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Jinkx Monsoon is among the newly announced cast members for Broadway’s upcoming and reimagined Pirates of Penzance production starring the previously announced Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce.

Retitled Pirates! The Penzance Musical, Rupert Holmes’ jazzy New Orleans-style reinterpretation of the Gilbert & Sullivan classic is being staged by the Roundabout Theatre Company with previews beginning Friday, April 4, 2025, at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre. The official opening night is set for Thursday, April 24, and the limited engagement will run through June 22.

Monsoon, who will play Ruth to Karimloo’s Pirate King and Pierce’s Gilbert/Major General Stanley, is a two-time RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, and made her Broadway debut in 2023 as Matron “Mama” Morton in Chicago. In 2024, she played Audrey in the Off Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors opposite Corbin Bleu. Other credits include a Doctor Who debut as the new villain Maestro.

Scott Ellis will direct,...

“Where do things truly start?” wonders the narrator of Emmanuel Mouret’s relentlessly middlebrow romantic comedy Trois Amies, a story of three women and their relationships that never feels like it’s ever going to end. Though it lasts just under two hours, it feels as bright and breezy as a flight from Newark to Singapore, spinning a complicated web of emotional intrigue that, finally, seems to go on and on just for the sake of it.

The French like these kinds of films, and their big-name directors stuff them with their equally famous friends, leading to waffly ensemble pieces that can be as endearingly cheerful as Julie Delpy’s family memoir Skylab (2011) or as insufferable as Guillaume Canet’s Big Chill ripoff Little White Lies (2011). Trois Amies sits somewhere, lumpenly, in the middle, and it’s hard to imagine what the Venice Film Festival programmers were thinking when they...

Roger Vadim's 1968 sci-fi freak-out "Barbarella" is one of the zestiest, sexist, strangest, and most amusing pictures the genre has to offer. Set in the 41st century, "Barbarella" follows the merry caprices of the title heroine (Jane Fonda), a freelance adventurer of the cosmos. Barbarella, frequently undressed, is assigned by the President of Earth (Claude Dauphin) to track down a mysterious, missing scientist named Durand-Durand (Milo O'Shea) who has invented an all-powerful weapon called the positronic ray.

During her quest, Barbarella is attacked by killer dolls, befriends a blind angel (John Philip Law), is forced into a deadly orgasm machine (although she can outlast its mechanical manipulations), and faces off against the Black Queen, the tyrant ruler of Sogo.

The film was based on the erotic comics by Jean-Claude Forest, and possesses all the same sexual energy as the aggressively naughty original, even if it's not quite as sexually explicit.

New York’s July heat wave is doing nothing to wilt the prospects of some recent Broadway arrivals, with four spring-summer arrivals filling each and every seat at their respective venues last week: Oh, Mary!, The Outsiders, Stereophonic and Hell’s Kitchen were sell-outs for the week ending July 14.

Long-runners Hadestown and Hamilton were Sro, as usual, grossing $825,070 and $1,922,308, respectively.

Oh, Mary!, the Cole Escola comedy that opened July 11 to across-the-board raves, grossed $667,143; The Outsiders was at $1,390,233; Stereophonic grossed $983,845; and Hell’s Kitchen was at $1,687,326.

Closing soon are:

Home, the Roundabout’s well-reviewed Samm-Art Williams revival. Last week, a planned-seven performance week at the Todd Haimes grossed $133,600; closing July 21; The Who’s Tommy took in $772,892 at the Nederlander; closing July 21; Illinoise, which began an eight-performance schedule last week at the St. James, grossed $745,520; closing August 10; The Wiz grossed a magical $1,240,166 last week at the Marquis; closing August 18.

In all, the 26 Broadway...

Run Lola Run.For movie lovers of a certain age, the image of Franka Potente and her shock of Manic Panic red hair in Run Lola Run (1998) is iconic. A still-potent mix of postmodernism, action cinema, and existential drama, Tom Tykwer’s film fits neatly on the shelf between other millennial canonical classics with strong (or strong-ish) female leads like The Fifth Element (1997) and Amélie (2001). Some saw the breakout success of Run Lola Run as evidence that international arthouse cinema had succumbed to the influence of MTV and Hollywood; others found it a blast of fresh air. The elevator pitch is deceptively simple: Lola (Potente) receives a phone call from her boyfriend, Mani (Moritz Bleibtreu): he was supposed to deliver 100,000 stolen deutschmarks to his crime-lord boss, but left the money bag on the subway by mistake, and now Lola has just twenty minutes to come up with a different...

