The Academy Awards grew up at the 16th annual ceremony March 2, 1944. Since the first Oscar ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s Blossom Room in 1929, the Academy Awards were small banquet ceremonies for La La Land movers and shakers. But that all changed 80 years ago. World War II was in its third year and movies meant more than ever to war-weary audiences.
So, the Oscars moved to the then-Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and bleachers were introduced giving fans a chance to see their favorites walk the red carpet. And instead of a select industry audience, attendees included members of all branches of the armed services many of whom sat in bleachers on the stage at the Chinese. The ceremony was heard locally on Kfwb; Jack Benny hosted the international broadcast for the troops on CBS Radio via shortwave. And for the first time, supporting performers finally received a full-size Academy Award.
So, the Oscars moved to the then-Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and bleachers were introduced giving fans a chance to see their favorites walk the red carpet. And instead of a select industry audience, attendees included members of all branches of the armed services many of whom sat in bleachers on the stage at the Chinese. The ceremony was heard locally on Kfwb; Jack Benny hosted the international broadcast for the troops on CBS Radio via shortwave. And for the first time, supporting performers finally received a full-size Academy Award.
- 1/23/2024
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
Has any young actress ever had a year Katharine Hepburn experienced in 1933? After making her film debut in 1932’s “Bill of Divorcement” with John Barrymore, the 26-year-old with the preternatural cheekbones demonstrated her versatility in three exceptional motion pictures 90 years ago. The great Kate soared high as famed aviatrix who has a tragic affair with a married member of Parliament in Dorothy Arzner’s daring pre-code romantic drama “Christopher Strong.” Next up was “Morning Glory,” for which she won her first of four best actress Oscars-and of course was a no-show at the ceremony- as an eager young actress. And Hepburn ended the year with “Little Women,” the acclaimed box office hit which made $100,000 during its first week at Radio City Music Hall, based on Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel.
Most “little women” have read Alcott’s autobiographical coming-of-age novel that was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Set...
Most “little women” have read Alcott’s autobiographical coming-of-age novel that was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Set...
- 10/2/2023
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
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“Is You In There, Zombie?”
By Raymond Benson
There are a handful of Hollywood movies out there that successfully combined comedy with the horror genre. Surprisingly, truly good ones are few and far between. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is perhaps the quintessential example of the genre mashup. It provided genuine thrills and some frights mixed in with hilarious comedic bits. A more recent one that comes to mind is of course the 1984 megahit, Ghostbusters. There is no question that this Bill Murray vehicle owes a great deal to the 1940 romp, The Ghost Breakers, considered one of Bob Hope’s most beloved early pictures.
Based on the 1909 stage play, The Ghost Breaker, by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard, the 1940 movie is actually a remake of previous adaptations. Both Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred E. Green made silent films of the play in 1914 and 1922, respectively,...
“Is You In There, Zombie?”
By Raymond Benson
There are a handful of Hollywood movies out there that successfully combined comedy with the horror genre. Surprisingly, truly good ones are few and far between. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is perhaps the quintessential example of the genre mashup. It provided genuine thrills and some frights mixed in with hilarious comedic bits. A more recent one that comes to mind is of course the 1984 megahit, Ghostbusters. There is no question that this Bill Murray vehicle owes a great deal to the 1940 romp, The Ghost Breakers, considered one of Bob Hope’s most beloved early pictures.
Based on the 1909 stage play, The Ghost Breaker, by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard, the 1940 movie is actually a remake of previous adaptations. Both Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred E. Green made silent films of the play in 1914 and 1922, respectively,...
- 4/18/2022
- by [email protected] (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
The Kiss Before the Mirror
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1933 / 1.33:1 / 69 min.
Starring Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Gloria Stuart
Cinematography by Karl Freund
Directed by James Whale
James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror opens on familiar terrain for the director of Frankenstein—a moon-lit backroad littered with crooked trees and clutching branches. A figure tip-toes out of the darkness toward her destination—not a mad scientist’s castle but a swanky post-modern bungalow where her lover waits. The woman catches the moonlight quite well, thank you—she’s played by an incandescent Gloria Stuart and she has just escaped her husband for a rendezvous with a self-impressed roué played by the blankly handsome Walter Pidgeon. The two engage in pre-sex small talk that is so coy, so ear-grating, that it’s clear Whale is preparing them (and the audience) for some awful comeuppance.
Produced in 1933, The Kiss Before the...
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1933 / 1.33:1 / 69 min.
Starring Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Gloria Stuart
Cinematography by Karl Freund
Directed by James Whale
James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror opens on familiar terrain for the director of Frankenstein—a moon-lit backroad littered with crooked trees and clutching branches. A figure tip-toes out of the darkness toward her destination—not a mad scientist’s castle but a swanky post-modern bungalow where her lover waits. The woman catches the moonlight quite well, thank you—she’s played by an incandescent Gloria Stuart and she has just escaped her husband for a rendezvous with a self-impressed roué played by the blankly handsome Walter Pidgeon. The two engage in pre-sex small talk that is so coy, so ear-grating, that it’s clear Whale is preparing them (and the audience) for some awful comeuppance.
Produced in 1933, The Kiss Before the...
- 1/23/2021
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
We’ve got a big week of home media releases ahead of us, so I hope that your wallets are ready to suffer a whole lot of abuse this Tuesday, because there are a ton of must-own titles headed home that genre fans are definitely going to want to add to their collections. We have two new Vestron Video Collector’s Series releases to look forward to—David Cronenberg’s Shivers and Little Monsters (1989)—and for the first time ever, Wes Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn is being released on Blu-ray.
If you’re a Stephen King fan, Paramount has assembled a 5-Movie Collection on Blu that includes both iterations of Pet Sematary, Silver Bullet, The Stand, and The Dead Zone. Kl Studio Classics is showing some love this Tuesday to the horror comedy The Ghost Breakers featuring Bob Hope, and Dark Sky Films is set to release Luz: The Flower of Evil this week,...
If you’re a Stephen King fan, Paramount has assembled a 5-Movie Collection on Blu that includes both iterations of Pet Sematary, Silver Bullet, The Stand, and The Dead Zone. Kl Studio Classics is showing some love this Tuesday to the horror comedy The Ghost Breakers featuring Bob Hope, and Dark Sky Films is set to release Luz: The Flower of Evil this week,...
- 9/14/2020
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
Walter Huston and May Astor in Dodsworth is currently available on Blu-ray From Warner Archive. Ordering information can be found Here
” Love has got to stop some place short of suicide. “
Based on the best-selling novel by Sinclair Lewis, this “handsome, intelligent film” (Los Angeles Times) garnered seven Academy Award ® nominations, winning one*, and is “one of the authentic masterpieces of the 1930s” (Filmex Guide). Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is a small-town rags-to-riches millionaire who finds that his money cannot bring him happiness. His unsatisfied wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), seeking glamour and sophistication, persuades him to take her on a grand tour of Europe, where she promptly deserts him for a romantic but penniless baron. Brokenhearted, Sam meets Edith (Mary Astor), an understanding widow who arouses passions he never thought he had and sets him on a collision course with his wife, unleashing a torrent of desire, betrayal and shocking revelations.
” Love has got to stop some place short of suicide. “
Based on the best-selling novel by Sinclair Lewis, this “handsome, intelligent film” (Los Angeles Times) garnered seven Academy Award ® nominations, winning one*, and is “one of the authentic masterpieces of the 1930s” (Filmex Guide). Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is a small-town rags-to-riches millionaire who finds that his money cannot bring him happiness. His unsatisfied wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), seeking glamour and sophistication, persuades him to take her on a grand tour of Europe, where she promptly deserts him for a romantic but penniless baron. Brokenhearted, Sam meets Edith (Mary Astor), an understanding widow who arouses passions he never thought he had and sets him on a collision course with his wife, unleashing a torrent of desire, betrayal and shocking revelations.
