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:
