It's odd to think that there was a time when Clint Eastwood was just a jobbing actor and not the Hollywood legend we know him to be. As an actor and a director, the man has had a career that anyone looking for success in the film industry would envy, being able to make whatever he wanted to make consistently for decades.
Though he's tackled crime stories, romantic melodramas, biopics, and just about everything else you could in the business, we all know Clint Eastwood's bread and butter is the Western, the genre that rocketed him to stardom in the 1960s with the release of Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Western "Dollars" trilogy, all three of which hit American movie screens in 1967.
Prior to heading over to Italy to take on the Man with No Name character, Eastwood was the co-star of the television series "Rawhide" for eight years, and...
Though he's tackled crime stories, romantic melodramas, biopics, and just about everything else you could in the business, we all know Clint Eastwood's bread and butter is the Western, the genre that rocketed him to stardom in the 1960s with the release of Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Western "Dollars" trilogy, all three of which hit American movie screens in 1967.
Prior to heading over to Italy to take on the Man with No Name character, Eastwood was the co-star of the television series "Rawhide" for eight years, and...
- 4/8/2023
- by Mike Shutt
- Slash Film
You can’t argue with disc collectors eager to rediscover movies they loved at age 10, in terrific kiddie matinees. Cowboy star Rory Calhoun makes a perfectly fine Italian vagabond ladies’ man for this very un-serious ‘oriental’ adventure, and Yôko Tani is the requisite princess who needs kissing lessons. Tim Lucas’s welcome, info-packed commentary satisfies our curiosity about the long-unavailable title — it’s different than the A.I.P. release we (barely) remember.
Marco Polo
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1962 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 104, 95 min. / Street Date , 2023 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Rory Calhoun, Yôko Tani, Camillo Pilotto, Pierre Cressoy, Michael Chow, Thien-Huong, Franco Ressel.
Cinematography: Riccardo Pallottini
Production Designer: Zoran Zorcic
Art Directors: Aurelio Crugnola, Franco Fumagalli, Miodrag Miric, Jovan Radic
Film Editor: Ornella Micheli
Costume design: Mario Giorsi
Original Music: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino / Les Baxter
Written by Oreste Biancoli, Ennio De Concini, Eliana De Sabata, Antoinette Pellevant, Piero Pierotti, Duccio Tessari
Produced by Luigi Carpentieri,...
Marco Polo
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1962 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 104, 95 min. / Street Date , 2023 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Rory Calhoun, Yôko Tani, Camillo Pilotto, Pierre Cressoy, Michael Chow, Thien-Huong, Franco Ressel.
Cinematography: Riccardo Pallottini
Production Designer: Zoran Zorcic
Art Directors: Aurelio Crugnola, Franco Fumagalli, Miodrag Miric, Jovan Radic
Film Editor: Ornella Micheli
Costume design: Mario Giorsi
Original Music: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino / Les Baxter
Written by Oreste Biancoli, Ennio De Concini, Eliana De Sabata, Antoinette Pellevant, Piero Pierotti, Duccio Tessari
Produced by Luigi Carpentieri,...
- 1/31/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Finally out on Blu-ray in Region A, Luis Buñuel’s beautiful color adventure is a worthy jungle tale shot through with his signature negativity — it could be titled “The Bad, The Greedy and the Faithless.” The Spanish surrealist’s filmic obsessions steered toward the anarchistic, the anti-clerical and anti-bourgeois; all of his films are political, but three features in the 1950s cast a harsh eye on the subject of revolution itself, with surprising results. With the presence of movie stars Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, this may also be the director’s most commercial feature.
Death in the Garden
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1956 / Color / 1:37 / 104 min. / Street Date July 23, 2019 / La mort en ce jardin / Available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, Tito Junco, Mich.le Girardon, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Francisco Reiguera, José Chávez.
Cinematography: Jorge Stahl, Jr.
Film Editors: Denise Charvein,...
Death in the Garden
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1956 / Color / 1:37 / 104 min. / Street Date July 23, 2019 / La mort en ce jardin / Available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, Tito Junco, Mich.le Girardon, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Francisco Reiguera, José Chávez.
Cinematography: Jorge Stahl, Jr.
Film Editors: Denise Charvein,...
