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David Lynch once flirted with a Marilyn Monroe biopic so bold, it never stood a chance. This veered into conspiracy territory, hinting the Kennedys might’ve played a hand in Monroe’s untimely death. The idea sparked instant buzz but also sent studios running for cover.

David Lynch | Image by: Repose, licensed under Cc By-sa 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Too controversial? Absolutely. The project’s provocative edge and Lynch’s unflinching style were a recipe for cinematic chaos.

David Lynch’s Venus Descending: The Marilyn Monroe biopic Hollywood was too afraid to make Marilyn Monroe in the Bus Stop | Credit: 20th Century Studios

David Lynch nearly took on Marilyn Monroe’s mysterious death, but Hollywood wasn’t ready. In the late ’80s, Warner Bros. approached Lynch to direct a biopic based on Goddess, Anthony Summers’ 1985 Monroe biography.

The script, co-written by Lynch and Mark Frost, boldly suggested Monroe’s death wasn...

It was a revelatory moment for the aspiring filmmaker. Attempting to transition from amateur home-movies to a professional career, the 15-year-old Steven Spielberg found himself in the office of John Ford. In just two minutes, the legendary cigar-chomping director barked some unforgettable advice at the teenager, mostly involving why a horizon in the middle of a picture is “boring as shit”, before yelling at him to “Get the fuck out of my office.” In recreating this for his autobiographical drama The Fabelmans, Spielberg asked David Lynch to play Ford — and the results did not disappoint. At home in Los Angeles over a morning coffee, Lynch told us how the hell this happened.

Empire: Steven called you directly to ask you to play John Ford. How did you feel about it?

David Lynch: At first I didn’t want to do it. And the reason is, when it comes to acting,...

David Lynch is gone, and I'm not handling it well. Lynch was the very definition of a singular artist — there will never be anyone else like him. For over 50 years, Lynch was a filmmaker who almost never compromised, making unique, challenging, mind-blowing art on his own terms. We were immensely lucky to have him, and we are worse off without him. Perhaps we all should've known this was coming — death eventually comes for us all, and last year, word broke that Lynch's health had deteriorated due to emphysema (a fact Lynch confirmed on Twitter/X). And yet, a world without David Lynch feels almost cosmically wrong. I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking that despite poor health, Lynch would somehow keep on going, and somehow make another movie or TV show again. Just one more.

In addition to his unique directing career, Lynch would sometimes act. Not only did appear...

David Lynch revolutionized cinema — and now, Hollywood is paying tribute to the legendary auteur, who died Thursday at the age of 78.

Lynch made his feature debut in 1977 with “Eraserhead,” and his expansive career included features “Mulholland Drive,” “Dune,” and “Blue Velvet,” as well as iconic series “Twin Peaks.” Lynch’s family confirmed on social media that he died at age 78.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time,” the statement reads. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

Lynch announced in August 2024 that he was diagnosed with emphysema. However, he told...

Steven Spielberg knew what he was doing when he cast David Lynch as John Ford in The Fabelmans; already, in 2022, the director had become, like Ford, bigger than his movies, a living monument to cinema. Seeing Lynch in conversation back in 2007 at London’s BFI Southbank, before the release of Inland Empire, I was very mindful of that fact, writing that “seeing him speak to a packed house, with that silver pompadour, that black suit and buttoned-up, tie-less shirt, made me feel like a witness to history, like seeing Picasso, Churchill or Fred Astaire.”

The Elephant Man producer Mel Brooks later went one better when I spoke to him in 2008. Describing their first meeting at Bob’s Big Boy Diner in Burbank — because Lynch only ever ate there, usually for a late lunch at 2.30 p.m. — Brooks said, “He looked just like Charles Lindbergh when he flew over the Atlantic.

The international film community is paying tribute to the late, great David Lynch, who died this week, aged 78.

Italian-American actress Isabella Rossellini, who had her breakthrough role in Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and was Lynch’s romantic partner for several years, posted a photo of the two of them on her Instagram early Friday morning, including the simple caption: “I loved him so much. Thanks for all your kind messages.”

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A post shared by Isabella Rossellini (@isabellarossellini)

Rossellini played a supporting role in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. Speaking to THR at the European Film Awards last December, where she received a lifetime achievement award, Rossellini said she and Lynch remained in close contact since Blue Velvet, regularly texting and speaking on the phone.

