News

Pop singer Lola Dee, who recorded for the Columbia and Mercury labels in the 1950s and toured around the world with the likes of Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante and Johnnie Ray, has died. She was 95.

Dee died Thursday of natural causes at a nursing facility in Hinsdale, Illinois, her publicist and CD producer, Alan Eichler, announced.

After signing a five-year contract with Chicago-based Mercury Records, a recently formed company that had Frankie Laine, Vic Damone and Patti Page on its roster, the singer, then billed as Lola Ameche, teamed with the Al Trace Orchestra for 1951’s “Pretty Eyed Baby,” which reached No. 21 on the Billboard charts.

She and Trace followed that year with another hit, “Hitsity Hotsity,” and she recorded more than two dozen songs over the next three years, including swinging versions of “Dance Me Loose,” “Old Man Mose,” “Down Yonder,” “Take Two to Tango” and “Don’t Let...

Hollywood’s postwar shift to social consciousness addressed familiar issues like bigotry and discrimination. On his way to making his gargantuan, serious epics, famed director George Stevens paused for this almost entirely forgotten contemplation of American anxiety in the business rat race, with a side order of alcoholism and potential adultery. Ray Milland is the troubled ad man who tries to help the drink-impaired actress, Joan Fontaine. Wife Teresa Wright waits patiently back home, but for how long? Is Stevens just dabbling in neorealistic doldrums, or did he feel the wave of dull existential despair as well? It’s one of his least-known films.

Something to Live For

All Region Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #199

952 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Street Date February 22, 2023 / Available from [Imprint] / au 34.95

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Ray Milland, Teresa Wright, Richard Derr, Douglas Dick, Harry Bellaver, Paul Valentine, King Donovan, Kasey Rogers, Douglas Spencer, Mari Blanchard.

Cinematography: George Barnes

Production Designer: Hal Pereira,...

It’s one of the year’s most awaited discs: the recent restored and remastered The War of the Worlds ’53 in a glorious 4K Ultra HD edition. A second Blu-ray disc of When Worlds Collide ’51 is too good to be called a bonus extra: this edition looks better than anything seen since original Technicolor prints. In one show we endure scurvy invaders from The Red Planet; in the other a rogue Astral Body threatens Earth with obliteration, necessitating escape on a space ship. Don’t bother checking online for tickets, the flight is sold out. CineSavant has the lowdown for collectors: how good does the new release look?

The War of the Worlds on 4K Ultra-hd

When Worlds Collide on Blu-ray

Digital HD Access for both titles.

Paramount Presents

George Pal Sci-fi Double Feature

Color / 1:37 Academy / Street Date September 27, 2022 / 167 minutes / Available from Amazon / 39.99

Starring: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, John Hoyt; Gene Barry,...

Update (3/22/2022): Machine Gun Kelly is blaming his fame and “false” news reports for his failure to answer a battery lawsuit filed against him by a Los Angeles parking lot attendant.

In a new filing obtained by Rolling Stone, the musician whose legal name is Colson Baker is asking a judge to set aside his recent default in the case and allow him to fight the civil claim that he pushed and threatened a disabled parking lot attendant outside a Studio City bank on Aug. 23.

“As a result of my profession,...

Norman S. Powell, the longtime CBS executive whose work as a producer of 24 and more brought him two Emmy nominations, died on June 16. He was 86.

Powell died of acute respiratory failure, a spokesperson for the family confirmed to Deadline.

Born as Norman Scott Barnes on November 2, 1934, Powell was the son of Oscar-nominated cinematographer George Barnes and actress Joan Blondell. Following his parents’ divorce in 1936, he was adopted by his mother’s second husband, actor Dick Powell.

Powell began his career in the 1950s as a production manager on TV Westerns including Wanted: Dead or Alive, Gunsmoke and The Rifleman.

