War Requiem is a film adaptation of Benjamin Britten's musical piece War Requiem. It was shot in 1988 by the British film director Derek Jarman with the 1963 recording as the soundtrack, produced by Don Boyd and financed by the BBC. Decca Records required that the 1963 recording be heard on its own, with no overlaid soundtrack or other sound effects.
The film featured Nathaniel Parker, Tilda Swinton, Sean Bean, Nigel Terry and Laurence Olivier in his last acting appearance in any medium before his death in July 1989. The film is structured as the reminiscences of Olivier's character, the Old Soldier in a wheelchair, and Olivier recites "Strange Meeting" in the film's prologue.
Shooting for the film took place at Darenth Park Hospital in Kent, beginning 17 October 1988 and lasting for 18 days.
With more than three hundred credit sequences (so hundreds and hundreds of images) this is a feast of visual goodies. The ten chapters reveal a history of the movie in the movies. It is sort of chronological though many newer credits are mixed in with historical ones to indicate a style, like chapter four that looks at titles as logos: Gone With the Wind or Pulp Fiction where the type is overlaid on an image background.
The text runs in small sections throughout the pages and its clear the authors have done a lot of research and obviously expressed their opinions, too, especially in the long captions.
An amazing two hundred designers have their work included. The great Saul Bass has nineteen credits, Kyle Cooper, Maurice Binder, Ferro Pablo, Dan Perri and Richard Greenberg are the other designers who get a good showing. Those that only have one or two credits (in the book) can still deliver a punch though, the credits for Thank You For Not Smoking by Shadowplay Studio are quite stunning or Marlene McCarty's lovely period work on Far From Heaven.
Secret Beyond the Door (1948) is a psychological thriller and modern updating of the Bluebeard fairytale, directed by Fritz Lang, produced by Lang's Diana Productions, and released by Universal Pictures. The black-and-white film noir drama is about a woman who suspects her new husband, an architect, plans to kill her.
In this Freudian version of the Bluebeard tale, a young, trust-funded New Yorker goes to Mexico on vacation before marrying an old friend whom she considers a safe choice for a husband. However, there she finds her dream man -- a handsome, mysterious stranger who spots her in a crowd. In a matter of days they marry, honeymoon and move to his mansion, to which he has added a wing full of rooms where famous murders took place. She discovers many secrets about the house and her husband, but what she really wants to know is what is in the room her husband always keeps locked.
The Los Angeles leg of Christopher Nolan's none-more-secret sci-fi Inception is underway and Sir Michael Caine, one of the esteemed names on the call-sheet, has defied the omerta to reveal a snippet or two on his role in the movie.
"I play a professor who's teaching a guy science," Sir Michael told of us of his fourth Nolan collaboration. "It's Leonardo diCaprio. He's going off to do a science project and he speaks to me before he goes."
While the great man wouldn't elaborate on exactly what that project involves (and we're not expecting frog dissection) he had warm words for his co-star's performance. "Leo is great. I've had a day with him [in London], he's wonderful."
Veiling proceedings in a covertness not seen since the heyday of Secret Squirrel, Nolan is keeping even his cast members in the dark on how the plot, set "within the architecture of the mind", will play out. Say Caine: "They wouldn't let me read the script. I only got my page. They're all very secretive!"
Judging by the teaser trailer, the cryptic carry-ons are shaping up into something special. That Nolan teamsheet in full: Sir Michael, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy.
Crisis is a 1950 drama film about an American couple who become embroiled in a revolution. It was based on the short story "The Doubters" by George Tabori.
Eugene Ferguson (Cary Grant), a renowned American brain surgeon, and his wife Helen (Paula Raymond) are vacationing in Latin America when a revolution breaks out. They are taken against their will to the country's dictator, Raoul Farrago (José Ferrer), who urgently needs a life-saving operation. Over the next few days, while Ferguson trains assistants for the operation, he witnesses various acts of brutality by the regime, especially by Colonel Adragon (Ramón Novarro), but his Hippocratic Oath compels him to do his best.
Roland Gonzales (Gilbert Roland), the rebel leader, kidnaps Helen to pressure her husband into making a fatal surgical "mistake", but his message to Ferguson is intercepted by Isabel Farrago (Signe Hasso), the patient's wife, and the operation is a success. Fortunately for the doctor, Helen is released unharmed when Farrago dies soon afterwards and his government is overthrown.
Crisis is the first film directed by Richard Brooks.
Probably the most "un-Cary Grant-like" movie that Grant ever made, Crisis is a political melodrama Richard Brooks directed with a steady hand on guiding the film as a whole (and he is aided by Ray June's deft cinematography and an exciting and atmospheric Miklos Rozsa score.) Grant is quite good, even if never totally credible in the role, and José Ferrer does his evil villain routine to very good effect. Even better are the Eva Peron-like Signe Hasso and the understated Ramon Novarro.
The 10th Victim (Italian: La decima vittima) is an Italian cult science fiction film directed by Elio Petri in 1965. It is based on Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim". Sheckley later published a novelization of the film in 1966.
The film begins with a man chasing a woman through the streets whilst shooting at her. He is stopped by a policeman to be questioned but the man shows his licence to kill and the policeman allows him to continue. The scenes transfer between the pursuit and a narrator explaining the rules and justification of the attempted murder.
In the near future, big wars are avoided by giving individuals with violent tendencies a chance to kill in the Big Hunt. The Hunt is the most popular form of entertainment in the world and also attracts participants who are looking for fame and fortune. It includes ten rounds for each competitor, five as the hunter and five as the victim. The survivor of the ten rounds will become the ultimate champion.
Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress) is the huntress armed with a high caliber Bosch Shotgun looking for her tenth victim. Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni) is the victim, but is reluctant to kill Meredith as he is not sure whether she really is his hunter. Killing the wrong person would get him locked up in prison for 30 years. To maximize her financial gain, Meredith wants to get a perfect kill in front of the cameras as she has negotiated a major sponsor from the Ming Tea Company.
Originally released in 1965 and based on a story by Robert Sheckley, Elio Petri's The 10th Victim can be seen as a mod ménage of La Dolce Vita, James Bond and The Most Dangerous Game. The film is set in the then-futuristic 21st century; we've lived to see some (but thankfully not all) of Petri's amorally corrupt worldview come to fruition. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are players in the world's most popular game: a real-life manhunt in which two participants are randomly chosen by a computer, one to be a hunter, the other to be the hunted. After ten successful rounds, you win a million dollars and the elite status as a "decathlete." The world is their battlefield (except for churches, bars, barbershops and a couple of other off-limits locales) — and other than parking violations not being tolerated, there are no rules.
Chock full of James Bond-type gadgetry, including a bra that doubles as a machine gun (this is where Austin Powers got it from) and a mechanical pet named Thomas that delivers a soothing massage and hides a gun in its mouth, The 10th Victim is a retro fantasia that may look charmingly dated because of its "futuristic" vision. But beneath the façade is a dystopic view that continues to remain relevant. And considering the increasingly mobility of media and the seeming promise of instant stardom (whether on reality television or the internet), Petri's film will continue to speak to consumer culture for a long time to come.
As consumers become savvier, and traditional media becomes more and more cluttered, brands are faced with unprecedented challenges: How do they stand out from the crowd?
How can they engage consumers? How can they re-invent traditional channels and create new ones? How can they incorporate creativity to refresh their brands? How can they imbue their brand with a sense of 'cool'?
Contrary to conventional thinking, the answers are simple. In fact, a single solution applies, and it can be summed up in one word: Innovate.
Innovation isn't an option anymore. It's mandatory. And to today's hyper-informed and perennially connected consumers, it's a basic expectation.
To some people innovation and the ability to think creatively come naturally, but for most of us, it's a baffling task. The good news is that, while the Steve Jobs' of this world are born with a ‘sixth innovation sense,’ the rest of us can learn it. Mastering the art of innovation is a revelatory process that involves, among other things, a lot of 'unlearning.'
Harry Brown is an upcoming British crime thriller film directed by Daniel Barber and starring Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Iain Glen, Jack O'Connell and Liam Cunningham. Features actor-artist Ben Drew (Plan B) responsible also, with Chase & Status, for the film theme music "End Credits". It will have its World Premiere as a Special Presentation at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and is due for release on the 13th of November 2009.
Described as a "modern urban western" the titular Harry Brown (Caine) is an elderly widower and former Royal Marine who has lived to see his neighbourhood overrun by violent gangs, drugs and crime. When his best friend Leonard (Bradley) is brutally murdered and the gang leader responsible walks free, Harry finds himself snapping. Soon, his desire for revenge leads to the unlikely vigilante facing up to the young thugs, with terrifying results.
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is a film noir drama produced and directed by Robert Aldrich starring Ralph Meeker. The screenplay was written by A.I. Bezzerides, based on the Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer mystery novel Kiss Me, Deadly. Kiss Me Deadly is often considered a classic of the noir genre.
Kiss Me Deadly marked the film debuts of both actresses Cloris Leachman and Maxine Cooper.
Ralph Meeker plays Mike Hammer, a tough Los Angeles private eye who is just slightly less brutal and corrupt than the crooks he chases. One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina (Cloris Leachman), an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.
The twisting plot takes Hammer to the apartment of Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), a sexy, waif-like blond who is posing as the dead Christina's ex-room mate. Lily tells Hammer she has gone into hiding and asks Hammer to protect her. But she is duplicitous, and is after a mysterious box that, she believes, has contents worth a fortune.
"The great whatsit" (as Hammer's assistant Velda (Maxine Cooper) calls it) at the center of Hammer's quest is a small, mysterious valise that is hot to the touch and contains a dangerous, shining substance. It comes to represent the 1950's Cold War fear and nuclear paranoia about the atomic bomb that permeated American culture. It also suggests the mysterious glowing brief-case of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.
Later, at a deserted beach house, Hammer finds Lily with her evil companion, Dr. Soberin. Velda is their hostage, tied up in a bedroom. Soberin and Lily are vying for the contents of the box. Lily shoots Soberin, believing that she can keep the mysterious contents for herself. As she slyly opens the case, it is ultimately revealed to be stolen radionuclide material, which in an apocalyptic final scene apparently reaches explosive criticality when the box ("Pandora's Box") is fully opened. Horrifying sounds are emitted from the nuclear material as Lily bursts into flames.
Alternate ending
The original American release of the film shows Hammer and Velda escaping from the burning house at the end, running into the ocean as the words "The End" come over them on the screen. Sometime after its first release, the ending was crudely altered on the film's original negative, removing over a minute's worth of shots where Hammer and Velda escape and superimposing the words "The End" over the burning house. This implied that Hammer and Velda perished in the atomic blaze, and was often interpreted to represent the End of the World. In 1997, the original conclusion was restored. The DVD release has the correct original ending, and offers the now-discredited (but influential) truncated ending as an extra. The movie is described as "the definitive, apocalyptic, nihilistic, science-fiction film noir of all time - at the close of the classic noir period."
