Isabella Rossellini inLa Chimera(Neon), on the red carpet (Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images), inBlue Velvet(De Laurentis Entertainment Group/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis)Graphic: Jimmy Hasse
Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what...
Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what...
- 4/8/2024
- by Brent Simon
- avclub.com
The generational chasm between our parents’ lives and the memories we preserve of them — sure, in turn, to warp and fade when passed to our children — is elegantly explored in “Little Girl Blue,” Mona Achache’s pained, poignant docudrama cry to her female elders. In an effort to process her mother Carole’s death by suicide in 2016, the filmmaker collates an assortment of archival materials to trace the arc of a turbulent and care-starved life, leading inevitably to the time-blurred figure of Achache’s grandmother, writer and editor Monique Lange. But it’s in the gaps between tangible records that the film gets most interesting, as Marion Cotillard steps in to inhabit the Carole of her memories, the ones Achache can’t quite find on paper.
This is hardly a novel technique, given the evolving hybridization of the documentary form, as filmmakers chase larger audiences with the narrative and aesthetic comforts of fiction.
This is hardly a novel technique, given the evolving hybridization of the documentary form, as filmmakers chase larger audiences with the narrative and aesthetic comforts of fiction.
- 3/6/2024
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
In Wim Wenders‘ meditative, Perfect Days (2023), viewers are transported to a world where the ordinary transforms into the extraordinary with smooth and continuous strokes of cinematic poetry. The simplicity of daily routines takes on a profound significance, serving as a canvas for existential contemplation. Guided by the protagonist, Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho), the film unfolds with mesmerizing cadence, offering a unique exploration of the human condition. Wenders delicately captures the essence of existence through the lens of existential contemplation, creating a quiet rebellion against the noisy chaos of modern life in the metropolitan. The narrative whispers through the viewer’s mind, unveiling the beauty and blessedness in simple acts like waking up and going to work, turning them into moments of celebration. It challenges the audience to reconsider their own lives, prompting reflection on whether the pursuit of comfort and luxury is a means to an end or an end in itself.
- 2/6/2024
- by Dipankar Sarkar
- Talking Films
Those who fought in World War II are considered the Greatest Generation. And executive producers Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman paid homage to these young men who risked life and limb during the global conflict in their award-winning 2001 HBO series “Band of Brothers” and 2010’s “The Pacific.” And now they’ve taken to the not-so-friendly skies in their latest World War II series, Apple TV +’s “Masters of the Air.”
Created by John Shiban and John Orloff, “Masters of the Air” is based on the 2007 book: “Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the War Against Nazi Germany,” the series starring Austin Butler focuses on the 8th Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group stationed in England. It was known as the “Bloody Hundredth” because of the high causalty rate.
Watching the series, one can’t help but remember the numerous bombardier films produced by Hollywood...
Created by John Shiban and John Orloff, “Masters of the Air” is based on the 2007 book: “Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the War Against Nazi Germany,” the series starring Austin Butler focuses on the 8th Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group stationed in England. It was known as the “Bloody Hundredth” because of the high causalty rate.
Watching the series, one can’t help but remember the numerous bombardier films produced by Hollywood...
- 2/5/2024
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
Following through on a warning earlier this month, Authentic Brands Group has revoked Sports Illustrated‘s license to publish due to a missed payment.
As a result of the move, the entire staff of the 70-year-old print and online publication was notified on Friday that their jobs were being eliminated.
“We appreciate the work and efforts of everyone who has contributed to the Si brand and business,” Si operator The Arena Group wrote in a memo to employees that prompted outrage and lamentation on social media.
Related: 2024’s Best Red Carpet & Party Photos
In a statement, Sports Illustrated Union and The NewsGuild of New York vowed to “fight for every one of our colleagues.”
The Arena Group, which has operated the venerable brand under a license agreement since 2019, said in an SEC filing this month that it did not make a quarterly payment of about $3.75 million.
Authentic “issued the company...
As a result of the move, the entire staff of the 70-year-old print and online publication was notified on Friday that their jobs were being eliminated.
“We appreciate the work and efforts of everyone who has contributed to the Si brand and business,” Si operator The Arena Group wrote in a memo to employees that prompted outrage and lamentation on social media.
Related: 2024’s Best Red Carpet & Party Photos
In a statement, Sports Illustrated Union and The NewsGuild of New York vowed to “fight for every one of our colleagues.”
The Arena Group, which has operated the venerable brand under a license agreement since 2019, said in an SEC filing this month that it did not make a quarterly payment of about $3.75 million.
Authentic “issued the company...
- 1/19/2024
- by Dade Hayes and Ted Johnson
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s that time of year where critics, film buffs, and awards prognosticators come together and search for a consensus on what were “the best films” from the previous year. It’s already begun with the Golden Globes this past weekend and the Critics Choice Awards coming in the next. Perhaps more than most years, the frontrunners for “the best picture” prizes are obvious too.
That is all well and good, but sometimes attempting to find a consensus (or at least a horse race winner) deprives us from acknowledging our true favorites; films that you or I might have loved and are convinced no one else in the world has seen. These are the pictures that may not be “the best,” but they are favorites for our staff, and we’d like you to consider giving them a chance. Also feel free to shout out your own choices in the comments section below.
That is all well and good, but sometimes attempting to find a consensus (or at least a horse race winner) deprives us from acknowledging our true favorites; films that you or I might have loved and are convinced no one else in the world has seen. These are the pictures that may not be “the best,” but they are favorites for our staff, and we’d like you to consider giving them a chance. Also feel free to shout out your own choices in the comments section below.
- 1/12/2024
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days suggests a kind of cinematic spring cleaning for the filmmaker. Gone are the elaborate concepts and freighted iconography of The American Friend and Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, not to mention of the vastly less impactful fictional films that he’s released in the intervening years. Wenders aims for simplicity here, following a middle-aged man, Hirayama (Yakusho Kôji), as he goes about his day cleaning Tokyo’s toilets, taking pictures of trees, listening to American rock, reading classic literature, and savoring the humble sources of day-to-day affirmation that we tend to take for granted.
Hirayama’s humility is the gauntlet that Wenders has thrown down for himself. Perfect Days wants to be an invitingly human movie that homes in intensely on the little moments of a man’s life so as to unearth universal truths. There’s a bit of Vittorio de Sica’s...
Hirayama’s humility is the gauntlet that Wenders has thrown down for himself. Perfect Days wants to be an invitingly human movie that homes in intensely on the little moments of a man’s life so as to unearth universal truths. There’s a bit of Vittorio de Sica’s...
- 9/8/2023
- by Chuck Bowen
- Slant Magazine
Toledo, Spain — Carmen Machi, one of the foremost performers of her generation in Spain, is attached to play legendary Barcelona agent Carmen Balcells, prime architect of the Latin American Boom and a key figure in the break out of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa to worldwide renown.
Chile’s Invercine, producer of “News of a Kidnapping” which swept April’s Platino Awards, is teaming with Spain’s Abacus, Pausoka and Grupo Lavinia to develop and produce “Boom Agency” (“La Agencia del Boom”) which turns on Balcells extraordinary life, achievement and personality. The deal was confirmed to Variety at Conecta Fiction.
The series also turns on Balcells’ worst nightmare, the rupture of the deep friendship between her star writers, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García-Marquez, whose rift broke the back of the Boom.
