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Western movies have seen a variety of talented actors build their careers through roles as cowboys, lawmen, and bounty hunters, but few have commanded the genre as well as Clint Eastwood. Building up an image as a gritty, self-reliant, and morally grey antihero, the actor/director has left as strong an impression behind the camera as in front. The image he established in the Western genre was so strong and beloved that it followed him through other genres, such as action, thriller, and drama.

Clint Eastwood's leadership of the Western genre throughout the latter half of the 20th century defined his career, rarely turning in a bad movie. As great as roles like Dirty Harry may be, the actor has always been at his best in the Old West -- and some films are a stronger testament to this than others. Ranging from performances as bounty hunters to vengeful spirits,...

In 1967, Clint Eastwood's career took off overnight with the U.S. theatrical releases of "A Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." This trilogy of newfangled Spaghetti Westerns directed by the brilliant Sergio Leone transformed Eastwood from a TV cowboy (as Rowdy Yates on CBS' "Rawhide") to a gunslinging antihero. The genre was reborn, and Eastwood was suddenly John Wayne for the Baby Boomer generation. He expanded his range and bolstered his popularity the following year by genre-hopping from Western "Hang 'Em High" to cop flick "Coogan's Bluff" to World War II spy thriller "Where Eagles Dare." By the time 1969 rolled around, he could do just about anything — and he did the unexpected.

Though musicals and traditional Westerns were declining in popularity, Paramount thought it could give them both a jolt by mounting a big-screen adaptation of the popular Alan Jay Lerner...

Popularly known for his appearance and direction of Western dramas, Clint Eastwood is considered a living legend in the history of Hollywood. But while the actor has created an incredible reputation in the industry, even Eastwood has seen his fair share of struggling years as a newcomer. And it was from back then that the actor appeared in a 1969 musical drama.

Clint Eastwood in the 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon | image: Paramount Pictures

Yes, Clint Eastwood has starred in a musical and he surely doesn’t want you to know about it. Claiming to be a risk taker during his initial years, Eastwood revealed working in Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon, where he even delivered some dodgy vocal performance.

Clint Eastwood once took the risk of appearing in a musical drama

While Clint Eastwood is best known for his tough-guy roles in Western dramas, even the veteran legend once took...

Clint Eastwood's Best Picture-winning Western is getting a new streaming home. Since the 1960s, the American icon has been widely associated with the Western genre. He rose to fame for his roles as the ramrod Rowdy Yates in the Western television series Rawhide and the bounty hunter, the Man with No Name, in director Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti Westerns, which includes A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Eastwood capped off the 1960s with the Westerns Hang 'Em High, which was his first starring role in an American movie, and the musical Paint Your Wagon. During the 1970s, Eastwood starred in Two Mules for Sister Sara and Joe Kidd before he began directing his own Westerns in addition to starring, starting with High Plains Drifter and followed by The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider. In 1992, Eastwood made Unforgiven,...

Clint Eastwood started his acting career in the mid-1950s with various smaller and uncredited parts in both film and TV before landing his first major TV role as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide. This part and his co-starring role for 217 episodes helped transition his career from TV actor to internationally known film superstar, with his breakout roles in the Dollars Trilogy as 'The Man with No Name'. The 1960s were a decade that transformed Eastwood's career and turned him into one of the most important figures in the cinematic landscape.

Eastwood's starring roles in iconic Westerns A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly launched him into the mainstream and showed his undeniable star power. They showed his ability to portray an intense, quiet, yet charismatic lead that helped change not only his career but the genre as a whole, focusing on a...

Clint Eastwood is known for his elaborate and prolific career and filmography. He has not only entertained his audience as an actor, but down the line, he also picked up directing and proved his worth as a talented director. He not only delved into the marvelous Western world but also portrayed characters in different genres, including romantic drama, cop movies, and a lot of thriller flicks. Eastwood also amazed everyone as a musician and composer, and in the 1980s, he even served as the Mayor of the California town Carmel-by-the-Sea.

A Still from The Bridges of Madison County | Credits: Warner Bros.

He surely has an impressive resume to show. Eastwood’s charming screen presence, stoic physique, and serious look on his face gave him success in the war and crime movie genres. He supremely excelled in them and even received 11 Oscar nominations for his acting and directing talents, while winning...

