Wide Screen's Tribute to Elizabeth Taylor

by Tony Dayoub

Film lovers and readers of this blog may be interested in checking out this week's issue of Wide Screen. It's an all-Liz Taylor edition, a tribute to the superstar put together pretty quickly by our illustrious editor, Glenn Kenny, chief critic for MSN Movies. In this issue you'll find an auteurist's observations on Taylor's career by Kenny; a lovely remembrance by Farran Smith Nehme, The Self-Styled Siren; two galleries containing rare photos of the actress; Vadim Rizov's usual look at the media, in this case comparing its farewells to La Liz; and a survey of the actress's best films on DVD by yours truly. All of this, plus Simon Abrams's latest on this week's theatrical releases.

If you haven't yet signed up for the month-long free trial, I can't think of a better issue to start with.

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN

Farley Granger

by Tony Dayoub

Handsome and stiff-jawed, it was easy to mistake him for a traditional leading man at first glance. But a few minutes spent with him and a quiet uncertainty in his features would quickly give way to anxious desperation. That was why Farley Granger was often cast as someone with something to hide. Alfred Hitchcock took advantage of that in two of his films, so did Nicholas Ray, and Italy's Luchino Visconti. In Granger's best period, a short span of time from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, each director pushed the suave acting neophyte to subvert his angular features to the point where they seemed brittle, exposing a fragility which often told the viewer everything one needed to know about his character.

MIA since Out of Sight: Jennifer Lopez, Actress

by Tony Dayoub

Where is the actress who worked with Francis Ford Coppola, Bob Rafelson, and Oliver Stone, and seemed on the verge of something greater as US Marshal Karen Sisco in Steven Soderbergh's Elmore Leonard adaptation? March's Blu-ray release of Out of Sight (1998) is occasion for me to lament the disappearance of bright, rising star Jennifer Lopez (replaced full-time by pop star, J.Lo) from any challenging dramas.

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Elizabeth Taylor

by Tony Dayoub

"Seems like we always spend the best part of our time just saying goodbye."

-Elizabeth Taylor as Angela Vickers in A Place in the Sun (1951)

One of cinema's most iconic stars is gone. Certainly there has never been an actor who had gained as much attention for her personal life as she had for her work like Elizabeth Taylor. Married eight times, twice to the volatile love of her life, actor Richard Burton, Taylor seemed to weather scandal easily. She had been in the public eye since childhood, when she starred in such movies as Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet (1944). Perhaps it was the casual way she managed the lifelong attention she received from the press that helped her comfort damaged souls like Montgomery Clift and Michael Jackson, close friends of hers, through their own public trials and tribulations. Since many of the countless tributes yet to be seen in the next few days will focus on her personal life, I'd like to talk about several of her roles which have shone brightest for me.