There isn’t another killing in cinema quite like the centrepiece sequence in Leave Her To Heaven.
Categories
Notes on Leave Her To Heaven.
Category: cinema
Categories
Weekend Viewing.
Over the weekend I watched a couple of films.
Categories
Brief notes on a couple of films.
I’ve watched a lot of John Ford films recently, thanks to a pair of fantastic new home video releases.
Categories
Coming June. Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross.
A couple of months ago I was tasked with providing an essay for this upcoming release of Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross. Somewhat under-seen in the UK, Criss Cross stands as one of the darkest and most affecting film noir pictures of the era. Take a look at the trailer and the artwork below.
The opening shot of Jacques Demy’s 1969 film Model Shop, starring Gary Lockwood and Anouk Aimee reminds of the same director’s Bay Of Angels and Jeanne Moreau running down the Nice seafront.
Categories
Apocalypse Now?
So.
We’re in lockdown. Today marks the end of week two. In that time, and aside from my wife and dog, I’ve had face-to-face conversations with precisely three people, all neighbours, and all from the safety of at least two metres distance. It’s a curious existence, but one that we have all seemingly adapted to with great speed.
Categories
Burt Lancaster By Blutch.
I’ve been writing about Burt Lancaster for a freelance project recently, and this illustration by French artist Blutch turned out to be an unlikely starting point.
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood opens in the UK this week. It’s a breathtaking and wholly affecting piece of work, and one that focuses on Hollywood’s ability to “fix” the worlds ills. Here, the dream factory conjures the ultimate happy ending.
A real sense of denouement runs riot throughout the picture. Much has been made of the director’s impending retirement, which is set to follow in the wake of the release of his next, thus far unmade feature, but one can not help but think this would have been the ideal ending for the filmmakers oeuvre. It’s a culmination of everything that he’s ever done, and everything that he’s about.
Here he takes the idea of Hollywood saving the day to its logical ending, allowing the movies to veer away from its own greatest personal tragedy. The director has been here before: There are echoes of his manipulation of world history in Inglourious Basterds, but in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood it’s all the more personal to Tarantino the cinephile.
Categories
From Violent Saturday to One, Two, Three.
It is with a note of sadness that I acknowledge the passing in to out-of-print status of Eureka Entertainment’s home video release of Richard Fleischer’s Violent Saturday, which was the first such release of any real note that I worked on.
I think it’s really important that films like this remain accessible to all, so it’s a shame to see it’s run finally sell out. I don’t think there are any plans to reissue it.
Conversely, my latest home video release, a lavish new edition of Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three, was released this past Monday. The initial run comes equipped with a special slipcover. It can be found here.
The Glass Family 