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German film festival Filmfest Hamburg has scrapped its plan to give the Douglas Sirk Prize to the Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, following allegations of on-set impropriety and child exploitation against him and his film “Sparta.”

However, the festival has decided to continue with its plan to show “Sparta,” a statement released Tuesday by festival director Albert Wiederspiel and program director Kathrin Kohlstedde explained.

The statement read: “The accusations against the production around the working conditions during the making of the film came up after our [festival program] was already in print.

“We included the film in the program because of its outstanding quality. It is a very sensitive film about a particularly difficult and taboo subject. The accusations against Ulrich Seidl are directed against the conditions during the shooting and explicitly not against his film.

“We have therefore decided to leave the film in the program.”

The statement added: “Regarding the Douglas Sirk Prize,...

Stevie Wonder has kept a relatively low profile over the last decade, but that quiet period — which follows a health scare — seems to be ending. On Tuesday, the 70-year-old legend announced the release of two new songs, his first in 15 years. In equally startling news, Wonder said he would be releasing the tracks on his own label under Republic Records. The releases mark a break from Motown, his home since 1962.

Speaking by Zoom from his Southern California home, Wonder said he began writing one of the songs, the fluid “Where Is Our Love Song,...

Gavin in Alfred Hitchcocks 1960 classic "Psycho".

By Lee Pfeiffer

John Gavin, a long-time Hollywood star who gravitated into a career in politics, has died at age 86 following some bouts with ill health. Gavin, a former U.S. Naval Intelligence officer, entered the acting profession in the mid-1950s, an era in which Hollywood studios were looking for beefcake type leading men. Gavin fit the bill with his handsome looks and impressive physique. It wasn't long before he was scoring prominent roles in major films such as "A Time to Love and a Time to Die" and "Imitation of Life". Alfred Hitchcock cast him as the heroic leading man in his 1960 "Psycho" and he was seen on screen the same year playing Julius Caesar in "Spartacus". Despite his good looks and competent acting skills, however, the major roles began to dry up. Gavin would still score some prominent parts in major...

"Psycho" star John Gavin -- who appeared in several other classics such as "Midnight Lace" and was the Us Ambassador to Mexico under Ronald Reagan -- has died.  John -- who played Sam Loomis in the classic horror flick -- died Friday morning ... TMZ has learned. We're told he succumbed to complications from pneumonia and had battled leukemia for a long time. John was first hospitalized just before Christmas and died just before 6 Am Friday at his Beverly Hills home,...

Some like their comedy hot and some like it cold. Billy Wilder opted to step on the joke accelerator to see what top speed looked like. One of the most finely tuned comedies ever made, this political satire crams five hours’ worth of wit and sight gags into 115 minutes. The retirement-age James Cagney practically blows a fuse rattling through Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s high-pressure speeches, without slurring so much as a single syllable.

One, Two, Three

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date May 30, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis,

Howard St. John, Hanns Lothar, Lilo Pulver

Cinematography Daniel L. Fapp

Production Designers Robert Stratil, Heinrich Weidemann

Art Direction Alexander Trauner

Film Editor Daniel Mandell

Original Music André Previn

Written by Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond from the play by Ferenc Molnar

Produced and Directed by Billy Wilder

How...

"For those still immune to the glories of Douglas Sirk’s cinema, the 25-film retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (most in 35 mm) is a rare opportunity to see what they’ve been missing," writes Tony Pipolo in Artforum, topping our overview of the series: Richard Brody on All I Desire, Melissa Anderson on Imitation of Life and There's Always Tomorrow, Max Kyburz on Written on the Wind, Justin Stewart on Sleep, My Love, plus an appreciation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder: 'Film is like a battleground,' Sam Fuller, who once wrote a script for Douglas Sirk, said in a film by Jean-Luc Godard, who, shortly before he made Breathless, wrote a rhapsody on Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die. But not one of us, Godard or Fuller or me or anybody else, can touch Douglas Sirk." » - David Hudson...

"For those still immune to the glories of Douglas Sirk’s cinema, the 25-film retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (most in 35 mm) is a rare opportunity to see what they’ve been missing," writes Tony Pipolo in Artforum, topping our overview of the series: Richard Brody on All I Desire, Melissa Anderson on Imitation of Life and There's Always Tomorrow, Max Kyburz on Written on the Wind, Justin Stewart on Sleep, My Love, plus an appreciation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder: 'Film is like a battleground,' Sam Fuller, who once wrote a script for Douglas Sirk, said in a film by Jean-Luc Godard, who, shortly before he made Breathless, wrote a rhapsody on Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die. But not one of us, Godard or Fuller or me or anybody else, can touch Douglas Sirk." » - David Hudson...

★★★★☆ The latest work from German auteur Douglas Sirk to get the Masters of Cinema treatment (following the rerelease of The Tarnished Angels earlier this month), 1958's A Time to Love and a Time to Die is remarkable not only for its sympathetic portrayal of disheartened and disenfranchised German soldiers towards the end of the Second World War, but also for its fine blend of sharp humour and sweeping CinemaScope melodrama. Starring John Gavin and Liselotte Pulver as the lovestruck Ernst Gräber and beautiful Hamburg resident Elisabeth, this is Sirk at the height of his Hollywood power.

Returning home to the burnt-out remnants of Hamburg after several long, cold years on the Russian-German Front, Gavin's square-jawed Gräber comes back to a city in ruins. With his parents' apartment block completely destroyed by enemy bombing raids, Gräber frantically searches the note-littered wall of the district to find some trace of his beloved family.

Eureka Entertainment has announced its August and September new releases on its Masters of Cinema label and true to form it offers a sextet of recognised classics and emerging new talent from every corner of World Cinema.Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte and Federico Fellini's Il Bidone both appear on Blu-ray for the very first time, as do two classics from Douglas Sirk, The Tarnished Angel and A Time to Love and a Time to Die. Also appearing in the collection is Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh, as well as a brand new release in the form of Antonio Campos' 2012 sophomore feature, Simon Killer.As always, we'll bring you more details about these releases nearer the time, but you can check out the packshots below, as well as...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Norman Rockwell, America’s most beloved illustrator, purveyor of sentimental, small-town kitsch, preserver of American pieties, is undergoing something of a renaissance. Though Robert Hughes said in his 1978 Time obituary that “Rockwell's reputation was not made by museums and could not have been,” it is museums, starting with an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC in 1999, that are fuelling his reassessment. A superb draftsman and a canny anecdotalist, Rockwell’s work definitely repays serious attention, but I’m not sure his reputation will be greatly altered by his newest exhibition, at the Smithsonian, of works from the private collections of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, two of the world’s most prominent Rockwell collectors. Spielberg and Lucas are obvious kindred spirits, sharing both Rockwell’s virtues as well as his limitations. Had this been an exhibition of Rockwell works from the collections of, say, Jean-Luc Godard and George Romero,...

Above: Griffith's Intolerance.

In New York, Bam, Film Forum, and Anthology Film Archives are playing forgotten masterworks, unavailable on DVD, in pristine prints: this past week has surfaced prints of Elia Kazan’s America, America at Film Forum, Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die and André De Toth’s Man in the Saddle, Norman Rockwell with guns, at Bam, and an entire retrospective to Ulrike Ottinger at Anthology, where upcoming are long overdue retros of Roger Corman and Jerry Lewis. In most cases, it’s been decades since these films have been shown in New York.

Meanwhile, MoMA slugs on with deliberately disposable movies designed to draw families and indie teens who have already seen them: a Spike Jonze retro of his music videos and films; an upcoming Tim Burton retro the museum’s been working on for years; a just-completed “Recent Film Acquisitions...