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Former heavyweight boxing champion Leon Spinks Jr., who defeated Muhammad Ali for the world heavyweight title in 1978, has died. He died Friday after a five-year battle with prostate and other cancers, his representatives at Firm PR confirmed. He was 67.

“Leon fought his battle with numerous illnesses resiliently, never losing his trademark smile,” said a statement from Firm PR. “Showing true Spinks determination, he never threw in the towel.”

Born on July 1, 1953 in St. Louis, Spinks discovered his loved for boxing while serving in the Marines. He kicked off his career taking home multiple wins in the light heavyweight division. He first won the bronze medal at the 1974 World Championships, then the silver at the 1975 Pan American Games and later the gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

While Spinks had numerous wins under his belt before debuting professionally in 1977, he cemented his place in boxing history by upsetting the legendary Muhammad Ali on Feb.

Tiger Joe Robinson, a real-life British judo, karate and wrestling champion who famously engaged Sean Connery in a fierce fight in an elevator in Diamonds Are Forever, has died. He was 90.

Robinson died July 3 after a short illness in Brighton, England, his family announced.

Robinson also jumped in the ring to wrestle the Italian giant Primo Carnera in director Carol Reed's A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), which competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

In Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Robinson, who played a...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, Sam Moffitt, and Tom Stockman

Special effects legend Ray Harryhausen, whose dazzling and innovative visual effects work on fantasy adventure films such as Jason And The Argonauts and The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad passed away in 2013 at age 92. In 1933, the then-13-year-old Ray Harryhausen saw King Kong at a Hollywood theater and was inspired – not only by Kong, who was clearly not just a man in a gorilla suit, but also by the dinosaurs. He came out of the theatre “stunned and haunted. They looked absolutely lifelike … I wanted to know how it was done.” It was done by using stop-motion animation: jointed models filmed one frame at a time to simulate movement. Harryhausen was to become the prime exponent of the technique and its combination with live action. The influence of Harryhausen on film luminaries like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, Sam Moffitt, and Tom Stockman

Special effects legend Ray Harryhausen, whose dazzling and innovative visual effects work on fantasy adventure films such as Jason And The Argonauts and The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad passed away last month at age 92. In 1933, the then-13-year-old Ray Harryhausen saw King Kong at a Hollywood theater and was inspired – not only by Kong, who was clearly not just a man in a gorilla suit, but also by the dinosaurs. He came out of the theatre “stunned and haunted. They looked absolutely lifelike … I wanted to know how it was done.” It was done by using stop-motion animation: jointed models filmed one frame at a time to simulate movement. Harryhausen was to become the prime exponent of the technique and its combination with live action. The influence of Harryhausen on film luminaries like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Peter Jackson,...

Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack, 1933

By now, King Kong is so familiar and endearing that we have to pinch ourselves to remember he's a fantasy. It feels so true! Today, the special effects in the movie look innocent and charming, not to say amateur. But somehow we believe that Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) goes on a boat to Skull Island to act in a movie planned by Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), is kidnapped by "natives" (white actors in shameless black-face), then offered as a sacrifice to this momentous id-like beast, Kong – one of the most resonant names in movies, known all over the world and acknowledged as the animal we all long to be.

But when she screams, we understand. Yet Kong proves to be a gentleman and a stalwart defender of his Beauty. He'll take on any dinosaur the film can invent. And he treats Ann as a precious new toy,...

“Boxing,” Eddie Muller affirmed, “is noir.” In the early 1930s between the demise of Jack Dempsey as heavyweight champion of the world and the ascension of Joe Louis as heavyweight champion of the world, a couple of enterprising gangsters on the East Coast—Paul John (“Frankie”) Carbo and Frank (“Blinky”) Palermo (“I’m not making these names up,” Muller assured us)—attempted to take control of all the boxing rings by basically determining who would and would not fight for the championship fights that were being held in the greater New York area. Their great contribution to boxing was the creation of heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, a circus strongman that Carbo and Palermo had their hooks into who they basically led by a leash to the heavyweight championship of the world. Mark Robson’s The Harder They Fall is the fictionalized account of the Primo Carnera scandal.

In keeping with...