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At 77, Steven Spielberg isn’t holding back! The legendary director just dropped some truth bombs about his post-War of the Worlds flicks, admitting that the films that followed didn’t quite hit the mark. It’s not every day you hear a titan of cinema reflect so candidly, but Spielberg’s honesty shines through as he acknowledges a string of less-than-stellar projects.

Steven Spielberg | Image by: Gage Skidmore licensed under Cc By-sa 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s a bold move for a guy who’s given us classics like Jaws and E.T., proving that even the best can have their off days. So, what’s behind his revelation? Let’s dive into Spielberg’s journey through the highs and lows of Hollywood as he reexamines his filmography!

Steven Spielberg at 77: Why the Legendary Director’s Choosing History Over Blockbusters Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise from the set of...

You can't have "Jaws" without Quint, a modern Captain Ahab if he'd been hunting a great white shark rather than a white whale. It's difficult to picture anyone but Robert Shaw (in one of his last roles before his premature death in 1978) in the part, but the actor actually wasn't who director Steven Spielberg first had in mind.

In "Spielberg: The First Ten Years" by Laurent Bouzereau, Spielberg claimed his first choice for Quint was Lee Marvin. He wanted a big star and Marvin was famous for playing sinister tough guys. See: "The Big Heat," "Point Blank," "The Dirty Dozen," and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (directed by the man who taught Spielberg how to frame a horizon.) Marvin, though, said no. Spielberg recounted: "What I heard was that [Marvin] wanted to go fishing for real! He took his fishing very seriously and didn't want to do it from a 'movie' boat.

Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" remained depressingly relevant. We live on a planet wherein humans have invented single explosive devices powerful enough to eliminate all life on Earth, and yet they are being handled by whiny, insecure, clownish politicians and violence-obsessed military wonks with impotence and delusions of grandeur. It's telling that one of the biggest hits of 2023, Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer," was also about how petty egos tend to take precedence over the profound immoral invention of the nuclear bomb.

1964 was a time when phrases like "balance of power" were bandied about in the news, all while politicians and pundits argued about the moral righteousness of every major global superpower possessing the ability to destroy the world with equal skill. If everyone on Earth can blow up the planet, surely, then, everything is in perfect balance.

Kubrick...

Eric Roberts is one of the most prolific actors of all time. With over 700 credits on the IMDb to his name, Roberts has had a long and varied career. While one could argue that he hit his career pinnacle in the eighties when he earned an Academy Award nomination for Runaway Train (and richly deserved one for Star 80) and appeared in the cult hit Best of the Best (and its sequel) he’s kept plugging away and is an icon in his own right.

Eric Roberts was born on April 18, 1956, in Biloxi, Mississippi, to Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Grady Roberts. His family soon moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he grew up in a creative household with his younger sister Julia Roberts. Their parents ran a children’s acting school, and Eric began performing at a young age, appearing in local productions and television shows.

However, his parents’ marriage ended...

There wasn't a more capable director of massive, widescreen Westerns working in Hollywood during the 1950s and '60s than John Sturges. Whether classical ("Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") or somewhat unconventional ("Bad Day at Black Rock"), Sturges could frame a mountainous expanse or stage a gunfight with the best of them. He thrived when working with big casts and specialized in discovering stirring nuances in characters that would've been walking cliches in more typical genre flicks.

Sturges was also efficient, which came in handy when managing expensive studio productions populated with big egos. His biggest challenge in this department might've been "The Magnificent Seven," the 1960 remake of Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece "Seven Samurai." Yul Brynner, then a hugely popular movie star (largely on the strength of his Academy Award-winning performance in "The King and I" and his portrayal of Ramses in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments"), controlled...

Rod Serling was famous for a lot of things. He was one of the most acclaimed television writers of the mid-20th century, the creator of the genre-defining anthology series "The Twilight Zone," he co-wrote the screenplay to the original "Planet of the Apes," and he even helped give Steven Spielberg his big break. But even though he's famous for a lot of things, he was a prolific writer and even some of his best and most fascinating projects have been largely forgotten by the public over time. Like, for example, an adaptation of one of the most popular Christmas stories ever told, transformed into one of the most politically charged Christmas movies ever filmed.

Serling was no stranger to Christmas stories. After all, he wrote the classic yuletide episode "Night of the Meek," a hopeful story about an alcoholic department store Santa who stumbles across a magical sack that...

Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley are teaming for a West End stage production of Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 war satire, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Billed as the first-ever adaptation of a Kubrick work, Dr. Strangelove will star Coogan in multiple roles at London’s Noel Coward Theatre for a limited run from October 8, 2024-December 21, 2024.

