Lady in white (1988)

Lady in White is a 1988 American horror film of the ghost/mystery genre. Much of the film was made in Wayne County, New York, taking advantage of appropriate local color. The movie is based on the story of The Lady in White who supposedly searches for her daughter in Durand-Eastman Park in Rochester, New York while protecting young women who are on dates with their boyfriends.

The film was directed, produced, and written by Frank LaLoggia, a native of nearby Rochester, NY. Starring were Lukas Haas, Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, and Katherine Helmond.

The film begins with a man arriving at an airport. He is a very successful author of ghost stories and horror novels. While en route to his hometown of Willowpoint Falls, he asks the cab driver to pull into a cemetery. There, he and the cabbie visit two graves. The man begins telling a story in flashbacks of how he knew the deceased. On Halloween 1962, 9-year-old Franklin "Frankie" Scarlatti (Lukas Haas) heads off to school. After telling a scary story to his classmates, school ends. As the children head into the cloakroom, school jokesters Donald (Jared Rushton) and Louie (Gregory Levinson) grab Frankie's hat and toss it onto a shelf, setting him up for a mean joke. When Frankie realizes his hat is missing, Donald and Louie persuade him to go back to the cloak room to look for it. While looking for his hat Frankie is locked in by Donald and Louie. They both run off as Frankie is crying for them to let him out.

Later that night, while still locked in the cloak room, Frankie sees the ghost of a little girl and witnesses a re-enactment of her death. After the scene, a darkened figure enters the cloak room. The stranger appears interested in the airvent on the floor and begins to unscrew the metal grate cover. Simultaneously, a rat crawls onto Frankie's pant leg and he scoots the animal away thus betraying his presence. The stranger discovers Frankie and attacks him. A series of scenes unfold for Frankie after he loses consciousness. One of the scenes centers on his initial encounter with the child ghost. She's sitting in front of two graves (which look very similar to the gravestones in the opening scene of the movie). Without prompting, she asks Frankie where he is going. Frankie replies in confusion and she admits that she can't leave without finding her mother. She asks Frankie for his help - then without explanation, Frankie is revived by his father giving CPR. He is then rushed to the hospital. The police search the school and find the janitor, Mr. Williams, in the basement. Because he is intoxicated and present at the scene, he is arrested and charged with attempted murder.

Frankie is soon released from the hospital and enjoys a comfortable recovery with his family. His brother Geno, brings a newspaper home which proclaims Frankie to be a star. Geno is reprimanded for making an inappropriate remark and the newspaper is thrown away. Secretly, Frankie finds the newspaper and reads the story regarding his attack which coincidentally links him to an on-going 10 year investigation into the deaths of 11 other children at the hands of a serial killer. Within the same article, he learns the name of the ghost - Melissa Ann Montgomery (Joelle Jacobi). Soon, Frankie sees the ghost of Melissa frequently and he befriends her. Her only request is that he find her mother.

When he returns to school, Frankie finishes removing the grate cover on the airvent in the cloakroom and removes an odd assortment of children's objects. He singles out two things, a hairclip - which he assumes to belongs to Melissa as he saw something hard and shiny fly off her hair and drop into the grate during her struggle - and an old high school class ring. Frankie cannot figure out the significance of anything he found in the grate. A few more weeks pass and the seasons change.

One day, Frankie overhears a conversation between his father and the chief of police. The chief readily admits that Mr. Williams is probably a scapegoat for the murders. The chief also explains that blood found within the cloakroom links that location to the murder of Melissa Montgomery - a fact not released to the press. In a flash, Frankie figures out that the killer came back for his class ring which he dropped into the airvent the night he killed Melissa.

Unbeknownst to Frankie, the ring has fallen out of his pocket in his bedroom several days earlier (and picked up by Geno). Frankie relays his theories to family friend Phil. Several days later, Frankie is lured out to the cliffs by Donald and Louie and encounters a lady in white clothing inside an old abandoned cottage. All three kids run out of the house scared but Frankie realizes that she may be Melissa's mother and tries to explain the situation to Geno (who has come looking for him due to the late hour). Geno does not believe him but now understands the origin of the ring he found. He does not tell Frankie that he found the ring.

Melissa's ghost haunts Frankie in a non-threatening way. She appears one night and even Geno sees her. Suddenly, both boys follow her as she re-creates her death scene at 10pm (it is implied that this happens every night). They are late arriving at the school and by the time they get to the front door, her ghost is seen being carried down the stairs (presumebly dead) and back out of the school. This time, Frankie follows her but Geno is incapacitated by a thorn in the foot and cannot give chase. Alone, Frankie follows the body (that is being carried by an unseen person) out to the cliffs. There, Frankie sees that at the last minute, Melissa regains consciousness, screams and is thrown over the cliffs alive. Afterwards, Melissa's mother runs out of the old white cottage calling for her daughter. She sees Melissa's body at the foot of the cliffs and then throws herself over the edge. Geno finally catches up with a very startled Frankie and they both go home.

