John M.

Singin' in the Public Domain event tile, featuring the Lockette, expressing open content.

When the clock strikes midnight on January 1, creative works from 1929 & sound recordings from 1924 will enter the public domain in the US, like:

⚓️ Popeye
🕵️ The Maltese Falcon
📖 The Sound and the Fury
🇮🇹 A Farewell to Arms
🏠️ A Room of One's Own
🙌 Hallelujah
🎺 Bolero
and many more!

🧵👇

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2/20 Katharine Hepburn

a close up of a woman 's face with the name lavinia gardner visible Alt: Ava Gardner, in a head and shoulders shot from the 1951 movie Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. She's wearing a sheer black top with black piping and tied at the neck with a black ribbon, beneath which her neckline is open, extremely red lipstick, and green teardrop earrings which resemble emeralds. Her slightly less-than-shoulder length dark brown hair is brushed out and back to the sides of her face. Her eyes are light green.

1/20 Ava Gardner

At the end of the day, don’t we all just want a bookshelf with a rolling ladder?

And among so very many other memorable things, the lead (and virtually the whole show) on the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. An irreplaceable part of TV and film history.

An invaluable PSA: Truly the kindest TV-related service you can perform for those you love!

Step 1: Eat the pumpkin pie.
Step 2: Get another pumpkin pie.
Step 3: Eat 2nd pumpkin pie.
Step 4: Repeat if necessary.

Seriously, if you ever found someone that recognized your Monty Python, Airplane, Caddyshack or blues Brothers quotes, or had even heard of Doctor Who, you were like, “hey this person is now my best friend.”

Being an ‘80s kid means you can quote entire sections of Caddyshack and Airplane! to this day. (in high school Latin club we once did an entire skit that was riffs on Airplane!, obviously it killed)

Remember when "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" tried to teach us about tariffs and no one was paying attention

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This instrumental's all the moods at once, and it's been that kind of day: Santo and Johnny performing Sleepwalk on The Dick Clark Show in 1959.

youtube.com/watch?v=2rwf...

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I share that hope, that somewhere there are mislabeled cans containing, say, Manhattan Cocktail. Stranger things have happened! Keep importuning the nitrate gods!

Excited to head to Chicago in April for the SCMS conference to give a talk related to my bio-in-progress, "Categorizing Dorothy Arzner: The 'Never-Married,' 'First' and 'Only' Woman Director." Can't wait to see who else is on my panel!

#scms #scms2025 #scms25 #dorothyarzner #arzner #hollywood

2/2 titles. She's long deserved a book written at a time when her work's been a bit (but still not enough) more widely available, and a proper consideration of her wider life. Looking forward to reading it when it's published!

1/2 I'm delighted to hear about your upcoming book! Back in 2003, I co-curated at MoMA what was at the time the first comprehensive retrospective of Arzner's extant films (built around the then new UCLA archive preservations of Working Girls and several of her other early Paramount....

McCay was just incredible, across multiple mediums.

Don't think I have many followers likely to have freelance film writing gigs available, but in case I do, this guy is a great writer and has justifiably built up quite a following. Giving him an assignment or subscribing would be well worth it!

No leads for you, unfortunately, but I've subbed and will repost. Love your writing and your posts both here so far and previously at The Former Place. Also, welcome to NYC! All of us who love film and good writing about it are lucky to have you here.

Many high school memories of eating there---though at the Century City location in LA, not the Vegas outpost. No other theme restaurant then was anywhere near as memorable, and pretty good food, considering it wasn't really the main point. It pops into my head with disconcerting frequency, too!

It's really fun and works in ways you wouldn't necessarily expect of a semi-musical remake of an Edward G. Robinson movie (albeit one of his comedies), let alone one with those two leads. And Margaret Dumont too! Enjoy.

And Nancy Carroll again, tripping the light fantastic with George Murphy in AFTER THE DANCE (1935)

youtube.com/watch?v=QKpN...

It's Nancy Carroll's birthday (1903-1965). A personal favorite, and a huge star of the late silent and early sound period who's still under-remembered. Here she is in a clip from 1930's PARAMOUNT ON Parade:

youtube.com/watch?v=m9a5...

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A little (good) night music from The Five Satins.

youtube.com/watch?v=ak6t...

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Gary Cooper in a 1930s movie wearing a brown leather or suede jacket, a white dress shirt and a bow tie, blinking and then looking downward bashfully.

If I could pick 2, it'd be Tyrone Power on alternate days.

Elegant, eloquent, moving and important. Thank you.

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And because it would be comic malpractice not to post it, here's the famed mirror sequence.

youtube.com/watch?v=VKTT...

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As noted in my earlier repost of the estimable Citizen Screen, it's DUCK SOUP's 91st release anniversary. Any possible similarity here to anything more recent is, of course, surely coincidental...

youtube.com/watch?v=uSsU...