Shutter Island’s AncestorsIn the flurry of interviews Martin Scorsese granted running up to the release of Shutter Island, he rattled off a long list of movies he screened for his cast, including Laura, Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Seventh Victim. The first two were studied by DiCaprio and Ruffalo to look good in a rumpled suit (thanks to Dana Andrews and Robert Mitchum), while the last three, of course, were churned out by Val Lewton’s miraculous horror unit at RKO, a remarkable run of terror keyed off of the suggestion of violence rather than the blood and guts themselves. But the main wellspring of Scorsese’s recent box-office champ are two later Lewtons, which he also mentions: Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946) [Spoilers abound below]. I Can See You
“…without a doubt one of the most intriguing and well-crafted low-budget horror films in recent memory.” (Fangoria) “It’s akin to an acid trip, actually. Take a hit right as the movie starts up, and chances are as soon as the acid kicks in, the movie starts twisting at the same time.” (DreadCentral.com) “I Can See You heralds a splendid new filmmaker with one eye on genre mechanics, one eye on avant-garde conceits and a third eye for transcendental weirdness.” (The New York Times) READ MORE Unearthed Japanese Craziness from 1977 – Hausu
Janus Films, the distributor of high-brow and classic arthouse films such as Rashomon, Rules of the Game, and Pierrot le fou, has struck out in an entirely unexpected direction by picking up the rights to a very bizarre and overlooked Japanese horror film by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Originally released over thirty years ago, Hausu (aka: House) is currently making the rounds again, nation-wide, at very select theaters. This movie about a young girl who takes some friends with her to her grandmother’s house out in the country, only to discover it’s haunted and ready to eat some victims. The film is – to use the words of film critic J. Seaver – “batshit crazy from start to finish.” READ MORE “And 5000 Others!”, including Maria Ouspenskaya
Maria Ouspenskaya, whose talent came out of that creative seedbed for some of the finest actors and boldest hams, stands out among them, despite being under five feet tall. Many of her colleagues lent their credibility and indelible gifts to Hollywood, but she may be the most readily identifiable of the bunch. While hightailing it away from the Cossacks, the Whites, the Reds, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the anarchists and the fascists who made life a bit too “interesting” in the first half of the 20th century from Siberia to the shores of Ellis Island, several of these actors found a pretty fair living in Hollywood, among them Akim Tamiroff, Olga Baclanova, Vladimir Sokoloff, Leonid Kinskey and Konstantin Shayne. They may never have felt completely at home in what sometimes seemed the Babylonian splendor of “barbaric” American culture in the studio era. Cut off from their cultural roots and often having lost their families and nearly their lives during the revolutionary times they lived in, these actors often proved their strength of character and professional versatility when asked to play characters of almost every class and ethnicity in American movies. Highlights from the Telluride Film Festival
The Invisible American Genre Directors
The Independent’s Kaleem Aftab expands Thompson’s reasoned analysis into a confusing screed about the lack of “great American directors”, and he ignores genre films as well. Below the fold I offer a list of my favorite contemporary genre operators, a group of under-the-radar auteurs and purveyors of quality pulp. First though, I have to take Aftab to task. Aside from the fact that he lists 20 or so “great” directors in his own piece, he clearly has no idea what an “auteur” is. His definition: “a director whose films had to be watched no matter what they were about or who was in them.” He goes on to say that after the auteur theory hit, “Suddenly, it was the director rather than the producer, the studio or the lead actor who became the star.” Aside from the fact that this is blatantly false (only Hitchcock could be considered a “star”, everyone else the New Wavers or Sarris championed were anonymous genre operators: Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller), it never discusses the films themselves, only their popularity. A Father’s Day tribute: four films that make me think of my ol’ man.
It’s Father’s Day today – so I’d like to thank my dad for all he did to contribute to my warped cinematic sensibilities. He didn’t know it at the time, but some of the films he took me to as a kid had a profound experience on me. Four immediately come to mind. READ MORE They Lost Their Faces
I’ll follow up Jeff’s post on faces with one that says “let’s bandage ‘em up!” (It certainly sounds better to say that than “in your face!” – Especially if the face in question just got melted or has otherwise disappeared.) READ MORE Sympathy For the Devil Since today is Ash Wednesday it dawned on me that few films might be more ripe for some examination today than Alias Nick Beal (1949), an unjustly obscure retelling of the Faust legend from the gifted, if uneven John Farrow. Coming at the end of the war torn forties, a decade when movies often toyed with stories about the relationship between the world, the flesh and the devil, this rarely seen movie fits uneasily among those films. TCM occasionally trots out some of the best on this slippery topic. There’s the brilliant silent Haxan (1922), the engaging The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), the suavely sinister air of Angel on My Shoulder (1946), the rank scent of corruption in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and the dazzling Mephisto (1982) turning up on the schedule from time to time as cautionary tales that entertain as well. No such cherished fate has befallen this mixture of noir and horror, which has never been released on dvd nor has it been broadcast very often in the last quarter century, though fortunately, this year’s Noir City 7 is presenting a freshly prepared 35mm print from Universal for those lucky enough to attend their screenings around the country .
Swedish Vampires
I finally got a chance to see the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in, 2008), directed by Tomas Alfredson and based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Several people told me they thought it was the best film of 2008. High praise that makes me think of my own favorites for the year, films like WALL-E, The Edge of Heaven, Tropic Thunder, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Persepolis, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Wrestler, Gomorrah, and Man on Wire. But after seeing Let the Right One In I have to concur with my friends; this film about a harassed 12-year-old boy who develops a crush on a strange “girl” gets top-shelf honors. READ MORE |
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