News

[Editor’s note: The following essay contains major spoilers for “Anora.”]

Why do men do the things they do to women? Why do they offer affection and hope when all they’re really capable of is self-satisfaction? Why do they prop themselves as something they’re not at the expense of the physical and emotional well-beings of others? This is not to say women aren’t guilty of the same cruelties, but in a world where women continue to be persecuted, having their health, financial livelihoods, education, and more subject to legal control while men walk the Earth freely, seemingly bound by only the Darwinian laws of nature, I think it’s fair to say that one gender is granted a much wider latitude over the other. And why is that so? It was these questions that rattled through my brain as I took in every thrilling high and tragic low of Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning “Anora” and...

Venice film festival: James is the Liz Taylor-ish diva claiming a young star-struck girl as her new best friend in Saverio Constanzo’s tale set in 1950s Rome

The Italian writer-director Saverio Constanzo has offered the Venice film festival some unpretentious calorific fun with this enjoyable film: a tasty, showbizzy crowd-pleaser and romantic melodrama with a vivid streak of surreal absurdity in the tradition of Federico Fellini’s The White Sheik or Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.

It is the tale of an unconventionally beautiful duckling who becomes more of a swan than the glamorous people she idolises; her dreams come true – or sort of true – in 1950s Rome in the heyday of the giant Cinecittà film studio. There are seductive performances from Lily James as the Liz Taylor-ish American movie diva, Willem Dafoe as her elegant, kindly confidant, Rachel Sennott as the disaffected up-and-coming actor...

Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores (“Mediterraneo”) is back behind the camera on “Napoli – New York,” a period immigration drama based on a story written for the screen by Federico Fellini.

Fellini co-wrote the tale of two Neapolitan kids who embark on a ship to New York to escape Italy’s early postwar poverty with his frequent collaborator Tullio Pinelli, a writer on the Italian maestro’s “La Dolce Vita” and “8 1/2,” as well as other titles.

Italian A-lister Pierfrancesco Favino stars as the chief officer of the ship which the two kids, named Carmine and Celestina, manage to board surreptitiously in the port of Naples, becoming clandestine passengers. The youngsters are on a mission to reach the U.S. where they dream of living with Celestina’s sister, who emigrated to New York two years earlier. Newcomers Dea Lanzaro e Antonio Guerra play the kids. (See first-look image above of Favino with the kids and Salvatores.

Still believe in the goodness of people? Still hold out hope for the future? If so this is one picture you’ll want to catch up with sooner than later. ‘The Good Totò’ is literally found in a cabbage patch; the simple magic of kindness enables him to turn a shanty town into a little Utopia . . . for a few days. Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini fashion a story that insists that magic is as real as sunlight, music, and the words ‘Good Morning’ — and that man is imperfect and his institutions unjust. Francesco Golisano, Brunella Bovo and the heavenly Emma Gramatica are unforgettable. The warmth and understanding here bests that of Charlie Chaplin.

Miracle in Milan

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1119

1951 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 96 min. / Miracolo a Milano / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 19, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Emma Gramatica, Francesco Golisano, Paolo Stoppa, Guglielmo Barnabò, Brunella Bovo, Anna Carena,...

Mubi is kicking off the new year with a selection of our 2021 highlights, including some of which haven’t picked up proper distribution yet. Most notably, their own release, Alexandre Koberidze’s dazzling What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, will premiere along with a New Voices in Georgian Cinema series. Also arriving is Salomé Jashi’s Taming the Garden, Ana Katz’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Alex Camilleri’s Luzzu, and Nino Martínez Sosa’s Liborio.

As part of a series of first films, they’ll also feature works from Janicza Bravo, Noah Baumbach, Garrett Bradley, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Terry Gilliam, and more. A double bill of Federico Fellini classics, Nights of Cabiria and The White Sheik, will also come to the platform.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

January 1 | Kicking & Screaming | Noah Baumbach | First Films First

January...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Bad Trip (Kitao Sakurai)

The Eric Andre persona is best understood by his popular late-night Adult Swim series, succinctly titled The Eric Andre Show. In every episode Andre’s irreverent and self-destructive behavior leads him to trash his set, causing bodily harm, and torturing a slew of celebrities that range from Jimmy Kimmel to the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Andre is the equivalent of a magic mushrooms trip: wildly confusing, incoherent, sometimes causing one to burst at the seams with ecstatic comedic moments. Andre’s energy finds the perfect vessel in Bad Trip, his first starring role with a script he wrote with frequent collaborator and director Kitao Sakurai.

