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Lifeboat (1944) (For the Love of Film III)
(This post is the Siren's contribution to our blogathon, For the Love of Film III, raising money for the National Film Preservation Foundation to stream The White Shadow, one of the first films worked...
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For the Love of Film III: Day Four, With the Siren as Your Host
UPDATE: Hello folks. As always, the Siren, Marilyn Ferdinand and the fine people at the National Film Preservation Foundation are happy with the outpouring from the blogosphere. The number of bloggers...
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For the Love of Film III: Last Call at Rod's
It's the final day of our For the Love of Film III blogathon to raise funds for the National Film Preservation Foundation's efforts to stream The White Shadow. Once again, your host is Rod Heath of...
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For the Love of Film III: Bring Up the House Lights
Don't mind me...I'm just a little tired...Whaddya know, the last reel rocked.The Siren foregoes preamble to tell her patient readers, dear blogathon participants and generous, beautiful donors that our...
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Anecdote of the Week: "I think Nathanael West was a creep."
Two excerpts from Eve's Hollywood, billed as "a confessional L.A. novel by Eve Babitz." James Wolcott wrote about Babitz not too long ago and the Siren, fascinated, managed to borrow a copy of the...
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For the Love of Film III: Onward and Upward, With the Help of Fandor
The Siren, Marilyn Ferdinand and Rod Heath have joyous news for all of us who labored on the For the Love of Film III blogathon to benefit the National Film Preservation Foundation: the good folks at...
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Anecdote of the Week: Blondell Crazy
Alas, the Siren has been up to her step-ins in work and has consequently been missing you all terribly. Since April, she's been doing some freelance film reviewing for (drum roll) the New York Post....
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In Memoriam: Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012
Last year, my friend Lee Tsiantis took me to have tea with Molly Haskell and Andrew Sarris in their home. It was a beautiful afternoon, of which I will tell one thing only: At one point, I mentioned...
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In Memoriam: Andy Griffith, 1926-2012
It's supposed to be an insult, describing a performer as a "professional [ethnicity]"--someone who, with little else to recommend him, makes a living pandering to stereotypes. Andy Griffith, born in...
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Gilbert Talks: Fast Workers (1933) and Downstairs (1932)
There was nothing wrong with John Gilbert's voice. We know that, but let's start there anyway, as even a few recent articles about The Artist, by people who should know better, reference the old story:...
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The Kid with the Citizen Kane Tape
Neal Gabler, an excellent film writer and historian, had (and probably is having) a dark night of the soul over at the Los Angeles Times last weekend. Gabler believes that the taste for old...
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This Is My Love (1954)
Dan Duryea dancing in a wheelchair to the strains of the "Vienna Blood" waltz is one of those deep cinematic needs you never realized you had until suddenly, it's fulfilled. Fulfillment came from This...
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Sight and Sound and Siren and (Lack of) Fury
So the Siren was toddling along, doing no harm, having an uncommonly busy summer but otherwise in good cheer, when all of a sudden, this happened.The Siren was hit by a late-summer bout of what her...
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Anecdote of the Week: "The Girl in the Black Tights"
Some big parties going on for the past couple of weeks and the Siren's best hats were all being re-blocked, so she didn't go. Thursday night TCM, in the slyest bit of counter-programming the Siren has...
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Jean Grémillon
This week, at the site MUBI, the Siren has a long essay about Jean Grémillon and the new DVD set of three of his films (Le ciel est à vous, Lumière d'été and Remorques) from Criterion's no-frills...
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The Cobweb (1955)
(For the one and only Yojimboen, here's a complete and slightly spruced-up version of the Siren's 2011 essay on The Cobweb, from the now-defunct Nomad Widescreen. Curtain going up...)Here’s a little...
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In Memoriam: Herbert Lom, 1917-2012
The Siren felt a bit of eerie coincidence on hearing that Herbert Lom had died at the venerable age of 95. Less than three weeks ago, she saw the fine old British psychiatric romance The Seventh Veil....
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Tay Garnett: Light Your Torches and Pull Up Your Tights
The Siren has written before about director Tay Garnett: his marriage to actress Patsy Ruth Miller, and his script for and direction ofOne Way Passage, which the Siren would unhesitatingly cite as one...
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To Save and Project: MOMA Screens Wild Girl (1932) and Call Her Savage (1932)
On Thursday, Oct. 11 (that's tomorrow) the Museum of Modern Art in New York kicks off its 10th edition of To Save and Project, their annual series of screenings dedicated to film preservation. The...
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Ernst Lubitsch's The Loves of Pharaoh, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Another alert for the Siren's patient New York readers: On Oct. 18 through Oct. 20, the Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting the great Ernst Lubitsch's 1922 silent, The Loves of Pharaoh. Lost for...
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