News

Toni Vaz, a screen veteran who blazed a trail as an extra, stunt performer and actress before becoming an activist and founder of the NAACP Image Awards, has died. She was 101.

A representative for the Motion Picture & Television Fund confirmed that she passed away on Oct. 4. No cause of death was provided. Per the rep, Vaz was “a beloved resident” at MPTF’s Woodland Hills home.

With roots in the British West Indies and Panama — her parents hailed from Barbados before immigrating to the United States — Vaz was one of four siblings raised in New York. She moved to Los Angeles from the East Coast in the 1950s to pursue a career as an actress and stuntwoman, which may have been a surprising career choice to some as her mother did not allow her to watch movies until she came of age. The leap of faith paid off with...

It’s been inferred since last year that Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming Jesus film would take an aslant approach to the greatest story ever told. Put simply and enigmatically by the man himself: “I don’t know what it’s going to be, exactly. I don’t know what you’d call it. It wouldn’t be a straight narrative. But there would be staged scenes. And I’d be in it.”

After furthers confirmations and intimations of what the film, an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s A Life of Jesus, will constitute, Father Antonio Spadaro––with whom Scorsese conversed for a series of interviews that form the recently published Italian book Dialoghi sulla fede (Dialogues on Faith)––has given Variety a close view of its intentions. Per Scorsese’s hopes to remove negative onuses from religion, Spadaro said the feature seeks “to recover this original experience that he had of the fully embodied,...

f it was the summer of the megawatt blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” September has turned into a month of sequelitis with “The Nun 2,” “Equalizer 3” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.” Even Kenneth Branagh’s “A Hunting in Venice,” is the third installment in the actor/director’s Hercule Poirot mystery series. It’s all a bit of a snooze. That wasn’t the case 70 years ago this month.

There were some oddball films that were released September, 1953 including “Cat-Women of the Moon” with Sonny Tufts and Marie Windsor and “The Sins of Jezebel” starring Paulette Goddard. But 70 years ago, audiences were introduced to a new wide-screen format and young actress who would become one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and ‘60s and Clark Gable returning to a role he originated in 1932.

Twentieth Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck unveiled the studio’s new widescreen process Cinemascope...

To briefly remind readers of the saga:

Back in June of 2023, it was announced that the leadership behind Turner Classic Movies, a long-beloved curator of cinema from Hollywood's Golden Age and beyond, would be laid off. VP of enterprises and strategic partnerships Genevieve McGillicuddy, senior VP of programming and content strategy Charles Tabesh, executive vice president and general manager Pola Changnon, marketing VP Dexter Fedor, and VP of studio production Anne Wilson all lost their jobs. The future of TCM was suddenly up in the air. This not only outraged fans of classic cinema but threw some of Hollywood's most beloved filmmakers into a panic. Was David Zaslav, the CEO of the beleaguered Warner Bros. Discovery nixing the entire TCM brand the same way he did with so much of the films and TV shows on HBO Max? Perhaps Zaslav, having already accrued a horrendous reputation for a long series of consumer-hostile business decisions,...

Good news for those who wish to know what their Twitter feed’s jacking off to: the Criterion Channel are launching an erotic thriller series that includes De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Body Double, the Wachowskis’ Bound, and so many other movies to stir up that ceaseless, fruitless “why do movies have sex scenes?” discourse. (Better or worse than middle-age film critics implying they have a hard-on? I’m so indignant at being forced to choose.) Similarly lurid, if not a bit more frightening, is a David Lynch retro that includes the Criterion editions of Lost Highway and Inland Empire (about which I spoke to Lynch last year), a series of shorts, and a one-month-only engagement for Dune, a film that should be there in perpetuity.

Retrospectives of Harold Lloyd, Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, and shorts by Fanta Régina Nacro round out the big debuts,...

Slow weekend for new titles as cinemas await ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’.

RankFilm (distributor)Three-day gross (Dec 9-11)Total gross to date Week 1. Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical (Sony) £2.1m £10.8m 3 2. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney) £802,106 £30.8m 5 3. Violent Night (Universal) £567,351 £1.9m 2 4. Strange World (Disney) £305,802 £1.8m 3 5. The Menu (Disney) £192,742 £3m 4

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.23

Sony’s Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical held first place at the UK-Ireland box office for a third consecutive weekend, as cinemas await the arrival of Avatar: The Way Of Water.

