News

A judge ruled Monday that Marilyn Manson can’t use the specter of his “indefinite” criminal investigation to avoid sitting for a deposition in the sexual assault and battery lawsuit brought by his former personal assistant, Ashley Walters.

Los Angeles County Judge Steve Cochran said Manson, born Brian Warner, can still show up, assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions, but he’s not entitled to a special order blocking the sit-down pending a charging decision from newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman.

Whatever acclaim––nay, outright-legendary status––is foisted upon Michelangelo Antonioni typically comes from a small selection of films produced in the 1960s. While I continue awaiting just desserts for Mystery of Oberwald and Beyond the Clouds, we can now cross off Il Grido, his 1957 feature that’s been restored by The Film Foundation, Cineteca di Bologna, and Compass Film, and which is receiving a theatrical release from Janus Films starting at Film Forum on November 8 (before an inevitable Criterion). Ahead of this, there’s a new trailer in which Antonioni’s early triumph looks crisp as ever.

Here’s the new synopsis: “Years before L’avventura, his international breakthrough, Michelangelo Antonioni crafted his first masterpiece with Il grido, a raw expression of anguish that remains one of Italian cinema’s great underappreciated gems. Bridging Antonioni’s early, neorealism-inspired work and his hallmark stories of existential rootlessness Il Grido centers on...

Michelangelo Antonioni, the iconic Italian auteur, has been immortalized in cinema history thanks to his acclaimed classics “L’Avventura,” “Blow-Up,” and “The Passenger,” which redefined film grammar.

Yet three years prior to his international breakthrough with “L’Avventura,” which won the Cannes Jury

Prize, Antonioni directed his lesser-known feature “Il Grido.” The 1957 drama is relatively obscure and has rarely been screened stateside; however, the film is an early look at the themes of loneliness and fractured relationships that Antonioni later became synonymous with.

The official synopsis for “Il Grido” reads: “Michelangelo Antonioni crafted his first masterpiece with ‘Il Grido,’ a raw expression of anguish that remains one of Italian cinema’s great under-appreciated gems. Bridging Antonioni’s early, neorealism-inspired work and his hallmark stories of existential rootlessness, ‘Il Grido’ centers on Aldo (Steve Cochran), a sugar-refinery worker in the Po Valley. When Irma (Alida Valli), his lover of seven years, learns that...

The gangster genre has a rich cinematic lineage that played a significant role in the development of American, French, Japanese, and Hong Kong cinema. Some of film history's greatest auteurs have excelled in the gangster genre, evolving gangster moviemaking from a B movie genre into one of international cinema's most popular genres. In the United States, filmmakers like Raoul Walsh greatly shaped gangster cinema during Hollywood's Golden Age. Throughout the New Hollywood movement, directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Brian De Palma pushed the genre toward unprecedented critical and commercial heights.

Overseas, auteurs Jean-Pierre Melville and Seijun Suzuki made existentialism cool with their highly stylized gangster movies produced during the 1960s. In Hong Kong, John Woo and Johnnie To combined the gangster genre with action cinema to create some of the most thrilling movies ever made. Many of the best gangster movie directors of all time account...

Decades before Quentin Tarantino was crowned the coolest director on the planet, Sam Peckinpah was one of Hollywood's most controversial, violent, and flamboyant filmmakers. The creator behind such visceral, violent thrillers like The Getaway, war epics like Cross of Iron, and psychological horror stories like Straw Dogs, Peckinpah was a master of his form, but he was exceptionally talented at helming Westerns.

Most of the stories Sam Peckinpah told were either set in the West or influenced by the genre in some way, shape, or form. That's likely because Peckinpah was a Westerner, with his great-grandfather settling in central California in the mid-1800s. Born in 1925, Peckinpah spent much of his early life on his grandfather's ranch, and after a stint in the Marines, where he witnessed torture and violence while stationed in China, he embarked on a film career that would rank amongst the best the Western genre would ever see.

