Classic Cinema Online. A ton of old movies watchable in an embedded player.
posted by Turtles all the way down on Oct 26, 2009 - 9 comments

Hitchcock's first in 1925. Kubrick in 1957. Sturges in 1963. Bergman, Huston, Ophüls, and Wilder. Sound of Music in 1965. Willy Wonka in 1971. Also, Monty Python made their Fliegender Zirkus specials there in 1971 and 1972. Film history and all that. Sure. But to my mind, the best part of the Bavarian Film Studios is being able to go inside the actual submarine from Das Boot. Or you can ride on that flying dog thing from Neverending Story... if that's how you roll.
posted by Brosef K on Sep 17, 2009 - 9 comments

How does a director follow up the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time*? (*adjusted for inflation) He remakes a French classic - taking an international cast to a Caribbean nation ruled by a military dictatorship, where hurricanes, irascibility, other difficulties take him far over a budget already large enough to be shared by two studios. The result is his personal favorite among his films. But deceptive marketing and cute robots contribute to its making back less than half of its costs. (previously)
posted by Joe Beese on Sep 7, 2009 - 65 comments

The day after Kristallnacht, Hitler said: "It was necessary not to make propaganda for violence as such, but to explain certain matters of foreign policy to the German people in such a way, that the inner voice of the people all by itself gradually would call for violence." Towards that end, Goebbels commissioned and closely supervised the production of a propaganda documentary titled Der ewige Jude - "The Eternal Jew". Few if any of the inhabitants of the Łódź Ghetto who appear in its footage survived the war. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Sep 1, 2009 - 11 comments

Fox have offocially announced that Ridley Scott has officially signed on to direct the new 'Alien' prequel. He certainly did a great job on the original but can he match his previous truimph? Given the number of projects he has in gestation (heh) maybe any celebration is premature...
posted by Mintyblonde on Jul 31, 2009 - 166 comments

Pauline Kael called it "a huge, jerry-built, crumbling ruin of a movie". Roger Ebert called it "such a silly and stupid movie... our immediate reaction is pity". Few directors of Michelangelo Antonioni's stature have followed a film as acclaimed as Blowup (1966) with one as reviled as Zabriskie Point (1970). [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Jun 25, 2009 - 30 comments

I've listened to dozens of film podcasts, but Left Field Cinema is the first that devotes its episodes only — or at least primarily — to movies worth discussing. I'm talking about Malick's Badlands. I'm talking about Tarkovsky's Solaris. I'm talking Kieslowski's Dekalog which gets a two-parter. I'm talking about Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies. I'm talking Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. At long last, I say.
posted by colinmarshall on Jun 12, 2009 - 38 comments

"Because the camera is so close to the character(s) being followed, we feel that we're physically attached to those characters, as if by an invisible guide wire, being towed through their world, sometimes keeping pace, other times losing them as they weave through hallways, down staircases or through smoke or fog." A video montage and essay by Matt Zoller Seitz. All shots are identified at the end; you may know more of them than you think. (via)
posted by maudlin on Jun 3, 2009 - 15 comments

...[Change of scene. We are looking out of a car window; it is raining, or has recently rained. Shops go by.] I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets! There wasn't a street--there wasn't a building--that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There I was buying a suit with my father. There I was having an ice-cream soda after school. When I finally came in, Debby was home from work. And I told her everything about my dinner with André

And here is Sergio Leone and the Inside Fly Rule's meditation on the only possible other candidate for Best.Movie.Ever. [more inside]
posted by y2karl on Apr 3, 2009 - 52 comments

Vintage photos and a history of General Cinemas. Before the 1960s, concessions were rare at movie theaters, but GCC introduced them widely and even launched their own exclusive drink: Sunkist soda. Also part of the GCC experience was their feature presentation bumper. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on Mar 9, 2009 - 15 comments

The Oscar-nominated "Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello" is an "adventurous tale of a navigator’s journey to save his ailing wife set in a beautiful world of Victorian science-fiction" and one the many fine film shorts and videos available to watch at shortof theweek.com - a site dedicated to "finding those few [video] gems amongst the enormous heap of garbage they're buried in..." [more inside]
posted by taz on Mar 9, 2009 - 7 comments

It's Bad Movie Club night! You have until 9 GMT / 4 ET to procure #1: a Twitter account and #2: a copy of M. Night Shyamalan's critically misunderstood masterpiece, The Happening. Good luck!