On its third weekend in cinemas, Matilda dropped just 16 on its previous session...

Grant is a suave stranger who stirs up the strained marriage of Niven and Loretta Young in this fey but beguiling seasonal tale

There’s an unworldly charm and odd, innocent solemnity to this Christmas fantasy comedy from 1947, now on rerelease, directed by Henry Koster and starring Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young. Niven plays the sobersided Bishop Henry Brougham, a decent but now careworn man whose overwork has lately caused him to neglect the happiness of his sweet-natured wife Julia (Young) and infant daughter Debby (Karolyn Grimes). As the Christmas season approaches, the bishop is becoming a veritable Scrooge, a role he effectively shares with the wealthy widow Mrs Hamilton (Gladys Cooper). She was instrumental in getting him the bishop’s job in the first place, and is now exhaustingly stringing him along with a promise to fund the building of a vainglorious new cathedral with which the...

Every once in a while, you'll hear the story of an actor being an absolute disaster to work with. Something like Jared Leto's behavior when he was the Joker in "Suicide Squad," pulling countless disgusting and offensive pranks on cast and crew all for the pursuit of "Method acting." Now, when a middling talent like Jared Leto pulls that kind of stunt, society as a whole mostly agrees to laugh at him, and dislike him for treating crew members so poorly. But what happens when the person childishly tormenting everybody is a genuine generational acting talent?

Marlon Brando, the iconic star of films like "The Godfather'' and "Apocalypse Now," was known and respected for his great talent as an actor. But it was because of this remarkable talent, that he was often able to get away with on-set antics that other performers could not dream of. From making ridiculous...

Look into the series Criterion Channel have programmed for August and this lineup is revealed as (in scientific terms) quite something. “Hollywood Chinese” proves an especially deep bench, spanning “cinema’s first hundred years to explore the ways in which the Chinese people have been imagined in American feature films” and bringing with it the likes of Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, and Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet—among 20-or-so others. A three-film Marguerite Duras series brings one of the greatest films ever (India Song) and two lesser-screened experiments; films featuring Yaphet Kotto include Blue Collar, Across 110th Street, and Midnight Run; and lest we ignore a Myrna Loy retro that goes no later than 1949.

Criterion editions include The Asphalt Jungle, Husbands, Rouge, and Sweet Smell of Success; streaming premieres for Loznitsa’s Donbass, Béla Tarr’s watershed Damnation, and...

From “The King of Kings” to “The Northman,” hundreds of films have premiered within the storied walls of the Tcl Chinese Theatre, which celebrates its 95th anniversary May 18.

Indeed, as early as 1933, the famed movie house appeared in other media as a boilerplate for how a premiere should, and often does, look like. Since then, the theater played itself in dozens of television shows and movies, some of which went on to debut on its iconic screen. The forecourt holds the signatures and imprints of concrete immortalization.

The former Grauman’s Chinese Theatre will fete its 95 years by launching a full year of programming, while also navigating premieres for first-run films and special events including the annual TCM Film Festival. It repertory programming was scheduled both in the big house and at its sister location, the Tcl Chinese 6.

“We’re going to be having screenings of seminal movies that have...

No two ways about it: April’s a great month for the Criterion Channel, which (among other things; more in a second) adds two recent favorites. We’re thrilled at the SVOD premiere of Hamaguchi’s entrancing Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, our #3 of 2021, and Bruno Dumont’s lacerating France, featuring Léa Seydoux’s finest performance yet.

Ethan Hawke’s Adventures in Moviegoing runs the gamut from Eagle Pennell’s Last Night at the Alamo to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, while a 14-film John Ford retro (mostly) skips westerns altogether. And no notes on the Delphine Seyrig retro—multiple by Akerman, Ulrike Ottinger, Duras, a smattering of Buñuel, and Seyrig’s own film Be Pretty and Shut Up! That of all things might be the crown jewl.