On Friday, the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals...

David Lynch is a gem of an artist, who’s always gone against the norm and created narratives that linger in your mind, long after you’ve watched them. His unsettling stories, combined with the brilliance of bringing haunted themes to life are unparalleled, and he proves the same in Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks.

Davin Lynch | Qagoma / YouTube

Cinephiles would rejoice to know about the time when Steven Spielberg rang him up to make a highly specific request. The Jurassic Park director is a legend in his own right, so the anecdote, narrated by Lynch himself will be nostalgic and bittersweet to fans who are bereaved by the latter’s death.

How David Lynch was convinced to do Steven Spielberg’s movie Steven Spielberg | Time / YouTube

Steven Spielberg was in the process of casting for The Fabelmans, his semi-autobiographical movie. He wanted David Lynch to play John Ford, who is another renowned filmmaker.

Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and James Gunn are among the filmmakers to pay tribute to David Lynch.The 'Twin Peaks' director passed away on Thursday (16.01.25) at the age of 78 and a host of his fellow creatives have spoken of his influence on their own work, as well as the huge impact he has had on cinema as a whole.Steven said in a statement: “I loved David’s films. ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade. “I got to know David when he played John Ford in ‘The Fabelmans.’ Here was one of my heroes—David Lynch playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David’s own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test...

David Lynch, director of film classics such as Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and The Elephant Man, and co-creator of the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks, has died aged 78.

His family announced the news in a Facebook post, saying:“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” It’s...

by Cláudio Alves

David Lynch as John Ford in his last big-screen appearance, in The Fabelmans (2022).

Somewhere in LA, in the middle of a concrete nowhere, an open door beckons. It tugs, a jerky motion that makes you fly through space, into Club Silencio. The insides are old, the red velvet memory of a place that is no more. And yet, despite the unease, it's time to sit down and attend the Mc's lugubrious presentation, a swirl of lies and jest, fakery that denounces itself in a spectacle that's a bit like a threat, a lot like a spell. Blue swaths over red, it glows, and then, at long last, the diva makes her entrance – Rebekah Del Rio will be singing "Llorando." But of course, it's not her voice, for she falls, and the ghostly tune persists. Somehow, that doesn't matter. In a palace of illusions, the false still rings true.

The world of film lost one of its biggest, most unconventional names this week with the death of David Lynch at the age of 78. Lynch was one of the most singular filmmakers to have ever lived, and his is a filmography where that descriptor, "singular," really does fit. Lynch was a one-of-a-kind director, whose work was so unique, so head-scratching, yet so compelling that he was able to create indelible image after indelible image across stories set in the worlds of science fiction, suburbia, and everywhere in between. But what that also means is that David Lynch was among the most divisive directors. A few people have noted that Lynch's last notable piece of work was as the legendary John Ford in the final scene of Steven Spielberg's 2022 film "The Fabelmans"; his one-scene cameo is absolutely delightful, hilarious, and kind of as inexplicable as the rest of Lynch's career.

David Lynch, the visionary filmmaker who died Thursday at 78, months after revealing he had been diagnosed with emphysema as a lifetime smoker, was such an essential figure in the history of cinema that he had his own adjective: Lynchian. The term describes works that share characteristics with some of his most memorable creations.

Lynch’s work was unmistakable. “I loved David’s films. Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Elephant Man defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade,” Steven Spielberg, who cast Lynch to play John Ford in The Fabelmans, said in the aftermath of his friend’s death. It’s a sentiment shared widely on social media over the last several hours.

In movies like 1986’s Blue Velvet, 1997’s Lost Highway, and 2001’s Mulholland Drive — not to mention the 1990s ABC TV drama Twin Peaks — Lynch portrayed a mundane America of seemingly pastoral splendor undercut by stupefaction and terror.

Steven Spielberg, Nicolas Cage, and Kyle MacLachlan are among the prominent figures paying tribute to David Lynch, whose death was announced Thursday.

“I loved David’s films. Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Elephant Man defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade,” Spielberg said in a statement. “I got to know David when he played John Ford in The Fabelmans. Here was one of my heroes — David Lynch playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David’s own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time, and they always will.”

