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Following up on their excellent Blood Money box set from last year, the folks at Arrow Video now offer the four-film collection Savage Guns, another deep dive into the vaults of the Italian western. With each of these releases, Arrow gives viewers the opportunity to form a richer and broader notion of the genre, to examine the way these films work the warp and weft of similarity and difference, providing audiences with expected payoffs of sex and violence while also playing variations (subtle or otherwise) on familiar generic themes.

Featuring sparkling new restorations based on original film elements, Savage Guns comes in another lavishly appointed package from Arrow Video, complete with hours of bonus materials, like cast and crew interviews, commentary tracks, introductions to each of the films by critic Fabio Melelli, and appreciations of two of the film scores by audiophile Lovely Jon. Also included in the slipcase are...

Spanish auteur Carlos Saura, known for a lifetime of movies made in the shadow of his country’s civil war under the Franco dictatorship and its aftermath, has died. He was 91.

The Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences said Saura died at home “surrounded by his loved ones.”

Fernando Mendez-Leite, president of the Spanish Academy, paid tribute to Saura, saying the filmmaker’s “highly personal, varied work and creative has left an indelible mark on the history of our cinema and Spanish culture. Personally I’m very sad, because I had the pleasure of knowing and dealing with Carlos for many years, whom I considered an a teacher and a friend.”

Saura had been due to receive the Academy’s Honorary Goya Award at a ceremony Saturday but instead received the statuette at home this week. The Spanish Academy added the 37th edition of the Goya Awards will pay tribute to “an unrepeatable creator.

Spanish film director and screenwriter best known for The Holy Innocents, an unflinching portrayal of rural poverty in 1960s Spain

The Spanish film director Mario Camus, who has died aged 86, was shocked by the success of his 1984 film The Holy Innocents. An unflinching portrayal of rural poverty in 1960s Francoist Spain, it broke Spanish box office records, topping the bill in cinemas for 18 months. When it narrowly missed the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, the divided jury awarded it a consolatory special mention.

Years later, Camus found himself in the same Paris restaurant as Dirk Bogarde, the jury president who had fought to give him the top prize. Bogarde exchanged just two words with Camus: “Milana Bonita.” There is not a Spaniard over the age of 50 who does not know what that means.

Mario Camus, the acclaimed Spanish writer-director behind La colmena, Young Sánchez, The Holy Innocents and more, died in his hometown of Santander on September 18. He was 86.

Spain’s Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Goya Awards, confirmed the news with a post published on Saturday to their official Instagram page. “Filmmaker Mario Camus dies in Santander. Author of classics of our cinema such as The Holy Innocents, The Beehive, The Days of the Past or That Woman,” a spokesperson wrote in Spanish. “He received the Goya de Honor in 2011.”

Born on April 20, 1935, Camus was creatively active for at least 45 years, and directed 30 films, starting with 1963’s Los farsantes. He claimed the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear statuette for Best Film with his 1983 feature La Colmena, along with Cannes’ Prize of the Ecumenical Jury for 1984’s The Holy Innocents (Spanish title: Los santos inocentes). The director...

This year’s San Sebastian Film Festival is in mourning as Spanish director Mario Camus, celebrated for his sober but caring adaptations of distinguished Spanish novels such as “La Colmena” – written by Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela – Ignacio Aldecoa’s “Young Sánchez” and “The Holy Innocents” by Miguel Delibes, died on Saturday in Santander, northern Spain, the city where he was born. Camus was 86.

Among his career achievements, Camus took the Berlin Golden Bear for best film with “La Colmena” (1983), a Cannes Prize Ecumenical Jury prize for “The Holy Innocents” (1984). Such films proved a highpoint in Spain’s ruling socialist left’s dream, pushed when Pilar Miró took over as head of Spain’s Icaa film institute in 1982, of maintaining Spanish cinema’s social edge but priming its production levels and taking it onto a European stage.

Camus also participated in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and at the Moscow Festival...

Content group iZen has optioned Eduardo Mendoza’s acclaimed Spanish historical novel “City of Marvels” (La Ciudad de los Prodigios) and is developing it as a six-part series. No broadcaster or streaming platform has yet been attached to the project.

iZen’s Zebra Producciones was behind epic Amazon Prime Video historical series “El Cid,” with “Money Heist” star Jaime Lorente, which will return for a second season this year.

Published in 1986 and translated into 14 languages, “City of Marvels” chronicles the protagonist Onofre Bouvila’s journey from small-time hustler to one of the richest people in Spain. The multi-generational story is set against the backdrop of Barcelona’s social and cultural evolution at the turn of the 20th century, as the city shook off its medieval past and reinvented itself as a vibrant modern metropolis.

The deal was brokered by NewCo Audiovisual, the Barcelona-based iZen company formed in 2018 to produce scripted series and international co-productions.

