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Clint Eastwood is known for his elaborate and prolific career and filmography. He has not only entertained his audience as an actor, but down the line, he also picked up directing and proved his worth as a talented director. He not only delved into the marvelous Western world but also portrayed characters in different genres, including romantic drama, cop movies, and a lot of thriller flicks. Eastwood also amazed everyone as a musician and composer, and in the 1980s, he even served as the Mayor of the California town Carmel-by-the-Sea.

A Still from The Bridges of Madison County | Credits: Warner Bros.

He surely has an impressive resume to show. Eastwood’s charming screen presence, stoic physique, and serious look on his face gave him success in the war and crime movie genres. He supremely excelled in them and even received 11 Oscar nominations for his acting and directing talents, while winning...

Throughout the 1950s, big-budget musicals were de rigueur for Hollywood, and there was a sudden glut of epics that sported gigantic budgets, recognizable stars, and no small amount of studio hype. Such films were exhibited as touring roadshow productions, which was a great way for films to make fistfuls of cash. Roadshow epics were also, it should be noted, a concerted ploy by studios to distract audiences from the rising threat of television. Studios felt the need to invest a lot of money into musicals and epics, hoping the massive productions could draw people into theaters and keep the industry afloat.

One might logically predict, however, that Hollywood tried to ride the trend of epics for a little longer than was healthy, and foolish overspending eventually became common. The age of the "roadshow epic" pretty much came to a close with the release of the notorious bomb "Cleopatra" in 1963. 

But then,...

“The transition will be seamless.”

Those words usually accompany an announcement of a corporate takeover and, of course, it never works out that way. And it likely won’t for Paramount 2024.

Consider history: When MGM found it had become a corporate conquest in the mid-1960s, not only was the studio staff fired but three major movies were canceled mid-production. The executive guillotine was also in action at Warner Bros a year later, when the production team was decimated by its new proprietor and even Looney Tunes was dropped.

Paramount’s “transition” in 1966 was even more lethal: Not only did the new studio owner cancel existing shoots but he also greenlit three of the biggest flops in Hollywood history – earning renown as “Bluhdorn’s Bombs” (see below).

History may not automatically repeat itself in the deal now unfolding behind the filigreed Paramount gates, but the “seamless transition” already sounds problematic:...

The original 1964 Broadway production of "Hello, Dolly!" was considered a showcase for its star, Carol Channing, and little else. At the time, critics were not entirely kind, saying the show had "unnecessary vulgar and frenzied touches," and that they "wouldn't say that Jerry Herman's score is memorable." Despite the middling reviews, "Hello, Dolly!" won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Leading Actress (for Channing), Best Direction, Best Choreography, and Best Original Score.

The mid-'60s were a weirdly fraught time for major Hollywood musicals, as the genre provided some of the era's biggest hits, but also some of its biggest bombs. In 1964, Disney had a big hit with "Mary Poppins" and Warner Bros. made bank with "My Fair Lady," so musicals were suddenly on the rise. In 1965, Fox released "The Sound of Music," adapted from the stage production by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and it proved to be one of...

Don Siegel’s 1976 western The Shootist stars John Wayne in his final film appearance, though it’s perhaps just as notable for the muted nature of its regard for the pathology of violence. After all, Siegel is the same filmmaker who half a decade prior made Dirty Harry, in which Clint Eastwood’s renegade cop relishes squeezing the trigger of his 44-magnum revolver whenever the opportunity presents itself.

There’s a propulsive mania to Siegel’s direction of Dirty Harry, tapping as it does into the curious overlap between Harry’s police tactics and a psycho sniper’s bloodlust. Wayne’s J.B. Books in The Shootist has no such compelling correlate. He’s a former sheriff turned gunslinger, now an old man easing the pain of his terminal cancer with swigs of laudanum, and he’s aiming to die in peace. It’s 1901, and the fact that he can’t...

Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon can be viewed as one of the last gasps of a dwindling Hollywood studio system, as well as a precursor to the New Hollywood. The film, with its expansive anamorphic vistas of the American Northwest, bears some superficial similarities to Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, which is often historicized as the end of the New Hollywood, given how it bankrupted United Artists. But in contrast to the profound sadness with which Cimino regards America’s history of violence, Logan’s musical romp takes a lighthearted approach to the process of resettlement, and it’s propelled by the contrasting personalities of Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood as bickering and tussling gold prospectors.

Paint Your Wagon straddles multiple genres at once, suggesting something like a western-inflected musical riff on Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living. The crux of the story concerns Ben Rumson (Marvin), a ne...

