Last month I wrote about why conservatives embrace Turner Classic Movies over any current network that plays more contemporary films. The lack of graphic violence, abusive language while having sex and infidelity portrayed beautifully through metaphor plays a large role in growing audience interest in classic Hollywood. It was a different era, literally the polar opposite of what you see today. Sure, there were good and bad things during the Golden Age, but most dedicated movie buffs feel that films were superior before 1960 – because they were.

TCM recently aired a seven part documentary on the foundation of Hollywood through 1970 that covered about eighty years of film history. This impossible task was a nice change of pace for the network and hopefully will spark a follow up series. However, taking on so much history in such a short amount of time forced the show to grossly oversimplify certain elements and leave other crucial happenings completely out of the picture. Sure, there were more conservatives in Hollywood in 1940 than today, but the political landscape was different (conservatives and liberals joined against Fascism and Socialism, for starters).

Big Hollywood’s John Nolte, who certainly knows a thing or two about classic Hollywood, recently caught up on Moguls and Movie Stars and was not happy. His criticism was that the series dwelled on the idea that the Studio System, complete with a self-censoring office, held back the full potential of the film industry. Nolte makes a great point in telling us that this doesn’t mean that Hollywood’s full potential is necessarily better. The same reason I argued that conservatives love TCM is why so many people prefer classic films over the new garbage spewing from Tinsel Town. Nolte notes that the series constantly reminds us of why the moguls and their politics were in the way, which is far from the truth: (more…)

Other than this has to be too good to be true, there’s nothing to comment on. To make suggestions or to give advice or to create some kind of wish list regarding these upcoming films, as though anything anyone could come up with will surpass the genius of Christopher Nolan, is foolish. So carry on, Mr. Nolan. See ya, opening day.

More of this, please…

Deadline Hollywood Daily:

Warner Bros is trying to ready its DC Comics stalwart Superman to soar again on the Big Screen, and the studio has turned to Chris Nolan to mentor development of the movie. Our insiders say that the brains behind rebooted Batman has been asked to play a “godfather” role and ensure The Man Of Steel gets off the ground after a 3 1/2-year hiatus. Nolan’s leadership of the project can set it in the right direction with the critics and the fans, not to mention at the box office. Besides, Nolan is considered something of a god at Warner Bros and has a strong relationship with the studio after the success of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Though he wasn’t obligated to do so, he gave the studio first crack at his spec script Inception, and Warner Bros was able to buy it before other studios even got a sniff. While Nolan completes that Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer for a July 16th release, he’s also hatched an idea for Warner Bros’ third Batman installment. Now his brother and frequent collaborator Jonah Nolan, and David Goyer who co-wrote Batman Begins and penned the story for The Dark Knight, are off scripting it.

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It always impresses me when an aged actor manages a comeback that is authentic, one based on more than mere nostalgia, one appealing to an entirely new generation of moviegoers. Jackie Gleason spent most of the 1970s appearing in pale television retreads of his 1950s heyday, and for most of that time he was absent from the big screen entirely. A revered comedic master, yes — but nevertheless his career as an innovator and taste-maker seemed long over. Then came Smokey and the Bandit, a fitting capstone to a long career of memorable portrayals and endless belly-laughs.

Born in 1916 in Brooklyn, Gleason was no stranger to tragedy. His sickly brother died when he was three, and his mother died when he was nineteen. But it was his father vanishing that gouged the biggest hole in his soul. “I was about nine when one day my pop didn’t come home,” Gleason said in later years. “A few days before, my mom and he had a violent argument and he took every picture out of the house that had him in it. That should have been the tip-off, but I was too young to know.” (more…)

There’s a “Twilight Zone” episode early in the first season where Ida Lupino plays a Norma Desmond-type screen star: aging, resentful, a little nuts and holed up in a dark Hollywood mansion lost in the glory days that run endlessly on an old film projector. The final Serling-esque twist is that she ends up transporting herself into one of her own 25 year old films where she can live forever in a sophisticated romantic celluloid dream, always young always beautiful, where the world is as she believes it should be. 

For some reason Serling presents that twist as though it’s a bad thing. I don’t know, sounds like a plan to me, and  if there’s one movie-world on this list that I would want to transport myself into it would be “Christmas in Connecticut.”

