Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection
Blu ray
Severin Films
1965 – 1989 / 2841 min.
Starring Russ Tamblyn, Regina Carrol, Lon Chaney
Cinematography by Gary Graver, Vilmos Zsigmond, László Kovács
Directed by Al Adamson, David Gregory
The titles grab you by the collar like a desperate carny barker – Psycho A Go-Go, Blood of Ghastly Horror, Satan’s Sadists – then something for the raincoat crowd – Girls For Rent, Nurses For Sale, The Naughty Stewardesses. The rant turns political, incendiary: Black Heat, Mean Mother, Black Samurai. His last gasp – Cinderella 2000, Nurse Sherri, The Happy Hobo. The Happy Hobo?
Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection is an alarming new release from Severin Films presenting 32 of the director’s misbegotten “masterpieces” in beautifully restored transfers with enough added attractions to choke a horse. It’s the story of one man’s twenty year run in exploitation cinema that may be too exhausting for the casual viewer to contemplate. But...
Blu ray
Severin Films
1965 – 1989 / 2841 min.
Starring Russ Tamblyn, Regina Carrol, Lon Chaney
Cinematography by Gary Graver, Vilmos Zsigmond, László Kovács
Directed by Al Adamson, David Gregory
The titles grab you by the collar like a desperate carny barker – Psycho A Go-Go, Blood of Ghastly Horror, Satan’s Sadists – then something for the raincoat crowd – Girls For Rent, Nurses For Sale, The Naughty Stewardesses. The rant turns political, incendiary: Black Heat, Mean Mother, Black Samurai. His last gasp – Cinderella 2000, Nurse Sherri, The Happy Hobo. The Happy Hobo?
Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection is an alarming new release from Severin Films presenting 32 of the director’s misbegotten “masterpieces” in beautifully restored transfers with enough added attractions to choke a horse. It’s the story of one man’s twenty year run in exploitation cinema that may be too exhausting for the casual viewer to contemplate. But...
- 6/23/2020
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Curator Jessica Regan on The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland, Gilbert Adrian connection In Pursuit of Fashion The Sandy Schreier Collection: “Oh yes, in relation to the gingham bows that are on the kittens.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Costume designer Gilbert Adrian had longtime working relationships with some of the biggest stars on the silver screen, including Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow, Jeanette MacDonald, Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford. He created the ruby slippers and designed the gingham dress worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy in Victor Fleming’s The Wizard Of Oz.
Jessica Regan on working with Nathan Crowley and Shane Valentino: “They were looking at 1930s film set design and taking inspiration …” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Adrian designed Garbo’s clothes for 17 of her 24 American films and helped in making her a lasting icon of style. “She has created a type,...
Costume designer Gilbert Adrian had longtime working relationships with some of the biggest stars on the silver screen, including Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow, Jeanette MacDonald, Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford. He created the ruby slippers and designed the gingham dress worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy in Victor Fleming’s The Wizard Of Oz.
Jessica Regan on working with Nathan Crowley and Shane Valentino: “They were looking at 1930s film set design and taking inspiration …” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Adrian designed Garbo’s clothes for 17 of her 24 American films and helped in making her a lasting icon of style. “She has created a type,...
- 11/30/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Mark, Aaron and Scott Nye kick off the first of a seven episode series about French cinema in the 1930s. We give an overview of the decade and some historical context, and discuss the French silent tradition and how that it transitioned to sound. We also get into detail about two important filmmakers, Jacques Feyder and Jean Vigo. Feyder was an important filmmaker in his time, but his works are not as prominent today, whereas Vigo was nearly forgotten in the 1930s and discovered after the war.
Episode Links & Notes
Special Guest: Scott Nye from CriterionCast and Battleship Pretension. You can follow him on Twitter.