Spain’s Oscar Pedraza, co-director of HBO España’s “Patria,” is attached to direct. Colombians Verónica Triana...
Chile’s Invercine, producer of “News of a Kidnapping” which swept April’s Platino Awards, is teaming with Spain’s Abacus, Pausoka and Grupo Lavinia to develop and produce “Boom Agency” (“La Agencia del Boom”) which turns on Balcells extraordinary life, achievement and personality. The deal was confirmed to Variety at Conecta Fiction.
The series also turns on Balcells’ worst nightmare, the rupture of the deep friendship between her star writers, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García-Marquez, whose rift broke the back of the Boom.
Spain’s Oscar Pedraza, co-director of HBO España’s “Patria,” is attached to direct. Colombians Verónica Triana...
- 7/3/2023
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
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“All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born,” William Faulkner wrote in “Requiem for a Nun.” As we’ve seen with the WGA strike, Hollywood’s past issues with labor often seem like a familiar tangle. An ongoing exhibit at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles about the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s is making those attending since the writers’ strike began see the dispute in a new — and yet familiar — light.
The writers’ battle with studios is primarily economic, while the blacklist dealt with Cold War politics. But Skirball Center curator Cate Thurston, who put together the current exhibition “Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare,” sees similarities between then and now — chiefly in the idea that studios and writers are pitted against each other by external forces...
“All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born,” William Faulkner wrote in “Requiem for a Nun.” As we’ve seen with the WGA strike, Hollywood’s past issues with labor often seem like a familiar tangle. An ongoing exhibit at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles about the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s is making those attending since the writers’ strike began see the dispute in a new — and yet familiar — light.
The writers’ battle with studios is primarily economic, while the blacklist dealt with Cold War politics. But Skirball Center curator Cate Thurston, who put together the current exhibition “Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare,” sees similarities between then and now — chiefly in the idea that studios and writers are pitted against each other by external forces...
- 6/30/2023
- by Kristen Lopez
- The Wrap
Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who in prose both dense and brittle took readers from the southern Appalachians to the desert Southwest in such novels as “The Road,” “Blood Meridian” and “All the Pretty Horses,” died Tuesday. He was 89.
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint, announced that McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“For 60 years, he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft, and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word,” Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said in a statement. “Millions of readers around the world embraced his characters, his mythic themes, and the intimate emotional truths he laid bare on every page, in brilliant novels that will remain both timely and timeless, for generations to come.”
McCarthy, raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, was compared to William Faulkner for his expansive, Old Testament style and rural settings.
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint, announced that McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“For 60 years, he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft, and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word,” Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said in a statement. “Millions of readers around the world embraced his characters, his mythic themes, and the intimate emotional truths he laid bare on every page, in brilliant novels that will remain both timely and timeless, for generations to come.”
McCarthy, raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, was compared to William Faulkner for his expansive, Old Testament style and rural settings.
- 6/14/2023
- by Alex Nino Gheciu
- ET Canada
Before you ask, yes, Lou Reed’s rock standard “Perfect Day” does indeed make an appearance in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days”: on the protagonist’s stereo as suitably ideal sunlight pours into his small, neat Tokyo apartment, before swarming the soundtrack as we head out into the city on a calm weekend afternoon. If that sounds a little obvious, basic even, said protagonist Hirayama — a mellow, soft-spoken toilet cleaner beautifully played by Kōji Yakusho — would probably agree with a shrug. He’s into simple pleasures, not deep cuts. His solitary life is built around the things that make him happy and the work that keeps him solvent. He’s not inclined to wonder what other people make of it. Wenders’ film, in turn, is sincere and unassuming, and owns its sentimentality with good humor.
“Perfect Days” finds its maker in bracing, uncomplicated form: It hasn’t the ecstatic spiritualist...
“Perfect Days” finds its maker in bracing, uncomplicated form: It hasn’t the ecstatic spiritualist...
- 5/25/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Senegalese and French director Ramata-Toulaye Sy is only the second Black woman to make it into Competition in Cannes. Her debut feature, Banel & Adama, which had its debut Saturday, follows in the footsteps of Mati Diop’s 2019 Atlantics.
Sy draws on her roots in the Fulani, or Peul, culture of the Futa region in northern Senegal for her magic-realist film about a young couple whose passion brings chaos to their remote rural community. “The people of Futa have the reputation of being very dignified and sticking to their community,” says Sy, who was born and grew up in France. “I was raised in the Fulani tradition at home and French culture outside.”
Inspiration for Banel & Adama came from a desire to create a tragic African heroine on par with Pierre Corneille’s Médée or Jean Racine’s Phèdre. “We don’t really have these mythical, tragic characters, or we do,...
Sy draws on her roots in the Fulani, or Peul, culture of the Futa region in northern Senegal for her magic-realist film about a young couple whose passion brings chaos to their remote rural community. “The people of Futa have the reputation of being very dignified and sticking to their community,” says Sy, who was born and grew up in France. “I was raised in the Fulani tradition at home and French culture outside.”
Inspiration for Banel & Adama came from a desire to create a tragic African heroine on par with Pierre Corneille’s Médée or Jean Racine’s Phèdre. “We don’t really have these mythical, tragic characters, or we do,...
- 5/20/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
On January 1, 2022, A.A. Milne's 1926 children's novel "Winnie-the-Pooh" lapsed into the public domain. Filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield immediately took the opportunity to turn the notoriously gentle fable about a talking stuffed bear into a brutal, gory, low-budget horror movie. In his film, the young Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) has returned to his childhood home in the 100-Acre Wood after growing up. Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and Piglet (Chris Cordell), in his absence, were forced to eat Eeyore and grew into human-hating, murderous behemoths. The two creatures spend the bulk of the movie stalking around a remote vacation home murdering its tenants.
The film is just as stupid as it sounds, but its premise was wild enough that crowds gathered out of curiosity. Made for a mere $100,000, "Blood and Honey" grossed $5.2 million worldwide. Not too shabby for a cheap, crude horror flick. In its opening weekend, the film garnered just enough excitement...
The film is just as stupid as it sounds, but its premise was wild enough that crowds gathered out of curiosity. Made for a mere $100,000, "Blood and Honey" grossed $5.2 million worldwide. Not too shabby for a cheap, crude horror flick. In its opening weekend, the film garnered just enough excitement...
- 4/11/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Actor Liam Neeson is set to portray the iconic character Philip Marlowe in the upcoming film, Marlowe. But he is hardly the first. Neeson has become known in recent decades for his leading roles in action movies like The Grey and Taken.
In Marlowe, he’ll go noir as he attempts to fill the shoes of one of the most storied private eyes in history: a character who’s been played by some of the biggest actors in Hollywood history.
Liam Neeson takes his penchant for action movies noir in ‘Marlowe’ Marlowe stars Diane Kruger and Liam Neeson | Jb Lacroix/WireImage
Set in Bay Cities, California, in the ’50s, Marlowe follows a “tough as nails private detective” as he investigates the disappearance of a beautiful heiress’ ex-lover. But the more he digs into the case, the more he realizes the spider’s web has spun far larger than he originally thought.
In Marlowe, he’ll go noir as he attempts to fill the shoes of one of the most storied private eyes in history: a character who’s been played by some of the biggest actors in Hollywood history.