His small-screen credits, as a producer, include CBS’ The New Dick Van Dyke Show; TNT’s The Lazarus Man; CBS’ Orleans; and AMC’s The Lot, as well as telefilms including 1978’s More Than Friends, starring Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall; 1995’s Convict Cowboy, starring Jon Voight; and 1995’s Black Fox,...

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

That haunting line opened Daphne Du Maurier’s treasured 1938 romantic thriller “Rebecca,” which was published in 1938. Lauded by critics, it quickly became a best-seller and has been in print ever since. And for good reason.

Du Maurier wraps readers around her little finger with this addictive tale of a timid young woman-her name is never mentioned-who meets and falls in love with an enigmatic wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, while in Monte Carlo working as a paid companion to the obnoxious American, Mrs. Van Hopper. Max and the young woman soon fall in love. They marry and he takes her home to his gothic estate Manderley run with an iron-fist by the tightly wound housekeeper Mrs. Danvers who is obsessed with the late, charismatic Rebecca, the late wife of Maxim.

Two years after its publication, “Gone with the Wind” producer David O. Selznick...

Rebecca, an important piece of psychological drama literature famously adapted by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film, is about to be reinvented as a Netflix feature starring Lily James and Armie Hammer.

Director Ben Wheatley updates this classic story of a young newlywed to an aristocrat, finding herself in the shadow of his recently-deceased first wife, with whom the estate’s housekeeper has a dangerous obsession. Now, the new movie has a release date firmly set, and you can check out its first official images (which you can view below).

Rebecca Netflix Release Date

Rebecca is set to hit Netflix on Wednesday, October 21.

Rebecca Netflix Story

“After a whirlwind romance in Monte Carlo with handsome widower Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), a newly married young woman (Lily James) arrives at Manderley, her new husband’s imposing family estate on a windswept English coast. Naive and inexperienced, she begins to settle into the trappings of her new life,...

“It neutralizes mesons somehow. They’re the atomic glue holding matter together!” For most of the 1950s George Pal’s Martian invasion spectacle reigned as the top Sci-fi spectacle about an alien invasion. All the money went into the visuals, beautifully turned out by Byron Haskin and Gordon Jennings. Paramount’s much-awaited full restoration job does the picture justice, even if fussy fans will continue to argue the ‘what about the wires?’ battle. Even more impressive than the visuals is the film’s superb sound design, which still blows audiences away whether in mono or a new 5.1 remix. Criterion’s extras don’t critique the film as much as they tout the high-class restoration (and minor revisions).

The War of the Worlds

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1037

1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 85 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 7, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne.

Cinematography: George Barnes

Film Editor:...

One of America’s favorite holiday movies plays strangely today, and despite being one of the most popular pictures of its year, really should have disturbed people when it was new as well. Director Leo McCarey and his glowing stars Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman do remarkable work, and the show has its heart in the right place… but the values built into the story are painfully wrong-headed. We don’t expect ’40s films to adhere to today’s so-called enlightened PC values, but some of the attitudes in this one make us want to throw things at the screen. Taken from a beautifully remastered new restoration, Olive’s Signature Edition is flawless.

The Bells of St. Mary’s

Blu-ray

Olive Signature

1945 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 126 min. / Street Date November 26, 2019 / available through the Olive Signature website / 39.95

Starring: Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Travers, William Gargan, Ruth Donnelly, Joan Carroll, Martha Sleeper,...

This amazing Busby Berkeley extravaganza is the best choice to impress newbies to pre-Code musical madness: it is absolutely irresistible. James Cagney’s nervy, terminally excitable stage producer makes the tale of Chester Kent accessible to viewers otherwise allergic to musicals — he’s as electric here as he is in his gangster movies. Remastered in HD, the fantastic, kaleidoscopic visuals will wow anybody — we really expect Porky Pig to pop up and stutter, “N-n-n-o CGI, Folks!”

Footlight Parade

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1933 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 104 min. / Street Date July 16, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert.

