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I’m old enough to remember when Jacques Rivette films were the domain of dark-web networks and substandard DVD rips, a conspiratorial network worthy of his cinema. It’s still a little strange seeing that April will feature a 10-film, one-short Criterion Channel program that combines of his canonized masterpieces with decidedly lesser-seens––plus Va Savoir, which I really hope is the recently unearthed four-hour cut for which there’s no substitute. Penélope Cruz is also subject of a retrospective in April, which––more than making me pine for a Rivette collab that never was––will include both Abre Los Ojos and Vanilla Sky, some Almodóvar, and another in the Channel’s ongoing let’s-add-a-Woody-Allen-movie campaign, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

For themed series, J. Hoberman has curated a series on the dangers of ’60s and ’70s New York that runs from Michael Roemer’s recently restored The Plot Against Harry and...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSInland Empire.Former MoviePass CEO Ted Farnsworth pleaded guilty to defrauding the company’s investors by making “materially false and misleading representations” of the company’s operations. In the words of a Justice Department official, Farnsworth “concealed that MoviePass’s subscription model was a money-losing gimmick and falsely claimed that [the company] used artificial intelligence to monetize MoviePass’s subscriber data,” the latter tactic described as “AI washing.”Shout! Studios has acquired the worldwide rights to the Golden Princess movie library, a collection of 156 Hong Kong action cinema classics that have been unavailable in Western markets for decades. The collection includes John Woo classics like The Killer (1989), Bullet in the Head (1990), and Hard Boiled (1992), as well as Tsui Hark’s...

There's like, been a murder, dude. Years before Jeff Bridges graced screens with his defining role in The Big Lebowski, he starred in a darker, grittier stoner noir of sorts. Cutter's Way is a forgotten, early '80s thriller masterpiece. Directed by Ivan Passer, the film was a groundbreaking departure for how veterans were portrayed in Hollywood at the time. John Heard (Home Alone) appeared alongside Bridges, delivering one of his greatest lead role performances as an alcoholic Vietnam War vet. Their partnership notably shares a similar dynamic to the central friendship between The Dude and his unstable Vietnam War vet best friend, Walter, played by a buzzing John Goodman, in The Coen Brothers' classic. Both films have gone on to achieve cult-classic status, but couldn't contrast each other more in terms of their moods and ambiance.

Variety, along with her partner, musician Dan Gilroy, have confirmed that Shelley Duvall, best known for her roles in The Shining and Nashville, has died. She passed away on Thursday, July 11 in Blanco, Texas.

Shelley Duvall – Her Impact In The World Of Films

Duvall’s work with Stanley Kubrick in The Shining, which required extensive shooting that took over a year to complete, was said to push the actress to her limits.

Some of the scenes needed over 100 takes, with the baseball sequence appearing in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most takes needed in a single dialogue seen.

Shelley is also well-known for her work with director Robert Altman, and her performance in his 3 Woman, where she received a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA nomination.

Her first onscreen appearance was in Altman’s Brewster McCloud, and went on to work with the...

Shelley Duvall, the big-eyed, waifish performer who won the Cannes actress award for Robert Altman’s “3 Women” and endured Stanley Kubrick’s intense directing techniques to star in “The Shining,” died Thursday in Blanco, Texas, Variety confirmed with her partner Dan Gilroy. She was 75.

Duvall was known for working with director Altman, who cast her in “Brewster McCloud” as her first screen role. She went on to appear in his films “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Thieves Like Us” before starring as part of the ensemble cast of “Nashville” in 1975. After gaining attention in “Nashville,” Altman cast her in “Buffalo Bill and the Indians,” then gave her unusual screen presence a chance to shine in “3 Women,” for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress as well as a BAFTA nomination.

Also in 1977, Duvall played a Rolling Stone journalist in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,...

The 58th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff), which kicks off in the Czech spa town on Friday, promises a balanced diet of world premieres and other movies to discover, as well as hits and favorites from the recent festival circuit.

Central Europe’s biggest cinema fest and party once again dishes up a mix of regional and international films, including serious and some more fun fare, with a healthy serving of edgy, innovative, genre-bending, maybe somewhat outlandish-sounding movies, which it has often used as a special ingredient.

So without further ado, here is THR‘s look at some of the more unusual and offbeat-sounding films that Kviff will unspool for cineasts, tastemakers and industry insiders from June 28 through July 6.

Tiny Lights

Some filmmakers are proud of providing a new and different perspective on important topics and issues. Czech writer and director Beata Parkanová seems to have...

How now, what news: the Criterion Channel’s July lineup is here. Eight pop renditions of Shakespeare are on the docket: from movies you forgot were inspired by the Bard (Abel Ferrara’s China Girl) to ones you’d wish to forget altogether (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing), with maybe my single favorite interpretation (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet) alongside Paul Mazursky, Gus Van Sant, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jarman, and (of course) Kenneth Branagh. A neonoir collection arrives four months ahead of Noirvember: two Ellroy adaptations, two from De Palma that are not his neonoir Ellroy adaptation, two from the Coen brothers (i.e. the chance to see a DVD-stranded The Man Who Wasn’t There in HD), and––finally––a Michael Winner picture given Criterion’s seal of approval.

