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Quentin Tarantino loves movies far more than most. He doesn’t just watch them. he eats, sleeps, and breathes cinema. Accordingly the writer/director is quite knowledgeable about noteworthy cinematic efforts from years past. In fact, you might say he wrote the book on it. Because he basically did.

Tarantino’s book Cinema Speculation chronicles a variety of standout historic offerings with which the director connected. Through the tome, he dives into a lot of his influences and serves up plenty of quality recommendations within.

One film Tarantino speaks especially fondly of through the pages of Cinema Speculation is an Edmund Goulding picture he thinks deserves even more acclaim than it tends to get.

The Pulp Fiction director has this to say about the motion picture in question: “While Nightmare Alley is rightly considered a classic, I still think it’s underrated. To me, Nightmare Alley is as good as studio filmmaking ever gets.

Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence and Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini in ‘Conclave’ (Photo Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024)

The 51st Telluride Film Festival announced its lineup just days ahead of the festival’s opening on Friday, August 30, 2024. The festival, which runs through Monday, September 2nd, will include the world premieres of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, Edward Berger’s Conclave, and Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson.

This year’s festival includes 60 feature films, shorts, and revival programs.

“This brief weekend of cinematic bliss reminds us every year that movies really are magic,” stated Telluride Film Festival director Julie Huntsinger. “The process of assembling our line-up is both daunting and rewarding, and it never fails to bring the most fantastic sense of satisfaction once we’re finished. Our anticipation matches that of the audience. We’re delighted to now share what we found to be the most exciting, interesting and...

Unless you’re a major studio or willing to pay for a rent-spiked ski lodge––and even then––few festivals ring more exclusive than Telluride, which has the distinction / misfortune of firing the starting gun for fall festivals and that ever-deleterious phenomenon we call “Oscar buzz.” Their 2024 lineup nevertheless features some films of note: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s Rumours; Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia; Payal Kapadia’s All That We Imagine as Light; Sean Baker’s Anora; and Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple series Disclaimer.

On a repertory end, Kenneth Lonergan’s been anointed this year’s Guest Director and has programmed the following: Arch of Triumph, Barry Lyndon, Doctor Zhivago, Grand Hotel, and My Darling Clementine. And Telluride’s 2024 Special Medallion goes to Les Films du Losange, who will represent Misericordia and have their history celebrated with the following screenings: Beauty and the Beast; Charles, Dead or...

It's an election year, which means everyone and everything is focused on politics—even the season's major festivals. Colorado's Telluride Film Festival just unveiled its 2024 lineup, and it has as much of an eye toward the White House as anything else this time of year.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,...

September marks Marcello Mastroianni’s centennial, and the Criterion Channel pays respect with a retrospective that puts the expected alongside some lesser-knowns: Monicelli’s The Organizer, Jacques Demy’s A Slightly Pregnant Man, and two by Ettore Scola. There’s also the welcome return of “Adventures In Moviegoing” with Rachel Kushner’s formidable selections, among them Fassbinder’s Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, Pialat’s L’enfance nue, and Jean Eustache’s Le cochon. In the lead-up to His Three Daughters, a four-film Azazel Jacobs program arrives.

Theme-wise, a set of courtroom dramas runs from 12 Angry Men and Anatomy of a Murder to My Cousin Vinny and Philadelphia; a look at ’30s female screenwriters includes Fritz Lang’s You and Me, McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, and Cukor’s What Price Hollywood? There’s also a giallo series if you want to watch an Argento movie and ask yourself,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSThere Is No Evil.Facing eight years in prison, Mohammad Rasoulof has fled Iran for Europe and may even be in Cannes next week for the premiere of The Seed of the Sacred Fig. In a statement, he concludes, “Many people helped to make this film. My thoughts are with all of them, and I fear for their safety and well-being.”The US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against Netflix in a case determining whether a video excerpted for Tiger King (2020–21) constituted fair use. The ruling may have far-reaching implications for documentary makers.Cannesa rumored list of ten alleged abusers in the film industry has not yet materialized, but Cannes reportedly has a crisis management team...

MGM celebrated its centennial on April 17th. Marcus Lowe established the studio by merging Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Boasting it had “more stars than there are in heaven,” MGM may have been the biggest studio during the Golden Age of Hollywood, it has gone through many owners and regimes over the years but seems to on terra firma since Amazon acquired MGM in 2021. In fact, Amazon MGM Studios won best screenplay Oscar for “American Fiction.” And speaking of Academy Awards, MGM has earned numerous statuettes over the years. Here’s a look at five Best Picture winners produced between 1929-1958.

