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How now, what news: the Criterion Channel’s July lineup is here. Eight pop renditions of Shakespeare are on the docket: from movies you forgot were inspired by the Bard (Abel Ferrara’s China Girl) to ones you’d wish to forget altogether (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing), with maybe my single favorite interpretation (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet) alongside Paul Mazursky, Gus Van Sant, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jarman, and (of course) Kenneth Branagh. A neonoir collection arrives four months ahead of Noirvember: two Ellroy adaptations, two from De Palma that are not his neonoir Ellroy adaptation, two from the Coen brothers (i.e. the chance to see a DVD-stranded The Man Who Wasn’t There in HD), and––finally––a Michael Winner picture given Criterion’s seal of approval.

Columbia screwballs run between classics to lesser-seens while Nicolas Roeg and Heisei-era Godzilla face off. A Times Square collection brings The Gods of Times Square,...

RaMell Ross, director/cinematographer of the Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

RaMell Ross, director/cinematographer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening will participate in a Film at Lincoln Center free virtual conversation moderated by Time director Garrett Bradley on June 24, starting at 6:00pm (Edt). Hale County This Morning, This Evening has an impressive producing team with Joslyn Barnes and Danny Glover of Louverture Films to Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) and Charlotte Cook of Field of Vision, Susan Rockefeller (Oceana), Tony Tabatznik, Lynda Weinman, Su Kim, and co-writer Maya Krinsky.

RaMell Ross's subjects Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, a scene with Bert Williams from Edwin Middleton and T. Hayes Hunter's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913), the atmosphere of the local community in Hale County, Alabama, thunderstorms, starlit night...

Universal’s explosion of the horror genre in the 1930s gave us two legendary actors in Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Lugosi, who I’ve covered before in this column, was the leading-man type in that whomever he played, he was still pretty much Bela Lugosi (arguments could be made either way as to whether this was to his benefit or his detriment). Karloff, however, often had a tendency to get lost in his roles. Granted, part of this was done via the magic of FX. In movies like Frankenstein and The Mummy, Jack Pierce covered Karloff in enough prosthetics to make him unrecognizable. But credit must also be given to Karloff’s performances. Few people could pull off his take as Frankenstein’s monster where even with his face completely covered, and not a word of dialogue in script, he still managed to make this hulking monster come across as sympathetic.

African-American film 'Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day.' With Williams and Odessa Warren Grey.* Rare, early 20th-century African-American film among San Francisco Silent Film Festival highlights Directed by Edwin Middleton and T. Hayes Hunter, the Biograph Company's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913) was the film I most looked forward to at the 2015 edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. One hundred years old, unfinished, and destined to be scrapped and tossed into the dust bin, it rose from the ashes. Starring entertainer Bert Williams – whose film appearances have virtually disappeared, but whose legacy lives on – Lime Kiln Club Field Day has become a rare example of African-American life in the first years of the 20th century. In the introduction to the film, the audience was treated to a treasure trove of Black memorabilia: sheet music, stills, promotional material, and newspaper clippings that survive. Details of the...