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Just about every movie buff knows that Clint Eastwood shot to international fame after starring in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy," but what came next? It's a good pub quiz question because many people might leap straight to the year 1968 when a trio of hits cemented his status as one of Hollywood's top tough guys: "Hang 'Em High," "Coogan's Bluff," and "Where Eagles Dare." But tucked away in his filmography is a forgotten 1967 Italian movie called "The Witches," not to be confused with the Hammer production of the same name from the year before. Originally titled "Le streghe" in Italian, it's an offbeat anthology movie that isn't a horror film at all and has very little to do with witches, unless you squint really hard at its themes.

"The Witches" was the brainchild of legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would later make an impact in Hollywood with the 1976 "King Kong" remake,...

Marina Cicogna, Italy’s first major female film producer who shepherded films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Zeffirelli and Elio Petri, including Petri’s Oscar-winning “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” has died. She was 89.

Cicogna died on Nov. 4 in her Rome home after a long battle with an unspecified form of cancer, according to Italian news agency Ansa.

The Venice Biennale foundation is a statement, praised her as “the first female film producer in Europe” and noted that she was always deeply linked to the Venice Film Festival that was founded by her grandfather, Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata.

Born in Rome on May 29, 1934, to Count Cesare Cicogna Mozzoni and Countess Annamaria Volpi di Misurata, Cicogna attended high school in Italy and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she struck up a friendship with Jack Warner’s daughter Barbara Warner and established a connection with Hollywood.

In...

Film actor whose hypnotic presence was central to a trio of films directed by Luchino Visconti in the late 1960s and early 70s

With his glacial blue eyes, blade-like face and feline elegance, Helmut Berger, who has died aged 78, was one of the most ravishing and hypnotic actors in postwar European cinema, and a lingering presence even after his best days were behind him. He was also Vogue’s first male cover star; the magazine photographed him in 1970 alongside his then-girlfriend, the model Marisa Berenson, while he was simultaneously in a relationship with the director Luchino Visconti. Madonna, who featured him in her controversial 1992 coffee-table book Sex, cited among her influences “every movie that Visconti ever made starring Helmut Berger”.

The first of these films – and only Berger’s fourth screen appearance – was The Damned (1969), an unrestrainedly lurid melodrama charting the decline of a fictional family of industrialists, loosely based on the Krupps family,...

As Cleopatra turns 60, and its star’s romance with Richard Burton becomes the subject of a new play at the National, we take a trip down the Queen of the Nile’s finest films

Liz tries to rescue her failing marriage by getting cosmetic surgery at a Swiss clinic before testing her restored fabulousness on Helmut Berger in a Eurotrash hotel. This facelift infomercial is the opposite of feminism, but the turbans and fur-trimmed outfits save the day.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.REMEMBERINGInauguration of the Pleasure Dome.Kenneth Anger has died at the age of 96, as reported this morning by his gallery. "Anger forged a body of work as dazzlingly poetic in its unique visual intensity as it is narratively innovative," wrote Maximilian Le Cain of the pioneering avant-gardist (and devoted occultist) for Senses of Cinema. "Anger’s films are cinematic manifestations of his occult practices. As such, they are highly symbolical, either featuring characters directly portraying gods, forces and demons or else finding an appropriate embodiment for them in the iconography of contemporary pop culture."The Austrian actor Helmut Berger died last week aged 78. He was best known as Luchino Visconti’s muse, unforgettable in The Damned (1969), Ludwig (1973), and Conversation Piece (1974). Among his additional...

Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who became a star of 60s and 70s art cinema with roles in films such as Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, and Ludwig and Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman, has died aged 78. His death was announced by his management agency, which posted a statement on its website saying Berger had “passed away peacefully but unexpectedly” in Salzburg, the city where he grew up.

Born Helmut Steinberger in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl in 1944, Berger studied acting in London before moving to Italy, where he met and began a relationship with acclaimed director Luchino Visconti, nearly 40 years his senior. Visconti gave him his first acting role, a small part in the comic anthology The Witches, and subsequently cast him in a spectacular role in his landmark 1969 epic The Damned.

Austrian actor Helmut Berger, the groundbreaking star of European cinematic masterpieces such as Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” and Vittorio De Sica’s “Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” has died at the age of 78. Berger died at home in Austria from natural causes.

In one of European cinema’s most storied and creative periods, the 60s and 70s, Berger boldly established his place in the pantheon of Continental stars via a handful of films directed by Visconti, his one-time romantic partner. “The Damned,” “Ludwig” and “Conversation Piece” were all crafted with standout roles for Berger and the films were hugely successful both at the arthouse box office and with critics and awards groups.

“The Damned”

Berger was nominated for a Golden Globe for “The Damned,” which was also nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar in 1970. No less an authority than the late German filmmaking maestro Rainer Werner Fassbinder called it “perhaps the greatest film,...

