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...

I am so excited this week that I get to talk to you about something I’ve been wanting to discuss in these pages for quite a long time. I’ve got a look at more goodies from Warner Archive this week, including their new blu-ray of 1982’s comedy “Victor/Victoria.” First off, I want to talk about the thing that is simply one of the most bizarre items to have ever come out of a major motion picture studio. So strange, you may not even believe me when I tell you about it.  What is this strange thing I want to tell you about? Some odd little horror movie or low-budget sci-fi flick someone conned Columbia pictures into making? Nope. I’m talking about something that was actually quite popular for a year or two. Between 1929 and 1931 MGM made a series of nine short films known as The Dogville Comedies. Directed by Zion Myers and Jules White—who would both go on to work for years with The Three Stooges—The Dogville Comedies are short parody films of popular movies of the day. Only th...

There was a time, not so long ago, when superhero movies were not the bread and butter of the Box Office. All that change in 1989, when Tim Burton's Batman opened up and blew the roof off. I was a kid who was obsessed with Batman. I had Batman shoes, Batman socks, Batman pajamas, Batman bed sheets, Batman shirts, even a custom made Batman chair. With the chance for a new line of monster money makers, Hollywood started to look at what could be, essentially, be the next Batman . Disney tried their hand at it with 1990's Dick Tracy, and 1991's The Rocketeer. The former was a box office smash, and the latter wasn't. But an issue with the rights to the Dick Tracy character prevented a film franchise from going forward. Both though, were films I very much loved growing up. With the second Batman film, 1992's Batman Returns opening to big returns, it was still unclear what, if at all, would be the next hero to take the box office throne. During all of th...