William O’Connell, whose extensive TV and film acting credits in the 1960s and ’70s included a memorably villainous role on Star Trek and a string of adversaries in the films of his frequent collaborator Clint Eastwood, died January 15 at his home in Sherman Oaks, CA. He was 94.

His death was announced to Deadline by a family friend. A cause was not disclosed.

O’Connell scored a lengthy roster of TV episodic credits in the 1960s, becoming a busy character actor of the day. He had small roles, often nameless characters distinguished only by their job titles — Flagman, Cabbie, Field Rep. #1 — in Highway Patrol, Peter Gunn and The Twilight Zone, also popping up on Dennis the Menace, My Three Sons, The Outer Limits, Bonanza, The Munsters, Batman and The Lucy Show.

His most memorable TV role from the era came in 1967, when he was cast in the Season 2 “Journey to Babel” episode of Star Trek as Thelev,...

Actor Clint Eastwood has starred in a variety of movies, but was once mostly known for action films like Dirty Harry. Still, the filmmaker wasn’t afraid of branching out in his younger years. But when he did a film that was too unlike his typical work, his inner circle panicked.

Everyone thought Clint Eastwood was making a big mistake doing this feature Clint Eastwood | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

After building his reputation as an action star, Eastwood wanted to experiment with other genres. To do this, he began eyeing the feature Every Which Way but Loose. The 1978 movie was a huge departure from Eastwood’s usual work. The veteran actor played a trucker and part-time fighter with a pet orangutan named Clyde. Although it had action elements, it functioned heavily as a comedy, targeting a much younger audience than Eastwood’s films were used to.

When his team discovered Eastwood was actually considering the project,...

Barbie is confounding: In addition to setting box office records, the movie has also inspired a flood of commentaries about its presumed “message.”

Yes, there have been more editorials about a doll than about a bomb. Why did Barbie complain about “cognitive dissonance” at a Mattel corporate meeting? Or denounce “sexualized consumerism”? For that matter, was it rude to joke about Proust, the revered French novelist?

Were director Greta Gerwig and her co-screenwriter, husband Noah Baumbach, nurturing a hidden subtext in their script?

And should we care? The big news on Barbie: it’s headed for $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales by this weekend, vastly surpassing Oppenheimer, which has a longer running time and more limited release schedule (it’s at $181 million U.S.).

Even Barbie swag is as inescapably pervasive as it is numbingly pink. The caps, T-shirts, tote bags, sunglasses and toy cars have arrived like a wave of Pepto Bismol.

When Midnight Cowboy came out in 1969, Miami Herald critic John Huddy heralded its arrival with a string of superlatives: “Staggering, shattering, heartbreaking, hilarious, tragic, raw and absurd.”

Over the years, the ranks of its admirers has only grown, among them documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski.

“I remember feeling that it was a really radical film,” recalls Buirski, who first saw Midnight Cowboy sometime after its original release. “It felt different from anything I had seen… It was like a gut punch.”

Director Nancy Buirski

Buirski’s documentary Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, now playing in limited release in New York, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Detroit and other cities, digs into the loam that produced such a bleak yet beautiful flower of a film. Midnight Cowboy hit theaters the same year as Hello, Dolly! and Paint Your Wagon but unlike those celluloid larks, John Schlesinger’s film...

Sally Ann Howes, who began her acting career as a child and was best known for starring in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” opposite Dick Van Dyke, died on Dec. 19. She was 91.

Her death was confirmed by her nephew, Toby Howes, who tweeted: “I can also confirm the passing of my beloved Aunty Sally Ann Howes who died peacefully in her sleep yesterday. My brother & I thought Sally Ann might hold on until the Christmas screening of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ as this would have greatly appealed to her mischievous side.”

“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” is often broadcast on Christmas Day in the U.K.

In a career that spanned five decades, Howes racked up 40 film and television credits, having spent the latter half of her career focusing on the theater, including a part in Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” at the New York City Opera in 1990.

Born in...

The year of 1969 saw the moon landing of the Apollo 11’s Eagle module, Richard Nixon sworn in as the 37th president of the United States, the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village ushering in the gay rights movement, the Tate-La Bianca murders by the Manson Family, the landmark Woodstock Music and Arts Fair which attracts 400,000, the tragic and violent Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway and even Tiny Tim marrying Miss Vicki on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

But one major event was basically ignored by the mainstream media: the Harlem Cultural Arts Festival which took place June 29-August 24 at the Mount Morris Park. Founded by Tony Lawrence, the festival celebrating Black pride, music and culture features such landmark performers as Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension and Mahalia Jackson. And when the NYPD refused to supply security,...

