News

Long before Stanley Kubrick made waves with book adaptations like The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, he directed one of the most powerful anti-war stories of all time. Based on Humphry Cobb’s book, Paths of Glory is a powerful anti-war drama that explores the futility of battle. But, in true Kubrick style, the film condemns war by creatively dissecting the power structures that sustain it.

Paths of Glory is less about the battlefield and more about the forces pulling the strings behind the scenes: the generals who see soldiers as disposable, the bureaucratic system that turns life-and-death decisions into calculated operations, and the ethical compromises made in the name of victory. Kubrick shifts the spotlight from combat to corruption, making a war film where the real enemy is the system itself.

Paths of Glory Explores the Machinations Behind War

In 1916, during the First World War in Northern France, French...

The "Gunsmoke" episode "Quaker Girl" opens with Thaddeus apprehending a dangerous criminal named Fred Bateman, played by none other than the legendary William Shatner. 

Shatner was about to blow up in popularity thanks to "Star Trek," which debuted only a few months prior, so his appearance on "Gunsmoke" likely made him feel ubiquitous across the medium. On "Gunsmoke," Fred Bateman is an arrogant, violent character who knows no deputy will kill him because the price on his head is too high. He has a few fight scenes with Ewing right at the star of "Quaker Girl." The episode will take Thad and Bateman into a nearby Quaker village, where Bateman lies about being the deputy, claiming that Thad is his prisoner. Will the Quakers figure it out? 

Shatner played Bateman as a rough-and-tumble heavy, a devious jerk willing to throw a punch and too arrogant to admit defeat. It's a good performance.

It's like something out of a film noir. An actor, in the middle of the production of a young despotic director's big war picture, is suddenly kidnapped. Only as the threads unravel it becomes clear that the kidnapping is as fictional as the movie itself: the actor faked it for personal publicity. The actor in question? Timothy Carey, who disappeared during the production of Stanley Kubrick's anti-war masterpiece Paths of Glory.

Betty Sturm, who played a follower of Timothy Carey’s cult leader in the infamous Frank Zappa-scored The World’s Greatest Sinner, died Sunday of Alzheimer’s disease at her home in Clinton, New Jersey, her son, William Winckler, announced. She was 89.

Carey wrote, directed, produced and starred as an insurance salesman who transforms himself into the dictatorial God Hilliard in The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962). The film has rarely been seen in theaters and is perhaps best known for its Zappa connection. Martin Scorsese is said to be a fan.

In the 2012 making-of documentary Making Sinner, Sturm was interviewed by Romeo Carey, Timothy Carey’s son. She explained that because of The World’s Greatest Sinner‘s yearlong shooting schedule and a financial dispute, she did not return for one last scene, so an extra stepped in for her to play a saxophone.

Raised in Spain and Germany,...

Quentin Tarantino’s first feature may not be to all tastes, but it is an admirable feat of commercial filmmaking — what other director has broken into the front rank with such panache? The fifth time through, the splintered, elliptical structure still impresses, and there’s always something new to see in the performances of Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, and Steve Buscemi. The (rather bargain-priced) 4K disc set has everything — two formats, a digital code and those deleted scenes to ponder. And a Pulp Fiction 4K is due in just a week or so.

Reservoir Dogs 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

Lionsgate

1992 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / 30th Anniversary Edition / Street Date November 15, 2022 / Available from Amazon / 22.99

Starring: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Randy Brooks, Kirk Baltz, Eddie Bunker, Quentin Tarantino.

Cinematography: Andrzej Sekula

Production Designer: David Wasco

Film Editor: Sally Menke

Dedicatees: Timothy Carey,...

Kino boosts the third United Artists Stanley Kubrick classic to 4K clarity, bringing out every nuance of the director’s fine B&w imagery. Kubrick’s major career achievement this time was forming a mutually positive relationship with a big star. Their show is an artful anti-militaristic shout that accuses the French officer corps of willful murder. Producer-star Kirk Douglas gets the best grandstanding soapbox of his career, while Kubrick proves he can shape a dozen fine performances into a mainstream movie masterpiece.

Paths of Glory 4K

4K Ultra HD

Kl Studio Classics

1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date August 23, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Wayne Morris, Richard Anderson, Joe Turkel, Timothy Carey, Suzanne Christian, Jerry Hausner, Emile Meyer, Bert Freed.

Cinematography: George Krause

Production Designer: Art Director: Ludwig Reiber

Film Editor: Eva Kroll

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written by Stanley Kubrick,...

