CelluloidKid
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Posts posted by CelluloidKid
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_U.S. vs. John Lennon, The_ (2006)
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William Hurt won an Academy Award for Best Actor in: _Kiss of the Spider Woman_ (1985) directed by: H?ctor Babenco!.
*NEW DIRECTOR: H?ctor Babenco!*
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*Fri, Feb 19, 2010 @ 3:30 AM: _Johnny Eager_ (1941)- Mnt. Time (Arizona) - Check Local Schedule for times.*
*Van Heflin (Jeff Hartnett) won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.*
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*Fri, Feb 19, 2010 @ 1:30 AM: _The Bad and the Beautiful_ (1952) - Mnt. Time (Arizona) - Check Local Schedule for times.*
*_Facts_:*
The Bad and the Beautiful holds the record for most Oscars won (five) by a movie that was _not_ nominated for Best Picture.
In 2002 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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*WOW!!!* *Has DVD replaced going to the theater!???. I hope not!!*
*Trouble at the tea party: 'Alice in Wonderland' faces theater owner revolt in U.K.*
February 17, 2010
Los Angeles Times
*Are you ready for a trip down the rabbit hole? Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Disney are adding a strange new chapter to the Lewis Carroll classic with their "Alice in Wonderland," a film that presents a young woman who finds herself in the world of the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Red Queen. She is welcomed as a returning visitor -- but is she, in fact, the same Alice who roamed the trippy realm as a child? Time will tell. Here at the Hero Complex, we're counting down to the film's March 5 release with daily coverage. Today, a look at the brewing controversy that threaten the film's box office in Europe.*
Walt Disney Pictures' decision to accelerate the release of its upcoming 3-D film "Alice in Wonderland" on DVD has sparked a revolt among movie theater owners in Europe.
Major chains in the U.K. and the Netherlands have threatened to boycott the movie when it hits theaters March 5, a move that could cut into box-office revenue.
The film adaptation based on classic characters of Lewis Carroll has become the latest battleground between studios and exhibitors over how soon movies should be released on DVD after they've opened in theaters.
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*Turner Classic Movies to Celebrate 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Legendary Japanese Filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in March!!*
Feb 16, 2010
*One hundred years ago, one of cinema's greatest visual artists was born: Akira Kurosawa. This March, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will celebrate the legendary filmmaker's career with a month-long collection of more than 25 movies. The event will include a 24-hour marathon on Tuesday, March 23, the anniversary of Kurosawa's birth.*
"There are many reasons the name Akira Kurosawa means so much in the world of moviemaking, and we're going to be showing 26 of those reasons this month on Turner Classic Movies," says TCM host Robert Osborne. "It's the largest gathering of Kurosawa films we've ever shown in a retrospective of his work, and we couldn't be more excited."
TCM's March celebration of Kurosawa will include such popular samurai films as Seven Samurai (1954 - March 23), The Hidden Fortress (1958 - March 9), Yojimbo (1961 - March 23) and its sequel, Sanjuro (1962 - March 23); the groundbreaking classic Rashomon (1950 - March 23); literary adaptations such as Throne of Blood (1957 - March 9) and The Lower Depths (1957 - March 9); compelling domestic dramas like No Regrets for Our Youth (1946 - March 23), Ikiru (1952 - March 9), I Live in Fear (1955 - March 16) and Red Beard (1965 - March 16); crime dramas such as Stray Dog (1949 - March 23), The Bad Sleep Well (1960 - March 16) and High and Low (1963 - March 16); and the vibrantly photographed Dodes 'Ka-Den (1970 - March 23) and Kagemusha (1980 - March 30).
Among the films making their debut on TCM are two of Kurosawa's later films, Dersu Uzala (1975 - March 30), which earned Kurosawa a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar??, and Ran (1985 - March 30), which is based loosely on Shakespeare's King Lear. Also making their TCM premieres are The Idiot (1951 - March 9), based on the book by Dostoyevksy, and The Most Beautiful (1944 - March 23), a World War II drama that wasn't released in the United States until the late 1980s.
In addition to its slate of Kurosawa films, TCM will present two Westerns inspired by Kurosawa's work. On Sunday, March 21, a double-feature will include The Outrage (1964), an adaptation of Rashomon, and The Magnificent Seven (1960), adapted from Seven Samurai.
