The greatest cinephile deal going right now is for Arrow Films’ 8-Disc Box Set of Eric Rohmer films, which includes all six entries in his Comedies & Proverbs series, along with Love in the Afternoon and The Marquise of O.  At Amazon UK (a region 2 disc, you’ll need an all-region player to spin it), it’s priced at 11.93 pounds, which is 17.27 USD. That’s the highest sublimity-per-dollar ratio you’ll find anywhere! Guaranteed.

So with summer approaching, ready to expunge sweat from heretofore unknown pores, I watched Rohmer’s The Green Ray (1986, titled Summer in the U.S.) in my un-air conditioned apartment on a 90 degree day. Delphine (Marie Rivière) is planning a vacation to the Greek isles when her friend backs out two weeks before departure. Scrambling to find an alternate getaway, she gloms on to another friend’s trip to Cherbourg.

This begins a frustrating, lonely journey as Delphine bounces from resort town to resort town, each densely populated sun-dappled spot making her feel more alone than the last. She refuses to mask her pain with play-acting or empty flirtations, holding firm to her ideal of romantic love. Her interest in superstitions and the supernatural is curiously stoked by the fortuitous appearance of green playing cards and a mention of Jules Verne’s novel The Green Ray. She senses a pattern in these shades (the kind of game playing one is used to seeing in Rivette), which leads her to embrace the spirit of the Rimbaud epigram that begins the film: “Let the moment come/When hearts will be one.” (“Song From the Tallest Tower”, translated by Wyatt Mason)

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The fifth session of Chicago’s best-loved midnight movies series began this past Saturday at Facets Multi-Media. Dubbed Night School, the series is intended to be educational as well as entertaining, because each film is introduced in a 20 to 30 minute lecture by a knowledgeable Facets employee who then leads a Q&A after the movie is over. Most cinephiles are more than willing to linger at 2:00am to join others in a lively, intelligent discussion, and the open atmosphere encourages the free flow of different viewpoints and ideas about the film. This summer, the midnight series will last ten weeks, and, of all the sessions of Night School, Session 5 is truly unique. Part of my job here at Facets is to help my colleague Phil Morehart coordinate Night School, and Phil is always thinking of ways to make the series entertaining and different from typical midnight movie programs. For this session, Phil has come up with something that no other midnight movie series has ever done—at least not in Chicago.

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This month on Turner Classic Movies a number of unheralded and lesser known films that deserve some attention are being aired along with a few personal favorites that I never get tired of watching again like GIRL CRAZY (1943) starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The date to mention though is Tuesday, June 8^th, in which all of the previous evening programming – a line-up of detective movies in The Saint series – has been cancelled in order to honor the late Dennis Hopper.   READ MORE

He was the man behind such soft core sleazefests as Girls for Rent (1974), The Naughty Stewardesses (1975) and Cinderella 2000 (1977). He was also the schockmeister responsible for exploitation classics such as Satan’s Sadists (1969), Five Bloody Graves (1970) and the seriously deranged Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). He would be the last person you’d expect to make a child-friendly movie but that’s exactly what he attempted in 1981. CARNIVAL MAGIC, which airs on TCM Underground on Friday, July 22nd at 2:45 am ET, is almost tame enough for a six-year-old but also a terrifically weird and strange experience for older audiences who have seen any of Adamson’s previous movies. He’s marching to the beat of a different drummer here and that drummer just happens to be a talking chimpaneze named Alex.     READ MORE

One of the things Hollywood really knew how to do, apart from making stars and making movies, was sell stuff.  The behind-the-scenes deal-making is worthy of a book of its own but for the purposes of this piddling blog post I’m talking about celebrities who loaned themselves out or whose images were used without their approval as product pitchmen, hawking everything from cigarettes to radial tires to RC Cola to convection ovens.  The magazine ads from this era are as lovely as the movies themselves and I never get tired of looking at them.  They’re so romantic and lush and seductive that they almost have me jones-ing for a Chesterfield. READ MORE

After recently reading and writing about Peter H. Brothers’ book Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda, I was motivated to watch one of Honda’s lesser-known films that I hadn’t had the opportunity to see yet, Dogora (1964). I’m not sure how I managed to overlook this little gem involving a giant jellyfish from space with an appetite for diamonds but I’m glad that I finally caught up with it on DVD. It’s undoubtedly one of the oddest monster movies produced by Toho Studios in the ’60s and it has quickly become one of my favorite Ishiro Honda films.

Dogora or Dagora, the Space Monster stars the Japanese actor Yosuke Natsuki (Yojimbo; 1961, Chushingura: 47 Samurai; 1962, Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster; 1964, etc.) as a detective named Komai who is investigating a rash of strange diamond thefts plaguing Tokyo. He enlists the help of an aging scientist (Nobuo Nakamura), his female assistant (Yoko Fujiyama) and an American G-Man named Mark Jackson (Robert Dunham) but things take a strange turn when it’s discovered that creatures from outer space are responsible for many of the thefts. The monsters apparently feed on carbon-based matter and they soon begin to inhale Tokyo’s coal supply while causing massive destruction throughout the city. Naturally the military fights back but these bizarre events don’t slow down a group of jewel thieves who are desperate to get their hands on some diamonds. Detective Komai is forced to do battle with organized criminals as well as space monsters in this entertaining and unusual movie.

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“Forgive me for being profound, but it’s good to be alive,” mumbles Troy Donahue to his date, Suzanne Pleshette, as Italian singer Emilio Pericoli warbles the reverberating “Al-Di-La,” in Rome Adventure (1962-Delmer Daves).  Well, forgive me for being a goof, but this girl’s fancy, (and questionable taste) finds such fare pretty irresistible as the days are getting longer and Spring melts into Summer. Besides, this movie, filmed in Roma, Firenze, and Lago Maggiore is a cheap, vicarious way of visiting Italy without having to stand in line at the airport or mispronouncing this beautiful language myself.  The fact that it also features two actresses I’ve always loved–Suzanne Pleshette and Constance Ford–was icing on this Italian ciambella.

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Fifty episodes of THE RIFLEMAN (1958 – 1963) are available for viewing on Hulu, and it’s a phenomenally rich show for auteurists (and everyone else). Sam Peckinpah was the lead writer (and directed two episodes), while Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy) directed a large chunk of the rest. It’s a dynamically shot program, with agile use of push-ins and close-ups, and a strong use of depth-of-field, all swiftly illustrating Peckinpah’s surprisingly violent universe. And then there are the actors, which along with Chuck Connors’ granite-faced realist includes R.G. Armstrong, Warren Oates, and a baby-faced Dennis Hopper in the pilot episode, “The Sharpshooter.”

I learned of Hopper’s passing soon after viewing his tender, soft-spoken performance as the titular marksman Vernon Tippert, and it’s as fine a tribute to his talents as any (for a complete overview, check out Matt Zoller Seitz’s great video montage up at Moving Image Source).  Hopper was only 22, but he was already a television veteran, having done guest spots on “Cheyenne” and “Zane Grey Theater” (along with theatrical bit parts in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant). Tippert is a sad-eyed youth, driven from town to town to hustle shooting contests by his grizzled, greed-addled uncle Wes. The Rifleman, Lucas McCain (Connors), and his son Mark (Johnny Crawford), arrive in the town of North Fork after the (never explained) death of his wife. Lucas is there to compete in a Turkey Shoot in order to raise money to buy a ranch, and Vernon is there to win money for his uncle and the town’s mob boss (Leif Erickson) who is rigging the contest to win his bets. McCain tanks the event to avoid the violence aimed at Mark, but he runs the gang out of town with his rapid-fire rifle by the end.

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