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In his youth, he had gone from his home in Gurdaspur to Amritsar to get medicines for his ailing mother. To quench his thirst, he ordered a glass of sugarcane juice from a stall near the Golden Temple. When the vendor took a closer look at him, he exclaimed that Dev Anand had the sun on his forehead, foretelling greatness.

The prediction did come true Dev Anand did become a star that burnt bright across an over six-decade-long career.

With his undeniable charm, fast diction, the slight lopsided gait, trademark nodding to add emphasis, the winning winsome smile, and the flamboyant sartorial style, Dev Anand sparkled in a career that began before Independence and lasted into the second decade of the 21st century.

Included in the pantheon of the top three heroes of Hindi cinema in the 1950s, he not only outpaced his peers Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor, who did around 70-odd films each,...

In his youth, he had gone from his home in Gurdaspur to Amritsar to get medicines for his ailing mother. To quench his thirst, he ordered a glass of sugarcane juice from a stall near the Golden Temple. When the vendor took a closer look at him, he exclaimed that Dev Anand had the sun on his forehead, foretelling greatness.

The prediction did come true Dev Anand did become a star that burnt bright across an over six-decade-long career.

With his undeniable charm, fast diction, the slight lopsided gait, trademark nodding to add emphasis, the winning winsome smile, and the flamboyant sartorial style, Dev Anand sparkled in a career that began before Independence and lasted into the second decade of the 21st century.

Included in the pantheon of the top three heroes of Hindi cinema in the 1950s, he not only outpaced his peers Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor, who did around 70-odd films each,...

In this time of geekery and craft reigning supreme, film critics and academics no longer reject horror movies with the knee-jerk certainty some once did. But even now the specter of “elevated horror” (see that concept’s lambasting in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s “Scream 5”) looms over discussions of artier explorations of dread and terror — Ari Aster’s “Midsommar,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria,” Rose Glass’ “Saint Maud” — that are clearly distinguished from, well, non-elevated horror. The general gist is that these exceptions to the “horror is bad” rule engage your brain more than just showing brains: eaten by zombies or splattered against the wall.

How can films that fire your adrenal glands, send shivers down your spine, raise goosebumps, and quicken your breath — that inspire such an intense physical reaction — also be cerebral experiences? The answer is obvious enough. Viewers forget all the time that, as Anna Karina...

Eugene Hütz, founder and frontman with U.S. gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, would likely to have ended up a painter wearing “dirty pants and long hair” had his parents not left the Soviet Union when he was 16.

“I would probably have become a painter, as there was more of a path paved in that in my family,” he says. “I was drawing most of my childhood and my uncle – Mikhail Mykolayev – is a pretty well-known painter who still lives in Kyiv.”

Fresh from playing a brief, impromptu solo guitar gig at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, following the international premiere of a new documentary about the band, “Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story,” Hütz fits the bill, although his khaki cargo pants are not paint spattered.

The singer was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, but the Hütz family left years of Communist oppression behind and moved to Western...

Following the successful recipe of the previous entries in the franchise, “Bungo Stray Dogs 4” came out 3 years after the previous one, while beginning with a story from the past before getting to the present.

on Crunchyroll

by clicking on the image below

The past story this time deals with Rampo, how he got to know Fukuzawa and how he ended up in the Armed Detective Agency. The three episodes arc mostly focuses on a specific case revolving around a stage play, which is eventually revealed as much more complicated than it initially seemed. The most interesting part, however, is seeing Rampo in his beginnings, being a truly imbalanced individual on the border of sociopathy, particularly because he could not understand that the people around him cannot realize and understand as much as he does. The way Fukuzawa acts as a father figure, while occasionally being out of his depth himself,...

Why do horror movies still feel undervalued? One thing’s for certain: In this age of geekery and craft reigning supreme, critics and academics no longer dismiss the genre as disreputable with the kneejerk regularity some once did. But even now there’s talk of “elevated horror” (see that concept’s lambasting in “Scream 5″) appearing in artier explorations of dread and terror — Ari Aster’s “Midsommar,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria,” Rose Glass’ “Saint Maud” — that are clearly distinguished from, well, non-elevated horror. The idea being that they engage your brain more than just showing brains…eaten by zombies or splattered against the wall.

How can films that fire your adrenal glands, send shivers down your spine, raise goosebumps, and quicken your breath — that inspire such an intense physical reaction — also be cerebral experiences? We forget all the time that, as Anna Karina’s “Pierrot Le Fou” character Marianne Renoir says,...

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In a typical year, fans of Eastern European cinema, after enjoying the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in early July, would hop on a two-hour flight to Odesa, Ukraine for the Odesa International Film Festival, the No. 1 annual event for Ukrainian cinema.

