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4 items from 2012
11 April 2012 8:23 AM, PDT | The Playlist | See recent The Playlist news »
You know what’s a fun task? Trying to convince anyone that Steven Spielberg’s 1975 “Jaws” is not an American classic and a nearly flawless film. It’s kind of impossible, and if you were to somehow take this position, you would either be painfully foolhardy, Armond White, or both.
The film is regarded as the first bonafide summer blockbuster, one that, along with subsequent seasonal smashes like "Star Wars," were part of the death of the 1970s silver-age era of indie American filmmaking. Its enormous box-office success made irrevocable changes to the the studio business model that has turned the months between April and September into a frenzy of special effects and explosions. But "Jaws" shouldn't be demonized for that, because unlike most of today’s blockbusters, it was and is much more than a spectacle-driven piece meant to lure audiences to the theaters.
In fact, for much of the maligned production of “Jaws, »
- The Playlist
6 March 2012 9:10 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »
Actress Joan Taylor, best remembered for two sci-fi / horror B movies of the late 1950s, died March 4 in Santa Monica, in Los Angeles County. Taylor was 82. According to various sources, Taylor was born Rose Marie Emma in Geneva, Illinois, on August 18, 1929. She was the daughter of Austrian vaudeville player Amelia Berky and an Italian-born immigrant who later became a Hollywood prop man. Curiously, last Friday night I watched for the first time the 1957 Columbia release 20 Million Miles to Earth. Though wasted in a non-role in this King Kong rip-off with stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, Taylor looked quite pretty (as an Italian) whether angry at leading man William Hopper (son of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper) or screaming at the ballooning Martian creature. I guess it says something about her screen presence that I was rooting for the Martian Monster to gobble up the film's director (Nathan Juran), writers (Robert Creighton Williams »
- Andre Soares
9 January 2012 6:42 PM, PST | WeAreMovieGeeks.com | See recent WeAreMovieGeeks.com news »
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat is a monthly newspaper run by Steve DeBellis, a well know St. Louis historian, and it.s the largest one-man newspaper in the world. The concept of The Globe is that there is an old historic headline, then all the articles in that issue are written as though it.s the year that the headline is from. It.s an unusual concept but the paper is now in its 25th successful year! Steve and I collaborated last Spring on an all-Vincent Price issue of The Globe and I.ve been writing a regular monthly movie-related column since. Since there is no on-line version of The Globe, I post all of my articles here at We Are Movie Geeks. This month’s edition of The Globe takes place in 1947. The headline on the cover will scream “Al Capone Dead!” and there will be several articles about the famous gangster. »
- Tom Stockman
8 January 2012 4:16 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »
On The Road Letter: Jack Kerouac Wanted Marlon Brando for Dean; Kerouac Would Play Sal [Photo: Leslie Caron.] On the Road was never made into a movie during Jack Kerouac's lifetime. However, the lesser-known The Subterraneans, which Kerouac mentions in his letter to Marlon Brando, was turned into an MGM movie in 1960. Needless to say, the final film had little in common with Kerouac's semi-autobiographical novella about an interethnic romance. In the Subterraneans movie, Kerouac's character, Leo Percepied, is played by George Peppard. The "colored" girl, Mardou Fox, minus the color but with the addition of a French accent is played by Leslie Caron. Others in the film's cast were Janice Rule, Roddy McDowall, Anne Seymour, and Jim Hutton (as the fictional Allan Ginsberg). Former screenwriter Ranald MacDougall (Mildred Pierce, Possessed, The Hasty Heart) directed from a screenplay by Robert Thom. "While none of the portrayals is distinguished," wrote A.H. Weiler in the New York Times, »
- Andre Soares
4 items from 2012
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