‘A deeply twisted shocker… You will never, ever, ever find a psychotic she-monster more blood-chilling than Susan Tyrrell’
Coming Soon
‘An excellent shocker… queasy and wildly ahead of its time… Susan Tyrrell delivers a character unlike any other in horror history’
Mondo Digital
‘Tyrrell steals the show… the sight of her… clutching a machete and chasing a poor unfortunate through a stormy night is once seen, never forgotten!… I heartedly recommend you seek out’
Hysteria Lives
One of the notorious 1980s video nasties Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker has been lauded as ‘Brilliantly insane’ (Cool Ass Cinema) and a ‘horror gem, well-crafted, ripe for analysis… should not go overlooked (Bloody Disgusting) and now, thanks to Severin Films, you can witness the film like never before. The company announces a brand-new Special Edition Dual 4K Uhd and Blu-ray is set for its UK release on 13th May 2024.
In a surprising change of direction,...
Coming Soon
‘An excellent shocker… queasy and wildly ahead of its time… Susan Tyrrell delivers a character unlike any other in horror history’
Mondo Digital
‘Tyrrell steals the show… the sight of her… clutching a machete and chasing a poor unfortunate through a stormy night is once seen, never forgotten!… I heartedly recommend you seek out’
Hysteria Lives
One of the notorious 1980s video nasties Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker has been lauded as ‘Brilliantly insane’ (Cool Ass Cinema) and a ‘horror gem, well-crafted, ripe for analysis… should not go overlooked (Bloody Disgusting) and now, thanks to Severin Films, you can witness the film like never before. The company announces a brand-new Special Edition Dual 4K Uhd and Blu-ray is set for its UK release on 13th May 2024.
In a surprising change of direction,...
- 4/17/2024
- by Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins
- Horror Asylum
‘An underrated northern artist whose impact could have been greater given the right breaks. Cliff Twemlow’s story should provide encouragement to the current crop of British indie filmmakers. An essential watch’
*****
Starburst
‘Hugely entertaining documentary about a truly unique character… Jake West paints an affectionate portrait of a genuine one-off, whose work you’ll want to dive into once credits roll’
Dexerto
‘A fascinating man… Cliff absolutely deserves a place in the pantheon of low-budget, guerrilla-style filmmakers and hopefully this documentary will introduce him to an entirely new audience’
*****
Set the Tape
Following its successful festival run and ahead of its digital release in June 2024, Severin Films announces a UK theatrical tour of the acclaimed film Mancunian Man the Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow.
Tour dates:
3 March – Nottingham Broadway + Q&a with Jake West & David Gregory
13 March – Birmingham – Mockingbird Cinema + Q&a with Jake West
23 March – Exeter – Exeter Phoenix...
*****
Starburst
‘Hugely entertaining documentary about a truly unique character… Jake West paints an affectionate portrait of a genuine one-off, whose work you’ll want to dive into once credits roll’
Dexerto
‘A fascinating man… Cliff absolutely deserves a place in the pantheon of low-budget, guerrilla-style filmmakers and hopefully this documentary will introduce him to an entirely new audience’
*****
Set the Tape
Following its successful festival run and ahead of its digital release in June 2024, Severin Films announces a UK theatrical tour of the acclaimed film Mancunian Man the Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow.
Tour dates:
3 March – Nottingham Broadway + Q&a with Jake West & David Gregory
13 March – Birmingham – Mockingbird Cinema + Q&a with Jake West
23 March – Exeter – Exeter Phoenix...
- 3/13/2024
- by Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins
- Horror Asylum
Mubi Picks at Posteritati is a series in which we invite our favorite artists to the prestigious movie art gallery in New York City to discuss their favorite movie posters of all time.We met with celebrated cinematographer Sean Price Williams and prolific film critic Nick Pinkerton, now making waves for their first film as a writing-directing team in The Sweet East. As the film plays in theaters nationwide, they stopped by Posteritati to share their selection of the best movie posters of all time, including Raymond Savignac's cartoonish designs for Robert Bresson, Walerian Borowczyk's handwritten erotica, and more.
- 2/26/2024
- MUBI
Austin-based indie directors David and Nathan Zellner have spent more time thinking about Sasquatch than most filmmakers do musing about human beings. In 2011, they brought “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2” to the Sundance Film Festival, a four-minute faux nature documentary in which a hirsute creature can be seen giving birth to an equally furry infant. Thirteen years later, the siblings return with “Sasquatch Sunset,” a one-joke feature that leaves the amateur videographer gimmick behind, committing itself to tracking a year in the lives of a Sasquatch family of four — let’s call them Big Foot, Mama Foot, Tender Foot and Buster (the runt of the litter).
In case you were wondering, the joke is that the film exists at all … because who would finance, much less star in, an 88-minute portrait of these apocryphal brutes? The late-arriving punchline comes with the end credits, when the names Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg appear...
In case you were wondering, the joke is that the film exists at all … because who would finance, much less star in, an 88-minute portrait of these apocryphal brutes? The late-arriving punchline comes with the end credits, when the names Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg appear...
- 1/20/2024
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
For the past decade-and-a-half, cinematographer Sean Price Williams has been a staple of the New York indie-film scene, lensing features for (naming just a handful) the Safdie brothers, Alex Ross Perry, Michael Almereyda, Robert Greene.
The Sweet East finds Williams moving to the director’s chair with a script from film critic Nick Pinkerton. Deliberately provocative and very funny, The Sweet East begins with a Pizzagate sequence that separates high-schooler Lillian from her classmates in D.C. From there she drifts throughout the Northeast, mingling with a cast of outsiders who all take a special, often sexual interest in her, among them a disorganized band of Antifa-esque punks, an over-eager filmmaking duo (Ayo Edebiri and playwright Jeremy O. Harris), and closeted Neo-Nazi academic Lawrence (Simon Rex).
Fans of Pinkerton’s film criticism and Twitter account will be pleased by the wordsmithery of his dialogue, especially Lawrence’s extended monologues on...
The Sweet East finds Williams moving to the director’s chair with a script from film critic Nick Pinkerton. Deliberately provocative and very funny, The Sweet East begins with a Pizzagate sequence that separates high-schooler Lillian from her classmates in D.C. From there she drifts throughout the Northeast, mingling with a cast of outsiders who all take a special, often sexual interest in her, among them a disorganized band of Antifa-esque punks, an over-eager filmmaking duo (Ayo Edebiri and playwright Jeremy O. Harris), and closeted Neo-Nazi academic Lawrence (Simon Rex).
Fans of Pinkerton’s film criticism and Twitter account will be pleased by the wordsmithery of his dialogue, especially Lawrence’s extended monologues on...
