Notizie

These days, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is obviously considered a comedy classic. But when it was first released back in 1975, there was no guarantee that people would like it. And specifically, there was no guarantee that film critics would like it.

Several critics did enjoy the Pythons’ first original feature film. The New York Times’ Vincent Canby called it “a marvelously particular kind of lunatic endeavor,” and Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune, hailed Monty Python and the Holy Grail as “an incredibly silly film of great humor, brilliant design and epic insanity.”

But other critics weren’t so impressed. Variety argued that it was “basically an excuse for set pieces, some amusing, others overdone.” Gene Siskel claimed that it “contained about 10 very funny moments and 70 minutes of silence”. In the U.K., film critic and journalist Barry Norman hosted Film 75, the 1975 iteration of his long-running movie review series.

When Natasha Rothwell set out to create her first TV series, she had no idea the corner she was writing herself into by setting it at JFK. As it turns out, there’s a reason you don’t see any workplace comedies about airports. “Standards and practices sanitized so many logos that I was wondering, ‘Is this going to look like JFK?’ ” she says. “When Hudson News finally agreed to let us show their sign, it was really such a get.”

The red tape for something as simple as using a newsstand storefront is one of many unexpected hurdles in making How to Die Alone, Rothwell’s starring vehicle that premieres Sept. 13 on Hulu — seven years after she initially developed it at HBO. Though she’s written for Saturday Night Live and Insecure, on which her colorful script readings inspired showrunners Issa Rae and Prentice Penny to cast her in...

Without music, life would be a mistake. —Friedrich NietzscheIllustration by Ivana Milos.Sometimes during a film, a fleeting moment occurs onscreen that changes everything, and you wonder whether you’ve really seen what you think you have. It was too short, too violent, too beautiful. You didn’t quite understand it, but you felt it. Was it just a dream? Whenever I encounter such moments, I understand something about the way time escapes the grasp of our perception. As my mind lingers on the shot I have just seen, the film moves on. For a second, everything seems unchanged, as if I just imagined this moment. But then I see that the film itself starts to move differently, its colors change, the light has a different taste to it, or the voices of the protagonists seem softer. It becomes clear that something has occurred that has changed everything. This can be a uniquely personal encounter,...

A kindred spirit of Luis Buñuel, but one whose existential compulsions are more palpable, Pier Paolo Pasolini perpetually rebelled against moral hegemony, commiserating with outcasts and creating and dying as one. Today, his canon has been co-opted by forces on the right and left, the faithful and the secular. Which is to say, he belongs to us all.

The Criterion Collection’s new box set, Pasolini 101, represents the most comprehensive collection of Pasolini’s films to date, collecting nine of his features, as well as two shorts (1963’s La Ricotta and 1969’s The Sequence of the Paper Flower) that he made for anthology films and two documentaries that he shot during his travels. In addition to his own work, the set’s extensive and richly informative extras, among them two commentary tracks and a 100-page book featuring an essay and notes on the films by critic James Quandt, remind us...

Based on a Japanese manga by Garon Tsuchiya Nobuaki Minegishi, Park Chan-wook's 2003 film "Oldboy" is a sensational, harrowing, violent, exhilarating opera of sin, retribution, and tragic twists worthy of Shakespeare. Tapping into a particularly Korean sense of social anxiety, it explores experiences of free-floating guilt and the sense that one might be punished at any moment for a slight you didn't know you committed. It's a panic attack of a film that swings for the walls -- literally, with a hammer -- and thwacks a few skulls in the process. Aggressive, enormous, bloody, and blunt, "Oldboy" may be one of the best films of its decade. 

In 2003, Park's film -- the second part of what the filmmaker called a Vengeance Trilogy -- received a lot of attention. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and dozens of other film awards besides. Quentin Tarantino talked it up immensely, and critics gushed.

There are some stories that become archetypes, heavily reused and seemingly permanent fixtures in popular culture. But exactly how much is remembered about these story tropes, and how easily can they be pulled together based on the restrictions of a puzzle game? Storyteller, from developer Daniel Benmergui and publisher Annapurna Interactive, asks players this very question.

Storyteller takes the form of a story book, but its pictures are all empty - for now. That's where the player comes in, taking the title of the story on each page and turning it into something complete through choosing scenes and characters to form something real. These explore some of those aforementioned stories, with the player grappling with how to best map out the plot of plots like Hamlet within six panels.

Related: Great Puzzle Games (That Aren't Tetris)

Each page acts as its own puzzle level in its own right, although similar...

