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One of the best bits of advice any writer will give you is to make yourself familiar with as many tropes, cliches and conventions as possible. That way, you can understand how they work while also knowing just when to ignore them. One convention seen in just about all of fiction is the idea that the protagonist and antagonist must share at least one, if not many, moments together, culminating in a final altercation in which the hero emerges victorious over the villain. It's a trope so common that not only is it not questioned, it's routinely expected, so much so that when it's missing, it seems initially like it could be a mistake. Of course, there are many examples of novels, TV shows, and films where this convention is subverted or even ignored, yet it becomes more difficult to do so when an artist is working within the confines of genre.

Within a career that lasted over 50 years, French singer-songwriter, actress, author, fashion icon, and astrologist Françoise Hardy — who passed away Tuesday, June 11 after a long battle with cancer — produced 32 studio albums, performed in over 10 films and television specials, wrote six books, and influenced countless artists ranging from Carla Bruni to Charli Xcx. Her screen career includes roles in films like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculin Féminin” and John Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix.”

She was a renegade. A heartbreaker. Born at the height of World War II in Paris, her upbringing coincided with a great sociopolitical re-evaluation in France that fed her own anxieties and obsessions. Seeking artistic refuge outside of her home country, she found inspiration in American music that, by her teen years, was starting to reach her shores.

“This passion for singing became real madness when I discovered an English station called Radio Luxembourg,” Hardy said in a 2012 interview with Télérama.

The intent of THR‘s annual list of the 50 Most Powerful Showrunners is to provide an accurate state of the TV union — a rundown of the writer-producers selling in an increasingly fraught media climate, making culturally relevant and awards-friendly shows and serving the masses at a time when consensus entertainment has all but vanished. It’s also a great opportunity to pick some brains.

Those showrunners who made the 2023 list were polled on a variety of subjects. If Suits can become a streaming hit years after ending, what other shows deserve a similar fate? What IP are they dying to get their hands on? What’s already a pressing issue for the next WGA contract negotiation with the studios? And if they found themselves with a burner social media account, what would they do with it?

Here are some of the best answers to those and more questions.

If I...

1977's "The Spy Who Loved Me" is a landmark James Bond film for several reasons. For one, it fully cemented Sir Roger Moore as Bond, establishing his take on the character as distinctive and separate from Sean Connery and George Lazenby. For another, it introduced another recurring character to the continuity-lite franchise: Richard Kiel's imposing (and mostly silent) henchman, Jaws. The film also featured a then-groundbreaking stunt sequence, a buzzworthy moment that helped it become the massive box-office hit the franchise needed in order to continue at all after the underperformance of "The Man With the Golden Gun."

Most intriguingly for the spy movie in general, however, "The Spy Who Loved Me" introduced the notion of detente between Her Majesty's Secret Service (represented by Bond) and the Kgb (represented by Barbara Bach as Anya Amasova). This spirit of tolerance and occasional cooperation continued throughout the next several Bond films,...

For the many actors who have taken their turn portraying British superspy James Bond in his numerous films, the job can sometimes be nearly as dangerous as Bond's on-screen escapades. Whether it be Roger Moore being injured doing a boat crash stunt or Daniel Craig hurting himself doing parkour, the role often requires some fairly risky stunts.

Nobody knows this better than Moore, who played Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. Taking up the mantle after Sean Connery finished up with the role meant expectations were high. Moore had to live up to Connery not only as a charismatic presence, but as an actor to work with, so this meant he would be doing a lot of his own stunts. Moore knew he'd be compared to Connery in many aspects, though when asked in an Entertainment Weekly interview if he got competitive with his predecessor, he said, "No more than...

One of the great things about horror movies is that they offer a universal experience. No matter where you go in the world, the same things are considered scary, which is why great horror movies are made all over the world. Today we’re going to be focusing on ones made or produced in Ireland, so if you’re looking for a fright, try one of these out.

The Sleep of Death

The Sleep of Death was released in 1980 and was written and directed by Calvin Floyd. It’s often described as a Swedish-Irish film, thanks to the prevalence of Swedish cast members. The film is based on the 1872 novella The Room in the Dragon Volant and is sometimes called The Inn of the Flying Dragon, in reference to the title of the novella. The story follows a young Englishman called Colonel Gaillard, played by Per Oscarsson, who goes to France to pursue a woman,...

Veteran filmmakers Michael Relph and Basil Dearden try a hip ‘n’ flip costume comedy about an 1899 consortium that’s the equivalent of Murder Inc.: Killings for hire done with veddy proper civility and good taste. The charming Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg lead a notable cast — Telly Savalas, Curd Jürgens, Philippe Noiret, Beryl Reid, Clive Revill — through mayhem-filled chases in several European capitals. Tossed off in tongue-in-cheek style, it’s shallow but cute, and if you like the stars it can be a lark. Its saving grace is the spirited Ms. Rigg.