Nicole Kidman has captivated audiences with her spellbinding acting for over 40 years and has excelled in theatre, film, and television. Not only is she an accomplished producer but a five-time Academy Award nominee. Her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002) earned her the Oscar for Best Actress in 2002.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1967, she began her career in Australia as a teenager with roles in Bush Christmas (1983) and BMX Bandits (1983). Her performance in Dead Calm (1989) would grab the attention of Hollywood, and Tom Cruise, casting her in her breakout role as neurologist Dr. Claire Lewicki, in Days of Thunder (1990).

Her trajectory to establishing herself among Hollywood’s A-List continued as she starred alongside Cruise again in Far and Away (1992), mastered her comedic acting chops as an aspiring television personality in Gus Van Sant’s black comedy, To Die For (1995), and portrayed another doctor in the superhero film Batman Forever (1995), opposite Val Kilmer.

Stirke-postponed event originally set to take place this year.

American Film Institute (AFI has rescheduled the strike-postponed 49th AFI Life Achievement Award gala tribute celebrating Nicole Kidman for April 27 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

The event was originally scheduled for this year before it was held back amid the SAG-AFTRA work stoppage. The air dates for the special on TNT and Turner Classic Movies will be announced at a later date.

Kidman is the first Australian actor to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award in recognition of a career that has brought the lead actress Oscar for...

Also new this weekend is ’The Nun II’ and Chinese thriller ’No More Bets’.

Universal Pictures’ My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is aiming to entice audiences this weekend as the widest new release in the UK and Ireland, opening at 587 sites.

The third in the franchise picks up just after the family patriarch Gus has passed away (actor Michael Constantine died in real life in 2021).

Cast including Nia Vardalos – who also directs the third instalment, and wrote the first two, and Sex And The City and And Just Like That… star John Corbett return.

Close behind is another sequel,...

Sony’s “The Equalizer 3” has finally toppled the six-week reign of “Barbie” atop the U.K. and Ireland box office.

Antoine Fuqua’s action thriller, headlined by Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning, debuted with £2.7 million ($3.4 million), per numbers from Comscore.

In its seventh weekend, Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” slid down to second place with £1.6 million for a mighty total of £92.5 million. It is the highest grossing film of 2023 and occupies seventh position on the all-time charts for the territory behind “Spectre,” which has £95.2 million.

Also in its seventh weekend, Universal’s “Oppenheimer” slid down a spot to third with £960,504. With £55.4 million, it is the second highest grossing film of 2023 and is level with “Bohemian Rhapsody” at No. 34 on the all-time chart.

Angel’s “Sound of Freedom,” a massive success Stateside, debuted in fourth place with £760,060. Rounding off the top five was Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” which...

Execs from BBC Storyville and Canada’s CBC are among the speakers lined up for Israel’s CoPro market next month.

Emma Hindley, lead commissioning editor at the BBC’s documentary strand Storyville, and CBC commissioning editor Jordana Ross will be among the film and television industry leaders on stage at the conference.

Other confirmed speakers include France Télévisions commissioning editors Renaud Allilaire and Caroline Behar, Pov coordinating producer Robert Y. Chang, Impact Partners exec producer Lauren Haber, Participant Media director Amanda Hillsberg Arya, Arte G.E.I.E. commissioning editor Catherine Le Goff and Rai Documentari director Fabrizio Zappi.

CoPro, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, will also host reps from major networks including BBC, Arte, NBC, and Netflix as well as production companies and distributors. They will meet with Israel’s most prominent documentary makers in a series of in-person events including pitches, rough-cut screenings, and meetings.

Meanwhile CoPro will...

Co-production forum marks 20th anniversary this year.

Laurynas Bareisa, winner of the 2021 best film prize at Venice’s Orrizonti section for his debut Pilgrims, is among the directors presenting new projects at the 20th edition of the Sofia Meetings co-production forum (22-26 March).

The Lithuanian director is bringing Drowning Dry to Sofia where it is one of five projects in a section dedicated to second feature films.

The section’s line-up also includes The Last Slap by Italian director Matteo Oleotto whose debut feature Zoran, My Nephew The Idiot premiered in Venice’s Critics Week in 2013.

The Last Slap’s...

Edward Berger’s harrowing German-language war film “All Quiet on the Western Front” has been named the best film of 2022 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), which presented its annual Ee British Academy Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday evening in London.

The film was a commanding winner at the Baftas, winning seven awards overall, including Best Director for Berger and Best Film Not in the English Language, as well as honors for its adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound and Volker Bertelmann’s score. Martin McDonagh’s black comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” and Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” each received four.

“All Quiet” was the first film not in English to win at BAFTA since “Roma” in 2019. Before that, no non-English film had won since “Jean de Florette” in 1987. In the early years of the award, films not in English won the top prize fairly regularly,...