The adaptation hails from Veep creator and Coogan’s Alan Partridge collaborator Iannucci, and Olivier Award-winner Foley. Foley will also direct.

The original Oscar-nominated film about a rogue U.S. General who triggers a nuclear crisis, starred Peter Sellers, George C Scott, Sterling Hayden and Slim Pickens, among others. Sellers memorably played more than one character, scoring an Oscar nomination in the process.

Said Coogan, “The idea of putting Dr. Strangelove on stage is daunting. A huge responsibility. It’s also an exciting challenge, an...

Mafia-related murders. An improbable constellation of 20th-century icons. Belated accessibility to the public after decades of obscurity. Are we talking about the JFK assassination or Winter Kills, William Richert’s 1979 film inspired by it?

Adapted from Richard Condon’s 1974 novel, the film flamed out on its initial release for many of the usual reasons: a troubled production, the short-sightedness of critics, and a willingness on the part of the filmmakers to potentially confuse, alienate, or offend audiences of the day. But even if you don’t go in with a conspiratorial mindset, one viewing of this riotously entertaining, chillingly perceptive film could leave you wondering if some larger force is at play, protecting the targets of this should-be New Hollywood classic by keeping it in the dark after all this time.

The history of Winter Kills is nearly as lurid and tangled as the conspiracy it depicts. Unable to secure...

"I met the true assassin of my brother." This restoration and re-release of Winter Kills is presented by author/filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, a longtime fan and champion of the movie. Film Forum will play a 35mm restoration of the 70s comedy thriller Winter Kills in August. It's a spin on JFK: the younger brother of an assassinated US President is led down a rabbit hole of conspiracies and dead ends after learning of a man claiming to be the real shooter. There's also more: "the story behind Winter Kills is as convoluted, mysterious and downright incredulous as the movie itself. The two main producers went bankrupt – one was later sent to a federal prison for drug trafficking, the other tied to his bed by a creditor and shot in the head – and production was suspended for two years while" the director found more money. Camera op John Bailey, who oversaw the restoration,...

Peter Meyer a prominent talent agent who prior to launching his company was a William Morris agent for over a decade, died Monday following a years-long battle with sarcoma. He was 68.

“After a heroic five-year battle against sarcoma, Meyer found peace surrounded by his family. He will be deeply missed by his wife, Anna Maria, and his three children, Christopher, Sasha, and Chase, as well as by his brothers John & Michael, sister Patty, nephews Zachary, Nathan, and Matthew and the rest of the Meyer and Sistare families. He also will be mourned by his beloved friends and incredibly talented clients with whom he grew very close over the decades,” the family said in a statement, provided to TheWrap by Meyer’s sister, producer Patricia K Meyer.

Born May 11, 1955 in Los Angeles, Meyer came from a family with deep ties to Hollywood and to the city. His father was Stanley Meyer,...

Peter Meyer, who represented the likes of Tom Hanks, James Caan and William Shatner as a talent agent at William Morris before spending the past three decades leading his own management firm, has died. He was 68.

Meyer died May 14 in his Los Angeles home after a five-year battle with sarcoma, his sister, writer-producer Patricia K. Meyer (The Women of Brewster Place), announced. Survivors also include his son Chris Meyer, a talent agent at CAA.

After training under legendary Wma agent Stan Kamen, Meyer was hired as a talent agent in June 1978. His clients would include actors Sterling Hayden, Kevin Costner, Kathleen Turner, Christopher Walken, Steve Guttenberg and David Hasselhoff.

After 11 years at Wma, he launched Meyer Management in 1990 to represent directors, writers, producers and authors, selling their work and facilitating their employment across all entertainment platforms.

He repped Jeffrey Reiner (Friday Night Lights), Michael Sloan and Tony Eldridge (The Equalizer...

The desert will again be a hotbed of deceit and larceny in luxurious black-and-white as the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival returns to Palm Springs this Thursday through Sunday, with the quintessential noir classics “The Killing” and “Double Indemnity” bookending a marathon weekend that otherwise tends toward more rarely screened ‘40s and ‘50s titles.

Several sons or daughters of the original actors or directors will be on hand, but of special interest to festival attendees will be the presence of one of the actual filmmakers: James B. Harris, 94, Stanley Kubrick’s producing partner for several of his best early films, who’ll be able to speak first-hand about the making of 1956’s “The Killing,” the crime drama that turned out to be Kubrick’s first real masterpiece.

“I’m just utterly thrilled that ‘The Killing’ will show and Jimmy will be the guest on opening night,” says the festival’s longtime guiding light,...

