News

It's generally accepted that the summer movie season as we know it today began 50 years ago with the release of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws." Studios were already obsessed with blockbusters thanks to the runaway success of films like "Love Story" and "The Godfather," as well as the proliferation of multiplexes (which meant screen numbers were exploding all over the world). But when "Jaws" blew past "Gone with the Wind" to become the highest grossing movie of all time, it was game on.

This gold rush mentality led studios to prioritize sequels to their previous hits, even though this approach invited critical scorn. "The Godfather Part II" was one thing, and, sure, "French Connection II" made sound story sense since Charnier got away at the end of the first one, but a follow-up to "Love Story" felt obscene. So, when a studio trotted out a sequel, they knew many influential critics...

It has been a banner year for Martin Delemazure, the managing director of Paris-based composer agency Grande Ourse.

He had seven films at the Cannes Film Festival in May featuring music by composers on the agency’s books, topped by Jury Prize-winner Emilia Pérez, which also won Best Cannes Soundtrack for Grande Ourse talent Camille, who takes a co-music credit with life and work partner Clément Ducol.

The other titles spanned Palme d’Or contender Wild Diamond, for which the soundtrack was composed by Audrey Ismaël, who also wrote the music for Un Certain Regard title The Kingdom.

Grande Ourse also represents David Sztanke, who wrote the music for a second film in the sidebar, Dog on Trial. Elsewhere in the Official Selection, client Matteo Locasciulli wrote the soundtrack for bio-doc Jacques Demy, the Pink and the Black in Cannes Classics.

In the parallel Cannes Critics’ Week section, Rebeka Warrior...

Martin Scorsese honored late rocker Robbie Robertson with the tribute concert “Robbie Robertson: A Celebration of His Life and Music,” during which the auteur recalled how Robertson’s scores marked a “turning point” in his career.

The private memorial concert was hosted at Village Studios in Los Angeles, with artists Jackson Browne, Rocco Deluca, Angela McCluskey, Blake Mills Group, and Citizen Cope performing. Robertson, the former The Band guitarist, died at age 80 in August 2023. Scorsese first met Robertson during concert documentary film “The Last Waltz” in 1976; the duo collaborated for decades after, with Robertson serving as the music producer and composer on films like “The King of Comedy,” “Silence,” “The Aviator,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and most recently, “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

“We kept working together for the next 45 years,” Scorsese said of Robertson scoring “Raging Bull” and adding another working layer to their friendship. “Forty-five years of...

To mark the release of Le Mépris which is available on 4K Uhd, Blu-Ray, DVD & digital, from June 26, we have 2 Blu-Rays to give away!

To mark the 60 th anniversary of one of the most notable examples of the French New Wave, Studiocanal is delighted to announce a brand-new 4K restoration of Le MÉPRIS. Fresh from its inclusion in the Cannes Classic selection at this year’s festival, this landmark in world cinema from cinema’s original enfant terrible; Jean-Luc Godard will be available to own on 4K Uhd for the first time, on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital on 26 June.

Featuring the style icon Brigitte Bardot as Camille, and legendary French talent Michel Piccoli as Paul, Le MÉPRIS boasts a strong and eclectic supporting cast featuring ‘master of darkness’ Director, Fritz Lang as himself, renowned American actor Jack Palance as Jeremy, and the infamous Giorgia Moll as Francesca. The restoration also...

In a decade of numerous masterpieces, one of the towering cinematic feats of the 1970s was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Alberto Moravia adaptation The Conformist. With jaw-dropping cinematography from Vittorio Storaro, stunning production design from Ferdinando Scarfiotti, and an iconic Georges Delerue score, the film will return in a new 4K restoration to kick off 2023. Ahead of a January 6 opening at Film Forum, we’re pleased to share the first look at the restoration––sourced from the original camera negative––with the exclusive trailer premiere, courtesy of Kino Lorber.

In Mussolini’s Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode––and murder––joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife Stefania Sandrelli...

My favorite tracking shot in film history is not a tracking shot. It's a shot of a tracking shot.

The scene in question opens Jean Luc-Godard's "Contempt," and, visually, consists of little more than a movie camera gliding down a dolly track toward a stationary camera, which serves as the audience's Pov. As the camera moves closer into view, we see that it is shooting, at a 90-degree angle square to our perspective, a young woman (Giorgia Moll) scribbling notations in a book. Eventually, the camera rolls to a stop directly in front of our camera, which is now a low-angle shot of the film's cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, who pans his implement 90-degrees before pointing it downward at the audience. The effect is at once startling and amusing. We have, in essence, locked eyes with the filmmaker.

This may not sound terribly thrilling in writing, but factor in a...