Cage, who starred in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, called Lynch “a singular genius in cinema, one of the greatest artists of this or any time. He was brave, brilliant, and...

Hollywood is mourning David Lynch, who has directed beloved films and TV shows like Blue Velvet, Dune, Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks.

On Thursday, it was announced on his Facebook page that Lynch had died. He was 78.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole,'” read the post. “It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

Lynch won the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival for Wild at Heart. He received an honorary Oscar in 2019.

Since news broke that he died, stars like Steven Spielberg, James Gunn, Ron Howard,...

Kyle MacLachlan has paid tribute to David Lynch, the visionary filmmaker known for “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive” and “Twin Peaks,” who died at the age of 78.

“Forty-two years ago, for reasons beyond my comprehension, David Lynch plucked me out of obscurity to star in his first and last big budget movie. He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision,” MacLachlan wrote Thursday in an Instagram post. “What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him. He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to.”

He continued, “Our friendship blossomed on ‘Blue Velvet’ and then ‘Twin Peaks’ and I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met. David was in tune with the...

Hollywood is mourning the death of visionary filmmaker David Lynch, with friends, fans and frequent collaborators paying tribute to his immense legacy.

Kyle MacLachlan, who played FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper on Lynch’s Twin Peaks and also starred in Lynch films like Blue Velvet and Dune, said on Instagram: “Forty-two years ago, for reasons beyond my comprehension, David Lynch plucked me out of obscurity to star in his first and last big budget movie. He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision.”

More from...

Iconic filmmaker David Lynch died on January 16th at the age of 78. Artists, creatives, and members of the film community at large took to social media to express their gratitude for Lynch’s visionary, distinct work.

Longtime collaborator and friend Kyle MacLachlan wrote a lengthy tribute on Instagram, saying he owed “my entire career, and life really” to Lynch’s vision. “I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear,” he said. “My world is that much fuller because I knew him and that much emptier now that he’s gone.”

Naomi Watts, who starred in Mulholland Drive, said her “heart is broken.” She added, “The world will not be the same without him. His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map.”

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Steven Spielberg opened up about his own relationship with Lynch.

Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and more have paid tribute to David Lynch, the visionary director behind “Twin Peaks” and “Blue Velvet” who died at 78 years old.

“I loved David’s films. ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade,” Spielberg said in a statement. “I got to know David when he played John Ford in ‘The Fabelmans.’ Here was one of my heroes—David Lynch playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David’s own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”

Last year, Lynch revealed that he had been diagnosed with emphysema after a lifetime of smoking, and would likely not be able to leave his house to direct any more.

Steven Spielberg, James Gunn, Kumail Nanjiani, Melanie Lynskey and more creatives in Hollywood reacted in mourning and admiration to the death of iconic filmmaker David Lynch, who died Thursday at 78.

“I loved David’s films. ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade,” Spielberg said in a statement. “I got to know David when he played John Ford in ‘The Fabelmans.’ Here was one of my heroes — David Lynch playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David’s own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”

“Rip David Lynch. You inspired so many of us,” Gunn wrote in an X post on Thursday coupled with a heart emoji and...

One of the all-time greats is gone. That thought went through my head this afternoon when word came down that David Lynch, the incredible mind behind Twin Peaks, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and so many more, was no longer with us. The news was a shock as, despite his fragile health, Lynch was still pretty active, teasing potential new projects and also receiving rave reviews for his acting turn as John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. Of course, with this news, it’s time to take a look back at the master’s work, and lucky for us, he leaves an incredible cinematic legacy behind. We all have our favorite David Lynch movies, but here are my top 5 picks:

Lost Highway (1997):

This was an important movie in my cinematic education. It came out in the late nineties, at a time when I was coming of age as a potential cinephile.

While the late David Lynch made an inimitable and indelible mark on cinema from the director’s chair, his final big-screen contribution came in front of the camera with an unforgettable cameo in The Fabelmans.

In Steven Spielberg’s 2022 semi-autobiographical film, Lynch appears toward the end of the movie as another legendary filmmaker, John Ford, who is visited by an aspiring young filmmaker.

