News

Legendary actor Gene Hackman has passed away at the age of 95. Tragically, according to authorities, Hackman’s 64-year-old wife Betsy Arakawa, and a dog, were also found deceased in the couple’s New Mexico home. While “no foul play is suspected” the cause of death has yet to be determined.

It’s hard to overstate Hackman’s impact on the world of film; he starred in all-time classics like The Conversation, Night Moves, Bonnie & Clyde, Superman and, of course, The French Connection. Plus, he had key supporting roles in more modern masterpieces such as Unforgiven and The Royal Tenenbaums (even if he clearly didn’t want to be in the latter).

Then, after decades of acclaimed performances in countless films, he gave up on the entire industry after making a single Ray Romano movie.

In the latter half of his career, it certainly wasn’t unusual to see Hackman...

Film critic Gene Siskel thought that Jack Nicholson’s second directing effort, the comedy-western Goin’ South, was just okay, giving the film two and a half stars out of four. There was at least one way it could have been better, he said. “The film could use more of John Belushi, the Animal House star, wasted here in a walk-on as a fat Mexican deputy sheriff.”

There was someone else who believed Belushi could use more screen time: John Belushi. And he would have had more scenes if he could have behaved properly. But things were goin’ south right after Belushi signed on to the project for five weeks of work at $5,000 a week. “What the hell does John Belushi want to do this for?” wondered Nicholson, according to Daniel De Visé’s The Blues Brothers.

Good question. Belushi was a mess when he arrived in Mexico for filming. Producers...

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Jack Nicholson is singular for many reasons, but one of his most fascinating attributes is that he was commercially bulletproof. Don't get me wrong, Nicholson made a flop here and there, but there was never a sense with the star that he needed a hit. Even when he was slumping, everyone figured Nicholson would get it straightened out one way or another. He was just too damn appealing to not score a hit once every few years.

If Nicholson was ever kinda-sorta in trouble, it was probably in 1977. Yes, he was only two years removed from winning Best Actor Oscar for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (which was an incredibly competitive year), but he was more immediately on the hook for two box office bombs in Arthur Penn's "The Missouri Breaks" (a pricey Western that paired him with...

If the Warner Bros. logo was a badge, as opposed to a shield, Clint Eastwood would be the man behind it: the tough, rule-bending guy who sticks to his guns, à la Harry Callahan. So why is the studio doing him dirty on “Juror No. 2,” Eastwood’s 40th — and quite possibly last — stint in the director’s chair?

At 94, the star is just seven years younger than the studio with which he’s been associated since 1971. That was the year he shot “Dirty Harry” with his filmmaking mentor, Don Siegel, for WB, and it was also the year that Eastwood made his own directing debut, “Play Misty for Me,” over at Universal. He’s strayed from Warner Bros. just a few times since 1975, calling the studio home for nearly half a century, during which he’s earned four Oscars — and more than $4 billion at the box office.

Fast-forward to this year,...

What's the best Jack Nicholson movie? Ask a group of film fans, and you'll likely get a half-dozen different answers. The actor's most historically significant movie may be "Chinatown," the sun-baked California noir from 1974 that earned 11 Oscar nominations and a permanent spot in the American Library of Congress' National Film Registry. Or it might be "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the beloved adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel that swept the Oscars in 1975 and turned the already-popular Nicholson into Hollywood's hottest commodity.

The actor's most popular films according to Letterboxd users are Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece "The Shining" and Martin Scorsese's crime saga "The Departed." His highest-grossing role at the box office came in 1989, when Tim Burton cast him as the rictus-grin supervillain The Joker in "Batman." Other popular moneymakers featuring the veteran performer include James L. Brooks' "As Good As It Gets," Nancy Meyers' "Something's Gotta Give,...

Fred Roos, the casting director turned producer who jump-started the career of Jack Nicholson and collaborated often with Francis Ford Coppola, sharing a best picture Oscar with the filmmaker for The Godfather Part II, has died. He was 89.

Roos died Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills, a publicist announced.

It’s part of Hollywood lore that before Harrison Ford became a famous actor, he was laboring as a carpenter to make ends meet. What some might not know is that it was at Roos’ house where Ford was woodworking when the casting director befriended him, eventually pushing him for roles in George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977) and Coppola’s The Conversation (1974).

