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Remaking Metropolis by David Kalat at Movie Morlocks
Once again, David Kalat blows me away with one of his wide-ranging and highly informative posts. This time, he approaches the Complete Metropolis with some trepidation – not because the restored version of the film isn’t amazing (it is, and he agrees), but because the push to market it as the full version of what we’d only known in part before downgrades the earlier cuts unfairly. After all, that shorter cut is what most people have known and fallen in love with for the past 75 years. On his way to this argument, though, he also details the production and troubled distribution of the film, discussing in detail how the cuts got made in the first place and why, and the seemingly subtle but actually quite significant changes to the story that resulted from them. Probably the best post I read all week.
A Meditation on Mad Men by The Lady Eve at The Lady Eve’s Reel Life
The Lady Eve has been hosting a whole series of excellent posts about Mad Men on her blog (most of which seem to be relatively spoiler-free, discussing the overall aesthetics and appeal of the show rather than specific plot details – which is good for me, since I’m still back in S3 somewhere), and this collection of thoughts from the Lady Eve herself captures a lot of the major themes of the show – the sense of nostalgia that calls us to a show about the ’60s even as Don Draper uses it to hearken to an even earlier time in his ad campaigns, the search for identity that haunts Don and his family and to some degree the ’60s as a whole, and of course, the exquisite detail of the production design and scripts that seem to bring not just the look of the ’60s, but the hopes and fears of that era into startling reality.
The Psychology of Betty Draper Francis by Terry Towles Canote at A Shroud of Thoughts
Yes, another Mad Men-related post. What are you gonna do about it? Just please don’t take this opportunity to spoil me on what was apparently a brilliant episode last night, because I am a season and a half behind. This post pulls some stuff from season 4, I think, but not enough to bother me. Betty is pretty much a shoo-in for least-liked character on the show, and Canote certainly doesn’t whitewash any of her frankly horrible behavior throughout the show, but he does take the opportunity to psychoanalyze her a little bit, in terms of her family background, life with Don, and the social atmosphere of the ’60s. I don’t always agree with psychoanalytical approaches, but this one manages to discuss an awful lot about the show in general, and the way the writers have set Betty up to be the person she is.
Memories of Midnight Movies by Will McKinley at The Cinementals
A simply delightful post, relating Will’s experience with midnight movies on Long Island in the ’70s and ’80s. He discusses the midnight movie phenomenon in general, even though he was too young at the time to really be a part of it, and the first time his dad took him to a midnight movie – not Rocky Horror Picture Show or Eraserhead, though those were two of the films to popularize the concept in the late ’70s – but a midnight screening of classic Three Stooges movies. I guess we know why Will’s a Cinemental!
Pioneers of the Corman Film School by Alex Withrow at And So It Begins
Alex reminds us that without Roger Corman, we’d be unlikely to have the many of the most talented directors of the past few decades, and New Hollywood itself probably would’ve been a very different time. Known for his low budget, quickly shot B movies, Corman used his studio AIP to give young directors a shot at making films the same way he did – quick and dirty. But by giving them the freedom they needed, he ended up launching careers for people like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and more. Alex runs through a bunch of these directors, talking a bit about the films they made for AIP and what they went on to do later. Thank you, Mr. Corman, for your contribution to American cinema.
Playing by Different Rules: Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray by Marilyn Ferdinand at Ferdy on Films
Classic Hollywood loved to pair the same actors together over and over again, with many costarring teams becoming almost inextricably linked – Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Marilyn Ferdinand points out that Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray costarred no fewer than three times together (not quite as often as those other teams, granted, but still a decent amount), and yet all their films are so decidedly different that it’s tough to consider them a “team” in the same way as some of the others. She takes a look at these three films and at Stanwyck and MacMurray’s performances in them.
More Links!
- Silent film fan Trevor Jost of The Cinementals nails down his itinerary of silent films (and a few others) at the TCM Film Festival – all, incidentally, films I’m planning to see as well
- Joanna of Man, I Love Films, who is a twin, talks about the depictions of twins in movies
- Ryan of the Matinee got out of his comfort zone a bit at Toronto’s Silent Film Festival last week, but it sounds like this screening of The Italian Straw Hat was the stuff movie magic is made of
- Rick of the Classic Film and TV Cafe is preparing for a month of blaxploitation films – here’s his informative intro to the series
- Glenn Kenny offers a wonderful anecdote from Luis Buñuel about the predictability of Hollywood filmmaking
- Nick Jobe of Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob watches City Lights as his third silent film ever, and loves it – may there be many more, Nick. 🙂
- Ryan at CriterionCast outlines the new Criterion additions to HuluPlus – and there are some great ones, including Belle de Jour, Zero for Conduct, Beauty and the Beast, and more
- Dan of Public Transportation Snob picks his Top 5 Films Set in San Francisco – I might take issue with his description of Vertigo as “glacially paced,” but I can’t argue with his inclusion of Bullitt
- Farran Smith Nehme (aka The Self-Styled Siren) interviews Whit Stillman, touching on a lot of classic screwball comedy influences on him – some very delightful stuff
- Kimberly Lindberghs at Movie Morlocks looks at Jack Clayton, not usually thought of an auteur, through his recurring interest in children, especially in the lesser-known The Pumpkin Eater
- Caroline of Garbo Laughs got assigned Return of Count Yorga as a part of a White Elephant blogathon – she didn’t like the film, but her hilarious review made me want to see it anyway
- Laura of Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings runs down the final week of Noir City LA, the lineup of which has just been announced – I definitely hope to make it to some of these films this year!
