Among the myriad reasons we could call the Criterion Channel the single greatest streaming service is its leveling of cinematic snobbery. Where a new World Cinema Project restoration plays, so too does Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I think about this looking at November’s lineup and being happiest about two new additions: a nine-film Robert Bresson retro including L’argent and The Devil, Probably; and a one-film Hype Williams retro including Belly and only Belly, but bringing as a bonus the direct-to-video Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club. Until recently such curation seemed impossible.
November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...
November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...
- 10/24/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Festival line-up includes 84 world premieres.
Elizabeth, the feature documentary directed by the late Roger Michell, will have its world premiere at the 53rd edition of Switzerland’s Visions du Réel (VdR) film festival.
The film will play as a special screening out of competition at the non-fiction festival in Nyon. Elizabeth looks at the life of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving female head of state in history.
It is produced by Kevin Loader for the UK’s Free Range Films, with Embankment Films handling sales and Signature distributing in the UK and Ireland.
It is one of 84 world premieres on the VdR line-up,...
Elizabeth, the feature documentary directed by the late Roger Michell, will have its world premiere at the 53rd edition of Switzerland’s Visions du Réel (VdR) film festival.
The film will play as a special screening out of competition at the non-fiction festival in Nyon. Elizabeth looks at the life of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving female head of state in history.
It is produced by Kevin Loader for the UK’s Free Range Films, with Embankment Films handling sales and Signature distributing in the UK and Ireland.
It is one of 84 world premieres on the VdR line-up,...
- 3/17/2022
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
As 2021 mercifully winds down, the Criterion Channel have a (November) lineup that marks one of their most diverse selections in some time—films by the new masters Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Garrett Bradley, Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen (one of 2020’s best films) couched in a fantastic retrospective, and Criterion editions of old favorites.
Fourteen is featured in “Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women,” which also includes Céline and Julie, The Virgin Suicides, and Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege. Of equal note are Criterion editions for Ghost World, Night of the Hunter, and (just in time for del Toro’s spin) Nightmare Alley—all stacked releases in their own right.
See the full list of October titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.
300 Nassau, Marina Lameiro, 2015
5 Card Stud, Henry Hathaway, 1968
Alone, Garrett Bradley, 2017
Álvaro, Daniel Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Chloe Zimmerman, 2015
America, Garrett Bradley, 2019
Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953
Angels Wear White,...
Fourteen is featured in “Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women,” which also includes Céline and Julie, The Virgin Suicides, and Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege. Of equal note are Criterion editions for Ghost World, Night of the Hunter, and (just in time for del Toro’s spin) Nightmare Alley—all stacked releases in their own right.
See the full list of October titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.
300 Nassau, Marina Lameiro, 2015
5 Card Stud, Henry Hathaway, 1968
Alone, Garrett Bradley, 2017
Álvaro, Daniel Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Chloe Zimmerman, 2015
America, Garrett Bradley, 2019
Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953
Angels Wear White,...
- 10/25/2021
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Even as an old man that’s looking as though he’s getting slower with every passing year, Clint Eastwood is still the kind of guy you’d say ‘Yes sir’ to when speaking to him. Plus, his description of being macho is more or less on the nose, since there’s nothing wrong with being macho, but it’s wise to realize that it needs to be balanced out by something else. The story of an old, not aging but old, rodeo star is one that a lot of people can likely appreciate when it comes to Eastwood, who’s been seen as one of
What We Learned From the Trailer for “Cry Macho”...
What We Learned From the Trailer for “Cry Macho”...
- 8/10/2021
- by Tom Foster
- TVovermind.com
Clint Bentley’s Jockey sources its strength from its casting. Led by a career-best Clifton Collins Jr. and supported by more-than-solid performances from Molly Parker and Moisés Arias, the film leans on these three actors to tell a tried-and-true story. Bathed in the simmering goldenness of sunrises and sunsets, Jockey looks and feels like a classic sports movie, and a simple story about a man and a horse.
Written by Bentley, whose father was a jockey, and Greg Kwedar (Transpecos), the Sundance drama finds Collins as Jackson, a jockey past his prime who is looking to win one final title with an up-and-coming horse. He works with long-time trainer, Ruth (Parker), to build towards competitive success. It’s a setup that takes from decades of films that have come before it, albeit told with a beautiful glow in its setting. Told on a racetrack and in trailers existing as homes-on-the-move,...
Written by Bentley, whose father was a jockey, and Greg Kwedar (Transpecos), the Sundance drama finds Collins as Jackson, a jockey past his prime who is looking to win one final title with an up-and-coming horse. He works with long-time trainer, Ruth (Parker), to build towards competitive success. It’s a setup that takes from decades of films that have come before it, albeit told with a beautiful glow in its setting. Told on a racetrack and in trailers existing as homes-on-the-move,...
