Category Archives: Movie

Metropolis 97 years old

It is hard to believe that Fritz Lang’s masterpiece is 97 years old, In those 97 years, that movie has lost none of its magic.

I have done a post on Metropolis before, the link is at the bottom of this post, but this edition will focus on a re-imagined version of the movie which was released in 1984.

Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder released a truncated version with a soundtrack by rock artists including Freddie Mercury, Loverboy, and Adam Ant

Giorgio Moroder, who paid $200,000 for the rights, outbidding his Cat People collaborator David Bowie. Although Moroder initially intended only to create a new soundtrack, he was surprised by the lack of a definitive print, and expanded his project to a major reconstruction. Moroder’s version, which was made in consultation with the Munich Film Archive and their archivist, Enno Patalas,was tinted to emphasise the different moods and locations in the film. It also featured additional special effects, replaced intertitles of character dialogue with subtitles and incorporated a soundtrack featuring songs Moroder composed, produced and recorded with popular artists such as Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Pat Benatar, Adam Ant and Jon Anderson. It was the first serious attempt made at restoring Metropolis to Lang’s original vision, and until the restorations in 2001 and 2010, it was the most complete version of the film commercially available. The shorter run time was due to the extensive use of subtitles for spoken lines instead of title cards, a faster frame rate than the original, and the fact that large amounts of footage were still missing at the time.

Moroder’s version of Metropolis generally received poor reviews. Moroder responded to the critics who lambasted his production for not being faithful to the original in The New York Times: “I didn’t touch the original because there is no original.” The film was nominated for two Raspberry Awards, Worst Original Song for “Love Kills” and Worst Musical Score for Moroder. However, Bonnie Tyler was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance at the 27th Grammy Awards for “Here She Comes.

1984 Soundtrack

  1. “Love Kills” (Freddie Mercury)
    Giorgio MoroderFreddie Mercury
    MoroderMercuryReinhold Mack
    4:29
  2. “Here’s My Heart” (Pat Benatar)
    MoroderPete Bellotte
    MoroderNeil Giraldo
    4:54
  3. “Cage of Freedom” (Jon Anderson)
    MoroderBellotte
    Moroder 4:40
  4. “Blood from a Stone” (Cycle V – a.k.a. Frank Dimino)
    MoroderBellotte
    Moroder 3:37
  5. “The Legend of Babel” (Giorgio Moroder)
    MoroderBellotte
    Moroder 3:55
  6. “Here She Comes” (Bonnie Tyler)
    MoroderBellotte
    Moroder 3:48
  7. “Destruction” (Loverboy)
    MoroderBellotte
    MoroderPaul Dean
    4:09
  8. “On Your Own” (Billy Squier)
    MoroderSquier
    Moroder 4:09
  9. “What’s Going On” (Adam Ant)
    MoroderBellotte
    Moroder 3:49
  10. “Machines” (Giorgio Moroder) Moroder Moroder 4:11
Metropolis

sources

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/?ref_=tt_mv_close

My Interview with Sigal Erez: Actress, Director, Screenwriter and Producer

A few weeks ago, I watched a beautiful short film, What’s Your Number? It’s a story about a Holocaust survivor who comes full circle sharing his life story with an African American child he meets at the park. The survivor and his sister’s lives were saved by the heroic action of an African American soldier during World War II.

Yesterday, I had the privilege to interview its writer, director and producer.

Sigal Erez was born to a Moroccan/Spanish/Jewish family. She has travelled extensively around the world and speaks four languages. She is the daughter of a merchant marine who became a rabbi, from whom she learned to appreciate the deeper meaning held within the bible and its teachings. Often, she holds spiritual gatherings and teachings at her home by the beach. Sigal is a mother, and her greatest accomplishment is being a mother. Her very vivid imagination and creative vision are her strengths. From a very young age, Sigal always said she would one day own a studio and write and direct great movies.

She completed the full program at Lee Strasberg New York and was later accepted to a master’s program in screenwriting at UCLA’s acclaimed Writer’s Program. As a newcomer in Los Angeles, she landed roles of many nationalities, including television shows such as Santa Barbara, Star Trek, and a lead in a pilot called DEA, as well as others. Sigal also scored the lead role in two feature films, that were either shelved or never made—Shape Shifter and Arrive Alive.

Although Erez is skillful at acting, improvisation, and a variety of international accents, her main passion is storytelling. She believes creativity is a platform that can raise the level of consciousness in the world.

In 2000, Sigal’s screenplay, Across The Line, was produced into a motion picture starring Brad Johnson. Sigal played the lead role of Miranda, winning acclaimed reviews. She was invited as a special guest to speak at Texas A&M University. Distributed by Lion’s Gate, the film won the Silver Award at the Houston Film Festival and Best Film at Texas A&M. The film received a new distribution deal with all the major networks in 2017.

