New Paramount Films Available Free on YouTube

Posted on December 28, 2015 at 8:00 am

Now free on YouTube via The Paramount Vault: a digital cinematic collection of films sorted into Classics, Comedy, Action/Adventure, Drama, Horror, Westerns, Science Fiction, and Thrillers. Many of them are B-movies and oddities, but there are treasures for movie fans, including Elvis films, “King Creole” and “GI Blues,” Audrey Hepburn and William Holden in “Paris When it Sizzles,” the Preston Sturges classic “Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,” Danny Kaye’s “On the Double,” and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “1900,” with Robert De Niro.

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Neglected gem VOD and Streaming
Debbie Reynolds’ New Book:  Make ‘Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends

Debbie Reynolds’ New Book: Make ‘Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends

Posted on December 27, 2015 at 3:50 pm

Debbie Reynolds can be described with the term used for one of her most memorable characters, Molly Brown. Indeed, her previous memoir is called Unsinkable. On screen, she has appeared in classic films like “Singin’ in the Rain” (when she was still a teenager), “Tammy,” “How the West was Won,” “The Pleasure of His Company,” “The Singing Nun,” and “Mother.” While most often remembered for musicals and comedies, her work in “The Catered Affair” and “The Rat Race” show that she is a gifted dramatic actress as well.

Her new book is Make ‘Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends, she tells stories about her friends and colleagues from the golden era of Hollywood, including Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Phyllis Diller, Gary Cooper, Judy Garland, and Bob Hope.

Nathan Smith writes in The Washington Post

“Make ’Em Laugh” recounts — sometimes gleefully, sometimes mournfully — Reynolds’s experiences in and outside the movies, using many items from her archives, scrapbooks and diaries. The book also offers candid shots of “America’s Sweetheart” with the likes of state dignitaries and even circus animals to gauge and eulogize the changing tides of Hollywood and the studio system.

Here she is on Turner Classic Movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpN7AOfEDoU
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Actors Books
Tribute: Haskell Wexler

Tribute: Haskell Wexler

Posted on December 27, 2015 at 12:00 pm

We mourn the loss of Haskell Wexler, one of the greatest cinematographers in Hollywood history, the director of the pioneering film “Medium Cool,” and the subject of a documentary by his son, Tell Them Who You Are.

The International Cinematographers Guild voted him one of the ten most influential in his field. He began doing television (including “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”), documentaries, and ads. He made an enormous impression with the black and white “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” for which he won his first Oscar.

His other films include Best Picture Oscar winners “In the Heat of the Night” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” as well as “Bound for Glory,” and “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip.” He made “Medium Cool” in the midst of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, filming in the midst of protests. Famously, you can hear one of his crew say, “Look out, Haskell, it’s real!”

Wexler’s son Mark also became a filmmaker, pointedly on the other end of the political spectrum from his outspokenly liberal father. Like My Architect and The Man Nobody Knew, Tell Them Who You Are is part of an arresting new genre of documentary as therapy, with sons (mostly) exploring and putting their own stamp on their father’s lives.

May his memory be a blessing.

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