News

Newly restored in 4K from original, 35mm archival elements, the harrowing, supernatural thriller Tormented (1960) will be available 23rd April 2024 in a must-have collector’s edition loaded with bonus features, on Blu-ray and DVD from Film Masters.

Iconic cult film director Bert I. Gordon (Empire of the Ants, The Food of the Gods, The Mad Bomber, The Cyclops) helmed this terrifying story of passion from beyond the grave, starring Richard Carlson (Creature From the Black Lagoon, It Came From Outer Space), Susan Gordon (Ben Casey, The Five Pennies) and Lugene Sanders (The Life of Riley).

In a tight-knit island community off the coast of California, Tom Stewart (Carlson) is about to marry the woman he loves (Sanders). All is well until Tom’s ex-girlfriend, Vi (Reding), confronts him at the top of the island’s lighthouse, claiming he is hers and hers alone! When a freak accident occurs, he refuses to intervene,...

After his overlooked procedural Dark Waters, Todd Haynes is moving full steam ahead on a number of projects. He’ll premiere his documentary The Velvet Underground at Cannes Film Festival followed by an Apple TV+ release, and he recently set his Wonderstruck star Michelle Williams to lead his Peggy Lee biopic Fever. However, it looks like another reunion is in the works that will kick off production sooner.

Julianne Moore, who worked with Haynes on the aforementioned Wonderstruck, as well as Safe and Far From Heaven, will reteam with the director for a new drama titled May December, also starring Natalie Portman. Scripted by Samy Burch with a story by Burch and Alex Mechanik, production will kick off next year as the project gets shopped at the Cannes market. Check out the synopsis below via Deadline.

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yu and her...

Welcome back to Intermission, a spin-off podcast from The Film Stage Show. Led by yours truly, Michael Snydel, I invite one guest to discuss an arthouse, foreign, or experimental film of their choice.

For our tenth episode, I talked to Cody Corrall, an editor at Filmcred and a regular contributor to Chicago Reader and Cine-file, about Antonio Campos’ polarizing 2016 character study Christine, which is available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, The Criterion Channel, and other locations. A dramatization of the real-life tragedy of Christine Chubbuck––a Sarasota, Florida TV news reporter who committed suicide on air in 1974––the film is notably less interested in that end than using that milieu to explore mental illness, exceptionalism, sexism, and performance.

Unusually, one of two films in 2016 about Chubbuck, Christine is a complicated proposition and easy to underestimate. There’s a whiff of prestige vanity to its construction and star-studded cast and more pointedly,...

Did star James Stewart and director Anthony Mann corner the market on upscale ‘A’ ’50s westerns? This beauty sends Stewart, Ruth Roman and Corrine Calvet on a breezy trek over a Canadian glacier, with Walter Brennan as a folksy, ditsy sidekick — not very original but endearing. John McIntire saves the day as a charmingly malevolent self-appointed Judge Roy Bean-type swindler and murderer — he’s so hilariously evil, even Stewart’s character is amused. The special edition has two aspect ratio versions, a full commentary and two film history featurette-docus.

The Far Country

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1955 / color / 1:88 + 1:2 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date November 12, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: James Stewart, Ruth Roman, Corinne Calvet, Walter Brennan, John McIntire, Jay C. Flippen, Harry Morgan, Steve Brodie, Connie Gilchrist, Robert J. Wilke, Chubby Johnson, Royal Dano, Jack Elam, Kathleen Freeman, Connie Van, Eugene Borden, John Doucette, Chuck Roberson.

Cinematography: William H. Daniels...

Slant's is, of course, the big list to appear since the last Briefing. From Nick Schager's introduction to the countdown of their collective top 25: "The auteurs had it in 2011, which delivered such a feast of fantastic domestic and international cinema that it's difficult to remember a year in which it was harder to compile a consensus Top 25. Nonetheless, best-of-year rankings wait for no critic, and our list is practically overflowing with films by young and old masters at the apex of their games, be it Terrence Malick's sumptuous spiritual odyssey The Tree of Life, Edward Yang's long-unreleased 1991 classic A Brighter Summer Day, or Abbas Kiarostami's formalist masterwork Certified Copy." Which lands at #1. At the House Next Door, you can scan the titles that came in between #26 and #50 as well as the individual ballots by Schager, Ed Gonzalez, Andrew Schenker, Jaime N Christley, Bill Weber, Jesse Cataldo,...

Former child star Susan Gordon has died at the age of 62.

The actress, also known as Susan L. Aviner, passed away on Sunday in New Jersey after a long battle with cancer, according to Variety.

Gordon made her acting debut as a child in 1958 movie Attack of the Puppet People, which was directed by her father Bert I. Gordon.

She went on to land roles in 1959 film The Five Pennies and hit TV show The Twilight Zone, as well as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke and a TV version of Miracle on 34th Street.

In her later career she worked as a copywriter at an advertising agency in Japan before returning to acting to star in a 2002 Off-Broadway production of A Magic Place in a New Time.