Penelope Andrew

Aided in part by the book Hana's Suitcase, filmmaker Larry Weinstein takes an intimate look at the Holocaust, a topic the veteran of 25 documentaries -- mostly "quirky ones" about music -- thought he'd never undertake. The director of Mozartballs (2006), Beethoven's Hair (2005), Ravel's Brain (2001) and The Music...

Liza Minnelli, Kim Novak, Robert Wagner, Tippi Hedren and Debbie Reynolds in person. Black Narcissus, Vertigo, Cabaret, and The Fountainhead projected on gigantic screens at Grauman's Chinese and Egyptian...

No, the title of Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Systad Jacobsen's debut narrative feature isn't a typo, it's really called Turn Me on Dammit! The documentary director (Scenes from a Friendship, The Clown Children) adapted the film from the novel by Olaug Nilssen and won the award for best screenplay at...

Among its many virtues, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) is a rare, dreamy, Technicolor depiction of London during the blitz. It's a masterpiece composed during this unique period where courage, cooperation, and creativity flourished on a Denham soundstage and in London's environs. It would be impossible to...

It wasn't too far along into the film Life, Above All, adapted from a book called Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton, that I was reminded of Winter's Bone, a superb indie adapted from the eponymous novel, which also takes on some of the bleakest subject matter imaginable, but leaves you...

Film buffs who missed the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival's rare screening and discussion of director Bryan Forbes' (The L-Shaped Room) first film, Whistle Down the Wind (1961) on May 1st, which took place at the Chinese Multiplex on Hollywood Boulevard, will have a chance to see...

Lynn Hershman Leeson's sweeping new documentary, !Women Art Revolution (!WAR), reaches beyond the boundaries of cinema thanks to its "links" to new technology and new media, as well as its collaborations with educational institutions, artists, scholars, and social media architects. In 83 minutes, the director, who is also the writer...

The evening began auspiciously with Leslie Caron walking the red carpet to Grauman's...

On Thursday evening, April 28, Leslie Caron will walk the red carpet to Grauman's Chinese Theatre on her way to the world premiere of the 60th anniversary restoration of An American in Paris. Although Turner Classic Movies' Film Festival, which takes place in Hollywood through May 1, coincides with New...

In In a Better World, Danish director Susanne Bier has the audacity to enter places where madness and inhumanity flourish. She looks at this world squarely as one world, and allows her actors to succeed in making sense of it. They forge ahead full speed even when the narrative feels...

Off Broadway, Hollywood and American Dreams in Making the Boys: All About The Boys in the Band

Director Crayton Robey's ambitious new documentary Making the Boys, about The Boys in the Band -- both the play (1968) and the film (1970) -- chronicles the life, times and resonance of a...

While there were no surprises regarding Screen Actors Guild wins for best male lead actor, Colin Firth (The King's Speech), and supporting actor, Christian Bale (The Fighter), it was refreshing to see Melissa Leo (The Fighter) snag the best supporting actress award and disappointing to witness Natalie Portman's (The Black...

British sculptor and multimedia conceptual artist Jane McAdam Freud continues to excavate deep within the bowels of humanity. In her first solo exhibit in New York City, Random Plus, she creates visual paradigms that shed light not only on crucial transgenerational bonds (in her own family and in ours), but...

A rare screening of the Ernst Lubitsch masterpiece--and last completed film--Cluny Brown (1946) opened on Christmas Eve at The Film Forum for one week, while the new animated feature The Illusionist directed by Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville) adapted from an original script by the late Jacques Tati (Mon...

I am partial to British films with ensemble casts tapped from UK's dazzling pool of film, theater, and BBC television talent with a Yank or two thrown in. In the Loop, An Education, and Four Weddings and A Funeral are a few examples. With a cast that boasts Sally Hawkins...

As late summer transformed into autumn, milestones in classic film, which focused primarily on iconic leading ladies, dominated the news and will be remembered as bittersweet. Some of international cinema's most important figures such as Patricia Neal, Claude Chabrol, Arthur Penn, Tony Curtis, and Jill Clayburgh passed away, while others...

What sets artists apart from stars and competent actors is originality and authenticity. Patricia Neal had these and other rare qualities in spades. Like some of her contemporaries who achieved greatness, she rose above mediocre or even bad material and delivered performances...

Fascinating roles for women marked with dazzling performances by Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington (Mother & Child), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone), and their supporting casts converge in two new films. Michael Douglas gives a gripping performance in Solitary Man rivaling his work in the sleeper Wonder Boys, while art...

Film scholar Molly Haskell could not have been a more perfect choice for Yale University Press to tap for another volume in its Icons of America series that explicates the phenomenon -- both novel and film -- of Gone with the Wind....

This is Part II of an article on All About Eve featuring highlights of a recent interview with film scholar and National Board of Review member Kenneth L. Geist. Eve kicked off TCM's Classic Film Festival in NYC. The festival continues in L.A. from April 22 through 25.

Like Casablanca...