See the full list of April titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

—

3 Bad Men, John Ford, 1926

Aar paar, Guru Dutt,...

With fears our winter travel will need a, let’s say, reconsideration, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming could hardly come at a better moment. High on list of highlights is Louis Feuillade’s delightful Les Vampires, which I suggest soundtracking to Coil, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and Jóhann Jóhannson’s Mandy score. Notable too is a Sundance ’92 retrospective running the gamut from Paul Schrader to Derek Jarman to Jean-Pierre Gorin, and I’m especially excited for their look at one of America’s greatest actors, Sterling Hayden.

Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.

See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020

5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952

After Migration: Calabria,...

The July lineup at The Criterion Channel has been revealed, most notably featuring the new Wong Kar Wai restorations from the recent box set release, including As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and his shorts Hua yang de nian hua and The Hand.

Also among the lineup is a series on neo-noir with Body Double, Manhunter, Thief, The Last Seduction, Cutter’s Way, Brick, Night Moves, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and more. The channel will also feature a spotlight on art-house animation with work by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more.

With Jodie Mack’s delightful The Grand Bizarre, the landmark doc Hoop Dreams, Orson Welles’ take on Othello, the recent Oscar entries Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time and You Will Die at Twenty, and much more,...

Ace Italian cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, who was instrumental to the making of masterpieces such as Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” and Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord,” but also worked in Hollywood and was an Oscar nominee for Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz,” has died. He was 97.

Rotunno, who was nicknamed Peppino, died on Sunday in his Rome home, his family announced without disclosing the exact cause.

Born in Rome on March 23, 1923, Rotunno started his remarkable six-decade career as a still photographer at the Italian capital’s Cinecittà Studios in 1940 before being recruited in 1942 to serve as a newsreel cameraman with the Italian army where he cut his teeth as a cinematographer.

In 1943 at age 20, with World War II still raging, Rotunno was hired as an assistant Dp by Roberto Rossellini for the 1943 war film “L’Uomo dalla croce” (The Man with a Cross), a drama about a military chaplain.

After the war,...

A extensive look at all those movies James Franco directed.

James Franco has done a lot of things, we’ve heard. Following a successful turn on Judd Apatow’s Freaks and Geeks and a well-received starring spot on a TNT biopic on James Dean, he turned immediately to a litany of pursuits: from playwriting and English degrees to painting and directing no less than ten feature-lengths. The latter project interested me. Were they any good? In Franco’s Rolling Stone profile last year, Jonah Weiner ran around a thesaurus of words like “dizzying,” “indefatigable“ and, wait for it, “multihyphenate” to describe his subject but none of those words mean very much. Paul Klee painted over a thousand paintings in the penultimate last year of his life. So could I. So what?

“What did we do to deserve James Franco?,” asked Rex Reed in a slightly different era. Back then, even the The Guardian agreed with Jared Kushner...

By Doug Oswald

Adolf Hitler shaped history in ways we are still coming to grips with to this day. Our understanding and interpretation of the devastation and evil he inflicted upon the world involves not only warfare but his impact on the lives of individuals who would become his victims. Some of his victims would become refugees, most prominently Jewish and political dissidents who would make their way to America and Hollywood. Their story is told in “Cinema’s Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood” available on DVD by Warner Home Video.

Hitler’s devastation of Europe resulted in an influx of movie talent to America and their impact is extraordinary. The great German cinema brain drain started in the early 1930s and delivered a variety of cinematic exiles, Jews and non-Jews alike, who fled Nazi Germany to Vienna, Paris and London before making their way eventually to Hollywood. Fritz Lang,...

Joe Richards Mar 24, 2017

Need to find a bit of movie happiness? Here are 25 films that might just do the trick...

Let's face it, we could all probably do with a little bit of cheering up right about now. Times are scary and times are tough, so it's perfectly natural to look for some kind of reassurance that everything will indeed be all right in the end.

Film is perhaps one of the most powerful and effective tools in doing this. It can be a transportative experience, an escape from reality, and, most importantly, it can act as a reminder of all that is good in the world.

With that in mind, here’s a list of 25 movies that are almost-guaranteed to make you smile and restore your faith in humanity...