2022, of course, is a far from typical. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has made the Oiff untenable this year, but festivals across the region are showing cross-border solidarity with Ukraine filmmakers and the country’s stricken local industry. The PriFest in Kosovo (July 26-31) has agreed to cooperate with the Oiff on a series of special screenings of full-length and short films by Ukrainian debutant directors, and Poland’s Warsaw Film Festival will take over the screening of Oiff’s entire competition program at its event, which runs Oct. 14-23.

In Karlovy Vary, meanwhile, the festival is devoting a section...

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1972 / 1:85 / Street Date July 18th, 2017

Starring: Woody Allen, Gene Wilder, Tony Randall, Burt Reynolds

Cinematography: David M. Walsh

Film Editor: Eric Albertson

Written by Woody Allen

Produced by Jack Brodsky, Elliott Gould

Music: Mundell Lowe

Directed by Woody Allen

A how-to book for fledgling libertines, David Reuben’s bestselling Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) was the kind of sex manual that could remain on the coffee table when the in-laws arrived. An everyman’s guide to the birds and the bees, it ambled through its range of racy topics, from sodomy, cunnilingus to, um, plastic surgery for the genitalia, with both commonsensical and alarmingly retrograde attitudes, dispensing its advice with all the excitement of an insurance agent’s visit. When Woody Allen was given the opportunity to adapt it,...

All kinds of grim, including both the good and the bad kinds, A Gentle Creature (Krotkaya) from Belarus-born director Sergei Loznitsa peers deep into the Russian soul and finds there an unfathomable blackness. Only tenuously related to the Dostoyevsky story of the same name and the 1969 film adaptation of that source material by Robert Bresson, this harrowing tale revolves around a stoical unnamed woman (Vasilina Makovtseva) stuck in a nightmarish Siberian prison town. Although there are piercing echoes here of absurdist fiction by Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka and others, as well as mythical journeys to the underworld, Loznitsa’s approach...

Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has been detained after state investigators and security forces raided his Moscow theater, the Gogol Center.

Serebrennikov, whose The Student won the Francois Chalais award in Cannes last year after competing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, was arrested at his Moscow home Tuesday following the raid on the theater during a rehearsal for a performance of Nikolai Gogol's satire Dead Souls.

Around 50 actors and members of theater staff were held, and their mobile telephones confiscated during the raid, which investigators say is linked to a probe into suspected fraud between 2011 and 2014 of 200 million...

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan will star alongside Rutger Hauer in an upcoming Russian-Chinese fantasy adventure movie called  Viy-2. Schwarzenegger and Chan almost appeared together in The Expendables 2 and 3, but Chan ended up passing on the role. I guess it was only a matter of time before they teamed up for a film. 

The film is a sequel to the 2014 film based on a horror novella by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Apparently it was a box office hit in Russia. I've never seen it, but it stars Jason Flemyng of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and he also stars in the sequel. I included the trailer for the first film for you to check out below, and it looks fun! Seems like a movie that's worth checking out.

The movie centers on English explorer Jonathan Green (Flemyng), who receives an order from Peter the Great to map the Russian Far East.

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Sad, strange and very funny comedy drama Flowers, feat. Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt, starts tonight on Channel 4…

Julian Barratt has news for you: “We’re all going to die.”

“Spoiler!” says Will Sharpe.

“We’re all in a bit of a horrifying situation” continues Barratt. “The reality of our predicament on the planet is…” he laughs, “quite bleak.”

We’re discussing death and new six-part comedy drama Flowers, written and directed by Sharpe, starring Barratt and Olivia Colman as Maurice and Deborah, heads of the dysfunctional Flowers family. The subject becomes relevant once you see the opening seconds of episode one.

“I used to really like and still do, The Odd Couple, the film with Jack Lemmon and Walther Matthau” says Barratt. “It starts with him wandering about trying to kill himself and he puts his back out. I always find that funny, sort of...

Exclusive: David Oakes and Simon Callow will both feature in Anastasia and Elena Baranoff’s adaptation of The Portrait.

UK actors David Oakes and Simon Callow are among the cast in Anastasia and Elena Baranoff’s $3m adaptation of 19th Russian writer Nikolai Gogol’s short story The Portrait.

Oakes - whose credits include The Pillars of Earth and The White Queen - will appear as the portrait painter Andrei Chartkov opposite Russian actor Stanislav Ryadinskiyy (Pechorin) as writer Alexei Pravdin in the Baranoffs’ feature debut, which they will be producing through their own company Tempera Movement.

The UK and Russian cast is yet to be finalised, but will also include actress-director Louise Salter and rising star Oliver Dench, great-nephew of veteran actress Judi Dench.

