A tribute to the last surviving star of the classic Hollywood period of the 1930s and ‘40s.
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming, including Blaze, The Heiress, and Dragged Across Concrete.
A preview of the Gene Siskel Film Center's upcoming Brit Noir film series, which runs from November 5-30.
An appreciation of Richard Lester as a retrospective of his work is about to unfold in New York City.
Lord Richard Attenborough, legendary director and actor, has passed away at the age of 91.
Marie writes: Last week, in response to a club member comment re: whatever happened to Ebert Club merchandize (turned out to be too costly to set up) I had promised to share a free toy instead - an amusement, really, offered to MailChimp clients; the mail service used to send out notices. Allow me to introduce you to their mascot...
Marie writes: Holy crap! THE KRAKEN IS REAL!" Humankind has been looking for the giant squid (Architeuthis) since we first started taking pictures underwater. But the elusive deep-sea predator could never be caught on film. Oceanographer and inventor Edith Widder shares the key insight - and the teamwork - that helped to capture the squid on camera for the first time, in the following clip taken from her recent TED talk." And to read more about the story, visit Researchers have captured the first-ever video footage of a live giant squid at i09.com
Marie writes: The ever intrepid Sandy Khan shared the following item with the Newsletter and for which I am extremely glad, as it's awesome..."Earlier this year, the Guggenheim Museum put online 65 modern art books, giving you free access to books introducing the work of Alexander Calder, Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Kandinsky. Now, just a few short months later, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched MetPublications, a portal that will "eventually offer access to nearly all books, Bulletins, and Journals" published by the Met since 1870."
Marie writes: Belgium club member Koen Van Loocke has submitted the following and it's so awesome, I have no words. But first, background..The Cinematic Orchestra is led by composer/programmer/multi-instrumentalist Jason Swinscoe, who formed his first group "Crabladder" in 1990 while a Fine Arts student at Cardiff College. The group's fusion of jazz and hardcore punk elements with experimental rhythms, inspired Swinscoe to further explore the musical possibilites and by the time the group disbanded in the mid-'90s, he was playing DJ at various clubs and pirate radio stations in and around London.
Lesson for the day: How to have fun while wasting time... Marie writes: welcome to DRAW A STICK MAN, a delightful Flash-based site prompting viewers to draw a simple stick figure which then comes to life! Ie: the program animates it. You're given instructions about what to draw and when, which your dude uses to interact with objects onscreen. Thanks go to club member Sandy Kahn who heard about it from her pal Lauren, in Portland Oregon.Note: here's a screen-cap of what I drew; I've named him Pumpkin Head.
"I love music so much and I had such ambition that I was willing to go way beyond what the hell they paid me for. I wanted people to look at the artwork and hear the music." - Alex Steinweiss
 
View "The Bed-Sitting Room," complete and legally.
Watch The Bed Sitting Room (1969, Richard Lester) in Comedy | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
"The Bed-Sitting Room" A film written and directed by Richard Lester. Featuring Rita Tushingham, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Mulligan, Arthur Lowe, Marty Feldman, Ralph Richardson and Harry Secombe. Classified PG.
By Roger Ebert / December 10, 1976
If "Monty Python's Flying Circus" had never existed, Richard Lester would still have invented it. In 1970 he directed "The Bed-Sitting Room," a film which so uncannily predicts the style and manner of Python that we think for a moment we're watching television. The movie's dotty and savage; acerbic and slapstick and quintessentially British.
It was also a total disaster at the box office. So great was its failure, indeed, that Lester didn't get another directing assignment until 1974 and "The Three Musketeers." He'd been one of the most popular filmmakers of the 1960s ("A Hard Day's Night," "How I Won the War,") but "The Bed-Sitting Room" hardly opened.
It's an after-the-Bomb movie, but like no other. It takes place at some time in the fairly immediate future, after England and (we gather) the rest of the world have been almost wiped out by a nuclear war. A few people still survive. Some of them ride on an endlessly circling underground train (powered by an earnest young man peddling a bicycle). Others roam through the debris above. They try to appear as proper as possible by wearing the right clothes. From his midriff up, for example, the BBC announcer wears a tuxedo. Everything below is rags, but you can't see that when he's broadcasting (which he does by holding a TV set in front of his face and talking.)
People seem to be genial enough. There's a pregnant young girl (Rita Tushingham) who lives with Mum and Dad on the underground train. There's a genial gentleman (Ralph Richardson) who goes about looking into other people's business. There are two policemen (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) who operate out of a wrecked Volkswagen suspended from a hot-air balloon. And there's poor Arthur Lowe, who's obsessed by the fear that he'll turn into a bed-sitting room. Well, we all are. All of the characters are mad, of course, but that's not the point; this isn't a heavy-handed anti-war parable, but a series of sketches that gradually grow more and more grim.
Things start out fairly cheerfully, actually. At one point a messenger arrives with a pie, asks if he has the correct person, and when he finds he does, throws the pie into the man's face. So now we know where that fad came from. Later, though, the smiles grow more forced. The characters try to maintain an adequate British reserve, but it's a little hard when you find you are likely to turn into a bed-sitting room. Escalators from the underground are likely to dump you in mid-air, a square meal is hard to come by, Rita Tushingham's baby dies and so on. Since the movie accompanies all of this material with mindlessly mechanical music hall tunes, the effect is macabre.
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"I need you out here," Russ Meyer told me on the phone in 1977. It was 6 a.m. He could not conceive that I might still be asleep. "Have you ever heard of the Sex Pistols?"
"No," I said.
"They're a rock band from England. They got a lot of publicity for saying 'fuck' on TV. Now they have some money and want me to direct their movie."
The Festival International du Film, held annually in Cannes, France, has become the world's most prestigious film festival—the spot on the beach where the newest films from the world's top directors compete for both publicity and awards.
A producer of horror films doesn't actually need fangs and little points on his ears, but it would help. He doesn't need to quaff blood at every meal, but...cole slaw? Dishes and dishes of cole slaw? This is a horror movie producer?
Great Movies
