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25 years ago, Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions left theaters as quickly as it arrived, barely making a blip during a landmark year in American cinema save for a litany of negative reviews that all but celebrated its failure. (Luc Moullet might have been its sole admirer upon release.) Adapted from the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name, Breakfast captures a cross-section of American archetypes on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown; correspondingly, the film also feels like it’s also losing its mind. Rudolph, cinematographer Elliot Davis and editor Suzy Elmiger imbue Breakfast with a manic, comically grotesque […]

The post “This is Going to Be the Most Circuitous Interview”: Alan Rudolph on Breakfast of Champions first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

25 years ago, Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions left theaters as quickly as it arrived, barely making a blip during a landmark year in American cinema save for a litany of negative reviews that all but celebrated its failure. (Luc Moullet might have been its sole admirer upon release.) Adapted from the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name, Breakfast captures a cross-section of American archetypes on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown; correspondingly, the film also feels like it’s also losing its mind. Rudolph, cinematographer Elliot Davis and editor Suzy Elmiger imbue Breakfast with a manic, comically grotesque […]

The post “This is Going to Be the Most Circuitous Interview”: Alan Rudolph on Breakfast of Champions first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Albert Finney as Kilgore Trout with Bruce Willis as Dwayne Hoover in Alan Rudolph’s adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions

In the second instalment of my conversation with Alan Rudolph on his adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast Of Champions, shot by frequent collaborator Elliot Davis (Equinox; Mortal Thoughts; Love At Large), we start out with what his friend, the novelist Tom Robbins, who has a cameo (as Pesky Weber), told him after the film was finished.

Alan Rudolph with Anne-Katrin Titze on the influence of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée on final scene: “Probably not directly, but you know, every little drop of water feeds the plant.”

The director/screenwriter has assembled the perfect cast of accomplices, including Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Glenne Headly, Barbara Hershey, Omar Epps, Lukas Haas, Owen Wilson, Buck Henry, plus a hyperactive Bruce Willis starring as Dwayne Hoover, the ringleader of what goes on in Midland City.

Alan Rudolph with Anne-Katrin Titze on Robert Altman considering Johnny Carson and Peter Falk to be cast as Dwayne Hoover (played by Bruce Willis) in Breakfast Of Champions: “He would cast his movies before they were written.”

In the first instalment with Alan Rudolph, we discuss Robert Altman’s early connection to Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast Of Champions, the roles played by Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, Albert Finney, and Owen Wilson, plus working with Willis and Demi Moore on Mortal Thoughts. Now, with the help of Ron Mann, director of What We Like, producer David Blocker, cinematographer Elliot Davis and Shout Factory, there is a 4K Digital Restoration of Breakfast of Champions available to screen in cinemas, on streaming platforms and Blu-ray DVD for the 25th anniversary of this very prescient film. Alan Rudolph was an assistant director on Altman’s Nashville, California Split, The Long Goodbye, and appeared as himself in The Player.

Among the most inspired choices for a 4K restoration this year would have to be Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions. Despite coming out in the middle of Bruce Willis’ Armageddon/The Sixth Sense heyday, the 1999 Kurt Vonnegut adaptation died a quick death at the box office, which certainly wasn’t aided by the critic class who thought at the time American Beauty was somehow a more scathing critique of the country’s false promises and personal repression. A genuinely bizarre film, bolstered by an outstanding cast and an abrasive form, Breakfast of Champions arrives at just the right moment for reclamation.

In his earnest romanticism and wild stylization, Rudolph, for lack of a better comparison, could at times come off as the child of Frank Borzage and Seijun Suzuki, which made it extra exciting that he sat down with The Film Stage in what turned out to be his first-ever Zoom call.

25 years ago, writer/director Alan Rudolph realized a decades-long dream when he finally got to make his adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut‘s “Breakfast of Champions” with a cast that included Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, Albert Finney, and Barbara Hershey, all operating at the peak of their talents. The tale of a smiling car dealership mogul (Willis) in the midst of a breakdown, “Breakfast” was one of Rudolph’s best films, a hilarious, prescient, and audacious portrait of not just a man, but a country losing its mind.

“Breakfast of Champions” was a deeply personal, fully realized work from one of the most interesting American filmmakers of his era. It was also a complete flop with audiences and critics.

“The film came out for two or three days and was radioactive,” Rudolph told IndieWire. “Breakfast” was so buried by the studio that released it that even its director couldn’t get...

