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Few female villains in the history of horror have been so beguiling as Pearl (Mia Goth). We first meet this dancing murderess in the twilight days of her life as she slaughters the cast and crew of a low-budget porno in Ti West’s X. The second film in this feminist trilogy takes us all the way back to Pearl’s own youth when she too was a would-be starlet hoping to make it in Hollywood.

The stylish Pearl explores the limitations placed on women in the early 1900s while giving us the origin story of a vicious predator. Tim Waggoner continues his novelization of West’s trilogy by playing with the motivations and backstories of this doomed cast of characters. Waggoner’s literary adaptation of X allows us to peer into Pearl’s mind, explaining her practice of targeting victims for her own sexual pleasure. His Pearl adaptation provides...

The poster child of cinematic modernism, one of those early-‘60s event films that seemed to break every rule classical Hollywood ever codified, Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad left its initial audiences in equal measure ravished by Sacha Vierny’s sumptuous cinematography, capturing in rapturous detail every element of its chateau setting’s florid production design, and baffled by its deliberately disorienting puzzle-picture narrative, so willfully inscrutable that its three main characters don’t even have names. You have to trouble yourself to read Alain Robbe-Grillet’s screenplay in order to glean that they’re called A, X, and M, as if to emphasize that they’re variables in some erotic algorithm.

Unlike the testimonials to the politique des auteurs, all the rage with the Cahiers du Cinéma crowd, Last Year at Marienbad draws its power from a different engine, the disparate and ultimately divergent sensibilities of its director and screenwriter.

Pedro Pascal is currently one of the most in-demand actors in the industry. He has starred in several successful projects including big franchises that have catapulted his career to great heights. Along with his role as Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones, his performances in The Last of Us and The Mandalorian garnered rave reviews from fans and critics.

Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin in The Mandalorian | Lucasfilm

The actor starred alongside Gina Carano in the latter who played Cara Dune. The actress was infamously fired from the show due to some of her political views that were deemed inappropriate. As her battle against Disney continues, various individuals related to the show, including Pascal, could testify in court.

Gina Carano Wants Pedro Pascal And Other Witnesses To Testify In Court Over Her Mandalorian Firing

Gina Carano played Cara Dune in the first two seasons of The Mandalorian | Lucasfilm

In 2021, Gina...

A slew of Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner collectibles sold at auction over the weekend, including a pink Pucci dress worn by the actress and a smoking jacket and slippers worn by the Playboy founder.

The three-day auction, which ended Saturday, saw the long-sleeved silk jersey Pucci dress go to the winning bidder for $325,000, which set a record for a Pucci dress sold at auction, according to organizer Julien’s Auctions.

Also sold were the one-space mausoleum crypt at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary in Los Angeles, located near the final side-by-side resting places of Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe, for $195,000; a grave marker from Monroe’s crypt, for $88,900 (constant touching from fans led to minor wear, causing it to be replaced); Hefner’s burgundy smoking jacket, slippers, pajamas and tobacco pipe ensemble ($13,000); and a circular mansion bed custom-made for Hefner as a backup to his primary bed...

The director of “Queen Cleopatra” is addressing critics.

Last week, Netflix released the trailer for the new drama-documentary series about the iconic Queen of Egypt and drew intense backlash for casting a Black actress as Cleopatra. The series is executive produced and narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith.

Read More: Gal Gadot Defends ‘Cleopatra’ Casting Against ‘Whitewashing’ Backlash

Writing for Variety, director Tina Gharavi, who is Iranian, directly took on criticisms, recalling, “I remember as a kid seeing Elizabeth Taylor play Cleopatra. I was captivated, but even then, I felt the image was not right. Was her skin really that white?”

It is not known exactly what the real Cleopatra looked like, and heritage has long been a source of debate, often attributed to Macedonian Greeks, but with some claiming Persian and other backgrounds.

“Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress,...

Last summer, I was living in Venice Beach and had decided, due to a friend’s persistence, to visit a fortune teller. Me, ever the sceptic but game for a laugh, agreed to go along. What the fortune teller said made me roll my eyes: “I am not saying you are Cleopatra but somehow you share her story and are connected.”

Less than a month later, I got a call from a production company making Jada Pinkett Smith’s “African Queens” and was subsequently hired to direct four episodes of a drama-documentary on the life of the controversial leader. The joke was on me.

I remember as a kid seeing Elizabeth Taylor play Cleopatra. I was captivated, but even then, I felt the image was not right. Was her skin really that white? With this new production, could I find the answers about Cleopatra’s heritage and release her from...

