“There was a quality about Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that was so special . . . it was just the most exciting studio in the world. They looked after their people so perfectly. And then to go to a place [20th Century-Fox] where you don't know anybody and they don't know you and they don't give a rip, it was not a happy time. I got so ticked off, I got married!†~ Ann RutherfordAnn Rutherford will be 90 on Tuesday! An elegant dark haired beauty who graced many classic movies from Hollywood’s hey day, Ann was a prime example of the old Hollywood star system. Making her first film at the age of twenty, she soon was signed to MGM, the glittering super studio of Hollywood at the time. Groomed as ! one of its prime starlets, she appeared as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Metro’s holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol alongside Reginald Owen and Gene Lockhart. But it was as Polly Benedict in the studio’s wildly popular “Andy Hardy†series, that she became famous and steadily employed for nearly half a decade. As Polly, Andy’s (Mickey Rooney) best girlfriend, Ann had to often share Andy, and screen time, with other up and coming starlets who were being promoted by the studio. These comely lasses included Lana Turner, Esther Williams, Kathryn Grayson and Donna Reed.
Landing juicy roles in youth oriented films at MGM in the late 30’s (most noticeably Dramatic School! (1938) and These Glamour Girls (193! 9), Ruth erford was cast by David O. Selznick in his mega hit, Gone with the Wind (1939), as Scarlett O’Hara’s baby sister Careen. The role was briefly considered to be offered to teen-aged Judy Garland, but her light was about to shine very brightly in The Wizard of Oz later that same year.
In the early 1940’s, Rutherford left Metro and worked as a freelance actress, with some success at 20th Century-Fox. In Orchestra Wives (1942), she played Connie, who falls in love and marries trumpet player Bill Abbott (George Montgomery) much to the chagrin of his fellow band member and lead singer Jaynie (the lovely and ever conniving Lynn Bari). She went on to even ! more memorable roles particularly in the “Whistling†series with Red Skelton back at MGM and as Danny Kaye’s fiancee in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), but retired from films in 1950. She returned in the 1970’s for a couple more big screen roles and was considered for the role of older Rose in James Cameron’s huge cinematic spectacle Titanic (1997), a role that eventually was played by Gloria Stuart.
Great classic films, best all time movies
The Film Pie has an interesting "inside movie journalism" story about being the 'first' review posted on Rotten Tomatoes (re: Paranormal Activity 2).Pink is the New Blog! Jude Law on Sesame Street. Awwww. I don't get enough Jude Law these days. Or felt puppets. Both at once? Yes, please.Low Resolution Halloween words of wisdom from Beetlejuice. Speaking of...The Exploding Kinetoscope has some birthday wishes for Winona Ryder. Could her career be back on the upswing?popbytes 'Hottie with a Rubik's Cube'. How 80s and now simultaneously.Everything I Know... is not among the fans of Julianne Moore's Off Broadway musical Freckleface Strawberry.Blog Stage considers the changes made for Rabbit Hole as it shifts from stage to screen.Dear Old Hollywood For California readers: The Arclight is hosting a Steve McQueen tribute event on November 11th.A Toy Story MomentI thought this was cute. It's a moment of closure for director Lee Unkrich who has been working on the Toy Story franchise forever. If you've ever said goodbye to a long term project that you actually completed, you'll understand. But this moment would be! way cooler if we knew that there'd be no more Toy Story movie! s after Toy Story 3 which really did close the franchise beautifully. Sadly, Pixar, which once was THE studio for originality, is rapidly becoming like all the other studios when it comes to sequels and franchises and they're going to be beating all their horses way past the time that they're dead (to mangle a metaphor).
Finally, over at Pussy Goes Grrr Andreas made me lol with his love for Cat People. Have you ever seen that movie? There's almost nothing in the world I love more than clever people obsessing over movies. To this day I lol (literally) every time I think of the time Nick, hearing I had just watched Nashville, said "I want to rub that movie all over me." LOL. See, I did it again? It's too bad blogs don't have sound so you could hear. I speak the truth.