“Of course, it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe that wasn’t meant to be reasonable.” Back in 1999, an unimpeachable satirical black comedy classic, Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel, “Breakfast Of Champions”—about a used car salesman/struggling science fiction writer who, after fatefully meeting a wealthy businessman, becomes successful and wins a Nobel Prize and the insanity that ensues afterward— finally was adapted into a movie by the filmmaker Alan Rudolph (“Mrs.

Continue reading ‘Breakfast Of Champions’ 4K Restoration Trailer: Long Lost ’90s Bruce Willis/Kurt Vonnegut Adaptation Finally Returns To Theaters In November [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

Kris Kristofferson, the soulful country music superstar who wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” performed with the supergroup The Highwaymen and made audiences swoon in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and A Star Is Born, has died. He was 88.

Kristofferson died Saturday at home in Maui, Hawaii, his family announced. “We’re all so blessed for our time with him,” they said in a statement. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”

A native of South Texas, Kristofferson starred in football and rugby and won a Golden Gloves boxing tournament while attending Pomona College in California; earned a Rhodes Scholarship to study literature abroad; and piloted helicopters in the U.S. Army.

He threw away a career in the military and moved to Nashville, where he worked as...

It’s kind of wild that there has never been an official soundtrack album for Choose Me, Alan Rudolph’s 1984 kooky-but-foxy ensemble rom-com. For starters, the movie was distributed by Island Alive, a joint venture between then-indie company Alive Films and Island Records co-founder Chris Blackwell. Secondly, the songs in...

Gary Larson’s The Far Side may not seem like the best candidate for a feature film adaptation, considering that it contains no real narrative to speak of. But back in the late ‘80s, the iconic daily single-panel comic very nearly made the jump to the big screen, thanks to Alan Rudolph, the acclaimed director of offbeat films like Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and Mortal Thoughts.

Not too much is known about the unproduced movie, although we did get a taste of what it might have looked like, thanks to actor Dirk Blocker. In 2021, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star shared photos from a Far Side screen test he participated in, recalling that, while the project didn’t “go anywhere,” the actors “laughed a lot and got to meet the amazing Gary Larson.”

In addition to these vaguely cursed photos, Rudolph revealed to The A.V. Club that his plan was...

In 1988, Bruce Willis committed a most grievous offense against entertainment journalists: he proved them wrong. Really wrong. Laughably wrong.

The newly minted star of ABC's "Moonlighting" drew the ire of just about everyone in Hollywood when 20th Century Fox paid him a whopping $5 million to star in the action film "Die Hard." This rankled rival studio executives, who only shelled out that kind of cash for long-established leading men like Warren Beatty and Robert Redford. While Willis might've been a minor media sensation due to "Moonlighting," with his surprise Billboard smash "The Return of Bruno" and his omnipresent Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler commercials, he had yet to prove himself worthy of a $5 million big-screen payday.

Before "Die Hard," Willis had scored a solid theatrical hit with Blake Edwards' dismally unfunny "Blind Date." This was the extent of his motion picture oeuvre when Fox declared him a massive marquee name.

Revenge (Shudder), Only God Forgives (Radius), Mandy (Rlje Entertainment)Graphic: The A.V. Club

The appeal of the revenge thriller is simple: it’s catharsis. A grim power fantasy that taps into the irrational parts of our brains that crave satisfaction after being wronged. Of course, in life, most people will...

About an hour into the brief and dazzling Bushman, the central character announces, “I need a hamburger,” and then the screen goes black for a few seconds. When the movie resumes, it’s no longer a drama enlivened by a streetwise documentary sensibility, but a work of straight-up nonfiction. Relying on stills in this last stretch but maintaining the visual fluency of the preceding story, the final 10 minutes recount why director David Schickele stopped filming for a year: He was working instead on securing a release from prison for his wrongfully imprisoned leading man.

There are strong parallels between Gabriel, the onscreen outsider, and Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, the man who plays him. Both grew up in a Nigerian village. Like Gabriel, Okpokam was a graduate student at San Francisco State College. Schickele’s screenplay was to have ended with Gabriel being deported after falling into trouble with the law.

February––particularly its third week––is all about romance. Accordingly the Criterion Channel got creative with their monthly programming and, in a few weeks, will debut Interdimensional Romance, a series of films wherein “passion conquers time and space, age and memory, and even death and the afterlife.” For every title you might’ve guessed there’s a wilder companion: Alan Rudolph’s Made In Heaven, Soderbergh’s remake, and Resnais’ Love Unto Death. Mostly I’m excited to revisit Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, a likely essential viewing before Megalopolis.