The Deadly Companions is a 1961 American Western starring Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Steve Cochran, and Chill Wills. The screenplay and the novel the film is based on were written by A. S. Fleischman. The Deadly Companions is legendary director Sam Peckinpah's first and least-known film. Rife with continuity errors, plot holes, visible crew and equipment, and numerous other errors, the movie was a trial by fire for the newly minted director. With a relatively small budget of $1.5 million and unable to rewrite the screenplay or edit the picture, Peckinpah cobbled together 93 minutes of one of the technically worst westerns ever made and a humble start for a legendary western director.

Premiere Networks and award-winning broadcast radio legend Patty Steele announced the launch of “The Backstory with Patty Steele” podcast. Listen to the trailer now on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere podcasts are heard.

The Backstory with Patty Steele is a bi-weekly short-form podcast featuring Patty Steele as she enlightens and entertains listeners with a journey through pivotal moments in history and pop culture. In each episode, Steele takes listeners beyond the surface of the big stories everyone knows to discover the fascinating lesser-known stories that shed light on the big picture. Some of the stories include a look at the world-famous architect and the mass murders that took place at his home; how bathing suits went from 30 pounds of wet wool to the thong; the original Olympics with athletes competing completely in the nude; and an iconic inventor who actually stole his masterpiece.

“The Backstory with Patty Steele” launches July...

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Kim Kardashian and Ye have reached a settlement in their divorce, averting a trial that had been set for next month, court documents filed Tuesday showed.

The former couple and their attorneys filed documents asking for a judge’s approval of terms they have agreed on, including 200,000 per month child support payments from Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, to Kardashian.

The two will have joint custody, and neither will pay the other spousal support, according to the documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The judge declared the two legally single at Kardashian’s request in March, ending their eight-year marriage, but issues of property and custody remained that were to be worked out in a trial starting Dec. 14.

The two have four children whose ages range from 3 to 9 years old.

Kardashian and Ye will equally split the expenses for the kids’ private security and private school,...

As Kanye West drags his feet in his ongoing divorce from Kim Kardashian, a judge granted an impatient Kardashian a December trial date Friday to finalize the former couple’s remaining financial and custody issues.

Kardashian, 41, and West, 45, were declared legally single at a hearing back in March, but they still haven’t reached a settlement — or been give final court orders — related to their vast wealth and four kids: North, 9, Saint, 6, Chicago, 4, and Psalm, 3.

“We’ve been ready for quite a while,” Kardashian’s lawyer Laura Wasser told Los Angeles County Judge Steve Cochran.

Viavision’s second deluxe Film Noir boxed finds real variety in the film style, with entries that range from low-budget efforts to a picture filmed on location in Mexico. Richard Conte solves a notorious movie studio murder in Hollywood Story, Gig Young is a cop who considers going crooked in City that Never Sleeps, Glenn Ford dodges murderous treasure hunters in Plunder of the Sun and Steve Cochran’s cop really does go rogue in Private Hell 36.

Essential Film Noir Collection 1

Blu-ray (Region-Free)

Viavision [Imprint] 18, 19, 20, 21

1947-1957 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 327 min. / Street Date October 28, 2020 / Available from Viavision [Imprint] / 149.99

Starring: Richard Conte, Julia Adams; Gig Young, Mala Powers, Marie Windsor; Glenn Ford, Diana Lynn, Patricia Medina; Ida Lupino, Steve Cochran, Howard Duff.

Directed by William Castle, John H. Auer, John Farrow, Don Siegel

Viavision’s noir series throws a wide net, with two debuts on Blu-ray and one full debut on home video.

A significant subplot of Quentin Tarantino's ninth feature, Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood, involves the offer of work to fading movie stars from the Italian film business, where a few got lucky and reinvigorated their careers and others merely paid the rent or tarnished their reputations, if any.This notion is certainly not one of Q.T.'s notorious counter-historical plot turns: Italy had been offering opportunities to Hollywood and European flotsam since the fifties.In the era of Il Boom, the post-war economic miracle, filmmakers, including actors, were offered a great deal: they could live and work in Italy tax-free for a year. Projects were not only re-written to take advantage of this possibility, they were conceived for it: it's uncertain Roman Holiday would exist without the big tax break incentive.For actors, there was clearly another consideration, beyond the big, or at least tax-exempt, bucks and...

