News

British-Argentine filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland has always been interested in hands and touch, but in her new film, “Collective Monologue,” she expands her focus beyond human appendages. Her focus on instances of touch between caretaker Maca and the animals at the Buenos Aires Eco-Park, which are frequently framed by the park’s enclosures, reveals a tension between the radical acts of care and the politics of captivity inherent to institutions such as zoos.

“My interest in hands has to do with process, it has to do with labor, it has to do with tools,” Rinland tells Variety following a press screening before the film’s world premiere at Locarno. Her multi-disciplinary career as an artist, which also encompasses book-making and installation work, has always focused on alternative modes of perception. The films she makes and the tools she uses come to her organically. In her own words: “They are things...

In the 1970s, Dolly Parton joined Willie Nelson on tour. She was working on her solo career and trying to lean to perform with a new band. Parton appealed to a broad audience at the time, but Nelson’s fans were not always among them. She struggled for the crowd’s attention and later admitted that she wasn’t sure why she had been on the tour.

Dolly Parton had a difficult time on tour with Willie Nelson

As she profiled Parton, writer Alanna Nash attended one of her shows in Waco, Texas. She was touring the state with Nelson.

“You’ll be able to tell who they’ve come to see as soon as they walk through the door,” reporter Steve Ray told Nash, per her book Dolly. “If the guys have long hair and wear dungarees and flannel shirts — that progressive country look — then they’ve come to see Willie.

Pam Grier has lived an incredible life. Her autobiography, "Foxy: A Life in Three Acts" is hopefully going to be turned into a biopic that can finally celebrate her trailblazing career. An entire generation of fans know her as the titular character in "Jackie Brown," Tarantino's follow-up to "Pulp Fiction," based on the crime novel "Rum Punch" by Elmore Leonard. Decades before that, Grier became widely known as the first female action star playing street-savvy, no-nonsense characters in "Coffy" (She'll cream you!), "Foxy Brown", and the more comedic mystery "Friday Foster." 

An undeniable acting force and sought-after sex symbol, it was only a matter of time before more challenging, high-profile roles started to come Grier's way. After essentially owning the 1970s, Grier started off the '80s taking on more character-driven parts, like in the boxing drama "Tough Enough" starring Dennis Quaid, and the classic police procedural "Fort Apache the Bronx" starring Paul Newman.

It would be easy to play Santa Claus as a holiday caricature who boasts "ho ho ho" at the top of his lungs, but Edmund Gwenn's Academy Award-winning performance (Best Supporting Actor) in "Miracle on 34th Street" shows a much more tender side of the Christmas mascot. He speaks to children as though they were his equal. Scenes like Kris Kringle heartily speaking Dutch to a young orphaned girl (Mary Field), illustrate how greatly this performance has transcended the decades.

With Gwenn stealing the show, it can be easy to overlook the film's wealth of memorable performances. You have names like Natalie Wood, Porter Hall, Gene Lockheart, and Maureen O'Hara bringing this timeless tale of yuletide cheer to life. It's John Payne, however, who is arguably tasked with the second most responsible role in Fred Gailey, the New York City lawyer who advocates on behalf of Kringle in court.

Never heard of Wake Island? Its fall terrified Americans at Christmas of 1941. The war’s just begun, we’re definitely not winning, and the assignment was to make a movie about a tragic defeat that might be the first of many tragic defeats for the U.S.A.. Paramount’s careful morale-builder doesn’t exaggerate or sentimentalize the brutal fall of a tiny atoll in the Pacific, and stands as an example of filmmaking reaching for hope in the face of disaster.

Wake Island

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1942 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 88 min. / Street Date August 18, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, Macdonald Carey, William Bendix, Albert Dekker, Walter Abel, Mikhail Rasumny, Rod Cameron, Bill Goodwin, Damian O’Flynn, Frank Albertson, Hugh Beaumont, Barbara Britton, Hillary Brooke, Dane Clark, Frank Faylen, Mary Field, Alan Hale Jr., Richard Loo, James Millican, Jack Mulhall, Keith Richards, Phillip Terry, Mary Thomas,...

Yasujirô Ozu’s films use minimalist storytelling and an emphasis on character to paint a portrait of family life and the relationships between the generations.Made the year before his career defining masterpiece “Tokyo Story” (which will be released on Blu-ray by the BFI on 15 June) “The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice” is one of Yasujirô Ozu’s most beautiful domestic sagas, a subtly piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone.

Secrets and deceptions strain the already tenuous relationship of a childless, middle aged couple, as the wife’s city bred sophistication clashes with the husband’s small town simplicity, and a generational sea change in the form of their headstrong, modern niece sweeps over their household. Ozu’s expert grasp of family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humour and an expansiveness that moves the action from the home, to the...

The Great Gildersleeve Movie Collection

DVD

Warner Archive

1942, ’43, ’44 / 1.33:1 / 62, 63, 64, 63 min.

