For more than a decade, cinema’s faithful have flocked to the promised land every spring for the TCM Classic Film Festival: One long weekend on Hollywood Boulevard in the movie palaces of yore under the flickering images of the familiar … Continue reading Let’s Movie: 2021 TCM Classic Film Festival
It’s mid-June, which means we ought to be full swing into Chautauqua’s Summer of Silents—the annual celebration of cinema sans dialogue. And whether they’re accompanied by the incomparable Hank Troy or the impressive Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, spending a … Continue reading Home Viewing: Silent Clowns
Made in 1925, Charlie Chaplin’s greatest comedy is also his most recognizable. From the Little Tramp (Chaplin) woefully underdressed in the Klondike to hunger so intense he envisions his cabin-mate as a large roast chicken. But it’s the dance of … Continue reading THE GOLD RUSH
Movies aren’t reality. They’re visual expressions of an emotional experience. The best filmmakers have known this all along, but it’s worth bringing up, as many seem to forget this crucial caveat. For too many, movies must present, literally, the source … Continue reading BLACK NARCISSUS
Filmmaking is an act of optimism. Setting ideas to paper; convincing others to come and join the party; devoting time, money, blood, sweat, and tears to capture those images on celluloid; believing those images can carry meaning throughout the world; … Continue reading Thelma Schoonmaker and Margaret Bodde on THE TALES OF HOFFMANN
Why do you want to dance?” the man asks the girl. The girl pauses and answers his question with a question, “Why do you want to live?” “I don’t know exactly why,” the man responds with a smile. “But I … Continue reading THE RED SHOES
I think that a film should have a good story, a clear story, and it should have, if possible, something which is probably the most difficult thing—it should have a little bit of magic. Magic being untouchable and very difficult … Continue reading Born On This Day — December 5, 1902
Of course, all films are surrealist. They are because they are making something that looks like a real world but isn’t. Seventy years ago there were men like D.W. Griffith and seventy years later—now—there are not many men like Martin … Continue reading Born On This Day — September 30
Michael J. Cinema 
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