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Something that happens in Hollywood once in a blue moon is the splitting up of a movie into two parts. Rarely does a movie franchise or brand ever warrant something as massive as a story that takes place over multiple films. With that said, many have earned that incredible honor before, from Kill Bill to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to, as the most recent example, Wicked. As Hollywood box office receptions have been bigger than ever, many studios are electing to tell more of their stories over the course of two or three films in order to maximize their profits and increase the longevity of a franchise. But if this practice is still going on today, why are films like Dune, Wicked and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse hiding the fact that there is more than one part to the movie?

It's been noted by audiences that movie studios...

Brazil’s Fantaspoa film festival is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and the festival is breaking numerous records, presenting an impressive total of 114 feature films, 22 of these as World Premieres, marking the largest number of feature films in Fantaspoa’s long history.

The final selection of feature films for Fantaspoa’s highly-anticipated 20th edition has been exclusively presented to Bloody Disgusting, so read on for everything you need to know!

The festival tells us this week, “With a diverse selection, the feature films screening at Fantaspoa Xx have been divided into seven distinct competitive categories: International, Ibero-American, National, Documentary, Animation, All-Nighter, and Low Budget, Great Films. These categories promise audiences a variety of cinematic experiences, from the fringes of horror and fantasy to the depths of the human imagination.

“In addition to feature films, Fantaspoa will screen 123 short films, totaling 237 participating works, making this edition of the festival the largest in its history.

Last Updated March 7: Dune,” “Nightmare Alley,” and “No Time to Die” were the big film winners March 5 at the 26th Art Directors Guild Awards (held at the Intercontinental Los Angeles Downtown). However, the production design race now comes down to “Dune” and “Nightmare Alley.”

Last Updated February 9: The production design Oscar nominees — “Dune” (Warner Bros.), “Nightmare Alley” (Searchlight/Disney), “The Power of the Dog” (Netflix), The Tragedy of Macbeth” (Apple TV+), and “West Side Story” (20th Century/Disney) — are all creative examples of world building which defy genre expectations.

However, the ambitious and imaginative world building for Denis Villeneuve “Dune” is the frontrunner for production designer Patrice Vermette and set decorator Zsuzsanna Sipos. They oversaw an assortment of large-scale sets at Origo Studios in Budapest. There’s the castle of the Atreides family on the ocean planet Caladan and distinguished by its Norwegian vibe with mottled hues. The...

When production designer Stefan Dechant (Disney’s upcoming hybrid “Pinocchio”) got a surprise call to meet with Joel Coen on the spur of the moment to discuss “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” his noir-like Shakespeare adaptation of murder, madness, and mayhem, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, Dechant was immediately hooked.

The look and design were explicitly laid out in a photo album that Coen shared with Dechant, after the director spent a year refining his black-and-white vision with cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. It cried out German Expressionism, with images from movies, architecture, photography, and theater (modernist stage designer Edward Gordon Craig’s use of large geometric blocks). Inspired by the blueprint, the production designer went to work on the very spare Shakespearean world building, shot on sound stages in L.A.

“When we sat down, Joel had a very strong vision [for the look and choreography]: black-and-white, Academy ratio [1.37:1], German Expressionism, and it was abstracted...

This article contains spoilers for Army of Thieves and Army of the Dead.

Army of Thieves, the prequel to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, has less to do with zombies than you might expect. Yes, there are a few undead creatures shambling around the claustrophobic hallways of Ludwig Dieter’s (Matthias Schweighöfer) nightmares and on European newscasts showing the horrific outbreak in Las Vegas, but the movie’s not really interested in what’s happening across the Atlantic. Instead, Army of Thieves is about the mythical safes built by legendary (and fictional) locksmith Hans Wagner, one of which will eventually become the vault Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), Ludwig, and the rest of the squad of mercenaries will risk their lives for in Army of the Dead.

Years before that fateful heist in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Ludwig is a man named Sebastian, a bank teller living in the city of Potsdam,...

Siegfried Fischbacher — of the animal training and magic duo Siegfried & Roy — has died at the age of 81 from pancreatic cancer.

