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Victoria Preminger, daughter of director Otto Preminger, died Feb. 7 in Studio City, Calif. following a fall at home. She was 63.

Her mother was actress Hope Bryce Preminger and her uncle was film producer Ingo Preminger, the literary agent who represented clients such as Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, who were both blacklisted throughout the McCarthy period.

Born in New York in 1960, Preminger studied at the Lycée Français de New York and later graduated with honors from Smith College. During her undergraduate career, she starred in a number of television soap operas as well as the 1988 feature “Spike of Bensonhurst,” which was directed by Paul Morrissey.

Four years later, she graduated from Pepperdine University School of Law. She spent the following six years producing audiobooks in Beverly Hills, Calif. for Dove Audio, one of the premier audio book companies nationally. She went on to produce, edit and lead celebrities including Glenda Jackson,...

Updated: There has been another round of content removal from Disney+, this time in the Emea region, which consists of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. More than 120 titles have been taken off this week, primarily Disney Channel original movies and vintage Disney live-action films, as well as a few series, including Zeke and Luther, Pepper Ann, So Random and the first three seasons of Nat Geo’s Genius and ESPN/Nat Geo docs.

According to sources, the takedowns were a result of a library title review. There have been several content purges at Disney+ over the last year amid cost-cutting, most notably the removal of a slew of original series last May.

Here is a list of movie titles that are said to be gone from Disney+ in Emea, compiled by Drew Ryan.

A Tale of Two Critters

America’s Heart and Soul

Angry Sky (ESPN)

Babes in Toyland...

Christmas comes early on Max, as the streamer adds a bevy of holiday movies to its library for the month of November, alongside new TV debuts, a noteworthy documentary and more. “Elf,” “Christmas Vacation,” “Arthur Christmas,” “The Shop Around the Corner” and “Four Christmases” are some of the holiday films arriving on the streaming platform on Nov. 1.

This month also sees the Season 2 premieres of “Rap Sh!t” (on Nov. 9) and “Julia” (on Nov. 16) and the series premiere of “Two and a Half Men” creator Chuck Lorre’s new sitcom “Bookie” starring Sebastian Maniscalco (on Nov. 30).

On Nov. 11, check out the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life” in which the comedian, actor and filmmaker’s best friend Rob Reiner peppers him with questions about his life and career.

And Chip and Joanna Gaines renovate a 100-year-old building in “Fixer Upper: The Hotel,” which premieres on Nov. 8.

Check out the full list...

It’s a lean month for new original content on HBO/Max. November will see the return of two scripted series in Julia and Rap Sh!t, both of which are debuting their respective second seasons, but this month’s fresh highlight is likely to be Bookie, a new comedy series from the partnership of The Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre, and Nick Bakay. The show tracks an LA bookie called Danny (Sebastian Maniscalco), whose business is in peril as California movies to legalize sports gambling.

Elsewhere in November, there quite a few interesting documentaries to keep an eye on, and two that jump out as “must watch”. The first is Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, which chronicles the aging comedian’s life and career. The second is the previously-released Little Richard: I Am Everything, which tries to peel back the whitewashed canon of Richard Penniman in a true...

Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce in ‘Julia’ season 2 (Photograph by Sebastein Gonon/Max)

Max’s November 2023 schedule includes season two of Julia starring Sarah Lancashire as Julia Child and the return of Rap Sh!t with Aida Osman and Mia KaMillion. Bookie, a new comedy about sports gambling created by Chuck Lorre, makes its debut on November 30th with Sebastian Maniscalco starring as an LA bookie.

HBO documentaries Albert Brooks: Defending My Life and South to Black Power will stream on Max this November, along with CNN Films’ Little Richard: I Am Everything.

Series & Films Arriving On Max In November 2023:

November 1

Act of Valor (2012)

After the Thin Man (1936)

Aliens (1986)

The Ant Bully (2006)

Arthur Christmas (2011)

The Avengers (1998)

The Bachelor (1999)

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Bells Are Ringing (1960)

Black Beauty (1994)

Boys’ Night Out (1962)

Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984)

Brigadoon (1954)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

A Christmas Carol (1938)

Christmas Cookie Challenge, Seasons...

One of the first girls Paul McCartney ever dated as The Beatles rose to fame was Jane Asher. Here’s the story of how the musician and actress met.

