News

Halloween is upon us, so stay safe out there — and stay away from the taco meat.

Tonight, America’s costumed children will venture out in search of treats, trickster teenagers will commit playful acts of vandalism and us older, sensible folk will hole up in our homes, eat candy and re-watch festive, barely frightening and deliciously nostalgic TV shows and movies from our own childhoods.

While horror films are the traditional fare for a night such as tonight, the last half-century of American culture embracing the theme of the season has led to every syndicated TV show at least attempting a Halloween episode, and, for those of us who prefer laughs to gasps, we’d rather settle in with a sitcom than a slasher while we eat cupcakes decorated like skulls and drink punch that we’ll pretend is blood.

But although most every American sitcom has made at least one Halloween episode,...

After a gap of a few years and a messy-yet-secretive legal dispute between creators Doug Naylor and Rob Grant, Red Dwarf is rumoured to be back on its way to our screens once again with three new episodes. Which poses the question – how many more returns can it make before it finally draws to a close? How will the TV series that started with a pilot episode called “The End” end?

Red Dwarf is unlike any other science fiction franchise of comparable longevity. It is not like Stars Trek or Wars, an expansive universe full of side characters and unexplored domains for spin-offs to inhabit. Nor is it the adventure of a single character whose face changes on a semi-regular basis.

As part of the ongoing mysterious feud settlement, Rob Grant is launching Red Dwarf: Titan, which is set to give us a prequel/alternate universe take on Lister and Rimmer.

This article contains major spoilers for "May December."

As far back as the Middle Ages, springtime months were frequently depicted in literature as young women, while the later, winter months as old men. The great Geoffrey Chaucer even included a couple in "The Canterbury Tales" named Miss May and Mr. January who were depicted as a young woman and a graying old man. This was written before the Gregorian calendar was accepted which established December as the last month of the year, so updated versions often change his name to "Mr. December." And thus, the expression "May December" was born, a shorthand expression to indicate a large age gap between romantic couples. This is the source of the title of Todd Haynes' latest film, "May December," a delicious melodrama about humanity and boundaries inspired by the real-life scandal and subsequent marriage of 34-year-old Mary Kay Letourneau and her 12-year-old student,...

Josephine Chaplin, actor and daughter of Charlie Chaplin, has died. She was 74.

Chaplin died on July 13 in Paris, according to an announcement from her family.

During her career, she starred in a number of foreign films. In 1972 she was featured in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s award-winning film “The Canterbury Tales” and Richard Balducci’s “L’odeur des fauves.” The same year, she also starred alongside Laurence Harvey in Menahem Golan’s 1972 drama “Escape to the Sun” about a group of people attempting to flee the Soviet Union.

In 1974, Chaplin starred as Martine Leduc in Georges Franju’s European crime-thriller “Shadowman” alongside Gayle Hunnicutt and Jacques Champreux. The film follows the Man Without a Face, a criminal attempting to find the elusive treasures of the Knights Templar. Chaplin then reprised her role as Martine in the subsequent French mini-series “The Man Without a Face,” an extended eight-episode version of Franju’s film.

Actor, who starred in films including 1971’s Canterbury Tales, died in Paris on 13 July, her family said

Josephine Chaplin, the daughter of Charlie Chaplin and his fourth wife, Oona O’Neill, died on 13 July in Paris, her family said on Friday. The actor, who starred in films including Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Canterbury Tales, was 74.

Josephine Chaplin was the sixth of 11 children fathered by the comedic screen legend and the third of eight with O’Neill, an actor and daughter of the Nobel prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill.

Josephine Chaplin, the daughter of Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neill, who was an accomplished actress in her own right, has died at 74, according to a report in Le Figaro, which cites her children Charly, Julien and Arthur. She died on July 13 in Paris.

Chaplin got her start as an actress in one of her father’s final films, Limelight (1952), as a child who appears in the opening scene. She was one of five of the director’s children featured in the somewhat-autobiographical project. She also appeared briefly in her father’s final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), with sisters Geraldine and Victoria.

Charlie Chaplin, Josephine (right) and Oona (left) at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival in 1971 (Getty Images)

Her first substantial role was for another iconic director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, in his 1972 take on The Canterbury Tales. Chaplin plays May, the adulterous wife of the elderly Sir January in “The Merchant’s Tale.

Josephine Chaplin, whose father was screen legend Charlie Chaplin, died July 13 in Paris, her family announced on Thursday. She was 74. A cause of death was not immediately given.

