There's one thing you can say about every single Academy Award nominee: whether they're good films or bad films, beloved or obscure, they are officially in the history books. Future movie lovers will read about them and, often, watch them out of either passionate interest or mild curiosity, decades later.
And that's a very good thing because a lot of the films that are nominated for the Oscars fall into obscurity pretty quickly. We may remember most of the Best Picture winners, for example, but what about the other films in contention? "Casablanca" won Best Picture at the 16th Academy Awards and it's a film most people can quote directly, even if they've never watched it before. But there's a good chance that many of its fellow nominees that same year — films like "The Human Comedy," "The More the Merrier," and "Watch On the Rhine" — aren't nearly as well known today.
And that's a very good thing because a lot of the films that are nominated for the Oscars fall into obscurity pretty quickly. We may remember most of the Best Picture winners, for example, but what about the other films in contention? "Casablanca" won Best Picture at the 16th Academy Awards and it's a film most people can quote directly, even if they've never watched it before. But there's a good chance that many of its fellow nominees that same year — films like "The Human Comedy," "The More the Merrier," and "Watch On the Rhine" — aren't nearly as well known today.
- 2/9/2023
- by William Bibbiani
- Slash Film
After unveiling the discs that will be arriving in April, including Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder, Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep, and more, Criterion has now announced what will be coming to their streaming channel next month.
Highlights include retrospectives dedicated to Guy Maddin, Ruby Dee, Lana Turner, and Gordon Parks, plus selections from Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg’s stellar box set. They will also present the exclusive streaming premieres of Bill Duke’s The Killing Floor, William Greaves’s Nationtime, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes, and more.
Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which recently arrived on the collection, will be landing on the channel as well, along with a special “Lovers on the Run” series including film noir (They Live by Night) to New Hollywood (Badlands) to the French New Wave (Pierrot le fou) to Blaxploitation (Thomasine & Bushrod) and beyond. Also...
Highlights include retrospectives dedicated to Guy Maddin, Ruby Dee, Lana Turner, and Gordon Parks, plus selections from Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg’s stellar box set. They will also present the exclusive streaming premieres of Bill Duke’s The Killing Floor, William Greaves’s Nationtime, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes, and more.
Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which recently arrived on the collection, will be landing on the channel as well, along with a special “Lovers on the Run” series including film noir (They Live by Night) to New Hollywood (Badlands) to the French New Wave (Pierrot le fou) to Blaxploitation (Thomasine & Bushrod) and beyond. Also...
- 1/26/2021
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Alice in Wonderland
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1933 / 1.33:1/ 76 min.
Starring Charlotte Henry, W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper
Cinematography by Bert Glennon, Henry Sharp
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by Harvey Kurtzman with art by Jack Davis, Mad‘s 1954 parody of Alice in Wonderland stands as a succinct critique of Paramount Pictures’s 1933 adaptation. The film stars crowd pleasing performers like Cary Grant and W.C. Fields yet manages to be one of the most uniquely disturbing studio pictures ever made.
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod and written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the movie began production in 1932, the centennial of Lewis Carroll’s birth. Carroll’s classic was ripe for Paramount – the studio on Melrose was ground zero for absurdist humor in the early ’30s. McLeod had just wrapped the Marx Brothers’ sublime Horse Feathers while the Mankiewicz-scripted Million Dollar Legs was released the same year – both...
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1933 / 1.33:1/ 76 min.
Starring Charlotte Henry, W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper
Cinematography by Bert Glennon, Henry Sharp
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by Harvey Kurtzman with art by Jack Davis, Mad‘s 1954 parody of Alice in Wonderland stands as a succinct critique of Paramount Pictures’s 1933 adaptation. The film stars crowd pleasing performers like Cary Grant and W.C. Fields yet manages to be one of the most uniquely disturbing studio pictures ever made.
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod and written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the movie began production in 1932, the centennial of Lewis Carroll’s birth. Carroll’s classic was ripe for Paramount – the studio on Melrose was ground zero for absurdist humor in the early ’30s. McLeod had just wrapped the Marx Brothers’ sublime Horse Feathers while the Mankiewicz-scripted Million Dollar Legs was released the same year – both...
