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THE WAR GAME d: Peter Watkins

The War Game (1965)
Direction and Screenplay: Peter Watkins
Narration: Michael Aspel and Peter Graham
 

 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
For anyone who thinks that those 50-pack mega-DVD sets of public domain films put out by several different video companies are worthless, I would argue that the amount of films you get for the money is worth it, even if all were mediocre, and that the truth is: each DVD package will come with at least 8-10 enjoyable films, a few true classics like Carnival of Souls or Night of the Living Dead, and every so often a great little film will pop up that makes the package a total steal.
One such 50-pack I [...]

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER Screening

Werner Herzog’s Academy Award-nominated Encounters at the End of the World (above, lower photo) and Irena Salina’s Flow: For Love of Water will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 28th annual “Contemporary Documentaries” series on Wednesday, October 21, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission is free.
Directed by Herzog and produced by Henry Kaiser, Encounters at the End of the World looks at human beings interacting with the harsh environment of Antarctica. Werner Herzog will be present to take questions from the audience following the screening.
Flow: For Love of Water deals with the dire consequences of increased privatization [...]

Linwood Dunn: Celebrating a Visual Effects Pioneer – CITIZEN KANE Screening

"Linwood Dunn: Celebrating a Visual Effects Pioneer," will explore the work of special effects artist Linwood Dunn (above, lower photo), including the techniques he used in creating optical effects for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, on Friday, October 9, at 8 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ appropriately named Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. A newly struck print of Citizen Kane from the Academy Film Archive will be screened. This event is sold out, but standby tickets may become available.
Presented by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, "Linwood Dunn" will be hosted by Oscar-winning visual effects artist and Academy governor Craig Barron. The evening will also [...]

CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA, THE GARDEN Screening

Set in Los Angeles’ impoverished inner city areas, the documentaries The Garden (above, lower photo) and Crips and Bloods: Made in America will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 28th annual “Contemporary Documentaries” series on Wednesday, October 7, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission is free.
In Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s The Garden, the organization South Central Farmers fight a wealthy developer in order to preserve the community garden they created after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The Garden earned an Academy Award nomination for Documentary Feature. Kennedy will be present to take questions from the audience following the [...]

Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark: NO WAY OUT Screening

Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark in No Way Out

Ruby Dee will be the special guest at a screening of No Way Out (1950), part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Monday Nights with Oscar” series on September 21 at 7 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City.
Film historian and scholar Foster Hirsch will host this celebration of the centennial of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s birth and the recent gift of Mankiewicz’ papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library.
In the socially conscious No Way Out, Richard Widmark plays a racist patient — and petty criminal — who, following his brother’s death, becomes intent on destroying the life [...]

THE SWEET HEREAFTER – Ian Holm, Sarah Polley

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Direction: Atom Egoyan
Screenplay: Atom Egoyan; from Russell Banks’ novel
Cast: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Caerthan Banks, Maury Chaykin
 

Ian Holm, Sarah Polley in The Sweet Hereafter
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Some films are well crafted but lifeless. Others err by believing they can too readily make an audience care for a character just by having a traumatic situation beset him early on. The Sweet Hereafter, a 1997 drama by Canadian director and screenwriter Atom Egoyan, suffers from both maladies. It’s not a bad film, but it certainly is not a great film, either — much less ‘the best film of the year’ as Los Angeles Times [...]

Behind the Motion Picture Canvas: MANHATTAN, THE BLACK STALLION Screenings

Woody Allen, Diane Keaton in Manhattan

Newly struck prints of Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979) and Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion (1979) will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ presentation “Behind the Motion Picture Canvas: Film Formats through the 21st Century,” which will trace the history and evolution of motion picture formats from the silent era through the current digital age.
"Behind the Motion Picture Canvas" will kick off on Wednesday, September 9, at 8 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. It will continue with screenings of Manhattan on Thursday, September 10, and The Black Stallion on Friday, September 11. Both screenings will begin at 8 p.m. Academy [...]

Bette Midler at THE ROSE Screening

Mark Rydell will take part in an onstage discussion following the 30th anniversary screening of The Rose on Friday, September 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. (Bette Midler was scheduled to attend, but has had to cancel her appearance at the screening.)
Inspired by the wild life and times of Janis Joplin, The Rose chronicles the rise and fall of late ’60s rock star Mary Rose Foster (Midler), who is used by her self-serving manager (Alan Bates at his slimiest); loved by a just-folksy, Starred-and-Striped limo driver (Frederic Forrest); and who eventually comes to the realization that [...]