Robert C. Jones, an Oscar-winning writer and editor whose credits include It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Coming Home and Love Story, has died. He was 84.

“It is with deep sadness that I am writing to tell you the passing of Robert C. Jones, who was a celebrated editor and screenwriter, and a beloved professor at our School,” said Elizabeth Daley of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where Jones served as a professor for 15 years.

Jones was born on March 30, 1936 in Los Angeles. His foray into film work began upon his drafting into the U.S. Army, when he joined the Army Pictorial Center from 1958 to 1960 as a film editor. At the Pictorial Center he edited Army training films, documentaries and several segments of the television program The Big Picture.

After his Army stint, Jones further developed his editing skills for A Child Is Waiting...

It’s 1927, and we are inside a Chicago recording studio. A blues singer and her band banter about the music business and its inherent lack of equality.

It’s 1964, and we are in Miami, where Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay (as he was known for one more day) discuss their roles in society.

It’s semi-present day and we’re in a small town in Indiana, where a high school prom is upended by a non-straight pair. Stage performers show up to save the day.

Three films are arriving this month — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman, “One Night in Miami,” directed by Regina King, and “The Prom,” directed by Ryan Murphy, starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and James Corden — that are all are adaptations of plays. This used to happen all the time but not so much anymore.

Until now.

Some of us have spent nearly as much time in Springfield as we have in our own actual hometowns. So much has changed in the 30 years since The Simpsons debuted in 1989, but some things never grow old. Which led to an even more important conversation: Of the 670-plus episodes that have aired since its beginning, which would you show to the few who remain unconverted to the show’s genius? What, essentially, are the greatest Simpsons’ episodes of them all?

So after hours of arguing, several bouts of fisticuffs, many...

Pop culture creates goddesses only to offer them up for sacrifice, and over the course of her career, Kristen Stewart has no doubt gotten close enough to that pyre to smell the brimstone. So she’s a natural to play Jean Seberg in “Seberg,” about the Iowa girl who became an international movie star, only to be targeted and ultimately destroyed by the FBI because of her affiliation with the Black Panthers.

And while “Seberg” is rarely as great as its lead actress, the film does shed light on a tragic corner of American history that’s not discussed nearly enough — the U.S. citizens who had their lives shattered by J. Edgar Hoover’s secret Cointelpro (counter-intelligence program) surveillance that targeted anyone the FBI considered “subversive,” be they Vietnam War protesters, black or indigenous activists, even environmentalists.

Jean Seberg’s life comes with its own built-in metaphor: She began...

Robert Evans, the legendary Paramount Pictures exec and consummate Hollywood producer behind films like Chinatown and Marathon Man, died on Saturday, October 26th, Variety reported. He was 89. A representative for Evans confirmed his death, though no cause or location was given; The New York Times reported that Evans died in Beverly Hills.

Evans’ career stretched across decades and was filled with an array of glitzy highs and brutal lows. He was best known for running and revitalizing Paramount in the late Sixties and early Seventies, overseeing hits like The Odd Couple,...

Robert Evans, the Paramount executive who produced “Chinatown” and “Urban Cowboy” and whose life became as melodramatic and jaw-dropping as any of his films, died on Saturday night. He was 89.

Even though Hollywood history is filled with colorful characters, few can match the tale of Evans, whose life would seem far-fetched if it were fiction. With his matinee-idol looks but little acting talent, Evans was given starring roles in a few movies and then, with no studio experience, was handed the production reins at Paramount in the 1960s. When he left the exec ranks, his first film as a producer was the classic “Chinatown,” and he followed with other hits, like “Marathon Man” and “Urban Cowboy.” Eventually, his distinctive look and speaking style turned him into a cult figure, and he had the distinction of being the only film executive who starred in his own animated TV series.

His life was a continuous roller-coaster.

The 71st Emmy Awards featured a major gaffe during the In Memoriam tribute when a photo of living composer Leonard Slatkin was used to honor the late André Previn. The Television Academy issued the following statement reacting to the In Memoriam segment error: “The producers for the 71st Emmy Awards, the Television Academy and Fox sincerely apologize for this error. All In Memoriam mentions on the Television Academy’s website feature accurate imagery for Mr. Previn.”

Previn was nominated for 11 Academy Awards throughout his career, winning the Best Original Score prize for “Gigi,” “Porgy and Bess,” “Irma la Douce,” and “My Fair Lady.” Additional movies composed by Previn include “All in a Night’s Work,” “Designing Woman,” “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” and “Paint Your Wagon.” The composer passed away in February at the age of 89. The 75-year-old Slatkin is the Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and...

