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‘Days Of Our Lives’ (Dool) spoilers celebrate the 56th anniversary of a daytime icon, Susan Seaforth Hayes, who plays Julie Williams on the soap.

‘Days Of Our Lives’ Spoilers: Seaforth Hayes Started On Days In 1968

Seaforth Hayes has been praised for taking on some of the most challenging scenes she’s ever had to play in her life this year.

Image Credit: Jpi Studios

Her co-star and real-life husband, Bill Hayes, who played Julie’s husband, Doug, passed away in January this year. Not only did she make thousands of viewers tear up when Doug died peacefully in his sleep on Thanksgiving, but she also gave the same eulogy at Doug’s funeral that she said at her husband’s church.

It was a beautiful and poignant full-circle moment since Doug and Julie also recited the same wedding vows as Susan and Bill.

When Doug died and Julie went into the room to say `goodbye,...

General Hospital spoilers December 9, 2024: Coming up next on Gh, a Dex gets a holiday treat, and more. A Surprise Visitor… There’s one brother she merely tolerates and another she actually enjoys, so you can imagine Laura’s (Genie Francis) surprise when Martin (Michael E. Knight) waltzes in! Sure, she’s thrilled to see him, but […]

The post General Hospital Spoilers December 9: Laura Has A Surprise Visitor appeared first on Soap Opera News.

Deadpool & Wolverine finished its theatrical run as the second-highest-grossing movie of the year ($1.3 billion), surpassed only by Inside Out 2, the animated flick that left theaters as one of the 10 highest-grossing movies ever. While much of the film’s success can be credited to Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman making their MCU debut as Deadpool and Wolverine, respectively, the film also features several cameos that certainly helped boost its box office stature. One of those cameos is X-23/Laura, the mutant portrayed by Dafne Keen who made her debut in Logan (2017) and reprised her role in the 2024 superhero tentpole. To celebrate Laura’s MCU debut, Hot Toys announced a new figure for the clawed mutant on its official Instagram page based on her appearance in the film, featuring her signature outfit and even the iconic pink sunglasses.

Disney vet Alexandra Weinberger has joined Amazon MGM Studios in the newly created role of chief of YA and comedy ongoing series.

Three years ago, Amazon MGM Studios (then just Amazon Studios) organized its leadership team to focus on three areas: development, series, and IP and talent management. In her new position, Weinberger will head up a team that will take oversight of some of Amazon MGM Studios’ first-season YA and comedy shows — at Prime Video, the list of applicable upcoming titles includes “Cruel Intentions,” “We Were Liars,” “Motorheads,” “Off Campus,” “Every Year After,” “Overcompensating” and more — as they enter into their second seasons.

As head of YA and comedy series, Weinberger will report directly to Amazon MGM Studios head of co-prod television and ongoing series Laura Lancaster.

Most recently, Weinberger was a producer and creative consultant on the Dear Media podcast “Coming in Hot.” Prior to that, she worked...

In the "Magnum, P.I." episode "Laura", a retired NYPD cop named Sergeant Michael Doheny (Frank Sinatra) travels to Hawai'i for reasons he doesn't initially make clear. He hires Magnum (Tom Selleck) to help him track down the killers of a missing young girl, trying to close an unsolved homicide that took place in the Bronx. Magnum soon learns that the victim was Doheny's granddaughter, Laura (Kristin Brick), who had been kidnapped from Doheny's recent retirement party before being assaulted and killed. Magnum assumes Doheny wants the killers apprehended and jailed, but Doheny intends to kill the culprits himself.

In "Laura," Sinatra, then 72, gets to be fully out of control, beating up people in bars and yelling lines like "You slimy bastard. You beat her face to a pulp. You broke her body down to nothin' and then you threw her in an alley to die! And I'm gonna do the same thing to you!

General Hospital spoilers for the week of October 7-11, 2024 tease another big return and an even bigger reunion.

General Hospital Spoiler Highlights

Episode 15563 Air Date: Monday, October 7, 2024

Lucas visits Bobbie’s (ex-Jackie Zeman) grave.

Holly (Emma Samms) encounters Brennan (Charles Mesure).

Robert (Tristan Rogers) makes a promise.

Lois (Rena Sofer) is unnerved.

Chase (Josh Swickard) and Brook Lynn (Amanda Setton) are in for a shock.

Episode 15564 Air Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Robert and Holly get reacquainted.

Sam goes to see Alexis (Nancy Lee Grahn).

Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst) fears for Lucky (Jonathan Jackson).

Anna (Finola Hughes) cautions Brennan.

Mac (John J. York) gives his two cents.

