Cinema OCD

A movie has to be pretty damn good to get me past killing a five year old boy in the first five minutes. Vigil in the Night does just that and though I felt like I could hardly forgive it for su...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/04/vigil-in-night.html

It was worth watching Gog, which is a fairly tedious, but stylish 50s sci-fi outing, just to see Herbert Marshall with these awesome round, tortoise-shell glasses and undone polka-dot bowtie. If...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/08/gog-1954.html

Film buffs know Colorado Territory primarily as a Westernized re-make of High Sierra. The chief advantage to me of the later film is getting to watch Joel McCrea instead of Humphrey Bogart. McCr...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/08/colorado-territory.html

Gregory La Cava directed some of the seminal films of the 1930s, My Man Godfrey and Stage Door being the first that usually come to mind. I also enjoy some of this director's lesser known stuff ...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/07/she-married-her-boss-1935.html

I'm just going to go ahead and say it: Noel Coward inadvertently created the genre of screwball comedy. When his stage play, Private Lives was being made into a film, he advised director, Sidn...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/03/private-lives-1931.html

While casting Crack Up, the filmmakers must have made a clerical error. How else to explain Pat O'Brien playing an art critic and Herbert Marshall a cop? Still, it works because Pat O'Brien is p...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/02/crack-up-1946.html

Before I saw this movie, my knowledge of Gentleman Jim Corbett had been limited to a particularly audacious Bob Dylan rhyme in the song "Hurricane." (We're gonna put his ass in the stir/we're go...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/07/gentleman-jim-1942.html

Once again, I make Valentines out of random photos I've collected this past year. Print these out and give them to your would-be Valentine or anyone else you want to deeply confuse. (Click on the...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/02/cinema-ocd-valentines.html

On my first trip to Scotland, upon the recommendation of my Scottish mother-in-law, we stopped at a gas station/gift shop called The Canny Scot where you could choose between canned and frozen...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/01/scotland-land-of-heroes.html

To all my faithful friends who have patiently waited for a new blog post, I'm sorry. I really have no excuse other than I needed a little break. A few things that have ruled my world during hia...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-have-not-been-kidnapped.html

A few years ago I was up in Duluth, Minnesota looking for someplace quiet, to grab a bite when we suddenly the perfect place: a small restaurant, with a kitschy, pseudo Russian theme that served...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/04/quality-street-1937.html

Certain Robert Donat films so deserve a DVD release that I feel compelled to do some kind of civil disobedience on their behalf. That's it: I'm going to lie down in the middle of the street unti...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/04/young-mr-pitt-1942.html

This was my first Esther Williams movie. I'm always amazed by the movies I think I know because I've seen lots of clips or satires of them. It's easy to sell a movie like Jupiter's Darling short...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/03/jupiters-darling-1955.html

As usual, I started off making a few caps to illustrate my review and went crazy. Warning: spoilers within. Director Frank Borzage leaves out star Gary Cooper's face in many scenes, including a...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/06/farewell-to-arms-1932-picspam.html

There are cinematic obsessions and there are literary obsessions. Sometimes they mingle in our brains. Tainted, we re-read with movies in our heads, yet while watching movies, we are haunted by ...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/09/reader-i-shagged-him.html

When Ladies Meet (1941) is one of MGM's megastar dramas, featuring four brand-name stars, lush production values and a screenplay drawn from a high-profile property. For all that, it's a pretty ...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-ladies-meet.html

The dangers of Cosplay: Haversham disguised as the enemy. Gosh, I thought I was in the mood for The Four Feathers. I guess not. I'm usually all about obscure British actors cheerio-ing it up in...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/07/four-feathers-fail.html

Warren William plays a sideshow mystic who falls in love, hits the big time and then loses it all. Good lordy, I love this movie. This is probably my favorite Warren William film so far. I could ...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/06/mindreader-1933-picspam.html

I admit it. I really like Shirley Temple movies of the 1940s. They are safe. They are predictable. They are the antithesis of the kinds of movies I normally like (pre-code or screwball with lo...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/06/tween-angst-kathleen-1941.html

It's wonderfully ironic that a movie whose villains are sleazy publicity hounds had such a ridiculously trashy publicity campaign. Posters and trailers for the film bore the words, "The managemen...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/06/story-of-esther-costello.html

At age 27 Bette Davis won an Oscar for playing a burnt-out, drunken, embittered, middle-aged actress, Joyce Heath in this film. She is magnificent as a character so full of nervous energy that e...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/06/dangerous-1935.html

A friend of mine recently sent me an article from the NY Times about pairing DVDs with drinks I liked the concept and the fact that the author mentioned one of my favorite obscure British films,...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/05/mixing-movies-and-cocktails.html

Cinema OCD Podcast Episode two is up and archived. Cliff and I discussed Warren William and his films Upperworld, The Match King, Three on a Match and The Mind Reader. Thirty minutes of Warren ...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/05/cinema-ocd-podcast.html

Such as it, the first episode of my CinemaOCD Podcast is now available. It's a bit rough, owing to interruptions from my son, and the fact that I had to end early when I lost a page of my script...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/05/podcast-well-sort-of.html

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to catch Notorious (1946) at the Riverview Theater. I had a unique experience at that screening: I got there late. Call me an incorrigible optimist, but this ...

http://cinemaocd.blogspot.com/2010/05/ocd-for-big-screen-notorious.html