Authors — Jim Hemphill
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The American Film Theatre, Another Woman, Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie and More: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
In the early 1970s, producers Edie and Ely Landau launched the American Film Theatre, a project designed to bring filmed adaptations of great stage plays to the masses. It was a fairly bold idea at the time given the business and technology of distribution: each filmed play would play simultaneously on around 500 screens, for one showing only — something similar to what Fathom Events does today, only without the benefit of digital exhibition. The productions were financed by a combination of corporate sponsorship and subscription ticketing in which audiences bought advance tickets for an entire season of films, like […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 9, 2017 -
Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, Ghost World and The Last Word: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Martin Scorsese famously considered becoming a priest before taking another path, and he clearly never lost the evangelical impulse. In the 38 years since Scorsese used his influence and finances to restore and rerelease Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, he has done more to spread the gospel of cinema than any other director in film history, devoting countless hours to film preservation and education while simultaneously amassing a body of work that in its breadth, depth, and quality rivals that of any of the masters his scholarly efforts aspire to honor. In 2007 Scorsese embarked on one of his most important […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 2, 2017 -
The Accidental Tourist, Seven Days in May, Tough Guys, The Paradine Case: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
One of the best American films of the 1980s, Lawrence Kasdan’s achingly beautiful and delicate The Accidental Tourist is now available on Blu-ray courtesy of the Warner Archive label. Adapted from a novel by Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist tells the story of Macon Leary (William Hurt in one of the great screen performances in history), a travel guide writer whose entire life is geared toward circumventing experience rather than embracing it; his books are for business travelers who want to avoid feeling as if they’ve ever left home. Macon’s insular nature is exacerbated by the tragic death of his son, […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 25, 2017 -
Our Man in Havana, Edge of Eternity and Streets of Fire: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Given the (justly) hallowed place that Carol Reed’s 1949 thriller The Third Man occupies in the hearts and minds of most cineastes, I’ve always been a little mystified by the comparative obscurity of his subsequent collaboration with screenwriter Graham Greene, the delightful satire Our Man in Havana (1959). I can only assume that the bleak, wintry setting of postwar Vienna that gives The Third Man its haunting effects also gives it a slight edge in the critical consciousness over Havana’s sunny, tropical effervescence. Yet in Reed and Greene’s skilled hands, the breezy charm of Havana just before the revolution only […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 17, 2017 -
The Handmaid’s Tale, Donnie Darko and The Mephisto Waltz: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Last month saw the premiere of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel documenting a future America in which women are oppressed by religious fundamentalists. The series has been garnering a lot of attention and acclaim, but it isn’t the first time filmmakers have tried their hands at Atwood’s dystopian classic; German director Volker Schlöndorff, working from a script by Harold Pinter, brought the book to the screen in 1990. His version of the story was considerably less well received at the time than Hulu’s, but it’s a compelling, distinctive film – one in which […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 5, 2017 -
Django, Prepare a Coffin Leads a Western Blu-ray Roundup: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
When Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Western Django became an international hit, it kicked off one of the more surprisingly enduring series in the history of movies, though to call it a “series” is a bit misleading. In keeping with Italian cinema practices of the day, the movie spawned not only official and semi-official sequels but dozens of unsanctioned off-shoots — in some cases Westerns that had been made with no connection to Django whatsoever but which worked the name into their titles in the hope of making a quick buck. Over time the name Django became less a reference to the […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 2, 2017 -
Behind The Graduate‘s “Leg Shot”: Daniel Raim on Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
Two unsung heroes of the American film industry get their due in Daniel Raim’s extraordinary documentary Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story. Most filmgoers – even the most informed ones – have probably never heard of Harold and Lillian Michelson, but the history of movies was forever changed by their contributions to classics like The Ten Commandments, The Graduate, The Apartment, West Side Story, and DePalma’s Scarface. Harold was a storyboard artist and Lillian ran a massive Hollywood research library; separately or together, they were essential resources for directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Coppola, Danny DeVito, and Stanley Kubrick. They […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 28, 2017 -
“Can You Make All Your Money Back Just Showing on TV Every Mother’s Day?”: John Waters on Serial Mom
The last couple of months have been good ones for John Waters fans. Last month Criterion put out a gorgeous restoration of the director’s first truly great film, Multiple Maniacs, and on May 9 Shout Factory is set to release Serial Mom, a movie Waters made 24 years after Multiple Maniacs with the full resources of Hollywood at his disposal. A hilariously provocative riff on the true crime genre, Serial Mom follows suburban wife and mom Beverly (Kathleen Turner) as she’s driven insane by everything from loud gum chewing to women wearing white after Labor Day; a pristine overseer of […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 25, 2017 -
Anatahan, Woman of the Year, Baby Boom and La La Land: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations of the Week
Director Josef von Sternberg’s last film, Anatahan (1953), represents one of those rare cases where a director got to go out on the absolute perfect note: it sums up many of his philosophical and aesthetic preoccupations while also starkly departing from the kinds of lavish Hollywood productions that made him famous. Loosely based on a true story, it follows ten Japanese soldiers who are stranded on an island during World War II and remain there for years, reduced to their primal instincts by their surroundings as well as the lone woman they discover inhabiting the island. Von Sternberg shot the […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 21, 2017 -
Multiple Maniacs, Dead or Alive, House and House II: The Second Story: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Shock value in cinema is a tricky thing, especially when it comes to posterity; what scandalizes one generation often seems mild to the next, while images and dialogue that might have seemed innocuous in another era – particularly when it comes to attitudes about race, gender, and sex – can come across as abhorrent to audiences discovering them in a different cultural context. Two genuinely transgressive films, movies that were shocking when they came out and are shocking now, are newly available in generously appointed Blu-ray editions: John Waters’ Multiple Maniacs (1970) and Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive (1999). Waters […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 14, 2017