By Lee Pfeiffer

I know I'm not only getting old, but I'm there already. That's apparent in the fact that I remember seeing the 1981 comedy "All Night Long" at an advanced critic's screening in New York. Back in those prehistoric days before the internet, you had to read trade industry publications to get the background story or buzz on forthcoming films. Sure, the general public was always aware that expensive epics were experiencing production problems, but everyday movie fans were generally unaware of the scuttlebutt on mid-range fare. Within industry circles, however, the word-of-mouth was negative about the film despite the fact that it starred Gene Hackman and Barbra Streisand, both then very much at the peak of their acting careers. The film had gone through some almost surrealistic production problems that involved high profile people and had come in massively over the original budget estimate. I recalled thinking the...

Kenneth Wannberg, composer and Emmy-winning music editor who worked on nearly half of all John Williams’ films dating back to the late 1960s, died Jan. 27 at his home in Florence, Oregon. He was 91.

Wannberg was best known as Williams’ music editor, working closely with the composer on more than 50 of his films. He assisted Williams throughout the scoring process, from providing detailed descriptions of sequences to be scored to more technical aspects such as trimming or modifying music during the last stages of post-production.

He music-edited the first six “Star Wars” films, the first three “Indiana Jones” films and such other landmark Williams scores as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jurassic Park,” “Schindler’s List” and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

During his 50-year career in films, Wannberg worked with many other composers including Bernard Herrmann (“Journey to the Center of the Earth”), Jerry Goldsmith (“The Mephisto Waltz”), Michael Convertino...

Every Wes Anderson film is filled with musical delights, from offbeat songs to unexpected score cues, and “The French Dispatch” is no exception.

Composer Alexandre Desplat and music supervisor Randall Poster are among the first to read any new Anderson script. “He and I have been corresponding with music since the day we met,” says Poster, “and over the course of 25 years there’s a lot of musical history that we draw upon for different projects.”

“The French Dispatch,” an homage to the New Yorker magazine’s traditions and writers, was special for the Paris-based Desplat because the film is based in “a fantasized France,” as he puts it, a not-quite-real France as seen through Anderson’s unique prism.

Desplat scored the opening sequence (with Bill Murray as the editor) and two of the three episodes in the film, about an imprisoned artist (Benicio del Toro) and a police commissioner...

The comedian and former The Daily Show correspondent talks about his favorite Blaxploitation movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Casablanca (1942) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

The Castle (1997)

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973) – Bill Duke’s trailer commentary

Pressure (1976)

Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

Boss (1975)

Django Unchained (2012) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary

The Thing With Two Heads (1972) – Stuart Gordon’s trailer commentary

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970)

Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)

Black Samurai (1977)

Truck Turner (1974)

Schindler’s List (1993)

Black Caesar (1973) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary

Hell Up In Harlem (1973) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary

Judas And The Black Messiah (2021)

Friday Foster (1975)

That Man Bolt (1973)

Blacula (1972)

Foxy Brown (1974) – Jack Hill’s trailer commentary

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976)

Willie Dynamite (1973) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Billy Jack (1971)

John Wick (2014)

The Matrix (1999)

Cleopatra Jones...

It’s been such a long wait for the release of the new film from Wes Anderson that the filmmaker himself is already prepping to shoot his next film this summer. 2021, however, is finally the year of The French Dispatch and ahead of a Cannes Film Festival debut, a stateside premiere at New York Film Festival, and a release on October 22, we’ve now got another tease in the form of the official soundtrack details and a preview.

Made up of 25 tracks, the score comes from Anderson’s recent frequent collaborator Alexandre Desplat as well piano solos performed by Jean-Yves Thibaudet, notes Film Music Reporter, who revealed the first details. Also including songs by Grace Jones, Ennio Morricone, Jarvis Cocker, Chantal Goya, and more, we’ve collected the currently available tracks on a Spotify playlist. The tracklist itself also gives some hints at what to expect from the story with car chases,...

They swim, they play, and they talk. They love George C. Scott and call him ‘pa.’ Mike Nichols’ paranoid sci-fi classic combines Lassie Go Home and The Manchurian Candidate. It works up a good guys versus bad guys conspiracy storyline — until the message arrives that what the adorable dolphins Fa and Bee really need, along with the rest of the natural planet, is for us greedy, murderous humans to just Go Away. Buck Henry’s screenplay overcomes aquatic clichés and cutesy animal traditions to come up with a crowd-pleasing winner.

The Day of the Dolphin

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1973 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date February 18, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Paul Sorvino, Fritz Weaver, Jon Korkes, Edward Herrmann, John Dehner, Severn Darden, Elizabeth Wilson.

Cinematography: William A. Fraker

Film Editor: Sam O’Steen

Production Designer: Richard Sylbert

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written by Buck...

