I won’t argue with a single one of the films you’ll be hearing about in the obituary pages and tributes to come. Network, Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men, Serpico and especially The Verdict are all standalone masterpieces brought to visceral life by a one-of-a-kind director who leaves behind a legacy that will live on for as long as there’s a civilization. Anyone with just one of those films on their resume could sit back in the satisfaction of knowing that they had achieved something very rare today – artistic perfection. “Fail Safe” and “The Pawnbroker” both come romantically close to that kind of perfection, as well.

But I’m a “deep cut” kind of movie lover, someone who likes to see absolutely everything in the hopes of digging up a gem everyone else appears to have missed. The only thing I love more than my secret stash of  cinematic gems, is the sharing of them. And the beauty of Lumet is that he had a number of sleepers, chief among them one of my wife’s all-time favorites, A Stranger Among Us with Melanie Griffith. The film was written by our own Robert Avrech and not only ranks as a terrific murder mystery/urban thriller, but also a delicately crafted love letter to both human dignity and the Jewish faith. Beneath all the drama and mystery, you’ll find a life-affirming subtext and thematic drive that tenderly examines the big issues of  fidelity, faith, and loyalty in ways movies then, and especially now, simply don’t anymore. For this reason it stands out in Lumet’s work, which is both a credit to the director and my friend Robert.  

Here are some others worth seeking out if you haven’t already…

Garbo Talks (1984): One of Lumet’s few escapist films with a perfectly cast Ron Silver as a Manhattan worker bee who drops everything to fulfill his dying mother’s (a never better Anne Bancroft) wish to meet the elusive Greta Garbo.

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Robert Avrech’s lovely paean to the patriotism of Old Hollywood reminds me, by way of contrast, of a blink-and-you-missed-it scandal from seventeen months ago. Even in a cultural arena rife with liberal outrages against military families, it marked a new low. And although it was but one small battle in the culture war, it is worth recalling in the wake of Memorial Day as a reminder of just how far our popular media has fallen from the sterling ideals of our forefathers.

What does NBC stand for again? National Broadcasters against Conservatives? No Blessings for the Corps? On December 7, 2007, as the country solemnly remembered Pearl Harbor and the timeless sacrifices of soldiers long dead, one of our major television networks decided that running ads praising today’s modern armed forces constituted a bridge too far. The two thirty-second spots had been produced by Freedom’s Watch, a now-defunct conservative action group which aspired to be the MoveOn.org of the right, using “grassroots lobbying, education and information campaigns, and issue advocacy” to fight the good fight against the legion of hippy-dippy protesters, nihilists, and ideological bullies that perpetually rage (and increasingly reign) throughout blue-state America. (more…)

7:30am PST - Battle Of Algiers, The (1965) – Algiers revolts against the French Foreign Legion. Cast: Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Brahim Haggiag, Tommaso Neri Dir: Gillo Pontecorvo BW-121 mins, TV-14

I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never seen this. I have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate, but somehow this one got past me.

Good thing, then, we have our own Robert Avrech, who wrote a masterful two-part deconstruction of the film just last month titled, “Learning From the Real Battle of Algiers.” Here’s the opener: (more…)

What an exhilarating week. Big Hollywood is finally up. Traffic is way better than expected.

Greg Gutfeld is posting his wondrous inanities and many pointed yet not vitriolic salvos have been launched against the intransigent Hollywood left and vital ones aimed at the right — for forfeiting culture to the opposition. Movie and television reviews and historical treatises abound, and we’re even breaking news.

John Ziegler launched a massive story where Sarah Palin unleashed on the media for treating her so unfairly. It is easily the mainstream news media story of the week. Big Hollywood is the site to go to for the inside scoop on Ziegler’s forthcoming documentary, “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected“.

Actor-singer-songwriter Joe Lima in a timely fashion came to bury Guevara, but also put usually reliable director Steven Soderbergh in his place for wasting so much studio money and movie watchers’ time with the execrable, “Che.”

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