With a career in film that hails back as far as 1955, it's almost impossible for an individual not to find at least one film of Clint Eastwood's they enjoy. Westerns? There's one or two. Monster movies? Does Revenge of the Creature ring a (diving) bell? Suspense thriller? It's hard to beat In the Line of Fire. Musical? Yep Paint Your Wagon. Clint Eastwood has appeared at least once in almost every genre of film, and directed a healthy portion of them to boot. Speaking of boots, cowboy boots to be specific, the apex of his directorial efforts has to be 1992's Unforgiven, a powerful film that deconstructs the Western genre and reinvents it going forward. It's a critically acclaimed winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. On industry gospel review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Unforgiven sits at 96%. Not bad, but not as good as the 97% for...

Clint Eastwood's role in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly solidified his status as a Western genre icon. Lee Van Cleef's portrayal of the ruthless Angel Eyes added depth to the Spaghetti Western trilogy. Eli Wallach's comedic relief as Tuco balanced out the serious tone of the iconic film.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a standout film whose cast elevated it to greatness and is the third movie in Sergio Leones iconic Fistful of Dollars trilogy. The trilogy began with A Fistful of Dollars in 1964 and was followed up by For A Few Dollars More the next year before culminating with 1966s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The films are part of the Spaghetti Western tradition, which was a subgenre of Westerns that used Italian teams to make American Western-genre films.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is arguably the...

Is there a more iconic American actor than Clint Eastwood? Indeed, his name has been at the forefront of many discussions of the most influential and iconic actors on the screen. His career spans decades of content curated to his strong persona and clear artistic direction when behind the camera. Still, one genre that Eastwood has become synonymous with is the Western; both the starting point and the final farewell of his career have been steeped in the genre.

We will examine Eastwood's impact on the Western and outline how you can stream all of his movies in the genre online; what better way to celebrate the American icon?

How to Watch Every Clint Eastwood Western

The below lists every Western where Clint Eastwood had a prominent role. This excludes his early appearances in Star in the Dust and The First Traveling Saleslady, with an uncredited role in one and...

Throughout the 1950s, big-budget musicals were de rigueur for Hollywood, and there was a sudden glut of epics that sported gigantic budgets, recognizable stars, and no small amount of studio hype. Such films were exhibited as touring roadshow productions, which was a great way for films to make fistfuls of cash. Roadshow epics were also, it should be noted, a concerted ploy by studios to distract audiences from the rising threat of television. Studios felt the need to invest a lot of money into musicals and epics, hoping the massive productions could draw people into theaters and keep the industry afloat.

One might logically predict, however, that Hollywood tried to ride the trend of epics for a little longer than was healthy, and foolish overspending eventually became common. The age of the "roadshow epic" pretty much came to a close with the release of the notorious bomb "Cleopatra" in 1963. 

But then,...

With a career in film that hails back as far as 1955, it's almost impossible for an individual not to find at least one film of Clint Eastwood's they enjoy. Westerns? There's one or two. Monster movies? Does Revenge of the Creature ring a (diving) bell? Suspense thriller? It's hard to beat In the Line of Fire. Musical? Yep Paint Your Wagon. Clint Eastwood has appeared at least once in almost every genre of film, and directed a healthy portion of them to boot. Speaking of boots, cowboy boots to be specific, the apex of his directorial efforts has to be 1992's Unforgiven, a powerful film that deconstructs the Western genre and reinvents it going forward. It's a critically acclaimed winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. On industry gospel review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Unforgiven sits at 96%. Not bad, but not as good as the 97% for...

“The transition will be seamless.”

Those words usually accompany an announcement of a corporate takeover and, of course, it never works out that way. And it likely won’t for Paramount 2024.

Consider history: When MGM found it had become a corporate conquest in the mid-1960s, not only was the studio staff fired but three major movies were canceled mid-production. The executive guillotine was also in action at Warner Bros a year later, when the production team was decimated by its new proprietor and even Looney Tunes was dropped.

Paramount’s “transition” in 1966 was even more lethal: Not only did the new studio owner cancel existing shoots but he also greenlit three of the biggest flops in Hollywood history – earning renown as “Bluhdorn’s Bombs” (see below).

History may not automatically repeat itself in the deal now unfolding behind the filigreed Paramount gates, but the “seamless transition” already sounds problematic:...

The original 1964 Broadway production of "Hello, Dolly!" was considered a showcase for its star, Carol Channing, and little else. At the time, critics were not entirely kind, saying the show had "unnecessary vulgar and frenzied touches," and that they "wouldn't say that Jerry Herman's score is memorable." Despite the middling reviews, "Hello, Dolly!" won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Leading Actress (for Channing), Best Direction, Best Choreography, and Best Original Score.

