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For his Oscar-contending documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, filmmaker Benjamin Ree drew inspiration from literary sources as much or more than cinematic ones.

“One of my main interests is dramaturgy… and structure,” he says over a breakfast of an omelet and waffles in Amsterdam. “I’m obsessed with that, and I’ve been studying that my whole life.”

In his Netflix film, Ree explores the journey of Mats Steen, a young Norwegian man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a terminal condition that causes progressive weakening of the heart and skeletal structure. Despite the physical limitations caused by the disorder, Mats lived a rich life in the online World of Warcraft game – where his avatar was the powerfully built, able-bodied Ibelin. In that setting, Mats made many friends and impacted people far and wide, but his parents had no idea of their son’s vibrant virtual experiences until after his passing...

Rochelle Oliver, who starred on Broadway in Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and taught acting at New York’s respected Hb Studio since the 1970s, has died. She was 86.

Oliver died April 13, the Hb Studio announced. “Those who knew Rochelle will know what a luminous artist, sensitive and passionate teacher she was,” it said in an Instagram post. She died two days shy of her birthday.

For the big screen, Oliver starred in the Horton Foote-written 1918 (1985) and Courtship (1987) and appeared in such other films as The Happy Hooker (1975), Paul Mazursky‘s Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), John Sayles’ Lianna (1983), An Unremarkable Life (1989), Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman (1992) and Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending (2002).

She also recurred as Judge Grace Larkin on Law & Order from 1993-03.

A protégé of Uta Hagen — who also taught for decades at Hb and...

When 24-year-old Zoe Jackson scrolls her for-you-page, there are books all the way down. As a BookTok creator, Jackson spends much of her time on TikTok watching videos and recommendations surrounding the best books out there, from newly published novels to classic tomes. But while the average reader might stop scrolling when they recognize a book cover from high school English or a college course — like Catcher In The Rye, The Brothers Karamazov, or Infinite Jest, Jackson usually keeps it moving in an effort to avoid one of BookTok’s biggest icks: bro-lit.

Burbank, Calif. – As part of the year-long centennial celebration for the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros. Studio, the iconic supernatural film The Exorcist from Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin (The French Connection) will be available for purchase on 4K Ultra HD Disc and Digital for the first time this September.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of its 1973 release, on September 19, The Exorcist will be available to purchase on Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc from online and in-store at major retailers and available for purchase Digitally from Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, Vudu, and more.

The Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs include both the 1973 theatrical version of the film and the 2000 Extended Director’s Cut of the film, which features eleven additional minutes of footage not seen in theaters.

Directed by Friedkin, who died today at age 89, from a screenplay by Academy Award winner William Peter Blatty, the film is based on Blatty...

As part of the year-long centennial celebration for the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros. Studio, the iconic supernatural film The Exorcist from Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin (The French Connection) will be available for purchase on 4K Ultra HD Disc and Digital for the first time this September, Bloody Disgusting has learned today.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of its 1973 release, on September 19 The Exorcist will be available to purchase on Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc from online and in-store at major retailers and available for purchase Digitally from Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, Vudu and more.

The Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs include both the 1973 theatrical version of the film and the 2000 Extended Director’s Cut of the film which features eleven additional minutes of footage not seen in theaters.

Directed by Friedkin from a screenplay by Academy Award winner William Peter Blatty, the film is based on Blatty’s 1971 novel of the same name.

At nearly 200 minutes in length, “About Dry Grasses” (or “Kuru Otlar Üstüne”) is par for the course for Turkish virtuoso Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He returns, once again, to the icy frost of his Anatolia-set Palme d’Or winner “Winter Sleep,” for a story that beats with similar frustrations towards power in the grand social scheme. However, he weaves this theme into his background tapestry, favoring instead a talkative and often discomforting tale of a small-town art teacher, his 12-year-old female student, and an accusation of impropriety that might be false on its surface, but is rooted in truths the camera sees.

Where “Winter Sleep” adapted Russian greats like Chekhov and Dostoyevsky — it draws from both “The Wife” and “The Brothers Karamazov”— “About Dry Grasses” plays like a spiritual descendant of Nabokov’s “Lolita,” at least in its use of point-of-view. Ceylan’s novelistic approach to cinema could perhaps find no...