Columbia screwballs run between classics to lesser-seens while Nicolas Roeg and Heisei-era Godzilla face off. A Times Square collection brings The Gods of Times Square,...

Yentl.The publication of My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand's 970-page memoir, has offered fans of the actress-singer-icon a long-awaited glimpse into her life. It’s a lot of book, a maximalist feast of details and anecdotes that paints a lavish portrait of the woman who became a generational star. It’s easy to forget just how much of Streisand's career was besieged by misogyny, whether it was critics' repeated derision of appearance or co-stars like Walter Matthau berating her on set. Streisand certainly never forgot, and her memoir offers frequent reminders of the sexism that hampered her path to success at every turn. Her memoir conveys an achingly detailed portrait of endurance by a wildly ambitious woman. Wherever she went, she was derided for trying to do or be “too much,” and she took pleasure in proving her detractors wrong in her inimitable style. When she chose to get behind the camera and direct,...

The supposed demise of physical media has been well covered and long lamented, with each passing year bringing reports of yet another nail in the coffin of the once flourishing DVD and Blu-ray market. Fall 2023 brought a double whammy of bad news: Netflix shipped its final discs to customers before closing up its DVD department for good, and a month later, Best Buy announced that it would be phasing out the sale of physical media. Yet, while DVDs are no longer the massive revenue generator for studios that they were throughout the first decade of the 2000s, it has never been a better time to be a physical media enthusiast. Thanks to independent labels like Criterion, Kino Lorber, Shout! Factory, Arrow, Imprint, Indicator, and many others, every month sees the release of well over a dozen exceptional titles, often lovingly restored and with indispensable scholarly extras.

That we’re living...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

More than four decades after the New Hollywood films of the ’60s and ’70s hit screens and became enshrined as a near-mythological period of artistic excellence in American cinema, the era’s attributes also become increasingly contrasted with current American cinema.

Nonconformity, provocation and experimentation were mainstream. Today, those qualities aren’t selling movie tickets but instead driving streamer subscriptions. And the big hits are all characterized by the packaged goods franchise hits that dominate box office to the almost total exclusion of personal cinema.

Which is a long explanation of why awards season is more essential than ever.

As someone who lived through and loved the New Hollywood films and filmmakers, this is the time of year when the hunger for the ambitious telling of difficult stories is sated.

In addition to Todd Field’s wonderful and already much-celebrated “Tár,” which has evoked positive comparisons to the best of New Hollywood giant Stanley Kubrick,...

A black comedy with an extremely ironic title, this 1971 film was directed by Ivan Passer and stars George Segal as a drug addict who calls Times Square his home. The supporting cast is reason enough to see it: Paula Prentiss as Segal’s wife, Karen Black as his sometime girlfriend, and Robert De Niro as a crooked cop.

The post Born to Win appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Ivan Passer’s superb coda to the ’60s counterculture generation now enjoys a formidable reputation; this new Fun City Editions release packs it with terrific extras. It may have the best performances by top stars John Heard, Jeff Bridges and Lisa Eichhorn. Disaffected 30-somethings in Santa Barbara investigate a murder and then try to blackmail a corporate CEO. Heard is the maimed, one-eyed veteran already judged unstable, Bridges the yacht bum who gets by on his good looks, and Eichhorn the most forlorn woman of the early ’80s, looking for a reason to give a damn about something. Jordan Cronenweth’s cinematography and Jack Nitzsche’s music track couldn’t be bettered; the movie deserves the place of honor granted to Easy Rider.

Cutter’s Way

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1981 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 109 min. / Street Date October 25, 2022 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 39.98

Starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn, Ann Dusenberry,...

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William Richert, the maverick writer-director behind the Jeff Bridges-starring conspiracy thriller Winter Kills and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, which gave River Phoenix his first leading role, has died. He was 79.

Richert died Tuesday at his home in Portland, Oregon, his wife, Gretchen, told The Hollywood Reporter. She would not disclosed the cause of death but said he chose to use Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act.

Richert’s résumé also included co-writing The Happy Hooker (1975), starring Lynn Redgrave as celebrity madam Xaviera Hollander, and a pair of Ivan Passer-directed films: Law and Disorder (1974), starring Carroll O’Connor and Ernest Borgnine, and Crime and Passion (1976), starring Omar Sharif and Karen Black.

A black comedy take on the mystery surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination, Winter Kills (1979) featured Bridges fronting an all-star cast that also included John Huston, Elizabeth Taylor,...

