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Seven years after his comeback film The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick returns to cover a topic with scope to finally match his enigmatic talent. The New World sees him detailing the very formation of America, dissecting the popular Pocahontas myth as his means of doing so. And whether this is a popular yarn positively spun, or a much gloomier meditation about the loss of natural freedom, it is brilliantly delivered and absorbing to watch.

As the native Powhatan tribe of Indians struggle with newly-arrived British settlers in 17th century Virginia, the resident chief's daughter Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) and tender explorer Captain Smith (Colin Farrell) fall deeply in love. Neither of their societies approve; soon Pocahontas is traded to the English and Smith summoned home by his king. Slowly adapting to the disciplined lives of the settlers, the abandoned Pocahontas begins to find new happiness with recently arrived farmer John Rolfe (Christian Bale).

Major events in Pocahontas' life are made to mirror the changes happening in America around her. As she is traded, so the Indians seem to somehow cede control of the land, allowing the English to establish themselves. Her two relationships also communicate a shift. With Smith, she ran around in fields and stared with naive eyes at the world; the new life with Rolfe involves farming tobacco and living in a house. It's restrictive, but sensible and honest. This is the new country.

Though he doesn't particularly convince as a grizzly explorer, Farrell puts in a decent performance as the traumatised Smith, whose eternal adoration for Pocahontas is made profoundly, painfully obvious. Bale is efficient and calm as the kind-hearted Rolfe, who battles to claim Pocahontas' heart after Smith moves away. The two never share the screen, yet balance each other well.

But there is no doubting the star of the show. Partly due to her most bewitching smile, Peruvian-born Kilcher is mesmerising as Pocahontas. Gracefully allowing her character to shift from enthusiastic young girl to wearied housewife, she is in turn inspiring, bewildering and iconic. Every possible emotion is covered along the way, without blemish. A dazzlingly bright presence, Kilcher's Pocahontas deserves to be one of cinema's great characters.

She is aided by Malick's thoughtful, zealous direction. Up until Pocahontas' trade, his film is wild and energised. Emmanuel Lubezki's camera spins around in rapture, stealthily stalking through the long grass, or staring with unwavering focus on astonishing landscapes. Natural Virginian sounds compete with James Horner's dramatic music for attention; there is little speech. Malick presents the land just as the magical new frontier must have seemed for those first settlers. And, like it, his film is epic, sprawling and inspirational.

It's also an emotional picture at this stage, more concerned with places and senses than action or plot development. Whether it's the Indians attacking, or the English, it matters not; Malick prefers to focus on the sentiments of his main trio of characters, with dramatic music, pained faces and charged voiceovers. Then, as soon as Pocahontas is taken from her tribe and Smith leaves her, the dreamy feel suddenly ceases, the bubble bursts and the film changes.

It has stiller, clearer scenes, less demanding on the senses; the plot becomes more prosaic and slow-paced. Whereas, in the early scenes, it was hard to know what was occurring on screen; now it is easy - there's more dialogue and more logical scene progressions. The initial fervour is replaced by a stony calm, as if the movie has grown up, or been suppressed, like Pocahontas. As America shifts, so does Malick's film in response.

In the shift, and the way that the lively, naive Pocahontas is so noticeably dulled, you wonder if Malick really believes that a good change took place at all. Yes, the English have great qualities; yes, their society has stood the test of time. But the loss of Pocahontas' liberty and expressive temperament are terrifically obvious in the film's second part; it seems hard to think of that loss other than as a tragedy.

But tragedy or not, Malick's film is a rousing, delicious experience. It has so much to offer; vast, lush scenery, elegant camerawork presenting hugely important historical moments, a sublime soundtrack and a roller coaster, compelling love triangle - and of course its majestic main character.

This is cinema made individually, warmly and skillfully - just, in fact, as it should be.

Önderlik yetene?iyle dikkati çeken Trakyal? bir köle olan Spartaküs, bir olas?l??a göre Roma ordusundan kaçm??, haydutluk yaparken yakalanm?? ve köle olarak sat?lm??t?. Spartaküs M.Ö. 73'te kendisiyle birlikte Capua'daki gladyatör okulundan kaçan 77 arkada??yla Vezüv Yanarda??'na s???nd?. Küçük bir Roma ordusunca ku?at?lan kaçaklar, bir uçurumdan a?a?? inerek Romal? askerleri ?a??rt?p kaçmay? ba?ard?lar. Spartaküs, kendisine kat?lan ve say?lar? 100 bine ula?an kaçak köle ve gladyatörlerle Lucania'ya do?ru yürüdü. Amans?z bir çat??ma sonucunda Publius Varinius'u yendi ve Thuria ile Metapontion kentlerini ya?malad?. Spartaküs art?k Güney ?talya'ya egemen olmu?tu. Roma Senatosu birden tehlikenin fark?na vard?. M.Ö. 72'de iki konsülün yönetimindeki güçler Spartaküs'ün üzerine gönderildi. Spartaküs onlar? yendikten sonra kuzeye, Alpler'e do?ru yürüyü?e geçti. Gallia Cisalpina valisi onu durdurmaya çal??t?ysa da, yenilgiye u?rad?. Köle ordusu art?k Alpler'i geçebilir ve güvenlik içinde da??labilirdi. Ne var ki, kimse ?talya'dan ayr?lmak istemedi. Spartaküs, ister istemez güneye yürümek durumunda kald?. Lucinia'ya geri dönen ordu, orada ilk kez Marcus Crassus'a yenildi. Spartaküs, Sicilya'ya geçmeyi tasarlayarak Messina'ya çekildi. Onlar? kaç?rmaya söz veren korsanlar sözlerinde durmad?. Crassus köleleri ku?att?ysa da, Spartaküs ku?atmay? yararak çekildi. Daha sonra, M.Ö. 71'de, sava?makta direnen köleler Romal?larca k?l?çtan geçirildi. Romal? general Pompeius, Spartaküs'ün ordusundaki çok say?da kaça?? yakalay?p öldürdü. 6000 ki?iyi tutsak alan Crassus, Appia Yolu boyunca tümünü çarm?ha gerdirdi. Spartacus'un cesedi ise asla bulunamad?.