The 76th BAFTAs take place on Sunday, February 19 at the Royal Festival Hall with Richard E. Grant hosting. Germany’s ‘”All Quiet on the Western Front” leads with 14 nominations, followed by 10 for “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and nine for “Elvis.”

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts was founded in April 1947 as the British Film Academy by luminaries including David Lean, Carol Reed, Charles Laughton, Laurence Olivier, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Lean was named chairman of the awards that would “recognize those which had contributed outstanding creative work towards the advancement of British film.” Eleven years later, the British Film Academy merged with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors.

The first awards were handed out on May 29, 1949 at the Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square to honor films released in Britain in 1947-48. Best Picture went to William Wyler’s 1946 release “The Best Years of Our Lives,...

Charity Novella The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov Wins Independent Publisher’s Gold Medal for Horror: "The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov, Preston Fassel’s 2021 horror-comedy novella released to help raise funds for The Trevor Project, has won the Independent Publisher’s Gold Medal for Horror.

Set between the mid-90s and early-2000s, the John Waters-inspired story documents the exploits of Quentin Sergenov, a closeted pro-wrestler whose affair with a fellow athlete causes him to be blacklisted from the industry and subsequently transformed into a dinosaur by a collective of mad scientists. After escaping his captors, he decides to try and reintegrate into society in his new form, with disastrous results. The book was released during Pride Month 2021, with 35 of all proceeds going to benefit The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that provides suicide prevention services to LGBT+ youth.

Founded in 1996, the Independent Publisher’s Book Award—also...

The Oscars are a few days away, and I’m looking not only at the nominated actors’ performances this year, but at the stage careers that helped them develop and/or refine their skills to be eligible for Academy Awards. Half of this year’s Oscar nominees for acting were previously involved with Tony-nominated and other productions on Broadway.

For example, Ariana DeBose, the Academy Award Best Actress in a Supporting Role nominee, most-predicted on Gold Derby to win, cut her teeth on Broadway for a decade before she landed her nominated role as “Anita” in West Side Story. Her first Broadway job at age 21 was as a member of the ensemble of Bring It On in 2012, a Tony-nominated musical which required a lot of acrobatic dancing. Although it didn’t win any awards, Bring It On did have music and lyrics co-written by Lin Manuel Miranda with choreography by Andy Blakenbuehler.

In film history, the anthology genre is the most challenging. Episodic films often have several directors and screenwriters which gives them an inconsistent tone and quality. But the genre’s pitfalls haven’t stopped such filmmakers including Akira Kurosawa (“Dreams”), the Coens (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”), Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”); Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese (“New York Stories”); and Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller and Steven Spielberg (“Twilight Zone: The Movie”).

Wes Anderson joined them with his latest film “The French Dispatch,” which received a nine-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. The comedy brings to life three stories from an American magazine published in a fictional French city and features his stock company of actors including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson.

If you are a fan of the genre, here are the best anthology movies that...

How many films have been made on which the director never met the the majority of the actors? How often have performers had to operate the camera themselves rather than the cinematographer or operator or director? Any number of films have been made under great duress, but The Same Storm is a rare bird, a scripted feature made last July under Covid conditions in New York City on which the actors performed while isolated from anyone other than their fellow castmates. It even features a number of name actors, beginning with Elaine May, appearing in her first big-screen film since Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks 21 years ago. And she’s terrific in it.

That alone would justify checking out this modest but adventurous film, which assumes a La Ronde-like structural approach by skipping from one very short story to another on the way to creating a panoramic, if still limited,...

A new Castlevania anime series is in the works at Netflix, which should come as no surprise considering the success of the first show and how well received it was by fans of the video game franchise. With its four-season Castlevania series, the streamer did the impossible: produce a video game adaptation that is not only faithful and respectful to its source material but is also entertaining and unique in its own right.

Indeed, one of the secrets to the series’ success is that it added layers of complexity to stories that had previously only been told in pixelated form on 8-bit and 16-bit consoles. Netflix’s Castlevania not only explored new facets of iconic characters like Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard but it gave their stories added historical context, placing them right in the middle of Game of Thrones-like power struggles of the land of Wallachia during the Middle Ages.

Barbara Crampton is the queen of indie horror. Gracious and humble as she is, it’s a title she would most likely reject. These are precisely among the qualities that make her an icon: she’s a leader in the industry who makes it a point to bring others up, a gigantic star too nice to ever act like one. She’s the absolute best and deserves to be celebrated not just during #IndieHorrorMonth, but all year long.

