Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’

by Marilyn Ferdinand Note:  This review of ‘The Devils’ first appeared at Ferdy-on-Films in June of 2009, and is offered up here by the author as a contribution in Ken Russell’s remembrance at the sad time of his passing. Necessarily graphic or exploitative trash? Blasphemous or truthful? All the fuss that has accompanied Antichrist, the pas [...]

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Farewell to Unkle Ken – Ken Russell (1927-2011)

by Allan Fish When I heard of Ken Russell’s death first thing this morning after going onto the IMDb and BBC websites, one felt a sense of shock.  And shock at a death can come in so many different guises.  Only 24 hours earlier the football world, in the UK in particular, was beyond saddened [...]

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Intermezzo – 1936, Gustaf Molander

by Allan Fish (Sweden 1936 88m) DVD1 Seeing the flag… d  Gustav Molander  w  Gustav Molander, Gösta Stevens  ph  Äke Dahlquist  ed  Oscar Rosander  m  Heinz Provost, Robert Henning Gösta Ekman (Holger Brandt), Inga Tidblad (Margit Brandt), Ingrid Bergman (Anita Hoffman), Erik ‘Bullen’ Burglund (Charles Möller), Britt Hagman (Ann-Marie Brandt), Hugo Björne (Thomas Stenborg), Hasse [...]

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Hugo, The Artist, A Dangerous Method, My Week with Marilyn, House of Pleasures and silent Ben-Hur on Monday Morning Diary (November 28)

by Sam Juliano America’s turkey population was greatly diminished in the past week, but alas, life goes on, and next it’s the evergreens that will take a hit as the holiday season is officially underway.  Dee Dee’s Thanksgiving greetings represented the site’s spirit for November 24, and hopefully all had a wonderful and relaxing day, [...]

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Bambi (1942, prod. Walt Disney) • (Fixing a Hole: Animated Animals Month)

by Joel Bocko “Fixing a Hole” is a series whose purpose is to review films that have not yet been covered on Wonders in the Dark. The theme for November is “Animated Animals.” • The Story: One spring, a little fawn is born into a world of sunshine and flowers – but as the seasons pass, and [...]

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Truth, Justice and the American Way: “A History of Violence” on Page and Screen

By Bob Clark One of the great strengths of the comics medium that I’ve belabored upon is how any given panel on a page can stand on its own as a frozen moment in time, building sequences of linear action and non-sequitor stream of consciousness through static snapshots rather than the fluid, flowing continuities of [...]

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The Bowery – 1933, Raoul Walsh

by Allan Fish (USA 1933 92m) not on DVD When it’s on the strict QT p  Darryl F.Zanuck, Raymond Griffith, William Goetz  d  Raoul Walsh  w  Howard Estabrook, James Gleason  novel  Michael L.Simmons, Bessie Roth Solomon  ph  Barney McGill  ed  Allen McNeil  m  Alfred Newman  art  Richard Day  Wallace Beery (Chuck Connors), George Raft (Steve [...]

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Getting People Over the Beatles: A Series Examining the Greats of British (and UK) Pop Music (part 51)

by Jamie …There’s something else I wanted to say about Cezanne: that no one before him ever demonstrated so clearly the extent to which painting is something that takes place among the colors, and how one has to leave them completely alone, so that they can come to terms among themselves. Their mutual intercourse: this [...]

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“I only know I’ve changed”: Louis Bunuel’s ‘Viridiana’

Copyright © 2011 by James Clark       For quite a while, I’ve been jockeying into position one of my favorite films, Woman in the Dunes (1964), whose guiding light (along with novelist and scriptwriter, Kobo Abe), namely, Hiroshi Teshigahara, has occupied some of my daydreams due to his abandoning film in favor of  flower arrangement, [...]

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CD Opera Mini-Review: Philador’s ‘Sancho Panca’

by Sam Juliano The appearance of eighteenth-century opera on CD is a blessing for both fans of opera comique and those looking to broaden the horizons of  a form that takes risks far too infrequently.   The French composer Francois-Andre Danican Philador is thought to be the first to achieve real distinction in a style that [...]

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