Helmut Berger, the Austrian actor who became an international star through films by directors Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Massimo Dallamano, died today in his home city of Salzburg. He was 78.

His death was announced by his agency, Helmet Werner Management.

“Helmut Berger was one of the greatest and most talented actors European cinema had ever seen,” the agency said in a statement. “His mentor, the Italian star director Luchino Visconti, recognized this talent immediately. With the films The Damned, Violence and Passion and Ludwig II he created an eternal monument to Helmut Berger.

The statement continued, “”No other actor after him embodied the Bavarian fairy tale king as expressively as the native of Bad Ischl [Austria], whose portrayal of Ludwig II is internationally recognized as a masterpiece.”

In addition to the Visconti films, Berger gave memorable performances in De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Dallamano’s Dorian Gray,...

Helmut Berger, the Austrian actor and regular Luchino Visconti collaborator who become one of the most recognizable faces of European arthouse cinema in the 1960s, has died at the age of 78. The news was announced by the actor’s agent, who wrote that he died “peacefully but nevertheless unexpectedly” on his management company’s website.

Born in Austria in 1944, Berger moved to Rome and began pursuing an acting career after expressing disinterest in following his parents into the hospitality industry. He initially found work as an extra before meeting Visconti in 1964. The “Rocco and His Brothers” director gave Berger a small part in his 1967 film “The Witches,” an omnibus film also directed by the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Berger and Visconti began a professional and romantic relationship that would go on to shape the European cinema landscape of the subsequent decade.

Berger’s most significant...

Marie Kreutzer and Vicky Krieps (holding Patti’s A Book of Days) with Patti Smith, the host of a preview screening of Corsage (Austria’s shortlisted Oscar entry) at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York Photo: IFC Films

In the second instalment with Marie Kreutzer, we discuss Sisi with King Ludwig II of Bavaria (Manuel Rubey), Louis Le Prince played by Finnegan Oldfield, and the chocolate scene in Corsage, Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig, riding in the dark, how biographies speak of their own time, undefinable friendships with men, the representational, the functional, and the omnipresence of golden chairs.

Vicky Krieps as Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Corsage Photo: Felix Vratny, courtesy of IFC Films

Last week Patti Smith hosted a screening of Corsage (Best Film at the London Film Festival), attended by Sarita Choudhury, Hailey Gates, Annie Leibovitz, Piper Perabo, Dolly Wells, Sunita Mani, Diana Silvers, Olivia Luccardi, Bree Elrod,...

What do you want when you already have paradise?

That question looms over Albert Serra’s singularly mysterious cinematic immersion into Tahiti, “Pacifiction.” The indigenous Polynesians living there would likely argue that this paradise hasn’t been theirs in a long time. Serra, the Catalan filmmaker behind such boundary-pushing works of experiential filmmaking as “Honor of the Knights” and “Story of My Death,” is yet another outsider coming to their shores, but he avoids the touristic travel-porn clichés of most movies set in some tropical locale. “Pacifiction” is not a vicarious experience of luxury; it is an experience of life. Set to its own tidal rhythm, it is , a film that makes you deeply ponder the fate of humanity itself.

Benoît Magimel plays De Roller, the High Commissioner for French Polynesia, still one of the “overseas territories” ruled from Paris as a vestige of France’s empire. He’s...

The Story of Film: A New Generation opens at two dozen theaters this weekend — Laemmle Royal in LA, Museum of the Moving Image in NY, Music Box Theatre in Chicago and Brattle in Cambridge. It’s a mix of arthouses, cinematheques, museums and even a few multiplexes for Mark Cousins’ follow-up to his 15-hour, 2011 opus The Story Of Film: An Odyssey. (This one clocks a relatively brief three hours.)

Several theaters are programming repertory series with the release, “which we feel will elevate its profile and continue the conversation,” said Kyle Westphal, head of theatrical sales for Music Box Films, the distributor for both installments.

A New Generation debuted at Cannes to strong reviews, Deadline’s here. Now, Westphal said, the first film, only available in standard definition, has been remastered in HD and both works will be released in a Blu-ray box set. The earlier work, which essentially played...

"My parents, the whole family, he murdered them all!!" MovieFarm has unveiled an official trailer for a film titled Beautiful Blue Eyes, originally from 2009 finally getting an actual wide release in theaters this week. The indie film is acclaimed American actor Roy Scheider's final feature before he passed away in early 2008. A retired cop seeks revenge against an elderly man he's convinced is the Nazi who slaughtered his family during World War II. The film was retitled (from Iron Cross) when Scheider suggested this new title just a few days before he passed, and the director kept it in honor of Roy. In addition to Roy Scheider (best known as "Brody" in Jaws), the film also stars Scott Cohen, Sarah Bolger, Helmut Berger, and Alexander Newton, who plays the young Joseph. I'm not entirely sure why it took so many years to give this film a proper release, but...