The film's title is taken from English romantic William Wordsworth's 1807 Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Reflections of Early Childhood, some of which is quoted here:

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, but rather find
Strength in what remains behind.

The mood and story line of the stormy relationship between two star-crossed, teenaged lovers parallels the poem as the adolescents meet, fall obsessively in love and become sexually awakened, face repressed sexual attitudes, parental pressures, turmoil, social constraints and class differences, and ultimately break up and are traumatized without consummating their love. The values of the business-oriented civilization - at the time of its greatest crash - coincides with the collapse of their tender romance.

By Elia Kazan, 1961.

Malick's third, most recent and most uneven film, The Thin Red Line, is a further engagement with his concerns. If Badlands deals with the nature of our engagement with the world and Days of Heaven shows the world in a particularly primordial way (or a presentation of the reality as phusis, one might say), The Thin Red Line's inspiration (other than the primary source, the James Jones novel) seems to have come from, again, one of Heidegger's claims, made in regard to Heraclitus' fragment 53, that phusis shapes itself through polemos, (18) i.e. that reality shapes itself through conflict and struggle. Indeed, it becomes gradually clear that the film's opening query, ?what's this war in the heart of nature??, is not referring to a specific war, nor nature in a specific sense (such as ?Darwinian? wars in the heart of nature, or the violent human ?nature? at ?war? with itself). As the film progresses, the terms' senses become multiplied and relevant to natures and wars both cosmic and local, and of individuals, ideas, humans, and animals, and it is perhaps not overly interested in taking positions in the various ?wars? that are being presented, nor in how their various ?natures? are being understood. The film is interested in the fact that the world is governed by conflicts (between "opposites" - war and peace, darkness and light, etc.), not in who's on the ?right? side of each of them.

In fact, limiting the film's identity to a war picture or an anti-war picture, or understanding the film's point as various declarations (or arguments) about what ?war? and ?nature? are (and they would translate into utter banalities, or even redundant sentences, in any case, such as ?war comes from violent human nature? and ?war is a crime against Mother Nature?, and so on) would be confusing the film's aims and the nature of the questions that are asked by the film's characters. Like Wittgenstein, the soldiers in the film ask ?where does (something) come from?? not as a demand for a causal explanation (and besides, as the philosopher puts it, explanations come to an end somewhere) (19) but as the expression of a certain craving that the explanation cannot satisfy. (20) If the film does make moral judgments of any kind they are not about justifying why there shouldn't be wars and destruction of nature but are about a certain (modern) understanding of nature that allows humans to see the natural environment as a monolithic, meaningless abstraction, where destruction is allowed to happen with impunity and, as in Days of Heaven, the characters are less in control of nature than they think, as nature both nurtures them and violently rejects them in equal measure.

As with Badlands and Days of Heaven, Malick's concerns manifest themselves primarily in cinematic terms in The Thin Red Line. In the earlier films, particularly in Days of Heaven, the constant flow of images has very little spatial continuity, thereby making each image a discrete world existing on its own (or an emerging-abiding sway, one would say) rather than a small bit of perceptual information. A characteristic surge of images is the sequence that begins with the departure of Bill (Richard Gere) with the circus performers and ends with the time-lapse image of sprouting seed; there is no dialogue, save for the offscreen narration, no narrative content, and no continuity, but only the overwhelming power of the images which have not degenerated into ?signs? or ?symbols?.

Sergeant Storm (John C. Reilly) in The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line is comparatively more complex in its structure. It is structured in terms of various oppositional elements (or ?wars? or polemos). These include oppositions such as those between ?individual? and ?collectivity? (or the self and the other), as exemplified by the film's extremely odd use of voiceover narrations. The voiceovers are read by different characters, but not necessarily the ones that are on screen while the lines are uttered. Furthermore, the flashbacks and the ?subjective, mental? images are insufficiently distinguished from the ?objective, corporeal? images. When we first see Tall (Nick Nolte), it isn't clear whether what follows (the conversation with the general [John Travolta]) is the event recalled specifically from his point of view, or something that follows in chronological order. The shot of Witt (Jim Caviezel) looking around at his comrades is followed by a shot of Bell (Ben Chaplin) thinking by himself, and a shot of praying hands, before the scene continues back to Witt. And perhaps most tantalizingly, during Bell's musings, a shot of his wife (Miranda Otto) standing by herself is disrupted by a figure that enters the frame from afar, vaguely recognizable as a man in military uniform; is he Bell as he imagines himself, or some projection of his fear (of her infidelity), or is the scene about what actually happens to her (that she falls in love with another soldier)?

