Member, Online Film Critics Society

As I tweeted not long ago I'm a newly minted member of the Online Film Critics Society. I'm honored, humbled, flattered. Does my badge guarantee free popcorn and soda? No? Well, that's OK. Happy to be part of things.

Castle creep

Was 1999 really the last time Film Forum showed the gimmicky shockers of William Castle? I'm not sure how I made it through the aughts without a tinge of Percepto or a blast of Emergo. In any case he's back, starting tomorrow, in a retrospective that takes in other facets of his career besides. While I don't subscribe to the producer-as-auteurist claims made for him by others there's no denying that the films are a lot of fun, and seeing them with their gimmicks intact makes them all the more entertaining. Take my advice at the end of my review of a box set of Castle flicks that came out last year. And, boy, does Joan Crawford mean business with that axe in Strait-Jacket, a cutting-edge start to the retrospective paired with the delightful Homicidal.

The Fall issue of Cineaste

On sale and also online, where you'll find reports on four film festivals, interviews with Patrice Leconte, Simone Bitton, and Zelimir Zelnik, and reviews of The Tillman Story and There's Always Tomorrow. Among much else. Pictured is Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year.

Popdose: The Tillman Story

War and remembrance as the new documentary about the football player and friendly fire casualty goes into release. Plus, on DVD, the unsung Triage, with Colin Farrell and Christopher Lee.

Henry hews to Andrew

Henry Hewes Design Awards, that is. The Broadway-bound Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, that is, for Donyale Werle's Public-filling, Southern-fried scenic design, an excellent choice (pictured). Plus Martin Pakledinaz for Lend Me a Tenor's costumes, Kevin Adams for American Idiot's lighting, and The Orphans' Home Cycle's production team for notable effects.

Bali bye

The magnificent revival of South Pacific that so moved me back in April 2008 is closing this Sunday at the Vivian Beaumont, but Live From Lincoln Center is giving us a last (or a first) look 8pm EST tonight on PBS. Matthew Morrison, who played Cable, has decamped to Glee and TV stardom but its incomparable leads, Kelli O'Hara and Paulo Szot (pictured), have returned to see it through to the end. I'm not sure how it'll play on the small screen but Light in the Piazza, also with O'Hara, turned out well, and I'm chancing my highest recommendation on this. Watch it, DVR it, tape it--just don't miss it.

Secrets of the Trade

For Theater News Online: The great John Glover gives Noah Robbins life lessons in Jonathan Tolins' new play, at Primary Stages. Love the "Cafe des Artistes" backdrop.

Kick ass movies

In "honor," I guess, of the saggy ass Expendables, a ten-film strong list of KA movies, as selected by the men (and women) of Popdose. I wrote up Aliens.

There are two kick ass movie events in New York this week. The press yawned over the "Classic 3D" fest that Film Forum held in 2004 but what a difference an Avatar makes--lots of thumbsucking this week over the already exhausted 3D revolution and what it all means as a similar program gets underway today. What it all means in the now is that you get some nice two-for-one deals (no surcharges!) on some entertaining B-movies, with a few As like the fun Kiss Me, Kate and the dull-in-any-dimension Miss Sadie Thompson thrown at you, along with some (terrific) Three Stooges shorts and a few oddities, like a selection of Harold Lloyd's stereoscopic nudes. Comin' at ya indeed.

Meanwhile, New York filmmaker William Lustig has picked some more down-and-dirty flicks for showcasing at Anthology Film Archives, including a personal favorite, 1967's mean merc movie Dark of the Sun. Quentin Tarantino cast its star, Rod Taylor, in a small role in Inglourious Basterds, and filched the main theme from its score (pictured), too. Rest assured that it kicks major ass.

Cineaste: A slice of Splice

New Webtakes are up on the site, including my own on the recent sci-fi shocker.

RIP Patricia Neal

For my masters in journalism, which seemed so useful back in 1988, we had to come up with a saleable magazine concept. We found one, alas an unglamorous concept, caregiving. The good news was that our cover subject was the great actress and fellow Northwestern alum Patricia Neal, who with her then-husband Roald Dahl by her side battled back from debilitating strokes in the mid-60s, regaining her life and career. I didn't interview her, but the word was that she was as kind and generous as she was always said to be.

