Neuigkeiten

When we talk about films that dare to look history in the eye, few resonate with the quiet devastation of Satyajit Ray’s “Ashani Sanket”. This is not just cinema. It is a memory resurrected through the brilliance and hues of art. The Bengal famine of 1943 was a catastrophe that claimed millions of lives, and it often slips past the pages of textbooks and dinner-table conversations. Ray’s “Ashani Sanket” refuses to let it stay buried as he hands it back to us, not as statistics or as an archival horror. But as something deeply lived, fragile, and human.

We all know of the horrors of the Second World War.

Based on Wahei Tatematsu’s novel “Enrai”, the production of “Distant Thunder” has quite a background behind it. Initially, several directors competed for the adaptation rights, while Nikkatsu considered adapting another of Tatematsu’s novels, “Buriki no Hokukaikisen”. However, those plans were stalled, and focus shifted to “Enrai”. Atg’s Shiro Sasaki intended it to be Kichitaro Negishi’s directorial debut, but by the time the project materialized, it had become his eighth work. It was still, however, his mainstream debut, since his previous productions had been pinku eiga. Negishi, who had no personal connection to rural areas, agreed to direct because the characters he wanted to portray happened to live in the countryside. He had also long hoped to collaborate with screenwriter Haruhiko Arai.

One controversial scene involves a long take of Johnny Okura delivering a monologue inside the greenhouse. Though edited from three cuts, it appears as a...

Veteran actor Denis Arndt, known in part for his role in the hit movie Basic Instinct, has passed away. His death is starting to get reported on by various news outlets, which have revealed that Arndt died at the age of 85.

Per Ashland.news, Arndt died unexpectedly on March 25 at his home in Ashland, Oregon. His wife of 45 years, Magee Downey, confirmed the actor's death. A cause of death was not revealed, but it was noted in the report that Arndt suffered a stroke in 2019, though he had since recovered.

Arndt was born on Nov. 23, 1939. Before he got into acting, Arndt had a stint in the U.S. Army as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. For his service, he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Commendation Medal. He then worked as a helicopter pilot in Alaska before he took an interest in theater, leading to founding Seattle's Intiman Theatre.

Denis Arndt, the familiar character actor who appeared on L.A. Law, Picket Fences and other shows for David E. Kelley and earned a Tony nomination for his turn opposite Mary-Louise Parker in the Broadway two-hander Heisenberg, has died. He was 86.

Arndt died Tuesday at his longtime cabin home in Ashland, Oregon, his family announced.

Arndt also portrayed the newlywed husband of Mary Tyler Moore’s character on the 1988 CBS sitcom Annie McGuire — Adrien Brody played his son — and he was one of the cops ogling Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell in the iconic interrogation scene in Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992).

Arndt started out with Kelley on NBC’s L.A. Law as lawyer Jack Sollers, who arrives in season five (1990-91) to represent the naughty Rosalind Shays (Diana Muldaur) in her sexual discrimination case against McKenzie Brackman.

He recurred as another lawyer, Franklin Dell, on CBS’ Picket Fences over four...

Silver Bear Award Winners (Photo Credit – Koimoi)

Berlin International Film Festival is one of the biggest award shows in the world and is known for recognizing cinema as an art. The show has many prestigious awards, including the Golden Bear for the Best Film and the Silver Bear for the Best Director. The Silver Bear, introduced in 1956, has since been one of the most coveted awards for a director. That honor has been bestowed upon filmmakers whose vision and storytelling push the boundaries of creative expression.

Remarkably, only four directors have been awarded this award on multiple occasions. Among this prestigious quartet stands a figure whose legacy transcends national borders: Satyajit Ray. His work not only elevated Indian cinema to a global platform but also set a high benchmark for artistic excellence. Ray is the only director to win the award in two consecutive years.

Satyajit Ray won the Silver...

“Yasuko, Songs of Days Past” tells the story of a love triangle involving the poet Chuya Nakahara, the literary critic Hideo Kobayashi, and the actress Yasuko Hasegawa in the 1920s. These are all historical figures and the plot is based on true events. While Nakahara and Kobayashi are known in the West, Hasegawa is relatively unknown today. However, she is the central figure in the story.

Yasuko, Songs of Days Past is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

Chuya Nakahara’s life was tragically cut short in 1937 at the young age of 30 due to tuberculosis. He was a pioneer of modernist poetry, and his work continued to gain recognition in the years following his untimely death, earning him comparisons to the Japanese Rimbaud. Director Kichitaro Negishi (“Distant Thunder” 1981) captures a moment from the poet’s youth when he fell in love with aspiring actress Yasuko Hasegawa, while also contending with...

Choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett, who taught Kevin Bacon acrobatic dance moves for his starring turn in Footloose and received two Tony nominations for her efforts on Swing!, has died. She was 78.

Taylor-Corbett died Jan. 12 of breast cancer in Rockville Centre, New York, her son, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, told The New York Times.

