There’s one obsession I’ve long pursued, while another obsession — for decades — has followed me around.  They finally collided. Artwork influenced by movies has been a personal obsession:  in the days before home video, I searched eight years for a public screening of Joseph Cornell’s ROSE HOBART; I spent last Christmas Eve at the [...]

Since I’ve worked in the Industry, some of my posts approach a movie as more than an end product:  they also look at the work culture of making a film plus the bottom-line realities of how everything up on the screen had to be paid for one way or another. That’s why I really enjoyed [...]

While in New York recently, I caught the Tim Burton retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.  In addition to the staggering displays of prized artifacts, MoMA hosted a screening series of Burton’s favorite films, including Disney’s post-War animated delectation THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD, the 1974 all-star disaster (in more than one [...]

Los Angeles in the days of New Wave totally kicked ass:   The Police (including an impossibly young Sting) gigging at the upstairs bar of Madame Wong’s in Chinatown; Pee-Wee Herman developing his act at clubs on Sunset Boulevard; Andy Warhol snapping Polaroids of hipsters waiting on the street to get into Club Lingerie; future [...]

When Francis Coppola’s RUMBLE FISH was released in the early 1980s, I read a report that throughout the production the director would repeat, “This is my student film.” I’m a former film student and ex-professor to film students, so I understand how that phrase crystallizes a unique aesthetic and precious experience in film viewing:  the [...]

I don’t do Top Ten lists. I think they’re ridiculous.  As a frequent film festival juror, I’ve seen films that never got a commercial release (or sometimes even a festival screening timeslot) that were much better than anything distributed during the year.  A similar scenario:  about a decade ago, J. Hoberman listed Lawrence Brose’s DE [...]

In a true case of (to quote a friend) “Hollywood Timing” I’m in Shanghai during the week when TCM is screening Orson Welles’ THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI twice. In order to heighten the pleasure of its viewing, here’s a link to an essay I wrote on this blog’s parent site, PostModern Joan.com:  THE LADY FROM [...]

I’M NOT A FILM ARCHIVIST but the three-headed monster known as my career (making media, writing and assessing media, managing media) has always kept me one or two degrees away from the field.  So I’m happy to report that I’ll be blogging from the conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, held this year [...]

By coincidence BOILING SAND went live on the 10th of October, the birthday of 1950s cult film director Ed Wood.   To commemorate both their introductions to the world, I’m re-posting a personal memoir of my early days in Hollywood and of knowing Wood’s makeup man, Harry Thomas. Have you ever heard Charlie Parker’s 1947 [...]

When I was a young pup working in the film/tv production industry, I was flipping through the Lowel lighting equipment catalog during a break and read that the company invented Gaffer’s Tape in 1959. No, way!! — I thought — How could GONE WITH THE WIND have been made without Gaffer’s Tape?!?!?   How could [...]

At her excellent website Ferdy on Films, etc. Marilyn Ferdinand has called for film bloggers to list their 15 favorite dancers.   CLICK HERE TO READ MY LIST. Doug / PoMo Joan

The Malaysian films of actor / singer / songwriter / orchestrator / screenwriter / director P. Ramlee are gems:  disarming, humorous, tuneful treasures needing to be discovered by Western cinephiles. On a cursory look Ramlee’s Cinema may look like Bollywood-on-a-Budget, but as the viewing unfolds what emerges is a picaresque slapstick world with a common [...]

Beginning July 6, Greg at Cinema Styles blogsite will be hosting an Ed Wood Blog-a-Thon. I’ll be posting my entry here at BOILING SAND. It should be an interesting read, because my make-up teacher in film school was Ed Wood’s make-up man, Harry Thomas. Harry was a great guy and had millions of tales to [...]

Whoa, mama!! Did any of you see this film on Fox Movie Channel recently??! DESIRE IN THE DUST is another of those claptrap novels of demented, devious and oversexed Southern families that Yankees love to project upon the denizens who live below the Mason-Dixon line: a horse-riding vixen who cools off by taking a dip [...]

We recently got cable. I seem to go through four-year periods of having cable and four years of just using my TV for viewing home video.  It makes for interesting observations, since this way I don’t have the ‘frog in the beaker’ syndrome with the medium of TV.  I can see how some cable channels [...]

Shadi Abdel Salam was the One-Hit Wonder of International Cinema. He had many successes working in film (including set design for the Elizabeth Taylor / Joseph L. Mankiewicz CLEOPATRA and for Roberto Rossellini’s FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL) before directing al-Mummia; and he created many award-winning shorts afterwards. But the only feature film he directed (also known [...]

I don’t think it was ever released on home video, but thanks to Turner Classic Movies, we occasionally get the chance to see BORDERTOWN, a Warner Brothers drama from 1935. The two top dramatic talents then under contract to Warners (Paul Muni & Bette Davis) are lensed in their early, edgy days of raw talent. [...]

Ray Dennis Steckler, director of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies !!? (1964) passed away in Las Vegas this month at the age of 70. Steckler was a man of many talents (producing, directing, acting) and of many noms de cinema: in addition to works he directed under his own [...]

[OK, so I fibbed last month when I said no more posts about Australia.] Back in November I was at Manly Beach near Sydney, Australia. It was named Manly because when Captain Cook saw the indigenous males on the beach, he thought them ‘manly.’ So, at Manly Beach, all things are Manly: Manly Italian Restaurant, [...]

In October, I wrote about Beverly Garland. Today, the NYT announced her passing. What a gal. What an actress. What an icon. Doug

Back in Austin, Texas, now with my last posting on Australia. Final thoughts: If you’re ever on a bus ride in the Australian bush, I’ve got the perfect soundtrack for you. Load your mp3 player with tracks by Melbourne-based Dead Can Dance. I loved them in the 1980s and 1990s, but hadn’t thought about them [...]

Being a mythopoetic kind of bubba, I frequently wax McLuhanesque on the experience of viewing a motion picture. Such as: When motion pictures were introduced in one African region, if the shot panned from one object to another (e.g., a shot of a house panned over to a shot of a tree), the audience’s perception [...]

TEA TREE GULLY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA. DVD shopping in Australia. I scored almost from the start when I found a used copy of the ‘lost’ David Bowie / Marlene Dietrich film, JUST A GIGOLO, for around 5 USD in downtown Melbourne. As I understand it, the original negs were lost in a fire. Never got to [...]

Earlier this week I had dinner with a friend who told me a couple of Christmases ago, he was in Paris drinking champagne with Olivia DeHavilland at her apartment. Well, I’ve never done that, but once I was in the same convention hall with Beverly Garland. I was working on an Alzheimer’s documentary, so me [...]