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One of the most successful actors and directors that the world has ever witnessed, Clint Eastwood remains a pop-culture icon even at the age of 94. Bursting onto the scene with his ice-cool breakout turn in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, Eastwood would go on to cement his status as cinema's quintessential badass with his bow as anti-hero cop Harry Callahan in the wildly popular Dirty Harry movie series. Complementing his best movie character roles with a string of acclaimed directorial efforts over the years, the American also boasts four Academy Award wins from 11 nominations.

A Western icon, many of Eastwood's best movies take place within the genre he made his name in. However, the actor has also demonstrated a penchant for starring in or directing a number of prominent war movies throughout his career. Typically bringing his accomplished style of film making to the table with great effect, Eastwood's performances,...

Few figures in Hollywood can match Clint Eastwood's towering legacy as an actor and director with nearly 70 years in the industry. From his 1955 debut in Revenge of the Creature to 73 different acting roles and 45 directorial efforts, Eastwood transformed from Sergio Leone's stoic Western hero to the iconic Dirty Harry before emerging as one of cinema's most accomplished filmmakers. His instantly recognizable delivery of lines like "Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" helped cement his status as a cultural icon. But his versatility allowed him to inhabit roles across every conceivable genre.

Behind the camera, Eastwood developed a distinctive minimalist style marked by patient film noir-inspired cinematography and understated dramatic tension. This approach, favoring action over dialogue and subtle character development over exposition, has earned him numerous accolades, including Academy Awards for Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, and Oscars nominations for Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, and American Sniper.

Tina Xavie has departed Cmg Worldwide and launched her own agency specializing in brand and icon management.

Based in Beverly Hills, the Xavia Agency’s roster of clients already includes the estates of musician Jerry Garcia, Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter and professional wrestler Ric Flair. Xavie counts more than a decade of experience in striking multi-million deals with Hollywood studios, ad agencies, production companies and global brands.

“I’m thrilled to bring a new vision to the industry,” said Xavie, whose title is founder and president. “Our approach ensures that we don’t just meet expectations — we exceed them.”

Allan Glaser, late husband of Tab Hunter, added, “Tina’s expertise and dedication make her the only person I trust to preserve Tab’s legacy.”

She has secured lucrative Nil (name, likeness and image) rights for historical figures featured in movies, TV shows and other media projects, including the Apollo 11...

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

In October 2024, we’re doing the Midnight Movie Monster Mash with films that challenge our understanding of evil characters and creatures just in time for Halloween.

First, read the spoiler-free Bait: a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film. Then, come back for the Bite: a breakdown of all the spoiler-y bits you’d want to unpack when exiting a theater.

The Bait: Kaiju Cain and Abel Take Tokyo

As a horror and sci-fi subgenre, Kaiju was built on the promise of towering monsters threatening to squish entire cities on a whim. From North Korea’s bonkers “Pulgasari” (1995) to the global phenomenon that is Godzilla and the MonsterVerse, you’d be hard-pressed to find a mega-monster flick that doesn’t classify as midnight in some way.

But even...

Cinema isn’t a beauty contest, but if it were, Alain Delon surely would have won the title of the 1960s’ most handsome actor.

That’s a subjective call, of course, and as such, Delon is the kind of figure about whom writers tend to fall back on the word “arguably” — as in, “arguably the most handsome” — which is kind of a cop-out, as it leaves the argument to somebody else. When it comes to Delon, plenty have made the case. I loved Anthony Lane’s longform analysis of Delon’s allure in The New Yorker earlier this year. And none other than Jane Fonda, who co-starred with Delon in 1964’s “Joy House,” described him as “the most beautiful human being.”

The French star, who died Sunday, made more than 100 movies in a career that spanned 50 years, but for that one transformative decade in film history — beginning with the Patricia Highsmith...

John Waters’s Cry-Baby is the ideal companion piece to the filmmaker’s 1988 hit Hairspray. That film takes place in the early ’60s, against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, and deals in a lighthearted fashion with thorny issues of racial segregation, while Cry-Baby uses its mid-’50s setting to poke fun at class conflict in staid Eisenhower-era Baltimore. And both films are perfectly realized period pieces awash with the music of their respective eras: Hairspray focusing on soul and R&b, Cry-Baby packed with catchy rockabilly and doowop numbers.

Cry-Baby focuses on Wade Walker (Johnny Depp), the leader of a redoubtable gang of “drapes,” a Baltimorean spin on the greasers of the time. Events begin to echo Romeo and Juliet once Cry-Baby, who’s known for driving girls crazy for the way he’s able to shed a single tear, makes a play for Allison (Amy Locane), the...

Hollywood has always been a land of glitz, glamour, and larger-than-life personalities. But behind the dazzling smiles and carefully crafted images, many stars have harbored secrets, especially when it came to their love lives.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho

In a bygone era where societal norms and career pressures dictated who could love and be loved openly, some chose to live their most intimate relationships in the shadows. The world witnessed a myriad of clandestine love stories, where actors, musicians, and other luminaries grappled with the challenge of keeping their romantic lives away from the limelight.