Hello, everyone! We’re back with the final round of horror and sci-fi home media releases for the month of August, and we’ve got quite a few killer titles headed home today. Scream Factory is giving Paul Schrader’s Cat People remake a 4K overhaul in a brand-new Collector’s Edition release, and Severin Films is keeping busy with several titles today as well, including All About Evil and Fearless, and if you haven’t had a chance to check it out for yourself yet, Jane Schoenbrun’s extremely unsettling We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is headed to Blu-ray this week as well.

Other titles being released on August 30th include Arrow Video’s Giallo Essentials: 3-Disc Limited Edition Collection, Lux Aeterna, Satan’s Children, Jack Be Nimble featuring Alexis Arquette, The Oregonian, Raw Nerve, and Shriek of the Mutilated.

All About Evil: 2-Disc Special Edition

It's...

“Beautiful Blue Eyes,” the last film starring Roy Scheider, will release worldwide on June 10, following a charity premiere in London on June 6.

The two-time Oscar nominee died in 2008 while “Beautiful Blue Eyes” was being filmed. Completion of the film was put on hold until AI and CG technology was advanced enough to overcome the technical challenges faced by the filmmakers.

Written and directed by Joshua Newton (“Iron Cross”), the film also stars Helmut Berger (“The Godfather: Part III”), Scott Cohen (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), Sarah Bolger (“The Tudors”) and Alexander Newton (“Iron Cross”) who plays a young Roy Scheider.

Set in Germany with flashbacks to Nazi-occupied Poland, the film is the story of Joseph (Scheider), a retired NYPD cop who visits his estranged son Ronnie (Cohen) in Nuremberg and insists that his neighbour is the SS Commander (Berger), who slaughtered his entire family in a Polish forest in 1941. In flashbacks,...

Joshua Newton’s ’Beautiful Blue Eyes’ starring the late Roy Scheider will mark the company’s first film release.

Industry veteran Martin Myers has launched UK-based distribution company MovieFarm with co-founder Alexander Newton, with the new outfit picking up global rights to Beautiful Blue Eyes starring the late Roy Scheider.

MovieFarm will premiere the film in London on June 6, before releasing theatrically in the UK from June 10. Releases in other territories are also planned, including a premiere in New York.

Beautiful Blue Eyes, written and directed by Joshua Newton, will mark MovieFarm’s first release. The project was filmed in...

Sex and swastikas! — that combo shows up in both trash cinema and high art. Luchino Visconti’s searing look at Nazi corruption sees an industrialist family torn apart by murderous greed and ambition worthy of the Borgias. The fiendish Countess Ingrid Thulin has raised a twisted son (Helmut Berger) to serve her deadly schemes; her path to power involves framing one heir for a killing while another rival is sacrificed in an SS massacre for the good of the Reich. The chilling treachery plays out at family dinner tables, in the offices of a steel mill, and in various bedrooms; Nazi fervor is equated with sex perversion. The uncut original version, remastered, also stars Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini, René Koldehoff, Charlotte Rampling and Florinda Bolkan.

The Damned

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1098

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 157 min. / La caduta degli dei, Götterdämmerung / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 28, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Dirk Bogarde,...

The debauchery of a bunch of bewigged 18th-century libertines is presented with cerebral seriousness, but it’s an ordeal to watch

Albert Serra’s Liberté, or Liberty, is a gruesome midsummer night’s dream of Sadeian horror in which a bunch of verbose bewigged libertines in the 18th century gather in a dark forest in their carriages for some prototypical dogging. It is some years before the French Revolution, centuries before Viagra. This film is an ordeal that I never want to go through again, but it’s undoubtedly executed with a cerebral conviction and uncompromising seriousness that no Anglo Saxon film-maker could approach.

A group of (fictional) aristocrats, expelled from the court of Louis XVI, approach a sympathetic German nobleman, the Duc de Walchen (played by Visconti veteran Helmut Berger) for help; with his guidance they assemble one moonlit night in a forest for some uninhibited debauchery – and only that quaint word will do.

Tinto Brass's Deadly Attractions and Sinful Desires is showing September - October, 2020 on Mubi.Above: Salon KittyKnown today as a maestro of erotic cinema, Italian director Tinto Brass’s legendary status is hard-won and attributable to his dogged dedication to filming sex. There’s a whiff of aimless opportunism in his genre-hopping early career, which included flirtations with neorealism, psychedelic experimentalism, and even a spaghetti western. But in Salon Kitty (1976), his first English-language film, Brass began to consolidate and wield influences. Salon Kitty brandishes its references in plain acknowledgement of the director’s derivative tendencies, meanwhile offering glimpses of Brass-original motifs that he would later (rather ingeniously) repurpose in erotic contexts. In Salon Kitty, we can perceive the director’s artistic resolve stiffening, amounting to a film that’s greater than the sum of its cherry-picked parts. Based on the stranger-than-fiction, true story of a Berlin brothel of co-opted...

