Natalie Wood has been named Star of the Month by TCM, and fans and viewers will be treated to a selection of her films every Monday evening in June. Tonight’s bill includes my favorite Wood film, Splendor in the Grass, along with two she made with Tab Hunter, The Girl He Left Behind and The [...]

The fifth session of Chicago’s best-loved midnight movies series began this past Saturday at Facets Multi-Media. Dubbed Night School, the series is intended to be educational as well as entertaining, because each film is introduced in a 20 to 30 minute lecture by a knowledgeable Facets employee who then leads a Q&A after the movie [...]

Clint Eastwood turns 80 years old today, though, with a film titled Hereafter in postproduction and one called Hoover in preproduction, he shows no signs of slowing down. Perhaps America’s most significant starteur—that is, both a star and an auteur—Eastwood has been part of the film industry since his uncredited role as Jennings the Lab [...]

Hollywood has always relied on remakes and reworkings of previous movie hits as a strategy to lure audiences to the theater. As far back as the silent era, directors and producers remade films to speak to new generations, to showcase the talents and images of new stars, and to rework the material with updated techniques [...]

I work in the marketing department at Facets Multi-Media in Chicago. Part of the Facets operation is a vast videotheque, or video rentals store, which features thousands of foreign, indie, documentary, and classic films for viewers seeking something beyond contemporary Hollywood fare. As such, we are besieged with announcements from all manner of straight-to-DVD production [...]

This month marks the 107th birthday of Bob Hope, who was an icon of the entertainment industry for almost nine decades.  From vaudeville to radio to movies to television to video/DVD releases of his films, Hope’s comic style and persona were remarkably consistent and adaptable from one arena of entertainment to another. Anyone who knows [...]

This month on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, TCM will offer “Race in Hollywood: Native American Images on Film,” a series that has culled the archives to spotlight both positive and negative images of American Indians. The films will be hosted by Robert Osborne and Professor Hanay Geiogamah, the director of the American Indian Studies Center [...]

Cinephiles everywhere were envious of the TCM crew who attended the first annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles last week. The festival lineup of films, presenters, and guests looked like a phenomenal combination of Hollywood star power and learned scholars. Fortunately, I was able to attend an event that was arguably the next [...]

Long ago, in a class on modern art, a professor once explained to me the value of art deemed avant-garde, underground, or even offensive. One point stuck out and has stayed with me over the years: Art that pushes the edges of accepted aesthetics, tastes, and standards—and, sometimes breaks free of them—keeps that mode of [...]