Life With Father (1947) is a delightful, charming, cleverly written and, apparently, underrated gem. In a year in which anti-Semitism was apparently the focal point in Hollywood or at least of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a film about the life of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family in 1883 New York City didn’t really get the recognition it deserved when they were handing out nominations, or Oscars. Even the National Film Registry, which has many times “corrected” such gross oversights by A.M.P.A.S., has neglected to add this Warner Bros. classic to the Library of Congress. Then again, the National Film Preservation Board has only added two of 1947’s features films to the L.O.C. – the Santa Claus yarn Miracle on 34th Street and the venerated film noir Out of the Past – which is the fewest number of movies listed for any year from 1924 (Safety Last is the only listing for 1923) through 1965, from which only The Pawnbroker and The Sound of Music have made the cut thus far.
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If you’re suffering from the summer blockbuster blues, there’s no greater pick-me-up than the New York Asian Film Festival, an invigorating potpourri of the finest in creative Eastern bloodletting. It marks its tenth decadent year with 45 features from nine different countries, unspooling at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from July 1st – 14th. 11 of those films are co-presented with Japan Cuts, the NYAFF’s more studious (if no less ambitious) five-year-old sister festival, held at Japan Society from July 7th – 22nd. Including the 21 other titles in Japan Cuts, there are 66 Asian movies hitting screens in July, most of which will never receive distribution in the United States (although many will be obtainable at Asian DVD retailers).

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Next year marks the 50^th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, but the pop culture machine is already ramping up to review her life and recast her career. Recently, the famous white dress from The Seven Year Itch—a signifier of her star image as Hollywood’s premiere sex symbol—sold for $5.6 million. Next month, a retrospective of her films is playing at BAM, the performing arts center in New York City. Two narrative films featuring Monroe as a character are scheduled for release: My Week with Marilyn (2011), starring Michelle Williams as MM, focuses on the tumultuous production of The Prince and the Showgirl in which an unsympathetic Laurence Olivier attempted to direct a neurotic Monroe; Blonde (in development for 2012), with Naomi Watts as MM, is another adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s imaginary Monroe memoir.

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One of the more ambitious and offbeat Westerns of the early sixties, THE LAST SUNSET (1961) is an odd duck that has its admirers and detractors with several participants of the film – director Robert Aldrich, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and star Kirk Douglas – the most vocal about its flaws and unrealized potential. But for a frontier tale that attempts to emulate a Greek tragedy on the range, there is an abundance of plot twists and varying acting styles – too many in fact – to keep you riveted to the sight of this often visually stunning boxoffice strikeout. Themes of revenge, incest, and cowardice infused with an overarching cod psychology are baked in a heavy casserole that includes dust storms, a cattle stampede, quicksand, trigger-happy rustlers, embittered ex-Confederates in the post-Civil War years, marauding Indians and a natural phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s fire. Even Leonard Maltin in his capsule movie review for his popular guide calls it “Strange on the Range.”     READ MORE

Like Popeye, Neighbors is a film I love but which no one else I know can even stand.

I hadn’t seen it in years when it finally resurfaced on some obscure cable outlet recently and I delightedly made my family gather around to make it our evening’s entertainment. We don’t watch movies together as a family–this was a big deal. And hoo boy did theyhate it. It’ll take a while for me to live that down. So, as I began to rally my arguments in my head about why I like it so much, I figured I might as well make that thought process public.

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Just in over the transom is the latest issue of Steve Puchalski’s essential, incomparable, irreverent, inflammatory, indomitable Shock Cinema, whose motto is “Serving the Film Fanatic since 1990.” Can that be right — 21 years? I caught up with the mag in the mid-90s, when it was (as I remember, correct me if I’m wrong) an old school Xeroxed ‘zine stapled together on monochrome paper. I think the first issue I ever bought was green. Back then, pre-Internet, you had to actually know people to talk about the movies and music you loved. They had to be neighbors or schoolmates or coworkers and if there was no one around for you to talk to you did without. ‘Zines and proper magazines helped get you through those lonely hours, both by discussing the stuff you had seen (“Someone else has seen this! I’m not crazy!”) and by making you hip to lots of other stuff you’d only ever read about and lots more stuff you had no idea existed. Although I grew up during the heyday of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein, I really started becoming the person I am now back when the racks of the better New York City news stands held new copies of Psychotronic Video, Monsterscene, Ecco, Headpress, Scarlet Street, Necronomicon, Filmfax, Video Watchdog and Shock Cinema. An interest in cult movies, in horror, sci-fi, crime, fantasy, westerns, war films, biker flicks and all manner of ignoble cinema that had lain dormant in my 20s through the dissolution of my first marriage was resparked in 1994 or so when I discovered these magazines and joined their world of freaks and geeks. By 1994 I was a regular letter-writer to most of these publications. By 1996 I was contributing small pieces to Monsterscene, the first magazine in which any of my genre writing was published. In 1997 I had a big article in Video Watchdog and by 1999 I was a member of “The Kennel” at VW. In very quick succession, I became a moderator at the Mobius Home Video Forum, a contributor to books published in and outside of the United States and a very busy writer of supplemental material for such DVD companies as Anchor Bay Entertainment, NoShame Films, Synapse Films, Severin Films and Dark Sky Films. In 2006, I hooked up with a little Atlanta, GA-based outfit called Turner Classic Movies and… well, here we are. READ MORE

Last Thursday the Atlanta film community lost one of their most gifted and committed champions in bringing diverse and multicultural cinema to the city….and I lost a dear friend.       READ MORE

I watched this Academy Award winning Best Picture again for the first time in decades the other day and, while it’s an entertaining film that features the second & last classic pairing of acting heavyweights Paul Newman and Robert Redford, it was somewhat difficult to watch knowing the ending. There are a lot of movies that lose their “sting” after you know the outcome.

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The evil geniuses over at Hong Kong’s Milkyway Image productions (above, looking evil) have begun their takeover of the Mainland.   Johnnie To (seated) and his long time co-director and screenwriter Wai Ka-fai (flashing the horns) have had their last decade of gangster sagas (Election, Triad Election, Exiled, et. al.) banned or censored in China. So in an effort to expand their audience, they are making two Chinese co-productions, both romantic dramas, back-to-back. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was released in March of this year (and is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray), and Romancing in Thin Air recently wrapped production in Yunan province, and should open early in 2012.

Regarding Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, Johnnie To told the South China Morning Post that, “we believe in our ability to bring our own style of filmmaking to audiences up there.” But then went on to hedge that, ”It’s not exactly the kind of film that could best bring our skills to play – but if we were to do something else, like a police thriller, we would have to attend to a lot of potential problems with the censors.” A director, like any artist, is also a full-time hustler, and has to follow the money in order to get their work made. With Hong Kong’s film industry in an across the board decline and the Mainland still flush with cash, Milkway Image is making artistic concessions to keep afloat. The strange thing about To’s comment is that they’ve made superb romantic comedies before, including the smash hit Needing You in 2001 and the wonderful cult item My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (’02). Their skills certainly play well in that genre, although it’s clearly not where his creative interests lie right now. In the downtime between the Chinese super-productions, he shot a low-budget HK thriller starring Lau Ching-wan, Life Without Principle, whose release date is unknown.

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