Ivan Passer’s first American film and his first in the English language is a core life-with-a-junkie tale in a cold Manhattan winter. George Segal is the ‘habituated, not addicted’ (he says) user whose married life has already been destroyed. Can he escape with the help of his new girlfriend? Hector Elizondo’s pimp/pusher has no intention of letting that happen. What’s weird is Passer’s frequently light tone — Segal’s criminal antics verge on the absurd. It’s a great film to see Karen Black, a young Robert De Niro and even Paula Prentiss in action, and yet another snapshot of Times Square in its most degraded decade.

Born to Win

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Scraping Bottom / Street Date May 31, 2022 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 27.99, from Amazon / 34.99

Starring: George Segal, Karen Black, Paula Prentiss, Hector Elizondo, Jay Fletcher, Robert De Niro, Ed Madsen, Marcia Jean Kurtz,...

Above: Poster by Frank Stella for the 9th New York Film Festival.Compared to the 32 films in the main slate of this year’s New York Film Festival, not to mention the seemingly hundreds of others playing in sidebars, the 1971 edition of the NYFF, half a century ago, was a lean affair. With only 18 films, down from 78 just four years earlier, the ninth edition of the NYFF was, according to its director Richard Roud, a “belt-tightening festival, a year of consolidation.” In fact, the financially strapped festival almost didn’t take place that year. A New York Times article published midway through the event mentions that “outside the 984-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater, there is only one poster announcing the festival [one assumes it was the beautiful Frank Stella poster above] that is quietly and modestly taking place inside.” A far cry from the glorious phalanx of digital billboards currently beaming outside Alice Tully Hall and the Elinor Bunin Center.The...

Next month’s Criterion Channel selection is here, and as 2021 winds down further cements their status as our single greatest streaming service. Off the top I took note of their eight-film Jia Zhangke retro as well as the streaming premieres of Center Stage and Malni. And, yes, Margaret has been on HBO Max for a while, but we can hope Criterion Channel’s addition—as part of the 63(!)-film “New York Stories”—opens doors to a more deserving home-video treatment.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy, Bruno Dumont’s Joan of Arc duology, and Criterion’s editions of Irma Vep and Flowers of Shanghai also mark major inclusions—just a few years ago the thought of Hou’s masterpiece streaming in HD was absurd.

I could implore you not to sleep on The Hottest August and Point Blank and Variety and In the Cut or, look, so many Ernst Lubitsch movies,...

Bouncing back in live form after two cancellations caused by Covid safety measures last year, the 55th edition of the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival has kept its core values intact but with significant new formatting.

Kviff’s most radical departure from long tradition — ending its dedicated documentary section and blending non-fiction films into the Crystal Globe and East of the West competition sections — was “a serious decision, which took us a few years to make,” says artistic director Karel Och.

But, he says, the fest is satisfied that the documentaries now being weighed by the two juries are worthy of their new role.

“Considering the types of documentaries we aim to highlight, the ambition, the level of script and directing,” says Och, they are “absolutely comparable with the non-docs. The distinction and a separate doc ‘ghetto’ was no longer necessary.”

Another challenge in a year full of them was...

The July lineup at The Criterion Channel has been revealed, most notably featuring the new Wong Kar Wai restorations from the recent box set release, including As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and his shorts Hua yang de nian hua and The Hand.

Also among the lineup is a series on neo-noir with Body Double, Manhunter, Thief, The Last Seduction, Cutter’s Way, Brick, Night Moves, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and more. The channel will also feature a spotlight on art-house animation with work by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more.

With Jodie Mack’s delightful The Grand Bizarre, the landmark doc Hoop Dreams, Orson Welles’ take on Othello, the recent Oscar entries Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time and You Will Die at Twenty, and much more,...

The coronavirus pandemic is still going on, and shutdowns are being lifted oh so gently. That generally means two things: go outside with a mask on while strafing away from passersby on the sidewalk, or stay in and watch stuff. Luckily, The Criterion Channel has announced its June 2020 lineup, which is full of things old and new.

June sees the streaming premiere of Bertrand Bonello’s fantasy-horror, Zombi Child, which originally premiered in the Director’s Fortnight section of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The month also brings us the Channel’s addition of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, which comes with deleted scenes, a making-of documentary, and more. Meanwhile, they will also flesh out the service’s Chantal Akerman selection, adding features such as One Day Pina Asked…, Golden Eighties, and her penultimate feature, Almayer’s Folly. On the other side of the coin comes Jamie Babbit...

Among the first fests to suffer the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival has also been one of the most proactive in adapting to the lockdown mode. Earlier this March, Tiff’s docs-only spinoff, the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, turned its 22nd edition into a digital-only gathering scheduled to go live between May 19-28. And in early April, Tiff announced the launch of “Spaces,” a new online series showcasing short films by world renowned auteurs inspired by—and made during—the quarantine. Borrowing from Species of Spaces, a collection of essays from French author Georges Péréc, Tiff reached out to 8 Greek and 14 international filmmakers to commission short films grappling with the pandemic-induced confinement, all shot from the confines of home. In the words of Tiff artistic director Orestis Andreadakis, the project “was meant to remind us that art, and film, can fill any space with meaning, and disperse our solitude.