The mid-'60s were a weirdly fraught time for major Hollywood musicals, as the genre provided some of the era's biggest hits, but also some of its biggest bombs. In 1964, Disney had a big hit with "Mary Poppins" and Warner Bros. made bank with "My Fair Lady," so musicals were suddenly on the rise. In 1965, Fox released "The Sound of Music," adapted from the stage production by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and it proved to be one of...

Don Siegel’s 1976 western The Shootist stars John Wayne in his final film appearance, though it’s perhaps just as notable for the muted nature of its regard for the pathology of violence. After all, Siegel is the same filmmaker who half a decade prior made Dirty Harry, in which Clint Eastwood’s renegade cop relishes squeezing the trigger of his 44-magnum revolver whenever the opportunity presents itself.

There’s a propulsive mania to Siegel’s direction of Dirty Harry, tapping as it does into the curious overlap between Harry’s police tactics and a psycho sniper’s bloodlust. Wayne’s J.B. Books in The Shootist has no such compelling correlate. He’s a former sheriff turned gunslinger, now an old man easing the pain of his terminal cancer with swigs of laudanum, and he’s aiming to die in peace. It’s 1901, and the fact that he can’t...

Clint Eastwood perfected the archetype of the witty, fast-shooting gunslinger in his Western films through collaboration with acclaimed directors. Not all Eastwood roles were deadly gunslingers; some showed complexity and romantic entanglements, like McBee in The Beguiled. Eastwood's portrayal of deadly gunslingers like Joe Kidd and The Stranger showcased intense, rough characters with layers of complexity.

Legend of the Western genre Clint Eastwood has played several deadly gunslingers across his acclaimed career. From Spaghetti Westerns to Hollywood blockbusters, Eastwood perfected the archetype of the witty, fast-shooting, lone anti-hero who was consistently embroiled in shootouts, standoffs, and vicious bar fights. Through Eastwood's work with acclaimed directors like Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, as well as the many movies he directed himself, Eastwood played countless intimidating, tough, and skilled gunslingers who left their mark on the often brutal and deadly landscape of the Wild West.

While Eastwood did appear in plenty of Western movies,...

If you've heard of 1969's "musical Western" Paint Your Wagon, there's a decent chance you only know it from The Simpsons. In Season 9, Homer rents Paint Your Wagon for family movie night, hoping for a blood-and-guts western, as the picture stars Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, both known as men of violence. The Simpsonized version opens in media res, during what seems to be a tense showdown at high noon. Homer is disappointed when, instead of trying to kill each other, the cowboys break into a song of friendship. ("Gonna paint our wagon! Gonna paint it good!") It's very silly. But it's structurally sound. First it appears to be the prototypical western, then it pivots sharply into a middle-aged cartoon man's nightmare idea of what a musical is. There's a purity of form you have to admire. The actual movie Paint Your Wagon, on the other hand, is not like that at all.

Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon can be viewed as one of the last gasps of a dwindling Hollywood studio system, as well as a precursor to the New Hollywood. The film, with its expansive anamorphic vistas of the American Northwest, bears some superficial similarities to Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, which is often historicized as the end of the New Hollywood, given how it bankrupted United Artists. But in contrast to the profound sadness with which Cimino regards America’s history of violence, Logan’s musical romp takes a lighthearted approach to the process of resettlement, and it’s propelled by the contrasting personalities of Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood as bickering and tussling gold prospectors.

Paint Your Wagon straddles multiple genres at once, suggesting something like a western-inflected musical riff on Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living. The crux of the story concerns Ben Rumson (Marvin), a ne...

A Fistful of Dollars marked Clint Eastwood's big break into Hollywood, solidifying his connection to Spaghetti Western films and launching a successful career. Despite Paint Your Wagon not being a major hit, Eastwood's role showcased his versatility as an actor and earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Clint Eastwood's portrayal of Detective Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry became iconic, leading to numerous sequels and commercial success.

Established actor and director Clint Eastwood is remembered for his highly decorated career, starring in some of the best Western movies of all time. Since the beginning of Eastwood's career in 1955, he's starred in over 60 film titles as an actor and has directed over 40, which is an impressive feat across an almost seven-decade span. Along the way, certain movies helped cement his legacy and define his on-screen persona.

Of course, with such a brilliant and diverse list of films under his belt,...

Experimental Westerns often struggle with controversial endings that can undermine the initial theme or narrative coherence. Films like "El Topo" and "Heaven's Gate" take risks with their endings, resulting in disconcerting twists or unsatisfying conclusions. "Cowboys and Aliens" and "Paint Your Wagon" suffer from confusing or unexpected endings that detract from the overall story and themes.

