Double Feature: The Big Lebowski and The Beach Bum
“Sometimes there’s a man — well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.” Thus the voiceover narration in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski […]
Tag Archives: musicals
Dawn by Electrician: The Constructed World of Guys and Dolls
In times like these, it may sound redundant — to say nothing of that old bugbear, “escapist” — to retreat to the heightened artifice of the studio-bound Hollywood musical. Globetrotting […]
Double Feature: Pickford vs. Temple
Eleanor Gates began writing novels just after the turn of the century, then turned to writing plays before starting a film production company in 1915. This same trajectory was taken […]
My Most Anticipated 2020 Movies
Scanning the horizon for next year’s crop of movies yields the usual mix of excitement and despair. Some things haven’t changed much; franchise sequels continue to suck most of the […]
Double Feature: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and La La Land
Among the current decade’s crop of movie neo-musicals, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land stands apart for tapping into traditions uniquely native to film. That is to say, it’s a song-and-dance extravaganza […]
Bye Bye Birdie — Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Here to Stay
Bye Bye Birdie, George Sidney’s candy-colored adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, arrived in theaters on the eve of pivotal moments in the histories of both the musical genre in […]
Uh … 3 ½? — The Gay Divorcee
The Introduction I had failed to see any of the Astaire-Rogers musicals until early 2014, at which time I was bulking up my working knowledge of 1930s cinema in general. […]
Oscar 2017
I wasn’t paying much attention this year, to be honest. Real life had a way of directing my gaze to what are admittedly more pressing concerns than who gets Oscar […]
Buñuel Retrospective: Letterboxd Reviews
Rolling along past the halfway mark on my chronological Buñuel viewing, I’ve almost reached his extended period of brilliance in the 60s and 70s. You can follow along on my […]
Uh … 3 ½? — Mulan
The Introduction I caught up with this late Disney Renaissance film at some point during the mid-2000s, though I had been very familiar with the two pop singles it spawned […]
Geppetto's Clocks 