Over the last eight years, while President Obama attempted to do his job and a large percentage of our country medicated itself with important things like reality show star Kim Kardashian’s big ass, the…
Category: Film
Blog posts
Do We Make Our Own Luck?
Personally, I have a strong aversion toward any notion of “making your own luck,” a thoroughly ridiculous idea if ever I’ve heard one. Luck, by it’s very definition, is bigger than we are and any reference…
Quote of the Day: Charles Laughton on Acting
“Method actors give you a photograph. Real actors give you an oil painting.” More Charles Laughton: The Truth Comes Out! The Sexual Secrets of the Golden Age of Hollywood’s “Gentleman Hustler” Revealed…
#DIFF: Interview with Do I Sound Gay? Director David Thorpe
When I first scanned the program of over 160 films scheduled for the Ninth Annual Dallas International Film Festival, Do I Sound Gay? resonated in a particularly personal way. As the title suggests, the documentary…
Living Stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era, Volume 2
The feedback to the first edition of Stargayzing’s 30 Stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era Who Are Still Alive feature was so positive—as of this writing it is the blog’s most highly read piece)—that I have prepared…
Christopher Lee (1922 – 2015)
“I was once asked what I thought was the most disquieting thing you could see on the screen and I said, ‘An open door.'” The lauded English actor Christopher Lee, who died on June…
Movie Quote of the Day: Cinematographer Jack Cardiff on Orson Welles
With all of the online chatter about the crowdfunding effort to complete The Other Side of the Wind, the last film of auteur Orson Welles, I thought this might be a great time to…
The Moment Charlie Chaplin Met Helen Keller
This photograph of Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin has been circulating on the Internet for quite a while. Every time I come across it I am captivated, both by the image itself—two extremely famous…
On Stevie Phillips’ Memoir: Judy + Liza et. al.
Even by Hollywood standards, the majesty and misery of Judy Garland’s short life were extreme, marked by operatic intensity and an epic series of (mostly) public peaks and valleys. The Judy Garland story arc remains the…
86-Year-Old Ingenue Mae West Sold Poland Spring Water
Mae West was a true show business original. Her pre-code Paramount films like She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel are still first rate comedies that reveal a rich comic mind and ridiculously…
Opening Reel: The 9th Annual Dallas International Film Festival
All New Yorkers know that leaving town often is one of the only things that ostensibly keeps us sane—a head scratcher that in and of itself might set off a light bulb for anyone who…
Page 2
of 13