His death comes just eight months after his performing partner Roy Horn died from complications related to Covid-19 at the age of 75.

Sad news: Siegfried Fischbacher, of “Siegfried & Roy,” passed away last night at his home in Las Vegas from pancreatic cancer. He was 81.https://t.co/oyooKtAQuo pic.twitter.com/Z6lCh7VmjY

— Dan Linden (@DanLinden) January 14, 2021

The German duo met as entertainers on a cruise ship in 1957 and...

German entertainment giant Ufa is continuing its push into feature films with a slew of high-profile projects, including an upcoming Siegfried and Roy biopic and a sequel to the 2014 historical epic “The Physician,” starring Tom Payne (“Prodigal Son”).

The ramp-up follows the huge box office success last year of Oscar winner Caroline Link’s “All About Me,” based on the childhood memoir of German comedian Hape Kerkeling, which became 2019’s second biggest local box-office hit with €31.25 million ($35.34 million) via Warner Bros.

Other upcoming titles include Leander Haussmann’s highly anticipated Cold War laffer “A Stasi Comedy,” which Constantin Film is set to release next year. Set in the 1980s, the film centers on a young agent of East Germany’s infamous state security service, played by David Kross (“Balloon”), who is sent to infiltrate East Berlin’s counterculture scene and who, years later, is confronted with the possibility of his...

German entertainment giant Ufa is continuing its push into feature film with a slew of high-profile projects, including an upcoming Siegfried and Roy biopic and a sequel to the 2014 historical epic “The Physician,” starring Tom Payne (“Prodigal Son”).

The ramp-up follows last year’s huge box-office success of Oscar-winner Caroline Link’s “All About Me,” based on the childhood memoir of German comedian Hape Kerkeling, which became 2019’s second biggest home-grown box-office hit grossing €31.25 million ($35.34 million) via Warner Bros.

Other upcoming titles include Leander Haussmann’s highly anticipated Cold War laffer “A Stasi Comedy,” which Constantin Film is set to release next year. Set in the 1980s, the film centers on a young agent of East Germany’s infamous state security service, played by David Kross (“Balloon”), who is sent to infiltrate East Berlin’s counterculture scene and who, years later, is confronted with the possibility of his secret Stasi past coming to light.

The Simpsons has an uncanny track record of its spooky predictions coming true. Over the years, it’s been noted that past episodes predicted smartwatches, the Siegfried & Roy tiger attack, Disney purchasing Fox, and most famously, the presidency of Donald Trump (described by the writers as “the logical last stop before hitting bottom”). But now, a prediction made in the season 4 episode “Marge in Chains” has, appropriately enough, gone viral. Twice!

The episode features Springfield suffering from the “Osaka flu,” which naturally caused many to begin comparing it with coronavirus. This made the episode’s writer, Bill Oakley, pretty unhappy. He laid out his problems in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, saying:

“I don’t like it being used for nefarious purposes. The idea that anyone misappropriates it to make coronavirus seem like an Asian plot is terrible. In terms of trying to place blame on Asia — I think that is gross.

Hard-media home video is making a comeback, and Kino Lorber shows its faith in the medium with an extravagant collection of its entire silent holdings of the Fritz Lang library. Mythical heroes, sacrificing heroines, criminal madmen and uncontrolled super-science are his themes; it’s a paranoid’s view of the first half of the 20th Century, expressed with fantastic innovations that literally re-write the rules of cinema.

Fritz Lang The Silent Films

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1919-1929 / B&W / 1:37 Silent Aperture / 1894 min. / Street Date November 21, 2017 / “The Complete Silent Films of German Cinema’s Supreme Stylist” / Available through Kino Lorber / 149.95

Films: The Spiders, Harakiri, The Wandering Shadow, Four Around the Woman, Destiny, Dr. Mabuse The Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, Spies, Woman in the Moon, The Plague of Florence.

Directed by Fritz Lang

Kino Lorber has been a happy home for many marvelous discs of silent German classics. Thanks to their ongoing...