“Who is Jean Seberg?” a reporter asks the eponymous movie star midway through “Seberg,” attempting to close a puffy promotional interview for “Paint Your Wagon” with some semblance of personal insight. She doesn’t get to answer, as Seberg’s publicist swiftly calls time on the question: “Let’s just keep it about the movie,” he instructs. It’s one of many moments in Benedict Andrews’ slick, diverting portrait in which Seberg is shown to be treated as a product, a pawn or a patsy, handled by men in their own best interests rather than hers. And yet “Seberg” does something a little similar to that protective publicist: Every time it threatens to truly pierce the psyche of its subject, played with typically intriguing, elusory intelligence by Kristen Stewart, the more ordinary mechanics of the movie she’s serving get in the way.

In fairness, those mechanics are more movie-ish...

A fitting punishment for anyone who felt that “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” didn’t lavish enough love upon the late Sharon Tate, Benedict Andrews’ “Seberg” is proof enough that extra screen time isn’t the secret to a more satisfying cinematic séance.

Which isn’t to say that this scattered look at the last years of Jean Seberg’s life gives the actress its undivided attention. Less a biopic about the “Breathless” star than a paranoid thriller that revolves around her fateful role in the FBI’s Cointelpro surveillance program, Andrews’ film might position Seberg as its subject, but it ultimately just uses her as a screen on which to project a story about someone else. Whereas Quentin Tarantino suffused Tate’s memory into the very soul of his revisionist elegy, liberating the murdered starlet from her own iconography, Andrews — whose film also takes place in the late...

David Crow Jul 25, 2019

We examine the shocking ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and what it means for the film's era and Quentin Tarantino.

This article contains major Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spoilers.

Joan Didion famously wrote in her 1979 collection of essays, The White Album, about the night Sharon Tate died.

“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” wrote Didion. “Ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”

This is often the conventional wisdom about the era: Charles Manson’s so called Family brought an end to the Summer of Love, which also just happened to occur around the same time that the old Hollywood studio system finally collapsed, buried by its massive flops like Hello,...

To Quentin Tarantino, the year 1969 represented a moment of magic and turmoil in Hollywood and, being Tarantino, he determined to make a movie exploring it. He was, in fact, only 6 years old in 1969; as a result, his “take” on that year inevitably poses a challenge to those of us who’d actually lived through it. This is particularly true since Tarantino has a colorful propensity to rewrite history, his movies re-arraying events about slavery or Hitler — or hippies.

The upshot: Tarantino’s new movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, offers filmgoers classic star turns from Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. Both seem exhilarated, cast as polar opposites of their true selves: DiCaprio plays a terminally insecure actor, obsessed that he will never achieve stardom, Pitt plays an unemployed stunt man eager to bury his loser past. Both have an eerie premonition of a generational change in the public taste for TV and movies,...

Released in the same year as The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Henry Hathaway’s western was defiantly old-fashioned in comparison

The year 1969 was a true inflection point for the American western, a once-dominant genre that had become a casualty of the culture, particularly when Vietnam had rendered the moral clarity of white hats and black hats obsolete. A handful of westerns were released by major studios that year, including forgettable or regrettable star vehicles for Burt Reynolds (Sam Whiskey) and Clint Eastwood (Paint Your Wagon), who were trying to revitalize the genre with a touch of whimsy. But 50 years later, three very different films have endured: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch and True Grit. Together, they represented the past, present and future of the western.

Related: Midnight Cowboy at 50: why the X-rated best picture winner endures...

With Rocketman opening strongly this past weekend at 3,500 theaters, and with a dozen other music-driven movies huddled at the starting line, one movie milestone is being studiously ignored: the 50th anniversary of Paint Your Wagon.

At its opening, Roger Ebert called Paint “a lump of a movie.” Its failings, he wrote, display all that could go wrong in the music genre – a comment that should resonate with Celine Dion, David Bowie, Boy George, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Carole King, Elvis Presley, Judy Garland and, yes, even the Beatles, all of whose stories will be immortalized in upcoming musical biopics.

Having lived through the production of Paint Your Wagon, I’m more than a little surprised by this sudden musical gridlock.

Some context: Fifty years ago, with box office dwindling, Hollywood turned to the musical genre in the hope of re-awakening a golden era. But instead of discovering a new Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,...

