Shadow Cabaret

Movie bloggers did themselves proud in April, zipping back and forth through film history from current events to downright rarities and fresh takes on some classics of the silent screen.

Pushing off from the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the A Life at the Movies blog plunged into an exhaustive survey of a century’s worth of films dealing with that less than unsinkable vessel’s ill-fated voyage.

TCM “morlock” David Kalat related the tangled history of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and discussed why the version closest to the director’s original vision isn’t necessarily the official one.

Stacia of “She Blogged by Night” took a fresh look at Clara Bow’s career-launching vehicle It and served up a saucy bitch-slap to one of Bow’s biographers along the way.

The very busy David Kalat returned to offer an eye-gouging survey of the many, many faces of the Three Stooges.

David Cairns exhumed the mostly forgotten 1933 melodrama The Return of Bulldog Drummond, his nomination for a prime example of rare but earnest fascist commercial filmmaking.

Don’t panic, you knuckleheads – spread out and get a load of these highbrow links.

On the blogs and websites devoted to movies March was all classics all the time, with talented writers working overtime to mine new nuggets from the golden age of the silver screen.

The Criterion Collection blog offered a sharp look at the fiftieth anniversary of Roman Polanski’s landmark 1962 drama Knife in the Water, and its place within not only the director’s body of work, but in world cinema.

“Tales of the Easily Distracted” blogger DorianTB served up a lengthy and entertaining investigation of Dick Powell’s career-changing performance as Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe in the wonderfully atmospheric noir classic Murder, My Sweet.

Blogger Cliff Aliperti discussed his own adventures – and some fascinating info encountered along the way – while nailing down the facts for an article about the 1944 Frederic March biopic The Adventures of Mark Twain on the “Immortal Ephemera” site.

Writer Gary Cahall pried open the Disney vault to weigh the pros and cons of the controversial Song of the South on The Great Entertainment Media Archive blog.

Dive in and soak up the knowledge in these fascinating links.

Bloggers, reviewers and other online writers about movies were on a roll in February, giving us a collection of first-rate pieces that were heavy on film history and high in reader interest.

TCM “morlock” David Kalat began an absorbing and entertaining serialized think piece on silent film comedy that avoided a lot of the usual suspects – part one here, offering a sharp take on the roots of classic silent slapstick gags, part two here, with a well-written rumination on the flaws in the way we look back on those classic films, and part three here, with an appreciative eye for the accomplishments of Charlie Chaplin’s unjustly forgotten brother Syd.

Starting in January, the “Myfilmviews” blog kicked off an ongoing feature detailing the history of Hollywood studio logos. The February Warner Brothers entry included a handy set of links to the entire series, each of which is well worth a look.

New York Post writer Lou Lumenick recapped the long deterioration and triumphal restoration of Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front in his review of that classic film’s new Blu-Ray release.

In a guest post on the always-interesting “Edward Copeland on Film” blog, Ivan G. Shreve celebrated the 60^th anniversary of the Anthony Mann-James Stewart “adult Western” Bend of the River.

Bilge Ebiri discussed the take-no-prisoners world view of director Hideo Gosha, as exemplified in his impressive debut film Three Outlaw Samurai, via the “Criterion Collection” site.

Uni-monickered “Mark” of the “Where Danger Lives” blog offered one of the month’s most effective pieces with a beautifully written appreciation of Hollywood tough guy Alan Ladd.

Cinch up your chaps and high-tail it over to these entertaining links.

The Shadow Cabaret was flattered recently by a request for permission to reprint our 2010 multi-part opus on the Three Mesquiteers movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

That reprint has just appeared on the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention’s site, a bright and entertaining slice of the Net which you can check out here.

Click the “Articles” heading to see what a nice job the Mid-Atlantic folks did with our sagebrush saga – then poke around a bit and enjoy the other stories and celebrity profiles. It’s a smart site and a good-looking one, too, and new material is added frequently.