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

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

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...

Music blares as the CinemaScope logo fades—a train guns across the Mojave. It is like a gut punch. The camera flies over the modern streamliner, shooting like a bullet through the desert. Unexpectedly, its horns blow and it halts to a stop in a little nowhere place. The whole...

Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

by James Cameron-wilson

In January of this year something extraordinary happened. For the first time, United Artists’ Black Tuesday was shown on British television, having been originally banned for its violence. The film noir classic of 1954 stars Edward G. Robinson, one of the four giants of Hollywood’s gangster genre, alongside James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and George Raft. At the time that Edward G. starred in Black Tuesday, he was in something of a career slump, but, in spite of his modest physical stature, he still manages to bring to bear his characteristically brutal persona. Perhaps even more surprising is how good the film is, a sort of forgotten masterpiece from the Argentinean helmer Hugo Fregonese who, in his time, had directed such stars as Gary Cooper, James Mason, Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Lee Marvin and Stewart Granger, but who is largely forgotten today,...

Celebrity documentaries are commanding lofty price tags at the moment, even though “star power” itself seems to be losing its sizzle.

The facts are nasty: Superstar endorsements carried zero clout in the presidential elections. Further, studios have lost their zeal for the once pivotal pre-opening star interview circuit. Superstar vehicles like Wolfs (George Clooney and Brad Pitt) drifted before audiences with limited exposure to blurbdom. Sequel numbers carry greater weight than festival fervor.

Defying this algorithmic blur, Apple TV still felt its Billie Eilish caper was worth $27 million, and Disney forked out $32 million for Elton John: Never Too Late. Disney also paid handsomely for a new/old doc titled Beatles ’64 from Paul McCartney, premiering this week. Could Taylor Swift be far behind?

Intriguingly, audiences still register an appetite for docs about past legends like Humphrey Bogart as well as semi-present ones like Bob Dylan — even litigating about their validity.

This article first appeared into the September 2018 issue of Empire.

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Thirty years after unleashing defective detective Frank Drebin onto the streets of LA, the men behind The Naked Gun talk us through its most iconic moments.

“I’ve finally found someone I can love. A good clean love, without utensils.”

So spoke Lieutenant Frank Drebin in the closing moments of The Naked Gun, romancing his girlfriend mere seconds after his would-be assassin is trampled to death by a marching band. It’s been 30 years since Leslie Nielsen’s Drebin crashed into cinemas, getting everything wrong yet somehow still solving the case. Today, Drebin’s co-creators David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker (aka Zaz), brought together by Empire for an anniversary chinwag, are in fine fettle — there’s no mistaking Drebin’s heritage. “Tell me if I’m wrong,” says Empire, about to pose a question. “You’re wrong!

Screenwriter Derek Kolstad wrote around 50 scripts before he finally broke through with the spec screenplay that became John Wick.

It’s an odd profession, screenwriting. There are some who’ve spent years trying to break into it, only to have their work changed to such a degree that their original idea has effectively vanished by the time it reaches the screen. There are others who get paid handsomely by studios to write screenplays that then wind up on a shelf, unused. For every celebrated screenwriter with millions in the bank and awards on their shelves, there are countless others who are behind on their rent and remain largely unknown.

Screenwriter Derek Kolstad, meanwhile, is something of an inspiration. He toiled away for years in the hope of making a career out of writing, and almost gave up when some of the low-budget movies he worked on didn’t bring in much of a salary.

THR reports that Chad Stahelski is producing The Professionals. When I read the title, I initially thought this might be a remake of the 1966 Western starring Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin, but no. The project is said to be a cross between John Wick and Clue. I can get down with that.

The film follows “a group of contract killers stranded in an English countryside estate when one of them is murdered and the remaining group has to solve the death.” Stahelski will produce alongside Alex Young and Jason Spitz, his partners at 87Eleven, as well as Jason Michael Berman and Jordan Moldo of Mandalay Pictures. Hunter Perot, grandson of the late Ross Perot, wrote the initial draft of the screenplay. Madison Turner, a stuntman-turned-writer and son of longtime stunt performer Tierre Turner, is now tackling the script.

Related Awesome Artist We’ve Found Around The Net: Bryan Carey

Chad...

