News

When I spoke to Alan Rudolph a couple months ago, he confirmed that Criterion had sought to release his Remember My Name but were held up by music rights––a situation so complicated that a lawyer hired by the director himself simply gave up. I like to think something’s changed in less than 60 days: the Criterion Channel will stream Remember My Name as part of a quartet featuring Afterglow, Trouble In Mind, and Breakfast of Champions, the latter recently given a 4K restoration. It’s part of a retrospective-heavy month that also includes a 12-title Johnnie To series, numerous films by René Clair, highlights of Amy Holden Jones and Ougie Pak, and Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip saga in both television and theatrical editions. Meanwhile, Gene Hackman is celebrated with six titles.

One of those, Night Moves, gets a Criterion Edition; so do Les Blank’s A Poem Is...

Best known to daytime fans for his portrayal as Father Lonigan on “Passions,” actor Bruce French has died. He was 79 years old.

French died Friday, February 7 in Los Angeles of complications from Alzheimer’s, his wife of 34 years, Eileen Barnett (“Days of our Lives”), told The Hollywood Reporter. French was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s around four years ago, Barnett shared with the outlet.

On “Passions,” French made a memorable impression on the show playing a priest who had lost his sight after a church he had been in burned down while he was looking to save a statue of an angel. His primary role in Harmony was advising citizens on the problems they sought solutions to, particularly those told to him by the young adult characters.

French appeared in several hundred episodes of the drama series from its debut on NBC in July 1999 and into its run on DirecTV’s 101 Network.

Bruce French, the dependable character actor who did lots of work for the theater and portrayed Father Lonigan, the blind priest on the soap opera Passions who somehow could sense that evil was imminent, has died. He was 79.

French died Friday in Los Angeles of complications from Alzheimer’s, his wife of 34 years, longtime Days of Our Lives actress Eileen Barnett, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The Iowa native, who has more than 150 acting credits on IMDb, guest-starred for David E. Kelley on such shows as L.A. Law, Picket Fences, Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Public and Boston Legal, and he appeared on three Star Trek series — The Next Generation, Voyager and Enterprise — and in the 1998 film Star Trek: Insurrection.

Plus, he played the wealthy neighbor of Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver’s shifty characters on both seasons of the 2007-08 FX drama The Riches.

French recurred as the kind-hearted...

Chicago – “With Love, Mommie Dearest” is a new book by A. Ashley Hoff, chronicling the making of the camp classic. Chicago’s Music Box Theatre will screen “Mommie Dearest” and Hoff will sign his new book on June 4, 2024. Click Crawford for tickets/details.

The 1981 film “Mommie Dearest” has a place in cultural history, and author A. Ashley Hoff decided to do a deep dive into the history of the film in his new book (the subtitle is “The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic”). The story of this only-in-show-business happening starts with its production history, culminating in the film’s release – anticipated with studio backing and awards consideration prestige – only to devolve quickly after early screenings.

‘With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic’ by A. Ashley Hoff

Photo credit: Chicago Review Press

When Paramount Studios understood that audiences were reacting with laughter to the extreme nature...

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama for a two-film Bertrand Bonello retrospective, starting just four days before The Beast opens. Larger and rarer (but just as French) is the complete Jean Eustache series Janus toured last year. Meanwhile, five William Friedkin films and work from Makoto Shinkai, Lizzie Borden, and Rosine Mbakam are given a highlight.

One of my very favorite films, Comrades: Almost a Love Story plays in a series I’ve been trying to program for years: “Hong Kong in New York,” boasting the magnificent Full Moon in New York, Farewell China, and An Autumn’s Tale. Wim Wenders gets his “Adventures in Moviegoing”; After Hours, Personal Shopper, and Werckmeister Harmonies fill...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook.NEWSThe Delinquents.The start of the Academy Awards ceremony was delayed by hundreds of protestors obstructing the red carpet to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.Asghar Farhadi has been cleared of plagiarism charges by an Iranian court after allegations were leveled by a former student, who accused him of stealing the idea for A Hero (2021) from her documentary on the same subject, produced in his 2014 filmmaking workshop.Meanwhile, Alexander Payne has been accused of plagiarizing The Holdovers (2023) “line-by-line” from a screenplay by Simon Stephenson he appears to have read on spec.Thailand is planning to reform its national film industry as part of a “soft power” program, which may include increased production funding, more rebates for foreign productions, and a reduction of state censorship domestically.

Catering directly to my interests, the Criterion Channel’s January lineup boasts two of my favorite things: James Gray and cats. In the former case it’s his first five features (itself a terrible reminder he only released five movies in 20 years); the latter shows felines the respect they deserve, from Kuroneko to The Long Goodbye, Tourneur’s Cat People and Mick Garris’ Sleepwalkers. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner, Bertrand Tavernier, Isabel Sandoval, Ken Russell, Juleen Compton, George Harrison’s HandMade Films, and the Sundance Film Festival get retrospectives.

