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When “Boulevard Nights” opened in early 1979, it was one of several major studio films — along with “The Warriors,” The Wanderers,” and “Over the Edge” — to take on gang violence as its primary subject. After the movies inspired a handful of violent incidents at theaters, Paramount doubled down on the marketing of Walter Hill‘s “The Warriors” and turned it into a box office hit; unfortunately for “Boulevard Nights” director Michael Pressman, Warner Bros. went in the opposite direction and pulled their film from the venues where violence had broken out, essentially abandoning the movie.

“Warner Bros. said, ‘We’re very proud of this movie, don’t get us wrong,'” Pressman told IndieWire, “‘but we’re not about to risk lawsuits.'” Over the years, however, “Boulevard Nights” has found the audience it always deserved via repertory screenings (it’s a perennial favorite at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema...

The Mulan International Film Festival (MulanIFF) is Canada's largest film festival of its kind, dedicated to championing Chinese-language films and pan-Chinese cinemas. At its fifth edition, this year's festival places a special emphasis on emerging talented filmmakers, while continuing to advocate for female filmmakers, LGBTQ+ films, and Hong Kong films. Founded in 2018 by a small group of University of Toronto alumni, the festival is now listed in Telefilm Canada's Development Program, as a qualifying festival for the stream for Black and People of Colour.

The 2024 Mulan International Film Festival will be held from August 9 to August 17, 2024, at Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto St. George.

The festival will open with the Canadian Premiere of Love Is a Gun. Directed by Taiwanese actor and director Lee Hong-Chi, this highly anticipated film has already received acclaim at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Lion of the Future...

Francis Galluppi’s crime thriller The Last Stop in Yuma County scooped both the top prize and audience award at the 28th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan) tonight (July 12) in South Korea.

The US feature won the Best of Bucheon award, which comes with a cash prize of $15,400 (KW20m), as well as the audience award.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The debut feature of US writer/director Galluppi received its Asian premiere at Bifan following its world premiere at Fantastic Fest last September and won best feature in the Orbita section of Sitges.

Richard Brake, Jim Cummings,...

American-made films took two top prizes at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) in South Korea, ahead of a slew of Korean and Taiwanese titles that took the lesser prizes.

“The Last Stop in Yuma County,” a crime thriller directed by Francis Galluppi and set around a restaurant in Arizona, won the KRW20 million Bucheon Choice feature award. The jury called it a, “profound exploration of human nature [with] characters traversing the boundary between righteousness and malevolence.”

Jt Mollner was named best director in the same section for his “Strange Darling,” a retro-feel, horror-romance with what the jury called, “an exhilarating and engaging narrative, challenging genre and character stereotypes and subverting implicit bias.”

The awards were presented Friday evening at a closing ceremony at the Bucheon City Hall. The ceremony was followed by a screening of Soi Cheang’s smash hit Hong Kong action film “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In.”

Cheang,...

Set against the backdrop of the student strike at the Department of Fine Arts of Chinese Culture University in 1994 Taiwan, “Who'll Stop the Rain” is equally a political film and a romantic drama, in a rather ambitious feature debut by Su I-hsuan, which netted Yeh Hsiao-Fei,one of the protagonists the Taipei Film Award for Best New Talent.

Who'll Stop the Rain is screening at BFI Flare

During the 1994 post-martial law period in Taiwan, 19-year-old Chi-wei arrives in Taipei to study art in a college. However, it turns out that the Chairman of the department, Yung-shing, is a rather old-fashioned professor, who expects his students to appear and behave “properly”, which immediately brings Chi-wei into trouble, for her uncombed hair and “rough” demeanor. Even more so, Yung-shing influences all the teachers in the department, with the girl starting to receive failing grades from the get go. It seems, however, that...

A clash with Chinese New Year and the imminent launch of Hong Kong Filmart has resulted in a reduced presence from some parts of Asia at this year’s European Film Market (EFM).

It is hard to spot any Hong Kong exhibitor on the market floor of the Gropius Bau as sales and production companies from the territory are holding their latest lineups for Filmart, which begins on March 11, less than three weeks after EFM wraps.

Representatives of sales and acquisition company Golden Scene are at the EFM primarily as buyers, looking for new titles for theatrical distribution in Hong Kong,...

The BFI Flare: London Lgbtqia+ Film Festival has revealed the line-up for its 38th edition which takes place March 13-24.

The programme comprises 57 features across the Hearts, Bodies and Mind strands, four of which are world premieres.