- 2/5/2021
- by Michael Frank
- The Film Stage
Everyone knows about the challenges facing major sports events in the Covid-19 world. Face masks, social distancing, bubble isolation and no spectators are among the features. Now imagine having to apply those same rules to a violent direct contact sport like rodeo. That’s the conundrum facing the Cowboy Channel as it tries to present the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, the Super Bowl of the sport, which it will showcase for ten hours per day over ten days beginning December 3. The event is being held at Globe Life Park, the Fort Worth, Texas Stockyards and Fort Worth Convention Center. It marks a move away from its longtime home in Las Vegas, where it annually sold out. The Cowboy Channel is available via in 42 million cable and satellite homes via DirecTV, Dish, Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse and other carriers. There are limited seats at the live event as well.
The Cowboy...
The Cowboy...
- 11/28/2020
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Closing out a year in which we’ve needed The Criterion Channel more than ever, they’ve now announced their impressive December lineup. Topping the highlights is a trio of Terrence Malick films––Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The New World––along with interviews featuring actors Richard Gere, Sissy Spacek, and Martin Sheen; production designer Jack Fisk; costume designer Jacqueline West; cinematographers Haskell Wexler and John Bailey; and more.
Also in the lineup is an Afrofuturism series, featuring an introduction by programmer Ashley Clark, with work by Lizzie Borden, Shirley Clarke, Souleymane Cissé, John Akomfrah, Terence Nance, and more. There’s also Mariano Llinás’s 14-hour epic La flor, Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, plus retrospectives dedicated to Mae West, Cary Grant, Barbra Streisand, and more.
Check out the lineup below and return every Friday for our weekly streaming picks.
Also in the lineup is an Afrofuturism series, featuring an introduction by programmer Ashley Clark, with work by Lizzie Borden, Shirley Clarke, Souleymane Cissé, John Akomfrah, Terence Nance, and more. There’s also Mariano Llinás’s 14-hour epic La flor, Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, plus retrospectives dedicated to Mae West, Cary Grant, Barbra Streisand, and more.
Check out the lineup below and return every Friday for our weekly streaming picks.
- 11/24/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Stan Jones wrote one of Western music’s signature songs, “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” But it’s another Jones composition, the restless “Cowpoke,” that Colter Wall interprets on his upcoming album, Western Swings & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs.
The song, originally cut back in 1951 by Elton Britt and the Skytoppers, romanticizes the wandering life of a cowboy, but makes sure to reveal some of the hardships, from loneliness to empty pockets. “I ain’t got a dime in these ol’ wore-out jeans/so I’ll stop eating steak and go back to beans,...
The song, originally cut back in 1951 by Elton Britt and the Skytoppers, romanticizes the wandering life of a cowboy, but makes sure to reveal some of the hardships, from loneliness to empty pockets. “I ain’t got a dime in these ol’ wore-out jeans/so I’ll stop eating steak and go back to beans,...
- 7/23/2020
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
Colter Wall, the Canadian cowboy singer who has made a career out of folky, old-timey Western songs, will release his third album late this summer. Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs arrives August 28th as the follow-up to 2018’s Songs of the Plains.
Ahead of the album’s release, Wall has posted the track “Western Swing & Waltzes,” a more up-tempo, swinging song than the bulk of the material on Songs of the Plains or his 2017 self-titled debut. Wall recorded the new LP at Yellow Dog Studios, Adam Odor and...
Ahead of the album’s release, Wall has posted the track “Western Swing & Waltzes,” a more up-tempo, swinging song than the bulk of the material on Songs of the Plains or his 2017 self-titled debut. Wall recorded the new LP at Yellow Dog Studios, Adam Odor and...
- 6/16/2020
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
Even Burt Reynolds in his black Trans Am, all gonna meet down at the Cadillac Ranch. No movie star has ever not given a fuck more deeply, more passionately, than the late, great Burt Reynolds. He could give off that Idgaf shrug with every muscle in his body, including the ones in his mustache. He was the Homer of American bad-ass stoicism, with Smokey and the Bandit as his Iliad and Sharky’s Machine as his Odyssey. Both of his eyebrows were finely tuned Stradivarius violins, calibrated to the point...
- 9/7/2018
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
One might expect an interrogation of nostalgia in an American movie set among rodeo riders of South Dakota, but Chloé Zhao’s second film, The Rider, avoids grand questions about the status of American myths. Instead, Zhao grounds her setting of a dwindling cowboy culture in a humble and intimate story of a young injured rider, Brady (Brady Jandreau), during his pride-bruised recovery. Tying his identity to the cowboy ethos—not the thrill, the money, or the fame, but something deeper, if more vague—and with his mother dead, his father an old cowboy (Tim Jandreau) softened by drink and age, and a clique of comrades whose culture is to man up, Brady has few people he can tell of his worries. The lonesomeness of the Western hero becomes the simple shame of a young man not able to do what he thinks is expected of him, what he's built his satisfaction around.
- 4/12/2018
- MUBI
Sam Peckinpah was a fine director of actors when the material was right, and his first collaboration with Steve McQueen is an shaded character study about a rodeo family dealing with changing times. Joe Don Baker and Ben Johnson shine, but the movie belongs to Ida Lupino and Robert Preston.