The Assassination Bureau

Region-Free Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 86

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / The Assassination Bureau Limited / Street Date October 29, 2021 / Available from [Imprint] or Amazon /

Starring: Oliver Reed, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Curd Jürgens, Philippe Noiret, Warren Mitchell, Beryl Reid, Clive Revill, Kenneth Griffith, Vernon Dobtcheff, Annabella Incontrera, Jess Conrad, George Coulouris.

Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth

Art Director: Michael Relph

Film...

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Yul Brynner, who were celebrating this week for his centennial, was in a lot of very expensive movies. His biggest year was 1956, with The King & I, Anastasia and The Ten Commandments - a combined budget of over $20 million. But there were plenty to follow. Studios saw Brynner as a generic racial and ethnic “other,” which got him cast in all sorts of bloated historical, international, orientalist pictures. Which also means, of course, that many of his movies are entirely worthy of consignment to the dustbin of Hollywood history.

Intriguingly, though, he did occasionally work beyond Hollywood. In the late 1960s he joined Orson Welles, Sergei Bondarchuk, Franco Nero and Curd Jürgens in Yugoslavia for The Battle of Neretva. A World War Two Partisan film directed by Veljko Bulajić, a Partisan veteran himself, it...

Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection

Blu ray

Severin Films

1965 – 1989 / 2841 min.

Starring Russ Tamblyn, Regina Carrol, Lon Chaney

Cinematography by Gary Graver, Vilmos Zsigmond, László Kovács

Directed by Al Adamson, David Gregory

The titles grab you by the collar like a desperate carny barker – Psycho A Go-Go, Blood of Ghastly Horror, Satan’s Sadists – then something for the raincoat crowd – Girls For Rent, Nurses For Sale, The Naughty Stewardesses. The rant turns political, incendiary: Black Heat, Mean Mother, Black Samurai. His last gasp – Cinderella 2000, Nurse Sherri, The Happy Hobo. The Happy Hobo?

Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection is an alarming new release from Severin Films presenting 32 of the director’s misbegotten “masterpieces” in beautifully restored transfers with enough added attractions to choke a horse. It’s the story of one man’s twenty year run in exploitation cinema that may be too exhausting for the casual viewer to contemplate. But...

Psyche 59

Blu ray – All Region

Powerhouse

1964 / 1:85:1 / 94 Min. / Street Date – February 25, 2019

Starring Patricia Neal, Samantha Eggar, Curd Jürgens

Cinematography by Walter Lassally

Directed by Alexander Singer

The story of a troubled marriage and a tenacious home wrecker, Psyche 59 is a Brigitte Bardot movie without Bardot – despite its overheated narrative Alexander Singer’s psychosexual potboiler is stuck at room temperature.

Patricia Neal plays Alison Crawford, the unlucky sibling to Samantha Eggar’s hot to trot sister Robin and Curd Jürgens is Eric, the reluctant Romeo in the little flirt’s crosshairs. Jürgens knew the pitfalls of a wandering eye having tangled with Bardot herself in 1956’s And God Created Woman – judging by his reaction to Eggar he hasn’t learned his lesson.

Alison suffers from hysterical blindness and has suppressed the traumatic event that triggered it – her sister’s return unlocks a Pandora’s Box of bad memories but...

I’ve always had a great appreciation and fondness for horror anthologies, and I devoured horror comics as a kid; whether it was House of Mystery or Creepy magazine, they never failed to fire my imagination in short, sharp bursts. When the Romero/King collaboration Creepshow (1982) came out, my dream of seeing these kinds of stories translated to film was nothing but revelatory. I soon discovered it was not the first of its ilk, and began a journey through dusty video store shelves looking for its long-lost relatives. One of my first (and favorite) finds was Vault of Horror (1973), a five-fingered punch to my nascent, pubescent, omnibus-loving heart.

Released by Cinerama Releasing stateside in March and produced by Amicus (the fine folks behind its predecessor, Tales from the Crypt), Vault of Horror (aka The Vault of Horror, for the easily confused, I guess) was not as well received by critics as Tales,...

He’s fast on his feet, quick with a gun, and faster with the to-die-for beauties that only existed in the swinging ’60s. The superspy exploits of Oss 117 were too big for just one actor, so meet all three iterations of the man they called Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath . . . seriously.