Catalan director Albert Serra rejoices in oddball period pieces, from the outré Casanova biopic “The Story of My Death” to the slow-burn “The Death of Louis Xiv,” which delivers exactly that for two hours straight. Yet Serra’s work has a poetic charm percolating beneath its provocative exteriors, as if the very idea of merging the formalities of the past with vulgar flourishes registers as a grand historical punchline: Serra gives us the semblance of an old Eurocentric world as it likes to remember itself, but tosses in sex and bodily fluids that make it resonate in more immediate, visceral terms. His filmography amounts to an alternately gross and kinky history lesson.

To that end, “Liberté” is the movie he’s been building toward for the better part of a decade. Serra’s blend of elegant visuals and provocative subject matter reaches his apex with a lush, haunting movie almost...

The New York Film Festival’s Dennis Lim delivered director Albert Serra to me in the lobby of the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center during the 57th edition of the festival last fall. Serra was traveling solo for the American debut of Liberté, which picked up a Special Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival when it premiered in the Un Certain Regard section.

We didn’t know where to record our conversation so we intruded on the festival staff’s lounge. Serra set up two U-shaped leather chairs facing each other. He grabbed us drinks from the bar and moved in close. Talking to the director is a lot like watching his movies; you listen and watch closely for long, unbroken amounts of time. You don’t analyze Serra’s film–they analyze you. Some directors refuse to speak about their own work—especially with the press—but Serra will gladly dissect his own,...

We aren’t getting a Marvel movie to kick off the summer movie season, but thankfully something far more daring and anticipated is arriving instead next week. Albert Serra’s Liberté, which won a Special Jury Prize when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, will be coming to virtual cinemas across the country thanks to Cinema Guild. The first U.S. trailer has now arrived, previewing the story of a group of libertines who become expelled from the Puritan court of Louis XVI seek safety in Germany.

“This is both Serra’s most uncompromising film and his most enjoyable,” Ethan Vestby said in our rave Tiff review. “In a way, it’s perhaps a stunning refute to the notion of “edgelord” as pejorative term; someone has to deliberately provoke to show us something we haven’t seen before.”

See the trailer and poster below and read our interview with Serra,...

In today’s film news roundup, Cinema Guild starts its virtual cinema initiative, Mucho Mas Media announces a partnership, Amazon hires a Netflix veteran and “Pot Luck” gets released.

Virtual Cinema

Cinema Guild is launching its virtual cinema initiative with 2019 Cannes Film Festival prize winner, Albert Serra’s “Liberté” in partnership with arthouse theaters.

“We’re grateful for the opportunity to continue our partnership with arthouse theaters and institutions around the country during this difficult time,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “We’re also very happy that U.S. audiences won’t have to wait any longer to experience the audacity and artistry of Albert Serra’s singular vision.” “Liberté” will launch May 1 in partnership with Film at Lincoln Center, and a national rollout will follow on May 8. The film premiered last year at Cannes, where it won a Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section. Set just before the French Revolution,...

Gravitas Ventures has set a VOD/digital release for Sean McEwen’s debut feature Braking For Whales on April 24. The Narrator Entertainment and Charlie Baby Productions film stars Tammin Sursok (Pretty Little Liars), Tom Felton (Harry Potter franchise), Wendi McLendon-Covey (The Goldbergs), David Koechner (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy), and Austin Swift (Live By Night). Written and directed by McEwen, the plot charts the unexpected journey of a dysfunctional brother and sister who are forced to come to terms with each other and themselves over their recently deceased mother’s final wish. Unique, clever and insightful, this is a story that many can relate to – none can push our buttons like family. McEwen, Sursok and Cassidy Lunnen produced the Boston Film Festival award-winning pic, while Takashi Cheng served as executive producer. Producer Cassidy Lunnen negotiated on behalf of the filmmakers with Brett Rogalsky, on behalf of Gravitas.

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More from...

In today’s film news roundup, Fathom Events has set a one-night showing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of “The Twilight Zone” and “Lazy Susan” and “Liberte” get distribution.

Anniversary Show

Fathom Events and CBS Home Entertainment have scheduled a Nov. 14 showing for “The Twilight Zone: A 60th Anniversary Celebration” at more than 600 North American cinemas.

The shows will combine digitally restored versions of six episodes with an all-new documentary short titled “Remembering Rod Serling” about the life, imagination and creativity of the show’s creator. It’s the first time that original episodes of the series, which ran from 1959 to 1964, have been presented on the big screen.

Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt said, “‘The Twilight Zone’ has inspired many filmmakers and storytellers, so it is a great honor to be able to bring these classic stories to the big screen, and to offer such an incisive look into the...

One of the most daring films on the festival circuit this year has found a home. We’re pleased to exclusively reveal that Cinema Guild has acquired the U.S. distribution rights for Albert Serra’s Liberté, which won a Special Jury Prize when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It’s an official election of both the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Cinema Guild will open the film in theaters in 2020. See the official synopsis and new international trailer below.

Just before the French Revolution, in a forest outside Berlin, a band of libertines expelled from the court of Louis XVI rendezvous with the legendary German seducer and freethinker, the Duc de Walchen (Helmut Berger), to convince him to join in their mission: the rejection of authority and all moral boundaries. What begins as an evening of strategizing on the proliferation of libertinage,...

Finally, evil in cinema is back! That was the impression running through the mind of this writer during all 132 minutes of Albert Serra’s Liberté, a film so thoroughly dedicated to bad, evil vibes–and yes, the beauty inherent in them–that it feels like something approaching a howl in the wind against the notions of good taste.

Completing a kind of Men in Powdered Wigs Decaying trilogy with Serra’s two previous films, Story of My Death and The Death of Louis Xiv, Liberté shares their droning pace, if a more hypnotic style. It plays as the truly unshackled film he’s always tried to make; one in which the burden of deconstructing historical or literal representation feels loosened. Only the harsh clash of bodies matters.

Circa 1774, we hone in on a few select members of the French upper-class who’ve been banned from society by the puritanical King...

In 1926, Polish-born immigrant Lillian Alling decided either that she was done with New York City or it was done with her, and set out to take the long way home. Traveling on foot, she crossed into Canada at Niagara Falls, headed for Alaska, and continued her epic solo trek along the Bering Strait toward Russia. She was never heard from again. Alling’s story is a grimly remarkable one that has inspired multiple novels, historical studies and even an opera; by now, it ought to have made for a remarkable film. “Lillian,” the first narrative feature by celebrated Austrian docmaker Andreas Horvath, isn’t quite it, but neither does it tell quite that story. Reimagining Alling’s journey as a present-day trans-American odyssey, it retains the sad, aloof mystique of its true-life inspiration, but despite the topical resonance of an immigrant escape narrative set in Trump’s hostile America, Horvath...

The part documentary, part fiction work stars visual artist Patrycja Planik.

Sébastien Chesneau’s Dubai-based world sales company Cercamon has acquired international sales rights to Austrian director Andreas Horvath’s part documentary, part fiction work Lillian, produced by compatriot filmmaker Ulrich Seidl, ahead of its premiere in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight (May 15-25).

Visual artist Patrycja Planik stars as a woman stranded in New York, who decides to head home to her native Russia on foot. It is a journey that will take her straight across the United States and into the freezing wastes of Alaska.

The film is based on...

Ludwig. Photo courtesy of Agfa.A gaggle of men in formal wear, their collars stiff and blue coats festooned with medals and ropes knotted into different patterns, stand as straight as antenna. It’s a room of immense affluence. The splendor is almost surreal, everything in its right place. The camera pans, prowls, zooming in on faces, on hands and decor, as if smitten or in awe of the decadence. In an adjacent room, a young man with an immaculate face which is frozen in a feigned look of calmness downs a glass of champagne. He paces. Soon, he is told the time has come. The doors open. Bedecked in their glittering symbols of honor and prestige, the men put a crown on his head; they raise a coat the color of wine and drape it over his shoulders. It takes four people to carry the cape. There is now a new king,...

The strangest Italian portmanteau picture of the sixties features glorious Silvana Mangano in dozens of costume changes, directed by big names (Visconti, De Sica, Pasolini) and paired with a woefully miscast Clint Eastwood. The other major attraction is a delightful music score by Piero Piccioni, with an assist from Ennio Morricone.

The Witches

Special Edition Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 (?) 111 105 min. / Le streghe / Street Date January 30, 2018 / 34.95

Starring: Silvana Mangano, Clint Eastwood, Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Massimo Girotti, Véronique Vendell, Elsa Albani, Clara Calamai, Marilù Tolo, Nora Ricci, Dino Mele Dino Mele, Helmut Berger, Bruno Filippini, Leslie French, Alberto Sordi, Totò, Ciancicato Miao, Ninetto Davoli, Laura Betti, Luigi Leoni, Valentino Macchi, Corinne Fontaine, Armando Bottin, Gianni Gori, Paolo Gozlino, Franco Moruzzi, Angelo Santi, Pietro Torrisi.

Cinematography: Giuseppe Rotunno

Film Editors: Nino Baragli, Adriana Novelli, Mario Serandrei, Giorgio Serrallonga

Original Music: Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni

Written by Mauro Bolognini, Fabio Carpi,...