Anyone who has spent much time on Film Twitter recently might know that there are two recurring subjects sure to instigate discourse wars between certain moralistic Zoomers and their befuddled elders: on-screen relationships marked by significant age gaps, and on-screen sex scenes between partners of any age, largely condemned by youthful detractors as gratuitous narrative roadblocks. That demographic won’t be seeking out Emily Atef’s film “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything,” a brazenly sensual May-December romance between a teenage ingenue and a middle-aged social outcast, though beyond the festival circuit, this pretty but somewhat dreary mood piece is unlikely to end up on many people’s radars at all.

Indeed, what’s most interesting about German-born filmmaker Atef’s return to her home turf — after a directing stint on TV’s “Killing Eve” and last year’s predominantly French romance “More Than Ever,” with Vicky Krieps and the...

Emily Atef’s latest feature is something of a curate’s egg, a well-made foray into high-end romantic lit that’s saddled with some off-putting baggage about the reunification of Germany post-1989. The Berlin Film Festival competition entry is clearly personal to the novel’s writer, Daniela Krien, who was born, mid-’70s into the former Gdr, and it does offer a layer of quirky detail, such as an unnerving car crash involving what looks to be Trabant. But for a film that shows a lot of naked flesh and spends a lot of time documenting a young woman’s complicated sexual awakening, the political table-talk can be distracting and even wearying, notably on the occasion when a whole (recently reunited) family bursts into “The Song of The Peat Bog Soldiers.“

The year is 1990, and the young woman in question is 18-year-old Maria (Marlene Burow), who has moved away from...

Germany’s reunification as a backdrop for two attractive bodies uniting over and over again is one way to sum up Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, which director Emily Atef (3 Days in Quiberon) adapted from Daniela Krien’s popular 2011 novel.

The problem with this handsomely made, well-acted and overwrought rural drama is precisely that: What’s interesting is not the doomed love affair between a beautiful 19-year-old girl and a strapping farmer more than twice her age, in a story that’s plays out like Lady Chatterley’s Lover meets Fifty Shades of Gray in the former Ddr. It’s whatever the film has to say about the struggling family and farming community that serves as its setting, during a period just after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Unfortunately, Atef gives short shrift to the latter in favor of the former, in a movie that starts off rather promisingly...

In 1966, Montreal-born William Shatner was cast in the role that would change his life, Capt. James Tiberius Kirk in NBC's sci-fi drama "Star Trek." Shatner would go on to play the starship captain for three seasons before reprising Kirk in a Saturday morning cartoon and then in several "Trek" movies throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s until Kirk's demise in 1994's "Star Trek Generations." There's no argument that Shatner — who celebrated his 91st birthday in March 2022 — will forever be associated with his "Trek" character. And while Kirk will always be his signature role, the truth is that it's one of many for an actor who first made his way to Hollywood in the 1950s after performing Shakespeare with the famed Stratford Festival in his native Canada.

In fact, Shatner has amassed a whopping 250 screen credits over the years. His roles have run the gamut, ranging from Ranger...

Exclusive: Lan Samantha Chang’s novel The Family Chao is getting a series adaptation after Sam Esmail and UCP optioned the rights to the book.

Esmail will develop the adaptation via his Esmail Corp. banner, which has a deal at the Universal Studio Group division. He will exec produce alongside Chad Hamilton and Chang with Eli Kirschner as co-executive producer. The team is currently searching for a writer to adapt.

The book was published last month by W. W. Norton & Company. The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. A mysterious death in the restaurant reunites the Chao brothers in Haven...

Exclusive: Oscar-winning production designer William A. Horning and Oscar-nominated production designer, costume designer and producer Polly Platt will be inducted into the Art Directors Guild’s Hall of Fame this year for their “extraordinary contributions to the art of visual storytelling.”

The guild’s 26th annual awards will be held in-person March 5 at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown.

“The creative and professional standards set by the 2022 Adg Awards Hall of Fame recipients Polly Platt and William A. Horning are nonpareil,” said Nelson Coates, the guild’s president. “The breadth of the narrative design achievement and depth of storytelling excellence of both legendary designers has served as a benchmark for production design and collaboration and will continue to inspire for generations to come.”

2022 Awards Season Calendar – Dates For The Oscars, SAG, BAFTAs & More

Horning, who died in 1959, won Oscars for Ben-Hur and Gigi and was Oscar-nominated for The Wizard of Oz,...

