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It Happened Tomorrow

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1944 / 1.33:1 / 85 min.

Starring Dick Powell, Linda Darnell, Jack Oakie

Cinematography by Archie Stout, Eugen Schüfftan

Directed by René Clair

René Clair takes a trip through The Twilight Zone in It Happened Tomorrow, the story of a reporter’s perilous adventure with a different kind of time machine. Like Clair’s I Married a Witch and The Ghost Goes West, this 1944 fantasy is lighter than air but its feet are planted firmly on the ground. Dick Powell plays Larry Stevens, a struggling journalist with a literal dead end job—he writes obituaries for The Evening News. Linda Darnell is Sylvia Smith, a stage performer who predicts fortunes with the help of Oscar Cigolini, né Smith, her showboating uncle played by Jack Oakie. Sylvia isn’t the only one with insight into the future, Larry gets in on the act when he’s handed a...

Whaddaya know, this new disc of the Carole Lombard / Fredric March comedy hit looks great, besting by far all previous videos and prints I’ve seen of the early (1937) Technicolor production. Hazel Flagg’s Madcap Manhattan Weekend now pops with brilliant hues. And a little digging tells us that Ben Hecht’s morbid premise is based on a real-life scandalous workplace tragedy called ‘The Living Dead Women.’

Nothing Sacred

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1937 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 74 min. / Street Date November 13, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly, Sig Ruman, Troy Brown, Max ‘Slapsie Maxie’ Rosenbloom, Margaret Hamilton, Olin Howland.

Cinematography: W. Howard Greene

Original Music: Oscar Levant

Written by Ben Hecht suggested by a story by James H. Street

Produced by David O. Selznick

Directed by William A. Wellman

Here’s something we didn’t expect to see. When I reviewed an older Kino disc of this title,...

Billy Wilder always more or less disowned his one real musical, which leaves the enthusiast with a choice: keep re-watching the classic Wilder films, of which there are many, or probe into the obscure, disreputable corners of the great man's oeuvre?The year was 1948. Wilder had been involved with the war effort. Lost Weekend had belatedly come out in 1945 and won an Oscar for Ray Milland. And while the rest of Hollywood was churning out movies that developed the film noir genre Wilder had helped launch with Double Indemnity, he made a Bing Crosby musical set in Austria. He claimed it was offered to him, but the script is credited to Wilder and Charles Brackett, so he can't distance himself that easily."On a December night, some forty-odd years ago, His Majesty Franz Joseph the First, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia,...

Turner Classic Movies continues with its Gay Hollywood presentations tonight and tomorrow morning, June 8–9. Seven movies will be shown about, featuring, directed, or produced by the following: Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Farley Granger, John Dall, Edmund Goulding, W. Somerset Maughan, Clifton Webb, Montgomery Clift, Raymond Burr, Charles Walters, DeWitt Bodeen, and Harriet Parsons. (One assumes that it's a mere coincidence that gay rumor subjects Cary Grant and Tyrone Power are also featured.) Night and Day (1946), which could also be considered part of TCM's homage to birthday girl Alexis Smith, who would have turned 96 today, is a Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a posh, heterosexualized version of Porter. As the warning goes, any similaries to real-life people and/or events found in Night and Day are a mere coincidence. The same goes for Words and Music (1948), a highly fictionalized version of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical partnership.

Long before movies routinely created ‘worlds’ with their own twisted fantasy logic, only a few paranoid thrillers, usually odd genre items, tried out twisted stories of deceptive ‘hidden realities.’ Like an extended Twilight Zone entry, this lively James Garner war pic morphs into a bizarre conspiracy worthy of Philip K. Dick. If only it weren’t so “L-a-o” — Literal And Obvious.

36 Hours

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1965 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date April 11, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Taylor, Werner Peters, John Banner, Russell Thorson, Alan Napier, Oscar Beregi, Ed Gilbert, Sig Ruman, Celia Lovsky, Karl Held, James Doohan.

Cinematography Philip H. Lathrop

Art Direction Edward Carfagno, George W. Davis

Film Editor Adrienne Fazan

Original Music Dimitri Tiomkin

Written by George Seaton, Carl K. Hittleman, Luis H. Vance from a story by Roald Dahl

Produced by William Perlberg

Directed by George Seaton

Released...

Here’s a real gem — a ‘classic’ Chekhov story turned into a compelling tale of lust and murder. George Sanders and Linda Darnell shine as a judge and the peasant girl who intrigues him; Edward Everett Horton is excellent cast against type in a dramatic role.

Summer Storm

DVD

Sprocket Vault / Kit Parker

1944 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 106 min. / Street Date October 20, 2009 (I’m a little late) / available through Sprocket Vault / 14.99

Starring: George Sanders, Edward Everett Horton, Linda Darnell, Anna Lee, Hugo Haas, Lori Lahner, Sig Ruman, Robert Greig, Byron Foulger, Mike Mazurki, Elizabeth Russell.

