Movie sites

We are bombarded every day by requests to watch this movie or that TV series. How can we make sense of it all?  Fortunately, there is no shortage of internet places to visit that will gladly help you make those decisions.  I will take you through a few of my favorite media watering holes. You might be surprised by some, already familiar to others. 

To start with:  

IMDB (Internet Movie Database) Owned now by Amazon 

To quote them, “IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. Find ratings and reviews for the newest movie and TV shows. Get personalized recommendations, and learn where to watch across hundreds of streaming providers.” IMDb has been on the web since 1993.  And in my opinion, there is no more complete encyclopedia of movies and TV. 

Rivaling IMDB is Wikipedia, a vast searchable encyclopedic storehouse of facts and references. 

Many giant corporate media conglomerates like NBCUniversal/Comcast who own Fandango.com recognize the importance of getting information about their films and shows so have either started or bought successful web sites like Rottentomatoes, Flixster.com or  

Movies.com 

VideoETA , owned by Ingram Entertainment is a great resource that has DVD and Blu-ray release dates for upcoming movies.

Variety, the magazine, founded by Sime Silverman in New York in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville and the web site have entertainment news, film reviews, awards, film festivals, box office, and entertainment industry conferences. 

For reviews and parents' guides: 

Roger Ebert.com 

Movie reviews and ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert 

Common Sense Media
Trusted ratings created with families in mind. 


Screenit
“We are a small but growing team of reviewers who are not affiliated with any political, social or religious group thus assuring that we'll provide unbiased reviews. By doing so, we allow parents and others to decide whether a movie, video or DVD is appropriate for them and/or their kids based on THEIR values.” 


For years I have found that listening to YouTube reviewers can be entertainment in itself. Here are a few of my favorite. 

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo 
Film reviews from Mark Kermode and film interviews with Simon Mayo taken from the BBC podcast Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review. 


Emergency Awesome 

All the best Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, Avengers Endgame and Marvel Movies, The Flash, Trailer, Promo, Easter Eggs, and Comic Book and Sci Fi Fantasy. 

Jeremy Jahns 

A show of movie reviews and comedy. If I make you laugh, then i've done my job. Subscribe, and spread the word! 

Chris Stuckmann 

Lover of film, published author, certified on Rotten Tomatoes 

Impression Blend w/Mariana 

There is a shortage of great female reviewers but she is one of my favorites. Books and Film 

https://aliciamalone.com/books 
Check out Alicia Malone for some interesting reads on women in film  

Newspapers online 

New York Times Entertainment 

LA Times Entertainment & Arts 

Chicago Tribune Entertainment 

Time Out Worldwide   

Do you have any favorite sites to share? Let us know 

Lindsay Anderson - Free Cinema 1985

What if Ingmar Bergman Directed The Flash?

A "Pandemic" might help me post more often. 
I am back. 
Lets see if I can focus on something to say on this blog. 

I guess I was wrong. What will it take for me to post to this site on a regular basis?

I Lied

Sorry I promised to update more often. I will not make that mistake again.

I've been away

Away from this blog...obviously. My New Years resolution (maybe Groundhog Day resolution) is to post someting at least once a week, no matter how lame.

Tales from the Gimli Hospital, directed by Guy Maddin

Men In Film from Philip Scott Johnson on Vimeo.

Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Errol Flynn, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Gene Kelly, Burt Lancaster, William Holden, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck, Richard Burton, Jack Lemmon, Sean Connery, Sidney Poitier, Charlton Heston, Steve McQueen, Peter O'Toole, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, Warren Beatty, Dennis Hopper, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Harrison Ford, Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas, Christopher Walken, Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, John Travolta, Antonio Banderas, Tim Robbins, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Matt Damon, George Clooney

Music: Bach's Allemande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009 performed by Antonio Meneses

Women in Film

Mujeres en el cine de Philip Scott Johnson from Cortos Sabrosos on Vimeo.

