Posted on July 13, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Summer is a time for travel, and, whether you’re traveling or not, it’s a great time for movies about travel as well. Film Forever has an excellent list of movies about Brits traveling abroad. Here are my favorites.
Posted on July 2, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Summer is a great time to catch up on some classic and even not-so-classic films, the movie version of beach books. The nice folks at Entertainment Weekly have come up with a terrific list of films all children should see before they get to high school. This is a good chance for parents to share some of their own childhood favorites with their children, like “The Princess Bride” and “Babe” and perhaps discover some they missed like “The Red Balloon” and “Duck Soup.” These are the movies that should inspire the scheduling of a monthly family movie night where we re-invent the idea that everyone sits down with a bowl of popcorn and enjoys the same movie at the same time in the same room.
And for couples, Esquire has helpfully put together a list of romantic comedies that men will enjoy. No Katherine Heigl, Jennifer Aniston, or Adam Sandler in the bunch, and some very well-chosen black and white classics like “Trouble in Paradise” and “Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.”
In case you’ve been waiting for some suggestions from perennial polymath James Franco, Vibe has published his list of some favorites. I was especially glad to see “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” one of my favorite documentaries, about a group of kids who transformed skateboarding and helped invent the idea of extreme sports.
Posted on June 26, 2014 at 9:20 am
My friend Michael Mirasol has put together a wonderful supercut of movie robots in honor of this week’s release of the new Transformers movie. How many can you identify?
Posted on June 26, 2014 at 8:00 am
Margaret Talbot and I will kick off our second series of Pre-Code films at Washington, D.C.’s Hill Center tomorrow night with “The Ladies They Talk About.” As Margaret says, it’s Depression-era “Orange is the New Black,” much of it set in a women’s prison with a colorful group of inmates. It is based on a play written by an actress who herself served time in prison.
Pre-Code films were made in the brief time between the beginning of the Sound Era (1927) and the enforcement of the Hays Code, which strictly limited the content of films, in 1934. Pre-Code films are frank and remarkably spicy. Tomorrow’s film, which stars Barbara Stanwyck and Margaret’s father, Lyle Talbot, may have a loopy plot, but portions of it feel very modern, including the treatment of a lesbian prisoner. I hope those of you in the area will join us!
Posted on June 24, 2014 at 3:42 pm
John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands were at the forefront of a revolution in cinema that led to a new era of naturalism in subject matter and performance. Cassavetes, best known as an actor for starring opposite Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby
Leonard Maltin calls Cassavetes’ 1959 film, “Shadows,” “a watershed in the birth of American independent cinema”.
Rowlands was nominated for an Oscar for her fearless performance in “A Woman Under the Influence,” a 1974 film that piercingly portrayed her character’s mental collapse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Uzdlgv2G8Their son, Nick Cassavetes, became a director as well, and featured his mother in his best film, The Notebook
BFI’s Film Forever site has a terrific tribute to this ground-breaking couple.
