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By Hank Reineke
Just following Christmas of 1940, Box Office reported Paramount’s new thriller The Mad Doctor would hit cinemas on Valentine’s Day of 1941. The actual sneak-preview – and accompanying publicity push - of the film would take place ten days prior, February 4, at Los Angeles’s Paramount Theater. Then, on Saturday night, February 6, the studio would pull out all the stops, offering a proper premiere for their “blood-chilling drama.” The studio would celebrate the double-bill of The Mad Doctor and The Monster and the Girl as central to a “Spook Week” celebration. Saturday’s “hair-raising” program would not only feature the films but also a magician and Andy Kirk and his Harlem Orchestra… the latter performing their swinging “Spooks and Boogie Woogie” stage show.
The general release of The Mad Doctor, more fittingly described a “drama” than a horror film in industry trades,...
By Hank Reineke
Just following Christmas of 1940, Box Office reported Paramount’s new thriller The Mad Doctor would hit cinemas on Valentine’s Day of 1941. The actual sneak-preview – and accompanying publicity push - of the film would take place ten days prior, February 4, at Los Angeles’s Paramount Theater. Then, on Saturday night, February 6, the studio would pull out all the stops, offering a proper premiere for their “blood-chilling drama.” The studio would celebrate the double-bill of The Mad Doctor and The Monster and the Girl as central to a “Spook Week” celebration. Saturday’s “hair-raising” program would not only feature the films but also a magician and Andy Kirk and his Harlem Orchestra… the latter performing their swinging “Spooks and Boogie Woogie” stage show.
The general release of The Mad Doctor, more fittingly described a “drama” than a horror film in industry trades,...
- 4/12/2022
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
How would you program this year's newest, most interesting films into double features with movies of the past you saw in 2014?
Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2014—in theatres or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2014 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2014 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch...
Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2014—in theatres or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2014 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2014 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch...
- 1/5/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Some movies just vanish.
While Costa-Gavras continues to enjoy a high reputation for his sixties and seventies political thrillers (perhaps more respected than watched, which is a shame) and to some extent for his later American movies (more watched than respected, also a shame), The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), one of his earliest works, is so hard to see that I wound up watching a pan-and-scanned off-air recording taped on VHS from Scottish Television sometime in the eighties, and dubbed into English. At least Simone Signoret seems to have done her own re-voicing, but her erring husband Yves Montand has that strained Amurrican tone I associate with Robert Rietty doing Orson Welles.
So Costa-Gavras' movie, formerly a missing person, turns up as a homicide victim, mutilated to prevent identification. With the performances defaced, the compositions utterly ruined, and the editing patterns minced in this copy (because a cut doesn't mean the...
While Costa-Gavras continues to enjoy a high reputation for his sixties and seventies political thrillers (perhaps more respected than watched, which is a shame) and to some extent for his later American movies (more watched than respected, also a shame), The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), one of his earliest works, is so hard to see that I wound up watching a pan-and-scanned off-air recording taped on VHS from Scottish Television sometime in the eighties, and dubbed into English. At least Simone Signoret seems to have done her own re-voicing, but her erring husband Yves Montand has that strained Amurrican tone I associate with Robert Rietty doing Orson Welles.
So Costa-Gavras' movie, formerly a missing person, turns up as a homicide victim, mutilated to prevent identification. With the performances defaced, the compositions utterly ruined, and the editing patterns minced in this copy (because a cut doesn't mean the...
- 11/6/2014
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Screwball comedy movies, rare screenings of epic box office disaster: Library of Congress’ Packard Theater in April 2014 (photo: Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in ‘The Awful Truth’) In April 2014, the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus Theater in Culpeper, Virginia, will celebrate Hollywood screwball comedy movies, from the Marx Brothers’ antics to Peter Bogdanovich’s early ’70s homage What’s Up, Doc?, a box office blockbuster starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal. Additionally, the Packard Theater will present a couple of rarities, including an epoch-making box office disaster that led to the demise of a major studio. Among Packard’s April 2014 screwball comedies are the following: Leo McCarey’s Duck Soup (Saturday, April 5) — actually more zany, wacky, and totally insane than merely "screwball" — in which Groucho Marx stars as the recently (un)elected dictator of Freedonia, abetted by siblings Harpo Marx and Chico Marx, in addition to Groucho’s perennial foil,...
- 3/27/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will open the 2014 edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival with the world premiere of a brand new restoration of the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (1955). TCM’s own Robert Osborne, who serves as official host for the festival, will introduce Oklahoma!, with the film’s star, Academy Award®-winner Shirley Jones, in attendance. Vanity Fair will also return for the fifth year as a festival partner and co-presenter of the opening night after-party. Marking its fifth year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place April 10-13, 2014, in Hollywood. The gathering will coincide withTCM’s 20th anniversary as a leading authority in classic film.
In addition, the festival has added several high-profile guests to this year’s lineup, including Oscar®-winning director William Friedkin, who will attend for the screening of the U.S. premiere restoration of his suspenseful cult classic Sorcerer (1977); Kim Novak, who...
In addition, the festival has added several high-profile guests to this year’s lineup, including Oscar®-winning director William Friedkin, who will attend for the screening of the U.S. premiere restoration of his suspenseful cult classic Sorcerer (1977); Kim Novak, who...