3:15 – Dedication and Thanks
9:35 – Intro to French Film Series
28:15 – From Silent to Sound
46:30 – Jacques Feyder
1:13:30 – Jean Vigo
Criterion Collection: Poetic Realism Flicker Alley: The House of Mystery French Masterworks: Russian Émigrés in Paris 1923-1929 Flicker Alley: L’Inhumaine Flicker Alley...
Episode Links & Notes
Special Guest: Scott Nye from CriterionCast and Battleship Pretension. You can follow him on Twitter.
3:15 – Dedication and Thanks
9:35 – Intro to French Film Series
28:15 – From Silent to Sound
46:30 – Jacques Feyder
1:13:30 – Jean Vigo
Criterion Collection: Poetic Realism Flicker Alley: The House of Mystery French Masterworks: Russian Émigrés in Paris 1923-1929 Flicker Alley: L’Inhumaine Flicker Alley...
- 9/25/2016
- by Aaron West
- CriterionCast
Brigitte Horney is not much remembered today, despite a long, distinguished career (films for Siodmak, Wegener, Fanck, the Nazi Baron Munchausen). Tarantino's name-checking of her during the pub games of Inglourious Basterds is probably her one star moment. Maybe the porn star name doesn't help: if Emil Jannings had been christened Emil Bigballs, he might not enjoy the status he currently has.Horney did not confine her activities to Germany: Secret Lives is a version of the Mata Hari history/legend produced in Britain with a French director, the versatile, some would say hacky, Edmond T. Gréville, whose most famous British creation was the 1960 camp classic Beat Girl (John Barry score; Gillian Hills; Christopher Lee; Oliver Reed; striptease and juvenile delinquency). But his '30s and '40s work, mostly in France, was generally slick and stylish.As a flagrant roman à clef treatment of the career of a celebrated seductress,...
- 9/21/2016
- MUBI
Mariann Lewinsky curates several strands at Bologna's festival of restored or recovered films, Il Cinema Ritrovato: this year, she commemorated the centenary birth of the Dada movement and Krazy Kat with her Krazy Serial, in which surviving episodes of incomplete serials were jammed together with shorts and newsreels. The finest moment was perhaps when one serial ended and another, Abel Gance's The Poison Gases, began, but with it's opening title long lost, so that the caption "A few minutes later" seemed to join to wholly unconnected narratives.The preceding serial was Jacques Feyder's bizarre spoof, The Clutching Foot (Le pied qui étreint), which I realized from pervious excursions to Bologna was a parody not just of serials in general but of 1914's The Exploits of Elaine in particular, in which Pearl White was regularly menaced by a secret society led by the hooded and spasm-wracked mastermind The Clutching Hand.
- 7/7/2016
- MUBI
Greta Garbo movie 'The Kiss.' Greta Garbo movies on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” performer today, Aug. 26, '15. Now, why would Garbo be considered a silent era rarity? Well, certainly not because she easily made the transition to sound, remaining a major star for another decade. Think Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Fay Wray, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, etc. And so much for all the stories about actors with foreign accents being unable to maintain their Hollywood stardom following the advent of sound motion pictures. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star, Garbo was no major exception to the supposed rule. Mexican Ramon Novarro, another MGM star, also made an easy transition to sound, and so did fellow Mexicans Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio, in addition to the very British...
- 8/27/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Fandor, the premiere streaming service for independent, classic and critically-acclaimed films, shorts and documentaries, in a partnership with the Criterion Collection and Hulu Plus, is currently home to a rotation of uniquely curated bundles of Criterion films available to watch instantly via desktop, set top and mobile devices.
Every Tuesday, Fandor rolls out a new collection of films that share a common theme, genre, time period, film style, etc. These films are available on the site for 12 days before being replaced by a fresh new batch of featured Criterion masterpieces.
Fandor’S Criterion Picks For March
March 17-28: The Sixteenth Century
Carnival in Flanders(1935, Director Jacques Feyder): A small village in Flanders puts on a carnival to avoid the brutal consequences of the Spanish occupation. Ivan the Terrible(1944, DirectorSergei Eisenstein): As Ivan ascends to lead Russia, the Boyars are determined to disrupt his rule. Ivan’s relationship...