Following Ingmar Bergman, Agnès Varda, Bruce Lee, Federico Fellini, Godzilla, and Wong Kar Wai, the next major box set collection coming from the Criterion Collection has been announced. Arriving this June is Pasolini 101, a 9-Blu-ray set dedicated to the legendary, late Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini.

“Released in celebration of the 101st anniversary of Pasolini’s birth, this collector’s set provides an essential window onto a transformative period for an artist whose legacy remains a wellspring of freedom and revolutionary force,” Criterion notes. “Including nine provocative, lyrical, often scandal-inducing films from the 1960s––Accattone, Mamma Roma, Love Meetings, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Oedipus Rex, Teorema, Porcile, and Medea––the decade in which this celebrated poet, novelist, and intellectual embarked on a feature filmmaking career, Pasolini 101 is a monument to the artist’s daring vision of cinema.”

The release features new 4K digital restorations...

Veteran French docmaker Nicolas Philibert was the surprise winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, taking the prize for his film “On the Adamant,” a poignant observational study of a Paris mental health care facility.

He received the award from jury president Kristen Stewart, after the star offered an extended and plainly heartfelt ode to the film’s humanity and simplicity: “People have gone in circles for thousands of years trying to pin down what can be deemed art, who’s allowed to do it and what determines its value,” she said, citing the boundary-pushing nature of the festival, and namechecking such opposing philosophers on the matter as Aristotle, Barthes, Sontag and Beavis & Butthead, before concluding, “For all of us, you just know it when you see it.”

It was an apt way to introduce a film that stood out in this year’s Competition...

(Welcome to Best Actor Ever, an ongoing series where we explore the careers and performances of the greatest performers to ever grace the screen.)

If the young Denzel Washington had his way, the now 68-year-old Mount Vernon native would have a bust in Canton's Pro Football Hall of Fame. The man who would be Malcolm X, Rubin Carter, and Alonzo Harris initially had his sights trained on the gridiron before he enrolled at Fordham University in 1977, where he was a skilled enough athlete to play under Coach P.J. Carlesimo for the school's junior varsity team. "He would run us all day, and make us work," Washington told the New York Times in 1998. "But you know what? We were always prepared for the fourth quarter, and we hardly ever lost. Some of the things I learned from him, I still apply myself."

Washington knew by this point that a pro sports...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDore O.'s Alaska (1968)The German avant-garde artist Dore O., whose poetic films were at once vast and intimate explorations of dreams, has died at 75. O. was a founder of the Hamburg Filmmakers Co-op (1968-1974), a participant in the famous German exhibit documenta 5 in 1972, and a prolific painter. The DVD label Re:voir Video had recently released a collection of six restored films by O. In 1988, the critic Dietrich Kuhlbrodt wrote: "Dore O. has become classic, and suddenly it turns out that her work has passed the various currents of time unharmed: the time of the cooperative union, the women's film, the structuralists and grammarians, the teachers of new ways of seeing."Subscriptions are now open for Notebook magazine, our print-only publication devoted to the art and culture of cinema. Subscribe now and you’ll...

Wada Emi, the celebrated Japanese costume designer who won an Oscar for Kurosawa Akira’s “Ran” in 1985, has died.

Wada’s family told Japanese media that she died on Nov. 13, 2021, but did not disclose the cause or the place of her death.

Appreciated for her painstaking attention to detail – she hand-dyed the costumes for “Ran” – and for playing hard to get, Wada won numerous awards in addition to the Oscar and BAFTA. Other prizes included a Prime Time Emmy for her costumes in British TV show “Oedipus Rex” in 1993 and a Hong Kong Film Award for her designs on Zhang Yimou’s spectacular martial arts fantasy “Hero.”

Born Noguchi Emiko in 1937 to a wealthy family, Wada was surrounded from an early age by concert-level pianists, European artistic influence and Japanese literature.

At middle school she discovered that she liked the films of Jean Cocteau, but wanted to be a painter.

Winning the prize for first post-pandemic indoor stage performance, L.A. Opera will present composer Igor Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex for a single matinee June 6 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The inimitable Stephen Fry — prerecorded at London’s Abbey Road studios — will appear onscreen as the narrator of the production.

Based on a 1927 libretto written by Jean Cocteau and later translated by E.E. cummings, the 50-minute opera-oratorio recounts Oedipus’ inquiry into the murder of King Laius. Oedipus, the King of Thebes, discovers that Laius, whom he secretly killed, was actually his father and that he has slept ...

