Event Backdrop Hire Sydney
In only his third film, George C. Scott gives a chilling performance as Newman's manipulative manager. The talents of Vincent Price, writer Richard Matheson, director Roger Corman and the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe combined in the first of American International Pictures' series of films that dominated horror on the screen in the 1960s. Despite shooting schedules that rarely ran more than three weeks or budgets over $500,000, the series offered elegant, literary adaptations, luminous decor and color photography that established a new standard for screen horror. As a director and producer, Corman's films helped launch the careers of a galaxy of Hollywood talent including Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and James Cameron. The all-black-cast film "Hallelujah" was a surprising gamble by normally conservative MGM, allowed chiefly because director King Vidor deferred his salary and MGM had proved slow to convert from silent to sound films.
The film's kinesthetic direction and editing laid the aesthetic groundwork for many of the 1970s' gritty, realistic police dramas. This ultra-cheap melodrama shot in six days by Edgar G. Ulmer has developed cult status as one of the most stylish B pictures ever produced. Hitchhiker Al Roberts gets mixed up with a femme fatale who "looked like she'd just been thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world." The story is told birthday backdrop hire in narration addressed directly to the audience who hears not what happened, but what Al wants us to believe happened. Its hackneyed dialog, quick-and-dirty camera work, and shabby no-budget rear projection combine to create a bleak nightmare existence. Director Penelope Spheeris' controversial documentary about the Los Angeles hard-core punk rock scene circa 1980 was perceived as shocking by some, even prompting the L.A.
These color additive methods were complicated and costly, and companies sought more efficient ways to reproduce the true colors of nature. Studios incorporated two-color sequences using Kodachrome and the rival Technicolor film stocks until three-strip Technicolor became the industry standard in the late 1930s. The "Lubitsch Touch" -- an easy comedic elegance which characterized the films of director Ernst Lubitsch -- is epitomized in this frothy gem starring Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins as professional thieves who fall in love while plundering the Riviera. Saucy dialog delivered with mock melodrama runs rampant amidst sophisticated promiscuity when Marshall is bewitched by the wealthy Parisienne he intends to fleece , the thieves find they're not as thick as they thought.
A romance with a character portrayed by Eva Novak dominates one of the subplots of the story written and directed by former newspaper reporter Lynn Reynolds. Mix, the antithesis of reigning Western hero William S. Hart, was easygoing, wore flashy gear and did his own stunts, a style that set a standard for cowboy stars that lasted decades. Outstanding musical numbers choreographed by Michael Kidd -- particularly the rousing barn-raising dance -- prove to be its most enduring quality. Howard Keel and Jane Powell star as the eldest brother and his new wife, and the remaining cast is comprised of top dancers including Russ Tamblyn, Tommy Rall, Jacques d'Amboise. Considered by many to be John Ford's best film, it is equal parts majestic spectacle and soul-searching moral examination that anticipated the complex themes and characters that would dominate films of the 1970s. John Wayne, a Confederate soldier, returns after the war to find his niece has been kidnapped by Comanches and sets out to find her – not to rescue her, but to destroy what he sees as a creature no longer human.
This loving portrait by a father of his son with Down syndrome represents the creativity and craftsmanship of the American amateur filmmaker. This polished amateur film by Miriam Bennett spoofs women's clubs and the Soviet menace in the 1930s. While listening to a tedious lecture on the Soviet threat, Wisconsin Dells' Tuesday Club members fall asleep and find themselves laboring in an all-women collective in Russia under the unflinching eye of the Soviet special police. A virtual watercolor painting come to life, the details in the Disney animation never fail to amaze.
Unfortunately for him, ambitious senator Walter Chalmers , the head of the aforementioned subcommittee, wants to shut his investigation down, interfering with Bullitt's plan to bring the killers to justice but discover who's behind the ambush. This powerful documentary by the Kentucky-based arts and education center Appalshop represents the finest in regional filmmaking, providing important understanding of the environmental and cultural history of the Appalachian region. The 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood Disaster, caused by the failure of a coal waste dam, killed more than 100 people and left thousands in West Virginia homeless. Local citizens invited Appalshop to come to the area and to film a historical record, fearing that the Pittston Coal Co.'s powerful influence in the state would lead to a whitewash investigation and absolve it of any corporate culpability. Newsweek hailed the film as "a devastating expose of the collusion between state officials and coal executives." In his film debut, John Singleton wrote and directed this thought-provoking look at South Central L.A.'s black community.
