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I’m old enough to remember when Jacques Rivette films were the domain of dark-web networks and substandard DVD rips, a conspiratorial network worthy of his cinema. It’s still a little strange seeing that April will feature a 10-film, one-short Criterion Channel program that combines of his canonized masterpieces with decidedly lesser-seens––plus Va Savoir, which I really hope is the recently unearthed four-hour cut for which there’s no substitute. Penélope Cruz is also subject of a retrospective in April, which––more than making me pine for a Rivette collab that never was––will include both Abre Los Ojos and Vanilla Sky, some Almodóvar, and another in the Channel’s ongoing let’s-add-a-Woody-Allen-movie campaign, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

For themed series, J. Hoberman has curated a series on the dangers of ’60s and ’70s New York that runs from Michael Roemer’s recently restored The Plot Against Harry and...

Quick Links Tarantino Has Found a New Creative Outlet as an Author Tarantino Drafted a Screenplay for The Movie Critic, Then Scrapped It Tarantino Intimates His Fear of Making a Poor Final Film Could Writing and Podcasting Supplant Filmmaking for Tarantino? Quentin Tarantino's detailed creative process and dedication to his craft make him a unique and meticulous filmmaker. The cancelation of The Movie Critic suggests Tarantino may be more comfortable in literature than film at this point. While the fear of making a lackluster final film lingers, Tarantino's newfound pursuits in writing and podcasting hint at a potential shift in his career focus.

"Leave them wanting more, and you know they'll call you back." The lyrical quote is attributed to soul singer Bobby Womack. Those words clearly resonate with Quentin Tarantino, a longtime fan of Womack's music who used Womack's song "Across 110th Street" as the keynote of his film Jackie Brown.

Burt Young, a former boxer who was in Sylvester Stallone’s corner as his brother-in-law Paulie in the six Rocky films and received a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his turn in the original, has died. He was 83.

He died on Oct. 8 in Los Angeles, his daughter, Anne Morea Steingieser, told The New York Times Wednesday.

A tough guy in real life who usually played tough guys onscreen, Young portrayed a rotten client of gumshoe Jack Nicholson’s in Chinatown (1974), was mobster “Bed Bug” Eddie in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) and played Rodney Dangerfield’s protector/chauffeur Lou in Back to School (1986).

Young also appeared in four movies in four straight years with fellow Queens guy James Caan — Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Gambler (1974), The Killer Elite (1975) and Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976) — before they worked together again in Mickey Blue Eyes (1999).

He played a getaway driver in Sam Peckinpah’s The Killer Elite,...

As Pam Grier waxes over her groundbreaking career — touching on everything from Foxy Brown and Coffy to Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 love letter to Grier and the genre she built, Jackie Brown — she takes a moment to take stock of what it all represents.

“I hope I’ve given you a slice of what it’s like to be a woman in film,” says the gilded icon of Blaxploitation films during a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter. “From age 19 to me today, I’m in such gratitude and honor of all the people who taught me so much.”

While a library could be built around what’s been written about the Blaxploitation era and her role in it — the recent Netflix documentary Is that Black Enough for You?!? in part chronicles how the genre made her one of the highest-grossing film stars in the 1970s — these days, Grier is focused on...

John G. Avildsen's "Rocky" was only one of three films to star actor Burgess Meredith in 1976. That year he also appeared in the horror film "Burnt Offerings" and the Irish short film "Circasia" which also starred Sean Connery, Eric Clapton, John Huston, and Shirley MacLaine. Meredith was one of those lucky character actors who seemingly never stopped working. His career began in 1935, when he played the uncredited "Flop House Bum" in the Noël Coward film "The Scoundrel." Meredith gained mainstream attention when he appeared in Lewis Milestone's 1939 adaptation of "Of Mice and Men," and had been a showbiz darling ever after. A quick look through his filmography reveals that he had at least one film or television project every year from 1935 through 1995. Meredith passed away in 1997 at the age of 89 with hundreds of acting credits to his name.

Meredith was the largest known star when "Rocky" debuted in...

Jackie Brown has one of Quentin Tarantino’s grooviest soundtracks, featuring songs by such iconic artists as Bobby Womack and the Delfonics. The movie revolves around a flight attendant who plays a notorious gun runner and a couple of Atf agents against each other so she can make off with their loot. From Mr. Blonde torturing a cop to the tune of “Stuck in the Middle with You” to the opening credits of Pulp Fiction kicking off to the tune of “Misirlou,” Tarantino is famous for his needle drops. His soundtrack choices are as crucially tied to his filmmaking style as his idiosyncratic dialogue and scenes of graphic violence.

