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Ninotchka is a 1939 American comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch. Ninotchka is Greta Garbo's first full comedy, and her penultimate film. It is one of the first American movies which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray, in this instance comparing it with the free and sunny Parisian society of pre-war years.

Estleman is best known for his hard-boiled Amos Walker detective series, all set in Detroit—of which, I heartily recommend the first, Motor City Blue. (Most of these were written when Detroit was still a city.) He also straps on the Yeehaw! and pumps out a lot of pretty good cowboy stories. Now Estleman moves as far West as he can go with his Hollywood series starring Valentino. Val, to his pals, is a film archivist—he calls himself a movie detective—and professor at a well known Los Angeles-based university. His wise-cracking older next-door-office neighbor Broadhead, who by the grace of tenure...

In life, Greta Garbo did her best to avoid the media limelight. But the reclusive actress will be in focus over the next few months as Sweden celebrates its greatest movie star, who would have turned 100 on Sunday. The Swedish Film Institute kicks off the Garbo centenary celebration Friday with a screening of the 1936 classic "Camille," which had its original premiere at Stockholm's Roda Kvarn movie theater. "It was Garbo's own favorite and is part of a two-month retrospective of the films of one of the world's greatest film stars ever," said institute spokesman and Garbo expert Jan...