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It hardly needs repeating, but director John Carpenter is known for making multiple horror classics, including "Halloween," "The Fog," "Christine," "The Thing," "Prince of Darkness," "In the Mouth of Madness" and "Vampires." Although Carpenter doesn't have a notable, recognizable style or motif in his filmography (apart from recurring actors) he does seem to possess a subtle, natural mastery of filmmaking craft that makes all his films, even the bad ones, imminently watchable.

Carpenter loves horror, of course, but oddly, he's not a horror guy at heart. He possesses an old-world workman's attitude when it comes to filmmaking, just sort of sussing out, by instinct, how to shoot a scene, regardless of genre. Carpenter has given multiple interviews where he's talked about monster movies and sci-fi flicks that inspired him, but moreso, Carpenter talks about the films of John Ford and Howard Hawks, two American filmmakers best known for their high-profile Westerns.

The iconically seductive silent film star Clara Bow is being further immortalized courtesy of a festival at New York City’s Film Forum.

1920s superstar Bow, who recently inspired a track named after her on Taylor Swift’s “Tortured Poets Department” album, is at the center of a career retrospective screening series at the New York City indie theater. Deemed the very first “It Girl,” Bow starred in films such as “Wings,” “The Saturday Night Kid,” and short “The Pill Pounder” which was recently rediscovered and subsequently restored after 101 years.

Bow’s turn in silent comedy “It” also inspired the very term “It Girl,” which refers to “sex appeal” as coined by British author Elinor Glyn, who also appears in the feature as well as a young Gary Cooper.

The festival will run on most Mondays at Film Forum from October 7 to December 30, with an additional screening on Thursday, October...

Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

Ron Harper, who starred on Planet of the Apes and four other short-lived primetime series and on the final season of the beloved kids TV show Land of the Lost during a very busy 15 years on television, has died. He was 91.

Harper died Thursday of natural causes at his home in West Hills, his daughter, Nicole Longeuay, told The Hollywood Reporter.

After understudying for Paul Newman on Broadway, Harper portrayed Det. Bert Kling alongside Norman Fell, Robert Lansing, Gregory Walcott and Gena Rowlands on the 1961-62 NBC cop show 87th Precinct, based on the novels of Ed McBain.

He played Jeff Conway, the husband of Connie Stevens’ character, on the 1964-65 ABC sitcom Wendy and Me, also starring George Burns, who produced the show and appeared as the owner of the apartment building in which the young couple lives.

Next up for Harper were turns as the son of Jean Arthur...

The Academy Awards grew up at the 16th annual ceremony March 2, 1944. Since the first Oscar ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s Blossom Room in 1929, the Academy Awards were small banquet ceremonies for La La Land movers and shakers. But that all changed 80 years ago. World War II was in its third year and movies meant more than ever to war-weary audiences.

So, the Oscars moved to the then-Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and bleachers were introduced giving fans a chance to see their favorites walk the red carpet. And instead of a select industry audience, attendees included members of all branches of the armed services many of whom sat in bleachers on the stage at the Chinese. The ceremony was heard locally on Kfwb; Jack Benny hosted the international broadcast for the troops on CBS Radio via shortwave. And for the first time, supporting performers finally received a full-size Academy Award.

There are many films that have quotable last lines such as “After all, tomorrow is another day” from “Gone with the Wind.” And who can forget Humphrey Bogart telling Claude Rains: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” But the beloved 1953 George Stevens’ Western “Shane” perhaps has one of the most endearing and emotional final lines. Young Joey (Brandon De Wilde) wants his idol, the former gunslinger Shane (Alan Ladd), to stay with his family. But the wounded hero continues to ride off.

“Shane………come back,” Joey cries out.

Be prepared to bring you handkerchiefs to the Academy Museum’s 70th anniversary screening Dec 10 at the David Geffen Theatre. Ladd, in his strongest performance, plays a world-weary gunslinger who wants to hang up his six-shooter. He ends up working for an honest, struggling rancher Joe, (Van Heflin), his wife Marian (Jean Arthur) and young son...

Harry Houdini in Haldane Of The Secret Service Image: Harry Houdini Pictures While a lot of people are looking ahead to the movies that are coming in 2023 (we’ve done it too), The A.V. Club thought this would also be a good moment to take a look back. Way, way back.

Angela Lansbury, whose career crossed theater, film, and television across more than seven decades, has died at the age of 96. Her death was announced by MSNBC’s Ali Velshi on his Twitter account on Tuesday afternoon and confirmed by NBC News. “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 Am today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family said in a statement.

