Monte Hale Centennial

James Dean with Monte Hale on the set of "Giant"

Who? Listen we're not huge western devotees but nevertheless we tip our imaginary cowboy hats today to the bygone tradition of singing cowboys on film. (You know the kind if only from watching Alden Ehrenreich work such charismatic wonders as one of 'em in the Coen Bros Hail Caesar!). Monte Hale, born on this day 100 years ago in Oklahoma, was among the last of such stars...

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Soundtracking: Moulin Rouge!

by Chris Feil

Perhaps it’s easy to forget how revolutionary Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge! was in 2001. The thing about masterpieces is their legacy sometimes overshadows the context that birthed them. But at the time, the musical was a massive gamble and creative leap, helping to relaunch the genre that had died a slow death at the box office and to cultural  cinematic tastes. Just as Luhrman’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet had aggressively re-imagined its text for the MTV set, he delivered something even more drug-fevered to the musical, shattering notions of what the genre’s limitations were and how it could exist in the modern era.

Musicals may be more commonplace now, but they have yet to be as audacious since. But as much as Luhrman’s trippy, frenetic stylings play nearly twenty (gasp!) years later as its most obvious innovations, it was Luhrman’s music choices that were the biggest shock to the system for movie musicals.

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Review: "Rocketman" blasts off

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Pop stardom is a notoriously fickle thing. For every “legacy” artist out there, there are thousands of one-hit wonders, and hundreds of sort-of famous B listers. One imagines that anyone in the center of the hurricane of New Fame imagines it will last forever. If you find yourself engineering your own biopic in your golden years, congratulations, it did. Which brings us to Reginald Dwight… better known as Elton John.

In the first frames of Rocketman, Elton John (Taron Egerton) strolls into focus, cheekily dressed as a horned devil to confront his own demons in a therapy session framing device...

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Watch at Home: What/If life were a Cabaret, Greta?

Nathaniel R giving you the heads up on what's available to you now to screen at home.

New on DVD/Blu-Ray
• Climax - Gaspar Noe's latest provocation about an orgiastice dance troup on drugs
• Greta - Opinions are split on this femme thriller at TFE HQ but yours truly is on the 'Did Neil Jordan forget how to make movies?' side of said split. 

Notable iTunes 99¢ Deals
• Cabaret - OMG you guys. See Bob Fosse's masterpiece (well, his first masterpiece. There was another one seven years later) for only a dollar...

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Posterized: Liza Minnelli

by Nathaniel R

Some people's talents are so supersized that they're destined for fame. Others are born right into it. In the delicious nutty case of Liza Minnelli it was both. She was famous at birth, being the first child of a superstar couple (Movie star Judy Garland and celebrated director Vincente Minnelli) but later her talents proved that she would have become LIZA even if she'd been born to a phone operator and a brick-layer.

Liza is currently back in select movie theaters as herself in the documentary Halston (2019). But we're here to look back today. You can actually catch baby Liza (uncredited) at the end of the Judy Garland musical In the Good Old Summertime (1949) but her film debut proper came in 1968 in the Albert Finney comedy Charlie Bubbles. 

How many of her movies have you seen? Every poster is after the jump but since she's an all platform star we included notes about other major work where it applied... 

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