"A Month of VERTIGO," TCM and...Synchronicity

Sans SoleilThis blog was consumed by Vertigo all through January and half of February. I thought I'd moved on, was looking forward to Mad Men on Sunday nights - and then I opened the March issue of TCM's Now Playing guide.One of my Vertigo guest bloggers, Dan Auiler, author of the definitive Vertigo: the Making...

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Sunday Night is "Mad Men" Night...a blog event

AMC’s Mad Men begins its much-anticipated fifth season on Sunday night, March 25, after a long and, for some of us, parched nearly two year hiatus. This means that Sunday night will once more be Mad Men night in my world. At last. But I’m not alone in my joy, and a few blogger friends have volunteered to contribute...

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Noir City X...and a look at upcoming classics festivals

Noir City X, San Francisco January was a busy, busy month in my reel and real lives this year, but I still managed to squeeze in one night of lust and murder thanks to Noir City X, San Francisco's 10th annual film noir festival, a ten day event that ran from the 20th through 29th.Noir City, presented by the locally...

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A Month of "Vertigo," The Final Chapter

by The Lady EveIt was 1948 in post-war France when mystery writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac met for the first time at an awards ceremony for the Prix du Roman d'Aventures, a literary award for crime fiction. Narcejac received the prize that year and Boileau had taken the honor ten years earlier; in...

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Happy 80th Birthday, Edna May!

Edna May Wonacott in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) with Henry TraversEdna May Wonacott, who turns 80 today, was born in the town of Willits in Northern California in 1932. She spent most of her childhood to the south, in Santa Rosa, where her father was a grocer. When she was nine years old a twist of fate occurred...

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Hitchcock’s Most Beautiful Shot Ever; Or, A Single Frame So Good, 2000 Words Don’t Do It Justice

by guest contributor Joel Gunz Practically every frame of every movie Alfred Hitchcock made could be blown up and hung on a museum wall. He had such a clear sense of composition that you can turn off the sound, forget the story and set your DVD player to slo-mo, letting the images parade by.* Among the many...

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