As we kick off Oscar month tomorrow, we also honor the birthday of Clark Gable, who picked up a statuette at the seventh Academy Awards ceremony in 1935. He got it for a movie he did not want to do — a comedy called It Happened One Night – and though he would be nominated twice more, he would not … More Details

Imagine if in “It’s A Wonderful Life“, Mr. Potter had actually prevailed and George Bailey, a ruined man, had to relocate. That couldn’t happen in a Frank Capra movie, of course, but sadly it can and did happen in real life, at Carnegie Hall, and without that much fuss or fall-out. Photographer Josef Astor’s new documentary “Lost Bohemia”, which opens … More Details

When Christian Bale won his Oscar for “The Fighter” (2010), I was hardly surprised, but nor was I elated. And I had to ask myself why. This now hugely successful movie star is prodigiously talented, blazing with intensity and intelligence- not to mention killer good looks. Still- with apologies to all the self-proclaimed “Baleheads” out there, on an emotional level … More Details