05.31.10 Movie Poll: Who’s Your Favorite Clint Eastwood Cowboy?
Our pick of Clint Eastwood's Underrated Films
Happy Birthday Clint Eastwood (A Tribute)
May, 2010 Archive
05.31.10 Underrated Films by Clint Eastwood
In honor of Clint Eastwood's 80th birthday I’d like to take a look at some of his films that flied a bit under the radar. Full disclosure: This is actually an update on an earlier post I wrote which included other actors’ overlooked efforts as well. Nevertheless, here are his “lesser” works still well worth viewing.
The Beguiled
WHO (else): Geraldine Page
WHAT: A Southern girls’ school idyllic, if not anachronistic, existence is shattered by wounded Union soldier Eastwood who’s been given refuge.
WHY: Released in the same year as Dirty Harry and Play Misty for Me, the film was perhaps destined to be overlooked. Even so, it confounded critics and moviegoers alike with many unpleasant scenes and its ending outraged even its own studio boss. Pay no attention. This slightly surreal gothic tale keeps viewers off balance, ever questioning the characters’ motives and intentions.
05.31.10 New DVD Releases: Week of 5-31-10
Chris Cummins | New Releases This Week
This week's new releases (of which there are many) include Tim Burton's adaptation of a childhood favorite, a DVD set of Elvis' most popular films, a documentary exploring Clint Eastwood's working relationship with Warner Brothers, the recent remake of a horror classic and much more. Let's see what new DVD and Blu-ray offerings are making their debut this week.
Part live action, part computer animated, Tim Burton's take on Lewis Carroll's classic tale follows 19-year-old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) as she leaves her engagement party to follow the White Rabbit into Underland. Unable to remember her previous visit there, she encounters the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and gets involved in a battle to dethrone the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) that allows her to rediscover her inner hero. With Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas. Obviously this was a huge blockbuster smash, but many left the theaters feeling ambivalent towards the film's thin story and grating visuals. What did you think? Was it another masterful Burton/Depp collaboration, or are they both just going through the motions at this point?
05.31.10 Clint Eastwood: Happy 80th Birthday!
The weathered features, steel-eyed squint and take-no-prisoners demeanor are immediately recognizable to the global cinema audience that has raised this onetime Army swimming instructor to a remarkable 40+years at the forefront of box-office draws.
Born in San Francisco to a steelworker father, Clinton Eastwood, Jr. spent his first post-high school years doing assorted odd jobs before his Korean War-era enlistment. Encouraged by service buddies David Janssen and Martin Milner to give movies a shot once back to civilian life, he obtained a contract with Universal in 1955, and received bits in Bs like Revenge of the Creature (more about his debut here), Francis in the Navy and Tarantula.
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05.28.10 MovieFrightFare: House of Terror-ific Trivia
George D. Allen and Irv Slifkin | Movie Buzz, Movie Buzz Podcast
Ghoul school is back in session, as the horrifyingly humble host of MovieFrightFare (hosted by our page on Famous Monsters) spins the Weird Wheel and delves into another decade of dread. Bone up on your terror-ific trivia with Ghouly Irv's latest malevolent masterclass!
(Fear fans will want to return to the crypt to see the trivia your humble horror host shared earlier about the silent era and another groovy decade for ghouly movies!)
05.28.10 George A. Romero & Survival Of The Dead
Irv Slifkin | In the Director's Chair, Movie Buzz
George A. Romero is back on the zombie track with George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead. The New York City -born, Pittsburgh-raised and now Toronto-based director has brought us gore and lots more in his shockers about the living dead for decades. Of course, it was Romero who practically invented the entire subgenre of horror movies with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, the classic low-budget saga of a group of people holed up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse battling flesh-eating creatures. But there was more to the black-and-white effort other than scares for the sake of scares. Whether the midnight movie and drive-in audiences flocking to the film realized the subtext is debatable, but Romero, 70, has gone on record to talk about how anger about the Vietnam War and his views on the country’s racial prejudices played integral parts in the story. And, he has said, there have been political and social ingredients to all of his other skin-devouring scareathons as well.
