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Kino Lorber is back with another stunning 4K restoration, this time for obscure, gritty thriller Night of the Juggler, soon available for the first time in 40 years.

We can exclusively debut the new trailer for the restoration, a re-cut of the original that gives a look at the twisty, sleazy intensity ahead and an impressive cast.

The new 4K restoration of Night of the Juggler opens at the IFC Center in NYC on August 1 before rolling out to select cities that currently include Los Angeles, Atlanta, Portland, San Francisco, Austin, and Chicago, with more to follow.

In Night of the Juggler, “Twenty-four hours of nerve-jangling tension and suspense begin when a twisted psychotic kidnaps a teenaged girl, mistaking her for the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer. Her determined father, a hard-hitting ex-cop, doggedly pursues them through New York’s seamy streets, decaying, burned-out Bronx tenements, and the grimy...

We’ve always loved setting trends at The Film Stage and are accordingly chuffed that, nine months after we screened a 35mm print at the Roxy, Roman Polanski’s late-career triumph The Ghost Writer comes to the Criterion Channel in next month’s Coastal Thrillers, a series that does what it says on the tin: The Lady from Shanghai, Key Largo, The Long Goodbye, The Fog, and the other best film of 2010, Scorsese’s Shutter Island. It pairs well with Noir and the Blacklist featuring films by Joseph Losey, Fritz Lang, Jules Dassin, and so on. Retrospectives are held for Terry Southern, Kathryn Bigelow, Jem Cohen, and (just in time for Caught By the Tides) Jia Zhangke, while Spike Lee gets his own Adventures In Moviegoing.

For recent restorations, Antonioni’s Il Grido and Anthony Harvey’s Dutchman appear. Criterion Editions include The Runner, Touchez pas au grisbi, Godzilla vs.

Last Updated on March 17, 2025

Martin Scorsese is the quintessential New York filmmaker. Sure, some of his greatest films are set in New York, but that asthma kept him inside of a Little Italy apartment to do nothing but study cinema says a lot about how embedded the city is in his blood and his own movies. Now, Scorsese has listed more than 30 of the most essential New York films – and yes, he was modest enough to not list Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and Goodfellas and…

Check out Martin Scorsese’s list of 30+ greatest New York movies below:

Daybreak Express

The Naked City and Kiss of Death

Fourteen Hours

Cry of the City

A Double Life and The Marrying Kind

It Should Happen to You

On the Waterfront

The Wrong Man

Sweet Smell of Success

Shadows

Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man

The French Connection

Bye Bye Braverman

Prince of the City...

New York icon Martin Scorsese is revealing his go-to films set in the Big Apple.

The auteur curated the screening series “Living, Breathing New York” for the Roxy Cinema, which features screenings of four of his favorite NYC movies out of a full list of Scorsese’s 32 favorite New York movies he’s created and which IndieWire is proud to share below.

“Living, Breathing New York” is curated by Scorsese in celebration of the new release of Olmo Schnabel’s NYC-set thriller, “Pet Shop Days,” which Scorsese executive produced. The film premieres March 15 at the Roxy Cinema in New York, and stars Dario Yazbek Bernal and Jack Irv as two lovers whose whirlwind romance sends them down a rabbit hole of drugs and depravity in Manhattan’s underworld. Willem Dafoe (who starred in Olmo Schnabel‘s father Julian Schnabel’s Vincent Van Gogh biopic “At Eternity’s Gate”), Emmanuelle Seigner, Peter Sarsgaard,...

Over more than 40 years in Hollywood, Denzel Washington has only ever reprised one of his characters: Robert McCall of The Equalizer trilogy. Nearly 30 years ago however, there was another potential franchise in the works for him that he, the studio, and director Carl Franklin were all eager to see work.

Although you won’t often hear his name mentioned among auteur theorists, four-time Oscar winner Robert Wise amassed an impressive filmography in his lifetime. Let’s take a look back at 20 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Wise cut his teeth as a film editor, most notably working on Orson Welles‘ landmark film “Citizen Kane” (1941), for which he received an Oscar nomination. He made his directorial debut with “The Curse of the Cat People” (1944), the first of many successful collaborations with low-budget horror producer Val Lewton.

Throughout his career, Wise excelled at a number of genres, including science fiction (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”), film noir (“Odds Against Tomorrow”), horror (“The Haunting”), war (“The Desert Rats”), comedy (“Two for the Seesaw”), and drama (“Executive Suite”). Rather than imposing his own directorial fingerprint on each film, Wise instead tried to adapt his style to best suit the material.

Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow came along at the tail end of film noir’s steady decline in popularity in the 1950s and just before the civil rights movement reached its peak in the ’60s. The quintessential male icons of these two distinct eras clash in the film through the extremely confrontational yet mutually beneficial collaboration between a virulently racist ex-con, Earle (Robert Ryan), and a slick, Black jazz musician, Johnny (Harry Belaafonte).

The unlikely pair are brought together by a disgraced retired cop, Burke (Ed Begley), who caught wind of a robbery that’s a sure thing. If something sounds too good to be true in a noir, it always is, but the weaselly Earle’s too macho to let his doting wife, Lorry (Shelley Winters), continue being the breadwinner. Meanwhile, Johnny’s gambling debts have caused him to be estranged from his wife, Ruth (Kim Hamilton), as...

Courtesy of Kino Lorber

by Chad Kennerk

Considered the first film noir to feature a leading black protagonist, Odds Against Tomorrow is a vital entry in the noir canon. Directed by legend Robert Wise and produced by star Harry Belafonte’s HarBel Productions, the gritty look at racial tension is also one of cinema’s most important films about prejudice. Created amidst growing disquiet in America, the film heralds the explosive events to come at the dawn of the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement.

