Gone with the Wind Blew Back Last Week A part of me is for shortening Gone with the Wind to simply Gone. And yet there are pockets that care, 116 of them showing up for a Fathom Events run this past week, my local six-plex using GWTW for one matinee (Sunday) and two evening runs (Monday, then Wednesday). Admission was $10, which means they collected $1160 total. That may have been more than Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire or Kung Fu Panda 4 took for comparable play. I dealt myself in for Sunday afternoon, time served one hour, as here is where audible reaction most occurs, at least ..read more

  STS: John Barrymore as Richard, Sister Ethel, Handsy Gable, plus Bogie and Flynn JOHN BARRYMORE DOING SHAKESPEARE --- The Show of Shows hindsights as woofing dog among studio revues, lice upon 1929 schedules, but wanted by a public curious to hear and not just see stars. Barrymore among these was known for declamation of Bard words (re stage triumph as Hamlet), so who was more an object of aural yearning? He parts a curtain in formal attire to announce recital as Richard III that we’ll experience just like it was Broadway and we paid four dollars and up for a seat. This was heady pr ..read more

  Among the One-Hundred: The Black Cat and Other Poetics Ask anyone to recall who was the first nineteenth-century author to come to their attention and I bet most would answer Edgar Allan Poe. That certainly was the case for me. “Poe” as product promised the best, whether it be The Haunted Palace or The Masque of the Red Death at the theatre, or The Black Cat and The Raven on television at home. The fact few were strict adaptations would not matter, each having pledged to “capture the spirit of Poe,” all benefiting from pedigree the long-deceased author suggested. I seldom heard of P ..read more

  Ad/Odds: Dick's Doughnut Party, Unholy Love, All-RKO Show, and Dream Girl WHY NOT A DOUGHNUT PARTY? --- Merit badge to all who toss such event after fashion of Olivia DeHavilland and Dick Powell in 1938. What goes ideally with doughnuts? They may not have proposed marijuana then, but I’ll attest to pastry and cannabis as irresistible combo for potheads during a seventies usage peak … this not from personal experience (never used weed --- really). What I did hear of, and often, was classmates toking up on weekend nights, then hitting Hwy. 421 for Winston-Salem (apx. an hour’s distanc ..read more

  Produced by John Wayne --- Part Two Of the Batjacs, Seven Men from Now may be an only one called canonical. Of westerns, it is close to a top of fifties heap. Extras for Seven Men from Now are lush with profiling of Budd Boeticcher, Kennedy, Gail Russell, more from the 1956 project. 2010 and thereabouts was when DVD buyers really got a money’s fillup. “Sparkhill” made these pocket documentaries. I don’t know if they are still in business, but they did a crackerjack job. Where your 78-minute feature comes with as much length again of bonuses, there is $5.99 well spent (Amazon’s curre ..read more

  When Paramount Played with Batjac --- Part One Call this “When DVD Was King,” or Gold Age for Discs. Guess all formats have such apex, be they laser, even cassettes of long past. CD’s still come out, though I’m not certain who buys them. DVD stunned for quality when initially arrived. First toe-in I recall was 1999 and Teenagers from Outer Space. Suddenly we knew 16mm was kaput. Now it is discs that are dinosaurs, for why buy when streaming will do? Except streaming is them deciding what you watch, and when, “physical media” the retreat we make to possession that is true. Must be me ..read more

  PPP: The Scarlet Claw and 1975 Homecoming Parade, and The Lodger (1944) A right combination of setting and selection makes memorable time spent with shows. Mine of late was The Scarlet Claw with The Lodger (both 1944), seen in pocket of paradise that is the Parkland, this third of recorded visits there, and so far a most stimulating for favorites ideally suited to a small corner of home sweet childhood home. We’ve all found our sweetest spot by now. Just recline back and let the rest of a world turn as will. Does private theatre work best in jewel box proportion, just room for you i ..read more

 WWW: Robocop, The Sea Wolves, Sign of the Gladiator, and The Hill ROBOCOP (1987) --- Outlaw action thriller they’d not dare today, Robocop silly on surface, a title giving exclamation to that, but don’t confuse with safe spandex  served over twenty years past (really, that many?). Robocop runs rapid, tawdry in the cut-price doing. Used to be flummoxed by those calling the eighties a golden era, or “last” golden era, but hang if things like Robocop don’t open my eyes. Robocop is fun in disorienting ways. No wonder it made a star director of Paul Verhoeven, forever young in m ..read more

  Noir: Breakaway, Canicule aka Dog Day, Circle of Danger, Clash by Night, and Cloudburst BREAKAWAY (1956) --- It’s another Tom “Duke” Martin thriller with Tom Conway! There were two, lensed in Britain, one US-released, Murder on Approval, while this one, Breakaway, I’m not for sure. Maybe RKO in waning days floated it to a handful of Yank cinemas. Someone more patient to do necessary research will enlighten us. Breakaway showed up in a “Forgotten Noir” DVD box, itself forgotten for coming out of VCI years back, but these  please where it’s small change intrigue one wants, or Con ..read more

  LIFE Versus the Movies August 13, 1951, was Detonation Day, not when a cold war turned hot, but where the Number One family weekly aimed laser at an industry they said was in throes of decline, an industry too late to save. Hollywood saw LIFE’s gesture as one to live ever after in infamy, a sneak attack wholly unjustified. How could amusement for masses occasion such hostility? Everyone read LIFE magazine. A household to afford but one magazine subscription would subscribe to LIFE. Whatever it printed, people talked about. Size mattered, as issues were big as a Declaration of Indepe ..read more