As a child, she appeared with her father in his 1952 film “Limelight” and 1967’s “A Countess From Hong Kong.” She went on to star in the 1972 films “L’odeur des fauves” with future partner Maurice Ronet, Menahem Golan’s “Escape to the Sun” opposite Laurence Harvey; and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s X-rated “The Canterbury Tales” as May, the adulterous wife of the elderly Sir January (Hugh Griffith).

Her later films include 1984’s “The Bay Boy” with Kiefer Sutherland and Liv Ullman. In 1998, she played Hadley Richardson to Stacy Keach’s Ernest Hemingway in the miniseries “Hemingway.”

For years she managed the Chaplin office in Paris and sponsored a statue of her father by sculptor Alan Ryan Hall as his Little Tramp character in Waterville,...

Josephine Chaplin, an actress and the sixth of 11 children fathered by screen legend Charlie Chaplin, died July 13 in Paris, her family announced. She was 74.

Chaplin starred with Laurence Harvey in Menahem Golan’s Escape to the Sun (1972), about a group of people attempting to leave the Soviet Union to escape antisemitism and political repression.

She also appeared with Vittorio De Sica and Maurice Ronet in L’odeur des fauves (1972), with Liv Ullmann and Kiefer Sutherland in Daniel Petrie’s The Bay Boy (1984), and with Klaus Kinski in a German-language version of Jack the Ripper (1976).

In 1988, she portrayed Hadley Richardson, the first wife of Ernest Hemingway, in a miniseries that starred Stacy Keach.

Josephine Chaplin with Laurence Harvey in 1972’s Escape to the Sun.

Josephine Hannah Chaplin was born in Santa Monica on March 28, 1949, the third of eight children of Charlie Chaplin and his fourth wife, Oona O’Neill, the British actress...

Medieval fiefdoms and dystopian surveillance states have never been known as bastions of civil liberties. So when someone had the bright idea to combine the two, it was only a matter of time before an innocent man got framed.

“Nimona” begins with an accolade ceremony that Chaucer could have written. Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) is the first solider in his kingdom’s history to achieve knighthood without having descended from noble blood. Everyone agrees that he earned the position through merit and hard work — especially his dreamy boyfriend Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang).

But this isn’t your grandfather’s feudal state — Nick Bruno and Troy Quane’s animated fantasy takes place in a world that splits the difference between “The Canterbury Tales” and “Tron.” Steel swords and suits of armor coexist alongside smartphones and flying cars, and the city-state is governed by medieval customs despite everyone having access to YouTube.

Dame Julie Walters has been forced to leave the cast of the forthcoming Channel 4 drama Truelove, due to ill health.

The veteran star of stage and screen, 73, was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer in 2018.

In 2020, she gave an interview in which she revealed that she had got the all-clear and said that she felt like a “different person” after having cancer.

Walters’ role as Phil in the drama Truelove was set to be her return to TV after a seven-year hiatus (she was last seen in the acclaimed 2016 Channel 4 drama National Treasure).

Walters will be replaced on the show by Lindsay Duncan, who now stars opposite The Wire’s Clarke Peters.

The pair play former teenage sweethearts who reunite at a friend’s funeral after many years, and make a pact to help each other experience dignified deaths, rather than slow declines.

Filming on Truelove was initially last year...

A&m/UMe celebrates the 30th-anniversary of Sting’s fourth solo album, Ten Summoner’s Tales, with a digital-only Expanded Edition released today. Originally released on March 1, 1993, the album title is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek mashup of the artist’s given surname, Sumner, and a character in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 15th-century literary classic The Canterbury Tales, the summoner.

The 27-track Expanded Edition features the original 12-song Ten Summoner’s Tales album plus 15 bonus tracks consisting of B-sides, remixes, alternate versions, and live performances (complete track listing included below). Eleven of these 15 bonus tracks were previously unavailable for digital download or streaming. Mixed by 4-time Grammy Award winning Robert “Hitmixer” Orton, the album is also available in Dolby Atmos. Listen to or purchase Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales – Expanded Edition Here.

Pivoting from the deeply personal sense of loss that permeated Sting’s platinum solo album The Soul Cages, Ten Summoner...

Summer is almost over. You can feel it as the days are getting longer. You can smell it as the air gets a little cooler and that first bit of foliage starts to fall. While the heat is still raging in large swaths of the U.S. (which this streaming list has been composed for), the truth is things are starting to quiet down.

In that vein, it’s a perfect time to curl up with someone and “Netflix and chill” as the kids might say. It’s also just a good time to revisit some old favorites, which Netflix is bringing back to the streaming service in droves. Here are the best of those gems.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

September 1

Hardly a movie for the faint of heart—this is the type of picture that the term “trigger warning” should’ve been invented for—Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange...

