A glimpse at upcoming UK DVD and Blu-ray release dates until the end of 2024: here’s what’s coming to disc and when.
Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note that all dates are for the UK.
Also: We’ve started adding affiliate links. If you click on those, we benefit, and can spend more money paying more people to write more things for this website. No pressure, just hugely obliged.
Obviously in the current climate everything is subject to change, of course…
Just released
First Time On UK Blu-ray: No Way Out (Film Stories Blu-ray #2)
First Time On UK Blu-ray: Bull Durham (Film Stories Blu-ray #3)
Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note...
Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note that all dates are for the UK.
Also: We’ve started adding affiliate links. If you click on those, we benefit, and can spend more money paying more people to write more things for this website. No pressure, just hugely obliged.
Obviously in the current climate everything is subject to change, of course…
Just released
First Time On UK Blu-ray: No Way Out (Film Stories Blu-ray #2)
First Time On UK Blu-ray: Bull Durham (Film Stories Blu-ray #3)
Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note...
- 5/27/2024
- by Simon Brew
- Film Stories
Legendary film editor Thelma Schoonmaker is honoring the films of filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger with an upcoming retrospective at MoMA.
Titled “Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger,” the screening series is presented in collaboration with the BFI and will take place from June 21 to July 31. The program includes more than 50 films — many of which are new restorations — and was curated by conservation experts, archivists, and curators at the BFI National Archive.
Oscar-winning editor Schoonmaker will open the series on June 21 with an introduction to the new digital restoration of “Black Narcissus” (1947). Schoonmaker was married to British director Powell from 1984 until his death in 1990.
Powell and Pressburger’s cultural legacy is most notably recognized in their film “The Red Shoes” (1948), which has inspired sequences in films such as Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” which Schoonmaker edited.
Titled “Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger,” the screening series is presented in collaboration with the BFI and will take place from June 21 to July 31. The program includes more than 50 films — many of which are new restorations — and was curated by conservation experts, archivists, and curators at the BFI National Archive.
Oscar-winning editor Schoonmaker will open the series on June 21 with an introduction to the new digital restoration of “Black Narcissus” (1947). Schoonmaker was married to British director Powell from 1984 until his death in 1990.
Powell and Pressburger’s cultural legacy is most notably recognized in their film “The Red Shoes” (1948), which has inspired sequences in films such as Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” which Schoonmaker edited.
- 5/1/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
For those of us who remember going to the movies in 1977, we were treated to Star Wars, Smokey And The Bandit, The Spy Who Loved Me, Airport 77, The Car, Orca and Capricorn One. There was a rich wealth of movies to choose from and a time when audiences in their local cinemas would cheer and clap for the heroes. Then on December 14, 1977, coming off the success of Jaws, that director Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi masterpiece graced the screens. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind was the filmmaker’s next movie and, along with star Richard Dreyfuss and the magnificent score from composer John Williams, took audiences on a journey of mankind’s first meeting with aliens and let us know we are not alone in the universe.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning for Best Cinematography by Director of Photography Vilmos Zsigmond (The Sugarland Express...
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning for Best Cinematography by Director of Photography Vilmos Zsigmond (The Sugarland Express...
- 3/21/2024
- by Melissa Thompson
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The 2024 TCM Film Festival is ringing in its 15th anniversary with a slew of star-studded panels and premieres.
The festival, which takes place in Los Angeles from April 18 to 21, will kick off with a special 35mm screening of “Pulp Fiction” with actor John Travolta in attendance. This year’s festival theme is “Most Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film,” and fittingly, the festival boasts a cast reunion of prison escape drama “The Shawshank Redemption” with stars Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins.
Both “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Pulp Fiction” are celebrating 30 years since their respective 1994 releases.
The festival will close with Mel Brooks’ “Spaceballs,” with Brooks presenting the feature.
Additional programming includes the world premiere of the IMAX restoration of David Fincher’s “Se7en,” a restoration of “The Searchers” courtesy of Warner Bros. and The Film Foundation with Oscar-nominated writer/director Alexander Payne introducing the film, and “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings presenting the U.
The festival, which takes place in Los Angeles from April 18 to 21, will kick off with a special 35mm screening of “Pulp Fiction” with actor John Travolta in attendance. This year’s festival theme is “Most Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film,” and fittingly, the festival boasts a cast reunion of prison escape drama “The Shawshank Redemption” with stars Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins.
Both “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Pulp Fiction” are celebrating 30 years since their respective 1994 releases.
The festival will close with Mel Brooks’ “Spaceballs,” with Brooks presenting the feature.
Additional programming includes the world premiere of the IMAX restoration of David Fincher’s “Se7en,” a restoration of “The Searchers” courtesy of Warner Bros. and The Film Foundation with Oscar-nominated writer/director Alexander Payne introducing the film, and “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings presenting the U.
- 3/21/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Those attending the 15th annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood next month will have an opportunity to engage with Mel Brooks and Vitaphone, both born in 1926. One’s extinct, the other’s still going strong.
While Brooks, 97, will be on hand for a closing-night screening of his 1987 comedy Spaceballs, six Vitaphone vaudeville shorts from the 1920s will be projected in 35mm, with sound played back from their original 16-inch discs on a turntable designed and engineered by Warner Bros.’ postproduction engineering department.
Also announced Thursday:
• Steven Spielberg will participate in a Q&a with Howard Suber — the UCLA faculty member at the center of the recent six-part TCM documentary The Power of Film — ahead of a director’s cut of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977);
• Nancy Meyers and Alexander Payne, respectively, will introduce world premiere restorations of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) and John Ford’s The Searchers...
While Brooks, 97, will be on hand for a closing-night screening of his 1987 comedy Spaceballs, six Vitaphone vaudeville shorts from the 1920s will be projected in 35mm, with sound played back from their original 16-inch discs on a turntable designed and engineered by Warner Bros.’ postproduction engineering department.
Also announced Thursday:
• Steven Spielberg will participate in a Q&a with Howard Suber — the UCLA faculty member at the center of the recent six-part TCM documentary The Power of Film — ahead of a director’s cut of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977);
• Nancy Meyers and Alexander Payne, respectively, will introduce world premiere restorations of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) and John Ford’s The Searchers...
