CelluloidKid
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Posts posted by CelluloidKid
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*_Goodbye My Fancy_ (1951)*
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Peter Falk was in: _Murder by Death_ (1976) (Love it!!!) directed by Robert Moore.!
*NEW DIRECTOR: Robert Moore.!*
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*Now, according to Amazon.com, the movie will be released on DVD January 12, 2010 as a 25th Anniversary Edition and is available for pre-order.*
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*MGM Moving Into a Potential Asset Auction*
Source: MovieWeb.com
November 16th, 2009
In a story from Variety, MGM is moving into a potential asset auction over the next several months. The studio is exploring "a possible sale, merger or remaining as a stand-alone" entity.
MGM let it be known that bondholders are going to hold off receiving debt payments until Jan. 31. This was the second exemption on an undisclosed amount of interest payments on its $3.7 billion in debt in the past 2 months.
What needs to happen first is for Moelis & Co., which was hired in May by MGM, to send out non-disclosure agreements to potential bidders as a prelude to seeing MGM's books.
In the meantime, the current MGM leadership will remain in place and production chief Mary Parent will oversee a small production and development slate.
MGM is going to continue on with the following films which are already set for release: Hot Tub Time Machine in March, The Zookeeper in October, Red Dawn in November and a 3D version of Cabin in the Woods in early 2011.
The studio will keep its position as co-financier with New Line Cinema on The Hobbit. That project is still slated to go into production in the spring in New Zealand. It will be part of two Hobbit films shot back-to-back by Guillermo del Toro. Executive producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh are working on the screenplay and no cast has been announced. The two films should be released in late 2011 and late 2012.
MGM is going to continue to develop of another James Bond film. Peter Morgan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are going to write the script for the film. There is no director on board currently.
Lastly, development work is going to remain in effect for a reboot of Poltergeist.
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*Paul WS Anderson Talks The Three Musketeers In 3D*
Cinema Blend - Perri Nemiroff
2009-11-14
*Paul W.S. Anderson is hard at work on his next film, Resident Evil: Afterlife, but he?s also got some big plans for future films, most notably The Three Musketeers 3D. Omelete is reporting in from the Resident Evil set with details on the 3D adaptation of Alexandre Dumas? classic novel straight from Anderson himself.*
Anderson said he?ll reteam with Resident Evil producer Jeremy Bolt and be working with an $80 million budget. That might sound like a lot, but it?s not enough to shoot the entire film in 3D. They might have to resort to 2D when it comes to capturing horse racing chases and convert them to 3D in postproduction. Anderson plans to keep Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D?Artagnan in the 18th century but give the story a contemporary feel with a heavy dose of action and romance. It?ll be ?a new telling? of Dumas? story.
The film hasn?t nabbed a domestic distribution deal, but Constantin Films is on board to finance. Collider points out that this project is monumental for Constantin because it?ll mark their biggest budgeted film ever. Also, partnering with Constantin will free Anderson of studio pressure thus granting him creative freedom. Casting is currently underway and production is set to commence in September 2010.
It?s hard to get excited about this project unless you?re really into the Musketeers or Anderson?s work. Do we really need a new Three Musketeers film? Does it really have to be in 3D? Is the guy responsible for the Resident Evil movies the one to do it? $80 million seems like a lot of money to bet on a guy known for sci-fi films and videogame adaptations. He?s got a following, but this is something that?ll bank on mass appeal. This ?new telling? better be pretty damn innovative.
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*_Per Wikipedia_:*
*Ownership and copyright issues*
*Ancillary rights*
Liberty Films was purchased by Paramount Pictures, and remained a subsidiary until 1951. In 1955, M. & A. Alexander purchased the movie. This included key rights to the original television syndication, the original nitrate film elements, the music score, and the film rights to the story on which the film is based, "The Greatest Gift".National Telefilm Associates (NTA) took over the rights to the film soon thereafter.
