Tag Archives: Gary Lockwood

Basketball Jocks and Pom Pom Girls

Posted on by
Reply
Jane Fonda (in her film debut) and Anthony Perkins appear in a publicity still for the 1960 romantic comedy TALL STORY, directed by Joshua Logan.

The film debut of a soon-to-be-major movie star is not always an event of any significance when it first occurs. Nor is it often a movie with any artistic merit that can stand the test of time and become an important topic for analysis among film scholars. Jane Fonda’s movie debut, Tall Story, will surely never make the AFI’s top 100 films list and it wasn’t a commercial or critical success upon its release in 1960. Yet the film is important in the career arc of Ms. Fonda. It’s also an enjoyable, often witty romantic comedy that plays much better today than when it first premiered.

Continue reading →

Sin City Mercenaries

Posted on by
Reply

Las Vegas aka Sin City, the gambling mecca of the world, might be a symbol of capitalism at its worse but it makes an irresistible location for a movie with its dazzling neon lights and nightlife diversions from extravagant musical revues to strip clubs to glittering casinos. The intoxicating atmosphere has been featured prominently before in musicals like Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) and Viva Las Vegas (1964) as well as comedies (Honeymoon in Vegas [1992], Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [1998]) and dramas (Leaving Las Vegas [1995], Casino [1995). But I especially enjoy the crime caper films set in Sin City such as Ocean’s 11 (1960) and the remakes it inspired years later starting with Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven (2001). To this list, I have to add an often overlooked but superior genre entry from 1968 – They Came to Rob Las Vegas. 

Continue reading →

Adrift in a L.A. Haze

Posted on by
Reply

Anouk Aimée in Jacques Demy's Model Shop (1969)

Anouk Aimée in Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969)

Los Angeles has served as the backdrop for countless Hollywood movies but in Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969), the French director’s first and only American film (if you don’t count the 1984 made-for-TV movie Louisiana), the city becomes the real protagonist. With its sprawling urban landscape, oil derricks, desolate beaches and constant traffic, it  provides a vivid canvas for a contemporary love story about romantic longing, missed connections and unrealized dreams. Film writer Clare Stewart referred to the film in the film journal Senses of Cinema as “a road movie that doesn’t go anywhere” but that’s not a putdown. It’s an apt description of what Demy was trying to create here – a drifting, dreamy mood piece.   Continue reading →