The actress is best known for “Murder, She Wrote,” but started her career in 1944 and has delighted generations of fans with nearly 150 credits. That includes everything ranging from voice-over performances to musicals and dramas. Lansbury was able to be anything an audience needed, from a warmhearted mother to a vicious villain.

Angela Brigid Lansbury was born on October 16, 1925 in London, England. She was born into entertainment,...

With certain cinematic performances, we could not possibly fathom another actor in the same part. Only Bette Davis could have played Margot Channing in "All About Eve." Only Bruce Willis could have played John McClane in "Die Hard." Only Samuel L. Jackson could have played Jules in "Pulp Fiction." Of course, the reality is this isn't true. Countless actors audition and lose out on parts they would be perfect for all the time because of a variety of random reasons completely out of their control, yet when see a transcendent performance, we still believe the actor has performed magic in front of us. The filmmakers got the one person in the entire world made to play this particular character.

For me and many others, one such performance is James Stewart's Oscar-nominated turn as the titular character in Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The notion of Stewart as a folksy,...

They were two actors, who happened to briefly meet in the New York office of their mutual manager; the beautiful blonde from Georgia said she initially “hated him,” what with this blue-eyed Greek god looking so damned gorgeous in his seersucker suit. But let’s not kid anybody — it was lust at first sight. When the two of them were cast as understudies in the original Broadway production of William Inge’s Picnic, they’d watch the play together in the wings. During a scene in which the lead characters...

The screwball comedy has a unique place in Hollywood history: When times were tough, audiences sought escapism. What was less interesting to audiences during the Great Depression was celebrations of wealth and extravagance, as the purse strings were tighter than ever before. Enter the screwball, comedies that regularly delighted audiences by transporting them with ridiculous and often nonsensical scenarios featuring the brightest stars of the day. Performers like Carole Lombard, Gene Kelly, Claudette Colbert, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunn, and Gary Cooper regularly lit up the screen. The genre exploded in the 1930s, and while there's no consensus as to the first screwball, "Twentieth Century" and "It...

The post The 15 Best Screwball Comedies Of All Time appeared first on /Film.

Writer-director Billy Wilder’s favorite and perhaps best movie takes the leap to 4K, revealing even more beauty in the images of Joseph Lashelle and the designs of Alexandre Trauner . . . we all feel like we’ve lived in C.C. Baxter’s New York flat. Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s ‘dirty fairy tale’ best expresses the difficulty of keeping both a job and one’s self-respect — fitting in a love life seems altogether too much to ask. It all comes down to Shirley MacLaine’s sweet smile and Jack Lemmon’s eagerness to be a ‘mensch’ — when he’s discovering that a moral compromise is like selling one’s soul.

The Apartment 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1960 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Street Date March 15, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens,...

The former head of the ACLU discusses some of the movies – and sports legends – that made him.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Mighty Ira (2020)

The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)

42 (2013)

Shane (1953)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

Last Year At Marienbad (1962)

The Seventh Seal (1957)

La Strada (1954)

Wild Strawberries (1957) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

The Virgin Spring (1960) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Last House On The Left (1972) – Darren Bousman’s trailer commentary

A Walk In The Sun (1945) – Glenn Erickson’s review

Paths Of Glory (1957) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary, John Landis’s trailer commentary

All Quiet On The Western Front (1930) – Ed Neumeier’s trailer commentary

Lonely Are The Brave (1962)

Casablanca (1942) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

On The Waterfront (1954) – John Badham’s trailer commentary

12 Angry Men (1957)

Inherit The Wind (1960)

Judgment At Nuremberg (1961)

Witness For The Prosecution (1957)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

The Verdict (1982)

Twelve Angry Men teleplay (1954)

The Front (1976)

Judgment At Nuremberg teleplay...

by Cláudio Alves

During the past years, the Criterion Channel has highlighted the careers of many Old Hollywood stars. After Carole Lombard, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, and many more, it's time to celebrate Jean Harlow. In this case, the selection of titles entices because of how encompassing it is. The Criterion Channel presents 14 films, every feature the starlet did while on contract with MGM, from 1932 to her untimely death in 1937. By watching these works, one can get a good sense of Harlow's meteoric rise, how her persona evolved, how it changed to accommodate personal and physical transformations, a transfiguration of industry ideals and popular tastes. Furthermore, the movies showcase other great stars and the work of such vital 1930s screenwriters as Anita Loos and Dorothy Parker. It's a perfect treasure trove of Old Hollywood moviemaking, history, and scandal…...

