News

“If I’m going to do something difficult, he’s usually my first choice,” reveals David Crosby about his choice to collaborate with his son, James Raymond, on the song “Home Free” from the movie, “Little Pink House.” In our recent chat with the music legend (watch the exclusive video above), he adds that his son is the best songwriter with whom he has worked over the years: “The other thing is that he writes for film anyway and he’s very good at it… What I’ve learned from him is to not be afraid and be as complex and strange with the music as I want to be. Don’t water it down.”

SEE2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees: Returning Janet Jackson versus newcomers Def Leppard, Stevie Nicks

The film is based on the story of Susette Kelo, a nurse whose property and that of her...

This past weekend, the American Society of Cinematographers awarded Greig Fraser for his contribution to Lion as last year’s greatest accomplishment in the field. Of course, his achievement was just a small sampling of the fantastic work from directors of photography, but it did give us a stronger hint at what may be the winner on Oscar night. Ahead of the ceremony, we have a new video compilation that honors all the past winners in the category at the Academy Awards

Created by Burger Fiction, it spans the stunning silent landmark Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans all the way up to the end of Emmanuel Lubezki‘s three-peat win for The Revenant. Aside from the advancements in color and aspect ration, it’s a thrill to see some of cinema’s most iconic shots side-by-side. However, the best way to experience the evolution of the craft is by...

Lupita Tovar, the 1930s film actress who starred in the acclaimed Spanish-language version of Dracula and the first Mexican talkie, Santa, has died. She was 106.

Born the oldest of nine in a poor and very religious household in a small town in the southernmost part of Mexico, Tovar moved with her family to Mexico City in the later years of the Mexican Revolution. It was there, as a teenager studying dance and gymnastics, that she was discovered by Robert Flaherty, the docu-fiction film pioneer who directed Nanook Of The North and Man Of Aran. At the time, Flaherty was preparing his collaboration with F.W. Murnau, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, and he wanted Tovar for the lead role. However, after coming to Hollywood, she ended up signing a contract with Fox; Tovar would later claim that this was an attempt by the studio to get back ...

'The Beast with a Million Eyes': Hardly truth in advertising as there's no million-eyed beast in Roger Corman's micro-budget sci-fi thriller. 'The Beast with a Million Eyes': Alien invasion movie predates Alfred Hitchcock classic Despite the confusing voice-over introduction, David Kramarsky's[1] The Beast with a Million Eyes a.k.a. The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes is one of my favorite 1950s alien invasion films. Set in an ugly, desolate landscape – shot “for wide screen in terror-scope” in Indio and California's Coachella Valley – the screenplay by future novelist Tom Filer (who also played Jack Nicholson's sidekick in the 1966 Western Ride in the Whirlwind) focuses on a dysfunctional family whose members become the first victims of a strange force from another galaxy after a spaceship lands nearby emitting sound vibrations that turn domestic animals into aggressive killers. Killer cow First, the lady-of-the-house is pecked by a flock of chickens and,...

Philippe Garrel’s In The Shadow of Women is his Jacques Rivette film: a work of masks, intrigues, labyrinthine deceptions and power games...but applied to the most intimate of relationships. So too is it thus a 69 minute long miracle of economy: We will see the meanings of these frames later. As Garrel says in his press conference: "For me, In The Shadow of Women is a film about the equality of men and women in as far as cinema can achieve this."And insofar as it is a meditation on equality between men and women, it too is also in dialogue with cinema itself.“...a history of cinema as communication between man and woman.” – Garrel, New York 2015 A good alternate title would be: Now, how do we get from point A to point B? “I also use images from my dreams. I am looking for a form of oneirism...

By 1931, nearly the entirety of the film industry had not only gained the capabilities to make sound pictures, but appeared to leave silent cinema completely behind. Save for a few iconic artists like Charlie Chaplin, who stuck with silent cinema aesthetics for quite some time after the growth of sound in cinema, the medium had all but shifted into both sound storytelling, and the stationary camera that it would need.

