Auspicious Beginnings: Nicholson’s Leitmotif in Five Easy Pieces
“His characters have tended to be more bewildered by life and disgusted by a world that won’t cooperate.” As Jack Nicholson turns 70 (April 2007), he embodies more than ever[…]
Category: Actors & Personalities
Uneasy Living: The Insecure Charm of Jean Arthur
“Funny, tender, a little neurotic, a little erotic, and always spontaneous …” A Foreign Affair (1948) is a blunt Billy Wilder comedy set amid the ruins of Berlin, and it’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
More Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, The Nutty Professor, no Gorilla (I think), and no Allen Ginsberg (or Ginzberg)
Since my esteemed Bright Lights After Dark (and Bright Lights Film Journal) co-contributor C. Jerry Kutner posted his last entry in the (now) ongoing Nutty Professor debate out here in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis vs. Julius Kelp & Buddy Love
In a comment to my previous Jerry Lewis post, Tom Sutpen wrote: Couldn’t agree more . . . except . . . Jerry Lewis has always steadfastly denied any Martin[…]
Farley Granger: Senso and Sensibility
In four films, two for Alfred Hitchcock (Rope {1948} and Strangers on a Train {1951}), one for Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night {1948}) and one for Luchino Visconti (Senso[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian
Beauties and Furies: Hong Kong’s New Wave of Women Stars
“The women of To’s world are not just endearingly kooky, but often unacceptably bizarre and amoral in their excited reactions to events.” Five years ago, I was starting to think[…]
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[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Looking at Charlie: The Idle Class, Pay Day, The Pilgrim, and A Woman of Paris
“Now, Goliath was a big man.” With the release of The Kid in 1921, Charlie Chaplin had fulfilled his dream of making a full-length comedy that would be recognized as[…]
Steele Vision: The Face of Italian Cult Cinema
“Again the camera shows how the imperfection of Asa’s face does not present an insurmountable obstacle to her being ultimately attractive.” Within cinema scholarship there is a reluctance to address[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists · Directors · Interviews · Movies
What’s Wrong with Fast Food? A Conversation with Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser on Fast Food Nation
With additional comments by Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke Introduction The distributor’s website describes Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, a dramatic feature based on Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book, as[…]
Great Blog Topic – Monologues
Edward Copeland at The House Next Door has written a great post concerning film monologues. After considering what makes a great film monologue, he describes in detail 5 stellar examples.[…]
Julie! Julie! Julie!
The incredibly beautiful Julie Adams, paramour of The Creature From the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1953), and object of many adolescent fantasies including, obviously, my own. What a pleasure it[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Beautiful Betty
Anyone infatuated with silent film, like me, is always on the lookout for that one pre-talkie film that will win over the unconverted, and I think I’ve found a mighty[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
A Frontline Guy: An Interview with Burt Young
“Get Burt!” Introduction For too many people, Burt Young is simply “That Guy from Rocky,” but to a cult that’s included the likes of Actor’s Studio founder Lee Strasberg, Sergio[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Mish-Mash Planet: The Cult of Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier
“Speaking of impurity: what was Rita Hayworth’s image supposed to be in the ’40s?” What did we use to think of other countries? The question occurred to me while watching[…]
Finding the Funny, One Dick Joke at a Time: Comedy Central’s Pam Anderson Roast on DVD
Enough engorged vagina jokes to feed a family of four for an entire year! Some pleasures — a blow job from Angelina Jolie, for example1 — lie permanently out of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Forbidden Fruit? Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III
Is it a sin to see this film? There is no doubt that Tom Cruise is guilty of acting like a movie star in public. He’s jumped on Oprah’s couch,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Looking at Charlie — First National, Shoulder Arms, and The Kid: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin
“LOST CHILD WANTED — Last seen with a little man with large flat feet and a small moustache” In 1917, for the first time in his life, Charlie Chaplin took[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books
Kay Francis: Secrets of an Actress: New Books Reveal the “Wavishing” Star
“I’m not a star, I’m a woman, and I want to get fucked!” A combination clotheshorse/workhorse, Kay Francis made 67 films from 1929 to 1946. Her life and career are a splurging[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
When Fred Met Red: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, and Vera-Ellen Commingle in Three Little Words
It’s Bert and Harry, together again! Why are you not excited? Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby are not names to conjure with, unless you’re excessively fond of conjuring, but back[…]
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