Everyday Noir in Prague: a one-of-a-kind Czech/Brit coproduction teams fine British actors with the home-grown star Rudolf HruSínský, and the result is neither murder nor mayhem, but a real everyday tragedy that might happen anywhere. The bright B&w images chart an unhappy illicit romance, and a petty crime with awful consequences.
90° in the Shade
All-region Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1965 / B&w / 2:39 widescreen / 91 min. / + second version Tricet jedna ve stínu 83 min. / Street Date September 23, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99
Starring: Anne Heywood, James Booth, Rudolf HruSínský, Ann Todd, Sir Donald Wolfit, Jirina Jirásková, Jorga Kotrbová, Vladimír Mensík.
Cinematography: Becrich Batka
Film Editors: Jan Chaloupek, Russell Lloyd
Original Music: Ludek Hulan
Written by David Mercer story by Jirí Mucha, Jirí Weiss
Produced by Raymond Stross
Directed by Jirí Weiss
(note: a Czech friend who long ago helped me with research for Ikarie Xb-1 advised me not to even Try spelling Czech with full diacritical remarks.
90° in the Shade
All-region Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1965 / B&w / 2:39 widescreen / 91 min. / + second version Tricet jedna ve stínu 83 min. / Street Date September 23, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99
Starring: Anne Heywood, James Booth, Rudolf HruSínský, Ann Todd, Sir Donald Wolfit, Jirina Jirásková, Jorga Kotrbová, Vladimír Mensík.
Cinematography: Becrich Batka
Film Editors: Jan Chaloupek, Russell Lloyd
Original Music: Ludek Hulan
Written by David Mercer story by Jirí Mucha, Jirí Weiss
Produced by Raymond Stross
Directed by Jirí Weiss
(note: a Czech friend who long ago helped me with research for Ikarie Xb-1 advised me not to even Try spelling Czech with full diacritical remarks.
- 9/14/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Roku’s streaming TV platform accounted for more than 30% of U.S. sales of connected-tv devices in the first quarter, and its lead over the No. 2 provider, Sony PlayStation, will reach 70% by the end of 2019.
Those are among the findings in a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics.
The report counted more than 41 million Roku-based devices in use, including streaming and smart TVs, accounting for 15.2% of all media streaming devices. The startup led by Anthony Wood, a tech pioneer who holds patents to DVR technology, recently said its licensing business gives one out of every three smart TVs sold in the U.S. a Roku interface and user experience. That gives it bigger market share than manufacturers like Samsung or Vizio, without the overhead costs of those hardware giants. After an initial emphasis on hardware (streaming boxes and sticks), Roku has pivoted to emphasize partnerships, advertising and licensing.
Roku...
Those are among the findings in a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics.
The report counted more than 41 million Roku-based devices in use, including streaming and smart TVs, accounting for 15.2% of all media streaming devices. The startup led by Anthony Wood, a tech pioneer who holds patents to DVR technology, recently said its licensing business gives one out of every three smart TVs sold in the U.S. a Roku interface and user experience. That gives it bigger market share than manufacturers like Samsung or Vizio, without the overhead costs of those hardware giants. After an initial emphasis on hardware (streaming boxes and sticks), Roku has pivoted to emphasize partnerships, advertising and licensing.
Roku...
- 6/26/2019
- by Dade Hayes
- Deadline Film + TV
Complex and avant-garde French film director best known for Night and Fog and Last Year in Marienbad
Alain Resnais, who has died aged 91, was a director of elegance and distinction who, despite generally working from the screenplays of other writers, established an auteurist reputation. His films were singular, instantly recognisable by their style as well as through recurring themes and preoccupations. Primary concerns were war, sexual relationships and the more abstract notions of memory and time. His characters were invariably adult (children were excluded as having no detailed past) middle-class professionals. His style was complex, notably in the editing and often – though not always – dominated by tracking shots and multilayered sound.