*Below is a complete schedule of TCM's centennial celebration of Akira Kurosawa (all times shown are Eastern):*
*Tuesday, March 9*
8 p.m. Ikiru (1952) - Frequent Kurosawa actor Takashi Shimura turns in a heartbreaking performance as a man who finds out he only has a short time to live. Kurosawa explores the meaning of a man's life with this poignant drama.
10:30 p.m. Throne of Blood (1957) - Kurosawa's stunning adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth stars frequent Kurosawa leading man Toshiro Mifune as the feudal lord who kills his rival at his wife's bidding. Kurosawa skillfully blends elements of Noh drama to craft this fascinating and visually arresting film.
12:30 a.m. The Hidden Fortress (1958) - One of Kurosawa's more whimsical samurai dramas, this film follows a pair of inept misfits as they try to help a princess pass through a rival territory. Mifune is the general who assists. George Lucas has acknowledged this rousing tale was the primary inspiration for his first Star Wars film.
3 a.m. The Idiot (1951) - Dostoyevsky's tale of a love triangle served as the basis for this Kurosawa drama starring Mifune and Shimura. Kurosawa's original cut was edited down by the studio before release, but much of Kurosawa's brilliance remains.
6 a.m. The Lower Depths (1957) - Kurosawa's adaptation of the Maxim Gorky play is a character study of a group of people living in poverty. Mifune leads a fine cast. Jean Renoir tackled the Gorky play in 1936, but Kurosawa remained more faithful to the original than the French master.
*Tuesday, March 16*
8 p.m. The Bad Sleep Well (1960) - In this variation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Kurosawa captures the feel of the great Warner Bros. crime dramas. Mifune stars as a man determined to exact revenge against he high-profile businessman he blames for his father's suicide.
10:45 p.m. High and Low (1963) - Mifune plays a shoe company executive whose son is targeted for kidnapping. But the kidnappers end up taking his chauffeur's son instead. This cat-and-mouse thriller, based on an Ed McBain novel, provides a unique view of Japan in the 1960s.
1:15 a.m. Red Beard (1965) - Kurosawa and Mifune worked together for the last time with this gentle drama about a doctor and his intern, played by Yuzo Kayama.
4:30 a.m. I Live in Fear (1955) - Mifune, nearly unrecognizable thanks to old-age makeup and a superb characterization, plays a successful businessman whose fear of nuclear war leads him to want to move his entire family from Japan to South America.
6:15 a.m. Scandal (1950) - This Kurosawa drama stars Mifune as a painter who sues a magazine over a scandalous story. His lawsuit is threatened when his lawyer, whose daughter is deathly ill, takes a bribe to lose the case.
*Sunday, March 21* - Adapted from Akira Kurosawa
8 p.m. The Outrage (1964) - In this remake of Kurosawa's Rashomon, Paul Newman plays the bandit who attacks a couple, played by Laurence Harvey and Clair Bloom. Each of the three has a different perspective on what exactly happened. Edward G. Robinson and William Shatner co-star.
*10 p.m. (1960)* - John Sturges' thrilling western is based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and stars Yul Brynner as the head of a gang of gunslingers who come to the aid of a village threatened by bandits. Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, Horst Bucholz, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn co-star. Elmer Bernstein provided the memorable score.
*Tuesday, March 23*
*6 a.m. Sanshiro Sugata (1943)* - Kurosawa's first feature film as director is the simple tale of a young judo fighter who must battle another fighter over a woman. The outstanding use of photographic composition and sound make this one of the more striking martial arts films of the era.
*7:30 a.m. The Most Beautiful (1944)* - Kurosawa's story of young women working in a factory during World War II stars Shimura as their difficult foreman. This interesting early work from Kurosawa includes several elements of pro-Japanese propaganda.
*9 a.m. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945)* - Based on a Kabuki play, this film tells the story of a lord who disguises himself and his generals as monks in order to avoid detection from the lord's murderous brother. This film was banned twice in Japan, first for not being faithful to is source material and then again by the occupation forces for its favorable depiction of feudal militarism.
