Noticias

Welcome to a pair of vintage mysteries with George Simenon’s popular Inspector Jules Maigret, a gumshoe who gets the tough cases. Top kick French actor Jean Gabin is the cop who keeps cool, until it’s time to rattle a recalcitrant suspect. In two separate cases, he tracks a serial killer in the heart of Paris, and travels to his hometown to unearth a murder conspiracy.

Maigret Sets a Trap

and

Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case

Blu-ray (separate releases)

Kino Classics

1958, 1959 / B&W /1:37 flat; 1:66 widescreen / 118, 101 min. / Street Date December 5, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber: Trap, St. Fiacre / 29.95 ea.

Starring: Jean Gabin, Annie Girardot, Jean Desailly, Olivier Hussenot, Lucienne Bogaert, Paulette Dubost, Lino Ventura, Dominique Page / Jean Gabin, Michel Auclair, Valentine Tessier, Michel Vitold, Camille Guérini, Gabrielle Fontan, Micheline Luccioni, Jacques Marin, Paul Frankeur, Robert Hirsch.

Cinematography: Louis Page

Film Editor: Henri Taverna

Original Music: Paul Misraki...

Women presidents at the Academy: Cheryl Boone Isaacs is only the third one (photo: Angelina Jolie, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Brad Pitt) (See previous post: "Honorary Award Non-Winners: Too Late for Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich.") Wrapping up this four-part "Honorary Oscars Bypass Women" article, let it be noted that in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 85-year history there have been only two women presidents: two-time Oscar-winning actress Bette Davis (for two months in 1941, before the Dangerous and Jezebel star was forced to resign) and screenwriter Fay Kanin (1979-1983), whose best-known screen credit is the 1958 Doris Day-Clark Gable comedy Teacher's Pet. Additionally, following some top-level restructuring in April 2011, the Academy created the positions of Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer, with the CEO post currently held by a woman, former Film Independent executive director and sometime actress Dawn Hudson. The COO post is held...

By Terence Johnson

Managing Editor

The Oscar race is never a dull one and that couldn’t be any more apparent than in the race for Best Foreign Language film. This year is certainly shaping up to be a battle of David vs. Goliath if you looked at the histories of the countries competing. In one corner, you have Italy, with a whopping 12 wins in this category, facing off with a country like Cambodia, with no Oscar nominations. But such is the beauty of the awards season and the Oscars. So before the nominations come out, here’s an Oscar primer to get you caught up on the Foreign Language films.

Belgium – 2013 Nominee: The Broken Circle Breakdown

Logline/Synopsis: Elise and Didier fall in love at first sight, in spite of their differences. He talks, she listens. He’s a romantic atheist, she’s a religious realist. When their daughter becomes seriously ill,...

On the occasion of writer/director René Clément’s centennial I thought we’d take a look back at his award winning 1952 film Forbidden Games. This drama about children and grief during World War II won the Nyfcc foreign film prize, BAFTA’s best film honors and a special Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (before the category was permanently introduced). Though Clement made other important pictures (Purple Noon, The Walls of Malapaga, Is Paris Burning?) let's just say this one comes with a fair amount of prestige baggage.

it's hard to remember prayers when you're hungry

I had never seen the picture but given my long history covering Oscar’s foreign film prize, where World War II and stories about children are both privileged frequently whether or not they’re “special”, my expectations weren’t enormously high. But the film more than lives up to its lauded reputation.

Above: 1959 poster for Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, USA, 1957).

I’ve always loved this Polish poster for Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon, with its ethereal collage of photography and daubs of paint (not to mention perfectly tasteful type), and I knew that its designer, Wojciech Fangor, had designed a number of other posters in a similar style. But until I started looking into him for Movie Poster of the Week, I had no idea that he is one of Poland’s pre-eminent artists and is still alive and well at the age of 90. Not only that, but he is currently being fêted with a major exhibition, titled Space as a Game, at the National Museum in Krakow (it closes tomorrow if you’re lucky enough to be in the vicinity).

Born in 1922, Fangor was reared on the paintings of Picasso, Matisse and Léger that he would see...

tuesday top ten returns! It's for the list-maker in me and the list-lover in you

The Cannes film festival wrapped this weekend (previous posts) and the most recent Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Secret in Their Eyes is still in the midst of a successful Us run. That Oscar winning Argentinian film came to us from director Juan Jose Campanella. It's his second film to be honored by the Academy (Son of the Bride was nominated ten years back). The Academy voters obviously like Campanella and in some ways he's a Hollywood guy. When he's not directing Argentinian Oscar hopefuls he spends time making Us television with episodes of Law & Order, House and 30 Rock under his belt.

So let's talk foreign-language auteurs. Who does Oscar love most?

[The film titles discussed in this article will link to Netflix pages -- if available -- should you be curious to see the films]

Best Director winners Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) and Milos Forman

(Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

Please Note:...