- 6/6/2020
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
The writer/director of The Love Witch talks about her favorite classic women’s pictures.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Love Witch (2016)
Baby Face (1933)
Stromboli (1950)
Europa ’51 (1951)
Fear (1951)
Duel In The Sun (1946)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Blonde Venus (1932)
Nora Prentiss (1947)
Woman On The Run (1950)
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Imitation of Life (1969)
Little Women (2019)
Emma (2020)
My Cousin Rachel (2017)
Sex and the City (2008)
Mamma Mia! (2008)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
The Reckless Moment (1949)
Sudden Fear (1952)
Torch Song (1953)
Captain Marvel (2019)
Other Notable Items
The Captain Trips virus in Stephen King’s novel The Stand (1978)
Marlene Dietrich
Mae West
Jennifer Jones
Joan Crawford
Joan Bennett
Gene Tierney
Barbara Stanwyck
The Hays Code
Cary Grant
Marilyn Monroe
Ingrid Bergman
Roberto Rossellini
The Academy Awards
Bette Davis
Jennifer Jones
Gregory Peck
Joseph Cotten
Travis Banton
Josef von Sternberg
Catherine the Great
The Criterion Collection
Kent Smith
Dan Duryea
Douglas Sirk
Jane Austen
Mildred Pierce TV miniseries...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Love Witch (2016)
Baby Face (1933)
Stromboli (1950)
Europa ’51 (1951)
Fear (1951)
Duel In The Sun (1946)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Blonde Venus (1932)
Nora Prentiss (1947)
Woman On The Run (1950)
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Imitation of Life (1969)
Little Women (2019)
Emma (2020)
My Cousin Rachel (2017)
Sex and the City (2008)
Mamma Mia! (2008)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
The Reckless Moment (1949)
Sudden Fear (1952)
Torch Song (1953)
Captain Marvel (2019)
Other Notable Items
The Captain Trips virus in Stephen King’s novel The Stand (1978)
Marlene Dietrich
Mae West
Jennifer Jones
Joan Crawford
Joan Bennett
Gene Tierney
Barbara Stanwyck
The Hays Code
Cary Grant
Marilyn Monroe
Ingrid Bergman
Roberto Rossellini
The Academy Awards
Bette Davis
Jennifer Jones
Gregory Peck
Joseph Cotten
Travis Banton
Josef von Sternberg
Catherine the Great
The Criterion Collection
Kent Smith
Dan Duryea
Douglas Sirk
Jane Austen
Mildred Pierce TV miniseries...
- 5/19/2020
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
The 10-episode comedy series “The Great” premieres on Hulu on May 15 telling a fictionalized story of the rise of Russia’s Catherine the Great (played by Elle Fanning). It was created by Tony McNamara, who earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing another skewed royal history, Yorgos Lanthimos‘s offbeat 2018 film “The Favourite.” So does his followup live up to its title?
As of this writing “The Great” has a MetaCritic score of 74 based on 16 reviews counted thus far: 11 positive, 5 somewhat mixed, none outright negative. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, which classifies reviews simply as positive or negative, the series is 80% fresh based on 25 reviews, only 5 of which are rotten. The Rt critics’ consensus summarizes the reviews by saying, “Gorgeous, if gratuitous, ‘The Great’ can’t quite live up to its namesake, but delicious performances from Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult and a wicked sense of humor make it a pretty good watch.
As of this writing “The Great” has a MetaCritic score of 74 based on 16 reviews counted thus far: 11 positive, 5 somewhat mixed, none outright negative. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, which classifies reviews simply as positive or negative, the series is 80% fresh based on 25 reviews, only 5 of which are rotten. The Rt critics’ consensus summarizes the reviews by saying, “Gorgeous, if gratuitous, ‘The Great’ can’t quite live up to its namesake, but delicious performances from Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult and a wicked sense of humor make it a pretty good watch.
- 5/15/2020
- by Daniel Montgomery
- Gold Derby
Above: 1986 Japanese poster for She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, USA, 1986).In the ten months since I last did a round-up of the most popular posters on Movie Poster of the Day, two things have happened. I’ve slacked off a bit: after running the site since November 2011 and posting one poster every single day for years, in the past year I’ve let my self-appointed task slide a little and have been posting more sporadically. And at the same time it seems that Tumblr is starting to atrophy. At its height my site had over 300,000 followers—it still does officially, but I would guess that a large percentage of those people are no longer still on Tumblr or rarely check their feed. I’m often asked why I don’t up sticks and move to Instagram instead, but while I love Instagram for personal stuff, Tumblr is still...
- 4/12/2018
- MUBI
The Scarlet Empress (1934), starring Marlene Dietrich, John Lodge, Sam Jaffe, Louise Dresser and “a supporting cast of 1,000 players,” is director Josef von Sternberg at his most grandiose and excessive, which is just another way of saying “at his best,” at the height of a state of expressive delirium no other director has ever really matched. (Though many have, either consciously or subconsciously, tried– I wonder if Ken Russell ever admitted envy for von Sternberg or this film.) Von Sternberg’s paints his pictures with gasp-and-giggle-inducingly broad strokes, but his approach is no joke. There’s an exhilarating strain of claustrophobia in the director’s films which is given its freest rein here. His frames are burdened with grandeur, luxury and horror closing in, and he achieves a genuine sense of epic sprawl and decadence, despite the orchestrated sense that the whole of Russia, royalty as well as the entirety of its oppressed,...
- 3/31/2018
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
It's been said of L. Frank Baum, perhaps not quite fairly, that everything he ever did involving the fantasy kingdom of Oz was a huge success, and everything he did without it was a calamitous disaster. Certainly he made a bit of money late in life as the producer of Oz-themed silent movies, before he died and his son bankrupted the company, showing that only one Baum had the magic touch.The first Oz short of 1910, Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz is actually the closest, plot-wise, to the familiar 1939 version, and it has a cool cast, including nine-year-old Bebe Daniels as Dorothy and future director Norman Z. McLeod as the Scarecrow. But Baum really hit his stride as a mogul four years later, with the release of three feature films, in the year when features had only just started appearing in America. And His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz,...