You’ve never seen Hollywood quite like the way it’s portrayed in “Babylon,” the new film from Oscar-winning “La La Land” and “First Man” filmmaker Damien Chazelle. This three-hour epic takes place in the late 1920s and opens in a debauchery-filled Hollywood in the heyday of silent films, as it then chronicles a trio of characters through the transition to talkies. Chazelle assembled an all-star cast for the film, including Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt, and holds nothing back in this R-rated drama that has drawn more than a few comparisons to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights.”

So if “Babylon” is the film you’re looking to watch over the holiday break, you may be wondering how and where to see it. All your questions answered below.

Also Read:

Watch How ‘Babylon’ Production Designer Florencia Martin Re-Created Old Hollywood in the Desert (Exclusive Video) When Did “Babylon” Come Out?...

Stars: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro | Written by Ti West, Mia Goth | Directed by Ti West

Mia Goth reprises her role as Pearl in Ti West’s prequel to this year’s X, co-written with Goth while on lockdown during production, and shot on the same New Zealand locations. Combining a fabulous visual aesthetic with a delightfully unhinged central performance and some spectacular gore moments, this is an unabashed genre treat that’s full of surprises.

Pearl takes place in 1918, some 60 years before the events of X, in which the members of a porn shoot at a remote farmhouse were menaced by a horny old lady. As the rest of the world deals with the tail end of WWI and the global outbreak of Spanish Flu, 20-something Pearl (Goth) is forced to work on her family farm, where her duties include looking after her severely...

The American movie business started in New Jersey.

Between 1893 and 1896 in West Orange, N.J., Thomas Edison was developing the early motion picture tech, inventing new ways to capture images in motion, and the result is that “you have the only fully operational motion picture studio facility in the world,” says Richard Koszarski, professor emeritus of English and cinema studies at Rutgers University, and expert in the early motion picture industry in New York and New Jersey.

His latest book on film history is “Keep ’Em in the East: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance.”

While companies were setting up production operations and offices in New York City, including Edison, “it’s very difficult to film in New York City. In those days, they didn’t have very good artificial lights,” says Koszarski. Making films required enormous skylights and other sources of natural light.

But over in Fort Lee,...

Spyros Skouras was a practical man with a dream. As a finance-minded studio executive who made his bones in the industry as a frugal theater owner during the Depression, Skouras was looking for a safe bet when he asked producer Walter Wanger to remake the story of Cleopatra on a budget of $2 million. It didn’t work out that way.

Nearly 60 years after Elizabeth Taylor rode into Rome on a sphinx, the gaudy, extravagant, and moribund epic that is Hollywood’s most iconic Cleopatra remains the stuff of legend—and perhaps hellish nightmares for studio execs with greenlighting powers. What was intended to be a by-the-numbers remake of a 1917 film, shot at cost on Fox’s already vanishing backlot, instead became the most expensive international production of its age: a movie with two Alexandrias, two directors, two Antonys and two Caesars, and one highly demanding Cleopatra. Indeed, Taylor was the...

Who killed the sex symbol?

It's no mystery that in the era of #MeToo, the rules of combat have changed on the sexual battlefield. Women will no longer tolerate condescending or degrading treatment that was once business as usual in the workplace or dating arena. But in this long overdue push-back against sexual coercion and exploitation, has something valuable been lost?

The sex symbol was arguably Hollywood's most brilliant artifact, propelling the young movie industry to world impact from the moment that Theda Bara flashed her coiled-snake brassiere in Cleopatra (1917). Sex was great box office. With its impudent populism,...

Who killed the sex symbol?

It's no mystery that in the era of #MeToo, the rules of combat have changed on the sexual battlefield. Women will no longer tolerate condescending or degrading treatment that was once business as usual in the workplace or dating arena. But in this long overdue push-back against sexual coercion and exploitation, has something valuable been lost?

The sex symbol was arguably Hollywood's most brilliant artifact, propelling the young movie industry to world impact from the moment that Theda Bara flashed her coiled-snake brassiere in Cleopatra (1917). Sex was great box office. With its impudent populism,...

Chicago – If the French New Wave cinema movement (1958 to late 1960s) had a mother, it was undoubtably Agnés Varda. The versatile filmmaker began her film journey shortly before the movement began, and her influence resonated throughout that era and within her career. Varda died at the age of 90 on March 29th, 2019.

French Filmmaker Agnés Varda in Chicago, October of 2015

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Arlette “Agnés” Varda was born in Brussels, Belgium, and through her French mother applied to the Sorbonne (University of Paris) shortly after World War II, gaining a degree in literature and psychology. Continuing her education in art history, she turned to photography before becoming a voice in Left Bank Cinema and the French New Wave. Her debut film was 1954’s “La Pointe Courte,” which she built from still images of her photographs.

