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The November 12, 1958 edition of The Village Voice featured the first installment of the column “Movie Journal” by Jonas Mekas.

“Movie Journal” would become what the Underground Film Journal would argue was the most significant organizing tool of avant-garde cinema created by Jonas, even more so than the Film-makers’ Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives he helped found. But what was the column like before it gained such notoriety?

Well, we don’t have to guess. The book collection Movie Journal doesn’t start reprinting Jonas’s columns until 1959, but the entire archives of the Voice are online.

As a weekly publication, the Voice only published twelve “Movie Journal” columns in 1958. The Underground Film Journal has read all twelve and extracted what films Jonas reviewed each week; as well as made notes of significant avant-garde film happenings.

Jonas reviewed only a few avant-garde films those first two months, including Maya Deren...

The Chalk Garden

Blu ray

1964 / 106 min. / 1:85:1

Starring Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills, John Mills

Cinematography by Arthur Ibbetson

Directed by Ronald Neame

Julie Andrews thrived in the role of governess—even when pitted against the Nazis in The Sound of Music she found plenty of time for sing-alongs—the same for Mary Poppins where the greatest threat was Dick Van Dyke’s British accent. But Deborah Kerr was never so lucky in the job; as the tutor assigned to a pair of possibly possessed tykes in The Innocents, she struggled as much with her own demons as the children’s. She still hadn’t learned her lesson when she signed on as companion to a troubled child in 1964’s The Chalk Garden. Kerr’s presence, along with Hayley Mills, Dame Edith Evans, and Hayley’s dad John, may seem inviting, but beware—the production is in the heavy hands...

Ronald Neame remains somewhat of an underrated, incredibly multi-faceted figure from the annals of classic British cinema. Beginning as a writer/producer/cinematographer for David Lean, Neame began his directorial debut in the late 1940s and stretched into the mid-1980s.

Twice competing at Cannes (his 1969 Muriel Sparks adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie won Maggie Smith her first Oscar), his work ranged from film noir (the Locarno entry The Golden Salamander) and twice went to Venice, with 1958’s The Horse’s Mouth and 1960’s underappreciated post-wwii drama Tunes of Glory, one of three Neame titles to join the Criterion Collection (including The Horse’s Mouth and Hopscotch), and won John Mills Best Actor in Venice while scribe James Kennaway nabbed an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (from his own novel).…...

Konga

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1961/ 1:85 / 90 min.

Starring Michael Gough, Margo Johns

Directed by John Lemont

Like any actor worth their salt, Michael Gough contained multitudes. And so did his fans – from the West End to 42nd Street they gathered as one to sing his praises. Born in Kuala Lumpur and educated in England, Gough bolted Wye College for the Old Vic, eventually graduating to roles in films like Richard III and The Horse’s Mouth. Haunting the studio by day, he tread the boards at night showing a special talent for light comedy and, in the words of critic Caryl Brahms, an “extraordinary capacity for pent-up emotion.”

In 1959 Gough’s day job took a turn for the weird – producer Herman Cohen offered him the lead in Horrors of the Black Museum, the grisly tale of a crime enthusiast with a fetish for eccentric torture devices. And absolutely no capacity for pent-up emotion.

On the day a U.S. appeals court lifted an injunction that blocked a Mississippi “religious freedom” law – i.e., giving Christian extremists the right to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, etc. – not to mention the publication of a Republican-backed health care bill targeting the poor, the sick, the elderly, and those with “pre-existing conditions” – which would include HIV-infected people, a large chunk of whom are gay and bisexual men, so the wealthy in the U.S. can get a massive tax cut, Turner Classic Movies' 2017 Gay Pride or Lgbt Month celebration continues (into tomorrow morning, Thursday & Friday, June 22–23) with the presentation of movies by or featuring an eclectic – though seemingly all male – group: Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Dirk Bogarde, John Schlesinger, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins. After all, one assumes that, rumors or no, the presence of Mercedes McCambridge in one...

The Horse's Mouth is an ongoing feature with a collection of the more head-scratching comments and/or crazy conversations we've had with people in the industry that made us laugh. We thought we'd share them with you as we roll into Memorial Day weekend: Publicist: Can you capitalize his title in front of his name? Reporter: Why? Publicist: It makes him feel more important to have it capitalized. —————————————————————————————————————— Producer: I have no movies. I lost my…...

The Horse's Mouth is an ongoing feature with a collection of the more head-scratching comments and/or crazy conversations we've had with people in the industry that made us laugh. We thought we'd share them with you as we roll into Memorial Day weekend: Publicist: Can you capitalize his title in front of his name? Reporter: Why? Publicist: It makes him feel more important to have it capitalized. —————————————————————————————————————— Producer: I have no movies. I lost my…...

Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers!

Lucasfilm Story Group Creative Executive (long title) Pablo Hidalgo just dropped a spoiler that dispels a major fan theory about the true identity of Supreme Leader Snoke:

@JediMasterPlant Snoke is not Plagueis. Dang. I lost the game.

— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) May 11, 2016

Not that it does much good now, but I never thought that was who Snoke was. It seemed a little too on the nose and too close to extended universe canon, which is no longer actual canon. I mean it's not like my theory that Snoke is of the same species as Yoda, but it does make me feel a bit more vindicated knowing that No One knows who Snoke is yet.

Straight from not The horse's mouth, but A horse's mouth nonetheless. Do you buy it? Are you still in denial? Remember, Andy Serkis also denied that Snoke was Plagueis earlier this year.

The Horse's Mouth is an ongoing feature with a collection of the more head-scratching comments and/or crazy conversations we've had with people in the industry. We thought we'd share them with you. Happy holidays: Reporter: So you are going to have to write off $100M from this dog of a movie. Exec: Yes, but is there any way you can put in the article that we’re very proud to work with the director and that the film is an outstanding achievement for him? —————————————————&#8212…...

The Horse's Mouth is an ongoing feature with a collection of the more head-scratching comments and/or crazy conversations we've had with people in the industry. We thought we'd share them with you. Happy holidays: Reporter: So you are going to have to write off $100M from this dog of a movie. Exec: Yes, but is there any way you can put in the article that we’re very proud to work with the director and that the film is an outstanding achievement for him? —————————————————&#8212…...

The Horse's Mouth is an ongoing feature with a collection of head-scratching comments and crazy conversations we've had with people across the industry that made us laugh or roll our eyes. We thought we'd share them with you: Commenter: “It's kind of sad, really. Chargers fans are crazy loyal. During home games everybody from surfers to scientists are wearing team colors. And all it means to the owners is they're ripe for extortion.” —————————————————————————————————————&#8212…...

The Horse's Mouth is an ongoing feature with a collection of head-scratching comments and crazy conversations we've had with people across the industry that made us laugh or roll our eyes. We thought we'd share them with you: Commenter: “It's kind of sad, really. Chargers fans are crazy loyal. During home games everybody from surfers to scientists are wearing team colors. And all it means to the owners is they're ripe for extortion.” —————————————————————————————————————&#8212…...

 This evening at 92Y Tribeca, J Hoberman will be introducing a screening of Anthony Mann's Reign of Terror (1949, also known as The Black Book) and signing copies of his new book, An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War. For Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Leo Goldsmith writes that "Hoberman's particular interest here is the cinema that captured and often prodded the pathologies of the day: reactionary exposés of the lurking Red Menace, crypto-socialist satires and sympathetic docudramas, and those scads of B-grade Cold War allegories presented in the genre guise of science fiction, the biblical epic, the western. With a cast of characters including G-men, fact-finders, space invaders, coonskin kids, Christian soldiers, and 'white negroes,' and with cameos from the likes of Ronald Reagan, Nick Ray, Orson Welles, and Joe McCarthy, it's a densely detailed, near-hallucinatory history, irradiated with Hoberman's inimitable,...

11:45:  Steven Spielberg classes up the joint when giving out the Best Picture award.  He reminds the "losers" they'll join The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, Raging Bull and a few other masterpieces that didn't win.

Then he announced The King's Speech as the Best Picture winner.

The King's Speech is a very, very good movie.  But not the Best Picture.  The Social Network, Black Swan, Inception and True Grit are all, in my opinion, far superior.  I even prefer The Kids Are All Right.  127 Hours and Toy Story 3 are around the same level as The King's Speech.  (Winter's Bone, I felt, was interesting, but not all that great.)

I suppose this is why awards shows annoy me.  How do you compare art?  You can't.  But Oscar Night can still be fun.  It affords me an opportunity to think back about all the great movies of the past year.

Producer, director and cinematographer of many well-loved British film classics, including Oliver Twist, Tunes of Glory and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The producer, director, writer and cinematographer Ronald Neame, who has died aged 99, played an important role in British cinema for more than half a century. The critic Matthew Sweet once called him "a living embodiment of cinema, a sort of one-man world heritage site". Neame was assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock on Blackmail (1929), the first British talkie; he was the cinematographer on In Which We Serve (1942), Noël Coward's moving tribute to the Royal Navy during the second world war; he co-produced and co-wrote David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946); and he directed Alec Guinness in two of his best roles, in The Horse's Mouth (1958) and Tunes of Glory (1960). As if this wasn't enough, Neame also conquered Hollywoo d with one of the first and most successful disaster movies,...

