MTV:

The former MTV.com movie reviewer recently sat down for a chat to promote the book, currently in stores. Though he didn’t change his opinions in the reviews since he wrote them, Loder did admit that his personal opinions of some of the biggest films of the past decade have changed with time. Let’s just say he might regret a thing or two he said about “The Dark Knight” when it was first released.

“I’ve definitely changed my mind about ‘The Dark Knight,’ which I was not really impressed with and now I think is one of the great movies. Just a great, great movie,” he said. 

“The Dark Knight” isn’t the only film he changed his mind about, and some of those reviews he opted to leave out of the book to avoid confusion. Loder said he really loved “Watchmen” when it was first released, but later it came to leave a bad taste in his mouth. In fact, he ended up disliking the film so much that it ended up coloring his opinion of the graphic novel it’s based on, which says a lot because he’s a self-professed Alan Moore fan. So he decided to leave the “Watchmen” review out of his book because his changed opinion would take too long to explain.

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So, because you all enjoyed that list so much, and because I apparently have a death wish, it’s time for another: The Top 10 Most Overrated Actors/Actresses of All Time.

Unlike last time, I will claim that these are objective facts, not subjective opinions, so that all my critics may have full liberty to attack me (To those same critics who claimed last time that I phrased my opinions in an “objective” manner, this is called being facetious. That means I’m kidding. Also, seriously? That was your criticism?).

Here are my criteria: are they considered great actors/actresses? If not, they can’t make the list (sorry, Rob Schneider). Are they actually great actors? If so, they can’t make the list (sorry, Laurence Olivier). Only those who are considered great actors but are not, in fact, great actors can make this list. Even then, I’m not claiming that these are bad actors unless I explicitly say that I am.

So, here we go. In the words of Han Solo, I’ve got a bad feeling about this …

10. George Clooney: Not a great actor. Not a good actor. Not really an actor. If you’ve ever seen a movie with Clooney where you didn’t say to yourself, “Hey, I’m watching George Clooney” every thirty seconds or so, you haven’t seen a George Clooney movie. You’re mixing him up with Kate Winslet. He’s a D actor. Dull in “Michael Clayton.” Dreary in “Up In The Air.” Dreadful in “Syriana.” Dismal in “Batman and Robin.” He’s not a low-rent Cary Grant. He’s an affordable-housing Robert Wagner.

9. Dustin Hoffman: He turned in some tremendous performances in his early days (most notably “Papillon,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” and “Tootsie”), then became a caricature of himself. He has not done anything worthwhile since “Tootsie,” in fact. Even in his better performances, he is a bit too mannered for my taste, perhaps an effect of his method acting. Laurence Olivier thought the same thing. When they were working on “Marathon Man” together, Hoffman showed up on set after having not slept for several days in order to get “in character.” Olivier took one look at him and said, “Dear boy, it’s called acting.” (more…)

We’ll know more this afternoon after the lead Los Angeles detective on the case holds a press conference, but according to an interview with the man who captained the boat the night of Natalie Wood’s 1981 drowning, the finger is pointing at actor Robert Wagner.

On November 28, 1981, Wagner and Wood were nine years into their second marriage (they had married 1957, divorced in 1962, and then remarried in 1972). According to most reports, they were partying on a yacht with Christopher Walken, Wood’s “Brainscan” “Brainstorm” co-star. They were anchored near Catalina Island in Southern California, and according to the coroner’s report, Wood, died trying to leave the yacht or after trying to secure a dinghy that was banging against the yacht’s side. Everyone was partying and she had a lot of alcohol in her system.

There are plenty of rumors that one of the reasons Wood might have wanted to leave the yacht was due to an argument breaking out between Wagner and Walken, maybe even over Wood. I’ve read that things got so heated Wagner smashed a champagne bottle and in his 2008 auto-biography the actor not only blames himself for her death but confirms the drinking and the argument with Walken:

Wagner wrote that despite various theories about what led Wood to the water, which she feared, it was impossible to know what exactly happened.

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“MICHAEL MOHHHRRREEEEAAAHHHHTTTEEEEE?!” she echoed again.

“I thought you wuh dead!”

Symbolically I had, indeed, died to the business of celebrity and fame. It frightened me. Sickened me, actually. Made me commit a kind of career suicide. Because my career blip had fallen off Katharine Hepburn’s radar screen, I had become dead to her.

I’m sure, though, if I had ever called again, it would be her, Hepburn and not her secretary, picking up the phone in the East Side Manhattan brownstone she owned. This particular clip from “Glass Menagerie” says it all.