However, a clerical error at NTA prevented the copyright from being renewed properly in 1974. Despite the lapsed copyright, television stations that aired it still were required to pay royalties. Although the film's images had entered the public domain, the film's story was still protected by virtue of it being a derivative work of the published story "The Greatest Gift", whose copyright was properly renewed by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1971.The film became a perennial holiday favorite in the 1980s, possibly due to its repeated showings each holiday season on hundreds of local television stations. It was mentioned during the deliberations on the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.
In 1993, Republic Pictures, which was the successor to NTA, relied on the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend (which involved another Stewart film, Rear Window) to enforce its claim to the copyright. While the film's copyright had not been renewed, the plaintiffs were able to argue its status as a derivative work of a work still under copyright. It's a Wonderful Life is no longer shown as often on television as it was before enforcement of that derivative copyright. NBC is currently licensed to show the film on U.S. network television, and traditionally shows it twice during the holidays, with one showing on Christmas Eve. Paramount (via parent company Viacom's 1998 acquisition of Republic's then-parent, Spelling Entertainment) once again has ancillary rights for the first time since 1955, while NBC's broadcast rights are licensed from Trifecta Entertainment & Media (which holds television distribution of the Republic/Paramount theatrical library).
Due to all the above actions, this is one of the few RKO films not controlled by Turner Entertainment/Warner Bros. in the USA.
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It's a Wonderful Life was nominated for five Oscars without winning any, but the film has since been recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made, and placed number one on their list of the most inspirational American films of all time.
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*_The Wizard Of Oz_ (1939)*
*The book was made into films on many different occasions during the silent era.*
[Archivist Mark Evan Swartz's book _Oz Before the Rainbow_ (2000) compiles an in-depth history of the evolution of Baum's work with all its stage and screen permutations up through the 1939 MGM musical version, and its significant cultural influences]:
?The Wizard of Oz (1908)
?The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910), with 9 year old Bebe Daniels as Dorothy
◦and two other films from Selig Polyscope Company based on Baum's Oz: Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), and The Land of Oz (1910)
?three times in 1914, all produced by Baum's own short-lived Oz Film Manufacturing Company
◦The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914)
◦The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914)
◦His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914/15) - the closest to Baum's original book and the only one directed by him
?The Wizard of Oz (1921)
?The Wizard of Oz (1925), a full-length silent film from Chadwick Pictures, with comedian Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame portraying the Tin Woodsman, from producer/director/star/writer Larry Semon.
*_ALSO_:*
There were a total of four directors who collaborated in the making of the film: first, Richard Thorpe (for almost two weeks) and then George Cukor (for two or three days). Victor Fleming (the credited director) was involved for four months, but was hired away by David O. Selznick to direct Gone With the Wind (1939). An uncredited King Vidor finished the production in ten more days, which consisted mostly of completing the film's opening and closing sepia sequences in the Kansas scenes.
The back-story behind the chaos and confusion created by the many Munchkin extras was strangely and improbably documented in director Steve Rash's _Under the Rainbow_ (1981), a tasteless comedy set in 1938 during the filming of Oz, that starred Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher, and Eve Arden.
THANKS,
www.filmsite.org
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_Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough_ (1974)
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Martin Sheen turned down the lead role in Ridley Scott's _Blade Runner_ (1982) because he was still recovering from the fallout of Apocalypse Now; the part went to Harrison Ford.
*Celebri-links: Harrison Ford!*
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Scale ... Hmmmmm.... scale ...makes me think of the Criminal justice system ..._Anatomy of a Murder_ (1959) !!!!!
*NEW WORD: Thanksgiving Feast!*
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Richard Chamberlain was in: _The Towering Inferno_ (1974) directed by John Guillermin (Irwin Allen directed the "action sequences" only!).
