The Top Ten Greatest Directors of All Time

Last week, I stirred some folks up with my Top Ten Most Overrated Directors of All Time.  To recap, they were: Ridley Scott, Michael Mann, David Lean, Darren Aronofsky, Mike Nichols, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Alfred Hitchcock.  And by “stirred some folks up,” I mean faced down a virtual lynch mob.  Who knew that Aronofsky supporters were fans of the film Fury? 

A few quick items in response to that piece.  First, it was not about “bad directors” (although some were plain bad, including Aronofsky), but about overrated directors.  Alfred Hitchcock is nowhere near the worst director ever (I was probably too harsh to label him “slightly better than mediocre”), but it is a travesty to label him the greatest director of all time, as so many have.  The same holds true for David Lean (I appreciate Great Expectations, Brief Encounter, and swaths of Bridge Over the River Kwai, I just think he doesn’t deserve to make the top 20 list). Second, I neglected three directors who clearly should have made the list: Roman Polanski (somebody stop the Chinatown cult!), Spike Lee (how can he make race relations this dull?), and Tim Burton (damn you for ruining Sweeney Todd).  Third, two corrections: (more…)

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Tags: Akira Kurosawa, billy wilder, Charlie Chaplin, christopher nolan, Elia Kazan
Posted Jan 24th 2010 at 6:34 am in Classic Hollywood, Culture, Featured Story, Film | 295962265 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bshapiro/2010/01/24/the-top-ten-greatest-directors-of-all-time/The+Top+Ten+Greatest+Directors+of+All+Time2010-01-24+14%3A34%3A57Ben+Shapiro

Jean Simmons Has Died

Well, the wait is over. Every year I was sure the Academy would get their act together and award this underrated and under-appreciated actress who possessed the most beautiful speaking voice to ever grace a motion picture with a long overdue honorary Academy Award, and every year the Academy never failed to disappoint.

And now it’s too late.

Twice nominated for an Oscar, Jean Simmons brought an exquisite mix of regal bearing, accessible warmth, feminine strength and womanly eroticism to such timeless classics as “Black Narcissus,” “Hamlet,” “Great Expectations,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Big Country,” “Elmer Gantry,” and “Spartacus.” There were also too many superb but lesser-known gems on her resume to count, but you can start with “Until They Sail” with Paul Newman and “Angel Face” with Robert Mitchum. To set your DVR using her name is to discover a treasure-trove.

So powerful and bewitching was her screen presence that we completely understood and believed that larger-than-life men – Brando, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster — would fall head-over-heels for her because we fell right along with them.  (more…)

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Tags: Jean Simmons, Jean Simmons Dead at 80, kirk douglas, oscar, Spartacus
Posted Jan 23rd 2010 at 10:50 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story | 30013865 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2010/01/23/jean-simmons-has-died/Jean+Simmons+Has+Died2010-01-23+18%3A50%3A23John+Nolte

For Conservative Movie Lovers: King Vidor, Wallace Beery and ‘The Champ’ Part 3

If you’ve seen Superman: The Movie (1978), you surely remember the character of Perry White, the tough-as-nails editor of The Daily Planet. Played pitch-perfect by actor Jackie Cooper, he’s one of the comedic highlights of the picture. “I want the name of this flying whatchamacallit to go with the Daily Planet like bacon and eggs! Franks and beans! Death and taxes! Politics and corruption!”

Cooper delivers his one-liners in a Preston Sturges staccato that helps give the 1970s film a pleasant 1930s gloss, bridging the gap between comic book and movie. But if, like me, you were just a kid when you saw Superman, you may not have known that here was an actor who, fifty years earlier, was one of the most popular and recognizable in the world, courtesy of a little picture called The Champ. (more…)

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Tags: academy awards, Alan Alda, Captain William S. Graves, Christmas, Clark Gable
Posted Jan 23rd 2010 at 6:25 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story | 29963025 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2010/01/23/for-conservative-movie-lovers-king-vidor-wallace-beery-and-the-champ-part-3/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+King+Vidor%2C+Wallace+Beery+and+%E2%80%98The+Champ%E2%80%99+Part+32010-01-23+14%3A25%3A05Leo+Grin

TCM’s Shadows of Russia: The Lighter Side of Revolution

“I feel a little reactionary,” deadpans Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X, 1940.