Ultimately, however, the film's primary weakness is that its verbosity (and overly self-conscious poetic effects) seems a less convincing sign of the director's commitments to the characters (not as characters, but as human beings) than the piercingly simple dialogues and voiceover narrations used in the previous two films. It appears as if Malick was torn between presenting a convincing drama (which Badlands and Days of Heaven are), and a philosophical inquiry unencumbered by the various demands upon it (as a war film, as a drama, as a popular film). As it is, it is not really convincing either as a drama, of men in war, or as a philosophical inquiry influenced by Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Yet the film that we do have is still a fascinating combination of different impulses and motivations.

Malick's unique cinematic style has produced many admirers, but not many acknowledged disciples. One recent exception is a young director called David Gordon Green, who admitted Malick's influence in his film George Washington (2001). Since The Thin Red Line, it looks like the director has entered another period of inactivity (there were twenty years separating it and Days of Heaven), at least in terms of directing. It is hard to say what further course Malick's career will take, but undeniably, the three films he has made so far are sources of much beauty and provocation.

the Coens once again suggest that human connection trumps Hollywood-style man-alone heroism. Just compare the relaxed, warm atmosphere of the Moss trailer or the Bell homestead with the dump motels to whose garish signage, flimsy walls and soulless decorations the film pays such keen and damning attention. Here as elsewhere, hotels are the setting for a series of big and little deaths, most of them pointless and dumb. Sheriff Bell recognises the absurdity at work in this world. "I laugh myself sometimes," he says. "Ain't a whole lot else you can do." by Ben Walters and J.M. Tyree

Scott's comment for COENs

my top 5 coens
fargo
barton fink
millers crossing
raising arizona
bloodsimple

when i watched fargo in the 90s, i just dident get it, i dident think it was a good crime film, and humour weird, but then i decided towatch it as a black comedy, for this it is the best, maybe dr stranglove and king of comedy could top it for that, some great comic moments and all in the spe, ech, like many coen films, which is my fav thing from them, this is why, for me its the best, but im not saying the others are bad, barton fink, millers crossing, i consider true clasics also, for my full list check coen brothers films on my page, all there films in order of merit, thanks fr your honest thoughts

Howard Hughes (1905-1976)'s life according to M.S.

In my opinion, PTA's films are only 1 star. That is it. There are few exceptions. There will be blood; 1- Over talented player Daniel Day-Lewis. 2- Upton Sinclair's novel 'Oil'. These two points make this film a little better. No-mater what other people think, say only your own opinion. Forget others.

In 1964, with the threat of nuclear war looming over the entire world, Stanley Kubrick spun the whole issue on its head by creating the greatest ever comment on Cold War insanity, but also one of the funniest films ever made. Taking Peter George?s novel, ?Two Hours Till Doom?, a deadly serious tale of an unauthorized attack on the Soviet Union, Kubrick originally intended to play the story straight, but changed to full-on black comedy. And you can thank your precious bodily fluids he did, for this is one of the darkest, most merciless comedies ever made.

The film runs in three concurrent strands, with the magnificent Peter Sellers playing three of the finest portrayals of military insanity. The first strand is set in a U.S military base, with General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) going crazy in the belief that the Communists are invading and so sends a wing of B-52 bombers to bombard the Soviets and so spark nuclear war. Only a British officer (Sellers) has any chance of stopping him...

The second is on board one of the bombers, piloted by a hilarious Texan called Major T.J Kong (also look out for a young James Earl Jones) and in the third the U.S President (Sellers) is desperately trying to solve the problem. The films revolves around these three scenes, with each action in one directly involving the other two. There are more memorable scenes than you can imagine, including the appearance of the title character (Sellers, again), a mad ex-Nazi scientist; the President's phone call to the Soviet leader, probably the funniest monologue of movie history; and of course the tragi-comic, unforgettable ending. It is breathtaking to watch and despite the excellence of the acting, it is indeed Kubrick's genius that makes this film tick.

EUFS

the second one by COEN Brothers-1998.

Forman's masterpiece. There are more works. I assume that M.Forman managed producing good films even in the States.

http://www.woodyallen.com/

I assume that A.Pakula's the best.

Chalton Heston by William Wyler-1959.

There are too many strong players in this film. Two legends M.Brando and Jack Nicholson are in, but there is also very interesting player in the same film. Let's have a look at him by three films. HARRY DEAN STANTON. The first one by Arthur Penn, 1976.

Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)
The Interpreter (2005)
... aka Interprète, L' (France)

Random Hearts (1999)
Sabrina (1995)
... aka Sabrina (Germany)
The Firm (1993)
Havana (1990/I)

Out of Africa (1985)
Tootsie (1982)
Absence of Malice (1981)