- 2/28/2018
- MUBI
In the late 1970s, an associate professor in the Philosophy department at Johns Hopkins (thesis title: "The Nature of the Natural Numbers") began publishing essays on Hollywood movies. George M. Wilson wasn't the first person to undergo this shift in specialism. At the start of the decade, Stanley Cavell had published The World Viewed, a series of "reflections on the ontology of film." But Cavell had always been concerned with how works of art enable us to think through philosophical themes such as knowledge and meaning, and he held a chair, at Harvard, in Aesthetics. Wilson differed in that he brought a range of analytic gifts to an ongoing revolution: the close reading of American cinema, conceived as part of the "auteur" policy of Truffaut and other writers at Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s, and concertedly developed in the following decades by critics in England such as V. F.
- 12/11/2017
- MUBI
Take one fiercely individual auteur fed up with the Hollywood game, put him in Kyoto with a full Japanese film company, and the result is a picture critics have been trying to figure out ever since. It’s a realistic story told in a highly artificial visual style, in un-subtitled Japanese. And its writer-director intended it to play for American audiences.
The Saga of Anatahan
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Anatahan, Ana-ta-han / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring: Akemi Negishi, Tadashi Suganuma, Kisaburo Sawamura, Shoji Nakayama, Jun Fujikawa, Hiroshi Kondo, Shozo Miyashita, Tsuruemon Bando, Kikuji Onoe, Rokuriro Kineya, Daijiro Tamura, Chizuru Kitagawa, Takeshi Suzuki, Shiro Amikura.
Cinematography: Josef von Sternberg, Kozo Okazaki
Film Editor: Mitsuzo Miyata
Original Music: Akira Ifukube
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Written by Josef von Sternberg from the novel by Michiro Maruyama & Younghill Kang
Produced by Kazuo Takimura
Directed by Josef von Sternberg...
The Saga of Anatahan
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Anatahan, Ana-ta-han / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring: Akemi Negishi, Tadashi Suganuma, Kisaburo Sawamura, Shoji Nakayama, Jun Fujikawa, Hiroshi Kondo, Shozo Miyashita, Tsuruemon Bando, Kikuji Onoe, Rokuriro Kineya, Daijiro Tamura, Chizuru Kitagawa, Takeshi Suzuki, Shiro Amikura.
Cinematography: Josef von Sternberg, Kozo Okazaki
Film Editor: Mitsuzo Miyata
Original Music: Akira Ifukube
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Written by Josef von Sternberg from the novel by Michiro Maruyama & Younghill Kang
Produced by Kazuo Takimura
Directed by Josef von Sternberg...
- 4/11/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The twentieth entry in an on-going series of audiovisual essays by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin. Mubi will be showing Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) from February 14 - March 16, 2017 in the United States.The Blue Angel (1930) is a film that stands at many, superimposed crossroads. It represents a transition between the expressive language of silent cinema and the new technology of sound cinema. Before the reign of dubbing took hold around the world, it was a heroic instance of a project shot in two different language versions (German and English) simultaneously. It juxtaposes two very different sorts of acting performance: the expressive histrionics of Emil Jannings, characteristic of the silent period, and the more understated naturalness of its rising star, Marlene Dietrich. In its drama, it plays out the clash, and the changeover, between an institutionalized form of high, literary culture (as transmitted in Professor Rath’s classroom), and the unruly,...
- 2/14/2017
- MUBI
The U.S. political climate is heating up as we draw closer to the 2016 elections, and it’s time to honor some fellow actors who made a name for themselves in Hollywood and in Washington. Is a career in politics in your future? Draw inspiration from these 15 performers who served our country in various political seats. Ronald ReaganCertainly the most famous performer-turned-politician in history, actor Reagan became the Potus in 1981 after serving as the governor of California. Prior to his political career, Reagan had a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers Studios where he worked on numerous films; he also served in the U.S. Army Air Force’s Motion Picture Unit, and was president of the Screen Actors Guild for seven terms between 1947 and 1960! John Davis LodgeA star of stage and screen from the 1930s to the 1940s (“Little Women,” “The Scarlet Empress”), Lodge made a new name for himself...
- 9/22/2015
- backstage.com
The title invokes tragedies already over and done: "From Mayerling to Sarajevo," a range of time spanning from the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in Mayerling, a death that eventually made Archduke Franz Ferdinand the next heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, to the assassination of the Archduke in the Bosnian capital, precipitating the First World War.The title invokes a range of cities spanning countries. The director of From Mayerling to Sarajevo, a 1940 picture revived in a new print by The Film Desk and opening at New York’s Film Forum on March 27, is Max Ophüls, himself a roving vagabond auteur, born in Germany and making films not only there but in the Netherlands, Italy, Hollywood, and France, where this film was made on the precipice of the Second World War and the beginning of a new kind of German-speaking empire.The films of Max Ophüls survive beautiful and aphoristic,...