Jim Knipfel Jan 17, 2017

We take a look back at the enduring legacy of the world’s first cinematic sci-fi epic, Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich shortly before his death in 1976, Fritz Lang said of Metropolis, “You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale – definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture – thought it was silly and stupid – then, when I saw the astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures - should I say now that I like Metropolis because something I have seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished?”

See related Peter Ramsey interview: revisiting Rise Of The Guardians

Lang wasn’t...

Wow! Fritz Lang's second western is a marvel -- a combo of matinee innocence and that old Germanic edict that character equals fate. It has a master's sense of color and design. Robert Young is an odd fit but Randolph Scott is nothing less than terrific. You'd think Lang was born on the Pecos. Western Union Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1941 / Color /1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date November 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Randolph Scott, Robert Young, Virginia Gilmore, Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Chill Wills, Slim Summerville, Barton MacLane, Victor Kilian, George Chandler, Chief John Big Tree, Iron Eyes Cody, Jay Silverheels. Cinematography Edward Cronjager, Allen M. Davey Original Music David Buttolph Written by Robert Carson from the novel by Zane Grey Produced by Harry Joe Brown (associate) Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Darryl Zanuck of 20th Fox treated most writers well, was good for John Ford...

Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921) with Music by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra screens November 5th at 7:30 at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave,) as part of this year’s this year’s St. Fritz Lang’s Destiny Louis International Film Festival. Ticket information can be found Here.

There’s nothing better than seeing a silent film with live music and you’ll have the opportunity Saturday November 5th at 7:30 at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium. There’s a new restoration of Fritz Lang’s Destiny (Der müde Tod 1921) a dizzying blend of German Romanticism, Orientalism, and Expressionism and Cinema St. Louis will be screening it at this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. The film will be accompanied live by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra, who will debuting their new original score for the film.

Destiny marked a bold step for Fritz Lang,...

The schedule for the 25th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (Sliff) has been announced and once again film goers will be offered the best in cutting edge features and shorts from around the globe. The festival takes place November 3-13, 2016.

Sliff kicks off on November 3 with the opening-night selection St. Louis Brews, the latest home-brewed documentary by local filmmaker Bill Streeter, director of Brick By Chance And Fortune: A St. Louis Story (read my interview with Bill Here)

According to Sliff, the festival will feature more than 125 filmmaking guests, including honorees: Actress Karen Allen (Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Animal House), director Charles Burnett (Killer Of Sheep, To Sleep With Anger), winner of the Cinema St. Louis Lifetime Achievement Award; and director Steve James (Hoop Dreams).

Full information on Sliff films, including synopses, dates/time, and links for purchase of advance tickets is available on the Cinema St.

Savant uncovers the true, hidden ending to this Fritz Lang masterpiece. The moral outrage of Lang's searing attack on lynch terror hasn't dimmed a bit -- with his first American picture the director nails one of our primary social evils. MGM imposed some re-cutting and re-shooting, but it's still the most emotionally powerful film on the subject. Fury DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1936 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 92 min. / Street Date August 2, 2016, 2016 / available through the WB Shop / 17.99 Starring Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis, Walter Brennan, Frank Albertson, George Walcott, Arthur Stone, Morgan Wallace, George Chandler, Roger Gray, Edwin Maxwell, Howard C. Hickman, Jonathan Hale, Leila Bennett, Esther Dale, Helen Flint. Cinematography Joseph Ruttenberg Film Editor Frank Sullivan Original Music Franz Waxman Written by Bartlett Cormack, Fritz Lang story by Norman Krasna Produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Just...

'Die Nibelungen: Siegfried': Paul Richter as the dragon-slaying hero of medieval Germanic mythology. 'Die Nibelungen': Enthralling silent classic despite complex plot and countless characters Based on the medieval epic poem Nibelungenlied, itself inspired by the early medieval Germanic saga about the Burgundian royal family, Fritz Lang's two-part Die Nibelungen is one of those movies I can enjoy many times without ever really understanding who's who and what's what. After all, the semi-historical, fantasy/adventure epic is packed with intrigue, treachery, deceit, hatred, murder, and sex. And that's just the basic plotline. As seen in Kino's definitive two-disc edition, artistically and cinematically speaking Die Nibelungen contains some of the greatest visual compositions I've ever seen. Filmed mostly in long shots that frame the imaginative sets and high ceilings, each static shot is meticulously composed with such symmetry and balance that, even though Die Nibelungen takes the viewer through a mythical fantasia,...

