How Had I Never Seen..."Independence Day"?

by Cláudio Alves

Some of my recent choices for the "How Had I Never Seen" series may have leaned towards the esoteric. Probably most people don't wonder why or how they have never set eyes on Valley of the Dolls or Girlfriends. This time around, however, I've decided to fix a pretty deep lacuna in my movie-watching, one that's firmly in the mainstream rather than an arthouse curio. Today marks the 25th anniversary of Roland Emmerich's 1996 Oscar-winning mega-blockbuster Independence Day. To commemorate the date, I finally watched the flick that turned Will Smith into a star of the silver screen, redefined the effects-driven summer movie, and birthed a new era of Hollywood entertainment… 

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame @ 25: The first movie I ever saw

by Cláudio Alves

Do you know what the first movie you watched in a theater was? While I have no memory of the event, my parents were kind enough to remember my inaugural trip to the movies. When I was just two, they took me to see the latest Disney flick to hit theaters, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Supposedly, I was besotted by the sight and, when the picture was released on VHS, proceeded to re-watch it to my heart's content. I still have that videocassette today, a treasured memento of childhood and a token of a kid's blossoming love for cinema. So today, as The Hunchback of Notre Dame turns 25, I revisited that underrated classic of the Disney Renaissance and see if I still loved it…

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Judy Holliday @ 100: The Oscar Winner's Fascinating Career

by Brent Calderwood

I’m just going to say it. I’m glad Judy Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar for the 1950 comedy Born Yesterday. I’m not saying she should have won—I’m not even saying I would have voted for her if I’d been a member of the Academy. But if I could have been there when the winner was announced on March 29, 1951, I would have been cheering the loudest.

Today—100 years after Holliday’s birth and 56 years and two weeks after her untimely death—Holliday’s Sea Biscuit victory over frontrunners Bette Davis for All About Eve and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard is still a topic of discussion and debate...

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The many versions of "Anna and the King of Siam"

by Cláudio Alves

Seventy-five years ago, Anna and the King of Siam premiered in theaters. The film was adapted from a book by the same name, which purported to present a fictionalized, yet historically-based, account of the years spent by Anna Leonowens in the court of King Mongkut of Siam - present-day Thailand - in the 1860s. Novelist Margaret Landon based her work on Leonowens' memoirs, creating a window into an otherworld that dazzled readers and moviegoers of the 1940s. Over the years, the story's popularity persisted, and it has been retold in several different mediums. On the anniversary of its first cinematic adaptation, let's look at the four movie versions from the Oscar-winning costume drama to a forgotten animated catastrophe…

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Blue @ 50: Joni Mitchell's Music in Film

by Brent Calderwood

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

“Songs are like tattoos.” That’s according to “Blue,” the title track on Joni Mitchell’s fourth album, which turns 50 this month. A half century after Mitchell wrote and recorded those words, it’s clear that Blue has made an indelible mark on the culture. Songwriters from Bob Dylan (“Tangled Up in Blue”) to Prince (“So Blue”) to Taylor Swift (Red) have acknowledged the influence of Blue’s achingly autobiographical lyrics on their own work. Just last year, Rolling Stone declared Blue the third greatest album of all time. And thanks to scores of cover versions over five decades, two of Blue’s torchiest tracks—“A Case of You” and “River”—have become American Songbook standards. 

No wonder, then, that filmmakers have frequently tapped into Blue, especially for their characters’ most vulnerable moments. While plenty of ink has been spilled over who the songs on Blue are about (James Taylor, Graham Nash, Leonard Cohen), screenwriters and directors often look deeper, mining the songs for what they are about: love, desire, loss, travel, California, Christmas, and much more. 

In honor of the classic album's 50th anniversary, here’s a look at the Top 5 times that songs from Blue appeared in movies… 

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