Her career built from there, as her follow feature...

8 random things that happened on this day in history (Aug 10th)...

1918 Today is the centennial of Salome, one of Theda Bara's key pictures. Sadly, the film is lost as are so many silents of historic significance and almost all of Theda's films. She was nicknamed 'The Vamp' setting an archetype that would stay with the cinema forever basically. Theda was in her 40s by the time sound killed off the silents; she never even attemped a talkie.

1933 Hedy Lamarr marries her first husband (of six!) when she is just 19 years old. If you haven't yet watched Bombshell the Hedy Lamarr story on Netflix I urge you to do so. She's fascinating. Currently both Diane Kruger and Gal Gadot are planning to play her in different biographical projects for film and television. 

1950 Sunset Boulevard, only one of the all time greatest films, has its world premiere at Radio City Musical Hall...

10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history

1775 The Us Postal System is created. Are there any great movies about mailmen? I'm drawing a blank. Do not say The Postman.

The first movie actress to get a postage stamp would be Ethel Barrymore but she had to share it with her brothers Lionel and John! Grace Kelly was (I believe) the first movie star to get a solo postage stamp. Since that time (in 1993) we've had: Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Zasu Pitts, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Hattie McDaniel, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, and Shirley Temple. Who is next? Any guesses?

More after the jump including Mr Julie Andrews, Pee Wee Herman, and Cate Blanchett...

'The Pink Panther' with Peter Sellers: Blake Edwards' 1963 comedy hit and its many sequels revolve around one of the most iconic film characters of the 20th century: clueless, thick-accented Inspector Clouseau – in some quarters surely deemed politically incorrect, or 'insensitive,' despite the lack of brown face make-up à la Sellers' clueless Indian guest in Edwards' 'The Party.' 'The Pink Panther' movies [1] There were a total of eight big-screen Pink Panther movies co-written and directed by Blake Edwards, most of them starring Peter Sellers – even after his death in 1980. Edwards was also one of the producers of every (direct) Pink Panther sequel, from A Shot in the Dark to Curse of the Pink Panther. Despite its iconic lead character, the last three movies in the Pink Panther franchise were box office bombs. Two of these, The Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, were co-written by Edwards' son,...

One thing that’s easy for podcast fans to forget: There are people who don’t listen to podcasts. For the newly initiated, it’s hard to figure out where to look first. No fear: we’ve gathered a few of our favorite film-related shows. Some are hundreds of episodes deep into their runs, so we’ve also provided some good places to start. Enjoy.

Read More: 13 Must-Listen Podcast Episodes for March 2017

Black List Table Reads

Scripted podcasts come in all kinds; sci-fi, alternate history, period piece, and superhero shows only beginning to crack the list. Franklin Leonard and the team behind the Black List Table Reads have found a way to combine the appeal of those shows with the script-based hook of the site that gives the show its name. Producing feature-length scripts with an impressive roster of actors, the show has evolved to become something more than...

This month, Cinelinx is taking you on a trip back through time. Join us as we examine how movies have changed over the last 100 years. To begin, we are going all the way back to 1917.

1917 was a year of tension and conflict. Europe was war-torn, having been engaged in World War I for 3 years with no hope for peace on the horizon. Several acts by Germany including resuming submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram would cause the United States to reluctantly enter the war and bolster the Allied forces. On the homefront, numerous scientific advances around the turn of the century were proliferating their way through society to modernize cities and improve industrial efficiencies. However, the transition to having more machines and electricity in the workplace was not a smooth one. Industrial accidents were common, working conditions were terrifying, and child labor was the norm. Thus, free time was not...

Women… Do you look like this? Men… Do you look like this?

I’ll admit, I am deathly afraid I haven’t pissed enough people off this past year and I’m rapidly running out of time. But, damn, people keep on pissing me off and, like every jamoke who has a keyboard and an Internet connection, vengeance is mine.

As Geek Culture enthusiasts, there are lots and lots of incredibly important issues for us to discuss. Fan-women get dumped on viciously for committing the crime of voicing their opinions. Women gamers often are treated like they are Typhoid Mary. Women cosplayers often are regarded as fair game for convention-attending degenerates. And there’s that bit about only having to pay women 77 cents on the dollar, and that’s something that affects absolutely every aspect of a woman’s daily life. As human beings, intelligent women continue to be marginalized as ditzy babes.

