For each movie in the top 100, I’ve written a question to answer. (It would get very, very boring for me to have to write some variation on “boy howdy, you’ll never believe how good this movie is” one hundred more times.) There’s no exact sentence or word count I’m holding myself to here, but… Read More Top 250 American Movies: 1-10
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here All stars are listed with a single film which is particularly important, though not exclusively so, to understanding what makes them vital to American movies. 100) Vivien Leigh / Key film – Gone with the Wind The chauvinists… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 96-100
The following is from my series of Oscar Best Picture rankings, as well as my strongly worded suggestions for what should have won from among the nominees. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a way to vote on some Oscar-related ideas, click here. If I’ve written a review on any of the… Read More Better than the Oscars: 20-16
The following is part of an overview of the top 100 American narrative fiction feature films, from my perspective. For an introduction to the project and an index of other entries in the series, click here. For a list of more than 800 films which I considered for the top 450 and my eligibility qualifications, click here.… Read More Better than AFI’s Top 100: 7-5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8RZR5O5CK4 Honorable mentions: “New Ways to Dream,” “This Time Next Year” Like Jeremy Jordan, Sunset Blvd (as I’m going to call it to avoid confusion) has gotten thorough treatment on this blog in the recent past. And while Sunset Blvd and Sunset Boulevard aren’t the same thing at all, they are devilish close. One occasionally wonders how Don Black and… Read More Songs from Musicals: #35 “The Greatest Star of All,” from Sunset Boulevard
Rules: Yes, I stole this idea from my older brother. He can complain to someone else about it, because people pay him to write stuff in real life and I have a blog that no one cares about. I’ve chosen fifty musicals that mean at least a little something to me, and then picked some… Read More Songs from Musicals: Intro and Links
Dir. Billy Wilder. Starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Nancy Olson One of my favorite scenes in Sunset Boulevard, far and away the most shocking of the bunch, is the scene where Joe (Holden) has just snuck back to the Desmond estate after a writing session with Betty (Olson); Max, the butler (Erich von Stroheim), is hiding… Read More Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Seeing Things Secondhand 