SUGGESTEDActors Whose Hollywood Career Was Affected By Playing Villains The Tragic Tale of Anthony Perkins: A Love Forbidden

One poignant example of the struggles celebrities faced is the tragic story of Anthony Perkins, renowned for his iconic portrayal of Norman Bates in Psycho. Perkins, married to actor Berry Berenson,...

Henry Willson’s behavior was protected by other powerful players in the entertainment industry who depended on him for a steady stream of fresh, young talent.

In episode 3 of “Variety Confidential,” host Tracy Pattin and co-host Matt Donnelly, Variety’s senior entertainment and media writer, unearth the story of Willson, an aggressive, midcentury Hollywood talent agent and manager who succeeded in both spotting and taking advantage of young actors within whom he saw potential for fame.

Willson, a closeted gay man, would lure dozens of handsome young men, or “beefcakes” as they would come to be known, to his Los Angeles home after wining and dining them and promising fame. “He seems to have insinuated himself into their lives,” Pattin explains. “He became their friend, the parent, the protector, and in many cases, their lover.”

Willson prioritized on-screen sex appeal over acting ability, which was key to landing roles for...

Just over 30 years ago, director Mark Rappaport in his playful deconstructionist essay Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, cleverly mined the queer subtext in the midcentury Hollywood superstar’s screen work to speculate on his inner conflict as a gay public figure confined to the closet. Stephen Kijak’s more conventional, though also more heartfelt docu-portrait, Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, takes a similarly cheeky approach to sniffing out coded behavior in a staggering array of clips that find just as much pathos as amusement.

Contextualizing Hudson’s regimented stardom against the relative freedom with which he lived his sexuality within a trusted circle, the HBO film paints him less as a victim of repressive times — though he certainly was that — than as a savvy product of the studio system who learned quickly how to play the game without losing his sense of self.

The tragic conclusion of his life...

During his lifetime, Rock Hudson was a model for American masculinity. That changed after his death, when the strapping, straight-acting (but occasionally sensitive) hunk from Winnetka became the poster boy for Hollywood homophobia: a closeted star who’d been forced to play a role his entire career that wasn’t true to himself, on screen and off. “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” treats that compromise as a tragedy, leaning on the fact Hudson died of AIDS to underscore the injustice, but Stephen Kijak’s documentary does him a disservice, reducing Hudson’s career — in exactly the way he went so far out of his way to avoid — to the dimension of his sexuality.

Built around interviews with a handful of former lovers and friends, Kijak spills private details from Hudson’s personal life, ranging from whom he shagged to how he arranged such trysts in the first place. A...

Quentin Tarantino reveals the fate of one Once Upon a Time in Hollywood character three years after the movie’s release. Set in 1969, Tarantino’s ninth film (by his counting) served as the director’s love-letter to the Los Angeles of his youth, but also took time to pay homage to an era of Hollywood that stood poised between the end of the old-time studio system and the beginning of the more dynamic period that came to be known as New Hollywood. Central to Tarantino’s depiction of 1969 Hollywood was Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, a B-grade actor forced to take on TV roles, who in the course of the film battles with his own self-doubt as a performer, but winds up an unlikely hero in the movie’s outrageously violent finale.

Now three years after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood introduced Dalton and his hilarious fake filmography, Tarantino...

Austrian actor Helmut Berger, the groundbreaking star of European cinematic masterpieces such as Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” and Vittorio De Sica’s “Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” has died at the age of 78. Berger died at home in Austria from natural causes.

In one of European cinema’s most storied and creative periods, the 60s and 70s, Berger boldly established his place in the pantheon of Continental stars via a handful of films directed by Visconti, his one-time romantic partner. “The Damned,” “Ludwig” and “Conversation Piece” were all crafted with standout roles for Berger and the films were hugely successful both at the arthouse box office and with critics and awards groups.

“The Damned”

Berger was nominated for a Golden Globe for “The Damned,” which was also nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar in 1970. No less an authority than the late German filmmaking maestro Rainer Werner Fassbinder called it “perhaps the greatest film,...

Helmut Berger, the Austrian actor who became an international star through films by directors Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Massimo Dallamano, died today in his home city of Salzburg. He was 78.

His death was announced by his agency, Helmet Werner Management.

“Helmut Berger was one of the greatest and most talented actors European cinema had ever seen,” the agency said in a statement. “His mentor, the Italian star director Luchino Visconti, recognized this talent immediately. With the films The Damned, Violence and Passion and Ludwig II he created an eternal monument to Helmut Berger.

The statement continued, “”No other actor after him embodied the Bavarian fairy tale king as expressively as the native of Bad Ischl [Austria], whose portrayal of Ludwig II is internationally recognized as a masterpiece.”

In addition to the Visconti films, Berger gave memorable performances in De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Dallamano’s Dorian Gray,...