On their improbable wedding night, anti-Communist reporter—remember them?—Clark Gable gives Bolshevik Hedy Lamarr a luscious, Adrian designed silk nightgown. Unlike Travis Banton, Adrian was concerned with silhouette and in this exquisitely bias-cut negligee—Gable just happens to have it in his suitcase—Hedy Lamarr’s figure is highlighted to a spectacular effect.

Long live the products of decadent American capitalism.

Capitalist Clark Gable puts Communist Hedy Lamarr in touch with her feminine side in Comrade X, 1940.

Hedy, playing a variation of Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka, is a humorless Soviet scold more concerned with industrial production than with her own femininity, which translates into her humanity.

TCM’s Shadows of Russia series, organized and programmed by my favorite  film blogger Self-Styled Siren and The New York Posts’s fine film critic Lou Lumenick, kicks into a refreshing mode—after the shallow and dopey Reds—as we view the lighter side of the Russian revolution.

(more…)

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Tags: Adrian, Ben Hecht, Clark Gable, Comrade X, Ernest Lubitsch
Posted Jan 21st 2010 at 6:45 am in Classic Hollywood, Politics | 29664246 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2010/01/21/tcms-shadows-of-russia-the-lighter-side-of-revolution/TCM%27s+Shadows+of+Russia%3A+The+Lighter+Side+of+Revolution2010-01-21+14%3A45%3A14Robert+J.+Avrech

Top 10 Most Overrated Directors of All Time

Ever since the advent of the modern motion picture industry, critics have praised directors as the key to great film.  The auteur theory of cinema is idiotic, since writing is truly the key – no director could make a masterpiece out of “The Ugly Truth.”  It is one of the great travesties of artistic justice that no one remembers the writers of great movies – nobody knows Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, for example, but everyone remembers Frank Capra.  Together, those three wrote It’s a Wonderful Life.  (Together, Goodrich and Hackett also worked on The Diary of Anne Frank, The Thin Man, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Father of the Bride.) 

Directors get too much credit when a movie goes right, and too little blame when a movie goes wrong.  There are certain directors, however, who get credit even when movies go wrong.  Here, then, are my top ten overrated directors of all time… 

10.  Ridley Scott:  Ridley Scott has, for some odd reason, received accolades that far outpace his actual accomplishments.  He’s made one entertaining film, Gladiator, and a host of second rate films masquerading as masterpieces.  Blade Runner is a bizarre and massively overpraised mess.  Thelma and Louise is liberal tripe, although it does provide the best imagistic summary of modern feminism: two irritating “independent” women driving themselves off a cliff.  White Squall is the single most depressing film ever made.  Black Hawk Down is loved by conservatives because it isn’t anti-military, but that’s about the only praiseworthy element to a film that is an endless series of quick cuts between white guys who look alike in their helmets.  Who’s been killed?  Who’s still alive?  You have no way of knowing.  Then there’s Kingdom of Heaven, which is an homage to the “religion of peace” and a slap at Christianity through and through.  Alien is slow.  GI Jane is hysterically terrible.  Plus, it’s got Orlando Bloom, who has about as much charisma and credibility as Al Gore.  Scott is a key player in the rise of the infernal shaky-cam, which is not only biologically inaccurate (the human eye adjusts for bodily movements), but incredibly annoying.  For that alone, he should be exiled to a land without cameras.  (more…)

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Tags: alfred hitchcock, Darren Aronofsky, David Lean, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese
Posted Jan 17th 2010 at 7:10 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Film | 291078687 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bshapiro/2010/01/17/top-10-most-overrated-directors-of-all-time/Top+10+Most+Overrated+Directors+of+All+Time2010-01-17+15%3A10%3A02Ben+Shapiro

For Conservative Movie Lovers: King Vidor, Wallace Beery and ‘The Champ’ Part 2

The Champ marks the third time in a row — after John Wayne and Burt Reynolds — that I’ve chosen a movie starring an actor many deride as a “natural,” a “ham,” someone who gained stardom not by skill but mere charisma. The sort of rough-hewn appeal epitomized by Wallace Beery (1885–1949) isn’t something that can be taught by Stanislavski or faked with The Method. It comes from within, and evokes American qualities and ideals that have never gone out of style.

