Seeing the world in black-and-white … and shades of grey

Time is running out for small-time entertainer Sammy Lee (Anthony Newley) in Ken Hughes' The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)

The pleasures of black-and-white cinematography are on full display in Ken Hughes’ The Small World of Sammy Lee; shot on the streets of Soho and the East End by the great Wolfgang Suschitzky, this story of a small-time entertainer and compulsive gambler desperately trying to raise cash to pay off a gangster is a finely observed depiction of the seedier side of pre-Swinging London, shot through with bleak humour and the tentative possibility of redemption.

A 3D New Year

The fossil claw, in your eye, in Jack Arnold's Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D (1954)

At my annual New Year’s ritual of dinner and movies at my friend Steve’s, I finally got to sample the home 3D viewing experience; we sampled a number of movies, old and new, cheap and expensive, but while the experience had some interesting aspects, I can’t imagine wanting to watch in 3D too often.

Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Marlon Brando as Rio, the internalized anti-hero of One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Criterion’s Blu-ray release of One-Eyed Jacks is one of the disk highlights of the year, its restored image and sound confirming this great western’s stature. Marlon Brando’s sole directing effort is a key transitional moment between the traditional western and the national myth it represented and the modern deconstruction of that myth by filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn.

Blasts from the past

Listmania redux:
The Greatest Documentaries of All Time, part one

Seeing the world in black-and-white … and shades of grey

Stanley Kubrick 3: The Missing Piece – Fear and Desire (1953)

Recent Kino Lorber releases

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