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When Michael Douglas semi-sprinted on to the stage of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Grand Hall to introduce the Czech premiere of the 50th anniversary screening (a restored print that also played at Cannes in May) of the late Czech American director Miloš Forman’s iconic Academy Award winning film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” he joyfully took in the applause of the choc-a-block auditorium.

It had been 27 years since he was last at this postcard perfect spa town two hours west of Prague, which is currently hosting the 59th edition of the underrated Central European film festival. Back in 1998, Douglas and the film’s other producer, the late Saul Zaentz were honored with the Crystal Globe, the festival’s highest award.

At the July 5 ceremony, as a heartwarming and funny gesture, Kviff’s Executive Director Kryštof Mucha presented Douglas with an updated Crystal Globe trophy — the...

Ahead of the Oscar nominations being announced Jan. 23, where “Waves” is hoping for recognition after being shortlisted for Best International Film, it led the pack this past week at the Czech Lion Awards — Czech Republic’s equivalent of the Academy Awards — with 14 nominations.

“Waves” was mentioned in numerous categories, including best director and screenplay for Jiří Mádl. Actors Vojtěch Vodochodský, Tatiana Pauhofová, Martin Hofmann and Stanislav Majer were nominated in their respective categories.

The film was also nominated in below-the-line crafts, including for cinematography, editing, sound design, music, stage design, costume design and makeup and hairstyling.

The success of “Waves” at the Czech Lion Awards and its shortlist mention for Best International Film at the upcoming Academy Awards comes after much success back home. After its debut at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where it won the top audience award, the film was released in Czech theaters in August,...

Emma Stone might be in a whole bunch of your favorite movies — but what are her favorites?

In January 2024, Stone spoke to Letterboxd — the social media site centered around movies — about her "four favorites," a regular interview the outlet does with major Hollywood celebrities. After appearing visibly stressed by the prospect of only picking four movies, Stone responds that Charlie Chaplin's 1931 comedy "City Lights" is her all-time favorite movie. "I love 'Network,'" Stone continued, name-checking the 1976 dark comedy that won Best Picture at the 49th Academy Awards in 1977. "'Mikey and Nicky,' I just saw it for the first time a couple of weeks ago," Stone raved, citing Elaine May's movie (also from 1976) about a mobster and his best friend (played by John Cassavetes and Peter Falk). "I love almost every Cassavetes movie — that one wasn't Cassavetes, he's just in it. It's obviously Elaine May, who's a genius,...

In 2022, Jane Campion made history as the first female director to be nominated for Best Director twice. And then, for “The Power of Dog,” she followed through and won, becoming the third female director to take home the top prize.

The win was a triumphant and long overdue achievement for Campion, who has consistently been one of the best directors actively working since her 1989 feature debut “Sweetie.” The black comedy about a dysfunctional family marked the New Zealand-born director as a great talent immediately, entering the Cannes Film Festival and taking home an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film shortly afterwards. Just a year later, Campion released her first masterpiece: the Janet Frame biopic, “An Angel at My Table.”

From there, her 1993 feature “The Piano” netted Campion her first Best Director nomination, while efforts like “The Portrait of a Lady,” “Holy Smoke,” “In the Cut,” and “Bright Star” received acclaim.

Ivan Passer’s first American film and his first in the English language is a core life-with-a-junkie tale in a cold Manhattan winter. George Segal is the ‘habituated, not addicted’ (he says) user whose married life has already been destroyed. Can he escape with the help of his new girlfriend? Hector Elizondo’s pimp/pusher has no intention of letting that happen. What’s weird is Passer’s frequently light tone — Segal’s criminal antics verge on the absurd. It’s a great film to see Karen Black, a young Robert De Niro and even Paula Prentiss in action, and yet another snapshot of Times Square in its most degraded decade.

Born to Win

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Scraping Bottom / Street Date May 31, 2022 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 27.99, from Amazon / 34.99

Starring: George Segal, Karen Black, Paula Prentiss, Hector Elizondo, Jay Fletcher, Robert De Niro, Ed Madsen, Marcia Jean Kurtz,...

Czech director Martin Kohout will turn his focus to the housing crisis, Variety has learned, developing a new film under the working title “Growth of the City.”