It's hard to imagine what audiences thought of "A Face in the Crowd" in 1957.This story still speaks volumes about fame and power and the mass hordes who blindly provide it. While the screenplay's deadly aim focused on the power of television, a fast-growing medium in the 1950s, the message goes beyond that today and can be applied to politicians, talk-show hosts and celebrities who have done nothing except use their fame to become more famous. And the masses still lap this stuff up, providing the fuel that these people thrive on.It's something Budd Schulberg got right, but in the 1950s, this type of cynicism didn't always play well with the public.But before discussing this, the story is pretty straightforward. M! arcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) plays a small-town radio reporter with a popular series called "A Face in the Crowd." A trip to the local jail turns up Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, full of bravado and sleeping off a bender. He grabs a guitar and immediately shows his genius for improvised entertainment. Jeffries sees ratings and convinces the station to give Rhodes his own show, which quickly succeeds. His homespun, on-air demeanor wins over fans. When the show is picked up nationally and aired on TV, his fan base skyrockets, although most are unaware of his increasing addiction to power and fame and his cavalier opinion of the people who give him this.
The film, beyond Neal, is filled with fresh faces. Audiences today! are familiar with Griffith and his gentle Andy Taylor from hi! s 1960s TV show. But this was his film debut, and today we can marvel at his range as an actor. Walter Matthau and Lee Remick are also appearing early in their career. These new faces actually may have hurt its appeal; even Neal wasn't a big star at this point, so today we can relish the fine job being done across the board but perhaps not then.Director Elia Kazan was no stranger to the entertainment world. By this point he had won two Oscars, yet his agreement to testify during the McCarthy era certainly tainted his image. Kazan and Schulberg worked together on "On the Waterfront," and "Face" has an even harder core.Which leads me to the point about cynicism, and two other films from the 1950s come to mind. "Ace in the Hole" was Billy Wilder's biting look at a news story that is literally turned into a media circus in order to sell newspapers and gain fame. "The Sweet Smell of Success" shows what lengths a publicist will sink to in order to gain publicity for a client. These films,! along with "Face," nail their topics with relentless power, but their tones turned off audiences who didn't shy from drama but would turn away from it if there was no strong protagonist or redeeming idea to follow. My only criticism is that "Face" suffers from making its point too early. On a recent viewing (my third) on the big screen, I found myself satisfied by the 90 minute mark but felt restless for the final 30 minutes, thinking that the screenplay had made its point and was chugging toward an inevitable climax that didn't surprise or involve me. If anything, Griffith's searing performance also runs on one speed -- at most times fascinating yet wearisome at others. The monster had been created, and while the monster was not to be liked, he wasn't nearly as compelling at the end. I felt this diminished the overall power of the film, despite how spot-on its observations were -- I mean, when the story talks about how politicians should change their image and tap into th! e power of television, who would have thought that three years! later t he presidential election would turn on a TV debate?Despite my criticisms, this is still a great film, well-made with a strong cast. If audiences in 1957 weren't sure what to think, today it's clear that Schulberg understood exactly what he was writing and that fame and power and influence haven't changed much in 50 years.
With 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 (both 1933), Warner Brothers studio had tapped into a treasure trove of entertainment for Depression weary audiences, longing for escapist fare of the highest caliber. With these fluffy film musicals, they had just that, lots of singing, lots of dancing and spectacular kaleidoscopic choreography by master showman Busby Berkley. Striking while the iron was red hot, Warners produced Footlight Parade, a cookie cutter copy of the previous shows, before the year was out. Although not exactly the same plot, the similarities were enough to continue the successful streak for Berkley and the studio.The plot, suc! h as it is, revolves around the flailing career of New York stage director Chester Kent (movie tough guy James Cagney), who, in an attempt to save his struggling production company, develops “prologuesâ€, live musical introductions to the newly popular talking pictures. As his financial woes mount, his shrewish, shallow wife demands a divorce, his competitor steals his ideas (with the help of an insider from his troupe), and his partners are swindling him of his share of the profits; add to this mix a gold-digging tootsie who latches on to his coattails when it appears he is on his way up again and you have a whirlwind of screen activity with Cagney chewing it up like it was a steak and baked potato. By his side the entire time and helping him at every turn, is his devoted and enamored secretary Nan (the incomparable Joan Blondell, at her cutest and wise-cracking snappiest).