This picture looks as modern and radical as anything from Italy in the 1960s, yet it’s a tough-talking take on hardboiled crime caper fiction. In three pictures Stanley Kubrick went from amateur to contender: now he has a like-minded producer, a top-flight cast, and the help of the legendary pulp author Jim Thompson. Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards peg the cynical film noir style, and Kubrick maintains the source book’s splintered chronology for the tense racetrack heist. All Hollywood took notice — at least that part of the industry looking out for daring, progressive storytelling. Now in 4K, Kubrick’s superb B&w images look better than ever.

The Killing

4K Ultra HD

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date July 26, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen,...

Click here to read the full article.

Joe Turkel, who portrayed the haunting bartender in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and the creator of the replicants in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, has died. He was 94.

Turkel died Monday at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, his family announced.

Turkel also appeared in two other Kubrick films: as a gunman in the climactic shootout in The Killing (1956) and as a soldier sent to the firing squad in Paths of Glory (1957), which the lanky Brooklyn-born actor called the greatest film ever made. (Only Philip Stone has appeared in as many as three Kubrick movies.)

For Bert I. Gordon, Turkel appeared as Abu the Genie and as a gangster, respectively, in the 1960 releases The Boy and the Pirates and Tormented. He also played a prisoner of war in Robert Wise’s The Sand Pebbles (1966) and was the real-life bribe...

Wild Guitar (1962).The films of low budget director Ray Dennis Steckler present a unique balancing act between familiar B-movie tropes and the unexpected. With Wild Guitar (1962), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies!!? (1964), The Thrill Killers (1964), and Rat Pfink A Boo Boo (1966), Steckler, a self-acknowledged Hollywood outsider, crafted a series of idiosyncratic low budget features in the heart of Tinseltown before eventually decamping to Las Vegas in 1970 for a career in porn and to teach film classes at the University of Nevada. In these energetic early films, his characters—drifters, rock ‘n’ rollers, killers, dropouts, superheroes, and struggling actors—seem to be plucked from Hollywood Boulevard and set down in a pulp comic come to life. The Hollywood strip appears again and again in the director’s films as a symbol of intoxicating fantasy and disillusionment. Indeed, Steckler’s work embodies, at first glance, a simple teenage dream of celebrity,...

“Here is the screen’s most shocking exposé, of the ‘Baby-Facers’ just taking their first stumbling steps down Sin Street U.S.A.!” Robert Altman’s first feature film is far too good to be described as any but an expert step toward an impressive career. But he had to deal with a young actor who drove him up the wall, Tom Laughlin.

The Delinquents

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1957 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 72 min. / Street Date March 21, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Tom Laughlin, Peter Miller, Richard Bakalyan, Rosemary Howard, Helen Hawley, Leonard Belove, Lotus Corelli, James Lantz, Christine Altman, George Mason Kuhn, Pat Stedman, Norman Zands, James Leria, Julia Lee, Lou Lombardo.

Cinematography: Charles Paddock

Film Editor: Helene Turner

Second Unit Director: Reza Badiyi

Produced, Written and Directed by Robert Altman

The hoods of tomorrow! The gun molls of the future!

Ah, the glorious Juvenile Delinquency film, or J.D. Epic,...

Marlon Brando put his all into this impassioned, expertly acted and crafted VistaVision western spectacle. Has it been overlooked because of the scarcity of quality presentations? Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, Pina Pellicer, Ben Johnson and Slim Pickens are unforgettable, as are the Big Sur locations. One-Eyed Jacks Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 844 1961 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 141 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 22, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Pina Pellicer, Larry Duran, Sam Gilman, Míriam Colón, Timothy Carey, Margarita Cordova, Elisha Cook Jr., Rodolfo Acosta, Joan Petrone, Joe Dominguez, Tom Webb, Ray Teal, John Dierkes, Philip Ahn, Hank Worden, Clem Harvey, William Forrest, Mina Martinez. Cinematography Charles Lang. Jr. Film Editor Archie Marshek Original Music Hugo Friedhofer Written by Guy Trosper, Calder Willingham from the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider Produced by Frank P. Rosenberg Directed by Marlon Brando...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the lineup for the Revivals section, taking place during the 54th New York Film Festival (Nyff). The Revivals section showcases masterpieces from renowned filmmakers whose diverse and eclectic works have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners.

Read More: Ava DuVernay’s Netflix Documentary ‘The 13th’ Will Open 54th New York Film Festival

Some of the films in the lineup include plenty of Nyff debuts returning once again: Gillo Pontecorvo’s “The Battle of Algiers,” which was the the Nyff Opening Night selection in 1967, Robert Bresson’s “L’argent,” and Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County USA.” Also included are a program of Jacques Rivette’s early short films, Edward Yang’s second feature “Taipei Story,” Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu,” and Marlon Brando’s solo directorial effort “One-Eyed Jacks.”