The King Baggot Tribute will take place Wednesday September 28th at 7pm at Lee Auditorium inside the Missouri History Museum (Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri). The 1913 silent film Ivanhoe will be accompanied by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra and there will be a 40-minute illustrated lecture on the life and career of King Baggot by We Are Movie Geeks’ Tom Stockman. A Facebook invite for the event can be found Here

Okay, technically I didn’t ‘discover’ it. I actually bought it off eBay and I guess it wasn’t really lost…but I thought it was so that counts for something!

King Baggot was a silent film star from St. Louis. He was a major player in the early days of silent film, known as the first ‘King of the Movies’ He was the first actor to have his name above a movie...

Mariann Lewinsky curates several strands at Bologna's festival of restored or recovered films, Il Cinema Ritrovato: this year, she commemorated the centenary birth of the Dada movement and Krazy Kat with her Krazy Serial, in which surviving episodes of incomplete serials were jammed together with shorts and newsreels. The finest moment was perhaps when one serial ended and another, Abel Gance's The Poison Gases, began, but with it's opening title long lost, so that the caption "A few minutes later" seemed to join to wholly unconnected narratives.The preceding serial was Jacques Feyder's bizarre spoof, The Clutching Foot (Le pied qui étreint), which I realized from pervious excursions to Bologna was a parody not just of serials in general but of 1914's The Exploits of Elaine in particular, in which Pearl White was regularly menaced by a secret society led by the hooded and spasm-wracked mastermind The Clutching Hand.

'L'Inhumaine': Marcel L'Herbier silent classic stars Jaque Catelain and Georgette Leblanc. Marcel L'Herbier silent 'L'Inhumaine': 'Intense sensory integration of sight' For me, the real jewel in the crown of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's “A Day of Silents,” held on Dec. 5, '15, at the Castro Theatre, was Marcel L'Herbier's The Inhuman Woman / L'Inhumaine (1924). The screening of this mix of desire and seduction with science fiction turned out to be an intense sensory integration of sight and sound. First, the sight. I had not seen any other films directed by L'Herbier (e.g., L'Argent, La Comédie du bonheur), so L'Inhumaine, with its spectacular visuals, came as a big surprise to me. For instance, the film features a stand-out scene of a car racing down a wooded highway from the driver's point of view, while in a party sequence I really liked the effect of the serving staff wearing sardonic face masks,...

Nooooo. I almost forgot to share the National Film Registries new titles. Each year they add 25 pictures  that are deemed historically, culturally or aesthetically important. Each year I suggest that we should watch all the titles together. Well, the ones we can find at least. Perhaps we'll actually do that for 2016 -- you never know! Getting a spot on the National Film Registry is more symbolic than active. It does not guarantee preservation or restorations but it does suggest that these films should all be preserved and/or restored.

The 2015 additions are:

 

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894) - watch it now. it's six seconds long... the earliest surviving copyrighted film Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906) -watch it now. (7 minutes) from a short Winsor McCay comic strip A Fool There Was (1915) -watch it now. (66 minutes) Theda Bara tempts a married man! It's always the woman's fault, don't you know  Humoresque...

Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 675 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2015 list, which includes classics such as Douglas Sirk‘s melodrama Imitation of Life, Hal Ashby‘s Being There, and John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds. Perhaps the most popular picks, The Shawshank Redemption, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and L.A. Confidential were also added. Check out the full list below.

Being There (1979)

Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer’s persona,...

Kitty Gordon: Actress in silent movies and on the musical comedy stage. Rediscovering a long-forgotten silent film star: Kitty Gordon It seems almost unthinkable that there are still silent stars who have not been resurrected, their lives and films subject to detailed, if not always reliable, examination. Yet I am reminded by Michael Levenston, a Canadian who has compiled what is best described as a “scrapbook” of her life and career, that there is one such individual – and not just a “name” in silent films, but also from 1901 onwards famed as a singer/actress in musical comedy and on the vaudeville stage in both her native England and the United States. And she is Kitty Gordon (1878-1974). 'The Enchantress' and her $50,000 backside Kitty Gordon was a talented lady, so much so that Victor Herbert wrote the 1911 operetta The Enchantress for her; one who also had a “gimmick,” in that...

Previous | Image 1 of 15 | NextArtist and filmmaker Agnés Varda

Chicago – With the 51st Chicago International Film Festival now history, photographer Joe Arce of HollywoodChicago.com has collected his portrait highlights. Opening Night – October 15th, 2015 – was a Red-Carpet Extravaganza, with many notable personalities of the Festival making their way through the gauntlet of press and photographers. HollywoodChicago.com was also there, to collect some voices behind the images.

