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Alice Walker published her acclaimed novel “The Color Purple” in 1982. It sold five million copies; Walker became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and she also received the National Book Club Award. Three years later, Steven Spielberg directed the lauded film version which made stars out of Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. It earned 11 Oscar nominations. The story revolves around a young woman who suffers abuse from her father and husband for four decades until she finds her own identity. Not exactly the stuff of a Broadway musical.

But the 2005 tuner version received strong reviews, ran 910 performances and earned ten Tony nominations, winning best actress for Lachanze. The 2015 production picked up two Tonys for best revival and actress for Cynthia Erivo. The movie musical version opened strong Christmas Day with $18 million and is a strong contender in several Oscar categories especially for Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks.

Universal Pictures has debuted a poignant trailer for the upcoming documentary on a Hollywood legend ‘Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed.’

The documentary is an intimate portrait of actor Rock Hudson, one of Hollywood’s most celebrated leading men of the 1950’s and ‘60’s and an icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age, whose diagnosis and eventual death from AIDS in 1985 shocked the world, subsequently shifting the way the public perceived the pandemic.

Directed by celebrated documentary filmmaker Stephen Kijak the film features a wealth of interviews from Doris Day, Linda Evans, Piper Laurie, Douglas Sirk and Ross Hunter who all worked alongside Rock Hudson, in addition to interviews with Rock Hudson’s friends Armistead Maupin and Allison Anders, and author of All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson, Mark Griffin.

Hudson became a number one box-office superstar in sweeping melodramas like ‘All That Heaven Allows,’ ‘Giant’ (starring opposite...

"Can there be joy where there has been no sorrow?" Oscar winner Peter Finch belts out these thought-provoking song lyrics in the musical adaptation of the James Hilton novel, Lost Horizon, and it's probably safe to say there was very little joy and lots of sorrow on the set of this ill-fated film. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter had the grand idea to turn the classic story of Shangri-La, first brought to the screen by director Frank Capra in 1937, into a big-budget singing and dancing extravaganza with an all-star cast. Hunter was successful at this kind of thing. He produced the lavish 1953 remake of Magnificent Obsession that turned Rock Hudson into a star. He also helmed the sumptuous 1959 re-imagining of Imitation of Life, breathing new life into Lana Turner's career and setting up young Sandra Dee for future movie success. It was practically a no-brainer that Hunter would make lightning...

“I’m filthy — period!” With an ideal cast — Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone — director Douglas Sirk tells a tale with everything the ’50s wouldn’t allow — lust, nymphomania, impotence, the works. It’s perhaps Sirk’s most accomplished, self-contained masterpiece — a glamorous soap with absorbing characters caught in a cycle of unfulfilled desires. An oil dynasty comes tumbling down because the heir is “tortured by a secret that made him lash out at all he loved!” I keep expecting bathos, but this great show makes its world come alive.

Written on the Wind

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 96

1956 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 99 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 1, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith, Grant Williams, Robert J. Wilke, Edward Platt, Harry Shannon, John Larch, Joseph Granby, Roy Glenn, Maidie Norman, William Schallert, Kevin Corcoran, Cynthia Patrick.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Art Directors: Robert Clatworthy,...

Racial passing occurs when a member of one racial group is either believed to be or accepted as a member of another. In the U.S., it generally means someone who is Black or of multi-racial heritage, “passing” as a White person. It’s the subject of Rebecca Hall’s well-received directorial debut “Passing,” currently streaming on Netflix. Hall, who is the daughter of the late director Peter Hall and opera singer Maria Ewing is of Dutch, Native American, African American and Scottish heritage. She adapted Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel about two African American friends: one (Tessa Thompson) is married to a prominent doctor and the other (Ruth Negga) has passed for white for years and is married to a wealthy racist (Alexander Skarsgard). Hall was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize dramatic at Sundance; “Passing” currently is nominated for five Gotham Awards including Best Picture and Breakthrough Director.

Racial...

This dubious mix of war combat and faith-based inspiration is as well directed as any of Douglas Sirk’s films, even if literally every scene seems to be saying the wrong thing. Combat pilot Col. Dean Hess helped found and publicize a major orphanage in South Korea, but as personified by a pious Rock Hudson his story comes off as a public relations gambit. A fine cast empowers the grandstanding bid for sainthood, where ‘Killer Hess’ channels his guilt into good works. The aerial footage is outstanding — Sirk really loved his airplanes.