The screenplay was based on the novel by William P. McGivern (The Big Heat) and secretly written by Abraham Polonsky, who penned the screenplays for films such as Body and Soul and Force of Evil. Polonsky had been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, so Belafonte approached black novelist and friend John O. Killens to serve as the credited screenwriter. It would take until...

Edward L. Rissien, who produced the Burt Lancaster-starring war film Castle Keep and served as an executive at ABC, Bing Crosby Productions, Filmways and Playboy Productions, has died. He was 98.

Rissien died April 8 of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, his nephew, Emmy-nominated director Michael Zinberg (The Bob Newhart Show, The Good Wife, NCIS), told The Hollywood Reporter.

“Eddie was a well-respected man who had beautiful taste in material,” Zinberg said. “He was always looking for something that would make a difference.”

An Iowa native who started out as a stage manager on Broadway, Rissien helped set up Harry Belafonte‘s HarBel Productions after acquiring the film rights for Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), the Robert Wise-directed drama that starred Belafonte, Robert Ryan and Shelley Winters.

He also produced Snow Job (1972), starring legendary French skier and Olympic champion Jean-Claude Killy as a thief in his only feature role,...

The star with the gorgeous calypso voice was also a naturally passionate actor who appeared in heists, colonial confrontations – and even the last love triangle on Earth

In the middle of the 20th century, Harry Belafonte was at the dizzying high point of his stunning multi-hyphenate celebrity: this handsome, athletic, Caribbean-American star with a gorgeous calypso singing voice was at the top of his game in music, movies and politics. He was the million-selling artist whose easy and sensuous musical stylings and lighter-skinned image made him acceptable to white audiences. But this didn’t stop him having a fierce screen presence and an even fiercer commitment to civil rights. He was the friend and comrade of Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King Jr – and his crossover success, incidentally, never stopped him being subject to the ugliest kind of bigotry from racists who saw his fame as a kind of infiltration.

On Tuesday, the world lost an icon in the legendary performer, civil rights activist, and humanitarian Harry Belafonte. The Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winner passed away at the age of 96. After starting his career in his native New York City as a jazz singer in the late 1940s and early ’50s, often backed by the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Max Roach, he released his first hit song “Matilda” in 1953. Then, a year later, he won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.” His first album “Calypso” was released in 1956 and brought unquestionably the most enduring song of his career, “Day-o (The Banana Boat Song).”

Belafonte went on to regularly perform with the Rat Pack in Las Vegas throughout the years while also transitioning to the screen. During the 1950s, he starred in such films as “Carmen Jones,” “Island in the Sun,...

Harry Belafonte, a beloved Hollywood star, iconic singer, and prominent civil rights activist, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan's Upper West Side, The New York Times reported. He was 96 years old. That outlet noted that Belafonte's longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine confirmed the actor died of congestive heart failure.

Belafonte rose to astronomical heights in the 20th century as one of the most renowned entertainers of his time, who blazed trails for other Black performers alongside icons like his late friend Sidney Poitier. The actor became known as one of the first Black leading men in Hollywood, starring in iconic films like 1954's "Carmen Jones," as well as many TV variety specials. Belafonte also forayed into film production with features like "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" and heist picture "Odds Against Tomorrow," both from 1959.

According to Variety, Belafonte then stepped back from the big screen for...

Harry Belafonte, the actor, producer, singer and activist who made calypso music a national phenomenon with “Day-o” (The Banana Boat Song) and used his considerable stardom to draw attention to Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights issues and injustices around the world, has died. He was 96.

Belafonte, recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2014, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his Manhattan home on the Upper West Side with his wife, Pamela, by his side, longtime spokesman Ken Sunshine told The Hollywood Reporter.

A master at blending pop, jazz and traditional West Indian rhythms, the Caribbean-American Belafonte released more than 30 albums during his career and received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy from the Recording Academy in 2000.

Calypso, which featured “Day-o” and another hit, “Jamaica Farewell,” topped the Billboard pop album list for an incredible 31 weeks in 1956 and is credited as...

Iconic actor, musician, and lifelong activist Harry Belafonte has died at the age of 96. The cause, per his longtime spokesman Ken Sunshine, was congestive heart failure.

Belafonte’s singing shaped a musical consciousness for generations of Americans, from traditional folk music and spirituals to Caribbean calypso and protest songs. His acting in films such as “Carmen Jones” and “Odds Against Tomorrow” won praise and helped pave the way for Black performers who would follow. And his activism took him to the front lines of the civil rights movement, where he marched with Martin Luther King Jr., lobbied for the release of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela, and joined other stars to raise money for famine relief on the African continent. Realizing from an early age the power of celebrity to advance social change, Belafonte was among the rare few to have been equally entrenched in the worlds of entertainment and politics with genuine results to spare.

Singer, actor, producer and activist Harry Belafonte, who spawned a calypso craze in the U.S. with his music and blazed new trails for African-American performers, has died of congestive heart failure at his Manhattan home. He was 96.

An award-winning Broadway performer and a versatile recording and concert star of the ’50s, the lithe, handsome Belafonte became one of the first black leading men in Hollywood. He later branched into production work on theatrical films and telepics.

As his career stretched into the new millennium, his commitment to social causes never took a back seat to his professional work.

An intimate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he was an important voice in the ’60s civil rights movement, and he later embarked on charitable activities on behalf of underdeveloped African nations. He was an outspoken opponent of South Africa’s apartheid policies.

Belafonte was set to receive the Motion Picture...