British director Ronald Neame has died at the age of 99 after failing to recover from a fall.

The Poseidon Adventure filmmaker passed away at a Los Angeles hospital on Wednesday, his friend Peter Bowes has confirmed.

Born in London to photographer Elwin Neame and actress Ivy Close, Neame began his career in the film industry as a messenger boy at the U.K.'s famous Elstree Studios, where he first met acclaimed director Alfred Hitchcock.

He became an assistant cameraman on Hitchcock's 1929 movie Blackmail, before working as a cinematographer on 1933 musical comedy Happy.

He turned to directing in 1947 with Take My Life, and he worked with acting legend Alec Guinness on three of his films, The Card (1952), The Horse's Mouth (1958) and Tunes of Glory (1960).

But Neame will perhaps be best remembered for 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, which earned three Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Shelley Winters. The disaster movie, which also starred Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine, won in the two other categories it was nominated for - Best Song for The Song from The Poseidon Adventure, also known as The Morning After, and Special Achievement in Visual Effects.

During his lengthy career, Neame also worked with Judy Garland, Dirk Bogarde and Dame Maggie Smith, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 1969 for her role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

He is survived by his third wife Donna Friedberg, who he wed in 1993; his son Christopher, a writer/producer, from his first marriage to Beryl Heanly; and his grandson Gareth, who works as a TV producer.

British filmmaker Ronald Neame, whose career dates back to serving as assistant cameraman on the first feature film made with sound in Great Britain, Alfred Hitchcock's "Blackmail," has died, according to reports. He was 99.

No details were available.

His directing credits ranged from "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) to "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969), for which Maggie Smith won the Oscar for best actress.

As a producer, Neame was involved with three British classics: "Brief Encounter" (1945), "Great Expectations" (1946) and "Oliver Twist" (1948). "Brief Encounter" and "Great Expectations" were the fruition of a production partnership called Cineguild that Neame had formed with David Lean and Anthony Havelock-Allan.

As a screenwriter, Neame earned Oscar nominations for the screenplays of "Brief," adapted from a Noel Coward play, and "Expectations," from Charles Dickens' novel. He shared those distinctions with Lean and Havelock-Allan.

Cineguild broke up in 1947 with a fall-out between Neame and Lean when...

Film director Ronald Neame has died at the age of 99, it has been announced. The British star, most notable for helming 1972 movie The Poseidon Adventure, passed away in hospital in Los Angeles on Wednesday, BBC News reports. Family friend and BBC correspondent Peter Bowes said that the filmmaker never recovered after suffering a fall. Along with The Poseidon Adventure, Neame's directing credits include 1958's The Horse's Mouth and 1969's The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, which earned Maggie Smith a 'Best Actress' Oscar. He had earlier worked as a cinematographer on a number of films, and also had screenwriting duties on 1945's Brief Encounter and 1946's Great Expectations. Neame was awarded a CBE for his contribution to the film industry in 1996.

Although best known as a theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan also wrote widely on film, and even wrote screenplays, including Ealing Studios' "least Ealing film ever"

Kenneth Tynan's fame rests on his drama criticism, but he was as much devoted to film as to theatre. He wrote movie criticism for the Observer and star profiles for the New Yorker, and was also, at various times, a script adviser and screenwriter. In fact, it was while working in the former capacity for Michael Balcon at Ealing Studios in 1958 that Tynan co-scripted Nowhere to Go with the movie's director, Seth Holt.

Holt, who had worked for the patriarchal Balcon since 1953, once described Nowhere to Go as "the least Ealing film ever made". And what he and Tynan concocted was a movie that ran totally counter to the studio's preoccupation with harmless eccentrics and benevolent communities. It is, in fact, a crime...

To understand why I'm putting up a post about an English actor who passed away 10 years ago, you have to understand a couple of personal facts about me, how he influenced my life, and played a significant part in influencing so many film fans today.

You see, I’ve discovered that in our lives we can hold many passions and loves, and these can change over time. The ones that stay with us during the majority of our lives tend to play a small part in defining who we are. Big things, small things, important things, insignificant things, it almost doesn’t matter what the subject of our passion is. I’ve found that the happiest people I’ve ever met are those who have a passion for something, and allow that thing to play a part of their lives. Stamps, painting, singing, cars, video games, history, math, science, Elvis,...