He spoke in a raspy monotone that was at once commanding, yet menacing. Howard Strickling officially was the public relations boss of MGM during its heyday, but his real responsibility, he would explain, was protection more than publicity.

Strickling’s mission was to nurture the roster of stars under studio contract. If he were around today he might even have a few things to say to Brad Pitt or George Clooney.

He’d likely be wary, for example, about Pitt’s decision to play silent star John Gilbert in the forthcoming period movie Babylon. Gilbert’s career ended abruptly in the 1920s due to his stormy personal relationships with other stars, so Strickling would counsel Pitt to avoid references to his litigation with ex-wife Angelina Jolie.

Gilbert experienced well-publicized conflicts with his volatile co-star and fiancée Greta Garbo. Louis B. Mayer opposed the wedding and, in one lethal moment, Gilbert...

Click here to read the full article.

Michael Callan, the actor and dancer who portrayed Riff in the original Broadway production of West Side Story before starring in such films as Gidget Goes Hawaiian, The Interns and Cat Ballou, has died. He was 86.

Callan died Monday night of pneumonia at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his daughter Rebecca Goodman told The Hollywood Reporter.

A contract player at Columbia Pictures, Callan made about a dozen movies at the studio, starting with They Came to Cordura (1959), a Western starring Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth, Van Heflin and Tab Hunter.

On the 1966-67 NBC comedy Occasional Wife, Callan starred as a confirmed bachelor who sets up a woman (Patricia Harty) in an upstairs apartment so she can pose as his wife in order to help him advance at the baby food company where he works. (His boss believes...

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Venetia Stevenson, a model, actress and daughter of Hollywood luminaries who appeared in films including Darby’s Rangers, Island of Lost Women and Horror Hotel after being labeled “the most photogenic girl in the world,” has died. She was 84.

Stevenson died Monday at a health care facility in Atlanta after a battle with Parkinson’s disease, her brother, actor and photographer Jeffrey Byron, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stevenson’s parents were Robert Stevenson, the Oscar-nominated director of Mary Poppins who earlier helmed King Solomon’s Mines and Jane Eyre, and her mother was Anna Lee, who starred in How Green Was My Valley and portrayed the matriarch Lila Quartermaine for a quarter-century on General Hospital.

The screen siren was married to actor Russ Tamblyn from Valentine’s Day 1956 until their divorce in April 1957 and to Don Everly of The Everly Brothers from 1962-...

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Don Graham, the music promotion pioneer who worked at Warner Bros. Records, A&m Records and Blue Thumb Records with the likes of Edd “Kookie” Byrnes and Connie Stevens, The Everly Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner, has died. He was 87.

Graham died Thursday in Los Angeles of stomach cancer, his family announced.

In 1958, Graham learned that Warner Bros. was about to start a record label and soon became head of its San Francisco operations. Under his leadership, Warner Bros. Records signed actors Edd “Kookie” Byrnes, Connie Stevens and Tab Hunter, plus The Everly Brothers and Peter, Paul & Mary.

One of Warner Bros.’ first records to be successful was “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb” by Kookie and Stevens, based on Byrnes’ popular character on the ABC show 77 Sunset Strip. When top San Francisco radio station Kya would not add the song to its playlist,...

Alfred Sole, the prolific television production designer of Veronica Mars, Castle and MacGyver who had achieved cult-horror status with his 1976 film Alice, Sweet Alice featuring a 10-year-old Brooke Shields in a supporting role, died Feb. 14 at his home in Salt Lake City. He was 78.

His death was announced in a Facebook post by his cousin, filmmaker Dante Tomaselli. A cause of death was not specified.

Sole had already written and directed the 1972 sexually explicit, low-budget film Deep Sleep when several years later – and after the first film had been pulled from theaters on charges of obscenity – he turned to the horror genre. Originally titled Communion, Sole’s second movie premiered at the Chicago Film Festival in 1976 and was released by Allied Artists the following year as Alice, Sweet Alice, a name change disliked by Sole.

Inspired in part by Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 moody thriller Don’t Look Now, Sole’s Alice,...

When Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard premiered in 1993, it became a major hit. But few people then, or even now, are aware of a much earlier attempt to bring the classic film to the stage—by Gloria Swanson herself.

Boulevard! A Hollywood Story, directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, explores how Swanson, five years after her star turn as Norma Desmond in the 1950 Billy Wilder drama, threw herself into the adaptation project with a pair of unknowns. Her collaborators: handsome young composer Dickson Hughes and even more handsome young lyricist Richard Stapley.

“[Hughes and Stapley] were creative partners and also life partners,” Schwarz noted Tuesday night at the world premiere of his documentary at the Outfest film festival. The event took place—where else?—on Sunset Boulevard, at the DGA theater in West Hollywood.

The tale takes as many twists and turns as the celebrated road through Los Angeles. Swanson sought...

