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What would the moviegoing experience be without Sir Ian McKellen? An actor with a towering, half-century-plus career, theater-trained performer McKellen has become synonymous not just with great plays and serious dramas, but with huge sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters. McKellen headlined two major franchises in the aughts, playing indelible parts in both Peter Jackson' "Lord of the Rings" trilogy (plus the less beloved prequel saga) and pre-mcu superhero standout the "X-Men" trilogy.

McKellen adds his signature gravitas to every role, and he's elevated plenty of so-so films, like "The Da Vinci Code," "The Golden Compass," and -- dare I say -- "Cats." With a career so sprawling and significant, it's difficult to say just which of McKellen's films is his best, but where human brains fail, the (sometimes super-wonky) metrics of the Rotten Tomatoes algorithm theoretically succeed. We may not be able to pick just one McKellen performance that stands above the rest,...

“The Lord of the Rings” is the most successful film series in the history of the Academy Awards, winning 17 Oscars including two Best Picture awards out of 30 total nominations.

Both “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Return of the King” won Best Picture while Peter Jackson won Best Director for the latter movie, which holds the joint record for most Oscar wins of all time with 11 victories (the same number as “Ben-Hur” and “Titanic”). However, the lauded trilogy only received one acting citation — that was for Ian McKellen for Best Supporting Actor for “The Fellowship of the Ring.”

But while the Oscars didn’t nominate nearly enough actors in this trilogy (shout out to Andy Serkis), “The Lord of the Rings” cast is full of incredible actors who have received multiple awards nominations for other projects. Considering it is Emmys season, we’re going to focus on Emmys.

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Richard Gere has joined the upcoming espionage thriller series “The Agency” at Paramount+ with Showtime, Variety has learned.

Gere is the latest big name to join the series, after Variety exclusively reported that Michael Fassbender would star in the show and Jeffrey Wright was confirmed as a cast member in June.

“The Agency” is based on the hit French series “Le Bureau.” In the English-language version, Fassbender stars as Martian, described as “a covert CIA agent ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London Station. When the love he left behind reappears, romance reignites. His career, his real identity and his mission are pitted against his heart; hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage.”

Gere will star as Bosko, said to be “the London Station Chief with a storied past after serving as an 8-year undercover agent,” per the official character description.

“Richard...

Ian McKellen is an Oscar-nominated thespian whomhas excelled at everything from Shakespeare to sci-fi on both the stage and screen. Let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1939 in Lancashire, England, McKellen first came to prominence on the stage, appearing in a number of classic plays from the likes of Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare (including an acclaimed production of “Richard III” that he brought to the screen in 1995). His performance as Salieri in the 1981 production of “Amadeus” brought him a Tony award as Best Actor in a Play.

McKellen appeared in films sporadically throughout this period, earning his first starring role in “Priest of Love” in 1981. He became increasingly recognizable onscreen throughout the 1990s, earning his first Oscar nomination when he was 59-years-old: Best Actor for “Gods and Monsters” (1998). For his acclaimed performance as “Frankenstein” (1931) director James Whale, McKellen won...

E. Duke Vincent, a naval aviator and novelist who also, with partner Aaron Spelling, produced some of the most popular shows in television history, died on February 10 in Montecito. That, according to his wife, actress Pamela Hensley. He was 91.

Born Edward Ventimiglia, Vincent’s 40-year TV career kicked off after he joined the Navy, became a Naval aviator and eventually joined The Blue Angels. About that time, he flew the F8F-8P filming the aerial photo sequences for the NBC’s The Blue Angels.

On resigning from the Navy in 1962, he followed his interest in TV and got a job producing seven one-hour documentaries called Man In Space. While in Los Angeles, filming sequences for the series, Vincent met with Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard, the executive producers of The Dick Van Dyke show. After writing a spec script for them, he signed on to do their next series,...

E. Duke Vincent, the writer and two-time Emmy-winning producer who partnered with Aaron Spelling on such hugely popular shows as Dynasty, Beverly Hills, 90210, Charmed, 7th Heaven and Melrose Place, has died. He was 91.

Vincent died on Feb. 10 in his home in Montecito, California, his wife, actress Pamela Hensley, announced.

He and Spelling produced more than 40 series together, also including Hotel, Vegas, Matt Houston, Madman of the People and The Colbys; seven miniseries, among them Jackie Collins’ Hollywood Wives in 1985 and James Michener’s Texas in 1994; and more than three dozen telefilms.

Vincent won his Emmys for executive producing Day One, a 1989 CBS movie about the Manhattan Project that starred David Strathairn as J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the 1994 HBO movie And the Band Played On, centering on the AIDS epidemic.

