Each year I look forward to the Silent Summer Film Festival at the Portage Theater, one of Chicago’s few restored movie palaces. For six consecutive Fridays, the Silent Film Society of Chicago (SFSC) presents a variety of well-known and unknown silent movies accompanied with live organ and sound effects by professional “photoplay organists” Dennis Scott [...]

Like his peer John Sayles, director Victor Nunez is a veteran independent filmmaker of three decades. Even before the Hollywood studios closed their doors to auteurs and turned their backs on audiences who appreciate complex dramas and original styles, filmmakers like Nunez and Sayles realized the need for a production model that existed completely outside [...]

Elvis Week begins tomorrow in Memphis, and fans and tourists are descending on the King’s city to mark the 33rd anniversary of his death with a week of concerts, movies, Graceland tours, and informal get-togethers. This year would have been Elvis’s 75th birthday, adding a special note to Elvis Week. To honor—and exploit—both occasions, Fathom [...]

Difficulties exist in any discussion of African American actors in westerns prior to the 1960s.  Given the general stereotyping of black actors as servants or entertainers in secondary roles during the Golden Age, most film histories criticize the industry for its institutionalized racism and leave it at that. While this widely held interpretation of Hollywood’s [...]

A few days ago, Morlock Jeff offered a list of movies that suffered from at least one horribly miscast actor whose performance and character distracted from the rest of the film. The list was topped by the preposterous casting of Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi, Holly Golightly’s Japanese neighbor, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Few can [...]

Movie-goers are bemoaning the lack of decent Hollywood movies in the cineplexes this summer. Not only are the studios releasing fewer films than in past years, but most of those that end up on the big screen have sacrificed good storytelling and craftsmanship for expensive gimmicks like 3-D, CGI, and Michael Bay-style hyper-editing that assaults [...]

Though not as doggedly determined as Sam Spade or as quick with the quip as Philip Marlowe, hard-boiled private eye Toby Peters investigates the most entertaining cases because his beat is Hollywood during the Golden Age. While working for such legendary stars as Errol Flynn or Mae West, Toby rubs elbows with other real-life film [...]

I first heard of hard-boiled writer Jim Thompson around 1990 when his books were suddenly the hottest properties in Hollywood. That year, The Grifters and After Dark, My Sweet were both adapted for the big screen, which subsequently cast a spotlight on director Maggie Greenwald’s 1989 indie version of The Kill-Off. Other Thompson novels were [...]

After the Great Fire of 1871, the city of Chicago was rebuilt as a modern metropolis that included theater and entertainment districts. By the turn of the century, Chicago had grown into a show business capital, peaking in the 1910s and 1920s as a mecca for every form of entertainment. There were 19 major theaters [...]