“The Broadway Melody”

The 1929 musical made Oscar history by being the first talkie to win the top prize. Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed wrote the songs which include “The Broadway Melody,” “You Were Meant for Me” and “The Wedding of the Painted Doll” but...

Before 1950, ties were allowed at the Oscars if the results were close, leading to Wallace Beery winning Best Actor despite receiving fewer votes. The Academy Awards have had a total of 6 ties in their history, including in categories such as Best Documentary and Best Actress. While less likely now due to current rules, ties can still occur at the Oscars, especially in strong categories with strong contenders.

Although it’s an uncommon situation, there’s one actor who won the Oscar for Best Actor at the same time as another actor, despite receiving fewer votes than his fellow winner. There are many awards in the film industry, with some even focused on shedding light on what’s considered by them the “worst” of each year, but by far the most famous and prestigious awards are the Academy Awards. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929, making the Oscars the oldest entertainment awards ceremony.

Among the myriad reasons we could call the Criterion Channel the single greatest streaming service is its leveling of cinematic snobbery. Where a new World Cinema Project restoration plays, so too does Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I think about this looking at November’s lineup and being happiest about two new additions: a nine-film Robert Bresson retro including L’argent and The Devil, Probably; and a one-film Hype Williams retro including Belly and only Belly, but bringing as a bonus the direct-to-video Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club. Until recently such curation seemed impossible.

November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...

(Welcome to Did They Get It Right?, a series where we take a look at an Oscars category from yesteryear and examine whether the Academy's winner stands the test of time.)

Let's go back a few years to the 88th Academy Awards in 2016. Todd McCarthy's investigative journalist drama "Spotlight" took home Best Picture, but it was by no means a dominant force that evening. "Mad Max: Fury Road" walked away with the most awards that night with six, and "The Revenant" took home three, including Best Director and Best Actor. The only other award "Spotlight" won was for Best Original Screenplay. In the last ten years, it's the only film to win Best Picture with that low of an awards total.

Only three movies have won Best Picture without winning anything else, and they all came in the 1930s. It first happened at the 2nd Academy Awards with "The Broadway Melody...

Though it received a Best Picture nomination at the 94th Academy Awards in 2022, Guillermo del Toro's re-adaptation of the William Lindsay Gresham novel "Nightmare Alley" hit theaters the same day as "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and was overshadowed by that movie's juggernaut success amid the pandemic. It makes the most of those shadows, though, filling them with smoke and "the poetry of disillusionment and existentialism," as del Toro has called it. This is a movie that lives at the carnival, where you're less likely to see any spider-men and more likely to see a woman with a spider's body warning children about the sins of lust and pride.

Co-written by Kim Morgan, the del Toro version of "Nightmare Alley" takes its cues from Gresham's book and was not intended as a remake of the black-and-white 1947 adaptation starring Tyrone Power. However, that movie is a classic and it's worth...

It’s another week of unstoppable television. As we barrel towards the end of Emmy eligibility, the mixture of highbrow prestige fare (like “The Staircase”) and four-quadrant blockbusters (like the Mike Myers-led “The Pentaverate”) just keep on coming. Plus, we’ve got new documentaries about Sheryl Crow and a social security scam artist that you won’t believe, Guillermo del Toro’s masterful “Nightmare Alley” like you’ve never seen and the Muppets invading “Holey Moley.” Buckle up. It’s a big week.

On with the television!

“The Pentaverate”

Thursday, May 5, Netflix

Netflix

Mike Myers has been off the radar for a little while. His last film appearances happened in 2018 (including a small role in the Oscar-winning “Bohemian Rhapsody”), the same year he showed up as Dr. Evil in a pair of appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Now, he’s back. And true to form, it’s a wildly ambitious,...

Guillermo del Toro’s seductive remake of the gritty cult classic hits a genre sweet spot alongside LA Confidential, The Postman Always Rings Twice and more

Our most enduring images and memories of film noir tend to be rooted in the 1940s and 1950s: say the words and monochromatic visions of fedoras, slinky satin gowns and unrestricted billows of cigarette smoke inevitably come to mind. That makes it a difficult genre to tackle in the present day, even if its themes and social corners are hardly era-specific. Lean too hard into the period styling and it feels like empty cosplay; update it too much and the shadowy romance dissipates.

Guillermo del Toro’s snaky, seductive remake of Nightmare Alley (now on all major VOD platforms) gets the balance just about right, even if its early-40s production and costume design is sumptuous in a way that Edmund Goulding’s 1947 original,...