War is a living nightmare, wreaking its destruction on innocent lives and civilizations. It casts deep wounds that shape our history, present circumstances, and potential prospects for the future.

War has been a central theme in all of human history since its inception. It inspires both captivation and terror, with stories of bravery, resilience, and courage, as well as violence and death. It is the peak of danger – where any semblance of safety or security ceases to exist for those who fight. All that remains are humanity’s yearning for survival against insurmountable odds.

Hollywood has no shortage of war films meant to both awe and educate. Some promote the best humanity can offer as people come together for a common cause. Others reveal the horrific truth behind conflict’s brutality and man’s capacity for harm on an unimaginable scale.

Here is the ultimate fan selection of the top...

John Sturges' 1960 western "The Magnificent Seven" was a Yul Brynner vehicle from the jump -- it was he and actor Anthony Quinn who had acquired the rights to remake Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" epic as a western. To fill out the rest of the hired guns tasked to protect a Mexican village, the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" filmmaker would reunite "Never So Few" stars Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson as, respectively, a drifter and a broke mercenary. Robert Vaughn would play a traumatized war veteran, while Brad Dexter and "German James Dean" Horst Buchholz would round out the crew. James Coburn was last to come aboard.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2001, Coburn revealed that he was one of the few cast members who had caught the original Kurosawa film beforehand. He would subsequently spend "a week straight" taking friends to see it:

"Cut to a year later,...

Powerhouse Indicator’s first foray into the Universal library yields six noir thrillers, all crime-related and all different: the list introduces us to scheming businessmen, venal confidence crooks, black-market racketeers, a femme fatale, a gangster deportee and baby stealers. The B&w features are enriched with some of the best actors of the postwar years, and the titles themselves are a litany of vice and sin: The Web, Larceny, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, Abandoned, Deported and Naked Alibi.

Universal Noir #1

Region B Blu-ray

The Web, Larceny, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, Abandoned, Deported, Naked Alibi

Powerhouse Indicator

1948-1954 / B&w / Street Date November 14, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £49.99

Starring: Ella Raines, Edmond O’Brien, Vincent Price, William Bendix; John Payne, Joan Caulfield, Dan Duryea, Shelly Winters, Dorothy Hart; Joan Fontaine, Burt Lancaster, Robert Newton; Dennis O’Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Raymond Burr; Marta Toren, Jeff Chandler, Marina Berti, Richard Rober; Sterling Hayden,...

While he may not be as well-known today as Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder, director Nicholas Ray had a fantastic run during the '50s working across a range of genres from film noir ("In a Lonely Place") to war saga ("Flying Leathernecks"), coming-of-age teen angst ("Rebel Without a Cause") to westerns, the strangest of which is undoubtedly "Johnny Guitar." Shot in gaudy Trucolor, it stands apart from other studio westerns of the day, maybe because it isn't really a western at all -- It's more like a twisted gothic psychodrama that just happens to be set in the Old West.

Although the title refers to Sterling Hayden's nonchalant protagonist, Mr. Guitar takes a back seat for much of the movie, just one of many of Ray's subversive twists to the standard western formula. Instead, the main focus is the bitter rivalry between Vienna (Joan Crawford), a steely saloon keeper,...

This picture looks as modern and radical as anything from Italy in the 1960s, yet it’s a tough-talking take on hardboiled crime caper fiction. In three pictures Stanley Kubrick went from amateur to contender: now he has a like-minded producer, a top-flight cast, and the help of the legendary pulp author Jim Thompson. Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards peg the cynical film noir style, and Kubrick maintains the source book’s splintered chronology for the tense racetrack heist. All Hollywood took notice — at least that part of the industry looking out for daring, progressive storytelling. Now in 4K, Kubrick’s superb B&w images look better than ever.

The Killing

4K Ultra HD

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date July 26, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen,...

Take a look at the 4K restoration of director Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical feature, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”:

"..'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' is the BAFTA Award-winning (Best Film 1965) 'black comedy' feature about a psychotic general, 'Air Force Commander Jack D. Ripper' (Sterling Hayden) who sends out a fake alert for a squadron of nuclear bombers to attack Russia...

"...while 'Joint Chief of Staff' 'Buck Turgidson' (George C. Scott)...

"...tries to stop the gung-ho crews from dropping their bombs on Moscow.

The timid President (Sellers) is helpless to stop the bombers...

"... as is the foolish 'Captain Mandrake' (Sellers)...

"...while 'Dr. Strangelove' (Sellers), a wheelchair-bound ex-Third Reich scientist fiddles away the precious time remaining, with his own bizarre ideas about man's future..."

