Abbott & Costello were brilliant at what they did. Like them or not, they were experts in their chosen field. The proof is in the routines, in the delivery, in the timing. Set aside the physical stuff and concentrate on…
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A post on one of my least favorite “major” directors– Mr. Freeze himself, Otto Preminger. Otto Preminger was a hack– at best, a functioning director on the level of a Lew Landers. His fame, or rather his notoriety, rests solely…
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is a film that may show up at some point at the Pickwick Theatre Classic Film Series, but it won’t be because I want to see it. Nicholas Ray was a great, intuitive filmmaker, and…
I used to program movie serials and played three of the very best at the LaSalle Bank Theatre in Chicago: Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938), Dick Tracy’s G-Men (1939) and Spy Smasher (1942)– the latter being my choice for…
The following is a previously unpublished piece on one of my favorite ’50s screen monsters… Revenge of the Creature (1955) is a fun favorite from childhood, but occasionally I see misinformation printed about the film, specifically in regards to stuntman…
“As a piece of comic architecture, it’s impeccable.” ~ Orson Welles Safety Last! (1923) contains one of the most famous shots in motion picture history: the sight of Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock. Even those who…
Jay Warren is one of the foremost silent film accompanists in the country. He is the face of the Silent Film Society of Chicago and hosts the “Silent Summer” film festivals which, prior to COVID, had been held at the…
“There was a German scientist by the name of Mobius whose concept was the elliptical band. You take a ribbon and you attach it together and you twist it. And if you traveled on one side of it and kept…
When Alec Baldwin’s Lamont Cranston walks down the alley after kissing Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) and disappears around the corner, there were high hopes from this viewer that he would return. But we never saw him again. We never…
It’s been over a year now since our last show at the Pickwick Theatre Classic Film Series. We miss seeing our patrons before and after each movie. We miss hearing Jay Warren on the Mighty Wurlitzer. And we miss our…