Leo Grin - Page 2

Maybe you first saw it at a museum retrospective or a revival theater, with the marquee emblazoned with tag-lines like, “The most action-packed film of all time!” and “More exciting than a dozen Die Hards!” Or perhaps your first taste

When in 1918 D. W. Griffith asked Lillian Gish to star in a tragic story of love, opium, dreams and death, all set against a Dickensian backdrop of poverty and despair, she was intrigued. But when he told the twenty-six-year-old

A curious aspect of the Bond legend is that Ian Fleming’s socialite wife despised the character. She went so far as to host upper-crust parties at which she and her lettered friends — literary giants such as Cyril Connolly, Graham

Almost fifty years ago, in the film journal Sight and Sound for Winter 1964/65, critic Roger Hudson wrote that the talent of motion picture production designers “is often overlooked, except where it is the greatest element in a film’s success,

In 1964, little-known actor Michael Caine was being evicted — again — and needed a place to stay — again. His friend Sean Connery, starting out in similar circumstances, had reached the pinnacle of the acting world as James Bond.

The name was Fleming, Valentine Fleming. But to his four young boys, Bond creator Ian Fleming among them, he was “Mokie” — a baby-talk bastardization of “Smokie,” so called because he always had a pipe dangling from his lips, the

It’s the kind of movie “best” lists were made for, and over the years it’s been on plenty of them: Best Movie Quote, Best Song, Best Villain, Most Thrills. It boasts both the most famous car in movie history and

In November 1974, Werner Herzog received a most distressing phone call. Lotte Eisner, the beloved doyenne of German cinema, was dying. Part film historian, part published critic, part heroic preservationist, and part muse to the filmmakers struggling to piece together

Timothy Treadwell loved bears. In the name of loving them, with a stalwart sense of the innate sanctity of his mission, he continuously abused them for thirteen years. Time and again from 1989 until 2003 he invaded their territory —

When King Vidor first stepped onto the set of The Champ, he was filled with a rare sense of freedom. Frances Marion’s script was unusually simple, focused squarely on a pair of immensely sympathetic protagonists and their relationship. All the

Toward the end of the filming of The Wizard of Oz (1939), the picture’s director, Victor Fleming, was suddenly called away to salvage another production that was careening off-track at the studio, Gone with the Wind. The “Oz” portions of

If you’ve seen Superman: The Movie (1978), you surely remember the character of Perry White, the tough-as-nails editor of The Daily Planet. Played pitch-perfect by actor Jackie Cooper, he’s one of the comedic highlights of the picture. “I want the

The Champ marks the third time in a row — after John Wayne and Burt Reynolds — that I’ve chosen a movie starring an actor many deride as a “natural,” a “ham,” someone who gained stardom not by skill but

Our newest film in this series, 1931’s The Champ, marks the first time we begin our study not with a director but with a writer. Not to say that the director didn’t have a great deal to do with the

Late last spring, through the auspices of a mutual friend, I spent an afternoon visiting with eighty-nine-year-old author Ray Bradbury. Walking upstairs to his den, I found the genial (and, for the record, fairly conservative) writer dressed in a rumpled

If there is one overriding theme coursing through reviews of Smokey and the Bandit, it is superficiality. Read through the mountain of pieces out there, and you’ll continually be assaulted with adjectives like “silly,” “mindless,” “breezy,” “fun,” and “stupid.” Taken

In an industry notorious for wasteful pretentiousness — directors shooting a hundred takes, crews taking all day to light a single shot, gazillions spent on the latest effects — Hal Needham was a rebel. Directing? “There is no magic to

It always impresses me when an aged actor manages a comeback that is authentic, one based on more than mere nostalgia, one appealing to an entirely new generation of moviegoers. Jackie Gleason spent most of the 1970s appearing in pale

The star of Smokey and the Bandit was, of course, Burt Reynolds, a man of great passions, great flaws, and ultimately great loyalty to the people and place he came from. “I love the South,” he emphatically states to this

These days, big-city philistines posing as cultural elites call it “flyover country.” From the comfort of a private jet, it looks like a vast ocean of emptiness. And yet, every election day, media newsrooms find themselves grudgingly painting that part

The casting of Robert Montgomery (1904–1981) in They Were Expendable was uncommonly appropriate. The suave, handsome actor made his name in debonair romantic comedies throughout the 1930s, but like John Ford he didn’t wait until America was dragged into war

“I was just the paint for the palettes of Ford and Hawks.” — John Wayne — John Wayne was still young in 1944, only thirty-eight years old. And yet the major elements of his inimitable style were hardening into place.

[youtube VkS8-bVPdak — click here to watch in full-screen HD] “Close-ups, affectionate or noble, are held at leisure; long shots are sustained long after their narrative role has been performed. A marginal figure is suddenly dwelt on, lovingly enlarged to

“That bold buckaroo with the cold green eyes.” — General Douglas MacArthur, describing his savior John Bulkeley — In March 1942, facing imminent capture by the Japanese, America’s commander in the Far East was ordered to slip away to safety

“I am really a coward. I know I am, so that’s why I did foolish things. I was decorated eight or nine times, trying to prove that I was not a coward, but after it was all over I still

[youtube HwH4rPHZT4Q — click here to watch in full-screen HD] “[John Ford] was the only one of the Hollywood directors who fought who did not forget his men.” — Captain Mark Armistead, USN — Thus quotes Joseph McBride in his

[youtube LMsfogNky6w — click here to watch in full-screen HD] A thousand years ago in Cairo, surrounded by ancient pyramids and the ghosts of lost civilizations, the great Arab scientist Alhazen conducted a peculiar optical experiment. Building on observations made

Troopathon 2009 is shaping up to be far more than a marvelous day of thanks offered to our brightest, bravest, and best. It’s also turning into a grand culmination of sorts for the first six months of Big Hollywood’s existence.

Looking back at The Karate Kid (1984), which turned twenty-five years old this week, a thought keeps recurring. Wow. . . Avildsen made it work twice. John G. Avildsen is, in some ways, a director of little distinction when compared

Robert Avrech’s lovely paean to the patriotism of Old Hollywood reminds me, by way of contrast, of a blink-and-you-missed-it scandal from seventeen months ago. Even in a cultural arena rife with liberal outrages against military families, it marked a new

He is a man with a gun. He is a killer, a slayer. Patient and gentle as he is, he is a slayer. Self-effacing, self-forgetting, still he is a killer. . . All the other stuff, the love, the democracy,