- 3/21/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In the narrator’s seat for David Hinton’s eloquent documentary on the filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Martin Scorsese is the ultimate fan. Tracing his all-around movie obsession to his first viewing of the U.K.-based pair’s 1948 tour de force, The Red Shoes, he leads us through a dozen of their features and a few of Powell’s solo efforts, connecting key sequences to memorable scenes in his own work. But beyond its clear explication of the films’ imaginative and technical power, Made in England is also a testament to mentorship and friendship; Scorsese was close to Powell, who died in 1990, for the last decade and a half of the British director’s life, and Powell married Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, in 1984.
The documentary ignites a longing to see the movies, whether for the first time or the umpteenth (many are available on...
The documentary ignites a longing to see the movies, whether for the first time or the umpteenth (many are available on...
- 2/24/2024
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.
While Isabella Rossellini...
While Isabella Rossellini...
- 6/22/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
This very traditional chamber murder mystery starring David Farrar and Geraldine Fitzgerald has been beautifully restored by Studiocanal and bears the original U.K. title The Late Edwina Black. When the sickly wife Edwina dies in bed the bitter housekeeper accuses the husband and another very attractive servant; all the Scotland Yard Inspector need do is stir the pot, and paranoid suspicions take over. Is Edwina’s spirit still present in the house? The housekeeper thinks she communicates through a wind chime by the window . . .
Obsessed
Blu-ray
ClassicFlix
1951 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 78 min. / Street Date February 28, 2023 / The Late Edwina Black / Available from / 29.99
Starring: David Farrar, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Roland Culver, Jean Cadell, Mary Merrall, Harcourt Williams, Charles Heslop, Ronald Adam.
Cinematography: Stephen Dade
Art Direction: George Provis
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Haffenden
Film Editor: Douglas Myers
Original Music: Allan Gray
Screenplay by Charles Frank, David Evans from the play by William Dinner, William Morum...
Obsessed
Blu-ray
ClassicFlix
1951 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 78 min. / Street Date February 28, 2023 / The Late Edwina Black / Available from / 29.99
Starring: David Farrar, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Roland Culver, Jean Cadell, Mary Merrall, Harcourt Williams, Charles Heslop, Ronald Adam.
Cinematography: Stephen Dade
Art Direction: George Provis
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Haffenden
Film Editor: Douglas Myers
Original Music: Allan Gray
Screenplay by Charles Frank, David Evans from the play by William Dinner, William Morum...
- 3/7/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Mubi is showing Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Small Back Room (1949), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) in November and December, 2017 in the United States in the series Powell & Pressburger: Together and Apart.The story goes that when they were casting their first flat-out masterpiece together, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger sent a letter to an actress outlining a manifesto of their production company, called "the Archers." At the time, the Archers was freshly incorporated, with Powell and Pressburger sharing all credit for writing, directing, and producing, and their manifesto had five points. Point one was to ensure that they provided their financial backers with "a profit, not a loss," which may raise eyebrows among those who are used to manifestos burning with anti-capitalist fire—but then, in a system like commercial cinema, profitability buys freedom.
- 11/8/2017
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
The Films of Alex Ross Perry
As we await distribution for Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, FilmStruck is presenting a selection of his first three features, Implox, The Color Wheel, and Listen Up Philip. Also streaming is a master class with Perry’s frequent editor (and excellent director in his own right) Robert Greene.
Where to Stream: FilmStruck...
The Films of Alex Ross Perry
As we await distribution for Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, FilmStruck is presenting a selection of his first three features, Implox, The Color Wheel, and Listen Up Philip. Also streaming is a master class with Perry’s frequent editor (and excellent director in his own right) Robert Greene.
Where to Stream: FilmStruck...
- 11/3/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
John Wayne plays a German sea captain in a film that goes out of its way to create a favorable image of our former enemy, with hardly a Nazi flag or even a German accent in sight. Wayne and his co-star Lana Turner are as Teutonic as Blondie and Dagwood, yet the film works as a basic adventure – we like the charismatic star, and the sea chase format guarantees extra interest.
The Sea Chase
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 117 min. / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: John Wayne, Lana Turner, David Farrar, Lyle Bettger, Tab Hunter, James Arness, Richard Davalos, John Qualen, Paul Fix, Alan Hale Jr., Peter Whitney, Claude Akins, John Doucette, Tudor Owen, Adam Williams.
Cinematography: William Clothier
Film Editors: William Ziegler, Owen Marks
Original Music: Roy Webb
Written by James Warner Bellah, John Twist from a novel by Andrew Geer
Produced and Directed...
The Sea Chase
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 117 min. / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: John Wayne, Lana Turner, David Farrar, Lyle Bettger, Tab Hunter, James Arness, Richard Davalos, John Qualen, Paul Fix, Alan Hale Jr., Peter Whitney, Claude Akins, John Doucette, Tudor Owen, Adam Williams.
Cinematography: William Clothier
Film Editors: William Ziegler, Owen Marks
Original Music: Roy Webb
Written by James Warner Bellah, John Twist from a novel by Andrew Geer
Produced and Directed...
- 7/18/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Cinematography festival to present retrospective on the innovative British film-making duo, attended by Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
Camerimage (Nov 15-22) is to host a special retrospective around the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
The film festival that celebrates cinematography, held in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, will be attended by Powell’s wife and three-time Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker as well as film scholars and Powell-Pressburger experts Erich Sargeant and Ian Christie.
Films of the due set to be screened at Camerimage include:
The Edge Of The World; 1937; cin. Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, Ernest Palmer
One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing; 1942; cin. Ronald Neame
The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp; 1943; cin. Georges Périnal
A Canterbury Tale; 1944; cin. Erwin Hillier
‘I Know Where I’m Going!’; 1945; cin. Erwin Hillier
A Matter Of Life And Death; 1946; cin. Jack Cardiff
Black Narcissus; 1947; cin. Jack Cardiff
The Red Shoes; 1948; cin. Jack Cardiff
[link...
Camerimage (Nov 15-22) is to host a special retrospective around the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
The film festival that celebrates cinematography, held in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, will be attended by Powell’s wife and three-time Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker as well as film scholars and Powell-Pressburger experts Erich Sargeant and Ian Christie.
Films of the due set to be screened at Camerimage include:
The Edge Of The World; 1937; cin. Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, Ernest Palmer
One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing; 1942; cin. Ronald Neame
The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp; 1943; cin. Georges Périnal
A Canterbury Tale; 1944; cin. Erwin Hillier
‘I Know Where I’m Going!’; 1945; cin. Erwin Hillier
A Matter Of Life And Death; 1946; cin. Jack Cardiff
Black Narcissus; 1947; cin. Jack Cardiff
The Red Shoes; 1948; cin. Jack Cardiff
[link...