Junior Bonner
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1972 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / Special Edition / Street Date October 31, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Steve McQueen, Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, Joe Don Baker, Ben Johnson, Mary Murphy, Dub Taylor, Don ‘Red’ Barry, Bill McKinney.
Cinematography: Lucien Ballard
Film Editors: Frank Santillo, Robert L. Wolfe
Second Unit Director: Frank Kowalski
Bud Hurlbud: Special Effects
Original Music: Jerry Fielding
Written by Jeb Rosebrook
Produced by Joe Wizan
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
I suppose there were plenty of successful rodeo-themed westerns back in the day, perhaps the kind interrupted by a cowboy song every ten minutes or so.
Junior Bonner
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1972 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / Special Edition / Street Date October 31, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Steve McQueen, Robert Preston, Ida Lupino, Joe Don Baker, Ben Johnson, Mary Murphy, Dub Taylor, Don ‘Red’ Barry, Bill McKinney.
Cinematography: Lucien Ballard
Film Editors: Frank Santillo, Robert L. Wolfe
Second Unit Director: Frank Kowalski
Bud Hurlbud: Special Effects
Original Music: Jerry Fielding
Written by Jeb Rosebrook
Produced by Joe Wizan
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
I suppose there were plenty of successful rodeo-themed westerns back in the day, perhaps the kind interrupted by a cowboy song every ten minutes or so.
- 10/17/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Everyone notices the eyes first, languid, those of a somnambulist. Robert Mitchum, calm and observant, is a presence that, through passivity, enamors a viewer. His face is as effulgent as moonlight. The man smolders, with that boozy, baritone voice, seductive and soporific, a cigarette perched between wispy lips below which is a chin cleft like a geological fault. He’s slithery with innuendo. There’s an effortless allure to it all, a mix of malaise and braggadocio, a cocksure machismo and a hint of fragility. He’s ever-cool, a paradox, “radiating heat without warmth,” as Richard Brody said. A poet, a prodigious lover and drinker, a bad boy; his penchant for marijuana landed him in jail, and in the photographs from his two-month stay he looks like a natural fit. He sits, wrapped in denim, legs spread wide, hair shiny and slick, holding a cup of coffee. His mouth is...
- 9/29/2017
- MUBI
It’s that time of year again. With fall festivals like Tiff and Venice now in the rear view mirror, the film world is focused squarely on the Mecca that is New York City, for arguably the year’s most interesting festival, Nyff. Running, this year, from September 28-October 15, the lineup includes not only the 25 Main Slate releases, but numerous others spread over sections ranging from experimental features to groundbreaking shorts and even a Robert Mitchum retrospective.
So how does one go about processing all of these films, or even where to begin when setting your own viewing schedule? Well, you could stick to the well known directors or the highly buzzed about properties that are making a stop on their long festival journey from as early as Cannes or Berlin of this year. But where’s the fun in that? How about a few genuine discoveries? That’s where...
So how does one go about processing all of these films, or even where to begin when setting your own viewing schedule? Well, you could stick to the well known directors or the highly buzzed about properties that are making a stop on their long festival journey from as early as Cannes or Berlin of this year. But where’s the fun in that? How about a few genuine discoveries? That’s where...
- 9/28/2017
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
Dear Kelley and Fern,We are all on the same page for John Woo's Manhunt, no doubt—a film that casts my mind back with wry, chuckling nostalgia to first discovering the action maestro's days of glory. Such backward glances have been common to me this week. I must admit, it's been more than a bit hard to be present at Toronto—my heart, mind and soul still feels battered aghast from last week’s devastating, gaping conclusion of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return. The 25 years that separate that series from the show’s second season are a gulf of time, a void of aging and loss that you feel in every shot—a span, the finale implies, that is ultimately impossible to surmount.This gap was very much in my mind watching Youth, a nostalgic re-envisioning of the Cultural Revolution in the...
- 9/10/2017
- MUBI
(See previous post: “Gay Pride Movie Series Comes to a Close: From Heterosexual Angst to Indonesian Coup.”) Ken Russell's Valentino (1977) is notable for starring ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev as silent era icon Rudolph Valentino, whose sexual orientation, despite countless gay rumors, seems to have been, according to the available evidence, heterosexual. (Valentino's supposed affair with fellow “Latin Lover” Ramon Novarro has no basis in reality.) The female cast is also impressive: Veteran Leslie Caron (Lili, Gigi) as stage and screen star Alla Nazimova, ex-The Mamas & the Papas singer Michelle Phillips as Valentino wife and Nazimova protégée Natacha Rambova, Felicity Kendal as screenwriter/producer June Mathis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), and Carol Kane – lately of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt fame. Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) is notable as one of the greatest musicals ever made. As a 1930s Cabaret presenter – and the Spirit of Germany – Joel Grey was the year's Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner. Liza Minnelli...