- 12/1/2023
- by Caleb Hammond
- The Film Stage
The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Women in Love.“British erotica” has long been considered an oxymoron, and this distinction is not entirely unfounded. While European auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Tinto Brass, Walerian Borowczyk, and Luis Buñuel were treating copulation as a springboard to philosophical ruminations, the British were paying to see Barbara Windsor’s bra popping off during an outdoor aerobics session in Carry On Camping (1969). Is this assessment fair? Well…yes and no. While many films point to a nation of buttoned-up prudes and furtive voyeurs, a deeper inspection reveals a colorful mosaic of sexual mores and shifting social values as film became an established part of life.Part of the challenge of defining British erotica lies with the difficulty of defining erotica itself. There’s enormous variability in the human response, and where some prefer explicit material,...
- 2/21/2023
- MUBI
Though their “’80s Horror” lineup would constitute enough of a Halloween push, the Criterion Channel enter October all guns blazing. The month’s lineup also includes a 19-movie vampire series running from 1931’s Dracula (English and Spanish both) to 2014’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the collection in-between including Herzog’s Nosferatu, Near Dark, and Let the Right One In. Last year’s “Universal Horror” collection returns, a 17-title Ishirō Honda retrospective has been set, and a few genre titles stand alone: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The House of the Devil, and Island of Lost Souls.
Streaming premieres include restorations of Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour and Ed Lachman’s Lou Reed / John Cale concert film Songs for Drella; October’s Criterion editions are Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns, Bill Duke’s Deep Cover, Haxan, and My Own Private Idaho. Meanwhile, Ari Aster has curated an “Adventures...
Streaming premieres include restorations of Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour and Ed Lachman’s Lou Reed / John Cale concert film Songs for Drella; October’s Criterion editions are Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns, Bill Duke’s Deep Cover, Haxan, and My Own Private Idaho. Meanwhile, Ari Aster has curated an “Adventures...
- 9/26/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Kathryn Bigelow’s vampire movie Near Dark – the best vampire movie released in 1987 – has been famously hard to find on streaming over the years, but we’ve learned that it’ll soon be available to stream once again this Halloween season thanks to the Criterion Channel!
Beginning October 1, Criterion’s streaming service will have the “80s Horror Collection” up for grabs, a 30-film collection that includes Near Dark among several other horror classics.
The collection includes films from Dario Argento, Kathryn Bigelow, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, Michael Mann, Ken Russell, Paul Schrader, and more.
The full “80s Horror Collection” lineup includes…
Inferno, Dario Argento, 1980 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, Walerian Borowczyk, 1981 Dead & Buried, Gary Sherman, 1981 The House by the Cemetery, Lucio Fulci, 1981 The Funhouse, Tobe Hooper, 1981 Strange Behavior, Michael Laughlin, 1981 Wolfen, Michael Wadleigh, 1981 Scanners, David Cronenberg, 1981 Road Games, Richard Franklin, 1981 The Fan,...
Beginning October 1, Criterion’s streaming service will have the “80s Horror Collection” up for grabs, a 30-film collection that includes Near Dark among several other horror classics.
The collection includes films from Dario Argento, Kathryn Bigelow, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, Michael Mann, Ken Russell, Paul Schrader, and more.
The full “80s Horror Collection” lineup includes…
Inferno, Dario Argento, 1980 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, Walerian Borowczyk, 1981 Dead & Buried, Gary Sherman, 1981 The House by the Cemetery, Lucio Fulci, 1981 The Funhouse, Tobe Hooper, 1981 Strange Behavior, Michael Laughlin, 1981 Wolfen, Michael Wadleigh, 1981 Scanners, David Cronenberg, 1981 Road Games, Richard Franklin, 1981 The Fan,...
- 9/23/2022
- by John Squires
- bloody-disgusting.com
If you’re a horror fan with a subscription to the Criterion Channel, you’ve got a hell of a month to look forward to. The streaming service will kick off the Halloween season with a collection of thirty of the best ’80s horror movies out there. With movies from Dario Argento, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, and more, there’s something for everyone, from Amy Holden Jones’ sleazy slasher The Slumber Party Massacre to Kathryn Bigelow’s cult classic vampire thriller Near Dark.
Mark your calendars: '80s Horror—our 30-film collection featuring films by Dario Argento, Kathryn Bigelow, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, Michael Mann, Ken Russell, Paul Schrader, and more—is coming to the @criterionchannl on October 1! pic.twitter.com/QIIyFaEO20
— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) September 22, 2022 Related The Best 80s Vampire Movies
This collection of ’80s horror was curated by Clyde Folley and will...
Mark your calendars: '80s Horror—our 30-film collection featuring films by Dario Argento, Kathryn Bigelow, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, Michael Mann, Ken Russell, Paul Schrader, and more—is coming to the @criterionchannl on October 1! pic.twitter.com/QIIyFaEO20
— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) September 22, 2022 Related The Best 80s Vampire Movies
This collection of ’80s horror was curated by Clyde Folley and will...
- 9/23/2022
- by Kevin Fraser
- JoBlo.com
One of my great memories from the, put one way, debatable year of 2020 was Criterion Channel’s “’70s Horror,” a program that did what it said on the tin while offering discoveries aplenty—Texas Chain Saw next to Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Deathdream given equal prominence as The Wicker Man. It is of course a delight to see they’re picking up their own baton with next month’s “’80s Horror,” which again runs a canon-to-obscurity gamut. Scanners, Near Dark, and Prince of Darkness will of course appear, but I’d just as soon direct people to Wolfen, Society, and The Keep—which made my jaw drop just a bit, given how averse Michael Mann seems towards any exhibition of it.
Criterion have released a nifty trailer encapsulating the spooks and scares to come. Find it below, as well as the full list of titles and more on the Criterion Channel.
Criterion have released a nifty trailer encapsulating the spooks and scares to come. Find it below, as well as the full list of titles and more on the Criterion Channel.
- 9/22/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
IndieWire can exclusively announce that New York City’s Film at Lincoln Center (Flc) has promoted Florence Almozini to the role of Senior Director of Programming after a comprehensive, months-long search. Her predecessor, Dennis Lim, was previously elevated to the role of New York Film Festival (NYFF) Artistic Director back in March. Almozini will report to Flc president Lesli Klainberg and begin her new role on September 6, 2022. This year’s NYFF runs September 30 through October 16.
“Florence is an accomplished and highly respected film curator with deep expertise in creating and presenting innovative quality programs,” said Klainberg in a statement shared with IndieWire. “As we seek to develop and engage new audiences and sustain Flc as the premier destination for first run and cinematheque programming in the city, Florence’s experience, commitment to our mission, and vast knowledge of cinema make her an exceptional choice to lead our efforts.”
Per Flc,...
“Florence is an accomplished and highly respected film curator with deep expertise in creating and presenting innovative quality programs,” said Klainberg in a statement shared with IndieWire. “As we seek to develop and engage new audiences and sustain Flc as the premier destination for first run and cinematheque programming in the city, Florence’s experience, commitment to our mission, and vast knowledge of cinema make her an exceptional choice to lead our efforts.”
