Movies 'Til Dawn Blog

KIM NOVAK MEETS JEANNE EAGELS?

Yesterday I posted the excellent final scene of legendary stage star Jeanne Eagels’ only surviving film ‘The Letter’ (1929). Today lets watch a very good breakdown scene from the 1957 Kim Novak-starring biopic ‘Jeanne Eagels’. The movie is largely fictionalized which is a shame–Eagels real life was filled with so

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JEANNE EAGLES–‘THE LETTER’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPJDHpXk_I Jeanne Eagels was a Broadway star of the 1920s whose short and lurid life became the stuff of legend before ultimately being totally forgotten. There was a heavily fictionalized 1957 Kim Novak biopic (appropriately titled ‘Jeanne Eagels’) which delved into some–if not all–of the dark aspects of her life

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JAMES ELLROY PART DEUX

Behold  ‘James Ellroy’s Feast Of Death’, a fascinating documentary about Ellroy’s search for the person who murdered his mother in late 1950s Los Angeles, an event that he’s written an entire book about and that obviously shapes his identity in so many ways. Ellroy hired an LAPD detective to re-investigate

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THE JAMES ELLROY OF IT ALL

For those of you wondering why I didn’t post a Three Stooges short this weekend (or for those of you who wonder why I post Three Stooges shorts at all) let me explain. I began a re-reading of James Ellroy’s ‘The Big Nowhere’ on Saturday morning and more or less

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‘GIANT’ FIGHT; RIP GEORGE STEVENS

Let’s closed ‘fight week’ with another George Stevens directed fight sequence. Earlier this week we watched his superb fight scene from ‘Shane’ (which took place in a bar). The day before we caught the fight from John Sturges ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ (which took place in a diner that

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THE EXORCIST OF FIGHT SCENES

In 1980 (or thereabouts) I saw William Peter Blatty’s ‘The Ninth Configuration’ on the Z Channel, LA’s now legendary first run cable channel which featured lousy prints of new-ish movies. I was perhaps fifteen at the time and was so perplexed and mesmerized by this one-of-a-kind film that I promptly

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BARS ARE FOR FIGHTS: ‘TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE’

If you’re going to get into a fight, why not combine it with some drinking? It will certainly make the idea of fighting seem more rational than if you were sober. Which brings us to ‘fight week’. On Monday we watched a fight in a diner (which more than likely

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‘SHANE’–THE BAR FIGHT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4X24dPPg-8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U_jzOepc8o Yesterday we watched the excellent fight scene from “Bad Day At Black Rock” in which an aging, one-armed Spencer Tracy kicks martial arts ass. Today we’ll watch what I consider to be the Grandaddy of all fight scenes, George Stevens virtuoso bar fight from ‘Shane’. I first saw ‘Shane’

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BIG FIGHT AT BLACK ROCK

Much as I deplore seeing people physically fighting in real life–it’s always such a jarring and disgusting sight–I LOVE a good fight scene in a movie. Let’s watch a few this week. First up is this fabulous sequence from ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’ in which Spencer Tracy (who has

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CAB CALLOWAY–‘HI DE HO’ (1934)

Here’s an immensely enjoyable short film starring Cab Calloway, his orchestra and the great and unsung black actress Fredi Washington called ‘Hi De Ho’. Directed by Fred Waller (who also directed the pioneering Duke Ellington short ‘Symphony in Black’ and was–get this–responsible for the development of the Cinerama process) the

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