While just a cameo, Lynch-as-Ford steals every second of the scene and distills the entire art of filmmaking with one piece of advice: “When the horizons at the bottom,...

David Lynch, one of the most beloved and influential filmmakers in the history of American cinema, has died at the age of 78. The news was confirmed on Lynch's official Facebook page with the following statement:

"It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There's a big hole in the world now that he's no longer with us. But, as he would say, 'Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.' It's a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way."

Lynch is known for films like "Eraserhead" (his feature directorial debut), "Blue Velvet," and "Mulholland Drive," but perhaps his best-known work is the surreal, atmospheric murder mystery series "Twin Peaks," which ran for two seasons in the early '90s, received a...

David Lynch, director of film classics such as Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and The Elephant Man, and co-creator of the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks, has died aged 78.

His family announced the news in a Facebook post, saying:“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” It’s...

Mark your calendars, Oscars fans, because the 97th Academy Awards will air on Sunday, March 2, 2025 on ABC. The annual star-studded ceremony will honor movies released in theaters within the 2024 calendar year of eligibility. AMPAS members will vote on the Oscar winners in 23 categories, including Best Director. But who will win? Here at Gold Derby, thousands of users have been making and updating their 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Director, so let’s take a look at all of the top contenders in our photo gallery below.

These 25 Best Director hopefuls are listed in order of their racetrack odds, which are derived from the combined forecasts of four unique groups: experts we’ve polled from major media outlets, editors who cover awards year-round for this website, top 24 users who had the best accuracy scores last year, and the mass of users who make up our biggest predictions bloc.

There will be five...

Claude Jarman Jr., who received a Juvenile Academy Award for his heart-tugging performance as the boy who adopts an orphaned fawn in the 1946 MGM classic The Yearling, died Sunday. He was 90.

Jarman died in his sleep of natural causes at his Marin County home in Kentfield, California, his wife of 38 years, Katie, told THR’s Scott Feinberg.

In films released in 1949, Jarman starred with Jeanette MacDonald in the Lassie movie The Sun Comes Up, played the brother of a rancher on the run (Robert Sterling) in Roughshod and reteamed with Yearling director Clarence Brown to portray a youngster out to prove the innocence of a Black man in Intruder in the Dust, based on the William Faulkner novel and filmed in Oxford, Mississippi.

A year later, he played the son of a cavalry officer (John Wayne) in John Ford’s Rio Grande (1950).

Born on Sept. 27, 1934, Jarman was the 10-year-old son...

If one thing is certain about uncertain times, it’s that people will still try to create art. And it was in the midst of the boredom and artistic desperation induced by Covid-19 lockdown that Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, and Mark Oosterveen came up with the idea to stage a production of Hamlet inside the virtual cityscape of Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto Online.

GTA Online is something of a perfect conduit for what Crane and company attempt to create. After all, the subtext of Grand Theft Auto V’s single-player campaign is the idea of men trying to divine meaning from what they do and what still needs doing. That campaign also represents another level down of Rockstar’s meta-creative reckoning with the monsters they’ve unleashed. That side of GTA 5 has since been utterly eclipsed by its lawless online counterpart, which made an already popular game into...

Making movies can be hard, unpredictable work, so it makes sense that, prior to beginning principal photography, many directors try to assemble a team of familiar faces and proven talents. John Ford frequently collaborated with producer Merian C. Cooper; screenwriters like Nunnally Johnson, Dudley Nichols, and Frank S. Nugent; and a whole stock company of actors that included Victor McLaglen, Jack Pennick, Harry Carey Jr., and, of course, John Wayne. On a smaller scale, you've got Joe Dante, who cast character actor Dick Miller in almost all of his movies, and Ron Howard, who's been finding small parts for his brother Clint Howard since making his feature directing debut with 1977's "Grand Theft Auto."

This cohesion gives film productions a sense of built-in camaraderie and purpose; it also conveys an air of confidence in that everyone working on the movie trusts this group of craftspeople knows how to deliver a high-quality picture.

Kurosawa Akira understood the American western beyond the mythos of the lone warrior. The western is one of the most political of genres, concerned with how resources are dispersed. The struggle in American westerns between various enforcers embodies the tug of war between the working-class and robber barons, and Kurosawa saw in these stories parallels to Japan’s fraught cultural shifts. In the case of 1961’s Yojimbo, and to a lesser extent its sequel, 1962’s Sanjuro, he uses the western template to riff on Japan’s postwar leap into capitalism.

