Leonard Maltin

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Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist And Rebel

By Leonard Maltin
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September 2, 2010 2:39 AM
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There are few people who can be credited with affecting real or lasting change in our culture. One of them is Hugh Hefner, an aspiring cartoonist who borrowed money to put out the first issue of a magazine called Playboy that became an overnight sensation back in the uptight 1950s. Hef became a celebrity, and used his success to promote his ideas and ideals; that’s the focus of Oscar-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman’s new documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel.

By Leonard Maltin
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August 24, 2010 4:00 AM
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3 Comments

I am extremely happy because one of my all-time favorite films—The Last Command—has finally come to DVD, as part of a glorious boxed set from Criterion called 3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg.

By Leonard Maltin
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August 17, 2010 4:00 AM
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(Criterion Collection)

By Leonard Maltin
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July 26, 2010 4:00 AM
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The Runaways | Leonard Maltin | Leonard Maltin's Secret's Out | Movie Trailers

By Leonard Maltin
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July 16, 2010 4:00 AM
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3 Comments

The term “film noir” didn’t exist in the 1940s and early 1950s. The late Larry Gelbart, who wrote the noir-inspired stage musical City of Angels, once told me that back then “film” was something you got if you didn’t brush your teeth. People went to “the movies.” But ever since the term was taken up by American film buffs and scholars in the 1970s it has created a special allure for those dark, hard-boiled melodramas that studios ground out so effortlessly in the post-War era. What’s more, since today’s audiences have no trouble digesting cynicism, these films seem positively modern as opposed to the apple-pie wholesomeness of other Hollywood product from the period.

The ongoing popularity of noir has impelled studios and distributors to dig deep into their vaults and inspired some exceptional writing and scholarship. Editors Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini and Robert Porfirio have expanded and updated their landmark 1979 volume The Film Noir Encyclopedia (Overlook Press). There are many new entries, overview essays, and a section on—

By Leonard Maltin
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July 13, 2010 4:00 AM
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3 Comments

The folks at Kino International deserve a medal for the exceptional job they’ve done bringing Buster Keaton’s films to DVD. Last year they unveiled a beautiful copy of The General on Blu-Ray, the first silent feature to appear in that format. Now they’ve unearthed an alternate version of Steamboat Bill Jr. and paired it with the print we’re familiar with. As silent-film aficionados know, most films were shot with dual cameras, side by side, to provide a second negative for overseas use. Because the finished prints were edited separately, there were often variations in the timing of shots. At this late date it’s impossible to know for certain which version was which, but Kino’s new two-disc DVD enables Keaton scholars to examine them both. (For those who are less compulsive, a bonus feature offers a handful of scenes in split-screen so you can see the admittedly slight differences between the two. The pictorial quality is quite good in both cases.) Other features include a visual essay on the making of the film, a photo library, and—

By Leonard Maltin
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May 26, 2010 5:14 AM
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This is a momentous week for me: we’ve just finished the new edition of my annual paperback Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide—the 2011 Edition, to be specific. In this era of instant communication the process of writing, editing, and preparing a book seems quaint at best, and cumbersome at worst, but our book is still alive and well, and (I’m happy to say) has a healthy audience around the world. (I use the editorial “we” advisedly, since this has always been a team effort. Some of my collaborators have been working on this book for thirty years or more. If I didn’t have their input I’d be lost.)

Every spring becomes a high-stress period for me and my colleagues as we become mired in fact-checking details (the spelling of a Czech actor’s name, the running time of an unrated DVD version of a popular hit, etc.) and making sure someone on our team has seen every major new release. Then there are additions, corrections, and changes to the existing entries, which never end.

But when I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, sometime in early May, I start to breathe. I’ve actually—

By Leonard Maltin
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May 24, 2010 6:56 AM
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4 Comments

(Criterion Collection)

A film as great, and significant, as John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) deserves a great presentation DVD, and it finally has one, thanks to the Criterion Collection. It’s tragic that the original negative of this landmark film no longer exists; we’ve been lucky to have decent copies in spite of that, but Criterion had access to a 35mm nitrate negative from the 1942 reissue, which they treated with care and respect for the integrity of the film as it originally appeared. In the booklet that accompanies the DVD, the disc’s producers apologize for flaws that remain. “The picture suffered from thousands of instances of blended-in scratches and debris, especially around reel changes and in action sequences. In cases where the damage was not fixable without leaving traces of our restoration work, we decided to leave the original damage. Through hundreds of hours of restoration work, we’ve manually removed the—

By Leonard Maltin
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May 18, 2010 6:11 AM
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How can a film that’s more than eighty years old seem fresh and modern? That’s the marvel of Rene Clair’s silent gem The Italian Straw Hat (1927), which has been lovingly restored by producer David Shepard for DVD release through Jeffery Masino’s Flicker Alley. If you’ve never seen the picture, you owe it to yourself to experience its wit and charm, which is comparable to the finest work of Ernst Lubitsch…yet it is distinctly, unmistakably French. While its source material (an emblematic stage farce written in 1851) was already well-worn by the late 1920s, Clair put his own stamp on it by changing—

By Leonard Maltin
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April 12, 2010 5:03 AM
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2 Comments

Leo McCarey poses with ZaSu Pitts and Charles Laughton on the set of Ruggles of Red GapIf he had made only the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, Leo McCarey would have a place in the pantheon of American comedy. He did much more, of course, from a superb series of silent two-reelers with Charley Chase and some of Laurel and Hardy’s finest comedy shorts to such great feature films as The Awful Truth and Love Affair. His name isn’t invoked as often as other giants of his era, perhaps because his later films became sentimental (Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s, both giant hits with Bing Crosby) and then political (My Son John, Satan Never Sleeps). But somehow, in this year of 2010, as some of us shake our heads over signs that civilization—

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Categories

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist And Rebel

review: Von Sternberg Dazzles On DVD

dvd review: Black Orpheus

secret's out: The Runaways now on DVD

book and dvd reviews: It's A Noir, Noir, Noir, Noir World

dvd review: Buster Keaton: Lost And Found

Catching Up

dvd review: Stagecoach

The Italian Straw Hat

DVD review: Hail, Hail Freedonia—And Leo McCarey

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