Erik Knudsen’s retelling of the grim Greek myth sparks in moments but is weighed down by its leaden script

Shot in and around Manchester, favouring cobbled alleys and anonymously austere office buildings for locations, this contemporary reworking of Oedipus Rex is a well-meaning but plodding drama. Instead of a Greek king, the protagonist is Campbell, a handsome but brooding young man who has become an executive in the vaguely defined family company owned by his partner Jaz (Miranda Benjamin), a woman 20 years older.

The two are looking into adopting a fertilised egg if they don’t succeed in getting Jaz pregnant. But her brother takes Campbell to meet a “seer” named Tim, who reveals that Jaz is in fact Campbell’s biological mother, rather spoiling the whole happy-family vibe. And on it goes, tracking pretty closely to the narrative as laid out in Greek mythology, but with modern dress...

“Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” hopes to live up to its name, but not by having players re-experience the trials and tribulations of Odysseus as told by Homer, but rather by giving players a chance to create their own epic tale, their own odyssey during a time much later and more volatile in Greek history than the mythical Trojan War.

Player choice is key among several major shifts in this latest “Assassin’s Creed,” due out later this year. Constructed to tell a story more driven by player choice than ever before in the franchise, in a place more storied than ever visited.

In “Odyssey,” players take on the role of mercenary, a Spartan abandoned as a child to fend for himself who has grown to become a masterful Spartan soldier. In their own adventures, crafted by how they tackle the story and how they talk with other characters, players will battle with shield and spear,...

Luis Alfaro takes “Oedipus Rex” and moves it up a few millennia to the streets of present-day Los Angeles. He calls his new adaptation “Oedipus el Rey,” but a more apt title would be “Oedipus Sex.” Let’s get right to what most theatergoers will be talking about the minute they walk out of Off Broadway’s Public Theater, where “Oedipus el Rey” opened Tuesday: “Is that possibly the hottest, longest nude sex scene you’ve ever seen on stage anywhere?” With “Hair” back in 1968, the Public presented the first nude scene on Broadway. Now, in association with the Sol Project,...

Long unavailable in the U.S., Toshio Matsumoto’s subversive masterpiece “Funeral Parade of Roses” is now in limited release with a shiny new 4k restoration from Cinelicious Pics and The Cinefamily, crafted from the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements of the feature.

The film follows transgender actor Peter, who turns in an eye-opening performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Gene who enters into a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) and Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya).

Read More: ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’ Review: 50 Years Later, This Transgressive Japanese Drama Is Still a Party and a Procession

As our Michael Nordine wrote in his review, the movie as “both a party and a procession,” adding that the “subversive drama starts like a dream, a black-and-white vision of bodies entwined in momentary escape, before reality intervenes: Eddie (Peter, also known as...

Before Divine, Laverne Cox and the leading ladies of “Tangerine” there was Peter, who in 1969 helped make “Funeral Parade of Roses” both a party and a procession. Toshio Matsumoto’s subversive drama starts like a dream, a black-and-white vision of bodies entwined in momentary escape, before reality intervenes: Eddie (Peter, also known as Pita) and Gonda’s (Yoshio Tsuchiya) love affair is an illicit one, and at risk of being undone by the fact that Gonda is already spoken for. That’s the central conflict in “Funeral Parade of Roses,” but describing this transgressive take on “Oedipus Rex” purely in terms of plot would be as limiting as calling the King of Thebes slightly confused.

The title is a double entendre of sorts: “Rose” carries the same connotation in Japanese that “pansy” does in English, with Eddie getting pride of place as the brightest flower in Matsumoto’s bouquet. Some of the others are wilting,...

This is my seventh TCM Classic Film Festival. At a certain point, some things become routine – one learns to expect the exhaustion at the dawn of day three (of four), the constant negotiation between personal viewing whims and rare presentations, the way plots and aesthetic choices start to run together, and the suspicion that explaining the draw of such an event to those not immediately inclined to attend it may come across a touch insane. Film festivals are innately demanding experiences, but between the pleasure of its programming, the consolidation of the venues, and the brevity of most of its films’ running times, few make it so easy to watch four, five, six movies in a day. You tell your coworkers on Monday what you did all weekend, and it starts to not make a lot of sense. But somehow, in the midst of it all, the point of it couldn’t be clearer.

Cinelicious Pics and actor Elijah Wood’s production company SpectreVision will restore and re-release Toshio Matsumoto’s Japanese queer cinema classic “Funeral Parade of Roses.” A loose adaptation of “Oedipus Rex” set in the gay underground of 1960’s Tokyo, the film follows a group of transgender people as they travel through a largely unseen world of drag bars and nightclubs, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitar, performance art and black mascara.