From her earliest genre performances in movies like Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, and From Beyond, there was something special about Crampton. She could lend gravity and empathy to even the most outrageous scenario, from the notorious decapitated head scene in Re-Animator to the giant robot battles of Full Moon’s Robot Wars, to which she brings energy and spunk worthy of Marion Ravenswood. She could be a Bdsm-clad mad scientist in From Beyond...

When Netflix recommendation listed this work under ‘Hidden gems for you’, I took notice as I have been fortunate with this segment in the past. Though the title sounded cheesy, I was hoping that it was a play on words before revealing what is behind the curtain and I was not disappointed.

Manana is a daughter/wife/mother/teacher in her fifties who lives with the rest of her family in an apartment in a Georgian town. The quarters are just big enough for its seven inhabitants to call it home, but not large enough for peaceful coexistence. It is her birthday and friends and family gather to celebrate and wish her well, even when that is not Manana wants. The next day she informs her family that he has found another apartment in a different district and will be moving for good, as they are all capable of taking care of themselves.

“Use your words.” I remember one of my sheroes saying that to a stammering 4-year-old decades ago. Here was a woman who’d dedicated her life to preschool education, whom I assisted for several summers, trying to get through to a tongue-tied little boy. The more he sputtered, the more upset he got, unable to express what was frustrating him. That’s not unusual with young children, but his teacher knew just how to handle the situation, calmly telling the child to channel his emotions into language, so the rest of us might understand.

That simple life lesson — that one can’t properly address a problem until it’s been put into words — resurfaced for me watching “Summertime,” an upbeat, feature-length poetry slam that just might be the most inspirational movie to hit the indie circuit this year. A lo-fi, high-ingenuity collaborative endeavor between “Blindspotting” director Carlos Lopéz Estrada and...

The next generation of royals are stealing the spotlight in season three of The Crown, and that's thanks in large part to their love lives being every bit as dramatic as an episode of Days of Our Lives. The sudsy storyline involving Princess Anne and Camilla Parker Boyle's love triangle is all too real. It seems that both Princess Anne and Camilla were involved with the British Army Officer Andrew Parker Boyle in the '70s - and poor Prince Charles ended up being roped into the drama as well when he fell for Camilla.

Royal biographer Penny Junor detailed the tangled love lives of the young royals at the Henley Literary Festival, per Harper's Bazaar. "Camilla was passionately in love with Andrew but he was a cad, he was bonking other people, some of her friends," she reportedly said. It seems his dalliances extended to Princess Anne, who was...

Did star James Stewart and director Anthony Mann corner the market on upscale ‘A’ ’50s westerns? This beauty sends Stewart, Ruth Roman and Corrine Calvet on a breezy trek over a Canadian glacier, with Walter Brennan as a folksy, ditsy sidekick — not very original but endearing. John McIntire saves the day as a charmingly malevolent self-appointed Judge Roy Bean-type swindler and murderer — he’s so hilariously evil, even Stewart’s character is amused. The special edition has two aspect ratio versions, a full commentary and two film history featurette-docus.

The Far Country

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1955 / color / 1:88 + 1:2 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date November 12, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: James Stewart, Ruth Roman, Corinne Calvet, Walter Brennan, John McIntire, Jay C. Flippen, Harry Morgan, Steve Brodie, Connie Gilchrist, Robert J. Wilke, Chubby Johnson, Royal Dano, Jack Elam, Kathleen Freeman, Connie Van, Eugene Borden, John Doucette, Chuck Roberson.

Cinematography: William H. Daniels...

The German festival runs from June 28 to July 7.

The Munich Film Festival opens on Thursday (June 28) with the world premiere of Joachim A. Lang’s Mackie Messer – Brechts Dreigroschenfilm, starring Lars Eidinger as Bertold Brecht.

The film is inspired by Brecht’s 1928 play The Threepenny Opera and Kurt Weill’s song Mack The Knife, which was written for the play.

The German premiere of Andrew Niccol’s Anon, starring Clive Owen as a detective who finds a young woman with no identity, played by Amanda Seyfried, will close the festival on July 7. The sci-fi thriller is produced by Germany’s K5 Film.

Nostalgia, which had its world premiere in Palm Springs this week, is an ambitious movie from some well-regarded filmmakers and actors, but it just doesn’t jell. The film revives a mode of storytelling without a single protagonist, flowing from one group of characters to another. The archetypal example may be Max Ophuls’ La Ronde, which followed a series of sexual contacts, leading to new characters and stories every 10 or 15 minutes. Commercial movies like Black Beauty and The Yellow Rolls Royce have utilized the same format, and more recently, adventurous filmmakers have experimented with this structure in such films...

