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To celebrate the release of Mark Cousins’ new documentary The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, a portrait of the Oscar-winning producer responsible for bringing to life films by David Cronenberg, Jonathan Glazer, Jim Jarmusch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Nagisa Ôshima, Jerzy Skolimowski, and many more, NYC’s Quad Cinema is fittingly paying tribute to his career with a fantastic retrospective.

“Jeremy Thomas Presents” kicks off today and runs through September 28 at Quad Cinema, with The Storms of Jeremy Thomas opening this Friday, September 22. As the retrospective commences, we’re pleased to exclusively share the trailer along with comments directly from Thomas looking back at the making of these iconic films.

Sexy Beast

I was sent a script with a Jonathan Glazer attached, called “Sexy Beast”. It was on a Friday night, and I read it over the weekend. The screenplay was brilliant, and on the Monday I bought it before anyone else could.

If you like Euro-crime and haven’t seen this one you’re in for a real treat. English killers are on the road in Spain, executing a hit on a ‘Supergrass’ who’s spent ten years in protective custody. The brilliant cast — Terence Stamp, John Hurt, Tim Roth and Laura Del Sol give the criminal twists extra credibility. The suspenseful show is one of Stephen Frears’ best, and it builds to a highly satisfying conclusion. It’s also the feature debut of Tim Roth, and as such shouldn’t be missed.

The Hit

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 469

1984 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 20, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Terence Stamp, John Hurt, Tim Roth, Laura Del Sol, Fernando Rey, Bill Hunter, Jim Broadbent.

Cinematography: Mike Molloy

Film Editor: Mick Audsley

Original Music: Paco de Lucía

Written by Peter Prince

Produced by Jeremy Thomas

Directed by Stephan Frears

Class-act...

One’s awareness of modern avant-garde flamenco will get a boost from this exciting, impressive documentary about the progressive Spanish bailarina Rocío Molina, a fireball of a dancer whose powerful improvisations get our hearts beating faster. All the earmarks of traditional flamenco are there — grace, style and a fierce independent attitude — in a woman who loves what she does, and is not trying to push an art form to its next level. It’s pretty inspiring, even for an amateur fan like myself. Dance experts note, this is a film review.

Impulso

DVD

KimStim

2017 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 87 min. / Street Date March 19, 2019 / 29.95

Starring: Rocío Molina, Antonio Santiago Amador.

Cinematography: Dorian Blanc, Thomas Brémond

Produced by Sophie de Hijes, Nicolas Lesoiult

Directed by Emilio Belmonte

Flamenco dancing on film is sort of a hit-and-miss thing. I’ve seen two or three flamenco-related films by Carlos Saura that are terrific, starring Antonio Gades,...

One of the world's most celebrated flamenco guitarists

The fame and influence of the guitarist Paco de Lucía, who has died aged 66 from a suspected heart attack, reached far beyond the intense and sometimes enclosed world of Spanish flamenco. His musical role in Carlos Saura's Carmen (1983) was as arresting in its way as the first glimpse of Laura del Sol, the film's luminous lead. The director-choreographer Saura cleverly reinvented the opera as a contemporary fable while retaining the original's elements of passion, possession, jealousy and obsession. De Lucía's interpretation respectfully returned Bizet's score – a French fantasy of Spain – to its Moorish antecedents. He also gave Carmen's timeless melodies a fresh, international appeal that chimed with the movie's arthouse success.

De Lucía had begun to broaden his horizons in the late 1960s, on teaming up with the charismatic young singer Camarón de la Isla. Their partnership yielded many...

Director Christopher Nolan has selected his Top Ten films for Criterion.  His choices are varied, and the themes unsurprising: morality, mortality, life-or-death decisions, larger-than-life situations, and characters pushed to their total limits.  The films he selected -- from Erich von Stroheim in 1924 and Orson Welles in 1955 to Terrence Malick in 1998 -- share ambition.  Watch the trailers and clips from Nolan's selections below. The full list is here, published in the Criterion newsletter. "The Hit" | 1984 | Dir. Stephen Frears Starring John Hurt, Tim Roth, Terence Stamp, and Laura Del Sol, this breakthrough 1984 feature has music by Eric Clapton.  The gangster flick was famously difficult to find until Criterion claimed it. Nolan says: "That Criterion has released this little-known Stephen Frears gem is a testament to the thoroughness of their search for obscure masterworks. Few films have gambled as much on a simple portrayal of...

