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“The Story of Hollywood in 10 Films” – Robbie Collin at The Telegraph attempts a simply/impossible feat of boiling down American industry filmmaking into .000000001% of its output.
“The industry grew into itself, the star system formed, and filmmakers from around the world fluttered, moth-like, to Hollywood, bringing European elegance and style with them. Some, like Ernst Lubitsch and F?W Murnau, were already successes at home. Others, like the Italian-born Francesco Capra, arrived in America as children and were seduced by Hollywood on its home turf.
The film of 1934 was Capra’s It Happened One Night, and the Oscars agreed. (It was the first to win in all five major categories.) Here was another comedy that centered on an ordinary man on the make – in this case, Clark Gable’s recently sacked newspaper reporter who falls in love with Claudette Colbert’s heiress-on-the-run – except Gable, on loan to Columbia from M?G?M, looked anything but ordinary.”
“Can the Story of Hollywood be Told in Just 10 Films?” – Max O’Connell at Indiewire ricochets off that article in order to push (slightly) against it and provide his own list. Let’s all do this now. (Hint: all correct lists include RoboCop.)
“How the Mother of All Sequels Crashed and Burned” – Luke Dittrich at Esquire tells the tale of Benedict Fitzgerald’s attempt to follow his Passion of the Christ script with a prequel focusing on Mary’s life, and the collapsing production process was a doozy.
“Comic-Con Talk Back is a real-life internet comments section” – Todd VenDerWerff at Vox sits in on a town hall event with the president of Comic-Con and a bunch of pissed of fans looking to make the event better.
“In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, pop culture acts as both shelter and cage” – Nathan Rabin at The Dissolve looks at how comic books, kitschy TV shows and action figures help soothe and imprison Steve Carrell’s character.
Related Topics: Conventions