” You don’t know what love is like until you’ve fallen for your cousin.”

Laurence Olivier and Diane Lane in A Little Romance (1979) is available on Blu-ray From Warner Archives. Ordering information can be found Here

Dapper old rascal and park-bench regular Julius (Laurence Olivier) wants to make a place in our jumbled world for A Little Romance. Specifically, he aids and abets Diane Lane and Thelonious Bernard as 13-year-olds in Paris whose genius IQs are no match for the innocent spell of first love. They decide to seal their union with a sunset kiss under Venice’s Bridge of Sighs. It’s a perfectly impulsive puppy-love scheme — and a perfect trek for pied piper Julius to lead. Gracefully scripted by Allan Burns (Mary Tyler Moore), overflowing with Continental charm under the direction of George Roy Hill (The Sting) and set to a sublime Oscar-winning* score by Georges Delerue,...

So you thought compact discs were a dead format? Not to soundtrack collectors. Film music labels continue to thrive, turning from current scores to, increasingly, limited-edition expansions and even new recordings of classic scores from the past.

Many film studios have (as they did in the 1950s and ’60s) formed their own in-house music labels and frequently release digital-only albums of their movie and TV soundtracks. So the traditional soundtrack labels are focusing more on older, classic material, often expanding the old 30-to-40 minute albums to CD length of 75 minutes or more. They’re also tracking down and licensing previously unreleased soundtracks of interest to collectors.

It’s a business model that seems to be working for more than a dozen labels in the U.S. and Europe that are devoted to releasing music from movies and TV. Here then, alphabetically, are our choices for the best classic film music...

There’s a sentimental Oscar race brewing for Best Original Score between cousins Randy Newman (“Marriage Story”) and Thomas Newman (“1917”), who are also going head to head for the Golden Globe. And neither has ever won the Academy Award in this category.

They belong, of course, to the legendary musical Newman family, with a record 92 nominations between them. Randy, who is also up this season for the “Toy Story 4” Original Song, “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away,” has won two Oscars in the category, and boasts 20 nominations total (including the scores for “The Natural” and “Ragtime”). Thomas, meanwhile, has 14 nominations (including the scores for “American Beauty” and “The Shawshank Redemption”).

The Academy loves a good Hollywood story, and this current race between the dueling Newmans could finally pave the way for one of them to finally win. The question is: Which one? That’s hard to...

In the fall of ‘64, while Hollywood was gently satirizing the battle of the sexes with Send Me No Flowers and What a Way to Go!, Europe was at work in the trenches, peppering art houses with piercing dramas like François Truffaut‘s The Soft Skin and André Cayatte’s dual release, Anatomy of a Marriage: My Nights With Francoise and My Days with Jean-Marc (“One Ticket Admits You to Both Theaters”). Perhaps most unforgiving of all was Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater starring Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch and James Mason.

Bancroft plays Jo Armitage, a fragile beauty who responds to her husband’s infidelities by getting pregnant. Finch is Jake, a screenwriter whose recent success has emboldened him to walk on the wild side thereby provoking Jo to over-crowd the nursery. Mason is, once again, the odd man out, the deceptively genial husband of one of Jake’s conquests.

The slate of awards hopefuls is new each year, but there is always a sense of continuity, of new contenders’ connections to the past.

For example, Alexandre Desplat, a strong Golden Globes and Oscar possibility this year for his score to Sony’s “Little Women,” can trace the influence of his predecessors on his work. Growing up in Paris, Desplat knew he wanted to be a film composer. “When I was very young, I was collecting soundtracks and it was an education. I learned to listen to music outside the film. When home video arrived, I would watch a movie over and over, to figure out when the music started and when it stopped and why.

“I listened to Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Maurice Jarre. And my parents had earlier scores, by George Duning, Bernard Herrmann and many others. I was also very much into the earlier Hollywood composers: Max Steiner,...

Someone save Judith Hearne, for she can’t save herself. Jack Clayton’s film of Brian Moore’s novel has stunning performances by Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins — but whew, for many of us its social cruelties will feel like traumatic emotional abuse. Not enough nasty people and clueless victims in your life? … this show will give you your fill.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1987 / Color / 1:75 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date June 24, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Maggie Smith, Bob Hoskins, Wendy Hiller, Marie Kean, Ian McNeice, Alan Devlin, Rudi Davies, Prunella Scales.