Liam Neeson takes his penchant for action movies noir in ‘Marlowe’ Marlowe stars Diane Kruger and Liam Neeson | Jb Lacroix/WireImage
Set in Bay Cities, California, in the ’50s, Marlowe follows a “tough as nails private detective” as he investigates the disappearance of a beautiful heiress’ ex-lover. But the more he digs into the case, the more he realizes the spider’s web has spun far larger than he originally thought.
- 2/5/2023
- by Lindsay Kusiak
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is perhaps David Fincher's strangest film (if you don't count that time he summoned a cursed CGI Orville Redenbacher). Strange not because of disturbing CGI resurrections of beloved cultural figures, but because it doesn't feel like any other Fincher movie. It was well-received upon its 2008 release, but some derided its sentimentality, which according to Peter Bradshaw made for a "twee and pointless" movie. But the sentimentality is what makes "Benjamin Button" such a fascinating entry in its director's filmography, which is otherwise characterized by a coldly cynical tone. This might be the only time in Fincher's career that he was accused of being "twee" in any sense of the word.
There was definitely a sense that in the post-9/11, post-2008 financial crash world, people had more pressing concerns than watching Brad Pitt age in reverse. But that didn't stop the movie from making...
There was definitely a sense that in the post-9/11, post-2008 financial crash world, people had more pressing concerns than watching Brad Pitt age in reverse. But that didn't stop the movie from making...
- 1/30/2023
- by Joe Roberts
- Slash Film
In "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Brad Pitt's Benjamin Button and Cate Blanchett's Daisy Fuller come together and drift apart throughout, mimicking the ebb and flow of life's emotional journey. As director David Fincher explained to Emanuel Levy, "The universe conspires to make them who they are at exactly the right moment [...] And you kind of breathe a sigh of relief when they get together because now it can happen, exactly as it is supposed to." Which is strangely applicable to how "Benjamin Button" finally came to be made.
The project had been in development for decades. According to Reuters, as far back as the 1940s, William Faulkner tried his hand at adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story about a man who ages in reverse, only for the project to be shelved by Jack Warner. In the '80s, former agent Ray Stark snapped up the...
The project had been in development for decades. According to Reuters, as far back as the 1940s, William Faulkner tried his hand at adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story about a man who ages in reverse, only for the project to be shelved by Jack Warner. In the '80s, former agent Ray Stark snapped up the...
- 1/25/2023
- by Joe Roberts
- Slash Film
Fritz Lang’s trailblazing sci-fi epic Metropolis, the final Sherlock Holmes stories (and the detective character himself), and musical compositions like “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “My Blue Heaven” are entering the public domain today, Jan. 1.
According to the Public Domain Day site, most works copyrighted in 1927 had their rights expire, as U.S. copyright law only remains intact for 95 years. Alfred Hitchcock’s early thriller The Lodger, F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, musical compositions (but not the actual recorded songs) by Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers,...
According to the Public Domain Day site, most works copyrighted in 1927 had their rights expire, as U.S. copyright law only remains intact for 95 years. Alfred Hitchcock’s early thriller The Lodger, F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, musical compositions (but not the actual recorded songs) by Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers,...
- 1/1/2023
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
A lot of life is boring. Well, maybe not boring, but pedestrian. Rote and pedestrian. We wash ourselves, earn money, run errands, buy stuff, and prepare our sustenance. So-called “slow cinema” can capture this connective tissue of our lives and there is no more relevant example than Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the film that just topped Sight and Sound’s decennial “greatest film” poll.
Up from 36th place in 2012, is Jeanne Dielman really the greatest film of all time? No, of course not. Neither was Vertigo. Citizen Kane had a stronger case, but isn’t the whole notion of a “greatest” film futile? I couldn’t possibly reduce cinema to a single title and I wouldn’t want to. Not even a top 10 would be a worthwhile endeavour.
Anyway, hype aside, what is Jeanne Dielman all about? This question has seen Chantal Akerman’s film leapfrog some 12,000 places...
Up from 36th place in 2012, is Jeanne Dielman really the greatest film of all time? No, of course not. Neither was Vertigo. Citizen Kane had a stronger case, but isn’t the whole notion of a “greatest” film futile? I couldn’t possibly reduce cinema to a single title and I wouldn’t want to. Not even a top 10 would be a worthwhile endeavour.
Anyway, hype aside, what is Jeanne Dielman all about? This question has seen Chantal Akerman’s film leapfrog some 12,000 places...
- 12/13/2022
- by Jack Hawkins
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Hello, and welcome back for a brand new Let’s Scare Bryan to Death! After a short hiatus to accommodate our Hellraiser fundraiser in September, I’m ready to get back in the saddle trying to catch up little by little with my horror blind spots.
I’m very excited this month as I’m joined by Annie Rose Malamet of Girls, Guts, & Giallo, a “podcast and live screening series about subversive, controversial film.” Malamet brings a wealth of knowledge on queer history and kink to give her analysis a unique perspective, and you may have caught her on the PBS show The Historian’s Take and more recently on Shudder’s Queer for Fear documentary.
Admittedly, I’ve never been well-versed in the sapphic vampire films from the ’70s, so I was hoping the self-proclaimed “Only lesbian vampire expert” would bring one to the table. She did not disappoint with Stephanie Rothman’s 1971 film,...
I’m very excited this month as I’m joined by Annie Rose Malamet of Girls, Guts, & Giallo, a “podcast and live screening series about subversive, controversial film.” Malamet brings a wealth of knowledge on queer history and kink to give her analysis a unique perspective, and you may have caught her on the PBS show The Historian’s Take and more recently on Shudder’s Queer for Fear documentary.
Admittedly, I’ve never been well-versed in the sapphic vampire films from the ’70s, so I was hoping the self-proclaimed “Only lesbian vampire expert” would bring one to the table. She did not disappoint with Stephanie Rothman’s 1971 film,...
- 10/26/2022
- by Bryan Christopher
- DailyDead
Click here to read the full article.
Like The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan, the story of Matilda has endured in many different forms with tweaks and adjustments — first as a very English book for the young, then as an Americanized movie, and then a stage musical that’s now a film adaptation of that stage musical — precisely because it’s so damn weird.
The chatty-catty narration of the 1988 novel by Roald Dahl constantly dives off in peculiar directions, makes frequent snarky asides and, like so much of Dahl’s work, is often laugh-aloud funny as it tells the story of the super-smart eponymous girl who defies her philistine parents to become a reader and goes up against bullying headmistress Miss Trunchbull. But it’s also chock-full of horrors and casual cruelty inflicted on kids by adults, such as hurling children around by their hair and locking them in iron maiden-like punishment boxes.
Like The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan, the story of Matilda has endured in many different forms with tweaks and adjustments — first as a very English book for the young, then as an Americanized movie, and then a stage musical that’s now a film adaptation of that stage musical — precisely because it’s so damn weird.
The chatty-catty narration of the 1988 novel by Roald Dahl constantly dives off in peculiar directions, makes frequent snarky asides and, like so much of Dahl’s work, is often laugh-aloud funny as it tells the story of the super-smart eponymous girl who defies her philistine parents to become a reader and goes up against bullying headmistress Miss Trunchbull. But it’s also chock-full of horrors and casual cruelty inflicted on kids by adults, such as hurling children around by their hair and locking them in iron maiden-like punishment boxes.