Jane Asher was an accomplished actor when she met Paul McCartney

Before Asher, McCartney dated his fair share of Beatles super fans. But no one he shared a serious connection with. Asher was different. At 17, when the two met, she still lived at home with her wealthy parents, a psychiatrist and professional musician, according to the Beatles biography The Love You Make by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. Before the Beatles, McCartney probably wouldn’t have had a chance with a girl like Asher.

While McCartney was part of one of the most popular bands of the day with his star only rising, Asher was by no means a nobody when she met the Beatle.

Asher appeared in her first film at the age of five.

To celebrate its century-long run as one of Hollywood's biggest movie studios, Warner Bros. is releasing 20-minute-long remakes of six of its most classic films. The company, which is now called Warner Bros. Discovery after a merger with Discovery, Inc., plans on developing the short film series through its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team and stated that the series will reimagine these stories through "representative casting, storytelling, and narrative."

The six films on the slate are the recently remade "A Star is Born," the swashbuckling "The Adventures of Robin Hood," the Western "Calamity Jane," the Abbott and Costello comedy "Jack and the Beanstalk," the much-adapted "The Prince and the Pauper," and the James Dean drama "Rebel Without a Cause." Production is slated to begin this summer, with Ali Afshar ("American Wrestler: The Wizard" and a whole slew of Christmas-related material) serving as consulting producer. "We can't think of a better...

As part of its ongoing celebration of the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros. Studios, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has commissioned short film adaptations of six classic movies from its vault.

These 20-minute shorts, which will be available to stream on Max later this year, will update the films through today’s more diverse and inclusive understanding of the world, with what Wbd’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team calls “representative casting, storytelling and narrative.”

Six filmmakers have already been chosen by a committee that includes Wbd senior vp Dei in North America Karen Horne alongside individuals from Warner Bros. Pictures, Visual Communications, Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, Urban World, Sundance Indigenous Lab, Outfest and ReelAbilities Film Fest. The filmmakers, who will receive a budget through which they can derive their own compensation, will begin production this summer and be mentored by a group of established producers and directors,...

Disney has shared a new trailer for their upcoming Disney+ streaming service and it’s over 3-hours long! I don’t know if you want to spend over three hours seeing what Disney+ has to offer when it launches, but you have the option!

Disney+ also posted all of the films and TV shows coming to the streaming service on a super long Twitter thread, which I included below the trailer. As you’ll see there’s a ton of stuff that will be available that will make Disney fans happy. Gargoyles and several other classic 90s animated series are among them along with a lot of old weird films that have been pulled out of the Disney vault.

If you don’t want to watch the trailer or scroll through the Twitter feed, I shared the full list of titles for you. Check everything out below and let us...

A dose of 21st century attitude mixes nicely with other winning ingredients in “Kingdom,” a thoroughly entertaining adaptation of Yasuhisa Hara’s hugely popular manga set in China, 245 B.C. Centered on two orphan boys who dream of becoming “the greatest generals on Earth,” this Japanese take on a Chinese wuxia is overwrought at times and too simply plotted at others, but wins through with colorful characters, top-class swordplay and snappy dialogue that’ll especially connect with younger viewers. Energetically directed and co-written by manga-to-screen specialist Shinsuke Sato, “Kingdom” grossed a whopping $50 million in local cinemas earlier this year and ought to perform strongly in limited North American release from August 16.

Taking its thematic cues from literary classics including “The Prince and the Pauper,” and adopting the high-spirited story-telling of action-adventures such as Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress,” “Kingdom” refreshes a familiar tale of heroes emerging from poverty to...

Role-reversal films have become a Christmas tradition … but does Netflix’s latest effort show the genre has finally had its day?

At last, Christmastide is upon us, for it is decreed that it may only commence when Netflix drops its worst festive movie – and, as last week saw the release of The Princess Switch, it is now Ok to start decking the halls. The film stars Vanessa Hudgens as Stacy De Novo (just a normal baker from Chicago) and Lady Margaret Delacourt, Duchess of Montenaro (just go with it), who swap identities for a bit, just to see. Seasonal shenanigans of course ensue.

The most notable thing about The Princess Switch, which is otherwise hilariously unChristmassy in spirit, is the way it plays on ye olde Christmas tradition of the switcheroo, as pioneered by Charles Dickens and subsequently elevated to art form by, erm, Nancy Meyers’ The Holiday. Of course,...

There’s a new duchess in town this holiday season!

Vanessa Hudgens is starring in the upcoming Christmas romantic comedy The Princess Switch.

