Mar 28, 2025

In this week's RKO Studios Year by Year episode, we discuss our favourite movies from our first round with the studio and how that round shaped our impression of RKO, and then turn to two new 1930 movies: Framed (directed by George Archainbaud), a gangster movie focused on Evelyn Brent's tough/tender mixed-up moll,...

Mar 21, 2025

We've got a big one for you this week: four main movies plus four Fear and Moviegoing viewings. Our main feature is Stanning for Sten: Anna Sten's three movies for Samuel Goldwyn, Nana (1934), based on (more like inspired by) the Zola novel, We Live Again (1934), with a Tolstoy source, and The Wedding Night (1935),...

Mar 14, 2025

In this Diana Wynyard Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we look at probably her best-known film, Gaslight (directed by Thorold Dickinson), and consider its pros and cons relative to the Cukor/Selznick Hollywood version of a few years later, as well as the question of how "gaslighting" became an internet meme and how well...

Mar 7, 2025

The first episode of our second Studios Year by Year round with Fox, the "Rube" according to Ethan Mordden, is a real ridiculous/sublime contrast: the sci-fi musical comedy Just Imagine (directed by David Butler), a vehicle for vaudevillian El Brendel, in whom Dave may have found his comedy bête noir; and the F. W....