- 10/5/2022
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The rules of survival in Hollywood have always fascinated me. “Consistency is the key – always present yourself to studios as a total bitch,” Bette Davis once confided. “Never delude yourself into thinking that a star can become a loyal personal friend,” advised Billy Wilder. “Since studios always lie, a producer’s mandate is to come up with bigger lies,” said David O. Selznick.
As a collector of Hollywood war stories, I was pleased this week to discover a new book (741 pages) with the intimidating title Hollywood: The Oral History – one that has greatly expanded my inventory of intrigue.
Over the course of the last 50 years AFI (the American Film Institute) has semi-secretly recorded, and now published, interviews with accomplished stars and filmmakers, thus creating an intimate Hollywood history told in first person (HarperCollins is the publisher).
Approaching a book of this size as summer reading, I decided to focus not on thoughtful analysis,...
As a collector of Hollywood war stories, I was pleased this week to discover a new book (741 pages) with the intimidating title Hollywood: The Oral History – one that has greatly expanded my inventory of intrigue.
Over the course of the last 50 years AFI (the American Film Institute) has semi-secretly recorded, and now published, interviews with accomplished stars and filmmakers, thus creating an intimate Hollywood history told in first person (HarperCollins is the publisher).
Approaching a book of this size as summer reading, I decided to focus not on thoughtful analysis,...
- 9/8/2022
- by Peter Bart
- Deadline Film + TV
Far removed from music-industry cities like Los Angeles and Nashville, the seeds of American music were sown in Mississippi soil, where the pioneers of blues, country, and rock ‘n’ roll followed dusty roads through forests and flatlands to perform for locals.
Today, visitors from across the U.S. and abroad follow the Mississippi Blues Trail and Country Music Trail into the same communities to learn about the land that birthed Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, and Jimmie Rodgers and experience the roots of contemporary American music culture.
Before you...
Today, visitors from across the U.S. and abroad follow the Mississippi Blues Trail and Country Music Trail into the same communities to learn about the land that birthed Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, and Jimmie Rodgers and experience the roots of contemporary American music culture.
Before you...
- 8/1/2022
- by Jim Beaugez
- Rollingstone.com
HBO’s “The Last Movie Stars,” Ethan Hawkes’ exceptional six-part series on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, works on so many levels. For baby boomers who grew up watching the Oscar-winning couple, the series is a strong emotional tug at the heartstrings. For actors and those who love acting, it’s a primer on the craft. For those who love and admire the fact they remained married for 50 years, it’s a perceptive depiction of the highs, lows and struggles of a marriage. And by peeling away the legend of their union, you end up admiring and loving Newman and Woodward more than ever. And be prepared to blubber several times in the final episode.
The couple collaborated on 16 movies and three plays. And in honor of “The Last Movie Stars,” here’s a look at several of those projects.
The two fell in love while working on William Inge’s 1953 Pulitzer-Prize-winning romantic drama ‘Picnic.
The couple collaborated on 16 movies and three plays. And in honor of “The Last Movie Stars,” here’s a look at several of those projects.
The two fell in love while working on William Inge’s 1953 Pulitzer-Prize-winning romantic drama ‘Picnic.
- 7/25/2022
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
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Cinema Retro continues covering films that are not currently available on home video in the U.S. or U.K.
By Brian Hannan
"Sanctuary" is an overheated melodrama that stands as a classic example of Hollywood’s offensive attitudes to women. Nobel prize-winning author William Faulkner could hardly blame the movies for sensationalising his misogynistic source material since, if anything, the movie took a softer line. The story is told primarily in flashback as headstrong southern belle Temple Drake (Lee Remick) attempts to mitigate the death sentence passed on her maid Nancy (Odetta). Given that such appeals are directed at Drake’s Governor father (Howard St John), and that the maid has been condemned for murdering Drake’s infant child, that’s a whole lot of story to swallow.
Worse is to follow. Drake takes up with Prohibition bootlegger Candy Man (Yves Montand...
Cinema Retro continues covering films that are not currently available on home video in the U.S. or U.K.
By Brian Hannan
"Sanctuary" is an overheated melodrama that stands as a classic example of Hollywood’s offensive attitudes to women. Nobel prize-winning author William Faulkner could hardly blame the movies for sensationalising his misogynistic source material since, if anything, the movie took a softer line. The story is told primarily in flashback as headstrong southern belle Temple Drake (Lee Remick) attempts to mitigate the death sentence passed on her maid Nancy (Odetta). Given that such appeals are directed at Drake’s Governor father (Howard St John), and that the maid has been condemned for murdering Drake’s infant child, that’s a whole lot of story to swallow.
Worse is to follow. Drake takes up with Prohibition bootlegger Candy Man (Yves Montand...
- 3/18/2022
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “Assault” and “Kung Fu Zohra” from Mabrouk El Mechri are among the lineup at International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (IFFR) 51st edition.
The films were among 10 features selected for the Big Screen competition, which aims to bridge the gap between popular, classic and arthouse cinema.
IFFR also boasts the Tiger Competition for emerging talent and Ammodo Tiger Short competition for shorts.
Among the 14 titles selected for the Tiger Competition, Roberto Doveris will present “Proyecto Fantasma,” Morgane Dziurla-Petit will deliver “Excess Will Save Us” and David Easteal will show “The Plains.”
The festival, whose full lineup was announced on Friday, will run as a virtual festival on IFFR.com from Jan 26-Feb. 6 for the second year in a row due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Festival director Vanja Kaludjercic revealed that the lockdown in the Netherlands had enforced some changes in previously announced elements of the program. For example,...
The films were among 10 features selected for the Big Screen competition, which aims to bridge the gap between popular, classic and arthouse cinema.
IFFR also boasts the Tiger Competition for emerging talent and Ammodo Tiger Short competition for shorts.
Among the 14 titles selected for the Tiger Competition, Roberto Doveris will present “Proyecto Fantasma,” Morgane Dziurla-Petit will deliver “Excess Will Save Us” and David Easteal will show “The Plains.”
The festival, whose full lineup was announced on Friday, will run as a virtual festival on IFFR.com from Jan 26-Feb. 6 for the second year in a row due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Festival director Vanja Kaludjercic revealed that the lockdown in the Netherlands had enforced some changes in previously announced elements of the program. For example,...
- 1/7/2022
- by K.J. Yossman and Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, classic novels by Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie and hundreds of thousands of pre-1923 sound recordings are among the works that entered that public domain on New Year’s Day 2022.
Dorothy Parker’s first poetry collection Enough Rope, William Faulkner’s first novel Soldiers’ Pay, and books by Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, T.E. Lawrence and more also joined Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in the public domain, the Associated Press reported.
“When works go into the public domain,...
Dorothy Parker’s first poetry collection Enough Rope, William Faulkner’s first novel Soldiers’ Pay, and books by Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, T.E. Lawrence and more also joined Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in the public domain, the Associated Press reported.
“When works go into the public domain,...
- 1/1/2022
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Kira Kovalenko’s feature Unclenching the Fists was initially inspired by a line in William Faulkner’s novel Intruder in the Dust. Speaking at Deadline’s Contenders Film: International awards-season event, the Russian director said she thought a lot about Faulkner’s line, “While some people can endure slavery, nobody can stand freedom,” when she began co-writing her sophomore film, which is now Russia’s submission into this year’s International Feature Oscar race.