- 7/30/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Finally out on Blu-ray in Region A, Luis Buñuel’s beautiful color adventure is a worthy jungle tale shot through with his signature negativity — it could be titled “The Bad, The Greedy and the Faithless.” The Spanish surrealist’s filmic obsessions steered toward the anarchistic, the anti-clerical and anti-bourgeois; all of his films are political, but three features in the 1950s cast a harsh eye on the subject of revolution itself, with surprising results. With the presence of movie stars Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, this may also be the director’s most commercial feature.
Death in the Garden
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1956 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date July 23, 2019 / La mort en ce jardin / Available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, Tito Junco, Mich.le Girardon, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Francisco Reiguera, José Chávez.
Cinematography: Jorge Stahl, Jr.
Film Editors: Denise Charvein,...
Death in the Garden
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1956 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date July 23, 2019 / La mort en ce jardin / Available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, Tito Junco, Mich.le Girardon, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Francisco Reiguera, José Chávez.
Cinematography: Jorge Stahl, Jr.
Film Editors: Denise Charvein,...
- 7/30/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Growing up as Sergio Leone’s career escalated segueing from the so-called “Dollars Trilogy” to “Once Upon a Time in the West” up to their father’s final masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in America,” led his children Raffaella and Andrea to become steeped in two inextricably linked passions: film and family.
“Film has always been an aggregating element of our family,” says Andrea, speaking with Raffaella in the office that used to be their father’s in a villa on Rome’s outskirts, now the company’s headquarters. “In the evenings we would discuss movies and our father used to talk to us about his projects.”
Raffaella remembers spending every other summer of her childhood on one of the director’s sets in Spain, in the desert of Almeria where “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” as well as other Leone films,...
“Film has always been an aggregating element of our family,” says Andrea, speaking with Raffaella in the office that used to be their father’s in a villa on Rome’s outskirts, now the company’s headquarters. “In the evenings we would discuss movies and our father used to talk to us about his projects.”
Raffaella remembers spending every other summer of her childhood on one of the director’s sets in Spain, in the desert of Almeria where “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” as well as other Leone films,...
- 5/10/2019
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
By Fred Blosser
I saw many, many Italian-made sword-and-toga movies as a kid in the early 1960s at the Kayton, my neighborhood movie house, where they usually played on mismatched double-bills with B-Westerns, British “Carry On” comedies, low-budget noir dramas, and fourth-run Elvis movies. Many of these Italian epics were simplistic and formulaic, as if the producers figured that people had come to see spectacle, sex, and sword-fights, and never mind anything else. Regardless, more ambitious productions occasionally surfaced with slightly more dramatic substance and marginally higher production values. One such entry was “The Colossus of Rhodes” (1961), Sergio Leone’s first acknowledged directorial credit preceding his breakthrough success with “A Fistful of Dollars” in 1964. The Warner Archive Collection has released the 1961 movie on Blu-ray with audio commentary by Sir Christopher Frayling, Leone’s biographer and longtime critical champion.
The script co-written by Leone has plenty of plot -- almost too much,...
I saw many, many Italian-made sword-and-toga movies as a kid in the early 1960s at the Kayton, my neighborhood movie house, where they usually played on mismatched double-bills with B-Westerns, British “Carry On” comedies, low-budget noir dramas, and fourth-run Elvis movies. Many of these Italian epics were simplistic and formulaic, as if the producers figured that people had come to see spectacle, sex, and sword-fights, and never mind anything else. Regardless, more ambitious productions occasionally surfaced with slightly more dramatic substance and marginally higher production values. One such entry was “The Colossus of Rhodes” (1961), Sergio Leone’s first acknowledged directorial credit preceding his breakthrough success with “A Fistful of Dollars” in 1964. The Warner Archive Collection has released the 1961 movie on Blu-ray with audio commentary by Sir Christopher Frayling, Leone’s biographer and longtime critical champion.
The script co-written by Leone has plenty of plot -- almost too much,...
- 5/7/2019
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Sergio Leone was born Jan. 3, 1929; he would have been 90 this week. Though he directed only seven films, their impact has been wide and long-lasting, including making Clint Eastwood a star.
On Oct. 11, 1967, Variety carried a guest column by Lee Van Cleef shortly before the U.S. bow of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” The actor countered criticism that Leone’s films are too violent: “What could have more violent sequences than the Bible?” he wrote. Van Cleef added that the films were authentic and heavily researched, saying that on the set the filmmaker “carried a small library of well-illustrated American books devoted to American history of those times.”
