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Marisa Pavan, the Italian actress and twin sister of Pier Angeli who received an Oscar nomination for her performance as the daughter of Anna Magnani’s seamstress in the 1955 drama The Rose Tattoo, has died. She was 91.

Pavan died Wednesday in her sleep at her home in Gassin, France, near Saint-Tropez, Margaux Soumoy, who wrote Pavan’s 2021 biography, Drop the Baby; Put a Veil on the Broad!, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Pavan also portrayed the French queen Catherine de’ Medici in Diane (1956), starring Lana Turner; an Italian girl who had an affair years ago with a corporate exec (Gregory Peck) in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956); and the love interest of a former cop (Tony Curtis) investigating the murder of a priest in the film noir The Midnight Story (1957).

In Paramount’s The Rose Tattoo (1955), an adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play that won four Tony Awards, including best play,...

Guillermo del Toro takes a walk on the noir side in his first film since winning the Oscar for directing the 2017 best picture winner “The Shape of Things.” “Nightmare Alley,’ based on the uncompromising 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, offers a bleak depiction of humanity including low-rent carnivals filled with has-beens, geeks and “rum-dums.” Searchlight Pictures is giving “Nightmare Alley,” which had to shut down production during the height of Covid in 2020, the “A” treatment, opening the film on Dec. 3 just in time for awards consideration.

The innovative Mexican filmmaker best known for his acclaimed fantasy, horror (“The Devil’s Backbone”) and sci-fi (‘Hellboy”) productions, co-wrote the screenplay with Kim Morgan. Bradley Cooper plays Stan Carlisle, a handsome manipulative carny worker who has a massive chip on his shoulder. Stan wants to hit the big time and with the help of carnival headliner Zeena (Toni Collette) resurrects her old mentalist act.

Richard Fleischer's Viking saga is a great star showcase: for the grinning one-eyed Kirk Douglas, sullen one-handed Tony Curtis and the heavy-breathing, two-breasted Janet Leigh. Jack Cardiff gives us the fjords of Norway, lean and mean Viking ships, and a brain-bashing acrobatic castle assault designed to out-do Burt Lancaster. With Ernest Borgnine ("Ohhh-dinnnn!!"), James Donald and Alexander Knox. And as the old song goes, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got Frank Thring. The Vikings Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 114 min. / Street Date March 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, Janet Leigh, James Donald, Alexander Knox, Maxine Audley, Frank Thring. Cinematography Jack Cardiff Production Designer Harper Goff Film Editor Hugo Williams Original Music Mario Nascimbene Written by Calder Willingham adapted by Dale Wasserman from a novel by Edison Marshall Produced by Jerry Bresler Directed by Richard Fleischer

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson...

Dolores Hart, Pamela Tiffin and Lois Nettleton are flight attendants aiming to snag three attractive, wealthy husbands right out of the air -- Karl Boehm, Hugh O'Brien and Karl Malden. There's more social comment in this 'coffee, tea or me' romantic comedy than can be found in a graduate thesis about the sexual habits of liberated stewardesses. And Hey, Frankie Avalon warbles the classy title tune! Come Fly with Me DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1963 / Color / 2:35 enhanced widescreen / 109 min. / Street Date June 30, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 18.49 Starring Dolores Hart, Hugh O'Brian, Karlheinz Bohm, Pamela Tiffin, Lois Nettleton, Karl Malden, Dawn Addams, Richard Wattis, Andrew Cruickshank, James Dobson, Lois Maxwell, John Crawford, Robert Easton, Maurice Marsac, George Coulouris, Ferdy Mayne. Cinematography Oswald Morris Film Editor Frank Clarke Original Music Lyn Murray Written by William Roberts from a book by Bernard Glemser Produced by Anatole De Grunwald Directed by Henry Levin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

What?...