Cinematography: George Barnes

Art Directors: Anton Grot, Jack Okey Film Editor: George Amy

Original Music: Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal Harry Warren, Al Dubin

Written by Manuel Seff, James Seymour

Produced by Robert Lord

Directed by Lloyd Bacon

Our...

Part two of our Joan Fontaine celebration. Here's Tim Brayton...

Joan Fontaine's reign at the top of the Hollywood pyramid was short and intense: three out of four movies made in three out of four years netted her Oscar nominations, with a win for the second, Suspicion. We come now to the film made immediately after this golden run: the second talkie adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 classic Jane Eyre, released in the United Kingdom at the very end of 1943, but held back from the U.S. until February, 1944.

By the time the film arrived at 20th Century Fox, it had already passed through the hands of super-producer David O. Selznick, who had assembled all of the main components in an apparent bid to replicate his Oscar-winning Rebecca. Fontaine appears once again as a delicate, innocent ingénue dropped into a rambling Gothic mansion where a bullying man falls in love with her,...

Happy September, guys! This month’s home entertainment releases are wasting no time, as Tuesday looks to be another stellar day of horror and sci-fi titles coming our way. For those of you excited for Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros. is putting out The Final Cut version of Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece in 4K Ultra HD, and Criterion is giving Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca their trademarked HD treatment with a stunning new release.

As far as new indie horror movies go, both A Dark Song and Raw come home this Tuesday and are well worth your time, and for those of you Winchester brothers fans out there, the 12th season of Supernatural is being released this week, too.

Other notable titles for September 5th include The Spell, The Atoning, The Basement, I Saw What You Did, and a 4K Ultra HD release of The Cabin in the Woods.

Blade Runner...

While the vast majority of our favorite films of last year have been treated with Blu-ray releases, one title near the top of the list we’ve been waiting the longest for is Kelly Reichardt‘s Certain Women. It looks like it’s been worth the wait as The Criterion Collection have unveiled their September releases and it’s leading the pack (with special features also an interview with the director and Todd Haynes!).

Also getting a release in September, is Michael Haneke‘s Isabelle Huppert-led The Piano Teacher and the recent documentary David Lynch: The Art Life (arriving perfectly-timed to the end of the new Twin Peaks). There’s also Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic psychodrama Rebecca and the concert film Festival, featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and many more.

Check out the high-resolution cover art and full details on the releases below, with more on Criterion’s site.

Five new movies are joining the Criterion Collection in September, two of which were released in the last year: Kelly Reichardt’s spare, moving “Certain Women” and the documentary “David Lynch: The Art Life.” Also getting the Criterion treatment are Michael Haneke’s “The Piancho Teacher,” starring Isabelle Huppert; “Rebecca,” Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novel and his first American production; and Murray Lerner’s documentary “Festival,” which features performances by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, among others.

It isn’t Criterion’s most exciting month, but there’s still much to look forward to. Details below, including Criterion’s own descriptions:

Read More: Criterion Collection Announces August 2017 Additions, Including Restored ‘Sid & Nancy’ and Mike Leigh’s ‘Meantime’

“Rebecca”

“Romance becomes psychodrama in Alfred Hitchcock’s elegantly crafted ‘Rebecca,’ his first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. A dreamlike adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, the film...

This past weekend, the American Society of Cinematographers awarded Greig Fraser for his contribution to Lion as last year’s greatest accomplishment in the field. Of course, his achievement was just a small sampling of the fantastic work from directors of photography, but it did give us a stronger hint at what may be the winner on Oscar night. Ahead of the ceremony, we have a new video compilation that honors all the past winners in the category at the Academy Awards

Created by Burger Fiction, it spans the stunning silent landmark Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans all the way up to the end of Emmanuel Lubezki‘s three-peat win for The Revenant. Aside from the advancements in color and aspect ration, it’s a thrill to see some of cinema’s most iconic shots side-by-side. However, the best way to experience the evolution of the craft is by...

