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The TCM Classic Film Festival, running this year from April 24-27 for its 16th annual edition, comes at a pivotal time for the network and the state of classic cinema as a whole.

As a new generation of cinephiles flock to vintage film screenings across Los Angeles and beyond, the TCM Classic Film Festival is meeting the moment with Tiktoks and creators helping spread the word.

Beginning in January, TCM hosted a video series titled “New Voices of Film,” where three content creators and impassioned cinema lovers presented a film of their choosing to program on the network. The selections ranged from the Douglas Sirk melodrama “All That Heaven Allows,” Billy Wilder’s “A Foreign Affair” to the pre-code classic “Merrily We Go to Hell.” But in order to reach younger audiences, TCM has also focused its efforts across social media, with short-form videos on TikTok and Instagram drawing bridges between contemporary and older films.

The Pearl episode of Revisited was Written and Narrated by Vannah Taylor, Edited by Juan Jimenez, Produced by Tyler Nichols and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

If there’s one thing Ti West continues to nail, it’s a retro aesthetic. Throughout his filmography, West channels the essence of ‘70s and ‘80s horror films, not only in the visual style he achieves through his attention to detail when it comes to production design, his frequent use of natural lighting and minimalist sound design but through his abilities as a storyteller. Films such as The Roost (2005), The House of the Devil (2009), and In a Valley of Violence (2016) can all be characterized by their sincere homages to the genres they are playing within while still exploring fresh, contemporary themes and bringing new twists to the table. His most recent endeavor, the X Trilogy, is no different. Not only did...

Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

by James Cameron-wilson

The career and reputation of Douglas Sirk has undergone many mutations. Famous for directing lush melodramas in the 1950s, he was dismissed and belittled by many contemporary critics, until seeing a revival of sorts in the 1970s sparked by European writers and filmmakers, in particular Jean-Luc Godard and then subsequently by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Later on, many notable directors doffed their hat to Sirk and paid homage to his 1950s’ soap operas, including Tarantino, Pedro Almodóvar, Wong Kar-wai, David Lynch, John Waters, Lars von Trier and in particular Todd Haynes, with his sumptuous imitation Far from Heaven, with Julianne Moore. When the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro accepted his Oscar for The Shape of Water, he even name-checked Douglas Sirk as an inspiration.

Sirk, the son of Danish parents, made his breakthrough as a stage director in 1920s’ Germany and then, when filmmakers...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of the Moving Image

See It Big! Let It Snow brings 35mm prints of All That Heaven Allows, Doctor Zhivago, and Meet Me In St. Louis.

Museum of Modern Art

A dual celebration of Marcello and Chiara Mastroianni continues, this weekend bringing films by Raúl Ruiz and Marco Bellocchio.

Anthology Film Archives

A look at Robert Frank and his influences continues, including Chantal Akerman’s Toute une nuit and Blue Velvet on 35mm, while Scenes from the Streets begins.

Roxy Cinema

The New World and The Magnificent Ambersons shows on 35mm; Hardcore plays Friday and Saturday, the latter day bringing a Paul Schrader Q&a; Eastern Promises and Paul Verhoeven’s Elle also screen.

Metrograph

Lost In Translation, 2046, Phantom Thread, and Brokeback Mountain play on 35mm; The Holidays at Metrograph, It Looks Pretty from a Distance, and This...

Filmmaker Tyler Taormina quickly fell in love with IFC Films’ idea for how to market his merry-and-bright feature. The indie distributor’s trailer for “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” plays as a full-on throwback to how holiday season comedies used to be advertised, complete with baby boomer doo-wop, a long list of grinning cast members and a warm narrator promising that, “It’s more than a holiday. It’s a gift for the whole family.” But the nostalgic packaging came with an unforeseen side effect.

“A lot of the people online are like, ‘Oh, I thought it was a horror movie.’ It was a very common reaction that was not at all thought of,” Taormina shares. “Earnest nostalgia is not able to be detected. The irony is expected. It bummed me out.”

No killer is mucking up the holiday in “Miller’s Point,” now playing in theaters after premiering...

It was the day after Halloween, and at The Grove in Los Angeles, Christmas decorations had already been rolled out and strung up. It was fitting for the interview I was about to have with filmmaker and musician Tyler Taormina, who was in between travels for his most recent work, “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” but rather than sit outside and enjoy the ambience, I asked if he’d like to head to Barnes & Noble for the first day of their annual November Criterion Collection sale. Seeing his eyes light up with excitement, I realized I had my answer.

Taormina and I were a few years apart at Emerson College in Boston, and though we’d never met, I found an unmistakable familiarity with him as we started to chat and look through Blu-rays and DVDs. Perhaps it resulted from being shaped at the same institution, or maybe...