Cinematography: Peter Hannan

Film Editor: Terry Rawlings

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written by Peter Nelson from the novel by Brian Moore

Produced by Richard Johnson, Peter Nelson

Directed by Jack Clayton

Fine acting doesn’t get finer than that seen in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, a book adaptation...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Jean-Claude Brisseau's Céline (1992) is showing July 20 - August 18, 2019 in the United States.Early in his career, once his ambitious, feature-length debut made on Super 8 had been discovered by Éric Rohmer and Maurice Pialat, Jean-Claude Brisseau (1944-2019) attracted the tag of being a social realist, a “poet of suburbia.” From Life the Way It Is (1978) to Sound and Fury (1988), the jagged, often violent plots reflected his life experience as a committed teacher to troubled, working-class kids. But other, less-heralded aspects of these films, as well as of A Brutal Game (1983) and White Wedding (1989), were already pointing in a different, more holistic direction: dreams and visions, intimating the presence of some broadly defined “other world.” Brisseau declared in 2002: “My films are all about the problem of our relation to reality—whatever that reality may be. I’ve always...

I don't know about you, but the idea of seeing Game of Thrones stars Jason Momoa and Peter Dinklage join forces for a remake of Twins sounds like good times to me. Let me make sure and point out right up front here today that this is not in any way official news, this is merely a fun story that occurred the other day. You see what had happened was Momoa was recently speaking at Celebrity Fan Fest, and when a fan pitched the idea of the Twins remake with Peter Dinklage, Momoa answered with this.

"F--kin' tell me where to sign! Absolutely. That'd be amazing. I love that movie."

And boom! There you go. Jason Momoa is more than down for starring in a remake of the classic '80s buddy comedy. Now we just need to have someone track this Peter Dinklage character down and make sure he's just as enthusiastic.

In an effervescent and expansive conversation with Alec Baldwin on Thursday at the Tribeca Film Festival, Guillermo Del Toro shared a Criterion Collection’s worth of filmmaking wisdom and appreciation.

The director’s debut appearance at Tribeca, according to festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal’s brief onstage introduction, was five years in the making. The pairing with Baldwin proved surprisingly fertile, and the two traded stories about their lifelong connection to cinema and travels through the industry. Fans of Del Toro’s work, from the Spanish-language Pan’s Labyrinth to studio fare like Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, gave him several Comic-Con-like ovations. They seemed ready to listen to another hour had the 75-minute chat kept going, which it seemed poised to do.

Baldwin asked whether Del Toro would ever step behind the camera for a remake of a monster movie given he has...

One of the most inventive comedies of all time is director Ivan Reitman's 1988 buddy adventure Twins starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as - you guessed it - twins separated at birth. The movie is one of the great examples of a killer high-concept idea, and a sequel seemed like a given. But it never happened. That said, is there still a chance another film may come to fruition? Well, while out and about promoting Tim Burton's recent live-action remake of the Disney classic Dumbo co-star Danny DeVito talked a bit about the rumors circling a possible sequel Triplets co-starring Eddie Murphy.

Danny DeVito says this.

"Everybody would be up for it. The main thing is you have to have a screenplay. We're looking. We're figuring it out."

So what could the film be? There have been rumors flying back and forth for years now that a potential...

Paris — A True Renaissance Man of French cinema, director, historian and film preservationist Bertrand Tavernier can now claim another title – maestro.

For the past several months, the filmmaker has been working on a project honoring several pioneering French composers, restoring several pieces and putting together a program that he presents on Saturday January 19 in conjunction with UniFrance’s Rendez-Vous With French Cinema.

To be held in Paris’ Maison de la Radio, the concert, called “May the Music Begin!” will pay tribute to several classic French films and their composers. As an added lure, the show will premiere three restorations of scores never before played in concert.

The director sat down with Variety to explain both his process and goals on this new venture.

What are the roots of this project?

This project sprung from my passion for music and from the two documentaries that I made, the feature film “My...

A movie for people who don’t normally like costume dramas about kings and queens, this adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s play is great entertainment from head to toe. Richard Burton gives one of his better late-career performances, and Geneviève Bujold is a dynamo in a tiny package. It’s an impressive portrait of male power run amuck.

Anne of the Thousand Days

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 146 min. / Street Date , 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Richard Burton, Geneviève Bujold, Irene Papas, Anthony Quayle, John Colicos, Michael Hordern, Katharine Blake, Valerie Gearon, Michael Johnson, Peter Jeffrey.

Cinematography: Arthur Ibbetson

Film Editor: Richard Mardon

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written by Bridget Boland, John Hale, Richard Sokolove from the play by Maxwell Anderson

Produced by Hal Wallis

Directed by Charles Jarrott

Anybody still saying that the Production Code made movies better? One minor effect of Code Enforcement was...

Varèse Sarabande, renowned as Hollywood’s preeminent soundtrack label, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, going into its fifth decade under new ownership — Concord Music acquired the label in February — while renewing its goal of presenting the best of movie and TV music, both current and past.

