With the Academy Awards just a month away, it’s the perfect time to look at fun facts, trivia and tidbits for both this year and historically.
John Williams, who just turned 91, reaped his 53rd Oscar nomination for scoring Steven Spielberg’s movie memoir “The Fabelmans.” Three of his five Oscar wins are for Spielberg films. His first Oscar nomination was for Best Music for 1967’s “Valley of the Dolls” and his first win was for Best Music (scoring adaptation and original song score) for 1971’s “Fiddler on the Roof.” And what was the first film he scored? The long-forgotten 1958 Aip release 1958 “Daddy-o.”
In terms of nominations, Williams is second only to Walt Disney. During his 40-plus year film career, he received 26 Oscar — 22 of those were competitive — and a staggering 59 bids. At the 5th Oscars, he won an honorary Oscar for creating Mickey Mouse, while winning the Academy Award for...
John Williams, who just turned 91, reaped his 53rd Oscar nomination for scoring Steven Spielberg’s movie memoir “The Fabelmans.” Three of his five Oscar wins are for Spielberg films. His first Oscar nomination was for Best Music for 1967’s “Valley of the Dolls” and his first win was for Best Music (scoring adaptation and original song score) for 1971’s “Fiddler on the Roof.” And what was the first film he scored? The long-forgotten 1958 Aip release 1958 “Daddy-o.”
In terms of nominations, Williams is second only to Walt Disney. During his 40-plus year film career, he received 26 Oscar — 22 of those were competitive — and a staggering 59 bids. At the 5th Oscars, he won an honorary Oscar for creating Mickey Mouse, while winning the Academy Award for...
- 2/15/2023
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
Anthony Asquith’s unusual look at wartime espionage garnered good notices in 1958, perhaps from reviewers rebelling against the trend toward ruthless screen violence. Star Paul Massie is fine as an emotionally-stricken Allied assassin who balks at carrying out his mission; the acting support from Irene Worth and Leslie French is superb. Screenwriter Paul Dehn was an ace at sharp, no-nonsense thrillers, but this story is soft around the edges — it seems to be explaining non-chivalric warfare to your sweet old grandmother. Which reminds us, Lillian Gish has a small role, too.
Orders to Kill
Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1958 / B&w / 1:75 widescreen / 112 93 min. / Street Date September 20, 2022 / available from Amazon / 34.99
Starring: Eddie Albert, Paul Massie, Lillian Gish, James Robertson Justice, Leslie French, Irene Worth, John Crawford, Lionel Jeffries, Sandra Dorne, Lillabea (Lillie Bea) Gifford, Anne Blake, Sam Kydd, Ann Walford, Denyse Alexander, Ralph Nosseck.
Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson
Art Director: John Howell
Film...
Orders to Kill
Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1958 / B&w / 1:75 widescreen / 112 93 min. / Street Date September 20, 2022 / available from Amazon / 34.99
Starring: Eddie Albert, Paul Massie, Lillian Gish, James Robertson Justice, Leslie French, Irene Worth, John Crawford, Lionel Jeffries, Sandra Dorne, Lillabea (Lillie Bea) Gifford, Anne Blake, Sam Kydd, Ann Walford, Denyse Alexander, Ralph Nosseck.
Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson
Art Director: John Howell
Film...
- 9/17/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
During lockdown, director Edgar Wright dug deep into the history of British cinema – guided by a letter from a living legend
Read Mark Kermode’s interview with Edgar Wright
When the film-maker Edgar Wright told his hero Martin Scorsese he’d “always been curious as to what some of your favourite British films were growing up”, the great director responded with this list of mid-20th century gems.
Shooting Stars
Anthony Asquith (1927)...
Read Mark Kermode’s interview with Edgar Wright
When the film-maker Edgar Wright told his hero Martin Scorsese he’d “always been curious as to what some of your favourite British films were growing up”, the great director responded with this list of mid-20th century gems.
Shooting Stars
Anthony Asquith (1927)...
- 10/24/2021
- The Guardian - Film News
During a three-hour discussion on a recent episode of “The Empire Film Podcast,” Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino revealed the existence of their makeshift quarantine movie club over the last 9 months. As Wright explained, “It’s nice. We’ve kept in touch in a sort of way that cinephiles do. It’s been one of the very few blessings of this [pandemic], the chance to disappear down a rabbit hole with the hours indoors that we have.” Tarantino added, “Edgar is more social than I am. It’s a big deal that I’ve been talking to him these past 9 months.”
A bulk of the film club was curated by none other than Martin Scorsese, who sent Wright a recommendation list of nearly 50 British films that Scorsese considers personal favorites. In the five months Wright spent in lockdown before resuming production on “Last Night in Soho” — and before he received the...
A bulk of the film club was curated by none other than Martin Scorsese, who sent Wright a recommendation list of nearly 50 British films that Scorsese considers personal favorites. In the five months Wright spent in lockdown before resuming production on “Last Night in Soho” — and before he received the...
- 2/8/2021
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
EntertainmentFrom 'Parasakthi' to 'Gentleman', here are some of the Tamil films made before the 2000s available for streaming online on the Ott platform.Tnm StaffOnline streaming platforms are a great way to catch up with films that you might have missed watching in theatres. These platforms are also becoming a good repository for films that offer a quick fix for your K TV/Raj TV loving heart. Amazon Prime, for instance, has a very good collection of old Tamil films that you probably didn’t know was available to stream online in good quality, ad-free. On a lazy weekend afternoon, if you’re in the mood for some old Tamil drama, the ones that were made before the glitz of the new millennium, take your pick from this list. Parasakthi 1952 If you haven’t heard about this film, you’re probably not from here. But not to worry, it’s...
- 7/26/2019
- by Anjana
- The News Minute
It’s expressive silent filmmaking at its best — Anthony Asquith vies with Alfred Hitchcock for direction in silent-era England. Elissa Landi and Brian Aherne meet in the Tube but become entangled in the jealous scheme of the jealous Cyril McLaglen. Restored just a few years back after being unavailable for generations, this is a beauty: the BFI gives it a full orchestral orchestra score, plus a second avant-garde ‘contextual audio’ track.
Underground
Blu-ray
Kino Classics / BFI
1928 / B&W / 1:33 silent ap. / 93 min. / Street Date April 23, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Elissa Landi, Brian Aherne, Cyril McLaglen, Norah Baring.
Cinematography: Stanley Rodwell
Art Direction: Ian Campbell-Gray
Written and Directed by Anthony Asquith
If one was asked to come up with the name of a ‘tame’ English director, the answer a while back might have been Anthony Asquith, a privileged toff whose post-grad lark was to spend a year in Hollywood, learning all...
Underground
Blu-ray
Kino Classics / BFI
1928 / B&W / 1:33 silent ap. / 93 min. / Street Date April 23, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Elissa Landi, Brian Aherne, Cyril McLaglen, Norah Baring.
Cinematography: Stanley Rodwell
Art Direction: Ian Campbell-Gray
Written and Directed by Anthony Asquith
If one was asked to come up with the name of a ‘tame’ English director, the answer a while back might have been Anthony Asquith, a privileged toff whose post-grad lark was to spend a year in Hollywood, learning all...
