At the intersection of big-star international dealmaking, the 70mm epic, and the humble sword ‘n’ shield actioner, this comic book viking saga stacks one absurd, borderline bad taste action scene on top of another. It’s an irresistible mash-up of earlier successes, well directed visually by Jack Cardiff. Richard Widmark at forty must play the Viking action hero, Russ Tamblyn at thirty is still a physical dervish, and Sidney Poitier takes on the strangest casting of his career. Plus, low sexist comedy from a platoon of hearty Brit thesps!
The Long Ships
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 137
1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95
Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.
Cinematography: Christopher Challis
Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic
Art Director: Bill Constable...
The Long Ships
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 137
1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95
Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.
Cinematography: Christopher Challis
Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic
Art Director: Bill Constable...
- 8/6/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
A quick Jet-set ride takes us to Rome of 1962, which for a couple of years was the movie capital of the world. Washed-up actor Kirk Douglas reinvents himself amid the vipers of his past — an abusive director (Edward G. Robinson), a medusa-like ex-wife (Cyd Charisse) and a parade of show-biz creeps that want him to fail and grovel. But wait — redemption springs eternal through the love of a simple innocent unspoiled Italiana with no agenda of her own (Daliah Lavi). Will Douglas be reborn? Director Vincente Minnelli tries his hardest to get MGM in on the Italian art-movie gold rush.
2 Weeks in Another Town
Blu-ray
The Warner Archive Collection
1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date June 19, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Edward G. Robinson, Cyd Charisse, George Hamilton, Daliah Lavi, Claire Trevor, Rosanna Schiaffino, James Gregory, Joanna Roos, George Macready, Mino Doro, Stefan Schnabel, Vito Scotti, Leslie Uggams.
2 Weeks in Another Town
Blu-ray
The Warner Archive Collection
1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date June 19, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Edward G. Robinson, Cyd Charisse, George Hamilton, Daliah Lavi, Claire Trevor, Rosanna Schiaffino, James Gregory, Joanna Roos, George Macready, Mino Doro, Stefan Schnabel, Vito Scotti, Leslie Uggams.
- 6/12/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Edgar G. Ulmer movies on TCM: 'The Black Cat' & 'Detour' Turner Classic Movies' June 2017 Star of the Month is Audrey Hepburn, but Edgar G. Ulmer is its film personality of the evening on June 6. TCM will be presenting seven Ulmer movies from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, including his two best-known efforts: The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). The Black Cat was released shortly before the officialization of the Christian-inspired Production Code, which would castrate American filmmaking – with a few clever exceptions – for the next quarter of a century. Hence, audiences in spring 1934 were able to witness satanism in action, in addition to other bizarre happenings in an art deco mansion located in an isolated area of Hungary. Sporting a David Bowie hairdo, Boris Karloff is at his sinister best in The Black Cat (“Do you hear that, Vitus? The phone is dead. Even the phone is dead”), ailurophobic (a.
- 6/7/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
By Lee Pfeiffer
The film must have seemed to have the makings of a classic. Director Vincente Minnelli reuniting with Kirk Douglas for the first time since their triumphant The Bad and the Beautiful a decade earlier. Edward G. Robinson co-starring and a supporting cast that included Cyd Charrise, Claire Trevor, James Gregory, George MacReady, George Hamilton and lovely up-and-coming actresses Rosanna Schiaffino and Daliah Lavi. Add to this exotic Rome locations during the era when La Dolce Vita was all the rage plus a source novel by Irwin Shaw -- this had to be a project that couldn't miss. Alas, it did indeed go off-target, but the fact that the 1962 screen version of 2 Weeks in Another Town falls short of its potential doesn't mean it isn't a gloriously trashy spectacle to behold.
Douglas plays Jack Andrus, a washed up, one-time screen legend who is driven to the brink of...
The film must have seemed to have the makings of a classic. Director Vincente Minnelli reuniting with Kirk Douglas for the first time since their triumphant The Bad and the Beautiful a decade earlier. Edward G. Robinson co-starring and a supporting cast that included Cyd Charrise, Claire Trevor, James Gregory, George MacReady, George Hamilton and lovely up-and-coming actresses Rosanna Schiaffino and Daliah Lavi. Add to this exotic Rome locations during the era when La Dolce Vita was all the rage plus a source novel by Irwin Shaw -- this had to be a project that couldn't miss. Alas, it did indeed go off-target, but the fact that the 1962 screen version of 2 Weeks in Another Town falls short of its potential doesn't mean it isn't a gloriously trashy spectacle to behold.
Douglas plays Jack Andrus, a washed up, one-time screen legend who is driven to the brink of...
