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Happy (almost) Halloween readers! With October 31st falling on the weekly home entertainment release day, that means we have extra reasons to get excited this Tuesday. Scream Factory has put together two absolutely incredible collector’s edition Blu-rays for George A. Romero’s underrated modern classic Land of the Dead as well as Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, which fans are going to want to add to their own personal collections.

For those of you who may have missed it in theaters, The Dark Tower comes home on Halloween, and Lionsgate has given the cult classic Slaughter High the Vestron Video treatment for their brand new Blu. Blue Underground is also keeping busy this week with a pair of Collector’s Edition sets, too—The Lift and Down—and the complete series of Orphan Black makes its home release bow on Halloween, too.

Other notable Halloween...

It’s ugly, it’s violent, it’s graphic novelist Frank Miller’s nasty vision through and through. Scream Factory’s Collector’s Edition brings out the amazing backstory of the production of this stop-motion- intensive first sequel to RoboCop. Druglord Caine is a menace, but we’re just as appalled by the film’s vivid depiction of a greater terror: Predatory Privatization.

RoboCop 2

Blu-ray

Shout! Factory / Scream Factory

1990 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 117 min. / Collector’s Edition / Street Date March 21, 2011 / 34.93

Starring: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Robert DoQui, Tom Noonan, Gabriel Damon, Belinda Bauer, Felton Perry.

Cinematography: Mark Irwin

Production Design: Peter Jamison

Original Music: Leonard Rosenman

Special Effects: Phil Tippett, Rob Bottin, Peter Kuran, Rocco Gioffre.

Written by Frank Miller, Walon Green from characters created by Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner

Produced by Jon Davison

Directed by Irvin Kershner

I wish I could say that 1990’s RoboCop 2 has been...

If you've read The Film Experience for any length of time beyond let's say, a week, you'll know that we live for eye candy. Three of the cinematic arts that most regularly provide this are, outside of beautiful movie stars in the acting categories, Production Design and Costume Design i.e. the Moulin Rouge! categories. We love these categories so much we have two weekly series for them, Daniel Walber's "The Furniture" and my own forthcoming costume series "Three Fittings".

Anyway, it's time to make our final predictions for Oscar but it's also time to get those Film Bitch Awards (my own long running awards jamboree) going. So herewith my personal ballot and, putting the pundit hat on, my Oscar predictions. These two modes should not be confused... so apologies for discussing them simultaneously. This is what happens when you procrastinate!

Will Stuart Craig receive his 5th nomination directly from...

With a title like this you know it has to be good. Irvin Kershner got his start directing on this small-scale tale of kids and crime. Jonathan Haze and Abby Dalton are standouts in the cast, while the uncredited executive producer who put up the cash is said to have been Roger Corman. It's a beautiful widescreen transfer -- the film was one of the first features shot by Haskell Wexler, who is also uncredited. Stakeout on Dope Street DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1958 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 83 min. / Street Date June 22, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Yale Wexler, Jonathon Haze, Morris Miller (Stever Marlo), Abby Dalton, Allen Kramer, Herman Rudin, Philip Mansour, Andrew J. Fenady, Herschel Bernardi, Coleman Francis. Cinematography Mark Jeffrey (Haskell Wexler) Film Editor Melvin Sloan Original Music Richard Markowitz Story and Screenplay by Andrew J. Fenady, Irvin Kershner, Irvin Schwartz Produced by Andrew J. Fenady Directed...

By Todd Garbarini

The Royale Laemmle Theater in Los Angeles will be presenting a 50th anniversary screening of Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? based upon Edward Albee’s play. The 131-minute film, which stars Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis, will be screened on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 7:00 pm.

Actor George Segal, who appears in the film as Nick (Honey’s Husband), is scheduled to appear at a Q&A session after the film to discuss his role and career.

From the press release:

Who’S Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966) 50th Anniversary Screening

Tribute to Oscar-winning Cinematographer Haskell Wexler

Oscar Nominee George Segal In Person for post-screening Q&A with Lafca President Stephen Farber

Tuesday, February 23, at 7:00 Pm at the Royal Theatre

Skeptics said Edward Albee’s scathing dissection of marriage could never be turned into a movie. But when the Production...

Legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis, the "Prince of Darkness" who was responsible for the look of such era-defining films of the Seventies as the first two Godfather films, All the President's Men, Annie Hall and Manhattan, died Sunday at the age of 82, according to Variety. His cause of death was not listed.

Peter Travers on 'The Godfather' Trilogy

A native of Queens, New York, Willis cultivated an early interest in photography and, while serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, joined the motion-picture unit. After the war,...

What is an auteur?

The question never goes away, does it? The director Irvin Kershner died last week, and I commemorated his passing by putting up some of my thoughts about his work up at my blog. I discussed a couple of pictures of his that I admired—The Luck of Ginger Coffey and Loving among them, mentioned the George-Lucas-produced elephant, and made an observation concerning the (to my mind) objectively pro-fascist content of RoboCop 2, which Kershner directed, and the seemingly not-fascist character and view of the man himself, which to me suggested a certain late-period disconnect between the director and his material, the sort of thing that is, or can be, interesting to note when making a career assessment or summing-up. The item solicited some comments, including one from the blogger who goes by the nom Flickhead, who had less admiration for even the ostensible high points of Kershner's...