The eighth annual New York City Popfest is underway as it continues to bring to light indie bands to people all over the city. Bands from all over the world are invited to join in on this four day event, from May 28th to May 31st.

The fest will prove to be a great hit as there are over 25 bands coming to perform at this year’s event. Bands from New York to California and as far as Spain and Japan are all signed on to come perform. Having such a large selection, it’s only fair we go into detail about each one.

New York City-based bands:

Beverly – Drew Citron and Frankie Rose came together to make their debut LP “Careers” in July 2014 on Kanine Records, and were later joined by Jamie Ingalls (of Chairlift), Caitlin Frame (Frame), and Scott Rosenthal (Class Actress/The Beets). With a band full of guitars,...

'The Letter' 1940, with Bette Davis 'The Letter' 1940 movie: Bette Davis superb in masterful studio era production Directed by William Wyler and adapted by Howard Koch from W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play, The Letter is one of the very best films made during the Golden Age of the Hollywood studios. Wyler's unsparing, tough-as-nails handling of the potentially melodramatic proceedings; Bette Davis' complex portrayal of a passionate woman who also happens to be a self-absorbed, calculating murderess; and Tony Gaudio's atmospheric black-and-white cinematography are only a few of the flawless elements found in this classic tale of deceit. 'The Letter': 'U' for 'Unfaithful' The Letter begins in the dark of night, as a series of gunshots are heard in a Malayan rubber plantation. Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) walks out the door of her house firing shots at (barely seen on camera) local playboy Jeff Hammond, who falls dead on the ground.

Force of Evil

Written by Abraham Polonsky and Ira Wolfert

Directed by Abraham Polonsky

U.S.A., 1948

Joe Morse (John Garfield) finds himself in a professionally precarious, if certainly lucrative, position. As one of New York’s top lawyers, he represents Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts), the city’s top dog in the racket numbers game. His plush office and impressive wealth are due to impressive commissions earned via Tucker, the latter whom, through Joe’s tireless efforts, has established himself as legitimately as possible. One of the smaller ‘banks’ that is soon to come under Tucker’s reign following the 4th of July rigged horse race is that belonging to Joe’s estranged brother, Leo (Thomas Gomez). The big race passes, leaving Manhattan’s smaller rackets broke, consequently forcing them to comply and join Tucker. Joe strives to sweeten the deal as much as possible for Leo, but differences of...

Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar as Best Director, but the first year he worked in Hollywood he made a pair of memorable films. Rebecca was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (including Best Director) and won two, for George Barnes’ cinematography and for Best Picture. The second release, which appeared in theaters just four months later, also earned a handful of nominations—including Best Picture—but isn’t cited as often as it should among the director’s finest work. Foreign Correspondent is one of my all-time favorites and it’s been given deluxe treatment in a terrific new Blu-ray/DVD release from The Criterion Collection. In a video essay called “Hollywood Propaganda and World War...

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Blu-ray Release Date: Nov. 12, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $Tba

Studio: Twilight Time

Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine star in the 1943 film version of the Charlotte Brontë classic.

This 1943 movie version of Charlotte Brontë’s passionate Victorian novel Jane Eyre is directed by Robert Stevenson (Old Yeller, Mary Poppins), written by Stevenson, John Houseman, and Aldous Huxley, and stars Joan Fontaine (Letter from an Unknown Woman) and Orson Welles (The Stranger).

Like the novel, the drama-romance details Jane’s dramatic journey from the brutality of a school for impoverished children, following as she goes out into the world, becomes a governess at the mysterious Thornfield Hall, and breaks taboos by falling in love with her mercurial master, the brooding Edward Rochester.

The film features stunning cinematography by George Barnes (Rebecca) and an outstanding score by the incomparable Bernard Herrmann (which can be heard on this Twilight Time release as an isolated track).

As...

