Lana Turner in IMITATION OF LIFE Screening

Karen Dicker, Juanita Moore, Terry Burnham, and Lana Turner in Imitation of Life

Douglas Sirk’s classic melodrama Imitation of Life, starring Lana Turner, will have its 50th anniversary celebrated with a screening of a recently struck print at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on Friday, August 21, at 7:30 p.m.
Hosted by film critic Stephen Farber, the Imitation of Life screening will feature an onstage discussion with Oscar-nominated (supporting) actresses Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore, conducted by Kohner’s sons, filmmakers Paul and Chris Weitz. The print, which is part of the Academy Film Archive collection, was made from the Universal Pictures restoration.

Sandra Dee, Lana Turner

Douglas Sirk’s reputation has gained some belated recognition in [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

MUNICH d: Steven Spielberg

Munich (2005)
Direction: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Tony Kushner and Eric Roth; from George Jonas’ book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team
Cast: Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz, Ciaran Hinds, Hanns Zischler, Ayelet Zurer, Michel Lonsdale, Gila Almagor, Mathieu Amalric, Moritz Bleibtreu, Marie-Josée Croze, Lynn Cohen, Omar Metwally, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
 

Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Hanns Zischler, Mathieu Kassovitz in Munich
 

Alternately intriguing and irritating, thought-provoking and banal, subtle and patronizing, the biggest surprise about Steven Spielberg’s Munich is that it — however grudgingly — works. The film, which Spielberg himself has referred to as "prayer for peace," follows five men contracted by Israel to avenge the massacre of that country’s athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games in [...]

MATCH POINT d: Woody Allen

Match Point (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Woody Allen
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton
 

 

If Alfred Hitchcock were to direct a screenplay co-written by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, and based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, the result would be something like Woody Allen’s latest opus, Match Point. A dark fable about the vagaries of chance in a godless world, Allen’s aesthetically old-fashioned crime drama belies a haunting postmodern sensibility.
Set in London, the basic plot of Match Point follows certain key elements of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy: After experiencing the joys of wealth and high social standing (read: power), an ambitious petit bourgeois resorts to whatever it takes to maintain his newfound status. Between the [...]

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN d: Ang Lee

Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Direction: Ang Lee
Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana; from E. Annie Proulx’s short story
Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Linda Cardellini, Kate Mara
 

 

Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is without a doubt a culturally significant motion picture. The same-sex romantic drama has won numerous awards, has been discussed all over the media, and has been labeled "groundbreaking" by numerous film critics. Of course, the fact that those critics’ knowledge of film history only goes as far back as Revenge of the Sith should not be held against Lee’s film. Yet, except for a few touching moments in its second half Brokeback Mountain fails to become fully involving chiefly because its central relationship — between a [...]