Romance is complicated. The meshing together of two or more people isn’t designed to be a smooth process and art has reflected that for generations, most recently in the new rom-com “A Family Affair.” In honor of the film dropping, IndieWire has compiled a list of the best age-gap romance films to enjoy after watching Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron’s jaunt within the genre. From writer Carrie Solomon and “P.S. I Love You” director Richard Lagravenese, “A Family Affair” follows a self-absorbed movie star (Efron) who ends up in a whirlwind Hollywood romance with the relatively older mom (Kidman) of his 24 year-old assistant (Joey King). Efron returns to full heartthrob mode following a dark, dramatic turn in “The Iron Claw” and reunites with his “Paperboy” co-star to charming results.

In addition to his directorial work, Lagravenese is also known for his romantic screenwriting work with “The Bridges of Madison County...

By the time he died at 59 on October 2, 1985 as the most famous early casualty of the AIDS crisis, Rock Hudson had unwittingly become more than just a tragic victim of a horrible disease; he was also one of the first star actors of his generation to be outed as gay. It was something he zealously guarded by necessity in order to remain a star. It’s at the center of the HBO/Max film documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” which paints a fascinating but bittersweet portrait of the film icon’s life in the closet. “It goes back to the ethics of the day,” believes the film’s director Stephen Kijak (pronounced “Kayak”). “One didn’t speak of those things.” But a code of silence also helped Hudson keep his secret across decades. “There was such goodwill around him,” he adds. “He was notoriously the nicest man in Hollywood.

There’s no shortage of things to watch this month at Prime Video and Freevee! The Amazon streamers head into May with a collective hundred-plus new titles, channels, and sports streams available to watch throughout the month, from the new Anne Hathaway-starred rom-com “The Idea of You” to Thursday night 2024 WNBA regular season games after the season opener on Tuesday, May 14.

Ready to watch? Check out The Streamable’s top-to-watch picks this month, and find out everything coming to Prime Video and Freevee in May!

30-Day Free Trial $8.99+ / month amazon.com What are the 5 Best Shows and Movies Coming to Prime Video and Freevee in May 2024? “The Idea of You” | Thursday, May 2

Michael Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt adapt Robinne Lee’s sexy, funny, and contemporary love story with Anne Hathaway playing Solène, a 40-year-old single mom who begins an unexpected romance with 24-year-old Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the lead singer...

With its list of May 2024 releases, Amazon Prime Video is giving us the kindest gift of all: cougar Anne Hathaway.

May 2 sees the premiere of The Idea of You, a romantic-comedy that features Hathaway as a 40-year-old mom finding romance with a 24-year-old boy band singer (Nicholas Galitzine). Having saved the medium of film forever, Prime Video is celebrating with some big time library titles this month as well. American Fiction and BlacKkKlansman arrive on May 14 and will be followed by Creed and Pearl: An X-traordinary Origin Story on May 16.

For its TV offerings, Prime is leading off with Outer Range season 2 on May 16. This James Brolin sci-fi Western will continue the mysteries of the strange happenings on Thanos’ ranch. Reality TV fans will be able to enjoy the Daniel Tosh-hosted competition series The Goat on May 9.

Here’s everything coming to Prime Video and Freevee in April – Amazon...

Douglas Sirk was a German-born director active in the 1930s and '50s. Although he dabbled in Westerns, war movies, and comedies, he is most famous for his melodramas, including All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind. These movies were commercially successful but dismissed by reviewers on release. However, Sirk's critical standing improved significantly over the intervening decades, to the point that he is now frequently ranked among the greatest filmmakers of the 1950s.

Courtesy of Kino Lorber

by Chad Kennerk

Set in the 1920s, Has Anybody Seen My Gal? gets its name from the once-popular jazz song recorded by the California Ramblers in 1925. Loosely based upon the Eleanor Porter novel Oh Money! Money! (she was also the author behind Pollyanna), the 1952 jukebox musical comedy was given the full Technicolor treatment – a visual bee’s knees in Kino Lorber’s sterling release.

The Universal Pictures title makes good use of Twenties tunes such as ‘Tiger Rag,’ ‘When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along,’ ‘It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More,’ ‘Gimme a Little Kiss, Will Ya, Huh?’ - and of course, ‘Has Anybody Seen My Gal?’. It was directed by studio regular Douglas Sirk, who would go on to make his name with lush, slyly ironic melodramas such as Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind (all with Rock Hudson), There's Always Tomorrow,...