The Nyff previously announced three of the films screening...

As much as we’re excited for the already enticing line-up for the 2016 New York Film Festival, their Revivals slate is always a place where one can discover a number of classics or revisit favorite films. This year is no different as they have newly restored films from Robert Bresson, Edward Yang, Jacques Rivette, Marlon Brando, Kenji Mizoguchi, and more. Check out the line-up below and return for our coverage this fall. If you don’t live in New York City, there’s a good chance a number of these restorations will travel in the coming months (or year) as well as get the home video treatment.

L’argent

Directed by Robert Bresson

1983, France, 83m

Robert Bresson’s final film, an adaptation of Tolstoy’s story The Forged Coupon, is simultaneously bleak and luminous, and sharp enough to cut diamonds. The story of a counterfeit bill’s passage from hand...

John Flynn's The Outfit (1974), a brutally efficient bit of business based glancingly on Richard Stark’s procedurally inquisitive and poetic crime novel of the same name, is a movie that feels like it’s never heard of a rounded corner; it’s blunt like a 1970 Dodge Monaco pinning a couple of killers against a Dumpster and a brick wall. I say “glancingly” because the movie, as Glenn Kenny observed upon The Outfit’s DVD release from the Warner Archives, is based less on the chronologically unconcerned novel than an idea taken from it. On the page Stark's protagonist, the unflappable Parker, his face altered by plastic surgery to the degree that past associates often take a fatal beat too long to realize to whom it is they are speaking, assumes the detached perspective of a bruised deity, undertaking the orchestration of a series of robberies administered to Mob-run businesses...

Hollywood tackles the big issues! This adapted play about an unwanted teen pregnancy is actually quite good, thanks to fine performances by Carol Lynley and Brandon De Wilde, who convince as cherubic high schoolers 'too young to know the score.' And hey, the teen trauma is set to an intense music score by Bernard Herrmann. Blue Denim 20th Century Fox Cinema Archives 1959 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 89 min. / Street Date March 16, 2016 / available through Amazon / 19.98 Starring Carol Lynley, Brandon De Wilde, Macdonald Carey, Marsha Hunt, Warren Berlinger, Vaughn Taylor, Roberta Shore, Malcolm Atterbury, Anthony J. Corso, Gregg Martell, William Schallert. Cinematography Leo Tover Film Editor William Reynolds, George Leggewie Original Music Bernard Herrmann Written by Edith Sommer, Philip Dunne from the play by James Leo Herlihy and William Noble Produced by Charles Brackett Directed by Philip Dunne

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Sex education today is erratic, with no established standard, but...

“The man you stabbed in the back is a soldier!”

Two anti-war Wwi films and one wild British propaganda piece made while WWII was still raging constitute the three-film series sponsored by The Mildred Kemper Art Museum next week at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar in the University City Loop). This ties into the museum’s current exhibit World War I: War of Images, Images of War, which is on display through January (details on the exhibit can be found Here) http://www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/Wwi

All three films start at 7pm and admission is Free!

All Quiet On The Western Front screens at 7pm Tuesday December 8th

The film series kicks off Tuesday December 8th with All Quiet On The Western Front (1930) — the first major anti-war film of the sound era, faithfully based upon the timeless, best-selling 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who had experienced the war first-hand as a young German soldier.

“Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieveFor if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once we hadBetter by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.”—Christina Rossetti, Remember (1862)An opening title card from director Thom Andesen’s new feature film, The Thoughts That Once We Had, directly identifies the cinematic writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the project's primary subject and inspiration. Deleuze’s two volumes on film, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985), are today synonymous with a certain modernist school of thought that, while integrated in academia to such a degree as to be all but understood, remains quite radical. Unquestionably dense and provocatively pedantic, the French empiricist’s filmic texts integrate an array of theories and conceptualizations into a fairly delineated taxonomy, and are therefore fairly conducive...

CopAt the ripe age of twenty-six—the two were born within days of each other in 1928—James B. Harris and Stanley Kubrick formed Harris-Kubrick Productions. With Kubrick leading the charge behind the camera and Harris acting as the right-hand-man producer, the duo completed three major critical successes: The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), and Lolita (1962). But where Kubrick’s subsequent work has achieved a supreme, hall-of-fame stature, Harris’s own directorial career—consisting of five excellent movies made across a four-decade span—remains, despite the valiant effort of a few notable English-language critics (Michael Atkinson, Jonathan Rosenbaum), on the relative sidelines. The latest attempt to boost Harris’s reputation: BAMcinématek’s week-long retrospective of Harris’s producing and directing output, selected by “Overdue” co-programmers Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold.Harris and Kubrick stopped working together amidst a pre-production disagreement during the making of what would become Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb...