Based on Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, Jackie Brown was Tarantino’s only adaptation of another writer’s work. It scored much-deserved career comebacks for Pam Grier and Robert Forster, with the latter earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting...

As a lifelong fan of Blaxploitation flicks and exploitation movies in general, of course Quentin Tarantino was desperate to work with Pam Grier. The legendary star of "The Big Bird Cage," "Coffey," and "Foxy Brown" meshed uncommon beauty with undeniable grit. She wasn't looking for trouble. She was trouble. And the bad folks clownish enough to try her on for size always found her to be a treacherously poor fit.

Unfortunately, when the Blaxploitation trend faded in the late 1970s, Hollywood failed Grier. She went from starring roles to underwritten supporting parts in a string of mostly forgettable movies. Strangely, she didn't benefit much from the Black filmmaking renaissance of the early 1990s led by directors like Spike Lee, John Singleton and the Hughes brothers. Then 1996 happened. Though the films weren't particularly big hits, the triple-punch of "Mars Attacks!," "Original Gangsters," and "Escape from L.A." proved she still had plenty...

Cinematography retrospectives are the way to go—more than a thorough display of talent, it exposes the vast expanse a Dp will travel, like an education in form and business all the same. Accordingly I’m happy to see the Criterion Channel give a 25-film tribute to James Wong Howe, whose career spanned silent cinema to the ’70s, populated with work by Howard Hawks, Michael Curtz, Samuel Fuller, Alexander Mackendrick, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer, and Raoul Walsh.

Further retrospectives are granted to Romy Schneider (recent repertory sensation La piscine among them), Carlos Saura (finally a chance to see Peppermint frappe!), the British New Wave, and groundbreaking distributor Cinema 5, who brought to U.S. shores everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth and Putney Swope to Pumping Iron and Scenes from a Marriage.

September also yields streaming premieres for the recently restored Bronco Bullfrog, Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands,...

Gritty inner city crime pix don’t get any rougher than this — I witnessed the walk-outs personally. Barry Shear and a crack crew filmed in Harlem for this downbeat crime pic that could be called ‘Every Thief For Himself.’ Paul Benjamin just wants to score some mob money and leave the mean streets behind — but a single slipup brings the worst of the Mafia and the black mob down on his neck. It’s neither a ‘stick it to whitey’ saga nor a plea for justice: it’s story 8 million and 1 in The Naked City. Stars Anthony Quinn, Anthony Franciosa and Yaphet Kotto provide more acting fireworks, with solid assistance from Gloria Henry, Antonio Fargas and Marlene Warfield.

Across 110th Street

Region-Free Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 120

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 102 min. / Street Date April 27, 2022 / Available from / Aud 34.95

Starring: Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa, Paul Benjamin, Ed Bernard, Antonio Fargas, Richard Ward,...

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.

Apollo 10 ½ A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater)

A delightful meditation on childhood in the summer of 1969 set literally in the shadows of NASA’s central operations in Houston, Richard Linklater’s contemplative and vividly animated Apollo 10 ½ A Space Age Childhood reflects on the filmmaker’s own experiences. It captures the joy and wonder of childhood through the eyes of Stan, a ten-year-old who fantasizes about being recruited for “space camp” by NASA. His father (Bill Wise), a frugal but caring man, has uprooted his family from the city to a newly built suburban development in the shadow of the Astrodome and Astroworld amusement parks. Black’s adult narrator fills in the blanks for us with whimsical, nostalgic details that highlight just how...

Denis Côté is a weird kind of humanist, arriving at that angle from an offbeat starting point. Maybe the key to his work thus far is his short, powerful 2012 documentary Bestiaire, surveying a bevy of exotic animals in a Quebec safari park, all pulled from their natural habitats. Beyond its prescient aspect, foreshadowing other recent animal-focused docs like Gunda and Cow, Côté enacts the role of a skewed portrait artist, showing the zebras, giraffes, and ostriches resplendent in their odd physicality, where you can feel them both attempting to evolve into, as well as neutralized by, their new environment of iron bars, railings, and peepholes.

A Skin So Soft, showing male bodybuilders in a similar state of haunted repose (and reviewed perceptively by Tfs’s Rory O’Connor on its 2017 premiere), is a byway from there towards his latest film, That Kind of Summer. This look at sex addiction could again...

What do the Bride, Jackie Brown, Django, Mia Wallace, Hans Landa, Cottonmouth, Stuntman Mike McKay, Mr. Pink, Charles Manson and the Gimp all have in common? For one thing, that they’re all characters in a stage musical now playing at the Bourbon Room in Hollywood.

