Movies... For Free! M (1931)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here!


M, Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, 1931.

Directed by Fritz Lang.
Starring Peter Lorre and Otto Wernicke.

M is the first sound feature from acclaimed Expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang - described by the British Film Institute as the "Master of Darkness" - and is a highly influential masterpiece of the thriller genre. Written by Lang along with his wife Thea von Harbou, a Nazi sympathiser who would later join the NSDAP, M is a powerful, cold and brutal piece of cinema that explores themes of morality, justice and hysteria.

The film stars Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, a German child killer and presumed paedophile whose brutal crimes are terrorising Berlin. When the police investigation headed by Inspector Lohmann (Wernicke) fails to identify the murderer, members of the underworld join in the manhunt in order to protect their business interests in the city. This leads to a race between the police and criminals, who eventually trace and capture Beckert and subject him to a kangaroo court that serves to explore the twisted and tormented mind of the killer.

Considered by Lang to be his finest work, M was a success upon release and helped to launch the international career of Peter Lorre, who would often return to the role of the villainous psychopath (see his turn in Alfred Hitchcock's 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much). It also served as a breakthrough for Otto Wernicke, who reunite with the director and the character of Inspector Lohmann in Lang's next movie, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933).

The film is rumoured to be inspired by the real life case of "The Vampire of Düsseldorf" Peter Kürten; a suggestion denied by the director.



Embed courtesy of Internet Archive.

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Toy Story 3 Teaser Trailer!

Pixar release the first official teaser from Toy Story 3. View it here!

Hot on the heels of the latest talk from DreamWorks Animation about their upcoming projects, CGI rivals and genre-leaders Pixar have released the first official trailer from Toy Story 3... what are you waiting for?? Check it out here:


The third installment in the series reunites all the old favourites including Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Rex, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head et.al., and once again features the voice talents of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. Michael Keaton is also rumoured to be lending his voice to Ken (of Barbie fame).

Toy Story 3 is set for release July 23rd, 2010 in the U.K., while our American cousins will get to see the film a month earlier on June 18th.

DreamWorks Animation Update

Jeffrey Katzenberg talks DreamWorks Animation's upcoming slate...

Former Disney chairman and current CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG Jeffrey Katzenberg has been discussing the studio's upcoming slate with investors this week and revealed that a number of sequels and original animated movies are in the pipeline.

The production house - whose credits include the hugely successful Shrek series alongside Madagascar, Bee Movie, Kung Fu Panda, and Monsters vs Aliens - have eight films scheduled for release by 2012, and Katzenberg has said that they hope to reduce costs by around 10%, with an average budget of $130m per picture (including 3D conversion).

In 2010 DreamWorks will release How to Train Your Dragon (based on the book of the same name), Shrek Forever After, and Ooberman, which features the voice talents of Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller, while 2011 will see the return of Jack Black as Po in Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom. As if that wasn't enough DreamWorks are also producing a second sequel to Madagascar along with Shrek spin-off Puss in Boots, both of which are scheduled for release in 2012 (along with an original property yet to be confirmed).

All of the films will be released in 3D and will take DreamWorks to the end of their current distribution deal with Paramount Pictures.

It's a Wrap - Where Have All The Ideas Gone?

It’s a Wrap – reboots, reboots, reboots and reboots (with a sprinkling of Transformers, G.I. Joe, and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus for good measure) in our round-up of recent movie news from the world-wide-web.

We've been a little behind at FlickeringMyth with the daily updates lately due to other commitments, but we'll continue adding content as often as possible and should be back on track in the next few weeks. In the meantime, it's also been quite a while since our last news round-up so let's take a look at some interesting titbits coming out of Movieland...

First up is the report from Bloody-Disgusting that 20th Century Fox are lining up a reboot of the Alien franchise, with Ridley and Tony Scott attached as producers on behalf of Scott Free Productions. The spy reporter - who also broke the news that Robert Rodriguez was working with Fox on the recently confirmed Predator reboot - claims that music video director Carl Rinsch will helm the remake, and that the plan is to follow a similar concept to that of the original film. No doubt Fox are already conjuring up plans for an Alien vs Predator reboot to kill both franchises once again.

Continuing with the reboot theme, Terminator Salvation and Sherlock Holmes producer Dan Lin has been talking about his plans for the next installment in the Tomb Raider movie series, which just so happens to be a prequel. "It's a great origin story that we're going to tell", says Lin, "a very character-orientated story... more realistic than the past Lara Croft movies."

