...will not appear this weekend while I'm attending the annual Lone Pine Film Festival. The column will also not appear on October 19th due to a family wedding. Around the Blogosphere This Week will return on Saturday, October 26th. For recent links of interest to classic film fans, please visit my October 5th column. Tweet ..read more

We're headed to the annual Lone Pine Film Festival today! We're taking an extra day this year to head as far north as Bishop on Highway 395 and enjoy some of the fall colors before turning around and heading back south for Bishop Wednesday afternoon. Last month I shared details on the festival's films and guests. Please click here to check out the info. After I return from the festival posting may continue to be light here until the week of the 21st, due to a family wedding and relatives visiting from out of town. I'll be back as usual with lots of reviews and much more later this month! Tweet ..read more

It's time for a quick peek ahead at what's in store on Turner Classic Movies this November! I'm quite excited about the November Star of the Month, Ruth Roman. Roughly 20 of Roman's films will be shown on Tuesday evenings, including the TCM premiere of BELLE STARR'S DAUGHTER (1948). Some of the great Roman films on hand next month will include THE WINDOW (1948), STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951), and TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951). The TCM Spotlight on Wednesdays will feature suspense films, and a Special Theme on the first three Thursday evenings of the month will be the films of Michael Powell an ..read more

The popular comedic mystery series ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING debuted on Hulu in 2021, but I had never seen any of it until a few days ago. Thanks to a few free weeks of Hulu via a rewards program, I decided to give the show a whirl, and I was pleasantly surprised to find I really enjoyed it. I'll be starting Season 2 in the near future. ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING was created by John Hoffman and Steve Martin, who stars along with Martin Short and Selena Gomez.For those who have not yet caught up with the show, it takes place mostly in the Arconia, a marvelous old apartment building in Ne ..read more

Humphrey Bogart plays a wife murderer in the highly enjoyable CONFLICT (1945), just released on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection. CONFLICT was scripted by Arthur T. Norman and Dwight Taylor from a story by Alfred Neumann and Robert Siodmak. Siodmak, of course, is greatly revered as a director of film noir but he did not direct CONFLICT; that job fell to Curtis Bernhardt. It's interesting to me that a star as big as Bogart was cast in this type of role, not all that long after CASABLANCA (1942) and other heroic roles. And as a matter of fact, Bogart would again play a wife killer two ..read more

Miscellaneous bits of news and fun stuff from around the Internet... ...Coming to Blu-ray from the Warner Archive in November: HUMORESQUE (1946), starring Joan Crawford and John Garfield. ...Also out from the Warner Archive Collection in November: Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 4, MUST LOVE DOGS (2005) with Diane Lane, and a complete THIN MAN Blu-ray set. ...Fall cookbook time: WHEN SOUTHERN WOMEN COOK is coming from America's Test Kitchen in November. ...Kino Lorber Studio Classics has announced a November 19th release date for the Western THE LONELY MAN (1957) starring Jack Palance ..read more

Happy October! It's hard to believe the spooky season has rolled around once more, but here we are! And it's time for a look at the October schedule on Turner Classic Movies. Bela Lugosi is the October Star of the Month. Over two dozen of his films will be featured on Wednesday evenings. The TCM Spotlight will focus on period costume dramas, with a whopping 53 films being shown on Tuesday evenings. Thursdays will feature Creepy Cinema, guest hosted by Mario Cantone, and on Fridays the two-month series "Making Change: The Most Important Political Films of All Time," which began in September ..read more

The Dark Side of Cinema sets are coming out at a great clip from Kino Lorber! I have films from multiple Dark Side of Cinema sets in line to review. First up is SHACK OUT ON 101 (1955) from the Kino Lorber Dark Side of Cinema XXI collection. I first saw SHACK OUT ON 101 in 2013 when it was released on DVD by the late, lamented Olive Films. I absolutely adored this crazy movie when I first saw it and felt the same way over a decade later. An IMDb review has it right, saying it "feels like it was shot on break from a really fun beach party." SHACK OUT ON 101 was directed by Edward Dein, f ..read more

My latest Western RoundUp column has just been published at Classic Movie Hub. My annual "B" Western Sampler covers four films from Lippert Pictures: DEPUTY MARSHAL (1949), COLORADO RANGER (1950), THREE DESPERATE MEN (1951), and OUTLAW WOMEN (1952). Marie Windsor is seen here in OUTLAW WOMEN. Please click over to Classic Movie Hub to read it, and thanks, as always, for your support of my Western RoundUp column! Previous Classic Movie Hub Western RoundUp Column Links: June 2018; July 2018; August 2018; September 2018; October 2018; November 2018; December 2018; January 2019; February 2019 ..read more

The first feature-length 3D film, BWANA DEVIL (1952), was released on Blu-ray this summer by Kino Lorber Studio Classics. This impressive Blu-ray set includes three different versions of the film, including the 3D Film Archive's restoration of the 3D print from 4K scans of the original 35mm Ansco Color negatives. The set features one 3D version for 3D Blu-ray players; another 3D print which can be viewed with anaglyphic red and blue glasses included in the set, as seen in the photograph below; and a "flat" 2D print. This 79-minute film about man-eating lions in Kenya, written and directed by A ..read more