Welcome to this week’s Ring Of Honor review, right here on Nerdly. I’m Nathan Favel and we have Bandido in the main event against Shane Taylor. Isn’t it nice when I don’t tell any jokes? Well, it isn’t for me. Why did the chicken cross the road? …to go watch Ring Of Honor! Yeah, my writers quit, so I’m stuck with Reading Rainbow humor.

Match #1: The Bouncers (Beer City Bruiser and Brawler Milonas) defeated Coast 2 Coast (Lsg and Shaheem Ali) and Shinobi Shadow Squad in a Triple Threat match The following is courtesy of rohwrestling.com:

Nova got off to a fast start against Lsg, but The Bouncers eventually used their significant weight advantage to take control. Coast 2 Coast got on a roll, as Ali took out his four opponents with a dive to the floor. In the end, The Bouncers prevailed after...

Oscar-winning film composer and symphony orchestra conductor Andre Previn died Thursday at his home in Manhattan, his manager confirmed to the New York Times. He was 89.

The former enfant terrible of motion picture scoring and accomplished jazz pianist was honored with four Academy Awards. He won the first two, for best scoring of a musical picture (a category that has since been retired), for “Gigi” and “Porgy & Bess” in 1958 and 1959, respectively, while still in his 20s. He then won two for best adaptation or treatment (another retired sub-category) in 1963 and 1964 for “Irma la Douce” and “My Fair Lady,” respectively.

He later abandoned films to conduct such esteemed orchestras as the London Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Previn’s jazz influence was pianist Art Tatum and, from the age of 12, he developed a proficiency in jazz piano, which led to his first film assignment at age 16, while still a...

At a time when Hollywood is cautiously playing by the rules, Clint Eastwood continues to create rules of his own. The hero in his new release, The Mule, is not a revered sniper (American Sniper) or a legendary pilot (Sully), but a politically incorrect, geriatric screwup. He is portrayed not by Bradley Cooper, who’s relegated to a supporting role, but by the 88-year-old Eastwood himself, looking fragile and a bit confused. When the plot goes astray, its problems relate not to an anticipated outburst of Dirty Harry violence but to scenes that may strike filmgoers as marginally maudlin.

The Mule won’t be a box office hit like Gran Torino, and it won’t win surprise Oscars like Million Dollar Baby, but it will reinforce Eastwood’s credentials as America’s most productive, autonomous and idiosyncratic filmmaker. Warner Bros released it the movie with little hoopla — a modest campaign,...

With three films already in release this year and another coming, Melissa McCarthy has been wallowing in worshipful media coverage. “Has anyone ever worked so hard to make us laugh?” the New York Times Magazine asked in this week’s cover story. Having established that she “owns” comedy, however, McCarthy, in true movie star fashion, has now switched to high drama. Mirthless Melissa’s new film, appropriately titled Can You Ever Forgive Me?, is best described by the New Yorker as “a mournful film suffused with an air of doom.”

I don’t want to pick on Melissa McCarthy, but the compulsion of stars to shed their true persona has always intrigued me. The pages of Hollywood history are steeped in examples of famed actors who want to prove that they can “stretch” — code for self-destruct.

On occasion, of course, the results have been inspiring: Remember how Tom Hanks, obviously...

Tony Sokol Sep 24, 2018

Warner Bros is putting Mel Gibson in Sam Peckinpah's saddle for a Wild Bunch remake.

"We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us," Don Jose said in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. "Perhaps the worst most of all." The director then took the most graphic violence and realistic gunshots to turn the wild south west into a beautifully tortured regression in time. Warner Bros. is handing the film over to Mel Gibson, who will co-write, executive produce, and direct a remake of the influential 1969 American epic Western movie, according to Deadline.

The Wild Bunch is about a gang of aging outlaws on the Mexico–United States border in 1913 led by William Holden. Lee Marvin was originally cast as the lead, but backed out to do the Western genre musical Paint Your Wagon. Veteran actor Holden was at the beginning of a major comeback.

The last few months of the year are known as Oscar season because it is the time in which studios release the films they intend to have contend for the Academy Awards. But just because you release your film during this time doesn’t automatically make it good enough to compete. Here are some infamous examples.

Just because you have a good story, an esteemed actor, or a knowledgeable director doesn’t mean you’ll end up with a good film. A good film is ultimately a collaborative effort, and the end result relies on many different factors that may or may not be controllable. I like to believe that the Oscars try to celebrate those moments in film where the pieces came together just right. Of course, some films think they can take shortcuts in order to reach the level of esteem that would be rewarded by the Academy.

