News

In today’s film news roundup, “Guest of Honour” and “Skin Deep: The Battle Over Morgellons” have found distribution and Screen Gems is developing “Urban Legend.”

Acquisitions

Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to Atom Egoyan’s drama, “Guest of Honour,” starring David Thewlis, Laysla De Oliveira and Luke Wilson.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and was an official selection at the Toronto, Vancouver, London, and Busan International Film Festivals. The film will have its U.S. premiere on Feb. 13 as the opening night selection of the Canada Now 2020 event at IFC Center in New York.

Thewlis portrays a health inspector in Hamilton, Ontario and De Oliveria plays a high school music teacher who has been incarcerated for inappropriate behavior with students. She rebuffs his efforts to secure an early release, convinced she needs to be punished for crimes she committed earlier. The daughter also...

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later. – Stanley Kubrick

17 years ago today, we lost perhaps the most influential director in cinema, Stanley Kubrick. There’s no shortage of videos and other materials (we’ve posted hours upon hours’ worth) regarding his meticulous process and the effect his work has had on generations of filmmakers, but while he continues to be a source of inspiration for both them and viewers, there’s also room to learn more. On the anniversary of his death, we have a collection of some of the finest resources.

Leading off with the crown jewels of today’s post, we have a nearly one-hour conversation with his widow Christiane Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and his long-time producer Jan Harlan. The trio...

Casablanca is rightfully considered one of the greatest films of all time, but even broken down into its granular aspects, it’s a masterful piece of work. From its crackling dialogue that’s been repeated and referenced ad infinitum within popular culture to its sweeping scope and the story’s palpable melancholy, its impact has been etched in the fabric of cinema. Gary Leva makes another persuasive case for its enduring legacy with a new 35-minute documentary about its production called Casablanca: An Unlikely Classic.

Gathering together cinematic stand-bys like Steven Spielberg and William Friedkin alongside various historians, former big wigs, and esteemed cinematographers and production designers, Leva painstakingly combs through all of the aspects that cemented Casablanca’s reputation. At this point, the praise is almost redundant given the canon of critics that have worshipped at director Michael Curtiz’s feet, but the documentary feels particularly special for the...

Sure, you’ve seen a bevy of his films—everything from “Casablanca” to “Mildred Pierce” to “Angels With Dirty Faces” and “The Adventures Of Robin Hood”—but what do you really know about Hungarian American director Michael Curtiz? He is, indeed, perhaps the greatest director you’ve never heard of and you’ve unknowingly gone on for years captivated by Erroll Flynn, James Cagney, and Humphrey Bogart without taking a second to learn about the man behind the camera. Read More: Watch: 35-Minute Documentary 'Casablanca: An Unlikely Classic' With Steven Spielberg, William Friedkin, More In this terrific 37-minute short documentary, Gary Leva explores what we don’t know about Curtiz, who made over 160 (!!) films in his brilliant, decade-spanning career. From humble beginnings in 1888, Curtiz worked his way up in show business, starting out as an actor and eventually making films in his native Austria-Hungary and Berlin. Curtiz’s work in America is unparalleled.

One doesn’t necessarily think of San Francisco as a site of cinematic innovation, but there’s a history that’s hard to argue against. But it’s more than Homeward Bound II. The city that once housed Muybridge would later serve as a hub of camaraderie, creativity, and inspiration among the form’s biggest figures — all in all, a spot that could stand alongside Paris and Hollywood in significance. This lineage was explored in Gary Leva‘s 2007 documentary entitled Fog City Mavericks, which managed to snag the likes of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola, Clint Eastwood, John Lasseter, Brad Bird, and more. [The Playlist]

Paired with it is a video essay on Coppola’s San Francisco movie, The Conversation, which combined the city’s geography and mood with larger — national and universal alike — matters of paranoia and insecurity. “They don’t make ’em like they used to” is an overused,...

Few movies have a lasting presence in their own decade, let alone seventy years later. “Casablanca,” however, is the quintessential American film: an unforgettable love story full of vulnerabilities, romance, and one-liners. What a tremendous hole would lie in the world of cinema if this film hadn’t been made, but truth be told, it almost wasn’t. During wartime, film studios in the 1930s and ‘40s showed the utmost patriotism — Warner Bros. being perhaps the most loyalist of all. The studios pumped out films the way factories concocted car parts; there were few classics among the assembly lines. When a story developer at Warner came across the play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” they ingeniously renamed it “Casablanca,” and so began the tale we know so very well today. Read More: Watch J.K. Simmons And Future Ghostbuster Kate McKinnon Reveal Alternate 'Casablanca' Ending On 'SNL' Gary Leva directs this...