- 3/30/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
KollywoodWhile this genre has always been popular among audiences, we’ve listed some of the best films from the past.Anjana ShekarYoutube ScreengrabsWhat would be the ideal scale to rate a good thriller? Is it by the number of screams and gasps it elicits? Is it by the number of dramatic ‘pa-pa-pa-paaaam’ background music? Or is it by the number of times it gets your heart racing for inexplicable reasons? My very first recollection of a thriller is that of a major cult classic from Tamil cinema, a film that’ll garner the same ‘dramatic’ wide-eyed reaction from many when you name it – Athey Kangal! I’ve seen this film so many times that I can perfectly match the loud screams just by listening to the film’s audio. Directed by AC Tirulokchandar, this film that came out in 1967 was a major success upon its release. Starring Ravichandran and Kanchana in lead roles, Athey Kangal is a Raymond Chandleresque, tightly wound thriller, centred around a series of mysterious killings that take place inside a house. The intense plot twists, heightened drama and the final big reveal make this film a gripping watch, irrespective of the number of times you’ve already seen it. While the thriller genre has always been popular among Tamil audiences, here is a list of some of the must-watch films from before the 1990s. Andha Naal (1954) All hell broke loose in Tamil cinema when this film released. In addition to being one of the best thrillers to this day, this film was also the first Tamil film without any song, dance or stunt sequences. While it is popular belief that Sundaram Balachandar’s Andha Naal was adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon (1950), film historian Randor Guy writes that the film is actually an adaptation of Anthony Asquith’s The Woman in Question (1950). Rajan (played by Sivaji Ganesan), a radio engineer, is found dead under suspicious circumstances. The film unfolds in the form of investigations where one character leads them to the other until the killer and their motive is finally revealed. With a short runtime of 130 minutes, the film was also lauded for its camera work and narrative technique. Nenjam Marappathillai (1963) With its unusual storyline, this is another film worthy of being called a cult classic. Director CV Sridhar has admitted to have been inspired from real life incidents that he read in the newspaper. The film has some brilliant sequences, and the cinematography by Aloysius Vincent was lauded by many. The climax is quite literally edge-of-the-seat and the brilliant background score compensates for the absence of dialogues in the climax. Puthiya Paravai (1964) Puthiya Paravai, starring Sivaji Ganesan, Saroja Devi and Sowcar Janaki, was a great success when it released. A popular adaptation of the English film Chase A Crooked Shadow (1958) by noted filmmaker Michael Anderson, Puthiya Paravai is best known for its narrative technique. There’s plenty of glitz, reckless living and endearing romance in the film. The big reveal, however, is one that will not fail to take you by surprise. The film was also popular for its chart-busting songs. Shanthi Nilayam (1969) This film is a loose adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre. The film’s narrative steadily builds up with eerie sounds and clever play with light and shadows. The scene where the woman walks with a lantern at night and the song shot in a hot-air balloon are some of the memorable scenes from this film. Interestingly, Shanthi Nilayam fetched its cinematographer Marcus Bartley a National Award. Sigappu Rojakkal (1978) This film can be called Tamil cinema’s coming-of-age thriller, one of the very earliest successful psychological thriller films. In fact, Bharathiraja’s Sigappu Rojakkal brought in an interesting resurgence of thriller films soon after. Kamal Haasan plays a successful businessman who seduces women and later kills them. Kamal’s hatred towards women is slowly unveiled as the film progresses, leading up to a thrilling chase with the heroine, Sridevi. This film has inspired several other films including Dhanush’s Kadhal Kondein (2003) and Simbu’s Manmadhan (2004). Moodu Pani (1980) The song ‘Yen Iniya Pon Nilave’ from this film might be a breezy number, but there is nothing breezy about the film’s plot-line. In a sense Moodu Pani has strong similarities to Sigappu Rojakkal. This film has often been compared with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho for its uncanny resemblance to the latter’s climax. Directed by Balu Mahendra, the film has nail-biting sequences and has often been regarded as one among Balu Mahendra’s masterpieces. Needless to say, the film has some of Tamil cinema’s best visuals. Nooravathu Naal (1984) This film is a cult classic in its truest sense. So much so that it was believed to have inspired real-life serial killer Auto Shankar who went on a killing spree between 1988 and 1989. The film’s solid storytelling by its director Manivannan and a riveting performance by Sathyaraj are its highlights. The film’s suspense is sustained till the very end leading to an insanely unexpected climax. Also on our list: Tik Tik Tik (1981) Karayellam Shenbagapoo (1981) Oru Kaidhiyin Diary (1984) Also Read: Beyond romance: 9 on-screen couples from Tamil cinema who gave us relationship goals p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 14.7px Helvetica; color: #222222; -webkit-text-stroke: #222222; background-color: #ffffff} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 14.7px Helvetica; color: #500050; -webkit-text-stroke: #500050; background-color: #ffffff} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 12.8px Arial; color: #222222; -webkit-text-stroke: #222222; background-color: #ffffff} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}...
- 7/5/2018
- by Monalisa
- The News Minute
Hitchcock’s first self-professed ‘Hitch’ picture is still a winner. Many of his recurring themes are present, and some of his visual fluidity – in this finely tuned commercial ‘shock’ movie with witty visual tricks from Hitchcock’s own background as an art director. And hey, he secured a real box office name to star as the mysterious maybe-slayer, ‘The Avenger.’
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 885
1927 / B&W + Color tints / 1:33 Silent Ap / 91 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 27, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Ivor Novello, June Tripp, Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, Malcolm Keen.
Cinematography: Gaetano di Ventimiglia
Film Editor + titles: Ivor Montagu
Assistant director: Alma Reville
Written by Eliot Stannard from the book by Marie Belloc Lowndes
Produced by Michael Balcon and Carlyle Blackwell
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock became the most notable English film director for all the right reasons — he was talented and creative,...
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 885
1927 / B&W + Color tints / 1:33 Silent Ap / 91 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 27, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Ivor Novello, June Tripp, Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, Malcolm Keen.
Cinematography: Gaetano di Ventimiglia
Film Editor + titles: Ivor Montagu
Assistant director: Alma Reville
Written by Eliot Stannard from the book by Marie Belloc Lowndes
Produced by Michael Balcon and Carlyle Blackwell
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock became the most notable English film director for all the right reasons — he was talented and creative,...
- 6/13/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Blake Edwards: Director of the 'Pink Panther' movies – and Julie Andrews' husband for more than four decades – was at his best handling polished comedies and a couple of dead serious dramas. Blake Edwards movies: Best known for slapstick fare, but at his best handling polished comedies and dramas The Pink Panther and its sequels[1] are the movies most closely associated with screenwriter-director-producer Blake Edwards, whose film and television career spanned more than half a century.[2] But unless you're a fan of Keystone Kops-style slapstick, they're the filmmaker's least interesting efforts. In fact, Edwards (born William Blake Crump in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 26, 1922) was at his best (co-)writing and/or directing polished comedies (e.g., Operation Petticoat, Victor Victoria) and, less frequently, dramas (Days of Wine and Roses, the romantic comedy-drama Breakfast at Tiffany's). The article below and follow-up posts offer a brief look at some of Blake Edwards' non-Pink Panther comedies,...
- 5/29/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
★★★★★ An unbroken crane shot in Shooting Stars' opening scene, tracking movie starlet Mae Feather (Annette Benson) as she wanders from her own ground-level film set into the first-floor set of her lover's, easily matches both Goodfellas' restaurant scene and the opening sequence of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. It's an achievement made all the more impressive by both the technological limitations of the time and the fact that it was British director Anthony Asquith's debut film. Helping matters is Henry Harris and Stanley Rodwell's gorgeous cinematography, which uses expressionistic light and shadow that ironically plays with the boundaries between artificial sets and 'real' space, a theme that informs the film's central narrative. Indeed, Shooting Stars is at its most successful when it juxtaposes its stars' unhappy private lives with the artifice of public celebrity.
- 3/22/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Each week, the fine folks at Fandor add a number of films to their Criterion Picks area, which will then be available to subscribers for the following twelve days. This week, the Criterion Picks focus on eight films from the Criterion Collection that were later remade.
Don’t have a Fandor subscription? They offer a free trial membership.
The Blob, the Horror film by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.
