The James Bond franchise has long been blossoming in the action genre and remains among the fan-favorite franchises. It is rich in many elements, from thrilling action sequences to innovative gadgets, that captivated audiences for decades. It is all thanks to Ian Fleming, the creator behind the iconic 007 spy, who laid the foundation of the vast saga.
Sean Connery in Goldfinger [Credit: United Artists]However, many would be surprised to know that he was against the idea of Sean Connery to take up the iconic role. Fleming would have done with anyone, but not Connery, and the reason would surprise many!
Sean Connery’s James Bond Was Different from What Ian Fleming Intended
In Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, the author shared insights on what went behind the scenes in a film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel Casino Royale.
Sean Connery in Goldfinger [Credit: United Artists]However, many would be surprised to know that he was against the idea of Sean Connery to take up the iconic role. Fleming would have done with anyone, but not Connery, and the reason would surprise many!
Sean Connery’s James Bond Was Different from What Ian Fleming Intended
In Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, the author shared insights on what went behind the scenes in a film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel Casino Royale.
- 5/31/2024
- by Priya Sharma
- FandomWire
Isabelle Huppert will head up the 2024 Venice Film Festival jury this year. Serving as jury president, Huppert will hand out the Golden Lion and other awards when the festival on the Lido concludes. The dates for this year’s edition are August 28 to September 7.
Huppert has never before served as jury president at Venice, but she did at Cannes in 2009, awarding the Palme d’Or to Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” after deliberations with James Gray, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Asia Argento, Robin Wright, and Lee Chang-dong. Before that she’d served on the jury headed by Dirk Bogarde at Cannes in 1984, which gave the top prize to “Paris, Texas.”
The 71-year-old actress has been a powerhouse force in global cinema for the past 50 years, making her mark in French cinema before quickly appearing in Hollywood productions such as Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate.” Over the past decade Huppert’s...
Huppert has never before served as jury president at Venice, but she did at Cannes in 2009, awarding the Palme d’Or to Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” after deliberations with James Gray, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Asia Argento, Robin Wright, and Lee Chang-dong. Before that she’d served on the jury headed by Dirk Bogarde at Cannes in 1984, which gave the top prize to “Paris, Texas.”
The 71-year-old actress has been a powerhouse force in global cinema for the past 50 years, making her mark in French cinema before quickly appearing in Hollywood productions such as Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate.” Over the past decade Huppert’s...
- 5/8/2024
- by Christian Blauvelt
- Indiewire
Lashana Lynch became the first woman to own the 007 title in the 2021 James Bond tentpole “No Time to Die,” but it turns out a plan to make James Bond a woman was actually pitched over 60 years prior. In Nicholas Shakespeare’s upcoming biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled “Ian Fleming: The Complete Man,” it’s confirmed that producer Gregory Ratoff floated the idea of casting Susan Hayward in a film adaptation of Fleming’s first Bond novel “Casino Royale.”
Shakespeare writes in the biography (via IndieWire): “Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached [to play Bond]. Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward. Ian had entertained several possibilities, from Richard Burton (‘I think that Richard Burton would be by far the best James Bond’), to James Stewart (‘I wouldn’t at all mind him as Bond if he can slightly...
Shakespeare writes in the biography (via IndieWire): “Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached [to play Bond]. Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward. Ian had entertained several possibilities, from Richard Burton (‘I think that Richard Burton would be by far the best James Bond’), to James Stewart (‘I wouldn’t at all mind him as Bond if he can slightly...
- 4/8/2024
- by Zack Sharf
- Variety Film + TV
Yes, a female James Bond has been over a half-century in the making.
Before Lashana Lynch briefly donned the 007 title in “No Time to Die,” the film adaptation of “Dr. No,” a woman was in talks to lead the franchise 50 years prior.
In Nicholas Shakespeare’s upcoming biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled “Ian Fleming: The Complete Man,” it’s revealed that original “Casino Royale” producer Gregory Ratoff had imagined a woman in the titular lead role. In fact, Oscar-winning actress Susan Hayward was in Ratoff’s mind to take the part.
Prior to “Casino Royale,” the two Bond films had floundered with “Thunderball” and “Casino Royale” receiving poor reviews, hence the proposed gender-swap.
Shakespeare writes in the biography, “Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached. Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward. Ian had entertained several possibilities,...
Before Lashana Lynch briefly donned the 007 title in “No Time to Die,” the film adaptation of “Dr. No,” a woman was in talks to lead the franchise 50 years prior.
In Nicholas Shakespeare’s upcoming biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled “Ian Fleming: The Complete Man,” it’s revealed that original “Casino Royale” producer Gregory Ratoff had imagined a woman in the titular lead role. In fact, Oscar-winning actress Susan Hayward was in Ratoff’s mind to take the part.
Prior to “Casino Royale,” the two Bond films had floundered with “Thunderball” and “Casino Royale” receiving poor reviews, hence the proposed gender-swap.
Shakespeare writes in the biography, “Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached. Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward. Ian had entertained several possibilities,...
- 4/8/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Clay McLeod Chapman And Andrea Mutti Conjure The New Horror Series “SÉANCE In The Asylum”: "We’re receiving a message from the beyond! Dark Horse Comics presents Séance in the Asylum, a new historical horror series from renowned writer Clay McLeod Chapman and artist Andrea Mutti that will have you questioning what’s real and what’s not. Chapman will write the series and Mutti will illustrate, with Trevor Henderson, Francesco Francavilla, Lukas Ketner, and Jenna Cha rounding out the circle and providing variant cover art on issues #1-4.
“Years back, I uncovered an esoteric text -- The Homeopathic Principle Applied to Insanity: A Proposal to Treat Lunacy by Spiritualism by Dr. James John Garth Wilkinson -- written all the way back in 1857, and I knew within my bones, my blood, that this was destined to be a story,” said Chapman. “As a lifelong acolyte of the Fox Sisters,...
“Years back, I uncovered an esoteric text -- The Homeopathic Principle Applied to Insanity: A Proposal to Treat Lunacy by Spiritualism by Dr. James John Garth Wilkinson -- written all the way back in 1857, and I knew within my bones, my blood, that this was destined to be a story,” said Chapman. “As a lifelong acolyte of the Fox Sisters,...
- 3/15/2024
- by Jonathan James
- DailyDead
In his last dramatic and interminable years, Michael Cimino spent his days in solitude rewatching old movies in the Bel-Air mansion he bought during his heyday. On the rare occasions that he ventured out, he drove a Rolls-Royce he acquired while making The Deer Hunter in 1978, his chauffeur having left long ago, as well as his success.
Even in those final moments, he did everything he could to show a winning image to Hollywood, a town that had ostracized him ever since the colossal Heaven’s Gate fiasco that had bankrupted United Artists during the early ’80s. He had a perpetually ironic, scornful smile, but he was the first to know how pointless, even miserable, that act was. The only thing he had left from his triumphant years was some money, and he would show up at the hangouts of movers and shakers like the Polo Lounge, where he often ended...
Even in those final moments, he did everything he could to show a winning image to Hollywood, a town that had ostracized him ever since the colossal Heaven’s Gate fiasco that had bankrupted United Artists during the early ’80s. He had a perpetually ironic, scornful smile, but he was the first to know how pointless, even miserable, that act was. The only thing he had left from his triumphant years was some money, and he would show up at the hangouts of movers and shakers like the Polo Lounge, where he often ended...