Kiss Me Deadly is one of the most brutal of all films noir (a close thing with the same year’s The Big Combo), a diamond sharp looking paean to the colour black. It’s the sort of film that could only have existed in the fifties and perfectly encapsulates what it was to be a cult item in that most iconic of decades. This may have been the decade of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, but it was also the age of a new phoney realism in the movies. Deadly may not be realistic, but it tantalises you into thinking that it could be.
In many ways the film shows signs of the prevalence of science fiction on the mentality of Cold War America. There’s a sense of paranoia seeping through every shot of this film, an unnameable force not only driving the plot along but lurking beneath the surface ready to explode. All the women Hammer encounters are mysterious and cannot be trusted and Hammer is happy to kiss them but leave it at that. This is no Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett detective, this is Mike Hammer. He is a very unpleasant fellow in too many respects. He enjoys dishing out pain, both physical and even psychological (just recall his ever ready fists, the sadistic glee on breaking Bonanova’s rare Caruso record or holding the admittedly slimy Helton’s fingers in a drawer) and does not flinch from receiving it to the point of near masochism. Even gangster Stewart is repulsed by his low morals, observing “what’s it worth to turn your considerable talents back to the gutter they crawled out of?“ For sure the villains he goes after are nasty people, but he is no less nasty. It is to Ralph Meeker’s great credit that he finely balances the character’s brutal exterior with a final realisation that he’s in over his head. Yet even then he goes in all fists blazing and gets himself shot for his troubles. He’s a bull in a china shop and he doesn’t care what gets smashed. No wonder Addy’s cop looks at him with such disdain. In comparison the rest of the cast seem like caricatures; Stewart and Dekker do slimy like they have many times before, the latter immortally showing only his black moccasins through most of the film; Rodgers acts and speaks as if completely stoned for the entire film in a truly bizarre performance, about as desirable and fresh as an ashtray. And as for Dennis’ Nick with more va-va-voom’s per sentence than Thierry Henry, he chews the scenery with a relish more akin to Tod Slaughter. However, in spite of this and the gorgeous jet-black lensing of Ernest Laszlo, the real stars are screenwriter Bezzerides, who recognised the inherent fascism of Hammer (a black shirt wannabe if ever there was one?), a true parallel to Genesis and classical myth and the hypocrisy of the private eye ideology. Mostly, though, it’s a testament to the vision of Aldrich, who shows just how treacherous a kiss – “a liar’s kiss, the kiss that says I love you” – can be when delivered by the poisoned lips of a treacherous Pandora or Eve.
New Port South is a 2001 drama film. The film is set in the fictional town of New Port, near Chicago. It stars Will Estes, Todd Field, and Blake Shields, was written by James Hughes and directed by Kyle Cooper. The soundtrack is by Telefon Tel Aviv.
What if a student did not like the idea of school and authority and they thought it was prison? Will Maddox (Blake Shields) tests this theory and tests the boundaries of authority and his friendships. A few years before, a student, John Stanton (Michael Shannon) was committed to an insane asylum, reasons unknown to most everybody except the principal. One day he escapes, releasing everyone else from the asylums around. Maddox sees this defiance which is the start of his anarchy. Maddox wants to "help him" and understand him more so they start a correspondence and Stanton tells him what to do and how to do them. This is includes the erasing of student grades, posting posters/fliers, locking part of the student body in a room among other things. Maddox gets his friends involved and challenges authority and gets most of the school behind him, including an administrator for a while. He is so consumed with creating chaos and disorder that his friends start to see the destruction, but they have to save themselves, and him before he can take complete control over the school.
Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter. It was filmed in New York in July 1964.
Beckett’s original choice for the lead – referred to only as “O” – was Charlie Chaplin, but his script never reached him.The director Alan Schneider was interested in Zero Mostel but he was unavailable. Beckett was “enthusiastically in favour” of Jack MacGowran as a replacement but he also became unavailable. James Karen, who was to have a small part in the film, talked constantly about the 68 year old Buster Keaton and persuaded Schneider to consider him when MacGowran’s circumstances changed. Schneider credits Beckett himself with the suggestion however.
The filmed version differs from Beckett's original script but with his approval since he was on set all the time, this being his only visit to the United States. The script printed in Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (Faber and Faber, 1984) states:
“This is the original film project for Film. No attempt has been made to bring it into line with the finished work. The one considerable departure from what was imagined concerns the opening sequence in the street. This was first shot as given, then replaced by a simplified version in which only the indispensable couple is retained. For the rest the shooting script followed closely the indications in the script.”
It was remade by the British Film Institute (1979, 16 mm, 26 minutes) without Beckett’s supervision, as Film: a screenplay by Samuel Beckett. David Rayner Clark directed Max Wall.
It first appeared in print in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber and Faber, 1967).
More has probably been written about the making of this film than the film itself. An entire play has even been devoted to the story, The Stone Face by Canadian playwright Sherry MacDonald.
Beckett had never seen Schneider direct any of his plays and yet continued to entrust him with the work. Why then, for this particular project did he decide to make the trip? Schneider has speculated that it may simply have been the opportunity to work directly with Keaton. “It has even been suggested that the inspiration for Waiting for Godot might have come from a minor Keaton film called The Lovable Cheat in which Keaton plays a man who waits endlessly for the return of his partner - whose name interestingly enough was Godot.”