Oss 117 Five Film Collection

Blu-ray

Oss 117 Is Unleashed; Oss 117: Panic in Bangkok; Oss 117: Mission For a Killer; Oss 117: Mission to Tokyo; Oss 117: Double Agent

Kl Studio Classics

1963-1968 / B&W and Color / 1:85 widescreen + 2:35 widescreen / 528 min. / Street Date September 26, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 59.95

Starring: Kerwin Matthews, Nadia Sanders, Irina Demick, Daniel Emilfork; Kerwin Matthews, Pier Angeli, Robert Hossein; Frederick Stafford, Mylène Demongeot, Perrette Pradier, Dominique Wilms, Raymond Pellegrin, Annie Anderson; Frederick Stafford, Marina Vlad, Jitsuko Yoshimura; John Gavin, Margaret Lee, Curd Jurgens, Luciana Paluzzi, Rosalba Neri, Robert Hossein, George Eastman.

Cinematography: Raymond Pierre Lemoigne...

This Story Has Been Updated.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Molly Peters, who began her career as a nude "glamour girl" model before starting a short-lived film career, has passed away at age 78.  She had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer according to her husband but it was a stroke to which she succumbed. Peters' voluptuous appearance made her one of the more popular of the provocative models who posed for men's magazines in the 1960s. She posed for England's legendary photographer of nudes, Harrison Marks. She landed the only memorable role of her career in the 1965 James Bond blockbuster "Thunderball". In the film, Bond (Sean Connery) was sent to the Shrublands health spa to recuperate from some wear-and-tear. Here he encounters nurse Pat (Peters), a sexy blonde who conveniently is assigned to look after Bond's needs. Within short order Bond has her naked in a steam room. In another scene, Bond...

Submarine movie evening: Underwater war waged in TCM's Memorial Day films In the U.S., Turner Classic Movies has gone all red, white, and blue this 2017 Memorial Day weekend, presenting a few dozen Hollywood movies set during some of the numerous wars in which the U.S. has been involved around the globe during the last century or so. On Memorial Day proper, TCM is offering a submarine movie evening. More on that further below. But first it's good to remember that although war has, to put it mildly, serious consequences for all involved, it can be particularly brutal on civilians – whether male or female; young or old; saintly or devilish; no matter the nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other label used in order to, figuratively or literally, split apart human beings. Just this past Sunday, the Pentagon chief announced that civilian deaths should be anticipated as “a...

“Observe, Mr. Bond, the instruments of Armageddon.”

In celebration of the life of Sir Roger Moore, and to benefit Unicef, there will be a double feature screening of The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only at select AMC Theatres on May 31st at 6pm and June 4th at 2pm. For a list of participating theaters, go Here (the only St. Louis AMC Theater participating is The AMC Chesterfield 14)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Spy Who Loved Me sports a labyrinthine story involving outer-space extortion. The leading lady is sexy Russian secret agent Barbara Bach, who joins forces with Bond to foil yet another megalomaniacal villain, who plans to threaten New York City with nuclear weaponry. Curt Jurgens stars as Stromberg, Richard Kiel costars as ‘Jaws’, and other Bond lovelies include Caroline Munro and Valerie Leon.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Roger Moore was back as Secret Agent 007 in For Your Eyes Only,...

Jacqueline Bisset’s in a heck of a fix. Her hubby Alan Alda has been seduced by promises of fame and fortune from creepy concert genius Curt Jurgens, and is responding to weird overtures from Curt’s daughter Barbara Parkins. The pianist’s mansion is stuffed with occult books, and he displays an unhealthy interest in Alda’s piano-ready hands. Do you think the innocent young couple could be in a diabolical tight spot? Nah, nothing to worry about here.

The Mephisto Waltz

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1971 / Color /1:85 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date April 18, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Alan Alda, Jacqueline Bisset, Barbara Parkins, Brad(ford) Dillman, William Windom, Kathleen Widdoes, Pamelyn Ferdin, Curt Jurgens, Curt Lowens, Kiegh Diegh, Berry Kroeger, Walter Brooke, Frank Campanella.

Cinematography: William W. Spencer

Film Editor: Richard Brockway

Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith

Written by Ben Maddow from a novel by Fred Mustard Stewart

Produced...

Veteran’s Day is November 11. While we all try to escape from the most exasperating Presidential Campaign in our history let me pay tribute to the Men and Women who have served in the military to insure we keep our electoral process and our freedoms.

Having served in the Navy four years (there he goes again!) I have a keen interest in any movie about the military, especially the sea service. I did serve during peace time so had no experience with combat but still spent most of my tour of duty at sea on an aircraft carrier, the USS Amerca CV66. Among other jobs I ran the ship’s television station for almost two years. Movies have always been important to me and so providing a few hours of entertainment every day when we were at sea was just about the best job I could have had.

The author...