- 2/17/2024
- by Antonio Monda
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Initially inspired by an all too common misreading of the classic novel Lolita in her younger years, filmmaker Victoria Singh-Thompson – last featured on Directors Notes with her caught between cultures coming-of-age drama Don’t Forget To Go Home – wanted to depict the complex layers of trauma and how it affects the way we see the world. The resulting film 14 in February is a fragmented and haunting look at the world through the eyes of a young hard-of-hearing schoolgirl who isn’t yet able to process the experiences she has undergone and dissociates from her memories. The immersive and quietly shocking short is as visually still as it is emotionally frantic, with a focused lens pulling us into its young protagonist’s point of view, accented with purposeful jarring sounds which as a package, disturb and succeed in creating the unease that Singh-Thompson wanted. Making a welcome return to Dn’s pages,...
- 2/13/2024
- by Sarah Smith
- Directors Notes
Glynis Johns, remembered by movie audiences as Mrs. Banks from Mary Poppins and by Broadway devotees as the first person to sing Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” on a national stage, died Thursday of natural causes at an assisted living home in Los Angeles. She was 100.
Her death was announced by her manager and publicist Mitch Clem. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said in a statement. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”
A Tony winner (Best Actress/Musical) for her performance as Desiree Armfeldt in the original 1973 Broadway cast of the Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler A Little Night Music, Johns both debuted and, due to her widespread acclaim, helped popularize what would become perhaps Sondheim’s most beloved and well-known songs with “Send in the Clowns.”
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, the Welsh Johns made her West End debut in 1931 at age...
Her death was announced by her manager and publicist Mitch Clem. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said in a statement. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”
A Tony winner (Best Actress/Musical) for her performance as Desiree Armfeldt in the original 1973 Broadway cast of the Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler A Little Night Music, Johns both debuted and, due to her widespread acclaim, helped popularize what would become perhaps Sondheim’s most beloved and well-known songs with “Send in the Clowns.”
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, the Welsh Johns made her West End debut in 1931 at age...
- 1/4/2024
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
To celebrate Studiocanal’s brand new 4K restoration of King and Country available in the UK for the first time ever on Blu-ray & Digital and on a new DVD 6th November, we’re giving away a Blu-Ray copy!
Studiocanal is thrilled to announce a brand new 4k restoration of British anti-war classic King And Country (1964) from esteemed American director Joseph Losey (The Servant), available in time for Remembrance Day on Blu-Ray & Digital for the first time ever in the UK, plus a new DVD on 6th November, through the Vintage Classics brand. The new restoration of King And Country recently premiered at Venice Film Festival to great acclaim.
Returning for another stellar collaboration with director Joseph Losey is revered British actor Dirk Bogarde (The Servant), seen here as Captain Hargreaves, a tough army lawyer assigned to defend army volunteer-turned-deserter Private Hamp, played by the brilliant Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar), whose...
Studiocanal is thrilled to announce a brand new 4k restoration of British anti-war classic King And Country (1964) from esteemed American director Joseph Losey (The Servant), available in time for Remembrance Day on Blu-Ray & Digital for the first time ever in the UK, plus a new DVD on 6th November, through the Vintage Classics brand. The new restoration of King And Country recently premiered at Venice Film Festival to great acclaim.
Returning for another stellar collaboration with director Joseph Losey is revered British actor Dirk Bogarde (The Servant), seen here as Captain Hargreaves, a tough army lawyer assigned to defend army volunteer-turned-deserter Private Hamp, played by the brilliant Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar), whose...
- 11/4/2023
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Tom Courtenay is unforgettable as a first world war private on trial for desertion. But it is Dirk Bogarde, dripping with distaste for his defendant who delivers a horrific coup de grâce
There’s an extra, unexpected shiver of contemporary relevance and horror in this rerelease of Joseph Losey’s brutal expressionist drama from 1964. Tom Courtenay plays the pinch-faced, talkative but also somehow inscrutable Private Hamp, who is court-martialled for desertion in 1917 having “gone for a walk” away from the guns at Passchendaele.
Dirk Bogarde’s suave, sorrowing Capt Charles Hargreaves is assigned the task of defending Private Hamp – suppressing his distaste for Hamp, of course, like all the officer class, and trying not to think about the inevitability of his execution – and he boldly asks the court to consider Hamp’s “mental health”. The presiding colonel, played by Peter Copley, erupts with contempt at this modern-sounding phrase. “Do you...
There’s an extra, unexpected shiver of contemporary relevance and horror in this rerelease of Joseph Losey’s brutal expressionist drama from 1964. Tom Courtenay plays the pinch-faced, talkative but also somehow inscrutable Private Hamp, who is court-martialled for desertion in 1917 having “gone for a walk” away from the guns at Passchendaele.
Dirk Bogarde’s suave, sorrowing Capt Charles Hargreaves is assigned the task of defending Private Hamp – suppressing his distaste for Hamp, of course, like all the officer class, and trying not to think about the inevitability of his execution – and he boldly asks the court to consider Hamp’s “mental health”. The presiding colonel, played by Peter Copley, erupts with contempt at this modern-sounding phrase. “Do you...
- 11/3/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Venice film festival: A courtroom drama based on events in Herman Wouk’s second world war novel The Caine Mutiny, Friedkin leaves us with a valuable last effort
The ghosts of film history can be seen all over Venice, the city where Dirk Bogarde sat down in a deck-chair and died and Donald Sutherland was bewitched by the sight of a red raincoat. One spies their faces on black-and-white stills inside the main festival site and adorning celebratory posters positioned around town. They occasionally crop up on the movie schedule as well.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is the swansong film from director William Friedkin, completed just before his death last month and dedicated to the memory of its co-star, Lance Reddick, who died back in March. This is a forensic, exacting courtroom drama; stiffly tailored and a little unyielding; doggedly making a bonus of a claustrophobic single location. It’s not The Exorcist,...
The ghosts of film history can be seen all over Venice, the city where Dirk Bogarde sat down in a deck-chair and died and Donald Sutherland was bewitched by the sight of a red raincoat. One spies their faces on black-and-white stills inside the main festival site and adorning celebratory posters positioned around town. They occasionally crop up on the movie schedule as well.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is the swansong film from director William Friedkin, completed just before his death last month and dedicated to the memory of its co-star, Lance Reddick, who died back in March. This is a forensic, exacting courtroom drama; stiffly tailored and a little unyielding; doggedly making a bonus of a claustrophobic single location. It’s not The Exorcist,...
- 9/3/2023
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
It's been a long road, getting from there to here.
One might recall in June of 2023, it was announced that several key executives and programmers at Turner Classic Movies were callously canned by the new management at their parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. For many, this was tantamount to nixing TCM altogether. CEO David Zaslav made this decision at the end of a string of bad decisions that made him look like the film world's most callous villain. After the weird rebranding of HBO Max to merely Max, it was starting to look like Zaslav didn't give a damn about film history.
It certainly looked that way to Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, three lovers of vintage film and advocates for the preservation of classics. The trio famously called Zaslav to appeal for the retaining of TCM and the re-hiring of some of their old staff. A...
One might recall in June of 2023, it was announced that several key executives and programmers at Turner Classic Movies were callously canned by the new management at their parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. For many, this was tantamount to nixing TCM altogether. CEO David Zaslav made this decision at the end of a string of bad decisions that made him look like the film world's most callous villain. After the weird rebranding of HBO Max to merely Max, it was starting to look like Zaslav didn't give a damn about film history.
It certainly looked that way to Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, three lovers of vintage film and advocates for the preservation of classics. The trio famously called Zaslav to appeal for the retaining of TCM and the re-hiring of some of their old staff. A...
