November 21, 1924—Three Hawaiian guitarists played at the funeral of Hollywood player Thomas Ince , but that was only the latest of the bizarre, inexplicable events surrounding his hurried departure a few days before from the yacht of William Randolph Hearst . The incident sparked a three-quarters-of-a-century scandal and mystery involving the tabloid publisher; his mistress, silent-film comedienne...
This week Turner Classic Movies announced additional information about its TCM Classic Film Festival , which will be held next April in Hollywood. Leonard Maltin, Peter Bogdanovich, and Douglas Trumbull are the first names announced to appear at the Festival. The first films announced to be screened at the festival include a restored copy of A STAR IS BORN (1954) and a presentation of 2001: A SPACE...
A couple of 5-star worthy TCM news items to bring across the bow of the Shelf, and more from around the Shelf neighborhood: You may already know that Turner Classic Movies is hosting their first annual TCM Classic Film Festival April of 2010 in Hollywood, CA. They will be presenting more than 50 classic films, and hosted by Robert Osborne- with many talks and special guests such as Leonard Maltin,...
The latest installment of the vaunted PBS series Independent Lens is No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos. The documentary about the legendary Hungarian cinematographers debuts this week around the country. Check your local listings for time and channel. Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond met at film school in Budapest in the 1950s. When Soviet tanks rumbled [...]
Yesterday, Devin Faraci of the movie website C.H.U.D. posted the following to his Twitter, I can't believe Cinematical is running an Oscar story shit-talking Roger Corman! That hurts. So I found the offending article, Hints About 2010 Oscars Emerge: No More Five-Person Presenting by Eric D. Snider, right there at the top. It says, "Corman, who has directed more than 50 films and produced nearly...
This ability to make art on a murderously short shooting schedule with no money and reused sets (or cleverly-shot practical locations) was passed on by Corman to his most adroit proteges: Dante had a low-budget, homage-heavy blast with PIRANHA; Cameron willed a sci-fi classic out of next-to-nothing in THE TERMINATOR; and Peter Bogdanovich used two contract-mandated days of Boris Karloff to pull off...
James Chressanthis ' No Subtitles Necessary premieres Tuesday night on ITVS' "Independent Lens" series: it's an anecdote-rich documentary about lifelong friends, cinematographic greats Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, from their youthful escape from Hungary in 1956 with footage of the Russian invasion of Budapest to the glory days of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s and into their mature...
Criterion's February announcements include, at long last, a DVD of Leo McCarey's masterpiece Make Way For Tomorrow , as well as a DVD and Blu-Ray of Max Ophuls' Lola Montes. The McCarey disc doesn't have as many special features as it deserves, though in this case I'm OK with Peter Bogdanovich being interviewed, since he was one of the few people who ever interviewed McCarey. And any McCarey-centric...
Roger Corman, the king of the B movie, will receive an honorary Oscar at this year's ceremony for his lifetime of work, it was announced recently. Many of the industry's most accomplished filmmakers — directors such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich, for example — got their start under the master of the no-budget genre picture. In honor of the legend,...
He is the unbearable lightness of being a director, producer, actor, mentor. He is the most effervescent of gentlemen, one who has that gene for making it all look easy.
Roger Corman, one of the most prolific movie makers ever, got his honorary Oscar yesterday. He's an award winner that seems unconventional for the Academy, but Corman's connections to mainstream Hollywood go deeper than I realized. You might already...
Eighty-three-year-old Roger Corman, who has produced nearly 400 "B" movies -- none of them regarded as a candidate for an Oscar nomination -- over a career that began 55...
Oscar News: Indie legend's proteges have nabbed many Oscars -- The first job I had in the movie business paid $400 for four weeks' work on location in 1974 in some of the top chicken-fighting spots in Georgia for a movie called "Cockfighter."
God's Gift to Women The one scene that will strike you and linger around after you walked out of the cinemas, it's the final scene. It's no spoiler, but it walked right out of National Geographic, where you see up close, how a toad devours a mouse. Swallow in fact, allowing it to semi-digest, while occasionally tugging at the tail. It's downright gross as a parting short, but the camera stayed firmly...
This week in the Picture Palace, we highlight Claire Makes It Big , Jeremy Workman's short following the travails of a talented actress and her difficulties landing a decent movie role. A sharply written and briskly directed satire of the acting and filmmaking professions that then turns into a hilarious wish-fulfillment fantasy, it also features a lovely lead performance by Mara Hobel (whom Joan...
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