Based on the 1994 A.S. Byatt short story "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye," George Miller's new film "Three Thousand Years of Longing" -- in theaters on August 26 in the United States -- stars Idris Elba as Byatt's titular djinn who appears to a human scholar named Alithea (Tilda Swinton) to grant her wishes in exchange for his freedom. "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" appeared in a collection of similar short stories that draw heavily from ancient texts and folk tales, linking up themes and characters from works such as the "Epic of Gilgamesh," "One Thousand and One Nights," and "The Canterbury Tales," as well as the works of William Shakespeare, and the myth of Cybele. Miller seemingly matched Byatt's thematic links by including multiple flashback scenes wherein the djinn interacts with figures of the distant past.

The central narrative of Miller's film takes place in a single hotel room in Istanbul,...

British actor Dennis Waterman, who starred in the TV shows Minder, The Sweeney and New Tricks, has died at 74. No immediate information the cause was available.

A statement from his family said: “We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved Dennis passed away very peacefully in hospital in Spain, on Sunday afternoon, with [his wife] Pam by his side. The family kindly ask that our privacy is respected at this very difficult time.”

Waterman played bodyguard Terry McCann in Minder after his role as tough cop George Carter in The Sweeney. Minder was a portrayal of the criminal underworld in West London. Waterman also took the role of Gerry Standing in the BBC police drama New Tricks, which began in 2004. His other TV credits include ITV’s Where the Heart Is and the BBC’s The Canterbury Tales and Moses Jones.

Beyond acting, Waterman was known for singing the theme songs to many of his shows.

As Italy marks the centennial of Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s birth with a series of special events, the Academy Museum is honoring the influential film director, poet, writer and intellectual, whose 1975 murder remains a mystery, with a complete retrospective.

Titled “Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini,” the Los Angeles tribute in the Academy’s Renzo Piano designed temple of cinema opened Feb. 17 with Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti on hand.

Ferretti, in a moving tribute, said he owed his career to Pasolini, having worked on nine of his films, starting with Pasolini’s first work “The Gospel According to Matthew” and ending with his incendiary condemnation of the Italian upper classes “Salò – or the 120 Days of Sodom,” released in Italy just a few weeks after Pasolini’s murder on Nov. 2, 1975, at age 53, in the seaside town of Ostia outside Rome.

The Academy’s complete retro of Pasolini’s...

Rarely one finds a friend on the Criterion Channel—discounting the parasitic relationship we form with filmmakers, I mean—but it’s great seeing their March lineup give light to Sophy Romvari, the <bias>exceptionally talented</bias> filmmaker and curator whose work has perhaps earned comparisons to Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman but charts its own path of history and reflection. It’s a good way to lead into an exceptionally strong month, featuring as it does numerous films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara, newfound cult classic Arrebato, and a number of Criterion editions.

On the last front we have The Age of Innocence, Bull Durham, A Raisin in the Sun, The Celebration, Merrily We Go to Hell, and Design for Living. There’s always something lingering on the watchlist, but it might have to wait a second longer—March is an opened floodgate.

See the full...

Showtime announced today that Bill Nighy has joined the cast of “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” filling the same role as David Bowie in the 1976 film.

Nighy will play the brilliant Thomas Newton, the first alien to arrive on Earth in over 40 years who turns to Faraday (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to complete his original mission. The TV series is based on the Walter Tevis novel of the same name.

“I was honored to be invited to play the part of Thomas Jerome Newton that glorious David Bowie made so famous,” said Nighy in a statement.

“I was keen to work with Chiwetel and Naomie again,” said Nighy. He previously worked with Ejiofor in 2003’s “Love Actually” and “Canterbury Tales” and with Harris in two “Pirates of the Caribbean” films.

“I think the story is terrific and brilliantly expressed. I am an enthusiast for shows which extrapolate from current technology and...

The Performers | Frances Conroy and Evan Peters

The Show | American Horror Story: Double Feature

More from TVLineConnie Britton Addresses Emmys Absence, Shares Photo of Planned Red Carpet LookTrevor Noah Shares 'Proof' His Emmy Win Was LegitChicago Med Bosses Preview Luke Mitchell's Troubled New Doctor, Romantic Sparks With [Spoiler]

The Episodes | “Cape Fear” and “Pale” (Aug. 25, 2021)

The Performances | Wednesday’s two-part Double Feature premiere gave us plenty to sink our teeth into, but nothing was quite as satisfying as the all-you-can-eat buffet of delight served by Peters and Conroy as “pugilists of prose” Austin Sommers and Belle Noir. Oh, how we feasted.