Clément Cogitore on Michelangelo Antonioni and Apichatpong Weerasethakul: "who are my masters" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Nicholas Ray's Bitter Victory starring Richard Burton and Curd Jürgens to Stanley Kubrick's Paths Of Glory with Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker and Adolphe Menjou come to mind or the tension built with Kip (Naveen Andrews) checking for mines in Anthony Minghella's The English Patient, based on Michael Ondaatje's novel when reflecting on Neither Heaven Nor Earth (Ni Le Ciel Ni La Terre).

Jérémie Renier is Captain Antarès Bonassieu

Clément Cogitore's haunting debut feature stars Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne discovery Jérémie Renier with Kévin Azaïs (Thomas Cailley's Love At First Fight, Catherine Corsini's Summertime), Swann Arlaud (Axelle Ropert's The Apple Of My Eye), Finnegan Oldfield (Thomas Bidegain's Les Cowboys, Eva Husson's Bang Gang), Sâm Mirhosseini, Marc Robert, Hamid Reza Javdan (Atiq Rahimi's The Patience Stone), Edouard Court,...

1977 is our "Year of the Month" for July. So we'll be celebrating its films randomly throughout the month. Here's Daniel Walber...

Looking back at the films of '77, the clear production design stand-out is Star Wars. It won the Oscar and changed the world, though not necessarily in that order. Science fiction was crossing over, pushed even further by fellow nominee Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But why talk about harder sci-fi when you could focus on the futuristic gadgetry and technological excess of the James Bond franchise?

The Spy Who Loved Me is a remarkable showcase for legendary production designer Ken Adam, who passed away earlier this year. He built models of the Pyramids, a cavernous office for the head of the Kgb and a decadent underwater lair for nefarious shipping magnate Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens). But the real showstopper is the interior of the Liparus supertanker, the...

June 6, 1944. Today marks the 72nd anniversary of D-Day.

On June 7th, Paramount Home Media Distribution will release director Michael Bay’s remarkable 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi.

Hailed as “powerful” (Kyle Smith, New York Post), “engrossing” (Soren Andersen, Seattle Times) and “full of explosive action” (Dan Casey, Nerdist), the film arrives on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and On Demand this Tuesday. (Review)

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi tells the incredible true story of six elite ex-military operators who fought to protect the CIA against overwhelming odds when terrorists attacked a U.S. diplomatic compound on September 11, 2012. The film stars John Krasinski (TV’s “The Office”), James Badge Dale (World War Z) and Pablo Schreiber (TV’s “Orange is the New Black”), and is based on the nonfiction novel 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by New York Times best-selling author Mitchell Zuckoff with...

David Bowie in 'The Hunger' with Catherine Deneuve. David Bowie movies: Iconic singer memorable as fast-aging vampire in 'The Hunger,' Nikola Tesla in 'The Prestige' Singer and sometime actor David Bowie, one of the iconic figures of the English-language music scene of the second half of the 20th century, died of cancer yesterday, Jan. 10, '16. Bowie (born David Robert Jones in the London suburb of Brixton) had turned 69 on Jan. 8. His son, filmmaker Duncan Jones (Moon), has confirmed Bowie's death on Twitter. Bowie was seen in only a couple of dozen movies during his four-decade show business career. Among his most memorable film roles were those in the titles listed below. The Man Who Fell to Earth Directed by Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout, Don't Look Now) from a screenplay by Paul Mayersberg (based on a novel by Walter Tevis), The Man Who Fell to Earth...

It is no secret that Roger Moore holds the record as the actor who played James Bond the most, his tally an impressing 7. There are a bevy of reasons why this was the case, the most obvious being that each one of his films were massive financial successes, the only bump in the road being his second outing, The Man With the Golden Gun, which itself speaks to the immense stature of the franchise when the film that earns 97 million dollars is the ‘bump in the road.’ There was a shift in tone that permeated in the Bond films once Roger Moore took over the mantle from Sean Connery. Whereas the latter brought toughness and grittiness to his interpretation of the famous super spy all the while proving to be as smooth as butter, the former injected some light comedic flair. It was definitely still James Bond on the screen,...

The Spy Who Loved Me

Directed by Lewis Gilbert

Screenplay by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum

UK, 1977

There’s an undeniable lasting appeal to Bond. Lasting 50 years is certainly proof of that, but there’s something deeper. After all, one can point to Star Trek and Doctor Who as cultural icons that have stood the test of time, but there’s something different about Bond. Trekkies or Whovians faced ostracization for many years, the fans relegated to dark corners and hushed tones of conversation. Ordering a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, however, paints someone as the very opposite of a nerd, something that has never changed throughout the run of Bond. So what stands Bond apart? It can’t be the saving the world aspect of things; after all, there are many heroes and heroines who’ve saved the world on a regular basis, perhaps with more frequency than Bond,...