Restorations of Soviet sci-fi trip Ikarie Xb 1, The Unknown, and The Music of Regret stream, as does the recent Plan 75. January’s Criterion Editions are Inside Llewyn Davis, Farewell Amor, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and (most intriguingly) the long-out-of-print The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blu-rays of which go for hundreds of dollars.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

Back By Popular Demand

The Graduate,...

Janet Landgard, who starred in 1968’s “The Swimmer” alongside Burt Lancaster and played Paul Petersen’s love interest for three seasons on “The Donna Reed Show,” has died. She was 75.

Petersen shared the news of co-star Landgard’s death on Facebook, noting that cancer “took her life earlier this week.” He added that Landgard was “the best TV girlfriend my alternate ego, Jeff Stone, ever had on the last three years of ‘The Donna Reed Show.’ Janet was gorgeous, inside and out… We were always close no matter the time or distance.”

Landgard was born on Dec. 2, 1947, in Pasadena, Calif. She made her onscreen debut in 1963 on “The Donna Reed Show,” playing a girl named Sabrina in one episode of the sitcom’s fifth season. She also guested on ABC’s “My Three Sons” that year.

Landgard returned to portray Jeff’s (Petersen) girlfriend Karen on 11 episodes of “The Donna Reed Show...

Janet Landgard, who accompanied Burt Lancaster on a portion of his bizarre tour of backyard swimming pools in the acclaimed 1968 drama The Swimmer, has died. She was 75.

Landgard died this week after a very brief bout with brain cancer, actor Paul Petersen told The Hollywood Reporter. She recurred as his love interest on the final three seasons of the ABC family comedy The Donna Reed Show.

On Facebook, Petersen called her “the best TV girlfriend my alternate ego, Jeff Stone, ever had. Janet was gorgeous, inside and out … a flawless Scandinavian beauty that literally stunned jaded Hollywood types into silence. We were always close no matter the time or distance.”

In Columbia Pictures’ The Swimmer — directed by Frank Perry and adapted by his then-wife, Eleanor Perry, from a John Cheever short story in The New Yorker — Landgard was memorable as Julie Ann Hooper, who used to babysit Ned Merrill’s...

Rose Gregorio, who received a Tony nomination for her performance as the browbeaten daughter of Geraldine Fitzgerald’s declining old woman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama The Shadow Box, has died. She was 97.

Gregorio died Aug. 17 of natural causes in her Greenwich Village home, her nephew Robert Grosbard told The Hollywood Reporter.

Gregorio was married to Belgium-born stage and film director Ulu Grosbard from 1965 until his death in 2012, and she appeared for him as the ex-wife of Dustin Hoffman’s character in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971); as a local madam in True Confessions (1981); and as the mother of Treat Williams’ character in The Deep End of the Ocean (1999).

On television, she had a recurring role on NBC’s ER as Nurse Carol Hathaway’s (Julianna Margulies) mom from 1996-99.

Gregorio also landed a Drama Desk nom and a Clarence Derwent...

In competition at Cannes, the Italian director’s comedy-drama about a failing film-maker is full of non-comedy and anti-drama – a complete waste of time

Nanni Moretti is the Italian director who will always have a place in our hearts, not least for his masterly The Son’s Room (2001), in my view the greatest Cannes Palme d’Or winner of the century so far. And more recently his cinephile comedy Mia Madre (2015) was tremendous.

But his new film in competition is bafflingly awful: muddled, mediocre and metatextual – a complete waste of time, at once strident and listless. Everything about it is heavy-handed and dull: the non-comedy, the ersatz-pathos, the anti-drama.

It is effectively a film within a film, both as dull as each other. Moretti himself plays Giovanni, a high-minded film director with a failing marriage who is struggling to shoot his passion project about the Italian Communist party standing up to...

It was an epic night for the Academy, with now-classic films and performances in competition, an anomaly between Best Picture and Best Director nominations, a young actress redefining the acting categories and the culmination of a decades-long feud. Let’s flashback to when first-time host Frank Sinatra guided the 35th Academy Awards ceremony on April 8, 1963.

In the years of the Best Picture category being limited to five films, the Best Director category typically fell in line with those productions, with maybe one variation. In 1963, only two directors from Best Picture nominees received bids; unsurprisingly, those two films also had the most nominations and the most wins. David Lean‘s sprawling epic biopic “Lawrence of Arabia” led the pack, coming into the night with ten bids and leaving with seven statues, including Best Picture and Lean’s second career win for Best Director. It has the unusual distinction of being the...

Dorothy Tristan, an actress best known for her roles in the films Klute and End of the Road, died Jan. 8 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. She was 88 and died in her sleep at home, according to her husband, director John D. Hancock, to whom she was married for 48 years.

Tristan co-wrote and starred in the 2015 independent drama The Looking Glass in her final role. She did the film after a decades-long absence from acting. She played a woman caring for her troubled 13-year-old granddaughter (Grace Tarnow) as symptoms of her dementia appear. Her husband directed the film, set in the couple’s longtime home in La Porte County, Indiana.

Related: Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries

Tristan made her film debut in the X-rated cult classic End of the Road (1970), where her and Stacy Keach’s characters have an affair. She went on to play druggie prostitute...

Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- arguably one of the best films of all time -- is so expansive and far-reaching in its story and tone that a casual viewer might miss that astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) is the protagonist. Indeed, Dave doesn't even appear until about halfway through the film, and that's after an early extended sequence set during prehistoric times among a group of proto-human hominids, and then a very long sci-fi sequence wherein characters other than Dave discover a mysterious monolith buried on the surface of the moon.

Dave, however, does get the lion's share of the film's screentime. Dave also has the more "exciting" scenes, like matching wits with the malfunctioning computer intelligence Hal 9000 (Douglas Rain). Dave will also be the recipient of an effable form of evolutionary awareness, allowed to first see space travel as the logical next step in human evolution.

The words offbeat, personal and edgy used to be a draw for movie fare — we’d check out a new relationship picture based only on an actor or two that we liked. Bobby Roth’s semi-autobiographical buddy story has a good stab at the early ’80s art + singles scene in Los Angeles, with a dash of macho clichés — pals Peter Coyote and Nick Mancuso fight in public and somehow suffer while bedding fantastic women. But the overall vibe is one of honest sensitivity, aided by fine performances from Carole Laure, Kathryn Harrold and Carol Wayne. Plus music by Tangerine Dream.

Heartbreakers

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1984 / Color / 1:85 / 99 min. / Street Date August 30, 2022 / Available from Amazon, Available from Vinegar Syndrome

Starring: Peter Coyote, Nick Mancuso, Carole Laure, Max Gail, James Laurenson, Carol Wayne, Jamie Rose, Kathryn Harrold, George Morfogen, Jerry Hardin, Henry Sanders, Walter Olkewicz.

Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus

Production Designer: David Nichols...

Ivan Passer’s first American film and his first in the English language is a core life-with-a-junkie tale in a cold Manhattan winter. George Segal is the ‘habituated, not addicted’ (he says) user whose married life has already been destroyed. Can he escape with the help of his new girlfriend? Hector Elizondo’s pimp/pusher has no intention of letting that happen. What’s weird is Passer’s frequently light tone — Segal’s criminal antics verge on the absurd. It’s a great film to see Karen Black, a young Robert De Niro and even Paula Prentiss in action, and yet another snapshot of Times Square in its most degraded decade.

Born to Win

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Scraping Bottom / Street Date May 31, 2022 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 27.99, from Amazon / 34.99

Starring: George Segal, Karen Black, Paula Prentiss, Hector Elizondo, Jay Fletcher, Robert De Niro, Ed Madsen, Marcia Jean Kurtz,...

Kathryn Hays, who in 1972 started playing the trouble-making homewrecker Kim Sullivan in As the World Turns and by the soap’s cancelation in 2010 had aged with her character to become the beloved matriarch Kim Hughes, died March 25 in Fairfield, Ct. She was 87.

Her death was announced today in the Connecticut Post.

Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery

In addition to her long-running role on As the World Turns — with her 38-year-stint, she was the fourth-longest-serving cast member when the series went off the air — Hays is remembered by fans of the original Star Trek for her memorable guest portrayal of Gem in the 1968 episode “The Empath.” As the beautiful alien who gives the episode its title, Hays rescued an injured Capt. Kirk by briefly absorbing his injuries.

Born in Princeton, Il, Hays began her professional acting career in the early 1960s with appearances on such series as Hawaiian Eye,...

Veteran actor and frequent scene stealer Bruce Davison joins Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss a few of his favorite films.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Extra School (2017)

Gone With The Wind (1939)

Willard (1971) – Joe Dante’s review, Lee Broughton’s Blu-ray review

Fortune And Men’s Eyes (1971)

Short Cuts (1993) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Longtime Companion (1989)

Last Summer (1969) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Short Eyes (1977)

The Manor (2021)

Ulzana’s Raid (1972) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review and All-Region Blu-ray review

King Solomon’s Mines (1950) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)

Them! (1954) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

Tarantula (1955) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Spartacus (1960) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Ben-Hur (1959) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Psycho (1960) – John Landis’s trailer commentary,...

The passing of Joan Didion, one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, is tough to put into words. Really, only Didion herself could fully pull off the mighty task of encapsulating her grand and wildly influential output. Her clear-eyed and no-nonsense view of American culture, stripped of its own propaganda to reveal the grimy hypocrisies lying underneath a gleaming surface, could be as elegiac as it was merciless. During the most confusing and incomprehensible of times, be it the paranoia of post-Manson Hollywood or the battlefield of her own grief, Didion provided a guiding light forward. Even as some of her most famous words have become iconography for Pinterest boards devoid of their original context, Didion's anti-Romantic glance lost none of its potency.Given her status as one of California’s homegrown talents, a Sacramento girl who partied with the Doors, hired Harrison Ford as her carpenter, and had dinner with Sharon Tate,...

Joan Didion, the journalist, novelist, and screenwriter of such films as the 1976 “A Star Is Born” died Thursday at her home in Manhattan at the age of 87. The New York Times reported that the cause was Parkinson’s disease.