Hudgens, 29, will play two identical people: Stacy, a baker from Chicago and Margaret, the Duchess of Montenaro — a fictional town in the European nation of Belgravia.

The unlikely pair cross paths when Stacy is invited to participate in a baking competition in Belgravia. Like the movie The Parent Trap or the classic tale The Prince and the Pauper, after bumping into each other and realizing they look exactly alike, Stacy and Margaret decide to switch places… temporarily.

You'll get a double dose of Vanessa Hudgens this holiday season. In the upcoming Christmas romantic comedy film The Princess Switch, set for release on Netflix, the 29-year-old High School Musical alum plays two identical people, bringing to mind The Parent Trap and The Prince and the Pauper. Hudgens portrays both Stacy, an American girl from Chicago, and Margaret, the Duchess of Montenaro, who bears an ultra posh British accent. After meeting and discovering they look identical, the women switch places temporarily. "I want to get to know what it's like to be a normal girl," Margaret says. Naturally, hijinks ensue, namely when it comes to the women's...

A post shared by Vanessa Hudgens (@vanessahudgens) on Jun 17, 2018 at 10:15am Pdt

It's never too early for a holiday movie, and nobody knows that better than Netflix. It's no surprise that the network has been steadily working to bring us more gems like A Christmas Prince, the holiday romance that did so well a sequel is already in the works. Netflix is bringing rom-coms back in a huge way, and its newest offering stars two familiar faces to music- and TV-lovers: High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens and Nashville's Sam Palladio.

Netflix's See What's Next twitter account announced the upcoming holiday rom-com The Princess Switch, which is very loosely based on Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. See What's Next described the movie as "a rom-com about a Duchess and a commoner who swap places after discovering they look exactly alike! But things get complicated when they each...

W.C. Fields famously pronounced, “never work with animals or children.” Of course, Fields was known to have secretly loved children, and it’s easy to imagine him being enamored by the pint-sized cast of “School of Rock,” Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical based on the 2003 big-screen comedy starring Jack Black as “Dewey Finn,” a shlubby, ne’er-do-well substitute teacher at a buttoned-up prep school who turns his disenchanted students into a thriving rock band.

Born of Broadway, the national tour of “School of Rock,” currently playing at Hollywood Pantages Theatre through May 27 and starring Rob Colletti as Dewey, is warm, engaging, and filled with invigorating performances by a cast of budding young musicians and singers who steal the show in almost every scene.

Emmy and Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes, who penned the book for “School of Rock,” is known primarily for tony adult dramas such as “Gosford Park” and “Downton Abbey,...

I like crowds. I like big noisy events. State fairs? Love ‘em. Black Friday shopping days? I’m there. Live music with tiny crowded dance floors? Sounds good to me. San Diego Comic Con? Yeah, baby. Ditto The New York Comic Con.

But on the other hand, when I’m thinking about Geek Culture and comic conventions, I find that I also enjoy small comic conventions. There’s a certain charm, an aura of creativity and a sense of community that embraces you in a unique way that you won’t find at NYC’s Javits Center.

I had to cancel out of this past weekend’s WonderCon in Anaheim, California. That was a drag as I was looking forward to being a panelist on Rik Offenberger’s Marketing/PR panel. But I haven’t been on a convention hiatus; lately, I have been busy finding and attending them. For consecutive weekends,...

Criterion re-releases Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 adventure The Hidden Fortress for a ravishing blu-ray update this month, following hot on the heels of a similar refurbishing for Throne of Blood (1957). Long hailed as a “primary” influence on George Lucas’ Star Wars, there are indeed notable structural similarities, but they’re quite superficial, as those attracted to the title based on this tidbit alone should take note. An entertaining adventure comedy that utilized widescreen technology to breathtaking effect (and represents Kurosawa’s first time using Toho Scope), it’s an impressively structured endeavor on its own, and was actually the first substantial hit for Kurosawa since 1954’s Seven Samurai.

At its core a re-dressed version of The Prince and the Pauper, two peasants in war torn feudal Japan, Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matakishi (Kamatari Fujiwara) escape as prisoners of war and attempt to make their way back home to their own province.

Director: Choo Chang-min Review: Stan Glick Masquerade is a marvelous period film set during the rule of Gwanghae, one of the Joseon Dynasty kings. Cj Entertainment released a single disc DVD version in June of 2013. A Blu-ray edition became available in the U.S. on Tuesday, February 11th. So this seemed like the perfect time to review the film and to compare the DVD and Blu-ray versions. The story is one of assumed identity. In this it is related to such literary works as Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper (1881) and Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and to Akira Kurosawa's film Kagemusha (1980). King Gwanghae (Lee Byung-hun) knows that there are powerful ministers in his court who are plotting against him. Fearful of assassination, he commands Chief Secretary Ho Gyun (Ryu Seung-Ryong) to locate an identical double who can pretend to be the king certain evenings.

