Free Republic

Saint Valentine's Day being later this week motivates the appropriately titled pick for today's feature. TAOL is a dark farce about a struggling artist(Dick Van Dyke) who fakes his own death to increase interest in and sales of his own paintings. James Garner is his buddy/manager and partner in this scheme which, of course, snowballs into all kinds of trouble and comic events. Lovely actresses Angie Dickinson and Elke Sommer in their prime play the women in their lives. A fun movie that I discovered as a child on a Sunday afternoon being played by a local channel but oddly...

Today's MFASA features the only film to star both the King of Cool(Republican and later in life born-again Christian, Steve McQueen) and the Queen of Hot(sweet Lutheran girl Ann-Margret). McQueen's the title character, a young hotshot card player who goes up against the Man(Edward G. Robinson) in a high tension poker game in Depression-era New Orleans. A-M(as Melba, the bad girl or "Ginger" of the film) and Tuesday Weld(as Christian, the good girl or "Mary Ann" of the film) are the women in his life. They both look more like swingin' 60s chicks than 1930s women but hey, they're both...

MONTREAL — Canadian director Norman Jewison, whose long career has included Oscars for his films and actors who have starred in them, doesn't know half the "movie stars'' that are under the age of 30. Jewison told his audience at a literary festival Sunday that he has divided those who are in pictures into two categories: movie stars and actors. For example, Jewison said that Arnold Schwarzenegger, now California governor, is a movie star while Denzel Washington is an actor. But what really bothers Jewison is celebrity culture and what he calls the unhealthy obsession with it that permeates people's...