At Il Cinema Ritrovato, the festival of restored and rediscovered films in Bologna, one intriguing item was a short season of the films noir of Felix E. Feist, with Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951) advertised as the best of these. A couple-on-the-run movie in the melancholy vein of Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night, it benefits from strong performances from its unusual leads, and Feist, intermittently a striking stylist, seems fully engaged.From the start, when anti-hero Steve Cochran is paroled from the prison he's spent eighteen years in since killing his brutal father as a teenager, low angles make the hero hulking and threatening. But then, released into an uncaring and alien society, he wanders for silent minutes, observed by a crafty newsman, but not speaking, merely staring in bewilderment at the modern cars and fashions.Then he wanders into a diner and orders three different types of pie,...

Fay McKenzie, who starred alongside Gene Autry in five Westerns and appeared in five films for director Blake Edwards, has died. She was 101.

McKenzie died in her sleep on April 16 in Los Angeles, a relative, Bryan Cooper, announced.

After a brief marriage to tough-guy actor Steve Cochran in the 1940s, McKenzie wed screenwriter Tom Waldman, who worked on the screenplays for the Edwards films High Time (1960), The Party (1968) and Trail of the Pink Panther (1982).

In The Party, McKenzie played Alice Clutterbuck, the hostess of the film's chaotic bash, and she also appeared for the ...

Fay McKenzie, who starred alongside Gene Autry in five Westerns and appeared in five films for director Blake Edwards, has died. She was 101.

McKenzie died in her sleep on April 16 in Los Angeles, a relative, Bryan Cooper, announced.

After a brief marriage to tough-guy actor Steve Cochran in the 1940s, McKenzie wed screenwriter Tom Waldman, who worked on the screenplays for the Edwards films High Time (1960), The Party (1968) and Trail of the Pink Panther (1982).

In The Party, McKenzie played Alice Clutterbuck, the hostess of the film's chaotic bash, and she also appeared for the ...

Mamie Van Doren Film Noir Collection

Blu ray

Kl Studio Classics

1957 – 1959 / 1.75:1, 1.85:1, / 216 Min. / Street Date – November 20, 2018

Starring Mamie Van Doren, Anne Bancroft, Lee Van Cleef, Lex Barker

Cinematography by Stanley Cortez, William Margulies

Directed by Howard Koch, Edward Cahn

Mamie Van Doren, née Joan Lucille Olander, was born in Rowena, South Dakota in 1931. In 1942 the family relocated to Hollywood where the camera-ready kid blossomed at the speed of light – a Pantages usherette at the age of 13, she racked up a string of attention-grabbing gigs that led to a reign as Miss Eight Ball and the inevitable merger with Tinseltown’s preeminent lounge lizard, Howard Hughes.

That arrangement generated a distinctly higher-profile for the industrious starlet – from an eye-popping Alberto Vargas pinup to swivel-hipped walk-ons in a series of forgettable potboilers and finally a contract at Universal. A cheeky studio exec christened her “Mamie” thereby hijacking the name of President...

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By Hank Reineke

Blue Underground’s double-feature Blu Ray issue of Code 7… Victim 5 and Mozambique is a generous release considering the company chose to simultaneously issue both films as standalone DVDs. Both films are among the earliest big screen efforts of notorious exploitation producer Harry Alan Towers. Both were adapted from Tower’s own semi-original scenarios (under his usual pseudonym of “Peter Welbeck”) and both were penned by the Australian screenwriter Peter Yeldham with British director Robert Lynn at the helm.

Both men had been working in television and, like Towers, were now gingerly testing the waters of the international movie business. The films, modest thrillers financed by Tower’s UK Company “Towers of London,” nonetheless share a continental roster of technicians and actors. The films are serviceably entertaining as thrillers, but are most ambitious in conveying a jet-setting ‘60s ambiance. The fact...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Arthur Riplye's The Chase (1946) is playing from September 30 - October 30, 2017 in the United States.“It’s happened again.” This almost throwaway admission by the protagonist of The Chase, Arthur Ripley’s way-out 1946 noir, comes just after the film’s jolting third act twist. It sets the viewer up for the unexpected, but is delivered with such exasperation that, at least for the beleaguered hero of the picture, the situation may perhaps be all too familiar, a possibility that in itself makes the occurrence that much more significant. Prior to this point, The Chase had been a solid, atmospheric thriller, with sufficient quirkiness to keep it in thoroughly fresh territory. But with this derailing revelation, there is really no preparing for how The Chase plays out, and what that, in turn, means for the preceding story. On its surface set-up,...

