News

Toni Vaz — a trailblazing stunt performer, actress and activist, who also founded the NAACP Image Awards — has died at 101.

She died Oct. 4 in Woodland Hills, according to a spokesperson for Vaz, at the Motion Picture & Television Fund assisted living facility, where she was a longtime resident.

In addition to her acting roles and stuntwork that had her doubling for such stars as Cicely Tyson, she founded the NAACP Image Awards to honor her peers and encourage studios and producers to hire and honor a wider range of talent. The first Image Awards ceremony was held on Aug. 13, 1967 in the Beverly Hills Hotel’s International Ballroom.

However, she was not credited with founding the awards until 2021, when she was honored at the awards’ 52nd ceremony. “Black-ish” star Anthony Anderson introduced her. You can watch a clip of the moment below:

Born to parents from Barbados who had immigrated to the U.

The old president has fled, the new one is just as unpopular, and a state of emergency is in place as Sri Lanka weathers the worst economic crisis in its history.

The island nation known as the pearl of the Indian Ocean — where films like “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Tarzan, the Ape Man” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai” were shot on location — has been through some extraordinary times in recent weeks.

In the last year, the government’s economic mismanagement has precipitated a foreign currency and agricultural crisis that has led to shortages of medicine, fuel and basic food staples amid a 50 rise in inflation. The country declared bankruptcy earlier this month. While the impact to local film and TV production isn’t high on the priority list amid a looming famine, Sri Lankan industry insiders say it will take years for the creative sector to recover.

Celebrating the release of his new memoir, multi-hyphenate Steven Van Zandt joins hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss a few of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Elevator To The Gallows (1958) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Breathless (1960) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

The Fisher King (1991)

Tony Rome (1967)

Lady In Cement (1968)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

The Killer (1989)

True Romance (1993)

True Lies (1994)

Get Shorty (1995) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Point Blank (1967) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Catch Us If You Can a.k.a. Sweet Memories (1965)

Double Trouble (1967)

Performance (1970) – Mark Goldblatt’s trailer commentary

The Driver (1978)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Tfh’s Don’t Knock The Rock piece

Help! (1965) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s review

Blue Collar (1978) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s...

Perry Botkin Jr., the Grammy-winning composer behind “The Young and the Restless” theme song, died on Monday, his publicist confirmed. He was 87.

A TV and film composer whose work dominated the ’60s and ’70s, Botkin composed and arranged theme music and scores for hit series like “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Mork & Mindy” and “The Smothers Brothers Show.”

The theme song for “The Young and the Restless,” best known as “Nadia’s Theme” for its association with Olympic gymnast Nadia Comăneci, was an original rearrangement of a piece he co-wrote with Barry De Vorzon and later earned him a Grammy award for best instrumental arrangement.

On film, Botkin’s credits include “Goin’ South,” “Skyjacked,” “Tarzan the Ape Man,” “They Only Kill Their Masters” and 1971’s “Bless the Beasts and Children,” for which he received a “Best Original Song” Oscar nomination for the title song performed by The Carpenters.

Botkin...

Carlos Casas's Cemetery is exclusively showing November 18 - December 17, 2020 on Mubi in the Undiscovered series.I am very happy and proud to introduce Cemetery to its new audiences at Mubi. It is always a great honor to reach wider audiences but its also a difficult task to introduce one's own film, especially a film I have worked for nearly a decade to complete, and that has taken so much of my passion and dedication, to a lot of issues and questions, that I hope will also be part of your experience as a viewer.I never imagined in my darkest dreams that this film would be viewed in the context of a world pandemic, forcing cinemas and festivals around the world to close and confining people to their homes. But I guess now the film is in your hands and I really hope it will provide some positive light...

At 130 minutes, Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies has a clear trajectory. Well, make that a clear enough trajectory. Dipping its toes into present-day before going back to the 1880s, Danny Wolf’s documentary wafts through the expected checkpoints: the pre-Code era, the reign of the Hays Code, the introduction of the Motion Picture Association of America. There are but three or four major tent poles in the film’s structure itself. But despite such a wide scope, it manages to lack enough context to form its own argument, or to say much of anything that new.

It’s a bit peculiar too. Wolf, who co-wrote Skin with Paul Fishbein, doesn’t seem entirely focused on the history of nudity itself at first. Instead, he uses the #MeToo movement’s skyrocket from 2017 onward as a sort of framing structure. The first and last five minutes use this context to bookend the picture,...

” The body is meant to be seen. Not all covered up ” – Marilyn Monroe

Skin: A History Of Nudity In The Movies , available On Demand August 18th, explores the history of nudity in film, beginning with the silent movie era through present day. The documentary delves into the gender bias concerning nudity in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has pushed for gender equality in feature films today. A deep discussion of pre-code Hollywood and its amoral roots, the censorship that “cleaned up” Hollywood and how the MPAA was formed leads into a discussion of how nudity changed cinematic culture through the decades. It culminates in a discussion of “what are nude scenes like in the age of the #Metoo movement?”

Danny Wolf, director of Skin: A History Of Nudity In The Movies , took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about the film.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman August 11th,...

on this day in history as it relates to showbiz

30 BC Cleopatra commits suicide, allegedly by purposeful snake bite. I don't remember that scene in Liz Taylor's Cleopatra but it might have been at the four hour mark and t'was possibly asleep

How to honor this day: play with someone's snake. In the absence of a suitable one, wink at someone as saucily as Liz

← 1915 "Of Human Bondage" by W Somerset Maugham published. 19 years later it becomes a movie and marks Bette Davis's ascent to superstar actress

How to honor this day: Let it all out like Bette in that performance that's pure...