Ji-Yoon Kim’s young daughter Ju-Ju has an important question: Why does her mother, who runs the English department at a prestigious New England liberal arts college, use the title of “Doctor.” Ji-Yoon tries explaining how her love of literature led to a Ph.D. and a career in academia, but Ju-Ju cuts to the heart of the matter, asking, “But why are you a doctor? You never help anybody.”

Ji-Yoon (Sandra Oh) is rendered speechless in the moment, though she spends much of the new Netflix comedy The Chair...

Olivia Rodrigo could have been designed in a laboratory as the perfect teen pop star — except the best part is how gloriously, messily, authentically human she is. She’s a whole new pop-queen paradigm, ripping up the old playbook and starting again. She seemingly blew in out of nowhere to hit Number One with her instant-classic debut single, “Drivers License.” It’s one of the all-time great debuts — yet somehow the sequels, “Deja Vu” and “Good 4 U,” are even better? And the first of those sequels is about taunting her...

Shout! Studios has secured all distribution rights in North America from Protagonist Pictures to “The Show,” the mystery fantasy feature film written by Alan Moore, the creator of iconic comic-books such as “Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” “From Hell” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” “The Show,” directed by Mitch Jenkins, will be launched across all major platforms later this year.

Tom Burke stars in the film, alongside Siobhan Hewlett, Ellie Bamber, Sheila Atim, Christopher Fairbank and Moore himself.

The pic centers on Fletcher Dennis (Burke), a man of many talents, passports and identities, who arrives in Northampton – a strange and haunted town in the heart of England as dangerous as he is. On a mission to locate a stolen artefact for his menacing client, Fletcher finds himself entangled in a twilight world populated with vampires, sleeping beauties, voodoo gangsters, noir private eyes, and masked avengers.

The North American deal was...

Perhaps it is fate that an early era Blaxploitation, anti-capitalist film about an off-the-rails, pot-smoking cop who starts to mentally deteriorate because of racism from white officers on the force and insults from Black people he’s arresting, barely had its chance to reach an audience. Written, directed, and produced by its star Christopher St. John, 1972’s Top of the Heap is a tragic story of a Black artist struggling to create a singular vision in a Hollywood system dominated by white voices.

Although featuring what one would expect to see in any film labeled “Blaxploitation,” Top of the Heap takes a very different approach to the subgenre. It’s a story about Black trauma, angst, and disillusionment with the American dream and a middle finger to the expectations of the subgenre it wishes to subvert. It’s a surreal and violent cocktail made with the ingredients of Abel Ferrara,...

Audible, the Amazon-owned company with the world’s largest audiobook library has introduced a new, free service aimed at kids (and adults!) who want to brush up on some reading while they’re stuck indoors.

The program is called Audible Stories, and it’s impressively easy to use. There’s no membership (Audible, Amazon, or otherwise) to sign up for, no fees, and no limits on the amount of books you can stream. To access the library, use this link, and you’ll be taken to the Audible Stories home page.

Sky has boarded “Four Kids and It,” Andy De Emmony’s family adventure film starring Sir Michael Caine, Matthew Goode, Paula Patton and Russell Brand. The film, which is based on the 1902 bestselling book by Jacqueline Wilson, will be available on pay-channel Sky Cinema and in theaters day-and-date at Easter.

Set on the Cornish coast, “Four Kids and It” follows four children who embark on a journey to discover if a magical creature can really make all their wishes come true. It starts out with a family holiday to a Cornish cottage which takes an unexpected turn when the kids come across a magical and very grumpy creature (Caine) on a beach.

“’Four Kids and It’ is another example of our huge ambition for Sky original films. We are passionate about great storytelling and I know, with this fantastic cast, that our customers are definitely in for a treat this Easter,...

Moments after cameraman David Myers finished filming a couple having sex in the tall grass at the Woodstock festival in 1969, he happened upon a middle-aged sanitation worker cleaning out an overflowing toilet with a giant suction hose. “It’s hard to keep up,” he says. “I’m glad to do it for these kids. My son’s here, and I got one over in Vietnam too. He’s up in the Dmz right now flyin’ helicopters.” As the Port-o-San man moves on to his next toilet, a tall hippie staggers...

For auteurists in New York there can hardly be a better series playing right now than "Trilogies" at Film Forum: a four-week extravaganza of 78 films comprising 26 mini director retrospectives from Angelopoulos to Wenders and 24 other auteurs in between. Many of the groupings in the series are actual sequential trilogies, like Kobayashi’s The Human Condition or Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, while others more loosely stretch the term, such as Lucrecia Martel’s "Salta Trilogy" or Hou Hsiao-hsien’s "Coming of Age Trilogy," very welcome though those are.Very few of the trilogies in the series, however, have posters that were conceived as trios themselves, the French posters for Kieslowski’s Three Colors, above, and Albert Dubout’s cartoony designs for Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles Trilogy being the major exceptions. There are two terrific matching posters by Jan Lenica for the first two films in Mark Donskoy's Maxim Gorky Trilogy,...