“No city is able to solve the housing crisis without building new apartments, so they just become bigger and bigger – it’s an endless process. This idea of never-ending growth is something I would like to explore, because it also has to do with climate change. Instead of focusing on the problem, we are just doing more,” he says.

Kohout, born in 1984, was only 5 years old when the Velvet Revolution took former Czechoslovakia by storm, ending the rule of the Communist Party. In “Points for the President aka Attempt at Counterrevolution,” world premiering at Ji.hlava Intl. Film Festival, he returns to that time once again, trying to figure out what went wrong.

“I was there; I was waving the flag. For my generation,...

It’s hard to imagine a more well-timed and well-placed documentary than Jan Siki’s “Reconstruction of Occupation,” which debuted on Saturday, Aug. 21 at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic. The film had its world premiere 53 years to the day that Soviet tanks and military vehicles rolled into what was then Czechoslovakia, and it screened in a theater, the Kino Čas, that sits on streets that saw those military vehicles in August 1968.

Much of the footage stems from a time when the new wave of Czech films was flowering, with landmarks like Jiri Menzel’s Oscar-winning “Closely Watched Trains,” Milos Forman’s “The Fireman’s Ball” and Jan Nemec’s “A Report on the Party and the Guests.” And it came at the end of the Prague Spring, the eight-month period that began when Alexander Dubček became head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and instituted liberal reforms...

Premiering at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival as part of their Industry Selects sidebar, Jesse Noah Klein’s Like a House on Fire follows Veep star Sarah Sutherland as Dara, a woman who returns home to reconnect with her husband and her young daughter, whom she left two years earlier. When she arrives, she discovers that a woman who is seven months pregnant has taken her place and that her daughter no longer recognizes her. Now set for a release later this month, on March 30, from Game Theory Films, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the first trailer. and poster.

“While this film began to come together, I got married to someone I have known for much of my life and so ideas about family and parenthood were never far off. My siblings and my closest friends have become parents and it’s something my wife and I talk about for our future,...

“I wanted to tell this story because it asks so many questions on so many levels,” admits acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland about why she wanted to direct her latest film, the Czech/Polish/Irish/Slovak co-production “Charlatan.” “It’s an intimate story with an epic scope,” she says. Watch our exclusive video interview with Holland above.

“Charlatan” is based on the true story of Czech healer Jan Mikolášek, who dedicated his life to treat the sick using medicinal plants. Throughout the war and turmoil of the 20th century he has to choose between his calling and his conscience. The film stars acclaimed Czech actor Ivan Trojan in a stunning performance as Mikolášek, alongside his real-life son Josef Trojan as the younger Mikolášek. The film co-stars Czech matinee idol Juraj Loj as the healer’s devoted assistant František Palko.

See 2021 Oscars shortlists in 9 categories: International Feature Film, Documentary Feature, Original Song,...

Albert Hughes takes us on a wild journey through the movies that made him, then explains why he’s not a cinephile (Spoiler: He is). Heads up – you’re going to hear some words you’ve never heard on our show before, and only one of them is Metropolis.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Gremlins (1984)

A Christmas Story (1983)

The Candidate (1972)

Menace II Society (1993)

Die Hard (1988)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Scarface (1983)

Goodfellas (1990)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Raging Bull (1980)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Alpha (2018)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Metropolis (1927)

True Romance (1993)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

The Matrix (1999)

Man Bites Dog (1992)

Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003)

A Serbian Film (2010)

Scarface (1932)

The Book of Eli (2010)

The Departed (2006)

Infernal Affairs (2002)

The Godfather (1972)

Casino (1995)

JFK (1991)

Dead Presidents (1996)

Eve’s Bayou (1997)

Basic Instinct (1992)

Psycho (1960)

The Cremator (1969)

The Firemen’s Ball (1967)

Halloween (2018)

From Hell (2001)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Hoffa (1992)

V For Vendetta (2005)

Spartacus (1960)

You Were Never Really Here...

Industry registration closes on September 2.

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) organisers on Tuesday (September 1) announced a selection of 30 global acquisition titles outside the Official Selection.

