As one of the movies being presented as part of TCM’s 24-Hour Tribute to the Telluride Film Festival on Monday evening, September 6th at 2 am (ET), THE CHALLENGE (1938) is a bit of an oddity. Rarely seen in the U.S. and not one of the better known films about a famous mountain-climbing expedition, it [...]

“If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”  -  Leonard Cohen Missing in action since it was first filmed by Tony Palmer in 1972, BIRD ON A WIRE, a documentary account of Leonard Cohen’s European tour, has finally surfaced on DVD after being painstakenly restored frame by frame by the director who [...]

This week I’m here to praise BFI Flipside, a classy underdog in the world of DVD distribution, who launched this label in 2009 with the following explanation on all of their box art: “The Flipside: rescuing weird and wonderful British films from obscurity and presenting them in new high-quality editions.” Earlier releases have included Richard [...]

The closest Woody Strode ever got to playing the leading role in an American film was SERGEANT RUTLEDGE (1960), in which he portrayed the title character but was fourth billed after Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Tower and Billie Burke. In an ironic twist that makes sense in a Pre-Civil Rights Hollywood, Strode had to travel to [...]

Every national cinema has their own homegrown subgenres and mythology when it comes to Horror films and I think Japan has some of the most unique and bizarre creatures of all such as the hopping Umbrella ghost from Yokai hyaku monogatari (1968, aka The Hundred Monsters) or the rampaging stone idol of the Majin trilogy [...]

Remember Big Jim McBob (Joe Flaherty) and Billy Sol Hurok (John Candy) as the hayseed hosts of “Farm Report” on the legendary SCTV comedy series? These farmer-turned-film-reviewers loved movies where people and things blew up and eventually their hog report turned into a talk show where they blew up famous celebrities every week like Meryl [...]

When Blake Edwards was pondering who should play Mr. Yunioshi, Holly Golightly’s Japanese neighbor, in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961), did he call central casting and ask for suggestions? Or did he come up with his own ideas, running through such choices as  Benson Fong, Philip Ahn, Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and others before arriving at [...]

This past Spring NYC’s Film Forum programmed a series entitled “The Newspaper Picture” and out of the entire schedule, ten of the movies starred Lee Tracy, including The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932), Love is a Racket (1932), Advice to the Lovelorn (1933), which was based on Nathanael West’s novel Miss Lonelyhearts, and Power [...]

Some movies play on in your memory, long after the viewing. But it isn’t always because of the story, the actors or the film’s cumulative impact. Sometimes it could simply be a music cue or the end credits music or the opening theme that resonate in your brain for years, even when the rest of [...]