HollywoodGolightly

The Newspaper Series at the NYC Film Forum starts Friday! April 8, 2010 *The Fearless Press, and Other Legends* By A. O. SCOTT The clatter of typewriters and the rattle of whiskey bottles in desk drawers; the haze of cigarette smoke in the air; the fedoras and notepads, the sleeve garters and eyeshades; the cries of ?Copy!? and ?Get me rewrite!? Remember newspapers? Neither do I, to tell you the truth, even though I?ve been working at this one for more than 10 years. But you have to go back a lot further? nearly half a century ? to sample the sights, sounds and smells that still evoke the quintessence of print journalism in all its inky, hectic glory. Or you could go to Film Forum, where a 43-movie monthlong series called The Newspaper Picture opens on Friday with Billy Wilder?s ?Ace in the Hole.? The program is a crackerjack history lesson and also, perhaps, a valediction. Not a day goes by that we don?t read something ? a tweet, a blog, maybe even a column ? proclaiming the death of newspapers, either to mourn or to dance on the grave. And even if those old newsprint creatures survive, say by migrating to the magic land of the iPad, they sure ain?t what they used to be. Where are the crusty editors and fast-talking girl reporters of yesteryear? I?m peeking over the cubicle wall, and all I see are Web producers and videographers. But maybe those old-school newshounds are mythical creatures after all. Maybe no newsroom couple ever talked as fast or flirted as sharply as Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns, played most memorably in 1940 by Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in ?His Girl Friday.? The same characters were played, with a bit less sparkle, nine years earlier by Adolph Menjou and Pat O?Brien in ?The Front Page.? Both versions are naturally part of The Newspaper Picture ?how could they not be??and they mark out one area of this vibrant and protean genre. A newspaper, as envisioned by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur in their 1928 play, ?The Front Page,? and as set in motion first by the director Lewis Milestone and then (though not for the last time) by Howard Hawks ? is a hive of clashing ambition, hectic incident and (especially in Hawks?s rendering) nonstop talk. The perfect setting, in other words, for a comedy. But those same traits also make newspapering a scene of ethical drama, dark intrigue and even tragedy. ?Citizen Kane? may transcend the newspaper genre, but it also fulfills its implicit promise both by dwelling on the details of the journalistic enterprise and by allowing that enterprise to attain Shakespearean gravity and complexity. And the grandeur of Orson Welles?s conception of the American press in its heroic late-19th-century phase is answered by the stylish scrappiness of Sam Fuller?s ?Park Row,? from 1952. Fuller had been a reporter and retained a jaundiced affection for his old trade. His 1963 thriller, ?Shock Corridor? ? strictly speaking perhaps more of a loony-bin picture than a newspaper picture ? turns a reporter?s investigative zeal into a perverse cautionary tale. And while it is fashionable these days to rhapsodize about the civic spirit and democratic value of traditional journalism, a survey of the movies that explore that tradition reveals a more shaded, ambiguous, even cynical picture. Reporters are crusaders after truth and scourges of corruption, for sure, but they are never squeaky clean. Observe Hildy nonchalantly paying bribes, massaging quotations and spinning sources in ?His Girl Friday,? and you will in essence witness the ethics handbooks of any decent paper going up in flames. The urge to get the big scoop can be noble but also unscrupulous, and the moral tension between candor and exploitation emerges, especially after World War II, as one of the newspaper picture?s great themes. Consider Chuck Tatum, played with exhausting, exhilarating intensity by Kirk Douglas in 1951?s ?Ace in the Hole.? A onetime big-city hotshot exiled to a sleepy paper in the Southwest, Chuck stumbles across a mishap ? a guy trapped in a cave ? and turns it into a media spectacle. In the process he risks an innocent man?s life and his own soul, and the movie acutely maps the queasy terrain where the public?s desire for information bleeds into something more predatory. Movies like ?Ace in the Hole? and Alexander Mackendrick?s ?Sweet Smell of Success? (1957) might have been a bit too cynical for 1950s audiences, but in the gossip-mad, fake-news atmosphere of the present they seem stringent and prophetic. There is power in being a champion of the underdog, and we all know power corrupts, just as institutions proudly devoted to the truth can become magnets for liars. The Film Forum series will close, four weeks from now, on a high note of idealism, with Alan J. Pakula?s ?All the President?s Men,? from 1976. It?s an old favorite of mine, and also by a good decade the most recent selection in the program. Only a small handful of the newspaper pictures in The Newspaper Picture were released after the 1950s, and the years between the introduction of sound and the rise of television were clearly the genre?s heyday. Like the western, it survives in somewhat ghostly, self-conscious form, since an on-screen newspaper job can still provide action, laughter and intrigue. Jennifer Aniston has one in ?The Bounty Hunter,? which I have now evoked in an article that also mentions ?Citizen Kane.? Get me rewrite! But if the historical parameters established by Film Forum define a golden age of print journalism on celluloid, this marvelous series also suggests a sequel. Start with ?A Face in the Crowd? and work forward to, say, ?Wag the Dog? and you could fill a month with something not yet widely known as The Television Picture. And maybe 50 years from now there will be a retrospective devoted to the Web News Aggregator Picture. By then, thankfully, I?ll be as dead as dead-tree journalism. The Newspaper Picture series runs through May 6 at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village; (212) 727-8110, filmforum.org.

