News

If you miss Escape from the 21st Century‘s one-night-only theatrical release on June 9, you’ll be able to stream the Chinese genre-bender exclusively on Fandor beginning June 27.

The frenetic amalgam of sci-fi, action, adventure, suspense, coming of age, and comedy is written and directed by Yang Li.

It follows three friends who discover they have the power to travel back and forth 20 years into the future with a sneeze. However, the future is not as good as they hoped, and they need to take on the responsibility of saving the world.

Ruoyun Zhang, Chuxi Zhong, Yang Song, Chenhao Li, Xiaoliang Wu, Yanmanzi Zhu, and Zhengrong Wen star.

I wrote in my review out of Buff, “Maximalist in every sense of the word, Escape from the 21st Century plays like a hyperactive blend of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Kung Fury, and Stand by Me.

Series from Atresmedia TV, Rtve, Movistar Plus+, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (“La Mesías”), Zeta Studios (“Elite”) and director Carlota Pereda and Morena Films (behind Sundance hit “Piggy”) will unspool or be unveiled at the Berlinale. They underscore the breadth and depth of Spanish TV output:

“Death to Love,”

Carlota Pereda dazzled at Sundance with first feature, “Piggy.” Now, Pereda’s at the Berlinale Co-Pro Series on Feb. 20 with her debut series, “Death to Love,” in which afemale vampire struggles over centuries to end a toxic relationship with her vampire female lover and culminates in a modern-day climax. “A visceral and romantic proposition,” Pereda says.

“Dressed in Blue: Veneno Season 2,”

The Sundance world premiere “La Mesías” sealed the standing of Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi as most probably the coolest creative duo in Spain. This time around, they produce, with Mikel Rueda, a director on “Veneno,” and Claudia Costafreda and Ian de la Rosa,...

I saw Sergio Corbucci's 1970 western Compañeros during the video-boom of the early eighties, when suddenly an immense wealth of titles became available for home viewing, and renting a stack of videotapes was a part of each weekend's routine. Not being into westerns, I initially skipped out, but the group of friends and family which had seen Compañeros wanted to see it again the next day, because it was such a fun film and "the music was so good". Huh? So I decided to join the second viewing, and ended up loving the film. Franco Nero and Tomas Milian made an excellent couple of anti-heroes, and indeed the soundtrack rocked. Fast forward to more than thirty years later, with me vividly remembering the film (and...

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

When Spaghetti Western aficionados recommend their favorite films, they will usually introduce people to The “Three Sergios,” that consists of Sergio Leone, Sergio Sollima and Sergio Corbucci. Even those unfamiliar the genre would surely be familiar with the masterworks of Leone, who created two of the greatest Western films of all time. Neither Sollima or Corbucci ever came close to the fame or acclaim of Leone, but stylistic and talented Sollima’s underrated The Big Gundown was politically ambitious and ahead of the curve, while Corbucci embraced a strong pulp sensibility in his ultra violent Django that featured the iconic coffin hauling gunslinger. Later, he showed his political ambitions in his Mexican Revolution trilogy that features Companeros between The Mercenary and What Am I Doing in the Middle of the Revolution?

Companeros came along during a transitional period of Italian genre cinema and Westerns specifically started shifting towards humor. Companeros...

Following are some supplemental sections featuring notable director & actor teams that did not meet the criteria for the main body of the article. Some will argue that a number of these should have been included in the primary section but keep in mind that film writing on any level, from the casual to the academic, is a game of knowledge and perception filtered through personal taste.

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Other Notable Director & Actor Teams

This section is devoted to pairings where the duo worked together at least 3 times with the actor in a major role in each feature film, resulting in 1 must-see film.

Terence Young & Sean Connery

Must-See Collaboration: From Russia with Love (1962).

Other Collaborations: Action of the Tiger (1957), Dr. No (1962), Thunderball (1965).

Director Young and actor Connery teamed up to create one of the very best Connery-era James Bond films with From Russia with Love which features a great villainous performance by Robert Shaw...

I think we can all agree that Ennio Morricone is one of the greatest living film composers, if not the greatest. It boggles the mind to consider that he has composed nearly 500 (?) scores since the early 1960s; is there even that much music in the world? He was a pioneer of Spaghetti Westerns, cooking up bizarre combinations of twanging guitars, screeching choruses, whistling, bells and harmonicas. That would be enough to secure him some kind of place in history, but then he went on to make such heartbreakingly gorgeous scores for majestic films like Days of Heaven, The Mission and Cinema Paradiso, as well as uniquely haunting bits of music for The Thing and Mission to Mars.

It's sometimes surprising to see his name turn up on movies as disparate as Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Richard Fleischer's Red Sonja (1985). But he makes you want to...

I have always been moved in some way or another by film music, but no one has created a bigger lump in the throat or watered my eyes more than Ennio Morricone.

He made film music transcend the film. He made me realize that film music could invoke emotions that went beyond just playing sad or tense or action themes. His music became the emotional anchor of the films he scored. This is music that didn’t have to make you think of the film it was used in, but gives your life its own score. I know that may be getting a little carried away, but that’s how I’ve always viewed it.

Being a (very) amateur composer myself, I always fall back on not just his work but the context of how it’s placed in movies. The few cues that were written before filming especially in...