- 6/30/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Metrograph
“Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z” has a packed weekend with a slate that includes Alain Resnais‘ Je t’aime, je t’aime, Nicholas Ray‘s The Lusty Men, Jackie Brown, and, yes, Jackass 3D.
Baumbach & Paltrow‘s De Palma plays with a Jim McBride feature on Saturday and two De Palma shorts on Sunday.
Metrograph
“Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z” has a packed weekend with a slate that includes Alain Resnais‘ Je t’aime, je t’aime, Nicholas Ray‘s The Lusty Men, Jackie Brown, and, yes, Jackass 3D.
Baumbach & Paltrow‘s De Palma plays with a Jim McBride feature on Saturday and two De Palma shorts on Sunday.
- 7/8/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
It's a different Bogart -- a character performance in a Nicholas Ray noir about distrust anxiety in romance. Gloria Grahame is the independent woman who must withhold her commitment... until a murder can be sorted out. Which will crack first, the murder case or the relationship? In A Lonely Place Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 810 1950 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 93 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 10, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Martha Stewart, Robert Warwick, Morris Ankrum, William Ching, Steven Geray, Hadda Brooks. Cinematography Burnett Guffey Film Editor Viola Lawrence Original Music George Antheil Written by Andrew Solt, Edmund H. North from a story by Dorothy B. Hughes Produced by Robert Lord Directed by Nicholas Ray
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Which Humphrey Bogart do you like best? By 1950 he had his own production company, Santana, with a contract for release through Columbia pictures.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Which Humphrey Bogart do you like best? By 1950 he had his own production company, Santana, with a contract for release through Columbia pictures.
- 4/30/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In his 1969 short film 3 American LP’s, the 24-year-old Wim Wenders, in the kind of feat of earnestness that can befit a young man, attempts to match his two greatest interests” America’s landscapes and its rock-and-roll music. If we’re to pick perhaps the most endearing eye-roller from this “rockist” mission statement, one can look no further than Wenders describing a Creedence Clearwater Revival album as being “like chocolate.”
But this isn’t necessarily an atypical moment in his filmography, as Wenders has always skirted the line of, for lack of a better word, corniness — if not just telegraphing his influences to at-times-obnoxious degrees, also with a kind of sentimentality both formally and politically speaking. Consider Wings of Desire‘s glossy look, which could so easily be reconfigured into a perfume-commercial aesthetic, or even just the title of one of his later, forgotten films; The End of Violence.
Yet...
But this isn’t necessarily an atypical moment in his filmography, as Wenders has always skirted the line of, for lack of a better word, corniness — if not just telegraphing his influences to at-times-obnoxious degrees, also with a kind of sentimentality both formally and politically speaking. Consider Wings of Desire‘s glossy look, which could so easily be reconfigured into a perfume-commercial aesthetic, or even just the title of one of his later, forgotten films; The End of Violence.
Yet...
- 1/29/2016
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
Dear Fernando,You are done with the festival I know, but I since I have finally caught up with Anomalisa, I wanted to answer you about it. Back in Cannes you may recall how much I enjoyed Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster, but wondered if the second time around it would carry such a punch—in other words, how founded the experience of that film is on the first encounter. This is the very question I asked myself again after sitting through Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman's animated puppet drama, a wonderfully unsettling viewing experience of constant awkwardness, drawn-out deadtime, halted humor, and a truly never ending awareness that at no point did I have any idea what kind of movie this was or where it might be going. Isn't that wild? So used to genres and conventions, signposts, patterns, throwbacks and homages, it often feels like few films come as a true surprise.
- 9/21/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Robert Mitchum ca. late 1940s. Robert Mitchum movies 'The Yakuza,' 'Ryan's Daughter' on TCM Today, Aug. 12, '15, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series is highlighting the career of Robert Mitchum. Two of the films being shown this evening are The Yakuza and Ryan's Daughter. The former is one of the disappointingly few TCM premieres this month. (See TCM's Robert Mitchum movie schedule further below.) Despite his film noir background, Robert Mitchum was a somewhat unusual choice to star in The Yakuza (1975), a crime thriller set in the Japanese underworld. Ryan's Daughter or no, Mitchum hadn't been a box office draw in quite some time; in the mid-'70s, one would have expected a Warner Bros. release directed by Sydney Pollack – who had recently handled the likes of Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, and Robert Redford – to star someone like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman.
- 8/13/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The cinematic universe of romance novelist Nicholas Sparks has become a theatrical institution best described as “Shyamalanian.” The films stick to a particular genre formula, but that’s part of the fun: an unlikely romance is challenged by dubious (or even better, insane) plot twists that all the same allow for a happily-ever-after-enough ending. The shtick is part of the appeal, as watching beautiful people fall in love only gets more exciting when you know they’ll have to overcome a coo-coo bananas curveball or two. As the 10th entry in a potentially-stagnating brand, The Longest Ride tries out something more daring than any ghost wife or organ transplant shuffle: being sweetly, uneventfully boring.
