Giulietta Masina @ 100: Cabiria's perfect ending

by Cláudio Alves

Born 100 years ago in San Giorno di Piano, Giulietta Masina is one of the most indelible faces of Italian cinema. She started her career as a theatre and radio actress but, by the time her husband Federico Fellini made the transition from screenwriter to film director, Masina was ready to follow him on the journey to the big screen. Despite having worked for other such notable auteurs as Rossellini and Wertmüller, Masina's legacy is defined by her husband's pictures. He immortalized her in more ways than one, both creating film monuments to her humanity, and using their marital strife to create many a celluloid drama...

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Lana @ 100: Love Has Many Faces

Celebrating Lana Turner's Centennial. Here's Baby Clyde...

1965 was the year Martin Luther King marched on Selma, The Civil Rights Act was signed and Malcolm X was assassinated. The Vietnam War was raging, London was swinging, The Beatles played Shea Stadium and Dylan went electric. The times they were a changing, but some things stayed the same because this was also the year Lana Turner starred in the trashiest of all her tawdry melodramas, the Acapulco-set potboiler Love Has Many Faces or as it should have been called ‘Lana Has Many Costume Changes’.

In it she plays Kit Chandler a rich, international glamourpuss, with luxury apartments around the globe, who chooses to reside in the luxury Mexican resort with her estranged husband Pete (Cliff Robertson). When a dead body washes up on the shore it transpires that the deceased beach boy was one of Lana’s many conquests and she's the main suspect in the murder investigation....

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Carol Channing Centennial: A Thoroughly Wacky Nomination

by Cláudio Alves

Carol Channing was a force of nature. The actress electrified the Broadway stages, originating such famous roles as Lorelei in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the titular character in Hello, Dolly!, but the husky-voiced sensation with a mega-wat smile went on to find success in front of cameras too. Whether acting or just being herself, there's effervescent energy to Channing's screen presence, a frenetic joy that made her both a camp icon and an entertainment powerhouse whose fame persists to this day, long after her heyday and even her death. Throughout her legendary career, Channing won four Tony Awards, a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame, a Golden Globe, and even an Oscar nomination. Since we're all a bit Oscar-obsessed around here, the star's centennial celebration feels like a good time to reminisce about that achievement, its inherent weirdness, and wacky charm…

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Angels & Insects @ 25: Entomological Perversions

by Cláudio Alves

Angels & Insects arrived in US theaters 25 years ago. The picture had had its premiere at the 48th Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or but it would take several more months for it to get a commercial release in the UK and the States. Once that happened, Phillip Haas' adaptation of an A.S. Byatt novel received plenty of acclaim from such renowned critics as Roger Ebert, conquering enough buzz to get a surprising, if deserved, Best Costume Design Oscar nomination. Nowadays, the flick isn't talked about, which is a terrible injustice as far as I'm concerned.

To rectify such lack of contemporary discussion, let's try to explore the sensuous perversions and entomological nightmares of this tale insects, incest, and insidiousness…

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Happy 75th Birthday, David Lynch

by Eric Blume

David Lynch during quarantine this past summer

One of the greatest living American film directors, David Lynch, turns 75 today, so it's only fitting we take a moment to celebrate this unique visionary and his wonderful contributions to our cinema. Lynch is so rightfully esteemed and exulted that it's easy to forget he's only made ten feature films during his 40+ years in the industry! 

But right out of the box, with 1977's Eraserhead, he delivered a film so singular that it was clear a new voice had arrived.  He followed it with 1980's The Elephant Man, for which he received his first Best Director nomination, and while his second film was a bankrolled studio movie on one hand, it still bears Lynch's dark imagination throughout.  Lynch was the perfect director to see the soul of John Merrick, as he's always seen the beauty in the "ugly" and spent most of the rest of his career blurring those two ideas, visually and psychologically...

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