Battle Hymn

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 108 min. / Street Date April 27, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Dan Duryea, Anna Kashfi, James Edwards, Martha Hyer, Philip Ahn, James Hong, Don DeFore, Jock Mahoney, Carl Benton Reid, Alan Hale Jr., Bartlett Robinson, Carleton Young, William Hudson.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Film Editor: Russel F. Schoengarth

Art Directors: Alexander Golitzen,...

Emmy-nominated film and TV editor Richard Bracken has died. He was 90.

Bracken died Thursday of kidney failure in Chatsworth, California, according to his daughter Kathleen Bracken.

Over the course of his 30 year career, Bracken served as editor for a roster of television classics, including “Columbo,” “The Bold Ones” and “Ironside.” He spent a particularly fruitful number of years working for Oscar-nominated producer Ross Hunter, editing films “The Thrill of It All” and “Madame X,” miniseries “The Moneychangers” and NBC drama “A Family Upside Down,” which starred Fred Astaire and Helen Hayes.

Much of Bracken’s career was dedicated to television, having also worked on NBC drama “Run for Your Life,” ABC American Western series “Alias Smith and Jones” and TV movie “The Jesse Owens Story.” His work was recognized with four Emmy nominations, including for the 1976 TV miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man” and the Anjelica Huston-starring miniseries “Buffalo Girls...

Richard Bracken, a four-time Emmy-nominated film editor with credits including Ironside, Columbo, Rich Man, Poor Man and three Wes Craven movies, has died. He was 90.

Bracken died Thursday of kidney failure in Chatsworth, California, his daughter Kathleen Bracken said.

Bracken worked for Oscar-nominated producer Ross Hunter on the films The Thrill of It All (1963) and Madame X (1966); on the Arthur Hailey 1976 miniseries The Moneychangers; and on telefilms including 1978’s A Family Upside Down, starring Helen Hayes and Fred Astaire.

He also collaborated with director Wes Craven on Deadly Blessing (1981), Swamp Thing (1982) and The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984).

Bracken received ...

Richard Bracken, a four-time Emmy-nominated film editor with credits including Ironside, Columbo, Rich Man, Poor Man and three Wes Craven movies, has died. He was 90.

Bracken died Thursday of kidney failure in Chatsworth, California, his daughter Kathleen Bracken said.

Bracken worked for Oscar-nominated producer Ross Hunter on the films The Thrill of It All (1963) and Madame X (1966); on the Arthur Hailey 1976 miniseries The Moneychangers; and on telefilms including 1978’s A Family Upside Down, starring Helen Hayes and Fred Astaire.

He also collaborated with director Wes Craven on Deadly Blessing (1981), Swamp Thing (1982) and The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984).

Bracken received ...

Whether or not it’s a result of the backlash against “La La Land” and its white-savior-of-jazz subplot, black filmmakers seem to be having a moment to reclaim jazz narratives for themselves, from Kemp Powers co-directing Pixar’s “Soul” to Eugene Ashe writing and directing “Sylvie’s Love,” a gorgeous new romance set against the backdrop of jazz and television, two of America’s most dominant artforms of the 1950s.

Ashe isn’t rewriting the love story, but he has steeped it with old-school glamour, making the kind of sumptuous saga of aching, star-crossed romance that Ross Hunter might have produced in his 1960s glory days if Hollywood had been ready to populate such a film with an all-Black cast. Between the scorching chemistry of leads Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha and the glorious mid-century outfits, hair, décor and cars on display, “Sylvie’s Love” is a delectable valentine.

When Sylvie (Thompson) and Robert meet,...

Bring back the Age of Aquarius! Olive Films returns with the company’s best Signature Edition ever. The show is an excellent choice for a special edition, as seen by the simply terrific interviews in its battery of added value featurettes. Top creative contributors have been tapped for some great memories. Rather than filming a simple adaptation, Milos Forman reinterprets the hit show, allowing Twyla Tharp’s choreographic genius to soak into most every scene — the result is a marvelous melding of theatrical and cinematic effects.

Hair

Blu-ray

Olive Signature

1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date June 30, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: John Savage, Treat Williams, Beverly D’Angelo, Annie Golden, Dorsey Wright, Don Dacus, Cheryl Barnes, Richard Bright, Nicholas Ray.

Cinematography: Miroslav Ondricek

Film Editors: Lynzee Kingman, Stanley Warnow, Alan Heim

Music: Galt McDermott

Written by Michael Weller from the musical book by Gerome Ragni and James Rado

Produced by Michael Butler, Lester Persky...