Per Flc,...
- 7/21/2022
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Her name is Roxy, but the village girls call her Toxic. With peroxide-blond hair and the Lolita-like naiveté of a vintage sexploitation-movie heroine, Roxy wanders through a post-apocalyptic world as unfamiliar to us as it is to her — for we have all stepped into the parallel dimension that is underground filmmaker Bertrand Mandico’s erotic imagination. Welcome to the dirty paradise of “After Blue.”
Humans have poisoned Earth and fled to a new planet, which they’ve dubbed After Blue. Screens and machines have since been banished, making way for a kind of old-world mysticism of sparkling dust, psychedelic lights and occult symbols — like a third eye, superimposed over the pubic triangle of the most enlightened. Operating in the mode of Polish porno-surrealist Walerian Borowczyk, Mandico creates sensual mood trips using only practical effects (this one could be the “Barbarella”-style sci-fi film-within-a-film being produced in Mandico’s 2018 meta-textual short...
Humans have poisoned Earth and fled to a new planet, which they’ve dubbed After Blue. Screens and machines have since been banished, making way for a kind of old-world mysticism of sparkling dust, psychedelic lights and occult symbols — like a third eye, superimposed over the pubic triangle of the most enlightened. Operating in the mode of Polish porno-surrealist Walerian Borowczyk, Mandico creates sensual mood trips using only practical effects (this one could be the “Barbarella”-style sci-fi film-within-a-film being produced in Mandico’s 2018 meta-textual short...
- 6/3/2022
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. It must have been a familiar scene for actor Patrick Magee. Here he was again playing an aging bachelor, surrounded by audio recording paraphernalia, listening to voices out of the past. The first time was on stage at the Royal Court Theater in 1958: a different room, different audio equipment, playing a different aging bachelor. The play was Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, in which the decrepit, solitary Krapp listens to tape recordings of his younger, sometimes comically confident self. Krapp, caustic and disillusioned, has diminished since making his first recordings, growing ever more contemptuous of his youthful enthusiasms. Though the role was played by many great actors, including John Hurt, Michael Gambon, and Harold Pinter, Beckett wrote the part for Magee, or more specifically for “Magee’s distinctively Irish voice,...
- 4/27/2022
- MUBI
Playing with Fire (1975)After becoming an international sensation in 1974 with her for-the-ages erotic turn as the titular Emmanuelle, Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel had the European art world at her feet. Sylvia grew up in Utrecht, the daughter of hoteliers, before shipping off to Catholic boarding school, attending dance school, and finally making her way to Paris. There, she found small parts in movies, eventually winning Miss TV Europe, a title that would land her an audition for Emmanuelle. The film changed Kristel’s life overnight, bringing her both opportunities to bolster her sex-symbol image and break away from it. A new home video collection from Cult Epics—which includes Julia, Playing with Fire, Pastorale 1943, and Mysteries—highlights the delicate balance Kristel found between her sexy persona and art-house aspirations.Julia is the closest Kristel would stay to her Emmanuelle role outside of that franchise, and would itself become a video-store...
- 2/16/2022
- MUBI
French helmer Bertrand Mandico has achieved a cult following for his gender-bending sensorial surrealist visions, with more than 20 short films and two feature films completed to date.
His first feature, “The Wild Boys,” about five wealthy adolescent boys sent to a tropical island, all played by actresses, premiered in Venice. It won the Louis-Delluc 2018 prize for best first film and topped Cahiers du Cinéma’s 2018 list of Top 10 films.
His sophomore feature “After Blue (Dirty Paradise),” is a sci-fi western, again primarily with a female cast, including Mandico’s fetish actress Elina Löwensohn. It had its world premiere at Locarno in 2021, where it won the Fipresci prize, followed by its North American premiere in Toronto’s Midnight Madness sidebar, and U.S. premiere in the Fantastic Fest, where it won Best Film. It won the Special Jury Prize at Sitges.
The helmer is now completing post-production on his third feature,...
His first feature, “The Wild Boys,” about five wealthy adolescent boys sent to a tropical island, all played by actresses, premiered in Venice. It won the Louis-Delluc 2018 prize for best first film and topped Cahiers du Cinéma’s 2018 list of Top 10 films.
His sophomore feature “After Blue (Dirty Paradise),” is a sci-fi western, again primarily with a female cast, including Mandico’s fetish actress Elina Löwensohn. It had its world premiere at Locarno in 2021, where it won the Fipresci prize, followed by its North American premiere in Toronto’s Midnight Madness sidebar, and U.S. premiere in the Fantastic Fest, where it won Best Film. It won the Special Jury Prize at Sitges.
The helmer is now completing post-production on his third feature,...
- 1/13/2022
- by Martin Dale
- Variety Film + TV
Despite the pandemic disruption of the film industry around the world, which impacted everything in film from production to simple moviegoing, the vibrancy of cinema culture throughout the year has felt as strong as ever, and fiercely resilient. In our small but passionate way we also have made a show of force. In 2021 alone, Notebook has published over 400 articles. Here are some highlights from the year—and we encourage you to use the "Explore" menu or dive into our archives to find even more excellent work published this year.ARTICLESTikTok meets silent cinema in Caroline Golum's witty essay. Cinematic technology used not for social celebrity but rather for criminal forensics was the focus of an article by Emerson Goo.The French New Wave's Luc Moullet, a guiding light for Notebook, was the subject of two pieces, one about the extraordinary TV show How to with John Wilson, the other...
- 12/31/2021
- MUBI
The November 12, 1958 edition of The Village Voice featured the first installment of the column “Movie Journal” by Jonas Mekas.
“Movie Journal” would become what the Underground Film Journal would argue was the most significant organizing tool of avant-garde cinema created by Jonas, even more so than the Film-makers’ Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives he helped found. But what was the column like before it gained such notoriety?
Well, we don’t have to guess. The book collection Movie Journal doesn’t start reprinting Jonas’s columns until 1959, but the entire archives of the Voice are online.
As a weekly publication, the Voice only published twelve “Movie Journal” columns in 1958. The Underground Film Journal has read all twelve and extracted what films Jonas reviewed each week; as well as made notes of significant avant-garde film happenings.
Jonas reviewed only a few avant-garde films those first two months, including Maya Deren...
“Movie Journal” would become what the Underground Film Journal would argue was the most significant organizing tool of avant-garde cinema created by Jonas, even more so than the Film-makers’ Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives he helped found. But what was the column like before it gained such notoriety?
Well, we don’t have to guess. The book collection Movie Journal doesn’t start reprinting Jonas’s columns until 1959, but the entire archives of the Voice are online.
As a weekly publication, the Voice only published twelve “Movie Journal” columns in 1958. The Underground Film Journal has read all twelve and extracted what films Jonas reviewed each week; as well as made notes of significant avant-garde film happenings.