According to label VP and veteran producer Robert Townson, Varèse’s mandate hasn’t changed. It’s all about “focusing on the big picture, maintaining a role in the community and standing by the next generation of composers,” Townson says. “The entire history of Varèse is about taking calculated gambles, maintaining an artistic integrity and releasing scores even when we knew we were going to lose money.”

Townson should know. He has produced more than 1,400 soundtracks since his association with the label began 32 years ago. As an ambitious 19-year-old in Whitby, Ontario, he launched his Masters Film Music label to provide a home...

Perhaps Jean-Luc Godard’s most accessible feature, Contempt is nearly (but not quite) conventional in the way it tells its tale of the disintegration of the marriage between a bored trophy wife (Brigitte Bardot) and her ineffectual husband. Michel Piccoli plays the well-meaning screenwriter who is about to lose his beautiful playmate to an arrogant bully-boy producer played by Jack Palance. Godard’s cool-as-a-cucumber approach, offset by Raoul Coutard’s ravishing cinematography and Georges Delerue’s achingly beautiful score, makes Contempt a moving yet defiantly unsentimental experience. Martin Scorsese tipped his hat to Godard’s classic in 1995’s Casino (where Delerue’s music underscored De Niro and Stone’s doomed relationship).

The post Contempt appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Fred Zinnemann’s counter-assassination thriller remains topflight filmmaking, torn from reality and shot through with an unsentimental dose of political realism. Edward Fox’s implacable killer outwits the combined resources of an entire nation as he stalks his prey, and when bad luck forces him to improvise, he racks up more victims on his kill list. Step aside Bond, Bourne and Marvel — the original Jackal is the man to beat.

The Day of the Jackal

Blu-ray

Arrow Video USA

1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95

Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion, Michel Subor, Howard Vernon.

Cinematography: Jean Tournier

Film Editor: Ralph Kemplen

Second Unit Director: Andrew Marton

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written...

By Todd Garbarini

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A Summer Story is the unassuming title of a classy and ultimately emotionally wrenching romantic drama of class differences set in Great Britain in the early 1900’s. Originally released in the United States in the summer of 1988 in a small number of theaters, the film is an adaption of John Galsworthy’s 1916 short story “The Apple Tree” which was also made into two separate radio programs over forty years earlier: Lady Esther Almanac on CBS in 1942 and Mercury Summer Theatre in 1946. Obviously the source material proved to be palatable enough to audiences to warrant adaptations in both the aural and visual spectrums. Director Piers Haggard, known for more sinister fare such as The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Venom (1981), directs from the late Penelope Mortimer’s adapted screenplay.

Frank Ashton is played by James Wilby, who was coming off...

By Todd Garbarini

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Laemmle’s Royal Theatre in Los Angeles will be presenting a 45th anniversary screening of Francois Truffaut’s 1973 film Day for Night. The 115-minute film, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and known in its native France as La Nuit américaine (The American Night), stars Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Dani, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean Champion, Jean-Pierre Léaud and François Truffaut and has been referred to as the most beloved film ever made about filmmaking. It will be screened on Thursday, May 10, 2018 at 7:30 pm.

Please Note: At press time, Actress Jacqueline Bisset is scheduled to appear in person for a discussion about the film following the screening.

From the press release:

Part of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: laemmle.com/ac.

Day For Night

Part of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: laemmle.

Translation Ivana Miloš. This text originally appeared as part of the Siegfried-Kracauer-scholarship of the Verband der deutschen Filmkritik on the blog "Squirrels to the Nuts" hosted by Filmdienst.Mubi's retrospective Angela Schanelec: Showing without Telling is playing from April 5 - June 3, 2018. Angela Schanelec's The Dreamed Path (2016), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from May 4 - June 3, 2018 as a Special Discovery. Just as in Jacques Rivette’s cinema, Angela Schanelec’s films begin at a point where the characters have yet to decide whether they will become passive observers of a documentary or enter the realm of fiction. Naturally, since Schanelec, unlike her French colleague, understands the world as something close to a prison, they cannot escape either way. However, the impossibility of escape does not contradict the feeling that the characters in her films do disappear: this disappearance is a direct consequence of the world around them.

Love the film scores for “Jackie” and “Gone Girl”? You’re not alone. Barry Jenkins celebrated National Film Score Day by publishing his personal list of 10 favorite film scores, and the selections cover recent favorites like “Sicario” and classics such as Georges Delerue’s music for Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt.”

Jenkins includes current favorites like Mica Levi, Alexandre Desplat, and Cliff Martinez on his list. The “Sicario” mention is another reminder of what great work Jóhann Jóhannsson achieved before his untimely death earlier this year. Despite the addition of “The 400 Blows,” Jenkins wrote a follow-up tweet saying he would replace the entry with Ryuchi Sakamoto’s “Gohatto” score instead.