A cult classic of gooey greatness, The Blob follows the havoc wreaked on a small town by an outer-space monster with neither soul nor vertebrae, with Steve McQueen playing the rebel teen who tries to warn the residents about the jellylike invader.
The Hidden Fortress, the Japanese Action/Adventure film by Akira Kurosawa
This rip-roaring ride is among the director’s most beloved films and was a primary influence on George Lucas’ Star Wars. The Hidden Fortress delivers Kurosawa’s trademark deft blend of wry humor,...
Don’t have a Fandor subscription? They offer a free trial membership.
The Blob, the Horror film by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.
A cult classic of gooey greatness, The Blob follows the havoc wreaked on a small town by an outer-space monster with neither soul nor vertebrae, with Steve McQueen playing the rebel teen who tries to warn the residents about the jellylike invader.
The Hidden Fortress, the Japanese Action/Adventure film by Akira Kurosawa
This rip-roaring ride is among the director’s most beloved films and was a primary influence on George Lucas’ Star Wars. The Hidden Fortress delivers Kurosawa’s trademark deft blend of wry humor,...
- 1/19/2016
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Each week, the fine folks at Fandor add a number of films to their Criterion Picks area, which will then be available to subscribers for the following twelve days. This week, the Criterion Picks focus on 8 mystery films.
Secrets, lies, clues and questionable motives: follow these films as they insist on (or resist) throwing light on the dark corners of human nature.
Don’t have a Fandor subscription? They offer a free trial membership.
Confidentially Yours, the French Crime film by François Truffaut
When a real estate agent is framed for the murders of his wife and her lover, it is up to his faithful secretary to solve the mystery.
The Element of Crime, the Danish Crime film by Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier’s stunning debut film is the story of Fisher, an exiled ex-cop who returns to his old beat to catch a serial killer with a taste for young girls.
Secrets, lies, clues and questionable motives: follow these films as they insist on (or resist) throwing light on the dark corners of human nature.
Don’t have a Fandor subscription? They offer a free trial membership.
Confidentially Yours, the French Crime film by François Truffaut
When a real estate agent is framed for the murders of his wife and her lover, it is up to his faithful secretary to solve the mystery.
The Element of Crime, the Danish Crime film by Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier’s stunning debut film is the story of Fisher, an exiled ex-cop who returns to his old beat to catch a serial killer with a taste for young girls.
- 12/8/2015
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
The BFI has just uncovered what is presumed to be the first kiss between a black woman and white man on national television, a scene from a TV drama entitled "You in Your Small Corner." First broadcast on ITV in June 1962, it has just been discovered in the BFI National Archive. Read More: Anthony Asquith's 'Shooting Stars' Selected as BFI London Film Festival Archive Gala The revival of Lloyd Reckord and Elizabeth MacLennan's kiss is a timely one in light of BFI’s Love season, and subsequently, the infamous scene will be seen by audiences at the ongoing event. Heather Stewart, Creative Director of BFI, said in a statement that "This ground-breaking TV play is such an important re-discovery. A document of British social history, it demonstrates the role of progressive television drama as a reflection of our society and underlines the vital work of the...
- 11/20/2015
- by Elle Leonsis
- Indiewire
In honor of the holidays, Walt Disney Animation Studios Restoration and the British Film Institute have teamed up to deliver a stellar present to London cinephiles in the form of "Sleigh Bells," a 1928 animated film that is one of Disney's first movies and features the first-ever company character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (a long-eared precursor to Mickey Mouse). The film will be screened for the first time since 1928 at the BFI Southbank on December 12. Read More: Anthony Asquith's 'Shooting Stars' Selected as BFI London Film Festival Archive Gala Oswald was drawn up by Walt Disney and Ub Iwers in 1927 and is marked for his "mischievous and rebellious personality," a definite departure from the character we would all come to love as Mickey Mouse. It wasn't until a few years later that both Disney and Iwers broke away from Universal Studios, for whom they had developed Oswald films,...
- 11/4/2015
- by Elle Leonsis
- Indiewire
Shooting Stars, Anthony Asquith’s sharp-edged 1928 satire of the film industry, proves the lure of the behind-the-cameras drama is almost as old as cinema itself
It makes sense that movies should be like laws and sausages – it’s better not to see how they’re made. If the green screen doesn’t ruin the magic of the CGI, the box the leading man stands on for the love scenes might undermine the romance. And yet film-makers don’t seem to be able to resist showing us what goes on, on-set. In 1928, with his very first film, British director Anthony Asquith turned his already familiar knowledge of the film industry into a sharp-edged satire of the movie business. Shooting Stars (1928, directed by Asquith along with Av Bramble) is a takedown of the film world as cheap and unoriginal, with overprivileged stars whose misbehaviour makes a mockery of their fans’ devotion. Even...
It makes sense that movies should be like laws and sausages – it’s better not to see how they’re made. If the green screen doesn’t ruin the magic of the CGI, the box the leading man stands on for the love scenes might undermine the romance. And yet film-makers don’t seem to be able to resist showing us what goes on, on-set. In 1928, with his very first film, British director Anthony Asquith turned his already familiar knowledge of the film industry into a sharp-edged satire of the movie business. Shooting Stars (1928, directed by Asquith along with Av Bramble) is a takedown of the film world as cheap and unoriginal, with overprivileged stars whose misbehaviour makes a mockery of their fans’ devotion. Even...
- 10/5/2015
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee and Sean Hutchinson to discuss Anthony Asquith’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
About the film:
Oscar Wilde’s comic jewel sparkles in Anthony Asquith’s film adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest. Featuring brilliantly polished performances by Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenwood, and Dame Edith Evans, the enduringly hilarious story of two young women who think themselves engaged to the same nonexistent man is given the grand Technicolor treatment. Seldom has a classic stage comedy been so engagingly transferred to the screen.
Subscribe to the podcast via RSS or in iTunes
Buy the film on Amazon:
Watch a clip from the film:
Episode Links:
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) – The Criterion Collection The Importance of Being Earnest – From the Current The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) – IMDb The Importance of Being Earnest (1952 film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Importance of Being Earnest...
About the film:
Oscar Wilde’s comic jewel sparkles in Anthony Asquith’s film adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest. Featuring brilliantly polished performances by Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenwood, and Dame Edith Evans, the enduringly hilarious story of two young women who think themselves engaged to the same nonexistent man is given the grand Technicolor treatment. Seldom has a classic stage comedy been so engagingly transferred to the screen.
Subscribe to the podcast via RSS or in iTunes
Buy the film on Amazon:
Watch a clip from the film:
Episode Links:
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) – The Criterion Collection The Importance of Being Earnest – From the Current The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) – IMDb The Importance of Being Earnest (1952 film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Importance of Being Earnest...
- 10/5/2015
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...
- 9/16/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The 59Th BFI London Film Festival Announces Full 2015 Programme
You can peruse the programme at your leisure here.
The programme for the 59th BFI London Film Festival in partnership launched today, with Festival Director Clare Stewart presenting this year’s rich and diverse selection of films and events. BFI London Film Festival is Britain’s leading film event and one of the world’s oldest film festivals. It introduces the finest new British and international films to an expanding London and UK-wide audience. The Festival provides an essential platform for films seeking global success; and promotes the careers of British and international filmmakers through its industry and awards programmes. With this year’s industry programme stronger than ever, offering international filmmakers and leaders a programme of insightful events covering every area of the film industry Lff positions London as the world’s leading creative city.
The Festival will screen a...
You can peruse the programme at your leisure here.
The programme for the 59th BFI London Film Festival in partnership launched today, with Festival Director Clare Stewart presenting this year’s rich and diverse selection of films and events. BFI London Film Festival is Britain’s leading film event and one of the world’s oldest film festivals. It introduces the finest new British and international films to an expanding London and UK-wide audience. The Festival provides an essential platform for films seeking global success; and promotes the careers of British and international filmmakers through its industry and awards programmes. With this year’s industry programme stronger than ever, offering international filmmakers and leaders a programme of insightful events covering every area of the film industry Lff positions London as the world’s leading creative city.