Cao Jinling studied at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts after receiving a doctorate in Dramatic Literature from China’s Central Academy of Drama. Before turning director, she wrote scripts, e.g. for “Meet Miss Anxiety” (2014), “Crying Out in Love” (2016) and “Seventy-Seven Days” (2017).

On the occasion of her debut movie, environmental drama “Anima”, we talk about the human relationship with nature, animism, using resources of our planet smartly as well as filming in minus 40 degrees Celsius.

You studied literature and scripted several movies. Now you turned into a director. What are the differences – or similarities – between being a storyteller as a writer and a director?

I feel they are very similar in essence; they all express one’s connection to the world through stories. As a screenwriter, I use words like a sword. As a director, I have a more comprehensive set of tools: photography, sound, and acting performance, etc.

Elizabeth Sellars, the Glasgow-born actress who appeared in films that starred Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart and Peter O’Toole, on TV with Laurence Olivier and onstage opposite Alec Guinness, died at her home in France on Dec. 30. She was 98.

Her death was announced by her family.

Trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Sellars made the first of many stage appearances in 1946’s The Brothers Karamazov, starring Guinness.

By 1949 she’d embarked on a long film career, making her debut in the British film Floodtide, and, in Hollywood, she appeared in 1954’s The Barefoot Contessa with Bogart and Ava Gardner. Also that year, she performed in the Brando film Désirée.

Other film highlights include Prince of Players, starring Richard Burton, in 1955; 1957’s The Shiralee, starring Peter Finch; 1960’s The Day They Robbed the Bank of England, with O’Toole; and, reteaming with Gardner in 1963, 55 Days in Peking. In 1967 she...

There’s a reason the first word in Michael Glover Smith’s triptych Rendezvous in Chicago isn’t pluralized despite consisting of three distinct stories. It stems from the fact that Smith sought to close out his cinematic trilogy about on-screen relationships and communications within (Cool Apocalypse and Mercury in Retrograde are the others) with the three possible stages of a romantic union. Rather than call each chapter a rendezvous, the title is referring to our engagement with them as the beginning, middle, and end of a single passionate affair (complete with the potential for getting back up to try again). The agreed-upon time and place is therefore whenever you sit down to watch the film and its characters’ hometown of Chicago, Illinois. The date is between you and love.

We become an intentional voyeur as these couples traverse the tenuous divisions between public and private life. I say “intentional...

Classic Midnite Cult movies were a mini-phenomenon chosen by the public, created only by word of mouth approval. Frank Henenlotter’s wild ‘n’ weird ‘separated at birth’ story is a thematic mashup of horror ideas, plunked down in the middle of America’s sleaze capital, 42nd street in the early 1980s. The audience-pleasing telepathic siblings Duane and Belial look fantastic in a new MoMa restoration, and the extras let the flamboyant director recount a great making-of story. His first distributor decided to ‘fix’ the movie by removing most of the gore!

Basket Case

Blu-ray

Arrow Video USA

1982 / Color / 1:33 flat full frame / 91 min. / Street Date February 27, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video

Starring: Lance VanHentenryck, Terri Susan Smith, Beverly Bonner, Robert Vogel, Diana Brown, Lloyd Pace, Ruth Neuman.

Cinematography: Bruce Torbet

Original Music: Gus Russo

Produced by Arnold H. Bruck and Edgar Levins

Written, Edited and Directed by Frank Henenlotter

A few...

Ask a certain crowd of people what the defining MTV show of their childhood was, and it’s not Trl, or Real World or Jersey Shore. It’s Daria. Though Ms. Morgendorffer had been seen on Beavis and Butt-Head before, the March 3, 1997, premiere of Daria proved that the two shows couldn’t be more different. Let’s take a fond trip back to Lawndale for a closer look at the best animated misanthrope of the ‘90s.

1. B&B-h creator Mike Judge had no involvement in Daria …

Judge agreed to release the character, but that’s where his involvement with the show ended.

French actor and Russian citizen Gerard Depardieu will star in a Russian TV series based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic 1879 novel, The Brothers Karamazov. The series, produced by Mars Media, will consist of eight episodes, with shooting planned for 2017. Mars Media head Ruben Dishdishyan told Russian news agency Rambler News Service, "Depardieu was the initiator of the project. He will play the father of the Karamazovs." According to Dishdishyan, French producer Jean-Pierre Guerin — who produced the French TV series Le comte de Monte Cristo, Balzac and Les miserables, starring Depardieu — will also come on board. Funding for the series

read more...

