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At the beginning of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a flaying saucer lands in Washington, D.C. and a stern, masked alien named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerges. He announces to the gathered military and curious humans that he comes in peace, and even has a gift for the people of Earth. He extracts a small, palm-sized tube and flicks it open, revealing multiple small antennae. The flicking device, however, spooks one of the nearby military men, and he fires off a shot, injuring Klaatu's hand. He falls in pain. 

Almost instantly, as if sensing Klaatu's panic, an enormous eight-foot humanoid robot emerges from the flying saucer. It is silvery and featureless, sporting a mysterious visor across its face. This is Gort. Gort steps out onto the ground, and its visor lifts, revealing a glowing power source. A laser beam emerges from Gort's head, striking all the Army's weapons.

Hind Rostom and Youssef Chahine as Qenawi in ‘Cairo StationYoussef Chahine (1926–2008) was the leading Egyptian film director all through the second half of Twentieth Century active in the industry from 1950 until his death. He was the only Egyptian filmmaker to achieve international recognition with films at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Moscow and received a lifetime achievement award at Cannes in 1997. He wrote most of his own scripts and was a competent actor appearing in four of his own films. Altogether Chahine was the auteur of about 40 films, 21 of which have been on view at the Arsenal cinema all through the month of March in a rare retrospective entitled Youssef Chahine, Again and Forever.Youssef ChahineThe Arsenal Cinema which is a central venue of the Berlin Film Festival is a kind of German Cinematheque and continues to screen unusual film series such as this throughout the year providing Berliners with what...

Patricia Morison, who starred as shrewish diva Lilli Vanessi in the original 1948 Broadway production of “Kiss Me, Kate” as well as Anna Leonowens in the 1954 run of “The King and I” opposite Yul Brynner, died of natural causes in her Los Angeles home Sunday. She was 103.

Morison was born on March 15, 1915 in New York City, the daughter of playwright and actor William Morison and Selena Fraser, a British Intelligence agent during World War I. After graduating from high school, Morison took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse and made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in the musical revue “Don’t Mind the Rain.” Her Broadway debut followed shortly, in 1933’s “Growing Pains,” though she never appeared on stage, instead acting as the stand-by for Helen Hayes in the lead role of Victoria Regina.

After catching the eye of talent scouts, Morison signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and...

Actress Patricia Morison, who brought a touch of grace and style to even her anti-heroine film roles, has died at age 103. She passed at her Los Angeles home of natural causes.

Morison had a huge presence in films of the 1940s, and appeared in such classics as Song of Bernadette and Dressed To Kill opposite such stars as Basil Rathbone, Ray Milland, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, among many others.

Sporting long, flowing hair down to her hips, Morison often was portrayed as the villain in her many roles.

She also had an extensive Broadway career, appearing in the first staging of Kiss Me, Kate (based on a production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew) and with Yul Brynner in The King and I.

Morison was born in 1915 in New York and took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, studied dance with Martha Graham, and made her Broadway...

This time they may have gotten it right! If a knife or a straight razor won’t do, how about killing a victim with 500-pound metal artwork studded with spikes? Dario Argento distilled a new kind of slick, visually fetishistic horror who-dunnit thriller subgenre with this shocker, aided by the dreamy cinematography of Vittorio Storaro.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Blu-ray + DVD

Arrow Video USA

1971 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date June 20, 2017 / L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / Available from Arrow Video/ 49.95

/ 49.95

Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Raf Valenti, Giuseppe Castellano, Mario Adorf, Pino Patti, Gildo Di Marco, Rosita Torosh, Omar Bonaro, Fulvio Mingozzi, Werner Peters, Karen Valenti, Carla Mancini, Reggie Nalder.

Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro

Film Editor: Franco Fraticelli

Original Music: Ennio Morricone

Written by Dario Argento from a novel by Fredric Brown

Produced by Salvatore Argento, Artur Brauner

Directed by Dario Argento...

Marlene Dietrich Grandson J. Michael Riva, Robert Clatworthy, and Harper Goff: Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame 2014 Production Designers Robert Clatworthy, Harper Goff, and J. Michael Riva will be posthumously inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame at the 18th Art Directors Guild Awards ceremony, to be held on February 8, 2014, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. (Photo: Production designer J. Michael Riva.) J. Michael Riva J. Michael Riva (1948-2012), grandson of Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express, A Foreign Affair), was production designer for Stuart Rosenberg / Robert Redford’s 1980 socially conscious drama Brubaker. Later on, Redford hired Riva as the art director for Ordinary People, also released in 1980. Riva’s other production design credits include the Lethal Weapon movies starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; A Few Good Men (1992), with Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore; The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), with Will Smith; Spider-Man 3 (2007), with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst,...

