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The Aristocats (1970) is a complicated Disney classic. Beloved by generations since its premiere, it's received criticism in recent years for its portrayal of unsavory racial stereotypes in feline form. Especially in the musical number "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat." Disney addresses this on their streaming platform, Disney+, before audiences are able to screen the film. The sensitivity warning states: "This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures . . . we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it, and spark a conversation to create a more inclusive future together."

Other Disney films from this time, and especially before, have similar messages attached. The 1970s would have been the beginning of what would be known as the...

French-Mauritanian filmmaker Abid Mohamed Medoun Hondo (professionally known as Med Hondo), a founding father of African cinema, died Saturday morning in Paris. He was 82 years old.

Rest as you lived, Med Hondo, in Power. https://t.co/vglzeUn9yX

— Cameron Bailey (@cameron_tiff) March 2, 2019

An award-winning filmmaker who also gained attention in his later years dubbing African-American actors like Eddie Murphy and Morgan Freeman for their movies’ French releases, Hondo remains largely unknown beyond academic and cineaste circles. However, Hondo was a visionary whose work underlined the importance of the preservation of African history via the cinema.

Hondo’s films explored the nature of conflicts within the continent, and between the competing European powers, especially during colonialism. He provided the world with an alternative and necessary understanding of contemporary Africa. He was devoted to creating an African cinema that adopted an anti-imperialist approach to filmmaking, one that could counter Hollywood’s very limited African representation.

Two films by Marcel Carné are playing on Mubi in the United States as part of the series Marcel Carné, Arletty, Jean Gabin: Le jour se lève (1939), from June 7 - July 7, and Air of Paris (1954), from June 8 - July 8, 2017.Marcel Carné’s 1937 film Drôle de drame (Bizarre, Bizarre) feels anomalous when placed next to his classic dramas. Unlike the sincere emotion, heartbreak, and despair which characterize his poetic realist works, Drôle de drame is a lighthearted and rather frivolous comedy of manners. The film depicts a series of absurd events caused by a need to maintain appearances, following meek botanist Irwin Molyneux (Michel Simon) as he lives a double life, writing crime novels in secret. When his cousin, the bishop Bedford (Louis Jouvet), accuses Molyneux of having killed his wife, the married couple go into hiding rather than rectify the mistake. Molyneux emerges with his novelist persona in order...

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz

1519 Catherine de Medici, Queen consort, born. She's been played in movies and TV by Kerry Fox, Megan Follows, Françoise Rosay, Maria Palmer, and many more but none so brilliantly as Virna Lisi in her Cannes winning performance in the sensational French epic Queen Margot (1994)

1570 Guy Fawkes born in England. V for Vendetta's "V" wears his face as a mask.

1743 Founding Father Thomas Jefferson born in Virginia. He's been played in movies and TV by actors like Nick Nolte, Jerry O'Connell, Stephen Dillane, Sam Waterston, Ken Howard, and many more...

Hammer horror fans are in for a treat, as respective collections of five William Castle films and five Hammer horror movies are coming out on Blu-ray in August, and The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant has been set to come out on Blu-ray.

The William Castle and Hammer horror collections will respectively come out on DVD August 18th from Mill Creek. The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, meanwhile, is slated for release later this year by Kino Lorber. Stay tuned to Daily Dead for further updates.

From Mill Creek: "Iconic horror director William Castle created a simple, but winning formula for his films: a little comedy, a lot of scares, a preposterous gimmick, and a clear sense that fright films should be fun. This even meant Castle would, like Alfred Hitchcock, appear in his trailers and even the movies themselves. Though his career spanned 35 years and included everything from westerns to crime thrillers, he'll...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...

Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...

Actor and director who brought dark good looks and a commanding presence to his roles

Austrian by birth, Swiss by circumstance and international by reputation, Maximilian Schell, who has died aged 83, was a distinguished actor, director, writer and producer. However, he will be best remembered as an actor, especially for his Oscar-winning performance in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – an early highlight among scores of television and movie appearances. He also directed opera, worked tirelessly in the theatre and made six feature films, including Marlene (1984) - a tantalising portrait of Dietrich, his co-star in Judgment, who is heard being interviewed but not seen, except in movie extracts.

Schell courted controversy and much of his work, including The Pedestrian (1973), dealt with the second world war, its attendant crimes and the notion of collective guilt. In 1990, when he was offered a special award for his contributions to German film, he refused to accept it.

Maximilian Schell movie director (photo: Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell) (See previous post: “Maximilian Schell Dies: Best Actor Oscar Winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg.’”) Maximilian Schell’s first film as a director was the 1970 (dubbed) German-language release First Love / Erste Liebe, adapted from Igor Turgenev’s novella, and starring Englishman John Moulder-Brown, Frenchwoman Dominique Sanda, and Schell in this tale about a doomed love affair in Czarist Russia. Italian Valentina Cortese and British Marius Goring provided support. Directed by a former Best Actor Oscar winner, First Love, a movie that could just as easily have been dubbed into Swedish or Swahili (or English), ended up nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Three years later, nominated in that same category was Schell’s second feature film as a director, The Pedestrian / Der Fußgänger, in which a car accident forces a German businessman to delve deep into his past.

