Author Archives for Retro
- October 10, 2019
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- Comments Off on The Making and Unmaking of the Femme Fatale
The Making and Unmaking of the Femme Fatale
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Often considered the first American film noir, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon features the femme fatale figure front and center, but not yet fully formed. The film opens on Jack Spade, P.I., played by a confident and competent Humphrey Bogart. His secretary enters his office and announces a possible client. She assures Spade, “You’ll want to meet her anyways. She’s a knockout.”
In comes Mary Astor, breathless and desperate, sporting one of several fake names her character will try on throughout the course of the film. Astor’s character embroils Spade in a tapestry of lies and deception, the primary structural role of any femme fatale. But Bogart’s no dope. The male hero is not quite ready to give up his privileged agency over the narrative. Their romance is always tempered by Spade’s distrust, knowing this woman’s act is deadly, and he’s not afraid
- September 30, 2019
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- Comments Off on Clearcut Invoice
Materials($650) plus $22 Gateway Fee
- September 27, 2019
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2Screeners plus $9 Gateway Fee
- September 18, 2019
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- Comments Off on SD Feature Trailer
SD Feature ($350) plus $15 Gateway Fee
- September 17, 2019
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- Comments Off on HD Sample Screener
HD Sample Screener, Payment Gateway Fee
- August 21, 2019
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- Comments Off on SDFeature Trailer
SD Feature Trailer ($350) plus $15 Gatewa Fee
- July 9, 2019
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- Comments Off on HD Feature Apple Quicktime ProRes
1 Feature Quicktime ProRes. Hard drive. Gateway Fee.
- March 25, 2019
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- Comments Off on How Nitrate Film Set the World Ablaze
How Nitrate Film Set the World Ablaze
Decades before the compact disc, DVDs and streaming services like Hulu and Netflix – even Betamax, there was the film reel – specifically, the nitrate film reel that manufacturers stopped producing in the 1950s.
The reason for the sudden stoppage in the manufacture of nitrate film reels? Combustibility. This posed a huge danger not just to production outfits of the 1930s onward, but also to cinemas that necessarily stored nitrate film reels. By the 1950s, Kodak had replaced both colored and black and white nitrate reels with more stable film stock that didn’t blaze like their predecessors.
Film critics and curators like Genevieve McGillcuddy of the TCM Classic Film Festival state that there’s nothing quite like watching films straight from nitrate film stock, and many similar believers of nitrate film say that the experience of enjoying this type of cinema is close to a spiritual experience.
Explosive cinema
- March 25, 2019
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- Comments Off on Marilyn Monroe – Enduring Screen Icon
Marilyn Monroe: Enduring Screen Icon
Sexy, glamorous and risqué – these are just three of the mouthful of qualities that are regularly attributed to the most iconic blonde bombshell in American popular culture – Marilyn Monroe. But one can argue that she wasn’t the only pin-up girl or bombshell of her time. There was Bettie Page, Betty Grable, and Jayne Mansfield, to name a few. Why can’t Marilyn Monroe be ‘just’ Marilyn Monroe?
So many things about the enigmatic Monroe tickled the popular imagination, to the extent that even if she was only around in Hollywood for only a few years, her films accrued $200 million in profits, and her legendary blonde locks could be recognized globally, from North America to the Middle East.
A most universal Marilyn
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, Marilyn was like good literature, because she easily transcended cultural differences and became a remarkably marketable actress and model everywhere she went.