The Festival will screen a...
- 9/1/2015
- by John
- SoundOnSight
The festival circuit is gearing up to start and London has added a handful of other prominent awards players for the year.
Among the new additions to the festival are Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender in the lead role as the famed Apple head, which will be the festival’s closer. They have also announced that the premiere of Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan, will happen at the festival.
Opening & Closing Night
Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw and Meryl Streep. Director Sarah Gavron returns to the Festival for a third time with a film that tells the story of the ordinary British women at the turn of the last century who risked everything in the fight for equality and the right to vote. Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle whose films Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and 127 Hours (2010) previously closed the Festival.
Among the new additions to the festival are Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender in the lead role as the famed Apple head, which will be the festival’s closer. They have also announced that the premiere of Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan, will happen at the festival.
Opening & Closing Night
Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw and Meryl Streep. Director Sarah Gavron returns to the Festival for a third time with a film that tells the story of the ordinary British women at the turn of the last century who risked everything in the fight for equality and the right to vote. Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle whose films Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and 127 Hours (2010) previously closed the Festival.
- 9/1/2015
- by Zach Dennis
- SoundOnSight
Read More: 'Steve Jobs' European Premiere to Close BFI London Film Festival The BFI London Film Festival has announced that its Archive Gala screening will be the world premiere of a new restoration of Anthony Asquith's "Shooting Stars" (1928). Asquith's first film as co-director and scriptwriter, "Stars" is set behind the scenes at a contemporary film studio. Newly restored by the BFI National Archive, the film will be presented with a new live score by BAFTA and Emmy award-winning composer John Altman. Annette Benson and Brian Aherne play two mismatched, married stars, with Donald Calthrop (Andy Wilkes) as a Chaplin-esque star at the same studio, with whom Mae becomes romantically involved. Chili Bouchier, Britain’s first sex symbol of the silent era, plays a key role as an actress/bathing beauty, an attractive foil to the comic antics of the comedian. The film manages to operate as both...
- 8/20/2015
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Anthony Asquith’s 1928 film to get a new score from John Altman.
The BFI London Film Festival (Oct 7-18) has announced that its Archive Gala will be a new restoration of Anthony Asquith’s Shooting Stars.
The restoration by the BFI National Archive will receive its world premiere on Oct 16 with a new live score by John Altman, the BAFTA and Emmy award-winning composer whose work includes Titanic and Goldeneye. The score has been written for a 12 piece ensemble playing multiple instruments.
Shooting Stars, first released in 1928, was Asquith’s first film as co-director and scriptwriter and is a drama set behind the scenes at a film studio.
Annette Benson (Mae Feather) and Brian Aherne (Julian Gordon) play two mis-matched, married stars and Donald Calthrop (Andy Wilkes) a Chaplin-esque star at the same studio, with whom Mae becomes romantically involved.
Chili Bouchier, Britain’s first sex symbol of the silent era, plays a key role...
The BFI London Film Festival (Oct 7-18) has announced that its Archive Gala will be a new restoration of Anthony Asquith’s Shooting Stars.
The restoration by the BFI National Archive will receive its world premiere on Oct 16 with a new live score by John Altman, the BAFTA and Emmy award-winning composer whose work includes Titanic and Goldeneye. The score has been written for a 12 piece ensemble playing multiple instruments.
Shooting Stars, first released in 1928, was Asquith’s first film as co-director and scriptwriter and is a drama set behind the scenes at a film studio.
Annette Benson (Mae Feather) and Brian Aherne (Julian Gordon) play two mis-matched, married stars and Donald Calthrop (Andy Wilkes) a Chaplin-esque star at the same studio, with whom Mae becomes romantically involved.
Chili Bouchier, Britain’s first sex symbol of the silent era, plays a key role...
- 8/20/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
I. The Rattigan Version
After his first dramatic success, The Winslow Boy, Terence Rattigan conceived a double bill of one-act plays in 1946. Producers dismissed the project, even Rattigan’s collaborator Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont. Actor John Gielgud agreed. “They’ve seen me in so much first rate stuff,” Gielgud asked Rattigan; “Do you really think they will like me in anything second rate?” Rattigan insisted he wasn’t “content writing a play to please an audience today, but to write a play that will be remembered in fifty years’ time.”
Ultimately, Rattigan paired a brooding character study, The Browning Version, with a light farce, Harlequinade. Entitled Playbill, the show was finally produced by Stephen Mitchell in September 1948, starring Eric Portman, and became a runaway hit. While Harlequinade faded into a footnote, the first half proved an instant classic. Harold Hobson wrote that “Mr. Portman’s playing and Mr. Rattigan’s writing...
After his first dramatic success, The Winslow Boy, Terence Rattigan conceived a double bill of one-act plays in 1946. Producers dismissed the project, even Rattigan’s collaborator Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont. Actor John Gielgud agreed. “They’ve seen me in so much first rate stuff,” Gielgud asked Rattigan; “Do you really think they will like me in anything second rate?” Rattigan insisted he wasn’t “content writing a play to please an audience today, but to write a play that will be remembered in fifty years’ time.”
Ultimately, Rattigan paired a brooding character study, The Browning Version, with a light farce, Harlequinade. Entitled Playbill, the show was finally produced by Stephen Mitchell in September 1948, starring Eric Portman, and became a runaway hit. While Harlequinade faded into a footnote, the first half proved an instant classic. Harold Hobson wrote that “Mr. Portman’s playing and Mr. Rattigan’s writing...
- 3/25/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
Part I: The Lawrence Bureau
T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) ranks among the 20th Century’s oddest heroes. This short, smart, and mischievous British soldier helped organize the Arab Revolt against Turkey, a secondary front of the First World War. He became Emir Feisal’s trusted ally, painfully conscious that the Allies wouldn’t honor promises of independence. After the Paris Peace Conference, Lawrence retreated into the Royal Air Force and Tank Corps as a private soldier, T.E. Shaw.
Lawrence lived a curious double life, befriending both private soldiers and notables like Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw. He wrote memoirs and translated Homer while repairing boats and seaplanes. His intellect, warmth, and puckish humor masked internal torment – guilt for failing to secure Arab freedom, regret for two brothers killed in the war, shame over an incident where Turkish soldiers sexually assaulted him.
In his autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence...
T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) ranks among the 20th Century’s oddest heroes. This short, smart, and mischievous British soldier helped organize the Arab Revolt against Turkey, a secondary front of the First World War. He became Emir Feisal’s trusted ally, painfully conscious that the Allies wouldn’t honor promises of independence. After the Paris Peace Conference, Lawrence retreated into the Royal Air Force and Tank Corps as a private soldier, T.E. Shaw.
Lawrence lived a curious double life, befriending both private soldiers and notables like Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw. He wrote memoirs and translated Homer while repairing boats and seaplanes. His intellect, warmth, and puckish humor masked internal torment – guilt for failing to secure Arab freedom, regret for two brothers killed in the war, shame over an incident where Turkish soldiers sexually assaulted him.
In his autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence...
- 2/17/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
Rod Taylor dead at 84: Actor best known for 'The Time Machine' and 'The Birds' Rod Taylor, best remembered for the early 1960s movies The Time Machine and The Birds, and for his supporting role as Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's international hit Inglourious Basterds, has died. Taylor suffered a heart attack at his Los Angeles home earlier this morning (January 8, 2015). Born on January 11, 1930, in Sydney, he would have turned 85 on Sunday. Based on H.G. Wells' classic 1895 sci-fi novel, The Time Machine stars Rod Taylor as a H. George Wells, an inventor who comes up with an intricate chair that allows him to travel across time. (In the novel, the Victorian protagonist is referred to simply as the "Time Traveller.") After experiencing World War I and World War II, Wells decides to fast forward to the distant future, ultimately arriving at a place where humankind has been split...