When actors die or age it’s often up to CGI actors to complete scenes and make sure a movie gets made, we take a look at how they’ve developed over the years

It used to be the case that if a lead actor died mid-movie, film-makers had a limited range of options available to them. When Tyrone Power died of a heart attack on the set of Solomon and Sheba in late 1958, having shot 75% of his scenes, he was replaced, in all but a few long shots, by Yul Brynner (a hirsute Yul Brynner, mind). By contrast, after Marilyn Monroe died before completing Something’s Got to Give, the entire movie was unceremoniously shelved. Natalie Wood’s final film, Brainstorm, was completed using rewrites, reshoots and body doubles for Wood, while in cheapo-maestro Ed Wood’s Plan Nine From Outer Space, the absence of the late Bela Lugosi...

Prolific Spanish film-maker who specialised in psychedelic gothic horror – often laced with sex and violence

According to the Internet Movie Database, the Spanish film-maker Jesús Franco, who has died aged 82, directed 199 films, from El árbol de España in 1957 to Al Pereira vs the Alligator Ladies in 2012, a record few can match in the era of talking pictures. Given that many Franco films exist in three or four variant versions, sometimes so radically different that alternative cuts qualify as separate movies, his overall tally might be considerably higher.

Born Jesús Franco Manera, he was most often credited – at least on international release prints – as Jess Frank or Jess Franco, though he used a host of pseudonyms, writing scripts as David Khune, composing music as Pablo Villa and co-directing pornographic films (with his long-term muse Lina Romay) as Rosa Almirall. He was a true man of the cinema, whose CV ranged from...

Here's the latest in Austin and Texas film news.

The Harry Ransom Center continues its free Biblical Film Series on Thursday at 7 pm with Cecil B. Demille's Samson and Delilah. The film, starring Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature, tells the story of Samson, the strongest man in his tribe. After his fiance is murdered, he is seduced by her sister Delilah, who learns the secret of his strength and betrays him to the Philistines. The series relates to the center's exhibition "The King James Bible: Its History and Influence," which ends July 29. The final movie in the series, Solomon and Sheba, will screen July 26.Central Texas-shot feature Bernie (Don's review) has earned more than $7 million, making the dark comedy the highest grossing film for distributor Millennium Entertainment, Indiewire reported. Richard Linklater's film is expected to surpass his 1993 cult hit Dazed and Confused in the next few weeks. Bernie, made...

For moviegoers growing up in the last 20-30 years, big is the new normal. I’m talking about those big-budget, over-produced, effects/action-packed extravaganzas that are as expected and routine an arrival as a commuter bus, and never more so than during the summer months. Come a rise in temperatures, there’s an almost ceaseless parade of these megabuck behemoths through multiplexes starting in May and continuing until the kids go back to school, one rolling out almost every week.

Consider these May-August releases and their eye-popping price tags:

5/4: Marvel’s The Avengers — $220 million

5/11: Dark Shadows — $150 million

5/18: Battleship — $209 million

5/25: Men in Black 3 — $250 million

6/8: Prometheus — $120-130 million

7/3: The Amazing Spider-Man — $220 million

7/20: The Dark Knight Rises — $250 million

7/31: Total Recall — $200 million

8/5: The Expendables 2 — $100 million

For those of you who haven’t been keeping count, that’s a little over $1.7 billion in productions...

"I want to thank three persons,” said Michel Hazanavicius, accepting the 2012 Best Picture Oscar for “The Artist.” “I want to thank Billy Wilder, I want to thank Billy Wilder and I want to thank Billy Wilder.” He wasn’t the first director to namecheck Wilder in an acceptance speech. In 1994, Fernando Trueba, accepting the Foreign Language Film Oscar for "Belle Epoque" quipped, "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so, thank you Mr. Wilder." Wilder reportedly called the next day "Fernando? It's God."

So just what exactly was it that inspired these men to expend some of the most valuable seconds of speechifying airtime they'll ever know, to tip their hats to Wilder? And can we bottle it?

Born in a region of Austria/Hungary that is now part of Poland, Wilder's story feels like an archetype of...