Long unavailable in the United States, “Funeral Parade of Roses” is an intoxicating masterpiece of subversive imagery, combining elements of documentary and the avant garde. Stanley Kubrick acknowledged that the film was a major influence on “A Clockwork Orange.” Check out some exclusive images from the film below.

Read More: ‘Private Property’ Exclusive Trailer & Poster: Lost 1960s Noir Melodrama Starring Warren Oates

Cinelicious specializes in releasing independent features and docs along with brand-new 4K restorations of under-seen classics. They...

In the premiere of TNT’s Animal Kingdom, impressionable young J Cody was always being given things by his thieving uncles. Money. Jewelry. The false impression that breakfast is clothing-optional and petty disagreements are best settled with firearms. So the question became, would the teenager be seduced by his family’s flashy criminal lifestyle? For that matter, would we be seduced by the series? I wasn’t. How about you? Read on, and after we go over the major developments in the series’ opener, you can grade it and weigh in with your review in the comments sections.

RelatedSummer TV...

The Italian film legend, known for his expressive face, made many films with Pier Paolo Pasolini and starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films

The Italian cinema legend Franco Citti has died in Rome aged 80 following a long illness. Friend and fellow actor Ninetto Davoli confirmed that Citti had died on Thursday.

Citti, known internationally for his role as Calò in Francis Ford Coppola’s the Godfather I and III and as the face of films by director Pier Paolo Pasolini, came to fame at the age of 26 playing the title role in Pasolini’s 1961 Accattone. He continued to work with the legendary director throughout the 60s and 70s, appearing in films such as Mamma Roma, Edipo Re, Pigsty and The Decameron.

Continue reading...

A version of this story first appeared in the Dec. 25 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. When Hamlet debuted on the stage of the Globe Theater in May of 1600, a funny thing happened — no one went home and killed their uncle. In fact, in the weeks and months afterward, there was no rash of uncle killings throughout London. The same thing had happened over two thousand years earlier — after the debut of Oedipus Rex, thousands of Greeks (as far as we can tell) did not go home and have sex

read more...

Terminator

Directed by James Cameron

Written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd

1984, USA

In 1984, James Cameron released his sci-fi thriller The Terminator: the story of a killer cyborg sent from the future, and programmed to kill the mother of a future rebel chief. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the automated hit man roaming around present-day Los Angeles to eliminate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Her only hope is the guerrilla fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) who has followed the killer machine back through time in order to protect her. Terminator has long staked its claim as a classic for the ages (The Library of Congress even added it to its National Film Registry in 2008) and three decades later, Termiantor is still the best film James Cameron has directed, a resourceful low-budget thriller that recalls the canny exploitation work of George Miller and John Carpenter. While the film made a considerable profit for Orion Pictures,...

Hannah is one week into her new job as a substitute teacher, and apparently killing it with her class of high school English students. I think we all anticipated this might be the case, but Hannah has never been in rarer form than she is in front of a room full of sassy teenagers (including Maude Apatow!) discussing Oedipus Rex, free will, and MILFs; what's more, she seems like she's doing 10 times the job any of my subs ever did. When her charming banter with history teacher Fran in the teachers' lounge ends in a date proposal almost as abrupt as Jason Ritter's to Shosh last week, I genuinely thought, "Good for you, Hannah! You deserve it!" possibly for the first time in the history of this show. (Sidenote: is it just me, or does this feel like a scene from a less caffeinated New Girl?)Of course, being Hannah,...

The following is an extract generously provided by Verso Books from their new release, "St. Paul," the first English translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's screenplay about the apostle Paul.

It is well known that the Christian reference played a role of primary importance in the formation of Pasolini’s thought, despite (or because of) the sexual and transgressive violence that inspired his personal life and bestowed a particular coloration on his communist political choices. In a certain sense, it was a sacrifice bordering on the sacred – the mysterious death of his brother, an Italian partisan, probably killed by the Yugoslav resistance at the moment of Liberation – that led both to his view of the judgement one can make on History, and to the severity he displayed, from the late 1950s on, towards the Italian Communist Party. Basically, the Pci was guilty in his eyes of having allowed the young...

