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Big screen Westerns might've been falling out of favor at the U.S. box office in 1965 (thus paving the way for Spaghetti Westerns to become a surprise sensation when Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy rode into movie theaters throughout the course of 1967), but television Westerns were still swaggering their way to strong ratings thanks to "Bonanza," "Gunsmoke," and the hybrid Western/spy/sci-fi series "The Wild Wild West." And with "Rawhide" finally drawing to a close that year (thereby allowing its star Clint Eastwood to become a modern Western star), there was suddenly room for a new, sudsy, ranch-bound saga about scheming landowners and warring heirs.

"The Big Valley" whooped it up for a solid four-season run, running out of steam in 1969 at around the same moment the television Westerns began going the way of classical big screen oaters. Until then, viewers were hooked on the doings at the Barkley Ranch,...

Man vs. machine chess thriller Rematch was awarded the International Competition grand prize at the 2024 Series Mania festival on Friday night (March 22) in Lille, France.

Inspired by the true story of the historic confrontation between chess master Garry Kasparov and Ibm’s supercomputer Deep Blue, the AI-themed story created by Yan England, André Gulluni and Bruno Nahon is produced by Unité, Arte France, Federation Studios and Proton and stars Christian Cooke. Federation Studios handles international sales.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The international competition jury, presided by The Oa creator Zal Batmanglij, also gave awards to the stars...

International television festival Series Mania unveiled its 2024 lineup Wednesday, with an impressive slate of world premieres that will grace the screens of Lille, France for the event running March 19-21.

Peacock’s Australia-set family drama Apples Never Fall, featuring Nyad Oscar nominee Annette Bening and Jurassic Park veteran Sam Neill as a dysfunctional couple, will screen in competition at year’s fest, as will MGM+’s Hotel Cocaine, from Narcos showrunner Chris Brancato, a crime thriller featuring The Shield star Michael Chiklis and set in the booming cocaine scene in Miami in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

So Long Marianne, a Canadian-Norwegian co-production from Crave and Norway’s Nrk, will also get its first screening in Lille. The series stars Oppenheimer supporting actor Alex Wolff as legendary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen in a story of his turbulent relationship with Norwegian writer Marianne Ihlen (played by The Last Kingdom‘s Thea Sofie Loch Næss...

French TV festival and industry event Series Mania has unveiled the line-up for its 2024 edition, which runs from March 15-22.

Series Mania returns to the northern French city of Lille with 52 unreleased series, 26 world premieres, 15 international premieres, hailing from 21 countries including three new territories – South Africa, Latvia and New Zealand.

Netflix sci-fi series 3 Body Problem opens the festival. The adaptation of the best-selling book series by Cixin Liu from David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo follows a group of brilliant scientists to join forces with a detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.

Series Mania organisers...

Peacock’s Apples Never Fall, MGM+’s Hotel Cocaine and Nrk’s buzzy drama about Leonard Cohen, So Long, Marianne will be in the International Competition race at Series Mania in March.

The shows will be up against BBC Three’s UK series Boarders, France 2 drama Dans L’Ombre (In the Shadows), Ard’s German series Herrhausen, the Banker and the Bomb, ABC Australia’s House of Gods, and Franco-Hungarian co-production Rematch, which is for Arte, Disney+ and HBO Europe.

The shows comprise an interesting cross-section of U.S. and European projects, with the Annette Bening-starring thriller Apples Never Fall among the highest profile. Hotel Cocaine, about a Cuban expatriate who re-made his life in Miami, is among MGM+’s biggest recent bets, while So Long, Marianne has been building steam as a study into the life of singer-songwriter Cohen and his muse, Marianne Ihlen.

Lille-based Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV festival and forum, has revealed its impressive 2024 main competition, which includes three U.S. streamer bows – from Peacock, and MGM+ and Disney+/HBO Europe world premieres.

The starry lineup features, for example, the much-anticipated new Liane Moriarty adaptation “Apples Never Fall” with Annette Bening as the matriarch who suddenly disappears, leaving her picture-perfect family in disarray. Currently celebrating Oscar nomination for “Nyad,” Bening is joined in the series be by Sam Neill and Alison Brie.

Alex Wolff, recently spotted in another Oscar hopeful “Oppenheimer,” will put on his deepest voice for “So Long, Marianne” about the tumultuous relationship between Leonard Cohen and Norwegian writer Marianne Ihlen, from Norway’s Nrk.

With Wolff currently set to attend, Zal Batmanglij – behind Netflix’s “The Oa” – “The Artist’s” Bérénice Bejo, “Gossip Girl” alumni Kelly Rutherford, novelist Douglas Kennedy and France’s Laurent Lafitte will also deliver masterclasses.

The disc of the year has finally arrived and it’s 1000 worth the wait. William Cameron Menzies’ flight into schoolboy paranoia now really looks like it ought to hang in the Louvre; the entire show is inspired Modern Art. When Martians conduct a brain-snatching takeover of Middle America little David MacLean must save the day, with an assist from an astronomer buddy and a sexy city nurse. The review is mostly concerned with how the new Ignite release looks and sounds. The rejuvenation of this fantasy masterpiece will turn fans of the 1950s sci-fi boom back into delighted ‘Gee Whiz’ kids.