- 3/30/2020
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
It’s ‘Marriage Story’ circa 1936. Talk about older shows that still pack a dramatic wallop… William Wyler’s most celebrated ’30s film is this Sinclair Lewis adaptation. The Production Code frowned on disrespecting the institution of marriage, but Wyler & writer Sidney Howard keep the divorce theme intact — their well-off couple learn more about each other and simply grow apart. Industrialist Walter Huston gets pushed a little too far. His social-climbing wife Ruth Chatterton doesn’t appreciate what she’s got, while luscious Mary Astor is the Depression equivalent of a Malibu Earth Mother.
Dodsworth
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1936 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 101 min. / Street Date March 24, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, David Niven, Gregory Gaye, Maria Ouspenskaya.
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté
Film Editor: Daniel Mandell
Original Music: Alfred Newman
Written by Sidney Howard from his play of the novel by Sinclair Lewis...
Dodsworth
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1936 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 101 min. / Street Date March 24, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, David Niven, Gregory Gaye, Maria Ouspenskaya.
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté
Film Editor: Daniel Mandell
Original Music: Alfred Newman
Written by Sidney Howard from his play of the novel by Sinclair Lewis...
- 3/17/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
” I am not what is called a civilized man, Professor. I have done with society for reasons that seem good to me. Therefore, I do not obey its laws.”
“20000 Leagues Under the Sea” Kirk Douglas 1954 Walt Disney Productions ** I.V.
Kirk Douglas is gone, so pay tribute to the great actor and attend a screening of one of his most beloved films! 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) will be screening at The Wildey Theater in Edwardsville, Il at 7pm Tuesday, February 18th. Admission is $2.
Based on the Jules Verne novel, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea takes us back to 1868, where rumors of a sea monster attacking ships are running rampant. Eminent scientist Professor Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his protégé’ Counseil (Peter Lorre) are invited to join a voyage to investigate the matter, along with the free-spirited harpoonist Ned Land (Douglas). They encounter the beast and are shipwrecked, only to discover...
“20000 Leagues Under the Sea” Kirk Douglas 1954 Walt Disney Productions ** I.V.
Kirk Douglas is gone, so pay tribute to the great actor and attend a screening of one of his most beloved films! 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) will be screening at The Wildey Theater in Edwardsville, Il at 7pm Tuesday, February 18th. Admission is $2.
Based on the Jules Verne novel, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea takes us back to 1868, where rumors of a sea monster attacking ships are running rampant. Eminent scientist Professor Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his protégé’ Counseil (Peter Lorre) are invited to join a voyage to investigate the matter, along with the free-spirited harpoonist Ned Land (Douglas). They encounter the beast and are shipwrecked, only to discover...
- 2/11/2020
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Hidden behind the membership-only barrier of The Disney Movie Club is a long-delayed, long-missed key feature from The Mouse, Walt’s masterful super-production of the timeless Jules Verne classic. Despite the funny songs and an annoyingly ‘ork-ork’-ing sea lion, the lavishly filmed show embraces the dark side of Verne’s vision — Captain Nemo is nothing less than an anti-Colonial terrorist, waging a one-submarine war against international warmongers. With the commanding James Mason in the role, the film’s furious politics are as impressive as the to-die-for art direction: this Disney family attraction has us rooting for the terrorist and against the Imperialist European powers.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Blu-ray
The Disney Movie Club
1954 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 127 min. / Anniversary Edition / Street Date June 18, 2019 / Disney Movie Club exclusive.
Starring: Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre, Robert J. Wilke, Ted de Corsia, Carleton Young.
Cinematography: Franz Planer
Film Editor: Elmo Williams...
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Blu-ray
The Disney Movie Club
1954 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 127 min. / Anniversary Edition / Street Date June 18, 2019 / Disney Movie Club exclusive.
Starring: Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre, Robert J. Wilke, Ted de Corsia, Carleton Young.
Cinematography: Franz Planer
Film Editor: Elmo Williams...
- 7/2/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Mill Creek and Kit Parker package nine mid-range Columbia features from the 1940s and 1950s, not all of them strictly noir but all with dark themes — crime, creepy politics, etc. None have been on Blu-ray, and all but one are in fine condition.
Noir Archive 9-Film Collection
Address Unknown, Escape in the Fog, The Guilt of Janet Ames, The Black Book, Johnny Allegro, 711 Ocean Drive, The Killer That Stalked New York, Assignment: Paris, The Miami Story
Blu-ray
Mill Creek / Kit Parker
1944 -1954 / B&W / 8 x 1:37 Academy; 1 x 1:85 widescreen / 734 min. / Street Date April 23, 2019 / 49.95
Starring: Paul Lukas, Nina Foch, Rosalind Russell, Robert Cummings, George Raft, Edmond O’Brien, Evelyn Keyes, Dana Andrews, Barry Sullivan.
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté, George Meehan, Joseph Walker, John Alton, Joseph Biroc, Franz Planer, Joseph Biroc, Burnett Guffey, Henry Freulich.
Written by Herbert Dalmas, Aubrey Wisberg, Louella MacFarlane, Philip Yordan, Karen DeWolf, Richard English, Harry Essex, William Bowers,...
Noir Archive 9-Film Collection
Address Unknown, Escape in the Fog, The Guilt of Janet Ames, The Black Book, Johnny Allegro, 711 Ocean Drive, The Killer That Stalked New York, Assignment: Paris, The Miami Story
Blu-ray
Mill Creek / Kit Parker
1944 -1954 / B&W / 8 x 1:37 Academy; 1 x 1:85 widescreen / 734 min. / Street Date April 23, 2019 / 49.95
Starring: Paul Lukas, Nina Foch, Rosalind Russell, Robert Cummings, George Raft, Edmond O’Brien, Evelyn Keyes, Dana Andrews, Barry Sullivan.
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté, George Meehan, Joseph Walker, John Alton, Joseph Biroc, Franz Planer, Joseph Biroc, Burnett Guffey, Henry Freulich.
Written by Herbert Dalmas, Aubrey Wisberg, Louella MacFarlane, Philip Yordan, Karen DeWolf, Richard English, Harry Essex, William Bowers,...
- 4/9/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It’s clear that the Academy tasked producer Donna Gigliotti and co-producer/director Glenn Weiss with reinventing the Oscar show this year. After all, the promise of a show limited to three hours, made by the AMPAS Board of Governors in August, before the producers was hired, was enough to demand a new approach.
As we all know, two of the ideas that were to make this a new kind of Oscar show — the creation of a new “Popular Oscar” category and the shifting of several categories into the commercial breaks — were scrapped, the first in September and the second just last week.
That’ll make it significantly harder (and quite possibly impossible) for Gigliotti and Weiss to hit that three-hour limit, but they’ll probably trot out a few new takes on an old model. We won’t know how well it’s going to work until Sunday night...
As we all know, two of the ideas that were to make this a new kind of Oscar show — the creation of a new “Popular Oscar” category and the shifting of several categories into the commercial breaks — were scrapped, the first in September and the second just last week.
That’ll make it significantly harder (and quite possibly impossible) for Gigliotti and Weiss to hit that three-hour limit, but they’ll probably trot out a few new takes on an old model. We won’t know how well it’s going to work until Sunday night...