Director who was part of the ‘Czech film miracle’ in the 1960s but made his masterpieces in Hollywood

Ivan Passer, who has died aged 86, was one of the new wave of Czech film directors who emerged during the social and cultural democratisation of the mid-60s that afforded them unprecedented artistic freedom. With his childhood friend Miloš Forman, Passer co-wrote A Blonde in Love and The Firemen’s Ball (1967), and directed Intimate Lighting (1965), his brilliant feature film debut.

In that short period, Passer, Forman, Vera Chytilová, Jirí Menzel and Jan Němec, among others, made films that rejected the official state socialist-realist aesthetic and produced eclectic, highly assured features that captured the world’s attention.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSIvan Passer by Irfan Khan for the Los Angeles TimesFilmmaker Ivan Passer, a key figure in the Czech New Wave alongside peers like Miloš Forman, has died. For The Guardian, Andrew Pulver writes of Passer's departure from Prague and entry into Hollywood. The latest lineup announcement for this year's Berlinale includes the very exciting world premieres of Charlatan by Agnieszka Holland and Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue by Jia Zhangke. The Cannes Film Festival has announced that Spike Lee will preside over its jury, making him the first Black jury head in the festival's history. In a statement, Lee writes: "You could easily say Cannes changed the trajectory of who I became in world cinema.”Amid increasing festival buzz, awards season also continues with the release of the Academy Awards nominations, which can be found here.

Ivan Passer, a part of the Czech New Wave and director of Cutter’s Way, has died at the age of 86.

Passer died on Thursday in Reno, Nv, following a 40-year career in film and television, and later a spell teaching at USC’s School of Cinema-Television.

The Associated Press said Amina Johns, a friend of the family, confirmed the news as the Czech Culture Ministry and the country’s National Film Archive. Passer’s attorney Rodney Sumpter told the AP that Passer had been dealing with pulmonary issues.

Passer was part of a Czech New Wave of filmmakers in the 1960s along with names including Milos Forman, writing the screenplays for Forman’s films including Audition, Love of a Blonde and The Fireman’s Ball. His debut feature was 1965’s Intimate Lighting.

After 1968 he emigrated to the U.S. from communist Czechoslovakia.

He is known for 1981’s Cutter’s Way,...

Ivan Passer, a pioneering filmmaker in the Czech New Wave, a frequent collaborator with the late Milos Forman and the director of the 1981 film “Cutter’s Way,” has died. He was 86.

A friend of the family, Amina Johns, told the Associated Press (via The Washington Post) that Passer died Thursday in Reno, Nevada. Rodney Sumpter, an attorney for Passer, said the director had been dealing with pulmonary issues.

Passer got his start in filmmaking as a co-writer on some of Forman’s films in the ’60s, and he directed his first feature “Intimate Lighting” in 1965. He and Forman were students along with Václav Havel and Jerzy Skolimowski at a boarding school in Prague after WWII. They would later escape Prague to Hollywood just as Russian tanks began invading the region in 1969.

Also Read: Edd Byrnes, 'Grease' and '77 Sunset Strip' Star, Dies at 87

Ivan Passer (left) and...

Czech-born director Ivan Passer, known for the U.S. cult thriller Cutter’s Way, died Thursday in Reno, Nev. He was 86.

The Czech online newspaper iDnes reported the filmmaker's death without revealing the cause.

Passer, a native of Prague, attended a secondary school alongside future prominent director Milos Forman and the Czech Republic's president Václav Havel before studying at the country's best known Famu film school.

He first came to the limelight in the 1960s as a screenwriter of Forman's features Horí, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) and Lásky jedné plavovlásky (The Loves of a ...

Czech-born director Ivan Passer, known for the U.S. cult thriller Cutter’s Way, died Thursday in Reno, Nev. He was 86.

The Czech online newspaper iDnes reported the filmmaker's death without revealing the cause.

Passer, a native of Prague, attended a secondary school alongside future prominent director Milos Forman and the Czech Republic's president Václav Havel before studying at the country's best known Famu film school.

He first came to the limelight in the 1960s as a screenwriter of Forman's features Horí, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) and Lásky jedné plavovlásky (The Loves of a ...

Has it been 35 years since film director Ivan Passer, who died Jan. 9, explained to me why horror movies will never stop getting financed and distributed? “They don’t give their producers any sleepless nights,” the sage Czech maestro quietly, sagely noted, summing up a multitude of film business realities in a simple haiku.

And how many decades ago was it when I was first gripped by Passer’s greatest film, “Cutter’s Way,” a completely uncompromising and richly drawn portrait of young Americans facing down the Masters of War that Bob Dylan sang about?

When did I first marvel at the wit and compassion Passer brought to the screenplays of his great fellow countryman Milos Forman? I saw their unforgettable social satire “The Firemen’s Ball” when it first graced our American shores and scored a best foreign language film nomination in the late ’60s.

