My genre viewing on disk over the past couple of months ranges from classics to crap, and I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed it all. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) From England, I’ve obtained impressive Blu-rays of three key movies from the period when “modern” horror was born: Hammer’s first two colour Gothic features, […]
I just learned that Anthony Hinds died three weeks ago, aged 91. Although perhaps not a household name, Hinds was one of the most influential post-war producers not just in British film, but in world cinema in general. And this despite the fact that he apparently wasn’t enamoured of the business; a quiet man, he […]
My friend Howard and I get together fairly regularly for an evening of conversation and movie viewing. The conversation often revolves around what he goes through teaching film courses to first-year university students … something I’m glad not to be involved with! The viewing more often than not focuses on older movies (we’re both pretty […]
Falling behind again! Things have been hectic lately – working on a documentary which has turned out to be bigger than expected and is now way overdue, plus starting a new project with a tight deadline, I haven’t had a lot of time to write down notes on what I’ve been watching the past couple […]
Kim Longinotto and Marc Isaacs are two English documentarians whose subjects differ widely, but who share a fascination for the small details of people’s lives.
Howard Curle recalls another formative experience with William K Everson’s class at NYU in the ’70s; The Sound Barrier, a key film in David Lean’s career
In his review column today, DVD Savant Glenn Erickson, in the course of writing about an interesting East German thriller from the ’60s, mentions that the disk has been mastered at a ratio of 1.85:1 although the film was shot and released at 2.25:1. In other words, despite the fact that it’s been released by […]
Continuing my survey of one month’s movie viewing: Red Dawn (Dan Bradley, 2012): As dumb as John Milius’ original about small town American kids fighting against vicious invaders. Milius had Nicaragua(!) taking over the States; here it’s North Korea backed by, for some reason, the Russians (aware of how much U.S. debt is held by […]
I usually only have time to write once a week for this blog, and my occasional obligations to Blogcritics (i.e. the free review copies I get through them) have pushed me into the habit of doing reviews more often than more general posts about broader topics (which was what I actually anticipated when I started […]
After three years of steady releases, for some reason the BFI suspended their Flipside series last May. Now, after an eleven month break, they’ve released two new titles, as unexpected as anything which has come before. In John Krish, they’ve returned to a filmmaker familiar from a number of previous BFI releases, while in B.S. […]