Showbiz in Soho is artificial, gaudy and vulgar, but Laurence Harvey’s slick promoter-con man thinks he can cheat at the pop music game. Cliff Richard is his new discovery, a teen crooner who digs the bongo drums. Wolf Mankowitz’s portrait of talent, glitz, and double-dealing in music and TV showbiz also stars Sylvia Syms as a Soho stripper and Yolande Donlan as a singing star trying to make a comeback. The disc contains director Val Guest’s uncut original version.
Expresso Bongo
Blu-ray
Cohen / Kino Lorber
1959 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 111 106 min. / Street Date January 18, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Laurence Harvey, Sylvia Syms, Yolande Donlan, Cliff Richard, Meier Tzelniker, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Eric Pohlmann, Gilbert Harding, Hermione Baddeley, Reginald Beckwith, Avis Bunnage, Sally Geeson, Kenneth Griffith, Burt Kwouk, Wilfrid Lawson, Patricia Lewis, Barry Lowe, Martin Miller, Susan Hampshire, Peter Myers, Lisa Peake, The Shadows.
Cinematography: John Wilcox
Art Director:...
Expresso Bongo
Blu-ray
Cohen / Kino Lorber
1959 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 111 106 min. / Street Date January 18, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Laurence Harvey, Sylvia Syms, Yolande Donlan, Cliff Richard, Meier Tzelniker, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Eric Pohlmann, Gilbert Harding, Hermione Baddeley, Reginald Beckwith, Avis Bunnage, Sally Geeson, Kenneth Griffith, Burt Kwouk, Wilfrid Lawson, Patricia Lewis, Barry Lowe, Martin Miller, Susan Hampshire, Peter Myers, Lisa Peake, The Shadows.
Cinematography: John Wilcox
Art Director:...
- 3/5/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It’s the ‘other’ version of Dickens’ terrific novel, an English film that few Americans have seen. This Australian DVD is in the Pal format and from a rather outdated transfer, yet I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a favorite story enacted by a great batch of UK talent. Dirk Bogarde stars and the many character roles go to familiar faces: Cecil Parker, Athene Seyler, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass, Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Christopher Lee, Leo McKern, Donald Pleasence, Eric Pohlmann, Danny Green and the lovely Marie Versini. It’s a regular actor-spotting quiz. Ralph Thomas directed and much of the film was shot in France … with excellent English diction.
A Tale of Two Cities
Region 2 Pal DVD
Viavision (Australia)
1958 / B&w / 1:33 adapted flat / 117 min. / Street Date January 5, 2022 / Available from Viavision / 19.95 au
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker, Stephen Murray, Athene Seyler, Paul Guers, Marie Versini, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass,...
A Tale of Two Cities
Region 2 Pal DVD
Viavision (Australia)
1958 / B&w / 1:33 adapted flat / 117 min. / Street Date January 5, 2022 / Available from Viavision / 19.95 au
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker, Stephen Murray, Athene Seyler, Paul Guers, Marie Versini, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass,...
- 1/25/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
“An Alastair Sim Quartet”
By Raymond Benson
Alastair George Bell Sim, popularly known as Alastair Sim, was one of those great British actors famous for his remarkable facial features, physical presence, and vocal delivery. Primarily a renowned stage performer from the 1930s to the 1970s, Sim also made several films—mostly comedies, because he could do “irony” as well as, say, Alec Guinness. Sim is perhaps best-known for his definitive Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, but his work portraying acerbic and sarcastic characters in other pictures in the late 40s and through the 50s, is outstanding.
The impressive Film Movement label has released this 4-disk package that highlights a quartet of notable Alastair Sim appearances in what are deemed to be among the best post-war “very British” comedies. This was a time when Ealing Studios, for example, was making its mark in the genre.
“An Alastair Sim Quartet”
By Raymond Benson
Alastair George Bell Sim, popularly known as Alastair Sim, was one of those great British actors famous for his remarkable facial features, physical presence, and vocal delivery. Primarily a renowned stage performer from the 1930s to the 1970s, Sim also made several films—mostly comedies, because he could do “irony” as well as, say, Alec Guinness. Sim is perhaps best-known for his definitive Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, but his work portraying acerbic and sarcastic characters in other pictures in the late 40s and through the 50s, is outstanding.
