A young, unmarried woman (Edna Purviance) gives birth in a charity hospital. Distraught and abandoned by the baby’s father, she leaves the child in the back of an expensive automobile along with a note imploring the owner of the car to care for the new orphan. Later, she reconsiders her rash action and returns to…
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter has apparently long stymied filmmakers, because there has yet to be a cinematic version that fully adapts the material without changing the tone or intent of the author’s original novel. Not to be overly sarcastic about it or anything. It’s a damn shame, too, because Letter is truly a masterwork of American…
One of the most entertaining cartoons to come out of the 1990s features a trio of sweet little girls named Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup … and despite their cutesy names, they just happen to be some seriously ass-whoopin’ superheroes. Those girls–originally called The Whoopass Girls before being renamed as the more family-friendly Powerpuff Girls–were created by Craig…
One of the most prolific partnerships to emerge in the silent film era was the one between movie star Mary Pickford and screenwriter Frances Marion. Director Clarence Brown once referred to their working relationship as “spontaneous combustion,” an apt description of the women’s uncanny ability to play off one another in developing new material. For…
The serial film has deep roots in cinema. These short subjects–the features before the features, as it were–told an extended, continuous story, shown in weekly or monthly “episodes” that were stretched out over a period of time. Over the years, many of these serials gained their own rabid fan bases, as moviegoers returned to the…
Early Hollywood actress Barbara Kent, one of the last living stars from the silent era, has passed away. Though not as well-known today as many of her contemporaries, Kent starred with some of the stalwarts of the silver screen in her all-too-brief career (she only made about three dozen movies between 1926 and 1935). In…
Tuesday, October 4th, marks silent screen icon Buster Keaton’s 116th birthday. TCM has already named Buster their “Star of the Month” and will be featuring a number of his beloved films and shorts on Sunday nights, beginning this evening with a showing of one of the actor’s most popular (and best) movies, The General (1926).…
Welcome to the introductory post for our Feminist Fridays series! Keep in mind that many of the comments contained herein are tongue-in-cheek in nature and are not intended to offend or inflame those who may take them otherwise. Also, these posts are not intended to be scholarly or academic or otherwise “learned” reviews, but are…
True Classics 