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Julie Christie is an Oscar-winning actress who has been largely absent from movie screens this century, enjoying a semi-retirement that finds her returning for the odd performance here and there. Yet she's always finding new fans as younger generations discover her cinematic classics. Let's take a look at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born on April 14, 1940, Christie rose to prominence for her work in London, starting with a breakthrough performance in John Schlesinger's "Billy Liar" (1963). She won the Oscar as Best Actress just two years later for Schlesinger's "Darling" (1965), playing a fashion model who sleeps her way to the top. That same year, she shot to stardom thanks to David Lean's romantic epic "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), which casts her as a political activist's wife who falls in love with a physician (Omar Sharif) during the Russian Revolution.

She earned a second Best Actress nomination for Robert Altman...

From Billy Liar to My Summer of Love, the county’s moors and mill towns have been fertile ground for film-makers. Clio Barnard’s Bradford romance is no exception

Claire Rushbrook and Adeel Akhtar are the middle-aged lovers defying familial prejudice and cultural barriers in Ali & Ava (arriving on major VOD platforms on Monday), but that’s only one of the romances unfolding in British director Clio Barnard’s gentle, sentimental film. More metaphorically, Ali & Ava extends Barnard’s ongoing devotion to the Yorkshire city of Bradford, not far from her own home town of Otley.

It’s her third film set in the once-booming beneficiary of the Industrial Revolution, and while she doesn’t over-romanticise Bradford’s mixture of Victorian grandeur and contemporary poverty, a palpable affection for its physical and social geography softens the edges of its realism. More so than in Barnard’s previous Bradford-set films,...

John Schlesinger decided not to attend the Academy Awards in 1970, even though his film “Midnight Cowboy” had been nominated for Best Picture and he was up for Best Director. On the evening of April 7, 1970, otherwise known as Oscar night, the British director remained in London with his American boyfriend, the photographer Michael Childers. Schlesinger didn’t want to make the brutal 24-hour roundtrip flight to Hollywood and back, and besides, he was well into production on his follow-up film, “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” For him, it was a very personal project, and, in some ways, an even more controversial film than “Midnight Cowboy.”

As Schlesinger explained it, the genesis of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” went back to the early 1960s when he was directing his first play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “At the time, I had a very intense affair with one of the actors, a man who was bisexual,” Schlesinger recalled.

The director of Over The Edge and The Accused takes us on a journey through some of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Student Teachers (1973)

Night Call Nurses (1972)

White Line Fever (1975)

Truck Turner (1974)

Heart Like A Wheel (1983)

The Accused (1988)

Over The Edge (1979)

Modern Times (1936)

City Lights (1931)

Manhattan (1979)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

The Apartment (1960)

North By Northwest (1959)

Moon Pilot (1962)

Mr. Billion (1977)

White Heat (1949)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The Three Musketeers (1973)

The Four Musketeers (1974)

Superman (1978)

Superman II (1980)

The Three Musketeers (1948)

Shane (1953)

The 400 Blows (1959)

8 ½ (1963)

Fellini Satyricon (1969)

Richard (1972)

Millhouse (1971)

The Projectionist (1970)

El Dorado (1966)

The Shootist (1976)

Woodstock (1970)

Payback (1999)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

Billy Liar (1963)

Ford Vs Ferrari (2019)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

Bad Girls (1994)

Masters of the Universe (1987)

Giant (1956)

The More The Merrier (1943)

The Graduate (1967)

The Victors (1963)

…And Justice For All (1979)

Citizen Kane (1941)

An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn...

From the people that brought you Pandemic Parade chapters 1-8, comes yet another thrilling episode featuring Jesse V. Johnson, Casper Kelly, Fred Dekker, Don Coscarelli, Daniel Noah, Elijah Wood and Blaire Bercy.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Wondrous Story of Birth a.k.a. The Birth of Triplets (1950)

Contagion (2011)

The Omega Man (1971)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

The Last Man On Earth (1964)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Innerspace (1987)

The Howling (1981)

The Invisible Man (2020)

The Sand Pebbles (1966)

Where Eagles Dare (1969)

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Goldfinger (1964)

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965)

Murder On The Orient Express (1974)

Dr. No (1962)

From Russia With Love (1963)

Bellman and True (1987)

Brimstone and Treacle (1982)

Richard III (1995)

Titanic (1997)

Catch 22 (1970)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)

The Graduate (1967)

1941 (1979)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Jaws (1975)

The Fortune (1975)

Carnal Knowledge (1970)

Manhattan...

An important piece of the short-lived British New Wave of the early 1960s was John Schlesinger’s sophomore film Billy Liar (1963). But if the wave began with the ‘angry young man’ archetype established with Tony Richardson’s Look Back in Anger (1959), its trajectory slid into something a bit more melancholically fanciful with Schlesinger, who presented Tom Courtenay as a lonely, immature character drifting along in his own increasingly aimless fantasies.

The film would make Julie Christie into a star with her brief supporting turn (she’d go on to win an Academy Award for her next stint with Schlesinger in 1965’s Darling), here a pseudo-love interest for the titular Billy, their interactions finally motivating him to think about future possibilities.…...

