It’s big, it buzzes, and it screams like a banshee. So why is the Mantis monster so ho-hum? Universal-International tries to squeak out another boffo big bug epic, but 1957 screens were already crowded with grasshoppers and scorpions — and the screenplay is derivative — and somebody allowed producer William Alland to throw in every stock shot that wasn’t nailed down.
The Deadly Mantis
Blu-ray
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date March 19, 2019 / 27.99
Starring: Craig Stevens, William Hopper, Alix Talton, Donald Randolph, Pat Conway, Florenz Ames, Paul Smith, Harry Tyler.
Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter, Clifford Stine
Film Editor: Chester Schaeffer
Original Music: Irving Gertz, William Lava, Henry Mancini
Written by Martin Berkeley, William Alland
Produced by William Alland
Directed by Nathan Juran
I grew up partly in the Mojave Desert. Our red ants were aggressive (and they stung!), our grasshoppers big and strong, and our scorpions were as scary as the...
The Deadly Mantis
Blu-ray
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date March 19, 2019 / 27.99
Starring: Craig Stevens, William Hopper, Alix Talton, Donald Randolph, Pat Conway, Florenz Ames, Paul Smith, Harry Tyler.
Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter, Clifford Stine
Film Editor: Chester Schaeffer
Original Music: Irving Gertz, William Lava, Henry Mancini
Written by Martin Berkeley, William Alland
Produced by William Alland
Directed by Nathan Juran
I grew up partly in the Mojave Desert. Our red ants were aggressive (and they stung!), our grasshoppers big and strong, and our scorpions were as scary as the...
- 3/16/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Teutonic art writ large and loud: Arnolf Fanck’s first big ‘mountain’ classic wow’ed them back in 1926, with its massive vistas and death-defying feats of mountaineering, all sworn to be authentic. More importantly, Fanck and his diva Leni Riefenstahl invest their images with the sense of mythic, spiritual kitsch grandeur that became an aesthetic blueprint for the coming Nazi regime.
The Holy Mountain
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1926 / B&W with tints / 1:33 Silent Aperture / 105 min. / Der Heilige Berg / Street Date April 24, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker, Ernst Petersen, Frida Richard, Friedrich Schneider.
Cinematography: Sepp Allgeier, Albert Benitz, Helmar Lerski, Hans Schneeberger
Production Design: Leopold Blonder
Original Music: Edmund Meisel, Edmund Reisch / 2002 score Alijoscha Zimmermann
Produced by Henry R. Sokal
Written, Edited and Directed by Arnold Fanck
The Weimar-era ‘mountain’ films from Germany are often excerpted but seldom shown intact. Great documentaries like Kevin Brownlow’s Cinema Europe:...
The Holy Mountain
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1926 / B&W with tints / 1:33 Silent Aperture / 105 min. / Der Heilige Berg / Street Date April 24, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker, Ernst Petersen, Frida Richard, Friedrich Schneider.
Cinematography: Sepp Allgeier, Albert Benitz, Helmar Lerski, Hans Schneeberger
Production Design: Leopold Blonder
Original Music: Edmund Meisel, Edmund Reisch / 2002 score Alijoscha Zimmermann
Produced by Henry R. Sokal
Written, Edited and Directed by Arnold Fanck
The Weimar-era ‘mountain’ films from Germany are often excerpted but seldom shown intact. Great documentaries like Kevin Brownlow’s Cinema Europe:...
- 5/22/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Jimmy Chin on Mount Meru Photo: Renan Ozturk
In Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's Oscar shortlisted Best Documentary Film nominee Meru, three of the world’s most accomplished mountain climbers, Conrad Anker, Renan Ozturk and Chin himself, attempt to conquer nature, outward and inward, to reach the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, the heretofore impossible peak in the Himalayas. The footage is breathtaking, the obstacles seem insurmountable, the trust and friendship between them has to be complete and you will find yourself cheering them on.
Jimmy Chin: "I owe so much to Conrad …" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
The Arnold Fanck films with Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl The Holy Mountain (Der Heilige Berg) and The Great Leap (Der Grosse Sprung) and Storm Over Mont Blanc (Stürme Über Dem Mont Blanc) with Riefenstahl and Sepp Rist came to mind as I spoke with Jimmy Chin. He expressed his love of the ocean,...
In Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's Oscar shortlisted Best Documentary Film nominee Meru, three of the world’s most accomplished mountain climbers, Conrad Anker, Renan Ozturk and Chin himself, attempt to conquer nature, outward and inward, to reach the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, the heretofore impossible peak in the Himalayas. The footage is breathtaking, the obstacles seem insurmountable, the trust and friendship between them has to be complete and you will find yourself cheering them on.
Jimmy Chin: "I owe so much to Conrad …" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
The Arnold Fanck films with Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl The Holy Mountain (Der Heilige Berg) and The Great Leap (Der Grosse Sprung) and Storm Over Mont Blanc (Stürme Über Dem Mont Blanc) with Riefenstahl and Sepp Rist came to mind as I spoke with Jimmy Chin. He expressed his love of the ocean,...