‘Unabashed, unfettered romanticism’ runs wild in Frank Borzage’s golden-age masterpiece of a runaway wife and the crazy Frenchman who pursues her. Long lost to awful, ragged 16mm prints, the newly restored gem will dazzle fans of delirious love stories, where the right people get together despite distance, time, and the interference of jealous husbands, misunderstandings, accusations of murder and natural disasters. All the above figure in this mini-epic, yet the movie never seems like a genre mash-up. Jean Arthur skips the squeaky line deliveries, Charles Boyer drops the gloom act, Colin Clive is more frightening than in his horror movies and Leo Carillo steals the show with one of the most endearing characters of the 1930s.

History is Made at Night

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1072

1937 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 97 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 13, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Charles Boyer, Jean Arthur, Leo Carrillo, Colin Clive, Ivan Lebedeff,...

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Keeping up with new Criterion releases can feel like a spectator sport for cinephiles checking the site each month. To make Blu-Ray shopping a little easier for your, IndieWire put together a roundup of new Criterion releases that you can pre-order now.

All of the films listed below are available on Amazon, which means that Prime members will get free two-day shipping. In addition to shipping perks, an Amazon Prime membership (which costs $12.99 a month) gives you streaming access to Amazon’s massive library of film and TV shows. So even if you binge all of your new Criterion Blu-Rays in a single weekend, you won’t be left without something to watch.

Today marks the birthday of Fred MacMurray. Writer Joe Elliott provides a fitting tribute to the late actor.

By Joe Elliott

Classic Hollywood actor Fred MacMurray is probably best remembered today as the easy-going father in the popular, long-running 1960s family sit-com “My Three Sons.” As the head of the growing Douglas clan, the pipe-smoking, sweater-clad MacMurray each week dispensed his gentle blend of wisdom and humor to the delight of American television audiences. One might have thought this was the kind of role MacMurray had always played. Not so, a fact that was first brought home to me by my mother. I recall as a kid hearing her say she didn’t much care for him. Not like Fred MacMurray??? “But why?” I asked. “Because of the jerks he played in the movies,” she told me. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered what she meant. As many CinemaRetro readers will know,...

Today marks the birthday of Fred MacMurray. Writer Joe Elliott provides a fitting tribute to the late actor.

By Joe Elliott

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Classic Hollywood actor Fred MacMurray is probably best remembered today as the easy-going father in the popular, long-running 1960s family sit-com “My Three Sons.” As the head of the growing Douglas clan, the pipe-smoking, sweater-clad MacMurray each week dispensed his gentle blend of wisdom and humor to the delight of American television audiences. One might have thought this was the kind of role MacMurray had always played. Not so, a fact that was first brought home to me by my mother. I recall as a kid hearing her say she didn’t much care for him. Not like Fred MacMurray??? “But why?” I asked. “Because of the jerks he played in the movies,” she told me. It wasn’t until much later...

For producer-director John Ford Columbia Studios was apparently a calm port in a hostile movie climate. Away from the bankability guaranteed by John Wayne, Ford never quite regained the power of his earlier triumphs, from the silent era to his socially conscious classics at Fox. The four Columbia-controlled pictures presented on Powerhouse Indicator’s lavishly appointed disc set consist of two winners and (for this viewer) a pair of odd ducks. But the quality of his filmmaking remained consistent.

John Ford at Columbia 1935-1958

The Whole Town’s Talking, The Long Gray Line, Gideon’s Day, The Last Hurrah

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1935-1958 / Color & B&w / 1:37 Academy, 2:55 widescreen, 1:85 widescreen / / Street Date April 27, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £ 42.99

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur; Tyrone Power, Maureen O’Hara; Jack Hawkins, Anna Massey; Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter.

Cinematography: Joseph August; Charles Lawton Jr., Charles Lang; Frederick A.

by Cláudio Alves

Charming and witty, Jean Arthur was one of the great actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. While nowadays she's most famous for her comedic works, Arthur wasn't constricted to only humorous movies, being able to play everything from melodramas to crime pictures. Still, it's easy to see why her comedy talents are her calling card to this day. The actress was able to bring the manic, unstable energy of screwball comedy to all of her movies, imbuing them with an electrifying unpredictability. Like a black hole can bend light, so did Arthur bend the tone of every film she was in, making projects bow to the power of her screen presence and helping them become better, more complicated cinema in the process.