Forman’s Czech New Wave classic “Loves of a Blonde,...

Passer was a key figure in the Czech new wave before moving to the Us, where his best known film was the cult thriller Cutter’s Way

Ivan Passer, the film-maker who was a key figure in the Czech new wave and who went on to direct the thriller Cutter’s Way after emigrating to the Us, has died aged 86. Variety reported that an associate of his family confirmed the news.

Passer, who was born in Prague in 1933, spent his career inextricably associated with, and to some extent overshadowed by, his friend and fellow Czech director Miloš Forman. The pair met as schoolboys and studied together at the Prague Film Academy; they both became part of a group of film-makers who took advantage of a slight weakening of the communist government’s iron grip in the late 50s and early 60s. “We were all united, one way or another, with desire to...

Ivan Passer, a leading figure of the Czech new wave who directed films including “Cutter’s Way,” died Thursday of pulmonary complications in Reno, Nevada, an associate of the family confirmed. He was 86.

Passer was a close friend and collaborator of the late Czech filmmaker Milos Forman. Passer met Forman at a boarding school for delinquents or children who had lost their parents during the war (other students included Vaclav Havel and Jerzy Skolimowski). They reunited at film school in Prague, where he began collaborating on Forman’s films including “Loves of a Blonde” and “The Firemen’s Ball.” Passer’s first feature was the 1965 film “Intimate Lighting.”

Passer and Forman escaped Prague in 1969 as Russian tanks were advancing, when they pretended to be visiting Austria for the weekend. Though they lacked exit visas, a border guard who was a fan of Forman’s let them cross to safety, Passer told Variety...

There’s a reason director Jan Nemec’s name isn’t immediately conjures in superficial conversations on the Czech New Wave, despite his haunting 1964 debut Diamonds of the Night being one of the movement’s first major offerings. Described as “the movement’s bitterest aesthete” and by film historian Peter Hames as the “enfant terrible” of his peers, Nemec had neither the eventual Hollywood success of colleagues such as Milos Forman or Ivan Passer, nor international awards glory such as the Oscar winning The Shop on Main Street (1965) from Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos. Such is the price to pay for the revel.…...

Věra Chytilová shooting Time Is RelentlessIn Something Different (1963), housewife Vera has had it with her emotionally unavailable husband, exhausting chores, and child-rearing, so she starts an affair. A broken woman, she bursts into sporadic fits of giggling, scaring both men in her life. Prefiguring to some extent Alain Tanner's La salamandre, this laughter lifts the veil over the heroine's existential crisis, one so reluctant to be put into words and yet occasionally susceptible to movie images. Over the almost 50-year span of her career, we've heard Věra Chytilová's laugh so many times that it deserves to be catalogued. Daisies (1966) gave the censors plenty of reasons to ban it, but the derisive cackling of two girls at war with common sense would've sufficed. You can hear the sound as early as her student film Caterwauling (1960), made at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Famu). There,...

What are the odds that a boy born in the tiny town of Caslav, Czechoslovakia, who lost his parents to the Nazis around the age of 10, would go on to make a pair of Academy Award-nominated comedies about everyday Czech people in the late ’60s, escape Prague on the eve of the Russian invasion, and find his way to the United States, where he would direct two Oscar best picture winners?

Unlikely as it sounds, that is the path that brought Milos Forman to Hollywood, which enabled him to make “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus,” in addition to such films as “Taking Off,” “Hair,” and “Ragtime.” Forman was an exceptional artist in so many ways, and his death earlier this year at the age of 86 concludes a life of enormous sensitivity, insight, and good humor — traits that made his characters, whether great or small, so recognizably human.

Milos Forman, who died on April 14 at the age of 86, has left behind some of the most sharply observed portraits of human behavior in cinema.

When I think of Forman’s work, my mind doesn’t necessarily go first to his two Oscar-winning juggernauts — “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) or “Amadeus” (1984) — or the Czech films that garnered him worldwide acclaim in the 1960s, such as “Loves of a Blonde” (1965) or “The Firemen’s Ball” (1967). Rather, I think of the opening scene from his lesser-known comedy, “Taking Off” (1971): a series of static shots of young women, one after the other, performing songs for an off-screen producer.

Most of the women are earnest and serious; some seem awkward or shy, dressed in contemporary hippy-ish clothes; their hair is often long and frizzy. Some of these audition singers include Carly Simon, Kathy Bates (credited as Bobo Bates) and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Jessica Harper. What is remarkable about these relatively straightforward snippets is that Forman isn’t nudging the audience for what to make of these young people, or their songs. He’s not telling the audience how to react; he’s simply presenting these young people as they are.

Also Read: Milos Forman, 'Amadeus' and 'Cuckoo's Nest' Director, Dies at 86

The first 5-10 minutes of this film paints a picture of these flower children of the Woodstock era that feels authentic, admiring and compassionate. And kind. It’s a quality in Forman’s cinema I can see throughout his career.

