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Cinematographer Peter Biziou — who earned an Oscar and BAFTA for Alan Parker-directed 1988 film Mississippi Burning — will receive the lifetime achievement award at the 31st EnergaCamerimage international festival of cinematography, which returns to Turun, Poland, in November.

Biziou’s credits include Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, for which he earned an additional BAFTA nom, and several films with Parker, including Bugsy Malone (shared with Dp Michael Seresin) and Pink Floyd: The Wall.

His other notable credits also include Monty Python’s Life of Brian, helmed by Terry Jones; Time Bandits, directed by Terry Gilliam; Another Country, by Merek Kanievska; and In the Name of the Father, by Jim Sheridan.

Born in Wales in 1944, Biziou’s family was evacuated during WWII. His father, Leon Bijou, was a cinematographer, special effects, animation pro and an assistant director who worked with Richard Thorpe on 1952’s Ivanhoe.

Following his return to post-war London,...

British Cinematographer Peter Biziou, known for his work on pics like The Truman Show and Mississippi Burning, is the recipient of the lifetime achievement award this year at Poland’s Camerimage film festival.

Biziou was born in 1944 in Bangor, Caernarvonshire County, Wales. His family had been evacuated during the Second World War. His father was the cinematographer and special effects artist Leon Bijou who worked with Richard Thorpe on Ivanhoe (1952) and Adrian Lyne on Foxes (1980).

Beyond The Truman Show, Biziou’s credits include Monthy Python’s Life of Brian, Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981), Nine ½ Weeks Lyne (1986), Unfaithful (2002), and A World Apart (1987). Biziou has also lensed pics including Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), City of Joy (1992), Damage (1992), Richard III (1995), Ladies in Lavender (2004), Derailed (2005), and Mississippi Burning (1998), for which he won the Best Cinematography Oscar.

Peter Biziou

Biziou is set to attend the fest held in Torun, Poland, to accept the award...

The year 1953 surely left even the most devoted Oscar fans scratching their heads. One of the biggest upsets ever for Best Picture, some shocking snubs and all major awards going to different films led to some baffling anomalies at the 25th Academy Awards ceremony on March 19, 1953. This was also the year that the film industry finally capitulated to its rival source of entertainment, television, and for the first time broadcast the lavish ceremony live for viewers at home – so perhaps they wanted to dazzle and stun. Let’s flashback to the Oscars from 70 years ago.

With the cameras switching back and forth between Bob Hope hosting in Los Angeles and Conrad Nagel hosting in New York, the event attracted the largest single television audience to date in that medium’s young history. Five films were nominated for Best Picture, including the expected winner “High Noon,” plus “The Quiet Man,” “Moulin Rouge” and “Ivanhoe.

What was the movie Steven Spielberg saw as a child that inspired him to become one of the most successful, influential, and acclaimed filmmakers? According to his semi-autobiographical new film “The Fabelmans,” his cinematic alter-ego Sammy becomes obsessed with movies after his parents take him to the see Cecil B. DeMille’s 1952 circus epic “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

“The Greatest Show on Earth,” which not only won the Oscar for Best Picture and story, was the box office champ of the year earning 14 million domestically and 36 million worldwide. Critics were not so kind to his cotton-candy colored melodrama set under the big top at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Films in Review declared “Mr. DeMille is so accomplished a showman that one is astonished he did not just photograph a circus performance without the synthetic story he injected here. After all, the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus is a wonder in itself.

In the postwar turf fight between the motion picture industry and the television networks, the first telecast of an Academy Awards ceremony by NBC on March 19, 1953 marked the beginning of grudging truce: The movies would use TV to lure audiences back into theaters and TV would use the movies to sell television.

As usual, a lot of the action took place off (either) screen. In addition to the film-v.-TV storyline and the backstage machinations to win the gold-plated statue (by now universally known as Oscar, though still a name that required quotation marks, at least according to the grammar police at the New York Times), a political undercurrent rumbled beneath the hooray-for-Hollywood festivities. The showdown was not just, or maybe mostly, between calibrations of film artistry but, in the case of two of the five best picture nominees, between gradations of ideological correctness.

Three of the candidates bore no...