Guns! Bombs! Assassinations! Blackmail! Fritz Lang invents the escapist super-spy thriller! To seize a set of political documents the evil Haghi dispatches the seductive agents Kitty and Sonya to neutralize a Japanese security man and our own top spy No. 236. (that's 007 x 33,714.2857!) It's a top-rank silent winner from the maker of Metropolis. Spies (Spione) Blu-ray Kino Classics 1928 / B&W /1:33 Silent Aperture / 150 min. / Street Date February 23, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gerda Maurus, Lien Deyers, Willy Fritsch, Lupu Pick, Hertha von Walther, Fritz Rasp, Craighall Sherry, Hans Heinrich von Twardowsky, Gustl Gstettenbaur. Cinematography Fritz Arno Wagner Art Directors Otto Hunte, Karl Vollbrecht Set Designer Edgar G. Ulmer (reported) Original Music Werner R. Heymann (original) Neil Brand piano score on this disc. Written by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou from her novel Produced by Erich Pommer Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

How did Fritz Lang...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Hard to Be a God is playing on Mubi in the Us through January 2.Hard to Be a GodRussian director Aleksei German spent the final 15 years of his life working on Hard To Be A God (2013), a brutal medieval epic adapted from a 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strutgatsky, dying just before he could complete the job in February 2013. Happily, his son and widow were able to oversee the final sound mix. The result is one of the most immersive and harrowing cinematic experiences going, three hours of being put to the sword and mired in the mud, blood and viscera of a nightmare alternate reality.Although German's characters are dressed in the clanking armour, chainmail and robes of the European Middle Ages, Hard To Be A God is in fact set on a distant planet,...

Top brass at the 42nd edition of the Colorado event have announced the roster of 27 films, with surprises to come over the September 4-7 run date.

The line-up is as follows:

Carol (Us), Todd Haynes

Amazing Grace (Us, 1972/2015), Sydney Pollack

Anomalisa (Us), Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson

Beast Of No Nation (Us), Cary Fukunaga

He Named Me Malala (Us), Davis Guggenheim

Steve Jobs (Us), Danny Boyle

Ixcanul (Guatemala), Jayro Bustamante

Bitter Lake (Us), Adam Curtis

Room (UK), Lenny Abrahamson

Black Mass (Us), Scott Cooper

Suffragette (UK), Sarah Gavron

Spotlight (Us), Tom McCarthy

Rams (Iceland), Grímur Hákonarson

Mom And Me (Ireland), Ken Wardrop

Viva (Ireland), Paddy Breathnach

Taj Majal (France-India), Nicolas Saada

Siti (Indonesia), Eddie Cahyono

Heart Of The Dog (Us), Laurie Anderson

45 Years (UK), Andrew Haigh

Son Of Saul (Hungary), Lázló Nemes,

Only The Dead See The End Of The War (Us-Australia), Michael Ware, Bill Guttentag

Taxi (Iran), Jafar Panahi

Hitchcock/Truffaut (Us), Kent Jones

Time To Choose...

Top brass at the 42nd edition of the Colorado event have announced the roster of 27 films, with surprises to come over the September 4-7 run date.

The line-up is as follows:

Carol (Us), Todd Haynes

Amazing Grace (Us, 1972/2015), Sydney Pollack

Anomalisa (Us), Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson

Beast Of No Nation (Us), Cary Fukunaga

He Named Me Malala (Us), Davis Guggenheim

Steve Jobs (Us), Danny Boyle

Ixcanul (Guatemala), Jayro Bustamante

Bitter Lake (Us), Adam Curtis

Room (England, pictured), Lenny Abrahamson

Black Mass (Us), Scott Cooper

Suffragette (UK), Sarah Gavron

Spotlight (Us), Tom McCarthy

Rams (Iceland), Grímur Hákonarson

Mom And Me (Ireland), Ken Wardrop

Viva (Ireland), Paddy Breathnach

Taj Majal (France-India), Nicolas Saada

Siti (Indonesia), Eddie Cahyono

Heart Of The Dog (Us), Laurie Anderson

45 Years (England), Andrew Haigh

Son Of Saul (Hungary), Lázló Nemes,

Only The Dead See The End Of The War (Us-Australia), Michael Ware, Bill Guttentag

Taxi (Iran), Jafar Panahi

Hitchcock/Truffaut (Us), Kent Jones

Time To...