Review by Roger Carpenter

In a day and age when video distribution companies are mostly concerned with the bottom dollar and release or re-release films they know are guaranteed to sell (anyone care to count the number of Us releases of The Evil Dead series or Night of the Living Dead?), one of my favorite things about Arrow Video USA is their apparent fearlessness in releasing films and box sets that are probably only going to appeal to a very small niche audience.

Along with Arrow Academy, Arrow Video USA’s arthouse imprint, the company has released a good portion of Walerian Borowcyzk’s films and is busily releasing the early works of Seijun Suzuki as well as other, relatively obscure, 50’s and 60’s Japanese films. While I applaud Arrow for releasing these films and enjoy them all immensely, I’m just not sure the typical movie fan has a...

We all, on some level, regret aging because we fear dying, but there’s something especially poignant about watching artists who celebrated vitality grapple with their mortality. It’s one thing to watch Bergman or Woody Allen settle into their later years, having seen them grapple with those subjects their entire careers. It’s quite another when an artist who once seemed to defy death’s grip can no longer avoid it.

Conversation Piece was Luchino Visconti’s penultimate film, released a little more than a year before his death. He was only 67, and had already suffered a stroke. Remarkable in its formal construction, you can nevertheless feel his regrets, his fears, his very life coming to the fore through his protagonist, a retired professor played by Burt Lancaster. So solitary is his existence that he isn’t even given a name. He’s content in his Italian apartment, taking...

It's that time again! With the end of the year approaching, everyone begins revealing their own Top 10 best of the year lists. One of our favorite lists that kicks off this time is from filmmaker John Waters' - his Top 10 favorite films from this year. For 2016, Waters has chosen yet another (expected) eclectic mix of films, including Paul Verhoven's controversial Elle, Todd Solondz's divisive Wiener-Dog, as well as David Farrier & Dylan Reeve's outstandingly creepy documentary Tickled, among some other oddball picks. A few years back his top film was Spring Breakers, and last year it was a film titled Helmut Berger, Actor. I always like hearing about Waters' favorites because he has such unique taste and his quick comments are fun to read. Waters includes a short one/two-sentence explanation with each pick, so head to ArtForum to read all of his thoughts on his Top...

As a kid perusing the shelves of my local mom-and-pop video store every weekend, there were two VHS covers that scared me every time I looked at them. I made sure to avoid the box art for Neil Jordan’s horror fantasy film The Company of Wolves; something about the wolf’s snout protruding from a person’s mouth was too disturbing for my eight-year-old brain to comprehend. The second box, however, was one that I always made a point to walk past because while I found it gross and scary, I was weirdly drawn to it. I had no real desire to see the movie—if the cover was that nasty, the film itself had to be ten times more sick—but I was forever daring myself to sneak one more look at the video box. That movie was the 1983 horror comedy Microwave Massacre.

It wasn’t until Arrow Video...

With August almost over and September around the corner, we’re only a few weeks away from the start of Fantastic Fest, taking place September 22nd–29th in Austin, Texas. Following the announcement of the first wave of programming earlier this month, the second wave of films have now been revealed, including even more titles for horror, sci-fi, and suspense fans to look forward to seeing:

Press Release: Austin, TX – Thursday, August 25, 2016 – Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest delivers another dose of cinematic decadence with its second wave of programming. Procured once again from the most curious corners of the genre universe, Fantastic Fest is proud to announce its opening film, Denis Villeneuve’s stunning Arrival. Arrival marks Villeneuve’s Fantastic Fest debut, which has proven to be worth the wait as his spectacular science fiction feature promises to kick off proceedings in explosive fashion.

It wouldn’t be Fantastic Fest...

Fantastic Fest has announced the second wave of programming for this year’s edition of the Austin-based fête, which runs from September 22 — 29. “The Bad Batch,” a new restoration of 1971’s “The Zodiac Killer,” “Toni Erdmann,” “The Handmaiden” and opening-night selection “Arrival” are among the most prominent selections, with a number of appropriately oddball offerings thrown in as well. Full list below.

“Aalavandhalan” (Suresh Krissna)

Kamal Hassan stars in this ridiculously entertaining tale of an Indian commando pitted against his own serial killer twin brother in a deadly race to save the beautiful Tejaswini from certain death.

“Arrival” (Denis Villeneuve)

When mysterious spacecraft touch down across the globe, an elite team — led by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) — are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers — and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life,...

Hope you guys made some extra room in your wallets for all the cash you’ll undoubtedly be shelling out this week (love me some “dad humor”), as August 23rd boasts an awesome selection of horror and sci-fi Blu-ray and DVD releases, all capped off by the home entertainment debuts of both season one of Ash vs Evil Dead and the sixth season of The Walking Dead.

