Here is a very cool 60’s B&W Giallo from one of the most talented and prolific screenwriters of Italian Cinema! Ernsto Gastaldi wrote screenplays for very amazing genre of the Golden Age of Italian Cinema! Peplum (aka Hercules, Maciste type historic films) Horror, Vampires, Westerns, Thrillers, Giallos, Science Fiction, you name it! Check out his IMDB page and prepare to be blown away. This thriller was co directed by Ernesto and Vittorio Salerno for almost no money! It features an unknown(at the time) Giancarlo Gianinni, appearing as John Charles John. Ernesto’s wife, the lovely Mara Gastaldi appears as Mara Maryl. This film was made to prove a theory that the two producers had a bet about, who makes a better film, a technician (like a cameraman for example) or a screenwriter. Ernesto won the bet. Featuring a great score by Carlo Rustichelli, a lovely Giallo! Here it is in the original Italian. There is also a BluRay version you can buy with a lot of extras.
I went to the NY Worlds Fair when I was a little kid. It was great. Bob Downey told me he worked at the fair as a young man from Forest Hills along with his friend Ron Neely, (who later played The Holy Ghost in Greaser’s Palace). Here is a film the great Alexander Hammind made about the Fair. He also did To Be Alive, both with Francis Thompson. Hammid was a true filmmaker, he could make a film about anything. He was involved with the development of IMax and was Supervising Editor on To Fly. He also made Meshes of The Afternoon with Maya Deren, one of the most influential underground Art Films of all time. They are having a major retrospective of his work at the Anthology Film Archives in NYC so if you are in the Big Apple go check it out!
I watched Tomu Uchida’s The Mad Fox the other night on ARROW. A streaming channel from Arrow Films. They mainly show Horror films and I am always tempted to cancel my subscription but then I run across a film like this one, that’s hard to find and really great. This is a very strange film, not really seen outside of Japan for many years. Based on a Bunraku play from 1734 it mixes Japanese theater techniques in with traditional filmmaking. At one point in the film we are transported to a house on a stage, the proscenium is in view and the story continues sort of as a play. There are characters wearing masks (The Foxes) who can assume human form. I love this mixing of techniques, rotating stage, masks, curtains, simple but effective practical visual effects brought over from Theater. To me it speaks of a confidence of the artist in his performers and material. For example there is a baby in the film, it is obviously a wooden doll but I defy anyone not to be moved by the actors interacting with it. Amazing! As Fellini and other filmmakers have said, Film is like Magic, an illusion you create in the mind of the audience.
The sets, costumes ,photography are all excellent, it is a visually beautiful film. The acting is great, even though it seems like traditional Japanese theater acting, it’s great. It transcends the cultural differences. There are paper butterflies flitting about on strings but they are cool little fires fly around, the spirits of the Foxes. Just great stuff.
The Film is really about the treachery and duplicity of humans compared to the nobility of the Animals. The Foxes in this case. It’s also a doomed love story. A Tale of Evil and Innocence in Imperial Japan. Kind of a Fairy Tale for Adults. I recommend it.
I also watched a Crime Film by Uchida on ARROW. Another film little know outside of Japan but a big hit there. A Fugitive From The Past, another film that kept me from cancelling my subscription. Someone at ARROW is a real expert and lover of Japanese Cinema. Bravo!
My good pal Mike Malloy created a short film on multi-screen sequences in Feature films as a supplement to the new dvd release of Fernando DiLeo’s Nick The Sting. He asked if I had any footage of my old friend Pablo Ferro that he could include in his film. Pablo was a great title designer ( Dr. Strangelove, Bullit, Good Will Hunting,etc.), He made the amazing multiple sequence for the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair. I had filmed Pablo at an Optical Printer a few years back and I was happy to let Mike use the footage, Here is the film Mike made.
Here’s a great recording of an interview with Stanley Kubrick. Done during the shooting of 2001, A Space Odyssey. It’s very interesting to hear Kubrick’s voice and he tells some informative tales. Check it out.
I’ve been in a Buster Keaton mood lately, so here is a little masterpiece, SHERLOCK JR. I understand it was not a hit when it came out, as a matter of fact I think it was his poorest performer at the Box Office. Since then it has risen quite a bit in the public’s esteem. I believe his masterpiece, THE GENERAL was not a big hit either and now is recognized for the work of genius that it is. Anyway Buster Keaton we salute you. Your work is getting the respect and admiration it deserves.
And here is a short about the making of SHERLOCK JR.
I just watched Faust again last night. I bought the BluRay put out by Kino and it looks terrific. You can really appreciate the time, effort and artistry put into making this film. UFA gave Murnau unlimited money and time to make the best film he could. He succeeded marvelously. The imagery is superb.