- 2/23/2019
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
"Jacques Tourneur, Fearmaker" runs from December 14 – January 3, 2019 at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center.A man twists and contorts himself to fire his tommy gun from the front seat of a prop plane, strafing an escaping yacht in Jacques Tourneur’s Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939). The action scenes of the first (of only two) of MGM’s detective programmers starring Walter Pidgeon as a blasé, blowhard private dick go a long way to set thrilling standards of danger and energy in a prescient pre-war mystery of aviation espionage and sabotage. The opening scene in the desert of a foiled aircraft hijacking is already that Christopher Nolan-style of concept, grandeur and stark visuals, but the boat-gunning climax, created through great, swooning back projection and Carter’s nearly absurd violent technique, lends great character to an otherwise unpromising crime series.A gang leader huddled among anonymous criminals on a prison boat as “the Rock,...
- 12/18/2018
- MUBI
Days of Glory (1944)This year at the Locarno Festival I am looking for specific images, moments, techniques, qualities or scenes from films across the 70th edition's selection that grabbed me and have lingered past and beyond the next movie seen, whose characters, story and images have already begun to overwrite those that came just before.***“Like anything you will ever tell me,” dreamily says a Soviet dancer-turned partisan (Tamara Toumanova) to her lover and commander Vladmir (Gregory Peck in his first role), “it’s learned by heart.” Days of Glory (1944), a highly evocative masterpiece from Jacques Tourneur conjured in that brief moment during World War 2 when Hollywood was asked to make movies in support of our Soviet allies, with disjunctive, lyrical surrealness casts this dancer among the hardened Russian soldiers isolated in a crumbling, underground redoubt behind enemy lines. She comes from a world of art unknown to these fighters,...
- 8/11/2017
- MUBI
One of the quirks of Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna's annual jamboree celebrating restored or rediscovered movies, is that expensive products of the Hollywood studio system can be just as obscure and hard-to-see as low-budget oddities, foreign arthouse affairs and forgotten silents from a hundred years ago. Dave Kehr's retrospective of neglected items from Universal's vaults demonstrates this clearly.James Whale always liked to say By Candlelight was his favorite of his own films, bypassing the more celebrated Frankenstein films. It's a romantic comedy of confused identities and it's no surprise that P.G. Wodehouse had a hand in the stage source.But in this movie, when a butler impersonates his master in order to seduce a wealthy lady who turns out to be a maid impersonating her mistress, all the irony of Wodehouse's inversion of traditional ideas about class has gone. All right, so George Orwell argued persuasively that Wodehouse...
- 7/6/2017
- MUBI
Paul Lukas and Bette Davis in "Watch on the Rhine"
It's ten days until Oscar and soon this post may be obsolete! To date, unless I've miscounted, ten actors have won the leading Oscar for reprising a role they won praise for first on the Broadway stage. Soon there could be 11 depending on how well Denzel Washington fares on Oscar night for Fences.
Actors Who Won Lead Oscars Reprising Their Broadway Roles
They are...
• George Arliss for Disraeli (1929/30)
Arliss had played this role in the Broadway production in 1911
• Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine (1943)
He previously played this role from 1941 through early 1942 on Broadway -- the transfer to the screen was mighty quick!
• Jose Ferrer for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
He won the Tony for this iconic role in 1947. Later in 1990 Gerard Depardieu would also be nominated for playing the same role -- and Steve Martin arguably should have been...
It's ten days until Oscar and soon this post may be obsolete! To date, unless I've miscounted, ten actors have won the leading Oscar for reprising a role they won praise for first on the Broadway stage. Soon there could be 11 depending on how well Denzel Washington fares on Oscar night for Fences.
Actors Who Won Lead Oscars Reprising Their Broadway Roles
They are...
• George Arliss for Disraeli (1929/30)
Arliss had played this role in the Broadway production in 1911
• Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine (1943)
He previously played this role from 1941 through early 1942 on Broadway -- the transfer to the screen was mighty quick!
• Jose Ferrer for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
He won the Tony for this iconic role in 1947. Later in 1990 Gerard Depardieu would also be nominated for playing the same role -- and Steve Martin arguably should have been...
- 2/16/2017
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...
- 3/26/2016
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
William Cameron Menzies. William Cameron Menzies movies on TCM: Murderous Joan Fontaine, deadly Nazi Communists Best known as an art director/production designer, William Cameron Menzies was a jack-of-all-trades. It seems like the only things Menzies didn't do was act and tap dance in front of the camera. He designed and/or wrote, directed, produced, etc., dozens of films – titles ranged from The Thief of Bagdad to Invaders from Mars – from the late 1910s all the way to the mid-1950s. Among Menzies' most notable efforts as an art director/production designer are: Ernst Lubitsch's first Hollywood movie, the Mary Pickford star vehicle Rosita (1923). Herbert Brenon's British-set father-son drama Sorrell and Son (1927). David O. Selznick's mammoth production of Gone with the Wind, which earned Menzies an Honorary Oscar. The Sam Wood movies Our Town (1940), Kings Row (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). H.C. Potter's Mr. Lucky...
- 1/28/2016
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Constance Cummings in 'Night After Night.' Constance Cummings: Working with Frank Capra and Mae West (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Actress Went from Harold Lloyd to Eugene O'Neill.”) Back at Columbia, Harry Cohn didn't do a very good job at making Constance Cummings feel important. By the end of 1932, Columbia and its sweet ingenue found themselves in court, fighting bitterly over stipulations in her contract. According to the actress and lawyer's daughter, Columbia had failed to notify her that they were picking up her option. Therefore, she was a free agent, able to offer her services wherever she pleased. Harry Cohn felt otherwise, claiming that his contract player had waived such a notice. The battle would spill over into 1933. On the positive side, in addition to Movie Crazy 1932 provided Cummings with three other notable Hollywood movies: Washington Merry-Go-Round, American Madness, and Night After Night. 'Washington Merry-Go-Round...
- 11/5/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Australian writer-producer Tammy Burnstock has been fascinated by the world.s first and only .Smell-o-Vision. feature ever since she interviewed its director/cinematographer Jack Cardiff in 1986.
Now Burnstock is part of the team that aims to screen a restored version of Scent of Mystery, retitled Holiday in Spain, to cinema audiences around the world including Australia.
Released in 1960, the film starred Denholm Elliott as a mystery novelist who discovers a plan to murder an American heiress (Beverly Bentley) while on vacation in Spain. He enlists the help of a local taxi driver (Peter Lorre) to try to thwart the crime. The cast included Leo McKern, Diana Dors and Paul Lukas.
Cardiff and producer Mike Todd Jr. updated a system invented by a Swiss man, Dr. Hans Laube, which piped artificial scents through a network of tubes to the back of each seat in a theatre.
Laube first demonstrated his .Scentovision...
Now Burnstock is part of the team that aims to screen a restored version of Scent of Mystery, retitled Holiday in Spain, to cinema audiences around the world including Australia.
Released in 1960, the film starred Denholm Elliott as a mystery novelist who discovers a plan to murder an American heiress (Beverly Bentley) while on vacation in Spain. He enlists the help of a local taxi driver (Peter Lorre) to try to thwart the crime. The cast included Leo McKern, Diana Dors and Paul Lukas.
Cardiff and producer Mike Todd Jr. updated a system invented by a Swiss man, Dr. Hans Laube, which piped artificial scents through a network of tubes to the back of each seat in a theatre.
Laube first demonstrated his .Scentovision...