05.28.10 Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
Jason Marcewicz | Create-A-Caption
You know the drill. Below is a classic movie photo with Jason’s caption.
You’re encouraged to leave your own suggestion in the comment section below!
This was exciting. If he was the eighth caller they’d win the Laser Floyd tickets!
05.28.10 A Bijou Flashback: Forgotten Hollywood Treasures
Guest contributor Bob Campbell writes:
Where on television today can you find short subjects starring Betty Boop, Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang or Flash Gordon? Hollywood studios stopped producing short subjects altogether in the late 1950s as television became a household fixture, but in their heyday the shorts were the equivalent to what would become the sit-coms, variety shows, sports shows, cartoon series and news programs audiences could enjoy at home on the small screen.
Among our favorite theatrical shorts were the Hollywood behind-the-scenes newsreels produced during the 1930s, like The Star Reporter, Hollywood on Parade, Voice of Hollywood and Broadway Highlights. These little jewels foreshadowed today's Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, American Idol and America's Got Talent TV shows.
The Star Reporter newsreels were hosted by veteran sports commentator Ted Husing and served to introduce new and evolving talent, some going on to stardom. In one episode, nine-year old Bennie Bartlett sings his own original composition, and in another Ina Ray Hutton and Her All-Girl Orchestra let loose with some hot notes and hot moves, raising the roof until balloons descend to cover the orchestra in a grand finale.
05.26.10 Bette Davis: She Did It The Hard Way
Bette Davis was a movie star when the word “star” meant something. She was quoted as saying, “Today everyone is a star – they’re all billed as ‘starring’ or ‘also starring’. In my day, we earned that recognition.” She was correct. Today actors get “name above the title” status after one hit movie or TV show and then they usually crash and burn…fast. On her tombstone she had inscribed “She did it the hard way.” And she did. Her success wasn’t instantaneous. There were many a turkey in her long career (Parachute Jumper, Beyond the Forest, anyone?), but because of the studio system she was allowed to fail and grow and move on. (Ironically, later in her career she would fight the studio system over the quality of the scripts she was being sent and lose.) Davis didn’t fit the standard of beauty of her day, but she had ‘it”…”it” being that unknown quantity that makes someone riveting to watch on the big screen.
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05.26.10 Catherine O’Hara: More Than Kevin’s Mom
Last week on this site an article examined the career of SCTV regular-turned-movie dad Eugene Levy, so now let's turn to a look at his distaff counterpart, a gifted comic actress from the Great White North who's also gone on to big-screen notoriety for a parental role, albeit one who was a little more forgetful than Levy's American Pie pop. A passing mention of a woman suddenly sitting up in her airplane seat and yelling out "KEVIN!" should be enough for filmgoers to know that I'm talking about Home Alone mother Catherine O'Hara.
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05.26.10 Movie Review: Lured
Guest blogger Moira Finnie writes:
Lured (1948), directed by Douglas Sirk in high style, presents George Sanders as a good guy detective from Scotland Yard and Lucille Ball as a woman working with Scotland Yard who presents herself as bait to help draw a murderer out of hiding in London in this slightly satirical but enjoyable "gaslight melodrama". Among the suspects are Boris Karloff, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Napier, and George Zucco. Btw, Boris Karloff's brief, highly amusing madman alone makes this movie worthwhile, but all the actors look as though they are having stylish fun, and I don't think that Lucy ever looked more beautiful than she does in this role. What a shame that Hollywood never seemed to know what to do with her in the '40s, leaving us with just a handful of screen appearances in better than average movies that decade, such as this movie, Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and The Big Street (1942). Each in their own way hint at her considerable dramatic as well as comic potential.
Tags: Clint Eastwood