The "Game of Thrones" prequel plot is beefing up its cast. Marquis Rodriquez, John Simm, Richard McCabe, John Heffernan, and Dixie Egerickx have all been cast in series regular roles, reports variety.com. As with all things "Game of Thrones," the exact nature of the characters each will be playing is being kept under tight wraps.

Rodriguez will next be seen starring in the Netflix miniseries "When They See Us" from director Ava DuVernay, which is based on the true story of the Central Park Five. He also had a role in the Marvel-Netflix shows "Luke Cage" and "Iron Fist".

Simm's previous television credits include "Collateral", "Doctor Who", "The Catch" "Life on Mars" and "The Canterbury Tales".

McCabe has appeared in shows such as "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams," "Harlots," "Collateral," and "Peaky Blinders."?

Heffernan's TV credits include "Dracula," "Brexit," "Collateral," "The Crown," and "Luther".

Egerickx recently wrapped...

The “Game of Thrones” prequel pilot at HBO is beefing up its cast.

Marquis Rodriquez, John Simm, Richard McCabe, John Heffernan, and Dixie Egerickx have all been cast in series regular roles. As with all things “Game of Thrones,” the exact nature of the characters each will be playing is being kept under tight wraps.

Rodriguez will next be seen starring in the Netflix miniseries “When They See Us” from director Ava DuVernay, which is based on the true story of the Central Park Five. He also had a role in the Marvel-Netflix shows “Luke Cage” and “Iron Fist.” He is repped by Paradigm, Sinclair Management, and Jackoway Tyerman.

Simm’s previous television credits include “Collateral,” “Doctor Who,” The Catch,” “Life on Mars, and “The Canterbury Tales.” He is repped by Independent Talent Group.

McCabe has appeared in shows such as “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams,” “Harlots,” “Collateral,...

Exclusive: Women’s advocacy organization WeForShe has selected 20 unproduced female-written television scripts, plus an additional five “scripts to watch” for its fifth annual WriteHer List.

The scripts were selected from a record 500-plus nominations and evaluated based on criteria including diversity of cast, the number and quality of female roles, and the Bechdel Test — a measure of female representation in fiction. A group of network and studio execs, showrunners, producers and directors curated the list.

The scripts include Almost Olympian by Emma Jay, La Coyote by Rebecca Feldman, Vesta by Jenny Deiker Restivo and Thorns by Caroline Levich & Michelle Badillo.

The WriteHer List, introduced in 2015, is one of the tools created by WeForShe for use by the entertainment industry’s content creators and decision-makers to help increase the number of women working in entertainment.

“We are thrilled to see how the engagement has grown with the community year over year,...

For those of you who enjoy your genre offerings on the eccentric side, May 8th is shaping up to be a wild day of home media releases. Severin Films has put together a limited edition Blu-ray for Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals and they have the uncut version of Violence in a Women’s Prison coming out this week as well. Both The Devil Incarnate and Enter the Devil have been gussied up for an HD release this Tuesday, and for all you Amicus fans out there, Scream Factory is bringing The House That Dripped Blood to Blu, too.

Other notable releases for May 8th include Disembodied, Bizarre, Sick Sock Monsters From Outer Space, The Creeps, Gutboy: A Badtime Story, and The Violence Movie.

The Devil Incarnate

The action takes place in 16th century Spain. The Devil comes to earth to live as a mere mortal. Together with a human companion,...

Jokes on you, fools! Celebs loooooove to hit up social media on the first of April to play April Fool's jokes on the world—and most of us get tricked every time! But how did this April Fool's business of tricking the ones you love most even start? Well it's got a pretty long history and the origin of April Fool's is widely disputed. Some say the concept of April foolishness goes back to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In 1508, French poet Eloy d'Amerval referred to a poisson d'avril (which literally meant "Fish of April") and is possibly the first reference to the April Fool's celebration in France. Some writers suggest that April Fools' originated...

From left: Kate Micucci, Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza play nuns with pent-up lust and schemes that are played for bawdy comedy and slapstick absurdity in a movie based on a 14th-century story. Photo: Gunpowder & Sky (c)

Writer/director Jeff Baena draws on Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th The Decameron for The Little Hours, a bawdy, absurd comedy where the F-bombs fly through air thick with schemes and suppressed lust. Some audiences may object to foul-mouthed women religious but for those who don’t, Baena’s comedy is very amusing, as well as a clever updated twist on a medieval classic.

