Entries in Old Hollywood (176)
"Monkey Business" Giggles
Friday, June 15, 2018 at 2:12PM 
I caught a retro matinee of Howard Hawk's silly delight Monkey Business (1952) for my birthday last weekend. I'd never seen it before and was giggling throughout. Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Marlowe, and Charles Coburn were in great form but Ginger Rogers completely steals the movie -- no small feat with that cast!
She plays the ridiculously patient and then suddenly immature wife of a chemist (Grant) who is trying to find a formula for de-aging that he's testing on monkeys. Hijinx ensue! My main takeaway this week has been that modern comedies try too hard to have a message, a character arc, and "heart" to go with the laughs. This spring's I Feel Pretty and Life of the Party had this problem and one assumes the newly opened Tag does, too, merely because almost all comedies now do. Heart and message and meaty arcs (if you have to have them) should just spring from silliness rather than be inorganically thrown on top of the comedy like a blanket. That blanket is wet and it dampens the fun.
Do you have this problem with modern comedies and what do you love most about Monkey Business if you've seen it?
Interview: Jamie Bell on falling in love with Annette Bening and his "Billy Elliot" reunion
Friday, January 12, 2018 at 6:00PM by Nathaniel R
Jamie Bell has been famous since he was 14 years old. His debut film Billy Elliott (2000) about a young boy who discovers a passion for dancing that puts him at odds with his blue-collar community, became a global sensation. The charming film earned over $100 million (on a $5 million budget), received 3 Oscar nominations multiple BAFTAs, and eventually spawned a similarly popular stage musical which took yet more prizes.
The film also earned its young star the BAFTA for Best Actor in February of 2001. And, seventeen years later, here we are again. Jamie Bell is BAFTA nominated for Best Actor for his latest movie Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool. The romantic drama, now in limited release, is about the last days of Oscar winner Gloria Grahame's (Annette Bening) life and the young unknown actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell) she falls in love with, and whose life she essentially takes over moving into his parents home (where they're both mothered by Julie Walter).
I had the opportunity to speak with Jamie Bell a few times this season at events which was a gift since the actor is so charming and his talent somehow still undervalued 17 years later. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool should change that as his best performance yet. Our interview is after the jump..
Doc Corner: 'Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story'
Tuesday, November 28, 2017 at 12:30PM 
More often than not, biographic documentaries can feel staid in the way they so relentlessly follow a basic Point A to Point B narrative. It is understandable, really. After all, one must suppose that if somebody is interesting enough to have a documentary made about them, then they must be interesting enough to sustain 90 minutes without the need for their story to be gussied up with stylistic bells and tricky whistles.
Still, watching as many of these sort of films as I do, it can grow tiresome and can take me out of whatever spell the filmmaker hopes to cast.
And then there is a movie like Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. This is a film that it would be easy to pigeonhole before the opening scene has even begun - and it’s true that Alexandra Dean’s film adheres to a very traditional birth-to-death narrative. But what makes the film so interesting beyond its subject is the way it turns what could be perceived as just standard bio-doc delivery into a unique advantage.
Feud 1.08: You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends? - Season Finale
Monday, April 24, 2017 at 8:45PM In the season one finale, Joan goes to the dentist, Bette gets roasted, and the show answers the question “If you could have any four people over for dinner, dead or alive…?”
Last night, after seven weeks of behind-the-scenes introspections, gargantuan character work, and many, many hats, Feud reached its conclusion. And if it accomplished anything, it was making clear that, underneath the two legends the world knows as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, there were two broken women with an eternal strive for outside validation, left empty once the cameras stopped rolling.
The finale presents the last years in the careers of Joan (Jessica Lange) and Bette (Susan Sarandon). But mostly Joan. Because she seemed to have been the most natural recipient of all the themes Ryan Murphy and company wanted to make evident: ageism, mysogny, merciless sacrifice for Hollywood, estrangement, ingratitude, and, mostly, pain...