Stars: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Ted de Corsia, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Joe Sawyer, Timothy Carey, Kola Kwariani, Dorothy Adams | Written and Directed by Stanley Kubrick

It goes without saying that film fans know that Stanley Kubrick was a master of his art. All masters though have a starting point where they were learning and in some respects were yet to evolve into the legends that they would become. With the Arrow Academy release of The Killing on Blu-ray, which also includes Killer’s Kiss we get to see a director who had a vision, but was yet to perfect his style.

The Killing is a heist movie that when it was first released didn’t make that much of an impact, but not surprisingly when it comes to Kubrick’s work has grown to be respected and revered as a true classic of the genre.

The Conversation is a new feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their second piece, they will discuss Stanley Kubrick’s film The Killing (1956).

Drew’s Take

Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) is not my favorite work by the visionary director. In fact, the film probably wouldn’t even make it onto a list of my top five Kubrick films. Yet, with a career that included such amazing films as Paths of Glory (1957),Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964),2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barry Lyndon (1975), and The Shining (1980), that’s not an indication that The Killing is a film of poor quality but an indication that Kubrick’s body of work comes the closest to cinematic perfection than any director I can think of. Thus, while The Killing...

War is hell, for sure, but war can make for undeniably brilliant movie-making. Here, the Guardian and Observer's critics pick the ten best

• Top 10 action movies

• Top 10 comedy movies

• Top 10 horror movies

• Top 10 sci-fi movies

• Top 10 crime movies

• Top 10 arthouse movies

• Top 10 family movies

10. Where Eagles Dare

As the second world war thriller became bogged down during the mid-60s in plodding epics like Operation Crossbow and The Heroes of Telemark, someone was needed to reintroduce a little sang-froid, some post-Le Carré espionage, and for heaven's sake, some proper macho thrills into the genre. Alistair Maclean stepped up, writing the screenplay and the novel of Where Eagles Dare simultaneously, and Brian G Hutton summoned up a better than usual cast headed by Richard Burton (Major Jonathan Smith), a still fresh-faced Clint Eastwood (Lieutenant Morris Schaffer), and the late Mary Ure (Mary Elison).

Parachuted into the German Alps, they have one...

Kirk Douglas movies: The Theater of Larger Than Life Performances Kirk Douglas, a three-time Best Actor Academy Award nominee and one of the top Hollywood stars of the ’50s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" featured star today, August 30, 2013. Although an undeniably strong screen presence, no one could ever accuse Douglas of having been a subtle, believable actor. In fact, even if you were to place side by side all of the widescreen formats ever created, they couldn’t possibly be wide enough to contain his larger-than-life theatrical emoting. (Photo: Kirk Douglas ca. 1950.) Right now, TCM is showing Andrew V. McLaglen’s 1967 Western The Way West, a routine tale about settlers in the Old American Northwest that remains of interest solely due to its name cast. Besides Douglas, The Way West features Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Lola Albright, and 21-year-old Sally Field in her The Flying Nun days.

Each week we take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of the home entertainment offerings, reviewing and rating the films and the special features packed onto the discs.

Release of the Week

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Film

The BFI have been working hard on their Masters of Cinema collection, a British equivalent to the Criterion Collection. This is their fifth and final introduction into the John Cassavetes collection which includes Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night. The story of Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara – mesmerising), a small strip-club owner who gets in too deep with some murky characters because of his consuming gambling addiction which leaves him $23,000 in the red. The mob then use this as a handle to blackmail him into murdering someone to wipe off some of his debt. It goes behind the scenes of a seemingly successful man...

The 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival continues to expand, with newly added appearances by legendary stars at screenings of some of their most memorable films, including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan, Barrie Chase, Polly Bergen,Coleen Gray, Theodore Bikel and Norman Lloyd, as well as producer Stanley Rubin, Clara Bow biographer David Stenn, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) film collections manager Katie Trainor and director Nicholas Ray’s widow, Susan Ray. In addition, TCM’s Essentials Jr. host and Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader will present screenings of Shane (1953) and The Ladykillers(1955).

And The Film Forum’s Bruce Goldstein will present a special screening of Frank Capra’s The Donovan Affair (1929), complete with live voice actors and sound effects to replace the film’s long-lost soundtrack.Mel Brooks is slated to talk about his comedy The Twelve Chairs (1970). Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan...

