Tag: Howard Hawks

X Me Deadly: A Visual Essay

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“The thumb isn’t good enough for you. You have to use your whole body.”  Naked underneath her trenchcoat, frightened hitchhiker Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman) gets private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) to stop his car by standing in the middle of the highway with her arms outstretched in an X pattern.  This is the first time we [...]

2009 DVD Round-Up (part 1)

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With blu-ray and instant viewing on netflix, the whole world of movie watching is changing, and new vs. old releases is becoming harder to pinpoint, so my discoveries here are proudly of all ages based only on what I saw this year that I wanted to write about, liked, but didn’t have anything clever to [...]

Early Warning re “Early Hawks Blog-a-thon”

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FOB (“Friend of Bright Lights”) Ed Howard writes in to announce: “my new blog-a-thon, which will run from January 12-23, 2009 and will focus on the early films of Howard Hawks. More details here. I’m announcing it far in advance to give time for the word to spread and for those who are interested to [...]

Remembering Maila Nurmi (1921-2008)

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Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira – actress, comedienne, artist, and horror hostess – was one of the most interesting and extraordinary persons I have ever met. MAILA KNEW EVERYBODY The first thing she asked me was, “Are you a genius?” adding, “I only associate with geniuses.” Taken aback, I realized that if I wanted to keep [...]

Two Overlooked Supporting Performances of 2007

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What with all the year-end lists we’ve been seeing lately, I’ve been surprised at some of the omissions. Well, not all that surprised, since lists like these almost always neglect films released during the first three-quarters of the year in favor of movies released at the year’s tail-end (Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, Atonement), [...]

Welles’s Don Quixote (excerpt)

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Perhaps the most famous of all uncompleted film projects is the Orson Welles version of Don Quixote (starring Francisco Reiguera, Akim Tamiroff, and Patty McCormack, above). Like so many of Welles’s projects – from his first short film, The Hearts of Age (1934), to his final films, The Immortal Story, Chimes at Midnight, The Other [...]

Sidney Poitier’s Daughter

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One of the not-so-guilty pleasures of Death Proof, the Quentin Tarantino-directed second half of Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse, is the performance of Sydney Tamiia Poitier (above) as Austin D.J., “Jungle Julia.” The way Tarantino directs actors – in this film and generally – owes a lot to Howard Hawks. Like Hawks at his most Hawksien [...]