There will also be a Russian-uk mix behind the camera with Kuzma Bodrov composing the score and the UK’s John Lee (the ITV series Victoria) serving as DoP.

Principal photography...

Exclusive: David Oakes and Simon Callow will both feature in Anastasia and Elena Baranoff’s adaptation of The Portrait.

UK actors David Oakes and Simon Callow are among the cast in Anastasia and Elena Baranoff’s $3m adaptation of 19th Russian writer Nikolai Gogol’s short story The Portrait.

Oakes - whose credits include The Pillars of Earth and The White Queen - will appear as the portrait painter Andrei Chartkov opposite Russian actor Stanislav Ryadinskiyy (Pechorin) as writer Alexei Pravdin in the Baranoffs’ feature debut, which they will be producing through their own company Tempera Movement.

The UK and Russian cast is yet to be finalised, but will also include actress-director Louise Salter and rising star Oliver Dench, great-nephew of veteran actress Judi Dench.

There will also be a Russian-uk mix behind the camera with Kuzma Bodrov composing the score and the UK’s John Lee (the ITV series Victoria) serving as DoP.

Principal photography...

Special Mention: Clean, Shaven

Directed by Lodge H. Kerrigan

Screenplay by Lodge H. Kerrigan

1993, USA

Genre: Crime / Psychological Thriller

Lodge H. Kerrigan’s Clean, Shaven is not an easy film to watch. Kerrigan, who wrote, produced and directed this unsettling psychological thriller, traps us inside the mind of a madman for the entire viewing experience. Peter Winter (Peter Greene) appears to be a killer–even worse, a child killer–but not much about him is objectively clear, and we are never sure if what we are seeing is real or a product of his tormented imagination. The film heightens the tension by restricting its focus to Peter’s unsettling, confused, and angry view of the world. The most gruesome violence inflicted on Peter comes by his own hand. In the most unforgettable scene, Peter slowly mutilates his body in order to remove what he believes are a receiver in his...

‘The Witch Queen’ in The Last Witch Hunter.

The Witch: I’m not a witch, I’m not a witch!

Sir Bedevere: But you are dressed as one!

The Witch: *They* dressed me up like this!

Crowd: We didn’t! We didn’t…

The Witch: And this isn’t my nose. It’s a false one.

Sir Bedevere: [lifts up her false nose] Well?

Peasant 1: Well, we did do the nose.

Sir Bedevere: The nose?

Peasant 1: And the hat, but she is a witch!

Crowd: Yeah! Burn her! Burn her!

– Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Throughout history, witches have always gotten a bad rap. The Salem Witch Trials proved that.

Things didn’t improve with the birth of cinema. Filmmakers have had a magical time telling the tales of sorcery, magical powers and witchcraft.

Good or bad, funny or downright scary, their stories have fascinated moviegoers and these burnt offerings show no signs of slowing down.

Theodore Bikel. Theodore Bikel dead at 91: Oscar-nominated actor and folk singer best known for stage musicals 'The Sound of Music,' 'Fiddler on the Roof' Folk singer, social and union activist, and stage, film, and television actor Theodore Bikel, best remembered for starring in the Broadway musical The Sound of Music and, throughout the U.S., in Fiddler on the Roof, died Monday morning (July 20, '15) of "natural causes" at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. The Austrian-born Bikel – as Theodore Meir Bikel on May 2, 1924, in Vienna, to Yiddish-speaking Eastern European parents – was 91. Fled Hitler Thanks to his well-connected Zionist father, six months after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938 ("they were greeted with jubilation by the local populace," he would recall in 2012), the 14-year-old Bikel and his family fled to Palestine, at the time a British protectorate. While there, the teenager began acting on stage,...

(Marek Piwowski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Wojciech Marczewski, 1970-1981; Second Run, 15)

This latest collection of key Polish films come from a decade that began with a relaxation of censorship and ended with the brutal clampdown that accompanied the suppression of Solidarity, the independent, non-governmental trade union, in a Gdańsk shipyard and the introduction of martial law in 1981. Each is accompanied by a booklet to put them in their historical context, and all three attack from different angles the communist regime in a period represented by what came to be called “the cinema of moral anxiety”.

Now widely regarded as Poland’s first cult movie, Marek Piwowski’s The Cruise (1970) is a broad satire on the absurdity of the whole communist system. It’s set on a pleasure steamer chugging down the Vistula and is clearly inspired by Gogol’s 1836 comedy The Government Inspector. In the play the mayor of a provincial town...

The film was the first ever Punjabi-language to feature in a competitve section of the festival.