But its creators would rather that you not call “Tarantino Live” a musical per se, or at least not boil it down strictly to that term. For one thing, its “book” — largely an amalgam of dialogue from Quentin Tarantino’s movies — is a sort of loose fantasia tying characters and themes from the films together into a surreal, seriocomic knot, more than any traditional, straight stage narrative. For another thing, the 50-plus songs from the filmmaker’s soundtracks are being licensed for an immersive concert nightclub experience, not a theatrical production… although a transfer to the legit stage is something that’s hoped for down the road.

It might be a Netflix world, but there are plenty of other competitive streaming platforms offering home viewing options that are more bountiful than ever before. Amazon Prime is one of them and, just like Netflix, the streamer offers a library of films, both old and new, that have become increasingly diverse over the years. However, it can still be a difficult task for any discerning viewer, specifically those looking for Black films, to sift through the deluge.

To assist on this cinematic journey, IndieWire runs a monthly series that highlights movies and television series worth streaming on every major platform in the U.S., including Netflix. But, as an extension of that popular ongoing series, we’ve also curated lists of films that specifically tell Black stories and are streaming on those same major streaming platforms.

The ’60s and ’70s are especially well-represented on this month’s list of 10 picks,...

Robert Sacchi, the actor who so closely resembled Humphrey Bogart that he starred in the 1980 20th Century Fox comedy The Man With Bogart’s Face, died June 23 in Los Angeles after a brief illness, according to a family spokesperson. He was 89.

The Rome-born, Brooklyn-raised actor played Bogart or Bogart look-alikes in several films, TV shows and commercials, including on the series Fantasy Island, Sledge Hammer! and Cybill and Tales From the Crypt on which he lent his voice. He also played Bogart in Phil Collins’ 1990 music video for “I Wish It Would Rain Down.”

Sacchi also starred in a one-man show, Bogey’s Back, and in touring productions of Play It Again, Sam. He even had a top 10 hit single in Germany with 1982’s “Jungle Queen,” a rap performed in Bogart-ese.

In The Man With Bogart’s Face, directed by Robert Day and based on Andrew J. Fenady’s book, Sacchi starred as Sam Marlowe,...

Actor Robert Sacchi, known for his close resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, died June 23 at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles after a brief illness. He was 89.

Sacchi played the title role in the 1980 feature “The Man With Bogart’s Face.” He also appeared in many films, TV shows and commercials playing Bogart or a Bogart look-alike. That list includes appearances on the sitcom “Cybill,” a Phil Collins musicvideo and “Fantasy Island,” as well as his one-man show, “Bogey’s Back” and touring productions of Woody Allen’s comedy “Play It Again, Sam.”

He also played other characters in such works as the Mike Hodges-Michael Caine movie “Pulp,” the Anthony Quinn-Yaphet Kotto drama “Across 110th Street” and “Die Hard 2,” among others. He also had a top 10 hit in Germany with the 1982 single “Jungle Queen” and authored the book “Willie Pep Remembers … Friday’s Heroes.”

“The Man With Bogart’s Face...

Robert Sacchi, an actor known for The Man With Bogart’s Face, has died following a brief illness, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed on Tuesday. He was 89.

Sacchi began acting on screen in 1972 as Inspector Fontaine in Ferdinando Merighi’s thriller The French Sex Murders. He followed up with films including Pulp, with Mickey Rooney and Michael Caine, and the crime drama Across 110th Street.

Due to Sacchi’s resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, he played Bogart in a number of projects, among them Fantasy Island and Pointman. In 1980’s The Man With Bogart’s Face, Sacchi played a private investigator who gets plastic surgery ...

Robert Sacchi, an actor known for The Man With Bogart’s Face, has died following a brief illness, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed on Tuesday. He was 89.

Sacchi began acting on screen in 1972 as Inspector Fontaine in Ferdinando Merighi’s thriller The French Sex Murders. He followed up with films including Pulp, with Mickey Rooney and Michael Caine, and the crime drama Across 110th Street.

Due to Sacchi’s resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, he played Bogart in a number of projects, among them Fantasy Island and Pointman. In 1980’s The Man With Bogart’s Face, Sacchi played a private investigator who gets plastic surgery ...

The July lineup at The Criterion Channel has been revealed, most notably featuring the new Wong Kar Wai restorations from the recent box set release, including As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and his shorts Hua yang de nian hua and The Hand.

Also among the lineup is a series on neo-noir with Body Double, Manhunter, Thief, The Last Seduction, Cutter’s Way, Brick, Night Moves, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and more. The channel will also feature a spotlight on art-house animation with work by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more.