Exclusive: Outside, the magazine which has published feature articles that were the basis for both film and television projects such as Everest, The Perfect Storm, Into the Wild, Blue Crush and 127 Hours, has just teamed up with The Gotham Group. The two companies will produce content for film, television and new media for what will be different platforms and distributors. Outside, which began in 1977 and is owned by the Mariah Media Network, is also known as the only magazine to have won three consecutive National Magazine Awards for general excellence.

If you add up the box office for those aforementioned feature projects alone, it totals ovver $700M worldwide. Larry Burke (Outside chairman) and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein (The Gotham Group’s CEO/founder and an avid sports enthusiast), are currently in talks with production companies, financiers, streaming services, broadcast and cable entities to start the partnership rolling.

“Over the last few weeks,...

Personal Shopper and Twilight actress Kristen Stewart has been cast in the independent political thriller, Against All Enemies, in the role of Saint Joan actress Jean Seberg.

Stewart joins Anthony Mackie, who will portray a civil rights activist and Jack O’Connell who has been cast as an FBI agent assigned to surveil the actress. Margaret Qualley and Colm Meaney will also star. Una director, Benedict Andrews will take the helm on a script by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse.

Also in the news – Madonna set to direct feature adaptation Taking Flight

The story will focus on attempts by the FBI to discredit Seberg through its Cointelpro program in retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party. Those efforts included creating a false story in 1970 that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband, but by a member of the Black Panther Party.

Seberg, whose career...

Steve Ross I Remember Him Well: The Songs of Alan Jay Lerner Birdland Jazz Club, NYC Monday, January 22, 2018

Lerner who?

Getting serious for a moment, this is the fact around which we will orbit: What really constitutes American culture? Literature and architecture and painting -- yes, certainly. But what particularly animates our hearts is song -- and, in particular, the living energy of the American musical theater. In that buoyant realm, there’s no greater literate master than lyricist and writer Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986). The open-and-shut-case evidence for this assertion is his CV: On A Clear Day, Brigadoon, Gigi, Paint Your Wagon, An American In Paris (story and screen play), Camelot, and -- most famously, My Fair Lady.

Watching our black and white TV, as a child I noticed my parents (and the studio audience) were delighted by a singer I’d never heard of. I could not understand the big to-do about him.

Ryan Lambie Jul 14, 2017

A cult gem in its own right, 1981's Galaxy Of Terror also gave James Cameron his start in big-screen filmmaking...

In most respects, it's pure Roger Corman: low-budget, swiftly made, and loaded with gratuitous gore and bare flesh. But take a closer look at Galaxy Of Terror, the amiably tawdry sci-fi horror flick released by Corman's New World in 1981, and you'll see the creative fingerprints of one James Cameron.

See related 8 Star Wars games we'd like to see

Directed by Bruce D Clark - who also co-wrote - Galaxy Of Terror slams together the plots of Ridley Scott's Alien and the 50s classic, Forbidden Planet. A group of explorers land on the planet Morganthus, where they discover a huge ancient pyramid; one by one, the visitors are terrorised and killed by monsters from their subconscious. One luckless character is torn apart by claws and tentacles...

Mubi will be showing the retrospective Philippe Garrel: Fight for Eternity from May 1 - July 5, 2017 in most countries around the world.Les enfants désaccordésQuestion: I must ask you here about one concept you discuss in your book, one that also might be thought of, next to the structural work, as another way to break from the story in the film. The concept is muzan, and I find it quite difficult to think of a proper translation of it into English. How do you employ this concept into your films, and does it, in fact, have anything to do with the way you wish to break away from the story?

Yoshishige Yoshida: I understand the word in itself, as you would understand the literal meaning of the kanji: something which expresses the impossibility of attaining stability or change for the better. Yes, I believe this is the meaning of the concept that I use.

Robert Altman, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie join together for one of the great westerns, a poetic account of the founding of a town and the way big business preys on foolish little guys. Raw and cluttered, the show gives the genre a new look, with a dreamy mix of snowflakes, opium and the music of Leonard Cohen. McCabe & Mrs. Miller Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 827 1971 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 121 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 11, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Antony Holland, . Cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond Production Designer Leon Ericksen Film Editing and Second Unit Director Louis Lombardo Original Music Leonard Cohen Written by Robert Altman, Brian McKay from the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton Produced by Mitchell Brower, David Foster Directed by Robert Altman

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Robert Altman films run hot and cold for this reviewer.

Guy Pearce plays a terrifying reverend in the period drama-thriller, Brimstone. Here's our review of a brutal movie...

