1970s

Lady Sings the Blues, like many enjoyable biopics, has little to do with presenting fact and everything to do with presenting the essence of a life. It has been both rightly and unfairly reviled by passionate fans of Holiday’s music as being highly fictionalized—and so it is, just as Amadeus, Funny Girl, and St. Louis Blues also use seeds of fact to grow fanciful tales of their respective subjects’ lives. It is also true that Diana Ross has little in common with Billie Holiday; their singing styles are markedly different, and Ross is far too slender and beautiful to believably imitate Holiday; to her credit, she does not try.Read More »

Here is a Peter Handke Adaptation from the 70s featuring Geraldine Chaplin and Music by Brian Eno.
about the novel:
In ”Short Letter, Long Farewell,” a German playwright is pursued by his wife, an actress, who wants to kill him. They scramble across the United States – Providence, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Tucson, northern Oregon – to California, where they meet the director John Ford, who utters sage advice that enables them to part in peace. The novel is full of vivid snapshots of American characters and scenes, and the idiosyncratic mixture of narrative, interior monologue, natural description and cultural themes and cliches is a brilliant concoction.Read More »

Synopsis:
Isabelle Douléan (Isabelle Adjani) is a medical student who lives with her dad, Jean (Lino Ventura). The fact that her parents (Ventura and Annie Girardot) don’t live together anymore does not bother her that much. Love life, cute guy (Jacques Spiesser), annoying boyfriend (Francis Perrin), exam failure, and yearning for independence are some of the things Isabelle must deal with. These are like a slap in the face for her; it’s something unexpected and painful at the same time…Read More »

In this black comedy, Fred (Jean-Louis Trintingnant) works for an insurance company as a computer engineer. Fred is bored with enduring the trials of his shrewish wife, so, after using actuarial tables to calculate the most common means of death, he cleverly prepares the family bathroom and brings about her demise. For a while he is content with his new freedom, but then he recognizes that a friend is in a similar situation.Read More »

The third film in Ogawa Productions’ Narita/Sanrizuka series of documentaries about the resistance by farmers and activists to the construction of the Narita Airport.Read More »

Synopsis:
A magician makes money by charging people to cast love spells on the objects of their affection. Complications arise when he decides that he wants a customer’s bride for himself.Read More »

Quote:
Nino Manfredi and Mariangela Melato are a couple who teach at the same elementary school and are dying to have a child of their own. At this school all the little students wear uniforms that make them look like miniature Austin Powers’. They also accompany the soundtrack with insipid songs that tell you what you are looking at. Whether you understand Italian or not, it soon gets on your nerves.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘The film begins with a school teacher played by Javier Escriva bidding farewell to his students, who are leaving for the summer. As he is heading home he notices two of his students are hitch-hiking (a boy and a girl, played by John Moulder-Brown and Inma de Santis), and picks them up. He invites them over for dinner and lodging, which they accept. The majority of the film from this point on is set at the mansion, where the two students turn from guests to prisoners under the teacher’s command. The teacher has a thuggish (yet sensitive) henchman played by Simon Andreu, who enforces the teacher’s wishes. The teacher begins to sexually humiliate and torture the two students until he has mentally brainwashed them into his way of thinking […] Eventually there is a reversal of roles…’
– jlabineRead More »

Synopsis:
When the king is murdered, his baby son and heir is hidden in the forest where he is abducted and raised by a pride of lions. As an adult he uses his beastly strength and claw-like hands to take revenge against the new king and his armies.Read More »