Didion was born in Sacramento in 1934. The fifth-generation Californian found some of her most important material for her earliest writing in the culture and chaos of her home state. Her career began after she won a pair of writing contests put on by magazines during her time at Uc Berkeley. One of those wins led her to begin writing at Vogue.

She worked her way up to features editor at the fashion magazine. In 1963 she published her first novel, “Run River,” about the unraveling of a marriage that also serves as a commentary on the history of California.

Around that time and while living in New York she struck up a friendship,...

As 2021 mercifully winds down, the Criterion Channel have a (November) lineup that marks one of their most diverse selections in some time—films by the new masters Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Garrett Bradley, Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen (one of 2020’s best films) couched in a fantastic retrospective, and Criterion editions of old favorites.

Fourteen is featured in “Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women,” which also includes Céline and Julie, The Virgin Suicides, and Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege. Of equal note are Criterion editions for Ghost World, Night of the Hunter, and (just in time for del Toro’s spin) Nightmare Alley—all stacked releases in their own right.

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

300 Nassau, Marina Lameiro, 2015

5 Card Stud, Henry Hathaway, 1968

Alone, Garrett Bradley, 2017

Álvaro, Daniel Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Chloe Zimmerman, 2015

America, Garrett Bradley, 2019

Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953

Angels Wear White,...

October’s here and it’s time to get spooked. After last year’s superb “’70s Horror” lineup, the Criterion Channel commemorates October with a couple series: “Universal Horror,” which does what it says on the tin (with special notice to the Spanish-language Dracula), and “Home Invasion,” which runs the gamut from Romero to Oshima with Polanski and Haneke in the mix. Lest we disregard the programming of Cindy Sherman’s one feature, Office Killer, and Jennifer’s Body, whose lifespan has gone from gimmick to forgotten to Criterion Channel. And if you want to stretch ideas of genre just a hair, their “True Crime” selection gets at darker shades of human nature.

It’s not all chills and thrills, mind. October also boasts a Kirk Douglas repertoire, movies by Doris Wishman and Wayne Wang, plus Manoel de Oliveira’s rarely screened Porto of My Childhood. And Edgar Wright gets the “Adventures in Moviegoing” treatment,...

One of the most controversially polarizing films ever made, Frank Perry's cult-classic Mommie Dearest turns 40 years old on Sept. 25, 2021. Earning Razzie Awards for worst actress as well as multiple critics' award nods for best actress, the film stars Faye Dunaway in a histrionic turn as Hollywood luminary Joan Crawford and depicts the horrifying ways she allegedly abused her adopted daughter, Christina (Diana Scarwid and Mara Hobel).

Related: 10 Razzie Winners That Actually Did Some Things Right

As the film nears its 4oth anniversary, it's worth taking a look back and assessing the lasting merits that Mommie Dearest still has to offer to audiences in a new generation.

Though there have been deaf characters in movies for decades they were rarely played by hearing impaired actors. Hollywood was looking for big names for their movies and overlooked performers who were deaf. Case in point: Did you know that Loretta Young played deaf characters in both 1939’s “The Story of Alexander Graham Bell” and 1944’s “And Now Tomorrow”? And hearing actors Jane Wyman and Patty Duke won Oscars playing deaf characters. It wasn’t until 1986’s “Children of a Lesser God” that a deaf actress, Marlee Matlin, won an Oscar for playing a deaf character.

Change has been slow since then, but this past year has been encouraging. Paul Raci received an Oscar nomination this year as a Vietnam Vet who became hearing impaired in the conflict runs a shelter for recovering hearing impaired substance abuse addicts in “Sound of Metal.” Teenage deaf performer Millicent Simmonds returned this year...

Due to its persistent on-screen presence, the swimming pool can be taken for granted; but beneath the surface it is cinema’s Jungian friend, representing secrets lying underneath. It exudes glamour and danger, shifting beyond conscious realms. It is a key to transformation, coming of age tales and renewed relationships. It is a status symbol and whether or not the pool is intact says a lot about the mood of the film and the state of its characters. Away from states of intensity, the swimming pool emerges on screen as a signifier of a time to unwind and to forget life past the poolside. The films featured in this mix show how the pool alludes mysterious symbolism and sexual awakening; murder, lust, and love brush shoulders as sun kissed babes in bikinis whisper sweet truths or uncover deadly secrets (such as the strange swimming pool activities in Three Women or...

Another unexpected comic treasure from the mid ’70s! Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston make an irresistible pair of would-be outlaws in a tale of the modern West — high-country Montana, actually — where a gentleman rancher from New Jersey owns all the land and making an honest living is just too boring. Thomas McGuane’s hilariously laid-back dialogue pits our slacker cattle rustlers against society — but only in the pursuit of having a good time. Frank Perry’s beautifully directed show gives choice roles to a fistful of actors: Clifton James, Elizabeth Ashley, Harry Dean Stanton, Slim Pickens, Charlene Dallas, Richard Bright, Joe Spinell, Patti D’Arbanville. Call it ‘literate’ country comedy, with musical accompaniment by Jimmy Buffett. The extras include a great new interview with star Jeff Bridges.

