On a snowy, slushy day in Chicago, gazing out the plate glass window of a Starbucks, I’m thinking of the New Jersey native who embodied all things sunny and casual:  Sandra Dee. “Ms. Dee defined a new kind of natural, sun-soaked innocence that America, and much of the rest of the world, quickly embraced as [...]

Association of Moving Image Archivists St. Louis November, 2009 FIRST BLOG POST FROM AMIA CONFERENCE St. Louis gave the world ice cream cones and Agnes Moorehead, Nelly and T. S. Elliot, Masters & Johnson and peanut butter.  But this week, the world is giving something righteously awesome back to this cool city as the Association [...]

This post is part of the Robert Wise Blog-a-Thon that Josh at the Octopus Cinema blogsite is hosting during the first week of September. I’ve had a long time to think about how to articulate my admiration for Robert Wise:  I worked in the same building as Wise when I got my first temp job [...]

I’m about 48 hours behind the rest of the Blogosphere in commenting on the passing of Ann Savage. Two reasons for this… Number One, I decided to sit back last night and enjoy her performance in MIDNIGHT MANHUNT on DVD while savoring some leftover eggnog. Number Two, I realized that Ann Savage and my mom [...]

I rented a VHS tape of ONE MILLION B.C. recently. This is NOT the Raquel Welch movie from the 1960s; that’s ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. This is a 1940 movie starring Victor Mature, Carole Landis and Lon Chaney Jr. (in his first role with horror make-up) with direction by Hal Roach (!) and D. W. [...]