In honor of Martin Luther King Day, TCM will be featuring Charles Burnett’s films tonight. Don’t know who he is? Well that is not too surprising. The New York Times put it all too well; Charles Burnett is “the nation’s least-known great filmmaker and most gifted black director.” I blogged on Charles Burnett a few months ago click here to read my post. I am stoked about watching these relatively obscure films. All his films deal...

Scene From The Cat People (1942) Turner Classic Movies will have a documentary on Val Lewton, classic horror filmmaker on Monday, January 14th at 8:00 PM EST. The documentary will be hosted by Martin Scorsese. Val Lewton is known for his “less is more school of poetic film making,” using shadows and sounds to scare us– (the unseen). This made his movies all the more chilling; imagine that, being afraid of what we cannot see....

The 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is the best. It’s a macabre story of greed, lust, and destruction. A gorgeous young man, Dorian (Hurd Hatfield) makes a pact with the devil. He offers the devil his soul in exchange for eternal beauty and youth. Dorian manages to keep his youth, but as the devil may have it, at a cost. It’s not like the devil will have Dorian have many friends, and influence others....

The film “Other Men’s Women” (1931) left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It’s a love triangle gone completely bad. But can any love triangle turn well? Grant Withers and Regis Toomey play the role of the men in love with the same women, a very young and beautiful Mary Astor. Mary Astor is happily married to Toomey until Withers steps into their lives. Withers falls in love with Mary and wants her bad. Toomey and Withers get into...

“Footsteps in The Fog” (1955) starring Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons totally impressed me. An Edwardian thriller which has all the ingredients of a dark and twisted story of betrayal and murder. Jean plays a maid who knows her employer (Stewart Granger) has killed his wife and decides to blackmail her way into love, acceptance, and wealth. Little does she know that her employer is always one step ahead of her, and his twisted ways...

Remember Frank Capra’s, George Bailey, you know the guy that just wanted to die one Christmas day in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” because he just felt he was a nothing, a nobody, a zero, a nada? Remember the great lesson he learned? He learned that we all mean something. He learned that he, one person, made all the difference in lives of others. Remember all the characters in the movie, Mary his wife, Clarence the ...