- 3/26/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
First Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings and first Best Actress Oscar winner Janet Gaynor on TCM (photo: Emil Jannings in 'The Last Command') First Best Actor Academy Award winner Emil Jannings in The Last Command, first Best Actress Academy Award winner Janet Gaynor in Sunrise, and sisters Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge are a few of the silent era performers featured this evening on Turner Classic Movies, as TCM continues with its Silent Monday presentations. Starting at 5 p.m. Pt / 8 p.m. Et on November 17, 2014, get ready to check out several of the biggest movie stars of the 1920s. Following the Jean Negulesco-directed 1943 musical short Hit Parade of the Gay Nineties -- believe me, even the most rabid anti-gay bigot will be able to enjoy this one -- TCM will be showing Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command (1928) one of the two movies that earned...
- 11/18/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The Austin Film Society continues its "Rebel Rebel" series this weekend with a brand new 35mm print of Jamaa Fanaka's 1976 film Emma Mae. Tonight's screening at the Marchesa is free to Afs members, and the movie will play again on Sunday afternoon. Afs is also sponsoring a screening of The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, starring Tommy Lee Jones, on Wednesday night at the Texas Spirit Theater (inside the Bullock Texas State History Museum). It's free for Afs members, as well as Aff, Cine Las Americas and Bullock Museum members. Julio Cedillo and producer Eric Williams will be there for a post-screening Q&A. Head back to the Marchesa on Thursday night for a 35mm print of Truffaut's Jules And Jim. The film is part of this month's Essential Cinema series on films Of World War I.
Alamo Drafthouse Ritz has programmed a weekend of classic biker flicks to...
- 6/13/2014
- by Matt Shiverdecker
- Slackerwood
The Blue Angel
Written by Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmöller, Robert Liebmann
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Germany, 1930
It’s strange that the work of Josef von Sternberg has not been better represented in the realm of Blu-ray production. Aside from 1930’s The Blue Angel, available now on a new Kino Classics 2-Disc Ultimate Edition, not a single Sternberg film exists on the format. For such a stylish director, one who was expressly concerned with the ornate visual texture of his films, the enhanced images that go along with the standard digital restorations of Blu-ray titles would seemingly be ideal. That said, with at least The Blue Angel, it does become clear that this format and this filmmaker are indeed made for each other.
While not as deliberately composed to accentuate frames bursting to their edges with fore- and background elements (see The Scarlet Empress, for example), The Blue Angel nevertheless...
Written by Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmöller, Robert Liebmann
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Germany, 1930
It’s strange that the work of Josef von Sternberg has not been better represented in the realm of Blu-ray production. Aside from 1930’s The Blue Angel, available now on a new Kino Classics 2-Disc Ultimate Edition, not a single Sternberg film exists on the format. For such a stylish director, one who was expressly concerned with the ornate visual texture of his films, the enhanced images that go along with the standard digital restorations of Blu-ray titles would seemingly be ideal. That said, with at least The Blue Angel, it does become clear that this format and this filmmaker are indeed made for each other.
While not as deliberately composed to accentuate frames bursting to their edges with fore- and background elements (see The Scarlet Empress, for example), The Blue Angel nevertheless...
- 12/20/2013
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Aleksandr Sokurov's tetralogy of power, previously dedicated to real biographical subjects (Lenin, Hitler, Hirohito), unexpectedly concludes with a legendary fictitious man: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. The Russian director has loosely—one might even say wildly, fervently—adapted Goethe's play with a barely contained gleeful passion.
The mise en scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of Molokh (1999), Taurus (2001) and The Sun (2005) and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruizian manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After beginning with a Forrest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens, flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical opening introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food (let alone gravediggers), the doctor first approaches and then is chased,...
The mise en scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of Molokh (1999), Taurus (2001) and The Sun (2005) and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruizian manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After beginning with a Forrest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens, flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical opening introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food (let alone gravediggers), the doctor first approaches and then is chased,...
- 11/15/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
If you've never seen The Bat before, then we can promise you're in for a treat. If you have seen the flick, we can also promise you've never seen it quite like this! Read on for details.
From the Press Release
Mystery, murder, and mayhem take flight in The Bat – restored and in HD for the first time ever – debuting on Turner Classic Movies October 24 and DVD November 12 from Film Chest Media Group. Featuring an all-star cast, this suspenseful cult favorite from 1959 will keep you on the edge of your seat!
In The Bat, mystery writer Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead - TV’s "Bewitched"; Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte; Citizen Kane) resides in a town terrorized by a mysterious murderer known only as “The Bat,” said to be a man with no face who kills women at night by ripping out their throats with steel claws.
Breaking into Cornelia’s countryside home one night,...