Sigal also worked as a television writer and created 13 episodes for the TV drama— Hotel San Miguel for Televisa, under renowned writer and showrunner, Sabina Berman.

The screenplay, The Battle of Evermore, which Erezco-wrote with Martin Spottl, advanced to the semi-finals at the prestigious Nichol’s Fellowship. She was then hired to write creative proposals that led to successful ventures.

In addition to screenplays, Sigal writes lyrics and poetry. She has a charismatic personality and an ability to captivate an audience. In 2000, Sigal hosted a music festival with Mark Brown at the Hollywood Bowl and co-hosted the opening of a Latin theatre event with Colombian film star Rodrigo Obregon.

In 2018, Sigal wrote, directed, and produced the film What’s Your Number?, about the unlikely friendship between a holocaust survivor and an African-American boy. The film has been shown at many festivals and won many awards, including the Best Film Award at the Women’s Only Entertainment Film Festival and the Social Impact Award at the Marina Del Ray Film Festival. What’s Your Number? also won multiple awards at the South Cinematographic Academy of Film & Arts, including Best Lead Actor In A Short Film, Best Young Actor In A Feature Film, and Best Costume Design In A Short Film.

Her latest project, Serial Beauty, is currently in post-production. The movie is about a serial killer who targets beautiful women and poses their bodies in exquisite tableaus. Without any leads in a dead end of clues, the LAPD brings back two detectives who find mystical subtexts that lead to the unlikely killer.


https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3512843033/?playlistId=nm0258852&ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Sources


https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0258852/?…
https://www.highwaterfilms.com/

https://weshort.com/collection?s=7037

My Interview with Award–Winning Director, Turlough O’Cinnéide aka Turlough Kennedy

Turlough Kennedy founded Dolmen Films in 2017 with a vision to connect filmmakers all across Ireland and internationally. Turlough is an award-winning Director, Cinematographer, and composer with over 15 awards and ten nominations. He is a first-degree honours graduate of TUS University. In 2022 was awarded the Lord Puttnam scholarship for directing. His work is internationally acclaimed and is currently in the festival circuit.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18260230/

Hooray for Hollywood

I don’t think there is one person on the planet who doesn’t know what Hollywood is, or what cultural significance it has. It is a place where dreams are turned into reality, and reality turned into dreams, sometimes nightmares.

This is just a pictorial blog about that place we all love and sometimes hate, or rather what is produced there The most visible symbol of the district is the Hollywood sign that overlooks the area. First built in 1923 (a new sign was erected in 1978), the sign originally said “Hollywoodland” (to advertise new homes being developed in the area), but the sign fell into disrepair, and the “land” section was removed in the 1940s when the sign was refurbished.

Greta Garbo and the Dubliner Cairbre, he was the first lion used by MGM, and was born in Dublin Zoo.

Judy Garland on the set of the Wizard of Oz

D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks founders of United Artists.

George Reeves as Superman

On the darker side of the entertainment business, The Hollywood Ten were a part of an industry-wide blacklisting of individuals thought to be connected to or involved with the Community Party.

Psycho

Born to be wild-The filming of Easy Rider

In a galaxy far, far away-Star Wars

We are going to need a bigger boat, and probably cinema-Jaws the first block buster.

source

https://historyinorbit.com/vintage-pictures-that-define-old-hollywood-2

Rolf Wenkhaus; Child actor and Luftwaffe crew member

I was reminiscing on TV shows I watched as a kid in the Netherlands. One of my favourite shows was a series called “Q&Q”. It was about 2 teenage detectives. The boys named Aristides Quarles and Wilbur Quant accidentally snap a photo of a dead body in the woods. After finding the place where the body was, they find it to be gone. Nobody believes them except Grandpa. They decide to investigate themselves. I will spare you the theme song because once you hear it, it will be in your head for days.

Then I also remembered a German movie I watched about some German teenage detectives, nowadays with Google and IMDB, it was relatively easy to find the title. The movie is called “Emil and the Detectives” .Turns out it is the birthday of the young main actor today. Rolf Wenkhaus was born on September 9,1917. The movie I was referring to earlier was made in 1931.

Rolf only made tow more movies, the last one was a Nazi propaganda movie titled “S.A.-Mann Brand”

Ironically the screenplay for Rolf Wenkhaus’s 1st movie, “Emil and the Detectives” was written by Billy Wilder, a Jewish Austrian screenwriter who lived in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, he moved to Paris, due to rampant antisemitism and discrimination against the Jewish people. He moved to Hollywood in 1933. That movie was also based on a novel by Erich Kästner, a pacifist and an opponent of the Nazi regime. The Gestapo interrogated Kästner several times, the national writers’ guild expelled him, and the Nazis burned his books as “contrary to the German spirit” during the book burnings of 10 May 1933, instigated by Joseph Goebbels.