Studio Film Group (Sfg International) has secured all Canadian rights from Elle Driver for The Fourth Direction (Chauthi Koot), which received its world premiere in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

It is the first Punjabi-language film to ever screen in competition at Cannes.

Based on two short stories by Waryam Singh Sandhu, the film uses mostly non-professional actors for its Punjab-set tale, which takes place in 1984 during India’s tumultuous groundswell for a Sikh separatist state.

Director Singh is made his Cannes premiere with this follow-up to his debut, Alms For A Blind Horse, which was unveiled at the Venice Film Festival in 2011.

For The Fourth Direction, Singh reunites with his Alms director of photography Satya Nagpaul. The pair were honoured on that film with awards for best direction and best cinematography at India’s National...

Break out the vodka (pronounced wad-ka) and start boiling the potatoes, because Russian director Oleg Stepchenko has a dark Russian fairytale he’d like to tell you. Loaded with witches, Slavic folklore, and mystical enchantments, Forbidden Empire provides a cultural spin on what would otherwise be a Brothers Grimm tale. Stepchenko keeps his influences in-country, using Nikolai Gogol’s story Viy as a backstory for larger, more sinister(ish) adventures, but there’s an (ish) added because Forbidden Empire feels like two separate films the entire time. It’s like Stepchenko can’t decide which audience he’d rather please more, as the film erratically jumps from childish bouts of jubilant frolicking to sudden bursts of ghoulish debauchery. Ugh, what a haunting tease.

Jason Flemyng stars in Stepchenko’s fable as an ambitious cartographer (Jonathan Green) who sets out to create detailed maps that show the true borders of countries.

Forbidden Empire

Written by Aleksandr Karpov and Oleg Stepchenko

Directed by Oleg Stepchenko

Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, 2014

Though we may not like to admit it, some movies simply have the deck stacked against them. Case in point, Forbidden Empire. Forbidden Empire is, in fact, a dubbed and re-cut version of Viy, a 2014 Russian fantasy-horror film with a very interesting pedigree. The film is based off a short story by Nikolai Gogol, one of the more towering figures of classic Russian literature, and was previously adapted into a film of the same name in 1967. The previous version of Viy is regarded as something of an unsung classic, an immensely watchable gem rife creative and memorable effects sequences. The new film, however, eschews most of the practical effects wizardry that made the original what it is in favor of CGI effects. So, in summary, it’s a re-cut, dubbed version of a...

When a film project languishes for close to ten years in development limbo, chances of it being any good - let alone having any financial success - are usually quite slim. The end result is often a muddled mess of plot adjustments and re-shoots, a once-promising concept somehow watered down into a ball of confusion. Forbidden Empire, from Russian director Oleg Stepchenko and adapted from an 1835 novella by Nikolai Gogol, opened in Eastern Europe (as Viy 3D) in early 2014 and quickly made back enough to turn a tidy profit. But is it actually any good? Well, that depends on the viewer’s expectations.

The original intention was to make a modern, effects-heavy horror remake of 1967’s more literal adaptation of Gogol’s Viy. But, in a probable effort t [Continued ...]...

In the grand tradition of Russian fantasy films comes a new version of the supernatural legend of The Viy, written by Nicolai Gogol and previously filmed several times, most memorably by Mario Bava as one of the tales in Black Sabbath, (easily my favorite due to the participation of Boris Karloff.).

In Forbidden Empire, a young English cartographer Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) takes to the road after being chased out of the house by his lovers Father, played by Charles Dance, after being caught in bed with her.

Looking very much like a Terry Gilliam movie, with the frame over crowded with bizarre machinery, filthy looking characters in period costume (set in the 18th century) and lots of cgi monsters, Forbidden Empire is a beautiful film to behold and more than a little disjointed and episodic.

But like classic Russian fantasy films of the past such as Sword and the Dragon,...

We've arrived at Roger Moore's penultimate Bond. But isn't it about time somebody fought Octopussy's corner?

After the comedown of For Your Eyes Only, the series is back on a high. A very good-natured, occasionally thrilling escapade that boasts an impressive roster of villains, a finely developed heroine, unusually meaty roles for series stalwarts General Gogol and Q, a nuclear bomb and a gloriously stupid title. Yes, Roger Moore has aged to the point where counting the wrinkles is a legitimate distraction. And many valid criticisms can be levelled about plot and credibility. But the good outweighs, or certainly overwhelms, the bad in Octopussy. Still, he really should have quit after this one.

The Villain: Kamal Khan got his break by winning the talent competition Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing Superstar - and that was just the beginning. 2012 hit Ishk Sufiana launched Khan into stardom and he bagged...