And it was Roos who convinced Lucas — who had been leaning toward Amy Irving — that Carrie Fisher should portray Princess Leia in Star Wars. (Roos did not have an official role on that film.)

Roos, however,...

Clint Eastwood's decision to fire his director during the filming of The Outlaw Josey Wales changed Hollywood forever. Eastwood's feud with director Philip Kaufman stemmed from their differing opinions on the film's direction and political undertones. As a result of this conflict, the Directors Guild of America imposed a fine on Eastwood and Warner Bros. and implemented "the Eastwood Rule" to prevent actors or producers from firing directors and assuming their role.

Clint Eastwood fired his director during a Western movie's filming — here is what happened and how his decision ultimately changed Hollywood forever. Since the beginning of his Hollywood career, Clint Eastwood has been a creative powerhouse, landing several acting and directing accolades under his belt. In his acting career, the veteran made a name for himself by building his own identity by playing minimally expressive but masculine spaghetti western characters. As a director, he has garnered...

After the release of his 1960 masterpiece “Psycho,” Alfred Hitchcock received an irate letter from someone saying his daughter refused to take a bath after seeing Henri Clouzot’s 1955 thriller “Les Diaboliques,” which features a horrifying murder in a bathtub. And now she wouldn’t take a shower because of “Psycho.” What was he to do? Hitchcock wrote back the fuming father in his typical succinct and macabre style telling him to “send her to the dry cleaners.”

Undoubtedly, he received a lot of angry missives who saw his next film, “The Birds,” which celebrates the 60th anniversary of its release on March 28. In what is considered the Master of Suspense’s only horror film, “The Birds” finds feathered friends on the attack for no apparent reason. Let’s face it, six decades later if you see a large flock of birds gathering on a school’s jungle gym or malevolently peering down from trees,...

Marc Eliot's 2009 biography "American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood" lays out the production of Don Siegel's 1971 cop drama "Dirty Harry" as a complicated affair. The first version of the film's script was violent and raw, telling the story of a cop who has to break the law in order to stop a dangerous serial killer. As the script was passed around, though, many became wary of its violence, and many actors expressed interest and dropped out. The rights to the film were once in the hands of ABC who aimed to adapt it for TV, but sold it to Warner Bros. when they realized just how violent the film had to be. Irvin Kershner was once hired to direct, with Frank Sinatra starring. Sydney Pollock, George C. Scott, Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, and many other famous people brushed up against "Dirty Harry" during pre-production. Even Terrence Malick purportedly wrote a draft.

The cliche "everyone's gotta start somewhere" is meant to be reassuring. In showbiz, however, getting that start requires a bit of good fortune in and of itself. Whether you're working in the mailroom at CAA or bopping from set to set as a background player, you've likely used a connection or two to get yourself in the figurative ballpark. Maybe your college buddy knew a guy at an agency. Perhaps you were bartending at a popular industry watering hole. Getting noticed is often a fluke. Taking the next step is a winning lottery ticket.

Take Clint Eastwood for example. He wasn't a natural-born genius like Montgomery Clift or Marlon Brando. He was a handsome, young, 6'4" swimming instructor at Ford Ord in Northern California when, according to his biographer Patrick McGilligan, he met a connected photographer named Chuck Hill. When Eastwood relocated to Los Angeles, Hill convinced his friend to...

Arnold Schulman, who landed Oscar nominations for his screenplays for Love With the Proper Stranger and Goodbye, Columbus and found success with several incarnations of his Broadway hit A Hole in the Head, has died. He was 97.

Schulman died Saturday of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica, his son, Peter Schulman, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In two late-career triumphs, Schulman was recruited by Francis Ford Coppola to write the biopic Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and he scored an Emmy nomination and a Humanitas Prize in 1994 for his teleplay for HBO’s And the Band Played On, an adaptation of Randy Shilts’ nonfiction book about the onset of AIDS.

An original member of the Actors Studio, Schulman in the 1950s worked alongside the likes of James Dean and Paul Newman on live television. In 1962, he quit as the original screenwriter on the never-completed Marilyn Monroe movie Something’s Got to Give,...