The Criterion Channel has unveiled their March 2021 lineup, which includes no shortage of remarkable programming. Highlights from the slate include eight gems from Preston Sturges, Elaine May’s brilliant A New Leaf, a series featuring Black Westerns, Ann Hui’s Boat People, the new restoration of Ousmane Sembène’s Mandabi.

They will also add films from their Essential Fellini boxset, series on Dirk Bogarde and Nelly Kaplan, and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned and Death in Venice, and more. In terms of recent releases, there’s also Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century and Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In.

Check out the lineup below, along with the teaser for the Black Westerns series. For weekly streaming updates across all services, bookmark this page.

The Adventurer, Charles Chaplin, 1917

Bandini, Bimal Roy, 1963

Behind the Screen, Charles Chaplin, 1916

Black Jack, Ken Loach, 1979

Black Rodeo, Jeff Kanew, 1972

Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan Coen,...

Giuseppe Tornatore’s romantic ode to the movies charmed America, convincing theater-goers that little Italian kids are the cutest in the world. Little Salvatore Cascio grows up in a projection booth under the life-tutelage of kindly Philippe Noiret. Arrow presents the theatrical version of this Best Foreign Picture Oscar winner in 4K Ultra HD. The (greatly) extended version is on a second Blu-ray — it plays like a different movie entirely.

Cinema Paradiso

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 174, 155, 124 min. / Nuovo cinema Paradiso / Street Date December 8, 2020 / 49.95

Starring: Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin, Agnese Nano, Brigitte Fossey, Pupella Maggio, Leopoldo Trieste.

Cinematography: Blasco Giurato

Film Editor: Mario Morra

Original Music: Ennio Morricone, Andrea Morricone

Produced by Mino Barbera, Franco Cristaldi, Giovanna Romagnoli

Written and Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore

Every so often there comes along a European movie that so captures American audiences, one would...

All products and services featured by IndieWire are independently selected by IndieWire editors. However, IndieWire may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

Products featured are independently selected by our editorial team and we may earn a commission from purchases made from our links.

No matter how convenient our digital lives are, there’s still something special about physical media — especially when it’s so beautifully and thoughtfully curated by the Criterion Collection.

Each of Criterion’s releases takes an exemplary film, from auteur classic to Hollywood blockbuster and everything in between, and includes a slew of special features — commentary tracks, restored film transfers, essays about its importance in the cinematic pantheon — that help “deepen the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of the art of cinema.”

While there are literally hundreds of important classic and contemporary...

One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. La dolce vita (1960) is showing on Mubi in many countries in the series Fellini 100.In the finale of La dolce vita, after the most decadent of the film’s parties, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) collapses on the beach, faces the camera, and offers world cinema its most iconic shrug. The sequence is laden with symbolism that lends itself to much too literal interpretation: the giant dead sea creature, an ichthys stand-in for Italy's discarded Christ; the angelic girl, a reminder of Marcello’s purer dreams; the loud wind, a modern cacophony that drowns out human connection. But in the ascendant arthouse of 1960, when such subject matter, a cubist structure, and ample sensationalism could break box office records, it wouldn’t do to simply peg Fellini as a didactic philosopher. He...

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Joining in the international celebration of Federico Fellini's 100th birthday, Criterion is thrilled to announce Essential Fellini, a fifteen-Blu-ray box set that brings together fourteen of the director's most imaginative and uncompromising works for the first time. Alongside new restorations of the theatrical features, the set also includes short and full-length documentaries about Fellini's life and work, archival interviews with his friends and collaborators, commentaries on six of the films, video essays, the director's 1968 short Toby Dammit, and much more.

