Burt Bacharach: Casino Royale

Burt Bacharach’s soundtrack is probably the least maligned aspect of producer Charles Feldman’s 1967 film version of Casino Royale. One doesn’t have to love the movie to enjoy the soundtrack.
Read moreFestivity, Revels, and Nocturnal Dalliances
Burt Bacharach’s soundtrack is probably the least maligned aspect of producer Charles Feldman’s 1967 film version of Casino Royale. One doesn’t have to love the movie to enjoy the soundtrack.
Read moreKara Murat Fatihin Fermani, though a little rough around the edges, is still an incredibly enjoyable film, full of Cuneyt Arkin doing somersaults over his enemies and flinging scimitars across a room with deadly accuracy.
Read moreFrancoise Hardy may have been the most stereotypically French of the Yē-Yē girls: Aloof, sophisticated and beautifully melancholy. Nevertheless, her sound was one that was largely made in England.
Read moreHoney Ltd. got their start at Detroit’s Wayne State University. With a gift for seamless four part harmony, the group’s sound was essentially a timely update of the classic girl group sound of the early 60s
Read moreThe decision to film The Great Silence in Spain’s snowy Pyrenees was the result of Sergio Corbucci wanting to take a skiing trip. Whatever the case, it’s a decision responsible for giving the film a unique and visually striking character.
Read moreCompared to the appellations given to the protagonists of other 1980s action films — the Exterminator, the Punisher, the Executioner — the Stabilizer sounds pretty benign. You’d almost think that he was given that name only because all of those others had already been taken. But then you learn that what the Stabilizer is in charge of stabilizing is the
Read moreSo, yes, if you’ve seen a James Bond movie, you know exactly what tropes Altin Cocuk holds in store. But the film nonetheless offers distinct pleasures in the course of watching them unfold.
Read moreIn the mid sixties, Hong Kong’s Cantonese language film industry, faced with the emerging dominance of the considerably more well-funded and increasingly action-oriented Mandarin language Shaw Brothers Studio–as well as changing audience tastes in a rapidly modernizing society–found itself in need of retooling its output. Melodramas, romances and period martial arts films featuring heroic female swordsmen had been staples of
Read moreThe Black Rose takes the female-centric swashbuckling of wuxia cinema and the heroics of Chinese folklore and places them in a contemporary setting. It also pays service to the James Bond films.
Read moreA while back I held forth at extraordinary length about The Mummies of Guanajuato, detailing how it was the first film to team up lucha cinema’s “Big Three”; Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras. I also bloviated at the expense of many words on how it went on to reap rich rewards at the Mexican box office as a result.
Read moreAt the height of the Yeh Yeh Girl craze, here were many girls compelled by external forces to seek fame. Yet, as the brief and quite odd career of Clothilde demonstrates, the results were not always bad.
Read moreOne need only glance over the many titles in the lucha movie genre to see that there is a long history of enmity between Mexican wrestlers and mummies. This goes all the way back to 1964, when Elizabeth Campbell and Lorena Velazquez threw down against a pop-eyed, reconstituted Aztec warrior in their sophomore effort as The Wrestling Women, Las Luchadoras
Read moreThe special thing about Turkish pulp films is how, even at their most plagiarized, they can serve as an example of just how unique a complete rip-off can be. After all, no one ever mistook Turkish Star Wars for regular Star Wars, or Bedi, the Turkish E.T., for E.T., the American E.T. And the same goes for Seytan, director Metin
Read moreIf you wanted to live in the Philippines, it would help if you really, really liked Jesus. A lot. With a Catholic majority of at least 85%, the nation is the third largest predominately Catholic country on Earth, and the largest in Asia (with East Timor being its lone competition). And, for the most part, we’re not talking about fair
Read moreOur introduction to Joe Walker in Three Golden Serpents underscores the caliber of filmmaking we’re dealing with here, coming by way of a recycled and re-dubbed scene from the earlier Kill, Panther, Kill! in which Walker is made to seem as if he’s talking on the phone to Mrs. Leighton in Thailand.
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