Androcles and the Lion

Everett Sloane was in Sirocco with Zero Mostel

Oberon, Merle

Napoleon

Glad you enjoyed it!

From today's L.A. Times: The Big Picture Patrick Goldstein on the collision of entertainment, media and pop culture *The 'Clash of the Titans' conundrum: Why animated films look better in 3-D* *April 8, 2010* Why was the 3-D in "Clash of the Titans" so awful? Slate's Daniel Engber offers some pretty darn intriguing theories about the issue in a recent post, taking us way past the most obvious explanation -- that the effects were simply done on the cheap. As he explains, if you want to add depth to a flat image, you need skilled 3-D artisans, and skilled artisans cost moolah. But more important, he argues that the biggest problem with "Clash of the Titans" is that it's largely a live-action film. And when it comes to 3-D, computer animators are farther along the learning curve than conventional cinematographers. As he put it: "'Alice in Wonderland,' by contrast, is mostly animated, as are all the other recent 3-D blockbusters, like 'Up,' 'Monsters vs. Aliens,' 'Ice Age 3,' 'A Christmas Carol,' and 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.' Even big-daddy 'Avatar,' which some took as a test-case for live-action 3-D, was more animated than not. There are plenty of reasons why animated films might have a leg up when it comes to 3-D. For one, the movie-makers have full control over all the pixels on the screen, which allows for precise correction of every optical artifact. They also have access to a set of 3-D tricks that haven't yet migrated into live cinema. One nifty innovation, called the 'dynamic floating window,' tilts the edges of the frame forward and backward in space as the movie goes along. Those adjustments -- invisible to the audience -- let the director add depth to a scene without resorting to awkward, pop-out effects." He also argues that a fundamental drawback to the 3-D conversion gimmick is that it essentially undermines the 3-D storytelling process. "'Clash of the Titans' appears to suffer for being shot with a flat image in mind," he wrote. "Stereo cinema has its own rules for visual storytelling, and some tried-and-true flat-film techniques are a liability in three dimensions. Quick cuts and fast-paced action scenes, for example, can be hard to follow in a 3-D movie." In other words, Michael Bay -- my new 3-D guru -- is right. If you're going make a movie in 3-D, you have to do it from the very beginning, not at the end, when it looks like it will help you score big-time at the box office. If you don't want moviegoers to end up seeing 3-D as a marketing gimmick, it's time to give it the respect it deserves.