TIFF Industry Selects titles hail from 29 countries and have been hand-picked by TIFF’s industry and festival programming teams and will screen to accredited users on the festival’s dedicated press and industry platform, TIFF Digital Cinema Pro. Industry registration closes on September 2.

2020 TIFF Industry Selects Titles:

A Good Man (France) Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar

After Love (UK) Aleem Khan

And Tomorrow The Entire World (Germany/France) Julia Von Heinz

Apples (Greece) Christos Nikou

Baby Done (New...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Bungalow (Ulrich Köhler)

Ulrich Köhler remains underseen—even by the standards of Berlin School brethren Christian Petzold and Maren Ade—and a 4K restoration of his 2002 debut Bungalow comes at the right time: its story of isolation, frayed connections, and romantic infatuation foreground an only idyllic-seeming summer getaway. 18 years on, not a shred of it feels dated or resolved, down to a conclusion that puts one in mind of ’70s American classics.

Where to Stream: Grasshopper Film

Czechoslovak New Wave

A period of creative fervor and political deconstruction like few others in cinema, Czechoslovak New Wave is now getting a spotlight on The Criterion Channel. Selections includes Black Peter (Miloš Forman,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Alice (Josephine Mackerras)

It makes no sense. The night before saw Alice Ferrand’s (Emilie Piponnier) husband François (Martin Swabey) going out of his way to passionately make-out with her in front of their friends at a dinner party and now he won’t answer her calls. Despite his running out of the house earlier than usual without any explanation, however, there’s nothing to make her think something is wrong until a trip to the drugstore exposes a freeze on their finances. One credit card won’t work. Then another. The Atm won’t accept her sign-in and François still isn’t picking up his phone.

Milos Forman would’ve celebrated his 88th birthday on February 18, 2020. The late director, who passed away in 2018, only made a dozen movies in his career, yet several of those are classics. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at all 12 of Forman’s films, ranked worst to best.

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1932, Forman first came to international attention with “Loves of a Blonde” (1965) and “The Firemen’s Ball” (1967), both of which earned Oscar nominations as Best Foreign Language Film. In those early works, the director showed an affinity for antiauthoritarianism and oddball outsiders that would animate his best work.

He made his American debut with “Taking Off” (1971), and just four years later he was collecting his first Oscar for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975). The comedic drama about a mental patient (Jack Nicholson) rebelling against a tyrannical nurse (Louise Fletcher) became one of only three films...

Director who was part of the ‘Czech film miracle’ in the 1960s but made his masterpieces in Hollywood

Ivan Passer, who has died aged 86, was one of the new wave of Czech film directors who emerged during the social and cultural democratisation of the mid-60s that afforded them unprecedented artistic freedom. With his childhood friend Miloš Forman, Passer co-wrote A Blonde in Love and The Firemen’s Ball (1967), and directed Intimate Lighting (1965), his brilliant feature film debut.

In that short period, Passer, Forman, Vera Chytilová, Jirí Menzel and Jan Němec, among others, made films that rejected the official state socialist-realist aesthetic and produced eclectic, highly assured features that captured the world’s attention.

Czech-born director Ivan Passer, known for the U.S. cult thriller Cutter’s Way, died Thursday in Reno, Nev. He was 86.

The Czech online newspaper iDnes reported the filmmaker's death without revealing the cause.

Passer, a native of Prague, attended a secondary school alongside future prominent director Milos Forman and the Czech Republic's president Václav Havel before studying at the country's best known Famu film school.

He first came to the limelight in the 1960s as a screenwriter of Forman's features Horí, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) and Lásky jedné plavovlásky (The Loves of a ...

Czech-born director Ivan Passer, known for the U.S. cult thriller Cutter’s Way, died Thursday in Reno, Nev. He was 86.

The Czech online newspaper iDnes reported the filmmaker's death without revealing the cause.

Passer, a native of Prague, attended a secondary school alongside future prominent director Milos Forman and the Czech Republic's president Václav Havel before studying at the country's best known Famu film school.

He first came to the limelight in the 1960s as a screenwriter of Forman's features Horí, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) and Lásky jedné plavovlásky (The Loves of a ...