At 77, Steven Spielberg isn’t holding back! The legendary director just dropped some truth bombs about his post-War of the Worlds flicks, admitting that the films that followed didn’t quite hit the mark. It’s not every day you hear a titan of cinema reflect so candidly, but Spielberg’s honesty shines through as he acknowledges a string of less-than-stellar projects.

Steven Spielberg | Image by: Gage Skidmore licensed under Cc By-sa 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s a bold move for a guy who’s given us classics like Jaws and E.T., proving that even the best can have their off days. So, what’s behind his revelation? Let’s dive into Spielberg’s journey through the highs and lows of Hollywood as he reexamines his filmography!

Steven Spielberg at 77: Why the Legendary Director’s Choosing History Over Blockbusters Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise from the set of...

You can't have "Jaws" without Quint, a modern Captain Ahab if he'd been hunting a great white shark rather than a white whale. It's difficult to picture anyone but Robert Shaw (in one of his last roles before his premature death in 1978) in the part, but the actor actually wasn't who director Steven Spielberg first had in mind.

In "Spielberg: The First Ten Years" by Laurent Bouzereau, Spielberg claimed his first choice for Quint was Lee Marvin. He wanted a big star and Marvin was famous for playing sinister tough guys. See: "The Big Heat," "Point Blank," "The Dirty Dozen," and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (directed by the man who taught Spielberg how to frame a horizon.) Marvin, though, said no. Spielberg recounted: "What I heard was that [Marvin] wanted to go fishing for real! He took his fishing very seriously and didn't want to do it from a 'movie' boat.

Tom Cruise – the man who has proven time and again that age is nothing but a number. No one will look at him and say that he is sixty-two! Just look at the stunts he did in Top Gun: Maverick and the recent Mission: Impossible. When the conversation is about going all out for stunts and turning the intensity to ‘reckless,’ you just cannot leave the ever-charming superstar out of it.

Tom Cruise in Collateral | Credits: Paramount Pictures

Sure, there are other actors out there who perform their own stunts, including Keanu Reeves, but there is just something about Tom Cruise that sets him apart from the rest. Michael Mann, who directed the actor in Collateral (2004), will completely agree with the previous statement. In fact, he even compared Tom Cruise’s gunmanship with that of Keanu Reeves and declared the former as the winner.

Michael Mann on Tom Cruise vs.

In 1967, The Dirty Dozen fought their way into the hearts and minds of moviegoers in the classic war movie of the same name. Directed by Robert Aldrich, "The Dirty Dozen" told the (partly true) story of a dozen convicts ordered to fight for the U.S. in a secret, super-dangerous World War II mission. Among them: mobster Victor Franko (John Cassavettes), former coal miner Joseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson), and Vernon Pinkley, played by Donald Sutherland in the role that landed him the "M*A*S*H" movie.

Character actor Lee Marvin played the general who put the ragtag team together, while Ernest Borgnine played his boss, who asked him to assemble the suicide mission that made the movie famous. All of these great actors are gone now, along with 10 of the 12 castmates who played the original "dozen." The two actors who are still with us, Stuart Cooper and Colin Maitland,...

Michael Ritchie’s Prime Cut never quite recovers from an early botched opportunity. Up until then, Ritchie effectively primes us for the reveal of the film’s big bad, seemingly eavesdropping on characters in a Chicago bar as they trade exposition pertaining to Mary Ann (Gene Hackman), the owner of a meatpacking plant who uses his business as a front for running drugs and prostitutes.

The trouble is that Mary Ann’s supposed to pay up to some folks in Chi-town, who claim he owes them half a mil, and that’s where enforcer Nick (Lee Marvin) comes in, swinging down to the former’s fortress in Kansas City in a limo fully decked out with guns and expendable goons. Nick and Mary Ann have a history, of course, working for the same bosses, sleeping with the same gold-digging henchwomen. After first stopping at an atmospherically sleazy flophouse, Nick walks...

The legendary actor, Donald Sutherland, has passed on and even though his passing is something to mourn, his legacy will live on and that is something to be most grateful for. Early life Donald McNichol Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada in 1935. Sutherland worked in several different jobs before beginning his acting career, one of them being a radio DJ in his youth. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in engineering and was almost set on becoming an engineer. However, he also graduated with a degree in drama, and he chose arts over applied science. And aren’t we all so glad that he did? 1960s: Career starter Sutherland's first roles were very small parts in films such as the 1965 horror film ‘Dr. Terror's House of Horrors’, starring Christopher Lee. He also appeared on the small screen doing episodes of shows such as...