Curtis Hanson--Confidentially

By

Alex Simon

Curtis Hanson was my first interview with a fellow film buff and film journalist. He was nice enough to sit down with me twice, first at the Rose Cafe in Venice, then at a lunch spot in the Marina, the name of which has been lost to time. He was then kind enough to invite me to the world premiere of "L.A. Confidential" at the Chinese Theater as his guest, my first time on the red carpet at a real-life Hollywood premiere, and called me after this piece ran to thank me personally. A nice man. Hanson, and co-writer Brian Helgeland, would go on to win Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars for "L.A. Confidential."

Years later, I ran into Hanson at a book signing party for Pat York that was held in Westwood. I approached him and reminded him of our interview a decade or so earlier.

Michelangelo Antonioni's pre-international breakthrough drama is as good as anything he's done, a flawlessly acted and directed story of complex relationships -- that include his 'career' themes before the existential funk set in. It's one of the best-blocked dramatic films ever... the direction is masterful. Le amiche Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 817 1955 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 106 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 7, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Eleonora Rossi Drago, Gabriele Ferzetti, Franco Fabrizi, Valentina Cortese, Madeleine Fischer, Yvonne Furneaux, Anna Maria Pancani, Luciano Volpato, Maria Gambarelli, Ettore Manni. Cinematography Gianni De Venanzo Film Editor Eraldo Da Roma Original Music Giovanni Fusco Written by Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alba de Cespedes from a book by Cesare Pavese Produced by Giovanni Addessi Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

It's time to stop being so intimidated by Michelangelo Antonioni. His epics of existential alienation La notte, L'eclisse and...

By John M. Whalen

Cornell Woolrich is a writer whose work was much loved and cherished by fans of film noir. The Internet Movie Database lists 102 credits for him for both film and TV shows—titles including “Rear Window,” “The Bride Wore Black,” “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,” “Black Angel,” “Fear in the Night,” and “Phantom Lady,” He didn’t write any screenplays that I know of. The films and TV shows were all adapted from a prolific output of stories written under his Woolrich and William Irish pseudonyms, and under his real name, George Hopley.

While Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain make up the Big Three in noir fiction, Woolrich carved out a special niche for himself. Chandler, and Hammett wrote about tough guy heroes who usually overcame the web of evil they encountered. Cain’s heroes weren’t always so lucky, but at least...

An exercise in dizzy disorientation, this Cornell Woolrich crazy-house noir pulls the rug out from under us at least three times. You want delirium, you got it -- the secret words for today are "Obsessive" and "Perverse." Innocent Robert Cummings is no match for sicko psychos Peter Lorre and Steve Cochran. The Chase Blu-ray Kino Classics 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 86 min. / Street Date May 24, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Cummings, Michèle Morgan, Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre, Lloyd Corrigan, Jack Holt, Don Wilson, Alexis Minotis, Nina Koschetz, Yolanda Lacca, James Westerfield, Shirley O'Hara. Cinematography Frank F. Planer Film Editor Edward Mann Original Music Michel Michelet Written by Philip Yordan from the book The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich Produced by Seymour Nebenzal Directed by Arthur D. Ripley

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

As Guy Maddin says on his (recommended) commentary, the public domain copies of this show were...

Review by Sam Moffitt

Being the first is not always a good thing. Many ground breaking artists who introduce something new into the cultural mix do not always fare well after they have changed the rules and the game. Take, just as one example, Orson Welles who changed forever how movies were made as well as radio drama and stage productions. Although Welles made out better than Maila Nurmi, also known as Vampira, the subject of the incredible and unforgettable documentary Vampira and Me.