An only child, Edward Ventimiglia was born on April 30, 1932, in Jersey City, New Jersey. His father, Egizio, was a pilot...

E. Duke Vincent, an Emmy-winning TV producer, died on Feb. 10 in Montecito, Calif. He was 91.

With Aaron Spelling, the duo worked on 43 TV series, such as “Dynasty,” “Hotel,” “Vegas,” “Matt Houston,” “The Colbys,” “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place,” in addition to seven miniseries including Jackie Collins’ “Hollywood Wives” and James Micheners’ “Texas.” They also hold 39 TV movie credits, including Emmy winners “Day One” and “And the Band Played On.”

Additionally, Duke and Spelling served as executive producers on Warner Bros. Network’s long-running series “Charmed” and “7th Heaven,” the network’s highest rated and longest running drama. Duke wrote or produced over 2,300 hours of programming over the course of his 40-year career in Hollywood, with 1,600 hours of primetime and 750 hours of daytime TV.

The only child of Margaret and Egizio Ventimiglia, he was born Edward Ventimiglia in Jersey City, N.J. on April 30, 1932. After graduating from Seton Hall University,...

There was barely a dry eye in the house at the Los Angeles premiere three decades ago of HBO’s landmark AIDS’ film “And the Band Played On.” During the end credit sequence set to Elton John’s “The Last Song” was a montage of well-known people who had died of AIDS or were HIV positive including Ryan White, Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins, Rudolf Nureyev, Arthur Ashe, Michael Bennett, Liberace, Halston, Peter Allen, Denholm Elliott, Brad Davis, Amanda Blake and Robert Reed.

No wonder emotions were running high. Deaths were rising every year. According to Social Security Administration, some 37,000 people died of HIV Illness in 1993. And it would be three years before the introduction of Haart-highly active antiretroviral therapy-that is often called the anti-hiv “cocktail.”

Based on Randy Shilts’ 1987 best-seller, “And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic,” the acclaimed film, which premiered on HBO on Sept.

Garth Craven, the British-born sound and film editor and second-unit director whose credits included six Sam Peckinpah features, as well as Turner and Hooch, My Best Friend’s Wedding and Legally Blonde, has died. He was 84.

A resident of Malibu, Craven died May 20 after he suffered a medical emergency while flying back to Los Angeles from a safari in Namibia, his daughter, Willow Kalatchi, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Craven collaborated with the maverick director Peckinpah on Straw Dogs (1971), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The Killer Elite (1975) and Convoy (1978).

He worked with fellow editor Roger Spottiswoode on the first three of those films, and when Spottiswoode graduated to director, they partnered on the features Shoot to Kill (1988), Turner and Hooch (1989) and Air America (1990) and on two HBO telefilms: 1989’s Third Degree Burn and 1993’s And the Band Played On.

Craven also cut Gaby: A True Story...

Arnold Schulman, who landed Oscar nominations for his screenplays for Love With the Proper Stranger and Goodbye, Columbus and found success with several incarnations of his Broadway hit A Hole in the Head, has died. He was 97.

Schulman died Saturday of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica, his son, Peter Schulman, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In two late-career triumphs, Schulman was recruited by Francis Ford Coppola to write the biopic Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and he scored an Emmy nomination and a Humanitas Prize in 1994 for his teleplay for HBO’s And the Band Played On, an adaptation of Randy Shilts’ nonfiction book about the onset of AIDS.

An original member of the Actors Studio, Schulman in the 1950s worked alongside the likes of James Dean and Paul Newman on live television. In 1962, he quit as the original screenwriter on the never-completed Marilyn Monroe movie Something’s Got to Give,...

Regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation, Sir Ian McKellen had been a pillar of British theatre for decades before venturing to Hollywood. After his early days in London theatre, including a stint in the 1970s with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, he crossed the pond in 1981 to play Antonio Salieri in a Broadway production of "Amadeus" — and took home a Tony Award. The movies beckoned, bringing McKellen to a new level of fame that crested when he was tapped to play the wise and courageous wizard Gandalf in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Meanwhile, McKellen also made headlines in 1988 when he came out as openly gay in 1988 and was then knighted by the Queen in 1991.

While Gandalf is the most iconic of his many roles, by no means is it his only memorable performance in film and television. For a refresher course on his extraordinary career,...

Exclusive: The Art Directors Guild has sketched out a career honor for Donna Cline. The concept artist whose credits include Bones, Chicago Med and The Big Bang Theory will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illustrators and Matte Artists at the 26th annual Adg Awards.