When the big-budget sci-fi/boxing flick hybrid "Real Steel" brawled its way into theaters on October 7, 2011, it was ridiculed by some as "Rock'em Sock'em Robots: The Motion Picture." On one hand, the $110 million-budgeted film's blockbuster pedigree of star Hugh Jackman and director Shawn Levy did little to suggest the film was anything more than this. But anyone who grew up gorging on Rod Serling's original run of "The Twilight Zone" in syndication or reading the novels and short stories of Richard Matheson knew there was more to "Real Steel," at least in theory, than family friendly mechanical mayhem.

Obviously, with that budget, Disney (which distributed the DreamWorks production) wasn't going to sell the film primarily on its connection to a nearly 50-year-old black-and-white television show. As for Matheson, while he's considered a god of 20th century sci-fi/fantasy/horror literature by publishing heavyweights like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman,...

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

The film industry lost another legendary actor as Hunger Games actor Donald Sutherland passed away on Thursday. Sutherland rose to prominence in the ’70s with the roles in The Dirty Dozen and M*A*S*H. However, he had a less prominent role in the former until one actor’s refusal to do a scene landed him a bigger part and the main role in the latter.

Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H | Ingo Preminger Productions

Sutherland had nearly 200 films to his name in his career and the role of Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H always had a special place in the audience’s hearts. Unfortunately, the actor never received an Academy Award in his lifetime, but received an Academy Honorary Award in 2017.

Donald Sutherland Should Thank One Unexpected Scene In The Dirty Dozen For His M*A*S*H Role...

In Robert Aldrich's 1967 World War II film "The Dirty Dozen," an ambitious army Major named John Reisman (Lee Marvin) is tasked with assembling 12 American soldiers who have all been thrown in military prison for their insubordination and tendencies toward violence. His job is to whip them into shape, as he intends to send them on a particularly dangerous mission: infiltrating a Nazi stronghold. It's easily one of the manliest films ever made, something Aldrich was good at; he also directed "Kiss Me Deadly," "The Longest Yard," and "The Flight of the Phoenix." It's a testament to Aldrich's talent that he also made famously femme films like "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?," and "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte."

The second member of the Dirty Dozen was a character named Vernon L. Pinkley, played by the late, great Donald Sutherland. There is a scene wherein Reisman asks Pinkley -- at the last...

Acting legend Donald Sutherland died at the age of 88. The well-respected and beloved actor was the star of such classic movies as Mash, Klute, Ordinary People, ‘Hunger Games,’ and The Dirty Dozen. His work spanned many decades and he was honored with awards for his talent. He was the father of Keifer Sutherland, and CAA Media Finance exec Roeg Sutherland.

Here are all the latest details.

Donald Sutherland – Kiefer Sutherland YouTube Donald Sutherland Died In Miami

On Thursday, Deadline reported that the award-winning actor died in Miami after a long illness. He was 88 years of age. Donald Sutherland was born on July 17, 1935, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Acting since his 20s, his 60-year career was in both movies and television. He had over 200 credits to his name. Best of all, he was able to share the screen with his actor son Keifer Sutherland in Forsaken.

On Twitter, Keifer wrote,...

Donald Sutherland, the beloved actor who starred in scores of films from The Dirty Dozen, Mash and Klute to Animal House and Ordinary People to Pride & Prejudice and The Hunger Games franchise and won an Emmy for Citizen X, died Thursday in Miami after a long illness. He was 88.

The 2017 Honorary Oscar recipient also is the father of Emmy-winning 24 and Designated Survivor actor Kiefer Sutherland and veteran CAA Media Finance exec Roeg Sutherland. CAA confirmed the news to Deadline.

Related: Remembering Donald Sutherland: A Career In Photos

In some of his most well-known roles, he perfected a laconic, wry and dead-serious delivery. Such was the case for characters including the cool-headed amateur murder investigator John Klute, opposite Jane Fonda’s terrified and erratic call girl Bree Daniels in Klute; as Hawkeye Pierce in the film Mash, where he played opposite Elliott Gould’s cut-up Trapper John; and in Nicolas Roeg...