H Greene first got to know Maila Nurmi when he interviewed her for a documentary called Schlock! The Secret History of Hollywood, (a good documentary in its own right.) Nurmi had grown distrustful of just about everyone, and with good reason. Yet for reasons Greene doesn’t even speculate on she trusted Greene and gave him almost two hours of interview time and discussed every last moment of her bizarre,...

Gary Cooper movies on TCM: Cooper at his best and at his weakest Gary Cooper is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 30, '15. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any Cooper movie premiere – despite the fact that most of his Paramount movies of the '20s and '30s remain unavailable. This evening's features are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Sergeant York (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town solidified Gary Cooper's stardom and helped to make Jean Arthur Columbia's top female star. The film is a tad overlong and, like every Frank Capra movie, it's also highly sentimental. What saves it from the Hell of Good Intentions is the acting of the two leads – Cooper and Arthur are both excellent – and of several supporting players. Directed by Howard Hawks, the jingoistic, pro-war Sergeant York was a huge box office hit, eventually earning Academy Award nominations in several categories,...

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

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

Teresa Wright ca. 1945. Teresa Wright movies on TCM: 'The Little Foxes,' 'The Pride of the Yankees' Pretty, talented Teresa Wright made a relatively small number of movies: 28 in all, over the course of more than half a century. Most of her films have already been shown on Turner Classic Movies, so it's more than a little disappointing that TCM will not be presenting Teresa Wright rarities such as The Imperfect Lady and The Trouble with Women – two 1947 releases co-starring Ray Milland – on Aug. 4, '15, a "Summer Under the Stars" day dedicated to the only performer to date to have been shortlisted for Academy Awards for their first three film roles. TCM's Teresa Wright day would also have benefited from a presentation of The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956), an unusual entry – parapsychology, reincarnation – in the Wright movie canon and/or Roseland (1977), a little-remembered entry in James Ivory's canon.

Veterans Day movies on TCM: From 'The Sullivans' to 'Patton' (photo: George C. Scott in 'Patton') This evening, Turner Classic Movies is presenting five war or war-related films in celebration of Veterans Day. For those outside the United States, Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day, which takes place in late May. (Scroll down to check out TCM's Veterans Day movie schedule.) It's good to be aware that in the last century alone, the U.S. has been involved in more than a dozen armed conflicts, from World War I to the invasion of Iraq, not including direct or indirect military interventions in countries as disparate as Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. As to be expected in a society that reveres people in uniform, American war movies have almost invariably glorified American soldiers even in those rare instances when they have dared to criticize the military establishment.

Singer, dancer and actor whose Hollywood career was overshadowed by her marriage to Errol Flynn

The gifted singer, dancer and actor Patrice Wymore, who has died aged 87, had the misfortune to be typecast in secondary roles at Warner Bros studios in the 1950s, and to be known as the third wife of the Hollywood star Errol Flynn.

The 23-year-old Wymore and the 41-year-old Flynn got married after co-starring in Rocky Mountain (1950), a minor western in which he played an army officer who rescues her from marauding Indians, though they had no love scenes together on screen. It was Wymore's second film, while Flynn was a veteran of more than three dozen movies. It was the beginning of her film career, while his was on the slide. Both were under contract to Warner Bros.

At the time, MGM musicals reigned supreme, though Warner Bros had Doris Day, a top box-office singing star.

Mind

“There is an image, and people believe me when I say I make films, because, well, in the end...because we used a camera, and there is an image,” muses Jean-Luc Godard to potential producers in his video pitch, Petites Notes à propos du film Je vous salue Marie (1983), shown at the 51st New York Film Festival’s retrospective programmed by Kent Jones and Jake Perlin, Jean-Luc Godard - The Spirit of the Forms. “People think everything comes from the camera.”

Sometimes I think the images come from inside myself. On rare occurrence, a picture unspools in front of me that in the moment has no antecedent in my mind. Its movement is that of a dream, spontaneously created, this instant’s images connected only by the most opaque thread to those behind them. Its future images, those that follow what I am seeing, are not predestined by the...