Lookingglass Theatre, Frontera Grill and Silverguy Entertainment announce an extension to the wildly popular return of Rick Bayless in Cascabel Dinner -- Daring -- Desire, the unforgettable theatrical adventure featuring a sumptuous feast, world-class circus acts, and a tantalizing love story starring celebrity chef Rick Bayless that had Chicago audiences spellbound when it premiered in spring 2012. The extremely limited engagement is co-created by Rick Bayless, Lookingglass Ensemble Member Heidi Stillman Hephaestus, The Brothers Karamazov, Hard Times, and Artistic Associate and founder of Silverguy Entertainment Tony Hernandez Hephaestus, Lookingglass Alice. Cascabel runs at the Goodman Theatre's Owen Bruner Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, now playing through August 31, 2014. Scroll down for a first look at the show...

Lookingglass Theatre, Frontera Grill and Silverguy Entertainment present the return of Rick Bayless in Cascabel Dinner - Daring - Desire, the unforgettable theatrical adventure featuring a sumptuous feast, world-class circus acts, and a tantalizing love story starring celebrity chef Rick Bayless that had Chicago audiences spellbound when it premiered in spring 2012. The extremely limited engagement is co-created by Rick Bayless, Artistic Associate and founder of Silverguy Entertainment Tony Hernandez Hephaestus, Lookingglass Alice, and Lookingglass Ensemble Member Heidi Stillman Hephaestus, The Brothers Karamazov, Hard Times. The culinary and theatrical experience of the year runs at the Goodman Theatre's Owen Bruner Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, for four weeks only, today, July 30, through August 24, 2014.

A review of "The Devil, Probably" by Mireille Latil-Le-Dantec. Originally published in Issue 77, July-August 1977, of Cinématographe. Translation by Ted Fendt. Thanks to Marie-Pierre Duhamel.

"I challenge you all now, all you atheists. With what will you save the world, and where have you found a normal line of progress for it, you men of science, of co-operation, of labour-wage, and all the rest of it?

With credit? What's credit? Where will credit take you? [...] Without recognizing any moral basis except the satisfaction of individual egoism and material necessity! [...] It's a law, that's true; but it's no more normal than the law of destruction, or even self-destruction. [...] Yes, sir, the law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in humanity! The devil has equal dominion over humanity till the limit of time which we know not. You laugh? You don't believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French idea,...

Maximilian Schell dead at 83: Best Actor Oscar winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ (photo: Maximilian Schell ca. 1960) Actor and filmmaker Maximilian Schell, best known for his Oscar-winning performance as the defense attorney in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 political drama Judgment at Nuremberg died at a hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, on February 1, 2014. According to his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, Schell died overnight following a "sudden and serious illness." Maximilian Schell was 83. Born on December 8, 1930, in Vienna, Maximilian Schell was the younger brother of future actor Carl Schell and Maria Schell, who would become an international film star in the 1950s (The Last Bridge, Gervaise, The Hanging Tree). Immy Schell, who would be featured in several television and film productions from the mid-’50s to the early ’90s, was born in 1935. Following Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Schell’s parents, Swiss playwright Hermann Ferdinand Schell and Austrian stage actress Margarete Schell Noé,...

The Double

Written & Directed by Richard Ayoade

UK, 2013

The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been well served by cinema, especially his major works Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot, all of which have received numerous adaptations throughout the decades. The latter was lavished with a recent Estonian take, after receiving a Japanese decoding by Kurosawa no less, as well as Indian and (naturally) Soviet versions. It has taken until 2013 for a filmmaker brave enough to approach Dostoyevsky’s binary second novel; there is a certain numerical sense of doubling, since Richard Ayoade has decided to allocate his second film as The Double, an ambitiously promising plea following Submarine back in 2010.

Abandoning the novel’s Russian setting, Ayoade’s take is set in some strange alternate Orwellian state, complete with slightly outsized costumes and angled hairstyles, creaking teak-panelled analogue technology, greyly oblique architecture and a smothering suffocation of legislative red tape.

Khloe’s Instagrams and captions are becoming stronger and fiercer as her fourth wedding anniversary to Lamar approaches on Sept. 27 — but her latest Instagram’s message and photo might be her most shocking yet in regards to her marriage.

