Johnny Mercer Centennial Tribute
Johnny Mercer (top); Mercer, Donald O’Connor, Hoagy Carmichael at the 1951 Academy Awards ceremony (bottom)
Johnny Mercer’s musical legacy will be celebrated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a gala centennial tribute featuring film clips of many of Mercer’s classic songs, in addition to performances and appearances by friends and colleagues, on Thursday, November 5, at 8 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Note: This event is sold-out, but standby tickets may become available.
Program host Michael Feinstein and Monica Mancini (daughter of Mercer’s longtime friend, Henry Mancini) will perform some of Mercer’s best-known songs, while Oscar-winning songwriter-composer Alan Bergman, Oscar-nominated songwriter Arthur Hamilton, [...]
by Andre Soares | October 27, 2009
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Tags: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Alan Bergman, Arthur Hamilton, Classic Movies, Henry Mancini, Jane Russell, Johnny Mercer, Los Angeles Screenings, Michael Feinstein, Monica Mancini, Rose Marie
THE HISTORY OF INDEPENDENT CINEMA: Q&A with Phil Hall
"Independent film is a vast and varied territory, and Phil Hall’s remarkable book explores every inch of it with wit, intelligence, a sympathetic spirit, and a wide-open mind. Fresh discoveries and surprising revelations abound on every topic from Edison to Aronofsky, Anger to Warhol, the silent era to the Internet age. It’s hard to imagine a study more keenly in tune with one of cinema’s liveliest, most multifaceted fields.” — David Sterritt, Ph.D, chairman, National Society of Film Critics
The "remarkable book" in question is called The History of Independent Cinema, which, as the title implies, covers the century-long development of American filmmaking outside the big-studio lots. Published by BearManor Media, The History [...]
by Andre Soares | May 26, 2009
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Tags: Books, Classic Movies, Interviews, Jane Russell, Otto Preminger, Phil Hall, The Bootleg Files, The History of Independent Cinema, The Moon Is Blue, The Outlaw
Joseph I. Breen: Anti-Semite?
Thomas Doherty in The Forward:
"’These Jews seem to think of nothing but money making and sexual indulgence,’ fumed Joseph I. Breen in a letter to the Rev. Wilfrid Parsons, S.J., editor of the Jesuit weekly America. The year was 1932, and the hot-tempered Irish Catholic, lately summoned to Hollywood, Calif., by motion picture czar Will H. Hays to convert a reprobate medium, was raging at the moguls who blocked his missionary work. ‘People whose daily morals would not be tolerated in the toilet of a pest house hold the good jobs out here and wax fat on it,’ he marveled. ‘Ninety-five percent of these folks are Jews of an Eastern European lineage. They are, probably, the scum of the scum [...]