City Lights

In truth, any of Charlie Chaplin’s films are perfect for those times when you just need to smile.

German import Henry Koster, like many of Hollywood’s studio directors, is not a name many remember despite having been responsible for a quite a few notable titles, quite a few of them starring iconic luminaries across several eras.

Continue reading...

No Highway in the Sky

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1951 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 99 min. / Street Date February 7, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring : James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Glynis Johns, Jack Hawkins, Janette Scott, Niall MacGinnis, Kenneth More, Ronald Squire, Elizabeth Allan, Jill Clifford, Felix Aylmer, Dora Bryan, Maurice Denham, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Bessie Love, Karel Stepanek.

Cinematography: Georges Périnal

Film Editor: Manuel del Campo

Original Music: Malcolm Arnold

Written by: R.C. Sherriff, Oscar Millard, Alec Coppel from the novel by Nevil Shute

Produced by: Louis D. Lighton

Directed by Henry Koster

A few years back, whenever a desired title came up on list for a Fox, Columbia or Warners’ Mod (made-on-demand) DVD, my first reaction was disappointment: we really want to see our favorites released in the better disc format, Blu-ray. But things have changed. As Mod announcements thin out, we have seen an explosion of library titles remastered in HD.

Banished by Josef Goebbels and threatened by the Reich, the creative core of the German film industry found itself in sunny Los Angeles, many not speaking English but determined to carry on as writers, directors and actors. More than simply surviving, they made a profound impact on Hollywood moviemaking. Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 2009 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 117 min. / Street Date April 12, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Cinematography Joan Churchill, Emil Fischhaber Film Editor Anny Lowery Meza Original Music Peter Melnick Written, Produced and Directed by Karen Thomas

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood is the perfect docu to introduce people to the way film and world history are intertwined... and also to generate interest in older movies and classic cinema. Instead of a story about the making of movies, it's about a fascinating group of filmmakers forced to abandon...

Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...

It has been sixty three years since Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland starred in Henry Koster’s cinematic adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s 1951 novel, My Cousin Rachel. The classic noir mystery is now set for modernisation, however, with Sam Claflin and Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz taking the redefined lead roles, under the oversight of writer-director Roger Michell (Morning Glory, Hyde Park On The Hudson).

The story follows a young man’s descent into paranoia and confusion as he is stricken with grief at the loss of a beloved relative. When the widow, Rachel, arrives, he is torn between his growing love for her, and the belief that she could be a gold-digging femme fatale.

“Philip Ashley’s older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to the Ambrose’s beautiful English estate, is crushed that the...

Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

Debbie Reynolds ca. early 1950s. Debbie Reynolds movies: Oscar nominee for 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown,' sweetness and light in phony 'The Singing Nun' Debbie Reynolds is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 23, '15. An MGM contract player from 1950 to 1959, Reynolds' movies can be seen just about every week on TCM. The only premiere on Debbie Reynolds Day is Jerry Paris' lively marital comedy How Sweet It Is (1968), costarring James Garner. This evening, TCM is showing Divorce American Style, The Catered Affair, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and The Singing Nun. 'Divorce American Style,' 'The Catered Affair' Directed by the recently deceased Bud Yorkin, Divorce American Style (1967) is notable for its cast – Reynolds, Dick Van Dyke, Jean Simmons, Jason Robards, Van Johnson, Lee Grant – and for the fact that it earned Norman Lear (screenplay) and Robert Kaufman (story) a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination.

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...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Teresa Wright-Samuel Goldwyn association comes to a nasty end (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock Heroine in His Favorite Film.") Whether or not because she was aware that Enchantment wasn't going to be the hit she needed – or perhaps some other disagreement with Samuel Goldwyn or personal issue with husband Niven Busch – Teresa Wright, claiming illness, refused to go to New York City to promote the film. (Top image: Teresa Wright in a publicity shot for The Men.) Goldwyn had previously announced that Wright, whose contract still had another four and half years to run, was to star in a film version of J.D. Salinger's 1948 short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." Instead, he unceremoniously – and quite publicly – fired her.[1] The Goldwyn organization issued a statement, explaining that besides refusing the assignment to travel to New York to help generate pre-opening publicity for Enchantment,...

Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock heroine (image: Joseph Cotten about to strangle Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt') (See preceding article: "Teresa Wright Movies: Actress Made Oscar History.") After scoring with The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and The Pride of the Yankees, Teresa Wright was loaned to Universal – once initial choices Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland became unavailable – to play the small-town heroine in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. (Check out video below: Teresa Wright reminiscing about the making of Shadow of a Doubt.) Co-written by Thornton Wilder, whose Our Town had provided Wright with her first chance on Broadway and who had suggested her to Hitchcock; Meet Me in St. Louis and Junior Miss author Sally Benson; and Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, Shadow of a Doubt was based on "Uncle Charlie," a story outline by Gordon McDonell – itself based on actual events.

By Doug Oswald

“Fraulein” begins with a close-up shot of the spires of a Gothic cathedral, organ music playing on the soundtrack and air-raid sirens blaring as a statement appears on screen: “Cologne on the Rhine during the last weeks of World War II.” The scene moves down to street level as German civilians and soldiers run for bomb shelters as destruction rains down on them. An American prisoner of war makes his escape during the chaos and he stumbles upon the home of a college professor and his daughter.

Mel Ferrer plays the American Pow, Captain Foster MacLain. He meets the Fraulein of the movie, Erika Angermann, played by Dana Wynter. She helps him evade capture during a search of her father’s home. We learn about a fiancé she has not seen in over two years. She learns later from a letter that he has been wounded and is in a hospital.

Roger Michell (Notting Hill) is attached to write and direct My Cousin Rachel, an adaptation of the classic Daphne Du Maurier novel, for Fox Searchlight.

The dark romance revolves around Philip, a young orphan, who believes his mysterious, beautiful cousin Rachel may have been responsible for the murder of his beloved guardian Ambrose, also a cousin of theirs. As Philip plots his revenge, he finds his feelings complicated as he falls under Rachel’s beguiling spell.

The project is currently out to cast.

The book, originally published in 1951, was previously adapted into a film starring screen legends Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton and directed by Henry Koster (Harvey).

Michell most recently directed TV mini-series The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries, the true story of a retired schoolteacher who was wrongly accused of the murder of 25-year-old landscape architect Jo Yeates and vilified in the press, before being fully vindicated.

Loretta Young films as TCM celebrates her 102nd birthday (photo: Loretta Young ca. 1935) Loretta Young would have turned 102 years old today. Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the birthday of the Salt Lake City-born, Academy Award-winning actress today, January 6, 2015, with no less than ten Loretta Young films, most of them released by Warner Bros. in the early '30s. Young, who began her film career in a bit part in the 1927 Colleen Moore star vehicle Her Wild Oat, remained a Warners contract player from the late '20s up until 1933. (See also: "Loretta Young Movies.") Now, ten Loretta Young films on one day may sound like a lot, but one should remember that most Warner Bros. -- in fact, most Hollywood -- releases of the late '20s and early '30s were either B Movies or programmers. The latter were relatively short (usually 60 to 75 minutes) feature films starring A (or B+) performers,...

Honorary Oscars 2014: Hayao Miyazaki, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Maureen O’Hara; Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award goes to Harry Belafonte One good thing about the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards — an expedient way to remove the time-consuming presentation of the (nearly) annual Honorary Oscar from the TV ratings-obsessed, increasingly youth-oriented Oscar show — is that each year up to four individuals can be named Honorary Oscar recipients, thus giving a better chance for the Academy to honor film industry veterans while they’re still on Planet Earth. (See at the bottom of this post a partial list of those who have gone to the Great Beyond, without having ever received a single Oscar statuette.) In 2014, the Academy’s Board of Governors has selected a formidable trio of honorees: Japanese artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, 73; French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, 82; and Irish-born Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara,...

We pay tribute to the actor James Shigeta, famous for his roles in Flower Drum Song, Die Hard, and a legion other turns on stage and TV.

For a generation of moviegoers, James Shigeta will be immediately recognisable as Joseph Takagi, the Nakatomi Corporation boss who's ruthlessly despatched by Alan Rickman's sneering villain in the 1988 hit, Die Hard. But there was so much more to Shigeta than John McTiernan's action classic - that appearance was, in fact, but one of many in a long and fruitful career on stage, television and the silver screen.

