"The story of Trumbo is a reminder that efforts to control screen content had existed in the past and there's always the chance..."

"... that in some case the political winds will shift and some of those ideas will become popular again in the future," says Jeff Smith, a University of Wisconsin film professor, expressing great pride in The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, a huge archive which includes — among much else (as you'll see in this short video) — materials relating to Dalton Trumpo Trumbo and Hollywood's era of "blacklisting":



As you may have noticed, there's a new movie, "Trumbo," starring Bryan Cranston.

ADDED: The commenters enjoyed my "Trumpo" for "Trumbo" typo, above, which I've preserved with a strike-through. Meaning was striven for: "Maybe AA typo'd 'Trumpo' because she sees Donald Trump as a maligned avatar of truth that the establishment is trying to suppress."

Remember the time Ben Carson separated the conjoined twins Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear?

Watch the clip.

"Maureen O’Hara... was called the Queen of Technicolor..."

"... because when that film process first came into use, nothing seemed to show off its splendor better than her rich red hair, bright green eyes and flawless peaches-and-cream complexion."



O'Hara died today in Boise, Idaho, at the age of 95.

"Lysistrata" — the ancient Greek play about women withholding sex to stop a war — made the news twice this week.

1. Withdrawing from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in the setting of the Democratic National Committee's Women's Leadership Forum, Lincoln Chafee said: "Since today is all about women’s leadership it reminds me of one of my favorite Greek plays; Lysistrata, a comedy from about 400 BCE by Aristophanes. In that play, a group of women, fed up with the war mongering of their husbands, agree to withhold their favors until peace returns. And it worked!"

2. Spike Lee is squabbling with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The subject is Lee's new movie, "Chi-Raq," which, Hollywood Reporter tells us, "is an update of the classical Greek play Lysistrata and stars Teyonah Parris as a woman who protests the city's black-on-black gun violence."

Here's the full text of the play at Project Gutenberg, which flaunts this jaunty frontispiece:



ADDED: Here's a full set of the Aubrey Beardsley illustrations for "Lysistrata." They're even jauntier. NSFW.

"I just saw the whole Back to the Future trilogy in the theater."

My son John blogs:

Well, that was fun. The Back to the Future movies are probably better enjoyed one at a time than back to back....

The first and the second each end with a to-be-continued cliffhanger which is supposed to be fun because you have to wait.

I never once felt like leaving and finishing the rest some other time by watching the DVDs I have at home. It was the most enthusiastic movie audience I've ever been part of — people applauded and hooted not only during various climactic moments, but also when the time machine and Doc first appeared, the first time one of the characters said the words "back to the future," and of course, when Doc said "October 21, 2015."

There are some live-theater experiences that cannot be had at home.

At one point, Back to the Future Part III stopped in the middle... Audience members called out things like: "You've disrupted the space-time continuum!" "Not enough jigowatts!"

I love stuff like that... much as I hate the malfunctions. I was once in some little theater in Greenwich Village that was showing the Marlon Brando movie "The Fugitive Kind" — "Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins arrives at a small town and... is pursued by Carol Cutere..." Marlon and Carol/Joanne Woodward are tooling along in a sportscar and she's saying: "I'm just a lewd vagrant, and I'm gonna show 'em, and show 'em all, just how lewd a lewd vagrant can be, when she puts her whole heart into it, the way I do mine," and then she suddenly points off screen and says: "Hey, turn off here." Immediately, the film malfunctions and shuts down, as if the projectionist had taken "Hey, turn off here" as an order. I've never been simultaneously so amazed and annoyed.

"As October 21, 2015, a.k.a. Back to the Future Day, nears, the film franchise is enjoying a nice, topical comeback."

"So much so that Toyota put together this cute teaser of the saga's two heroes, Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox, assessing how accurate the movies were...."

"All 29 Steven Spielberg Movies, Ranked from Worst to Best."

At New York Magazine.

I've never seen #1. Or #4.

Don Cheadle as Miles Davis.

"It’s just a brief clip, but Cheadle’s got Davis’ husky speaking voice down pat, and the trumpet lessons he took in preparation for the role seem to have paid off...."

"Don't you worry, boy. I'll get you out of here."

Goodbye to Moochie, Kevin Corcoran, who has died at the age of 66.

"He was the quintessential bratty kid brother or mischievous moppet..." His brother was almost always Tommy Kirk. Kirk lives on, at 73.

"Dressing for being burned at the stake is never a good look."

A perfect comment, here.

ADDED: Leelee Sobieski actually played the part of Joan of Arc in a movie a while back. You can see what she wore to the burning at the stake here.

AND: The Leelee Sobieski "Joan of Arc" came out in 1999, but there are numerous movies about Joan of Arc. Many have seen the great 1928 film "The Passion of Joan of Arc," directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, but that movie is the 8th on the list of movies about Joan of Arc. Second on the list is this 1899 short film "Jeanne d'Arc," directed by George Méliès, one of the first color films. Watch it: