There he is, in Act of Violence, Joe Parkson, limping, gat in hand, desperate and obsessed with blowing away clean-living Frank Enley, maybe even taking Enley’s wife out in the process. You can’t get that one out of your head, … Continue reading
How do you narrow down the mystery that is Orson Welles? Like trying to make a disc of the greatest sounds of the planet earth, really, it’s fairly impossible to do, yet fun to try. We can bask in the warm … Continue reading
That’s right: Monty Python. A television show? And why not? Is television not a part of the medium? And did not the madness of this troupe of six perhaps over-educated actors, writing their own material, change the face of television… … Continue reading
Yes, there’s Peter Lorre. Bernard Herrimann and Sam Peckinpah, Warren Oates. The great cinematographer Gregg Toland, Elisha Cook Jr., Thelma Ritter, John Huston and his dad, Walter. I can talk about the stars in Hollywood’s firmament, and the ones who … Continue reading
“Because there was once a god who roamed the earth named Warren Oates.” –Richard Linklater, on one of the sixteen reasons he loves Two-Lane Blacktop Rumor has it that there’s a documentary out there about Warren Oates, something that might … Continue reading
Who was Bernard Herrmann? Well, he was one of the top men in Hollywood for a very long time, a man whose work you’re probably familiar with. See, Herrmann was a composer. He did the scores for so many classic … Continue reading
“He hardly seems dead, just as it is difficult to believe he was ever clinically alive.” –David Thomson I don’t know about this Peter Lorre. Look at him there in The Maltese Falcon. A pretty man, supposedly drenched in some … Continue reading