Harry Belafonte, the pioneering Calypso singer, actor, and civil rights leader, has died at the age of 96.

According to The New York Times, Belafonte passed away on Tuesday from congestive heart failure.

Born on March 1st, 1927 in Harlem, New York to Jamaican-American parents, Harold Bellanfanti, Jr. served in the Navy in World War II before becoming enamored with the stage while attending shows at the American Negro Theater with close friend Sidney Poitier. Eventually, he began performing at the venue after taking acting classes at The New School and won a Tony Award for the 1953 musical revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.

Belafonte began his musical career performing in nightclubs as a way to afford his acting classes. In 1953, he signed a recording contract with RCA Victor and released his debut single, “Matilda,” ahead of his breakthrough album Calypso. The 1956 LP topped the Billboard album chart for 31 weeks and spawned...

A late era noir which sets aside the femme fatales and short-lived husbands to focus on the simplest of crimes – robbery carried out for sake of accessing some ready cash – Odds Against Tomorrow taps into Fifties America’s deep social unease, finding the same problems amongst the criminal fraternity that exist elsewhere, and highlighting the damage they do to all concerned. It was produced by Harry Belafonte, who also stars in it as nightclub singer Johnny Ingram, a man whose gambling addiction forces him to go to desperate lengths. Still working at 96, Belafonte is now the only surviving member of its core cast, but it retains a fan following, as a screening in the Gloria Grahame strand at the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival made clear.

Grahame plays Helen, not quite a femme fatale but certainly a complicating influence in the life of career criminal Earle Slater (Robert Ryan),...

Another month, another Criterion Channel lineup. In accordance with Black History Month their selections are especially refreshing: seven by Melvin Van Peebles, five from Kevin Jerome Everson, and Criterion editions of The Harder They Come and The Learning Tree.

Regarding individual features I’m quite happy to see Abderrahmane Sissako’s fantastic Bamako, last year’s big Sundance winner (and Kosovo’s Oscar entry) Hive, and the remarkably beautiful Portuguese feature The Metamorphosis of Birds. Add a three-film Laura Dern collection (including the recently canonized Smooth Talk) and Pasolini’s rarely shown documentary Love Meetings to make this a fine smorgasboard.

See the full list of February titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

Alan & Naomi, Sterling Van Wagenen, 1992

All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk, 1955

The Angel Levine, Ján Kadár, 1970

Babylon, Franco Rosso, 1980

Babymother, Julian Henriques, 1998

Bamako, Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006

Beat Street, Stan Lathan, 1984

Blacks Britannica, David Koff, 1978

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,...

The legendary punk god joins us to talk about movies he finds unforgettable. Special appearance by his cat, Moon Unit.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Tapeheads (1988)

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Eli Roth’s trailer commentary

A Face In The Crowd (1957) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Meet John Doe (1941)

Bob Roberts (1992)

Bachelor Party (1984)

Dangerously Close (1986)

Videodrome (1983) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

F/X (1986)

Hot Rods To Hell (1967)

Riot On Sunset Strip (1967)

While The City Sleeps (1956) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Spider-Man (2002)

The Killing (1956) – Michael Lehmann’s trailer commentary

Serpent’s Egg (1977)

The Thin Man (1934)

Meet Nero Wolfe (1936)

The Hidden Eye (1945)

Eyes In The Night (1942)

Sudden Impact (1983) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary

Red Dawn (1984)

Warlock (1989)

The Dead Zone (1983) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

Secret Honor (1984)

The Player (1992) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary,...

While the summer movie season will kick off shortly––and we’ll be sharing a comprehensive preview on the arthouse, foreign, indie, and (few) studio films worth checking out––on the streaming side, The Criterion Channel and Mubi have unveiled their May 2021 lineups and there’s a treasure trove of highlights to dive into.

Timed with Satyajit Ray’s centenary, The Criterion Channel will have a retrospective of the Indian master, along with series on Gena Rowlands, Robert Ryan, Mitchell Leisen, Michael Almereyda, Josephine Decker, and more. In terms of recent releases, they’ll also feature Fire Will Come, The Booksellers, and the new restoration of Tom Noonan’s directorial debut What Happened Was….

On Mubi, in anticipation of Undine, they’ll feature two essential early features by Christian Petzold, Jerichow and The State That I Am In, along with his 1990 short documentary Süden. Also amongst the lineup is Sophy Romvari’s Still Processing,...

Cicely Tyson, the trailblazing actress died whose career spanned more than six decades, died Thursday afternoon, her manager Larry Thompson confirmed. She was 96.

From the start of her career, Tyson resolved to portray strong, positive, and realistic images of black women onscreen, and for many, she represented an enduring strength. Tyson received an Oscar nomination in 1973 for Martin Ritt’s drama Sounder (and was finally given an honorary Oscar in 2018), and became famous to a wider audience for her starring role in the 1974 TV movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,...

America doesn’t have a system of knights or dames, as Britain, Australia and New Zealand do. If there were such a system, Cicely Tyson would have undoubtedly been honored. But Tyson, who died on Thursday, a month after her 96th birthday, didn’t need any government-sanctioned titles: Admirers such as Ava DuVernay, Tyler Perry and Shonda Rhimes call her Queen Cicely, which was much more appropriate for her.

Her 70-year career was filled with landmark works, including the film “Sounder” (1972) and TV’s “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (1974), “Roots” (1977), “A Woman Called Moses”, and “The Trip to Bountiful” (2014), among many others. There was also her recurring role in “How to Get Away With Murder,” in which she was Emmy-nominated five times, most recently in 2020, for playing the mother of lead character Annalise Keating (Viola Davis).