Her filmography is full of greatness. The Criterion Channel is celebrating her enviable resume with a new collection of 16 of her films available to stream. Here...

by Cláudio Alves

Despite being one of Old Hollywood's most electrifying actresses, Barbara Stanwyck feels somewhat forgotten (apart from cinephiles) when compared to her contemporaries like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford or Ingrid Bergman. The one role that arguable does keep her immortal with the mainstream is the devilish Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, the noir to end all noirs starring the greatest femme fatale of them all. Still, to believe that Stanwick was essentially a noir vixen is unfair to her grand legacy. More than many actresses of her time, she rejoiced in hopping from genre to genre, unencumbered by exclusive contracts to studios that might want to pin her down to one type of role.

Because of that, she was able to experiment with the extremes of Pre-Code libertinism (Baby Doll), weepy melodrama (Stella Dallas), historical epics (Titanic), tragic romances (There's Always Tomorrow) and even camp...

Kicking off the month, The Criterion Channel celebrates the great Mifune Toshiro, who was born on April 1, 1920. (Note: now updated with new trailer for the occasion.) In their collection "Toshiro Mifune Turns 100," the streaming service features 26 narrative films in which Mifune starred, including classic titles directed by Kurosawa Akira, plus a documentary, and, oh yes, an introduction by critic Imogen Sara Smith. Of course, that's not all the channel has programmed for this month. Other highlights, per their official verbiage, are "a celebration of 1970s style; a second installment of our Columbia Noir series; spotlights on Jean Arthur, Gary Cooper, and Maurice Pialat; and audacious works by contemporary auteurs Yorgos Lanthimos, Jafar Panahi, Rungano Nyoni, and Alain Guiraudie." Details on the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Our reader's choice "streaming film club" is going weekly since we're all soon stuck at home in this brave new world of Covid-19. This week you selected the Howard Hawks adventure romance classic Only Angels Have Wings (1939) starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur so we'll be discussing that on Monday March 23rd so queue it up on the Criterion Channel. In second place was Disney's Pollyanna (1960) so we'll also discuss that on Wednesday March 25th so watch that one on Disney+ if you'd like to play along. Okay? 

Last week's runner up film to Lady in a Cage was the romantic comedy Cactus Flower (1969) and Murtada and I decided to discuss it on the podcast (returning very soon) since it was such a close vote. So see, we're doing double duty to keep you thinking about movies when you're no longer allowed to go see them in theaters! *sniffle*

Stay...

One of the greatest newspaper pictures ever (can there be many more in our future?), Howard Hawks’ gender-bending remake of The Front Page stands as a comedy classic. Its improvisational-sounding overlapping dialog still impresses as modernistic. Such stars as Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert turned down Rosalind Russell’s revamped Hildy Parks role. Cary Grant’s surprised reaction to one of Russell’s unexpected ad-libs was directed directly to Hawks: “Is she going to do that?”. And it’s in the movie. Unfortunately all we could find was a textless trailer on this one.

The post His Girl Friday appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

While it sometimes comes across platitudinous and trite, one cannot stay in any conversation about arthouse film more than five minutes without hearing the phrase “auteur” tossed out. It has become a tad sterile, but, as Andrew Dudley pointed out in The Major Film Theories, it is a valid form of critical theory. So for an August Blu-ray round-up, the conversation will revolve around three classic Hollywood “auteurs” and films from each that often go overlooked. Kino Lorber released Billy Wilder’s critique of war-time Hollywood, A Foreign Affair; the Warner Archive presented John Ford’s passion project Wagon Master; and Criterion added Douglas Sirk’s first foray into widescreen Technicolor, Magnificent Obsession, to their illustrious collection. While each release is a fairly underrated title in their director’s larger filmography, a close watch unveils tricks and tropes that each respective filmmaker would later use in their more popular works.

In his day Buster Keaton’s popularity trailed that of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, but now those reputations have switched around. These two ‘lesser’ Keaton features generate more sheer fun than anything going. Seven Chances and Battling Butler are great on remastered Blu-ray — better materials, no missing frames — but do yourself a favor and find a way to see a Keaton picture with a big audience!

Seven Chances & Battling Butler: The Buster Keaton Collection Volume 3

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection

Street Date August 20, 2019 / 29.98

Original Music composed and Conducted by Robert Israel

Produced by Joseph M. Schenck

Starring, and Directed by Buster Keaton

Seven Chances

1925 / B&w + Color / 1:37 Silent Ap / 56 min.