- 10/3/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Creative force in the British film industry whose work included The Stepford Wives and Whistle Down the Wind
The director, actor and writer Bryan Forbes, who has died aged 86, was one of the most creative forces in the British film industry of the 1960s, and the Hollywood films he directed included the original version of The Stepford Wives (1974). In later life he turned to the writing of books, both fiction and memoirs.
The turning point for him in cinema was the formation of the independent company Beaver Films with his friend Richard Attenborough in 1958. For the screenplay of their first production, The Angry Silence (1960), Forbes received an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award. Attenborough played a factory worker shunned and persecuted for not joining a strike. His colleagues are shown as being manipulated by skulking professional agitators and to some it seemed more like a political statement than a human...
The director, actor and writer Bryan Forbes, who has died aged 86, was one of the most creative forces in the British film industry of the 1960s, and the Hollywood films he directed included the original version of The Stepford Wives (1974). In later life he turned to the writing of books, both fiction and memoirs.
The turning point for him in cinema was the formation of the independent company Beaver Films with his friend Richard Attenborough in 1958. For the screenplay of their first production, The Angry Silence (1960), Forbes received an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award. Attenborough played a factory worker shunned and persecuted for not joining a strike. His colleagues are shown as being manipulated by skulking professional agitators and to some it seemed more like a political statement than a human...
- 5/9/2013
- by Dennis Barker
- The Guardian - Film News
Bryan Forbes dies at 86: Directed Katharine Hepburn, Leslie Caron, the original The Stepford Wives Director Bryan Forbes, whose films include the then-daring The L-Shaped Room, the all-star The Madwoman of Chaillot, and the original The Stepford Wives, has died "after a long illness" at his home in Virginia Water, Surrey, England. Forbes was 86. Born John Theobald Clarke on July 22, 1926, in London, Bryan Forbes began his film career as an actor in supporting roles in British productions of the late 1940s, e.g., Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Small Back Room / Hour of Glory and Thornton Freeland’s Dear Mr. Prohack. Another twenty or so movie roles followed in the ’50s, including those in Ronald Neame’s The Million Pound Note / Man with a Million (1954), supporting Gregory Peck, and Carol Reed’s The Key (1958), supporting Sophia Loren and William Holden. Bryan Forbes director Despite his relatively prolific output in the previous decade,...
- 5/9/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Bryan Forbes, who directed the original Stepford Wives, Whistle Down The Wind and International Velvet, has died at the age of 86.Born John Theobald Clarke in 1926, he always intended to become an actor and trained at Rada, though he didn’t finish his studies. Devoting himself to military service for three years, he got his first screen credit in 1949’s Hour Of Glory, and became a working performer.At the same time he began to write screenplays, contributing to films such as The Black Knight, and he was the sole writer on 1955’s The Cockleshell Heroes.With his ambitions stretching beyond acting and writing, Forbes founded Beaver Films with friend and regular collaborator Richard Attenborough, where they made 1960’s The Angry Silence (with Forbes writing and Attenborough starring) among several others.Beaver Films was also behind Forbes’ first shot at directing with 1961’s Whistle Down The Wind, which scored four BAFTA nominations.
- 5/8/2013
- EmpireOnline
The Berlinale has come and gone so quickly, so intensely. Everyone was catching the flu or a cold, and I was left with the sniffles. My last two days I was lucky to be able to catch some films. Before that I only saw Don Jon’s Addiction which I was charmed by. Scarlett Johanssen played the best role of her life, she is a great comedienne. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt was delightful. Upstream Color bit off more than it could chew. The reviews express my feelings about it better than I can.
A quick list of films seen by me and by other discerning women:
Concussion, starring Catherine Deneuve, a bored house wife story has been told before. This time, the two protagonists were attractive lesbian women and it was beautifully filmed, but nothing beats Belle de Jour also starring Catherine Deneuve.
The Weimar Touch is a series of films from the Weimar era in Germany which preceded the Nazi era and films which were influenced by filmmakers of the Weimar era. MoMA Chief Curator of Film, Rajendra Roy and Laurence Kardish, the former Senior Curator of Film at MoMA were members of the Curatorial Board (along with Rainer Rother, Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Connie Betz (Deutsche Kinemathek, Programme Coordinator Retrospective, and Hans-Michael Bock (Cinegraph, Hamburg). Maybe I could catch more of these fantastic sounding films in New York.
Hangmen Also Die! by Fritz Lang sounded so great. I got the ticket, but damn I missed the film because of a meeting. The notes written for Hangmen Also Die by Rainer Rother of the Deutsche Kinemathek, "Prague 1942. Following the assassination of Nazi Reich Protector Heydrich...a professor’s daughter hides the culprit in her parents’ apartment…sadistic, elegant and effeminate." Doesn’t that sound great? The gender bending in Vicktor Viktoria was charming and funny. Julie Andrews saw this actress and copied her style perfectly. They look like twins. Other films in the Restrospective had me going to the Film Museum to ask for the boxed set, but the prints are from so many places, the clearance on them would be nearly impossible I guess…no boxed set. Other films in The Weimar Touch were so enticing! I had seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Max Reinhardt himself and William Dieterle, (U.S. 1935) the last time when I was in high school and then didn’t know who Max Reinhardt was. Car of Dreams was a favorite of those who saw it. Casablanca in which Victor Lazlo and Ilse Lund play out their doomed love was directed by Hungarian born director Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtiz) and Humphrey Bogart is almost the only “real” American in the ensemble. I had never been aware of how The Weimar Touch formed that film. Others: The Chase, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Le Corbeau – what a great film that is, a film that was saved only by Sartre and Cocteau’s speaking out in favor of director Henri-Georges Clouzot. This is a film Michael Haneke saw when he created The White Ribbon. A Dutch film, Somewhere in the Netherlands by Ludwig Berger in 1940, Gerhard Lamprecht’s Einmal Eine Grosse Dame Sein, British film, First a Girl, by Victor Saville, Fury by Fritz Lang, Gado Bravo from Portugal 1934, Gluckskinder from Germany in 1936, The Golem, The Mystery of Moonlight Sonata, Hitler’s Madman, How Green Was My Valley by John Ford in 1941 which was influenced by his friend F.W. Murnau, Max Ophuls’ Comedy About Gold, Letter from an Unknown Woman by Max Ophuls, M by Joseph Losey, Mollenard by Robert Siodmak, None Shall Live by Andre de Toth, Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur, Peter, Pieges, The Queen of Spades, The Small Back Room, Some Like it Hot, To Be or Not to Be by Lubitsch, Touch of Evil by Orson Welles, Cabaret by Bob Fosse, Dial M for Murder, On the Waterfront, The Student of Prague, Tokyo Story were all touched by The Weimar Touch. What a collection!
