Nearly a decade after being fired by Nikkatsu Studios, Suzuki returned to the director’s chair with this titillating tale of a model who is groomed to become a professional golfer as a publicity stunt. When she turns out to be good at the sport, her success leads a deranged fan to hatch a blackmail scheme.
Month: February 2022
Mani Kaul’s film was funded by the Film Finance Corporation and an independent multi-arts co-operation led by noted painter Akbar Padamsee. Derived from a Rajasthani folk tale, it tells of a merchant’s son who returns home with his new wife only to be sent away on family business. A ghost witnesses the brides’ arrival and falls in love with her. He takes on the absent husband’s form an lives with her. She has his child, which becomes a problem when the real husband returns home. The film focusses on the wife’s life and dispenses with almost any dialogue developing the characters through parallel, historically uneven or even contradictory narratives.
Arriving in Taiwan in the 1950s, Kuei-mei makes a disadvantageous marriage to a widower with three unruly kids and a bad gambling habit. Beautifully portrayed by celebrated actress Yang, she weathers pregnancies, her husband’s infidelity, her daughter’s resentment, a stint as servant in Japan, divorce, and illness while struggling to keep the family restaurant business afloat.
Orlac is a world famous pianist. One day he is badly hurt in a big train wreck. He is in danger of losing both his hands so his wife begs the doctors to save them. They eventually manage to transplant his hands with those of another deceased person. After his recovery Orlac discovers that there is something seriously wrong with his new pair of hands — it is as if they had a will of their own. But Orlac doesn’t know that they actually belonged to a dangerous murderer.
Director Robert Altman’s 1996 film, Kansas City – a jazz-tinged melodrama about a corrupt politician and a determined gangster – was notable if only for some remarkable 1930s music as arranged by the innovative John Cale. This documentary is the offspring of that movie, featuring sessions recorded on the set of the earlier film. With Jazz ’34‘s pumping, grinding blues all set to elevate the spirits.
A crusading reporter plans his own arrest and conviction for first degree murder, trying to show that the death sentence should be outlawed when based on circumstantial evidence alone, but his plan goes awry.
The biggest town problem is worrying whether the high school basketball team will win the championship… until racketeers move into town and the kids begin to bet on horses, become overly fond of stripped-down racing cars, and Genevieve Rogers suspects her father of being too fond of the school principal’s secretary. Town nerd Bill Kennedy invents a new fuel amidst rumors that – horrors – the basketball game might be fixed. River City is not the only town that has trouble starting with a “T” and there’s not a pool hall in sight.