Every Tuesday, Fandor rolls out a new collection of films that share a common theme, genre, time period, film style, etc. These films are available on the site for 12 days before being replaced by a fresh new batch of featured Criterion masterpieces.
Fandor’S Criterion Picks For March
March 17-28: The Sixteenth Century
Carnival in Flanders(1935, Director Jacques Feyder): A small village in Flanders puts on a carnival to avoid the brutal consequences of the Spanish occupation. Ivan the Terrible(1944, DirectorSergei Eisenstein): As Ivan ascends to lead Russia, the Boyars are determined to disrupt his rule. Ivan’s relationship...
- 3/21/2015
- by Robert Greenberger
- Comicmix.com
There nothing better than seeing silent films with live music, especially in the cozy confines of Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood in Webster Groves). This Sunday, February 15th, at 7pm, Webster University, in conjunction with Cinema St. Louis, will screen the 1927 French film Verdun, Visions Of History from director Léon Poirier accompanied by live music from pianist Hakim Bentchouala-Golobitch. Admission is Free.
Because of the political, social, economic and cultural impact it generated worldwide, the First World War is a singular event in the history of mankind. With 4.4 million soldiers mobilized and a financial contribution of 500 billion today, the United States played a major role in the Great War and the victory of the Triple Entente. The long French-American friendship was strengthened by this conflict.
Since September 2014, as part of the worldwide commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, the Cultural Service at the Consulate General of France in Chicago,...
Because of the political, social, economic and cultural impact it generated worldwide, the First World War is a singular event in the history of mankind. With 4.4 million soldiers mobilized and a financial contribution of 500 billion today, the United States played a major role in the Great War and the victory of the Triple Entente. The long French-American friendship was strengthened by this conflict.
Since September 2014, as part of the worldwide commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, the Cultural Service at the Consulate General of France in Chicago,...
- 2/11/2015
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Translators introduction: This article by Mireille Latil Le Dantec, the first of two parts, was originally published in issue 40 of Cinématographe, September 1978. The previous issue of the magazine had included a dossier on "La qualité française" and a book of a never-shot script by Jean Grémillon (Le Printemps de la Liberté or The Spring of Freedom) had recently been published. The time was ripe for a re-evaluation of Grémillon's films and a resuscitation of his undervalued career. As this re-evaluation appears to still be happening nearly 40 years later—Grémillon's films have only recently seen DVD releases and a 35mm retrospective begins this week at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens—this article and its follow-up gives us an important view of a French perspective on Grémillon's work by a very perceptive critic doing the initial heavy-lifting in bringing the proper attention to the filmmaker's work.
Filmmaker maudit?...
Filmmaker maudit?...
- 11/30/2014
- by Ted Fendt
- MUBI
Scotland's only silent film festival was born of the determination of a Bo'ness local to bring the big screen to his doorstep
Festival name: Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema
Location: Bo'ness, Falkirk
Website: www.hippfest.co.uk
Dates: Annually, mid-March
About: With the best will in the world, Bo'ness seems an unlikely venue for a film festival, even something as quaint-sounding as a silent movie festival. But Bo'ness, a town with a population of about 14,500, perched on the banks of the Firth of Forth between Edinburgh and Falkiri, is the home of Scotland's only silent film festival. And it's all in honour of a local hero.
Louis Dickson, an electrical engineer turned cameraman, was a big noise in the early Scottish film business, grandly named the official "Kinematographer" of the Scottish National Exhibition in 1908. While he went on to take other official positions within the national film industry, Dickson's heart...
Festival name: Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema
Location: Bo'ness, Falkirk
Website: www.hippfest.co.uk
Dates: Annually, mid-March
About: With the best will in the world, Bo'ness seems an unlikely venue for a film festival, even something as quaint-sounding as a silent movie festival. But Bo'ness, a town with a population of about 14,500, perched on the banks of the Firth of Forth between Edinburgh and Falkiri, is the home of Scotland's only silent film festival. And it's all in honour of a local hero.
