I’d kind of assumed that with all the wonderful ghosty-themed programming going on over TCM this month, they wouldn’t have time to also fit in a bounty of musicals, but somehow they did! In fact, they’re so rare that I’ve seen almost none of them, and will have to leave you to your own devices. …
It’s no secret that I love a good sailor musical, so when I caught wind of the getTV Mickey Rooney Blogathon, hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled and Paula’s Cinema Club, it took only a moment’s perusal of the channel’s upcoming schedule to make my pick: All Ashore, the 1953 musical in which Rooney plays, yup, a sailor on …
When Rudolph Valentino died in 1926 at the age of 31, he left in his wake a massive audience of heartbroken fans—and one of those tragic, inherently private situations that the Hollywood spectacle machine enjoys stoking the most. For days before the final report of his passing, newspapers had offered conflicting, yet (they swore) definitive accounts of his …
By the 1980s, the movie musical was… well, far beyond the time of transition. Since their heyday in the ’30s and ’40s, musicals had become limited to just a handful of movies per year, without a lot to choose from—Disney films for kids, pop hits designed to sell soundtracks, the occasional prestigious musical dramas, and the cheesy movies that seemed to capture everything cringeworthy of their era. For the studios financing the films, musicals were, to put it mildly, anything but a sure thing. That’s partly what makes Purple Rain such an interesting moment in film history—though it’s easy to see its significance 25 years after the fact, Purple Rain is still a weird, weird movie.
While most of the costumes featured in San Diego Comic-Con’s annual Masquerade typically run towards video game, comic, anime, and blockbuster genre film characters, this year’s had a little something special for the classic film fan: Edith Head!
Considering the historical entwinement of the United States and Britain, for the most part, people on either side of the Atlantic know where to spot the differences between our two cultures. The chips, the crisps, biscuits, boots, and lifts—as an American, I can accept all of those fairly easily, and will enthusiastically bring them up upon encountering …