As an RKO and MGM star, sassy blonde Ann Sothern had an unconventional professional trajectory: A and B movies in a decades-long film career that had no less than 2 peaks.
Starring the German Mary Pickford, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Doll movie is a satirical fantasy featuring inventive art direction and jabs at the Catholic Church.
Comedy actress Alice Howell on the cover of film historian Anthony Slide’s latest book: Pioneering funky-haired performer “could have been Chaplin” – or at the very least another Louise Fazenda.…
Film historian Anthony Slide wearing Tom Mix’s hat in 1976. ‘Hollywood Hero’ John Dewar remembered Perhaps I have been around too long, but as I grow older I grow despondent…
Clara Bow, Mantrap: The Silent Era’s “It Girl.” What do Andrei Tarkovsky, Edward G. Robinson, Clara Bow, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Audrey Hepburn have in common? Easy. They’ll all be…
Barbara Sukowa as Hildegard von Bingen in Vision Margerethe von Trotta-Barbara Sukowa ‘Vision’: Hildegard von Bingen in L.A. Margarethe von Trotta’s Vision, Official Selection at the Telluride and Toronto film…
Silent era superstars Norma Talmadge, Constance Talmadge at Norma’s Santa Monica beach house. Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge are the stars of two recent Kino International releases. Talmadges who? Well,…
J’accuse!: Abel Gance anti-war drama with Séverin-Mars. Released the year after the end of World War I, Abel Gance’s 1919 anti-war French drama was a major hit in France and…
It’s always good to hear when a filmmaker is inspired by Woody Allen – as opposed to, say, Quentin Tarantino or Zack Snyder. Case in point: First-timer James C. Ferguson,…
The 13th annual Kansas Silent Film Festival (KSFF) will be held on Feb. 27 and 28, 2009, at the White Concert Hall on the Washburn University campus in Topeka, Kansas.…
The General of the Army: Buster Keaton and his train. Bridge insurance needed but not required. Considered by many Buster Keaton’s masterpiece and one of the greatest movies ever made,…
Marcel Marceau: World-renowned mime artist dead at 84 Mime artist Marcel Marceau died in Cahors, France, on Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007. The cause of death was not immediately known. Marceau…
Examples of extravagance in the world’s film capital: The Hollywood Book of Extravagance. The Hollywood Book of Extravagance. How do you write something with that sort of title without falling…
The Crowd with James Murray and Eleanor Boardman: King Vidor’s working-class classic. The sidebar “The Silent City: New York in the Movies, 1898-1928” will accompany Film Forum’s (website) NYC NOIR…
The Talmadge Sisters: Constance Talmadge in Her Sister from Paris. Adapted to the screen by frequent Ernst Lubitsch collaborator Hanns Kräly, Sidney Franklin’s 1925 comedy Her Sister from Paris is…
Movie festival news from around the world cover big-screen events from New York’s Tribeca to the century’s ‘biggest’ French cinema retrospective in Beijing.
Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert: Pulitzer winner, TV star-critic, humanistic Twitter voice has died Roger Ebert, probably the best known movie critic in the United States, died earlier today in Chicago,…
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Osborne: Classic movie selections on TCM. Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will join Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne to present four of his favorite films in…
Johnny Guitar with Joan Crawford. One of the December 2008 additions to the U.S. Library of Congress’ National Film Registry is Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar. The 1954 psychological Western stars…
Back in the late 1920s, Anita Page could never have dreamed that eight decades later she would be a celebrity of sorts: The Official Last Surviving Silent Film Star. In…