- 9/28/2015
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
To mark the release of deep sea thriller Pressure, out now on DVD/download starring Danny Huston, Matthew Goode, Joe Cole, Alan McKenna and Daisy Lowe, we take a look at the best deep sea thrillers of all time.
The Hunt For Red October (1990)
Starring: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn
Director: John McTiernan
Das Boot (1981)
Starring: Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, Klaus Wennemann
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954)
Starring: Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre
Director: Richard Fleischer
Jaws (1975)
Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Director: Steven Spielberg
The Abyss (1989)
Starring: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn
Director: James Cameron
The Big Blue (1988)
Starring: Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno, Rosanna Arquette, Paul Shenar.
Director: Luc Besson
Pressure (2015)
Starring: Danny Huston, Matthew Goode, Joe Cole, Alan McKenna and Daisy Lowe
Director: Ron Scalpello
Sphere (1998)
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: Barry Levinson...
The Hunt For Red October (1990)
Starring: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn
Director: John McTiernan
Das Boot (1981)
Starring: Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, Klaus Wennemann
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954)
Starring: Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre
Director: Richard Fleischer
Jaws (1975)
Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Director: Steven Spielberg
The Abyss (1989)
Starring: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn
Director: James Cameron
The Big Blue (1988)
Starring: Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno, Rosanna Arquette, Paul Shenar.
Director: Luc Besson
Pressure (2015)
Starring: Danny Huston, Matthew Goode, Joe Cole, Alan McKenna and Daisy Lowe
Director: Ron Scalpello
Sphere (1998)
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: Barry Levinson...
- 9/7/2015
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
Susan Hayward. Susan Hayward movies: TCM Star of the Month Fiery redhead Susan Hayward it Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month in Sept. 2015. The five-time Best Actress Oscar nominee – like Ida Lupino, a would-be Bette Davis that only sporadically landed roles to match the verve of her thespian prowess – was initially a minor Warner Bros. contract player who went on to become a Paramount second lead in the early '40s, a Universal leading lady in the late '40s, and a 20th Century Fox star in the early '50s. TCM will be presenting only three Susan Hayward premieres, all from her Fox era. Unfortunately, her Paramount and Universal work – e.g., Among the Living, Sis Hopkins, And Now Tomorrow, The Saxon Charm – which remains mostly unavailable (in quality prints), will remain unavailable this month. Highlights of the evening include: Adam Had Four Sons (1941), a sentimental but surprisingly...
- 9/4/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Virginia Bruce: MGM actress ca. 1935. Virginia Bruce movies on TCM: Actress was the cherry on 'The Great Ziegfeld' wedding cake Unfortunately, Turner Classic Movies has chosen not to feature any non-Hollywood stars – or any out-and-out silent film stars – in its 2015 “Summer Under the Stars” series.* On the other hand, TCM has come up with several unusual inclusions, e.g., Lee J. Cobb, Warren Oates, Mae Clarke, and today, Aug. 25, Virginia Bruce. A second-rank MGM leading lady in the 1930s, the Minneapolis-born Virginia Bruce is little remembered today despite her more than 70 feature films in a career that spanned two decades, from the dawn of the talkie era to the dawn of the TV era, in addition to a handful of comebacks going all the way to 1981 – the dawn of the personal computer era. Career highlights were few and not all that bright. Examples range from playing the...
- 8/26/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' 2015: Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' movie is a domestic box office bomb: Will it be saved by international filmgoers? Directed by Sherlock Holmes' Guy Ritchie and toplining Man of Steel star Henry Cavill and The Lone Ranger costar Armie Hammer, the Warner Bros. release The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has been a domestic box office disaster, performing about 25 percent below – already quite modest – expectations. (See also: “'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' Movie: Bigger Box Office Flop Than Expected.”) This past weekend, the $80 million-budget The Man from U.N.C.L.E. collected a meager $13.42 million from 3,638 North American theaters, averaging $3,689 per site. After five days out, the big-screen reboot of the popular 1960s television series starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum has taken in a mere $16.77 million. For comparison's sake:...
- 8/19/2015
- by Zac Gille
- Alt Film Guide
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ca. 1935. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was never as popular as his father, silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in one action-adventure blockbuster after another in the 1920s (The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad) and whose stardom dates back to the mid-1910s, when Fairbanks toplined a series of light, modern-day comedies in which he was cast as the embodiment of the enterprising, 20th century “all-American.” What this particular go-getter got was screen queen Mary Pickford as his wife and United Artists as his studio, which he co-founded with Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charles Chaplin. Now, although Jr. never had the following of Sr., he did enjoy a solid two-decade-plus movie career. In fact, he was one of the few children of major film stars – e.g., Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Angelina Jolie, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis – who had successful film careers of their own.
- 8/16/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' with Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' box office: Bigger domestic flop than expected? Before I address the box office debacle of Warner Bros.' The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I'd like remark upon the fact that 2015 has been a notable year at the North American box office. That's when the dinosaurs of Jurassic World smashed Hulk and his fellow Halloween-costumed Marvel superheroes of Avengers: Age of Ultron. And smashed them good: $636.73 million vs. $457.52 million. (See also: 'Jurassic World' beating 'The Avengers' worldwide and domestically?) At least in part for sentimental (or just downright morbid) reasons – Paul Walker's death in a car accident in late 2013 – Furious 7 has become by far the highest-grossing The Fast and the Furious movie in the U.S. and Canada: $351.03 million. (Shades of Heath Ledger's unexpected death...
- 8/16/2015
- by Zac Gille
- Alt Film Guide
'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' with Henry Cavill. 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' box office: Hollywood's third domestic bomb in a row Right on the heels of Chris Columbus-Adam Sandler's Pixels and Josh Trank's Fantastic Four comes The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a big screen adaptation of the 1960s television series, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Man of Steel hero Henry Cavill and The Lone Ranger costar Armie Hammer. (See updated follow-up post: “'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' Movie Box Office: Bigger Bomb Than Expected.”) Budgeted at a reported $88 million, to date Pixels has collected a mere $61.11 million in North America. Overseas things are a little better: an estimated $73.6 million as of Aug. 9, for a worldwide total of approx. $134.71 million. Sounds profitable? Well, not yet. First of all, let's not forget that distributor...
- 8/15/2015
- by Zac Gille
- Alt Film Guide
Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...
- 8/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Katharine Hepburn movies. Katharine Hepburn movies: Woman in drag, in love, in danger In case you're suffering from insomnia, you might want to spend your night and early morning watching Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" series. Four-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Katharine Hepburn is TCM's star today, Aug. 7, '15. (See TCM's Katharine Hepburn movie schedule further below.) Whether you find Hepburn's voice as melodious as a singing nightingale or as grating as nails on a chalkboard, you may want to check out the 1933 version of Little Women. Directed by George Cukor, this cozy – and more than a bit schmaltzy – version of Louisa May Alcott's novel was a major box office success, helping to solidify Hepburn's Hollywood stardom the year after her film debut opposite John Barrymore and David Manners in Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement. They don't make 'em like they used to Also, the 1933 Little Women...
- 8/7/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
What a treat I gave myself. I went to the Billy Wilder Theater to see Director Dorothy Arzner’s films “The Wild Party” (1929, Paramount) and “Anybody’s Woman” (1930, Paramount) as restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, in cooperation with Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures.
And as good as these two films were (fantastic!), the audience was just as good. I saw our old friend Alan Howard with his friends David Ansen and Mary Corey, my best friend during our oh-so-long-ago freshman year at Brandeis. A perfect segue into the film “The Wild Party” Clara Bow’s first sound feature. I had never seen Clara Bow before, nor had I seen a Dorothy Arzner film. And I had only seen Mary Corey once since we both left Brandeis after our freshman year and went our separate ways.
