Summer fun: ‘Il Boom’ lost De Sica comedy comes to town
Jul
5
2017
IL BOOM is a rare and undervalued example of director Vittorio De Sica’s long and fruitful collaboration with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini — a canon that includes other landmark neo-realist films Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. IL BOOM is considered a minor masterpiece of the commedia all’italiana, a mordant form of film comedy that arose ...
TCM Fest: The rise and rise of digital restoration 1
Last weekend’s unveiling of seven digital restorations (five of them world premieres) at the fifth annual TCM Classic Film Festival came at an interesting moment. I saw four of them, and had previously seen a fifth, Hitchcock’s half-silent/half-sound 1929 “The Lodger,” at LACMA’s “Hitchcock 9” program. It was impossible to see all of them due ...
Respect for Godard’s “Contempt”
Jan
14
2014
Laemmle Theatres and Rialto Pictures have teamed to present Rialto Pictures’ new 50th anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s CONTEMPT (1963). The exclusive Los Angeles engagements begin Friday, January 17 at the Royal in West L.A. and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. The director’s look at a crumbling marriage stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and, ...