The structure of The Longest Ride is the biggest surprise it has in store, as the first twenty minutes or so are by-the-numbers Sparks. An artsy college senior, Sophia (Britt Robertson) meets a shit-kicking bull rider,...
The structure of The Longest Ride is the biggest surprise it has in store, as the first twenty minutes or so are by-the-numbers Sparks. An artsy college senior, Sophia (Britt Robertson) meets a shit-kicking bull rider,...
- 4/10/2015
- by Sam Woolf
- We Got This Covered
The 19th Human Rights Watch Film Festival is returning to the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton from the 18th to the 27th of March. You can find the whole program here, along with a statement from the Festival Director John Biaggi. For Film Comment, Jordan Osterer interviews Buzzard director Joel Potrykus:
"Film Comment: There’s a divide in the film between idle, detached moments and pretty graphic content. How do you negotiate the gap between these very quiet moments and the more extreme situations?
Potrykus: My whole theory of making films is that I want to lull audiences to sleep—I almost want to bore them—and then right before they fall asleep, kick them in the balls."
David Robert Mitchell's It Follows is Sight & Sound's film of the week; Kim Newman reviews. Not one, not two, but three successful Kickstarter campaigns to take note of:
1. Living Los Sures...
"Film Comment: There’s a divide in the film between idle, detached moments and pretty graphic content. How do you negotiate the gap between these very quiet moments and the more extreme situations?
Potrykus: My whole theory of making films is that I want to lull audiences to sleep—I almost want to bore them—and then right before they fall asleep, kick them in the balls."
David Robert Mitchell's It Follows is Sight & Sound's film of the week; Kim Newman reviews. Not one, not two, but three successful Kickstarter campaigns to take note of:
1. Living Los Sures...
- 3/4/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
If you were looking for a primer on Jean-Luc Godard, you couldn't do much better than J. Hoberman's latest piece for the Nation. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Matthew Asprey Gear on the conspiracy thriller Orson Welles never got around to making, Imogen Sara Smith on Jacques Tati's Playtime, Julien Allen on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death, Adam Nayman on George Stevens’s Shane, Robert Cashill on Richard Fleischer's Che!, Christopher Sharrett on Roger Corman's Bloody Mama, Leonard Quart on Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men, interviews with Martín Rejtman, Andrei Zvyagintsev, Matt Porterfield, David Robert Mitchell (It Follows), Daniel Wolfe (Catch Me Daddy)—and much more. » - David Hudson...
- 2/27/2015
- Keyframe
If you were looking for a primer on Jean-Luc Godard, you couldn't do much better than J. Hoberman's latest piece for the Nation. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Matthew Asprey Gear on the conspiracy thriller Orson Welles never got around to making, Imogen Sara Smith on Jacques Tati's Playtime, Julien Allen on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death, Adam Nayman on George Stevens’s Shane, Robert Cashill on Richard Fleischer's Che!, Christopher Sharrett on Roger Corman's Bloody Mama, Leonard Quart on Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men, interviews with Martín Rejtman, Andrei Zvyagintsev, Matt Porterfield, David Robert Mitchell (It Follows), Daniel Wolfe (Catch Me Daddy)—and much more. » - David Hudson...
- 2/27/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Edited by Adam Cook
Above: if you are fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of MoMA between now and November 21st, you may want to consider visiting their Bill Morrison exhibition. David Ehrlich of The Playlist interviews Mia Hansen-Løve about her new film Eden, as well as her next project. In a web exclusive piece for Sight & Sound, Michael Pattison writes on experimental films from the London Film Festival and 25Fps in Zagreb:
"All art is by its very nature experimental. In the face of an increasingly standardised narrative cinema, one defining feature of the experimental mode might be miscellany. Festival programmes celebrating ‘experimental cinema’ subsequently accommodate everything from the impenetrably personal to the familiarly abstract.
More than most, when housed together, such works demand an omnivorously receptive sensibility: preferences are fine, but one’s sustained appreciation of this genre seemingly depends upon how long one is able to keep an open mind.
Above: if you are fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of MoMA between now and November 21st, you may want to consider visiting their Bill Morrison exhibition. David Ehrlich of The Playlist interviews Mia Hansen-Løve about her new film Eden, as well as her next project. In a web exclusive piece for Sight & Sound, Michael Pattison writes on experimental films from the London Film Festival and 25Fps in Zagreb:
"All art is by its very nature experimental. In the face of an increasingly standardised narrative cinema, one defining feature of the experimental mode might be miscellany. Festival programmes celebrating ‘experimental cinema’ subsequently accommodate everything from the impenetrably personal to the familiarly abstract.
More than most, when housed together, such works demand an omnivorously receptive sensibility: preferences are fine, but one’s sustained appreciation of this genre seemingly depends upon how long one is able to keep an open mind.
