Two obscure Robert Wise titles reach Blu-ray release this month, both direct follow-ups to some of the auteur’s more iconic works. First up is 1962’s Two for the Seesaw, a romantic drama headlined by Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine following the famed 1961 title West Side Story. But the decade prior would fine Wise unveiling one of his most stilted efforts, The Captive City (1952), a sort-of noir procedural which followed his sci-fi social commentary The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Providing John Forsythe with his first starring role (a performer who would find his most famous roles decades later on television, as Blake Carrington in “Dynasty,” and of course, the famous voice in “Charlie’s Angels”), it has to be one of the most unenthusiastic renderings of organized crime ever committed to celluloid. A scrappy journalist defies the mob ruled police force and a slick Mafia boss in a tired...
- 1/5/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Robert Wise's taut noir suspenser about the Mafia takeover of a small city is like an underworld Invasion of the Body Snatchers. John Forsythe's newsman slowly realizes that gambling corruption has infiltrated the business district, city hall, and even his close associates; he's expected to become a crook too, or else. Great docudrama style aided by a special deep-focus lens; Estes Kefauver makes a personal appearance touting the crime-busting Washington committee that inspired the picture. The Captive City Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1952 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 91 min. Street Date January 5, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring John Forsythe, Joan Camden, Marjorie Crossland, Victor Sutherland, Ray Teal, Martin Milner, Geraldine Hall, Hal K. Dawson, Paul Brinegar, Estes Kefauver, Victor Romito. Cinematography Lee Garmes Film Editor Robert Swink Original Music Jerome Moross Written by Alvin M. Josephy Jr., Karl Kamb Produced by Theron Warth Directed by Robert Wise
Reviewed...
Reviewed...
- 1/4/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
…if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things The quote above is from Raymond Chandler’s superb essay, The Simple Art of Murder. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a huge favor and do so, right now. Google the title and read Chandler’s prose and then come back to me. I’ll wait. Hi. You’ve finished reading Chandler and here you are, and yes, you owe me one. But now I want to bollix the discourse by disagreeing with Chandler. I agree with almost everything Chandler writes in the essay – almost, but not all. “...if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things”? Um, no. But it’s a qualified no. If we’re discussing a fictional man, then okay, let Chandler’s claim stand. I think most writers and critics...
- 4/4/2013
- by Dennis O'Neil
- Comicmix.com
Did Fredric Wertham imitate superheroes? And if so, did he realize that he was doing it? But let’s back up and give you latecomers an establishing shot or two. Way back in the early 50s, Dr. Wertham, a New York City psychiatrist, wrote a book provocatively titled Seduction of the Innocent which claimed to use science to demonstrate that comic books were corrupting the nation’s youth. Comics were already being attacked by editorial writers and at about the same time as the book’s publication, a senator named Estes Kefauver was convening hearings to investigate the same charge. The result of all this accusing was twofold: comics publishers went out of business leaving over 800 people suddenly unemployed, and the ragtag remnants of the business created The Comics Code Authority to censor their publications and thus placate the witch hunters. The comic book enterprise went into sharp decline, both...
- 2/28/2013
- by Dennis O'Neil
- Comicmix.com
Okay, who’s to blame? Somebody has to be responsible – stands to reason. I mean, it’s always somebody’s fault. We’re not that somebody, you and me, so it has to be one of them! The hippies. The nonconformists. The others. Them!
Take this nonsense about global warming or climate change or whatever they’re calling it this week. What a load! So the ice caps are melting. Even if that’s true, and as far as I’m concerned the jury’s still out, but even if it is true… So what? You telling me we can’t handle a little more water? What are we, sissies afraid to get our socks wet?
There’s a newspaper in London – I forget which one – that said that global warming stopped years ago. Sounds right to me.
But you know what I think? I think that under those ice...
Take this nonsense about global warming or climate change or whatever they’re calling it this week. What a load! So the ice caps are melting. Even if that’s true, and as far as I’m concerned the jury’s still out, but even if it is true… So what? You telling me we can’t handle a little more water? What are we, sissies afraid to get our socks wet?
There’s a newspaper in London – I forget which one – that said that global warming stopped years ago. Sounds right to me.
But you know what I think? I think that under those ice...
- 1/17/2013
- by Dennis O'Neil
- Comicmix.com
For me the best news produced by the Florida primary was Newt Gingrich's vow to take his fight all the way to the floor of this year's Republican convention. It has been way too long since a national political convention was more than a coronation stage-managed by public relations experts. It seems likely that Mitt Romney will be this year's Gop nominee, although with the party's revolving-door Surges of the Week we can never be sure. It is unlikely to be any of the other remaining candidates, although Ron Paul may use his pledged delegates to win a speaking slot. I'll enjoy that. He has the rare quality of talking turkey, and is funnier than his rivals. He is, in fact, the only candidate in either party who is likely to say something unexpected (on purpose) every time he speaks.
Newt is a seasoned politician and surely doesn't believe...
Newt is a seasoned politician and surely doesn't believe...
- 2/3/2012
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
Everett Frank Sinatra in “Higher and Higher,” 1943.
My new novel “Narrows Gate” is set in the years preceding and immediately following World War II. The town of Narrows Gate, with its waterfront piers, factories and urban grit, sits in the shadow of New York City. It’s a fictional version of Hoboken, New Jersey, where I was born and raised.
You’d be right if you guessed that “Narrows Gate” includes a skinny young blue-eyed Italian-American crooner who rises from...
