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peterbogdanovich Peter Bogdanovich
Blogdanovich is the blog of director, producer, writer, actor, film critic, and author Peter Bogdanovich. He has directed over 25 feature films including international award winners The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, Daisy Miller, Saint Jack, Mask; cult favorites Targets, Texasville, Noises Off, They All Laughed, and A The Thing Called Love, among stars he’s introduced: Cybill Shepherd, Tatum O’Neal, Madeline Kahn, John Ritter, Sandra Bullock; has directed stars Audrey Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Michael Caine, Cher; best-sellers Who the Devil Made It: Who the Hell's In It, The Killing of the Unicorn; standard texts John Ford, This is Orson Welles; and was a recurring guest-star on the popular HBO series The Sopranos.

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Peter Bogdanovich

The Big Sleep

  • February 3, 2012
The two Humphrey Bogart movies that are quintessentially Bogart—in which that line between a star actor’s screen persona and a specific character he’s playing is most thoroughly and effectively erased so that these become indistinguishably one—were directed and produced back-to-back by Howard Hawks. Both co-star Lauren Bacall at her freshest and most defining (her first and third films) and both have screenplays worked on by William Faulkner, one based (rather vaguely) on Ernest Hemingway, the other (rather strongly) on Raymond Chandler.  The first was 1944’s dramatic World War II espionage romance, To Have and Have Not, and the second starred Bogie as the definitive Chandler private eye, Philip Marlowe, in 1946’s mesmerizingly entertaining The Big Sleep (available on DVD).
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A Double Life & The Actress

  • January 27, 2012
Since New York City-born (1899-1983) George Cukor’s first love was the theatre—-he was smitten quite young, right from his initial exposure to a Broadway show, and decided he would be a stage director long before he knew exactly what the job entailed—-it isn’t surprising that at least ten of his movies deal with show-business people, specifically actors; pictures like the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born (1954), or the Cole Porter-Gene Kelly musical, Les Girls (1957), or the oddball Sophia Loren western, Heller in Pink Tights (1960).  Two of his best in this category are 1953’s The Actress (available on DVD), an utterly charming, poignant period comedy based on Ruth Gordon’s autobiographical play (Years Ago) about her stage aspirations and her father’s disapproval, starring Spencer Tracy, Jean Simmons, Teresa Wright, and introducing Anthony Perkins; and the dark psychological drama of an actor’s obsession, 1948’s A Double Life (available on DVD) starring Ronald Colman, Signe Hasso, Edmond O’Brien, and introducing Shelley Winters.
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A Year and a Day Calender: Rowan

  • January 21, 2012
Rowan is a native of Eurasia, a member of the Rose Family which has been naturalized across Alaska and Canada, and From Maine to California.  The word “Rowan” comes from an old Scandinavian word for “red,” referring to the bright red berries that remain on the tree into early winter.  Rowan is also known as Quickbeam, Quicken, or Mountain Ash, and is sometimes called “The Witch,” because witch-wands, once used for finding metal, were made of Rowan.  In the British Isles, Rowan is used as a prophylactic against lightning and also against any kind of witches’ charms; it is believed that bewitched horses can be controlled only with a whip made of Rowan.  Before their battles in ancient Ireland, Druids kindled fires made with Rowan, summoning the spirits to join in the fight.
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Sands of Iwo Jima

  • January 19, 2012
One of Billy Wilder’s first jobs in the German film business, he told me once, was an assignment in the mid-1920s to show around Berlin a famous and respected American film director and his beautiful former-showgirl wife. Allan Dwan at that time was considered one of the best of the Hollywood picture-making pioneers, an all-around professional who could handle comedy as easily as he could handle drama, who had a good touch with pathos and a fine understanding of human nature, who was superstar Gloria Swanson’s favorite director, as well as the legendary Douglas Fairbanks’s favorite too. Indeed, Dwan had directed Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1921), which was the first movie ever to cost a million dollars. In later years, he would become Shirley Temple’s favorite director as well.
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The Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy

  • January 13, 2012
The most popular and successful comedy team in entertainment history was Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the timid thin one and the bossy fat one, who made an unbroken string of shorts (20 minutes each, as many as 13 a year) from 1927 to 1935, and features (averaging two annually) from 1930 to 1945.  Since they began so near the 1929 arrival of full sound, and moved into talkies more smoothly than practically any other stars, comic or otherwise, it is often forgotten that they began in silents.  Indeed, purists have always maintained that the best of Laurel and Hardy were their silent two-reelers—-all made in the first two years of the team’s existence—-and that the level of hilarity they achieved without dialog was never matched in the talking era, even though their voices perfectly suited the pantomimed personas they had so brilliantly established.  These rare silent comedy classics have been collected in ten DVD compilations under the umbrella title, The Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy (confusingly made available originally by Image Entertainment under volume numbers 1-10; check through Amazon.com).
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A YEAR AND A DAY CALENDAR

  • By Peter Bogdanovich
  • |
  • December 22, 2011
In the early 1980s, I spent a lot of time reading and writing, mainly a book about the tragic death of Dorothy Stratten. While working on this for over three years, one of the first matters I wanted to solve was the meaning of the Unicorn. The beast had become an issue of some depth between Dorothy and me.
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The Golden Age of American Talkies: 1932

  • December 16, 2011
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The Student Prince (In Old Heidelberg)

  • December 9, 2011
Since for me the Polish-German master Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947), once internationally famous for his “Lubitsch Touch,” is high among the ten best and most influential picture-makers of the western world--one to whose work I gravitate even more as I get older--it follows that if there happens to be a Lubitsch film on TV (more than likely TCM), it’s almost automatically the best movie of the week.  Based on the famous Sigmund Romberg operetta, 1927’s THE STUDENT PRINCE (In Old Heidelberg) [available, shamefully, only on VHS], one of Lubitsch’s last silent pictures, is not really typical of him--being neither a romantic comedy nor an historical drama--but rather an extremely moving sad love story. But the “Touch” is so present throughout, no one else could have made this picture: a lightly told and devastating romantic heartbreaker. It is an underappreciated work of Lubitsch’s, yet it is among his very best, coming just at the end of the glorious silent era. As Charlie Chaplin said of that lost period: “Just when we got it right, it was over.”
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Hail the Conquering Hero

  • November 30, 2011
As questions of morality, ethics and honor in our society become ever more ambiguous, it might be salutary to see an American comedy of the highest order dealing with these troubling issues, made while World War II was daily in a different way bringing them vividly to the fore. During 1944, the inimitable Preston Sturges wrote and directed one of his most enduring works with these themes: HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO (available on DVD). It was the seventh picture in that most extraordinary run of eight consecutive movies over four years, all brilliantly conceived, written and directed by Sturges (here’s the Link to a piece I did on this very special picturemaker years ago).
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Comanche Station

  • By Peter Bogdanovich
  • |
  • November 14, 2011
Among hip Western connoisseurs both here and abroad, there have been four really memorable, artistically consistent director-star series in the genre’s sound era: eight John Ford-John Wayne features (from Stagecoach to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); four Howard Hawks-Wayne pictures (including Red River and Rio Bravo); five Anthony Mann-James Stewart sagas (from Winchester ‘73 to The Man from Laramie); and seven intimate ones from Budd Boetticher-Randolph Scott.
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