Has it been 35 years since film director Ivan Passer, who died Jan. 9, explained to me why horror movies will never stop getting financed and distributed? “They don’t give their producers any sleepless nights,” the sage Czech maestro quietly, sagely noted, summing up a multitude of film business realities in a simple haiku.

And how many decades ago was it when I was first gripped by Passer’s greatest film, “Cutter’s Way,” a completely uncompromising and richly drawn portrait of young Americans facing down the Masters of War that Bob Dylan sang about?

When did I first marvel at the wit and compassion Passer brought to the screenplays of his great fellow countryman Milos Forman? I saw their unforgettable social satire “The Firemen’s Ball” when it first graced our American shores and scored a best foreign language film nomination in the late ’60s.

Forman’s Czech New Wave classic “Loves of a Blonde,...

Ivan Passer, a leading figure of the Czech new wave who directed films including “Cutter’s Way,” died Thursday of pulmonary complications in Reno, Nevada, an associate of the family confirmed. He was 86.

Passer was a close friend and collaborator of the late Czech filmmaker Milos Forman. Passer met Forman at a boarding school for delinquents or children who had lost their parents during the war (other students included Vaclav Havel and Jerzy Skolimowski). They reunited at film school in Prague, where he began collaborating on Forman’s films including “Loves of a Blonde” and “The Firemen’s Ball.” Passer’s first feature was the 1965 film “Intimate Lighting.”

Passer and Forman escaped Prague in 1969 as Russian tanks were advancing, when they pretended to be visiting Austria for the weekend. Though they lacked exit visas, a border guard who was a fan of Forman’s let them cross to safety, Passer told Variety...

Milos Forman, the Oscar-winning director behind Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon, died Friday at 86. A representative confirmed Forman's death to Rolling Stone, saying that the director died at Danbury Hospital near his home in Warren, Ct.

Forman's wife Martina told the Czech news agency Ctk that the director died following a short illness, Reuters reports. "His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends," Martina said.

Forman won two Best Director Oscars,...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Hard to Be a God is playing on Mubi in the Us through January 2.Hard to Be a GodRussian director Aleksei German spent the final 15 years of his life working on Hard To Be A God (2013), a brutal medieval epic adapted from a 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strutgatsky, dying just before he could complete the job in February 2013. Happily, his son and widow were able to oversee the final sound mix. The result is one of the most immersive and harrowing cinematic experiences going, three hours of being put to the sword and mired in the mud, blood and viscera of a nightmare alternate reality.Although German's characters are dressed in the clanking armour, chainmail and robes of the European Middle Ages, Hard To Be A God is in fact set on a distant planet,...

Milos Forman was the prince of the Prague Spring with this Czech New Wave classic, a hilarious black comedy about the cheerful corruption and incompetence of petty bureaucrats. A fire brigade throws a bash, and by the end of the evening the lottery prizes are all stolen and the beauty contest has become a travesty. And they can't even put out a simple fire. The joke is clearly aimed at the Communist government. The Fireman's Ball Region-Free Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Academy (UK) 1967 / Color / / 71 min. / Horí, má panenko / Street Date October 12, 2015 / Available from Amazon UK £14.99 Cinematography Miroslav Ondrícek Production Designer Karel Cerny Film Editor Miroslav Hájek Original Music Karel Mares Writing credits Milos Forman, Jaroslav Papousek, Ivan Passer and Václav Sasek Produced by Rudolf Hajek, Carlo Ponti Directed by Milos Forman

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

We know Milos Forman from his American pictures Hair and Ragtime, but he made big...

Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’s 1965 film The Shop on Main Street, which was the first film from Eastern Europe to win an Academy Award, celebrates it’s 50th anniversary this year. The Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino, CA will be holding a special one-night-only showing of the 128-minute drama on Tuesday, June 9, 2015 at 7:30 pm. Scheduled to appear in person are film director Ivan Passer and Michal Sedlacek, Consul General of Czech Republic in Los Angeles.

From the press release:

The Shop On Main Street (1965) was the first film from Eastern Europe ever to win an Academy Award. Fifty years ago this powerful Czech drama won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, it was one of the key films in the Czech New Wave that flourished in the 1960s, before the Soviet invasion of 1968 stamped out this vital movement. Josef Kroner...