The very first conversation in Yojimbo is between a ronin who calls himself Sanjuro (Mifune Toshiro) and a man who regrets the new generation’s obsession with money. Kurosawa stages this encounter as a comic scene, but the man’s alienation stings, especially as Kurosawa lingers on the rhythmic sound of his wife working her loom for the silk she weaves as a side hustle.

Everything is an allusion, a pose, in the films of Quentin Tarantino, right down to the font and colors that he uses for his title sequences—even the name of his production company, A Band Apart, which arrogantly asks us to think of him as our generation’s Godard. And how willingly we indulge him says plenty. Tarantino is as much creator as curator, and his overbearing cinephilia appeals to audiences who not only lost it at the movies but can’t seem to live without them: From Reservoir Dogs to his Kill Bill diptych, his films are solipsistic totems to his favorite things, and their effect is often suffocating.

Inglourious Basterds, a WWII-set revenge fantasy about the secret and sometimes not-so-secret maneuverings of a group of gung-ho Jewish-American Nazi hunters known as the Basterds, is no less meticulously engineered than Tarantino’s other pulp fictions. Except this one is...

Vince Gilligan once spilled the tea on his boldest Breaking Bad move. Back then, Gilligan was orchestrating a scene so ambitious, he called The Godfather his blueprint. Yep, he went full Coppola mode. The stakes? Off the charts. The pressure? Through the roof.

Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad. | Image by Gage Skidmore, licensed under Cc By-sa 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gilligan turned a gritty Albuquerque drug saga into a cinematic masterpiece, proving that even in the chaos of meth labs and desert standoffs, art could reign supreme.

How Vince Gilligan gave Breaking Bad a cinematic soul Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul in Breaking Bad | Credits: AMC

Vince Gilligan wanted Breaking Bad to look like The Godfather. Yes, that was the standard he set for a show that rewrote television history.

Back on Jan. 20, 2008, Breaking Bad debuted on a fledgling network with zero hits under its belt. Expectations were rock bottom.

Peaky Blinders season 6’s unexpected connection to real life (Photo Credit – Instagram)

While his arrival was shrouded in mystery, his connection to real-life history is anything but. Uncle Jack isn’t just a fictional mob boss; he’s inspired by Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., father of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.

In the Peaky Blinders universe, Uncle Jack’s arrival from the U.S. with plans to buy import licenses for Scotch and whiskey distilleries adds layers to the show’s dark, gritty intrigue. He rolls up to England with a crew straight out of the pages of history: his wife, mistress, and the son of President Roosevelt. The whole setup might sound familiar, and it should. 1933 Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. did the same thing, arriving in London with a similar entourage. He, too, was looking to cash in on the end of Prohibition, buying rights to...

Love them or hate them, obsess over them or ignore them altogether, the Academy Awards are a cultural artifact whose history mirrors the very history of American film. Granted, as a gatekeeping and taste-managing institution, the Oscars have always been better at belatedly following and responding to winds of change in the industry than at anticipating or provoking them, and you could probably count on your fingers the number of times that the Oscar statuette in any given category went to a genuinely bold, bracing, game-changing winner. But they're as good a summation of the congealing of critical and commercial mainstream consensus over the decades as we film buffs have. And, as such, it's fascinating to look at the instances of the ultimate winner being so out of lockstep with that consensus as to cause an uproar.

As we gear up for the 97th Academy Awards in March 2025, it's a...

For whatever reason, folks in the film and TV industry seem inclined to hand Kevin Costner a ten-gallon hat and stick him on a horse. Okay, if we're being real, it's often the "Dances with Wolves" filmmaker who casts himself to play cowboy, as was also the case when he starred in his own feature-length directorial efforts "Open Range" and "Horizon: An American Saga -- Chapter 1." You can actually trace the "Yellowstone" veteran's association with the Western genre to the early days of his career when he starred in Lawrence Kasdan's Oscar-nominated 1985 oater "Silverado." The duo's reunion almost a decade later on "Wyatt Earp" didn't fare as well by comparison, although Costner has always defended the three-hour epic.