From the Press Release
Mystery, murder, and mayhem take flight in The Bat – restored and in HD for the first time ever – debuting on Turner Classic Movies October 24 and DVD November 12 from Film Chest Media Group. Featuring an all-star cast, this suspenseful cult favorite from 1959 will keep you on the edge of your seat!
In The Bat, mystery writer Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead - TV’s "Bewitched"; Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte; Citizen Kane) resides in a town terrorized by a mysterious murderer known only as “The Bat,” said to be a man with no face who kills women at night by ripping out their throats with steel claws.
Breaking into Cornelia’s countryside home one night,...
- 10/24/2013
- by Uncle Creepy
- DreadCentral.com
I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 363 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies, the Up docs and Decalogue) and of those 363, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...
- 4/10/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 362 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies and Decalogue) and of those 362, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...
- 4/10/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Fact would have been more fun than fiction in this overblown big-screen biopic of Russia's 18th-century empress
A Royal Scandal (1945)
Director: Otto Preminger
Entertainment grade: B-
History grade: C
Catherine II "the Great" was Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796.
International relations
Anna (Anne Baxter), a lady in waiting, emerges from Catherine (Tallulah Bankhead)'s chambers to tell the chancellor of Russia (Charles Coburn) that the empress is fighting with the commander of the palace guard. The chancellor is known in the film simply as Nikolai Ilyich, with no surname, though since the film seems to be set in 1763 he should probably be Nikita Ivanovich Panin. In her rage, Catherine smashes a porcelain horseman – a gift from Frederick the Great, king of Prussia. "Even in her most furious moments, her majesty has exquisite taste," says the chancellor.
Romance
Anna's fiance, a young soldier called Alexei Chernoff (William Eythe), bursts into the...
A Royal Scandal (1945)
Director: Otto Preminger
Entertainment grade: B-
History grade: C
Catherine II "the Great" was Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796.
International relations
Anna (Anne Baxter), a lady in waiting, emerges from Catherine (Tallulah Bankhead)'s chambers to tell the chancellor of Russia (Charles Coburn) that the empress is fighting with the commander of the palace guard. The chancellor is known in the film simply as Nikolai Ilyich, with no surname, though since the film seems to be set in 1763 he should probably be Nikita Ivanovich Panin. In her rage, Catherine smashes a porcelain horseman – a gift from Frederick the Great, king of Prussia. "Even in her most furious moments, her majesty has exquisite taste," says the chancellor.
Romance
Anna's fiance, a young soldier called Alexei Chernoff (William Eythe), bursts into the...
- 11/1/2012
- by Alex von Tunzelmann
- The Guardian - Film News
"A hidden message in a painting has led to the first evidence of a 'lost' Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece that has lain hidden for 400 years in a secret compartment behind another mural in Florence, scientists announced today.
An 'endoscopic' probe was inserted into the interior of the wall in the Palazzo Vechio, and obtained chemical samples of a dark pigment which Da Vinci also used in the Mona Lisa." —MailOnline
From Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress (1934); featuring Sam Jaffe and Marlene Dietrich; cinematography by Bert Blennon; art direction/department: Hans Dreier, Peter Ballbusch, and Richard Kollorsz.
An 'endoscopic' probe was inserted into the interior of the wall in the Palazzo Vechio, and obtained chemical samples of a dark pigment which Da Vinci also used in the Mona Lisa." —MailOnline
From Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress (1934); featuring Sam Jaffe and Marlene Dietrich; cinematography by Bert Blennon; art direction/department: Hans Dreier, Peter Ballbusch, and Richard Kollorsz.
- 7/9/2012
- MUBI
Oscar-nominated production designer, known for his work on The Color Purple and The Goonies, has died
Oscar-nominated production designer J Michael Riva has died, Variety reports. The New York-born veteran had been working on the new Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained. He was 63.
Riva's Oscar nod came in 1985 for his work on Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. He also won an Emmy in 2007 for his work on the 79th Academy Awards ceremony, his second time in charge of production design duties following a stint in 2002.
Part of a showbiz family – he was the grandson of Marlene Dietrich – Riva's long list of credits included work on forthcoming comic book reboot The Amazing Spider-Man as well as The Goonies, Lethal Weapon, and the first two Iron Man films. His father worked on Broadway as a set designer and his mother appeared in Dietrich's 1934 historical drama The Scarlet Empress, playing Catherine the Great as a child.
Oscar-nominated production designer J Michael Riva has died, Variety reports. The New York-born veteran had been working on the new Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained. He was 63.
Riva's Oscar nod came in 1985 for his work on Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. He also won an Emmy in 2007 for his work on the 79th Academy Awards ceremony, his second time in charge of production design duties following a stint in 2002.
Part of a showbiz family – he was the grandson of Marlene Dietrich – Riva's long list of credits included work on forthcoming comic book reboot The Amazing Spider-Man as well as The Goonies, Lethal Weapon, and the first two Iron Man films. His father worked on Broadway as a set designer and his mother appeared in Dietrich's 1934 historical drama The Scarlet Empress, playing Catherine the Great as a child.
