Today, we’re wrapping up our week-long celebration of the 70th anniversary of The Maltese Falcon with a little irreverence. And where better to turn for irreverence than the Animaniacs? God, how I adored this cartoon in my callow and misspent youth. But it’s watching the show as an adult that really brings the greatest pleasure,…
Chapter Three of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is titled, appropriately enough, “Three Women.” It opens with Sam Spade chastising his exhausted secretary, Effie Perine, for allowing Iva Archer, his dead partner’s widow, into the office. Spade is impatient with the woman–his secret lover–and extricates himself from her clutches as soon as possible. He later…
As part of our week-long celebration of the 70th anniversary of The Maltese Falcon (1941), today we are taking a look at the third and final film version of Dashiell Hammett’s pulp crime novel. For a brief introduction to this movie, check out our post on Falcon from last year. For a more in-depth synopsis of the film’s plot, we recommend…
1999 marked a turning point for the Walt Disney Animation Studios in more ways than one. It was the ten-year anniversary of the release of The Little Mermaid, which had heralded the company’s veritable rebirth in the subsequent decade. It saw the release of Toy Story 2, the third critically-acclaimed film produced in a lucrative…
Well, folks, we’re back with another, long-delayed installment of Saturday Morning Cartoons! What can I say–it’s been a busy summer. We still have two films left to cover in our examination of the “classic” Disney canon–the final two movies released during the period popularly known as the “Disney Renaissance.” This week, we’ll be tackling 1998’s…
Today marks the 100th birthday of the fabulous Ginger Rogers! I have to admit, I’m somewhat surprised that TCM is not marking the occasion with a day of Ginger-centric films—after all, there’s no dearth of great movies from Ginger’s extensive filmography. She could do it all: melodrama (1940’s Kitty Foyle), romance (1945’s Weekend at the Waldorf),…
In 1862, a young British widow and teacher, Anna Leonowens, arrived in the small Asian nation of Siam (now Thailand) to accept a position as governess to the court of the country’s ruler, King Mongkut. Her pupils comprised the king’s expansive harem, made up of over one hundred wives, mistresses, and children, all of whom…
Clara, of Via Margutta 51 fame, recently reviewed Ernst Lubitsch’s 1943 fantasy-romance Heaven Can Wait, and her post on the film prompted me to re-watch that movie for the first time in years. It’s a delightful movie, awash with the magic of the famed “Lubitsch touch” and marked by a fabulous cast, with particularly fine…
True Classics 