The Electric Horseman (1979)
Bobby Deerfield (1977)
... aka Heaven Has No Favorites (Australia)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
... aka 3 Days of the Condor (Australia)
The Yakuza (1974)
... aka Brotherhood of the Yakuza (UK: video title)
The Way We Were (1973)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
Castle Keep (1969)
The Swimmer (1968) (uncredited)
The Scalphunters (1968)
This Property Is Condemned (1966)
The Slender Thread (1965)
"Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre" (5 episodes, 1963-1965)
- The Game (1965) TV episode
- The Fliers (1965) TV episode
- Murder in the First (1964) TV episode
- Two Is the Number (1964) TV episode
- Something About Lee Wiley (1963) TV episode
"Kraft Suspense Theatre" (2 episodes, 1964-1965)
- The Last Clear Chance (1965) TV episode
- The Watchman (1964) TV episode
"Slattery's People" (1 episode, 1964)
- Question: What Became of the White Tortilla? (1964) TV episode
"The Fugitive" (1 episode, 1964)
- Man on a String (1964) TV episode
"Breaking Point" (1 episode, 1963)
- Solo for B-Flat Clarinet (1963) TV episode
"Ben Casey" (10 episodes, 1962-1963)
- For This Relief, Much Thanks (1963) TV episode
- Suffer the Little Children (1963) TV episode
- A Cardinal Act of Mercy: Part 2 (1963) TV episode
- A Cardinal Act of Mercy: Part 1 (1963) TV episode
- I'll Be Alright in the Morning (1963) TV episode
(5 more)
"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" (2 episodes, 1962-1963)
- Diagnosis: Danger (1963) TV episode
- The Black Curtain (1962) TV episode
"The Defenders" (1 episode, 1963)
- Kill or Be Killed (1963) TV episode
"The Tall Man" (2 episodes, 1962)
- Phoebe (1962) TV episode
- Rio Doloroso (1962) TV episode
"Target: The Corruptors" (1 episode, 1962)
- The Wrecker (1962) TV episode
"Cain's Hundred" (1 episode, 1961)
- King of the Mountain (1961) TV episode

KARL MALDEN 1912-2009

My favorite Pakula. Sutherland and Fonda are excellent.

Adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from the novel by E.M. Forster, A Room with a View is a shining example of Merchant-Ivory's ability to achieve maximum quality and opulence at minimum cost. Set during the Edwardian Era, the film stars Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy Honeychurch, who like all proper young British ladies is compelled to tour Europe in the company of an older chaperone -- in this instance, her spinster cousin Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith). While in Italy, the ladies make the acquaintance of a wide variety of personalities; the most fascinating of their fellow tourists -- at least in Lucy's eyes -- is free-spirited George Emerson (Julian Sands). Aware that her cousin is becoming too familiar with Emerson, Charlotte demands that Lucy return to England posthaste. Lucy complacently settles for the tiresomely traditional courtship of nerdish Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis) -- and then Mr. Emerson moves into the neighborhood. Lucy now finds herself on the horns of a dilemma: Should she opt for a safe, proper marriage to Cecil, or the bohemian unpredictability of the charismatic Emerson? A winner of three Academy Awards, A Room with a View is not what one could call fast-moving, but fans of the Merchant-Ivory team will enjoy luxuriating in the film's leisurely pace and stimulating cast of characters.

An intricately plotted tale of thwarted love and betrayal, The Golden Bowl tells the story of an extravagantly rich American widower (NOLTE) and his sheltered daughter (BECKINSALE), both of whom marry only to discover that their respective mates, a beautiful American expatriate and an impoverished Italian aristocrat (THURMAN and NORTHAM), are entangled with one another in a romantic intrigue of seduction and deceit.

Set in England and Italy between 1903 and 1909, The Golden Bowl is adapted from the Henry James novel by the acclaimed and award-winning filmmaking team of Ismail Merchant, James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who have had great past success with James, namely in their films based on his novels The Bostonians and The Europeans. Such literary adaptations as these, as well as A Room with a View, Maurice, Howards End, The Remains of the Day, and now The Golden Bowl, are clearly a Merchant Ivory forte - the team has thirty-one Academy Award nominations and six Oscars for their screen adaptations, including two for writer Ruth Jhabvala, between them. But these films are also consistent showcases for their actors' best work, and The Golden Bowl is no exception. Thurman's passionate Charlotte Stant is her most challenging role so far; Nolte is a revelation as the brilliant and subtle Robber Baron; and screen legends Huston and Fox stand out in their supporting performances. Jeremy Northam's Prince is infused with a rare sophistication; and Kate Beckinsale (who will also star in the much-anticipated film Pearl Harbor, opening in May) shines as a seemingly naive beauty who proves to have the strongest will of all.

Laszlo Kovacs, a Hungarian cinematographer who fell in love with the American landscape on a cross-country bus ride and then used light, shadow and imagination to give visual shape to seminal films like ?Easy Rider,? died on Sunday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 74.



Adrees Latif/Reuters, 2002



Laszlo Kovacs

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Columbia Pictures



In films like ?Easy Rider? (1969), Laszlo Kovacs blended a love of landscape with an innovative filming style.



His death was announced by the International Cinematographers Guild. James Chressanthis, a cinematographer who is preparing a documentary on Mr. Kovacs and his friend and fellow cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, said that the cause was not known but that Mr. Kovacs had earlier had cancer.



Mr. Kovacs came along in the 1960s when the old studio system was sputtering and a new independent cinema was rising. Filmmakers emerged from film schools and work on B movies to challenge traditional themes and techniques and create what has been called ?the new Hollywood,? or ?the American new wave.?



Production moved from the studios to the streets, and the new breed used small crews, lightweight equipment and innovative means of coping with low budgets. Improvisation was both artistic goal and hard necessity. In ?Easy Rider? (1969), Mr. Kovacs used a 1968 Chevrolet convertible as his camera car, making the platform for his camera from a piece of plywood on the trunk held in place by a sandbag.



In that movie, he wanted to portray something hopeful after the fiery demise of the character played by Peter Fonda. A rising helicopter delivered a panoramic view of the horizon, but only after Mr. Kovacs balanced a camera on one skid and counterweights on the other to keep the helicopter from tipping over.