After the outbreak of World War II, Rolf Wenkhaus enlisted in the military. At the time of his death, aged 24, he was in the aircrew of a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, a four-engine bomber that specialized in attacks on shipping. Wenkhaus’s plane, with identification code F8 MH 0093, was shot down on 31 January 1942, off the coast of Bloody Foreland in County Donegal, Ireland by HMS Genista, a British Flower-class corvette being utilized as a convoy escort vessel.

The entire aircrew of six was killed. The body of the pilot, Werner Bornefeld, washed up at Bunbeg two weeks later, and was eventually reburied at a German War Cemetery at Glencree, Ireland.

Because Rolf Wenkhaus’s corpse has never been found they officially pronounced his dead only in 1948.

sources

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0921020/?ref_=tt_ov_st

https://prabook.com/web/rolf.wenkhaus/1928015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_K%C3%A4stner#Berlin_1933%E2%80%931945

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Brats-Laurel and Hardy were so ahead of their time.

brats

I know I have written about Laurel and Hardy before but now with the biopic of their lives in cinemas across the world, I was reminded how brilliant they were.

Unlike their contemporaries like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy’s humor stayed fresh and still appeals to audiences nowadays.

Perhaps this is because they were so ahead of their time. Not only in cinematographic technical aspects but also in modern social settings. Nothing illustrates this more then the movie Brats.

The short movie is about 2 dads playing  checkers and snooker, minding their children, while the wife are out on the town.Just think about that for a minute,today that would not be a big deal, but in 1930 it most definitely was.

Even when you look at the special effects, Laurel and Hardy not only play the dads but also the boys they are minding. Using  over-sized props to give the impression of kids into everything from a bathtub to a wooden chest of drawers. Each room of the house was re-created on a  large scale to achieve the effect of both duos being in the same house.

The movie is only 23 minutes long but it has so many hilarious scenes. I must have seen it 100s of times but it never bores me.

Ending up with my favourite line from the movie” You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be led”

 

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The German actor who was ordered to shoot American soldiers, but refused.

too far

September 17,1944 saw the start of “Operation Market Garden” a failed allied operation during WWII, which had dire consequences for the Dutch population.

However this blog is not about that but about the movie made about ‘Operation Market Garden@ a star studded movie made in 1977 directed by Richard Attenborough, with the title ‘A Bridge too Far’

bridge

More specifically about one of the actors in the movie.

Hardy Krüger played Generalmajor der Waffen-SS Karl Ludwig, the name of his character was fictitious. It was in fact based on Heinz Harmel, CO of the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg, but he did not want his name to be mentioned in the film.

Hamel

Hardy Krüger was born Eberhard Krüger in Wedding in the borough of Berlin on April 12 1928. His parents were enthusiastic Nazis.

When he was age 13 Hardy enrolled in an Adolf Hitler School, which was a NSDAP boarding school and joined the Hitler Youth.

When he was  15, Hardy made his film début in a German picture, “The Young Eagles”.

eagles

His acting career was interrupted though, when he was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht in 1944 at age 16.

In March 1945, he was assigned to the 38th SS Division Nibelungen where he was drawn into heavy fighting. The 16-year-old Krüger was ordered to eliminate a group of American soldiers. When he refused, he was sentenced to death for cowardice, but another SS officer stopped the order. The incident opened his eyes to what Nazism really was.

Hardy related how he “hated the uniform.” During the filming of A Bridge Too Far , he wore a top-coat over his S.S. uniform between takes so as not to remind himself of his childhood in Germany during WWII.

Hardy

In the TV mini series War and Remembrance televised in 1988/1989 he played Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Sources

German Wikipedia

IMDb

 

 

 

In Old Arizona- The innovative movie that nearly didn’t get made due to a Jackrabbit.

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In Old Arizona is a 1928 American Western film directed by Irving Cummings and Raoul Walsh, nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film, which was based on the character of the Cisco Kid in the story “The Caballero’s Way” by O. Henry, was a major innovation in Hollywood. It was the first major Western to use the new technology of sound and the first talkie to be filmed outdoors. It made extensive use of authentic locations, filming in Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park in Utah, and the Mission San Juan Capistrano and the Mojave Desert in California. The film premiered in Los Angeles on December 25, 1928 and went into general release on January 20, 1929.

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Raoul Walsh was cast as the Cisco Kid, as well as being the director; but during a return drive to Los Angeles from Utah, a jackrabbit jumped through the windshield of Walsh’s car, with both the rabbit and the broken glass hitting Walsh in the face. (Safety glass was added to cars the following year.) The damage to Walsh’s right eye necessitated replacing him in the lead role, re-writing the script and re-shooting some scenes with a different director while Walsh recuperated; Walsh thereafter wore the eye patch for which he was known, and eventually lost the eye entirely. Some footage of Walsh, in chase scenes and long shots, remains in the film.