One of the cardinal Hollywood sins for an established talent is to accept unsolicited material. To do so not only encourages other aspiring screenwriters to inundate agencies and production companies with scripts, it also places the recipient in a potentially vulnerable position legally. Basically, if an idea is fertile enough to merit a greenlight, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone else has had a similar idea. And if that writer can prove he sent that script years prior to the artist who turned that similar idea into a successful movie, that artist might find themselves on the business end of a plagiarism lawsuit.

So it's surprising that in the early 1970s, Clint Eastwood, who'd made his name on Westerns and had many more in active development, acquired the rights to an unsolicited novel called "The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales" by Forrest Carter. According to an interview with Patrick McGilligan,...

Clint Eastwood began his acting career in 1955, a year he would appear (uncredited) in the Universal monster movie "Revenge of the Creature" as well as the TV movie "Allen in Wonderland," wherein he played a hospital orderly. After four years of supporting roles and guest spots in movies and on TV, Eastwood landed his first notable starring role, playing the character of Rowdy Yates on the massively popular Western TV series "Rawhide." The hour-long drama debuted in January of 1959 and ran a then-unprecedented 217 episodes, finally going off the air in 1965.

"Rawhide" followed the many adventures of actual cowboys -- that is, the ones that handle cattle -- as they faced off against rustlers and other criminals. Rowdy Yates was the young hothead of the group and had to learn how to mature over the course of the series. Eastwood was 28 at the time but was already honing the type of...

When The New Yorker's Pauline Kael wrote of Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry" in 1971 that the American cop thriller "has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced," she kicked off a fierce debate about the genre that still roils today.

Taken at face value, it's difficult to dispute that the film is meant to titillate viewers with the ultimate, judge-jury-executioner justice pursued and dispensed by Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan. He despises the Miranda Warning, and complains that the United States' judicial system has been corrupted to favor the rights of criminals. The screenplay, credited to Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, and Dean Riesner, stacks the deck to a ludicrous degree by having Andrew Robinson's Scorpio Killer orchestrate an act of police brutality late in the movie to get Callahan kicked off the case. At this moment, it feels like we're meant to throw our hands...

One of the great pleasures of yesteryear filmmaking was Hollywood's unshakable belief in the power of movie stars. This was especially true in the 1960s when Baby Boomers came of age and clamored for films that reflected their rambunctious, rock-and-roll taste. The studios, run by aging/dying moguls, were caught flat-footed. To stay afloat, they leaned on old favorites and newcomers who cut a classically dashing figure. Method acting might've been all the rage, but viewed on a big, flickering screen, process practitioners like Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Warren Beatty looked the matinee-idol part.

Clint Eastwood was a breed apart. He was familiar to U.S. moviegoers due to his portrayal of Rowdy Yates on the CBS TV Western "Rawhide," but that familiarity cut both ways. His lean build, chiseled facial features, and labored emoting belonged to a different era. It wasn't until he teamed up with Sergio Leone...

Despite a long and prolific acting career that spans over 60 films, Clint Eastwood rarely worked with directors more than once. Only Sergio Leone, Don Siegel, and Ted Post worked with the actor on multiple occasions, with Post earning extra credit for directing "Magnum Force," a sequel to Siegel's "Dirty Harry." The directors in question might also be credited for creating some of Eastwood's most recognizable characters. Siegel and his screenwriters invented Harry Callahan, a tough-as-nails cop who cannot arrest a vicious Zodiac-like serial killer because of the police force's new implementation of Miranda laws. And Leone helped invent the stoic gunfighter often called The Man With No Name in a celebrated trilogy of Westerns in the 1960s.

Both characters are strong, silent types, their faces both etched with a permanent scowl of annoyance. Both are handy with a gun and tend to rely on vigilante justice. Both appear to...

Clint Eastwood rose to stardom in the 1960s by employing a minimalist style of acting as Sergio Leone's Man with No Name in "A Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More," and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." His characters were men of few words and even fewer expressions. Some critics at the time mistook this as a laughable lack of range on Eastwood's part -- an assertion the actor would prove incorrect with shockingly vulnerable performances in "Play Misty for Me" and "The Beguiled."

But while Eastwood was not precious with his image, he was keenly aware of what he could not, or should not, do. He could play blustery types like John Wilson (based on director John Huston) in "White Hunter Black Heart," but he knew not to emote. He could tweak his on-screen persona, but he almost never went broad.

In terms of performance style and genre preferences,...