The Telluride Film Festival's announced the lineup for its 42nd edition. Among the highlights: Todd Haynes's Carol, Laurie Anderson's Heart of the Dog, Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs, Scott Cooper's Black Mass, Adam Curtis's Bitter Lake, Andrew Haigh's 45 Years, Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa, Tom McCarthy's Spotlight, Lázló Nemes's Son of Saul, Jafar Panahi's Taxi, Sydney Pollack's Amazing Grace as well as revivals such as Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen and Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine. Guest Director Rachel Kushner's selected, among other titles, two classics by Jean Eustache. » - David Hudson...

The Telluride Film Festival's announced the lineup for its 42nd edition. Among the highlights: Todd Haynes's Carol, Laurie Anderson's Heart of the Dog, Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs, Scott Cooper's Black Mass, Adam Curtis's Bitter Lake, Andrew Haigh's 45 Years, Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa, Tom McCarthy's Spotlight, Lázló Nemes's Son of Saul, Jafar Panahi's Taxi, Sydney Pollack's Amazing Grace as well as revivals such as Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen and Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine. Guest Director Rachel Kushner's selected, among other titles, two classics by Jean Eustache. » - David Hudson...

What good is a canon? It's a question that hovers in endless debate near cinephile culture. The idea of distilling cinema down to its "best" or "most essential" films is like a game or a thought experiment, and whether it be the AFI or Sight & Sound or a group of Young Turks looking to rattle conventional wisdom, canon-making demonstrates nothing so much as a desire to assemble an expansive, fragmented, and still-evolving sense of film history into some sort of definitive order. Canons, each with its own biases, are useful chiefly as a starting point or a basecamp. The best answer is to always be looking, always curious. And cinema has barely more than a century to keep up with. I wonder how bibliophiles cope.One of the virtues of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which begins on May 28th, is how it mixes classics and arcana on a level plane.

★★★☆☆Fritz Lang is a behemoth entity who encompasses cinema from the Weimar age to playing a director called 'Fritz Lang' in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mepris (1963). Within this startling career are elements of his disdain for the influence of the powerful and how guilt destroys and enables. Frau im Mond (1929) is the latest instalment of Eureka's Masters of Cinema look at early Lang following on from Metropolis, M, the Mabuse films and Die Nibelungen. After Metropolis in 1927 was there anywhere for Lang to go? He ventured after escape, imagination and the boy's own thrill of space flight. Two years after his operatic yearning for communality he gazed towards the moon - that friend for the lonesome to talk to.

Eureka Entertainment has announced the UK release of Fritz Lang's silent science-fiction epic Frau Im Mond (Woman In The Moon) on dual format Blu-ray and DVD on 25 August. Previously available in the Masters of Cinema series as a DVD-only release, this newly remastered version will join other Lang masterpieces including Metropolis, M, Die Nibelungen and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse on the boutique Blu-ray label. The package will include a new 1080p transfer of the F.W. Murnau-Stiftung restoration, original German intertitles with newly-translated English subtitles and The First Science-Fiction Film - a German documentary on the film from Gabriele Jacobi.From the press release:Frau im Mond. [Woman in the Moon.] is: (a) The first feature-length film to portray space-exploration in a serious manner, paying close attention...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Smaug Hat: Jackson’s Second Entry Back on Track

Beyond the glaring distraction of the 48fps digital cinematography in Peter Jackson’s first installment of his bloated 2012 Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey, there also seemed a definite lack of enthusiasm, exacerbated by the fact that the novel’s slight narrative would now be stretched into about nine hours of cinema. An extended opening dinner sequence cast a fallow pallor with its ill-conceived antics and lilting dirges, followed by endless battle scenes that seemed more a justification for showing off nifty special effects than furthering the journey of Bilbo Baggins. Happily, Jackson seems to return to the point with the middle film of the trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, which is a rousing adventure film that manages to, for the most part, thrill and excite with its extended running time of 160 minutes.

