Great Movies
Chaz's Journal
Thank You, George Cukor and Mitchell Leisen - With Props to Ryan Coogler
A posthumous tribute to two male directors who encouraged audience identification with women onscreen and made opportunities for female film artists.
A posthumous tribute to two male directors who encouraged audience identification with women onscreen and made opportunities for female film artists.
An interview with the director "Baby Boom" and reappreciation of the film on its 30th anniversary.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including "Train to Busan," "The Accountant," "Deepwater Horizon" and many more!
Molly Haskell speaks with Matt Zoller Seitz about "From Reverence to Rape," "Love and Other Infectious Diseases," "Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films" and more.
A tribute to Alan Rickman on his passing.
The movie questionnaire and 2015 reviews of RogerEbert.com film critic Simon Abrams.
The completion of our countdown of twelve great Chirstmas-set scenes from the movies. Check out #4–#1.
Writer Simon Abrams responds to our Movie Love Questionnaire.
Marie writes: Welcome to "Good Books", an online bookseller based in New Zealand. Every time you buy a book through them, 100% of the retail profit goes directly to fund projects in partnership with Oxfam; projects which provide clean water, sanitation, develop sustainable agriculture and create access to education for communities in need. To increase awareness of Good Books' efforts to raise money for Oxfam, String Theory (New Zeland based agency) teamed up with collaborative design production comany "Buck" to create the first of three videos in a digital campaign called Good Books Great Writers. Behold the award winning animated Good Books Metamorphosis.
Marie writes: They call it "The Shard" and it's currently rising over London akin to Superman's Fortress of Solitude and dwarfing everything around it, especially St. Paul's in front. I assume those are pigeons flying over-head and not buzzards. Ie: not impressed, but that's me and why I'm glad I saw London before they started to totally ruin it.Known as the "London Bridge Tower" before they changed the name, when completed in 2012, it will be the tallest building in Europe and 45th highest in the world. It's already the second highest free-standing structure in the UK after the Emley Moor transmitting station. The Shard will stand 1,017 ft high and have 72 floors, plus another 15 radiator floors in the roof. It's been designed with an irregular triangular shape from base to top and will be covered entirely in glass. The tower was designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect best know for creating Paris's Pompidou Centre of modern art with Richard Rogers, and more recently the New York Times Tower. You can read an article about it at the Guardian. Here's the official website for The Shard. Photograph: Dan Kitwood.
Enlarge image: Newsroom hustle...
Enlarge image: ... and bustle. Notice the emphasis on women at work in the very first moments.
From That Little Round-Headed Boy:
"His Girl Friday": Anybody who ever worked in the journalism business, or wished they had been around for newspapering's madcap era, must feel a quickening at the opening tracking shot of Howard Hawks' classic comedy. As the camera tracks from right to left across the city room of the Chicago Morning Post, a smoky, hustling, chatty ambience hangs over the enterprise, as an editor yells out for a "Copy boy!", reporters are decked out in rolled-up shirts and green eye-shades, the women wear fashionable hats and the blue-collar switchboard gals are yammering in overdrive. The scene sets the fast-paced theme, and it never lets up.
JE: Good grief, TLRHB, that's a great one! (This should give readers an idea why they should check out TLRHB regularly.) As someone born with ink in his veins (red ink, I'm afraid), I know well the quickening of which you speak!
The hugely popular Chicago Outdoor Film Festival, held Tuesday evenings in Grant Park, will salute major stars in its 5th annual season.
Everyone knows that Cary Grant was the most charming man in the history of the movies, but charm alone did not make him a star, and indeed he rarely offered only charm in a performance. There was always something underneath, a quiet reserve, a certain coldness, a feeling that he was evaluating his leading ladies even as he romanced them - and that dual nature is what made him so important in so many different kinds of films. He brought comedy to thrillers, danger to romance, and even a certain poignancy to slapstick farce. He always gave us more than we bargained for.
When Howard Hawks came to visit the Chicago Film Festival in 1968, they asked Charles Flynn to get up on the stage and introduce him. And Flynn, who was helping to run Doc Films at the University of Chicago at the time, gave an introduction that was so simple in its eloquence that I remembered it the other day, when I learned Hawks had died.
hungry police reporters, and corrupt politicians, and an escaped murderer who spends half the film concealed in a rolltop desk in the press room. The play has been filmed twice before: In 1930 with Lee Tracy as the reporter and Adolphe Menjou as his managing editor, and again in 1940, when director Howard Hawks got the bright idea of making the reporter a girl (the new title was "His Girl Friday," with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant).
Stella Stevens swept into Fritzel's wearing a white crocheted dress, which swept in a quarter of an inch later.
