News

Here’s a real gem — a ‘classic’ Chekhov story turned into a compelling tale of lust and murder. George Sanders and Linda Darnell shine as a judge and the peasant girl who intrigues him; Edward Everett Horton is excellent cast against type in a dramatic role.

Summer Storm

DVD

Sprocket Vault / Kit Parker

1944 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 106 min. / Street Date October 20, 2009 (I’m a little late) / available through Sprocket Vault / 14.99

Starring: George Sanders, Edward Everett Horton, Linda Darnell, Anna Lee, Hugo Haas, Lori Lahner, Sig Ruman, Robert Greig, Byron Foulger, Mike Mazurki, Elizabeth Russell.

Cinematography: Archie Stout, Eugen Schüfftan

Art Direction: Rudi Feld

Collaborating Editor: Gregg G. Tallas

Original Music: Karl Hajos

Written by Roland Leigh, Douglas Sirk (as Michael O’Hara), Robert Theoren based on the play The Shooting Party by Anton Chekhov

Produced by Seymour Nebenzal

Directed by Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk, born Hans Detlef Sierck, had a pretty amazing career.

Margot Robbie and longtime boyfriend Tom Ackerley have tied the knot in Australia, according to local reports.

Australia’s The Daily Telegraph claims the couple wed in Byron Bay over the weekend, although they never announced an engagement. The actress was given away by her mother and her three siblings were in attendance, according to U.K.’s The Telegraph.

A rep for the actress has not responded to People’s request for comment.

Suspicions of the 26-year-old Suicide Squad star’s secret wedding arose when Robbie arrived at an airport in her home country last week wearing a T-shirt...

Queer Screen.s Mardi Gras Film Festival will host 10 international guests over the next two weeks..

The filmmakers will present their films, discussing their work and host masterclasses (supported by Screen Nsw) with local talent..

The guests include: Nneka Onuorah - director, The Same Difference (USA) who is showcasing her documentary on the black, lesbian and bisexual community on Friday 19 Feb at 9pm, and also presenting a masterclass on production..

Claudia Lorenz - director, What's Between Us (Switzerland) will present her feature directorial debut on Monday 22 February at 7pm as well as hosting a free screening on Tuesday 23 February at 11am at Event Cinemas supported by the Consulate General of Switzerland and City of Sydney.

Marçal Forés - director, Everlasting Love (Spain) screens his winner of the International Dramatic Feature Award at Outfest and Best Feature Film of Queer Lisboa, supported by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and Sydney Underground Film Festival,...

Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk (December 23 – January 6) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York gathers a substantial number of the German auteur's classic films together with more obscure titles, some of which may deserve elevation into the higher ranks of his oeuvre. Already, in the past few years, There's Always Tomorrow (1956) has crept up the league table of Sirkian melodrama, mainly because it became easier to see and people recognized that it could stand comparison with All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959), or nearly so.Some Sirk movies will, however, never be quite respectable, but in a way I love them for that. His period movies often dive headlong into Hollywood kitsch in a way that his once-despised weepies mainly avoid. There's a trio of movies playing with George Sanders which exemplify this in their different ways. Summer Storm (1944) was Hollywood's...

Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk (December 23 – January 6) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York gathers a substantial number of the German auteur's classic films together with more obscure titles, some of which may deserve elevation into the higher ranks of his oeuvre. Already, in the past few years, There's Always Tomorrow (1956) has crept up the league table of Sirkian melodrama, mainly because it became easier to see and people recognized that it could stand comparison with All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959), or nearly so.Some Sirk movies will, however, never be quite respectable, but in a way I love them for that. His period movies often dive headlong into Hollywood kitsch in a way that his once-despised weepies mainly avoid. There's a trio of movies playing with George Sanders which exemplify this in their different ways. Summer Storm (1944) was Hollywood's...