Episode 15565 Air Date: Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Laura (Genie Francis) returns!

Anna and Jason (Steve Burton) clear the air.

Carly (Laura Wright) meets with Brennan.

Lucky seeks assistance.

Sonny (Maurice Benard) briefs Kristina (Kate Mansi).

Episode 15566 Air Date: Thursday, October 10, 2024

Lucky and Laura have an emotional reunion.

On Tuesday September 3 2024, Investigation Discovery broadcasts Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior!

Laura Season 1 Episode 3 Episode Summary

The upcoming episode titled “Laura” of the series “Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior” promises to be a gripping hour of true crime storytelling. This episode focuses on the mysterious disappearance of a young woman who vanishes shortly after returning home from college. The sudden nature of her disappearance raises alarms and leaves her family and friends in distress.

As detectives begin their investigation, they delve into the young woman’s life, searching for clues that could lead them to her whereabouts. The episode highlights the challenges faced by law enforcement as they piece together the timeline of events. With each new lead, the detectives uncover evidence of a brutal crime, adding layers of complexity to the case.

The investigation takes a surprising turn when a suspect emerges, someone...

On Tuesday 3 September 2024, Quest Red broadcasts Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior!

Laura Season 1 Episode 3 Episode Summary

The upcoming episode titled “Laura” of the series “Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior” promises to be gripping and intense. The story centers around a young woman named Laura, who has just returned home from college, ready to start a new chapter in her life. However, things take a dark turn when she mysteriously disappears, leaving her family and friends in a state of panic.

As detectives dive into the investigation, they begin to uncover troubling evidence that suggests a brutal crime has taken place. The episode will explore the twists and turns of the investigation, highlighting the challenges the detectives face as they try to piece together what happened to Laura. The suspense builds as they discover a suspect linked to a previous case, raising questions about past...

When TCM channel host Dave Karger used to be a writer for Entertainment Weekly in his early days as a print journalist, he would focus a great deal on interviewing the big pop stars of the day, along with his duties on the film beat. But little did very many people suspect then that what he really wanted to be writing about was “Laura”… not Branigan, but David Raksin’s music for the classic 1945 noir. That was the film that really prompted Karger’s lifelong love of movie scoring.

“His score for ‘Laura’ really turned me on to classic film music, and film scores in general,” says Karger. “And then you go back and you learn that in 1945, there were 20 Oscar nominees that year in the category of best score for a non-musical film — and David Raksin wasn’t even one of the 20 nominees. That’s a score that has...

Everyone loves a good mystery, and some of the best ones can be found in film noir classics such as Laura, Out of the Past, and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Rooted in German Expressionism and popular pulp fiction crime novels, film noir is a term used to describe a film style that typically emphasizes cynical motivations and attitudes conveyed by a cast of intriguing characters. The 1940s and 1950s were considered the height of film noir and were initially popularized by visionary filmmakers including Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, and Robert Siodmark.

The Hollywood Blacklist ruined dozens of lives. United States-based artists who were sympathetic to, or even curious about, communism were demonized as traitors to their country and, due to hysterical pressure from The House Committee on Un-American Activities (aka Huac), banned from working in the industry. Disgraced and unemployed, blacklisted individuals were forced to leave the country if they wanted to continue working or, if they could not afford to relocate, find a line of work where being an alleged communist wasn't frowned upon. This latter option was, of course, dismally unlikely. The mental and financial burden of being completely shunned from one's industry was so unbearable that it led actor Philip Loeb to die by suicide.

This put Hollywood at war against itself. Anyone suspected of having communist ties was pressured to come clean and, if they wanted to continue working, name names (a cowardly practice savaged by films...

Laura Jane Grace has announced her second full-length studio album, Hole in My Head, which is due for release on February 16th, 2024 via Polyvinyl Record Co. She’s also shared the album’s title track as a single, and unveiled a string of new tour dates for 2024.

Grace’s first collection of songs since 2021’s At War with the Silverfish, Hole in My Head will feature the single “Dysphoria Hoodie,” which first debuted this past October. Written 30 years removed from the days when her band Against Me! was first beginning, the album captures the sense of reflection that she’s been leaning into recently.

The single “Hole in My Head” conveys this, pairing a stirring, youthful melody with lyrics bearing the wisdom of Grace’s years. “You can try to outrun all the pain you come from/ That would be a real mistake” she sings on the bridge, building into...

Explore where to stream the best films of 2023.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)

Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Fingernails (Christos Nikou)

Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...