With Jodie Mack’s delightful The Grand Bizarre, the landmark doc Hoop Dreams, Orson Welles’ take on Othello, the recent Oscar entries Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time and You Will Die at Twenty, and much more,...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Yaphet Kotto, the distinctive and distinguished actor, has passed away at age 81. Kotto was born in Harlem and began to study acting at age 16. He made his big screen debut in 1964 in the acclaimed race-themed drama "Nothing But a Man" opposite Ivan Dixon, a fellow African-American whose star would rise on the basis of the film. Kotto also appeared in "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968) and was a regular presence in guest star roles on top TV series such as "Gunsmoke", "Daniel Boone", "Night Gallery", "The Big Valley", "Hawaii Five-0", "Mannix" and "The High Chapparal". He was nominated for an Emmy award for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 1976 TV production of "Raid on Entebbe". Kotto simultaneously kept landing good parts in major movies such as "5 Card Stud", "The Liberation of L.B. Jones" and "Across 110th Street". In 1973, he appeared in what is perhaps his most memorable role,...

Quentin Tarantino, a master of pastiche himself, said he enjoyed seeing an homage to his own work in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” which is just one example of Tarantino and Marvel riffing on each other.

BBC Radio 1’s Ali Plumb asked Tarantino in a recent interview what he thought about the shoutout to his 1994 film “Pulp Fiction” in the 2014 Marvel Cinematic Universe installment.

Nick Fury’s gravestone features the opening line of Ezekiel 25:17 — “The path of the righteous man …” The bible verse, in its Tarantino-modified form, is delivered by Jules in “Pulp Fiction” as part of his pre-killing ritual in one of the movie’s most memorable scenes.

Jules and Nick Fury are both played by Samuel L. Jackson.

“Probably the first commentary I ever read was the Stan Lee ‘Soapbox’,” Tarantino said, referring to a column penned by the Marvel editor-in-chief that appeared in each comic...

Paul Benjamin, who played one of the men on the corner in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” died June 28, Lee announced on Instagram.

“I’m sad to write that the great actor Paul Benjamin, who played Ml, far left, passed this past Friday, two days before the 30th anniversary of ‘Do the Right Thing.’ Rest in Paradise,” the director wrote.

View this post on Instagram

I’m Sad To Write That The Great Actor Paul Benjamin on Jul 2, 2019 at 10:15am Pdt

Born in South Carolina, Benjamin started out doing Shakespeare on stage in New York, and made his film debut with a small role as a bartender in “Midnight Cowboy.” He had a featured role in “Across 110th Street” in 1972, and appeared in Blaxploitation films like “The Education of Sonny Carson” and “Friday Foster” with Pam Grier.

Among his other appearances were in Richard Pryor comedy “Some Kind of Hero,...

Character actor Tim O’Connor, best known for his role as Elliot Carson in 1960s prime time soap Peyton Place, has died. He passed in his sleep on April 5 in his longtime home of Nevada City, California at age 90.

O’Connor had a long career on stage and particularly television, where he had appearances in such iconic shows as All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, General Hospital, Dynasty, and Star Trek.

Born in Chicago, his career spanned Broadway, television and films. He worked with such actors as Sir Laurence Olivier, George C. Scott, Edward G. Robinson, Jessica Tandy, Maximilian Schell, Vincent Price, and Boris Karloff, among others.

Arriving in Hollywood in 1965, O’Connor moved to Santa Monica, California, and gained national recognition as one of the stars of Peyton Place. He starred as Elliot Carson, father of Mia Farrow’s Allison, in more than...

By Darren Allison

(Cinema Retro Soundtrack Editor)

Dutton Vocalion has released three3 more impressive titles in their Sacd range. The Black Motion Picture Experience / Music for Soulful Lovers (Cdsml 8531) is as a twofer release featuring The Cecil Holmes Soulful Sounds. There’s a perfect symmetry about this particular CD. Both albums were released on the famous Buddah label back in 1973 and both were released in Stereo and Quadrophonic pressings. Vocalion’s new CD marks the debut of both albums in both formats. Both titles were originally released back in the height of the Blaxploitation boom. The first of the Holmes albums consists of a great selection of major Blaxploitation themes including Super fly (1972), Shaft (1971) and Across 110th street (1972), but there’s also a great deal more than the usual, often repeated titles. Slaughter (1972) is a nice addition to the track listing, considering a soundtrack album was never released. Holmes also...

Chicago – The coolest cat on 1970s TV was Huggy Bear, informant to the cop team of “Starsky and Hutch.” The man who portrayed that fly guy was Antonio Fargas, who also could lay claim as the Godfather of Blaxploitation Films (the run of African American cinema in the late 1960s through the ‘70s). Fargas was honored for his contributions with the Career Achievement Award at the Cinepocalypse Film Festival, Music Box Theatre in Chicago.