Rancho Deluxe

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1975 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date July 19, 2021 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome /

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Elizabeth Ashley,...

Some films are not for me. One such is Man under the table, According to the blurb, the film, set against the backdrop of a “comically surreal and anachronistic LA”, is the tale of a “beleaguered young man” attempting to write a movie but instead getting “pulled into everyone else's projects as he hallucinates his way through a bizarre indie film scene”.

True.

Written, directed by and also starring Noel David Taylor, this is clearly a heartfelt and low-budget effort to communicate a certain disillusionment with the process of making a film in the shallow cut-throat business of contemporary movie-making. Or rather, not so much the making of a film, as obtaining the backing for the same.

It has some nice touches. There are the cynical film execs (Alisa Torres and Frank Perry), who just love the concept. If only it could be a bit more “relatable”. And include fracking.

The endlessly quotable and unforgettable drama Mommie Dearest celebrates its 40th anniversary with a brand-new Blu-ray in the Paramount Presents line, debuting June 1, 2021 from Paramount Home Entertainment. To celebrate, we've got an exclusive clip from the release which is part of the special features, a new commentary by drag performer Hedda Lettuce. Check out the iconic scene below.

Based on Christina Crawford's controversial best-selling tell-all novel, Mommie Dearest features a powerhouse performance by Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, struggling for her career while battling the inner demons of her private life. While the public Crawford was a strong-willed, glamorous object of admiration, behind the scenes is a private Crawford-the woman desperate to be a single mother and trying to survive in a devastating industry that swallows careers thoughtlessly.

Newly restored from a 4K film transfer, Mommie Dearest is presented in a limited-edition Blu-ray Disc with collectible packaging featuring a...

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

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Latest Addition to the Paramount Presents Line Debuts June 1, 2021 with New Special Features

The endlessly quotable and unforgettable drama Mommie Dearest celebrates its 40th anniversary with a brand-new Blu-ray in the Paramount Presents line, debuting June 1, 2021 from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Newly restored from a 4K film transfer, Mommie Dearest is presented in a limited-edition Blu-ray Disc™ with collectible packaging featuring a foldout image of the film’s theatrical poster and an interior spread with key movie moments. The Blu-ray includes a new Filmmaker Focus with biographer Justin Bozung on the film and its director Frank Perry, a new audio commentary with American drag queen Hedda Lettuce, access to a Digital copy of the film, as well as previously released bonus content. Special features are detailed below:

· Commentary by American drag queen Hedda Lettuce –New!

· Filmmaker...

Frank Perry’s version of the shootout at the O.K. Corral shapes up as a fine western and an even better drama — the revisionist angle is supported by an excellent script and thoughtful, challenging characterizations. Tombstone’s frontier folk are dirty, vulgar and corrupt, but Stacy Keach and Faye Dunaway generate a rough-hewn romantic harmony. Harris Yulin’s Wyatt Earp is a revelation as well — if this were modern times Earp would get a lock on city hall politics and go into the land development racket. The beautifully filmed movie looks terrific on disc. Alex Cox delivers a solid audio commentary as well.

“Doc”

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date March 23, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Stacy Keach, Faye Dunaway, Harris Yulin, Mike Witney, Penelope Allen, Antonia Rey, Denver John Collins, Penelope Allen, Luis Barboo.

Cinematography: Gerald Hirschfeld

Film Editors: Alan Heim, Juan Serra

Production...

Producer was longtime BAFTA LA board member.

Paul Heller, the US producer whose credits included Withnail & I and Enter The Dragon and My Left Foot as executive producer, died on December 28 in Los Angeles. He was 93.

Heller, a longtime board member of BAFTA LA, was born in New York on September 25, 1927, and spent many years in England producing some of his most acclaimed films.

His first feature, the 1962 mental health drama David And Lisa directed by Frank Perry, earned two Oscar nominations for directing and for Eleanor Perry’s adapted screenplay.

Encouraged to pursue his career with gusto, Heller...

Several atom-fear exposés bravely ‘told the truth’ about the madness of the nuclear standoff. They didn’t get more liberal-precious than this uncompromising, difficult-to-watch ordeal based on a true incident. When an Imminent Attack alarm sends a tiny elementary school into a panic, Frank and Eleanor Perry pull no punches, finding the worst possible outcome to twist one’s insides in helpless frustration. The notorious yet little-seen show stars stage actors then unfamiliar, a couple of whom would soon become much bigger names. For us Children of the Bomb it’s the traumatic connection between Duck and Cover and Miracle Mile — or “Romper Room of Fear.” Richard Harland Smith’s commentary gives this release the context it needs, answering most of the questions that have hovered over it for 57 years.

Ladybug Ladybug

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1963 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 82 min. / Street Date December 15, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Adults: Nancy Marchand,...

The November 2020 lineup for The Criterion Channel has been unveiled, toplined by a Claire Denis retrospective, including the brand-new restoration of Beau travail, along with Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, Nenette and Boni, Towards Mathilde, 35 Shots of Rum, and White Material.

