USA

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Todd Solondz is back with Life During Wartime, his sixth feature and a sequel of sorts to his crowd-pleasing 1998 effort, Happiness. Solondz once again follows the joyless Jordan sisters (played by new actors this time around) as they attempt to navigate life and love in sunny Miami. Consisting of a series of loosely connected vignettes and brimming with Solondz’s signature deadpan humor, Life During Wartime skirts the uncomfortable line between pathos and tragedy, all the while maintaining a pitch-perfect tone that never alienates the audience (but still manages to keep them safely at arms length). Solondz is most definitely an acquired taste, but Life During Wartime may just be the film that introduces his work to a wider audience. More accessible than both Storytelling and and featuring stellar performances from Allison Janney (Juno), Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) and Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club), Solondz has crafted an ironic exploration into the dark heart of America at its most vulnerable: when it thinks nobody is watching.Read More »

On the opening night of its annual 31 Days of Oscar festival, TCM presents the world premiere of “And the Oscar Goes To…”, a documentary tracing the history of the Academy Awards. The documentary is one of a series of programming events leading up to the TCM 20th anniversary in April 2014. In telling the story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry’s most coveted prize, And the Oscar Goes To… traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed “Oscar” and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.Read More »

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was a run-away success. The film is known as Mansfield’s “signature film.”

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a 1957 American satiric comedy film starring Jayne Mansfield and Tony Randall, with Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Lili Gentle, Mickey Hargitay, and a cameo by Groucho Marx. The film is a satire on popular fan culture, Hollywood hype and the ad industry, which was making millions of dollars off the growing revenue from television ads. The film also takes aim at television and the damage it was doing to movie attendance in the 1950s.

It was produced and directed by Frank Tashlin, who also wrote the largely original screenplay, utilizing little more than the title and the character of Rita Marlowe from the successful Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? by George Axelrod. The play had run from 1955 to 1956 and also starred Mansfield as Rita.Read More »

Plot: A dedicated young doctor places his patients above everyone else in his life. Unfortunately, his social register fianceé can’t accept the fact that he considers an appointment in the operating room more important that attending a cocktail party. He soon drifts into an affair with a pretty nurse who shares his passion for healing. Written by Daniel Bubbeo Read More »

Blurring the line between fiction, documentary, and experimental filmmaking modes, Telaroli herself plays a director attempting to recreate a scene from Michael Curtiz’s Depression-era drama The Cabin in the Cotton. While Telaroli presides over a round robin of collaborators who take turns performing the same scene again and again, a roomful of cameras, phones, and laptops capture the scene and its production from every conceivable angle. Read More »

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“Dark Horse” tells the story of Abe, a loser who leads a life of such agony that he might explode in misery if he weren’t protected by his cluelessness.

A tubby, balding, 35-year-old arrested adolescent, he lives at home with his parents, in a bedroom still containing his action-figures collection. He wears tight-fitting T-shirts printed with inane messages. He drives a bright yellow Hummer, which he carefully locks, as if anyone would want to steal it. The last man who looked cool driving a Hummer was Arnold Schwarzenegger.Read More »

Gambling Sex (1932)
A wealthy young socialite gets the gambling bug, and soon it goes from being just a fun pastime to an addiction, and she begins to lose more and more of her fortune.

Stars: Ruth Hall, Grant Withers, Maston Williams Read More »

In the 1800s a naturalist marries into a family of British aristocrats.

based on A.S. Byatt’s creepy, wonderful, novel… And there’s nothing creepier than Patsy Kensit’s doughy pig-face.

from allmovie:

A 19th-century British naturalist falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, but he soon discovers that her family’s perfect facade disguises unexpectedly grim secrets. Director and co-screenwriter Philip Haas’s adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s Morpho Eugenio eschews the usual gentility of Victorian period pieces in favor of subtle creepiness. The unsettling mood is emphasized by the film’s detailed attention to its protagonist’s scientific endeavors, which center on the study of insects and their behavior.Read More »

From wiki: The Company is composed of stories gathered from the actual dancers, choreographers, and office staff of the Joffrey Ballet. Most of the roles are played by real-life company members. While there are small subplots involving a love story between Campbell’s character and a character played by James Franco, most of the movie focuses on the company as a whole, without any real star or linear plot. The many real-life stories woven together show the dedication and hard work that dancers must put in to their art, even though they are seldom rewarded with fame, fortune, or even a statue, painting, or album on which to look back.Read More »