There is more pure, unadulterated joy in just the opening montage of classic moments and characters from Chuck Jones cartoons than in most recent feature films. Jones is the best known of the Warner Bros. stable of legendary animators. He is certainly the most honored. After winning three Oscars, the Academy in 1996 bestowed upon him its Lifetime Achievement Award. With impeccable comic timing and ...
Keeping the Faith, Edward Norton's directorial debut, centers on Jake (Ben Stiller) and Brian (Norton), a rabbi and a priest who've been best friends since childhood. Both find their callings and grow into strong spiritual leaders for their community. The clever and occasionally slapstick comedy as Jake and Ben find their places in the religious community is precisely timed, and the film ...
As its title suggests, this 84-minute episode of The West (covering the years 1856-68) addresses the violent turmoil that accompanied the ongoing expansion of the West in the 1850s. The divisive issue of slavery would spark the first fire of the Civil War, and the West entered a period of rampant brutality. For an intimate perspective, the writings of an antislavery settler, Julia Louisa ...
John Wayne's road to stardom needed some giddyup in the early 1930s; after a leading-man turn in The Big Trail, he quickly fell into B-movie obscurity. While waiting to vault to first-tier status in 1939's Stagecoach, he honed his talent with a set of six B-Westerns at Warner Brothers, shot in 1932-33. The series of snappy little films (under an hour each) allowed Warners to recycle ...