Deanna Durbin: Ephemeral fame (photo: Deanna Durbin in 1981) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin: 'Sweet Monster.'"] Unlike Greta Garbo, whose mystique remained basically intact following her retirement in 1941, Deanna Durbin’s popularity faded away much like that of the vast majority of celebrities who were removed — or who chose to remove themselves — from public view. Despite the advent of home video and classic-movie cable channels, Durbin remains virtually unknown to the vast majority of those who weren’t around in her heyday in the ’30s and ’40s. Yet, although relatively few in number, she continues to have her ardent fans. There are a handful of websites devoted to Deanna Durbin and her film and recording careers, chiefly among them the appropriately titled "Deanna Durbin Devotees." Fade Out Charles David, Deanna Durbin’s husband of 48 years, died in March 1999, at the age of 92; Institut Pasteur medical researcher Peter H. David is their only son. Durbin also had a daughter,...

Deanna Durbin: Three Husbands with Universal Pictures background [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin: Highest Paid Actress in the World."] By the time the 26-year-old Deanna Durbin’s film career was over, the movies’ personification of girl-next-door wholesomeness had been married twice: Durbin’s union with Universal Pictures assistant director Vaughn Paul ended in 1943. Two years later, she married another Universal employee, 43-year-old German-born writer-producer Felix Jackson, among whose screenwriting and/or producing credits were the James Stewart / Marlene Dietrich Western hit Destry Rides Again (1939), the well-regarded Ginger Rogers / David Niven comedy Bachelor Mother (1939), and several Deanna Durbin star vehicles, including Mad About Music, Hers to Hold, and Lady on a Train. Jackson, in fact, produced nearly all of her post-Joe Pasternak films of the mid-’40s, the one exception being The Amazing Mrs. Holliday. The last Jackson-Durbin collaboration was the 1947 critical and box-office misfire I’ll Be Yours, which came out as their marriage was crumbling. Deanna Durbin would...

Deanna Durbin in the 1940s: From wholesome musicals to film noir sex worker (photo: Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin cast against type in the un-Christmas-y Christmas Holiday) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin Without Joe Pasternak: Adrift at Universal."] The Deanna Durbin vs. Universal dispute was settled in early 1942, when the actress was supposedly granted director and story approval. But things didn’t go all that smoothly from then on. There would be no loan-outs to the more opulent MGM, and Durbin would later complain that Universal refused to abide by her requests. Also, for the first time since her career skyrocketed in 1936, Durbin was absent from the screen for a whole year. The key reason there were no 1942 Deanna Durbin movies was the troubled production of her next star vehicle, The Amazing Mrs. Holliday, in which Durbin tries to smuggle Chinese orphans into the U.S., and which underwent not only various title changes, but also various directors and various script...

Deanna Durbin, a star whose songs and smile made her one of the biggest box office draws of Hollywood’s Golden Age with fans that included Winston Churchill, has died.

Durbin died on about April 20 in a village outside Paris where she had lived, out of public view, since 1949, family friend Bob Koster of Los Angeles told the Associated Press on Wednesday. Koster’s father, Henry Koster, directed six of Durbin’s films. Bob Koster did not know the cause of death.

At the height of her career, the Canadian-born Durbin, who made her first feature, Three Smart Girls, at...

Child star with a powerful singing voice who played the perfect girl next door in Hollywood films of the 30s and 40s

When a teenage Deanna Durbin appeared on screen in the 1930s, wearing a decorous white dress with her hands clasped together, singing with a bell-like purity, audiences sighed contentedly. And so did film and music executives. In the days when child stars were wholesome, Durbin was everyone's idea of the perfect girl next door, and she was a huge money-spinner. Audiences flocked to see her musical comedies and, after she had trilled numbers such as It's Raining Sunbeams (in the film One Hundred Men and a Girl, 1937), Home Sweet Home (in First Love, 1939) and Waltzing in the Clouds (in Spring Parade, 1940), her fans queued to buy the latest record bearing her name.

Durbin, who has died aged 91, was the antithesis of the Hollywood glamour girl – which made her...

Former child star Deanna Durbin has died at the age of 91, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Durbin's son, Peter H. David, was quoted in the "Deanna Durbin Society" newsletter saying his mother had passed away several days ago, but he did not provide any other details about her death.

Durbin gained popularity during the Depression and was known for her "sweet soprano voice" that charmed American audiences, according to the New York Times.

The actress was born Edna Mae Durbin; her British parents moved from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Los Angeles when she was 2 years old, and she was discovered while still in junior high school. She made her film debut in the 1936 MGM short “Every Sunday,” with Judy Garland. Soon after, she signed a contract with Universal, changed her name to Deanna, and was cast in a series of musical comedies, reports Variety.

The Canadian-born actress was reportedly the second-highest...

Deanna Durbin, the Depression Era actress whose films included "Three Smart Girls," "Lady on a Train" and "Christmas Holiday," has died, according to the New York Times. She was 91. Durbin had been mostly out of the public eye since performing in 1948's "For the Love of Mary," retiring to France with her third husband, "Lady on a Train" director Charles David, because, as she said, "I hated being in a goldfish bowl." Also read: Notable Celebrity Deaths of 2013 Born Edna Mae Durbin in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Dec. 4, 1921, Durbin relocated...