Louis Dickson, an electrical engineer turned cameraman, was a big noise in the early Scottish film business, grandly named the official "Kinematographer" of the Scottish National Exhibition in 1908. While he went on to take other official positions within the national film industry, Dickson's heart...
- 3/18/2014
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
International Women's Day | Under The Skin + Jonathan Glazer Q&A | 1982 Rulez | The Hippodrome Festival Of Silent Cinema
International Women's Day, Bristol & London
Bristol's Translation/Transmission takes International women's day at face value with a documentary survey of women's activism around the world. The scope is equally diverse, from a 1970s deconstruction of Rapunzel to poet Audre Lorde's Berlin years. Each screening is accompanied by discussions and/or introductions. Taking a different tack, April's Birds Eye View film festival launches with a BFI screening of doc Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines, a celebration of female super-empowerment taking in the likes of Xena, Riot Grrrl and, of course, Lynda Carter.
Watershed, Sun to 30 Mar; BFI Southbank, SE1, Sat
Under The Skin + Jonathan Glazer Q&A, London
Blending his visual virtuosity with a mystifying Scottish sci-fi story, Glazer's latest movie is beguilingly strange and highly anticipated. But the questions just...
International Women's Day, Bristol & London
Bristol's Translation/Transmission takes International women's day at face value with a documentary survey of women's activism around the world. The scope is equally diverse, from a 1970s deconstruction of Rapunzel to poet Audre Lorde's Berlin years. Each screening is accompanied by discussions and/or introductions. Taking a different tack, April's Birds Eye View film festival launches with a BFI screening of doc Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines, a celebration of female super-empowerment taking in the likes of Xena, Riot Grrrl and, of course, Lynda Carter.
Watershed, Sun to 30 Mar; BFI Southbank, SE1, Sat
Under The Skin + Jonathan Glazer Q&A, London
Blending his visual virtuosity with a mystifying Scottish sci-fi story, Glazer's latest movie is beguilingly strange and highly anticipated. But the questions just...
- 3/8/2014
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
When I first saw this artwork for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis used on the Masters of Cinema 2010 Blu-ray packaging, I was convinced that it was contemporary artwork commissioned especially for that release. As familiar as I was with Heinz Schulz-Neudamm’s famous poster for the film (aka the most sought after and most expensive movie poster of all time), for some reason I had not seen this before. But when I discovered that this poster was not only an original 1927 French release poster but also that it is a four-sheet poster that stands 94 inches tall and 126 inches wide, my mind was blown. (Click on the image to see it in all its glory). Apparently an original exists in the Art Library of the Berlin State Museum (the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) but I would assume no copy has ever come up for auction. As far as I’m concerned this...
- 9/2/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Every time I see a Jean Grémillon film, I write about it for The Forgotten. I'm now going to break with tradition slightly, because thanks to the Edinburgh Film Festival's Grémillon retrospective, subtitled Symphonies of Life, I've now seen too many films to catch up on except through a kind of overview, which I will now attempt. I should stress that the retrospective isn't over yet, I haven't been able to see all of it, and anyway there are some films not showing. So this should be considered a work in progress.
Between La petite Lise (1930), which deserves to be considered alongside Lang's M when early sound cinema is discussed, and Gueule d'amour (1937), a magnificent melodrama that works along far more stylistically conventional lines, it's been hard to see exactly what kind of filmmaker Grémillon is. A great one, certainly, but what qualities unite his work?
This is now a bit clearer to me.
Between La petite Lise (1930), which deserves to be considered alongside Lang's M when early sound cinema is discussed, and Gueule d'amour (1937), a magnificent melodrama that works along far more stylistically conventional lines, it's been hard to see exactly what kind of filmmaker Grémillon is. A great one, certainly, but what qualities unite his work?