Is Khloe Kardashian, 29, taking a cue from her pal Katy Perry‘s song “Roar” by posting a photo of an ominous and powerful-looking tiger on Instagram with an even more powerful quote, referring to Lamar Odom, 33, being in a battle with the devil?

Does Khloe Kardashian Diss Lamar Odom On Instagram?

Khloe’s Instagram picture and message she posted on Sept. 23 is perhaps her most independent and emotional post yet.

She put up a seriously fierce picture of a tiger with it’s eyes barely visible with just its nose and mouth showing. Her caption was, “Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the most famous names in world literature. Author of eleven novels, some of which are among the most acclaimed in history, Dostoevsky has been praised for his superb grasp of psychology and his interest in both philosophical and religious themes.

He was born in Moscow in 1821 and published his first novel, Poor Folk, in 1846. In 1849, he was arrested for his involvement with a group of radical liberal utopians and sentenced to death by firing squad. In pure literary fashion, Dostoevsky was spared minutes before his sentence was to be carried out and instead was sentenced to 4 years labor in Siberia. After his release, he struggled for years financially but later in life he became known for his writing abilities and produced some of the masterpieces of western literature.

Although he wrote eleven novels in total, Dostoevsky is primarily remembered for five: Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment,...

As Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's classic bursts on to our screens, it's not hard to see why this cautionary tale of the decadent downside of the American dream has returned to haunt us, writes Sarah Churchwell

They called him an "ultra-modernist" and dismissed his books as overrated and forgettable, just "so much unnecessary evanescence travelling first class". When his third novel was published, on 10 April 1925, a characteristic review complained: "The boy is simply puttering around. It is all right as a diversion for him, probably … But why he should be called an author, or why any of us should behave as if he were, has never been satisfactorily explained to me." At the last minute, he had asked his editor if they could change the new novel's title to Under the Red, White and Blue, but it was too late. F Scott Fitzgerald's ultra-modernist...

Tom Cruise stars in ‘Oblivion’ and original and groundbreaking cinematic event from the visionary director of ‘Tron: Legacy’. On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, one man’s confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind. It’s 2077 and Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) serves as a security repairman stationed on an evacuated Earth. Living in and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, Jack’s soaring existence is brought crashing down after he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Drawn to Jack through a connection that transcends logic, her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he thought he knew. The fate of humanity now rest solely in the hands of a man who believed our world was soon to be lost forever. ‘Oblivion’ stars Tom Cruise,...

According to Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck, and Olga Kurylenko, making a Terrence Malick movie is sort of like watching a Terrence Malick movie. It’s a dreamy, uncertain, unpredictable experience that seems simultaneously transformative and frustrating… and even the film’s stars have no idea what’s going on most of the time. As Kurylenko explains in the first of these two behind-the-scenes featurettes, “When we work with him, we have a feeling that we don’t know what we are doing. But actually, he knows exactly. I think he knows perfectly.”

It’s tough to know that for sure,...

Josh Lucas may not be the first person you think of when picking a bad guy for a Nicolas Cage thriller — he was so adorably nice in "Sweet Home Alabama" — but that didn't stop the makers of his latest film, "Stolen," in theaters Friday.

In the movie, he kidnaps his former partner's teenage daughter and gives Cage only 12 hours to deliver some serious dough (like, bank-robbing amounts of dough) and keep her alive.

Thankfully, he's a bit more like the rom-com version of himself — which can also be seen in "Red Dog," currently available on DVD and On Demand — in real life. And, as such, he has some awesomely interesting tastes when it comes to movies, music and more. How do we know? Because we asked him to turn us on to his favorite pop culture picks.

Movies 'Betty Blue'

This erotic French romance from the '80s is one of the sexiest films ever,...

The second in a short series celebrating the films of the Pathé-Natan company, 1926-1934. 

Fyodore Otsep (Russia), also credited as Fjodor Ozep (Germany), Fedor Ozep (Canada) and Fédor Ozep (France) is probably best known as co-writer of sci-fi epic Aelita (1924) and director of Soviet classic Miss Mend (1926). His work in Europe and America is harder to see, and the whole lot is rarely grouped together for consideration as a whole, the curse of itinerant filmmakers like Dassin, Siodmak, even Ophüls.