- 11/15/2015
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson on the Oscars' Red Carpet Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson at the Academy Awards Eli Wallach and wife Anne Jackson are seen above arriving at the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony, held on Sunday, Feb. 27, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. The 95-year-old Wallach had received an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in November 2010. See also: "Doris Day Inexplicably Snubbed by Academy," "Maureen O'Hara Honorary Oscar," "Honorary Oscars: Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo Among Rare Women Recipients," and "Hayao Miyazaki Getting Honorary Oscar." Delayed film debut The Actors Studio-trained Eli Wallach was to have made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Academy Award-winning 1953 blockbuster From Here to Eternity. Ultimately, however, Frank Sinatra – then a has-been following a string of box office duds – was cast for a pittance, getting beaten to a pulp by a pre-stardom Ernest Borgnine. For his bloodied efforts, Sinatra went on...
- 4/24/2015
- by D. Zhea
- Alt Film Guide
Clint Eastwood Western persona co-creator dead at 87: Luciano Vincenzoni (photo: Clint Eastwood in ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’) Screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni, whose nearly five-decade career included collaborations with Mario Monicelli, Pietro Germi, and Sergio Leone, died of cancer on Sunday, September 22, 2013, in Rome. Vincenzoni (born on March 7, 1926, in Treviso, near Venice) was 87. In the late ’50s, Luciano Vincenzoni co-wrote Mario Monicelli’s The Great War / La Grande guerra (1959), a humorous (if overlong) World War I comedy-drama starring Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi as reluctant conscripts that earned a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award nomination and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (tied with Roberto Rossellini’s Il Generale della Rovere). Vincenzoni was also partly responsible for the screenplay of two well-regarded Pietro Germi movies: the omnibus comedy of manners The Birds, the Bees and the Italians / Signore & signori (1966), featuring Virna Lisi and Franco Fabrizi,...
- 9/26/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Kirk Douglas movies: The Theater of Larger Than Life Performances Kirk Douglas, a three-time Best Actor Academy Award nominee and one of the top Hollywood stars of the ’50s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" featured star today, August 30, 2013. Although an undeniably strong screen presence, no one could ever accuse Douglas of having been a subtle, believable actor. In fact, even if you were to place side by side all of the widescreen formats ever created, they couldn’t possibly be wide enough to contain his larger-than-life theatrical emoting. (Photo: Kirk Douglas ca. 1950.) Right now, TCM is showing Andrew V. McLaglen’s 1967 Western The Way West, a routine tale about settlers in the Old American Northwest that remains of interest solely due to its name cast. Besides Douglas, The Way West features Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Lola Albright, and 21-year-old Sally Field in her The Flying Nun days.
- 8/30/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
(1963, Eureka! PG)
This fascinating portmanteau film, supposedly "recounting the joyous beginning of the end of the world", was the brainchild of Italian producer Alfredo Bini as a way of using four leading directors he was working with on other projects. Despite creating a furore it failed to find a theatrical distributor in Britain. The title translates as Let's Wash Our Brains, expressing a shared disillusionment with society on the part of its four directors whose names make up the other part of the title: Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ugo Gregoretti.
Rossellini's Virginity is a slim tale about a rapacious American TV executive pursuing an Italian air hostess (Rosanna Schiaffino, producer Bini's wife). Godard's The New World is an elegant, talkative picture set in a Paris little affected by a nuclear holocaust. Then best-known for his innovative TV documentaries, Gregoretti's Free-Range Chicken is a funny if dated assault...
This fascinating portmanteau film, supposedly "recounting the joyous beginning of the end of the world", was the brainchild of Italian producer Alfredo Bini as a way of using four leading directors he was working with on other projects. Despite creating a furore it failed to find a theatrical distributor in Britain. The title translates as Let's Wash Our Brains, expressing a shared disillusionment with society on the part of its four directors whose names make up the other part of the title: Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ugo Gregoretti.
Rossellini's Virginity is a slim tale about a rapacious American TV executive pursuing an Italian air hostess (Rosanna Schiaffino, producer Bini's wife). Godard's The New World is an elegant, talkative picture set in a Paris little affected by a nuclear holocaust. Then best-known for his innovative TV documentaries, Gregoretti's Free-Range Chicken is a funny if dated assault...
- 9/8/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Producer of Pier Paolo Pasolini's early films
Though an enterprising film producer, often ahead of his times, Alfredo Bini, who has died aged 83, is best remembered for having given the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini the chance to make his debut as a film-maker with Accattone (1960), when no other film company was prepared to back it. Bini produced more than 40 films, including all the features made by Pasolini up until 1967, including Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964). Among his other films were many starring his wife, Rosanna Schiaffino.
Bini was born in Livorno, Tuscany, and, during the second world war, ran away from home to join the army. He was wounded and got a medal, but went back to finish his studies in biology. He soon gave up the idea of a scientific career and in 1945 moved to Rome, where, after taking on various jobs, he managed a theatre group.