A onetime dancer with Alvin Ailey’s dance company, Taylor-Corbett also served as a Broadway choreographer for 1981’s Shakespeare’s Cabaret, 1985’s The Boys of Winter, 1988’s Chess, 1994’s Sally Marr … and Her Escorts, 1997-99’s Titanic, 1997-98’s Jackie and 1999-2001’s Swing!, which she also wrote songs for and directed.

Swing!, a celebration of dance in the big band era, featured zero dialogue and was nominated for five Tonys, including best musical. Taylor-Corbett was up for best choreography and best direction of a musical.

In a 1984 interview, Bacon noted he was not a dancer when Taylor-Corbett worked with...

Prime Video today announced the exclusive worldwide premiere of the Japanese Original film Previously Saved Version, which will be available on September 26, 2024. Previously Saved Version is a psychopathic suspense romance set in space, directed and written by Kei Ishikawa, known for his acclaimed film A Man, which won a total of eight Japan Academy Awards.

The film stars Hideaki Ito, renowned for his extensive work in films, dramas, and stage performances, and Yuko Araki, a versatile actress and model who plays the lead female protagonist in this film.

Set in the year 2200 A.D., the story unfolds in a future where human migration to space and advanced technology enables memory manipulation. Naoki and Mayumi, who live in a luxury floating residence in space, are the perfect couple that anyone would admire at first glance.

Mayumi enjoys ceramics as a hobby, while Naoki is devoted to his own research. They are a peaceful,...

Stars: Saori Izawa, Akari Takaishi, Tatsuomi Hamada, Iwanaga Joey, Junpei Hashino, Atom Mizuishi, Tsubasa Tobinaga | Written and Directed by Yugo Sakamoto

Two years ago, Yugo Sakamoto’s quirky action comedy Baby Assassins came out of nowhere and blew me away with its story of Mahiro and Chisato two high school girls who live secret lives as assassins.

Now the girls are back in Baby Assassins 2 Babies, and they haven’t gotten any better at dealing with day-to-day things like paying their bills. A gym membership that’s been collecting late fees for five years and their insurance needs to be paid immediately. But when robbers strike the bank as they’re trying to, they intervene and get suspended from the Assassin’s Guild for using their skills off the clock.

But finding another job to pay the bills is the least of their problems. Makoto and Yuri are looking...

Above: 1973 New York Film Festival poster designed by Niki de Saint Phalle.The 61st edition of the New York Film Festival, which opens tonight, has 32 films in its Main Slate, fifteen films in its Spotlight section, ten films and seven collections of shorts in the Currents sidebar, and eleven revivals. That's over 60 feature films. Fifty years ago, in 1973, the 11th edition of the festival had just eighteen feature films and nineteen shorts. Just like this year’s opener—Todd Haynes’s May December—1973’s opening night film, François Truffaut’s Day for Night, had premiered four months earlier at the Cannes Film Festival. And as with this year’s festival, the 1973 edition opened, fifty years and one day ago exactly, in the shadow of an artists' strike. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians had been picketing the New York Philharmonic outside Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where the festival was taking place,...

The 61st New York Film Festival kicks off Sept. 29 with Todd Haynes’ drama “May December” starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. Sofia Coppola’s well-received Venice hit “Priscilla” about Priscilla Presley is the fest’s Centerpiece. Michael Mann’s biopic “Ferrari” with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz the closing night feature while Bradley Cooper’s portrait of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein “Maestro,” which had a seven-minute standing ovation in Venice, is the festival’s spotlight gala. Other films screening include Yorgos Lanthimos “Poor Things,” which won the Golden Lion and best actress for Emma Stone at Venice, as well as Andrew Haigh’s “All of us Strangers” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”

A director came into his own 50 years ago at the New York Film Festival: Martin Scorsese. He’s of cinema’s greatest directors, who has made such landmark films as ‘Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” Goodfellas,...

There are plenty of weapons in Horizon Forbidden West and its Burning Shores Dlc, but the legendary weapons make for the powerful and memorable options. These weapons are not only game-changers but are also versatile and flexible, adapting to the various combat situations the player will come across. Obtaining these weapons is relatively straightforward, albeit time-consuming, requiring the player to finish multiple tasks and quests across the Forbidden West. This is in addition to the amount of time spent getting the resources to upgrade the legendary weapons to their fullest and most deadly potential.

Horizon Forbidden West features a total of 26 legendary weapons, with nine belonging to the base game, eight arriving in a New Game+ update, and a final nine appearing in the Burning Shores Dlc. Forbidden West streamlines the weapons from Horizon Zero Dawn while expanding on them, allowing for more play style experimentation. As a result, each...

Angus “Drummie Zeb” Gaye, who sang and played drums on “Don’t Turn Around,” “Shine” and other hits for the UK reggae band Aswad, died September 2. He was 62.

