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On July 24, 1952, Stanley Kramer’s High Noon was released and subsequently won 4 Oscars. Wikipedia reports that the film was “one of the first 25 films (selected) for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1989, the NFR’s first year of existence.” As I see it, the greatness of the movie is in showing how good government depends on the performance of exceptional individuals and just how hard modern centuries make it for those individuals to want to stay in government. The heroes we need are getting harder and harder...

Gary Cooper died relatively young at sixty years of age, six days after his birthday, on the 13th May, in 1961. This was nine years after a sensational understated starring performance in High Noon, the immortal anthem to individual moral courage in the face of criminal danger. When Frank Miller, a criminal who had vowed to kill Kane, is headed back to town on the midday train on Kane's wedding day, Kane tries and fails to rally the support of the terrified towns people. Marshall Kane tells his predecessor: "I'm having trouble getting deputies." Former Marshall Martin Howe explains in...

Today's feature is Gary Cooper's final film, an underrated, British suspense thriller directed by Michael Anderson("Around The World In 80 Days", "Logan's Run") and scripted by Joseph Stefano("Psycho").

This week's feature is a classic western featuring cinema great and conservative Republican actor Gary Cooper. It's great to see him and Steve McGarrett battling each other 10 years before Jack Lord ever said "Book 'em Danno."

This week's feature is an excellent portrayal of how the cynical media manipulates(or at least certainly tries to and often succeeds at) the masses to advance their own agendas. From 1941 and involving 3 classic Hollywood legends (Cooper, Stanwyck, and Capra) who were all Republicans.

Patricia Neal, the famous actress passed away from lung cancer yesterday. Patricia Neal was a great actress and became a strong Catholic pro-life advocate as an adult. When Neal was young she fell in love and had an extended affair with her married co-star Gary Cooper. When Neal became pregnant with his child he urged her to have an abortion which she did. Gary Cooper's daughter Maria Cooper famously spat on Neal for carrying on an affair with her father. Later, however, Maria Cooper and Neal became great friends and it was Maria Cooper who helped bring Neal back to...

Warner Bros. today will launch a service giving the public the opportunity to custom-order DVDs of films never before released via the medium. The move is seen as a response to dwindling DVD sales and also to customer demand for titles that while not totally obscure, didn't necessarily generate enough heat to merit a full-on DVD release. The Warner Archive Collection, available at WarnerArchive.com, includes films dating back to the silent age and for $19.95 per disc Warners will burn, package and ship for receipt within an estimated five days. Currently there are 150 titles available with for a total...

Visionary student architect Howard Roark strives to break away from the classically inspired designs of ordinary architects. His unwillingness to compromise, despite the advice of his ambitious friend, Peter Keating, causes him to be kicked out of school, but earns him a job with Henry Cameron, a talented architect, who also believes that form must follow function. After Cameron is completely destroyed by the system, Roark sets up his own company, but gets only an occasional job. Roark is offered a commission to build a bank building, but when he learns that the bank wants him to add some classical...

The consensus of film critics is that three of the four best Western movies ever made were those starring John Wayne: Stagecoach (1939), Red River (1948), and The Searchers (1956). (The fourth is Gary Cooper’s 1952 High Noon.) Many critics consider The Searchers to be one of the greatest movies, period, and has been the subject of numerous academic seminars. It is a lesser known John Wayne Western, however, that contains an important lesson for our relations with the Moslem world. Directed by John Ford, made in 1948, entitled She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, it stars Wayne as Capt. Nathan...