Director Julie Taymor has finished the film version of her widely acclaimed, visually stuffed production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which ran earlier this year at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn). “Many people wanted to tour, but it’s completely impractical,” Taymor told Vulture this week at a screening of Boyhood at BAMcinemaFest. “There were 17 children and 15 principals. It will probably never see the light of day again as a live production, so I feel very good about the film."Taymor says this project is similar to her 1992 TV film Oedipus Rex, shot during a Japanese production of Stravinsky's opera-oratorio. Like on Oedipus, Taymor directed the Midsummer film, shot by Frida cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto during the last four performances of the play. “It’s not like Live From the Met,” Taymor says. “This is even more thorough. We shot all performances straight through, putting cameras in different positions...

I started writing this piece a little over two years ago when, wondering if this was a debate whose terms I wanted to propagate, I thought twice. After the recent Godard retro in New York, however, thinking thrice, I've decided not to think about it again. With very special thanks to Sam Engel, Matthew Flanagan, Danny Kasman, Andy Rector, Gina Telaroli, who provided so much of the source code for this piece. There's no greater fount of wisdom in the world for a guy to plagiarize.

And so:

***

“Pauvres choses! Elles n’ont que le nom qu’on leur impose.”

“Poor things! They have nothing but the name imposed upon them.” — Film Socialisme

“You can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll.

Very sorry baby, doesn’t look like me at all.” — Leonard Cohen, “Tower of Song”

"Three Jewish characters, it's a lot for a single film. The fourth...

Digital Spy was fortunate enough to score a sizeable amount of time in the company of acclaimed filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn in support of the DVD release of Only God Forgives. A thematically audacious and visually stunning movie, this twisted tale of Ryan Gosling's taciturn drugs dealer becoming embroiled with a vengeance-fuelled policeman called Chang has polarised audiences. But what is it really about? We probed its maker, before delving further into his career to explore the likes of Pusher and Bronson. As for the future, Bond, Beckham and Barbarella are all on the agenda...

Since its release, Only God Forgives has inspired many different interpretations. What's the weirdest one you've encountered so far?

"My favourite one is when a German woman at Cannes came up to me and said, 'I think this movie takes place in the vagina, yes?' I was like, 'Yeah, that's pretty spot on,...

A big black hole –

The galaxy’s bowl?

Captain Power’s goal?

Enough poesy. What we’re dissertating on today is not verse, which I’m pretty sure I don’t quite understand, but goals.

But first, a brief look at what are widely considered the seven basic plots. I’ll be courteous enough to add, under each one, an example of what it is. This I will do in italics.

Here we go:

Overcoming the Monster – Gilgamesh

Rags to Riches – Cinderella

The Quest – Lord of the Rings

Voyage and Return – Wizard of Oz

Comedy – Modern Times

Tragedy – Oedipus Rex

Rebirth – Christmas Carol

Most of what I’ve just tossed at you are narrative germs that involve somebody trying to get or accomplish something – somebody with goals to achieve. (Tragedy and Rebirth are hereby excused. And Comedy can take a nap, if it wants.)

That’s mostly the stuff we...

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn; Screenwriter: Nicolas Winding Refn; Starring: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm; Running time: 90 mins Certificate: 18

There's something undeniably beguiling about Ryan Gosling's face and the highly stylised, neon-bathed manner in which director Nicolas Winding Refn captures it. The standard forlorn expression may evoke shades of Joey Tribbiani's countenance during the whiffy throes of his 'smell the fart' acting forays, but within the framework of this brutal and compelling revenge thriller it packs the same visceral and emotive punch as in the pair's previous collaboration Drive.

The sublime Only God Forgives again positions Gosling as an immoral and taciturn anti-hero who appears disconnected from the world around him. He portrays Julian, a Bangkok based boxing promoter whose real line of work is peddling drugs.

When his paedophilic brother Billy is brutally slain by the father of a girl he murdered, with the consent of sword-bearing...

On the March 11 season finale of ‘The Bachelor’ Sean seeks guidance from his mom over which girl to pick, and her response is surprising. Watch the video here!

Cue the dramatic music — Sean Lowe has got some serious contemplating to do! The end is nigh for the Texan beefcake on The Bachelor, as on the March 11 finale he must propose to either Lindsay Yenter or Catherine Giudici. Sean may be a shirtless sexy hunk, but he is also a total Momma’s boy! Sean’s very attractive mother breaks down in tears on the finale and she tells him he does not have to get engaged. At All!

Sean Lowe’s Mom Advises Him On ‘The Bachelor’ Finale

It’s obvious where Sean gets his good looks and ability to stare dramatically for minutes on end — he is a dead ringer for his mom! On the season finale, Sean’s...