Jonas reviewed only a few avant-garde films those first two months, including Maya Deren...
- 11/28/2021
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In 1975, following the international success of his Romy Schneider starrer “That Most Important Thing: Love,” helmer Andrzej Żuławski returned to Poland. He was supposed to deliver the biggest spectacle in its history with science fiction epic “On the Silver Globe.” Based on “The Lunar Trilogy” written by his great-grandfather, Jerzy, it saw a group of astronauts leave Earth, only to crash on another planet. Years later, another astronaut arrives and is welcomed as a god. The project was interrupted in 1977, due to the decision by Deputy Minister of Culture Janusz Wilhelmi.
“To any cinephile, there is nothing more exciting than an unfinished or unmade film,” says director Kuba Mikurda, now exploring its tragic backstory in “Escape to the Silver Globe” (Ucieczka na Srebrny Glob), world premiering at Millennium Docs Against Gravity and produced by Silver Frame’s Daria Maślona and Stanisław Zaborowski.
“Everyone had a theory. Some said it was just too subversive,...
“To any cinephile, there is nothing more exciting than an unfinished or unmade film,” says director Kuba Mikurda, now exploring its tragic backstory in “Escape to the Silver Globe” (Ucieczka na Srebrny Glob), world premiering at Millennium Docs Against Gravity and produced by Silver Frame’s Daria Maślona and Stanisław Zaborowski.
“Everyone had a theory. Some said it was just too subversive,...
- 9/5/2021
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Sonny Chiba in Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003). Sonny Chiba, the prolific and singular actor, martial artist and choreographer, has died at the age of 82.New York Film Festival has unveiled its Currents section, featuring a strong slate that includes Artavazd Peleshian, Ted Fendt, Shengze Zhu, Christopher Harris, Shireen Seno, Matías Piñeiro and more. NYFF will also be screening seven programs dedicated to the centenary of the late film programmer and festival co-founder Amos Vogel. The retrospective includes works by Glauber Rocher, Oskar Fischinger, and Dušan Makavejev. The Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival has announced its lineup. This year's Focus program will showcase the works of Cambodian production company Anti-Archive, Nguyễn Trinh Thí, Rajee Samarasinghe, and Sps Community Media. Organized by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Archival Assembly #1 will take place from...
- 8/25/2021
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Son of the White Mare (1981)Pioneering Hungarian filmmaker Marcell Jankovics has died. Known for his fantastical and folkloric animations, Jankovics' films like Johnny Corncob (1973) and Son of the White Mare (1981) helped place Hungarian animation on the map. Last year, Jankovics discussed his recently re-released Son of the White Mare with Christopher L. Inoa. Amazon has bought MGM for $8.45 billion. Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, has announced plans to reimagine MGM's "treasure trove of [intellectual property]," which includes 12 Angry Men, Basic Instinct, and Raging Bull. Cristian Mungiu will be the Jury President for this year's International Critics' Week at Cannes. The festival's lineup is set to be announced on June 7. Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese has started production on his next film, supported by the International Film Festival Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund.
- 6/2/2021
- MUBI
Films by Walerian Borowczyk are showing on Mubi in many countries in the series The Many Sins of Walerian Borowczyk.Ligia Branice is extremely clothed in the three features she filmed with Walerian Borowczyk. Outfitted hat-to-boot in a pale, monochrome riding costume or a black lace Victorian gown, she is lodged in time on Goto, Island of Love (1968). As the titular character in Blanche (1971), Branice is medievally sheathed in a grey houpeland hood so tightly drawn her framed face appears like a floating animation. The flat blackness of the nun’s habit in Behind Convent Walls (1978) abstracts her body completely. The extreme clothedness of Branice fixes a signature Borowczyk dualism, for each film juxtaposes moments—in flight, in ecstasy, in exception—where she is notably unclothed. I was instantly captivated by Branice’s enigmatic screen quality: a Garbo, ever more matte. The actress’s visage, rendered in narratives of entrapment and seized on camera,...
- 5/26/2021
- MUBI
Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
Cult Epics Indiegogo Campaign For “Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol Written by Jeremy Richey Hardcover Book” + Sylvia Kristel 1970s Collection 4x Blu-ray set.
Los Angeles, CA (April 2021)
For Immediate Press release.
Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol
A trailblazing figure in film and popular culture, Netherlands native Sylvia Kristel became one of the biggest stars in the world as Emmanuelle in 1974. Alongside her most famous role, directed by Just Jaeckin, a little-known fact is that Sylvia Kristel also appeared in over 20 films between 1973 and 1981 featuring exceptional work with some of the greatest directors in film history including Walerian Borowczyk, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Roger Vadim and Claude Chabrol. Now the story of Sylvia’s astonishing career in the '70s is told in Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol, written by Jeremy Richey. Featured are new interviews with Just Jaeckin,...
Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
Cult Epics Indiegogo Campaign For “Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol Written by Jeremy Richey Hardcover Book” + Sylvia Kristel 1970s Collection 4x Blu-ray set.
Los Angeles, CA (April 2021)
For Immediate Press release.
Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol
A trailblazing figure in film and popular culture, Netherlands native Sylvia Kristel became one of the biggest stars in the world as Emmanuelle in 1974. Alongside her most famous role, directed by Just Jaeckin, a little-known fact is that Sylvia Kristel also appeared in over 20 films between 1973 and 1981 featuring exceptional work with some of the greatest directors in film history including Walerian Borowczyk, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Roger Vadim and Claude Chabrol. Now the story of Sylvia’s astonishing career in the '70s is told in Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol, written by Jeremy Richey. Featured are new interviews with Just Jaeckin,...
- 4/16/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.HolidayFrom the establishment of the Studio Małych Form Filowych in 1947 through the years immediately following the collapse of the communist regime in the country in 1989, animation flourished in Poland as an integral part of its film industry. “All of cinema is essentially animation,” said Walerian Borowczyk in 1984, echoing Amos Vogel’s conception of cinema at large. “A roll of film is just a roll of photos; it’s the same thing if you supplant the photos with drawings.” By extension, one might make no distinction between “live-action” and animation, or between what one sees onscreen and its allegorical reflection of life experience.This is especially true for Polish animation. To classify the genre in terms of nationality and not “culturally” or ideologically (the more vague “Soviet” implying animation made under a...
- 3/31/2021
- MUBI
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Udo Kier in drag, outfitted in an electrically engineered faux-candelabra atop his head, lip-syncing to Robyn’s all-time anthem for the lonely “Dancing on My Own.” The German actor has played everyone from Count Dracula in Paul Morrissey’s “Blood of Dracula,” to Jack the Ripper and Dr. Jekyll for Walerian Borowczyk, to Adolf Hitler (at least three times), and has served as the muse for Lars von Trier many times over. But in Todd Stephens’ “Swan Song,” a dark comedy that totters to and fro the campy and the melancholic with wincing laughs and real pain.