Arrow Video is giving the cult classic The Bloodstained Butterfly an HD overhaul for their impressive-looking two-disc Special Edition release that arrives this Tuesday, and Scream Factory is doing the same for another cult classic, Psycho IV: The Beginning. Kino Lorber is releasing a Blu-ray for Chandu The Magician this week, and we’ve also got a DVD and Blu release for Jon Watts’ Clown to look forward to as well.

Other notable releases for August 23rd include Der Bunker, The Ultimate Vincent Price Collection,...

Jackie Vernon may be remembered by many for being the voice of Frosty the Snowman, but horror fans know him as Donald, a frustrated husband who develops a taste for fellow humans in Microwave Massacre. In August, Arrow Video will release the cult 1983 horror film on Blu-ray / DVD, and they recently revealed new face-melting cover art for the special release, as well as an updated bonus features list for The Bloodstained Butterfly Blu-ray / DVD:

Press Release: Mvd Entertainment Group furthers the distribution of Arrow Video in the Us with several new titles in August...

Microwave Massacre [Blu-ray + DVD] (August 16th)

They Came For Dinner...To Find They Were It!!

Microwave Massacre stars legendary stand-up comedian and actor Jackie Vernon as Donald, a disgruntled construction worker whose wife's predilection for haute cuisine drives him to cannibalism.

Donald unwittingly stumbles upon a solution to his two major problems in his life - his nagging...

Arrow Video has sent us details on their two upcoming releases in August, the cheesy Microwave Massacre and the giallo film, The Bloodstained Butterfly. As usual, the team at Arrow Video will be packing both releases with all sorts of special features. Read on for all the details.

Microwave Massacre [Blu-ray + DVD] (August 16th)

They Came For Dinner…To Find They Were It!!

Microwave Massacre stars legendary stand-up comedian and actor Jackie Vernon as Donald, a disgruntled construction worker whose wife’s predilection for haute cuisine drives him to cannibalism.

Donald unwittingly stumbles upon a solution to his two major problems in his life – his nagging wife and his lack of decent meals – when, one night, he bludgeons his better half to death with a pepper grinder in a drunken rage. Thinking on his feet, Donald dismembers the body and sets about microwaving the remains, which turn out to be rather delicious.

Mvd Entertainment Group furthers the distribution of "Arrow Video" in the Us with several new home video titles available August 2016, including "Microwave Massacre" on Blu-ray + DVD, August 16, 2016 and "The Bloodstained Butterfly" on Blu-ray + DVD, August 23, 2016:

"Microwave Massacre", (Blu-ray + DVD, August 16, 2016) stars stand-up comedian, actor Jackie Vernon as 'Donald', a disgruntled construction worker whose wife's predilection for 'haute cuisine' drives him insane. 

"Donald unwittingly stumbles upon a solution to his two major problems in his life - his nagging wife and his lack of decent meals.

"Eschewing all notions of good taste, 'Microwave Massacre' is an exercise in political incorrectness that has gone on to gain a cult following thanks to a characteristically deadpan performance from Vernon..."

Director-approved Special Edition Contents Include:

- Brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative

- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations

- Original mono audio (uncompressed Pcm...

For most of us in the United States, Helmut Berger is not someone who we are very familiar with. In Europe, however, most people know if his work, and his reputation for being unpredictable. Director Andreas Horvath submerges himself into Berger’s world in order to show us an intimate, uncensored look at the present life of a wounded man who once seemed to have it all in Helmut Berger, Actor.

Warning: Trailer is Nsfw, and shouldn’t be viewed by children.

A little backstory to get you in the proper head space: Berger had it made in the 70’s and 80’s. He was given his first film role by director Luchino Visconti in 1967, and things took off from there. He was leading a luxurious lifestyle with his, now lover, Visconti. Berger became a man about town, enjoying the finer things in life. When his partner died in 1976, Berger spiraled out of control.

While Jackie Vernon is remembered by many for his stand-up comedy and for being the voice of Frosty the Snowman, cult horror fans know him as Donald, a frustrated husband who develops a taste for human flesh in 1983’s Microwave Massacre. The horror comedy will be released this summer on Blu-ray / DVD in the Us and UK by Arrow Video, who will also release 1971’s The Bloodstained Butterfly on home media with a new 4K restoration.

While the full release details for the Us Blu-ray / DVDs of Microwave Massacre and The Bloodstained Butterfly have yet to be revealed, we do have a look at the lists of special features for the UK editions, which should feature extras similar to what Us fans can enjoy.

In the UK, Arrow Video will release Microwave Massacre on Blu-ray / DVD on August 15th, followed by an August 22nd Blu-ray / DVD release of The Bloodstained Butterfly.