Okay, this one requires a bit of a history lesson because it's been about 10 years since this film was announced. Forbidden Empire, the new fantasy film you see before you today, was originally intended to be a remake of the 1967 Russian film Viy, which was a fantasy/horror film based on the Nikolai Gogol story that takes place in early 18th century Russia.

The Russian tale is about a cartographer who undertakes a scientific journey from Europe to the East. After passing through Transylvania and crossing the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassible woods where [Continued ...]...

Canada’s Studio Film Group (Sfg) International will co-produce Abhijeet Singh Parmar’s debut feature Overcoat, which will be made under the recently signed India-Canada co-production treaty.

Indian producers Jogavindra S. Khera and Rishebh Batnagar of Telling Tales Entertainment are also on board the project, based on Russian writer Nicolai Gogol’s short story The Overcoat.

“Overcoat is a uniquely satirical genre project exploring the human condition, and Abhijeet has an amazing vision for this adaptation that I think will resonate with genre fans throughout the world,” said Sfg International president Nadia Sandhu.

Set in Varanasi in the 1990s, the story follows a solitary office clerk who digs into his savings to buy a new coat. But when it is stolen, the traumatised man dies only to return as a ghost that seeks peace by solving the mystery of his stolen overcoat.

The project was selected for Nfdc’s National Script Lab in 2013 and this year’s...

Actor Gérard Depardieu is being considered for a Russian fantasy feature.

Actor Gérard Depardieu has come into the sights of Russian producer Yuri Kuznetsov-Taizhnov of Pervaya Kinostudia (First Film Studio) for children’s fantasy film Games Of Time. Exile by the newcomer Alexandr Olkov.

The project, which is budgeted at $2.6m (RUB90m) and reportedly has $1.5m (RUB50m) already in place, was presented by Kuznetsov-Taizhnov as one of 15 features looking for production support from the Ministry of Culture at its public pitching for children’s feature films.

The producer explained in the pitch that the film about a little girl from another world arriving unexpectedly in our reality is intended to be shot in IMAX 3D, although he reportedly admitted that the film’s budget could mean the makers would have to choose between either Depardieu or the big-screen format.

Games Of Time. Exile was one of five projects recommended by the Ministry’s expert committee...

Exclusive: Veteran UK producer Patrick Cassavetti has boarded Marat Alykulov’s black comedy Lenin?!.

Cassavetti, producer on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas - agreed to become executive producer on the Kyrgyzstani project following talks in Cannes last month.

Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily at this year’s Moscow Business Square (Mbs), producer Joanna Bence of Curb Denizen Productions said that Cassavetti will also offer new ‘perks’ to the ‘Help Bury Lenin?!’ crowdfunding campaign by giving burgeoning filmmakers the chance to receive personal feedback on their past or upcoming productions.

Bence also revealed that German-born, London-based DoP Stephan Bookas - who has worked on Maleficent and the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy - is confirmed as cinematographer for the project, which was pitched at the Mbs’s co-production forum last year after having been presented at Busan’s Asian Project Market and Connecting Cottbus in autumn 2012.

Together with Curb Denizen producer partner [link=nm...

Theatre Communications Group Tcg is pleased to announce the publication of The Inspector, a comedy in five acts by Nikolai Gogol, translated from the Russian by Richard Nelson, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. This essential edition marks the first in a series of major works of Russian drama, translated by Nelson, Pevear and Volokhonsky, that Tcg will publish over the coming years.

If you’ve never listened to horror radio, I wouldn’t blame ya. Most old radio shows are hokey, musty relics of forgotten times, only chilling to housewives in 1942. But there are exceptions, recordings from long ago with strange powers that have only grown over the passing decades. If you can look past the sometimes-dated presentation and put yourself in the right mindset, the best horror radio is like listening to the distant cries of ancient ghosts. Collected below are my ten favorite old-timey radio horror broadcasts. Turn off the lights and listen! [You can hear each episode by clicking on the title.] 1) Suspense: "Ghost Hunt" Forget The Blair Witch Project; this episode of Suspense marks the real beginning of found-footage horror. Recorded way back in 1949, the story is told through audiotapes “discovered” after wacky radio disc jockey Smiley Smith goes mad in a haunted house. Smiley starts off treating his visit like a goofy radio stunt, but before long,...

If you’re a fan of literary adaptations then no doubt you’ll currently have your head stuck in a copy of Joyce Maynard’s emotional coming-of-age novel Labor Day, Nick Hornby’s heart-warming suicide drama A Long Way Down, or maybe even Veronica Roth’s debut dystopian Divergent. What we’re looking forward to most, however, is Richard Ayoade’s upcoming adaptation of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s dark comedy novella, The Double. With an adapted screenplay written by Ayoade himself alongside fellow scribe Avi Korine, this is his first film since the hugely successful Submarine.

Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska as the two leads, the story follows a man driven insane after finding out his life and identity is being assumed by a doppelgänger. The original novella was released in 1846, subtitled “A Petersburg Poem” it showed the surreal and grotesque influences of fellow Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol,...

Whether you like any given movie or hate it, or if you have even watched it yet, I think you'll agree that it's always a great thing to see horror dominating the box office. Such is the case with a new 3D film called Viy, which scared up huge numbers over the weekend in Russia. Read on for the exciting news!

THR Reports that director Oleg Stephcehnko's adaptation of the classic Russian story grossed $17 million at the box office and is reportedly on track for a record opening for a 3D film in the country.

A faithful adaptation of Nikolay Gogol's famous novel, starring an international cast that includes Jason Flemyng and Charles Dance as well as Russia’s Alexey Chadov, the film opened to $2.5 million, before adding $3.2 million Friday and $6 million Saturday.

The novel was last adapted for the screen in Russia by Georgy Kropachev and Konstantin Ershov in 1967. The new film,...

It was all the way back in November of 2005 that we first wrote about Oleg Stepchenko's Viy, an effects driven adaptation of a classic tale by Nikolai Gogol, and to describe the film's road to completion from that time as tortuous is a bit of an understatement.With a constantly ballooning budget that is now reported as well more than double what was originally budgeted the film is now eight years on from the release of the original teaser, having been altered and re-engineered so many times that it's impossible to say what actually remains from the original work. I can say this, though: What began as a purely Russian production with an all Russian cast is now listed as a Germany / UK /...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Every year, we here at Sound On Sight celebrate the month of October with 31 Days of Horror; and every year, I update the list of my favourite horror films ever made. Last year, I released a list that included 150 picks. This year, I’ll be upgrading the list, making minor alterations, changing the rankings, adding new entries, and possibly removing a few titles. I’ve also decided to publish each post backwards this time for one reason: the new additions appear lower on my list, whereas my top 50 haven’t changed much, except for maybe in ranking. I am including documentaries, short films and mini series, only as special mentions – along with a few features that can qualify as horror, but barely do.

****

Special Mention:

Häxan

Directed by Benjamin Christensen

Denmark / Sweden, 1922

Häxan (a.k.a The Witches or Witchcraft Through The Ages) is a 1922 silent documentary about the history of witchcraft,...

Actor who played many major Shakespearean roles on the stage

Few actors played as many major Shakespearean roles as did Paul Rogers, a largely forgotten and seriously underrated performer, who has died aged 96. It was as though he was barnacled in those parts, undertaken at the Old Vic in the 1950s, by the time he played his most famous role, the vicious paterfamilias Max in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at the Aldwych theatre in 1965 (and filmed in 1973).

Staunch, stolid and thuggish, with eyes that drilled through any opposition, Rogers's Max was a grumpy old block of granite, hewn on an epic scale, despite the flat cap and plimsolls – horribly real. Peter Hall's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company was monumental; everything was grey, chill and cheerless in John Bury's design, set off firstly by a piquant bowl of green apples and then by the savage acting.

The Homecoming...

Film-maker known for his dark take on post-Soviet Russia

Aleksei Balabanov, who has died aged 54 after suffering a seizure, saw himself as the "anti-establishment rock'n'roller of Russian film" with an aim to make "scandalous, harsh cinema". Many of Balabanov's films are metaphorical black comedies that gaze unflinchingly at the bleakness and violence of the last days of communism and post-Soviet society, with classic Russian rock music on the soundtrack. His first two features, Happy Days (1991) and The Castle (1994), were based on Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka respectively, and Balabanov's nihilistic oeuvre also takes in Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov, whose Notes of a Young Doctor was the basis of Balabanov's Morphia (2008).

"I don't make movies with ideas. Ideas make for bad cinema," he said. "I don't make my movies for the intelligentsia, but for the people. That's why they like my films." This was demonstrated by the commercial...

It was all the way back in November of 2005 that Twitch first wrote about Russian horror film Viy, a remake of one of that nation's earliest horror films which is itself an adaptation of a story by Nikolai Gogol. The years since have not been kind to Viy. Massive delays, multiple reshoots, the apparent failure of more than one company involved in the film - at least in part due to massive budget overruns - the creation of an international framing story involving Jason Flemyng and Charles Dance in an attempt to broaden the international appeal and make their money back, more reshoots, more delays, more companies cycling through, etc etc etc ...But after all of that the film is now, apparently, nearing completion...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Uwe Boll's Event Film and German group Kinostar have taken world sales rights to Viy, a 3D fantasy epic from Russian director Oleg Stepchenko featuring Jason Flemyng (X-Men:First Class) and Game of Thrones star Charles Dance. Loosely based on the short story of the same name by Russian fantasy writer Nikolai Gogol, Viy is set in the 18th century. The cartographer Jonathan Green (Flemyng), on a trip across Europe, finds himself trapped in the dark woods of Transylvania, where a strange village, cut off from civilization, hides a dark secret. The Gogol short story has been the inspiration for

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Throughout the month of October, Editor-in-Chief and resident Horror expert Ricky D, will be posting a list of his favorite Horror films of all time. The list will be posted in six parts. Click here to see every entry.