Forman sprang forth from the extraordinary group of filmmakers known as the Czech New Wave, most of whom were trained at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (including Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Ján Kadár, Jan Němec and Ivan Passer), and, like his cinematic compatriots, Forman’s early films are often political in nature, portraying figures of authority as inept and corrupt. In “The Firemen’s Ball,” the volunteer fire department in a small town decides to organize a ball in honor of their recently retired chairman.

Also Read: Milos Forman Hailed as 'Champion of Artists' Rights' by Directors Guild of America

At the event, the firefighters’ committee decide to host a beauty contest and proceed to procure some of the unsuspecting young women to pose for them. The women appear hesitant, guarded, and a few are even somewhat amused by the ramshackle way they are being put on display by these old men. (Most of the actors were local to the area of Vrchlabí, where it was filmed.) The spunkiest of the young women seems to have an awareness of how ridiculous and sexist this is. She laughs and then runs off halfway through her walk for the judges, triggering a mass exodus by the other contestants, and the scene ends in comedic chaos.

Clearly, the characters who buck the system, like the young woman in “The Firemen’s Ball,” are what hold director’s greatest interest. Forman is fixed on the idea of the outsider as being the true hero of his work: Jack Nicholson’s R.P. McMurphy, Treat Williams’ George Berger, Howard E. Rollins’ Coalhouse Walker Jr., Tom Hulce’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Woody Harrelson’s Larry Flynt and Jim Carrey’s Andy Kaufman are all individuals that won’t fit into society’s prescribed mold for them.

Also Read: Milos Forman Remembered by Larry Flynt, Judd Apatow and More: 'Genius of Cinematography'

Forman’s rebels, though clearly stemming from his Czech roots, found fertile ground in America. His two most critically and financially successful films, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (adapted by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman from Ken Kesey’s novel) and “Amadeus” (Peter Shaffer adapting his own stage play), both impeccably produced by Saul Zaentz, together garnered 13 Oscars total, including two for Forman for directing.

At his best, Forman’s greatest work (I would include the woefully underrated musical adaptation of “Hair”) shows both compassion for his characters and wry humor in the predicaments in which these characters find themselves. His work with actors is exemplary, and his filmography is flooded with memorable performances and ensemble work: from Nicholson and Louise Fletcher in “Cuckoo’s Nest” to Rollins, Elizabeth McGovern and James Cagney in “Ragtime” (1981), F. Murray Abraham and Hulce in “Amadeus,” Harrelson and Courtney Love in “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996), and back to Hana Brejchová in “Loves of a Blonde” and Lynn Carlin, Buck Henry, Georgia Engel and Audra Lindley in “Taking Off,” to name a few.

Cinematically, I’m just so impressed with the way he and his cinematographers captured these actors’ faces and performances. This is filmmaking that is not trying to impress you with flashy editing and swirling cameras (though the camerawork in the opening “Aquarius” number in “Hair,” accompanied by Twyla Tharp’s wonderful choreography, is a wonderful exception), it’s focused on its characters and story.

Possibly because of his lack of flash and cutting-edge technique, there is a danger that Forman’s work may not be immediately appreciated by younger filmmakers — though in this current era where young people are rising up to stand for their beliefs to their schools, their City Halls, and the world at large, Forman’s filmography is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of rebels.

Read original story Milos Forman Remembered: A Rebel in His Time, and for the Future At TheWrap...

Czech-born director Milos Forman, who won best directing Oscars for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus,” has died. He was 86.

Forman died Friday in the U.S. after a brief illness, his wife, Martina, told the Czech news agency Ctk. She said that “his departure was calm, and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends.”

Forman was also known for directing “Hair,” “Ragtime” and “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”

Directors’ Guild president Thomas Schlamme said, “Miloš was truly one of ours. A filmmaker, artist, and champion of artists’ rights. His contribution to the craft of directing has been an undeniable source of inspiration for generations of filmmakers. His directorial vision deftly brought together provocative subject matter, stellar performances and haunting images to tell the stories of the universal struggle for free expression and self-determination that informed so much of his work and his life.

It’s a quality true-life mystery-exposé that doesn’t come off as tabloid trash or Oliver Stone hysteria — the true story of Karen Silkwood is told without cooking the books. The all-superstar cast is something too — Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell. Only a fine director like Mike Nichols could steer this one into good entertainment & memorable cinema territory.

Silkwood

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1983 / Color B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 131 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson, Diana Scarwid, Fred Ward, Ron Silver, Charles Hallahan.

Cinematography: Miroslav Ondrícek

Production Designer: Patrizia von Brandenstein

Art Direction: Richard D. James

Film Editor: Sam O’Steen

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written by Alice Arlen and Nora Ephron

Produced by Larry Cano, Michael Hausman, Buzz Hirsch, Mike Nichols

Directed by Mike Nichols

Remember when the big movies about adult themes were in the theaters, and not on cable TV?...