Western films are one of the most beloved genres in American cinema, so naturally, there have been many iterations of the movies' tropes and plenty of endings that don't live up to the giants of the field. Great Westerns are known for their action, landscapes, and nuanced portrayals of the rugged individualism that has come to define the American West. Though not always, Westerns frequently include cowboys, saloon brawls, and shootouts as central tenants of their stories.

Since there are so many hallmarks of the genre, many films try to subvert the tropes with original takes on classic stories,...

William O’Connell, whose extensive TV and film acting credits in the 1960s and ’70s included a memorably villainous role on Star Trek and a string of adversaries in the films of his frequent collaborator Clint Eastwood, died January 15 at his home in Sherman Oaks, CA. He was 94.

His death was announced to Deadline by a family friend. A cause was not disclosed.

O’Connell scored a lengthy roster of TV episodic credits in the 1960s, becoming a busy character actor of the day. He had small roles, often nameless characters distinguished only by their job titles — Flagman, Cabbie, Field Rep. #1 — in Highway Patrol, Peter Gunn and The Twilight Zone, also popping up on Dennis the Menace, My Three Sons, The Outer Limits, Bonanza, The Munsters, Batman and The Lucy Show.

His most memorable TV role from the era came in 1967, when he was cast in the Season 2 “Journey to Babel” episode of Star Trek as Thelev,...

Clint Eastwood's portrayal of Pardner in Paint Your Wagon showcases his versatility as he steps outside his stoic persona and embraces the Western musical genre with comedic timing and impressive singing. In Joe Kidd, Eastwood's performance as the titular character combines intensity with honor and moral complexity, elevating the film and showcasing his charisma and unwavering grit. As Marshal Jed Cooper in Hang 'Em High, Eastwood captivates with his portrayal of a resilient lawman seeking justice, breathing defiant life into a timeless tale and embodying courage and toughness on the frontier.

Over decades, Clint Eastwood has become synonymous with the iconic cowboy figure in classic Westerns. Portraying a multitude of remarkable characters, the majority of which have enhanced the quality of great Western films. As one of Hollywood's most legendary stars, Eastwood's name brings to mind the image of the stoic, rugged cowboy - the very embodiment of the Western genre.

Paint Your Wagon, the 1969 Western musical that displayed the singing talents of Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin, is headed to 4K and Blu-ray. Kino Lorber will release the film in a special edition set this spring, with a March 26 release date. The sweeping, three-hour-long Paramount musical will be presented in an all-new 4K transfer, shot from a scan of the original 35mm negative.

Barbie is confounding: In addition to setting box office records, the movie has also inspired a flood of commentaries about its presumed “message.”

Yes, there have been more editorials about a doll than about a bomb. Why did Barbie complain about “cognitive dissonance” at a Mattel corporate meeting? Or denounce “sexualized consumerism”? For that matter, was it rude to joke about Proust, the revered French novelist?

Were director Greta Gerwig and her co-screenwriter, husband Noah Baumbach, nurturing a hidden subtext in their script?

And should we care? The big news on Barbie: it’s headed for $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales by this weekend, vastly surpassing Oppenheimer, which has a longer running time and more limited release schedule (it’s at $181 million U.S.).

Even Barbie swag is as inescapably pervasive as it is numbingly pink. The caps, T-shirts, tote bags, sunglasses and toy cars have arrived like a wave of Pepto Bismol.

When Midnight Cowboy came out in 1969, Miami Herald critic John Huddy heralded its arrival with a string of superlatives: “Staggering, shattering, heartbreaking, hilarious, tragic, raw and absurd.”

Over the years, the ranks of its admirers has only grown, among them documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski.

“I remember feeling that it was a really radical film,” recalls Buirski, who first saw Midnight Cowboy sometime after its original release. “It felt different from anything I had seen… It was like a gut punch.”

Director Nancy Buirski

Buirski’s documentary Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, now playing in limited release in New York, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Detroit and other cities, digs into the loam that produced such a bleak yet beautiful flower of a film. Midnight Cowboy hit theaters the same year as Hello, Dolly! and Paint Your Wagon but unlike those celluloid larks, John Schlesinger’s film...

From The Big Red One to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, some Lee Marvin movies rank among the greatest films ever made. Marvin first rose to prominence in the 1950s and early 1960s with his villainous roles as “the heavy” in Westerns and film noirs, but he eventually transitioned into lead roles and revolutionized Hollywood filmmaking with the introduction of the antihero. Marvin’s most iconic characters, like Walker in Point Blank and Major John Reisman in The Dirty Dozen, helped to bring morally gray protagonists into mainstream productions, paving the way for characters like John Wick and Snake Plissken.