SITTING PRETTY – Clifton Webb, Maureen O’Hara

Sitting Pretty (1948)
Direction: Walter Lang
Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert; from Gwen Davenport’s novel Belvedere
Cast: Clifton Webb, Maureen O’Hara, Robert Young, Richard Haydn, Louise Allbritton, Randy Stuart, Ed Begley
 

 

In the late 1940s, the bucolic suburb of Hummingbird Hill is shaken in its tranquil complacency by the scandalous actions of two middle-aged, unmarried men. Each of these elitist, academic bachelors threaten the norm of twin beds, parlor games, and ladies who lunch. One escapes his overbearing mother in persistent eavesdropping and snooping; the other inserts himself as a platonic wedge between a husband and wife, usurping household authority with conceited pleasure.
The couple eventually separates under the strain, while the community itself is exposed for its flaws and hypocrisy. The convention of the two-parent, heterosexual family [...]

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT at Film Forum

Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim in All Quiet on the Western Front

The silent version of the best picture Academy Award winner All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), in my view the greatest war movie ever made, will be screened at New York City’s Film Forum on Monday, August 3. Showtimes are at 3:20, 6:50, and 9:20.
Having been restored and preserved by the Library of Congress, and featuring two reels cut from the original talkie print following the film’s East and West Coast premieres, this silent version — edited from the foreign negative — comes with musical accompaniment intended for foreign markets where theaters hadn’t yet been equipped to sound. (I should add that in the silent [...]

SOUNDER – Paul Winfield, Cicely Tyson

Sounder (1972)
Direction: Martin Ritt
Screenplay: Lonne Elder III; from William H. Armstrong’s book
Cast: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks, Carmen Mathews, Taj Mahal, James Best
 

 

Sounder probably features more extremely wide shots than any movie besides Lawrence of Arabia — and Martin Ritt’s movie is only half as long.  Time and again, humans become antish dots on the horizon, visually overwhelmed by the vast wilderness around them.  It’s Ritt’s way of establishing the world of David (Kevin Hooks), a young boy living in the Louisiana woods with his sharecropper family and the titular dog.  That world completely envelops him in these shots, which perform the old pastoral trick of contrasting the human and [...]

Judy Garland in THE WIZARD OF OZ Screening

Starring Judy Garland and directed by Victor Fleming, the 1939 Best Picture nominee The Wizard of Oz will be screened, digitally from a new 4K restoration, as the final feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, August 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Jerry Maren, who portrayed one of the Lollipop Guild members in Munchkinland, will be present for a short Q&A before the film.
The evening will begin at 6:45 p.m., and will include videotaped interviews with Margaret Hamilton and Ray Bolger from a 1983 Academy event; the [...]

OF MICE AND MEN Screening

Lon Chaney Jr, Burgess Meredith in Of Mice and Men

A newly restored sepia-tone print of the 1939 Best Picture nominee Of Mice and Men will be screened in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, July 27, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will begin at 7 p.m., with the 11th chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore; the comedy short Dog Daze, featuring the Our Gang brats; and Night Descends on Treasure Island, about the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair.
Of Mice and Men is [...]

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON Screening

A newly restored print of Frank Capra’s 1939 Best Picture nominee Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Claude Rains, will be screened tonight, July 20, as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939.” The screening will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will begin at 7 p.m., with the tenth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the Columbia animated short Scrappy’s Added Attraction.
By the time Mr. Smith Goes to Washington came out in 1939, [...]

Greta Garbo’s NINOTCHKA Screening

Ernst Lubitsch’s delightful Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas, will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series "Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, July 13, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will begin at 7 p.m., with the ninth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the animated short The Autograph Hound, featuring Donald Duck.

In Ninotchka, Garbo (above, with Lubitsch) plays a Russian agent out to retrieve three other agents who have been corrupted by the decadent lights of Paris. While in [...]

GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS Screening

Goodbye, Mr. Chips, directed by Sam Wood, and starring Robert Donat and Greer Garson, will be the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, June 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Juliet Mills, daughter of John Mills, who has a supporting role in the film, will introduce the program.
The evening will begin at 7 p.m., with a screening of the seventh chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the MGM Oscar-nominated cartoon Peace on Earth.

Robert Donat, who could be a truly excellent actor [...]

Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne in LOVE AFFAIR Screening

Love Affair, one of the 1939 Best Picture nominees, is next in line in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, June 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Prior to the film, beginning at 7 p.m., the sixth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the Warner Bros. Oscar-nominated cartoon Detouring America, directed by Tex Avery, will be screened.

Leo McCarey produced, directed and co-wrote (with Mildred Cram) the story for Love Affair (the actual screenplay was credited to Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart), a romantic [...]

