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The world trembles on the brink, and liberals are in charge! The nicest President you ever met gives the Soviet Premier an offer anybody could refuse, while technical glitches, not crazy people or radical politics, are blamed for starting WW3. Sidney Lumet’s taut, scary armageddon-outta-here thriller was weighed in the balance against a certain Stanley Kubrick film and found wanting, but unless you’re a stickler for technical details it really works up a buzz. The cast & crew list is a menu of committed liberal talent.

Fail Safe

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1011

1964 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 28, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Edward Binns, Fritz Weaver, Larry Hagman, William Hansen, Sorrell Booke, Hildy Parks, Janet Ward, Dom DeLuise, Dana Elcar.

Cinematography: Gerald Hirschfeld

Film Editor: Ralph Rosenblum

Written by Walter Bernstein from the book by Eugene Burdick,...

One of the greatest newspaper pictures ever (can there be many more in our future?), Howard Hawks’ gender-bending remake of The Front Page stands as a comedy classic. Its improvisational-sounding overlapping dialog still impresses as modernistic. Such stars as Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert turned down Rosalind Russell’s revamped Hildy Parks role. Cary Grant’s surprised reaction to one of Russell’s unexpected ad-libs was directed directly to Hawks: “Is she going to do that?”. And it’s in the movie. Unfortunately all we could find was a textless trailer on this one.

The post His Girl Friday appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

One of the greatest newspaper pictures ever (can there be many more in our future?), Howard Hawks’ gender-bending remake of The Front Page stands as a comedy classic. Its improvisational-sounding overlapping dialog still impresses as modernistic. Such stars as Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert turned down Rosalind Russell’s revamped Hildy Parks role. Cary Grant’s surprised reaction to one of Russell’s unexpected ad-libs was directed directly to Hawks: “Is she going to do that?”. And it’s in the movie. Unfortunately all we could find was a textless trailer on this one.

Allan Arkush talks really fast to tell us about His Girl Friday.

One of the greatest newspaper pictures ever (can there be many more in our future?), Howard Hawks’ gender-bending remake of The Front Page stands as a comedy classic. Its improvisational-sounding overlapping dialog still impresses as modernistic. Such stars as Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert turned down Rosalind Russell’s revamped Hildy Parks role. Cary Grant’s surprised reaction to one of Russell’s unexpected ad-libs was directed directly to Hawks: “Is she going to do that?”. And it’s in the movie. Unfotunately all we could find was a textless trailer on this one.

Click here to watch the trailer.

This movie is a favorite. Gleefully speedy, you can’t really get past mentioning the rapid-fire wit of all involved. Which makes it really bizarre that I found this on YouTube, an...

A week of laughs and loves and more laughs. Keep reading for a preview.

On Monday, July 4, John Landis celebrates his independence by declaring that Heaven Can Wait.

No, it’s not the Warren Beatty remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, but the sublime Ernst Lubitsch comedy fantasy, his biggest commercial hit and generally considered the last of his films to exemplify the inimitable “Lubitsch touch”. Feckless womanizer Don Ameche recounts his love life to urbane devil Laird Cegar at the gates of Hell in a sparking rumination on life, death and the importance of the common man.

On Wednesday, July 6, Mick Garris tells us all The Palm Beach Story.

The original title of this influential screwball comedy was Is Marriage Necessary?, but even though writer-director Preston Sturges was on a roll, he couldn’t get that one past the Hays Office. This was Joel McCrea’s second Sturges lead...

Jackie Cooper is now running the great Daily Planet up in the sky.

Cooper, a former child actor and star of the four Christopher Reeve "Superman" movies, died at a convalescent home in Santa Monica this Tuesday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 88.

It would appear that Cooper died of natural causes. "He just kinda died of old age,” said his attorney, Roger Licht. "He wore out."

Jackie Cooper was a huge child star in the '30s, appearing in 15 of Hal Roach's popular "Our Gang" short comedies and earning the nickname of "America's Boy." He holds the record for the youngest actor to ever receive an Oscar nomination for a lead role, having been nominated at the age of nine for his performance in "Skippy" (1931), which was based on a comic strip.

Speaking of comics, one of Cooper's most popular roles came much later in his career...