- 9/2/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
The Venice Film Festival kicked off its 80th edition Wednesday night on a somewhat muted note, with the dual Hollywood strike casting a pall over the glitz and glamour that typically exemplify the world’s oldest cinema fest. Instead of Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya starrer Challengers — which was scheduled to open Venice pre-strike, getting pulled amid the walkout — Venice was forced to go with a more locally focused feature, Edoardo De Angelis’ Italian World War II submarine drama, Comandante.
Italian actress Caterina Murino hosted the festival’s grand opening ceremony with a retrospective spanning eight decades of Venice cinema, featuring clips highlighting past Golden Lion winners. The audience burst into applause at the sight of the late William Friedkin, whose last film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, will premiere on the Lido this year.
Comandante tells the true story of Salvatore Todaro, a submarine captain under Italy’s fascist government who...
Italian actress Caterina Murino hosted the festival’s grand opening ceremony with a retrospective spanning eight decades of Venice cinema, featuring clips highlighting past Golden Lion winners. The audience burst into applause at the sight of the late William Friedkin, whose last film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, will premiere on the Lido this year.
Comandante tells the true story of Salvatore Todaro, a submarine captain under Italy’s fascist government who...
- 8/30/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In an alternate universe, Zendaya would be breaking the Internet with her red carpet fashion as she promoted Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” the movie that was supposed to open the 80th annual Venice Film Festival.
But the SAG-AFTRA strike made it impossible for the tennis movie, starring one of the world’s buzziest movie stars, to come to the Lido.
So instead, Venice kicked off with World War II drama “Comandante” by young Italian auteur Edoardo De Angelis. The movie, mostly set on a submarine, landed a brief 90-second standing ovation as actor Pierfrancesco Favino — who plays naval officer Salvatore Todaro — took a bow.
Indeed, the lack of star power was strongly felt at Venice opening night. The size of the crowds that lined up outside the Sala Grande Theatre was modest, and the biggest cheers went to Damien Chazelle, who is presiding over the Venice jury. Jane Campion,...
But the SAG-AFTRA strike made it impossible for the tennis movie, starring one of the world’s buzziest movie stars, to come to the Lido.
So instead, Venice kicked off with World War II drama “Comandante” by young Italian auteur Edoardo De Angelis. The movie, mostly set on a submarine, landed a brief 90-second standing ovation as actor Pierfrancesco Favino — who plays naval officer Salvatore Todaro — took a bow.
Indeed, the lack of star power was strongly felt at Venice opening night. The size of the crowds that lined up outside the Sala Grande Theatre was modest, and the biggest cheers went to Damien Chazelle, who is presiding over the Venice jury. Jane Campion,...
- 8/30/2023
- by Ramin Setoodeh and Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Even without major stars or Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” to buoy it, the opening night of the Venice Film Festival’s 80th edition was high on nostalgia for cinema’s past and excitement for the eight days of movies ahead.
A black-tie crowd gathered in the Palazzo del Cinema’s Sala Grande on the Lido for the presentation of Edoardo De Angelis’ World War II Battle of the Atlantic epic “Comandante,” the opener that replaced Guadagnino’s “Challengers” after that film was moved by MGM/Amazon to April due to the strikes.
First, though, elegant minimalist and icon Charlotte Rampling presented the festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Liliana Cavani, the Italian director of psychosexual Holocaust drama “The Night Porter,” starring Rampling and from 1974. (Wong Kar Wai muse Tony Leung Chiu-wai will also receive a Lifetime Achievement anointment later in the fest.) Rampling played a concentration camp survivor who finds her ex,...
A black-tie crowd gathered in the Palazzo del Cinema’s Sala Grande on the Lido for the presentation of Edoardo De Angelis’ World War II Battle of the Atlantic epic “Comandante,” the opener that replaced Guadagnino’s “Challengers” after that film was moved by MGM/Amazon to April due to the strikes.
First, though, elegant minimalist and icon Charlotte Rampling presented the festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Liliana Cavani, the Italian director of psychosexual Holocaust drama “The Night Porter,” starring Rampling and from 1974. (Wong Kar Wai muse Tony Leung Chiu-wai will also receive a Lifetime Achievement anointment later in the fest.) Rampling played a concentration camp survivor who finds her ex,...
- 8/30/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Updated with more details: The 80th Venice Film Festival officially kicked off Wednesday evening with the world premiere screening of Edoardo De Angelis’ Italian World War II submarine drama Comandante. Running in competition, the film took over the slot vacated by Luca Guadagnino’s tennis drama Challengers, which backed out of the spot amid the actors strike.
Before the Pierfrancesco Favino-starring movie unspooled to a warm welcome and a brief post-credit standing ovation, Italian actress Caterina Murino launched the festival’s opening ceremony featuring a retrospective covering the 80 years of the event. That included glimpses of previous Golden Lion and awards winners, with the audience erupting when the late William Friedkin appeared in the montage.
Friedkin, who died August 7, has his final work, the Showtime film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, screening later this week out of competition.
Biennalle president Roberto Cicutto then came on the stage to introduce Charlotte Rampling,...
Before the Pierfrancesco Favino-starring movie unspooled to a warm welcome and a brief post-credit standing ovation, Italian actress Caterina Murino launched the festival’s opening ceremony featuring a retrospective covering the 80 years of the event. That included glimpses of previous Golden Lion and awards winners, with the audience erupting when the late William Friedkin appeared in the montage.
Friedkin, who died August 7, has his final work, the Showtime film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, screening later this week out of competition.
Biennalle president Roberto Cicutto then came on the stage to introduce Charlotte Rampling,...
- 8/30/2023
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
As the Venice film festival turns 80, we pick the titles that capture the city’s allure, from desolate Don’t Look Now to romantic Summertime and Top Hat’s cheery glamour
This time next week I’ll be packing my bags for Venice, where the 80th edition of its annual film festival will unveil new films by Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Yorgos Lanthimos, David Fincher, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Bradley Cooper, the late William Friedkin – an especially glistening lineup for an event never short on gloss. But even without such attractions, Venice would remain my favourite festival: it’s the faintly unreal allure of the city itself, the spray from the Vaporetto as you leave the airport, the sense that you’re arriving into an eternal film location rather than just an industry event.
You can’t arrive on the Lido, the drowsy barrier island where the festival unfolds, and not recall...
This time next week I’ll be packing my bags for Venice, where the 80th edition of its annual film festival will unveil new films by Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Yorgos Lanthimos, David Fincher, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Bradley Cooper, the late William Friedkin – an especially glistening lineup for an event never short on gloss. But even without such attractions, Venice would remain my favourite festival: it’s the faintly unreal allure of the city itself, the spray from the Vaporetto as you leave the airport, the sense that you’re arriving into an eternal film location rather than just an industry event.
You can’t arrive on the Lido, the drowsy barrier island where the festival unfolds, and not recall...
- 8/19/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- The Guardian - Film News
The Venice Film Festival has set filmmaker Liliana Cavani and actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai to receive this year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement. The 80th Venice fest runs from August 30-September 9 on the Lido.
Cavani, whose credits include 1974 classic The Night Porter, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, and 1985’s The Berlin Affair, has had several films at the festival, beginning with 1965’s Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy, which won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary. It was followed by Francesco d’Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (1970), Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993) — for which Anna Bonaiuto won the Coppa Volpi for best actress — Ripley’s Game with John Malkovich (2002) and Clarisse (2012).