The Western was a movie staple for decades. It seemed the genre that would never die, feeding the fantasies of one generation after another of young boys who galloped around their backyards, playgrounds, and brick streets on broomsticks, banging away with their Mattel cap pistols. Something about a man on a horse set against the boundless wastes of Monument Valley, the crackle of saddle leather, two men facing off in a dusty street under the noon sun connected with the free spirit in every kid.

The American movie – a celluloid telling that was more than a skit – was born in a Western: Edwin S. Porter’s 11- minute The Great Train Robbery (1903). Thereafter, Westerns grew longer, they grew more complex. The West – hostile, endless, civilization barely maintaining a toehold against the elements, hostile natives, and robber barons – proved an infinitely plastic setting. In a place with no law, and where...

Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Retro-active: The Best From Cinema Retro's Archives (This article originally ran in October 2010)

By Raymond Benson

Often called one of the best, if not the best, anti-war movie ever made, Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory solidified the director’s standing in Hollywood as a talent to be reckoned with. The second film in Kubrick’s collaboration with producer James B. Harris (the first was the excellent The Killing), and released in 1957, the picture demonstrated Kubrick’s flair for camerawork, composition, and controversial subject matter. Certainly Paths of Glory stands out among his early works as a monumental achievement.

Based on true events during World War I, the story concerns how three innocent French privates are court-martialed for “cowardice” simply to set an example after a devastating defeat on the battlefield. Their commander (Kirk Douglas, in one of his best performances) must defend them.

The Killing

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Written by Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson

U.S.A., 1956

Stanley Kubrick, now there is a name evocative of so many immediate thoughts and emotions for movie buffs everywhere. Infuriating, coldly mechanical in his depiction of people, difficult to comprehend. He was also an intelligent screenwriter, deeply profound in the exploration of themes in his films, and meticulous with his sets and camerawork like only a handful of other directors were before his time, during his time, and ever since his passing in 1999. His films consist of a laundry list of all the major film genres, save the western, which he never ventured into. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick seemingly told thought provoking tales through a wide variety of cinematic prisms. Lest it be forgotten that the man began his career as a creator of major motion pictures in the film noir genre.

John Flynn's Rolling Thunder is finally out on DVD. He may not have made enough films, says John Patterson, but when he did, the script came first

John Flynn's Rolling Thunder (1977), available this week for the first time on DVD, takes you back to a time when Hollywood still made grown-up medium-budget thrillers like Charley Varrick, Mr Majestyk or Jackson County Jail. Flynn died in 2007 and never made enough movies; this one reminds us how good he was.

Rolling Thunder was written by Paul Schrader and – like Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza, written by Schrader and his brother Leonard – it signposts themes and imagery that would obsess Schrader in his own movies: Vietnam veterans, samurai ethics, and orgasmic explosions of cathartically violent revenge. Oh, and horribly mutilated hands. POWs Rane (William Devane) and Voden (Tommy Lee Jones) return to Texas after years of torture in a Hanoi prison.

Over the phone from London, British actor Ian McShane is talking about his homeland’s perennial obsession: the weather. More specifically, he is explaining how he fell ill when the U.K.’s recent Indian summer was replaced by conditions of a more briskly autumnal nature. “I’ve been sick,” he says. “I’ve a chest infection, where you just want to go around coughing. Anyway, luckily, I have the week off.”

Rare is the actor — even the plague-ridden one — who regards having a week off as “lucky.” But then McShane has been enjoying his own professional Indian summer over...

Chicago – When film lovers hear the name of one of the great masters of the form — Stanley Kubrick — their mind usually races to one of his most famous flicks, whether it be “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Shining,” or even “Full Metal Jacket.” But where did one of our most beloved directors hone his craft? In a series of smaller films, two of which are now available in a single Criterion Blu-ray or DVD release — “The Killing” and “Killer’s Kiss.”

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0

Synopsis:

Stanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson, and a phenomenal cast of character actors, including Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Timothy Carey, Elisha Cook Jr., and Marie Windsor, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut.

Your Weekly Source for the Newest Releases to Blu-Ray Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Agent 8 3/4 (1964)

Directed by: Ralph Thomas

Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Sylva Koscina, Robert Morley

Synopsis: Unemployed Czech-speaking writer Nicholas Whistler thinks he’s got a job visiting Prague for a bit of industrial espionage. In fact he is now in the employ of British Intelligence. His pretty chauffeuse on arrival behind the Iron Curtain, Comrade Simonova, is herself a Czech agent. Just as well she’s immediately attracted to 007′s unwitting replacement. [highdefdigest.com]

Special Features: Unknown.

