News

Above: Alternative and official UK posters for Parasite. Designers: Andrew Bannister (left) and La Boca (right).It’s been far too long since I last did one of these round-ups: nine months to be exact. A lot has changed in the world over that time of course, the most pertinent to this column being that far fewer new posters have premiered recently, and that the distractions and stresses of our current situation have led to me posting less frequently than I usually do.But, as I’ve been doing for many years, I have tallied up the most popular posters featured on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram (previously Tumblr) and by a long shot the most popular posts of the past nine months were for the two U.K. Parasite posters above. If it seems I’m giving these astonishing works short shrift by lumping them together here...

By Adrian Smith

William Blood (Kenneth More) is a man with an incredible immune system and without worries. He spends most of his time working as a human guinea pig for government departments such as the Common Cold and Flu Research Agency. There he frustrates the men in white coats by stubbornly refusing to catch a cold. He never gets ill, and his secret is that he has no emotional attachments. “The minute you get into a relationship with a woman, your guard is down and the coughing will start!” News of this remarkable constitution gets to the scientists at N.A.A.R.S.T.I., the National Atomic Research Station and Technological Institute, who are preparing to send the first maned rocket to the moon. They have previously sent up dogs and monkeys, but owing to public complaints about cruelty to animals, they have decided it would be...

Creative force in the British film industry whose work included The Stepford Wives and Whistle Down the Wind

The director, actor and writer Bryan Forbes, who has died aged 86, was one of the most creative forces in the British film industry of the 1960s, and the Hollywood films he directed included the original version of The Stepford Wives (1974). In later life he turned to the writing of books, both fiction and memoirs.

The turning point for him in cinema was the formation of the independent company Beaver Films with his friend Richard Attenborough in 1958. For the screenplay of their first production, The Angry Silence (1960), Forbes received an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award. Attenborough played a factory worker shunned and persecuted for not joining a strike. His colleagues are shown as being manipulated by skulking professional agitators and to some it seemed more like a political statement than a human...

British writer, director and actor Bryan Forbes has died aged 86, a family friend has revealed. Forbes began his career as an actor, before carving a name for himself as a screenwriter and later a director, with his 1945-48 military service occasionally inspiring his work. Writing the likes of The League Of Gentlemen (1960), The Whisperers (1967) and Deadfall (1968) (the latter two he also directed), Forbes made his directorial debut with Whistle Down The Wind in 1960, which earned four BAFTA nods. Among the most significant...

.

Bryan Forbes, who personified the golden age of British cinema in the post-wwii era, has died at age 86. Forbes started out as an actor before morphing into a screenwriter and esteemed director. He teamed with Richard Attenborough to form a film production company. Among their films was The Angry Silence, an acclaimed 1960 movie in which both men starred. It dealt squarely with England's omnipresent tensions between business leaders and union members. Forbes co-wrote the screenplay and produced the movie. His high profile films as director include such British classics as Whistle Down the Wind, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, The Wrong Box, The Whisperers, King Rat, Deadfall, The Slipper and the Rose, The L-Shaped Room, International Velvet as well as the hit 1975 Hollywood horror flick The Stepford Wives. Forbes also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for some of these films as well as the comedy classic The League of Gentlemen and director Attenborough's Chaplin.

The writer and director Bryan Forbes, whose films included Whistle Down the Wind and 1970s horror classic The Stepford Wives, has died aged 86 following a long illness, a family friend has said.

Forbes, who began his career in film as an actor and screenwriter and became one of the most important figures in the British film industry, died surrounded by his family at his home in Virginia Water, Surrey, friend Matthew D'Ancona said.

He was married to actor Nanette Newman, who appeared in several of his films, and with whom he had two daughters – the TV presenter Emma Forbes and the journalist Sarah Standing.

D'Ancona said: "Bryan Forbes was a titan of cinema, known and loved by people around the world in the film and theatre industries and known in other fields including politics. He is simply...