Bones alum Tamara Taylor will present the prize during the guild’s in-person ceremony on March 5 at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown Hotel. See the 2022 Adg Awards nominations here.

Cline is a storyboard artist and illustrator unlike any other who came to TV and motion pictures with a career as a forensic artist as well as a medical and scientific adviser. Her work includes facial recognition from the skulls of unknown deceased, composite drawings of suspects, medical illustrations and cadaver dissection and visuals for courtroom presentations.

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

She was the science adviser for all 12 seasons Fox’s Bones,...

The Emmy nominations were announced Tuesday, and the TV Academy provided historic representation across its acting categories, despite a couple of questionable hiccups.

Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett of the now-canceled “Lovecraft Country” made history as the first two Black leads to be nominated from the same drama series. “Pose” also joins for achieving the same feat with Billy Porter and Mj Rodriguez. It’s also the first piece of visual art to have a Black actor nominated in every eligible acting category, with Michael K. Williams and Aunjanue Ellis also picking up mentions.

Disney Plus’ “Hamilton” now has the second most nominations in the limited series/TV movie acting categories with seven. With the nominations for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr, Daveed Diggs, Anthony Ramos, Jonathan Groff, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo, it surpasses “And the Band Played On” (1993), “The Glass Menagerie” (1973) and “The Normal Heart” (2014) that all...

“76 Days” captures the first 76 days of the lockdown right at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. Back in January, when the virus was beginning to gather traction, Weixi Chen and Anonymous picked up a camera and began filming.

As journalists, they were able to gain unprecedented access into four hospitals in Wuhan, filming patients and doctors. Director and producer Hao Wu was meant to get on a plane, but as the virus spread around the world, flights were canceled and Wu directed remotely, virtually communicating with his on-the-field directors who sent him footage over the cloud.

Wu would take the rushes and edit them in his New York home and put his film together, taking viewers into the first coronavirus hot zone.

Wu talked about directing virtually and working with two directors who put their lives and careers at risk. “76 Days” is now available in virtual cinemas.

“Black Mirror’s” loss could be HBO’s gain. After three straight Best TV Movie Emmy victories for various episodes and not meeting the new 75-minute runtime requirement, “Black Mirror” is forced to compete in drama this year, paving the way for HBO to claim its record-extending 22 win in the category with “Bad Education.”

It may be hard to remember after the “Black Mirror’s” three-peat, which followed “Sherlock’s” victory in 2016 for its special episode “The Abominable Bride,” but the Best TV Movie category used to be HBO’s domain. The network started off with a bang in 1993, triumphing in a tie for its films “Barbarians at the Gate” and “Stalin,” and then ran the table for the rest of the decade.

Since 2000, HBO has racked up 13 wins; besides the last four years, its other 21st-century losses occurred in 2000 (ABC’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” won), 2003 (TNT’s “Door to Door...

Much of the attention for Amazon‘s “Hunters” has gone to Al Pacino since it’s the first regular TV series role for the Oscar winner. But the effect of the show, about a rag-tag group that seeks out and executes undercover Nazis, hinges on two other performances that are worthy of awards consideration: Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane as Murray and Mindy Markowitz.

SEEEmmys 2020 exclusive: Amazon Studios categories for ‘Hunters,’ ‘Maisel,’ ‘Modern Love’ and more

At first Murray and Mindy’s presence on the team seems like a gag — isn’t it funny to see this sweet old Jewish couple going all “Inglourious Basterds” on Nazi scum? But as the season develops they become the characters who best connect the audience to the story’s high emotional stakes. Murray and Mindy are both Holocaust survivors, and one of their young children was murdered. They harbor rage against the Nazi officer responsible,...

Richard Gere celebrates his 70th birthday on August 31, 2019. Whether in romantic comedies, legal dramas, action thrillers or musicals, he’s been pretty durable as a leading man in a career spanning over 40 years. But how many of his titles remain classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1949, Gere kicked off his movie career with a memorable supporting turn in Richard Brooks‘ “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” (1977), followed by a leading role in Terrence Malick‘s “Days of Heaven” (1978). He became a sex symbol with Paul Schrader‘s “American Gigolo” (1982) and a romantic idol with Taylor Hackford‘s “An Officer and a Gentleman” (1982), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination as Best Drama Actor.

SEEDebra Winger movies: 10 greatest films ranked from worst to best

Despite his box office bravura, Gere has never competed at the Oscars.

