Cornel Wilde’s directorial follow-up to his superb The Naked Prey was hot stuff in its day, a war movie with an unexpected emphasis on brutality and gore. Rip Torn bears down too hard on his stock character, while Wilde’s attempts to pull off associative thought memory montages come off as amateurish. But the movie has a firm fan base among lovers of movie combat, and the new transfer bests all previous video encodings.
Beach Red
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen Academy / 105 min. / Street Date January 5, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Cornel Wilde, Rip Torn, Burr DeBenning, Patrick Wolfe, Jean Wallace, Jaime Sánchez, Dale Ishimoto, Genki Koyama.
Cinematography: Cecil R. Cooney
Film Editor: Frank P. Keller
Original Music: Antonio Buenaventura
Written by Clint Johnston, Jefferson Pascal, Don Peters from the novel by Peter Bowman
Produced and Directed by Cornel Wilde
This is one movie title that connects...
Beach Red
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen Academy / 105 min. / Street Date January 5, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Cornel Wilde, Rip Torn, Burr DeBenning, Patrick Wolfe, Jean Wallace, Jaime Sánchez, Dale Ishimoto, Genki Koyama.
Cinematography: Cecil R. Cooney
Film Editor: Frank P. Keller
Original Music: Antonio Buenaventura
Written by Clint Johnston, Jefferson Pascal, Don Peters from the novel by Peter Bowman
Produced and Directed by Cornel Wilde
This is one movie title that connects...
- 1/9/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Cornel Wilde is a colonialist running for his life in 1965’s The Naked Prey, a film he also produced and directed. The more one knows about the life and career of Wilde, the more unique, and therefore special, The Naked Prey becomes. Unshackled from the burden of its own true-life backstory, it is, by today’s standards, just another go-go-go action-every-few-minutes/dialogue lite spectacle, albeit an older 'n’ earlier entry of the sort. The hunter becomes the hunted, and all that. But there are indeed deeper layers of appreciation and observation available at the heart of this straight-ahead survival tale. Wilde’s trifecta of screen credits is quite significant to the story behind the story of The Naked Prey, and why it remains in the conversation, primarily thanks to The Criterion Collection....
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 12/31/2018
- Screen Anarchy
An excellent example of a thriller that improves with age, Cornel Wilde’s survival tale is a lean ‘n’ mean exercise in first-person terror. Sent barefoot and naked on a hopeless ‘run of the arrow,’ our hero earns our admiration from his first desperate steps. Actor Wilde may never have directed anything else quite as good, but this winner cements his name in the achievement books.
The Naked Prey
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 415
1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 2, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: Cornel Wilde, Gert Van den Bergh, Ken Gampu, Patrick Mynhardt.
Cinematography: H.A.R. Thompson
Film Editor: Roger Cherrill
Original Music: Edwin Astley, Andrew Tracey, Cornell Wilde
Written by Clint Johnson, Don Peters
Produced by Sven Persson, Cornel Wilde
Directed by Cornel Wilde
In Panavision and blazing Technicolor, this grueling survival ordeal held us spellbound in 1965 — kids forgot to eat their popcorn. Those not...
The Naked Prey
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 415
1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 2, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: Cornel Wilde, Gert Van den Bergh, Ken Gampu, Patrick Mynhardt.
Cinematography: H.A.R. Thompson
Film Editor: Roger Cherrill
Original Music: Edwin Astley, Andrew Tracey, Cornell Wilde
Written by Clint Johnson, Don Peters
Produced by Sven Persson, Cornel Wilde
Directed by Cornel Wilde
In Panavision and blazing Technicolor, this grueling survival ordeal held us spellbound in 1965 — kids forgot to eat their popcorn. Those not...
- 10/6/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Inconceivable! “The Princess Bride” joining the Criterion Collection this October, and it isn’t alone: Brian De Palma’s “Sisters,” Hal Ashby’s “Shampoo,” Cornel Wilde’s “The Naked Prey,” and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Eight Hours Don’t Make the Day” are getting the Criterion treatment as well.
More information (and covert art) below.