The Prince and the Pauper plot conceit was barely an original idea when Mark Twain wrote it, but by 1951 it was already a timeless story. In the case of On the Riviera, though, this particular version of the story had already been used three times before (starting with a short-lived Broadway production called The Red Cat). How these previous iterations stand up to this one I cannot attest to, but they may perhaps be accountable for some of Riviera’s shortcomings.

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E! is trying its hand at scripted series, and one of the projects it has on the docket is the latest from Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. The "Gossip Girl" and "The O.C." creators teamed up once again on the series "Laurel Canyon," another Southern California-based television show that E! is looking to air.

The project is described as being about "a young woman who returns to her Hollywood family after her rock-star dad dies," and is one of eight scripted shows E! has in development. Among the others is a "darkly psychological retelling" of "The Prince and the Pauper" called "The Stand-In," a modern retelling of "Great Expectations" about a "morally corrupt family in the diamond business in New York City" called "Expectations" and series produced by Gale Anne Hurd and Kevin Spacey.

These aren't the only new series E! is looking to create. The network is still staying...

E! announced its upcoming shows and development slate today at the network's upfront presentation, and it's about what you'd expect on the reality side: a series about the Wanted, a show set among the fancy people of Sonoma Valley, a series called Sex & Real Estate. More important, though, the network also announced that it's developing a spinoff of The Soup called The Soup Investigates, which would explore such questions as, Where do the roses on The Bachelor come from? On the scripted side — yes, E! is still trying to make a go of scripted programming — the network is developing a Stephanie Savage/Josh Schwartz–produced show that was originally in the works at NBC (about a woman who moves back to California), as well as dramas based on The Prince and the Pauper, Hamlet, and Great Expectations. Among other shows! Good luck, E!. America is definitely yearning for a...

Got a scoop request? An anonymous tip you’re dying to share? Just want to say hello? Send any/all of the above to askausiello@tvline.com

Question: Any more Smash scoop other than what was revealed in your preview story about the first two episodes? —Jc

Ausiello: Did you hear about the Will & Grace reunion that wasn’t? Because although Sean Hayes will be guest-starring on Smash, it turns out he doesn’t share a single scene with former NBC sitcom castmate Debra Messing. Was new Smash boss Josh Safran worried that putting the two together would be too on the nose?...

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are the unlikely twins resulting from a genetic engineering experiment in Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman's good-nurtured comedy. It doesn't take a genius to see how the comedy might evolve with Arnie as the perfect specimen and Danny as the scheming lowlife, but everyone has fun turning the concept into a naughtier version of The Prince And The Pauper. Kelly Preston and Chloe Webb play the girlfriends who help the brothers reconcile their differences.

You wait a year for a film version of a Booker prize-winning magical realist novel largely concerned with people from the Indian subcontinent and widely considered to be unfilmable. Then suddenly two come along: Life of Pi and Midnight's Children. The lesser of the two, though a movie of ambition and distinction, Midnight's Children was published in 1981 and is adapted for the screen by its author Salman Rushdie, who also delivers the eloquent narration, a reworking of the book's framing device.

As a film and novel, Midnight's Children is a great baggy work covering over 60 years in the turbulent history of India and Pakistan from the end of the second world war up to Indira Gandhi's repressive "Emergency" of the late 1970s, as they affect five generations of a well-off Muslim clan and their associates in Kashmir, Agra, Mumbai, Karachi. It brings together Dickens, Kipling and Shakespeare, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam,...

Masquerade is only the latest example of the caustic social comment that seeps into the country's mainstream output

"Fucking bastards!" Not the kind of words you'd expect from a king's lips. Except the king – who's just been told a tale of shocking injustice suffered by one of his subjects – is not the king. In South Korea's new 17th-century period drama Masquerade, a court jester is put on the throne after the reigning monarch, Gwanghae, is drugged by his enemies. The clown's a dead spit for Gwanghae (they're both played by GI Joe dreamboat Lee Byung-hun), and his advisors are powerless to reproach his cheekier impulses in public, lest the secret slip and chaos engulf the kingdom. So the time of misrule begins. Except that this means, by the venal standards of the Joseon court, a time of proper rule.