Among the myriad reasons we could call the Criterion Channel the single greatest streaming service is its leveling of cinematic snobbery. Where a new World Cinema Project restoration plays, so too does Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I think about this looking at November’s lineup and being happiest about two new additions: a nine-film Robert Bresson retro including L’argent and The Devil, Probably; and a one-film Hype Williams retro including Belly and only Belly, but bringing as a bonus the direct-to-video Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club. Until recently such curation seemed impossible.

November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...

The murder-mystery renaissance really is in full effect right now. The likes of Only Murders In The Building, Poker Face, and Apple TV’s The Afterparty have been making armchair detectives of us all on the telly side of things, but it’s the big screen sleuthing boom that’s had genre fans flocking to the multiplexes with their magnifying glasses and (presumably) deerstalkers most recently. With whodunnits as wildly varied as Park Chan-wook’s sensual Decision To Leave, the superbly silly See How They Run, Rian Johnson_ – which leans hard into the ‘D’ of DC Comics – on offer, it’s not exactly hard to see why, either.

Now, as we prepare to take enough champagne to fill the, erm, canals of Venice with us to see Kenneth Branagh_, we at Empire HQ have put our tan raincoats on and launched an investigation into the very best the genre has to offer.

Now that it's officially September, we can start looking forward to Halloween season. It's not as if September offers anything fun after Labor Day provides a day off, so we might as well get in the spooky spirit. Paramount Pictures certainly isn't wasting time celebrating terror, because they've just announced their new Paramount Scares Vol. 1 box set that brings a collection of horror films to 4K Ultra HD physical media.

The Paramount Scares Vol. 1 limited edition box set comes with five films, each in stunning 4K with their own assembly of special features (more details on that below). Here are the movies you'll find in the box set:

"Rosemary's Baby" - Newly remastered on 4K Ultra HD, this iconic classic celebrates its 55th anniversary this year. With groundbreaking camerawork and bone-chilling suspense, "Rosemary's Baby" gave birth to the modern thriller. Featuring extraordinary performances — including Ruth Gordon in an Oscar-winning role...

Former “Love Island” presenter Laura Whitmore is tackling some controversial issues in her new show for U.K. streamer Itvx.

The three-part series “Laura Whitmore Investigates” sees Whitmore travel within the U.K., Europe and the U.S. In one episode, Whitmore investigates toxic masculinity with a focus on the subculture of involuntary celibates, or incels, a male-dominated, misogynistic online world where alienated males who struggle to engage with women share their anti-female mindsets, developing communities around their resentment.

Another episode explores how changing attitudes to sex in Britain have seen Bdsm become a multi-billion industry with more and more people experimenting, particularly with the act of choking during sex. The episode examines the influence of pornography as well as looking into the rise of the so-called “50 Shades” defense, whereby men accused of murdering their sexual partner claim the death was caused by rough sex that went wrong.

With cyber stalking on the rise,...

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, which bloomed in the late 1920s and dwindled in the late 1960s, film production and distribution were under the control of the studio system, and everyone, actors, filmmakers, and writers alike, was under strict contract. It is true that movie stars enjoyed worldwide recognition and partook in exclusive, prestigious events, but this glamorous façade came with a high emotional price and was often a front for terrible personal tragedies.

Marilyn Monroe spent her childhood in orphanages and foster homes, was groped and abused throughout her career, and died in circumstances still debated today. Judy Garland was forcibly put on a pill regiment at an early age and her marathonic schedule was ruthlessly controlled by her mother. Rita Hayworth was abused by her father, suffered mental cruelty from her fundamentalist husband, and succumbed to Alzheimer’s.

And then there was Gene Tierney. With her chiseled cheekbones,...

(Welcome to Did They Get It Right?, a series where we look at Oscars categories from yesteryear and examine whether the Academy's winners stand the test of time.)

When we think of great Hollywood directors, we think of names like John Ford, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, and moving on up to the likes of Steven Spielberg. These are filmmakers who not only had strong artistic and creative instincts and abilities, but they also knew how to translate those skills into making films that appealed to gigantic mass audiences. They made the films that Hollywood always strives to make.

Unquestionably, another filmmaker who belongs on that list is Alfred Hitchcock, the so-dubbed "Master of Suspense." That moniker suits him perfectly, as he was able to craft some of the most tense pictures ever produced in Hollywood. He perfectly understood set-up and payoff. He knew how to ride the line between euphemism and explicitness,...

Prolific Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice, Adams Apples, Men & Chicken), is dipping back into his deep well of dark comedy for his upcoming film, Back to Reality.