It somehow never occurred to me that Dorothy Arzner would have a particular point of view as a woman; but she certainly did. Lesbian herself, she made women’s films about women and men who were always slightly slighted by her, but with a loving touch. These were the opening films to the Dorothy Arzner Retrospective held in the Billy Wilder Theater of the Armand Hammer Museum. Alison Anders will present August 30th’s film “The Red Kimon” and “Old Ironsides” . The series runs until September 18. Do yourself a favor and catch at least one of these historic films by a historic director…an anomaly perhaps still yet to be surpassed.
"The Wild Party" (1929)
In “The Wild Party” Clara Bow plays Stella is an inveterate partier at an all-girl college. She is tough – when drunken men molest her and her friends and even kidnap her to rape her – she fights. When a favorite classmate is implicated in a scandal, Stella heroically defends her friend's reputation at the expense of her own. Rich with pre-Code delights (including furtive, "innocent" bed-hopping with college professors), one may easily detect the film's insistence on the supremacy of female friendships.
Clara Bow, the “It” Girl, in my mind was a live Betty Boop; what the “it” meant in her nickname was not clear though I knew it had something to do with sexy. Actually, her breakthrough film was entitled “It”. She is a wonderful comedian and her expressive eyes and face rule the screen; she was America’s first sex symbol. She won a photo beauty contest which launched her movie career that would eventually number 58 films, from 1922 to 1933.
Paramount Famous Lasky Corp. Producer: E. Lloyd Sheldon. Director: Dorothy Arzner. Screenwriter: E. Lloyd Sheldon. Based on a story by Warner Fabian. Cinematographer: Victor Milner. Editor: Otto Lovering. With: Clara Bow, Fredric March, Marceline Day, Shirley O’Hara, Adrienne Doré. 35mm, b/w, 77 min.
Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Jodie Foster, in cooperation with Universal Studios.
"Anybody's Woman" (1930)
“Anybody’s Woman” holds lots of surprises including the title itself. The cheesy out-of-work chorine Pansy Gray (Ruth Chatterton) accepts an irresponsible marriage proposal from Neil Dunlap (Clive Brook), an intoxicated but elegant upper crust attorney, and winds up in high society, to the horror of her newfound "family." Reforming her dissolute husband and striving to be an honest social success, Pansy is compromised by the flirtations of several men, including Neil's most important client, for which she is denounced as a seductress.
As David described Clive Brook as stiff and Mary defended his acting because the role called for such a stiff actor, Kevin Thomas was introduced to David and joined our little group; the talk veered into other directions and so did I. But I want to say that Paul Lukas, the Hungarian born actor held a very special place in this film; elegant but vulgar, open and mysterious, he was able to play the thin line of a slightly compromised but sincere character. He went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor for “Watch on the Rhine” in 1948.
Ruth Chatterton herself began as a chorus girl at age 14 so her role must have felt very natural to her. She became a Broadway star with "Daddy Long Legs" in 1914 and appeared in various shows before moving to Hollywood in 1925. As her film career faded in the late 1930s, she returned to the stage in revivals, and radio and TV performances, including "Hamlet." In the 1950s, she began a successful writing career. She was nominted twice for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She had no children.
Paramount Publix Corp. Director: Dorothy Arzner. Screenwriter: Zoë Akins, Doris Anderson. Cinematographer: Charles Lang. Editor: Jane Loring. With: Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook, Paul Lukas. 35mm, b/w, 80 min.
Read about this film series in the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal.
The UCLA Film Archive is pleased to commemorate the indispensable career of director Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979) as part of a year-long commemoration of our own 50th Anniversary. This retrospective features six Archive restorations of Arzner's work, which have helped to spur scholarship into and retrospectives of the director's remarkable achievements. The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television is also proud to claim Arzner as a former professor. A remarkable and nearly unique figure in American film history, Arzner forged a career characterized by an individual worldview, and a strong, recognizable voice. She was also, not incidentally, the sole female director in the studio era to sustain a directing career, working in that capacity for nearly two decades and helming 20 features—conspicuously, still a record in Hollywood. Distinguished as a storyteller with penetrating insight into women's perspectives and experiences, Arzner herself emphatically made the point that only a woman could offer such authority and authenticity. At a time when the marginalization of women directors in the American film establishment is still actively debated, we celebrate Dorothy Arzner, and the Archive's long association with her legacy.
Special thanks to: Peggy Alexander, Curator—Performing Arts Special Collections, UCLA Library; Gayle Nachlis, Kirsten Schaffer—Women in Film, Los Angeles.
And as good as these two films were (fantastic!), the audience was just as good. I saw our old friend Alan Howard with his friends David Ansen and Mary Corey, my best friend during our oh-so-long-ago freshman year at Brandeis. A perfect segue into the film “The Wild Party” Clara Bow’s first sound feature. I had never seen Clara Bow before, nor had I seen a Dorothy Arzner film. And I had only seen Mary Corey once since we both left Brandeis after our freshman year and went our separate ways.
It somehow never occurred to me that Dorothy Arzner would have a particular point of view as a woman; but she certainly did. Lesbian herself, she made women’s films about women and men who were always slightly slighted by her, but with a loving touch. These were the opening films to the Dorothy Arzner Retrospective held in the Billy Wilder Theater of the Armand Hammer Museum. Alison Anders will present August 30th’s film “The Red Kimon” and “Old Ironsides” . The series runs until September 18. Do yourself a favor and catch at least one of these historic films by a historic director…an anomaly perhaps still yet to be surpassed.
"The Wild Party" (1929)
In “The Wild Party” Clara Bow plays Stella is an inveterate partier at an all-girl college. She is tough – when drunken men molest her and her friends and even kidnap her to rape her – she fights. When a favorite classmate is implicated in a scandal, Stella heroically defends her friend's reputation at the expense of her own. Rich with pre-Code delights (including furtive, "innocent" bed-hopping with college professors), one may easily detect the film's insistence on the supremacy of female friendships.
Clara Bow, the “It” Girl, in my mind was a live Betty Boop; what the “it” meant in her nickname was not clear though I knew it had something to do with sexy. Actually, her breakthrough film was entitled “It”. She is a wonderful comedian and her expressive eyes and face rule the screen; she was America’s first sex symbol. She won a photo beauty contest which launched her movie career that would eventually number 58 films, from 1922 to 1933.
Paramount Famous Lasky Corp. Producer: E. Lloyd Sheldon. Director: Dorothy Arzner. Screenwriter: E. Lloyd Sheldon. Based on a story by Warner Fabian. Cinematographer: Victor Milner. Editor: Otto Lovering. With: Clara Bow, Fredric March, Marceline Day, Shirley O’Hara, Adrienne Doré. 35mm, b/w, 77 min.
Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Jodie Foster, in cooperation with Universal Studios.
"Anybody's Woman" (1930)
“Anybody’s Woman” holds lots of surprises including the title itself. The cheesy out-of-work chorine Pansy Gray (Ruth Chatterton) accepts an irresponsible marriage proposal from Neil Dunlap (Clive Brook), an intoxicated but elegant upper crust attorney, and winds up in high society, to the horror of her newfound "family." Reforming her dissolute husband and striving to be an honest social success, Pansy is compromised by the flirtations of several men, including Neil's most important client, for which she is denounced as a seductress.