Nuns in the 14th century were different from today, as a convent was a place where prosperous families could send unmarried daughters or in which women without wealth could shelter, as much as a place for the religiously devout. Like Chaucer’s later The Canterbury Tales, these women in habits could speak in plain,...

This is my seventh TCM Classic Film Festival. At a certain point, some things become routine – one learns to expect the exhaustion at the dawn of day three (of four), the constant negotiation between personal viewing whims and rare presentations, the way plots and aesthetic choices start to run together, and the suspicion that explaining the draw of such an event to those not immediately inclined to attend it may come across a touch insane. Film festivals are innately demanding experiences, but between the pleasure of its programming, the consolidation of the venues, and the brevity of most of its films’ running times, few make it so easy to watch four, five, six movies in a day. You tell your coworkers on Monday what you did all weekend, and it starts to not make a lot of sense. But somehow, in the midst of it all, the point of it couldn’t be clearer.

At the beginning of (and during) each month, HBO adds new movies and TV shows to HBO Go and HBO Now. We figure you want to know what they are. For more comprehensive coverage of the best titles available on HBO and elsewhere, check out Vulture’s What to Stream Now hub, which is updated throughout the month. Sexual healing: Magic Mike (2012) and Magic Mike Xxl (2015) Magic Mike is a solid, occasionally very fun look at lives of male strippers in Florida, with an accountant’s eye for the mechanics of the industry. Magic Mike Xxl is a road-trip comedy plus a “one last job” heist movie about a “pilgrimage to Myrtle Beach” for a stripping convention, which makes it sort of like The Canterbury Tales, if every tale was about a different way to please a woman. It’s the best acting showcase Joe Manganiello, Andie MacDowell, and possibly...

With hues of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Canterbury Tales as well as the carnivalesque absurdity of Federico Fellini, Matteo Garrone’s Tale Of Tales is a sideways Renaissance fairy tale — bawdy, ornate, hysterical and visceral. “He’s a painter, he’s very pictorial,” says Vincent Cassel, who was drawn to play a promiscuous royal in the film as it allowed him to “make fun” of the sexual archetypes he’s played. Tale of Tales marks the director’s third time on the Croisette…...

After a turbulent period of stolen screenplays and regrettable lawsuits last year, Quentin Tarantino decided to eschew his frustrations and finally film his mammoth screenplay for The Hateful Eight, a purportedly brutal and bloody western about a coterie of strangers who tell each other stories and kill stuff, like The Canterbury Tales but with more swearing. The film’s colossal cast includes Samuel L. Jackson as Major Marquis Warren, "The Bounty Hunter"; Kurt Russell as John Ruth, "The Hangman"; Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy Domergue, "The Prisoner"; Walton Goggins as Chris Mannix, "The Sheriff"; Demáin Bichir as Bob, "The Mexican"; Tim Roth as Oswaldo Mobray, "The Little Man"; Bruce Dern as General Sanford Smithers, "The Confederate"; and Michael Madsen as Joe Gage, "The Cow Puncher." Channing Tatum, James Parks, and Zoë Bell will also make appearances. The film's teaser came out illegally a few months ago, then legally last month,...

Venice — "Pasolini is me." So sang erstwhile Smiths frontman Morrissey on single "You Have Killed Me" from "Ringleader of the Tormentors," an album recorded in Italy. The very next track on the album opens with a sample of a very distinctive sound: the siren of an Italian ambulance. At the Venice festival, it's impossible to go for more than a day without hearing this dolorous yet urgent wail on the Lido; it's an unofficial soundtrack. These congruences were very much slushing around my head as I sat down for Abel Ferrara's "Pasolini." Prior to the festival, Maestro Ferrara, the man who brought "The Driller Killer," "King of New York," and the original "Bad Lieutenant" into the world gave various interviews about the project. Like Morrissey, he is an inveterate quote machine, an expert in controversy, and the words that drew the most attention were electrifying: "I know who killed him.

Jess Franco has tackled many of the classic subgenres and stories especially during the mid-70’s while he always put his own unique sexually explicit, tongue dropping sense of seduction on each movie he makes, he seems to rely on classic tales and great stories of historical fiction with a hint of the fantastic. Never is this truer than in Jack the Ripper from 1976 featuring Klaus Kinski. Franco invents true evil in the form of a well meaning bad guy with a very dark side in his interpretation of this classic White Chapel bound tale. While nobody knows how Jack was for sure that only helps Franco to create his own dark world. It’s got prostitutes in various stages of murder, dismember and clothing as well as a few stragglers along the way who fall victims to homicides of necessity. Ascot Elite offers us the chance to enjoy Jack the Ripper...