The 76-year-old Kier, who was born in Germany near the end of World War II and therefore knows a thing or two, has been primarily typecast into bit character roles throughout his career, most recently as a raging cuckold who gouges the eyes of his...
The 76-year-old Kier, who was born in Germany near the end of World War II and therefore knows a thing or two, has been primarily typecast into bit character roles throughout his career, most recently as a raging cuckold who gouges the eyes of his...
- 3/18/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Do Introverts Dream of Electric Carousels?: Wittock Waxes Fatuous in Debut
A finely wrought tradition of European cinema includes a bounty of infamous depictions of humans engaged in sexual or romantic congress with non-human counterparts. Always courting or breaking taboo, they’re often also girded by an eventually recuperative shower of cultish devotion, and a sterling range of examples would be the slimy alien in Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (1981), the chimpanzee in Nagisa Oshima’s Max, Mon Amour (1986), or the bestial frolicking in the perverse fairytale La Bete from (1975) from Walerian Borowczyk. In her directorial debut, Belgium’s Zoé Wittock conveys the romantic and sexual odyssey of an introverted woman suffering/enlightened by her mechanophilia, a sexual attraction to machines.…...
A finely wrought tradition of European cinema includes a bounty of infamous depictions of humans engaged in sexual or romantic congress with non-human counterparts. Always courting or breaking taboo, they’re often also girded by an eventually recuperative shower of cultish devotion, and a sterling range of examples would be the slimy alien in Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (1981), the chimpanzee in Nagisa Oshima’s Max, Mon Amour (1986), or the bestial frolicking in the perverse fairytale La Bete from (1975) from Walerian Borowczyk. In her directorial debut, Belgium’s Zoé Wittock conveys the romantic and sexual odyssey of an introverted woman suffering/enlightened by her mechanophilia, a sexual attraction to machines.…...
- 2/15/2021
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Up and coming art house genre film label Altered Innocence has announced today that they've acquired all US rights to Kuba Mikurda's documentary, Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk. One of the most innovative and challenging filmmakers of the '70s, Borowczyk's work is fantastically outré and retains the power to shock and engross over four decades later with standout cult favorites like the controversial fairy tale, The Beast, the arty horror of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, erotic horror triptych Immoral Tales, and the numerous unique short animations that brought him to the forefront of the Eastern European art scene at the beginning of his career. Mikurda's documentary looks at Borowczyk through from a number of different angles, but is...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 7/29/2020
- Screen Anarchy
Udo Kier was sad he didn’t get the call from Lars von Trier to play Satan in the gloomy Dane’s 2018 “The House That Jack Built.” “I’ve been to hell many times, you know,” the cult character actor told IndieWire in a recent interview. But he managed to triumph over that disappointment to play yet another deranged freak in “The Painted Bird,” the Czech Republic’s black-and-white, punishing but unforgettable, trudge through Holocaust hell, a drama now vying for the 2020 Best International Feature Academy Award.
In “The Painted Bird,” the German actor with the steely blue eyes plays a jealous husband, who’s taken in a young orphan adrift in the WWII-ravaged Eastern Europe countryside. Kier’s Miller is convinced his wife is sleeping with their sexy young farmhand, so as vengeance, he plucks out the peasant’s eyeballs and feeds them to the family housecats.
Business as usual for Kier,...
In “The Painted Bird,” the German actor with the steely blue eyes plays a jealous husband, who’s taken in a young orphan adrift in the WWII-ravaged Eastern Europe countryside. Kier’s Miller is convinced his wife is sleeping with their sexy young farmhand, so as vengeance, he plucks out the peasant’s eyeballs and feeds them to the family housecats.
Business as usual for Kier,...
- 12/12/2019
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Bertrand Bonello's Zombi Child is having its exclusive online premiere on Mubi in the United Kingdom. It is showing from October 18 - November 17, 2019.Zombi ChildIt’s never unusual for someone to end a conversation and begin dancing in the cinema of Bertrand Bonello. His fealty is to rhythm, to fabric, to swagger, to the perfect song, to what’s cool—and there is nothing cooler than the best Bonello films. He has turned insouciance into a bedrock style; his sense of the aesthetically voluptuous is ironclad and whatever point he’s in the mood to make will have to pass through the aura of manicured diffidence. This has made him a polarizing figure in critical circles. Is he charlatan or genius? Why not both? Investing so much of his gifts as a visual storyteller to reveling in what’s fashionable may give the impression of a shallow mind at work,...
- 10/17/2019
- MUBI
Anne Fontaine’s present-day female-sexual-empowerment fable “White as Snow” is not a Snow White story per se, although it’s fun to think of Isabelle Huppert’s character — an aging health-spa diva who becomes diabolically envious of her stepdaughter — as the wicked queen. This, one might argue, was a campy role the icy French star was born to play, and Huppert sinks her teeth into it, much as her scheming villainess hopes the pale-skinned Claire (Lou de Laâge) might a poisoned apple. But the differences between Fontaine’s stunt and the actual Brothers Grimm fairy tale distractingly outweigh the film’s semi-forced similarities, ultimately leaving audiences to wonder how this coy provocation wound up getting confused with Snow White in the first place.
The answer: Fontaine began with a situation more than a story, wherein a “pure” young woman (so perceived by multiple characters) discovers the nubile effect her beauty has over men.
The answer: Fontaine began with a situation more than a story, wherein a “pure” young woman (so perceived by multiple characters) discovers the nubile effect her beauty has over men.
- 5/14/2019
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
A formidable recuperation for art-house genre enthusiasts, Arrow Video recuperates a triptych of films from the peak period of director Jose Larraz, a master of injecting tawdry perversions into narratives which often dealt with shifting power plays and sex games amongst three people thrown together in various rural sanctuaries. What’s more surprising is how long it’s taken his films to resurface, considering he’s somewhere on a spectrum which would include such lofty cult favorites as Walerian Borowczyk or Fernando Arrabal. In 2016, Mondo Macabro unleashed his most laureled item, 1974’s Symptoms, which competed at the Cannes Film Festival, and starred Angela Pleasance (daughter of Donald) as a woman losing (you guessed it) her sanity while other titillating indiscretions pull at the fray.…...
- 4/2/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Roddick was an author, academic, industry consultant and publisher as well as a journalist.
Tributes from many different sections of the film business have been paid to former Screen International and Moving Pictures editor Nick Roddick, who died on New Year’s Day aged 73.
“I have to say for me he was a classic British rock and roll type of guy,” Berlinale festival director Dieter Kosslick said of Roddick. “He looked a little like Abbey Road… He was very cool and he always had this humour I really liked.”
Kosslick, who first met Roddick in the late 1980s, had one...
Tributes from many different sections of the film business have been paid to former Screen International and Moving Pictures editor Nick Roddick, who died on New Year’s Day aged 73.