Great 3-D thrills — Hollywood was working to perfect 3-D movies just as the craze died out. An impeccable Blu-ray 3-D restoration, the glory of young Rock Hudson and some of the best Utah scenery in depth makes this a very enjoyable disc. Director Douglas Sirk was itching to do a western, and the swiftly rising star Rock Hudson wanted to work for him again, even though it meant playing another Indian role. Were these men that desperate to get out of Hollywood for a month? At least they avoided filming in nuclear test sites…

Taza, Son of Cochise

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 2.00:1 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date May 26, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Gregg Palmer, Rex Reason, Morris Ankrum, Eugene Iglesias, Richard H. Cutting, Ian MacDonald, Robert Burton, Joe Sawyer, Lance Fuller, Charles Horvath, Jeff Chandler, William Leslie, Barbara Burck, most of Utah.

Cinematography:...

The Oscar

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1966/ 1:66:1 / 120 min.

Starring Stephen Boyd, Tony Bennett, Elke Sommer

Written by Harlan Ellison

Directed by Russell Rouse

Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success is a great movie with two career-best performances from Burt Lancaster as a malignant gossip columnist named J. J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis as press agent Sidney Falco – “a real louse.” The third star of the show is surely the screenplay by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets – a lyrical pastiche of streetwise slang that sizzles like “a pocketful of firecrackers.”

Hunsecker – What’s this boy got that Susie likes?

Falco – Integrity – acute, like indigestion.

Hunsecker – I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.

And so on. Mackendrick’s Broadway melodrama is a tale of bright lights and the big city so some hyperbole is expected. But Lehman and Odets were performing...

On Oct. 6, 1959, Rock Hudson and Doris Day's Pillow Talk premiered in New York theaters. The film went on to be nominated for five Oscars at the 32nd Academy Awards, winning for its screenplay. The Hollywood Reporter's original review, headlined "'Pillow Talk' Hilarious, Sophisticated, Surefire," is below.

Pillow Talk is U-i's hilarious moonshot for top box office grosses and, to judge by the uproarious reaction of preview audiences, it is sure to hit the target of high grosses. This Ross Hunter and Martin Melcher production is a brightly ingenious example of stimulating cinematic know-how in ...

On Oct. 6, 1959, Rock Hudson and Doris Day's Pillow Talk premiered in New York theaters. The film went on to be nominated for five Oscars at the 32nd Academy Awards, winning for its screenplay. The Hollywood Reporter's original review, headlined "'Pillow Talk' Hilarious, Sophisticated, Surefire," is below.

Pillow Talk is U-i's hilarious moonshot for top box office grosses and, to judge by the uproarious reaction of preview audiences, it is sure to hit the target of high grosses. This Ross Hunter and Martin Melcher production is a brightly ingenious example of stimulating cinematic know-how in ...

One of the strangest ‘uplifting moral tales’ of the 1950s was a huge hit, and launched Rock Hudson as a major star. Criterion’s deluxe presentation puts it on a par with world cinema, mawkish Kitsch-o-Rama and all. Comes with a restored copy of the slightly less head-spinning 1935 version, too. Co-stars Jane Wyman, Barbara Rush, Agnes Moorehead, and Otto Kruger, whose moral guidance has something to do with ‘contacting one’s power source.’ Oh, it’s about recharging my iPhone!

Magnificent Obsession

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 457

1954 / Color / 2.00:1 anamorphic widescreen / 108 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 20, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Agnes Moorehead, Otto Kruger.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Film Editor: Milton Carruth

Original Music: Frank Skinner

Written by Robert Blees from an original screenplay by Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason, George O’Neil from the novel by Lloyd C. Douglas

Produced by Ross Hunter

Directed...

Ross Hunter, Hollywood’s glossiest producer and Doris Day, Hollywood’s perennially cheery star, team up for this soap-operatic mix of Gaslight and Sorry, Wrong Number. Day is being stalked by a faceless killer and she finds little solace from her friends and family who assume she’s headed for a nervous breakdown. The dog-eared plot isn’t helped by the upscale decor and high-priced fashion (which are pure Hunter) but Rex Harrison, as Day’s duplicitous hubby, brings a welcome element of creepy ambiguity to the well-photographed (by Russell Metty) proceedings. Remade as a TV movie in 1981.

The post Midnight Lace appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Douglas Sirk took our heads off with this intense, thematically adult tale of love and obsession in a Depression-Era flying circus that’s the open air equivalent of the marathon dance craze — pilots die to thrill the crowd. The terrific-looking show provides career-best roles for some deserving actors: Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Jack Carson and Robert Middleton … but the newly-minted star Rock Hudson seems miscast.

