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7 items from 2011

1 December 2011 4:15 PM, PST | PEOPLE.com | See recent PEOPLE.com news »

Honestly, who's your favorite Abe? The Internet is abuzz with a photo of Daniel Day-Lewis in a beard during filming of Lincoln, but he's certainly not the first to channel the 16th American president for Hollywood. Going back to the silent era, the list is long and varied, including most famously Henry Fonda (beardless in Young Mr. Lincoln). But there are others, including two unlikely portrayers. Will Ferrell goes for laughs in a Funny or Die video while Hank Azaria did it twice, on The Simpsons and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. »

- Mike Fleeman

7 November 2011 6:45 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 then. Since there is no on-line version of The Globe, I will be posting all of my articles here at We Are Movie Geeks. When Steve informed me that this month.s St. Louis Globe-Democrat was to take place in 1939, often labeled “Hollywood’s Greatest Year”, I knew the possibilities were immense. »

- Tom Stockman

29 September 2011 10:05 PM, PDT | WeAreMovieGeeks.com | See recent WeAreMovieGeeks.com news »

Successful film biographies often inspire ‘back-story’ sequels. Since many of these movies end at the conclusion of the subject’s life, producers will go back back and explore an earlier chapter of this remarkable individuals history. Hence, we’ve seen films like Young Mr. Lincoln and Young Tom Edison. Now many years after Amadeus, cinema explores the life of ten year old Mozart, but from a different viewpoint. As the title suggests Mozart’S Sister is indeed this story told through the eyes of Wolfgang’s older sister (by five years). The movie is a fresh look at the formative years of this musical genius, but it also tells the story of an older sibling possessed of incredible talent who had no chance to shine in her brother’s long shadow.

Like many musician stories we first encounter the artists between ‘gigs’ and on the road. The Mozart family (father, »

- Jim Batts

2 June 2011 8:30 PM, PDT | WeAreMovieGeeks.com | See recent WeAreMovieGeeks.com news »

The other day I was thinking the concept of a movie prequel was a fairly new notion. I suppose it was George Lucas who really promoted that idea with his first trilogy in 1999 with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. But as I thought about it, movie prequels have been around for a while. Back in the 30′s and 40′s they were made to delve into the backgrounds of historical figures as in Young Tom Edison and Young Mr. Lincoln. In the early 70′s we had Butch And Sundance : The Early Years. The 80′s saw Young Sherlock Holmes, and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom ( which technically is a prequel to Raiders Of The Lost Ark as it is set a couple of years earlier ). The post Star Wars first trilogy prequels have been used as a way to restart or reboot an aging franchise. In that way »

- Jim Batts

12 May 2011 8:23 PM, PDT | CriterionCast | See recent CriterionCast news »

One more reason to be super jealous of our friends in Austin, the announcement of the Paramount’s Summer Classic Film Series 2011 would make any classic film lover think they had died and gone to heaven. Celebrating 36 years and going strong, the place to be during the summer is Austin (as usual). And of course, when there’s classic films being announced at a repertory theater, there’s always a few Criterion connections.

Peter Bogdanovich, who recently entered the Criterion collection himself with his magnificent film The Last Picture Show (which will be screening July 27th – 28th, hosted by Sam Beam of Iron & Wine), will be there at the kick off, on May 20th, where he will be discussing Hollywood history which then is followed by a screening of Casablanca and a film of his choosing. That alone is worth your anticipation, because if anyone has great stories about film, »

- James McCormick

3 May 2011 7:06 PM, PDT | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

The Conspirator opens on a battlefield, corpse-strewn yet oddly spotless, where a wounded soldier tells a joke to another to keep his mind from fading. They’re rescued and the joke is cut short and there you have Robert Redford’s cinema, antiseptic mud and missing punchlines. Shameful history repeating itself is the issue: Constitutional rights trampled in the fallout of national tragedy, the Lincoln assassination as a 19th-century 9/11, the judicial farce of a glum Dixie widow thrown to Yankee military tribunals to appease a nation’s vengeful mood. The sacrificial lamb is one Mary Surratt (Robin Wright, asked to channel Liv Ullman), Confederate landlady, mother of a John Wilkes Booth cohort, and all-around totem of Southern obstinacy, defended in court by a wispy audience surrogate (James McAvoy) who’s meant to be shocked, shocked!, to learn that “in times of war, the law falls silent.” A courtroom mystery, but »

30 January 2011 12:39 PM, PST | Blogdanovich | See recent Blogdanovich news »

People have been saying that the greatest year for American movies was 1939 (of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz fame) ever since Life magazine published a big piece proclaiming this opinion with all the passion of fact. Coincidentally, in August 1972, a few months before the Life article appeared, Esquire ran a “Hollywood” column of mine on the abundant film glories of 1939 (Ninotchka, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Only Angels Have Wings, Love Affair, Young Mr. Lincoln, Stagecoach, etc.). But the hook for my piece had been that opinions change with the years, and that… »

7 items from 2011