Movies Are Like, So Yesterday There was a show called Suits that ran from 2011 to 2019, “was” and “ran” operative words because old episodes still run, rather streams, to a gigantic worldwide audience, it said to recently be the most watched series, most watched anything, on devices including TV, laptops, smartphones, and Dick Tracy wristwatches. Success of Suits is beside point however, of characters quoting movies which meant much to them and sometimes to other characters being addressed. We were expected to recognize pearls of dialogue from filmic oysters still yielding pearls. Principal ..read more

STS: Rudy Resplendent, Preacher Powell Gone Over the Line, and Sacrosanct Strand RUDY AND HIS BLACK AND WHITE DREAM COAT --- What becomes of clothes when we pass? I’d like mine to tour on mannequins as Rudy’s should have, perhaps did for all I know. Surely this stunning overcoat with fur collar and cuffs went somewhere other than Goodwill. Might a derelict on soup lines have ended up with it? Valentino was done with Natascha by depart time (1926), but who knows but what she claimed content of his closet and spread wardrobe among friends, for a price even. I’d wear a coat like this even in t ..read more

  Ad/Odds: Winston-Salem as Show Town Supreme Newspapers.com gifted us over Mother’s Day weekend with free access to their archive, opportunity to dig among microfilmed pages, reminder anew of what damage was done to precious print when libraries converted their lot to ugly photostat and junked original pages. Sad outcome for so much of what had survived but no longer does. I at least was able to sift Winston-Salem Journal pages for what might engage or bring back memory of showgoing in that hour-distant town. Winston was home to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (get it? Winston and Salem cigare ..read more

  Noir: Chicago Deadline, Conflict, and Convicted CHICAGO DEADLINE (1949) --- A person might watch Chicago Deadline bi-yearly and enjoy it as if new, having forgot much of mystery and all of its solution. As was common of noir, there is setting and atmosphere, also attitude to compensate for coherence deficiency. I like Ladd for whatever he’s up to, especially when modern-set and allowing for trench coat, gun, whatever accoutrements we’d aspire to minus of course his aplomb. There is girl casualty Donna Reed to propel thicket that is stuff of plot, Ladd closing in on killers, or does ..read more

  CYB: Cats, Castles, Bats, Canaries, and Westward the Women Herewith another series I’ll call Count Your Blessings, object to single out discs or streaming a rebirth for features figured never to look so pristine again. Being around long enough to have seen some when new (Castle of Blood),  where poor prints prevailed (The Cat and the Canary), or when DVD was still in primitive state (The Bat Whispers), here is dawn on day the three look near to when new, but could we know what that amounted to, not having seen most fresh-minted? The chiller trio watched more/less in successio ..read more

  What Trades Told: Friendly Leo, Hutton Hustles, Get to Work, Showman!, and Hot Rod Lobbies Trade magazines are the great repository of film as merchandise, hang the aesthetics for what matter those except for positive word-of-mouth among customers going out? It was ones passing by or noting ads in papers that needed prod, trades’ sole mission to increase traffic through boxoffice turnstiles. I skipped a day of high school to clean out a venue in Taylorsville, hundreds of mags the owner threw in with posters he valued more, the reverse true for me thanks to joy trades brought. Sit dow ..read more

Watched: Young and Innocent, The Mule, Sol Madrid, and The Model and the Marriage Broker YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937) --- Beauty of a rewatch for me is realizing a thing thought good or even excellent goes up now in estimation to be "Among Favorites” of a creator, in this case Alfred Hitchcock who in any case never fails to surprise and delight. Young and Innocent of his UK output seemed a runt among them, partly I think because characters are young per title and not worldly sort like Donat or Madeleine Carroll, Leslie Banks, Edna Best, others we expect to be more invested in. Nova Pilbeam was ..read more

  Nothing So Far Was So Big Does a red flag become less red once hoisted? The Fox Corporation was tentative raising theirs for big-spent The Big Trail in August 1930, most aware Fox had this time gone a bridge too far. James Granger, “Jimmy” to showman pals across the USA, was distribution whiz for the company. What he didn’t know about sales was not worth knowing. Jimmy had been handed a big elephant that had cost his employers “in excess of $2,000,000,” so he was told, and for all he knew, maybe The Big Trail really did. Certainly it was elephantine for using a wide frame proce ..read more

  Precodes: Anna Christie, The Devil to Pay, Preview to Kong?, and No More Orchids ANNA CHRISTIE (1930) --- GARBO TALKS! as marquees shouted, but what they should have said was, GARBO TALKS AS THOUGH ON STAGE, which the Anna Christie experience was more/less like, a thing I’d not necessarily knock, as Anna Christie gives us close-as-ever insight to what GG might have amounted to had legit rather than film claimed her. Takes are long, static for that, being 1930 with sound still unaccustomed and customers there to hear Garbo speak and never mind if cameras do anything other than focus ..read more

  CCC: The Lady Eve and Ghostbusters THE LADY EVE (1941) --- The Lady Eve wowed 1941 for sophistication and slapstick the product of fertile mind that was Preston Sturges’, known/advertised heavy for being so after mere two, The Great McGinty and Christmas in July. The Lady Eve was his first with top stars and proof of Sturges getting blank check to do what suited him, which was what suited everyone in swelling attendance. What made Sturges uniquely valuable was the desire to make comedy a largest public would enjoy and support. For personality flamboyant beyond even what Hollywood af ..read more