This is now a bit clearer to me.
- 7/8/2013
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Although L'auberge rouge, directed by Claude Autant-Lara in 1951, is a well-loved classic in France, it's little enough known in the English-speaking world to rate discussion here. Besides, it's one of the best comedies I've seen this year.
The star is Fernandel, that long-faced clown. He has a philtrum you could ride a toboggan down. From certain angles, he resembles a melting wad of taffy in a tonsure. His simian features contort in ways unknown to the most experimental physiognomists: that unwieldy length of Neanderthal face looks incapable of the most standard expressions, but in fact it has more of them stashed away than the entire casts of lesser movies. When it splits open in a fearful chimp grin, great stretches of loose face-meat are abruptly hoiked skywards.
The movie serves as an excellent introduction to Fernandel's charms: playing a monk, he finds his buffoonery slightly constrained, which adds focus to it.
The star is Fernandel, that long-faced clown. He has a philtrum you could ride a toboggan down. From certain angles, he resembles a melting wad of taffy in a tonsure. His simian features contort in ways unknown to the most experimental physiognomists: that unwieldy length of Neanderthal face looks incapable of the most standard expressions, but in fact it has more of them stashed away than the entire casts of lesser movies. When it splits open in a fearful chimp grin, great stretches of loose face-meat are abruptly hoiked skywards.
The movie serves as an excellent introduction to Fernandel's charms: playing a monk, he finds his buffoonery slightly constrained, which adds focus to it.
- 6/6/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Above: Remorques (Jean Gremillon, 1941). Artist: Henry Monnici.
When I heard that Film Forum was putting on a show called “The French Old Wave” I was hoping that it was going to be a revisionist look at the films that Truffaut and his compadres in the nouvelle vague famously dismissed as “Le cinéma de papa” or the “le cinéma de qualité.” In his epoch-making 1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”, the essay which gave rise to the phrase “la politique des auteurs” and thus the Auteur Theory, Truffaut asserted that the worst of Jean Renoir’s movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy.
While Delannoy has two films in the series (L’eternel retour from 1943 and La symphonie pastorale from 1946), Renoir has six, so the series is less of a revisionist look at the films that the New Wave lambasted, and more...
When I heard that Film Forum was putting on a show called “The French Old Wave” I was hoping that it was going to be a revisionist look at the films that Truffaut and his compadres in the nouvelle vague famously dismissed as “Le cinéma de papa” or the “le cinéma de qualité.” In his epoch-making 1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”, the essay which gave rise to the phrase “la politique des auteurs” and thus the Auteur Theory, Truffaut asserted that the worst of Jean Renoir’s movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy.
While Delannoy has two films in the series (L’eternel retour from 1943 and La symphonie pastorale from 1946), Renoir has six, so the series is less of a revisionist look at the films that the New Wave lambasted, and more...
- 8/20/2012
- MUBI
In the wake of this past week’s essential Jean Epstein retrospective at New York’s Anthology Film Archives I was searching for posters for Epstein’s films and not having much luck. Two of the best posters I found however were both signed by the same artist, Jean A. Mercier or J.A.M., whom I’ve been wanting to feature for some time and not just for the following personal reason.
On the poster collector site Rue des Collectionneurs, Pierre Tchernia, a producer and TV host known in France as “Monsieur Cinema,” is quoted as saying (and I’ll translate as best I can): “It took a long time for me to discover that the ‘A’ in ‘J.A.M.’, the ‘A’ of Jean A. Mercier, the signature associated with the most beautiful movie posters, the most beautiful films of René Clair, the most beautiful films in general,...
On the poster collector site Rue des Collectionneurs, Pierre Tchernia, a producer and TV host known in France as “Monsieur Cinema,” is quoted as saying (and I’ll translate as best I can): “It took a long time for me to discover that the ‘A’ in ‘J.A.M.’, the ‘A’ of Jean A. Mercier, the signature associated with the most beautiful movie posters, the most beautiful films of René Clair, the most beautiful films in general,...