Scroll down for full line-up

World premiering is Karen Knox’s sophomore feature We Forgot To Break Up about a trans musician caught in a love triangle with his bandmates. The Canadian actress and filmmaker’s debut Adult Adoption premiered at Glasgow Film Festival in 2022.

Other world premieres are Kat Rohrer’s Austrian romantic comedy What A Feeling about two women who meet...

Despite a series of issues the whole Chinese language movie world is experiencing, it seems, and as we also mentioned last year, the local industries are also moving intensely forward, with the productions of quality from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong increasing significantly. In that fashion, Hong Kong seems to have made a rather successful turn towards social/family dramas, Taiwan continues on the rather high level it has established for some years now, while China's local blockbusters and international, diaspora movies continue to lead the way, both locally and beyond the borders of the country.

Without further ado, here are 20 movies that highlighted all the aforementioned in 2023, in reverse order, although the difference of quality is so small here, that the order could be completely different. Some films may have premiered in 2022, but since they mostly circulated in 2023, we decided to include them.

20. Who'll Stop the Rain by Su...

An addition 5% bonus will be granted for “significant Indian content”.

India has increased filming incentives for international productions shooting in the country from 30% to 40% as part of an ongoing bid to attract major projects to film in India.

The cap on qualifying spend has also been substantially increased from $300,000 (INR25m) to $3.6m (INR300m$3.6m) and an additional 5% rebate bonus will be granted to films that feature “significant Indian content”.

International productions eligible for the scheme will need to have been granted shooting permission by India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or the Ministry of External Affairs (for...

The drama is nominated for a Golden Horse Award.

Taiwanese drama Who’ll Stop The Rain has been sold to Japan’s Rights Cube by Hope Marketing Entertainment following its international premiere at Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).

The film marks the feature directorial debut of Su I-Hsuan and played in the World Focus strand of TIFF last month following its world premiere at the Taipei Film Festival in July where actress Yeh Hsiao-Fei won the best new performer prize.

Yeh is nominated for best new performer at the Golden Horse Awards, which will take place on Saturday (November 25), along with...

Su I-Hsuan is a Taipei-based writer and director. Her 2018 TV Film “Where The Sun Don't Shine” won Best TV Film, Best Lead Actor, and New Actor in the 2018 Golden Bell Awards. Her first feature film “Who Will Stop The Rain” was selected for the 2018 Talents Tokyo, Produire au Sud workshop Taipei and the 2022 Venice Gap-Financing Market.

On the occasion of “Who'll Stop the Rain” screening in Tokyo International Film Festival, we speak with her about combining romance with politics, the current social and political situation in Taiwan, the casting, and the cinematography, the erotic scenes, and other topics.

How was the reception of the film in Tokyo?

I think the Japanese and Taiwanese cultures are different. I found that the Japanese audience enjoyed our film and understood our culture, particularly the most important points, about LGBT issues, even though in Taiwan, these issues are quite open and not so much in Japan.

Set against the backdrop of the student strike at the Department of Fine Arts of Chinese Culture University in 1994 Taiwan, “Who'll Stop the Rain” is equally a political film and a romantic drama, in a rather ambitious feature debut by Su I-hsuan, which netted Yeh Hsiao-Fei,one of the protagonists the Taipei Film Award for Best New Talent.

Who'll Stop the Rain is screening at Tokyo International Film Festival

During the 1994 post-martial law period in Taiwan, 19-year-old Chi-wei arrives in Taipei to study art in a college. However, it turns out that the Chairman of the department, Yung-shing, is a rather old-fashioned professor, who expects his students to appear and behave “properly”, which immediately brings Chi-wei into trouble, for her uncombed hair and “rough” demeanor. Even more so, Yung-shing influences all the teachers in the department, with the girl starting to receive failing grades from the get go. It seems,...

‘’Eye Of The Storm’ and ‘Marry My Dead Body’ also secure several nods.

Chong Keat-aun’s historical epic Snow In Midsummer leads the nominations for the 60th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, scoring nine nods including best film and best director.

Lin Chun-yang’s Sars drama Eye Of The Storm and Cheng Wei-hao’s ghost comedy Marry My Dead Body are close behind with eight nominations apiece.

Each will compete in the best film category along with Stonewalling by husband-and-wife team Huang Ji from mainland China and Ryuji Otsuka from Japan, and Time Still Turns The Pages, the feature debut...