“The Naked Prey”
“Glamorous leading man turned idiosyncratic auteur Cornel Wilde created in the 1960s and ’70s a handful of gritty, violent explorations of the nature of man, none more memorable than ‘The Naked Prey.’ In the early nineteenth century, after an ivory-hunting safari offends a group of South African hunters, the colonialists are captured and hideously tortured. A lone marksman (Wilde) is released, without clothes or weapons, to be hunted for sport, and he begins a harrowing journey through savanna and jungle back to a primitive state. Distinguished by vivid widescreen camera work and unflinchingly ferocious action sequences,...
More information (and covert art) below.
“The Naked Prey”
“Glamorous leading man turned idiosyncratic auteur Cornel Wilde created in the 1960s and ’70s a handful of gritty, violent explorations of the nature of man, none more memorable than ‘The Naked Prey.’ In the early nineteenth century, after an ivory-hunting safari offends a group of South African hunters, the colonialists are captured and hideously tortured. A lone marksman (Wilde) is released, without clothes or weapons, to be hunted for sport, and he begins a harrowing journey through savanna and jungle back to a primitive state. Distinguished by vivid widescreen camera work and unflinchingly ferocious action sequences,...
- 7/16/2018
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Stories of people stranded in the wilderness have always been natural fodder for movies, as ideas of being lost in the jungle or shipwrecked at sea tap into a natural anxiety about the smallness of our place in the world, and the uneasy need for co-dependence that it inspires. And yet, without diminishing some formative examples, or paving over the past’s most hideous aberrations (George C. Scott’s “The Savage Is Loose” springs to mind), it seems as though the whole “lost adventurers” genre is just starting to find itself. “Adrift” may be the first of these movies that actually explains this recent phenomenon.
And it’s been a long time coming: In just the last eight years or so, we’ve seen mainstream American movies about a dude getting wedged beneath a rock (“127 Hours”), an older dude getting stuck in wolf country (“The Grey”), and an even...
And it’s been a long time coming: In just the last eight years or so, we’ve seen mainstream American movies about a dude getting wedged beneath a rock (“127 Hours”), an older dude getting stuck in wolf country (“The Grey”), and an even...
- 5/31/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Fans of The Exorcist TV series have rallied together to get the attention of Fox and hopefully get a second season of the show. Their latest campaign, as well as a video featuring fans from all over the world, is included in today's Horror Highlights, which also features a Q&A with the director of Parasites and Hunting Grounds VOD release details.
Details on The Exorcist TV Series's 'Fear the Feathers' Campaign: Press Release: "The Global Fandom for the Fox Television show "The Exorcist" launch[ed] their latest campaign "Fear The Feathers" on Friday, December 30, 2016, in an effort to plead with the network to renew the show for a second season.
The 10 episode series has recently ended its season one run with no news of a renewal from the Fox network. Passionate fans of the show, who have named their cohesive group the "Exorcist Congregation,” have been very vocal on social...
Details on The Exorcist TV Series's 'Fear the Feathers' Campaign: Press Release: "The Global Fandom for the Fox Television show "The Exorcist" launch[ed] their latest campaign "Fear The Feathers" on Friday, December 30, 2016, in an effort to plead with the network to renew the show for a second season.
The 10 episode series has recently ended its season one run with no news of a renewal from the Fox network. Passionate fans of the show, who have named their cohesive group the "Exorcist Congregation,” have been very vocal on social...
- 1/3/2017
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
"I may be dead, but I'm still pretty." Whether you want to watch Buffy Summers and company battle supernatural beings for the first time or re-live all your favorite moments from the show, reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are playing now on Pop TV. Also: The Drawing short film starring Clarke Wolfe in its entirety, a trailer / acquisition news for Gehenna: Where Death Lives, an excerpt from Duncan Ralston's Woom, the lineup for Ithaca Fantastik Film Festival, and The Master Cleanse at Screamfest.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Pop TV: Reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are now playing on Pop TV.
To learn more, visit:
http://poptv.com/buffy_the_vampire_slayer/
---------
Watch Short Film The Drawing in its Entirety: Press Release: "Los Angeles, CA: The Drawing is coming! The Drawing is here! The Drawing is a modern monster horror short infused with 80s synth overtones.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Pop TV: Reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are now playing on Pop TV.
To learn more, visit:
http://poptv.com/buffy_the_vampire_slayer/
---------
Watch Short Film The Drawing in its Entirety: Press Release: "Los Angeles, CA: The Drawing is coming! The Drawing is here! The Drawing is a modern monster horror short infused with 80s synth overtones.