Julie Christie celebrates her 79th birthday on April 14, 2019. The Oscar-winning actress has been largely absent from movie screens this century, enjoying a semi-retirement that finds her returning for the odd performance here and there. Yet she’s always finding new fans as younger generations discover her cinematic classics. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

SEEOscar Best Actress Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

Born in 1940, Christie rose to prominence for her work in London, starting with a breakthrough performance in John Schlesinger‘s “Billy Liar” (1963). She won the Oscar as Best Actress just two years later for Schlesinger’s “Darling” (1965), playing a fashion model who sleeps her way to the top. That same year, she shot to stardom thanks to David Lean‘s romantic epic “Doctor Zhivago” (1965), which casts her as a political activist’s wife...

James Marsh’s heist-caper “King of Thieves” reunites beloved British actors for a story that’s familiar yet still surprising. In a rat pack that includes Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon, Tom Courtenay and Ray Winstone, these mild-mannered gents play retired criminals who unite for one last tantalizing score: the chance to steal over £200 million in jewels and money.

Brian (Caine) is the reluctant leader of this grizzly pack, breaking his promise to his late wife to leave his notorious days behind him. But he knows a score too good to pass up, and when timid, but criminally minded whippersnapper Basil shows him a way into a high-security vault holding millions worth of goods, Brian rallies his troops for one last show. Basil ingratiates his way into their company as an expert in wiring and as the person who knows everything there is to know about their target.

Their crew is a motley one.

Nobody has as much energy as they used to in “King of Thieves,” which is partly the point. James Marsh’s true-crime heist movie is built around two remarkably high figures: first, the £14 million value of the loot, making the burglary in question the largest in British legal history, and more crucially, the average age of the culprits, almost all of whom were veteran criminals well into retirement.

The Hatton Garden jewelry heist made international headlines in 2015, but could have been a story dreamed up in Ealing Studios’ midcentury prime: A Vanity Fair article on which this film is based was even titled “The Over-the-Hill Mob.” Small wonder, then, that British film producers have been swift to jump on it. Yet this proficiently polished thriller (the second big-screen treatment of the story in two years) seems to feel a creak in its own joints: Torn between jaunty genre hijinks and a bleaker streak of realism,...

While us horror lovers revelled in the ripped bodices and cobwebbed corridors of another vampire plagued castle, Hammer was busy trying to clear the halls and make their way into the modern world. Take Nightmare (1964), an effective black and white thriller that shows you don’t need fangs to be fearsome.

Released in its native U.K. in April and stateside in June, Nightmare (Aka the amazing Here’s the Knife, Dear: Now Use It) still has a lot of wandering down darkened hallways, but instead of coming up against the undead, our heroine has to do battle with her own brittle mind. Or has the dead come back for her?

Pity poor Janet (Jennie Linden – Old Dracula). Our film opens with her hearing a distant voice calling her name. She leaves the comfort of her bed and follows the whispered voice which leads her to a shadowed room where...

Presenting the Supporting Actresses of '63. Well well, what have we here? This year's statistical uniqueness (the only time one film ever produced three supporting actress nominees) and the character lineup reads juicier than it actually is - your Fab Five are, get this: a saucy wench, a pious auntie, a disgraced lady, a pillpopping royal, and a stubborn nun.

The Nominees 

from left to right: Cilento, Evans, Redman, Rutherford, Skalia

In 1963 Oscar voters went for an all-first-timers nominee list in Supporting Actress. The eldest contenders would soon become Dames (Margaret Rutherford and Edith Evans were both OBEs at the time). Rutherford, the eventual winner, was the only nominee with an extensive film history and she was in the middle of a hot streak with her signature role as Jane Marple which ran across multiple films from through 1961-1965. In fact, Agatha Christie had just dedicated her new book "The...

The teenage years of the Smiths frontman are boiled down to a sentimental kitchen-sink drama that’s elevated by an honest performance from its lead

Morrissey gets the cuddly Billy Liar treatment in this weirdly generic movie about his early teen life in Manchester that sometimes seems to be straightforwardly channelling the kitchen-sink spirit of 60s British cinema that Morrissey famously adored – but with much less of the acid irony and alienation that he extracted from it.

Related: When did charming become cranky? Why a middle-aged Morrissey is so hard to love

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Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963) is playing July 16 - August 15, 2017 in the United States as part of the series John Schlesinger's First Masterpieces.Billy Fisher, a cheerful twenty-something lad from Yorkshire, is going to have a great future. For now, he only has a small office position in his dull small city, but Billy has already landed a job in London writing for a popular TV comedian. He is also working on a novel that soon enough will bring him fame and fortune. He is also engaged to a girl. Actually, two girls. And he doesn’t really want to marry any of them. Also, the TV star doesn’t really know that Billy exists. And he hasn’t started on the novel. Billy just has a vivid imagination and speaks before he thinks—some people prefer to call it compulsive lying.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)

Kirsten Johnson brings us her memoirs by way of a videographic scrapbook. Bits and pieces of the numerous documentaries she’s shot in her years as a Dp have been woven together into a travelogue / ethnographic study / commentary on the nature of cinematic framing. What was an establishing shot in one doc becomes, here, a study of the vagaries of a camera operator’s job. Documentary...

On the day a U.S. appeals court lifted an injunction that blocked a Mississippi “religious freedom” law – i.e., giving Christian extremists the right to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, etc. – not to mention the publication of a Republican-backed health care bill targeting the poor, the sick, the elderly, and those with “pre-existing conditions” – which would include HIV-infected people, a large chunk of whom are gay and bisexual men, so the wealthy in the U.S. can get a massive tax cut, Turner Classic Movies' 2017 Gay Pride or Lgbt Month celebration continues (into tomorrow morning, Thursday & Friday, June 22–23) with the presentation of movies by or featuring an eclectic – though seemingly all male – group: Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Dirk Bogarde, John Schlesinger, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins. After all, one assumes that, rumors or no, the presence of Mercedes McCambridge in one...