- 6/8/2012
- MUBI
When the British Film Institute was just getting started releasing DVDs, it was a surprise to come across La kermesse héroïque (a.k.a. The Heroic Surrender, a.k.a. Carnival in Flanders, 1935), a good, odd film probably not on many people's must-have lists, or at least not until it became possible for them to have it. Happily, the BFI has gone on digging up curios from the past, notably with its Flipside series of obscure British films from the 60s.
Jacques Feyder's film, based on a story by top scenarist Charles Spaak, tells of a Dutch town in 1616, on the even of its carnival celebrations, discovering itself threatened by invasion from the Spanish. The Burgomaster (André Alerme) and the town's most prominent citizens are aghast at the carnage likely to be wrought, and after they describe the rape and baby-slaying in detail, Feyder cuts to a fantasy insert depicting,...
Jacques Feyder's film, based on a story by top scenarist Charles Spaak, tells of a Dutch town in 1616, on the even of its carnival celebrations, discovering itself threatened by invasion from the Spanish. The Burgomaster (André Alerme) and the town's most prominent citizens are aghast at the carnage likely to be wrought, and after they describe the rape and baby-slaying in detail, Feyder cuts to a fantasy insert depicting,...
- 2/10/2012
- MUBI
Marlene Dietrich on TCM Pt.2: A Foreign Affair, The Blue Angel Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Monte Carlo Story (1957) Two compulsive gamblers fall in love on the French Riviera. Dir: Samuel A. Taylor. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Vittorio De Sica, Arthur O'Connell. C-101 mins, Letterbox Format. 7:45 Am Knight Without Armour (1937) A British spy tries to get a countess out of the new Soviet Union. Dir: Jacques Feyder. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Robert Donat, Irene Van Brugh. Bw-107 mins. 9:45 Am The Lady Is Willing (1942) A Broadway star has to find a husband so she can adopt an abandoned child. Dir: Mitchell Leisen. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Fred MacMurray, Aline MacMahon. Bw-91 mins. 11:30 Am Kismet (1944) In the classic Arabian Nights tale king of the beggars enters high society to help his daughter marry a handsome prince. Dir: William Dieterle. Cast: Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, James Craig.
- 9/1/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Vidyarthy Chatterjee, who wrote on cinema for leading publications like The Statesman and The Economic Times for over three decades writes on Gandha by Sachin Kundalkar, the final in the series of Marathi Cinema-New Texts, New Contexts.
About Gandha (Smell, 2009), Sachin Kundalkar’s third film, the director says: “The film is a realization of a childhood dream for me. When I was a young cinemagoer, I always wanted to smell the images that appeared on the big white screen in front of me. “
An ensemble of three stories interlinked by the sense of smell, Gandha is a challenge that only the brave of heart and the restless of spirit would come to grips with. Each story has a flavor of its own and is based on complex human relationships. The concluding story in particular has a haunting quality about it; a story of absences in the life of a young...
About Gandha (Smell, 2009), Sachin Kundalkar’s third film, the director says: “The film is a realization of a childhood dream for me. When I was a young cinemagoer, I always wanted to smell the images that appeared on the big white screen in front of me. “
An ensemble of three stories interlinked by the sense of smell, Gandha is a challenge that only the brave of heart and the restless of spirit would come to grips with. Each story has a flavor of its own and is based on complex human relationships. The concluding story in particular has a haunting quality about it; a story of absences in the life of a young...
- 7/6/2011
- by Vidyarthy Chatterjee
- DearCinema.com
Everett Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Goddard’s film “Breathless” (1960)
Since the competing claims of Edison and the Lumières to have invented the cinema, France and America have amassed two immensely rich but so often opposed film heritages. The attitude that has driven the American cinema was expressed by Sam Goldwyn when he observed, “Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” The well-crafted narrative rules in Hollywood, which has had little time for Jean-Luc Godard’s comment...
