AFI FEST 2009: SOMETHING’S GONNA LIVE, NORTH BY NORTHWEST

Cary Grant in North by Northwest

Among the highlights of AFI FEST 2009 is the Nov. 2 screening of AFI Conservatory Alumnus Daniel Raim’s documentary Something’s Gonna Live, which profiles several behind-the-scenes Hollywood veterans — most of whom have already passed away — including production designers Robert Boyle (who turned 100 this past Oct. 10), Henry Bumstead (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sting), Harold Michelson (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Mommie Dearest, Dick Tracy), and Albert Nozaki (When Worlds Collide, The War of the Worlds, The Ten Commandments), in addition to cinematographers Conrad L. Hall (In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Road to Perdition) and Haskell Wexler (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, In the Heat of [...]

Best Films – 2002

A man is dead. Who among the greedy, ruthless, amoral singing-and-dancing suspects stuck in the snowbound countryside mansion has done it? 8 women is an acquired taste, bien sûr. What seems silly the first time around becomes increasingly wittier and funnier — though no less bizarre — with each repeated viewing. Beautifully shot by Jeanne Lapoirie and chock-full of bitingly sardonic lines and situations (adapted by director François Ozon and Marina de Van, from Robert Thomas’ play), this murder musical is dotted with 8 of the brightest stars of the French cinema of the last 7 (!) decades.
More than seventy years after her film début, Danielle Darrieux, in full form both as an actress and as a singer, joins [...]

ROAD TO PERDITION – Tom Hanks, Paul Newman

Road to Perdition (2002)
Director: Sam Mendes
Screenplay: David Self; from Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner’s graphic novel
Cast: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Tyler Hoechlin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stanley Tucci, Daniel Craig, Dylan Baker, Ciarán Hinds, Liam Aiken

 

 
British director Sam Mendes won an Academy Award for his first film, American Beauty, released in 1999. Three years later, for his second film, Road to Perdition, Mendes once again relied on the assistance of cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and composer Thomas Newman to create another stylized look at dysfunctional American families. But instead of 1990s suburbia, Road to Perdition throws us into the warped universe of a Depression-era Midwestern town, a place where family values include loyalty, faith, extortion, [...]