Armed And Dangerous (1986)

Directed by: Mark L. Lester

Starring: John Candy, Eugene Levy, Meg Ryan, Robert Loggia

Synopsis: Dooley, a cop wrongly sacked for corruption, teams up with a useless defense lawyer in their new careers… as security guards. When the two are made fall guys for a robbery at a location they are guarding, the pair begin to investigate corruption within the company and their union.

DVD Playhouse—August 2011

By Allen Gardner

High And Low (Criterion) Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom is a multi-layered masterpiece of suspense and one of the best portraits ever of class warfare in post-ww II Japan. Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy businessman who finds himself in a moral quandary when his chauffer’s son is kidnapped by ruthless thugs who think the boy is Mifune’s. Beautifully realized on every level. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; Documentary on film’s production; Interview with Mifune from 1984; Trailers and teaser. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 4.0 surround.

Leon Morin, Priest (Criterion) One of French maestro Jean-Pierre Melville’s rare non-crime-oriented films, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a devoted cleric who is lusted after by the women of a small village in Nazi-occupied France. When Fr. Morin finds himself drawn to a...

Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable 1956 film noir heist movie The Killing comes to Criterion Blu-ray and DVD on Aug. 16 for the list prices of $39.95 and $29.95, respectively.

Disguises are donned in a plot to rob a racetrack in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.

The story of a well-planned racetrack robbery is told via a radical-for-its-time splintered narrative peppered with sharp dialogue from the great pulp writer Jim Thompson. Plus, the film features a cast of legendary character actors, including Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove), Coleen Gray (Red River), Timothy Carey (Paths of Glory) and Elisha Cook Jr. (The Maltese Falcon).

A too-cool thriller embodying all of film noir’s finest characteristics — deceit, betrayal, fate and a femme fatale — as well as its maker’s trademark tracking shots and precise mise-en-scene, The Killing is definitely a must-own for Criterion classics collectors.

The movie will feature a new high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition.

It’s so strange, writing this so long after the announcement yesterday. In today’s internet world of instant information, and twenty four second news cycles, yesterday’s August 2011 Criterion Collection new releases may as well have happened last week, or last month. I’m sure that the page views for this post will be markedly smaller than the usual, as I have tried consistently to have the new release post up within minutes of the pages going live on Criterion’s website. I know this all sounds like inside baseball stuff, but it’s on my mind, and darn it, this is my website.

I had a whole, several paragraph long, write up of the August titles, but since I’m finding myself writing this at 10pm on Tuesday evening, I think it’s better if I just scrap that whole thing and start over. I was going on...

Back in February, Obsessed With Film’s Stuart Cummins dedicated an entry into his Top Ten Tuesdays series with his choice of the 10 Greatest Heist Movies Ever Made. It was a fun list and I loved most of the movies he chose but one classic he left out deserved recognition.

In fact I believe it to be the greatest heist film ever made.

Stanley Kubrick’s early career thriller The Killing, a movie so refined and perfectly put together – Criterion have got the idea to give it the kind of Blu-ray treatment only that magnificent company can with his 1958 boxing drama Killer’s Kiss getting the full restoration treatment as an bonus feature! Save your pennies in August.

Press release below;

The Killing – Blu-ray & DVD

Stanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson,...

Encino - One of the joys of life is not in the getting, but the ability to give. For the longest time I thought that sentiment was bullshit. It sounded more like the excuse of plague carrier. How can giving a trophy be better than receiving it? I found myself overblissed while handing hardware to a certain star.

In case you tuned in late to the Icon Celebration special on the Dumont network, that was me on the podium announcing that 2011’s Spirit of Bob Crane Award winner was Charlie Sheen. Tears of joy were shed on the trophy that’s a bronzed Sony Portable camera from ‘77. Who knew Charlie was capable of emotion - especially anyone who bought the DVD of Navy Seals.

Charlie continues the legacy of the late great of Bob Crane. Both starred in completely absurd sitcoms. Crane played Col. Hogan on Hogan’s Heroes. We...

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, to celebrate an oft-forgotten cult figure. Friday marked the 82nd birthday of Timothy Agoglia Carey (1929-1994), one of Hollywood's consummate weirdos. Carey worked for four decades as a character actor, generally playing villains or oddballs. Whatever the size or significance of the role, he tackled it with sleazy gusto, complete with verbal tics and a grotesque snarl. His eccentric presence added considerably to movies like the psychedelic Head and two of the Frankie-and-Annette beach party movies, where he played the nefarious, scenery-chomping South Dakota Slim.