A killer book (Dog Soldiers) must hide behind a Credence Clearwater tune. Karel Reisz’s killer movie about the moral residue of Vietnam scores as both drama and action, as disillusioned counterculture smugglers versus corrupt narcotics cops. Just don’t expect it to really have much to say about the Vietnam experience. But hey, the cast is tops — Nick Nolte, Richard Masur, Anthony Zerbe — and the marvelous Tuesday Weld is even better as a pill-soaked involuntary initiate into the pre- War On Drugs smuggling scene.

Who’ll Stop the Rain

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1978 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date May 16, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, Anthony Zerbe, Richard Masur, Ray Sharkey, Gail Strickland, Charles Haid, David Opatoshu, Joaquín Martínez, James Cranna, Timothy Blake.

Cinematography: Richard H. Kiline

Supervising Film Editor: John Bloom

Original Music: Laurence Rosenthal

Written by Judith Rascoe, Robert Stone...

“The Devil’s Mistress”

Presented by the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Los Angeles, Czech That Film festival (Ctf) in Los Angeles is now in its 6th edition and is bringing an exciting mix of films to the city this spring, and will be followed by a new traveling film series.

15 venues across North America will screen a wide selection of critically acclaimed films from poignant dramas to unique animation as part this year’s Czech That Film.

Pavol Šepeľák, Consul General of the Czech Republic in Los Angeles explained, “C.S. Lewis said that art is something of a “window” into worlds unseen. The films that you will see during this edition of the festival are exactly that: “windows” to times and places that are out of reach, yet so significant for better understanding our daily lives. We would like to thank and honor the talented Czech directors...

Above: Italian 2-foglio for Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965).As the 54th New York Film Festival winds to a close this weekend I thought it would be instructive to look back at its counterpart of 50 years ago. Sadly, for the sake of symmetry, there are no filmmakers straddling both the 1966 and the 2016 editions, though Agnès Varda (88 years old), Jean-Luc Godard (85), Carlos Saura (84) and Jirí Menzel (78)—all of whom had films in the 1966 Nyff—are all still making films, and Milos Forman (84), Ivan Passer (83) and Peter Watkins (80) are all still with us. There are only two filmmakers in the current Nyff who could potentially have been in the 1966 edition and they are Ken Loach (80) and Paul Verhoeven (78). The current Nyff is remarkably youthful—half the filmmakers weren’t even born in 1966 and, with the exception of Loach and Verhoeven, the old guard is now represented by Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar,...

Festival reveals guests headed to Karlovy Vary next month.

Us actor Willem Dafoe and writer-director Charlie Kaufman are to be honoured at the 51st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) (July 1-9) on its opening night .

Dafoe is to receive the Crystal Globe for outstanding contribution to world cinema and the festival will screen his performances in Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini and Martin Scorese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.

Kaufman, who won an Oscar for his script for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, will receive the president’s award and the festival will screen animation Anomalisa, which he co-directed with Duke Johnson.

As previously announced, the festival set in the Czech Republic spa town will open with the world premiere of Second World War thriller Anthropoid, with actors Jamie Dornan and Toby Jones, Aňa Geislerová, Alena Mihulová, Václav Neužil and Marcin Dorocinski in attendence alongside writer-director Sean Ellis.

Guests

Other...

The first round of previews of this summer's movies is out. Also in today's roundup: Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese on Cannes, plus articles on William Shakespeare, Lars von Trier, Robert Drew, Ivan Passer and the influence of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd on the Soviet avant-garde. We also have news of new work from Terrence Malick and Hong Sang-soo and there's a Roberto Rossellini retrospective on in Austin. Plus Omer Fast in New York and Ben Rivers in Knoxville—and more. » - David Hudson...

The first round of previews of this summer's movies is out. Also in today's roundup: Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese on Cannes, plus articles on William Shakespeare, Lars von Trier, Robert Drew, Ivan Passer and the influence of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd on the Soviet avant-garde. We also have news of new work from Terrence Malick and Hong Sang-soo and there's a Roberto Rossellini retrospective on in Austin. Plus Omer Fast in New York and Ben Rivers in Knoxville—and more. » - David Hudson...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSDirector Guy Hamilton, Sean Connery, and Honor Blackman on the set of Goldfinger.We're still stunned from the sudden death of music legend Prince, at a time when Bowie is still on our minds and in our hearts.Last week we also lost director Guy Hamilton, an action director who began as an Ad for Carol Reed (on The Fallen Idol and The Third Man, among others), and best known for leading several James Bond entries, starting with Goldfinger in 1964.The Tribeca Film Festival wrapped in New York over the weekend, and the winners have been announced, including best international feature to Junction 48 and best documentary feature to Do Not Resist.There is no other cinematic project we're more looking forward to than 2017's continuation of David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks.

World premiere of Intimate Lighting restoration, a focus on Mexican female directors, a tribute to Otto Preminger and the first Eurimages Lab Project Award set for 2016 edition.