Career Achievement Honoree Antonio Fargas, Cinepocalypse Film Festival

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Starting with his participation in the breakthrough film “Putney Swope” (1969), Antonio Fargas was in some of the best Blaxploitation films, including “Across 110th Street” (1972), “Cleopatra Jones” (1973), “Foxy Brown” (1974), “Car Wash” (1976) and even the spoof “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” (1988) as “Flyguy.” He portrayed Huggy Bear on “Starsky and Hutch” from 1975 to ’79.

Photographer Joe Arce of HollywoodChicago.com...

Two weeks ago I wrote about Film Forum’s retrospective of New York in the 70s and collected all the Polish posters I could find for the best known films in the series. This week I want to concentrate on the films which are less well known and whose one sheets are maybe less iconic yet no less interesting. The 70s was a great period in American movie poster design. The illustrative style of classic Hollywood was out and instead a new reliance on photographs and, especially, type. The one thing that strikes me about the posters below is how heavily they rely on explanatory text and taglines (“Watch the landlord get his”...“Their story is written on his arm”...“If you steal $100,000 from the mob, it’s not robbery. It’s suicide”...“The tush scene alone is worth the price of admission”). The only two posters here that feature...

Quentin Tarantino’s films are famous for their non-linear narratives, for how they jump around in time like a skipping DVD, sometimes even willing their ways into alternate histories. And yet, despite all of their twisty plotting, his movies are increasingly defined by — and remembered for — self-contained scenes that stretch to the breaking point and seem to become iconic even as you’re first watching them. From the ingeniously knotted “Pulp Fiction” to the bifurcated “Death Proof”; from the sprawling “Kill Bill” (which is divided into 10 discrete chapters), to the snowbound “The Hateful Eight” (which limits itself to two locations and finds Tarantino challenging himself to hold a single note of suspense for hours at a time), these epic stories are shaped around chatty, taut, and indelible sequences that simmer with the potential for sudden acts of violence.

In honor of the filmmaker’s 54th birthday (and with a humble...

Federico Fellini’s best non-narrative feature is an intoxicating meta-travelogue, not just of the Eternal City but the director’s idea of Rome past and present. The masterful images alternate between nostalgic vulgarity and dreamy timelessness. Criterion’s disc is a new restoration.

Fellini’s Roma

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 848

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 13, 2016 / 39.95

Starring Peter Gonzales, Fiona Florence, Pia De Doses, Renato Giovannoli, Dennis Christopher, Feodor Chaliapin Jr., Elliott Murphy, Anna Magnani, Gore Vidal, Federico Fellini.

Cinematography Giuseppe Rotunno

Film Editor Ruggero Mastroianni

Original Music Nino Rota

Written by Federico Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi

Produced by Turi Vasile

Directed by Federico Fellini

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Federico Fellini stopped making standard narrative pictures after 1960’s La dolce vita; from then on his films skewed toward various forms of experimentation and expressions of his own state of mind. Most did have a story to some degree,...

If firing up your Netflix app tends to instill in you the desire to pull on a cardigan and send a contribution to Mike Pence’s office, it might be time to balance that out with a new media source. Maybe something that will stir up some less-complacent, more-revolutionary feelings in your soul. Could be what you’re looking for is Bounce TV’s new streaming service, Brown Sugar, which caters to aficionados of ’70s-era blaxploitation films Shaft, Foxy Brown, and Across 110th Street.

“Brown Sugar is just like Netflix, only blacker,” genre mainstay Pam Grier says in a statement. “These movies are entertaining and fun, but they were also empowering to the black community as they depicted African Americans as strong leading characters and heroes for the first time.”

Serious music and film consumers who have yet to dip into this enormous and extremely entertaining well of cinema will...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 9, 2014

Price: DVD $19.95, Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Kino Lorber

Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto (r.) head uptown in Across 110th Street.

The gritty, action-filled 1972 crime drama Across 110th Street stars Anthony Quinn (The Secret of Santa Vittoria) and Yaphet Kotto (Live and Let Die) as two hard-hitting New York City police detectives.

When a crew of gun-totin’ gangstas knocks over a mafia racket in Harlem, their plan gets blown to hell and the crib gets blown to bits! But as the bullets start flyin’ and cops start dyin’, a pair of New York’s finest, Mattelli and Pope, are forced to work together to bring justice to the streets before the Mafia brings the ghetto to its knees! Now, wanted by the Man and hunted by the Mob, there ain’t no way these homicidal homeboys are getting across 110th Street except in a body bag!

