Lloyd Schwartz

Cinerama Brought The Power Of Peripheral Vision To The Movies

Lloyd Schwartz — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:53:00 +0000

As early as silent film, directors attempted to create widescreen images. But in the 1950s it became a commercial necessity to give the multitude of new TV watchers what they couldn't get on a small screen. So even before CinemaScope, VistaVision, Todd-AO and Panavision, there was Cinerama — a process in which three projectors threw three simultaneous images onto a gigantic curved screen.

Mozart's Starring Role In 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'

Lloyd Schwartz — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:35:00 +0000

Sunday Bloody Sunday is one of those films that lets you into the lives of believable, complicated characters. A handsome, self-centered young artist played by the actor/rock singer Murray Head is having simultaneous affairs with both an older woman (played with infinitely nuanced self-irony by Glenda Jackson) and an older man, a Jewish doctor (the touching Peter Finch), two intelligent adults who have mutual friends and even know each other slightly.

What Happened To 'Baby Jane?' She's Turning 50

Lloyd Schwartz — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 18:54:00 +0000

Baby Jane Hudson is now 50 years old — or at least the strange and brilliant movie in which she's the main character is, just released as a beautifully remastered Blu-ray. Robert Aldrich's grotesque gothic tragedy is a cross between Gypsy, with its antithetical show-biz kid sisters, and Sunset Boulevard, with its decayed Hollywood glamour.

Baby Jane is a blond, curly-haired child star, a Shirley Temple wannabe, like Baby June in Gypsy. She's self-centered and more selfish than her plain sister, Blanche, who in the 1930s becomes a queen of Hollywood melodrama.