Reviews of films and books.
Whether it’s this year’s summer blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick or the silent World War I aerial epic Wings, film always has always been a perfect medium to showcase the wonder of aviation. Over the past century, airplanes and pilots have brought movie audiences big explosions, …
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One of the first silent films I ever watched was Douglas Fairbanks’ 1924 epic The Thief of Baghdad. A lavish costume drama inspired by Arabian night tales, the film’s imaginative tale and its star’s unique and energetic charm absolutely stunned an impressable young me. …
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Since warm weather has arrived, now is the perfect time to venture outside with a classic film book to get our day’s Vitamin D before heading back inside to catch TCM’s primetime showing of the day. For my third time participating in Raquel Stecher’s Summer …
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Aviation and film took the world by storm in the early 20th century. Just eight years after the Lumiere brothers’ famed 1895 projected screenings, Orville and Wilbur Wright took their first flight in December 1903. By the 1910s, film had exploded into an international entertainment …
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The earliest films relied heavily on other entertainment mediums such as vaudeville, theater, books, and newspapers to create short narratives for audiences. Comedy especially relied on jokes that were prevalent in late 19th and early 20th-century culture. For example, one of the earliest Lumiere films …
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During the peak of her popularity, Clara Bow was Hollywood’s biggest box office star and a worldwide 1920s cultural phenomenon. Only working in pictures for a decade before an early retirement and retreat from public life in her late 20s, Clara won over the hearts …
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