Directed with...

Bobby Womack, a colorful and revered R&B singer-songwriter who influenced artists from the Rolling Stones to Damon Albarn, has died. He was 70. Womack's publicist Sonya Kolowrat said Friday that the singer had died, but she could provide no other details. With an incomparable voice few could match, Womack was a stirring singer and guitarist in his own right and a powerful songwriter whose hits like "Across 110th Street," ''If You Think You're Lonely Now" and "I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much" captured the imagination of future stars in rock 'n' roll and R&B. "He had a...

Bobby Womack, a colorful and revered R&B singer-songwriter who influenced artists from the Rolling Stones to Damon Albarn, has died. He was 70. Womack's publicist Sonya Kolowrat said Friday that the singer had died, but she could provide no other details. With an incomparable voice few could match, Womack was a stirring singer and guitarist in his own right and a powerful songwriter whose hits like "Across 110th Street," ''If You Think You're Lonely Now" and "I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much" captured the imagination of future stars in rock 'n' roll and R&B. "He had a...

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Cleveland-born and raised Bobby Womack has passed away at the age of 70.  He was one of America's greatest R&B singer-songwriters and guitarists (Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin) and his career spanned 50-plus years. Last time I caught him live in concert was at the Beacon Theater in NYC well over 18 years ago. He was fine form, played all of his hits, many from the chart-topping The Poet (1981), including one of his most beloved songs, "If You Think You're Lonely Now," and The Poet II (1984), and even dragged Sly Stone (whose classic album There's a Riot Goin' On heavily features Womack's uncredited guitar playing) on stage for a few numbers. For me, his Harlem anthem "Across 110th Street" remains one of the best songs ever. Two years ago he released the critically lauded album The Bravest Man in the Universe on Xl, the same U.

Bobby Womack, the legendary soul singer, died on Friday. He was 70.

Bobby Womack Dies

Womack’s publicist confirmed the news of his death. "I am sadly able to confirm but I have no details at this time," Xl publicist Sonya Kolowrat told CNN. Throughout his later years, Womack suffered from a number of health ailments, including diabetes, pneumonia and colon cancer. It was revealed last year that Womack had the early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

"With the support of many good doctors, my family, and all of my wonderful fans, I will continue to write and perform and bring the good music to the people for as long as I can," Womack told CNNat the time.

Womack, whose career spanned six decades, was best known for hits “If You Think You’re Lonely Now,” “We Belong Together,” “That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” and “Across 110th Street.

Bobby Womack reportedly passed away on Friday. He was 70 years old.

Bobby Womack reportedly passed away on Friday. He was 70 years old.

According to Rolling Stone, the cause of death for the legendary soul singer is currently unknown.

His list of hits includes the R&B single "If You Think You're Lonely Now," "Across 110th Street" and "Woman's Gotta Have It." In 2009, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Womack began his seven-decade career as a member of Curtis Womack and the Womack Brothers with his brothers Curtis, Harry, Cecil and Friendly, Jr.

In the '80s, Womack struggled with addiction issues, which led to a stint in a treatment center. Womack later battled a tumor along with a slew of other ailments, which included diabetes, pneumonia and the early signs of Alzheimer's disease. In 2012, Womack had a tumor removed "which turned out to be cancer free," according to a Facebook...

Veteran soul singer Bobby Womack died Friday.Womack's sister says he passed away in his sleep ... she says they don't know the cause of death.Bobby struggled with multiple health problems throughout his life ... including diabetes, pneumonia, colon cancer and the early signs of Alzheimer's.Bobby and his brothers formed a group in the '60s called "The Valentinos" and they recorded the song "It's All Over Now" before the Rolling Stones released their version -- the group's first #1 hit.

He’s 69 years old and in recent years has been plagued by serious illness. But the legendary Bobby Womack is still the consummate soul man, as he proved in his show Friday night at NYC’s City Winery, the first of a three-night stand. He even still dresses the part, wearing a fire engine red leather suit complete with matching cap and sunglasses. When he launched into his opening number, the title song from the blaxploitation flick Across 110th Street, it was easy to believe it was still 1973. Except, that is, for the prohibitive ticket prices charged by the

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If you're in New York this weekend, it'll screen on Saturday, August 24, at the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens, as part of its Fun City: New York in the Movies 1967–75 screening series, curated by film critic and historian J. Hoberman. Across 110th Street is set in Harlem, New York, where 110th Street is an informal boundary line, separating Harlem from Central Park; symbolically dividing New York City by wealth, class and race (although that's certainly no longer quite the case, 41 years after the film was made. Three black armed robbers (Paul Benjamin, Antonio Fargas and Ed Bernard) slaughter five men - three Blacks and two Italians - in a...

