News

Exclusive: The upcoming final performance of funk and R&b group Average White Band (Awb) is to be made into a concert film.

Anthony Baxter (Flint) will direct Final Note: The Last Dance of Average White Band, chronicling the band’s farewell show.

The Scottish band has scored multiple Grammy nominations and is known for track Pick Up The Pieces and albums Awb and Cut The Cake. They been sampled by artists and groups including Nas, Public Enemy, Snoop Dog and A Tribe Called Quest.

Earlier this year, the current lineup of Awb embarked on a farewell tour, playing venues including London’s Royal Albert Hall and concerts in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The band’s final concert will take place at the concert auditorium of St Louis’ only Hbcu, Harris-Stowe State University, on Friday 13 December 2024. Awb first played in St Louis in 1977, at the city’s historic Kiel Auditorium, just...

When an ambitious, first-time filmmaker pulls off a cinematic coup, critics and jealous industry veterans have a penchant for working overtime to undermine their achievement. You need look no further than "Citizen Kane," the genius of which has, over the years, been ascribed to cinematographer Gregg Toland, screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, and editor Robert Wise. Surely, Welles, who only revolutionized radio and stagecraft, couldn't have transformed yet another medium!

But when an ambitious, first-time filmmaker faceplants, everyone in a position to claim credit skedaddles like cockroaches at the flick of a light switch. The cast and crew were at the mercy of a misguided fool. They did their jobs as directed, and couldn't wait to move on to the next show.

This is the way of things in Hollywood. So it's strange that John Wayne spent the last nineteen years of his life fighting to assert authorship of the poorly...

At the intersection of big-star international dealmaking, the 70mm epic, and the humble sword ‘n’ shield actioner, this comic book viking saga stacks one absurd, borderline bad taste action scene on top of another. It’s an irresistible mash-up of earlier successes, well directed visually by Jack Cardiff. Richard Widmark at forty must play the Viking action hero, Russ Tamblyn at thirty is still a physical dervish, and Sidney Poitier takes on the strangest casting of his career. Plus, low sexist comedy from a platoon of hearty Brit thesps!

The Long Ships

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 137

1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95

Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.

Cinematography: Christopher Challis

Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic

Art Director: Bill Constable...

The new [Imprint] label turns its attention to the Sam Peckinpah favorite, the almost-classic that suffered a number of setbacks — a studio regime change, impractical remote locations, the wrong producer — and a director with zero diplomatic skills, who couldn’t finish his script and fought political battles when his movie needed his full attention. That the finished film shows so much brilliance is a tragedy, as this could have been a landmark epic, Charlton Heston’s best. CineSavant turns its attention to a favored film one more time — to play imagination games with re-cuts. Viavision [Imprint]’s lavish boxed set is said to be sold out, but that may only be at the company source.

Major Dundee

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 11

1965 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 136, 122 min. / Street Date October 28, 2019 / available at [Imprint] / $79.95 au

Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong,...

Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Mangled Masterpiece’ gets a new lease on life with this Austrian import, which corrects all the things that bugged me about Twilight Time’s impressive Blu-ray back in 2013. This is the first time that the original uncut Preview-International version of Major Dundee has come to Blu-ray with its original soundtrack intact. The Two-Disc set includes a longform making-of docu from the prolific producer Mike Siegel, and the other extras make an extensive raid of our combined Dundee photo archives.

Major Dundee (Sierra Charriba)

Region-Free Blu-ray Mediabook

Explosive Media GmbH

1965 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 136, 121 min. / Sierra Charriba / Street Date December 12, 2019 / available at Amazon.de / 21,99 €

Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, Dub Taylor, Michael Pate, Karl Swenson, Begonia Palacios, Aurora Clavell.

Cinematography: Sam Leavitt

Film Editors: William A. Lyon, Don Starling, Howard Kunin...

Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Mangled Masterpiece’ gets a new lease on life with this Austrian import, which corrects all the things that bugged me about Twilight Time’s impressive Blu-ray back in 2013. This is the first time that the original uncut Preview-International version of Major Dundee has come to Blu-ray with its original soundtrack intact. The Two-Disc set includes a longform making-of docu from the prolific producer Mike Siegel, and the other extras make an extensive raid of our combined Dundee photo archives.

Major Dundee (Sierra Charriba)

Region-Free Blu-ray Mediabook

Explosive Media GmbH

1965 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 136, 121 min. / Sierra Charriba / Street Date December 12, 2019 / available at Amazon.de / 21,99 €

Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, Dub Taylor, Michael Pate, Karl Swenson, Begonia Palacios, Aurora Clavell.

Cinematography: Sam Leavitt

Film Editors: William A. Lyon, Don Starling, Howard Kunin...

This unusually sensitive, overlooked WW2 romance skips the morale-boosting baloney of the day. Two people meet on a train, each with a personal shame they dare not speak of. Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten are excellent under William Dieterle’s direction, and Shirley Temple doesn’t do half the damage you’d think she might.

I’ll Be Seeing You

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1944 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 85 min. / Street Date November 21, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Spring Byington, John Derek, Tom Tully, Chill Wills, Kenny Bowers.

Cinematography: Tony Gaudio

Film Editor: William H. Zeigler

Special Effects: Jack Cosgrove

Original Music: Daniele Amfitheatrof

Stunt Double: Cliff Lyons

Written by Marion Parsonette from a play by Charles Martin

Produced by Dore Schary

Directed by William Dieterle

Aha! A little research explains why several late-’40s melodramas from David O. Selznick come off as smart productions,...

At a time when movie stars were truly larger-than-life and iconic, few stood taller and were more memorable than John Wayne. The Duke more or less played himself, the tall, laconic keeper of the moral code regardless of era or genre. He’s best remembered for his work in Westerns, ultimately earning his one Oscar for True Grit, a tribute to a career spent along the dusty trails of a bygone America.

Bit by bit, Wayne’s oeuvre is being preserved on DVD and now Blu-ray, with The Comancheros being the most recent offering. In time for the perfect Father’s Day gift, the deluxe package from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment offers up one of Wayne’s last big Westerns just as interest in the genre was beginning to wane. The movie is well regarded by many Western fans and Elmer Bernstein’s score has lived on, well beyond the film itself,...