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2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007

19 items from 2012


Deborah Kerr: Sexual Outlaw

22 May 2012 2:03 PM, PDT | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, The King and I Deborah Kerr Pt.1: What Lies Beneath True, you most likely won’t find Deborah Kerr labeled a sex goddess anywhere, but that’s merely because her sexual allure, apart from the beach scene in From Here to Eternity, was hardly obvious. Unlike overgrown little girls such as Marilyn Monroe, Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Jayne Mansfield, or Brigitte Bardot, Kerr looked and acted like a mature woman even in her 20s. In other words, there was nothing kittenish about Deborah Kerr; she didn’t pout. Unlike Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Lizabeth Scott, or Susan Sarandon, Kerr’s seething sensuality had nothing to do with sultriness, come-hither looks, or bare body parts. Unlike Simone Simon, Jane Greer, the latter-day Barbara Stanwyck, and other (French or American) film noir dames, or Theda Bara and assorted film »

- Andre Soares

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Deborah Kerr: What Lies Beneath

22 May 2012 2:02 PM, PDT | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, From Here to Eternity. With Deborah Kerr, it’s not the bare shoulders that matter. It’s the eyes. Deborah Kerr, who died at the age of 86 on Oct. 16, 2007, has usually been labeled the cinematic embodiment of the English Rose: ladylike from coiffure to pedicure, perfectly enunciated English, a distinctive coolness, poise and class. I won’t argue with that description (except to point out that this English Rose was born in Scotland), but all the same I wonder if any of those labelers have ever watched Deborah Kerr on screen other than the "Shall We Dance?" sequence in The King and I. Then there are those who have seen two Deborah Kerr scenes: "Shall We Dance?" and the kissing-on-the-beach bit in From Here to Eternity. Shocking! Who would have guessed that the cool, red-headed British lady could be so fiery? Well, anyone who has paid »

- Andre Soares

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Q&A: 'Breaking Dawn' Costar Angela Sarafyan on Finding Her 'American Animal'

18 May 2012 9:00 AM, PDT | NextMovie | See recent NextMovie news »

Angela Sarafyan is on top of her game and playing the field. In the last couple of years, the young Armenian-American actress has dipped her toe in TV (costarring with Colin Hanks on the short-lived Fox series "The Good Guys") and big-budget tentpoles (she's Tia in "Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"). She's currently filming James Gray's "Low Life," in which she plays Marion Cotillard's sister.

In the new indie "American Animal," Sarafyan is Angela, a friend of Jimmy's (writer-director Matt D'Elia) who, along with Jimmy's roommate and her friend (also named Angela), becomes sucked into a madcap world of pop culture and personal torture. It's part comedy, part drama and like nothing you'd expect.

Sarafyan talked to us at last year's SXSW about the innovative process of working on "American Animal," along with details on why shooting a "Twilight" movie isn't that different then a tiny, micro-budget indie. »

- Matt Patches

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Bellissima

1 May 2012 7:30 PM, PDT | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »

Anna Magnani (The Rose Tattoo) yells, bellows, rambles, fights, and connives through the entirety of Luchino Visconti's neo-realist classic Bellissima, rarely if ever stopping to catch her breath. This alone would be something to watch, but she somehow manages in all that bellowing to be engaging and downright heartbreaking at moments. We should despise Maddalena Cecconi (Magnani), a stage mother desperate to give her too-young daughter opportunities that might have been withheld from her. And yet Magnani is such a large personality that no matter how bad she gets she's still a human being.

Cecconi is a singer and actress living in a loud, bustling tenement house in Rome with her husband, Spartaco (Gastone Renzelli) and five-year-old daughter Maria (Kewpie-doll-faced Tina Apicella). A break comes in the form of an open casting call for seven- and eight-year-old girls with a famous director in town.