And then there is Tabu. From not only one, but two of those iconic artists mentioned in the paragraph above, this brisk and powerful journey into the South Seas was created by the pair of F.W. Murnau and Nanook of the North director Robert J. Flaherty, and tells a story only these two legendary filmmakers could. Blending both Murnau’s beautiful, expressionistic filmmaking with the cultural focus that made the heart of Flaherty’s work beat, Tabu became a film...

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

Written by (Told by): F.W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty

Directed by F.W. Murnau

USA, 1931

Compared to John Ford’s studio-bound—though still highly appealing—South Seas adventure The Hurricane, recently reviewed here, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, directed by the great German filmmaker F.W. Murnau, is a patently more realistic and wholly distinctive production. Aside from its genuine French Polynesian locations (Bora Bora and Tahiti), Murnau’s silent 1931 film features a cast consisting almost entirely of actual island inhabitants, rather than Hollywood stars, thus resulting in a generally less strained authenticity. Not necessarily a better film for this reason alone, Tabu, even with its fictional plot, is nevertheless a purer and more revealing historical and scenic document.

Directed by Murnau and “told by” he and renowned documentarian Robert J. Flaherty (of Nanook of the North [1922] fame), Tabu is divided into two chapters.

The Conversation is a feature at PopOptiq bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their tenth piece, they discuss Guy Maddin’s fusion of silent-era horror and dance, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002).

Drew’S Take

Every autumn, I treat Halloween the way some Midwestern moms obsess over Thanksgiving or Christmas. Horror novels (last year, I finally read Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box and loved it), true crime documentaries, and an abundance of films make up the majority of my media diet for about six weeks. Over the past week, I’ve been re-reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula and re-watching the glut of adaptations out there. I think I’ve finally dialed in my three favorite translations…in no particular ranking! Obviously, F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) has a certain advantage from being the “first,” but it has...

Paul W.S. Anderson has continued his explorations in 3D cinema with his latest film, Pompeii. It’s a simplistic love story in the vein of Titanic, two mismatched, class-divided lovers contrasted against one of history’s worst natural disasters. The story concerns a Celtic gladiator named Milo (Kit Harrington), who witnessed the slaughter of his family by the Roman Empire, under the command of Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). Soon, after being spotted as a promising business prospect for Pompeii’s gladiator games, Milo is sent to the titular city. While on the way, he first meets Cassia (Emily Browning), the melancholic (by way of Kate Winslet in Titanic) daughter of the wealthy class. After arriving in Pompeii, Milo meets fellow slave and gladiator Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and they soon become friends, bonded by their captivity. Corvus, now a senator, arrives in Pompeii to broker a land deal, and with all the players now arrived,...

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...

Above: 1978 re-release poster for Tabu (F.W. Murnau, USA, 1931)

I only recently came across the posters of German artist Boris Streimann (1908-1984)—who was known to also sign his work as B. Namir—and was immediately struck by both the dynamism and the color of his work. The author of hundreds, if not thousands, of posters from the late 20s through the late 60s, Streimann loved diagonals. All of the posters I have selected— the best of his work that I could find—work off a strong diagonal line, with even his varied and very inventive title treatments (which could have been the work of another designer) often placed on an angle. On top of the sheer energy and movement of his posters, his use of color is extraordinary: brash and expressionistic like his brushwork. I especially love the multi-colored accordion in Port of Freedom, the loin cloth in Tabu, and...

The Moon, the opposite of the sun, hovers over us by night, the opposite of day. 

In F.W. Murnau’s Tabu (1931), Reri, the sacred maiden of the small island of Bora Bora, writes this to her lover Matahi: 

And indeed, when Matahi chases after her, the moon spreads its path on the sea.

He runs and swims after her, moving faster than a normal human being, defying the laws of gravity. 

Miraculously, he catches up to the boat. 

Thus, he must die, sinking back into a void…

…while ghost ships linger on in the distance…

…carrying another hopeless romantic, and a moving corpse—A second Nosferatu.

The moon is absent in Murnau’s earlier film, made nearly ten years before Tabu, but it is in the one he made nearly five years after Nosferatu, when George O’Brien leaves his wife for a midnight rendezvous with another woman. 

