Though his personal tragedies and demons have sometimes overshadowed his work, there’s no denying the impact Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski has had on cinema.
Born in 1933 in Paris and raised in Poland, Polanski’s childhood was marked by tragedy when he was separated from his parents during the Holocaust. As a child, he escaped the Krakow ghetto after his mother was killed in an Auschwitz gas chamber. When the war ended, he was reunited with his father and returned home.
He turned to filmmaking as a student, making his directorial debut with the international hit “Knife in the Water” (1962), which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. His followup, the psychological thriller “Repulsion” (1965), was an even bigger hit, and he was soon drafted by Hollywood to direct the occult horror film “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), which earned him a Best Adapted Screenplay bid.
It was during this time that he married Sharon Tate,...
Born in 1933 in Paris and raised in Poland, Polanski’s childhood was marked by tragedy when he was separated from his parents during the Holocaust. As a child, he escaped the Krakow ghetto after his mother was killed in an Auschwitz gas chamber. When the war ended, he was reunited with his father and returned home.
He turned to filmmaking as a student, making his directorial debut with the international hit “Knife in the Water” (1962), which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. His followup, the psychological thriller “Repulsion” (1965), was an even bigger hit, and he was soon drafted by Hollywood to direct the occult horror film “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), which earned him a Best Adapted Screenplay bid.
It was during this time that he married Sharon Tate,...
- 8/12/2023
- by Zach Laws and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
Adonis Creed, like Rocky Balboa before him, is a fighter who faces down his demons and finds his triumph-of-the-human-spirit mojo, all leading up to his inevitable delivery of that knockout punch. The first two “Creed” films, like the six “Rocky” films, were rah-rah crowd-pleasers, with the hero taking on an adversary who represents the forces of darkness. The boxing foes in these movies are a little like comic-book supervillains: Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, Drago’s vengeful son, and so on. They’ve been catchy and, at times, memorable characters, but it’s part of their appeal that they’re two-dimensional raging-bull enemies you would hardly rank as layered human beings.
But “Creed III,” directed with impressive first-time flair by its star, Michael B. Jordan, is infused with a different flavor. Adonis, having settled into retirement in his sleek L.A. mansion, appears to be sitting on top of the world.
But “Creed III,” directed with impressive first-time flair by its star, Michael B. Jordan, is infused with a different flavor. Adonis, having settled into retirement in his sleek L.A. mansion, appears to be sitting on top of the world.
- 2/24/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
This Legends of Tomorrow review contains spoilers.
Legends of Tomorrow Season 5 Episode 6
Structurally, I think it makes a lot of sense that “Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac,” this week’s episode of Legends of Tomorrow, starts with an extended reminder of the Beebo/Mallus fight. That’s probably the moment when this show went completely insane. A show born out of multiple resurrections from the dead that spent an entire season grimly plodding through time that then decided to have a little fun had after a time reached its natural climax: five of its team Voltron-ing together to form a giant stuffed toy to fight off a legendary demon. The natural life cycle of a TV show would see it chasing that moment for the rest of its run. Instead, the team at Legends outsmarted their own expectations, and “Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac” completes the show’s pivot to workplace sitcom beautifully,...
Legends of Tomorrow Season 5 Episode 6
Structurally, I think it makes a lot of sense that “Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac,” this week’s episode of Legends of Tomorrow, starts with an extended reminder of the Beebo/Mallus fight. That’s probably the moment when this show went completely insane. A show born out of multiple resurrections from the dead that spent an entire season grimly plodding through time that then decided to have a little fun had after a time reached its natural climax: five of its team Voltron-ing together to form a giant stuffed toy to fight off a legendary demon. The natural life cycle of a TV show would see it chasing that moment for the rest of its run. Instead, the team at Legends outsmarted their own expectations, and “Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac” completes the show’s pivot to workplace sitcom beautifully,...
- 3/11/2020
- by Mike Cecchini
- Den of Geek
Some movies just don’t get the respect they deserve, which cues pushy reviewers to sing their praises. Forget everything you’ve read and give this Roman Polanski picture a chance — it’s the classiest Halloween treat ever, a lavish blend of Hammer horror, slapstick comedy and wistful romance — plus a vampire horde more balefully scary than a carload of zombies. It’s the beloved Sharon Tate’s best picture, and its vampire king is an original apart from Bela Lugosi and Chris Lee’s Draculas — an aristocratic one-percenter on a satanic mission to put all of humanity in a graveyard of the undead. Warners’ Panavision-Metrocolor restoration is drop-dead beautiful. And they’ve even revived Frank Frazetta’s original ‘jolly chase’ poster art.
The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 107 91 min. / Dance of the Vampires, Your...
The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 107 91 min. / Dance of the Vampires, Your...
- 10/8/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Roman Polanski celebrates his 86th birthday on August 18, 2019. Though his personal tragedies and demons have sometimes overshadowed his work, there’s no denying the impact this Oscar-winning director has had on cinema. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.
Born in 1933 in Paris and raised in Poland, Polanski’s childhood was marked by tragedy when he was separated from his parents during the Holocaust. As a child, he escaped the Krakow ghetto after his mother was killed in an Auschwitz gas chamber. When the war ended, he was reunited with his father and returned home.
He turned to filmmaking as a student, making his directorial debut with the international hit “Knife in the Water” (1962), which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. His followup, the psychological thriller “Repulsion” (1965), was an even bigger hit, and he...
Born in 1933 in Paris and raised in Poland, Polanski’s childhood was marked by tragedy when he was separated from his parents during the Holocaust. As a child, he escaped the Krakow ghetto after his mother was killed in an Auschwitz gas chamber. When the war ended, he was reunited with his father and returned home.
He turned to filmmaking as a student, making his directorial debut with the international hit “Knife in the Water” (1962), which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. His followup, the psychological thriller “Repulsion” (1965), was an even bigger hit, and he...
- 8/18/2019
- by Zach Laws and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
Coming off her work on the Amazon limited series Picnic at Hanging Rock, multi-hyphenate Larysa Kondracki has signed a first-look television deal with Amazon Studios. Under the pact, the producer, director and writer will develop and produce original series for the studio, with the option to serve as director for select series. Kondracki, who was director-showrunner on Picnic at Hanging Rock, will produce the projects for Prime Video via her Smadginelli banner.
“Larysa has a unique, particular vision and we were blown away by her take on Picnic At Hanging Rock. She made the story seem modern, timeless and avant-garde all at the same time,” said Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios. “By signing her to a first look deal, we have a triple threat player who will enthrall our Prime Video audience with whatever she does next.”
Picnic at Hanging Rock, a re-imagining of Joan Lindsay’s classic Australian novel,...
“Larysa has a unique, particular vision and we were blown away by her take on Picnic At Hanging Rock. She made the story seem modern, timeless and avant-garde all at the same time,” said Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios. “By signing her to a first look deal, we have a triple threat player who will enthrall our Prime Video audience with whatever she does next.”
Picnic at Hanging Rock, a re-imagining of Joan Lindsay’s classic Australian novel,...
- 7/26/2018
- by Nellie Andreeva and Denise Petski
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Larysa Kondracki, who co-wrote and directed the Rachel Weisz sex-trafficking drama The Whistleblower and is currently showrunner of Amazon’s just-released limited series Picnic At Hanging Rock, has signed with Wme. The director-writer-producer also helmed the pilot of the six-episode series starring Natalie Dormer as well as the next two episodes.
Hanging Rock, a re-imagining of Joan Lindsay’s Australian novel from distributor FremantleMedia International, chronicles the mysterious disappearances of three schoolgirls and one teacher on Valentine’s Day 1900. The narrative follows the investigation and the event’s far-reaching impact on the students, families and staff of Appleyard College, and on the nearby township.