- 1/9/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...
- 11/5/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Best British movies of all time? (Image: a young Michael Caine in 'Get Carter') Ten years ago, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine as a dangerous-looking London gangster (see photo above), was selected as the United Kingdom's very best movie of all time according to 25 British film critics polled by Total Film magazine. To say that Mike Hodges' 1971 thriller was a surprising choice would be an understatement. I mean, not a David Lean epic or an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller? What a difference ten years make. On Total Film's 2014 list, published last May, Get Carter was no. 44 among the magazine's Top 50 best British movies of all time. How could that be? Well, first of all, people would be very naive if they took such lists seriously, whether we're talking Total Film, the British Film Institute, or, to keep things British, Sight & Sound magazine. Second, whereas Total Film's 2004 list was the result of a 25-critic consensus,...
- 10/12/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Australian actress Wendy Hughes dead at 61 (photo: Wendy Hughes in ‘Newsfront’) Australian film, television, and stage actress Wendy Hughes, best known internationally for the big-screen dramas My Brilliant Career and Careful, He Might Hear You, died of cancer early today, March 8, 2014, in Sydney. Hughes (born on July 29, 1952, in Melbourne) was 61. Wendy Hughes’ film career kicked off in the mid-’70s, with Tim Burstall’s psychological drama ‘Jock’ Petersen / Petersen (1974), in which she plays the wife of a college professor who becomes romantically involved with a married student (Jack Thompson). "I spent a lot of the time naked and doing sex scenes," Hughes would later recall about her work in ‘Jock’ Petersen, "because in the seventies you all had to do that." In 1979, Hughes landed a key supporting role in the international arthouse hit My Brilliant Career, Gillian Armstrong’s late 19th-century-set tale of an independent-minded young woman (a Katharine Hepburn...
- 3/9/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
(Thorold Dickinson, 1940, BFI, PG)
Although he only directed eight features, Thorold Dickinson (1903-84) had as remarkable and wide-ranging a career in the British cinema as his close contemporaries David Lean and Anthony Asquith. Like Lean, he served a long apprenticeship as an editor. Like Asquith, a fellow liberal, Oxford-educated son of the establishment, he had an early interest in the avant-garde and played a significant role in organising Act, the film industry trade union.
As film critic of the Spectator, Graham Greene praised The High Command and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, Dickinson's first two films, both thrillers. But there were long absences from commercial cinema. In the late 1930s he spent several years making leftwing documentaries supporting the Spanish government. Much of his second world war was devoted to public information pictures, and for several postwar years he produced pictures for the United Nations. In the 1960s he became Britain's...
Although he only directed eight features, Thorold Dickinson (1903-84) had as remarkable and wide-ranging a career in the British cinema as his close contemporaries David Lean and Anthony Asquith. Like Lean, he served a long apprenticeship as an editor. Like Asquith, a fellow liberal, Oxford-educated son of the establishment, he had an early interest in the avant-garde and played a significant role in organising Act, the film industry trade union.
As film critic of the Spectator, Graham Greene praised The High Command and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, Dickinson's first two films, both thrillers. But there were long absences from commercial cinema. In the late 1930s he spent several years making leftwing documentaries supporting the Spanish government. Much of his second world war was devoted to public information pictures, and for several postwar years he produced pictures for the United Nations. In the 1960s he became Britain's...
- 12/15/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Jean Kent: ‘The Browning Version’ 1951, Gainsborough folds (photo: Jean Kent in ‘The Browning Version,’ with Michael Redgrave) (See previous post: “Jean Kent: Gainsborough Pictures Film Star Dead at 92.”) Seemingly stuck in Britain, Jean Kent’s other important leads of the period came out in 1948: John Paddy Carstairs’ Alfred Hitchcock-esque thriller Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948), with spies on board the Orient Express, and Gordon Parry’s ensemble piece Bond Street. Following two minor 1950 comedies, Her Favorite Husband / The Taming of Dorothy and The Reluctant Widow / The Inheritance, Kent’s movie stardom was virtually over, though she would still have one major film role in store. In what is probably her best remembered and most prestigious effort, Jean Kent played Millie Crocker-Harris, the unsympathetic, adulterous wife of unfulfilled teacher Michael Redgrave, in Anthony Asquith’s 1951 film version of Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version — a Javelin Films production...
- 12/4/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Jean Kent: British film star and ‘Last of the Gainsborough Girls’ dead at 92 (photo: actress Jean Kent in ‘Madonna of the Seven Moons’) News outlets and tabloids — little difference these days — have been milking every little drop from the unexpected and violent death of The Fast and the Furious franchise actor Paul Walker, and his friend and business partner Roger Rodas this past Saturday, November 30, 2013. Unfortunately — and unsurprisingly — apart from a handful of British publications, the death of another film performer on that same day went mostly underreported. If you’re not "in" at this very moment, you may as well have never existed. Jean Kent, best known for her roles as scheming villainesses in British films of the 1940s and Gainsborough Pictures’ last surviving top star, died on November 30 at West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds, England. The previous day, she had suffered a fall at her...
- 12/4/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Popular stalwart of film classics such as The Browning Version and Fanny By Gaslight
Jean Kent, the fiery, sexy, red-haired bad girl of British movies in the 1940s, who has died aged 92, was a fine actor, and clearly enjoyed life, her work and – while it lasted – her cinema fame. While never a top star, she gained a considerable following, and from the 1960s appeared regularly on television. Her film breakthrough came as a result of stage work: after the revue Apple Sauce, starring Vera Lynn and Max Miller, reached the London Palladium in 1941, she was offered a long-term contract, and the first of her Gainsborough Pictures appearances came in It's That Man Again (1943), with another wartime entertainer, the radio comic Tommy Handley.
It took another four films for her to make her first real mark as Lucy, the friend of Phyllis Calvert in the title role of the melodrama Fanny By Gaslight,...
Jean Kent, the fiery, sexy, red-haired bad girl of British movies in the 1940s, who has died aged 92, was a fine actor, and clearly enjoyed life, her work and – while it lasted – her cinema fame. While never a top star, she gained a considerable following, and from the 1960s appeared regularly on television. Her film breakthrough came as a result of stage work: after the revue Apple Sauce, starring Vera Lynn and Max Miller, reached the London Palladium in 1941, she was offered a long-term contract, and the first of her Gainsborough Pictures appearances came in It's That Man Again (1943), with another wartime entertainer, the radio comic Tommy Handley.
It took another four films for her to make her first real mark as Lucy, the friend of Phyllis Calvert in the title role of the melodrama Fanny By Gaslight,...
- 12/2/2013
- by Sheila Whitaker
- The Guardian - Film News
Prolific comedy actor who worked with Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan and Hattie Jacques
The stony-faced, beaky comedy actor Graham Stark, who has died aged 91, is best remembered for his appearances alongside Peter Sellers, notably in the Pink Panther movies. His familiar face and voice, on television and radio, were part of the essential furniture in the sitting room of our popular culture for more than half a century. A stalwart in the national postwar comedy boom led by Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Dick Emery, Eric Sykes and Benny Hill, he worked with them all in a sort of unofficial supporting repertory company that also included Hattie Jacques, Deryck Guyler, Patricia Hayes and Arthur Mullard. He was also a man of surprising and various parts: child actor, trained dancer, film-maker, occasional writer, and dedicated and critically acclaimed photographer.
Like Gypsy Rose Lee, he had a resourceful and determined...