February also marks Black History Month, and Criterion’s series will include work by Shirley Clarke (also subject of a standalone series), Garrett Bradley, Cheryl Dunye, and Julie Dash, while movies by Sirk, Minnelli, King Vidor, and Lang play in “Gothic Noir.” Greta Gerwig gets an “Adventures in Moviegoing” and can be seen in Mary Bronstein’s Yeast,...

The mark of an actor’s career, I think, is what extent their filmography can reflect the time they’re working. Matthew Modine is a prime case: we can point, first and most easily, to leading a Stanley Kubrick film, a title for which there are fewer living holders than men who’ve walked on the moon; there’s one of the all-time biggest box-office disasters; supporting roles for Christopher Nolan, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone; and aiding auteurs Abel Ferrara and Alan Rudolph as a star. This makes especially appreciable the Roxy Cinema’s retrospective The Many Faces of Matthew Modine, running Friday through Sunday with five films: Ferrara’s The Blackout, Rudolph’s Equinox, Cutthroat Island, Birdy, and his own feature If… Dog… Rabbit…

Having long admired Modine’s screen presence, I was happy to speak with him about this retrospective. But it engendered a longer, deeper conversation about...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

The films of Kijū Yoshida are now playing in a massive retrospective. Read our piece on him here.

Roxy Cinema

A five-film retrospective of Matthew Modine (read my interview here) takes place this weekend, including work by Abel Ferrara, Alan Rudolph, and the man himself.

Museum of the Moving Image

A career-spanning Todd Haynes retrospective begins, with the director present on Friday and Saturday; Robert Altman’s Popeye plays on 35mm this Saturday and Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art

A massive Ennio Morricone retrospective begins, this weekend bringing Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.

Anthology Film Archives

The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while Joseph Cornell, Tony Conrad, and Bruce Conner programs run in Essential Cinema; a Hollis Frampton retrospective is also underway.

Film Forum

Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration,...

Rita Hollingsworth, a longtime publicist for entertainment clients and non-profit organizations, died Nov. 16 in Los Angeles. She was 61.

Her husband Jeff Hollingsworth said she had suffered a intracerebral brain hemorrhage.

When working at the Lee Solters Company, she represented clients including Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Liza Minnelli and Neil Diamond, as well as the Carousel of Hope and Race to Erase Ms with Barbara and Nancy Davis.

After founding publicity firm Rmh Media, she worked with directors including Robert Altman, Mike Figgis, Alan Rudolph, Michael Radford, Tim Hutton and Chen Kaige, bringing their films to Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and other festivals.

Rmh also represented clients including bestselling author Reyna Grande, the Angelus Student Film Festival, the Anthony & Jeannie Pritzker Family Foundation, Foster Care Counts, artworxLA and St. Vincent Meals on Wheels, where she was a key strategist for the large senior nutrition program.

Rmh Media is working with filmmaker Matthew Solomon...

John Bailey, a seasoned Hollywood cinematographer who served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 2017 to 2019, died Friday in Los Angeles. He was 81.

Bailey’s death was announced by his wife, Carol Littleton, in a statement released by the Academy on Friday evening.

”It is with deep sadness I share with you that my best friend and husband, John Bailey, passed away peacefully in his sleep early this morning,” Littleton wrote. “During John’s illness, we reminisced how we met 60 years ago and were married for 51 of those years. We shared a wonderful life of adventure in film and made many long-lasting friendships along the way. John will forever live in my heart.”

“All of us at the Academy are deeply saddened to learn of John’s passing,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang in a joint statement. “John was a...

Shannon Wilcox, a character actress who appeared alongside Willie Nelson in Songwriter, with Dudley Moore in Six Weeks and opposite Al Pacino in Frankie and Johnny, has died. She was 80.

Wilcox died Sept. 2 in Los Angeles, her daughter, actress-director Kelli Williams — she played attorney Lindsay Dole on The Practice — told The Hollywood Reporter.

A life member of The Actors Studio, Wilcox also portrayed the mother of Elisabeth Shue’s Ali Mills in John G. Avildsen’s The Karate Kid (1994) and worked in many other notable films, among them Tony Richardson’s The Border (1982), Ivan Reitman’s Legal Eagles (1986), Mark Rydell’s For the Boys (1991) and David Fincher’s Seven (1995).

Wilcox was the resigned ex-wife of Nelson’s Doc Jenkins in Alan Rudolph’s Songwriter (1984) and the wife of a California politician (Moore) caught up with a woman (Mary Tyler Moore) and her sickly child (Katherine Healy) in Tony Bill’s...

Here’s a look at this week’s biggest premieres, parties and openings in Los Angeles and New York, including events for Killers of the Flower Moon, the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Albie Awards and the Versace Icons Dinner.