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek the...

The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola from the bestselling novel by Mario Puzo, has just hit another historic milestone: its 50th anniversary. Released on March 24, 1972, it is a landmark film that made and remade history. The ultimate saga, which can be seen in the recently-released The Godfather Trilogy 4K Ultra HD edition, follows an immigrant family as they rise in American society. The Corleones reflect the vantage point of one of the Five Families of New York’s organized crime ruling commission.

While the words “mafia” and “cosa nostra” are never used in the film, many of the scenarios reflect specific points in the mob’s story. Some of these are strictly from Puzo’s imagination for the novel, like the horse’s head in a Hollywood producer’s bed scene. There is no evidence in gangland history to a corresponding incident like that. However, one of the most...

This week at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood, California titans of the film industry gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Godfather. Franics Ford Coppola’s mob epic has, as it put it to our interviewer DaniElle DeLaite, had ‘the best review of all – that it has stood the test of time.’

We spoke to Coppola, Jon Voight and American Zoetrope Film Archivist James Mockoski and Paramount SVP of Archives Andrea Kalas about the filming of the movie, and asked why they think the film continues to endure and inspire new generations of filmmakers and audiences.

The film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, and Diane Keaton. It is one of the cornerstones of modern cinema, and should be enjoyed on as big a screen as possible. DaniElle DeLaite and Bobby Jones were our team on the red carpet,...

Director Sidney J. Furie discusses his favorite films he’s watched and re-watched during quarantine with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Dr. Blood’s Coffin (1961)

The Ipcress File (1965) – Howard Rodman’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Appaloosa (1966)

The Naked Runner (1967)

Lady Sings The Blues (1972)

The Entity (1982) – Luca Gaudagnino’s trailer commentary

The Boys in Company C (1978)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

The Apartment (1960) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

Twelve O’Clock High (1949)

A Place In The Sun (1951) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Out Of Africa (1985)

The Last Picture Show (1971) – Mark Pellington’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

Annie Hall (1977)

The Bad And The Beautiful (1952)

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)

The Tender Bar...

The Stranger Wore a GunIn the pantheon of great Western collaborations sits three mantels: John Wayne and John Ford, James Stewart and Anthony Mann, Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher. There is another mantelpiece, unvarnished and dirty from disuse: Randolph Scott and André De Toth. Does it belong there? Elements, directions, suits in a deck—the trappings of the West always come in fours. Why does this cycle of films lack a reputation, good standing, or even a quick moniker? Skronky where Ford is rhythmic, constricted where Mann is open, jagged where Boetticher is smooth, the De Toth films, six all told with Scott, give, rather than a cohesive persona or moral treatise, a cluster of pictures and ideas on a centerless society. Brass lanterns blown dark, drawn-out fistfights, flaming wagons streaking across the plains, gunfights in pitch-black bars; these images run across the sextet, fogging the hopeful vision of the American West.

Director Ron Underwood discusses a few of his favorite westerns with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Pearl Harbor (2001)

Mighty Joe Young (1998)

Speechless (1994)

Heart and Souls (1993)

Stealing Sinatra (2003)

City Slickers (1991)

Tremors (1990) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Tourist Trap (1979) – David DeCoteau’s trailer commentary

The Seduction (1982)

Puppet Master (1989)

The Boondock Saints (1999)

Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952)

Capricorn One (1977) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Panic In The Streets (1950) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

Back When We Were Grownups (2004)

Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018)

Tremors: Shrieker Island (2020)

The Howling (1981) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

Red River (1948) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Johnny Guitar (1954) – Michael Lehmann’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Searchers (1956)

Seven Samurai (1954) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary

The Magnificent Seven (1960) – Jesus Treviño’s trailer commentary

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Westworld...

It’s not wedding bells which break up the old gang in Ben Affleck’s The Town, it’s witness protection. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. The movie’s center is Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston, a legend in illicit locales. The blue-collar neighborhood “produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the world,” according to the movie’s prologue. Affleck’s second film as a director charts the fall of a mythic heist gang and the streets which made them.

The Boston area was prime cinematic crime fields during the early 2000s. In Black Mass, Johnny Depp plays South Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, an Irish gangster who informed on the Italian mob to the FBI. Some of the scenes were shot on the real crime locations depicted.

Paramount Pictures announced that Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” will be returning to theaters for its 50th anniversary at the Dolby Cinema and AMC theaters on Feb. 24, with 4K Ultra HD and digital on March 22.