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- David M. DeLeon

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The Lion In Winter Producer Martin Poll Dead

16 April 2012 10:43 PM, PDT | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, The Lion in Winter Martin Poll, best known for producing Anthony Harvey's 1968 Best Picture Oscar nominee The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Peter O'Toole as King Henry II, died of "natural causes" on April 14 according to various online sources. Poll was 89. An Avco Embassy release, The Lion in Winter was considered the favorite for the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. The film had won the Best Film Award from the New York Film Critics Circle, while Harvey was the year's Directors Guild Award winner. However, Carol Reed's Columbia-distributed musical Oliver! turned out to be the winner in both categories. (Curiously, the previous year another Embassy release, Mike Nichols' The Graduate, unexpectedly lost the Best Picture Oscar to Norman Jewison's United Artists-distributed In the Heat of the Night. But at least Nichols came out victorious. »

- Andre Soares

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R.I.P. Martin Poll

15 April 2012 7:36 PM, PDT | Deadline TV | See recent Deadline TV news »

Veteran movie and TV producer Martin Poll died between Friday night and early Saturday morning of natural causes at a care facility on the Upper Westside in New York City. He was 89. Poll was nominated for an Academy Award as producer for Best Picture of 1968 for The Lion In Winter, which won three Oscars — Best Actress Katharine Hepburn (tied with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl), Best Original Score for John Barry and Best Adapted Screenplay for James Goldman — out of seven nominations. He began his career in Europe where he served as a co-producer on feature films and produced more than three dozen half-hour episodes of the classic Flash Gordon TV series in Germany and France for international release. After moving to New York City, Poll bought and reopened the famed Biograph Studio and rechristened it Gold Medal Studios. Productions during his time at Gold Medal included Elia Kazan’s A Face In The Crowd, »

- THE DEADLINE TEAM

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The Films Of Sidney Lumet: A Retrospective

9 April 2012 8:00 AM, PDT | The Playlist | See recent The Playlist news »

It has been a year since Sidney Lumet passed away on April 9, 2011. Here is our retrospective on the legendary filmmaker to honor his memory. Originally published April 15, 2011.

Almost a week after the fact, we, like everyone that loves film, are still mourning the passing of the great American master Sidney Lumet, one of the true titans of cinema.

Lumet was never fancy. He never needed to be, as a master of blocking, economic camera movements and framing that empowered the emotion and or exact punctuation of a particular scene. First and foremost, as you’ve likely heard ad nauseum -- but hell, it’s true -- Lumet was a storyteller, and one that preferred his beloved New York to soundstages (though let's not romanticize it too much, he did his fair share of work on studio film sets too as most TV journeyman and early studio filmmakers did).

His directing career stretched well over 50 years, »

- Oliver Lyttelton

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Meryl Streep Has Lost the Oscar 14 Times

1 April 2012 11:48 PM, PDT | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Colin Firth, Meryl Streep Colin Firth tells Meryl Streep he should have been cast as Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady, for he's British and Streep is not. Streep responds by telling him she can play any nationality, including Italian. As proof, she incarnates Anna Magnani in Bellissima. Well, something like that went on backstage at the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony. (Photo: Bryan Crowe / ©A.M.P.A.S.) Meryl Streep's Best Actress Oscar for The Iron Lady was her third. Streep's previous two Oscars were as Best Supporting Actress for Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), featuring Dustin Hoffman, Jane Alexander, and Justin Henry; and as Best Actress for Alan J. Pakula's Sophie's Choice (1982), with Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol. Only three other performers have won three Academy Awards: Walter Brennan as Best Supporting Actor for Howard Hawks and William Wyler's Come and Get It »

- Andre Soares

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DVD Playhouse--March 2012

6 March 2012 9:50 PM, PST | The Hollywood Interview | See recent The Hollywood Interview news »

DVD Playhouse—March 2012

By Allen Gardner

J. Edgar (Warner Bros.) Director Clint Eastwood provides a rock-solid, albeit rather flat portrait of polarizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, covering his life from late teens to his death. Leonardo DiCaprio does an impressive turn as Hoover, never crossing the line into caricature, and creating a Hoover that is all too human, making for an all the more unsettling look at absolute power run amuck. Where the film stumbles is the love story at its core: Hoover’s relationship with longtime aide Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). In the hands of an openly-gay director like Gus Van Sant, this could have been a heartbreaking, tender story of forbidden (unrequited?) love, but Eastwood seems to tiptoe around their romance, with far too much delicacy and deference. The film works well when recreating the famous crimes and investigations which Hoover made his name on (the Lindbergh kidnapping, »

- The Hollywood Interview.com

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L'Automobile

2 March 2012 8:30 AM, PST | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »

L’Automobile has an impeccable Italian cinematic pedigree: it stars the gorgeous Anna Magnani (Oscar winner for 1955’s The Rose Tattoo and “she-wolf” of Italian neorealism), is written and directed by Alfredo Giannetti (the scribe behind the classic Divorce Italian Style), and has an amazing musical score by the incomparable Ennio Morricone. The film does not add up to a sum as great as each of those individual parts; however, it is still worth taking for a spin.