If you're one of the many film fans who didn't get a chance to see the black and white limited theatrical release of Guillermo del Toro's moody noir "Nightmare Alley," then boy do I have some good news for you. Starting Monday, April 25, 2022, you can stream this gorgeous-looking alternate version of the movie on Hulu.

"Nightmare Alley" tracks the rise of a conman named Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) as he plays a dangerous grift game against the backdrop of the carny scene of the 1930s. The film is a remake of a 1947 noir of the same name by director Edmund Goulding so it's easy...

The post Guillermo del Toro's Black and White Version of Nightmare Alley Is Coming To Hulu Next Week appeared first on /Film.

Conrad Nagel, the handsome matinee idol and co-founder of the Academy Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was the host of the fifth annual Academy Awards on Nov. 18, 1932. The evening marked Nagel’s second stint at Oscars host; the then-academy prez had hosted the festivities two years earlier. He turned on the charm in his sophomore outing at the glamorous banquet at the Fiesta Room of the Ambassador Hotel honoring films released between Aug. 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932. (Nagel would later co-host the first televised Oscars with Bob Hope in 1953.)

Eight films vied for Best Picture: John Ford’s medical drama “Arrowsmith”; Frank Borzage’s marital drama “Bad Girl”; Mervyn LeRoy’s examination of tabloid journalism “Five Star Final,” Edmund Goulding’s stylish drama “Grand Hotel”; Ernst Lubitsch’s pre-Code musical comedies “One Hour with You” and “The Smiling Lieutenant”; and Josef von Sternberg’s luscious pre-Code melodrama “Shanghai Express,” starring his muse Marlene Dietrich.

This article contains spoilers for both versions of Nightmare Alley.

“Mister, I was made for it,” versus “Mister, I was born for it,” sums up the major psychological distinction between the 1947 Nightmare Alley and Guillermo del Toro’s 2021 remake. Neither line from the end of their respective movies is in the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham. That book concludes just short of the revelation or confession (depending on the actor who says it). Bradley Cooper’s Stan Carlisle finds it downright hilarious that he is about to become a geek. Tyrone Power’s The Great Stanton only grants himself temporary clemency. The geek is their destiny. Chicken necks are their shared fate.

The first major difference between the two movies is the most obvious. One employs all the tricks of black and white filmmaking, the other shades its colors in a muted noir. The next immediately recognizable difference comes at feeding time.

In 2013, four years before he announced his retirement from acting, Daniel Day-Lewis set a record with his Oscar victory for “Lincoln” by becoming the first three-time Best Actor champion. The last quartet of contenders he beat consisted of previous winner Denzel Washington (“Flight”), past nominee Joaquin Phoenix (“The Master”), and newcomers Bradley Cooper (“Silver Linings Playbook”) and Hugh Jackman (“Les Misérables”). With Day-Lewis now out of the picture, all but Jackman have emerged as hopefuls in the current Best Actor contest, creating the possibility of another three-way showdown.

According to our racetrack odds, the actor from this trio with the best shot at landing in this year’s lead lineup is Washington, who stars in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and places fourth in our ranking. This would be his ninth acting nomination following supporting bids for “Cry Freedom” (1988) and “Glory” (1990) and lead ones for “Malcolm X” (1993), “The Hurricane” (2000), “Training Day” (2002), “Flight,...

Of all the oddball flourishes across Guillermo del Toro’s filmography, it’s perhaps most surreal that he has taken this long to run away and join the circus. In re-adapting William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel of a carnival barker-turned-mentalist, The Shape of Water and Crimson Peak helmer seems a safe bet to follow down the wild, murky corridors of Nightmare Alley. Ever the rapturous stylist, del Toro lends an undeniable dreamlike sheen to this retelling, even managing to sharpen the claws on some of the key scenes shared by its 1947 predecessor. Yet what remains contains no more truth or deep connection than one of Stanton Carlisle’s (Bradley Cooper) spook shows. That role, it seems, is one of Nightmare Alley’s main sticking points.

Seeing Tyrone Power sweat, scheme, and sneer is one of the original film’s key treasures. Having shepherded the project in ’47, Power was actively challenging himself with an against-type role.

You may remember that Guillermo del Toro’s last film — the strange, somewhat surprisingly Oscar-laden adult fairytale The Shape of Water — ended, appropriately, in water: a plunging turquoise expanse, an eternal resting place for two doomed, sinking, but finally unencumbered lovers. His latest film, however, begins on literal fire, consuming the rickety remains of a wooden cottage, where an occupied bed also surrenders to the blaze. The keeper of the flames, as it were, will soon to be introduced to us as Stanton Carlisle, looking on at his handiwork with...