Chivalry! Vows of loyalty and honor! Combat action that will impress today’s Marvel fans! The violet eyes and super-damsel figure of Elizabeth Taylor! MGM’s made-in-Merrie Olde England tale of Knights and knaves and forbidden love is yet another suits-of-armor sword-basher about ransoming King Richard from those European Union swine across the channel. Everything clicks, from Miklos Rozsa’s most stirring anthem to the righteous justice of the finale. And it’s restored from 3-strip Technicolor. Robert Taylor is terrific as the stalwart Ivanhoe, the kind of no-funny-business hero they ain’t makin’ anymore.

Ivanhoe

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1952 /Color / 1:37 Academy / 106 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date December 14, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Emlyn Williams, Robert Douglas, Finlay Currie, Felix Aylmer, Guy Rolfe.

Cinematography: Freddie Young

Art Director: Alfred Junge

Film Editor: Frank Clarke

Original Music: Miklos Rozsa

Written by Aeneas MacKenzie, Marguerite Roberts,...

The Academy Awards celebrated its 25th anniversary on March 19, 1953 by being telecast for the first time in its history. Bob Hope hosted the celebration for NBC at the Rko Pantages Theater in Hollywood while Conrad Nagel had the Mc duties at the NBC International Theatre in New York. And the show captured the largest single TV audience at the time.

The Best Picture nominees were Fred Zinnemann’s thrilling Western “High Noon,” MGM’s lavish epic “Ivanhoe,” John Huston’s dazzling biopic on Toulouse Lautrec “Moulin Rouge,” John Ford’s warm hug of an Irish romantic comedy “The Quiet Man” and Cecil B. DeMille’s penultimate film as a director, “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

The surprise winner was “The Greatest Show on Earth,” which was the box office champ of the year earning $14 million domestically and $36 million worldwide. Critics were not so kind to his cotton-candy colored melodrama set...

Van Johnson steps into adventure-guy shoes more suitable for Humphrey Bogart in this European-shot thriller. Daring Martine Carol provides the sex appeal as the mystery dame who entices Johnson to smuggle a man out of Red Albania. The movie is practically a proto- James Bond film: it’s directed by Terence Young, includes Sean Connery and Anthony Dawson in the cast list, and features a fight in a gypsy camp. But Herbert Lom steals the show from them all as a monocle-wearing, oversexed gypsy bandit who can’t abide Commies. Oh, and the disc has special treat in store for discerning, high-toned art-movie intellectuals: this is the film’s hotter Continental version.

Action of the Tiger

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date April 14, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom, Gustavo Rojo, José Nieto, Helen Haye, Anna Gerber, Anthony Dawson, Sean Connery,...

” Is this your wife? What a lovely throat!”

There’s nothing better than silent films accompanied by live music and I’d go as far as saying there’s nothing better than silent films accompanied by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra. And I’ll go even farther by saying that there’s nothing better than the 1922 silent spooker Nosferatu accompanied by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra which is an event that will be taking place Wednesday night, October 23rd at Urban Chestnut Brewing Company’s Midtown Brewery & Biergarten. Doors open at 6pm and the movie unspools after dark! A Facebook invite for this event can be found Here

Admission Is Free !!!

I’ve seen Nosferatu with live music before and have even shown a 25-minute cut of the film at my old monthly Super-8 Movie Madness show with live keyboard accompaniment (by the talented Linda Gurney...

David Crow May 14, 2019

We compare the best and worst Robin Hood movies. From Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe to a fox, here's the definitive ranking.

Like a certain Saxon archer landing an arrow right down the center of a bullseye, another Robin Hood movie being around the corner is inevitable. One of the oldest and most beloved figures of English folklore, Robin of Locksley has evolved through the centuries from grifter and trickster to fallen nobleman, and finally to righteous social justice warrior enamored with a serious income distribution plan. He also has more easily made the jump to cinema in the 20th century than many of his legendary peers of yore like King Arthur and Beowulf.

Indeed, thanks in large part to the charms of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Robin has been the star of one of the most important Hollywood films in cinema history,...

Jerry Thorpe, an executive at Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's Desilu Productions and a co-creator, director and producer on the David Carradine adventure series Kung Fu, died Sept. 25 in Santa Barbara, his family announced. He was 92.

During his four-decade career, the Los Angeles native also worked on David Janssen's Harry O; Our House, starring Wilford Brimley; and the longtime Jane Wyman CBS primetime soap Falcon Crest.

