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The Holdovers director Alexander Payne (in Nirvana T-shirt) with Anne-Katrin Titze on Westward The Women: “It’s as though Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa got together to make a Western.”

In the first instalment with Alexander Payne on his intricately layered Golden Globe-nominated The Holdovers (screenplay by David Hemingson with an Oscar-shortlisted score by Mark Orton) we started out discussing a film he recommended, William A Wellman’s Westward The Women (screenplay by Frank Capra and Charles Schnee), starring Robert Taylor and Denise Darcel with a formidable supporting cast of women, led by Hope Emerson.

Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) and Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) with Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph)

From there we touched upon his longtime collaborators, Wendy Chuck and Nathan Carlson, production designer Ryan Warren Smith, a scene between (Golden Globe-nominated) Paul Giamatti and Carrie Preston leading to Slavoj Žižek’s comment in Sophie Fiennes’s The Pervert’s Guide To Ideology...

Sidney Poitier — film noir icon? That may not be one of the phrases that popped up most frequently in the recent obituaries and appreciations for the late actor, but Poitier did take his turn at noir. The movie with which he made his screen debut, “No Way Out,” will be featured at the upcoming resumption of the annual Noir City Hollywood Festival, which is devoting separate days to the treatment of race and women in the crime dramas of the ’40s and ’50s, along with a continued focus on presenting restorations in 35mm glory.

Noir City Hollywood has been a staple at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre each spring since the late ’90s, but with that theater closed for extensive Netflix-funded renovations, this year it will take place at the Hollywood Legion Theatre a few blocks up Highland Blvd. Hosted as always by Film Noir Foundation president (and...

Directed by William Wellman and released in 1951, this unusual western stars John McIntire as a rancher who plays matchmaker to a town full of lonely California cowpokes. Leading man Robert Taylor is the rangerider charged with shepherding the adventurous brides to be—a diverse band of city slickers more than capable of holding their own, including the petite Parisian Denise Darcel and the towering Hope Emerson. This trailer, however, hasn’t aged well, especially the last card about wedding rings!

The post Westward the Women appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Fiery dame Susan Hayward carries this far-flung ‘women’s epic’ to delirious romantic extremes, as her Irish heroine defies nature and exploits admirers to claim the hunky Dutchman of her dreams. Using apartheid-ridden South Africa as a background for a cheerful white conquest wasn’t as touchy an idea in 1955 as it is now, but it should have been. Just the same, Henry King’s film is an impressive production from the early years of CinemaScope.

Untamed

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 111 min. / Street Date January 22, 2019 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Richard Egan, John Justin, Agnes Moorehead, Rita Moreno, Hope Emerson, Brad Dexter, Henry O’Neill, Eleanor Audley, Kevin Corcoran, Philip Van Zandt.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Barbara McLean

Original Music: Franz Waxman

Visual Effects: Ray Kellogg, Matthew Yuricich

Written by Talbot Jennings, Frank Fenton, Michael Blankfort, William A. Bacher from a novel by Helga Moray.

Robert Siodmak’s superb noir classic pits two graduates of Little Italy against one other: a crook who can deceive relatives and seduce strangers into helping him, and the cop who wants to put him out of business. Starring the great Richard Conte, with Victor Mature in what might be his best role.

Cry of the City

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date November 15, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring Victor Mature, Richard Conte, Fred Clark, Shelley Winters, Betty Garde, Berry Kroeger, Tommy Cook, Debra Paget, Hope Emerson, Roland Winters, Walter Baldwin, Mimi Aguglia, Kathleen Howard, Konstantin Shayne, Tito Vuolo.

Cinematography Lloyd Ahern

Original Music Alfred Newman

Written by Richard Murphy from the novel The Chair for Martin Rome by Henry Edward Helseth

Produced by Sol C. Siegel

Directed by Robert Siodmak

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Perhaps because of a legal or rights issue, Robert Siodmak...

Orange Is the New Black returns June 17. The show has rightly earned praise for its nuanced, moving portrayals of female inmates of all stripes, and serves as a reminder of how far things have come in terms of images of incarcerated women on screen. In appreciation of series creator Jenji Kohan and the cast and crew's elevated take on the subject matter, we're looking back at the bleak and often exploitative history of the strange "women's prison drama" film genre. The portrayal of women in prison can be split - as most of Hollywood can - into two periods: Pre- and Post-Code.

Orange Is the New Black returns June 17. The show has rightly earned praise for its nuanced, moving portrayals of female inmates of all stripes, and serves as a reminder of how far things have come in terms of images of incarcerated women on screen. In appreciation of series creator Jenji Kohan and the cast and crew's elevated take on the subject matter, we're looking back at the bleak and often exploitative history of the strange "women's prison drama" film genre. The portrayal of women in prison can be split - as most of Hollywood can - into two periods: Pre- and Post-Code.

Eleanor Parker dead at 91: ‘The Sound of Music’ actress, three-time Best Actress Oscar nominee (photo: Eleanor Parker ca. 1945) Eleanor Parker, one of the best and most beautiful actresses of the studio era, a three-time Best Actress Academy Award nominee, and one of the stars of the 1965 blockbuster and Best Picture Oscar winner The Sound of Music, died today, December 9, 2013, of complications from pneumonia at a medical facility near her home in the Southern Californian desert town of Palm Springs. Eleanor Parker was 91. “I’m primarily a character actress,” Parker told the Toronto Star in 1988. “I’ve portrayed so many diverse individuals on the screen that my own personality never emerged.” At one point, wildly imaginative publicists called her The Woman of a Thousand Faces — an absurd label, when you think of Man of a Thousand Faces Lon Chaney. Eleanor Parker never altered her appearance the way Chaney did — her...