To decide whether this is merely a quirk of film history, or a full-on case of major artistic neglect, simply watch this clip:

Amok (1934) is the third of Ozep's Pathé-Natan films, and the most baroque. It's based on a story by Stefan Zweig (Letter from an Unknown Woman) later filmed in Mexico with less fidelity but plenty of gusto. It's a very weird orientalist fever dream.

Jean Yonnel,...

It won the Cannes grand prix – but people have been walking out of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Stuart Jeffries finds him unrepentant

'The problem with Hollywood," says Nuri Bilge Ceylan, "is the audience expects to get the answers like a pill. They expect to know not just whodunnit, but the motives of the characters, the how and why. Real life is not like that. Even our closest friend – we don't know what he really thinks. In films we want more than in real life, everything being made clear. That means this kind of cinema is a lie. I cannot make cinema that way."

I had asked the 52-year-old Turkish director to explain why his new film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which won the grand prix at Cannes last year, refuses to provide answers. It's an epically lugubrious, austerely beautiful 157-minute police procedural...

Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi in Oscar nominee (but not DGA nominee) David Lean's Summertime DGA Awards vs. Academy Awards 1948-1952: Odd Men Out George Cukor, John Huston, Vincente Minnelli 1953 DGA (12) Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, Above and Beyond Walter Lang, Call Me Madam Daniel Mann, Come Back, Little Sheba Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Julius Caesar Henry Koster, The Robe Jean Negulesco, Titanic George Sidney, Young Bess DGA/AMPAS George Stevens, Shane Charles Walters, Lili Billy Wilder, Stalag 17 William Wyler, Roman Holiday Fred Zinnemann, From Here to Eternity   1954 DGA (16) Edward Dmytryk, The Caine Mutiny Alfred Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder Robert Wise, Executive Suite Anthony Mann, The Glenn Miller Story Samuel Fuller, Hell and High Water Henry King, King of Khyber Rifles Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, Knock on Wood Don Siegel, Riot in Cell Block 11 Stanley Donen, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers George Cukor, A Star Is Born Jean Negulesco,...

Stephen King is undeniably one of the most recognised household names in modern literature. A prolific idea machine, King’s schlocky, pulp-style delivery and liberty-taking use of prose is an instant turn-off for some. But it can’t be denied that many of the concepts that he dreams up are truly touched by greatness.

There are a ridiculous number of varying movie/TV adaptations from throughout the length and breadth of Stephen King’s career; believe me, I counted them. In all, I found evidence that no less than eighty-four various projects (from shorts to feature films and the gamut in-between) have been adapted out of Stephen King’s novelizations and short stories. And chances are you’ve seen a good chunk of them, even if you’re not aware of it.

Of course they’re not all great, not by a long shot. Some of them are downright drivel (the T.

Anyone who reads literature in translation probably has some inkling of the effort it takes a specialist to mold foreign masterworks into readable prose that feels alive and inviting. Some translators have earned renown for their impeccable renditions of the classics — Lydia Davis comes to mind — but such formidably intelligent people are accustomed to working, for the most part, in complete obscurity, unknown except to the book publishers who commission their interpretive labors and those who bother to notice bylines. Until her death last year at age 87, Svetlana Geier was the most distinguished translator of Dostoyevsky in Germany, having shouldered the monumental task (beginning in 1992) of rendering the Russian novelist’s “five elephants” (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Devils, and The Raw Youth) into her adopted language. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Geier began her work in the late fifties, but developed a special passion for the...

West Wing star tells of family's struggle to deal with Charlie Sheen's behaviour

The Hollywood star Martin Sheen has spoken of his fears for his son, Charlie, who is battling addiction, in a frank interview with Kirsty Young.

Talking to Young, the host of BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Sheen admitted that his family finds dealing with his 45-year-old son's problem "a rollercoaster", but said that the troubled star required help and sympathy: "Charlie is dealing with the most profound problems and addiction, it is no secret," said Sheen, 70. "His behaviour has been an example of that."

After discussing his own battle with alcohol as a young man, Sheen, best known for his long stint in the Oval Office on the television series The West Wing, compared his son's addiction with other potentially terminal illnesses. "So, if he had cancer, how would we deal with him? Well, he...