His father, Richard Thorpe, was a prolific director at MGM whose voluminous credits included Tarzan Escapes (1936), The Crowd Roars (1938), The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), Ivanhoe (1952) and ...

Jerry Thorpe, an executive at Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's Desilu Productions and a co-creator, director and producer on the David Carradine adventure series Kung Fu, died Sept. 25 in Santa Barbara, his family announced. He was 92.

During his four-decade career, the Los Angeles native also worked on David Janssen's Harry O; Our House, starring Wilford Brimley; and the longtime Jane Wyman CBS primetime soap Falcon Crest.

His father, Richard Thorpe, was a prolific director at MGM whose voluminous credits included Tarzan Escapes (1936), The Crowd Roars (1938), The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), Ivanhoe (1952) and ...

” Is this your wife? What a lovely throat!”

There’s nothing better than silent films accompanied by live music and I’d go as far as saying there’s nothing better than silent films accompanied by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra. And I’ll go even farther by saying that there’s nothing better than the 1922 silent spooker Nosferatu accompanied by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra which is an event that will be taking place Thursday night, October 25th at Urban Chestnut Brewing Company’s Midtown Brewery & Biergarten. Doors open at 6pm and the movie unspools after dark!

Admission Is Free !!!

A Facebook invite for this event can be found Here

https://www.facebook.com/events/255950208596615/permalink/255952768596359/

I’ve seen Nosferatu with live music before and have even shown a 25-minute cut of the film at my old monthly Super-8 Movie Madness show with live keyboard...

Warner Bros. is developing a sequel to its groundbreaking hit “Crazy Rich Asians,” which earned $35 million at the box office over its five-day opening weekend. Deadline reports that the studio is keeping the hit-making team together, bringing back director Jon M. Chu, as well as writers Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim. Producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force and John Penotti of Ivanhoe already have rights to the next two books in Kevin Kwan’s best-selling trilogy, “China Rich Girlfriend” and “Rich People Problems.”

Warners has not officially greenlit the sequel, but all the pieces are in place. “Let the audience ask for the sequel,” Jacobson told Deadline. “We’d love to make one, but not unless the audience asks for it, and hopefully they will this weekend.” The movie’s $35 million opening weekend outperformed estimates, which predicted only $18 million, so it seems the audience has spoken—loudly.

One of the most legendary writers of all time created the most adventurous fantasized and romanticized novel of all time Ivanhoe. Later in the timeline of movie making, several movies of this story were made, including an Australian cartoon movie from 1986. In 1982, a British movie maker Douglas Camfield created a television movie together with the writer John Gay. Douglas was born in 8th May in India, got adopted by English parents in London, he sadly passed away the 24th January 1984. His Ivanhoe movie is claimed to be one of the best version of the story and in Sweden when it got released it became so popular that it is broadcast on tv even today as a new year tradition every 31 December....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Review Andrew Blair 30 Sep 2013 - 08:15

Andrew checks out the DVD release of Tom Baker story Terror Of The Zygons...

This review contains spoilers.

It's aptly named, is Terror of the Zygons. Its opening episode is a slow-build towards one gloriously unexpected shock moment. Even now, when you know it's coming, it's a brilliant moment of jarring editing. A sudden reveal, a scream, a zoom into a shadowy monstrous face, cue credits. You don't quite have time to process it before its over.

That's after some enjoyably ripe Hammer horror scene-setting in the north-east of Scotland. Tales of ancient horror are spun to incredulous newcomers, and we occasionally cut away to ineffable alien eyes. Most formidable of all, of course, is Tom Baker. Here he's in prime unnerving form amidst a lot of competition. Perhaps there was a competition between him, Lillias Walker and Robert Russell. That would certainly explain a lot.

The name might not immediately ring a bell, but the face surely will. Julian Glover has decades of highly acclaimed television, theatre and film behind him and has worked with some of the very biggest names in cinema.

He squared off against Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade and he captained an At-at during the assault by the Empire on Hoth. He has appeared in a Bond film (For Your Eyes Only), a sword and sandals epic (Troy) and has been directed by Lord Attenborough (Cry Freedom). Truly a legend. I had the distinct pleasure of catching up with him recently to talk about the Hammer production Quatermass and the Pit, which gets a Blu-ray re-release this week and also to look at some of the rest of his hugely accomplished career.

I resisted the temptation to lay out my Indiana Jones nerd credentials (when I got married, we walked...