Throughout his storied career, Marvin won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Film Award, and a Golden Globe. Decades after he passed away, Marvin remains a timeless icon of the silver screen whose performances continue to thrill audiences to this day. Marvin is one of the few “tough guy” movie stars to have real-life grit,...

Sally Ann Howes, who began her acting career as a child and was best known for starring in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” opposite Dick Van Dyke, died on Dec. 19. She was 91.

Her death was confirmed by her nephew, Toby Howes, who tweeted: “I can also confirm the passing of my beloved Aunty Sally Ann Howes who died peacefully in her sleep yesterday. My brother & I thought Sally Ann might hold on until the Christmas screening of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ as this would have greatly appealed to her mischievous side.”

“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” is often broadcast on Christmas Day in the U.K.

In a career that spanned five decades, Howes racked up 40 film and television credits, having spent the latter half of her career focusing on the theater, including a part in Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” at the New York City Opera in 1990.

Born in...

The year of 1969 saw the moon landing of the Apollo 11’s Eagle module, Richard Nixon sworn in as the 37th president of the United States, the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village ushering in the gay rights movement, the Tate-La Bianca murders by the Manson Family, the landmark Woodstock Music and Arts Fair which attracts 400,000, the tragic and violent Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway and even Tiny Tim marrying Miss Vicki on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

But one major event was basically ignored by the mainstream media: the Harlem Cultural Arts Festival which took place June 29-August 24 at the Mount Morris Park. Founded by Tony Lawrence, the festival celebrating Black pride, music and culture features such landmark performers as Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension and Mahalia Jackson. And when the NYPD refused to supply security,...

Robert C. Jones, an Oscar-winning writer and editor whose credits include It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Coming Home and Love Story, has died. He was 84.

“It is with deep sadness that I am writing to tell you the passing of Robert C. Jones, who was a celebrated editor and screenwriter, and a beloved professor at our School,” said Elizabeth Daley of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where Jones served as a professor for 15 years.

Jones was born on March 30, 1936 in Los Angeles. His foray into film work began upon his drafting into the U.S. Army, when he joined the Army Pictorial Center from 1958 to 1960 as a film editor. At the Pictorial Center he edited Army training films, documentaries and several segments of the television program The Big Picture.

After his Army stint, Jones further developed his editing skills for A Child Is Waiting...

It’s 1927, and we are inside a Chicago recording studio. A blues singer and her band banter about the music business and its inherent lack of equality.

It’s 1964, and we are in Miami, where Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay (as he was known for one more day) discuss their roles in society.

It’s semi-present day and we’re in a small town in Indiana, where a high school prom is upended by a non-straight pair. Stage performers show up to save the day.

Three films are arriving this month — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman, “One Night in Miami,” directed by Regina King, and “The Prom,” directed by Ryan Murphy, starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and James Corden — that are all are adaptations of plays. This used to happen all the time but not so much anymore.

Until now.

Some of us have spent nearly as much time in Springfield as we have in our own actual hometowns. So much has changed in the 30 years since The Simpsons debuted in 1989, but some things never grow old. Which led to an even more important conversation: Of the 670-plus episodes that have aired since its beginning, which would you show to the few who remain unconverted to the show’s genius? What, essentially, are the greatest Simpsons’ episodes of them all?

So after hours of arguing, several bouts of fisticuffs, many...

Pop culture creates goddesses only to offer them up for sacrifice, and over the course of her career, Kristen Stewart has no doubt gotten close enough to that pyre to smell the brimstone. So she’s a natural to play Jean Seberg in “Seberg,” about the Iowa girl who became an international movie star, only to be targeted and ultimately destroyed by the FBI because of her affiliation with the Black Panthers.

And while “Seberg” is rarely as great as its lead actress, the film does shed light on a tragic corner of American history that’s not discussed nearly enough — the U.S. citizens who had their lives shattered by J. Edgar Hoover’s secret Cointelpro (counter-intelligence program) surveillance that targeted anyone the FBI considered “subversive,” be they Vietnam War protesters, black or indigenous activists, even environmentalists.

Jean Seberg’s life comes with its own built-in metaphor: She began...

Robert Evans, the legendary Paramount Pictures exec and consummate Hollywood producer behind films like Chinatown and Marathon Man, died on Saturday, October 26th, Variety reported. He was 89. A representative for Evans confirmed his death, though no cause or location was given; The New York Times reported that Evans died in Beverly Hills.