'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' 2015: Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' movie is a domestic box office bomb: Will it be saved by international filmgoers? Directed by Sherlock Holmes' Guy Ritchie and toplining Man of Steel star Henry Cavill and The Lone Ranger costar Armie Hammer, the Warner Bros. release The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has been a domestic box office disaster, performing about 25 percent below – already quite modest – expectations. (See also: “'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' Movie: Bigger Box Office Flop Than Expected.”) This past weekend, the $80 million-budget The Man from U.N.C.L.E. collected a meager $13.42 million from 3,638 North American theaters, averaging $3,689 per site. After five days out, the big-screen reboot of the popular 1960s television series starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum has taken in a mere $16.77 million. For comparison's sake:...

'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' with Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' box office: Bigger domestic flop than expected? Before I address the box office debacle of Warner Bros.' The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I'd like remark upon the fact that 2015 has been a notable year at the North American box office. That's when the dinosaurs of Jurassic World smashed Hulk and his fellow Halloween-costumed Marvel superheroes of Avengers: Age of Ultron. And smashed them good: $636.73 million vs. $457.52 million. (See also: 'Jurassic World' beating 'The Avengers' worldwide and domestically?) At least in part for sentimental (or just downright morbid) reasons – Paul Walker's death in a car accident in late 2013 – Furious 7 has become by far the highest-grossing The Fast and the Furious movie in the U.S. and Canada: $351.03 million. (Shades of Heath Ledger's unexpected death...

Theodore Bikel. Theodore Bikel dead at 91: Oscar-nominated actor and folk singer best known for stage musicals 'The Sound of Music,' 'Fiddler on the Roof' Folk singer, social and union activist, and stage, film, and television actor Theodore Bikel, best remembered for starring in the Broadway musical The Sound of Music and, throughout the U.S., in Fiddler on the Roof, died Monday morning (July 20, '15) of "natural causes" at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. The Austrian-born Bikel – as Theodore Meir Bikel on May 2, 1924, in Vienna, to Yiddish-speaking Eastern European parents – was 91. Fled Hitler Thanks to his well-connected Zionist father, six months after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938 ("they were greeted with jubilation by the local populace," he would recall in 2012), the 14-year-old Bikel and his family fled to Palestine, at the time a British protectorate. While there, the teenager began acting on stage,...

'Nicholas and Alexandra': Movie starred Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman 'Nicholas and Alexandra' movie review: Opulent 1971 spectacle lacks emotional core Nicholas and Alexandra is surely one of the most sumptuous film productions ever made. The elaborate sets and costumes, Richard Rodney Bennett's lush musical score, and frequent David Lean collaborator Freddie Young's richly textured cinematography provide the perfect period atmosphere for this historical epic. Missing, however, is a screenplay that offers dialogue instead of speeches, and a directorial hand that brings out emotional truth instead of soapy melodrama. Nicholas and Alexandra begins when, after several unsuccessful attempts, Tsar Nicholas II (Michael Jayston) finally becomes the father of a boy. Shortly thereafter, he and his wife, the German-born Empress Alexandra (Janet Suzman), have their happiness crushed when they discover that their infant son is a hemophiliac. In addition to his familial turmoil, the Tsar must also deal with popular...

Happy December! Its hard to believe the holiday season is really here, but, with Christmas only a few weeks away now, it seems like time is just ticking away. And if you’re still in need of some gift ideas, thankfully there are a handful of Blu-rays and DVD’s coming out this Tuesday that would make perfect gifts to go under the tree (or tucked in the stockings) this year.

Scream Factory is giving horror fans a double dose of terror this week with their Tales From the Crypt/Vault of Horror Blu-ray and sci-fi fans can finally bring Caesar and all his primate friends home, as 20th Century Fox pulling out all the stops with a stunning collector’s edition of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes too. A few Star Trek: The Next Generation titles are also getting a high-def release on December 2th and...

Scream Factory delayed the Tales from the Crypt / Vault of Horror Blu-ray release, but for good reason: they’re prepping three different cuts of Vault of Horror. To hold horror hounds over until this much-anticipated Blu-ray becomes available on December 2nd, Scream Factory has given us a look at three clips and an original trailer that show off the movies’ high-definition upgrades.

“Scream Factory invites you to embrace the chills this December with two classic British horror films! On December 2nd, 2014, Scream Factory will release Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror on Blu-ray for the first time! Featuring the rare, uncut version of Vault of Horror, the two disc set includes three different cuts of the cult classic. The first disc will include Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror’s uncut widescreen presentation. The second disc will include Vault of Horror’s theatrical PG cut and...