An apocalyptic pall hangs over this western from Dutch writer-director Martin Koolhoven, from its ominous title to its spectacular yet bleak landscapes. Some movies have a tendency to romanticise what life was like on the American frontier; Brimstone, on the other hand, is so witheringly violent that it makes Bone Tomahawk look like Paint Your Wagon.

Dakota Fanning stars as Elizabeth, a mute midwife who has the thankless task of delivering babies at a time when childbirth is fraught with danger. And on the day that one delivery goes tragically wrong, a scarred, glowering Reverend (Guy Pearce) shows up to tell Liz that she must be punished for her sins...

Koolhoven's sordid tale of abuse, sadism and revenge might be impossible to sit through were it not for construction: the opening 40 minutes introduces its two leads,...

The Bleeder looks a bit familiar. A film of browns and greens; disco music and ‘70s rock tunes; big haircuts and even bigger lapels. Indeed, in a way reminiscent of recent period efforts such as Black Mass and David O. Russell’s last two outings, The Bleeder is drenched in that particular decade’s elaborate trappings. It also owes a lot to the school of Scorsese, complete with wise-guy narration, east-coast working-class lilts, and a sense of “You gotta be shitting me! Is this really my life?” But it’s a sports film at heart and a rather good one at that, all plucky underdog right hooks and tragic, humiliating falls. In a way, it’s also a film about movies, too. Coming from decorated Québécois filmmaker Philippe Falardeau, it is the true life story of Chuck “The Bayonne Bleeder” Wepner, the man who fought Muhammed Ali after the champ...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, and Tom Stockman

Lee Marvin rose through the ranks of movie stardom as a character actor, delivering mostly villainous supporting turns in many films before finally graduating to leading roles. Regardless of which side of the law he was on however, he projected a tough-as-nails intensity and a two-fisted integrity which elevated even the slightest material. Born February 19, 1924, in New York City, Marvin quit high school to enter the Marine Corps and while serving in the South Pacific was badly wounded in battle when a machine gun nest shot off part of his buttocks and severed his sciatic nerve. He spent a year in recovery before returning to the U.S. where he began working as a plumber. The acting bug bit after filling in for an ailing summer-stock actor and he studied the art at the New York-based American Theater Wing. Upon making his debut in summer stock,...

The 5th Avenue Theatre presents an exciting new 'revisal' of the sweeping saga Lerner amp Loewe's Paint Your Wagon. Featuring an all-new book by Pulitzer Prize nominee John Marans, this show has taken an incredible journey over the last five years from developmental workshops to The 5th Avenue stage this season. And BroadwayWorld is happy to report that the company has just announced the full cast and creative team.

It's a genuine forgotten gem: American student Jean Seberg's five-year adventure in Paris is mostly a period of romantic frustration. Irwin Shaw and Robert Parrish's look at the problems of an independent woman is remarkably insightful; the chronically miscast and underused Ms. Seberg is luminous. In the French Style Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1963 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 105 min. / Ship Date April 12, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Jean Seberg, Stanley Baker, Phillippe Forquet, Addison Powell, Jack Hedley, Maurice Teynac, Claudine Auger, James Leo Herlihy, Ann Lewis, Barbara Sommers. Cinematography Michel Kelber Original Music Joseph Kosma Written by Irwin Shaw from his short stories Produced by Irwin Shaw, Robert Parrish Directed by Robert Parrish

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Talk about elusive movies: on must keep an eye on the TCM logs to catch many of the films of director Robert Parrish. I had to wait for the advent of...

"Batman v. Superman": potential blockbuster or "Cleopatra Redux".

By Lee Pfeiffer

The heavily-hyped Warner Brothers super hero epic "Batman V. Superman:  Dawn of Justice" is one of the most heavily promoted films in years. It's also one of the most expensive. Variety estimates that the film's $250 million production budget plus ancillary marketing costs will make it necessary for the movie to gross $800 worldwide just to break even. You read that right: $800 million. One industry analyst says that anything less than a gross of $1 billion will be considered a disappointment. Warner Brothers contends that those figures don't take into consideration ancillary revenues from video and merchandising. Fair enough, but if a film bombs, generally speaking, the merchandise and video sales do, too. If you doubt it, how many people did you see walking around with "Waterworld" or "Howard the Duck" T shirts? Veteran screenwriter William Goldman once said of the film industry "Nobody knows anything.