On the TV side, Kondracki most recently directed the pilot episode of ABC’s The Fix, on which Marcia Clark is co-writer and executive producer and Robin Tunney stars; the network ordered the pilot to series and it’s eyeing a midseason bow. Kondracki is...
Hanging Rock, a re-imagining of Joan Lindsay’s Australian novel from distributor FremantleMedia International, chronicles the mysterious disappearances of three schoolgirls and one teacher on Valentine’s Day 1900. The narrative follows the investigation and the event’s far-reaching impact on the students, families and staff of Appleyard College, and on the nearby township.
On the TV side, Kondracki most recently directed the pilot episode of ABC’s The Fix, on which Marcia Clark is co-writer and executive producer and Robin Tunney stars; the network ordered the pilot to series and it’s eyeing a midseason bow. Kondracki is...
- 6/11/2018
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
Scream: The TV Series writer Brian Sieve’s horror drama Cul-De-Sac has put in development at NBC from director Larysa Kondracki, Blumhouse Television, and Universal Television. Cul-De-Sac as a possible first installment under the new an event series franchise banner called “Blumhouse Presents” reports Deadline. The series will be written and co-executive produced by Sieve, Kondracki […]
The post “Blumhouse Presents” Brian Sieve’s Mbc Horror-Drama Cul-de-sac appeared first on Dread Central.
The post “Blumhouse Presents” Brian Sieve’s Mbc Horror-Drama Cul-de-sac appeared first on Dread Central.
- 6/2/2018
- by Mike Sprague
- DreadCentral.com
Looks like a new brand is moving into the neighborhood. Not content with upending traditional Hollywood business models with his micro-budget, auteur-driven horror films, producer Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions are branching out into television with a new brand called Blumhouse Presents. Now a new report pegs a possible new NBC series called Cul-De-Sac […]
The post NBC’s Horror Series ‘Cul-De-Sac’ Could Be First TV Show Under New ‘Blumhouse Presents’ Brand appeared first on /Film.
The post NBC’s Horror Series ‘Cul-De-Sac’ Could Be First TV Show Under New ‘Blumhouse Presents’ Brand appeared first on /Film.
- 6/1/2018
- by Ben Pearson
- Slash Film
NBC has put in development horror drama Cul-De-Sac from Scream: The TV Series writer Brian Sieve, director Larysa Kondracki (The Fix), Blumhouse Television and Universal Television.
I hear there is a branding idea for an event series franchise under the umbrella “Blumhouse Presents”, with Cul-De-Sac as a possible first installment under the “Blumhouse Presents” banner.
Written and co-executive produced by Sieve, Cul-De-Sac is a serialized drama about three families living in a suburban cul-de-sac who begin to experience terrifying events and come to realize there’s something sinister invading their perfect middle-class dream.
Kondracki executive produces and will direct the potential pilot. Chris Mills and Zack Tann executive produce for Magnet Management.
Sieve was a staff writer on MTV’s Scream: The TV Series and prior to that worked on the network’s Teen Wolf. His film Cadaver is set to be released by Screen Gems later this year. He is repped by Verve,...
I hear there is a branding idea for an event series franchise under the umbrella “Blumhouse Presents”, with Cul-De-Sac as a possible first installment under the “Blumhouse Presents” banner.
Written and co-executive produced by Sieve, Cul-De-Sac is a serialized drama about three families living in a suburban cul-de-sac who begin to experience terrifying events and come to realize there’s something sinister invading their perfect middle-class dream.
Kondracki executive produces and will direct the potential pilot. Chris Mills and Zack Tann executive produce for Magnet Management.
Sieve was a staff writer on MTV’s Scream: The TV Series and prior to that worked on the network’s Teen Wolf. His film Cadaver is set to be released by Screen Gems later this year. He is repped by Verve,...
- 5/31/2018
- by Nellie Andreeva
- Deadline Film + TV
Lionsgate has released the first-look image from Roman Polanski’s thriller-drama “Based on a True Story,” which marks the French-Polish director’s first film in four years. The film, whose original title in French is “D’après une histoire vraie” and stars Eva Green and Emmanuelle Seigner, will show at the Cannes Films Festival, which will run May 17 – 28.
Read More: Roman Polanski Compares Court to Nazis for Rejecting Motion to Avoid Further Jail Time
The film is an adaptation of Delphine de Vigan’s novel of the same name. Polanski wrote the script with writer and “Personal Shopper” director Olivier Assayas. “Based on a True Story” follows a Parisian writer (Seigner) who gets romantically involved with an obsessed admirer (Green) who tries to impose influence on her.
Read More: The Films of Roman Polanski, Ranked Worst to Best
During his embattled five-decade career, Polanski has helmed a long list of acclaimed films,...
Read More: Roman Polanski Compares Court to Nazis for Rejecting Motion to Avoid Further Jail Time
The film is an adaptation of Delphine de Vigan’s novel of the same name. Polanski wrote the script with writer and “Personal Shopper” director Olivier Assayas. “Based on a True Story” follows a Parisian writer (Seigner) who gets romantically involved with an obsessed admirer (Green) who tries to impose influence on her.
Read More: The Films of Roman Polanski, Ranked Worst to Best
During his embattled five-decade career, Polanski has helmed a long list of acclaimed films,...
- 5/3/2017
- by Yoselin Acevedo
- Indiewire
Perhaps motivated by the success of La La Land, Criterion has reissued two impressive Jacques Demy musicals as separate releases. This all-singing, all-dancing homage to candy-colored vintage Hollywood musicals is a captivating Franco-American hybrid that allows free rein to Demy’s marvelously positive romantic philosophy.
The Young Girls of Rochefort
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 717
1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Les Demoiselles de Rochefort / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Danielle Darrieux, George Chakiris, Gene Kelly, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Production Designer: Bernard Evein
Film Editor: Jean Hamon
Original Music: Michel Legrand
Produced by Mag Bodard, Gilbert de Goldschmidt
Written and Directed by Jacques Demy
I was going to squeak by reviewing only Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but the interest in the new La La Land prompted some emails and messages that tell me a revisit of the charming...
The Young Girls of Rochefort
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 717
1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Les Demoiselles de Rochefort / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Danielle Darrieux, George Chakiris, Gene Kelly, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Production Designer: Bernard Evein
Film Editor: Jean Hamon
Original Music: Michel Legrand
Produced by Mag Bodard, Gilbert de Goldschmidt
Written and Directed by Jacques Demy
I was going to squeak by reviewing only Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but the interest in the new La La Land prompted some emails and messages that tell me a revisit of the charming...
- 5/2/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Glinwood worked with Roman Polanski, Jeremy Thomas, Karel Reisz and Terry Jones.
UK industry veteran Terry Glinwood has died aged 82 following complications from surgery for a minor complaint.
Glinwood’s career spanned fifty years as a producer and sales executive during which time he worked closely with some of the European industry’s leading figures.
He entered the business in the 1960s as a production controller working on Roman Polanski films Repulsion and Cul-De-Sac.
In the 1970’s he would work closely with fellow-producers Ned Sherrin and Beryl Vertue and director Bob Kellett on a string of UK comedies including Up Pompeii and The Alf Garnett Saga as well with UK producer John Heyman and Grease and Saturday Night Fever producer Robert Stigwood.
In the same decade Glinwood struck up a fertile collaboration with Rpc boss Jeremy Thomas for whom he would work in a sales and financing capacity on Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor and [link...
UK industry veteran Terry Glinwood has died aged 82 following complications from surgery for a minor complaint.
Glinwood’s career spanned fifty years as a producer and sales executive during which time he worked closely with some of the European industry’s leading figures.
He entered the business in the 1960s as a production controller working on Roman Polanski films Repulsion and Cul-De-Sac.
In the 1970’s he would work closely with fellow-producers Ned Sherrin and Beryl Vertue and director Bob Kellett on a string of UK comedies including Up Pompeii and The Alf Garnett Saga as well with UK producer John Heyman and Grease and Saturday Night Fever producer Robert Stigwood.