My new novel “Narrows Gate” is set in the years preceding and immediately following World War II. The town of Narrows Gate, with its waterfront piers, factories and urban grit, sits in the shadow of New York City. It’s a fictional version of Hoboken, New Jersey, where I was born and raised.
You’d be right if you guessed that “Narrows Gate” includes a skinny young blue-eyed Italian-American crooner who rises from...
- 1/19/2012
- by Jim Fusilli
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
Irvin Kershner directed an anti-comics documentary before helming The Empire Strikes Back. Before making it big in Hollywood, Kershner worked at Kttv, an L.A. TV station, as a staff TV director. He was given an assignment with L.A. Times reporter Paul Coates for a 1955 expose of crime and horror comics. According to research of the time done by Senator Estes Kefauver who said they are "very upsetting, it has a bad moral effect and that it is directly responsible for a substantial amount of juvenile delinquency and child crime."
Comic book artist Ellis Eringer makes the claim that the trend toward darker comics "first started as a science fiction kind of a weird thriller," but since there's also a sequence that shows kids reading comics and then rising up to torture one of their friends, we don't feel much like trusting what anyone has to say here. But...
Comic book artist Ellis Eringer makes the claim that the trend toward darker comics "first started as a science fiction kind of a weird thriller," but since there's also a sequence that shows kids reading comics and then rising up to torture one of their friends, we don't feel much like trusting what anyone has to say here. But...
- 4/26/2011
- by Tiberius
- GeekTyrant
The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want you to Read
By Jim Trombetta
Abrams ComicsArts, 304 pages, $29.95
Comic book fans certainly know enough history to understand that the comics industry bowed to public pressure and created the Comics Code Authority to clean up its image. It resulted in countless professionals losing their livelihoods and publishers dropping like leaves during autumn. We know that it also shuttered the great EC horror comics and forced Mad to evolve from comic book to magazine.
But just how horrid were these stories? Were the drawings that graphic and lurid to cause parents to ban them from the house? Was Dr. Fredric Wertham right that they contributed to psychological disease? Was Senator Estes Kefauver correct in considering the comics a cause of juvenile delinquency?
A few years back, we got David Hadju’s nicely researched The Ten Cent Plague, which gave us...
By Jim Trombetta
Abrams ComicsArts, 304 pages, $29.95
Comic book fans certainly know enough history to understand that the comics industry bowed to public pressure and created the Comics Code Authority to clean up its image. It resulted in countless professionals losing their livelihoods and publishers dropping like leaves during autumn. We know that it also shuttered the great EC horror comics and forced Mad to evolve from comic book to magazine.
But just how horrid were these stories? Were the drawings that graphic and lurid to cause parents to ban them from the house? Was Dr. Fredric Wertham right that they contributed to psychological disease? Was Senator Estes Kefauver correct in considering the comics a cause of juvenile delinquency?
A few years back, we got David Hadju’s nicely researched The Ten Cent Plague, which gave us...
- 10/29/2010
- by Robert Greenberger
- Comicmix.com
By Robert W. Welkos
HollywoodNews.com: For decades, underworld boss Meyer Lansky kept mob secrets so explosive that if the truth ever came out it would alter American history. Now his little-known daughter, who kept her own Code of Silence over the years about her father’s activities, is drawing back the dark veil of the mob’s influence at the highest reaches of government and world events.
Sandi Lansky Lombardo, now 72 and living in an undisclosed location in Florida, carried on the mob tradition of silence to protect her late father and family all the while knowing revealing details about President Nixon’s threat to withhold the sale of fighter jets to Israel because Lansky refused to cut Nixon in on a casino deal; Lansky and Charles “Lucky” Luciano’s plot to assassinate Hitler and Mussolini; and, legendary singer Frank Sinatra hiding out in the basement of a Catholic...
HollywoodNews.com: For decades, underworld boss Meyer Lansky kept mob secrets so explosive that if the truth ever came out it would alter American history. Now his little-known daughter, who kept her own Code of Silence over the years about her father’s activities, is drawing back the dark veil of the mob’s influence at the highest reaches of government and world events.
Sandi Lansky Lombardo, now 72 and living in an undisclosed location in Florida, carried on the mob tradition of silence to protect her late father and family all the while knowing revealing details about President Nixon’s threat to withhold the sale of fighter jets to Israel because Lansky refused to cut Nixon in on a casino deal; Lansky and Charles “Lucky” Luciano’s plot to assassinate Hitler and Mussolini; and, legendary singer Frank Sinatra hiding out in the basement of a Catholic...
- 5/21/2010
- by Robert W. Welkos
- Hollywoodnews.com
- Did anybody else besides me pitch a heterosexual admiration tent in their pants solely from David Strathairn’s performance in Good Night, and Good Luck? I didn’t know Edward R. Murrow personally, but after watching that movie I felt like he became a part of me. That older part that smokes on live television and accuses senators of instilling fear into the nation. God bless America. Strathairn has quite a few projects on his plate. He’s signed on to the thriller Fracture, written by Daniel Pyne (Pacific Heights, Doc Hollywood) and Glenn Gers (Mad Money) which will be directed by Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear). Ryan Gosling (The Notebook) plays an assistant district attorney who wants revenge on Anthony Hopkins (The World’s Fastest Indian) who killed his wife but is freed on a technicality. The film also co-stars Rosamund Pike (Pride & Prejudice). He will also next be
- 2/3/2006
- IONCINEMA.com
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