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The very first Academy Awards were held on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Douglas Fairbanks, one of the biggest stars of his time, presented every single one of the awards. Right away, the timing was a little off, as the Oscars didn't adhere to specific calendar years for their awards. Instead, the awards were given to all the films released between August 1, 1927, and July 31, 1928.

The Academy continued with the "straddle" schedule for its first five years, considering a "release year" to be August 1 to July 31. Perhaps wanting to keep things a little cleaner, the Academy expanded the year of the 6th Academy Awards, which considered all the films released from August 1, 1932, all the way to December 31, 1933. The 7th Oscars was the first Oscars to finally measure by a proper calendar year. The Awards have been following that pattern ever since.

Welp, it’s January. That special time of year where everyone is simultaneously recovering from the holidays and trying to kick off the new year by putting their best foot forward. TV shows that have been on break will soon return and mid-season premieres quickly follow thereafter, but for film, January is often looked at as slow period for new releases, with offerings like “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man,” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence” being unveiled. Films that have had awards-qualifying runs like Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths” and Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl” will also expand wider, boosting their profiles in time for Oscar voting, but generally, there’s not much going on to excite the average movie-goer this month. So what better time to say, “Out with the new, in with the old!”

Repertory theaters in New York and Los Angeles have...

Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our contributors. Here are some of their finest essays, interviews, festival coverage, and more from this year. We’re looking forward to much more in the new one. As always, thank you for reading.ESSAYSIllustration by Zoé Mahamès Peters.The current cinema:Sasha Frere-Jones on Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s GIFTPhilippa Snow on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor ThingsAdam Nayman on Pascal Plante’s Red RoomsCassie da Costa on RaMell Ross’s Nickel BoysAmanda Chen on Trương Minh Quý’s Việt and NamSanoja Bhaumik on Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The SettlersNathalie Olah on Andrea Arnold’s BirdRobert Rubsam on Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimeraGrace Byron on Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV GlowZach Schonfeld on M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Michael Showalter’s The Idea of YouSam...

On May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the first Academy Awards ceremony was held. William A. Wellman's war film "Wings" was declared the year's Outstanding Picture, while Best Unique and Artistic Picture went to F.W. Murnau's masterpiece "Sunrise." There were two Best Director trophies handed out that night, one for drama (to Frank Borzage for "7th Heaven") and another for comedy (Lewis Milestone for "Two Arabian Nights"). There were only two performance awards: Best Actor went to Emil Jannings for "The Last Command," while Janet Gaynor claimed Best Actress for three movies. The ceremony was held without pomp or suspense: it lasted 15 minutes and the winners were known well in advance. The razzle-dazzle was reserved for the afterparty.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) opted to broadcast the ceremony via radio in 1930, they fairly rapidly became of interest to a movie-mad public that was...

January 2025 could mark a bleak month for very specific reasons, but in that month one can watch a nicely curated collection of David Bowie’s best performances. Nearly a decade since he passed, the iconic actor (who had some other trades) is celebrated with The Man Who Fell to Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Linguini Incident, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Basquiat. (Note: watch The Missing Pieces under Fire Walk with Me‘s Criterion edition for about three times as much Phillip Jeffries.) It’s a retrospective-heavy month: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Crowe, Ethan Hawke, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Paolo Sorrentino, and Sean Baker are given spotlights; the first and last bring with them To Die For and Take Out‘s Criterion Editions, joining Still Walking, Hunger, and A Face in the Crowd.

“Surveillance Cinema” brings Thx 1138, Body Double, Minority Report, and others, while “Love in Disguise” offers films by Lubitsch,...

The annual To Save and Project festival has unveiled its 2025 lineup. Presented by the Museum of Modern Art and Chanel, the 21st annual event is the definitive international festival of film preservation. The latest edition is dedicated to celebrating newly preserved and restored films from archives, studios, distributors, foundations, and independent filmmakers from around the world.

The 2025 To Save and Project: The 21st MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation will take place from January 9 to January 30, and include more than 25 feature films and shorts programs in newly preserved or restored versions.

Frank Borzage’s “7th Heaven” (1927) will open the festival, as presented in a new upgrade from MoMA’s previous restoration. Charlie Chaplin’s 1918 World War I comedy “Shoulder Arms” will close the festival with a reconstruction of the seldom-seen original version presented as a work-in-progress.

Highlights also range from Yevgeny Chervyakov’s long-lost Soviet film “My Son (Moy Syn...