The Tarnished Angels

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1957 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 91 min. / Street Date March 26, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Jack Carson, Robert Middleton, Alan Reed, Alexander Lockwood, Chris Olsen, Robert J. Wilke, Troy Donahue.

Cinematography: Irving Glassberg

Film Editor: Russell F. Schoengarth

Original Music: Frank Skinner

Written by George Zuckerman from a novel by William Faulkner

Produced by Albert Zugsmith

Directed by Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk made his name with big, glossy soap operas starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson,...

If you've used up all the available Douglas Sirk melodramas, why not try The Restless Years (1958), directed by Helmut Kautner (pronounced "Koit-ner")? It's a small town tale, focusing mainly on the teenage populace, but spreading out to follow their interaction with parents and teachers."This is a dirty, little, gossipy small town. And I ought to know because I was born here. People here are jut like a herd of sharks that turn on a crippled one and kill it." So says salesman James Whitmore to his son, a fresh-faced John Saxon, and he appears to be right, giving the film the social criticism dimension that Sirk's films likewise weave beneath their emotionally turbulent tales.The producer is the flamboyant Ross Hunter, who needs to be considered a kind of co-auteur of many Sirkian tales, only he should be credited for the dumber, soapier elements, his writers and directors for the irony and subtext,...

The Bloodthirsty Trilogy

Blu ray

Arrow Films

1970 – 1974 /2:35 / Street Date May 22, 2018

Starring Yukiko Kobayashi, Chôei Takahashi, Toshio Kurosawa

Cinematography by Kazutami Hara, Rokurô Nishigaki

Written by Ei Ogawa, Hiroshi Nagano

Directed by Michio Yamamoto

Hell-raising vampires invade the normally serene confines of Japanese cinema in three elegant 70’s shockers directed by Michio Yamamoto. Joining far-flung contemporaries like Jean Rollin, Harry Kümel and Stephanie Rothman, Yamamoto’s trilogy helped rejuvenate a genre always hungry for fresh blood.

In 1970’s The Vampire Doll, a restless spirit’s killing spree is the product of a tragic family secret – a storyline out of a Ross Hunter weepy with arterial spray taking the place of tears.

In search of her wayward brother and his girlfriend, Keiko arrives at a lonely country home only to find the sibling gone and his fiancee Yuko dead. Yuko’s saturnine mother is unusually tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding her...

Mubi's series, In the Realm of Melodrama: A Douglas Sirk Retrospective, is showing April 2 - June 20, 2018 in the United Kingdom and many other countries.The mythos of director Douglas Sirk—cold leftist emigré subverting hammy melodramatic conventions and sickly Hollywood homilies from within—has never been in alignment with Sirk himself, let alone the thirty-some movies he made for Ufa, Universal-International, Columbia, and the independent companies that belatedly, unceremoniously greeted him several years after his prewar arrival in the Us. In Sirk, who lived another 28 years after his health forced him to retire from cinema, there likely existed the same antinomies as are evident in his films. What makes him a fascinating figure is that it is possible to see the guy, in interviews and press materials for the movies, as the articulate iconoclast, the aloof and erudite artist who found himself at the helm of many of a...

Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1955) is showing April 16 - May 16, 2018 in the many countries around the world as part of the series In the Realm of Melodrama: A Douglas Sirk Retrospective."The studio loved the title All That Heaven Allows. They thought it meant you could have everything you wanted. I meant it exactly the other way round. As far as I am concerned, heaven is stingy."—Douglas SirkUntil very recently, Douglas Sirk remained in a kind of critical limbo. In the last couple of years some valuable and novel material has appeared, covering many aspects of his work. The most important element so far left unstudied is Sirk’s relationship to the melodrama, the genre he most used during both his German period (1935-37) in feature films, and in his second American period, at Universal (1950-58).Two reasons, certainly, have contributed to the neglect of Sirk. One...

Actor who played in Psycho and Spartacus – and almost became the next Bond

It must have been galling for the actor John Gavin, who has died aged 86, to have often been called “the poor man’s Rock Hudson”, but comparisons between the two actors were inevitable. Both were tall, dark, well built and handsome romantic leads. Both starred in glossy Ross Hunter productions during the 1950s and 60s, at the peaks of their careers. Moreover, both actors were favourites of the director Douglas Sirk, who gave them some of their finest roles. But Gavin could also claim to have worked with Alfred Hitchcock (in Psycho) and Stanley Kubrick (in Spartacus), which Hudson never did.

Both these films came out in 1960, when Gavin was at the height of his fame. In Spartacus, he played a muscular, youthful Julius Caesar, wary of opposition. In Psycho, he was Sam Loomis, boyfriend of Marion Crane...