Storey delivered a blast of energy to the dull early 60s with the character of Frank Machin, a rugby player who capitalised on the new magic of celebrity

David Storey, author of This Sporting Life, dies at 83

David Storey, in an unforgettable partnership with the director Lindsay Anderson, provided one of the great energising shocks of the 1960s, a blast of energy, smashing at the dullness, the complacency and hypocrisy of class-ridden Britain. Storey adapted his own 1960 novel This Sporting Life for the screen: Lindsay Anderson directed it, and won from Richard Harris a performance to rival Brando. He is Frank Machin, a gifted sportsman who wants to make it as a professional rugby league player (like Storey himself), but is poignantly in love with his widowed landlady, played by Rachel Roberts. Frank is a superstar on the field; he has money, success with women and a cocksure sense of...

Andrew Haigh’s quiet, two-person relationship tale won a lot of friends last year. A revelation from the past changes everything in the marriage of Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. We read the faces, read the gestures — just like we do in our own close relationships.

45 Years

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 861

2015/ Color / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 7, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine James, Dolly Wells, David Sibley.

Cinematography: Lol Crawley

Film Editor: Jonathan Alberts

Production Designer: Sarah Finlay

From the short story by David Constantine

Produced by Tristan Goligher

Written and Directed by Andrew Haigh

Most filmmakers must find a way to chop down 800-page novels and still retain some semblance of the original. Others have the opposite problem, fleshing a short story to fill a feature length movie. The classic example is Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, which is less than three thousand words in length.

45 Years In this exquisitely calibrated film by Andrew Haigh (Weekend), Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter) and Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar) perform a subtly off-kilter pas de deux as Kate and Geoff, an English couple who, on the eve of an anniversary celebration, find their long marriage shaken by the arrival of a letter to Geoff that unceremoniously collapses his past into their shared present. Haigh carries the tradition of British realist cinema to artful new heights in 45 Years, weaving the momentous into the mundane as the pair go about their daily lives, while the evocatively flat, wintry Norfolk landscape frames their struggle to maintain an increasingly untenable status  [ Read More ]

The post The Criterion Collection Adds 45 Years, Being There, and Blow-Up, and Others For March 2017 #Criterion appeared first on Shockya.com.

Last month, The Criterion Collection finally announced their forthcoming release of Richard Linklater‘s The Before Trilogy and now with the announcement of their March titles, a few more highly-requested titles will be coming to the collection. Perhaps the most sought-after, Michelangelo Antonioni‘s English-language debut and counterculture landmark Blow-Up, will be arriving on the line-up.

Also coming is the previously teased 45 Years from Andrew Haigh, one of the finest films of last year (featuring an incredible, outside-the-box cover), as well as Hal Ashby‘s Being There, John Waters‘ Multiple Maniacs, which recently got a restored theatrical run, and Felipe Cazals‘ Canoa: A Shameful Memory.

Notable special features include a new documentaries on Blow-Up, Being There, and 45 Years, audio commentaries from Haigh and Waters, as well as a Guillermo del Toro introduction for Canoa, and a talk between the director and Alfonso Cuarón. Check out the full details for each release after the artwork.

Elfin Rita Tushingham makes a smash film debut as Shelagh Delaney's dispirited working class teen, on her own in Manchester and unprepared for the harsh truths of life. It's one of the best of the British New Wave. A Taste of Honey Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 829 1961 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 100 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 23, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Paul Danquah, Murray Melvin, Robert Stephens. Cinematography Walter Lassally Film Editor Anthony Gibbs Original Music John Addison Written by Tony Richardson and Shelagh Delaney adapted from her stage play Produced and directed by Tony Richardson

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The British New Wave got a real shot in the arm with 1961's A Taste of Honey. A stubbornly realistic drama about life in the lower working classes of Manchester, it was adapted from a near-revolutionary play by Shelagh Delaney, produced by Joan Littlewood. Here in...

Shot and set in Manchester in 1962, A Kind of Loving was one of the seminal kitchen sink dramas of post-war British cinema. Made before Darling and Billy Liar, the film stars Alan Bates as a young draftsman in pursuit of fellow factory worker June Ritchie, making her screen debut. In this exclusive clip, he pursues her on the bus trip back home

• The restored print of A Kind of Loving screens as part of the Cinema Rediscovered season at Watershed, Bristol on July 29 and is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 1 August

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She's beautiful, desired and enjoys a social mobility in the improving Italian economy... but she's also a pawn of cruel materialist values. Stefania Sandrelli personifies a liberated spirit who lives for the moment, but who can't form the relationships we call 'living.' Antonio Pietrangeli and Ettore Scola slip an insightful drama into the young Sandrelli's lineup of comedy roles. I Knew Her Well Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 801 1965 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 115 min. / Io la conoscevo bene / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 23, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Stefania Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy, Joachim Fuchsberger, Nino Manfredi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Ugo Tognazzi, Karin Dor, Franco Nero. Cinematography Armando Nannuzzi Production design Maurizio Chiari Film Editor Franco Fraticelli Original Music Piero Picconi Written by Antonio Pietrangeli, Ruggero Maccari, Etore Scola Produced by Turi Vasile Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Did a new kind of woman emerge in the 1960s?...

