Posts by John Calhoun

Noted always for her beauty, sometimes for her acting, and equally frequently for her scandalous romances and charitable acts, Elizabeth Taylor was the epitome of a star right up to her passing earlier this year at age 79.

The great W. C. Fields may have resented being buttoned up, but he had little choice in the silent film era. Without being able to show off his gift for gab, the comedian had to rely on his vaudeville-honed physical gifts, which were also prodigious.

In the mood for an eclectic combination of animated, experimental, documentary, and narrative-based short films? Then don't miss Award-Winning Works from the 29th Black Maria Film + Video Festival, presented Saturday, April 24 at 2:30pm at Jefferson Market Library.

Pete Seeger may be best known as a folk music icon, but his history as a political activist is as important as his musical legacy. The activism gets pride of place in Pamela Timmins' documentary Clearwater Nation, which will be shown Monday, April 5, 2010 at 6pm at Jefferson Market Branch.

Global women's issues are the focus of Jefferson Market Branch's Monday night film series in March, which is National Women's History Month. The series, titled 21st-Century Women on Film, includes five movies made in the first decade of the 2000s, and examines contemporary challenges facing women across four continents.

Jefferson Market to screen some of the winning foreign-lingo movies in February 
Now that Oscar season is upon us, Jefferson Market Branch is devoting its Monday night film series in February to Academy Award-winning foreign-language films.

In 1919, D.W. Griffith announced that he was opening an independent film studio in Mamaroneck, New York; it had been only five years since the director left the East Coast for Hollywood. But that five-year period had been a momentous one, not only for Griffith—whose West Coast output during this time included Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Broken Blossoms—but for the film industry in general. By 1915, 80 percent of American films were made in southern California, and by 1919, the factory system that came to characterize Hollywood production during its classical period was largely in place.

Griffith’s return East is Richard 

Who better to take a fresh look at Scarlett O’Hara than the author of a book titled From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies? Molly Haskell made her name with that 1973 work, a watershed chronicle of female images through Hollywood history. In her new book Frankly My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, Haskell has turned her lively analytical style to Margaret Mitchell’s tempestuous heroine, both in her literary and cinematic incarnations.

You may think Gone with the Wind represents well-trod ground, particularly in the oft-repeated stories about the production of David O. Selznick’s massive movie adaptation. And