Los Angeles Beverly Arts Icon Awards

The third annual Laba Icon Awards took place on Friday in Beverly Hills, where artist and photographer Michael Warren was presented with an award by his son Cash Warren (and support from daughter-in-law Jessica Alba) and visual artist Alexandra Grant was honored by sound mixer Paul N. J. Ottosson.

Michael Warren, Jenny Warren, Jessica Alba and Cash Warren

L.A. Loves Alex’s Lemonade

After a three year hiatus, L.A. Loves Alex’s Lemonade, hosted by Chef Suzanne Goin and partner Caroline Styne along with Chef David Lentz, returned on Saturday to UCLA’s Royce Quad. The culinary cookout, which supports Alex’s Lemonade...

The Film

Based, apparently more closely, on the same book that was adapted into the 1949 film They Live By Night, Thieves Like Us feels to me as if it falls somewhere between being Robert Altman’s faithful take on a studio era gangster film, and a somewhat gentler response to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. Penn’s film arguably struck the final blow against what had been the standards in censorship in the US across the Hays Code years, ushering in the movie brats era, while Altman keeps much of the violence off screen, but otherwise makes a film that is very much of its time.

The plot is fairly loose, but follows three prison escapees—Bowie (Keith Carradine), Chicamaw (John Shuck) and T-Dub (Bert Remsen)—as they try to evade the authorities staying with relations (Louise Fletcher as T-Dub’s cousin) or criminal friends like Dee Mobley (Tom...

When Robert Aldrich’s 1968 Hollywood insider yarn, “The Legend of Lylah Clare” screens at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville, Maine, it will represent much more than a simple revival of a New Hollywood-era roman à clef.

The film’s presentation on July 12 will include a discussion between actor Michael Murphy, who co-stars in the film, and former MGM publicity director Mike Kaplan, who has from the film’s earliest screenings defended both the film’s director, who Kaplan feels was “grossly maligned” by the depiction of him in Ryan Murphy’s limited series “Feud,” and the film, which monumentally tanked both critically and commercially when first released.

Kaplan recalls “I loved the script, and I loved the film. MGM had an unexceptional slate at the time. I was a big fan at the get-go.”

But as MGM’s New York City-based publicity chief, Kaplan watched helplessly as others,...

A couple months after spotlighting the world’s greatest actress, the Criterion Channel have taken a logical next step towards America’s greatest actress. May (or: next week) will bring an eleven-film celebration of Jennifer Jason Leigh, highlights including Verhoeven’s Flesh + Blood, Miami Blues, Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker, her directorial debut The Anniversary Party, and Synecdoche, New York, and a special introduction from Leigh. Another actor’s showcase localizes directorial collaborations: Jimmy Stewart’s time with Anthony Mann, an eight-title series boasting the likes of Winchester ’73 and The Man from Laramie. Two more: a survey of ’80s Asian-American cinema (Chan Is Missing being the best-known) and 14 movies by Seijun Suzuki.

That would be enough for one month (or two), but No Bears and Cette maison will have their streaming premieres, while Criterion Editions offers the Infernal Affairs trilogy (plus its packed set), Days of Heaven, and the aforementioned Chan Is Missing.

Julie Christie is an Oscar-winning actress who has been largely absent from movie screens this century, enjoying a semi-retirement that finds her returning for the odd performance here and there. Yet she’s always finding new fans as younger generations discover her cinematic classics. Let’s take a look at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born on April 14, 1940, Christie rose to prominence for her work in London, starting with a breakthrough performance in John Schlesinger‘s “Billy Liar” (1963). She won the Oscar as Best Actress just two years later for Schlesinger’s “Darling” (1965), playing a fashion model who sleeps her way to the top. That same year, she shot to stardom thanks to David Lean‘s romantic epic “Doctor Zhivago” (1965), which casts her as a political activist’s wife who falls in love with a physician (Omar Sharif) during the Russian Revolution.

She earned a second Best...

The word “romantic” doesn’t have much place in cinema these days, serving mostly as a modifier for “comedy.” The term “women’s picture” has also passed out of favor since its ’40s heyday, regardless of the fact that the films that exemplified it usually featured strong female characters and almost always pushed back at the pressures of male-run society. With her feature debut Past Lives, which screened to a double standing ovation this week in the Premieres strand at Sundance, playwright Celine Song has killed two birds with one stone, creating an elegant and unexpectedly mesmerizing character piece that speaks profoundly to the concept of love in the modern age while using an intelligent and ambitious, but still very relatable woman to do so.

Surprisingly, the film comes from A24, whose recent output has been heading in a very different and more genre-focused direction, and also Killer Films, historically known for much edgier fare.

