9/11 Ninety Years Ago: Fatty Arbuckle Should’ve Nursed His Ass at Home
This entry is part 5 of 12 in the series Pic of the Day.Today is September 11, 2011, ten years after the terrorist attacks on America. As a result, hundreds of stories will fill the airwaves, blogosphere, and other social media outlets as reporters, bloggers, and otherwise (still) try to make sense of it all. First, they’ll ask interviewees, “Where were you on that beautiful clear morning?” Next, we’ll see those horrific images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, of the Pentagon smoking, and of that jet-shaped indention in a grassy Pennsylvania field. Third,...
Read MoreColin Firth: Actor, Sex Symbol, Drag Queen
This entry is part 4 of 12 in the series Pic of the Day.Today, Colin Firth turns 51. That’s right, folks; the man above is 51 years old. I’m unsure when this particular photo was taken (8-10 years ago?), but if this is what middle age looks like or this, which I know was taken last week, sign me up. Trying to decide on one photo to represent this “pic of the day” entry is by far the most difficult thing I’ve done all week. Please keep in mind that over the past six days, I set the DVR for the upcoming fall season, watched the documentary Exporting Raymond, and...
Read MoreThank You, Gene Kelly, for Not Directing Cabaret
This entry is part 28 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.Last week I stumbled across several 1976 newspaper articles in which Gene Kelly discusses his return to movies. After the death of his (second) wife, Jeanne Coyne, Kelly turned down virtually any film project that would take him away from the couple’s two young children, Tim and Bridget. At this point, single fatherhood was his life. But with the blessing of his kids, he returned to the silver screen in the dramatic (not musical) role of Evil Knievel’s “grease-monkey sidekick” in Viva Knievel (1977). (Further...
Read MoreHangin’ with the Ghosts of Buster Keaton and John Barrymore: Movie Palaces and Murals in Toledo, OH
This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series In and Around Toledo.Every Thursday during July and August, the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library sponsor free walking tours of downtown Toledo. Held during lunchtime, the tours cover Toledo’s history and architecture: July 7: Trinity Episcopal Church (built 1892). July 14: Vistula, Toledo’s Oldest Neighborhood (estb. 1837). July 21: The Valentine Theater (opened 1896). July 28: Birmingham Ethnic Neighborhood (Hungarian neighborhood estb. in 1892; still home to the famous hot-dog joint,...
Read MoreAnimated GIFs, Cinemagraphs, and Our Return to Early Cinema
This entry is part 26 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.Every couple of days I head over to Tumblr to check out my dashboard, which normally overflows with — no surprise to frequent readers of this blog — info about and images of Gene Kelly, Colin Firth, Jon Stewart, and Shakespeare. But hey, sometimes I also wake up to pics of Bogie and Bacall, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Hugh Laurie, Kenneth Branagh, Karl Pilkington, and the guys from Men of a Certain Age. So there. While still photographs like this one of Colin Firth showering in coffee — sure, I’ll give you a...
Read MoreThe Bias of All That: Gene Kelly and His Wives
This entry is part 25 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.In the first half of her memoir, The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris, actor/activist Betsy Blair writes fondly about her relationship with and marriage to Hollywood song-and-dance man Gene Kelly. The reader learns, for instance, what Gene was wearing when the sixteen-year-old Blair first laid eyes on him: “an open-necked white shirt, a dark long-sleeved sweater, dark trousers, and moccasins. He seemed to be balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to spring like a cat” (9). More...
Read MoreFavorite Student Tweets: Rashomon
This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Favorite Student Tweets.The spring 2011 semester is over, and so is my tenure at the University of Toledo. As a result, I’ve had time to revisit the student tweets I marked as favorites, many of which, because of the usual end-of-the-semester frenzy, never made it onto the blog. Let’s remedy that, shall we? Here are some of my favorite student tweets from Cinema History‘s in-class screening of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950). The Bandit The Medium (and her “Eyebrows”) (This student closed his account after the...
Read MoreBridesmaids and the Critical Hysteria Surrounding It
This entry is part 23 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses. If Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) fails financially, Hollywood will never make another female-centric comedy again. At least that’s the word on the street. First, apparently Bridesmaids is The Movie that will decide if women can carry blockbusters and subsequently liberate female viewers from the dreadful Katherine Heigl-helmed romantic comedies to which they’ll surely be subjected next summer. Second, any woman who refuses to watch Bridesmaids in its theatrical release is seemingly shirking her societal duty. Yes,...
Read MoreAhoy, Matey: A Pirate in My Class
This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series In and Around Toledo. Well, here’s a new one… Today, during a screening of Psycho‘s infamous shower scene, I stopped the film to give the students a bit of trivia: “This is the first toilet shown onscreen,” I informed the class of 120 as Hitchcock’s camera focused momentarily on the john at the Bates Motel. And then, shortly after this comment, I asked, “Does anyone recall, from our first lecture in particular, why it would take Hollywood until 1960 to reveal a toilet onscreen? After all, cinema has been around...
Read MoreThose Gene Kelly Volkswagen Commercials Suck, and Here’s Why
This entry is part 22 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.For the subject of my final FlowTV column, I debated between “God,” a thought-provoking episode of FX’s comedy show Louie, and those two recent Volkswagen commercials that digitally resurrect my man Gene Kelly. Well, from the title of this post, I suppose it’s clear which path I took. With the exception of “So Why Did Everybody Love Raymond?” this Flow essay was the most difficult one I’ve written (I’ve penned seven now). The Raymond column was tough because I had to dig through nine...
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Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,