In the same decade Glinwood struck up a fertile collaboration with Rpc boss Jeremy Thomas for whom he would work in a sales and financing capacity on Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor and [link...
- 3/9/2017
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Stars: Donald Pleasence, Lionel Stander, Françoise Dorléac, Jack MacGowran, Iain Quarrier | Written by Roman Polanski, Gerard Brach | Directed by Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski’s taste for dark absurdist comedy is in full swing in 1966 comedy-thriller Cul-De-Sac. It’s his second English-language film, sandwiched between Repulsion and Fearless Vampire Killers. Compared with his towering classics (and there are a few) it is slight, but even minor Polanski is a joy to watch.
Especially with a setup like this. We open with Dickey (Lionel Stander, the spit of Ernest Borgnine) and Albie (Jack MacGowran), their car sputtering along the Northumberland coast. Albie is dying from a gunshot wound, so Dickey heads off for help, and finds himself on a coastal island, in a castle owned by George (Donald Pleasence) and his glamorous wife Teresa (Françoise Dorléac).
So begins a strange semi-hostage relationship between the very American gangsters and the gentle married couple.
Roman Polanski’s taste for dark absurdist comedy is in full swing in 1966 comedy-thriller Cul-De-Sac. It’s his second English-language film, sandwiched between Repulsion and Fearless Vampire Killers. Compared with his towering classics (and there are a few) it is slight, but even minor Polanski is a joy to watch.
Especially with a setup like this. We open with Dickey (Lionel Stander, the spit of Ernest Borgnine) and Albie (Jack MacGowran), their car sputtering along the Northumberland coast. Albie is dying from a gunshot wound, so Dickey heads off for help, and finds himself on a coastal island, in a castle owned by George (Donald Pleasence) and his glamorous wife Teresa (Françoise Dorléac).
So begins a strange semi-hostage relationship between the very American gangsters and the gentle married couple.
- 2/24/2017
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
“No one does it to you like Roman Polanski” – a tagline that would take on some rather unfortunate new contexts only a few years after its unveiling, or the rare bit of marketing to properly sell an artist? Answer: both. But we’ll only focus on the second point, our impetus being a new, Cristina Álvarez López– and Adrian Martin-helmed video essay on some of the director’s close-quarter thrillers as a “cinema of invasion.”
Even this well-learned Polanski admirer, one who could fire off more than a few examples of how the assorted films — Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, Frantic, Bitter Moon, and The Ghost Writer — overlap, was impressed and, more importantly, surprised by the connections drawn here. Taking full advantage of both the material at hand and ways of bringing them closer together (disassociated sound, split-screen), Álvarez López and Martin’s...
Even this well-learned Polanski admirer, one who could fire off more than a few examples of how the assorted films — Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, Frantic, Bitter Moon, and The Ghost Writer — overlap, was impressed and, more importantly, surprised by the connections drawn here. Taking full advantage of both the material at hand and ways of bringing them closer together (disassociated sound, split-screen), Álvarez López and Martin’s...
- 10/25/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Though director Roman Polanski’s next film was set to tackle the Dreyfus affair, the 1890s French political scandal involving a Captain of the French Army who was convicted of passing secrets to the Germans, it has so far failed to get off the ground. But now The Film Stage reports that Polanski will adapt Delphine de Vigan’s novel “Based on a True Story,” with a script from writer-director Olivier Assayas. The novel tells the story of a writer who goes through a rough time after the release of their latest book, and their relationship with an admirer who tries to impose influence on the writer.
Read More: Roman Polanski Will Not Be Extradited to U.S.
Polanski is best known for his numerous acclaimed films during his five-decade career. Some of these include “Knife in the Water,” “Repulsion,” “Cul-de-Sac,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Macbeth,” “Chinatown,” and “The Pianist.” His...
Read More: Roman Polanski Will Not Be Extradited to U.S.
Polanski is best known for his numerous acclaimed films during his five-decade career. Some of these include “Knife in the Water,” “Repulsion,” “Cul-de-Sac,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Macbeth,” “Chinatown,” and “The Pianist.” His...
- 7/18/2016
- by Vikram Murthi
- Indiewire
Gene Gutowski, who produced three of Roman Polanski‘s 1960s movies and was a co-producer on the director’s 2002 Oscar winning Holocaust drama, “The Pianist,” has died. He was 90. Gutowski’s son Adam Bardach told the Associated Press that his father died of pneumonia at a hospital in Warsaw, Poland. Gutowski and Polanski collaborated on “Repulsion,” “Cul-de-Sac” and “The Fearless Vampire Killers” in the 1960s. They reunited more than three decades later on “The Pianist.” Also Read: William Schallert, Character Actor and Former SAG President, Dies at 93 The movie was “a personal catharsis” for Gutowski, who wrote that “watching crowds of terrified helpless.
- 5/11/2016
- by Beatrice Verhoeven
- The Wrap
What is this -- a naughty sex odyssey as absurdist art? Or a non-pc slice of sleazy art film exploitation? Either way it's a (minor) Polanski masterpiece of direction, influenced by the Italian setting. Is what turns Polanski on? The entire excercise is a Kafka comedy of erotic discomfort. What? Blu-ray Severin 1972 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 110 min. / Che? / Street Date April 26, 2016 / 29.95 Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Sydne Rome, Hugh Griffith, Guido Alberti, Gianfranco Piacentini, Romollo Valli. Cinematography Marcello Gatti, Giuseppe Ruzzolini Production Design Aurelio Crugnola Film Editor Alastair McIntyre Original Music Claudio Gizzi Written by Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski Produced by Carlo Ponti Directed by Roman Polanski
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
It's a slippery slope, I tell you: art films are the gateway to surrealism, and surrealism connects straight to bondage and kinky costume play, which is a direct conduit either to Comic-Con or being forced to resign from the P.T.A.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
It's a slippery slope, I tell you: art films are the gateway to surrealism, and surrealism connects straight to bondage and kinky costume play, which is a direct conduit either to Comic-Con or being forced to resign from the P.T.A.
- 5/7/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Day for Night
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, and Suzanne Schiffman
Directed by François Truffaut
France, 1973
From Fellini to Fassbinder, Minnelli to Godard, some of international cinema’s greatest directors have turned their camera on their art and, by extension, themselves. But in the annals of great films about filmmaking, few movies have captured the rapturous passion of cinematic creation and the consuming devotion to film as well as François Truffaut’s Day for Night. While there are a number of stories at play in this love letter to the movies, along with several terrific performances throughout, the crux of the film, the real star of the show, is cinema itself.
Prior to Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, Truffaut was arguably the most fervent film loving filmmaker, wearing his affection for the medium on his directorial sleeve and seldom missing an opportunity to sound off in interviews or in...
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, and Suzanne Schiffman
Directed by François Truffaut
France, 1973
From Fellini to Fassbinder, Minnelli to Godard, some of international cinema’s greatest directors have turned their camera on their art and, by extension, themselves. But in the annals of great films about filmmaking, few movies have captured the rapturous passion of cinematic creation and the consuming devotion to film as well as François Truffaut’s Day for Night. While there are a number of stories at play in this love letter to the movies, along with several terrific performances throughout, the crux of the film, the real star of the show, is cinema itself.
Prior to Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, Truffaut was arguably the most fervent film loving filmmaker, wearing his affection for the medium on his directorial sleeve and seldom missing an opportunity to sound off in interviews or in...
- 8/19/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Knife in the Water
Directed by Roman Polanski
Poland, 1962
Certainly a stretch to categorize as horror, Roman Polanski’s debut feature anticipates the creeping dread and tense blocking that will characterize his later, truer films of the genre.
Husband and wife Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) pick up a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) on their way to a sailing outing. The young man joins them on the water and tensions rise among the three as the men jockey for power.
