Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes

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Bernard F. Dick, a professor of English and communication at Fairleigh-Dickson University in New Jersey, has published many titles on the classical era of Hollywood film-making, covering a wide range of figures like producers Harry Cohn and Hal B. Wallis; directors Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder; actresses Claudette Colbert and Rosalind Russell; and the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. In his 2018 book, That Was Entertainment, Dick hailed the MGM musical as the genre’s ‘Gold Standard,’ reeling off a list of the studio’s all-time greats from The Wizard of Oz to Singin’ in the Rain. Continue reading

‘Man, Woman and Sin’ at MoMA

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Jeanne Eagels with John Gilbert and Marc McDermott in Man, Woman and Sin

Jeanne Eagels’ last silent movie – and her only Hollywood shoot – Man, Woman and Sin (1927) is showing in a restored print as part of To Save and Project, the 20th annual film preservation festival at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) next Saturday, January 13th, at 1:30 pm. Continue reading

2023: A Year in Film

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Adapted from David Grann’s history of the Osage murders, Killers of the Flower Moon was – for me at least – the cinematic event of 2023. With authoritative performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and a luminous Lily Gladstone, plus the painterly cinematography of Jack Fisk and a subtly insistent final score from the late Robbie Robertson, Killers channels the spirit of the first revisionist Westerns. While perhaps lacking the flash of this year’s Oscar rivals (Oppenheimer, Poor Things), this is a masterclass in neo-classical filmmaking from Martin Scorsese – and a tough-minded reckoning with America’s brutal origins. Continue reading

2023: A Year in Books

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Set in her beloved West London, Zadie Smith’s The Fraud focuses on two forgotten figures: William Harrison Ainsworth, once a bestselling author – and a doorway into literary celebrity, Victorian-style; and Andrew Bogle, a formerly enslaved Jamaican and chief witness in the trial of the Tichborne Claimant. Caught in the whirl of notoriety, their fates are tracked by a free-thinking widow whose acidic commentary tests the bounds of white liberalism. Continue reading

2023: A Year in Music

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Lana Del Rey’s ‘diarist era’ has surely reached its apogee with Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard. Sprawling, eccentric, and soul-baring, it has more in common with her poetry than previous albums. In a female-dominated race, her five Grammy nominations include the supremely dark A&W, hailed by many as song of the year; while the jazz-inflected Candy Necklace has already nabbed two MTV awards. Continue reading