Guest post by Katelyn Wo. The documentary And Then They Came for Us recounts the testimonies of some of the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in prison camps during World War II after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, ordering all Americans who held at least 1/16 Japanese heritage to… Read more »
Bite-Sized Blogs
1940s Comedy Bombshell: Lucille Ball
In 1942, about a decade before she would step into the role of Lucy Ricardo, Lucille Ball was ending a run as “the RKO comedy bombshell” and moving up into MGM’s glitz-and-glam musical comedy world. The height of Ball’s Hollywood stardom was in the early- to mid-1940s, and yet her success in Hollywood cinema pales… Read more »
An Ode to Rock Hudson in Plaid
When Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) invites her gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), to join her in a cup of coffee on a whim, it seems innocuous enough. She politely inquires about his work while he gives her laconic replies until their discussion turns to his new passion of growing trees and his eyes brighten. Despite… Read more »
The Enduring Mysteries of Possession (1981)
The first time I saw Possession (1981), I didn’t understand it. Part of that was due to the circumstances of my viewing. I had wanted to see this film for years due to its reputation as an unforgettable and strange film. I knew that Plan 9 Film Emporium, Bloomington’s wonderful video store, had a copy…. Read more »
The Joy of The Sound of Music
There are few movie musicals more beloved than The Sound of Music (1965). In its day it was a massive success, and if you adjust its earnings for inflation, it remains the most successful movie musical of all time. It seems fitting then that this adaptation of the Broadway hit of the same name has… Read more »
Marnie & Hitchcock’s Cinema of the Feminine
In Robin Wood’s 1988 article “The Skull Beneath the Skin: Some Indiscreet Charms of Narrativity,” the critic places some of the pantheon directors of cinema into categories of identification: “Buñuel was clearly one of the cinema’s great male-identified directors (the list would include Hawks, Godard and Scorsese), as against its great woman-identified directors (the list… Read more »