*10 a.m. Sanshiro Sugata Part 2 (1945)* - Bordering on outright propaganda, this government-suggested film uses judo as the background for a story extolling the virtues of Japanese warriors.
*11:30 a.m. No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)* - In this revealing domestic drama, a young woman learns about life after leaving the politically charged atmosphere of Tokyo and going to the country house of her executed boyfriend's parents.
*1:30 p.m. One Wonderful Sunday (1947)* - Dreams and despair collide in this gentle drama about a couple who try to spend a Sunday afternoon on just 35 yen.
*3:30 p.m. Drunken Angel (1948)* - An uneasy friendship between an alcoholic doctor and a gangster is at the center of this gripping drama featuring Shimura and Mifune in two early Kurosawa performances.
*5:30 p.m. Stray Dog (1949)* - A grueling heat wave becomes its own character in this outstanding drama about a pair of police officers determined to track down a gun that was stolen from one of them. Shimura and Mifune play the cops. Kurosawa uses the story as an opportunity to shed light on the difficulties Japanese soldiers faced when they came home from the war.
*8 p.m. Rashomon (1950)* - This groundbreaking film established a new story-telling style using the different points of view of several characters to explore the meaning of truth. Mifune is a bandit who attacks a couple and kills the husband. But as each person's story reveals, truth may be in the eye of the beholder. This film won Kurosawa an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The title has now become synonymous with the multiple-storytelling style the film established.
*9:30 p.m. Seven Samurai (1954)* - Considered by many critics to be among the greatest films ever made, this extraordinary tale follows a group of ronin (masterless samurai) who agree to protect a village against bandits. Kurosawa explores everything from class distinctions to the nature of violence in this deeply humanistic film starring Shimura, Mifune and a host of stock Kurosawa performers. Tatsuya Nakadai, who would later play the lead roles in such Kurosawa epics as Kagemusha and Ran, can be seen briefly as one of the samurai walking through the town in the first half of the film. Kurosawa's use of slow-motion death scenes greatly influenced the work of Sam Peckinpah.
*1 a.m. Yojimbo (1961)* - This Cold War allegory features Mifune as a samurai who plays two sides of a warring town against each other. Kurosawa uses satire and cynicism to tell a story that in many ways reveals the worst in human nature. This film was later remade by Sergio Leone as the 1964 spaghetti western Fistful of Dollars.
*3 a.m. Sanjuro (1962)* - Mifune returns as the nameless samurai in this humor-laced action flick. This time around, he helps a group of young warriors expose corruption within the leadership of their clan.
*4:45 a.m. Dodes 'Ka-Den (1970)* - Kurosawa's first color film is a character study of various people living in a Tokyo slum. The director uses his painters' eye to craft a unique color scheme. The title refers to the sound Tokyo streetcars make as they travel down a track. Noted symphonic composer Toru Takemitsu created the enchanting score.
*Tuesday, March 30*
8 p.m. Dersu Uzala (1975) - Kurosawa won his second Oscar with this story of a Goldi tribe hunter who teaches a Russian explorer how to survive in the harsh Siberian terrain. The pair gradually come to understand one another, despite the remarkably different worlds from which they come.
*10:30 p.m. Kagemusha (1980)* - George Lucas and Francis Coppola served as producers on this extraordinary epic about a thief who is used as a double for a noble lord. But when the lord dies, the thief has to become him. Tatsuya Nakadai plays the thief, a role that was eventually supposed to go to box-office star Shintaro Katsu, but Kurosawa objected to Katsu's demand that he have his own personal video crew on the set and fired him. At the time this film was made, Kurosawa was having difficult securing financial backing. So he appeared in a series of Suntory Whiskey commercials shot on the set. Kagemusha marked Kurosawa's final film with actor Takashi Shimura.
*1:45 a.m. Ran (1985)* - Kurosawa adapted Shakespeare's King Lear with this lavishly produced film about a lord who divides his kingdom among three sons, inviting disaster in the process. Nakadai once again takes the lead as the lord, who eventually goes insane as he sees his entire land descend into chaos. Mieko Harada, as the lord's daughter-in-law, creates one of cinema's most memorable and conniving villains. Gender-bending star Peter plays the lord's jester. Costume designer Emi Wada took home an Oscar for her work.