He surrounded himself with actors, musicians and writers of enormous talent and the result was a somewhat elitist body of work with little concern for realism or the socially or intellectually deprived. Even overtly political works, Night and Fog,...
Alain Resnais, who has died aged 91, was a director of elegance and distinction who, despite generally working from the screenplays of other writers, established an auteurist reputation. His films were singular, instantly recognisable by their style as well as through recurring themes and preoccupations. Primary concerns were war, sexual relationships and the more abstract notions of memory and time. His characters were invariably adult (children were excluded as having no detailed past) middle-class professionals. His style was complex, notably in the editing and often – though not always – dominated by tracking shots and multilayered sound.
He surrounded himself with actors, musicians and writers of enormous talent and the result was a somewhat elitist body of work with little concern for realism or the socially or intellectually deprived. Even overtly political works, Night and Fog,...
- 3/3/2014
- by Brian Baxter
- The Guardian - Film News
Television director in the glory days of the BBC, who went on to make feature films
Alan Bridges, who has died aged 86, was a leading director during the glory days of the BBC, from the mid-60s to the early 70s. Today, whenever media pundits analyse the history of television drama, they wax lyrical about The Wednesday Play and its successor Play for Today, bemoaning the virtual disappearance of the single play.
By the time Bridges started working in the Wednesday Play slot, he was already one of the BBC's most experienced TV directors – he had directed excellent 10-part adaptations of two 19th-century classics, Great Expectations and Les Misérables (both in 1967) – but he relished the "right to fail" ethos at the BBC, enjoying working with exciting contemporary writers.
While continuing to have a distinguished television career into the 80s, adeptly moving from the popular to the experimental, from the modern to the classical,...
Alan Bridges, who has died aged 86, was a leading director during the glory days of the BBC, from the mid-60s to the early 70s. Today, whenever media pundits analyse the history of television drama, they wax lyrical about The Wednesday Play and its successor Play for Today, bemoaning the virtual disappearance of the single play.
By the time Bridges started working in the Wednesday Play slot, he was already one of the BBC's most experienced TV directors – he had directed excellent 10-part adaptations of two 19th-century classics, Great Expectations and Les Misérables (both in 1967) – but he relished the "right to fail" ethos at the BBC, enjoying working with exciting contemporary writers.
While continuing to have a distinguished television career into the 80s, adeptly moving from the popular to the experimental, from the modern to the classical,...
- 1/29/2014
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The gifted film-maker, winner of the top prize at Cannes in 1973, did not always get the acclaim he deserved in his native Britain
The death of the British director Alan Bridges at the age of 86 is a great sadness. Bridges was a brilliant poet and cinematic satirist – in tones both mordant and melancholy – of the English class system of the early 20th century, and a director with a flair for psychology and interior crisis, as evidenced by movies like The Return of the Soldier (1982) and The Shooting Party (1985).
A film-maker to bear comparison with Joseph Losey and John Schlesinger, he was one of the few British directors to win the top prize at the Cannes film festival. Bridges earned that accolade with his wonderful 1973 movie The Hireling, when the award was called the Grand Prix – jointly, in fact, with Jerry Schatzberg's marvellous Scarecrow, another film only recently being rediscovered.
The death of the British director Alan Bridges at the age of 86 is a great sadness. Bridges was a brilliant poet and cinematic satirist – in tones both mordant and melancholy – of the English class system of the early 20th century, and a director with a flair for psychology and interior crisis, as evidenced by movies like The Return of the Soldier (1982) and The Shooting Party (1985).
A film-maker to bear comparison with Joseph Losey and John Schlesinger, he was one of the few British directors to win the top prize at the Cannes film festival. Bridges earned that accolade with his wonderful 1973 movie The Hireling, when the award was called the Grand Prix – jointly, in fact, with Jerry Schatzberg's marvellous Scarecrow, another film only recently being rediscovered.