WALSH, RAOUL

In Old Arizona contributed to creating the image of the singing cowboy, as its star, Warner Baxter, does some incidental singing. Baxter went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

trivia_99

Other nominations included Best Director for Irving Cummings, Best Writing for Tom Barry, Best Cinematography for Arthur Edeson, and Best Picture.

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The forgotten James Bond

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Everyone knows there have been 7 actors who played the illusive 007. Sean Connery,Roger Moore,George Lazenby,Timothy Dalton,Pierce Brosnan,Daniel Craig and David Niven(who played Bond in the parody Casino Royale)

And when you exclude the parody Casino Royale there have been 24 movies and number 25 due out in the cinemas in April 2020.

Well on both counts you’d be wrong. Starting with the number of  feature movies there already have been 25 movies made. Never_Say_Never_Again_–_UK_cinema_posterAlthough “Never Say Never Again” does star Sean Connery as James Bond, It is technically not considered to be a James Bond movie.

A  High Court in London in 1963 allowed Kevin McClory to produce a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again in 1983.The film, produced by Jack Schwartzman’s Taliafilm production company and starring Sean Connery as Bond, was not part of the Eon series of Bond films.

McClory then took Fleming to the High Court in London for breach of copyright and the matter was settled in 1963. After Eon Productions started producing the Bond films, it subsequently made a deal with McClory, who would produce Thunderball, and then not make any further version of the novel for a period of ten years following the release of the Eon-produced version in 1965.

When it comes to playing the character James Bond there is an eighth actor who played him.In fact he was the first actor to play 007.

BarryNelsonBondCR1954

In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000  to adapt his first novel, Casino Royale, into a one-hour television adventure as part of their dramatic anthology series Climax!, which ran between October 1954 and June 1958.GW200H303It was adapted for the screen by Anthony Ellis and Charles Bennett; Bennett was best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, including The 39 Steps and Sabotage.Due to the restriction of a one-hour play, the adapted version lost many of the details found in the book, although it retained its violence, particularly in Act III.

The hour-long Casino Royale episode aired on 21 October 1954 as a live production and starred Barry Nelson as secret agent James Bond, with Peter Lorre in the role of Le Chiffre and was hosted by William Lundigan.The Bond character from Casino Royale was re-cast as an American agent, described as working for “Combined Intelligence”, supported by the British agent, Clarence Leiter; “thus was the Anglo-American relationship depicted in the book reversed for American consumption”.

Clarence Leiter was an agent for Station S, while being a combination of Felix Leiter and René Mathis. The name “Mathis”, and his association with the Deuxième Bureau, was given to the leading lady, who is named Valérie Mathis, instead of Vesper Lynd.

So you see there were 8 Bond movies and in total 26 movies, 3 of which were titled “Casino Royale”.

 

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Operation Petticoat:well part of it.

1024px-Operation_Petticoat_poster

Operation Petticoat is a 1959 American World War II submarine comedy film in Eastmancolor from Universal-International, produced by Robert Arthur, directed by Blake Edwards, that stars Cary Grant and Tony Curtis.

The film tells in flashback the misadventures of the fictional U. S. Navy submarine, USS Sea Tiger, during the opening days of the United States involvement in World War II. Some elements of the screenplay were taken from actual incidents that happened with some of the Pacific Fleet’s submarines during the war.

The evacuation of one Navy nurse and several Army nurses from Corregidor to Australia by the submarine USS Spearfish

800px-Spearfish_(SS-190)

On the night of 3 May, the submarine slipped into Manila Bay and picked up 27 passengers from Corregidor to be evacuated to Fremantle. She was the last American submarine to visit that beleaguered fortress before it surrendered. Navy nurse and Legion of Merit recipient Ann A. Bernatitus was among the 27 rescued by Spearfish.

Ann_Agnes_Bernatitus

The sinking of the submarine USS Sealion at the pier at Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines.

Sealion(SS-195)

The torpedoing of a bus by the USS Bowfin.bowfin

Captain Sherman’s letter to the supply department at Cavite on the inexplicable lack of toilet paper (based on an actual letter to the supply department of Mare Island Naval Shipyard by Lieutenant Commander James Wiggins “Red” Coe of the submarine USS Skipjack.

USS_Skipjack_-_19-N-19055

The need to paint a submarine pink due to the lack of enough red or white lead undercoat paint. The heat from the burning Sealion also scorched off the black paint of the nearby USS Seadragon and for a time this submarine fought with only her red lead undercoat visible. This led Tokyo Rose to disparage American “red pirate submarines.

USS_Seadragon_(SS-194);0819404

USS Balao starred as the “pink submarine” in the film Operation Petticoat.

USS_Balao_standing_in_for_Operation_Petticoat-'s_fictional_USS_Sea_Tiger

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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