One of the many treats at this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato festival of restored or rediscovered films was a retrospective of the works of Helmut Käutner, who has been known and admired for a few select works but whose larger oeuvre is rarely screened. Curators Olaf Möller and Christoph Huber explained that this was partly because the German director's comedies often deal with German current affairs of the day in a way which makes them seem obscure even to modern German audiences. But one humorous movie proved timeless.Käutner began his career during WWII, but never seems to have been seriously tainted by associations with the Nazi regime. Indeed his great successes shot during wartime, Grosse Freiheit No. 7 (1944) and Under the Bridges (1946) apparently made the authorities uncomfortable: framed in a setting that's not-quite period and not-quite alternate reality, where the war simply does not exist, they seemed...a touch defeatist.

There are two major sides to the film noir coin, as I see it – the psychological and the practical. Now, the practical noir is fairly straightforward; maybe a detective has to solve a crime, or someone gets themselves in over their head with some scheme gone wrong. There’s a problem to be solved, and the protagonist either overcomes or becomes consumed by it. Double Indemnity, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Night and the City, The Killing, and The Maltese Falcon fit into this section rather well. The psychological noir uses genre tropes to investigate someone’s soul, usually stemming from their nearness to sin and death. Scarlet Street, Laura, Female on the Beach, The Chase, Sunset Boulevard, and Kiss Me Deadly fit the bill. Obviously films in each use elements of the other to shade the characters or move the story along, but the texture and flavor is notably distinct,...

This is as sexy as Hollywood pix got in 1960. John O'Hara's novel about class snobbery and the drive for success posits Paul Newman as a moody go-getter. In glossy soap opera fashion, his silver spoon-fed bride Joanne Woodward morphs into an unfaithful monster. Some adulterous relationships are excused and others not in this glossy, morally rigged melodrama. In other words, it's prime entertainment material. From the Terrace Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 144 min. / Ship Date January 19, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Myrna Loy, Ina Balin, Leon Ames, Elizabeth Allen, Barbara Eden, George Grizzard, Patrick O'Neal, Felix Aylmer. Cinematography Leo Tover Art Direction Maurice Ransford, Howard Richmond, Lyle R. Wheeler Film Editor Dorothy Spencer Original Music Elmer Bernstein Written by Ernest Lehman from the novel by John O'Hara Produced and directed by Mark Robson

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

1960 saw the release of...

Rko's final in-house production is a good end-of-an-era film, a spirited and well-made musical comedy. Bright-eyed Jane Powell can't stop accepting marriage proposals, from nerdy Tommy Noonan, dreamboat kisser Cliff Robertson and zillionare Keith Andes. She imagines her future with each man in musical terms, through production numbers staged by Gower Champion. The Girl Most Likely DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1956 / Color / 1:78 enhanced widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date November 17, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Jane Powell, Cliff Robertson, Keith Andes, Kaye Ballard, Tommy Noonan, Una Merkel, Kelly Brown, Judy Nugent, Frank Cady, Joseph Kearns, Marjorie Stapp, Robert Banas. Cinematography Robert H. Planck Film Editor Doane Harrison Original Music Nelson Riddle Choreographer Gower Champion Written by Devery Freeman, Paul Jarrico (uncredited) Produced by Stanley Rubin Directed by Mitchell Leisen

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

From roughly 1925 to 1957, the powerful men in charge of the big studios controlled most aspects of production. That...

Douglas Sirk's first American movie came out so well that Prc sold it to MGM, earning Sirk a promotion out of the Poverty Row studios. John Carradine is excellent - and underplays! -- as the Hangman of Prague who moonlights as a depraved sex criminal. But the context in this wartime propaganda movie is serious -- it commemorates the Nazi murder of an entire Czech town. Hitler's Madman DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1943 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 84 min. / Street Date December 1, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 18.95 Starring Patricia Morrison, John Carradine, Alan Curtis, Howard Freeman, Ralph Morgan, Ludwig Stössel, Edgar Kennedy, Al Shean, Elizabeth Russell, Jimmy Conlin, Ava Gardner, Natalie Draper, Victor Kilian, Otto Reichow, Peter van Eyck, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Blanch Yurka. Cinematography (Eugen Schüfftan, credited as Technical Advisor), Jack Greenhalgh Film Editor Dan Milner Second unit and uncredited production designer Edgar G. Ulmer Original Music...

Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 675 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2015 list, which includes classics such as Douglas Sirk‘s melodrama Imitation of Life, Hal Ashby‘s Being There, and John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds. Perhaps the most popular picks, The Shawshank Redemption, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and L.A. Confidential were also added. Check out the full list below.