Jackson, along with his band of screenwriters that include Fran Walsh,...

The first part of Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen (Siegfried) will be the opening film of the 12th annual week of German cinema in Mexico! Things kick off on Thursday, August 15 at the Cinematheque (Cineteca Nacional). This film exhibition is presented by Goethe Institut and Cineteca Nacional, with the support of Patronato de la Industria Alemana para la Cultura. The other venue for the week of German cinema, which ends on September 1, is Mexico's largest movie theater chain Cinepolis, through three of its Mexico City cinemas: Cinepolis Diana, Cinepolis Perisur and Cinepolis Interlomas. A selection of these films will travel afterwards to ten states in Mexico: Nuevo León, Guadalajara, Morelos, Zacatecas, Hidalgo, Tijuana, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Aguascalientes. The menu: the mentioned Fritz Lang classic (plus...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

This is incredible news for horror fans and aficionados of silent cinema - Masters of Cinema is bringing F. W. Murnau's classic, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, to Blu-ray this November. But before that, Eureka Entertainment will take the legendary vampire film on a showcase theatrical tour of the UK in a brand new digital restoration, courtesy of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung.I was lucky enough to catch some of Fwms's incredible restoration work late last year, when a collection of restored versions of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau's works, including Nosferatu, were screened here in Hong Kong, and they really are astoundingly good. Masters of Cinema has already released their newly restored versions of Die Nibelungen, Metropolis and Tabu on Blu-ray in recent months, and to have Nosferatu...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Like Night of the Hunter, Tod Browning’s Freaks or Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers, The Road to Yesterday can be ranked among the UFOs of cinema. It’s place in the heart of Cecil B. DeMille’s work proves to be in itself very distinctive. We know that, during his entire life, DeMille had virtually only one producer—Paramount (the former Famous Players Lasky)—just like Minnelli was MGM’s man and Corman American International’s. Sixty-three of his films (out of seventy) were produced at Paramount. And, oddly enough, it is among the seven outsiders, situated within a brief period from 1925 to 1931, that his best activity is to be found (I’m thinking of Madam Satan, The Godless Girl, and The Road to Yesterday)–his most audacious undertakings. To top it off, for this uncontested king of the box office, his best films were his biggest commercial failures.

0:00 - Intro 9:30 - Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 1:05:50 - Headlines: Pacific Rim Trailer, Man of Steel Trailer, Star Trek Into Darkness Trailer 1:22:35 - Other Stuff We Watched: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Uncle Buck, Killer Joe, Finding Nemo, The Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus, Hugo, Bernie, Mirror Mirror, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Die Nibelungen: Siegfried, Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache, Die Hard, Dick Tracy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 2:02:05 - Junk Mail: Film Junk Rating Ratios, Foreign Actors Speaking their Native Tongue in Hollywood Movies, Movies We'd Like to See Receive Oscar Nominations, Worst Trilogy Cred and Frank's Top 5 Animals, Movies with Bleak Endings, Getting Performances Out of Documentary Subjects, Wilhelm Scream 2:35:45 - This Week on DVD and Blu-ray 2:37:33 - Outro 2:40:10 - Spoiler Discussion: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey...

This month, one of Fritz Lang’s first epic masterpieces, Die Nibelungen gets a lush Blu-ray treatment from Kino, and it has to be one of the most exciting remasters of the year. Sandwiched in-between his seminal crime classic Dr. Mabuse: the Gambler (1922) and Metropolis (1927), Lang’s expansive rendering of the Nordic legend is a technical achievement that rivals the likes of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and was thus split into two parts, Siegfried and Kreimheld’s Revenge (and is not based on Wagner’s opera). Fans of Lang’s oeuvre should be salivating at the chance to experience these beautiful remastered prints, and even though Lang had his fair share of subpar titles, there’s no denying his innate genius here, with what stands as one of the most impressive feats of filmmaking before and after the advent of sound.