- 10/15/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Out of the Past
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
USA, 1947
Director Jacques Tourneur knew how to make the most out of a little, particularly when he was working in collaboration with producer Val Lewton (see Cat People, 1942, I Walked with a Zombie, 1943, and The Leopard Man, 1943). So when Rko gave this master of the low-budget picture a comparatively larger budget and a top-notch screenplay (by Daniel Mainwaring—as Geoffrey Homes—based on his own novel, “Build My Gallows High”) the result was one of the finest of all film noir.
Starring Robert Mitchum as Jeff and Jane Greer as Kathie, Out of the Past is built on a premise that is one of the defining characteristics of noir: the inevitability of an inescapable past. Such a device was often integral, with the repercussions of one’s recent deeds coming back to haunt them, but relatively rare was...
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
USA, 1947
Director Jacques Tourneur knew how to make the most out of a little, particularly when he was working in collaboration with producer Val Lewton (see Cat People, 1942, I Walked with a Zombie, 1943, and The Leopard Man, 1943). So when Rko gave this master of the low-budget picture a comparatively larger budget and a top-notch screenplay (by Daniel Mainwaring—as Geoffrey Homes—based on his own novel, “Build My Gallows High”) the result was one of the finest of all film noir.
Starring Robert Mitchum as Jeff and Jane Greer as Kathie, Out of the Past is built on a premise that is one of the defining characteristics of noir: the inevitability of an inescapable past. Such a device was often integral, with the repercussions of one’s recent deeds coming back to haunt them, but relatively rare was...
- 9/2/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
No sleep for cinephiles as the fall festival season keeps stacking one enticing movie upon another. In case you thought it was only new movies worth paying attention to, guess again, as the New York Film Festival has unveiled a slate of restored films (along with with their Documentary, Applied Science and How Democracy Works Now programming) that will be heavenly manna for those looking to check out classic films in crisp new editions. So what can you look forward to? Martin Scorsese's underrated and pretty gorgeous "The Age Of Innocence" gets a restoration. Two Nicholas Ray films get spruced up — his rodeo western "The Lusty Men" and film noir classic "The Live By Night" — while French filmmaker Leos Carax also gets two movies restored with "Mauvais Sang" and "Boy Meets Girl." Legends Luschino Visconti and Alain Resnais get "Sandra" and "Providence" touched up respectively while filmmakers Apichatpong Weerasetakhul,...
- 8/26/2013
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Above: A 35mm still image from We Can't Go Home Again.
Mubi is currently showing throughout most of the world two wonderful Nicholas Ray films. One is his final film, uncompleted but beautifully restored and reconstructed, We Can't Go Home Again (1973). The other is a new documentary by Susan Ray, the filmmaker's widow, Don't Expect Too Much, that is a companion piece to this wildly experimental, collaborative feature. We are showing these two features to celebrate Ray and bring attention to The Nicholas Ray Foundation's Kickstarter project funding a new documentary on the filmmaker, Action! Master Class with Nicholas Ray.
Update: After not making the previous project goal, a new Kickstarter projection for Action! can be found here. We highly encourage you to donate your support. From the project's description:
"In Action! you'll encounter Nick's charismatic presence as he shares his knowledge of what he called "the cathedral of the arts.
Mubi is currently showing throughout most of the world two wonderful Nicholas Ray films. One is his final film, uncompleted but beautifully restored and reconstructed, We Can't Go Home Again (1973). The other is a new documentary by Susan Ray, the filmmaker's widow, Don't Expect Too Much, that is a companion piece to this wildly experimental, collaborative feature. We are showing these two features to celebrate Ray and bring attention to The Nicholas Ray Foundation's Kickstarter project funding a new documentary on the filmmaker, Action! Master Class with Nicholas Ray.
Update: After not making the previous project goal, a new Kickstarter projection for Action! can be found here. We highly encourage you to donate your support. From the project's description:
"In Action! you'll encounter Nick's charismatic presence as he shares his knowledge of what he called "the cathedral of the arts.
- 1/8/2013
- by Notebook
- MUBI
News.
The Rome Film Festival has come to a close and the awards have been handed out. David Hudson has the details at Keyframe. The big winner? Larry Clark's Marfa Girl, which as of today has been independently released online. The Berlin Film Festival has announced its retrospective for February, and it's a particularly inspired choice: "The Weimar Touch," which is "devoted to how cinema from the Weimar Republic influenced international filmmaking after 1933. It will focus on continuities, mutual effects and transformations in the films of German-speaking emigrants up into the 1950s." A welcome surprise in casting news: Viggo Mortensen has signed up for Lisandro Alonso's next feature, on which he will also serve as producer.
Finds.
Above: via Three Colors, Jean-Luc Godard on the set of his next film, Adieu au langage. On the very left is cinematographer Fabrice Aragno, whom I interviewed here in the Notebook.
