Nightmare Alley
Written by Jules Furthman
Directed by Edmund Goulding
U.S.A., 1947
A carny cons his way up to high society through cold-reading and (un)timely circumstance. Based on that one-liner, who would you cast? If you say Tyrone Power, I’d say that my friend Stan Carlisle is on his way (The name Stan Carlisle being a con-industry handshake of sorts, informing one con-artist that he’s stepping in on another man’s con, or at least according to Eddie “The Czar of Noir” Muller’s introduction of this film at Tcmff). In Nightmare Alley, Tyrone Power, the 20th Century Fox matinee idol, plays a lowlife con man, who lies and cheats his way from a podunk carnival to becoming a spiritualist amongst the more gullible of Chicago’s upper crust. His character is also the namesake of the above con slang.
And any which way, yes, Tyrone Power...
Written by Jules Furthman
Directed by Edmund Goulding
U.S.A., 1947
A carny cons his way up to high society through cold-reading and (un)timely circumstance. Based on that one-liner, who would you cast? If you say Tyrone Power, I’d say that my friend Stan Carlisle is on his way (The name Stan Carlisle being a con-industry handshake of sorts, informing one con-artist that he’s stepping in on another man’s con, or at least according to Eddie “The Czar of Noir” Muller’s introduction of this film at Tcmff). In Nightmare Alley, Tyrone Power, the 20th Century Fox matinee idol, plays a lowlife con man, who lies and cheats his way from a podunk carnival to becoming a spiritualist amongst the more gullible of Chicago’s upper crust. His character is also the namesake of the above con slang.
And any which way, yes, Tyrone Power...
- 4/17/2015
- by Diana Drumm
- SoundOnSight
Austin Film Society continues their "Films Of Johnnie To" series this weekend with the Austin premiere of his latest crime thriler, Drug War. It screens at the Marchesa tonight and on Sunday afternoon. The Pre-Code Stanwyck series is sadly coming to a close this week with Tuesday night's screening of Frank Capra's The Miracle Woman from 1931. If you haven't made it out on any of the last few Tuesday evenings, I'd highly encourage you to give this last week a shot. The prints have been incredible with lively post-film discussion.
Afs also brings us a very special event on Thursday to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Richard Linklater's The School Of Rock at the Paramount. Linklater will be in attendance along with star Jack Black, writer/co-star Mike White and many of the younger cast members from the film.
Speaking of the Paramount, we're getting close to the...
- 8/23/2013
- by Matt Shiverdecker
- Slackerwood
The Master confirms Paul Thomas Anderson as the only American film-maker of his generation who could be mistaken for a junior member of Hollywood's golden age
Hollywood's prestige season is upon us and, despite a parade of heavy hitters, including Steven Spielberg's Lincoln and the Wachowski-Tykwer adaptation of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, no potential Oscar winner is more ambitious – or more likely to provoke discussion regarding its meaning and intent – than Paul Thomas Anderson's sixth feature, The Master.
Anderson's subtly disorienting, deeply engrossing study of the symbiotic relationship between charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd, magnificently played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and his disturbed follower Freddie Quell, indelibly embodied by Joaquin Phoenix, is a panoramic chamber drama. Punctuated by persistent close-ups, it's an extended two-shot epic in its sweep.
The first production to avail itself of the great clarity afforded by 65mm in the 16 years since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet,...
Hollywood's prestige season is upon us and, despite a parade of heavy hitters, including Steven Spielberg's Lincoln and the Wachowski-Tykwer adaptation of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, no potential Oscar winner is more ambitious – or more likely to provoke discussion regarding its meaning and intent – than Paul Thomas Anderson's sixth feature, The Master.
Anderson's subtly disorienting, deeply engrossing study of the symbiotic relationship between charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd, magnificently played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and his disturbed follower Freddie Quell, indelibly embodied by Joaquin Phoenix, is a panoramic chamber drama. Punctuated by persistent close-ups, it's an extended two-shot epic in its sweep.
The first production to avail itself of the great clarity afforded by 65mm in the 16 years since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet,...
- 11/3/2012
- by J Hoberman
- The Guardian - Film News
For the tenth edition of Film Art: An Introduction, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are partnering with Criterion to present Connect Film, an hour-long set of twenty videos on various aspects of filmmaking addressed in the now-classic textbook. Above: "Elliptical Editing in Vagabond (1985)." Kristin Thompson: "Most of the other Connect examples illustrate the chapters on the four types of film technique: mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. There's also a short documentary about digital animation."
More books. You may remember that Dave Kehr is quite an admirer of the writing of Arlene Croce, a dance critic for the New Yorker from 1973 to 1998. She's also the author of The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book and, in the new issue of the New York Review of Books, she reviews Todd Decker's Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz and Kathleen Riley's The Astaires: Fred and Adele. As the Boston Globe's Mark Feeney writes,...
More books. You may remember that Dave Kehr is quite an admirer of the writing of Arlene Croce, a dance critic for the New Yorker from 1973 to 1998. She's also the author of The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book and, in the new issue of the New York Review of Books, she reviews Todd Decker's Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz and Kathleen Riley's The Astaires: Fred and Adele. As the Boston Globe's Mark Feeney writes,...
- 3/19/2012
- MUBI
"Dan Callahan's Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman is a serious book about a serious woman, less a biography of an actress than a biography of her career," writes Scott Eyman in the Wall Street Journal. "Mr Callahan follows her choices of roles and tries to capture what she was saying about herself through her acting. It was an astonishing career, whose impressive outlines only became clear in retrospect. Most actors want to be loved — it's the Achilles' heel of the profession — but Stanwyck seems to have been after something else: respect."
Introducing his interview with Dan Callahan at the L, Mark Asch notes that "Dan concludes that Stanwyck was the most open, raw, unshowy and affectless of the Golden Age movie queens, in both her performances and offscreen attitudes; he builds a compelling personal narrative out of her contradictions: her bootstrapping tough-broad self-sufficiency (this slum kid was a...
Introducing his interview with Dan Callahan at the L, Mark Asch notes that "Dan concludes that Stanwyck was the most open, raw, unshowy and affectless of the Golden Age movie queens, in both her performances and offscreen attitudes; he builds a compelling personal narrative out of her contradictions: her bootstrapping tough-broad self-sufficiency (this slum kid was a...
- 2/19/2012
- MUBI
The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch) City Lights (Charlie Chaplin) Tabu (F.W. Murnau & Robert Flaherty) Street Scene (King Vidor) Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg) The Champ (King Vidor) The Struggle (D.W. Griffith) The Criminal Code (Howard Hawks) Arrowsmith (John Ford) An American Tragedy (Josef von Sternberg) The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock) Private Lives (Sidney Franklin) Wicked (Allan Dwan) Bad Girl (Frank Borzage) Chances (Allan Dwan) The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra) Girls About Town (George Cukor) Frankenstein (James Whale) The Public Enemy (William Wellman) Seas Beneath (John Ford) The Yellow Ticket (Raoul Walsh) Tarnished Lady (George Cukor) The Guardsman (Sidney Franklin) Dirigible…...
- 2/18/2011
- Blogdanovich
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