Choo Chang-min's film achieved the critics-and-public double whammy in South Korea:...

Ewan McGregor is set to headline Indomina Releasing's contemporary "The Prince and the Pauper" tale, Born to Be King , Variety reports. Kate Hudson is also said to be eyeing the project as the female lead. Written and directed by Peter Capaldi ( Strictly Sinatra ), Born to Be King follows an on-set battle between male and female movie stars and a situation that gets all the more complicated when an extra arrives bearing a shocking resemblance to the leading man. McGregor was recently seen in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire and Lasse Hallström's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen . He'll next appear on the big screen in Bryan Singer's just-retitled Jack the Giant Slayer . Hudson, meanwhile, appeared in Something Borrowed and Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist ....

Dave is a comedy about an everyday guy (Kevin Kline) whose resemblance to the Us president finds him tasked with playing the role of the leader of the free world while the real man recovers from an illness. He’s meant to be nothing more than a placeholder, but his discovery of class distinctions both tragic and comical instead leads him to use the position and power to do good deeds for the country and for the real president’s estranged wife. It’s a wonderful film (and Ivan Reitman’s last great one too) that itself, like many other movies, owes a debt of sorts to Mark Twain’s classic The Prince and the Pauper. Twain’s literary influence extends well beyond North America’s borders to include direct adaptations like the 1968 Bollywood film Raja Aur Runk and thematic ones like this year’s South Korean box-office hit, Masquerade. It...

Be careful what you wish for — especially if there's two of you.

Viggo Mortensen and Viggo Mortensen star in "Everybody Has a Plan," a Spanish-language thriller directed by Ana Piterbarg that looks like a contemporary (and crime-ridden) twist of sorts on the age-old fable of "The Prince and the Pauper."

Viggo plays a man who is unhappy enough with what should be a very happy life (beautiful wife, cute kids, good job) to fake his own death and assume the identity of his twin brother (yep, Viggo again). His self-inflicted "second chance" becomes complicated, however, when he inevitably becomes embroidered in his brother's criminal connections.

The film looks a bit heavy-handed with the symbolism (not only do we see a buzzing beehive, someone mentions it later on, too), but a class act like Viggo makes almost anything he's involved in an automatic must-see. If nothing else, this looks like quite...

It premiered over the weekend, on Saturday, September 8, on Bet, and will premiere this Saturday, September 15, on Centric (10am - 11am) as a part of their Back-to-School Programming Campaign! So this one's for the kiddies. Titled Kasha and the Zulu King, and said to be a South African revival of Mark Twain's The Prince And The Pauper, the series description reads: Kasha and the Zulu King tells the tale of an amaZulu boy who returns to his place of origin years after being given away, looking to piece together his past. Upon his return he forms a unique bond with the Zulu prince, with whom he shares an uncanny resemblance. The two switch places and learn an...

In 1909, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) would turn 73 years old and spend a lot of his time at his homestead in Redding, Connecticut. This was decades after giving birth to American literature, making friends with Tesla and fighting ghosts or whatever supernatural beast writers will faddishly shove into his autobiography. It was also a troublesome year. It was the year his youngest daughter Jean as well as his close friend Henry Rogers died, and it’s the same year that he predicted his own demise to coincide with Halley’s Comet (just as he’d come into the world). He was right. The next year, he died. Right on schedule with the comet. But 1909 also saw good friend Thomas Edison visit Twain and his family in Redding to capture some moving images. A bit of the footage ended up in the short film The Prince and the Pauper, but it holds the unique distinction of being the...

In case you're curious what inventor Thomas Edison's filmmaking skills were like, watch this 1909 footage of author Mark Twain to find out. Edison captured the author and humorist hanging out with his daughters Clara and Jean at his Redding, Connecticut estate, which he dubbed "Stormfield." This is the only known footage of Twain in existence. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer writer smokes like a chimney, drinks tea, sports a lovely scowl that complements his unruly cloud of white hair, and strolls along his picturesque property for the camera. It's a nice snapshot of celluloid and literary history — which was apparently used in part for a two-reel, 1909 short film, The Prince and the Pauper (based on another Twain tale). Watch the clip...