Starring: Buster Keaton, Snitz Edwards, Ruth Dwyer, T, Roy Barnes, Jean Arthur, Constance Talmadge.

Cinematography: Elgin Lessley, Byron Houck

Art Direction: Fred Gabourie

Written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, Joseph Mitchell from a play by Roi Cooper Megrue

Directed...

If you like Billy Wilder but haven’t seen everything he’s done, this is the film for you, a sparkling but typically sharp-tongued comedy-drama set in the last place expected in 1948 — bombed-out Berlin, rumored to be awash in corruption. Jean Arthur is the Iowa congresswoman out to clean up the town, and Marlene Dietrich a war survivor with a highly suspect past. Underrated John Lund is the Romeo with Captain’s stripes, brushing up on his (click) umlaut. And Millard Mitchell, of all people, steals the movie. Great cabaret songs by Friedrich Hollander, and an A-class commentary by Joseph McBride.

A Foreign Affair

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 116 min. / Street Date August 6, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund, Millard Mitchell, Peter von Zerneck, Stanley Prager.

Cinematography: Charles Lang

Original Music: Friedrich Hollander

Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen; adaptation Robert Harari,...

The Whole Town’s Talking

Blu ray

Twilight Time

1935 / 1:33:1 / 92 Min. / Street Date – March 26, 2019

Starring Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur

Written by Jo Swerling, Robert Riskin

Cinematography by Joseph H. August

Directed by John Ford

Overworked, under-appreciated and ever optimistic, Arthur Jones’ humdrum existence takes a turn for the weird when he returns home to find a stranger lurking in the shadows. Stranger still, the intruder is… Jones himself. Is this The Twilight Zone or a rough draft from Dostoevsky? No, it’s John Ford’s disquieting comedy from 1935, The Whole Town’s Talking.

Edward G. Robinson plays the mild-mannered paper pusher who bears more than a passing resemblance to a vicious mob boss named “Killer” Mannion. Once his co-workers note the uncanny likeness it’s all downhill – the delirious clerk is dragged to the police station for a brutal interrogation followed by that late night confrontation with the gangster himself.

Graft, Greed and One Man’s Fight Against Political Corruption: The TCM Big Screen Classics Series Brings Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Back to Movie Theaters Nationwide on October 14 and 17 Only.

he David-and-Goliath story, set within the not-so-hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol. This special presentation of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington also includes exclusive insight from TCM Primetime Host Ben Mankiewicz.

When Governor Hubert “Happy” Hopper (Guy Kibbee) appoints affable Jeff Smith — head of the Boy Rangers — to the U.S. Senate, corrupt political boss Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) and secretly crooked U.S. Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains) believe they can easily manipulate the newly minted politician when he arrives in Washington. But guidance from his hard-nosed, Beltway-savvy secretary Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), Mr. Smith exposes graft and greed that threatens the very fabric of American democracy, and the junior Senator becomes a heroic one-man filibuster.

By Todd Garbarini

Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills will be presenting a Digital Cinema Package (Dcp) screening of George Stevens’s 1953 film Shane. The 118-minute film, which stars Alan Ladd as the hero and Jack Palance, Ben Johnson, Elisha Cook, Jr., will be screened on Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 3:00 pm.

Please Note: At press time, actor/producer David Ladd (son of actor Alan Ladd) will participate in a Q&A after the screening at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre on Sunday, August 26.

From the press release:

Shane (1953)

65th Anniversary Screening

Sunday, August 26, at 3 Pm

Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre

Q&A with David Ladd, Actor-Producer and Son of Alan Ladd

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 65th anniversary screening of one of the most beloved Westerns of all time, George Stevens’ production of 'Shane.' The 1950s happened to be a golden age for cowboy sagas,...

Guilt, gloom, weird nightmares of death and persecution — and romance? The wondrous Gail Russell brings a spark of life into Frank Borzage’s weird expressionist masterpiece produced at the seldom-artistic Republic Studio. The bitter, despairing Dane Clark has just committed what a jury will likely call first degree murder, but the night can offer atonement and forgiveness, if he’ll just listen to Russell’s good advice.

Moonrise

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 921

1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 90 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 8, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Dane Clark, Gail Russell, Ethel Barrymore, Allyn Joslyn, Rex Ingram, Henry Morgan, Lloyd Bridges, Selena Royle.