Chosen to direct The Empire Strikes Back, he turned in one of the best sequels – and highest box-office earners – of all time

The film director Irvin Kershner, who has died aged 87, was known in the trade as a hired gun. His most famous film, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the fifth episode in the Star Wars saga, is most commonly linked to its executive producer, George Lucas. Never Say Never Again (1983) is celebrated as the film in which Sean Connery made his comeback as James Bond after 12 years away from the role, the director merely providing the vehicle. Kershner's first feature, Stakeout On Dope Street (1958), was made under the aegis of Roger Corman, who usually gained the main credit for the films he produced. Yet, eclectic as Kershner seemed, his best films reveal a visual flair, with an eye for the telling detail and a sympathy for the rebel.

The Philadelphia...

Filmmaker Irvin Kershner died at age 87 Saturday after a three year battle with lung cancer. Kershner began making documentaries for the U.S. Information Service in the early ’50s. After working in television, he co-scripted and directed his first feature, the crime drama Stakeout on Dope Street, for executive producer Roger Corman. Kershner started to make a name for himself in the mid ’60s with the Brian Moore adaptation The Luck of Ginger Coffey, the romantic satire A Fine Madness, and the marital-crisis drama Loving. However the director is best known for his big-budget action and adventure films such as The Empire Strikes Back, the James Bond film Never Say Never Again, and RoboCop II.

Star Wars creator/producer/director George Lucas issued a touching statement in memory of Kershner.

The statement was released on StarWars.com:

“The world has lost a great director and one of the most genuine...

Two architects of the internet's collective childhood have recently passed away. Filmmaking legend Irvin Kershner and parody actor-extraordinaire Leslie Nielsen have died.

Nielson, who starred in such films as Airplane!, The Naked Gun trilogy, Dracula: Dead & Loving It, and countless other mirth-inducing movies passed away last night at the age of 84. Mr. Nielson was in a hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida struggling with complications arising out of pneumonia.

Mr. Nielson’s agent issued the following statement:

“We are saddened by the passing of beloved actor Leslie Nielsen, probably best remembered as Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun series of pictures, but who enjoyed a more than 60 year career in motion pictures and television.”

Kershner, best remembered as the director of the holiest film of the Holy Trilogy (The Empire Strikes Back to the uninitiated) passed away this morning in Los Angeles at age 87. Though the exact cause of death...

George Lucas will always be known as the genius behind Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Darth Vader. But it was Irvin Kershner, a professorial and genteel man of the old school, who directed the film most Star Wars aficionados consider the greatest chapter in the saga, 1980′s The Empire Strikes Back. It was to Kershner’s credit that he never jockeyed for the limelight or clawed for the credit. He was a quiet craftsman who believed in letting the images he put on screen speak for him. The news that Kershner passed away earlier today leaves a giant black hole...

When he was hired to direct the sequel to Star Wars, no one in fandom knew the name Irvin Kershner. By the time Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back had rolled out in theaters in the summer of 1980, director Irvin Kershner had been assured of his slice of immortality.

Widely regarded by film critics and the general Star Wars fanbase to be a superior sequel to an already great first movie, The Empire Strikes Back took the characters that George Lucas had created and gave them maturity, inner complexity and raised the personal stakes that they were fighting for. Without Empire the final Star Wars film in the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi, and even the following prequel trilogy, would have turned out differently.

Born in 1923, Kershner began his directing career by working in television in the 1950s. He began to build up a positive reputation as a solid...

The leading female character of Grease (1978), Sandy Olsen, played by Olivia Newton-John, is the character who wears the clothes most typified by fancy dress companies pertaining to sell costumes linked to the film.

Desperate to fit in at her new school, many of her clothes bear the ‘Rydell High’ logo in some way. Unfortunately for Sandy, she chooses ‘The Pink Ladies’ as her new best friends, the clique who find school far beneath their coolness. No wonder she is deemed by Rizzo as “too pure to be pink”.

We see this purity at the beginning of the film, where Sandy refuses to take her ‘Summer Loving’ with Danny a step further. Wearing a lilac hooded gym top and bikini bottoms, this is more revealing than her Rydell attire, but then again, this is the beach. We are immediately reminded of her warm, gentle nature as we are introduced to her flawless,...

Friends of John Travolta and Kelly Preston offered condolences after the death of son Jett and said the couple will find strength in caring for 8-year-old daughter Ella. Mike Nichols, who directed Travolta in 1998's Primary Colors, tells People: "They're very strong. They have Ella. They have lots of people they love to take care of. And they will. But they have to have time for just plain grief." A source close the family tells People that the autopsy on their 16-year-old son Jett revealed his death Jan. 2 in the Bahamas was caused by a "seizure disorder." Because there was no foul play,...