June 6, 2024, marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of the beaches of Normandy, France. Code-named Operation Overlord, it marked the largest amphibious invasion in military history and resulted in the defeat of German Nazi forces at Reims.

Some films portray the soldiers who set foot on the shores of Normandy, portrayed by actors including John Wayne, Tom Hanks, Mark Hamill, Lee Marvin, Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, Tom Sizemore, Ted Danson, Paul Giamatti and more. Others focus on Winston Churchill, who made the call for Britain to join the invasion. Two Churchill biopics, starring Brian Cox and Gary Oldman, came out in 2017 and depict the strenuous decision the prime minister made.

For those looking for TV shows about the operation, Band of Brothers starring Scott Grimes, Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston is a must-watch. HBO’s miniseries about Easy Company also features Andrew Scott, James McAvoy, Colin Hanks, Simon Pegg,...

Several top stars put their careers on hold and their lives on the line to serve during World War II including Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, Robert Taylor, Alan Ladd, William Holden, Robert Ryan and Robert Montgomery. And numerous young men who weren’t yet actors during the global conflict including Lee Marvin and Charles Durning saw action and suffered severe injuries.

With the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which was the largest amphibious invasion in military history with five naval assault divisions invading the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, let’s look at some actors who participated in the massive operation.

Charles Durning

The versatile character actor, who earned supporting actor Oscar nominations for 1982’s “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and 1983’s “To Be or Not to Be” and nine Emmy nominations, was just 21 when he was one of the first group of soldiers to land and...

The physical media distributor Shout Factory has been announcing quite a bit of cool new 4K releases lately. Most recently, we reported on the all-new 4K Uhd Blu-ray box set on the Bill & Ted Trilogy that includes Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Bill & Ted Face the Music. Blu-ray.com also revealed additional titles coming from the label. This August will see the 4K special releases of the Cannon Film classic The Delta Force, starring Chuck Norris, and a steelbook edition of the 1996 film from director Rob Cohen that features Sean Connery as a talking dragon, Dragonheart. .

The synopsis on the Delta Force 4K Blu-ray reads,

“Political extremists have taken innocent people hostage…and only super-soldiers Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin can rescue them in this “astounding mix of fact, fantasy and heavy-duty adventure” (Variety). Co-starring Martin Balsam and Shelley Winters, The Delta...

I grew up in the time of the Chuck Norris joke. I didn’t even really know who he was apart from the Walker, Texas Ranger guy who Conan O’Brien would pull a lever to get just the most random, out of context clip. I remember seeing the Chuck Norris joke book in a Barnes and Noble store and leafing through it only to find a bunch of absolutely absurd and comically over the top things that Chuck Norris could and would do to you or what he kept behind his beard. It was enough for me to start looking at his overall contribution to film and much of it was action. I found him teaming up with the likes of Lee Marvin in The Delta Force or going up against the great Christopher Lee in An Eye for an Eye. There’s also a great fight he had with...

Chris Pine, Cynthia Erivo, Kieran Culkin, Sharon Stone and Rosie Perez celebrated Jeff Bridges’ seven-decade career at the 49th annual Chaplin Awards Gala in New York City on Monday night. But the Big Lebowski star almost chose a different career path.

During his acceptance speech for the Film at Lincoln Center‘s prestigious honor, the True Grit star shared that he originally “resisted” the idea of pursuing acting full-time for a few different reasons.

“It made me nervous, anxious, and I had other things I wanted to do,” he told the full auditorium at Alice Tully Hall. “I was very much into music. I loved ceramics, painting, and who wants to do what their parents do anyway?”

He recalled his father, actor Lloyd Bridges, explaining to him that he could do all of those things in this career path and use them all to some degree, which was one of the beauties of the job.

When Tony Scott died in 2012, he left behind more than a few unfinished projects, including a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s iconic Western, The Wild Bunch.

L.A. Confidential screenwriter Brian Helgeland was attached to write the script for the remake of The Wild Bunch for Tony Scott, and he spilled a few details about the project while speaking with Inverse, including that it would have been set in the modern day.