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) has unveiled the first wave of titles and industry initiatives set for its 51st edition (July 1-9).

The festival, hosted in the picturesque Czech spa town, will world premiere a digital restoration of Ivan Passer’s Intimate Lighting. The bittersweet comedy about an encounter between two former classmates and musicians is described one of the most striking films of the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s.

The 82-year-old director, who was honoured with Kviff’s Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema in 2008, will be present at the premiere on July 2.

Mexican female directors

Semana Santa

Kviff will also spotlight Mexican female directors, screening nine features and one short from the past five years. The filmmakers include Elisa Miller, who won a Palme...

The new issue of cléo features essays on Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous, Catherine Breillat’s Abuse of Weakness, Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night and Sean Baker's Tangerine, another on Anna May Wong, plus an interview with Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson) and a profile of cinematographer Iris Ng. Also in today's roundup: Nina Hoss on her performance in Christian Petzold's Phoenix, reviving Ivan Passer's Cutter’s Way, honoring Ellen Burstyn and remembering Ronit Elkabetz and Doris Roberts. » - David Hudson...

The new issue of cléo features essays on Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous, Catherine Breillat’s Abuse of Weakness, Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night and Sean Baker's Tangerine, another on Anna May Wong, plus an interview with Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson) and a profile of cinematographer Iris Ng. Also in today's roundup: Nina Hoss on her performance in Christian Petzold's Phoenix, reviving Ivan Passer's Cutter’s Way, honoring Ellen Burstyn and remembering Ronit Elkabetz and Doris Roberts. » - David Hudson...

"Sorry, I just slashed my wrists." "Well, tape 'em!"  This is the aftermath of the '60s protest movement. Ivan Passer's riveting murder mystery of flakes and losers in sun-drenched, guilty Santa Barbara expresses the rage of radicals faced with the growing class divide, and the arrogance of the wealthy. Cutter's Way Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1981 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 109 min. / Ship Date , 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn, Ann Dusenberry, Stephen Elliott, Arthur Rosenberg, Nina Van Pallandt. Cinematography Jordan Cronenweth Production Designer Josan F. Russo Film Editor Caroline Biggerstaff Original Music Jack Nitzsche Writing credits Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, from the novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg. Produced by Paul R. Gurian Directed by Ivan Passer

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Sort of the bad-news post-graduate version of American Graffiti, Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way is a movie with a mindset and background that I partly lived through,...

Director Jacques Rivette just passed away back in January. There's more interest lately in his 12-hour opus Out 1, but if you'll settle for just 2.5 hours, this unique early New Wave feature will take you inside Rivette's world of artists, students, and refugees from political persecution, all in conflict in a sunny Paris of 1958. It's just as revolutionary as an early Godard or Truffaut, but in a style all Rivette's own. Paris Belongs to Us Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 802 1961 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 141 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Paris nous appartient / Street Date March 8, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Betty Schneider, François Maistre, Giani Esposito, Françoise Prévost, Daniel Crohem, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Marie Robain, Jean Martin. Cinematography Charles L. Bitsch Film Editor Denise de Casablanca Original Music Philippe Arthuys Written by Jacques Rivette, Jean Grualt Produced by Claude Chabrol, Roland Nonin Directed by Jacques Rivette

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The French New...

Emerging as some demented second cousin of contemporaries Jacques Tati and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Miloš Forman’s landmark 1967 comedy The Firemen’s Ball is about a disaster of a party, the complete inability and casual disinterest in resuscitating it. The general idea is to host a party with a raffle and beauty pageant to help out the volunteer fire department in a small Czechoslovak town. They throw in a ceremony in honor of their former chairman as a way to lend the affair some dignity. Any question of dignity quickly goes out the window. The raffle prizes are stolen, the potential beauties deemed somewhat underwhelming, and their beloved chairman is largely forgotten, left sitting in a corner by himself until sporadically directed to approach to the stage at the wrong time entirely.

More learned writers than I can – and have – placed the film in a larger Communist context, arguing for...

Milos Forman was the prince of the Prague Spring with this Czech New Wave classic, a hilarious black comedy about the cheerful corruption and incompetence of petty bureaucrats. A fire brigade throws a bash, and by the end of the evening the lottery prizes are all stolen and the beauty contest has become a travesty. And they can't even put out a simple fire. The joke is clearly aimed at the Communist government. The Fireman's Ball Region-Free Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Academy (UK) 1967 / Color / / 71 min. / Horí, má panenko / Street Date October 12, 2015 / Available from Amazon UK £14.99 Cinematography Miroslav Ondrícek Production Designer Karel Cerny Film Editor Miroslav Hájek Original Music Karel Mares Writing credits Milos Forman, Jaroslav Papousek, Ivan Passer and Václav Sasek Produced by Rudolf Hajek, Carlo Ponti Directed by Milos Forman

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

We know Milos Forman from his American pictures Hair and Ragtime, but he made big...