Beery was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest son of three. He dropped out of school in fourth grade (”I was too dumb to get any farther”) and ran away for a few months, bumming around the Midwest, spurred onward not by a hatred of family but by a sense of pure adventure. At sixteen he lied his way into a job as an elephant handler with a circus, spending the next three years traveling across the country, and even crediting himself with being the first to train elephants to use their trunks to grab the tails of the elephants in front of them in order to keep them all in line. But eventually he realized that, where bull handling was concerned, “my ambition had been no ambition at all, that I was just drifting.” When Beery heard that his older brother Noah was working on Broadway in New York, he hurried there to try his hand at the acting game. (more…)

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Tags: academy awards, Beverly Hills CA, Burt Reynolds, Charlie Chaplin, Chicago Magazine
Posted Jan 16th 2010 at 7:06 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Film | 29402619 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2010/01/16/for-conservative-movie-lovers-king-vidor-wallace-beery-and-the-champ-part-2/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+King+Vidor%2C+Wallace+Beery+and+%E2%80%98The+Champ%E2%80%99+Part+22010-01-16+15%3A06%3A07Leo+Grin

Turner Classic Movies Presents: Shadows of Russia

This month TCM is running a fascinating series, Shadows of Russia, a history of Russia and the Soviet Union as seen through Hollywood’s lens. If you care about movies and politics, you should check out these movies.

The idea for this series originated with the fine film blogger Self-Styled Siren and the New York Post’s Lou Lumenick. Self-Styled Siren explains how it came about here.

Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlett Empress, 1934.

First up, Josef von Sternberg’s—real name Jonas Sternberg—The Scarlett Empress, 1934, starring Marlene Dietrich as Catherine The Great. Catherine was born to an obscure noblemen of the tiny and dirt poor realm of Anhalt-Zerbst. She was brilliant, precocious and, ah, not too attractive.

Hollywood being Hollywood—thank heavens—rewrites and recasts history in a big way. Marlene Dietrich first appears as an innocent young girl, all blond ringlets—very Shirley Temple. It’s great seeing Dietrich do a virgin: she pouts and poses, melding innocence and nymphomania. (more…)

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Tags: diane keaton, Ethel Barrymore, Jack Nicholson, Janet Leigh, John Barrymore
Posted Jan 14th 2010 at 4:13 pm in Classic Hollywood | 29271058 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2010/01/14/turner-classic-movies-presents-shadows-of-russia/Turner+Classic+Movies+Presents%3A+Shadows+of+Russia2010-01-15+00%3A13%3A00Robert+J.+Avrech

Bring Back June Cleaver: PCTV Too Real For My Taste

Whenever I watch a retrospective of the Golden Age of Television, I find the shows considerable less entertaining than television I’ve watched as an adult. The Golden Age actually refers to the dramatic programs, sometimes broadcast “live” starring many great Hollywood stars and written by terrific writers.  But I was watching television then from the mean streets of the barrio and usually from a neighbor’s house because we couldn’t yet afford a TV set.  My perspective of the era is skewed in favor of the sitcoms and variety shows that presented an escape from my reality.

What is noteworthy, however, is that much of television during that time period was considered politically incorrect but in a strange way was actually more honest. How can that be, you may ask? The fake domestic bliss of “Father Knows Best,” the racism of “Amos and Andy,” the sexism of “I Love Lucy” and so on. Yet there was a lot more credibility in those shows as entertainment than in the supposedly PC programming that probably started with Norman Lear’s “All in the Family.” (more…)

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Tags: All in the Family, Amos and Andy, Father knows best, Golden Age of Television, Lucille Ball
Posted Jan 11th 2010 at 5:04 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Television | 28847883 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/aliciacolon/2010/01/11/bring-back-june-cleaver-pctv-too-real-for-my-taste/Bring+Back+June+Cleaver%3A+PCTV+Too+Real+For+My+Taste2010-01-11+13%3A04%3A26Alicia+Colon

For Conservative Movie Lovers: King Vidor, Wallace Beery and ‘The Champ’ Part 1

Our newest film in this series, 1931’s The Champ, marks the first time we begin our study not with a director but with a writer. Not to say that the director didn’t have a great deal to do with the success of the film — he most certainly did, and (as the title of this post hints) we will review that contribution in good time. But in the case of The Champ, it was the writer who was primarily responsible for the rich familial tone and heart-rending melodrama for which this touching little film (only 86 minutes) is best known and remembered.