With Thomas Vinterberg’s retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd hitting theaters today, I thought it was a good excuse to look back at an earlier adaptation that spawned some memorable poster art.Made in 1967, John Schlesinger’s corseted rural love quadrangle was a far cry from the biting contemporary urban dramas like Billy Liar and Darling that had made his name. Schlesinger defended his decision to direct a big budget Victorian costume drama by saying “I wanted to get away from a contemporary subject. People are tiring of the flip side. Contemporary is dated,” but in ’67—the year so beautifully chronicled in Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution as the year Old Hollywood ceded to the New—Far from the Madding Crowd, shot in 70mm and nearly 3 hours long, was inevitably overshadowed by the nowness of the likes of The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde.

★★★☆☆ John Schlesinger's Darling (1965), reissued this week for 50th anniversary celebrations, is at once a time capsule piece and an oddly prescient fable about vacuous, ephemeral celebrity which remains tartly relevant in 2015. It is perhaps best remembered as the film that crowned the imperial phase of Julie Christie's career with an Oscar, part of a golden run encompassing Billy Liar (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1967) and Don't Look Now (1973), and lasted right up until Shampoo and Nashville (1975). In retrospect, it's difficult to fathom why the award came for her portrayal of the one-note Diana Scott in this slightly confused film rather than for her spectacular performance in, say, The Go-Between (1971).

Best British movies of all time? (Image: a young Michael Caine in 'Get Carter') Ten years ago, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine as a dangerous-looking London gangster (see photo above), was selected as the United Kingdom's very best movie of all time according to 25 British film critics polled by Total Film magazine. To say that Mike Hodges' 1971 thriller was a surprising choice would be an understatement. I mean, not a David Lean epic or an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller? What a difference ten years make. On Total Film's 2014 list, published last May, Get Carter was no. 44 among the magazine's Top 50 best British movies of all time. How could that be? Well, first of all, people would be very naive if they took such lists seriously, whether we're talking Total Film, the British Film Institute, or, to keep things British, Sight & Sound magazine. Second, whereas Total Film's 2004 list was the result of a 25-critic consensus,...

By Howard Hughes

(The following review is of the UK release of the film on Region 2 format.)

In Roy Ward Baker’s 1960s comedy-drama Two Left Feet, Michael Crawford plays Alan Crabbe, a clumsy and unlucky-in-love 19-year-old who begins dating ‘Eileen, the Teacup Queen’, a waitress at his local cafe. She lives in Camden Town and there are rumours that she’s married, but that doesn’t seem to alter her behavior. Alan and Eileen travel into London’s ‘Floride Club’, where the Storyville Jazzmen play trad for the groovers and shakers. Eileen turns out to be a ‘right little madam’, who is really just stringing Alan along. She’s the kind of girl who only dates to get into places and then starts chatting to randoms once inside. She takes up with ruffian Ronnie, while Alan meets a nice girl, Beth Crowley. But Eileen holds a strange hold over...

God Help the Girl

Written and directed by Stuart Murdoch

UK, 2014

In 2009, Belle and Sebastian mastermind Stuart Murdoch released a concept album under the guise of God Help the Girl, the name of both the album and the collective of musicians behind it. It was a break away from his Scottish band’s usual stylings in that it was primarily penned for female vocalists known and unknown, though male singers like The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon and Murdoch himself made memorable appearances on a few tracks. Additionally, while Belle and Sebastian’s most beloved songs can often be taken as their own singular, compelling tales, the God Help the Girl album was a larger narrative project, with the songs tracking protagonist Eve through various woes and successes. Five years later, a long-gestating film adaptation of the album has arrived, courtesy of producer Barry Mendel (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and some support through Kickstarter,...

Nineties indie cinema wasn't short on cool dudes but there's something irresistible about the grand tradition of the silent action hero stacking up the bodycount

Why I'd like to be Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation

Why I'd like to be Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird

Why I'd like to be Julie Christie in Billy Liar Continue reading...

Gentlemanly and intelligent with a hint of vulnerability, the Cary Grant of Charade is the perfect version of the great man himself

• Why I'd like to be … Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird

• Why I'd like to be … Julie Christie in Billy Liar

• Why I'd like to be … Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous

Seriously? This series has got to instalment 6,485 and no one, not one person, has chosen Cary Grant? That the qualities of cinema's leading man solicit nothing more than a ¯\_("/)_/¯ from the internet generation (and Xan Brooks) is a dispiriting indictment. It's also, however, an opportunity. An opportunity for me. An opportunity to have my name published next to Grant's on a piece of search engine optimised content. This means the next time somebody idly asks Google for the identity of the contemporary equivalent of the man born Archibald Alexander Leach, I'm right in there. Probably behind Hugh Grant,...

John Wayne he ain't, but Die Hard's deskbound cop, Sgt Al Powell, offers the perfect protection during McClane's fantasy rampage and sees off some demons of his own

Why I'd like to be Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird

Why I'd like to be Julie Christie in Billy Liar

Why I'd like to be Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous Continue reading...