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By Todd Garbarini

Film director Richard Rush, perhaps best known for his unorthodox and original 1980 film The Stunt Man, passed away in Los Angeles, CA on Thursday, April 8, 2021 just one week shy of what would have been his 92nd birthday following years of health issues. He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Claude (née Claude Cuveraux); his son, Anthony; and his grandson, Shayne.

Mr. Rush was born on Monday, April 15, 1929 in New York City and broke into the film industry through the UCLA film program and later worked for producer and director Roger Corman as the co-writer and director of Too Soon to Love (1960), alternatively titled High School Honeymoon, about high school sweethearts who go all the way and the girl ends up pregnant. This was heady subject matter for the time and Jack Nicholson has a small role in the film.

A musical that charms even audiences that don’t like musicals, this adaptation of a big 1955 Broadway hit is noted for capturing much of the original’s power and brilliance — more legendary stage performances should be filmed like this, immortalizing theater history that otherwise disappears into the ether. Gwen Verdon, Ray Walston, Russ Brown and star replacement Tab Hunter shine, yet ‘unknown’ Broadway talent Shannon Bolin and Robert Shafer earn just as much applause. The Verdon-Bob Fosse creative hookup is at its strongest here, complete with a show-stopper of a dance duo. Come to think of it, almost every song in this thing stops the show, like one of Joe Hardy’s home runs: Wow!

Damn Yankees

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1958 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 111 min. / Street Date March 16, 2021 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Tab Hunter, Gwen Verdon, Ray Walston, Russ Brown, Shannon Bolin, Nathaniel Frey, James Komack, Rae Allen,...

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By Doug Oswald

An all star cast features in the adaptation of Leon Uris’ “Battle Cry,” available on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive Collection. The granddaddy of contemporary WWII melodramas like “The Winds of War” and “Band of Brothers,” “Battle Cry” was one of the first big dramatic war stories which followed multiple characters through boot camp, romance, heartbreak, the battlefield, death and homecoming. One of my favorite movies in this genre is Otto Preminger’s “In Harms Way” from 1965 which teamed John Wayne and Kirk Douglas. “Battle Cry” was first a best selling novel released in 1953 and quickly adapted to the big screen. Some people criticize these types of military themed melodramas as being light on action and heavy on romance, but there’s certainly a place for both.

“Battle Cry” begins with the narrator setting the stage. It’s...

Actor John Saxon, who starred in three “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies for the late Wes Craven, died Saturday of pneumonia in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, his wife, Gloria, told The Hollywood Reporter. Saxon was 83.

Saxon is also known for play the role of the degenerate gambler, Roper, in the 1973 Bruce Lee classic “Enter the Dragon” for Warner Bros. The film centered on a martial arts tournament that took place on an island owned by the villainous Mr. Han.

Saxon was discovered by talent agent Henry Willson, who also discovered and launched the careers of Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, and was portrayed by Jim Parsons in the Netflix miniseries “Hollywood.” Saxon’s breakout performance was as a disturbed high school football star in 1956’s “The Unguarded Moment” and is billed in the film’s credits as “the exciting new personality John Saxon.”

Also Read: Bruce Lee 2020? 'Be Water' Doc Director Imagines...

If anyone has the talent to pull off playing Paul Lynde, the campy queer icon beloved for “Bewitched” and “Hollywood Squares,” it’s Billy Eichner, one of the most prominent out gay comedians in the business. Eichner has just been tapped to star as Lynde in “Man in the Box,” a biopic based on the actor’s life on the screen. While Lynde was never officially “out,” his sexuality was well-known in front of and behind the camera throughout a run on television beginning in the ’50s up until his death in 1982.

The project was first reported by Deadline, to whom Eichner gave a wide-ranging interview about the struggles for out and closeted gay actors in Hollywood, and how he hopes to de-stigmatize major roles for queer stars with the Lynde film.

“There’s some overlap, between Paul and I, in that we both had our breakthrough in the industry,...

Exclusive: Actor-comedian Billy Eichner and producer Tom McNulty are developing Man in the Box, a biopic based on the life of groundbreaking TV icon Paul Lynde. Eichner plans to star. They’ve optioned a script by Edwin Cannistraci, and Eichner and McNulty are currently meeting with creatives to round out the rest of the production team.

After his breakout turn in Bye Bye Birdie, Lynde became a big TV star with his guest turns as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, and in his role on the long-running game show Hollywood Squares. While Lynde was never publicly “out,” he never lied about his sexuality either, as most famous gay actors of that era did. His unique comic persona often and overtly nodded to his “barely-closeted” lifestyle in a way that still feels groundbreaking for his time. But he was not on the same lists for roles as straight actors. One of the...

” I have just received a dispatch that Santa Anna has captured San Antonio. Colonel Travis, with less than 200 men, has withdrawn across the river to the Alamo to prepare for its defense. At the moment, that is the only military force between the Mexican army and the Sabine River… and those men need help!”

Two lavishly produced Mexican war epics, The Man From The Alamo and They Came To Cordura make their high-definition debut in this star-studded double feature spotlighting the talents of Glenn Ford, Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth, Julia Adams and many more!