In 2018, Whoopi Goldberg told Variety, “When you think about artistry and elegance in acting,...

Emmy- and Tony-winning actress Cicely Tyson, who distinguished herself in theater, film and television, died on Thursday afternoon. She was 96.

“I have managed Miss Tyson’s career for over 40 years, and each year was a privilege and blessing,” her manager, Larry Thompson, said in a statement. “Cicely thought of her new memoir as a Christmas tree decorated with all the ornaments of her personal and professional life. Today she placed the last ornament, a Star, on top of the tree.”

Her memoir “Just As I Am” was published on Tuesday.

Tyson broke into movies with the 1959 Harry Belafonte film “Odds Against Tomorrow,” followed by “The Comedians,” “The Last Angry Man,” “A Man Called Adam” and “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” Refusing to participate in the blaxploitation movies that became popular in the late ’60s, she waited until 1972 to return to the screen in the drama “Sounder,” which captured several...

Today’s noir forecast is vice, kidnapping, murder, suicide, narcotics and a sleazy stolen baby racket! Kino’s third volume of Universal-International pix contains two seldom-screened quality urban noirs. Expect genuine dark themes in these sizable-budget location noirs filmed before Universal pulled most production back onto its one-size-fits-all backlot sets. Barbara Stanwyck dominates one show, while noir stalwarts Richard Conte and Dennis O’Keefe anchor the other two dramas, with dynamic showings by Coleen Gray, Edith Barrett, Peggy Dow, Jeanette Nolan, Meg Randall and especially Gale Storm.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema III

Abandoned, The Lady Gambles, The Sleeping City

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1949-50 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 79,99,86 min. / Street Date June 9, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.99

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Meg Randall, Raymond Burr, Marjorie Rambeau, Jeanette Nolan, Mike Mazurki, Will Kuluva, David Clarke; Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Preston, Stephen McNally, Edith Barrett, John Hoyt,...

Why do we like horror and monster movies that routinely get labeled as ‘bad?’ Because many of them have great story ideas and look at the world from odd, warped viewpoints. Back when ‘warped’ wasn’t a prerequisite for All filmed entertainment (my exaggeration) this murderous rejuvenation tale could be appreciated as something unusual, even quirky. Jeez, the characters are even nastier than the people I know! Lovely Coleen Gray takes a chance on a downmarket Universal programmer and proves how well she can carry a movie, even through several dubious horror make-ups.

The Leech Woman

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1960 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 77 min. / Street Date August 27, 2019 / Available from Scream Factory

Starring: Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Phillip Terry, Gloria Talbott, John Van Dreelen, Estelle Hemsley, Kim Hamilton, Arthur Batanides, Murray Alper, Paul Thompson.

Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter

Film Editor: Milton Carruth

Original Music: Irving Gertz

Written by David Duncan, story by Ben Pivar,...

Robert Wise would’ve celebrated his 104th birthday on September 10. Although you won’t often hear his name mentioned among auteur theorists, the four-time Oscar winner amassed an impressive filmography in his lifetime. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 20 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Wise cut his teeth as a film editor, most notably working on Orson Welles‘ landmark film “Citizen Kane” (1941), for which he received an Oscar nomination. He made his directorial debut with “The Curse of the Cat People” (1944), the first of many successful collaborations with low-budget horror producer Val Lewton.

Throughout his career, Wise excelled at a number of genres, including science fiction (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”), film noir (“Odds Against Tomorrow”), horror (“The Haunting”), war (“The Desert Rats”), comedy (“Two for the Seesaw”), and drama (“Executive Suite”). Rather than imposing his own directorial fingerprint on each film,...

Apple has secured the rights to a project based on Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine story, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change” and the forthcoming book of the same name, to be produced by Anonymous Content. Rich and Steve Golin (“Spotlight”) will produce the project.

Rich’s “Losing Earth tells the story of efforts by a number of top scientists, activists, and politicians to stop climate change in the 1980s. The story was published this month in the New York Times Magazine. A book based on the article is set to be published by McD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux next year.

Rich is represented by Elyse Cheney at The Cheney Agency. He is an editor at large at the New York Times Magazine, and the author of the novels “King Zeno,” “Odds Against Tomorrow,” and “The Mayor’s Tongue.”

The deal for “Losing Earth” continues...

In a competitive situation, Apple has landed the rights to Nathaniel Rich’s 70-page New York Times Magazine story “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change” and his upcoming book based on same for TV series development.

Anonymous Content will produce the project, with Rich and Anonymous CEO Steven Golin (Spotlight) serving as executive producers.

In “Losing Earth,” Rich tells story of a small group of American scientists, activists, and politicians who, between 1979 and 1989, tried to save the world from the ravages of climate change before it was too late. The piece occupied an entire special August 1 issue of the New York Times Magazine. Produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center, “Losing Earth” is based on more than 18 months of original reporting, well over a hundred interviews, and thousands of archival documents, many previously unknown, from government and industry sources. In recounting the story of the decisive...

“Racial Tolerance: It’s Good for America And good for Criminals!” Harry Belafonte’s second production is a noir keeper, thanks to a top-flight cast and sharp direction by Robert Wise. The big heist is on, but Robert Ryan’s anger management problem all but assures doom and disaster. It’s Wise’s last gritty action picture before moving up to big-scale audience pleasers; he pulls off some slick images with film sensitive to infra-red light.