There will also be a series celebrating 30 years of The Film Foundation, featuring a new interview with Martin Scorsese by Ari Aster, as well as a number of their most essential restorations, including films by Jia Zhangke, Ritwik Ghatak, Luchino Visconti, Shirley Clarke, Med Hondo, and more.

There’s also David Lynch’s new restoration of The Elephant Man, retrospectives dedicated to Ngozi Onwurah, Nadav Lapid, and Terence Nance, a new edition of the series Queersighted titled Queer Fear, featuring a new conversation between series programmer Michael Koresky and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman, and much more.

See the lineup below and learn more on the official site.

With the Emmy Awards nominations set for Tuesday, it is a good time to back at a few of the greatest Emmy-winning and Emmy-nominated performances from some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

Ingrid Bergman, “The Turn of the Screw” (1959)

The Oscar-winning Swedish actress certainly ended the 1950s on a different note than she began the decade. After making her U.S. film debut opposite Leslie Howard in 1939’s “Intermezzo,” Bergman became one of the top Hollywood stars earning her first Oscar for 1944’s “Gaslight.” Married with a young daughter, she shocked the U.S. when she had an affair and became pregnant by famed Italian director Roberto Rossellini during the production of “Stromboli.” She was even denounced in Congress for her affair. The couple did marry, have three children including actress Isabella Rossellini and made several films together before they divorced in 1957. All was forgiven by 1956 when she won...

The star, Alexandra Daddario, the writer, Alan Trezza, and the director, Marc Meyers, of the terrific new film We Summon The Darkness walk us through some of their favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

We Summon The Darkness (2020)

Burying The Ex (2015)

The Little Mermaid (1989)

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

American Beauty (1999)

Strictly Ballroom (1992)

Ghostbusters (1984)

The Sound of Music (1965)

L.A. Story (1991)

Ghost Dad (1990)

Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003)

Roxanne (1987)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

Fargo (1996)

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (2018)

Psycho (1960)

Psycho (1998)

Defending Your Life (1991)

Modern Romance (1981)

The Jerk (1979)

Jaws (1975)

Notting Hill (1999)

Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994)

When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

Love Actually (2003)

Marley & Me (2008)

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

World’s Greatest Dad (2009)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Raging Bull (1980)

Mandy (2018)

Heathers (1988)

Ed Wood (1994)

Hellzapoppin’ (1941)

Fletch (1985)

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Batman Returns (1992)

Warlock (1989)

Beetlejuice (1988)

Star Wars (1977)

Sixteen Candles (1984)

The Swimmer (1968)

Sherman’s March (1985)

Amadeus (1984)

Amarcord (1974)

Hugo Pool (1997)

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills...

There’s a reason why, over the course of a career that has spanned nearly six decades, Joan Didion’s remarkable body of work has received the film adaptation treatment just twice. In 1972, Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne wrote the screenplay for Frank Perry’s big-screen take on her novel “Play It As It Lays,” a celluloid turn that Didion followed up with various contributions to other scripts unrelated to her own books (including the 1976 “A Star Is Born” remake).

Despite mostly good reviews for the Perry film, even Didion seemed to quickly get hip to the fact that her work isn’t necessarily translatable to other mediums. Others surely got the memo, too, with almost a half a century going by before anyone else tried to turn Didion’s gimlet-eyed writings into a movie. And time has not been kind to the endeavor: and even less by...

Though the cinematic landscape has changed over the past five decades, one thing has remained the same: the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, New York Film Critics Circle and National Society Film Critics have agreed to disagree on many of their choices of the best of the year. So, let’s travel back to awards season 50 years ago and see what these groups selected as the finest in filmmaker in 1969.

Best Picture

Academy Awards: The year of 1969 was truly a watershed for cinema and the Oscars reflected the numerous changes taking place in Hollywood and internationally. The Academy had one foot in tradition and one foot in contemporary cinema. But in terms of best film, “X” marked the spot as “Midnight Cowboy,” the then-x-rated gritty and poignant drama took home the best picture honor. It was the only time in Oscar history, the Academy...

If 1939 was cinema's golden year, 1969 was its watershed. Though Hollywood was still producing big-budget films (Hello, Dolly!) and features starring such veterans as John Wayne (True Grit), the counterculture was quickly taking root. That year heralded the arrival of such new filmmakers as Paul Mazursky (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) and three X-rated dramas — John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool and Frank Perry's Last Summer — which all became critical and commercial successes. Midnight Cowboy even claimed the best picture Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards over relatively lighter fare like Dolly! and Butch ...

If 1939 was cinema's golden year, 1969 was its watershed. Though Hollywood was still producing big-budget films (Hello, Dolly!) and features starring such veterans as John Wayne (True Grit), the counterculture was quickly taking root. That year heralded the arrival of such new filmmakers as Paul Mazursky (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) and three X-rated dramas — John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool and Frank Perry's Last Summer — which all became critical and commercial successes. Midnight Cowboy even claimed the best picture Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards over relatively lighter fare like Dolly! and Butch ...

