News

Alex Garland's latest feature film, Civil War, has captivated audiences nationwide on its way to setting numerous box office records for A24. Civil War became A24's highest-grossing Thursday night preview release and the company's highest-grossing opening weekend release. The movie also became A24's first film to finish a weekend at the top spot of the domestic box office list.

A civil war is any armed conflict between organized groups within the same state or country. Many in the United States are familiar with films about the American Civil War, such as Gone with the Wind, Glory, and Gettysburg. However, other civil wars such as the Irish Civil War and the Sengoku period in Japanese history have been brilliantly depicted in cinema through movies such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Ugetsu. Civil war films account for some of the greatest war movies ever made.

Updated...

Breakthrough was praised for its realistic portrayal of D-Day and the brutalities of war. The film featured actual American and British military films along with real-life WWII footage. Breakthrough was profitable at the box office, earning over $3 million against a $784,000 budget.

A classic 1950 war movie called Breakthrough was the first great film about D-Day. After World War II ended on September 2, 1945, several WWII films about D-Day were released soon after, particularly in the year 1950. D-Day took place on June 6 1944 and is widely regarded as one of the most significant days in American military history. According to BBC, "D-Day was the largest military seaborne operation ever attempted and marked the start of the campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied north-west Europe." Breakthrough is not currently available to stream but physical copies can be purchased online.

Breakthrough stars David Brian as Captain Tom Hale, John Agar as Lt. Joe Mallory, and Frank Lovejoy as Sgt.

Hollywood’s postwar shift to social consciousness addressed familiar issues like bigotry and discrimination. On his way to making his gargantuan, serious epics, famed director George Stevens paused for this almost entirely forgotten contemplation of American anxiety in the business rat race, with a side order of alcoholism and potential adultery. Ray Milland is the troubled ad man who tries to help the drink-impaired actress, Joan Fontaine. Wife Teresa Wright waits patiently back home, but for how long? Is Stevens just dabbling in neorealistic doldrums, or did he feel the wave of dull existential despair as well? It’s one of his least-known films.

Something to Live For

All Region Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #199

952 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Street Date February 22, 2023 / Available from [Imprint] / au 34.95

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Ray Milland, Teresa Wright, Richard Derr, Douglas Dick, Harry Bellaver, Paul Valentine, King Donovan, Kasey Rogers, Douglas Spencer, Mari Blanchard.

Cinematography: George Barnes

Production Designer: Hal Pereira,...

“Murder Or Self Defense?”

By Raymond Benson

This compelling 1949 melodrama—it can’t quite be called film noir due to a lack of many of the traits associated with that cinematic movement—would have a field day in the era of #MeToo. It was made during 1948 (released in January ’49) while the Production Code was still in effect. While it was taboo to say that the protagonist, Dr. Wilma Tuttle (Loretta Young), is “sexually assaulted” by one of her students at the college where she teaches psychology (it’s obvious that this is what occurs in front of our eyes on the screen), it’s perfectly fine for the investigating homicide detective, Lt. Dorgan (Wendell Corey), to make harassing sexual innuendos and sexist remarks about the woman he suspects of murder, not only to her face but to all the other men in the room while she’s present. But it...

Eric Balfour's neighbors claim the actor's latest role is peeping tom, but Eric thinks the buzz next door -- from a beehive -- is killing him ... this according to court docs filed in their block war. Eric, who starred in "24" and "Six Feet Under," is in a heated dispute with his Venice neighbors, who tried to get a restraining order against him. In the docs, they say he's harassing their whole family by...

Turner Classic Movies continues with its Gay Hollywood presentations tonight and tomorrow morning, June 8–9. Seven movies will be shown about, featuring, directed, or produced by the following: Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Farley Granger, John Dall, Edmund Goulding, W. Somerset Maughan, Clifton Webb, Montgomery Clift, Raymond Burr, Charles Walters, DeWitt Bodeen, and Harriet Parsons. (One assumes that it's a mere coincidence that gay rumor subjects Cary Grant and Tyrone Power are also featured.) Night and Day (1946), which could also be considered part of TCM's homage to birthday girl Alexis Smith, who would have turned 96 today, is a Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a posh, heterosexualized version of Porter. As the warning goes, any similaries to real-life people and/or events found in Night and Day are a mere coincidence. The same goes for Words and Music (1948), a highly fictionalized version of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical partnership.

In the middle of the 20th century, Alfred Hitchcock made a career out of generating fear from the mundane. Psycho made us afraid to shower. The Birds had us looking toward the skies for more than just the pigeons looking to crap on our heads. And I’ll be damned if Rear Window didn’t get me to stop spying on my neighbors with a telescopic camera.

Those familiar with Hitchcock’s work likely know that his ability to instill dread stems from his knowledge about the difference between surprise and suspense. According to Hitchcock, to surprise, you simply need to set off a bomb in the middle of a scene. To create suspense, however, the audience needs to know the bomb is there. Suspense is the knowledge that two people are living their lives blissfully unaware that each moment could be their last. That’s why many of Hitchcock...

The actor Douglas Dick has died at the age of 95. His family announced the news in an obituary in The Los Angeles Times. Dick. who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Rope, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Los Angeles on Dec. 19, 2015. As well as an esteemed actor, Dick's family noted that Dr. Douglas M. Dick was also a naval officer, writer and psychologist. In 1960 he starred alongside Elvis Presley and Barbara Eden in Flaming Star. He was described by his family as "an honest, intelligent, charitable and principled man, was an active member of the Academy...

The actor Douglas Dick has died at the age of 95. His family announced the news in an obituary in The Los Angeles Times. Dick. who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Rope, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Los Angeles on Dec. 19, 2015. As well as an esteemed actor, Dick's family noted that Dr. Douglas M. Dick was also a naval officer, writer and psychologist. In 1960 he starred alongside Elvis Presley and Barbara Eden in Flaming Star. He was described by his family as "an honest, intelligent, charitable and principled man, was an active member of the Academy...

Douglas Dick, who starred in such films as Rope, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage before exiting show business to work as a psychologist, has died. He was 95. The actor died Dec. 19 in his sleep in his Los Angeles home, his family announced. Dick played the indecisive dinner guest Kenneth Lawrence in Rope (1948), the first of Hitchcock’s Technicolor movies. The crime drama takes place in one room and is edited so as to appear as one continuous shot. Dick played a major in Mark Robson’s Home of the Brave (1949) and

read more...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...