Duncan Shepherd
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Duncan Shepherd
Duncan Shepherd, a longtime film critic, wrote a weekly column for the alternative weekly the '' San Diego Reader'' from 1972 until November 2010. Shepherd's pithy, incisive, and (in later years) very often negative reviews have sparked strong reactions from readers. Shepherd attended Columbia University ("a school chosen solely for the number of proximate movie theaters in New York City", according to the criticDebt
. ''San Diego Reader''. May 25, 2006.
) and received a Master's degree from the University of California, San Diego. His thesis, entitled "Scratching the surface: a speculation into the importa ...
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Film Criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Journalism, journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets; and academic criticism by film scholars who are informed by film theory and are published in academic journals. Academic film criticism rarely takes the form of a review; instead it is more likely to analyse the film and its place in the history of its genre or in the whole of History of film, film history. Film criticism is also labeled as a type of writing that perceives films as possible achievements and wishes to convey their differences, as well as the films being made in a level of quality that is satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Film criticism is also associated with the journalistic type of criticism, which is grounded in the media's effects being developed, and journalistic criticism resides in standard structures su ...
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Curse Of The Cat People
''The Curse of the Cat People'' is a 1944 American psychological fantasy thriller filmEggert, Brian (October 22, 2017)"The Curse of the Cat People" Deep Focus Review. Retrieved 2019-03-16. directed by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, produced by Val Lewton, and starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, and Jane Randolph. Its plot follows Amy, a young girl who befriends the ghost of her father's deceased first wife, Irena, a Serbian fashion designer who descended from a race of people who could transform into cats. The film, which marks Wise's first directing credit, is a sequel to ''Cat People'' (1942) and has many of the same characters. However, it is only tangentially related to its predecessor. Plot Following the death of his wife, Irena Dubrovna, engineer Oliver Reed has remarried to his former co-worker, Alice. The couple now have a six-year-old daughter, Amy, and reside in Tarrytown, New York. Oliver worries about Amy's extreme introversion and predilection to fantas ...
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Robert Aldrich
Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His notable credits include '' Vera Cruz'' (1954), ''Kiss Me Deadly'' (1955), ''The Big Knife'' (1955), '' Autumn Leaves'' (1956), '' Attack'' (1956), '' What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'' (1962), '' Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte'' (1964), '' The Flight of the Phoenix'' (1965), ''The Dirty Dozen'' (1967) and '' The Longest Yard'' (1974). Early life Family Robert Burgess Aldrich was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, into a family of wealth and social prominence – "The Aldriches of Rhode Island". His father, Edward Burgess Aldrich (1871–1957) was the publisher of ''The Times'' of Pawtucket and an influential operative in state Republican politics. His mother, Lora Elsie (née Lawson) of New Hampshire (1874–1931), died when Aldrich was 13 and was remembered with fondness by her son. Ruth Aldrich Kaufinger (1912–1987) was his elder sister and only sib ...
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The Big Clock (film)
''The Big Clock'' is a 1948 American film noir directed by John Farrow and adapted by novelist-screenwriter Jonathan Latimer from the 1946 novel of the same title by Kenneth Fearing. The black-and-white film is set in New York City, and stars Ray Milland, Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Sullivan. Elsa Lanchester and Harry Morgan, in an early film role, also appear. Noel Neill has an uncredited part as an elevator operator very early in the film. Plot George Stroud, editor-in-chief of ''Crimeways'' magazine, hides from building security inside the "big clock," which is the largest and most sophisticated clock ever built. The clock dominates the lobby of the Janoth Publications building in New York City, where Stroud works. Thirty-six hours earlier, Stroud is eager to embark on a long-postponed honeymoon in Wheeling, West Virginia with his wife Georgette and son. His tyrannical boss Earl Janoth wants him to stay to pursue a missing-person story that Stroud has just cracked, but ...
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John Farrow
John Villiers Farrow, KGCHS (10 February 190427 January 1963) was an Australian film director, producer, and screenwriter. Spending a considerable amount of his career in the United States, in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Wake Island'', and in 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for ''Around the World in Eighty Days''. He had seven children by his wife, actress Maureen O'Sullivan, including actress Mia Farrow. Early life Farrow was born in Sydney, Australia, the son of Lucy Villiers (née Savage; 1881–1907), a dressmaker, and Joseph Farrow (1880–1925), a tailor's trimmer. His mother died when he was born.Unpublished letter dated Oct 3, 1939 His parents were both of English descent. Farrow was educated at Newtown Public School and Fort Street Boys' High School and then started a career in accountancy. He claimed to have run away to sea in an American barquentine, sailed "all over the Pacific," and fought in revo ...
