Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): ****

L' Age D'Or (1930) marks not only Luis Buñuel's feature debut, but also the ill-fated ending of a rather unusual, yet extremely creative, collaboration. Having enjoyed a successful cooperation while making their much talked about short Un Chien Andalou (1928), Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, two of the most well respected surrealist artists of the era, attempted to replicate their experience. Sadly, well before L'Age was completed their friendship was fractured for good.

Supposedly, when the film opened for the first time in Paris it started a riot, which eventually led to it being banned by the French government. Even though L'Age makes little in the way of sense, at least in the linear, plot driven and conventional way that mainstream movies do, one can easily understand why it inspired such strong reactions.

Continue reading "L'Age D'Or" »

Posted by at 6:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas
Rating (out of 5): ****

It's often said that we're again living in an era in which our entertainment is politicized, unseen since the muted tones of the seventies. Though the decade that brought us The Candidate, The Parallax View and Nashville is clearly an influence on cynical filmmaking today, I think we should cast our collective eyes to an earlier time, when we mixed our politics with fluffy romantic comedy, when highly-synchronized dancers ironically sang "We're in the Money" in Pig Latin.

Released at the height of the depression, Mervyn LeRoy's Gold Diggers of 1933, sets the scene quickly with the aforementioned routine featuring rows of chorus girls sporting plate-sized, gold coin crotch pieces, doing Busby Berkeley (the dance director of the picture) routines, as Ginger Rogers sings "Let's lend it, spend it, send it rolling along," before the revelry is shut down by the Sherriff's Office for unpaid debts. By way of explaining the scene, Ginger exclaims "It's the Depression, dearie!"

Continue reading "Gold Diggers of 1933: Depression-era nugget" »

Posted by at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I begin my countdown of favorite character actors you have seen on DVD this year, performers who cause many of us to exclaim, "Who is that guy/gal?!" every time they appear.

10.

Okay, so he's been dead for 23 years. But the marvelous character actor William Demarest made a return of sorts, in the guise of the just-released (as part of the new, long-awaited Preston Sturges box set) classic comedies: Hail the Conquering Hero (pictured above, Demarest with Eddie Bracken and Ella Raines); The Great McGinty, in which he played a bouncer; and Christmas in July, in which he played a judge in a coffee slogan contest. He may have been at his best in Sturges' Miracle of Morgan's Creek, where he played the irascible patriarch of a clan of daughters, including Betty Hutton's Trudy Kockenlocker, who gets knocked up by a soldier. Demarest's scenes with Eddie Bracken and with his household are absolutely priceless. He also appeared in my favorite Sturges film, Sullivan's Travels. Cantankerous, flustered, often grouchy, Demarest was at his best in screwball comedy, with a particular knack for doing slow burns in reaction to the madness around him. He was well contrasted in particular with the prissy Franklin Pangborn in those Sturges films. His career went way back, too, all the way to 1927's The Jazz Singer and Howard Hawks' 1928 film A Girl in Every Port, and including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, What Price Glory? and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Also known as: Uncle Charley on the TV series "My Three Sons" (replacing an ailing William Frawley in 1965). -- Craig Phillips

Posted by at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½ for Thank You, Mr. Moto; *** for Think Fast, Mr Moto; ***½ for Mr. Moto Takes a Chance, and **** for Mysterious Mr. Moto.

Think Fast, Mr. Moto, the first in the famous Asian detective series that gave Peter Lorre his rare chance to play the hero (and disc 4 in Volume One of 20th Century Fox's "Mr. Moto Collection") is quite an entertaining piece of work. Clocking in at just over an hour, this 1937 movie is exotic fun that features Lorre surprisingly subtle, underplaying a smart guy who's not averse to simply shooting a sleazbag or dumping him overboard into the middle of the ocean. (Some of our current cinematic heroes and heroines could take a lesson from Lorre and stop stupidly allowing the villain to live - thus making a dumb movie continue for another unnecessary half-hour.) Moto's side-kick here is the heir to a shipping line, nicely played by Thomas Beck, who provides a rather innocent counterpart to Lorre's all-wise-all-the-time sleuth. The first Moto I've seen, it was good enough to have me queuing up for the rest. The DVD quality is rich and sharp, as well.

Continue reading "Moto Rising" »

Posted by at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (46)