“When Schneider managed to hunt up Keaton, he found that genius of the silent screen — old, broke, ill, and alone — some $2 million ahead in a four-handed poker game with an imaginary Louis B. Mayer of MGM and two other invisible Hollywood moguls.
“‘Yes, I accept the offer,’ were silent Keaton’s unexpected first words to Schneider. Keaton was dying even as they made the film. ‘We didn’t know that,’ Rosset told interviewer Patsy Southgate in 1990, ‘but looking back at it, the signs were there. Couldn’t speak — he was not so much difficult, he just wasn’t there.’ Keaton would in fact die 18 months after the shooting of Film.”
From this one might think that Keaton jumped at the chance but this is not the case. James Karen remembers:
“He had to be talked into it by Eleanor [his wife] and I remember calling and saying, ‘You know, it could be your Les Enfants du paradis. It could be that wonderful, wonderful thing.’”
Beckett had wanted to work with Keaton several years earlier, when he offered him the role of Lucky in the American stage premiere of "Waiting for Godot," but Buster turned it down. It's said that Buster didn't understand Godot and had misgivings about this script as well. Presumably this went a long way to make him think twice about this new project.
During a meeting with documentary filmmaker, Kevin Brownlow, Beckett was quite forthcoming:
“Buster Keaton was inaccessible. He had a poker mind as well as a poker face. I doubt if he ever read the text - I don't think he approved of it or liked it. But he agreed to do it and he was very competent … Of course, I had seen his silent films and enjoyed them – don't suppose I could remember them now. He had a young woman with him – his wife, who had picked him up from his alcoholism. We met him at a hotel. I tried to engage him in conversation, but it was no good. He was absent. He didn't even offer us a drink. Not because he was being unfriendly, but because it never occurred to him.”
Scheneider’s recollection of that awkward first meeting confirms all of this and more: “They simply had nothing to say to each other, no worlds of any kind to share. And all of Sam's good will and my own flailing efforts to get something started failed to bring them together on any level. It was a disaster.”
But not entirely. Although the role called for Beckett’s seemingly ubiquitous bowler hat, Keaton had brought along some of his trademark flattened-down Stetsons and it was quickly agreed that he should wear one of those. On the Monday morning they “traipsed down in Joe Coffey's ancient Morgan to just beneath the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge and began the shooting.”
Beckett continues:
“The heat was terrible - while I was staggering in the humidity, Keaton was galloping up and down and doing whatever we asked of him. He had great endurance, he was very tough and, yes, reliable. And when you saw that face at the end - oh!’ He smiled, ‘At last’”
Both Beckett and Schneider were novices, Keaton a seasoned veteran. That said, “Keaton's behaviour on the set was … steady and cooperative … He was indefatigable if not exactly loquacious. To all intents and purposes, we were shooting a silent film, and he was in his best form. He encouraged [Schneider] to give him vocal directions during the shot, sometimes starting over again without stopping the camera if he felt he hadn't done something well the first time. (Nor did he believe much in rehearsal, preferring the spontaneity of performance.) Often when the crew was stumped over a technical problem with the camera, he came through with suggestions, inevitably prefacing his comments by explaining that he had solved such problems many times at the Keaton Studios back in 1927.”
Both Beckett and Schneider pronounced themselves more than pleased with Keaton's performance; the latter called him "magnificent."
Keaton’s negative comments about the film are often reported but this final recollection by Schneider may redress the balance: “Whatever he may have subsequently said to interviewers or reporters about not understanding a moment of what he was doing or what the film was about, what I remember best of our final farewell on the set was that he smiled and half-admitted those six pages were worth doing after all.”
The Miracle Worker is a 1962 American biographical film directed by Arthur Penn. The screenplay by William Gibson is based on his 1959 play of the same title, which originated as a 1957 broadcast of the television anthology series Playhouse 90. Gibson's original source material was The Story of My Life, the 1902 autobiography of Helen Keller.
The plot tells the story of young Helen Keller, blind and deaf since infancy due to a severe case of scarlet fever, frustrated by her inability to communicate and subject to frequent violent and uncontrollable outbursts as a result. Unable to deal with the child, her terrified and helpless parents contact the Perkins School for the Blind for assistance. In response they send Annie Sullivan, a former student, to the Keller home to tutor the child. What ensues is a battle of wills as Annie breaks down Helen's walls of silence and darkness through persistence, love, and sheer stubbornness.
Despite the fact Anne Bancroft had won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her performance in the Broadway production, United Artists executives wanted a bigger name cast as Annie Sullivan in the film adaptation. They offered to budget the film at $5 million if Elizabeth Taylor was cast but only $500,000 if director Arthur Penn insisted on using Bancroft. Penn, who had directed the stage production, remained loyal to his star. The move paid off, and Bancroft won an Oscar for her role in the film.
For the dining room battle scene, in which Annie tries to teach Helen proper table manners, both Bancroft and Patty Duke wore padding beneath their costumes to prevent serious bruising during the intense physical skirmish. The nine-minute sequence required three cameras and took five days to film.
The film was shot at Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California and Middletown, New Jersey and was remade twice for television, in 1979 with Patty Duke as Annie Sullivan and Melissa Gilbert as Helen and in 2000 with Alison Elliott and Hallie Kate Eisenberg in the lead roles.
