Archive for September, 2011
Friday, September 30th, 2011
Glorious Excess
How do you top the untoppable? That was the problem facing Busby Berkeley and the Warner Bros. Studio back in 1933. Following the success that same year of 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, how could they make the script funnier, the pacing faster, and — most importantly — the spectacular musical numbers even [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
One of Us
One of the more unusual Hollywood studio films from the 1930s is Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932). It’s often dismissed as an exploitation film or a cheap attempt at sensationalism. In fact, it’s neither. Browning, best known for having directed Dracula the year before, had run away to join the circus when he was 16 years [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
Best Comedy Short?
Is Cops (1922) the best comedy short of all time? You can certainly make a case that it is. Film buffs split on whether Chaplin or Keaton is the king of comedy, so Chaplin fans might choose one of his Mutual comedies as the best short. Even so, I don’t know of any other short [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
The Sound of Silence
In one of the finest books ever written about comedic film, The Silent Clowns, Walter Kerr refers to Buster Keaton as the most silent of the silent film comedians: The silence was related to another deeply rooted quality — that immobility, the sense of alert repose we have so often seen in him. Keaton could [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Saturday, September 3rd, 2011
Breaking the Rules
Sometimes the conventional wisdom is true. In this case, Citizen Kane (1941) really is one of the best films ever made. Another bit of conventional wisdom is that Welles wasn’t able to direct another great film after Kane. That bit of shared knowledge is not true. Kane is the only film where Welles was given [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Saturday, September 3rd, 2011
Well-Oiled Machine
Mildred Pierce (1945) is the kind of competently directed Hollywood film from the 1940s that seems better each time you watch it. Like Michael Curtiz’s other outstanding drama from that decade, Casablanca (1943), everything seems to click — uniformly fine performances, a terrific script that never misses a beat, and a first-rate musical score (Max [...]