As with all lists, this is personal and nobody will agree with every choice – and if you do, that would be incredibly disturbing. It was almost impossible for me to rank them in order, but I tried and eventually gave up.

****

Special Mention:

American Psycho

Directed by Mary Harrron

Written by Mary Harron

2000, USA

Bret Easton Ellis’s dark and violent satire of America in the 1980s was brought to the big screen by director Mary Harron. Initially slapped with the MPAA’s kiss of death (an Nc-17 rating), American Psycho was later re-edited and reduced to a more commercially dependable “R”. Perhaps the film works best as a slick satire about misogyny,...

For Christopher Eccleston, small is always beautiful, whether it be TV thriller Blackout or Greek tragedy Antigone on the stage. He reveals why making films just doesn't compare

He strides across the polished tiled floor, past imposing columns and heavy, intricately carved doors. Outside, the Manchester winds are furiously buffeting the redbrick walls of this grand, turn-of-the-last-century university hall. There seems nowhere more appropriate to meet Christopher Eccleston: he has a face to fit buildings like this, an on-screen intensity that is the match of the architecture. But even so, his latest TV role looks set to stretch him: an unflinching, uncomfortable, three-hour examination of addiction and corruption, in which Eccleston goes from rock bottom to hero, as Manchester politician Daniel Demoys.

Written by Bill Gallagher, who adapted Lark Rise to Candleford for the small screen, Blackout puts alcoholism under the microscope in the course of its three episodes.

Directed by: Alberto Lattuada

Written by: Alberto Lattuada, Giorgio Proseri, Giordano Corsi

Cast: Renato Rascel, Yvonne Sanson, Biulio Stival, Ettore Mattia, Giulio Cali

I must admit, my knowledge of Italian cinema is limited to the works of Dario Argento and Mario Bava and the grindhouse classics of the '70s. So when Il Cappotto (The Overcoat) showed up for me to review, I was a bit hesitant about trying to critique a restored classic. But, according to the DVD cover, the film is a ghost story, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Well, the jacket wasn't exactly telling the truth. A ghost does show up, but not until the final 10 minutes of the film. And using phrases like "retribution" and "wreaks havoc" in the plot summary implies much more than the movie delivers. The film is quite good, with stunning cinematography and solid performances, but it is not...

The Overcoat is a film adaptation of a well-known short story by Nikolai Gogol, only it lifts the dark, tragicomedy tone that seems so quintessential to Russian stories and transports it to contemporary Italy. Of course, by contemporary, I mean 1952, as that was when Alberto Lattuada directed the film. Now being released as another installment in RaroVideo’s series of digitally restored Italian classics, The Overcoat benefits from being wholly devoted to the bleak, stereotypically Russian nature of the story, and including enough of Gogol’s brand of sharp, satirical humor to keep the viewer from being completely blindsided by our protagonist’s agony.

Read more...

Popular Bollywood matinee idol, producer and film-maker

The Indian actor, producer and film-maker Dev Anand, who has died aged 88, was the first and longest serving matinee idol of Bollywood cinema. The pinnacle of his career came with Guide (1965), a film based on Rk Narayan's novel, in which Dev played the male lead opposite the classical Indian dancer turned actor Waheeda Rehman. Dev's talented younger brother Vijay directed it. During the golden age of Indian cinema, in the 1950s and 1960s, Dev, along with Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, formed the trio of stars who dominated the silver screen. Dev's urbanity and quirky mannerisms made him especially popular among the young and women.

He was born in undivided India at Gurdaspur, in the Punjab region. His father, Pishorimal Anand, was a leading lawyer. After graduating from the prestigious Government College, in Lahore, Dev tried and failed to enter the Royal Indian Navy.

"Romanian film and theater director Liviu Ciulei, whose career spanned 50 years and included winning a top award at the Cannes Film Festival, has died at 88," reports the AP. "Ciulei, as an actor, director and set designer, was the most influential figure of Romanian theater and film in a generation." Actor Ion Caramitru is said to have exclaimed today, "An era has died! A genius had died!"