The Man From The Alamo (1953) stars Glenn Ford as John Stroud, a heroic survivor of the brutal battle at The Alamo who is branded a coward for fleeing to warn the local townsfolk of the approaching Mexican armies. He sets out to clear his name and avenge those who killed his wife and child.

Directed by...

Jim Parsons really knows how to play lecherous and repugnant.

Just take a look at his work as Henry Willson in “Hollywood,” a new Netflix drama from Ryan Murphy. Wilson, a ruthless powerbroker whose clients included Rock Hudson, Lana Turner, Robert Wagner and Tab Hunter, was a sexual predator who preyed on young men trying to make it in show business.

Despite the makeup and fake teeth, hair and eyes, Parsons is far from physically unrecognizable in the role. Still, the actor says he had never felt such “freedom” in front of the camera while portraying Wilson.

“I had a friend watch it. She wrote me and said — and I thought this was very well put — ‘It’s not that it doesn’t look like you. It’s not like anybody would notice that and say, ‘Who the hell is that?’ It’s like you were shot through a spider web covered creepy filter,...

Great 3-D thrills — Hollywood was working to perfect 3-D movies just as the craze died out. An impeccable Blu-ray 3-D restoration, the glory of young Rock Hudson and some of the best Utah scenery in depth makes this a very enjoyable disc. Director Douglas Sirk was itching to do a western, and the swiftly rising star Rock Hudson wanted to work for him again, even though it meant playing another Indian role. Were these men that desperate to get out of Hollywood for a month? At least they avoided filming in nuclear test sites…

Taza, Son of Cochise

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 2.00:1 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date May 26, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Gregg Palmer, Rex Reason, Morris Ankrum, Eugene Iglesias, Richard H. Cutting, Ian MacDonald, Robert Burton, Joe Sawyer, Lance Fuller, Charles Horvath, Jeff Chandler, William Leslie, Barbara Burck, most of Utah.

Cinematography:...

This article contains Hollywood spoilers. You can find our spoiler-free review here.

It’s a beautiful fantasy. On Oscar night 1948, the same evening that in real-life Walt Disney’s troubling Song of the South received an honorary Oscar for James Baskett’s performance, Rock Hudson came out of the closet in front of the entire world. Standing on the red carpet with his hand in Archie Coleman’s, a black man who was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, Rock announces his love to the world and says he is not afraid. But like many sparkling things in Ryan Murphy shows, it’s still only a fantasy. In real life, there was no Archie Coleman, no Meg to catapult Rock Hudson’s career into liberal advocacy, and no coming out of the closet.

In recent years, Rock Hudson is likely most remembered, whether he would’ve liked it or not,...

In Ryan Murphy's Hollywood, Jim Parsons brings the character of prominent agent Henry Willson to life, but how much of Hollywood's depiction is actually true? A good amount of it, actually, if we take a look back at the real Willson's life as an agent to the stars - namely Rock Hudson.

The fictionalized Willson is a brash, closeted gay man who seemingly preys on inexperienced actors. He discovers Hudson - when he's still Roy Fitzgerald - and changes his name, his teeth, and his appearance to groom him to be a mainstay in Hollywood. He also sleeps with him, knowing Hudson is also in the closet. In the show, though, Willson loses control of Hudson when the actor decides to go public with his screenwriter boyfriend. After treating his client like trash and pushing him away, he comes groveling back a year later saying he's a changed man...

This episode includes Hollywood spoilers. You can find our easter egg guide for the first episode here.

Ah, the episode of Hollywood introduces us to Anna May Wong and the 1940s studio caste system. There’s a lot to unpack in this hour, which may give you nightmares about how a studio cafeteria is apparently not that different from a high school… except, you know, with racism.

Hollywood Episode 2

-When Ernie bails Jack out of prison, Jack laments he cannot have a record. “Yeah you can,” Ernie answers, “Ever heard of Frank Sinatra?” Ol’ Blue Eyes was arrested in 1938 in New Jersey after being charged by an ex-girlfriend with “adultery and seduction.” That is to say, he could be and was charged back then with promising marriage and then ghosting her the morning after.

-We then hear Johnny Mercer and Paul Eston’s rendition of “Button Up Your Overcoat.”

-Avis...

A new year, a new month. That means a lot of fun new stuff is coming to Disney+ starting New Year's Day. There are some classic movies, a few new ones, and a whole bunch of anticipated TV shows that will get Disney fans extremely excited as they kick off 2020 with plenty of streaming options at their fingertips.

The streaming juggernaut that is Disney+ rocked the cordless world towards the end of 2020. Debuting on November 12, 2019, the nascent streaming service quickly grabbed a large part of the digital marketplace (10 million subscribers in one day - if the numbers are to be believed), and it shows no signs of slowing down. With a library as vast and identifiable as Disney's is, it should surprise nobody that they launched and were immediately a threat to another red and black behemoth known as Netflix.&#160

Off the Marvel and Star Wars properties alone, Disney+ probably...