If you have been living and routinely interacting with other human beings over the last month, you’ve probably heard one or two words involving this year’s Academy Awards and the heated controversy over the startling lack of both films and people of color among the nominees. Personally, I think that the real focus of concern ought to be less on the back end-- awards handed out for films which were financed and/or studio-approved, scheduled for production and filmed perhaps as much as two or three years ago-- and more on addressing the lack of cultural and intellectual and experiential diversity among those who have the power to make the decisions as to what films get made in the first place. This is no sure-fire way to ensure that there will be a richer and more consistent representation of diverse creative voices when it comes time for Hollywood...

Jerry Gross Organization

It seems hard to believe, given their recent output, but there was a time when the major studios considered themselves to be above exploiting lurid subject matter.

Studio movies had big budgets, big stars and, in an attempt to lure viewers away from their TV sets, widescreen colour cinematography. In keeping with the Hays Production Code, they did not depict sex and nudity, bloody gore or violence.

What changed their minds were independent filmmakers like Herschell Gordon Lewis and Roger Corman, whose low budget exploitation pictures made millions while Hollywood continued turning out costly flops such as Cleopatra and Paint Your Wagon. The times, as well as audiences, were changing, and Hollywood had to change with them.

Much has been made about the audience for pictures like The Sound Of Music turning its back on Hollywood, but you could also say that Tinseltown forgot those viewers and...

Ahead of American Ultra’s release in UK cinemas, we look at the rise of the stoner in film, from the 30s to the present...

"The motion picture you are about to witness may startle you. It would not have been possible, otherwise, to sufficiently emphasize the frightful toll of the new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers. Marihuana is that drug - a violent narcotic - an unspeakable scourge - the Real Public Enemy Number One!

So reads the opening crawl to the now infamous film Reefer Madness. Originally released in 1936, it was designed as a hard-hitting expose of marijuana and its inherent dangers. The drug could cause "violent, uncontrollable laughter," the movie's introduction read. It could induce "dangerous hallucinations," "monstrous extravagances," all eventually leading to "shocking acts of physical violence... ending often in incurable insanity."

Reefer Madness was one of many...

Cinema Retro proudly presents its latest "Movie Classics" special edition issue: "The American Westerns of Clint Eastwood", the perfect companion to our acclaimed special issue dedicated to the three Clint Eastwood Westerns directed by Sergio Leone.

"The American Westerns of Clint Eastwood" is a 116 page limited edition publication. Each of Eastwood's American Westerns is covered in detail in individual chapters:

"Hang "Em High" "Paint Your Wagon" "Two Mules for Sister Sara" "The Beguiled" "Joe Kidd" "High Plains Drifter" The Outlaw Josey Wales" "Pale Rider" "Unforgiven" Special section covering early film roles and TV Western appearances

Featuring hundreds of photographs, rare behind-the-scenes stills an movie poster art, including location photos (then and now) and even props that exist to this day in private collections!!

We are also very honored to present unseen movie poster designs by the legendary Bill Gold, who has overseen the advertising campaigns for most of Eastwood's films...

Ron Moody as Fagin in 'Oliver!' based on Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist.' Ron Moody as Fagin in Dickens musical 'Oliver!': Box office and critical hit (See previous post: "Ron Moody: 'Oliver!' Actor, Academy Award Nominee Dead at 91.") Although British made, Oliver! turned out to be an elephantine release along the lines of – exclamation point or no – Gypsy, Star!, Hello Dolly!, and other Hollywood mega-musicals from the mid'-50s to the early '70s.[1] But however bloated and conventional the final result, and a cast whose best-known name was that of director Carol Reed's nephew, Oliver Reed, Oliver! found countless fans.[2] The mostly British production became a huge financial and critical success in the U.S. at a time when star-studded mega-musicals had become perilous – at times downright disastrous – ventures.[3] Upon the American release of Oliver! in Dec. 1968, frequently acerbic The...

Does the guy in the new Diet Dr Pepper commercial look familiar to you?

Early American Idol fans, rejoice – it's none other than Justin Guarini.

The 36-year-old singer and Broadway actor stars in the soda ad as "Lil' Sweet."

The commercial depicts a woman looking for a low-calorie but still-sweet beverage. Cue Guarini, who comes sliding in on his knees, dressed in a red wig and shiny metallic pants and hands her a Diet Dr Pepper.

The woman asks if Guarini works at the office and he sings back his response.

"No, Lil' Sweet is self-employed," he says as he...

Two-time Tony nominee Keith Carradine starred in the Encores production of Paint Your Wagon, which closed last night, March 22, alongside Alexandra Socha and Justin Guarini. The show, set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California, is the story of a dreaming gold miner and his daughter whose world is changed when the daughter finds gold-and love-near their camp. Check out photos from the closing night reception below...