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  • Dark Cinema: Noirs Your Should Know, Vol. 2

    I'm continuing my quest to shine the spotlight on those films noirs that are not necessarily well-known, but are certainly worthy of your time. This installment focuses on three Columbia Pictures features from the 1950s that will put you on the edge of your seat and keep you there for a while.Pushover (1954)Some may call Pushover a 'poor man's Double Indemnity' -- and the label is understandable. Like Double Indemnity, Pu...

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  • The Old Corral: Howdy Ma'am - Women in Westerns

    The West of the Western movie has always been a masculine place. Looking at it impartially, it's a bit odd because women have been associated with nature and freedom, while men have been the conventional law and order types. So we might imagine that men would be more urban creatures, setting up businesses and building churches, while women would relate to the wide open spaces of the frontier. But the reverse is true.In the Western myth women are the civilizers. The men in Westerns...

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  • A Compelling Character: Edmond O'Brien

    Oscar-winning actor Edmond O'Brien was born in New York just over a century ago, on September 10, 1915.O'Brien made his Broadway debut at the age of 21 and four years later made his film debut opposite Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). He continued to work in theater, including starring as Mercutio opposite Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in a 1940 production of Romeo and Juliet, and also appeared in a handful of other f...

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  • Dark Cinema: The Flawed Gents of Pre-Code, Vol. 1

    The films released during Hollywood's pre-Code era undeniably have their fair share of admirable, upstanding fellas. You have Warren William's long-suffering hubby in Three on a Match (1932); Leslie Howard as the sensitive and understanding fiance of Norma Shearer in A Free Soul (1931); and the good-hearted soldier, brought to life by Douglass Montgomery, who falls in love with a woman of ill repute in Waterloo Bridge (1932).More often than not, though (...

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  • Classics 101: A Definition of Film Terms

    Classic movie fans and ClassicFlix subscribers know that the great movies of yesteryear can be enjoyed as entertainment for their stars, stories, production values, direction, cinematography and all the other artistic areas that make films worth the price of a ticket. For those looking to delve deeper into the Hollywood vaults, most of the film books on the motion pictures of the era deal with the overall output of the studios and independents, 1920s-1960s, or specific genre, such as noir, ho...

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  • Silent Cinema: They Had Color Back Then

    Too many people, black and white is synonymous with 'old' movies. Therefore, it comes as a surprise when they discover just how colorful the world of silent film was. Color was present in motion pictures from the very beginning. Thomas Edison's motion pictures were advertised as having hand-colored footage of dancers, their twirling dresses ideal for disguising imperfections in the applied dyes.Tinting and ToningBy far the most common method for adding...

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  • The Old Corral: The Westerns of Robert Mitchum

    From a tenth-billed part as a heavy in Border Patrol, a 60-minute Hopalong Cassidy oater of 1943 to eighth in the cast list as the bad guy in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man fifty-two years later, with 29 Western appearances in between, Robert Mitchum took on the genre, and won.He was Bob Mitchum, of course, so a lot of the time he went through the motions, sleep-walking through the Western parts assigned to him. He used to say they painted eyeballs onto his closed lids....

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  • Underrated Baseball Films

    As a lover of both baseball and old movies, I enjoy discussions of the best films about the national pastime. Unfortunately, too often arguments begin, say, 40 years ago and concentrate on modern times while excluding fine works from Hollywood's past. The Pride of the Yankees is deservedly beloved; one of the iconic movies of the golden age of studio filmmaking, but it often stands alone as the token 'classic' choice in the conversation.Let's examine some underrated baseb...

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  • Disney's Hidden Gems

    Everyone's familiar with Disney's best-known films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Cinderella (1950) to the studio's newer classics The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).There's a rich library of somewhat lesser-known but very worthwhile Disney films to explore beyond the most famous titles, some of which will be fondly remembered by film fans, while others may be completely unfamiliar.There are so...

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  • Dark Cinema: 'Big' Noir

    Creating an absolute definition of film noir is sometimes an elusive task; I've found over the years that a simplistic but revealing description of the era can be found in some of the frequently repeated words in the titles of the films themselves, some of which include 'fear,' 'night,' 'kill,' 'street,' 'kiss,' and 'big.'Today, I'm taking a look at three 'big' noir films from the classic era: The Big Combo, The Big Heat, and The Big Knife. Each one is a...

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