Frequently Illuminating, but Sometimes Misjudged: Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties by Foster Hirsch Tom Ryan January 2024 Book Reviews Across its 600-plus pages, Foster Hirsch’s ambitious account of Hollywood and the films made there during the 1950s covers the terrain with comprehensive purpose. As he puts it in his introduction, citing L.P. ...
Beneath the Tuxedo Elegance: Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend, by Mark Glancy Tom Ryan January 2021 Book Reviews Film stars are like mirages: although we can see them, we know that they’re not really what they appear to be. They play characters born of scripts, but they also exist independently of them. At the same time, ...
Obsessions, Imitations & Subversions, Part Two – on Imitation of Life Tom Ryan December 2015 Feature Articles “It’s not a remake as such, it’s a new take.” Michael Boughen, producer of the TV series, Tomorrow When the War Began The subject here is Imitation of Life, but it’s important to be clear about one point...
Glimpses of Life: An interview with Albert Maysles Tom Ryan June 2015 Feature Articles Albert Maysles, who died on March 6 at the age of 88, was an American treasure, a documentary filmmaker for whom anything was a potential subject, simply because it happened, and who discovered poetry in the ev...
The Bleakness of the Happy Ending: Sirk’s Uncomfortable Comedies Tom Ryan February 2015 Feature Articles Both in Europe and the US, Douglas Sirk’s best-known work was done in the realm of the melodrama, from Zu neuen Ufern (To Distant Shores,1937) to Imitation of Life (1959). It was as if he was drawn to it by ins...
Obsessions, Imitations & Subversions, Part One – on Magnificent Obsession Tom Ryan December 2014 Feature Articles In the beginning was the Lloyd C. Douglas novel (1), published in the immediate wake of the 1929 stock market crash, when the author was 52. It was the then Protestant minister’s first foray into fiction (2). T...
On John Flaus: Marines, Let’s Go Tom Ryan October 2014 John Flaus Dossier I’ve known John Flaus for more than 40 years. Remarkably, he still looks almost exactly as he did when we first crossed paths at La Trobe University in 1969. Back then he used to be mostly a beard, grey and bla...
The Adaptation and the Remake: From John M. Stahl’s When Tomorrow Comes to Douglas Sirk’s Interlude Tom Ryan March 2014 Feature Articles Raising Cain: Setting the Record Straight Douglas Sirk shot Interlude in 1956, between Battle Hymn and The Tarnished Angels. Starring June Allyson and Rossano Brazzi and implicitly acknowledged in the credits ...
Bringing the War Back Home: An Interview with Jonathan Teplitzky on The Railway Man Tom Ryan December 2013 Feature Articles Jonathan Teplitzky. Photo: Debi Enker A $16 million Australia-UK co-production, Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man tells the story of Second Lieutenant Eric Lomax, a Signal Corps engineer from Edinburgh w...
Sirk, Hollywood and Genre Tom Ryan March 2013 Feature Articles The Douglas Sirk discovered by criticism has gone through numerous phases. For me, the most telling is the one which has excavated from his work not only an extended and devastating critique of the bourgeoisie ...
Richard Franklin: Director/Producer Scott Murray and Tom Ryan July 2008 Dossier on Australian Exploitation, Special Dossiers An extensive interview originally published in 1980 with the director of the classic road-movie thriller Roadgames. Written by Everett de Roche and starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to Do This…: True Stories from a Life in the Screen Trade by Bruce Beresford Tom Ryan March 2008 Book Reviews He didn’t know it at the time, but, in October 2003, Australian film director Bruce Beresford (The Adventures of Barry McKenzie , “Breaker” Morant , Driving Miss Daisy ) was about to enter something of a lull i...
Making History: Errol Morris, Robert McNamara and The Fog of War Tom Ryan April 2004 Politics and the Documentary Matters of truth and perception, style and representation, ethics and political responsibility, history and human error all come to the fore in Morris' latest documentary, and are discussed here.
Sirk, Douglas Tom Ryan February 2004 Great Directors b. Detlef Sierck b. April 26, 1900, Hamburg, Germany d. January 14, 1987, Lugano, Switzerland filmography bibliography web resources Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is a...
Errol Morris Interview Tom Ryan September 2001 Feature Articles Discovering that Morris' favourite American film of all time is Detour is just one thing you take away from this comprehensive and fascinating interview.
