Fin de Cinema (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
After both Criterion Blu-ray editions of Akira Kurosawa's Ran and Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt [ Le mépris ] were canceled, many (myself) included suspected that it was the evil doings of The Weinstein Company, who own, presumably, the Wellspring catalogue... but in fact, it looks as it if was Studio Canal, who already released the Blu-rays in the UK, France and Germany. Well through Lionsgate,...
Bright Lights After Dark (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Michael Gough ( above ) was born 96 years ago today in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, and remarkably, he is still alive . An incredibly sly and versatile English character actor - equally at home reading the dialogue of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pinter, Berthold Brecht, or Jimmy Sangster (the principal scribe of Hammer horror) - Mr. Gough has worked with more good film directors than you can name - among them,...
Ed Gorman Blog (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
I've mentioned The Film Noir Foundation before. The estimable Eddie Muller founded it and continues to present noir in all its aspects around the world--and present it in the most intelligent and compelling ways possible. By sending a contribution to the Foundation you'll receive The Noir City Sentinel when it appears. This magazine is the finest ongoing history of noir I've ever seen. Here's how to...
Some Came Running (Free subscription) | 11/15/2009
Last week's installment, including links to previous weeks, here. Farber: "A tabloid melodrama of sex and avarice in suburbia, our of Cain by Joe Losey, featuring almost perfect acting by Evelyn Keyes as a hot, dumb, average American babe who,...
Gusts of Popular Feeling (Free subscription) | 10/31/2009
I finally watched Kim Ki-young's 1960 film The Housemaid, which was released on DVD a few months ago. It's long been considered a classic (or at least since his work was 'rediscovered' at the 1998 Pusan International Film Festival) and more than lives up to its reputation. Basically, a middle class family moves into a new, two story house, and, due to the wife's pregnancy, hires a maid. (The film is...
Woody Haut's Blog (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
Heartbreak & Vine Film Festival Day 6 For those, like me, who missed last week's film festival in Lyon, here are clips from some of the rarely seen films that Eddie Muller and Philippe Garnier presented there. As often the case with clips like these, the picture quality is often less than desired. The Prowler, directed by Joseph Losey, 1951 Woman on the Run, direcgted by Norman Foster, 1950 711...
Movie Talk (Free subscription) | 10/16/2009
The Damned (aka, These Are the Damned, 1963) BBC2, 2.05am Now here’s a little British gem to set your video for. From director Joseph Losey comes this bizarre sci-fi film noir set in Weymouth of all places. Trying to escape a gang of Teddy Boy bikers, a middle-aged American sailor (Macdonald Carey of Days of Our Lives fame) [...]
The Agitation of the Mind (Free subscription) | 10/14/2009
It is Dirk Bogarde's collaborations with Joseph Losey (five films) and Luchino Visconti (two films) that are made the most of by the critics. But what of his four-film association with Basil Dearden? It was under Dearden's direction that the world got its first glimpse of the dark side of Dirk - as Tom Riley in 'The Blue Lamp' . They did their finest work together with 'Victim' - an incredibly brave,...
The Agitation of the Mind (Free subscription) | 10/10/2009
Ah, the great and prolific actor/director relationships: John Wayne and John Ford, Robert de Niro and Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, Dirk Bogarde and Basil Dearden Joseph Losey Ralph Thomas. Bollocks! It pains me to discuss the Bogarde/Thomas relationship (nine films together compared to the five he made with Losey and the four with Dearden) since Thomas was a journeyman director and...
DVD Times (Free subscription) | 10/09/2009
News: Second Sight Films have announced the UK DVD release of three titles on 30th November 2009. Gambit - Ronald Neame's action-packed comedy crime caper stars Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine as partners in crime. The disc includes a commentary ...
Variety.com (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
Obituary: Producer made headlines in Paramount lawsuit -- Producer and literary agent Alain Bernheim, who famously sued Paramount with Art Buchwald, died of bacterial meningitis Oct. 3 in Paris. He was 86.
The Agitation of the Mind (Free subscription) | 10/04/2009
'King & Country' - the very title just the first of several bitter pills the viewer is forced to swallow - was the third of Dirk Bogarde's five collaborations with Joseph Losey. For me, it's second only to 'The Servant' . Powerful, unflinching and bludgeoningly grim, it's no surprise it did sod all at the box office. Forty-five years on, its impact is undiminished. This is partly because of Losey's...
The One-Line Review (Free subscription) | 10/01/2009
UK Feature Film Director: Joseph Losey Writers: Evan Jones, John Wilson, J.L. Hodson Cinematographer: Denys Coop Composer: Larry Adler Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Tom Courtenay, Leo McKern, Barry Foster, Peter Copley, James Villiers, Jeremy Spencer, Barry Justice, Vivian Matalon Based on John Wilson’s play, Hemp , itself based on J.L. Hodson’s semi-autobiographical novel, Return to the wood , Losey’s...
Ferdy on Films, etc. (Free subscription) | 09/18/2009
The Damned (aka, These Are the Damned, 1963) Director: Joseph Losey By Roderick Heath Like Stanley Kubrick, Joseph Losey decamped from America for Britain (for political rather than artistic reasons) and remained there for the rest of his career....
Movie Talk (Free subscription) | 09/07/2009
For years, the cognoscenti have agreed on two things about Marcel Proust’s epic 2,500-page, seven-volume semi-autobiographical novel A la recherché du temps perdu – it’s the greatest novel ever written and it’s un-filmable. Over the decades, the challenge of putting Proust on screen has tempted and frustrated an impressively high-calibre list of filmmakers. Luchino Visconti...
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