Often overshadowed by the blinding lights of Hollywood just a few hours south, San Francisco is a city with a long cinematic legacy. In fact, it was there that Eadweard Moybridge invented stop-motion photography (to photograph a horse’s gallop), and then the zoopraxiscope, the first ever motion picture projection device. A century later, San Francisco would be the home base for some of the most influential cinematic auteurs in American history: George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, among others. Today, the city has become a hot spot of innovation, with much of the tech world settled just south of the city proper. But it hasn’t lost its cinematic leanings, with more and more animation studios taking root in the city. Read More: Watch: Short Doc ‘Vision Of A Future Passed: The Prophecy Of 2001’ All of this and much more is featured in the hyper-prolific Gary Leva’s feature-length 2007 documentary “Fog City Mavericks,...

Last week, we took a look at “Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001,” a 2007 documentary that explored the impact Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” had on other and later filmmakers. Today, to cap off the week, let’s examine '2001' through another lens — that of it’s inconsistently prophetic ability to predict the realities of a then decades-distant future. Directed by Gary Leva, the same documentarian who made 'Standing on the Shoulders…,' “Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophesy of 2001” compares the future Kubrick predicted when he made his film in the late 1960s to the “future” that we now live in. Turns out, there’s a lot the director correctly guessed. Read More: Video Essay Details How Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' Is A Response To Kubrick's '2001' “Kubrick and his team visualized space and the surface of the moon...

Documentarian and cinema historian Gary Leva interviewed an impressive roster of Hollywood’s most acclaimed filmmakers and experts in his short, “Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001.” Released as a feature on the 2007, two-disc, special DVD/Blu-Ray edition of Kubrick’s masterful “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the documentary highlights how that one film redefined cinema for generations of filmmakers to follow. Leva recently uploaded the short to Vimeo, so even those of us without the special release can now view it. Early on in the video, Sydney Pollack (who later starred in "Eyes Wide Shut") states that Kubrick “was always on the cutting edge, technically,” of which '2001' is perfect proof. It was a technological and aesthetic accomplishment unlike anything that had come before it. Attesting to this, George Lucas cites the movie as “hugely inspirational” to him; the visual nature of '2001' lit a...

  Movie-title maestro Saul Bass created some of the most memorable credits sequences in cinema during his 40-year career. The Man with the Golden Arm, North by Northwest and Psycho are just a few of the films Bass worked on, creating innovative, kinetic titles that blew old Hollywood's static and snooze-worthy sequences out of the water. If you want to know more about Bass and his dazzling work, we highly recommend checking out this 55-minute documentary called Title Champ by Gary Leva. Our friends at Film.com (by way of our favorite film Tumblr Cinephilia and Beyond) shared the video, which looks at Bass' contributions to cinema and presents interviews with Martin Scorsese and more. The Taxi Driver director discusses Bass' modern sensibility and groundbreaking...

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There's a real art to the movie title sequence, one that's all too often overlooked these days (think of how many movies this year have had truly memorable ones). And the master of them was Saul Bass. From films by Alfred Hitchcock to pictures by Martin Scorsese, Bass was behind many of the most distinctive and evocative title sequences, for some of the greatest films ever made.  We're big Bass fans here at the Playlist, of both his title sequences (we featured some of our favorites here) and of his underseen sole directorial effort "Phase IV," so we were delighted when our friends at Film.com dug up a documentary today called "Saul Bass: Title Champ." Clocking in at just under an hour, and directed by Gary Leva, we haven't seen it all the way through yet, but what we have seen is excellent stuff that we're looking forward to digging into more.

Chicago – Every seasoned movie lover can attest to having a favorite shot in Michael Curtiz’s 1942 classic “Casablanca,” a picture practically overflowing with indelible imagery. The first appearance of freedom fighter-turned-café owner Rick (Humphrey Bogart) decked out in a white tux, the tearful letter that turns to literal tears in a rainstorm, the final walk through the fog…all unforgettable.

Yet the shot that remains closest to my heart is the one that lingers on the face of Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), as she becomes hopelessly lost in the evocative notes and lyrics of a song from her past. No actress embodies earthy sensuality and misty-eyed passion quite like Bergman, who was at the peak of her luminous beauty at age 26. Her trancelike state of nostalgic longing never fails to mesmerize me, as her eyes convey what words could only feebly articulate.

Blu-ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

Unlike other landmarks of cinema history, “Casablanca...