As someone who has been a fan of Guillermo del Toro’s entire filmography for nearly three decades now (was Cronos really released in the early ’90s? Egads.) and knowing what a cinephile he is, I was excited to see his take on Nightmare Alley, William Lindsay Gresham’s novel that was previously adapted by Edmund Goulding in his unforgettable noir about the dangers of man’s pursuit of power that has gone on to become a bona fide cinematic classic since its release. Thankfully, del Toro’s efforts do not disappoint here. Nightmare Alley may not be del Toro’s most provocative work, nor does it have that intangible, unexpected spark of storytelling ingenuity that I’ve enjoyed in some of his other filmic projects like The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, and the aforementioned Cronos. But what I really loved about del Toro’s Nightmare Alley...

On Oct. 9, 1947, 20th-Fox unveiled director Edmund Goulding’s film noir adaptation of Nightmare Alley, starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, at its New York premiere. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review, titled “Nightmare Alley’ One of Year’s Best Shockers – Eerie Drama Hits Note of Realism,” is below:

A strikingly successful shocker as a novel, William Lindsay Gresham’s unusual story of a “geek,” Nightmare Alley, emerges on the screen as a study in realistic horror which might just as well be recorded now as one of the finest pictures of the year. Gripping, exciting ...

On Oct. 9, 1947, 20th-Fox unveiled director Edmund Goulding’s film noir adaptation of Nightmare Alley, starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, at its New York premiere. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review, titled “Nightmare Alley’ One of Year’s Best Shockers – Eerie Drama Hits Note of Realism,” is below:

A strikingly successful shocker as a novel, William Lindsay Gresham’s unusual story of a “geek,” Nightmare Alley, emerges on the screen as a study in realistic horror which might just as well be recorded now as one of the finest pictures of the year. Gripping, exciting ...

The world is one big carnival, and we’re all just suckers — or “marks,” in the parlance of the traveling grifters so effective at fleecing those poor rubes who are not with it — in Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley.” A perfect match of material to auteur, William Lindsay Gresham’s pulpy 1946 novel and the shockingly dark studio picture it inspired give the helmer, hot off his Oscar win for “The Shape of Water,” a chance to go full-film noir, resulting in a gorgeous, fantastically sinister moral fable about the cruel predictability of human nature and the way entire systems — from carnies and con men to shrinks and Sunday preachers — are engineered to exploit it.

Building on the rise-and-crash arc of his “A Star Is Born” has-been, Bradley Cooper delivers another terrific tragic turn as ambitious huckster Stanton Carlisle, proving an even better match for the picaresque protagonist than Tyrone Power...

The observation that men are the real monsters in Guillermo del Toro movies has become so vividly self-evident that it now offers all the same insight of noting that Quentin Tarantino loves feet, or that the old guy who popped up in the first two dozen MCU films had something to do with the comics that inspired them.

“The Shape of Water” may have been a bold choice for Best Picture, but that Oscar-winning fable about a mute cleaning lady who falls in love with an imprisoned fishman stretched del Toro’s lifelong obsession with poignant genre stories to a fairy-tale ending. It was hard to imagine what “happily ever after” might look like for someone whose B-picture heart earned him prestige-picture hardware. Would he pivot away from his pet obsession, or would he use his newfound pedigree to double down like never before?

The answer, perhaps inevitably, is a bit of both.

The November 12, 1958 edition of The Village Voice featured the first installment of the column “Movie Journal” by Jonas Mekas.

“Movie Journal” would become what the Underground Film Journal would argue was the most significant organizing tool of avant-garde cinema created by Jonas, even more so than the Film-makers’ Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives he helped found. But what was the column like before it gained such notoriety?

Well, we don’t have to guess. The book collection Movie Journal doesn’t start reprinting Jonas’s columns until 1959, but the entire archives of the Voice are online.

As a weekly publication, the Voice only published twelve “Movie Journal” columns in 1958. The Underground Film Journal has read all twelve and extracted what films Jonas reviewed each week; as well as made notes of significant avant-garde film happenings.

Jonas reviewed only a few avant-garde films those first two months, including Maya Deren...

