Word: siodmak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fanatic. Fan as in fancier. Fan as in fantasy lover. Forrest J Ackerman, who died Thursday at 92 of a heart attack in Los Angeles, was all these things and many more: literary agent for such science fiction authors as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, Curt Siodmak and L. Ron Hubbard; actor and talisman in more than 50 films (The Howling, Beverly Hills Cop III, Amazon Women on the Moon); editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and creator of the Vampirella comic book franchise. But each of these trades was an exponent of his educated ardor...
...Criterion has a gift for pairing films that belong together. One example is its release of Maxim Gorky's play The Lower Depths as filmed by Renoir in 1936 and Kurosawa 21 years later. Another is its dual set of The Killers, both the 1946 Robert Siodmak original of Hemingway's story about a man who welcomes his own murder - it's Burt Lancaster's sleepy-eyed, long-muscled film debut - and Don Siegel's hyped-up 1964 remake that was made for TV but too violent for broadcast...
...Killers Robert Siodmak, Don Siegel The Ernest Hemingway story, about two tough guys in a diner, is one of the most influential works in American lit; without it, no Pulp Fiction. The 1946 movie expands the action with a long flashback about the gangster's prey, a haunted boxer called Swede (Burt Lancaster in his first movie). The 1964 version has murderous Lee Marvin tangling with the even more venal Ronald Reagan (in his last movie). The set also includes a third film, a short by renegade Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky...
...first eight mins., Siodmak and Schoenfeld efficiently construct a gallows due for our rancorous architect hero, Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis). The pickup, the revue they attend, the four people who noticed them - the bartender, the cab driver, the Carmen Miranda-style star of the show and her hepped-up drummer - are sharply sketched, with lots of oblique camera angles and warning shadows. The men waiting for Scott when he arrives home don?t bother to introduce themselves; are they thugs, or unknown suitors for Mrs. H.? They are detectives of the brutish sort Woolrich often painted: the menacing fatso (Thomas...
...novel?s suspense came from its withholding of the news that [SPOILER ALERT] Scott?s upper-class friend Jack Marlow is the killer. You can?t obscure the star till the end of the movie, so Schoenfeld and Siodmak don?t waste time trying. From the moment Marlow (Franchot Tone) enters Cliff?s dingy digs and mutters, ?What a place. You can feel the rats in the walls,? he has pearly psychopath written all over him. Especially his hands, which poke out of the shadows into harsh light. ?How interesting a pair of hands can be,? Marlow muses, as Cliff...