In that same issue, Leone said he didn’t invent Westerns all’Italiana. There were two dozen before the 1964 “Fistful of Dollars.” But the film was such a hit, he said, it inspired more than 200 spaghetti Westerns in the following two years,...
On Oct. 11, 1967, Variety carried a guest column by Lee Van Cleef shortly before the U.S. bow of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” The actor countered criticism that Leone’s films are too violent: “What could have more violent sequences than the Bible?” he wrote. Van Cleef added that the films were authentic and heavily researched, saying that on the set the filmmaker “carried a small library of well-illustrated American books devoted to American history of those times.”
In that same issue, Leone said he didn’t invent Westerns all’Italiana. There were two dozen before the 1964 “Fistful of Dollars.” But the film was such a hit, he said, it inspired more than 200 spaghetti Westerns in the following two years,...
- 1/4/2019
- by Tim Gray
- Variety Film + TV
The Colossus of Rhodes
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1961 / 2:35 / Street Date June 26, 2018
Starring Rory Calhoun, Lea Massari, Georges Marchal
Cinematography by Antonio Ballesteros
Directed by Sergio Leone
Fred Astaire once said of an undulating Cyd Charisse, “She came at me in sections.” So does the star of Sergio Leone’s The Colossus of Rhodes, a 300 foot titan whose sky-scraping vertical stance is at extreme odds with Leone’s widescreen frame. Save for some long shots, one of The Seven Wonders of the World is reduced to a slide show of disconnected body parts. Such are the giant-sized headaches of epic movie-making.
Even before an earthquake would wreak havoc on the community and topple the Colossus in 226 BC, Rhodes was a city in turmoil. Darios, a Brylcreemed military hero and would-be romeo has just dropped anchor but in lieu of a warrior’s welcome, he’s immediately ensnared in a two-pronged...
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1961 / 2:35 / Street Date June 26, 2018
Starring Rory Calhoun, Lea Massari, Georges Marchal
Cinematography by Antonio Ballesteros
Directed by Sergio Leone
Fred Astaire once said of an undulating Cyd Charisse, “She came at me in sections.” So does the star of Sergio Leone’s The Colossus of Rhodes, a 300 foot titan whose sky-scraping vertical stance is at extreme odds with Leone’s widescreen frame. Save for some long shots, one of The Seven Wonders of the World is reduced to a slide show of disconnected body parts. Such are the giant-sized headaches of epic movie-making.
Even before an earthquake would wreak havoc on the community and topple the Colossus in 226 BC, Rhodes was a city in turmoil. Darios, a Brylcreemed military hero and would-be romeo has just dropped anchor but in lieu of a warrior’s welcome, he’s immediately ensnared in a two-pronged...
- 6/16/2018
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Luis Buñuel’s filmic obsessions steered toward the anarchistic, the anti-clerical and anti-bourgeois, with a surreal spin. All of his films are political, but three features in the 1950s cast a harsh eye on the subject of revolution itself, with surprising results. This beautiful color show is a worthy jungle adventure tale shot through with Buñuel’s signature negativity — it could be titled “The Bad, The Greedy and the Faithless.”
Death in the Garden
Region B Blu-ray + DVD
Eureka Entertainment / Masters of Cinema
1956 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date June 19, 2017 / La mort en ce jardin / Available from Amazon UK / £ 11.65
Starring: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, Tito Junco, Michèle Girardon, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Francisco Reiguera, José Chávez.
Cinematography: Jorge Stahl, Jr.
Film Editors: Denise Charvein, Marguerite Renoir
Original Music: Paul Misraki
Written by Luis Alcoriza, Luis Buñuel, Raymond Queneau, Gabriel Arout from a novel by José-André Lacour.
Death in the Garden
Region B Blu-ray + DVD
Eureka Entertainment / Masters of Cinema
1956 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date June 19, 2017 / La mort en ce jardin / Available from Amazon UK / £ 11.65
Starring: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli, Tito Junco, Michèle Girardon, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Francisco Reiguera, José Chávez.
Cinematography: Jorge Stahl, Jr.