Stars: Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey, David Samson, Mary Garlington, Ken King | Written and Directed by John Waters

After his prolific 1970s, enfant terrible John Waters directed only two films in the 1980s, at each end of the decade. They were also his two most mainstream and – relatively speaking – palatable works. One was 1988’s Hairspray, and the other was Polyester, made in 1981.

Waters’ muse Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a middle-aged housewife who’s married to a wealthy porn cinema owner, Elmer (David Samson). They have two teenage kids: the uncontrollable and self-destructive Lu-lu (Mary Garlington), and Dexter (Ken King), whose frustrated foot fetish leads him to a stint in prison after a rampage as the “Baltimore Foot Stomper”.

Like most Waters flicks, there’s no real plot, just a melting pot of outrageous characters doing hideous things to each other. Francine is the glue that holds the tenable parts of the family together.

For his first studio picture, filth maestro John Waters took advantage of his biggest budget yet to allow his muse Divine to sink his teeth into a role unlike any he had played before: Baltimore housewife Francine Fishpaw.

Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine turns to the bottle as her life falls apart—until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow (vintage heartthrob Tab Hunter).

Enhanced with Odorama technolog...

Elvis fans laud this high-end drama, an attempt by the superstar to lock into a mainstream acting career. Presley has fine dramatic support, especially from his three leading ladies, but the requirement that an Elvis movie be all things to all people — especially marketers — really takes its toll. It’s a soap where almost nothing is believable, except to true believers for whom Presley can do no wrong.

Wild in the Country

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1961 / Color / 2:35 widescreen 1:37 academy / 114 min. / Street Date August 20, 2019 / Available from Twilight Time Movies / 29.95

Starring: Elvis Presley, Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, Millie Perkins, Rafer Johnson, John Ireland, Gary Lockwood, William Mims, Raymond Greenleaf, Christina Crawford, Pat Buttram, Doreen Lang, Alan Napier, Jason Robards Sr..

Cinematography: William C. Mellor

Editor : Dorothy Spencer

Original Music: Kenyon Hopkins

Written by Clifford Odets from a novel by J. R. Salamanca

Produced by Jerry Wald

Directed by Philip Dunne...

Harold Prince, the Broadway icon who produced or directed some of the 20th century’s most famous musicals West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Damn Yankees, Cabaret, Evita and The Phantom of the Opera, died today in Reykjavik, Iceland, after a brief illness. He was 91.

If you’ve ever hummed — or belted out — a showtune from the past half-century, there’s a good chance “Hal” Prince was involved in the original production of its musical. Winner of 21 Tony Awards — the second-most of anyone after Roger S. Berlind — he also produced or directed such iconic Main Stem musicals as The Pajama Game, Candide, A Little Night Music, Show Boat, Company, Fiorello! and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Eight shows he produced won the Tony for Best Musical — ranging from The Pajama Game (1955) to Candide (1974). He also won the Best Direction of a Musical for eight shows including Show Boat,...

Rick Dalton, the actor played by Leonardo DiCaprio in “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” does not exist. But he feels like he could, because director Quentin Tarantino has mapped out an entire filmography for Dalton that plausibly places him within a changing Hollywood in 1969.

The fake movie scenes and posters Tarantino has created for Dalton are a portrait of a certain type of actor in the ’60s: a handsome, ruggedly masculine type who would soon be replaced as the default Hollywood leading man by a more androgynous aesthetic inspired by the emerging counterculture. Tarantino has said on several occasions that Rick Dalton’s screen persona and his career trajectory are an amalgam of guys like Steve McQueen, George Maharis, Vince Edwards, Edd Byrnes, Ty Hardin and more. And if you have forgotten who some of those actors are, that’s essentially Tarantino’s point.

“What he’s dealing with...

To get everyone in the mood for his ninth film, director and cult film guru Quentin Tarantino has something special in mind for the Sony Movie Channel. From the 5th of August Tarantino’s ‘Swinging Sixties-a-Movie Marathon’ will showcase nine films which perfectly set the tone for Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood, which comes out in cinemas on the 14th of August.

Each of these films has been specially curated, having influenced the director’s new film, and will play individually or as double features. As always with the director, there are some surprises here. In amongst ’60s classics Easy Rider and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice are secret agent specials, violent Westerns and a little bit of love in all its complicated forms. In short – it’s a masterclass in movie mood – just the thing to dive into before you take a trip back to the...

“We can have a real ’60s summer here, setting up for it,” said Quentin Tarantino as he settled in for a nearly three-hour conversation about his July programming at his New Beverly Cinema, a survey of the 1960s films that inspired his forthcoming “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The movie is Tarantino’s love letter to the filmmaking era that made him fall in love with cinema as a kid. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie, and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year to considerable acclaim. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” opens in theaters on July 26.