In ?Five Easy Pieces? (1970), Mr. Kovacs memorably matched the color of Susan Anspach?s blue eyes and the sky. In another scene, he shot Ms. Anspach and then let his camera drift elsewhere; she scurried behind the camera and he arrived back at her face, giving the illusion that the shot had gone all the way around the room.



His tricks included using flashing lights and other techniques to create the impression of psychedelic hallucinations. His goal was to let the environment make statements about the characters. He intended for the foggy islands of the Pacific Northwest to explain the tight little family in ?Five Easy Pieces.?



Most of his major works are clustered at the start of the 1970s, including ?That Cold Day in the Park? (1969), Robert Altman?s third feature as a director, and ?The King of Marvin Gardens? (1972), which, like ?Five Easy Pieces,? was directed by Bob Rafelson. He did six pictures with the director Peter Bogdanovich, including ?Targets? (1968), ?What?s Up, Doc?? (1972) and ?Paper Moon? (1973).



His range grew wider, with credits including Martin Scorsese?s movies ?New York, New York? (1977) and ?The Last Waltz? (1978) and Hal Ashby?s ?Shampoo? (1975). Other movies included ?Ghost Busters? (1984) and ?My Best Friend?s Wedding? (1997).



Mr. Kovacs was born on May 14, 1933, in Cece, a farming village about 60 miles west of Budapest. During the Nazi occupation, he distributed flyers for the propaganda movies shown each week in a school auditorium. His pay was a free seat, and he was fascinated by the flickering images.



In 1945, he was accepted into the Academy of Drama and Film Art in Budapest, where students watched Western films surreptitiously. He was swept off his feet by ?Citizen Kane,? saying it ?changed my visual vocabulary.?



In the uprising against the Communist regime in 1956, he and Mr. Zsigmond shot 30,000 feet of film at great risk to themselves. They escaped with the film, and some of it eventually became part of a documentary a few years later.



They both bounced among odd jobs. Around 1957, Mr. Kovacs, who had arrived in the United States speaking no English, moved from New Jersey to Seattle, taking the memorable bus ride that found echoes later in ?Easy Rider.? In 1959, he took another bus to Los Angeles, where he reunited with Mr. Zsigmond.



Mr. Kovacs did movies like ?The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill? (1966), often working with the B movie producer Roger Corman. After he shot eight biker movies in one year, Dennis Hopper asked him to do another. Mr. Kovacs?s reluctance to repeat himself vanished after Mr. Hopper acted out the script. ?Easy Rider,? with a budget of $340,000, was a sensation at Cannes and made $60 million.



Mr. Kovacs is survived by his wife, Audrey, and his daughters Julianna and Nadia.



He prided himself on spontaneity. He and the other crew members had no preconceived idea where they would shoot the classic scene in ?Five Easy Pieces? in which Jack Nicholson orders a chicken salad sandwich without the chicken salad just to get the toast he wants.



?Approaching the freeway, we saw a little rise, and there was the cafe,? he said in an interview with American Cinematographer magazine in 2005. ?I think we shot that scene in two hours, and then we moved on.?

"Scout" Finch (Mary Badham) is a six-year-old tomboy growing up in Maycomb,Alabama in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression. Along with her brother "Jem" (Phillip Alford), and their friend "Dill" (John Megna), she leads a carefree life. Their father is Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), a widower, and an attorney with deeply-held principles. When young Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a black man, is falsely accused of raping a white woman (Collin Wilcox) Atticus is appointed to defend him, although a guilty verdict from an all-white jury is expected by everyone ? which is exactly what happens, even though Atticus shows that Tom is innocent. Atticus tries to have the verdict overturned, but Tom tries to escape from jail and is killed. To get back at Atticus, the father of the supposed rape victim (James Anderson) attacks Scout and Jem, but Boo Radley (Robert Duvall), a mentally retarded neighbor whom the children have made fun of and built up into the local boogeyman, saves them by killing their attacker. The Sheriff decides to promulgate that the death was accidental, and Boo is not put on trial.[1][2]

W.A is as usual. After losing the Oscar three times Michael Caine was tired of attending the awards ceremony. Ironically he won the first time in 1986.

In Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel, romance between an upper-class gentleman and an ostracized lady is doomed by 19th century New York society. Shortly after his engagement to blandly genteel May Welland (Winona Ryder), Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is reacquainted with May's scandalous cousin Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). As the head of an esteemed family, Archer initially uses his standing to try to rehabilitate Ellen's reputation, but he finds himself increasingly drawn to her disregard for the codes of New York manners. Bound by ingrained society mores and his peers' insinuations, Newland tries to dodge his growing passion by rushing his marriage to May, but he cannot keep himself from confessing his love to Ellen. Recognizing that Newland could never abandon his sense of honor and be happy, Ellen pushes Newland to May and leaves town. The marriage proceeds as dictated, but when Newland unexpectedly sees Ellen again, he yearns for the affair to come to fruition. However, he underestimates not only what May knows but also her ability to uphold the rules of propriety. Sumptuously shot by Michael Ballhaus, the film offers meticulously designed costumes and settings that evoke a culture as seductively beautiful in its surfaces as it is stifling in its rituals. Unspoken emotions are expressed through such details as yellow roses or a clipped cigar, a fade to red or a single camera move. Using Wharton's original prose to comment on the setting's hypocrisies, Joanne Woodward's voiceover narration suggests how much decisive power is buried beneath dainty femininity. The Age of Innocence received five Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Ryder and Best Screenplay for Scorsese and Jay Cocks, and a win for Best Costumes. Although The Age of Innocence seemed like a departure from Scorsese's prior work, Newland is as much at the mercy of his circle's Byzantine structure (and his own conscience) as are Scorsese's more familiar mobsters; Newland's persecutors just wear white tie and tails.