- 6/8/2012
- by Ben Child
- The Guardian - Film News
Veteran Production Designer J. Michael Riva Dies
Oscar-nominated production designer J. Michael Riva, who worked on films including A Few Good Men and The Amazing Spider-man, has died at the age of 63.
A representative for Riva tells movie industry website Variety.com he passed away in hospital but further details surrounding the death are unknown.
The designer was well respected in Hollywood and came from a family of movie professionals including his actress and singer grandmother Marlene Dietrich, film editor grandfather Rudolf Sieber, Broadway set designer father William Riva and his actress and author mother Maria Riva, who appeared in The Scarlet Empress with Dietrich.
Riva worked on more than 40 films including Lethal Weapon, The Goonies, and two Iron Man movies. In 1986, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration for his work on The Color Purple.
A representative for Riva tells movie industry website Variety.com he passed away in hospital but further details surrounding the death are unknown.
The designer was well respected in Hollywood and came from a family of movie professionals including his actress and singer grandmother Marlene Dietrich, film editor grandfather Rudolf Sieber, Broadway set designer father William Riva and his actress and author mother Maria Riva, who appeared in The Scarlet Empress with Dietrich.
Riva worked on more than 40 films including Lethal Weapon, The Goonies, and two Iron Man movies. In 1986, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration for his work on The Color Purple.
- 6/8/2012
- WENN
The 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival has unveiled another spectacular lineup of special guests and events for this year’s four-day gathering in Hollywood. Among the newly announced participants for this year’s festival are five-time Emmy® winner Dick Van Dyke, Oscar® winner Shirley Jones, two-time Golden Globe® winner Angie Dickinson, six-time Golden Globe nominee Robert Wagner, seven-time Oscar nominee Norman Jewison, longtime producer A.C. Lyles and three-time Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker. In addition, the festival will feature a special three-film tribute to director/choreographer Stanley Donen, who will be on-hand for the celebration.
As part of its overall Style and the Movies theme, the festival has added several films featuring the work of pioneering costume designer Travis Banton. Oscar-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis will introduce the six-movie slate, with actress and former Essentials co-host Rose McGowan joining her for one of the screenings.
Other festival additions include a screening...
As part of its overall Style and the Movies theme, the festival has added several films featuring the work of pioneering costume designer Travis Banton. Oscar-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis will introduce the six-movie slate, with actress and former Essentials co-host Rose McGowan joining her for one of the screenings.
Other festival additions include a screening...
- 3/9/2012
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Aleksandr Sokurov loosely—one might even say wildly, fervently–adapts Goethe’s Faust with barely contained, gleeful passion to conclude his tetralogy of power (previously, all real biographical subjects: Lenin, Hitler, Hirohito).
The mise-en-scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of those three films and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruiz-like manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After opening first with a Forest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical shot introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food let alone gravediggers, the man first approaches and then is chased, accompanied and pursued by (and later pursues himself) the town’s money-lender (Anton Adasinsky)—the film's devil.
The mise-en-scène breaks out of the fetid, murmuring stasis so evocative of those three films and is freed to wander in a malleable, Ruiz-like manner around a sumptuously dirty and worn old German town of stone and earth. After opening first with a Forest Gump-like descent of the camera from mirrored heavens flying down to the grimy, sprawling town, the second shot after this luxurious, fantastical shot introduces Faust (Johannes Zeiler) via the decomposing ash-purple penis of a corpse he is dissecting in poverty and philosophical inquiry. With no money for food let alone gravediggers, the man first approaches and then is chased, accompanied and pursued by (and later pursues himself) the town’s money-lender (Anton Adasinsky)—the film's devil.
- 9/9/2011
- MUBI
Acknowledging Apache Drums (1951) as the forgotten Val Lewton movie, we must also acknowledge that it's not quite as special as Cat People or Isle of the Dead or any of the others in the chiller cycle, but it does bear comparison with the lesser-known Mademoiselle Fifi and it certainly beats the pants off of Youth Runs Wild.
If the conservative nature of the western format reins in some of Lewton's more sophisticated tendencies, it also allows others to stand out in bold relief, and if director Hugo Fregonese is no Jacques Tourneur, nor even a Mark Robson, he's a perfectly amicable journeyman.
Admitting a certain B-movie banality, what's striking is how Lewton is able to continue his preoccupations into what might seem an alien genre, so that Apache Drums resembles, at numerous times, a supernatural/psychological horror movie, in which the horror is dually located in the American Indian "other,...
If the conservative nature of the western format reins in some of Lewton's more sophisticated tendencies, it also allows others to stand out in bold relief, and if director Hugo Fregonese is no Jacques Tourneur, nor even a Mark Robson, he's a perfectly amicable journeyman.
Admitting a certain B-movie banality, what's striking is how Lewton is able to continue his preoccupations into what might seem an alien genre, so that Apache Drums resembles, at numerous times, a supernatural/psychological horror movie, in which the horror is dually located in the American Indian "other,...