Film Editors: Denise Charvein, Marguerite Renoir
Original Music: Paul Misraki
Written by Luis Alcoriza, Luis Buñuel, Raymond Queneau, Gabriel Arout from a novel by José-André Lacour.
- 5/26/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
"He's best known for his westerns, which traditionally are sagas about how civilization begins, how ruthless and cynical men rip it out of the throat of the wilderness," writes Peter Keough in the Boston Phoenix. "But the end of civilization is what really fascinated Sergio Leone, and the poison within that undoes every would-be paradise. Death and doom and dark hilarity overshadow his films, not just the westerns, but all of them, which are on view this month in a two-week retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive. From his first directorial effort, The Colossus of Rhodes (1961; screens November 13 at 4:30 pm), to the script about the 900-day siege of Leningrad that he left behind when he died in 1989 at the age of 60, Sergio Leone showed us how the world ends — be it by the slow brutal murder of a modern city, or the catastrophic destruction of an ancient one."
More events.
More events.
- 11/10/2011
- MUBI
Josh Holloway, best known as hunky con-man castaway Sawyer on Lost, will be joining Community for their two-part season finale. This morning, E! Online posted some quotes from the cast today about the finale and working with Mr. Holloway.
Producers have teased that the finale will have a “Sergio Leone homage.” Well, just who is Sergio Leone? He's the Italian film director / screenwriter best known for his association with the “Spaghetti western” genre. His films include The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America and The Colossus of Rhodes.
Joel McHale (Jeff Winger) on the theory that Holloway is one of the only guys who would be believable as someone cooler than Jeff: "I agree fully with that theory, because he is cooler than me, just by walking in a room, and Jeff is a little unhappy about it. Or happy about it. Maybe he...
Producers have teased that the finale will have a “Sergio Leone homage.” Well, just who is Sergio Leone? He's the Italian film director / screenwriter best known for his association with the “Spaghetti western” genre. His films include The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America and The Colossus of Rhodes.
Joel McHale (Jeff Winger) on the theory that Holloway is one of the only guys who would be believable as someone cooler than Jeff: "I agree fully with that theory, because he is cooler than me, just by walking in a room, and Jeff is a little unhappy about it. Or happy about it. Maybe he...
- 3/16/2011
- by Crit Obara
- TVovermind.com
So last year I joined Twitter and desperately struggled to figure out a good use for it. Assuming most people following my account might come from the Film Junk podcast, I thought it might be an idea platform to keep track of what films I've been watching and what ratings I give them. My first post was March 9th, 2009 with David Cronenberg's The Brood (3.5/4) and since then I've managed to check out a good number of great films over the last year. (Jacques Tati's Play Time and Wim Wender's Paris, Texas are definitely two stand outs on this list.) Many of these are first time viewings, but a there are also a lot of movies I just felt the urge to revisit. So what do you think? Any favourites? Have a look for yourself after the jump! The Brood, (Cronenberg, 1979) 3.5/4 Operation Crossbow (Anderson, 1965) 3.5/4 Watchmen, (Snyder, 2009) 3/4 Pontypool, (McDonald, 2008) 4/4 Pinocchio,...
- 3/10/2010
- by Jay C.
- FilmJunk
0:00 - Intro 1:15 - R.I.P. Patrick Swayze 5:30 - Tiff Review: The Road 17:55 - Tiff Review: Jennifer's Body 23:35 - Tiff Review: Survival of the Dead 33:20 - Tiff Review: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done 52:50 - Tiff Review: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans 1:06:10 - Tiff Review: Up in the Air 1:13:50 - Tiff Review: [Rec] 2 1:19:25 - Tiff Review: Life During Wartime 1:33:00 - Other Stuff We Watched: Bitch Slap, Whip It, Vengeance, Defendor, Solomon Kane, Solitary Man, Daybreakers, Monterey Pop, The Colossus of Rhodes, Grace, Fanboys, Community, Glee, Archer, Survivor 2:03:05 - Junk Mail: The Het Voice Mail 2:06:40 - This Week's DVD Releases 2:08:30 - Outro » Download the MP3 (60 Mb) [1] » View the show notes [2] » Vote for us on Podcast Alley! [3] Subscribe to the podcast feed: [4] [5] [6] [7] Donate via Paypal: Recurring Donation $2/Month: [1] http://www.
- 9/21/2009
- by Sean
- FilmJunk
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.