As for Leung, whose credits include Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs and recent Marvel title Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,...
Cavani, whose credits include 1974 classic The Night Porter, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, and 1985’s The Berlin Affair, has had several films at the festival, beginning with 1965’s Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy, which won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary. It was followed by Francesco d’Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (1970), Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993) — for which Anna Bonaiuto won the Coppa Volpi for best actress — Ripley’s Game with John Malkovich (2002) and Clarisse (2012).
As for Leung, whose credits include Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs and recent Marvel title Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,...
- 3/27/2023
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
Christophe Honoré selected Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette: “Her work is very important for French cinema.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Jacques Demy’s Lola (starring Anouk Aimée with Marc Michel), Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Zhangke Jia and composer Yoshihiro Hanno, Yves Robert’s La Guerre des Boutons, Alain Resnais’ Providence and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By The Sea, Sophie's Misfortunes, and Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette all came up in our discussion.
Christophe Honoré with Anne-Katrin Titze on why Alain Resnais is a king: “I’m interested in narrative play and people who have a ludic relationship to storytelling.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Christophe Honoré was in New York to present Winter Boy, starring Paul Kircher, Vincent Lacoste, Juliette Binoche, and Erwan Kepoa Falé, shot by Rémy Chevrin (Guermantes, [film]On...
Jacques Demy’s Lola (starring Anouk Aimée with Marc Michel), Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Zhangke Jia and composer Yoshihiro Hanno, Yves Robert’s La Guerre des Boutons, Alain Resnais’ Providence and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By The Sea, Sophie's Misfortunes, and Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette all came up in our discussion.
Christophe Honoré with Anne-Katrin Titze on why Alain Resnais is a king: “I’m interested in narrative play and people who have a ludic relationship to storytelling.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Christophe Honoré was in New York to present Winter Boy, starring Paul Kircher, Vincent Lacoste, Juliette Binoche, and Erwan Kepoa Falé, shot by Rémy Chevrin (Guermantes, [film]On...
- 3/13/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Great Italian Films of the 1970sThere was a certain type of great art film which was being made from 1968 through the 1970s which can never be approximated. Active and engaged filmmakers were consciously wakening out of the post-war amnesia and taking a perversely erotically charged political stand against the hypocrisy of the previous generation.
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
- 2/11/2023
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
Performer starred opposite Dirk Bogarde in Victim as well as playing the mother of Helen Mirren’s monarch in The Queen
Sylvia Syms, the versatile British actor who appeared in a string of films including Ice Cold in Alex, Expresso Bongo, The Tamarind Seed and The Queen, has died aged 89.
According to a statement given to Pa by her family, Syms “died peacefully” on Friday at Denville Hall, a care home in London for those in the entertainment industry. Her children, Beatie and Ben Edney, said: “Our mother, Sylvia, died peacefully this morning. She has lived an amazing life and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end. Just yesterday we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.”...
Sylvia Syms, the versatile British actor who appeared in a string of films including Ice Cold in Alex, Expresso Bongo, The Tamarind Seed and The Queen, has died aged 89.
According to a statement given to Pa by her family, Syms “died peacefully” on Friday at Denville Hall, a care home in London for those in the entertainment industry. Her children, Beatie and Ben Edney, said: “Our mother, Sylvia, died peacefully this morning. She has lived an amazing life and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end. Just yesterday we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.”...
- 1/27/2023
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Sylvia Syms, the British actress whose body of work stretched back to the 1950s and included roles in Ice Cold in Alex, Victim and The Queen, has died. She was 89.
In a statement to Sky News, her family said she “died peacefully” on Jan. 27 at a London care home for those in the entertainment industry.
“She has lived an amazing life, and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end,” they said. “Just yesterday, we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.”
Born in London in 1934, Syms attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and became an almost instant star in her 20s, thanks to major roles in films such as WWII drama and 1958 Berlinale winner Ice Cold in Alex (alongside John Mills, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews), English Civil War drama The Moonraker and Expresso Bongo with Cliff Richard.
In 1961, she...
In a statement to Sky News, her family said she “died peacefully” on Jan. 27 at a London care home for those in the entertainment industry.
“She has lived an amazing life, and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end,” they said. “Just yesterday, we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.”
Born in London in 1934, Syms attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and became an almost instant star in her 20s, thanks to major roles in films such as WWII drama and 1958 Berlinale winner Ice Cold in Alex (alongside John Mills, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews), English Civil War drama The Moonraker and Expresso Bongo with Cliff Richard.
In 1961, she...
- 1/27/2023
- by Alex Ritman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
English actress Sylvia Syms has passed away in the UK aged 89, according to her family.
Syms was best known for roles in movies including Ice Cold Alex, Victim, The Tamarind Seed and Stephen Frears’ The Queen, in which she played The Queen Mother.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Gina Lollobrigida Dies: Italian Cinema Diva Was 95 Related Story Chris Ledesma Dies: 'The Simpsons' Longtime Music Editor Was 64
Syms passed away this morning at Denville Hall, a care home in London for those in the entertainment industry. In a statement shared with The Sun, Syms’ family said: “She has lived an amazing life and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end. Just yesterday we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.
“We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Denville Hall for...
Syms was best known for roles in movies including Ice Cold Alex, Victim, The Tamarind Seed and Stephen Frears’ The Queen, in which she played The Queen Mother.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Gina Lollobrigida Dies: Italian Cinema Diva Was 95 Related Story Chris Ledesma Dies: 'The Simpsons' Longtime Music Editor Was 64
Syms passed away this morning at Denville Hall, a care home in London for those in the entertainment industry. In a statement shared with The Sun, Syms’ family said: “She has lived an amazing life and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end. Just yesterday we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.
“We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Denville Hall for...
- 1/27/2023
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
The rereleases from Wendy Toye, one of only two female directors working in the 1950s UK film industry, include her feature debut and a Dirk Bogarde cameo
This pair of middling rereleases from Britain’s studio era are of significance because of who oversaw them: Wendy Toye, one of only two female directors working in the UK film industry in the 1950s. While her contemporary Muriel Box often chipped away at feminist issues in her films, these two features find Toye – also a child-prodigy dancer and prolific theatre and opera director – working firmly inside the commercial parameters of the period.
The Teckman Mystery (★★★☆☆), from 1954, is in the mould of the upper-class Hitchcockian runaround, starring John Justin as writer Philip Chance, who is commissioned to write a biography of a vanished airman called Martin Teckman. Toye whips up a brisk, intriguing pace in black and white as a series of sinister...
This pair of middling rereleases from Britain’s studio era are of significance because of who oversaw them: Wendy Toye, one of only two female directors working in the UK film industry in the 1950s. While her contemporary Muriel Box often chipped away at feminist issues in her films, these two features find Toye – also a child-prodigy dancer and prolific theatre and opera director – working firmly inside the commercial parameters of the period.
The Teckman Mystery (★★★☆☆), from 1954, is in the mould of the upper-class Hitchcockian runaround, starring John Justin as writer Philip Chance, who is commissioned to write a biography of a vanished airman called Martin Teckman. Toye whips up a brisk, intriguing pace in black and white as a series of sinister...
- 11/16/2022
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
Leslie Phillips, Debonair British Actor of ‘Carry On,’ ‘Doctor’ and ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Dies at 98
Click here to read the full article.
Leslie Phillips, the British actor and Casanova of the Carry On movies who turned to serious supporting roles in Out of Africa and Empire of the Sun before voicing The Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter franchise, has died. He was 98.