Coming after a number of murky, eerie shorts – including 1957’s grim A Murder – Knife in Water is Lifeboat meets Dead Calm but with Polanski’s signature brooding unease rather than overt, textbook suspense or violence. Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant make up the director’s “Apartment Trilogy,” and though Knife in Water is almost exclusively on open water it may as well mark the beginning of a “Claustrophobia Quadrilogy.
Directed by Roman Polanski
Poland, 1962
Certainly a stretch to categorize as horror, Roman Polanski’s debut feature anticipates the creeping dread and tense blocking that will characterize his later, truer films of the genre.
Husband and wife Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) pick up a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) on their way to a sailing outing. The young man joins them on the water and tensions rise among the three as the men jockey for power.
Coming after a number of murky, eerie shorts – including 1957’s grim A Murder – Knife in Water is Lifeboat meets Dead Calm but with Polanski’s signature brooding unease rather than overt, textbook suspense or violence. Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant make up the director’s “Apartment Trilogy,” and though Knife in Water is almost exclusively on open water it may as well mark the beginning of a “Claustrophobia Quadrilogy.
- 10/14/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Macbeth
Written by Roman Polanski and Kenneth Tynan
Directed by Roman Polanski
UK, 1971
Following the success of Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, and prior to what is arguably still his greatest film, Chinatown (1974), Roman Polanski made three curious filmmaking choices. One was the international coproduction and rarely discussed What? (1972), one was the racing documentary Weekend of a Champion (1972), and the third, which actually came before these two, was Macbeth (1971). It is obviously not that a Shakespearean adaptation in itself is unusual, but rather that it so seemingly diverted from the films that were garnering the young Polanski his worldwide acclaim: taut thrillers like The Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-De-Sac (1966), and Rosemary’s Baby. Yet in Macbeth, there are a number of characteristic Polanski touches — in story and style — harkening back to these previous works and in many ways pointing toward those to come.
Don’t be fooled by the Playboy...
Written by Roman Polanski and Kenneth Tynan
Directed by Roman Polanski
UK, 1971
Following the success of Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, and prior to what is arguably still his greatest film, Chinatown (1974), Roman Polanski made three curious filmmaking choices. One was the international coproduction and rarely discussed What? (1972), one was the racing documentary Weekend of a Champion (1972), and the third, which actually came before these two, was Macbeth (1971). It is obviously not that a Shakespearean adaptation in itself is unusual, but rather that it so seemingly diverted from the films that were garnering the young Polanski his worldwide acclaim: taut thrillers like The Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-De-Sac (1966), and Rosemary’s Baby. Yet in Macbeth, there are a number of characteristic Polanski touches — in story and style — harkening back to these previous works and in many ways pointing toward those to come.
Don’t be fooled by the Playboy...
- 9/30/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Tomorrow, more than a year after its Cannes Competition premiere, Roman Polanski's "Venus in Fur" finally opens in Us theaters. It's the 20th narrative feature of a career that now spans six decades, so a list themed around the Oscar-winning director's work seemed in order. Given that "Venus in Fur" -- Polanski's third film, after "Death and the Maiden" and "Carnage," to replicate the scale and pace of an intimate stage production -- is based so explicitly around notions of performance, and the push-pull relationship between actor and director, a selection of his most successful actorly collaborations seemed the obvious way to go. Like so many auteurs celebrated for their own idiosyncratic style, Polanski's facility with actors isn't discussed as frequently as his formal abilities and preoccupations, yet he's always had the knack for drawing surprising work out of established stars and newcomers alike -- often casting actors intriguingly out of their element,...
- 6/19/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
Tess
Written by Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski, and John Brownjohn
Directed by Roman Polanski
France/UK, 1979
Roman Polanski revealed an exceptional eye for gripping visual design in his earliest films. In those works, like Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac, Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and, somewhat later, The Tenant, most of this pictorial construction was derivative of themes, and subsequent depictions of, confinement, claustrophobic paranoia, and severely taut antagonism. In terms of visual and narrative scope, Chinatown opened things up somewhat, but it was with Tess, his 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” that Polanski significantly broadened his canvas to encompass the sweeping tale of the Victorian era loves and conflicts of this eponymous peasant girl.
Polanski speaks to this distinction during an interview in the newly released Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD of Tess. In discussing the film for the French TV program Cine regards, the director...
Written by Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski, and John Brownjohn
Directed by Roman Polanski
France/UK, 1979
Roman Polanski revealed an exceptional eye for gripping visual design in his earliest films. In those works, like Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac, Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and, somewhat later, The Tenant, most of this pictorial construction was derivative of themes, and subsequent depictions of, confinement, claustrophobic paranoia, and severely taut antagonism. In terms of visual and narrative scope, Chinatown opened things up somewhat, but it was with Tess, his 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” that Polanski significantly broadened his canvas to encompass the sweeping tale of the Victorian era loves and conflicts of this eponymous peasant girl.
Polanski speaks to this distinction during an interview in the newly released Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD of Tess. In discussing the film for the French TV program Cine regards, the director...
- 2/28/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Although Hammer Films will always be associated with British horror, the studio did have stiff competition. Amicus specialised in the successful horror anthologies and Us counterparts American International Pictures established a permanent UK base in the mid sixties. Other smaller independents took their own bite from the cherry tree of horror with some success, the best known being Tigon Films.
Tigon has received some belated recognition in recent years. Andy Boot’s book on British horror Fragments of Fear devotes a chapter to the company while John Hamilton’s excellent book Beast in the Cellar covers the varied career of Tigon’s charismatic founder Tony Tenser.
Like Hammer’s Sir James Carreras, Tenser was one of the British Film Industry’s great entrepreneurs. Born in London to poor Lithuanian immigrants and a movie fan since childhood, he was an ambitious man with a natural talent for showmanship. Combining shrewd business...
Tigon has received some belated recognition in recent years. Andy Boot’s book on British horror Fragments of Fear devotes a chapter to the company while John Hamilton’s excellent book Beast in the Cellar covers the varied career of Tigon’s charismatic founder Tony Tenser.
Like Hammer’s Sir James Carreras, Tenser was one of the British Film Industry’s great entrepreneurs. Born in London to poor Lithuanian immigrants and a movie fan since childhood, he was an ambitious man with a natural talent for showmanship. Combining shrewd business...
- 2/18/2014
- Shadowlocked
Jacqueline Bisset won a Golden Globe Award for her role in BBC’s ‘Dancing On The Edge!’ But not only did she have to walk incredibly far to the stage, her speech was kind of insane!
Jacqueline Bisset was incredibly stunned to win a Golden Globe — and she made that clear in her speech! The 69-year-old actress took home the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or TV Movie on Jan. 12, beating out names like Sofia Vergara and Hayden Panettiere. But even when the music began to play, she refused to walk off the stage; she actually proceeded to curse and talk about her mother!
Jacqueline Bisset Wins Golden Globe & Gives Bizarre Speech
Jacqueline stars in BBC’s Dancing On The Edge, a drama about a black jazz band in London in the 1930s. She plays Lady Lavinia Cremone, a wealthy recluse.
The actress got her start...
Jacqueline Bisset was incredibly stunned to win a Golden Globe — and she made that clear in her speech! The 69-year-old actress took home the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or TV Movie on Jan. 12, beating out names like Sofia Vergara and Hayden Panettiere. But even when the music began to play, she refused to walk off the stage; she actually proceeded to curse and talk about her mother!
Jacqueline Bisset Wins Golden Globe & Gives Bizarre Speech
Jacqueline stars in BBC’s Dancing On The Edge, a drama about a black jazz band in London in the 1930s. She plays Lady Lavinia Cremone, a wealthy recluse.
The actress got her start...