Born in Hawaii in 1933, Shigeta embarked on a singing career after winning first place in a TV show called Original Amateur Hour. His subsequent success was such that a lengthy run of appearances in Tokyo musicals left him with the nickname, The Frank Sinatra of Japan.

Returning to America in the late 1950s, Shigeta...

Above: French grande for Harvey (Henry Koster, USA, 1950) by Roger Cartier.

Movie Poster of the Week is on semi-hiatus for the Easter holiday, so in the spirit of the season I thought I’d simply offer up Roger Cartier’s beautiful vernal French poster for everybody’s favorite invisible rabbit. Of course, that didn’t stop me searching out every other international poster for the film. (I especially love the much more sinister Donnie Darko-esque German design.)

Above: the German poster.

Above: the Swedish design.

Above: an alternative French poster.

Above: the U.S. one sheet.

Above: the U.S. three sheet.

Above: the U.S. half-sheet.

Above: U.S. Savings Bond tie-in poster.

Above: U.S. press book.

Posters courtesy of Doctor Macro and Heritage Auctions.

‘Gone with the Wind’ actress Mary Anderson dead at 96; also featured in Alfred Hitchcock thriller ‘Lifeboat’ Mary Anderson, an actress featured in both Gone with the Wind and Alfred Hitchcock’s adventure thriller Lifeboat, died following a series of small strokes on Sunday, April 6, 2014, while under hospice care in Toluca Lake/Burbank, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Anderson, the widow of multiple Oscar-winning cinematographer Leon Shamroy, had turned 96 on April 3. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1918, Mary Anderson was reportedly discovered by director George Cukor, at the time looking for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s film version of Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller Gone with the Wind. Instead of Scarlett, eventually played by Vivien Leigh, Anderson was cast in the small role of Maybelle Merriwether — most of which reportedly ended up on the cutting-room floor. Cukor was later fired from the project; his replacement, Victor Fleming,...

Blu-ray Release Date: April 8, 2014

Price: Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Twilight Time

James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara go on holiday in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation.

James Stewart (It’s a Wonderful Life), Maureen O’Hara (Miracle on 34th Street), John Saxon and Fabian star in the 1962 family comedy film Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation.

Initially a seemingly light-hearted comedy, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation reveals an intriguing darker side in its tale of a family get-together gone awry. Little kids are monstrous, older kids suffer from self-esteem problems, grown-up kids have marital difficulties of distressingly diverse natures—and all are presided over by a decidedly grumpy (if great) James Stewart, waging the familial wars with more idealistic helpmate O’Hara at his side.

Directed and written by a pair of Hollywood veterans (Henry Koster and Nunnally Johnson, respectively), the quirky movie features a standout score by the superb Henry Mancini, available on...

As promised last week, here’s the list of my favorite Christmas movies, starting with all my very favorite-est…

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). Directed by Frank Capra, who declared it his favorite of all his films and showed it every Christmas at his home, it stars James Stewart as “everyman” George Bailey, Donna Reed as his wife Mary Hatch Bailey, Lionel Barrymore as the banker Mr. Potter, and a veritable Who’s Who of notable character actors, including Beulah Bondi as Ma Bailey, Thomas Mitchell as Uncle Billy, Ward Bond as Bert the cop, Frank Faylen as Ernie the cab driver, Gloria Grahame as Violet the “bad” girl, Sheldon Leonard as Nick the bartender, and Harry Travers in the pivotal role of the angel Clarence Odbody. The story of an ordinary man who lives an ordinary life, driven to despair of having his dreams crushed once and for all...

Dipsomania Week! concludes at Trailers from Hell with director and Tfh creator Joe Dante introducing Henry Koster's 1950 classic "Harvey," starring James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd, a man convinced he's become companions with a six-foot rabbit. One of Stewart's most memorable performances anchors a comedy classic that's enriched by the seriousness of its basic premise. Funny, sad and captivating, it's that rare example of a well-loved movie that plumbs deeper depths than it's given credit for. It's been restaged often for television and there's always talk of a theatrical remake, but it's hard to see how director Koster's version of Mary Hadley Chase's play could be topped.