On this week's episode of The Golden Briefcase, Tim and Jeremy are joined by guest Evan Saathoff aka "Sam Strange" of Badass Digest to go through their picks of the week, the newest DVD & Blu-ray releases and much more. For the main topic of the night the guys spend some time discussing the film legacy of Godzilla, the King of Monsters, in honor of Gareth Edwards' interpretation hitting theaters this Friday! The guys talk over some of the best and worst examples of Godzilla films, the phenomenon of the character and more. They also share thoughts on the new rendition of the monster and where they want to see him go. Download #195 or Listen Now: [audio href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/firstshowing/EP195.mp3" title="The King of Monsters! (Guest: Evan Saathoff)"]The Golden Briefcase #195/audio] Subscribe via: RSS or iTunes Previous Episode: Before the Summer Storm (Guest: Liam O'Donnell) Our Guest: Evan Saathoff: @Sam_Strange Picks of the Week: Jeremy: Lawman (1971) Evan: Metallica: Through the...

3D animation sells to Poland, Estonia, Russia and Cis, among others.

Munich-based Global Screen has announced a raft of deals on its new 3D animation feature, the fairytale comedy The 7th Dwarf.

In advance to its market premiere, the film has gone to Poland (Kino Swiat), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Cis (all Rekiston Enterprises), and Croatia and the other ex-Yugoslavian states (all Karantinja).

Other new deals also include Latin America (Swen), Portugal (Pris), India (Pictureworks) and Asian-Pacific territories including Malaysia and the Philippines (Suraya Filem).

With the earlier deals in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aqs), Israel (Five Stars), Indonesia (Pt Media Bermutu), Korea (Sane Company), Middle East (Italia Film) and Turkey (Medyavizyon), The 7th Dwarf has been sold everywhere from Eastern Europe to the Asian-Pacific regions to Latin America.

The German release is being handled by Universal.

Global Screen is launching several other new projects in the market. Among these is...

There is plenty of art out there portraying the X-Men's resident weather goddess Storm, but at least for me, Hanie Mohd's For All Seaons series is among my favorites. The series depicts Ororo in four of her more recognizable forms, each one echoing the season of choice. While all are fantastic, Autumn Wind and Summer Storm are two that truly embrace the fierceness and beauty that the character represents to me. You can grab some prints of the set on Hanie's Etsy page, and if you like them, let her know. ...

New films by actor-director Matthias Schweighofer, Marco Kreuzpaintner, Robert Glinski, and Bettina Oberli are among the titles being lined up by German sales agents Global Screen and Picture Tree International (Pti) for the Marché du Film in Cannes next month.

Munich-based Global Screen will be unveiling five market premieres:

actor-director/producer Schweighofer’s third directorial outing, the romantic comedy Joy Of Fatherhood (Vaterfreuden), adapted from Murmel Clausen’s novel Frettsack, was released by Warner Bros. Pictures Germany in February, has been seen by more than 2.3 million cinemagoers and taken more than €17.7m ($24.5m) to date.

the 2D and 3D versions of the English-language animated feature The Seventh Dwarf (Der 7bte Zwerg), directed by Harald Siepermann and actor Boris Aljinovic, to be released by Universal Pictures in Germany this autumn.The film was also presold to many territories, including

Christian Bach’s feature debut, the coming of age/family drama Flights Of Fancy (Hirngespinster), which received Bavarian Film Awards...

Global Screen has picked up sales rights to German rom-com Coming In from Marco Kreuzpaintner.

Marco Kreuzpaintner’s (Summer Storm, Trade) latest effort tells the story of a gay hairdresser who falls in love with a female beauty parlor owner.

Kostja Ullmann and Aylin Tezel star alongside Ken Duken, August Zirner and Katja Riemann.

The film is a Summerstorm Entertainment production, in co-production with Warner Bros. Film Productions Germany and in cooperation with Bavaria Film Partners.

Producers are Gabriela Bacher, Christoph Müller and Christian Angermayer of Summerstorm’s parent company Film House Germany.

Warner Bros. will be releasing the film in the autumn in Germany.

Brace yourselves. This list of the Top 100 Greatest Gay Movies is probably going to generate some howls of protest thanks to a rather major upset in the rankings. Frankly, one that surprised the hell out of us here at AfterElton.

But before we get to that, an introduction. A few weeks ago we asked AfterElton readers to submit up to ten of their favorite films by write-in vote. We conducted a similar poll several years ago, but a lot has happened culturally since then, and a number of worthy movies of gay interest have been released. We wanted to see how your list of favorites had changed.

