By John H. Foote Director Joel Schumacher often blamed for the demise of the Tim Burton started Batman franchise died of cancer yesterday. The lanky, friendly filmmaker was always smiling and an excellent interview, willing to field the tough questions. I first interviewed Schumacher for his brilliant independent film Tigerland (2000) which introduced Colin Farrell…
By John H. Foote (***) Director Brian De Palma earned his true breakthrough with this film, a rock and roll version of the famous Phantom of the Opera, filmed three times before this wild version, before the long running Broadway play and subsequent film. Cleverly merging the work with Faust, and The Picture of Dorian…
By John H. Foote (****) There are several love stories weaving their way through the narrative of this superb Civil War drama, each unique in its own right, each with a profound impact on the characters and the story. Directed by Academy Award winning director Anthony Minghella, who won his Oscar for the wildly overrated…
By John H. Foote It should come, really, as no surprise that the great Martin Scorsese has five of the fifteen films on this list, while Francis Ford Coppola has two within the top three. Each man revolutionized the gangster genre with their films through the last near 50 years. While Quentin Tarantino arrogantly declared…
By John H. Foote (***) During our podcast for the fifties, which we recorded a couple of nights ago, Alan professed deep affection for the John Huston adventure The African Queen (1951) one of the last classics to come to Blu Ray and DVD. Shot on location in the African Congo, which was not common…
By John H. Foote Ian Holm, one of the greatest though less known British actors, has died at 88. Best known to this generation of film audiences as Bilbo Baggins in the superb The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-02-03) and as Mitchell Stevens the lawyer in The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Holm had a career…
By John H. Foote (***) In the shadow of the success of Batman (1989), Warren Beatty brought his long awaited live action film of the famous comic strip “Dick Tracy” to the screen for the summer of 1990. With the same eye for detail he brought to his Oscar winning film Reds (1981), Beatty had…
By Craig Leask When winter arrives and we are all forced inside (particularly those of us who live in colder climates), who doesn’t like escaping to a good movie showing brilliant cloudless skies, crystal clear water, endless beaches and romantic sunsets? This article investigates films that show off the beauty and brilliance of sunny locations,…
By John H. Foote Let me be clear, these books are not written by the editor, they act as gatherers of information, they are detectives seeking out old interviews, nothing more. So Lane, a self-described acclaimed film and television director, producer and writer, lent not a creative bone to this book, by far the weakest in…
By Nick Maylor (*) I’m a big fan of Kenneth Branagh, both as an actor and a director. He’s shown tremendous talent in front of the camera and behind it. He has taken on many famous worlds of popular folklore. He’s directed in the realms of Shakespeare, Marvel, Tom Clancy, Disney Princesses, Agatha Christie and…