Malick's first film Badlands (1973) is ostensibly a semi-factual account of a mass-murderer and his girlfriend, set in the 1950s. What's immediately unusual about the film is its lack of interest in trying to explain the causes of its protagonists' violent behaviors, and furthermore, its lack of moral judgment of these individuals or the culture that produced them. Instead the film's focus is concentrated on their experience of alienation from the world that they inhabit and its values. As Heidegger might put it, the intelligibility of the world and the values people share are, at bottom, not based on justifications, nor are they arbitrary. It is a given fact, if you will, that they are based neither on unshakable foundations nor on arbitrary consensus.

Kit (Martin Sheen) in Badlands

Malick's lack of interest in the causes of the characters' behaviors should not be understood as itself a moral judgment, as if their actions are in some nebulous way justified. This film is not a polemic, like Kiéslowski's A Short Film about Killing (1988). Rather, Malick's point seems to be that mere condemnation, or trying to determine the causes of their actions, essentially evades the fact that our world and values sometimes are unable to deal with certain human possibilities. The film could easily have been given a particular interpretive framework: it could have been a condemnation of American mass-culture or juvenile delinquents, or a polemic about the death-penalty and justice system. However because the film eschews any particular moral stance, it makes the viewer realize that attempts at trying to judge the characters as "inhuman" (or look for explanation for their actions) cover up the fact that our world and values are more fragile than we think they are. In fact, Kit (Martin Sheen) and Holly (Sissy Spacek) are barely aware of the monstrous nature of their acts, and they have no particular reasons for their actions either, except for the fact that they are running away from the lawmen. One of the film's more indelible scenes involves Kit's inability to explain to the policeman why he has done what he has done, after he's just been captured (of his own accord, no less). He even finds people in general ?Okay,? and is not a particularly hostile character throughout the film.

Kit and Holly in Badlands

The film is also perceptive on the nature of a human being's relationship to his or her world. Here, a phenomenon like alienation again is not given an explanatory angle: Kit and Holly's loneliness and detachment from their world are not due to some particular psychological reasons or their places in a society. Rather, experiences such as alienation, anxiety, and listlessness are shown to be fundamental facets of human life, as life oscillates between the stable everyday world and its tasks and the realization that its stability is not based on unshakable foundations. Malick is insistent that human action is not always motivated by psychological causes. In effect, he challenges the traditional notion of the ?character? as primarily defined by psychology, deeply buried within a person's mind, instead preferring to envision human beings as by nature tied to (or being robbed of) their worlds, which forms the basis of any sort of human experiences. In fact, the freedom that Kit and Holly experience, as they retreat more and more from society, is an oppressive, unbearable one.

James Monaco has described Malick's films as ?mythic? in appearance, but rather than imposing myths onto the reality, Malick finds mythic material out of the reality (or to use his own words, Malick ?deduces? myths out of the reality, instead of ?inducing? them). (4) It is a perceptive comment, for Malick's films usually evoke (rather than explicitly ?reference? or ?replay?) various (cultural, literary, cinematic) myths. Malick himself believes Badlands calls to mind Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Swiss Family Robinson, (5) as they and his film look at our form of life, its values and rituals, from a distance. Days of Heaven (1978) is vaguely biblical both in tone and plot (the title itself, as Stanley Cavell has noted, has a biblical origin). (6) It evokes other films, without specifically commenting on them, and many believe it to be heavily influenced by Murnau's City Girl (1930) and Sunrise (1927), and even George Stevens' Giant (1956). Similarly, even though The Thin Red Line (1998) (7) actually quotes various religious and literary texts, such as The Bhagavad-Gita, (8) The Iliad (9) and The Grapes of Wrath, (10) as well as alluding to films such as Murnau's Tabu (1931) and Cornell Wilde's Beach Red (1967) (and From Here to Eternity, the James Jones novel, as well as Zinnemann's film [1953]), (11) one still wonders as to what such allusions are made for, since unlike most films that self-consciously refer to other films or myths, Malick's films do not engage with them in a particularly critical manner, nor do they understand the notion of myth as something that obscures truth, or legitimizes ideological interests, etc. so that it needs to be ?demystified? and ?revised?, as in the films of someone like Altman or Godard. Instead, Malick understands myths as ?cultural paradigms,? if you will, that function as a precondition for making sense out of the human experience, and that shape the sensibilities of the culture that produces them. Indeed, myths, as recognized as such, are not hypotheses that might or might not turn out to be true, as they serve a completely different function from the presentations of facts.

Days of Heaven

The lack of much critical work on Malick's films is partly due to the fact that (besides the lack of outputs) it is hard to articulate the motivations or concerns behind them. In the case of Days of Heaven, the difficulty is even more pronounced than the director's previous film. Primarily a tragic love story, the characters and the plot are almost dwarfed by the overwhelming scale and the beauty of the film's nature imagery. In a rather perplexing but nevertheless moving way, the film feels detached (in an almost religious sense, one might say) from the specific events within the film, never really delving deep into the particular emotions and minds of the characters. Pauline Kael, perhaps with impatience, likened the film to an ?empty Christmas tree: you can hang all your dumb metaphors on it,? (12) which makes one wonder why she thought the film had to be metaphorical. The critics also have persistently noticed Malick's sympathy towards the aesthetics of silent cinema. As stated, Days of Heaven is largely thought to be borne out of various biblical narratives, and also a self-conscious homage to certain silent films, which makes one curious as to why particularly silent films are being evoked. Is it a case of mere nostalgia? A more likely answer is that such evocations result from Malick's understanding of notions such as image and narrative in relation to cinema.