The Rome Film Festival has come to a close and the awards have been handed out. David Hudson has the details at Keyframe. The big winner? Larry Clark's Marfa Girl, which as of today has been independently released online. The Berlin Film Festival has announced its retrospective for February, and it's a particularly inspired choice: "The Weimar Touch," which is "devoted to how cinema from the Weimar Republic influenced international filmmaking after 1933. It will focus on continuities, mutual effects and transformations in the films of German-speaking emigrants up into the 1950s." A welcome surprise in casting news: Viggo Mortensen has signed up for Lisandro Alonso's next feature, on which he will also serve as producer.
Finds.
Above: via Three Colors, Jean-Luc Godard on the set of his next film, Adieu au langage. On the very left is cinematographer Fabrice Aragno, whom I interviewed here in the Notebook.
- 11/21/2012
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
While adored by the French and the Cahiers Du Cinema coterie that went on to become the rebellious French New Wave -- which spawned the oft-quoted Jean-Luc Godard phrase "cinema is Nicholas Ray" -- the American filmmaker never really received his due outside of the one film of his that most moviegoers have seen (and even then, they’re possibly unaware that he directed it): “Rebel Without A Cause.” And while that iconic 1950s film, with its audacious, expressionistic colors, its passionate angst and anguish, its mix of quiet machismo and vulnerability, is perhaps the cornerstone of many of Nicholas Ray’s films -- vibrant melodrama on the surface, percolating emotional agony within -- it’s certainly just the tip of iceberg when it comes to the director’s career.
Starting out as a would-be actor, Ray moved to moved to New York where he appeared in the great Elia Kazan's theater debut.
Starting out as a would-be actor, Ray moved to moved to New York where he appeared in the great Elia Kazan's theater debut.
- 6/15/2012
- by The Playlist Staff
- The Playlist
I used to believe, like Wenders or Godard, in the death of cinema. I accepted it as fact but never believed in it. The movies, that’s what I believed in—a dark room, shadows on a surface, a bunch of lonely people sitting down, looking up.
Like Leos Carax to Serge Daney, Abel Ferrara showed me there’d be cinema ‘til the end of the world.
***
At first I thought Abel Ferrara’s films were badly acted; I soon realized Ferrara would take bad acting with truth in it over a masterpiece of falsehoods. (Later I found out that Ferrara would, in Dangerous Game and New Rose Hotel, use one to create the other.)
I thought his films were too commercial. “Already captivated by cinema, I didn’t need to be seduced as well,” as Serge Daney put it. Hollywood in the 21st century is a highly sophisticated marketing ploy.
Like Leos Carax to Serge Daney, Abel Ferrara showed me there’d be cinema ‘til the end of the world.
***
At first I thought Abel Ferrara’s films were badly acted; I soon realized Ferrara would take bad acting with truth in it over a masterpiece of falsehoods. (Later I found out that Ferrara would, in Dangerous Game and New Rose Hotel, use one to create the other.)
I thought his films were too commercial. “Already captivated by cinema, I didn’t need to be seduced as well,” as Serge Daney put it. Hollywood in the 21st century is a highly sophisticated marketing ploy.
- 3/19/2012
- MUBI
“I didn’t know who to believe—my parents or the television set.” — We Can’t Go Home Again ('73 cut)
“On the one hand, Ray has a knack for disrupting smooth sequences with odd interpolations… a sense of trying to carve out some space for immediacy and spontaneity inside institutionalized patterns of construction. But against this is a proclivity for heavy symbolic underlining and general schematization, which place the individual movements of the films within thickly determined contours” — B. Kite, Bigger Than Life: Somewhere in Suburbia
“Salvation is a private affair.” — Jacques Rivette, On Imagination
Some thoughts crystallized around We Can’t Go Home Again.
***
In retrospect, Nicholas Ray can seem as much like the last great Hollywood romantic as the first serious parodist of a generation, Godard, Oshima, Ruiz, still to come: anatomizing genre structure and hallmarks not to show the extension of personal philosophy into any...
“On the one hand, Ray has a knack for disrupting smooth sequences with odd interpolations… a sense of trying to carve out some space for immediacy and spontaneity inside institutionalized patterns of construction. But against this is a proclivity for heavy symbolic underlining and general schematization, which place the individual movements of the films within thickly determined contours” — B. Kite, Bigger Than Life: Somewhere in Suburbia
“Salvation is a private affair.” — Jacques Rivette, On Imagination
Some thoughts crystallized around We Can’t Go Home Again.
***
In retrospect, Nicholas Ray can seem as much like the last great Hollywood romantic as the first serious parodist of a generation, Godard, Oshima, Ruiz, still to come: anatomizing genre structure and hallmarks not to show the extension of personal philosophy into any...
- 10/4/2011
- MUBI
The title of Lee Server’s acclaimed 2002 biography, Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don’t Care (MacMillan), offers a perfect encapsulization of the eponymous actor: a hard-partying Hollywood Bad Boy who didn’t give a damn what moralizing finger-waggers thought of him, or what his peers in the movie business thought, or the press, or even the public. He was going to go his own way and to hell with you, and anyone positioning themselves to make strong objection was just as likely to get a punch in the nose as shown the actor’s broad back. He worked hardest at conveying the idea that the thing he did for a living – acting – was also the thing he cared least about; an impression that may have been his most convincing performance.