As the director and producer of both “House of Gucci” and “The Last Duel,” Ridley Scott is poised to score big when the 2022 Oscar nominations are announced three months from now. Reaping double Best Picture or Best Director bids would make the 83-year-old the first to pull off either feat since Steven Soderbergh did so in 2001. Even if he ends up being left out of both lineups, he could still make history if academy voters decide to recognize the work of his two leading ladies. If Jodie Comer (“The Last Duel”) and Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”) are both chosen to compete for Best Actress, Scott will become the fifth person to direct female leads from different films to nominations in a single year.

The first of these rare occurrences dates back to the third Oscars ceremony in 1930 when Nancy Carroll (“The Devil’s Holiday”) and Gloria Swanson (“The Trespasser...

As 2021 mercifully winds down, the Criterion Channel have a (November) lineup that marks one of their most diverse selections in some time—films by the new masters Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Garrett Bradley, Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen (one of 2020’s best films) couched in a fantastic retrospective, and Criterion editions of old favorites.

Fourteen is featured in “Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women,” which also includes Céline and Julie, The Virgin Suicides, and Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege. Of equal note are Criterion editions for Ghost World, Night of the Hunter, and (just in time for del Toro’s spin) Nightmare Alley—all stacked releases in their own right.

See the full list of October titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

300 Nassau, Marina Lameiro, 2015

5 Card Stud, Henry Hathaway, 1968

Alone, Garrett Bradley, 2017

Álvaro, Daniel Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Chloe Zimmerman, 2015

America, Garrett Bradley, 2019

Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953

Angels Wear White,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Kenneth Branagh's Belfast.The Toronto International Film Festival has come to a close, with Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical drama Belfast claiming the TIFF People’s Choice Award and Kamila Andini's coming-of-age film Yuni taking home the Platform Prize. Hot off of last year's Tenet, Christopher Nolan has made a deal with Universal to back his next film, which is centered on the theoretical physicist and one of the "fathers of the atomic bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer. The deal marks the end of Nolan's lengthy working relationship with Warner Bros. and gives the auteur "total creative control, at least a 100-day theatrical window, around a $100 million budget, equal marketing spend, 20 percent of first-dollar gross, and a blackout period where the studio would not release another movie for three weeks before and after the feature.

Guillermo del Toro is a master of horror, fantasy, and all things concerning monsters, which is why the first trailer for his latest directorial effort, “Nightmare Alley,” might come as a shock to his fans. Instead of going his traditional genre route, del Toro has instead crafted a full blown film noir for his follow-up to “The Shape of Water,” which grossed nearly $200 million worldwide and won the filmmaker his first Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. How do you follow an Oscars darling? If you’re del Toro, you take on one of Hollywood’s most iconic genres and put together the most star-studded ensemble cast of your career.

Here’s the “Nightmare Alley” cast del Toro has assembled: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Rooney Mara, Holt McCallany, Clifton Collins Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, and David Strathairn.

“Nightmare Alley...

Guillermo Del Toro's next film, Nightmare Alley, has earned an R-rating from the MPAA for "strong/bloody violence, some sexual content, nudity and language." Nightmare Alley will be his first film since The Shape of Water, which won Best Picture and Best Director at the 2018 Academy Awards. Production on the film wrapped in December 2020 after it was shut down for six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We got to see these characters, when [Cooper's Stanton Carlisle] was full of himself and arrogant and certain and seeking," Guillermo del Toro told Indiewire. "We were able to go back six months in between all this and were able to analyze and see not only that character but what we needed to rewrite to be able to go back to a set. If your pores are open, the movie finds you. Each movie tells you what it needs."

Nightmare Alley is an...

Looks like we’ll have to wait a little bit longer to find out more about Guillermo Del Toro’s next flick, “Nightmare Alley,” as the film appears to be skipping the 78th edition of the Venice Film Festival. Based on Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel and its film adaptation by Edmund Goulding the following year, the film stars Bradley Cooper and co-stars Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, and Rooney Mara.

Continue reading Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Nightmare Alley‘ Was Intended For Venice But Won’t Be Finished In Time at The Playlist.

Guillermo del Toro takes a walk on the noir side in his first film since winning the Oscar for directing the 2017 best picture winner “The Shape of Things.” “Nightmare Alley,’ based on the uncompromising 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, offers a bleak depiction of humanity including low-rent carnivals filled with has-beens, geeks and “rum-dums.” Searchlight Pictures is giving “Nightmare Alley,” which had to shut down production during the height of Covid in 2020, the “A” treatment, opening the film on Dec. 3 just in time for awards consideration.