Cagney had become a big star at Warners, along with Edward G. Robinson, as the resident grande gangster, after his breakthrough hit The Public Enemy two years earlier. But the actor had started out on the stage as a song and dance man and took this opportunity to flaunt his hoofing skills to great success. It is in this capacity and genre that he would win an Academy Award nine years later as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. In Footlight Parade, Cagney is a firecracker of activity, shooting rapid fire dialogue as quickly as he does a machine gun in his gangster/hoodlum pictures.Blondell, also a Warners staple, is a scene stealer as Nan. Standing by her man throughout the whole film (even when Cagney doesn’t realize he’s her man), she sticks up for the underdog/good guy (encouraging Chester to hire ! talented dancer/stenographer Ruby Keeler) and protects those she loves from harm (ie: pretty but conniving Claire Dodd from bossman Cagney). Along with the two leads, Footlight Parade features the fresh faces of crooner Dick Powell and the afore mentioned Keeler, who made a dynamic duo in the year’s previous two Berkley hits.
The film is pre-Code, the time before Hollywood censorship took a stronghold, and some of its racier dialogue was sliced and diced from re-release dates after the Code took effect. However, it was restored in 1970, so today, we can enjoy a classic Blondell sniping to her gold-digging rival for Cagney’s affections: “Out countess…as l! ong as there are sidewalks, you’ll have a job.†Other elem! ents tha t post-Code films wouldn’t have gotten away with were scantily clad chorines in a the bathing beauty extravaganza “By a Waterfall.†As a matter of fact, all the musical numbers in the film’s finale have daring themes to say the least. The charming “Honeymoon Hotel†routine shows a newlywed couple (Powell and Keeler) trying to enjoy their matrimonial amour without the constant interruptions that ensue, including an odd and ribald baby played by dwarf Billy Barty. In the final number, “Shanghai Lilâ€, Cagney is a sailor, looking for his lost love in the bordellos and opium dens of the Orient. It is a bizarre and surreal concept and even more unusual is the introduction of Keeler’s Lil. Unlike the debauchery and wanton behavior going on around her, Keeler, as Cagney’s Asian gal pal, is cute and perky. From the rest of the performers in the bit, one would expect Marlene Dietrich to show up as the infamous Lil. However, it is nonetheless a fabulous piece of fil! m extravagance set to music.Fast, furious and complete fun, Footlight Parade, like its toe tapping cousins, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers, was a success and continued the trend at Warners fondly known as the “backstage musicalâ€. The string would continue the following year with another installment of the “Gold Diggers†films, Dames and Wonder Bar.Want to know more?Here are some recommendations regarding the article above:Footlight Parade (1933) DVDJoan Blondell: A Life Between Takes ~ Matthew KennedyIf you are interested in these or any other merchandise, please help support this blog by purchasing them through the Amazon portal at the top of this page. By accessing Amazon through this site, you help me maintain resource material and continue to share my love of classic film. Thank you very much.
Newspapers. They've always had it rough; The second you publish something it's ancient history.Just as soon as this news was making the rounds the lady and her cattle driving man, rode into town in a cloud of triumphant dust and defeated their main rival. They won! Celebratoryparties, long delayed lovemaking and a return to the now thriving Faraway Downs followed. After a short orgiastic montage of Australia's natural beauty (the country's and the movie's), the epic movie ends with a speech by the young narrator Nullah (Brandon Walters) Just like Drover say 'that rain make everything come alive.' The land it grow green and fat and we all go back to ! Faraway Downs. Mrs Boss happy. Drover Happy. 
I hear for the first time that thing called Christmas. Then the rain, it stops. And then Drover, he go droving. The Mrs Boss, she always misses Drover. But I know, he's going to come back.