In his review in the New York Times, Bosley Crowther observed, "The absolutely tremendous and unforgettable display of physically powerful acting that Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke put on in William Gibson's stage play The Miracle Worker is repeated by them in the film . . . But because the physical encounters between the two . . . seem to be more frequent and prolonged than they were in the play and are shown in close-ups, which dump the passion and violence right into your lap, the sheer rough-and-tumble of the drama becomes more dominant than it was on the stage . . . The bruising encounters between the two . . . are intensely significant of the drama and do excite strong emotional response. But the very intensity of them and the fact that it is hard to see the difference between the violent struggle to force the child to obey . . . and the violent struggle to make her comprehend words makes for sameness in these encounters and eventually an exhausting monotony. This is the disadvantage of so much energy. However, Miss Bancroft's performance does bring to life and reveal a wondrous woman with great humor and compassion as well as athletic skill. And little Miss Duke, in those moments when she frantically pantomimes her bewilderment and desperate groping, is both gruesome and pitiable."
Long thought to be lost or destroyed a complete recording has been found of one of the few hour long interviews of Alfred Hitchcock . Originally broadcast as one of the first Tomorrow Shows with Tom Snyder in the Fall of 1973. This recording is from a second repeat of this show broadcast on Memorial day, 1980.
The VHS (SP) tape itself was found to be in excellent condition. While properly stored in a climate controlled environment it apparently had not been played in decades. Great care has been taken to make the digital transfer.
Donald David Dixon Ronald O’Connor (August 28, 1925 – September 27, 2003) was an American dancer, singer, and actor who came to fame in a series of movies in which he co-starred alternately with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule. Perhaps his most famous performance was as Gene Kelly's friend and colleague in Singin’ in the Rain (1952).
O'Connor broke into films in 1937, usually playing impetuous kids. He scored a huge personal success opposite Bing Crosby in Sing, You Sinners, and even at age 12 displayed excellent comedic timing. Paramount Pictures kept him busy in both A and B pictures, including Tom Sawyer, Detective and Beau Geste, until 1940, when the now-adolescent O'Connor had outgrown kid roles. He returned to vaudeville for more than a year.
In 1942 O'Connor joined Universal Pictures' troupe of talented teenagers. He received gradually larger roles in four of the studio's Gloria Jean musicals, and achieved stardom at 17 with Mister Big (1943), co-starring Gloria Jean and comic dancer Peggy Ryan. O'Connor and Ryan's energetic routines invited comparisons with M-G-M's pairing of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.
O'Connor was drafted into the armed forces in 1944. Before he reported for duty, Universal rushed him through the production of three feature films, produced simultaneously and released while the actor was overseas. Upon his return, Universal (now reorganized as Universal-International) cast him in lightweight musicals and comedies. In 1949, he was given the leading role in Francis, the whimsical story of a sad-sack soldier befriended by a talking mule. The film was a huge success, and a mixed blessing for O'Connor: the momentum of his musical career was constantly interrupted because the studio insisted on his making one "Francis" picture a year until 1955.
It was because of Francis that O'Connor missed out on a plum role: Bing Crosby's sidekick in White Christmas. O'Connor was forced to bow out when he contracted an illness transmitted by the mule. He was replaced in the film by Danny Kaye. However, his role as Cosmo the piano player in Singin' in the Rain would earn him the Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy or Musical.
In 1954 O'Connor he appeared in There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), which featured an all-star cast, including Marilyn Monroe, Dan Dailey, Ethel Merman, Mitzi Gaynor, with whow he also appeared in Anything Goes in 1955. He attempted to shed his boy-next-door image with a more dramatic role in the 1957 biopic The Buster Keaton Story. However, as the 1950s came to a close, O'Connor came across fewer and fewer parts.
After overcoming a drinking problem in the 1970s, he had a huge career boost when he hosted the Oscars, which earned him two Primetime Emmy nominations. He appeared as a gaslight-era entertainer in the 1981 film Ragtime, notable for similar encore performances by James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. O'Connor also appeared in the short-lived Bring Back Birdie on Broadway in 1981, and continued to make film and television appearances into the 1990s. Donald O'Connor's last feature film was the Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau comedy Out to Sea, in which he played a dance host on a cruise ship. O’Connor was still making public appearances well into 2003.
He died from congestive heart failure on September 27, 2003 at the age of 78. Among his last words, he is reported to have expressed tongue-in-cheek thanks to the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement that he expected to win at some future date. He was cremated at the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.
He was survived by his wife of over 40 years, Gloria, and four children.
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 Cold War political thriller film starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury and featuring Henry Silva, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish and John McGiver. It was directed by John Frankenheimer from an adaption by George Axelrod of Richard Condon's 1959 novel.
The central concept of the film is that the son of a prominent, right-wing political family has been brainwashed as an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy. The Manchurian Candidate was nationally released on Wednesday, October 24, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
During the Korean War, the Soviets capture an American platoon and take them to the region of Manchuria in Communist China. There, communists implant false memories in the soldiers' minds. Brainwashed, the soldiers are covertly returned to action, unaware of their ordeal, and under the belief that one of their own, Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), saved their lives in combat. Upon the recommendation of the platoon's commander, Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for his supposed actions. In addition, when asked to describe him, Marco and the other soldiers automatically respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." Deep down, however, they know that Shaw is a cold, sad, unsociable loner. As Marco puts it: "It isn't as if Raymond is hard to like. He's impossible to like!"
After the war, Marco — who has since been promoted to Major — suffers from the same recurring nightmare, in which a hypnotized Shaw kills two of his fellow soldiers before assembled Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean brass during a practical demonstration of the communists' brainwashing technique. Marco wants to investigate, but receives no support from his superior officers at Army Intelligence, because he has no proof. This changes when he learns that another soldier from the platoon, Allen Melvin (James Edwards), has been suffering the same nightmare and has identified the same specific communists in a photo lineup. Deciding that this is too much of a coincidence, Army Intelligence agrees to help Marco set up a task force to investigate.