Mr. Williams, the black school janitor, who got drunk while watching a ballgame in the school basement on the night of Frankie's assault, is accused of the attempted murder of Frankie and the murder of Melissa and ten other children. This sets off instances of outrage in the community but Angelo Scarlatti (Alex Rocco), Frankie's father, believes Mr. Williams' claim of innocence upon failure to link the janitor to Frankie's assault and the fact that Harold Williams is also a father. Mr. Williams is later freed when a grand jury decides against going to trial due to insufficient evidence but he is then murdered by the mother of one of the victims (who believes him to be guilty).

Meanwhile, Geno continues to investigate the ring that Frankie found in the vent. His father has an old trunk full of old sentimental objects and he notices that his father owns an identical class ring from the same school year. He realizes that the killer may be in the same graduating class as his father. Geno compares the initals on the old ring with his father's yearbook, and discovers that the murderer is family friend Phil. He frantically runs to tell his father and the police chief. Frankie, who is with Phil at that time, figures out the truth when Phil is whistling "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking" (Melissa's song) and unwittingly tips off Phil. Phill attempts to attack Frankie but he escapes and runs to the cliffs. Phil chases him and admits to being the killer, but claims he had no idea he was attacking Frankie on Halloween. He explains that he wouldn't have done it had Frankie not been wearing his Halloween mask as he cares about him. Phil attacks Frankie by strangling him and demands the whereabouts/return of the ring. Suddenly he's struck from behind by an unseen person and both Frankie and Phil collapse.

Frankie then awakens in the well-preserved bedroom (presumably the old cottage) which had been Melissa's, under the care of the woman who saved him, Amanda Harper (Katherine Helmond). She reveals that she is Melissa's aunt and has been despondent over the loss of her sister and niece. She also tells Frankie that she set fire to her own house in an attempt to take her own life in order to be reunited with her family, but was rescued from the blaze and subsequently branded the town crazy.

Before she can finish her explanations, Phil sneaks into the cottage, and murders Harper. Several candles are knocked over during the struggle and a large housefire begins. Phil rescues Frankie from the burning cottage but only to try and throw Frankie off the cliff. Frankie puts up a great struggle and in the end is saved by the ghost of Melissa's mother (the true Lady in White) who scares Phil over the edge of the cliff. Having brought the ghost of Melissa with him, Frankie watches as she and the Lady in White reunite and ascend into the sky.

Frankie attempts to crawl away from the cliff edge but is grabbed around the ankle by a struggling Phil (who's holding onto a lone tree branch). Frankie's father Angelo, Geno, the police, and hunters with scent-tracking dogs arrive. Angelo frees Frankie and tries to save Phil but at the last minute Phil lets go and falls to his death. With Phil dead, the group watches as the cottage burns down while the snow begins to fall.

Happy birthday!

Psycho 50° Anniversary

Psycho, independently produced by Hitchcock, was shot at Revue Studios, the same location as his television show. Psycho was shot on a tight budget of $806,947.55, beginning on November 11, 1959 and ending on February 1, 1960.Filming started in the morning and finished by six or earlier on Thursdays (when Hitchcock and his wife would dine at Chasen's). Nearly the whole film was shot with 50 mm lenses on 35 mm cameras. This trick closely mimicked normal human vision, which helped to further involve the audience.

Paramount, whose contract guaranteed another film by Hitchcock, did not want Hitchcock to make Psycho. Paramount was expecting No Bail for the Judge starring Audrey Hepburn who became pregnant and had to bow out, leading Hitchcock to scrap the production. Their official stance was that the book was "too repulsive" and "impossible for films", and nothing but another of his star-studded mystery thrillers. They did not like "anything about it at all" and denied him his usual budget. So, Hitchcock financed the film's creation through his own Shamley Productions, shooting at Universal Studios under the Revue television unit.Hitchcock's original Bates Motel and Psycho House movie set buildings, which were constructed on the same stage as Lon Chaney Sr.'s The Phantom of the Opera, are still standing at Universal Studios in Universal City near Hollywood and are a regular attraction on the studio's tour. As a further result of cost cutting, Hitchcock chose to film Psycho in black and white, keeping the budget under $1,000,000. Other reasons for shooting in black and white were to prevent the shower scene from being too gory and that he was a fan of Les Diaboliques's use of black and white.