Charles Schulz's landmark comic strip Peanuts has occupied a unique niche in American pop culture. It's part of a medium often aimed at children, and its cast is a group of kids under the age of 10, doing normal child-like activities like playing baseball, going to school, and ice skating. But these kids also talk about Beethoven, theology, and The Brothers Karamazov. They throw around words like "depressed" and "neurotic," and one of them puts up a "Psychiatric Help" stand instead of selling lemonade. The strip balances hilarity with the fragility of life and the pain of existence, and that balance surfaces in Peanuts' first two big-screen adventures, A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Come Home (both available this week as a two-disc DVD from CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment).

Yesterday, I had the opportunity so speak for about 30 minutes over the phone with the legendary British stage and screen actress Claire Bloom, one of the great talents and beauties of the past century. Bloom, who made her film debut 63 years ago and has co-starred with countless greats — among them Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Rod Steiger, and Paul Newman — is still going strong at the age of 79. Most recently, she gave a brief but memorable performance as Queen Mary, the mother of King Edward Xiii (Guy Pearce) and King George VI (Colin Firth), in “The King’s Speech” (The Weinstein Company, 11/24, R, trailer), which the Screen Actors Guild rewarded with a best ensemble nomination.

Click Here To Listen To Audio Of Our Conversation!

Over the course of our conversation, Bloom and I discussed…

her early theater- and movie-going experiences/acting inspirations (her mother loved Shakespeare and...

Sunday, December 5th concludes the 5th annual Romanian Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City. This year hosts The Romanian Cultural Institute and curator Mihai Chirilov added the moniker “A New Beginning,” in appreciation of the recent success of what has been dubbed the “Romanian New Wave.” This year, Cristi Puiu, arguably the one who started it all with his 2006 debut The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, returns with his second feature Aurora. The three-hour long film premiered earlier this year at the New York Film Festival to resoundingly positive reviews. Also returning from Nyff are Radu Montean’s Tuesday, After Christmas (opening May 25 at Film Forum) and Andrei Ujica’s The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, which opened the festival. All three were standouts this past May on the Croisette. Bobby Paunescu, producer of “Aurora” and “Lazarescu”, screens his directorial debut Francesca. Rounding out the “Romanian New Wave” roster of attendees is Razvan Radulescu,...

From Dante's Lucifer to Jack Nicholson's wicked seducer, Peter Stanford, author of The Devil a Biography, picks the most majestic Satans in film and literature

Dante's Inferno

In this peerless early 14th-century description of life after death, the final one of the concentric spheres of hell is presided over by the devil. But he is impotent, encased up to chest height in ice, with one head but three faces, all of them weeping as he chews in each of his jaws a notorious sinner – Judas Iscariot, Jesus's betrayer, and Brutus and Cassius, conspirators against Caesar. In contrast to depictions of the devil in Dante's day as a cunning foe ready to prey on human weakness, his Lucifer is strikingly modern, a metaphor for nothingness, all hype and menace but no delivery.

Paradise Lost

It was the 17th-century Puritan poet John Milton who produced the first psychologically compelling portrait of the devil,...

I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.

At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry. I'm informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: "It's more than Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and The Brothers Karamazov." I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition.

If you assume I received a lot of cretinous comments from gamers, you would be wrong. I probably killed no more than a dozen. What you...

Veteran actor/director Jack Sydow has died at the age of 88.

The longtime theatre star passed away last month in Los Angeles. No more details about his death were available as WENN went to press.

Sydow made his name as a theatre director, winning an Obie Award for his 1958 adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov. He went on to helm a string of high-profile productions, including a 1959 national tour of Once Upon a Mattress with Buster Keaton.

His work on Broadway earned him a Tony Award for his 1967 revival of Annie Get Your Gun.

Sydow's career included several acting roles, with a brief stint in TV comedy Frasier in the 1990s and a 2007 appearance in Brothers & Sisters.

Jack Sydow, a Tony Award-nominated director, actor, playwright and professor at the University of Washington, died May 28 in Los Angeles. He was 88.

Sydow directed the 1966 revival of the musical "Annie Get Your Gun" on Broadway that starred Ethel Merman and featured new music by Irving Berlin. He was nominated for a Tony for best director in a field that included Gower Champion, Mike Nichols and eventual winner Harold Prince.

A native of Rockford, Ill., Sydow in 1943 collaborated with other servicemen to create "Hump Happy," a satirical musical review that featured him as one of three cross-dressing Andrews Sisters. The show toured military bases in India and the Middle East during World War II.

