Along with Enrico Guazzoni’s epic Quo Vadis? (1912, It.) - often considered the first successful feature-length motion picture and one of the first films with over two hours running time, the influential three-hour Italian silent film from Giovanni Pastrone, Cabiria (1914, It.), was an early example of spectacular and monumental epic film-making. It laid the pattern and groundwork for future big-budget feature-length films (by the likes of D.W. Griffith - for his Judith of Bethulia (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), and later his Babylonian sequences in Intolerance (1916) - and Cecil B. DeMille). Its story of 3rd century BC Ancient Rome included sequences of the eruption of Mt. Etna and Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with elephants (with an early example of tracking shots). The landmark film was shot on location in North Africa, Sicily and the Italian Alps. It was also the first film to be screened at the White House.

Download Two of the Earliest Epics from Italy: Quo Vadis? and Cabiria

In the 1930s and early 40s, American sound films with hybrid science fiction/horror themes included an oddball collection of mad scientist films, with memorable characters who created mutated or shrunken creatures:

Download Mad Scientists in Early Horror/Sci-Fi Films

esterns became the staple subject matter for serials (and many feature-length films) for the first full decade after the coming of sound. Buck Jones, a western star in the 1920s during the silent era, was demoted to low-budget pictures and serials once talkies emerged. He starred in 19 westerns for Columbia from 1931 to 1934, and then in 22 westerns for Universal from 1934 to 1937.

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Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the earliest silent film comedians (as well as director and screenwriter). He started out with the Selig Polyscope Company in 1909 (his first film was Ben's Kid (1909)), and then went onto Universal Pictures in 1913 where he appeared in several of Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies films, noted for fast-paced chase sequences and 'pie-in-the-face' segments. Arbuckle was the first of the silent comedians to direct his own films, starting with Barnyard Flirtations (1914). His teaming with Mabel Normand at Keystone, in a series of "Fatty and Mabel" films, were lucrative for the studio.

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A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in February, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, but three months later was retitled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted melodramatic staged play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy:

* The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden, 1865-1900
* The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
* The Traitor


Download The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Raise the Red Lantern is one of the more sublimely beautiful and openly disturbing films of the 1990s. It is also the best work to date turned in by the actress/director combination of Gong Li and Zhang Yimou -- and this includes other impressive films like Ju Dou andTo Live. Raise the Red Lantern is one of those all-too-rare motion pictures capable of enthralling audience members while they're watching it, then haunting them for hours (or days) thereafter. With its simple story and complex themes and emotions, Raise the Red Lantern hints at the kind of film a great director like Ingmar Bergman might have made had he attempted a story set in mainland China.

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Starring Rebecca De Mornay
Jaime King
Briana Evigan
Patrick Flueger
Deborah Ann Woll
Alexa Vega
Kandyse McClure

Review:

Being a huge fan of Charles Kaufman's classic film Mother's Day, the prospect of a remake had me a little on the worried side. Simply put, the flick is so lovably "out there" that trying to duplicate its special brand of insanity could just never work. Director Darren Lynn Bousman realized this as well, and as a result his re-imagining of the 1980 shocker is an altogether different beast, but rest assured its fangs are still razor sharp!

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Stars: Rosella Elmi, Guglielmo Favilla and Elisa Ferretti

Review:

So, in my last review I mentioned that zombie flicks are getting a bit tired these days, and I still maintain that. But the prospect of a new Italian Zombie film is something I can still totally get behind. Eaters may not me the most original Zombie entry on the block — in fact, it’s largely a mashup of other genre flicks (see: Day of the Dead, Children of Men) — but it’s a film that’s not afraid to go places American, PC zombie films would fear to tread.


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Starring Renee Willner
Bridget Neval
Dawn Klingberg
Danny Alder
Taryn Eva
Peter Stratford
Mark Taylor

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Cast:

Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, Donald Sutherland, Caroline Goodall, Roma Maffia


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