The innovative Mexican filmmaker best known for his acclaimed fantasy, horror (“The Devil’s Backbone”) and sci-fi (‘Hellboy”) productions, co-wrote the screenplay with Kim Morgan. Bradley Cooper plays Stan Carlisle, a handsome manipulative carny worker who has a massive chip on his shoulder. Stan wants to hit the big time and with the help of carnival headliner Zeena (Toni Collette) resurrects her old mentalist act.

One of the most glamorous / unsavory films noir ever, this creepy tale of a master con-man undone by warped ambition was planned as a career-altering role for the big star Tyrone Power. Power plumbs the depths of personal degradation in terms that even today skew to the squeamish side of human experience. Almost as fascinating are the women Power uses, arrayed in dynamic contrast: Coleen Gray, Joan Blondell and Helen Walker. Yes, this is the movie about ‘The Geek’… Hollywood hadn’t been this intimate with the seamy underside of carnival life since Tod Browning’s Freaks. The disc extras include top contributions from James Ursini and Alain Silver, Imogen Sara Smith and even Coleen Gray.

Nightmare Alley

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1078

1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 111 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 25, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Tyrone Power, Coleen Gray, Joan Blondell, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Mike Mazurki, Ian Keith,...

The Criterion Collection releases the original 1947 film Nightmare Alley in just over two weeks' time in North America. Directed by Edmund Goulding, this film was adapted from the lurid, bestselling novel by William Lindsay Gresham. The book put Gresham on the map, and he went on to write more fiction, as well as non-fiction, but he never again achieved the critical and public acclaim of his very first book. He also went on to cheat on his wife with her cousin, whom he later married... while his wife traded up and married the more successful author, C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia series). Gresham also committed suicide in a...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

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“Geek Love”

By Raymond Benson

One of the more unique entries in the film noir movement of the 1940s and 50s is the 1947 melodrama, Nightmare Alley. Based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the picture was made only because Tyrone Power expressed the desire to star in it after reading the grim tale of a carnival barker who rises to the top of the charlatan world, only to ultimately fall hard to rock bottom.

While classified as film noir, the picture has little of the usual trappings of the movement. There is no central crime in the story, there are no cynical detectives, and one can argue that there are no femmes fatale. It is only in the visual presentation that one can consider Nightmare Alley an item of film noir—the high contrast black and white photography, the heavy light and shadows,...

While the summer movie season will kick off shortly––and we’ll be sharing a comprehensive preview on the arthouse, foreign, indie, and (few) studio films worth checking out––on the streaming side, The Criterion Channel and Mubi have unveiled their May 2021 lineups and there’s a treasure trove of highlights to dive into.

Timed with Satyajit Ray’s centenary, The Criterion Channel will have a retrospective of the Indian master, along with series on Gena Rowlands, Robert Ryan, Mitchell Leisen, Michael Almereyda, Josephine Decker, and more. In terms of recent releases, they’ll also feature Fire Will Come, The Booksellers, and the new restoration of Tom Noonan’s directorial debut What Happened Was….

On Mubi, in anticipation of Undine, they’ll feature two essential early features by Christian Petzold, Jerichow and The State That I Am In, along with his 1990 short documentary Süden. Also amongst the lineup is Sophy Romvari’s Still Processing,...

The Oscars could have some interesting surprises pop up at the ceremony on April 25, even in the best picture race. Given the unprecedented nature of the season and the assumption that many AMPAS voters sat out the nomination phase of voting, a couple of upsets may await. One of which could be “The Trial of the Chicago 7” only winning best picture.

The historical drama, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, has long been considered one of the potential spoilers to Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” which has been steamrolling its competition most of the awards season. After the Netflix drama failed to score a director nod for Sorkin, all hope seemed to be lost, especially after factoring in its losses from the WGA (losing to “Promising Young Woman”), DGA and PGA (losing to “Nomadland”). However, the film got a nice bump from the SAG Awards, picking up the cast ensemble prize.

Ninety years ago, two groundbreaking horror movies were made: Lugosi’s official chiller and a covert version – which might just be its superior

They came under the shadow of darkness – quite literally. Just as Dracula star Bela Lugosi was no doubt being tucked up for the night, director George Melford, cast and crew made their way on to the Universal studio lot in 1931 to shoot a Spanish-language version of the Bram Stoker 1897 horror novel, filmed using the same sets and costumes as the much more familiar Tod Browning masterwork.

Melford’s production of Dracula was what is known as a multiple-language version – Aka Mlv – which was one method by which the recently developed sound “talkie” aimed to reach non-English speaking audiences. Initiated by the 1927 release of The Jazz Singer – which featured 15-minutes of synchronised singing and talking – producers created prints in which dialogue was replaced with music and foreign inter-titles...