*NEW DIRECTOR: John Guillermin!*
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*Robert Mitchum On TCM - All Times Eastern - Check Local Schedule.*
*Wed, Nov 25, 2009 @ 10:00 PM _Macao_ (1952)*
*_Production_*
When many of Von Sternberg's scenes made no sense dramatically, Ray asked Mitchum to write several bridging scenes. Cinematographer Harry J. Wild worked on the film and filming was completed in 1950 but the film was not released until 1952. Only stock footage was shot on location in Hong Kong and Macau.
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*Don't forget:*
*Wed, Nov 18, 2:00 PM (Eastern Time) - Check Local Schedules!*
_Autumn Leaves_ (1956)
*_Awards_*
Best Directorial Award (Aldrich), Berlin International Film Festival 1956.
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*Blockbuster to Rent Movies Out at SD-Card Kiosks*
Source: Fast Company
November 11th, 2009
It seems that rental chain Blockbuster has found a new way to keep up with Netflix and Redbox with its own kind of rental kiosks. Fast Company is reporting that Blockbuster is starting up a new kiosk program that will allow users to rent films from SD-card kiosks.
The rentals will cost $1.99 and users can bring their own SD cards and download the movie to the card. An upside is the consumer obviously doesn't have to return the movie, but a DRM will be employed that has an expiration date for the film. Once the film is downloaded, you can watch through any SD-enabled device like mobile phones, laptops or televisions, although there are still many devices that aren't SD-ready at this time.
It was said that the higher picture quality from these SD cards is an attempt to lure customers back from streaming services like Netflix. It also wasn't clear when Blockbuster would start rolling out these kiosks either. to read more on these new SD kiosks.
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/blockbuster-rent-movies-sd-cards-why
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*Kind Hearts and Coronets: from 'antisemitic' novel to classic film.*
*The 60th anniversary of Robert Hamer's Ealing classic Kind Hearts and Coronets is the perfect time to get acquainted with the witty, provocative book on which it is based*
guardian.co.uk - Nov 12, 2009
Posted by Peter Bradshaw
guardian.co.uk
*This week, I spoke at the Film Nite discussion group in London on the 60th anniversary of Robert Hamer's Ealing classic Kind Hearts and Coronets. It was a chance to revisit that old chestnut: is it true that you can only make great films from terrible books, and that conversely, great books always get turned into terrible films?*
Kind Hearts and Coronets is the elegant black comedy about a suburban draper's assistant, Louis Mazzini, played by Dennis Price, who by a quirk of fate is distantly in line to a dukedom and sets out to murder every single nobleman and noblewoman ahead of him in the succession so that he can get his hands on the ermine. All the members of this complacent family are famously played by Alec Guinness in various guises, and this multi-performance is superbly detailed and differentiated: not a pantomime dressing-up turn, but an inspired tour de force, as if eight different excellent actors from the same family had somehow been brought to the screen.
It is based on a very interesting book: a 1907 novel called Israel Rank, by the Edwardian actor-manager and author Roy Horniman ? a work which since 1949 has attained a kind of cult fascination by virtue of being, until very recently, obscure and almost impossible to find.
The Daily Telegraph journalist Simon Heffer, with enormous energy and resourcefulness, tracked down a copy, wrote about the book's importance, and it is Mr Heffer who has the distinction of having single-handedly retrieved this novel from oblivion. It is witty, tremendously written and a real page-turner, and is now republished as a print-on-demand item from Faber Finds, with an introductory essay online by Heffer.
However, the weird samizdat aura still surrounds the novel by virtue of the strange copy-editing slips that speckle almost every single page of this new edition.
There is a very specific reason why Israel Rank has been shrouded in reticence and unspoken embarrassment. In the movie, Dennis Price's social-climbing serial killer was supposed to be half-Italian: in the book he is a Jew, whose first name speaks for itself and whose second name hints punningly at social hierarchy but also, unquestionably, at a bad smell.