Also, in her professional life, a good judge of scripts--so flinty yet so touching in her Oscar winner, 1963's Hud. Caught up in the craziness of The Fountainhead (1949) with her lover, Gary Cooper, as Hollywood beckoned following a Tony award for Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest. Anchoring The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with her good common sense. Managing Andy Griffith to shallow stardom in A Face in the Crowd (1957). Stylish and controlling in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Wistful and unfulfilled in The Subject Was Roses, for which she received a second Oscar nomination as she returned to the screen in 1968.

Others: The fine, Burma-set play adaptation The Hasty Heart (1949), with the late Richard Todd and Ronald Reagan, Otto Preminger's In Harm's Way (1965), a good match for John Wayne; the Dahl-written The Night Digger (1971), no doubt feeling youthful opposite Fred Astaire and John Houseman in 1981's Ghost Story, Cookie in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune (1999). Glenda Jackson played her in the good 1981 TV movie The Patricia Neal Story, opposite Dirk Bogarde as Dahl, filmed not long before their 30-year marriage dissolved.

I always loved her (that voice!). In that I was hardly alone. A talent and an inspiration.

Popdose: Inception, Conception

Dreaming of Leo, plus a family ideal in The Kids Are All Right and all the wrong ways to to make it in Manhattan in The Extra Man, as I put a spin on it again.

Mad Men-ned

I couldn't quite get this to work out on my own, so I had my secretary do it. All very accurate, as I drink and smoke and avoid blogging. In my heart of hearts I'm a studly Don or a dapper Roger, but sad to say I'm at best a Duck.

Live Design: The Grand Manner

Two days left to see A.R. Gurney's comic rumination on an encounter with Katharine Cornell, with Kate Burton, Boyd Gaines, and Bobby Steggert, as I resume my usual semi-usual posting, mostly about posts. Just the way it is these days.

Popdose: Cyrus vs. Predators

Alien muscle against Adrien Brody and John C. Reilly in a death match with Jonah Hill--who will survive and what will be left of them?

Popdose: Columbia Noir, Hammer Suspense

A hot summer just added a few degrees as as the moody masterpieces Human Desire (Fritz Lang) and Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur) arrive in one box set and Joseph Losey's astonishing These Are the Damned in another.

Popdose: Inception, the soundtrack

A few days before Leo and his "dream thieves" can plant themselves into our minds, Hans Zimmer and Johnny Marr insinuate themselves into our ears with its soundtrack album.

Live Design: The Merchant of Venice

Al Pacino seeks his pound of flesh in Shakespeare's confounding comedy, running in repertory with The Winter's Tale through Aug. 1 at the Delacorte.

The century mark

Gloria Stuart, star of The Old Dark House (1932) and, 65 years later, an Oscar nominee for Titanic (1997), has hit it today. (James Cameron rediscovered her when he heard her commentary on the Dark House LD, which I own.) But she's not alone, as Film Experience blogger Nathaniel Rogers discovered when he researched the most senior Oscar nominees, and his commenters chimed in with a few more. A heartening read, particularly for me, as we mourn the passing of our 16-year-old cat Tom-Yum, a star in his own right.

Popdose: Phil Spector's bad hair day

There's agony and ecstasy, and a whole lot of kvetching, in the new documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, now at Film Forum. Plus: the doc It Came from Kuchar, Toy Story 3. Agora, and the proverbial much, much more.

Memo to Elena Kagan

In the vampires vs. werewolves debate that electrified the nation yesterday during your confirmation hearing, there is clear precedent for a liberal jurist to side with the lycanthropes. From 1943’s Return of the Vampire to the Underworld movies of today werewolves are a minority constantly oppressed by aristocratic vampires. How cute the vampires are is not a matter of judicial interest. Conservative justices on Team John might disagree but when the Twilight series is hauled before the Supremes for crimes against literature and cinema there is only one way to rule in this particular debate.