Filmmaker AGNÉS Varda

Agnés Varda is a living legend, an influencer on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s (“Cléo from 5 to 7”) and a social and feminist commentator through her film, photography and art installation.

HollywoodChicago.com: Where does the origin of film as an art form reside in your mind and perspective?

Agnés Varda: Look around you, it is a feast of cinema here. [Pointing to the Chicago International Film Festival logo] I would like to go back there and meet again the eyes of Theda Bara,...

'Sorrell and Son' with H.B. Warner and Alice Joyce. 'Sorrell and Son' 1927 movie: Long thought lost, surprisingly effective father-love melodrama stars a superlative H.B. Warner Partially shot on location in England and produced independently by director Herbert Brenon at Joseph M. Schenck's United Artists, the 1927 Sorrell and Son is a skillful melodrama about paternal devotion in the face of both personal and social adversity. This long-thought-lost version of Warwick Deeping's 1925 bestseller benefits greatly from the veteran Brenon's assured direction, deservedly shortlisted in the first year of the Academy Awards.* Crucial to the film's effectiveness, however, is the portrayal of its central character, a war-scarred Englishman who sacrifices it all for the happiness of his son. Luckily, the London-born H.B. Warner, best remembered for playing Jesus Christ in another 1927 release, Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings, is the embodiment of honesty, selflessness, and devotion. Less is...

'Sunset Blvd.': Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond. The Charles Brackett Diaries: Gay Rumors quashed, troubled Billy Wilder partnership discussed in Q&A with Anthony Slide See previous post: “Charles Brackett Diaries: Politics and Gossip During the Studio Era.” First of all, how did you become involved in this Charles Brackett project? And what did your editorial job entail? I discovered the diaries about six years ago when I was asked by Brackett's grandson, Jim Moore, to place a financial value on them during the process of his donating them to the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It was clear to me that these diaries had not only considerable financial worth, but also, and perhaps more importantly, they were primary resources in the study of Hollywood history. Happily, Charles Brackett's family (who own the copyright) gave permission for me to edit the diaries,...

Charles Brackett ca. 1945: Hollywood diarist and Billy Wilder's co-screenwriter (1936–1949) and producer (1945–1949). Q&A with 'Charles Brackett Diaries' editor Anthony Slide: Billy Wilder's screenwriter-producer partner in his own words Six-time Academy Award winner Billy Wilder is a film legend. He is renowned for classics such as The Major and the Minor, Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment. The fact that Wilder was not the sole creator of these movies is all but irrelevant to graduates from the Auteur School of Film History. Wilder directed, co-wrote, and at times produced his films. That should suffice. For auteurists, perhaps. But not for those interested in the whole story. That's one key reason why the Charles Brackett diaries are such a great read. Through Brackett's vantage point, they offer a welcome – and unique – glimpse into the collaborative efforts that resulted in...

Above: three-sheet poster for The She-Devil (1918).Theda Bara, cinema’s first bona fide sex symbol, was born 130 years ago this week. Barely remembered today, she was once one of the great stars of the silent era (only Chaplin and Pickford were bigger). She made over 40 films, most of them, astonishingly, in the space of five years—between 1915 and 1919—but, thanks to a fire at Fox Studios in 1937, only a handful can be seen today. She never made a talkie, though she lived long into the sound era. But in her heyday she was a media sensation, a Kardashian avant la lettre.Born Theodosia Burr Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 29, 1885, Bara was a New York theater actress who wasn’t discovered by the movies until she was 30. The film that, quite literally, made her name—and that name was “The Vamp”—was A Fool There Was in 1915.Adapted from a...

'Cat People' 1942 actress Simone Simon Remembered: Starred in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic (photo: Simone Simon in 'Cat People') Pert, pouty, pretty Simone Simon is best remembered for her starring roles in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie Cat People (1942) and in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938). Long before Brigitte Bardot, Mamie Van Doren, Ann-Margret, and (for a few years) Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm in a film career that spanned a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both sides of the Atlantic – at times, with fatal results. During that period, Simon was featured in nearly 40 movies in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Hollywood. Besides Jean Renoir, in her native country she worked for the likes of Jacqueline Audry...

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture today:   Now that they're both part of Disney, Iron Man and Boba Fett may as well be mashed up into one. This poster is by Marco D'Alfonso (via Live for Films).   Here's what happens when Chewbacca, Groot and Hodor from Game of Thrones get together to have a chat (via Topless Robot):   Given that Frozen is basically a superheroine movie, here's an appropriate look at what a comic book starring Elsa and Anna would look like (via Geek Tyrant):   Today is the 100th anniversay of the release of the film A Fool There Was, in which Theda Bara originated the femme fatale character type known as a "vamp." Watch the...