The impressive Film Movement label has released this 4-disk package that highlights a quartet of notable Alastair Sim appearances in what are deemed to be among the best post-war “very British” comedies. This was a time when Ealing Studios, for example, was making its mark in the genre.
- 5/14/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
This strange blend of French série noire and English Brit noir was filmed in glowing Technicolor on location in Holland and Paris. Runaway bookkeeper Claude Rains teams up with the highly fatale Märta Torén, evading the law in pursuit of the good life promised by a valise packed with money. Georges Simenon’s crime tale has an undertaste of Poetic Realist rebelliousness.
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By
Blu-ray
ClassicFlix
1952 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / The Paris Express / Street Date May 29, 2018 / 29.99
Starring: Claude Rains, Märta Torén, Marius Goring, Herbert Lom, Anouk Aimée, Felix Aylmer, Ferdy Mayne, MacDonald Parke, Lucie Mannheim, Eric Pohlmann.
Cinematography: Otto Heller
Film Editor: Vera Campbell, Arthur H. Nadel
Original Music: Benjamin Frankel
From the book by Georges Simenon
Produced by Josef Shaftel, Raymond Stross
Written and Directed by Harold French
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By is from a 1938 novel by Georges Simenon, one of...
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By
Blu-ray
ClassicFlix
1952 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / The Paris Express / Street Date May 29, 2018 / 29.99
Starring: Claude Rains, Märta Torén, Marius Goring, Herbert Lom, Anouk Aimée, Felix Aylmer, Ferdy Mayne, MacDonald Parke, Lucie Mannheim, Eric Pohlmann.
Cinematography: Otto Heller
Film Editor: Vera Campbell, Arthur H. Nadel
Original Music: Benjamin Frankel
From the book by Georges Simenon
Produced by Josef Shaftel, Raymond Stross
Written and Directed by Harold French
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By is from a 1938 novel by Georges Simenon, one of...
- 6/12/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Rex Harrison hat on TCM: ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Anna and the King of Siam’ Rex Harrison is Turner Classic Movies’ final "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 31, 2013. TCM is currently showing George Cukor’s lavish My Fair Lady (1964), an Academy Award-winning musical that has (in my humble opinion) unfairly lost quite a bit of its prestige in the last several decades. Rex Harrison, invariably a major ham whether playing Saladin, the King of Siam, Julius Caesar, the ghost of a dead sea captain, or Richard Burton’s lover, is for once flawlessly cast as Professor Henry Higgins, who on stage transformed Julie Andrews from cockney duckling to diction-master swan and who in the movie version does the same for Audrey Hepburn. Harrison, by the way, was the year’s Best Actor Oscar winner. (See also: "Audrey Hepburn vs. Julie Andrews: Biggest Oscar Snubs.") Following My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison...
- 8/31/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
We recently reported that Peter Morgan, who penned The Queen and Frost/Nixon, will be co-scripting the new James Bond movie with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, and that Afghanistan might factor into the plot-line somehow.
Now comes word from The Guardian that Michael Sheen, who has collaborated in the past with Morgan on the aforementioned movies, is in negotiations to play Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Bond 23.
Blofeld back for Bond 23...? That's what the UK paper is reporting.
"Michael is hot property right now and it is felt that he's the right man to bring Blofeld back to life," an unnamed source revealed. "Michael was a Bond fan in his youth, so this would be a dream role for him."
Blofeld is the head of Spectre and has appeared in six previous James Bond installments: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service...
Now comes word from The Guardian that Michael Sheen, who has collaborated in the past with Morgan on the aforementioned movies, is in negotiations to play Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Bond 23.
Blofeld back for Bond 23...? That's what the UK paper is reporting.
"Michael is hot property right now and it is felt that he's the right man to bring Blofeld back to life," an unnamed source revealed. "Michael was a Bond fan in his youth, so this would be a dream role for him."
Blofeld is the head of Spectre and has appeared in six previous James Bond installments: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service...
- 6/17/2009
- CinemaSpy
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