Phillips died peacefully in his sleep on Monday, agent Jonathan Lloyd told the BBC on Tuesday.
With an eye for the ladies onscreen and off, the sophisticated Phillips appeared in more than 170 roles across screens big and small, portraying policemen, military officials, reverends and judges. But for audiences in the 1950s and ’60s, he was synonymous with the low-budget Carry On and Doctor series (he took over from Dirk Bogarde in the latter).
In the ’80s, he distanced himself from his playboy roles to lend gravitas to Sydney Pollack’s Oscar best picture winner Out of Africa (1985) and to Steven Spielberg’s...
Leslie Phillips, the British actor and Casanova of the Carry On movies who turned to serious supporting roles in Out of Africa and Empire of the Sun before voicing The Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter franchise, has died. He was 98.
Phillips died peacefully in his sleep on Monday, agent Jonathan Lloyd told the BBC on Tuesday.
With an eye for the ladies onscreen and off, the sophisticated Phillips appeared in more than 170 roles across screens big and small, portraying policemen, military officials, reverends and judges. But for audiences in the 1950s and ’60s, he was synonymous with the low-budget Carry On and Doctor series (he took over from Dirk Bogarde in the latter).
In the ’80s, he distanced himself from his playboy roles to lend gravitas to Sydney Pollack’s Oscar best picture winner Out of Africa (1985) and to Steven Spielberg’s...
- 11/8/2022
- by Rhett Bartlett
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Ava Gardner's career was a constant tug-of-war behind the scenes, and that was in large part due to her having to constantly maneuver around her home studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, aka MGM. In the golden age of Hollywood, the studio system wielded a ton of power, far more than the power imbalances we see with studios today. They shaped, sculpted, and launched the careers of many a favorite actor, director, screenwriter, etc. But there were strings attached that I'd liken to puppet strings. Bucking against those strings could get you cut.
In earlier roles, much criticism was directed towards Gardner for her supposed subpar acting abilities, abilities which MGM Studios failed to nurture in the young woman from the get-go. There was an emphasis on Gardner's image and, once roles in "Barefoot Contessa" and "The Killers" pigeonholed her in more seductive roles that emphasized her glamourous beauty, MGM really leaned into that image.
In earlier roles, much criticism was directed towards Gardner for her supposed subpar acting abilities, abilities which MGM Studios failed to nurture in the young woman from the get-go. There was an emphasis on Gardner's image and, once roles in "Barefoot Contessa" and "The Killers" pigeonholed her in more seductive roles that emphasized her glamourous beauty, MGM really leaned into that image.
- 11/6/2022
- by Sarah Musnicky
- Slash Film
"Nocebo" is an equally psychological and physical horror movie. It's mind and body horror, both surreal and all too realistic. Director Lorcan Finnegan's film takes a horrific part of the world, which is best not to spoil, and turns it into a suitably nightmarish setting featuring stars Eva Green and Chai Fonacier.
The home is another cage in Finnegan's new film. "Lorcan explored that a bit in "Vivarium,'" Green told us in a recent interview, referencing Finnegan's 2019 sci-fi mystery. "It was something like being the perfect house, but it's too perfect and you choke. There's something when everything is too perfect, it's not right."
Green is an actor who works with true independent spirits. The "Penny Dreadful" star has made some box office hits, like "Casino Royale," but she's also made several out-of-the-box films, such as "Franklyn," "Perfect Sense," and "The Salvation." With "Nocebo," Green stars in another...
The home is another cage in Finnegan's new film. "Lorcan explored that a bit in "Vivarium,'" Green told us in a recent interview, referencing Finnegan's 2019 sci-fi mystery. "It was something like being the perfect house, but it's too perfect and you choke. There's something when everything is too perfect, it's not right."
Green is an actor who works with true independent spirits. The "Penny Dreadful" star has made some box office hits, like "Casino Royale," but she's also made several out-of-the-box films, such as "Franklyn," "Perfect Sense," and "The Salvation." With "Nocebo," Green stars in another...
- 11/4/2022
- by Jack Giroux
- Slash Film
Bing Crosby, David Hockney and Dame Margot Fonteyn are among the interviewees to have been discovered within old Desert Island Disc tapes.
As the interviews predated the BBC recording archives, the recordings had previously been lost, but now an audio collector has found them.
Richard Harrison from Lowestoft in Suffolk discovered the 90 lost tapes, telling the BBC that finding the missing archives was a “great feeling”.
Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast which is also now released in a podcast format. It has been airing since January 1942 when it was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme.
The 90 recordings feature interviews from the 1960s and 1970s and include a host of stars from actor Dirk Bogarde to actor and dancer Sophie Tucker.
Harrison is a member of the Radio Circle, a group who take a keen interest in discovering lost radio. Harrison collects old tapes from car...
As the interviews predated the BBC recording archives, the recordings had previously been lost, but now an audio collector has found them.
Richard Harrison from Lowestoft in Suffolk discovered the 90 lost tapes, telling the BBC that finding the missing archives was a “great feeling”.
Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast which is also now released in a podcast format. It has been airing since January 1942 when it was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme.
The 90 recordings feature interviews from the 1960s and 1970s and include a host of stars from actor Dirk Bogarde to actor and dancer Sophie Tucker.
Harrison is a member of the Radio Circle, a group who take a keen interest in discovering lost radio. Harrison collects old tapes from car...
- 10/13/2022
- by Megan Graye
- The Independent - Music
To mark the release of newly restored The Who Dare on 5th September, we’ve been given 2 copies to give away on Blu-ray.
During the Second World War, Lieutenant Graham (Dirk Bogarde) is sent on a mission to destroy two German airfields on Rhodes that may threaten Egypt. Under his command, a group of six Special Boat Service, two Greek officers and two local guides are assembled.
The group is taken to Rhodes by submarine and comes ashore at night on a desolate beach. From there, the group has to traverse the mountains to reach its targets. At a pre-designated location, the party splits into two raiding parties. After having infiltrated the air bases, they blow up the aircraft, but two of the raiders are taken prisoner by the Italians. Hunted by the many enemy patrols, will the others evade capture and make it back to the submarine in time?...
During the Second World War, Lieutenant Graham (Dirk Bogarde) is sent on a mission to destroy two German airfields on Rhodes that may threaten Egypt. Under his command, a group of six Special Boat Service, two Greek officers and two local guides are assembled.
The group is taken to Rhodes by submarine and comes ashore at night on a desolate beach. From there, the group has to traverse the mountains to reach its targets. At a pre-designated location, the party splits into two raiding parties. After having infiltrated the air bases, they blow up the aircraft, but two of the raiders are taken prisoner by the Italians. Hunted by the many enemy patrols, will the others evade capture and make it back to the submarine in time?...
- 8/29/2022
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Haven’t yet seen all the best old-school vintage naval combat epics? This color & ‘scope thriller has a terrific cast of Brit stars and up-n-comers, can boast excellent visuals and is historically accurate. Alec Guinness captains a ship during the Napoleonic Wars, and finds his duty complicated by a psychopathic top officer (Dirk Bogarde) who usurps authority and sees the crew as fresh meat for his sadistic ideas about discipline. All the tech and art credits are top-tier, plus we get nice supporting perfs from the likes of Anthony Quayle, Nigel Stock, Maurice Denham, Victor Maddern, Tom Bell, and Murray Melvin.
Damn the Defiant!