Documentary casts the movie star as a painful figure who inspired a new dialogue about Aids, but doesn’t do much to examine his Republican politics

The title of this efficient documentary, patching together archive footage with off-camera interview material, is naturally taken from the 1955 romantic drama All That Heaven Allows, directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Rock Hudson opposite Jane Wyman; it is a movie – and a genre – long since rescued from critical condescension. Hudson did indeed seem to have all that heaven allowed: an almost preternatural handsomeness with something like Cary Grant’s looks and pure movie-star glow, overlaid with a granite masculinity, and a cool, insouciant style, which appeared to enclose an enigma long before his gay identity and his Aids diagnosis was confirmed at the very end of his life.

Even when he went out of style during the American new wave, as the scuffed-up authenticity of Pacino,...

The matinee idol’s death in 1985 changed the public’s perception of Aids. Yet in life, the golden age actor was anything but an activist

Gore Vidal’s reaction to the news of Truman Capote’s death in 1984 is well known. “Good career move,” the writer said. Rock Hudson, once the most bankable star in Hollywood, died the following year – like Capote, he was 59 – but the manner of his death and the revelations that preceded it have deterred anyone from applying Vidal’s line to him. Looked at coldly from a 21st-century vantage point, though, Hudson’s death was a good career move, deepening his persona in ways that would never otherwise have happened. The actor died of complications from Aids, having been outed as gay months beforehand. His sexuality had been an open secret within the industry for decades: his pool parties, described as “blond bacchanalias”, were legendary. The public,...

Universal Pictures has debuted a poignant trailer for the upcoming documentary on a Hollywood legend ‘Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed.’

The documentary is an intimate portrait of actor Rock Hudson, one of Hollywood’s most celebrated leading men of the 1950’s and ‘60’s and an icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age, whose diagnosis and eventual death from AIDS in 1985 shocked the world, subsequently shifting the way the public perceived the pandemic.

Directed by celebrated documentary filmmaker Stephen Kijak the film features a wealth of interviews from Doris Day, Linda Evans, Piper Laurie, Douglas Sirk and Ross Hunter who all worked alongside Rock Hudson, in addition to interviews with Rock Hudson’s friends Armistead Maupin and Allison Anders, and author of All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson, Mark Griffin.

Hudson became a number one box-office superstar in sweeping melodramas like ‘All That Heaven Allows,’ ‘Giant’ (starring opposite...

The most important thing about “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” is that, within the essential act of reclamation it provides for the star, it doesn’t just write off the Hollywood icon’s life as sad. That’s a remarkable thing for a documentary in which its last 40 minutes are as harrowing a depiction of AIDS in the ’80s there’s been in a film since “How to Survive a Plague.”

Certainly, it’s infuriating and upsetting on many levels: that Hudson wasn’t allowed to fly on a commercial airliner because of his diagnosis and had to rent an Air France Boeing 747 at the cost of $250,000 to return home to Los Angeles from Paris as it became clear his experimental treatment there had failed. And the revelation that his friend Nancy Reagan even urged her husband to deny him treatment at a military hospital is beyond enraging.

Stephen Kijak...

Rock Hudson was one of the biggest stars of the 1950’s and 60s: the most handsome leading man who romanced the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, Jane Wyman, Barbara Rush, Julie Andrews and Gina Lollobrigida on the silver screen. But he was living a secret life off-screen — he was gay.

The new Max/HBO documentary “Rock Hudson All That Heaven Allowed” examines his double life and the lengths that were taken to ensure his LGBTQ+ identity wasn’t revealed It wasn’t until 1985 did the truth make the headlines when he became the first famous Hollywood star to die of AIDs.

Barbara Rush, who appeared in three films with Hudson including 1954’s “Magnificent Obsession,” told me in a 2019 L.A. Times interview that it was no secret in Tinseltown that he was gay. “His agent [Henry Willson] decided that there had been enough about the rumors about Rock being gay.

It’s heaven on earth for Golden Age of Hollywood fans. Coming Wednesday, June 28, 2023, HBO and Max will release “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” an intimate Original Documentary about one of Hollywood’s most celebrated leading men. The silver screen superstar starred in major blockbuster comedies and drams in the 1950s and 1960s, including “Pillow Talk,” “Giant,” and “All That Heaven Allows.” A symbol of masculinity and heterosexuality during the age, the documentary will detail the actors’ career and secret personal life as a gay man. “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” will debut on HBO and will be available to stream on Max on Wednesday, June 28, 2023, at 9 p.m. Et. You can watch with a 7-Day Free Trial of Max.

How to Watch 'Rock Hudson: All that Heaven Allowed' When: Wednesday, June 28, 2023 Where: Max Stream: Watch with a 7-Day Free Trial of Max. 7-Day Free Trial...