- 1/13/2014
- by Chloe Melas
- HollywoodLife
Gilbert Taylor, the legendary cinematographer, has passed away at age 99. Although he photographed some of the greatest films of all time, Taylor never received a single Oscar nomination (though he was nominated for two BAFTAs for his work on Polanski's Repulsion and Cul-de-sac). He was among the most revered artists in his trade. Among the classics he worked on: Star Wars, Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day's Night, Dr. Strangelove, Frenzy and The Omen. For more click here...
- 8/28/2013
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Cinematographer on the first Star Wars film who worked with the Boulting Brothers, Hitchcock and Polanski
The British cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, who has died aged 99, was best known for his camerawork on the first Star Wars movie (1977). Though its special effects and set designs somewhat stole his thunder, it was Taylor who set the visual tone of George Lucas's six-part space opera.
"I wanted to give it a unique visual style that would distinguish it from other films in the science-fiction genre," Taylor declared. "I wanted Star Wars to have clarity because I don't think space is out of focus … I thought the look of the film should be absolutely clean … But George [Lucas] saw it differently … For example, he asked to set up one shot on the robots with a 300mm camera lens and the sand and sky of the Tunisian desert just meshed together. I told him it wouldn't work,...
The British cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, who has died aged 99, was best known for his camerawork on the first Star Wars movie (1977). Though its special effects and set designs somewhat stole his thunder, it was Taylor who set the visual tone of George Lucas's six-part space opera.
"I wanted to give it a unique visual style that would distinguish it from other films in the science-fiction genre," Taylor declared. "I wanted Star Wars to have clarity because I don't think space is out of focus … I thought the look of the film should be absolutely clean … But George [Lucas] saw it differently … For example, he asked to set up one shot on the robots with a 300mm camera lens and the sand and sky of the Tunisian desert just meshed together. I told him it wouldn't work,...
- 8/25/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Influential and respected cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, whose career encompassed the likes of Dr. Strangelove, Star Wars and A Hard Day’s Night, has died at the age of 99.Though he might be best remembered by fans for working on George Lucas’ original space fantasy, his career was long and fascinating, and saw him work with many of the world’s most respected directors. Born in Bushey Heath in 1914, he got his break into the film industry in 1929 at London’s Gainsborough Studios, where he began working as a camera assistant. While his career was interrupted by military service during World War II, he still managed to find a creative outlet, filming nighttime raids over Germany for the Royal Air Force.Among the films he worked on either as Camera Assisstant or Cinematographer are such notable titles as Brighton Rock, The Outsider, Ice Cold In Alex, Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, Frenzy and Flash Gordon.
- 8/25/2013
- EmpireOnline
London, Aug 24: Gilbert Taylor, the veteran British cinematographer behind classic films "Star Wars" and "The Omen", is no more. He was 99.
Taylor passed away Friday at his home on the Isle of Wight, reports contactmusic.com.
Born in Hertfordshire in 1914, Taylor started his career in the late 1920s as a camera assistant at Gainsborough Studios in London and shot daring Royal Air Force raids over Germany during World War II following a request from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
His film credits also include "Ice Cold in Alex", Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy" and two movies with Roman Polanski, Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac, which earned him back-to-back BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nominations.
He.
Taylor passed away Friday at his home on the Isle of Wight, reports contactmusic.com.
Born in Hertfordshire in 1914, Taylor started his career in the late 1920s as a camera assistant at Gainsborough Studios in London and shot daring Royal Air Force raids over Germany during World War II following a request from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
His film credits also include "Ice Cold in Alex", Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy" and two movies with Roman Polanski, Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac, which earned him back-to-back BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nominations.
He.
- 8/24/2013
- by Amith Ostwal
- RealBollywood.com
Gilbert Taylor, a veteran cinematographer known for his work on films like "Star Wars," "The Omen" and "Dr. Strangelove," has died on the Isle of Wight in Britain at the age of 99.
Active in the film industry since 1929, Taylor started out as a camera assistant who later began to specialize in cinematography. By the 1960s, he sufficiently in-demand that he was able to turn down work on one of the James Bond films. Taylor's work appeared in the Beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night," Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy," and television shows like "The Avengers."
The cinematographer worked on several films -- including "Repulsion" and "Cul-de-Sac" -- with Roman Polanski, a man he considered to be a close personal friend. For Stanley Kubrick, Taylor was the cinematographer for the classic, "Dr. Strangelove." He later called the lighting on that film's set "sheer magic."
Despite his many credits, Taylor is perhaps best-known...
Active in the film industry since 1929, Taylor started out as a camera assistant who later began to specialize in cinematography. By the 1960s, he sufficiently in-demand that he was able to turn down work on one of the James Bond films. Taylor's work appeared in the Beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night," Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy," and television shows like "The Avengers."
The cinematographer worked on several films -- including "Repulsion" and "Cul-de-Sac" -- with Roman Polanski, a man he considered to be a close personal friend. For Stanley Kubrick, Taylor was the cinematographer for the classic, "Dr. Strangelove." He later called the lighting on that film's set "sheer magic."
Despite his many credits, Taylor is perhaps best-known...
- 8/24/2013
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Pop2it
The lauded British cinematographer who crafted iconic imagery in Star Wars, Dr Strangelove and The Omen, died on Friday [23] with his family by his bedside on the Isle Of Wight. He was 99.
Taylor was born in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, in 1914, and embarked upon a brilliant career in film as a camera assistant at London’s Gainsborough Studios in 1929.
He served six years with the Royal Air Force during World War II and filmed the aftermath of bombing raids on Germany at the behest of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
His film credits included A Hard Day’s Night and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy. According to the BBC his wife Dee, a script supervisor, said he turned down the opportunity to shoot a James Bond film to work with their eventual friend Roman Polanski, with whom he collaborated on Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac.
Taylor swotted up on the Star Wars script while George Lucas was preoccupied with the production...
Taylor was born in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, in 1914, and embarked upon a brilliant career in film as a camera assistant at London’s Gainsborough Studios in 1929.
He served six years with the Royal Air Force during World War II and filmed the aftermath of bombing raids on Germany at the behest of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
His film credits included A Hard Day’s Night and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy. According to the BBC his wife Dee, a script supervisor, said he turned down the opportunity to shoot a James Bond film to work with their eventual friend Roman Polanski, with whom he collaborated on Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac.
Taylor swotted up on the Star Wars script while George Lucas was preoccupied with the production...
- 8/23/2013
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The lauded British cinematographer who crafted iconic imagery in Star Wars, Dr Strangelove and The Omen, died on Friday [23] with his family by his bedside on the Isle Of Wight. He was 99.
Taylor was born in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, in 1914, and embarked upon a brilliant career in film as a camera assistant at London’s Gainsborough Studios in 1929.
He served six years with the Royal Air Force during World War II and filmed the aftermath of bombing raids on Germany at the behest of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
His film credits included A Hard Day’s Night and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy. According to the BBC his wife Dee, a script supervisor, said he turned down the opportunity to shoot a James Bond film to work with their eventual friend Roman Polanski, with whom he collaborated on Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac.
Taylor swotted up on the Star Wars script while George Lucas was preoccupied with the production...
Taylor was born in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, in 1914, and embarked upon a brilliant career in film as a camera assistant at London’s Gainsborough Studios in 1929.
He served six years with the Royal Air Force during World War II and filmed the aftermath of bombing raids on Germany at the behest of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
His film credits included A Hard Day’s Night and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy. According to the BBC his wife Dee, a script supervisor, said he turned down the opportunity to shoot a James Bond film to work with their eventual friend Roman Polanski, with whom he collaborated on Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac.
Taylor swotted up on the Star Wars script while George Lucas was preoccupied with the production...
