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This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network: vampire slayers, secret agents, the Marx brothers and much more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

TV’s Greatest Seasons

Following a comprehensive primer episode featuring all of the series guests asking what makes a great season of television, Baz Greenland is joined by Matt Latham for the first of this new series to discuss Season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer…

At the Movies in the Noughties

It’s not mission difficult for Dev Elson this week, it’s Mission Impossible 2, so it should be a walk in the park for he and guest Craig McKenzie to dig into John Woo’s 2000 sequel…

The Rest of Us

Ahead of the season finale and what is sure to be a monster of a cliffhanger, Maria Lattila joins forces with James Harvey to discuss Joel and Ellie’s tragic final conversation in...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network: new avengers, weird cults, film festivals and much more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Reel Talk

There might be hope for the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet if Thunderbolts* is anything to go by. Sam Stokes and guests Violet Hammond, Baz and Gemma Greenland unpack the latest comic-book blockbuster…

Podcast-616

If you just can’t get enough of Thunderbolts* on the network, are you in luck? Our Marvel-dedicated show sees hosts Hugh McStay and Ashley Thomas joined by guest Dan Owen to unpick the film in detail…

Writers on Film

The Godfather Pts 1 & 2 and Apocalypse Now stand as among the greats in 1970s cinema, no thanks in part to the editing prowess of Walter Murch, who sits down with John Bleasdale to discuss his new book and career, plus don’t miss John reporting exclusively from the Cannes Film Festival with special episodes…...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network: speakeasy vampires, dark technologies, deadly sharks and much more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Reel Talk

The atmosphere is stacked with smoke as Sam Stokes dives in, with guest Nick Chandler, to Ryan Coogler’s unexpected cultural and critical hit, Sinners…

Modern Horror

Six more warnings about our technological dystopia are dispensed by the seventh season of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, so Aj Black and Hugh McStay tumble down the rabbit hole to explore them…

MovieVersaries

They’re gonna need a bigger Bo, who is absent this week as Andy Willliams, Ian Buckley and Violet Hammond celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s seminal Jaws…

Writers on Film

Described as the poet laureate of movie tie-in novelisations, John Bleasdale sits down with the legendary Alan Dean Foster to chat penning tie-in novels for some of the most iconic movies ever made…...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network: organ grinder monkeys, legendary critics, Oscar predictions and more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Modern Horror

Are you an organ grinder or monkey? Find out as Aj Black and Hugh McStay, plus guest Dan Owen, tackle Osgood Perkins’ comic horror The Monkey…

Writers on Film

Legends about this week both on screen and off, starting with host John Bleasdale, including his guest, critic and historian Sir Christopher Frayling, and topped off by their subject, director Sergio Leone…

Academy Watch

The Oscars are imminent and Bo Nicholson has raced to the finish line with mini-episodes on the nominees, an expansive look at Wicked with Violet Hammond, and a final array of predictions with Ian Buckley. How many will they get right?

Reel Talk

Fresh off our Podcast-616 coverage last week, Sam Stokes suits up to tackle the latest salvo from...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network: American idols, almost birthday girls, Oscar hopefuls and more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Podcast-616

Suit up as the Marvel Cinematic Universe kicks off perhaps its most important year since the endgame, with Hugh McStay and Robert Clark teaming up to look at Captain America: Brave New World…

Modern Horror

Listen to the episode talking Longlegs nowwwww, with Aj Black, Hugh McStaaaaay and Dan Owen, and it’ll be nice, but if you don’t listen nowwwww, then we’ll have to make more episodes, not onnnnce, not twiiiiiiice, but as many times as we liiiiiiiike!

Academy Watch

You can practically smell the Oscars coming off Bo Nicholson’s podcast as this week, he chats The Brutalist with Ian Buckley, The Wild Robot with Craig McKenzie and Dune Part Two with Sam Stokes, but what are their chances?

Writers...

