Cecil B. DeMille Award recipient George Clooney in The Monuments Men, with Matt Damon. Produced and written by Good Night, and Good Luck. collaborators George Clooney and Grant Heslov, and directed by Clooney, The Monuments Men is a World War II drama loosely based on Robert M. Edsel and Bret […]

Michael Ealy and Taraji P. Henson, Think Like a Man 'Think Like a Man' sleeper hit April 23 update: Think Like a Man, inspired by TV/radio comedian Steve Harvey's bestselling book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, dethroned Gary Ross / Jennifer Lawrence's The Hunger Games at the […]

Christmas films: Grease with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John on TCM. Despite an array of mostly uninspired songs and dance numbers, the Randal Kleiser-directed, 1950s-set musical Grease was a gigantic box office hit. Olivia Newton-John has the more appealing screen presence, but the most notable element in this youth-oriented musical […]

Mary Pickford in Maurice Tourneur's The Poor Little Rich Girl (top); Dustin Farnum in Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man (bottom) The Birth of Hollywood, part II of the seven-part documentary Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood, will be shown again tonight on Turner Classic Movies. In addition […]

Alla Nazimova, Salome (top); Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, Mata Hari (bottom) Alla Nazimova's Salome, Claudette Colbert's Cleopatra, Hedy Lamarr's Delilah, and Greta Garbo's Mata Hari are the four temptresses featured in the “Ornament and the Enchantress” film series presented by Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Museum. Charles Bryant's Salome (1923); […]

Chicago, the restored 1927 silent (unofficially) directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring perky Phyllis Haver (right, with Victor Varconi) as Roxie Hart, is being released on DVD by Flicker Alley, in collaboration with The Blackhawk Films Collection. The 2002 Chicago remake, based on Bob Fosse's musical which itself was […]

The site Film Snobbery has published a list of the 50 Most Important Religion Films of All Time, thus paying tribute to “the union of the sacred and cinematic” in celebration of Epiphany (Jan. 6, '10), the final day of the Christmas holiday season. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the […]

  This one took me totally by surprise! Cecil B. DeMille's last silent movie (one version has added talking scenes), The Godless Girl, starts out as an intriguing story (by Jeanie Macpherson) about high-school hijinks – but instead of Sharks and Jets, the gangs consist of Atheists and Believers. Fronting […]

The Cecil B. DeMille epic The Volga Boatman should be book-ended with DeMille's 1929 drama The Godless Girl. Both tell compelling stories without a clear, definite point of view. Picture it: Russia right before the Bolshevik revolution. The peasants are seething against the ruling class. We see workers slaving to […]

"I hope you enjoyed your trip back to a more innocent time,” said presenter Randy Haberkamp to a packed house last night following the screening of the 1928 Chicago at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. This latest installment of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' “Lost […]

All evidence points to Phyllis Haver, but she seems to think otherwise Photo: © A.M.P.A.S.. A restored print of the little-seen 1928 silent film Chicago will be screened on August 16 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Directed by Frank Urson, […]

“Glamorous actresses”: Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray in True Confession. One of the highest-paid stars of the studio era, Carole Lombard was a top-notch light comedienne usually wasted in below-par dramas and comedies. True Confession, in which she's partnered with unappealing leading man Fred MacMurray (who, curiously, would excel as vile villains), […]