Read More...

King The Detective And The Smugglers will screen at Super-8 Mummy Movie Madness Tuesday January 6th at The Way Out Club

Okay, technically I didn’t ‘discover’ it. I actually bought it off eBay and I guess it wasn’t really lost…but I thought it was! So that counts for something!

Just when I thought I’d put this King Baggot project to bed… they pull me back in! King Baggot was a silent film star from St. Louis. He was a major player in the early days of silent film, known as the first ‘King of the Movies’ He was the first actor to have his name above a movie’s title and the first actor that people went to see a movie because a certain actor was in it. Between 1909 and 1916, he was known as “The Most Photographed Man in the World” and “The Man Whose Face...

Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...

Claudette Colbert movies on Turner Classic Movies: From ‘The Smiling Lieutenant’ to TCM premiere ‘Skylark’ (photo: Claudette Colbert and Maurice Chevalier in ‘The Smiling Lieutenant’) Claudette Colbert, the studio era’s perky, independent-minded — and French-born — "all-American" girlfriend (and later all-American wife and mother), is Turner Classic Movies’ star of the day today, August 18, 2014, as TCM continues with its "Summer Under the Stars" film series. Colbert, a surprise Best Actress Academy Award winner for Frank Capra’s 1934 comedy It Happened One Night, was one Paramount’s biggest box office draws for more than decade and Hollywood’s top-paid female star of 1938, with reported earnings of $426,944 — or about $7.21 million in 2014 dollars. (See also: TCM’s Claudette Colbert day in 2011.) Right now, TCM is showing Ernst Lubitsch’s light (but ultimately bittersweet) romantic comedy-musical The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), a Best Picture Academy Award nominee starring Maurice Chevalier as a French-accented Central European lieutenant in...

Here’s a bit of justified promotion for an event you will absolutely want to see: fashion historian, DJ for Jazz FM, author and Clothes on Film contributor, Amber Jane Butchart, teams up with your very own editor, Christopher Laverty, for an exquisite evening entitled Puttin’ on the Glitz on 28th March in London.

Taking place at the sumptuous, gorgeous, you-really-should-have-been-there-by-now British Library, Amber and Christopher present two separate talks pertaining to the 1920/30’s Jazz Era before coming together to answer questions from the audience. After that, there will be cocktails and period frivolities courtesy of The Vintage Mafia. It all starts at 6.30 pm and finishes around 10.30, so plenty of time to be entertained, educated, and tipsy.

The beautiful British Library is about five minutes walk from King’s Cross and St. Pancras International train stations. Full details on the library website.

The following press release is pulled directly from the British Library website,...

Today's Useless But Fun Oscar Trivia Numbers Chain!

• 17 years ago The English Patient (1996) won 9 Oscars, driving Julia Louis-Dreyfus Elaine to the brink of madness "quit telling your stupid story about the desert and just die already. die!!!" and making it one of the seven most-Oscared films of all time. (Only Titanic and Return of the King have since beat it). Can Gravity, which has 10 nominations but will definitely lose Best Actress, tie The Patient's record -- it would have to win All of its other nominations -- or do you foresee a "spread the wealth" year?

• Sal Mineo is the only 17 year-old of either gender ever nominated for an Oscar. That nomination came for his role as "Plato" in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Mineo also holds the record of youngest (male) actor to two nominations as he was nominated for Exodus (1960) by the age of 22. He would have turned 75 this...

The history of errant women has been a mainstay of cinema from its earliest days. There was Theda Bara as the mysterious intoxicating temptress who led men to their ruin in A Fool There Was. However, femmes fatales really came into their own as double crossing dames in the 1940s, when the genre of film noir was in ascendancy. Audiences were scandalised by these cold hearted, sometimes murderous women and entranced as they watched big star names such as Barbara Stanwyck (in Double Indemnity) misbehave abominably.

The archetype of the femme fatale is still very much used in cinema in modern times for it is an archetype that will always fascinate the film fan’s imagination. Exploring female bad behaviour is an endlessly interesting and entertaining topic for film makers to tackle. What is particularly captivating about femme fatale films is the extent to which they receive their comeuppance or get away with their crimes.