The film is described as a drama/crime comedy mashup involving a bank robbery, Anker, who gets released after a jail stint for a heist from which the money was never recovered. The only one who knows where the loot is buried is Anker’s brother Manfred, but the shock of his childhood trauma has sent him fleeing to an alter ego who has no recollection of the money. Hoping to unlock Manfred’s memory, the brothers travel to their childhood home and start digging, physically and psychologically. Back to Reality is currently in preproduction and in the final phase of financing.

No cast has been confirmed but Jensen is a frequent collaboration with Danish star Mads Mikkelsen, the...

Warning: This article includes Scream VI spoilers.

I love going to the theater. I mean, who doesn’t? The chance to see a great horror movie up on the biggest screen possible is one of the simplest pleasures in life. And now there’s a bevy of options to see your movie in such as RealD 3D, Dolby, IMAX, and Laser Projection. Premium Formats, they call them, and I have experienced almost every single format out there.

But one in particular always eluded me for various reasons: 4Dx.

What exactly is 4Dx?

4Dx is a premium format that allows films to be projected with various practical effects like rain, wind, strobe lighting and motion-seats. The goal is to fully immerse the audience in the movie and the effects allow for recreations of various effects seen on screen. For example: a character standing in the rain on screen will cause the...

Accused Season 1 Episode 8 Episode Description And Spoilers Accused Season 1 Episode 8 Photos Laura’s Story – A grieving mother learns that facts and evidence are no match for viral misinformation, when she discovers a growing online conspiracy in the all-new “Laura’s Story” episode of Accused airing Tuesday, March 14 (9:01-10:00 Pm Et/Pt) on Fox. (Acu-104) s01e08 1×08 1.08 s1e18 accused episode Accused is a collection of 15 intense, topical and exquisitely human stories of crime and punishment. Each episode is a fast-paced provocative thriller, exploring a different crime, in a different city, with an entirely original cast. Based on the BBC’s BAFTA-winning crime anthology, each episode opens in a courtroom on the defendant, with viewers knowing nothing about their crime or how they ended up on trial. Told from the defendant’s point of view through flashbacks, the show holds a mirror up to current times with evocative and emotional stories.

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "A Simple Favor"

Where You Can Stream It: Prime Video

The Pitch: "A Simple Favor" poses a very (appropriately) simple question: what if Phillip Marlowe was a suburban single mom with a vlog? You'd get Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), best friend to Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) who went missing after asking Stephanie for, you guessed it, a simple favor. In the aftermath of Emily's disappearance, Stephanie takes it upon herself to find her bestie, which leads her down a dark path littered with secrets, some of which are her own.

Emily Nelson works as a PR executive for a high-end fashion designer with an attitude, Dennis Nylon, and she knows how to handle him (and others like him). "You've gotta go right at 'em,...

Exclusive: Paris-based genre specialist has boarded sales on Belgian black comedy Krump about a down-on-his-luck ex-porn actor who embarks on a seemingly hopeless mission to raise 50,000 euros when his daughter is kidnapped.

The film is the debut feature of French-born, long-time Brussels resident director Cédric Bourgeois after a raft of half a dozen shorts including Laura and Dreamcatchers.

Veteran Belgian actor Jean-Benoit Ugeux stars as the titular Krump who turns to his former acquaintances in the porn world to raise the ransom money in a race against time in the underbelly of Brussels nightlife.

Other cast members include Jean-Jacques Rausin (Death By Death), Babetida Sadjo, stunt woman and actress Barbara Hellemans and Ingrid Heiderscheidt (Employee Of The Month).

Bourgeois and Ugeux, and director Xavier Seron co-wrote the screenplay taking inspiration from the figure of President Donald Trump after he was swept from power in the 2020 elections.

Just under three decades ago, the stop-motion animated classic "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was released. Directed by Henry Selick, the film introduced us to Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town in charge of the holiday. He's starting to get bored with being spooky, though. One day he discovers the door to Christmas Town and sees a different sort of celebration. Jack formulates a plan to kidnap Santa Claws — who he thinks is named Sandy Claws — and take over the winter festivities himself. Chris Sarandon voiced the role of Jack Skellington, with score composer Danny Elfman singing the songs for the character.

Santa Claus was voiced by Ed Ivory in the film, but the role originally went to someone who is very familiar with scary things. That man was horror legend Vincent Price, according to a Daily Beast interview with Selick from 2013. He wasn't the only person they saw for the role,...

Click here to read the full article.

Given the direction of the world in recent years, it’s perhaps no surprise that Participant — Jeff Skoll’s socially conscious production powerhouse — has been as prolific as ever. But its output isn’t all about shining a torch on today’s most pressing concerns, as Academy Awards winners such as Roma, Green Book and Spotlight attest.