The edition is accompanied by two lavishly illustrated books with hundreds of pages of notes and essays on the films by writers and filmmakers, as well as dozens of images of Fellini memorabilia. Essential Fellini is a fitting tribute to the maestro of Italian cinema!

Fifteen-blu-ray Special Edition Collector's Set Features

New 4K restorations of 11 theatrical features, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks for...

Classic movie buffs with $200 to burn, take note: The Criterion Collection has announced “Essential Fellini,” a box set of 14 films from legendary film director Federico Fellini.

The Blu-Ray set, which will release on November 24,will include several features, including 4K restorations of 11 of the films, as well as uncompressed monaural soundtracks for each title. Most of the director’s most celebrated films will be included in the box set. The 14 films are: “Variety Lights” (1950), “The White Sheik” (1952), “I Vitelloni” (1953), “La Strada” (1954), “Il Bidone” (1955), “Nights of Cabiria” (1957), “La Dolce Vita” (1960), “8½” (1963), “Juliet of the Spirits” (1965), “Fellini Satyricon” (1969), “Roma” (1972), “Amarcord” (1973), “And the Ship Sails On” (1983), and “Intervista” (1987).

Here’s Criterion’s announcement of the news:

One hundred years after his birth, Federico Fellini still stands apart as a giant of the cinema. The Italian maestro is defined by his dualities: the sacred and the profane, the masculine and the feminine, the provincial and the urbane.

On the day their gorgeous Agnès Varda box set arrives, The Criterion Collection has announced details on their next director collection. In celebration of his 100th birthday this year, Federico Fellini will be receiving a 15-disc box set featuring fourteen of his films, set for a release on November 24, 2020.

Titled Essential Fellini, the release features new restorations of the theatrical features, as well as short and full-length documentaries about Fellini’s life and work, archival interviews with his friends and collaborators, commentaries on six of the films, video essays, the director’s 1968 short Toby Dammit, and much more. It also includes two illustrated books with hundreds of pages of notes and essays on the films by writers and filmmakers, plus memorabilia. Check out a list of films and special features below.

List of Films

Variety Lights (1950)The White Sheik (1952)I Vitelloni (1953)LA Strada (1954)Il Bidone (1955)Nights Of Cabiria (1957)LA Dolce Vita...

Mubi's retrospective Fellini at 100 is showing April 29 - July 13, 2020 in many countries.As someone raised in a town of 500, itching to escape to the nearest city for the best part of my childhood, Fellini’s characters have always felt familiar. “His films are a small-town boy’s dream of the big city,” Orson Welles told Playboy in a 1967 interview, and indeed, dotting them are heroes and eccentrics who either share the director’s provincial origins or dance through the frame with the stupor of perpetual strangers in strange lands. “He’s right,” Fellini said about Welles’s remark, “and that’s no insult.” For that naïve awe is the source of the ageless charm of Fellini’s whole cinema. If the films he made over a career spanning five decades still feel so alive and vibrant, it’s because they nurture the same childlike wonder of their protagonists, and their inordinate lust for life.

The centennial celebration of Federico Fellini continues as another one of his classics has been restored and will be getting a theatrical run here in the United States. Following his first solo directorial effort The White Sheik, Film Forum will premiere the new 4K restoration of his masterpiece Nights of Cabiria, which follows Giulietta Masina as a prostitute in Rome looking for love.

Masina won Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival for the drama, which would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957, marking the second year in a row this would happen for Fellini, following La Strada. This new 4K restoration, by TF1 Studio in partnership with Studiocanal and with the support of the Cnc, also boasts a brand-new translation and subtitles.

Ahead of an April 17 release (and likely Criterion box set), see the restoration trailer below via IndieWire.

Streetwalker “Cabiria,” a seemingly tough cookie,...

Just one year after winning the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (now known as the Best International Feature Film) in 1956 for his opus “La Strada,” iconic Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini repeated the win with “Nights of Cabiria,” also starring his wife and muse Giulietta Masina. Inspired by her brief appearance in his “The White Sheik,” the episodic drama follows Masina’s Cabiria through a series of interactions and incidents that highlight her search for true love.