Odds Against Tomorrow

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1959 / B&W / 1:77 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date May 29, 2018 / available through the Olive Films website / 24.95

Starring: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, Will Kuluva, Kim Hamilton, Mae Barnes, Richard Bright, Carmen De Lavallade, Lew Gallo, Lois Thorne, Wayne Rogers, Zohra Lampert, Mel Stewart, Cicely Tyson.

Cinematography: Joseph C. Brun

Film Editor: Dede Allen

Original Music: John Lewis

Written by John O. Killens (fronting for Abraham Polonsky), Nelson Gidding,...

by Nathaniel R

Harry Belafonte in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

The great activist, musician, and movie actor Harry Belafonte is turning 91 years young today (there's a concert tonight in his honor at City College here in NYC), and we wantto wish him a very happy birthday. My parents had one of his vinyl albums and I loved his voice as a wee one.

This birthday reminded me that it's been a long time since we updated our celebratory list of elderly screen stars who are still among us! We've been keeping this list for several years now and the rich line of comments over the years reminds us of how glad we are that the internet can bring so many people together to appreciate the magical craft of acting. Watch an old movie or TV show this month and discover a surviving talent that you didn't even know to love before!

★★★★☆ Now available on DVD and Blu-ray, Odds Against Tomorrow is also another welcome addition to the BFI's Black Star slate. One of the most striking things upon viewing this admirably dark and gritty crime yarn is the realisation that the filmmaker behind it is the same person who unleashed a singing nun and seven moppets extolling the joys of music scales into the world. Made six years before saccharine-drenched megahit, The Sound of Music, prolific director Robert Wise was at the helm for this hard-hitting noir.

Dirty cops were a movie vogue in 1954, and Edmond O'Brien scores as a real dastard in this overachieving United Artists thriller. Dreamboat starlet Marla English is the reason O'Brien's detective kills for cash, and then keeps killing to stay ahead of his colleagues. And all to buy a crummy house in the suburbs -- this man needs career counseling. Shield for Murder Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1954 / B&W / 1:75 widescreen / 82 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Edmond O'Brien, Marla English, John Agar, Emile Meyer, Carolyn Jones, Claude Akins, Herbert Butterfield, Hugh Sanders, William Schallert, Robert Bray, Richard Deacon, David Hughes, Gregg Martell, Stafford Repp, Vito Scotti. Cinematography Gordon Avil Film Editor John F. Schreyer Original Music Paul Dunlap Written by Richard Alan Simmons, John C. Higgins from the novel by William P. McGivern <Produced by Aubrey Schenck, (Howard W. Koch) Directed by Edmond O'Brien, Howard W. Koch