The Bad Boy part of Mitchum’s reputation was honestly come by. As a youth, he’d been booted from more than one school,...
The Bad Boy part of Mitchum’s reputation was honestly come by. As a youth, he’d been booted from more than one school,...
- 2/28/2011
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
Actors on Actors looks at screen moments when stars are name-checked... by other stars! It's very meta. Since we're multi-tasking today trying to catch up, it's also a Tuesday Top Ten! In this episode, a scene from My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
Julia Roberts: I have big plans for dancing. Just give me 30-35 years."
Rupert Everett [the voice on that ginormous cel phone]: The misery. The exquisite tragedy. The Susan Hayward of it all!"The umimpeachably witty Mr. Everett (aided by that film's wonderful screenplay from Ronald Bass) is, of course, referring to the grand high priestess of exclamatory drama, Miss "I Want to Live!" Herself. It's not just those curtain-chewing performances, the desperate women she played or the trashy films but the gleefully histrionic taglines, too.
For no reason other than that I plan to live my life with exclamation points this week...
10 Best Taglines from Susan Hayward Films (We really should do like...
Julia Roberts: I have big plans for dancing. Just give me 30-35 years."
Rupert Everett [the voice on that ginormous cel phone]: The misery. The exquisite tragedy. The Susan Hayward of it all!"The umimpeachably witty Mr. Everett (aided by that film's wonderful screenplay from Ronald Bass) is, of course, referring to the grand high priestess of exclamatory drama, Miss "I Want to Live!" Herself. It's not just those curtain-chewing performances, the desperate women she played or the trashy films but the gleefully histrionic taglines, too.
For no reason other than that I plan to live my life with exclamation points this week...
10 Best Taglines from Susan Hayward Films (We really should do like...
- 9/29/2010
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
David Dortort, who created "Bonanza," the top-rated Western that aired for 14 years on NBC with family values as its centerpiece, died Sept. 5 in his apartment in Westwood. He was 93.
"Bonanza" ran from 1959-73, was the most-watched show on television from 1964-67 and maintained a place in the ratings top 10 for a decade. Dortort also created "The High Chaparral," which originally followed "Bonanza" on Sunday nights on NBC and ran for three seasons.
In 1959, Dortort pitched his show to RCA subsidiary NBC. "Bonanza" would be filmed in color in gorgeous Lake Tahoe, Nev. -- to help promote the sale of RCA's color TVs -- and feature a cast of relative unknowns (Michael Landon, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Pernell Roberts) as members of the Cartwright family.
Dortort went away from the typical Western formula of focusing on lone drifters, choosing to focus on a family of three boys and a father living on the Ponderosa Ranch.
"Bonanza" ran from 1959-73, was the most-watched show on television from 1964-67 and maintained a place in the ratings top 10 for a decade. Dortort also created "The High Chaparral," which originally followed "Bonanza" on Sunday nights on NBC and ran for three seasons.
In 1959, Dortort pitched his show to RCA subsidiary NBC. "Bonanza" would be filmed in color in gorgeous Lake Tahoe, Nev. -- to help promote the sale of RCA's color TVs -- and feature a cast of relative unknowns (Michael Landon, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Pernell Roberts) as members of the Cartwright family.
Dortort went away from the typical Western formula of focusing on lone drifters, choosing to focus on a family of three boys and a father living on the Ponderosa Ranch.
- 9/7/2010
- by By Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
New York City's Film Forum will salute director Nicholas Ray with a 14-film retrospective, July 24 through August 6.
Born Nicholas Raymond Kienzle in Galesville, Wisconsin, Ray won a scholarship at age 16 to study drama and architecture at the University of Chicago, and would later earn a fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright. Following college, he moved to New York, where he joined Elia Kazan's Theatre of Action.
Upon moving to Hollywood, Ray was hired as an assistant for Kazan's first film, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." He made his directorial debut at Rko in 1947 with the noir classic "They Live By Night." After directing seven more pictures at Rko, Ray became a free agent and produced some of his most memorable work, including "Johnny Guitar," "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Bigger Than Life." Ray's Hollywood career ended after he collapsed from nervous exhaustion on a set in 1962. Remaining in ill health...
Born Nicholas Raymond Kienzle in Galesville, Wisconsin, Ray won a scholarship at age 16 to study drama and architecture at the University of Chicago, and would later earn a fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright. Following college, he moved to New York, where he joined Elia Kazan's Theatre of Action.
Upon moving to Hollywood, Ray was hired as an assistant for Kazan's first film, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." He made his directorial debut at Rko in 1947 with the noir classic "They Live By Night." After directing seven more pictures at Rko, Ray became a free agent and produced some of his most memorable work, including "Johnny Guitar," "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Bigger Than Life." Ray's Hollywood career ended after he collapsed from nervous exhaustion on a set in 1962. Remaining in ill health...
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