Deanna Durbin: Ephemeral fame (photo: Deanna Durbin in 1981) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin: 'Sweet Monster.'"] Unlike Greta Garbo, whose mystique remained basically intact following her retirement in 1941, Deanna Durbin’s popularity faded away much like that of the vast majority of celebrities who were removed — or who chose to remove themselves — from public view. Despite the advent of home video and classic-movie cable channels, Durbin remains virtually unknown to the vast majority of those who weren’t around in her heyday in the ’30s and ’40s. Yet, although relatively few in number, she continues to have her ardent fans. There are a handful of websites devoted to Deanna Durbin and her film and recording careers, chiefly among them the appropriately titled "Deanna Durbin Devotees." Fade Out Charles David, Deanna Durbin’s husband of 48 years, died in March 1999, at the age of 92; Institut Pasteur medical researcher Peter H. David is their only son. Durbin also had a daughter,...

‘The Deanna Durbin Unit’ (photo: Robert Cummings, Deanna Durbin, and Charles Laughton in It Started with Eve) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin Movies Save Universal."] Deanna Durbin and Henry Koster, who has been credited with helping to mold Durbin’s screen persona, collaborated on five movies. Besides Three Smart Girls, there was the inevitable sequel, Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), in addition to One Hundred Men and a Girl, after which Durbin’s salary was reportedly doubled to $3,000 per week, plus a $10,000 bonus per film; the Cinderella-like First Love (1939), in which, following worldwide publicity, Durbin gets kissed on screen for the first time (Robert Stack was the kisser); Spring Parade (1940), with a Viennese setting and Robert Cummings as her leading man; and It Started with Eve (1941), a light, well-received romantic comedy co-starring Cummings and Charles Laughton. (Universal would also release the 1964 remake, I’d Rather Be Rich, starring Sandra Dee in the Robert Cummings role, Robert Goulet in the Deanna Durbin part,...

Deanna Durbin dies at 91: One of the top stars of Hollywood’s studio era (photo: Deanna Durbin in I’ll Be Yours) According to Hollywood lore, teen star Deanna Durbin saved Universal Pictures from bankruptcy in the mid-’30s, when her movies earned the Great Depression-hit studio some much-needed millions. The story may seem like an exaggeration, but in fact future Universal players such as Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Maria Montez, Rock Hudson, Doris Day, and even Jaws‘ Bruce the Shark and the assorted dinosaurs found in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park partly owe their film careers to the pretty, bubbly, full-faced, soprano-voiced Deanna Durbin, the star of immensely successful Universal releases such as Three Smart Girls, One Hundred Men and a Girl, and That Certain Age. Universal should be in mourning this week. Late this past Tuesday, April 30, it was announced that Deanna Durbin had died a...

Deanna Durbin, a star whose songs and smile made her one of the biggest box office draws of Hollywood’s Golden Age with fans that included Winston Churchill, has died.

Durbin died on about April 20 in a village outside Paris where she had lived, out of public view, since 1949, family friend Bob Koster of Los Angeles told the Associated Press on Wednesday. Koster’s father, Henry Koster, directed six of Durbin’s films. Bob Koster did not know the cause of death.

At the height of her career, the Canadian-born Durbin, who made her first feature, Three Smart Girls, at...