It is revealed that Shaw, as a result of his conditioning in Manchuria, is an unwitting assassin whose actions are triggered by a Queen of Diamonds playing card. When he sees it, he will obey the next suggestion or order given to him. His intended role is that of a killer who, while carrying out his assignments, must also kill any witnesses and then forget his actions.
Raymond's mother, Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury), is the driving force behind her husband Senator John Yerkes Iselin (James Gregory), a bombastic demagogue in the style of Joseph McCarthy, who is dismissed by many people as a fool. He is also Raymond's stepfather. Raymond hates them both, especially his domineering mother. Sen. Iselin's political stature is established when (per his wife's orders) he interrupts a televised Congressional briefing of the Secretary of Defense and accuses him of knowing that some 207 Defense Department employees are Communist agents. This provokes a chaotic reaction among journalists and an enraged reaction from the Secretary.
However, unknown to everyone, even Raymond, the Iselins are actually Communist agents with a plan that could take them to the White House. His own mother is also the American operative for whom Raymond is the instrument with which to effect the operation's final step.
Raymond briefly finds happiness when he rekindles a youthful romance with Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish), the daughter of Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), one of his step-father's political rivals. Raymond previously courted Jocelyn in order to get at his parents in a Romeo and Juliet-style romance, but they then genuinely fell in love, both she and her father being the nearest thing Raymond has ever had to having friends. The couple are reunited as part of a plan by Mrs. Iselin to get Senator Jordan to support her husband's vice presidential bid. They even elope and get married. Although pleased with the match, Senator Jordan tells Mrs. Iselin that he will move for Senator Iselin's impeachment if he makes a bid to become their party's vice-presidential candidate. Mrs. Iselin "triggers" Raymond and has him assassinate Senator Jordan, as well as Jocelyn, who witnessed the event. Raymond has no recollection of doing this and is grief-stricken when he hears of the murders.
In the course of Marco's investigation, he discovers the role of the Queen of Diamonds card in putting Raymond in an hypnotic state for his assignments. Marco meets Raymond and, using a trick deck composed entirely of such cards, gets the full story from Raymond and instructs him not to carry out further orders. Later, Mrs. Iselin primes Raymond to assassinate their party's presidential candidate at the nomination convention so that Senator Iselin, as the vice-presidential candidate, will become the presidential candidate by default and give an inflammatory anti-communist speech (written by the communists themselves). This will cause mass hysteria that will get Iselin elected and justify him taking on presidential emergency powers that, in Mrs. Iselin's words, "will make martial law seem like anarchy." Thereby President Iselin — the "Manchurian Candidate" — will rule America on behalf of the communists.
In a cynically moving scene, Raymond's mother admits to the activated Raymond that she has been a Communist agent for years. She needed an assassin to complete her plan and regrets that he is involved. After all, the world is full of killers who do not require brainwashing to do the job. The International Communist Conspiracy chose Sergeant Raymond Shaw as the assassin because it solidified their hold and control over his mother, and she intends to strike back at them once in power.
Marco's attempt to free Raymond from Mrs. Iselin's control appears to fail. Raymond enters the convention hall disguised as a Catholic priest and takes up a position to carry out the assassination. Marco and his supervisor, Colonel Milt (Douglas Henderson), arrive at the convention to stop him. As the Presidential nominee (Robert Riordan) makes his speech, Raymond instead takes his revenge by killing his stepfather and mother. He then commits suicide in front of Marco, while wearing his Medal of Honor.
For Raymond's mother, Sinatra had wanted Lucille Ball, but Frankenheimer, who had worked with Lansbury in a mother role in All Fall Down, suggested having her for the part and insisted that Sinatra watch the film before decisions were made.
Love Never Dies is a musical with a book and lyrics by Glenn Slater and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. A sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, it will be directed by Jack O'Brien and is scheduled to open at the Adelphi Theatre in the West End on 9 March 2010, on Broadway on 11 November 2010, and in Australia in 2011. It will be the first time a musical sequel is staged in the West End.
On 8 October 2009, Lloyd Webber launched the musical at a press conference held at Her Majesty's Theatre, where the original Phantom has been running since 1986. Also present were Sierra Boggess, who has been cast as Christine Daaé, and Ramin Karimloo, who will portray the Phantom, a role he currently is playing in the West End. Karimiloo sang his character's first song in the new production for the journalists, industry insiders, and fans who had assembled for the presentation. Boggess originated the role of Ariel in The Little Mermaid on Broadway.
The musical is set a decade after the end of Phantom. Christine is invited to perform at Phantasma, a new attraction in Coney Island, by an anonymous impresario and, with her husband Raoul and son Gustave in tow, journeys to Brooklyn, unaware it is the Phantom who has arranged her appearance in the popular beach resort.
Lloyd Webber first began plans for a sequel in 1997. Following a conversation with Maria Björnson, the designer of The Phantom of the Opera, Lloyd Webber decided that were a sequel to come about, it would be set in turn-of-the-20th century New York City. Lloyd Webber began collaborating with author Fredrick Forsyth on the project, but it soon fell apart as Lloyd Webber felt the ideas they were developing would be difficult to adapt for the musical stage. Forsyth went on to publish some of the ideas he had worked on with Lloyd Webber as a novel entitled The Phantom of Manhattan.
