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Feature Screengem

Screengems: The Staircase from The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz & William Keighley, 1938)

During the late 1930’s, no period Hollywood adventure was complete without Errol Flynn or Basil Rathbone. These two men epitomised the archetypal male from the golden age of the silver screen – rakish, suave, and debonair. The swashbuckling extravaganzas in which they starred reached their zenith with the technicolour fantasy The Adventures of Robin Hood, […]

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Architecture & Film Feature

Architecture and Film #8 Director’s Cut – John Lautner

Having their best-known building appear in film after film is an honour that has fallen to several architects, from William F. Lamb and the Empire State Building (King Kong, Sleepless in Seattle) to Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim Museum (Men in Black, Manhattan), but only John Lautner has had half a dozen of his […]

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Feature On Location

On Location: Astral House as it appears in ‘The Limey’ (Steven Soderbergh, 1999)

Much has been made about the rich heritage of LA’s modernist residential architecture but Thom Andersen, in his wonderful film-essay Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) suggests that ‘Hollywood movies have almost systematically denigrated this heritage by casting many of these houses as the residences of movie villains.’ A look back at many of the houses […]