News

Range Media Partners has signed filmmaker Kat Wood for representation.

The U.K.-born and L.A.-based director and screenwriter was a BBC broadcast journalist before making her mark on Hollywood. Wood, who was named to Screen International’s “Stars of Tomorrow” list, has shown her proficiency as a screenwriter, setting up a high-profile genre feature every year for the last six years.

Last August, Thunder Road Pictures optioned “Enigma,” Wood’s original contemporary supernatural spy thriller. The film – which Wood will executive produce — follows British spy Emma Taylor who is suddenly tasked with hiding a mysterious and dangerous artifact that falls into her hands. The project has been described as a “reverse Indiana Jones,” meaning that the story is about someone whose job is focused on “hiding rather than finding,” thus turning traditional adventure film tropes on their head.

Wood’s Hollywood career kicked off in 2016 with the...

Critics compare this sophisticated spy thriller to Carol Reed’s earlier Triumph set in Vienna with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles — but it’s a different story altogether, not about black-market evil but the perils of moral compromise in a divided Berlin. James Mason and Claire Bloom are stunningly good together, in a moody suspense that’s completely serious — no comic relief or ‘fun’ jeopardy to distract from the fascinating, you-are-there setting, a Berlin trying to rebuild itself. With Hildegard Knef, and an extended, beautifully filmed nighttime chase that seals an unlikely romance.

The Man Between

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1953 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 102 min. / Street Date November 5, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: James Mason, Claire Bloom, Hildegard Knef, Geoffrey Toone, Aribert Wäscher, Ernst Schróder, Dieter Krause, Hilde Sessak, Karl John, Ljuba Welitsch, Reinhard Kolldehoff.

Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson

Film Editor: Bert Bates

Original Music: John Addison

Written by Harry Kurnitz,...

Nunnally Johnson hands us a well-written spy & hostage drama set in Cold War Berlin, with plenty of intrigue and good humor to boot. Gregory Peck is the troubled negotiator and Broderick Crawford a Yankee galoot sticking his nose where it isn’t wanted. This one has been out of reach for quite a while — and it works up some fun suspense.

Night People

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Gregory Peck, Broderick Crawford, Anita Björk, Rita Gam, Walter Abel, Buddy Ebsen, Max Showalter, Jill Esmond, Peter van Eyck, Marianne Koch, Hugh McDermott, Paul Carpenter, Lionel Murton, Ottow Reichow.

Cinematography: Charles G. Clarke

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music: Cyril Mockridge

Story by Jed Harris, Tom Reed

Associate Producer Gerd Oswald

Written, Directed and Produced by Nunnally Johnson

An intelligent cold war thriller about distrust and passive aggression across the East-West divide in Berlin,...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, and Tom Stockman

Lee Marvin rose through the ranks of movie stardom as a character actor, delivering mostly villainous supporting turns in many films before finally graduating to leading roles. Regardless of which side of the law he was on however, he projected a tough-as-nails intensity and a two-fisted integrity which elevated even the slightest material. Born February 19, 1924, in New York City, Marvin quit high school to enter the Marine Corps and while serving in the South Pacific was badly wounded in battle when a machine gun nest shot off part of his buttocks and severed his sciatic nerve. He spent a year in recovery before returning to the U.S. where he began working as a plumber. The acting bug bit after filling in for an ailing summer-stock actor and he studied the art at the New York-based American Theater Wing. Upon making his debut in summer stock,...

By Allen Gardner

A Separation (Sony) This drama from Iran won the 2011 Best Foreign Film Oscar, telling the story of a couple who file for a legal separation, with the wife pushing for a divorce. He won’t leave his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father behind, while she is wanting to take their young daughter with her to the United States. After a series of misunderstandings, threats and legal actions, the couple find that there is more than just their marriage that’s on the line. Hyper-realistic to a fault, reminiscent of the neo-realist films that came out of post-ww II Europe, but also repressive and redundant in the extreme, with the characters seeming to throw the same temper tantrum for two hours straight while the story, meanwhile, seems stalled. Wildly overpraised film is a real litmus test, with viewers seeming to be staunch defenders or equally impassioned detractors. It did win an Oscar,...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, and Tom Stockman

We’re celebrating one of Hollywood’s great tough guys and one of our favorite actors September 6th at The Way Out Club in St. Louis with Super-8 Lee Marvin Movie Madness.

Lee Marvin rose through the ranks of movie stardom as a character actor, delivering mostly villainous supporting turns in many films before finally graduating to leading roles. Regardless of which side of the law he was on however, he projected a tough-as-nails intensity and a two-fisted integrity which elevated even the slightest material. Born February 19, 1924, in New York City, Marvin quit high school to enter the Marine Corps and while serving in the South Pacific was badly wounded in battle when a machine gun nest shot off part of his buttocks and severed his sciatic nerve. He spent a year in recovery before returning to the U.S. where...