- 10/25/2016
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
Relax with the latest Horror Highlights brought to you by your friends here at Daily Dead. The first of three items today is a new poster for festival darling, In a Valley of Violence. Also: GoFundMe details for the 22-episode documentary Two Minutes with Tom Holland and a look at Ithaca Fantastik Film Festival's program announcement.
Check Out The New In a Valley of Violence Poster: Focus World will release In a Valley of Violence in select theaters and on VOD and Digital HD on October 21st, 2016.
“A mysterious drifter named Paul (Ethan Hawke) and his dog (YouTube sensation Jumpy) make their way towards Mexico through the barren desert of the old west. In an attempt to shorten their journey, they cut through the center of a large valley — landing themselves in the forgotten town of Denton, a place now dubbed by locals as a “valley of violence.” The once-popular...
Check Out The New In a Valley of Violence Poster: Focus World will release In a Valley of Violence in select theaters and on VOD and Digital HD on October 21st, 2016.
“A mysterious drifter named Paul (Ethan Hawke) and his dog (YouTube sensation Jumpy) make their way towards Mexico through the barren desert of the old west. In an attempt to shorten their journey, they cut through the center of a large valley — landing themselves in the forgotten town of Denton, a place now dubbed by locals as a “valley of violence.” The once-popular...
- 9/10/2016
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
Summer is coming to an end and the 2016-17 TV season is just around the corner (not to mention football and more football). So it’s a good time to cram in a whole collection of shows and movies on Netflix before your schedule gets so full you won’t know what to do with yourself. Some exciting additions are a couple Fast and Furious movies, No Country for Old Men and Funny Or Die Presents: Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal: The Movie, which stars Jonny Depp as Trump. Check out the list. Find a comfortable spot and begin watching. New to Netflix August 1 The American Side An Inconvenient Truth Apex: The Story of the Hypercar Beethoven’s Christmas Adventure Big Daddy Black Widow Critical Condition Deadfall Destination: Team USA Funny Or Die Presents: Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal: The Movie The Family Man The Fast and the Furious...
- 8/1/2016
- by David Eckstein
- Hitfix
That’s right. Hulu. I’m here to tell you that there’s a cinematic streaming goldmine available on Hulu that includes recent hits, older classics, domestic releases, and foreign imports. It’s even home to hundreds of Criterion titles. Sure there’s plenty of filler and seemingly thousands of titles I’ve never heard of before, but I’m not here to talk about possible gems like Nocturnal Agony… I’m here to recommend some good movies to watch this month on Hulu. Pick of the Month: ’71 (2014) A young British soldier (Jack O’Connell) enters the street of 1971 Belfast in an attempt to keep the peace, but when a riot breaks out and he’s accidentally left behind what he finds is anything but peaceful. This is a crackerjack thriller that brings tension and suspense to what’s in some ways a modern(-ish) update of The Naked Prey. O...
- 4/4/2016
- by Rob Hunter
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Where was Leonard Pinth Garnell when we needed him? Joseph Losey is often accused of pretension but in this case he may be guilty. Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell are escapees scrambling across a rocky terrain, pursued by a helicopter that seems satisfied to just harass them. Keeping the audience in the dark doesn't reap any dramatic or thematic benefit that I can see. Figures in a Landscape Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date January 12, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Shaw, Malcolm McDowell, Roger Lloyd Pack, Pamela Brown. Cinematography Henri Alekan, Peter Suschitzky, Guy Tabary Film Editor Reginald Beck Art Direction Ted Tester Original Music Richard Rodney Bennett Written by Robert Shaw from the novel by Barry England Produced by John Kohn Directed by Joseph Losey
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Joseph Losey is a gold mine for film criticism but a real problem for simple film reviewing.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Joseph Losey is a gold mine for film criticism but a real problem for simple film reviewing.
- 1/16/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In this special episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the best DVD and Blu-ray 2015.
Subscribe in iTunes or RSS.
Follow-Up Ryan buys the Ernest and Celestine Blu-ray from Plain Archive Ultra HD Blu-ray Pre-orders Live, March 1st release: Fox, Sony, WB, Shout! and now Lionsgate Curzon Tarkovsky Ryan’s Top 10 List of 2015 Classics from the Van Beuren Studio (Thunderbean Animation) Thunderbirds: The Complete Series (Timeless Media Group / Shout! Factory) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Arrow UK) Twice Upon A Time (Warner Archive Collection) Journey to the Center of the Earth (Twilight Time) Watership Down (The Criterion Collection) Walt Disney Animation Studios: Short Films Collection (Disney) 3-D Rarities (Flicker Alley) Spartacus: Restored Edition (Universal) The Apu Trilogy (The Criterion Collection)
Honorable mentions:
Arrow Video: Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism, The Train, The Criterion Collection: The Fisher King, Moonrise Kingdom...