Alfredo Landa, Cannes Best Actor winner dead at 80 Cannes Film Festival Best Actor winner Alfredo Landa, who was featured in more than 100 Spanish movies, died May 9 in his birthplace of Pamplona, in the Spanish province of Navarra. Landa, who underwent colon cancer treatment in 2004 and suffered a stroke in 2009, was 80. The son of a Civil Guard officer, Alfredo Landa quit his law studies to enter show business in the mid-’50s. According to the IMDb, he was an extra in Michael Anderson’s 1956 Best Picture Academy Award winner Around the World in 80 Days, though Landa’s first credited role was in Rafael J. Salvia El puente de la paz ("The Bridge of Peace") two years later. Landa kept busy throughout the ’60s, coming into his own as a star of lowbrow, post-Francisco Franco sex comedies in the mid-’70s, e.g., Mariano Ozores’ Los pecados de una chica...

Most recent film appearances, plus concert and television work Please check out our previous post: "Montiel La Violetera and Pedro Almodóvar Icon." Her last star vehicle of note was Juan Antonio Bardem's Varietés (1971), a melodrama about an aging actress who continues to dream of becoming a bona fide star. [Please scroll down to listen to Montiel's husky rendition of "Amado mío."] The forty-something hopeful eventually gets her chance at stardom, but it all turns out to be a flash in the pan. By then, following a whole array of formulaic romantic musical melodramas, Montiel's box-office allure had waned rather radically. She turned down roles in Spain's cine del destape -- post-Franco softcore comedies -- which eventually meant the demise of her movie career. Her last official star vehicle was Pedro Lazaga's comedy Cinco almohadas para una noche ("Five Cushions for One Night," 1974) -- though she would be seen in Eduardo Manzanos Brochero's That's Entertainment-like compilation feature Canciones de nuestra...

Montiel movies: From the blockbuster La Violetera to new versions of Carmen and Camille (Please check out the previous post: "Legendary Spanish Star Dead at 85."] Next in line for the sensual, husky-voice performer was a second tear-jerking hit: Luis César Amadori's La Violetera ("The Violet Peddler," 1958), for which Montiel is supposed to have earned $1 million dollars. In this romantic musical melodrama, she plays Soledad Moreno, a flower seller in the Madrid of the early 1900s, who falls in passionately love with an aristocrat played by Italian star Raf Vallone. As to be expected, class issues arise. Soledad flees for France, where she becomes (surprise!) a singing sensation. What follows includes tears, despair, a deadly iceberg (heard of the Titanic?), psychological and physiological trauma, and, finally, eternal love. Pictured above: A very sexy Montiel in a risque Gina Lollobrigida-like pose. “La violetera was even bigger than El último cuplé,...

Fernando Guillén dies: Pedro Almodóvar Collaborator, Goya Award winner for Don Juan in Hell Fernando Guillén, a Spanish acting legend whose film, stage, and television career spanned close to six decades, died of cancer earlier today at a Madrid hospital. The Barcelona-born Guillén was 81 according to the daily El Mundo. (As per the IMDb, he was 80; born on Nov. 22, 1932.) Curiously, Fernando Guillén became more active in Spanish cinema in the last three decades. Among his movies are three directed by Pedro Almodóvar: Law of the Desire (1987), in which Guillén plays the police investigator; the Academy Award-nominated Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), as Carmen Maura’s jerk ex-boyfriend; and the Oscar-winning All About My Mother (1999), as the Doctor featured in the play A Streetcar Named Desire starring Marisa Paredes as Blanche DuBois. (Correction: Penélope Cruz’s father is played by Fernando Fernán Gómez.) [Photo: Fernando Guillén.] Other Guillén movies include...

Black Bread, Buitful, and the other winners of the 2011 Goya Awards (Premios Goyas) have been announced. The 25th Annual Goya Awards “known in Spanish as los Premios Goya, are Spain’s main national film awards, considered by many in Spain, and internationally, to be the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards.” The full listing of the 2011 Goya Awards (Premios Goyas) winners is below.

Film

Pa negre (Black Bread)

Director

Agustí Villaronga, Pa negre (Black Bread)

New Director

David Pinillos, Bon Apetit

Production Supervision

Cristina Zumárraga, También la lluvia (Even the Rain)

Photography

Antonio Riestra, Pa negre (Black Bread)

Original Screenplay

Chris Sparling, Buried

Adapted Screenplay

Agustí Villaronga, Pa negre (Black Bread)

Art Direction

Ana Alvargonzález, Pa negre (Black Bread)

Leading Actress

Nora Navas, Pa negre (Black Bread)

Leading Actor

Javier Bardem, Biutiful

Supporting Actress

Laia Marull, Pa negre (Black Bread)

Supporting Actor

Karra Elejalde, También la lluvia (Even the Rain)

New Actress

Marina Comas,...