Graham Linehan, of Father Ted and IT Crowd fame, will be your master of ceremonies, and there will be a second screening at midnight GMT / 7 ET, hosted by Phill Jupitus. But remember kids, piracy is stealing.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Feb 13, 2009 - 32 comments

In a time of top 10 lists, there are those who aim higher: They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? maintains an annually updated list of the 1,000 greatest films ever made, as well as the 250 greatest of the 21st century. Kevin B. Lee wants to see them all. How many have you seen? (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole on Dec 29, 2008 - 55 comments

The Best Youtube Videos of Spanish Filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo (previously). [more inside]
posted by Staggering Jack on Dec 13, 2008 - 5 comments

The Auteurs is a new web site (in beta) for film lovers--and, for those film lovers, Criterion has relaunched their site. Now with the ability to watch (some of) their films online for $5 (good for a week's worth of watching one title). The viewing cost is also applicable to the cost of buying the same title on DVD.
posted by Manhasset on Nov 25, 2008 - 22 comments

China Film Journal "a bilingual website dedicated to Chinese-language cinema from around the world."
posted by Abiezer on Nov 11, 2008 - 10 comments

In the 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong had a thriving film industry, dominated by studios such as Cathay Studios. One of Cathay's most fabulous stars was Grace Chang (Ge Lan), referred to by some as the Marlene Dietrich of Hong Kong Chinese cinema. Her greatest hit was The Wild Wild Rose (Ye mei gui zhi lian), based on Bizet's Carmen. The showstopper is her version of Habanera (YT). [more inside]
posted by carter on Oct 21, 2008 - 16 comments

Black & white films to be remembered.
posted by exogenous on Sep 15, 2008 - 33 comments

Lorenzo Semple, 84, has been a screenwriter for more than 50 years; his credits include "Papillion," "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor." Marcia Nasatir, 81, is a longtime agent and production executive, was the first female VP of production at United Artists, and produced films like "The Big Chill" and "Hamburger Hill." Together, they are the "Reel Geezers," offering irresistible film reviews on YouTube. To wit: Superbad, Iron Man, Sex and the City, Lars and the Real Girl, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood. [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Jun 11, 2008 - 27 comments

Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films (official site w/Flash) Filmmaker Arthur Dong covers the good (YT), the bad and the players (link to Flash video clips) in his latest award-winning documentary. Related MeFi post.
posted by LinusMines on May 4, 2008 - 19 comments

"But, it's a post on film noir!" I told her. She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me. I knew that caving into my desires meant I might lose her. But I didn't care. I went out to the kitchen to make coffee -- yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. I knew she'd be back. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Jan 11, 2008 - 48 comments

The Unsung Joe: Where bit-part actors go when they die. Biographies of the most obscure micro-stars of 1940s and '50s cinema, all remarkably well-researched and richly illustrated.
posted by jack_mo on Dec 11, 2007 - 28 comments

Though best known for his role as hunky Lance Rocke in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the actor/author was also distinguished by a career as a beefcake pin-up boy. Sadly, he has passed away at the age of 67.
posted by dhammond on Dec 6, 2007 - 25 comments

Though not as commonly known, Alfred Hitchcock's late British period is nonetheless an intriguing look at what delights were to come from his later work.

Secret Agent (1936 | Wikipedia | Download)
Young and Innocent (1937 | Wikipedia | Download)
Jamaica Inn (1939 | Wikipedia | Download)

posted by dhammond on Nov 25, 2007 - 15 comments

Top 10 Most Disturbing Movies of All Time. [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Nov 7, 2007 - 216 comments

In 1974, Martin Scorsese interviewed his parents on film, prompting them to discuss their life together as well as their Sicilian ancestry. The resultant documentary was entitled Italianamerican. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. [Inspired by...]
posted by Neilopolis on Sep 4, 2007 - 16 comments

The 50 Greatest movie sex scenes of all time (with clips)
posted by Roach on Aug 23, 2007 - 105 comments

Plotbot is a web-based collaborative screenwriting application where you can write a screenplay with as many or as few people as you like. Adopting the wiki approach to screenwriting, each element is editable by any member of a project. You can also comment on, delete or restore any element. For all of the "filmic storytellers" on MeFi.
posted by ColdChef on Jul 30, 2007 - 18 comments

EU Tube: sharing the sigh(t)s and soundsmoans of Europe. Human rights around the world? 700 views. A smoke-free Europe? 2300 views. 44 seconds of sex scenes from award-winning, popular European movies? 1,900,000 views. The European Commission just launched its own YouTube channel, using the oldest marketing trick ever, all for 350 Euros per clip (link includes the list of films), even though the usual suspects aren't happy.
posted by elgilito on Jul 4, 2007 - 15 comments

Roscoe Lee Browne, class act from beginning to end. The first time I ever noticed him was in The Cowboys, a western I've watched many times just to hear him speak.
posted by loosemouth on Apr 13, 2007 - 18 comments