Paramount has released a new trailer for the restored version. The restoration included 1,000 hours of color correction and restoration of the original mono tracks, in addition to 4,000 hours of repairing stains and tears.

All three films in the trilogy have been restored under the direction of Coppola.

Originally released in 1972, the Academy Award-winning film adaptation of Mario Puzo’s novel is a trilogy that chronicles the rise and fall of the Corleone family under the patriarch Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and the transformation of his youngest son, Michael (Al Pacino), from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss.

James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton also star.

This article contains Don’t Look Up spoilers.

Is this really happening? That is the anxious, painfully relatable plea Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dr. Randall Mindy cries repeatedly during the pre-title sequence of Don’t Look Up. Over the extended prologue of the new Adam McKay and Netflix phenomenon, Mindy and his best student, PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), have discovered that a comet is a) going to collide with earth in six months; b) that it will trigger an extinction level event; and c) it’s forced them to inform the President of the United States that all life on Earth is about to end.

With McKay’s camera practically touching DiCaprio and Lawrence’s eyeballs, we are made to feel their each and every agonized breath as they grapple with the gravity of the situation. In this way, the tight handheld photography of these scenes is not that different from...

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,...

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,...

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Rip Van Marlowe

By Raymond Benson

(Note: Portions of this review appeared on Cinema Retro in 2014 for an earlier Kino Lorber edition.)

Robert Altman was a very quirky director, sometimes missing the mark, but oftentimes brilliant. His 1973 take on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye is a case in point. It might take a second viewing to appreciate what’s really going on in the film. Updating what is essentially a 1940s film noir character to the swinging 70s was a risky and challenging prospect—and Altman and his star, Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe (!), pull it off.

It’s one of those pictures that critics hated when it was first released; and yet, by the end of the year, it was being named on several Top Ten lists. I admit that when I first saw it in 1973, I didn’t much care for it.

To the public, Alec Baldwin’s Colt .45 stands as a symbol of perhaps criminal incompetence, but to insiders it also represents a pathetic epitaph to that mythic genre, the “indie” movie.

The indie Western already was in dire straits because of lack of funding and distribution until Baldwin came along as both star and producer of Rust – a sort of Dennis Hopper of the 2020s. The film was under-budgeted at $7 million on a 21-day shooting schedule. Its crew was rebellious, inexperienced and seemingly oblivious to the protocols governing movie weaponry.

Besides all this, no one seemed to be running the show among the usual cluster of producers and executive producers (including Baldwin’s manager).

By contrast, indie producers traditionally were proud to take their bows. Upon completing Easy Rider, Hopper once boasted proudly that his film crew was essentially “a dysfunctional family.” The dysfunction worked for him in the ’60s...

Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is no stranger to heist movies. Remember 1998’s “Out of Sight,” 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and 2017’s “Logan Lucky”? And he’s returned to the popular genre with this latest film “No Sudden Move,” which landed on HBO Max July 1 after having premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Set in Detroit in 1954, “No Sudden Move” around a group of small-time hoods who are hired to steal a document. Though they consider it to be a straightforward job, it turns out to be anything but when the gig goes wrong. While the crooks try to figure out who hired them and way, they are lead down a rabbit hole of twists and turns involving racial prejudice, corporate greed in the auto industry and even the mob. “No Sudden Move,” which stars Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, David Harbour, Jon Hamm, Brendan Fraser, and Ray Liotta, is currently at...

Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) with Stanley Kubrick in Gregory Monro’s Tribeca Film Festival highlight Kubrick by Kubrick

In the first instalment of my conversation on Tribeca Film Festival highlight Kubrick By Kubrick with director Gregory Monro, we discussed Stanley Kubrick’s thoughts as a room and the rarity of hearing his voice in the recorded taped interviews by Michel Ciment. Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) saying “John Wayne is more violent”, Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon), and Sterling Hayden (The Killing and Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb), Kubrick’s longtime association with Leon Vitali, the mystery of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Shining also came up. I noted two other Tribeca highlights - Pan Nalin’s Last Film Show, where he references Kubrick and Douglas Tirola’s use of a Look magazine photo taken by Kubrick for his documentary on Leonard Bernstein,...

Scarface hadn’t been made when Pete Townshend’s 1974 song “The Punk and the Godfather” came out, but The Godfather certainly had. The Who’s anthem was a musical allegory about the rock scene, but the lyrics might as well be interpreted as a conversation between Michael Corleone and Tony Montana. Possibly right before they rumble.