That said, the studio comes to Venice with two somewhat topical documentary features. In All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras (an Oscar winner for her Participant film CitizenFour) follows artist and activist Nan Goldin in a deeply personal battle as she fights to hold the Sackler family to account for the opioid crisis.

Meanwhile, A Compassionate Spy from Hoop Dreams director Steve James (also behind Participant’s first TV series, America to Me) tells the story of Ted Hall, who as a physicist on...

Includes new work from Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Werner Herzog and Klaus Hӓrӧ.

New work from Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Werner Herzog and Klaus Hӓrӧ are among TIFF Docs and Contemporary World Cinema line-ups announced on Wednesday (August 17).

In TIFF Docs, Cowperthwaite’s The Grab exposes the systematic acquisition of food and water resources by international governments and private companies. Herzog returns to the fray with Theatre Of Thought, in which he explores the cutting edge of brain research.

The selection includes Mark Fletcher’s nature documentary Patrick And The Whale (pictured) and opens with Sacha Jenkins’ Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.

Click here to read the full article.

Alice Diop, Kelly Reichardt, Paul Schrader, Park Chan-wook and Ruben Östlund are among the high-profile directors whose films are set to screen during the main slate of the 2022 New York Film Festival.

Park’s Decision to Leave and Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness are among the Cannes prize-winners coming to the annual fall event in Manhattan along with Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon and Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun.

Filmmakers making their first appearance in the festival’s main slate include Margaret Brown, Davy Chou, Laura Citarella, Alice Diop, Mark Jenkin, Marie Kreutzer, Cyril Schäublin, Ryuji Otsuka and Huang Ji.

Helmers returning to the festival include Todd Field, Mia Hansen-Løve, Hong Sangsoo, Joanna Hogg, Pietro Marcello, Cristian Mungiu, Jafar Panahi, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Kelly Reichardt, Paul Schrader, Albert Serra, Jerzy Skolimowski and Frederick Wiseman.

NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim said in a statement,...

Just a few weeks into filming, production on the second season of Apple TV+‘s “The Morning Show” had to shut down in early 2020 due the then-oncoming Covid-19 pandemic. Even though more than half of the season had already been written at that point, the writers decided to rewrite it in order to incorporate what would become the global health crisis of our time into the original storyline. For re-recording mixer Elmo Ponsdomenech, addressing the pandemic within the story was an emotional undertaking. “I won’t lie to you: during the first episode, it was a bit emotional seeing… a pan across [an empty] New York City,” he admits in a new webchat with Gold Derby. “It’s not the New York that most of us know or know of, so it made the hairs on your arm stand up a little bit.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Developed by Kerry Ehrin...

The chaos of "Ozark" began when mild-mannered suburbanite Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) got his family entangled in a dangerous drug operation. Backed into a corner and desperate to keep his family together, he uprooted their lives and whisked them from Chicago to the Lake of the Ozarks, to begin a life of leaping from one disaster to the next, desperate to keep both the FBI and a dangerous drug cartel at arm's length. Though Marty is an exceptionally clever person and gifted with a very effective poker face, the Byrdes haven't survived for four seasons on his merits alone. More than once, he's nearly spiraled...

The post Why Ozark's Laura Linney Won't Call Wendy A Villain appeared first on /Film.

Exclusive: Producer Sam Okun and his Sam Okun Productions banner have optioned worldwide film and TV remake and sequel rights to a pair of classic films directed and produced by three-time Oscar nominee Otto Preminger: 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder and 1962’s Advise & Consent.

The former courtroom drama based on Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker’s novel watched as an upstate Michigan lawyer defended a soldier who claimed he killed an innkeeper due to temporary insanity after the victim raped his wife. The drama starring James Stewart, Lee Remick and Ben Gazzara landed seven Academy Award nominations upon its release, including Best Picture, Screenplay and Actor.

Advise & Consent was a political thriller based on Allen Drury’s 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, in which the polarizing search for a new Secretary of State had far-reaching consequences. Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford,...

The "Orphan Black" sequel series has officially opened its writers' room, with Variety reporting that Anna Fishko has boarded the show as a writer and executive producer. The idea of an AMC "Orphan Black" continuation was first reported in 2019, though at this point very little is still known about the new series.

Fishko has worked as a story editor, producer, and writer on several series, most recently Netflix's "The Society." Fishko has also worked with AMC before, having written episodes of "Fear The Walking Dead," including the show's benchmark bottle episode "Laura." Fishko will also executive produce the new iteration of "Orphan Black," which...

The post AMC's Orphan Black Sequel Series Lands Writer Anna Fishko appeared first on /Film.

