TakePart Social Action Network™ (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
My second film in my Yesterday’s Films, Today’s Issues series is going to be another Elia Kazan film (there was recently a Kazan retro in NYC ). Kazan’s Wild River is a beautiful film starring Lee Remick and Montgomery Clift as a young Tennessee woman named Carol and a government agent named Chuck sent in to get Carol’s grandmother off of her river property so that they can...
TakePart Social Action Network™ (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
Elia Kazan may have led a politically controversial life when he named names for HUAC but many of his films brought to light issues that centered on helping the less fortunate in society and discussing the power of government and media to influence people. One of the those films is 1957’s A Face in The Crowd . A Face in the Crowd tells the story of Lonesome Rhodes (played by the amazing Andy...
look back in anger (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
francis lederer is a name i have never known before today. all it took was this look at his beautiful face. actress louise brooks is the very famous silent star who is cradling him in her lap. francis came from europe to america where some of the biggest film people including mgm young genius irving thalberg and 'actor's studio' guru elia kazan embraced him. alas, long lasting fame was not in the cards...
Hollywood Elsewhere (Free subscription) | 30/10/2009
I don't know what I was doing when this Matt Zoller Seitz video essay about Elia Kazan 's On The Waterfront went up almost a month ago. The more-or-less conventional view is that the story of Terry Malloy vs. Johnny Friendly is "a rat's fantasy" or "a stoolie's defense." Seitz argues otherwise, or at least that a fairer, more perceptive reading is somewhere in the middle. Kazan's...
Upperstall Blogs (Free subscription) | 28/10/2009
A BBC radio anchor was fired in November 2008 for making racist remarks. She called a taxi service to pick up her daughter, and insisted that they not send an Asian driver with a turban as that “would freak out her daughter”. It is true that children, specially babies respond well to face types that [...]
Lens (Free subscription) | 27/10/2009
A new show at the Museum of the City of New York has historic waterfront images and contemporary pictures by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, as Niko Koppel reports.
Film Experience Blog (Free subscription) | 27/10/2009
Jose here bringing you the Monday Monologue , this time taken from Elia Kazan's production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire . "Blanche, can I ask you a question?" says shy Mitch ( Karl Malden ) to Blanche DuBois ( Vivien Leigh ) during one of their dates. She says yes and he proceeds "How old are you?". With this simple question Leigh takes us on a trip down memory,...
The Independent (Free subscription) | 27/10/2009
The Canadian actor Joseph Wiseman had a long career in which he gave distinguished performances on stage, screen and television, with particular success in roles of deception or villainy. With his gaunt demeanour, narrow eyes and thin lips, he conveyed an air of menace with an unsettling instability, and was rarely to be trusted.
AskMen.com (Free subscription) | 26/10/2009
Sporting not much more than a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt, this dude became an iconic fashion figure.
Anything that defies my sense of reason.... (Free subscription) | 24/10/2009
"The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal." -- Elia Kazan Don't worry about the economy, we don't need it. A statement that is at once bold, brave and easily dismissed as foolish, but it's a sentence that encapsulates as succinctly as possible something that desperately needs saying. "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not...
atHome Top Story (Free subscription) | 24/10/2009
Cinematheque Ontario retrospective reveals Elia Kazan's inner depth.
The Washington Times (Free subscription) | 23/10/2009
The Weather Channel announced earlier this week that they are adding feature movies to their programming diet of forecast updates. First up is "The Perfect Storm." We've taken it upon ourselves to program some movies for a few other cablers. 1. Fox News Channel — Depending on your point of view, the Murdoch-Ailes news network is either a platform for dangerously cynical demagogues or...
EphBlog (Free subscription) | 23/10/2009
The Williamstown Film Festival begins today! Lots of interesting events in the line-up, but this one stands out for me: WFF returns to MASS MoCA on Friday night, October 30th with La Nave de Los Monstruos (The Ship of Monsters), a Mexican sci-fi musical in which Venusian women land on Earth in search of men. Ethel, [...]
local Cut (Free subscription) | 21/10/2009
WW examines Portland orchestral pop act Pink Martini—by the numbers. by Ben Waterhouse While Portlanders are quick to gloat over the indie successes of bands like the Decemberists, the Thermals and Menomena, we sometimes forget that Portland’s most ubiquitous band, Pink Martini, is one of the biggest success stories in the history of indie music. The band’s [...] Related posts: LEAK:...
Premium Hollywood (Free subscription) | 21/10/2009
Joseph Wiseman, the very fine Montreal-born character actor who played the first cinematic James Bond supervillain, Dr. Julius No, has passed on at the age of 91. A highly accomplished stage performer, he apparently had little idea he was going to be involved in the launch of a major global phenomenon and didn’t have a [...]
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