John Fogerty is no fan of President Donald Trump; the former Creedence Clearwater Revival leader even issued a cease-and-desist order (promptly ignored) this fall when “Fortunate Son” was cranked during Trump rallies. Now, Fogerty will be sending Trump off in his own way — with “Weeping in the Promised Land,” the 75-year-old rocker’s first new song in eight years.

Centered around Fogerty’s voice and piano, with only a handful of gospel singers accompanying him, the song marks a return to the socially conscious themes that powered Creedence anthems like...

In the early weeks of the pandemic, John Fogerty had a flashback as he was instructing his new band on the finer points of playing his Creedence Clearwater Revival standards. “I heard myself actually saying some of the same instructions I gave to Creedence all those years ago,” he tells Rolling Stone. “Trying to get the rhythm for ‘Proud Mary’ to be just so.”

The Covid-19 twist is that his “band” was actually composed of his three youngest children: Shane, 28; Tyler, 27; and Kelsy, 18. What began as informal, lockdown-inspired jams in...

Read Robert McFadden's excellent New York Times obit of the British hero who died at 106, "one man who just decided to do the right thing," wrote Michael Phillips in the Wall Street Journal. A stock broker in the 1930s, Winton deferred a ski vacation to organize the rescue of hundreds of mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, just before World War II began.  Among the 669 Jewish children who Winton sent via train to England before the arrival of the Nazis were filmmaker Karel Reisz ("Isadora," "The French Lieutenant's Woman," "Who'll Stop the Rain") as well as the mother of The Hollywood Reporter and Kcrw's Masters, who interviewed Winton in London for NPR some years ago. She spoke to Kcrw about Winton, below. ...

(Brian De Palma, 1978; Arrow, 18)

Now 73, Brian De Palma was one of the bearded young, cinéliterate film-makers dubbed "the movie brats", who rose rapidly to dominate Hollywood in the 1970s. De Palma was Hitchcock's most assiduous disciple and The Fury, released in 1978, was part of his bid to establish himself as the Master's heir apparent. Like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Fury yokes together a spy thriller and a domestic drama while also incorporating elements of Sf and horror.

It begins with an electric sequence on a sunny east Mediterranean beach where widowed CIA agent Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) narrowly escapes death when his teenage son Robin (Andrew Stevens) is abducted, apparently by Arab terrorists. It rapidly becomes clear that he's been kidnapped by Sandza's chillingly sinister colleague (John Cassavetes), who intends to exploit the boy's psychic gifts for nefarious cold war purposes. Douglas is at his most attractively...

It's no surprise that the film adaptation of Kerouac's book is rocky: the Beats have rarely fared well on the big screen

The Beat generation was vibrant for just a short cultural moment, proclaiming a loud "no way" to the great American "yes sir" sighed by fat, complacent Eisenhower-era America. The Beats sought escape in jazz, marijuana and heroin; in racial and sexual transgression and spiritual questing; in language still deemed obscene (Ginsberg: "America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb"); and with a determination to live free of ambitions and schedules. Their exploits unfolded in a world now vanished, where racial segregation was the norm, and jazz was still a living music, not a museum art; before Eisenhower shrank America with the transcontinental highways, and the road was still The Road. They're people in history now, the Beats.

It's taken 55 years for Kerouac's On The Road, the movement's signature novel,...

East Rutherford, N.J. — Bruce Springsteen celebrated his 63rd birthday onstage until nearly 2 a.m. Sunday, joined at the end by his hearty mom.

Adele Springsteen danced and sang background to "Twist and Shout," walking offstage with her son and his band at nearly 2. Her only concession to age was a pair of hastily made earplugs.

She watched as her son cut a giant cake in the shape of a guitar, passing out pieces to some audience members.

His show in the open-air MetLife Stadium was delayed three hours Saturday by authorities because of a downpour and worries about lightning. Thousands of fans clustered on indoor ramps waiting for the rain to stop.

When it did, Springsteen and his E Street Band took the stage at 10:30 p.m. to the strains of Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour," a song they performed when the clock hit that mark.

Over 30 years ago Karel Reisz's excellent Dog Soldiers (aka Who'll Stop the Rain) used heroin as a metaphor for an America corrupted by the Vietnam war and the counterculture. Stone uses a similar plot less well in his uneven thriller about two rich surfers – one a military veteran, the other a University of California botanist living the life of Riley (or Romney) with their shared girlfriend by dealing in top-grade Afghan marijuana. Along the way they tangle with a federal drugs agent (John Travolta) and Mexican cartels moving north of the border. An unpleasantly amoral tale involving unsympathetic characters, it has its taco and eats it by offering two different endings.