Champion of the disinherited of postwar Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini's masterworks reveal an obsession with martyrdom that foreshadowed his own wretched death

At the end of Mamma Roma (1962), Pier Paolo Pasolini's great film, the hero lies dying on a prison bed like the dead Christ of Mantegna or a barefoot saint by Caravaggio. Much has been made of the Renaissance and baroque iconography in Pasolini's cinema. The implied blasphemy of Caravaggio's grubby, low-life Christs excited the iconoclast in the Italian film-maker, whose wretched death was somehow foreshadowed in his own work. On the morning of 2 November 1975, in a shanty town outside Rome, Pasolini was found beaten beyond recognition and run over by his Alfa Romeo. A woman had noticed something in front of her house. "See how those bastards come and dump their rubbish here," she complained.

The scene of the murder, Idroscalo, recalls a setting for a...

Not everyone thinks about it this way, but movies educate us about life better than any school or religion.

Why? Because our brains trick our bodies into thinking that we are the ones experiencing the events on the screen.

And this is scientifically verified fact. Your mouth waters when you watch Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Your heart palpitates when Ethan Hunt makes impossible missions doable through technology, acrobatics and bombs. And your … well, let’s just say certain things happen to your body when James Bond and one of his lady friends start making out.

Although none of us will probably have such adventures, we’d sure like to.

The best part about movies is that they can teach us how not to live. Ancient tragedies like Oedipus Rex taught hard lessons to the Greeks about what not to do, and a sufficient number of those folks...

When "The Following" premieres tonight (Monday, January 21 at 9 p.m. Est on Fox), viewers will meet the charismatic serial killer known as Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), a man who has somehow been able to inspire an army of loyal followers to carry out untold grisly crimes in his name, even from his cell on Death Row.

Retired FBI agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) is always one step behind, working to predict Joe's next move before anyone else is killed. The cat-and-mouse relationship between the two is a large part of what makes the new drama so compelling.

At the recent Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, HuffPost TV sat down with James Purefoy to discuss what drew him to playing a killer, whether violence on TV is contributing to the violence we see in America today, and the "bizarre love story" at the center of the show.

What drew you to the project initially?...

There's nothing quite like the sustained pleasure of immersing one's self in a huge chunk of a top-notch artist's output for a significant period of time. This was easily accomplished in 2012, because lately it seems like the classical arms of the major labels are trying to get all their best material into budget-priced box sets (in Europe even more than in the U.S., so check the imports, especially for Sony). And anything they aren't doing that with, another label would be happy to license. In that sense, it's a great time to be a classical fan. Nonetheless, I'm keeping this list shorter than my new releases list, because, well, there's too much to listen to all of it! So to make my list, these items had to make me very, very happy in 2012.

 

1. Hilliard Ensemble: Franco-Flemish Masterworks (Virgin Classics)

This eight-cd box is a delight for fans of choral music,...

Above: Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975) was released by Criterion in 1998 and in 2004 they released Mamma Roma (1962). This past month they released a much belated box-set of his six-hour Trilogy of Life (1971-1974), in a beautiful restoration and accompanied with an awesome heap of great docs, essays and other goodies. On December 13 MoMA started a month-long retrospective dedicated to his work.

I. Defending Pasolini Against His Devotees

The prevailing view of Pier Paolo Pasolini has become subjugated to the misshapen reputation of his most infamous film, Salò (1975). The film’s unyielding serial descent into ever more severe cycles of mutilation, sodomy, coprophagia, and chronic rape of a group of 12-15 year olds has scandalized and influenced a culture that is frantic for any stimuli that can remind its constituents of their humanity. The film has furnished ample fodder for generations of filmmakers intent on...

★★★★☆

Eureka Entertainment kicks off a busy Q4 this week with the rerelease of three classic cinematic treats on Dual Format, courtesy of their acclaimed Masters of Cinema label. Restored gems include Cecil B. DeMille's hammy-yet-enjoyable rough diamond Cleopatra (1934), Fritz Lang's expressionist crime sequel The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's inaugural colour feature Oedipus Rex (1967) - yet another addition to MoC's growing Pasolini catalogue. Read more »...

Freud was right about Oedipus. Perhaps the famous neurologist was just some crazy Austrian guy who did altogether too much cocaine, but he was right to say the ancient Greek myth contains a universal truth, if maybe not the one he imagined. Oedipus Rex, from Pier Palo Pasolini (the Italian director best known for the notorious Salò: 120 Days of Sodom) is a fairly straight retelling of the legend from Sophocles's play, about the boy who grew up to unwittingly kill his father and marry his mother. But Pasolini's genius stems in large part from the idea backstabbing, double-dealing, murder and incest are the less interesting things going on here.Oedipus Rex is a gorgeously theatrical production that still proves visually stunning more than four decades...