The most effective Surreality is that which is entirely Unintentional (15-minute Google video). A delightful balance between amusing & disturbing. Harvested from Doctor Macro's MGM Shorts page. Previously.
posted by squalor on Apr 1, 2007 - 19 comments

Gang rape. Animal cruelty. Exploitation. Cannibalism. Put these elements together and you have Cannibal Holocaust, arguably one of the most well known exploitation films ever made. [Some of the following links are arguably NSFW]. Released in 1980, Cannibal Holocaust was a film so shockingly violent that it saw director Ruggero Deodato arrested by Italian authorities on the mistaken belief that he had made a snuff film and saw it being banned in almost every western country in the world for the actual deaths of several animals in the film. Although Deodato now regrets the introduction of the animals and although this ban has now been lifted in many of the countries that originally censored it, the horror of this landmark film is still as powerful as it ever was, a point evidenced by the often visceral reviews the film has garnered in its time. Whilst an official sequel has never been made (there have been at least two unofficial sequels), following his cameo appearance in Grindhouse movie Hostel II, Deodato has said an official sequel is in the works with an expected release date of 2009.
posted by Effigy2000 on Feb 18, 2007 - 59 comments

It seems apropos today to post about Bollywood and its style of romance and love. Songs are often the equivalent of a bedroom scene, a fact I didn't believe until it was pointed out to me that there were numerous instances of extremely suggestive songs followed by pregnancy. Bollywood also uses songs to arouse patriotic fervour, a trait that master music director A.R. Rahman takes to new heights with his release of the classics Vande Mataram [Motherland, I salute thee] and Jana Gana Mana [India's national anthem]. But even before him, there were classics of public service advertising such as "Mile sur tera hamara..." a fuzzy video but inspiring nonetheless of the myriads of voices and languages spoken in India. Other loves that hindi cinema celebrates through its songs is that of a mother for a child, god, love across cultural boundaries and what is politely termed as "conjugal love".
posted by infini on Feb 14, 2007 - 31 comments

Atlas Shrugged is again in the pipeline to be made into a movie. BACK in the 1970s Albert S. Ruddy, the producer of “The Godfather,” first approached Ayn Rand to make a movie of her novel “Atlas Shrugged.” But Rand, who had fled the Soviet Union and gone on to inspire capitalists and egoists everywhere, worried aloud, apparently in all seriousness, that the Soviets might try to take over Paramount to block the project.
posted by Brian B. on Jan 20, 2007 - 142 comments

Anders als die Andern ("Different From the Others") [IMDB|Wikipedia] was one of a series of films on sexual issues directed by Richard Oswald in the late 1910s and sponsored by Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science. The 1919 movie (photo reconstruction), "the first major gay-themed film ever made," and "the world's first homosexual emancipation film," was made in part to protest against Paragraph 175, which was added to Germany's Reich Penal Code in 1871 and prohibited sex acts "between persons of male sex." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Dec 15, 2006 - 11 comments

The most inspirational film ever has an underexamined dark side, including a 1947 FBI memo that branded the film as subversive and "a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers." The film's script was influenced by the liberal populism of the 1930s, used suicide as a plot point, and was criticized by a Christian Right website for "lax attitudes on alcohol and drunkenness." The film also inspired a feminist art project on "bad girl" Violet Bick and a dead-on parody of a right-wing Christian movie review. Meanwhile, Jimmy Stewart paid back Frank Capra for reviving his post-WWII career by spying on him for the FBI. The hidden backstory behind It's A Wonderful Life.
posted by jonp72 on Dec 15, 2006 - 66 comments

Too Wong Foo: There's Mixed-Up Surf Nazis Invading A Plane! In honor of Snakes On A Plane slithering into theaters this coming weekend, Boston.com offers eleven perfectly descriptive, or overly cryptic, but all memorable movie titles. How would you retitle your favorite movie to be as descriptive as Snakes On A Plane? For example, The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down?
posted by Lord Kinbote on Aug 14, 2006 - 119 comments

Perfection and Eraserhead. Discussing Singing in the Rain and Goodfellas with prisoners. The link between Pasolini, Blind Willie Johnson and Carl Sagan. If you like hanging out at the corner of Film and Word, you might enjoy spending time in the archives at Your Humble Viewer, a wide-ranging, well-written, funny and literate film blog.
posted by mediareport on Jul 31, 2006 - 10 comments

Mobile Cinema: From the little to the big; DIY to HOLY (pics) COW (pics)! Coming attractions has never seemed so literal.
posted by bjork24 on Jun 13, 2006 - 6 comments

"Ten Favorite Offbeat Musicals" by Jonathan Rosenbaum
posted by matteo on Apr 4, 2006 - 30 comments