Subscribe in iTunes or RSS.
Follow-Up Ryan buys the Ernest and Celestine Blu-ray from Plain Archive Ultra HD Blu-ray Pre-orders Live, March 1st release: Fox, Sony, WB, Shout! and now Lionsgate Curzon Tarkovsky Ryan’s Top 10 List of 2015 Classics from the Van Beuren Studio (Thunderbean Animation) Thunderbirds: The Complete Series (Timeless Media Group / Shout! Factory) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Arrow UK) Twice Upon A Time (Warner Archive Collection) Journey to the Center of the Earth (Twilight Time) Watership Down (The Criterion Collection) Walt Disney Animation Studios: Short Films Collection (Disney) 3-D Rarities (Flicker Alley) Spartacus: Restored Edition (Universal) The Apu Trilogy (The Criterion Collection)
Honorable mentions:
Arrow Video: Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism, The Train, The Criterion Collection: The Fisher King, Moonrise Kingdom...
- 1/13/2016
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Gaspar Noé's very explicit 3D "Love" is undressing itself in arthouses around the country, and the director has been busy chatting with press (read our talk with him right here). However, the folks over at The Criterion Collection managed to allow the filmmaker to fulfill every cinephiles dream —walk into their closet full of releases and walk out with whatever he wanted. Read More: Cannes Review: Gaspar Noe's Hardcore & Softhearted "Love" It's probably not a surprise that Noé pivots toward genre fare, so sorry, no Wes Anderson titles will be found in his hands. Rather, he eyes Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salo," Paul Schrader's "Mishima," the thriller "The Naked Prey," and shares his penchant for Japanese cinema. So take a few minutes and see Noé flip through Criterion titles below.
- 11/5/2015
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
“I remember my mother, on my eighteenth birthday, she brought me to see Pasolini’s Salò,” Gaspar Noé recently told us. “I said, ‘Why did you show me this?’” She said, “You’re old enough to understand human cruelty.” [Laughs] To her, it was important that I see that movie. ‘Now you’re a man. You have to face what the humankind is.'”
It’s no surprise that the director, while doing press for Love here in New York City, picked the aforementioned film upon a stop-in at the Criterion Collection closet. His other choices included Seconds (which says he had planned to remake), Pigs, Pimps, and Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura, Master of the House, Safe (a film he’s seen “two or three times”), State of Siege, Sundays and Cybèle, Jigoku, Island of Lost Souls, The Naked Prey, and his optimal double bill: Yukio Mishima‘s Patriotism and...
It’s no surprise that the director, while doing press for Love here in New York City, picked the aforementioned film upon a stop-in at the Criterion Collection closet. His other choices included Seconds (which says he had planned to remake), Pigs, Pimps, and Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura, Master of the House, Safe (a film he’s seen “two or three times”), State of Siege, Sundays and Cybèle, Jigoku, Island of Lost Souls, The Naked Prey, and his optimal double bill: Yukio Mishima‘s Patriotism and...
- 11/5/2015
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, The Naked Prey remains the only film directed by Cornel Wilde to be widely available, a situation that based on this example, is a lamentable state of affairs indeed. An incredibly physical actor, who was at least as proficient an athlete, Wilde found himself regularly typecast in classically heroic roles after moving to Hollywood. He had been offered a place on the Us Olympic fencing team in 1936, but turned it down to pursue his acting career. In 1940, Wilde played Tybalt in Laurence Olivier's New York stage production of Romeo & Juliet, for which he also choreographed the sword fights. Then in 1945 he was cast as composer Frederic Chopin opposite his acting hero Paul Muni in Charles Vidor's A...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 10/26/2015
- Screen Anarchy
By Lee Pfeiffer
Now this is what you call a bargain: three terrific WWII flicks for only $10 on Amazon, courtesy of Shout! Factory's Timeless Media label, which continues to distribute first rate editions of films that were often considered to be second-rate at the time of their initial release. This "War Film Triple Feature" package includes three gems that were not particularly notable at the time of their release. Two have grown in stature, while the third has benefited only from Cinema Retro writer Howard Hughes' enthusiastic coverage in issue #25. The films included in the set are:
"Attack" (1955)- During the period of WWII, both the Allied and Axis film industries concentrated on feature films that were pure propaganda designed to motivate their fighting men and the public at large. By the early-to-mid-1950s, however, more introspective viewpoints emerged among Hollywood directors and writers. With the conflict now over,...