The stony-faced, beaky comedy actor Graham Stark, who has died aged 91, is best remembered for his appearances alongside Peter Sellers, notably in the Pink Panther movies. His familiar face and voice, on television and radio, were part of the essential furniture in the sitting room of our popular culture for more than half a century. A stalwart in the national postwar comedy boom led by Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Dick Emery, Eric Sykes and Benny Hill, he worked with them all in a sort of unofficial supporting repertory company that also included Hattie Jacques, Deryck Guyler, Patricia Hayes and Arthur Mullard. He was also a man of surprising and various parts: child actor, trained dancer, film-maker, occasional writer, and dedicated and critically acclaimed photographer.
Like Gypsy Rose Lee, he had a resourceful and determined...
- 11/1/2013
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
There are a bunch of large-scale British pictures of the late silent era, like E.A. Dupont's Moulin Rouge and Piccadilly, and they all have dazzling surfaces but don't quite captivate as melodrama. It can seem as if the popular conception that British silent cinema consisted of Hitchcock standing alone and portly in a cultural wasteland is kind of true. But Anthony Asquith's A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929), which channels German expressionist lighting, composition and intensity, is an honorable exception: it's actually more Germanic than any of Hitchcock's films (even including The Pleasure Garden, which he shot in Germany).
Underground (1928), which was Asquith's very first feature, is not quite as good as that, but I'd wanted to see it for ages and was very glad I did: it's available, beautifully restored, from the BFI.
The movie wears its Germanic aspects more lightly than Cottage, with some giddy-making angles and sharp...
Underground (1928), which was Asquith's very first feature, is not quite as good as that, but I'd wanted to see it for ages and was very glad I did: it's available, beautifully restored, from the BFI.
The movie wears its Germanic aspects more lightly than Cottage, with some giddy-making angles and sharp...
- 8/22/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
(Anthony Asquith, 1929; BFI, PG)
Educated at Winchester and Oxford, lifelong socialist, closet gay, son of a Liberal prime minister, Anthony Asquith (1902-1968) is a currently undervalued film-maker whose career began in the silent era when he studied American cinema in Hollywood and German expressionism in Berlin. The British character in its various forms fascinated him, especially the middle classes, and he found an important collaborator in Terence Rattigan. Their association lasted from 1937 to the mid-1960s, resulting in numerous crucial works, including the wartime morale-booster The Way to the Stars and that masterpiece of stiff-upper-lip repression, The Browning Version.
Just before the coming of sound Asquith made two silent classics, A Cottage on Dartmoor and Underground that put his rival Hitchcock into the shade in the way it absorbed foreign influences and experimented with new styles. Underground is an exhilarating celebration of modern city life as embodied by the London underground system,...
Educated at Winchester and Oxford, lifelong socialist, closet gay, son of a Liberal prime minister, Anthony Asquith (1902-1968) is a currently undervalued film-maker whose career began in the silent era when he studied American cinema in Hollywood and German expressionism in Berlin. The British character in its various forms fascinated him, especially the middle classes, and he found an important collaborator in Terence Rattigan. Their association lasted from 1937 to the mid-1960s, resulting in numerous crucial works, including the wartime morale-booster The Way to the Stars and that masterpiece of stiff-upper-lip repression, The Browning Version.
Just before the coming of sound Asquith made two silent classics, A Cottage on Dartmoor and Underground that put his rival Hitchcock into the shade in the way it absorbed foreign influences and experimented with new styles. Underground is an exhilarating celebration of modern city life as embodied by the London underground system,...
- 7/2/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★★☆ In 1928, at the tender age of just 28 years, British director Anthony Asquith was already a driven and passionate filmmaker - exactly what he brought to his early silent, Underground (1928). This tale, whilst saturated in its own time, carries a modern note, as underground carriages bustle with nosey travellers leaning over each others shoulders to read their neighbour's newspaper, or young men eye up the ladies. Amidst the hustle of daily commutes we find a pair of lovebirds in the form of mild-mannered Bill (Brian Aherne) who works as an underground porter and shop worker Nell (Elissa Landi).
The pair's fledgling love is thrown into disarray by the brash Burt (Cyril McLaglen), who also has eyes for the working class blonde bombshell. Power station worker Burt, with his rough manners and penchant for drink, hatches a plan with former lover Kate (Norah Baring), that climaxes in a tremendous, Bond-style chase sequence.
The pair's fledgling love is thrown into disarray by the brash Burt (Cyril McLaglen), who also has eyes for the working class blonde bombshell. Power station worker Burt, with his rough manners and penchant for drink, hatches a plan with former lover Kate (Norah Baring), that climaxes in a tremendous, Bond-style chase sequence.
- 6/17/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today: • Yeah, cuz what fantasy! It's not like real women are strong or anything, so why would a writer feel moved to *invent* strong women? “Why do you write strong female characters?” • Cool! The Hobbit's amazing transformations • It's amazing how terrified our culture is of women who refuse to be ashamed of their bodies... The Audacity of Lena Dunham, And Her Admirable Commitment To Making Us Look At Her Naked [This was posted at the Facebook page of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.] • And we should be surprised by this why...? Congressional Offices Continue to Illegally Download Movies and TV Shows • Check out this movie clip, 85 years old, set in the London Underground... Underground: watch a clip from Anthony Asquith's thriller set on London's tube - video • Love. This is a scene I would love to see. • Bigelow rightly reminds us that the mere depiction of a Bad Thing is not necessarily endorsement.
- 1/16/2013
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
Superbly restored and equipped with an admirable new score by Neil Brand, Anthony Asquith's 1929 movie is a minor masterpiece. It provides us with a fascinating picture of the London underground system (everyone wearing hats, everyone smoking) while telling the simple tale of a womanising power station employee and a shy, gentlemanly tube official, both pursuing a department stores salesgirl played by the beautiful Italian-born Elissa Landi.
Much influenced by French and German movie-makers, Underground is a witty, highly imaginative piece of film-making by a director now largely regarded as an efficient craftsman, his best-known films being collaborations with Terence Rattigan. But in her 1931 book Cinema, my Observer predecessor, CA Lejeune, regarded Asquith and Hitchcock as the only two British directors of any consequence, and Asquith the more distinguished of the two. "Asquith lags behind Hitchcock in craftsmanship, comes very close to him in picture sense and passes him in fervency and conviction of thought,...
Much influenced by French and German movie-makers, Underground is a witty, highly imaginative piece of film-making by a director now largely regarded as an efficient craftsman, his best-known films being collaborations with Terence Rattigan. But in her 1931 book Cinema, my Observer predecessor, CA Lejeune, regarded Asquith and Hitchcock as the only two British directors of any consequence, and Asquith the more distinguished of the two. "Asquith lags behind Hitchcock in craftsmanship, comes very close to him in picture sense and passes him in fervency and conviction of thought,...
- 1/13/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Les Misérables | Gangster Squad | American Mary | What Richard Did | Midnight Son | Jiro Dreams Of Sushi | The Lookout | May I Kill U? | Underground
Les Misérables (12A)
(Tom Hooper, 2012, UK) Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne. 158 mins
The King's Speech director plus the globally adored musical: it's a match made in commercial heaven, a third-hand version of a 19th-century French saga, and the most epic celebrity karaoke session ever filmed. The fact that it's entirely sung, "live" on set, supposedly communicates more "emotion", but this is already oversaturated with so much melodramatic incident, the effect is numbing.
Gangster Squad (15)
(Ruben Fleischer, 2013, Us) Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin. 113 mins
Brolin's under-the-radar police squad guns for Penn's La mobsters in this exuberantly violent, but disappointingly straightforward 1940s thriller, derived more from modern videogames than vintage film noirs. Action definitely speaks louder than words here.
American Mary (18)
(Jen & Sylvia Soska,...