We also wanted to expand our list to 100 from the top 50 we had done previously. We figured there were finally enough quality gay films to justify the expansion. And we wanted to break out gay documentaries onto their own list (You'll find the...

There was a catch to this week's decision of the German Federal Film Board to approve more funds to more screenwrights than usual: In average, most of them walk away with less money. No maximum subsidies (30,000, in exceptional cases 50,000) were given out to the 16 approved projects (out of 60). Instead, all screenplays were affirmed for support payments of either 18,000 or just over 14,500 Euros. Four treatments received 7,000 each. Of course, that group included some better-known names, such as Fatih Akin, director of Head-On and The Edge of Heaven, who has teamed up with journalist Hans Hielscher to write a script called Kämpfernatur (Born Fighter), a story based in the world of professional boxing. We also have Aliza Olmert, visual artist and wife of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is trying to get her autobiographical novel A Slice of Sea on the big screen with the help of Brit writer/director Gareth Jones.

A few weeks ago we asked readers to submit up to five of their favorite movies in our third annual favorite gay film poll. We wanted to see which older gay films have timeless appeal and which recent gay films you judged important enough to register in the rankings.

After voting closed we sorted through the nearly 15,000 nominations (representing over 500 individual titles) to identify your top fifty favorite gay films.

Tabulating this data is actually a bit harder than it sounds. For instance, do you know how many different ways our readers can type/abbreviate "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert?" We counted about a dozen!

But we're not complaining, because the list that resulted this year is actually rather interesting.

Nine new films made their way into the rankings, and five of these are of very recent vintage. This represents a strong showing for current queer cinema.

Monsoon in Bangalore is literally musical. It starts with the building up of a crescendo, and breaks on the brink of enraging thunderstorms. But it never really rains. Rather, it contains the downpour. A lot like rock concerts in the city. Loud, promising of a grand moshpit mob and, of course, crazy fan attendance, and a pass out later. In keeping with the city’s legacy for its romance with great rock concerts, USA’s progressive death metal band, Lamb of God headlined the Summer Storm Festival 2010, at the Palace grounds on Saturday evening. Unleashing their demonsThe last ...

By Kevin Crust

How lackluster a week is this for new movies? A movie in its fourth week of release is likely to trump the trio of new films opening. Consider it the calm before the coming Summer storm of blockbusters, sequels and remakes.

The Back-up Plan

Jennifer Lopez returns to the romantic comedy genre that served her well a decade ago starring as a woman tired of waiting for the right guy. Just as she’s about to embark on single motherhood, she meets a potential Mr. Right (Alex O’Laughlin). TV vet Alan Poul (“Six Feet Under,” “Swingtown”) directed from a script by another tube alum Kate Angelo.

Most critics are finding the film blandly inoffensive and suggest you have your own back-up plan — for another movie. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times calls it “a not very good and yet painless waste of time,” while the...

Lamb of God (Log), the Virginia-based heavy metal band known for hits such as Laid to Rest and As The Palaces Burn, is set to debut in India. In its only gig in the country, the Grammy nominees will perform at the Palace Grounds, Bangalore on May 15. The band’s official site confirms the venue even as Overture India, the company getting the act to headline the ‘Summer Storm’ festival, remains tightlipped. The news, however, has fans and the music fraternity excited. A Facebook page dedicated to the concert is buzzing with activity. While over 1,800 users ...

Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic, and not-so-classic, movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies and TV shows such as Blood: The Last Vampire, Easy Rider and the first seasons of Hawaii Five-o and Vega$. Plus, I think some movie with lots of robots, explosions and Megan Fox also came out this week as well.

Check them out.

Movies

Blood: The Last Vampire ~ Michael Byrne, Constantine Gregory, Yasuaki Kurata (DVD and Blu-ray)

Cheri ~ Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Friend, Kathy Bates (DVD – 2009)

Easy Rider ~ Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson (Blu-ray)

Monsoon Wedding (The Criterion Collection) ~ Lillete Dubey, Vijay Raaz (Blu-ray)

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (Those Aren’t Pillows Edition) ~ Steve Martin,...