"attack"

Few artists in the popular culture transcend the passage of time and continue to leave their mark long after their passing. Sinatra is one such performer — a true icon whose indelible renditions of the Great American Songbook you can still hear in films, on the radio, and on the digital playlists of fans, whose ages span from twelve to 102. 

With a Best Actor Oscar win for “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” and a hit TV series with “True Detective,” it can be said unequivocally that Matthew McConaughey’s millennium career slump is officially over. It was the nineties that made him, and the aughts that tested him.  Now in the teens, he comes into his own, this time (hopefully) for good. How well do you know this comeback kid?

Baby boomers who grew up watching a lot of television probably know Eddie Albert best as Oliver Douglas, the city lawyer turned farmer on “Green Acres.” But like many actors who star in a popular TV series, Albert became so closely identified with the role that it’s almost jarring to see him in a movie, or to realize he’d been one of Hollywood’s most reliable character actors.

On the 115th anniversary of his birth, I can safely claim that Alfred Hitchcock's name and work endure like no other director of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Today, many moviegoers in their teens and twenties may look blankly at you if you mention legendary helmers like John Ford, George Cukor, or Billy Wilder. Yet more than likely, they’ll know the name Hitchcock, and will have seen at least one of his pictures."Vertigo" (1958) the greatest movie of all time, toppling "Citizen Kane" (1941) from the number one spot. Not only do Hitchcock's movies stay evergreen, they seem to get better with age. (Much as I admire "Vertigo," my favorite Hitchcock outing is 1946's "Notorious" starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, the director's favorite leading man. See it if you haven’t.)

How long since you’ve seen “On the Waterfront”? I just had the privilege of screening it again on the big screen at The Bedford Playhouse, and after nearly seven decades this brilliant film holds up extraordinarily well. It is, in fact, a masterpiece- a term I rarely invoke.

Many of us have lost someone we love way too soon. After the initial shock and grief recede somewhat, the prevailing feeling (at least for me) is waste. Wasted opportunity. What more could that person have done with his or her life? I feel it too with famous names in the arts who left us way too soon.

Over the course of movie history, there have been the great actresses, women who light up the screen with charisma and character, like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Meryl Streep. There have also been women whose special gifts had more to do with the sexual allure they projected. Hey fellas, you must have noticed them, right? Brace yourselves then- here are our picks for the top twenty female cinematic sex symbols of all time. (Drum roll). 

If you ask a true movie buff to identify the most gifted director in the history of film comedy, believe it or not, you might not hear the names Woody Allen, Rob Reiner, or even Mel Brooks – funny as many of their films may be. Some aficionados might point to Chaplin, Keaton, or Preston Sturges. My own vote goes to Ernst Lubitsch.             His string of classic comedies, extending from the late ‘20s to the early ‘40s, were all characterized by what became known as “The Lubitsch Touch.” The key to his approach lay in trusting his audience’s intelligence, in their ability to infer and appreciate subtle comic nuance. Try to imagine that happening in today’s Hollywood.      Lubitsch relied more on suggestion than demonstration; he counted on his public to fill in the blanks, and of course, they did. He was known for his urbane characters, witty dialogue, and chic, exotic settings - catnip for Depression-era audiences desperate for escape and a heady dose of glamour.

The set-up is straight out of the “classic horror” pagebook: six highly fit, attractive women cave-diving in Appalachia, when something goes wrong. It wouldn’t be much of a movie if nothing did. (Although in my own cave-dives, nothing seems to happen. Sigh.)