“I have to say for me he was a classic British rock and roll type of guy,” Berlinale festival director Dieter Kosslick said of Roddick. “He looked a little like Abbey Road… He was very cool and he always had this humour I really liked.”
Kosslick, who first met Roddick in the late 1980s, had one...
- 1/3/2019
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
1. Eight Hours Don’t Make a DayI don’t know for sure how much my love of this poster is tied up with my love of this film (a seven-hour 1972 German miniseries directed by R.W. Fassbinder that had never before been shown in the U.S.), except that I liked it an awful lot before I watched it (when I wrote about it back in March), and loved it even more after I’d seen it. Impeccably illustrated by British artist Sam Hadley in a wonderful pastiche of '70s advertising art, I’d say that in its unusually upbeat portrayal of a group of actors who we expect to look glum, that it’s the poster we need right now.2. ShopliftersWinner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s slow-burning family drama Shoplifters was released by Magnolia in the U.S.
- 12/7/2018
- MUBI
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal León's The Wolf House (2018), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from October 19 – November 17, 2018 as a Special Discovery.La casa lobo (The Wolf House), a debut feature film from the duo of Chilean filmmakers Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, who previously worked together on shorts, is a decidedly adult stop-motion animation, whose psychological portent is mysterious and dense, while its imaginative use of puppetry and bold animated design creates a world entirely its own, relatively rarely seen in contemporary cinema.The historical background of The Wolf House, which opens with sweeping language, like a fairytale, is vague. But it’s a known fact that South America was the preferred hideout for the Nazis after World War II, and it’s hard not to think of this context at the...
- 10/8/2018
- MUBI
Bertrand Mandico's The Wild Boys (2017), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing September 14 – October 14, 2018 as a Special Discovery.French director Bertrand Mandico shared with us the films he thought about before, during, and after making his feature debut, The Wild Boys:ISLANDSThe Saga of AnatahanMatango: Attack of the Mushroom People: The island and its fauna and flora, the mushroom-men, the sinking. A sublime film.Lord Jim: The tempest sequence in the opening and the cowardice of Lord Jim—an amazing film.A High Wind in Jamaica: For the confusion of the captain played by Antony Quinn, the phlegm of James Coburn and the beauty of his young crew.The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Lewis John Carlino, 1976): For the erotic figure of the Captain (Kris Kristofferson) and its clique of violent boys.Remorques: A romantic and captivating film with sequences...
- 9/13/2018
- MUBI
There is a movie within the movie Knife + Heart and it boasts the slightly euphemistic title of Homocidal (although I prefer the working title: Anal Fury). It is, in fact, being filmed as we watch, along with a number of other similarly lewd movies. Homocidal is the latest production of Far West Films, a fictional queer softcore porn studio that acts as the focus of Knife + Heart, a delightfully icky horror movie seeped in beautiful Giallo homage that is the second feature of Niçoise polymath Yann Gonzalez (who you might know as one half of M83).
Vanessa Paradis plays Anne, the indomitable producer, director, and screenwriter of the aforementioned independent movie studio. She is a filmmaker through and through, and thus it is not unusual for Anne to take events she sees or experiences in real life and use them in her porn movies, regardless of how delicate they may be.
Vanessa Paradis plays Anne, the indomitable producer, director, and screenwriter of the aforementioned independent movie studio. She is a filmmaker through and through, and thus it is not unusual for Anne to take events she sees or experiences in real life and use them in her porn movies, regardless of how delicate they may be.
- 5/19/2018
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Revered in the 1970s he later became better known as a maker of erotic movies.
Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales has boarded world sales for the documentary Love Express: The Disappearance Of Walerian Borowczyk, which explores the career of controversial filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, the cult Polish director whose credits include Blanche and Immoral Tales.
The company is launching the film, which was co-produced by HBO Europe, at the Cannes market.
Revered in the 1970s, Borowczyk was hailed as a director of unparalleled sensitivity, before later becoming better known as a maker of erotic movies including Emmanuelle 5. The...
Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales has boarded world sales for the documentary Love Express: The Disappearance Of Walerian Borowczyk, which explores the career of controversial filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, the cult Polish director whose credits include Blanche and Immoral Tales.
The company is launching the film, which was co-produced by HBO Europe, at the Cannes market.
Revered in the 1970s, Borowczyk was hailed as a director of unparalleled sensitivity, before later becoming better known as a maker of erotic movies including Emmanuelle 5. The...
- 5/10/2018
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
Revered in the 1970s he later became better known as a maker of erotic movies.
Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales has boarded world sales for the documentary Love Express: The Disappearance Of Walerian Borowczyk, which explores the career of controversial filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, the cult Polish director whose credits include Blanche and Immoral Tales.
The company is launching the film, which was co-produced by HBO Europe, at the Cannes market.
Revered in the 1970s, Borowczyk was hailed as a director of unparalleled sensitivity, before later becoming better known as a maker of erotic movies including Emmanuelle 5. The...
Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales has boarded world sales for the documentary Love Express: The Disappearance Of Walerian Borowczyk, which explores the career of controversial filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, the cult Polish director whose credits include Blanche and Immoral Tales.
The company is launching the film, which was co-produced by HBO Europe, at the Cannes market.
Revered in the 1970s, Borowczyk was hailed as a director of unparalleled sensitivity, before later becoming better known as a maker of erotic movies including Emmanuelle 5. The...
- 5/10/2018
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andrzej Żuławski's The Most Important Thing: Love (1975) is showing November 22 - December 22, 2017 in the United States.The DevilKiedy wszedłeś między wrony, musisz krakać jak i one.
(‘When among the crows, caw as they do.’)—Polish sayingAndrzej Żuławski’s That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) is unlike any film he ever made, and was certainly a departure in his visual sensibility relative to the feature films he had made previously in his native Poland: The Third Part of the Night (1971) and The Devil (1972). Narratively and visually, the film is at once an oddity and a turning point in Żuławski’s oeuvre, and in viewing it, it would benefit the viewer to understand the director’s experience with the French cinematic tradition and its effect on his own cinema.Żuławski was born into a well-known family of artists that spanned several generations in Poland,...
(‘When among the crows, caw as they do.’)—Polish sayingAndrzej Żuławski’s That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) is unlike any film he ever made, and was certainly a departure in his visual sensibility relative to the feature films he had made previously in his native Poland: The Third Part of the Night (1971) and The Devil (1972). Narratively and visually, the film is at once an oddity and a turning point in Żuławski’s oeuvre, and in viewing it, it would benefit the viewer to understand the director’s experience with the French cinematic tradition and its effect on his own cinema.Żuławski was born into a well-known family of artists that spanned several generations in Poland,...