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 136
1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / H.M.S. Defiant / Available from Viavision / Australian 34.95 / and Amazon US / 34.95
Starring: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Maurice Denham, Nigel Stock, Richard Carpenter, Peter Gill, David Robinson, Robin Stewart, Ray Brooks, Peter Greenspan, Anthony Quayle, Tom Bell,...
Damn the Defiant!
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 136
1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / H.M.S. Defiant / Available from Viavision / Australian 34.95 / and Amazon US / 34.95
Starring: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Maurice Denham, Nigel Stock, Richard Carpenter, Peter Gill, David Robinson, Robin Stewart, Ray Brooks, Peter Greenspan, Anthony Quayle, Tom Bell,...
- 7/26/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
To mark the release of the newly restored The Gentle Gunman on 7th March, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray.
At the height of World War II, Terry (John Mills) and his younger brother Matt (Dirk Bogarde) are undercover Ira foot-soldiers working in London. But while Matt is fully committed to the cause, Terry is now beginning to question their violent methods. When two fellow Ira members are arrested, the brothers are asked to break them out. Will Terry follow his orders, or will his misgivings put the two in harm’s way?
Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only
a Rafflecopter giveaway
The Small Print
Open to UK residents only The competition will close 10th March 2022 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available Please note prizes may be delayed due to Covid-19 To coincide with Gdpr regulations,...
At the height of World War II, Terry (John Mills) and his younger brother Matt (Dirk Bogarde) are undercover Ira foot-soldiers working in London. But while Matt is fully committed to the cause, Terry is now beginning to question their violent methods. When two fellow Ira members are arrested, the brothers are asked to break them out. Will Terry follow his orders, or will his misgivings put the two in harm’s way?
Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only
a Rafflecopter giveaway
The Small Print
Open to UK residents only The competition will close 10th March 2022 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available Please note prizes may be delayed due to Covid-19 To coincide with Gdpr regulations,...
- 2/28/2022
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Monica Vitti, the Italian screen icon known for a string of 1960s classics, died Wednesday at 90, according to reports in Italy.
The news was conveyed by writer, director and politician Walter Veltroni on behalf of Vitti’s husband, Roberto Russo:
Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.
— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022
The feted actress, best known for movies including L’Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962) and La Notte (1961), had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for two decades.
Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli on November 3, 1931, in Rome, Vitti acted in amateur productions as a teenager then trained at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts.
The actress shot to global fame following spectacular collaborations with legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vitti starred in L’Avventura as a detached and...
The news was conveyed by writer, director and politician Walter Veltroni on behalf of Vitti’s husband, Roberto Russo:
Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.
— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022
The feted actress, best known for movies including L’Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962) and La Notte (1961), had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for two decades.
Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli on November 3, 1931, in Rome, Vitti acted in amateur productions as a teenager then trained at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts.
The actress shot to global fame following spectacular collaborations with legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vitti starred in L’Avventura as a detached and...
- 2/2/2022
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s the ‘other’ version of Dickens’ terrific novel, an English film that few Americans have seen. This Australian DVD is in the Pal format and from a rather outdated transfer, yet I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a favorite story enacted by a great batch of UK talent. Dirk Bogarde stars and the many character roles go to familiar faces: Cecil Parker, Athene Seyler, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass, Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Christopher Lee, Leo McKern, Donald Pleasence, Eric Pohlmann, Danny Green and the lovely Marie Versini. It’s a regular actor-spotting quiz. Ralph Thomas directed and much of the film was shot in France … with excellent English diction.
A Tale of Two Cities
Region 2 Pal DVD
Viavision (Australia)
1958 / B&w / 1:33 adapted flat / 117 min. / Street Date January 5, 2022 / Available from Viavision / 19.95 au
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker, Stephen Murray, Athene Seyler, Paul Guers, Marie Versini, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass,...
A Tale of Two Cities
Region 2 Pal DVD
Viavision (Australia)
1958 / B&w / 1:33 adapted flat / 117 min. / Street Date January 5, 2022 / Available from Viavision / 19.95 au
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker, Stephen Murray, Athene Seyler, Paul Guers, Marie Versini, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass,...
- 1/25/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Lovers of vintage English crime thrillers will have a lot to chew over with this pair of escapist gangster pix, one pre-war and one post-. In each an innocent young couple suffers a run-in with a criminal gang. John Mills and Richard Attenborough are the ‘fresh’ new talent on display. The leading lady of Dancing with Crime is Sheila Sim, playing opposite her husband Attenborough. The co-feature The Green Cockatoo sports credits for William Cameron Menzies and Miklós Rózsa.
Dancing with Crime + The Green Cockatoo
Blu-ray
Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber
1937 & 1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 82 + 64 min. / Street Date January 25, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Barry Jones; John Mills, René Ray, Robert Newton.
Original Music: Benjamin Frankel, Miklós Rózsa
Directed by John Paddy Carstairs; William Cameron Menzies
The Blu-ray era has given home video devotees great opportunities to catch up with ‘exotic’ genre films from abroad. American TV...
Dancing with Crime + The Green Cockatoo
Blu-ray
Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber
1937 & 1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 82 + 64 min. / Street Date January 25, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Barry Jones; John Mills, René Ray, Robert Newton.
Original Music: Benjamin Frankel, Miklós Rózsa
Directed by John Paddy Carstairs; William Cameron Menzies
The Blu-ray era has given home video devotees great opportunities to catch up with ‘exotic’ genre films from abroad. American TV...
- 1/11/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Director Alfred Hitchcock age 21. “Rebecca” star Laurence Olivier at 14. “Gone With The Wind” icon Vivien Leigh at 7. Author Roald Dahl age 4 years and nine months.
The 1921 census, which was released by the U.K.’s National Archives department on Thursday, provides a snapshot into the lives of some of Britain’s best known names long before they became famous. In all, 38 million people were required to fill out the survey just over a hundred years ago, with each citizen individually listed by name.
According to his census entry, in 1921 Alfred Hitchcock was still living at home in Southwark, south London, alongside his 56-year-old mother Emma. His occupation is listed as “Title Designer for Film Company.” At the time, he was working at Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount Pictures’ production arm, which was based in Islington.
Laurence Olivier, still years away from becoming one of Britain’s best-known actors, was 14 years and one...
The 1921 census, which was released by the U.K.’s National Archives department on Thursday, provides a snapshot into the lives of some of Britain’s best known names long before they became famous. In all, 38 million people were required to fill out the survey just over a hundred years ago, with each citizen individually listed by name.
According to his census entry, in 1921 Alfred Hitchcock was still living at home in Southwark, south London, alongside his 56-year-old mother Emma. His occupation is listed as “Title Designer for Film Company.” At the time, he was working at Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount Pictures’ production arm, which was based in Islington.
Laurence Olivier, still years away from becoming one of Britain’s best-known actors, was 14 years and one...
- 1/6/2022
- by K.J. Yossman
- Variety Film + TV
Björn Andrésen at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice
Björn Andrésen at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde and pronounced him to be “the most beautiful boy in the world”.
Andrésen in Ari Aster’s Midsommar plays a man who has reached the end of his life. In Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström’s claustrophobic and disquieting documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World (Världens Vackraste Pojke), produced by Stina Gardell we are introduced to a man in his Sixties who is having a difficult time dealing with life.
Kristian Petri with Kristina Lindström and Anne-Katrin Titze on Björn Andrésen: “The scenes are like we are...
Björn Andrésen at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde and pronounced him to be “the most beautiful boy in the world”.
Andrésen in Ari Aster’s Midsommar plays a man who has reached the end of his life. In Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström’s claustrophobic and disquieting documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World (Världens Vackraste Pojke), produced by Stina Gardell we are introduced to a man in his Sixties who is having a difficult time dealing with life.