Consisting of 1981′s Bodas De Sangre (Blood Wedding), 1983′s Carmen and 1986′s El Amor Brujo (Love, The Magician) the Flamenco Trilogy from director Carlos Saura comprise a curious set. Linked by a common cast (Antonio Gades, Cristina Hoyos and Laura del Sol) and all of them shot with a deliberately stagey feel, they will doubtless appeal to fans of vigorous and passionate Spanish dancing but may struggle to find an audience outside of those admittedly narrow tramlines.

Blood Wedding begins with the cast of a dance production applying their make-up before they launch into an energetic rehearsal under the tutelage of Antonio Gades’ choreographer (who assisted with the choreography for the entire trilogy). The wedding of the title is spoiled by the bride running off with Gades’ Leonardo, who the groom must track down and confront. In the end, this is an impressive showcase for vibrant Latin dancing, but pretty...

According to reports director Stephen Frears ("Prick Up Your Ears") , screenwriter Peter Prince and producer Jeremy Thomas will reunite to remake their 1984 crime feature "The Hit", with a considerably bigger budget than the original.

Although the original film was located primarily in a remote Spanish village, Frears intends to shoot his remake in Mexico and the Us.

Premise follows ruthless London gangster 'Willie Parker' (Terrence Stamp) who gives evidence against his criminal compatriots in return for a very generous offer from police.

Ten years later, Parker lives in comfortable retirement in Spain until four Spanish youths kidnap him and deliver him to two hitmen hired by the kingpin that Parker helped put away.

'Braddock' (John Hurt) is a world weary veteran, while 'Myron' (Tim Roth) is his hot-tempered apprentice. Parker quickly adopts a carefree demeanor, claiming that he's had ten years to accept death as a simple part of life.

In Ernest Hemmingway's short story "The Killers," the reader is presented with a character, Ole Anderson, who knows he is to be killed by two hit men yet goes gently into that good night. The story, which was directly adapted into two American film noirs, once by Robert Siodmak (1946) and once by Don Siegel (1964), unnerves because of its existential nature: The protagonist acknowledges that it is meaningless to flee, as he will ultimately die at one time or another. How can you escape the inevitable? Why not cut to the chase and meet it head on? Siodmak's adaptation follows an insurance investigator who essentially wants to discover the reason why Ole was killed. Siegel's adaptation follows the hit men (Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager), one of whom is startled by and becomes obsessed with his target's resignation towards life. Essentially, Siodmak's adaptation takes the form of a mystery while Siegel's...

DVD Playhouse—May 2009

Paramount Centennial Collection Paramount Studios releases two more classic titles from its library on special edition DVD: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last masterpiece (although he would go on to direct two more very good films) from 1962: about an Eastern lawyer (James Stewart) who travels west only to find primal brutality in the form of sadistic bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, great as always) and pragmatic brutality in local rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), each two sides of a coin that represent a way of life slowly dying out as Stewart’s modern brand of civilization tames the West. A perfect film, period. Howard Hawks’ El Dorado is essentially a remake of his earlier classic Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan as lawmen joining forces against corrupt cattle barons. Great fun. Two disc sets.

Actor Tim Roth

Tim Roth Is Telling No Lies

By

Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the March issue of Venice Magazine.

One of the film world’s great chameleons, Tim Roth was born in London May 14, 1961, the son of a journalist and a school teacher. After dropping out of art school, Roth was discovered by maverick British director Alan Clarke, and cast in his incendiary 1982 study of the skinhead movement in the UK, Made in Britain. Tim Roth hasn’t stopped working since, with over 70 feature and TV roles to his credit including such iconic titles as The Hit, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Vincent and Theo, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, and most recently, the lead in Francis Coppola’s first feature in ten years, Youth Without Youth.

Roth stepped behind the...