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- Lee Jutton

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DVD Review: L'automobile

26 February 2012 6:33 PM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

Among RaroVideo USA's latest offerings is the TV film L'Automobile starring Anna Magnani. I wish I could inject a little bit of insight into this film, but I really don't know where to go with it. The film is an interesting document of the actress in her later years as well as a commentary on early '70s gender politics, but it doesn't really get exciting at all until the very end. The result is a very workmanlike film that lacks any kind of visual flourish or significant action. While I was watching it, I enjoyed it, but looking back I can't really understand why. That being said, this film is a bit of a rarity and Raro's DVD is very good looking considering the source.Anna »

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George Cukor/Oscar Actors: Judy Holliday, Ronald Colman

22 February 2012 3:42 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

William Holden, Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday George Cukor: Oscar Actors' Director Pt.2 George Cukor-directed movies: twenty-one acting nominations; five wins. (s) supporting category; (*) Academy Award winner 1930-31 Fredric March, The Royal Family of Broadway (co-directed with Cyril Gardner) 1936 Norma Shearer, Romeo and Juliet Basil Rathbone (s), Romeo and Juliet 1937 Greta Garbo, Camille 1940 * James Stewart, The Philadelphia Story Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story Ruth Hussey (s), The Philadelphia Story 1944 Charles Boyer, Gaslight * Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight Angela Lansbury (s), Gaslight 1947 * Ronald Colman, A Double Life 1949 Deborah Kerr, Edward, My Son 1950 * Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday 1954 James Mason, A Star Is Born Judy Garland, A Star Is Born 1957 Anthony Quinn, Wild Is the Wind Anna Magnani,Wild Is the Wind 1964 * Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady Stanley Holloway (s), My Fair Lady Gladys Cooper (s), My Fair Lady 1972 Maggie Smith, Travels with My Aunt »

- Andre Soares

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George Cukor: Womens Director?

22 February 2012 3:38 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Known as a refined "women's director," George Cukor has had his considerable output either relegated to the sidelines or simply dismissed by those who like their directors macho and their films male-centered. Not helping matters is the general perception that Cukor was merely a hired hand for the likes of David O. Selznick at Rko and Louis B. Mayer at MGM, instead of an auteur following a clear professional path. Except, of course, for the (assumed) fact that he was a women's director — and we're back to square one. In truth, George Cukor was one of the most accomplished directors of the studio era. His movies may lack the wide vistas found in John Ford's Westerns, or those personal cinematic/thematic touches that make, say, an Alfred Hitchcock movie recognizably Hitchcockian. But that's because Cukor's camera was set up so audiences would forget it was there and thus be allowed to — or rather, »

- Andre Soares

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Greer Garson, Joan Crawford: Deceased Honorary Oscar-less

17 February 2012 4:01 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Walter Pidgeon, Greer Garson in William Wyler's Mrs. Miniver Honorary Oscars and Women Pt.2: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux, Joan Fontaine, Maureen O'Hara On the list of film industry women who have yet to receive an Honorary Award, I did not include Olivia de Havilland, Elizabeth Taylor, Maggie Smith, Glenda Jackson, Luise Rainer, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Sally Field, Jodie Foster, and Jessica Lange because each of them has already won two acting awards. Barbara Kopple, Thelma Schoonmaker, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, for their part, have each already won two Oscars for, respectively, documentary feature, film editing, and screenwriting. Barbra Streisand, I should note, has also won two Oscars; the second one, however, was as co-composer (with Paul Williams) of the song "Evergreen" from A Star Is Born. Only someone like Elia Kazan — i.e., with friends in high Academy places — can have two Academy Award wins in a »

- Andre Soares

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Cinema Paradiso Finale: Valentine's Day Movie Montage

