Something must have been in the water in 1960. All around the world, filmmakers, either at the beginning, middle, or the end of their careers, swung for the fences. In Japan, Akira Kurosawa spun Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a corporate thriller with … Continue reading PEEPING TOM
As you read this, members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild of America (SAG) are currently pounding the pavement in New York and Los Angeles, raising signs and rhyming chants to anyone who will … Continue reading National Film Registry 2023 Nominations Ballot
It ain’t like it used to be. But it’ll do.” So says one grizzled old timer to another at the end of 1969’s The Wild Bunch—one of the few movies that can truly claim to have changed the trajectory of … Continue reading “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” Dispatches from the 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival
Reporting from the 2022 Telluride Film Festival. His name and visage might be the most recognizable in all of movie history. Thanks to his cameos, his TV shows, and his copious appearances on talk shows, he’s practically a household name … Continue reading MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK
I guess you could say the low point arrived on March 27, 2022, with the broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards. No, the “slap heard ’round the world” wasn’t it—though that cast a pall over the proceedings, didn’t it?—but the … Continue reading Cinema 101
Hollywood loves a remake. Sometimes it’s a successful foreign film recast with English-speaking celebrities. Sometimes it’s a decent story that just didn’t work the first time around. Most of the time, it’s a hollow-minded cash-grab by a studio rejiggering its … Continue reading WEST SIDE STORY
On this week’s After Image, I chat with Veronica Straight-Lingo about Blow the Man Down (available on Amazon Prime), and recommend a couple of from Alfred Hitchcock, specifically Frenzy, The 39 Steps, and Shadow of a Doubt. Listen to After Image, Fridays at … Continue reading
Alfred Hitchcock may not have invented the moving image, but he defined what it was capable of. The son of a London grocer, Hitchcock’s career began in the silent era, at Germany’s famed UFA studios, before returning to England as … Continue reading Home Viewing: Alfred Hitchcock
The shadow of Alfred Hitchcock looms large in cinema. So much so that it’s hard to divorce his stylistic innovations from movies that may or may not have been influenced by him. Take Blow the Man Down, a recent release currently … Continue reading Two for the Master
Michael J. Cinema 
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