“I also wrote 45 pages of The Wild Bunch for Tony to direct before he died. Sadly, I always say that I’m still on page 45 of that project,” Helgeland said. “It’s pretty violent and set in the modern day. The plot revolves around L.A. rampart cops that were being sent to prison, but during the trial, they’re still technically free. So, they decide to head down to Mexico and rob a bank before scattering to the...

The title is the worst thing about this lively, fun and largely true World War II adventure The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which is inspired by the Damien Lewis book of the same name but extending it to add: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops.

Guy Ritchie has taken this story of an illicit black ops crew, mostly of the prisoner variety, who with the permission of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) was commissioned and put into action (a ragtag group of warriors if ever there was one) in order to sink, as it were, Nazi Germany’s U-boats operation that had been preventing the U.S. from entering the war in Europe.

Ritchie has been on a roll of late with 2019’s The Gentlemen (now a Netflix series), and a pair from last year, the terrific Afghanistan War-set The Covenant,...

In “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” the gorilla has a new adversary: Skar King, the cunning, lanky, red-haired orangutan-like creature, who lords over the subterranean realm of Hollow Earth like a sadistic bully to keep his ape minions in line. With Shimo, the ancient ice Titan, whom he controls as his slave, Skar King is so formidable that it takes the two titular Titans to stop him from achieving world domination.

In creating the best villain yet in the five-film MonsterVerse franchise, director Adam Wingard relied on Wētā FX — the king of ape films, with “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” right around the corner — to animate Skar King. They overhauled the design concept to ensure his biomechanics worked in line with the desired motion and also roughed him up, complete with a cat-eye reflection in one of his eyes.

Wētā additionally aged Kong by altering his fur...

As you've likely heard by now, O.J. Simpson has passed away at the age of 76.

One of the most famous -- and infamous -- Americans of the modern era, Simpson was known for many things:

He was, of course, a world-class athlete, a standout at running back for the NFL's Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers.

Later in life, he would become the center of the most high-profile murder trial of the 20th century,

And though he beat the charges under dubious circumstances, the lingering suspicion that Simpson murdered his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, would make him a pariah in the upper-crust social circles that had served as his comfortable domain for so many years.

But before O.J. ever earned a dime from professional football -- before he was arrested for murder and before he served nine years in prison on unrelated robbery and...

Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson, the football star turned actor who became the center of one of the highest-profile trials in U.S. history when he was accused of murdering his ex-wife and another man, died Wednesday at the age of 76.

Simpson’s children announced his death Thursday, saying that their father died following a private cancer battle. “On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer,” his family said in a statement. “He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition,...

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

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

At the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929, native Pennsylvanian Janet Gaynor made history as the first American-born performer to win an Oscar by taking the Best Actress prize for her body of work in “7th Heaven,” “Street Angel,” and “Sunrise.” Over the subsequent 95 years, 215 more thespians originating from the United States won the academy’s favor, meaning the country has now produced 68.1% of all individual acting Oscar recipients. Considering the last decade alone, the rate of such winners is even higher, at 70.3%.

At this point, 96.8% of American-born acting Oscar victors have hailed from one of 34 actual states. Of those constituting the remainder, three originated from the federal District of Columbia, while four were born in the territory of Puerto Rico. New York (home to 49 winners) is the most common birth state among the entire group, followed by California (34), Illinois (13), Massachusetts (11), and Pennsylvania (11).

Bearing in mind our specific birthplace focus, the 16 states...

George Harrison appeared in a handful of films and even opened his own production company. He loved movies, but there was one film he simply couldn’t get behind. In the 1960s, he watched a screening of a much-loved Western while on LSD. He couldn’t stand the movie, referring to it as a “load of baloney shite.” Here’s the movie that aggravated him so deeply.

George Harrison was not a fan of a much-loved film

In the 1960s, The Beatles were in Los Angeles and decided to take LSD. They spent their afternoon swimming in a pool with Peter Fonda and members of The Byrds. Later in the day, they attended a screening of the film Cat Ballou.

“Later on that day, we were all tripping out and they brought several starlets in and set up a movie for us to watch in the house,” he said in The Beatles Anthology.

