Nishio

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John Kent (Randolph Scott), a former star football player at Harvard, goes to Paris with his friend Huck Haines (Fred Astaire) and the latter's dance band, the Wabash Indianians. Alexander Voyda (Luis Alberni) has booked the band, but refuses to let them play when he finds the musicians are not the Indians he expected, but merely from Indiana (Huck Haines and his Indianians Band).　　John turns to the only person he knows in Paris for help, his Aunt Minnie (Helen Westley), who owns the fashionable Roberta gown shop. While there, he meets her chief assistant (and secretly the head designer), Stephanie (Irene Dunne). John is quickly smitten with her.　　Meanwhile, Huck unexpectedly stumbles upon someone he knows very well. Countess Scharwenka, a temperamental customer at Roberta's, turns out to be his hometown sweetheart Lizzie Gatz (Ginger Rogers). She gets Huck's band an engagement at the nightclub where she is a featured entertainer.　　Two things trouble John. One is Ladislaw (Victor Varconi), the handsome Russian deposed prince and doorman who seems too interested in Stephanie. The other is the memory of Sophie (Claire Dodd), the snobbish, conceited girlfriend he left behind after a quarrel over his lack of sophistication and polish.　　When Aunt Minnie dies unexpectedly without leaving a will, John inherits the shop. Knowing nothing about women's fashion and that his aunt intended for Stephanie to inherit the business, he persuades Stephanie to remain as his partner. Correspondents flock to hear what a football player has to say about feminine fashions. Huck gives the answers, making a lot of weird statements about the innovations John is planning to introduce.　　Sophie arrives in Paris, attracted by John's good fortune. She enters the shop, looking for a dress, but is dissatisfied with everything Stephanie shows her. Huck persuades her to choose a gown that John had ordered discarded as too vulgar. When John sees her in it, they quarrel for the final time.　　John reproaches Stephanie for selling Sophie the gown. Terribly hurt, Stephanie quits the shop. With Roberta's putting on a fashion show in a week, Huck takes over the design work, with predictably bad results. When Stephanie sees his awful creations, she is persuaded to return to save Roberta's reputation.　　The show is a triumph, helped by the entertaining of Huck, Countess Scharwenka, and the band. (A pre-stardom Lucille Ball, with platinum blond hair, appears uncredited in her first RKO film[4] as a model wearing an elaborate feather cape, after the vocal by Dunne, in the fashion show.[5]) The closing sensation is a gown modeled by Stephanie herself. At the show, John overhears that she and Ladislaw are leaving Paris and mistakenly assumes that they have married. Later, he congratulates her for becoming a princess. When she informs him that Ladislaw is merely her cousin and that the title has been hers since birth, the lovers are reunited. Huck and Lizzie, who decide to get married, do a final tap dance sequel.

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　　This film, very much of its time shows London in the early 1970's. Of course now a different world. Note the old fashion Underground ticket machines, and the Black and White Telly in the flat. The location looks very much like Churchill Gardens, Pimlico, with Battersea Power Station in the background. And, plenty of smoking going on, in pubs, and on the tube. The film is strangely sexy in its own way, with the young girl playing along with the much older man, its really a sexual fantasy come true. It is another one of those British low budget film where the low budget adds to rather that take away value. Watch for fun, which is what it is.

LifeoffashiondesignerMasabaGuptaassheentersbackintothedatingworld.

Arivalryformsbetweentwoteacherswhoarepolaropposites:astrict,old-fashionedby-the-bookinstructorandhischeerfulyoungcounterpartinterestedinsocialmedia.

PANIC BEATS begins with a totally nude woman with welts on her body, running through a misty forest full of decayed skeletons. A knight on horseback is chasing her, and we soon learn that he is Alaric de Marnac (a wicked character Naschy first created for HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB), viciously killing her for her unfaithful ways. After the credits role, we are taken to the present where a descendent of Marnac named Paul (Naschy) is married to the wealthy Geneviève (Julia Saly) was has some serious heart problems. Paul decides to take her to his ancestral home in the country for some peace and quiet, but the superstitious-filled setting opens a Pandora’s Box of terrible occurrences.　　We soon discover that Paul is a real son-of-a-bitch who plans to scare his wife to death, planning to control her fortune and continue his secret affair with seductive bad girl Mireille (Silvia Miró), who happens to be the niece of the tarot card-reading housekeeper, Mabile (Lola Gaos). Paul’s malevolent scheme works, but he still has to worry about an additional money-hungry mistress (this guy really gets around!), the unforgiving Mabile, as well as new fianceé Mireille who might be hiding a thing or two herself. More grisly murders follow, and the ghost of Marnac returns from hell to punish the most despicable human character in the film.　　PANIC BEATS was also written by Naschy (under his real name Jacinto Molina) who injects the film with an old-fashioned spooky house motif, beefed up with a modern movie sense of violence and sexuality. The film offers nothing too innovative storywise, and even Naschy admits on the disc’s extras that it was partly inspired by GASLIGHT and REBECCA, but he seems to just toss in a hodgepodge of exploitation and horror ingredients, while delivering a stylish and enjoyable effort with a number of twists and some genuinely chilling moments. The camera shots and lighting are both effective, and there's even does a cool set-up (much like what Freddie Francis did in THE SKULL and THE CREEPING FLESH) where we see the point of view of Marnac through his dark helmet as he stalks his female prey. Graphically, we are exposed to everything from a plate of bloody eyeballs, to victims being beaten relentlessly with the various Medieval weapons affixed on the house’s walls (for example, someone is axed in the stomach, followed by the soaked entrails oozing out!). Naschy’s most frequent 1980s leading lady, Julia Saly, is not given much to do, but with her offbeat looks, is a nice presence nonetheless. The prominent female star here is Silvia Miró who is seen in the buff frequently, and she certainly makes for some well-appreciated Euro starlet eye candy. Naschy himself is very good in the film, putting on conniving facades, carrying a number of women on a string,

Afterbeingphotographedbychanceonthewaytoworkoneday,SuziebecomesthecovermodelofSibylle,arenownedfashionmagazine,oftenreferredtoasthe“VogueoftheEast”.AsshedelvesintotheundergroundsceneofEastBerlin,shefallsinlovewithCoyote,aphotographerwhourgeshertofleewithhimtotheWest.YetthedecisionturnsouttobeatoughoneforSuzi...

　　Based on an unknown Sch?nberg opera from 1929, From Today Until Tomorrow explores one night in a not-quite loveless marriage. A husband and wife return from a party where she has flirted with another man, while he has cast an appraising eye toward an attractive, fashionably dressed acquaintance of his wife’s. Though each dreams, briefly, of leaving the marriage for the excitement and mystery of a new lover, in the end they decide stability and comfort are more important than the fleeting thrill of new romance. Directors Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, who previously collaborated on two other films about music (The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968, and Moses and Aaron, 1975), rely on long fixed shots in austere black-and-white so that the focus remains on the musical brilliance of Sch?nberg’s atonal score, performed here by 70 musicians. That Sch?nberg would choose such a relatively lighthearted message for his newly discovered musical language remains a mystery, especially since the conclusion reached by the husband and wife—to stick with the tried and true—seems directly at odds with Sch?nberg’s own philosophy of composing. It is just this juxtaposition, however, coupled with Straub and Huillet’s faithful presentation, that makes the opera a compelling addition to the Sch?nberg canon—and the film such a challenging and intriguing experience.

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