Joseph Biroc

Joseph Biroc, 93, who shared an Academy Award for cinematography on the prototype disaster film "The Towering Inferno." In addition to the Oscar that Biroc shared with Fred Koenekamp, he received several Emmys and in 1989 a lifetime achievement award from the Society of American Cinematographers. During World War II, he filmed the liberation of Paris for the U.S. Army Signal Corps as part of Frank Capra's photo unit. In his seven-decade career, Biroc filmed more than 80 motion pictures.

When girls are good they are very good, but when they are bad they are even better. And during the height of the film noir genre in the 1940s and '50s, some of the juiciest roles for women were as femmes fatales in snappy B-movies. Sony's terrific two-volume "Bad Girls of Film Noir" DVD collections, due out Tuesday, offer eight scrappy samples featuring several female icons of the genre. Volume I kicks off with the 1950 thriller "The Killer That Stalked New York." The killer in question is played by Evelyn Keyes, though she isn't a typical film noir villainess.

When girls are good they are very good, but when they are bad they are even better. And during the height of the film noir genre in the 1940s and '50s, some of the juiciest roles for women were as femmes fatales in snappy B-movies. Sony's terrific two-volume "Bad Girls of Film Noir" DVD collections, due out Tuesday, offer eight scrappy samples featuring several female icons of the genre. Volume I kicks off with the 1950 thriller "The Killer That Stalked New York." The killer in question is played by Evelyn Keyes, though she isn't a typical film noir villainess.

Joseph Biroc, 93, who shared an Academy Award for cinematography on the prototype disaster film "The Towering Inferno." In addition to the Oscar that Biroc shared with Fred Koenekamp, he received several Emmys and in 1989 a lifetime achievement award from the Society of American Cinematographers. During World War II, he filmed the liberation of Paris for the U.S. Army Signal Corps as part of Frank Capra's photo unit. In his seven-decade career, Biroc filmed more than 80 motion pictures.

This, it struck me several Marches ago, is the Season of the Gravy Shoulders. It is the time of the awards banquets, one after another, when black tie is worn, presenters present, accepters accept and harassed waiters try to maneuver dollops of meat and vegetables past the close-packed guests. The American Society of Cinematographers, holding its third annual award festivities Sunday night, did one handy reversal of tradition, withholding the food until after the presentations.

In the late '40s, Peter Lorre, harassed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and suffering a decline in his career, returned to Germany where a journalist friend told him a true story that became the basis for the one film he directed, "The Lost One" ("Der Verlorene"). Unfortunately, its title was all too apt: German audiences weren't ready to confront the implications of World War II on the screen, and it promptly disappeared.

Fox Studio Classics Fox, $15 each In Old Chicago MUSICALS and gangster dramas weren't the only movies audiences flocked to in the 1930s -- they also loved disaster films like "San Francisco," "The Hurricane" and this 1937 melodrama about the famed 1871 Great Chicago Fire. One of the most expensive movies of its day -- because of the still-effective re-creation of the fire -- the film revolves around the two O'Leary brothers.

This, it struck me several Marches ago, is the Season of the Gravy Shoulders. It is the time of the awards banquets, one after another, when black tie is worn, presenters present, accepters accept and harassed waiters try to maneuver dollops of meat and vegetables past the close-packed guests. The American Society of Cinematographers, holding its third annual award festivities Sunday night, did one handy reversal of tradition, withholding the food until after the presentations.