Richard Gere celebrates his 70th birthday on August 31, 2019. Whether in romantic comedies, legal dramas, action thrillers or musicals, he’s been pretty durable as a leading man in a career spanning over 40 years. But how many of his titles remain classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1949, Gere kicked off his movie career with a memorable supporting turn in Richard Brooks‘ “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” (1977), followed by a leading role in Terrence Malick‘s “Days of Heaven” (1978). He became a sex symbol with Paul Schrader‘s “American Gigolo” (1982) and a romantic idol with Taylor Hackford‘s “An Officer and a Gentleman” (1982), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination as Best Drama Actor.

Despite his box office bravura, Gere has never competed at the Oscars. Perhaps the closest he ever came was with his leading...

“Now Apocalypse” has the potential to be the queerest comedy in Emmy history. The awards — and TV in general — have been making strides in Lgbt representation in the last three decades, from 1990s winners like “And the Band Played On” and “Ellen,” to 2000s groundbreakers like “Will and Grace” and “Angels in America” and 2010s champs like “The Normal Heart” and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” But Best Comedy Series doesn’t have quite as many queer characters on the forefront this year.

A nomination for “Now Apocalypse” would change that to say the least. While there are top Emmy contenders for Best Drama Series (“Killing Eve” and “Pose“) and Best Limited Series (“A Very English Scandal“) with queer leading roles, the highest ranked comedy in our odds with a gay lead is “Schitt’s Creek,” a dark horse in the category with 68/1 odds. But “Apocalypse” is so unabashedly queer...

Ian McKellen celebrates his 80th birthday on May 25, 2019. The Oscar-nominated thespian has excelled at everything from Shakespeare to sci-fi on both the stage and screen. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1939 in Lancashire, England, UK, McKellen first came to prominence on the stage, appearing in a number of classic plays from the likes of Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare (including an acclaimed production of “Richard III” that he brought to the screen in 1995). His performance as Salieri in the 1981 production of “Amadeus” brought him a Tony award as Best Actor in a Play.

See‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ voted Best Picture of 2000s

McKellen appeared in films sporadically throughout this period, earning his first starring role in “Priest of Love” in 1981. He became increasingly recognizable onscreen throughout the 1990s,...

Toronto — Veteran Toronto director Laurie Lynd taps into the myth-busting 2017 book “Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic” for a documentary feature that reframes the legacy of Quebec flight attendant Gaetan Dugas, a promiscuous gay man who was incorrectly identified as patient zero by investigators from the U.S. Center for Disease Control in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

“Killing Patient Zero,” which had its world premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto, explores how the idea of a patient zero was amplified – and how Dugas was vilified – via the publisher’s strategy for promoting the groundbreaking book “And The Band Played On,” by serializing and sensationalizing its patient-zero chapter.

In Lynd’s film, author Randy Shilts is a key supporting character whose crusade to effect change through his writing had complex repercussions.

In a traditional but lively style, Lynd and editor Trevor Ambrose take viewers from...

Veteran actor Matthew Modine is running for president of SAG-AFTRA as the head of the ticket for the Membership First faction of the performers union.

Modine was first elected as a member of the SAG-aftra national board in 2017. He’s the first candidate to announce for the presidency. Current president Gabrielle Carteris, who won a two-year term in the 2017 election, has not yet announced whether she will seek re-election.

“As a current national and local board member of SAG-aftra, it would be my honor to represent all 160,000 members of the union I have proudly been a member of for nearly four decades,” Modine said in a statement released Monday. “It is my privilege to stand up for our legacy in order to safeguard our future. There comes a time when we must work to ensure that current and future membership will be able to enjoy the basic rights...

The creators of the “Inside Jaws” podcast are turning their attention to Jonathan Demme’s stigma-shattering “Philadelphia” to mark the 25th anniversary of the Tom Hanks-Denzel Washington drama — and raise money to fight HIV/AIDS worldwide.

The 1993 film helped put a human face on the virus at a time when patients suffered horrific discrimination and ignorance. That is still true in much of the world, and through an arrangement with Coca-Cola, 100 percent of donations made by listeners of the podcast will go to support the (Red) campaign to rid the world of AIDS.

Host Mark Ramsey, who created the podcast with audio designer Jeff Schmidt, told TheWrap that he sought and received the blessing of Hanks, Washington, “Philadelphia” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, and Joanne Howard, wife of Demme, who died last year at 73.

Also Read: 'Inside Jaws,' About Steven Spielberg's Rise, Lures Hollywood Interest (Podcast)

“I think...

The television movie category at the Emmys, through the years, has honored such landmark projects as ABC’s “Brian’s Song,” NBC’s “Roe v. Wade,” as well as HBO’s “And the Band Played On,” “Wit” and “The Normal Heart.” It’s probably time that the category be retired.