To keep costs down and because he was most comfortable around them, Hitchcock took most of his crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including the cinematographer, set designer, script supervisor, and first assistant director. He hired regular collaborators Bernard Herrmann as music composer, George Tomasini as editor, and Saul Bass for the title design and storyboarding of the shower scene. In all, his crew cost $62,000.

Through the strength of his reputation, Hitchcock cast Leigh for a quarter of her usual fee, paying only $25,000 (in the 1967 book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock said that Leigh owed Paramount one final film on her seven-year contract which she had signed in 1953). His first choice, Leigh agreed after having only read the novel and making no inquiry into her salary.Her co-star, Anthony Perkins, agreed to $40,000. Both stars were experienced and proven box-office draws.

Paramount did distribute the film, but four years later Hitchcock sold his stock in Shamley to Universal's parent company and his next six films were made at and distributed by Universal. After another four years, Paramount sold all rights to Universal. When the film became a major hit, the Hitchcocks received a much larger share of the profit than they would have otherwise.

In memoriam : Jose Saramago (1922-2010)

Charade (1963)

Charade is a 1963 American film directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It also features Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. It spans three genres: suspense thriller, romance, and comedy.

The film is notable for its screenplay, especially the repartee between Grant and Hepburn, for having been filmed on location in Paris, for Henry Mancini's score and theme song, and for the animated titles by Maurice Binder. Charade has been referred to as "the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made."

Regina "Reggie" Lampert meets a charming stranger, Peter Joshua, on a skiing holiday in Megève. She returns to Paris, planning to ask her husband Charles for a divorce, but finds all of their possessions gone. The police notify her that Charles has been murdered, thrown from a train. They give Regina her husband's travel bag. At the funeral, Regina is struck by the odd characters who show up to view the body, including one who sticks the corpse with a pin and another who places a mirror in front of the corpse's mouth and nose, both to verify he is dead.

She is summoned to the U.S. Embassy, where she meets CIA agent Hamilton Bartholomew . He informs her Charles was involved in a theft during World War II. As part of the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA), Charles, "Tex" Panthollow, Herman Scobie, Leopold W. Gideon and Carson Dyle were parachuted behind enemy lines to deliver $250,000 in gold to the French Resistance. Instead, they buried it, but were then ambushed by a German patrol. Dyle was badly wounded and left to die; the rest got away. Charles doublecrossed them, digging up the gold and selling it. He was killed but the money remains missing – and the U.S. government wants it back. Reggie recognizes the oddballs from the funeral in pictures shown to her by Bartholomew. He insists she has the money, even if she doesn't know where it is.

Peter offers to help. Reggie becomes attracted to him, even though he keeps changing his name (simultaneously amusing and confusing her) and unabashedly admits he is after her late husband's money as well. The dead man's partners in crime assume Reggie knows where the money is and demand their share. Unbeknownst to her, Peter is in league with them (under the pseudonym Alexander Dyle, Carson's brother), though none of the men trust each other.

They begin turning up dead — first Scobie is drowned in an overflowing bathtub, then Gideon has his throat slit while sneezing in an elevator. Reggie and Peter go to the location of Charles' last appointment and find an outdoor market. They also spot Tex there. Peter follows him.

It is Tex who finally figures out where the money is hidden. He sees several booths selling stamps. Charles had purchased rare stamps and stuck them on an envelope in plain sight just before he boarded his fateful train ride. The envelope was in his travel bag. Peter realizes the same thing and races Tex back to Reggie's hotel room. They come up empty. The stamps have been cut off the letter.

Reggie had given them to her friend's son for his stamp collection. By chance, she runs into them at the market, only to learn that the little boy has traded them away. Fortunately, the stamp seller is honest. He puts their total value at $250,000 and returns them to Reggie.

She returns to the hotel and finds Tex's bound body. Before he died, he was able to spell out in the dust the name of his killer: "Dyle." Figuring that Tex must have meant Alexander Dyle, a frightened Reggie telephones Bartholomew, who arranges to meet her. When she leaves the hotel, Peter spots her and gives chase through the streets of Paris and the subway.

Peter tracks her to the rendezvous and Reggie is caught out in the open between the two men. Peter tells her that the man she thought was Bartholomew is really Carson Dyle and that he was the one who killed the others. Another chase ensues, ending with Dyle's death.

Reggie insists on turning the stamps over to the proper authorities. Peter refuses to accompany her inside the embassy office. When she goes in by herself, she is shocked to find Peter (whose real name turns out to be Brian Cruikshank) sitting behind the desk. After proving to her that he is actually the government official responsible for recovered property, he promises to marry her...after she gives him the stamps.