Tokyo Kazoku (Tokyo Story) by Yoji Yamada was sweet and sad as the parents travel from their hometown of Hiroshima to visit their grown children in Tokyo – different from Ozu’s Tokyo Story, but “the story of family estrangement and the isolation inherent in modern society” as expressed in the story notes of Rainer Rother along with the reminders of the recent tsunami and its losses make this story deeply touching.
Interesting was Dark Blood by George Sluizer. It was not as spooky as The Vanishing, but to see River Phoenix, so beautiful in this role with such a sexy Judy Davis was a treat, if a bit dated. Elle s’en va with a Catherine Deneuve, aged after Umbrellas of Cherbourg and perhaps the same character takes a funny tour through rural France that I enjoyed. I missed Pourquoi Israel, part of the Homage to Claude Lanzmann but got to see Sobibor, 14 Octobre 1943 which was astounding. The bravery of the hero who was on screen the entire time, Yehuda Lerner, looked like a movie star. The entire story was so unexpected for me; how did it happen that I had never heard the story of the uprising at Sobibor before? I know Shoah and sat through it without a minute of disinterest – but that was in college. Claude Lanzmann justifiably said that this story was too unique and special to include in Shoah.
An odd Romanian film, the comedy A Farewell to Fools directed by Goodan Dreyer and starring child actor Boodan Iancu, Gerard Depardieu, Harvey Keitel and a cruelly beautiful Laura Morante, (and dubbed!) it is being sold in the market by Shoreline. It stands out in contrast to the Golden Bear Winner, the Romanian film Child’s Pose directed by Calin Peter Netzer and produced by Ada Solomon. This feisty portrayal of the nouveau riche seems like a fictional continuation of the doc her husband directed and which she produced in 2010: Kapitalism: Our Improved Formula.
Ada Solomon’s speech at the Awards Ceremony Closing Night deserves an award itself. Starting with the comment that she is more used to fighting than to winning, she pointedly thanked not only those who helped her but also those who did not help her whose resistance to her making this film made her stronger and more powerful. She pointed out the great need to have equal representation of women in the ranks of directors and producers as well, a theme which has been expressed repeatedly during this festival in many forms. (Read Melissa Silverstein’s blog on the joint meeting of women's films festivals initiated in Berlin by The International Women's Film Festival Dortmund|Cologone and the Athena Film Festival entitled "You Cannot Be Serious" in which women from many countries discussed the statistics and the status of women directors and other positions in the industry and continued the creation of a worldwide network pushing towards a more level playing field. Check out The International Women's Film Festival Network for more information).
Child's Pose, good in the vein of Separation, went head to head with the Chilean critic's choice, Gloria whose star Paulina Garcia, won the Best Actress Award. Could have gone both ways. The two older women were both great.
By the Way, Gloria was produced by Fabula, the Chilean company of the Lorrain Brothers who produced No as well as Crystal Fairy and director Sebastian Silva’s other films.
Jay Weissberg of Variety describes Child's Pose best as a "dissection of monstrous motherly love" and a "razor-sharp jibe at Romania's nouveau riche (the type is hardly confined to one country), a class adept at massaging truths and ensuring that the world steps aside when conflict arises."
I would like to suggest to the festival event planners that next year the Awards Ceremony’s onscreen presentation (which goes on simultaneously with the announcements of the prize winners) post the name of the winner along with the film title in its own language and in English as well as the country of origin. It’s difficult enough to follow the film with simultaneous translation in English via earphones; at least put the film titles in English for us foreigners.
A friend of mine remarks that the 2 most prestigious prizes at the festival went not to American or West European films, but to those from smaller countries with developing film cultures, Child’s Pose from Romania and Denis Tanovic’s Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker from Bosnia/ Herzogovina.
She goes on with her commentary of what she saw:
"Competition film Gold by Thomas Arslan provoked mixed response, but I liked it – Nina Hoss as the lead is excellent, plus there are long passages of the group on horseback trekking thru Alaska to the Klondike amidst spectacular landscapes. And the camerawork is wonderful. So that’s enough to keep me in my seat.
Night Train to Lisbon has been panned by virtually every trade publication critic as boring at the least. Nevertheless I enjoyed all the famous actors –Jeremy Irons, Lena Olin, Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, and yes Bruno Ganz. It is a story about the oppressive regime and a secret resistance group of in 1970s Portugal. Circles is a powerful and tough film by Srdan Folubovic about the revelations amidst survivors of a terrible event 12 years after the end of the war in Yugoslavia. Terrific performances support a complex and tough tale of how history permeates memory and behavior down thru the generations. Cold Bloom is the 4th feature of Atsushi Funahashi, who made last year’s powerful Nuclear Nation documentary about the effects if the tsunami. A drama about how the tsunami affected young workers and small businesses in the region is told thru the tragedy of a young couple. The title refers to a fantastic closing sequence under the cherry trees at night illuminated by street lamps, at once beautiful and bizarre. Gloria winner of the Golden Bear was clearly everyone’s favorite (although I could not get into the screening). Portrait of a middle aged woman in Chile (and winner of Best Actress award) it will hopefully make it across the ocean to these shores.
And finally, it is worth noting that the Forum Expanded section was extensive this year, showing diverse kinds of work including off site installations from every corner of the globe. Probably it is the single most important showcase for artists work in the film festival world. Kudos to the curators and the artist/filmmakers for keeping this exciting new work in front of the public year after year!"
Another friend who can’t decide whether to be credited here, a transplanted Los Angeleno who was born in Germany and lives in Berlin now had a very interesting insight into Two Women, wondering out loud if the two women and the two boys were transferring their homosexual feelings upon their cross parental lovers and likewise whether the two mothers were not actually acting out their lesbian affinities.
She also noted the sexual complexities of many of the films was of great interest to her. Examples she sites are the homosexual (But Not) pedophiliac feelings of a priest as depicted in In The Name Of; Gloria – not breaking news that a 58 woman is sexually alive – this film has a popular crowd pleasing charm which almost disqualifies it from the “festival” seriousness of a film like Child’s Pose, but both women are stellar.