Jack Nicholson's is not the only outstanding performance in the darkly comic movie. Director Milos Forman drew sensitive yet hilarious turns from a cast with a rich range of facial tics

Why we love … movie computers … the quarry in Breaking Away … the dribbly kiss in Little Women

"I'm not just talking about my wife, I'm talking about my life! I'm not just talking about one person, I'm talking about everybody. I'm talking about form, I'm talking about content, I'm talking about inter-relationships! I'm talking about God, the devil, hell, heaven! Do you understand? Finally?!"

The intellectual, neurotic Harding (William Redfield) lets off steam during one of five "group therapy" scenes in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. It sparks a fascinating set of reactions from other characters – the squealing Cheswick (Sydney Lassick), the taunting, swivelled-eyed Taber (Christopher Lloyd), the stuttering Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), the ghoulish Fredrickson (Vincent Schiavelli), the grinning,...

Criterion has posted Jane Campion's "Top 10" list, in which she ranks her favorite titles put out by the prestigious DVD and Blu-ray company. The list includes only nine films, but among them are Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt," Federico Fellini's "La Strada" and Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story." Full list below. Campion will receive the Carosse d'Or and head the Short Film and Cinefondation jury at Cannes later this week. The director's excellent mystery series, "Top of the Lake," which she co-wrote, produced and directed in part, recently concluded on the Sundance Channel. You can read Campion's comments on each film here. Campion's Top 9 for Criterion: 1. The Seven Samurai (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1954) 2. The Night Porter (dir. Liliana Cavani, 1974) 3. The Firemen's Ball (dir. Milos Forman, 1967) 4. That Obscure Object of Desire (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1977) 5. Contempt (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) 6. Tokyo Story (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) 7. La Strada (dir. Federico Fellini, 1954) 8. Scenes from...

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 363 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies, the Up docs and Decalogue) and of those 363, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 362 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies and Decalogue) and of those 362, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...

1.) Albert Brooks is returning to voice Nemo's father, Marlin, in Finding Nemo 2. Ellen DeGeneres is also expected to return as the forgetful Dory with Andrew Stanton set to direct. At this point there are no plot details, though a 2016 release date is expected. Deadline 2.) Safe House director Daniel Espinosa is attached to direct an adaptation of John Grisham's "The Racketeer" for Fox and New Regency. The book sees a federal judge murdered at a lakeside cabin and the contents of his safe emptied. The only man who knows the whos and whys is a former attorney serving time in federal prison who hopes to parlay that into getting revenge on the people who put him there. THR 3.) More Twilight fan fiction is targeting a big screen adaptation while Universal tries to figure out what they're going to do with Fifty Shades of Grey. Constantin Film has acquired movie...

In this age of disgusting financial misdeeds, it's good to remember the roots of the art of big-time financial cons. So tip your hat to turn of the century shitbag Charles Ponzi, who refined a fraudulent scheme of creating the illusion of short-term gains by leveraging new investment to pay off other investors. He didn't invent the con, but perpetrated it on a scale that was previously unheard of. The Ponzi scheme is basically a trademark financial con, and is the root of the scamming that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Bernie Madoff ran basically the largest Ponzi Scheme ever, bilking people out of $21 billion. And now Milos Forman, whose career has been seemingly close to dormant for a decade (though he's never been the most prolific director, with three major films in the '80s and two in the '90s) is going to direct a film about Charles Ponzi.

Along with early Milos Forman films like Loves Of A Blonde and The Firemen's Ball, Jiří Menzel's 1966 feature Closely Watched Trains, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, ushered in the Czech new wave, a brief but potent movement characterized by a mix of dark comedy, political tartness, and underlying humanism. When the Soviets all but extinguished the new wave in the late '60s, many directors (including Forman, who went on to make One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus) fled to the West, but Menzel stuck around and made only a couple more movies—1969's long-banned Larks On A String (which didn't surface until 1990) and 1985's Oscar-nominated My Sweet Little Village. They never got much recognition abroad. Forty years after his breakthrough, Menzel has returned with I Served The King Of England, and it's like he never left. A ribald black comedy about the...