Monied suburbanites take another hit in this 1968 drama about the waterlogged journey of one man in search of an endless pool party. Directed by Frank Perry and based on a story by John Cheever, Burt Lancaster stars along with Janice Rule. Squabbles between star and director eventually put the troubled production in the hands of Sydney Pollack.

The post The Swimmer appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Murder strikes a private college. In the new security guard’s efforts to find the killer, he uncovers sordid secrets and multiple unsavory conspiracies. Triple-threat Burt Lancaster boasts directing and screenwriting credits here, and heads a large, exemplary cast of suspects in a mystery that implicates practically all of them in something illegal.

The Midnight Man

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1974 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 117 min. / Street Date February 26, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Linda Thorpe, Cameron Mitchell, Morgan Woodward, Harris Yulin, Robert Quarry, Joan Lorring, Lawrence Dobkin, Ed Lauter, Mills Watson, Charles Tyner, Catherine Bach, Bill Lancaster, Quinn K. Redeker, Peter Dane, Linda Kelsey, William Splawn, Nick Cravat.

Cinematography: Jack Priestley

Film Editor: Frank Moriss

Original Music: Dave Grusin

Written by Roland Kibbee, Burt Lancaster from a book by David Anthony

Produced and Directed by Roland Kibbee & Burt Lancaster

Carrying a reputation as an intelligent low-key murder mystery, 1975’s...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Robert Aldrich's Autumn Leaves (1956) is playing October 22 - November 21, 2017 on Mubi in the United Kingdom. Autumn Leaves is the story of what happens to a Robert Aldrich hero after the Robert Aldrich movie ends. Vicious, cynical, and borderline nihilistic, Aldrich’s movies churned idealistic characters through crucibles of violence and disillusionment. He adored stories of marginalized nobodies forced to face impossible odds: murderers-turned-World War Two commandos in The Dirty Dozen (1967); desperate Chiricahua Apache raiders in Ulzana’s Raid (1972); a football team of prison inmates in The Longest Yard (1974); escaped military prisoners in Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977). For these men—and they were usually men—death was one of the kindest fates possible. Existential meaninglessness, the pointlessness of moral causes, the uselessness of idealism: these were the fates they truly feared. And for Aldrich, these were the just rewards...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: What is the best performance in an otherwise bad movie?

Joshua Rothkopf (@joshrothkopf), Time Out New York

There’s a Cult of Val (Kilmer, obviously) that I proudly belong to. Mainly it revolves around movies like “Real Genius,” “Top Secret!” and “Heat,” all excellent movies that don’t fit the parameters of this question. But you really don’t know Val until you’ve made your peace with Oliver Stone’s beyond-awful “The Doors.” The apocryphal anecdotes around Kilmer’s deep dive into Jim Morrison are insane: insisting that no one look him in the eye on set, wearing the same leather pants for months,...

Thanks be to the generous souls on Letterboxd who run the“Not Andrew Sarris” and “Not Dave Kehr” accounts with their thoughtful capsule reviews. When logging my viewing for Metrograph’s upcoming series, On Fire Island, I found reviews for Andy Warhol and Chuck Wein’s My Hustler, Frank Perry’s Last Summer, and Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances by the aforementioned critics. Stan Lopresto’s Sticks and Stones and Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand (also screening in the series) are noticeably missing professional critiques. Looking further, Last Summer is the only film of the five to receive a fair shake from a robust number of film critics and the write-ups for My Hustler and Parting Glances are more first impressions than researched arguments.

On Fire Island is programmed by Michael Lieberman, head of publicity at Metrograph, and picks up the critical slack with programming-as-criticism. The series is...