So many amazing miniatures were built, especially memorable is where Mephisto looms over the city and the flying POV over mountains and water, a huge miniature filmed with a camera on a small rollercoaster track. When Faust summons Mephisto rings of fire rise up around him, this same effect was used later by Fritz Lang in his epic Metropolis. Something I did not know, Murnau disliked the script he was given and secretly collaborated with Thea Von Harbou. She would later write Metropolis and Marry fritz Lang!
There are other parallels with Metropolis, the biggest one being burning the woman at the stake as the climax of the film. The lighting is amazing as well. The sets beautiful. Back then they could not make dupe negatives of good quality so they filmed with 2 cameras and did alternate takes for different world markets. I think there were 7 complete negative versos of Faust from which they struck the hundreds of prints for distribution. It is incredible to think that a hand cranked little machine ( the early motion picture camera) could create such sensations in millions of people. It is almost like Magic or witchcraft. Incredible. I also noticed for the first time that William Dieterle was in the cast. No wonder he became such an amazing director. Working for Murnau, learning everything from such a maestro. Check out his films, especially Portrait Of Jenny.
In any case watch Faust, get the Blurry, it’s worth it and experience one of the most influential films ever made. I mean this and Nosferatu are maybe the 2 most influential films made by the same director.
There is a new restoration of Aleksandr Ptushko’s masterpiece, Ilya Muramets. I ordered a copy but have not got it yet. The image quality looks amazing and I believe it contains scenes that were cut from the old American release. Here’s the trailer for the new restoration, by Deaf Crocodile. Check it out.
Bruce Lee , the amazing martial Artist/ Movie Star/ Filmmaker was working on this film when he died. A version of it was finished a year later. Now someone has found lost footage of Bruce and it’s pretty cool. this is an edited sequence that I assume Bruce put together with his editor. I don’t really know the whole story but I’ll try and find out. Any way I love Bruce Lee, I met his daughter after the premiere of Man With The Iron Fists, a film I edited. I told her how much I admired her father, she was very nice. But check out these action sequences, too Bad he didn’t get to finish the film.
I just watched A Hero by the great Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi. An excellent film, the story of a man who tries to do the right thing and is of course punished by Society. I have seen almost all of his films, they are all great, wonderfully written, acted and directed. Moral puzzles, all worth watching. I was lucky enough to see him speak at a screening of The Salesman, a truly great film, that posed some very complicated questions and did not give you the answers. Something I like in a film. Farhadi himself said he did not know the answer to these questions, he had a feeling what had happened but he the filmmaker did not know for sure. Amazing! He left it up to the audience to decide! On the way down to the parking garage, a man in the elevator expressed his view vehemently! “He definitely raped her!” He proclaimed. This is great Cinema, it has the power to create dialogs that last long after the film has been projected. Filmmaking through time. Also, we are at odds with Iran, our governments are almost at war, yet Cinema has the power to show the humanity of the people living in the Forbidden Country, what a great gift.
A Hero is also in my opinion a homage to the great Luis Bunuel Film, Nazarin. A film where a simple country priest(in Mexico) tries to live according to the true teachings of Christ. And of course is spurned and eventually arrested. In A Hero the daughter of the Creditor that our hero owes money to is named Nazarin, also at the end of Bunuel’s film, a peasant woman taking pity on Nazarin, who she assumes is a criminal because he’s being led to jail in chains, gives him a pineapple. At the end of A Hero, he gets a box of baklava.
Here on You tube you can watch the whole Let’s Get Lost, a beautiful documentary on the late great musician Chet Baker. Made by the great photographer Bruce Weber, this film is a minor masterpiece. Edited beautifully by Angelo Corrao, it is a real pleasure to watch. When I lived in NYC I was friends with a wonderful guy named Leo Mitchell, a jazz drummer, he always wanted to play Rock and Roll music with me because he had grown up as a Jazz musician and never played straight ahead Rock. What a great guy. He toured with Chet Baker in Europe several times. Years later I asked my friend Jack Nitzsche about an album he had done with Chet Baker called A Taste Of Tequila” or something like that. He said “Don’t listen to that album. It’s horrible. Chet and I both needed the money.”
Here is a cool documentary, shot on the set of the seminal film Silent Running. I saw this in the theater when it came out and really enjoyed it. Ahead of it’s time, the environmental message that’s even more relevant today. Bruce Dern is great and the double amputees that play the robots are really cool. They’re all teenagers, who knew. I later worked with two key players from this film, Michael Cimino, who was one of the writers and John Dykstra a VFX supervisor. Anyway check it out and see the film!
