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...
Hammer and Beyond (Free subscription) | 09/04/2009
Hardly a week seems to go by these days without a new announcement concerning previously rare and sought after Hammer movies finally seeing a proper DVD release. The Columbia Classics Blog writes that: “Next year, look for another Icons release when we gear up for the Icons of Suspense, the third in our effort to bring forward the great Hammer films in the Columbia library. The titles in this...
Artdaily (Free subscription) | 09/03/2009
WASHINGTON, DC.- This fall, the National Gallery of Art 's film program provides a great variety of work, including area premieres combined with musical performances and appearances by noted film directors, as well as vibrant film series devoted to postwar "British noir" and the American expatriate director Joseph Losey, whose centennial is celebrated this year. Among the film events, on...
James Wolcott's Blog (Free subscription) | 08/31/2009
Reinvigorated after a Hemingwayesque visit to the Florida Keys, Tom Watson contemplates the Rodin's "Thinker" with a cocked cigarette that is Mad Men's Don Draper: So the 60s continues to stall and its lead character remains a statuesque stick in...
FeckenOdeon Films (Free subscription) | 08/15/2009
1979 - Dir.: Joseph Losey Shown at The FeckenOdeon on January 30th, 2005 Veteran director Joseph Losey realised a lifelong ambition with this project - he'd been dissatisfied with the Hollywood projects that came his way in the 70s so the chance to direct Mozart's greatest opera was grabbed with enormous enthusiasm. Losey's film is rightly regarded to be one of the finest opera films ever made. It's...
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