We start the Top 7. You finish the Top 10.

Before this weekend’s Prometheus there was Alien, a little science fiction film in 1979 that was never made to inspire a franchise. Seven years later, the film received a sequel, Aliens, which cemented its status as a series with multiple stories and characters to be explored in further films.

Read Jeff Bayer’s Scorecard Review of “Prometheus”

Since then, the concept of making sequels and prequels has become an ol’ hat in Tinseltown, with numerous films inspiring various continuations, for better or for worse. Yet while a movie like Twins is set to be turned into a franchise with an upcoming sequel, there are plenty of films that are more worthy of such expansion.

These are films that should get the franchise treatment, with their characters, concepts, and stories having more to say beyond just one movie.

7. Stop! Or My Mom Will...

'Goodbye, lovelorn Skyping Germans'

The physical form of the critic has undergone an evolutionary change. Think of that famous image of an ape slouching along behind a less hairy, more upright figure showing us, homo erectus. A similar picture for critics might feature an image of a civilised, thoughtful figure sitting elegantly upright at a desk, tapping serenely at a laptop. Then, to the right on the timeline, there would be a sweaty, harassed figure, standing hunched outside a cinema, jabbing at his smartphone.

I've just discovered it's entirely possible to write a longish review on your iPhone yellow-pad app, using only a single hyperactive thumb. If there's very little time to complete it – at a festival, for example – doing it this way is the only way. It's actually fine. The yellow-pad auto-corrects, smoothing away fat-thumbed errors; and, unlike a tablet or laptop, a smartphone can be carried around in your jeans pocket.

On October 30, 1975, three days before he was murdered, Pier Paolo Pasolini was in Stockholm to present what was to be his last film, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, to Swedish critics. A roundtable discussion was recorded with the intent of turning it into a radio broadcast but news of the filmmaker's death oddly resulted in the withholding of the recording rather than, as would surely happen today, an immediate publication. Eventually, the recording was lost, but as Eric Loret and Robert Maggiori tell the story in Libération, Pasolini's Swedish translator, Carl Henrik Svenstedt, a passionate archivist, recently discovered his own private copy. In December, the Italian newsweekly L'espresso posted the audio recording and published an Italian transcript. Here, for the first time, is an English translation. After a couple of informal questions, the roundtable officially opens with "Ladies and gentlemen…"

What do you know about Swedish cinema?

I know Bergman,...

Among the five 2012 Golden Globe nominations for best series are two of television's most controversial shows, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones. Their story lines this past season dared to go where few have gone before, but where more and more seem to be heading: incest. So, is this trendy taboo on television a good thing for our psyches?

Incest in the arts and literature is not new, going back as far as Greek mythology (Oedipus Rex), Shakespeare (Hamlet) and Victorian romance novels. But it was almost always disguised or implied -- what went on between the sheets had to be read between the lines. Now these twisted romances are depicted in graphic detail for all to see.

In Boardwalk Empire, for example, we watch an unsettling, intimate relationship between a young mother and her son, dramatized, via flashback, by a deeply disturbing sexual encounter. Portrayed with longing, passion, shame and confusion,...

(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969, BFI, 12)

A companion piece to his Oedipus Rex (1967) and far removed from his realistic early movies, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea draws on Euripides's play after first relating the story of Jason and the Argonauts' voyage to steal the Golden Fleece from primitive Colchis and bringing it back to Greece along with the king's daughter Medea. The second part concerns her terrible revenge when Jason deserts her and their children. This wilfully complex film, which some find baffling and infuriating (the DVD set is accompanied by an explanatory booklet), is a Freudian-Marxist-Christian take on the myth, buttressed by Pasolini's cranky ideas about capitalism and mysticism versus modernity. Shot on locations as different as the beautiful Campo at Pisa and the Göreme region of Turkey, it's visually astonishing, and at its centre is Maria Callas in her only film role, a commanding presence with her large brown eyes.

With six children, his parents struggled to make ends meet. Now Ralph Fiennes is the toast of Hollywood – and making his directorial debut with Coriolanus. He tells Xan Brooks his story

Ralph Fiennes's trailer sits on a patch of wasteland beside the river and near the airport, in a neck of east London that's barely London. The cabbie can't find it and keeps driving in circles, his irritation rising as the planes rumble overhead. Either the satnav is scrambled or the address does not exist. "It's meant to be here but there's nothing there," he grumbles. "It's not a place, it's off the map."