As David described Clive Brook as stiff and Mary defended his acting because the role called for such a stiff actor, Kevin Thomas was introduced to David and joined our little group; the talk veered into other directions and so did I. But I want to say that Paul Lukas, the Hungarian born actor held a very special place in this film; elegant but vulgar, open and mysterious, he was able to play the thin line of a slightly compromised but sincere character. He went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor for “Watch on the Rhine” in 1948.
Ruth Chatterton herself began as a chorus girl at age 14 so her role must have felt very natural to her. She became a Broadway star with "Daddy Long Legs" in 1914 and appeared in various shows before moving to Hollywood in 1925. As her film career faded in the late 1930s, she returned to the stage in revivals, and radio and TV performances, including "Hamlet." In the 1950s, she began a successful writing career. She was nominted twice for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She had no children.
Paramount Publix Corp. Director: Dorothy Arzner. Screenwriter: Zoë Akins, Doris Anderson. Cinematographer: Charles Lang. Editor: Jane Loring. With: Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook, Paul Lukas. 35mm, b/w, 80 min.
Read about this film series in the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal.
The UCLA Film Archive is pleased to commemorate the indispensable career of director Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979) as part of a year-long commemoration of our own 50th Anniversary. This retrospective features six Archive restorations of Arzner's work, which have helped to spur scholarship into and retrospectives of the director's remarkable achievements. The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television is also proud to claim Arzner as a former professor. A remarkable and nearly unique figure in American film history, Arzner forged a career characterized by an individual worldview, and a strong, recognizable voice. She was also, not incidentally, the sole female director in the studio era to sustain a directing career, working in that capacity for nearly two decades and helming 20 features—conspicuously, still a record in Hollywood. Distinguished as a storyteller with penetrating insight into women's perspectives and experiences, Arzner herself emphatically made the point that only a woman could offer such authority and authenticity. At a time when the marginalization of women directors in the American film establishment is still actively debated, we celebrate Dorothy Arzner, and the Archive's long association with her legacy.
Special thanks to: Peggy Alexander, Curator—Performing Arts Special Collections, UCLA Library; Gayle Nachlis, Kirsten Schaffer—Women in Film, Los Angeles.
- 8/3/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Teresa Wright-Samuel Goldwyn association comes to a nasty end (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock Heroine in His Favorite Film.") Whether or not because she was aware that Enchantment wasn't going to be the hit she needed – or perhaps some other disagreement with Samuel Goldwyn or personal issue with husband Niven Busch – Teresa Wright, claiming illness, refused to go to New York City to promote the film. (Top image: Teresa Wright in a publicity shot for The Men.) Goldwyn had previously announced that Wright, whose contract still had another four and half years to run, was to star in a film version of J.D. Salinger's 1948 short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." Instead, he unceremoniously – and quite publicly – fired her.[1] The Goldwyn organization issued a statement, explaining that besides refusing the assignment to travel to New York to help generate pre-opening publicity for Enchantment,...
- 3/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'Cat People' 1942 actress Simone Simon Remembered: Starred in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic (photo: Simone Simon in 'Cat People') Pert, pouty, pretty Simone Simon is best remembered for her starring roles in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie Cat People (1942) and in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938). Long before Brigitte Bardot, Mamie Van Doren, Ann-Margret, and (for a few years) Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm in a film career that spanned a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both sides of the Atlantic – at times, with fatal results. During that period, Simon was featured in nearly 40 movies in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Hollywood. Besides Jean Renoir, in her native country she worked for the likes of Jacqueline Audry...
- 2/6/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Luise Rainer dies at age 104: Rainer was first consecutive Oscar winner, first two-time winner in acting categories and oldest surviving winner (photo: MGM star Luise Rainer in the mid-'30s.) The first consecutive Academy Award winner, the first two-time winner in the acting categories, and, at age 104, the oldest surviving Oscar winner as well, Luise Rainer (Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld, 1936, and The Good Earth, 1937) died at her London apartment on December 30 -- nearly two weeks before her 105th birthday. Below is an article originally posted in January 2014, at the time Rainer turned 104. I'll be sharing more Luise Rainer news later on Tuesday. January 17, 2014: Inevitably, the Transformers movies' director Michael Bay (who recently had an on-camera "meltdown" after a teleprompter stopped working at the Consumer Electronics Show) and the Transformers movies' star Shia Labeouf (who was recently accused of plagiarism) were mentioned -- or rather, blasted, in...
- 12/30/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Mickey Rooney was earliest surviving Best Actor Oscar nominee (photo: Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy in ‘Boys Town’) (See previous post: “Mickey Rooney Dead at 93: MGM’s Andy Hardy Series’ Hero and Judy Garland Frequent Co-Star Had Longest Film Career Ever?”) Mickey Rooney was the earliest surviving Best Actor Academy Award nominee — Babes in Arms, 1939; The Human Comedy, 1943 — and the last surviving male acting Oscar nominee of the 1930s. Rooney lost the Best Actor Oscar to two considerably more “prestigious” — albeit less popular — stars: Robert Donat for Sam Wood’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) and Paul Lukas for Herman Shumlin’s Watch on the Rhine (1943). Following Mickey Rooney’s death, there are only two acting Academy Award nominees from the ’30s still alive: two-time Best Actress winner Luise Rainer, 104 (for Robert Z. Leonard’s The Great Ziegfeld, 1936, and Sidney Franklin’s The Good Earth, 1937), and Best Supporting Actress nominee Olivia de Havilland,...
- 4/9/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Maximilian Schell dead at 83: Best Actor Oscar winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ (photo: Maximilian Schell ca. 1960) Actor and filmmaker Maximilian Schell, best known for his Oscar-winning performance as the defense attorney in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 political drama Judgment at Nuremberg died at a hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, on February 1, 2014. According to his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, Schell died overnight following a "sudden and serious illness." Maximilian Schell was 83. Born on December 8, 1930, in Vienna, Maximilian Schell was the younger brother of future actor Carl Schell and Maria Schell, who would become an international film star in the 1950s (The Last Bridge, Gervaise, The Hanging Tree). Immy Schell, who would be featured in several television and film productions from the mid-’50s to the early ’90s, was born in 1935. Following Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Schell’s parents, Swiss playwright Hermann Ferdinand Schell and Austrian stage actress Margarete Schell Noé,...
- 2/2/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
By Lee Pfeiffer
Sony has released director Richard Brooks' 1965 screen adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim as a burn-to-order DVD title. The novel, written in 1899, centers on Jim, an idealistic young man who fulfills his dream of being a highly regarded officer on a commercial cargo vessel in southeast Asia. All is going well for him under the guidance of his mentor, ship's captain Marlowe. However, when an injury causes Jim to convalesce for an extended period, he ends up on a rickety freighter under the command of an unscrupulous captain who is transporting hundreds of Muslim pilgrims. When the ship founders, the captain and his cowardly crew abandon ship, leaving the pilgrims to face what appears to be certain death. To his own astonishment, Jim spontaneously opts to join them in order to save his own life. When the ragged survivors finally make port, they are shocked...
Sony has released director Richard Brooks' 1965 screen adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim as a burn-to-order DVD title. The novel, written in 1899, centers on Jim, an idealistic young man who fulfills his dream of being a highly regarded officer on a commercial cargo vessel in southeast Asia. All is going well for him under the guidance of his mentor, ship's captain Marlowe. However, when an injury causes Jim to convalesce for an extended period, he ends up on a rickety freighter under the command of an unscrupulous captain who is transporting hundreds of Muslim pilgrims. When the ship founders, the captain and his cowardly crew abandon ship, leaving the pilgrims to face what appears to be certain death. To his own astonishment, Jim spontaneously opts to join them in order to save his own life. When the ragged survivors finally make port, they are shocked...