Lloyd Webber continually returned to the project throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, collaborating with a number of unknown writers. Although it was during this time that Lloyd Webber came up with the idea of making The Phantom the designer of Coney Island amusement park attractions, Lloyd Webber still did not feel the ideas he had were adaptable into a piece of musical theatre.
Finally, in 2007, Ben Elton (who had served as the librettist for Lloyd Webber's The Beautiful Game) approached Lloyd Webber with his own synopsis for a sequel, based on Lloyd Webber's initial ideas. Elton's treatment of the story focused more on the original characters of The Phantom of the Opera and omitted the new characters that Lloyd Webber and Forsyth had developed. Lloyd Webber was pleased with Elton's treatment and considered it to be the right version of the story to be adapted into a musical. Elton's synopsis served as the catalyst that led Lloyd Webber to begin work on the sequel, and in early March 2007, in his website's video blog, he officially announced he would be moving forward with the project.
In May 2008, on the live finale of his show I'd Do Anything, Lloyd Webber made the announcement that the sequel would likely be called Phantom: Once Upon Another Time. However, on 14 September 2008, during the BBC's Birthday in the Park concert celebrating his 60th birthday, Lloyd Webber announced the title would be Love Never Dies.
In July 2008, the first act of what was still known as Phantom: Once Upon Another Time was performed at Lloyd Webber's annual Sydmonton Festival. In the preview, the Phantom was played by Ramin Karimloo, while Raoul was played by Alistair Robbins.
On 3 July 2009 Lloyd Webber announced that Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess had been cast as the Phantom and Christine in Love Never Dies. It also was confirmed that the role of Meg Giry would be played by Summer Strallen.
Lloyd Webber had originally intended for Love Never Dies to open in London, New York and Shanghai simultaneously in the Autumn of 2009. Production was later put on hold as Lloyd Webber felt it would be too difficult to cast and rehearse three simultaneous productions of the same show without it being detrimental to the quality of the productions. On 8 October 2009, at a press launch event at Her Majesty's Theatre, Lloyd Webber announced that Love Never Dies would begin previews in London on 20 February 2010. A production will be mounted in New York on Thursday 11 November 2010 and a further production in Australia will begin performances in 2011. Lloyd Webber has also announced that plans for Asian and Canadian productions are well under way.
Lloyd Webber revealed that the original cast recording has already been recorded, though will not be released in its entirety until the production begins.
The plot takes place on Coney Island in 1906, approximately a decade after the events of The Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom has travelled to Coney Island with Madame Giry and her daughter Meg. Beginning his new life in America as a freakshow attraction, he has worked his way up to a position of power and is now the successful architect of a number of Coney Island attractions. Despite his new found wealth and success he still longs for Christine and manages to arrange for her to come and sing at one of his latest attractions. Christine arrives at Coney Island along with Raoul and their son Gustave, unknowingly returning to the man she feared most.
Marge Simpson is gracing the cover of Playboy magazine, becoming the first cartoon character in the publication's history.
The November issue sees Marge posing on a chair with the distinctive Playboy Bunny logo.
It marks the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons, viewed as America's most dysfunctional family.
The move to put Marge on the cover is an attempt to draw in a younger audience for the soft porn magazine.
"We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd," said Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey.
It is not yet know how much of Marge will be on show inside the issue, but "it's very, very racy," said editorial director James Jellinek.
He added: "She is a stunning example of the cartoon form."
The edition goes on sale in the US on 16 October, but subscribers to the magazine will find their copies have a more traditional live model on the cover.
Playboy owner Hugh Hefner is said to be a huge Simpsons fan and appeared in an episode in the early 1990s.
Targets (1968) is a film written, produced and directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
The story concerns an insurance agent and Vietnam veteran, played by Tim O'Kelly, who murders his wife and mother and then goes on a shooting rampage from atop a Los Angeles oil refinery. When police start tracking him down, he flees to and resumes his shootings at a drive-in theater where an aging horror film actor is making a final promotional appearance.
The character and actions of the killer are patterned after Charles Whitman, the University of Texas sniper. The character of actor Byron Orlok, named after Max Schreck's vampire Count Orlok in 1922's Nosferatu, is patterned after Boris Karloff himself, who in fact plays the part in his last appearance in a major American film (although Bogdanovich states that, unlike Orlok, Karloff was not embittered with the movie business and did not wish to retire).
In the film's finale, which takes place at a San Fernando Valley drive-in theater, Karloff — the old-fashioned, traditional screen monster who always obeyed the rules — confronts the new, nihilistic late-1960s monster in the shape of a clean-cut, unassuming multiple murderer.
Boris Karloff and Peter Bogdanovich
Bogdanovich got the chance to make Targets because Boris Karloff owed studio head Roger Corman two days' work. Corman told Bogdanovich he could make any film he liked provided he used Karloff and stayed under budget. In addition, Bogdanovich had to use clips from Corman's Napoleonic-era thriller The Terror in the movie. The clips from The Terror feature Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff. Bogdanovich has said that Samuel Fuller provided generous help on the screenplay and refused to accept either a fee or a screen credit, so Bogdanovich named his own character Sammy Michaels (Fuller's middle name was Michael) in tribute.
Although the film was written and production photography completed in 1967, it was released after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and thus had some topical relevance to then-current events. Nevertheless it was not very successful at the box office.
However, Bogdanovich, who appears in the film as a young writer-director (i.e. like Karloff, playing a character very similar to himself in real life), credits it with getting him noticed by the studios, which in turn led to his directing three very successful films in the early 1970s.