It is often asserted that cinematic images are ?signs? (and the films ?texts?) that are in need of deciphering, according to certain critical traditions and methodologies, that they are presented to us as something to be ?understood? (or at least that understanding films, in various ways, requires theories). (13) Malick's films are in some sense a profound challenge to such notions, as their primary concerns are not plots and characters with complex psychologies, nor some kind of intellectual engagement with ideas. Rather, Malick's films are most distinguished for the primacy and beauty and poetry of their imagery, which reminds the viewers of the fact that the most primal and direct way in which cinema engages its audiences is via the power of images. (They also force the viewer to listen carefully as well to the sounds that the world produces, including the different poignant human voices). And the intention behind such relative lack of regard for the conventions of ?narrative? cinema is not to be characterized as a subversion or aesthetic gamesmanship. Rather, the films are concerned with bringing cinema back to its humble origins, of presenting unmediated and uninterpreted reality, before its natures have split into different theoretical positions and approaches, such as the dichotomy between realism and expressionism, fiction and documentary, and the division of cinema into various genres and movements. Rather than merely paying homage to silent cinema, it appears to be a certain fundamental or primitive condition of cinema that he seeks, for most silent films are neither primitive, unmediated, nor uninterpreted presentations of reality.

Still, Malick's sympathy towards silent cinema may be thought of as some sort of yearning for purity in images, and may be borne out of a refusal to see cinema (and particularly cinematic images) as governed by various abstractions or opposing theses, instead understanding cinema as first and foremost a ?physical? phenomenon that elicits awe and wonder before any impulse to understand and interpret it in terms of its meaning. In a sense, Malick's films are both fiction and documentary, as they closely document the world that we live in and its inhabitants, akin to, as some have commented, National Geographic programs; as well as realistic and expressionistic. Indeed, contrary to some misconceptions about them, Malick's films (and their images) are profoundly anti-abstract, anti-symbolic, and anti-modernist.

Malick's understanding of cinema seems to be influenced by Heidegger's contention that it is a cardinal symptom of modernity (which he claims has its deepest roots in Greek thinking) to apprehend reality as something to be differentiated from how it appears to a subjective consciousness, and that the reality is understood at the most fundamental level as something to be mastered. (14) Surely, one of the guiding preoccupations of cinema, if one is to understand it as one of the chief products of modernity, is defining what a cinematic image ultimately is; is it a component of a narrative? A representation of the reality? Objective reality or subjective (psychological) reality? Psychological reality of the filmmaker or the characters? Is it a reflection of ideological values?

Heidegger believes the early Greeks, who did not ground the nature of reality in constant presence (15), experienced the world not as a collection of substances (or what ?appearances? really are) to be analyzed, but as a groundless source of mystery (and it is not insignificant, for the present context, that Heidegger thinks the world reveals itself to us via our moods, not cognition). Or as phusis, which has since degenerated into ?nature? in the sense of the products or resources produced by nature. Phusis, in his words, means everything that ?comes-into-presence,? or what unfolds itself in appearance, and the emerging-abiding sway, which, with its overwhelming power, has not yet been mastered by thought. (16) Malick, likewise, is wholly uninterested in envisioning his films as epistemological (or moral, or sociological, or what have you) inquiries for the audiences and the characters, instead preferring to envision them as a presentation of the world, in all its variety, as something to be faced with reverence. One might say, borrowing Wittgenstein's phrase, Malick's films are not interested in ?how the world is,? or what happens to be true, but in ?that it is,? the uncanny (and tragic and wondrous and humbling) fact of its very existence (which is to say, they are not trying to say something at all). (17) Days of Heaven, perhaps, cannot be described with more accuracy than by describing it as a certain embodiment of the site of human passions and tragedies, overseen by the gods and the cosmos where everything, human or nonhuman, has its place.

Terrence Malick is an American director whose films can be characterized as radical reevaluations of the current understandings of cinematic concepts such as image (and sound), character, and narrative. His films are intensely visual, abound in beautiful nature imagery and they elude explanation, in the sense of the reduction of a given phenomenon (say, a character's behaviors) to various (psychological, sociological) causes, usually favoring expression of moods instead. To articulate the intentions behind such choices would be the task in hand in trying to make sense of his films. Malick studied philosophy and worked in journalism before he turned to film. He produced a translation of one of Heidegger's short texts (1) and the philosopher's writings appear to have influenced the films greatly. Malick also worked for publications such as Life, New Yorker and Newsweek. (2) His other influences seem to be the writings of philosophical figures such as Wittgenstein, (3) the works of realist, non-abstract modern painters such as Hopper and Wyeth, and silent films, embracing both the documentary tradition of Flaherty and the expressionist tradition of Murnau (by questioning, or ignoring, their ?oppositional? status).

Burt Lancaster is super.