Love is in the air this week on the Film Stories Podcast Network: star cross’d lovers, bloody marriages, fine young cannibals and more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

No Book Club

After almost two years following a damp squib of a second season, Yellowjackets returns as does our weekly recap coverage, spearheaded by Aj Black, Kurt North and Matt Latham, who chat 3×01 ‘It Girl’, and 3×02 ‘Dislocation’…

Reel Talk

No, The Brutalist doesn’t have that title because of its length, as Sam Stokes explores with awards enthusiast Bo Nicholson…

Podmetheus

In space, no one can hear you podcast. The Fs network launches a podcast dedicated to the Alien franchise, as Aj Black is joined by Mark McManus to establish the show, and Fs’s own Ryan Lambie to dig into 1979’s Alien…

At the Movies in the 90s

Off to fair Verona this week as star...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network, our array of film and TV chats cover Ancient Rome, slasher movies and more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Reel Talk

Strength and honor all the way this week as Sam Stokes and guest Ian Buckley discuss Ridley Scott’s epic sequel Gladiator II. Are you not entertained?!

Britcom Goes to the Movies

Check it! Bo, join me main men Rob ‘Eaf and Guy Walka to chat all about Ali G: Indahouse, starring bredwin Sacha Baron Cohen, from 2003. Westside!

Modern Horror Podcast

The modern slasher is hacked about with this week as A. J. Black and Hugh McStay cover Chris Nash’s stripped back, artful 2024 bloodbath, In a Violent Nature…

Writers on Film

Don’t forget John Bleasdale’s discussion with Terrence Malick’s production designer Jack Fisk on ‘The Malick Hours’ series, but he also talks to recurring...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network, our array of film and TV chats cover Monty Python, Sean Baker’s Anora and more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

As always, we have a wealth of fascinating topics and opinionated minds to offer on the Film Stories Podcast Network. Below you’ll find chatter about up-to-the-minute movies – including Oscar contender Anora – and classic TV, including Babylon 5.

Here’s what we have on offer this week:

Reel Talk

Sam Stokes is back for another discussion, with guest Bo Nicholson, discussing the film of the moment – Sean Baker’s Anora…

Britcom Goes to the Movies

Join the anarcho-syndicalist commune ran by Rob Heath and Guy Walker once again, with special guest in The League of Gentlemen co-creator Jeremy Dyson, chatting 1975’s legendary Monty Python and the Holy Grail…

The CineHistorians Podcast

Our newest podcast kid on the block...

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network, our array of film and TV chats cover 1960s comedy, B-movie science fiction and more. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Den of Ten

Sam Stokes regularly unpacks people’s favourite top ten’s in popular culture, today being joined by Geoff Owen to discuss their Top 10 Gaming Systems…

The Magic Box

A possible language barrier this week between Kurt North and guest Carl Sweeney as they discuss Lost 1×06 ‘House of the Rising Sun’…

At the Movies in the 90s

The first of a series of bonus episodes coming over the next month sees A. J. Black talk to Perry Constantine about Roger Corman’s 1990 sci-fi horror Frankenstein Unbound…

ChuckyVision

Mark Adams and Dev Elson continue their odyssey into killer doll territory, joined by Violet Hammond to discuss, err… Heartstopper Season 3. Good old tenuous links, eh?

Britcom Goes to the Movies

Not only Peter Cook,...

I hate you, Butler! But you’ll almost certainly love the selection of new things to listen to on the Film Stories Podcast Network. Here’s a menu:

This week on the Film Stories Podcast Network, our shows have been busy bringing you an array of film and TV conversation.

Here’s what we’ve been up to…

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Britcom Goes to the Movies

Joining the network for its third season, Rob Heath and Guy Walker are joined by Smersh Pod funny man John Rain to discuss 1971’s big screen version of On The Buses. You’ll never see Reg Varney in the same way again…

The Magic Box

One of Lost's most iconic hours is on the agenda this week as Kurt North is joined by Darren Mooney to dissect 1×04 ‘Walkabout’. Just don’t tell them what they can’t talk about…

Modern Horror Podcast

Anthology horror series V/H/S...

Scorsese's Letterboxd list reveals his love for cinema, featuring companion movies from a wide range of genres and time periods. The list demonstrates Scorsese's role as a scholar of film, with many obscure choices that show his depth of knowledge. The cinematic elements in Scorsese's latest epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, reflect his passion for classic works and his ability to reimagine them.

Martin Scorsese details which films are the ideal double-features for his movies in his Letterboxd list. The auteur filmmaker directed his first feature movie, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, in 1967. Since then, Scorsese created more copious iconic epics and features, including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Wolf of Wall Street, and most recently, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is currently in theaters.

Taking to Letterboxd, Scorsese reveals an annotated list of the best companion movies to his work. The list included titles across nearly a century of cinema,...