Jenkins is expected to return to theaters this year with his James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.” The feature is the director’s first since the breakout success of “Moonlight,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture. Jenkins...

Finally — a satisfying home video edition of Ken Russell’s absorbing, argument-starting classic, in which D. H. Lawrence’s quartet of bohemians attempt to live out their progressive theories about love and sex. The intellectual arguments may be cold but the characters are warm and vivid. Exceptional performing from all — Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed and Jennie Linden, and outstanding cinematography from Billy Williams.

Women in Love

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 916

1969 / Color / 1:75 widescreen / 131 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 27, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Sir Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson, Jennie Linden, Eleanor Bron, Alan Webb, Catherine Willmer, Vladek Sheybal.

Cinematography: Billy Williams

Film Editor: Michael Bradsell

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written by Larry Kramer

Produced by Larry Kramer, Martin Rosen

Directed by Ken Russell

In college, this one was guaranteed to keep couples up all night, debating the merits of each character’s notion of what constitutes a good relationship.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963) is showing December 24, 2017 - January 23, 2018 in the United States as part of the retrospective For Ever Godard.One thing most commonly and justly admired in Contempt (1963) by the many who revere the film is its singular place on the dividing line in cinema between classicism and modernism. The 1960s, and most intensely in mid-decade, was a transitional time for these phases, one that of course should never be simplified because of the many instances in which classical directors looked ahead with modernist impulses or modern directors (like the New Wave coterie of which Jean-Luc Godard was a part) looked back with longing to what had gone before. Among so many movies that affirm this point, it’s enough to cite Voyage to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954), a touchstone for modern cinema, which it anticipated (though without...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andrzej Żuławski's The Most Important Thing: Love (1975) is showing November 22 - December 22, 2017 in the United States.The DevilKiedy wszedłeś między wrony, musisz krakać jak i one.

(‘When among the crows, caw as they do.’)—Polish sayingAndrzej Żuławski’s That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) is unlike any film he ever made, and was certainly a departure in his visual sensibility relative to the feature films he had made previously in his native Poland: The Third Part of the Night (1971) and The Devil (1972). Narratively and visually, the film is at once an oddity and a turning point in Żuławski’s oeuvre, and in viewing it, it would benefit the viewer to understand the director’s experience with the French cinematic tradition and its effect on his own cinema.Żuławski was born into a well-known family of artists that spanned several generations in Poland,...

The romances of Guillermo del Toro and Paul Thomas Anderson have finally collided, somewhat. Del Toro revealed on Twitter that he wrote and designed “The Shape of Water” with Jon Brion’s original score for Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” in mind. “The Shape of Water” script was being developed as early as 2012, and it was Brion’s percussion-heavy work on Anderson’s romance that helped guide del Toro’s emotions. Del Toro said he even temped the film with the “Punch-Drunk Love” score before Alexandre Desplat was brought on to compose the music.

Life is strange and so is the human brain… I remembered, that, at its early genesis (2012-14, The Shape of Water was written and designed with the score of Punch Drunk Love playing (later Georges Delerue and Rota, but at one point we even temped with Pdl’s score…

— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 23, 2017

To be clear:...

It’s a quality true-life mystery-exposé that doesn’t come off as tabloid trash or Oliver Stone hysteria — the true story of Karen Silkwood is told without cooking the books. The all-superstar cast is something too — Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell. Only a fine director like Mike Nichols could steer this one into good entertainment & memorable cinema territory.

Silkwood

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1983 / Color B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 131 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson, Diana Scarwid, Fred Ward, Ron Silver, Charles Hallahan.

Cinematography: Miroslav Ondrícek

Production Designer: Patrizia von Brandenstein

Art Direction: Richard D. James

Film Editor: Sam O’Steen

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written by Alice Arlen and Nora Ephron

Produced by Larry Cano, Michael Hausman, Buzz Hirsch, Mike Nichols

Directed by Mike Nichols

Remember when the big movies about adult themes were in the theaters, and not on cable TV?...

“May you live to be a thousand years old, sir.” Still the most widely unheralded great movie on the books, John Patrick Shanley’s lightweight/profound fable is an unmitigated delight. See Tom Hanks at the end of the first phase of his career plus Meg Ryan in an unacknowledged career highlight. How can a movie be so purposely insubstantial, and yet be ‘heavier’ than a dozen pictures with ‘big things to say?’

Joe Versus the Volcano

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1990 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date June 20, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Abe Vigoda,

Dan Hedaya, Barry McGovern, Amanda Plummer, Ossie Davis

Cinematography Stephen Goldblatt

Production Designer Bo Welch

Film Editors Richard Halsey, Kenneth Wannberg

Original Music Georges Delerue

Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Steven Spielberg and Teri Schwartz

Written and Directed by John Patrick Shanley

I think I found...