During his lifetime, Rock Hudson was a model for American masculinity. That changed after his death, when the strapping, straight-acting (but occasionally sensitive) hunk from Winnetka became the poster boy for Hollywood homophobia: a closeted star who’d been forced to play a role his entire career that wasn’t true to himself, on screen and off. “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” treats that compromise as a tragedy, leaning on the fact Hudson died of AIDS to underscore the injustice, but Stephen Kijak’s documentary does him a disservice, reducing Hudson’s career — in exactly the way he went so far out of his way to avoid — to the dimension of his sexuality.

Built around interviews with a handful of former lovers and friends, Kijak spills private details from Hudson’s personal life, ranging from whom he shagged to how he arranged such trysts in the first place. A...

Rock Hudson’s life as a closeted Hollywood icon is now captured in documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed.”

Helmed by Stephen Kijak (“We Are X,” “Shoplifters of the World”), the HBO film charts the “Giant” heartthrob’s career as an actor of the studio system until his final role in “Dynasty” ahead of his 1985 death from AIDS.

Among the most iconic Hollywood men of the 1950s and ’60s, Rock Hudson embodied masculinity and straightness until his diagnosis and death from AIDS in 1985 shattered those notions in the eyes of the public. “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” tells the story of Hudson as a man who lived a double life; while his public persona was meticulously curated by his handlers, controlled by the studio system, and falsely anchored by a lavender marriage, Hudson had to keep his homosexuality behind closed doors due to anti-gay sentiments at the time,...

Swiss director Maxime Rappaz isn’t sure if there is more space for stories about more mature women these days. But he is certainly willing to give it a try.

“I am fascinated by that phase in someone’s life,” he tells Variety, opening up about his fiftysomething protagonist played byJeanne Balibar.

“I want as many people as possible to see it, that’s for sure. But also women who think it’s already too late for them to change things. If this film can trigger something in them, it would make me so happy.”

In his feature debut “Let Me Go,” the opening film of Cannes’ Acid sidebar, Claudine keeps dedicating herself to her differently abled, Princess Diana-obsessed son.

But every once in a while, she puts on the same white dress and heads to the same hotel in the mountains, where she meets and romances men. The shorter their stay,...

As many a therapist’s coach has witnessed, in favour of running day to day as a cohesive unit many a family opt for the (perhaps not healthiest) strategy of pushing the simmering tensions they hold against one another to the background. But what if there was a way for you to have a much need cathartic vent, free from the worry of hurting the feelings of those you hold dearest? Filmmaker Daniel Turvil may have found a possible solution with This Much, So Far, his short film about a suburban dad who gathers a stand in cast of life-like dolls so he can deliver a torrent of unflattering home truths to his kin. It’s a film that does a great job of deploying the talents of actor Adam James, whose frenzied performance of Turvil’s high concept script is just as terrifying as it is captivating. Dn is...

When you have an adult animated series that's inspired by the like of Indiana Jones and "National Treasure," it would make sense if classic adventure movies provided a lot of inspiration. When it comes to Andy Samberg and Neil Campbell's new series "Digman!" on Comedy Central, that's certainly the case. But you might be surprised by the hefty helping of sci-fi that's thrown into the mix, and along with that come some unexpected allusions to other classic movies. Even films outside of the adventure and sci-fi arenas couldn't escape the comedic clutches of Rip Digman, a washed up archaeologist living in a world where these adventurers are huge celebrities. 

Leading up to the premiere of "Digman!" on Comedy Central this week, we spoke with series co-creators Andy Samberg and Neil Campbell, who revealed some of the surprising classic movies that inspired their absurd adventure antics in the eight episodes...

“These three films, they’re all masterful. They’re extraordinary films, and they’re actually quite different.” It’s mid-July in Switzerland and Todd Haynes is talking melodrama: “The three masterworks for me, and to see them at a festival like Locarno, which is very rare, are Written on The Wind, Imitation of Life, and All That Heaven Allows.” Perhaps more than even the cinema of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes’ films have so often intertwined with those of the late Douglas Sirk, a director whose peerless studio work from the 1940s and 1950s have been a rich source of aesthetic and emotional inspiration, most clearly seen in Haynes’ 2002 masterpiece Far From Heaven.

“Imitation of Life is a film of such remarkable resonance,” Haynes explains on a warm summer morning in the Hotel Belvedere. “I think its themes of race and pretending, of passing, and misperceptions of what you are and who you are,...

William Reynolds, an actor-turned-businessman best known for his six seasons starring on the TV series “The F.B.I.,” has died following a short illness. He was 90.

Reynolds portrayed F.B.I. agent Tom Colby on the hit ABC series from 1967 to 1973, joining the show in its third season. The role proved to be his last, as he pursued a business career beginning in the 1970s thereafter.