The Champ is that rare film that features a pair of strong male leads doing masculine things in a masculine universe, but with nuanced and delicate characterizations that delve far deeper than the usual sports movie, tearing at the raw edges of what it means to be a parent in an imperfect world, to live through the tragedy of a broken family, and to suffer the premature loss of childhood innocence. On the surface, these subjects would seem ill at home in one of the most famous boxing movies of all time. But The Champ is not based on a true story, or cribbed from a famous novel — it was wholly conceived in the mind of the screenwriter. And not just any screenwriter, but the most prolific (and arguably one of the greatest) in Hollywood history. Who was he, you ask?

Well, first of all, he was a she. (more…)

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Tags: academy award, Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, Barbra Streisand, Cari Beauchamp, Chuck Reisner
Posted Jan 9th 2010 at 6:53 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Uncategorized | 29045042 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2010/01/09/for-conservative-movie-lovers-king-vidor-wallace-beery-and-the-champ-part-1/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+King+Vidor%2C+Wallace+Beery+and+%E2%80%98The+Champ%E2%80%99+Part+12010-01-09+14%3A53%3A18Leo+Grin

Deconstructing ‘Casablanca’: Waiting for Rick…

Rather than proceed with the more obvious examples of Hollywood Left … as I had promised, films like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Reds and Inside Man, I’m drawn to a much subtler message in the great classic Casablanca.

Perhaps every movie buff has tried to write – if only in his or her own imagination –  a sequel to that great film classic, Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

Rick’s advice to Ilsa in the last scene of the film, that the problems of two little people don’t amount to much during World War II?

How could true love be defeated by an obviously Communist father-figure such as Paul Henreid’s Victor Laszlo?

“That’s a hefty charge, Mr. Moriarty.” (more…)

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Tags: Apocalypse Now, bogart, Casablanca, Communists, FDR
Posted Jan 8th 2010 at 5:11 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Politics | 289398225 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmoriarty/2010/01/08/waiting-for-rick/Deconstructing+%27Casablanca%27%3A+Waiting+for+Rick%E2%80%A62010-01-08+13%3A11%3A50Michael+Moriarty

The Ten Best Movies (I Screened) in 2009, Part II

Continuing from last week, here’s my list of the Ten Best Classic Hollywood Movies I screened during the past year. I realize that this list seems a bit, er, obscure and maybe even esoteric, but in truth, every film is hugely entertaining and suitable for most everyone.

It is sad that so few contemporary movie lovers are familiar with classic Hollywood movies in general and silent films in particular. Imagine if the history of music was suddenly swept clean of the work by Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach.

Well, it’s the same with classic Hollywood movies. (more…)

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Tags: Ann Todd, Anna May Wong, Chinese movies, David Lean, E.A. Dupont
Posted Jan 7th 2010 at 6:44 am in Classic Hollywood | 28803429 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2010/01/07/the-ten-best-movies-i-screened-in-2009-part-ii/The+Ten+Best+Movies+%28I+Screened%29+in+2009%2C+Part+II2010-01-07+14%3A44%3A30Robert+J.+Avrech

A Request From a Movie Lover to Turner Classic Movies…

Maybe it’s the boomer in me. Or perhaps, it has something to do with the fact that I’m the product of a dad who once was an usher at the local movie house I literally grew up in. The celluloid son-of-a-lovin’ father who used to let my mom sneak in the side door of the theatre during the Saturday afternoon matinee just so they could be together. Even when I was born, he asked his best friend and fellow usher at the Coolidge Theatre, Mikey Citino, to be my godfather when I was baptized. Who knows? Whatever it is or was, I don’t care.  I love movies.