Funnily enough, Kasdan's 1994 feature isn't even Costner's longest sojourn into the Old West. That would be "Hatfields & McCoys," the three-part 2012 History Channel miniseries that reunited Costner with his "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves...

Paul McCartney released a classic Christmas song in 1979, cementing his name in the holiday canon. McCartney also put on holiday specials with The Beatles and recorded albums for their fan club. These days, McCartney shares his favorite memories of Christmas in the weeks leading up to the holiday. He said that one unexpected smell always reminds him of his childhood Christmases.

Paul McCartney said this smell reminds him of Christmas

When asked what “always gives [him] a Christmas feeling,” McCartney said a specific smell always pulls him back to his childhood holidays.

“As a kid it was always the smell of cigars,” he said in a 2023 Q&a on his official website. “My dad didn’t smoke them except at Christmas, and my brother and I used to buy him a little pack each. Then one year our dad said, ‘Don’t buy me the pack, just get me one really good one!

2024 was an exceptionally strong year for cinematography, with several standout films that represent the art form at its apex. Perhaps what’s most welcome about these films is their variety, not only in terms of genre and tone but also budget and position in the marketplace. From the studio system, we have Greig Fraser’s extraordinary work on “Dune: Part Two,” which doubles down on the ambition and tactile detail of Fraser’s work on its predecessor (for which he justly received an Academy Award) to create one of the most flat-out beautiful epics since the glory days of David Lean. From the world of low-budget, independent filmmaking, we have “I Saw the TV Glow,” where cinematographer Eric Yue designs a meticulous and expressive visual corollary for his protagonist’s inner state. Like Fraser, cinematographer Lawrence Sher brings more innovation to his approach to a sequel — in Sher’s case,...

Frank Capra is one of a handful of directors, like Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg, whose name practically signifies its own genre, and like those directors, his body of work is far more complex and varied than the broad strokes by which he’s often defined. Capra tends to be thought of in one of two ways: as either the light, breezy director of handsomely crafted comedies like “Platinum Blonde,” “It Happened One Night,” and “You Can’t Take it With You,” or as the inspirational chronicler of American values and politics who made “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Both characterizations are true, but they only scratch the surface of Capra’s breadth. His full range is on glorious display in what is unquestionably the physical media event of the season, Sony’s release of the “Frank Capra at Columbia” collection.

David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune did not enjoy any critical or commercial success at the time of its release but went on to become a major cult hit. The failure could’ve proven too much for Lynch who refused to look back at the film or watch its latest adaptation from Denis Villeneuve. Interestingly, he seemed to have a clue about the fate of the film even before its release.

David Lynch in a still from The Fabelmans | Credits: Universal Pictures

During the promotional interviews for Dune, Lynch wasn’t overly confident about the film. Fans later came to know that many behind-the-scenes troubles impacted the film’s quality including studio interference. When asked if the film would put him in the ranks of directors like Steven Spielberg, Lynch replied that he didn’t even want to think about it at the time.

David Lynch shut down the Steven...

Physical media culture is alive and thriving thanks to the home video tastemakers hailing everywhere from The Criterion Collection to Kino Lorber and the Warner Archive Collection. Each month, IndieWire highlights the best recent and upcoming Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K releases for cinephiles to own now — and to bring ballast and permanence to your moviegoing at a time when streaming windows on classic movies close just as soon as they open.

The holidays are here, which means it’s high time to treat the cinephiles in your life (or yourself) to some new (and classic) home releases. Though the Barnes & Noble Criterion Flash Sale is now out of the way, Criterion itself is currently offering 30% off discs, and we’ve highlighted a few of the label’s new 4Ks, including the Coens’ 2008 Best Picture winner “No Country for Old Men” and Wim Wenders’ 1984 “Paris, Texas,” which IndieWire named the fourth best film of the 1980s.

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences today revealed the nominees for its third annual Children’s & Family Emmy Awards, the stand-alone competition that honors creativity and innovation in children’s entertainment.

See the full list below.

Winners will be feted during the 2024 Children’s & Family Emmys ceremony March 15 in Los Angeles. Winners in the Juried Individual Achievement in Animation categories will be announced early next year, as will the Lifetime Achievement honoree and ceremony host and presenters.