Siegfried (Paul Richter), is the son of King Siegmund,...

Below you will find our total coverage of the 2012 Vienna International Film festival by Daniel Kasman.

The Major and the Minor

On Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge (both 1924), and Ministry of Fear (1944)

American Genres

On Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941), John Ford's Donovan's Reef (1963), John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), and Tony Scott's Unstoppable (2010)

 The Unseen Guerrilla

On Fritz Lang's An American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950)

James Benning's the war

On James Benning's the war...

Hope or despair as one may, the experience of a film festival is a surprise sui generis creation born from a clash-overlap between what an audience member wants to see, what the programmers have chosen, and the confluence between the two via the Gods of Scheduling. In the case of the Vienna International Film Festival—the Viennale—what fell on my first day across the hatchmarks of mine, theirs, and that most frustrating of wild cards was not a single new film, but rather a requirement and an indulgence. The first was Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen, Siegfried and Kriemhild's Revenge (1924), which I had never seen, and the latter was a free slot opened up by an unexpected early arrival, allowing me to also catch Lang's Ministry of Fear (1944), which I had. Twenty years separate these two Fritz Lang films—part of the Vienna Film Museum's complete retrospective of the...

Die Nibelungen

As folk tales go, the old German epic poem Nibelungenlied is as important to that country's culture and psyche as The Iliad is to the Greeks. Fritz Lang's 1924 film version, split into two halves with a combined running time of almost five hours, removed all the Wagnerian stodge (and beards), delivering the silent-era version of a blockbuster. He couldn't match the American directors like Dw Griffiths in terms of budgets and scope of production, but he could outclass them.

Lang's film revels in style and artifice, using film tricks and elaborate sets to conjure a world that still impresses. Die Nibelungen, the emboldening tale of dragon-slayer Siegfried, his quest for power and the revenge that followed, was a film that would alert the world to the proficiency and ability of German cinema and give insight into the nation.

If anything Lang did his job too well: such...

Long, and not quite fairly, seen as something of a dark blot on Fritz Lang's CV, his epic silent film Die Nibelungen has begun to see its reputation restored in recent years. Now, finally, there's a restored print of the film to go along with it, as Eureka's Masters of Cinema series is about to release the film on DVD and Blu-ray, in its full two-part, five hour glory, for the first time ever in the UK.Das Nibelungenlied is an epic poem composed sometime in the twelfth or thirteenth century. The first half involves Siegfried, a pure-hearted adventurer intent on wooing the king of Burgundy's daughter Kriemhild. He slays a dragon, kills a dwarf king, gets hold of a cloak of invisibility and steals a lot of treasure. There's also an ill-advised erotic adventure with the Icelandic warrior queen Brunhilde. The second half sees the dastardly Lord Hagen stealing Siegfried's treasure,...

Eureka Entertainment announced today via their twitter feeds (@eurekavideo & @mastersofcinema) the forthcoming releases in The Masters of Cinema series for the months of January and February 2013.

Following a spate of epic releases for the last quarter of 2012 which included Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen and Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Masters of Cinema Series returns in 2013 with the nearly-impossible-to-see debut feature film by Stanley Kubrick, a long-awaited Blu-ray… More...

On 29 October, Eureka Entertainment's prestigious Masters of Cinema series is set to release a new restoration of Fritz Lang's epic two-part fantasy, Die Nibelungen, on double Blu-ray and double DVD in the UK. Renowned for its innovative effects work and breathtaking production design, this hallucinatory five-hour work was adapted from the same legend that inspired Wagner's Ring Cycle operas and has itself inspired everything from the Star Wars saga to The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.To whet our appetites in anticipation of what is sure to be one of its biggest releases of the year, Eureka Entertainment has released a clip from their restoration, which gives just a little taste of the film's extraordinary set-pieces, archetypal themes, and unrestrained ambition. Siegfried, the eponymous hero...

This futuristic Nazi space movie takes off with some well-researched historical references, but soon veers off the rails into student improvisation

Entertainment grade: D

History grade: Fail

The Soviet and American space programmes of the mid-20th century had their roots in German rocket research of the 1930s, which was partly carried out under the Nazi regime.