“Then go to the moon, you selfish dreamah!!!”

That is Hepburn rocketing the whole, profoundly ignorant, lifeless world to an equally banal and distantly barren planet. The faint echo placed upon Miss H’s cry of “dreamah” is particularly resonant now, insofar as the symbolic son that Kate was exhorting was, in real life, the playwright Tennessee Williams whom I also knew. About whom I will write in a future Big Hollywood post.

I came to know both Ms. Hepburn and Tennessee because of “Glass Menagerie.” My friendship with Tennessee lasted much longer than the volatile one I’d briefly shared with Hepburn.

Why?

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Something you really appreciate in the gorgeous new Blu-ray transfer of 1961’s Best Picture winner “West Side Story” is the decision co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins made to shoot the opening sequence on-location. While a majority of the film looks as though it was shot on large, well-designed sound stages, the opener takes place on the real streets of a real urban city and sets the authentic tone necessary to carry the rest of this racially-charged Romeo and Juliet musical through the full 152 minutes.

And it’s only Romeo and Juliet in the loosest sense. This isn’t the story of warring families; this is the story of warring gangs divided along racial lines (the white Jets and Puerto Rican Sharks) who don’t really understand why they hate each other. But every time a mutual respect begins to develop between the two gangs, a racist cop named Schrank (Simon Oakland) stirs up animosities built on nothing more than hollow notions of pride and turf.

Caught in the middle is Tony (Richard Beymer), the Jets’ one-time leader who’s just started to mature enough to know a better life can be had through hard work, and Maria (a ravishing Natalie Wood), the sister of one of the Sharks’ leaders. Per chance they meet at a dance and as only teenagers can, they immediately fall madly, desperately, passionately in love just as the two gangs prepare to face off to see who will dominate the neighborhood.

Two things make “West Side Story” the timeless classic it is. The first is Leonard Bernstein’s unforgettable score, and the second is how well the story explores some heady themes without ever devolving into a preach-a-thon. A perfect example of this is the film’s highlight (at least for me), the rooftop show-stopper “America” where Anita (a smoldering Rita Moreno) and Bernardo (George Chakins) square off over the pros and cons of immigrant life in America. What you’re watching is both performers win their respective supporting Oscars and more wit, sex, attitude, exuberance, and magic in those six minutes then we’ve seen from Hollywood in the last five years put together. Watch here and tell me it doesn’t make you glad to be alive:

“I think I go back to San Juan.”
“I know a boat you can get on — bye, bye.”
“Everyone there will give big cheer.”
“Everyone there will have moved here.”

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This photo of Bette Davis is, I think, the most perfect ever taken of her. Why? Because it is the most boldly complete, capturing what was most beautiful about her but also what was most dangerous: the unreleased dreams boiling behind her eyes and in the full pout of her mouth.

I never really understood nor appreciated Davis’s greatness as an actress until I watched her performance recently in ‘Dark Victory.’

For those who’ve never seen it, ‘Dark Victory’ centers entirely around the Davis character Judith Traherne and the manner in which she copes with her certain and imminent death from a brain tumor.

To me, Davis had been a very eccentric woman more than a great artist — one who, with turned-down lips, had an eternal chip on her shoulder. At any moment, Davis might snap your head off in the most histrionic manner possible before anyone who simply happened to be present, making you feel smaller, more useless and pathetic than last year’s want ad.

I crossed paths with Davis for a very brief instant on stage in New York when she was the one to hand me my Tony Award for a performance in John Hopkins’ play, ‘Find Your Way Home.’

Perhaps that “chip” she seemed to carry was, in some way, a central part of her character. I really don’t know nor can I say that for certain about her, never having had the intimidating privilege of working with Davis. That, however, could not diminish the enormously powerful size of her acting. Like Katharine Hepburn, with whom I did work, she was larger than any corner of a so-called ordinary life. (more…)

We take the simple act of going to the movies for granted, but for a U.S. soldier stationed overseas spending two hours watching a movie is a rare treat.

So let’s applaud Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment for donating 5,000 DVDs to Wounded Warriors and active military families this weekend. The home video company will bring its “Million Moments: Great Moments, Great Causes” mobile van tour to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center tomorrow.

It’s the sixteenth of 18 planned stops to deliver one million disks from the company’s catalog. But the charitable effort doesn’t end there.

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Barbara Kent, December 16, 1907 – October 13, 2011

Barbara Kent: “I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but being an actress was not it.”

—The Sound of Silence, by Michael Ankerich.