This year’s category is historically weak. Several of the nominees fall short of the bar of Emmy-worthiness. And it follows two years in which episodes of TV series that snuck their way into the race — PBS’ “Sherlock” in 2016, Netflix’s “Black Mirror” in 2017 — claimed the top prize over insubstantial competition.

It wasn’t always this way. The last time the movie category fell away, it was due to the weakness of an entirely different field; the category merged with limited series at the 2011 Emmys thanks to a dearth of miniseries. But the limited-series form was only just beginning its...

Over his storied career on the small screen, Alan Alda has won six of his 34 Emmys races. This year, with a scene-stealing turn on CBS All Access’ “The Good Fight,” Alda is on track to take home his seventh Emmy. This one, as with his most recent win for “The West Wing” in 2006, would be in Best Drama Guest Actor.

Alda appeared on two episodes of this season of “The Good Fight” — “Day 457” and “Day 471” –as the venerable attorney Solomon Waltzer, tasked with defending a detective who shot and handicapped an African-American police officer during a drug sting. Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and Adrian Boseman (Delroy Lindo), representing the crippled officer, are convinced the case will be an easy win – that is, until Waltzer plants a fake news story implicating the officer in a dogfighting ring. When Waltzer is accused in court of waging such tactics, he becomes determined to...

Lily Tomlin is one of Emmy’s favorite funny ladies. In the last half century, she has racked up a staggering two dozen nominations and has six Emmys Awards lining her mantle. This beloved TV veteran is all but certain to garner her 25th nomination this year for the fourth season of Netflix’s “Grace and Frankie.” Might Tomlin, who was nominated for the first three seasons of “Grace and Frankie,” finally take home lucky number seven?

With reigning Best Comedy Actress champ Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep”) ineligible for Emmy consideration this year, Tomlin is well-positioned in this race. Granted, she faces strong competition from the likes of Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), Allison Janney (“Mom”) and her co-star Jane Fonda, among others.

See Emmys 2018: Keep an eye on ‘Grace and Frankie’ in Best Comedy Series

But she has done stellar work that showcases her versatility as an actress.

Shonda Rhimes, Chuck Lorre and Greg Berlanti are easily the most powerful producers on TV. Yet none of them have ever won a Primetime Emmy.

Ten years ago, that might not have been the case. But Rhimes, Lorre and Berlanti produce populist fare for (mostly) broadcast networks, at a time when those shows are no longer on the Emmy radar.

In 2016, the broadcasters were shut out of the top Emmy categories for the first time in the award’s history. Never before had the top drama, comedy and actor and actress prizes gone exclusively to cable and streaming services.

But last year’s results were the culmination of a trend that began when “The Sopranos” star Edie Falco won the Emmy in 1999 for Outstanding Drama actress. By 2001, HBO had grabbed the first outstanding series prize for a cable series (“Sex and the City”), as well as both top drama acting...

It's the final episode as Manuel has worked his way through all the Lgbt-themed HBO productions.

I began this project because, after watching and recapping Looking here, I became fascinated with the idea that, with that Andrew Haigh show, the cable network had somehow reached peak gay TV even as it also managed to alienate the very viewers it was trying to coax. I wanted to, in a way, put Looking in context by watching everything HBO had produced and aired that had tackled Lgbt issues.

This required a lot of scavenging—despite their shiny HBOGo and HBO Now ventures, a lot of the network’s older and more obscure TV movies and shows remain unattainable. And so I reached back and watched a lot of not so great TV movies from the early 80s, caught up with key “very special episodes” of their most well-known dramas and comedies, and...

Manuel is working his way through all the Lgbt-themed HBO productions.

Last week we played a fun game of Oscar What If… imagining how Roger Spottiswoode’s And the Band Played On might have shifted the supporting actor and actress categories at the 1993 Academy Awards had it been released theatrically. This week we’re jumping ten years ahead and looking at the 2003 Oscar acting races and trying to suss out whether Jane Anderson’s Normal (which we discussed in depth a while back) could have made waves in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories.

Given that it was released the same year as the towering Angels in America it’s not surprising that Anderson’s Normal (based on her own play) went home empty-handed from all the end of year awards handed out despite featuring two dazzling performances that are usually awards-bait gold: Tom Wilkinson plays Roy Applewood...

Walt Martin, who collaborated with director Clint Eastwood on 14 films, including the upcoming American Sniper and Jersey Boys died at 69 on July 24. Martin died from vasculitis at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, CA. Martin received a 2007 Oscar nomination for his work on Eastwood’s World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers. Martin worked on such Eastwood titles as True Crime, Space Cowboys, Blood Work, Mystic River and Oscar best picture winner Million Dollar Baby. In addition to working on such films as And The Band Played On, Charlie’s Angels, and John Huston’s The Dead, Martin also sound mixed on such TV series […]...