Tony Award 2013 nominations: Broadway-Hollywood connections include Sigourney Weaver, Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd, Bette Midler (photo: Sigourney Weaver in Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike) The 2013 Tony Award nominations will be announced tomorrow, April 30. Among this year’s potential Tony nominees are a number of film-related performers, ranging from Academy Award nominees and winners such as Sigourney Weaver, Tom Hanks, and Jessica Chastain to The Avengers‘ Scarlett Johansson, Our Idiot Brother and Dinner for Schmucks‘ Paul Rudd, and Tom Cruise’s ex-wife Katie Holmes. Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, Forrest Gump) may be up for a Best Actor in a Play Tony Award for Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy. Ephron, who died last year, directed Hanks in two of his biggest box-office hits: Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998), both co-starring Meg Ryan. Another potential Best Actor nominee is David Hyde Pierce (Nixon, Down with Love) for...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Released in 1954 at the height of Marlon Brando's popularity, Desiree has the dubious distinction of being one of his least-remembered films, possibly because it was eclipsed by Kazan's On the Waterfront, released the same year. Desiree was a prestigious Fox production based on a romance novel that apparently had been so much the rage during this time that it was marketed as rivaling Gone With the Wind. The film version purports to explore the romantic relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte (Brando) and Desiree Clary (Jean Simmons), a young French girl of humble background who is employed in a shop owned by her family. When we first meet young Napoleon, he is on skids, his career and life threatened by the madness and paranoia that engulfed France in the aftermath of the Revolution. Still, he perseveres and survives the threats. He enters a playful romance with Desiree and even proposes to her.

Celeste Holm movies at Fox, later years. (See previous article: “Oscar Winner Celeste Holm Dies.” Photo: Celeste Holm All About Eve, with Bette Davis.) Celeste Holm received her second Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for playing a nun named Sister Scholastica opposite Loretta Young in Henry Koster’s light comedy Come to the Stable (1949). She earned her third and final Oscar nod for supporting rivals Bette Davis and Anne Baxter in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Broadway-set Oscar winner All About Eve (1950), wrapping up her Fox contract by appearing opposite veteran Ronald Colman in one of his last movies, the Richard Whorf-directed socially conscious [...]...

I was very saddened to learn this morning of the death of Celeste Holm, the Oscar-winning actress who starred in numerous classics of Hollywood's Golden Age -- among them Elia Kazan's best picture Oscar winner Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), Anatole Litvak's The Snake Pit (1948), Henry Koster's Come to the Stable (1949), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and best picture Oscar winner All About Eve (1950), and Charles Walters's The Tender Trap (1955) and High Society (1956) -- and who I was honored to count as a friend over the last decade of her life. I first met

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Grant Bowler / Richard Burton: Liz & Dick Grant Bowler as Richard Burton in Lifetime’s fall movie Liz & Dick looks less convincing than Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor. Burton met Taylor at the time the two were making Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. A troubled production, Cleopatra was initially to have starred Taylor, Peter Finch, and Stephen Boyd, under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. Mamoulian left, Taylor fell seriously ill, nearly died, and had to have a tracheotomy performed. The end result was a Best Actress Academy Award for her troubles (and for Butterfield 8) and brand new leading men for Cleopatra: Richard Burton as Marc Antony and Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar. By then, Cleopatra also had a new director: two-time Best Director Oscar winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz. A respected stage and screen actor in the ’60s, Richard Burton was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Best Supporting Actor...

There’s truly no place quite like Hollywood. For the third straight year, the TCM Classic Film Festival was staged in the historic center of the world’s film industry. The event once again united a great community of film fans. The 2012 event celebrated style in the movies, from fashion to architecture and everything in between and lined up great films, terrific guests and many special events.

There were so many classic films to choose from over the 4-day festival, it was nearly impossible to decide what to see! Here are a few of my favorites from the weekend.

Auntie Mame (1958) .

Fantastically restored, and screened at the legendary Egyptian Theater, this Rosalind Russell classic was easily a fan fave at the festival. Even at 9am on a Saturday morning, the house was packed. The screening was hosted by two-time Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholar Cari Beauchamp,...

The TCM Classic Film Festival is teaming up with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to showcase a unique slate of programming that taps into Academy archives and distinguished membership to illustrate this year.s overall festival theme of Style in the Movies.

AMPAS will exhibit Hollywood home movies, preserved by the Academy, featuring legendary stars and filmmakers, presented by Randy Haberkamp of AMPAS and Lynn Kirste of the Academy Film Archive with special guests Margaret O’Brien; Steve McQueen.s former wife Neile Adams McQueen Toffel; Henry Koster.s son, Robert Koster; and the daughter of Fred MacMurray, Kate MacMurray.

AMPAS will also present a discussion of how art directors use various items to aid in storytelling featuring members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Art Directors Branch as well an exhibit of sketches and behind-the-scenes photography that illustrate the work of costume...