New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Law went into effect on April 19, 1965. The collective, astonished reaction heard after the razing of old Penn Station in 1964: “you mean they can do that?” contributed to a movement that ultimately led to the measure. It was not enough to save the majestic Singer Building from the…
Odd Man Out, which took home the prize for best British film of 1947, is just out in a sparkling new special edition from The Criterion Collection. One of the great films of the 1940s, it had not previously been officially available on disc in North America. Johnny McQueen, the man who finds himself more…
The spring issue of Cineaste features an insightful interview with Ethan Hawke, who has some interesting things to say about the New Hollywood, how he made career decisions “based on a 1970s ascetic,” and that he and his contemporaries, like the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, were “chasing the old-school definition of a New York actor—meaning…
Major Dundee, Sam Peckinpah’s ill-fated Western starring Charlton Heston and Richard Harris, opened in New York City on April 7, 1965—or at least some version of it did. Taken out of the director’s hands and cut by almost a third (an “extended version” DVD release restores some of the lost material), the movie was a…
The Old Hollywood was running out of ideas but was still firmly in control at the thirty-seventh Academy Awards, hosted by establishment stalwart Bob Hope on April 5, 1965. The ambitious, subversive and spectacular Dr. Strangelove actually managed to nab a few high profile nominations, but the film, along with director Stanley Kubrick and star…
Alice’s Restaurant is out this week on DVD and Blu-Ray (Olive Films). Arthur Penn’s 1969 film, inspired by the Arlo Guthrie song/shaggy dog story (and starring the young singer), is a sympathetic but cautionary ode to the counter-culture. Made in the midst of Penn’s most fertile period as a director—after Mickey One and Bonnie and…