Almost There: Grace Kelly in "Dial M for Murder" & "Rear Window"

by Cláudio Alves

This past weekend, Grace Kelly was honored on TCM, with an entire day of "Summer Under the Stars" dedicated to her filmography. Moreover, Rear Window is enjoying a brief 70th-anniversary re-release in a select few American theaters. Considering all this, it seemed fitting to explore the Monegasque Princess' work on Almost There, revisiting the superlative year she had in 1954. After all, though she won Best Actress for The Country Girl, Kelly probably accrued a fair number of votes for two other cinematic triumphs, both by the Master of Suspense. There's Alfred Hitchcock's aforementioned Rear Window and Dial M for Murder…

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Nicole Kidman Tribute: The Others (2001)

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Jersey, the Channel Islands
1945

A screaming, terrified-looking Grace Stewart, played by an eerily put-together Nicole Kidman, awakens from a frightful dream (?) in the opening scene of Alejandro Amenábar’s wonderfully gothic 2001 thriller. Introduced in the vein of a spooky European fairy tale, The Others begins bracingly and basically doesn’t quit for all of its perfectly crafted 100 or so minutes. It’s a ghost story with ghostly storytelling beats from a pre-9/11 world of filmmaking. Released in the halcyon days of late summer 2001, The Others arrived with a pretty sterling production-distribution team at its back, despite its relatively slim ($17 million) budget: [Tom] Cruise-[Paula] Wagner Productions, Dimension Films and Studio Canal distributors. Having already announced—and by then finalized—a bombshell divorce from Cruise, Kidman appeared to have quite a bit of her own star power riding on the Cruise-produced film. Fortunately for her, The Others turned out to be an unqualified success…

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How had I never seen... "Rear Window"?

by Chris Feil

Rear Window has to be one of the more embarrassing blind spots to have among the entirety of Alfred Hitchcock’s repertoire or as a Jimmy Stewart lover, but alas I had it. I know, I know.

Maybe the best thing I can chalk it up to is something that’s been in the ether of my lifelong Hitchcock consumption that’s kept me from the Happy Ending Hitchcocks. Things like To Catch A Thief stayed out of my orbit until adulthood without the veneer of morbidity to entice them to a young horrorhound. And rest assured that Rear Window ends as quaintly, if subversively sly, as any of his films. But like me telling myself I’ll eventually catch up to the film, Rear Window is itself about things we put off and avoid. It’s a movie about a man trying so hard to avoid commitment that he gets himself invested in a murder.

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Showbiz History: Actress Stamps, Beyoncé's Debut, and Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"

10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history

1775 The US Postal System is created. Are there any great movies about mailmen? I'm drawing a blank. Do not say The Postman.

The first movie actress to get a postage stamp would be Ethel Barrymore but she had to share it with her brothers Lionel and John! Grace Kelly was (I believe) the first movie star to get a solo postage stamp. Since that time (in 1993) we've had: Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Zasu Pitts, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Hattie McDaniel, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, and Shirley Temple. Who is next? Any guesses?

More after the jump including Mr Julie Andrews, Pee Wee Herman, and Cate Blanchett...

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Perfect Things Which Are Perfect. "Rear Window" Edition

by Nathaniel R

This past weekend Jason and I went to a big screen showing of Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window (1954). Or one of his masterpieces that is; has more than his share, that one. We went just because it was playing (bless you rep scene) and it was the absolutely best thing to see during an actual heatwave in NYC because it's set during one yet it's its own air-conditioning. It's utterly cool...

I love that so many characters in the picture but especially LB (Stewart), eternally in pajamas and broken leg cast, come across like the heat is wearing at their nerves, temper, and clothing. Except Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont, who just floats onto the screen in a cocktail dress, in slomo no less in one of the cinema's all time greatest entrances. Lisa always looks like she is immune to common people concerns like the weather. This only benefits the film because it plays deliciously to L.B.'s (James Stewart) conflicted perception of her as somehow both above the mortal world but also too fragile for it. He thinks his rough and tumble travelling photographer existence too much for her. But isn't the rich dichotomy of the film that she's actually braver than he is when all the dangerous seeds the picture so gleefully places, eventually bloom? 

I've seen Rear Window several times but somehow I always forget big chunks of it. Like that it was set during a heatwave -- how did I forget that? But the heatwave ready to melt me again once I left the theater is beside the point. As I sat there totally engrossed and then delighted and then tense and then elated, I was reminded of a simple fact: Oh riiiiight, this perfect thing is perfect.

COMMENT PARTY ☛ So my spread-the-good-vibes question to you is this. When was the last time you saw an old favorite only to be surprised anew at its total perfection?