- 12/1/2017
- MUBI
Why do James (Jason Clarke) and his visually impaired wife Gina (Blake Lively) live in Bangkok? It’s a question that hangs over “All I See Is You,” begging to be asked. We know that James does insurance work somewhere in the Thai capital, but the way he brings it up in conversation makes it sound like an alibi. Usually film characters take jobs in far-flung destinations towards the end of the story, not before it starts. In truth the answer couldn’t be more obvious; it’s there the whole time, right in front of our faces, visible to everyone but Gina. Or maybe she sees it too, and — like us — simply doesn’t want to accept the fact that her doting husband moved her to a foreign city because of her debilitating blindness, and not in spite of it.
It can be nice to feel needed, but there...
It can be nice to feel needed, but there...
- 10/26/2017
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Mubi's retrospective Bertrand Mandico's Cinema is showing July 26 - October 7, 2017 in many countries around the world.The cinema of French filmmaker and animator Bertrand Mandico is unique in its approach to depicting the human body. For Mandico, the body’s status as a film subject is comparable to and interchangeable with that of any other film subject. That is, ‘animate objects’—such as human characters or animals—occupy the same cinematic roles as ‘inanimate’ ones—such as housewares or artificial structures, collapsing the binary that exists between the two. Mandico’s films time and again blur the line between binaries—animate and inanimate, male and female—and in doing so demonstrate their arbitrary nature as film subjects. Bodies and objects in Mandico’s cinema often appear abstracted and juxtaposed vis-a-vis each other, such as when women portray lamps and men portray statues in Our Lady of Hormones (2014). At first glance,...
- 8/28/2017
- MUBI
Review by Roger Carpenter
Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, long a filmmaker of experimental shorts, became a beloved celebrity of the arthouse circuit with his first two films, Goto Island of Love and Blanche. He began to fall out of favor with that crowd after his next two films were deemed pornographic and in bad taste, those films being Immoral Tales and, perhaps his most notorious film, The Beast. Lensing each of these films in France, where he made his home, The Story of Sin was his triumphant return to his Polish homeland.
The Story of Sin tells the tale of Ewa (Grazyna Dlugolecka), a beautiful yet pious young woman who strives to maintain a life free of sin. Her aging father cannot find work so the family lets rooms to keep afloat. Enter Lukasz (Jerzy Zelnick), a handsome young man separated from his wife and in need of a room.
Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, long a filmmaker of experimental shorts, became a beloved celebrity of the arthouse circuit with his first two films, Goto Island of Love and Blanche. He began to fall out of favor with that crowd after his next two films were deemed pornographic and in bad taste, those films being Immoral Tales and, perhaps his most notorious film, The Beast. Lensing each of these films in France, where he made his home, The Story of Sin was his triumphant return to his Polish homeland.
The Story of Sin tells the tale of Ewa (Grazyna Dlugolecka), a beautiful yet pious young woman who strives to maintain a life free of sin. Her aging father cannot find work so the family lets rooms to keep afloat. Enter Lukasz (Jerzy Zelnick), a handsome young man separated from his wife and in need of a room.
- 8/11/2017
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Foreplays is a column that explores under-known short films by renowned directors. Walerian Borowczyk's The Greatest Love of All Time (1978) is available to watch on Mubi from May 23 - June 22, 2017 in most countries around the world.In 1977, between his features The Streetwalker (1976) and Behind Convent Walls (1978), Walerian Borowczyk made The Greatest Love of All Time. This short documentary is, like several in his filmography, devoted to the work of another creator (see, for example, Atelier de Fernand Léger [1955] or Venus on the Half-Shell [1975]). In this case, the subject is Ljuba Popovic (1934-2016), a Serbian painter interested in fantastical and erotic themes, highly influenced by Surrealism and Baroque art. In 1963, Popovic moved to Paris where he worked most of his life. Although Borowczyk himself refused the distinction between shorts and features, and likewise between live-action and animation, The Greatest Love of All Time has not been discussed nearly as much...
- 6/5/2017
- MUBI
Yet another puzzle picture, that came out on DVD back with the first wave of Wac films in 2010. An expensive romance with Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux, it was filmed in Europe, co-written by Ray Bradbury and bears the music of Michel Legrand, including an exceedingly well known pop song. Yet it sat on a shelf for three years, only to make a humiliating world debut on TV — on CBS’s Late Nite Movie. It was clearly one of those Productions From Hell, where nothing went right.
The Picasso Summer
DVD-r
The Warner Archive Collection
1969 originally / Color / 1:85 enhanced widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date May 28, 2010 (not a mistake) / available through the WBshop / 17.99
Starring: Albert Finney, Yvette Mimieux, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Theodore Marcuse, Jim Connell,
Peter Madden, Tutte Lemkow, Graham Stark, Marty Ingels, Georgina Cookson, Miki Iveria, Bee Duffell, Lucia Bosé, Jean Marie Ingels.
Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond
Original Music: Michel Legrand
Animator:...
The Picasso Summer
DVD-r
The Warner Archive Collection
1969 originally / Color / 1:85 enhanced widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date May 28, 2010 (not a mistake) / available through the WBshop / 17.99
Starring: Albert Finney, Yvette Mimieux, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Theodore Marcuse, Jim Connell,
Peter Madden, Tutte Lemkow, Graham Stark, Marty Ingels, Georgina Cookson, Miki Iveria, Bee Duffell, Lucia Bosé, Jean Marie Ingels.
Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond
Original Music: Michel Legrand
Animator:...
- 6/3/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The Climber (1976) is now available Blu-ray From Arrow Video
After shooting cult favorites Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula in Europe, Joe Dallesandro spent much of the seventies making movies on the continent. In France he worked with auteurs like Louis Malle and Walerian Borowczyk, and in Italy he starred in all manner of genre fare from poliziotteschi (Savage Three, Season for Assassins) to nunsploitation (Killer Nun).
The Climber follows in the tradition of gangster classics such as The Public Enemy and Scarface as it charts the rise and inevitable fall of small-time smuggler Aldo (Dallesandro). Beaten and abandoned by the local gang boss after he tries to skim off some profits for himself, Aldo forms his own group of misfits in order to exact revenge…
Written and directed by Pasquale Squitieri (Gang War in Naples, I Am the Law), The Climber is a prime example of Italian crime...
After shooting cult favorites Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula in Europe, Joe Dallesandro spent much of the seventies making movies on the continent. In France he worked with auteurs like Louis Malle and Walerian Borowczyk, and in Italy he starred in all manner of genre fare from poliziotteschi (Savage Three, Season for Assassins) to nunsploitation (Killer Nun).
The Climber follows in the tradition of gangster classics such as The Public Enemy and Scarface as it charts the rise and inevitable fall of small-time smuggler Aldo (Dallesandro). Beaten and abandoned by the local gang boss after he tries to skim off some profits for himself, Aldo forms his own group of misfits in order to exact revenge…
Written and directed by Pasquale Squitieri (Gang War in Naples, I Am the Law), The Climber is a prime example of Italian crime...