- 1/6/2016
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Part I. A Filmmaker’s Apotheosis
April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical past through propaganda and art. Fittingly, Hitler celebrated at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Germany’s most prestigious cinema.
There, Nazi officials and foreign diplomats joined dignitaries of German kultur. Present were Wilhelm Furtwangler, conductor of Berlin’s Philharmonic Orchestra; Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and confidante; actor Gustaf Grundgens, transformed from Brechtian Bolshevik to director of Prussia’s State Theater; and movie star Emil Jannings, Oscar-winner of The Lost Command and The Blue Angel, now an Artist of the State. Also Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who nationalized German cinema in...
April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical past through propaganda and art. Fittingly, Hitler celebrated at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Germany’s most prestigious cinema.
There, Nazi officials and foreign diplomats joined dignitaries of German kultur. Present were Wilhelm Furtwangler, conductor of Berlin’s Philharmonic Orchestra; Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and confidante; actor Gustaf Grundgens, transformed from Brechtian Bolshevik to director of Prussia’s State Theater; and movie star Emil Jannings, Oscar-winner of The Lost Command and The Blue Angel, now an Artist of the State. Also Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who nationalized German cinema in...
- 7/8/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
Jean Boenish and Base jumping pioneer Carl Boenish in Marah Strauch's soaring Sunshine Superman
A conversation with Marah Strauch on Carl Boenish turned to John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths, starring Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Gene Hackman, German mountain films by Arnold Fanck with Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl, Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Les Blank's Burden Of Dreams with a touch of Caspar David Friedrich and a beam of Donovan's Sunshine Superman.
The Sunshine Superman here is Carl Boenish, the founder of Base jumping. Breathtaking aerial footage shot by Boenish and his colleagues accompanies a glimpse into the development of the extreme sport, always close to the edge, head in the clouds. It is a film filled with light and air with a refreshing lack of cynicism. Director Strauch in interviews with Boenish's wife Jean explores how the private man, the scholar of Christian Science and the...
A conversation with Marah Strauch on Carl Boenish turned to John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths, starring Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Gene Hackman, German mountain films by Arnold Fanck with Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl, Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Les Blank's Burden Of Dreams with a touch of Caspar David Friedrich and a beam of Donovan's Sunshine Superman.
The Sunshine Superman here is Carl Boenish, the founder of Base jumping. Breathtaking aerial footage shot by Boenish and his colleagues accompanies a glimpse into the development of the extreme sport, always close to the edge, head in the clouds. It is a film filled with light and air with a refreshing lack of cynicism. Director Strauch in interviews with Boenish's wife Jean explores how the private man, the scholar of Christian Science and the...
- 5/27/2015
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The cinema hasn't done skiing many favours. The films made in the 1920s by German producer Dr Arnold Fanck – culminating in White Ecstasy starring Leni Riefenstahl in 1931, must have put bums on seats and boots on skis – and Sun Valley Serenade (1941) was popular enough to have filled some rooms at the Sun Valley Lodge, where the film is shown in 24-hour rotation on in-room TVs. But apart from Downhill Racer – a proper film with a proper director (Michael Ritchie) and stars (Robert Redford, Gene Hackman) made in 1969 – nothing on the big screen has given skiing cause to celebrate. On the contrary, things have been going downhill since 1969.
- 2/16/2011
- The Independent - Film
By modern standards, Quentin Tarantino would be considered an auteur; a director whose films reflect that his personal creative vision. But what exactly is that vision, and how is it reflected in his work? One major observation that one can make about Tarantino’s films is that he often incorporates a number of references, many of which refer to cinema, specific films, or pop culture. His films are laced with this intertextuality were the relationship between texts (or films) is constantly being redefined. This method of pastiche is one way that he draws attention to the fact that his film is a constructed piece of fiction, or a “simulation.”
His rational behind this is heavily influenced by French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality.” Hyperreality in this case refers to the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, as the two become blurred into one. Baudrillard argues that...
His rational behind this is heavily influenced by French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality.” Hyperreality in this case refers to the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, as the two become blurred into one. Baudrillard argues that...
- 6/26/2010
- by Kristen Coates
- The Film Stage
In 1922, Robert J. Flaherty gave us Nanook of the North, one of my favourite silent films and an early example of a snow movie--that is, a movie that wouldn't be what it is without its wintry landscape. In some films, snow is incidental--a pretty backdrop or a minor metaphor (like the snowfall that blankets the Bride's duel with O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill Vol. I). In others, a snowy climate is central to the story or sometimes even a character in its own right. Here are 10 movies that each use ice, snow, and cold in a specific way; together, they collectively demonstrate the range one symbol can have.
As with a typical Pajiba Guide, many genres are represented (don't worry Nanook fans -- silent film, documentary, and Inuit culture are all covered below in some form). And as with a typical Guide, apologies must be made for omitting many more...
As with a typical Pajiba Guide, many genres are represented (don't worry Nanook fans -- silent film, documentary, and Inuit culture are all covered below in some form). And as with a typical Guide, apologies must be made for omitting many more...
- 2/18/2010
- by Dustin Rowles
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