As a kid, for me, goin’ to the movies was like goin’ to church. It was something special. I remember my older cousin, Eddie Cassassa, taking me to the show, when I was about 4 or 5. I’ll never forget him sitting me in the front row, to watch Boris Karloff  in “Frankenstein,” one fine Saturday afternoon. I was scared stiff and loved every minute.

A few years later, it was the same cousin Eddie who got us thrown out of the theatre during a matinee of “The Devil at 4 O ‘Clock” starring Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy. He laughed his ass off as the usher escorted us to the exit door, while I was just humiliated. Like gettin’ thrown outta church! (more…)

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Tags: "A Face in the Crowd", Ben Mankiewicz, Glen Beck, Robert Osborne, TCM
Posted Jan 7th 2010 at 4:59 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Film | 28691059 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jarone/2010/01/07/a-simple-request-from-a-movie-lover-to-tcm-please-keep-it-classy/A+Request+From+a+Movie+Lover+to+Turner+Classic+Movies...2010-01-07+12%3A59%3A12Jimmy+Arone

TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz: Political Cheap Shots Damage Beloved Network

Late last spring, through the auspices of a mutual friend, I spent an afternoon visiting with eighty-nine-year-old author Ray Bradbury. Walking upstairs to his den, I found the genial (and, for the record, fairly conservative) writer dressed in a rumpled shirt and boxer shorts, surrounded by a sea of awards and papers and memorabilia of every description, and happily watching Turner Classic Movies on a big-screen TV. “Isn’t this channel great?” he enthused, telling me how excited he had been to guest host there a year earlier. We spent the next hour talking about films — his early days as a local boy visiting the studios on roller skates and asking stars for autographs, his long friendship with special effects maven Ray Harryhausen, his experience writing the screenplay to Moby Dick (1956) for director John Huston.

And all the while TCM played in the background, like an old friend.

I’ve since reflected on how Turner Classic Movies has grown over the years into one of the most universally admired cultural forums in America. It’s a familiar presence in households of all political persuasions. If you like old movies, you like TCM, period.

That’s why the mini-uproar here at Big Hollywood last week was so disheartening. For those of you who missed it: during an on-air introduction to the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz gave legions of conservative viewers a collective poke in the eye, by way of a not-so-veiled sneer at talk-show host Glenn Beck. You can see the sad spectacle for yourself by clicking over to the TCM website, but here are the money quotes: (more…)

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Tags: A Face in the Crowd (1957), At the Movies (TV show), Ben Mankiewicz, Capricorn One (1977), Cenk Uyger
Posted Jan 5th 2010 at 5:00 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Politics | 286574108 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2010/01/05/tcms-ben-mankiewicz-political-cheap-shots-damage-beloved-network/TCM%27s+Ben+Mankiewicz%3A+Political+Cheap+Shots+Damage+Beloved+Network2010-01-05+13%3A00%3A37Leo+Grin

The Way You Wear Your Hat – Listen Up, Hollywood, It’s Important

I think we were all surprised and disappointed when Michael Mann’s $100 million ode to the midwestern bank robbers of the 1930s, Public Enemies, misfired at the box office, A Nightmare on Elm Street or no Donnie Brasco. After all, Captain Jack Sparrow meets Edith Piaf in Capone-era Chicago directed by the man who put De Niro and Pacino together for the first time at Kate Mantelini’s on Wilshire: what’s not to like?

–

Many theories have been offered as to why the public made b.o. enemies of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd, but the real reason, I think, has yet to be articulated.  And it’s this: Mann, perhaps our greatest living director, taught his cast how to do everything – fight, handle firearms, rob banks, ogle Marion Cotillard… (more…)

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Tags: Al Capone, Barack Obama, Dutch Schultz, gangsters, George Raft
Posted Jan 3rd 2010 at 6:52 am in Celebrity News, Classic Hollywood, Culture, Featured Story, Film | 285294149 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mwalsh/2010/01/03/the-way-you-wear-your-hat-listen-up-hollywood-its-important/The+Way+You+Wear+Your+Hat+-+Listen+Up%2C+Hollywood%2C+It%27s+Important2010-01-03+14%3A52%3A55Michael+Walsh