The movie ends with a split-screen grid showing flashback shots of all of Brian's different identities, while Reggie says she hopes that they have lots of boys, so she can name them all after him.

Audrey Hepburn's line, "at any moment we could be assassinated," was dubbed over to become "at any moment we could be eliminated" due to the recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Subsequent versions of the film have restored the original dialogue.

Cary Grant (59 years old at the time) was sensitive about the age difference between Audrey Hepburn (at age 34) and him, and this made him uncomfortable with the romantic interplay between them. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to add several lines of dialogue in which Grant's character comments on his age and Regina — not Grant's character — is portrayed as the pursuer.

The screenwriter, Peter Stone, and the director, Stanley Donen, have an unusual joint cameo role in the film. When Reggie goes to the U.S. Embassy to meet with Bartholomew, two men get on the elevator as she gets off. The man who says, "I bluffed the old man out of the last pot — with a pair of deuces" is Stone, but the voice is Donen's. Stone's voice is later used for the U.S. Marine who is guarding the Embassy at the end of the film.

Io sono l'Amore (2009)

I Am Love (Italian: Io sono l'amore) is a 2009 Italian film by Luca Guadagnino set at the turn of the millennium in Milan. The film follows the fall of the haute bourgeoisie due to the forces of passion and unconditional love. The cast is led by Tilda Swinton as the main character Emma Recchi.

The film will premiere in the United States at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and premiered in both the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival.

Set in Milan’s upper classes, in the Art Deco villa of a family of great wealth, this is a film about repression and breaking free.

The Recchi family are winners to a man – although the women look a good deal less confident. At a formal lunch party, ailing scion Edoardo Sr (Gabriele Ferzetti) celebrates his birthday by passing the business on to his son, Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), and, unexpectedly, his grandson Edoardo (Flavio Parenti), the beloved heart of the family.

Tancredi’s wife, Emma (Swinton), a Russian émigré, is evidently not entirely at ease: they have another son, Gianluca (Mattia Zaccaro) and a daughter Elizabeth (Alba Rohrwacher) who is an artist, and, it is later revealed, a lesbian.

And, fatefully, during that same evening, Eduardo Jr introduces his mother to his friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a chef, with whom he plans to set up a business.

Later, Emma, facing an empty nest, takes a trip to Sanremo and encounters Antonio there, as Edoardo Jr struggles against his role in the business during a trip to London. Passions flare and tensions rise, and as one thing leads to another, the Recchi family soon realizes everything will change forever.

The new collaboration between Luca Guadagnino, who returns to the big screen after Melissa P., and Tilda Swinton, who is also the film’s producer, conjures up Viscontian ghosts and decadent atmospheres, in a postmodern mix of style and intentions reminiscent of classical cinema.

Benson and Hedges Commercial 1973

The commercial Peter Sellers made with Spike Milligan and James Villiers for Benson and Hedges in 1973. It was directed by Peter Medak.

British investor William Chase offers funding help to Bond producers

from MI6

The man who harvested a £30m fortune from Tyrrells Potato Chips and then distilled it into Chase Vodka is seeking a licence to make another killing, this time in films - reports The Telegraph.
William Chase has contacted Barbara Broccoli, the producer behind the James Bond franchise, to see if he can offer some help in resolving the funding issues that have halted production on the latest film.
I won't bore you with the details but MGM, the studio that makes the films, is running out of cash so has had to shelve the latest film, the 23rd to be produced.
Now, Chase is a rich man from his various business endeavours, but not that rich. The budget for the last James Bond film was a cool $230m (£158m).
Still, I understand the approach hasn't been rebuffed. Good news for Bond fans. Not so good perhaps for Smirnoff. Until recently the vodka has been the film's official partner.
How will the mighty brand feel about upstaged about its upstart Herefordshire rival? I'm sure you know the line – shaken not stirred.

The Deadly affair (1966)

The Deadly Affair is a 1966 British espionage-thriller film, based John le Carré's first novel Call for the Dead. The film stars James Mason, Harry Andrews, Simone Signoret and Maximilian Schell and was directed by Sidney Lumet from a script by Paul Dehn. In it George Smiley, the central character of the novel and many other of le Carré's books, is renamed Charles Dobbs. The soundtrack was composed by Quincy Jones, and the bossa nova theme song, "Who Needs Forever," is performed by Astrud Gilberto.

