Leonard Maltin

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Let's Hear It For Vitaphone!

By Leonard Maltin
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August 26, 2010 4:00 AM
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2 Comments

Carlena Diamond, "Harpist Supreme"

By Leonard Maltin
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August 25, 2010 4:00 AM
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17 Comments

Doug Benson is a very funny guy. You may have seen him on TV or at a local comedy club; he tours all the time. Or you may be familiar with his stoner documentary Super-High Me. But I’ve gotten to know Doug because he hosts a podcast called Doug Loves Movies (formerly known as I Love Movies) that’s recorded in front of a live audience at L.A.’s comedy hotspot, Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. The heart of every show is a competition he calls—no kidding—The Leonard Maltin Game.

Doug is a dyed-in-the-wool movie buff, as smart as he is funny, and every week he gathers fellow standup comics and actors to play the game, in which he serves as quizmaster. The object is to guess the name of a movie based on—

By Leonard Maltin
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August 12, 2010 4:00 AM
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6 Comments

If you’re in New York City any time over the next two weeks and you’ve never seen “old-school” Hollywood 3D, make a beeline for Film Forum on Houston Street. Forget the untruths and distortions you’ve read about how primitive the process was in the 1950s and judge for yourself. You’ll have a great time, even if most of the movies aren’t great…and you won’t be wearing red-green glasses: that’s just one of the myths that’s been perpetuated by an ignorant press while touting new digital 3D.

To quote Film Forum’s press release, “The fifteen rare 35mm 3-D prints (not digital) in the series will all be run in the original dual-projector Polaroid system, employing a silver screen, special filters, two synchronized projectors (one for the left eye, the other for the right) and a super-cool pair of Buddy Holly-style 3-D glasses for each member of the audience. Film Forum is the only cinema in New York equipped to screen vintage double-system 3-D.” That’s because Film Forum’s program director, Bruce Goldstein, is a movie lover of the first order who does things right. Appropriately, the 3-D Fest overlaps with a tribute to—

By Leonard Maltin
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August 5, 2010 9:03 AM
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6 Comments

I’m pleased to announce the debut of a new weekly TV show. After nearly four years of writing and hosting Secret’s Out on ReelzChannel, I am bowing to requests that I cover major Hollywood releases as well as the indies and foreign films I love. The result: Maltin on Movies, which debuts this Friday and repeats several times over the weekend.

By Leonard Maltin
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August 3, 2010 9:03 AM
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0 Comments

I don’t know how the folks at TCM keep topping themselves, but they do. For their annual Summer Under the Stars festival, featuring a different star for every day in August, they’ve hired graphic artist Michael Schwab to create a series of distinctive collector cards, depicting each star in an iconic role one can recognize even in silhouette. You can admire the whole series online HERE. These are not “virtual” creations, however: the network plans to give away 500 complete sets through a sweepstakes drawing you can read about at their site.

By Leonard Maltin
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July 27, 2010 12:11 PM
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1 Comment

To celebrate the 15th year of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, its directors decided to extend the event by an extra day, kicking off Thursday night and screening all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The results were exhausting but exhilarating. As in years past, near-capacity crowds turned out at every show, with several shows, like the newly-restored Metropolis, turning customers away.

There are other vintage film festivals around the country but none is as elaborate, ambitious, or masterfully mounted as this one, a genuine cultural event in San Francisco. It has a perfect home in The Castro, a glorious 1927 movie palace, and its programmers and board of directors create a first-class experience. There are signings with authors of film-related books between showings, along with the sale of books and DVDs, and informative slide shows that set the stage for each screening. What’s more, the audience is treated to the widest possible variety of live music. This year, Dennis James kicked off the proceedings by accompanying John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924) on the Castro’s Mighty Wurlitzer organ, the three-man Alloy Orchestra played for—

By Leonard Maltin
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July 27, 2010 4:00 AM
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19 Comments

(The Penguin Group)I know, I know: the idea of publishing a reference book in the age of instant communication sounds positively quaint. But the 2011 Edition of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide is just out, in two paperback formats—mass-market and a larger “trade size”—still alive and kicking after forty-one years (!). True, we can’t offer the immediacy of the Internet, but I still think the book is relevant, and so do a substantial number of readers around the world, thank goodness. We’ve added 300 new reviews, as recent as Sex and the City 2 and Iron Man 2, bringing the book up to a whopping 1,643 pages, and as always we’ve made hundreds and hundreds of changes, corrections, and additions. If a film is remade or followed by a sequel, turned into a TV series or Broadway play, we say so. If an actor who wasn’t well known when a film was—

By Leonard Maltin
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July 23, 2010 12:31 PM
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4 Comments

Gloria Stuart joined by fellow actresses Carla Laemmle and Pauline Wagner, all of whom are centenarians, at the "Academy's Centennial Celebration with Gloria Stuart." (photo courtesy of AMPAS)

By Leonard Maltin
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July 20, 2010 6:00 AM
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0 Comments

On July 4, a slow news day, The New York Times ran an interesting feature article about a number of small towns that are operating their own first-run movie theaters—like the Roxy in Landon, North Dakota. They don’t add much to the weekend grosses you read about on Monday mornings, but they are keeping the tradition of moviegoing alive in close-knit communities from coast to coast: www.nytimes.com (You may have to be registered with The New York Times to read this piece.)

By Leonard Maltin
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July 2, 2010 4:00 AM
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2 Comments

There is no thrill to compare with seeing a classic movie in a great movie theater. For twenty-four years, the Los Angeles Conservancy has hosted a month-long series called Last Remaining Seats, showing vintage films in the city’s great movie palaces, most of which are located on Broadway downtown. This year’s wide-ranging bill of fare included Strangers on a Train, American Graffiti, The Graduate, the 1943 Mexican classic Flor Silvestre, and the silent version of Peter Pan. (The evening I’m really sorry I missed featured How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with its stars Robert Morse and Michele Lee in person, interviewed by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, who features Morse on his show.) I don’t know of another major city with more surviving theaters from the glory days than ours. Alas, this part of Broadway—which used to be a Mecca for Southland shopping and entertainment—is now just a business district during the day and something of a ghost town at night. Post-World War Two suburban sprawl and the destruction of Los Angeles’ much-loved Red Car light-rail system saw to that.

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Let's Hear It For Vitaphone!

Doug Loves Movies

Everything Old Is New Again—In 3D

A New Show: Maltin On Movies

Turner Classic Movies Plays Its Cards Right

Silent Films Live Again!

A New Movie Guide

Celebrating Glorious Gloria

Let’s Go To The Movies!

Movie Palaces Come Alive Again

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