- 8/23/2013
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Magic Magic
Written and directed by Sebastián Silva
Chile/USA, 2013
It’s become something of a cliché to draw links between any claustrophobic discomfort piece and the work of Roman Polanski. Magic Magic not only has the chamber piece qualities of the man’s apartment films and Carnage, but also the island locale and proximity to paralyzing waters of films like Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac and The Ghost Writer; furthermore, it also shares a blonde protagonist losing her grip on reality à la Repulsion. It’s an easy film to play ‘Spot the Roman’ with, but the comparison is valid and not just superficial checklist-ticking in this case. If, as a whole, it never reaches the same heights of quality as the best of Polanski’s more horror-inclined films, Sebastián Silva’s unnerving and enigmatic thriller has scenes that certainly stand up to worthy association.
Alicia (Juno Temple) arrives...
Written and directed by Sebastián Silva
Chile/USA, 2013
It’s become something of a cliché to draw links between any claustrophobic discomfort piece and the work of Roman Polanski. Magic Magic not only has the chamber piece qualities of the man’s apartment films and Carnage, but also the island locale and proximity to paralyzing waters of films like Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac and The Ghost Writer; furthermore, it also shares a blonde protagonist losing her grip on reality à la Repulsion. It’s an easy film to play ‘Spot the Roman’ with, but the comparison is valid and not just superficial checklist-ticking in this case. If, as a whole, it never reaches the same heights of quality as the best of Polanski’s more horror-inclined films, Sebastián Silva’s unnerving and enigmatic thriller has scenes that certainly stand up to worthy association.
Alicia (Juno Temple) arrives...
- 6/24/2013
- by Josh Slater-Williams
- SoundOnSight
Roman Polanski is as famous for the events of his tumultuous life as he is for his often brilliant, highly influential body of work.
Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish parents who unfortunately returned to Poland in 1937, Polanski survived the Nazi extermination of the inhabitants of Krakow’s Jewish ghetto (although his mother died in Auschwitz). He roamed the countryside struggling to survive for the remainder of the war, at times being sheltered by sympathetic families but also witnessing atrocities that seem likely to have influenced his choice of material and portrayal of violence on screen.
Polanski met actress Sharon Tate while making The Fearless Vampire Killers, and they were married in January 1968. In August 1969, while Polanski was in Europe, the pregnant Tate and four of their friends were murdered at their La residence at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon by the followers of Charles Manson, a crime that has...
Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish parents who unfortunately returned to Poland in 1937, Polanski survived the Nazi extermination of the inhabitants of Krakow’s Jewish ghetto (although his mother died in Auschwitz). He roamed the countryside struggling to survive for the remainder of the war, at times being sheltered by sympathetic families but also witnessing atrocities that seem likely to have influenced his choice of material and portrayal of violence on screen.
Polanski met actress Sharon Tate while making The Fearless Vampire Killers, and they were married in January 1968. In August 1969, while Polanski was in Europe, the pregnant Tate and four of their friends were murdered at their La residence at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon by the followers of Charles Manson, a crime that has...
- 2/6/2013
- by Ian Gilchrist
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
In 1964 Polanski came to Britain to make his first three English-language films, beginning with Repulsion, a brilliant, low-budget psychological horror movie. Ten years later he made the sociopolitical thriller Chinatown, his second and last Hollywood movie before his enforced withdrawal to the continent. Both are masterpieces about puzzled men, troubled women and perverse fathers, and it's good to have them back on the big screen as part of the BFI Southbank's Polanski retrospective.
In Repulsion Catherine Deneuve gives an astonishing, clinically accurate performance as a French beautician staying with her sister in South Kensington, whose descent into homicidal insanity is triggered by loneliness and thwarted sexuality. Made for under £50,000 for an exploitation company, it doesn't look cheap or hurried and took the Silver Bear in Berlin where the following year Polanski's Cul-de-sac won the Golden Bear. The subtle black-and-white photography is by Gilbert Taylor, who had just shot Dr Strangelove and A Hard Day's Night.
In Repulsion Catherine Deneuve gives an astonishing, clinically accurate performance as a French beautician staying with her sister in South Kensington, whose descent into homicidal insanity is triggered by loneliness and thwarted sexuality. Made for under £50,000 for an exploitation company, it doesn't look cheap or hurried and took the Silver Bear in Berlin where the following year Polanski's Cul-de-sac won the Golden Bear. The subtle black-and-white photography is by Gilbert Taylor, who had just shot Dr Strangelove and A Hard Day's Night.
- 1/6/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
A world of cruelty, where men are cold-blooded and women cold-hearted … The BFI begins a Roman Polanski retrospective – with extended runs of Repulsion and Chinatown – that showcases the director's fascinating pathology
Any hopes that the BFI's forthcoming retrospective – its second in less than a decade – will turn attention away from the glum key terms of Roman Polanski's life (the Kraków ghetto, Manson, statutory rape) back to the riches of his work are based on false reasoning and certain to be dashed. To watch Polanski's films is to be reminded of what produced their dazed brutality, those early experiences of the oppression of the weak that stole his innocence and distorted his sense of things. If ever there was a body of work on intimate terms with cruelty and domination, and steeped in a vision of men as cold-blooded and women as cold-hearted, this is it.
When, in Polanski's first film,...
Any hopes that the BFI's forthcoming retrospective – its second in less than a decade – will turn attention away from the glum key terms of Roman Polanski's life (the Kraków ghetto, Manson, statutory rape) back to the riches of his work are based on false reasoning and certain to be dashed. To watch Polanski's films is to be reminded of what produced their dazed brutality, those early experiences of the oppression of the weak that stole his innocence and distorted his sense of things. If ever there was a body of work on intimate terms with cruelty and domination, and steeped in a vision of men as cold-blooded and women as cold-hearted, this is it.
When, in Polanski's first film,...
- 12/29/2012
- by Leo Robson
- The Guardian - Film News
Last week's poll was, somewhat surprisingly, another blow out. Roman Polanski's Chinatown easily topped all of his other films and came away victorious with 44% of the votes. Only Rosemary's Baby and The Pianist put up much of a fight, coming in at #2 and #3 respectively. The Ghost Writer and Repulsion both finished in a deadlock for fourth place, rounding out the top 5. The other remaining options didn't get much love, with his most recent film Carnage pulling up the rear. Do you agree with these results? 1. Chinatown -- 44.8% 2. Rosemary's Baby -- 23.6% 3. The Pianist -- 15.4% 4. The Ghost Writer -- 3.5% 4. Repulsion -- 3.5% 6. The Tenant -- 3.1% 7. Frantic -- 2.3% 8. Cul-de-Sac -- 1.9% 9. Knife in the Water -- 1.2% 10. Carnage -- 0.8%
For More Daily Movie Goodness, Visit Filmjunk.Com!
For More Daily Movie Goodness, Visit Filmjunk.Com!
- 11/7/2012
- by Sean
- FilmJunk
Just in time for Halloween, Criterion has remastered what’s long been culturally considered one of the most notable pieces of horror film making in cinematic history, the eerie classic, Rosemary’s Baby. Standing as not only the first adaptation of someone else’s material for auteur Roman Polanski, this would mark his first foray into Hollywood, and his final product still stands as template of the film industry’s far-reaching allure to achieve a European arthouse aesthetic successfully melded with mainstream pulp.
Still, to approach this classic title, (that’s become so deeply ingrained in our cultural syntax that nearly everyone knows what the titular baby is really synonymous with), as purely a genre exercise modulated simply to invoke fear and unease, would be a mistake. What makes the film transcend showy thrills is how it plunders into our more collectively subconscious fears, giving us a kitchen sink melodrama...
Still, to approach this classic title, (that’s become so deeply ingrained in our cultural syntax that nearly everyone knows what the titular baby is really synonymous with), as purely a genre exercise modulated simply to invoke fear and unease, would be a mistake. What makes the film transcend showy thrills is how it plunders into our more collectively subconscious fears, giving us a kitchen sink melodrama...
