Notizie

Time Capsule Productions releases fan adaptation of Superman: Red Son. The Dcu's Elseworlds banner may include live-action adaptations of popular DC Comics stories, especially looking at the comics' own Elseworlds range. There is some real potential for a live-action Superman: Red Son movie under Gunn and Safran's DC regime.

Superman: Red Son is adapted as a live-action DC movie in a new fan production, showing a very different Man of Steel. One of the DC icons who is constantly depicted outside of the comics is Superman, with various media adaptations throughout the decades. As there have been numerous actors to play Superman in live-action, Krypton's last son continues to grow his legacy on the big and small screens - set to expand yet further with the upcoming Dcu Superman movie debut.

Given the character's popularity, he also has a considerable range of fan made projects that also delve into...

Image: Clockwise from top: The Crying Game by Palace Pictures, The Banshees of Inisherin by Searchlight Pictures, The Secret of Kells by New Video

When you think about Ireland, the first thing that comes to mind may not be the country’s robust film industry. But the fact is that...

Third Man on the Mountain

1959 / 105 Mins. / 1.66: 1

Starring Michael Rennie, James MacArthur

Written by Eleanore Griffin

Directed by Ken Annakin

CineSavant Revival Screening Review

From Newbery Medal to amusement park thrill ride, James Ramsey Ullman’s Banner in the Sky climbed the ladder as deftly as the men who scaled the mountains in his 1955 best seller, a fictionalized account of the first explorer to make it to the top of the Matterhorn.

It was rarefied air even for Ullman who, when he wasn’t writing, could be found shinnying up the nearest cliff side—though not recognized as a “high end” climber, the writer’s attraction to life or death experiences made him an honorary member of a lofty clique. In 1957, Walt Disney purchased the rights to Ullman’s novel and set the Mouse Machine in motion, first the tie-in paperback, then the Sunday comic strip, and after much fanfare,...

Stella Stevens, the screen siren of the 1960s who brought sweet sexiness to such films as The Nutty Professor, Too Late Blues and The Ballad of Cable Hogue, has died. She was 84.

Stevens died Friday in Los Angeles, her son, actor-producer-director Andrew Stevens, told The Hollywood Reporter. “She had been in hospice for quite some time with Stage 7 Alzheimer’s,” he said.

Shining brightest in light comedies, the blond, blue-eyed actress appeared as a shy beauty contestant from Montana in Vincente Minnelli’s The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), portrayed a headstrong nun in Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows! (1968) opposite Rosalind Russell and frolicked with the fun-loving Dean Martin in two films: the Matt Helm spy spoof The Silencers (1966) and How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life (1968).

Stevens also starred opposite Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), a movie she said she detested.

Her signature role, however, came in The Nutty Professor (1963), produced,...

Darby O’Gill and the Little People

Blu ray

Disney Movie Club

1959 / 1.66 : 1 / 93 Min.

Starring Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Sean Connery

Written by Lawrence Edward Watkin

Directed by Robert Stevenson

A late ‘50s showcase for classic horror films, Shock Theater managed to captivate children and worry their over-protective parents. But the kids knew the score, if you were looking for a real shock, forget Frankenstein and Dracula and put on a Disney movie.

Walt Disney’s assault on our nervous systems began in 1937 with the story of a bloodthirsty crone bent on removing the heart of her trusting rival—that feel-good fable was followed by the huntsman who murdered Bambi’s mom, and the demon-fueled bacchanal in 1940’s Fantasia. Uncle Walt’s reign of terror reached its apex with another kind of mad monster party in 1959’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People—a full moon parade of green-eyed goblins...

It’s an unusual sight for James Bond fans. Standing in a gloriously green Technicolor field by a California stream intended to pass for Ireland, Sean Connery cuts a more rugged approximation of Walt Disney masculinity, taking breaks between a swing of his scythe to sing, “She’s my dear, my darling one, my smilin’ and beguilin’ one, I love the ground she walks upon my darling Irish girl.”

