Cat Ballou is a 1965 American western comedy film starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual role. The story involves a woman who hires a notorious gunman to protect her father's ranch, and later to avenge his murder, only to find that the gunman is not what she expected. The supporting cast features Tom Nardini, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman, and Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye, who together perform the film's theme song, and who appear throughout the film in the form of travelling minstrels or troubadours as a kind of musical Greek chorus and framing device.
Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 erotic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The film stars Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Léaud, and portrays a recently widowed American who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
Absence of Malice is a 1981 American drama neo noir thriller film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Paul Newman, Sally Field, Wilford Brimley, Melinda Dillon and Bob Balaban.
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael often defied the consensus of her contemporaries.
Film Quarterly, a journal devoted to the study of film, television, and visual media, is published by University of California Press. It publishes scholarly analyses of international and Hollywood cinema as well as independent film, including documentary and animation. The journal also revisits film classics; examines television and digital and online media; reports from international film festivals; reviews recent academic publications; and on occasion addresses installations, video games and emergent technologies. It welcomes established scholars as well as emergent voices that bring new perspectives to bear on visual representation as rooted in issues of diversity, race, lived experience, gender, sexuality, and transnational histories. Film Quarterly brings timely critical and intersectional approaches to criticism and analyses of visual culture.
Pauline at the Beach is a 1983 French romantic comedy film directed by Éric Rohmer. The film stars Amanda Langlet, Arielle Dombasle, Pascal Greggory and Féodor Atkine. It is the third in the 1980s series Comedies and Proverbs by Rohmer.
I Lost It at the Movies is a 1965 compendium of movie reviews written by Pauline Kael, later a film critic from The New Yorker, from 1954 to 1965. The book was published prior to Kael's long stint at The New Yorker; as a result, the pieces in the book are culled from radio broadcasts that she did while she was at KPFA, as well as numerous periodicals, including Moviegoer, the Massachusetts Review, Sight and Sound, Film Culture, Film Quarterly and Partisan Review. It contains her negative review of the then-widely acclaimed West Side Story, glowing reviews of other movies such as The Golden Coach and Seven Samurai, and longer polemical essays such as her largely negative critical responses to Siegfried Kracauer's Theory of Film and Andrew Sarris's Film Culture essay "Notes on the Auteur Theory, 1962". The book was a bestseller upon its first release and is now published by Marion Boyars Publishers.
Wanda is a 1970 American independent drama film written and directed by Barbara Loden, who also stars in the title role. Set in the anthracite coal region of eastern Pennsylvania, the film focuses on an apathetic woman with limited options who inadvertently goes on the run with a bank robber.
The Iceman Cometh is a 1973 American drama film directed by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay, written by Thomas Quinn Curtiss, is based on Eugene O'Neill's 1946 play of the same name. The film was produced by Ely Landau for the American Film Theatre, which from 1973 to 1975 presented thirteen film adaptations of noted plays.
Juno is a 2007 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Elliot Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting her unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney and J. K. Simmons also star. Filming spanned from early February to March 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It premiered on September 8 at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation.
Margot at the Wedding is a 2007 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Noah Baumbach. It stars Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, John Turturro, and Ciarán Hinds. The film is about the familial storm that arises when Margot, a writer, comes to visit her sister Pauline on the eve of the latter's wedding.
Trapeze is a 1956 American circus film directed by Carol Reed and starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida. The film is based on Max Catto's 1950 novel The Killing Frost, with an adapted screenplay written by Liam O'Brien.
The Late Show is a 1977 American neo-noir mystery film written and directed by Robert Benton and produced by Robert Altman. It stars Art Carney, Lily Tomlin, Bill Macy, Eugene Roche, and Joanna Cassidy.
Independence Day is a 1983 American drama film directed by Robert Mandel from a script by the novelist Alice Hoffman. It was designed by Stewart Campbell and shot by Charles Rosher. It stars Kathleen Quinlan, David Keith, Cliff DeYoung, Frances Sternhagen and Dianne Wiest.
A Cold Wind in August is a 1961 low-budget drama exploitation film directed by Alexander Singer and adapted from the eponymous novel by Burton Wohl. The film stars Lola Albright as a mentally unbalanced burlesque-show stripper in her 30s who becomes involved in a torrid romance with a 17-year-old boy played by Scott Marlowe. In reality, Marlowe was actually 28, only eight years younger than Albright.
The Bonnie Parker Story is a 1958 crime film directed by William Witney. The movie is loosely based on the life of Bonnie Parker, a well-known outlaw of the 1930s. The film stars Dorothy Provine as Parker; Parker's actual historical partner, Clyde Barrow, is renamed Guy Darrow for the film's story, and played by Jack Hogan. The film was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Machine Gun Kelly starring Charles Bronson in his first leading role.
Life Itself is a 2014 American biographical documentary film about Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, directed by Steve James and produced by Zak Piper, James and Garrett Basch. The film is based on Ebert's 2011 memoir of the same name. It premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was an official selection at the 67th Cannes Film Festival. The 41st Telluride Film Festival hosted a special screening of the film on August 28, 2014. Magnolia Pictures released the film theatrically in the United States and simultaneously via video on demand platforms on July 4, 2014.
"Raising Kane" is a 1971 book-length essay by American film critic Pauline Kael, in which she revived controversy over the authorship of the screenplay for the 1941 film Citizen Kane. Kael celebrated screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, first-credited co-author of the screenplay, and questioned the contributions of Orson Welles, who co-wrote, produced and directed the film, and performed the lead role. The 50,000-word essay was written for The Citizen Kane Book (1971), as an extended introduction to the shooting script by Mankiewicz and Welles. It first appeared in February 1971 in two consecutive issues of The New Yorker magazine. In the ensuing controversy, Welles was defended by colleagues, critics, biographers and scholars, but his reputation was damaged by its charges. The essay and Kael's assertions were later questioned after Welles's contributions to the screenplay were documented.
Richard Keith Baitz is an American composer, born in 1954. His work incorporates elements of classical, jazz, electronic and world music, and has been extensively utilized for film, television, theatre, dance and the concert stage. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Columbia College Chicago, and was founding director of BMI’s "Composing for the Screen" workshop in New York City.
The Automat is a 2021 American documentary directed and produced by Lisa Hurwitz and written by Michael Levine. It is about the automats once operated by Horn & Hardart. It features an original song by Mel Brooks. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 2, 2021. It was released in the United States on February 18, 2022, by A Slice of Pie Productions. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.