Ciulei's 1964 film Forest of the Hanged (Padurea Spânzuratilor, clip) won Best Director in Cannes and was slated for restoration by the World Cinema Foundation. Adapted from the novel by Liviu Rebreanu, it "tells the story of a young man, Apostol Bologa, from Transylvania, part of the Austria-Hungary Empire, during the First World War," notes CinEast, Festival du Film d'Europe Centrale. "The kingdom of Romania (Moldavia and Wallachia) was on the opposite side, so Apostol Bologa finds himself in the difficult situation of fighting other Romanians.

Note: This is the second article in this series of posts. Click here to see the first entry.

Every year I spend the majority of the month of October watching as many horror movies as I possibly can. So I decided to take it upon myself to list off the greatest horror movies ever made. I felt the need to break up the list into several categories. You see, usually when people ask me for recommendations of what horror films they should see, they still have some idea of what sub genre they are interested in watching. So as appose to having one big jumbled list, I’ve broken it down to help with those looking for recommendations in a specific area. Please Note: by the end of the month, the last entry in this series will include a list of what I think are without a doubt, the 31 greatest horror movies ever made.

DVD Playhouse—August 2011

By Allen Gardner

High And Low (Criterion) Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom is a multi-layered masterpiece of suspense and one of the best portraits ever of class warfare in post-ww II Japan. Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy businessman who finds himself in a moral quandary when his chauffer’s son is kidnapped by ruthless thugs who think the boy is Mifune’s. Beautifully realized on every level. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; Documentary on film’s production; Interview with Mifune from 1984; Trailers and teaser. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 4.0 surround.

Leon Morin, Priest (Criterion) One of French maestro Jean-Pierre Melville’s rare non-crime-oriented films, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a devoted cleric who is lusted after by the women of a small village in Nazi-occupied France. When Fr. Morin finds himself drawn to a...

Entertainment One will release the $25 million Russian-produced epic war film Taras Bulba on DVD on July 26.

Bogdan Stupka is Taras Bulba in a new Russian adaption of Gogol's classic novel.

Based on the famed 1835 novel by Nikolai Gogol and adapted for the screen and directed by Russian filmmaker Vladimir Bortko, Taras Bulba is set in the 16th century and tells of Ukraine’s Cossack warriors and their campaign to defend their lands from the advancing armies of Poland.

In the midst of the brutal war, the youngest son (Igor Petrenko) of warrior Ukraine warrior Taras Bulba (Bogdan Stupka) disowns his father and swears allegiance to the enemy. But while on a quest for pride and glory, Taras’ eldest son (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) is captured, prompting Taras to set out on mission for vengeance.

The 2008 film was commissioned by Russian state TV and paid for totally by the Russian Ministry of Culture.

Geoffrey Rush will be the toast of the New York theatre world this week (begs07Mar11) when he is feted by fellow Aussie stars Hugh Jackman and director Baz Luhrman for his critically-acclaimed performance in The Diary Of A Madman.

The Oscar nominee has wowed theatregoers since returning to the stage in February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Bam), where he plays a civil servant driven mad in the adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's short story.

And Rush, who has been celebrated throughout awards season for his turn in The King's Speech, will be the guest of honour at the Bam Theater Gala on Thursday.

Guests including Jackman, Luhrman, Whoopi Goldberg and Susan Sarandon, who co-starred with Rush in Broadway hit Exit The King, will be among the stars paying tribute to the actor.

Geoffrey Rush may have channeled his inner Mad Man with his dapper fedora and shorn hair at Sunday's Golden Globes - but the actor wasn't sporting the hat just to make a style statement. Nope, the Aussie star, and Golden Globe nominee for The King's Speech, shaved his head for a new role in the play The Diary of a Madman, based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol, which already premiered in Australia, his rep tells People. Rush, 59, plays a civil servant who goes crazy in the dark comedy, which is set to make its U.S. premiere at...

...as in post The King's Speech not post-acceptance speech.

Until we saw Christian Bale's appropriately showy work in The Fighter -- you thought local celebrity crack addicts were wallflowers? --  we thought Geoffrey Rush's less-showy-than-expected eccentricity in The King's Speech would net him a second Oscar [Supporting Actor Category... though they're both arguably co-leads]. And why not? The man is a veritable magnet for gold (he ought to hire out as a metal detector) and, as such, is already a Triple Crowner (Oscar: Shine; Tony: Exit the King; Emmy: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers).

So what's next? Another showy eccentric on stage!

Diary of a Mad Man starring Geoffrey Rush

One assumes they'll be a couple of dark days 'round the Oscars so that Rush can attend but he'll spend Feb 11th to March 12th on stage at Bam in Brooklyn in Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Mad Man. It's not a Quills remake no but,...