Starring Harold Peary, Jane Darwell, Freddie Mercer, Nancy Gates

Cinematography by Frank Redman, Jack MacKenzie

Directed by Gordon Douglas, Tim Whelan

Like the transition from silent movies to the talkies, the progression from radio to film was a rocky road for some performers. Bud Collyer and Daniel Chodos, the actors who lent their musclebound vocals to Superman and Doc Savage, would have been unthinkable modeling skin-tight long Johns or shredded undershirts on the silver screen. But when audiences first caught sight of Harold Peary as the rotund popinjay Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve there was immediate recognition. Peary was built for the part – he looked like a bowling pin in a double-breasted suit but had the self-awareness to describe his character as “a small man who thinks he’s a big man.” Gildersleeve was a pompous fool but he was our pompous fool.

Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...

Fred Astaire ca. 1935. Fred Astaire movies: Dancing in the dark, on the ceiling on TCM Aug. 5, '15, is Fred Astaire Day on Turner Classic Movies, as TCM continues with its “Summer Under the Stars” series. Just don't expect any rare Astaire movies, as the actor-singer-dancer's star vehicles – mostly Rko or MGM productions – have been TCM staples since the early days of the cable channel in the mid-'90s. True, Fred Astaire was also featured in smaller, lesser-known fare like Byron Chudnow's The Amazing Dobermans (1976) and Yves Boisset's The Purple Taxi / Un taxi mauve (1977), but neither one can be found on the TCM schedule. (See TCM's Fred Astaire movie schedule further below.) Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals Some fans never tire of watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing together. With these particular fans in mind, TCM is showing – for the nth time – nine Astaire-Rogers musicals of the '30s,...

Lana Turner movies: Scandal and more scandal Lana Turner is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, Saturday, August 10, 2013. I’m a little — or rather, a lot — late in the game posting this article, but there are still three Lana Turner movies left. You can see Turner get herself embroiled in scandal right now, in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), both the director and the star’s biggest box-office hit. More scandal follows in Mark Robson’s Peyton Place (1957), the movie that earned Lana Turner her one and only Academy Award nomination. And wrapping things up is George Sidney’s lively The Three Musketeers (1948), with Turner as the ruthless, heartless, remorseless — but quite elegant — Lady de Winter. Based on Fannie Hurst’s novel and a remake of John M. Stahl’s 1934 melodrama about mother love, class disparities, racism, and good cooking, Imitation of Life was shown on...

Sadie Frost, Gary Kemp, Phil Collins – they all started out in movies from the Children's Film Foundation

A forgotten catalogue of hundreds of British children's films, all shot in the school holidays from the 1950s to 1980s, is to be re-released after lying dormant while many of their young stars rose to fame.

Performers such as Phil Collins, Michael Crawford, Leslie Ash, Susan George, Sadie Frost and Gary Kemp all got their first screen work in Children's Film Foundation features, which entertained the nation's youth at Saturday morning cinema screenings. The British Film Institute has announced that it will be releasing the entire catalogue and screening many of the best features at special events which are sure to attract nostalgic fans and social historians.

"The early black-and-white films from the 1950s were rather middle-class and wholesome, so you can imagine the children throwing their ice cream tubs at the screen back then,...

Sex-obsessed newts, a vampire vine, slime moulds – nature films of the interwar wars focused not on big beasts in exotic places but on the world around us. Robert Macfarlane hails a golden age of natural history documentary.

In the summer of 1903, the hottest ticket in London was for the Alhambra Music Hall in Leicester Square, where a minute-long silent film called Cheese Mites was showing to packed houses. The film was the work of an amateur naturalist called Francis Martin Duncan, who had hit on the idea of pointing a motion-picture camera down a microscope. Cheese Mites, the result of his experiments in micro-cinematography, was a miniature B-movie masterpiece. An Edwardian gentleman sits at a table, browsing his newspaper through a reading glass while lunching on bread and cheese. He idly turns his glass upon his cheese and – horror! – discovers it to be seething with dozens of "great uncanny crabs...

It's a fading memory for the middle-aged, but gave a start to Phil Collins, Susan George, Michael Crawford and many future stars. And Keith Chegwin. It gave parents a kid-free break, too

The year is 1967. The place is your local ABC cinema. The event – the ABC Minors Children's Matinee, to which thousands of grateful parents have dispatched their offspring. First off is the ABC Minors song, the lyrics of which flash up on screen:

"We are the boys and girls all known as

Minors of the ABC

And every Saturday all line up

To see the films we like and shout aloud with glee

We like to laugh and have our sing-song

Such a happy crowd are we

We're all pals together

We're Minors of the ABC."

After this rousing number, the cinema's manager hosts some obligatory birthday singing and talent shows. Finally comes the moment the budding juvenile delinquents...