Feature Alex Westthorp 9 Apr 2014 - 07:00

In the next part of his series, Alex talks us through the film careers of the second and fourth Doctors, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker...

Read Alex's retrospective on the film careers of William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee, here.

Like their fellow Time Lord actors, William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker also shared certain genres of film. Both appeared, before and after their time as the Doctor, in horror movies and both worked on Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films.

Patrick George Troughton was born in Mill Hill, London on March 25th 1920. He made his film debut aged 28 in the 1948 B-Movie The Escape. Troughton's was a very minor role. Among the better known cast was William Hartnell, though even Hartnell's role was small and the two didn't share any scenes together. From the late Forties, Troughton found more success on the small screen,...

What makes films about religion so interesting is the way some manage to tread a line between support and criticism, while some are vehemently anti-religion or pro-religion. When all is said and done, it’s up to the audience to decide whether or not the film (or the faith portrayed) is a respectful or perceptive study on faith and the dogmatic principles that may or may not surround it. Not every religious film is uplifting. In fact, there are plenty of non-religious films that do a better job of building viewers’ faith. But that’s another list for another time.

30. Beyond the Hills (2012)

Directed by Cristian Mingiu

Five years after his punishing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Christian Mingiu delivered an interesting look at a lifelong friendship formed at an orphanage. Beyond the Hills tells the story of two women, based on non-fiction novels by Tatiana Niculescu Bran: Alina (Cristina Flutur) has fled to Germany,...

The Canterbury Tales

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Written by Pier Paolo Pasolini

1972, Italy

The Canterbury Tales (1972) is the second film in Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life” that began with Decameron (1971) and Arabian Nights (1974). Each film in the trilogy contains an enormous amount of sex, nudity, slapstick, and scatological jokes and are based on revered works of literature. Pasolini’s adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” contains eight of the 24 stories from the book. Each story effortlessly flows from one to the next and the whole is certainly greater than the sum of its part. Pasolini was a terrific director and his later period shows how he expanded his political cinema by incorporating the Academy’s literary canon. Adapting revered novels did not stop Pasolini from inserting radical subversions into the ideology of these texts.

In The Canterbury Tales, a fictional Chaucer, played by Pasolini, frames the narrative,...

Chapters 1 – 3

There are very few examples of adaptations or remakes that have taken well to the public liking, and even fewer prove to be worth the watch and outdo everything in its way. This perfectly describes House of Cards, a remarkable show following the narcissistic Francis Underwood in his strife for political power. The show is a remake of the 1990 UK political drama of the same name, and author of the book as well as producer on the Us version, Michael Dobbs, has stated the Us version is much darker than the UK version and “is true to the spirit.” This first season has has already garnered the fantastic title of being the most watched show on Netflix and now it comes to DVD and Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

House of Cards stars Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood, a Democratic U.S. Representative from South Carolina’s 5th congressional district.

The first Chicago bar I drank in was the Old Town Ale House. That bar was destroyed by fire in the 1960s, the customers hosed off, and the Ale House moved directly across the street to its present location, where it has been named Chicago's Best Dive Bar by the Chicago Tribune.

I was taken to the Ale House by Tom Devries, my fellow college editor from the Roosevelt Torch. It was early on a snowy Sunday afternoon. I remember us walking down to Barbara's Bookstore to get our copies of the legendary New York Herald-Tribune Sunday edition. Pogo. Judith Crist. Tom Wolfe. Jimmy Breslin. I remember peanut shells on the floor and a projector grinding through 16mm prints of Charlie Chaplin shorts. I remember my first taste of dark Löwenbräu beer. The Ale House was cool even then.

I returned to the North Avenue drinking scene on New Year's Eve...

Just in case you didn’t already know, Todd Phillips is here to help you put aside any feelings you might have and come to realise the ecstatic truth – The Hangover Part II is better than The Hangover. Todd’s disappointed that he even needs to tell you this.

Todd’s surprised that you can’t come to this conclusion yourself. I mean, come on! Of course it’s better! It somehow reunites the entire cast on the other side of the world, labouring under a paper-thin premise with weak jokes and a recycled plot, costing twice the original. How could you be so mistaken?

In an interview with Empire, the oracle Todd Phillips goes on to demonstrate his powers of omniscience, as well as omnispresence, stating,

“I think in five or ten years time, people will come to realize how brilliant ‘Hangover II‘ is.”

