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He was initially an ambassador from the Hippie Nation, a force of irreverence armed with a sharp wit and a what-me-worry smile. Which is why, in the late 1960s, right when Flower Power was beginning to bloom in full and the escalating situation in Vietnam galvanized the youth generation, Donald Sutherland started to make a name for himself in… war movies. It’s funny to think of that factoid now, given the six decades of incredibly versatile work the late, great actor left behind when he died Thursday at the...

Bruce Kessler, who directed episodes of shows including The Monkees, It Takes a Thief, The Rockford Files, McCloud and The Commish when he wasn’t driving race cars, designing boats or circling the globe in a yacht, has died. He was 88.

Kessler died Thursday at his home in Marina del Rey after a brief illness, his brother, author and columnist Stephen Kessler, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Survivors also include his wife, actress Joan Freeman, perhaps best known as the love interest of Elvis Presley’s character in Roustabout (1964). She and Kessler were together for 54 years and married for 33.

Kessler served as second-unit director on Howard Hawks’ Red Line 7000 (1965), an action film about stock cars that starred James Caan, before embarking on a three-decade career as a director for television.

His credits included The Flying Nun, Adam-12, Marcus Welby, M.D., Get Christie Love!, Baretta, Switch, CHiPs, The A-Team, The Greatest American Hero,...

Mario Camus, the acclaimed Spanish writer-director behind La colmena, Young Sánchez, The Holy Innocents and more, died in his hometown of Santander on September 18. He was 86.

Spain’s Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Goya Awards, confirmed the news with a post published on Saturday to their official Instagram page. “Filmmaker Mario Camus dies in Santander. Author of classics of our cinema such as The Holy Innocents, The Beehive, The Days of the Past or That Woman,” a spokesperson wrote in Spanish. “He received the Goya de Honor in 2011.”

Born on April 20, 1935, Camus was creatively active for at least 45 years, and directed 30 films, starting with 1963’s Los farsantes. He claimed the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear statuette for Best Film with his 1983 feature La Colmena, along with Cannes’ Prize of the Ecumenical Jury for 1984’s The Holy Innocents (Spanish title: Los santos inocentes). The director...

This year’s San Sebastian Film Festival is in mourning as Spanish director Mario Camus, celebrated for his sober but caring adaptations of distinguished Spanish novels such as “La Colmena” – written by Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela – Ignacio Aldecoa’s “Young Sánchez” and “The Holy Innocents” by Miguel Delibes, died on Saturday in Santander, northern Spain, the city where he was born. Camus was 86.

Among his career achievements, Camus took the Berlin Golden Bear for best film with “La Colmena” (1983), a Cannes Prize Ecumenical Jury prize for “The Holy Innocents” (1984). Such films proved a highpoint in Spain’s ruling socialist left’s dream, pushed when Pilar Miró took over as head of Spain’s Icaa film institute in 1982, of maintaining Spanish cinema’s social edge but priming its production levels and taking it onto a European stage.

Camus also participated in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and at the Moscow Festival...

Against the star-spangled, quilted backdrop of what looks like it could be a friendly, amateur Fourth of July talent show, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and the company of the Fta Show raise their fists and middle fingers to the United States Armed Forces. They’re accompanied by the raucous cheers from thousands of enlisted service members who make up a fraction of the reported 64,000 total GI attendees over the course of the Fta Show’s tour through U.S. military bases in Hawai’i, the Philippines, and Japan. At each station they delight in having an outlet to tell their employers to screw off and set the date to get them back home.

It’s hard to call an anti-Vietnam doc anyone’s idea of a good time, which is the exact expectation F.T.A—the film, the show it documents, and the stars of both—so brilliantly subverts to its advantage.

Jane Fonda accepted her Cecil B. DeMille award for lifetime achievement at the Golden Globe awards by calling on Hollywood to work harder to increase diversity.

“Stories, they really can change people. But there’s a story we’ve been afraid to see and hear about ourselves in this industry, a story about which voices we respect and elevate and which we tune out, a story about who is offered a seat at the table and who is kept out of the rooms where decisions are made,” she said.

“So let’s all of us, including all the groups that decide who gets hired and what gets made and who wins awards, let’s all of us make an effort to expand that tent so that everyone rises and everyone’s story has a chance to be seen and heard.

“I mean, doing this simply means acknowledging what’s true,...

It sounds like a punchline, but it’s true: Jane Fonda has so many awards, they once broke a shelf.

It was during her marriage to Ted Turner; prior to that she never really had her accolades, which include two Academy Awards, two BAFTAs, seven Golden Globes and a Primetime Emmy Award, on display. But then she moved in with Turner and notes, “Ted’s office is about the size of a football field. And it’s lined with trophies from his sailing. And it really struck me: he’s not ashamed of putting out all his trophies. I mean, literally, there were thousands.”

So at their home in Montana, Fonda created a case with glass shelves. “I put all my awards on them. And the shelves broke,” she says. “I had enough to cause them to break.”

Fonda will soon have some more hardware to display; she’s been...

Simone Simon: Remembering the 'Cat People' and 'La Bête Humaine' star (photo: Simone Simon 'Cat People' publicity) Pert, pretty, pouty, and fiery-tempered Simone Simon – who died at age 94 ten years ago, on Feb. 22, 2005 – is best known for her starring role in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic Cat People (1942). Those aware of the existence of film industries outside Hollywood will also remember Simon for her button-nosed femme fatale in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938).[1] In fact, long before Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, and Barbarella's Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm – with a tad of puppy dog wistfulness – in a film career that spanned two continents and a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both...

Learn more about one of the 20th century's greatest composers—and about one of the funniest comedy troupes ever—and then scream your head off with a horror classic starring a cult gay icon.

Read on for more!

I've been spending the week watching the fascinating mini-series Monty Python: Almost the Truth on IFC, and if you missed it, now you can check out the DVD. While the late gay Python Graham Chapman (above) is obviously not still around to tell his side of the story, his contributions to the group are nonetheless highlighted via archival chat-show clips as well as new interviews with his longtime companion.

If you want even more Python, and didn't shell out for the gigantic box set that came out a while back, that collection's documentaries are now available separately as Monty Python: The Other British Invasion. (If you're a Netflix subscriber, you can see...