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On May 16, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out its first two Academy Awards for Best Director to Frank Borzage ("7th Heaven") and Lewis Milestone ("Two Arabian Knights"). This was the only year the organization distinguished between drama and comedy, but it would not be the last time either of these men took home the top prize in their field. Milestone would win again in 1930 for his heartbreaking adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front," while Borzage, a visual storytelling master whose every film you should absolutely watch, triumphed anew in 1932 with the pre-code classic "Bad Girl."

Throughout the Academy Awards' history, 21 directors have earned more than one Best Director Oscar. 18 have won it twice (Alfonso Cuarón was the most recent filmmaker to join the two-time ranks with "Roma"), while Frank Capra and William Wyler are the only three-time winners.

Now that they’ve set the year’s best film for a December 10 debut, the Criterion Channel have unveiled the rest of next month’s selection. John Waters’ films are inseparable from John Waters’ presence, making fitting Criterion’s decision to pair an eight-film retrospective (Multiple Maniacs to Cecil B. Demented) with his own “Adventures in Moviegoing” wherein the director extols virtues of Bergman, Chabrol, Barbara Loden, and Samuel Fuller. His own Polyester will have a Criterion Edition alongside the Bob Dylan doc Don’t Look Back, an iconic film in its own right and, I think, fitting companion to The Unknown with Lon Chaney, also streaming on Criterion. No Country for Old Men and Election receive likewise treatment; the latter appears in “MTV Productions,” a series featuring Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, The Original Kings of Comedy, and (coming close to Freddy Got Fingered for least-expected 2024 addition) Jackass: the Movie.

Among the most inspired choices for a 4K restoration this year would have to be Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions. Despite coming out in the middle of Bruce Willis’ Armageddon/The Sixth Sense heyday, the 1999 Kurt Vonnegut adaptation died a quick death at the box office, which certainly wasn’t aided by the critic class who thought at the time American Beauty was somehow a more scathing critique of the country’s false promises and personal repression. A genuinely bizarre film, bolstered by an outstanding cast and an abrasive form, Breakfast of Champions arrives at just the right moment for reclamation.

In his earnest romanticism and wild stylization, Rudolph, for lack of a better comparison, could at times come off as the child of Frank Borzage and Seijun Suzuki, which made it extra exciting that he sat down with The Film Stage in what turned out to be his first-ever Zoom call.

Exclusive: The life of legendary author Ernest Hemingway is set to become a ten-part TV drama.

LA’s Avatar Entertainment has secured rights to Mary V. Dearborn’s Ernest Hemingway: A Biography and was at MIPCOM this week shopping the project to buyers. Larry Robinson, Head of Avatar Entertainment, will exec produce the series.

Dearborn’s 750-page biography follows the author’s life from his middle-class childhood in Oak Park, Illinois, to his life as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, his career as a journalist in Chicago, his life among other preeminent authors in Paris and the establishment of Hemingway as the world’s most famous novelists. Gersh represents the Hemingway estate, but Dearborn’s book about the author’s life sit outside of that.

The biography, which has received praise from The Washington Post as “the most fully faceted portrait of Hemingway now available,” extensively...

Ang Lee is an Oscar-winning filmmaker who has worked in a variety of genres and styles to explore the lives of people around the globe. Let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in Taiwan in 1954, Lee’s interest in film brought him to NYU’s graduate program, where he worked as a crew member on classmate Spike Lee‘s thesis project, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.” He directed his first feature, “Pushing Hands” (1991) at the age of 37.

Lee followed up his debut with back-to-back international successes, each one scoring Oscar nominations as Best Foreign Language Film: “The Wedding Banquet” (1993) and “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994). In both films, the director explored the kinds of complex familial relationships that would animate many of his stories.

He was then drafted by Hollywood to helm the Jane Austin adaptation “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), which...

The Locarno Film Festival is justly renowned for its retrospectives, and this year is no exception. But rather than an individual director or star, this edition is dedicated to a studio: Columbia Pictures with “The Lady with the Torch” celebrating the studio’s centenary.

With 44 films from well-known titles such as Orson Welles’s “The Lady from Shanghai” (1947) and Fritz Lang’s “The Big Heat” (1953) to more obscure gems like Frank Borzage’s “Man’s Castle” (1933) and Earl McEvoy’s “The Killer that Stalked New York” (1950), curator Ehsan Khoshbakht has created what he calls an “unofficial history” of the studio in its heyday, as controversial president Harry Cohn dragged Columbia from poverty row to Academy success.

Variety sat down to speak with Khoshbakht (who is also the co-director of Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato Festival) about the retrospective.

Variety: What role does the retrospective play in Locarno?