One of the best international thrillers ever has almost become an obscurity, for reasons unknown – this Blu-ray comes from Australia. Edward Fox’s wily assassin for hire goes up against the combined police and security establishments of three nations as he sets up the killing of a head of state – France’s president Charles de Gaulle. The terrific cast features Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig and Cyril Cusack; director Fred Zinnemann’s excellent direction reaches a high pitch of tension – even though the outcome is known from the start.

The Day of the Jackal

Region B+A Blu-ray

Shock Entertainment / Universal

1973 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date ? / Available from Amazon UK / Pounds 19.99

Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion,...

The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series started last Friday and continues the next two weekends — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

All films are screened at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints.

Golden Exits. © Sean Price Williams“No soul or locale is too humble,” John Updike wrote, “to be the site of entertaining and instructive fiction.” Which is a good thing for Nick, the nominal hero of Alex Ross Perry’s new film Golden Exits. The mild, meek, nearly-fifty archivist, played with greying dignity by former Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, lives a pinched and incapacious existence, toiling ten hours a day hunched behind the desk of a basement office only a few blocks away from his Brooklyn apartment. It’s a spartan, closed-loop life, and Nick thinks it’s “thrilling”—which it becomes for a time, when a 25-year-old assistant arrives from Australia and threatens to disrupt it. Golden Exits is about that threat. Or more precisely, it is a film about what happens when order and routine are besieged by the promise of change—when the life one has accepted is beleaguered by temptation,...

The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints. Even more traditional, we also offer a silent film with live music, and audiences are sure to delight in the Poor People of Paris...

One week a month, Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by the week’s new releases or premieres. This week: In honor of Kenneth Lonergan’s magnificent Manchester By The Sea, we’re giving a standing ovation to other movies written and/or directed by playwrights.

The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

Maybe it’s too large a claim for a nearly forgotten domestic drama, but there’s a scene in the Harold Pinter-scripted The Pumpkin Eater that by all rights should’ve been one of the iconic moments of ’60s cinema. A deeply unhappy, alienated housewife, Jo (Anne Bancroft), goes walking after confirming her husband’s infidelity. She walks to Harrods and stares at a fountain. She stares at refrigerators, exotic birds, and a man tuning pianos. Then, in the middle of the black-and-white tiled floor, she stops. The camera stays at her back and a subdued refrain by Georges Delerue...

Keep up with the always-hopping film festival world with our weekly Film Festival Roundup column. Check out last week’s Roundup right here.

Openers, Closers and Other Additions

– The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced the films that will play in the Special Screenings section of AFI Fest 2016 presented by Audi, which includes three World Premieres and four additional highly anticipated films.

The World Premiere of the CG-animated film “Moana” will play in the Special Screenings section, along with “Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds” and “Toni Erdmann.” Also bowing as Special Screenings will be the World Premieres of “Miss Sloane” and, as previously announced, “The Comedian.”

AFI Fest has also added Pablo Larrain’s lauded “Jackie,” starring Natalie Portman, as a Centerpiece Gala.

– The Edinburgh International Film Festival has announced that “American Pastoral,” the directorial debut of Perthshire-born Ewan McGregor will have a special Edinburgh International Film Festival Gala at the Filmhouse,...

Jury led by Jeremy Thomas awards Terence Davies title with top award.

The 43rd annual Film Festival Ghent (Oct 11-21) awarded Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion with the Grand Prix for Best Film.

Shot largely at Aed Studios in Antwerp, the Emily Dickinson biopic is a UK-Belgium co-production.

The international jury was led by Jeremy Thomas. The veteran UK producer was also recognised by the festival for his contribution to cinema, receiving the lifetime achievement award.

Ahead of the closing-night screening of Belgian film-maker Bavo Defurne’s romantic drama Souvenir, Thomas and his jury – including Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, author Jonathan Coe and actresses Maaike Neuville, Lina El Arabi and India Hair – handed out the prizes.

Davies’ A Quiet Passion win came with $47.500 (€43,500) in prize money; special mention went to Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s Glory.

The Georges Delerue Award for best score went to Us producer/composer Johnny Jewel for Fien Troch’s Home...

Watch a movie scored by Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrmann or John Williams and you instantly recognize the composer’s signature sound.

Having just received the prestigious Vision Award at the Locarno Film Festival, Howard Shore has amassed a body of work that requires him to be mentioned among those fellow composing legends. From the ominous underbelly he gave “Seven,” to the magical rhythms that drive “Hugo,” to the dour tones encapsulating the reporters’ struggle in “Spotlight,” to the music that brought Tolkien’s Middle Earth to life, Shore has been behind some of the very best film scores of the last 40 years.

