I was reading The Onion and took a peek at my horoscope. It said “You will make medical history this week as the first person to recover from smallpox only to die from a never-before-seen strain of enormouspox.” My actual fate was not so dire, but that printed and malignant prophecy did manage to land [...]

I spent two weeks working round-the-clock to put together my fall film calendar and to meet my printer’s deadline last Friday. I celebrated with top-shelf beers and a 16mm screening in my backyard of The Night of the Hunter (1955). It was the great actor Charles Laughton’s only directorial excursion, using a script by Pulitzer [...]

Exactly one week ago today I was in a clear green field near an aspen grove here in Colorado, staring down at a suspiciously mutilated cow. Aside for a few flies, nothing else was near it. Oblivious to its gender I dubbed it “Fred.” My girlfriend and I took some pictures and we continued along [...]

August marks TCM‘s annual Summer Under the Stars festival, and the Morlock’s have been given their marching orders: pick one overlooked star deserving of a week-long tribute. In 2008 it was Fred MacMurray. In 2009 it was Gloria Grahame. This year it’s Woody Strode (1914 – 1994). Strode was an athlete who turned to acting. [...]

Although Shadow of a Doubt (1943) precedes what is typically considered “Hitchcock’s Golden Age” it was a personal favorite for the director. Teresa Wright puts in an exceptional performance as Charlotte Newton, aka: “Young Charlie” – affectionately named after her uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten). While the younger Charlie is clearly an innocent, the elder [...]

I rarely attend films on opening night, but made an exception for Christopher Nolan’s Inception, knowing that it would be one of those films, like The Usual Suspects, whose ending can be telegraphed in two or three words by anyone who’d seen the film before me. Among other things, Inception is about dreams, dreams within [...]

I recently got back from extended travels to face a backlog of queries from Colorado friends and neighbors regarding the belated start of my 16mm backyard cinema program. Using FaceBook I asked if people had a preference for either Preston Sturges, Richard Fleischer, or Billy Wilder. The latter got a big shout-out, and then I [...]

Dennis Hopper passed away yesterday morning at the age of 74 from complications related to prostate cancer (he’d been diagnosed with it late in 2009). That same morning I heard of the news from over 12 Facebook posts by friends, and from there the tally continued to climb. Somewhere, someone has surely come up with [...]

Repertory film is a hard sell on campus, but last night I watched an advance screener for a multi-layered, black-and-white, French-Italian co-production that’s being re-released by Oscilloscope Pictures next month – one that  reminded me (in part) of my college days, and hopefully it will still connect with both students and general audiences today. The [...]