In addition to hosting the Melies d'Or awards for the European Federation Of Fantastic Film Festivals this year, the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival have just held one very fine festival all their own and with things wrapped up they have announced their full slate of awards. And the hardware went to: The Man With The Magic Box by Bodo Kox is the winner of the Asteroide prize (assigned to the best feature film of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival). The international jury, formed by Stefano Disegni, Chris Oosterom and Milan Todorović, chose the film according to the following motivation: “with a visually striking production design, the director creates a universe reminiscent of Orwell and Kafka, with echoes of his country’s dark past. Thereby, he seamlessly blends styles of the past and...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

New projects revealed, including thriller described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”.

New films by internationally feted Polish filmmakers Jan Komasa, Kuba Czekaj and Dorota Kedzierzawska were among 20 projects presented to sales agents, distributors and festival programmers at the sixth edition of the Polish Days (8-10 August) during this week’s New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw.

Komasa - who made his feature debut with Suicide Room - and his producer Leszek Bodzak of Aurum Film (The Last Family) pitched the contemporary social drama Corpus Christi which is based on screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz’s first screenplay for cinema.

The €1m project is being structured as a Polish-French co-production and will begin principal photography in spring 2018.

Bodzak also presented a second feature project, Borys Lankosz’s thriller Dark, Almost Night, which he described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”, to begin shooting this autumn with The Last Family’s Dawid Ogrodnik and Aleksandra Konieczna in the cast...

Never open strange old boxes. It’s a lesson no one ever follows in horror movies.

From the director John R. Leonetti (Annabelle), Wish Upon follows a young girl who was given a strange box by her father that grants seven wishes. For every wish granted, a blood sacrifice is made and her love ones suffer the consequences of her wishes.

The film stars Joey King (Independence Day: Resurgence), Ryan Phillipe (Cruel Intentions), Ki Hong Lee (Maze Runner), Mitchell Slaggert (Moss), Shannon Purser (Stranger Things) and Sydney Park (The Walking Dead).

Wish Upon will be playing nationwide in theaters starting this Friday.

Lrm had a one-on-one interview with Ki Hong Lee on his strong supporting role in the film. He plays an Asian skater, who has a secret crush on the girl with the wish box. He assists her on uncovering the secrets of the box.

Ki Hong Lee discussed...

Milestone wraps up its ‘Project Shirley,’ an in-depth study of the independent director of The Connection and Portrait of Jason. Practically all of Shirley Clarke’s small and experimental films are here from the early 1950s forward, plus a wealth of biographical film.

The Magic Box: The films of Shirley Clarke, 1929-1987

Blu-ray

The Milestone Cinematheque

1929-1987 / B&W + Color

1:37 flat full frame / 502 min.

Street Date November 15, 2016 / 99.99

featuring Shirley Clarke

Produced by Dennis Doros & Amy Heller

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Some disc boutique companies license ready-made movie classics for home video, and some slap whatever odd-sourced items can be had into the Blu-ray format and call it a restoration. Although the general tide for quality releases is rising, only a few companies will invest time and effort in historically- and artistically- important films lacking an obvious commercial hook. Milestone Films has been consistent in its championing of abandoned ‘marginal’ films,...

Doha’s youth-focused film festival screened 80 pictures from 36 countries.

Robert Connolly’s Australian feature Paper Planes, Zig Madamba Dulay’s Philippine title Scarecrow and Spanish duo Pablo Iraburu and Migueltxo Molina’s feature-length documentary Walls (Muros) have clinched the top prizes at the Doha Film Institute’s third Ajyal Youth Film Festival (Nov 29-Dec 5).

Connolly’s endearing tale about a young Australian boy chasing his dream to participate in the World Paper Plane Championships in Japan was voted the top film by the Mohaq jury for children aged eight to 12-years-old.

The Hilal jury, for children aged 13-17, chose Dulay’s tale of a young agricultural worker wrongly accused of theft.

The Bader jury, for jurors aged 18-21, picked the hard-hitting Walls, exploring controversial political barriers around the world.

In the “Made in Qatar” section, the observational documentary The Palm Tree, charting the life story of a palm tree, and the short fiction work Asfoora won the...

Legende and Parts & Labor scripts among development projects at Mia market.