“This year’s nominations are particularly meaningful as much of the work being honored was delayed due to last year’s strikes,” said Rachel Schwartz, Head of the Children’s & Family Emmy Awards. “It is a privilege to have been named head of a competition that is not only honoring exceptional talent but is also shaping the way children and their families interact with the world.”

Here are the nominees for...

In the early 1950s, Hollywood introduced numerous widescreen formats in an effort to compete with the rise of television; the thinking was that the spectacle of CinemaScope, Cinerama, and other processes would give people incentive to leave their homes and return to the theater. Now, as exhibitors struggle with the rise of streaming and declining theater attendance, filmmaker Brady Corbet has revived the greatest of all widescreen formats and given today’s audiences the same reason to get off their couches that Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Curtiz, and other premier directors of their era gave in the 1950s.

Corbet opted to shoot “The Brutalist” in VistaVision, a process Paramount Pictures introduced in 1954 with the release of Michael Curtiz’s “White Christmas.” The format’s run was brief but glorious; it essentially fell out of regular use after Marlon Brando’s “One-Eyed Jacks” in 1961, but before that it was employed on several...

Due to the vagaries of rights acquisition, it has taken Arrow Video three volumes of its indispensable Shawscope series to offer the movie that started it all in terms of Shaw Brothers Studio’s ascent to the top of the Hong Kong box office: Chang Cheh’s groundbreaking 1967 wuxia The One-Armed Swordsman. As such, it can be easy to take for granted Chang’s ultraviolence and grim thematic undertones given how many later, more refined efforts from Chang and other filmmakers have already been released.

Nonetheless, The One-Armed Swordsman’s economy of pacing and visceral transmission of its hero’s rage give the film a power undiminished by the host of copycats that flooded the Hong Kong market over the next decade. Jimmy Wang Yu’s maimed warrior, Fang Kang, cuts an instantly iconic profile: hair bound in a fin-like top knot and beard honing his jaw to a point,...

Speaking at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia this week, Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Frémaux spoke with passion about his love of cinema. “If you love cinema, cinema will love you,” he said with emphasis. He also sought to explain what made a “good film” for the world’s leading film festival.

Frémaux, who is at Red Sea to present his documentary “Lumière! The Adventure Continues,” emphasized that he would step down if his abilities as the festival’s artistic chief failed him. “One day it will be my destiny to do a bad selection,” he said. “If I do a second bad selection the next year, I will leave. I will say: I am not connected anymore with the cinema of my times.”

Asked to define what made a “good film,” Frémaux said: “I think there are two answers. The first answer is that it is...

One of the most thrilling scenes in recent cinema history comes not from a big budget Hollywood production but via independent documentary filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, directors of Gaucho Gaucho.

To capture the tremendous horsemanship of cowboys and cowgirls in a remote area of Argentina, Dweck and Kershaw wanted to film the gauchos galloping at great speed across the open range. But pulling off a tracking shot of that nature required a Herculean effort.

“First, we had to get a device to film that,” Dweck explains. “And there was only one guy that had that. He was in Buenos Aires. He had a Polaris truck, like a four-wheel drive SUV. It’s like a Mad Max-mobile, with an arm and a gyro, very complicated machine. And we had to truck it 25 hours across [the country] because we were on the other end of Argentina completely, near Chile and Bolivia,...

There are a lot of strange characters on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but Charlie’s Uncle Jack might just be the strangest. He’s supposedly a lawyer, yet seems perplexed by even the smallest of legal issues. He’s obsessed with his hands, fearing they’re too small, which eventually results in him wearing fake, unconvincing rubber hands to hide his self-perceived abnormality. And while nothing has ever been confirmed, we’re pretty sure he touched his nephew Charlie when Charlie was little.

Andrew Friedman has played Uncle Jack for almost 20 years now, as the character debuted in Season One back in 2005. He’s returned sporadically in the years since to defend the gang in court and to offer Charlie a chance to “wrestle with his uncle” — you know, just like they used to. Although it’s doubtful that any of us would want to spend time alone with Uncle Jack,...