Since the competing claims of Edison and the Lumières to have invented the cinema, France and America have amassed two immensely rich but so often opposed film heritages. The attitude that has driven the American cinema was expressed by Sam Goldwyn when he observed, “Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” The well-crafted narrative rules in Hollywood, which has had little time for Jean-Luc Godard’s comment...
- 6/13/2011
- by Charles Drazin
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
"Though Éric Rohmer's breakthrough film stateside was the lustrous black-and-white, winter-set My Night at Maud's (1969), the New Wave architect may be cinema's greatest chronicler of the summer vacation," suggests Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Among the director's many holiday-set movies, Pauline at the Beach (1983) and A Summer's Tale (1996) explore both the languid pleasures and the romantic anguish of time off during the hottest season. Rohmer's 1986 masterpiece (being re-released with its original French title, which translates as 'The Green Ray'), Le Rayon Vert centers on those themes, too, but delivers something much richer: an absorbing, empathic portrait of a complex woman caught between her own obstinacy and melancholy."
"As Delphine, the lonely but defiant Paris secretary at the center of Le Rayon Vert, Marie Rivière creates an emotionally rich portrait of a young woman disappointed in love who transfers her energies into an anxious quest for the ideal summer vacation.
"As Delphine, the lonely but defiant Paris secretary at the center of Le Rayon Vert, Marie Rivière creates an emotionally rich portrait of a young woman disappointed in love who transfers her energies into an anxious quest for the ideal summer vacation.
- 6/9/2011
- MUBI
A little late this week, mainly because of my own random b.s. that one goes through when attempting to juggle too many things at once. Try not to do it kids, because it means a Hulu article gets sidetracked a bit. A ton of stuff was added since I last was here, but unlike last week’s where I focused on 10 specific films that weren’t in the Collection, this time it’s a bunch of familiar (and not so) faces, be it in their great Eclipse sets or in Criterion’s own pantheon.
A huge thanks to who have already used this link to enjoy their own Hulu Plus and in turn keeping this series of articles up and running. We can always use the help, so please sign up using that specific link. Every little bit does keep this nice and polished. But enough about that. You...
A huge thanks to who have already used this link to enjoy their own Hulu Plus and in turn keeping this series of articles up and running. We can always use the help, so please sign up using that specific link. Every little bit does keep this nice and polished. But enough about that. You...
- 5/28/2011
- by James McCormick
- CriterionCast
A look at what's new on DVD this week:
"Fubar: Balls to the Wall"
Directed by Michael Dowse
Released by Screen Media Films
Following up the 2002 cult comedy about lifelong metalhead pals Terry and Dean, this sequel, which recently premiered to much acclaim at SXSW, finds the duo down on their luck when they decide to head up north to work in the oil industry, but when their best laid plans go awry, Dean attempts to get on worker's comp, leading to the kind of exploits best enjoyed with a cold beer.
"Born to Raise Hell" (2011)
Directed by Darren Shahlavi
Released by Paramount
Steven Seagal not only stars as an Interpol agent named Samuel Axel in this Dtv thriller, but also wrote the script, so you know it has to be good. In it, Axel must bring down a gun trafficking ring in the Balkans where the stakes become personal...
"Fubar: Balls to the Wall"
Directed by Michael Dowse
Released by Screen Media Films
Following up the 2002 cult comedy about lifelong metalhead pals Terry and Dean, this sequel, which recently premiered to much acclaim at SXSW, finds the duo down on their luck when they decide to head up north to work in the oil industry, but when their best laid plans go awry, Dean attempts to get on worker's comp, leading to the kind of exploits best enjoyed with a cold beer.
"Born to Raise Hell" (2011)
Directed by Darren Shahlavi
Released by Paramount
Steven Seagal not only stars as an Interpol agent named Samuel Axel in this Dtv thriller, but also wrote the script, so you know it has to be good. In it, Axel must bring down a gun trafficking ring in the Balkans where the stakes become personal...