Scream Factory delayed the Tales From The Crypt / Vault of Horror Blu-ray release, but it will be well worth the delay, as they confirmed that they’re prepping three different cuts of Vault of Horror:

“Scream Factory invites you to embrace the chills this December with two classic British horror films! On December 2nd, 2014, Scream Factory will release Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror on Blu-ray for the first time! Featuring the rare, uncut version of Vault of Horror, the two disc set includes three different cuts of the cult classic. The first disc will include Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror’s uncut widescreen presentation. The second disc will include Vault of Horror’s theatrical PG cut and a rare open-matte version of the BFI master. The release also includes an original trailer and an alternate opening scene for Vault of Horror.

Tales From The Crypt...

For the past two months, viewers have been disturbed and unsettled by Richard Sammel's performance as Eichorst, the Nazi concentration camp guard turned vampire apocalypse facilitator, on FX's "The Strain."  Playing both the human (but inhuman) Nazi version of Eichorst and his steely, arrogant contemporary incarnation, Sammel has given very different monstrous shadings to his role. That's why it's a bit funny to Skype up with the smiley, voluble Sammel and have him immediately cackle in pleasure at being able to identify my mogwai avatar from "Gremlins,"  before he very politely asks me to switch on my webcam so that we can see each other as we chat. Sammel is in a good mood because it's the first sunny day in Paris for a while. Or maybe he just genuinely enjoys talking about his part in the FX vampire drama, which was recently renewed for a second season. "I...

Miscasting in films has always been a problem. A producer hires an actor thinking that he or she is perfect for a movie role only to find the opposite is true. Other times a star is hired for his box office draw but ruins an otherwise good movie because he looks completely out of place.

There have been many humdinger miscastings. You only have to laugh at John Wayne’s Genghis Khan (with Mongol moustache and gun-belt) in The Conqueror (1956), giggle at Marlon Brando’s woeful upper class twang as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and cringe at Dick Van Dyke’s misbegotten cockney accent in Mary Poppins (1964). But as hilarious as these miscastings are, producers at the time didn’t think the same way, until after the event. At least they add a bit of camp value to a mediocre or downright awful movie.

In rare cases,...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Sony has released director Richard Brooks' 1965 screen adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim as a burn-to-order DVD title. The novel, written in 1899, centers on Jim, an idealistic young man who fulfills his dream of being a highly regarded officer on a commercial cargo vessel in southeast Asia. All is going well for him under the guidance of his mentor, ship's captain Marlowe. However, when an injury causes Jim to convalesce for an extended period, he ends up on a rickety freighter under the command of an unscrupulous captain who is transporting hundreds of Muslim pilgrims. When the ship founders, the captain and his cowardly crew abandon ship, leaving the pilgrims to face what appears to be certain death. To his own astonishment, Jim spontaneously opts to join them in order to save his own life. When the ragged survivors finally make port, they are shocked...

Midsomer Murders ITV

Kieran Kinsella

It is midsummer which means blood is flowing in the streets of England’s most dangerous county – Midsomer. Over the next few weeks, Acorn Media are releasing not one, not two but Six boxsets of the beloved hit series Midsomer Murders on DVD. Not only that, but they are also releasing the Alec Guinness classic Smiley’s People on Blu-ray. So without further ado, let’s begin.

Midsomer Murders Set 22

The four stories in this set were originally broadcast in the UK in late 2011 and have never been shown in the U.S. All four feature Neil Dudgeon as Barnaby and Jason Hughes as his ever-reliable sidekick. The first of the stories is Sleeper Under the Hill. It centers around a group of Druids and a Stonehenge-like monument that they use during rituals. A local farmer plans to plough up the surrounding meadow, an endeavor...

Kim Novak to attend Cannes 2013 Vertigo screening Kim Novak will be in attendance at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, festival organizers have announced. Novak will be present at a Cannes Classics screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo, which has been recently restored. For all it’s worth, Vertigo was the top movie at the most recent (2012) Sight & Sound decennial poll of film critics and filmmakers. (Photo: Kim Novak Vertigo.) Vertigo was also a source of controversy in early 2012, when Kim Novak took out an ad in one of the trade publications claiming she felt she had been violated ("I want to report a rape") after finding bits from Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo music in Ludovic Bource’s eventually Oscar-winning The Artist score. Besides the Vertigo screening, Kim Novak will also be a presenter at Cannes’ closing ceremony on Sunday, May 26. According to the festival’s press release, Novak first...

"Can you swim?"

While Sean Connery will always be the first actor to play James Bond, Roger Moore appeared in more movies as 007 — at least in terms of those considered "canon." Moore's third outing as Bond came in 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me, which was based on the ninth novel in author Ian Fleming's James Bond series, though all the book and the movie share is the title.

Unhappy with the finished product, Fleming would only allow the movie's producers the right to the novel's name and not its story, allowing them to instead concoct a story where Bond teams up with a Soviet agent (Barbara Bach) to stop the sinister Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens) from destroying the world and creating a new civilization undersea. In addition to providing several memorable moments in Bond movie history, including Bond's submarine car, The Spy Who Loved Me provided the first...

