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Did Quentin Tarantino stumble this time out? His tale of western killers sharing a snowbound cabin builds almost zero suspense, and the verbal excess and violent grossness lack Tarantino's usual clever, wickedly funny edge. And 70mm cooped up in a dim interior? It's A Long Day's Journey into Lincoln Logs. Totally dig Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ennio Morricone, though. The Hateful Eight Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Anchor Bay / Weinstein 2015 / Color / 2.76 widescreen (Ultra Panavision 70) / 187 min. / Street Date March 29, 2016 / 39.99 Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Michael Madsen, James Parks, Dana Gourrier, Zoë Bell, Lee Horsley, Gene Jones, Channing Tatum. Cinematography Robert Richardson Film Editor Fred Raskin Original Music Ennio Morricone Production Design Yohei Taneda Produced by Richard N. Gladstein, Shannon McIntosh, Stacey Sher Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Quentin Tarantino's opening title sequence card announces...

If you've been reading us this season then you know we've already given you pretty thorough analyses of this year's short film categories. I watched all the films that made it to the final consideration stage and offered up thoughts on each and some somewhat informed predictions. In the end, though, it was still tricky to guess, but I did get four of the five animated players right. Now, with nominees announced, it seems worth it to review. So let's… All things considered, the animated short category is difficult to handicap. Particularly with the infiltration of other voters, as theses categories are opened up to the entire membership via screeners, it's just hard to guess which way preference will fall. The biggest surprise for me was that Glen Keane's gorgeous, heavily promoted "Duet" missed out on a nod. I frankly thought it could have put up a fight to win,...

The fifth entry in an on-going series of audiovisual essays by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin.

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Inside every narrative film is a non-narrative film struggling to get out. A film of details, of in-betweens, of atmospheres; of nothing-much-happening and everyday banality. A film of redundant repetition and obligatory scene-setting. A film where glances fall into the void rather than guiding a drama; where gestures and actions happen for their own sakes rather than for the symbolic or thematic meaning they project. A film where the background surges forward and becomes the foreground; where rooms and objects for once really do become (as that lousy reviewing cliché loves to say) ‘characters in their own right.’

A film without intrigue. Or, at any rate, only the most minimal filigree of intrigue, perhaps a single turning point or shock. In their great and too-little-known 1998 book To Dress a Nude: Exercises in Imagination,...

A new Coen brothers film celebrates Greenwich Village in its 60s heyday, but what's left of Dylan and Kerouac's New York? Karen McVeigh takes a cycle tour of the area

Five decades have passed since America's troubadours and beat poets flocked to Greenwich Village, filling its smoky late-night basement bars and coffee houses with folk songs and influencing some of the most recognisable musicians of the era.

A few landmarks of those bygone bohemian days – most recently portrayed in the Coen brothers' film Inside Llewyn Davis, out on 24 January – still exist. The inspiration for the movie's fictional anti-hero, Davis, was Brooklyn-born Dave Van Ronk, a real- life blues and folk singer with no small talent, who worked with performers such as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, but remained rooted in the village until he died in 2002, declining to leave it for any length of time and refusing to fly for many years.

The fourth annual London Underground Film Festival is the first edition of the fest to be run by new caretakers Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais, two accomplished filmmakers. The festival will run November 14-17 at the legendary avant-garde media center, the Horse Hospital.

Fawcett and Pais have programmed a bold fest, which begins on the 14th with the London-based documentary Grasp the Nettle by Dean Puckett. The film follows the challenges faced by a group of land rights activists fighting for a piece of disused land in West London. Also on opening night is Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow, which was filmed surreptitiously at Disneyland; and Táu by Daniel Castro Zimbrón.

Other films screening at the fest include the award winning doc A Body Without Organs, directed by Steven Graves; Alex Munt’s Warhol homage Poor Little Rich Girls (After Warhol); Irene Lusztig’s history of childbirth, The Motherhood...

Feature Rob Smedley 17 Oct 2013 - 06:44

Rob unpacks Zack Snyder and Bruce Timm's wonderful Superman 75th anniversary animated short to see the bizarre highlights that lie within...

Superman! For seventy-five years now he's confused birdwatchers and air traffic controllers alike as he's zoomed around battling evil and falling in love with women who have alliterative names starting with 'L'. Like Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris... Llllovely.

Yes, it's been a busy three quarters of a century for the Last Son of Krypton, and to celebrate it Zach Snyder (Man of Steel) and Bruce Timm (Superman: Tas) produced a two-minute flypast of Superman's history. It went down rather well when it premiered at New York Comic Con last week and no wonder. It's a beautiful salute to Supes, but also to the artists and actors who've brought him to life across the decades, as the animation style seamlessly...

Resurrecting the Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp must’ve sounded like one of the all-time Hollywood no-brainers when it was pitched to Disney in 2011. After all, the mysterious masked man used to be the all-American icon with the greatest chase-music (“The William Tell Overture”), the greatest sidekick (Tonto), and the greatest catchphrase (“Hi-yo, Silver, away!”). Plus, though Depp is playing a boldly reimagined Tonto opposite Armie Hammer’s Ranger, he was reuniting with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski, the creative triumvirate that made Disney billions with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. But getting The Lone Ranger into...

Los Angeles (Reuters) - Fine art, jewelry and Hollywood memorabilia owned by Tony Curtis -- including the yachtsman jacket he wore in "Some Like It Hot" -- brought in over $1 million on the auction block on Saturday, more than twice the presale estimates.

Curtis, who enjoyed a 60-year career in show business before his death in 2010 at age 85, appeared in more than 100 films and received an Oscar nomination for the 1958 drama "The Defiant Ones." He was an art lover and painter as well.

The estate items on sale at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills featured property Curtis acquired throughout his life, from the time he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II to the 2000s. The presale estimate on the collection was $500,000.

Highlights included the Andy Warhol "Some Like It Hot" shoe lithograph, signed by Warhol to Curtis around 1955, which sold for $53,125; the "Some Like It Hot" yachtsman jacket,...

Flaming Creatures midnight screening

Jonas Mekas’ Movie Journal: The Rise Of The New American Cinema 1959-1971 is essential reading for anybody interested in underground film. The book contains excerpts from the “Movie Journal” column Mekas wrote for the Village Voice alternative weekly newspaper for a dozen years. Also included in the book are a couple of movie posters and newspaper ads from that era, which I’ve scanned and uploaded to a photo gallery. If you click on each image in this post, it will take you to an embiggened version of it so you can look at them in better detail.

It’s tough for me to pick an absolute favorite poster out of the bunch, but I inserted the most striking above. It’s for a special midnight screening of Jack Smith’s classic Flaming Creatures. I’m guessing from the date on the poster and the year the film was completed,...

I love getting IndieWire’s Cannes Wish List. IndieWire's commentary on each film is interesting in and of itself. I find myself remarking "I didn't know that!" at every other entry. My former Tipped for Cannes Report (when FilmFinders was my company) was one of my most popular reports because film buyers and programmers could immediately hone in on their targets. So, in keeping with tradition, I pulled together the list Screen International (Si) and blogger ion (he did a lot of research for this!) published in February just after the Berlinale and am now going to compare it with Iw’s. My links for the title are to IMDbPro and for the contact either to the seller (Isa=International Sales Agent) or the producer.

After this, I will track which of these land in Cannes, which in Toronto, Venice, etc.; which get acquired by whom (to be gathered together...