Andyland, USA

It’s easy to get overwhelmed looking at the filmography of director Howard Hawks. There are numerous films in the Hawks catalog that any director would be happy to have one of. Out of forty six films, Hawks has nine on The National Film Registry. Hawks was a genre master, tackling and succeeding in screwball comedy, musicals, drama, western, film noir, and even sci-fi.  If the name Howard Hawks doesn’t immediately ring a bell with you, odds are good you’ve seen at least one of his bigger films: “Bringing Up Baby,” “The Big Sleep,” “Rio Bravo,” “To Have and Have Not,” “Red River,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” and the film which this week’s column is about, “His Girl Friday.” Released in 1940 by Columbia Pictures, “His Girl Friday” stars Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell, and is based upon the 1928 stage play “The Front Page” written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Grant plays Walter Burns, the determined and hard-boiled editor of “The Morning Post,” who learns his ex...

It can feel like beating a dead horse to say over and over again “they don't make them like they used to” when it comes to talking about classic films. The phrase itself automatically puts an aged sheen over a movie, a disservice, when sometimes what you want to do is get someone to realize that an older film can be just as relevant as whatever new Michael Bay film in which he destroys a beloved childhood property is (my bet is on Power Rangers as the next one). However, there are some times when that phrase is quite apt to describe certain movies, and nothing fits that moniker better than 1963's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World . By the early 1960s, director Stanley Kramer had a glowing reputation as the moral voice of Hollywood. Kramer was best known for his big dramatic, socially conscious films, such as Inherit The Wind and Judgement at Nuremberg. Wanting to show that he had more to offer than just heavy films, Kramer decided to make what he called “The com...