The Spy Who Loved Me

Directed by Lewis Gilbert

Screenplay by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum

UK, 1977

There’s an undeniable lasting appeal to Bond. Lasting 50 years is certainly proof of that, but there’s something deeper. After all, one can point to Star Trek and Doctor Who as cultural icons that have stood the test of time, but there’s something different about Bond. Trekkies or Whovians faced ostracization for many years, the fans relegated to dark corners and hushed tones of conversation. Ordering a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, however, paints someone as the very opposite of a nerd, something that has never changed throughout the run of Bond. So what stands Bond apart? It can’t be the saving the world aspect of things; after all, there are many heroes and heroines who’ve saved the world on a regular basis, perhaps with more frequency than Bond,...

It is no secret that Roger Moore holds the record as the actor who played James Bond the most, his tally an impressing 7. There are a bevy of reasons why this was the case, the most obvious being that each one of his films were massive financial successes, the only bump in the road being his second outing, The Man With the Golden Gun, which itself speaks to the immense stature of the franchise when the film that earns 97 million dollars is the ‘bump in the road.’ There was a shift in tone that permeated in the Bond films once Roger Moore took over the mantle from Sean Connery. Whereas the latter brought toughness and grittiness to his interpretation of the famous super spy all the while proving to be as smooth as butter, the former injected some light comedic flair. It was definitely still James Bond on the screen,...

Bond. James Bond. Synonymous with pop corn and over the top, ridiculous, mucho suave fun. We’ve come to know him through six iconic suave masters (some more than others) in Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig. Fifty years and twenty two films later, Bond is still alive and kicking, currently with a little more grit and a lot more blond. To celebrate MGM’s cash cow golden boy’s big 50 and the upcoming release of Skyfall, they have put together not only the most comprehensive Bond release to date, but one of the biggest home release packages ever released. All twenty two films, many of which have received thorough restorations and some of which are completely new to Blu-ray, are housed within a gorgeous shelf ready box set that contains an absolutely ludicrous amount of extra features. Bond fans rejoice! There is...

It was 1977, the year of jubilee and punk, but Roger Moore's smirking Bond was fully at ease with Britain's lameness

The affection that Bond films inspire seems in no way connected to considerations of their actual quality: who, honestly, would voluntarily re-watch any of them other than slumped wearily in front of the TV on Christmas Day? That, presumably, is why they seem so linked to time and place: like Peter Bradshaw, I remember gawping saucer-eyed at this, my first big-screen Bond, as an 11-year-old: it seemed, as for Peter, to have issued from a world of impossibly grown-up glamour and excitement.

Rather weirdly, I realise I may have sat in exactly the same seat as Peter, a few years later. I too saw my first Bond at the Classic cinema in Hendon Central; while Peter, it turns out, was a tourist (visiting his auntie), I grew up there, at...

MTV Movies Blog is currently running what we call the Bond-a-Thond. Every week we're taking a look back at a single (official) Bond film, giving you the vitals and seeing how it holds up, right up until the release of "Skyfall" on November 9. Feel free to watch along with us and share your thoughts or just kick back and enjoy the Bond.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Plot: When Russian and British nuclear submarines go missing, MI6 and the Kgb send in agents to find them. Falling in love was never part of the plan. [Cue music]

Title Meaning: It is the moniker of Francisco Scaramanga, the assassin at the heart of the plot, who uses a literal golden gun to kill his targets.

Theme Song: "Nobody Does It Better" by Marvin Hamlisch and performed by Carly Simon.

Bond: Roger Moore

Villains: Karl Stromberg, played by Curd Jürgens, an ocean-obsessed shipping tycoon,...

James Mason movies Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, August 11 (Edt) 6:00 Am Lord Jim (1965). After turning coward, a naval officer tries to redeem himself by helping Asian natives stage a revolution. Director: Richard Brooks. Cast: Peter O’Toole, James Mason, Curt Jurgens. Color, 154 minutes. Letterbox. 8:45 Am Thunder Rock (1942). A disillusioned writer moves into a lighthouse where some ghostly visitors restore his faith. Director: Roy Boulting. Cast: Michael Redgrave, Barbara Mullen, James Mason. Black and white, 107 minutes. 11:00 Am The Seventh Veil (1945). A concert pianist with amnesia fights to regain her memory. Director: Compton Bennett. Cast: James Mason, Ann Todd, [...]...

To mark the 50th Anniversary of one of the most successful movie franchises of all time and with filming well underway on James Bond’s 23rd official outing in Skyfall due for release later this year, I have been tasked with taking a retrospective look at the films that turned author Ian Fleming’s creation into one of the most recognised and iconic characters in film history.