- 10/30/2012
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
I saw this movie for the first and only time crossing the Atlantic in 1957, on the Mauritania, on the way to the States. My fellow English Speaking Union scholars and I, still in the grip of Look Back in Anger and seething from the moral and political debacle of Suez, regarded it with mirthful contempt. It was the kind of stilted, patronising British movie about working-class and lower-middle-class life we were in flight from after we'd just embraced Paddy Chayefsky's Marty, The Catered Affair and The Bachelor Party, and been thrilled by Ealing's Alexander Mackendrick making his American debut with Sweet Smell of Success. It's now being revived, or disinterred, as a major harbinger of British kitchen-sink realism, a term coined in the mid-1950s by my future mentor David Sylvester.
The movie turns upon a lower-middle-class clerk (stiff-upper-lip specialist Anthony Quayle) preparing to leave his loving, depressed, slatternly...
The movie turns upon a lower-middle-class clerk (stiff-upper-lip specialist Anthony Quayle) preparing to leave his loving, depressed, slatternly...
- 7/28/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
The possibility of an edition of Roman Polanski's classic thriller, Rosemary's Baby, released by The Criterion Collection has been rumored for ages. The film seemed destined for Criterion (Knife In The Water, Cul-de-sac, and, his best film in my eyes, Repulsion, have hit home video via the mighty C) and due to one of their ever-great "wacky drawings," looks to be made available soon.
Read more on Rosemary’S Baby coming to The Criterion Collection?...
Other articles that you might like:
The Criterion Collection announces their October slate The Criterion Collection adds films from Hitchcock, John Ford to Hulu Plus Blu-ray Review: Vanya On 42Nd Street [The Criterion Collection]
Other articles that you might like: The Criterion Collection announces their October slate The Criterion Collection adds films from Hitchcock, John Ford to Hulu Plus Blu-ray Review: Vanya On 42Nd Street [The Criterion Collection]...
Read more on Rosemary’S Baby coming to The Criterion Collection?...
Other articles that you might like:
The Criterion Collection announces their October slate The Criterion Collection adds films from Hitchcock, John Ford to Hulu Plus Blu-ray Review: Vanya On 42Nd Street [The Criterion Collection]
Other articles that you might like: The Criterion Collection announces their October slate The Criterion Collection adds films from Hitchcock, John Ford to Hulu Plus Blu-ray Review: Vanya On 42Nd Street [The Criterion Collection]...
- 4/18/2012
- by Joshua Brunsting
- GordonandtheWhale
DVD Release Date: April 24, 2012
Price: DVD $24.95
Studio: Hen’s Tooth
Tom Selleck goes black tie in 1984's Lassiter.
Tom Selleck (TV’s Blue Bloods) is a suave, debonair man-about-town…and a notorious thief—in the 1984 action adventure crime film Lassiter.
Whether he’s charming high society’s elite at a black-tie dinner or emptying their safes in the dead of night, Nick Lassiter certainly excels at what he does. On the eve of World War II, Lassiter finds himself in London, where local authorities are well aware of his history as a notorious cat burglar. When word leaks out that a cache of uncut diamonds is to be smuggled through the German embassy, Lassiter is coerced by police and the FBI to perform one last heist on their behalf.
Directed by Roger Young (Kiss the Sky), Lassiter also stars Jane Seymour (TV’s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman), Lauren Hutton (The Joneses...
Price: DVD $24.95
Studio: Hen’s Tooth
Tom Selleck goes black tie in 1984's Lassiter.
Tom Selleck (TV’s Blue Bloods) is a suave, debonair man-about-town…and a notorious thief—in the 1984 action adventure crime film Lassiter.
Whether he’s charming high society’s elite at a black-tie dinner or emptying their safes in the dead of night, Nick Lassiter certainly excels at what he does. On the eve of World War II, Lassiter finds himself in London, where local authorities are well aware of his history as a notorious cat burglar. When word leaks out that a cache of uncut diamonds is to be smuggled through the German embassy, Lassiter is coerced by police and the FBI to perform one last heist on their behalf.
Directed by Roger Young (Kiss the Sky), Lassiter also stars Jane Seymour (TV’s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman), Lauren Hutton (The Joneses...
- 2/10/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Roman Polanski's claustrophobic comedy brilliantly unpicks the veneers of middle-class politeness
In 1996, I wasted an evening (actually an hour in the theatre and a journey into the West End) seeing Art, Yasmina Reza's vapid play about three French friends arguing over the aesthetic merits of a blank canvas one of them has bought. So I didn't bother with her much vaunted God of Carnage when it opened here and around the world three years ago to the masochistic amusement of enthusiastic middle-class audiences, apparently pleased to see themselves and their friends in a corridor of distorting mirrors.
The prospect of seeing yet another exposé of bourgeois hypocrisy reminded me of a 1950s New Yorker cartoon in which a bland, middle-aged hostess is presenting a bearded, long-haired young man in jeans to a tweedy, middle-aged guest, who's saying: "No, madam, I do not want to meet a spokesman for the Beat Generation.
In 1996, I wasted an evening (actually an hour in the theatre and a journey into the West End) seeing Art, Yasmina Reza's vapid play about three French friends arguing over the aesthetic merits of a blank canvas one of them has bought. So I didn't bother with her much vaunted God of Carnage when it opened here and around the world three years ago to the masochistic amusement of enthusiastic middle-class audiences, apparently pleased to see themselves and their friends in a corridor of distorting mirrors.
The prospect of seeing yet another exposé of bourgeois hypocrisy reminded me of a 1950s New Yorker cartoon in which a bland, middle-aged hostess is presenting a bearded, long-haired young man in jeans to a tweedy, middle-aged guest, who's saying: "No, madam, I do not want to meet a spokesman for the Beat Generation.
- 2/5/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
In the hands of Roman Polanski, the one-room chamber cinema of Carnage lives up to its name, says John Patterson. Spoiler alert! It all ends messily
"Mmm … Francis Bacon?" says Kate Winslet to Jodie Foster, leafing through a coffee-table book devoted to the master of the cramped interior and the silent scream, "cruelty and splendour, chaos and balance …" Later she will vomit violently and at considerable length all over this same book but for now, she's offering a neat summary of the virtues of Roman Polanski's toothsomely claustrophobic Carnage, from Yasmina Reza's stage play.
One apartment – the film's entire set – holds two bourgeois New York couples meeting to discuss their sons, one of whom has knocked out the other's front teeth, and to effect some kind of settlement between the boys. Add Polanski to this toxic cocktail of passive-aggressive PC liberalism (Foster) v Darwinian corporate sharkiness (Christoph Waltz...
"Mmm … Francis Bacon?" says Kate Winslet to Jodie Foster, leafing through a coffee-table book devoted to the master of the cramped interior and the silent scream, "cruelty and splendour, chaos and balance …" Later she will vomit violently and at considerable length all over this same book but for now, she's offering a neat summary of the virtues of Roman Polanski's toothsomely claustrophobic Carnage, from Yasmina Reza's stage play.
One apartment – the film's entire set – holds two bourgeois New York couples meeting to discuss their sons, one of whom has knocked out the other's front teeth, and to effect some kind of settlement between the boys. Add Polanski to this toxic cocktail of passive-aggressive PC liberalism (Foster) v Darwinian corporate sharkiness (Christoph Waltz...
- 1/30/2012
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Chicago – Roman Polanski may not seem to be the first choice for a film about culture clashes in New York City but he has notable experience with dramas with only a few characters in a few locations (“Knife in the Water,” “Cul-de-sac,” “Death and the Maiden”). He knows how to build character tension through interaction – the games people play with words. Sadly, “Carnage” doesn’t quite deliver on the same level (or Polanski’s notable best) as the Tony Award-winning stage play but there are still elements that work here. Given the Oscar pedigree of the people who made it, one can’t be blamed for expecting a bit more from it, but there’s definite value here, particularly in a pair of great performances.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
In one of the Yasmina Reza’s greatest mistakes in adapting her own play, we actually see the incident that was only referred to...