Linda Christian, international actress and Tyrone Power's second wife, died Friday (July 22) in Palm Springs, California. Christian, who was 87, had been suffering from colon cancer. Linda Christian was born Blanca Rosa Henrietta Stella Welter Vorhauer on November 13, 1923, in Tampico, Mexico, to a Dutch oil executive and his German-Mexican wife. As a young girl, she traveled the world with her parents, according to reports eventually becoming fluent in seven languages. Discovered by Errol Flynn while in Acapulco, Christian moved to Los Angeles where she began her film career in bit parts in Hollywood movies of the mid-1940s. Labeled "The Anatomic Bomb" by Life magazine, Christian eventually progressed to supporting roles in a handful of productions, among them Robert Florey's Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948) and Richard Fleischer's The Happy Time (1952). Leading roles, however, eluded her, while a reported seven-year MGM contract led nowhere. Though the first Bond girl...

Article by Dana Jung

Decades before there was ‘J-Lo’. or ‘LiLo’, we had ‘La Lollo’,. one of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace movie screens, Gina Lollobrigida. Along with Sophia Loren, Elsa Martinelli, Monica Vitti, and others during the new wave. of Italian and European cinema, she gained fame as an international sex star in the 1950’s and 60s in low-budget Italian films with racy titles such as Fast & Sexy and Go Naked In The World. But when Loren won her Oscar for Two Women, Lollobrigida was already 35 years old, way beyond starlet status. In 1968 (ironically the same year her compatriot actresses Claudia Cardinale & Luciana Paluzzi respectively starred in the cult classics Once Upon A Time In The West and The Green Slime), Gina made probably her best Hollywood film, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, which is sadly not available on DVD.

A pleasant mash-up of Hollywood screwball comedy and Italian sex farce,...

The 50s sword-and-sandals epic features acrobats, fire eaters and a funky chicken - but not a single grain of historical accuracy

Director: King Vidor

Entertainment grade: D

History grade: Fail

Solomon is said to have been the son of David, and king of Israel around 1000 BC.

Politics

Prince Solomon (Yul Brynner) and his brother Adonijah (George Sanders) are hanging around in the desert, near Israel's border with Egypt. There's a skirmish, and the Israelites take some prisoners. "Highness, this one was found among the Egyptian dead," exclaims a soldier, "but he is no Egyptian!" Indeed not: he appears to be a blond Anglo-Saxon covered in boot polish. "I have the honour to serve her majesty, the Queen of Sheba," squeaks the blond. The premise of the film is that Sheba and Egypt have formed an alliance against Israel. This makes no sense in 1000 BC. Neither scripture nor archaeology suggests that...

Tyrone Power, wife Deborah Ann Minardos on the set of Solomon and Sheba. Power suffered a fatal heart attack during filming. Tyrone Power VI: Lana Turner, Sonja Henie, Janet Gaynor Why do you think that Tyrone Power isn’t as well-remembered today as, say, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and several other top stars of the studio era? I love this question because it’s such bunk. That’s nothing against you — I understand why it was asked, but it’s not true. If you go out on the street and ask any twenty-something about any of these people, they’ll tell you they don’t know who any of them are. I have a friend who is a voice teacher who just [...]...

Frank Liberman, a Hollywood publicist for more than 60 years, died Monday. He was 92.

Liberman represented Bob Hope for 41 years, Phyllis Diller for 33 and David Janssen for 16. He also repped Henry Fonda, Nat "King" Cole, Tony Bennett, Jack Paar, Harry Belafonte, Steve Allen, Charles Bronson, Joan Blondell, Dorothy Lamour, Peggy Lee, Mel Ferrer, Mike Nichols, Frank Langella, Nick Nolte and William Shatner, among others.

Liberman also publicized such major motion pictures as "Solomon and Sheba" (1959), "The Miracle Worker" (1962) and "Fiddler on the Roof" (1971). As a book publicist, he represented many of the published works of George Burns, Hope, Allen and Diller.

Liberman also served as the publicist for two famed celebrity-frequented restaurants -- Dan Tana's in West Hollywood and La Scala in Beverly Hills.

Liberman, a native of Manhattan, served with the U.S. Signal Corps and Army Pictorial Service during World War II. He began work in the movie...