This 1945 Warner Brothers’ charmer is as light as the souffle Barbara Stanwyck’s magazine writer, Elizabeth Lane, pretends she can cook for thousands of magazine readers and now will have to in reality if she’s to keep her job. Using recipes from her Uncle Feliz (the terrific S.Z. Sakall), Lane has crafted an identity for her readers and employers that doesn’t exist. Everyone believes she’s a Connecticut housewife with a newborn baby living on a storybook farm when in reality she’s single, childless, can’t boil an egg, and living in a cramped New York City apartment. As expected, topsy soon goes turvy and for the Christmas holidays her boss (an absolutely delightful Sydney Greenstreet) decides to offer a returning soldier (Dennis Morgan) a Christmas weekend with Lane on her storybook farm. Oh, yes, and the boss would like to join them. (more…)

You can probably date yourself by remembering how much comic books cost when you were a kid. Was it a dime, a quarter, a dollar? Can you believe they cost $4 now?

As the greenies would say, that’s unsustainable. Comic books used to be common. If you went in any kids house in the 50s or early 60s you would probably find some. Not so much anymore. Comics once sold everywhere magazines were sold. You could buy them in drug stores, supermarkets, seven-elevens, newsstands, even some liquor stores. But the so called “newsstand market” was a hostile place to comics publishers, and a shrinking one.

These days, it’s hard to find comics anywhere outside of the comic book store. That means that comics have become a “destination product.” It’s something you need to know where it’s sold, you have to physically go there and if you’re lucky, they might have what you’re looking for. However, most comics retailers order to sell out. So the odds are, you may be unlucky if you don’t come on “comics day,” the day the books come in from the distributor.

And that’s another problem with comics these days. There is only one distributor. When I got in the business in the mid 80s, there were around ten distributors. But over the years they all went under leaving Diamond Comics as the sole place publishers can distribute through to the “Direct Market,” as we call it. It’s like government run health care, if there’s only one place to go for your needs, you have to like their terms. (more…)

I missed the series premiere of “V,” but not the ongoing flap afterwards. The remake of the 1984 sci-fi classic seems to have hit a lot of nerves on the left and found an audience on the right. Left-wing media types are outraged that the series “degrades” the Obama administration, and some on the right are wondering if a Hollywood talent has been dismissed from his job for political reasons. As I write this, I’m watching O’Reilly go on about “the writers taking shots at President Obama.” 

As it happens, I’m acquainted with Scott Peters who developed and wrote the remake of “V” for ABC.  Mr. Peters was also the creator and executive producer of “The 4400” and a writer for “The Outer Limits.” As far as I know Mr. Peters has only made one mistake in his career and that was directing me in the low-budget film “Don: Plain and Tall” back in 2003. It was the story of my friend comedian Don McMillan’s life as a comic. I played myself in the film and the part was horribly miscast. 

When I started reading some of the rumors and theories about Mr. Peters’ latest show and the behind-the-scenes politics, I laughed out loud.  Let me try to shed some light on the “V” controversy. (more…)

Acting’s in the eyes and regardless of the role Jimmy Cagney’s eyes always screamed “caged.” Whether playing George M. Cohan or some middle-aged Coca-Cola executive, watching Cagney is like watching the lit fuse of a firecracker and whether it was with an explosion of song, dance or violence, Cagney never disappointed — he went off. In “White Heat,” director Raoul Walsh’s magnificent closing chapter in a magnificent two-decade series of Warner Brothers’ gangster pictures, Cagney again explodes …only this time, literally.

Jimmy Cagney in the early 1930s

Produced in 1949, within just a few minutes “White Heat” announces itself as something unlike anything that came before starting with the introduction of Verna Jarrett (29 year old Virginia Mayo), a striking, almost regal beauty shown fast asleep in a close up. Walsh immediately knocks the bark off his perfectly groomed leading lady by having her snore like a sailor after a three day bender. The message is clear: don’t believe everything you see. In just a few more minutes things will move even further beyond normal and straight into disturbing.   (more…)

I took my five-year-old son (Ed) and seven-year-old daughter (Ahmi) to see “Monsters vs. Aliens.” We got our Elvis Costello 3D glasses and wore them at all the wrong times during the television commercials that come on before the movie trailers. My kids didn’t know but I was mostly interested in their response to the 3D imagery. That’s right, I went to “Monsters vs. Aliens” primarily for human experimentation. They reached out to grab objects that appeared to float in front of them, but the greatest of all expressions came to their faces every time I looked over at them: smiles.

Reese Witherspoon voices Ginormica, a 49-foot-tall woman with an awesome figure. More to love. But her fiance is a sleazy weatherman from Modesto, as if there’s any other kind. Ginormica is the straight person in the adventure; she carries the hero’s burden of bringing any kind of depth or drama to a 90 minute farce. Her comedy relief side-kicks are fish man, cockroach man, a big Mothra maggot and the show stealing gelatinous B.O.B. voiced by Seth Rogen. (more…)