You know Home Alone and Miracle on 34th Street and Love Actually and White Christmas, Elf and A Christmas Story and Die Hard and Christmas Vacation. But do you recall the most underrated holiday films of all? Okay, so saying they’re “the most underrated” might be a bit of an exaggeration. But the following eight titles… Read more »
Tommy Rall was a man who defied gravity. Whether executing impossibly fast twirls, nimbly leaping through the air, or doing a series of stunningly intricate tap steps, Rall proved to be one of the best dancers Hollywood would ever see. And yet he never became the star he deserved to be. On October 6, at… Read more »
In most discernible ways, the respective bodies of work of the long-married French Left Bank filmmakers Agnès Varda (1928-2019) and Jacques Demy (1931-1990) have remained quite distinct from one another. Unlike some other notable filmmaking couples (like Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, for instance), Varda and Demy rarely worked on each other’s films in any… Read more »
In front of a deep blue background, a vivacious redhead appears, full of anguish and yearning as she sings about the rock star she idolizes being drafted into the army. This is the hypnotic beginning to 1963’s Bye Bye Birdie, and for many, it was the moment Ann-Margret became a bona fide star. A triple… Read more »
When I first became enamored of classic Hollywood, there were a handful of actors who were responsible for introducing me to this new wonderful world. At the time, the one who shone the brightest was Marilyn Monroe; today, she is still someone I cherish. To belatedly celebrate Ms. Monroe’s June 1st birthday, I’ve decided to… Read more »
I’ll never forget the day I realized that Professor Glenn Gass’s class on the history of rock in the 1960s (now called History of Rock Music II: Rock’s Classic Era) was going to be one of my favorites at IU. Professor Gass, who recently retired, was making an argument that people should appreciate the early… Read more »