It was great to see Kathryn Bigelow accepting an Oscar as the first female to win as Best Director, and it brought me a sigh of relief to see Jeff Bridges finally take home a prize that could have (and should have) been his many times over the last 35 years.  Though I was pulling for Meryl [...]

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On March 1st, Oscar-winning Englishman David Niven would have turned 100 years old.  (He died at 73 in 1983.)  Beloved for his charm, wit, and elegance, Niven had an impressively long movie career filled with lasting favorites:  WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939), A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946), THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947), AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS (1956), THE GUNS OF [...]

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Screen songbird Kathryn Grayson died last week at 88, further decreasing the number of stars who remain from the Golden Age of the MGM Musical.  Though she never became a main player in the studio’s celebrated Freed Unit (the maker of MGM’s greatest musicals), Grayson was one of the key stars of the less prestigious [...]

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February 27 marks what would have been the 100th birthday of screen actress Joan Bennett, who died at age 80 in 1990.  When she first caught attention, as a blonde and beautiful (but rather awkward) ingenue in major early talkies such as DISRAELI and BULLDOG DRUMMOND, both from 1929, she was best known as the daughter of [...]

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I have nothing good to say about the new SHERLOCK HOLMES, the box-office juggernaut.  Director Guy Ritchie shows a talent for loudness, and that’s all.  The movie is heavy on endless, tiring action scenes, and the overall impact is that of a period-piece James Bond rip-off.  The main plot feels like a warmed-over retread of THE DA VINCI [...]

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