ThrillerOliver StoneCrimeJohn TravoltaBenicio del ToroPhilip French

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"Tuesday Weld will not be attending the Film Society of Lincoln Center's retrospective American Girl: Tuesday Weld, running from September 21—25, which will showcase 10 performances by the unconventional actress." Louis Jordan, who's working on a biography of Weld, at the House Next Door: "For a tantalizing moment, the reclusive Weld agreed to be interviewed at the Walter Reade Theatre in an event called 'An Evening with Tuesday Weld,' but later suddenly cancelled. Weld hasn't made a public appearance in more than a decade. Perhaps she's gone into self-imposed exile a la Marlene Dietrich, wanting to preserve the public's memory of the brazen, luminous beauty that made her an icon of the '60s and turned the heads of everyone from Elvis Presley to Pinchas Zukerman. But then again, Weld has made a career of not giving the public what they want, or expect."

"As an actress, Weld is famous for...

Three decades later, John Patterson still can't get enough of watching Jeff Bridges and John Heard try to avenge a murder in Cutter's Way

Thirty years on from its botched original release, Ivan Passer's note-perfect, sun-splashed neo-noir thriller Cutter's Way has slowly fought its way up from cult obscurity. As one of the lucky few who saw it then, and having loved it madly ever since, I couldn't be happier to see it available once more.

Released in 1981, it's like the last Hollywood movie of the 1960s, in which the aspirations and ideals of that long-gone decade finally soured irrevocably on its dazed, burnt-out survivors. It belongs alongside Karel Reisz's Who'll Stop The Rain (its perfect double-bill doppelganger), and Arthur Penn and Alan Sharpe's Night Moves – both visions of a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American malaise.

Continue reading...

Three decades later, John Patterson still can't get enough of watching Jeff Bridges and John Heard try to avenge a murder in Cutter's Way

Thirty years on from its botched original release, Ivan Passer's note-perfect, sun-splashed neo-noir thriller Cutter's Way has slowly fought its way up from cult obscurity. As one of the lucky few who saw it then, and having loved it madly ever since, I couldn't be happier to see it available once more.

Released in 1981, it's like the last Hollywood movie of the 1960s, in which the aspirations and ideals of that long-gone decade finally soured irrevocably on its dazed, burnt-out survivors. It belongs alongside Karel Reisz's Who'll Stop The Rain (its perfect double-bill doppelganger), and Arthur Penn and Alan Sharpe's Night Moves – both visions of a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American malaise.

Cutter's Way opens with a girl's corpse dumped in a trashcan in a rainswept Santa Barbara back alley,...

Even here in the normally sunny Southwest, the rain has been falling in recent days. And so at the request of Rebekah, here's a damp but intermittently lovely playlist for all those rainy days in our lives. Please remember these words by John Updike: "Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life." Here's That Rainy Day - Frank Sinatra Here Comes The Rain Again - The Eurythmics Songs About Rain - Gary Allan Buckets Of Rain - Bob Dylan Rain King - Counting Crows Buy For Me The Rain - The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Broken Headlights - Joey Ryan featuring Sarah Bareilles Who'll Stop The Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival I Can't Stand The Rain - Ann Peebles Walk Between The Raindrops - Donald Fagen Rain On My Parade - Bobby Darin Lady Rain - Daryl Hall and John Oates Box Of.

Even if you can't play keyboards for Deftones, New Order and Talking Heads music in "Rock Band 3" just yet, you will have the opportunity in a few days to download a soul-strumming pack of tracks by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The tunes will run $1.99, £.99, €1.49, 160 Msp or 200 Wii Points apiece, depending on where and how you acquire them. You'll also be able to snag the the full "Creedence Clearwater Revival Pack 01" for $19.99, £9.99 UK, €14.99 EU or 1600 Microsoft Points.

The full list awaits after the jump:

• "Bad Moon Rising"

• "Born on the Bayou"

• "Down on the Corner"

• "Fortunate Son (Original Version)"

• "Green River"

• "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"

• "Lookin' Out My Back Door"

• "Proud Mary"

• "Run Through the Jungle"

• "Travelin' Band"

• "Up Around the Bend"

• "Who'll Stop the Rain"

I think that about covers all the classics, not that Ccr had that huge of a library to begin with. Whether you're a longtime...