Ann Blyth movies: TCM schedule on August 16, 2013 (photo: ‘Our Very Own’ stars Ann Blyth and Farley Granger) See previous post: "Ann Blyth Today: Light Singing and Heavy Drama on TCM." 3:00 Am One Minute To Zero (1952). Director: Tay Garnett. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ann Blyth, William Talman. Bw-106 mins. 5:00 Am All The Brothers Were Valiant (1953). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth. C-95 mins. 6:45 Am The King’S Thief (1955). Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Cast: Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, David Niven. C-79 mins. Letterbox Format. 8:15 Am Rose Marie (1954). Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas. C-104 mins. Letterbox Format. 10:00 Am The Great Caruso (1951). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Mario Lanza, Ann Blyth, Dorothy Kirsten, Jarmila Novotna, Richard Hageman, Carl Benton Reid, Eduard Franz, Ludwig Donath, Alan Napier, Pál Jávor, Carl Milletaire, Shepard Menken, Vincent Renno, Nestor Paiva, Peter Price, Mario Siletti, Angela Clarke,...

White Heat

Written by Ivan Goff and Robert Evans

Directed by Raoul Walsh

U.S.A., 1949

Where would people be without their mothers? Whether by birth, adoption or simply maternal figures, these great dames have, since time immemorial, commanded love, admiration, respect and devotion from their children. Codes of conduct, signs of affection, life lessons, mothers are so often considered the obvious heart and soul of one’s family, the father more commonly seen as the backbone. Appreciation for one’s own mother and, at the very least, respect for another’s mother are understood as basic concepts that, if challenged, speak gravely ill of the offending party. Sometimes the devotion stretches too far, venturing into eerie symbiosis, as was the case with poor Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho (1960). While James Cagney’s Arthur ‘Cody’ Jarrett in White Heat does not belong in quite the same category as Bates,...

‘White Heat’

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Written by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts

Starring James Cagney, Virginia, Edmond O’Brien

USA, 114 min – 1949.

“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

Raoul Walsh’s White Heat stars James Cagney as yet another gangster (Cagney being known for other films such as The Public Enemy and Angels with Dirty Faces), Cody Jarrett. Cody runs a gang of criminals that have recently killed four people during a train robbery. When the police come close to catching his gang, Cody admits to a lesser crime and is sentenced to one to three years in prison. He worries that gang member Big Ed (Steve Cochran) is trying to take over and decides to break out of prison.

Unlike the other gangsters Cagney has played, his character Cody draws strength from and finds comfort in the care of his mother, Ma Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly). Whenever Cody has...

Colenso Bbdo Auckland has launched the next phase of its ‘Money is good, money is bad’ campaign for Bnz, with a plea to New Zealanders to be innovative with their money.

TotalMoney, a product allows customers to offset their savings against their mortgage, marks the first ad in the latest phase of the campaign.

“TotalMoney is a great example of being good with money, having saved customers who’ve switched to it a staggering $191m in interest since it was launched”, said Andy McLeish, head of planning at Colenso Bbdo.

Colenso won the Nab-owned business having resigned the Westpac account earlier this year.

Credits:

Creative Chairman: Nick Worthington Executive Creative Director: Steve Cochran Group Account Director: Paul Wilson Senior Account Director: Rebecca Richardson Account Executive: Nick O’Donnell Planning Director: Andy McLeish Agency Producer: Jen Storey/Megan Robertson Production Company: Assembly Director: Matt von Trott Design: Jonny Kofoed 3D: Wayne Osborne,...

The Italian master's challenging and difficult L'Avventura was booed at its premiere in Cannes. But nowadays the director gets something far more hurtful: indifference

This is the centenary year of Michelangelo Antonioni. He was born on 29 September 1912 and died in 2007 at the age of 94, having worked until almost the very end. As well as everything else, he gave us one of the founding myths of postwar cinema: The Booing of L'Avventura. For film historians, it's as pretty much important as the audience riots at the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

At the Cannes film festival on 15 May 1960, Antonioni presented his L'Avventura, a challenging and difficult film and a decisive break from his earlier work, replete with languorous spaces and silences. This was movie-modernism's difficult birth. The film was jeered so ferociously, so deafeningly, that poor Antonioni and his beautiful star Monica Vitti burst into tears where they sat. There...