In Stuart Galbraith IV's invaluable and exhaustive 2001 book "The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune," the famed Japanese director talks briefly about Sergio Leone's classic 1964 Western "A Fistful of Dollars." Kurosawa admired the film saying that it was "a fine movie," and hastened to add, "but it was my movie." 

"A Fistful of Dollars" was, of course, a remake of Kurosawa's own 1961 film "Yojimbo." Both films are about stalwart and detached loners who find themselves wandering through a remote frontier villages that have been overtaken by two warring gangs. In both films, the stranger -- Mifune in the original, Clint Eastwood in the remake -- use their wits to pit the two gangs against one another. Notably, Leone's film didn't bother to credit Kurosawa or his "Yojimbo" co-screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima, nor did he approach Toho about the possibility of licensing the rights.

Clint Eastwood was in show business for nearly twenty years when he finally made his directorial debut with 1971's "Play Misty For Me." The shift from actor to director wouldn't have been possible without the help and encouragement of his friend Don Siegel, a filmmaker perhaps as responsible for Eastwood's iconic screen presence as Sergio Leone. Like Eastwood, Siegel had decades of experience and had fashioned a professional, unpretentious style of working that Eastwood would embrace.

For starters, he took the work seriously. "Play Misty For Me" would not be a vanity project, but the work of a dedicated professional committed to the art of making movies, one who was willing to take a pay cut just for the chance of doing the work. The result was a movie that even now ranks as one of Eastwood's best.

"Misty" has the economical sensibilities that would become a trademark of his directorial work,...

When I saw "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" for the first time last year, I was taken aback by how it felt as if I had always known "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." Blondie's forced march through the desert; Angel Eyes's back as he walks through a house full of dead bodies; Tuco running through the cemetery looking for the right grave marker. Not to mention Ennio Moricone's score, whose main theme I guarantee you can quote from memory even if you've never seen the movie. I cannot say if "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is the best western ever made, because it has plenty of competition even among Leone's own work. But it makes as strong a case as any for mythic permanence, as if it was set down on a tablet rather than filmed.

Of course, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

Before Clint Eastwood was the guy talking to a chair he was pretending Obama was sitting in, he was one of the most sought-after men in Hollywood. Not only is Eastwood a great actor, but he's a very talented director as well, having directed and starred in such movies as "Unforgiven" and "Gran Torino."

The first real star-making roles Eastwood took were in legendary Italian director Sergio Leone's trilogy of Westerns, known as the "Dollars Trilogy." He played the Man with No Name in "A Fistful of Dollars" in 1964, and again in "For a Few Dollars More" the next year. After the success of these two films, Eastwood felt his stock as an actor was rising, so he had more leverage negotiating for the third film in the trilogy, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" revolves around three very different cowboys...

It’s that time of year again. While some directors annually share their favorite films of the year, Steven Soderbergh lists everything he consumed, media-wise. For 2021––another year in which he not only released a new film, but shot another (and produced the Oscars)––he still got plenty of watching in.

Along with catching up on 2021’s new releases, he took in plenty of classics, including Jaws, Citizen Kane, Metropolis, The French Connection, and Lubitsch’s Ninotchka and Design For Living. Early last year, he also saw a cut of Channing Tatum’s Dog, which doesn’t arrive until next month. He also, of course, screened his latest movies while in post-production, with three viewings of No Sudden Move and three viewings of Kimi, which arrives on February 10 on HBO Max and the first look of which can be seen below.

Check out the list below via his official site.

Historians may now acknowledge Oscar Micheaux as a pioneering Black filmmaker, and the industry could be catching up. However, that acclaim certainly didn’t follow him through his lifetime, when the hustling novelist and director made complex dramas about Black life in America across three decades, starting with the silent era and continuing for many years after that. By the time of his death in 1951, the child of former slaves in Kentucky had written six novels and directed 44 films, but around 80 percent of them have been lost.

Needless to say, most people have been late to the party when it comes to Micheaux’s career, including Cannes. But the festival’s Cannes Classics sidebar made up for that this year by screening a new restoration of Micheaux’s 1935 crime thriller “Murder in Harlem,” alongside a new documentary about the filmmaker’s contemporary resonance, “Oscar Micheaux – The Superhero of Black Cinema,...

You’ve asked questions. Prepare for the answers.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

The Beguiled (1971)

Tenet (2021? Maybe?)

