While Mario Bava paved the way for Italian horror, directors who followed him pushed the limits of violence, foremost among them Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.
Italian genre beyond Bava
Tag: Italian Film
Mario Bava and Italian genre film: Gialli and Thrillers
The visual master Mario Bava virtually invented the Italian genre called giallo, influencing generations of filmmakers who followed and built on his stylistic and thematic example. Arrow video has been releasing a series of impressive editions of Bava’s films on Blu-ray, offering alternative versions and a rich array of supplements to provide a critical and historical context for his work.
Mario Bava and Italian genre film: Horror
The visual master Mario Bava virtually invented the Italian horror film, influencing generations of filmmakers who followed and built on his stylistic and thematic example. Arrow video has been releasing a series of impressive editions of Bava’s films on Blu-ray, offering alternative versions and a rich array of supplements to provide a critical and historical context for his work.
Criterion Blu-ray review: Fellini Satyricon (1969)
Criterion’s Blu-ray edition of Fellini Satyricon should go a long way towards establishing this phantasmagoric adaptation of the ancient Roman novel as one of the director’s finest and most creatively significant films.
Recent Viewing: horror from Arrow Video
Arrow Video has quickly become one of my favourite sources for both genre and “art” films, with impressive editions of a wide range of titles; most recently I’ve been immersing myself in some of their horror releases.
Year End 2014
Despite perennial predictions of the demise of movies-on-disk, 2014 offered a rich and varied selection of new and old titles in often impressive editions from many different companies, though not necessarily from major distributors. The cream came from specialty labels like Criterion, the BFI, Arrow, Eureka/Masters of Cinema, Shout! Factory, Olive Films, Kino Lorber, Flicker Alley and Twilight Time.
Late summer viewing 2014, part three
The range of my recent viewing covers classic Italian and Eastern European films by Elio Petri and Karel Zeman as well as a pair of 1970s sci-fi/fantasy productions from the BBC, newly released on disk by the BFI.
Recent Viewing: April and May, part one
Once again, I’ve fallen way behind in commenting on the movies I’ve been watching: ’60s political agitprop, mind-bending time travel, demonic possession, cheesy B monster movies, Cold War submarines and futuristic trains …
Styles of Horror, part three
Because it’s pretty hard to lose money with a horror movie, it’s been possible for filmmakers to experiment and push boundaries. But it’s a fact which has also produced a lot of laziness in both conception and execution, or at best a rote repetition of overly familiar formulas.
The Pathology of Power:
Elio Petri’s Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Elio Petri’s 1970 masterpiece Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion provides one of the most incisive dissections of the pathology of power ever committed to film.
Search
Indexes
Monthly Archives
Recent Posts