Network is a 1976 satirical film about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System (UBS), and its struggle with poor ratings. It was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, and stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Robert Duvall and features Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty and Beatrice Straight. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
Network has continued to receive recognition, decades after its initial release. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2002, it was inducted into the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame as a film that has "set an enduring standard for U.S. American entertainment." In 2006, Chayefsky's script was voted one of the top ten movie scripts of all-time by the Writers Guild of America, East. In 2007, the film was 64th among the Top 100 Greatest U.S. American Films as chosen by the American Film Institute, a ranking slightly higher than the one AFI gave it ten years earlier.
The script was written by Paddy Chayefsky, and the producer was Howard Gottfried. The two had just come off a lawsuit against United Artists, challenging the studio's right to lease their previous film, The Hospital, to ABC in a package with a less successful film. Despite recently settling this lawsuit, Chayefsky and Gottfried agreed to allow UA to finance the film. But after reading the script, UA found the subject matter too controversial and backed out.
Undeterred, Chayefsky and Gottfried shopped the script around to other studios, and eventually found an interested party in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Soon afterwards UA reversed itself and looked to co-finance the film with MGM, who for the past several years had distributed through UA in the US. MGM agreed to let UA back on board, and gave them the international distribution rights, with MGM controlling North American rights.
The film premiered in New York City on November 27, 1976, with a wide release following shortly afterward.
The Shootist is the final film role of John Wayne.
Directed by Don Siegel, it tells the story of John Bernard (J.B.) Books (John Wayne) (born January, 29, 1843), an aging gunfighter, the most celebrated "shootist" extant, who is struggling with terminal prostate cancer. The movie begins with a clip montage of some of Wayne's earlier western movies. Although Books is perceived by some of the characters as an amoral opportunist, he expresses his simple creed when he says, "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." Arriving in El Paso, Texas (Carson City, Nevada in the movie) in 1901, Books seeks the second medical opinion of an old friend, E. W. ("Doc") Hostetler (Jimmy Stewart).
Once Hostetler confirms the presence of the cancer, Books rents a room from the widow 'Bond' ("that's a crackerjack of a name for a woman") Rogers (Lauren Bacall), and her son Gillom Rogers (Ron Howard). Books' presence in town is soon known to most, and the news spreads by telegraph throughout the country. This results in the arrival of troublemakers to lure Books back to his past. Not only does he have to deal with his inevitable death, but he has to deal with the vultures who come to profit from his infamy. Having never had trouble facing death in other men, Books now struggles with the fact that death is calling on him. On his 58th birthday, January 29, 1901 he confronts the three men, offering to settle an outstanding score, and they meet in an empty saloon, where he kills Mike Sweeney, Jack Pulford and Jay Cobb. Then the bartender shoots Books and in return Gillom shoots him, throws the gun away and walks out of the saloon and down the street.
The character of J.B. Books - John Wayne in the film - serves to parallel the final days of Wayne himself, who died from stomach cancer three years after production ended. The Shootist would be his final film role, concluding a legendary career that began during the silent film era in 1926. The knowledge of Wayne's health during the production would inspire much of the dialogue and imagery of the film. Lauren Bacall had suffered through the 1957 death of her husband Humphrey Bogart, who died of throat cancer, adding further shading to the parallels of the film.
At the time the movie rights were purchased, John Wayne was not seriously considered for the role, due to questions about his health and his ability to complete the filming. The producers had wanted George C. Scott, but Wayne actively campaigned for the role and made completion of the film a personal mission.
Contrary to popular belief, John Wayne did not have cancer when he made this film. His entire left lung and several ribs had been removed in surgery on 16 September 1964, and in 1969 he was declared cancer free. It was not until 12 January 1979, almost three years after this movie had been filmed, that the disease was found to have returned.
The film was shot on location in Carson City, Nevada and at studios in Burbank, California. In Carson City, the house at 500 N. Mountain Street that doubled for J.B. Books' rooming house (owned by Bond Rogers in the movie) is three doors south from the Nevada governor's mansion. The only change to the house was a portico added on the southern side. Besides changing the location from El Paso to Carson City, and having his horse Dollor written in, Wayne also changed the ending of the screenplay. Books was supposed to shoot Jack Pulford (Hugh O'Brian) in the back, and then Gillom Rogers (Ron Howard) was to shoot Books. Wayne said "I've made over 250 pictures and have never shot a guy in the back. Change it." He also did not want the young Gillom killing him. The screenplay was changed, having him shoot Pulford in the head, the bartender then shooting Books, followed by Rogers shooting the bartender.
The horse that J.B. Books (Wayne) rides in the film, Dollor ('Ole Dollor), that he gives to Gillom Rogers (Howard), had been Wayne's favorite horse for ten years, through several Westerns. The horse shown during the final scene of True Grit was Dollor, a two-year-old in 1969. Wayne had Dollor, a chestnut Quarter horse gelding, written into the script (although there is no mention in the book of a specific horse) of The Shootist because of his love for the horse; it was a condition for him working on the project. Wayne would not let anyone else ride the horse. Robert Wagner was a rare exception, who rode the horse in a segment of the Hart to Hart television show, after Wayne's death.
John Wayne and Lauren Bacall made one previous film together two decades earlier called Blood Alley (1955), a seafaring adventure set in China.
James Stewart and John Wayne also made one previous film together, John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
The original poster of the film is Richard Amsel art.
In my case, self-absorption is completely justified. I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention.
(Waldo Lydecker - Laura 1944)