- 9/9/2011
- 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
Marlene Dietrich on TCM: Shanghai Express, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil Is A Woman Raoul Walsh's unpretentious Manpower (1941) is a surprisingly entertaining drama about a love triangle featuring good-time gal Marlene Dietrich and unlikely partners Edward G. Robinson and George Raft. As an ex-Nazi chanteuse/black marketer (photo), Dietrich nearly steals the show in Billy Wilder's post-war Berlin-set A Foreign Affair (1948); I say nearly because Jean Arthur is Dietrich's equal as the goody-goody American congresswoman who learns that goody-goodiness may take you far at work (at least in the movies) but not in life. In the hands of someone like Ernst Lubitsch, A Foreign Affair would have been a humorously romantic masterpiece, cleverly and subtly interweaving the personal, the social, and the political. As it is, the comedy works great whenever Arthur and Dietrich are on-screen; else, A Foreign Affair suffers from Wilder's heavy hand; lapses in judgment in Wilder,...
- 9/1/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Marlene Dietrich is Turner Classic Movies last "Summer Under the Stars" star of 2011. Today, TCM is showing 12 Marlene Dietrich movies, in addition to J. David Riva's 2001 documentary Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song. Riva, I should add, is the son of Maria Riva and Dietrich's grandson. [Marlene Dietrich Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, TCM isn't presenting any Marlene Dietrich movie premieres today. In other words, no Dietrich opposite David Bowie in Just a Gigolo, or Dietrich next to Jean Gabin in Martin Roumagnac / The Room Upstairs, or any of Dietrich's little-known German-made silents, e.g., Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame / I Kiss Your Hand, Madame; Das Schiff der verlorenen Menschen / The Ship of Lost Men; and Gefahren der Brautzeit / Dangers of the Engagement. None of the silents are exactly what I'd call good movies — nor is Just a Gigolo — but they all are worth a look if only because Dietrich is in them. Another option for...
- 9/1/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
When I came up with the idea to start aggregating the various Criterion Collection related blogs that I read on a somewhat regular basis into a weekly column, I had grand plans to set up reminders for myself, bookmark posts into folders, and produce a compelling weekly blog post for all of you. Unfortunately, the birth of my daughter, and all of the other responsibilities of my life have managed to position themselves between me and that goal. I thought maybe if I switched to a monthly format, that would make things easier, but in reality it just gave me less of an excuse to work on the post. I’ve decided to reboot the column and produce it on a weekly basis. We’ll see if I can keep it going this time. As much as I pretend to be organized and productive, I am really a lazy, lazy guy.
- 8/15/2011
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
So you probably saw the headline and thought to yourself, “Oh Dave came up with a cute tie-in to all the pomp and ceremony that went on over in London last week, how clever of him to find an Eclipse title that connects so well with the marriage of Prince William and his girlfriend Catherine Middleton.” Yeah, I’m sure that’s what you were thinking and I can’t fault you for drawing such an obvious conclusion, even though it’s wrong. I actually chose this film for my next installment in this series simply because May 2 happens to be the birthday of Catherine the Great, the most powerful woman on earth during her lifetime and one of the most influential of all monarchs in Russia’s long and turbulent history.
Despite the fact that The Rise of Catherine the Great depicts a young woman’s entry into the...
Despite the fact that The Rise of Catherine the Great depicts a young woman’s entry into the...
- 5/4/2011
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
It appears that I should re-title this semi-regular column on the blog “this month in criterion blogs,” rather than “this week,” given that I haven’t written one of these since the end of March. If you’ve been following along with the various news items in my life, you’ll know that I have a lot on my plate these days, and it won’t be cleared for another 18 years or so. That being said, there have been a lot of great Criterion-related blog posts going up on my favorite sites in April, and I thought it was about time to share them all with you fine readers.
This month I’d like to highlight all of the amazing stuff going on at Film School Rejects. As you know from the past few entries in this series, they have their own weekly Criterion column, the Criterion Files. For April,...
This month I’d like to highlight all of the amazing stuff going on at Film School Rejects. As you know from the past few entries in this series, they have their own weekly Criterion column, the Criterion Files. For April,...
- 4/22/2011
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
• Introduction to The Great Movies III
You'd be surprised how many people have told me they're working their way through my books of Great Movies one film at a time. That's not to say the books are definitive; I loathe "best of" lists, which are not the best of anything except what someone came up with that day. I look at a list of the "100 greatest horror films," or musicals, or whatever, and I want to ask the maker, "but how do you know?" There are great films in my books, and films that are not so great, but there's no film here I didn't respond strongly to. That's the reassurance I can offer.
I believe good movies are a civilizing force. They allow us to empathize with those whose lives are different than our own. I like to say they open windows in our box of space and time.