The public considers the Academy Awards as a Hollywood event. True, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is headquartered in Southern California, and most of the best pic contenders are American and/or in the English language. But Oscar history proves they have been an international event from the beginning.

In the first year (1927-28), there were nominations for directors Herbert Brenon (born in Ireland) and Lewis Milestone (born in Moldova), plus a special award to Charlie Chaplin (from the U.K.).

The next five years saw two noms apiece for directors Ernst Lubitsch (Germany) and Josef von Sternberg (Austria). And the second best actress Academy Award was given to Canadian Mary Pickford.

The early years of Oscar featured a slew of non-Americans. Aside from mega-star Chaplin, the list of early Academy Award winners includes Emil Jannings, George Arliss (U.K.), Claudette Colbert (raised in the U.S. but...

Cara Williams, the actress known for her Oscar-nominated turn in The Defiant Ones, her Emmy-nominated performance in CBS’ sitcom Pete and Gladys and more, died on December 9. She was 96.

Williams’ passing was confirmed in a Twitter post published on Saturday by her great-nephew, Richard Potter. “My Great Aunt, who might have been the last surviving Golden Age of Hollywood actress died on Thursday at 96,” he wrote. “#Oscar & #Emmy Nominated. #CaraWilliams. Rip Cara.”

The actress was born in Brooklyn, NY on June 29, 1925 as Bernice Kamiat, finding her first film role in Lesley Selander’s 1941 Western, Wide Open Town. She starred in Stanley Kramer’s drama The Defiant Ones opposite Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, appearing in December Bride spinoff Pete and Gladys opposite Harry Morgan.

Over the course of her 40-plus year screen career, Williams garnered a total of 55 screen credits. She also appeared on the film side in Girls’ Town,...

"Laura does not exist. Is that understood?" Strike Media has released a US trailer for a Greek indie comedy titled In the Strange Pursuit of Laura Durand. It first premiered in 2019 at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and played at a bunch of other fests including Athens, Sarajevo, Red Rock, Sunscreen, and Thessaloniki. It now opens in the US starting in January 2022. Two men who live in Athens decide to start the quest for Laura Durand, a pornstar of the 90's who has disappeared mysteriously several years ago. "An award winning and hilarious road movie, loaded with an amazing and eclectic soundtrack, In the Strange Pursuit of Laura Durand is a feelgood, touching, original story, that stays with you long after watching." The cast includes Makis Papadimitriou, Michalis Sarantis, Anna Kalaitzidou, Danis Katranidis, Ivonni Maltezou, Alexandros Logothetis, and Nikos Hatzopoulos. There's a hilariously bad English voiceover in this trailer,...

This Fear the Walking Dead review contains spoilers.

Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 6

Fear the Walking Dead used to be must-watch television for me, once upon a time. This was due in no small part to following the exploits of characters I actually cared about. Characters like Nick, Alicia, and Travis—members of a blended family who weathered the earliest days of a nascent zombie apocalypse. Fear billed itself as a drama in those first seasons, and its stories were suitably gritty and gripping. But now, seven seasons in, Fear bears little resemblance to the concept that original showrunner Dave Erickson once envisioned.

As for this week’s episode, “Reclamation” is a minor step up from the last two weeks, but that’s a low bar to clear. “Reclamation” still has its share of problems, most of which stem from dodgy character motivations and odd storytelling choices. Which is a shame,...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Laura"

Where You Can Stream It: Criterion Channel

The Pitch: Directed by Otto Preminger and released in 1944, "Laura" is, simply put, the story of a detective who falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

Based on the 1943 novel of the same name by Vera Caspary, the story follows Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) as he investigates the murder of one Laura Hunt (played by the...

The post The Daily Stream: Laura, A Strange Experiment in Love ... and Murder! appeared first on /Film.

Nominations for this year’s Australian Directors’ Guild (Adg) Awards are shared amongst the likes of Wayne Blair, Shannon Murphy, Daniel Nettheim, Tennika Smith, and Jonathan Brough, who have all scored two nods each.

Murphy is one of two women included in the category for Best Direction in a Feature Film for Babyteeth, joining Unjoo Moon (I Am Woman) in a field that also includes Seth Larney (2067), Maziar Lahooti (Below), and Robert Connolly (The Dry).

She also gets the nod for Best Direction in a TV or SVOD Drama Series episode for Killing Eve, where she will compete against fellow double nominee Nettheim, who features for Halifax: Retribution (Series 1 Episode 7), and is also up for Best Direction in a TV or SVOD Miniseries Episode for Line of Duty (Series 6 Episode 1).