How perfect are these golden shots ! as closing romantic images?Only there's no closing. The epic m! ovie didn't end there, not on October 29th (and the cattle drive was already quite a movie) or with Nullah's first Christmas. Or even after the Drover went a-drovin' again, an amusingly brief montage which consists only of this leaving and returning, beautifully illustrating a family falling into its future pattern.But there's a lot more adventure, World War II adventure, coming. There's roughly sixty more minutes of it. I've often thought that had Australia wrapped up with that three shot shown above and this clear romantic narrative about the formation of a family (after one hour and forty-three minutes of a rousing western adventure), the critics and audiences might have been kinder. Wasn't Australia's main sin only that it was desperately overstuffed, that it didn't trust that one adventure, one tone, or one lead character arc was enough and it had to pack in at least a few of everything? Sometimes less is more, even for gorgeous sun-kissed epic that aspi! re to the mythic.Australia came out two years ago and though two years isn't a long time, you rarely hear people discuss this one anymore. Have any of you watched it recently? If you haven't seen it since its premiere, what is your most vivid memory of it?***
127 Hours may give you a headache, but Aron Rolston had to hack his arm off, so maybe you I should stop complaining. Danny Boyle rather pre-empts the inevitable intensity of witnessing someone detach their arm with a blunt penknife by assaulting your senses from the very first moment â€" it’s all split screens, fast edits, impossible pans from inside kitchen units, close ups of taps dripping, and so on and so forth. This is all rather disorientating, and it barely lets up, but the film is enclosed in some vague, meaningless allusion to the speed of modern life with shots of commuters that resemble Koyaanisqatsi,! and so the headrush of Boyle’s direction is a very straight! forward interpretation of living in Rolston’s world. Once he gets trapped in the crevice, these stylisations barrage instead into his mind, continually taking us on flights of delirious imagination and memory. Trapped in a limited space, this approach cracks open the film to a freewheeling, if no less intense than you’d expect, experience, the ‘realer’ scenes kept vital by a dynamic use of sound to express the physicality of the situation. 127 Hours is doubtless a rather aggressive experience, but even if the schizophrenia of the visuals makes you put your head between your legs, the generous sense of irony and humour the script exudes, and that the playful, sympathetic James Franco expresses so engagingly, keep the film alive. Though maybe cover your eyes when he removes his contacts. (B+)
Coming-of-age dramas are ten-a-penny, yet the festival threw up a fair share of superbly imagined gems of that specificity. South Africa’s Oscar entrant this year is Life, Above All, where the adolescent Chanda deals with a useless, drunk stepfather, an ill mother, a rebellious friend and the judgmental gazes of her entire neighbourhood. Khomotso Manyaka is a vibrant, perceptive anchor for the film, never characterising Chanda either as burdened by or martyring herself, and importantly maintaining a sense of innocence and childlike fun in her gait and attitude. The script’s heavy emphasis on social judgment is intriguingly endorsed by the intensity of the style in these sequences, hammering home the point to such an extent that it takes on an extra layer of the camera’s judgment; it doesn’t merely observe, but judges the judgers. But specially, Life, Above All is a nuanced, powerful and engaging dram! a that eschews the ‘poverty porn’ that most African export! s seem t o engage in, without severing itself from the depiction of the nationhood that inspired that stunted idea in the first place. (A-)
More literally coming of age is Anna (Clara Augarde), centre of Katell Quillevere’s intriguing Love Like Poison, which initially seems set up as a reticent period story, in the 1.33 aspect ratio and dangerously cosy country settings, but very rapidly we see that this is a very modern story, with a handily unjudgmental and open attitude. Familial dynamics are skewed â€" Anna’s mother ashamedly confesses to being jealous of her daughter’s burgeoning sexuality; and Anna reveals herself to two very different males with markedl! y different intentions â€" and their tangle with the essence of religion is a set of thematics dealt with by the script on an unpredictable, deeply complex level. More essentially, Quillevere’s film has an innate sense of what the realisation of sexuality is like, and the repercussions it has on the people closest to Anna prove amusing, surprising, depressing, and memorable. (B+)
I was researching Neil Marshall's The Descent for a post I was writing about horror movies when I was surprised to stumble upon this trivia item:No real caves appear anywhere in the film.Goes to show that it's easy to be guilty of the same behavior we so often criticize awards groups for displaying, namely, having a narrow idea of what greatness in a particular field looks like. Despite being a huge fan of the movie, until that moment the brilliance of Simon Bowles' production design for The Descent had not occurred to me.Of course, if you think about it for two seconds you realize they're sets. Real caves ! wouldn't be safe, would be impossible to light, would not match the needs of the plot, and would most likely look boring on camera. But Bowles' work is so convincing you don't pause to think about it. All you can focus on is the horrible trouble these women have gotten themselves into.