Being There (1979)

Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer’s persona,...

Coleen Gray in 'The Sleeping City' with Richard Conte. Coleen Gray after Fox: B Westerns and films noirs (See previous post: “Coleen Gray Actress: From Red River to Film Noir 'Good Girls'.”) Regarding the demise of her Fox career (the year after her divorce from Rod Amateau), Coleen Gray would recall for Confessions of a Scream Queen author Matt Beckoff: I thought that was the end of the world and that I was a total failure. I was a mass of insecurity and depended on agents. … Whether it was an 'A' picture or a 'B' picture didn't bother me. It could be a Western movie, a sci-fi film. A job was a job. You did the best with the script that you had. Fox had dropped Gray at a time of dramatic upheavals in the American film industry: fast-dwindling box office receipts as a result of competition from television,...

Coleen Gray ca. 1950. Coleen Gray dead at 92: Leading lady in early Stanley Kubrick film noir classic Actress Coleen Gray, best known for Stanley Kubrick's crime drama The Killing, has died. Her death was announced by Classic Images contributor Laura Wagner on Facebook's “Film Noir” group. Wagner's source was David Schecter, who had been friends with the actress for quite some time. Via private message, he has confirmed Gray's death of natural causes earlier today, Aug. 3, '15, at her home in Bel Air, on the Los Angeles Westside. Gray (born on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska) was 92. Coleen Gray movies As found on the IMDb, Coleen Gray made her film debut as an extra in the 20th Century Fox musical State Fair (1945), starring Jeanne Crain and Dana Andrews. Her association with film noir began in 1947, with the release of Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947), notable for showing Richard Widmark...

Oscar-nominated actor who brought sensitivity and warmth to her most famous role in Imitation of Life

From its earliest days, Hollywood, which has always lagged behind wider social advances, limited the roles of black actors to stock, wide-eyed cowards, simpletons or servants, often referred to as "uncles" and "mammies". Juanita Moore, who has died aged 99, suffered from this limitation by having to play maids throughout most of her long career. However, Moore could have echoed what Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, once said: "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

Where McDaniel as Mammy, Scarlett O'Hara's lovable, sassy servant in Gone With the Wind (1939) was the apotheosis of the black maid, Moore's Oscar-nominated portrayal of Annie Johnson, housekeeper to the glamorous Broadway star Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) in Douglas Sirk...

Stylish film noir star known for her role in Lady in the Lake

I was kissed by Audrey Totter. At least, I share that experience with anybody who has seen Lady in the Lake (1947), when Totter plants her lips on the subjective camera, the surrogate for Robert Montgomery as Philip Marlowe. The film, directed by Montgomery, and based on the Raymond Chandler novel, was shot so that the whole story is seen literally through Marlowe's eyes.

The role of the gold-digging tigress magazine editor Adrienne Fromsett, who hires the private eye to find the missing wife of her publisher, was a breakthrough for Totter, who has died aged 95. Previously, she had been in a dozen movies, her hair colour and accent varying so much from film to film that she dubbed herself "the feminine Lon Chaney of the MGM lot".

Montgomery chose Totter for the part because of her versatility as a radio actor.

Oscar Sunday is three months from today, March 2, 2014 and this year, it’s anyone’s game. The Academy has a history of playing up all the glamour and suspense, and this year should be no different.

As of today, Gold Derby‘s Top 5 Best Picture predictions for the 86th Academy Awards are: 12 Years A Slave, Gravity, Saving Mr. Banks, Captain Phillips and American Hustle.

Hit Fix’s Top 5 are: Gravity, 12 Years A Slave, Saving Mr. Banks, Captain Phillips and Inside Llewyn Davis.

In what’s classic TV, take a look at the opening of the 43rd Academy Awards in 1971, featuring an introduction by Academy President Daniel Taradash.

The big A-listers of the day all appeared at the Oscars – Goldie Hawn, Jeanne Moreau, Melvyn Douglas, Ryan O’Neal, Leigh Taylor-Young, George Segal, Jennifer Jones, Lee Grant, Maximilian Schell, Ginger Rogers, Jack Nicholson, Ali McGraw, Robert Evans, Quincy Jones, Sally Kellerman, Jim Brown,...