Khoshbakht: Very recently, I was...

Man's Castle.“When you’re dead, you get a hunk of earth. When you’re alive, all you’ve got is that hunk of blue.” This is how Bill (Spencer Tracy), the restless hero of Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle (1933), explains his insistence on sleeping under the open sky. Borzage’s films always cast their eyes heavenward with exalted sincerity; they offer no sop to modern irony or cynicism. No one should watch them who is not prepared to be enraptured.The essence of Borzage’s romanticism resides in the enchanted spaces his lovers create together: sometimes a semi-permanent home, like the Parisian garret in 7th Heaven (1927), at other times a fleeting idyll of shared fantasy, like the abandoned plantation mansion where the outcast couple in Moonrise (1948) waltz amid the shadows and cobwebs. These magical playhouses are spaces of care and refuge as much as dreamy eroticism; in Man’s Castle,...

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with an expansive retrospective titled The Lady with the Torch, mounted in collaboration with the studio’s parent company, Sony.

Organized in partnership with the Cinémathèque suisse, The Lady with the Torch will be curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato, an annual festival in Bologna dedicated to film history and film restoration. The official unveiling will take place at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Locarno has said the retrospective will present the studio in “all its glory,” shining a light on lesser-known genre filmmakers like Max Nosseck, Seymour Friedman, and William A. Seiter, as well as celebrating auteurs like Howard Hawks, Frank Borzage, Fritz Lang, Frank Capra, George Stevens, and John Ford. After launching at the 77th Locarno Film Festival, running August 7-17, the retrospective will tour the world. The Retrospective will...

Within the same broad outline as Jean Renoir’s La Chienne, Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street strikes many notes to emphasize the emasculation of Christopher “Chris” Cross (Edgar G. Robinson): at a dinner in his honor, the lowly bank cashier sees his boss (Russell Hicks) rush through a ceremonial toast to make time with his mistress; in his own home he’s obligated to indulge his unwelcome hobby of picture painting in the bathroom; and there’s a bit of business with a frilly smock he puts on to do the dishes.

Against the grain of what we might assume about put-upon little guys in movies and the way they lash out, Lang only dwells on the tableaux of Chris eunuchized doldrums to make one almost invisible moment work—when, over drinks with Katherine “Kitty” March (Joan Bennett), Chris doesn’t really correct her when she makes the fateful...

Indie producer Harry Cohn, brother Jack and their associate Joe Brandt created the CBC Film Sales Company in 1918. And on Jan. 10, 1924, the trio formed the Poverty Row studio, Columbia Pictures. According to Enclyclopedia.com, by the mid-20s “Cohn had gained reputation as one of the industry’s toughest businessmen.” That’s putting it mildly.

Though “B” movies and series such as The Three Stooges, “Blondie” and “The Lone Wolf” were the bread and butter of the studio, Cohn slowly attracted top talent and directors and turned such newcomers as Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, William Holden and Kim Novak into stars.

Frank Capra changed the fortunes of the studio. Signing with Columbia in 1928, he made 25 films for Columbia. His optimistic, common man movies attracted critics and audiences alike during the Depression. His 1934 screwball comedy “It Happened One Night,” penned by Robert Riskin and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, swept the Oscars winning five.

Blyth’s recent credits include The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Michael Winterbottom has written and is set to direct a new film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s classic World War I novel A Farewell To Arms starring Tom Blyth

Blyth, whose recent credits include The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and MGM+ series Billy the Kid, will play the role of volunteer ambulance driver Frederic Henry, who is wounded and falls in love with his nurse in Italy during the First World War.

The Fremantle-backed film is set to start shooting in...

Tom Blyth is set to follow in the footsteps of Gary Cooper, Rock Hudson and George Hamilton to star in Michael Winterbottom’s new adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel A Farewell to Arms.

Fremantle, Winterbottom’s production company Revolution Films and Passenger are joining forces on the production.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and Billy the Kid star Blyth will play volunteer ambulance driver Frederic Henry, who is wounded and falls in love with his nurse in Italy during World War One.

Published in 1929, A Farewell To Arms is inspired by Hemingway’s own experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Italian Army on the Isonzo Front.

Considered one of the greatest war novels of the twentieth century, it established Hemingway as a household name.

The novel has previously been...

Winning the Best Director Oscar more than once is a guarantee of legendary status among filmmakers. Here are the 21 directors who have achieved this prestigious feat. Directors like Alfonso Cuarón, Clint Eastwood, and Elia Kazan have won the Academy Award for Best Director twice, showcasing their exceptional talent and filmmaking abilities. John Ford holds the record for the most Best Director wins, having won the award four times, solidifying his status as one of the greatest directors in film history.