Born in 1931 in Los Angeles, Reynolds attended Pasadena City College and began acting in 1951. Signed to Universal, he appeared in the film “Carrie” (1952) among several other small parts in movies. That same year he was drafted into the military, but he resumed his work in Hollywood in 1955 with films like “Gunsmoke,” “Cult of the Cobra” and Douglas Sirk’s “All That Heaven Allows.”

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By the late 1950s he transitioned into television roles, starring in...

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William Reynolds, who portrayed crime-stopping Special Agent Tom Colby opposite Efrem Zimbalist Jr. on the final seven seasons of the ABC crime drama The F.B.I., has died. He was 90.

Reynolds died Wednesday in Wildomar, California, from non-covid 19 complicated pneumonia, a family spokesperson announced.

The Los Angeles native also starred in three other series, all short-lived: as the trumpet player on the 1959 NBC drama Pete Kelly’s Blues, created by Jack Webb; on ABC’s The Islanders, a 1960-61 adventure show set in the East Indies; and on the World War II-set The Gallant Men, which ran on ABC from 1962-63.

In 1960, Reynolds memorably played a WWII officer who can’t ignore an ominous light on the faces of his men destined to be killed in the acclaimed Twilight Zone season-one episode “The Purple Testament.”

On the big screen, he appeared in the...

When German director Douglas Sirk fled the Nazis in 1937 and planted his flag in Hollywood, he quickly became a reliable studio craftsman equally adept at war films, musicals (Slightly French), comedies and Westerns. Nevertheless, today his reputation rests almost entirely on the melodramas made in the last five years of his career: movies like Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, and The Tarnished Angels, whose heightened emotions justify Sirk’s most delirious flights of visual fancy. A brilliant smuggler, Sirk had it […]

The post Written on the Wind, The Devil Strikes at Night, and Dexter: New Blood: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When German director Douglas Sirk fled the Nazis in 1937 and planted his flag in Hollywood, he quickly became a reliable studio craftsman equally adept at war films, musicals (Slightly French), comedies and Westerns. Nevertheless, today his reputation rests almost entirely on the melodramas made in the last five years of his career: movies like Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, and The Tarnished Angels, whose heightened emotions justify Sirk’s most delirious flights of visual fancy. A brilliant smuggler, Sirk had it […]

The post Written on the Wind, The Devil Strikes at Night, and Dexter: New Blood: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

We revived the long dormant "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" club last week with Nightmare Alley and tonight the film is Douglas Sirk's melodrama All That Heaven Allows (1955). It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and Highly recommended. The drama features Jane Wyman as a New England widow and Rock Hudson as the younger gardener she falls for. He doesn't care much for societal expectations but she's awfully concerned about what her neighbors and grown children think. While the film was underappreciated in its time (zero Oscar nominations for this beauty?!) it has since grown into being an influential classic, famously homaged in Far From Heaven (2002). (Each week on Best Shot anyone who would like to join is welcome to post their choice for the chosen film. We'll add more shots if any more come in.)

Click on these "Best Shots" to see why these players chose it.

by Nathaniel R

Cary: I suppose these old beams are rotted.

Ron: No they're oak. They're good for another 100 years

Do any of you remember that short burst of retro Douglas Sirk-enthusiasm in 2002? Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon (all of whom cite Sirk as an influence) all had new very stylized films out, and the lost art of melodrama was suddenly in the air and being discussed. Sirk was briefly exalted. Those were good times. It should happen every few years, trotting Sirk back out again, to marvel at his gifts.

Realism has not always been the most prized end-game of art, but for most of our lives the consensus, from critics audiences and awards bodies has wildly favoured it. Give us something real and gritty! Melodrama, then, is a hard ask for many moviegoers though we've never understood why...

“I’m filthy — period!” With an ideal cast — Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone — director Douglas Sirk tells a tale with everything the ’50s wouldn’t allow — lust, nymphomania, impotence, the works. It’s perhaps Sirk’s most accomplished, self-contained masterpiece — a glamorous soap with absorbing characters caught in a cycle of unfulfilled desires. An oil dynasty comes tumbling down because the heir is “tortured by a secret that made him lash out at all he loved!” I keep expecting bathos, but this great show makes its world come alive.

Written on the Wind

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 96

1956 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 99 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 1, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith, Grant Williams, Robert J. Wilke, Edward Platt, Harry Shannon, John Larch, Joseph Granby, Roy Glenn, Maidie Norman, William Schallert, Kevin Corcoran, Cynthia Patrick.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Art Directors: Robert Clatworthy,...