The Abyss (Courtesy of 20th Century Fox), Dawn Of The Dead (Courtesy of United Film Distribution Company), Pump Up The Volume (Courtesy of New Line Media) Graphic: The A.V. Club For all you digital disciples: do you ever wonder why some friends still collect physical media? After all, why have...

Irene Cara, the Oscar-winning singer and actor who rocketed to pop stardom singing the title tracks to “Fame” and “Flashdance,” had died at age 63. Her publicist, Judith A. Moose, announced the news on social media, writing that a cause of death is “currently unknown.”

“Irene’s family has requested privacy as they process their grief,” Moose wrote. “She was a beautifully gifted soul whose legacy will live forever through her music and films.”

Cara first came to prominence playing Coco Hernandez, a student at the High School of Performing Arts, which is now known as Fiorello H. Laguardia High School, with ambitions of becoming a star. Not only did Cara act in the film, she also recorded the film’s title song “Fame.” That track would go on to be nominated for an Academy Award for best original song, as would “Out Here on My Own,” another number from “Fame” that was sung by Cara.

Click here to read the full article.

Andrew Prine, the charming character actor who proved quite comfortable in the saddle in Bandolero!, Chisum, Wide Country and dozens of other Westerns on television and the big screen, has died. He was 86.

He died Monday in Paris of natural causes while on vacation with his wife, actress-producer Heather Lowe, she told The Hollywood Reporter. “He was the sweetest prince,” she said.

Prine also played the brother of Helen Keller (Patty Duke in an Oscar-winning turn) in The Miracle Worker (1962) and portrayed a lawman in Texarkana, Arkansas, who hunts a hooded serial killer alongside Ben Johnson in the cult classic The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976).

Later in his career, he stood out as Confederate Gen. Richard B. Garnett in the sprawling Gettysburg (1993).

In 1962-63, the lanky Prine got a taste of fame when he starred as the younger brother of Earl Holliman — their...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of von Sternberg’s Dishonored and Alan Rudolph’s rarely screened Remember My Name.

Bam

In advance of her debut feature The African Desperate, Martine Syms has curated a series of influences—among them Spike Lee’s Girl 6, Paprika, and Happy Together.

Film Forum

A Miloš Forman retrospective celebrates the filmmaker’s 90th birthday; “Loving Highsmith” has its second weekend with Purple Noon, Strangers on a Train, and The American Friend; restorations of Alain Resnais’ The War Is Over and Carnal Knowledge continue.

Film at Lincoln Center

Three Colors: Blue, Three Colors: White, and Three Colors: Red all play in new 4K restorations.

Museum of the Moving Image

One of Johnnie To’s best films, Vengeance, screens on Friday as part of a retrospective on The Story of Film, while...

Mickey Rooney Jr., the eldest of nine children of Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney and one of the original “Mickey Mouse Club” Mouseketeers, died on Saturday. He was 77 years old.

Rooney Jr.’s death was announced on Facebook by Paul Petersen, founder of the child-actor advocacy group A Minor Consideration. No cause of death was given. Longterm partner Chrissy Brown told THR that Rooney Jr. died in his home in Glendale, Arizona.

Rooney Jr. was a pro musician, a gifted guitar and keyboard player who appeared in Willie Nelson’s 1980 musical romantic drama “Honeysuckle Rose” and Alan Rudolph’s 1984 film “Songwriter.”

Also Read:

William ‘Poogie’ Hart, Lead Singer of Delfonics, Dies at 77

Rooney Jr. and his brother Tim were hired in 1955 as backup cast on ABC’s “The Mickey Mouse Club,” but they didn’t last long, getting canned over mischief (along with Peterson).

“Mickey Rooney Jr. peacefully passed away this morning in Arizona,...

Following the death of actor Fred Ward, several of his former costars, including Kevin Bacon, Matthew Modine, Lou Diamond Phillips, Richard E. Grant, and Kate Mulgrew, shared their memories of working with the charmingly gruff star.

Bacon shared a photo of himself and Ward from the 1990 cult hit “Tremors,” writing, “So sad to hear about Fred Ward. When it came to battling underground worms I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. I will always remember chatting about his love of Django Reinhardt and jazz guitar during our long hot days in the high desert. Rest In Peace Fred.” The two reunited in 2018 for a “Tremors” TV pilot that sadly was not picked up.

So sad to hear about Fred Ward. When it came to battling underground worms I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. I will always remember chatting about his love of Django Reinhardt and...

Exclusive: Neve Campbell has inked with new representation including The Gersh Agency, Anonymous Content for Management and attorneys Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.