Whistle Down The Wind director Bryan Forbes has died at age 86.

The filmmaker, whose films also included The Stepford Wives, National Velvet and The Slipper And The Rose, passed away yesterday after a long illness.

Forbes, born John Theobald Clarke, initially forged a career as an actor on the stage before earning supporting roles in films including An Inspector Calls and The League Of Gentlemen (for which he also wrote the screenplay). He founded Allied Film Makers with Jack Hawkins, director Basil Dearden, producer Michael Relph and Richard Attenborough in 1959.

“We weren’t going anywhere,” Forbes said, “So we started our own company.”

He switched to directing in 1961, to helm Whistle Down The Wind, starring Hayley Mills, taking over after the original director was forced to pull out.

Family friend Matthew D'Ancona said: "Bryan Forbes was a titan of cinema, known and loved by people around the world in the.

‘Caper’ movies are a sub-genre of the crime film that in the past 50 years has created some highly entertaining, memorable pieces of cinema. Each of the classics of the sub-genre seems to follow a simple set of just three rules:

The ensemble cast, led by a strong leading actor, play a group of down-on-their-luck men (they are either criminals, ex-cons, reluctant soldiers, or unemployed) who band together to carry out a clever and audacious heist. The audience throughout cheers for the ‘criminals’ because we know they are not Really ‘bad guys’ and, until the very final moments, we hope that they will get away with the crime (any maybe afterwards). The script is as clever as the cinematic crime itself and has a strong element of black – and usually quite socially subversive – humor.

****

The top five are probably The League of Gentlemen (1960), Ocean’s Eleven (1960), The Italian Job (1969), Three Kings...

I just finished watching this jazz-infused 1962 psychodrama from British filmmaker Basil Dearden, titled All Night Long; it’s basically a retelling of Shakespeare’s Othello, set in a 1960s London jazz club, taking place over the course of one eventful evening.

As interracial couple, and band mates, Aurelius Rex (played by Paul Harris) and Delia Lane (played by Marti Stevens), celebrate their first wedding anniversary, jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin (Patrick McGoohan), who wants Delia for himself to headline his own burgeoning band, works feverishly to tear the couple apart, with lies and deception. A familiar story of jealousy and treachery.

And by the time the night draws to a close, the previously-happily married Aurelius has been deceived into trying to murder his beloved wife, and her believed to be lover.

It’s provoking, especially for a film of its time. Not a film that I’d expect to be...

by Vadim Rizov

In 1957, Jack Hawkins led a coordinated Allied attack on The Bridge on the River Kwai, and three years later, he led a coordinated private attack on a British bank. The film was The League of Gentlemen (included in Basil Dearden's London Underground, a smashing new box set from Criterion/Eclipse), in which Hawkins rounds up seven equally unpleasant, mostly meta-cast men to assist. The recruits comprise a microcosm of various, superficially resilient members of the British way of post-war life. One is Nigel Patrick, perhaps best known at that point as a mindlessly brave test pilot in The Sound Barrier, a sacrificial lamb to the stiff-upper-limb ethos to the last. He's Hawkins' aide, clinging to his pre-war aristocratic status by being paternally glib to the other men and looking foolish in the process. Other members: Terence Alexander (in real life a member of the 27th Lancers,...

DVD Links: DVD News | Release Dates | New Dvds | Reviews | RSS Feed

Broadcast News (Criterion Collection) This arrived on Monday afternoon so I've only had the chance to remove the cellophane. However, this was my most anticipated title from Criterion this January as I've heard so much about this film from James Brooks but have never seen it. The disc comes with a brand new audio commentary with Brooks and film editor Richard Marks as well as deleted scenes and an alternate ending with commentary from Brooks. I should have a full review within the next week. Dogtooth I didn't know this one was coming out today until I was putting together this article and I'm sure Kino is half-excited and half-upset at the prospect it's landing the same day as the Oscar nominations are announced. On one hand it's nice to hit shelves the same day you could possibly be...