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Christopher Challis
Christopher George Joseph Challis BSC, FRPS (18 March 1919 – 31 May 2012) was a British cinematographer who worked on more than 70 feature films from the 1940s onwards. Career After working as camera operator on several films for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, he made his debut as director of photography on ''The End of the River'' (1947) one of their projects as producers. After filming of ''The End of the River'' concluded, Challis was camera operator under Jack Cardiff on '' The Red Shoes''. He did not object to the demotion as he wanted to work on the film. Following this he went back to being director of photography. He was cinematographer on most of Powell and Pressburger's later films, including ''The Small Back Room'' (1949), '' The Elusive Pimpernel'' (1950), ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' (1951), '' Oh... Rosalinda!!'' (1955), '' The Battle of the River Plate'' (1956) and ''Ill Met by Moonlight'' (1957). His expertise in colour cinematography meant that he wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ill Met By Moonlight (film)
''Ill Met by Moonlight'' (1957), released in the USA as ''Night Ambush'' (which is eleven minutes shorter than the British release), is a film by the British writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and the last movie they made together through their production company "The Archers". The film, which stars Dirk Bogarde and features Marius Goring, David Oxley, and Cyril Cusack, is based on the 1950 book ''Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe'' by W. Stanley Moss, which is an account of events during the author's service on Crete during World War II as an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The title is a quotation from Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', and the book features the young agents' capture and evacuation of the German general Heinrich Kreipe. Plot During World War II, the Greek island of Crete is occupied by the Nazis. British officers Major Patrick Leigh Fermor DSO (Dirk Bogarde) and Captain Bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Martin Scorsese, many major accolades, including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, Emmy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, two Directors Guild of America Awards, an AFI Life Achievement Award and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2007. Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". Scorsese received an Master of Arts, MA from New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development in 1968. His directorial debut, ''Who's That Knocking at My Door'' (1967), was accepted into the Chicago Film Festival. In the 1970s and 1980s decades, Martin Scorsese filmography, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Deep (1977 Film)
''The Deep'' is a 1977 adventure film based on Peter Benchley's 1976 novel of the same name. It was directed by Peter Yates, and stars Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte. Plot While scuba-diving near shipwrecks off Bermuda, vacationing couple David Sanders and Gail Berke recover a number of artifacts, including an ampoule of amber-coloured liquid and a medallion bearing the image of a woman and the letters "S.C.O.P.N." (meaning "Santa Clara, ora pro nobis", for "Saint Clara, pray for us") and a date, 1714. Gail is attacked while probing a crevice in the wreck, and in panic escapes by getting loose from her wooden baton, which is shown to have its end shredded. Sanders and Berke seek the advice of lighthouse-keeper and treasure-hunter Romer Treece on the origin of the medallion; he identifies the item as Spanish and takes an interest in the young couple. The ampoule is noticed by the man who had rented diving equipment to Sanders and Berke, which in turn attracts the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabesque (1966 Film)
''Arabesque'' is a 1966 American comedy thriller spy film directed by Stanley Donen and starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, written by Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, and Peter Stone based on ''The Cipher'', a 1961 novel by Alex Gordon (pseudonym of Gordon Cotler). The film, along with Donen's immediately prior film ''Charade'' (1963), is usually described as being "Hitchcockian", as it features as a protagonist an innocent and ordinary man thrust into dangerous and extraordinary situations. It was the last film of that genre which Donen would make. ''Arabesque'' was filmed in Technicolor and Panavision and was distributed by Universal Pictures. Plot In an undercover mission, Major Sloane kills Professor Ragheeb, an ancient hieroglyphics expert at Oxford University and steals a hieroglyph-encrypted message. Sloane then asks Professor David Pollock, who has taken over Ragheeb's class on hieroglyphics, to meet with shipping magnate Nejim Beshraavi on a business matter. David d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Donen
Stanley Donen ( ; April 13, 1924 – February 21, 2019) was an American film director and choreographer whose most celebrated works are '' On the Town,'' (1949) and ''Singin' in the Rain'' (1952), both of which he co-directed with Gene Kelly. His other films include ''Royal Wedding'' (1951), ''Seven Brides for Seven Brothers'' (1954), ''It's Always Fair Weather'' (1955), ''Funny Face'' (1957), '' Indiscreet'' (1958), and ''Charade'' (1963). Donen began his career in the chorus line on Broadway for director George Abbott, where he befriended Kelly. From 1943, he worked in Hollywood as a choreographer before collaborating with Kelly. After ''On the Town'', Donen worked as a contract director for MGM under producer Arthur Freed producing critically well-received box-office hits. Donen and Kelly co-directed the musical ''Singin' in the Rain'', released in April 1952, which has appeared on lists of the best films ever made. Donen's relationship with Kelly deteriorated during thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes
''The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes'' is a 1970 DeLuxe Color film in Panavision written and produced by Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, and directed by Wilder. The film offers an affectionate, slightly parodic look at Sherlock Holmes, and draws a distinction between the "real" Holmes and the character portrayed by Watson in his stories for '' The Strand'' magazine. It stars Robert Stephens as Holmes and Colin Blakely as Doctor Watson. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the creators and writers of the BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning series '' Sherlock'', credited ''The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes'' as a source of inspiration for their show. Michael Hardwick and Mollie Hardwick authored a novelization of the film. Plot The film is divided into two separate, unequal stories. In the first and shorter of the two, in August 1887 Holmes is approached by Rogozhin, on behalf of a famous Russian ballerina, Madame Petrova. Madame Petrova is about to retire, and wishes to have a chil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (; ; born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director eight times, winning twice, and for a screenplay Academy Award 13 times, winning three times. Wilder became a screenwriter while living in Berlin. The rise of the Nazi Party and antisemitism in Germany saw him move to Paris. He then moved to Hollywood in 1933, and had a major hit when he, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film ''Ninotchka'' (1939). Wilder established his directorial reputation and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director with the film noir adaptation of the novel ''Double Indemnity'' (1944), for which he co-wrote the screenplay with Raymond Chandler. Wilder won the Best ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'' is a 1968 musical-fantasy film directed by Ken Hughes with a screenplay co-written by Roald Dahl and Hughes, loosely based on Ian Fleming's novel '' Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car'' (1964). The film stars Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Adrian Hall, Heather Ripley, Lionel Jeffries, Benny Hill, James Robertson Justice, Robert Helpmann, Barbara Windsor and Gert Fröbe. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli. John Stears supervised the special effects. Irwin Kostal supervised and conducted the music, while the musical numbers, written by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, were staged by Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood. The song "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was nominated for an Academy Award. Plot The film opens with a sequence of European Grand Prix races won by the same car over an instrumental version of the main theme (" Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"), concluding with the eponymous car crashing and burning in 1909. Years later, widowed invent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sink The Bismarck!
''Sink the Bismarck!'' is a 1960 black-and-white CinemaScope British war film based on the 1959 book ''The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck'' by C. S. Forester. It stars Kenneth More and Dana Wynter and was directed by Lewis Gilbert.Weiler, A.H"Movie Review – Sink the Bismarck – Of Men and Ships."''The New York Times''. To date, it is the only film made that deals directly with the operations, chase and sinking of the battleship by the Royal Navy during the Second World War. Although war films were common in the 1960s, ''Sink the Bismarck!'' was seen as something of an anomaly, with much of its time devoted to the "unsung back-room planners as much as on the combatants themselves". Its historical accuracy, in particular, met with much praise despite a number of inconsistencies. ''Sink the Bismarck!'' was the inspiration for Johnny Horton's popular 1960 song, " Sink the Bismarck".Polmar and Cavas 2009, p. 251. The film had its Royal World Premiere in the presence of the Du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Spanish Gardener (film)
''The Spanish Gardener'' is a 1956 VistaVision and Technicolor film based on the 1950 eponymous novel by A. J. Cronin. The film, which stars Dirk Bogarde and Jon Whiteley, was directed by Philip Leacock. The adaptation was filmed both at Pinewood Studios near London and in Palamós nearby Mas Juny estate, as well as in S'Agaro, on the Costa Brava, Catalonia. There were also two other adaptations of the story for Brazilian television: ''Nicholas'' (1958) and ''O Jardineiro Espanhol'' (1967). The film was entered into the 7th Berlin International Film Festival. The ending of the film differs from that of the book. Plot British diplomat Harrington Brande (Michael Hordern) takes up a minor provincial consular post in Spain. The appointment is a disappointment to Harrington, who was hoping for a more senior position. His abandonment by his wife may have adversely affected his career, as might his brusque manner. He is accompanied by his eleven-year-old son, Nicholas (Jon Whiteley), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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