I forgot to mention one of yesterday's highlights: while Maureen O'Donnell and I were waiting in line for the excellent documentary "Finding Vivian Maier," we were stunned to see a long phalanx of orange-t-shirted volunteers with linked arms making a human shield on either side of Susan Sarandon, protecting her from the hoi polloi as she left the first public screening of "The Last of Robin Hood."  Today I start with the press screening of "The Last of Robin Hood," co-directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer, about the love affair between Errol Flynn and Beverly Aadland, who was 15 when they met, based on the book "The Big Love" by Beverly's complicit mom, Florence Aadland.  The book has a justly famed first line: "There's one thing I want to make clear right off -- my baby was a virgin the day she met Errol Flynn."   The film makes it clear...

Lana Turner movies: Scandal and more scandal Lana Turner is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, Saturday, August 10, 2013. I’m a little — or rather, a lot — late in the game posting this article, but there are still three Lana Turner movies left. You can see Turner get herself embroiled in scandal right now, in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), both the director and the star’s biggest box-office hit. More scandal follows in Mark Robson’s Peyton Place (1957), the movie that earned Lana Turner her one and only Academy Award nomination. And wrapping things up is George Sidney’s lively The Three Musketeers (1948), with Turner as the ruthless, heartless, remorseless — but quite elegant — Lady de Winter. Based on Fannie Hurst’s novel and a remake of John M. Stahl’s 1934 melodrama about mother love, class disparities, racism, and good cooking, Imitation of Life was shown on...

Producer Ross Hunter’s 1962 film If A Man Answers (directed by Henry Levin) is a sweet, silly and lighthearted romantic comedy featuring Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin. Sandra is Chantal Stacy, daughter of Boston businessman John Stacy (John Lund) and former Folies Bergere burlesque dancer and professional Frenchwoman Germaine Stacy (Micheline Presle). The film focuses on Chantal’s negotiation between the Boston practicality and the French passionate nature that runs through her genetic line. Bobby Darin, as fashion photographer Eugene Wright (“Mr. Wright”), finds himself in the middle of this mess as Chantal’s willing romantic victim.

Chantal’s first scene in the Stacy master bedroom after returning from a date features Dee in an ice-blue coat and white cowl-neck sweater (gowns are credited to Jean Louis), perfectly matching the walls of John and Germaine’s bedroom, illustrating via costume that she considers her place to be in her parents’ home,...

Living a White Life -- for a While

By Ellen Holly

New York Times

August 10, 1969

In September of last year I was approached to try out for a part on a brand new ABC soap opera called One Life To Live; the part was a black girl who passes for white. I didn't give it much thought. If you're black you don't get white parts either. But what most people don't realize is that even when there's a part for a "black who looks white," it never goes to a black person but to a white one. Follow? I know . . . I know . . . it's hard for me, too.

Some years ago I was interviewed for the film I Passed For White and the part went to the white Sandra Wilde. Some years later I was seen about the remake of Imitation of Life. Ross Hunter cooed over me, told me I looked like Loretta Young,...

With wild stories about the behaviour of Charlie Sheen circulating daily and the news that he has been fired from his hit TV show Two and a Half Men today, I began thinking about some of the most notorious cases of scandal in Hollywood’s sordid past!

As it appears that Sheen’s career may be heading towards oblivion, read on to discover the 10 most infamous scandals and just how they affected the stars responsible for them…

10. Winona Ryder’s Bargain Shopping Spree

When troubled actress Winona Ryder took a trip to the Beverly Hills Saks department store in December 2001, the sales assistants must have thought their luck was in in terms of commission! But no, Ryder decided that $6000 was too much to spend on a bundle of designer goodies that included a Gucci dress, Marc Jacobs jumper and a Dolce & Gabbana handbag, amongst other things…

Caught trying to pilfer the lot,...

British-born director known for Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots

The film and television director Charles Jarrott, who has died of cancer aged 83, began his career during a golden period of British TV drama, working on Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play in the 1960s alongside writers and directors such as Ken Loach, Dennis Potter and David Mercer. Both series were presided over by the Canadian producer Sydney Newman, who encouraged original work – what he called "agitational contemporaneity" – and had an astonishing impact. But in 1969 Jarrott's career took a different turn when he left for Hollywood, thereby increasing his income a hundredfold, while having to contend with far less adventurous material. His best films were his first, two Elizabethan costume dramas, Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots, enlivened by the Oscar-nominated performances of Richard Burton (Henry VIII), Geneviève Bujold (Anne Boleyn) and...

We at Mubi think that celebrating the films of 2010 should be a celebration of film viewing in 2010. Since all film and video is "old" one way or another, we present Out of a Past, a small (re-) collection of some of our favorite of 2010's retrospective viewings.

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This is a list of older movies I saw for the first time in 2010—not necessarily the best, but the ones that gave me the greatest sense of discovery. It’s a sad commentary on contemporary film culture that only five of the twelve films I mention are available on Netflix.