KARL MALDEN 1912-2009

No building is riper for romance than the Upper East Side brownstone where Holly and Paul live in Breakfast at Tiffany's. As James Sanders points out in Celluloid Skyline, the "inherently contradictory nature of the building--as a home for solitary young people, yet a domestic environment that encouraged neighborly relations--continued to make it an obvious locale for romance, stories that by their nature tracked the gradual victory of connection over solitude." While the front of the house is real, the rest is a stage set; row houses don't have tenement fire escapes like the one on which Holly strums her guitar. But Sanders points out that it is an instinctive, if not literal truth. The brownstone is a single-family residence broken into apartments, yearning for wholeness. "Superimposing a domestic unity atop otherwise solitary paths, of linking the lives, and perhaps even the hearts of New York's 'huckleberry friends.'"

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a film that is almost perfect, if I could recast the blandly handsome George Peppard and ax the racist caricature of Micky Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi, a character he said he hated. And, for me, the sentimentalization of prostitution is a problem, as well, although many a Manhattan migrant has found sexual liberation to be one of the more intoxicating aspects of urban life. Of course, we do NOT want it to turn this into Midnight Cowboy. "While it may be the archetypical Audrey Hepburn film, it's nowhere near her best. Blake Edwards' notion of life in the early sixties is stunningly inauthentic--his idea of a swinging party animal is Martin Balsam." (Thompson)

Why has this film maintained its popularity over the years? Perhaps, because it represents virtually the last moment in American movies where an actress was glamorized for glamour's sake. Audrey Hepburn is evoked as an inspiration by someone or other in almost every issue of Vogue; and Audrey Style is full of tributes to her ineffable and inimitable elegance. She is invariably linked with her exact contemporary, Jackie Kennedy. They represent 20th century style in a way no subsequent icons do. "People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant," she once said, "when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and say, 'I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies and it made such a difference.'"

http://www.kennethanger.org/

Final curten of John Huston who is one of the most respectful Irish/American film directors. Fascinating adaptation from James Joyse's Dubliners. Only one story.

"Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age."

I dedicate this advice to some people who confuse real art with horror films.

A Tennessee Williams' play commented by John Huston.

http://www.enotes.com/night-iguana

Combination of Ava Gardner, Dedorah Kerr, Richard Burton, Tennesses Williams, John Huston created one of the American Masterpieces.

Based on the novel by John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is closer to the dour, chilling world of Harry Palmer than the glossy glamorous lifestyle of James Bond. Le Carre's best-selling novel provides the basis for this breathtaking Cold War thriller of espionage, intrigue, crosses and double-crosses. A tension-packed and brilliantly plotted screenplay matches brooding first-rate performances from the entire cast, with masterful semi-documentary style direction from Martin Ritt.

1. Es war einmal ein treuer Husar,
Der liebt' sein Mädchen ein ganzes Jahr,
|: Ein ganzes Jahr und noch viel mehr,
Die Liebe nahm kein Ende mehr. :|

2. Der Knab' der fuhr ins fremde Land,
Derweil ward ihm sein Mädchen krank, |: Sie ward so krank bis auf den Tod,
Drei Tag, drei Nacht sprach sie kein Wort. :|

3. Und als der Knab' die Botschaft kriegt,
Daß sein Herzlieb am Sterben liegt,
|: Verließ er gleich sein Hab und Gut,
Wollt seh'n, was sein Herzliebchen tut. :|

4. Ach Mutter bring' geschwind ein Licht,
Mein Liebchen stirbt, ich seh' es nicht,
|: Das war fürwahr ein treuer Husar,
Der liebt' sein Mädchen ein ganzes Jahr. :|

5. Und als er zum Herzliebchen kam,
Ganz leise gab sie ihm die Hand,
|: Die ganze Hand und noch viel mehr, Die Liebe nahm kein Ende mehr. :|

6. "Grüß Gott, grüß Gott, Herzliebste mein!
Was machst du hier im Bett allein?"
|: "Hab dank, hab Dank, mein treuer Knab'!
Mit mir wird's heißen bald: ins Grab!" :|

7. "Grüß Gott, grüß Gott, mein feiner Knab.
Mit mir wills gehen ins kühle Grab.
|: "Ach nein, ach nein, mein liebes Kind,
Dieweil wir so Verliebte sind." :|

8. "Ach nein, ach nein, nicht so geschwind,
Dieweil wir zwei Verliebte sind;
|: Ach nein, ach nein, Herzliebste mein,
Die Lieb und Treu muß länger sein. :|

9. Er nahm sie gleich in seinen Arm,
Da war sie kalt und nimmer warm; |: "Geschwind, geschwind bringt mir ein Licht!
Sonst stirbt mein Schatz, daß's niemand sicht. :|

10. Und als das Mägdlein gestorben war,
Da legt er's auf die Totenbahr.
|: Wo krieg ich nun sechs junge Knab'n,
Die mein Herzlieb zu Grabe trag'n? :|

11. Wo kriegen wir sechs Träger her?
Sechs Bauernbuben die sind so schwer.
|: Sechs brave Husaren müssen es sein,
Die tragen mein Herzliebchen heim. :|

12. Jetzt muß ich tragen ein schwarzes Kleid,
Das ist für mich ein großes Leid, |: Ein großes Leid und noch viel mehr,
Die Trauer nimmt kein Ende mehr.

This is not a film. This is a legend. Look at the cast; all of them are also legendry.

Every once in a while, I decide I'm going to dismantle my vocabulary and try to learn to speak filmically all over again, but then I discover new ways of expressing myself in this primitive fashion that make me as excited as a kid on the first day of kindergarten with a new box of crayons.
? Guy Maddin, Indiewire

H.Fonda is very good. Also new Russian version,12, is also not bad. Sidney Lumet's best.