Projects from producer Alain Goldman and directors Hana Makhmalbaf and Sally Potter are among scripts being presented in Rome as part of the Mia’s New Cinema Network (Ncn) and Make It With Italy co-production strands.

In the Ncn strand, La Vie En Rose producer Goldman of Paris-based Legende is in development on English-language Us-set drama Mustang from actress and writer-director Laure de Clermont-Tonnere (Girafada), director of well-received shorts Rabbit and Atlantic Avenue.

Mustang charts the story of an inmate serving an 11-year prison sentence who is given the chance to participate in an unusual therapy programme.

Legende, currently in pre-production on buzzed-about thriller Hhhh, is also supporting Romanian drama 237 Years from first-time filmmaker Iona Mischie.

Paris-based Incognito Films is in development on English-language drama Mobile Homes while English-language fracking romance 50 Miles From Boomtown teams Swiss outfit Turnus Film with Love Is Strange producers Parts & Labor...

Ida producer Opus Film and distributors Against Gravity and Next Film were among the winners at the 8th Polish Film Institute Awards.

The awards were presented at a gala ceremony last night during the Gdynia Film Festival (Sept 14-29).

Lodz-based Opus Film and the Acme PR agency won the prize for ¨International Promotion of Polish Cinema¨ for its Oscar campaign for Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, which won Best Foreign-Language Film at the Academy Awards.

Next Film was recognised for its distribution of Jan Komasa’s Warsaw Uprising and Lukasz Palkowski’s Gods, the big winner at last year’s Gdynia Film Festival with admissions topping 2.2 million in Polish cinemas.

Against Gravity received the award for ¨Distribution of a Non-Commercial Foreign Film in Poland¨ for its release of Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Oscar-nominated Leviathan.

In addition, the 41st Film Summer in Insk beat off competition from the 5th American Film Festival in Wroclaw and the 21st Nationwide...

'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...

Feature Alex Westthorp 28 Mar 2014 - 07:00

In a new series, Alex talks us through the film roles of the actors who've played the Doctor. First up, William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee...

We know them best as the twelve very different incarnations of the Doctor. But all the actors who've been the star of Doctor Who, being such good all-rounders in the first place, have also had film careers. Admittedly, some CVs are more impressive than others, but this retrospective attempts to pick out some of the many worthwhile films which have starred, featured or seen a fleeting cameo by the actors who would become (or had been) the Doctor.

William Hartnell was, above all else, a film star. He is by far the most prolific film actor of the main twelve to play the Time Lord. With over 70 films to his name, summarising Hartnell's film career is difficult at best.

You could do a hell of a lot worse than having esteemed director Martin Scorsese deliver your annual lecture, which is exactly what the filmmaker did at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. His talk, titled Persistence of Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema, runs a little over an hour, but it's an engaging and informative lecture that proves why Scorsese is a master at what he does. The clip opens with a scene from The Magic Box, a biopic about William Friese-Greene, who designed and patented the first movie camera. We're treated to the scene in which the photographer and inventor finally projects a moving image and excitedly shares his discovery. It illustrates the magic of movies, but also Scorsese's passion for cinema, which he...

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In the 1940s and 50s, the Boulting brothers won over filmgoers and critics with a series of classics – from Brighton Rock to Private's Progress. As the BFI begins a retrospective, Michael Newton explores their version of Britain

The history of the Boulting brothers is the history of British cinema in miniature. The brilliance, the comforts and the disappointments are all there. In the 1940s, they take off from documentary realism to reach the heights of noir extravagance, before falling back into a gently unexciting worthiness. At the start of the 1950s they produce two fascinating oddities, characteristic of the oddity of the times. Later that decade, they turn to cosily satirical farce, the products of an exasperated, grump. The 1960s see them trying to get with it and making a middle-aged effort to "swing", but also creating one work that finds a vulnerable, extraordinary beauty in ordinary lives. And after that comes a petering out,...

Before the fictional world of Buffy Summers expanded into the larger ‘Buffyverse’ franchise of today – including Angel, the comic book continuations, video games, conventions and various other media spin-offs – the Slayer and her friends resided in a singular, contained microcosm of suburban America known as Sunnydale. In a way, they still do and always will.

Within this bubble existed a number of arenas that each served a designated purpose: the contrasting poles of home and school, the latter of which led to college; the extracurricular respite of The Bronze; the graveyard, home to many a foe; and the library, centre of knowledge, dutiful research and a place to convene with friends outside conventional social circles.