Across 110th Street is set in Harlem, New York, where 110th Street is an informal boundary line, separating Harlem from Central Park; symbolically dividing New York City by wealth, class and race (although that's certainly no longer quite the case, 41 years after the film was made.  Three black armed robbers (Paul Benjamin, Antonio Fargas and Ed Bernard) slaughter five men - three Blacks and two Italians - in a raid on a Mob-owned Harlem policy bank that nets them $300,000. And the chase begins, with 2 different groups hunting for the men - the sadistic, racist Mafia lieutenant (Anthony Franciosa), seizing the opportunity to prove himself, with the task of retrieving the stolen...

Recent hot cinema topics such as the portrayal of the Mandarin character in Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 and speculations about what classic Star Trek villain Benedict Cumberbatch’s character in J.J Abrams’ Star Trek: Into Darkness was modeled after leading up to the film’s release, among others, underline the importance of great villains in genre cinema.

Creating a great cinematic villain is a difficult goal that makes for an incredibly rewarding and memorable viewer experience when it is achieved.

We’ll now take a look at the greatest film villains. Other writing on this subject tends to be a bit unfocused, as “greatest villain” articles tend to mix live-action human villains with animated characters and even animals. Many of these articles also lack a cohesive quality as they attempt to cover too much ground at once by spanning all of film history.

This article focuses on the 1970’s,...

Feature Ivan Radford 21 Feb 2013 - 07:47

Quentin Tarantino's use of pre-recorded songs comes under the spotlight in Ivan's latest Music in Film...

“I don’t normally use original score. I don’t trust any composer to do it.”

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That’s Quentin Tarantino in a nutshell: his love of music rivals his love of film. A new Tarantino album is now an event in itself, so it’s hard not to devote an entire column to the director with Django Unchained in cinemas.

Eclectic is the word most used to describe Tarantino’s soundtracks, which hop around his record collection like an excited teenager who just snuck into his parent’s bedroom. Django is no exception, but marks the largest amount of original music in any of his films to date.

Just how big a deal is that?

The director’s use of music has changed over the years. Back...

After all the debates, controversies, and stereotype accusations have cleared, looking back on Blaxploitation cinema today it’s easy to see healthy portions of the crime and action genres. Using these genres and the struggles of the black community, these films were created for those that wanted to see African American characters on the big screen not taking shit from the man, “getting over”, and–above all else—being the heroes in movies. In the documentary Baad Asssss Cinema, Samuel L. Jackson gives his take on the heroes of Blaxploitation: “We were tired of seeing the righteous black man. And all of a sudden we had guys who were…us. Or guys who did the things we wanted those guys to do.”

The unsung supporting players in these films that backed Fred Williamson and Pam Grier and many other stars were people acting and making a living off of it.

Gary Oldman as Jackie Flannery in State Of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990, USA):

Long considered one of the most talented actors in cinema, it’s very strange that his outstanding acting as the younger brother of Ed Harris’ local crime boss in this underrated film doesn’t get talked about nearly enough when discussing Oldman’s body of work. This is a must-see performance for all Oldman fans. For the record, State Of Grace is a far better Irish mob film than The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006, USA), primarily because it contains much better acting across the board. Oldman was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011, UK/France).

Other notable Gary Oldman performances: Prick Up Your Ears (Stephen Frears, 1987, USA), Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992, USA), True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993, USA), Leon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994, France), Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997, USA), The Contender (Rod Lurie,...

As happened for so many other genres, the 1960s/1970s saw a tremendous creative expansion in crime and cop thrillers. The old Hollywood moguls had died off or retired, most of the major studios were bleeding red ink, attendance had gone off a cliff since the end of Ww II, and a new breed of young, creatively adventurous production executives had been tasked with trying to save their business by coming up with movies which could hook a new, young, cinema-literate audience.

It also happened to be one of the most socially turbulent times in American history. Even before the American public grew restive over the growing disaster in Vietnam, the social fabric was unraveling with self-examination and doubt. The Cold War; a certain inner emptiness that went with a period of great material prosperity; once invisible fault lines on matters of race and gender discrimination beginning to crack – all...

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; we take our Coffy black…and with six spoonfuls of Häagen-Dazs. You have just stumbled Across 110th Street and Hit! the internet’s most Boss bad movie column like a Hammer, and there’s No Way Back. Every Friday (Foster), we Drum up another Jive Turkey, becoming Mr Mean as we Savage! and Slaughter the movie right In Your Face. But then, as if we were a Thing with Two Heads we lay aside all our Hangups to tell you why we think the film is actually Super Fly. Then, for The Final Comedown, we’ll offer a Big Time delicious themed snack food item for you to cram down your food Shaft. This week’s big score: Hell Up in Harlem Alas it is time once again to bid farewell to Blaxploitation History Month, and this third incarnation in which we’ve focused on the best of the best worst blaxploitation...