My unnamed friend also said that, Camille Claudel failed to engage as did The Nun.
I would like to take this further, but it is very late for Berlin and now on to Guadalajara, a fascinating city and the seat of international, Iberoamerican co-productions which I think will become my obsession for the rest of the year.
Adios!
A quick list of films seen by me and by other discerning women:
Concussion, starring Catherine Deneuve, a bored house wife story has been told before. This time, the two protagonists were attractive lesbian women and it was beautifully filmed, but nothing beats Belle de Jour also starring Catherine Deneuve.
The Weimar Touch is a series of films from the Weimar era in Germany which preceded the Nazi era and films which were influenced by filmmakers of the Weimar era. MoMA Chief Curator of Film, Rajendra Roy and Laurence Kardish, the former Senior Curator of Film at MoMA were members of the Curatorial Board (along with Rainer Rother, Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Connie Betz (Deutsche Kinemathek, Programme Coordinator Retrospective, and Hans-Michael Bock (Cinegraph, Hamburg). Maybe I could catch more of these fantastic sounding films in New York.
Hangmen Also Die! by Fritz Lang sounded so great. I got the ticket, but damn I missed the film because of a meeting. The notes written for Hangmen Also Die by Rainer Rother of the Deutsche Kinemathek, "Prague 1942. Following the assassination of Nazi Reich Protector Heydrich...a professor’s daughter hides the culprit in her parents’ apartment…sadistic, elegant and effeminate." Doesn’t that sound great? The gender bending in Vicktor Viktoria was charming and funny. Julie Andrews saw this actress and copied her style perfectly. They look like twins. Other films in the Restrospective had me going to the Film Museum to ask for the boxed set, but the prints are from so many places, the clearance on them would be nearly impossible I guess…no boxed set. Other films in The Weimar Touch were so enticing! I had seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Max Reinhardt himself and William Dieterle, (U.S. 1935) the last time when I was in high school and then didn’t know who Max Reinhardt was. Car of Dreams was a favorite of those who saw it. Casablanca in which Victor Lazlo and Ilse Lund play out their doomed love was directed by Hungarian born director Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtiz) and Humphrey Bogart is almost the only “real” American in the ensemble. I had never been aware of how The Weimar Touch formed that film. Others: The Chase, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Le Corbeau – what a great film that is, a film that was saved only by Sartre and Cocteau’s speaking out in favor of director Henri-Georges Clouzot. This is a film Michael Haneke saw when he created The White Ribbon. A Dutch film, Somewhere in the Netherlands by Ludwig Berger in 1940, Gerhard Lamprecht’s Einmal Eine Grosse Dame Sein, British film, First a Girl, by Victor Saville, Fury by Fritz Lang, Gado Bravo from Portugal 1934, Gluckskinder from Germany in 1936, The Golem, The Mystery of Moonlight Sonata, Hitler’s Madman, How Green Was My Valley by John Ford in 1941 which was influenced by his friend F.W. Murnau, Max Ophuls’ Comedy About Gold, Letter from an Unknown Woman by Max Ophuls, M by Joseph Losey, Mollenard by Robert Siodmak, None Shall Live by Andre de Toth, Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur, Peter, Pieges, The Queen of Spades, The Small Back Room, Some Like it Hot, To Be or Not to Be by Lubitsch, Touch of Evil by Orson Welles, Cabaret by Bob Fosse, Dial M for Murder, On the Waterfront, The Student of Prague, Tokyo Story were all touched by The Weimar Touch. What a collection!
Tokyo Kazoku (Tokyo Story) by Yoji Yamada was sweet and sad as the parents travel from their hometown of Hiroshima to visit their grown children in Tokyo – different from Ozu’s Tokyo Story, but “the story of family estrangement and the isolation inherent in modern society” as expressed in the story notes of Rainer Rother along with the reminders of the recent tsunami and its losses make this story deeply touching.
Interesting was Dark Blood by George Sluizer. It was not as spooky as The Vanishing, but to see River Phoenix, so beautiful in this role with such a sexy Judy Davis was a treat, if a bit dated. Elle s’en va with a Catherine Deneuve, aged after Umbrellas of Cherbourg and perhaps the same character takes a funny tour through rural France that I enjoyed. I missed Pourquoi Israel, part of the Homage to Claude Lanzmann but got to see Sobibor, 14 Octobre 1943 which was astounding. The bravery of the hero who was on screen the entire time, Yehuda Lerner, looked like a movie star. The entire story was so unexpected for me; how did it happen that I had never heard the story of the uprising at Sobibor before? I know Shoah and sat through it without a minute of disinterest – but that was in college. Claude Lanzmann justifiably said that this story was too unique and special to include in Shoah.
An odd Romanian film, the comedy A Farewell to Fools directed by Goodan Dreyer and starring child actor Boodan Iancu, Gerard Depardieu, Harvey Keitel and a cruelly beautiful Laura Morante, (and dubbed!) it is being sold in the market by Shoreline. It stands out in contrast to the Golden Bear Winner, the Romanian film Child’s Pose directed by Calin Peter Netzer and produced by Ada Solomon. This feisty portrayal of the nouveau riche seems like a fictional continuation of the doc her husband directed and which she produced in 2010: Kapitalism: Our Improved Formula.
Ada Solomon’s speech at the Awards Ceremony Closing Night deserves an award itself. Starting with the comment that she is more used to fighting than to winning, she pointedly thanked not only those who helped her but also those who did not help her whose resistance to her making this film made her stronger and more powerful. She pointed out the great need to have equal representation of women in the ranks of directors and producers as well, a theme which has been expressed repeatedly during this festival in many forms. (Read Melissa Silverstein’s blog on the joint meeting of women's films festivals initiated in Berlin by The International Women's Film Festival Dortmund|Cologone and the Athena Film Festival entitled "You Cannot Be Serious" in which women from many countries discussed the statistics and the status of women directors and other positions in the industry and continued the creation of a worldwide network pushing towards a more level playing field. Check out The International Women's Film Festival Network for more information).
Child's Pose, good in the vein of Separation, went head to head with the Chilean critic's choice, Gloria whose star Paulina Garcia, won the Best Actress Award. Could have gone both ways. The two older women were both great.
By the Way, Gloria was produced by Fabula, the Chilean company of the Lorrain Brothers who produced No as well as Crystal Fairy and director Sebastian Silva’s other films.
