Films / TV Shows / Theater

We heard the news this morning and we were very sad about it: Tony Curtis died on Wednesday at his Las Vegas home of a cardiac arrest. We have seen him in ‘The Defiant Ones’, ‘The Outsider’ but he is mostly remembered for his role in ‘Some Like It Hot’ with Marilyn Monroe. He starred in more than 100 films but for many (including for Max Dana who mentioned him in this post) he was Danny Wilde in the 1971 ...

Claude Chabrol, one of the creators of the New Wave movement, died yesterday at the age of 80. Our favorite films from him are Le Beau Serge, Les Bonnes Femmes, Landru, Les Biches, La Femme infidèle, Le Boucher but also Madame Bovary, L’ivresse du pouvoir and Bellamy. This year he played Gainsbourg’s Music Producer in 2010 drama film: Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque by Joann Sfar. He loved to study human behavior and all his characters had ...

Everyone we know enjoys watching TV shows. Whether they are American, French or Indian, there are so many different genres and so many different stories, everyone can find its favorite(s). Max Dana has found hers. Burn Notice, Dark Blue, True Blood and Mad Men but also several others she likes to watch. This is Max’s latest blog entry, and we agree, Burn Notice is far better than Leverage! “ I really enjoy watching TV shows. Unfortunately, ...

Women for Women International in association with All Saints Church, Peckham, presents a special screening of Pray The Devil Back To Hell, by Gini Reticker. She is one of the world’s leading filmmakers on women’s issues and she produced Asylum, the 2004 Academy Award-nominated short focusing on the story of a Ghanaian woman who fled female genital mutilation to seek political asylum in the U.S.; and was the producer/director of 1994 Sundance ...

Louis is directed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, starring Jackie Earle Haley, Shanti Lowry and Anthony Coleman. The film is “an homage to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, beautiful women and the birth of American music”. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by Wynton Marsalis and Cecile Licad. About Louis, A Silent Film (more here): Louis, a silent film directed by Dan Pritzker and starring Jackie Earle ...

Sylvain Chomet‘s new animation film ‘The Illusionist’ is based on a 1956 unmade, deeply personal script by French cinema legend Jacques Tati. The hand drawn, 2D animation feature film from the director of ‘The Triplets of Belleville’ is about a dying breed of stage performer, who is believed to be a version of Tati himself. Chomet chose to mimic Tati‘s visual style and fans will love it. The film is now out in theaters ...

Actor, director and artist Dennis Hopper died Saturday at his home in the Los Angeles beach community of Venice, surrounded by family and friends, after cancer battle. Many will remember him in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’, ‘Easy Rider’, ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Hoosiers’. But Hopper was not only an actor and a director, he most of all was an artist. In 2008, Dennis Hopper was be the ...

If you live in France, there is no way you could not know Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec opens today. Louise Bourgoin (playing Adèle Blanc-Sec) and Luc Besson are on every channel, promoting the film. Even Max Dana posted about it on her Blog; so we had to add our small contribution to the buzz for our dear Sama Readers living abroad and who may not already know about the last movie produced by EuropaCorp. The plot (from IMDb): ...

If you are a movie fan, then you know  the long-running syndicated film-review show ‘At the movies’. Even some of us, living in France, we at least heard  the name of the movie review program once, even though we couldn’t watch it on television over here (hopefully, we have Youtube!). The show has been cancelled this week so we decided it was time to follow Roger Ebert on Twitter @ebertchicago, a ‘Film critic since time ...

 Peter Graveswas great actor. Many of us knew him best for his role of Jim Phelps, leader of a gang of special agents who battled evil conspirators in TV’s “Mission: Impossible“. Some others also remember him staring in”Fury“, Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17“, Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter“, Otto Preminger’s “The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell” and ...