“I did that ’60s kinda thing, but now I wanted to get more into the interior of the Hollywood that this movie is discussing,” Tarantino told Pure Cinema Podcast hosts Elric Kane and Brian Saur. Setting up “Hollywood,” he explains that DiCaprio plays an actor named Rick Dalton,...

It’s Tab Hunter as you’ve never seen him before! Antonio Margheriti’s limp but colorful Arabian Nights adventure romance is a real head-scratcher — it’s an entirely generic kiddie show, filmed on nice locations, and devoid of style or flash. Some of the sub-Bava effects are clever, but the only ‘magic’ element is the decision to re-voice Tab with an off-the-shelf dubbing artist… it’s as if Hunter has been sucked into a ‘scimitar & sandal’ episode of The Twilight Zone.

The Golden Arrow

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 91 min. / Street Date May 28, 2019 / L’arciere delle mille e una notte / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Tab Hunter, Rossana Podestà, Umberto Melnati, Mario Feliciani, Dominique Boschero, Renato Baldini, Giustino Durano, Franco Scandurra, Gloria Milland.

Cinematography: G´bor Pogány

Film Editor: Mario Serandrei

Art Direction: Flavio Mogherini

Original Music: Mario Nascimbene

Written by Giorgio Arlorio, Augusto Frassinetti, Giorgio Prosperi,...

John Waters is set to receive the Pardo d’onore Manor lifetime achievement award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, the first under new artistic director Lili Hinstin. The cult U.S. filmmaker will receive the festival’s highest distinction in Locarno’s Piazza Grande on Aug. 16.

Hinstin said Waters’ “playful” work, which was “full of boldness and joy,” offered “a symbol of freedom far removed from the political correctness ruling today.”

“For my first edition, offering John Waters the highest distinction of the festival is a perfect manifesto,” said Hinstin. “His political and aesthetic commitment is vital in these times, and I am extremely happy and honored to share his incredible work with the audience of Locarno.”

Waters’ appearance in the Piazza Grande will be followed by a ‘Crazy Midnight’ screening – the festival’s new strand introduced to the program this year – of his 2000 film “Cecil B. DeMented.

For Sunday’s Oscars 2019 ceremony, producers had a difficult decision of which film industry people would make the cut and who would be left out of the “In Memoriam.” For the segment, Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic performed music by Oscar winner John Williams.

Over 100 Academy members or film industry veterans died in the past 12 months. Visit our own Gold Derby memoriam galleries for the year of 2018 and the newly-started gallery for 2019.

SEEDirector Stanley Donen, dead at 94, was light on his feet and a movie musical heavyweight

Stanley Donen would have certainly been included, but he died on the weekend after the segment had been finalized (look for him on the 2020 show). Here is list of some of the people included in the Memoriam tribute for the ceremony (Academy members are indicated with ** by their names):

Susan Anspach (actor)

Bernardo Bertolucci (director)

Yvonne Blake (costume designer)**

Paul Bloch...

While Academy Awards producers have strived for a much shorter ceremony this year, the annual “In Memoriam” segment will definitely remain. In fact this moment on Sunday’s 2019 event should be extra classy since Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic will be performing as part of the tribute.

Over 100 Academy members or film industry veterans died in the past 12 months. But which ones will be featured in the short segment? There are generally outcries each year from family members upset about people being left out. Visit our own Gold Derby memoriam galleries for the year of 2018 and the newly-started gallery for 2019.

Virtually certain to be part of the montage are Oscar-winning directors Bernardo Bertolucci and Milos Forman, Oscar-nominated actors Carol Channing, Albert Finney and Burt Reynolds, director and actress Penny Marshall, executive producer and entertainment icon Stan Lee and many more.

SEEDana Carvey, Mike Myers, Queen Latifah, Barbra Streisand...

One of the saddest and most important segments of the SAG Awards each year is the In Memoriam segment. For the 2019 event, it turns out to be even sadder for family members of certain long-time members of the Screen Actors Guild. Which actors and actresses were not even featured in this portion of the program on Sunday night? Check out this list below:

Marty Allen (actor)

Charles Aznavour (actor)

Kaye Ballard (actor)

Dushon Monique Brown (actor)

Joseph Campanella (actor)

Roy Clark (actor/singer)

Vic Damone (actor/singer)

Daryl Dragon (host/musician)

Louise Latham (actor)

Robin Leach (host)

Stan Lee (executive/host)

Katherine MacGregor (actor)

Robert Mandan (actor)

Peggy McKay (actor)

Tim O’Connor (actor)

Roger Perry (actor)

Douglas Rain (actor)

Ken Swofford (actor)

Clint Walker (actor)

Nancy Wilson (actor/singer)

Louis Zorich (actor)

SEE2019 SAG Awards: Full winners list in the 6 film and 9 TV categories

For the ceremony hosted by...

Sunday’s telecast of the 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards will feature a special In Memoriam segment devoted to many of the actors and actresses who have died since last year’s ceremony in late January. Sure to be among those saluted include actress and director Penny Marshall, Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Burt Reynolds and Grammy winner Aretha Franklin. Visit our own Gold Derby memoriam galleries for the year of 2018 and the newly-started gallery for 2019.