The fans are in the seats, the fields have been lined in white and the players are ready for some football action. Can’t you smell it in the air? The early days of Fall are here and we’re in the thick of the hallowed football time of year – high school, college and NFL. Wamg is counting down our 35 favorite football films you need to see before the kickoff of pigskin season. It’s never too early or too late to talk the sport loved by fans everywhere. Many of these true stories can be found on DVD, Blu-ray and Video On Demand. Let us know in the comments section below how you would have ranked your favorite football movies or if we left any on the sidelines.

1. Rudy

“You’re 5 foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’, and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Aug. 21, 2012

Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Olive Films

Ida Lupino proves to be the wrong woman to get involved with in Private Hell 36.

Ida Lupino (High Sierra) co-wrote and stars in the classic 1954 film noir Private Hell 36, and this release marks its DVD and Blu-ray debut.

The crime drama follows desperate cop Cal Bruner (Steve Cochran, White Heat), who strays off the straight-and-narrow and falls for a hardened lounge singer (Lupino). His affections get in the way of his investigation of a robbery in which $300,000 was taken. And while his detective work leads him and his honest partner (Howard Duff, While the City Sleeps) to the key suspect and they find the cash, Cal is taken by his lady friend—who has expensive tastes—and he sets out on a path that can only lead to betrayal and murder.

Directed with grim efficiency by the...

New Zealand supermarket New World has launched a series of TV ads as part of a brand offensive.

The idea behind the ads is that peoples’ moods, occasions, relationships and even the weather affect what and how we eat.

The ads were shot by director Patrick Hughes of Finch who used a variety of cameras – a 35mm, anamorphic, 16mm on a Bolex, digital HD and an iPhone, mixed in with stock footage.

To complement the different stories, three individual music tracks were used, including an original recording of a 1928 blues standard, Fishin’ Blues by Henry Thomas.

Credits:

Agency: Colenso Bbdo and .99

Creative Chairman: Nick Worthington

Executive Creative Director: Steve Cochran

Creative Team: Victoria Daltrey & Will Bingham

Group Account Director: Jillian Stanton

Client Services Director: Jarad O’Hara

Planner: Katheryn Thomas

Agency Producer: Jen Storey

Production Company: Finch

Production Company Producer: Karen Bryson, Nikki Walker

Director: Patrick Hughes

Sound Design: Franklin...

In conjunction with La Furia Umana, Notebook is very happy to present Ted Fendt's original English translation of Luc Moullet's "Rockefeller's Melancholy," on Michelangelo Antonioni. Moullet's original French version can be found at La Furia Umana. Our special thanks to Mr. Moullet, La Furia Umana and Ted Fendt for making this possible.

Above: "John D. Rockefeller" (1917) by John Singer Sargent.

Drifting is the fundamental subject of Antonioni’s films. They are about beings who don’t know where they are going, who constantly contradict themselves, and are guided by their momentary impulses. We don’t understand what they feel or why they act as they do.

Psychological cinema could be defined in this way: it is psychological when you don’t understand the motivation of emotions and behaviors. If you understand, it means it’s easy, immediately, at a very superficial level... The filmmaker must therefore let it be...

Doris Day may have been — once again — absurdly bypassed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Board of Governors, but at least she'll be getting some much deserved recognition from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (Lafca). Day, 87, has been named the recipient of the L.A. Critics' Career Achievement Award of 2011 — or 2012, as the ceremony will take place early next year. (This year's winners will be announced on December 11.) The first Lafca award winners were announced in 1975. The annual Career Achievement Award was instituted the following year. Since then, a mere four women have been recognized for their contributions to the motion picture industry: actresses Barbara Stanwyck (1981) and Myrna Loy (1983), editor Dede Allen (1999), and now Doris Day. Male recipients — sometimes two per year — range from auteur John Cassavetes to comedian/auteur Jerry Lewis, from producer John Calley to silent-era pioneer Allan Dwan, from animator Chuck Jones to filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

Burt Lancaster on TCM: The Leopard, Scorpio, The Killers I haven't watched Michael Winner's Scorpio (1973), an unflattering portrayal of Us foreign policy and the CIA that reunited Lancaster with his The Leopard co-star Alain Delon. As per the TCM synopsis, "a CIA hit man [Lancaster] is stalked by a former partner [Delon] when the agency turns on him." A Man for All Seasons' Best Actor Oscar winner Paul Scofield and Gayle Hunnicutt are also in the cast. Robert Siodmak's 1946 film noir The Killers is one of the best-looking efforts in the genre thanks to Elwood Bredell's glistening black-and-white cinematography. Although The Killers turned newcomer Lancaster into a major star, as far as I'm concerned this adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story belongs to Ava Gardner; in fact, The Killers could just as easily have been called "The Leopardess (La gattaparda)." Edmond O'Brien co-stars. For The Killers, Siodmak...

