Posted in Art-house Cinema, Arts and Entertainment, Awards, Book to Film Adaptations, History, Movies, Pop Culture, tagged Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Joe Wright, Oscar Predictions, David Fincher, Previews, Trailers, Fall Movie Preview, Spike Lee, The Miracle at St. Anna, Movie Trailers, Mongol, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Australia, Baz Luhrmann, The Soloist, Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes, Changeling, Clint Eastwood, Defiance, Edward Zwick, Daniel Craig, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Alexandra Maria Lara, Burn After Reading, Quantum of Solace, Ghengis Khan on July 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »
CAPTION: Ghengis Khan is all up in this yurt.
So last week I saw that flick Mongol, you know, the new epic about Ghengis Khan made by a Russian director (Sergei Bodrov), starring a Japanese dude (Tadonubo Asano), nominated for an Oscar, and inexplicably released stateside in the middle of the summer movie season. It was a pretty [...]
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Posted in Book Reviews, Books, History, Literature, tagged Alan Furst, Espionage, Graham Greene, Historical Fiction, John Le Carre, Poland, Romance, Spies, Spy Novels, The Spies of Warsaw, Thrillers, Warsaw, World War Two on June 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Atmospheric and Meandering
Reviewed by:
David H. Schleicher “Author of The Thief Maker”
- See all my reviews
Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a military attache and French spy living in Poland, begins an affair with a lovely Polish lawyer named Anna while trying to obtain inside information on Germany’s planned invasion of France in Alan Furst’s atmospheric and meandering [...]
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Posted in Art, Art-house Cinema, History, Inspiration, Movie Reviews, Movies, Psychology, tagged Carl Dreyer, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Catholocism, Criterion Collection, Danish Cinema, Film Classics, Film School, Foreign Films, French Heros, French History, Joan of Arc, Maria Falconetti, Mysticism, Religion, Richard Einhorn, Saint Joan, Saints, Silent Films, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Voices of Light on June 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Re-watching Carl Dreyer’s silent classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), was the final piece of my self-taught Spring Film School that started in April with The Third Man and continued in May and June with M, Metropolis, The Big Heat, The 400 Blows, The Innocents, Twelve Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Citizen Kane and finally Dreyer’s film. One of [...]
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Posted in History, Inspiration, Travel, tagged Civil War, Day-Tripping, Delaware River, Fort Mifflin, Ghost Hunters, Ghosts, Haunted Philly, Haunted Places, Historic Sites, Philadelphia, Revolutionary War on May 19, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Recently featured on the TV show Ghost Hunters, Fort Mifflin always finds itself at the top of the list of most haunted places in Philadelphia. Built in 1771, the fort was an important outpost during the Revolutionary War designed to defend Philadelphia from British ships. During the Civil War, the fort was turned into a makeshift [...]
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Posted in Art, Art-house Cinema, History, Movie Reviews, Movies, Politics, Psychology, tagged Film Classics, Film Noir, Film School, Fritz Lang, German Expressionism, Group Think, Individualism, Jungian Archetypes, M, Nazi Germany, Peter Lorre, Propoganda, Symbolism, Weimar Republic on April 21, 2008 | 3 Comments »
With nothing worthwhile at the cineplex this spring, I’ve been using my Netflix queue to catch up with many of the classics I studied in film class but never watched as a complete whole. Fritz Lang’s M is one of those classics that looks great on your shelf, but you might only pop in the [...]
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Posted in Art, Baseball, History, Inspiration, Sports, Travel, tagged Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, Lake Ostego, Ty Cobb on April 5, 2008 | 2 Comments »
In honor of the opening week of baseball season, I took a road trip with my brother and a friend up to Cooperstown, NY to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. It was the first time I had been back since I was a child. Though cold (and rainy on the last day), it was the [...]
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Posted in Art-house Cinema, History, Inspiration, Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture, tagged Alexander Korda, Alida Valli, Anton Karas, Carol Reed, David O. Selznick, Film Classics, Film Noir, Film School, Graham Greene, Joseph Cotten, Kati Marton, Orson Welles, Post WWII Occupation, The Third Man, Trevor Howard, Vienna, Zither on April 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »
CAPTION: In 1949, this Valli was located in GreeneLand.
CAPTION: In the best of film noir, a viewer can actually feel the dampness and breathe in the darkness.
The Trouble with Harry Lime, 1 April 2008
Author: David H. Schleicher from New Jersey, USA
I initially felt a fool for not having seen The Third Man earlier. However, in retrospect, [...]
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Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Book to Film Adaptations, Books, History, Literature, Politics, Television, tagged Abigail Adams, Alexander Hamilton, American History, American Revolution, Beer, Ben Franklin, Boston, Charles Adams, Danny Huston, David McCullough, David Morse, Drinking, Founding Fathers, George Washington, HBO, John Adams, John Adams Episode Guide, John Quincy Adams, Laura Linney, Miniseries, Paul Giamatti, Philadelphia, Revolutionary War, Rufus Sewel, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Hooper, Tom Wilkinson on March 16, 2008 | 11 Comments »
**This was a post in progress.
Weekly updates appeared as each episode of John Adams aired Sunday nights on HBO.
And remember, faithful viewers, Samuel Adams White Ale is the (un)official beer of HBO’s John Adams. Real Patriots Drink Samuel Adams.
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*Above: Political Propaganda circa 1776.
PREVIEW:
Ever since the demise of The Sopranos and Rome, the only thing even remotely worth [...]
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Posted in Art-house Cinema, History, Literature, Movie Reviews, Movies, Psychology, Travel, tagged Belgium, Brendan Gleeson, Bruges, Clemence Poesy, Colin Farrell, Crime Thriller, Dark Comedy, David Mamet, Dwarves, Graham Greene, Hit Men, In Bruges, Martin McDonagh, Midgets, Ralph Fiennes on February 17, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Clemence Poesy says “oui oui” to a vaction…In Bruges.
Just when I was about lose faith in film due to the muck and mire currently overstuffing multiplexes and DVD shelves, In Bruges comes along, out of nowhere, to restore my religion. First-time feature length director/screenwriter Martin McDonagh hasn’t crafted an earth shaking masterpiece, but he has a made a film [...]
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Posted in History, Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture, tagged Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Cate Blanchett, Shekhar Kapur, Halloween, Rob Zombie, Sunshine, Danny Boyle on February 12, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Is it just me, or is the 2008 movie season getting off to one of the worst starts in recent memory in terms of the quality of films? While Hollywood jams the multiplexes with Oscar nominated films I’ve already seen and their Z-level garbage not good enough for year-end or summer releases, I decided to [...]
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