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The jokes come thick and fast and occasionally hit home as Sacha Baron Cohen unveils his latest grotesque creation

Most comedians create a screen persona that lasts a lifetime or they use a version of themselves. A few steadily assemble a formidable gallery of notable figures while retaining a personal identity known only to a circle of friends. The two most notable actors in the second category are Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, and it is in their company that Sacha Baron Cohen belongs, though he has yet to make his Kind Hearts and Coronets or Dr Strangelove. Cohen has turned in some creditable performances, each sporting an outrageous foreign accent, in what are essentially other people's films: the Italian pedlar of phoney elixirs in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd; the gay French grand prix driver in the Will Ferrell vehicle Talladega Nights; and the Parisian cop reminiscent of Sellers in Scorsese's Hugo.

On Twitter Watch, Alan Menken wrote Three days of Aladdin meetings starting today. Back with Casey and Chad. This bouncing between projects is crazy The 5th Avenue Theatre's production of Aladdin features Adam Jacobs and Courtney Reed as Aladdin and Jasmine, James Monroe Iglehart as the Genie, and Seattle mainstay Sen G. Griffin as the Sultan. Jonathan Freeman takes the stage to embody the role he originally voiced for the film, the Royal Vizier Jafar. He is joined by comedic favorite Don Darryl Rivera as Iago. Aladdin restores a trio of characters originally conceived by the film's creators Omar, Babkak, and Kassim, played by Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Brian Gonzales, and Brandon O'Neill, respectively.Several 5th Avenue veterans return for the production, including acclaimed director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw, who received his first professional choreography gig at The 5th Avenue Theatre The Prince and the Pauper, 2001 and where he later choreographed My Fair Lady 2002. On Broadway,...

Will anyone ever solve the case of mistaken identity? It just may be the longest running crime of storytelling and it’s often the refuge of desperate screenwriters. How much drama can be wrought of near misses with the unaware twins walking into one room just as the other walks out? How much comedy is left in that premise? Very little, and unless a clever spin is put on the proceedings, it feels like every other story of its ilk that’s ever been told. Monte Carlo is no exception. In fact, it’s damn near the very embodiment of the rule. It never tries to be anything more than a simple retelling of The Prince and the Pauper, but they add a few teenage drama elements in to help make it relevant. It doesn’t work, but maybe they deserve credit for not just copying and pasting the story verbatim.

One of the first fictional works to exploit the idea of identical twins from different social backgrounds was Mark Twain’s ” The Prince and the Pauper”. Television would pick up on the twin idea in programs as varied as ” The Patty Duke Show” and more recent “Ringer”. And of course the movies have jumped aboard with many film versions of the Twain novel and a couple of Parent Trap flicks. Well if turns out something similar has been going on in real life, particularly with Middle Eastern leaders and their families. This new film by director Lee Tamahori ( The Edge ) turns the clock back over twenty years In this true story of doubles and deception.

Dominic Cooper ( Captain America:The First Avenger ) plays Latif Yahia, an ordinary man serving in the Iraqui Army. One day he is scooped up and brought to the royal palace in Baghdad. There he is...

The Devil’s Double

Directed by Lee Tamahori

Written by Michael Thomas and Latif Yahia, Based on the novel by Latif Yahia

Belgium, 2011

Fantasia imdb

The idea that there could be someone in the world who resembles us so much that they could pass as our double is a popular meme in literary imaginations, frequently expressed as the confusion between a peasant and a noble who appear physically identical, but whose life experiences are radically different. The only question is how far back do we go to find the original idea first expressed: Moon Over Parador? The Great Dictator? The Prisoner of Zenda? The Prince and the Pauper? A Tale of Two Cities? The Man in the Iron Mask? Twelfth Night?

In fact, the idea of the doppelgänger is such a primal one that it is expressed in the very first piece of recorded literature: The Epic of Gilgamesh. The...

Reviewed by Samantha Perez

(June 2011)

Directed by: Thomas Bezucha

Written by: Thomas Bezucha, April Blair and Maria Maggenti

Starring: Selena Gomez, Katie Cassidy, Leighton Meester, Cory Monteith, Andie MacDowell, Brett Cullen, Luke Bracey and Pierre Boulanger

It’s an all-too-familiar tale: Small-town girl on the cusp of adulthood decides to take a trip to some fabulous place where she can find herself. This time around, the small-town girl is played by Selena Gomez (“Ramona and Beezus”) and she’s accompanied by a couple of hot young faces of Hollywood in Thomas Bezucha’s “Monte Carlo.”

Grace (Gomez) has just graduated from high school ready to ditch her boring waitressing job in Texas and hop a plane to Paris with her best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy of TV’s “Melrose Place”). Things start to go wrong almost immediately when Grace’s mom and stepfather announce that Meg (Leighton Meester of TV...