Kristian Petri with Kristina Lindström and Anne-Katrin Titze on Björn Andrésen: “The scenes are like we are...
- 1/5/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström’s claustrophobic and disquieting documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World (Världens vackraste pojke), produced by Stina Gardell, introduces us to the present-day Björn Andrésen now in his Sixties by way of his supremely filthy apartment with commentary by his then girlfriend Jessica Vennberg who may not be the best match for him or for her to get life in order.
Björn at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde, and pronounced him to be 'the most beautiful boy in the world'. Well chosen archival footage shows his supremely uncomfortable screen test in Stockholm, Björn on...
Björn at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde, and pronounced him to be 'the most beautiful boy in the world'. Well chosen archival footage shows his supremely uncomfortable screen test in Stockholm, Björn on...
- 1/4/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Björn Andrésen was just 16 when he landed the role that would change his life. The Swedish teenager was handpicked by legendary Italian auteur Luchino Visconti to star as Tadzio in the 1971 film adaptation of the 1912 Thomas Mann novella “Death in Venice.” In the film, Andrésen’s youth and striking looks obsess Dirk Bogarde’s Gustav von Aschenbach, a composer grappling with failing health. But that lucky break became a nightmare, particularly after Visconti labelled Andrésen the “most beautiful boy in the world” at a Cannes press conference for the film and then dropped the young man he had made a star.
“Life and career-wise, it fucked up a lot of things,” says Andrésen.
After gifting Andrésen with the memorable moniker describing his ethereal looks on that fateful day in the South of France, Visconti never spoke to the actor he’d plucked from obscurity and set off on a fateful collision course with teen idoldom.
“Life and career-wise, it fucked up a lot of things,” says Andrésen.
After gifting Andrésen with the memorable moniker describing his ethereal looks on that fateful day in the South of France, Visconti never spoke to the actor he’d plucked from obscurity and set off on a fateful collision course with teen idoldom.
- 11/30/2021
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Art films used to cross over into the mainstream more than they do now, though it still happens (just look at the success of “Parasite”). But even back in the heyday of art-house earthquakes like “Z” and “Last Tango in Paris,” there was something surreal about the crossover phenomenon of Björn Andrésen. He was the 15-year-old Swedish boy who director Luchino Visconti cast as the love object in “Death in Venice,” his 1971 film of Thomas Mann’s novel, and for a time Andrésen blew up like a pop star. “Death in Venice” was a grand, slow-moving, and, to me, always rather stilted and awkward piece of lavish-souled literary adaptation. On the page, Mann had evoked the romantic and sensual obsession that his ailing autobiographical hero felt, from afar, for Tadzio, an adolescent he spies at the hotel he’s convalescing at on the Lido. In the movie, the hero’s...
- 11/6/2021
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Sex and swastikas! — that combo shows up in both trash cinema and high art. Luchino Visconti’s searing look at Nazi corruption sees an industrialist family torn apart by murderous greed and ambition worthy of the Borgias. The fiendish Countess Ingrid Thulin has raised a twisted son (Helmut Berger) to serve her deadly schemes; her path to power involves framing one heir for a killing while another rival is sacrificed in an SS massacre for the good of the Reich. The chilling treachery plays out at family dinner tables, in the offices of a steel mill, and in various bedrooms; Nazi fervor is equated with sex perversion. The uncut original version, remastered, also stars Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini, René Koldehoff, Charlotte Rampling and Florinda Bolkan.
The Damned
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1098
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 157 min. / La caduta degli dei, Götterdämmerung / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 28, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Dirk Bogarde,...
The Damned
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1098
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 157 min. / La caduta degli dei, Götterdämmerung / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 28, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Dirk Bogarde,...
- 9/28/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Lest you think the title of this documentary is hyperbole, rest assured that the moniker “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” was indeed once applied to the film’s subject. He’s Björn Andrésen, who at the tender age of 15 was selected by legendary Italian film director Luchino Visconti to play the adolescent object of Dirk Bogarde’s obsession in the 1971 film adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. After making a worldwide splash in his first significant film role, Andrésen has spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity. Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri’s ...
- 9/23/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Lest you think the title of this documentary is hyperbole, rest assured that the moniker “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” was indeed once applied to the film’s subject. He’s Björn Andrésen, who at the tender age of 15 was selected by legendary Italian film director Luchino Visconti to play the adolescent object of Dirk Bogarde’s obsession in the 1971 film adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. After making a worldwide splash in his first significant film role, Andrésen has spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity. Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri’s ...
- 9/23/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
This year’s San Sebastian Film Festival is in mourning as Spanish director Mario Camus, celebrated for his sober but caring adaptations of distinguished Spanish novels such as “La Colmena” – written by Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela – Ignacio Aldecoa’s “Young Sánchez” and “The Holy Innocents” by Miguel Delibes, died on Saturday in Santander, northern Spain, the city where he was born. Camus was 86.
Among his career achievements, Camus took the Berlin Golden Bear for best film with “La Colmena” (1983), a Cannes Prize Ecumenical Jury prize for “The Holy Innocents” (1984). Such films proved a highpoint in Spain’s ruling socialist left’s dream, pushed when Pilar Miró took over as head of Spain’s Icaa film institute in 1982, of maintaining Spanish cinema’s social edge but priming its production levels and taking it onto a European stage.
Camus also participated in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and at the Moscow Festival...
Among his career achievements, Camus took the Berlin Golden Bear for best film with “La Colmena” (1983), a Cannes Prize Ecumenical Jury prize for “The Holy Innocents” (1984). Such films proved a highpoint in Spain’s ruling socialist left’s dream, pushed when Pilar Miró took over as head of Spain’s Icaa film institute in 1982, of maintaining Spanish cinema’s social edge but priming its production levels and taking it onto a European stage.
Camus also participated in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and at the Moscow Festival...
- 9/20/2021
- by Emilio Mayorga and Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
On Christmas Eve 1951, NBC aired the very first “Hallmark Hall of Fame” with the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Christmas opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” Rosemary Kuhlman and 12-year-old Chet Allen starred in this Peabody and Christopher Award-winning holiday story of the three Magi who stay with a young physically disabled boy and his widowed mother on their way to Bethlehem to find the Christ child. The presentation was so popular, the cast reprised their roles the following April. The production was done three more times in the 1950s on NBC, but Bill McIver played Amahl because Allen’s voice had changed.
The “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” which would air on NBC, ABC and CBS and is now exclusively on the Hallmark Channel, is the longest-running primetime series in TV history. In the past 70 years it has won over 80 Emmy Awards and dozens of Peabody Awards, Golden Globes,...
The “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” which would air on NBC, ABC and CBS and is now exclusively on the Hallmark Channel, is the longest-running primetime series in TV history. In the past 70 years it has won over 80 Emmy Awards and dozens of Peabody Awards, Golden Globes,...
- 9/13/2021
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
The subversive 1963 classic crackles with undertones of class, sexuality and communism, with Dirk Bogarde at his finest as the sociopathic manservant
Joseph Losey’s monochrome psycho-horror satire from 1963 is now re-released; it took an expatriate American to orchestrate this very English festival of class, fear, sex and shame with its menacing screenplay by Harold Pinter. Dirk Bogarde stars as the sinister manservant who gradually gains psychological control over his weak-willed master played by James Fox. The film was first considered unreleasably upsetting and weird, and notoriously gathered dust for a year on the shelf while Bogarde was humiliatingly forced to make another of the cheesy Doctor comedies he was trying to put behind him – Doctor in Distress – to pay off a tax bill.