‘Women in Film’ es un repaso por los rostros de las actrices más rutilantes de Hollywood, en una pasarela interminable que va de la novia de América, Mary Pickford, a Halle Berry, y por la que desfilan las estrellas del celuloide más deseadas de todos los tiempos; una lista selecta donde no faltan beldades como Vivien Leigh, Rita Hayworth o Ava Gardner. La música que acompaña a las imágenes es de Bach; se trata del conocido Preludio de la ‘Suite para cello No. 1 en G Mayor’.
http://ventanadelcine.blogspot.com/

80 Years of Female Actresses in Cinema

Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Ruth Chatterton, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Vivien Leigh, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young, Deborah Kerr, Judy Garland, Anne Baxter, Lauren Bacall, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Audrey Hepburn, Dorothy Dandridge, Shirley MacLaine, Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, Janet Leigh, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Ann Margret, Julie Andrews, Raquel Welch, Tuesday Weld, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Catherine Deneuve, Jacqueline Bisset, Candice Bergen, Isabella Rossellini, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sigourney Weaver, Kathleen Turner, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster, Angela Bassett, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Salma Hayek, Sandra Bullock, Julianne Moore, Diane Lane, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon, Halle Berry

Music: Bach's Prelude from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma

Lindsay Anderson's Last Documentary Part 1

Michael Haneke Interview Part 1

nyc ghetto fish market 1903

Online Videos by Veoh.com

David Lynch's "Inland Empire"

We mourn the passing of two film artists whose body of work is intensely studied, praised, and imitated.

"Ingmar Bergman (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) was a Swedish stage and film director. Ingmar Bergman found bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his indelible explorations of the human condition. He is generally grouped with Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini as one of the great artistic masters of modern cinema.

He produced about 60 films, and some of his internationally known favorite actors were Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in the landscape of his native Sweden. The themes were often bleak, dealing with illness and insanity.

The 89 year old director died in his home in Fårö, Sweden on July 29th, 2007." wiki article


I took a date to see "Hour of the Wolf" in 1968. She was a nice girl from the suburbs. I can't remember now how I met her, probably from school. Max Von Sydow plays an artist who sends for a bride (Liv Ullmann) to keep him company in an isolated cabin. The landscape is beautiful, dark and forbidding. Liv starts out happy and normal but descends into the dark madness of her husband by the end of the film. My date hated the film so much that she force me to promise that the next film we saw would be her pick. It was "Camelot" the musical with Richard Harris. It was appropriate punishment for me. Needless to say the relationship didn't go very far.

I have loved Bergman from the first time I saw Wild Strawberries. I actually owned, for a time a 16mm print of The Seventh Seal. I'm not sure if I have seen every Bergman film but at least all the major films and most of those when they came out on the big screen.

The great Sven Nyquist, who died last year, was his personal cinematographer from 1960's through 1984 on the following films:

After the Rehearsal (1984)
Fanny and Alexander (1982
From the Life of the Marionettes (1980)
Autumn Sonata (1978)
Magic Flute (1975)
Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Cries and Whispers (1972)
The Touch (1970)
Faro Document (1970)
The Passion of Anna (1969)
The Rite (1969)
Shame (1968)
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Persona (1966)
All These Women (1964)
The Silence (1963)
Winter Light (1962)
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
The Virgin Spring (1960)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

Only Gunnar Fischer with: "Smiles of a Summer Night"(1955); "The Seventh Seal" (1957) ;"Wild Strawberries" (1957) and "The Devil's Eye" (1960) is less identified as a cinematographer with Bergman. His "The Seventh Seal" and "Wild Strawberries" are essential viewing for any serious cinemaphile.

Erland Josephson, Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson were his principle actors.

ENTRETIEN
by Michelangelo Antonioni
Cahiers du Cinema, October 1960

Michelangelo Antonioni (September 29, 1912 – July 30, 2007)

"Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni redefined the concept of narrative cinema, challenging the accepted notions at the heart of storytelling, realism, drama, and the world at large; his films -- a seminal body of enigmatic and intricate mood pieces -- rejected action in favor of contemplation, championing image and design over character and story. Haunted by a sense of instability and impermanence, his work defined a cinema of possibilities, a shifting landscape of thoughts and ideas devoid of resolution; in Antonioni's world, riddles were not answered, but simply evaporated into other riddles." All Movie Guide

Antonioni, while less prolific than Bergman had a profound infrluence on modern cinema. He is probably best know in the US for "Blow up" (1966) filmed in London with David Hemmings as a professional photographer caught between the image and reality. It is rumored that Antonioni spray painted trees to get the right color in the park. The mimed tennis match at the end of the film is a classic cinema moment.

