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The most enjoyable additional extras on this disc, aside from Becoming Hitchcock, are interviews with Neil Brand about the scores. Even on The Ring, which is presented here with a score he didn't write, he proves an excellent guide to the mood of the film. Melodrama à la Manx: Stephen Horne on scoring Hitchcock is less detailed in terms of the film itself, but offers an insight into Horne's working on the score.

Davina Quinliven's conversation on Hitch's Leading Ladies - which can be found on The Manxman - is an excellent and accessible dive into the stars of the films on this set and their thematic connections to Hitchcock's later work. From Silent Film Idol to Superman: John Stuart by Jonathan Croall also gets down to specifics about John Stuart, whose long career would extend to Richard Donner's superhero film of 1978.

Charles Barr provides excellent additional insight.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The retrospective Early Hitchcock is showing August 11 - September 12, 2017 in the United States.ChampagneAround the time of his dazzling expressionistic breakthrough The Lodger (1927), and Blackmail (1929), his innovative foray into sound—and England’s first talkie—Alfred Hitchcock was testing the narrative waters of his potential filmic output. It was a terrifically productive period for the promising London-born auteur, with nearly 20 features in ten years, and looking back at these early works, the tendency is often to pinpoint instances of his trademark aesthetic to come (easy to do with something like The Lodger; less so with something like The Ring, also 1927). However, when sampling these titles, and keeping in mind the most popular Hitchcockian characteristics had yet to be regularly implemented, new and uncommon propensities emerge. Such is the case with a trilogy of films to be shown as part...

Joel and Ethan Coen movie ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ tops 2014 National Society of Film Critics Awards (Oscar Isaac in ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’) The National Society of Film Critics is the last major U.S.-based critics’ group to announce their annual winners. This year, their top film was Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, a comedy-drama about a hapless folk singer. Inside Llewyn Davis also earned honors for the directors, star Oscar Isaac, and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. Additionally, the Coen brothers’ film was the runner-up in the Best Screenplay category. Inside Llewyn Davis is the first movie directed by Joel and Ethan Coen to win the top prize at the National Society of Film Critics Awards. Back in early 2008, whereas most critics’ groups — and the Academy Awards — went for the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, the Nsfc selected instead Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.

Alfred Hitchcock silent movies added to Unesco UK Memory of the World Register (photo: Ivor Novello in The Lodger) The nine Alfred Hitchcock-directed silent films recently restored by the British Film Institute have been added to the Unesco UK Memory of the World Register, "a list of documentary heritage which holds cultural significance specific to the UK." The nine Hitchcock movies are the following: The Pleasure Garden (1925), The Ring (1927), Downhill / When Boys Leave Home (1927), The Lodger (1927), Easy Virtue (1928), Champagne (1928), The Farmer’s Wife (1928), The Manxman (1929), and Blackmail (1929) — also released as a talkie, Britain’s first. Only one Hitchcock-directed silent remains lost, The Mountain Eagle / Fear o’ God (1926). Most of those movies have little in common with the suspense thrillers Hitchcock would crank out in Britain and later in Hollywood from the early ’30s on. But a handful of his silents already featured elements and themes that would recur in...

Hitchcock's silents are now on the Memory of the World register – I can think of five others that deserve the same recognition

If, when you consider our national heritage, you think of murder, guilt, sex and cheeky humour – well, somebody out there agrees with you. The decision to add Alfred Hitchcock's nine surviving silent movies to Unesco's UK Memory of the World register puts his early work on a cultural par with the Domesday Book and Field Marshal Douglas Haig's war diaries – also selected for the list this year.

The nine silents were all directed by Hitchcock in the 1920s and include better-known films in the director's classic thriller mode such as The Lodger and Blackmail as well as comedies (Champagne, The Farmer's Wife) a boxing movie (The Ring) and dramas (The Pleasure Garden, Downhill, Easy Virtue and the lush, rustic romance The Manxman). The collection was nominated by the BFI,...

A series of nine silent films directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock between 1925 and 1929 have recently been restored by the British Film Institute, and are set to tour theaters in the Us this summer. According to Deadline.com, the so-called “Hitchcock 9” represent the first stage of the director's distinguished career, beginning with his first-ever film The Pleasure Garden, and including Blackmail, The Ring, The Manxman, and 1927's The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. The latter, loosely based on the Jack the Ripper murders, is considered by Hitchcock to be the first film to demonstrate his signature style – including his beloved tradition of making cameo appearances in all of his movies. The first Us screening will take place at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre as part of the Silent Film Festival June 14-16, followed by BAMcinématek, June 29-July 5, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Steinberg Screen in the Harvey Theater,...