*_Ran_ (1985)*
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Marilyn Monroe - Best Actress - _The Misfits_ (1961) & _Some Like It Hot_ (1959) ...no nods either ... sad!
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The word "paparazzi" is an eponym originating in the 1960 film _La dolce vita_ directed by Federico Fellini.
In his book _Word and Phrase Origins_, Robert Hendrickson writes that Fellini took the name from an Italian dialect that describes a particularly annoying noise, that of a buzzing mosquito.
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*Damita, Lili*
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*_Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, The_ (1970)*
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*Schlesinger, John* - Directed 8 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson, Burgess Meredith and Laurence Olivier. Christie won an Oscar _for Darling_ (1965).
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*X was missed .... _Xanadu_ (1980)*
Z .... _Zabriskie Point_ (1970
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Rip Torn received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1983 film _Cross Creek_ directed by Martin Ritt!
*Celebri-links ....... Martin Ritt!*
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Joel McCrea was in: _The Palm Beach Story_ (1942) directed by: Preston Sturges!
*NEW DIRECTOR: Preston Sturges!*
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*EXCLUSIVE: No Set Release Date For 3-D 'Beauty And The Beast,' No Plans 'Yet' To 3-Dify Other Disney Classics, John Lasseter Says*
MTV.com (blog) - Christopher Campbell
February 15, 2010
*You may recall the news from last summer's Comic-Con that Disney planned to re-release "Beauty and the Beast" enhanced in digital 3-D on February 12, 2010. Obviously, the Oscar-nominated classic did not make it to theaters last Friday. Instead it is reportedly due out sometime next year for the film's 20th anniversary.*
But when exactly? And will there be more films retro-fitted, as was done recently with "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2?" Over the weekend, MTV had a chance to talk with Disney Animation and Pixar head John Lasseter about the upcoming project and the very good chance of someday re-releasing Disney's other films in 3-D.
"There?s no release date set yet for that," Lasseter said of "Beauty and the Beast." "But it?s an exciting thing. Because with our computers we can go back in. We have all the scenes and all the sets saved. Just like we did with 'Toy Story' and 'Toy Story 2.'"
Those earlier Pixar films were, of course, retro-fitted in the format as a sort of lead-in for this summer's made-for-3-D sequel "Toy Story 3." With next year's main Pixar release, "Cars 2," also being a 3-D sequel, it might make sense for the original Lasseter-written & directed "Cars" to be enhanced for a temporary re-release.
"We don?t have any plans yet for further 3-D-izing of our older films," he admitted, "but it?s always a possibility. I?m excited that people are loving 3-D and it seems to be not just a fad, but something that will stay."
The uncertainty may sound disappointing for fans of the apparently here-to-stay format, but while elaborating on his and Pixar's history and love for 3-D, Lasseter made it seem very plausible that we'll eventually get enhanced versions of at least the computer-animated Pixar films, such as "Monsters Inc." and "The Incredibles," if not other hand-drawn classics from Disney Animation.
"We love 3-D," he said. "Pixar has been pioneering 3-D since way back when. There just weren't theaters to show it in."
Lasseter referred to the 1989 short "Knick Knack," which ended up available on VHS and Laserdisc in a 2-D form. Later, a re-cut version of the film was shown theatrically in 2-D ahead of "Finding Nemo" then was ultimately shown in it's intended format preceding the 3-D re-release of "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
"I always feel like it?s the best way to look at what we create," he said of the digital 3-D format. "Because within the computer, we?re truly creating three-dimensional worlds. And it?s so much fun to actually be able to make the films that way now. I feel like we?ve always been making our films 3-D but we?ve just been looking at them in 2-D."
At a time when it feels like every classic film and blockbuster of the past is being rumored for 3-D re-release, perhaps Pixar's movies are the only ones that really call for an upgrade, as well as the only ones deserving of such enhancement. Lasseter and the rest of the Pixar founders really seem to know the format best -- and what's best for the format.
"Everything in our movies is there to help tell the story," he explained. "The color of the scenes. The lighting in the scenes. The music. Everything that?s going on is trying to tell the underlying emotion of the scene. Now we even use that in 3-D. These are subtle things that the audience doesn?t notice but they feel."