“While I was thinking about this line, I realized that I needed to find the place that I could tell this story about, and this place was a small mining town close to the place I was living,” Kovalenko said via her producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who was interpreting for on the panel.
Veteran producer Rodnyansky, who has long been a champion of unique and new voices hailing from Russia and the Ukraine, said he was compelled...
“While I was thinking about this line, I realized that I needed to find the place that I could tell this story about, and this place was a small mining town close to the place I was living,” Kovalenko said via her producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who was interpreting for on the panel.
Veteran producer Rodnyansky, who has long been a champion of unique and new voices hailing from Russia and the Ukraine, said he was compelled...
- 11/20/2021
- by Diana Lodderhose
- Deadline Film + TV
The National Book Awards on Wednesday gave its fiction prize to author Jason Mott, whose novel Hell of a Book chronicled a black author’s book tour interspersed with a young Black boy in the rural South, to highlight the 2021 winners list.
The honors, held remotely for the second consecutive year, are one of the most prestigious awards in publishing. Past winners include William Faulkner, W.H. Auden, and Ralph Ellison, and winning in this age of adaptation instantly elevates the author.
Mott said his work was selected a decade ago out of the “slush pile,” a publishing industry term for books that are unsolicited. The poet and author had three previous novels.
“I would like to dedicate this award to all the other mad kids, to all the outsiders, the weirdos, the bullied,” Mott said in his acceptance speech. “The ones so strange they had no choice but to be...
The honors, held remotely for the second consecutive year, are one of the most prestigious awards in publishing. Past winners include William Faulkner, W.H. Auden, and Ralph Ellison, and winning in this age of adaptation instantly elevates the author.
Mott said his work was selected a decade ago out of the “slush pile,” a publishing industry term for books that are unsolicited. The poet and author had three previous novels.
“I would like to dedicate this award to all the other mad kids, to all the outsiders, the weirdos, the bullied,” Mott said in his acceptance speech. “The ones so strange they had no choice but to be...
- 11/18/2021
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Edgar Wright’s time-travel film plays like a 60s pop song building towards a big climax
The nostalgia gauge is code-red on Last Night in Soho, a gaudy time-travel romp that whisks its modern-day heroine to a bygone London that probably never existed outside our fevered cultural imagination. It’s the era of Dusty Springfield and Biba; great music, cool threads. British writer-director Edgar Wright takes a grab-bag of 1960s ingredients, paints them up and makes them dance to his tune. His film is thoroughly silly and stupidly enjoyable. To misquote William Faulkner, the past isn’t dead, it’s propping up the bar at the Café de Paris.
“You like that retro style, huh?” a classmate remarks to Eloise Turner, a 21st-century design student – and you can bet your house she does. Eloise is up from deepest Cornwall to attend the London College of Fashion, still haunted by her...
The nostalgia gauge is code-red on Last Night in Soho, a gaudy time-travel romp that whisks its modern-day heroine to a bygone London that probably never existed outside our fevered cultural imagination. It’s the era of Dusty Springfield and Biba; great music, cool threads. British writer-director Edgar Wright takes a grab-bag of 1960s ingredients, paints them up and makes them dance to his tune. His film is thoroughly silly and stupidly enjoyable. To misquote William Faulkner, the past isn’t dead, it’s propping up the bar at the Café de Paris.
“You like that retro style, huh?” a classmate remarks to Eloise Turner, a 21st-century design student – and you can bet your house she does. Eloise is up from deepest Cornwall to attend the London College of Fashion, still haunted by her...
- 9/4/2021
- by Xan Brooks in Venice
- The Guardian - Film News
Opening with William Faulkner's famous lines 'The past is never dead. It's not even past,' Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz's blistering mystery thriller blends its tenses even as it builds its tension. It beckons the viewer in with the romance which, to many Americans, is still conjured up by the title, with golden light and green fields and a rustle of colourful skirts, only to draw back and reveal a landscape where white men on horseback leer downwards at cowed black cotton pickers. You can't daydream about the past unless you're willing to face the brutal reality - but of course, it's precisely that brutality that some people want back.
Are the events that we see in these opening scenes a piece of the past or something else? When her alarm goes off, Veronica (Janelle Monáe) wakes up in the present day. Her partner soothes her, asks if it was another.
Are the events that we see in these opening scenes a piece of the past or something else? When her alarm goes off, Veronica (Janelle Monáe) wakes up in the present day. Her partner soothes her, asks if it was another.
- 7/26/2021
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Empire Strikes Back is a masterpiece of blockbuster cinema and the standard by which we measure all other big-screen space adventures. But before it became the magnum opus of the original Star Wars trilogy, the spark that would become The Empire Strikes Back floated in the nothingness of space, waiting for its big bang.
When Star Wars premiered in May 1977, the saga’s sequel could have gone either the low-budget or blockbuster route. Although we got the latter, there was already a plan in case the film wasn’t a huge hit. George Lucas hired Alan Dean Foster, who ghost-wrote the novelization of the first film, to write a relatively subdued sequel. That story eventually became the first Expanded Universe novel in the franchise’s history, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which sees Luke and Leia crash on a jungle planet and face off with Darth Vader in...
When Star Wars premiered in May 1977, the saga’s sequel could have gone either the low-budget or blockbuster route. Although we got the latter, there was already a plan in case the film wasn’t a huge hit. George Lucas hired Alan Dean Foster, who ghost-wrote the novelization of the first film, to write a relatively subdued sequel. That story eventually became the first Expanded Universe novel in the franchise’s history, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which sees Luke and Leia crash on a jungle planet and face off with Darth Vader in...
- 5/21/2021
- by jbindeck2015
- Den of Geek
‘The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson’ Review: An Exceptionally Compelling Outback Western
No one is more devoted to Australian author Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife” than Leah Purcell. First, she adapted Lawson’s classic 1892 short story as an award-winning play at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre, in which she starred; then she turned it into an acclaimed novel; and now, she has written and directed a gripping film in which she stirringly portrays Molly Johnson, as Purcell colorfully christened the tale’s nameless title character. Roles like this are rare enough in cinema, and Purcell knows it, giving herself a smashmouth first-act scene in which she brandishes a shotgun and warns an unwelcome visitor, “I’ll shoot you where you stand, and I’ll bury you where you fall.”
Purcell delivers the line with such assurance and authority that, had John Wayne or Charles Bronson been on the receiving end of that threat, they likely would have changed their minds and raised their hands.
Purcell delivers the line with such assurance and authority that, had John Wayne or Charles Bronson been on the receiving end of that threat, they likely would have changed their minds and raised their hands.
- 5/10/2021
- by Joe Leydon
- Variety Film + TV
Lyndon Chubbuck, a director and photographer known for such film as 2001’s “War Bride” and 2000’s “The Right Temptation,” has died. He was 67.
Chubbuck died at his home in Los Angeles on April 13. He was married to prominent acting coach Ivana Chubbuck and was a co-founder of Ivana Chubbuck Studio, which has worked with such notables as Charlize Theron, Brad Pitt and Halle Berry.
Lyndon Chubbuck also served as a partner in advertising agency Andrew Janson & Partners, where he worked on campaigns for Swatch, Paramount Pictures, E!, Sallie Mae and Miller Brewing Company. He was known for his strong social conscience and also worked on creative material for the ACLU, Amnesty International and Salvation Army.