Bogarde plays Barrett, a professional manservant whose manner is sometimes self-effacingly blank, sometimes ingratiating, camp and cunning. He is hired as a live-in valet by Tony (Fox...
Joseph Losey’s monochrome psycho-horror satire from 1963 is now re-released; it took an expatriate American to orchestrate this very English festival of class, fear, sex and shame with its menacing screenplay by Harold Pinter. Dirk Bogarde stars as the sinister manservant who gradually gains psychological control over his weak-willed master played by James Fox. The film was first considered unreleasably upsetting and weird, and notoriously gathered dust for a year on the shelf while Bogarde was humiliatingly forced to make another of the cheesy Doctor comedies he was trying to put behind him – Doctor in Distress – to pay off a tax bill.
Bogarde plays Barrett, a professional manservant whose manner is sometimes self-effacingly blank, sometimes ingratiating, camp and cunning. He is hired as a live-in valet by Tony (Fox...
- 9/10/2021
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
With the Pinter-penned 1963 classic The Servant back in cinemas, there’s a chance to reflect on the playwright’s less-acknowledged acting performances
Like an unhurried but dependable butler, The Servant is here again. It was only nine years ago that Joseph Losey’s crackling psychological drama, about the shifting power games between a toff (James Fox) and his manservant (Dirk Bogarde), was last doing the rounds in cinemas. But this is not a film that ever gets old.
Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips...
Like an unhurried but dependable butler, The Servant is here again. It was only nine years ago that Joseph Losey’s crackling psychological drama, about the shifting power games between a toff (James Fox) and his manservant (Dirk Bogarde), was last doing the rounds in cinemas. But this is not a film that ever gets old.
Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips...
- 9/6/2021
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
To mark the release of Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein on 13th September and The Servant on 20th September, we’ve been given 2 bundles of each film to give away on Blu-ray.
Mr. Klein
This brand-new restoration of the César Award-winning political thriller directed by Joseph Losey is starring Alain Delon in a career defining role with a special appearance from Jeanne Moreau. Mr. Klein, with its Kafkaesque focus on the themes of identity and obsession, has become a classic of the doppelgänger paranoia genre and is one of Losey’s darkest films.
Paris, January 1942 – art dealer Robert Klein (Alain Delon) is making a killing. For this loyal Frenchman the Nazi occupation is a unique business opportunity. He stands to profit from the Jewish people’s misfortune, as they sell their possessions in a hurry to leave the country. But when a Jewish newspaper turns up on Klein’s doorstep,...
Mr. Klein
This brand-new restoration of the César Award-winning political thriller directed by Joseph Losey is starring Alain Delon in a career defining role with a special appearance from Jeanne Moreau. Mr. Klein, with its Kafkaesque focus on the themes of identity and obsession, has become a classic of the doppelgänger paranoia genre and is one of Losey’s darkest films.
Paris, January 1942 – art dealer Robert Klein (Alain Delon) is making a killing. For this loyal Frenchman the Nazi occupation is a unique business opportunity. He stands to profit from the Jewish people’s misfortune, as they sell their possessions in a hurry to leave the country. But when a Jewish newspaper turns up on Klein’s doorstep,...
- 9/6/2021
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Dirk Bogarde’s magnificent performance as a man hiding his sexuality is the strongest note in a difficult, and groundbreaking, film that challenged censors
Twenty seven minutes into Victim, after some circuitous beating around the bush, the word is dropped into the dialogue – an unprecedented bombshell on screen at the time, and if it no longer shocks today, you can still sense the film bracing for impact. It’s not a slur, or a profanity, but it was enough to make audiences wince and censors bristle: in 1961, the simple word “homosexual” was more dangerous than an idle swear. Its blunt appearance in Victim ensured the British film initially fell foul of US censors. The British Board of Film Censors let it squeak by with an X rating, though objected to a different scrap of innocuous dialogue, when one man says of another, “I wanted him.” Sixty years ago, the love...
Twenty seven minutes into Victim, after some circuitous beating around the bush, the word is dropped into the dialogue – an unprecedented bombshell on screen at the time, and if it no longer shocks today, you can still sense the film bracing for impact. It’s not a slur, or a profanity, but it was enough to make audiences wince and censors bristle: in 1961, the simple word “homosexual” was more dangerous than an idle swear. Its blunt appearance in Victim ensured the British film initially fell foul of US censors. The British Board of Film Censors let it squeak by with an X rating, though objected to a different scrap of innocuous dialogue, when one man says of another, “I wanted him.” Sixty years ago, the love...
- 8/31/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- The Guardian - Film News
Throughout history, the world of filmmaking has chomped up childhoods in its sharpened teeth and spat them into an uncertain, damaged adulthood.
Stories of damaged and destroyed lives are commonplace: Judy Garland was fed an assortment of pills that stunted her growth and affected her mental health; Drew Barrymore was addicted to drugs and alcohol before she was a teenager; Corey Feldman was sexually abused and assaulted.
These young and tiny little lives are fed through a machine with no protection. With the popularity ofTikTok and Youtube, these child celebrities are on the rise with barely any safety net.
So it feels very pertinent that Kristina Lindströmand Kristian Petri’s documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is released now. The movie revolves around Björn Andresen who starred in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice and the title of this documentary relates to Visconti’s viewpoint on the star...
Stories of damaged and destroyed lives are commonplace: Judy Garland was fed an assortment of pills that stunted her growth and affected her mental health; Drew Barrymore was addicted to drugs and alcohol before she was a teenager; Corey Feldman was sexually abused and assaulted.
These young and tiny little lives are fed through a machine with no protection. With the popularity ofTikTok and Youtube, these child celebrities are on the rise with barely any safety net.
So it feels very pertinent that Kristina Lindströmand Kristian Petri’s documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is released now. The movie revolves around Björn Andresen who starred in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice and the title of this documentary relates to Visconti’s viewpoint on the star...
- 8/4/2021
- by Sarah Cook
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
It’s the granddaddy of British cop dramas of the modern era. The most popular English picture of 1950 introduced PC George Dixon, a warm-hearted constable who would become a staple on BBC TV for 21 years. T.E.B. Clarke’s screenplay of a murder manhunt is stocked with actors American fans know well — Dirk Bogarde, Bernard Lee — and some we should know better — Jack Warner, Robert Flemyng, Dora Bryan. The show was made by the top craftsmen of Ealing Studios, and its fast pace and Brit sensibility will definitely impress. And remember — the Bobbies on the beat don’t even carry guns.
The Blue Lamp
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1950 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 85 min. / Street Date June 1, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jack Warner, Jimmy Hanley, Dirk Bogarde, Robert Flemyng, Bernard Lee, Peggy Evans, Patric Doonan, Bruce Seton, Meredith Edwards, Dora Bryan, Gladys Henson, Tessie O’Shea, Betty Ann Davies, Jennifer Jayne, Sam Kydd,...
The Blue Lamp
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1950 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 85 min. / Street Date June 1, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jack Warner, Jimmy Hanley, Dirk Bogarde, Robert Flemyng, Bernard Lee, Peggy Evans, Patric Doonan, Bruce Seton, Meredith Edwards, Dora Bryan, Gladys Henson, Tessie O’Shea, Betty Ann Davies, Jennifer Jayne, Sam Kydd,...
- 5/11/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
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