Charles Dobbs (James Mason) is a British secret agent investigating the apparent suicide of Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan. Dobbs suspects that Fennan's wife, Elsa (Simone Signoret), a survivor of an extermination camp, might have some clues, but other officials want Dobbs to drop the case. Dobbs hires a retired police inspector, Mendel (Harry Andrews), to quietly make inquiries. As they uncover some horrible implications, Dobbs also discovers that his wife Ann (Harriet Andersson) has been having an affair with a colleague, Dieter Frey (Maximilian Schell).

Director Sidney Lumet said of James Mason "I always thought he was one of the best actors who ever lived. Whatever you gave him to do he would take it, assimilate it and then make it his own. The technique was rock solid, and I fell in love with him as an actor, so every time I came across a script I wanted to direct I would start to read it thinking is there anything here for James? He had no sense of stardom at all. He wanted good billing and the best money he could get, but then all he ever thought about was how to play the part. In that sense he reminded me more of an actor in a theatre repertory ensemble than a movie star, and it was what made him so good." Lumet also directed Mason in The Sea Gull (1968), Child's Play (1972) and The Verdict (1982).

Location shooting for The Deadly Affair took place in London, in St. James Park, at the Balloon Tavern and the Chelsea Embankment in Chelsea, in Clapham and Barnes, and in Twickenham.

Director of photography Freddie Young's technique of pre-exposing the colour film negative to a small, controlled amount of light (known as "flashing" or "pre-fogging") in order to create a muted colour pallette was first used in this film. Lumet called the result "colorless color" and it proved influential, being used by other cinematographers such as Vilmos Zsigmond on McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Silent Movie (1976)

Silent Movie is a 1976 comedy film directed by and starring Mel Brooks, and released by 20th Century Fox on June 17, 1976. The ensemble cast includes Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Bernadette Peters, and Sid Caesar, with appearances by Anne Bancroft, Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Marcel Marceau and Paul Newman playing themselves.

While indeed silent (except for one word and numerous sound effects), the film is a parody of the silent film genre, particularly the slapstick comedies of Hal Roach, Mack Sennett, and Buster Keaton. Among the film's many jokes is the fact that the only audible line in the movie is spoken by a noted mime (Marcel Marceau).

Sound is a big factor in the film's humor, as when a scene that shows New York City begins with the song "San Francisco," only to have it come to a sudden stop as if the musicians realize they are playing the wrong music. They then go into "I'll Take Manhattan" instead.

A play on the 1970s trend of large corporations buying up smaller companies is parodied in this film by the attempt of the Engulf and Devour Corporation to take control of a studio (a thinly veiled reference to Gulf+Western's takeover of Paramount Pictures).

Mel Funn, a great film director, is now recovering from a drinking problem and down on his luck. He sets out to Big Picture Studios to pitch a new script to the Chief, aided by his ever-present sidekicks Dom Bell and Marty Eggs.

His big idea: the first silent motion picture in forty years. At first the Chief, who is in danger of losing the studio to the rabidly greedy New York conglomerate Engulf & Devour, rejects the idea, but Funn convinces him that if he can get Hollywood's biggest stars to be in the film, he could save the studio.

Funn, Eggs, and Bell proceed to recruit Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft, and Paul Newman to be in their silent film. They sign up everybody they ask except for world-famous mime Marcel Marceau, who replies, "Non." (Funn fibs that he can't understand Marceau's reply because "I don't understand French.") The title card at the end suggests that Marceau later changed his mind, since he was obviously in the film.

Engulf and Devour, meanwhile, worry that Funn will save Big Picture Studios and they will be unable to buy it. They attempt to "stop Funn with sex" by sending voluptuous nightclub sensation Vilma Kaplan to seduce Funn and pretend to be in love with him.

Funn falls head over heels, but when Eggs and Bell reveal the truth to him on the day before filming begins, the director returns to drinking. He goes to pieces until discovering that Vilma has actually fallen for him. Several hundred cups of coffee sober him up.

Funn's silent movie is filmed in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, the only copy of it is stolen from the theater by Engulf & Devour just before its big premiere.

Vilma is asked to stall the theater's audience while Funn and his associates go out to steal back their film. They succeed, but are chased by Engulf and Devour's executives. Ultimately cornered, they defeat their foes by using a soda machine that launches cans of Coca-Cola like grenades. They hurry the film to the theater, where it is shown for the first time. After the movie is over, the audience leaps to its feet while balloons and streamers fill the air. "They seem to like it," Funn says.

The film ends with a title card: "This is a true story."

Kyle Cooper reminder....

HitchcockHitchcock

WE ARE SO LITTLE - part 2 : Guatemala City, Monday May 31, 2010.

Flor De Verano - out now

shipping worldwide.