Over the holidays, celebrated film scholar Robin Wood died of leukemia at age 78. I did not realize he had passed away until I saw his obituary on the Internet early last week, and I was saddened by the loss. Of all the historians, scholars, and critics I have studied and read over the years, Wood has been my most lasting influence.

While I enjoy reading the work of those who regularly write about film, I am extremely selective about those writers I consider true influences. The problem I generally find with the hundreds upon hundreds of writers who hold forth on film is twofold: Scholars steeped in cinema history, theory, and aesthetics write in such a tedious style that their ideas are lost in their academic jargon; critics and reviewers who write in breezy, entertaining styles often have so little formal background in film studies that their interpretations of movies are inaccurate or distorted, and their opinions are little more than reflections of their personal tastes. Scholars are often elitist in their choice of films to study or analyze, which can make them dismiss the very movies most of us enjoy. On the other hand, reviewers and critics are too blinded by their personal tastes or too full of themselves to be truly interested in helping their readers get more out of their viewing experiences. Robin Wood was that rare film scholar who loved popular movies, understood the contexts in which they were produced, and was devoted to interpreting them in a down to earth style that anyone could understand.

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I spent Thanksgiving with Dracula, and I don’t mean that creepy relative who likes to dress in black or my cold-hearted, soul-sucking “ex.”  On Thanksgiving evening, I watched the 1931 Universal film interpretation of Bram Stoker’s novel about the world’s most famous vampire, except it wasn’t the one with Bela Lugosi. Instead, I devoured the Spanish-language version starring Carlos Villarias. The Spanish Dracula, or Drácula, can be found as one of the extras on Universal’s DVD release, which is part of their Monster Legacy Collection. I was so intrigued with what I saw that I returned to the Lugosi version to compare and contrast.

In the early sound era, Universal sometimes produced two versions of the same film—one with English-speaking stars for American audiences and another with Hispanic stars for Spanish-speaking audiences. The purpose was to prevent the loss of the Spanish-speaking market because of the advent of talkies. In the silent era, producing a film for international audiences simply meant translating the intertitles into other languages. When sync-sound became the norm, international markets were far less interested in English-language talkies, and the big studios became concerned about losing foreign revenue. For a short while, Universal produced Spanish-language versions of some of their films to maintain their Spanish-speaking markets. Spanish versions of Universal films used different casts and directors but were shot on the same schedule using the same sets. I had heard about this practice back in film school, but I had never seen any of the Spanish-language Universal films until I watched Drácula.

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There are thousands of film festivals out there, and most of them are small D.I.Y. affairs that lean heavily on digital projection and extremely low-budget projects that happily take up any host that will notice them. And that’s fine. But I’ve also seen an abuse of local media by some of these overzealous festival promoters who know that the over-worked and harried journalists at shrinking newspapers often times won’t question their outrageous claims at being the “Cannes of the (your location here)” or other such nonsensical hyperbole. So it’s with great pleasure that I announce the return of a “reel” film festival that’s been around for several decades and that ambitiously brings in ten days of very eclectic programming, most of which is still on 35mm film: The 2009 Starz Denver Film Festival (Nov. 12 – 22). READ MORE

Ever wonder if the universe might be sending you a secret message? I’m not one to read tea-leaves or Tarot cards, but sometimes think numerology can be fun. So today I woke up wondering if there could be any significance to it being the first day of the eleventh month of the year. Taking a cue from the popular internet meme that asks people to turn to a specific page in the book nearest them to share an excerpt, I decided to see what films the cosmos might be suggesting I add to my Netflix account by pulling down from my bookshelf all the film books I had that I figured would have plenty of poster art. Then I counted the stack. I’m not making this up: there were exactly eleven books! I was off to a good start. How to proceed? Since it’s the first day of the eleventh month of the year I went to page 11, and from there let my finger fall on the very first film image that followed. With that in mind, I now dedicate the following eleven films to the month of November: READ MORE

Careening across the countryside in a gypsy wagon, a lovesick hunchback cries out piteously for release from his twisted form. A hardworking Jewish-American father tries to appease his young son on his birthday, seeking to interest him in a baseball bat rather than an expensive violin.

A tired general on the Western frontier finds a few moments of solace in soldiers’ singing. An Italian soldier, willing to do anything to get back to his wife and baby, is stranded in the war-torn desert. A stoic Indian chief joins a wild west show, finding a way to keep his dignity despite his reduced circumstances.
A broken matador tells an up and comer some hard truths. A Mexican dictator regretfully but decisively goes to war. A Japanese editor tries to correct his American-educated son’s corrupt Western ways.
A half-monkey, half-man broods endlessly about his plight, especially since he’s stuck being a houseboy for his creator.