Smokey Is The Bandit (1983)

Robin Hood (2010)

Hollywood Boulevard (1976)

The Devils (1971)

Song of the South (1946)

Gremlins (1984)

Dillinger (1973)

Marcello I’m So Bored (1966)

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Big Wednesday (1978)

Swamp Thing (1982)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Payback (1999)

Bell, Book And Candle (1958)

Blowup (1966)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Medium Cool (1969)

25th Hour (2002)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Palm Springs (2020)

Groundhog Day (1993)

Mandy (2018)

The Sadist (1963)

Spider Baby (1968)

Night Tide (1960)

Stark Fear

Carnival of Souls (1962)

The Devil’s Messenger (1961)

Ms. 45 (1981)

Léolo (1992)

The Howling (1981)

Showgirls (1995)

Green Book (2018)

The Last Hurrah (1958)

The Best Man (1964)

Advise and Consent (1962)

The Candidate (1972)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Seven Days In May (1964)

The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

The Man (1972)

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

Four Lions (2010)

Pump Up The Volume (1990)

Nightmare In The Sun (1965)

The Wild Angels (1966)

The Omega Man (1971)

The Nanny (1965)

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man...

Apparently HBO is developing a biopic about Oscar Micheaux, considered to be one of the earliest black film directors. Not only that, but they have also cast Tyler Perry in the lead role. The film will be based on the 2007 biography Oscar Micheaux: The Great And Only: The Life Of America’S First Black Filmmaker written by Patrick McGilligan. To the surprise of... Read More...

My book editor on Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films — the venerable, celebrated Patrick McGilligan — once told me in an e-mail, “There is nothing like one’s first book. You forever feel a special connection to that first subject matter. I feel the same fondness about James Cagney, my first book’s subject, as you probably do for Sidney J. Furie, your first.” For certain, I find that to be true. But I feel an even stronger bond to Furie, by sheer virtue of the fact that I was the very first to write a book — or, for that matter, any kind of […]...

Warners knocks us out with a beautifully remastered Rko noir. Nicholas Ray's crime tale is like no other, a meditation on human need and loneliness. It's a noir with a cautiously positive, hopeful twist. On Dangerous Ground Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 11, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Anthony Ross, Ed Begley, Ian Wolfe, Sumner Williams. Cinematography George E. Diskant Art Direction Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino Film Editor Roland Gross Original Music Bernard Herrmann Written by A.I. Bezzerides, Nicholas Ray from the novel Mad with Much Heart by Gerald Butler Produced by John Houseman, Sid Rogell Directed by Nicholas Ray

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Warner Archive is known for pleasant surprises, but this one is a real thrill -- one of the very best Rko films noir, reissued in a much-needed beautiful restoration.

For years, director Fritz Lang shared the story of his summoning by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, one involving the banning of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse that would cause his flee from Germany to Paris. This was later proven to be at least partly false by biographer Patrick McGilligan in his book The Nature of the Beast. It was mostly a fable, just a story repeated by Lang in his films for impact.

Does that make the story any less interesting? Cinema is comprised largely of the fictitious, so whether or not Lang espoused these stories on his own time as truth is irrelevant to one degree or another — an argument could be made that if it lands for audiences when shown on the screen, it has some worth.

Watch a video on the story below, recounted with imagery from Lang’s filmography, with a nod to CineTransit.

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...

Clint Eastwood biographer Patrick McGilligan, who wrote the damning, demythologizing 1999 Eastwood tome "Clint: The Life and Legend" (published in 2002 in the U.S. after weathering threats of litigation by the megastar's lawyers for a number of years) has released a new edition of the book that covers the last 13 years of Eastwood's life and career, including last year's hugely-controversial Iraq war drama "American Sniper." In a new interview with Salon, McGilligan addresses the "American Sniper" firestorm and suggests that its massive, unexpected success (not to mention the success of many of Eastwood's previous films) is reflective of larger societal problems -- namely American exceptionalism and our stubborn national love affair with firearms: "Gail Collins in the New York Times got it right: She said 'American Sniper' was ultimately a pro-gun film. Clint’s career has been a pro-gun career. He pioneered the huge body count and death toll in cop vigilante films,...

