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TV / Film

Warner Bros. Celebrates Hollywood's Jazz Age

Source: All About Jazz
April 19, 2009

The cycle of gangster movies launched by Warner Bros. in the early 1930s often included scenes in speakeasies with anonymous musicians in the background.

Anatole Litvak's Blues in the Night (1941) and Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), which were released this month by Warners on DVD, reversed the perspective. These are Warner gangster pictures told from the band's point of view: Idealistic white jazz players, determined to play their music despite rude audiences and mob interference, win the day ...

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TV / Film

Pete Kelly's Blues

Source: All About Jazz
April 18, 2009

First-time viewers of Pete Kelly's Blues are often impressed by its dynamic, directional stereophonic audio.

The Warner Sound Department concocted a particular method of recording their orchestra that gave their music tracks more brass and more bite, whether on a big picture or a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The movie is a visual treat as well. It begins with a beautifully realized prologue at a New Orleans jazz funeral that explains where Kelly got his cornet. The carefully designed shots segue ...

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TV / Film

The Glenn Miller Story

Source: All About Jazz
April 17, 2009

The 1954 film starring James Stewart, The Glenn Miller Story traces Miller's rise from pit-orchestra trombone player to leader of the most successful big band of his era.

June Allyson is on hand as Miller's wife, Helen, who learns the value of patience when Glenn spends his wedding night jamming with Gene Krupa and Louis Armstrong. Given an officer's commission during World War II, Miller helms the swingin'est military band ever heard.

In December of 1944, a plane carrying Miller ...

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TV / Film

SAG and Studios Reach Tentative Deal

Source: Michael Ricci
April 17, 2009

Negotiators for the Screen Actors Guild and the major studios have reached a tentative agreement on a new two-year contract for the union's 120,000 members.

Sources close to the talks say the union's negotiating task force will be briefed today on the proposed agreement, which is expected to be voted on by SAG's 71-member national board on Sunday.

Actors have been working without a contract for nine months as previous attempts at negotiations with the studios collapsed.

The contract contains ...

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TV / Film

The Gene Krupa Story

Source: Michael Ricci
April 16, 2009

The Gene Krupa Story (1959) Review Published: December 26, 1959

THE word for “The Gene Krupa Story" is okay no less and certainly no more.

Columbia's film biography of the king of hot jazz drummers arrived yesterday at the Forum with Sal Mineo in the title role, some dandy musical sequences and a plot that, however authentic, plays like a familiar success story. As we meet the gifted Mr. Krupa here he is an out-of-town lad who conquers ...

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TV / Film

On-Location Film and TV Shoots in L.A. Hit Lowest Levels on Record

Source: Michael Ricci
April 14, 2009

The recession and incentives from other states have caused location work in the region to fall to the lowest levels on record, a FilmL.A. report to be issued today shows.

Location filming for movies and TV commercials on the streets of Los Angeles, once as prevalent as the corner taco truck, is rapidly fading to black. Double whammies of the recession and out-of-state economic incentives for producers have caused on-location film shoots in the Los Angeles area to fall to ...

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TV / Film

The Russian Arc

Source: All About Jazz
April 14, 2009

THE RUSSIAN ARC (2002)

A museum as a living being, an entity that breathes with a personality of its own. Sokrov lends soul to the colossal palace of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, one of the greatest museums in the world, witness to the Russian saga over the course of centuries.

The Russian Arc was filmed on a single plane-sequence, without cuts, 97 minutes long, through 35 rooms in the museum, making the cinema screen a living picture where three ...

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