Technology

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that Iron Sky is not technically history. It's set in 2018, a date currently in the future. Furthermore, this is a future in which the Nazis, after losing the second world war, escaped to the moon, whence they are now returning in flying saucers to conquer Earth. On the face of it, this film wouldn't appear to concern itself too much with historical accuracy. On the other hand, it does have a tenuous factual basis. Late in the second world war, German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun considered that...

Cutting off his ties to Hollywood with the blade-bare sinistry of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), Fritz Lang returned to Germany in the late 1950s to make the final two features of his career, both resumptions, updates and evolutions on subjects and styles that forged Lang's name in Germany. His last film envisioned what German society's arch (fictional) supervillain, Dr. Mabuse, would be up to in 1960, producing the terrifying The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse. Less internationally known but more extravagant than that film, whose taut black and white sparseness resembles Lang's late work in Hollywood, is the master's "Indian Epic," a two part, three plus hour revision of a Weimar-era superfilm directed by Joe May from a scenario by future Lang wife Thea von Harbou.

The epic, split into two features—The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (1959)—lacks the reputation of the director's known superfilms of the 1920s (the first Dr.

Kenneth Branagh's big-budget adaptation of the Thor comic books pales next to cinema's greatest epics

The anonymous, unpretentious blockbuster Thor brings together two British actors who've both been called the successor to Laurence Olivier. One is Anthony Hopkins, who first came to fame in Olivier's National Theatre company at the Old Vic in the 1960s. The other is Kenneth Branagh, who brought Shakespeare to the screen as actor-director of Henry V and Hamlet, on each occasion deliberately challenging Olivier's movie versions.

Hopkins was later to provide Olivier's voice in key footage restored to Kubrick's Spartacus, and in Thor he plays Norse god Odin, a role very like Olivier's Zeus in Clash of the Titans. Branagh, whose best recent work on film has been for TV, returns to the big screen as director with Thor and is shortly to appear as Olivier in My Week With Marilyn, a movie about...

If you think Quentin Tarantino invented the splitting up of one movie into two then think again. Although it’s a trend at the moment, Fritz Lang pulled this stunt way back in 1958 with his Indian Epic.

Believing audiences would be bored sitting through a movie pushing four hours he and the producers re-cut it into two instalments: The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. It's a strange reason, really, given it was produced during the age of the historical-religious epic.

Although leaving Nazi Germany for Hollywood in the mid 1930s and becoming a Us citizen Lang was enticed back to his homeland to make an exotic action adventure yarn set in India. After years of battling studios bosses and churning out, admittedly, excellent B-pictures, the project gave Lang an opportunity to paint a movie on a broad canvas much like he was allowed to do in the 1920s...

The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present this two-part adventure epic directed by the legendary Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M, etc) in the UK for the first time on home video. Widely regarded as one of the most beautiful colour films in the history of cinema, Der Tiger von Eschnapur / Das indische Grabmal (Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic) is released on DVD on 18 April 2011.

See synopsis and disc details below:

Synopsis:

Fritz Lang returned to Germany on the eve of the 1960s to direct this enchanted penultimate work, a redraft of the diptych form pioneered in such silent Lang classics as Die Spinnen; Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.; and Die Nibelungen. Although no encapsulating title was lent at the time of release to what is, effectively, a single 3-hour-plus film split in two, the work that has come to be referred to in modern times as “the Indian epic” (consisting...

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It is somewhat customary in the review of a classic to point out the age of the opus in question before insisting that it still feels “as fresh as ever.” It’s a lazy shorthand that can be used for Wagner’s Ring cycle, Joyce’s Ulysses and Citizen Kane in the same breath, a write-off that attempts to reassure the reader that hallmarks of art do not have to sit in a museum, not even collecting dust because of protective cases. The statement is usually presented on its own, a Qed “proof” without demonstration, allowing the writer to move on quickly out of fear that he or she has nothing to add on an already thoroughly analyzed work (”What can I say about ____ that hasn’t already been said?” is also a trite shortcut that we have all used at some point no matter how much everyone hates to read the sentence). But,...