Vintage Directors

The Films Of Otto Preminger: A Retrospective

As Europe imploded, the 1930s saw an extraordinary exodus of filmmaking talent to the United States, with Jewish directors like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Max Ophuls, Anatole Litvak, Fred Zinnemann and many more escaping persecution and following in the footsteps of Ernst Lubitsch to go to a new prom...

Alfred Hitchcock's Silent Movies & F.W. Murnau's 'Sunrise' Getting New Scores

Hitchcock's Silents Will Be Screened As Part Of The 2012 London OlympicsThe scores of English film director Alfred Hitchcock’s early and rarely seen films and German director F.W Murnau’s 1927 masterpiece “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” are up for a creative and modern musical make-over.

Who Knew? Ingmar Bergman Loved Soderbergh's 'Ocean's 11' & Owned 'Die Hard'

Ask the layman, or even the more casual film fan, of their impression of the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, and the words 'depressed,' 'serious,' 'boring,' and 'forbidding' are likely to come up. Not that these aren't occasionally fair descriptions of aspects of the man and his work, but to ...

The Films Of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Retrospective

The great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman famously intoned in his 1987 autobiography, “The Magic Lantern,” that discovering Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s work was, “A miracle. Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it c...

Five Louis Malle Films You Should Know

Stanley Kubrick's Projection Memo For 'Barry Lyndon'; David Lynch Wanted 'Mulholland Drive' Louder

In case you've missed it, there has been a minor storm of controversy brewing over Warner Bros.' recent release of Stanley Kubrick's masterful "Barry Lyndon" on BluRay. The bone of contention is that the current release crops the picture with a 1.77 aspect ratio, which Warner Bros. insists complies with the wishes of the late Kubrick. However, Glenn Kenny has unearthed the smoking gun as it were, receiving a copy of the instructions Stanley Kubrick sent to projectionists insisting on a screen format of 1.66 "and in no event at less than 1:75." Meanwhile, Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has also been furiously digging into this whole aspect ...

The Essentials: The Films Of Nicolas Roeg

You might say it’s a good month to be a fan of British cult filmmaker Nicolas Roeg. Just last week the Criterion Collection released the director’s 1985 oddball picture, “Insignificance,” and this week, his landmark science-fiction film “The Man Who Fell to Earth&...

Gorgeous Poster Debuts For Fassbinder's 'World On A Wire'; Film Gets Limited Re-Release This Summer

After years in a floating-head wilderness, the art of movie poster design has had a bit of a shot in the arm in recent years, thanks to Criterion covers, self-commissioned work by cult designers like Olly Moss, and artisan one-sheets for one-off screenings at theaters like the Alamo Drafthouse and t...

Oliver Stone Reveals Sidney Lumet & Al Pacino Nearly Made 'Platoon'

For director Oliver Stone, "Platoon" would mark the beginning of the meatiest part of the director's career. The Vietnam film, the first in a loose trilogy (followed by "Born On The Fourth Of July" and "Heaven & Earth"), made a star out of its young lead Charlie Sheen, and it went to the Oscars that with year with eight nominations, walking away with four wins including Best Picture and Best Director (not to mention that Stone's other film that year, "Salvador," also earned two nods). It would be Stone's second Oscar (he won for writing "Midnight Express" in 1979) and it established the writer/director as a major voice. But as he tells it now...