Tag Archives: William Wellman

brother can you spare a dime?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Dave

The Great Depression ended in every film. If it ever existed. Yes we could thank Shirley Temple for that. The great template that the American entertainment complex gave us, and keeps on giving us. To learn to love kids, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged charles sellon, Edward Bernays, eleanor roosevelt, fred bojangles robinson, gifford and young, Herbert Hoover, J.P. Morgan, jaime diamond, james jimmy dunn, Pecora Commission, shirley temple, shirley temple curly top, Sigmund Freud, Thorstein Veblen, Walter Lippman, William Wellman | Leave a comment

wild boys: remnants of middle class decency

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Dave

Social realism unvarnished, unplugged, with America as a near gulag in gritty depression era society on the edge between starvation and death. Poverty, hypocrisy, opportunism are all explored in pre-code Hollywood where hand to mouth representations of living and ambiguous … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged frankie darro, freddie bartholomew, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hays Commission, jackie cooper, joe breen, joe breen enforced code, John Steinbeck, Lord of the Flies, Sigmund Freud, sigmund freud repression, William Golding, William Wellman | Leave a comment

romney care: tax evasives of the leisure clasp

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Dave

One of the key themes in our ongoing public discourse is taxes. Mitt Romney’s income tax filings and the continuing collateral damage from banker bonuses and bailouts have made this an open sore with the pain shooting to the dark … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Modern Arts/Craft | Tagged Ben Shahn, Charles White, charles white art, irving norman, jeff wall, john steuart curry, Lloyd Blankfein, Mitt Romney 2012, Paul Krugman, Ralph Ellison, Raphael Soyer, Thomas Hart Benton, Thorstein Veblen, William Wellman | Leave a comment

PESSIMISM AT THE OK CORRAL

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Dave

Do we blow up the ranch and burn the town or just take it over and run it into the ground? There has been a tendency in the discipline of film studies to treat the Western as ideological and, hence, … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Marketing/Advertising/Media, Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft | Tagged Akira Kurosawa, Arthur Koestler, Arthur Penn, Bruce Willis, Christopher Frayling, Clint Eastwood, Dashiell Hammett, Drucilla Cornell, Eli Wallach, Henry Fonda, Howard Hawks, John Ford, John Wayne, Pasquale Marco Veltri, Paul Cooke, Peter Bondanelle, R. Philip Roy, Robert Altamann, Robert Altman, Robert Pippin, Ross Miller, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Leone, Sergio Sollima, Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thomas Weisser, Tim Dirks, Walter Benjamin, Walter Brennan, William Wellman, William Wyler, Wyatt Earp | 2 Comments

GOOD FENCES MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS: Mending The Fury

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Dave

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” is about the fences that divide us, both externally and internally.Property and territoriality being a metaphor for that toxic blend of materialism and inner turmoil.Jean Renoir’s 1937 classic La Grande Illusion was also about … Continue reading →