Jay Weissberg of Variety describes Child's Pose best as a "dissection of monstrous motherly love" and a "razor-sharp jibe at Romania's nouveau riche (the type is hardly confined to one country), a class adept at massaging truths and ensuring that the world steps aside when conflict arises."
I would like to suggest to the festival event planners that next year the Awards Ceremony’s onscreen presentation (which goes on simultaneously with the announcements of the prize winners) post the name of the winner along with the film title in its own language and in English as well as the country of origin. It’s difficult enough to follow the film with simultaneous translation in English via earphones; at least put the film titles in English for us foreigners.
A friend of mine remarks that the 2 most prestigious prizes at the festival went not to American or West European films, but to those from smaller countries with developing film cultures, Child’s Pose from Romania and Denis Tanovic’s Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker from Bosnia/ Herzogovina.
She goes on with her commentary of what she saw:
"Competition film Gold by Thomas Arslan provoked mixed response, but I liked it – Nina Hoss as the lead is excellent, plus there are long passages of the group on horseback trekking thru Alaska to the Klondike amidst spectacular landscapes. And the camerawork is wonderful. So that’s enough to keep me in my seat.
Night Train to Lisbon has been panned by virtually every trade publication critic as boring at the least. Nevertheless I enjoyed all the famous actors –Jeremy Irons, Lena Olin, Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, and yes Bruno Ganz. It is a story about the oppressive regime and a secret resistance group of in 1970s Portugal. Circles is a powerful and tough film by Srdan Folubovic about the revelations amidst survivors of a terrible event 12 years after the end of the war in Yugoslavia. Terrific performances support a complex and tough tale of how history permeates memory and behavior down thru the generations. Cold Bloom is the 4th feature of Atsushi Funahashi, who made last year’s powerful Nuclear Nation documentary about the effects if the tsunami. A drama about how the tsunami affected young workers and small businesses in the region is told thru the tragedy of a young couple. The title refers to a fantastic closing sequence under the cherry trees at night illuminated by street lamps, at once beautiful and bizarre. Gloria winner of the Golden Bear was clearly everyone’s favorite (although I could not get into the screening). Portrait of a middle aged woman in Chile (and winner of Best Actress award) it will hopefully make it across the ocean to these shores.
And finally, it is worth noting that the Forum Expanded section was extensive this year, showing diverse kinds of work including off site installations from every corner of the globe. Probably it is the single most important showcase for artists work in the film festival world. Kudos to the curators and the artist/filmmakers for keeping this exciting new work in front of the public year after year!"
Another friend who can’t decide whether to be credited here, a transplanted Los Angeleno who was born in Germany and lives in Berlin now had a very interesting insight into Two Women, wondering out loud if the two women and the two boys were transferring their homosexual feelings upon their cross parental lovers and likewise whether the two mothers were not actually acting out their lesbian affinities.
She also noted the sexual complexities of many of the films was of great interest to her. Examples she sites are the homosexual (But Not) pedophiliac feelings of a priest as depicted in In The Name Of; Gloria – not breaking news that a 58 woman is sexually alive – this film has a popular crowd pleasing charm which almost disqualifies it from the “festival” seriousness of a film like Child’s Pose, but both women are stellar.
My unnamed friend also said that, Camille Claudel failed to engage as did The Nun.
I would like to take this further, but it is very late for Berlin and now on to Guadalajara, a fascinating city and the seat of international, Iberoamerican co-productions which I think will become my obsession for the rest of the year.
Adios!
- 3/10/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Themes parks are meant to be fun, but moviemakers often have other ideas. All aboard for the ride to the end of your life …
This week's clip joint is by Neil Mitchell, a freelance writer and editor of World Film Locations: London, among other publications. He also writes a film blog, and you can find him on Twitter @nrm1972.
Think you can do better? Email your idea for a future Clip joint to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk
In movie land, an amusement park is often anything but. In the hands of moviemakers, these modern day Rabelaisian playgrounds – spaces that, outside the norm of everyday life, offer the promise of thrills and hedonistic abandonment – have become sites of genuine terror, life threatening danger and unholy activity. Sometimes, the death-defying rides are the least of your worries …
1. Westworld
A theme park populated by androids, you say? Androids you can kill for fun?...
This week's clip joint is by Neil Mitchell, a freelance writer and editor of World Film Locations: London, among other publications. He also writes a film blog, and you can find him on Twitter @nrm1972.
Think you can do better? Email your idea for a future Clip joint to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk
In movie land, an amusement park is often anything but. In the hands of moviemakers, these modern day Rabelaisian playgrounds – spaces that, outside the norm of everyday life, offer the promise of thrills and hedonistic abandonment – have become sites of genuine terror, life threatening danger and unholy activity. Sometimes, the death-defying rides are the least of your worries …
1. Westworld
A theme park populated by androids, you say? Androids you can kill for fun?...
- 7/25/2012
- by Guardian readers
- The Guardian - Film News
Creative cinematographer and a key member of the Powell-Pressburger movie production team
Although the cinematographer Christopher Challis, who has died aged 93, was an essential member of the Archers production company of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, he joined them as director of photography at the time of their decline. However, he worked on more of the great British writing-directing team's films than any other cinematographer. These eccentric, extravagant, intelligent and witty fantasies went against the British realist tradition, allowing more scope for a creative cinematographer such as Challis. The sensuous use of Technicolor and flamboyant sets and designs made them closer to the MGM world of Vincente Minnelli and of Stanley Donen, who used Challis on six of his films.
Perhaps Challis's finest achievement was on Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) which, as he explained, had "no optical effects or tricks. It was all edited in...
Although the cinematographer Christopher Challis, who has died aged 93, was an essential member of the Archers production company of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, he joined them as director of photography at the time of their decline. However, he worked on more of the great British writing-directing team's films than any other cinematographer. These eccentric, extravagant, intelligent and witty fantasies went against the British realist tradition, allowing more scope for a creative cinematographer such as Challis. The sensuous use of Technicolor and flamboyant sets and designs made them closer to the MGM world of Vincente Minnelli and of Stanley Donen, who used Challis on six of his films.
Perhaps Challis's finest achievement was on Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) which, as he explained, had "no optical effects or tricks. It was all edited in...