Alfred Hitchcock puts Jane Wyman in harm’s way, as she tries to rescue her unworthy boyfriend Richard Todd from a murder charge. Is Jane proving her love, or are both of them being manipulated by a scheming actress, Marlene Dietrich? This is the movie in which Hitch inflicts a ‘frump complex’ on Ms. Wyman — she looks demoralized whenever she shares the screen with Dietrich. It’s also the movie that ponders the cinematic concept of ‘The Lying Flashback,’ which made perfect sense to Hitchcock but frustrated his audience. Also starring Michael Wilding, Alastair Sim and a cherry-picked list of English acting royalty.

Stage Fright

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1950 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 110 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date January 25, 2022 / 21.99

Starring: Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, Kay Walsh, Miles Malleson, Joyce Grenfell, André Morell, Patricia Hitchcock, Alfie Bass, Irene Handl. Lionel Jeffries.

Cinematography:...

Another month, another Criterion Channel lineup. In accordance with Black History Month their selections are especially refreshing: seven by Melvin Van Peebles, five from Kevin Jerome Everson, and Criterion editions of The Harder They Come and The Learning Tree.

Regarding individual features I’m quite happy to see Abderrahmane Sissako’s fantastic Bamako, last year’s big Sundance winner (and Kosovo’s Oscar entry) Hive, and the remarkably beautiful Portuguese feature The Metamorphosis of Birds. Add a three-film Laura Dern collection (including the recently canonized Smooth Talk) and Pasolini’s rarely shown documentary Love Meetings to make this a fine smorgasboard.

See the full list of February titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

Alan & Naomi, Sterling Van Wagenen, 1992

All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk, 1955

The Angel Levine, Ján Kadár, 1970

Babylon, Franco Rosso, 1980

Babymother, Julian Henriques, 1998

Bamako, Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006

Beat Street, Stan Lathan, 1984

Blacks Britannica, David Koff, 1978

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,...

Celebration of German Hollywood legend promises a fresh perspective on his life and work.

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival is set to explore the life and work of legendary German Hollywood director Douglas Sirk for the retrospective of its 75th edition, running August 3-13 this year.

The celebration of his work will coincide with the 35th anniversary of the death of the filmmaker whose classic melodramas include Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, There’s Always A Tomorrow, Written On The Wind, A Time To Love And Die and Imitation Of Life.

Born in Hamburg in 1897 as Hans Detlef Sierck,...

Writer, director and actress Rebecca Miller discusses a few of her favorite films with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002)

The Ballad Of Jack And Rose (2005)

The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee (2009)

Maggie’s Plan (2015)

Explorers (1985)

The Way We Were (1973)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

Annie Hall (1977)

Repulsion (1965)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Knife In The Water (1962)

The Tenant (1976)

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Persona (1966)

The Magician (1958)

Hour Of The Wolf (1968)

The Virgin Spring (1960)

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Shining (1980)

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Regarding Henry (1991)

Angela (1995)

Badlands (1973)

Casino (1995)

On The Waterfront (1954)

My Dinner with Andre (1981)

Jules and Jim (1962)

The Bitter Tears Of Petra von Kant (1972)

Wings Of Desire (1987)

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Married To The Mob (1988)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Dune (1984)

Imitation Of Life (1934)

Imitation Of Life (1959)

Written On The Wind (1956)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

All That Heaven Allows...

The Chalk Garden

Blu ray

1964 / 106 min. / 1:85:1

Starring Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills, John Mills

Cinematography by Arthur Ibbetson

Directed by Ronald Neame

Julie Andrews thrived in the role of governess—even when pitted against the Nazis in The Sound of Music she found plenty of time for sing-alongs—the same for Mary Poppins where the greatest threat was Dick Van Dyke’s British accent. But Deborah Kerr was never so lucky in the job; as the tutor assigned to a pair of possibly possessed tykes in The Innocents, she struggled as much with her own demons as the children’s. She still hadn’t learned her lesson when she signed on as companion to a troubled child in 1964’s The Chalk Garden. Kerr’s presence, along with Hayley Mills, Dame Edith Evans, and Hayley’s dad John, may seem inviting, but beware—the production is in the heavy hands...

The most interesting aspect of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice (in the Spotlight programme of the New York Film Festival), starring Tilda Swinton, is her DVD collection. Or is it his? Douglas Sirk’s Written On The Wind and All That Heaven Allows, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (Volume 1 or 2), Blake Edwards’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread - do they signal that what is to come is also a story of melodrama and revenge, loneliness and grief and powerful infatuation? Yes. On the bookshelves we see F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night and Almodóvar inspirations past (Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness; three of her short stories became his Julieta) and future (he is working on an adaptation of A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin for 2022).

Swinton, always a...