Over the past 50-plus years, film historian Joseph McBride has been one of the great chroniclers and analyzers of American directors. His 1972 volume on Orson Welles was one of the first essential works on that great filmmaker, and in the years since, he has published the definitive biographies of John Ford, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, and Steven Spielberg — along with a couple more terrific books on Welles and one of the best tomes on screenwriting (“Writing in Pictures”) ever written.

McBride has always been expert at finding the intersection between biography and personal expression, as rigorous in his research as he is insightful in his visual and literary analysis. Now, he has turned his keen eye toward director George Cukor, and the result, “George Cukor’s People: Acting for a Master Director,” is one of McBride’s most innovative works to date and indispensable for anyone interested not...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News The Scarlet Drop.John Ford’s The Scarlet Drop (1918), presumed to be lost for over 100 years, has been found in a warehouse in Santiago, Chile, that was slated to be demolished. “I think there are some films that decide to live,” says Jaime Cordova, who rescued and digitized the film, which stars Harry Carey as a defector from the Union Army who joins a gang of marauders.The Berlin government’s decision to slash its cultural funding budget by 13 percent (€130 million) has prompted widespread backlash from the city’s arts community. Roughly 450 institutions rely upon state subsidies and Berlin cultural workers predict closures and mass layoffs will be the inevitable result of this budget reduction. Sinema Transtopia...

Voting for the 90th New York Film Critics Circle Awards has ended, and all true cinephiles’ eyes are directed to what films the prestigious critics group honored today: Last year, “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Oppenheimer” won the biggest prizes, giving a partial sign of where the Oscar race was going. But not a complete one, as “Killers” won Best Picture and Lily Gladstone won Best Actress at the NYFCC, both awards that were not repeated at the Oscars. NYFCC winner for Best Director Christopher Nolan did win that award at the Oscars a few months later, however.

Cinephilia, not Oscars prognostication, is the true value of the NYFCC awards. And to that end, “Flow,” one of the most acclaimed animated features of the year and one that the Academy should take close note of, received the first award at the voting for the 2024 awards held in NYC on...

These days, it’s extremely easy to access information about your favorite movies and TV shows thanks to the wonders/horrors of the internet. But back in the dark ages of the 1990s, when dial-up modems, fax machines and slap bracelets were considered cutting edge, pop-culture info was a lot harder to come by.

This meant that fans of The Simpsons who grew up in the ‘90s mostly learned about The Simpsons by watching the show. After all, it’s not like many kids at the time were loyal CBS News NightWatch viewers.

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But then, in The Simpsons’ seventh season, one atypical clip show gave audiences a semi-fictional peek at the making of the series: “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular.”

A lot of the episode was obviously fake (it was hosted by Troy McClure on the Simpsons’ living room “set”), but it did feature actual deleted scenes, including alternate endings for “Who Shot Mr.

A who’s who of Indigenous film talent — including Dallas Goldtooth (Reservation Dogs, Echo), Amber Midthunder (Prey, Legion), Wes Studi (Heat, The Last of the Mohicans) and Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves, Wind River) — are set to star in Brave, a new dramedy from writer/director Steven Paul Judd (Echo, Dark Winds), The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The feature, currently in pre-production, will begin principal photography next summer on the Choctaw Nation Reservation in southeastern Oklahoma. It will be the first-ever feature film to be shot on Choctaw land. The project was developed in close cooperation with the Choctaw Nation, the third-largest Native tribe in the United States.

Brave tells the story of Uncle Jack (Goldtooth), a 15-year military vet with substance abuse issues who now works as the entertainment in his local Native casino. At the funeral of his estranged brother, Jack meets Jillian, his young niece, now an orphan.

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On May 16, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out its first two Academy Awards for Best Director to Frank Borzage ("7th Heaven") and Lewis Milestone ("Two Arabian Knights"). This was the only year the organization distinguished between drama and comedy, but it would not be the last time either of these men took home the top prize in their field. Milestone would win again in 1930 for his heartbreaking adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front," while Borzage, a visual storytelling master whose every film you should absolutely watch, triumphed anew in 1932 with the pre-code classic "Bad Girl."

Throughout the Academy Awards' history, 21 directors have earned more than one Best Director Oscar. 18 have won it twice (Alfonso Cuarón was the most recent filmmaker to join the two-time ranks with "Roma"), while Frank Capra and William Wyler are the only three-time winners.