Profiles in History will be auctioning off 59 film stills, including photos from Alfred Hitchcock’s lost 1926 silent film, The Mountain Eagle. We have more information on the auction and we’ve been given four photos to share with Daily Dead readers:

“Los Angeles- Nov 8, 2012- Profiles in History, run by Joe Maddalena, is proud to announce that a collection of 59 film stills that belonged to Alfred Hitchcock and the only existing evidence of The Mountain Eagle, one of his last silent films, will be on the auction block at “Drama, Action, Romance- The Hollywood Auction.” The auction will take place December 15 & 16 in Los Angeles.

This previously unknown, extraordinary collection of (59) special oversize photos are for two of Alfred Hitchcock’s most important silent films, The Mountain Eagle (1926) and The Manxman (1929), two of the most searched for lost films in history. These are not regular theatrical distribution publicity stills, which would...

The 17th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk) has announced its lineup. The festival will run from 7th to 14th December, 2012 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Some of the highlights of the lineup are festival favourites of the year Amour, Chitrangada, Samhita, The Sapphires, Drapchi, Miss Lovely, Me and You, Celluloid Man, and Baandhon.

Fourteen films will screen in the Competition section while seven contemporary films will be screened in “Indian Cinema Now” section.

Complete list of films:

Competition Films

Fourteen feature films from Asia, Africa and Latin America will compete for the coveted “Suvarna Chakoram” (Golden Crow Pheasant) and other awards.

Always Brando by Ridha Behi (Tunisia)

Inheritors of the Earth by T V Chandran (India)

A Terminal Trust by by Masayuki Suo (Japan)

Shutter by Joy Mathew (India)

Today by Alain Gomis (Senegal-France)

The Repentant by Merzak Allouache (Algeria)

Sta. Niña by Manny Palo (Philippines)

Present Tense...

The programme for the 56th BFI London Film Festival launched yesterday under the new creative leadership of BFI’s Head of Exhibition and Festival Director, Clare Stewart, bringing a rich and diverse programme of international films and events from both established and upcoming talent over a 12 day celebration of cinema. The Festival will screen a total of 225 fiction and documentary features, including 14 World Premieres, 15 International Premieres and 34 European Premieres. There will also be screenings of 111 live action and animated shorts. A stellar line-up of directors, cast and crew are expected to take part in career interviews, master classes, and other special events. The 56th BFI London Film Festival will run from 10-21 October 2012. This year sees the introduction of several changes to the Festival’s format. Now taking place over 12 days, the Festival expands further from its traditional Leicester Square cinemas – Odeon West End, Vue West End, Odeon Leicester Square...

Announced yesterday, the programme for the 56th BFI London Film Festival brings a rich and diverse programme of international films and events from both established and upcoming talent over a 12 day celebration of cinema. The Festival will screen a total of 225 fiction and documentary features, including 14 World Premieres, 15 International Premieres and 34 European Premieres. There will also be screenings of 111 live action and animated shorts. A stellar line-up of directors, cast and crew are expected to take part in career interviews, master classes, and other special events.

This year sees the introduction of several changes to the Festival’s format. Now taking place over 12 days, the Festival expands further from its traditional Leicester Square cinemas – Odeon West End, Vue West End, Odeon Leicester Square and Empire – and the BFI Southbank to include four additional new venues – Hackney Picturehouse, Renoir, Everyman Screen on the Green and Rich Mix, which join existing London venues the Ica,...

One of the clear victors emerging out of Telluride was Ben Affleck‘s The Town follow-up, the political hostage thriller Argo. Featuring a great ensemble including Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman, the film received top-notch reviews for its mix of thrillers and comedy and now we’ve got word it’ll be showing at another prestigious festival.

BFI London Film Festival announced their promising line-up today, which includes Argo, as well as Michael Haneke‘s Amour, Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths, Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday, Sally Potter’s Ginger and Rosa, Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone and much more. Check out the complete line-up below, as well as WB’s first TV spot for Argo.

London, Wednesday 5 September: The programme for the 56th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express launched today under the new creative leadership of BFI’s Head of Exhibition and Festival Director,...

The line-up to the 56th London Film Festival has just been announced and you can see the list of movies coming to the greatest city in the world below. We already knew that Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie and Mike Newell’s Great Expectations would open and close the festival respectively but now we have the rest of the movies coming to London Town.

Let us know your thoughts on the line-up below in our comments section.

The Festival itself runs from October 10th to October 21st and we’ll be doing our best to bring you reviews from as many films as we possibly can!

London, Wednesday 5 September: The programme for the 56th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express launched today under the new creative leadership of BFI’s Head of Exhibition and Festival Director, Clare Stewart, bringing a rich and diverse programme of international films and...