And indeed,...

(Roger Corman, 1960, Arrow, PG)

Now 87, Roger Corman has been a prolific producer of and director of low-budget films since the mid-1950s, mostly exploitation and genre movies, and initially for "grindhouses" (cinemas showing exploitation movies) and drive-ins, latterly for websites and Netflix. What James Cameron has called "the Roger Corman film school" gave dozens of directors (among them Cameron, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Coppola and Demme), actors and writers their big breaks. The best known of more than 50 films this ingenious, stylish moviemaker has directed are the eight horror films based with varying fidelity on gothic stories by Edgar Allan Poe, all but one starring the camp, aristocratic Vincent Price. Arguably the best is Masque of the Red Death (made in England and photographed by Nicolas Roeg). The first of them is The Fall of the House of Usher, made in 15 days for less than $300,000, with a cast of four. It was shot,...

(Fw Murnau, 1931, Eureka!, PG)

One of the last classic silent movies, this supreme example of poetic cinema brought together the German expressionist Murnau with the American mining engineer turned ethnographic documentary film-maker Robert J Flaherty. Both were in their 40s, leaders in their field, yet discontented with Hollywood, which had brought Murnau to California where he'd just made three big, unprofitable films, one of them the universally acclaimed Sunrise. With studio money they escaped to spend a year around Tahiti making their "Story of the South Seas", recruiting non-professional talent to appear in a tale of the doomed romance between a handsome pearl fisherman, Matahi, and his exotic lover, Reri. Their idyllic romance is interrupted by her nomination as an untouchable priestess, and they flee to a neighbouring island that's been contaminated by civilisation and where they're pursued by a tribal shaman.

The film credits Murnau as director, Murnau and Flaherty as "told by" authors,...

★★★★☆ Produced towards the end of the silent era, F.W. Murnau's Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) was to be the legendary German director final film. A lyrical tragedy that imbues elements of factual and narrative filmmaking, Murnau's exotic adventure is a poetic Polynesian love story that effortless articulates its tale like an affectionately composed photo album. A tale of prohibited love across the south seas, Murnau's story concerns a young girl, Reri (Anne Chevalier), who's selected to be her tribe's sacred maiden and consecrated to the gods - making it 'taboo' for her to marry or for any man to lay eyes upon her.

This comes as devastating news to Matahi, Reri's young sweetheart, who must sit and watch as his beloved is whisked away to a neighbouring island. Fuelled by his intense emotions, he sails under the veiled glare of the moon to kidnap her. His...

This is incredible news for horror fans and aficionados of silent cinema - Masters of Cinema is bringing F. W. Murnau's classic, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, to Blu-ray this November. But before that, Eureka Entertainment will take the legendary vampire film on a showcase theatrical tour of the UK in a brand new digital restoration, courtesy of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung.I was lucky enough to catch some of Fwms's incredible restoration work late last year, when a collection of restored versions of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau's works, including Nosferatu, were screened here in Hong Kong, and they really are astoundingly good. Masters of Cinema has already released their newly restored versions of Die Nibelungen, Metropolis and Tabu on Blu-ray in recent months, and to have Nosferatu...

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

Eureka Entertainment's always-excellent Masters of Cinema series has just announced its new titles for June and July, which includes five fantastc new releases. There will be Blu-ray upgrades of Shindo Kaneto's The Naked Island and Kureneko, which will be released in June together with a re-issue on both Blu-ray and DVD of F.W. Murnau's excellent Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. In July, D.W. Griffith's ground-breaking The Birth of a Nation will be released on Blu-ray in the UK for the very first time, alongside Jacques Rivette's little-seen Le Pont du Nord.We will be sure to share more information about these releases as the information becomes available, but for the time being you can check out the gorgeous new artwork in the gallery below.From...

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

Above: Gustav Mezey three-sheet poster for Le Rosier de Madame Husson (Bernard Deschamps, France, 1932).