Al Pacino played both men in both movies, and in each film, he begins the story as a punk. But in The Godfather, at least, he grows into the establishment. Michael becomes don. Tony was a shooting star on the other hand, one on a collision course with an unyielding atmosphere. Both roles are smorgasbords of possibilities to an actor, especially one who chased Richard III to every imaginable outcome. Each are also master criminals. But which is more masterful?

The obvious answer would seem to be Michael Corleone because he turned a criminal...

Producers Bruce Hendricks and Galen Walker have optioned the rights to Stanley Kubrick’s “Lunatic at Large,” one of three unmade Kubrick screenplays discovered in the film director’s library after his death in March 1999. Variety first reported the news. While plot details for “Lunatic at Large” are a mystery, Hendricks and Walker describe Kubrick’s script as a “film noir thriller in keeping with other collaborations between Kubrick and his frequent collaborator, screenwriter Jim Thompson.” Kubrick and Thompson’s shared filmography includes the 1956 film noir “The Killing,” plus “Paths of Glory” and “Spartacus.”

“The opportunity to bring a Stanley Kubrick project to the screen after so many years is a dream come true,” Walker said in a statement. “We look forward to making a film in keeping with his unique style and vision.”

Hendricks added, “Stanley Kubrick was an enormous influence on so many directors, and we are honored...

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“Wanted: Anger Management In Border Town”

By Raymond Benson

Sterling Hayden was often cast as the gangster, the hooligan, the nutsy general, the petty criminal with brawn but little brains… and yet here we have him as the hero of a sticky film noir from 1954 as the chief of police of an urban setting (southern California?) who loses his job because of allegations of police brutality. Hayden is perfectly cast, and this is said without sarcasm.

Naked Alibi was directed by Jerry Hopper, who made well over a dozen B-movies in the crime, adventure, western, and melodrama categories in the late 1940s to mid-50s, and then moved smoothly into television and helmed an abundance of television episodes for various long-running series into the 70s. Alibi does play like an extended episode of one of the late 50s TV crime dramas like Naked City,...

Ken Osmond, best known for his role at the troublemaker Eddie Haskell on the television comedy “Leave It to Beaver,” died on Monday morning. He was 76.

Sources tell Variety Osmond passed away at his Los Angeles home surrounded by family members.

The cause of death is unknown.

Osmond, a native of Glendale, Ca., began his career as a child actor with his first speaking part at age 9 in the film “So Big,” starring Jane Wyman and Sterling Hayden, followed by “Good Morning Miss Dove,” and “Everything But the Truth. He also guest-starred on television series, including “Lassie,” “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “Wagon Train,” “Fury,” and “The Loretta Young Show.”

In 1957, Osmond auditioned for the the Eddie Haskell role, which was originally intended to be a guest appearance, but those involved with the show were so impressed with Osmond’s portrayal that the character was a key component of...

Stanley Kubrick is one of the most written-about, discussed, dissected, pored-over filmmakers in history. He’s been an irresistible subject for critics, journalists, film scholars, documentarians, conspiracy theorists – in short, for everybody except maybe Kubrick himself.

The director, who was born in the Bronx but spent most of his adult life living in England, was famously reluctant to talk about himself. Other people may have wanted his thoughts on movies like “Paths of Glory,” “Spartacus,” “Lolita,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “Barry Lyndon,” “The Shining,” “Full Metal Jacket” and “Eyes Wide Shut,” but Kubrick wasn’t interested in explaining anything.

“I’ve never found it meaningful or even possible to talk about film,” said the director who to many might have been like that big black monolith in “2001”: an inscrutable blank with enormous powers, but who knows what’s lurking in the depths?

Also Read: Sue Lyon,...

Cinema Retro's Todd Garbarini with Sonny Grosso at a screening of The French Connection in 2010.

By Todd Garbarini

Salvatore Anthony Grosso, known affectionately as Sonny Grosso, passed away on Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at the age of 89. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, his work most assuredly did. Mr. Grosso was originally a New York City police detective who was the partner of Detective Eddie Egan. These two gentlemen both, on a hunch, broke up an organized crime ring which resulted in the seizure of 112 pounds of heroin. This then-unprecedented bust in 1961 provided the basis for the 1969 Robin Moore chronicle of their exploits, The French Connection, and was made into the Oscar-winning classic film of the same name two years later, resulting in a Best Picture win for producer Philip D’Antoni, Best Director for William Friedkin, Best Actor for Gene Hackman (he personified Eddie Egan’s Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle...