Cinematography: Archie Stout, Eugen Schüfftan

Art Direction: Rudi Feld

Collaborating Editor: Gregg G. Tallas

Original Music: Karl Hajos

Written by Roland Leigh, Douglas Sirk (as Michael O’Hara), Robert Theoren based on the play The Shooting Party by Anton Chekhov

Produced by Seymour Nebenzal

Directed by Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk, born Hans Detlef Sierck, had a pretty amazing career.

Stars: Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman, Victor Kilian | Screenplay by Jules Furthman | Directed by Howard Hawks

When thinking about the great flying pictures of Hollywood’s Golden Age, many would immediately turn to war films containing dogfights, high political drama and the sense that all the death we see onscreen is somehow noble because it’s for the causes of peace and freedom. But perhaps the greatest of these pictures, Only Angels Have Wings, isn’t a war movie and doesn’t contain a single dogfight. It’s an altogether smaller story than those sweeping dramas, and all the more powerful for it.

When Jean Arthur’s chorus girl, Bonnie, gets off a steamer at the fictional South American port of Barranca, she expects to see the sights (comprising a bustling market, a couple of dive bars and a rickety open-topped...

Merle Oberon movies: Mysterious star of British and American cinema. Merle Oberon on TCM: Donning men's clothes in 'A Song to Remember,' fighting hiccups in 'That Uncertain Feeling' Merle Oberon is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of March 2016. The good news: the exquisite (and mysterious) Oberon, whose ancestry has been a matter of conjecture for decades, makes any movie worth a look. The bad news: TCM isn't offering any Oberon premieres despite the fact that a number of the actress' films – e.g., Temptation, Night in Paradise, Pardon My French, Interval – can be tough to find. This evening, March 18, TCM will be showing six Merle Oberon movies released during the first half of the 1940s. Never a top box office draw in the United States, Oberon was an important international star all the same, having worked with many of the top actors and filmmakers of the studio era.

By 1935, the Marx Brothers already had five movies to add to their already extensive Broadway and Vaudeville resume, among them the legendary Duck Soup and the near-classics Animal Crackers and Monkey Business. As we’ve often seen, however, some of our most beloved Hollywood favorites flopped upon first release. 1933’s Duck Soup, specifically, was the last of a five-picture deal the Brothers had at Paramount, and its commercial failure would spell a parting of the ways between the studio and the iconic comedy team.

Enter Irving G. Thalberg, the wunderkind who helped build MGM into a powerhouse. Perhaps best known today for the namesake honor given to producers at each year’s Academy Awards, Thalberg left an indelible mark on Hollywood before his untimely death in 1937 at the age of 36. In addition to launching such innovations as the first production code and the use of audience response questionnaires to hone...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. To Be or Not to Be is playing on Mubi in the Us through August 28.In 2002, the American Film Institute selected To Be or Not to Be as one of the 50 funniest American movies of all time. In March of 1942, when the film was initially released, most critics weren't laughing. A movie lampooning Adolf Hitler may have been acceptable a few years prior (see, for example, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator [1940], though even then Chaplin began to regret his decision after learning more of the Nazis' "homicidal insanity"). But by 1942, Pearl Harbor had been attacked, America had entered World War II, and, to make matters even more dour, the star of To Be or Not to Be, the radiant Carole Lombard, had died in a plane crash less than two months before the premiere. All told, those...

Ninotchka

Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

USA, 1939

It’s easy to see why Ninotchka works as well as it does, and why it’s one of the best films from Hollywood’s golden age and of arguably Hollywood’s greatest year. Just look at the talent involved. Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch were all seasoned writers, though with their best work admittedly still to come. Ernst Lubitsch had directed a number of excellent silent films in Germany, had hit the ground running once in Hollywood, making his first American film with no less a star than Mary Pickford (Rosita [1923]), and after a series of charming musical comedies, many with Maurice Chevalier, directed the more sublime and sophisticated comedies for which he now best known, films like Trouble in Paradise (1932) and Design for Living (1933). While this was happening, Greta Garbo was working...

Veterans Day movies on TCM: From 'The Sullivans' to 'Patton' (photo: George C. Scott in 'Patton') This evening, Turner Classic Movies is presenting five war or war-related films in celebration of Veterans Day. For those outside the United States, Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day, which takes place in late May. (Scroll down to check out TCM's Veterans Day movie schedule.) It's good to be aware that in the last century alone, the U.S. has been involved in more than a dozen armed conflicts, from World War I to the invasion of Iraq, not including direct or indirect military interventions in countries as disparate as Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. As to be expected in a society that reveres people in uniform, American war movies have almost invariably glorified American soldiers even in those rare instances when they have dared to criticize the military establishment.