To be charitable, Connery’s attempt at an Irish lilt was no more convincing in 1959’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People than it would be three decades later for his Oscar winning turn in The Untouchables. Nevertheless, there was something charming, beguiling even, about both performances, with the musical one proving strangely important to Connery getting the role of Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007.

That might be in large part because Dr. No producer Cubby Broccoli anticipated Fleming,...

What’s the best Ecological Thriller of all time? Finally available in a good Region A disc is Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz’s thrilling, realistic account of our world turned topsy-turvy, and perhaps plunging into a fiery oblivion. The violent shifts of climate and weather patterns echo today’s global warming chaos. Newspapermen Edward Judd and Leo McKern track down a frightening government secret; Janet Munro is the confidential clerk that leaks the truth. One of the top all-time British Science Fiction films is also a great newspaper story about the importance of a free press. Extras include a new Richard Harland Smith commentary.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date July 7, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Edward Judd, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden, Reginald Beckwith, Renée Asherson, Arthur Christiansen, Pamela Green, Robin Hawdon.

Cinematography: Harry Waxman...

What’s the best Ecological Thriller of all time? Finally available in a good Region A disc is Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz’s thrilling, realistic account of a world turned topsy-turvy, and perhaps plunging into a fiery oblivion. The violent climate/weather pattern shifts predict today’s global warming chaos. Newspapermen Edward Judd and Leo McKern track down a frightening government secret; Janet Munro is the confidential clerk that leaks the truth. One of the top all-time British Science Fiction films is also a great newspaper story about the importance of a free press. Extras include a new Richard Harland Smith commentary.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date July 7, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Edward Judd, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden, Reginald Beckwith, Renée Asherson, Arthur Christiansen, Pamela Green, Robin Hawdon.

Cinematography: Harry Waxman

Art...

David Crow Alec Bojalad Hannah Bonner Dec 9, 2019

We have collected some of the best movies to stream on Disney+, from Star Wars to animation, and Marvel to Mary Poppins.

Disney+ is the gift that keeps on giving for anyone who ever grew up listening to “If You Wish Upon a Star” (which is almost all living Americans). More than likely, you spent the first week or two of the service diving into childhood favorites from your youth. But what if you want to venture out? What if you want to watch movies you might remember, vaguely, but don’t have memorized by heart? Well, we’re here to humbly collect for you the best family movies to watch on Disney+!

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

This definitive adaptation of the Jules Verne classic still delights baby boomers and likely a fair number of their grandchildren too. A winsome fantasy about...

Horror changes with each generation. In the ‘50s, societal fear of the Atomic bomb was projected back at us through the use of metaphorical figures such as giant lizards, oversized sea-creatures, and warped representations of nature too often taken for granted. And then there’s fun fare like The Crawling Eye (1958), which posits that visitors from space don’t always come in peace, nor are they willing to go quietly. I guess films don’t always have to reflect society.

This British independent production was released at home under its original title The Trollenberg Terror (also the name of the 1956 BBC serial it is based on) in October with a stateside rollout at the end of the year; unloved by critics (and mocked by Mystery Science Theater 3000), the film satiated the drive-in circuit looking for cheap thrills and cheaper monsters. But The Crawling Eye offers up more - atmosphere,...

An old monster formula props up this fantastic film, but at its heart is a brilliant central idea that excites the imagination. Jack H. Harris’s sophomore picture after The Blob is on the awkward side, but the good stuff is much better than we expect it to be. Ambitious performances by Robert Lansing, Lee Meriwether and James Congdon come through with something unique, with graces we just don’t find in independent Sci-Fi from the late 1950s. And the new Blu-ray rejuvenates the film’s special effects — all it took was a good 4K restoration.

4D Man

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1959 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 85 min. / Street Date August 20, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Robert Lansing, Lee Meriwether, James Congdon, Robert Strauss, Edgar Stehli, Patty Duke, Guy Raymond, Chic James, Elbert Smith, Jasper Deeter.