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Warner Home Video:

Burbank, Calif., June 20, 2011 – Ben-Hur – William Wyler’s unforgettable epic spectacle, starring Charlton Heston, that won a record-setting 11 Academy Awards® [1] (1959) including Best Motion Picture, Best Actor and Best Director -- will make a dazzling debut on Blu-ray September 27 as

Ben-Hur 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Uce) from Warner Home Video (Whv).

An inspiration to generations of filmmakers with its legendary scale and scope, “50 years later filmmakers and film experts are still in awe of the film,” says Ben-Hur documentarian Gary Leva. People like Ridley Scott, Ernest Dickerson, and others told Leva how Wyler’s film inspired them to emulate the filmmaker years later. Even with today's technology, they still aren't sure how some of the scenes were able to be put on film. Scott, who directed Gladiator, said his...

If you've seen Gary Leva's 2007 documentary, Fog City Mavericks, you may have heard a few people in it assert that George Lucas' 1973 film, American Graffiti, had the first ever pop music soundtrack. But while American Graffiti was among the earlier films to take that route, it wasn't the first. Not by a long shot. All throughout the sixties, in fact, directors were moving toward a more pop oriented approach. Bruce Conner's 1962 short, Cosmic Ray—featuring atomic bomb newsreel mixed with original footage—was set to Ray Charles' "What'd I Say," and was a significant early step away from the...

Over the past 150 years, San Francisco had been the base of operations for nm1155956 autoEadweard Muybridge[/link] and Philo T. Farnsworth—inventors of the zoopraxiscope and television, respectively—as well as filmmakers as well-known as nm0000184 autoGeorge Lucas[/link] and nm0000338 autoFrancis Ford Coppola[/link], and as lesser-known as avant-garde legend nm0175126 autoBruce Conner[/link]. nm0505118 autoGary Leva[/link]'s documentary Fog City Mavericks tries to encompass them all, making a case for the city as a welcoming place for innovation and art. But while his argument is hard to dispute, the way Leva makes it is often confounding. Working non-chronologically, Leva starts with Muybridge's early experiments in high-speed photography, then jumps ahead to the founding of Lucas and Coppola's idealistic filmmaking collective American Zoetrope. From there, Fog City Mavericks keeps returning to the Zoetrope crew, while zigzagging around to pick up anecdotes about nm0000122 autoCharles Chaplin[/link]'s brief stint in San Francisco, as well...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- From careers to relationships, reality takes a few bites out of a quintet of young moderns in writer-director Gary Leva's uneven but crowd-pleasing "Plan B", a low-budget indie that premiered recently at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Jon Cryer headlines a talented cast in a well-intentioned but predictable ensemble comedy set during the holiday season. Catchy title aside, "Plan B" has limited theatrical prospects. Cable and video gigs look more promising.

Stuart (Cryer) is a "serious" author who has penned a commercial thriller and hopes for a career breakthrough. His friend Rick (Mark Matheisen) is a handsome but brainless actor constantly on the hunt for ladies.

From Halloween to New Year's Eve, Stuart and Rick Cross paths several times with married couple Clare (Lisa Darr) and Jack Lance Guest) and Clare's promiscuous sister Gina (Sara Mornell). The individual conflicts of the five all have comic elements that are sporadically entertaining.

Clare is waging an all-out campaign to get pregnant and her after-sex tactics to increase the odds are amusing. A professional pilot, Jack is training to fly jetliners when his eyesight suddenly presents a problem. With his own small plane, however, he starts a flying motel bedroom service for adventuresome lovers.

In a promising debut, Mornell has the showiest role as sultry Gina, who sports an eclectic string of lovers before realizing the obvious, she needs to find a good guy. Most of the action takes place at parties and group gatherings, which makes it all seem strained and even contrived.

Not even the likable Cryer can do much with the many flat jokes, but it's Matheisen who has the most thankless job. Rick is too stereotyped a character and his self-absorbed game plan is tedious. First-time director Leva does a competent job, but the whole meandering affair could have been a lot livelier.

PLAN B

Puny But Loud Prods.

Writer-director Gary Leva

Producers Nancy Joslin, Gary Leva,

Lulu Baskins-Leva

Executive producers Shelly & Sally Leva Burr

& Elizabeth Joslin

Director of photography Yoram Astrakhan

Production designer Carol Strober

Editor Jane Allison Fleck

Music Andrew Rose

Color/stereo

Cast:

Stuart Jon Cryer

Clare Lisa Darr

Rick Mark Matheisen

Jack Lance Guest

Gina Sara Mornell

Running time -- 102 minutes

No MPAA rating...