- 2/14/2014
- by Melissa Thompson
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 26, 2013
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Charles Chaplin is Monsieur Verdoux.
Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times) plays against his classic type in the 1947 dark comedy Monsieur Verdoux, which is generally considered to be his most controversial film.
In this film about money, marriage, and murder, Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the ever-lively Martha Raye).
Both wildly entertaining and deeply philosophical, the quite-sophisticated Monsieur Verdoux is a multi-level work for its asking of heavy-duty moral questions and for its deconstruction of its superstar’s loveable on-screen persona.
The Criterion DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film contain the following features:
• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the
Blu-ray edition
• Chaplin Today: “Monsieur Verdoux,” a 2003 program on the film’s production and release,...
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Charles Chaplin is Monsieur Verdoux.
Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times) plays against his classic type in the 1947 dark comedy Monsieur Verdoux, which is generally considered to be his most controversial film.
In this film about money, marriage, and murder, Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the ever-lively Martha Raye).
Both wildly entertaining and deeply philosophical, the quite-sophisticated Monsieur Verdoux is a multi-level work for its asking of heavy-duty moral questions and for its deconstruction of its superstar’s loveable on-screen persona.
The Criterion DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film contain the following features:
• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the
Blu-ray edition
• Chaplin Today: “Monsieur Verdoux,” a 2003 program on the film’s production and release,...
- 12/26/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
It was inevitable that Chabrol, "the French Hitchcock," to allow for a moment that utterly inaccurate sobriquet, would at some point tackle the most famous of French murderers, the real-life Bluebeard who murdered ten women (plus one child). Perhaps too inevitable: the task may have felt like an obligation. So it's probably good that M. Chabrol took the plunge relatively early in his career, when he was barely typed as a master of crime movies. And indeed, Landru (1963) is more black comedy than thriller.
At first, this seems curious: hadn't Chaplin already made a comedic version of the "Bluebeard" case, one that was rather highly regarded in France? But Chabrol, working with screenwriter Françoise Sagan, has his reasons. Firstly, his version differs from Chaplin's by telling the story relatively faithfully, without changing character names or crucial facts. Secondly, it's tonal similarity (although really, the sense of humor displayed is quite...
At first, this seems curious: hadn't Chaplin already made a comedic version of the "Bluebeard" case, one that was rather highly regarded in France? But Chabrol, working with screenwriter Françoise Sagan, has his reasons. Firstly, his version differs from Chaplin's by telling the story relatively faithfully, without changing character names or crucial facts. Secondly, it's tonal similarity (although really, the sense of humor displayed is quite...
- 1/6/2011
- MUBI
Prolific French director of films with murder at their heart
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
- 9/14/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Claude Chabrol, who died Sunday, Sept. 12 at 80, was a founder of the New Wave and a giant of French cinema. This interview, which took place during the 1970 New York Film Festival, shows him at midpoint in his life, just as he had emerged from a period of neglect and was making some of his best films.
Claude Chabrol's "This Man Must Die" is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There's no doubt as to the villain's identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).
Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.
For this reason,...
Claude Chabrol's "This Man Must Die" is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There's no doubt as to the villain's identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).
Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.
For this reason,...
- 9/12/2010
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
Get Him To The Greek (15)
(Nicholas Stoller, 2010, Us) Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean Combs, Rose Byrne, Elisabeth Moss. 109 mins.
Who knew that if you put together every Brit rock star cliche in the book, you got Russell Brand? Record-label nerd Hill is charged with keeping the wayward Brand on the comeback trail here, but no one's taking the story that seriously; instead there's a tireless stream of one-liners, bit parts and surreal sidetracks to keep us (just about) amused. Brand is fine, but Diddy's manic music exec steals the show.
Good Hair (12A)
(Jeff Stilson, 2009, Us) 96 mins.
Chris Rock is an amiable guide on this documentary journey into African-American hair obsession, bantering in salons, quizzing black celebrities (Maya Angelou, Eve, Ice-t, Salt-n-Pepa), and tracing the cultural and chemical origins of relaxants, weaves and wigs without ever getting too serious.
Tetro (15)
(Francis Ford Coppola, 2009, Us/Ita/Spa/Arg) Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich,...
(Nicholas Stoller, 2010, Us) Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean Combs, Rose Byrne, Elisabeth Moss. 109 mins.
Who knew that if you put together every Brit rock star cliche in the book, you got Russell Brand? Record-label nerd Hill is charged with keeping the wayward Brand on the comeback trail here, but no one's taking the story that seriously; instead there's a tireless stream of one-liners, bit parts and surreal sidetracks to keep us (just about) amused. Brand is fine, but Diddy's manic music exec steals the show.
Good Hair (12A)
(Jeff Stilson, 2009, Us) 96 mins.
Chris Rock is an amiable guide on this documentary journey into African-American hair obsession, bantering in salons, quizzing black celebrities (Maya Angelou, Eve, Ice-t, Salt-n-Pepa), and tracing the cultural and chemical origins of relaxants, weaves and wigs without ever getting too serious.
Tetro (15)
(Francis Ford Coppola, 2009, Us/Ita/Spa/Arg) Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich,...
- 6/25/2010
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
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