As with just about every other upcoming female role, Megan Fox has been linked to the part despite shooting the rumour down in an interview with Times Online, along with those linking her to Wonder Woman. To be fair, unless the Tomb Raider origin story deals with a pre-pubescent Lara then I'm not particularly sure that Fox has the erm... ability to pull off such a physically demanding role.

But - if you just can't get enough of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen star - be sure to check out the latest publicity shots from the upcoming Michael Bay blockbuster courtesy of IGN.

And just to prove once and for all that the well of ideas is truly dry, Joblo have got their hands on some exclusive set pictures from the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, which also includes our first (albeit slight) glimpse of Watchmen star Jackie Earle Haley as child killer Freddy Krueger.

Meanwhile, Empire Online recently unveiled the international poster for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which also happens to feature our first official look at Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander (top right).

The Stephen Sommers action-figure adaptation - which also stars Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, Rachel Nichols, Marlon Wayans and Christopher Eccleston - is released on August 7th, most likely to considerable fan backlash. You can view the trailer for G.I. Joe (and Transformers 2) right here.

Finally, Joblo have a collected a few videos from Terry Gilliam's newest movie The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which recently debuted at Cannes and features Heath Ledger's final screen performance. Check out the embed below and be sure to head over to the site for more!

UK Box Office Top Ten - weekend commencing 22/05/09

UK box-office top ten for the weekend of Friday 22nd - Sunday 24th May 2009.

Continuing the streak of new releases debuting at the top of the UK box office, Night at the Museum 2 opened in first place with a healthy gross of £4.1m in receipts. The Ben Stiller comedy sequel also repeated this success across the pond, beating out Terminator: Salvation to top spot in the North American charts.

Meanwhile Star Trek slipped down into third place behind Angels & Demons, but has now overtaken the total gross of X-Men Origins: Wolverine despite the mutant superhero film having a week head start in cinemas. Star Trek now becomes the highest grossing movie in the top ten with Monsters vs Aliens slipping out of the chart after seven weeks on release.

Despite takings continuing to plunge Wolverine managed to hold on to the same position as last week, with the animated adaptation of British author Neil Gaiman's Coraline dropping two places from third to fifth. Hannah Montana: The Movie and Fighting each fell one spot into sixth and seventh respectively, while the newly released Brit horror-comedy Tormented pulled in £284,757, making it the eighth most popular film of the weekend.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and State of Play remain in the top ten (with the Russell Crowe / Ben Affleck political thriller now stretching to seven weeks in the chart) but there was no room for Zac Efron comedy 17 Again, which disappeared without a trace.

Pos.	Film	Weekend Gross	Week	Total UK Gross
1	Night at the Museum 2	£4,160,496	1	£4,160,496
2	Angels & Demons	£2,453,169	2	£11,020,395
3	Star Trek	£1,645,238	3	£15,396,776
4	X-Men Origins: Wolverine	£459,405	4	£15,188,597
5	Coraline	£458,178	3	£4,971,782
6	Hannah Montana: The Movie	£413,218	4	£6,604,938
7	Fighting	£299,196	2	£1,680,366
8	Tormented	£284,757	1	£284,757
9	Ghosts of Girlfriends Past	£162,926	4	£3,911,374
10	State of Play	£88,895	5	£5,405,100

It seems like Wednesday is the new Friday in UK cinemas with two new releases hitting screens May 27th. Sam Raimi returns to the genre where he made his name with horror flick Drag Me to Hell (view the trailer here), and WWE star John Cena hopes to put the ghost of The Marine to rest with his latest actioner 12 Rounds, directed by Renny Harlin. Also released is the Fatal Attraction-type thriller Obsessed, starring Idris Elba, Beyonce Knowles and Ali Larter, along with Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.

Drag Me to Hell should do good business but don't expect the other new releases to cause too many ripples in the box office chart once the dust settles this upcoming weekend.

Movies... For Free! The Street Fighter (1974)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here...


The Street Fighter, 1974.

Directed by Shigehiro Ozawa.
Starring Sonny Chiba, Goichi Yamada, and Yutaka Nakajima.