Chicago – We like to think that creative progress has led to a more open-minded era of today than decades ago but the fact is that I really don’t think a major studio with major actors would make a film today that felt as honestly dangerous as Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not To Be” did when it was released. A dangerous Jack Benny comedy? You bet.

Making a comedy that mocked not just Adolf Hitler himself but the wartime tragedies that were happening throughout Europe in 1942 took such amazing courage that this comedy, now considered a classic, was divisive when it was released. Benny’s own father reportedly walked out of his first viewing, uncomfortable seeing his son in a Nazi uniform. This was daring material and what’s so remarkable about watching it now is that the high-wire tonal tightrope that Lubitsch walks in the film can still be appreciated.

Billy Wilder movies, Johnny Carson interviews tonight on TCM Billy Wilder is Turner Classic Movies’ Director of the Evening tonight, July 8, 2013. But before Wilder Evening begins, TCM will be presenting a series of brief interviews from The Tonight Show, back in the old Johnny Carson days — or rather, nights. The Carson interviewees this evening are Doris Day, Charlton Heston, Tony Curtis, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin. (See also: Doris Day today.) (Photo: Billy Wilder.) As for Billy Wilder, TCM will be showing the following: Some Like It Hot (1959), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Spirit of St. Louis (1958), and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Of course, all of those have been shown before and are widely available. Some Like It Hot vs. The Major and the Minor: Subversive and subversiver Some Like It Hot is perhaps Billy Wilder’s best-known film. This broad comedy featuring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis...

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...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Aug. 27, 2013

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Carole Lombard and Jack Benny make a joke out of the Nazis in To Be or Not to Be.

Jack Benny (The Jack Benny Program) and, in her final screen appearance, Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey) star in To Be or Not to Be, a 1942 screwball comedy masterpiece from Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise).

As nervy as it is hilarious, the classic film features Benny and Lombard as husband-and-wife thespians in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who become caught up in a dangerous plot wherein a Polish soldier is trying to track down a German spy.

To Be or Not to Be is a Hollywood film of the undeniably bold black humor, which went into production soon after the U.S. entered World War II. Lubitsch manages to brilliantly balance political satire, romance, slapstick, and urgent wartime suspense in a comic high-wire act that has never been equaled.

Title: To Be Or Not To Be Director: Ernst Lubitsch Starring: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman. The younger generations who have missed a great all time classic such as Ernst Lubitsch’s ‘To Be Or Not To Be,’ will soon have the chance to see its full version restored, in Blu-Ray. The title is a reference to the famous Shakespearean soliloquy in Hamlet and becomes a humorous leitmotiv throughout Ernst Lubitsch’s film. The 1942 American comedy is about a troupe of theatre actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, who use their acting abilities to mock and disguise amongst the German troops. The movie had been [ Read More ]

The post The Restored ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Charles Durning: Fell in love with Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie [See previous post: "Charles Durning: Oscar-Nominated, Emmy-Nominated, Tony-Winning Actor Dies."] Charles Durning’s second Oscar nomination was for his comic Nazi officer in Mel Brooks’ 1983 remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s classic black comedy To Be or Not to Be, with Brooks and Anne Bancroft in the old Jack Benny and Carole Lombard roles as members of a theater troupe. Although Brooks’ version was deemed inferior to the original, Durning received widespread praise. (Sig Ruman had played [...]...

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die. This week’s Old Ass Movies celebrates the nonsense of the best American comedians of all time. Groucho, Harpo and Chico move in on Bogart’s territory by setting up camp at a hotel in Casablanca, mocking Nazis, playing with a toupee, and remembering to set their watches. A Night in Casablanca (1946) Directed By: Archie Mayo Written By: Joseph Fields & Roland Kibbee Starring: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Sig Ruman, Lisette Verea, Lois Collier, and Charles Drake Selling someone on watching a Marx Brothers movie should be as easy as standing on the street corner offering free bacon, but A Night in Casablanca isn’t the typical Marx movie. It certainly shouldn’t be the first a newcomer should see, since that distinction goes to Duck Soup. It shouldn’t even be the second or third film...

In 1939, MGM released an effervescent, lightly satirical romantic comedy called Ninotchka (available on DVD) which ranks well among the enduring delights of American cinema, yet virtually all its makers were heavily accented Europeans: a Swedish superstar, Greta Garbo; a Polish-German director-producer, Ernst Lubitsch; two Viennese scenarists, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch; a Hungarian story-writer, Melchoir Lengyel; a German composer, Werner Heymann; Prussian, Hungarian and German supporting actors, Felix Bressart, Bela Lugosi, and Sig Ruman. While the picture is about Russian aristocrats and communists (seduced by the Western world) in Paris, it was shot entirely in Culver City, California, and…...