A freshly minted English-language Almodóvar melodrama starring Tilda Swinton, “The Human Voice” would be one of the hottest tickets at the Venice Film Festival if it weren’t for the small point that it is just 30 minutes long. Still, it’s not size that counts, but what you do with it, and Almódovar does so much in half an hour that it is bound to be rated as one of the Festival’s highlights, anyway. This is the pure, distilled essence of both the veteran director and the actress. Feast your eyes on those mustard-coloured kitchen cabinets! Bow down before those leopard-print stilettos! Any more than 30 minutes might have been too much to take.

“Freely adapted” from the play by Jean Cocteau, the film begins, after a brief, surreal prologue, with Swinton browsing in a hardware store. (Check out that suitcase-sized black handbag! Place your order for that blue double-breasted trouser suit!

The Oscar winning co-writer and producer of Brokeback Mountain takes us on a cinematic journey through her life, and talks about the pleasures of writing with Larry McMurtry and Joe Bonnano, and what Ken Kesey’s favorite movie was.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Good Night, And Good Luck (2005)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Red River (1948)

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Hud (1963)

Piranha (1978)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

They Drive By Night (1940)

Kings Row (1942)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)

The Grapes of Wrath (1942)

Buffalo Bill (1944)

Laura (1944)

Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950)

The Day of the Triffids (1963)

Moby Dick (1956)

Village of the Damned (1960)

Written on the Wind (1956)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956)

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Brazil (1985)

Lost In La Mancha (2002)

The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996)

The Fisher King (1991)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

A History of Violence...

Kino Lorber unleashes their second volume of forgotten film noir classics with Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema II which includes three distinctly different titles from the 1950s, including Thunder on the Hill (1951), The Price of Fear (1956) and The Female Animal (1958), each containing their own notable nuggets among their cast members and directors.

The gem of the collection is Thunder on the Hill, a 1951 melodrama from Douglas Sirk, which by comparison’s standards is noir-light. The German émigré is of course most noted for a string of 1950s melodramas which would set the inspirational standards for a host of future international auteurs, with items such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), and his 1959 swan song Imitation of Life (the first and last of those being remakes of John M.…...

The life and career of Rock Hudson gets a revisionist look in Ryan Murphy’s new limited series “Hollywood.” The Oscar-nominated actor made a name for himself as a hunky leading man in romantic comedies, melodramas and adventure flicks. While you’re binging Murphy’s newest show, let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Hudson spent years as a supporting player and leading man in B-pictures before shooting to stardom in Douglas Sirk‘s soap opera satire “Magnificent Obsession” (1954). Shot in glossy Technicolor with a sweeping musical score, the film was the first of many the actor made with the German-born auteur, including “All That Heaven Allows” (1955), “Written on the Wind” (1956), and “The Tarnished Angels” (1957). Trashed by critics and adored by audiences in their time, these works have found a second life as clever subversions of American values, influencing filmmakers such as Pedro Almodovar and Todd Haynes.

Exclusive: Chris Albrecht has teamed with Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter and Pose executive producer Sherry Marsh for Tokyo Underworld, a crime drama set in Japan. It marks one of the first projects for Legendary Global, the television venture between Legendary and Albrecht launched in December, which is focused on developing, financing and producing premium international scripted programming.

Legendary Global has acquired the rights to Robert Whiting’s book Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan, with Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Winter set to write and executive produce the adaptation and Emmy nominee Marsh serving as executive producer.

Tokyo Underworld is the true story of Nick Zapetti, a streetwise 25-year-old Italian-American GI who relocated to war-ravaged Japan in the aftermath of World War 2 to become the undisputed king of the underground black market. Through a mixture of violence, cunning, and old-fashioned wit,...

The desire to have the world disappear overnight, leaving one alone with a devoted lover, undergirds many a melodrama, from All That Heaven Allows (1955) to The Bridges of Madison County (1995). It is also the bold, rather literal inspiration of Ulrich Köhler’s In My Room—an astonishingly protean film that begins as a minor-key character study of sad-sack, forty-something Berliner Armin (Hans Löw), before arriving at a place of strange, apocalyptic wonderment. Given the German director’s typically dogged, process-oriented realism, explicit references to Sirk’s Technicolor romance and Eastwood’s passionate two-hander—both of which emerge in the film’s later half—might seem misplaced. But it is this very tension between and union of opposites that will come to define Köhler’s fourth feature.When the film opens, though, we are faced with a reversal of a more banal sort. Armin, who works as a TV cameraman, makes...

One of the strangest ‘uplifting moral tales’ of the 1950s was a huge hit, and launched Rock Hudson as a major star. Criterion’s deluxe presentation puts it on a par with world cinema, mawkish Kitsch-o-Rama and all. Comes with a restored copy of the slightly less head-spinning 1935 version, too. Co-stars Jane Wyman, Barbara Rush, Agnes Moorehead, and Otto Kruger, whose moral guidance has something to do with ‘contacting one’s power source.’ Oh, it’s about recharging my iPhone!

