News

Tony Sokol Aug 16, 2019

Peter Fonda was a counterculture film icon who gave John Lennon a bad trip but a great song.

Actor and director Peter Fonda died of respiratory failure due to lung cancer at his Los Angeles home on Friday, Aug. 16, his manager, Alan Somers, announced via Variety. The Oscar-nominated screenwriter and star of Easy Rider was 79.

“It is with deep sorrow that we share the news that Peter Fonda has passed away at his home in Los Angeles surrounded by family,” the Fonda family said in a statement. “In one of the saddest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our hearts. And, while we mourn the loss of this sweet and gracious man, we also wish for all to celebrate his indomitable spirit and love of life. In honor of Peter, please raise a glass to freedom.

If the events recounted in “Tread” had not occurred in real life, you might mistake any synopsis of its storyline for a treatment written by some grindhouse-cinema aficionado as a tribute to ‘70s rural-revenge thrillers. Indeed, Paul Solet’s remarkably absorbing and suspenseful documentary often plays like the dark flip side of that audience-stoking subgenre — think Jonathan Kaplan’s “White Line Fever” or Jonathan Demme’s “Fighting Mad” — in which working-class protagonists transform tools of their trade into blunt-instrument weapons while battling corrupt oppressors.

For roughly the first third of the movie’s running time, Marvin Heemeyer, a fiftysomething welder and muffler-shop owner in the small Colorado mountain town of Granby, certainly seems to fit the genre stereotype of a hard-working, straight-shooting guy who doesn’t become violent until he’s pushed too far. To be sure, that initial impression is sustained largely by Heemeyer himself, who’s heard on...

“No one seems to love or understand me. Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me”

Melvin And Howard screens Friday, June 16th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). This is the third film in their ‘Tribute to Jonathan Demme’ The movie starts at 8:00pm.

Paul Le Mat is an average Joe named Melvin E. Dummar in Melvin And Howard (1980) an effective combination of drama and comedy from director Jonathan Demme. Melvin often finds it difficult to make ends meet, no matter what line of work he’s in. Then, one day, it seems as if his luck might change. A stranger leaves on his desk a will proclaiming Melvin to be one of 16 heirs to the fortune of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Once upon a time, Melvin had given a lift to an aged, decrepit looking individual (Jason Robards) who claimed to be Hughes. The...

We’re all still reeling from the death of Jonathan Demme, one of the most unpredictable, open-hearted and by all accounts best loved of American filmmakers. I was surprised to learn that he was 73 when he died because he, and his films, always seemed so youthful. The fact that his swansong was the beautifully exuberant Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids only added to that impression of vitality.Many of the posters for Demme’s films are as well known as the films themselves: the Dali-esque death’s head moth for Silence of the Lambs; the cutout of Spalding Gray’s head bobbing in a flat plane of blue for Swimming to Cambodia; an upside-down Jeff Daniels on Something Wild; Pablo Ferro’s Strangelove-esque titles over the Big Suit for Stop Making Sense. And of his later films I particularly like the screen-print look of Man From Plains. But the posters for Demme’s early films,...

New York City – He was the helmsman of “The Silence of the Lambs,” which won him Best Director and took home Best Picture at the 1992 Academy Awards, and made numerous other late 20th Century movie classics. Director Jonathan Demme died in New York City on April 26, 2017, at the age of 73.

Film writer Dave Kehr called Demme “the last of the great humanists,” and the director followed through on that description with an incredible run of films in the 1980s and ‘90s, which included “Melvin and Howard” (1980), “Something Wild” (1986), “Swimming to Cambodia” (1987), “Married to the Mob” (1988), “Lambs” (1991) and “Philadelphia” (1993). He also created one of the greatest rock documentaries ever, “Stop Making Sense” (1984, featuring the Talking Heads) and worked extensively with Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young on other rock docs. He even directed an episode of the TV classic “Columbo” in 1978, among his other TV achievements.

Director Jonathan Demme on the Set...

Director Jonathan Demme, who won an Oscar for directing the 1991 Best Picture winner The Silence of the Lambs, has passed away earlier this morning at the age of 74. According to a source close to the family, the filmmaker passed from esophageal cancer and complications from heart disease. The filmmaker had been treated for esophageal cancer in 2010, and while he did recover, the cancer came back in 2015, and sources said his condition had deteriorated in recent weeks. We have assembled a number of tweets below from filmmakers and actors paying their respects to this iconic director.

IndieWire first broke the news this morning, as tributes have started to flood in from filmmakers such as Edgar Wright, James Wan and actors such as Denis Leary, Michael Chiklis and many more. Jonathan Demme was born February 22, 1944 in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York to Dorothy Louise (Rogers) and Robert Eugene Demme, a public relations executive.

This week’s DVD and Blu-Ray Releases include a couple of films from the After Dark Horrorfest as well as two of Ron Howard’s earlier films and a Blu-Ray edition of Solaris. Check beyond the break for the full list.

All Descriptions of the following titles are provided by Amazon.com unless otherwise noted. If you plan on buying a flick from this list, please click on the links provided or click on the cover as it helps us pay the bills around here. Also, unlike most sites, we provide the Netflix widget which we think is pretty convenient to add these films to your queue. If you don’t have Netflix, feel free to click on “Free Trial” and try it out!

Death Hunter: Werewolves vs. Vampires

Format: DVD

———————–

In a forgotten region of the desert, an unspeakable evil exists. By no choice of his own, John Croix...

Durham, N.C. - During lunch a filmmaker tells me that of all the festivals he’s attended with his movies, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is the only one he wants to attend as a spectator. He enjoys how the various screens and activities aren’t spread all over the city. There’s a relaxed atmosphere as the festival-goers aren’t hustling hard to get tickets to sold out screenings. It’s a sweet Southern festival in the middle of Tobacco Road. Even the world’s biggest superstar just hangs out with the festival goers inside of hiding behind a wall of security.

Who is the superstar? Elmo! And we have an exclusive chat with him at the end of this column.

The film selection was once more top notch. An ample number of documentaries received their world debut in Durham. There were a few films that had built a buzz at Sundance,...

Rochester, NY - Ever wonder why schools today stink compared to decades ago? Every think tank moron has their dubious reasonings that appeases their corporate masters. But the truth is extraordinarily simple: Schools dumped their education films.

Do you remember those days when the gym teacher had to pad out health class by wheeling in the 16mm projector from the Av department? They’d thread up classic tales about your body, narcotics, driving safety and manners. Things which kids nowadays can’t seem to handle.

When the Vcr arrived in schools, the 16mm projector was quickly dumped as teaching tool.

Where did these classic films go? Many arrived at the city dump. However a few lucky tens of thousands found themselves on the racks of the Av Geeks Archive. This repository of cinematic education is overseen by Skip Elsheimer. He started collecting the films after I moved out of the infamous PineHaus.