In 1970, the final single The Beatles released before announcing their breakup failed to hit No. 1 because of an actor George Harrison disliked. Harrison was no fan of actor Lee Marvin or the film that won him an Oscar. It likely stung, then, when the song “Wanderin’ Star” blocked “Let It Be” from hitting No.1 in the U.K.

The Beatles’ George Harrison said he never liked this actor

While The Beatles were in California, Harrison and John Lennon tried to convince their bandmates to try LSD. While Paul McCartney refused, the others spent their day swimming in the pool and trying to avoid the attention of reporter Don Short. Later in the day, they viewed a screening of the film Cat Ballou.

“The movie was put on, and — of all things — it was a drive-in print of Cat Ballou,” Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “The drive-in print has the...

By respectively receiving Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations for “American Fiction,” Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown made history as the first two Black male cast mates to compete in separate categories for the same film. They are also the eighth pair of performers to earn academy recognition for playing brothers and constitute the 29th case of Oscar-nominated sibling characters overall. Check out our photo gallery of this and the previous 28 examples, which date as far back as 1948.

At this point, the only two people who have won Oscars for playing siblings in the same film are “A Streetcar Named Desire” cast mates Vivien Leigh (Best Actress) and Kim Hunter (Best Supporting Actress). Best Actor champ Lee Marvin can technically also be counted alongside them since he was honored for portraying twin brothers in “Cat Ballou.”

The other seven films on this list for which only one...

Alita: Battle Angel star Rosa Salazar has joined the cast of Shane Black’s next film, Play Dirty. She’ll appear alongside Mark Wahlberg and Lakeith Stansfield.

After years in development, Shane Black’s thriller Play Dirty appears to be gathering pace. It was only the other day that Lakeith Stansfield was announced as a co-star alongside Mark Wahlberg; it’s now reported that he’ll be joined by Rosa Salazar, whose previous roles include the zesty anime adaptation, Alita: Battle Angel.

Deadline, the outlet that broke the story, doesn’t disclose what role Salazar will be playing in Black’s thriller, which is based on the long-running – and influential – series of novels written by Donald E Westlake.

It’s previously been reported that Play Dirty will draw on several of those novels rather than one in particular, though judging by Deadline’s synopsis, it’ll take at least a...

Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" is the daddiest of dad movies. A box office smash upon its theatrical release in 1967, it was the proto-"men-on-a-mission" movie. Lee Marvin stars as a World War II U.S. Army major ordered to lead a pack of disposable military prisoners on a suicide mission to slaughter numerous high-ranking Nazi officers. The film brought together some of the most macho men on the planet to play the (not entirely) doomed soldiers: Charles Bronson, George Kennedy, Telly Savalas, and, of course, recently retired Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown. It was a testosterone-fueled must-see that inspired three made-for-tv sequels and a load of imitators (including Enzo G. Castellari's "The Inglorious Bastards" and Quentin Tarantino's endearingly misspelled "Inglourious Basterds").

It's been homaged and ripped off so many times over the last 57 years that a straight-up remake would hardly be sacrilege. In fact, given...

Turning a short-lived parody TV series into a feature film was always going to involve taking a chance, but as the team behind the Naked Gun franchise learned, it wasn’t quite on the level of sticking your face in a fan.

Following the breakout success of the 1980 smash hit Airplane!, that film’s writer-director team — David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker — found themselves grounded when ABC promptly canceled their police-spoofing show Police Squad! in 1982. But the series’ co-creators refused to let the concept die and went on to adapt it for The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, which Paramount Pictures released theatrically on Dec. 2, 1988. The movie, featuring Leslie Nielsen reprising his Police Squad! lead role as accident-prone police lieutenant Frank Drebin, also starred Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalbán, George Kennedy and O. J. Simpson.

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the original Naked Gun film that...

For the past few years, Joel Silver has kept a relatively low profile, his most recent credit on the little-seen “SuperFly” remake of 2018. Still, the hard-charging producer behind some of the biggest hits of the ’80s and ’90s was attempting to mount a comeback. And his prospects looked promising with a series of feature film and TV projects at Amazon that were based on Donald E. Westlake’s Parker noir crime novels.