Cinematography: Theodore J. Pahle

Film Editor: William B. Murphy

Original Music: Ralph Carmichael

Written by Theodore Simonson,...

St. Patrick’s Day is another fun holiday to celebrate with a few good movies between gulps of green beverages and hunts for that one person who forgot what day it was and will get your full wrath in one hard pinch. I wanted to take a little time to list a few films which will help you rewind after a hard day at work or at the local Irish pub. These are just a few of my favorites and a couple suggestions that give horror fans and family folks an alternative to the usual fare they’re bombarded with every year around this time.

Leprechaun

Dan O'Grady (Shay Duffin) steals 100 gold coins from a leprechaun (Warwick Davis in a role far from his cuddly one as Wicket the Ewok) while on vacation in Ireland. The leprechaun follows him home, but Dan locks the murderous midget in a crate, held...

This Sunday, I’m pleased to be part of a new series of Walt Disney presentations on Turner Classic Movies. I’ll be joining Ben Mankiewicz to introduce a full evening of Disney treats, including the classic Silly Symphonies short Santa’s Workshop (1932) and two other wintry cartoons, the wonderful behind-the-scenes feature The Reluctant Dragon (1941) featuring Robert Benchley, my boyhood favorite Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955), the Oscar-winning True Life Adventure The Vanishing Prairie (1954), and another film I’ve always liked, Third Man on the Mountain (1959) starring James MacArthur, Michael Rennie, Janet Munro, and Herbert Lom, followed by Perilous Assignment, an...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]...

★★★☆☆It's amazing how in the space of fifty odd years public taste and opinions have changed. Take for instance the classic Science Fiction thriller The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) - newly restored and released on DVD and Blu-ray to coincide with the BFI's Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder season (running from October through to December). Directed by Val Guest, the filmmaker responsible for Hammer's groundbreaking 1950s Quatermass films, and starring Edward Judd and Janet Munro, The Day the Earth Caught Fire brings a gritty tabloid realism to a terrifying subject that was very much in the public consciousness at the time of its release.

'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...

The gray rolling seas thundered through the forest of pilings under the piers, sometimes cresting enough to send a geyser of wind-whipped froth up onto the decking. Other places, it poured through the gaps the wind and tide had eaten through the dunes and poured into the beach town streets. It pulled boats large and small from their moorings in the lagoon marinas and piled them like a child’s toys up on the land. Some in apartment buildings would tell of the cars in the ground level garage floating against each other bathtub playthings. But there was nothing childlike in the way it took entire houses, made seaside villages look like an extension of the ocean and not the land.

For the day and a half I watched Hurricane Sandy pound my home state of New Jersey – which was all the time I had before I lost my cable...

Apocalypse is an ever-popular idea in cinema. After all, what could be more dramatic than the possibility -- or even the actuality -- of the end of everyone and everything that you've ever known. It's an all purpose metaphor, and can be used to tell all kinds of stories, in all kinds of tones, as highlighted by this weekend's comedy-drama "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World," which sees Steve Carell and Keira Knightley brought together by the impending end of civilization.

The film's only semi-successful at melding romantic comedy with the end of days, as you'll find from our review, but there's plenty in the film to recommend it as well. And if you're still looking for a little more end-of-the-world drama, we've picked out five lesser-known examples that are worth seeking out Asap. Check out our selections below, and let us know your own favorites in the comments section.

Between Dimensions [1] is a continuing feature that examines science-fiction on the screen in all of its forms: big or small, good or bad. Man fumbles the planet... The first in a continuing series If you want to sample the golden age of science fiction, The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a good place to start. Since British director Val Guest made the film in 1961, this apocalypse is a little more cerebral than what we’re used to (e.g. the recent new gold standard of 2012). With limited effects, Guest relies on good actors, disaster news reels, and clever staging to make his story real. Set in London, Decf sharply conveys the nervousness of a world discovering nuclear fission for better or worse. In this case, much worse. The premise is simple – two simultaneous nuclear explosions (thank you USA and Russia) knock the earth off its axis. England’s weather...