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Sarah Polley failed to crash the boys club to land a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director for her work on “Women Talking,” but she did manage to earn one for Best Screenplay for the same film. In the unlikely event she were to win — and we say unlikely because she is picked by few to take home the statuette in Gold Derby’s predictions where she has 4/1 odds, tying her for fourth place — Polley would be the first woman in 17 years to be so honored. It’s a rare enough event in Golden Globes annals that you barely need two hands to count the total number of women (seven) who have been victorious in the category since the Globes started handing them out 75 years ago.

SEEWill Sarah Polley (‘Women Talking’) be the 3rd woman in a row to win Best Director Oscar?

The last woman to win for her...

Alec Guinness transfers an acting challenge from the stage to the screen, in this account of a Cardinal forced to knuckle under to a Communist regime — instead of extracting a confession with torture, Jack Hawkins’ Inquisitor uses psychology to find his prisoner’s weakness. The picture is uneven but its key performances are choice, with a special assist from Wilfrid Lawson as a jailer.

The Prisoner

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1955 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date March 12, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Wilfrid Lawson, Kenneth Griffith, Jeanette Sterke, Ronald Lewis, Raymond Huntley, Percy Herbert.

Cinematography: Reginald Wyer

Film Editor: Frederick Wilson

Original Music: Benjamin Frankel

Written by Bridget Boland from her play

Produced by Vivian Cox

Directed by Peter Glenville

Is this an anti-Communist piece, or simply a story about human convictions and human weakness? Believe it or not, some interpreted it as anti-Catholic in 1955. European film festivals may have...

Great new for the many fans of Alec Guinness. The Prisoner (1955) will be available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy March 12th!

Banned from the Cannes and Venice Films Festivals for being anti-Communist and excoriated elsewhere as pro-Soviet propaganda, Peter Glenville s The Prisoner stoked controversy at the time of its original release and remains a complex, challenging and multifaceted exploration of faith and power.

In an unnamed Eastern European capital, an iron-willed Cardinal is arrested by state police on charges of treason. Tasked with securing a confession from him by any means necessary is a former comrade-in-arms from the anti-Nazi resistance. Knowing the Cardinal will never fold under physical torture, the Interrogator instead sets out to destroy him mentally, breaking his spirit rather than his body.

Adapted by acclaimed playwright Bridget Boland (Gaslight) from her own stage-play and showcasing powerhouse performances by two actors at the height of their game,...

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...

A letter found inside a book at the Lilly Library at Indiana University has revealed that, while living in Europe in the early 1950s, Orson Welles was contemplating working on several films and stage projects.

The signed, two-page letter, which was typed on Welles’ stationery, was found by Liana Meeker, a catalog specialist at Lilly Library. It was folded inside a copy of Whit Materson’s “Badge of Evil,” which was the basis for Welles’ 1958 film “Touch of Evil.”

It is unknown how the letter ended up in the book, said Craig S. Simpson, Manuscripts Archivist at Lilly Library.”It was just a random item found in a random book,” he explained.

Read More: 20 Must-See Films At Sundance 2017

The letter, dated March 11, 1953, is believed to have been addressed to Welles’ longtime friend and columnist Leonard Lyons. In it, the actor and filmmaker asks Lyons to publish a column about an...