- Ivan of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear unearths the June TCM schedule, featuring series on teen stars, the immigrant experience, and a host of birthday celebrations including my beloved Judy Garland
Cool Trailers, Videos, and More
- Trailer for
Bop DecameronNero FiddledTo Rome With Love – yes, I’m going to do that every time; but I will see the movie, whatever it’s called - Trailer for Lola Versus – amount I’d be interested in this if it didn’t star Greta Gerwig: 2%. Amount I’m interested because it does: 90%.
- I’ve been looking forward to Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz since I heard about it, and it looks heartbreakingly good
- Trailer for Oliver Stone’s Savages – looks like he’s back in NBK mode, crossed with a little early Tony Scott? I might could go for this
- A new Simon Pegg film? About a guy who’s irrationally afraid of everything? I’ll watch that – here’s the trailer
- Trailer for Bel Ami, with RPatts and many others – this looks….not good
- I need to have this Cabin in the Woods poster – of course, it’s Mondo and sold out already…
- Announcing Google Glass…someday
Noteworthy News
- Nicole Kidman will play Grace Kelly in an upcoming film from Olivier Dahan (La vie en rose) – if you don’t believe that’s great casting, just watch her in The Others and get back to me
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt won’t be in Django Unchained after all; he has a scheduling conflict due to his directorial debut. That’s a good reason, I think, but still.
- Apparently Greta Gerwig is a director now, with a surprise film headed for festivals this fall
- David Michôd’s debut Animal Kingdom turned a lot of heads, including in Hollywood, but he’s following it up with another small Australian film – good for him, and I’ll be there to watch it
- Vincenzo Natali is set to follow the underrated Splice with backwards ghost story Haunters, with Abigail Breslin in the lead
With a 
Billy Wilder is one of my favorite filmmakers, and I’m far from alone; as The Playlist mentions in the opening paragraph, The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius thanked only one former filmmaker in his Oscar speech, and that was Billy Wilder. The man made a few mediocre films, but he has an extraordinarily consistent output of great films, and The Playlist goes through them all chronologically, with a well-written and informative paragraph about each one.
I’ve known Carley before thanks to her blog The Kitty Packard Pictorial, and Will on Twitter, and now they’ve joined forces with some other classic movie fans to create The Cinementals, what looks to be an invaluable classic film site. They’re already off to a strong start with one of the best classic film podcasts I’ve heard, and this episode is particularly solid thanks to special guest Scott McGee, a producer at TCM (he produces a lot of the promotional and tribute videos that play between films on the network). With the TCM Classic Film Festival looming, they talk a bunch about that, but also about Scott’s experience seeing the Napoleon restoration in San Francisco, the fight to save Pickfair Studios, and more.
A major stereotype of silent film serials is the damsel in distress threatened by a mustachioed villain – as parodied in Dudley Do-Right, for example. But actually, an awful lot of early serials had female heroines, who were often quite capable of taking care of themselves. Brandie runs down a few of the most prominent (the only one I’d heard of before was The Perils of Pauline) ones. Of course, there were also plenty of male-centric serials in the teens (Les Vampires, etc.) and even more into the 1930s, when comic strip-type adventure heroes took over. But that’s a topic for another time.
It’s old news at this point that 
I’m putting these two together, both very worthwhile articles about the newest box office blockbuster, The Hunger Games. I finally saw it this weekend, so I got to read all the articles about it. These do both contain spoilers. Palmer points out that while many dystopian stories go from ignorance to knowledge to action, while The Hunger Games eschews the ignorance portion – even with the prevalent and misleading media, Katniss knows that the system is bad, she just needs a call to action and an opportunity to take it. Meanwhile, Rowan-Legg talks about Katniss the character as a hero, specifically in the tradition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, suggesting that it both does and doesn’t matter than she’s female. It’s a good, strong reading of a well-written and well-played character.
