Posts Tagged ‘Clark Gable’

John Nolte

The Polanski Culture: Hollywood’s Push to Normalize Sex With Children

by John Nolte

The vocal, sanctimonious Free-Polanski uproar is merely a symptom of an entertainment culture infected with a moral cancer – a culture that regularly practices up on the screen what we’ve heard them preach this last week on behalf of a confessed child rapist.

Last year Miramax released “Doubt,” a high-profile piece of Oscar-bait starring Academy Award winners’ Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Streep plays a puritanical nun on a moral crusade to expose a Priest (Hoffman) who she believes is sexually abusing a 12 year-old boy. Both characters are portrayed as unsympathetic (especially Streep’s) but in just a couple scenes the boy’s working-class mother (Mrs. Miller, played by Viola Davis) is established as the moral center of the film – the only one truly interested in the welfare of her child. When Mrs. Miller’s informed that her son’s being molested, the Moral Center Of The Film responds that her 12 year-old boy is gay, a social outcast, and beaten regularly by his homophobic father … so maybe the best option for him is a sexual relationship with a forty-something child predator.

towelhead

Starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, and written and directed by Oscar-winner Alan Ball, last year’s Towelhead” is a film Roman Polanski might have seen many, many times while wearing a rain coat. The protagonist is 13 year-old Jasira (played by the then barely eighteen Summer Bishil) and the story surrounds her sexual abuse at the hands of a number of men, including Eckhart’s Gulf War Vet. Rather than the repeated abuse damaging the young girl, the filmmaker portrays the rapes and molestations as a healthy and sexually liberating experience. More than once the audience is “treated” to lingering shots of Jasira’s bare legs as she discovers the joys of the orgasm while masturbating to photographs of naked women.

Kate Winslet won last year’s Best Actress Oscar for her role in “The Reader,” in which she plays a “sympathetic” Nazi guilty of mass murder who seduces and then engages in a steamy sexual affair with a 15 year-old boy. The sex scenes between this mature woman and a child lean heavily on the erotic, as opposed to the creepy. (The “sympathetic Nazi” issue we’ll save for another post.) (more…)

Yervand Kochar

40’s Movie Stars: Better in Bed, Better on the Battlefield

by Yervand Kochar

I have been watching a lot of 40s movies lately. Being radically anti-celebrity, I was taken aback by how easily mesmerized I was by the movie stars of that period. 

After all, why wouldn’t any man (straight or gay) imitate Cary Grant’s walk up the stairs to save Ingrid Bergman at the end of Hitchcock’s “Notorious?”


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And why wouldn’t any honest woman try to talk and look like Barbara Stanwyck? 

I was at a pool party in the Hollywood Hills once where agressive supermodels were trying to seduce fake producers. That entire pack of semi-nude nymphs had less seductive power than the play of the anklet on Barbara Stanwyck left leg in Wilders’ “Double Indemnity.”  (more…)

Robert J. Avrech

Hollywood Hair: Masculine or Feminine?

by Robert J. Avrech
Mary Pickford's rich and lustrous hair was the paradigm of female beauty in early Hollywood.

Mary Pickford's rich and lustrous hair was the paradigm of female beauty in early Hollywood.

I’ve been looking at portraits of Hollywood stars from the 50’s, a time when the studio system was finally collapsing, and I noticed a few things.

The quality of studio portrait photography was dismal.

The images are, for the most part, bland, with little creative inspiration. Everyone seems bored—the photographers and the stars. Hollywood once employed geniuses like George Hurrell and C.S. Bull, whose iconic photography helped mold the G-d-like images of Hollywood’s golden age.

But as the studios were shrinking in power, they drastically cut back on their still departments. And because actors were no longer under long-term contract to the studios, the technocrat executives who replaced the original passionate moguls had no stake or ability to carefully shape and control the images of their most promising thespians.

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Robert J. Avrech

Hollywood Unveiled: John Wayne Walks Like a Girl

by Robert J. Avrech

John Wayne walks the walk in Hondo, 1953.
John Wayne walks the walk in Hondo, 1953.

It’s in the walk.

Think of Mae West, hands caressing her Rubenesque hips, head tilted, not just sauntering, but oozing forward, the exaggerated female.

Elbows cocked and angled at his hips, moving with concentrated energy, Jimmy Cagney looks like a coiled spring about to explode.

Joan Crawford, leading with her linebacker shoulders, like a tank on the battlefield, determined, dangerous, unstoppable. (more…)

John Nolte

Memorial Day Top 5: Great WWII Films You Might Have Missed

by John Nolte

These may not be the best known or most famous of WWII films, but they deserve to be. Keep an eye out. You’ll be glad you did.

1. Command Decision (1948) – Made just after WWII, this Air Force drama set in 1943 when the outcome of the war was still in doubt, is one of the most intelligent examinations of the burden of command ever put on film. Clark Gable is absolutely outstanding as Casey, a Brigadier General forced to give orders that on their face appear cold and even monstrous, but in truth are just the opposite. Caught between the Washington brass who have a war to sell and the men under him who see only a General ordering their comrades to certain death, Casey is a leader willing to be hated and even lose his command in order to do the greater good. What Casey cares about before anything is saving American lives. That means winning the war as quickly as possible, something which can only be accomplished if unspeakable sacrifices are made in the here and now.   (more…)

Robert J. Avrech

Flashback: Hollywood Celebrates American Military Resolve

by Robert J. Avrech

During this Memorial Day Weekend Big Hollywood pays tribute those who have fallen, and those who sacrifice so much in the cause of freedom.

Remember when Hollywood celebrities flocked across the globe to entertain and support American troops? Remember when Hollywood—as a community—denounced tyrants, Jew-haters, and mass murderers?

Joan Crawford as Miss Liberty.
Joan Crawford as Miss Liberty

My father was a Rabbi, a Chaplain in the 42nd Division during World War II and the Korean War. He often told me just how much the troops loved and respected their Hollywood supporters.

Here’s just a brief sampler of what Hollywood patriotism once looked like.

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Steve Mason

The All-Time Top 10 Movie Posters (one man’s opinion) – #1 JAWS, #2 CHINATOWN, #3 THE DARK KNIGHT

by Steve Mason

Over the weekend, I was pondering why the low budget, standard genre pic The Haunting in Connecticut (Lionsgate) has become a nifty little box office hit. The film added almost $9.5M over the weekend for a new 10-day cume of $37M, and the only conclusion I have been able to reach is that it’s all about the poster.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

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John Nolte

Celebrity Video Palate Cleanser

by John Nolte

After a month of celebrity videos ranging from creepy to disturbing, maybe this will help to take the edge off: