By Alan Hurst Comedy on film is probably the hardest thing to pull off successfully on the big screen, and yet of all film genres it’s the one that struggles for critical respect. Good, even bad comedies enjoy much more success at the box-office than their more serious counterparts, yet come awards season it’s rare…
By John H. Foote No Academy, just me. In some cases there were six deserving performances, so I broke protocol and nominated all six. I have seen all the films for each given year, so without further ado, here are my nominees for Best Actor. My winner is marked with an *. Part II will…
By Alan Hurst Any list of the great film themes will include major achievements like Maurice Jarre’s sweeping score for Lawrence of Arabia (1962); Max Steiner’s romantic theme for Gone With the Wind (1939); John Williams’ adventure tinged work for Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977) and E.T The Extra-Terrestrial (1982); Elmer Bernstein’s panoramic The Magnificent…
By John H. Foote Some directors are just wizards with actors and bring out their finest work. Clint Eastwood believes that half his job as director is done when casting the film, and he might be right. As a former stage director, the greatest lesson I ever learned was when to be quiet, when to…
By John H. Foote America celebrated her 200th birthday in style at the movies, with another massive summer laden with blockbusters, the year’s best film was a spring release, and at years end came a film that forever altered the landscape of American film, taking us away from the darkness of films previously acclaimed. It…
By John H. Foote Though the major American networks were offering quality programs in the late nineties and through the 2000’s, the best on TV was being seen on HBO and Showtime, (The West Wing the exception) the two major cable networks available to subscribers. Free from those pesky network censors, the programs on the…
By John H. Foote From the beginning of film movies have explored sports in their narratives, and various forms of sport have provided some the most remarkable stories in film history. Be it biographical accounts or fictional works, audiences and critics have long thrilled to the stories set on the playing field, boxing ring, ice…
By John H. Foote Comedy is a genre all its own consisting of ten subgenres, and they evolve and expand as the years slip past. It is also, along with horror, the single most personal of the cinematic genres. I saw Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979) with my wife, howling as the film…
By Alan Hurst On a long commute home I often go to my “happy place” which usually involves movies and conjuring all sorts of lists – ten best of this, ten worst of that – you get the idea. Because we’re in a new decade, I’ve decided to pick one movie from each of the…
By John H. Foote Sequels achieved their greatest popularity through the seventies and eighties and beyond, though in fairness they have existed since the thirties and the Universal monster series. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) stands among the greatest sequels ever made, a wonderful film that preceded a series of increasingly bad films meant to…