Alas, the Silver comeback has hit a snag. Sources say Amazon has fired the polarizing Hollywood figure from at least two films — one starring Mark Wahlberg, the other Jake Gyllenhaal — for being verbally abusive to two female executives. But sources close to Silver say Amazon is retaliating against the producer after he pushed back on the studio’s calls to use artificial intelligence to finish a movie during the strike. Amid the chaos, Silver’s longtime friend Robert Downey Jr....

Elliot Silverstein, known for directing films such as “Cat Ballou” and “A Man Called Horse,” died on Nov. 24 in Los Angeles, his family confirmed via Legacy. He was 96.

After working on episodes of TV series like “The Twilight Zone,” “Naked City” and “Route 66,” Silverstein made his feature directorial debut in 1965 with “Cat Ballou,” which starred Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin. Silverstein suggested Marvin play Kid Shelleen when Kirk Douglas turned down the role in the Western comedy. When a producer wanted to replace Marvin with José Ferrer, Silverstein threatened to quit. Marvin ended up winning an Oscar for his role in the film.

Silverstein went on to direct the Anthony Quinn-led “The Happening,” “A Man Called Horse,” starring Richard Harris, and the cult classic “The Car” with James Brolin. He was also integral in forming the Bill of Creative Rights for directors.

While working on his “Twilight Zone” episode “The Obsolete Man,...

Update, with DGA statement: Elliot Silverstein, who directed Jane Fonda and, in an Oscar-winning performance, Lee Marvin in the 1965 comedy-Western Cat Ballou, died Nov. 24 in Los Angeles. He was 96.

His death was announced by family members.

Born August 3, 1927, in Boson, Silverstein launched his directing career during television’s 1950s on such programs as Omnibus and the Alfred Hitchcock-produced mystery series Suspicion, Silverstein stayed busy with episodic series throughout the 1960s. Among his credits from the era: Route 66, Have Gun – Will Travel, Naked City, Dr. Kildare, The Defenders and four episodes of The Twilight Zone, including the fan-favorite, Rod Serling-penned 1961 installment titled The Passersby, a mournful ghost story set at the end of the American Civil War.

Lee Marvin in ‘Cat Ballou’

Silverstein’s TV career would continue, sporadically, through the 1990s when he directed four episodes of Tales From The Crypt and an episode of Picket Fences,...

Elliot Silverstein, who helmed episodes of such acclaimed TV shows as Naked City, The Twilight Zone and Route 66 before guiding Lee Marvin to a best actor Oscar in Cat Ballou, his feature directorial debut, died Friday in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 96.

The Boston native also helmed A Man Called Horse (1970), which starred Richard Harris in the title role as an English aristocrat who eventually becomes the leader of the Native tribe that had captured and tortured him. The action movie spawned a couple of sequels.

Most importantly, Silverman was instrumental in the formation of the milestone Bill of Creative Rights for directors.

“Every director today owes a debt of gratitude to Elliot Silverstein,” DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement. “No one ever worked harder or was more passionate about protecting artists from having their work and vision altered than Elliot.”

It was Silverstein...

In principle, using the rainy-day, kitchen-sink post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer seems incredibly perverse, given that it’s an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually a very sound choice indeed: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for naming his band so, the first being that “Smith” is one of the most common and thus unremarkable surnames in the world. The second, and much more subversive theory, suggests that it’s also a reference to David and Maureen Smith, brother-in-law and sister of ’60s serial killer Myra Hindley, the snappily dressed couple whose testimony blew open the Moors Murderers case and whose beatnik likenesses adorn the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.

There’s a slight chance David Fincher and his creative team may not know these things,...

On a recent visit to Zagreb in Croatia, I was stopped in my tracks by this poster, above, in the Museum of Contemporary Art. It is a design for the First Science Fiction Fair held in 1972 in the museum’s previous incarnation as the Gallery of Contemporary Art. The poster’s artist, Mihajlo Arsovski, had been designing exhibition posters for the Gallery for more than a decade and this poster was awarded the Gold Medal at the International Poster Exhibition in Varese, Italy, in 1973. After finding it, I posted about the design on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram and asked whether anyone followed my account in Croatia, which led to my meeting up with two Croatian artists/designers Neven Udovičić and Sara Kern Gacesa. Neven told me more about Arsovski, who had died at the age of 83 in 2020, and also about Boris Bućan, whose famous poster for Stravinsky...