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Here's the kind of '50s movie we love, an ambitious, modest crime picture that for its time had an edge. In the 1950s our country was as blind to the true extent of police corruption as it was to organized crime. Movies about bad cops adhered to the 'bad apple' concept: it's only crooked individuals that we need to watch out for, never the institutions around them. Thanks to films noir, crooked cops were no longer a film rarity, even though the Production Code made movies like The Asphalt Jungle insert compensatory scenes paying lip service to the status quo: an imperfect police force is better than none. United Artists in the 1950s helped star talent make the jump to independent production, with the prime success stories being Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. But the distribution company also funded proven producers capable of putting out smaller bread 'n' butter movies that could prosper if costs were kept down. Edward Small, Victor Saville, Levy-Gardner-Laven. Aubrey Schenck and Howard C. Koch produced as a team, and for 1954's Shield for Murder Koch co-directed, sharing credit with the film's star, Edmond O'Brien. The show is a smart production all the way, a modestly budgeted 'B' with 'A' ambitions. O'Brien was an industry go-getter trying to channel his considerable talent in new directions. His leading man days were fading but he was in demand for parts in major films like The Barefoot Contessa. The producers took care with their story too. Writers Richard Alan Simmons and John C. Higgins had solid crime movie credits. Author William P. McGivern wrote the novel behind Fritz Lang's The Big Heat as well as Rogue Cop and Odds Against Tomorrow. All of McGivern's stories involve crooked policemen or police corruption. Shield for Murder doesn't tiptoe around its subject matter. Dirty cop Detective Lt. Barney Nolan (O'Brien) kills a hoodlum in an alley to steal $25,000 of mob money. His precinct boss Captain Gunnarson (Emile Meyer) accepts Barney's version of events and the Asst. D.A. (William Schallert) takes the shooting as an open and shut case. Crime reporter Cabot (Herbert Butterfield) has his doubts, and lectures the squad room about the abuse of police power. Barney manages to placate mob boss Packy Reed (Hugh Sanders), but two hoods continue to shadow him. Barney's plan for the money was to buy a new house and escape the rat race with his girlfriend, nightclub cashier Patty Winters (Marla English). But a problem surfaces in the elderly deaf mute Ernst Sternmueller (David Hughes), a witness to the shooting. Barney realizes that his only way forward is to kill the old man before he can tell all to Det. Mark Brewster (John Agar), Barney's closest friend. Once again one of society's Good Guys takes a bite of the forbidden apple and tries to buck the system. Shield for Murder posits an logical but twisted course of action for a weary defender of the law who wants out. Barney long ago gave up trying to do anything about the crooks he can't touch. The fat cat Packy Reed makes the big money, and all Barney wants is his share. Barney's vision of The American Dream is just the middle-class ideal, the desirable Patty Winters and a modest tract home. He's picked it out - it sits partway up a hill in a new Los Angeles development, just finished and already furnished. Then the unexpected witness shows up and everything begins to unravel; Barney loses control one step at a time. He beats a mob thug (Claude Akins) half to death in front of witnesses. When his pal Mark Brewster figures out the truth, Barney has to use a lot of his money to arrange a getaway. More mob trouble leads to a shoot-out in a high school gym. The idea may have been for the star O'Brien to coach actors John Agar and Marla English to better performances. Agar is slightly more natural than usual, but still not very good. The gorgeous Ms. English remains sweet and inexpressive. After several unbilled bits, the woman often compared to Elizabeth Taylor was given "introducing" billing on the Shield for Murder billing block. Her best-known role would be as The She-Creature two years later, after which she dropped out to get married. Co-director O'Brien also allows Emile Meyer to go over the top in a scene or two. But the young Carolyn Jones is a standout as a blonde bargirl, more or less expanding on her small part as a human ashtray in the previous year's The Big Heat. Edmond O'Brien is occasionally a little to hyper, but he's excellent at showing stress as the trap closes around the overreaching Barney Nolan. Other United Artists budget crime pictures seem a little tight with the outdoors action -- Vice Squad, Witness to Murder, Without Warning -- but O'Brien and Koch's camera luxuriates in night shoots on the Los Angeles streets. This is one of those Blu-rays that Los Angelenos will want to freeze frame, to try to read the street signs. There is also little downtime wasted in sidebar plot detours. The gunfight in the school gym, next to an Olympic swimming pool, is an action highlight. The show has one enduring sequence. With the force closing in, Barney rushes back to the unfinished house he plans to buy, to recover the loot he's buried next to its foundation. Anybody who lived in Southern California in the '50s and '60s was aware of the massive suburban sprawl underway, a building boom that went on for decades. In 1953 the La Puente hills were so rural they barely served by roads; the movie The War of the Worlds considered it a good place to use a nuclear bomb against invading Martians. By 1975 the unending suburbs had spread from Los Angeles, almost all the way to Pomona. Barney dashes through a new housing development on terraced plots, boxy little houses separated from each other by only a few feet of dirt. There's no landscaping yet. Even in 1954 $25,000 wasn't that much money, so Barney Nolan has sold himself pretty cheaply. Two more latter-day crime pictures would end with ominous metaphors about the oblivion of The American Dream. In 1964's remake of The Killers the cash Lee Marvin kills for only buys him a patch of green lawn in a choice Hollywood Hills neighborhood. The L.A.P.D. puts Marvin out of his misery, and then closes in on another crooked detective in the aptly titled 1965 thriller The Money Trap. The final scene in that movie is priceless: his dreams smashed, crooked cop Glenn Ford sits by his designer swimming pool and waits to be arrested. Considering how well things worked out for Los Angeles police officers, Edmond O'Brien's Barney Nolan seems especially foolish. If Barney had stuck it out for a couple of years, the new deal for the L.A.P.D. would have been much better than a measly 25 grand. By 1958 he'd have his twenty years in. After a retirement beer bash he'd be out on the road pulling a shiny new boat to the Colorado River, like all the other hardworking cops and firemen enjoying their generous pensions. Policemen also had little trouble getting house loans. The joke was that an L.A.P.D. cop might go bad, but none of them could be bribed. O'Brien directed one more feature, took more TV work and settled into character parts for Jack Webb, Frank Tashlin, John Ford, John Frankenheimer and finally Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch, where he was almost unrecognizable. Howard W. Koch slowed down as a director but became a busy producer, working with Frank Sinatra for several years. He eventually co-produced Airplane! The Kl Studio Classics Blu-ray of Shield for Murder is a good-looking B&W scan, framed at a confirmed-as-correct 1:75 aspect ratio. The picture is sharp and detailed, and the sound is in fine shape. The package art duplicates the film's original no-class sell: "Dame-Hungry Killer-Cop Runs Berserk! The first scene also contains one of the more frequently noticed camera flubs in film noir -- a really big boom shadow on a nighttime alley wall. Kino's presentation comes with trailers for this movie, Hidden Fear and He Ran All the Way. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Shield for Murder Blu-ray rates: Movie: Good Video: Very Good Sound: Excellent Supplements: Trailers for Shield for Murder, Hidden Fear, He Ran All the Way Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? N0; Subtitles: None Packaging: Keep case Reviewed: June 7, 2016 (5115murd)

Visit DVD Savant's Main Column Page Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: dvdsavant@mindspring.com

Text © Copyright 2016 Glenn Erickson...

Two obscure Robert Wise titles reach Blu-ray release this month, both direct follow-ups to some of the auteur’s more iconic works. First up is 1962’s Two for the Seesaw, a romantic drama headlined by Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine following the famed 1961 title West Side Story. But the decade prior would fine Wise unveiling one of his most stilted efforts, The Captive City (1952), a sort-of noir procedural which followed his sci-fi social commentary The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Providing John Forsythe with his first starring role (a performer who would find his most famous roles decades later on television, as Blake Carrington in “Dynasty,” and of course, the famous voice in “Charlie’s Angels”), it has to be one of the most unenthusiastic renderings of organized crime ever committed to celluloid. A scrappy journalist defies the mob ruled police force and a slick Mafia boss in a tired...

Robert Wise's taut noir suspenser about the Mafia takeover of a small city is like an underworld Invasion of the Body Snatchers. John Forsythe's newsman slowly realizes that gambling corruption has infiltrated the business district, city hall, and even his close associates; he's expected to become a crook too, or else. Great docudrama style aided by a special deep-focus lens; Estes Kefauver makes a personal appearance touting the crime-busting Washington committee that inspired the picture. The Captive City Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1952 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 91 min. Street Date January 5, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring John Forsythe, Joan Camden, Marjorie Crossland, Victor Sutherland, Ray Teal, Martin Milner, Geraldine Hall, Hal K. Dawson, Paul Brinegar, Estes Kefauver, Victor Romito. Cinematography Lee Garmes Film Editor Robert Swink Original Music Jerome Moross Written by Alvin M. Josephy Jr., Karl Kamb Produced by Theron Warth Directed by Robert Wise

Reviewed...