Trey Edward Shults (Krisha) and Britni West (Tired Moonlight) are among the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" Filmmaker has chosen to highlight this year. Also in today's roundup: Film International on Peter Bogdanovich and Ken Loach; David Cairns on Alain Robbe-Grillet; an interview with Patrick McGilligan, author of, most recently, biographies of Orson Welles and Clint Eastwood; more interviews with Pedro Costa, Shinya Tsukamoto, Judd Apatow, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Parker Posey; Film Comment on Frank Sinatra; and news of upcoming premieres in Venice (Scott Cooper's Black Mass) and New York (Don Cheadle's Miles Ahead). » - David Hudson...

Trey Edward Shults (Krisha) and Britni West (Tired Moonlight) are among the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" Filmmaker has chosen to highlight this year. Also in today's roundup: Film International on Peter Bogdanovich and Ken Loach; David Cairns on Alain Robbe-Grillet; an interview with Patrick McGilligan, author of, most recently, biographies of Orson Welles and Clint Eastwood; more interviews with Pedro Costa, Shinya Tsukamoto, Judd Apatow, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Parker Posey; Film Comment on Frank Sinatra; and news of upcoming premieres in Venice (Scott Cooper's Black Mass) and New York (Don Cheadle's Miles Ahead). » - David Hudson...

Part I.

1971 was an incredibly violent year for movies. That year saw, among others, Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack, with its half-Indian hero karate-chopping rednecks; William Friedkin’s The French Connection, its dogged cops stymied by well-heeled drug runners; Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, banned for the copycat crimes it reportedly inspired; and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, featuring the most controversial rape in cinema history. Every bloody shooting, sexual assault and death by penis statue reflected a world gone mad.

It seemed a reaction to America’s skyrocketing crime. Between 1963 and 1975, violent crimes tripled; riots, robberies and assassinations racked major cities. The antiwar and Civil Rights movements generated violent offshoots like the Weathermen and Black Panthers. Citizens blamed politicians like New York Mayor John Lindsay (the original “limousine liberal”), who proclaimed “Peace cannot be imposed on our cities by force of arms,” and Earl Warren’s Supreme Court,...

We've collected reviews of several books that'll be of interest to movie-lovers: Farran Smith Nehme's debut novel, Missing Reels; Nicholas Rombes's The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing ("Kafka directed by David Lynch doesn’t even come close," says 3:am); memories of Shirley Clarke; new biographies of Bob Hope and Robert De Niro; Tls on Marguerite Duras; Michael McGriff and J.M. Tyree's Our Secret Life in the Movies; Anjelica Huston's memoir; a coffee table book on Bettie Page; the Guardian on Akira Kurosawa; Patrick McGilligan on Nicholas Ray and more. » - David Hudson...

We've collected reviews of several books that'll be of interest to movie-lovers: Farran Smith Nehme's debut novel, Missing Reels; Nicholas Rombes's The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing ("Kafka directed by David Lynch doesn’t even come close," says 3:am); memories of Shirley Clarke; new biographies of Bob Hope and Robert De Niro; Tls on Marguerite Duras; Michael McGriff and J.M. Tyree's Our Secret Life in the Movies; Anjelica Huston's memoir; a coffee table book on Bettie Page; the Guardian on Akira Kurosawa; Patrick McGilligan on Nicholas Ray and more. » - David Hudson...

Tom Laughlin: ‘Billy Jack’ actor-filmmaker who died last week helped to revolutionize film distribution patterns in North America (photo: Tom Laughlin in ‘Billy Jack’) Tom Laughlin, best known for the Billy Jack movies he wrote, directed, and starred in opposite his wife Delores Taylor (since 1954), died of complications from pneumonia last Thursday, December 12, 2013, at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles County. Tom Laughlin (born on August 10, 1931, in Minneapolis) was 82; in the last dozen years or so, he suffered from a number of ailments, including cancer and a series of strokes. Tom Laughlin movies: ‘The Delinquents’ and fighting with Robert Altman In the mid-’50s, after acting in college plays and in his own stock company while attending university in Wisconsin, Tom Laughlin began landing small roles on television, e.g., Climax!, Navy Log, The Millionaire. At that time, he was also cast...

Blu-ray Release Date: Sept. 10, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Richard Burton (l.) warms up in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

The 1965 drama-thriller film The Spy Who Came In From The Cold starring Richard Burton (Cleopatra) and Claire Bloom (The King’s Speech) is generally considered to be one of the finest adaptations of a John le Carré bestselling novel to the big screen.