The news comes in the wake of Campbell’s success with Paramount/Spyglass Media’s relaunch of Scream, one of the bright spots at the box office, grossing over $135M WW to date and sending the five-picture genre franchise’s tally to $739M-plus.

Upcoming, the Party of Five vet will star in the Netflix drama series The Lincoln Lawyer which is based on Michael Connelly’s second book, The Brass Verdict, in the legal thriller novel series.

In 2020, Campbell starred in the Disney+ film Clouds in which she plays Laura Sobiech, the author whose memoir Fly A Little Higher: How God Answered a Mom’s Small Prayer in a Big Way the film is based on. Campbell was also seen opposite Steve Coogan in Hot Air and...

Sally Kellerman, who was Oscar nominated for her supporting role as Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in Robert Altman’s “Mash” feature film, died Thursday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 84.

Her publicist Alan Eichler confirmed her death, and her daughter Claire added that she had been suffering from dementia for the past five years.

Among her other roles were a cameo in Altman’s “The Player,” a professor in Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School” and a Starfleet officer in the “Star Trek” episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

The willowy blonde actress with the characteristically throaty voice appeared in two Altman films in 1970; the other was the more experimental “Brewster McCloud,” in which she starred with Bud Cort and Michael Murphy. In this film, which did not have a conventional narrative, Kellerman played Louise, the mother of Cort’s bewinged character, Brewster.

She next starred opposite Alan Arkin...

Is this show a hatchet job on Raymond Chandler’s confidential agent, or do Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett honestly find a place for Philip Marlowe in the laid-back 1970s? Vilmos Zsigmond’s even more laid-back ‘pushed and pre-flashed’ cinematography made industry news by shooting in places that normally needed three times more artificial light. The characters are vivid, as portrayed by Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, and Mark Rydell. It’s also a terrific Los Angeles film, from Marlowe’s Hollywood apartment to the Malibu Colony, and a dangster’s Sunset Blvd. tower office suite. Elliott Gould’s mellow Marlowe may be unfocused and sloppy, but he still subscribes to the old ethics, particularly where friendship and betrayal are concerned. And darn it, he cares about his pet cat.

The Long Goodbye

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1973 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 112 min. / Street Date December 14, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Elliott Gould,...

The film is a Belgian-Italian-Dutch-Bulgarian-Armenian co-production.

US actor Geraldine Chaplin and the Netherlands’ Jonas Smulders have joined the cast of US-Belgian filmmaker Jessica Woodworth’s drama Fortress.

Filming on the drama got underway this week in Sicily, and will run until October 5.

Woodworth has written the screenplay for the film, adapted from Dino Buzzati’s 1940 Italian novel The Tartar Steppe. It is about a young solder, hungry for battle, who embeds himself in an isolated fort where men wait in vain for an enemy to strike.

Woodworth is also producing with Peter Brosens for Belgium’s Bo Films and Krater Films.

Next month’s Criterion Channel selection is here, and as 2021 winds down further cements their status as our single greatest streaming service. Off the top I took note of their eight-film Jia Zhangke retro as well as the streaming premieres of Center Stage and Malni. And, yes, Margaret has been on HBO Max for a while, but we can hope Criterion Channel’s addition—as part of the 63(!)-film “New York Stories”—opens doors to a more deserving home-video treatment.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy, Bruno Dumont’s Joan of Arc duology, and Criterion’s editions of Irma Vep and Flowers of Shanghai also mark major inclusions—just a few years ago the thought of Hou’s masterpiece streaming in HD was absurd.

I could implore you not to sleep on The Hottest August and Point Blank and Variety and In the Cut or, look, so many Ernst Lubitsch movies,...

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,...

Exclusive: U.S. distributor Screen Media has acquired international rights to a substantial part of the Moonstone Entertainment library with a 10-year exclusive deal.

The deal will include titles from Noah Baumbach, Timothy Hutton and Alan Rudolph. Screen Media plans to take the 47 library titles to market immediately.

The pact, negotiated by Ernst “Etchie” Stroh on behalf of Moonstone Entertainment and David Fannon and Michael Kosche on behalf of Screen Media, in partnership with Mep, represents the continuation of a long-standing relationship between the two companies.

