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5 items from 2012

20 November 2012 2:20 PM, PST | The Backlot | See recent The Backlot news »

Birthday shoutouts go to hot horror himbo Joe Zaso (above), who is 42, and Sean Young is 53.Attention! Please join me on Sunday night at 9 Pm Et, when I Liveblog the Lifetime original movie Liz and Dick. From what i've heard, it could be the White Diamonds of camp classics. Let's experience it together!Allen West has finally conceded. Of course he didn't give Patrick Murphy a concession call ... but at least he's gone. But that means ... he's still out there somewhere. I don't know what's funnier: The actual column, or the editor's note that now precedes it.Starz! has canceled Boss after two seasons, but may wrap things up with a two-hour TV movie. Even though Jonathan Groff joined this season, II still couldn't muster the enthusiasm to watch.Orlando Cruz on adversaries who may not like his sexuality: "Oh, you know, there will be people like that, I’m sure. »

- snicks

2 November 2012 5:01 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

There was nothing "partial" about the restoration in the early 1980s of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's great wartime film masterpiece, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Good fellows, Arts, G2, 29 October). This was a thorough, comprehensive and state-of-the-art photochemical restoration carried out by the British Film Institute's National Film Archive (now the BFI National Archive) – of which I was then the deputy curator – working from original materials and supervised by experienced laboratory veterans.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was part of an ambitious project, generously supported by the BBC and the UK's National Heritage Memorial Fund – their first recognition of film as art and heritage – to restore British Technicolor classics, including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, Gone to Earth, The Thief of Baghdad, and Alexander Korda's The Divorce of Lady X.

On occasion, Martin Scorsese – campaigning at the »

10 June 2012 4:06 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Creative cinematographer and a key member of the Powell-Pressburger movie production team

Although the cinematographer Christopher Challis, who has died aged 93, was an essential member of the Archers production company of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, he joined them as director of photography at the time of their decline. However, he worked on more of the great British writing-directing team's films than any other cinematographer. These eccentric, extravagant, intelligent and witty fantasies went against the British realist tradition, allowing more scope for a creative cinematographer such as Challis. The sensuous use of Technicolor and flamboyant sets and designs made them closer to the MGM world of Vincente Minnelli and of Stanley Donen, who used Challis on six of his films.

Perhaps Challis's finest achievement was on Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) which, as he explained, had "no optical effects or tricks. It was all edited in »

- Ronald Bergan

26 May 2012 7:49 AM, PDT | The Backlot | See recent The Backlot news »

Stevie Nicks is many things: Goddess Of Rock, style icon, survivor, and today is her 64th Birthday. We could never hope to give her all of the proper respect she deserves, but here's a small tribute to her legacy of cryptic lyrics, ethereal stage presence, and shawls.

So many shawls ...

1. - "Landslide." The greatest song ever written. Timeless, and one of the most covered songs of all time, from The Dixie Chicks to anyone learning the guitar ... or performing drunken karaoke.

2. "Sisters Of The Moon" - Hands down the best track from Tusk, the chances that Stevie would write a song named "Sisters Of The Moon" were always pretty good.

3. "Gypsy" - One of the definitive Fleetwood Mac songs, and one of the greatest music videos ever made.

4.

5."Silver Spring" Such a beautiful song, it was originally supposed to be included on Rumours but was left off because there just »

- snicks

7 January 2012 8:02 AM, PST | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

The new Film Quarterly is out and, of the four pieces online, the standout for me is Caetlin Benson-Allott's: "Since Marey's motion studies at the end of the 19th century, film has been a tool for providing visible evidence, a record of things seen. The development of digital imaging technology over the past twenty years has transformed that original empirical function. Advancements in CGI enable convincing depictions of things impossible to see in everyday life: dinosaurs, hobbits, viruses. It has become necessary to speak of 'hypervisibility' to describe the way movies can realistically render such previously hard-to-envision phenomena. Steven Soderbergh's Contagion tries to contest this prevailing logic by insisting on the limits of visibility."

Also: Editor Rob White talks with Göran Hugo Olsson about The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Joshua Clover on Contagion, Justin Lin's Fast Five and Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes »

5 items from 2012