“ A man can lie, steal… and even kill. But as long as he hangs on to his pride, he’s still a man. All a woman has to do is slip – once. And she’s a “tramp!” Must be a great comfort to you to be a man. “

Webster University presents “The Other St. Nick”, a six-film Nicholas Ray Film Festival that runs December 27th-January 5th at the University’s Moore Auditorium(470 E Lockwood Ave). The films screen Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays at 7:00pm the weekends of Dec 27-29th and Jan 3-5th. The series continues Friday night, January 3rd at 7pm with Johnny Guitar (1954). A Facebook invite for the film can be found Here

A revisionist Western made at a time when a large section of the population didn’t recognize that the Western genre could use some revising, Nick Ray’s Johnny Guitar focuses on female...

” The city can be lonely too. Sometimes people who are never alone are the loneliest. “

Webster University presents “The Other St. Nick”, a six-film Nicholas Ray Film Festival that runs December 27th-January 5th at the University’s Moore Auditorium(470 E Lockwood Ave). The films screen Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays at 7:00pm the weekends of Dec 27-29th and Jan 3-5th. The series continues tonight, December 29th at 7pm with On Dangerous Ground (1951)

A film noir more often compared to the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer than its American contemporaries, On Dangerous Ground concerns the hot-headed detective Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan), who partners up with Walter Brent (Ward Bond), the father of a murdered young girl, in the solving of the crime. Along the way they encounter a blind woman, Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), who may offer a key to the case. Featuring a memorable score from master Bernard Herrmann.

” This boy… and this girl… were never properly introduced to the world we live in… To tell their story… They Live by Night. “

Webster University presents “The Other St. Nick”, a six-film Nicholas Ray Film Festival that runs December 27th-January 5th at the University’s Moore Auditorium(470 E Lockwood Ave). The films screen Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays at 7:00pmthe weekends of Dec 27-29th and Jan 3-5th.The series kicks off tonight, December 27th at 7pm with They Live By Night – 1948

After seven years in prison, 23-year-old Bowie (Farley Granger) escapes alongside some bank robbers. Once out, he runs into new love Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), and makes it a priority to prove his innocence, or at least escape to the mountains with Keechie in tow. With this, his film debut, Nicholas Ray already exhibits future preoccupations with young underdogs and offers a fine contribution to the film noir canon.

” I’ve got the bullets! “

Webster University has announced “The Other St. Nick”, a six-film Nicholas Ray Film Festival that runs December 27th-January 5th at the University’s Moore Auditorium(470 E Lockwood Ave). The films screen Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays at 7:00pm the weekends of Dec 27-29th and Jan 3-5th.

Jean-Luc Godard once famously wrote that “Cinema is Nicholas Ray.” Champion of the underdog, one of the earliest masters of Cinemascope, forward thinking in depictions of the aligned and marginalized, Mr. Ray’s contributions to film continue to resonate with modern filmmakers and audiences. Sure, you can spend the holiday season with an old man in a red suit, but Nicholas Ray is the one giving the gifts that keep on giving.

Here’s the lineup:

They Live By Night (1948) Friday, December 27 at 7:00pm

After seven years in prison, 23-year-old Bowie (Farley Granger) escapes alongside some bank robbers.

Francis Ford Coppola, Brett Morgen, actress Ali MacGraw and many more are mourning the Monday death of Robert Evans, the legendary film producer and Paramount Pictures chief in the ’60s and ’70s.

Coppola honored Evans for his contributions to “The Godfather” films when he was at Paramount and for his help as an independent producer on Coppola’s “The Cotton Club” from 1984.

“I remember Bob Evans’ charm, good looks, enthusiasm, style, and sense of humor. He had strong instincts as evidenced by the long list of great films in his career,” Coppola said in a statement to TheWrap. “When I worked with Bob, some of his helpful ideas included suggesting John Marley as Woltz and Sterling Hayden as the Police Captain, and his ultimate realization that ‘The Godfather’ could be 2 hours and 45 minutes in length; also, making a movie out of ‘The Cotton Club’ — casting Richard Gere and Gregory Hines,...

Francis Ford Coppola remembered his sometime-patron, collaborator and frenemy Robert Evans as a producer with “strong instincts” in an emotional tribute. Evans, the legendary producer and former head of Paramount Pictures, died on Saturday night at the age of 89. He played a crucial role in the creation of such film classics as “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown” and “Marathon Man.”

At Paramount, he plucked Coppola, then a rising young filmmaker, from semi-obscurity and tasked him with bringing Mario Puzo’s bestseller “The Godfather” to the screen. The two clashed frequently, but they created a beloved film that was also a box office success and Oscar winner. When they collaborated again on 1984’s “The Cotton Club,” it was not as star-crossed. That film was mired in lawsuits, budget over-runs, and competing creative visions. It became an infamous bomb that hurt both men’s careers. On Monday, however, Coppola chose to accentuate the positive aspects of their alliances.