- 6/10/2012
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Herbie Goes Bananas
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Written by Gordon Buford and Don Tait
USA, 1980
I cannot believe that a movie as wrongheaded and idiotic as Herbie Goes Bananas exists. Herbie Goes Bananas is so bad, it makes Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo look like the combined 1940s output of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (better known as The Archers), from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to The Small Back Room. In fact, I’m insulting The Archers’ films by even including them in the same sentence as anything pertaining to Herbie Goes Bananas. I could, frankly, spend this entire column cataloguing the many things in the world that are more enjoyable, funny, exciting, and lively than Herbie Goes Bananas. But while it’d be fun…well, I’m not sure how to finish that sentence. Let’s just assume the alternate-universe column where I tell you exactly...
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Written by Gordon Buford and Don Tait
USA, 1980
I cannot believe that a movie as wrongheaded and idiotic as Herbie Goes Bananas exists. Herbie Goes Bananas is so bad, it makes Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo look like the combined 1940s output of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (better known as The Archers), from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to The Small Back Room. In fact, I’m insulting The Archers’ films by even including them in the same sentence as anything pertaining to Herbie Goes Bananas. I could, frankly, spend this entire column cataloguing the many things in the world that are more enjoyable, funny, exciting, and lively than Herbie Goes Bananas. But while it’d be fun…well, I’m not sure how to finish that sentence. Let’s just assume the alternate-universe column where I tell you exactly...
- 5/26/2012
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
Italian Film Festival In Scotland
The cream of Italy's recent output is served here, including a host of festival winners. Oscar entry Terraferma contrasts the stunning Sicilian landscape with issues of seaside poverty and immigration, while the latter topic also crops up in the realist drama Our Life, for which Elio Germano won a Cannes best actor award in 2010. The big winner at the national Donatello awards, We Believed, is a three-hour account exploring Italy's reunification, and for perspective there are classics such as Elio Petri's Oscar-winning 1970 thriller Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion.
Dca, Dundee; Edinburgh Filmhouse; Gft, Glasgow; Eden Court, Inverness, Fri to 26 Apr
Terracotta Far East Film Festival, London
If names such as Sion Sono, Kim Ki-duk and, um, Kevin Spacey, or a summary like, "fish grow legs and attack Okinawa" mean something to you, then this is your kind of festival. It's mostly fresh Japanese and South Korean movies,...
The cream of Italy's recent output is served here, including a host of festival winners. Oscar entry Terraferma contrasts the stunning Sicilian landscape with issues of seaside poverty and immigration, while the latter topic also crops up in the realist drama Our Life, for which Elio Germano won a Cannes best actor award in 2010. The big winner at the national Donatello awards, We Believed, is a three-hour account exploring Italy's reunification, and for perspective there are classics such as Elio Petri's Oscar-winning 1970 thriller Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion.
Dca, Dundee; Edinburgh Filmhouse; Gft, Glasgow; Eden Court, Inverness, Fri to 26 Apr
Terracotta Far East Film Festival, London
If names such as Sion Sono, Kim Ki-duk and, um, Kevin Spacey, or a summary like, "fish grow legs and attack Okinawa" mean something to you, then this is your kind of festival. It's mostly fresh Japanese and South Korean movies,...
- 4/6/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) "so unambiguously [satirizes] the military mind-set that Prime Minister Winston Churchill tried to have it banned," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "Newly restored by Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation and playing two weeks [starting Friday] at Film Forum in its full length, Colonel Blimp is as stylized in its florid palette, lavish mise-en-scène, and obtrusive musical cues as Powell and Pressburger's subsequent The Red Shoes. Beginning and ending in London under the blitz, the movie spans 40 years, tracking the career of General Clive Candy (Roger Livesey) from dashing young hero of the Boer War to the sort of walrus-mustached establishment fogy that political cartoonist David Low named 'Colonel Blimp.' … The filmmakers originally wanted Laurence Olivier, but it seems unlikely that so acerbic an actor could have delivered so warm a performance."
"Seeing Colonel Blimp strictly in the...
"Seeing Colonel Blimp strictly in the...
- 11/16/2011
- MUBI
Actor with poise and presence, best known as Alfred the butler in Tim Burton's Batman
The actor Michael Gough, who has died aged 94, was an arresting presence on stage, television and film for the entire postwar period, notably as the butler Alfred Pennyworth in Tim Burton's Batman movies. Eventually he just voiced roles, as with the Dodo Bird in the same director's Alice in Wonderland film last year, but always to striking effect.
Gough started in the Old Vic company in London before the second world war, but it took till 1946 for his career proper to get off to a flying start in the West End, in Frederick Lonsdale's But for the Grace of God. The fistfight-to-the-death scene was done with such startling verisimilitude that nearly all the stage furniture was demolished nightly, and Gough broke three ribs and injured the base of his spine. So copiously...
The actor Michael Gough, who has died aged 94, was an arresting presence on stage, television and film for the entire postwar period, notably as the butler Alfred Pennyworth in Tim Burton's Batman movies. Eventually he just voiced roles, as with the Dodo Bird in the same director's Alice in Wonderland film last year, but always to striking effect.
Gough started in the Old Vic company in London before the second world war, but it took till 1946 for his career proper to get off to a flying start in the West End, in Frederick Lonsdale's But for the Grace of God. The fistfight-to-the-death scene was done with such startling verisimilitude that nearly all the stage furniture was demolished nightly, and Gough broke three ribs and injured the base of his spine. So copiously...
- 3/18/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
'I hear you control your explosions,' Sharon Stone purrs to Sly Stallone in The Specialist. It makes you wish more film directors could control theirs
Towards the end of Tetsuya Nakashima's stunning revenge psychodrama Confessions, there's a bomb blast filmed in a way I can't recall having seen before. No mean feat, because explosions are now such an integral part of the film-maker's train set that it's hard to think of a modern action movie that doesn't feature at least one orgasmic detonation, followed by cool guys strolling away with nary a singed eyebrow, not even (as the song goes) bothering to look back.
It wasn't always thus. Explosions in movies used to be memorable. Their natural bailiwick was the war film, but they also cropped up in gangster movies ("Made it Ma! Top of the world!" from White Heat) and thrillers. Hitchcock, who famously blew up a...
Towards the end of Tetsuya Nakashima's stunning revenge psychodrama Confessions, there's a bomb blast filmed in a way I can't recall having seen before. No mean feat, because explosions are now such an integral part of the film-maker's train set that it's hard to think of a modern action movie that doesn't feature at least one orgasmic detonation, followed by cool guys strolling away with nary a singed eyebrow, not even (as the song goes) bothering to look back.
