Desperately Seeking Ginger: Hollywood Rhythms, Vol. 2 on DVD offers relief for the Rogers Deprived
Hollywood Rhythms, Vol. 2 on DVD offers relief for the Rogers-Deprived.
Author: Alan Vanneman
Alan Vanneman is a writer living in Washington, DC. He is the author of two dead-tree novels, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra and Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara, both published by Penzler Press. Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara is available as an audiobook from Blackstone/Downpour. He is also the author of three new Nero Wolfe novellas recreating Rex Stout’s famous fat detective, a FREE ebook, and Author! Author! Auden, Oates, and Updike, a collection of two short stories and a novella, available both as an ebook and print on demand. All of his fiction can be accessed here at his blog Literature R Us. Portions of his article "Alfred Hitchcock: A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone," which originally appeared online in Bright Lights, have been included in a textbook anthology by Allison Smith, Trixie Smith, and Stacia Watkins. Bad Film, Great Soundtrack: New Orleans on DVD
How Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday saved New Orleans from the Yankees
Chicago: Hollywood Does Bollywood
No one can steal like America can steal Wish you could look like Leo, dance like Fred, and sing like Frank? Well, of course you do, but you can’t, and[…]
Composers · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Weill & Brecht: The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny on DVD
Show us the way to the next pretty boy Don’t know much about history? Well, don’t sweat it, because Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht didn’t either when they decided to[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Astaire Meets Artie Shaw in Second Chorus
New DVD also includes Ezio Pinza, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington “The worst picture I ever worked on.” That was Fred Astaire’s overly sour take on Second Chorus. It’s easy[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Goes Over the Top with Eleanor Powell in Broadway Melody of 1940
The semi-sweet smell of excess Have you got a yen for understated elegance and class? Then keep on truckin’, dude, because this 1940 M-G-M black-and-white monster/masterpiece ain’t for you. M-G-M[…]
Frederic March and Carole Lombard Find Nothing Sacred in the Big Apple
“There she is, in all her beads and ribbons!” How Manhattan is Nothing Sacred? To be more Manhattan, it would have to be Manhattan. Because once more we’re on that[…]
1966 CBS Version of Death of a Salesman: Now on DVD
Sure Arthur Miller’s masterpiece is flawed, but so’s your mother On paper, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner, shouldn’t work. Miller intended the play as another[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Astaire & Rogers Fade to Black in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
Fred dies, Ginger cries The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is the not very graceful swan song of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals of the thirties.1 Carefree,[…]
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002): There’s No “There” There
Why Tobey Maguire has us by the testicles and why he isn’t going to let go Whence Spider-Man? Whence, indeed, and whither? It has come to pass in these United[…]
Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
Looking Back at the Fabulous Invalid: TV Broadcasts of June Moon, Awake and Sing!, The Human Voice, and The Journey of the Fifth Horse, now on DVD
There was a time, America, a time when public television consisted of more than Antiques Roadshow, women in pantsuits explaining how to feel good about yourself, and reruns of inane[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
“Why Are They All Ugly Little Men?” Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon: The Great Silent Clowns Reformatted
“Why are they all ugly little men?” asked Cindy, after I’d dragged her to three solid weeks of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, and Harold Lloyd at a silent[…]
Robert Altman’s Gosford Park: Not Renoir, but Not Bad
Robert Altman gets all warm and fuzzy on your ass Say what you like about Robert Altman, the guy doesn’t quit. Altman didn’t hit the big time until 1969, when[…]
Todd Field’s In the Bedroom: Wake me when it’s over!
More boring than real life, plus you have to pay to get in Perhaps there’s something in the water. Whatever the cause, whenever an American film director takes on a[…]
Fred and Ginger: Together Again, yet Not Quite Carefree
“Colorblind,” and maybe just a little bit tone-deaf Breaking up is hard to do. But getting back together, well, that’s even harder. After the semi-failure of Shall We Dance in[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
Queer for the Rings: Frodo and Sam Find Fellowship
Pretty boys in danger: How yummy! Poor Frodo Baggins! He spends almost all his time in The Fellowship of the Ring 1) anticipating penetration; 2) suffering penetration; or 3) recovering[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Brigitte Bardot on DVD: Plucking the Daisy; The Night Heaven Fell; and . . . And God Created Woman Offer Vintage Titillation
“See that girl? Her ass is a song.” How horny were we back in the fifties? Horny enough to put on a raincoat, leave our happy suburban homes, drive downtown[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Astaire Goes Solo in Damsel in Distress
Nice work if you can get it When Fred & Ginger went splitsville after Shall We Dance, Astaire decided that he didn’t really need a dame, an idea that tends[…]
Mozart’s The Magic Flute on DVD
Ingmar Bergman does it again! Back in 1976, Ingmar Bergman made a movie of Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute.1 Twenty-five years later, it remains the finest operatic film ever[…]
We’ll Always Have Paris: Now that René Clair’s Le Million is on DVD
Not many extras but lots of fun What was Paris like back in the twenties? I mean, what was it really like? Well, if you cared for such things as[…]
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