The band announced his death on its Instagram page but did not provide details. “It is with deepest regret and profound loss that we have to announce the passing of our brother Angus ‘Drummie’ Gaye,” the post reads (see it here). “Drummie was much loved and respected by both family, friends and peers alike. [He] has left us to join our ancestors and leaves a huge void both personally and professionally.”

Gaye and his bandmates Tony Robinson and Brinsley Dan Forde met at Holland Park School in London and released a number of singles that dented the UK chart before scoring big with “Don’t Turn Around” in 1988 (see the video below). The jaunty track penned by Albert Hammond and Diane Warren hit No.

The mighty Satyajit Ray directed Soumitra Chatterjee in 14 films. Ray’s son Sandip grew up watching this great twosome at work, one of world cinema’s most accomplished collaborations…. “Comparable with Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni and with Kurosawa and Mifune,” says the affable Sandip Ray, himself a filmmaker of considerable repute. “Soumitra Babu’s collaboration with my father started from before I was born. He had gone to my father to be cast in Pather Panchali in 1959.My father found him too old to play Apu. Later he cast Soumitra Babu as Apu in Apur Sansar, that’s how their collaboration started.”

Sandip cannot stop marveling at the variety of films Satyajit Ray and Soumitra Chatterjee did together. “No two roles in the films they did together are comparable. Soumitra played the most varied characters in my father’s films…I can’t pick favourites..But Apur (in Apur Sansar...

Indian actor Soumitra Chatterjee, best known internationally for his long association with Oscar-winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray, died on Sunday in Kolkata after contracting coronavirus. He was 85.

Chatterjee was born in Calcutta in 1935. While at university he developed an interest in theater and was subsequently mentored by Sisir Bhaduri, a doyen in the field. He pursued an acting career in cinema while working as an announcer with All India Radio.

Chatterjee’s film debut, “The World of Apu,” (1959) was the third part of Ray’s celebrated Apu Trilogy that began with Cannes-winner “Pather Panchali” in 1955 and continued with Venice-winner “Aparajito” in 1956. The film began a fruitful association with Ray over the years that included “The Goddess” (1960), “Three Daughters” (1961), “The Expedition” (1962), “Charulata” (1964), “Days and Nights in the Forest” (1970), “Distant Thunder” (1973), “The Golden Fortress” (1974), “The Elephant God” (1979), “The Home and the World” (1984) and “Branches of the Tree” (1990).

Chatterjee also worked with the other greats of Bengali-language cinema,...

It will take a dedicated fan of romance novels to succumb to the schmaltz of Beautiful Voyage, a step back for director Zhang Jiarui (Distant Thunder, White Wedding). The fact that he covered four major roles on the film — producer, director, screenwriter and editor — is probably an indication that more help, particularly in the editing department, might have eliminated some awkwardness in the storytelling. As is, the pic looked mighty frail as the opening night film of the Shanghai International Film Festival, a responsibility it had to cover single-handedly when the advertised “double bill” with its co-opening-night film ...

It will take a dedicated fan of romance novels to succumb to the schmaltz of Beautiful Voyage, a step back for director Zhang Jiarui (Distant Thunder, White Wedding). The fact that he covered four major roles on the film — producer, director, screenwriter and editor — is probably an indication that more help, particularly in the editing department, might have eliminated some awkwardness in the storytelling. As is, the pic looked mighty frail as the opening night film of the Shanghai International Film Festival, a responsibility it had to cover single-handedly when the advertised “double bill” with its co-opening-night film ...

There haven't yet been any official photographs from the sets of Kenneth Branagh's Thor movie - and the unofficial ones have merely shown groups of vehicles, carefully arranged to block out any fanboy cameras hopeful of catching a glimpse.

And with the film not out until May 2011, it'll be a long time before we get any trailers.

But in the meantime, a fan-made trailer has been pieced together - and it's pretty good. You can watch it below...

I stumbled across it a few days ago (via Collider) and have been wary of uploading it because so many fan-created videos on YouTube end up being removed if they use copyrighted material.

Well-crafted video edits, such as X-Men vs Watchmen, have vanished when the intellectual copyright lawyers get twitchy and, with that in mind, I'm not sure how long this Thor clip will last, especially because it uses a lot...

While many people have taken to photoshop and created very cool images and posters for some of the upcoming comic book movies like Green Lantern and The First Avenger: Captain America, it’s another level of commitment to try and create a movie trailer for Kenneth Branagh’s Thor - a film that has no available footage. Also, some of the actors haven’t been in many movies and the costumes are pretty specific.

But YouTube user EditNinja has attempted to get it done, and using footage from Ca$h, Outlander, Brothers, Hulk, Alexander, Troy, Van Helsing, Defendor, A Perfect Getaway, Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, and trailer footage from The Clash Of The Titans, Swat, Spartan, Marvel Ultimate Alliance Vg and others, he’s created something worth checking out (especially on a Saturday). I’ll say it starts a lot stronger than it...