“C’mon out, Rocky. You haven’t got a chance!” 70 years of parodies haven’t dimmed the luster of this much-beloved Warners gangster saga that pretty much defined the crime movie as we knew it for a generation. Followed by a sequel, Angels Wash Their Faces, and countless programmers featuring the Dead End Kids as The East Side Kids, The Little Tough Guys and‚ The Bowery Boys– 89 movies for three different studios!
- 3/31/2017
- by TFH Team
- Trailers from Hell
Joop van den Berg's 1929 poster for AtlanticE.A. Dupont achieved early fame for Varieté (1925), a grimly saucy slice of Weimar doom and spiciness, and followed it up with prestigious British productions Moulin Rouge (1928) and Piccadilly (1929), the latter starring Anna May Wong—but just as his career was on the upswing he fell prey to the advent of sound, producing a big-budget version of the Titanic disaster in English and German versions.Atlantic, or Atlantik, became something of a laughing-stock in Britain, owing to Dupont's unfortunate combination of Teutonic tendencies and technical trepidation. The actors were directed to communicate as slowly as possible, perhaps so that Dupont could follow what they were saying. His desire to inflect each syllable with suitable weight and portent robbed the film of any sense of urgency, despite it being set on a ship that starts sinking around twenty minutes in (none of the ninety-minute time-wasting...
- 3/31/2016
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
E.A. Dupont had perhaps the most precipitous career trajectory of any German filmmaker of the silent years, plunging from the pinnacle of his native industry to the stinky depths of The Neanderthal Man (1953) in Hollywood. Supposedly the secret of his lack of success was an incident in 1939 when he was fired for slapping a bit player on the set of a Dead End Kids picture, and he spent a decade working as a talent agent (helped no doubt by his obvious sympathy for performers, ahem). It might be observed that if you're directing a Dead End Kids picture your career has already descended a few notches since your Ufa heyday.
Varieté (1925) was Dupont's breakthrough film, and today it's remembered more in film histories than it is actually seen: there's never been a DVD to my knowledge, and the copies drifting about in cyberspace are patchy and aged off-air recordings with...
Varieté (1925) was Dupont's breakthrough film, and today it's remembered more in film histories than it is actually seen: there's never been a DVD to my knowledge, and the copies drifting about in cyberspace are patchy and aged off-air recordings with...
- 9/19/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Three Takes is a column dedicated to the art of short-form criticism. Each week, three writers—Calum Marsh, Fernando F. Croce, and Joseph Jon Lanthier—offer stylized capsules which engage, in brief, with classic and contemporary films.
Joseph H. Lewis'
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
Correspondence is so often destroyed in Joseph L. Lewis' My Name is Julia Ross—by everything from smugly shredding fingers to curling flame—that the film starts to appear contemptuous toward text. The unlucky scrawlings belong to the title character (Nina Foch), an American expat in London who's kidnapped, dragged to the Cornwall coast, and installed as the faux-loony surrogate wife of a burly nobleman named Hughes (George Macready). (Hughes’ wealth is surpassed only by his barbarism; he reenacts his real spouse’s fate by jabbing a couch pillow, not insignificantly, with a letter opener.) Ever resourceful, the captive Julia scribbles Sos's on scraps...
Joseph H. Lewis'
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
Correspondence is so often destroyed in Joseph L. Lewis' My Name is Julia Ross—by everything from smugly shredding fingers to curling flame—that the film starts to appear contemptuous toward text. The unlucky scrawlings belong to the title character (Nina Foch), an American expat in London who's kidnapped, dragged to the Cornwall coast, and installed as the faux-loony surrogate wife of a burly nobleman named Hughes (George Macready). (Hughes’ wealth is surpassed only by his barbarism; he reenacts his real spouse’s fate by jabbing a couch pillow, not insignificantly, with a letter opener.) Ever resourceful, the captive Julia scribbles Sos's on scraps...
- 4/1/2013
- by Joseph Jon Lanthier
- MUBI
It's been a long time since we've heard anything about Eric Powell and David Fincher's CG animated feature film adaptation of The Goon, but today I bring you some great news! They've launched a KickStarter campaign with Blur Studios to raise the money to make a Story Reel that will hopefully lead to the movie getting major funding.
It's been a couple years since the test trailer and footage was shown at Comic-Con, and it's great to see they are trying everything they can to get the movie made. They have a goal of getting $400,000, and they are on their way to reaching that!
I have no doubt The Goon will make an incredible movie. I've loved everything I've seen from it, and I'm excited to see that there's now a real chance that it will get made thanks to KickStarter! For those of you who want to help...
It's been a couple years since the test trailer and footage was shown at Comic-Con, and it's great to see they are trying everything they can to get the movie made. They have a goal of getting $400,000, and they are on their way to reaching that!
I have no doubt The Goon will make an incredible movie. I've loved everything I've seen from it, and I'm excited to see that there's now a real chance that it will get made thanks to KickStarter! For those of you who want to help...
- 10/12/2012
- by Joey Paur
- GeekTyrant
Successful 1940s film actor whose exotic roles led fan magazines to dub him 'the Turkish Delight'
"Exotic" is the epithet most frequently used to describe the series of Technicolored escapist movies produced by Universal Pictures in the 1940s. These profitable films, often set in a North African or Arabian desert recreated on the studio backlot, featured the Dominican actor Maria Montez; Sabu, the Indian teenage boy; Jon Hall (son of a Swiss actor and a Tahitian princess); and Turhan Bey, who has died aged 90. Bey was often cast as wily, "foreign" villains, or romantic leads in thrillers and Arabian Nights fantasies, for which he was dubbed by fan magazines "the Turkish Delight".