The list of underrated Quentin Tarantino movies starts and ends with "Jackie Brown." Released in 1997, "Brown" was Tarantino's follow-up to the industry changing work he did in "Pulp Fiction," and a decidedly different affair. Contemplative and slow instead of brusque and face-paced, "Jackie Brown" included many Tarantino hallmarks -- sharp dialogue, cool soundtrack choices, Samuel L. Jackson -- but perhaps surprised some because of its maturity. After all, the film focuses on an aging flight attendent (Pam Grier) and the aging bail bondsman (Robert Forster) who she falls in love with. There's also a gangster and his hoodrat friend (Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro) involved in the story, and though both meet an untimely end in "Jackie Brown" (movie's been out for almost 15 years, get over the spoilers), it appears they'll be back in the near future.

Variety reports that Mos Def and John Hawkes will take on...

The list of underrated Quentin Tarantino movies starts and ends with "Jackie Brown." Released in 1997, "Brown" was Tarantino's follow-up to the industry changing work he did in "Pulp Fiction," and a decidedly different affair. Contemplative and slow instead of brusque and face-paced, "Jackie Brown" included many Tarantino hallmarks -- sharp dialogue, cool soundtrack choices, Samuel L. Jackson -- but perhaps surprised some because of its maturity. After all, the film focuses on an aging flight attendent (Pam Grier) and the aging bail bondsman (Robert Forster) who she falls in love with. There's also a gangster and his hoodrat friend (Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro) involved in the story, and though both meet an untimely end in "Jackie Brown" (movie's been out for almost 15 years, get over the spoilers), it appears they'll be back in the near future. Variety reports that Mos Def and John Hawkes will take on...

Precious little is known about Quentin Tarantino's upcoming "Django Unchained" beyond its absurd cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kerry Washington and more), its basic plot outline (a slave named Django seeks revenge on the man who kidnapped his wife) and its Christmas Day release. Now, one more slight detail has emerged: Tarantino is shooting the film on a ranch set in Santa Clarita and having a ball. Tarantino's latest was recently filming at the Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, Calif., one of about 10 movie ranches in the area that have been home to such productions as "Old Yeller," "The Muppets" and even some Super Bowl commercials. "It's a blast shooting here," Tarantino said to the Los Angeles Times in a break from shooting. "Most other western towns look like dollhouses. This has the complete look. It's fantastic.

Precious little is known about Quentin Tarantino's upcoming "Django Unchained" beyond its absurd cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kerry Washington and more), its basic plot outline (a slave named Django seeks revenge on the man who kidnapped his wife) and its Christmas Day release. Now, one more slight detail has emerged: Tarantino is shooting the film on a ranch set in Santa Clarita and having a ball.

Tarantino's latest was recently filming at the Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, Calif., one of about 10 movie ranches in the area that have been home to such productions as "Old Yeller," "The Muppets" and even some Super Bowl commercials.

"It's a blast shooting here," Tarantino said to the Los Angeles Times in a break from shooting. "Most other western towns look like dollhouses. This has the complete look. It's fantastic.

Pretty much all of the techniques and trademarks we associate with Quentin Tarantino are in Jackie Brown, yet many still think of it as the least Tarantinoesque (it’s not a name that lends itself to adjectives) of his work. Perhaps that’s because here he ties himself down to someone else’s story, so his more self-indulgent urges are kept in check. There are plenty of stylistic flourishes and the dialogue is sharp and witty, but nothing is there that doesn’t develop the story or illuminate the characters.

The movie was not a financial hit and audiences didn’t take to it straight away, as they had done with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction: on IMDb only Death Proof is rated lower of his films. But while audiences may have been underwhelmed by that film’s shallowness, Jackie Brown, which is based on a novel by Elmore Leonard,...

While I was away at Fantastic Fest, I got so crazy busy that I was unable to interview Pam Grier and Robert Forster about "Jackie Brown," which is one of two Quentin Tarantino films arriving on Blu-ray this week. Bummer. I mean that sincerely, too.  I love "Jackie Brown."  I think if you counted how many times I've seen each of Tarantino's films, "Jackie" would be the clear winner.  It's the emotional journey the film takes me on that I keep going back for.  Everytime I reach the reprise of "Across 110th Street," I feel the same surge of adrenaline and...