Reviewed by Samantha Perez

(June 2011)

Directed by: Thomas Bezucha

Written by: Thomas Bezucha, April Blair and Maria Maggenti

Starring: Selena Gomez, Katie Cassidy, Leighton Meester, Cory Monteith, Andie MacDowell, Brett Cullen, Luke Bracey and Pierre Boulanger

It’s an all-too-familiar tale: Small-town girl on the cusp of adulthood decides to take a trip to some fabulous place where she can find herself. This time around, the small-town girl is played by Selena Gomez (“Ramona and Beezus”) and she’s accompanied by a couple of hot young faces of Hollywood in Thomas Bezucha’s “Monte Carlo.”

Grace (Gomez) has just graduated from high school ready to ditch her boring waitressing job in Texas and hop a plane to Paris with her best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy of TV’s “Melrose Place”). Things start to go wrong almost immediately when Grace’s mom and stepfather announce that Meg (Leighton Meester of TV...

Chillar Party may boast of biggies like Salman Khan and Ranbir Kapoor but Smile Foundation's film I Am Kalam has none other than the Missile Man of India, former Indian President Dr. A P J Kalam as its inspiration. The fun and family entertainer has a social message and just like the feel of the film, the lead child actor Harsh Mayar has also had a story of grit and determination. Apparently, Harsh, who is a slum kid from Delhi, was first rejected by the makers of Chillar Party because he was a misfit for the film. Needless to say, Harsh was disappointed by the rejection and returned to Delhi little knowing what was in store for him. However, luck did decide to smile on the kid and he got noticed for his natural talent and got selected for I Am Kalam. Not just that, he got an opportunity to...

Chillar Party may boast of biggies like Salman Khan and Ranbir Kapoor but Smile Foundation's film I Am Kalam has none other than the Missile Man of India, former Indian President Dr. A P J Kalam as its inspiration. The fun and family entertainer has a social message and just like the feel of the film, the lead child actor Harsh Mayar has also had a story of grit and determination. Apparently, Harsh, who is a slum kid from Delhi, was first rejected by the makers of Chillar Party because he was a misfit for the film. Needless to say, Harsh was disappointed by the rejection and returned to Delhi little knowing what was in store for him. However, luck did decide to smile on the kid and he got noticed for his natural talent and got selected for I Am Kalam. Not just that, he got an opportunity to...

The Great Dictator Directed by: Charles Chaplin Written by: Charles Chaplin Starring: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard and Jack Oakie While The Great Dictator may not be as iconic as Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times or The Gold Rush, it's certainly still a classic piece of filmmaking that demonstrates how a master of silent movies makes the transition into sync sound cinema. While not technically a part of the 'Tramp' series of films, Chaplin still manages to update and reuse his classic character, dropping him into a dark setting -- the Jewish ghetto circa 1939 -- not realizing just how dark the real life counterpart to this story was going to get in the coming years. The film opens in battle during World War I as Charlie Chaplin (playing an unnamed Jewish barber turned soldier) bumbles his way through various tasks on the battlefield. It's classic Chaplin that at first seems slightly...

Starring: Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester, Katie Cassidy, Cory Monteith

Director: Thomas Bezucha

The Scoop: When you meet someone who looks exactly like you, there's only one thing to do: switch places with them, of course! It's one of the oldest plots in storytelling and this time around it's Disney starlet Gomez who goes undercover, trading places with a European princess and meeting the love of her life in the process in this modern riff on the classic fairy tale "The Prince and the Pauper."

Rated PG, 109 min. | Watch the trailer...

CBS’s Undercover Boss has always had it both ways. It pokes fun at egregiously overpaid executives without actually critiquing their entitlement — sort of like a reality-show version of The Office, except with each episode ending with faux uplift courtesy of a naturally benevolent corporate culture. The point of the series, if there is one, is that business leaders can only receive an honest view of their respective companies by donning a disguise and going undercover with entry-level workers—one-half of The Prince and the Pauper, with social mobility directed entirely downward. Presumably, the suits can then learn how to improve their companies.

Back when the buddy comedy was still a novel idea and had not yet become the diluted cliché that it has come in recent years due to a plethora of mediocre attempts, none was more successful or brought together two opposing dynamic talents as well as Trading Places, the 1983 John Landis directed feature that has its story origins back in the old tale of "The Prince and the Pauper".