Ramon Novarro is Ben-Hur: The Naked and Famous in first big-budget Hollywood movie saved by the international market (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro: Silent Movie Star.") Turner Classic Movies’ Ramon Novarro Day continues with The Son-Daughter (1933), on TCM right now. Both Novarro and Helen Hayes play Chinese characters in San Francisco’s Chinatown — in the sort of story that had worked back in 1919, when D.W. Griffith made Broken Blossoms with Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess. By 1933, however, the drab-looking, slow-moving The Son-Daughter felt all wrong. (Photo: Naked Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur.) Directed by the renowned Clarence Brown (who guided Greta Garbo in some of her biggest hits), The Son-Daughter turned out to be a well-intentioned mess, eventually bombing at the box office. And that goes to show that Louis B. Mayer and/or Irving G. Thalberg didn’t always know what the hell they were doing with their stars and properties.

What’s happening in movie costume this week.

Burton and Taylor

‘She had such a presence; apparently you always knew she was in the room’, costume designer Susannah Buxton on Elizabeth Taylor.

X-Men: First Class

Part 1: womenswear. More costume brilliance from Gavia Baker.

Cleopatra

Penny Dreadful Vintage looks at three cinematic incarnations of Cleopatra: Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh – with Elizabeth’s Taylor still to come.

Scandal

Emma Fraser analyses colour (or lack of it) on the character of Olivia Pope.

Ballet Russes

Stunning article by Tyranny of Style delving deep into the influential Paris dance company. Just check out those Prince Igor (1909) costumes! Wow.

Shawna Trpcic

Salon interview the great Shawna Trpcic about costuming Joss Whedon’s world. Had to chuckle at their question about ‘costuming clues’ in The Cabin in the Woods. Would a link back to This Article have killed you guys?

© 2013, Christopher Laverty.

This week, Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” features a group of young people, mostly female, who break into the homes of the rich and famous to steal their stuff, mostly for kicks. You can read our full review here, and while of course it’s a movie about celebrity obsession and the ennui of youthful privilege, it can also, in its central female characters and group dynamic, be read as an evolution of a subgenre with a decades-long spotty history: the bad girl gang movie. As much of a fascination as cinema may have always had with the “bad girl” (the temptress, the prostitute, the adulteress, the vamp, the tramp, the scarlet woman, the moll, and lord knows how many other Theda Bara/Louise Brooks-style archetypes we could quote), it wasn’t until the emergence of teen culture in the 1950s that we saw this new offshoot really grow it wings.

Everybody's favorite movie decade: Which ones are the best movies released in the 20th century's second decade? Best Film (Pictured above) Broken Blossoms: Barthelmess and Gish star as ill-fated lovers in D.W. Griffith’s romantic melodrama featuring interethnic love. Check These Out (Pictured below) Cabiria: is considered one of the major landmarks in motion picture history, having inspired the scope and visual grandeur of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Also of note, Pastrone's epic of ancient Rome introduced Maciste, a bulky hero who would be featured in countless movies in the ensuing decades. Best Actor (Pictured below) In the tragic The Italian, George Beban plays an Italian immigrant recently arrived in the United States (Click below for film review). Unfortunately, his American dream quickly becomes a horrendous nightmare of poverty and despair. Best Actress (Pictured below) The movies' super-vamp Theda Bara in A Fool There Was: A little...

Review by Sam Moffitt

I love silent films! I have to say that from the beginning I have been fascinated with the silent years of film making. When I was growing up in the St. Louis area in the sixties there was a syndicated show called Who’s The Funnyman? Hosted by Cliff Norton this was a kid’s show which presented silent slapstick comedies, Hal Roach, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd, The Keystone Cops. These were short versions, cut to fit a Saturday morning time slot and with voice over by Mr. Norton. He would always introduce the films as a record of his family members, cousins, uncles, brothers, sisters, and describe the predicaments we could see being acted out on camera.

How I loved that show! It made me want to see the complete films, I could tell they had been edited just as Channel...

(L-r) Michael York, Liza Minelli, Joel Grey, Robert Osborne and Marisa Berenson attend the 

"Cabaret" 40th Anniversary New York Screening at Ziegfeld Theatre on January 31, 2013. 

(Photo by Roger Kisby/Getty Images)

Last Thursday I was planning on spending a quiet evening at home curled up with some reading or knitting, or possibly sweeping my kitchen. After all, the arctic temperatures and gale force winds in NYC were not exactly enticement to leave one's home or pajamas. But when I got the invite to attend the 40th(-ish) anniversary screening of Cabaret at the historic Ziegfield Theater and to chat with some of its legendary cast on the red carpet, I put down the knitting, the book And the broom - for life is, after all these years, still a cabaret.

If anything was reason enough for me to freeze my tail feathers off on a Thursday night, it was the chance to meet Liza Minnelli,...

