tnyfrontrow.bsky.social
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social
With more classic Busby Berkeley on @tcmtv.bsky.social tonight (42nd St. and Gold Diggers of 1933, plus the aquatic erotics of Million Dollar Mermaid), a couple of words from a while ago, one on Berkeley himself and another on the Depression and Eddie Cantor, who brought him from stage to screen:
November 28, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted
Gloria Grahame & Bogie in Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place, 1950
The still photographer on the set was Irving Lippman.
#stillonset

"Ray - who was married to Grahame at the time - endows the couple’s intimate moments with a bittersweet ardor."
- Richard Brody

@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social
November 28, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Heureux de lire la belle et enthousiaste critique de Hedda par @borisbastide.bsky.social dans Le Monde; à ne pas rater, un film formidable en lui-même et une réinterprétation géniale de la pièce d'Ibsen.
November 27, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Mentioned seeing the Rockettes when I was four, at Radio City, before The Music Man; someone wondered that it was just a brief show before the movie; I cited Footlight Parade, about stage "prologues" to movies; here, Busby Berkeley provides them; at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social at 7 in 35mm.:...
November 27, 2025 at 6:05 PM
The Secret Agent is astoundingly ample and generous—passionately engaging drama, sharply realized characters, copious and far-reaching dialogue, richly developed context, exciting action, finely detailed design, form yielding political and emotional jolts; opens today @lincolncenter.bsky.social:...
November 26, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Didn't know there was Train Dreams discourse; seeing it in Sundance and again now, found it sluggish and trivial. Baby food, spoon-fed, no second level, hardly a first one; voice-over the best part—if it had 10x more and 3x the pace, could be an OK Best Live Action Short nominee.
November 26, 2025 at 2:39 AM
Band of Outsiders, tonight at 9 at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social contains one of Godard's, and the cinema's, most famous—and most widely misunderstood—scenes; word from a while ago about what's ignored, both by those who discuss it and those who pay homage to it:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
Behind the Scenes of an Iconic Godard Scene
www.newyorker.com
November 24, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Autumn Leaves (winter arrives); Robert Aldrich and Joan Crawford; tune in fast, on @tcmtv.bsky.social at 10pm and see why Berlin (giving him best director at the 1956 festival) caught on long before critics here did:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
The Front Row: “Autumn Leaves”
Robert Aldrich's 1956 film with Joan Crawford provides crucial backstory to “Feud,” Ryan Murphy’s miniseries about the frenemosity between Crawford and Bette Davis.
www.newyorker.com
November 24, 2025 at 2:58 AM
Reposted
11/23/59: Claude Chabrol's Les Cousins (US)
[DP Decaë] w/Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy
Stakes strong claim to "1st New Wave Film"
Rafferty: www.criterion.com/current/post...
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
@railoftomorrow.bsky.social: criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-...
November 23, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Scott Eyman, author of the terrific biography Joan Crawford: A Woman's Face, will introduce Dancing Lady, in which she stars with Clark Gable; far from a great film but her gaze is at full strength @filmforumnyc.bsky.social 3:20pm (plus Crawford's home movies, which he discusses in the book).
November 23, 2025 at 7:05 PM
A movie that takes place where you're from.
November 23, 2025 at 3:55 AM
Reminded in the other place that Richard Brooks's Fever Pitch, starring Ryan O'Neal, opened forty years ago today; it's terrific—but the nostalgia industry often ignores great movies already wrongly disdained in their time: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
Richard Brooks’s “Fever Pitch” Never Got Its Due
Disdained by critics at the time of its release, the 1985 film, starring Ryan O’Neal as a compulsive gambler, possesses a grim, ironic power.
www.newyorker.com
November 22, 2025 at 5:12 PM
A couple of words on Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Deuxième Souffle (second only to Le Cercle Rouge among his films), one on its tale and its tone, the other on the history embedded in it; it's at @filmforumnyc.bsky.social today at 3
www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
The Free French
www.newyorker.com
November 22, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Short word from a while back on Melville's Un Flic (Dirty Money), from
when it came out on DVD, what it's symptomatic of, and where it suggests Melville was heading when he died; it's in @filmforumnyc.bsky.social Le Heist Français series at 2:40pm in 35mm.:
www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...
French Disconnections
www.newyorker.com
November 21, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Kajillionaire
Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series, kicking off at The Frida on Dec 12 with PIG and RED ROCKET. RELIC, THE WILD GOOSE LAKE, & RELIC on Dec 13th. THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF & WOLFWALKERS on Dec 14 🎬️

🎟️: thefridacinema.org/film-series/...
November 21, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Greatly enjoyed the piece by @kevinlozano.bsky.social in @newyorker.com on Malcolm Cowley's life of literary reclamations; I looked closely a few years ago at one of them—of William Faulkner—and the resulting correspondence:
themillions.com/2022/12/a-ye...
A Year in Reading: Richard Brody - The Millions
Richard Brody reflects: "In the past few decades, my years in reading have been nearly coextensive with my years in riding..."
themillions.com
November 21, 2025 at 6:44 AM
I didn't like growing up in a suburb, but at this time of day and year, late-fall late-afternoon after school, it always looked its best.
November 20, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Auteur Story: the Council of Ten from
Oct. 1956 @cahiersducinema.bsky.social with dismissals of La Prisonnière du Désert (i.e., The Searchers), Boetticher's The Magnificent Matador, Dwan's Slightly Scarlet; favorites are three musicals: It's Always Fair Weather, Brigadoon, My Sister Eileen.
November 19, 2025 at 6:20 PM
The Most Dangerous Name:
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004): "Esteban!"
Sirāt (2025): "Esteban!"
November 19, 2025 at 4:20 AM
Reposted
In “Sirāt,” Oliver Laxe’s new desert thriller, an intensely agonizing journey reveals both the pitiless nature of fate and the stubborn persistence of compassion. Read @justincchang.bsky.social’s review. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/AWCQv9
“Sirāt” Is a Harrowing, Exhilarating Dance of Death
In Oliver Laxe’s desert thriller, an intensely agonizing journey reveals both the pitiless nature of fate and the stubborn persistence of compassion.
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
November 18, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Joan Crawford is the greatest classic- Hollywood actress, and Scott Eyman's wonderful new biography, Joan Crawford: A Woman's Face (out today from @simonschusteranz.bsky.social), reveals the exacting process behind the art—and how the studio system factored into it:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
“Joan Crawford: A Woman’s Face” Brings a Star’s Genius to Light
A new biography traces the self-transformative creation of the most movie-made actress of classic Hollywood.
www.newyorker.com
November 18, 2025 at 12:15 PM