When the star-studded film premiered at Cannes, Masina’s work was widely hailed as her best ever, and she went on to win the festival’s Best Actress award for her startling turn as the title heroine.

Over six decades since its release, New York City’s Film Forum is gearing up for a two-week run of the film, freshened up with a new 4K restoration, which also boasts a new translation and subtitles.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film at Lincoln Center

Bong Joon-ho’s “The Bong Show” is underway, with a mixture of his own films and work by Imamura, John Boorman, Clouzot and more.

Museum of Modern Art

“To Save and Project,” a highlight of any given year, has returned. The first weekend includes work by Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, and George A. Romero.

This year’s centennial of Federico Fellini’s birth is spawning a flurry of commemorative events, many of which will travel.

For starters the late great auteur, who was born on January 20, 1920, in Rimini, Italy, is being celebrated by his native seaside city with a new International Federico Fellini Museum, a so-called museum without walls, comprising an exhibition in a medieval castle titled “Fellini 100 and The Dolce Vita” and other components in other parts of Rimini’s historic center.

Elements of the high-tech show involving installations and “liquid screens” are expected to be replicated in a tribute to the “La Dolce Vita” director set at the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures – when the Renzo Piano-designed museum opens later this year – alongside a complete Fellini retrospective. This Fellini tribute will also be traveling to other major museums and film institutes around the world.

Meanwhile the first U.S. leg of...

“Parasite” has been named Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics. It’s the latest win for South Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s film, which won the Palme d’Or by a unanimous vote after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival.

The critics group convened in New York and Los Angeles to vote Saturday using a weighted scoring system, choosing winners and runners up across a variety of categories.

Bong’s genre-bending look at class in South Korea also won Best Screenplay, which the director co-wrote with Han Jin Won, while Song Kang Ho was a runner up for Best Supporting Actor. Bong was also a runner up for Best Director, an award won by Greta Gerwig for “Little Women.”

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “Little Women” were runners up for Best Picture and those films, along with “Marriage Story” were particularly favored by the society.

Bong Joon Ho‘s “Parasite” won Best Picture from the National Society of Film Critics, which met at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City on Saturday to choose its winners for the 54th time. The South Korean drama also won Best Screenplay from the group.

The society recognized two indies for the top acting prizes: Mary Kay Place for “Diane” and Antonio Banderas for Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory.” The supporting acting honors went to Brad Pitt for “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and Laura Dern for her work in both “Marriage Story” and “Little Women.”

The National Society of Film Critics was established in 1966, with its co-founders including Pauline Kael, Joe Morgenstern and Richard Schickel. The group currently has 60 active members. Members who have not seen most or all of the contending films can disqualify themselves from voting.

Also Read: New York Film...

Greta Gerwig named best director for Little Women.

Bong Joon Ho’s impressive awards season continued on Saturday night (January 4) as Parasite was named best picture of the year in the National Society Of Film Critics’ 54th annual vote.

The South Korean dark comedy, which is in the running for best foreign language film in Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, earned 44 votes under the Society’s weighted ballot system, finishing ahead of Little Women on 27 and Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood on 22.

Greta Gerwig was named best director for Little Women, edging out Bong with 39 votes against 36, while Martin Scorsese...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film at Lincoln Center

The career-spanning Agnès Varda retrospective has its final weekend.

Museum of Modern Art

Films by Truffaut, Jane Campion, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi and more play in “Show Me Love: International Teen Cinema.”

Metrograph

“Holidays at Metrograph” winds down with Phantom Thread and Eyes Wide Shut.

Downtown ’81 and A Bigger Splash play in “Metrograph Standards.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film at Lincoln Center

The career-spanning Agnès Varda retrospective continues.

Metrograph

“Holidays at Metrograph” winds down with Phantom Thread and Eyes Wide Shut.

A print of The New World plays on Sunday.

Brazil has late-night showings, while Where the Wild Things Are screens early.

Film Forum

Fellini’s The White Sheik plays in a restored...