Barbara Kent, b. Barbara Cloutman, who passed away a few weeks ago, was one of the last surviving movie stars—Mickey Rooney, ailing and frail, might be the last—who worked in the golden era of silent movies and then made the transition to sound.

She was a reluctant actress, a star whose light shined quite briefly, and then with exquisite sanity, she stepped out of the limelight and into the embrace of private life and marriage.

In 1925 Kent won the Miss Hollywood beauty pageant. Apparently, her parents pushed her to enter the contest. Thus, from the very beginning, Barbara was playing a role she neither sought nor desired. Though she had no acting experience, Universal offered the tiny—she was under five feet tall—baby-faced, 17 year-old beauty queen a contract.

In 1926, Kent was cast in ”Flesh and the Devil” (1926) as a young woman in love with the dashing John Gilbert who has eyes only for the heartless vamp Greta Garbo. Garbo gets all the loving close-ups, but I’ve always felt that Kent was far more attractive and desirable than the remote and narcissistic Garbo.

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Okay, that headline isn’t exactly accurate. But it’s Friday and you’ll see what I mean…

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Released after “The Godfather” in 1972, the same year as “The Godfather II” in 1974, and five years prior to “Apocalypse Now,” “The Conversation” represents one of four bona fide masterpieces writer/director Francis Ford Coppola brought to the screen during his incredible run throughout the 1970s. This low-key, character driven thriller might be the least famous title on that esteemed list, but it is more than worthy to be remembered among them.

The Mighty Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a San Francisco-based surveillance expert willing to take most any job that pays well. Harry never questions his employers because he doesn’t want the answers. You give him the job and he’ll give you the tape. It’s all very simple and clean… until it isn’t.

Though he moved a couple thousand miles away, the one thing Harry can’t escape is his past. Somebody was killed once upon a time, and Harry isn’t about to allow himself to shoulder the blame. But this devout Catholic is punishing himself, probably without even realizing it. He lives alone, is alone and he’s only willing to let himself get as close to someone as his suspicions and guilt will allow — which isn’t very close at all.

Harry’s latest job seems simple enough. All he’s been asked to do is record a young couple’s conversation as they stroll through a busy park during the workday lunch hour. This is the easy part for a man known as the best in his profession. A microphone here, a microphone there, put it all together and what you have at first appears to be a rather innocuous and even dull conversation. The difficult part comes later.

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THR:

The Muppets involves a new character, Walter, who is on vacation in Los Angeles with his friends from Smalltown, U.S.A. (Segel and Adams). After they discover a Texas oilman’s plot to raze the Muppet Theater, they reunite the Muppets, who have broken up. Fozzie is playing with a tribute band in Nevada, Miss Piggy has been working at Vogue Paris, and Gonzo is a plumbing magnate.

The concern among Muppets insiders is that Segel and director James Bobin (a writer on Da Ali G Show and Flight of the Conchords) didn’t have a complete understanding of the Muppets characters or were willing to sacrifice the characters’ integrity to land a joke. “They’re looking at the script on a joke-by-joke basis, rather than as a construction of character and story,” says one.

A small example is in one of the many trailers Disney has released, when Fozzie makes a fart joke. “We wouldn’t do that; it’s too cheap,” says another Muppets veteran. “It may not seem like much in this world of [Judd] Apatow humor, but the characters don’t go to that place.”

There is a list of similar concerns: Kermit would never live in a mansion, as he does in this movie. The Muppets, depicted in the script as jealous of Kermit’s wealth, would not have broken up in bitterness. The script “creates a false history that the characters were forced to act out for the sake of this movie,” says an old Muppets hand. …

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On May 2, 1949, Elle, France’s most popular women’s magazine, featured a cover photo of a fifteen year old model identified only as “BB.” Among the thousands of people who saw the photo of Brigitte Bardot was aspiring film director Roger Vadim, b. Roger Vladimir Plemiannikov (1928 – 2000.)

The cover that launched BB.

In a trance, Vadim gazed at the cover of Elle magazine. The model looked schoolgirlish and chaste but Vadim detected something more; he saw a smoldering girl-woman whose face and body was created for the movies.

BB, age 18, in her demure wedding gown. Years later, Bardot auctioned her dress and the proceeds went to her animal rights foundation.

At the time, Vadim was working as an assistant to the respected director Marc Allégret. Vadim showed Allégret the photo and urged his boss to set up a screen test for the unknown model. Allégret, known as a spotter of new talent—he discovered Jean-Paul Belmando—gave his young protege the go-ahead.

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Horror movies from the 1970s didn’t have CGI or other modern effects to scare us silly.