The Academy Award for Best Director is one of the most prestigious awards that any filmmaker can win, and these 10 directors have actually won the highly coveted Oscar more than once. Tons of talented directors have gone their whole life without even being nominated for Best Director, meaning that it is a big deal for anyone to actually win it. Winning the Best Director Oscar more than once is an almost guarantee of legendary status,...

West of Zanzibar (1928) shows in Unspeakable: The Films of Tod Browning, running March 17 - 26, 2023, at Film at Lincoln Center in New York.Untitled (Fay Wray with Masks) (ca. 1928).He referred to them not as photographs but as pictures, akin to John Ford’s self-description as a “picture-maker.” This was not by accident or due to eccentricity, for there was a war happening among photographers. One party, represented best by Ansel Adams’s Group f/64, advocated a “pure” photography in which sharp focus and an eye for “realism” aided the photographer’s holy scientific task of capturing the immense object of reality. The other less-centralized party, sometimes called Pictorialists, chose to depict reality by representation and exaggeration. For William Mortensen, who lauded and exemplified the Pictorialist vision when it was most unfashionable, the camera was simply another artistic tool to be revered and used alongside graphite or clay. What mattered was...

The 2023 Oscar nominees for Best Director are Todd Field (“Tar”), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”), and Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”). Our odds currently show that Kwan and Scheinert – aka the Daniels – are most likely to win (16/5), followed in order by Spielberg (19/5), McDonagh (9/2), Field (9/2), and Östlund (9/2).

Spielberg is the only returning directing contender in the bunch, with eight past bids under his belt for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1978), “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1982), “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1983), “Schindler’s List” (1994), “Saving Private Ryan” (1999), “Munich” (2006), “Lincoln” (2013), and “West Side Story” (2022). He prevailed on both his fourth and fifth outings and shared in a Best Picture win as a producer of “Schindler’s List.” This new notice makes him the first back-to-back directing nominee since 2015 and 2016 champion Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Birdman” and “The Revenant”).

For the first time in Oscars history,...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has, ever since 1927, been giving out awards to the best movies, directors, actors, and other artisans throughout the industry. Or at least, they've been giving awards to the ones that can win an annual popularity contest.

Say what you will about the Oscars and their credibility — they were, after all, invented to bust unions, not celebrate the art of cinema — but for nearly 100 years they have done a great job of raising the visibility of motion pictures which, on a long enough timeline, were otherwise destined to fade into obscurity. For every "Casablanca" or "Titanic," blockbuster films that have seemingly permanently invaded the public consciousness, there's a "Cavalcade" or a "The Greatest Show on Earth," which haven't made nearly as much of a cultural footprint, and which are more likely to be seen by modern audiences specifically because they won the Best Picture Oscar,...

Nikita Lavretski. Photo by Christopher Small.By his own count, Belarusian filmmaker Nikita Lavretski has released eight multimedia works this year: three mid- or feature-length films, one TikTok series, two stand-up specials, a short, and A Kid’s Flick, first screened at festivals at the end of 2021 but which he released online in 2022. It’s an astonishingly prodigious run even for a filmmaker well known—if known at all—for the speed and quantity of his output. Jokes About War and A Date in Minsk, the best of the bunch, played at Doclisboa last month, only a year after A Kid’s Flick had its world premiere at the same festival.Without a doubt, I count these films among the most significant and audacious of the year, though perhaps as much for personal as for cinematic reasons. Jokes About War was one of the first films of any kind released...

There is no more precarious moment in a movie star's career than the day they wake up, flush with box office success, and declare, "What I'd really like to do is direct!" Slightly less dangerous is a star's inclination to produce –- i.e., to diversify their career by generating material that reflects their taste or broadens their brand.

Two years after the end of World War II, John Wayne, who'd sat out the civilization-saving conflict while colleagues like James Stewart and Henry Fonda served, realized he was the biggest star in Hollywood and ought to start calling his own shots. Rather than direct, he found a quaint Western called "Angel and the Badman" written by James Edward Grant, in which a Quaker woman nurses a wounded gunfighter back to health. For an actor who'd made his name as a kickass, take-charge hero in Westerns and war movies, this was an oddly anti-violent movie.