Daisy Doodad's Dial (1914). Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes.CAVEATIn countries without active, functional frameworks to sustain the performance of cinephilia, a cross-generational transmission of an interest in the cinema is attained through traditions that are predominantly oral. Such a mode is—as all communication must be to remain relevant—plagued inevitably by tendencies of exaggeration, fabrication, or myth-making. This is to say that the heirloom of film culture that each successive generation of young cinephiles inherits in these countries is at least, in part, a collection of rumors, a tall-tale, an urban legend—at any rate, an elaborate fiction. In parts of the world therefore, where the conduct of cinephilia relies heavily on how thorough its artifice is, a crisis that is pertinent for the rest of the world—presentation or preservation—is resolved with much ease: presentation is preservation.

Johnnie Planco, a former William Morris agent and co-founder of the Parseghian Planco management and production company, has died. He was 68.

Planco died Sunday in New York after struggling with an infection that affected his brain and respiratory system, his daughter, Viewpoint publicist Sara Planco, announced.

Planco spent nearly three decades at the William Morris Agency, where he represented the likes of Peter O'Toole, Rock Hudson, John Cassavetes, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ben Gazzara, Madeline Kahn, Sterling Hayden, Lauren Bacall, Richard Harris, Tom Hanks, Richard Gere, John Malkovich, Vincent Gardenia, Michael Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Susan Sarandon, Abel Ferrara ...

Johnnie Planco, a former William Morris agent and co-founder of the Parseghian Planco management and production company, has died. He was 68.

Planco died Sunday in New York after struggling with an infection that affected his brain and respiratory system, his daughter, Viewpoint publicist Sara Planco, announced.

Planco spent nearly three decades at the William Morris Agency, where he represented the likes of Peter O'Toole, Rock Hudson, John Cassavetes, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ben Gazzara, Madeline Kahn, Sterling Hayden, Lauren Bacall, Richard Harris, Tom Hanks, Richard Gere, John Malkovich, Vincent Gardenia, Michael Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Susan Sarandon, Abel Ferrara ...

Johnnie Planco, the longtime New York-based Wma agent who partnered with Gene Parseghian in the management/production company Parseghian Planco, has died. Planco passed away on Sunday, June 2 in New York City, after struggling with an infection that quickly affected both his brain and respiratory system. He was 68.

Planco was born and raised in New York City, as was his father and grandfather, latter of whom was a Rough Rider under Teddy Roosevelt. Planco joined the famed Wma mailroom after graduating Fordham U at Lincoln Center with a BA in Theater. This was in 1972, and he would remain with that agency until 2000.

In those 28 years he became the youngest Department Head and Senior Vice President in the agency’s history, running both the Motion Picture department in New York and creating and running the William Morris Talent Department. Among the clients he represented were Tom Hanks, Richard Gere, John Malkovich,...

Take a look at a new trailer supporting the 4K restoration of director Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical feature, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", opening in UK cinemas May 17, 2019:

"..'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' is the BAFTA Award-winning (Best Film 1965) 'black comedy' feature about a psychotic general, 'Air Force Commander Jack D. Ripper' (Sterling Hayden) who sends out a fake alert for a squadron of nuclear bombers to attack Russia...

"...while 'Joint Chief of Staff' 'Buck Turgidson' (George C. Scott)...

"...tries to stop the gung-ho crews from dropping their bombs on Moscow. 

The timid President (Sellers) is helpless to stop the bombers...

"... as is the foolish 'Captain Mandrake' (Sellers)...

"...while 'Dr. Strangelove' (Sellers), a wheelchair-bound ex-Third Reich scientist fiddles away the precious time remaining, with his own bizarre ideas about man's future..."

Click the...

By John M. Whalen

John Payne was one of those “meat and potatoes” kind of actors. Nothing fancy. No complicated method acting style. He just gave good, solid, straight off-the-page performances in dozens of films and television shows over a span of nearly 40 years. I think of him primarily as the guy trapped and fighting for survival in old black and white film noirs of the 1950s-- films like “Kansas City Confidential,” “99 River Street,” and perhaps one of the best noirs ever—“The Crooked Way.”

He made a number of interesting westerns however, including “El Paso” (1949), the first of a several he made for the Pine-Thomas Productions B-movie unit of Paramount. It was notable for the fact that it was the first Pine-Thomas movie to have a decent budget-- $1 million. It was filmed partly in El Paso, but mostly on the Iverson Ranch, which, film historian Toby Roan explains in the audio commentary,...