Robert Altman
Maverick. Auteur. Rebel. Innovator. Storyteller. Rambler. Gambler. Mad man. Family man. Director. Artist. Robert Altman's life and career contained multitudes. This father of American independent cinema left an indelible mark, not merely on the evolution of his art form, but also on the western zeitgeist. "Altman", Canadian director Ron Mann's new documentary, explores and celebrates the epic fifty-year redemptive journey of one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of the medium. With its use of rare interviews, representative film clips, archival images, and musings from his family and most recognizable collaborators, Mann's Altman is a dynamic and heartfelt mediation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds.
The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.
Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.
A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court
A documentary on the director’s career, featuring interviews with friends, collaborators, and filmmakers.
On May 8th, 1945, writer, director Norman Corwin broadcast ON A NOTE OF TRIUMPH, an unforgettable homage to the end of war in Europe. This film shines a light on a lost work of genius, and examines it's haunting resonance to today's current events.
Sixteen years ago, Jack Tanner's bid for the White House ended at the 1988 Democratic convention. Now the former congressman is the subject of a documentary film directed by his daughter Alex focusing on the toll paid by failed contenders.
A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel's eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.
Ensemble drama centered around a group of ballet dancers, with a focus on one young dancer who's poised to become a principal performer.
Robert Altman interviewed during the making of GOSFORD PARK (2001), as well as members of the cast and crew. Also, revealing behind the scenes footage and information about his career leading up to this feature.
A documentary giving film fans a behind-the-scenes look at the making this Robert Altman film about a murder at an English country estate. Includes interviews with the cast and crew, who relate some of their experiences with making the film, as well as giving their views on all the work that went into it.
A behind the scenes look at the making of the movie M*A*S*H. The documentary reveals all of the chaos, politics, and conflict that was going on behind the scenes during production of the movie through new interviews done with director Robert Altman as well as Richard Zanuck, who was head of production for 20th Century Fox at the time, and others.
In 1930’s England, a group of pretentious rich and famous gather together for a weekend of relaxation at a hunting resort. But when a murder occurs, each one of these interesting characters becomes a suspect.
Passed over at work and numbed after she witnesses a colleague's murder, security guard Trixie Zurbo takes a relatively easy job at a lakefront casino, working undercover keeping an eye out for pickpockets. Trixie meets an assortment of colorful regulars: Kirk Stans, the casino's lounge act who drinks too much and is a dead-on mimic; Ruby Pearli , a glamorous, young and knowledgeable barfly; and Dex Lang, a raffish ladies' man who pays attention to Trixie in a way that's hard for her to ignore.
A successful Texas gynecologist finds himself amid a bevy of women and their problems – his wife’s breakdown, his daughter's fake marriage, his other daughter’s conspiracy theories, and his secretary’s crush. Craving time for himself, he finds solace in a kind outsider.
Follows a gun and the different hands it falls into and the different characters that use it.
Conflict arises in the small town of Holly Springs when an old woman's death causes a variety of reactions among family and friends.
Savannah lawyer Rick Magruder is at a party celebrating his courtroom victory defending a cop killer when a member of the catering staff, Mallory Doss, discovers her car has been stolen. Having had a few drinks, Magruder offers to give her a lift home, a decision that turns into a one night stand. Rick soon learns that her nut-case father, Dixon, seems to have begun threatening her again. Rick puts the force of his law firm behind Mallory, who he barely knows, has Dixon picked up by the police, and subpoenas the girl's belligerent ex-husband, Pete, to testify against the old man. Dixon is put away in an asylum. However, he soon escapes, putting the lives of everyone who conspired against him in jeopardy.
Gun is an American television anthology series which aired on ABC on Saturday night from April 12, to May 31, 1997 at 10:00 p.m Eastern time. The series lasted six episodes, each directed by a well-known director, before being cancelled. Each episode involves the same semi-automatic pistol as an important part of the plot. The characters each episode are completely different and appeared unrelated to those who appeared in other episodes. The series was produced by Robert Altman and attracted numerous recognizable stars including Fred Ward, Kathy Baker, Carrie Fisher, Daryl Hannah, Randy Quaid, and Martin Sheen, as well as James Gandolfini in his first television appearance. The theme song was a cover of The Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", performed by U2.