Joan Fontaine today: One of the best actresses of the studio era has her ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day Joan Fontaine, one of the few surviving stars of the 1930s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, Tuesday, August 6, 2013. I’m posting this a little late in the game: TCM has already shown six Joan Fontaine movies, including the first-rate medieval adventure Ivanhoe and the curious marital drama The Bigamist, directed by and co-starring Ida Lupino, and written by Collier Young — husband of both Fontaine and Lupino (at different times). Anyhow, TCM has quite a few more Joan Fontaine movies in store. (Photo: Joan Fontaine publicity shot ca. 1950.) (TCM schedule: Joan Fontaine movies.) As far as I’m concerned, Joan Fontaine was one of the best actresses of the studio era. She didn’t star in nearly as many movies as sister Olivia de Havilland, perhaps because...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: May 28, 2013

Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Olive Films

Barbara Stanwyck and Wendell Corey get deceptive in The File on Thelma Jordon.

The 1950 film noir drama The File on Thelma Jordon is directed by noir veteran Robert Siodmak (The Dark Mirror).

In the film, Barbara Stanwyck (1953′s Titanic) is the titular Thelma Jordon, a woman who seduces the married Assistant District Attorney (Wendell Corey, Hell’s Half Acre) and pulls him into a web of theft and murder. When her aunt’s mansion is burglarized and the woman is murdered, Thelma calls the Assistant Da to help her cover up evidence that may incriminate her. When she emerges as the prime suspect, the infatuated Assistant Da tries to sabotages the prosecution.

Featuring gorgeous cinematography by George Barnes (Spellbound) and a alluring score by Victor Young (The Quiet Man), the movie makes its DVD and Blu-ray premiere with this release.

Last week Criterion released the Blu-ray edition of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront and as impressive as the film (and all it's accompanying accoutrement) is, I zeroed in on a film Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones continued to reference in their discussion of Waterfront, Abraham Polonsky's 1948 feature Force of Evil. Starring John Garfield and Thomas Gomez, the film centers on Joe Morse (Garfield), a lawyer who turns to the numbers racket to make his first million. Problem is, the plan he and his associates have in store is going to put Joe's brother, Leo (Gomez) out of business and perhaps worse. Leo is a small-time operator in the racket and Joe's plan to consolidate and put out of business these small timers is going to put a kink in the family relationship, even though there isn't much of a relationship to begin with. Scorsese and Jones' conversation turned...

Rebecca

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Written by Robert E. Sherwood

1940, USA

Another crucial film in the villain’s gallery (believe it or not there is a method to my madness) that haunts Hitchcock’s career is Rebecca, his first American film since his emigration in 1939, just as Europe was plunged into inferno and genocide. Based on the novel of Daphne du Maurier whom Hitchcock had previously adapted with Jamaica Inn the year before and would return to again with the avian carnage of The Birds a quarter of a century later Rebecca is a dark, sweeping, gothic romance of an innocent and slightly naive woman swept into the arms of high society and privilege, of dark secrets and forbidden desires locked in remote rooms and fragile hearts. Famously the film won the Academy Award for best picture and began a rather tortured working collaboration between Hitchcock and the prodigious American super-producer David O.

Michael Leader Nov 2, 2019

Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, had a career that spanned 50-plus films. We think we can narrow it down to the 10 best.

Whenever geeky film conversations turn to the topic of the greatest British directors, a few answers frequently crop up: Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Nicolas Roeg, and Michael Powell are just a handful of a list of potentials, but there is one man whose impact on film history outclasses almost all contenders: Alfred Hitchcock.

Born on the cusp of the 20th Century, Hitchcock came to define entire genres of cinema in a career that spanned over 50 years and over 50 films. His body of work - not to mention his rotund body itself - is both immense and iconic, full of tense thrillers, psycho-dramas, and adventure flicks that were not only wildly popular at the time, but inspired both critical re-evaluation and whole new generations of filmmakers in ensuing years.

Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion Joan Fontaine, who turned 94 last October 22, shines on Turner Classic Movies' tonight. TCM will be showing five Fontaine movies: Jane Eyre (1944), The Constant Nymph (1943), Born to Be Bad (1950), Suspicion (1941), and Ivanhoe (1952). I've yet to check out The Constant Nymph, which had been unavailable for decades until TCM presented it a few months ago. In the film, 26-year-old Fontaine plays a 14-year-old infatuated with a composer (Charles Boyer) married to her older cousin (Alexis Smith). Edmund Goulding directed. Enough members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have found Fontaine quite believable as a lovestruck teen, for The Constant Nymph earned her her third (and final) Best Actress nomination. Jane Eyre has been made and remade about a zillion times in the last century or so. Fontaine's version, directed by Robert Stevenson (later of Mary Poppins fame) and co-starring Orson Welles as Rochester,...

Ted Donaldson, Joan Blondell, Peggy Ann Garner, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Joan Blondell Q&A Pt.2: Joan Blondell-Dick Powell-June Allyson Triangle, Lost Raunchy Pre-Coder Convention City My favorite Joan Blondell performance is her Aunt Sissy in Elia Kazan's 20th Century-Fox drama A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). How did she get that role? What was it like for her to work with Kazan, Peggy Ann Garner, Dorothy McGuire, James Dunn? What did the film do for her career? And how in the world could she not have received an Academy Award nomination? (Especially considering that James Dunn won in the supporting category.) Did Fox push Dunn while ignoring Blondell? A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a beautiful movie, and certainly Aunt Sissy is one of Joan's best performances. According to the sources I use in the book, a Fox contract was delivered to her...

Joan Blondell: Q&A with Biographer Matthew Kennedy Pt.1 What did Joan Blondell have to say about the musicals she made for Busby Berkeley? What about Ruby Keeler, James Cagney, and her other fellow contract players? Did she get along with them? [Photo: Joan Blondell in Mervyn LeRoy's Gold Diggers of 1933.] Joan said, not surprisingly, that those musicals were tough. There was extra rehearsal needed for production numbers, and Berkeley was very demanding. But she always spoke well of her fellow contract players. Or at least most of them. She and Keeler were friendly, and they had a happy reunion in New York in the early 1970s when they were both appearing on Broadway. Cagney she adored and admired, and maybe fell in love with. But they were not romantic off screen, only on. She was particularly close to Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, and Glenda Farrell, her costar in several low-budget comedies at Warners. She and [MGM contract player] Judy Garland...

Joan Blondell. Those who have heard the name will most likely picture either a blowsy, older woman playing the worldwise but warm-hearted saloon owner in the late 1960s television series Here Come the Brides, or a lively, fast-talking, no-nonsense, and unconventionally sexy gold digger in numerous Pre-Code Warner Bros. comedies and musicals of the early 1930s. Matthew Kennedy's Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes (University Press of Mississippi, 2007) seeks to rectify that cultural memory lapse. Not that Blondell doesn't deserve to be remembered for Here Come the Brides or, say, Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Havana Widows, and Broadway Bad. It's just that her other work — from her immensely touching performance as a sexually liberated woman in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to her invariably welcome (if brief) appearances in films as varied as The Blue Veil, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and Grease — should be remembered as well.

Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Dames Joan Blondell has always been a favorite of mine, much like fellow wisecracking 1930s Warner Bros. players Aline MacMahon and Glenda Farrell. The fact that Blondell never became a top star says more about audiences — who preferred, say, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney — than about Blondell's screen presence and acting abilities. As part of its "Summer Under the Stars" film series, Turner Classic Movies is currently showing no less than 16 Joan Blondell movies today, including the TCM premiere of the 1968 crime drama Kona Coast. Directed by Lamont Johnson, Kona Coast stars Richard Boone and the capable Vera Miles. Blondell has a supporting role — one of two dozen from 1950 (For Heaven's Sake) to 1981 (The Woman Inside, released two years after Blondell's death from leukemia). [Joan Blondell Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing the super-rare (apparently due to rights issues) The Blue Veil, Curtis Bernhardt's 1951 melodrama that earned Blondell her...