Look into the series Criterion Channel have programmed for August and this lineup is revealed as (in scientific terms) quite something. “Hollywood Chinese” proves an especially deep bench, spanning “cinema’s first hundred years to explore the ways in which the Chinese people have been imagined in American feature films” and bringing with it the likes of Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, and Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet—among 20-or-so others. A three-film Marguerite Duras series brings one of the greatest films ever (India Song) and two lesser-screened experiments; films featuring Yaphet Kotto include Blue Collar, Across 110th Street, and Midnight Run; and lest we ignore a Myrna Loy retro that goes no later than 1949.

Criterion editions include The Asphalt Jungle, Husbands, Rouge, and Sweet Smell of Success; streaming premieres for Loznitsa’s Donbass, Béla Tarr’s watershed Damnation, and...

Before the academy expanded the Best Picture race in 2010, the winner of that award almost always picked up the Best Director prize as well. But since then, these two awards have aligned at only seven of the dozen ceremonies. We thought that we’d see another case of double-dipping this year with Jane Campion winning for both directing and producing “The Power of the Dog.” But now it looks like “Coda” will claim the top prize of Best Picture, with Campion consoling herself with being the third woman to win Best Director.

Why the change?

When the decision was made to increase the number of nominees for Best Picture, it was also decided to bring back the preferential ballot that had been used by the academy until the mid 1940s. The rationale was that by ranking the nominees, the winner would be the film that had the broadest level of support.

Conrad Nagel, the handsome matinee idol and co-founder of the Academy Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was the host of the fifth annual Academy Awards on Nov. 18, 1932. The evening marked Nagel’s second stint at Oscars host; the then-academy prez had hosted the festivities two years earlier. He turned on the charm in his sophomore outing at the glamorous banquet at the Fiesta Room of the Ambassador Hotel honoring films released between Aug. 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932. (Nagel would later co-host the first televised Oscars with Bob Hope in 1953.)

Eight films vied for Best Picture: John Ford’s medical drama “Arrowsmith”; Frank Borzage’s marital drama “Bad Girl”; Mervyn LeRoy’s examination of tabloid journalism “Five Star Final,” Edmund Goulding’s stylish drama “Grand Hotel”; Ernst Lubitsch’s pre-Code musical comedies “One Hour with You” and “The Smiling Lieutenant”; and Josef von Sternberg’s luscious pre-Code melodrama “Shanghai Express,” starring his muse Marlene Dietrich.

Sensing a potential trend in the possible nominations of three major Oscars categories — best director, actor and actress — we could see a first-time occurrence for the Academy Awards on Tuesday. However, if you read the tea leaves put forth by the nominations for the DGA and SAG, there’s a strong possibility that all three of those categories may not include a first-time nominee — a first in Oscar history.

For best actor, the SAG lineup recognized all former nominees and winners — Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield, Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). Even the ones on the bubble are once-nominated or crowned, including Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”), Bradley Cooper (“Nightmare Alley”) and Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”). The closest first-timers in the running seem to be Golden Globe nominees Peter Dinklage (“Cyrano”) and Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza...

‘Unabashed, unfettered romanticism’ runs wild in Frank Borzage’s golden-age masterpiece of a runaway wife and the crazy Frenchman who pursues her. Long lost to awful, ragged 16mm prints, the newly restored gem will dazzle fans of delirious love stories, where the right people get together despite distance, time, and the interference of jealous husbands, misunderstandings, accusations of murder and natural disasters. All the above figure in this mini-epic, yet the movie never seems like a genre mash-up. Jean Arthur skips the squeaky line deliveries, Charles Boyer drops the gloom act, Colin Clive is more frightening than in his horror movies and Leo Carillo steals the show with one of the most endearing characters of the 1930s.

History is Made at Night

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1072

1937 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 97 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 13, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Charles Boyer, Jean Arthur, Leo Carrillo, Colin Clive, Ivan Lebedeff,...

Classic movie lovers, rejoice! Going virtual once again this year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place from May 6 to 9 and will be extended to HBO Max’s platform as well. The lineup has now been unveiled and there’s no shortage of both canonical classics and gems worth discovering.

Along with much-adored classics from Breathless to North by Northwest to Mean Streets, the lineup also features a Nichols and May documentary, a pair of Chantal Akerman films, Anthony Mann’s T-Men, Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm, Samuel Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A., Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going!, the world premieres of the new restorations of Irving Pichel’s noir gem They Won’t Believe Me, the French drama Princess Tam Tam, the Pre-Code film Her Man, and more.

There’s also a number of special events, including a star-studded Plan 9 From Outer Space table read,...

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Keeping up with new Criterion releases can feel like a spectator sport for cinephiles checking the site each month. To make Blu-Ray shopping a little easier for your, IndieWire put together a roundup of new Criterion releases that you can pre-order now.