They unnerved us all the same, in part, by their uniquely creepy soundtracks and penchant for atypical acting. That’s a kind way of saying they boasted indifferent, sometimes amateurish performances.

All of the above apply to ”Zombie,’ the 1979 Italian import sure to grab attention again this Halloween season thanks to its Oct. 24 Blu-ray release. The film, considered an unofficial sequel to 1978’s ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ earned its classic status with one of the strangest sequences in any zombie film. How many times do the undead wrestle tiger sharks?

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Run for your lives! It’s October, the unofficial horror movie month! Horror is consistently one of the most popular genres in film, with even middling movies guaranteed to make money. Why? Because audiences want to feel emotion from their entertainment, and no emotion is easier to evoke than fear.

Fear comes in many forms, everything from being startled to deep psychological terror. Few movies reach that final level, but when they do they leave a scar on our culture. With that in mind, let’s talk about the twenty most significant horror films. These aren’t necessarily the best or the most scary or even my favorites, but when you die . . .  these will be on the test.

Father Merrin had come to save Regan from Satan’s fluorescent lightbulbs.

1. Night of the Living Dead (1968): The importance of this film cannot be overstated. This film brought horror movies to adult audiences. Before ‘Dead,’ horror was costumed monsters aimed at kids. The film also kick-started the zombie craze which continues unabated today in film and within the Democratic party, and it established all the conventions for the zombie subgenre. “Yes we can . . . yes we can.”

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Kirk Douglas as a high school senior.

In the beginning of his legendary career, Kirk Douglas (1916 – ) b. Issur Danielovitch, was almost typecast as a well-meaning but ineffectual husband as in, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946, and A Letter to Three Wives, 1949.  But his career exploded into mega-stardom when he played bitter, cynical heroes motivated by rage: Champion, 1949, Ace in the Hole, 1951, The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952, Paths of Glory, 1957, Spartacus, 1960, and his favorite film Lonely Are the Brave, 1962,

Douglas was never a conventional leading man. Though handsome as a fairy tale prince he wielded his masculine beauty like a weapon. There was none of the gruff charm that made Gable the King of Hollywood, nor was Douglas an elegant, urbane gentleman like William Powell.

He excelled at playing, in his own words, “sons of bitches.”

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Charlton Heston as Judah Ben Hur, the Jewish hero—notice the Star of David necklace—of Ben Hur, 1959.

The Los Angeles Times is, like the NY Times, a reliably anti-Israel newspaper whose liberal/progressive/leftist slant often veers into  support for the Jew-hatred that is the foundation of Palestinian terror.

Even their entertainment articles frequently marinate in a radical ideology that extends to an ignorant and vile denial of Jewish, not to mention literary history.

In this brief announcement of an anniversary release of a Ben Hur DVD, the Charlton Heston character, Judah Ben Hur, is referred to as a “Palestinian nobleman.”

In the book and in all the movies Judah Ben Hur is a Jewish merchant.

This charade of so-called Palestinian history is a replacement ideology, Jewish history erased by faux Palestinians, a post-modern construct with zero historical basis.

I might add that this is also a fabrication of movie history.

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Be sure to click here and read John Hanlon’s terrific review of Roger Ebert’s new memoir. It was while reading the review that  I came across something Ebert floats that’s worth debating — and it only is a little bit about politics.

John Hanlon:

“Compared to the great movie stars of the past, modern actors are handicapped by the fact that their films are shot in color.” [Roger Ebert] adds, “In the long run, that will rob most of them of the immortality that was obtained even by second-tier stars of the black-and-white era.”

Ebert’s not the first one to make the argument that stars from the classic era have an advantage when it comes to becoming immortal due to being shot and remembered in black and white, as opposed to color. But in a word…

….this is preposterous.

Do we think of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman or Steve McQueen in black and white? What about Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Judy Garland, Kirk Douglas, Charles Bronson, or Gene Kelly? How about Clint Eastwood? Good heavens, James Dean became immortal after starring in only three films — all of them filmed in color.

Obviously the full context of Ebert’s thoughts can’t be included in a single book review, but like I said, I’ve heard this argument elsewhere and think it’s an excuse made by those trying to get ahead of the fact that the films that represent their values won’t live as long as those that represent age-old truths.