Now this is what you call a bargain: three terrific WWII flicks for only $10 on Amazon, courtesy of Shout! Factory's Timeless Media label, which continues to distribute first rate editions of films that were often considered to be second-rate at the time of their initial release. This "War Film Triple Feature" package includes three gems that were not particularly notable at the time of their release. Two have grown in stature, while the third has benefited only from Cinema Retro writer Howard Hughes' enthusiastic coverage in issue #25. The films included in the set are:
"Attack" (1955)- During the period of WWII, both the Allied and Axis film industries concentrated on feature films that were pure propaganda designed to motivate their fighting men and the public at large. By the early-to-mid-1950s, however, more introspective viewpoints emerged among Hollywood directors and writers. With the conflict now over,...
- 8/19/2014
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Savage Harvest is a 1981 movie starring Tom Skerritt as the patriarch of a family under siege by a pride of lions in Africa. It is awesome. Heatstroke gives the impression early on that it’s aiming for a similar feel — albeit with the lions replaced by hyenas — but what follows is nothing of the sort. There is only one hyena. And it’s less of a carnivorous threat than it is the reassuring reincarnation of Stephen Dorff (probably). Paul (Dorff) is a hyena expert teaching classes on hyenas. The divorced father of one is planning a trip to South Africa with his girlfriend Tally (Svetlana Metkina), but a call from his distraught ex-wife worried that their daughter Jo (Maisie Williams) is using drugs leads to the ornery teenager joining the research safari. Tally has little interest in taking care of a child, but she tries her best in the face of Jo’s constant attitude and ungratefulness...
- 7/8/2014
- by Rob Hunter
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
In my slightly sordid past, I have been dared to do a number of things including drink a pint of scotch in just an hour, dance on stage with a male stripper named Turbo, and also watch Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox back-to-back before I knew anything about them. Out of all of these tasks, the cannibal films were the hardest to get through and resulted in more nausea than the scotch. In short, I have a thing about animals. I can watch the most extreme horror films where people are the victims. But show me a slightly sad puppy or a mildly inconvenienced raccoon, and I’m disturbed for the remainder of the day. Why? Animals aren’t acting, and in the case of these classic cannibal films, the animal deaths are all real. That said, I have an odd appreciation for these films simply for attempting to push the envelope of decency.
- 1/15/2014
- by Rebekah McKendry
- FEARnet
Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) awakens on a dusty and deserted planet and immediately starts yammering on about how down on his luck he is, how nobody likes him, and how he may as well just die. But if there’s one consistent thing about Riddick (there are actually nothing but consistent things about Riddick) it’s that he is one difficult bastard to kill. Seems like just yesterday he was pouting on his throne as leader of the Necromongers, but after refusing to partake in a fivesome, he’s shipped off ostensibly to search for his home planet of Furya. Joke’s on him, though, as the bullies actually abandon him on the otherwise empty planet of Not Furya where he’s forced to avoid becoming dinner for creatures from land, sea, and air. He soon grows tired of performing his one-man show, a mash-up of The Lion King and The Naked Prey, for...
- 9/6/2013
- by Rob Hunter
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
In this series we explore the connections between Mad Men and the cinema. Season five has, thus far, not used the movies as much as they have in previous seasons. Though it's also possible that blogging concurrently with airings could result in missed references. Needless to say, I am behind so let's discuss the past couple of weeks of Mad Men.
Driving lessons for sad Pete Campbell
5.5 "Signal 30"
This episode focused on Pete, one of the show's least likeable characters who has, over the course of five years, grown more sympathetic and even more admirable while not really becoming more likeable per se. It's a nifty balancing act that actor Vincent Kartheiser performs tremendously well. Other than fame and fortune, this has been a thankless character for him as his fellow cast members have reaped abundant nominations (if strangely no wins) and increased big screen traction. If they have any...