Production has wrapped on Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley,” the upcoming psychological thriller film led by a starry ensemble including Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, and Ron Perlman. While Disney-owned distributor Searchlight Pictures has yet to reveal a release date, the film’s co-screenwriter Kim Morgan (writing with Del Toro) revealed the end of the film’s production on Instagram Saturday. Independently, Guillermo del Toro confirmed that shooting was completed to IndieWire. (See Morgan’s post below.)

Production was suspended on March 13 due to the pandemic, but resumed safely in September. The film shot mainly in Toronto. Based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the film centers on an ambitious young carny (Cooper) with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words. He hooks-up with a female psychiatrist (Blanchett) who, it turns out, is even more dangerous than he is.

Stanley Donen’s Charade has been described as “the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.” A similar phrase could be used for David Fincher’s Mank. You could say it’s a masterful work that Frank Capra never made, that Edmund Goulding never made, or William Wyler never made. It’s a film that captures a particular era of filmmaking so accurately that it looks and sounds like a film by directors of the 1930s and ’40s. So much so that it almost feels unnatural to be watching it on Netflix when it’s clearly a reel of celluloid best presented in an old picture house or even promoted as a newly restored print that plays on TCM every Sunday. Many writers and directors are keen to create a reimagining of this time in film history—project their ideas and dreams of what it should have been like. Fincher isn’t interested in that.

Exclusive: Holt McCallany’s Christmas looks like it’s coming a little early this year

The Mindhunter star is already before the cameras on the other side of the Atlantic for Guy Ritchie’s Cash Truck with Jason Statham, as Deadline revealed last month. Now I hear that the actor is joining Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Willem Defoe and Bradley Cooper in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley.

The deal for the Buchwald, Atlas Artists and attorney Rick Genow repped McCallany to get on board with the del Toro, J. Miles Dale and Tsg Entertainment produced drama just came together.

As a part of that cast, which also includes Toni Collette and David Strathairn, McCallany will play Anderson, a get-the-job-done bruiser with more going on that is first apparent from his tough guy persona.

Based on William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel revolving around an ex-carnival con-man turned spiritualist, played by Cooper,...

David Strathairn will have a role in Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Nightmare Alley. Strathairn was nominated for his performance in 2005's Good Night, and Good Luck. Bradley Cooper is taking the lead role in the noir thriller while Toni Collette, Rooney Mara, and Cate Blanchett also star. The story is set in a "world of carnival hustlers and con men, telling the story of a mentalist (Cooper) who teams with a psychologist in order to swindle the rich." However, things don't go as planned.

David Strathairn is all set to play "the alcoholic husband of Toni Collette's character, a mentalist named Zeena who ends up mentoring Bradley Cooper's character." Michael Shannon was also supposed to have a role in Nightmare Alley but it appears he had to back out due to scheduling conflicts. Frequent Guillermo del Toro collaborators Ron Perlman and Richard Jenkins will have roles in the thriller too,...

Rooney Mara is set to star in Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley,” which (excitingly) makes the project a “Carol” reunion between Mara and co-star Cate Blanchett. Deadline first reported the news. Blanchett joined the cast at the beginning August. Bradley Cooper is leading “Nightmare Alley” as Stanton “Stan” Carlisle, a con artist who falls in love with a female psychiatrist and has the tables turned on him. The movie is an adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel of the same name, which spawned a 1947 film directed by Edmund Goulding and distributed by 20th Century Fox.

“Nightmare Alley” is set to be del Toro’s first directorial project since “The Shape of Water,” which won him the Oscar for Best Director. The science-fiction period romance also took home the Academy Award for Best Picture. Del Toro wrote the “Nightmare Alley” script with Kim Morgan and is developing the project with Fox Searchlight,...

Exclusive: Rooney Mara is set to star with Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro’s first directorial outing since his Best Picture winning The Shape of Water. He’s making the film for Fox Searchlight under the deal he made at the studio after they collaborated on the Oscar winner.

Del Toro wrote the script with Kim Morgan. The film’s being produced by del Toro and J. Miles Dale with Tsg Entertainment, with Fox Searchlight acquiring worldwide distribution rights.

The film is based on William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel about a corrupt con-man who teams with a female psychiatrist to trick people into giving them money. Mara plays Molly, the closest thing to Stan’s true love. He meets her early on and they take the act they learned from the circus to Chicago. Cooper plays Stan.