This devastating romantic melodrama is Max Ophüls’ best American picture — perhaps because it seems so European? It’s probably Joan Fontaine’s finest hour as well, and Louis Jourdan comes across as a great actor in a part perfect for his screen personality. The theme could be called, ‘No regrets,’ but also, ‘Everything is to be regretted.’

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Blu-ray

Olive Signature

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 87 min. / Street Date December 5, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Carol Yorke, Howard Freeman, John Good, Leo B. Pessin, Erskine Sanford, Otto Waldis, Sonja Bryden.

Cinematography: Franz Planer

Film Editor: Ted J. Kent

Original Music: Daniele Amfitheatrof

Written by Howard Koch from a story by Stefan Zweig

Produced by John Houseman

Directed by Max Ophüls

A young woman’s romantic nature goes beyond all limits, probing the nature of True Love.

La Ronde has a lot to answer for. Arthur Schnitzler's classic play depicting a series of interconnected sexual liaisons has been adapted innumerable times since its 1920 premiere. It also has inspired an equally countless number of film, theater and literary works, including Michael John Lachiusa's 1993 musical that debuted at Lincoln Center. That work has now been adapted into a film version directed by Tom Gustafson featuring an array of veteran theater talents. But while Hello Again has been brought to the big screen, it has not been brought to anything resembling cinematic life. The movie does, however, offer...

French film actor best known for Madame de … and La Ronde

There are few actors who embodied many people’s idea of a French woman of the world more than Danielle Darrieux, who has died aged 100. Starting as an ingenue in the 1930s, she grew into a sophisticate in the 40s and 50s, and retained a dignified and magical presence in films into the new century.

The outstanding examples of her art were the three films Darrieux made with the German-born Max Ophüls when she was in her 30s. In La Ronde (1950), she played the married woman who is seduced by a student (Daniel Gélin). The second and best of the three adapted tales by Guy de Maupassant in Le Plaisir (House of Pleasure, 1952) is La Maison Tellier, in which Darrieux played one of a group of prostitutes paying an annual holiday visit to the country. But it was the...

Danielle Darrieux in her Fifties hey-day Photo: UniFrance

The star acted right up to the present decade Photo: Unifrance The veteran French actress Danièle Darrieux (also credited as Danièle) has died in Paris at the age of 100.

She was particularly well known for her work with director Max Ophuls including La Ronde, made in 1950, in which she played a married woman who meets a young man (Daniel Gélin) for an assignation.

Two years later she worked with Opuls again on Le Plaisir as a good time girl, regretting her lost innocence. In 1953 she and Ophuls made the highly acclaimed The Earrings Of Madame De … in which she played opposite Vittorio De Sica.

Later she appeared in a tepid version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1955 but her later career was rescued from the doldrums by `Jacques Demy who offered her singing roles in The Young Girls Of Rochefort in 1967 and...

Chicago – The second-oldest Lgbtq+ international film festival in America, Reeling (Reeling17), launches its 35th edition in Chicago at the historic Music Box Theatre on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. The opening-night film will be the musical “Hello Again” with appearances by featured cast members Tyler Blackburn (“Pretty Little Liars”) and Jenna Ushkowitz (“Glee”) along with director Tom Gustafson and screenwriter Cory Krueckeberg.

‘Hello Again’ Opens Reeling2017 on September 21st at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago

Photo credit: Reeling2017

“Hello Again” is a movie adaptation of Michael John Lachiusa’s celebrated 1994 Off-Broadway musical, which in turn was inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s stageplay “La Ronde” (written in 1897, with the first public performance in 1920). The 2017 film explores ten fleeting love affairs, across ten periods of New York City history, through ten lust-fueled episodes. It’s guaranteed to be saucy.

Reeling2017, the Chicago Lgbtq+ International Film Festival is in its 35th year, and has an incredible line-up of films,...

There is a very niche swath of Broadway lovers and lesbians who will be over the moon to see Audra McDonald and Martha Plimpton share a seductive scene in “Hello Again,” a film adaptation of Michael John Lachiusa’s 1993 musical which released its steamy new trailer today.

Read More: Why the ‘Swiss Army Man’ Directors Backed the Psychedelic Comedy-Musical ‘Snowy Bing Bongs’

“Hello Again” tells ten love affairs set in each decade of the 20th century, following the sexual escapades of characters with names like The Whore, The College Boy, and The Young Thing. Lachiusa is best known for writing “The Wild Party,” which developed a cult following in the years since its Broadway debut in 1999. “Hello Again” is based on “La Ronde,” the 1897 play by Arthur Schnitzler which caused an uproar when it first played Berlin and Vienna in 1920.