Above: Polish poster for Escape from New York (John Carpenter, USA, 1981). Designer: Wieslaw Walkuski.For three weeks in July, New York’s Film Forum is running a stellar series of more than 40 1970s New York-set films. As soon as I heard about the program I wanted to do a poster article on it, given that the 1970s was a heyday for American poster design. However, when I started to look at the posters I realized that many of them were so well known that rehashing their posters wasn’t that interesting. But in my search I started to notice how many of the films had Polish counterparts. It is interesting that so many of these American productions were released in Poland and it may have had a lot to do with the counter-cultural, anti-establishment bent of most of the films.While poster design in the U.S. had moved quite decisively from illustration to photography-based in the late 60s, Polish poster art was still mostly drawn and painted in the 1970s. There are a couple of exceptions here but the photos are collaged or posterized in a way that is quite different from the way they would be used in the U.S. Another interesting note is that very few of the posters make use of New York signifiers, with the obvious exception of the Statue of Liberty for Escape from New York, and a silhouetted skyline for Manhattan (notably the two films with the most New York-specific titles). Otherwise the posters seen here are typically idiosyncratic, eccentric, beautiful, alluring, occasionally baffling and, with the possible exception of Serpico, always strikingly unlike their American counterparts. This selection also feels like a tour of great Polish poster art in the 70s, with most of the major artists represented: Jakub Erol, Wiktor Gorka, Eryk Lipinski, Andrzej Klimowski, Jan Mlodozeniec, Andrzej Pagowski, Waldemar Swierzy, Wieslaw Walkuski and more. It seems as if every major designer got a crack at at least one of these challenging, thrilling films.Above: Polish poster for Manhattan (Woody Allen, USA, 1979). Designer: Andrzej Pagowski.Above: Polish poster for Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, USA, 1976). Designer: Wiktor Gorka.Above: Polish poster for All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, USA, 1979). Designer: Leszek Drzewinski.Above: Polish poster for Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, USA, 1975). Designer: J. Czerniawski.Above: Polish poster for The Hospital (Arthur Hiller, USA, 1971). Designer: Marcin Mroszczak.Above: Polish poster for Diary of a Mad Housewife (Frank Perry, USA, 1970). Designer: Eryk Lipinski.Above: Polish poster for Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1976). Designer: Andrzej Klimowski.Above: Polish poster for Klute (Alan J. Pakula, USA, 1971). Designer: Jan Mlodozeniec.Above: Polish poster for Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, USA, 1977). Designer: Andrzej Pagowski.Above: Polish poster for The French Connection (William Friedkin, USA, 1971). Designer: Andrzej Krajewski.Above: Polish poster for Serpico (Sidney Lumet, USA, 1973). Designer: Jakub Erol.Above: Polish poster for The Panic in Needle Park (Jerry Schatzberg, USA, 1971). Designer: Tomas Ruminski.Above: Polish poster for Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, USA, 1969). Designer: Waldemar Swierzy.Above: Polish poster for The Anderson Tapes (Sidney Lumet, USA, 1971). Designer: Jan Mlodozeniec.See New York in the 70s at Film Forum from July 5 to 27.Posters courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

The Last Emperor composers David Byrne and Ryuichi Sakamoto had a Forbidden Colors conversation at the Quad Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

At the Quad Cinema - Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise; Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth; Mitchell Leisen's Hold Back The Dawn; Elia Kazan's America, America; Werner Herzog's Stroszek; Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America, Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky with Anne Carlisle become Immigrant Songs. Retrospectives for Goldie Hawn, Frank Perry & Eleanor Perry, Bertrand Tavernier and Ryuichi Sakamoto; a Rainer Werner Fassbinder Lola First Encounter with Sandra Bernhard, Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear and a drop of Nathan Silver's Thirst Street come up in my conversation with Director of Programming C Mason Wells.

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor at China: Through The Looking Glass Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The Grandmaster director Wong Kar Wai chose a clip from...

The ultimate uptight blond turns psychotic ex-wife in a silly thriller that tries – and heroically fails – to be the new Fatal Attraction

Poor Katherine Heigl has been typecast as the uptight blond (think the unfortunate trifecta of Knocked Up, 27 Dresses and The Ugly Truth). Here, she at least has fun with that typecasting as tightly wound and sleekly coiffed troublemaker Tessa. A Bay Area psycho Barbie, Tessa is determined to make life difficult for her beer-brewing, rent-a-hunk, ex-husband’s (Geoff Stults) new girlfriend, Julia (a heroic Rosario Dawson, playing it as straight as the hammy script will allow). Enjoyable, too, is the inversion of the black best friend trope, with Julia’s supportive, zany bestie played by Whitney Cummings of 2 Broke Girls.

Movie super-producer Denise Di Novi’s directorial debut casts itself as an erotic thriller in the tradition of Fatal Attraction; to me, it had more in common with...

It’s not exactly remarkable that cinema has been around long enough to chart the rise of modern psychology. The first century of film covers society’s entire 20th, a hundred-year span rife with innovation in a great many fields. But as art is keen on investigating the psyche, it’s little surprise that cinema would try to keep pace in some way with the study and expression of it. From the psychological thriller to the psychodrama to most horror films, the study of the mind onscreen sometimes unfolds perfectly naturally, and other times feels like a stiff lecture from somebody who read a really fascinating article in Time the month before. Look no further than Psycho for an example of both, but look to three films that played at the TCM Classic Film Festival for some pretty wild takes.

Based on a novel by a prominent psychologist (once president...

Something Wild

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 850

1961 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen 1:37 flat Academy / 113 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 17, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Carroll Baker, Ralph Meeker, Mildred Dunnock, Jean Stapleton, Martin Kosleck, Charles Watts, Clifton James, Doris Roberts, Anita Cooper, Tanya Lopert.

Cinematography: Eugen Schüfftan

Film Editor: Carl Lerner

Original Music: Aaron Copland

Written by Jack Garfein and Alex Karmel from his novel Mary Ann

Produced by George Justin

Directed by Jack Garfein

After writing up an earlier Mod disc release of the 1961 movie Something Wild, I received a brief but welcome email note from its director:

“Dear Glenn Erickson,

Thank you for your profound appreciation of Something Wild.

If possible, I would appreciate if you could send

me a copy of your review by email.

Sincerely yours, Jack Garfein”

Somewhere back East (or in London), the Actors Studio legend Jack Garfein had found favor with the review. Although...