- 1/19/2014
- by [email protected] (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Bette Davis movies: TCM schedule on August 14 (photo: Bette Davis in ‘Dangerous,’ with Franchot Tone) See previous post: “Bette Davis Eyes: They’re Watching You Tonight.” 3:00 Am Parachute Jumper (1933). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, Harold Huber, Leo Carrillo, Thomas E. Jackson, Lyle Talbot, Leon Ames, Stanley Blystone, Reginald Barlow, George Chandler, Walter Brennan, Pat O’Malley, Paul Panzer, Nat Pendleton, Dewey Robinson, Tom Wilson, Sheila Terry. Bw-72 mins. 4:30 Am The Girl From 10th Avenue (1935). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Bette Davis, Ian Hunter, Colin Clive, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge, Phillip Reed, Katharine Alexander, Helen Jerome Eddy, Bill Elliott, Edward McWade, André Cheron, Wedgwood Nowell, John Quillan, Mary Treen. Bw-69 mins. 6:00 Am Dangerous (1935). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, Margaret Lindsay, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge, Dick Foran, Walter Walker, Richard Carle, George Irving, Pierre Watkin, Douglas Wood,...
- 8/15/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Bette Davis’ eyes keep ‘Watch on the Rhine’ Bette Davis’ eyes are watching everything and everyone on Turner Classic Movies this evening, as TCM continues with its "Summer Under the Stars" film series: today, August 14, 2013, belongs to two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis’ eyes, cigarettes, and clipped tones. Right now, TCM is showing the Herman Shumlin-directed Watch on the Rhine (1943), an earnest — too much so, in fact — melodrama featuring Nazis, anti-Nazis, and lofty political speeches. (See “Bette Davis Movies: TCM schedule.”) As a prestigious and timely Warner Bros. release, Watch on the Rhine was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award and earned Paul Lukas the year’s Best Actor Oscar. Bette Davis has a subordinate role and — for once during her years as Warners’ Reigning Queen — subordinate billing as well. As so often happens when Davis tried to play a sympathetic character, she’s not very good; Lukas, however,...
- 8/15/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Mickey Rooney movies on TCM: Music and murder (photo: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland ca. 1940) Mickey Rooney is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 13, 2013. According to the IMDb, Mickey Rooney, who turns 93 next September 23, has been featured in more than 250 movies — in shorts and features, in Hollywood and international productions, in cameos and starring roles, in bit parts and second leads. You name it, Rooney has done it: comedies, dramas, thrillers, musicals, biopics, war movies, horse movies, horror movies. (Mickey Rooney: TCM movie schedule.) Mickey Rooney in a horror movie? Yes, in about a dozen of those. Scarier than World War Z, The Conjuring, The Exorcist, and Alien combined were A Family Affair (on TCM earlier today) and ensuing Andy Hardy movies. Creepy stuff. Nearly as frightening are Rooney’s musicals with Judy Garland, one of which TCM presented earlier this morning, Strike Up the Band (1940). Another,...
- 8/13/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Paul Henreid: From Eleanor Parker to ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (photo: Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker in ‘Between Two Worlds’) Paul Henreid returns this evening, as Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013. In Of Human Bondage (1946), he stars in the old Leslie Howard role: a clubfooted medical student who falls for a ruthless waitress (Eleanor Parker, in the old Bette Davis role). Next on TCM, Henreid and Eleanor Parker are reunited in Between Two Worlds (1944), in which passengers aboard an ocean liner wonder where they are and where the hell (or heaven or purgatory) they’re going. Hollywood Canteen (1944) is a near-plotless, all-star showcase for Warner Bros.’ talent, a World War II morale-boosting follow-up to that studio’s Thank Your Lucky Stars, released the previous year. Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and Pirates of Tripoli (1955) are B pirate movies. The former is an uninspired affair,...
- 7/24/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
1935-42, PG, Network
The first volume of this series was disappointing, but this one is both valuable and entertaining. The first disc from pre-Michael Balcon days has the more significant films. The likable 18th-century children's naval yarn Midshipman Easy (1935) stars future TV star Hughie Green as an idealistic, naive teenager turning up trumps at sea and waving a cutlass ashore while serving on a Royal Navy sloop command by Roger Livesey. It's significant as the directorial debut of Carol Reed and welcomed by his future collaborator Graham Greene in his Spectator film column.
The other film, Brief Ecstasy (1937), directed by Edmond T Gréville, a French film-maker at home on both sides of the Channel, is a little gem about a handsome middle-class Englishman (Hugh Williams) and the attractive student (Linden Travers) with whom he has a one-night stand in London and then meets again five years later, when she's...
The first volume of this series was disappointing, but this one is both valuable and entertaining. The first disc from pre-Michael Balcon days has the more significant films. The likable 18th-century children's naval yarn Midshipman Easy (1935) stars future TV star Hughie Green as an idealistic, naive teenager turning up trumps at sea and waving a cutlass ashore while serving on a Royal Navy sloop command by Roger Livesey. It's significant as the directorial debut of Carol Reed and welcomed by his future collaborator Graham Greene in his Spectator film column.
The other film, Brief Ecstasy (1937), directed by Edmond T Gréville, a French film-maker at home on both sides of the Channel, is a little gem about a handsome middle-class Englishman (Hugh Williams) and the attractive student (Linden Travers) with whom he has a one-night stand in London and then meets again five years later, when she's...
- 5/11/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
One of the Most Amazing Silent Movies (or Movies of Any Era, Period) Ever Made Tops the List of Best of Movies Released in 1921 Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Metro Pictures' film version of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s epic novel -- from a scenario by the immensely powerful writer-producer June Mathis -- catapulted Mathis’ protégé, the until then little known Rudolph Valentino (photo, left), to worldwide superstardom, as The Four Horsemen became one of the biggest box-office hits of the silent era. Ingram’s wife, the invariably excellent Alice Terry (right, dark-haired in real life; a light-haired in her many movies), played Valentino's love interest. Ninety-two years after its initial launch, the Four Horsemen remains a monumental achievement. Released by MGM, Vincente Minnelli's 1962 remake of this Metro Pictures production featured an all-star cast: Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin (dubbed by Angela Lansbury), Charles Boyer, Lee J. Cobb,...
- 4/3/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival continues to expand, with newly added appearances by legendary stars at screenings of some of their most memorable films, including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan, Barrie Chase, Polly Bergen,Coleen Gray, Theodore Bikel and Norman Lloyd, as well as producer Stanley Rubin, Clara Bow biographer David Stenn, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) film collections manager Katie Trainor and director Nicholas Ray’s widow, Susan Ray. In addition, TCM’s Essentials Jr. host and Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader will present screenings of Shane (1953) and The Ladykillers(1955).
And The Film Forum’s Bruce Goldstein will present a special screening of Frank Capra’s The Donovan Affair (1929), complete with live voice actors and sound effects to replace the film’s long-lost soundtrack.Mel Brooks is slated to talk about his comedy The Twelve Chairs (1970). Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan...
And The Film Forum’s Bruce Goldstein will present a special screening of Frank Capra’s The Donovan Affair (1929), complete with live voice actors and sound effects to replace the film’s long-lost soundtrack.Mel Brooks is slated to talk about his comedy The Twelve Chairs (1970). Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan...