As self-contained as Sunnydale was, it was still fundamentally a reflection of the real world, more than just a mirror image of an archetypal California hometown with a twist. It was the landscape of every...

Martin Scorsese's family friendly fantasy is a cinephile's delight: a beautifully designed homage to the power of the first film-makers

"I would recognise the sound of a movie projector anywhere!" says one of cinema's greatest pioneers, hearing that mechanical, sprockety whirr. It's a climactic moment in Martin Scorsese's new film: a family fantasy adventure in 3D which turns out to be a hi-tech magic lantern presentation on the wonder of early cinema, and its origins in the world of clockwork craftsmanship: toys, games, illusions.

Hugo is pitched as much to cinephile adults as children, and insists, in a fervent if rather pedagogic way, on that magical quality of cinema which children and grownups generally feel without needing to be told. This is a spectacular and gorgeously created film, with allusions to Harold Lloyd and Fritz Lang, and it's an almost overwhelming assault on the senses from the very...

A child star as Oliver Twist, he became a key figure in epoch-making TV comedy

'Please, sir – I want some more." Rationing was still in force when, under the eye of David Lean's camera, a thin, pale eight-year-old boy named John Howard Davies raised his gruel bowl and dared to request a second serving. That image of Davies in Oliver Twist (1948) spoke to the mood of the moment – suggesting the sort of deprivation that postwar Britain was attempting to legislate out of existence. One scene called for Davies, who has died of cancer aged 72, and his fellow child actors to look on enviously as the bigwigs of the workhouse devoured a great pile of pastries, hams and chicken. The astonished expressions are genuine. None of these boys had ever seen food like it.

The film's production company, Cineguild, had launched a national campaign to secure a talented unknown for the title role.

Director/producer John Howard Davies has died at the age of 72.

He passed away at his home in Blewbury, England on Monday after a long battle with cancer.

Davies first appeared onscreen as orphan Oliver Twist in David Lean's 1948 adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel and he also starred in the Rocking Horse Winner, Tom Brown's Schooldays and The Magic Box.

He stepped behind the camera professionally in the late 1960s and became a director/producer of classic British TV shows like The Good Life, The Goodies, Only Fools and Horses, Monty Python's Flying Circus and Mr. Bean.

Davies was the Head of BBC Comedy from 1977 to 1982.

Experiments in the British seaside town were among the most significant early attempts to bring colour to the film industry

The first thing you see on entering Capturing Colour is Loïe Fuller, or one of her imitators, performing the "Serpentine Dance" on the earliest kind of colour film, hand-tinted frame by frame. Fuller's act, which involved her whirling her silky costume about the stage of the Folies-Bergère with arms and sticks, while bathed in multi-coloured light, transfixed the poets, painters, and sculptors of fin-de-siècle Europe, who saw in the dance a return to the primitive and intuitive, a manifestation of "Art, nameless, radiant", as one of them had it.

Though the film is, conventionally speaking, a relic, the very unnaturalness of the colourist's splotchy handiwork is, speaking otherwise, true to Fuller's literary reputation, taking us a shade closer towards understanding what Mallarmé, intoxicated by her "limelit phantasmagoria", meant by "the...

Got plans on Sunday, Nov. 7, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fans? Cancel them Asap because Chiller is about to give you a day-long marathon of your cult favorite TV show.

Starting at 6 a.m. Et, the horror channel will be airing Season 1 in its entirety and on Monday, Nov. 8 Chiller will begin airing the series in its regular time-slot, weekdays at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Better start clearing those DVRs, Scoobies!

Never ones to give up the chance to write about one of our all-time favorite shows, we decided to use this most awesome-st of awesome news to countdown our favorite Season 1 moments. So, in the immortal words of Andrew Wells: "Come with me now, if you will, gentle viewers. Join me on a new voyage of the mind. A little tale I like to call: Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyrs."

Favorite Moment No. 10: Xander to Cordelia in "Angel...

2010’s MTV European Music Awards take place in Madrid this November. It’s the second time in the illustrious event’s 17-year history that Spain has been chosen to play host and it promises to be quite a fiesta. Taking place on Sunday 7th November at Madrid’s Caja Magica, or The Magic Box, MTV’s prestigious music awards will be hoping to tap into the Spanish capital’s vibrant music scene to make this one a night to remember for everyone involved.

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...