You don't need to be an Old Etonian to identify with anti-hero schoolboy Mick Travis when he goes to war with the establishment

• Why I'd like to be … Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird

• Why I'd like to be … Julie Christie in Billy Liar

• Why I'd like to be … Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous

It is every unruly pupil's fantasy to run riot in the classroom and Mick Travis, the anti-hero in Lindsay Anderson's If …, takes schoolboy rebellion to the limit. This razor-sharp satire eviscerates the British establishment, and Malcolm McDowell relishes his role as the public-school refusenik at war with the society that created him. This was McDowell's debut, and his work with Anderson was to be his best. Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange made him a household name, but the rest of his career was spent playing minor-league heavies.

McDowell's roles in Anderson's loose trilogy comprising If …, O Lucky Man!

The Wicker Man is being considered as a TV series, according to Red Production Company.

The company is keen to adapt feature films such as the 1973 horror movie for the small screen, after being acquired by Studio Canal last year.

The acquisition means that Red has access to the company's vast film library, including The Wicker Man and 1963 movie Billy Liar.

Red's managing director Andrew Critchley told Broadcast: "One of the films we're looking at is The Wicker Man, as well as Billy Liar.

"This is one part of a fairly substantial expansion ambition that we have while keeping our domestic projects going."

The Wicker Man, which starred Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, tells the story of a policeman investigating the disappearance of a young girl amongst a suspicious community.

The movie gained a cult following after its release in the '70s and spawned a 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage.

Partnership will see the launch of the StudioCanal store, with over 5,500 images already available.

StudioCanal has partnered with Media Storehouse to further promote the studio’s catalogue of over 5,000 titles.

The partnership sees the launch of the StudioCanal store (www.studiocanalstore.co.uk), making digitally restored images and posters available to the public from films such as Billy Liar and The Wicker Man.

Fans will be able to purchase classic posters, prints and wall art, and over 5,500 images are already available with more being continually added.

Affirming StudioCanal’s commitment to promoting the best of British cinema, the launch has been four years in the making with the archive based at Pinewood Studios.

In 100 years of cinema, no American woman director has ever been invited to join the pantheon of international auteur directors. Non-American women directors like Andrea Arnold, Jane Campion, Liliana Cavani, Claire Denis, Marleen Gorris, Agnieszka Holland, Lynne Ramsay, Agnes Varda, Lina Wertmuller among others-- directors with bodies of work that match those of their male counterparts-- hardly exist in America, with the possible exceptions of masterful experimental directors, Maya Daren and Nina Menkes.

Kathryn Bigelow, who could be a top contender for American auteur director, had to leave America, after six years of unemployment, to seek financing in Europe, and is still not included with men among auteur directors. Other successful women directors who have made both commercially and critically successful features in America are mostly film and TV stars: Drew Barrymore, Jodie Foster, Penny Marshall, Barbra Streisand, Betty Thomas, to name a few. These directors have done fine work, but mostly within the confines of the studio system where, just once in a blue moon, a director like Nora Ephron, Catherina Hardwicke, Mimi Leder or Nancy Meyers can carve a niche.

The question arises, who are the American women directors whose films reveal the work of an auteur director? One could jump in with dozens of directors, from Anders, Arzner, Bigelow, Cholondenko, Coppola, Coolidge, Dash, Dunham, Hardwicke & Holofcener— just to start through the alphabet, but like Bigelow, none of these excellent directors is embraced as an auteur by the paternalist American film establishment.

In the United States less than 5% of feature films are directed by women, so for a director to emerge who is not already a women celebrity, is virtually impossible. Women directors usually make just one film before getting taken down early in the pipeline: if it’s not the misogynistic Hollywood studio system that expels them, their films are given paltry distribution and P&A budgets, or sometimes gender-biased critics comprised of over 80% males will likely taint their reviews.

One perfect example of a very fine American woman director whose body of work clearly distinguishes her as an auteur director is Jane Spencer. Jane Spencer is the director of the beloved low-budget indie feature Little Noises that premiered at Sundance some years ago to ecstatic reviews— and enamored audiences, and of Faces On Mars, which premiered in Europe at Solothurn. Her new film, The Ninth Cloud, which is being repped for distribution by Shoreline Entertainment is a dreamy, surreal marvel, which could do very well on the 2014 international festival circuit.

For Spencer, who dreams big, but must keep her budget small, ingenuity is the name of the game. As she says, “My dream as a kid was to direct big David Lean-style epics, so working within the framework I can create, I try to imbue my indie films with giant, epic themes.” Imagine if women directors like Spencer were afforded the budgets and opportunities to realize their immense talents for creating epic, visionary films.

I have always thought that film directors are like alchemists and magicians, but women directors have to be able to master another kind of magic as well: film financing in a void. Most women directors must cobble their production budgets together in any number of mysterious ways, and I wanted to know how Spencer had done it again. How did she succeed in making yet another wonderful feature film? How had she found the money?

Spencer answered the question with a question: “In an industry so difficult for women directors, how can any women director raise the money to make a film? You are basically forced to think outside the box. You just can’t give up. You try all the traditional methods: submit your script to actors, agents, studios, production companies, get it to friends in the business. They almost always lead to dead ends.

“So, finally, you go out and find it dollar-by-dollar— private equity from investors who like the project obviously, private loans you— yourself— take out. You get everything on the cheap, but keep the quality; get everyone to do you favors, but make sure they ‘get it’ and believe in the film. That’s the only way an American woman can make an indie feature film.”