Evans’ career stretched across decades and was filled with an array of glitzy highs and brutal lows. He was best known for running and revitalizing Paramount in the late Sixties and early Seventies, overseeing hits like The Odd Couple,...

Robert Evans, the Paramount executive who produced “Chinatown” and “Urban Cowboy” and whose life became as melodramatic and jaw-dropping as any of his films, died on Saturday night. He was 89.

Even though Hollywood history is filled with colorful characters, few can match the tale of Evans, whose life would seem far-fetched if it were fiction. With his matinee-idol looks but little acting talent, Evans was given starring roles in a few movies and then, with no studio experience, was handed the production reins at Paramount in the 1960s. When he left the exec ranks, his first film as a producer was the classic “Chinatown,” and he followed with other hits, like “Marathon Man” and “Urban Cowboy.” Eventually, his distinctive look and speaking style turned him into a cult figure, and he had the distinction of being the only film executive who starred in his own animated TV series.

His life was a continuous roller-coaster.

The 71st Emmy Awards featured a major gaffe during the In Memoriam tribute when a photo of living composer Leonard Slatkin was used to honor the late André Previn. The Television Academy issued the following statement reacting to the In Memoriam segment error: “The producers for the 71st Emmy Awards, the Television Academy and Fox sincerely apologize for this error. All In Memoriam mentions on the Television Academy’s website feature accurate imagery for Mr. Previn.”

Previn was nominated for 11 Academy Awards throughout his career, winning the Best Original Score prize for “Gigi,” “Porgy and Bess,” “Irma la Douce,” and “My Fair Lady.” Additional movies composed by Previn include “All in a Night’s Work,” “Designing Woman,” “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” and “Paint Your Wagon.” The composer passed away in February at the age of 89. The 75-year-old Slatkin is the Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and...

“Who is Jean Seberg?” a reporter asks the eponymous movie star midway through “Seberg,” attempting to close a puffy promotional interview for “Paint Your Wagon” with some semblance of personal insight. She doesn’t get to answer, as Seberg’s publicist swiftly calls time on the question: “Let’s just keep it about the movie,” he instructs. It’s one of many moments in Benedict Andrews’ slick, diverting portrait in which Seberg is shown to be treated as a product, a pawn or a patsy, handled by men in their own best interests rather than hers. And yet “Seberg” does something a little similar to that protective publicist: Every time it threatens to truly pierce the psyche of its subject, played with typically intriguing, elusory intelligence by Kristen Stewart, the more ordinary mechanics of the movie she’s serving get in the way.

In fairness, those mechanics are more movie-ish...

A fitting punishment for anyone who felt that “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” didn’t lavish enough love upon the late Sharon Tate, Benedict Andrews’ “Seberg” is proof enough that extra screen time isn’t the secret to a more satisfying cinematic séance.

Which isn’t to say that this scattered look at the last years of Jean Seberg’s life gives the actress its undivided attention. Less a biopic about the “Breathless” star than a paranoid thriller that revolves around her fateful role in the FBI’s Cointelpro surveillance program, Andrews’ film might position Seberg as its subject, but it ultimately just uses her as a screen on which to project a story about someone else. Whereas Quentin Tarantino suffused Tate’s memory into the very soul of his revisionist elegy, liberating the murdered starlet from her own iconography, Andrews — whose film also takes place in the late...

David Crow Jul 25, 2019

We examine the shocking ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and what it means for the film's era and Quentin Tarantino.

This article contains major Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spoilers.

Joan Didion famously wrote in her 1979 collection of essays, The White Album, about the night Sharon Tate died.

“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” wrote Didion. “Ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”

This is often the conventional wisdom about the era: Charles Manson’s so called Family brought an end to the Summer of Love, which also just happened to occur around the same time that the old Hollywood studio system finally collapsed, buried by its massive flops like Hello,...

To Quentin Tarantino, the year 1969 represented a moment of magic and turmoil in Hollywood and, being Tarantino, he determined to make a movie exploring it. He was, in fact, only 6 years old in 1969; as a result, his “take” on that year inevitably poses a challenge to those of us who’d actually lived through it. This is particularly true since Tarantino has a colorful propensity to rewrite history, his movies re-arraying events about slavery or Hitler — or hippies.

The upshot: Tarantino’s new movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, offers filmgoers classic star turns from Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. Both seem exhilarated, cast as polar opposites of their true selves: DiCaprio plays a terminally insecure actor, obsessed that he will never achieve stardom, Pitt plays an unemployed stunt man eager to bury his loser past. Both have an eerie premonition of a generational change in the public taste for TV and movies,...

