A Book Review by Maysaa H. Jaber. Adds a human, sometimes tragic face to those at the heart of moviemaking during the Golden Age.” Laura Wagner’s Hollywood Boozers, Brawlers and Hard-Luck Cases: Fifteen Ill-Fated Actors of the Golden Age (McFarland, 2025) takes readers on a journey of rediscovering the life […]
Her Own Star – Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away
A Book Review by Thomas M. Puhr. Author Christopher McKittrick makes a persuasive case for celebrating the consummate professional Miles became rather than mourning the icon she never was….” It says a lot about the fickleness of celebrity that an actress who has worked with some of the industry’s biggest […]
Hollywood’s Star of Stars – Ferocious Ambition: Joan Crawford’s March to Stardom
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. More than a mere biography with chronological touchstones and historical anecdotes (though there are plenty of those, and they’re fascinating), it is also a psychological profile delving into the inner motivations of its subject, and a lavishly illustrated assessment of how a Golden […]
“Who the Hell is That Dick Watson?”: Ricardo Darín and the Construction of Latin American Film Stardom
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. Both a compelling analysis of how political influences shaped the notion of the ‘movie star’ and an impressive biography of a cultural icon….” Argentine’s cinematic evolution is inextricably linked to the 20th-century tumultuous political landscape in the country. This process has been marked by […]
Always an Outsider – Harry Dean Stanton: Hollywood’s Zen Rebel
A Book Review by Ali Moosavi. I’ve always felt like an outsider….” –Harry Dean Stanton One of my abiding movie memories comes from the 1984 Edinburgh International Film Festival. I got to watch a late night showing of the full, uncut, 229 minute version of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a […]
Recognizing Belafonte
By Robert K. Lightning. If Poitier’s films frequently situate him as an integrationist hero, successfully negotiating the rocky path to white acceptance, Belafonte’s films typically chart a very different path where acceptance is not always the goal, making him often Poitier’s cinematic antithesis.” With the announcement of Harry Belafonte’s death […]
Berlinale Report, 7 February – 17 February 2013
By Yun-hua Chen. Against a backdrop of the Berlinale bear, the film festival opens with Wang Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster (2012), the five-year’s lavish-looking work of the president of the international jury. During the ten-day celebration of cinema, the city was honoured by the glamorous presence of international stars every […]