The Normal Heart (which airs May 25 on HBO) is the story of a great love. Not just the one between Ned (Mark Ruffalo) and his boyfriend Felix (Matt Bomer), who’s dying of AIDS, or the one that finds both men fighting to keep their friends alive during the early 1980s, before anyone really knew what this so-called “gay cancer” was. It’s the one that starts with the HBO project’s creator, Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story), and his infatuation with something he read back in college.

Murphy was first introduced to Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart...

What makes Ryan Murphy such a frustrating storyteller is that he has very obvious and impressive strengths, which he then seems to go out of his way to obscure with his very obvious weaknesses. He has great passion for socially relevant drama, for instance, but his point tends to get lost in the Adhd style that eventually plagued "Glee," "Nip/Tuck" and everything else he's done in television. ("American Horror Story," his biggest current hit, at least started out with Adhd, so there was no letdown later when things unraveled.) He works well with actors as both a writer and director, giving them meaty material and pulling excellent performances out of them, but then makes various other choices that distract from those performances. That "The Normal Heart" — an adaptation of Larry Kramer's 1985 play about the early days of the AIDS crisis — has finally been turned into a film that...

TNT has ordered a new supernatural drama called Proof. It will debut some time next year with 10 episodes.

The cast will include Jennifer Beals, Matthew Modine, Joe Morton, Callum Blue, Edi Gathegi, Annie Thurman, Sean Gleeson, and Caroline Rose Kaplan.

Here are some additional details:

TNT Greenlights Supernatural Drama "Proof," Starring Jennifer Beals

New Series from Executive Producer Kyra Sedgwick Also Stars Matthew Modine and Joe Morton

TNT has greenlit the supernatural drama Proof, starring Jennifer Beals (The L Word, Flashdance), Matthew Modine (And the Band Played On, Weeds) and Joe Morton (Scandal, Terminator 2: Judgment Day). Also starring in the series are Callum Blue (Dead Like Me, Royal Pains), Edi Gathegi (X-Men: First Class, Justified), Annie Thurman (The Hunger Games), Sean Gleeson (Doctors, Cold Mountain) and newcomer Caroline Rose Kaplan.

TNT has greenlit the supernatural drama Proof, starring Jennifer Beals ("The L Word," Flashdance), Matthew Modine (And the Band Played On, "Weeds") and Joe Morton ("Scandal," Terminator 2: Judgment Day). Also starring in the series are Callum Blue ("Dead Like Me," "Royal Pains"), Edi Gathegi (X-Men: First Class, "Justified"), Annie Thurman (The Hunger Games), Sean Gleeson ("Doctors," Cold Mountain) and newcomer Caroline Rose Kaplan. "Proof" is being executive-produced by Emmy winner Kyra Sedgwick ("The Closer"); Rob Bragin ("Greek," "Murphy Brown"), who wrote the pilot; Tom Jacobson; Jill Littman; and Emmy winner Alex Graves ("The West Wing," "Game of Thrones"), who directed the pilot.

The post TNT Greenlights Supernatural Drama Proof appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

TNT has greenlit the supernatural drama "Proof," starring Jennifer Beals ("The L Word," Flashdance), Matthew Modine (And the Band Played On, "Weeds") and Joe Morton ("Scandal," Terminator 2: Judgment Day). Also starring in the series are Callum Blue ("Dead Like Me," "Royal Pains"), Edi Gathegi (X-Men: First Class, "Justified"), Annie Thurman (The Hunger Games), Sean Gleeson ("Doctors," Cold Mountain) and newcomer Caroline Rose Kaplan.

At the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival there was a rescreening of the film And the Band Played On, a film based on a novel of the same name. The film (and book) goes into detail about the mysterious deaths of gay men during the time right before HIV and AIDS research had started. Starring Alan Alda and Mathew Modine as the film’s main characters, it was made during a time when the two viruses were still new to the public and difficult to understand.

In attendance at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this month for the event were Tom Kalin, David France, and Doron Weber. The trio would join the film’s actor Mathew Modine as well as Ron Nyswaner (known for writing Philidelphia) after the film’s rescreening for a question and answer session discussing the role of science in discovering new cures for certain diseases, at most focus being HIV and AIDS.