That period of time has...

Welcome back to Lizzie Bennet Diaries week! After examining the web series' Kickstarter and fanbase, today we're looking into its future. Bernie Su and Hank Green will be adapting a second book into a vlog format later this year, and they have many options. After much consternation (that is, forcing myself to remember all the books I read in high school), I've determined seven classic works of fiction that would work well as YouTube vlogs. Emma - This is the most logical choice, given its similarities to Pride and Prejudice, which serves as Lizzie Bennet's source material. It's another Jane Austen novel with a similarly satirical take on the life of a young woman in 18th-century England. An Emma vlog would be right in Su and Green's wheelhouse, and a few enterprising Lizzie Bennet fans have already adapted it on their own. The Canterbury Tales - Personally, I'd prefer a...

House Of Cards

Stars: Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, Kate Mara, Corey Stoll, Michael Kelly | Created by Michael Dobbs

Compared to the first three chapters, these three really just delivered. At first, I knew the show was intriguing but it really took me this long to realize it’s addicting. Sure, a part may account for my fondness of Kevin Spacey as well as political disarray (well, that’s a inside joke between myself), but this series is just phenomenal.

Just a recap: House of Cards follows Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the White House majority whip who was just backstabbed by the president and now is plotting some unknown, but always diabolical, plot. His wife Claire (Robin Wright) is the president of the Clean Water Initiative (Cwi) and Francis Underwood’s loyal assistant is Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) who helps Underwood concoct these menacing acts. Underwood has reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) up his sleeve,...

The first Chicago bar I drank in was the Old Town Ale House. That bar was destroyed by fire in the 1960s, the customers hosed off, and the Ale House moved directly across the street to its present location, where it has been named Chicago's Best Dive Bar by the Chicago Tribune.

I was taken to the Ale House by Tom Devries, my fellow college editor from the Roosevelt Torch. It was early on a snowy Sunday afternoon. I remember us walking down to Barbara's Bookstore to get our copies of the legendary New York Herald-Tribune Sunday edition. Pogo. Judith Crist. Tom Wolfe. Jimmy Breslin. I remember peanut shells on the floor and a projector grinding through 16mm prints of Charlie Chaplin shorts. I remember my first taste of dark Löwenbräu beer. The Ale House was cool even then.

I returned to the North Avenue drinking scene on New Year's Eve...

Above: Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975) was released by Criterion in 1998 and in 2004 they released Mamma Roma (1962). This past month they released a much belated box-set of his six-hour Trilogy of Life (1971-1974), in a beautiful restoration and accompanied with an awesome heap of great docs, essays and other goodies. On December 13 MoMA started a month-long retrospective dedicated to his work.

I. Defending Pasolini Against His Devotees

The prevailing view of Pier Paolo Pasolini has become subjugated to the misshapen reputation of his most infamous film, Salò (1975). The film’s unyielding serial descent into ever more severe cycles of mutilation, sodomy, coprophagia, and chronic rape of a group of 12-15 year olds has scandalized and influenced a culture that is frantic for any stimuli that can remind its constituents of their humanity. The film has furnished ample fodder for generations of filmmakers intent on...

Fiercely political and highly controversial poet/writer/artist/filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini gets a comprehensive citywide retrospective Dec. 13, 2012 - January 5, 2013. Regarded by many as a visionary thinker and major literary figure, Pasolini's legacy extends far beyond his work as a filmmaker. During his short lifetime, he was a public persona through his poetry, fiery newspaper editorials and political activism in post war Italy. Before his sensational murder death in 1975, Pasolini the filmmaker had made 22 films (including 8 shorts) in 14 years. His complete, rare cinematic output will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art. A well-timed Criterion release of Trilogy of Life in November saw Pasolini's three later works, of adaptation - Decameron, The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights on Blu-ray....

Chicago – In the early ’70s, Pier Paolo Pasolini made three adaptations of medieval literature that reflected the truly adult filmmaking language gaining popularity at the time. So many European filmmakers would try to copy the nudity, sexual humor, and scatological slapstick of Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life” that the films that inspired a wave of bad movies were somtimes lumped in with them. Criterion goes a long way to correct the historical record with their glorious box set for “Trilogy of Life.”

Rating: 4.5/5.0

1971’s “The Decameron,” 1972’s “The Canterbury Tales,” and 1974’s “Arabian Nights” make up “Trilogy of Life” and that third word in the title is exactly what they contain — energetic life. Pasolini was late in his too-brief career at this point (he would only make “Salo” after these three before his murder) and he was throwing caution and taste to the wind, asking audiences to readdress well-known stories from a new perspective.