David Thomson – the author of a number of indispensable books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (a simply essential volume for any movie lover), Have You Seen…?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films (highly recommended), and The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies (an extraordinary accomplishment) – has a new book out (as…
Category: News and Commentary
News and Commentary – Ingmar Bergman Made a Bad Movie
In 1950 the legendary studio Svensk Filmindustri released This Can’t Happen Here, a would-be Cold War spy thriller directed by Ingmar Bergman. Legend would hold that the film, largely unseen, was marred by a clumsy, even embarrassing anti-communist perspective—in the vein of some of the schlock being produced in America at the same time, as…
Meet the New Mid Century Cinema!
What’s new at Mid Century Cinema? Everything! It’s a brand new day for America—and it’s also, quite coincidentally, something of a re-launch for us, as you can see by surfing around our updated and upgraded site: https://midcenturycinema.org/. In addition to a spiffy new and improved design (courtesy of our multi-talented new webmaster), the biggest change in these…
News and Commentary – 2020 Roundup: The Best New Home Video Releases
This is the time of year we play the “best of” game, here with a top ten of our favorite home video releases of 2020. What’s that you say? All video in 2020 is home video? Well, yes, but we’re limiting ourselves to what was released on DVD and/or Blu Ray. And, as always, recall…
News and Commentary – Hitchcock in the Forties
We’ve all been there—late at night in a crowded bar, people have had a few to many, a boast is bandied about, and before you know it, a brawl erupts over which was Hitchcock’s greatest decade, the thirties or the forties? (A minority faction fights for the fifties, and that guy dressed in black smoking…
News and Commentary – A Conversation with David Thomson
David Thomson is one of the most accomplished and influential writers on cinema over the last half-century. Wedding an impossibly encyclopedic knowledge of film history with a singularly recognizable, assuredly graceful and daringly personal prose style, Thomson was prominent among the grand cohort of critical voices that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s—a golden age,…
News and Commentary – Important Announcement for MCC Followers
Greetings all. We’re writing today about some upcoming logistical changes here at Mid Century Cinema. We have to transition from both our web-host and our software template. (Our name, address, and content will remain the same.) During that process, we hope to be able to transfer our list of subscribers (those who receive e-mail notifications…
News and Commentary – Mid Century Cinema is Interviewed by Super-ficcion
Recently I was interviewed by Super-ficcion on a wide range of movie related issues, under the headline of “Is Hollywood in Crisis?” I thought they did a great job in putting together a very spiffy piece, which can be accessed here. Some Mid Century Cinema followers have read the interview on other platforms, but we’re…
News and Commenary – The Films of Jafar Panahi
One of the many pleasures of having an obsession with the movies is that one thing leads to another. A few months ago the programming team here at Mid Century Cinema stumbled across a film by Asghar Farhadi, and were so impressed that we quickly screened everything of his that we could get our hands…
News and Commentary – Robert Altman: The New Hollywood Years
Any pantheon of the New Hollywood must include Robert Altman, whose run of twelve films from 1967 to 1977 stands up robustly in comparison not only with his distinguished contemporaries, but alongside almost any figure we can think of in the history of cinema. So it is high past time that we gave him the official…