Los Angeles Film Festival 2009: Pandas, Jeanne Crain, Dennis Hopper & Zombies

Shu Hin, Ryu Hin in Panda Diary (top); Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews in Hot Rods to Hell (middle); ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction (bottom)

Los Angeles Film Festival, Saturday, June 27, highlights:

A second screening of Sophie Barthes‘ Cold Souls (The Regent, 1:30 pm), starring Paul Giamatti as a man whose soul is smuggled into Russia.
Narrated by the panda Shu Hin, Tadashi Mori’s documentary Panda Story (Landmark 8, 2 pm) follows the narrator and her twin brother, Ryu Hin, as they are moved from their homeland to some strange place, far, far away.
A second screening of Blayne Weaver’s Weather Girl (Landmark 4, 4:30 pm), a romantic comedy about a weather girl with a high-pressure love life.
John Brahm’s 1967 biker thriller Hot Rods [...]

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial

Four-time Academy Award winner screenwriter-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz will be saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special 50th anniversary screening of a recently restored print of Suddenly, Last Summer, starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor (above, and right, with Mankiewicz), and Montgomery Clift. The screening will take place on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will also celebrate the recent gift of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz Papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Turner Classic Movies host and The Young Turks co-creator Ben Mankiewicz, Joseph L.’s great nephew and grandson of Citizen Kane co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, will host [...]

Lee Madden

Lee Madden, best known for directing Hell’s Angels ‘69, died of complications from pneumonia on April 9 in Camarillo, a town north of Los Angeles. He was 82.
The American International Pictures release Hell’s Angels ‘69, the tale of two brothers who plan on robbing Las Vegas’ Caesar’s Palace, was the Brooklyn-born Madden’s first feature. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it is the only fiction film in which the Oakland Hell’s Angels, including leader Sonny Barger, appeared.
Madden’s other features were the bikers vs. rednecks adaptation of The Magnificent Seven, Angel Unchained (1970), starring Tyne Daly and Don Stroud, and which Madden also wrote and produced; The Night God Screamed (1971), starring 1940s Fox star Jeanne [...]

Elia Kazan’s Oscar Nominated Actors

Elia Kazan
24 Acting Nominations
(s) supporting category
(*) Academy Award winner
Elia Kazan: Top Oscar Directors for Actors
 
1945
James Dunn (s) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn*
(Additionally, Peggy Ann Garner won a special "juvenile" Oscar for her 1945 performances, including A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
 
1947

Gregory Peck Gentleman’s Agreement
Dorothy McGuire Gentleman’s Agreement
Celeste Holm (s) Gentleman’s Agreement *
Anne Revere (s) Gentleman’s Agreement
 
1949

Lily white Fox star Jeanne Crain was nominated for an Oscar for trying (and failing) to pass for a light-skinned "black" (read: mixed ancestry) girl trying to pass for a lily white girl. Fellow nominee Ethel Waters comforts Crain: "You cayn’t act, but you’re darned purty." (Actually, Crain could be excellent. Check out Henry King’s nostalgic Margie.)

Jeanne Crain Pinky (co-directed with John Ford)
Ethel Barrymore [...]

Keith Andes

Film and stage actor Keith Andes died at his home in Santa Clarita, a community northeast of Los Angeles, on November 11. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office ruled the death a suicide by asphyxiation. Andes had been suffering from bladder cancer and other ailments. He was 85.
Born John Charles Andes on July 12, 1920, in Ocean City, New Jersey, Andes was brought to Hollywood by 20th Century-Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. The mogul had seen him perform as an understudy in the Broadway production of the homefront melodrama Winged Victory.
Besides appearing in a small part in the 1944 film version directed by George Cukor, Andes had mostly supporting roles in about 20 other films, including The Farmer’s Daughter [...]

Best Films – 1946

Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford in Gilda
FILM
Anna and the King of Siam
d: John Cromwell; scr: Talbot Jennings, Sally Benson
The Best Years of Our Lives
d: William Wyler; scr: Robert E. Sherwood
Cloak and Dagger
d: Fritz Lang; scr: Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr.
From This Day Forward
d: John Berry; scr: Hugo Butler, Garson Kanin
Gilda
d: Charles Vidor; scr: Marion Parsonnet
Margie
d: Henry King; scr: F. Hugh Herbert
A Night in Casablanca
d: Archie Mayo; scr: Joseph Fields, Roland Kibbee, Frank Tashlin
Le Père tranquille / Mr. Orchid
d: René Clément; scr: Noël-Noël
Sciuscià / Shoeshine
d: Vittorio De Sica; scr: Cesare Zavattini, Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, Cesare Giulio Viola
The Spiral Staircase
d: Robert Siodmak; scr: Mel Dinelli
 
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My Darling Clementine
d: John Ford; scr: [...]

Best Films – 1944

John Hodiak, Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat

FILM
I Bambini ci guardano / The Children Are Watching Us
d: Vittorio De Sica; scr: Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica, Cesare Giulio Viola, Adolfo Franci, Margherita Maglione, Gherardo Gherardi
Crime by Night
d: William Clemens; scr: Joel Malone, Richard Weil
Dragon Seed
d: Harold S. Bucquet, Jack Conway; scr: Jane Murfin, Marguerite Roberts
Laura
d: Otto Preminger; scr: Jay Dratter, Samuel Hoffenstein, Betty Reinhardt
Lifeboat
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: Jo Swerling
Mr. Skeffington
d: Vincent Sherman; scr: Julius J. Epstein, Phillip G. Epstein
This Happy Breed
d: David Lean; scr: Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
The Uninvited
d: Lewis Allen; scr: Dodie Smith
 

Jennifer Jones, Robert Walker, Joseph Cotten in Since You Went Away
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Arsenic and Old Lace
d: Frank Capra; scr: Julius J. Epstein, Phillip G. Epstein
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