Les Misérables (12A)
(Tom Hooper, 2012, UK) Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne. 158 mins
The King's Speech director plus the globally adored musical: it's a match made in commercial heaven, a third-hand version of a 19th-century French saga, and the most epic celebrity karaoke session ever filmed. The fact that it's entirely sung, "live" on set, supposedly communicates more "emotion", but this is already oversaturated with so much melodramatic incident, the effect is numbing.
Gangster Squad (15)
(Ruben Fleischer, 2013, Us) Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin. 113 mins
Brolin's under-the-radar police squad guns for Penn's La mobsters in this exuberantly violent, but disappointingly straightforward 1940s thriller, derived more from modern videogames than vintage film noirs. Action definitely speaks louder than words here.
American Mary (18)
(Jen & Sylvia Soska,...
- 1/12/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
This restored silent from 1928 is terrific – and the exotic and futurist London locations are a treat
Anthony Asquith's 1928 black-and-white silent, Underground, restored three years ago with a great new score by Neil Brand, is now on general release, and it's terrific: an elegantly crafted melodrama with exotic and futurist London locations, and echoes of Lang and Hitchcock. Norah Baring is fascinating as the wronged woman, Kate, given to strange Ocd mannerisms and sightless staring: a performance to compare with Kathleen Byron in Powell's Black Narcissus. Two men fall in love with the same woman – demure shopworker Nell (Elissa Landi) – whom they see on the London Underground. Bill (Brian Aherne) is a decent chap who works on the Tube, but Bert (Cyril McLaglen) is a rougher, moodier sort, who is prepared to exploit his ex-girlfriend Kate in a plot to destroy Bill's chances. This love triangle evolves into a quadrangle,...
Anthony Asquith's 1928 black-and-white silent, Underground, restored three years ago with a great new score by Neil Brand, is now on general release, and it's terrific: an elegantly crafted melodrama with exotic and futurist London locations, and echoes of Lang and Hitchcock. Norah Baring is fascinating as the wronged woman, Kate, given to strange Ocd mannerisms and sightless staring: a performance to compare with Kathleen Byron in Powell's Black Narcissus. Two men fall in love with the same woman – demure shopworker Nell (Elissa Landi) – whom they see on the London Underground. Bill (Brian Aherne) is a decent chap who works on the Tube, but Bert (Cyril McLaglen) is a rougher, moodier sort, who is prepared to exploit his ex-girlfriend Kate in a plot to destroy Bill's chances. This love triangle evolves into a quadrangle,...
- 1/11/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
The film world went awards crazy this week, aided no doubt by the Academy awards' committee craftily bringing forward the announcement of their nominations to today – probably to spike the guns of the Golden Globes, who hold their results ceremony on Sunday. Whatever the machinations, that meant a glut of fevered speculation and analysis as the Bafta nominations yesterday were immediately followed by the Oscar nods. The full lists obviously skew in favour of national cultural interests – but one thing looks clear: 2013 is going to be the year that properly commercially successful films are also going to scoop the awards, in stark contrast to recent practice.
Lincoln, Les Miserables, Argo and Django Unchained look to be leading the pack, with Life of Pi bobbing pluckily in their wake. (Pause to bow your head for The Master,...
The big story
The film world went awards crazy this week, aided no doubt by the Academy awards' committee craftily bringing forward the announcement of their nominations to today – probably to spike the guns of the Golden Globes, who hold their results ceremony on Sunday. Whatever the machinations, that meant a glut of fevered speculation and analysis as the Bafta nominations yesterday were immediately followed by the Oscar nods. The full lists obviously skew in favour of national cultural interests – but one thing looks clear: 2013 is going to be the year that properly commercially successful films are also going to scoop the awards, in stark contrast to recent practice.
Lincoln, Les Miserables, Argo and Django Unchained look to be leading the pack, with Life of Pi bobbing pluckily in their wake. (Pause to bow your head for The Master,...
- 1/10/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
From Bond to Bourne to hairy monsters and sub-humans, cinema has always loved the tube
The freshest image of the tube in moviegoers' memories is not an encouraging one: a train crashing through the walls of an underground chamber and crumpling into a heap right where James Bond should have been standing. Luckily (and implausibly), the train in Skyfall was empty: although Javier Bardem was a villain, he had at least checked the schedules to cause minimum disruption to the service.
The cinematic possibilities of the tube are as myriad as its destinations. It's a great place for action and chases (The Bourne Ultimatum and Patriot Games got there before Skyfall). It's a realm of concealment, strangeness and subterranean nightmares, but it's a refuge, too. For film-makers, the tube is also very convenient: not only does it boast controllable light and a steady climate, it can also provide a mirror image of the city above.
The freshest image of the tube in moviegoers' memories is not an encouraging one: a train crashing through the walls of an underground chamber and crumpling into a heap right where James Bond should have been standing. Luckily (and implausibly), the train in Skyfall was empty: although Javier Bardem was a villain, he had at least checked the schedules to cause minimum disruption to the service.
The cinematic possibilities of the tube are as myriad as its destinations. It's a great place for action and chases (The Bourne Ultimatum and Patriot Games got there before Skyfall). It's a realm of concealment, strangeness and subterranean nightmares, but it's a refuge, too. For film-makers, the tube is also very convenient: not only does it boast controllable light and a steady climate, it can also provide a mirror image of the city above.
- 1/9/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Anthony Asquith's 1928 classic is a time capsule depiction of London's tube network, as well as a brilliant expressionist-influenced thriller
Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch video
Anthony Asquith's Underground (1928) is part thriller, part time capsule: a riveting film from one of the silent era's most ambitious British directors, and an intriguing portrait of 1920s London. In particular, the manners and motifs of the capital's tube system are seen just as they were 85 years ago. Re-released in cinemas this month to tie in with the 150th anniversary of the tube, Underground speaks not just to silent movie buffs but to the quiet public transport geek inside every commuting Londoner.
The underground in Underground is more than a metaphor for the repressed passions of four "ordinary workaday people", it is integral to the plot, and its shadowy locations set the film's tone. From their arrival in 1895, films about...
Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch video
Anthony Asquith's Underground (1928) is part thriller, part time capsule: a riveting film from one of the silent era's most ambitious British directors, and an intriguing portrait of 1920s London. In particular, the manners and motifs of the capital's tube system are seen just as they were 85 years ago. Re-released in cinemas this month to tie in with the 150th anniversary of the tube, Underground speaks not just to silent movie buffs but to the quiet public transport geek inside every commuting Londoner.
The underground in Underground is more than a metaphor for the repressed passions of four "ordinary workaday people", it is integral to the plot, and its shadowy locations set the film's tone. From their arrival in 1895, films about...
- 1/8/2013
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
Grant Bowler / Richard Burton: Liz & Dick Grant Bowler as Richard Burton in Lifetime’s fall movie Liz & Dick looks less convincing than Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor. Burton met Taylor at the time the two were making Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. A troubled production, Cleopatra was initially to have starred Taylor, Peter Finch, and Stephen Boyd, under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. Mamoulian left, Taylor fell seriously ill, nearly died, and had to have a tracheotomy performed. The end result was a Best Actress Academy Award for her troubles (and for Butterfield 8) and brand new leading men for Cleopatra: Richard Burton as Marc Antony and Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar. By then, Cleopatra also had a new director: two-time Best Director Oscar winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz. A respected stage and screen actor in the ’60s, Richard Burton was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Best Supporting Actor...
- 6/7/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Powell and Pressburger's Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp is typical of Archers Film and almost un-English in its audacity
You live abroad for a couple of decades and it's surprising which memories of the old country flicker into a different kind of focus. I'm not the nostalgic or homesick type, I haven't been home in six years. And yet two decades have made me feel more English than I ever did in England – and technically I'm not even English (I'm Scotch-Irish). I never read Trollope or Wilkie Collins in England, I never swooned exultantly over finding a Virago-edition Rosamond Lehmann novel, or a Two Ronnies video at a yard-sale.