All of the films listed below are available on Amazon, which means that Prime members will get free two-day shipping. In addition to shipping perks, an Amazon Prime membership (which costs $12.99 a month) gives you streaming access to Amazon’s massive library of film and TV shows. So even if you binge all of your new Criterion Blu-Rays in a single weekend, you won’t be left without something to watch.

Despite the proliferation of streaming services, it’s becoming increasingly clear that any cinephile only needs subscriptions to a few to survive. Among the top of our list are The Criterion Channel and Mubi and now they’ve each unveiled their stellar April line-ups.

Over at The Criterion Channel, highlights include spotlights on Ennio Morricone, the Marx Brothers, Isabel Sandoval, and Ramin Bahrani, plus Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, Frank Borzage’s Moonrise, the brand-new restoration of Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk, and one of last year’s best films, David Osit’s Mayor.

At Mubi (where we’re offering a 30-day trial), they’ll have the exclusive streaming premiere of two of the finest festival films from last year’s circuit, Cristi Puiu’s Malmkrog and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Labyrinth of Cinema, plus Philippe Garrel’s latest The Salt of Tears, along with films from Terry Gilliam, George A. Romero,...

All products and services featured by IndieWire are independently selected by IndieWire editors. However, IndieWire may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

If shelf space were unlimited, you’d find the walls of many a cinephile’s living room absolutely stacked floor to ceiling with Criterion Collection Blu-rays. Allow us to indulge your itch to add to your personal film collection with this list of some of the biggest and best upcoming Criterion Collection releases, including a massive box set of Wong Kar Wai’s films, plus new Blu-ray releases of some favorites.

“World of Wong Kar Wai”

Release Date: March 23

Buy: World of Wong Kar Wai $199.95 $159.99 Buy it

First things first: There’s plenty to admire in this collector’s set of the director’s films, which includes new 4K digital restorations of “Chungking Express,...

After unveiling the discs that will be arriving in April, including Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder, Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep, and more, Criterion has now announced what will be coming to their streaming channel next month.

Highlights include retrospectives dedicated to Guy Maddin, Ruby Dee, Lana Turner, and Gordon Parks, plus selections from Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg’s stellar box set. They will also present the exclusive streaming premieres of Bill Duke’s The Killing Floor, William Greaves’s Nationtime, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes, and more.

Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which recently arrived on the collection, will be landing on the channel as well, along with a special “Lovers on the Run” series including film noir (They Live by Night) to New Hollywood (Badlands) to the French New Wave (Pierrot le fou) to Blaxploitation (Thomasine & Bushrod) and beyond. Also...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Speaking after her tragic death at the age of 33, President Franklin D. Roosevelt testified to the legacy of Carole Lombard. “She is and always will be a star,” he stated in 1942, “one that we shall never forget, nor cease to be grateful to.” Although the president’s words were at least in part influenced by Lombard’s recent patriotic zeal (she died in a plane crash after traveling to sell war bonds), his comments resonated throughout the country, especially Hollywood, where the actress’s impact had been progressively pronounced for years. Her films were like a breath of fresh air to Depression-era audiences, adding silver screen levity to individuals seeking a brief reprieve from day-to-day hardship. By contrast, Lombard’s cinematic sphere was often one of glamour, romance, and, above all,...

It’s pretty scary to think that as late as 1940 both Washington and the American public were sharply divided over Nazi Germany. Poland had been overrun and France was about to fall, but MGM waited until June of that year to release this softened adaptation of a novel written as a warning to the world in 1937. Handsomely produced with MGM’s high-gloss production values, it’s remembered as a valiant and courageous anti-Nazi film. Its all-star cast reunited the potent romantic team of James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan for sentimental fireworks.

The Mortal Storm

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 100 min. / Street Date November 3, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Frank Morgan, Robert Stack, Bonita Granville, Irene Rich, William T. Orr, Maria Ouspenskaya, Gene Reynolds, Russell Hicks, Esther Dale, Dan Dailey, Ward Bond, Rudolph Anders, Brad Dexter.

Cinematography: William H. Daniels

Film Editor:...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

One has to appreciate Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s winking self-awareness in calling his new feature Creepy. It’s as if the Coen brothers released a film entitled Snarky, or Eli Roth named his next stomach-churner Gory. Kurosawa, who’s still best known for Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001), two rare outstanding examples of the highly variable J-Horror genre, instills a sense of creepiness into virtually anything he does, regardless of subject matter. His latest, which sees him return to the realm of horror after excursions into more arthouse territory, certainly lives up to its name and has a lot of fun doing so. – Giovanni M.C. (full review)

Where...