Hollywood’s Greatest Year in New York City

Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (top); Bette Davis, Geraldine Fitzgerald in Dark Victory (middle); Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights (bottom)

Gone with the Wind, the 1939 Best Picture winner, will kick off the New York presentation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ latest screening series, "Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939," on Saturday, June 20, at 12:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Theater in New York City. Turner Classic Movies host and film historian Robert Osborne will host the event.
"Hollywood’s Greatest Year" will continue through mid-October, showcasing all 10 Best Picture nominees from 1939. Screenings will take place on Monday at 7:30 p.m., [...]

Bette Davis’ DARK VICTORY Screening

The Bette Davis vehicle and 1939 Best Picture nominee Dark Victory will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, June 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Beginning at 7 p.m., the feature will be preceded by the fifth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the Warner Bros. cartoon Dangerous Dan McFoo, directed by Tex Avery.
Adapted by Casey Robinson from a play by George Emerson Brewer Jr. and Bertram Bloch, Dark Victory is one of Bette Davis’ [...]

THE ABYSS Screening

The Abyss, the costly, special-effect-laden, deep-sea adventure drama about underwater aliens and a bickering married couple, will be screened at a special 20th anniversary event by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday, June 23, at 7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.
This Academy screening will premiere a newly struck 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive. Considering that The Abyss boasts awesome underwater cinematography and first-rate visual and sound effects, this is a great chance to catch it on the big screen.

Presented by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, the evening will be hosted by film historian and author Eric Lichtenfeld and will feature [...]

A TALE OF TWO CITIES d: Jack Conway

A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
Direction: Jack Conway
Screenplay: W. P. Lipscomb and S. N. Behrman; from Charles Dickens’ novel
Cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Blanche Yurka, Donald Woods, Lucille La Verne, Henry B. Walthall, H. B. Warner, Walter Catlett, Fritz Leiber, Isabel Jewell, Tully Marshall, Mitchell Lewis, Robert Warwick
 

 

Although not as widely known as other big Old Hollywood productions, David O. Selznick’s film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, set during the time of the French Revolution, is far, far better than most of the other period dramas made during the studio era.
Starring former silent-screen heartthrob Ronald Colman; featuring respected supporting players such as Edna May Oliver, [...]

THE MERRY WIDOW d: Ernst Lubitsch

The Merry Widow (1934)
Direction: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Ernest Vajda and Samson Raphaelson; from Franz Lehár’s operetta
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel, George Barbier, Minna Gombell, Sterling Holloway
 

 
The Merry Widow is not one of Ernst Lubitsch’s most discussed films. Critics generally tend to focus on his early Paramount talkies, such as One Hour with You (co-directed by George Cukor) and Trouble in Paradise, and his later comedies Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be.
Yet, The Merry Widow is a superior musical, boasting sumptuous sets (production design by Cedric Gibbons), exquisite cinematography (courtesy of Oliver T. Marsh), a magnificently staged ballroom-dancing sequence, witty lines and situations (by Lubitsch collaborators Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda, from Franz Lehár’s operetta), [...]

Oscar 2009: Animated, Live-Action Shorts Screening

New Boy by Steph Green (top); Oktapodi by Emud Mokhberi and Thierry Marchand (bottom)

The 2009 Academy Award-nominated films in the Animated and Live Action Short Film categories will be screened as part of the program "Shorts!," presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday, February 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The program will feature onstage discussions with the nominated filmmakers (subject to availability). Not to be missed…
The 2009 Animated Short Film and Live Action Short Film nominees are:

Animated Short Film
La Maison en Petits Cubes (above), Kunio Kato, director
Lavatory-Lovestory, Konstantin Bronzit, director
Oktapodi, Emud Mokhberi and [...]

BLADE RUNNER – Harrison Ford – d: Ridley Scott

Blade Runner (1982)
Direction: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: Hampton Fancher and David Peoples; from Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy, Brion James
 

 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Director Ridley Scott’s dystopian 1982 sci-fi drama Blade Runner is one of those Hollywood productions whose initially mixed reviews were actually closer to the mark than the decades of hagiography that followed. That’s not to say that Blade Runner is a bad film; it’s only a much-ballyhooed mediocrity — due mostly to its sluggish screenplay — rather than a great film.
Adapted by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples [...]

CASABLANCA

Casablanca (1942)
Direction: Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch; from Murray Burnett and Joan Alison’s unproduced play "Everybody Comes to Rick’s"
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, S. Z. Sakall, Dooley Wilson, Joy Page
 

Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
About three years ago, I finally gave in to watch It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) for the first time. I had hesitated because of the five- and ten-minute snippets of the film I had seen, and for its reputation as a hokey Christmas story ‘chestnut.’ Well, was I wrong, for It’s a Wonderful Life is a truly great film — arguably the best [...]

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