Next year will mark the centennial of Federico Fellini, born on January 20, 1920 in Rimini, Italy. While we imagine there will be no shortage of retrospectives and screenings celebrating the Italian master, New York City’s Film Forum is getting ahead of the pack with a presentation of a new 4K restoration of the director’s first solo directorial effort The White Sheik. We’re pleased to present the exclusive trailer debut ahead of an opening on Christmas Day.

Coming after Fellini’s 1950 debut Variety Lights, co-directed with Alberto Lattuada, this 1952 slapstick rom-com follows a honeymoon gone off the rails when the bride (Brunella Bovo) goes off in search of her titular idol. Based on an original treatment by Michelangelo Antonioni, the film also marks a number of early collaborations with future Fellini stalwarts, notably a memorable cameo by Giulietta Masina as Cabiria (five years before Nights of Cabiria) and a score by composer Nino Rota.

The Venice Film Festival has announced the selections for its 76th edition, which is set to take place from August 29 to September 7. The announcement marks the week’s second major film festival lineup to confirm titles following the Toronto International Film Festival. With both official selections for Venice and Tiff now revealed, the upcoming 2019-20 awards season is quickly taking shape.

As previously announced, Venice 2019 will open with the world premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film “The Truth.” The family drama stars Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve, and Ethan Hawke. “The Truth” is Kore-eda’s first directorial effort since winning the Palme d’Or in 2018 with “Shoplifters.” This year’s festival will close with “The Burnt Orange Heresy,” the latest feature from Giuseppe Capotondi. The movie stars Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, and Mick Jagger.

Venice has already announced that Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel will serve as the president of this year’s competition jury.

Movies by Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, David Cronenberg, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luis Bunuel and Federico Fellini are among the lineup of the Venice Classics section at the 76th Venice Film Festival.

A new 35mm print of Scorsese’s 1977 film “New York, New York” will be screened in honor of United Artists’ centennial. The new copy, playing courtesy of MGM, will be presented by one of the film’s producers, Irwin Winkler, who will hold a masterclass following the screening.

Among the newly restored classics will be Hopper’s 1980 film “Out of the Blue”; Cronenberg’s 1996 movie “Crash”; a double bill of Bernardo Bertolucci pics – “The Grim Reaper,” the director’s feature debut, which bowed in Venice in 1962, and “The Spider’s Stratagem,” presented at Venice in 1970; Federico Fellini’s “The White Sheik,” which premiered at Venice in 1952; and Bunuel’s 1955 film “The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz.”

The complete...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Federico Fellini's The White Sheik (1952) is showing January 20 - February 19, 2018 and Nights of Cabiria (1957) from January 21 - February 20, 2018 on Mubi in the United States. Even the most straight-faced Federico Fellini film veers toward the illusory. From the lackadaisical daydreams of wayward young men to the ingenuousness of a simple-minded woman wanting nothing more than to be loved in a world that is anything but loving, his characters regularly search for something so perceptibly near and so conceivably real, yet something often revealed to be deceptive at best, nonexistent at worst. And when he applies this tendency with extravagant conviction, enhancing the whimsy further toward the fantastic, the result is something for which an adjective had to be created: “Felliniesque.” Variety Lights (1950), the first film Fellini directed—in collaboration with Alberto Lattuada—revolved around the world of vaudeville, so...

This remake of a pre-Code classic adds amazing European locations, glorious Technicolor and entire armies on the move, yet doesn’t improve on the original. Producer David O. Selznick secured Rock Hudson to play opposite Jennifer Jones, but the chemistry is lacking. Why did the man spend twenty years trying to top Gone With the Wind?

A Farewell to Arms

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 152 min. / Street Date April 18, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jennifer Jones, Rock Hudson, Vittorio De Sica, Mercedes McCambridge, Elaine Stritch.

Cinematography: Oswald Morris, Piero Portalupi

Production Designer: Alfred Junge

Art Direction: Mario Garbuglia

Film Editors: John M. Foley, Gerard J. Wilson

Original Music: Mario Nascimbene

Written by Ben Hecht from a play by Laurence Stallings from a novel by Ernest Hemingway

Produced by David O. Selznick

Directed by Charles Vidor

What happens when a major Hollywood producer thinks he has all the answers?...