For Conservative Movie Lovers: Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ Part 5

If there is one overriding theme coursing through reviews of Smokey and the Bandit, it is superficiality. Read through the mountain of pieces out there, and you’ll continually be assaulted with adjectives like “silly,” “mindless,” “breezy,” “fun,” and “stupid.” Taken together, they blend into a gargantuan wall of polite derision. Even those who genuinely adore the movie scoff at efforts to peek under the film’s thematic hood. Burt Reynolds himself has stated that “Anybody who would take that picture seriously needs a psychiatrist.”

Well, I disagree. A movie’s effect on the culture is often independent of intellectual considerations. The passage of years highlights a film’s vintage regardless of pedigree or awards. Father Time has a sneaky way of giving even erstwhile pop-culture artifacts a rich patina of nostalgia and meaning. And so it happens that light-footed entertainments like Smokey sometimes have lessons to teach, if only we can muster the wisdom to listen.

Let’s return for a moment to the film critic Gary Arnold, who in the summer of 1977 penned a lengthy appreciation of Smokey for The Washington Post. Along with Star Wars, Hal Needham’s film was dominating the domestic box office, especially at the drive-in theaters that were still fairly common in rural America. Given the movie’s success and the CB phenomenon, an article about the picture was a no-brainer. But what’s interesting about Arnold’s essay is how he goes beyond mere cinematic merit and expands his analysis into the realms of culture and politics: (more…)

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Tags: Burt Reynolds, CB radios, Democrats, drive-in theaters, Friar Tuck
Posted Jan 2nd 2010 at 6:26 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Film, Politics | 28721029 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2010/01/02/for-conservative-movie-lovers-hal-needham-burt-reynolds-and-smokey-and-the-bandit-part-5/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+Hal+Needham%2C+Burt+Reynolds+and+%E2%80%98Smokey+and+the+Bandit%E2%80%99+Part+52010-01-02+14%3A26%3A00Leo+Grin

The Ten Best Movies (I Screened) in 2009: Part I

Here’s my annual list of the Ten Best Movies I Screened in 2009.

I did not see more than a handful of contemporary releases that came close to the smart pacing, narrative sophistication and honest passion of these older films.

Though I will give a strong nod to 500 Days of Summer and Funny People, two fine films. Both are beautifully written, carefully structured and oh what a relief, they vigorously espouse what can only be described as (mostly) conservative values, a welcome relief in this post-modern age where nihilism passes for, ahem, cutting edge entertainment.

But I roll with classic Hollywood, silent movies and films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Keep in mind that most of the movies on my list were produced on modest budgets, never intended as studio blockbusters.

I’m not claiming that any of these movies are classics like The Crowd or Seven Samurai. I am saying that these ten films are grand entertainment from Hollywood’s great dream factory and well worth seeking out. (more…)

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Tags: Adolph Hitler, Bed of Roses, Billy Haines, Cecil B. DeMille, Constance Bennett
Posted Dec 31st 2009 at 6:01 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story | 28483430 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2009/12/31/the-ten-best-movies-i-screened-in-2009-part-i/The+Ten+Best+Movies+%28I+Screened%29+in+2009%3A+Part+I2009-12-31+14%3A01%3A34Robert+J.+Avrech

For Conservative Movie Lovers: Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ Part 4

In an industry notorious for wasteful pretentiousness — directors shooting a hundred takes, crews taking all day to light a single shot, gazillions spent on the latest effects — Hal Needham was a rebel. Directing? “There is no magic to it, you know. All you have to do is look through the camera and see if it’s got the lens on it that you want. . . I don’t really think it’s that tough.” Cinematography? “We’re not doing Gone with the Wind or Fiddler on the Roof. It’s action/comedy. . .don’t give me none of this artsy-fartsy stuff, just shoot the film.” Expensive locations? “I like to get outside whenever I can. I think it gives a film energy to be outside. . . and beauty.”