Blair is up for Best Direction in a Feature Documentary with co-director Nel Minchin for Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra,...

Paramount Players has rounded out the cast for horror Something’s Wrong with Rose.

Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner and Kal Penn will join the previously announced Mare of Easttown actress Sosie Bacon. Rob Morgan, Judy Reyes, Caitlin Stasey and Gillian Zinser will also star in the movie from writer-director Parker Finn.

Bacon will play a psychiatrist who, after a bizarre and traumatic event involving a patient, begins to experience terrifying occurrences that only she can see, and grows increasingly convinced that she’s being pursued by a malevolent supernatural force.

The movie, which is based on Parker’s SXSW award-winning short film Laura ...

Paramount Players has rounded out the cast for horror Something’s Wrong with Rose.

Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner and Kal Penn will join the previously announced Mare of Easttown actress Sosie Bacon. Rob Morgan, Judy Reyes, Caitlin Stasey and Gillian Zinser will also star in the movie from writer-director Parker Finn.

Bacon will play a psychiatrist who, after a bizarre and traumatic event involving a patient, begins to experience terrifying occurrences that only she can see, and grows increasingly convinced that she’s being pursued by a malevolent supernatural force.

The movie, which is based on Parker’s SXSW award-winning short film Laura ...

[Editor’s Note: The following interview contains spoilers for “The Morning Show” Season 2, Episode 3, “Laura.”]

What’s so surprising about the ending of “The Morning Show” Episode 3 isn’t that Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) kisses another woman. It’s not even that she kisses Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies), her network colleague assigned to do an in-depth report on Bradley, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), and their renovated Morning Show. What’s surprising is that Bradley kisses anyone at all.

“In Season 1, we didn’t really go into anyone’s personal life,” Witherspoon said in an interview with IndieWire. “We [saw] a little bit of Alex’s […] but [Season 2] was about pushing the boundaries and the edges of what [Bradley’s] personal life would look like.”

Now the question becomes: Is “The Morning Show” built for this? Up until the episode’s closing moments, “The Morning Show” has been pretty much all business, and Margulies’ Laura Peterson is part of that business. A prominent nighttime...

Next month’s Criterion Channel selection is here, and as 2021 winds down further cements their status as our single greatest streaming service. Off the top I took note of their eight-film Jia Zhangke retro as well as the streaming premieres of Center Stage and Malni. And, yes, Margaret has been on HBO Max for a while, but we can hope Criterion Channel’s addition—as part of the 63(!)-film “New York Stories”—opens doors to a more deserving home-video treatment.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy, Bruno Dumont’s Joan of Arc duology, and Criterion’s editions of Irma Vep and Flowers of Shanghai also mark major inclusions—just a few years ago the thought of Hou’s masterpiece streaming in HD was absurd.

I could implore you not to sleep on The Hottest August and Point Blank and Variety and In the Cut or, look, so many Ernst Lubitsch movies,...

UK Screen Industries Survey Highlights Socio-Economic Imbalance

A new survey has found that the majority of people working in the UK’s screen industries are from a background that is classified as ‘privileged’. The survey, conducted by the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre and backed by ScreenSkills, analyzed data from the latest edition of the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey in 2019. Their research found that 53% of those surveyed from the screen industries, including the film, TV and games businesses, were from a privileged background. Looking specifically at the careers of key creative roles, specified here as arts officers, producers and directors, the number rose to 61%. That was in comparison with 38% across all industries. The definition of having a privileged background is those who had at least one parent whose job was a higher or lower managerial, administrative or professional occupation. In contrast, the screen industries employed only 25% from a ‘working class’ background,...

Writer, producer, director Lee Daniels discusses some of his favorite films with Josh & Joe.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Infested (2002)

Shadowboxer (2005)

The United States Vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

A Star Is Born (1937)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Lady Sings The Blues (1972)

Island In The Sun (1957)

Carmen Jones (1954)

Claudine (1974)

Mandingo (1975)

Drum (1976)

Caligula (1979)

Gloria (1980)

The Exorcist (1973)

Abby (1974)

Blacula (1972)

Scream Blacula Scream (1973)

Cabaret (1972)

Lenny (1974)

Sounder (1972)

All That Jazz (1979)

I Am A Camera (1955)

Travels With My Aunt (1972)

The Emigrants (1971)

Star 80 (1983)

Harold And Maude (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

Pickup On South Street (1953)

In The Mood For Love (2000)

Leave Her To Heaven (1945)

Laura (1944)

Dragonwyck (1946)

The Baron of Arizona (1950)

His Kind of Woman (1951)

Explorers (1985)

Innerspace (1987)

Jack Reacher (2012)

Them (1954)

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Tarantula! (1955)

Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

Going In Style (1979)

Going In Style (2017)

Judas And The Black Messiah (2021)

Stroszek (1977)

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams...