Spencer shot The Ninth Cloud on super 16mm. Having a film camera instead of shooting digitally gives The Ninth Cloud a look that is simultaneously both very modern and nostalgic. As Spencer says, “It allows for the documentary, free-camera look I wanted to capture inspired by films like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Darling, and Billy Liar. These low-budget 1960’s British kitchen sink films were an inspiration for Spencer, her Production Designer/Producer Richard Hudson and her Dp, Sam Mitchell. She goes on, “I wanted the film to express an impressionistic vision of Zena’s (the main character) world.”

In the film, in which we follow the dreamy, strange Zena, through what turn out to be her final days....Spencer glorifies the vulnerable Zena through a nuanced appreciation for her ability to “see.” Keeping her indie budget low, Spencer uses inexpensive, old film technology to record her character’s fleeting, childlike, and magical perception of the world around her—and it works beautifully. The film captures the elusive, dream-like moments, as fleeting as a painter’s sudden awareness of reflected sunlight glancing off rippling water-- impressionism-- that gets at the essence of art, and is the very reason we revere our great male “Masters of Cinema.”

As Spencer puts it: “I wanted to depict, from a women’s perspective for once, the victorious dreamer. One doesn’t have to accept ‘reality’ to live a meaningful life. Whatever your journey is—stay with your dream. You cannot be dissuaded by pressure to conform to social norms, systems, or institutions that tell you ‘cannot' because it’s 'unrealistic' or 'impossible.'"

We all know that numerically, becoming a female film director in America is virtually impossible— as former DGA president, Martha Coolidge says: “like winning the lottery.” It’s a bizarre anomaly that America, the leader of the free world, virtually excludes women from its most culturally influential global export—media. Hollywood’s level of support of women film directors is among the worst in the world, something that is now accentuated by the recent drafting of international charters that promote the gender equity among women directors in many countries outside the United States.

However, making feature films that move and inspire audiences is Spencer’s quest and she has not been dissuaded by statistics. She says: “This was a very, very difficult film to finance. We had some wonderful equity investors, our own company invested a lot of the money-- especially for post, and there turned out to be not many pre-sales. It was very much patchwork financing, very hard, and we filmed it over the space of a year, in sections, because budget-wise, we had to.”

Even after her critical success at Sundance her studio meetings were difficult. After years of struggling to get financed out of L.A., Spencer happened to move to Europe for personal reasons, and immediately had much better luck.

"We got it done-- though at times we didn’t think we would. We started financing in 2008 when the financial crisis happened, so some of our financiers fell out. Our wonderful male lead at the time, Guillaume Depardieu, whom I adored, died of pneumonia on a set in Romania. I really wondered if this film would happen - for a moment. But then the producers and I got right back up on our feet and started financing it again. We found the amazing lead actress Megan Maczko in a play on London’s West End....Michael Madsen, who is great in the film—so sympathetic -- playing a dishwasher/poet (instead of a guy with a gun) - was lovely and stayed with the project....and we got the great French actor Jean Hugues Anglade onboard - We got right back up on our feet and started financing it again. By 2011 we had finished shooting. We’ve been in post for two years: all of 2012 and much of 2013.”

All the hard work has been well worth the effort. Spencer’s multi-layered film is woven with themes of Djuna Barnes and Baudelaire and traverses the landscapes of Marcel Carne and Antonioni. What makes the film so exceptional is how freshly these motifs have been re-imagined through this director’s effortless lens. The Ninth Cloud is at once tender and deeply moving, yet it manages to reject sentimentalities while glorifying its heroine and uplifting the audience.

Will women directors like Spencer ever join the pantheon of international male auteur directors? That depends upon the whether or not the U.S. cultural consciousness evolves to finally embrace gender equity in our nation’s most influential global export—media. Only then will women directors get the budgets and opportunities to test their metal and take their rightful places in the annals of American cinema.

The Ninth Cloud will be opening in select theaters internationally starting 2014.

Please visit The Int’l List of Living Women Directors: http://www.womendirectorsinhollywood.com/

Marie Giese is American feature film director, a writer, a member & elected Director Category Representative for women at the DGA. She graduated from Wellesley College and UCLA graduate film schooland co-founded the foremost international web forum for political action for women directors (Visit Here). An activist for parity for women directors in Hollywood, she is in development to direct two feature films Rain and Treasure Hunt...

The legendary Tom Courtenay delivers a star-making turn as William Terrence Fisher in John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963), one of the most memorable and universally acclaimed films of the Swinging Sixties. Now, thanks to StudioCanal, Schlesinger's surrealist kitchen sink drama finally comes to Blu-ray to celebrate the film's 50th Anniversary. To commemorate this very special rerelease of a bona fide British classic, we've kindly been provided with Three Blu-ray copies of Billy Liar to give away to our readers. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.

Running from an unsympathetic working-class family, a pair of demanding fiancées and an insecure job at an undertakers, Billy (Courtenay) escapes the everyday - Walter Mitty-like - into a world of fantasy where he can realise his dream ambitions. As...

★★★★★ John Schlesinger's celebrated slice of sixties British New Wave makes its debut on Blu-ray this week, and remains an absolute must-see for all serious cinephiles. Although lumbered with the 'angry young men' label back at the time of its release, Billy Liar (1963) actually eschews that kitchen sink realism and remains a quirkier beast than its cinematic brethren. Schlesinger (who would go on the even greater success with 1969's Midnight Cowboy) exhibits a disarming exuberance and playfulness behind the lens, and it's a film which crackles with an energy and imagination that completely betrays its half-a-century age.