Read More: ‘Dirty Dancing’ Review: ABC Musical Event Is Decidedly Not Worth Your Time

The movie stars six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, as well as similarly lauded theater actors Martha Plimpton, T.R. Knight, Cheyenne Jackson, and Rumer Willis. “Hello Again” is directed by Tom Gustafson from a screenplay by Cory Krueckeberg, the same pair behind the 2012 musical comedy “Mariachi Gringo.”

How many Broadway stars can you find?

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Exclusive: Here’s a first look at Hello Again, the film adaptation by Tom Gustafson (Mariachi Gringo) of composer-lyricist Michael John Lachiusa's acclaimed 1994 musical. A new riff on La Ronde, the scandal-causing Arthur Schnitzler play from 1897 (first filmed by Max Ophüls in 1950 and subsequently by Roger Vadim with 1964’s Circle of Love and Otto Schenk with Der Reigen in 1973) about series of sexual assignations across boundaries of class and status that seem…...

Coleen Gray actress ca. 1950. Coleen Gray: Actress in early Stanley Kubrick film noir, destroyer of men in cult horror 'classic' Actress Coleen Gray, best known as the leading lady in Stanley Kubrick's film noir The Killing and – as far as B horror movie aficionados are concerned – for playing the title role in The Leech Woman, died at age 92 in Aug. 2015. This two-part article, which focuses on Gray's film career, is a revised and expanded version of the original post published at the time of her death. Born Doris Bernice Jensen on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska, at a young age she moved with her parents, strict Lutheran Danish farmers, to Minnesota. After getting a degree from St. Paul's Hamline University, she relocated to Southern California to be with her then fiancé, an army private. At first, she eked out a living as a waitress at a La Jolla hotel...

Coleen Gray actress ca. 1950. Coleen Gray: Actress in early Stanley Kubrick film noir, destroyer of men in cult horror 'classic' Actress Coleen Gray, best known as the leading lady in Stanley Kubrick's film noir The Killing and – as far as B horror movie aficionados are concerned – for playing the title role in The Leech Woman, died at age 92 in Aug. 2015. This two-part article, which focuses on Gray's film career, is a revised and expanded version of the original post published at the time of her death. Born Doris Bernice Jensen on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska, at a young age she moved with her parents, strict Lutheran Danish farmers, to Minnesota. After getting a degree from St. Paul's Hamline University, she relocated to Southern California to be with her then fiancé, an army private. At first, she eked out a living as a waitress at a La Jolla hotel...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Black Sabbath is playing on Mubi in the Us through November 13, and Bay of Blood is playing on Mubi in the Us October 15 - November 14.Starting as a cinematographer and director of documentaries and shorts, Mario Bava would ultimately explore a variety of genres, from spaghetti westerns and sword-and-sandal adventures, to a modish detective film and even a romping sex comedy. It is his work within the horror genre, however, for which he is most widely, and justly, lauded. Among the Italian filmmakers who rose to prominence on the international horror scene of the 1960s and 70s, few would attain his degree of diverse stylistic virtuosity, nor would they cover the genre in such an expansive fashion. As the years of his career happened to fall, Bava ended up documenting the horror film in the process of profound transition.

Each week, the fine folks at Fandor add a number of films to their Criterion Picks area, which will then be available to subscribers for the following twelve days. This week, the Criterion Picks focus on eight delightful French films.

Three decades of exceptional French cinema in the service of that most intoxicating, unpredictable and stubborn of muscles, to which laws of convention and commitment prove no barrier: the heart.

Don’t have a Fandor subscription? They offer a free trial membership.

Children of Paradise by Marcel Carne

Poetic realism reached sublime heights with Children Of Paradise, widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time. This nimble depiction of nineteenth-century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, filmed during World War II, follows a mysterious woman loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a mime (Jean-Louis Barrault,...

The Little Death Magnolia Pictures Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes. Grade: C+ Director: Josh Lawson Screenwriter: Josh Lawson Cast: Josh Lawson, Bojana Novakovic, Damon Herriman, Kate Mulvany, Kate Box, Patrick Brammall, Alan Dukes, Lisa McCune, Erin James, T.J. Power, Kim Gyngell, Lachy Hulme Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 5/12/15 Opens: June 26, 2015 As sex comedies go, nothing has come up since 1897 that can match Arthur Schnitzler’s “Reigen,” also known as “La Ronde.” Schitzler’s roundelay of sexual encounters features people from all walks of society both before and after their sexual congress. Granted, Josh Lawson’s “The Little Death” is not trying to approach the [ Read More ]

The post The Little Death Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...

