With the 80th anniversary of its first release, I'm dipping into my archives to look at that hot and Hedy enchantress called Ecstasy. Hedy. Just looking at the woman, it's easy to repeat her name after exhaling a delicious deep breath -- Hhheeeddeeey. Her name respires like the title of one of her most famous, and infamous films, Ecstasy. Though some consider the picture a... Continue reading

"Crash is an autobiographical novel in the sense that it is about my inner life, my imaginative life. It is true to that interior life, not the life I have actually lived." -J.G. Ballard A survived car accident can be one of the most exciting, disturbing and hallucinatory events in a person's life, and not simply because of life endangerment and pain. Time is sped... Continue reading

She was some kind of a woman and... some kind of semanticist. Josef von Sternberg may have crafted his own goddess in the form of leggy, sunken-cheek-boned and languid Marlene Dietrich, but Marlene took his tutelage and made herself...Marlene. With classic, otherworldly, baroque beauty (blonde beauty -- which functions almost as its own cinematic genre) the Sternberg Dietrich duo created their iconic masterstrokes The Blue... Continue reading

Yesterday I was a guest on Allison Hope Weiner's show "Media Mayhem" discussing, live, among other topics, cinema, movie writing, tabloids, Bette Davis, Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Monroe, Spring Breakers, William Friedkin and Roger Ebert, who sadly, I had just learned passed away minutes before appearing on camera. Thank you Allison, for allowing such a vast array of subjects. It's rare I get to discuss Bette... Continue reading

"I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state ... I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting." --Roger Ebert Roger Ebert has left us today. Growing up watching Roger, and then, knowing Roger, sitting in for him in 2007, working with him a few years later... Continue reading

Ray Charles. The genius. We all know Ray Charles was sensational. Or at least, we all should know. And yet, even when the enormously popular, Oscar winning Ray underscored this point (though missing some of the better, grittier details) way back in 2004, many need to be reminded again, and beyond that "and then this happened" biopic. Need I say it again? Ray Charles was... Continue reading

I love hotels. Continue reading

When Madonna's "Sex" was released, actor Udo Kier, who was featured prominently in some of the photo book's best pictures (forever beautiful Udo does not take a bad shot), was asked about Ms. Ciccone. What she was like? But more specifically, since Kier had ample chance to see, What was her vagina like? Mr. Kier's answer? "Organized." He could have been talking about Tippi Hedren's... Continue reading

John Garfield would have been 100 years old today and his simmering, gorgeous genius of masculine menace, charm and vulnerability is, still, sorely missed. He's one of my favorite actors (among a top five that alternate, but Garfield always remains), and an actor who almost literally knocked me for a loop when I first saw him on screen (in The Postman Always Rings Twice). I... Continue reading

Darren McGavin, sexiest pusherman of all time? That's a terrible question to ask, I suppose. I'm not making light of addiction. But let's not kid ourselves. There's a reason drugs seduce. It's because they feel so damn good. And eventually so damn bad. In Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, McGavin's Louie looks good. And even better, he looks like he feels good.... Continue reading

There are some movies that are so perfect, so exquisitely beautiful, so effortlessly elegant, they're almost painful. Like watching an overwhelmingly enchanting dancer — their beauty cracks something inside of you, inspiring/torturing you to tears or even a brief spurt of madness. Nothing is that lovely. And indeed, nothing is. The pain of manipulating those graceful muscles, and in the case of Max Ophüls' The... Continue reading

Oh, Oscar. You always do this! The Oscars In Memoriam Reel always leaves out important, deserving people and this year was one of the worst. I watched those we're to remember, shocked the entire presentation was over so quickly. Here's Marvin Hamlisch, may he rest in peace, and here's Barbra Streisand singing, beautifully, but rather ironically, "Memories." Thank goodness the Academy had the memory to... Continue reading

Do you remember the song "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins? It was from Tarzan and it won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1999 (beating out Aimee Mann's "Save Me" from Magnolia for Christ's sake). Anyway, do you remember that "Tarzan" song over, say, The Who's "A Quick One While He's Away" from Wes Anderson's Rushmore the year before? That Phil... Continue reading

The Academy Awards -- one of cinema's most supreme accolades (or so they tell us). So prestigious that, as many filmmakers and actors claim, it's an "honor" just to be nominated. A gift from your peers, a historic milestone, a career changer, an ... oh ... where's Sacheen Littlefeather? I like Oscars that go a little crazy. And not in those golly-gee speeches where someone,... Continue reading

I have a real soft spot for a movie in which a drunken Richard Burton makes out with a mannequin while a wind machine blows through his hair but perhaps I’m easy. In any case, the critically maligned Candy (a huge flop in its day) fascinates me -- from its never-ending joke that the dirty old man is the establishment (or something), to its groovy... Continue reading

I'm currently working on a Fredric March piece to be posted soon, this year (get on it, Kim). Five favorite or fifteen favorite -- there's so many to list. Nothing Sacred, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Road to Glory, Merrily We Go to Hell, Death Takes a Holiday, The Best Year of Our Lives, The Sign of the Cross, A Star is Born, Design... Continue reading

Valentine’s Day. If you at all care about the day (though many of us pretend not to) it can be a sweet time to remind your partner how much you love them. That's very nice. It can also, well, sicken. Yes, yes, people can be wonderful on that day but they can also exhibit an icky display of public affection (those horrifying balloon bouquets, those... Continue reading

I've been reading and watching more than blogging. That's a good thing. I think. No, it's not. There are too many movies I've seen, and seen in the last few years, that I haven't written about (like Cry of the Hunted, Wicked Woman and The Road to Glory, to name a few). I've been watching so many movies and talking about them (to friends) but... Continue reading

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." So recalls Ray Liotta's Henry Hill in one of the greatest movies about gangsters, Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. There's something more to that line. For Hill, it's real life, but for those of us watching, it's a kind of fantasy we find strangely relatable (the American dream and all), or alien (if... Continue reading

Since I have taken most of January off I'm dipping into my archives and revisiting... Phantom Lady. There's a dangerous, sickly titillating sexuality to film noir that's not seen enough on screen these days. That thrill, that edge, that mixture of sadism and masochism, that passion, that cold-heartedness, that control and abandon. I'll speak mostly of the genre's women: Peggy Cummins coolly shooting between her... Continue reading

It's that screwy, supposedly joyful, yet depressing time of the year again: the holidays. And they're almost over. Thank God, the Master, Freddie Quell or my beloved Marilyn Monroe -- my woman of the year (I'll get to my movies in the next few days). I despise all year-end parties, which is why I'm now enjoying New Year's Eve, safely tucked away in a sleeper... Continue reading

It's not Christmas without Nat King Cole. I love "The Christmas Song" but "Stardust" is one of the most beautiful songs he ever recorded. And, I think, one of the most beautiful songs of all time. Continue reading

Another Christmas, another posting of one of my favorite holiday movies -- Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. I could write about countless other Christmas or Christmas-themed movies I revere (Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece The Shop Around the Corner is a prime example), but I've got other things on my mind, it's my day off and another Tom Cruise movie opened -- Jack Reacher. I'll see it,... Continue reading

“I have too many fantasies to be a housewife.... I guess I am a fantasy.” --Marilyn Monroe Lists. Numbers. Number ones. My number one movie this year was Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and my number one woman was Marilyn Monroe, a woman who, no matter how much I research, how much I study in photographs and moving pictures, how much I think about as... Continue reading

"I feel as though it's all happening to someone right next to me. I'm close, I can feel it, I can hear it, but it isn't really me." -- Marilyn Monroe I saw her on the side of the road blowing in the breeze next to an open garage while driving through Death Valley. With a mixture of excitement and bittersweet sadness (you're everywhere, Marilyn),... Continue reading