You'd be surprised how many people have told me they're working their way through my books of Great Movies one film at a time. That's not to say the books are definitive; I loathe "best of" lists, which are not the best of anything except what someone came up with that day. I look at a list of the "100 greatest horror films," or musicals, or whatever, and I want to ask the maker, "but how do you know?" There are great films in my books, and films that are not so great, but there's no film here I didn't respond strongly to. That's the reassurance I can offer.
I believe good movies are a civilizing force. They allow us to empathize with those whose lives are different than our own. I like to say they open windows in our box of space and time.
- 10/2/2010
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
Grades: Underworld: B+; The Last Command: A; The Docks Of New York: A Inevitably, any mention of Vienna-born, New York-raised director Josef von Sternberg is tied to his iconic star and muse Marlene Dietrich, and not without cause: Their seven films together, including The Blue Angel, Blonde Venus, Morocco, and The Scarlet Empress, gave her an exotic aura that other actresses and performers have tried to imitate since, with limited success. To take nothing away from Dietrich, a great deal of that aura had to do with von Sternberg’s meticulous craft, characterized by a subtle, caressing lighting scheme that ...
- 8/25/2010
- avclub.com
We all know how secretive Criterion is when it comes to their new releases, with Apple like control of what they announce, and when it is unveiled. Whether they’re teasing at upcoming releases in their e-mail newsletter or sending out Twitpic’s with obscured images of what they’re watching, Criterion won’t usually let the cat out of the bag until they’re good and ready, and the release is well on it’s way to production.
Today, the New York Times dropped a small Criterion bomb of Gizomodo-like proportions, towards the end of their “Summer DVD” selections. We aren’t expecting the August 2010 new releases to be announced for a couple more weeks, but we now know what a couple of the titles are likely to be:
Criterion continues its season of releases on Aug. 10 with a collection of Josef von Sternberg silents, including “The Last Command” and “Underworld.
Today, the New York Times dropped a small Criterion bomb of Gizomodo-like proportions, towards the end of their “Summer DVD” selections. We aren’t expecting the August 2010 new releases to be announced for a couple more weeks, but we now know what a couple of the titles are likely to be:
Criterion continues its season of releases on Aug. 10 with a collection of Josef von Sternberg silents, including “The Last Command” and “Underworld.
- 5/3/2010
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Nothing empowers women more than a good education and career, but since cinema began they have been unable to resist copying the fashions that give models and Hollywood stars allure
Growing up in 1950s Britain we learned that there was something dodgy about glamour. My home-loving mother pursed her lips at the bright blond hair and confident up-slick of black eyeliner sported by a friend's mum who was into amateur theatricals.
To the headmistress of our all-girls grammar school, fashion was at odds with high-mindedness. She was famous for not allowing her teaching staff to wear lipstick. In the 1950s she waged guerrilla warfare against the wearing of "paper-nylon" petticoats, designed to give a sticking-out effect to the skirts of summer dresses. These were frequently confiscated from sixth-formers and hung like scalps on pegs outside her study, a shameful warning to those lower down the school. Glamour got a girl into trouble.
Growing up in 1950s Britain we learned that there was something dodgy about glamour. My home-loving mother pursed her lips at the bright blond hair and confident up-slick of black eyeliner sported by a friend's mum who was into amateur theatricals.
To the headmistress of our all-girls grammar school, fashion was at odds with high-mindedness. She was famous for not allowing her teaching staff to wear lipstick. In the 1950s she waged guerrilla warfare against the wearing of "paper-nylon" petticoats, designed to give a sticking-out effect to the skirts of summer dresses. These were frequently confiscated from sixth-formers and hung like scalps on pegs outside her study, a shameful warning to those lower down the school. Glamour got a girl into trouble.
- 3/21/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
I first thought of featuring this film in the Foreign Region Report a couple months back, when my friends Fahran Nehme Smith, largely known as The Self-Styled Siren, and Lou Lumenick, a film critic for The New York Post, announced that they would be co-programming a January 2010 series on TCM entitled "Shadows of Russia." The series is devoted to well-known and not-so-well-known pictures, made in Hollywood, about Russia. In many eras. There’s von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress, about Catherine the Great, on the one hand, and the multi-Barrymore-starring Rasputin and the Empress, on the other. And then there’s 1943’s Mission to Moscow, starring Walter Huston, which will play on TCM on January 20th but will be screened at Bam’s Rose Cinema this very evening, January 12, at 7 p.m., followed by a panel discussion featuring Lou, The Siren, myself, and film historian Ed Hulse. Come around, if you are around.
- 1/12/2010
- MUBI
Angela Lansbury, Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate Below is the complete "Shadows of Russia" schedule on Turner Classic Movies: Wednesday, Jan. 6 Part One: Twilight of the Tsars 8 p.m. The Scarlet Empress (1934) – starring Marlene Dietrich and John Lodge. 10 p.m. Rasputin and the Empress (1932) – starring John, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore. Part Two: Red Romance 12:15 a.m. Red Danube (1949) – starring Walter Pidgeon and Ethel Barrymore. 2:30 a.m. Reds (1981) – starring Warren Beatty, Diane [...]...
- 11/4/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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