Name: Dallas Buyers Club

Release date: Nov. 1, 2013

DVD release date: Feb. 4, 2014

Run time: 1 hour, 57 mins

Box office: Limited opening weekend: $260,865; Wide opening weekend: $2.7 million; Total domestic box office: $24.4 million; Worldwide gross to date: $30.4 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 94 percent

Dallas Buyers Club movie math: (And the Band Played On + No Country for Old Men) x (Blow + Glen or Glenda + The Machinist)

Tweetable description: If Ron Woodruff only had 30 days left to live, you know what he’d do? Start an HIV treatment drug ring and live for seven years. #Nbd

What Chris Nashawaty said: Thanks to McConaughey’s and Leto’s...

It sounds too good to be true. By watching a movie for free, you can raise money for a charity of your choice. But that's the case with "Beyond Right & Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness," a documentary that features victims of conflicts around the world -- including the aftermath of the 1994 genocide of Rwandans in East Africa -- as they balance their desire for forgiveness with their need for justice. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode ("Tomorrow Never Dies," "And The Band Played On") and photographer Lekha Singh, the film screened at The Hamptons International Film Festival in 2012 and was presented at a special screening of the General Assembly at the United Nations. But along with its message of forgiveness, the film is now testing out a new innovative distribution platform, FilmRaise, that could serve as a model for other social impact documentary efforts.The idea of FilmRaise is to raise...

Ryan Murphy (far left) and the cast of HBO’s The Normal Heart

Matt Bomer told us last week how he shed 40 pounds to show the devastation of the AIDS epidemic on his character, Felix Turner, in the upcoming film adaptation of The Normal Heart. And with a cast including out actors Jim Parsons, Joe Mantello and Jonathan Groff as well as marquee names like Julia Roberts, Taylor Kitsch and Mark Ruffalo, there was much to talk regarding the filming of Larry Kramer’s play at last week’s Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour.

Fans of Kramer’s play will undoubtedly want to know how faithful was director Ryan Murphy to the original work? “I think it’s similar to the play and very different,” Murphy offered. “I worked with Larry on the script for, I think, three years, so I believe that we sort of broke it out.

By Mark Pinkert

Contributor

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This is the third article in a three-part series.

Though many Academy Award Best Picture nominees contain—or are predominantly about—sex and relationships, very few have been about sex issues in law and politics. In recent years there has been Milk (2008), the biopic of Harvey Milk, a California politician and gay rights activist, and otherwise not much else. Even in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the AIDS epidemic was a hot button issue, few films of this genre made it to the Best Picture ticket (remember, Philadelphia was snubbed from the category in 1993). Sexual issues topics, though, have been more popular within the documentary medium: there was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), which won for Best Documentary, and which was the first AIDS-related film to win an Oscar, the The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), which also won Best Documentary, and How to Survive a Plague...

An Original Voice

“We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get shown the door when the company had suddenly flatlined after eight years of phenomenal growth, and what we got was scared.

But it’s to the credit of HBO’s execs that whatever anxieties they may have had, they showed no panic or even nervousness in public. Instead, they poured any concerns into energetically and immediately addressing the question of, “What do we do now?” The world we knew had changed and there was no going back to the Gold Rush days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company required a humongous...

When I think of a character being diagnosed with a terminal illness in a movie, especially HIV/AIDS, I think of sorrow. I expect to see the illness take center stage, to spend the rest of the film rooting for the victim to overcome whatever physical and personal obstacles lie ahead, and to weep when he or she finally passes (think Philadelphia, And the Band Played On, Rent, even Precious). Maybe it’s because HIV/AIDS has become such an epidemic within the black community, or because of the way it’s typically portrayed on film. But when I recently screened David is Dying, the second feature film by UK director Stephen Lloyd Jackson, it quickly became clear that this wasn’t going to...

The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival took place between April 17th and April 28th all across New York City theaters. Created in response to the 9/11 Attacks by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2002, the festival has gone on to garner worldwide fame as one of the most celebrated festivals in the world.

The 12th Annual Tribeca Film Festival had over 450,000 attendees to the numerous screenings, panels, events and more all throughout the almost 2 week period. With over 89 feature films and 60 short films from more than 35 countries providing entertainment, the festival housed more than 117,000 people in their panels and screenings.

What proved to be remarkable about this year’s events was the fact that more people took advantage of the festival’s online festival (also known as the Tribeca Online Festival, or Tof), which gave people free screening s of select films and filmmaker panels. There was even an online...

In the time before "The Sopranos," "Sex and the City" and all that followed, HBO's prestige came from its movies and miniseries. In the '80s and '90s, when those formats were still wildly popular for the broadcast networks, HBO managed to distinguish itself with great dramas about social issues (the AIDS epidemic epic "And the Band Played On"), ruthless satire (the Wall Street comedy "Barbarians at the Gate") or even straight-up comedies (the minor league film "Long Gone," which some hardcore baseball fans prefer to "Bull Durham"). Slowly but surely, the rest of television got out of this particular part of...