A documentary looking at the life and career of film director Frank Capra. Hosted by Ron Howard.
Robert Altman's story is a riff on race, class, and power cross-cuts between the two kidnappings and the background of corrupt politics and virtuoso jazz music. It all takes place in Kansas City in 1934.
Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.
Paris Fashion Week draws the usual bunch of people; designers, reporters, models, magazine editors, photographers. Follows the various storylines of these characters, centering around a murder investigation of a prominent fashion figure. Features an all-star cast.
A documentary insight behind the scenes of Roberts Altman's Short Cuts.
Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
The famous rhythm and blues revue featuring such standards as the title song, "After You've Gone" and "In a Sentimental Mood," to name just a few, and sung by R&B legends Ruth Brown, Linda Hopkins and Carrie Smith.
A Hollywood studio executive is being sent death threats by a writer whose script he rejected - but which one?
Behind-the-scenes documentary about a fundraiser which was staged for Robert Altman's film "The Player" (1992).
The tragic story of Vincent van Gogh broadened by focusing as well on his brother Theodore, who helped support Vincent. Based on the letters written between the two.
A documentary focusing on seventeen maverick directors who were not afraid to break the rules of filmmaking to advance their art. Among the classic directors profiled are D.W. Griffith, Josef von Sternberg, Erich Von Stroheim, and Preston Sturges up until more current filmmakers like David Lynch, Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese..
In 1988, renegade filmmaker Robert Altman and Pulitzer Prize–winning Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau created a presidential candidate, ran him alongside the other hopefuls during the primary season, and presented their media campaign as a cross between a soap opera and TV news. The result was the groundbreaking Tanner ’88, a piercing satire of media-age American politics.
In 1988, renegade filmmaker Robert Altman and Pulitzer Prize–winning Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau created a presidential candidate, ran him alongside the other hopefuls during the primary season, and presented their media campaign as a cross between a soap opera and TV news. The result was the groundbreaking Tanner ’88, a piercing satire of media-age American politics, in which actors Michael Murphy (as contender Jack Tanner) and Cynthia Nixon (as his daughter) rub elbows on the campaign trail with real-life political players Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, Bob Dole, Ralph Nader, Kitty Dukakis, and Gloria Steinem, among many others. The Criterion Collection is proud to present the complete eleven-episode television series—more relevant today than ever.
A full-length adaptation, originally staged as a play, of the court-martial segment from the novel "The Caine Mutiny".
Manhattanites Bruce and Prudence are each looking for a meaningful romantic relationship and have been encouraged by their psychiatrists to find someone through the personal ads. Their first meeting is disastrous, but they begin to hit it off during their second date. However, Bruce's bisexual, live-in lover does not want to share Bruce and is willing to do whatever it takes to keep him to himself.
Two lonely women coincide at midnight in a laundromat, where they reveal their secrets.
A woman is waiting in a motel for her boyfriend, when an old flame turns up and tries to take her back to the life she is trying to leave behind.
O.C. and Stiggs aren't your average unhappy teenagers. They not only despise their suburban surroundings, they plot against it. They seek revenge against the middle class Schwab family, who embody all they detest: middle class.
In his New Jersey study, Richard Nixon retraces the missteps of his political career, attempting to absolve himself of responsibility for Watergate and lambasting President Gerald Ford's decision to pardon him. His monologue explores his personal life and describes his upbringing and his mother. A tape recorder, a gun and whiskey are his only companions during his entire monologue, which is tinged with the vitriol and paranoia that puzzled the public during his presidency.
The Disciples of James Dean meet up on the anniversary of his death and mull over their lives in the present and in flashback, revealing the truth behind their complicated lives.
A one act play about a young doctor who ditches his safe middle-class existence to become a cowboy out West. His cowboy fantasy eventually breaks down.