- 1/24/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Olivier Assayas looks back at the days following the events of May 1968 – and at his own youth – with a delicate wit
Link to video: Something in the Air: watch trailer here
The son of a movie director and now in his 50s, Olivier Assayas has built up an interestingly varied body of work as a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, authored several books including a monograph on Ingmar Bergman, and directed over the past 20 years a succession of modest, intelligent films. Most are concerned with moral problems and social responsibility in a middle-class setting like his Les Destinées sentimentales about a rebellious young man reluctantly taking over the family's prestigious porcelain factory in the 1920s, and Summer Hours, the tale of siblings and their elderly mother gathering to settle the estate of a recently deceased painter. Slightly different are Irma Vep, a cinéaste's celebration of Hong Kong movies and...
Link to video: Something in the Air: watch trailer here
The son of a movie director and now in his 50s, Olivier Assayas has built up an interestingly varied body of work as a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, authored several books including a monograph on Ingmar Bergman, and directed over the past 20 years a succession of modest, intelligent films. Most are concerned with moral problems and social responsibility in a middle-class setting like his Les Destinées sentimentales about a rebellious young man reluctantly taking over the family's prestigious porcelain factory in the 1920s, and Summer Hours, the tale of siblings and their elderly mother gathering to settle the estate of a recently deceased painter. Slightly different are Irma Vep, a cinéaste's celebration of Hong Kong movies and...
- 5/25/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Urbana, Ill. -- Michael Esteves wakes up every day in the spot Roger Ebert called the center of the universe, and it isn't Chicago, New York or Cannes.
Esteves owns the place, in fact. He has since 2005, when he bought the two-bedroom home in Urbana where the late movie critic grew up, writing once that it was the best possible place, the hub of it all. Since then, Esteves has gotten used to students, Ebert fans and even Asian tourists stopping by in reverence to the hometown hero who made it so big.
"People in India know about Roger Ebert," Esteves marveled.
Ebert was celebrated as a citizen of Chicago and the world after he died April 4 of cancer, but his connection with his hometown – and the University of Illinois, his alma mater – was strong and permanent.
Ebert donated money and more to the school, and he helped journalism students there with advice and,...
Esteves owns the place, in fact. He has since 2005, when he bought the two-bedroom home in Urbana where the late movie critic grew up, writing once that it was the best possible place, the hub of it all. Since then, Esteves has gotten used to students, Ebert fans and even Asian tourists stopping by in reverence to the hometown hero who made it so big.
"People in India know about Roger Ebert," Esteves marveled.
Ebert was celebrated as a citizen of Chicago and the world after he died April 4 of cancer, but his connection with his hometown – and the University of Illinois, his alma mater – was strong and permanent.
Ebert donated money and more to the school, and he helped journalism students there with advice and,...
- 4/19/2013
- by AP
- Huffington Post
The leftwing film director talks about the riots, his early work on television and the documentary he made for Save the Children 40 years ago that is about to be screened for the first time
About halfway through our interview, I call Ken Loach a sadist. The mild-mannered, faintly mole-like film director blinks hard, chuckles, and carries on. We are discussing a key aspect of his film-making: the element of surprise. Loach has spent his career depicting ordinary people, telling working-class stories as truthfully as possible, and he works distinctively – filming each scene in order, often using non-professional actors, encouraging improvisation.
They don't tend to see a full script in advance, and move through his films as confused as the audience about what lurks around the next corner. I ask Loach which surprise was most memorable, and he laughs incongruously through a few examples. He talks about an incident when an actor walked through a door,...
About halfway through our interview, I call Ken Loach a sadist. The mild-mannered, faintly mole-like film director blinks hard, chuckles, and carries on. We are discussing a key aspect of his film-making: the element of surprise. Loach has spent his career depicting ordinary people, telling working-class stories as truthfully as possible, and he works distinctively – filming each scene in order, often using non-professional actors, encouraging improvisation.