With James Bond well established as a worldwide phenomenon raking in countless millions at the box-office, the tenth film in the series, The Spy Who Loved Me proved unexpectedly problematic in its journey to the screen and marked the longest gap between films since the series began. Due to personal financial issues Bond producer Harry Saltzman decided to sell his 50% stake in Danjaq S.A., the company he had established with Albert R. Broccoli to produce the Bond series. United Artists, who had...

Denzel Washington, Dionne Warwick, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Dietmar Bär: Golden Camera Awards Initially a television award, the German weekly Hörzu's Golden Camera Award now covers a variety of categories, including movies, music, sports, pop culture, and even activism. Unlike the German Film Academy's prestigious Lola Awards — Germany's equivalent of the Oscars — the Golden Camera is basically a pop award. At a ceremony held Saturday, Feb. 4, at the Berlin headquarters of Hörzu's publishing house Axel Springer, this year's winners in the international movie categories were Scarlett Johansson and Denzel Washington, while Morgan Freeman received a Lifetime Achievement trophy. A couple of weeks ago, Freeman received a similar honor — the Cecil B. DeMille Award — from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Additionally, Dionne Warwick received her own Lifetime Achievement Golden Camera in the music category. Now, not that the U.S. media would know or care about this little detail,...

If you're like me, and let's assume you all are, you greet the discovery of a film called Tamango with the hope that it's some kind of anagrammatic sequel to Matango: Fungus of Terror. But it's not anything of the kind, it's a solemn drama about the slave trade. Idiot.

What distinguishes the film immediately is this subject matter, which had been pretty well ignored - and please do correct me if I'm wrong - by Hollywood, with the dubious exceptions of the various versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and those ante-bellum melodramas like Gone with the Wind which tend to consign the issue of slavery to the background. And here's Tamango, a French production made in 1958, with an international cast including Curt Jurgens and Dorothy Dandridge.

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If you're like me, and let's assume you all are, you greet the discovery of a film called Tamango with the hope that it's some kind of anagrammatic sequel to Matango: Fungus of Terror. But it's not anything of the kind, it's a solemn drama about the slave trade. Idiot.

What distinguishes the film immediately is this subject matter, which had been pretty well ignored - and please do correct me if I'm wrong - by Hollywood, with the dubious exceptions of the various versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and those ante-bellum melodramas like Gone with the Wind which tend to consign the issue of slavery to the background. And here's Tamango, a French production made in 1958, with an international cast including Curt Jurgens and Dorothy Dandridge.

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This week’s pick is the 1969 Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger, Force 10 From Navarone) directed classic Battle of Britain, which depicts the valiant struggle of Great Britain’s Royal Air Force against the onslaught of the numerically superior German Luftwaffe during the summer of 1940. The film opens as France falls in May 1940, and the British and their allies avoid capture with the massive evacuation at the coastal city of Dunkirk. With time to regroup and strengthen their home defenses, the British lie and wait for Hitler’s forces to eventually invade England.

The film is told through a collection of fighter squadron groups (English and German) who are veterans in the skies over France and the low countries during early 1940. Like many films of the mid to late 1960’s, Battle of Britain has its fare share of brilliant English and German actors. Screen legend Sir Laurence Olivier leads the cast as Chief Air Marshal H.

Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake is always going to divide opinion, those who see it as a conceptual art statement being able to argue, quite reasonably, that its failure to do the things Hitchcock's original does—create a consistent story world, stylized but credible characters, a sense of doom, suspense—is exactly the proof needed of its success as a conceptual artifact, dramatically redundant yet stubbornly existent.

Would the same people say the same thing for Edward Dmytryk's The Blue Angel, a faithful yet utterly arbitrary remake of Josef Von Sternberg's Der blaue Engel. Sternberg's production, Germany's first sound film, is so iconic and so utterly of its time—it marks the beginning of the Marlene myth, as well as the end of silence—that any kind of remake seems like an exercise in redundancy, like the Coens's joke proposal to re-shoot Stanley Kramer's well-intentioned liberal...

We start the Top 7. You finish the Top 10. World domination is a tough business. The hours are long, the sacrifices are heavy, and the workload is endless. Sometimes, your hard work doesn't even pay off. Even worse than all of this is when some horn dog super agent is killing your henchmen (and most likely) bedding your girlfriend/wife/mistress behind your back. Amped up for the release of new James Bond film Quantum of Solace, I've compiled a list of Top 7 Bond Villains. Carly Simon said it best: "Nobody does it better." But who does "it" worst? 7. Curd Jurgens as Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me -- Villainous Stromberg was a lover of the sea, with a scheme that would have forced us all to oblige: with captured submarines...