The Reluctant Debutante next: offering the smallest chance of danger

Ben-Hur - Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur

O'Brien, Virginia Oldman, Gary

T - From Hell to Texas

Zempi, Mario - directed Too Many Crooks

Mitchum, Robert

Libeled Lady

Charles Laughton was in Salome with Rita Hayworth

Richard Boone

Fun facts about Jean Harlow: * Birth name: Harlean Harlow Carpenter * Refused the lead in *King Kong* (1933), as well as the lead in the Tod Browning classic *Freaks* (1932). * Her final film, *Saratoga* (1937), became the highest grossing film of 1937 and set all-time house records, due almost entirely to her untimely death.

It is amazing that a childhood favorite like The Empire Strikes Back is now 30 years old. And it may be equally remarkable to think there was once a time when a young film school grad could challenge the status quo in such an amazing way - using much of his own millions from his previous movie to finance the next installment of a saga that paid homage to Saturday morning matinees - and hiring some old Hollywood veterans to help him get the movie made, including most notably a screenwriter who was a frequent collaborator of director Howard Hawks. The writer, of course, was Leigh Brackett, writer of such Hollywood classic screenplays as The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo and Hatari! for Hawks. At the time I watched The Empire Strikes Back, of course, I couldn't have understood how amazing it was for someone to get the project made with a screenwriter who'd penned some of the most highly regarded movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood. There was so much more that caught one's eye at the time. There were amazing special effects, and astonishing story twists - and you know which one was the biggest jaw-dropper. In hindsight, I'm glad that there were movies like these that relied so heavily on older material for inspiration, and on at least one of Hollywood's top screenwriters to get the job done. And mostly I'm very grateful to the filmmakers from my parents' generation for having had the courage to stay true to their convictions, to pay homage in the way they did to the great serials and children's movies of yesteryear while at the same time giving them a shiny new coat of magic to help us get the same sense of discovery that they had had with Flash Gordon or The Thief of Bagdad. In fact, I'm almost certain that if they hadn't awakened my curiosity, I might never have become a fan of classic movies. P.S. For more coverage of 30th anniversary of TESB, check out the April 16th issue of Entertainment Weekly: http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/04/08/empire-strikes-back-star-wars/

LOL!

> {quote:title=Meanie220 wrote:}{quote} > thanks for the heads up, Hollywood Golightly. It's good to get something well-rounded about the man, because for the longest I couldn't stop laughing about a person getting shot in the face. Oh, I know if I were ever shot in the face, I sure wouldn't want people laughing about it. finance - I didn't watch it when it was on TCM but I'm surprised they would have aired two Essentials on the same day. Could it have been another control room error?

> {quote:title=audreyforever wrote:}{quote} > I'm really disappointed I didn't record Meet the People. From what I saw, it looked good. I didn't record it this time - but if it is any consolation, it's available from the Warner Archive.

> {quote:title=sandykaypax wrote:}{quote} > She was so pretty and spunky in *Merton of the Movies* that I wish she had been allowed to do more films where she wasn't just deadpan. She was more than a one-trick pony. > I agree, absolutely, for all of the great things that MGM did and the stars that they knew how to groom well, occasionally Louis B. totally missed the boat. And like peter, I also had no idea about her having to abandon The Harvey Girls, I really wish things had been differently so she could have finished the movie.

Did you get a chance to finish it yet?

Finally had a chance to watch last year's Alice, which I think was originally shown on the SyFi channel before being released on video to coincide with the Burton movie. The 3-hour extravaganza seems to throw out everything but the kitchen sink. The younger actors in the cast are not very well known, I think, but there are some well-known actors in the other parts - most notably Kathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts, Tim Curry as the Dodo, Harry Dean Stanton as the Caterpillar and Matt Frewer (of "Max Headroom" fame) as the White Knight. Speaking of the White Knight, I think this is the first adaptation since the 1933 Paramount version to make good use of him - and he's an endearing, goofy delight. Since everything here is updated to take place more or less in the present time and there are no wild make-up jobs, this might not appeal to the purists. But if you give it a try, it's not a totally bad made-for-cable adaptation.

> {quote:title=faceinthecrowd wrote:}{quote} > Whatever happened to Cliff Eastwood? He had such a promising career. Cliff Eastwood? What sort of a silly name is that! He probably changed his name and went on to bigger and better things.