Ahead of FrightFest’s UK special screening of The Woman With Leopard Shoes at the Glasgow Film Festival, director Alexis Bruchon talks about his love of Noir, casting his brother and directing in his underwear…

Your background is in illustration and graphic design. Was making a movie the next logical step as an artist?

From a very young age, I wanted to make a movie (as a teenager I did make a slasher called Ice Crime a true masterpiece!) – but drawing is direct, cost nothing and allows you to produce any images you want. So, I started with two unpublished graphic novels. The good thing with comics is that I realised you can tell a story with very few elements… and no money!

So, when I started on The Woman With Leopard Shoes, drawing was highly important in the making of the film because I storyboarded everything with a lot of indications like light,...

Hugh Jackman may have bowed out in equally graceful and spectacular fashion as Wolverine, with Logan quickly gaining a well deserved reputation as one of the greatest comic book movies ever made, but even with the actor drawing a line under his career-defining tenure as the iconic character, there still appeared to be a future for adamantium-infused mutants under the Fox banner.

Dafne Keen’s Laura was the crux of Logan‘s plot, with the young actress giving an incredible breakout performance that saw her comfortably stand toe to toe with Jackman’s grizzled warrior, and soon after James Mangold’s blockbuster was released to widespread critical acclaim and almost $620 million at the box office, it was announced that the filmmaker was in the early stages of developing a spinoff for X-23.

Of course, Disney’s acquisition of Fox put those plans on ice, but in a recent interview, Keen...

by Nathaniel R

Dear reader, we had such fun doing the Montgomery Clift Centennial that we want to do more of them. Of course not every movie star inspires the same passion in cinephiles, nor has a cooperatively small enough filmography to be completist about. For instance I put out the feelers on Gene Tierney, who made 37 films in her career, and received only 2 volunteers. And herewith a confession: I, myself, despite my love of Old Hollywood, was unfamiliar. I had seen only two of her movies and so long ago that I had next to no recollection. So I queued up her most famous picture, Laura (1944), which I'd somehow never seen even when I was a uncool kid in the horrific "colorizing" days of pop culture who relished seeing old black and white movies... ...

For Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars, the scoring and music supervision on “On the Rocks” became the highlight of his five-film collaboration with director and wife Sofia Coppola. Indeed, this father-daughter comedy, starring Bill Murray and Rashida Jones, turned into a musical expression about bonding over New York on so many levels.

For starters, Coppola came up with Chet Baker’s “I Fall in Love Too Easily” as the perfect entry for Murray’s charming and irresistible Felix, the Don Juan-like art dealer. The movie opens with a voiceover of Felix telling young Laura (Jones) that her heart will always belong to him, even after she gets married. Fade in to Laura and husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) running off after their wedding for a playful tryst to the romantic strains of the iconic trumpeter Baker. It immediately conveys Felix’s strong hold on her, which must be resolved during their later...

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“Danger, Darkness, And Dames In High Defintion”

By Raymond Benson

Ding ding ding! Attention all lovers of film noir! The Warner Archive has released an outstanding 4-film Blu-ray collection of some of the best titles in this cinematic movement that ran from (approximately) 1941 to 1958. While author James Ellroy states in the included supplemental documentary, Film Noir: Bringing Darkness to Light, that noir began in “1945,” this is obviously incorrect. It would leave out such classics as one of the titles in the collection, as well as Double Indemnity and Laura. Film noir is generally accepted by most film scholars as beginning in 1941 with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon.

Much debate and discussion proliferate among film historians and scholars about what film noir is. Foremost, it is Not a genre! It is mostly a style, along with thematic elements that define a group of...

This may be the toughest overall competition of any Emmy category this year. In fact, in a year where Elisabeth Moss, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Mandy Moore, and many others weren’t nominated, you might be right to get the feeling that the contest for Lead Actress In A Drama Series is going to be brutal. We have an Oscar queen trying to become an Emmy queen, an Emmy-winning sitcom queen going dramatic, a first-timer whose TV work was previously better known on the Disney Channel, last year’s surprise winner matched again against her 10-time Emmy-losing co-star, plus a veteran four-time winner looking to add a fifth. Let’s survey the field and see who gets the Pete’s Winner Pick stamp. Just so you know this one looks like a photo finish to me and the end result is, quite frankly, still up in the air. In other...