Son of a Turkish diplomat father and a Czech industrialist mother, he was born Turhan Gilbert Selahattin Sahultavy in Vienna, but emigrated to the Us with his mother and grandmother shortly before Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938. In California,...
"Exotic" is the epithet most frequently used to describe the series of Technicolored escapist movies produced by Universal Pictures in the 1940s. These profitable films, often set in a North African or Arabian desert recreated on the studio backlot, featured the Dominican actor Maria Montez; Sabu, the Indian teenage boy; Jon Hall (son of a Swiss actor and a Tahitian princess); and Turhan Bey, who has died aged 90. Bey was often cast as wily, "foreign" villains, or romantic leads in thrillers and Arabian Nights fantasies, for which he was dubbed by fan magazines "the Turkish Delight".
Son of a Turkish diplomat father and a Czech industrialist mother, he was born Turhan Gilbert Selahattin Sahultavy in Vienna, but emigrated to the Us with his mother and grandmother shortly before Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938. In California,...
- 10/10/2012
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
“The secret to Nancy’s success,” the classic story goes, “is that it takes as long to read it as it does to decide not to read it.”
When I heard that gag back in the 1970s, it was attributed to the great artist Wallace Wood. Chillingly, it’s possible it predates Woody’s career by decades. What somehow became synonymous with the bland and the banal started off as the offspring of a cheesecake girlie strip, Fritzi Ritz. It turns out Fritzi had this niece named Nancy who came to live with her. Being a gag strip, I do not believe the details of the demise of the spiky-haired girl’s parents were ever revealed, but it would be uncharitable to assume the spunky, independent girl murdered them in their sleep.
Nancy’s best friend was a Dead End Kids wannabe named Sluggo. Had Nancy shaved off her hair,...
When I heard that gag back in the 1970s, it was attributed to the great artist Wallace Wood. Chillingly, it’s possible it predates Woody’s career by decades. What somehow became synonymous with the bland and the banal started off as the offspring of a cheesecake girlie strip, Fritzi Ritz. It turns out Fritzi had this niece named Nancy who came to live with her. Being a gag strip, I do not believe the details of the demise of the spiky-haired girl’s parents were ever revealed, but it would be uncharitable to assume the spunky, independent girl murdered them in their sleep.
Nancy’s best friend was a Dead End Kids wannabe named Sluggo. Had Nancy shaved off her hair,...
- 5/9/2012
- by Mike Gold
- Comicmix.com
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A second trailer for Arthur featuring a topper donned Russell Brand and cardigan wearing Helen Mirren has arrived. Can the film possibly be as likeable as this footage implies?
Arthur is a remake of the much loved 1981 movie of the same name starring Dudley Moore. When this idea was announced in 2008 it is fair to say most folk dismissed it as another pointless rehash. Yet, judging by this and the recently released first trailer, it could be a lot of silly, if ultimately pointless fun. Brand as Arthur really does look superb, too. Costume designer Juliet Polcsa (Brooklyn’s Finest, 79 episodes of The Sopranos) and director Jason Winer have gone for the Cecil Beaton gentry look, though swapping bowler hat for topper, as with Moore’s classic embodiment,...
A second trailer for Arthur featuring a topper donned Russell Brand and cardigan wearing Helen Mirren has arrived. Can the film possibly be as likeable as this footage implies?
Arthur is a remake of the much loved 1981 movie of the same name starring Dudley Moore. When this idea was announced in 2008 it is fair to say most folk dismissed it as another pointless rehash. Yet, judging by this and the recently released first trailer, it could be a lot of silly, if ultimately pointless fun. Brand as Arthur really does look superb, too. Costume designer Juliet Polcsa (Brooklyn’s Finest, 79 episodes of The Sopranos) and director Jason Winer have gone for the Cecil Beaton gentry look, though swapping bowler hat for topper, as with Moore’s classic embodiment,...
- 3/3/2011
- by Chris Laverty
- Clothes on Film
"C'mon out, Rocky. You haven't got a chance!" 70 years of parodies haven't dimmed the luster of this much-beloved Warners gangster saga that pretty much defined the crime movie as we knew it for a generation. Followed by a sequel, Angels Wash Their Faces, and countless programmers featuring the Dead End Kids as The East Side Kids, The Little Tough Guys and The Bowery Boys-- 89 movies for three different studios!
- 4/27/2010
- Trailers from Hell
#235 (Vol. 2 #7): The Chief And The King
When I was a child I enjoyed all sorts of animated cartoon series I saw on television, perhaps more or less equally. But as an adult, watching these cartoons again, I discovered that some, notably Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes grew in my estimation, while others, notably the Hanna-Barbera television cartoons of the late 50s through the 1960s, dropped considerably. I still find the early Hanna-Barbera characters–Yogi Bear, et al.–appealing, thanks to their visual design, primarily by the late animator Ed Benedict, and especially the great voice acting by Daws Butler and his colleagues. But while I can name numerous Warners cartoons whose direction and writing make them great and classic–What’s Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening, and on and on–are there individual Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons from the 50s and 60s that are anywhere near that league?
That’s why...
When I was a child I enjoyed all sorts of animated cartoon series I saw on television, perhaps more or less equally. But as an adult, watching these cartoons again, I discovered that some, notably Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes grew in my estimation, while others, notably the Hanna-Barbera television cartoons of the late 50s through the 1960s, dropped considerably. I still find the early Hanna-Barbera characters–Yogi Bear, et al.–appealing, thanks to their visual design, primarily by the late animator Ed Benedict, and especially the great voice acting by Daws Butler and his colleagues. But while I can name numerous Warners cartoons whose direction and writing make them great and classic–What’s Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening, and on and on–are there individual Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons from the 50s and 60s that are anywhere near that league?
That’s why...
- 3/4/2010
- by Peter Sanderson
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