The more “international” body of tastemaker critics have anointed Todd Haynes’ Carol, Hou Hsaio-Hsien’s The Assassin, George Miller’s Mad Max, Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Bruno Dumont’s Li’l Quinquin as the better film items for 2015 and top vote getters with the most noms for 2016 Ics Awards. Winners of the 13th Ics Awards will be announced on February 21, 2016. Here are the noms and all the categories.

Picture

• 45 Years

• Arabian Nights

• The Assassin

• Carol

• Clouds of Sils Maria

• The Duke of Burgundy

• Inside Out

• Li’l Quinquin

• Mad Max: Fury Road

• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

• Tangerine

Director

• Sean Baker – Tangerine

• Bruno Dumont – Li’l Quinquin

• Todd Haynes – Carol

• Hou Hsaio-Hsien – The Assassin

• George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road

Film Not In The English Language

• Amour Fou

• Arabian Nights

• The Assassin

• Hard to Be a God

• Jauja

• La Sapienza

• Li’l Quinquin

• Phoenix

• A...

Massimo Dallamano may be best known to some as the cinematographer of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), credited under the pseudonym Jack Dalmas. Following his collaborations with Leone, Dallamano would only serve as cinematographer twice more (his last credit being French director Michel Deville’s 1966 comedy The Mona Lisa Has Been Stolen starring George Chakiris and Marina Vlady). The explosive popularity of the spaghetti western would allow Dallamano to begin his own career as a director, with 1967 debut Bandidos (credited under another pseudonym, Max Dillman), but he’d soon after turn to the bread and butter of more exploitative genre fare. The director of eleven features, up until his death in 1976, Dallamano’s enduring, fascinating masterpiece stands as the 1972 title What Have You Done to Solange? Credited as a giallo staple, Dallamano’s film is more of a hybrid of subgenres, a mixed giallo and poliziotteschi film.

John Waters with Patty Hearst at the "Carol" premiereAh one of our favorite bad taste good --no... singular taste traditions of year-end end look backs has arrived: the annual John Waters Top Ten List at ArtForum. Though the Baltimore film icon hasn't made a feature film in over ten years he still says active as a celebrity for which we thank him. Try and imagine the world without him; we never want to!

His top ten lists generally contain at least one or two titles we haven't even heard of (rare for us don'cha know) and that's true again with #1 and #9 right here. They're also always a mix of smart, beautiful, queer, and head scratching choices -- I'm sorry but Love is Not a good movie even if it does contain, as John Waters raves, "heterosexual rimming -- in 3D!"

John Waters 2015 Top Ten List

01 Helmut Berger, Actor (Andreas Horvath)

02 Cinderella (Kenneth Branagh)

Yes,...

Forget the Oscar race. As he does every year, John Waters has named his favorite films of the last 12 months. Ranging from the ultra-obscure to the arthouse to the blockbuster, it’s another eclectic batch of movies to either put on your radar or revisit. While some of the year’s biggest studio hits are mentioned, Cinderella (“I fucking love this Disney film,” he says) and Mad Max: Fury Road (“this ultimate nonstop demolition derby is downright insane from the moment it takes off”), there’s sure to be a few you may not have heard of.

His number one choice is Andreas Horvath‘s obscure documentary Helmut Berger, Actor, which he questions, “Maybe the best motion picture of the year is also the worst?” There’s also Guy Maddin‘s “insanely inventive” The Forbidden Room, Xavier Dolan‘s “sexy” Tom at the Farm, Todd Haynes‘ Carol, Sean Baker‘s “beautifully shot” Tangerine,...

We're celebrating Woody Allen's 80th birthday today. Also in this roundup: "Best of 2015" lists from John Waters (#1: Andreas Horvath's Helmut Berger, Actor) and J. Hoberman (#1: Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin); interviews with legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, Kent Jones (Hitchcock/Truffaut), Andrew Haigh (45 Years) and Sofia Coppola (A Very Murray Christmas); Nathan Silver (Stinking Heaven) on Bertrand Bonello; Karina Longworth on Lana Turner; an upcoming masterclass in Cuba with Abbas Kiarostami, an audiovisual essay from Cristina Álvarez López on Luis Buñuel—and more. » - David Hudson...

We're celebrating Woody Allen's 80th birthday today. Also in this roundup: "Best of 2015" lists from John Waters (#1: Andreas Horvath's Helmut Berger, Actor) and J. Hoberman (#1: Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin); interviews with legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, Kent Jones (Hitchcock/Truffaut), Andrew Haigh (45 Years) and Sofia Coppola (A Very Murray Christmas); Nathan Silver (Stinking Heaven) on Bertrand Bonello; Karina Longworth on Lana Turner; an upcoming masterclass in Cuba with Abbas Kiarostami, an audiovisual essay from Cristina Álvarez López on Luis Buñuel—and more. » - David Hudson...

'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...