A lot of people saw The Deer Hunter, it won several Academy Awards including a Best Picture Oscar and was the talk of 1978, for a variety of reasons. Heaven’s Gate would only win Razzie and Stinker Awards, and is often credited with sinking a movie studio. This blog is a tale of a director … More Michael Cimino, The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate
I never understood the historical, religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland. At the time, all I saw was tragedy. No, I did not live there, so it is perhaps not fair to comment. I do not judge, and naïvely, I always wondered why everyone could not find a way to live in peace. When … More Belfast (2021)
Until Buddy Holly and then The Beach Boys, Beatles, Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, performers were less likely to write their own material. Songwriting was lucrative, but in those days, publishers and producers generally got the lion’s share of the profits as artists tended to lose control of their songs through poor publishing and management … More Songwriters: 1960s
Carl Bernstein is a throwback to newspaper men and woman of a different and lost time in America. If you’ve ever seen The Front Page, Lou Grant or Teacher’s Pet; this was a time of hard-boiled newsroom editors who drank, smoked cigars and were married to chasing stories, or at least that’s the romanticized image. … More Carl Bernstein: Chasing History
The other day I wanted to watch a movie, but I was too tired. My eyelids were heavy as barbells. I wasn’t really sleepy, just too tired to focus on a movie. I put the movie on and got comfortable, closing my eyes. Yes, film is a visual media, but it is also a sound … More Listening to the Movies
After discussing Buster Keaton’s life in Part 1, I decided to take a more specific look at some of his films. Keaton the man and Keaton the filmmaker are difficult to view separately. Keaton may not have been born onstage, but he grew up there and was a born performer. The film legacy of Keaton … More Buster Keaton – Part 2
What a life. What a talent. Typical of many silent stars, Buster Keaton’s film success did not fully translate to the sound era. The image many of us have of Keaton is the stone-faced guy doing impossible stunts in silent films or the old guy in the pork pie hat chasing girls in bikinis in … More Buster Keaton – Part 1
I am a fan of film credits/opening sequences. In film history, they served to give the audience information and set the story, often in a very creative way. Three of my favorite opening sequence designers are Saul Bass (Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger), Maurice Binder (James Bond) and Pablo Ferro (Stanley Kubrick, Steve McQueen). Film title … More Film Titles: Classics
The last thing I saw the late actor William Hurt in was the Prime series Goliath. He played a successful, but corrupt former law partner of the Billy Bob Thornton character.The nastiness, torment and flaws fit Hurt’s acting talent perfectly. Hurt played a lot of complicated characters, maybe because of the acting challenge, or because … More William Hurt Remembered
People generally are crazy about science fiction films or dislike them. Intentionally, science fiction also includes fantasy and superhero films in my book. So, Star Trek, Spider-Man, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are all cousins in the sci-fi/fantasy universe. Now, those are strange holiday gatherings! My list could include Star Wars, Gravity, Dark … More Favorite Science Fiction Films
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