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 [...]

[This post was written in conjunction with the For the Love of Film:  The Film Preservation Blogathon this week.  Please DONATE to the National Film Preservation Foundation.] The need for film preservation eventually reduces to a discussion of film stock.  It’s the effects of age and the unstable chemicals in the physical elements of film [...]

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

A few years before Hollywood’s most celebrated movie on racism and personal identity was filmed, Douglas Sirk’s IMITATION OF LIFE, M-G-M sent a stellar cast and crew to Pakistan to bring John Masters’ 1952 best-selling novel of identity politics, Bhowani Junction, to the screen. Ava Gardner plays Victoria Jones, a half-caste woman serving in the [...]

At the Internet Archive I downloaded a 1948 public domain feature called WOMEN IN THE NIGHT, an independent quickie filmed at a hotel in Ensenada (substituting for Shanghai in WW2) about women captured by the Japanese to be their “Comfort Women.” On the Web there are various discussions about how “good” or “bad” the movie [...]

The other night I rented the 1974 movie, AMAZING GRACE a star vehicle for the legendary black vaudeville entertainer, Moms Mabley. Moms was 80 years old the summer this was released. So her performance has a fascinating double-meaning and readability: she may be slow and sometimes fuzzy in her blocking and stage business, but her [...]

HOBART, TASMANIA — I was just in a place here in Taz called Drifter’s Internet Cafe, which is loaded with local hero Errol Flynn memorabilia. It also has a small pipe thru which you can peer out a side street window and see the house where Merle Oberon might or might not have been born. [...]

As the creator and author of www.postmodernjoan.com I find myself thinking about Joan Crawford almost every day. This weekend it has been her MOUTH. If you look at photos of JC from her silent movie days, she is hardly recognizable as the later screen diva, but most can’t put their finger on what’s different. Look [...]