In addition to "Blow Up" his greatest critically acclaimed films were "L'Adventura" 1960) "L'eclisse" (1962), "La Notte" (1961), "The Red Desert (1964), Zabriskie Point (1970)
and "The Passenger" (1975)

Wim Wenders worked in 1995 with him on Beyond the Clouds.

Many more qualified than I will write about Bergman and Antonioni's effect on cinema but both have shaped how I view film.

Werner gets shot!

Werner Herzog on Henry Rollins' Show.

Great Interview! Check it out.

Strange But True Documentarians

Not exactly mockumentaries but definitely documentaries filmmakers that will have you scratching your brain. Some of these are well known, some were but have faded into the past. I've seen most of them. I'm still behind on my Werner Herzog but working hard to fix that. Check some of these out for some stranger than fiction fun.
Cane Toads by Mark Lewis. A seriously light hearted look at environmental disaster in Australia.
Home Movie by Chris Smith the director of American Movie, and The Yes Men also highly recommended docs
Tong Tana "A Swedish crew trekked into the depths of the endangered Bornean rainforest to film this poetic documentary about the plight of the Penans and their most unusual ally, Bruno Manser - a young Swiss who has rejected 'civilization' to join the tribe and help fight international logging. Written by Dawn M. Barclift,IMDB"
Burden of Dreams Les Blank's masterpiece about the making of Fitzcaraldo. Catch the 20 minute short by Blank called "Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe"
The Young and the Dead Tyler Cassity and Hollywood Memorial Cemetary.
Hearts of Darkness-A Filmmakers Apocalypse "Documents the sensational events surrounding the making of 'Apocalypse Now' and Francis Ford Coppola's struggle with nature, governments, actors, and self-doubt. Includes footage and sound secretly recorded by Elanor Coppola, wife of Francis. Synopsis written on IMDB by Murray Chapman {muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au} "
Dark Days Mark Singer's (Not the actor) amazing award winning documentary about people living in the abandoned train tunnels beneath NYC. A must see.
Jupitor's Wife Michel Negroponte, a documentary filmmaker, meets Maggie one day in Central Park. Maggie claims to be married to the god Jupiter and the daughter of actor Robert Ryan. Michel gets to know Maggie over the next couple of years, and attempts to use her often outlandish stories as clues to reconstruct her past. Written by James Meek {james@oz.net}
Interesting and strangely compassionate.
Hands on a Hard Body

You find truth in the strangest places, 11 April 2000

Author: bongofish from Austin, Texas

I'm sure you've read enough of the other reviews to understand the story, so I won't go back over that. I simply wanted to add that this story is "deep". It is one of the most human and moving and exciting and funny documentaries I have ever seen. The movie in many ways transcends its limited scope and gives us glimpses into human nature that are truly universal. We see friendship, anger, sacrifice, jealousy, hope, pettiness, faith all arise from such a simple contest. The ending is so perfect that it'll bring a tear to your eye. To quote Benny, the sage of the film, "It's a human drama thing." Absolutely. from IMDB reviewer

I couldn't have said it better. I thought it was a joke at first and totally got into it by the end.

Psuedo Documentaries and Film Reality

I have just finished watching a very well made, controversial, British make-believe documentary called "Death of a President" (2006) directed by Gabriel Range. Set in 2008, a year after the assassination of President George W. Bush, it explores the "rush to judgment" and the political effects on the nation. I liked the way they realistically integrated archival footage with their shot footage. They discuss it in the special features.