Driving lessons for sad Pete Campbell
5.5 "Signal 30"
This episode focused on Pete, one of the show's least likeable characters who has, over the course of five years, grown more sympathetic and even more admirable while not really becoming more likeable per se. It's a nifty balancing act that actor Vincent Kartheiser performs tremendously well. Other than fame and fortune, this has been a thankless character for him as his fellow cast members have reaped abundant nominations (if strangely no wins) and increased big screen traction. If they have any...
- 5/5/2012
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Mad Men, Season 5, Episode 6: “Far Away Places”
Written by Semi Challes & Matthew Weiner
Directed by Scott Hornbacher
Airs Sundays at 9pm (Et) on AMC
What do the characters in ‘Far Away Places’ do when confronted by their own problems? There is undoubtedly an implicit vulnerability in existence between them and a longing for acceptance. But it’s more than that though. It’s the unmistakable desperation to escape these issues, resulting in mental and literal journeys to distant places.
In a cleverly concealed and well-paced cut up narrative, the writers tell of a single day in the life of three major characters. First Peggy, then Roger and finally Don. All three exhibit a determinedness to elude their day-to-day issues, but also a hunger to be accepted.
This week, we find Peggy running from both her private and professional difficulties. “Your mind is always elsewhere,” says a frustrated Abe, complaining...
Written by Semi Challes & Matthew Weiner
Directed by Scott Hornbacher
Airs Sundays at 9pm (Et) on AMC
What do the characters in ‘Far Away Places’ do when confronted by their own problems? There is undoubtedly an implicit vulnerability in existence between them and a longing for acceptance. But it’s more than that though. It’s the unmistakable desperation to escape these issues, resulting in mental and literal journeys to distant places.
In a cleverly concealed and well-paced cut up narrative, the writers tell of a single day in the life of three major characters. First Peggy, then Roger and finally Don. All three exhibit a determinedness to elude their day-to-day issues, but also a hunger to be accepted.
This week, we find Peggy running from both her private and professional difficulties. “Your mind is always elsewhere,” says a frustrated Abe, complaining...
- 4/23/2012
- by Adam Farrington-Williams
- SoundOnSight
The Hunger Games is not, as I thought when I heard the title, a nostalgic docu-drama on the 1948 London Olympics back in the first post-war age of austerity. It's a film version of Suzanne Collins's popular series of American novels for so-called young adults (my 11-year-old granddaughter is reading them) set in a dystopian near future. This totalitarian state is modelled in part on imperial Rome, and teenagers are chosen by lot from the nation's most deprived youth to take part in televised gladiatorial encounters that end in death for all but one contestant. The privileged citizens in the capital have Roman names (eg Cinna, Seneca, Cato, Caesar) and dress like characters in Alice in Wonderland, while the downtrodden people in the outlands have folksy rural names. The combative heroine has the Hardyesque moniker of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), and District 12, which she represents, resembles a coalmining town in the Appalachians from the 1930s.
- 3/25/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
by Nick Schager
What's new is always old, and in this recurring column, I'll be taking a look at the classic genre movies that have influenced today's new releases. In honor of Joe Carnahan's Liam Neeson-vs.-wolf actioner The Grey, this week it's Cornel Wilde's seminal 1966 stranded-man saga The Naked Prey.
No tears, no pity, no mercy—Cornel Wilde imagines a world of desperate violence and frenzied anxiety in The Naked Prey, in the process not simply inventing the “man in the wilderness” cinematic subgenre but, more powerfully, delivering an enduringly caustic vision of life as hard, inflexible, and painful. Working from an apparent true story, director/star Wilde—the dashing leading man who, beginning with this film, became an auteur of idiosyncratic masculine fables—does away with all but the bare necessities for his tale about a safari guide known only as Man (Wilde) leading an arrogant,...
What's new is always old, and in this recurring column, I'll be taking a look at the classic genre movies that have influenced today's new releases. In honor of Joe Carnahan's Liam Neeson-vs.-wolf actioner The Grey, this week it's Cornel Wilde's seminal 1966 stranded-man saga The Naked Prey.
No tears, no pity, no mercy—Cornel Wilde imagines a world of desperate violence and frenzied anxiety in The Naked Prey, in the process not simply inventing the “man in the wilderness” cinematic subgenre but, more powerfully, delivering an enduringly caustic vision of life as hard, inflexible, and painful. Working from an apparent true story, director/star Wilde—the dashing leading man who, beginning with this film, became an auteur of idiosyncratic masculine fables—does away with all but the bare necessities for his tale about a safari guide known only as Man (Wilde) leading an arrogant,...