There's no such thing anymore as the "art" of the movie still, with images from movies now part and parcel of carefully orchestrated marketing or sales plans driving the films. They are, generally speaking, grist for the mill, and while the first look at an imminent blockbuster or secretive project can provide a temporary thrill, the sheer overwhelming pervasiveness and availability of images, all at the click of a button, means that enjoyment is a temporary thing. Movie stills aren't about the glamor of a production anymore, so much as placeholders until we can see the actual movie. And that's not to cast judgment on how things work -- after all, we're a movie blog and very much perpetrators of the cycle -- but how images from movies are used and how they are perceived, from inside the studio and out, has changed dramatically.

Flipping through the pages of Joel F.

The first time I saw him, he was striding toward me out of the burning Georgia sun, as helicopters landed behind him. His face was tanned a deep brown. He was wearing a combat helmet, an ammo belt, carrying a rifle, had a canteen on his hip, stood six feet four inches. He stuck out his hand and said, "John Wayne." That was not necessary.

Wayne died on June 11, 1979. Stomach cancer. "The Big C," he called it. He had lived for quite a while on one lung, and then the Big C came back. He was near death and he knew it when he walked out on stage at the 1979 Academy Awards to present Best Picture to "The Deer Hunter," a film he wouldn't have made. He looked frail, but he planted himself there and sounded like John Wayne.

John Wayne. When I was a kid, we said it as one word: Johnwayne.

Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, The King and I Deborah Kerr Pt.1: What Lies Beneath True, you most likely won’t find Deborah Kerr labeled a sex goddess anywhere, but that’s merely because her sexual allure, apart from the beach scene in From Here to Eternity, was hardly obvious. Unlike overgrown little girls such as Marilyn Monroe, Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Jayne Mansfield, or Brigitte Bardot, Kerr looked and acted like a mature woman even in her 20s. In other words, there was nothing kittenish about Deborah Kerr; she didn’t pout. Unlike Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Lizabeth Scott, or Susan Sarandon, Kerr’s seething sensuality had nothing to do with sultriness, come-hither looks, or bare body parts. Unlike Simone Simon, Jane Greer, the latter-day Barbara Stanwyck, and other (French or American) film noir dames, or Theda Bara and assorted film...

Romeo and Juliet: Hailee Steinfeld, Douglas Booth Starring Lol‘s Douglas Booth and True Grit‘s Hailee Steinfeld, a new version of Romeo and Juliet is currently being shopped around at the Cannes Film Festival. Partly financed by Austrian design house Swarovski, this latest adaptation of Shakespeare’s love story was written by Academy Award winner Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) and directed by Carlo Carlei. A Best New Director David di Donatello nominee for The Flight of the Innocent (1993), Carlei’s previous English-language foray, the Matthew Modine vehicle Fluke, was a major box-office flop in 1995. In recent years, Carlei has worked on Italian television; his most recent TV movie was a remake of Roberto Rossellini’s Il General della Rovere (2011), starring Pierfrancesco Favino in the old Vittorio De Sica role. According to the Los Angeles Times blog 24 Frames, producer Ileen Maisel wants “every teenager in the world to come see” Romeo and Juliet.

Los Angeles — It took a stray bit of dirt to scratch the perfection of "Cabaret," and painstaking effort to return it to cinematic glory.

The restored "Cabaret," minus damage that had prevented a high-definition version, earned the opening spot at the four-day TCM Classic Film Festival. Stars Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey were scheduled to attend Thursday's ceremony marking the musical's 40th anniversary.

Minnelli, whose turn as cabaret singer Sally Bowles captured a best actress Academy Award and cemented her young stardom, said making "Cabaret" was a joyful "secret," filmed in Munich and far away from meddling Los Angeles studio bosses.

Director Bob Fosse "got away with murder. We all did," Minnelli said in a recent phone call from New York. She's on a concert tour, "Confessions," based on her album of the same title.

"We'd take chances, and the studio would send notes like, `Too cloudy. It will break...

Intrigued by The Artist but don't know where to start exploring the silent film archives? Try these five classics, which lead to plenty more…

It doesn't take long for a novelty to be hailed as a trend. Internet film rental service Lovefilm reports that the buzz around The Artist has sparked a boom in curiosity about early cinema, with a 40% rise in the number of people streaming silent films on its site in the week leading up to the Oscars.

The top 10 most-streamed silents include a clutch of Buster Keaton's ingenious comedies, some heady Hollywood melodrama (A Fool There Was, starring Theda Bara, and The Son of the Sheikh, with Rudolph Valentino) and creepy Swedish horror The Phantom Carriage. There are only two films on the list that seem to bear any relation to Michel Hazanavicius's surprise hit: Frank Borzage's mournful romance Seventh Heaven (which inspired the...