However, Carey's most memorable roles came with two renowned directors...

Bob Rafelson started a production company called Raybert (a combination of his name and producer Bert Schneider) when he was working on the Monkees television show. But Rafelson had cinematic aspirations, and so he took the Monkees to the big screen and started a production company with Bert and Steven Blauner called Bbs. Between Raybert and Bbs they made seven films: The Monkees’ feature film Head; Dennis Hopper’s seminal biker movie Easy Rider, Rafelson’s masterpiece Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut Drive, He Said, Henry Jaglom’s first film A Safe Place, Peter Bogdanovich’s career starting film about small town sexuality The Last Picture Show, and Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens. Seven film in four years, with regulars Karen Black, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, and stars like Peter Fonda, Cybil Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, and Orson Welles, made during one of the...

The Film

Let me begin with a preface. Before watching the Monkees feature Head (1968), I knew virtually nothing about the band. I knew they had a TV show, I knew they were modeled after the Beatles. Yet, my generation had MTV's "2Ge+Her" when it came to a fictional pop band packaged for our amusement. While the Monkees were undoubtedly an influence upon them, the intricacies of that influence escaped most of us. I was drawn to Head because of the talent behind the camera: it was co-written by Jack Nicholson and marked the feature debut of Rafelson, who would direct Five Easy Pieces (1970) two years later. Yet, the Monkees are inseparable from Rafelson's career, who used his revenues from the show, along with those of partners Bert Schneider and Steve Blauner, to form Bbs Productions. Bbs, the subject of the recently released "America Lost and Found: The Bbs Story...

First off, a word of welcome: this is the first entry in Pajiba's DVD Review section, a new section for which I was recently named editor by our esteemed editor and chief, Dustin Rowles. After nearly a decade of writing about film on the web, it feels like a homecoming to be doing DVD reviews once again (I cut my teeth on them initially and, over the years, I've learned a hell of a lot about the craft---those early reviews are embarrassing in retrospect). In any case, the purpose of this section serves two functions. In some cases, as in this review, we'll (yes, we, there will be a special guest writer who is joining the ranks) be reviewing movies with a fresh perspective while paying particular attention to Av quality and supplemental features. In other cases, when a film has already been reviewed for the site, we'll simply be...

Stanley Kubrick, 1957

This is one of the darkest anti-war films ever made, in great part because its vision – that of the young director Stanley Kubrick (he was only 29, making his third full-length picture) – is as bleak as the story. The place is the western front of the first world war, in a section manned by the French army. An attack is decreed by General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou), and passed on to General Mireau (George Macready) to execute.Everyone knows the attack is doomed because infantry advancing over open ground torn apart by artillery barrages will be cut down by the machine guns in the secure German lines. But when the plan fails, Broulard determines that there must be scapegoats – alleged cowards or malingerers – who betrayed the national purpose. Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), who led the attack, is charged with picking three victims who will be subject to court martial and firing squad.

Stanley Kubrick, 1956

With this lean black-and-white racetrack robbery thriller, Stanley Kubrick found the high style and astringent tone that would serve him for the rest of his career. Like John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (and featuring that film's lead, the rock-like Sterling Hayden), it is a forensic depiction of the planning and negotiation preceding a big hold-up, and of the treachery and violence that ensue.

Shot in a taut, quasi-documentary style, and evincing not one ounce of sentimentality, the movie features a cast of seasoned B-movie gargoyles. These include Timothy Carey's racist sniper (who shoots the favourite horse mid-race), Jay C Flippen and Elisha Cook Jr's sleazebag co-conspirators, and noir staple Marie Windsor as the perfidious moll who sends the whole caper spiralling into internecine slaughter. The presence of legendary pulp scribbler Jim Thompson as co-screenwriter probably ensured this level of coruscating cynicism and brute realism, and the...

The IMDb250. A list of the top 250 films as ranked by the users of the biggest Internet movie site on the web. It is based upon the ratings provided by the users of the Internet Movie Database, which number into the millions. As such, it’s a perfect representation of the opinions of the movie masses, and arguably the most comprehensive ranking system on the Internet.

It’s because of this that we at HeyUGuys (and in this case we is myself and Barry) have decided to set ourselves a project. To watch and review all 250 movies on the list. We’ve frozen the list as of January 1st of this year. It’s not as simple as it sounds, we are watching them all in one year, 125 each.

This is our 38th update, my next five films watched for the project. You can find all our previous week’s updates here.