Burton is British operative Alec Leamas, a Cold War spy on one final dangerous mission in East Germany, whose relationship with a beautiful librarian (Bloom) puts his assignment in jeopardy.

Directed by Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae) into a film that’s every bit as precise and ruthless as the book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a hard-edged and tragic thriller that’s suffused with the political and social consciousness that defined Ritt’s career.

Criterion issued The Spy Who Came In From The Cold...

Fifty years after its release (on March 28, 1963), we can't stop talking about Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." We're still terrified by it, perhaps because Hitchcock wisely avoided providing any explanation for the avian attacks on Bodega Bay. We're still fascinated by how it was made, especially because, at 83, star Tippi Hedren continues to hold forth on the pleasures and horrors of working with Hitchcock. Much of the story has been retold, in books (notably, Patrick McGilligan's "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light") and in last year's HBO movie "The Girl." Still, as familiar as we think we are with the scary masterpiece, there's still plenty that remains a mystery -- how did Hitchcock wrangle all those birds? How did he mix live ones with pretend birds so seamlessly? And what really went on between him and Hedren? Read on to learn some of the secrets of "The Birds.

When presenting a feature film focusing on the life of one of the most renowned filmmakers of all time, there is certainly an element of pressure on any director taking on such a task – yet for Sacha Gervasi, it’s a project he looked to revel in, and we caught up with the British filmmaker ahead of the release of Hitchcock – hitting our screens this coming Friday.

Gervasi, whose only previous work is that of rock documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil, admits that his low-key debut was in fact the deciding factor in persuading both Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren to get on board, as he also tells us of his delight at working alongside such a cast, also consisting of Scarlett Johansson. He also discusses the importance of Alma Reville, and his next project…

Hitchcock is your first narrative film after the Anvil documentary – was this something you always intended on doing?...

The director's most powerful and abiding images can be traced back to his early work in silent movies, as the forthcoming season at London's British Film Institute makes clear

Cary Grant runs through a desolate cornfield, pursued by a crop duster overhead. Ingrid Bergman risks her life to go into a wine cellar, looking for a secret. Eva Marie Saint clambers over the faces of the American presidents at Mount Rushmore. Tippi Hedren is pecked at by mysteriously aggressive gulls. James Stewart watches helplessly from a window as Grace Kelly creeps into a murderer's apartment. Kim Novak drives through San Francisco in a trance-like state wearing a grey suit. Janet Leigh takes a shower at the Bates Motel and never comes out.

These movie images could only belong to one director: Alfred Hitchcock, who from the end of June until October is being celebrated in a definitive season at the British Film Institute in London.

The new Spring 2012 issue of Cineaste is out and selections online include James L Neibaur on Kino's Blu-ray releases of Buster Keaton's work (as well as eleven more DVD/Blu-ray reviews), Andrew Horton's remembrance of Theo Angelopolous, Anchalee Chaiwaraporn and Kong Rithdee on the politics of Thai film and the opening paragraphs of Thomas Doherty's review of Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director:

Generally admiring but never intoxicated, Patrick McGilligan's insightful biography is a chronicle not only of the troubled director but also of the Hollywood studio system at dusk, the vagaries of the multilateral skirmishes between French, British, and American film criticism, and the political follies roiling through twentieth-century America. The author of well-regarded biographies of Fritz Lang and Clint Eastwood and the editor of the invaluable Backstory series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters (who all prove to be much more than...

A critical symposium on film preservation is at the heart of the new issue of Cineaste, though only a portion of it appears online. Nonetheless, the editors outline the issues covered, noting that the "digital revolution is a central theme," its "most significant role" being that of "an invaluable tool for providing access. After all, as the Critical Symposium respondents take pains to emphasize, preservation is rendered virtually meaningless if the films cannot be seen, by scholars at the very least, and ideally by the public at large. As a tool for access, digital video is doubly beneficial — not only does it allow for far wider distribution than possible with film prints, it also allows movies to be seen without risking damage to the original film materials."

Along with 15 film and DVD reviews, the Fall 2011 issue features…

Kong Rithdee: "Like the study of other national cinemas, the topography of Thailand and its cinematic representation — esthetically,...