And so Smokey and the Bandit was made fast and loose, outside, on a low budget. In Reynolds’ words, they worked “lightning quick,” with first-time director Needham “reigning over crew and camera with instincts that made him, in my humble opinion, the best action director in the business.” The entire film was shot on location in the South. “We moved all over Georgia. . . It was a screwy chase picture, but Hal’s fun, outlaw, hell-bent-sensibility made it sparkle.” (more…)

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Tags: academy awards, alfred hitchcock, Burt Reynolds, Chewbacca (character), Directing
Posted Dec 26th 2009 at 7:11 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Film | 28393423 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/12/26/for-conservative-movie-lovers-hal-needham-burt-reynolds-and-smokey-and-the-bandit-part-4/For+Conservative+Movie+Lovers%3A+Hal+Needham%2C+Burt+Reynolds+and+%E2%80%98Smokey+and+the+Bandit%E2%80%99+Part+42009-12-26+15%3A11%3A55Leo+Grin

25 Greatest Christmas Films: #1 — ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1946)

There aren’t many films that transcend their art and time and generations. A box-office disappointment when released, It’s A Wonderful Life was so forgotten its copyright lapsed causing it to be looped endlessly on small independent television stations everywhere desperate for free programming. Inevitably this forgotten classic was rediscovered by a new generation. A generation under siege by a film industry that now scoffs at such simplistic ideas as reminding us of the rich benefits that can be reaped by our own simple human decency. 

Fifteen-years ago it was all the rage to worship It’s A Wonderful Life, and then the inevitable backlash began by the contrary-is-cool crowd and those offended by spiritualism and sentiment. Whatever. All I know is that after dozens of viewings each new one is like the first and without fail the story stays with me for days. 

And who are we to argue with time? Like Beethoven and Sinatra, the story of a good man blinded by disappointment, driven to suicide, and saved by God’s grace will live for as long as there’s a civilization. Because the message is about the simplest and yet most important of things — it’s about why when things are at their worst that’s the most important time to step outside the hurly burly of life’s setbacks and inventory our blessings. 

It’s A Wonderful Life is about perspective.  (more…)

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Tags: 25 Greatest Christmas Films, Donna Reed, Frank Capra, It's A Wonderful Life (1946), jimmy stewart
Posted Dec 25th 2009 at 5:03 am in Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Film | 269134108 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/12/25/25-greatest-christmas-movies-1-its-a-wonderful-life-1946/25+Greatest+Christmas+Films%3A+%231+--+%27It%27s+a+Wonderful+Life%27+%281946%292009-12-25+13%3A03%3A51John+Nolte

Waiting for Sim: Christmas Eves With the Definitive Scrooge

When growing up in Los Angeles, a singular delight was getting the TV Guide in the Sunday paper and scouring it, pen in hand.  My movie search.  In the sixties, Los Angeles had the greatest number of TV channels in any city: 2-4-5-7-9-11-13.  In trips to San Diego, the Mid-West or anywhere else, you’d be lucky to get two, maybe three channels.  And not very good ones.

Some years ago, my daughter asked: “…so in the olden times, Dad, when did you see movies?” Hmmmm.  Olden times.  As if the wheel, the pen, writing, music, and entertainment were invented with her generation.  I explained that there were two places to see movies.  Theaters and Television.  That was it.  No DVD, VHS, iPod, or Hulu.com.  My TV Guide search was essential to find the right movies and straighten out my schedule for the week by circling and grading the films.  After all, if a movie came on at 11 p.m., you’d be up for two hours to “The End.”

But each week, when I got the TV Guide in my young hands, it was like opening a present.  Before the internet, I explained to my daughter, we had this ancient forum called a “library” where you could get books on movies and famous actors.

(more…)

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Tags: 'A Christmas Carol', Alistair Sim, Charles Dicken, Christmas, DVDs
Posted Dec 24th 2009 at 11:07 am in Classic Hollywood, Film, Reviews, Television | 28037840 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmandaville/2009/12/24/waiting-for-sim-christmas-eves-with-the-definitive-scrooge/Waiting+for+Sim%3A+Christmas+Eves+With+the+Definitive+Scrooge2009-12-24+19%3A07%3A47Michael+Mandaville