Routine Pleasures (Jean-Pierre Gorin, USA, 1986)

An essay film from the Godard’s former collaborator during his leftist Dziga Vertov Group days. The movie begins as a documentary about a group of model train enthusiasts in San Diego who have constructed an elaborate imaginary world with enormous and minutely detailed landscapes and a...

Jill Jackson, a pioneering New Orleans sportscaster who wrote a Hollywood gossip column that ran for decades, died Sept. 8 of natural causes at the Rehabilitation Center of Beverly Hills. She was 97.

Her column, "Jill Jackson's Hollywood," was syndicated and reached more than 1,700 newspapers at its peak. She continued writing until a few weeks ago.

An outstanding athlete in golf and tennis, Jackson became what some believe to be the first woman sportscaster when she did color commentary on golf tournaments with local legend Henry Dupre in the early 1940s and on baseball games with pitcher-turned-broadcaster Dizzy Dean.

Jackson soon had her own sports show on radio and then her own TV show in New Orleans, on which she interviewed celebrities who visited the city. She headed west in 1960.

An actress since her school days, Jackson starred in stage productions in New Orleans and appeared in "I'd Rather Be Rich...

Following my graduation in 1960, I was hired by Columbia-owned Screen Gems International as a very junior administration and sales executive.

It was during the mid-'60s that a friend suggested to someone at CBS that they offer me a job and, as I understood it, their reply was, "Why would we want to hire a film peddler like Norman?"

Eventually, I managed and sold billions of dollars of content for Columbia (twice), CBS, PolyGram and MGM/UA, but I always have remained a film peddler. My education in this business has lasted 50 years, and though it is not brain surgery, it is not as simple as my bosses often thought it to be.

Every company I ever worked for -- with the exception of CBS, where the broadcast business was a license to print money -- believed it was just one theatrical hit away from solvency. (Even the Eye got enamored of the film biz,...

Sherlock Holmes's creator wore it. So did your grandfather. Can contemporary fashion and design make Harris cool again?

Spend a stormy December evening in the Outer Hebrides and you'll understand why the locals invented Harris tweed. For centuries, the inhabitants of these remote Scottish isles have handwoven the dense woolen fabric to keep out the biting North Atlantic wind and rain. Outsiders -- stuffy toffs, dusty college profs, Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle -- adopted it. By the mid-1960s, the foot-powered Hebridean looms were producing as much as 7.6 million meters of cloth every year. Then came the slump. As customers switched to lighter, more modern fabrics, mills were shuttered. By 2008, annual output had sunk to just 500,000 meters.

But on Lewis, an island of moss-coated moors and salmon streams, a startup is weaving a profitable future for the sagging sector, with a client list that ranges from design giants Ralph Lauren,...

For many gay and bisexual men of a certain age, the first inkling that they weren’t like other boys came on Saturday mornings from 1974 to 1976, in the form of a television show called The Land of the Lost. The show, about a father and his two children who were stranded in a mysterious land of dinosaurs, also featured vicious, but curiously slow-moving reptilian humanoids called Sleestak. Now the classic kids’ program by Sid and Marty Krofft, the producers of H.R. Pufnstuf and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, has even been made into a feature film starring Will Ferrell, opening this Friday.

But it wasn’t just the gloriously campy-even-at-the-time nature of the show itself that appealed to gay boys. It was also the fact that it featured the role of Will, the Marshall’s handsome teenage son, played by an actor billed only as “Wesley,” but whose full name is Wesley Eure.

The Sundance Channel has acquired all U.S. rights to Mark Rucker's directorial debut Die Mommie Die, a 2003 Sundance Film Festival Jury Prize honoree. Sundance will release the comedy theatrically as part of its recently announced Sundance Film Series, which will feature four films released in 10 cities in the fall. Michael Winterbottom's In This World and Mark Decena's Dopamine were the first two Film Series releases to be announced. Written by and starring Charles Busch, Die Mommie Die was created as an ode to the Ross Hunter-style big-screen soaps of the 1960s and features Busch as a fallen pop diva whose husband discovers that she's having an affair with a tennis pro and has him killed. What follows is a comedic mixture of whodunits and double-crossings. Die Mommie Die was produced by Dante Di Loreto and Anthony Edwards of Aviator Films and Bill Kenwright of Bill Kenwright Films. It was executive produced by Lonny Dubrofsky and co-stars Frances Conroy, Philip Baker Hall, Natasha Lyonne, Jason Priestley and Stark Sands.