It's only later, safely arrived, that it strikes me that the non-place may well be the best place to meet Ralph Fiennes, an actor who does not so much inhabit his roles as hide out in them and a man who approaches press interviews with...

The Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival (Mifff), a three day international showcase of genre films, is thrilled to announce its final lineup and schedule for its third annual event.

The festival is taking place September 16th-18th, 2011 in Seattle, Washington on the campus of Seattle Center. Siff Cinema at McCaw Hall will once again be the center of genre film mania in the Pacific Northwest for filmmakers and fans alike.

Mifff’s third year will debut 5 feature films and over 40 short films from 12 countries across the globe. Over 10 of the films will be North American Premiere’s while there’s 30 films that will be making either their Northwest or Seattle Premiere. Information about the films can be accessed at the Mifff website.

Several filmmakers will be in attendance.

Tickets are available in advance online. An entire festival pass can be purchased for $40. Single day passes for Saturday and Sunday are available at $25 per day.

Chasing Madoff

Directed by Jeff Prosserman

2011, USA/Canada, 90 mins.

Here are three facts that, taken together, recommend this film. One: Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme bilked investors to the tune of billions. Two: in 1999, it took trader Harry Markopolos about five minutes to uncover the fraud and begin reporting Madoff to the Security and Exchange Commission. Three: the SEC did nothing, and Madoff was not arrested until 2008.

Madoff Rex

This is a film about Harry Markopolos more than it is a film about Madoff. It is the documentary equivalent of a thriller, made resonant by truth. Markopolos and his team, Frank Casey and Neil Chelo, don’t set out prove a fraud – rather, they stumble into it after trying to compete with Madoff and realizing that his profits are impossible. It is these three men – though primarily Markopolos – who tell the story, which director Jeff Prosserman edits together at a quick clip.

Some movie clips ... one unifying theme ... The Usual Suspects ... The Sixth Sense ... now you get it! Damn you!

Aristotle called it anagnorisis, that moment where the protagonist in a drama suddenly twigs what's been going on this whole time. He identified the famous scene in Oedipus Rex, where the young king realises he's killed his father and had sex with his mother, as the most perfect example of this in action. There's also the bit at the end of every episode of Scooby Doo where the ghost is revealed to have been that kindly old janitor all along.

When they're done well, these epiphany scenes can be genuinely amazing, pulling the rug from under the audience's feet and ensuring that films like The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense are talked about for years to come. They also give an actor the opportunity to show off their "sudden realisation face...

With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.

I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.

The Factory

Opens: 2011

Cast: John Cusack, Jennifer Carpenter, Ksenia Solo, Mae Whitman, Sonya Walger

Director: Morgan O'Neill

Summary: An obsessed cop is on the trail of a serial killer prowling the streets of Buffalo, New York. When his teenage daughter disappears, he drops any pretension and professional restraint he might have to get the killer.

Analysis: Shot almost three years ago now, Dark Castle had originally planned to release this thriller back in late 2009. However for reasons unspecified, it has been sitting on a shelf for some time and keeps getting delayed. In cases like these, the most obvious reason is usually the correct one - it stinks (eg. "Case 39"). The company certainly has had its fair share of box-office duds lately including "Whiteout," "Ninja Assassin," "The Losers," "Orphan" and "Splice".

Yet Cusack generally has good taste in projects, his last venture into horror was the surprisingly effective Stephen King...

The Factory

Opens: 2011

Cast: John Cusack, Jennifer Carpenter, Ksenia Solo, Mae Whitman, Sonya Walger

Director: Morgan O'Neill

Summary: An obsessed cop is on the trail of a serial killer prowling the streets of Buffalo, New York. When his teenage daughter disappears, he drops any pretension and professional restraint he might have to get the killer.

Analysis: Shot almost three years ago now, Dark Castle had originally planned to release this thriller back in late 2009. However for reasons unspecified, it has been sitting on a shelf for some time and keeps getting delayed. In cases like these, the most obvious reason is usually the correct one - it stinks (eg. "Case 39"). The company certainly has had its fair share of box-office duds lately including "Whiteout," "Ninja Assassin," "The Losers," "Orphan" and "Splice".

Yet Cusack generally has good taste in projects, his last venture into horror was the surprisingly effective Stephen King...