Yearly Archives: 2012

I enjoyed the vehicle film called “So, I Married an Axe Murderer,”  made in 1993.  Mike Myers, who plays a beat poet (complete with a jazz band), falls in love with a butcher played by Nancy Travis. But Myer’s … Continue reading →

“American Madness,” a great Frank Capra movie made at Colombia Pictures Corporation in 1932, features Walter Huston as Dickson, a bank manager who values character over money.  Dickson’s Union National Bank continually gives loans to regular people and local businesses, … Continue reading →

The 1941 version of “Charley’s Aunt,” directed by Archie Mayo, stars Jack Benny as a student from Oxford who dresses up in drag to help two schoolmates.  The fellow students need a chaperone so they can woo their sweethearts and … Continue reading →

I love seeing Betty Grable in those great color 20th Century-Fox musicals from the 1940’s.  Although she sings a few songs in Preston Sturges’ “The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend,” a 1949 sendup of westerns, we mostly see her as … Continue reading →

“The Sterile Cuckoo,” an Alan Pakula film from 1969 starring Liza Minnelli as Pookie Adams, highlights the romantic relationship between two freshman college students in upstate New York.  Almost an orphan — her father travels all the time and can’t … Continue reading →

William Wyler directed “How to Steal a Million” in 1966, which turned out to be both a fabulous caper movie and a wonderful romantic comedy.  Audrey Hepburn plays Nicole Bonnet, the daughter of Charles Bonnet, a successful art forger in … Continue reading →

I like to watch movies about artists because Hollywood and the world cinema does these films much better than films about food.  Painters and sculptors work in a visual medium, and film is visual.  Food can look good, it’s true, … Continue reading →

A documentary made in 1992, “Visions of Light,” describes several different styles of cinematography, including film noir, color films and other innovative examples.  A number of noted cinematographers, including Sven Nykquist,  Lazlo Kovaks, John Bailey, Lisa Rinzler and Conrad L. … Continue reading →