Cinematography: John L. Russell

Film Editor: Harry Keller

Original Music: William Lava

From the book by Theodore Strauss

Written and Produced by Charles Haas

Directed by Frank Borzage

Frank Borzage’s 1948 Moonrise is a critic’s delight, especially among aficionados that like to point out the artistic margins of traditional Hollywood filmmaking.

Savant’s vote for the best romantic comedy ever goes to a sordid fable about problems in the big city Rat Race: keeping both a job and one’s self-respect. Picking up where 1930s pre-Code movies left off, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s ‘how to succeed’ thesis divides people into two groups, Takers and those that Get Took. And yet the message it delivers is life & love- affirming.

The Apartment

Blu-ray

Arrow Video USA

1960 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Limited Edition / Street Date December 12 (29?) (?), 2017 / Available from Arrow Video

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Edie Adams, Johnny Seven, Joyce Jameson, Willard Waterman, David White.

Cinematography: Joseph Lashelle

Film Editor: Daniel Mandell

Original Music: Adolph Deutsch

Written by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder

Produced and Directed by Billy Wilder

… and it’s also the all-time champion New Years’ movie.

As is annual tradition, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced this year’s 25 film set to join the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Selected for their “cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance,” the films picked range from such beloved actioners as “Die Hard,” childhood classic “The Goonies,” the seminal “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and the mind-bending “Memento,” with plenty of other genres and styles represented among the list.

The additions span 1905 to 2000, and includes Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, silent movies, animation, shorts, independent, and even home movies. The 2017 selections bring the number of films in the registry to 725.

“The selection of a film to the National Film Registry recognizes its importance to American cinema and the nation’s cultural and historical heritage,” Hayden said in an official statement. “Our love affair with motion pictures is a testament to their enduring power to enlighten, inspire and...

Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 725 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2017 list, which includes such Hollywood classics as Die Hard, Titanic, and Superman along with groundbreaking independent features like Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of Performers, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger, and Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Also making this list are a pair of Kirk Douglas-led features, Ace in the Hole and Spartacus, as well as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and more. Check out the full list below and you can watch some films on the registry for free here.

Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)

Based on the infamous...

One of the greatest newspaper pictures ever (can there be many more in our future?), Howard Hawks’ gender-bending remake of The Front Page stands as a comedy classic. Its improvisational-sounding overlapping dialog still impresses as modernistic. Such stars as Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert turned down Rosalind Russell’s revamped Hildy Parks role. Cary Grant’s surprised reaction to one of Russell’s unexpected ad-libs was directed directly to Hawks: “Is she going to do that?”. And it’s in the movie. Unfortunately all we could find was a textless trailer on this one.

Updated: Following a couple of Julie London Westerns*, Turner Classic Movies will return to its July 2017 Star of the Month presentations. On July 27, Ronald Colman can be seen in five films from his later years: A Double Life, Random Harvest (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942), The Late George Apley (1947), and The Story of Mankind (1957). The first three titles are among the most important in Colman's long film career. George Cukor's A Double Life earned him his one and only Best Actor Oscar; Mervyn LeRoy's Random Harvest earned him his second Best Actor Oscar nomination; George Stevens' The Talk of the Town was shortlisted for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. All three feature Ronald Colman at his very best. The early 21st century motto of international trendsetters, from Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Turkey's Recep Erdogan to Russia's Vladimir Putin and the United States' Donald Trump, seems to be, The world is reality TV and reality TV...

Really, I mean Preston Sturges' Hotel Haywire, because nobody's too interested in George Archainbaud, a Paramount contract director who had been directing for 20 years without helming a really memorable film (Thirteen Women, an uncomfortably racist pre-Code with Myrna Loy, is as exciting as it gets, and even that one is remembered chiefly for featuring the girl who threw herself off the Hollywood sign), He would continue for another 20, moving from B-westerns into TV westerns, without making anything else of particular note.Sturges wrote the script as part of his plan to get a long-term contract at Paramount. To particularly appeal to the suits there, he filled the story with roles for Paramount stars such as Mary Boland, Charles Ruggles, Fred MacMurray and Burns & Allen, none of whom were necessarily famous enough to carry a movie, but whose combined star-power might make an attractive investment for studio or future ticket-buyers.