First, I know I’m probably setting myself up for disaster by putting up an Underground Film Links post three Sundays in a row. There’s going to come a Sunday — I predict at some point — when I don’t have time to do this, people will come expecting a links post and … nothing. And they will be mad and disappointed. But, until that day, here’ some more links for you, including a few I forgot to post last week:

Mike Plante of Cinemad fame has created a Google map pinpointing all of the microcinemas and oddball screening locations he knows of from around the world. There’s a few on there I need to add to Bad Lit’s own theater, non-map list. And if you have a location that you want added, you can contact Plante at Cinemad. I meant to do a full post on this bit o’ news,...

A suicide mission fueled by greed is the impetus behind the roundup of three soldiers for execution in one of Stanley Kubrick's earliest films, Paths of Glory. The young Kubrick set the bar incredibly high in his brutal, stark, black and white portrayal of World War I using Humphrey Cobb's 1935 antiwar novel of the same name as his guide. Kubrick exposes the cowardice and deceit rampant within military ranks during a time when the anxiety of war had men throwing their own into the fire -- and a time where there were no second chances. These misguided men with their loathsome military politics are at the helm of a mission which spotlights the unbearable injustice and corruption that all comes to a head in one defining moment.

A French army unit led by the avaricious General Mireau (George Macready) is ordered to do the impossible and things turn...

Independent film icon Timothy Carey is being honored at Philadelphia's International House tonight in collaboration with the Timothy Carey Estate and the artist collective Vox Populi. The film house will screen some of Carey's rarely seen works, including the documentary, Making of Sinner, which is directed by Carey's son, Romeo. A Q&A with the director will follow the screening. Also playing and not to be missed is the never before released Carey masterpiece, The World's Greatest Sinner, which is like spotting a yeti in Philadelphia, only better (and yetis are pretty great).

Carey wrote, produced, directed and starred in 1962's Sinner, which boasts a score by a then unknown Frank Zappa. The film established the impulsive artist -- and he was an artist in every sense of the word -- as an underground legend. Sinners was shot for around $100,000 and Carey used his El Monte home and the city...

Above: Svetlana Geier in Vadim Jendreyko's The Woman with the 5 Elephants.

Mittwoch in Vienna, and mittfestival (if there is such a word) also for the city's—indeed the country's—biggest and most important cinema-related event. The Viennale kicked off on Thursday 22nd with a screening of La Pivellina at the 1960s Gartenbaukino, the film (a fairly well-received Italian/Austrian drama about an abandoned two-year-old, directed by Rainer Frimmel and Tizza Covi) being somewhat overshadowed by the presence at the opening of the festival's headline guest, Tilda Swinton. One over-enthusiastic paparazzo (from Austria's most scandal-hungry tabloid) was reportedly ejected for overstepping the mark, amid scenes that would hardly be regarded as chaotic or frenetic at Cannes or Berlin, but which here at the rather more austere, genteel and rarefied Viennale caused quite a stir.

Personally speaking I'm "over the hump" in terms of my attendance, having completed five full days...

Interview by Staci Layne Wilson

Eli Roth is a cutie — he's got those dark-chocolate brown eyes and a sweet smile that could charm even the most hard-hearted Hannah. But Roth is also a complete, total and utter Basterd. He's best-known for making some of the most violent, grisly, and controversial horror movies of the 00's. His feature length horror films Hostel and Hostel II shocked the mainstream, as did his over-the-top fake movie trailer for Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse double-dip (in his slasher-trailer Thanksgiving, Roth gives 'cheerleader splits' and 'stuffing the turkey' whole new meanings). He’s also gearing up make a feature-length version of Thanksgiving and a PG-13 creature-feature called Endangered Species.

So what's a nice boy like Eli doing in Tarantino's latest movie, Iglourious Basterds? Why, killing Nazis, of course! And not just killing them… he's beating, scalping, burning, and basically putting on the hurt in every way...

Psychotronic filmmaker Ray Dennis Steckler lost his battle with heart disease on January 7, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada; he was 70 years old. With his passing so goes Cash Flagg, his hoodlum alter ego and star of Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, The Thrill Killers, Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters and Wild Guitar. We also say farewell to Sven Christian, Wolfgang Schmidt, and Cindy Lou Sutters; other Steckler pseudonyms; there were 12 of them at last count and I am sure we will miss them all.

Steckler started his film career by finishing principal photography on Timothy Carey’s World’s Greatest Sinner. He then went on to capture Arch Hall Jr.’s delinquent delight in 1962's Wild Guitar, and after that he was off and running, shooting films without ever a finished screenplay in hand.

Steckler always did the best he could with what he had,...