- 3/13/2013
- by Melissa Thompson
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Here are several things that I apparently missed were happening: there is going to be a Disney remake/re-adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. David Fincher is going to direct it. And for awhile, Brad Pitt was in talks to star as Ned Land. But, wait! Now Pitt has passed and everyone is looking towards Channing Tatum (basically young Brad Pitt but with more dancing) to take the part.
Details are sparse right now, but it’s been confirmed that Fincher is looking into other actors to take the part that none other than Kirk Douglas played in Disney’s 1954 film of Jules Verne’s classic novel. Channing Tatum is right at the top of the list; in fact, as of right now, he Is the list. Interesting.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea has all the exciting elements we might expect from a 3D Disney tentpole film: mad captains,...
Details are sparse right now, but it’s been confirmed that Fincher is looking into other actors to take the part that none other than Kirk Douglas played in Disney’s 1954 film of Jules Verne’s classic novel. Channing Tatum is right at the top of the list; in fact, as of right now, he Is the list. Interesting.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea has all the exciting elements we might expect from a 3D Disney tentpole film: mad captains,...
- 2/18/2013
- by Lauren Humphries-Brooks
- We Got This Covered
Golden Globes 2013: Best TV ratings in six years The Golden Globes 2013 telecast, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as smartly and tightly dressed co-hostesses, boasted the Golden Globes ceremony’s best television ratings in six years. That seems to indicate that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were bigger TV attractions than Ricky Gervais. (Photo: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, probably making fun of James Cameron — by way of Kathryn Bigelow — at the Golden Globes 2013 ceremony. © HFPA.) Broadcast last Sunday evening on NBC, the 70th Golden Globes lured an estimated 19.7m viewers in the United States, up 17% from last year. In recent years, Golden Globes 2013 trailed only the 2007 ceremony, which was watched by slightly more than 20m viewers — on a (less audience-friendly) Monday. This year’s Golden Globes were also a relative hit with the 18-49 demographic, up 28% from last year and averaging a 6.4 rating, according to data found at Variety.
- 1/16/2013
- by Anna Robinson
- Alt Film Guide
Deadline at Dawn
Directed by Harold Clurman
Written by Clifford Odets
U.S.A, 1946
Believability is a funny thing in movies. When two film fans enter a debate surrounding the merits of a picture, with one party claiming the story stretched the limits of credibility, a natural reply might be that the film requires one to raise their level of disbelief in order to be fully engaged. That debate may or may not be settled, but what everyone can agree on is that one’s lack of belief in character behaviour or plot revelations is a very personal thing. Sometimes, the real reason why how a given character behaved did not sit well is too opaque to decipher. It is an unfortunate predicament, that being to attempt an explanation as to why said film did not work beyond…it just did not work. In a first in the Friday Noir column,...
Directed by Harold Clurman
Written by Clifford Odets
U.S.A, 1946
Believability is a funny thing in movies. When two film fans enter a debate surrounding the merits of a picture, with one party claiming the story stretched the limits of credibility, a natural reply might be that the film requires one to raise their level of disbelief in order to be fully engaged. That debate may or may not be settled, but what everyone can agree on is that one’s lack of belief in character behaviour or plot revelations is a very personal thing. Sometimes, the real reason why how a given character behaved did not sit well is too opaque to decipher. It is an unfortunate predicament, that being to attempt an explanation as to why said film did not work beyond…it just did not work. In a first in the Friday Noir column,...
- 7/20/2012
- by Edgar Chaput
- SoundOnSight
Live Appearance by Kirk Douglas Introducing a New Restoration of
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
For the second consecutive year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will celebrate the legacy of The Walt Disney Studios. Turner Classic Movies (TCM), in collaboration with D23: The Official Disney Fan Club, will present a 75th anniversary screening of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937), Disney’s first hand-drawn feature-length animated film. In addition, legendary actor Kirk Douglas will present the first general public screening of the newly restored (from original camera negatives) live-action adventure, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).
On Saturday, April 14, Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will screen at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre at 1 p.m. This film revolutionized the art of animation with its cutting edge technique, design and storytelling . setting animation in pursuit of an ever more realistic look. Moreover, it demonstrated animation’s viability...
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
For the second consecutive year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will celebrate the legacy of The Walt Disney Studios. Turner Classic Movies (TCM), in collaboration with D23: The Official Disney Fan Club, will present a 75th anniversary screening of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937), Disney’s first hand-drawn feature-length animated film. In addition, legendary actor Kirk Douglas will present the first general public screening of the newly restored (from original camera negatives) live-action adventure, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).
On Saturday, April 14, Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will screen at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre at 1 p.m. This film revolutionized the art of animation with its cutting edge technique, design and storytelling . setting animation in pursuit of an ever more realistic look. Moreover, it demonstrated animation’s viability...
- 3/20/2012
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
While "The Godfather" is busy celebrating its 40th anniversary this year (and got a re-release courtesy of Cinemark Theatres), another American celluloid treasure will be turning 70 and getting it's own fresh look on screens later this month. Michael Curtiz's undeniable classic, "Casablanca," premiered in November of 1942 before being released into theaters in early 1943. The film won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay and was nominated for Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart, who lost to Paul Lukas in "Watch on the Rhine"), Best Supporting Actor (Claude Rains, who lost to Charles Coburn in "The More the...
- 3/6/2012
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Hitfix
William Wyler was one of the greatest film directors Hollywood — or any other film industry — has ever produced. Today, Wyler lacks the following of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Frank Capra, or even Howard Hawks most likely because, unlike Hitchcock, Ford, or Capra (and to a lesser extent Hawks), Wyler never focused on a particular genre, while his films were hardly as male-centered as those of the aforementioned four directors. Dumb but true: Films about women and their issues tend to be perceived as inferior to those about men — especially tough men — and their issues. The German-born Wyler (1902, in Alsace, now part of France) immigrated to the United States in his late teens. Following a stint at Universal's New York office, he moved to Hollywood and by the mid-'20s was directing Western shorts. His ascent was quick; by 1929 Wyler was directing Universal's top female star, Laura La Plante in the...
- 2/22/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Did you know that Meryl Streep holds the record for most individual Golden Globe nominations? "Extra" has compiled a list of fun facts about the awards ceremony. The 2012 Golden Globes air Sunday, January 15 on NBC (5 Pm Pst/8 Pm Est)!
Fun Facts About the Golden GlobesGoing National
The first national telecasts of the awards were during a special segment on "The Andy Williams Show" in 1964 and 1965.
The Beginning
Paul Lukas won the Golden Globe Award for...
Fun Facts About the Golden GlobesGoing National
The first national telecasts of the awards were during a special segment on "The Andy Williams Show" in 1964 and 1965.
The Beginning
Paul Lukas won the Golden Globe Award for...
- 1/15/2012
- Extra
Chicago – Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” isn’t one of his most heralded films. You don’t hear it mentioned on most lists of the best works of arguably the most influential director who ever lived. And yet it was the third film chosen for The Criterion Collection and has now been given the upgrade and joined the esteemed Blu-ray ranks of the most important collection in the history of home entertainment. If you’re unfamiliar with this witty, delightful gem of a thriller, there’s no other way to experience it for the first time. And if you’re a fan of Hitchcock’s more famous films, do yourself a favor by checking out one of his earliest.
Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0
“The Lady Vanishes” had actually been in production with a different director when Alfred Hitchcock came on board mostly to satisfy his British contract before heading to the States.
Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0
“The Lady Vanishes” had actually been in production with a different director when Alfred Hitchcock came on board mostly to satisfy his British contract before heading to the States.
- 12/19/2011
- by [email protected] (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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