March 31, 1915: The nascent serial genre has its first true star when Pearl White plays the hazard-plagued heroine of The Perils of Pauline. March 28, 1920: Broadway legend John Barrymore moves to center stage of the film world with…
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Hedy Lamarr: Smarter Than Your Average Woman
Guest blogger Kristine Blinn writes: Hollywood actresses often get a bad rep. People think they’re dumb. Not model-dumb or anything that bad, but dumb nonetheless. And sure, most of them might be, but it’s just not fair to make sweeping generalizations (unless…
Read more →The Men Who Stare at Goats
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! His “love connection” was a goat. Clearly the army’s new video dating service had some kinks to…
Read more →Greenberg (2010) Starring Ben Stiller: Movie Review
Movie Irv designated writer/director Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale one of his favorite movies of the decade. Now, the Brooklyn-born Baumbach has another film on the moviest critic’s radar–Greenberg, starring comic superstar Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig (of many a…
Read more →Talk Radio: Talking Pictures, Part 2
“Rage eventually undoes the enraged, even if the anger is merited. And no, the media isn’t everything. The battle isn’t everything. Something else remains.” –Andrew Sullivan, columnist for The Atlantic, discussing the nature of the ideological Internet and the online…
Read more →The Name’s the Same, But….
Trying to find your way to the right film in today’s 10-, 12-, and 24-and-beyond-screen multiplex cinemas can sometimes turn into a tricky feat of navigation the equal of Theseus making his way through the Labyrinth. Matters weren’t made any easier for…
Read more →Blue Angel of Mercy? Another View of Marlene Dietrich
Guest blogger TheLadyEve writes: Marlene Dietrich is one of only a very few film legends whose career spanned 60+ years. Her life in film began in the early 1920s with silent pictures. It came to a close with Maximilian Schell’s 1984…
Read more →Olsen and Johnson: The Limbo of the Hellzapoppin’ Boys
Late last year I wrote an article for MovieFanFare on the final screen appearances of six classic movie comedy teams (Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, the Marx Brothers, and the Three Stooges). Not…
Read more →Almodovar, Cruz and Broken Embraces
These days, when a director strings a few good movies together, people say they are on a roll. But how many filmmakers can honestly had an entire career that was one big roll—a career in which he’s never made a…
Read more →First Time Watch: Suspicion
Throughout the entire span of one’s own movie-watching career (for lack of a better word), there are always going to be films that get missed by individuals. Some of these celluloid efforts that escape a person’s experience are even considered…
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