Back when poster shops could be found next to any video arcades it was one of the more popular designs: an astronaut seated in a Corvette floating in space with a nebula cloud behind him. It was a poster for a movie that provided an anthology mix of animated science fiction and fantasy tales featuring […]

He was (and remains) a titan in the arthouse world. One of his masterpieces was made for television and this year finally got a Blu-ray release (Dekalog, 1988), but it was The Double Life of Veronique (1991) that launched his international career and paved the way for the Three Colors – a trilogy of films […]

  FilmStruck subscribers should take special note of the opportunity to acquaint themselves with one of the masters of Mexican cinema: Arturo Ripstein. Chances are that even ardent supporters of local arthouse cinemas are only familiar with Deep Crimson (1996), as that film got decent press and a solid release by New Yorker Films here […]

The Creeping Flesh (Freddie Francis, 1973) screens on TCM later this week and it’s worth highlighting for several reasons. Oddly enough, for me anyway, the skeleton found in New Guinea by a Victorian scientist – one that can regenerate flesh and which is posited as some ancient embodiment of evil – is low on the […]

Today heralds the beginning of “Frankenstein Sundays” taking place throughout October. TCM is, of course, referring mostly to Frankenstein’s monster, and not the person who gave birth to him in his mad scientist lab. Boris Karloff’s rendition of the monster is one of the reasons I became obsessed with movies at an early age. My […]

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer, 1963) screens this Wednesday on TCM. The madcap road-race featuring a who’s-who of comedy racing across state lines to dig up stolen cash is a marvel of story-line simplicity and fun. I wish I could have seen at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2013 where […]

I’m attending the 43rd Telluride Film Festival, where TCM is a Signature Sponsor for the Palm theater. Although there are only three films being screened on 35mm (The Fire Within, The Barefoot Contessa, and Les Enfants Terribles – all part of Volker Schlöndorff’s Guest Director selections), there are plenty of other classics to choose from. […]

The title line is an excerpt from noted French film historian Georges Sadoul describing the filmmaking style of Robert Aldrich. When you look up Aldrich’s name on IMDB the three film titles that get highlighted as the ones he’s “known for” are The Dirty Dozen (1967), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), and The […]

Made on roughly the same budget as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and shot shortly after the assassination of J.F.K., Monte Hellman’s The Shooting (1966) is a western very much of its time that was not properly released in its time. It’s informed by films like The Virginian (1962), One Eyed Jacks (1961), Stagecoach (1939), […]

A few weeks ago I got a chance to visit Tippett Studio and was given a tour by Phil Tippett himself. He was seven-years-old when he saw Ray Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and knew what he wanted to do with his life. Since then he has worked on Star Wars, The Empire Strikes […]