After the phenominal world-wide success of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973), which really introduced the martial arts genre to Western audiences, Japanese production house Toei Company decided to capitalise on this new market with the release of The Street Fighter, starring Shinichi 'Sonny' Chiba.

Chiba stars as Takuma Tsurugi, a master martial artist who is approached by Yakuza gangsters to kidnap Sarai (Nakajima), the daughter of an oil tycoon. When he refuses the Yakuza sentence Tsurugi to death, so he tracks down Sarai and offers to protect her from the gangsters who are pursuing them both. Cue lots of martial arts action, blood and brutality.

Sonny Chiba had previously appeared in numerous TV and film productions in his homeland but was largely unknown in the West, with The Street Fighter proving to be his breakthrough international role. It spawned two sequels - Return of the Street Fighter and The Street Fighter's Last Revenge - along with a spin-off Sister Street Fighter (each also released in 1974), and helped to position Chiba as the premier Japanese martial arts star of the 70's and 80's.

Please note that the film is split into two parts - the second part will load automatically after the first has finished, simply click play to resume.



Embeds courtesy of Internet Archive.

Click here to view all previous entries in our Movies... For Free! collection.

What's Happening With... The Hobbit?

Gary Collinson looks at the development of the live action adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy adventure, The Hobbit...

When a franchise grosses close to $3 billion at the world-wide box office you can rest assured that future installments will follow. No sooner had Peter Jackson released the final part of The Lord of the Rings - based upon J.R.R. Tolkien's classic high-fantasy epic - than rumours of future adaptations began to emerge. Originally Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh had intended to adapt The Hobbit as the first part of a trilogy (with the other two films covering the events of The Lord of the Rings), but were unable to secure the rights to the 1937 novel at that time. They pressed ahead with development on The Lord of the Rings, which of course led to three hugely successful movies being released between 2001 and 2003 through studio New Line Cinema.

In 2006, MGM (who held the rights to The Hobbit through United Artists), expressed an interest in teaming with New Line to produce the prequel, which deals with the adventures of a young Bilbo Baggins as he travels with a company of dwarves to infiltrate the liar of the mighty dragon Smaug and reclaim a horde of stolen treasure. There was however one slight problem; Jackson had launched a lawsuit against New Line the previous year accusing the studio of misrepresenting profits on The Fellowship of the Ring, and in January 2007 studio chief Robert Shaye had said that Jackson would "never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working at the company".

New Line's blacklisting of Jackson prompted MGM to cool their interest, but after a string of financial failures Shaye began to back peddle, suggesting that he "would love for him [Jackson] to be creatively involved in some way in The Hobbit". This 'some way' soon turned into an executive producer role when it was announced in December 2007 that New Line and MGM were teaming up to produce two movies back-to-back, each budgeted at $150m and set for release in December 2011 and 2012 respectively. While Sam Raimi was initially the strong favourite for directing duties, that honour fell to Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro in April 2008, and six months later del Toro, Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens were hard at work fleshing out the story and developing the treatments.

del Toro's appointment was followed by confirmation that Andy Serkis and Sir Ian McKellen would be reprising their roles as Gollum and Gandalf, while the director also discussed their intentions, describing the book as "one self-contained film", while the second movie would serve as "an integral part of telling the story of those 50 years of history lost in the narrative". Jackson had previously discussed possibilities for the second film, mentioning Gandalf's disappearance and meetings with the White Council along with Aragorn's protection of the Shire and Gollum's experiences in Mordor.

Naturally this led to rumours of many other returning characters and cast members, including Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, and Dominic Monaghan, along with newcomers and del Toro regulars Ron Perlman and Doug Jones. Christopher Lee - who portrays Saruman, head of the White Council - told Empire that he would reprise his role if asked but later recanted, suggesting that he did not feel physically up to the demands of travelling to New Zealand. Meanwhile, the lead role of Bilbo Baggins had been strongly linked to Wanted star James McAvoy, but a Christmas 2008 announcement failed to materialise and no further announcements have been forthcoming.

Last Month Empire Magazine spoke to both del Toro and Jackson and it was revealed that plans for the two movies have changed, with the events of The Hobbit now spanning both films. While this throws into doubt the previously announced 'bridging film', it wouldn't be too much of a stretch of the imagination to suspect a second trilogy could be in the works. With filming set for 2010 fans of Tolkien's classic fantasy world will soon have much to stoke their excitement as the production really steps up a gear up over the coming months.