Today we are talking to an actor who has appeared in over fifty feature films and starred in plays on Broadway and in the West End all about his career thus far, looking ahead to his new role as John Sculley in the forthcoming jOBS, co-starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, directed by Joshua Michael Stewart - the one and only Matthew Modine. In this all-encompassing chat tracing the past to the present, Modine also manages to give us the scoop on his featured role in the final part of Christopher Nolans Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, and shares his candid impressions of working with Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the rest of the starry cast of the sure-to-be blockbuster of the summer. Additionally, Modine illustrates his experiences working with director Robert Altman on screen and stage projects as diverse as Short Cuts and Streamers on film,...

At age 86, veteran screenwriter Arnold Schulman returns to the theater after more than half a century. His adult fairy tale, "Sleeping Ugly," is now running at the Santa Monica Playhouse. It's a romantic comedy about a dentist who is also a werewolf. Set in a multi-media cartoon world, the play is simultaneously a love story, monster flick send-up, and "metaphor for coming out," says Schulman.Schulman admits his successful Hollywood career has kept him fully occupied and away from theater. Consider his roster of credits: "Love with the Proper Stranger," "Goodbye, Columbus," "And the Band Played On."Still, he is no novice to theater either. His comedy "A Hole in the Head" and the musical version "Golden Rainbow" for which he wrote the book, were successfully were mounted on Broadway. But Schulman's 1963 experience with the short-lived tuner "Jennie" pushed him out of the theater. "Jennie" starred Mary Martin, with book.

Contagion; Immortals; The Rum Diary

One of the most likable things about the prolific Steven Soderbergh is just how eager he is to embrace (and subvert) the traditions of genre cinema. While other Cannes-favourite "auteur" directors may claim flatulently that their work is too personal for conventional labels (ha!), Soderbergh flits nimbly from big-budget crime caper to hand-held docudrama (the Oceans franchise, Full Frontal), from head-cracking action to arty angst (sex, lies, and videotape), from conspiracy thriller to political biopic (Michael Clayton, Che) and from sci-fi to sexposé (Solaris, The Girlfriend Experience) with ease.

His current cinema release, Haywire, casts mixed martial arts star Gina Carano as a high-kicking secret agent, lending a big-screen sheen to the straight-to-video genre of which Cynthia Rothrock was once queen bee. Meanwhile his viral outbreak movie Contagion (2011, Warner, 12) hits the DVD shelves, taking its lead from such time-honoured disaster epics as Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno,...

Following Lars von Trier's Melancholia (planet Earth destroyed by a giant meteor), the Scottish Perfect Sense (strange virus robs everybody of their senses one by one, starting with taste) and the British thriller Retreat (military guinea pig carrying incurable plague descends on remote island), Contagion is the fourth movie this month with an end-of-the-world scenario, all reflecting no doubt our current anxieties.

Here a high-flying business woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from abroad to her husband and family in Minneapolis carrying a lethal virus picked up in China from a chef who'd been cutting up a pig that had been in contact with suspicious-looking bats. On the way home she drops in on her lover in Chicago, thus infecting the Second City, and rapidly a pandemic is spreading around the world. The Centre for Disease Control (Cdc) in Atlanta is on the case, with Us homeland security joining in, suspecting...

Quarantine 2: Terminal, recently released on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, is the latest zombie film to inspire author and critic Kim Newman and is his motivation for compiling this hilarious Top 10. So take it away Mr Newman…

After my mammoth session with [Rec], [Rec]2, Quarantine and Quarantine 2: Terminal, I continued my survey of killer germ movies with both versions of The Crazies, … 28 days later and … 28 weeks later, the 1970s and 2000s series of Survivors, The Stand, The Cassandra Crossing, Outbreak, And the Band Played On, The Andromeda Strain, The Satan Bug, Carriers, Plague, Warning Sign, I Am Legend, and every single Sars, bird flu and pandemic TV movie ever made. This is what I have gleaned…

- Kim Newman

It’s always someone’s fault: some unethical businessman smuggling in an exotic pet … some researcher who thinks that genesplicing ebola and the common cold into one new super-infectious organism...

In 1987, a book carrying the title _And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic_ reached retail stores. Few of the people involved in the book’s acquisition, production and marketing harbored hope that it would sell briskly. Not all that many potential readers even understood the meaning of the AIDS acronym. The full name of the disease did not roll off the tongue, as the cliché goes. Go ahead, say it three times fast: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Those who did understand the workings of the newly identified virus knew that the subject matter was depressing, dark and vaguely dirty—pretty much unmentionable in polite society, where reading salons exist.