Marie Dubois, actress in French New Wave films, dead at 77 (image: Marie Dubois in the mammoth blockbuster 'La Grande Vadrouille') Actress Marie Dubois, a popular French New Wave personality of the '60s and the leading lady in one of France's biggest box-office hits in history, died Wednesday, October 15, 2014, at a nursing home in Lescar, a suburb of the southwestern French town of Pau, not far from the Spanish border. Dubois, who had been living in the Pau area since 2010, was 77. For decades she had been battling multiple sclerosis, which later in life had her confined to a wheelchair. Born Claudine Huzé (Claudine Lucie Pauline Huzé according to some online sources) on January 12, 1937, in Paris, the blue-eyed, blonde Marie Dubois began her show business career on stage, being featured in plays such as Molière's The Misanthrope and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. François Truffaut discovery: 'Shoot the...

• Boardwalk Empire actor Jack Huston will take the chariot reins as the title role in the upcoming remake of Ben-Hur. Previously, Tom Hiddleston had been in talks for the role of slave Judah Ben-Hur in the Paramount and MGM picture. Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) is directing the film adapted by John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) and Keith Clarke (The Way Back) that is said to be based more on Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ than the 1959 film that starred Charlton Heston. Morgan Freeman has already been cast as Ildarin, the teacher who helps make the slave Ben-Hur into chariot racer champion.

After a new print screened at the 2014 City of Lights City of Angels Festival earlier this spring, Cohen Media Group has released a digitally remastered Blu-ray of Otar Iosseliani’s 1984 classic yet elusive title, Favorites of the Moon. Awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 41st Venice International Film Festival, the film, along with most of the Georgian filmmaker’s titles, have long been unavailable to U.S. audiences, a shame considering his prolific stature and important body of work that subversively undermines frameworks within the dominant culture he’s navigating as an exiled dissident.

Taking its title from Shakespeare’s Henry IV describing thieves, “Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, favorites of the moon,” Iosseliani expounds on the same motif, casting all of humanity in the shade of the moon, a symbol of disorder, chaos and unrest. In essence, the plot is a roundelay, utilizing a set of...

Caught

Directed by Max Ophüls

Written by Arthur Laurents

USA, 1949

Max Ophüls’ third feature in America, Caught, from 1949, is an evocative amalgam of a domesticated melodramatic tragedy and a dynamic film noir sensibility. The picture stars Barbara Bel Geddes as Leonora Eames, a studious adherent to charm school principles who dreams of becoming a glamorous model, or at least marrying a young, handsome millionaire. She gets the latter when she meets Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan), a wealthy “international something” who gives her the superficial materials she desires but little else. Their marriage is an arduous sham. He works late hours on unclear projects while she is left to dwell uselessly in their extravagant mansion. He’s cruel to her and careless. A way out of the stifling relationship comes in the form of a job as a doctor’s receptionist. Leonora leaves Ohlrig and moves into Manhattan, where she eventually...

Danielle Darrieux turns 97: Darrieux has probably enjoyed the longest film star career in history (photo: Danielle Darrieux in ‘La Ronde’) Screen legend Danielle Darrieux is turning 97 today, May 1, 2014. In all likelihood, the Bordeaux-born (1917) Darrieux has enjoyed the longest "movie star" career ever: eight decades, from Wilhelm Thiele’s Le Bal (1931) to Denys Granier-Deferre’s The Wedding Cake / Pièce montée (2010). (Mickey Rooney has had a longer film career — nearly nine decades — but mostly as a supporting player in minor roles.) Absurdly, despite a prestigious career consisting of more than 100 movie roles, Danielle Darrieux — delightful in Club de femmes, superb in The Earrings of Madame De…, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking in 8 Women — has never won an Honorary Oscar. But then again, very few women have. At least, the French Academy did award her an Honorary César back in 1985; additionally, in 2002 Darrieux and her fellow 8 Women / 8 femmes co-stars shared Best Actress honors...

What’s difficult about making this list is finding a balance between a successful Kubrickian film that either predates or pays homage to Kubrick and, for lack of a better term, is a ripoff. Now that we’ve hit the apex, it’s clear that these are, regardless of influence, quality films. What sets them apart is their ability to evoke Kubrick’s greatness (or inspire it), while delivering a stand-alone masterpiece. If Kubrick took the helm for any of these films, the result wouldn’t delineate too much. Still. Kubrick is a genius because he always kept us guessing.

courtesy of theweeklings.com

10. Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Directed by Werner Herzog

What makes it Kubrickian? It’s a film about extreme obsession and the unreasonable lengths a man will go to when consumed by it. Fitzcarraldo is the story of Brian Sweeny “Fitzcarraldo” Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski) and his entry into the rubber industry.