” May we not believe as we choose and allow others to do the same?”

James Stewart in The Mortal Storm will soon be available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive

Masterful director Frank Borzage’s brilliance behind the camera empowers this story of Hitler’s rise to power as seen through the microcosm of one German family. What on the surface seems small and personal, is instead a towering bold revelation of the brutality of the Nazi regime. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan lead an impressive cast in a sweeping tale of the political and human chaos that rips a family apart, leading to savagery, sacrifice, and ultimately heroism.

The post James Stewart in The Mortal Storm Available on Blu-ray From Warner Archive appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.

TV’s 1979 Titanic movie comes to Blu in two versions. We liked it when new but didn’t care for the cut-down theatrical version that hit DVD in 2002. Kino’s disc completes a set of various film versions of the infamous 1912 disaster, and allows us the chance for a Titanic ‘battle of the bands’ — we’ll rate them from several criteria. The filmed-in-England production has a nicely-chosen soap opera cast: David Janssen, Cloris Leachman, Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, Anna Quayle, David Warner, Susan Saint James, Harry Andrews.

S.O.S. Titanic

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1979 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 102 + 144 min. / Street Date October 13, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: David Janssen, Cloris Leachman, Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, Anna Quayle, David Warner, Timothy Spall, Susan Saint James, Harry Andrews, Ed Bishop, Jerry Hauser, Aubrey Morris, Norman Rossington, Catherine Byrne, Warren Clarke, Madge Ryan.

Cinematography: Christopher Challis

Film Editor: Rusty Coppleman

Original Music: Howard Blake

Special effects: Wally Veevers,...

The Criterion Channel’s stellar offerings are continuing next month with a selection of new releases, retrospective, series, and more. Leading the pack is, of course, a horror lineup perfectly timed for Halloween, featuring ’70s classics and underseen gems, including Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer (pictured above), Tobe Hopper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, early films by David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, and Brian De Palma, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, and more.

Also of note is a New Korean Cinema retrospective, featuring a new introduction by critic Grady Hendrix and a conversation between directors Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook, whose Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Host, Mother, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Lady Vengeance are part of the lineup, as well as Lee Myung-se’s Nowhere to Hide, and more titles to be announced. Bong’s short Influenza will also arrive, paired with Michael Haneke’s Caché.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe on-demand success of Trolls: World Tour, and subsequent comments made by NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, has led to a significant development in the friction between studios and cinemas: AMC Theatres announced it will no longer play any Universal movies. The ongoing dispute speaks to the many changes likely to take place as response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Recommended VIEWINGThe Walker Art Center has made available more than 60 "in-depth portraits of directors, actors, writers, and producers who were celebrated in the Walker Cinema at pivotal moments in their careers." This abundant archive includes Bong Joon-ho, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Stan Brakhage, Julie Dash, and even Tom Hanks. Grasshopper's official trailer for Dan Sallitt's Fourteen, which stars Tallie Mehdel and Norma Kuhling as two long-time friends in New York. Read our review of the film here.

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***The coming of sound cost the American film industry plenty: it forced them to soundproof their stages, refit their theaters, and it rendered a fair few actors unemployable, by reason of heavy accents or lack of facility with the English language. In fact, one of the founders of 20th Century Fox was the comedy star Raymond Griffith, whose damaged vocal cords prevented him speaking above a croak, and who made the transition to writing and producing when he saw the writing on the wall. But on the other hand,...

Regardless of what happens on Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre, it’s likely that we’ll see a few landmark wins and some new Oscar records. Here are some of the notable ones that could happen:

• If 16 of the 62 nominated women win, this year’s Oscars will break the record set last year for the most female winners ever.

• If “Parasite” wins in any of the six categories in which it is nominated, it’ll be the first Korean film ever to win in that category.

• If “Parasite” wins Best Picture, it’ll be the first non-English film to win that award.

•It will also be the first Palme d’Or winner from the Cannes Film Festival to take Best Picture since 1955’s “Marty,” the only previous film to score those two awards.

• If Bong Joon Ho wins Best Director for “Parasite,” he’ll be the second director of a non-English film to win — and also the second in a row, after Alfonso Cuaron for “Roma” last year.

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***Sometime in '28 or '29, Raoul Walsh saw his first talking picture. He didn't like it. The stuff and stuffy theatrical performances, airless studio atmosphere and rigid, immobile staging and camerawork was all profoundly off-putting to this cinematic man of action. But on the same program was a Fox Movietone newsreel, and Walsh was dazzled by the way the small crew captured a noisy union meeting. He rushed to the studio and pitched an idea...All he needed was a western script and a newsreel van...

