Hollywood Flashback
Hollywood Flashback: ‘It Happened One Night’ Swept the Town Off Its Feet
It Happened One Night unspooled in theaters Feb. 22, 1934, and 90 years on, it remains the greatest rom-com to ever do it. Based on the 1933 Cosmopolitan short story “Night Bus” (also the movie’s shooting title), it follows a spoiled socialite (Claudette Colbert) who, against her father’s wishes, boards a Greyhound from Miami to […]
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Hollywood Flashback: ‘Cimarron’ Bet on Oklahoma and Struck Oscar Gold
Ninety-two years before Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon would wrestle with Osage County’s troubling history, there was another Oscar-nominated film that explored the very same Oklahoma terrain, even if it did so with kid gloves on. 1931’s Cimarron is best remembered today — if it’s remembered at all — for its epic opening […]
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Hollywood Flashback: In 1987, Martin Scorsese and Michael Jackson Made a Thrilling Duo
There was nothing small about Michael Jackson’s long-awaited follow-up to his 1982 smash Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. Released five years after Thriller helped establish the singer as the King of Pop, Bad made history with five singles topping the Billboard Hot 100 — but only one of them, the title track, featured […]
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Hollywood Flashback: Costa-Gavras’ ‘Z’ Ventured Into New Oscar Territory
“Any resemblance to real events and dead or living people is not a coincidence. It is INTENTIONAL.” So reads a title card at the beginning of Costa-Gavras’ Z, set in an unnamed Mediterranean country that could stand in for any number of police states torn between Russian and American influence at the height of the […]
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Hollywood Flashback: Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams Sizzled in ‘The Notebook’
Twenty years ago, the team behind The Notebook had no idea it would become a beloved romantic film that fans wouldn’t soon forget. Based on Nicholas Sparks’ debut 1996 novel of the same name, Nick Cassavetes’ feature centers on an elderly man (James Garner) in a nursing home reading a story to an Alzheimer’s patient […]
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Hollywood Flashback: Long Before TikTok, ‘Married to the Mob’ Had Style
More than 30 years ago, Married to the Mob was a bona fide hit, well before making its mark as a TikTok trend. Jonathan Demme’s comedy stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Angela de Marco, who is fed up with her Long Island Mafia-adjacent lifestyle and eyes a new path after her husband, Frank (Alec Baldwin), is […]
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Hollywood Flashback: 30 Years Ago, Sundance Checked Out ‘Clerks’
When Kevin Smith shopped Clerks at the Sundance Film Festival, he didn’t anticipate that the comedy would ignite his career at age 23. The budding director was a film school dropout and had penned the screenplay while working at a New Jersey convenience store called the Quick Stop. Clerks focuses on Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and […]
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Hollywood Flashback: Chilling Survival Story ‘Alive’ Landed in Theaters 31 Years Ago
More than three decades before Netflix’s Society of the Snow, which revisits the true story of the 1972 Andes flight disaster, Alive made an indelible impact. Frank Marshall directed the 1993 movie that was produced by his wife, Kathleen Kennedy, and focuses on the Uruguay rugby team’s chartered flight that crashed en route to a […]
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Hollywood Flashback: When Irene Cara’s ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling’ Had It All in 1984
The opening synthesizer lines of the song “Flashdance… What a Feeling” offer a sense of promise — something big is about to happen. And the tune, performed by actress and singer Irene Cara for the soundtrack of 1983’s Flashdance, delivered, becoming a hit single and winning the Oscar for best original song in 1984. In […]
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Hollywood Flashback: 50 Years Ago, ‘The Sting’ Hit the Oscar Jackpot
Sometimes lightning strikes twice — at least it did when Paul Newman and Robert Redford teamed up. The dazzling leading men made two movies together, both directed by George Roy Hill, that became Oscar juggernauts. The first, 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, rounded up seven Academy Award nominations and four wins. Fifty years […]
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Hollywood Flashback: ‘Ordinary People’ Led CBS’ First Golden Globes
The Golden Globes telecast is heading back to CBS for the first time in more than four decades. The ceremony is a TV staple, with viewers having come to expect a show that’s looser than the Academy Awards, thanks in part to plentiful alcohol. But the Globes, which debuted in 1944 and could be seen […]
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Hollywood Flashback: The Cast of ‘The Birdcage’ Soared at the 1997 SAG Awards
In 1997, the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble in a motion picture was expected to go to a “serious” nominee like The English Patient (which would go on to win the best picture Oscar), Sling Blade or Marvin’s Room (boasting a cast including Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio). But The Birdcage swooped in […]
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