Matthew Kennedy 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), Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2014), and On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide (Oxford University Press, 2024). Go here for more on Matthew and his oeuvre. 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[…]
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.[…]
Criterion serves up two more deep-dish DVDs from yesteryear Sullivan’s Travels (1941) Hollywood’s self-exams are usually dipped in acid: What Price Hollywood?, A Star is Born, Sunset Boulevard, The Bad[…]
Documentaries · Noir · Reviews
In DVD land, the world’s your oyster – pearls included (sometimes) Cuban Story (Victor Pahlen, 1959) By the mid-1950s, Errol Flynn was enjoying the low high life of a bloated[…]
The Criterion Collection offers another scrumptious golden-era DVD Criterion has spruced up the peerless 1936 Universal comedy My Man Godfrey and given it a bright new sheen. The digital transfer[…]
Check out these two favorites from Czech cinema’s Age of Camelot Those who fondly remember grainy, popping, and cloudy prints of old foreign films will be happy to know that[…]
The Criterion Collection serves up two Sirk beauties With the 2001 release of All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind, two gorgeous DVDs from the elite Criterion Collection,[…]
Actors Talk: Profiles and Stories from the Acting Trade, by Dennis Brown. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999. 280 pages, $25.00, ISBN 0-87910-287-X. I hate watching actors talk about acting. Humor, intelligence, and[…]
My Son Divine, by Frances Milstead, with Kevin Heffernan and Steve Yeager. New York: Alyson Books, 2001. 256 pages, $18.95. ISBN 1555835945 Divine has been dead for 13 years, and[…]
The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece, by Jan Stuart. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. 366 pages, $26.00 Fans of 1975’s Nashville, of which there are many, have reasons[…]