This film reminded me of all the "mockumentaries" (although many do not mock at all) that I have seen and some that I have meant to see. I've been thing about the earliest of this format. Of course we all remember October 30, 1938. (well maybe not exactly remember, I was born in 1947). It was on that Halloween Eve that Orson Welles scared the country with his radio adaptation of War of the Worlds. What made it particularly frightening was the simulation of real newscasts interrupting regular music programming. Real hysteria followed with people actually bringing guns outside to attack the invaders.

At Mock-Documentary: Subversion of Factuality there is a filmography listing many psuedo documentaries. Not listed is Haxan, Witchcraft through the Ages (1922), a Danish silent, "a documentary about the history of witchcraft, told in a variety of styles, from illustrated slide shows to dramatized events of alleged real-life events." (IMDB) (Blair Witch's production company is names Haxan)

Some highlights from the list:
Best in Show (2000)- mock docu-soap of competitors in a dog show (feature film)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)- horrific footage left by three vanished student filmmakers
Bob Roberts (1992)- satiric profile of an American right-wing politician
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) - a Kazakh documentary filmmaker attempts to understand American culture
Cannibal Holocaust (1979) - discovery of horrific footage captured by a film crew searching for cannibals (one of Blair Witch inspirations)
David Holzman's Diary (1967) - a young filmmaker tries to capture the reality of his life on film
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) - behind the scenes look at a teenage beauty pageant
The Falls (1980) - exhaustive presentation of evidence of an apparent 'violent unexplained event' (One of Peter Greenaway"s first works)
Forgotten Silver (1995) - the claimed discovery of a long-lost New Zealand filmmaker (Peter Jackson)
The History of White People in America (1985) - examination of white, middle-class Americans
How to Irritate People (1968) - John Cleese offers instruction on how to irritate friends, family and workmates
The Last Polka: The Schmenges (1984) -Great satire of retiring musicians by John Candy. Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, and Catherine O'Hara.
Medusa: Dare to be Truthful (1992) - parody of Madonna rockumentary
The Office (2001-2002) - mock docu-soap focusing on the relationships between British workmates (Successfully repeated in a US version)
Real Life (1979) - a Hollywood filmmaker tries to capture a year in the life of a typical American family. This early American mock-documentary takes its cue from the prototypical docu-soap television series An American Family (1973), in which a documentary crew followed the lives of a 'typical' American family. Here Albert Brooks plays himself, as the driving force behind a film which attempts to 'document' a year in the life of the Yeager family of Phoenix, Arizona.
The Rutles - All You Need is Cash (1978) - parody of the Beatles
Series 7: The Contenders (2001) - a reality gameshow where contestants hunt each other
Special Bulletin (1983) - television news coverage of a nuclear terrorist event
Take the Money and Run (1969) - the career of a failed criminal
Tanner '88 (1988) - the campaign of an American presidential candidate
This Is Spinal Tap (1984) - classic mock-documentary about the career of a British band
Waiting For Guffman (1996) - mock docu-soap about the production of a small-town musical
Zelig (1983) - the biography of a famous figure from 1920s America ( Great Woody Allen)

Also consider:

Peter Watkins is a great Pseudo Documentary Director including Privilege, The War Game, The Peace Game, Punishment Park etc.

Threads (1984) "Documentary style account of a nuclear holocaust and it's effect on the working class city of Sheffield, England; and the eventual long run affects of nuclear war on civilization." A riveting nightmare of a bleak future with Nuclear Weapons in the future.

Oil Storm (2005) Documentary-style footage reveals the aftermath of disastrous events that disrupt the flow of oil to the United States. Scary pre-Katrina mocumentary about the effect a Katrina style Hurricane and a series of terrorist attacks have on the price of oil. This was better ae showing our dependence on oil than films such as Syriana.

This is not the end but a beginning of an interesting discussion of fake reality films. Some satirically funny, others brutally real designed to open our eyes to "real" possibilities.

How do you feel about "real" documentary films that manufacture scenes to illustrate the "truth" that they are telling? What about skillful editing that changes footage? Are some Government and educational films dangerously close to being mockumentary? Have you seen Wag The Dog?

Just questions.

I love the bumper sticker "Question Reality"

Is this the future of film?