My excuse to post some of those awesome TCM Summer Under the Stars posters

My latest article for LFM is about TCM's annual Summer Under the Stars festival. It's also a defense of movie stars in general, in which I argue that the movies still need movie stars and we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss them.

I also wax a little nostalgic about Entertainment Weekly's "100 Greatest Stars of All Time" -- a magazine special edition I bought when I was sixteen and which I credit with turning me into the old movie fanatic I am today. I fell in love with old movies because I fell in love with the movie stars in them. I still have my dog-eared copy of "100 Greatest Stars of All Time" and I still pick it up from time to time to revisit those old loves.

I first discovered Barbara Stanwyck and Steve McQueen in those pages, if you can believe it. If it weren't for that fateful day in a Walgreens drug store all those years ago -- when I grabbed "100 Greatest Stars of All Time" off the newsstand on a whim -- I might not have known the pleasures of LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER or BALL OF FIRE.

But most of all, my article is just an excuse to post some of those amazing posters from last year's Summer Under the Stars. I wish TCM would turn all of these into full-sized glossy posters so I can put them on my wall. Seriously:

They are the last of my old time friends

There's this moment in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous where Kate Hudson's Penny Lane is drunk and overdosing on Quaaludes in a hotel suite in Manhattan, depressed over being dumped by Stillwater guitarist, Russell, and Patrick Fugit's character comes in to rescue her (and to also proclaim his undying love for her) and she says wistfully, sadly: "You're the last of my old time friends." And then she goes on to tell him where all the other band aids and roadies from the Stillwater tour -- her friends -- have gone. Everyone has left her -- everyone except Fugit's character, William Miller.

With the passing of Karl Malden today, I'm feeling a lot like Penny Lane.

How to Watch Old Movies, Part 2

There's a movie star for every occasion. Like patron saints.

Feeling like it's you against the world? Then queue up Joan Crawford. Maybe a screening of Mildred Pierce will make you realize you ain't got it half as bad as old Joanie. Sick of looking to our politicians for answers only to find that they're all just a part of one great, big, useless ball of dangerous Stupid? Embrace your inner anarchist and turn on the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. Stuck in a funk and feeling like a miserable, uncouth slob? Turn on a Cary Grant movie and try to catch just a sprinkle of his effortless grace.

See, old movies are more like religion than new movies are, and it's hard for new movie types to quite understand the fervor of the old movie devotee. At least, it's hard at first, because they're not used to the old movie fan's culture of movie star devotion (which is quite different from today's "celebrity culture"; devotion to old movie stars is based on love and enjoyment, whereas celebrity culture is based on curiosity and shock value). But these newbies can be brought around. You see, all they need is a little old time religion. Movie religion, that is.