Neither did I celebrate my birthday every year, as I do now, with a large scotch watching A Canterbury Tale alone, certain in the knowledge that when Eric Portman talks about the mysterious continuity of ancient tradition I will find myself,...
You live abroad for a couple of decades and it's surprising which memories of the old country flicker into a different kind of focus. I'm not the nostalgic or homesick type, I haven't been home in six years. And yet two decades have made me feel more English than I ever did in England – and technically I'm not even English (I'm Scotch-Irish). I never read Trollope or Wilkie Collins in England, I never swooned exultantly over finding a Virago-edition Rosamond Lehmann novel, or a Two Ronnies video at a yard-sale.
Neither did I celebrate my birthday every year, as I do now, with a large scotch watching A Canterbury Tale alone, certain in the knowledge that when Eric Portman talks about the mysterious continuity of ancient tradition I will find myself,...
- 5/11/2012
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
One of the United Kingdom’s most lauded stylists, Terence Davies has carefully crafted a body of work that fits squarely into the class-conscious, post-neorealist tradition of British cinema, working without much fanfare or regard for the exigencies of commercial filmmaking that the age and his stature would seem to demand.
Now in his mid-sixties, Davies has in the last 30 years quietly established himself as one of the finest British filmmakers of his generation. He is not a cinephile and his lugubrious, sublimely photographed and insidiously hard-hearted narratives — such as 1988′s Distant Voices, Still Lives, which will screen as part of a career retrospective at BAMCinematek this week, and 1992′s The Long Day Closes, which will receive a two-week repertory engagement at the Film Forum starting later this month — draw as much from his own innate sensibility and preoccupations, and a lyrical and meditative film grammar that seems all his own,...
Now in his mid-sixties, Davies has in the last 30 years quietly established himself as one of the finest British filmmakers of his generation. He is not a cinephile and his lugubrious, sublimely photographed and insidiously hard-hearted narratives — such as 1988′s Distant Voices, Still Lives, which will screen as part of a career retrospective at BAMCinematek this week, and 1992′s The Long Day Closes, which will receive a two-week repertory engagement at the Film Forum starting later this month — draw as much from his own innate sensibility and preoccupations, and a lyrical and meditative film grammar that seems all his own,...
- 3/21/2012
- by Brandon Harris
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The BFI restoration team has given new life to The First Born, a silent film co-written by Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville
Why don't we know more about our own silent film history? Is it a lack of interest or a lack of pride? Last month it was announced that a few reels of film by respected British director Graham Cutts had been found in an archive in New Zealand. But while the story was reported widely, it was as a "lost Hitchcock" discovery. It's true that Hitchcock worked on The White Shadow (1923) as a young man, but by overstating his influence we risk casting his peers into oblivion.
The Archive Gala strand of the London film festival was conceived for just such a purpose: to give the floor to some forgotten figures from our cinematic history, while recognising the work of the BFI restoration team. Two years ago, it was...
Why don't we know more about our own silent film history? Is it a lack of interest or a lack of pride? Last month it was announced that a few reels of film by respected British director Graham Cutts had been found in an archive in New Zealand. But while the story was reported widely, it was as a "lost Hitchcock" discovery. It's true that Hitchcock worked on The White Shadow (1923) as a young man, but by overstating his influence we risk casting his peers into oblivion.
The Archive Gala strand of the London film festival was conceived for just such a purpose: to give the floor to some forgotten figures from our cinematic history, while recognising the work of the BFI restoration team. Two years ago, it was...
- 9/22/2011
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine in Billy Wilder's The Apartment Shirley MacLaine on TCM: Ocean's Eleven, The Yellow Rolls Royce Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Two Loves (1961) A conservative teacher struggles with her values while teaching natives in New Zealand. Dir: Charles Walters. Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Laurence Harvey, Jack Hawkins. C-97 mins, Letterbox Format. 8:00 Am The Sheepman (1958) A tough sheep farmer battles the local cattle baron for land and a beautiful woman. Dir: George Marshall. Cast: Glenn Ford, Shirley MacLaine, Leslie Nielsen. C-86 mins, Letterbox Format. 9:45 Am Two For The Seesaw (1962) A conservative attorney considering a divorce gets involved with an emotionally fragile dancer in New York. Dir: Robert Wise. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shirley MacLaine, Edmon Ryan. Bw-119 mins, Letterbox Format. 12:00 Pm The Children's Hour (1961) A malicious student tries to destroy the teachers at a girls' school. Dir: William Wyler. Cast: Audrey Hepburn,...
- 8/11/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Shirley MacLaine, Irma la Douce on TCM Shirley MacLaine is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" star of the day today, August 10. This evening, TCM is presenting its last four Shirley MacLaine movies: Billy Wilder's Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), which is on right now; Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running (1958), which earned MacLaine her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination; Lewis Milestone's Ocean's Eleven (1960), in which MacLaine has a mere cameo; and Anthony Asquith's omnibus feature The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964), in which MacLaine is one of about a dozen stars in several individual stories. [Shirley MacLaine Movie Schedule.] It's too late for me to recommend The Apartment, though recommendable it is. For one thing, this collaboration between Billy Wilder and screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond features what is, in my view, Fred MacMurray's best performance by far. Usually an intolerable leading man — macho, reactionary, humorless, unsexy, dull — MacMurray could be a fascinating slimeball,...
- 8/11/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Orson Welles, Ruth Warrick, Citizen Kane Orson Welles on TCM: The Third Man, The Lady From Shanghai Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Tartars (1961) A barbarian army attacks Viking settlements along the Russian steppes. Dir: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Victor Mature, Orson Welles, Folco Lulli. C-83 mins, Letterbox Format 7:30 Am Tomorrow Is Forever (1946) A scarred veteran presumed dead returns home to find his wife remarried. Dir: Irving Pichel. Cast: Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, George Brent. Bw-104 mins. 9:30 Am Moby Dick (1956) Epic adaptation of Herman Melville's classic about a vengeful sea captain out to catch the whale that maimed him. Dir: John Huston. Cast: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn. C-115 mins, Letterbox Format 11:30 Am The V.I.P.S (1963) Wealthy passengers fogged in at London's Heathrow Airport fight to survive a variety of personal trials. Dir: Anthony Asquith. Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan.
- 8/8/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Our detailed look back over the non-Bond scores of John Barry continues with a look at his work between the years 1968 to 1979…
In the third part of our John Barry retrospective, we enter the late 60s and a surge of activity that would typify the composer’s output for nearly two decades. Despite the exacting nature of his commissions, he continued to build on his reputation with a succession of quality scores that stockpiled brilliant and unexpected surprises on top of unprecedented new ground. But all the while, he continued to strive for authenticity of arrangement and sincerity of expression. This phase demonstrates his broadening outlook but also reflects, in a profound way, the diversity of his musical influences.
His early output took inspiration from both the rhythm and blues of The Barry Seven and the popular rhythms of the time, such as Gene Vincent and American guitarist Duane Eddy,...
In the third part of our John Barry retrospective, we enter the late 60s and a surge of activity that would typify the composer’s output for nearly two decades. Despite the exacting nature of his commissions, he continued to build on his reputation with a succession of quality scores that stockpiled brilliant and unexpected surprises on top of unprecedented new ground. But all the while, he continued to strive for authenticity of arrangement and sincerity of expression. This phase demonstrates his broadening outlook but also reflects, in a profound way, the diversity of his musical influences.
His early output took inspiration from both the rhythm and blues of The Barry Seven and the popular rhythms of the time, such as Gene Vincent and American guitarist Duane Eddy,...
- 8/8/2011
- Den of Geek
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