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies that have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Katalin Berek (1930-2017) - Hungarian Actress. She stars in the Oscars-submitted film Adoption and appears in A Half Pint of Beer, Sacra Corona, The Upthrown Stone and Istvan, a Kiraly. She died on February 27. (Index) Brunella Bovo (1932-2017) - Italian Actress. She stars in Federico Fellini's The White Sheik (see below) and Vittorio De Sica's Miracle in Milan. She died on February 21. (Corriere di Rieti) Neil Fingleton...

Read More...

I'm a huge fan of Federico Fellini's films, films that have essentially become part of the the fabric of cinema history. This largely refers to La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, La Strada, The Nights of Cabiria and Amarcord. Of course, I've also seen and enjoyed I Vitelloni and Juliet of the Spirits while also not particularly loving The White Sheik or Ginger & Fred. I mention this only as a note that I will pretty much devour whatever Fellini feature is placed in front of me, and as much as I was ready to delve into this new Criterion release of his 1969 feature Fellini Satyricon, I can't say the trip was an enjoyable one. Admittedly, Criterion always manages to deliver something intriguing with their releases and this new Blu-ray edition of Fellini Satyricon is no different, but not for the film itself, more for the supplemental material that makes you start to...

Everyone knows Woody Allen. At least, everyone thinks they know Woody Allen. His plumage is easily identifiable: horn-rimmed glasses, baggy suit, wispy hair, kvetching demeanor, ironic sense of humor, acute fear of death. As is his habitat: New York City, though recently he has flown as far afield as London, Barcelona, and Paris. His likes are well known: Bergman, Dostoevsky, New Orleans jazz. So too his dislikes: spiders, cars, nature, Wagner records, the entire city of Los Angeles. Whether or not these traits represent the true Allen, who’s to say? It is impossible to tell, with Allen, where cinema ends and life begins, an obfuscation he readily encourages. In the late nineteen-seventies, disillusioned with the comedic success he’d found making such films as Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), and Annie Hall (1977), he turned for darker territory with Stardust Memories (1980), a film in which, none too surprisingly, he plays a...

Bill Hader has come a long way since his stint on Saturday Night Live, creating many popular characters and impersonations such as Stefon, Vincent Price and CNN’s Jack Cafferty. He is one of the highlights in such films as Adventureland, Knocked Up, Superbad and Pineapple Express, and so it is easy to see why author Mike Sacks interviewed him for his new book Poking A Dead Frog. In it, Hader talks about his career and he also lists 200 essential movies every comedy writer should see. Xo Jane recently published the list for those of us who haven’t had a chance to read the book yet. There are a ton of great recommendations and plenty I haven’t yet seen, but sadly my favourite comedy of all time isn’t mentioned. That would be Some Like It Hot. Still, it really is a great list with a mix of old and new.

Last Friday I had the good fortune to attend a press day for Woody Allen's newest film, To Rome With Love. In addition to that, I attended a press conference with the great man himself in which he admitted he never watches his films after they're finished and that he considers Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters great disappointments. In fact, here's what Annie Hall, according to Allen, was supposed to be about: "Annie Hall. Let me tell you. When Annie Hall started out, it was not supposed to be what I wound up with. It was supposed to be what happens in a guy's mind and you were supposed to see a stream of consciousness in his mind. And I did the film and it was completely incoherent. Nobody understood a thing that went on. And the relationship between myself and Diane Keaton was all anyone cared about.

“With Woody Allen, you have someone who is responsible for more memorable moments than anyone who’s ever been involved in films,” says Alec Baldwin, one of the stars of “To Rome With Love,” who joined various cast members and the director in New York City to talk with press about the film. The 42nd film of the career of the writer, director and legend, Allen doesn’t have to go far to find an exciting collaborator like Baldwin, who bluntly says, “When he calls you and asks you to come and do this, if you’re available, you go.”

“To Rome With Love” is an anthology, centered around multiple love stories set in the beautiful city of Rome. It’s a first for Allen, who has found a second home overseas since 2005’s “Match Point.” “Rome is a provocative city to shoot in,” Allen says. “It’s visually arresting,...