Born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Chubbuck worked steadily as a director in TV from the late 1980s through the late 1990s. His credits include episodes of such series as “Baywatch,” “Wiseguy,...
Chubbuck died at his home in Los Angeles on April 13. He was married to prominent acting coach Ivana Chubbuck and was a co-founder of Ivana Chubbuck Studio, which has worked with such notables as Charlize Theron, Brad Pitt and Halle Berry.
Lyndon Chubbuck also served as a partner in advertising agency Andrew Janson & Partners, where he worked on campaigns for Swatch, Paramount Pictures, E!, Sallie Mae and Miller Brewing Company. He was known for his strong social conscience and also worked on creative material for the ACLU, Amnesty International and Salvation Army.
Born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Chubbuck worked steadily as a director in TV from the late 1980s through the late 1990s. His credits include episodes of such series as “Baywatch,” “Wiseguy,...
- 4/22/2021
- by Cynthia Littleton
- Variety Film + TV
Acclaimed Korean director Lee Chang-dong is back after an 8-year absence from the movie industry and – hey – it was well worth the wait! His latest work “Burning” premiered with a bang at Cannes Film Festival last April where it bagged the Fipresci Prize and is collecting excellent reviews anywhere it lands. “Burning” was also the official submission of South Korea for the ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ category of the 91st Academy Awards in 2019.
“Burning” is screening at the 27th Art Film Fest Kosice
Marketed as a thriller-esque adaptation of Murakami Haruki’s short novel “Barn Burning” (first published in the ”New Yorker” and part of the anthology “The Elephant Vanishes”), it’s a lesser-known fact that Murakami himself was inspired by William Faulkner’s novel of the same title, where an arsonist exerts his power and control burning barns and ultimately forcing his family to lie in the name of a deviated idea of loyalty.
“Burning” is screening at the 27th Art Film Fest Kosice
Marketed as a thriller-esque adaptation of Murakami Haruki’s short novel “Barn Burning” (first published in the ”New Yorker” and part of the anthology “The Elephant Vanishes”), it’s a lesser-known fact that Murakami himself was inspired by William Faulkner’s novel of the same title, where an arsonist exerts his power and control burning barns and ultimately forcing his family to lie in the name of a deviated idea of loyalty.
- 4/9/2021
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Baby Doll
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1956 / 1.85:1 / 114 min.
Starring Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach
Cinematography by Boris Kaufman
Directed by Elia Kazan
Depraved, degenerate, and dreadfully funny, the genre known as Southern Gothic blurred the line between humor and horror and helped define the work of artists like William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Tennessee Williams. Depending on who you talked to, the experience was either a bracing walk on the wild side or freak show sensationalism. Poetry or not, books like Sanctuary and Reflections in a Golden Eye were catnip to thrill-hungry Hollywood execs who gobbled up the rights and, true to form, removed the raw carnality that made the original stories so… stimulating. That wasn’t the case with Williams’ screenplay for 1957’s Baby Doll—though its Rabelaisian spirit made it one of the most controversial and widely condemned events in movie history, the driving force behind Elia...
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1956 / 1.85:1 / 114 min.
Starring Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach
Cinematography by Boris Kaufman
Directed by Elia Kazan
Depraved, degenerate, and dreadfully funny, the genre known as Southern Gothic blurred the line between humor and horror and helped define the work of artists like William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Tennessee Williams. Depending on who you talked to, the experience was either a bracing walk on the wild side or freak show sensationalism. Poetry or not, books like Sanctuary and Reflections in a Golden Eye were catnip to thrill-hungry Hollywood execs who gobbled up the rights and, true to form, removed the raw carnality that made the original stories so… stimulating. That wasn’t the case with Williams’ screenplay for 1957’s Baby Doll—though its Rabelaisian spirit made it one of the most controversial and widely condemned events in movie history, the driving force behind Elia...
- 2/27/2021
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Although his last feature “Zegen” was not quite the success production company Toei had hoped for, they, nevertheless, wanted to continue their collaboration with renowned director Shohei Imamura and gave him the opportunity to tell a story he had been thinking about for quite some time. Based on Masuji Ibuse’s novel of the same name, the project “Black Rain” was set in Japan in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is a work which cinephiles, critics and film scholars alike often regard as an exception to Imamura’s work in the 1980s, as it bears more similarities to the features he directed in the 1960s given its radical imagery, tone and themes. At the same time, “Black Rain” follows Imamura’s concept of the period piece as a tale set in the past but which has a striking significance for the present, and even for the future,...
- 12/26/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.“Je résiste. I’m still fighting. I don’t know how much longer, but I’m still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film, you know?” —Agnès Varda, “An Interview with Agnès Varda,” The Believer, October 1, 2009Summing up Agnès Varda is nigh impossible; reducing her down to a single quote futile. There are words I might use to describe her—creative, ambitious, whimsical, pragmatic—but these feel remissive in their temperance. Simply put, Varda’s work is what epitomizes her, each feature, short film, photograph, and installation a breath of life. In elaborating on her concept of cinécriture, or “cinematic writing,” she affirms that it’s not “illustrating a screenplay, not adapting a novel, not getting the gags of a good play, not any of this.
- 12/9/2020
- MUBI
Pylon came out of the small college town of Athens, Georgia, at the dawn of the Eighties, playing a new kind of Southern rock that stunned people at the time and has continued to make converts ever since. Spare but fun, disorientating but inviting, their sound was in step with the stentorian dance-punk of U.K. bands like Gang of Four or the Au Pairs, but it was much more wide-open, driven by possibility rather than angst — the sound of slackers dreaming, not punks ranting.
The late Randall Bewley played piercing,...
The late Randall Bewley played piercing,...
- 11/9/2020
- by Jon Dolan
- Rollingstone.com
The Covid-19 crisis has devastated cinema attendance. Several major cinema chains have closed around the world. In the face of adversity, this year’s 12th edition of the Lumière Festival in France’s Lyon, which runs Oct. 10-18, aims to fly the flag of cinema even more forcefully than ever, through its on site mix of career tributes, restored classics, world premieres of new films and a classic film market.
Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier (“My Journey through French Cinema”) has played a key role in organizing this year’s line-up, including the tribute to the classic French screenwriter Michel Audiard, who would have turned 100 this year, the award of the Lumière Award to Belgian directing duo, the Dardenne brothers, tributes to Oliver Stone and Viggo Mortensen, and a career tribute to French actress Sabine Azéma, who starred in two films by Tavernier. The Festival also pays homage to American...
Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier (“My Journey through French Cinema”) has played a key role in organizing this year’s line-up, including the tribute to the classic French screenwriter Michel Audiard, who would have turned 100 this year, the award of the Lumière Award to Belgian directing duo, the Dardenne brothers, tributes to Oliver Stone and Viggo Mortensen, and a career tribute to French actress Sabine Azéma, who starred in two films by Tavernier. The Festival also pays homage to American...
- 10/13/2020
- by Martin Dale
- Variety Film + TV
American poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate Louise Gluck was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature Thursday, the world’s highest literary honor, “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,” said the Nobel Committee.
She is the first American woman to win the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993 and one of only 16 women since the awards, established in the will of Alfred Nobel, began in 1901.