Established by Etchie Stroh and his wife Yael at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992, producer Moonstone has made films including Alan Rudolph’s Afterglow starring Nick Nolte, Julie Christie (nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for this role), Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller; Mr. Jealousy starring Eric Stoltz, Annabella Sciorra and Peter Bogdanovich; Scott Sanders’ Thick As Thieves starring Alec Baldwin...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Marlon Brando and Willy Kurant on the set of The Night of the Following Day (1969). The great Belgian cinematographer Willy Kurant has died. During his illustrious career, Kurant worked on films including Agnès Varda's The Creatures, Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Feminin, and Orson Welles' The Immortal Story. David Cronenberg has confirmed the title of his next feature film, Crimes of the Future. Sharing the same title as his film from 1970, the film is set to star Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux, and Viggo Mortensen.Robert Haller, the Anthology Film Archives Director of Libraries, has also died. As Afa points out in its tribute to Haller, "with 35 years at Anthology all told, only Afa’s founder Jonas Mekas could claim seniority over Haller!⁠⁠" After more than 100 years, Technicolor Post has announced its integration into Streamland Media's postproduction services,...

Do audiences ever ask for a History Lesson? Robert Altman gives them a smart, if diffuse, image of America as a showbiz invention, commercialized and packaged. Paul Newman is the prepackaged white hero surrounded by a jolly circus; Buffalo Bill’s trick seems to be to get his colleagues, the dispossessed minorities and especially the vanquished Native Americans to cooperate with his self-aggrandizing fantasy. One of Altman’s better scattershot ensembles sketches an amusingly hollow Buffalo Bill in Paul Newman, but the director’s style keeps emotional involvement at arm’s length… make that telephoto lens’ length.

Buffalo Bill and the Indians

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1976 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 124, 105 min. / Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson / Street Date December 14, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Burt Lancaster, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson, Allan F. Nicholls, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine,...

Our 75th guest! The legendary filmmaker John Sayles joins Josh and Joe to explore some of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Ulzana’s Raid (1972)

Django (1966)

The Birth Of A Nation (1915)

City Of Hope (1991)

Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980)

The Challenge (1982)

Avalanche (1978)

Eight Men Out (1988)

Piranha (1978)

The Howling (1981)

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

The Killers (1964)

The King And I (1956)

Time Without Pity (1957)

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

Ben-Hur (1957)

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Two Women (1960)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Spartacus (1960)

Fixed Bayonets! (1951)

The Steel Helmet (1951)

Merrill’s Marauders (1962)

Targets (1968)

Touch Of Evil (1958)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Woodstock (1970)

Crime In The Streets (1956)

The Bad Seed (1956)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Fedora (1978)

Dune (1984)

The Cotton Club (1984)

Choose Me (1984)

Raising Arizona (1987)

El Norte (1983)

Yellow Sky (1948)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Irishman (2019)

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (2019)

The Thing (1982)

Chinatown (1974)

Manhattan (1979)

Duck Amuck (1953)

Goodfellas (1990)

Humanoids Of The Deep (1980)

Cockfighter (1974)

Dynamite Women a.k.a. The Great Texas Dynamite Chase...

Following our top 50 films of 2019, we’re sharing personal top 10 lists from our contributors. Check out the latest below and see our complete year-end coverage here.

The mild, sedately humming anxiety of a decade’s end yields innumerable ideas, most pertinent to this list being the inclusion of festival premieres currently awaiting theatrical release. An exceptional desire to leave the 2010s runs concurrent with the realization that many fresh offerings are sans whatever spark gets something here, and if the brand-new film you saw this year exemplified much of what you’re seeking every time you even bother taking a chance, well, rules both real and imagined shall be foregone. That slack response is both the cinema and me, but I retain immense excitement for the 2020s–less about those I love continuing than one whose name currently means zero becoming a front-center fixture within ten years that will round...

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who remains one of the modern era’s most celebrated American writers, is a largely untapped inspiration for cinematic adaptation—perhaps because he remains ahead of (his) time, even today. Just as his rise to acclaim in literature was prolonged, cinema has taken even longer to navigate Vonnegut.

Few have attempted to mount a Vonnegut adaptation, usually to mixed or poor reception. For Vonnegut, it was his sixth novel, the seminal Slaughterhouse-Five published in 1969, which became his breakthrough, and of course, a film ahead of, behind and far beyond the notion of time, here presented as a darkly satirical mobius strip in the time traveling journeys of the unreliable, potentially insane narrator Billy Pilgrim.…...

Julie Christie celebrates her 79th birthday on April 14, 2019. The Oscar-winning actress has been largely absent from movie screens this century, enjoying a semi-retirement that finds her returning for the odd performance here and there. Yet she’s always finding new fans as younger generations discover her cinematic classics. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

SEEOscar Best Actress Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

Born in 1940, Christie rose to prominence for her work in London, starting with a breakthrough performance in John Schlesinger‘s “Billy Liar” (1963). She won the Oscar as Best Actress just two years later for Schlesinger’s “Darling” (1965), playing a fashion model who sleeps her way to the top. That same year, she shot to stardom thanks to David Lean‘s romantic epic “Doctor Zhivago” (1965), which casts her as a political activist’s wife...