I stumbled upon a list of 41 of Woody Allen's favorite films over at This Recording, which were actually pulled from Allen's 2007 biography written by Eric Lax titled "Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking" which you can buy from Amazon for $16.47.

Allen comments on the lists, of which he breaks up into different categories, saying, "My tastes seem to me unremarkable except in the area of talking plot comedies where I seem to have little tolerance for anything and certainly not my own films."

Unfortunately, he's pretty much right as I would bet most avid movie watchers will have seen the majority of the films he lists and then when he does get to talking plot comedies he waves a white flag in fear of looking foolish saying, "[My] taste is eccentric and there are any number of comedies I love that would make me seem foolish or should I say,...

Cabiria (1914) was the seminal Italian historical epic, adding to the gigantic sets and overplayed melodrama of predecessors like Nero and The Fall of Troy, with elegant camera moves (using Segundo de Chomon's first purpose-built dolly) and celebrity cameos for Hannibal and Archimedes. "It had everything but a story," observed Karl Brown, Dw Griffith's camera assistant. Giovanni Pastrone and Gabriele D'Annunzio's historical pageant influenced movies from Intolerance to Metropolis to Conan the Barbarian, and Fellini borrowed its heroine's name for his wife's role in The White Sheik and Nights of Cabiria.

But the figure who caught the public imagination was not the titular heroine, but Maciste, the heroic slave, played by Bartolomeo Pagano, a Genovese longshoreman with a spectacularly muscled physique. Maciste/Pagano went on to star in twenty-four more movies over the next fourteen years, of which the most famous (and the only one available, albeit in somewhat...

The woes of rights have made a lot of fandom particularly challenging, whether it's seeing your beloved television shows never make DVD due to music rights, ultimate editions never getting released due split studio rights (Fire Walk with Me!), or Criterion titles disappear from the shelves.

Criterion has announced that they're about to lose the rights to 23 excellent titles from StudioCanal at the end of March. "The titles are going to Lionsgate, and we don't know when they may be rereleased. As ever, we will continue to try to relicense the films so that they can rejoin the collection sometime in the future." The titles are: Alphaville, Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy, Le corbeau, Coup de torchon, Diary of a Country Priest, The Fallen Idol, Forbidden Games, Gervaise, Grand Illusion, Le jour se leve, Last Holiday, Mayerling, The Orphic Trilogy, Peeping Tom, Pierrot le fou, Port of Shadows, Quai des Orfevres,...

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films from Criterion

Photo: Criterion Last week in my On DVD Today column I mentioned how the folks at Criterion were clearing off their shelves and offering every item in stock at a 40% discount while supplies lasted. I would assume a majority of the folks that read the article ignored that link since it didn't have any new information on Batman, Iron Man or any other kind of man from a comic book. However, I am hoping this headline brought in the folks that may be interested in such a deal. Of course, the hour is late and the majority of the titles are now gone as the deal ends Monday, November 24, at midnight Est. When I first got the email from Criterion I shuffled over to check out a few titles I had been longing to get and had never wanted to spend the money.

Alberto Sordi, the Italian film star who came to personify the genre known as "Italian comedy" in a career spanning seven decades and more than 150 films, died Tuesday in Rome of bronchitis, ending a six-month battle with cancer. He was 82. The son of a Roman orchestra conductor, Sordi started out in the movies in the 1930s as a dubber with a contract from MGM to give Oliver Hardy -- the chubby man of comic duo Laurel and Hardy -- an Italian voice. Sordi's acting career got a big boost after working with Federico Fellini, who picked the strapping, dark, typically Roman-looking Sordi to play the part of a romantic movie star in his 1952 feature The White Sheik. The next year, Sordi worked again with Fellini in the Italian cinema classic I Vitelloni, in which Sordi played one of five indolent young men shirking the responsibilities of adulthood in a sleepy seaside town. But it was for his roles in scores of popular comedies of the 1950s, '60s and '70s -- social satires in which he played a traffic cop, a doctor, a taxi driver, a playboy, a convict and a Mafioso, among many other roles -- that Sordi rose to icon status in Italy.