This stunning Austrian deco poster, which I came across on a Berlin antiquarian site, stands a magnificent 9 foot tall (110" x 49" to be precise) and comes in three sections. The poster is for a 1932 French film, whose German title, Der Tugendkönig, translates as “The Virtue King.” In the Us the film was titled He (or He - the Virgin Man), but the original title is Le Rosier de Madame Husson. Based on an 1887 Maupassant novella of the same name, the story concerns the titular Mme. Husson who seeks to promote chastity in her village by crowning a rosière, or a Rose Queen: a girl of unimpeachable virtue. But when none of the young women in town are equal to the title she selects the village idiot (played in the film by Fernandel) as her rosier.

Above: Roger...

Looking back at 2012 on what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2012—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2012 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How would you program some...

Parkas, mittens and earmuffs can only do so much to starve off the imposing weight of winter. Many of us suffer, in some form or another, from seasonable depression and it’s easy to stay in bed all day instead of facing the dark and cold that comes during the winter months. Not all of us can afford vacations to warmer places, so all we can do is live vicariously through movies. So, without any further ado, here is a list of five films that will transport you to warmer lands and let you forget for a second the awful conditions of winter. What are your favourite films to help you forget the cold?

Tabu – A Story of the South Seas (F.W. Murnau, 1931)

Location: Bora Bora, Tahiti

Perhaps Murnau’s most poetic work, Tabu – A Story of the South Seas blends documentary style, Tahiti and a story of forbidden love in this late silent film.

What follows is an exchange between Josh Timmermann (a fellow critic and Vancouver resident, who you may recall from this) and I, wherein we discuss the Vancouver International Film Festival and its individual parts, a chance to color outside the lines a bit and discuss the ins and outs of our festival experiences.

Context!

Above: Granville 7 Theatre, Viff's primary venue.

Adam Cook: I’ve been attending Viff since 2008—and you’ve been attending since 2007—so it seems kind of safe to say we’re well on our way to being veterans of the festival; although, this claim is humbled when encountering someone like Chuck Stephens—a member of this year’s Dragons & Tigers jury—who has been coming (from out of town, no less) for something like twenty years. However, five years of Viff-going has equipped me with a knack for knowing how to approach the festival, how to navigate the programming—and,...

Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012)

The new film from Mexican filmmaker, Carlos Reygadas, Post Tenebras Lux- a latin phrase meaning Light After Darkness, is an experimental family drama, which adopts a narrative flow that does moves between different levels of consciousness, fragmented chronologies and alternating points of view. Perhaps a bit too dense to be truly enjoyed, the film thrives on its vibrant cinematography. Opening with a young girl running after cows in a valley as a storm approaches, the film is off the beaten path stylistically, rejecting the more traditional widescreen format, adopting a sort of double-exposure motif, and bringing the camera to an unfamiliar vantage point, as we are on the same level as the child. This vibrant sequence evokes hope, life and love, however is properly contrasted with an incoming storm, and a moment of panic as the child screams for her parents. Many of the...

The American Film Institute (AFI) today announced its red carpet Centerpiece Galas and Special Screenings . comprised of award season contenders and the year.s most highly anticipated works from film masters, moving image icons and breakthrough talents . for AFI Fest 2012 presented by Audi. This year.s line up includes feature films of iconic figures such as President Abraham Lincoln, prolific filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, as well as non-fiction and inspired-by stories about the Central Park Five and West of Memphis teenagers, Southeast Asia tsunami survivors and much more.

As previously announced, the World Premiere of Hitchcock (Dir Sacha Gervasi) is the Opening Night Gala and the World Premiere of Lincoln (Dir Steven Spielberg) is the Closing Night Gala.

The Centerpiece Galas are Life Of Pi in 3D (Dir Ang Lee); On The Road (Dir Walter Salles);Rise Of The Guardians in 3D (Dir Peter Ramsey...