The movie stars Dan Aykroyd (Ghostbusters) and Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop) as complete opposites that become embroiled in a social experiment hatched between two financier brothers, the Dukes. Aykroyd plays Louis Winthorpe (who manages the fund for the Dukes), a well bred successful businessman with everything going his way. Murphy plays Billy Ray Valentine, a down on his luck character with few prospects. The Dukes want to find out if personality and success is a matter of upbringing or environment...

Watching Akira Kurosawa’s three hour long epic color film (his third) from 1980, Kagumusha (The Shadow Warrior) reminded me of the historical plays of William Shakespeare. While more famed for adapting the dramas of Shakespeare (Ran from King Lear, The Bad Sleep Well from Hamlet, The Hidden Fortress from Macbeth), Kurosawa’s long film reminds me more of the detailed histories, where a single character is less important than the whole milieu (as well as being a more epic version of the old The Prince And The Pauper fable). And he succeeds very well at it. While the overall film...

Haunted happenings are invading the Mark Twain House & Museum, a National Historic Landmark in Hartford, Ct, the family home of American author Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) 1874-1891. It is where Twain wrote his most important works, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and The Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Upcoming events include: Lorraine Warren in Conversation - This Friday, September 24th at 7:30pm An intimate conversation with Connecticut’s legendary paranormal...

Here's a word of advice to studios thinking of making their own hip adaptation of a literary classic: don't bother. Why not? Because producer Lionel Wigram is just going to come along and develop (or is already developing) a competing project, which will likely hit theaters before your version. And it's fair enough, given that you're just trying to emulate the success he had with Sherlock Holmes. Already he's dueling Summit Entertainment over which Three Musketeers film (his has Doug Liman directing, theirs has Paul W.S. Anderson) will be the first -- and therefore the only necessary -- to go before audiences. Now, Wigram has also thrown his hat into the ring for a Treasure Island movie challenge, according to Pajiba.

This latest contest seems to have begun back in February with the announcement of a UK production based on the Robert Louis Stevenson pirate swashbuckler. And strangely enough, rather...

Matt Damon is one of today's greatest actors, and he's terrific in all kinds of movies, whether they be comedies, dramas or action thrillers like The Bourne Identity. But I think it's time for him to do something really out there, possibly written by Charlie Kaufman. He had a cameo in the Kaufman-scripted Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and he's done bizarrely silly stuff like Stuck on You, The Brothers Grimm and the occasional Jimmy Kimmel Live! sketch. He'll also soon appear in a strange sci-fi film from Philip K. Dick called The Adjustment Bureau, which could well prepare him for his own metaphysical Kaufman film that combines Being John Malkovich, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The King of Comedy, The Hoax, The Prince and the Pauper and maybe even Multiplicity or The Parent Trap.

The inspiration for such a collaboration comes from a little non-news story about how Damon apparently...

Lights. Cameras. Birthday Action (for this, the 30th of November). Only one month left to go and it's 2010. How crazy is that?

Ridley, Terrence (in the 70s) and Marc

1835 Mark Twain's books have been adapted into movies ever since the movies began. Most notably The Prince and the Pauper and any tale of Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer

1920 Virginia Mayo 40s and 50s star, frequent Danny Kaye foil

1926 Richard Crenna, character actor

1927 Robert Guillaume, "Benson"

1929 Dick Clark, seemingly immortal creature who may finally be destroyed by the rise of his spiritual offspring Ryan Seacrest. It's all very Cronos vs. Zeus, only without the thunderbolts

1937 Ridley Scott, manly director whose movies are usually way better when they're shot through with a strong female presence. Consider the three classics: Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Alien. The rest of the filmography surely has its moments but that's the trinity right there.

1943 Terence Malick,...

Long Wharf Theatre, under the leadership of Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein and Managing Director Ray Cullom, will present the beloved musical The Fantasticks, directed by Amanda Dehnert, from October 7 through November 1, 2009, on the Mainstage.

Press night is Wednesday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. Curtain times are Tuesdays at 7 p.m., Wednesdays at 2 and 7 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 3p.m. and 8p.m., and Sundays at 2p.m. and 7p.m. Tickets are $30-$70.

"I have loved The Fantasticks since I was a little kid," said Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein. "This will be so much fun for the entire family."

This hit musical with book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt, the longest running Off-Broadway musical in history, tells the story of Luisa and Matt, a pair entering the bloom of their youth. Their fathers, scheming to encourage their budding love, hire...