Patricia Neal ca. 1950. Patricia Neal movies: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'A Face in the Crowd' Back in 1949, few would have predicted that Gary Cooper's leading lady in King Vidor's The Fountainhead would go on to win a Best Actress Academy Award 15 years later. Patricia Neal was one of those performers – e.g., Jean Arthur, Anne Bancroft – whose film career didn't start out all that well, but who, by way of Broadway, managed to both revive and magnify their Hollywood stardom. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” series, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating Sunday, Aug. 16, '15, to Patricia Neal. This evening, TCM is showing three of her best-known films, in addition to one TCM premiere and an unusual latter-day entry. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Robert Wise was hardly a genre director. A former editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons...

The criminal caper that goes wrong is always good for a suspenseful, absorbing thriller movie. Just from memory there is The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, (almost any classic film noir dealing with a criminal undertaking, if it didn’t go wrong it wouldn’t be noir now would it?) Odds Against tomorrow, Reservoir Dogs, Bob Le Flambeur, Rififi, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.

The list is just about endless, in fact, precious few movies about criminals show the heist going off without a hitch. Add to that list 7 Minutes, a tough, unblinking look at a caper done by amateurs so desperate they are willing to risk everything to try and pull it off.

Sam (Luke Mitchell), Mike, (Jason Ritter, son of John and showing some good acting chops) and Owen (Zane Holtz) lead small town lives of quiet desperation. They try and make some money through drug...

The 6th Annual Governors Awards took place on Saturday, November 8, 2014 in The Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, CA.

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient Harry Belafonte, Honorary Award recipient Hayao Miyazaki, Honorary Award recipient Jean-Claude Carrière and Honorary Award recipient Maureen O’Hara were honored by their peers during the evening.

The Honorary Award, an Oscar statuette, is given “to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.”

The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, also an Oscar statuette, is given “to an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.”

Pictured (left to right): Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient Harry Belafonte, Honorary Award recipient Hayao Miyazaki, Honorary Award recipient Jean-Claude Carrière and Honorary Award recipient Maureen O’Hara

Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs introduces the 2014 Governors Awards

Carrière,...

By Darren Allison

(Cinema Retro Soundtrack Editor)

I was recently fortunate enough to make an acquaintance with Jason Lee Lazell of Moochin’ About Records which is earning kudos for releasing some high profile film-related recordings. The latest box set in their Jazz on Film series – ‘Crime Jazz’- will be featured in our upcoming print edition of Cinema Retro. Another of their impressive releases, Film Noir, is a superb 5 CD box set featuring seven fantastic scores including Alex North’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Leith Stevens’s Private Hell 36 (1954), Elmer Bernstein’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Elmer Bernstein and Chico Hamilton’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Henry Mancini’s Touch of Evil (1958), Duke Ellington’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and John Lewis’s Odds Against tomorrow (1959). I must admit, I initially thought these releases were just going to be another in a long line of reissues, but how wrong I was…...

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted Tuesday night (August 26) to present Honorary Awards to Jean-Claude Carrière, Hayao Miyazaki and Maureen O’Hara, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Harry Belafonte.

All four awards will be presented at the Academy’s 6th Annual Governors Awards on Saturday, November 8, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center.

“The Governors Awards allow us to reflect upon not the year in film, but the achievements of a lifetime,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “We’re absolutely thrilled to honor these outstanding members of our global filmmaking community and look forward to celebrating with them in November.”

Carrière, who began his career as a novelist, was introduced to screenwriting by French comedian and filmmaker Pierre Étaix, with whom he shared an Oscar for the live action short subject “Heureux Anniversaire (Happy Anniversary)” in 1962. He...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will bestow actor/singer/producer Harry Belafonte with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at a stand-alone ceremony on Nov. 8 in Hollywood. French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, Japanese animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, and actress Maureen O’Hara will also receive honorary Oscars for their lifetime contributions to film at the sixth annual ceremony to be held separately from the annual Oscar telecast.

“The Governors Awards allow us to reflect upon not the year in film, but the achievements of a lifetime,” said Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “We’re absolutely thrilled to honor these...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced recipients of the 2014 Honorary Oscars, to be presented at the annual Governors Awards ceremony in November. Writer and actor Jean-Claude Carrière ("The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"), Japanese animation titan Hayao Miyazaki ("My Neighbor Totoro," "Spirited Away") and actress Maureen O'Hara ("The Parent Trap," "The Quiet Man") will receive Honorary Awards, while, singer/songwriter, actor and social activist Harry Belafonte will receive the organization's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Carrière, a frequent collaborator with Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, has been nominated by the Academy as a screenwriter on three occasions. He won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short alongside comedian Pierre Étaix for 1963's "Happy Anniversary." He has also collaborated with filmmakers such as Andrzej Wajda ("Danton"), Jean-Luc Godard ("Every Man for Himself") and one of this year's Telluride tributees, Volker Schlöndorff ("The Tin Drum"). Miyazaki,...

Harry Belafonte will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and Jean-Claude Carrière, Hayao Miyazaki and Maureen O’Hara will receive Honorary Awards at the Academy’s 6th Annual Governors Awards November 8 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland. The Academy’s Board of Governors did not award the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which is given out periodically. The last recipient was Francis Ford Coppola in 2010. Deadline’s Pete Hammond will give his take later today. The full release follows:

Los Angeles, CA —The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted Tuesday night (August 26) to present Honorary Awards to Jean-Claude Carrière, Hayao Miyazaki and Maureen O’Hara, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Harry Belafonte. All four awards will be presented at the Academy’s 6th Annual Governors Awards on Saturday, November 8, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center®.

