A Very Special Favor: More Strange Drag from the Hudson Closet
“Never mind that Hudson was a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man in love with a man who was really a woman.” Universal Studio, never in[…]
Author: Matthew Kennedy
Matthew Kennedy is curator and host of the CinemaLit Film Series at the Mechanics Library in San Francisco. He is the author of Marie Dressler: A Biography (McFarland, 1999), Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory: Hollywood's Genius Bad Boy (University Press of Wisconsin, 2004), Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), and Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2014). Go here for more on Matthew and his oeuvre. David Lean’s Problem Child: Gorgeous but Flawed Ryan’s Daughter on DVD
For maximum effect, see it when you’re 13 The 1965 epic Doctor Zhivago was a Brobdingnagian success and the highest-grossing film at MGM since Gone with the Wind. Director David[…]
Directors · Music & Musicals · Producers & Studios · Reviews
The Hip Hooray and Bally Hoo: Busby Berkeley Explodes on DVD
Come and meet those dancing feet, and pianos, and buildings, and . . . Give the nearest Warner Home Video executive a big hug. The company has at last remastered[…]
Men in Love: On Brokeback Mountain
” … I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love,” he said. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “It’s an obscenity, a theory, a perversity.” “Well[…]
Ann-Margret in Wonderland: But Bates and the Brits Are at Home in The Return of the Soldier
“Her English accent wanders around her mouth like a playful ice cube.” Have pity on The Return of the Soldier. Shot in England in 1982, the film did not get[…]
Renoir on the Seine: Boudu Saved from Drowning on DVD
Criterion’s Renoir-fest continues with this classic Criterion has already remastered Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion(1938) and The Rules of the Game (1939), so the release of Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932),[…]
Two by Jacques Becker: Casque d’or and Touchez pas au grisbi on DVD
Criterion resurrects a French master “Beckeresque” is not a word but maybe it should be. Embedded in its definition would be French director Jacques Becker (1906-1960) at his best: subtle,[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Noir · Reviews
“She Loves Too Much”: The Ravishing Leave Her to Heaven on DVD
No matter what she says, don’t upset her
DVD & Blu-ray · LGBT & Queer · Silents
Queer Silents: Different from the Others, Michael, and Sex in Chains on DVD
Kino’s unusual series spotlights German silent gay-themed cinema
Comedy · DVD & Blu-ray · Pre-Code
Dinner Is Served: The Return of MGM’s Witty ’30s Romp
Cukor’s all-star gala remains a tasty dish
Directors · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Doing What Moves Them at the Moment: Five of Cassavetes’ Best on DVD
The master of improv gets his due courtesy of Criterion’s extras-laden box set
On Commies, Stoolies, and Other Assorted Lowlifes: Pickup on South Street on DVD
Widmark and Peters sizzle, but Thelma Ritter steals the show
DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals
Wish Upon a Star! Robert Wise’s Musical Mess on DVD
or, a turkey returns
Recent DVDs: Christ in Concrete, The Garden of Eden, Breaking the Cycle, Mau Mau Sex Sex, Ordinary Sinner
Five DVDs for every taste, though some are more appetizing than others
Actors & Personalities · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Angela’s Lashes: Charles Busch’s Die Mommie Die!
Stage vet Charles Busch does glam for camp movie
Ho-hum Intrigue in Barcelona: Gaudi Afternoon on DVD
It’s little wonder this yawner didn’t get a theatrical release Gaudi Afternoon, a 2001 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival entry, never got a theatrical distributor and has[…]
Book review: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, by David Thomson
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Cloth, $35.00, 963pp. ISBN 0-375-41128-3. Hours will be lost, then days. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is[…]
Book review: Joan Crawford, by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell
Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography, by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2002. Cloth, $27.50, 294pp. ISBN 0-8131-2254-6. Joan Crawford was not Mommie Dearest.[…]
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