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Robert Wise
Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American film director, producer, and editor. He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his musical films ''West Side Story'' (1961) and ''The Sound of Music'' (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for ''Citizen Kane'' (1941) and directed and produced '' The Sand Pebbles'' (1966), which was nominated for Best Picture. Among his other films are ''The Body Snatcher'' (1945), ''Born to Kill'' (1947), '' The Set-Up'' (1949), ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'' (1951), '' Destination Gobi'' (1953), '' This Could Be The Night'' (1957), ''Run Silent, Run Deep'' (1958), '' I Want to Live!'' (1958), '' The Haunting'' (1963), '' The Andromeda Strain'' (1971), '' The Hindenburg'' (1975) and '' Star Trek: The Motion Picture'' (1979). He was the president of the Directors Guild of America from 1971 to 1975 and the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1985 thr ...
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William Wellman
William Augustus Wellman (February 29, 1896 – December 9, 1975) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and military pilot. He was known for his work in crime, adventure, and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion. He also directed several well-regarded satirical comedies. His 1927 film, ''Wings'', was the first film to an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony.
''Focus on Film'' #29. Retrieved: December 5, 2007.
He was also arrested and placed on for car theft.Krebs, Albion (1975). "William A. Wellman Dies; Directed Movie Classics", ''The New York Times'', December 11, 1975, p. 48.



Cold Heaven (film)
''Cold Heaven'' is a 1991 American supernatural thriller film directed by Nicolas Roeg, and starring Theresa Russell, James Russo, Mark Harmon, Julie Carmen, and Seymour Cassel. Its plot follows a lapsed Catholic woman whose husband inexplicably rises from the dead, profoundly challenging her beliefs. The screenplay, by Allan Scott, is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. The film score was by Stanley Myers. Plot Marie Davenport, a lapsed Catholic, is having an affair with Dr. Daniel Corvin, unbeknownst to her husband, Dr. Alex Davenport, also a doctor. She intends to break the news to Alex while attending a medical conference with him in Mexico. While swimming in a bay at Acapulco, Alex is struck by a passing motorboat. He is rushed to the hospital with a massive head laceration, but dies during emergency surgery. The following morning, Marie is notified by the hospital that, prior to Alex's scheduled autopsy, his body ine ...
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Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg (; 15 August 1928 – 23 November 2018) was an English film director and cinematographer, best known for directing '' Performance'' (1970), ''Walkabout'' (1971), ''Don't Look Now'' (1973), ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'' (1976), ''Bad Timing'' (1980), and '' The Witches'' (1990). Making his directorial debut 23 years after his entry into the film business, Roeg quickly became known for an idiosyncratic visual and narrative style, characterized by the use of disjointed and disorienting editing. For this reason, he is considered a highly influential filmmaker, cited as an inspiration by such directors as Steven Soderbergh, Christopher Nolan, and Danny Boyle. In 1999, the British Film Institute acknowledged Roeg's importance in the British film industry by respectively naming ''Don't Look Now'' and ''Performance'' the 8th and 48th greatest British films of all time in its Top 100 British films poll. Early life Roeg was born in St John's Wood in North London on ...
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The Exterminating Angel
''The Exterminating Angel'' ( es, El ángel exterminador, links=no) is a 1962 Mexican surrealist film written and directed by Luis Buñuel, starring Silvia Pinal, and produced by Pinal's then-husband Gustavo Alatriste. It tells the story of a group of wealthy guests who find themselves unable to leave after a lavish dinner party, and the chaos that ensues. Sharply satirical and allegorical, the film contains a depiction of the aristocracy that suggests they "harbor savage instincts and unspeakable secrets".Roger Ebert''The Exterminating Angel'', RogerEbert.com, 11 May 1997. In 2004, ''The New York Times'' included the film in a list of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". The film was adapted into an The Exterminating Angel (opera), opera of the same name in 2016. Plot After a night at the opera, Edmundo and Lucía Nóbile are having 18 wealthy acquaintances over for a dinner party at their lavish mansion. The servants inexplicably begin to leave as the guests are about to arrive ...
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Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in ''The New York Times'' called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture, ''Un Chien Andalou''—made in the silent era—is still viewed regularly throughout the world and retains its power to shock the viewer, and his last film, ''That Obscure Object of Desire''—made 48 years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel's work "the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scan ...
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Contempt (film)
''Contempt'' (french: Le Mépris, link=no) is a 1963 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the 1954 Italian novel ''Il disprezzo'' (''A Ghost at Noon'') by Alberto Moravia. It stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and Giorgia Moll. Plot Paul Javal, a young French playwright who has found commercial success in Rome, accepts an offer from vulgar American producer Jeremy Prokosch to rework the script for German director Fritz Lang's screen adaptation of the ''Odyssey''. Paul's wife, Camille Javal, joins him on the first day of the project at Cinecittà. As the first discussions are completed, Prokosch invites the crew to join him at his villa, offering Camille a ride in his two-seat sportscar. Camille looks to Paul to decline the offer, but he submissively withdraws to follow by taxi, leaving Camille and Prokosch alone. Paul does not catch up with them until 30 minutes later, explaining that he was delayed by a traffic accident. C ...
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