Magnificent Obsession

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 457

1954 / Color / 2.00:1 anamorphic widescreen / 108 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 20, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Agnes Moorehead, Otto Kruger.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Film Editor: Milton Carruth

Original Music: Frank Skinner

Written by Robert Blees from an original screenplay by Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason, George O’Neil from the novel by Lloyd C. Douglas

Produced by Ross Hunter

Directed...

Exclusive: In a competitive situation, Universal Television and producer Sherry Marsh have optioned the rights to Bruce Holsinger’s hot new novel The Gifted School for TV series development. A search is underway for a writer to pen the adaptation.

An instant bestseller, The Gifted School echoes the recent college admissions scandal, with NPR’s book review describing it as“ripped-from-the-headlines parental scheming” and “a seventh-grade variation” on the drama uncovered by Operation Varsity Blues.

Set in a fictional Colorado enclave of over-entitled families, The Gifted School depicts parenting as a competitive sport. In the book, four women who have been friends for over a decade, the Quad, find their lives turned upside down when a competitive charter school for “exceptionally gifted children” opens its doors in their pristine Colorado town. When one of their children launches a research project to help his admission odds, a secret is...

There remains a dearth of unappreciated titles from German émigré Douglas Sirk’s lengthy filmography, which basically includes anything outside of his seminal Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s—films would influence the output of more contemporary international auteurs, from Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Todd Haynes. Sirk is now best renowned for a quartet of iconic titles, including Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956) and his final masterpiece, Imitation of Life (1959), itself a remake of an earlier 1934 Claudette Colbert film directed by John M. Stahl. While some of his English language noirs of the 1940s have been recuperated, such as the Lucille Ball headlined Lured (1947), his German period remains neglected, and perhaps more surprisingly, several other 1950s works which starred his plethora of regular players.…...

Another lacerating depiction of the values of post-war middle-class Americans from Douglas Sirk, who Universal seemed to regard merely as their house soap-opera specialist. Once again a long-suffering spouse is put through the ringer; here it’s widow Jane Wyman taking flak from the country club set as well as her selfish kids for her affair with much younger free spirit Rock Hudson.

The post All That Heaven Allows appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Universal Pictures, moving ahead with its Rock Hudson biopic “All That Heaven Allows,” is in talks with Richard Lagravenese to write the screenplay.

The studio bought the movie rights last year to Mark Griffin’s “All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson.” Greg Berlanti is attached to direct and will produce alongside Sarah Schechter for Berlanti Film Corp. and Sherry Marsh for Marsh Productions Entertainment.

Hudson was one of the leading movie stars of the 1950s and ’60s, with credits on “Magnificent Obsession,” “Pillow Talk,” “All That Heaven Allows,” “Send Me No Flowers,” and the James Dean western “Giant,” for which he received an Oscar nomination. Hudson successfully transitioned to television in the ’70s in the long-running series “McMillan & Wife” and “Dynasty.”

He remained discreet about his sexual orientation throughout his life and died of complications from AIDS in 1985.

Berlanti is a prolific television producer with credits on “Dawson’s Creek,...

Is the new horror/action film Overlord worth your time? Check out the latest episode of The Casual Cinecast to find out! 

If you're a long time listener of The Casual Cinecast then you know the drill. The fellows start their episode out, as always, with their What's On Our Minds segment where they discuss the film, TV and other media they've been consuming over the last week. This week Justin purchased and watched the Criterion Collection blu ray edition of All That Heaven Allows from Douglas Sirk and starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. Mike and Chris both checked out the new animated series Star Wars: Resistance and compare it to the Clone Wars and Rebels series. Chris finished Red Dead Redemption 2 and, along with Mike, they discuss how unique and worthwhile the game's story is, even for the film fan who doesn't often dive into video games. 

Then Mike,...

Rock Hudson would’ve celebrated his 93rd birthday on November 17, 2018. The Oscar-nominated actor made a name for himself as a hunky leading man in romantic comedies, melodramas, and adventure flicks. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Hudson spent years as a supporting player and leading man in B-pictures before shooting to stardom in Douglas Sirk‘s soap opera satire “Magnificent Obsession” (1954). Shot in glossy Technicolor with a sweeping musical score, the film was the first of many the actor made with the German-born auteur, including “All That Heaven Allows” (1955), “Written on the Wind” (1956), and “The Tarnished Angels” (1957). Trashed by critics and adored by audiences in their time, these works have found a second life as clever subversions of American values, influencing filmmakers such as Pedro Almodovar and Todd Haynes.

He received his sole Oscar nomination for...