Which classic Disney works would you like to see re-released in 3-D?
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*Mon, Feb 22, 2010 - All times Eastern - 4:00 PM _The Hollywood Revue of 1929_ (1929)*
*The film was popular with audiences and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Producer Rapf tried to follow it up with another revue, The Hollywood Revue of 1930, which was changed during production to The March of Time, and finally abandoned. Musical numbers already shot for the film were edited into M-G-M short subjects of the early 1930s.*
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*Chinese remake of Coen brothers film screens in Berlin*
AFP - Feb 14, 2010
*BERLIN ? A Chinese remake of the Coen brothers' debut "Blood Simple" got a warm welcome at the Berlin Film Festival Sunday, the second Chinese competition entry in a banner year for Asian cinema.*
Veteran film-maker Zhang Yimou presented "A Woman, A Gun and Noodle Shop" in time for the Lunar New Year, saying he had aimed to "enchant the audience" with a Chinese retelling of a neo-film-noir classic.
Zhang, 58, took home the festival's prestigious Golden Bear top prize in 1988 for "Red Sorghum", the first time an Asian film won in Berlin.
The new picture takes the action far from small-town America to the stunning desert landscapes of Gansu province in northwestern China.
There, a wealthy noodle shop owner discovers his much younger wife is cheating on him with his cook.
He hires a policeman to kill the pair but the plot backfires, setting off a farcical chain reaction that leaves a trail of bodies in its wake.
Zhang said he saw 1984's "Blood Simple" for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival.
"At that time, there wasn't any translation into Chinese so I couldn't understand it and I could only watch the images and try to figure out what was going on," he said, adding it was only years later that he saw it with Mandarin subtitles.
The director said Joel and Ethan Coen, the Oscar-winning pair behind "No Country for Old Men" and "Fargo", were enthusiastic about the remake.
"They were kind enough to write me an email and say that they had seen the film and thought it was very, very amusing," he told reporters after a well-received press screening.
"They were amazed their film had been turned into a noodle story."
Zhang picks up the rich visual imagery familiar from his films such as "Hero", making his desert story look like a technicolor Western, and adds a dash of slapstick to the much darker original movie.
He described daring genre pictures as a relatively new development in China.
"It's not like 10 or 20 years ago when Chinese cinema was very restrictive. This was an attempt -- I was trying something out, and I think the market for this particular film is certainly there."
A Chinese love triangle of a very different sort opened the Berlinale Thursday.
"Apart Together" by director Wang Quan'an, another previous Golden Bear winner, tells the story of a soldier who fought Mao's Communist forces until repelled to Taiwan in 1949.
Decades later, he is permitted to return to the mainland where he tracks down the love of his life he was forced to abandon. But she has since married a soldier from the People's Liberation Army.
When he asks her to accompany him home to Taiwan, she is torn between her enduring feelings for her former lover and a sense of obligation to her husband.
The festival, Europe's most prestigious after Cannes, is giving special attention to Asian cinema this year.
On Friday, Bollywood heart-throb Shah Rukh Khan unveiled "My Name is Khan", a look at the treatment of Muslims around the world in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Koji Wakamatsu of Japan is due to unveil "Caterpillar" while Japanese master Yoji Yamada, the maker of more than 80 films in his four-decade-long career, will screen his latest picture, "About Her Brother", out of competition as the last of nearly 400 films at the festival.
The Berlinale wraps up February 21.
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Opera Gloves .... _The Phantom of the Opera_ (1925)
*NEW WORD: LEAP YEAR!*
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*_Berserk_. (1968)*
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*_Queens Logic_ (1990)*
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Olivia De Havilland was in: _Light in the Piazza_ (1962) directed by Guy Green!
*NEW DIRECTOR: Guy Green!*
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*Tue, Feb 16, 2:00 PM Grand Hotel (1932) - All Times Eastern. Check Local Schedules!*
*In 2007, Grand Hotel was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The line "I want to be let alone," famously delivered by Greta Garbo, placed #30 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes.*
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*Mannequin (1938)*
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Xavier, Ryan
*A to Z of Movies*
in Games and Trivia
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*_Caretakers, The_ (1963)*