"She's Gotta Have It" tells the story of a confident, single black woman pursued by three different African-American men — and who isn't sure she wants any of them. More than 30 years later, this landmark work remains as vital, vibrant, charming and streetwise as it was at first release, a harbinger of Lee's enduring and visionary career as filmmaker. George Stevens' western stars Alan Ladd as an ex-gunfighter pressed into defending a family of homesteaders portrayed by Jean Arthur and Van Heflin with Brandon De Wilde as their impressionable son. Stevens fills the screen with expansive vistas, as he would do on an even greater scale three years later in "Giant." The film employs some of the longest dissolves in American cinema and Loyal Griggs' lush color cinematography further helps to establish landscapes of mythic proportions. Martin Scorsese painted a visceral portrait of prizefighter Jake LaMotta, and Robert DeNiro fleshed out that portrait, literally and figuratively. DeNiro adroitly captures the fighter's success in the ring and contrasts it to a personal life full of rage, jealousy, and suspicion which ultimately left LaMotta destitute, alone, and seeking redemption.
In this film, a deeply devout woman faces a spiritual crossroads after being accidentally shot, and is forced to choose between heaven and hell. Spencer Williams, who wrote, directed and starred in the film, produced the film in response to a need for spiritually-based films that spoke directly to black audiences. Long thought lost, prints were discovered in a warehouse in Tyler, Texas, in the mid-1980s. A moving and personal story directed by real-life veteran William Wyler, the film depicts the return to civilian life by three World War II servicemen, portrayed by Dana Andrews, Fredric March and Harold Russell. Adapted by Robert Sherwood from MacKinlay Kantor's novel "Glory for Me," Gregg Toland's deep-focus cinematography is memorable for emotionally evokative long dolly shots.
Despite its original X rating , the film won the best-picture Oscar, defeating the crowd-pleasing "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Waldo Salt's screen adaptation of James Leo Herlihy's novel also won an Oscar. Frank Capra's big-budget romantic fantasy "Lost Horizon" offered an emotional respite to an American public seeking escape from the Depression and yearning for their own personal utopias. In the story, dashing diplomat Ronald Colman and a group of plane passengers are kidnapped and taken for mysterious reasons to a remote valley in the Himalayas where they find a seemingly blissful paradise, refuge from a world on the precipice of war.
Inspired by an actual miners strike in New Mexico that lasted for more than a year, "Salt of the Earth" recounted major incidents in the strike. Its impact was most felt in its focus on discrimination against minorities and women. Miners' wives had been instrumental in the strike, marching in picket lines and eventually going to jail. Produced by filmmakers who had been blacklisted in Hollywood for alleged Communist sympathies, the story was decidedly pro-union; consequently, few theater owners were willing to book it. It eventually debuted in New York City to mostly positive reviews, and found greater success in Europe.
This silent 16mm home movie uses creative editing, lighting and camera techniques comparable to what professionals were doing in Hollywood. "Our Day" also contains exceptional images of small-town Southern life, ones that counter the stereotype of impoverished people eking out a living during the Depression. The 12-minute film documents a modern home inhabited by adults with sophisticated interests and simple ones . Actor/director/screenwriter Charley Chase is underappreciated in the arena of early comedy shorts.
Critics and viewers often suggest that "Godfather II" is one of the few examples in American film history where the sequel is as good or better than the original. Among the best teen comedies, this 1980s cultural icon combines a sympathetic treatment of adolescence with hilarious performances. Directed by Amy Heckerling, the film was based on a script by 22-year old Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe, who spent nine months undercover as a student at Redondo Beach's Ridgemont High School. The cast contains an appealing mix of soon-to-be-famous young talent confronting their raging hormones as they hang out at the mall and endure jobs in fast-food restaurants.
This film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical marked the first Hollywood studio film featuring performances by a mostly Asian cast, a break from past practice of casting white actors made up to appear Asian. Starring prominent Asian-American actors Nancy Kwan and James Shigeta, this milestone film presented an enduring three-dimensional portrait of Asian America as well as a welcomed, non-cliched portrait of Chinatown beyond the usual exotic tourist façades. "Film Portrait" is a full-length autobiographical work directed by, and about, the life of Minnesota filmmaker and artist Jerome Hill. Throughout his life an avid student and creator of music, Hill began to compose all of the scores for his films in the late '60s. Hill died shortly after the completion of this film, and the work is often described as his memoir. Before Andy Griffith became a television legend playing a likable small-town sheriff, he portrayed a completely different type of celebrity in this dark look at the corruptability of sudden fame and power.