Around the Blogosphere This Week

Miscellaneous bits of news and fun stuff from around the Internet...

...50 Westerns From the 50s reports that APACHE RIFLES (1964), starring Audie Murphy, is coming to DVD August 11th. It's a VCI release with documentaries on director William Witney and Lone Pine. I'll be passing through Lone Pine on my summer vacation a couple weeks from now...

...One of my favorite articles of recent weeks is Moira Finnie's history of polo playing in early Hollywood, paying particular attention to Will Rogers, Walt Disney, and Spencer Tracy. A great slice of Hollywood history.

...I can't believe they're really making a big-screen version of TV's THE BIG VALLEY. Jessica Lange has replaced Susan Sarandon in the role made famous by Barbara Stanwyck. Jack Nicholson's daughter Lorraine plays Audra, the Linda Evans role. Lee Majors, who starred in the original show (seen at the left in the accompanying photo), has a role in the film. Richard Dreyfuss and Bruce Dern also star.

...Sweden today celebrates the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria, the nation's future queen. She married on her parents' 34th wedding anniversary. Victoria's flower girls and pages included a future king of Denmark and future queens of the Netherlands and Norway, who are all her godchildren. Photos are here.

...Reviews, reviews, and more reviews: the Warner Bros. all-star production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (1935) was reviewed at Kevin's Movie Corner...CODE TWO (1953), about an LAPD motorcyle unit, is discussed at Where Danger Lives. I recently recorded this and thought it looked like fun...Raven looks at ILLEGAL ENTRY (1949) at Noir of the Week. It stars George Brent and Howard Duff...Amanda liked Robert Taylor in HIGH WALL (1947), which she wrote about at A Noodle in a Haystack.

...Fun animal videos: a sea turtle did some filming with a lost underwater video camera which made a 1100-mile trek from Aruba to Key West...and Missy found a fun video of a pup chasing balls thrown by his automatic tennis ball launcher.

...At Out of the Past Raquelle goes over some of the ins and outs of classic film distribution, analyzing the studio history of the Charlie Chan films in general and TCM Spotlight's new Charlie Chan Collection in particular. (My younger kids are crazy about the Chan films. We have five boxed sets to date...I'll be looking for a good deal on this new set in the future.)

...Here's a great idea classic film fans may wish to bookmark: a way to Google search only among classic film blogs. The list is currently up to 136 blogs. I'm delighted to be included! It was created by Cliff of Immortal Ephemera. (Hat tip: Out of the Past.)

...New cookbook: SOUTHERN PIES by Nancie McDermott, author of SOUTHERN CAKES. It will be out September 1, 2010, from Chronicle Books.

...It's fun to read about how other classic film fans record, store, and view movies. Here's a post on that topic from Comet Over Hollywood. (Hat tip: Classic Movies.)

...Here's another lovely post by Moira, this time on Robert Ryan.

...TCM's Deanna Durbin Music and Romance Collection has had its release date changed from June 9th to June 30th, 2010.

...Lou Lumenick writes about Joe E. Brown movies and Red Skelton's WHISTLING... series, which have come to the Warner Archive DVD-R program.

...There are more new attraction posters up at Disneyland! Visit Disney Park Attraction Posters for a peek.

Have a great weekend!