A documentary overview of silent cinema pioneer Edwin S. Porter.
A one act play where a woman and a man share their life stories, till they inter stitch and conflict with each other.
Popeye is a super-strong, spinach-scarfing sailor man who's searching for his father. During a storm that wrecks his ship, Popeye washes ashore and winds up rooming at the Oyl household, where he meets Olive. Before he can win her heart, he must first contend with Olive's fiancé, Bluto.
Offbeat but endearing romantic comedy about unlikely match-up (by computer dating) of straitlaced Dooley, under the thumb of overbearing father, and singer Heflin, whose life is wrapped up with her familial rock group.
Muffin's wedding to Dino Corelli is to be a big affair. Except the ageing priest isn't too sure of the ceremony, only the families actually turn up as the Corelli Italian connection is suspect, security guards watch the gifts rather over-zealously, and Dino's grandma expires in bed just as the reception starts. Could be quite an occasion.
Just released from prison, a young woman arrives in town to "start a new life", but soon begins stalking a married construction worker for no apparent reason, turning his life inside out and eventually terrorizing him and his wife.
Over-the-hill gumshoe in Los Angeles seeks to avenge the killing of an old pal, another detective who had gotten himself involved in a case concerning a murdered broad, stolen stamps, a nickel-plated handgun, a cheating dolly, and a kidnapped pussycat.
Buffalo Bill plans to put on his own Wild West sideshow, and Chief Sitting Bull has agreed to appear in it. However, Sitting Bull has his own hidden agenda, involving the President and General Custer.
The lives of a group of Hollywood neurotics intersect over the Christmas holidays. Foremost among them, a songwriter visits Los Angeles to work on a singer's album. The gig, unbeknownst to him, is being bankrolled by his estranged father, a dairy magnate, who hopes to reunite with his son. When the songwriter meets an eccentric housewife who fancies herself a modern-day Garbo, his world of illusions comes crashing down.
Bowie, a youthful convicted murderer, and bank robbers Chicamaw and T-Dub escape from a Mississippi chain gang in the 1930s. They hole up with a gas station attendant and continue robbing banks. Bowie, who is injured in an auto accident, takes refuge with the daughter of the gas station attendant, Keechie. They become romantically involved but their relationship is strained by Bowie's refusal to turn his back on crime. The film is based on the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. The novel is also the source material for the 1949 film They Live by Night, directed by Nicholas Ray.
Carefree single guy Charlie Waters rooms with two lovely prostitutes, Barbara Miller and Susan Peters, and lives to gamble. Along with his glum betting buddy, Bill Denny, Charlie sets out on a gambling streak in search of the ever-elusive big payday. While Charlie and Bill have some lucky moments, they also have to contend with serious setbacks that threaten to derail their hedonistic betting binge.
Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.
A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Old West mining town, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.
Brewster is an owlish, intellectual boy who lives in a fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome. He has a dream: to take flight within the confines of the stadium. Brewster tells those he trusts of his dream, but displays a unique way of treating others who do not fit within his plans.
Sexuality without pretense gives the wallop to Events. A dramatic street story of young runaway flower-kids in the Greenwich Village of 1968, it raises ethical questions while the screen explodes with erotica."EVENTS is without question, the most far-out sexually experimental film made in the sixties or seventies."--Bruce Williamson, Playboy
Frances Austen, whose well-appointed apartment overlooks a park in Vancouver, one cold day, observes a rain-soaked young man on a park bench whom she assumes is homeless. Hoping to repress her loneliness, Frances invites ‘the boy’ inside her home to get warm and ends up encouraging him to stay. The young man accepts her every hospitality—food, clothes, profuse conversation, and a room of his own. Little does she realize that her guest is not the person he appears to be. Nor, for that matter, is Frances the woman that she appears to be.