Released in the same year as The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Henry Hathaway’s western was defiantly old-fashioned in comparison

The year 1969 was a true inflection point for the American western, a once-dominant genre that had become a casualty of the culture, particularly when Vietnam had rendered the moral clarity of white hats and black hats obsolete. A handful of westerns were released by major studios that year, including forgettable or regrettable star vehicles for Burt Reynolds (Sam Whiskey) and Clint Eastwood (Paint Your Wagon), who were trying to revitalize the genre with a touch of whimsy. But 50 years later, three very different films have endured: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch and True Grit. Together, they represented the past, present and future of the western.

Related: Midnight Cowboy at 50: why the X-rated best picture winner endures...

With Rocketman opening strongly this past weekend at 3,500 theaters, and with a dozen other music-driven movies huddled at the starting line, one movie milestone is being studiously ignored: the 50th anniversary of Paint Your Wagon.

At its opening, Roger Ebert called Paint “a lump of a movie.” Its failings, he wrote, display all that could go wrong in the music genre – a comment that should resonate with Celine Dion, David Bowie, Boy George, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Carole King, Elvis Presley, Judy Garland and, yes, even the Beatles, all of whose stories will be immortalized in upcoming musical biopics.

Having lived through the production of Paint Your Wagon, I’m more than a little surprised by this sudden musical gridlock.

Some context: Fifty years ago, with box office dwindling, Hollywood turned to the musical genre in the hope of re-awakening a golden era. But instead of discovering a new Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,...

Welcome to this week’s Ring Of Honor review, right here on Nerdly. I’m Nathan Favel and we have Bandido in the main event against Shane Taylor. Isn’t it nice when I don’t tell any jokes? Well, it isn’t for me. Why did the chicken cross the road? …to go watch Ring Of Honor! Yeah, my writers quit, so I’m stuck with Reading Rainbow humor.

Match #1: The Bouncers (Beer City Bruiser and Brawler Milonas) defeated Coast 2 Coast (Lsg and Shaheem Ali) and Shinobi Shadow Squad in a Triple Threat match The following is courtesy of rohwrestling.com:

Nova got off to a fast start against Lsg, but The Bouncers eventually used their significant weight advantage to take control. Coast 2 Coast got on a roll, as Ali took out his four opponents with a dive to the floor. In the end, The Bouncers prevailed after...

Oscar-winning film composer and symphony orchestra conductor Andre Previn died Thursday at his home in Manhattan, his manager confirmed to the New York Times. He was 89.

The former enfant terrible of motion picture scoring and accomplished jazz pianist was honored with four Academy Awards. He won the first two, for best scoring of a musical picture (a category that has since been retired), for “Gigi” and “Porgy & Bess” in 1958 and 1959, respectively, while still in his 20s. He then won two for best adaptation or treatment (another retired sub-category) in 1963 and 1964 for “Irma la Douce” and “My Fair Lady,” respectively.

He later abandoned films to conduct such esteemed orchestras as the London Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Previn’s jazz influence was pianist Art Tatum and, from the age of 12, he developed a proficiency in jazz piano, which led to his first film assignment at age 16, while still a...

At a time when Hollywood is cautiously playing by the rules, Clint Eastwood continues to create rules of his own. The hero in his new release, The Mule, is not a revered sniper (American Sniper) or a legendary pilot (Sully), but a politically incorrect, geriatric screwup. He is portrayed not by Bradley Cooper, who’s relegated to a supporting role, but by the 88-year-old Eastwood himself, looking fragile and a bit confused. When the plot goes astray, its problems relate not to an anticipated outburst of Dirty Harry violence but to scenes that may strike filmgoers as marginally maudlin.

The Mule won’t be a box office hit like Gran Torino, and it won’t win surprise Oscars like Million Dollar Baby, but it will reinforce Eastwood’s credentials as America’s most productive, autonomous and idiosyncratic filmmaker. Warner Bros released it the movie with little hoopla — a modest campaign,...

With three films already in release this year and another coming, Melissa McCarthy has been wallowing in worshipful media coverage. “Has anyone ever worked so hard to make us laugh?” the New York Times Magazine asked in this week’s cover story. Having established that she “owns” comedy, however, McCarthy, in true movie star fashion, has now switched to high drama. Mirthless Melissa’s new film, appropriately titled Can You Ever Forgive Me?, is best described by the New Yorker as “a mournful film suffused with an air of doom.”

I don’t want to pick on Melissa McCarthy, but the compulsion of stars to shed their true persona has always intrigued me. The pages of Hollywood history are steeped in examples of famed actors who want to prove that they can “stretch” — code for self-destruct.