- 1/26/2012
- GreenCine Daily
Gargoyles, the 1972 TV horror movie starring Cornel Wilde (The Naked Prey) and Jennifer Salt (Sisters) will return to DVD from Hen’s Tooth Video on May 17. The film became an instant cult favorite when it was release, and has been very hard to find on VHS over the years, let alone disc.
There's something demonic under the sand in 1972's Gargoyles.
The story shows Wilde playing an anthropology professor who stumbles on a clan of demonic gargoyles while traveling through a Southwestern desert region. Of course, as they’re gargoyles (adorned in Emmy Award-winning makeup by a team that included a young Stan Winston), they’ve got world domination on their minds.
Originally aired on CBS in the fall of 1972, Gargoyles was released on tape in the late 1980s by the low-budget VHS label Star Classics. Vci issued the film in both VHS and DVD editions in 2003. All have been...
There's something demonic under the sand in 1972's Gargoyles.
The story shows Wilde playing an anthropology professor who stumbles on a clan of demonic gargoyles while traveling through a Southwestern desert region. Of course, as they’re gargoyles (adorned in Emmy Award-winning makeup by a team that included a young Stan Winston), they’ve got world domination on their minds.
Originally aired on CBS in the fall of 1972, Gargoyles was released on tape in the late 1980s by the low-budget VHS label Star Classics. Vci issued the film in both VHS and DVD editions in 2003. All have been...
- 3/15/2011
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Is there anything in moviedom more consistently frustrating than the "arthouse thriller"?
I'm not talking about films created as commercial thrillers and subsequently embraced by cineastes. I'm referring to dramas, and sometimes romances, that are so "nuanced" that they risk putting audiences to sleep, and so cover for themselves by including watered-down tropes from more populist, engaging fare. A repentant serial killer retires to an Alpine village to collect pension checks and butterflies. A kidnapper adopts a puppy and we're meant to contrast his loving treatment of it with his callous disregard for young human beings. You know the type of bastardized genre I'm referring to--the promise of full-on action or suspense is always lurking there as a kind of tease, but the movie gets away with never fully delivering the goods because its high-minded goals are thought to elevate it beyond that obligation.
Well, I'm happy to report to you that The Robber,...
I'm not talking about films created as commercial thrillers and subsequently embraced by cineastes. I'm referring to dramas, and sometimes romances, that are so "nuanced" that they risk putting audiences to sleep, and so cover for themselves by including watered-down tropes from more populist, engaging fare. A repentant serial killer retires to an Alpine village to collect pension checks and butterflies. A kidnapper adopts a puppy and we're meant to contrast his loving treatment of it with his callous disregard for young human beings. You know the type of bastardized genre I'm referring to--the promise of full-on action or suspense is always lurking there as a kind of tease, but the movie gets away with never fully delivering the goods because its high-minded goals are thought to elevate it beyond that obligation.
Well, I'm happy to report to you that The Robber,...
- 9/26/2010
- Screen Anarchy
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."--Ernest Hemingway (from "On the Blue Water" in Esquire, April 1936)
With Predators (2010), producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimród Antal have lifted the central premise of The Naked Prey (1966) and dropped it freefall onto a foreign planet spinning violently in--yes, indeed--a predatorial universe. But Planet Terror this ain't even though, admittedly, that's what I was hoping for. Irregardless, as far as the Predator franchise goes, it's a helluva lot more faithful to the original storyline than the double fumble of Avp and Avp: Requiem. One could say Predators has put the dread back into the dreadlocks of one of my favorite cancroid creatures.
With Predators (2010), producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimród Antal have lifted the central premise of The Naked Prey (1966) and dropped it freefall onto a foreign planet spinning violently in--yes, indeed--a predatorial universe. But Planet Terror this ain't even though, admittedly, that's what I was hoping for. Irregardless, as far as the Predator franchise goes, it's a helluva lot more faithful to the original storyline than the double fumble of Avp and Avp: Requiem. One could say Predators has put the dread back into the dreadlocks of one of my favorite cancroid creatures.
- 7/9/2010
- Screen Anarchy
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