The adaptation's change ? which of course arguably offends Italians ? could be read as a tacit admission that one of our greatest films is taken from a dubious source, and that there is something questionable about the idea of a Jew (actually his father is a Jew, his mother a Christian) insinuating himself into the intimate friendship of the English nobility, and then murdering them, his cunningly concealed ambition feeding parasitically off the dead bodies of these aristocrats. The most deliriously inspired homicide ? which is not used in the movie ? is Israel's murder of a baby boy by wiping the infant's face with a handkerchief impregnated with the spores of scarlet fever. That comes really very close to the ancient blood libel.
So is Israel Rank the most obviously antisemitic novel of modern times? Simon Heffer argues forcefully that it in fact satirises antisemitism, daringly conjuring up the antisemite's most paranoid fantasies, though in doing so "skirts dangerous territory, and possibly even wades into it". This I think is true, and I think Horniman is also, specifically, satirising English attitudes to the career of Benjamin Disraeli: his wicked antihero at one stage relaxes with a copy of Disraeli's novel Vivian Gray. In its dreary suburban setting, it is also a premonition of the work of Patrick Hamilton.
No lover of the film will want to remain in ignorance of this book; reading it, while imagining Dennis Price's musical voice in your head, is like having access to a delicious deleted scene. But it also has the unfortunate effect of smudging what I can only describe as the film's innocence, if a film about an unrepentant serial killer can be described in this way. The original is, arguably, chancy and provocative in a way that the film isn't. Offensiveness has a certain worrying potency.
Set against this is the fact that the changes made by Hamer and dramatist John Dighton immeasurably improve the book. The murders onscreen have a cantering gaiety and narrative momentum which Horniman lacks. The book has an unwieldy third love-interest for the protagonist, a woman whose abject love for him creates the plot twist which saves Rank from the gallows. But Hamer and Dighton stick to just two women in Louis's life ? Sibella and Edith ? creating a simpler dilemma which is far more satisfying. Finally, Hamer and Dighton come up with a completely original final act, devising an irony by which Louis is arrested for the one murder he never commits: this is a masterpiece of suspense, much better than Israel Rank's final anticlimactic and implausible sloppiness.
Most importantly, removing the "Jewish" part of the book makes it a universal story. Kind Hearts and Coronets is a brilliant satirical parable for career ambition: anyone who has ever yearned enviously for a certain job or position ? and tormented himself with those people ahead of them in the pecking order ? will recognise and perhaps secretly admire Louis for his criminal daring. Israel Rank was a minor classic for its time; Kind Hearts and Coronets is a still major classic right now.
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Bill Murray accidentally broke Robert De Niro's nose during the filming of _Mad Dog and Glory_ (1993).
*Robert De Niro!*
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Dustin Hoffman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955. He enrolled at Santa Monica College with the intention of studying medicine but left after a year to join the Pasadena Playhouse
Dustin Hoffman began acting at the Pasadena Playhouse with Gene Hackman.!
*Gene Hackman.....*
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*_Caretakers, The_ United Artists, 1963.*
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*Janssen, Famke* - A Dutch actress and former fashion model. She is best known for her roles in _GoldenEye_ (1995) , Nip/Tuck and as Dr. Jean Grey/Phoenix in the X-Men movies. Janssen is also a UNODC Goodwill Ambassador for Integrity.
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*Ray, Nicholas* - An American film director best known for the movie _Rebel Without a Cause_ & _Johnny Guitar_ (1954)!
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Errol Flynn was in: _The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex_ (1939) directed by Michael Curtiz!
*NEW DIRECTOR: Michael Curtiz!*
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Alexis Smith was in: _The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane_ (1976) directed by Nicolas Gessner!
*NEW DIRECTOR: Nicolas Gessner!!!*
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Pocket Watch: _Time After Time_ (1979)
*NEW WORD: J'veux ton Amour!!!*
The First Film That Comes to Mind...
in Games and Trivia
Posted
peanuts .. _The Greatest Show on Earth_ (1952)!
*NEW WORD: Nymphomaniac!*