14 February 2012 2:48 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Anna Magnani in (what looks like) Luchino Visconti's Bellissima At the end of Giuseppe Tornatore's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner Cinema Paradiso, small-town projectionist Philippe Noiret has died and the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso has become a pile of rubble. The bratty Italian boy Salvatore Cascio has grown into the classy Frenchman Jacques Perrin (like Noiret, dubbed in Italian), a filmmaker who sits to watch a mysterious reel of film the deceased projectionist had left him. It turns out the reel contains clips from films censored by the prudish local parish priest, whose family values found kisses, embraces, and bare breasts and legs a danger to society. Now, who's doing all that kissing, embracing, and breast/leg-displaying in that film reel? (Please scroll down for the Cinema Paradiso clip.) Here are the ones I recognize: Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman in Giuseppe De Santis' Bitter Rice (1949); Mangano »

- Andre Soares

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Ben Gazzara obituary

5 February 2012 4:06 PM, PST | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »

Forceful actor who built a 60-year career in the Us and Europe

Few screen debuts have equalled the searing malevolence of Ben Gazzara's Iago-inspired Jocko De Paris in The Strange One (1957). The role, which he had created on stage, became forever associated with this intense graduate of New York's method school of acting.

Gazzara, who has died aged 81 of pancreatic cancer, continued his stage career in modern classics including Epitaph for George Dillon and as the humiliated and vengeful George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He also achieved popular acclaim through television series – notably Run for Your Life (1965-68) – and in movies for his friend John Cassavetes and other directors including Otto Preminger, Peter Bogdanovich, David Mamet, Todd Solondz and the Coen brothers.

Gazzara was born to Sicilian immigrants and grew up on Manhattan's lower east side. He began acting at the Madison Square Boys Club and »

- Brian Baxter

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Ben Gazzara, 1930 - 2012

5 February 2012 5:57 AM, PST | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

"A New York native of Sicilian heritage, Ben Gazzara was a strongly masculine, subtly menacing screen presence with a gravelly voice that one writer described as 'saloon-cured' and another said could strip paint at 50 paces," writes Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times. "The veteran actor, who died Friday in New York City, found fame on Broadway in the 1950s, starred in the TV series Run for Your Life in the 1960s and was closely identified on the big screen with independent filmmaker John Cassavetes."

In Cassavetes's Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1976), "he plays varieties of himself, as Cassavetes saw him: the moderate man who loses his head and takes immoderate action," blogs the New Yorker's Richard Brody. "Husbands, in particular, finds Gazzara accomplishing one of the most astonishing, and moving, feats ever filmed: he steals a movie from Cassavetes and Peter Falk…. The movies »

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Ben Gazzara obituary

4 February 2012 9:42 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Prolific actor who built a 60-year career in the Us and Europe

Few screen debuts have equalled the searing malevolence of Ben Gazzara's Iago-inspired Jocko De Paris in The Strange One (1957). The role, which he had created on stage, became forever associated with this intense graduate of New York's method school of acting.

Gazzara, who has died aged 81 of pancreatic cancer, continued his stage career in modern classics including Epitaph for George Dillon and as the humiliated and vengeful George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1976). He also achieved popular acclaim through television series – notably Run for Your Life (1965-68) – and in movies for his friend John Cassavetes and other directors including Otto Preminger, Peter Bogdanovich, David Mamet, Todd Solondz and the Coen brothers.

Gazzara was born to Sicilian immigrants and grew up on Manhattan's lower east side. He began acting at the Madison Square Boys Club and »

- Brian Baxter

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Ben Gazzara Dead at 81: Anatomy Of A Murder, Husbands, An Early Frost

3 February 2012 6:40 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Ben Gazzara, who was featured on Broadway in the original Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and in movies by the likes of John Cassavetes, Otto Preminger, and Peter Bogdanovich, died earlier today at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital Center as per the New York Times. Gazzara, who had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, was 81. Although Gazzara (the son of Italian immigrants, born Aug. 28, 1930, in New York City) is probably best remembered for his films directed by Cassavetes — Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Opening Night (1978) — he was remarkably effective elsewhere. Arguably, much more effective elsewhere. Gazzara delivered a first-rate performance in Otto Preminger's cynical look at the American justice system, Anatomy of a Murder (1959), in which he played a military man on trial for killing a man — he claims — was attempting to rape his wife (Lee Remick, replacing Lana Turner). James Stewart is his somewhat shady defense attorney, »

- Andre Soares

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2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007

19 items from 2012


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