- 5/23/2017
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
That bad boy of (mostly) French cinema Walerian Borowczyk has been converting doubters into fans for sixty years, even though his pictures were never easy to see. Before he took a headlong leap into soft-core epics, he made some of the most creative and influential short films of his time — and they eventually became more erotic as well.
The Walerian Borowczyk Short Film Collection
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1959-1984 / B&W and Color / 1:66, 1:78 and 1:37 flat Academy / 144 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 24.95
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk
This release brings back memories of traveling short subject shows, usually several reels’ worth of experimental films that would tour college campuses. Even in High School I’d drag my girlfriend to the University of Riverside, where huge crowds looking for the ‘In’ place to be would stare in attention at hours of abstract visuals, expressing their approval...
The Walerian Borowczyk Short Film Collection
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1959-1984 / B&W and Color / 1:66, 1:78 and 1:37 flat Academy / 144 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 24.95
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk
This release brings back memories of traveling short subject shows, usually several reels’ worth of experimental films that would tour college campuses. Even in High School I’d drag my girlfriend to the University of Riverside, where huge crowds looking for the ‘In’ place to be would stare in attention at hours of abstract visuals, expressing their approval...
- 5/13/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
For AhkeemEstablished in 2002, the Tribeca Film Festival has had a bit of trouble defining itself during the course of its 15-year run. It lacks the grit and quirk of SXSW or the finesse of Sundance, but like the latter, it serves a springboard with its own lab for first time directors. Tribeca's ambitious programming has evolved to encompass much more than movies. A Virtual Reality sidebar is innovative and conveniently forward-looking, the television slate, chock full of hotly anticipated premieres, is opportunely adaptive, and the Talks section is fascinating in its pairings, both expected (Noah Baumbach and Dustin Hoffman, whose work together will be showcased at Cannes) and funkily improbable (Barbra Streisand and Robert Rodriguez). There's even a curation of interactive media in the Games section.While the festival is often unfairly maligned, there are many decent offerings, including spillover from the international film festival circuit and a premieres of some more well-known titles,...
- 5/4/2017
- MUBI
This Week in Home VideoPlus 20 more new releases to watch at home this week on Blu-ray/DVD.
Welcome to this week in home video! Click the title to buy a Blu-ray/DVD from Amazon and help support Fsr in the process!
Pick of the WeekCatfight
What is it? Two old college friends cross paths as adults and beat the ever-loving crap out of each other.
Why see it? Onur Tukel’s latest is also his best thanks in part to the lead performances by Sandra Oh and Anne Heche. They do a good job of manipulating our sympathies and concerns ensuring that our loyalties shift from act to act. Themes of female friendships, class distinctions, and redemption run through alongside a satirical look at modern life, and there’s a terrifically wicked streak throughout. Funny, smart, and brutal are all apt descriptors for this cynical look at our violent selves.
[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentaries, featurette, deleted scenes]
Catfight...
Welcome to this week in home video! Click the title to buy a Blu-ray/DVD from Amazon and help support Fsr in the process!
Pick of the WeekCatfight
What is it? Two old college friends cross paths as adults and beat the ever-loving crap out of each other.
Why see it? Onur Tukel’s latest is also his best thanks in part to the lead performances by Sandra Oh and Anne Heche. They do a good job of manipulating our sympathies and concerns ensuring that our loyalties shift from act to act. Themes of female friendships, class distinctions, and redemption run through alongside a satirical look at modern life, and there’s a terrifically wicked streak throughout. Funny, smart, and brutal are all apt descriptors for this cynical look at our violent selves.
[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentaries, featurette, deleted scenes]
Catfight...
- 4/25/2017
- by Rob Hunter
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
This is my seventh TCM Classic Film Festival. At a certain point, some things become routine – one learns to expect the exhaustion at the dawn of day three (of four), the constant negotiation between personal viewing whims and rare presentations, the way plots and aesthetic choices start to run together, and the suspicion that explaining the draw of such an event to those not immediately inclined to attend it may come across a touch insane. Film festivals are innately demanding experiences, but between the pleasure of its programming, the consolidation of the venues, and the brevity of most of its films’ running times, few make it so easy to watch four, five, six movies in a day. You tell your coworkers on Monday what you did all weekend, and it starts to not make a lot of sense. But somehow, in the midst of it all, the point of it couldn’t be clearer.
- 4/11/2017
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
Mubi's retrospective The Many Sins of Walerian Borowczyk is showing February 12 - June 18, 2017 in the United States and in many other countries around the world.The late 1970s marks a stylistic departure for Walerian Borowczyk, as the Polish director moved away from a controlled, painterly style and toward a ‘corporeal’ style, wherein changes in aesthetic choices allowed him to explore the human body in greater depth than in his previous films. While the liberal portrayal of sex and sexuality (lending itself to the liberal portrayal of bodies, human or otherwise) is present in Borowczyk’s live-action films as early as his anthology Immoral Tales from 1973, the preoccupation with the body specifically comes to the fore with the films Behind Convent Walls (1978), Immoral Women (1979), L’armoire (1979), Lulu (1980), and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981). It is in this four-year period that the viewer will notice Borowczyk's moving away...
- 4/6/2017
- MUBI
There’s plenty of Sin in Walerian Boroczyk’s searing movie, but little of it can be laid at the feet of its heroine, no matter what terrible crimes she commits. In pre-WW1 Poland, the innocent Ewa’s tragedy is to fall hopelessly in love, without restraint; Boroczyk’s camera doesn’t flinch as the hapless Ewa falls from grace. Amour fou has been crazier than this, but rarely as destructive. Artistically this show is flawless, and in terms of sex politics it’s a scream of protest.
Story of Sin
Blu-ray + DVD
Arrow Academy USA
1975 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 130 min. / Dzieje grzechu / Street Date March 28, 2017 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95
Starring: Grazyna Dlugolecka, Jerzy Zelnik, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Roman Wilhelmi, Marek Walczewski, Karolina Lubienska, Zdzislaw Mrozewski, Mieczyslaw Voit, Marek Bargielowski.
Cinematography: Zygmunt Samosiuk
Film Editor: Lidia Pacewicz
Written by Walerian Borowczyk from the novel by Stefan Zeromski
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk
Walerian Borowczyk...
Story of Sin
Blu-ray + DVD
Arrow Academy USA
1975 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 130 min. / Dzieje grzechu / Street Date March 28, 2017 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95
Starring: Grazyna Dlugolecka, Jerzy Zelnik, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Roman Wilhelmi, Marek Walczewski, Karolina Lubienska, Zdzislaw Mrozewski, Mieczyslaw Voit, Marek Bargielowski.
Cinematography: Zygmunt Samosiuk
Film Editor: Lidia Pacewicz
Written by Walerian Borowczyk from the novel by Stefan Zeromski
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk
Walerian Borowczyk...
- 4/4/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
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