What do each of these diverse (and sometimes pretty outlandish) characters and at least 200 more have in common? Character actor and changeling J. Carrol Naish (1896-1973). I can’t possibly touch on the range of Naish’s roles in this blog, but his remarkably productive career includes an enormous range of characters, far beyond the roles as heavily accented types he is often best remembered for today.

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Inspired by the season, Chicago’s alternative movie venues are celebrating Halloween by showcasing a wide range of horror films, from the silent classics to contemporary gore fests. Recently, the Silent Film Society of Chicago showed The Bat, a 1926 mystery thriller that continues to intrigue me long after the initial screening. At first, I was fascinated by the striking visual style of director Roland West and his set designer, William Cameron Menzies, because I recognized that it must have been an influence on the character and visual design of Batman. While I was researching The Bat, I discovered that it was once on the list of permanently lost films before a copy miraculously popped up in Idaho, of all places. And, finally, after pondering the name Roland West, which seemed familiar to me, I realized he was involved in the mysterious death of actress Thelma Todd, though he was married to Jewel Carmen at the time, who actually costarred in The Bat. What a film; definitely Morlocks material.

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“So much about this movie and its characters should be annoying, but the sensory disorientation climaxes in a freakout that wipes all troubles away, as well as anything else in your head.” (The Village Voice)

“…without a doubt one of the most intriguing and well-crafted low-budget horror films in recent memory.” (Fangoria)

“It’s akin to an acid trip, actually. Take a hit right as the movie starts up, and chances are as soon as the acid kicks in, the movie starts twisting at the same time.” (DreadCentral.com)

“I Can See You heralds a splendid new filmmaker with one eye on genre mechanics, one eye on avant-garde conceits and a third eye for transcendental weirdness.” (The New York Times) READ MORE

Of all the films in the original Universal horror cycle, Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy feature the most memorable female characters. Elsa Lanchester’s turn as the title character in Bride is now a history-making performance in an iconic film. But, more interesting to me is Zita Johann as Helen Grosvenor, the reincarnation of Princess Anck-es-en-Amon in The Mummy. Johann’s raven hair, huge eyes, and underlying eroticism set her apart from the dull, virginal leading ladies of the other Universal films from this time frame. With their blonde bobs, tasteful hats, and tailored clothing, the Helen Chandlers, Mae Clarks, and Julie Bishops kind of all run together for me into one Anglo-looking archetype.]

Surprisingly, Johann’s film career never surpassed The Mummy. Interested only in the process of acting, the dedicated stage actress thought the trappings of movie stardom—the publicity and promotion, the catering to fans, and even the necessity of making lighter fare, like genre films—were silly and superficial. She disliked those movie stars who were more interested in the trappings than the work, once remarking that she had more respect for the whores on 42^nd Street than for the stars in Hollywood.

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As TCM winds down a month featuring one of the greatest character actors who ever stole a picture, (Claude Rains, the September Star of the Month),  my appetite for  character actors in the spotlight has been whetted. Partly in response to repeated requests from those interested readers who frequent these pages, I thought a deserving glimpse of more supporting players might enliven the month of October. Each week this month, I’ll focus one of those actors who may not have been the stars of the show, but whose work invariably stood out from the crowd of “5000 others”. This week, I thought I’d tip my hat toward at least one of the gifted Russian émigrés who trained at the Moscow Art Theatre.

Maria Ouspenskaya, whose talent came out of that creative seedbed for some of the finest actors and boldest hams, stands out among them, despite being under five feet tall. Many of her colleagues lent their credibility and indelible gifts to Hollywood, but she may be the most readily identifiable of the bunch. While hightailing it away from the Cossacks, the Whites, the Reds, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the anarchists and the fascists who made life a bit too “interesting” in the first half of the 20th century from Siberia to the shores of Ellis Island, several of these actors found a pretty fair living in Hollywood, among them Akim Tamiroff, Olga Baclanova, Vladimir Sokoloff, Leonid Kinskey and Konstantin Shayne. They may never have felt completely at home in what sometimes seemed the Babylonian splendor of “barbaric” American culture in the studio era. Cut off from their cultural roots and often having lost their families and nearly their lives during the revolutionary times they lived in, these actors often proved their strength of character and professional versatility when asked to play characters of almost every class and ethnicity in American movies.

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