On occasion, of course, the results have been inspiring: Remember how Tom Hanks, obviously...

Tony Sokol Sep 24, 2018

Warner Bros is putting Mel Gibson in Sam Peckinpah's saddle for a Wild Bunch remake.

"We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us," Don Jose said in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. "Perhaps the worst most of all." The director then took the most graphic violence and realistic gunshots to turn the wild south west into a beautifully tortured regression in time. Warner Bros. is handing the film over to Mel Gibson, who will co-write, executive produce, and direct a remake of the influential 1969 American epic Western movie, according to Deadline.

The Wild Bunch is about a gang of aging outlaws on the Mexico–United States border in 1913 led by William Holden. Lee Marvin was originally cast as the lead, but backed out to do the Western genre musical Paint Your Wagon. Veteran actor Holden was at the beginning of a major comeback.

The last few months of the year are known as Oscar season because it is the time in which studios release the films they intend to have contend for the Academy Awards. But just because you release your film during this time doesn’t automatically make it good enough to compete. Here are some infamous examples.

Just because you have a good story, an esteemed actor, or a knowledgeable director doesn’t mean you’ll end up with a good film. A good film is ultimately a collaborative effort, and the end result relies on many different factors that may or may not be controllable. I like to believe that the Oscars try to celebrate those moments in film where the pieces came together just right. Of course, some films think they can take shortcuts in order to reach the level of esteem that would be rewarded by the Academy.

Exclusive: Outside, the magazine which has published feature articles that were the basis for both film and television projects such as Everest, The Perfect Storm, Into the Wild, Blue Crush and 127 Hours, has just teamed up with The Gotham Group. The two companies will produce content for film, television and new media for what will be different platforms and distributors. Outside, which began in 1977 and is owned by the Mariah Media Network, is also known as the only magazine to have won three consecutive National Magazine Awards for general excellence.

If you add up the box office for those aforementioned feature projects alone, it totals ovver $700M worldwide. Larry Burke (Outside chairman) and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein (The Gotham Group’s CEO/founder and an avid sports enthusiast), are currently in talks with production companies, financiers, streaming services, broadcast and cable entities to start the partnership rolling.

“Over the last few weeks,...

Personal Shopper and Twilight actress Kristen Stewart has been cast in the independent political thriller, Against All Enemies, in the role of Saint Joan actress Jean Seberg.

Stewart joins Anthony Mackie, who will portray a civil rights activist and Jack O’Connell who has been cast as an FBI agent assigned to surveil the actress. Margaret Qualley and Colm Meaney will also star. Una director, Benedict Andrews will take the helm on a script by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse.

Also in the news – Madonna set to direct feature adaptation Taking Flight

The story will focus on attempts by the FBI to discredit Seberg through its Cointelpro program in retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party. Those efforts included creating a false story in 1970 that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband, but by a member of the Black Panther Party.

Seberg, whose career...

Steve Ross I Remember Him Well: The Songs of Alan Jay Lerner Birdland Jazz Club, NYC Monday, January 22, 2018

Lerner who?

Getting serious for a moment, this is the fact around which we will orbit: What really constitutes American culture? Literature and architecture and painting -- yes, certainly. But what particularly animates our hearts is song -- and, in particular, the living energy of the American musical theater. In that buoyant realm, there’s no greater literate master than lyricist and writer Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986). The open-and-shut-case evidence for this assertion is his CV: On A Clear Day, Brigadoon, Gigi, Paint Your Wagon, An American In Paris (story and screen play), Camelot, and -- most famously, My Fair Lady.

Watching our black and white TV, as a child I noticed my parents (and the studio audience) were delighted by a singer I’d never heard of. I could not understand the big to-do about him.

Ryan Lambie Jul 14, 2017

A cult gem in its own right, 1981's Galaxy Of Terror also gave James Cameron his start in big-screen filmmaking...

In most respects, it's pure Roger Corman: low-budget, swiftly made, and loaded with gratuitous gore and bare flesh. But take a closer look at Galaxy Of Terror, the amiably tawdry sci-fi horror flick released by Corman's New World in 1981, and you'll see the creative fingerprints of one James Cameron.

See related 8 Star Wars games we'd like to see

Directed by Bruce D Clark - who also co-wrote - Galaxy Of Terror slams together the plots of Ridley Scott's Alien and the 50s classic, Forbidden Planet. A group of explorers land on the planet Morganthus, where they discover a huge ancient pyramid; one by one, the visitors are terrorised and killed by monsters from their subconscious. One luckless character is torn apart by claws and tentacles...