In a timeless tale of youthful fantasising and wish fulfilment, 19-year-old Billy Fisher (a vivacious Tom Courtenay) harbouring dreams of becoming a celebrated in-house writer for a famous comedian. He longs to escape his lacklustre working-class life and thankless job as a clerk for the local undertaker and make a break for the bright lights of London.

Introducing our look at the year that defined the modern era, the veteran writer recalls the extraordinary collision of politics, culture and social upheaval that he witnessed as a student

Was it a prefigurative year? I think so. Not that one thought of it as such at the time or even a few years later, when it was totally forgotten in the turbulence that engulfed the world. I am trying to recall that year, to find deep down some memories, even a few impressions on the basis of which I could reconstruct a misted-up past without too many distortions.

When I arrived to study at Oxford in October 1963, the bohemian style was black plastic or leather jackets for women and black leather or navy donkey jackets for men. I stuck to cavalry twills and a duffle coat, at least for a few months. The Cuban missile crisis had temporarily boosted...

(John Schlesinger, 1963, Studiocanal, 15)

One of the key movies of the British new wave, Billy Liar began life in 1959 as a brilliant comic novel by Keith Waterhouse (clearly influenced by James Thurber's 1939 New Yorker story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"), and in 1960 Waterhouse and his regular writing partner Willis Hall turned it into a play that Lindsay Anderson directed in the West End. It was filmed 50 years ago this month under the direction of former actor and documentary maker John Schlesinger. Tom Courtenay (who took over the title role on stage from Albert Finney) is superb as the sad 19-year-old Billy Fisher, who escapes from his dreary lower-middle-class background and dead-end job as an undertaker's clerk through his dreams of becoming a writer, his habitual lying, and his fantasies about being a hero in the imaginary country of Ambrosia.

The film takes place over a single busy Saturday during which he juggles two fiancees,...

The Impossible | Billy Liar | Come Out And Play | Sneakers | History Of The Eagles

The Impossible

Making a film of any real-life disaster is a thankless task filled with pitfalls. Indeed, the title here could just as easily apply to the actual task of production. The decision to tell this story from the point of view of a holidaying western family trying to survive the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami drew criticism that it ignored the thousands of local lives that were destroyed. But their story is as valid as anyone's; this isn't, as was suggested many times, mere "grief tourism". Besides, without the star power of Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor it's unlikely it would have been made at all, certainly not with a budget that allows such terrifying spectacle – the tsunami itself, and the devastation it wreaks – in the form of some incredibly realistic effects work.

Despite the big names, the...

(Joseph Losey, 1963, StudioCanal, 15)

Half a century ago, British cinema had a great year. John Schlesinger's Billy Liar, Tony Richardson's Tom Jones and Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life took local film-makers into radically different directions. Two resident Americans – the self-exiled Stanley Kubrick and the McCarthy refugee Joseph Losey – established themselves as world figures. Kubrick made Dr Strangelove (though its release was postponed to 1964 due to the Kennedy assassination). Losey, after a difficult period, often working under pseudonyms, had three films released: the dazzling Hammer thriller The Damned, the Franco-Italian psycho-drama Eve (both shown in versions re-edited by their producers) and the complex, fully achieved The Servant.

Influenced by Marx and Brecht, The Servant was the first part of a trilogy scripted by Harold Pinter about class warfare, sexual conflict and struggles for power in 20th-century Britain, involving a whole society from the working class to the aristocracy.

Exquisitely made...

From Page To Screen | Bradford International Film Festival | Belfast International Film Festival | Italian Film Festival

From Page To Screen, Bridport

Curated by novelist Joe Dunthorne, this festival of literary adaptations takes in everything from Patricia Highsmith thrillers (Plein Soleil, Strangers On A Train) to comic-book films American Splendor and Ghost World, and films based on plays, like new vampire flick Byzantium, which comes with a masterclass from producer Stephen Woolley. Dunthorne introduces Richard Ayoade's adaptation of his own Submarine, and its key influence The Graduate, and there's a special screening of Kubrick's The Shining at the precarious, disused Burton Cliff Hotel.

Various venues, Wed to 14 Apr

Bradford International Film Festival

Bradford is rarely the first city that springs to mind when you think of British cinema, but it's home to our National Media Museum and is a Unesco City of Film, no less. And its festival is an embarrassment...

The Bradford International Film Festival is typically an underground-friendly fest. This year appears to be no exception with two very special experimental film retrospectives, as well as a few modern underground-type flicks.

The 19th annual Biff will roll on April 11-21 at several locations around Bradford and Leeds in England, including the National Media Museum, Hebden Bridge Picture House, Hyde Park Picture House and other venues.

Biff is hosting a tribute to Stan Brakhage this year by screening the prolific filmmaker’s magnum opus, Dog Star Man, as well as a selection of his short films, from 1963′s legendary Mothlight to 1994′s Black Ice. There’s also going to be an epic-sized tribute/retrospective of experimental films from Austria, a country with a proud avant-garde filmmaking tradition that’s typically overlooked.

From Austria, Biff is, of course, screening two works from one of the experimental film world’s biggest masters,...

Composer and pianist whose work included film scores, opera and jazz cabaret

The composer Richard Rodney Bennett, who has died in New York aged 76, pursued multiple musical lives with extraordinary success. He was one of the more distinguished soundtrack composers of his era, having contributed to some 50 films and winning Oscar nominations for his work on Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

But it scarcely seemed credible that this knack for writing for a mainstream audience in a melodic, romantic style co-existed with his mastery of serialism and 12-tone techniques. From 1957 to 1959, Bennett was a scholarship student with Pierre Boulez in Paris and soaked up the latter's total serialism techniques as well as his infatuation with the German avant garde. He also attended the summer schools at Darmstadt, the mecca for diehard atonalists.