They don't tend to see a full script in advance, and move through his films as confused as the audience about what lurks around the next corner. I ask Loach which surprise was most memorable, and he laughs incongruously through a few examples. He talks about an incident when an actor walked through a door,...
- 8/29/2011
- by Kira Cochrane
- The Guardian - Film News
British-born director known for Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots
The film and television director Charles Jarrott, who has died of cancer aged 83, began his career during a golden period of British TV drama, working on Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play in the 1960s alongside writers and directors such as Ken Loach, Dennis Potter and David Mercer. Both series were presided over by the Canadian producer Sydney Newman, who encouraged original work – what he called "agitational contemporaneity" – and had an astonishing impact. But in 1969 Jarrott's career took a different turn when he left for Hollywood, thereby increasing his income a hundredfold, while having to contend with far less adventurous material. His best films were his first, two Elizabethan costume dramas, Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots, enlivened by the Oscar-nominated performances of Richard Burton (Henry VIII), Geneviève Bujold (Anne Boleyn) and...
The film and television director Charles Jarrott, who has died of cancer aged 83, began his career during a golden period of British TV drama, working on Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play in the 1960s alongside writers and directors such as Ken Loach, Dennis Potter and David Mercer. Both series were presided over by the Canadian producer Sydney Newman, who encouraged original work – what he called "agitational contemporaneity" – and had an astonishing impact. But in 1969 Jarrott's career took a different turn when he left for Hollywood, thereby increasing his income a hundredfold, while having to contend with far less adventurous material. His best films were his first, two Elizabethan costume dramas, Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots, enlivened by the Oscar-nominated performances of Richard Burton (Henry VIII), Geneviève Bujold (Anne Boleyn) and...
- 3/7/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Karel Reisz's 1966 film about a young man broken down by the new consumer culture is a bizarre, brilliant portrait of changing times. Jon Savage explains its influence
Morgan Delt is in court. In the preceding hour or so of screen time, he has ignored an injunction preventing him from contacting his ex-wife Leonie, broken into their once shared house, run a sequence of extremely loud animal noises to disturb Leonie and her new partner Charles Napier, exploded a thunderflash under his mother-in-law, and finally, kidnapped Leonie in an abortive attempt to live in the wilderness of deep Wales.
This rapidly escalating sequence of harassment has been undercut by Morgan's ineptitude, but there's no doubt he's in big trouble. So what does he do? He daydreams. A giraffe is being lassoed by a group of horsemen: then we see a number of these wild animals run free through the veldt.
Morgan Delt is in court. In the preceding hour or so of screen time, he has ignored an injunction preventing him from contacting his ex-wife Leonie, broken into their once shared house, run a sequence of extremely loud animal noises to disturb Leonie and her new partner Charles Napier, exploded a thunderflash under his mother-in-law, and finally, kidnapped Leonie in an abortive attempt to live in the wilderness of deep Wales.
This rapidly escalating sequence of harassment has been undercut by Morgan's ineptitude, but there's no doubt he's in big trouble. So what does he do? He daydreams. A giraffe is being lassoed by a group of horsemen: then we see a number of these wild animals run free through the veldt.
- 2/11/2011
- by Jon Savage
- The Guardian - Film News
BBC commentator David Mercer has been forced to apologise after mentioning Laura Robson's "puppy fat" during coverage of Wimbledon. The remarks about the 16-year-old were broadcast on the channel's red button stream as Robson played Krista Hardebeck in a second-round match. According to the Daily Mail, he said: "I suppose the one thing that I have at the back of my mind at the moment, is Laura mobile enough around the court? Perhaps a little puppy fat at the moment, the sort of thing you'd expect her to lose as she concentrates on tennis full time." The comments were retracted shortly afterwards and Mercer apologised later in the day, allegedly following pressure from BBC executives. Meanwhile, Robson said: "Yeah, I've spoken to the guy (more)...
- 7/2/2010
- by By Catriona Wightman
- Digital Spy
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