If you like Cary Grant as much as I do, then it doesn’t matter that 1943’s romantic World War II home-front drama, Mr. Lucky (available on DVD), is neither a great movie, nor a film from an interesting though flawed director, nor even featuring an unusually fine screenplay. It is, though, a terrific vehicle for Cary Grant, who might therefore be called the picture’s auteur by default. Contributing to the “happy accident” status of the movie is excellent black-and-white lighting by veteran ace cinematographer George Barnes (Oscar for Hitchcock’s Rebecca); extremely effective “production design”—-which certainly must have included many camera…...

"This Spring Break…Get Hammered!"

Bongiovi Entertainment in association with Rex Steven Sikes (Massacre at Central High) and George Barnes (Take 2 productions)

present

"Girls Gone Dead"

(Aka Spring Break Massacre II)

Michael Hoffman Jr. and wife Meghan Jones were looking to reinvent the classic "The Slumber Party Massacre" or "Sorority House Massacre" sub-genre of films. Well, looking at the behind the scenes pics from the film, so far to date, they have come up with at least one new cliche or invention for the horror genre-

The Shawn C. Phillips death scene

Shawn C. Phillips is an indie actor who has been in a wide variety of horror films (President's Day, Witch's Brew, Hell House, Deadly Dares: Truth or Dare Part IV, Red River), but one thing always seems to be a constant in those films. He always gets killed! Judging by the pics from the set of "Girls Gone...

Cast & Crew "This Spring Break…Get Hammered!"

Bongiovi Entertainment in association with Rex Steven Sikes (Massacre at Central High) and George Barnes (Take 2 productions)

present

"Girls Gone Dead"

The film which is set to start filming on November 13 is genre director Michael Hoffman Jr.'s (Spring Break Massacre) most ambitious undertaking with a five week shooting schedule and a budget of roughly around $500,000. Helping him with this endeavor is Aaron Wells (Rock and a Hard Place: Another Night at the Agora) who will share co-directing credit and Ryan Dee who is on board as the film's producer.

Girls Gone Dead features a cast including hottie Caley Hayes (who ironically played the hottie in "Sex Drive"), sizzling Penthouse Pet Ryan Keely (seen on this year's MTV movie awards in a fake commercial for "Devil" alongside M. Night Shyamalan) internet sensation Shawn C. Phillips (President's Day) and the hardest working man in indie horror,...

"The earliest documented performance with an electrically amplified guitar was in 1932," according to Wikipedia. The electric guitar was used by Hawaiian Style musicians. George Barnes reportedly recorded the first 2 songs with the electric guitar in 1938. Now, Rock 'N' Roll without the electric guitar, is a folk song; slap a banjo on your knee and rock with a toothless hockey player on the harmonica. Howstuffworks calls it the best thing since the incandescent light bulb. In It Might Get Loud -- a documentary on the electric guitar from the point of view of three rock legends, Jack White, the lead vocalist for The White Stripes; The Edge, guitarist for the Irish rock band U2; Jimmy Page, co-founder of the English rock band Led Zeppelin; give accounts of their lives mastering the electric guitar. Jack White makes a one-string electric guitar...

First and Last: the first image post titles (left) and the last image prior to 'the end' (right). Can you guess the movie?

Highlight for a clue (but try to guess without it)

The first image is preceeded by a title card which reads "Not East of Suez --- but South of Algiers". Cinematography is by George Barnes.

And if you give up here's a still which shows a very peculiar credit. Can you imagine all the funny / weirdness we'd have today if movies stopped to thank actors for favors and IOUs? (click to embiggen... but only if you've already given up). For fun in the comments, tell us which extra special thank yous you'd have liked to have seen in today's movies.

previous first and last puzzles here...