I was an adolescent — and the day was cold and sunny — when I went to a Saturday matinee of Richard Brooks’ THE HAPPY ENDING. That day and that movie came back to me as I read that Jean Simmons died. I haven’t seen it since (the film might not have aged well) but [...]

Last Friday, I had morning coffee at a cozy westside cafe in Manhattan while trying to find words that attempt to articulate my appreciation of the legacy left behind by actress Jennifer Jones, who died last week at the age of ninety. When I first heard the news, I went into a little bit of [...]

The Harry Ransom Center on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin is an Elysian Fields for film lovers. Among its treasures are the David O. Selznick Archives, the Robert De Niro Archives and the Gloria Swanson Archives. While doing some volunteer research work amidst their film holdings, I unearthed an artifact that [...]

This posting is part of the Pauline Kael blog-a-thon at The Cooler blogsite. From 1967 through 1979, movie reviews didn’t suck because of Pauline Kael. I’m not saying that none of Kael’s reviews sucked; actually a whole helluvalot of ‘em did. But as a writer, she screwed brilliantly with the literary genre of film criticism [...]