Based on the novel Death on the Turnpike by William P. McGivern, Robert Altman's Nightmare in Chicago was expanded for theatrical release after it originally aired on NBC in 1964 on an episode of Kraft Suspense Theater. Filmed on-location in Chicago, this suspense thriller follows the story of a serial killer known as "Georgie Porgie." The Chicago turnpike is threatened over a three-day period as the police try to catch him by blocking the whole area. Starring Charles McGraw, Ted Knight, and Robert Ridgely. Original musical score by John Williams.
Kraft Suspense Theatre is an American anthology series that was telecast from 1963 to 1965 on NBC. Sponsored by Kraft Foods, it was seen three weeks out of every four and was pre-empted for Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall specials once monthly. Como's production company, Roncom Films, also produced Kraft Suspense Theatre. Writer, editor, critic and radio playwright Anthony Boucher served as consultant on the series. Later syndicated under the title Crisis, it was one of the few suspense series telecast in color at the time. While most of NBC's shows were in color then, all-color network line-ups did not become the norm until the 1966-67 season.
20 years after a Second World War court-martial, a vet pulls a gun on the ruthless attorney who defended him, when the cynical mouthpiece, who doesn't even remember his former client, refuses to see him. So the shaken gunman recounts the story of accidentally fragging his commanding officer.
Two aging film actresses live as virtual recluses in an old Hollywood mansion. Jane Hudson, a successful child star, cares for her crippled sister Blanche, whose career in later years eclipsed that of Jane. Now the two live together, their relationship affected by simmering subconscious thoughts of mutual envy, hate and revenge.
Combat! is an American television program that originally aired on ABC from 1962 until 1967. The show covered the grim lives of a squad of American soldiers fighting the Germans in France during World War II. The program starred Rick Jason as platoon leader Second Lieutenant Gil Hanley and Vic Morrow as Sergeant "Chip" Saunders.
Kraft Mystery Theatre is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from June 17, 1961 to September 25, 1963.
Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America in a Chevrolet Corvette sports car. The show ran weekly on Fridays on CBS from October 7, 1960 to March 20, 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for the first two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod was shown traveling on his own. Tod met Lincoln Case, played by Glenn Corbett, late in the third season, and traveled with him until the end of the fourth and final season. The series currently airs on Me-TV, My Family TV and RTV. Among the series more notable aspects were the featured Corvette convertible, and the program's instrumental theme song, which became a major pop hit.
Released two years after James Dean's death, this documentary chronicles his short life and career via black-and-white still photographs, interviews with the aunt and uncle who raised him, his paternal grandparents, a New York City cabdriver friend, the owner of his favorite Los Angeles restaurant, outtakes from East of Eden, footage of the opening night of Giant, and Dean's ironic PSA for safe driving.
A frustrated young man, separated from his younger girlfriend, gets involved in a juvenile gang.
A promotional film for Ford's Model Agency, directed by Robert Altman, as a potential television pilot.
1956 musical comedy Corn's-A-Poppin'. Writtern by Robert Altman, directed by Robert Woodburn and starring Jerry Wallace, Little Cora Rice and Hobie Shepp and The Cowtown Wranglers.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars as a fraternal and social organization, with emphasis on their projects that benefit community life and cohesion.
In this short National Safety Council film, the perfect crime is presented as excess speed. Accidents at high speed often results in deaths and are rarely investigated like the robbery of a corner grocery shown at the beginning of the film. The film ends with a plea to support the costs of new modern roads.
The Dirty Look is a 1954 comedy-short film, directed by Robert Altman, with Leonard Belove and William Frawley. Duration 24 minutes. This 1954 film was used by the Gulf Oil Company as a training film on keeping your Gulf Oil filling station clean.
Robert Altman's first film was this 26-minute short, which has a football coach explaining how to play the sport. This is basically an educational short where the viewer learns about the various rules of the sport as the narrator explains them while we see reenactments.
Walter Mitty, a daydreaming writer with an overprotective mother, likes to imagine that he is a hero who experiences fantastic adventures. His dream becomes reality when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman who hands him a little black book. According to her, it contains the locations of the Dutch crown jewels hidden since World War II. Soon, Mitty finds himself in the middle of a confusing conspiracy, where he has difficulty differentiating between fact and fiction.
