Judy Garland’s tragically short life of 47 years was made up of three phases that were separated by her triumphant performances in The Wizard of Oz in 1939 and A Star is Born in 1954. Visitors to the Redford Theatre were treated to these two movies on August 12 and 13, 2016, and gained more appreciation for the evolution and the full range of Garland’s talents.
Movies are collections of constantly changing images, and so are families. Two recent films at the Detroit Film Theatre took advantage of this rich source of cinema.
During the recent bankruptcy proceedings for the city of Detroit, the Detroit Institute of Arts was threatened with the sale of some of its art. During World War II, the art at the Louvre Museum in Paris also was threatened, by the approaching German army, as shown in the new movie Francofonia, which I saw at the Detroit Film Theatre at the DIA on Sunday, June 19, 2016.
When Lewis Grassic Gibbon wrote the novel Sunset Song in the early 1930s, he faced the challenge of using only words to create powerful images of early 20th century Scotland in the minds of his readers. More than 80 years later, movie director Terence Davies used all of the resources of the motion picture to tell his own powerful version of the story.
When the Michigan Theater and the Redford Theatre opened 88 years ago in 1928, their Barton theater organs were designed to accompany silent movies. The talking picture soon changed these plans, but these organs both returned to their original use on the weekend of April 23 and 24, 2016.
The outside temperature might have been in the 40s, but this April Fool’s Day joke by Mother Nature didn’t harm the springtime feeling of renewal at the Redford Theatre on Friday, April 1, 2016.
The Michigan Theater’s screening of the 1953 MGM drama Julius Caesar on March 21, 2016 helped me understand that this filmed adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play is more than just a showcase for Marlon Brando.
I took a break from the nonstop news coverage of this year’s controversial Academy Awards ceremony to watch some of the films whose deserved recognition was almost drowned out by the political commentary.
François Truffaut was a enthusiastic student of film, and he created a fascinating record of this enthusiasm in his films, in his movie reviews in the magazine Cahiers du cinéma, and in books like The Films in My Life (1975).
Rome has been the setting for many films, from historical epics like Julius Caesar to romantic dramas like Three Coins in the Fountain. Area moviegoers recently had the chance to see two vastly different movies that were filmed on location in Rome in the ten years after World War II.