One of cinema's early comediennes, Dorothy Devore: between 1918 and 1930, the Ft. Worth-born actress was seen in nearly 100 movies, both features and shorts. Among them were 'Salvation Sue,' 'Naughty Mary Brown' and 'Saving Sister Susie,' all with frequent partner Earle Rodney. 'Comediennes of the Silent Era' & film historian Anthony Slide at the American Cinematheque Film historian and author Anthony Slide, once described by Lillian Gish as “our preeminent historian of the silent film,” will attend the American Cinematheque's 2017 Retroformat program “Comediennes of the Silent Era” on Sat., May 6, at 7:30 p.m., at the Spielberg Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Slide will be signing copies of his book She Could Be Chaplin!: The Comedic Brilliance of Alice Howell (University Press of Mississippi), about the largely forgotten pioneering comedy actress of the 1910s and early 1920s. The book signing will take place at 6:30 p.

The retrospective Frank Capra, The American Dreamer is showing April 10 - May 31, 2017 in the United Kingdom.Frank CapraFrank Capra has fallen badly out of fashion in recent decades. While still well-known for the extraordinary Depression-era purple patch that produced It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the critics have rarely been kind. His work is routinely derided as “Capra-corn” for its perceived sentimentality and “fairy tale” idealism while the man himself is written off in favour of contemporaries Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch.Elliot Stein, writing in Sight & Sound in 1972, attacked Capra’s “fantasies of good will, which at no point conflict with middle-class American status quo values”, arguing that his “shrewdly commercial manipulative tracts” consist of little more than “philistine-populist notions and greeting-card sentiments”. Pauline Kael found him “softheaded,” Derek Malcolm a huckster hawking “cosily absurd fables.” To an extent,...

Mubi is partnering with the New York Film Festival to present highlights from Projections, a festival program of film and video work that expands upon our notions of what the moving image can do and be. James N. Kienitz Wilkin's Indefinite Pitch (2016), recipient of the festival's Kazuko Trust Award, is showing on Mubi in many countries around the world from October 18 - November 16, 2016.I’ve come to the conclusion that movies always communicate the circumstances in which they were made, and most of the time, these circumstances are unconscious influences. If one identifies with movies, or has dedicated one’s life to, or expects to make a living from, movies, then circumstantially, one's personal ambitions, dreams and memories get riskily exposed. Indefinite Pitch tries to pinpoint this.But not everything can be pinned down. In music, not all instruments make notes with a clear pitch. The rising and falling background...

On this day in showbiz history...

1886 Spring Byington is born in Colorado Springs. Goes on to supporting actress glory in Hollywood including Marmee in Little Women (1933, her feature debut) and an Oscar nomination as the eccentric hobbyist mom in You Can't Take It With You (1938). Curiously her screen daughter in that best picture winner Jean Arthur, an even bigger star, shares her same birthday (for the year of 1900)

1888 Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (an early step in creating the cinema)

1903 Author and screenwriter Nathanael West is born in NYC. Movies adapted from his work include Lonelyhearts (1958) and The Day of the Locust (1975)

1915 One of the world's most celebrated playwrights, Arthur Miller, is born. His classics include Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View From the Bridge. After marrying movie star Marilyn Monroe, he wrote The Misfits (1961) for her which would eerily (considering its elegiac...

Há Terra!I want to apologize for providing this Wavelengths avant-garde preview a little later than I might've liked. Hell, given that it's been over a week since movies died, I'm not exactly sure how much more kindling I can chuck onto the pyre. But I should remark that compared with previous years' iterations of the Tiff Wavelengths series, 2016 does feel a bit...off. I'm chiefly referring to the experimental short films here. (My second part, addressing the Wavelengths features, will be along in a matter of days.) Make no mistake. There's plenty of great work in this year's programs. But I do feel that the disparity this year between the truly exceptional films and the mediocre-to-not-very-good ones is markedly high.I enjoy films, and more than this, I enjoy enjoying them. I hardly get my kicks by being a nattering nabob of negativity. But programmers have to work with what is available to them,...

The recent box office success of The Boss firmly establishes Melissa McCarthy as the current queen of movie comedies (Amy Schumer could be a new contender after an impressive debut last Summer with Trainwreck), but let us think back about those other funny ladies of filmdom. So while we’re enjoying the female reboot/re-imagining of Ghostbusters and those Bad Moms, here’s a top ten list that will hopefully inspire lots of laughter and cause you to search out some classic comedies. It’s tough to narrow them down to ten, but we’ll do our best, beginning with… 10. Eve Arden The droll Ms. Arden represents the comic sidekicks who will attempt to puncture the pomposity of the leading ladies with a well-placed wisecrack (see also the great Thelma Ritter in Rear Window). Her career began in the early 1930’s with great bit roles in Stage Door and Dancing Lady.

“Lincoln said, “With malice toward none, with charity to all.” Nowadays they say, “Think the way I do or I’ll bomb the daylights outta you.”

Frank Capra’s You Can’T Take It With You screens at St. Louis’ fabulous Hi-Pointe Theater this weekend as part of their Classic Film Series. It’s Saturday, August 13th at 10:30am at the Hi-Pointe located at 1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, Mo 63117. The film will be introduced by Harry Hamm, movie reviewer for Kmox. Admission is only $5

A man from a family of rich snobs becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric Vanderhoff family in You Can’T Take It With You, a classic Frank Capra movie from 1938 which won the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’ and is considered to be one of the great director’s funniest films.

Jean Arthur as Alice is at her most beguiling in...

Accomplished and alluring, Olivia de Havilland dated her share of Hollywood's most dashing power players at the height of her career. Now, the Gone with the Wind actress, who turned 100 last Friday, reflects on the high-profile romances that intrigued a nation, speaking to People about her deep feelings for Errol Flynn, dalliances with John Huston and Howard Hughes - and passing on the role of George Bailey's wife in It's a Wonderful Life because she felt uncomfortable working alongside former love Jimmy Stewart. "It would have meant playing opposite Jimmy Stewart, home from the wars. I knew it would be...

Accomplished and alluring, Olivia de Havilland dated her share of Hollywood's most dashing power players at the height of her career. Now, the Gone with the Wind actress, who turned 100 last Friday, reflects on the high-profile romances that intrigued a nation, speaking to People about her deep feelings for Errol Flynn, dalliances with John Huston and Howard Hughes - and passing on the role of George Bailey's wife in It's a Wonderful Life because she felt uncomfortable working alongside former love Jimmy Stewart. "It would have meant playing opposite Jimmy Stewart, home from the wars. I knew it would be...

As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.

A woman departs a steamer in Argentina and soon finds herself in the middle of a love triangle between two pilots vying for her attention. They carry her off to a bar, then gamble between taking out the mail and a juicy steak date. As the loser Joe takes off into the night, the fog sets in. The music stops, the sounds of the plane motor crinkle above the jungle air. The mist proves too thick, and a fiery mess consumes the ground, but only the woman screams. There’s no time for tears, something the Brooklyn lass has yet to understand. “Who’s Joe?” becomes a denial of existential fear, and the music crowds the air once again. The man fades into memory out of necessity.

Mark and Aaron fly back to 1939 to discuss Howard Hawks’ classic Only Angels Have Wings. We evaluate the special effects, how the film built suspense, the context of aviation in the late 1930s, and later films that embody a similar masculinity. We also reveal the winner of our Don Hertzfeldt contest and talk about region free players.

About the film:

Electrified by crackling dialogue and visual craftsmanship of the great Howard Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings stars Jean Arthur as a traveling entertainer who gets more than she bargained for during a stopover in a South American port town. There she meets a handsome and aloof daredevil pilot, played by Cary Grant, who runs an airmail company, staring down death while servicing towns in treacherous mountain terrain. Both attracted to and repelled by his romantic sense of danger, she decides to stay on, despite his protestations. This masterful and mysterious adventure,...

Stars: Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman, Victor Kilian | Screenplay by Jules Furthman | Directed by Howard Hawks

When thinking about the great flying pictures of Hollywood’s Golden Age, many would immediately turn to war films containing dogfights, high political drama and the sense that all the death we see onscreen is somehow noble because it’s for the causes of peace and freedom. But perhaps the greatest of these pictures, Only Angels Have Wings, isn’t a war movie and doesn’t contain a single dogfight. It’s an altogether smaller story than those sweeping dramas, and all the more powerful for it.

When Jean Arthur’s chorus girl, Bonnie, gets off a steamer at the fictional South American port of Barranca, she expects to see the sights (comprising a bustling market, a couple of dive bars and a rickety open-topped...

★★★★☆ "A man can die but once; we owe God a death." Shakespeare's Henry IV provides the basis for the poetic expression of the fatalistic storm ever brewing on the horizon of Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings. "If we pay it today, we don't owe it tomorrow," goes the typically practical Hawksian suffix. Unlike the actual meteorological ructions that plague the pilots flying out of the fictional South American town of Barranca, that ultimate tempest is one they prefer to leave unmentioned. "Who's Joe?" asks a chorus of airmen in the bar when Bonnie (Jean Arthur), a showgirl passing through, brings up a young buck that just perished in a crash.