“The...

Susanne Rostock has long worked as an editor on American political and society documentaries, including a number directed by Michael Apted, and Sing Your Song, which she both directed and edited, is a skilfully compiled celebratory biography of Harry Belafonte. He was born into poverty in Harlem in 1927, raised in his father's native Jamaica, and after serving at sea in the Us navy at the end of the second world war, he worked as a janitor before being drawn into the theatre. From the late 1940s on he was primarily a singer, becoming sensationally successful in the 1950s as the "King of Calypso". Sadly he has made only a handful of films, three of them minor classics – Carmen Jones, Odds Against Tomorrow and Kansas City, a role that Robert Altman had to talk him into playing.

This excellent film, eloquently narrated by its octogenarian subject in that wonderfully husky voice,...

"Damn you, Spielberg, for getting me choked up with your Au Hasard Blockbuztar," tweets Aaron Hillis. Search for "War Horse" on Twitter and you could spend quite a while combing through the results before you'll find one that doesn't mention tears, weeping or outright blubbering. Though it doesn't open until Christmas Day, Steven Spielberg's War Horse is being shown to the media and industry now because, suggests Anne Thompson, the New York Film Critics Circle, like a state eager to draw early attention to its Republican primary, has moved its day of voting to this Tuesday. In other words, the Nyfcc will be announcing its awards for the best film of the year, performances and so on, with a full month of 2011 yet to go.

But at Deadline, Pete Hammond suggests that the "unusual strategy" Dreamworks and distributor Disney are pursuing isn't hinging on a single band of critics.

(Moochin About)

Seven soundtracks from the 50s, when jazz was the musical element that defined film noir. From Ziggy Elman's lubricious trumpet at the start of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) to Jim Hall's sparse guitar notes at the close of Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), it's an enthralling collection. Other scores include Elmer Bernstein's The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) and Ellington's superbly bravura Anatomy of a Murder (1959). The notes, by compiler Selwyn Harris, are a model of clarity and insight. All on five CDs in a box, which should make any jazz-fan film-buff's Christmas.

JazzDave Gelly

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"It's all in the eyes," Robert Ryan once said of film acting. "That's where you do most of your work."

But was it true of Ryan himself? His own narrow and heavily lidded brown eyes often registered as black disks in the lighting schemes of the late 40s and early 50s—that is, when they weren't overwhelmed by his massive forehead and his thick tangle of dark hair, or a pair of tragic eyebrows that threatened to merge with the numerous crags in his face as he entered middle age. Not to mention his lanky, extremely powerful physique. Take a close look at Ryan in The Set-Up or On Dangerous Ground and you'll get a sense of the relative frailty and delicacy of most male movie stars. In the post-war era, only Burt Lancaster was as physically imposing (Kirk Douglas was always fit but he was self-contained and self-motivated, even...

It's amazing how your perspective on movies changes the more you see and the more you open your mind to different kinds of films. In June 2009 I bought Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai as a blind buy. I loved it, and it remains my favorite Melville film to date. Since then I have seen Le Doulos, Army of Shadows and, of course, Le Cercle Rouge. All are films that change your perspective on filmmaking, and strangely, while Melville was obsessed with American films during his day, his films would turn an audience off today as quickly as they captured audiences attention over 60 years ago.

Case in point, Anton Corbijn's The American, a film improperly sold to audiences as a thriller in the same vein as the Bourne franchise, but instead finds more of a relation to Melville's cold and calculated features. In my review I referenced Le Samourai,...

I started a spreadsheet this year to track all of the movies I watch. This includes just watching a movie out of the blue, at a screening, for DVD/Blu-ray review, etc. I've never done this before, but I've been wondering recently just how many movies I actually watch each year. So far, after 15 days I've watched 20 movies in 2011. In honesty, the number shocked me at first, but the more I thought about it I really don't think a day goes by that I don't watch a movie.

A movie usually serves as my night cap once the day is done and I'm ready to call it quits. I may not finish it that night, but by the end of the next day it's done. So the fact I've already seen five more movies in 2011 than there have been days isn't as surprising as it may seem. After all, it is my job.

Innovative American film editor best known for her work on Bonnie and Clyde

Dede Allen, who has died after a stroke aged 86, not only broke into the predominantly male preserve of film editing, but developed a style and made innovations so distinctive that a school of editing was named in her honour. She was one of the great practitioners of movie-making.

Yet she worked rarely in Hollywood, did not achieve notable success until the age of 42, and despite receiving several Oscar nominations and the first solo onscreen credit for an editor at the beginning of a film, she was never well known. The job is highly technical and riddled with jargon, yet it is also an art, which is how Allen viewed it.

The film that made her name was Arthur Penn's 1967 hit, Bonnie and Clyde, about the doomed 1930s bank-robbing couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.

As announced in Eddie Muller’s introduction to this year’s edition of Noir City, the festival’s traveling road show—already situated in Hollywood, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.—will include Chicago to its roster of cities, come Friday. Venued at the Music Box Theatre, Noir City: Chicago will give Muller an opportunity to once again share the stage with Foster Hirsch—who Eddie once quipped has forgotten more about noir than he’ll ever know—as well as the legendary Harry Belafonte (in conjunction with a screening of the 1959 film noir Odds Against Tomorrow). By phone, Eddie Muller and I discussed this upcoming event.