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For Your Eyes Only is unquestionably the best film in the Roger Moore Bond series.  It has just about everything I want in a Bond movie.  Despite a few missteps here and there, the film is totally engaging, featuring Mr. Moore’s best performance, plenty of great characters and locations, the most classically beautiful Bond girl ever, and an outstanding script.  The film also contains numerous recalls of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

His Name Is…

We begin as we always do, with the performance of Roger Moore as James Bond, 007.  All the different aspects of Bond’s character are on display here, although because it’s Mr. Moore as opposed to Sean Connery, the range is not as broad.  It’s great to see him place flowers at Tracy’s grave, although I’d like to have seen a bit more emotion at that moment.  There’s plenty of Mr. Moore’s trademark charm, but it comes off as more organic this time around (due in no small part to the writing and directing).  Mr. Moore’s Bond is much more physical in this film – skiing, ski jumping, climbing a mountain, leading an assault on a shipyard, engaging in an ice hockey fight, and dangling from a helicopter.  And of course, there is a moment of unrepentant brutality as he kicks Locque’s car off the cliff.  Apparently, there was some serious discussion as to whether Mr. Moore’s Bond would do such a thing, that it was more suited to Sean Connery’s Bond.  I think this choice was a good one, as it reminded audiences that Bond wasn’t all just fun and games, and that he still could have an edge.

The film also has the most romantic feel of any of Mr. Moore’s films.  He is protective of Melina, there is obviously an attraction, they assault St. Cyril’s together, they fight to recover the ATAC underwater together, and end up skinny-dipping amidst beautiful undersea ruins over the credits.  It certainly helps that the film has the most beautiful and exotic locations thus far in the series, that they spend a lot of screen time together, that Ms. Bouquet is beautiful, and that there is the subtext of Tracy’s death running through it.  Of all the women Mr. Moore’s Bond has encountered thus far, Melina is the closest  and warmest relationship he’s had.   It truly is a romantic adventure, and yet another reason why I so admire the film.

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For the 70th anniversary, Walt Disney Studios has released a stunning Blu-ray transfer of their 1941 masterpiece “Dumbo,” which  along with a ton of fascinating extras, hits shelves today.

Most people know that between 1937 and 1942, the legendary Walt Disney released five undisputed, feature-length, animation masterpieces: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), “Pinocchio (1940), “Fantasia” (1940), “Dumbo” (1941), and “Bambi” (1942). What you might not know (and I didn’t until I watched the extras) is that in 1941 Disney Studios was in deep financial trouble. It’s hard to imagine today, but both “Fantasia” and Pinocchio” were box office disappointments and if the studio’s next feature failed to make up for those losses, bankruptcy was a real possibility.

Therefore,  ”Dumbo” was something of  hail mary and for that reason the story of a flying baby elephant is notably different from its predecessors. To cut costs, the film is only 67 minutes long and the animation itself is nowhere near as rich in detail. But as someone who personally believes that limits force artistic innovation, this actually helps to explain why “Dumbo” is so special.

The economy of story is remarkable. In a little over an hour — which  includes a few musical sequences that don’t even move the story (which is usually a criticism, but not in this case), the wealth of characterization and emotion is so full you don’t feel cheated in any way by the runtime. And while the animation isn’t as cutting edge as what you’ll see in “Pinocchio” or “Snow White,” the artistry more than makes up for this. Each scene and sequence is directed with dazzling imagination. You might not see each hair on Dumbo’s snout, but the rich, vibrant colors and mind-blowing set-pieces like the “Pink Elephants On Parade” make all of this a non-issue.

“Dumbo” is every inch a visual masterpiece.

Best of all, the story itself is brilliantly simple. If you’ve been conditioned by present-day Hollywood, you’re going to watch the narrative unfold and wonder when the villain will arrive to try to shut down the circus or how poor Dumbo will be exploited after the world discovers he can fly. But there’s none of that. Instead of all that clichéd filler, the story goes something like this: Dumbo is born different, ostracized for being different, separated from his mother, and other than a wise-cracking mouse — friendless.  Other than the climax, that’s it and once the final notes of the Academy Award-nominated “Baby Mine” fade out, it’s a story as rich and moving as you’ll ever see.

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Last year, while we were still living in Los Angeles, my wife and I visited a number of the Catholic missions that dot the State of California’s coastline. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that none other than Bob Hope is buried at the San Fernando Mission in Mission Hills, California.  It’s a beautiful, serene and private spot with a plot right next to Bob’s reserved for his beloved wife.

Of course the passing of Dolores Hope is a sad occasion and our condolences go out to her loved ones. But there is some peace in knowing Bob won’t be all alone anymore and that he and his bride of 69 years are side by side once again.    

Washington Post

Dolores Hope, who throughout her 69-year marriage to comedian Bob Hope oversaw their charitable giving and played a key role in establishing the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., has died. She was 102.

Mrs. Hope died Sept. 19 at her home in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll said. No cause of death was reported.

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