Eleanor Parker today: Beautiful as ever in Scaramouche, Interrupted Melody Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 in ten days (June 26, 2013), can be seen at her most radiantly beautiful in several films Turner Classic Movies is showing this evening and tomorrow morning as part of their Star of the Month Eleanor Parker "tribute." Among them are the classic Scaramouche, the politically delicate Above and Beyond, and the biopic Interrupted Melody, which earned Parker her third and final Best Actress Academy Award nomination. (Photo: publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in Scaramouche.) The best of the lot is probably George Sidney’s balletic Scaramouche (1952), in which Eleanor Parker plays one of Stewart Granger’s love interests — the other one is Janet Leigh. A loose remake of Rex Ingram’s 1923 blockbuster, the George Sidney version features plenty of humor, romance, and adventure; vibrant colors (cinematography by Charles Rosher); an elaborately staged climactic swordfight; and tough dudes...

Although L'auberge rouge, directed by Claude Autant-Lara in 1951, is a well-loved classic in France, it's little enough known in the English-speaking world to rate discussion here. Besides, it's one of the best comedies I've seen this year.

The star is Fernandel, that long-faced clown. He has a philtrum you could ride a toboggan down. From certain angles, he resembles a melting wad of taffy in a tonsure. His simian features contort in ways unknown to the most experimental physiognomists: that unwieldy length of Neanderthal face looks incapable of the most standard expressions, but in fact it has more of them stashed away than the entire casts of lesser movies. When it splits open in a fearful chimp grin, great stretches of loose face-meat are abruptly hoiked skywards.

The movie serves as an excellent introduction to Fernandel's charms: playing a monk, he finds his buffoonery slightly constrained, which adds focus to it.

When the British Film Institute was just getting started releasing DVDs, it was a surprise to come across La kermesse héroïque (a.k.a. The Heroic Surrender, a.k.a. Carnival in Flanders, 1935), a good, odd film probably not on many people's must-have lists, or at least not until it became possible for them to have it. Happily, the BFI has gone on digging up curios from the past, notably with its Flipside series of obscure British films from the 60s.

Jacques Feyder's film, based on a story by top scenarist Charles Spaak, tells of a Dutch town in 1616, on the even of its carnival celebrations, discovering itself threatened by invasion from the Spanish. The Burgomaster (André Alerme) and the town's most prominent citizens are aghast at the carnage likely to be wrought, and after they describe the rape and baby-slaying in detail, Feyder cuts to a fantasy insert depicting,...

Joanne Woodward never became a major box-office draw. No matter. Woodward was one of the best film actresses of the 20th century, as can be attested by her work in The Three Faces of Eve; Rachel, Rachel (right); Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams; The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds; and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. Woodward's absence from the big screen after a supporting role in Jonathan Demme's 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia is indeed cinema's loss. On Tuesday, August 16, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting 13 Joanne Woodward movies as part of TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" film series. [Joanne Woodward Movie Schedule.] Four of those are TCM premieres: Leo McCarey's weak comedy Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), with Paul Newman as Woodward's love interest, and Joan Collins sultrily stealing the show; Burt Reynolds' highly successful black comedy The End (1978), about a dying man's attempts at killing himself with the assistance of a...

The Halfway House (1943)

Director: Basil Dearden

A young girl tries to bring her estranged parents back together by contriving a mini-break at a charming Welsh inn. It might sound a bit like The Parent Trap, but The Halfway House is an intriguing but uneven wartime fantasy drama from Ealing Studios. Director Basil Dearden’s film was co-written by Angus MacPhail and Diana Morgan (Went The Day Well?) and also features one of the most grating Welsh accents I’ve ever heard – courtesy of Glynis Johns.

The Halfway House begins with a series of brief vignettes introducing the main characters. There’s young Joanna (Sally Anne Howes), whose bickering parents Richard and Jill (Richard Bird and Valerie White) are on the brink of divorce. A disgraced army officer Fortescue (Guy Middleton) is released from prison, after serving time for pilfering the regimental funds. At a Welsh port, ex-navy captain Harry Meadows...

This classic French battle between love, fate and bewitching passion set a pattern for later hits such as Casablanca

This classic example of pre-war French "poetic realism", directed by the great Belgian movie-maker Jacques Feyder, centres on an upper-class playboy business man (Pierre Richard-Willm) with financial problems being compelled to leave Paris and his high-maintenance lover Florence, and join the Foreign Legion in Morocco. A couple of years later as a reckless, hard-drinking sergeant, he meets a beautiful prostitute, the amnesiac Irma who's Florence's double, though their hair colour and voices are different. Can they be the same woman? A story of love, death and fate, this truly adult movie has a great cast that includes Marie Bell as both Florence and Irma, Charles Vanel as a vile hotelier and Françoise Rosay as a compassionate barmaid who predicts the hero's troubled future. Lazare Meerson's sets range from art deco Paris to Moroccan nightclubs,...