Though an enterprising film producer, often ahead of his times, Alfredo Bini, who has died aged 83, is best remembered for having given the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini the chance to make his debut as a film-maker with Accattone (1960), when no other film company was prepared to back it. Bini produced more than 40 films, including all the features made by Pasolini up until 1967, including Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964). Among his other films were many starring his wife, Rosanna Schiaffino.
Bini was born in Livorno, Tuscany, and, during the second world war, ran away from home to join the army. He was wounded and got a medal, but went back to finish his studies in biology. He soon gave up the idea of a scientific career and in 1945 moved to Rome, where, after taking on various jobs, he managed a theatre group.
- 11/2/2010
- by John Francis Lane
- The Guardian - Film News
Many retro movie lovers (including us) didn't realize that sultry Italian actress Rosanna Schiaffino had passed away in October at age 69 after a long battle with cancer . Schiaffino provided plenty of sex appeal for both European films and major Hollywood productions before she retired from the industry in the 1970s. Her tempestuous personal life rivaled any of the melodrama and scandal found in Italian films of the period. Her English-language films include Two Weeks in Another Town, El Greco, The Man Called Noon and Arrivederci, Baby! Click here to read more about her life and career.
- 12/21/2009
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Italian model and film actor, she left the cinema and joined the jet set
Rosanna Schiaffino, who has died aged 69, was one of those Italian beauty queens who began a promising acting career in the post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s. She gave up the cinema in the 1970s and married the handsome playboy and steel industry heir Giorgio Falck. Their marriage and, a decade later, their break-up and divorce, had overtones of melodrama more piquant than the content of any of the 45 films in which Schiaffino had starred.
She was born in Genoa, in north Italy, into a well-off family and, although her father wanted her to pursue studies as a surveyor, her mother encouraged her showbusiness ambitions, helping her to study privately at a drama school and then to take part in beauty contests, which she usually won. These led to modelling jobs, with photographs in important magazines, including Life.
Rosanna Schiaffino, who has died aged 69, was one of those Italian beauty queens who began a promising acting career in the post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s. She gave up the cinema in the 1970s and married the handsome playboy and steel industry heir Giorgio Falck. Their marriage and, a decade later, their break-up and divorce, had overtones of melodrama more piquant than the content of any of the 45 films in which Schiaffino had starred.
She was born in Genoa, in north Italy, into a well-off family and, although her father wanted her to pursue studies as a surveyor, her mother encouraged her showbusiness ambitions, helping her to study privately at a drama school and then to take part in beauty contests, which she usually won. These led to modelling jobs, with photographs in important magazines, including Life.
- 11/18/2009
- by John Francis Lane
- The Guardian - Film News
Rosanna Schiaffino was the lovely Italian actress who starred opposite American Olympic athlete (and future Congressman) Bob Mathias in 1960’s The Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete. Schiaffino played the dual role of the evil Princess Fedra and her good twin, Arianna, in this filmic version of the legendary man-bull who roamed the Cretan maze searching from human sacrifices.
Schiaffino was born in Genoa, Liguria, Italy, on November 25, 1938. She won a local beauty contest in 1952, and soon embarked on a career in films. Her many film credits include Roland the Mighty (1956), the sword and sandal adventure Romulus and the Sabines (1961) starring Roger Moore, a segment of the episodic fantasy film RoGoPaG (1963), the adventure saga The Long Ships (1964) with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier, the sensual horror film The Witch in Love (1966) as the supernatural Aura, the bio-film of the mysterious 18th Century count Cagliostr” (1974), and the giallo horror film The Killer Reserved Nine Seats...
Schiaffino was born in Genoa, Liguria, Italy, on November 25, 1938. She won a local beauty contest in 1952, and soon embarked on a career in films. Her many film credits include Roland the Mighty (1956), the sword and sandal adventure Romulus and the Sabines (1961) starring Roger Moore, a segment of the episodic fantasy film RoGoPaG (1963), the adventure saga The Long Ships (1964) with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier, the sensual horror film The Witch in Love (1966) as the supernatural Aura, the bio-film of the mysterious 18th Century count Cagliostr” (1974), and the giallo horror film The Killer Reserved Nine Seats...
- 11/7/2009
- by Harris Lentz
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
Rosanna Schiaffino, Vince Edwards in Carl Foreman’s The Victors (1963) Rosanna Schiaffino, the sensual leading lady of dozens of Italian (and a few international) productions of the ’60s and early ’70s, died on Oct. 17 at her home in Milan following a long battle with cancer. She was 69. The Genoa-born (Nov. 25, 1938) actress, referred to by some as the "Italian Hedy Lamarr," began her film career in the late 1950s. Among her best-known roles are those in Francesco Rosi’s first feature, La Sfida / The Challenge (1958); Mauro Bolognini’s La Notte brava / The Big Night / Bad Girls Don’t Cry (1959), winner of the Italian Film Critics’ Silver Ribbon for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s screenplay; and André Hunebelle’s historical [...]...
- 10/19/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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