His tremendous facility as a pianist would prompt the...

One of the film industry's last great composers has passed away at age 76. Sir Richard Rodney Bennett died this week in New York. The prolific composer was part of a now bygone age when spectacular and memorable film scores were a routine part of the motion picture industry. Bennett was nominated for three Oscars for his work on Far From the Madding Crowd, Nicholas and Alexandra and Murder On The Orient Express. He was also nominated for numerous BAFTA awards for his work in film and on television. Bennett was also acclaimed for his non-film work that included writing symphonies and operas. His other feature film scores include Billy Liar, Equus, Billion Dollar Brain, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Devil's Disciple. For more click here...

Founded in 1997, Rialto has been described as the gold standard of the reissue distributors. Now it will distribute international classics from the 2,000+ film catalogue of media giant Studiocanal.Rialto's past releases have included Renoir's Grand Illusion; Carol Reed's The Third Man; Fellini's Nights of Cabiria; Jules Dassin's Rififi; De Sica's Umberto D; Godard's Breathless, Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Masculine Feminine, A Woman is a Woman, and Made in USA; Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko; Luis Buñuel's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Phantom of Liberty, The Milky Way and That Obscure Object of Desire; John Schlesinger's Billy Liar; Clouzot's Quai des Orfèvres; Mel Brooks' The Producers; Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, Mouchette and Diary of a Country Priest; Jean-Pierre Melville's...

The brothers-in-film have been brilliant and Tony Scott will be sadly missed. He and Sir Ridley have also been part of a fascinating process: the creation of an unreal world beloved of London - and therefore of the UK's decision-makers

The careers of Tony Scott and his brother Sir Ridley are exemplars of how the talent of the north of England will out, in their case from Grangefield grammar at Stockton (whose alumni also include the novelist and Booker Prizewinner Pat Barker) and West Hartlepool college of art.

Both places are still part of the local education system although in different forms, as might be expected after more than half a century, Grangefield as a comprehensive technology college and West Hartlepool as part of Cleveland college of art and design. They continue a grand tradition which played a major part in an area requiring artistic and design talent for its...

As expected, American Pie: Reunion had a solid first week at the box office but didn’t trouble the all-conquering Avengers at the top of the cinematic pile.

Truth be told I don’t see anything getting near the Marvel epic for another week or so yet either. It smashed the opening weekend box office record set by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in the States and unsurprisingly a sequel has been confirmed this week by the studio.

This week’s big release though should do a pretty bit of business at the box office as well with Tim Burton’s latest quirky baroque offering Dark Shadows making its arrival on the big screen.

Burton has amassed some serious box office bank with his recent offerings such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factor and Alice in Wonderland and can now pretty much do whatever he pleases in the eyes of his employers.

While New Yorkers have plenty of opportunity to see classic films on the big screen, you'll be hard pressed to find a lineup as front to back awesome as the Film Society Of Lincoln Center's "15 For 15: Celebrating Rialto Pictures."

The series honors the reknowned arthouse distribution shingle founded in 1997 that has brought some of the best known (and previously unknown) classics of cinema to American audiences. And the selection here by programmers Scott Foundas, Eric Di Bernardo and Adrienne Halpern represents the breadth and scope of the films Rialto has put their stamp on, ranging from the French New Wave ("Breathless") to film noir ("Rififi") to comedy ("Billy Liar") and more. There is something here for everybody and with the series kicking off tonight, we've got a special prize for some lucky readers.

Courtesy of Film Society Of Lincoln Center, we've got a copy of the excellent Rialto DVD...

Someone actually wants to make a Hollywood film of 80s kids' series Worzel Gummidge? Shouldn't they get their thinking head on?

Age: 76.

Appearance: Scruffy, dirty, turnip for a head.

Either you're looking in a mirror … Very funny.

… Or we're strolling down memory lane. Wasn't this a kids' TV show 30-odd years ago? It certainly was. Worzel was a scarecrow with interchangeable heads for specific activities such as thinking, dancing or working. He had a comedy West Country accent and spent 30 episodes getting into tight spots from which he had to be rescued by a pair of kids. There was nothing he liked more than "a cup o' tea an' a slice o' cake".

Sounds terrible. That's "classic" TV for you.

Who was to blame for it? Barbara Euphan Todd wrote the books, but the TV scripts were by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, who also worked together on the film Billy Liar.

The new agency Creative England hopes to encourage voices, images - but let's hope, not cliches - from outside London

Following on from the previous post about Northumberland's village film-makers, and in the context of the Turner Prize exhibition's record-breaking visitor numbers at Gateshead, here's news from Creative England.

The agency has opened two new funds, using National Lottery money, to encourage film making in the regions. The total isn't huge in public funding terms - £400,000 - but maybe it will stimulate successors to a great tradition: The Full Monty, Wuthering Heights, Brassed Off, Wuthering Heights, Little Voice, Wuthering Heights...all the way back to Kes.

And further; the more you think about it, the more northern and northern-based films come to mind: Billy Liar, Room at the Top, Herriots, Cooksons; it goes on and on. But rather than turn this into a disquisition on regional cinema, let's cut to the chase.