Horror films live or die on atmosphere. Studios can produce successful comedies that are indifferently filmed, but not horror movies. If The Descent ever gave the impression, even subliminally, that the actresses were actually filming safely on a soundstage somewhere, the suspense would vanish instantly. As it stands the feel of the film is so strong that it's easy to forget it's a horror movie at all. The cave-diving sequences are already nerve-wracking enough. When the horror elements do kick in it is so well grounded in reality that t! he terror increases exponentially. It's like 127 Hours if Jame! s Franco were attacked by monsters halfway through.Like Buffalo Bill's basement in The Silence of the Lambs or the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, The Descent's caves are destined to be one of those touchstones of the horror genre. One wouldn't think something as dull as caves could be made so interesting, but I can vividly recall the various twists and forms the tunnels took as the women descended deeper and deeper into the Earth. From the putrid nest of the creatures to the chasm the women attempt to cross via the cave ceiling; from the huge, yawing entrance to the claustrophobia-inducing tunnel where poor Alex Reid gets stuck, every stage of the journey has its own distinct personality. Not bad considering roughly half the screen is pitch black most of the time.
The theme of this series is shaping up to be the showy versus the subtle. It'! s already come up with costume design and special effects. The design of this movie is another example of work that does the job without calling attention to itself and has therefore gone overlooked. So here's to the production design of Simon Bowles along with the art direction of Jason Knox-Johnson. Considering how much junk horror clogs the multiplexes, their contributions to one of the few truly effective horror films of the last decade should not go unrecognized.
Christopher Nolan has revealed the title of his third Batman film (Batman 7 if you're counting*) to Hero Complex and it's The Dark Knight Rises. We also know that the villain will not be The Riddler so stop that photoshopping of Tom Hardy in green tights even though his musculature is undoubtedly fun to move one's cursor around. What? Okay, you may leave the question mark upon his chest because we still don't know who he is. We just know he's not The Joker, Mr Freeze, Two Face or The Riddler.Now that we have this much info the reviews can practically write themselves. Blurb Whores all over the internet nation may now commence structuring their reviews...Little intro -- The Dark Knight is the best -- It's been 4 years since The Dark Knight blah blah blah but in that time, Nolan has proven himself th! e greatest director who ever lived, even without the pointy cowl etcetera etcetera Inception is a masterpiece ...more here. And other stuff yadda yadda but it must have been daunting as The Dark Knight is untoppable![Provocative question here] 'OR IS IT?' [insert "after the jump" here. Increase page views!!!]Very thorough plot description. [spoiler warning] plot point someone dies / is not who they appear to be / becomes [/spoiler warning] Describe favorite action scene (reference truck flipping from Dark Knight -- even cooler than that no really) end with more plot.
Christian Bale continues to be [insert whatever I thought of him before] proving that he had more fight left in him, bulking back up after his Oscar nominated emaciation ! in The Fighter. But blah blah Batman has the bes! t rogues gallery of any superhero and once again blah blah villains etcetera. Something about whichever girl gets cast and a defence of Chris Nolan's critiques that he's no good with female characters etcetera etcetera -- But Tom Hardy steals the show. He's AWESOME as The Riddler _______ and deserving of Oscar attention. And here's some concluding hyperbole. If the Academy knows what's good for them they'll nominate this one for Best Picture. Grand finish with hopeful plea for a fourth Nolan Batman picture. Done!* I know I'm the only one who is counting but it's not like people claim there's only 6 or 7 James Bond movies just because that series stops and starts with new Bonds and new decades and creatives and whatnot.