Welcome, beloved guests. The time has come to check-in to The Grand Budapest Hotel. Upon arrival, be sure to take in the beautiful world surrounding you, as created by director and co-writer Wes Anderson, as well as the wonderful hotel aesthetic, brought to you by production designer Adam Stockhausen. This week, Wamg and a few members of the press sat down (in a roundtable discussion) with Anderson and Stockhausen to talk about Anderson’s all new caper The Grand Budapest Hotel. Check it out below!

The Grand Budapest Hotel recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars; and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting; a raging battle for an enormous family fortune; a desperate chase on motorcycles, trains, sleds, and skis; and the sweetest...

The bloodless Cahiers du cinéma wars induced a vague but hugely influential criterion for what was to be considered good and bad in film. Elaborate sets, one of French cinema’s major traits that, in certain genres, could compete with Hollywood, were deemed stifling and were rejected in favor of urban spaces and real locations.

The infamy that Cahiers du cinéma’s critical bombardment brought to certain filmmakers, at least among a small circle of cinephiles, took years to reverse. While Cahiers du cinéma happened to be more generous to American cinema, fewer French directors were allowed to enter their cannon. If, for instance, one Robert Bresson did, otherwise many Jean Delannoys did not. While the art of some great filmmakers was acknowledged and they were given the throne, many others, who were less stylistically consistent, fell into oblivion.

Today, more than half a century after the Cahiers wars, and regardless of their accomplishments,...

German filmmaker Max Ophüls directed such acclaimed titles as The Earrings of Madame de... and La Ronde, but his last film, Lola Montès, stands out from the rest.  For one, it's the only Technicolor movie he made, with vibrant colors popping on the screen. Secondly, the flashback technique he chose to use in this film irked his production company so that they altered the cut shown to audiences in 1956. In recent years, a cut much closer to Ophüls' original vision has been restored and released to the public. Finally, Lola Montes has all the best qualities of an Ophüls film -- in CinemaScope.

This fictionalization of the life of historic figure Montes, an Irish dancer/courtesan who enchanted such men as Franz Liszt and King Ludwig I, has a ringmaster (Peter Ustinov, speaking French!) as a sort of narrator, with Ms. Montes (Martine Carol) walking a tightrope and performing death-defying...

DirecTV premiered its first original scripted series "Rogue," an undercover cop drama starring Thandie Newton, on April 3. Now the satellite provider is upping its original programming game with "Full Circle," another scripted series, this one the television debut of Neil Labute. DirecTV's ordered 10 episodes of "Full Circle," a high concept half-hour series Labute created, is writing and will co-executive produce to air on DirecTV's exclusive Audience Network in the fall of 2013. The show is based on Arthur Schnitzler's classic play "La Ronde," which daisy-chained ten pairs of lovers up and down the social classes in ten scenes, starting and ending with the Whore. "La Ronde" has been much abused in recent film, with Fernando Meirelles' "360" and Alexis Lloyd's "30 Beats" attempting none-too-successfully to use the narrative format in a contemporary setting. Read More: Why Everyone Wants a Premium Drama: DirecTV's Chris Long Talks About Getting Into the Game With.

Above: Gustav Mezey three-sheet poster for Le Rosier de Madame Husson (Bernard Deschamps, France, 1932).

This stunning Austrian deco poster, which I came across on a Berlin antiquarian site, stands a magnificent 9 foot tall (110" x 49" to be precise) and comes in three sections. The poster is for a 1932 French film, whose German title, Der Tugendkönig, translates as “The Virtue King.” In the Us the film was titled He (or He - the Virgin Man), but the original title is Le Rosier de Madame Husson. Based on an 1887 Maupassant novella of the same name, the story concerns the titular Mme. Husson who seeks to promote chastity in her village by crowning a rosière, or a Rose Queen: a girl of unimpeachable virtue. But when none of the young women in town are equal to the title she selects the village idiot (played in the film by Fernandel) as her rosier.

Above: Roger...

Director Fernando Meirelles made one of the strongest directorial debuts of the last twenty years with his film City of God and followed this up with the equally well received The Constant Gardener in 2005. He then went on to direct the film Blindness which despite having a neat central idea was less than the sum of its parts. Hopes were high for his next film as he was collaborating with screenwriter Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon) on a truly international stage.

360 is loosely based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler written in 1897 called La Ronde. The original play is a study of the morals and ideology of people of various classes and the role that sex plays in their lives. The point of this is that Schnitzler is saying that sex crosses all boundaries and classes. The play has been loosely adapted into film thirteen times over the last sixty years and 360 is the latest version.