Sam Mendes is the odds-on favorite to take home the Directors Guild of America Award on Saturday for “1917,” which would make him one of 14 people to win the award twice. But he’d also join an even more distinguished list within that group: undefeated multiple champs.

Mendes, who nabbed his first DGA for his feature film debut “American Beauty” (1999), would be the third person to have a 2-for-2 record after Milos Forman and Alfonso Cuaron, who prevailed for “Gravity” (2013) and last year for “Roma” (2018). No one else has been able to maintain a perfect record with more nominations; Steven Spielberg has three wins from 11 nominations — both records.

Though “1917” was one of the last films to be released — the movie itself wasn’t even finished until the end of November — it and Mendes have quickly ascended to become Best Picture and Best Director Oscar favorites after surprise victories at the Golden Globes.

The Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame will be induct William J. Creber – the production designer responsible for, among other achievements, the Statue of Liberty scene in the original Planet of the Apes – and frequent Cecil B. DeMille collaborator Roland Anderson into its ranks at the 24th Annual Art Directors Guild’s Excellence in Production Design Awards next month.

The announcement was made today by President Nelson Coates, Adg and Awards Producer Scott Moses, Adg. The 2020 Awards will be held Saturday, February 1, at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown.

Creber, who died last year, is best known for his work on the Irwin Allen disaster movies The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno as well as the first three Planet of the Apes movies. He was Oscar-nominated three times, for The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). He was Emmy-nominated for his work on ABC’s...

Sam Mendes really knows how to end a decade on a high note. Twenty years ago, he made his feature film directorial debut with “American Beauty” (1999), which went on to win the Best Picture Oscar, along with Best Director for Mendes — the most recent director to prevail for a debut. Now, he’s back with his World War I epic “1917” and is a massive contender to take home a bookend Best Director statuette, which would give him the longest gap between two wins.

Twenty-one people have scored multiple Best Director Oscars — 18 with two, two with three and one with four — but most have typically won two of them within a period of 10 years. Five have a gap of more than 10 years between two victories. The record is currently held by Billy Wilder, who won his two awards 15 years apart for “The Lost Weekend” (1945) and “The Apartment” (1960).

Two have a gap of 13 years: Fred Zinnemann,...

The experts were right when they said that silent filmmaking was developing something unique and beautiful, before talkies came along and spoiled the party with all that noise. This ‘handy three-pack’ of once-obscure Josef von Sternberg classics proves the theory 100% — his intense dramas excite audiences with something that’s gone missing from the movies, or the cinema or whatever you want to call it: the magic of visual stylization in the service of basic human emotions. Before Marlene there was Evelyn Brent and Betty Compson: Sternberg presents them as shimmering visions.

3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 529, 530, 531

1927-28 / B&w / 1:33 Silent Ap / 81, 88, 75 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 8, 2019 / 79.96

Starring: George Bancroft, Evelyn Brent, Clive Brook; Emil Jannings, Evelyn Brent, William Powell; George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Olga Baclanova.

Cinematography: Bert Glennon; Bert Glennon; Harold Rosson

Original Music: multiple scores by Robert Israel,...

Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles who are looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms — and there are more of them all the time — caters to its own niche of film obsessives.

From chilling horror fare on Shudder, to the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel, and esoteric (but unmissable) festival hits on Film Movement Plus and Ovid.tv, IndieWire’s monthly guide will highlight the best of what’s coming to every major streaming site, with an eye towards exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.

Here’s the best of the best for August 2019.

Amazon Prime

There are some big new movies coming to Amazon Prime this month, but most of these recent Hollywood titles will also be available to stream on Hulu and/or Netflix.

After decades lost in the darkest corners of video distribution, on samizdat VHS tapes haphazardly dubbed and cropped, or edited by companies like Miramax and even less reputable organizations, the 21st century has been pretty good for the classics of Chinese-language cinema. At least, for those films in the kung fu genre, kickstarted by Celestial Pictures remastering and restoring the original audio of much of the 60s and 70s Shaw Brothers library in the early 2000s. This has led in turn to a growing recognition in the West of the work of directors like Lau Kar-leung and Chang Cheh, thanks to quality releases through imprints like the Weinsteins' sadly defunct Dragon Dynasty label. Recently the U.K. company Eureka Video has picked up where they left off, releasing restored version of 80s and 90s classics like the Police Story (1985), Project A (1983) and Once Upon a Time in China (1991–7) movies,...