Nobel Committee chair Anders Olsson praised Gluck’s striving for clarity. “Glück seeks the universal, and in this she takes inspiration from myths and classical motifs, present in most of her works.”
The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by The Swedish Academy in Stockholm.
Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, said in a video presentation Thursday, that he had informed Gluck of the award earlier in the day. “It came as surprise. A welcome one.
She is the first American woman to win the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993 and one of only 16 women since the awards, established in the will of Alfred Nobel, began in 1901.
Nobel Committee chair Anders Olsson praised Gluck’s striving for clarity. “Glück seeks the universal, and in this she takes inspiration from myths and classical motifs, present in most of her works.”
The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by The Swedish Academy in Stockholm.
Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, said in a video presentation Thursday, that he had informed Gluck of the award earlier in the day. “It came as surprise. A welcome one.
- 10/8/2020
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner
Directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz begin their hybrid horror film Antebellum with this quote from William Faulkner’s story “Requiem for a Nun.” The line, specific about the history of the American South, describes how the past still haunts the present. When Barack Obama used a variation of that line during a speech in 2008, it framed William Faulkner’s environment of the South and how the legacy of racial atrocities found in history still linger so prevalently today.
It doesn’t take much to find horror in the world these days. Amid a global pandemic, the makings of a horror film already, the injustices happening across the world continue to pile on one right after the other. And cinema, consistently one of the best mirrors of present times in the world, has taken to genre film to discuss and dissect the issues.
Directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz begin their hybrid horror film Antebellum with this quote from William Faulkner’s story “Requiem for a Nun.” The line, specific about the history of the American South, describes how the past still haunts the present. When Barack Obama used a variation of that line during a speech in 2008, it framed William Faulkner’s environment of the South and how the legacy of racial atrocities found in history still linger so prevalently today.
It doesn’t take much to find horror in the world these days. Amid a global pandemic, the makings of a horror film already, the injustices happening across the world continue to pile on one right after the other. And cinema, consistently one of the best mirrors of present times in the world, has taken to genre film to discuss and dissect the issues.
- 9/22/2020
- by Monte Yazzie
- DailyDead
Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you have not seen “Antebellum,” now available on PVOD.
Filmmakers Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz weren’t worried about pushing the envelope too far with “Antebellum,” their twisty tale of a contemporary Black woman, a slave living on a brutal Southern plantation and the way their fates are intertwined. In fact, one could argue that was their intention.
“I think that we are in this place where art is being policed in such a way that the potency of the medicine that needs to be delivered, is being greatly diluted. Good art, our art is meant to activate and trigger,” Bush told Variety shortly before the film’s release. “I would prefer that you be triggered within the safety of your own home and activated into action, than for this to happen in reality and for us to continue to live in an open-air shooting gallery.
Filmmakers Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz weren’t worried about pushing the envelope too far with “Antebellum,” their twisty tale of a contemporary Black woman, a slave living on a brutal Southern plantation and the way their fates are intertwined. In fact, one could argue that was their intention.
“I think that we are in this place where art is being policed in such a way that the potency of the medicine that needs to be delivered, is being greatly diluted. Good art, our art is meant to activate and trigger,” Bush told Variety shortly before the film’s release. “I would prefer that you be triggered within the safety of your own home and activated into action, than for this to happen in reality and for us to continue to live in an open-air shooting gallery.
- 9/22/2020
- by Angelique Jackson
- Variety Film + TV
[Content Warning: This piece contains information and description of troubling current and historical events, reference to racism, and some upsetting language. This piece contains spoilers for Antebellum.]
The United States is wracked with a fever, and we’re reaching the breaking point. We are in a cultural moment of being weary of systems and institutions that have done harm to others, weary of upholding “ideals” that conceal and excuse that harm, and weary of glossing over the sins that are woven into the fabric of this country. Horror, as it always has, is the first to rise to the occasion and meet this cultural moment on the field. Horror is the first place that we begin to deconstruct, discuss, and work through our greatest cultural anxieties.
Horror films like Get Out and Candyman, to name a few, have already begun to do the work of placing horror firmly within a Black scope. Speaking directly to the horrors of the Black experience using a language, a shorthand, and a history that is expressly for and pertaining to Black people.
The United States is wracked with a fever, and we’re reaching the breaking point. We are in a cultural moment of being weary of systems and institutions that have done harm to others, weary of upholding “ideals” that conceal and excuse that harm, and weary of glossing over the sins that are woven into the fabric of this country. Horror, as it always has, is the first to rise to the occasion and meet this cultural moment on the field. Horror is the first place that we begin to deconstruct, discuss, and work through our greatest cultural anxieties.
Horror films like Get Out and Candyman, to name a few, have already begun to do the work of placing horror firmly within a Black scope. Speaking directly to the horrors of the Black experience using a language, a shorthand, and a history that is expressly for and pertaining to Black people.
- 9/18/2020
- by Caitlin Kennedy
- DailyDead
It’s Lily Cowles‘ Sarah who gets to say the opening text of Antebellum: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” It’s a quote by William Faulkner around which directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz frame their horror film, the idea that racism is as well and truly alive as it was in the Antebellum South. But […]
The post ‘Antebellum’ Star Lily Cowles on Learning to Be an Ally [Interview] appeared first on /Film.
The post ‘Antebellum’ Star Lily Cowles on Learning to Be an Ally [Interview] appeared first on /Film.
- 9/17/2020
- by Hoai-Tran Bui
- Slash Film
Antonio Campos delivers a star-studded, darkly comic psychological thriller set in the postwar American Bible belt
“There’s a lot of religion going around with this thing,” says Mickey Rourke’s shell-shocked gumshoe in Alan Parker’s Angel Heart, a devilish mix of neo-noir intrigue and gothic horror based on William Hjortsberg’s page-turning novel. The same could be said of The Devil All the Time, a similarly genre-bending tale of twisted faith and postwar trauma, adapted from Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 novel, which drew comparisons with Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. Set between the aftermath of the second world war and the gathering storm of Vietnam, it’s a labyrinthine tale of hardscrabble lives and monstrous deaths in woodsy environs, littered with fanatical fornicating preachers, misguided, faith-fuelled sacrifices and tortuous family legacies, passed unforgivingly from one generation to another.
Flipping back and forth in time as the narrative slips between Coal Creek,...
“There’s a lot of religion going around with this thing,” says Mickey Rourke’s shell-shocked gumshoe in Alan Parker’s Angel Heart, a devilish mix of neo-noir intrigue and gothic horror based on William Hjortsberg’s page-turning novel. The same could be said of The Devil All the Time, a similarly genre-bending tale of twisted faith and postwar trauma, adapted from Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 novel, which drew comparisons with Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. Set between the aftermath of the second world war and the gathering storm of Vietnam, it’s a labyrinthine tale of hardscrabble lives and monstrous deaths in woodsy environs, littered with fanatical fornicating preachers, misguided, faith-fuelled sacrifices and tortuous family legacies, passed unforgivingly from one generation to another.
Flipping back and forth in time as the narrative slips between Coal Creek,...
- 9/13/2020
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
Eliza Scanlen likes dark places. She was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy who turned into a cunning serial killer in HBO’s “Sharp Objects;” the terminally ill Beth March in “Little Women,” and now can be seen as a teenage cancer patient in “Babyteeth.” At 21, Scanlen takes on characters who find transformative, sometimes sinister, power in affliction.