Tabu

Directed by Miguel Gomes

Written by Miguel Gomes

Portugal, 2012

With his third feature, Portuguese critic-turned-auteur Miguel Gomes has proven himself to be a director in complete control of his craft. Tabu is a film of artistic cool – breaking classic genre conventions in the most crafty and affectionate way by consistently subverting the narrative in a beautiful dreamlike style. The film is divided into two parts: The first section is set in modern day Lisbon and titled Paradise Lost. It follows Aurora, an elderly cranky woman who spends her last days suffering from paranoia and the emotional burden of a troubled past. The second section, titled Paradise, is set in Mozambique in the 1960s, and tells the story of her uncontrollable and obsessive relationship with a man named Venturo, deep in the jungles of Africa. These two chapters are preceded by an enigmatic prologue, which turns out to be a...

It’s been known that a singular moment during a brilliant film can make you realize you’re watching something special, something that will be deposited into your memory bank with a very high interest rate. In Miguel Gomes’ third feature film, "Tabu," this moment comes while you’re still getting comfortable in your seat. A film-within-a-film begins proceedings, in which we are introduced to an ‘intrepid explorer’ who, heartbroken over the one he lost, commits suicide and gets eaten by a crocodile. Then something strange happens, the narrator says: this crocodile adopts the melancholic state of the explorer and, as the film comes to a close, spends his time with the ghost of the explorer’s lost ladyfriend. Welcome to movie magic. Charming, witty, beautifully shot and inexplicably captivating, "Tabu" (a salute to its namesake, F.W. Murnau’s 1931 classic), is split into two sections, beginning with ‘Lost...

Entering the final stretch of the 36th Hong Kong International Film Festival I was finally availed the opportunity to see Jeff Nichols' sophomore feature, which had received blanket rave reviews across the blogosphere and appeared on numerous best of 2011 lists. I also caught one of the most-talked about films of the Berlinale.Day 11 (2 April)Tabu (dir. Miguel Gomes, Portugal)I had no prior knowledge of writer-director Miguel Gomes or his work going into this film, save for hearing that this was one of the most highly-praised yet divisive films of this year's Berlin International Film Festival. Apparently references are made to F.W. Murnau's film of the same name, but having not seen that film they were all but lost on me, save for the fact...

With Georges Méliès as its subject, Martin Scorsese's Hugo – up for 11 Oscars – is a film that gives meaning to the cliché 'the magic of the movies'

Should you stay up for the Oscars, here's a surefire way to be hammered by the end: pour yourself a drink each time you hear the word "magic", and you'll be watching the winner's tearful acceptance speech in an alcoholic haze.

Is there a phrase more hackneyed than "the magic of the movies"? From the moment of their invention at the end of the 19th century, motion pictures have been perceived as simultaneously hyper natural and supernatural. The first films of the Lumiére brothers were simple recordings ("actualities") that established the photographic basis of the medium; those produced by the stage magician Georges Méliès, the subject of Martin Scorsese's impressive 3D spectacle Hugo, were fantastic and predicated on special effects – namely stop-motion,...

In 2009, the best film in Competition at the Berlinale was Maren Ade's Everyone Else (Fwiw, it came away with 1.5 Silver Bears, the 1 for Best Actress Birgit Minichmayr, the .5 for tying with Adrián Biniez's Gigante for the Jury Grand Prix; the Golden Bear that year went to Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow). Three years on (!), the trio that made Everyone Else worth talking up to this day (see, for example, Kevin B Lee's new video essay on a key scene at Fandor; see, too, Mike D'Angelo on the same scene a year ago at the Av Club) is back in Competition, albeit in three different films. Lars Eidinger has drawn the shortest straw, taking on the lead in Hans-Christian Schmid's rather dismal Home for the Weekend. Minichmayr's fared better opposite Jürgen Vogel in Matthias Glasner's new film, though I seriously doubt many of us will...

A head-scratchingly lyrical immersion into colonialist metaphor and historical memory, Portuguese director Miguel Gomes' third feature "Tabu" reaches for the dreamlike experiences of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's oeuvre with a bold structure that defies genre specifics. At the same time, for all its confusing and erratic qualities, Gomes ("Our Beloved Month of August") has made a decisively cinematic work, tapping into classic film traditions while subverting them with consistent narrative invention. Not to be confused with the F.W. Murnau movie of the same name, "Tabu" nonetheless borrows the expressionistic style of the earlier film's period, using luxurious black-and-white photography to alternately drain the life out of a boring world and transcend it with the magic realism of the alternate reality that eventually takes over. Gomes breaks his movie into two very different parts: The first, entitled "A Lost Paradise," serves...