Read More: Legendary Composer Ennio Morricone Is Releasing A Greatest Hits Album

Yet what’s remarkable about Shore’s body of work, and what separates him from the other scoring legends, is that there’s nothing instantly recognizable binding together his diverse scores.

Growing up in Toronto, the...

1973’s The Day of the Dolphin was based on a French sci-fi thriller about talking dolphins involved in a plot to assassinate the president. Its Greenpeace Meets James Bond storyline managed to attract directors as disparate as Roman Polanski and Franklin Schaffner but the task eventually fell to Mike Nichols who enlisted his Graduate scribe Buck Henry to tap out the screenplay. Starring George C. Scott as a kind of water-logged Dr. Doolittle, Nichols described the Bahamas-set shoot as his “toughest” ever. Georges Delerue’s achingly lovely score was nominated for an Academy Award.

One of the best-remembered dramas of the '70s gives us controversial actresses, a lavish production and a story by the even more controversial Lillian Hellman. Director Fred Zinnemann makes it into a suspenseful, deeply affecting experience. Julia Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1977 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Ship Date April 12, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Maximilian Schell, Hal Holbrook, Meryl Streep, Rosemary Murphy, Dora Doll, Elisabeth Mortensen, John Glover, Lisa Pelikan, Susan Jones, Cathleen Nesbitt, Maurice Denham. Cinematography Douglas Slocombe Film Editor Walter Murch Original Music Georges Delerue Written by Alvin Sargent based on the story by Lillian Hellman Produced by Richard Roth Directed by Fred Zinnemann

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Fred Zinnemann was a cinema activist from way back, a filmmaker of uncompromising convictions. His most frequent theme is anti-fascism, although he began with a very Soviet-styled pro-union film in Mexico, Redes.

April 14 the Official Selection will be announced at the Cannes Film Festival press conference. While waiting, keep up with all the Festival news online and onFacebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram!

 

The official poster for the 69th Festival de Cannes -- taking place from May 11 to 22 and presided over by Australian director George Mille -- was designed using stills from Jean-Luc Godard 's film "Contempt" by Hervé Chigioni and his graphic designer Gilles Frappier. The 2016 visual identity has been created by Philippe Savoir (Filifox).

The festival described the poster as follows: 

"It's all there. The steps, the sea, the horizon: a man's ascent towards his dream, in a warm Mediterranean light that turns to gold. As an image it is reminiscent of a timeless quote used at the beginning of 'Contempt': 'Cinema replaces our gaze with a world in harmony with our desires'."

This year Michel Piccoli will open the Red Carpet for the 69th Festival de Cannes from the roof of the famous villa designed by the writer Curzio Malaparte,  It's a symbolic choice, since this film about the making of a film - regarded by many as one of the finest ever made in CinemaScope (the Piccoli/ Bardot pairing along with Fritz Lang, Raoul Coutard's cinematography, Georges Delerue's music, and so on and so forth) - had such a considerable impact on the history of film and cinephilia.

On the eve of its 70th anniversary, by choosing to represent itself under the symbol of this simultaneously palimpsest and unambiguous film, the Festival is reiterating its founding commitment: To pay tribute to the history of film and to welcome new ways of creating and seeing. The steps represent a kind of ascension towards the infinite horizon of a cinema screen." ...

In just about three weeks we’ll be getting the line-up for the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, but first, the official poster has landed. For the 69th Festival de Cannes, featuring a jury presided over by Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller, the yellow-tinted poster honors the Jean-Luc Godard classic Contempt. Check out the description below, along with a full version of the poster.

It’s all there. The steps, the sea, the horizon: a man’s ascent towards his dream, in a warm Mediterranean light that turns to gold. As an image it is reminiscent of a timeless quote by Michel Mourlet used at the beginning of Contempt: “Cinema replaces our gaze with a world in harmony with our desires”.

And so it is Michel Piccoli who in 2016, from the roof of the famous villa designed by the writer Curzio Malaparte, will open the red carpet for the 69th Festival de Cannes.

There are few filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, and even fewer films like “Contempt” (“Le Mépris”). It’s a crucial viewing for any cinephile, and for those living across the pond, the picture is headed back to the big screen where it deserves to be seen, and BFI has dropped a terrific a new trailer. Featuring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and legendary director Fritz Lang (playing himself), the film tracks the making of a movie and dissolution of a marriage. But of course, in the hands of Godard, it’s so much more. Featuring terrific CinemaScope cinematography by Raoul Coutard, a score by Georges Delerue, and some truly forward-thinking editing, the picture is a feast for the eyes and mind. “Contempt” returns to the big screen in the U.K. on January 1, 2016. For those of you stateside, you’ll have to cross your fingers and hope it lands here...