“I would probably be even more scared about doing a comedy,” she told IndieWire in a phone interview from her native Sydney, Australia. She earned notice for her supporting roles, but “Babyteeth” announces her position as a leading force who commands the screen in nearly every scene of director Shannon Murphy’s heartfelt coming-of-age tale that reinvents the maudlin cancer indie dramedy.
In “Babyteeth,” Scanlen is a young woman who must grapple with illness as well as the rush of first love with a drug-addicted crust punk (Toby Wallace). “I really changed as a person,...
“I would probably be even more scared about doing a comedy,” she told IndieWire in a phone interview from her native Sydney, Australia. She earned notice for her supporting roles, but “Babyteeth” announces her position as a leading force who commands the screen in nearly every scene of director Shannon Murphy’s heartfelt coming-of-age tale that reinvents the maudlin cancer indie dramedy.
In “Babyteeth,” Scanlen is a young woman who must grapple with illness as well as the rush of first love with a drug-addicted crust punk (Toby Wallace). “I really changed as a person,...
- 6/28/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
"Those Sensational Swing Scores: Or How I Journeyed from 1949’s Martin Kane, Private Eye to 2018’s King of Thieves in Four Years, Two Months, 17 Days, Six Hours and 43 Minutes"
By Derrick Bang, author of "Crime and Spy Jazz 1950-1970" and "Crime and Spy Jazz Since 1971" (McFarland)
I initially wanted to write the ultimate guide to television’s Peter Gunn. But some quick research revealed that it would be hard to improve upon Joe Manning’s excellent two-part feature story in the June and July 2007 issues of Film Score Monthly magazine; and Mike Quigley’s impressively thorough website guide to that iconic 1958-61 TV series (at www.petergunn.tv). That said, Mike’s meticulously thorough analysis of the show’s music planted a larger seed: perhaps a book about classic TV action jazz? Even there, though, a few existing books — such as Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979 — had...
By Derrick Bang, author of "Crime and Spy Jazz 1950-1970" and "Crime and Spy Jazz Since 1971" (McFarland)
I initially wanted to write the ultimate guide to television’s Peter Gunn. But some quick research revealed that it would be hard to improve upon Joe Manning’s excellent two-part feature story in the June and July 2007 issues of Film Score Monthly magazine; and Mike Quigley’s impressively thorough website guide to that iconic 1958-61 TV series (at www.petergunn.tv). That said, Mike’s meticulously thorough analysis of the show’s music planted a larger seed: perhaps a book about classic TV action jazz? Even there, though, a few existing books — such as Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979 — had...
- 5/7/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Else Blangsted, a Holocaust survivor who went on to a 35-year career as a film music editor who worked with some of the industry’s most successful directors, producers and composers – Robert Redford, Steven Spielberg, Quincy Jones, Dave Grusin, Sydney Pollack, among others – died Friday, May 1, from natural causes at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99.
Blangsted’s death, which occurred just three weeks short of her 100th birthday, was confirmed by her cousin, the Oscar–winning filmmaker and producer Deborah Oppenheimer.
Though she occasionally worked in TV throughout the years – Hazel, Dennis the Menace, Apple’s Way and the 1976 miniseries Helter Skelter, among others – it was in film that Blangsted left her most indelible professional mark. A partial roster of her film credits, spanning 1955’s Picnic to 1990’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, includes On Golden Pond, The Great Santini, Ordinary People, The Color Purple, The Goonies, In Cold Blood,...
Blangsted’s death, which occurred just three weeks short of her 100th birthday, was confirmed by her cousin, the Oscar–winning filmmaker and producer Deborah Oppenheimer.
Though she occasionally worked in TV throughout the years – Hazel, Dennis the Menace, Apple’s Way and the 1976 miniseries Helter Skelter, among others – it was in film that Blangsted left her most indelible professional mark. A partial roster of her film credits, spanning 1955’s Picnic to 1990’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, includes On Golden Pond, The Great Santini, Ordinary People, The Color Purple, The Goonies, In Cold Blood,...
- 5/5/2020
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
“I’m working in the outhouse again.” That’s how Ben Hecht, the fabled screenwriter, used to describe toiling in Hollywood. “And the nitwits are still in charge,” he assured his friends.
Hecht wrote terrific movies like Scarface and Notorious but he hated studio chiefs, and it was mutual. His name came to mind last week when Don Winslow posted his poignant piece on Deadline reminding producers and executives that writers of books and scripts these days could use a little more love. Given the tensions of the moment, he argued, a few friendly phone calls (and even checks) would bolster sagging writer morale.
More from DeadlineDon Winslow: Top 10 Things Studios, Networks and Streamers Could Do To Treat Authors BetterDon Winslow: My First Experience With Hollywood MathDon Winslow's Take On Scorsese & De Niro Doing 'The Irishman' Over 'Frankie Machine:' 'I Blame Eric Roth'
Winslow is responsible for...
Hecht wrote terrific movies like Scarface and Notorious but he hated studio chiefs, and it was mutual. His name came to mind last week when Don Winslow posted his poignant piece on Deadline reminding producers and executives that writers of books and scripts these days could use a little more love. Given the tensions of the moment, he argued, a few friendly phone calls (and even checks) would bolster sagging writer morale.
More from DeadlineDon Winslow: Top 10 Things Studios, Networks and Streamers Could Do To Treat Authors BetterDon Winslow: My First Experience With Hollywood MathDon Winslow's Take On Scorsese & De Niro Doing 'The Irishman' Over 'Frankie Machine:' 'I Blame Eric Roth'
Winslow is responsible for...
- 4/16/2020
- by Peter Bart
- Deadline Film + TV
Murder, He Says
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1945 / 1.33:1 / 94 min.
Starring Fred MacMurray, Marjorie Main, Peter Whitney
Cinematography by Theodor Sparkuhl
Directed by George Marshall
The Snopes family were a collection of Southern-fried scoundrels introduced by William Faulkner in 1940’s The Hamlet. Over the course of three novels and several short stories, the clan proved themselves capable of just about any atrocity. They were so comically loathsome they could have been kissing cousins to Mamie, Mert and Bert: the Fleagle family – a slapstick version of the Snopes. Even the local sheriff is terrified of the Fleagles and a greenhorn census taker from the big city is about to find out why.
Fred MacMurray plays Pete Marshall, the eager beaver field man for the Trotter Poll who’s searching for a missing colleague last seen headed toward the Fleagle house, way, way out in the woods (where presumably no one can hear...
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1945 / 1.33:1 / 94 min.
Starring Fred MacMurray, Marjorie Main, Peter Whitney
Cinematography by Theodor Sparkuhl
Directed by George Marshall
The Snopes family were a collection of Southern-fried scoundrels introduced by William Faulkner in 1940’s The Hamlet. Over the course of three novels and several short stories, the clan proved themselves capable of just about any atrocity. They were so comically loathsome they could have been kissing cousins to Mamie, Mert and Bert: the Fleagle family – a slapstick version of the Snopes. Even the local sheriff is terrified of the Fleagles and a greenhorn census taker from the big city is about to find out why.
Fred MacMurray plays Pete Marshall, the eager beaver field man for the Trotter Poll who’s searching for a missing colleague last seen headed toward the Fleagle house, way, way out in the woods (where presumably no one can hear...
- 3/28/2020
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
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