The work of the great English cinematographer Oswald Morris, in both colour and black-and-white, added enormously to the films he worked on. He had a long and fruitful association with John Huston (his work on Moulin Rouge in 1952 pushed the boundaries of what Technicolor was supposed to be able to do), and also shot […]
Three recent disks showcase performances by interesting actors in less-than-reputable movies: Klaus Kinski in Crawlspace, Udo Kier in The House on Straw Hill, and Peter Cushing in Corruption.
While some of the films and plays in the series of disks I wrote about last week, devoted to ghost and horror stories made for British television, reveal the budgetary and technical limitations of their time and medium (low budget sets, somewhat coarse and murky video recording), the BFI has lavished its attention on one […]
The English love ghost stories. There are the classics, of course – Hamlet and Macbeth, for instance – but after the advent of Gothic literature in the late 1700s, spirits, whether harmful or helpful, became less distant, increasingly incorporated into contemporary life. From penny dreadfuls to Dickens, ghosts impinged on the lives of characters not […]
My genre viewing on disk over the past couple of months ranges from classics to crap, and I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed it all. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) From England, I’ve obtained impressive Blu-rays of three key movies from the period when “modern” horror was born: Hammer’s first two colour Gothic features, […]
I just learned that Anthony Hinds died three weeks ago, aged 91. Although perhaps not a household name, Hinds was one of the most influential post-war producers not just in British film, but in world cinema in general. And this despite the fact that he apparently wasn’t enamoured of the business; a quiet man, he […]
My friend Howard and I get together fairly regularly for an evening of conversation and movie viewing. The conversation often revolves around what he goes through teaching film courses to first-year university students … something I’m glad not to be involved with! The viewing more often than not focuses on older movies (we’re both pretty […]
Falling behind again! Things have been hectic lately – working on a documentary which has turned out to be bigger than expected and is now way overdue, plus starting a new project with a tight deadline, I haven’t had a lot of time to write down notes on what I’ve been watching the past couple […]
Kim Longinotto and Marc Isaacs are two English documentarians whose subjects differ widely, but who share a fascination for the small details of people’s lives.
Howard Curle recalls another formative experience with William K Everson’s class at NYU in the ’70s; The Sound Barrier, a key film in David Lean’s career