Turner Classic Movies' look at Arabs in Hollywood movies continues this evening with six movies. Why exactly Gabriel Pascal's film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) is one of the six, I don't know. Caesar was a Roman-born emperor; Cleopatra, a descendant of Greek royalty, was an Egyptian queen long before the Arab conquest of Egypt. Now, I may be puzzled about its inclusion, but Caesar and Cleopatra is very much worth watching chiefly thanks to Claude Rains' brilliant performance as the first half of the title role and Vivien Leigh's highly theatrical but enjoyable star turn as the second half of the title role. Kismet (1944) would have been more enjoyable had it been directed by Henry Hathaway, Michael Curtiz, Frank Lloyd, or even Lloyd Bacon. William Dieterle, best known for several ponderous Warner Bros. biopics of the '30s, had a heavy hand...

Washington, Mar 15 – Charlie Sheen has reportedly recruited a new lawyer, who has worked for Michael Jackson in the past, to defend him in domestic violence case against his wife.

According to RadarOnline.com, the actor has hired Steve Cochran, a L.A. based criminal defense lawyer.

Until now, Richard Cummins has been Sheen’s lead attorney, reports Radaronline.

However, the ‘Two and a Half Men’ star’s team believed they eeded a “more high powered” attorney on the case

Sheen recently visited rehab for alcohol.

Ralph Meeker, Dan Duryea, Vince Edwards, Steve Cochran. There's just something about the asshole. Scratch that. That's too strong and vulgar and dismissive of a word. More like, the shit heel, the hinky hombre, the shit bird, the gas house palooka, whichever old-timey slang you choose to apply, these fellas are smarmy, slimy, ready with the pimp hand and sport that proverbial cat-that-at-the-canary grin whenever a comely broad crosses their path. If you're upset, you're just, as Duryea spits in The Little Foxes, "showing off your grief" (though he dares utter this to a man, which, in the rare case of the actor's screen career, causes Mr. Duryea to become the recipient of the bitch slap, rather than his usual backhand). And should you ever flag down a car in hysterical distress; the good looking stinker might not give you...

Ralph Meeker, Dan Duryea, Vince Edwards, Steve Cochran. There's just something about the asshole.

Scratch that. That's too strong and vulgar and dismissive of a word. More like... the shit bird, the hinky hombre, the gashouse palooka, whichever old-timey slang you choose to apply. These fellas are smarmy, slimy, ready with the pimp hand, and they sport that proverbial cat-that-ate-the-canary grin whenever a comely broad crosses their path. If you're upset, you're just, as Duryea spits in "The Little Foxes," "showing off your grief" (though he dares utters this to a man, which, in the rare case of the actor's screen career, causes Mr. Duryea to become the recipient of the bitch slap, rather than his usual backhand). And should you ever flag down a car in hysterical distress; the good looking stinker might not give you the comfort you require. He might just ask, à la Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer,...

The B Noir festival is a hit! It's always a delight to hear about retrospective programming doing well. There are still people out there interested in and trying out old movies in theaters. Or maybe the San Francisco noir crowd is just that strong. I'd written about "I Wake Up Dreaming" a couple of weeks back (read it here); I have since went and saw some of the movies they're playing.

If you're in the Bay Area and you haven't spared the time, there's good news. The festival was supposed to end this Thursday, but I have just been informed that since it is selling out so well, they've decided to add another week of showings!

The list of extra screenings is at the bottom, but before that, I want to recommend trying to get to this Friday's showing of The Devil Thumbs a Ride, which I managed to catch on the fest's opening night.