Tyrone Power and Coleen Gray starred in...

There may be no director more embedded in Film Twitter than Guillermo del Toro, who expresses his adoration for cinema–from gems both beloved and lost to history, to championing modern directors from all of the world. So, it should be no surprise, that word has it he’s staging a reunion of the stars from one of Film Twitter’s most enduring favorites, Todd Haynes’ Carol.

With Bradley Cooper set to lead the director’s reimagining of the William Lindsay Gresham-penned Nightmare Alley (which Edmund Goulding turned into a 1947 film) as con man Stanton ‘Stan’ Carlisle, Cate Blanchett has now come on board the film, according to Variety. Collider then broke the news of the impressive supporting cast he’s eying to lock down, including Blanchett’s Carol co-star Rooney Mara, as well as Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Willem Dafoe, Michael Shannon, Ron Perlman, and Mark Povinelli.

Production...

Two-time Academy Award-winning Aussie icon Cate Blanchett is currently in talks to join Guillermo del Toro’s next project as director, “Nightmare Alley,” Variety reports. The follow-up to “The Shape of Water,” which earned the Mexican auteur Best Director and Best Picture Oscars, will also star Bradley Cooper. As previously reported, Cooper replaced Leonardo DiCaprio earlier this summer.

Del Toro is developing “Nightmare Alley” at Fox Searchlight, the studio that took “The Shape of Water” all the way at the 2018 Academy Awards. Del Toro is working with screenwriter Kim Morgan to adapt William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 true crime pulp novel of the same name.

The novel was previously adapted by director Edmund Goulding in 1947, but sources close to del Toro’s film say this iteration of “Nightmare Alley” is not a remake of that film, but rather, a faithful interpretation of Gresham’s text.

The novel plunges us into the...

Bradley Cooper is in talks to replace Leonardo DiCaprio as the star of Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley.” DiCaprio was circling the project back in April but ultimately passed because a deal could not be reached with his team, Variety reports. Cooper is now being considered the favorite for the role and has reportedly received an offer.

Del Toro is developing “Nightmare Alley” at Fox Searchlight, the studio that handled the production and distribution of his Oscar winner “The Shape of Water.” The new film is being adapted by del Toro and screenwriter Kim Morgan from William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel of the same name. Filmmaker Edmund Goulding directed a “Nightmare Alley” movie in 1947, but sources close to del Toro’s film say he will use Gresham’s original vision for his adaptation.

Should Cooper take the offer, he’ll star as mentalist and con artist Stanton “Stan” Carlisle.

Here’s what happens when the need to see takes over and I start pulling DVDs off the shelf with only my dark heart as a guide…

The sleazy, claustrophobic, catch-as-catch-can transience of the carnival world, with its ever-changing roster of freaks, geeks, disappointed con men and women with few options, all clinging to shreds of dignity and eyeing a better life while digging themselves deeper into the one from which they want to flee, seems a naturally cinematic subject. Yet there are surprisingly few movies that have ever captured the symbiotic push-pull of vibrant show-biz fakery and dark personal obsessions that lurk behind the curtain, beyond the barker’s call. Somewhere between the boy’s wish-fulfillment of Toby Tyler and the mind-wrenching funhouse mirror reflections of Tod Browning, Tobe Hooper and Rob Zombie, Edmund Goulding’s film of W.L. Greshman’s Nightmare Alley (1947), from a script by Jules Furthman...

First published in 1946, William Lindsay Gresham's novel Nightmare Alley plumbed the lower depths of the entertainment industry. Tyrone Power bought the film rights and then starred in Edmund Goulding's big-screen adaptation, released in 1947. Meeting with mixed critical reviews and limited audience reactions, Nightmare Alley was eventually recognized as a distinctive, sterling example of the film noir genre. Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) became involved with a remake in 2017,...

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After taking a bit of a break between the grueling The Revenant, which earned him his first Oscar, and the highly-anticipated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it looks like Leonardo DiCaprio is not waiting as long to decide his next role. The actor is set to team with Guillermo del Toro for his next film following his Best Picture winner The Shape of Water.

Variety reports the film, co-written by the director and Kim Morgan, is Nightmare Alley. Once again teaming with Fox Searchlight, the film is based on William Lindsay Gresham’s novel, which was also made into a 1947 film by Edmund Goulding starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell. That film starred a con man who joined a traveling circus featuring a female mind-reader and her alcoholic husband. When her husband dies, she teams up with the con man and manipulates him.

Promising to be a devilishly fun co-leading role,...