In a wide-ranging conversation at the Cannes Film Festival today, Jane Fonda did not hold back, offering uncensored opinions on Robert Redford, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Douglas, and Katharine Hepburn, not to mention climate change.

Her comments about co-stars and colleagues weren’t always flattering. Speaking at the Rendezvous with Jane Fonda event at the Salle Buñuel, the two-time Oscar winner said she “was in love with” Redford, her leading man in four films including Barefoot in the Park, and The Electric Horseman. But in a kiss-and-tell disclosure, she said of Redford, “He did not like to kiss,” referring, presumably, to film roles with her. She added, “I never said anything [to him about it]. And he’s always in a bad mood, and I always thought it was my fault.”

She added, “He’s a very good person. He just has an issue with women.” She did not elaborate and the moderator did not follow up.

Ray Stevenson, the Irish actor who played the villainous British governor in “Rrr”, an Asgardian warrior in the “Thor” films, and a member of the 13th Legion in HBO’s “Rome”, has died. He was 58.

Representatives for Stevenson told The Associated Press that he died Sunday but had no other details to share on Monday.

Stevenson was born in Lisburn in 1964. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and years of working in British television, he made his film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight”. In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a knight of the round table and several years later played the lead in the pre-Disney Marvel adaptation “Punisher: War Zone”.

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Though “Punisher” was not the best-reviewed film, he’d get another taste of Marvel...

Jim Brown was everything. He was the greatest football player of all time, a trailblazing Black movie star, a vital voice during the Civil Rights Movement, and a man around whom controversy persistently swirled because he did not give a single, solitary f**k ... to a fault.

Brown was a model of American manhood. He played nine seasons of football as the Cleveland Browns running back, and he made the Pro Bowl in every one. Brown averaged 5.2 yards per carry for his career (third-best of all-time) and did so by scrapping for every inch inbounds. He blasted into defenders with rib-cracking velocity. He took his lumps (which were bruisingly visible in his later years), but when you tackled Brown you got the worst of it. The man didn't believe in running to the sideline. He ran through you.

Brown was also a model of defiance at a time when Black...

Jim Brown, the NFL Hall of Famer and Civil Rights activist who turned to acting and appeared in films and TV shows ranging from The Dirty Dozen and I Spy to Draft Day, Mars Attacks! and The A-Team, died Thursday night in Los Angeles. His wife, Monique Brown, said in an Instagram post that he died peacefully, but she did not provide a cause.

Brown is considered among the greatest football players of all time. Drafted sixth overall in 1957 by the Cleveland Browns out of Syracuse University, his bruising running style redefined the running back position. As a rookie, he ran for 237 yards in a game against the Los Angeles Rams — a record that would stand until the 1970s.

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Among his myriad NFL records and milestones, he was the first to top 100 career rushing touchdowns and set single-season and career rushing...

Jim Brown, the NFL titan who appeared in “The Dirty Dozen,” many Blaxploitation films plus Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday,” “The Running Man,” Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks” and Spike Lee’s “He Got Game,” to name a few, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 87.

His wife Monique posted the news of his death on Instagram, saying, “He passed peacefully last night at our L.A. home.”

In nine extraordinary seasons as a fullback with the Cleveland Browns, Brown set an array of NFL records. In 2002, The Sporting News named him the greatest professional football player ever. That phenomenal athleticism and a charismatic personality made him bankable as the first African American action star.

“On behalf of the entire NFL family, we extend our condolences to Monique and their family,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “Jim Brown was a gifted athlete — one of the most dominant players to...

Jim Brown, the incomparable Cleveland Browns fullback who quit the NFL at the peak of his prowess to become a Hollywood action hero in such films as The Dirty Dozen, Ice Station Zebra and 100 Rifles, has died. He was 87.

A staunch advocate for civil rights, Brown died in his Los Angeles home Thursday night with wife Monique by his side, his family’s spokesperson told the Associated Press.

In a statement, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell praised Brown’s skills on the field, in addition to calling him a “cultural figure who helped promote change.” The message continued, “During his nine-year NFL career, which coincided with the civil rights movement here at home, he became a forerunner and role model for athletes being involved in social initiatives outside their sport. He inspired fellow athletes to make a difference, especially in the communities in which they lived.”

A synthesis of speed,...