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2009 | 2004

9 articles from 2009

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BFI Announce December Events At Southbank, London

1 December 2009 11:00 AM, PST | Cinemaretro.com | See recent CinemaRetro news »

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the British Film Institute regarding their program of events for the month of December at the Southbank theatre facility in London. For full info and tickets visit the web site by clicking here. 

Blonde Venus, one of the films screened as part of the Von Sternberg tribute.

 

Josef Von Sternberg

This month we will celebrate the career of Josef von Sternberg – one of Hollywood’s most visionary directors – with a complete retrospective of his films. He was the man Marlene Dietrich called her master, and is perhaps best known for Underworld (1927), The Blue Angel (1930) and Macao (1952)

 

  Sally Potter

Sally Potter is one of the UK’s most innovative and original filmmakers, and we look forward to launching our comprehensive study of her career with a screening of Orlando (1993) followed by a Q&A »

- nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)

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Penelope and Pedro: Broken Embraces

17 November 2009 8:00 AM, PST | TribecaFilm.com | See recent Tribeca Film news »

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni. Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart. Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton... The cinema would be a lesser place without the classic films sprung from its great director/actor teams. Currently, the celebrated Spaniards, writer/director Pedro Almodóvar and his actress/muse Penelope Cruz, are on the verge of that mythic list, italics intended. That's not just a pun on Almodóvar's international breakthrough Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), but also a winking acknowledgement of his latest feature Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos), opening this week in select cities. In a film within that new film, the director reenacts crucial scenes from his own Women on the Verge. Here's the fascinating revision: Cruz plays the Carmen Maura role from that classic Oscar-nominated comedy. I would hate to downplay »

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The Forgotten: Gorgeous Lifelike Color By Deluxe

29 October 2009 6:58 AM, PDT | The Auteurs | See recent The Auteurs news »

 

Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake is always going to divide opinion, those who see it as a conceptual art statement being able to argue, quite reasonably, that its failure to do the things Hitchcock's original does—create a consistent story world, stylized but credible characters, a sense of doom, suspense—is exactly the proof needed of its success as a conceptual artifact, dramatically redundant yet stubbornly existent.

Would the same people say the same thing for Edward Dmytryk's The Blue Angel, a faithful yet utterly arbitrary remake of Josef Von Sternberg's Der blaue Engel. Sternberg's production, Germany's first sound film, is so iconic and so utterly of its time—it marks the beginning of the Marlene myth, as well as the end of silence—that any kind of remake seems like an exercise in redundancy, like the Coens's joke proposal to re-shoot Stanley Kramer's well-intentioned liberal »

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Cary Is Not To Be Taken For Granted

3 August 2009 12:23 AM, PDT | NYPost.com | See recent New York Post news »

'Everybody wants to be Cary Grant," the iconic actor is supposed to have once joked. "Even I want to be Cary Grant."

The suave Grant (1904-1986), born Archibald Leach in England, is the subject of a rare retrospective opening tonight at the Bam Rose Cinemas with one of his earliest leading-man assignments.

He's a playboy dallying with married woman Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's outrageous pre-code gem "Blonde Venus" (1932), which is best remembered for her appearance in a »

- By LOU LUMENICK

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SFSFF09—Underworld (1927) Introductory Remarks

14 July 2009 2:40 PM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

I first caught Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927) at the Pacific Film Archive von Sternberg retrospective earlier this year accompanied by Judith Rosenberg on piano.  I welcomed the opportunity to watch the film again projected on the Castro’s giant screen with live piano accompaniment by the indefatigable Stephen Horne for the specific intent of savoring the scene where “Feathers” McCoy (Evelyn Brent) first comes to the attention of “Rolls Royce” Wensel (Clive Brook); namely, by way of an ostrich feather shaken loose from McCoy’s outfit, drifting down to Wensel who is sweeping the floor below.  Entrances are rarely so insinuating.

