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afs Articles

• Libeled Lady (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 13 days ago

  Genre: Comedy

  Director: Jack Conway (Too Hot to Handle)

  Starring: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Walter Connolly

  In Brief: Sophisticated comedy with Myrna Loy as the rich society girl who sues a newspaper for libel, Spencer Tracy as the beleagured managing editor, William Powell as a sharp former reporter who knows all the angles and Jean Harlow as Tracy's long-suffering fiancée. The plan is that Powell will marry Harlow, then seduce Loy and destroy her case. It's all the sort of thing that could only happen in the make-believe world of the movies, but that's exactly why it works so well and remains fresh and funny almost 80 years later.

  0 comments

  150 views

• The Shining (R)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 27 days ago

  Genre: Horror

  Director: Stanley Kubrick

  Starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson, Philip Stone

  In Brief: Here is a rare opportunity to see Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of horror on the big screen — and in a brand new digital cinema print, meaning it probably looks better than it did in 1980 when it was first released. Kubrick is one of those filmmakers whose work truly cries out for big screen presentation, and The Shining is no exception. Whether seeing it properly for the first time in more than 30 years will help you unravel whether it's a plain horror movie, a psychological horror movie or a black comedy of a horror movie (or maybe all three and maybe more) is another matter, but if you love cinema, you owe it to yourself to see it as it was meant to be seen.

  54 comments

  627 views

• Re-Animator (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 04/16/2013

  Genre: Splatstick Horror

  Director: Stuart Gordon (From Beyond)

  Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson

  In Brief: Believe it or not, this is the third anniversary of the Thursday Horror Picture Show — three solid years in pursuit of making Asheville warped. (Weird is so old hat by now.) That's a lot of blood under the bridge. And speaking of blood, the evening is being marked with a screening of the movie that kicked the whole thing off in 2010: Stuart Gordon's outrageously gory, warped and funny debut film Re-Animator. It's the film that officially gave the splatstick horror movie — movies in which the blood and violence were deliberately funny — to the world. And, as is often the case, it's the original that's the best.

  3 comments

  188 views

• Women in Love (R)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 06/26/2012

  Genre: Drama

  Director: Ken Russell

  Starring: Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson, Jennie Linden, Eleanor Bron, Alan Webb, Vladek Sheybal, Catherine Wilmer

  In Brief: Ken Russell's 1969 film of D.H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love is the film that put the director on the map as a filmmaker of international importance -- and it also garnered Oscar nominations for Russell and cinematographer Billy Williams, as well as a Best Actress Oscar win for Glenda Jackson. It remains one of Russell's most highly-regarded works, and one of the best translations of literature to film ever made.

  0 comments

  678 views

• The Gang's All Here (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 06/19/2012

  Genre: Musical Comedy

  Director: Busby Berkeley

  Starring: Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda, Eugene Pallette, Edward Everett Horton, Charlotte Greenwood, Phil Baker, Benny Goodman

  In Brief: Busby Berkeley meets Technicolor in this almost surreal musical comedy. It's perhaps most famous for Carmen Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti Fruiti Hat" number, with its pop art imagery and giant phallic bananas. But there are other pleasures -- some just as peculiar -- within its fast-paced, often silly confines. Ever hear Benny Goodman sing? You will.

  0 comments

  383 views

• The Horse's Mouth (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 06/12/2012

  Genre: Comedy Drama

  Director: Ronald Neame

  Starring: Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, Mike Morgan, Renee Houston, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger

  In Brief: Ronald Neame's brilliant film -- with a screenplay by star Alec Guinness -- of Joyce Cary's novel is one of the best, if not the best, films ever made about a painter. Rich, wryly funny, shot through with perception, beautifully acted by a splendid cast and then perfectly topped off by the skillful application of excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite.

  0 comments

  393 views

• Easy Living (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 06/05/2012

  Genre: Comedy

  Director: Mitchell Leisen (Remember the Night)

  Starring: Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland, Luis Alberni, Mary Nash, Franklin Pangborn

  In Brief: Scintillating screwball comedy with Jean Arthur as a young woman who gets a dose of the high life when she's mistaken for the mistress of a banker (Edward Arnold). The great Preston Sturges provided the very funny screenplay, which director Mitchell Leisen brought to the screen with wit, charm and that glistening classic-era Paramount Pictures look.

  0 comments

  385 views

• Mississippi (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 05/22/2012

  Genre: Musical Comedy

  Director: A. Edward Sutherland (International House)

  Starring: Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Joan Bennett, Gail Patrick, Queenie Smith, Claude Gillingwater

  In Brief: W.C. Fields and Bing Crosby co-star for the only time in this musical comedy where Fields runs a show boat on which Bing finds a job singing. A more-or-less forgettable story gives way to some terrific Fields comedy, some great Rodgers and Hart songs for Crosby, and absolutely glistening cinematography and production values.

  0 comments

  359 views

• His Girl Friday (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 05/15/2012

  Genre: Comedy

  Director: Howard Hawks

  Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Ernest Truex, John Qualen

  The Story: A charmingly unscrupulous newspaper editor will stop at nothing to keep his star reporter -- and ex-wife -- from quitting and marrying another (and much duller) man. The Lowdown: It's the classic newspaper comedy -- a fast-paced story with dialogue delivered as if fired by a machine gun. Add two glamorous stars -- Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell -- and you have one of the great comedies.

  4 comments

  535 views

• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (PG-13)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 05/15/2012

  Genre: Comedy

  Director: The Coen Brothers

  Starring: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Holly Hunter, Charles Durning, John Goodman

  In Brief: Taking the concept of the film that never gets made in Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, the Coen Brothers then imagined it as a 1930s take on The Odyssey. The results? Possibly their best film -- certainly their most congenial one -- and already an established classic.

  6 comments

  666 views