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Few historical figures have been so frequently portrayed on camera as Jesse James. From early silent features to the Brad Pitt star vehicle The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Hollywood has found no shortage of material to mine from the life of the legendary outlaw. It might come as a surprise to many movie fans that Robert Duvall played James in the 1972 revisionist western The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid, which dramatizes one of the most infamous bank robberies he ever carried out. Rather than turn this episode into a thrilling adventure, The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid seeks to de-mystify the James legend by presenting this story with gritty naturalism.

In today’s film news roundup, Pearl Jam teams with Abramorama, “Bloodshot” get an Immersive Cinema Experience release, Philip Kaufman is honored, the Doc10 Festival unveils its slate and “Testament” gets rolling.

Release Dates

Pearl Jam and Abramorama have scheduled the “Gigaton Listening Experience” for March 25 in more than 200 Dolby Atmos-equipped theaters in 20 countries.

The immersive event takes place two days before the release of Pearl Jam’s album “Gigaton.” It includes a playback of the entire album in Dolby Atmos with visuals curated and created by Evolve, the filmmaker and artist behind the music video for the first single “Dance of the Clairvoyants.”

This marks Pearl Jam’s fourth theatrical collaboration with Abramorama following 2007’s “Imagine in Cornice,” directed by Danny Clinch; 2011’s “Pearl Jam Twenty,” directed by Cameron Crowe; and 2017’s “Let’s Play Two,” also helmed by Clinch.

Abramorama’s Evan Saxon and Richard Abramowitz said in a statement,...

Blu-ray fans are now well aware that many great movies unavailable in the U.S., can be easily found in Europe. One of the best westerns of the ’70s is this jarringly realistic cavalry vs. Apaches drama from Robert Aldrich and Burt Lancaster, which used the ‘R’ rating to show savage details that Hollywood had once avoided. In this case it works — the genuinely scary movie is also a serious meditation on violent America.

Ulzana’s Raid

(Keine Gnade für Ulzana)

All-region Blu-ray + Pal DVD

Explosive Media

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date November 9, 2017 / available through the Amazon Germany website / Eur 17,99

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Richard Jaeckel, Bruce Davison, Jorge Luke, Joaquín Martínez, Lloyd Bochner, Karl Swenson, Douglass Watson, Dran Hamilton, Gladys Holland, Aimee Eccles, Tony Epper, Nick Cravat, Richard Farnsworth, Dean Smith.

Cinematography: Joseph Biroc

Film Editor: Michael Luciano

Original Music: Frank De Vol

Written by Alan Sharp

Produced by...

Guest Reviewer Lee Broughton is back, with another Italo Western double bill DVD review. Wild East’s ongoing Spaghetti Western Collection continues to grow and this double bill release is particularly welcome since it features two obscure and wholly idiosyncratic genre entries from 1969. Italian Western directors had found it relatively easy to appropriate key plot points and ideas from Sergio Leone’s Dollars films during the genre’s early years but when Leone’s sprawling, mega-budgeted, meta-Western Once Upon a Time in the West was released in 1968 it was clear that this was one genre entry that local filmmakers would not be able to easily emulate.

With scriptwriters and directors now essentially being forced to come up with their own ideas and generic trends, a new wave of Spaghetti Westerns were produced that effectively took the genre in a multitude of new directions. The two films featured here were part of that wave.

I spent my Friday afternoon at Cannes in a master class with legendary director Philip Kaufman ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being"). During the master class, French film critic Michel Ciment asked provocative questions, guiding Kaufman through his body of work. Clips were shown from a selection of his works including, "Goldstein," "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," The Wanderers," "Henry & June," and "Quills." Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen, who star in his new film "Hemingway & Gellhorn," were in attendance.Speaking about casting actors, especially those that are not well known, Kaufaman said you just "perceive something that tells you 'this man is great.'""Now, we were shooting a low budget film (“The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid”) for well under a million dollars up in Oregon during a rainy season, so we had no time for a rehearsal really," Kaufman explains. "[Robert Duvall] had read the script. I liked him. I was...

Jack Finney's ('Somewhere in Time') seminal 1955 science fiction-horror novel (serialized a year earlier in Collier's), 'The Body Snatchers' (a.k.a. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'), has been filmed four times, first in 1956, the second in 1978, the third in 1993, and the fourth (and so far, last) in 2007. The1956 adaptation, shot on a limited budget by Don Siegel ('Dirty Harry,' 'The Beguiled') for Allied Artists with Kevin McCarthy in the lead role, is generally acknowledged as a minor genre classic, in part for its anti-conformity, anti-collectivist themes that could be read as a critique of McCarthyism (named after the red-baiting senator from Wisconsin, not the actor), or communism. It was also an effective horror film, building existential dread from the characters' fears and anxieties, that the people they knew and love had been replaced by duplicates, identical in almost every way, but incapable of emotion.

Broadway, television and film star Jack Manning has died, aged 93.

Manning died on 31 August at his home in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

The star made his Broadway debut in the 1941 hit comedy Junior Miss, before opening in Broadway's Harriet in 1943 and later taking on roles as Roderigo in Othello and as Tweedledee in Eva Le Gallienne’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

Manning also appeared in the original Broadway cast of the 1965 musical Do I Hear a Waltz? by Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents.

He enjoyed small screen success performing in a critically acclaimed TV adaptation of Hamlet and with a starring role in The Paper Chase.

He also racked up a number of guest appearances on TV programmes Studio One, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Here’s Lucy, Kojak and The Waltons, among others.

His film credits include Walk East on Beacon, Where’s Poppa?, The Owl and the Pussycat, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid and The Great Waldo Pepper.

Manning went on to teach acting at his own studios in New York and Los Angeles.

He is survived by his wife, Frances Ann Smith, a son, two daughters, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.