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The films Dutch director Cyrus Frisch has made thus far are controversial, erratic and politically engaged. With the recent re-release of his films Dazzle (original title: Oogverblindend), Blackwater Fever, and Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad in Afghanistan on Vimeo On Demand, it is a good time to get (re-)acquainted with his work. After a number of short films and television programs with which he made a name for himself, he made his feature film debut in 2001 with Forgive Me. Forgive Me is one of the most challenging films I have seen recently. But like any of Frisch's films, it invites you to look deeper. In Forgive Me, Frisch deliberately pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable. He was alarmed...

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

Awards season just started, but considering that La La Land is already grabbing tons of little statues and plaques, it seems like the movie industry could be readying itself for a musical renaissance of sorts. Granted, superhero movies will probably have to die out before that ever happens, but the public clearly has a taste for people singing about doing things. According to Deadline, Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig are going to take advantage of that with a new musical based on the book Everything’s Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age Of Industrial Musicals, with Smash and Hairspray writers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman putting together the score.

The book was written by Steve Young and Mike Murphy, and it’s about how companies used to enlist Broadway performers to put on shows with names like Diesel Dazzle and The Bathrooms Are Coming to educate and motivate employees. As...

Steve Krantz, who produced the X-rated animated movie Fritz The Cat and created successful TV mini-series out of wife Judith Krantz's romance novels, has died. He was 83. Krantz died of complications from pneumonia on January 4 in Los Angeles. During his TV career, he wrote for Milton Berle and Arthur Godfrey and helped create several comedies, including Dennis The Menace and Bewitched as head of creative development at Columbia Pictures Television. He was also executive producer for Steve Allen's The Tonight Show. Krantz later turned to feature films such as Fritz the Cat, based on the Robert Crumb underground comic and Cooley High, about black high school students in the 1960s. In the 1980s and 1990s, he produced mini-series based on his wife's steamy novels, including Scruples, Mistral's Daughter and Dazzle. After his retirement, Krantz was involved with mental-heath counseling and former California Governor Pete Wilson appointed him to the board of the California Mental Health Council.