Eddie Muller, the “Czar of Noir”, had the honors of introducing Underworld to its Sfsff audience.  Often asked—in his capacity as the Czar—what he considers to be the first film noir, Muller admitted he rarely answers the question because he considers trying to pin down the »

- Michael Guillen

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2009 San Francisco Silent Film Festival—Line-up Preview

7 July 2009 8:17 AM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

[Our thanks to Michael Hawley for this write-up.]

July is here—which means it’s time to jump aboard the time machine and set the dial for 1920s San Francisco.  The Sf Silent Film Festival (Sfsff) returns for its 14th glorious edition this weekend, and lucky Bay Area filmgoers (and scores of devoted out-of-towners) will get to relive the magnificent era of silent movies once more.

Sfsff is a first-rate act, which explains why it’s become the most prestigious annual event of its kind in the Americas.  How so?  First, you begin with a venue like the built-in-‘22 Castro Theater, perhaps the nation’s most beloved extant movie palace.  Next you program an eclectic, challenging and fun group of films and exhibit them with the best possible 35mm prints.  Then you hire the cream of internationally renowned silent movie musicians to accompany the films.  Throw in a printed program of scholarly essays, informative slideshows before each screening, »

- Michael Guillen

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'Moon' Director Will Go 'Mute'

29 June 2009 9:10 PM, PDT | CinemaSpy | See recent CinemaSpy news »

Award-winning director Duncan Jones can’t stay quiet about Mute, his mystery-thriller follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Moon.

In an interview with ScreenDaily.com, the British-born helmer said the upcoming project would revolve around a woman whose disappearance creates a mystery for her partner, who is a mute bartender.

"When she disappears, he has to go up against the city’s gangsters," said Jones, who is expected to start shooting Mute early next year.

While he was mostly tight-lipped about the new film, Jones did say it would have a bigger budget than Moon, a different tone and feel, and would feature an ensemble cast, whereas Moon revolved around one character.

"It will definitely be bigger than Moon, probably something up to $25 million," said Jones, who will be re-teaming up with Moon producer Stuart Fenegan of Liberty Films for Mute. "Moon is about alienation and isolation. The next one will have a different vibe. »

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Josef Von Sternberg: Eros And Abstraction—Shanghai Express (1932)

15 February 2009 3:22 PM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

It takes more than one viewing of Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932) to fully appreciate why Magdalen (Marlene Dietrich) changed her name to Shanghai Lily, the “notorious white flower of China.”  This is my third viewing and—as some say—therein lies the charm.

As Juliet Clark succinctly synopsizes in her capsule for Pacific Film Archive‘s ongoing von Sternberg retrospective: “In Sternberg’s fantasy of China, ‘the realism of place was given over to the loveliness of decor and the ambiguous iconography of the love goddess’ (David Thomson).  A train crossing this land of picturesque squalor becomes a political, moral, and romantic battleground where Shanghai Lily (Dietrich), ‘notorious white flower of China,’ faces a reckoning with her former lover Doc (Clive Brook).  A revolutionary episode advances the plot, but for Sternberg, suspense is a matter of sexual rather than political tension.  A hostage situation is a test of devotion, »

- Michael Guillen

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Josef Von Sternberg: Eros & Abstraction—Morocco (1930)

7 February 2009 11:32 AM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

Again, Heaven’s imperial rule is like some trader looking for beautiful pearls.  When that merchant finds one priceless pearl, he sells everything he owns and buys it.—Matthew 13:45-46.

The Father’s imperial rule is like a merchant who had a supply of merchandise and then found a pearl.  That merchant was prudent; he sold the merchandise and bought the single pearl for himself.—Thomas 76:1-2.

I found the system; but, I lost the pearl.—Laura Nyro, “Money”

One of my favorite themes from fairy tales is that of the false marriage.  And one of my favorite parables from Christian lore is that of the pearl of great value.  Conflated, they contrast the resonance of authentic desire against contrived desire and pose—not so much a conflict—but a tension between the sensual and the spiritual.  Especially at a time when marriages were prearranged, what could have »

- Michael Guillen

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2009 | 2004

9 articles from 2009

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