- 4/19/2011
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
From the pioneers of the silver screen to today's new realism, French directors have shaped film-making around the world
France can, with some justification, claim to have invented the whole concept of cinema. Film historians call The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the 50-second film by the Lumière brothers first screened in 1895, the birth of the medium.
But the best-known early pioneer, who made films with some kind of cherishable narrative value, was Georges Méliès, whose 1902 short A Trip to the Moon is generally heralded as the first science-fiction film, and a landmark in cinematic special effects. Meanwhile, Alice Guy-Blaché, Léon Gaumont's one-time secretary, is largely forgotten now, but with films such as L'enfant de la barricade trails the status of being the first female film-maker.
The towering achievement of French cinema in the silent era was undoubtedly Abel Gance's six-hour biopic of Napoleon (1927), which...
France can, with some justification, claim to have invented the whole concept of cinema. Film historians call The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the 50-second film by the Lumière brothers first screened in 1895, the birth of the medium.
But the best-known early pioneer, who made films with some kind of cherishable narrative value, was Georges Méliès, whose 1902 short A Trip to the Moon is generally heralded as the first science-fiction film, and a landmark in cinematic special effects. Meanwhile, Alice Guy-Blaché, Léon Gaumont's one-time secretary, is largely forgotten now, but with films such as L'enfant de la barricade trails the status of being the first female film-maker.
The towering achievement of French cinema in the silent era was undoubtedly Abel Gance's six-hour biopic of Napoleon (1927), which...
- 3/22/2011
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
According to the notes on the back of this typically exemplary Eureka!/Masters of Cinema release, this 1934 film by Jacques Feyder, who from all appearances seems to be one of the handful of directors who did not miss a step when making the transition from silent to sound filmmaking (this was in fact the director's first "talkie," so to speak), is "an early benchmark of poetic realism." That's the sort of statement that these days is apt to get some cinephiles in a bit of a lather as to what "realism" in films is and whether "realism" or "reality" ever ought to be discussed with respect to the film image at all, and so on, but what the heck, it's just jacket copy, right? In any event, my own favorite moment of "realism" in the film occurs during one of a series of establishing shots that tell us we're in North Africa,...
- 12/28/2010
- MUBI
This classic French battle between love, fate and bewitching passion set a pattern for later hits such as Casablanca
This classic example of pre-war French "poetic realism", directed by the great Belgian movie-maker Jacques Feyder, centres on an upper-class playboy business man (Pierre Richard-Willm) with financial problems being compelled to leave Paris and his high-maintenance lover Florence, and join the Foreign Legion in Morocco. A couple of years later as a reckless, hard-drinking sergeant, he meets a beautiful prostitute, the amnesiac Irma who's Florence's double, though their hair colour and voices are different. Can they be the same woman? A story of love, death and fate, this truly adult movie has a great cast that includes Marie Bell as both Florence and Irma, Charles Vanel as a vile hotelier and Françoise Rosay as a compassionate barmaid who predicts the hero's troubled future. Lazare Meerson's sets range from art deco Paris to Moroccan nightclubs,...
This classic example of pre-war French "poetic realism", directed by the great Belgian movie-maker Jacques Feyder, centres on an upper-class playboy business man (Pierre Richard-Willm) with financial problems being compelled to leave Paris and his high-maintenance lover Florence, and join the Foreign Legion in Morocco. A couple of years later as a reckless, hard-drinking sergeant, he meets a beautiful prostitute, the amnesiac Irma who's Florence's double, though their hair colour and voices are different. Can they be the same woman? A story of love, death and fate, this truly adult movie has a great cast that includes Marie Bell as both Florence and Irma, Charles Vanel as a vile hotelier and Françoise Rosay as a compassionate barmaid who predicts the hero's troubled future. Lazare Meerson's sets range from art deco Paris to Moroccan nightclubs,...
- 7/17/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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