It's still about the means of production, you see — but in the overdeveloped world, at least, it's not about the production of goods and services anymore. Today's virtual revolutionary is happy to leave all that to capitalists. The virtual revolutionary wants to control the production of meaning — representations of herself and her world as she wants them to seem. Or be. Or whatever. That's all she asks.
Or, rather, takes.
Thomas de Zengotita welcomes the big world of the small screen. Peter Bogdanovich, instead, still mourns that last picture show.
posted by matteo on Mar 26, 2006 - 22 comments

Three new ways of thinking about David Cronenberg (director of Videodrome, Dead Ringers, etc.). A documentary filmmaker, an avant-garde filmmaker, or maybe just a guy who looks at couples and probably wonders what they look like having sex. Kind of par for the course.
posted by Joe Hutch on Mar 20, 2006 - 45 comments

She made movies. They were cheap, They were shot in her apartment. She didn't film in sound, and so, when characters spoke, rather than sync the sound, she often cut away to objects in the room, or the feet of those who were speaking.

Her films had titles like Nude on the Moon, Bad Girls Go to Hell, and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist.

She was Doris Wishman
posted by Astro Zombie on Mar 1, 2006 - 30 comments

Say "cheese" — stinky, expensive, overprocessed American cheese. The venerable Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed its set design for the Seventy-Eighth Academy Awards® Telecast. This year's edition is described as "an homage to old movie theaters" by designer Roy Christopher. "It's a no-holds-barred return to classic Hollywood glamour." Others may beg to differ.
posted by rob511 on Feb 22, 2006 - 56 comments

"He was someone who acted out our psyches ... He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen... the history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that's grotesque, that the world will turn away from."
A Valentine for Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces. (BugMeNot for the first link; more inside)
posted by matteo on Feb 18, 2006 - 14 comments

Odd Films: Hungry for films on food? Pining for movies about dead pets? Can't get enough substance-abuse flicks? Perhaps you want to catch a glimpse of Elvis/Nixon/Nixon&Elvis? All these and many more are included in this somewhat crudely presented, but surprisingly comprehensive list of strange and/or indy cinema.
posted by Drexen on Dec 10, 2005 - 7 comments

The Emperor's Bunker. "The Japanese, with sadness and irony, stressed that Hirohito couldn't even speak properly. This was partly to do with the fact that he didn't have to speak - people spoke in his name and he was isolated from real life". "The Sun", the third part in Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's 'Men of Power' tetralogy after the gloom of Moloch (1999), about Hitler and Eva Braun, and the despairing tones of "Taurus" (2001), focused on the wheelchair-bound Lenin in his death throes, "The Sun" seems almost upbeat. This, after all, is a film about reconciliation. More inside.
posted by matteo on Sep 13, 2005 - 21 comments

"It has always been as if I carry chaos with me the way others carry typhoid. My purpose in writing is to transcend my existence by illuminating it."
Crime novelist Edward Bunker, who died last Tuesday at age 71 (LATimes obit), became at 17 the youngest inmate at San Quentin after he stabbed a prison guard at a youth detention facility. It was during his 18 years of incarceration for robbery, check forgery and other crimes that Bunker learned to write. In 1973, while still in prison, he made his literary debut with "No Beast So Fierce", a novel about a paroled thief James Ellroy called "quite simply one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years" and that was made into the movie "Straight Time" starring Dustin Hoffman. Also a screenwriter ("Runaway Train"), Bunker appeared as an actor in nearly two dozen roles, most notably as Mr. Blue in "Reservoir Dogs." (more inside)
posted by matteo on Jul 25, 2005 - 9 comments

Vintage & Retro Posters
French/Italian
Marc Chagall
Old Movie Posters via
posted by peacay on Jul 12, 2005 - 8 comments

I don't know what "independent film" means. At a time when the Weinsteins are trying to extricate themselves from Disney, it seems an appropriate question to ask. There are Indie films (non-industry money) that are supposed to imitate fancy hollywood films, there are new studios being opened outside of LA by Wealthy Christians in Denver hoping to convert through CS Lewis movies and there are Garden State, Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine etc. which are like other Hollywood films: have stars, and studio money but are marketed as "Independent Films." What makes these independent? Finally, and seemingly too infrequently, there are privately financed and self-distributed unusual films like Assisted Living which despite their obvious merits and the critic's adoration are presumably ignored by the studios, blasted by the brain-numbing EW and distributed instead by the two young first-time filmmakers Why can't we see more non-hollywood and non-hollywood espousing independent ART on the screen? Why do we let every other multi-million dollar romantic comedy be sold to us as "indy" just because it has a quirky soundtrack or aesthetic sensibility. What can we do about it? I'm going to the movies. You?
posted by tallbuildings on Apr 15, 2005 - 30 comments