It wasn't always thus. Explosions in movies used to be memorable. Their natural bailiwick was the war film, but they also cropped up in gangster movies ("Made it Ma! Top of the world!" from White Heat) and thrillers. Hitchcock, who famously blew up a...
- 2/18/2011
- by Anne Billson
- The Guardian - Film News
The Oscar-winning director of The Departed, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, talks about his new 3D film Hugo Cabret, his movie-mad childhood in New York – and how directing HBO's acclaimed drama Boardwalk Empire opened his mind to the epic freedoms of TV
"I've always liked 3D," declares Martin Scorsese breezily, his brown eyes twinkling from behind the trademark black-rimmed glasses which seem larger (and more impressively varifocal) in real life. "I mean, we're sitting here in 3D. We are in 3D. We see in 3D. So why not?" He smiles at me like it's the most obvious thing on earth, his face alive with boyish enthusiasm (even though he turned 68 last week), his well-groomed silver-grey hair lending an air of statesmanlike authority. I smile back, my heart full of anxiety about the "future of cinema" in the post-Avatar stereoscopic 21st century, wondering whether my hero would look quite so imposing wearing...
"I've always liked 3D," declares Martin Scorsese breezily, his brown eyes twinkling from behind the trademark black-rimmed glasses which seem larger (and more impressively varifocal) in real life. "I mean, we're sitting here in 3D. We are in 3D. We see in 3D. So why not?" He smiles at me like it's the most obvious thing on earth, his face alive with boyish enthusiasm (even though he turned 68 last week), his well-groomed silver-grey hair lending an air of statesmanlike authority. I smile back, my heart full of anxiety about the "future of cinema" in the post-Avatar stereoscopic 21st century, wondering whether my hero would look quite so imposing wearing...
- 11/22/2010
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
We ask our film critics and former winners for their view of the nominees for next weekend's ceremony, and Jason Solomons reflects on Bafta history and the future of the awards
Long gone are the days when the Bafta ceremony was as vital as a Rotarian dinner, when the same few British redoubtables – Attenborough, Mills, Bogarde, Forsyth (Bill and Bruce) – clapped each other on the back with a "Well done, old chap", mainly for still squeezing into their black tie.
The Baftas used to take place in April or early May, way after the Oscars. Splitting the film and television awards in 1998 provided an instant injection of glamour, and in 2002 the film Baftas were moved to February, cannily placing them as the last staging post en route to Oscar glory for many American films. I remember the red carpet foaming up in the rain and ruining Julia Roberts's shoes,...
Long gone are the days when the Bafta ceremony was as vital as a Rotarian dinner, when the same few British redoubtables – Attenborough, Mills, Bogarde, Forsyth (Bill and Bruce) – clapped each other on the back with a "Well done, old chap", mainly for still squeezing into their black tie.
The Baftas used to take place in April or early May, way after the Oscars. Splitting the film and television awards in 1998 provided an instant injection of glamour, and in 2002 the film Baftas were moved to February, cannily placing them as the last staging post en route to Oscar glory for many American films. I remember the red carpet foaming up in the rain and ruining Julia Roberts's shoes,...
- 2/15/2010
- by Jason Solomons, Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
The woes of rights have made a lot of fandom particularly challenging, whether it's seeing your beloved television shows never make DVD due to music rights, ultimate editions never getting released due split studio rights (Fire Walk with Me!), or Criterion titles disappear from the shelves.
Criterion has announced that they're about to lose the rights to 23 excellent titles from StudioCanal at the end of March. "The titles are going to Lionsgate, and we don't know when they may be rereleased. As ever, we will continue to try to relicense the films so that they can rejoin the collection sometime in the future." The titles are: Alphaville, Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy, Le corbeau, Coup de torchon, Diary of a Country Priest, The Fallen Idol, Forbidden Games, Gervaise, Grand Illusion, Le jour se leve, Last Holiday, Mayerling, The Orphic Trilogy, Peeping Tom, Pierrot le fou, Port of Shadows, Quai des Orfevres,...
Criterion has announced that they're about to lose the rights to 23 excellent titles from StudioCanal at the end of March. "The titles are going to Lionsgate, and we don't know when they may be rereleased. As ever, we will continue to try to relicense the films so that they can rejoin the collection sometime in the future." The titles are: Alphaville, Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy, Le corbeau, Coup de torchon, Diary of a Country Priest, The Fallen Idol, Forbidden Games, Gervaise, Grand Illusion, Le jour se leve, Last Holiday, Mayerling, The Orphic Trilogy, Peeping Tom, Pierrot le fou, Port of Shadows, Quai des Orfevres,...
- 2/3/2010
- by Monika Bartyzel
- Cinematical
Presenting a half- dozen DVDs suitable for the movie buffs on your Christmas- gift list.
* "Satantango" (Facets): It takes three discs (plus a fourth for extras) to do justice to Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr's austere, 420-minute allegory, shot in widescreen black and white.
A look at the dead-end lives of people in a muddy village in post-Communist Hungary takes patience to watch but is worth effort.
* "Vampyr" (Criterion): Restored print of one-of-a-kind vampire tale, made in 1932 by cult Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Extras on this impeccable two-disc presentation include a 1966 documentary on Dreyer and a 1958 radio...
* "Satantango" (Facets): It takes three discs (plus a fourth for extras) to do justice to Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr's austere, 420-minute allegory, shot in widescreen black and white.
A look at the dead-end lives of people in a muddy village in post-Communist Hungary takes patience to watch but is worth effort.
* "Vampyr" (Criterion): Restored print of one-of-a-kind vampire tale, made in 1932 by cult Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Extras on this impeccable two-disc presentation include a 1966 documentary on Dreyer and a 1958 radio...
- 12/14/2008
- by By V.A. MUSETTO
- NYPost.com
Only one year after the release of The Red Shoes in Technicolor, British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created the black-and-white wartime thriller The Small Back Room. While the movie sprang from a gritty novel about alcohol abuse and explosives research, it's halfway between character study and Hitchcockian suspense, and every frame is stuffed with witty cinematic flourishes. Powell and Pressburger's filmography is so deep that even their secondary works contain a wealth of invention and pure pleasure. David Farrar plays a munitions researcher employed by one of the many quasi-official projects and institutes that got funding for various projects during World War II. (Powell makes the point with his usual deftness by having the camera pan down a building's long directory to the improvised sign at the bottom that points to Farrar's workplace.) By night, he battles the pain of his artificial leg and his alcohol addiction,...
- 8/27/2008
- by Donna Bowman
- avclub.com
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