The subtitle of the latest book from veteran Hollywood biographer Patrick McGilligan sums up his thesis: Director Nicholas Ray spectacularly failed to live up to his full potential, and his successes and lows, both professional and personal, are inextricable. For the most part, McGilligan’s book is strictly a biography, avoiding criticism or analysis, except when connecting Ray’s most wounded protagonists—most famously James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause—to events in the director’s life. The only implicit criticism occurs whenever McGilligan cursorily skips over what he considers a lesser title (Party Girl, Flying Leathernecks, Run For ...

The 18th Annual Whitaker Saint Louis International Film Festival (Sliff) will be held on November 12-22, 2009. The festival annually features the St. Louis premieres of more than 250 films from nearly 40 countries. Along with all the many great films from around the globe, there are several special events and screenings taking place as part of the festival that you’ll want to make sure and mark your calendars for.

An Education, directed by Lone Scherfig (2009) on Thursday, November 12, 7:00 pm – Tivoli Theatre The silent Within Our Gates – Screening will feature live musical accompaniment by Stace England and the Salt Kings. Micheaux biographer Patrick McGilligan will introduce the program and participate in a post-film discussion. – Friday, November 13 at 7:00 pm - St. Louis Art Museum Up In The Air Cocktail Party – Saturday, November 14, 4-6pm, Hilton at the Ballpark. Special-event ticket price of $50; limited number of tickets available only by phone through...

DVD Playhouse—June 2009

By

Allen Gardner

The International (Sony) An Interpol agent (Clive Owen) joins forces with a Manhattan D.A. (Naomi Watts) to bring down an arms dealing ring and a corrupt global banking cartel that’s funding them. Superlative thriller was oddly ignored by critics and audiences alike, but expertly blends intelligence (courtesy screenwriter Eric Warren Singer’s masterfully-crafted script) and full-throttle action (director Tom Tykwer stages one of the great film shoot-outs in New York’s iconic Guggenheim Museum), making this dynamite thriller reminiscent of the best work from masters such as John Frankenheimer and Robert Aldrich. Armin Mueller-Stahl is wonderful as a world-weary covert op. Bonuses: Extended scene; Featurettes; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.

The Jack Lemmon Film Collection(Sony) Five films from the two-time Oscar winning actor, focusing on his early career: Phfft! is a zippy comedy from 1954, one of Lemmon’s earliest films, in which...

Upon viewing Man Hunt, it becomes nearly impossible to not wonder what kind of director Fritz Lang might have become had he not fled Nazi Germany. Apparently not understanding the subtext of M and Metropolis, the Third Reich government offered him the chance to direct propaganda films for them based on the strength of those two films, which are still by and large considered to be Lang’s best; instead, he left the country that very day, making a quick stop in France before making Hollywood films for the rest of his life, none of which ever achieved the legacy that his German films did. Certainly, living in Nazi Germany is more than we could ever really ask from an artist, but it’s a sure bet that whatever he would have made, it would have been a whole lot more interesting than Man Hunt.

The film opens in the...

Clint Eastwood has dropped a libel lawsuit over an unauthorized biography which claimed he beat his ex-wife in exchange for the removal of passages from the book. Eastwood, 74, sued author Patrick McGilligan and St Martin's Press over Clint: The Life And Legend in federal court in San Jose, California, claiming the book contained false and defamatory statements. The offending material included comments made by a former associate who said in a tape-recorded interview he had seen Eastwood abuse his former wife, Maggie Eastwood. The former associate later retracted the claim and McGilligan and his publisher agreed to remove the statement from future editions, prompting the case to be settled. Other terms of the settlement have not been disclosed due to a confidentiality statement.

Clint Eastwood has filed a $10 million lawsuit against the author of a controversial biography that describes him as a coward and a wife-beater. The Dirty Harry star says there are harmful comments regarding his reputation as well as malicious errors. It also says that he knocked his wife Maggie to the floor, just like his on-screen tough guy image. Eastwood's lawyer Marshall Grossman says, "He is entitled to have what is written about him be accurate and truthful. He is not one to sit idly by and permit somebody to deal with his reputation in this fashion." But author Patrick McGilligan says, "The book is fair and honest to the best of my ability. He is not one to sit idly by and permit somebody to deal with his reputation in this fashion."...