I was recently afforded the opportunity to talk to Alex Stapleton, the director of the wonderful documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (review here) about the many sides of the “schlock king” Roger Corman. Through a tenuous phone connection (I do have an At&T iPhone and live in New York City, after all), we discussed the process of making this film, how she got roped into doing crew on a Corman movie, Jack Nicholson‘s lounging gear, and doing interviews from the barber’s chair. The Film Stage’s questions are in bold, Alex’s responses follow.

Is there going to be a big premiere out there?

Well we had our kind of fancy premiere at Lacma [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], actually as a part of Film Independent’s series that they were running with Elvis Mitchell. So that was kind of our fancy night. So we will have on the 16th of December,...

As you may have heard, Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Artist” (The Weinstein Company, 11/23, ?, trailer) — which made a big splash at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (where it was a serious contender for the Palm d’Or and its star Jean Dujardin was named best actor), and which will soon be seen again at the Toronto International Film Festival — is not only in black-and-white, but also silent!

Many credible analysts — including Harvey Weinstein, who is as savvy an Oscar-prospector as anyone, and whose studio purchased the film’s rights shortly after Cannes – believe that it is visually beautiful/emotionally powerful enough to seriously factor into this year’s Oscar race.

But could a silent film, in this day and age, actually catch on with the public and/or Oscar voters?

Most people today dismiss silent movies as lacking something — namely, sound — but that’s not a particularly enlightened position. After all,...

(Fw Murnau, 1929, U, Eureka)

The great German director Fw Murnau made three silent movies for Fox in Hollywood before co-directing his only sound film, Tabu, with the documentarist Robert Flaherty, and dying in 1931 aged 42. His first Hollywood silent, Sunrise, is universally acclaimed; the second one, Four Devils, no longer exists; and the third, City Girl, was for years known only through a re-edited, semi-sound version which Murnau disowned. The silent City Girl is a lyrical masterwork of pastoral realism, in which Lem, a simple farm boy from Minnesota (Charles Farrell), in Chicago to sell the family's wheat crop, meets and marries Kate (Mary Duncan), a waitress yearning for an idyllic life in the countryside. When they return to Minnesota, however, they're met with hostility by coarse, lascivious harvesters and Lem's overbearing father. It is a rural melodrama of great beauty and honesty, the inspiration for Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven...

The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch) City Lights (Charlie Chaplin) Tabu (F.W. Murnau & Robert Flaherty) Street Scene (King Vidor) Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg) The Champ (King Vidor) The Struggle (D.W. Griffith) The Criminal Code (Howard Hawks) Arrowsmith (John Ford) An American Tragedy (Josef von Sternberg) The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock) Private Lives (Sidney Franklin) Wicked (Allan Dwan) Bad Girl (Frank Borzage) Chances (Allan Dwan) The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra) Girls About Town (George Cukor) Frankenstein (James Whale) The Public Enemy (William Wellman) Seas Beneath (John Ford) The Yellow Ticket (Raoul Walsh) Tarnished Lady (George Cukor) The Guardsman (Sidney Franklin) Dirigible…...

Ang Lee’s next project, Life of Pi has been casting over the past few weeks. Its most recent additions include Irrfan Khan (In Treatment), Adil Hussain (Calendar Girls), and Gerard Depardieu (La Vie en Rose). The film, based on the novel by Yann Martel, is about a young boy who is stranded at sea in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a tiger. According to Variety, Khan will play the adult version of the lead character Pi, while Hussain will play Pi’s father, a zookeeper. Depardieu will play the part of the chef on the ship which they are traveling on. Though Depardieu is most known for playing Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac, I loved him in my childhood for his villainous role of Jean-Pierre in 102 Dalmations. Currently, the Bollywood actress Tabu (The Namesake), is being spoken to about playing Pi’s mother.