Rating: 3.5/5.0
In one of the Yasmina Reza’s greatest mistakes in adapting her own play, we actually see the incident that was only referred to...
- 1/13/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Best Contemporary Titles
Winner: "The Tree of Life"
Runner-up: "Black Swan"
Love it or hate it, Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is visually the most luscious film of the year and Blu-ray transfer recreates this in perfect detail. No digital artifacts or enhancements are done here, there is a bit of grain but that's expected with the photography on offer, while the IMAX 65mm sequences are true visual wonders.
Coming in second is my favourite film of last year, Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller "Black Swan". Here is a challenge of a different sort, a film shot on both 16mm film and off the shelf Dslr video cameras. The result is a deliberately soft and grainy handheld-style image which lends a realistic documentary feel to proceedings and could look terrible if the Blu-ray transfer was handled poorly. Full kudos to Fox for a high quality presentation lacking in...
Winner: "The Tree of Life"
Runner-up: "Black Swan"
Love it or hate it, Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is visually the most luscious film of the year and Blu-ray transfer recreates this in perfect detail. No digital artifacts or enhancements are done here, there is a bit of grain but that's expected with the photography on offer, while the IMAX 65mm sequences are true visual wonders.
Coming in second is my favourite film of last year, Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller "Black Swan". Here is a challenge of a different sort, a film shot on both 16mm film and off the shelf Dslr video cameras. The result is a deliberately soft and grainy handheld-style image which lends a realistic documentary feel to proceedings and could look terrible if the Blu-ray transfer was handled poorly. Full kudos to Fox for a high quality presentation lacking in...
- 1/3/2012
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
This weekend sees the start of a new retrospective at the wonderful Tiff Bell Lightbox in Toronto. In anticipation of Roman Polanski’s upcoming film, Carnage, Tiff has decided to highlight a selection from his filmography. The retrospective is incomplete, missing at least a couple key films in the long career of the established, controversial director, but the offerings on hand are indeed great. The series begins with Knife in the Water on the 17th and continues through the 25th with a screening of The Ghost Writer. In between, there are screenings of Chinatown, Cul-de-sac, Repulsion, The Tenant and Rosemary’s Baby.
Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby are quite popular even in the mainstream, though the chance to see them on the big screen is not something to pass up. Even better, though, is the chance for the uninitiated to check out Polanski’s earlier work.
Here are a couple...
Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby are quite popular even in the mainstream, though the chance to see them on the big screen is not something to pass up. Even better, though, is the chance for the uninitiated to check out Polanski’s earlier work.
Here are a couple...
- 12/16/2011
- by Corey Atad
- SoundOnSight
Too bad the critical symposium in the new, Winter 2012 issue of Cineaste isn't online. Participants evidently include Gianni Amelio, Olivier Assayas, Costa-Gavras, Robert Greenwald, and Sally Potter, "among others," but until we get our hands on the print edition, we'll have to make do with what is online, which, after all, is plenty: Patrick Z McGavin on Dave Kehr's When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade, Richard James Havis on Kyung Hyun Kim's Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era, Andrew Horton on New Zealand Film: An Illustrated History and Henry K Miller on Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema and The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe. And that's just the book reviews.
Besides the interviews with Mona Achache and Charlotte Rampling and festival reports (Locarno, Toronto and Montreal), the 15 reviews include David Sterritt on Kubrick's The Killing (1956), Joseph Luzzi on Raffaello Matarazzo,...
Besides the interviews with Mona Achache and Charlotte Rampling and festival reports (Locarno, Toronto and Montreal), the 15 reviews include David Sterritt on Kubrick's The Killing (1956), Joseph Luzzi on Raffaello Matarazzo,...
- 12/13/2011
- MUBI
Sigh....Polanski in the sixties. Knife in the Water(1962), Repulsion (1965), The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) are all on that list. But so is the not oft remarked on Cul-de-sac (1966). Cul-de-sac trades effectively in Polanski's modern noir Gothic but amongst the elemental chills is a smart, heartbreaking, very funny, satire of failed aristocracy, would be intellectualism and decayed gangster myth. A pair of hoods on the lam descend on a remote and somewhat decrepit beach property castle inhabited by a decidedly eccentric couple. George (Donald Pleasance) is a scholar, his much younger wife, Teresa (Francoise Dorleac), is a flighty woman who may or may not be in love with him. They meet the intrusion into their home with equal parts moral...
- 12/7/2011
- Screen Anarchy
TorontoFilm.Net reports that the Tiff Bell Lightbox run of director Roman Polanski's "Carnage", opens Friday December 30, 2011.
Tiff will also host a retrospective looking back at specific films during Polanski's career, tracing the recurring themes that have shaped his vision.
"Roman Polanski" runs December 17 - December 25, 2011, including special screenings of the features "Knife in the Water", "Cul-de-sac", "Chinatown", "Repulsion", "The Tenant", "Rosemary's Baby", and "The Ghost Writer" :
"...In a career spanning more than fifty years, Roman Polanski has firmly established himself as one of the contemporary masters of cinema with his nerve-wrackingly suspenseful and darkly comic portraits of cruelty, violence, claustrophobia and madness.
"Often confining his characters within suffocatingly cloistered locations—a sailboat on a lonely lake, a crumbling castle, an isolated beach house and a succession of ominous apartment houses—Polanski observes with cynical, diabolical glee as the thin pretenses of civilization are quickly stripped away in the face of human vanities,...
Tiff will also host a retrospective looking back at specific films during Polanski's career, tracing the recurring themes that have shaped his vision.
"Roman Polanski" runs December 17 - December 25, 2011, including special screenings of the features "Knife in the Water", "Cul-de-sac", "Chinatown", "Repulsion", "The Tenant", "Rosemary's Baby", and "The Ghost Writer" :
"...In a career spanning more than fifty years, Roman Polanski has firmly established himself as one of the contemporary masters of cinema with his nerve-wrackingly suspenseful and darkly comic portraits of cruelty, violence, claustrophobia and madness.
"Often confining his characters within suffocatingly cloistered locations—a sailboat on a lonely lake, a crumbling castle, an isolated beach house and a succession of ominous apartment houses—Polanski observes with cynical, diabolical glee as the thin pretenses of civilization are quickly stripped away in the face of human vanities,...
- 12/6/2011
- by Michael Stevens
- SneakPeek
Big announcement from the Zurich Film Festival yesterday: "Director Roman Polanski will attend the upcoming 7th Zurich Film Festival to accept the lifetime achievement award that was intended for him two years ago, to honor his outstanding career achievements as a filmmaker. The World Premiere of a full-length nonfiction film will follow the tribute ceremony. Details regarding the film and the world premiere will not be released before the official screening on Sept 27."
You have to wonder what subject that nonfiction film will be addressing. Meantime, MoMA's Polanski retrospective reels on through September 30 and I've been posting updates on it in the entry for Carnage. Earlier: "Polanski Season," now updated with Criterion's "Three Reasons" for Cul-de-sac (1966).
On view at Microscope Gallery in New York through October 2: Independence Returns, with work by Peggy Ahwesh, Michel Auder, Agnes Bolt, Martha Colburn, Raul Vincent Enriquez, Bradley Eros, James Fotopoulos, Su Friedrich, Andrew Lampert,...
You have to wonder what subject that nonfiction film will be addressing. Meantime, MoMA's Polanski retrospective reels on through September 30 and I've been posting updates on it in the entry for Carnage. Earlier: "Polanski Season," now updated with Criterion's "Three Reasons" for Cul-de-sac (1966).
On view at Microscope Gallery in New York through October 2: Independence Returns, with work by Peggy Ahwesh, Michel Auder, Agnes Bolt, Martha Colburn, Raul Vincent Enriquez, Bradley Eros, James Fotopoulos, Su Friedrich, Andrew Lampert,...
- 9/16/2011
- MUBI
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