In 1958, Sydow and Boris Tumarin shared an Obie Award for the theatrical adaptation of "The Brothers Karamazov." That year, he began work on the pre-Broadway production of "Once Upon a Mattress" in Tamiment, Pa., where Sydow also...

In my Friday Doc Jensen column, I promised you all a special bonus edition to post on Sunday, devoted to questions and theories inspired by last Tuesday’s Desmond-tastic episode of Lost entitled “Happily Ever After.” And here I am, a man of my word, making good on my promises, as I always do… except for that time when I promised you candy bars in Season 3. And a reading list after Season 5. And that other time when I vowed to… oh, stop hounding me with your recriminations, Doc Jensen Conscience! To business: Amie Vigneux writes: “I have a question about the significance of Eloise's pin.

The beast is back and the wolf howls again in “The Wolfman”! Legendary actor Sir Anthony Hopkins breathes life into the spectacle and the horror in this latest incarnation of the classic Universal monster movie that launched a legacy of horror.

Hopkins stars opposite Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot’s eccentric father, the ice-cold Sir John Talbot, who embraces his own madness as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. As the two Talbots have not seen one another or spoken for years, from the moment they reconnect, the relationship between the men is naturally tense. With his dirty nails, filthy clothes and unkempt hair, Sir John walks about a huge house that has become derelict and he makes sure that Lawrence never knows where he stands in their relationship.

We sat down recently with the Oscar-winning actor to discuss his new film, “The Wolfman.” Sir...

Yasujiro Ozu's sublime family dramas hymned our ordinary bliss and everyday tragedy. Our film culture is now in danger of forgetting such jewels in our endless grasping for the smash-bang shallow spectacles of Avatar and its ilk

Family is where we learn everything, including the sweeping urge to be done with family. Family is a basis of every narrative art, even if it offers us the humbling insight that our lives are all so ordinary and alike as to be worthless or without lofty significance. For most of us, family determines who will be at our funeral, and with what mixed feelings. Family asserts that we are higher than animals, and is the undertone and the consideration that leaves every one of us, if not afraid, then stilled, as we go to bed at night.

You see, this is an unusual essay for a newspaper, for it deals with...

The Birthday Boys and Girls of 11/11

1821 Fyodor Dostoevsky, legendary Russian author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov fame. So many movies inspired by his work. But he's not the legendary Russian author that'll be getting all the press this next couple of months. That'd be Leo Tolstoy, soon to be chattered about when The Last Station emerges as an Oscar contender.

1887 Roland Young, popular 30s and 40s character actor (Topper, The Philadelphia Story, Ruggles of Red Gap)

1898 René Clair, (pictured left), wonderful French writer/director. If you've never seen Le Million I urge you to rent it maintenant. His Oscar nominated films include The Gates of Paris (1957) and À nous la liberté (1931)

1899 Pat O'Brien --Ewwww, not that one people -- the actor! whose film career stretches alllllll the way from the 1931 classic The Front Page to 1981's Ragtime.

1901 Sam Spiegel, powerful producer. Boy was he on fire in...

London -- The works of U.S. filmmaker Richard Brooks, a member of the so-called "generation of violence," will be the subject of a retrospective during this year's San Sebastian Film Festival, organizers said Tuesday.

Brooks, who won a best screenplay Oscar for "Elmer Gantry" in 1960, started out as a penning thrillers in the 1940s, including "Brute Force" and "Key Largo."

He went on to direct such films as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Sweet Bird of Youth" and his resume includes a slew of literary adaptations including Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim" and Fedor Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov."

San Sebastian organizers also said the festival will host a retrospective titled "Backwash: The Cutting Edge of French Cinema," which will look at the last 10 years of Gallic output.

The 40-title retrospective is expected to include titles from filmmakers including Laurent Cantet,...

Foreign-language Oscar guide

Moscow -- Petr Zelenka's "The Karamazovs" will be the Czech Republic's submission for the foreign-language Oscar, the Czech Film and Television academy said Monday.

"The Karamazovs" is a cinematic retelling of the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, based on a Polish theatrical dramatization staged in 2000.

It was one of the Czech Republic's two entries at this year's Karlovy Vary international film festival, where it received the special jury mention and the Fipresci prize.