Filming the Aftermath of Genocide
posted August 15, 2011
Rwanda has been far from alone in experiencing the horrors of genocide. Now, efforts are under way to advance a long, painful process of national healing by creating an audio-visual record of those events at the Iriba Center for Multimedia Heritage.
Jungleland Revisited
posted August 8, 2011
Louis Goebel moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1919, worked on films sets with animals, and decided to rent lions to moviemakers. The result was the fabled Jungleland, reports the Thousand Oaks Acorn.
Robert Ryan Remembered
posted August 8, 2011
In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis writes about a retrospective of films starring Robert Ryan: “The two dozen features in a Film Forum series dedicated to Ryan and opening on Friday includes dazzlers, solid genre fare, some curiosities and a few duds. Most are better than anything playing now at the multiplex.”
A Home for Nicholas Ray
posted August 3, 2011
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has announced that it has acquired the archives of director Nicholas Ray (1911–1979), best known for his 1955 film, Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood, and much admired by French New Wave directors, including Jean-Luc Godard, who declared
Early Hitchcock Found
posted August 3, 2011
The discovery of 30 minutes of an early Hitchcock film is “one of the most significant developments in memory for scholars, critics, and admirers of Hitchcock’s extraordinary body of work,” says one expert.
Preserving the Humor of Dom DeLuise
posted August 1, 2011
Birthday boy Dom DeLuise (August 1, 1933 – May 4, 2009) would have turned 78 today, had he not passed away two years ago. His performances are in good hands, Nat Segaloff reported on MIAN, late last year.
Recomposing Hitchcock Soundtracks
posted July 28, 2011
Bernard Hermann did Hitchcock proud, when it came to musical soundtracks for many of his movies. But several British composers have been entrusted with creating new orchestral scores for rarely seen, silent Hitchcock films that the British Film Institute is restoring for exhibition at the London 2012 Festival. Among the composers is Nitin Sawhney, a
Nazis as Movie Villains – Wherefore?
posted July 28, 2011
The Atlantic monthly asks – perhaps superfluously – why the Nazi became the clichéd movie villain, rarely as compellingly as in The Three Stooges You Nazty Spy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMdnJNl3tBA
Your Saddest Movie?
posted July 28, 2011
Turns out that behavioral scientists have spent a good deal of time researching the question: What is the saddest movie of all time. And they’re quite interested in disgusting ones, too. Why? Read all about it in this fascinating article from Smithsonian magazine. And do tell!
New Books, and More New Books
posted July 26, 2011
Descriptions of new books relating to moving images go up on the Books pages all the time. Today, for instance, new July 2011 books are summarized that deal with film and Canadian national identity, animation and comedy in Hollywood, and images of black masculinity in television. Some of the additions to the pages are for