If you love movies, particularly horror, science fiction, fantasy, European, cult, Psychotronic, obscure, rare and anything other than THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, CASABLANCA and DUCK SOUP, then at one time or another you have wanted to bust Leonard Maltin right in the kisser. I know I have.

READ MORE

Humphrey Bogart and William Holden duking it out on the set of SABRINA (1954)

In June actor Harrison Ford made news after publicly calling, Shia LaBeouf, his young costar from INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (Steven Spielberg; 2008) “…a f–king idiot.” Since then I’ve been thinking about insults that actors have hurled at other actors over the years and a recent piece at Flavorwire titled “The 30 Harshest Filmmaker-on-Filmmaker Insults In History” compelled me to compile a list of 30 of the worst actor-on actor insults I’ve come across. Some of them are surprisingly crude so I thought I should worn potential readers before they plunge ahead. Let the war of words begin…

READ MORE

Remakes.   It’s possible, just possible, they’re hated more than sequels.  After all, a sequel is continuing a successful story with the same actors and director (under most conditions but not all) whereas a remake is taking a film that may be beloved by many and redoing it with different actors and a tweaked storyline.  This can be maddening.  Whatever the remake’s merits, sometimes we simply don’t want to see our beloved original toyed with so casually.   My usual reaction is to avoid the remake altogether.  I have nothing against Mark Wahlberg, Thandie Newton or director Jonathan Demme, the team behind the Charade remake, The Truth about Charlie, but I really don’t see the need to ever redo anything done by Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and Stanley Donan, the team behind the original.  I mean, just re-release Charade if you’re so hell-bent on showing it again.  Later, Mr. Demme remade another favorite film of mine that was, like Charade, almost obscenely perfect in its original incarnation, The Manchurian Candidate.   At this point, I must ask:  Mr. Demme, why do you hate me so much?

READ MORE

You know this gaunt growler. He lurks in the disreputable direct-to-video section of your local video store, if it still exists, or pops up on Netflix in a low-budget creeper rated with one reluctant star. He is, of course, Lance Henriksen, a tireless worker and a real character of a character actor. In his wild, circuitous life he’s compiled a trunk-full of  anecdotes and chastened life lessons. With the help of co-writer Joseph Maddrey, he packed all of them into his autobiography, Not Bad For A Human. It lays bare his poverty-stricken youth and job-hustling acting career with a disarming lack of vanity and a rhythmic sense of cursing.

READ MORE

Last week’s post on memorable movie hats for women was fun and enlightening but time consuming because of the laborious process of researching examples. Women’s hats tend to be unique variations on specific styles or one-of-a-kind haute couture designs. To find examples, I wracked my brain to recall films, stars, or female characters that might lead to colorful, meaningful, or dynamic hats, and then I searched for film stills from those movies. Once I found examples, I discerned what style it was and then interpreted its use in the film. Not the most efficient approach to the topic, and I knew many good examples of hats would fall through the cracks. Fortunately, my readers picked up the slack and mentioned some terrific examples, which prompted me to add bits of hat lore and history in the comments section.

READ MORE

Although released in 2001 and greatly admired by many prominent film critics, DELBARAN, directed by Iranian filmmaker Abolfazl Jalili, is not nearly as well known as other Iranian prize winners such as Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) or Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar (2001) but deserves to be. The story of Kaim, a fourteen-year-old war orphan trying to survive in a desolate Iranian village near the Afghanistan border, the film is in the grand tradition of other cinema masterworks that feature child protagonists caught up in the madness of war such as Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games (1952), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962) and Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985).        READ MORE

Recently I rejoined the traditional nine-to-five workforce after close to 14 years as a stay-at-home father. It was a momentous step and one that changed more than just my life–we hired a nanny to take over my childcare duties. This occasioned my daughter to draft a list of requirements that included: “must not smell of barley water” and “must understand that reference.”

Yeah, she’s my daughter all right!

The thing of it is, she hadn’t even seen Mary Poppins in years, but it had left enough of an impression that she could call out references like that anyway.

We were fortunate enough to hire, if not the actual Mary Poppins, at least a credible 21st century alternative. And in her honor, I’d like to pay tribute to a movie so engaging and memorable that it lives on almost a half century later, in the memories of succeeding generations of fans.

READ MORE

This coming Saturday — tomorrow, August 6th – marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of show business’ forever and always top funny lady Lucille Ball, and also a day of Lucille Ball on TCM’s Summer Under the Stars.  It would be more than appropriate for anyone to celebrate this significant milestone, but I especially love Lucy.  My mother used to say that when I was a kid everytime she would come into a room I’d be watching I Love Lucy on TV, and I used to talk about it all the time.  Still do even today — watch and talk about it! READ MORE

Christina Rice is a Los Angeles-based librarian, film historian and new mother who is currently writing a biography of Hollywood actress Ann Dvorak (1911-1979) while maintaining the website Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel. This busy lady was kind enough to spend a little time with me on what would have been Dvorak’s 100th birthday in anticipation of Ann Dvorak Day — Tuesday, August 9th, on Turner Classic Movies.

RHS: Can you believe it’s almost Ann Dvorak Day?

CR: Ann Dvorak Day – something I never thought would exist outside of my house!  When I was on maternity leave last August I spent a good part of the month parked on the couch watching Summer Under the Stars and thinking what a drag it was that Ann would probably never get a day. She was always great in whatever she appeared in, but her filmography as a whole isn’t – how to say this nicely – terribly significant. But thanks to the Pre-Code box sets and TCM airing her more important works, I think Ann has picked up a lot of new fans over the past few years. I mean, she’s still obscure, but, now people know her face and her acting. READ MORE