Exclusive: The cast for Amazon Prime Video’s vengeance-driven Nazi-hunting series executive produced by Academy Award winner Jordan Peele continues to grow with Kate Mulvany joining as a series regular and James Le Gros, Ebony Obsidian, Caleb Emery, Henry Hunter Hall and Jeannie Berlin boarding in key recurring roles. They join an already robust cast including Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, Jerrika Hinton, Josh Radnor as well as Lena Olin, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Tiffany Boone, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Greg Austin and Dylan Baker.

The Hunt, created by David Weil, follows a diverse band of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City. The Hunters, as they’re known, have discovered that hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the U.S. The eclectic team of Hunters will set out on a bloody quest to bring the Nazis to justice and thwart their new genocidal plans.

A list of Manhattan's greatest gatherings of wits would have to include the 1970s Saturday Night Live writers room; the late-1950s meetings between Mike Nichols and Elaine May; and the 1920s Algonquin Round Table. The last was a group of sharp-tongued literati that included Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman (who co-wrote You Can't Take It With You and several Marx Bros. movies) and Robert Benchley.

Beginning in 1919, the "Vicious Circle," as they dubbed themselves, met daily for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street. They were portrayed in Alan Rudolph's 1994 film,...

A list of Manhattan's greatest gatherings of wits would have to include the 1970s Saturday Night Live writers room; the late-1950s meetings between Mike Nichols and Elaine May; and the 1920s Algonquin Round Table. The last was a group of sharp-tongued literati that included Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman (who co-wrote You Can't Take It With You and several Marx Bros. movies) and Robert Benchley.

Beginning in 1919, the "Vicious Circle," as they dubbed themselves, met daily for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street. They were portrayed in Alan Rudolph's 1994 film,...

In 2018 we've published 70 interviews whose subjects have ranged from old masters to emerging new voices, and including some unexpected conversations, including those with curators (Dave Kehr of the Museum of Modern Art), as well as archival finds (a 1971 talk with Jerry Lewis).Below you will find an index of our conversations throughout the year, listed in order of publication date.Blake Williams (Prototype)Samira Elagoz (Craigslist Allstars)F.J. Ossang (9 Fingers)Jerry LewisAndré Gil Mata (The Tree)Christian Petzold (Transit)Raoul Peck (Young Karl Marx)Ashley McKenzie (Werewolf)Penelope SpheerisTed Fendt (Classical Period)Dominik Graf (The Red Shadow)Blake Williams ("Stereo Visions")Arnaud Desplechin (Ismael's Ghosts)Ruth Beckermann (The Waldheim Waltz)Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias (Cocote)Esther GarrelPhilippe Garrel (Lover for a Day)Jonas MekasJohann Lurf (★)Karim Aïnouz (Central Airport Thf)Juliana Antunes (Baronesa)Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Birds of Passage)Wang Bing (Dead Souls)Donal Foreman...

For 11 years running, our end-of-the-year tradition on the Notebook has been to poll our roster of contributors to create fantasy double features of new and old films. But what about the curators behind Mubi itself? This year we begin what we hope to be a new tradition: publishing the favorite films of the year as chosen by our programming team: Daniel Kasman in the U.S., Anaïs Lebrun and Chiara Marañón in the U.K. We each have two lists: our top new films that premiered in 2018, and then a selection of revivals screened in cinemas.PREMIERESDaniel Kasman1. Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)2. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland)3. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, USA)4. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, USA)5. The Waldheim Waltz (Ruth Beckermann, Austria)6. Unsane (Steven Soderbergh, USA)7. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, USA)8. The Red Shadow [director's cut]9. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?...

Actress and director Sondra Locke, who received a supporting actress Oscar nomination in her first movie role for “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” died Nov. 3 at 74. The Los Angeles County Public Health Department confirmed her death.

She died due to breast and bone cancer, according to Radar Online, which reported that she was laid to rest at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary.

Locke had a contentious relationship of more than a decade with Clint Eastwood, who first cast her in “The Outlaw Josey Wales.”

Locke was born in 1944 as Sandra Louise Smith and raised in Shelbyville, Tenn. She changed her named to Sondra in her early 20s and won a nationwide talent search in 1967 for the part of teenager Mick Kelly in the movie adaptation of Carson McCullers’ novel “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” Locke starred opposite Alan Arkin, who was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.