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Everyone notices the eyes first, languid, those of a somnambulist. Robert Mitchum, calm and observant, is a presence that, through passivity, enamors a viewer. His face is as effulgent as moonlight. The man smolders, with that boozy, baritone voice, seductive and soporific, a cigarette perched between wispy lips below which is a chin cleft like a geological fault. He’s slithery with innuendo. There’s an effortless allure to it all, a mix of malaise and braggadocio, a cocksure machismo and a hint of fragility. He’s ever-cool, a paradox, “radiating heat without warmth,” as Richard Brody said. A poet, a prodigious lover and drinker, a bad boy; his penchant for marijuana landed him in jail, and in the photographs from his two-month stay he looks like a natural fit. He sits, wrapped in denim, legs spread wide, hair shiny and slick, holding a cup of coffee. His mouth is...

The book was raw & dirty, and did you read what that girl did with that guy on page 167? Racking up a stack of Oscar nominations, Peyton Place became one of the big hits of its year, launched the careers of several young actors, and proved that Hollywood could pasteurize most any so-called un-filmable book. Lana Turner is the nominal star but the leading actress is Diane Varsi, in her film debut.

Peyton Place

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 157 min. / Street Date March 14, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Arthur Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Lee Philips, Terry Moore, Russ Tamblyn, Betty Field, David Nelson, Leon Ames, Mildred Dunnock.

Cinematography William Mellor

Art Direction Jack Martin Smith, Lyle R. Wheeler

Film Editor David Bretherton

Original Music Franz Waxman

Written by John Michael Hayes from the book by Grace Metalious

Produced by Jerry Wald

Directed by Mark Robson

What’s this,...

Robert Mitchum ca. late 1940s. Robert Mitchum movies 'The Yakuza,' 'Ryan's Daughter' on TCM Today, Aug. 12, '15, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series is highlighting the career of Robert Mitchum. Two of the films being shown this evening are The Yakuza and Ryan's Daughter. The former is one of the disappointingly few TCM premieres this month. (See TCM's Robert Mitchum movie schedule further below.) Despite his film noir background, Robert Mitchum was a somewhat unusual choice to star in The Yakuza (1975), a crime thriller set in the Japanese underworld. Ryan's Daughter or no, Mitchum hadn't been a box office draw in quite some time; in the mid-'70s, one would have expected a Warner Bros. release directed by Sydney Pollack – who had recently handled the likes of Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, and Robert Redford – to star someone like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman.

James Salter, the highly acclaimed but never commercially popular writer, has died at 90, the New York Times reports. Salter chronicled the ennui of postwar America and the often toxic nature of masculinity, from his debut novel The Hunters (1956) to his controversial classic A Sport and a Pastime (1967), a sensuous sylph of a novel that Salter’s publishers viewed as being akin to “a pair of dirty socks,” to the Salter-scripted Robert Redford film Downhill Racer (1969) and the Pen/Faulkner-winning collection Dusk and Other Stories.As Pulitzer-winning writer Richard Ford once said, "It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anyone writing today." Those beautiful, fluid sentences were usually unburdened by ornate flourishes, yet somehow Salter always seemed to dig at truths deep and dark — his writing sharp enough to pierce something unfathomably heavy. His most recent novel, the critically heralded...

From a full programme of film and stage adaptations to a new James Bond novel, unpublished works by Rs Thomas and Wg Sebald and a new prize for women writers, 2013 is set to be a real page-turner

January

10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.

18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.

24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.

Chicago – They don’t make ‘em like Robert Mitchum any more. Every few years, there’s a DVD collection of classic movies that rises above the others for the holiday season. One of this year’s most star-packed entries includes not only Mitchum but John Wayne, Deborah Kerr, Kirk Douglas, Shirley MacLaine, Richard Widmark, Gene Kelly, Paul Newman, Shelley Winters, Marilyn Monroe, and many more. Mitchum may be the face on the cover but the set is a trip through the golden era of Hollywood through more than just one star.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

With a 10-dvd set, it can be difficult to sum up in one review. The quality of the films, the transfers, and the special features are wildly variable. “River of No Return” looks surprisingly good. “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison” needs a better remastering (some of the darker scenes look horrendous). The Criterion Blu-ray edition of “Night of the...

How long has it been since we've watched a movie where my boyfriend Robert Mitchum valiantly fights a war and at some point winds up in a cave hiding from bad guys? Or one in which my boyfriend Robert Mitchum grapples (in a purely manly fashion, to be certain) with a love that can not be had? The answer, of course, is that it's been too long. It's also been too long since I wrote about a movie in which things blow up. So let's solve all these problems at once with a Korean war film in yummy Color by Deluxe called The Hunters.

Since my emotional interest in Rm isn't going to come as any surprise, let's start instead with the explosions. Dick Powell's The Hunters is about fighter pilots in the Korean War. They drink and smoke and wear jaunty pilot uniforms and get supersonic with some Really Old jets.

How long has it been since we've watched a movie where my boyfriend Robert Mitchum valiantly fights a war and at some point winds up in a cave hiding from bad guys? Or one in which my boyfriend Robert Mitchum grapples (in a purely manly fashion, to be certain) with a love that can not be had? The answer, of course, is that it's been too long. It's also been too long since I wrote about a movie in which things blow up. So let's solve all these problems at once with a Korean war film in yummy Color by Deluxe called The Hunters.

Since my emotional interest in Rm isn't going to come as any surprise, let's start instead with the explosions. The Hunters is about fighter pilots in the Korean War. They drink and smoke and wear jaunty pilot uniforms and get supersonic with some Really Old jets.