Just when you start believing there’s no hope for anything daring and original coming out of Movieland, something gets released that surprises you. The Artist is one such movie — and what’s new about it is that it’s old. Or rather — it’s a silent film — not just a spoof à la Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie (1976), but a … More Details

A couple of months ago, I addressed the issue of younger people categorically refusing to watch black and white movies. Now I’m turning my attention to the avoidance of foreign language films, a pattern which unfortunately is not just found among our youth. Americans of all ages it seems are willing to forgo even outstanding movies that just happen to … More Details

It all started with the hardboiled detective fiction which exploded onto the American popular culture way back in the roaring twenties, and which portrayed America’s evolving urban landscape as vividly as the Western genre did the rural frontier. The originators of this type of fiction – notably James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler – got their start writing … More Details