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Shaw Brothers films are not exactly at the top of many film buffs’ watching list. For one, there has not been a traditional Shaw film, opening fanfare and all, in close to 30 years and a hefty portion of the public do not give catalogue films the time of day. Even for those who do, there is a vast selection of genres, directors, actors and studios that, often for good reason, will strike someone’s fancy more so than a 1960s, 70s or early 80s Shaw production.

It is widely known that said movies were produced at the speed of light, like cheap toys on a factory production line. Even so, their legacy lives on, with the bountiful number of martial arts films made and released in countries around the world, in addition to their critical role in making Kung Fu films popular in North America. For the decidedly smaller band...

To celebrate their 5th anniversary, the Arizona Underground Film Festival has expanded to a whopping nine nights on Sept. 21-29 for a cinematic event the likes of Tucson has never seen before!

The shenanigans kick off with the opening night film The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, an experimental Italian feature directed by Davide Manuli and starring Vincent Gallo as the hero and the villain to a strange young boy, then end with the closing night film Jason M. Solomon’s nostalgic documentary 7 Years Underground: A 60′s Tale, which profiles the legendary Cafe Au Go Go in NYC that hosted such up-and-coming acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin and more.

In between those two films lies a twisted carnage of movie mayhem, including Spencer Parsons’ demented homage to ’70s mystery cartoons Saturday Morning Massacre; Michael Melamedoff exploitative semi-doc The Exhibitionists; Stephen Amis’ Australian WWII sci-fi...

DVD Playhouse—February 2012

By Allen Gardner

To Kill A Mockingbird 50th Anniversary Edition (Universal) Robert Mulligan’s film of Harper Lee’s landmark novel pits a liberal-minded lawyer (Gregory Peck) against a small Southern town’s racism when defending a black man (Brock Peters) on trumped-up rape charges. One of the 1960s’ first landmark films, a truly stirring human drama that hits all the right notes and isn’t dated a bit. Robert Duvall makes his screen debut (sans dialogue) as the enigmatic Boo Radley. DVD and Blu-ray double edition. Bonuses: Two feature-length documentaries: Fearful Symmetry and A Conversation with Gregory Peck; Featurettes; Excerpts and film clips from Gregory Peck’s Oscar acceptance speech and AFI Lifetime Achievement Award; Commentary by Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 2.0 mono.

Outrage: Way Of The Yakuza (Magnolia) After a brief hiatus from his signature oeuvre of Japanese gangster flicks,...

The National Film Preservation Foundation and the Film Foundation have announced the recipients of their annual Avant-Garde Masters Grants, which goes towards preserving classic experimental, avant-garde and underground films.

This year, $50,000 will be given to five different film preservation and archival organizations to preserve 10 avant-garde films from the ’60s and the ’70s. The most significant recipient of grant funds is Ohio State University who will be preserving five early works by Lillian Schwartz, a pioneer in early computer animation.

Pictured above is a film still courtesy of Ohio State from Schwartz’s Olympiad (1971), one of the films being preserved. The other four are Pixillation (1970), Enigma (1972), Mutations (1972), and Papillons (1973). While computer animation is ubiquitous today, Schwartz led early efforts to use computer languages to create artistic animated forms.

According to Dan Streible, acting director of Nyu’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program:

Lillian Schwartz worked alongside At&T research scientists...

Some casting news, release date news, rumors and new pictures for you today. And all in one post... Have at it.

Lee Pace has joined the cast of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, playing the opportunistic New York City mayor Fernando Wood, a prominent early supporter of the Confederate cause. The mayor traded frequent correspondence with President Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis). Pace will next be seen in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 and will play the role of Thranduil in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. [Deadline]

Sony has set an October 12, 2012 release date for Kathryn Bigelow's Kill Bin Laden, putting it in prime Oscar positioning for next year and a likely 2012 Toronto Film Festival selection. The film stars Joel Edgerton (The Thing) in a story focusing on the black ops mission to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, which culminated in his death earlier this month during a high-stakes...

British horror fans rejoice! Two new fright flicks by British filmmakers have been released on DVD on your shores: James Eaves‘ Bane and Paul Campion‘s The Devil’s Rock.

While Bane has been available in the U.S. for awhile now, it’s finally getting its due in the country that spawned this dark and disturbing vision of a scientific experiment gone awry.

Four women wake up in a military medical facility, held against their own will, but for what nefarious purpose they cannot guess. During the day, they are pushed through a rigorous regimen of psychological torture, while at night a mysterious being breaks into their cell to carve into their bodies the time he’s going to come back to kill them. And kill them he does, in terrifically brutal fashion.

Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film reviewed Bane a few years ago and described it...

"Let me count the ways I love the Harry Potter movies," wrote Amy Taubin in the summer of 2009, as if asking permission to do so in Artforum's virtual pages. First, they "remind me of growing up enthralled with English childhoods," but "mostly I love Harry Potter for the actors." Singled out in particular are "Alan Rickman's Professor Severus Snape, looking more than ever like a formaldehyde version of John Cale in his Velvet Underground days. Rickman is a genius at allowing conflicting thoughts and impulses to flicker across his face while keeping most of what he's up to under wraps. He is also the winner of a tough competition with Maggie Smith (as Professor Minerva McGonagall) over who can deliver the most plumy version of dry wit; he bridges the second and third words of a three-word sentence with a full five-second pause."...

Chicago – It’s always nice to see world-famous filmmakers raising awareness about work from their lesser known peers. Where would Eli Roth be without Quentin Tarantino, or Neill Blomkamp be without Peter Jackson, or Danny McBride and Jody Hill be without the better half of Hollywood’s comedy titans? That’s why it’s nice to see “Evil Dead” creators Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert “hand pick” the indie horror films they admire, and then assist in their distribution.

Overall Blu-Ray Rating: 2.5/5.0

Raimi and Tapert’s “Ghost House Underground” series began last year with a collection of eight features that included the exuberant zombie satire “Dance of the Dead.” This year’s collection has shrunk to four features, none of which are as fun or memorable as last year’s “Dance.” Only one film manages to satisfy, while the other three vary in their degrees of mediocrity and failure. Let...