The 25th annual ceremony will be hosted by past winner Megan Mullally (“Will and Grace”) for TNT and TBS on Sunday, January 27, at 8:00 p.m. Et; 5:00 p.m. Pt. Tom Hanks will be presenting the SAG life achievement award to Alan Alda.

SEE2019 SAG Awards nominations: Full list of Screen Actors Guild Awards nominees

Over 100 people in SAG/AFTRA have passed away in the past 12 months. Which of the following 50 names will also...

Amid the chaos that was 2018, the show business industry lost some major players. There were icons of the big screen (Burt Reynolds) and TV, along with such legends as Marvel hero Stan Lee, sportscaster Keith Jackson and singer Aretha Franklin, to name just a few of the year’s high-profile passings.

Hollywood also lost groundbreaking producers, unforgettable writers, and executives.

Familiar actors including Joseph Campanella, Sondra Locke, Tab Hunter, John Mahoney, Charlotte Rae, Harry Anderson, Jerry Van Dyke, David Ogden Stiers, Verne Troyer and R. Lee Ermey also left us this year.

We also said goodbye to such influential folks including physicist Stephen Hawking, SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg, editor Anne V. Coates, Bambi animator Don Lusk, gossip columnist Liz Smith, Blockbuster founder Wayne Huzienga,...

Every year, the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys must choose which notable performers and creators to memorialize in their In Memoriam segments, and the three organizations will have many talented entertainers to remember at 2019’s ceremonies.

The past year saw the loss of celebrated stars of the big screen, such “Smokey and the Bandit” star Burt Reynolds, who died Sept. 6. Reynolds, who was 82, earned an Oscar nom for “Boogie Nights” and also appeared on television in “Evening Shade.”

Among the other notable movie performers lost this year were “Superman” and “Smallville” actress Margot Kidder, who died May 13; “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” star Sondra Locke, who was also a film director and died Nov. 3; and Susan Anspach, who starred in “Five Easy Pieces” and “Blume in Love” and died April 2.

Several stars known for their work in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s passed away in 2018, including Dorothy Malone, who starred...

With just six weeks left for 2018, Gold Derby celebrates over 40 celebrities and entertainers who died in the past 12 months. Tour our photo gallery above as we feature tributes to 25 losses from this year so far.

Stan Lee, co-creator of many iconic superheroes, died on November 12 at age 95. For Marvel Comics and later many films and TV programs, his characters included Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America and the Avengers.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen died on October 15 at age 65. He and Bill Gates helped start the microcomputer revolution in the mid-1970s by creating the world’s largest PC software company.

Burt Reynolds died on September 6 at age 82 in Florida. He was an Oscar nominee for “Boogie Nights” and an Emmy winner for “Evening Shade.” He was one of the top box office stars of the 1970s with movies such as “Deliverance,” “Smokey and the Bandit,” “The Longest Yard,...

In a new documentary, myths and assumptions about the Oscar-nominated heartthrob who struggled with his sexuality are replaced with the little-known truth

For over 30 years, scripts have floated around Hollywood promising to tell the story of Montgomery Clift, one of the most innovative and handsome actors in history. Tellingly, they’re always pitched under working titles like ‘Beautiful Loser’ and' ‘Tragic Beauty’. Guided by the key biographies of Clift, they reliably parrot a narrative which paints the actor as a startlingly attractive and prodigiously gifted man who, according to one notably overheated tabloid TV show “became a drug-addicted alcoholic living in a self-imposed hell because he had a secret he couldn’t live with”.

Related: Tab Hunter: how Hollywood's boy next door became a gay icon...

The special “In Memoriam” segment on the 2018 Emmy Awards ceremony was tearful as beloved television legends Steven Bochco, Anthony Bourdain, Robert Guillaume, Monty Hall, John Mahoney, Jim Nabors, Charlotte Rae, Burt Reynolds, Neil Simon and Craig Zadan were part of the annual tribute.

SEEEmmy winners 2018: Full list of winners and nominees at the 70th Emmy Awards

But who was missing from the memoriam this time? Some of those surprising omissions included:

Marty Allen (actor/comedian)

Peter Baldwin (director)

Brent Briscoe (actor)

Dushon Monique Brown (actor)

Frank Buxton (writer/director)

Joseph Campanella (actor)

Olivia Cole (actor)

Vic Damone (actor/singer)

Bradford Dillman (actor)

Roy Dotrice (actor)

John Dunsworth (actor)

Harlan Ellison (writer)

Nanette Fabray (actor)

Dominic Frontiere (composer)

Michael Gershman (cinematographer)

Billy Graham (host)

Vanessa Greene (producer)

Doug Grindstaff (sound editor)

John Hillerman (actor)

Rance Howard (actor)

Tab Hunter (actor)

Earle Hyman (actor)

Anne Jeffreys (actor)

Margot Kidder (actor)

Louise Latham...