After announcing earlier in the week that this year’s BFI London Film Festival opening night film will be Frankenweenie, they’ve now announced that the closing night film will be Mike Newell’s anticipated adaptation of Great Expectations.

Newell’s adaptation will be making its world premiere the Toronto International Film Festival on 11th September, and will then make its European debut here in London on Sunday, 21st October, before its UK-wide release at the end of November.

Jeremy Irvine stars as the young Pip, and is joined by a stellar cast headed up by Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Holliday Grainger, Jason Flemyng, Robbie Coltrane, Sally Hawkins, David Walliams, and Ewen Bremner.

Newell, whose credits include the classic Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is directing a script penned by the best-selling novelist/screenwriter David Nicholls (Starter for 10,...

With two new Hitchcock films arriving soon, there'll be plenty of chance to revisit the great man's finest moments from a behind-the-scenes perspective. But if you can't wait until then, the BFI's The Genius of Hitchcock season is in full swing. There's also a microsite - 39 Steps To Hitchcock - to whet your appetite.As a rarely-seen taster, this spot of clip-based sauciness shows him twisting the melons of one of his earlier leading ladies, Anny Ondra, on the set of Blackmail. Here he's taking the opportunity afforded by a sound test to embarrass the petunias off the Czech actress's blouse with bawdy probings about her love life. brightcove.createExperiences(); Still she got off lightly compared to Tippi Hedren, upon who he unleashed that beaky blitzkrieg in The Birds, and the two also worked together on The Manxman the same year. The Genius of Hitchcock season runs at the BFI until October.

Everyone knows the classic Hitchcocks: Psycho, The Birds, The Lady Vanishes. But the summer-long retrospective also includes wonderful films you may not have heard much about; here's 10 often-overlooked Hitchcocks you won't want to miss

Born in Leytonstone, east London, but destined to be the toast of Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock learned the business of film-making in London, not La. The business at that time was silent cinema, and the young Hitchcock had a full apprenticeship.

He spent years at Gainsborough Pictures in Islington, north London (or Famous Players-Lasky as it was when he arrived) crafting caption cards, editing scripts and designing sets before he was given the chance to direct his own films. His early features are far more accomplished, and more personal, than many a director's debut. And if you're familiar with his famous sound movies, you'll find much in them that prefigures his most celebrated suspense-filled sequences.

The British...

Nine of the 10 films Hitchcock directed in the 1920s are getting a full restoration. Henry K Miller enters the dusty world of the archivists and learns about the race to save the silents

The audience at the Capitol cinema in London during the middle week of April 1926 witnessed an unusually bold declaration of authorship. The opening moments of The Pleasure Garden, touted in the fan magazines as the debut of "the youngest director in the world", contained, under the "directed by" credit, the slanted and underlined signature of the 26-year-old Alfred J Hitchcock. What followed was also – as it would become clear over the decades – signature Hitchcock film-making. The film's first scene gives us a voyeur's-eye-view of a dancer's legs; and then makes us share the voyeur's unease as the look is returned. The Spectator's influential critic Iris Barry scented the "new blood" desperately needed by the ailing British film industry,...

Netflix has revolutionized the home movie experience for fans of film with its instant streaming technology. Netflix Nuggets is my way of spreading the word about independent, classic and foreign films made available by Netflix for instant streaming.

This Week’s New Instant Releases…

Promised Lands (1974)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Documentary

Director: Susan Sontag

Synopsis: Set in Israel during the final days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this powerful documentary — initially barred by Israel authorities — from writer-director Susan Sontag examines divergent perceptions of the enduring Arab-Israeli clash. Weighing in on matters related to socialism, anti-Semitism, nation sovereignty and American materialism are The Last Jew writer Yoram Kaniuk and military physicist Yuval Ne’eman.

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2009)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Heino Ferch, Hannah Herzsprung, Gerald Alexander Held, Lena Stolze, Sunnyi Melles

Synopsis: Directed by longtime star of independent German cinema Margarethe von Trotta, this reverent...

There isn't a person on Earth that can deny that Alfred Hitchcock is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. You simply don't earn the title "Master Of Suspense" without making a few great films. But before Hitchcock directed Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window and North By Northwest, he was a silent film director. Sadly, the prints of some of his earliest work are slowly decaying with time and are in desperate need of restoration, but it's something that you can help fix. The BFI National Archive is currently accepting donations from those willing to put money towards saving the remaining Hitchcock silent films. Asking people to "Rescue the Hitchcock 9," the films in question are The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger, The Ring, Downhill, Easy Virtue, The Farmers Wife, Champagne, The Manxman and Blackmail. Most mainstream moviegoers likely has never heard of any of these titles, but hopefully the name...