Invaders from Mars

Blu-ray

Ignite Films

1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 81 min. / Street Date September 27, 2022 that was the plan … delivery expected . . . ? / Available from Ignite Films / 55.00

Starring: Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Jimmy Hunt, Leif Erickson, Hillary Brooke, Morris Ankrum, Max Wagner, William Phipps, Milburn Stone, Janine Perreau, Barbara Billingsley, Peter Brocco, Richard Deacon,...

"Caddyshack" started out as a straightforward coming-of-age comedy about a young guy working as a caddie on the links of a posh golf club; by the time it reached the screen, it had become a summit meeting between three comic heavyweights of the time. There was Chevy Chase, the former star of "Saturday Night Live;" Bill Murray, the then-current star of the show; and Rodney Dangerfield, the stand-up legend whose club in New York helped launch the career of many comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Carrey. There was also a gopher that looked remarkably like a hand puppet, but the coming-of-age stuff was largely relegated to filler by the antics of its three stars.

After the huge success of "National Lampoon's Animal House," Harold Ramis and Douglas Kennedy decided to take the riotous underdog formula to the links. They'd both had experience at golf clubs as teenagers and, together...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has rejected parole for Sirhan Sirhan, concluding that the man convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy “still lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the kind of dangerous and destructive decisions he made in the past.”

Sirhan was granted parole last summer by a state panel, but Newsom still had the authority to nix his release.

“The most glaring proof of Sirhan’s deficient insight is his shifting narrative about his assassination of Kennedy, and his current refusal to accept responsibility for it,” Newsom wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times published Thursday.

The issue of whether Sirhan, 77, should be released divided children of Kennedy. Robert Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy argued for Sirhan’s release, but other children, as well as Kennedy’s widow Ethel, expressed opposition to it.

Sirhan’s attorney, Angela Berry, told the Associated Press that he would ask...

Paddington 3 is set to begin shooting in Q2 2022, Studiocanal announced Tuesday during the Cannes Film Festival.

The anticipated threequel, which will have a story by Paddington 1 & 2 collaborators Paul King, Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton and a screenplay by Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont, will be one of the company’s flagship movies in coming years as it looks to invest $1 billion in content between now and 2024, it said.

Studiocanal, which celebrates it 30th anniversary this year, is doubling down on the bear franchise with a third season of TV series The Adventures of Paddington, which is also made with Heyday.

During a Cannes presentation, the Euro studio also confirmed the Kaley Cuoco project Role Play, which we revealed today, and confirmed that long-in-the-works Benedict Cumberbatch movie War Magician, with Colin Trevorrow attached to direct, is due to begin in 2022.

Cumberbatch-starrer The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is due to release this fall,...

“Behind A Barrier Of Antarctic Ice…A Paradise Of Hidden Terrors!” Universal-International laid out a pretty penny to film this elaborate spin on The Lost World, modernized to take in discoveries at the South Pole. It’s a showcase for fancy B&W opticals and traveling mattes … but the featured monster stars are a big letdown — a pathetic rubber costume for a T-Rex and a clunky mechanical water dragon. And the leading lady screams as she pretends to be entangled in a man woman-eating plant!

The Land Unknown

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1957 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 78 min. / Street Date , 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jock Mahoney, Shawn Smith, William Reynolds, Henry Brandon, Douglas Kennedy, Phil Harvey, Shirley Patterson.

Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter

Film Editor: Fred MacDowell

Visual Effects: Orien Ernest, Jack Kevan, Fred Knoth, Roswell A. Hoffman, Clifford Stine

Original Music: Henry Mancini, Heinz Roemheld, Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein

Written by László Görög,...

Film expected to start shooting in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Seoul-based production and sales company Mirovision has optioned the Korean-language remake rights to French thriller The Big Picture from EuropaCorp.

The original movie is based on Douglas Kennedy’s novel of the same name, which has been the top-selling English novel in South Korea since its publication ten years ago.

Directed by Eric Lartigau in 2010, the EuropaCorp movie based on the book starred Romain Duris, Marina Fois and Catherine Deneuve. The story follows a successful Parisian lawyer who murders his wife’s lover in a jealous rage, then assumes his identity.

The Korean remake is currently being scripted and is expected to start shooting in the fourth quarter of 2018. Mirovision previously produced Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid (2010), which played in competition at Cannes.

Canadian-born actress Alexis Smith (born 1921) would have turned 96 years old today, June 8. Turner Classic Movies is celebrating her birthday by presenting nine of her movies, mostly during her time as a Warner Bros. contract player. In addition to Michael Curtiz's box office hit Night and Day, a highly fictionalized Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a heterosexual version of the famed gay composer. Night and Day is being shown as part of TCM's Gay Pride Month celebration. Alexis Smith died on June 9, 1993, the day after she turned 72. After her film career petered out in the 1950s, she went on to receive acclaim on the Broadway stage, making sporadic film appearances all the way to the year of her death. Smith's last film appearance was in a minor supporting role in Martin Scorsese's overly genteel period drama The Age of Innocence (1993), starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder.

Edgar G. Ulmer movies on TCM: 'The Black Cat' & 'Detour' Turner Classic Movies' June 2017 Star of the Month is Audrey Hepburn, but Edgar G. Ulmer is its film personality of the evening on June 6. TCM will be presenting seven Ulmer movies from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, including his two best-known efforts: The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). The Black Cat was released shortly before the officialization of the Christian-inspired Production Code, which would castrate American filmmaking – with a few clever exceptions – for the next quarter of a century. Hence, audiences in spring 1934 were able to witness satanism in action, in addition to other bizarre happenings in an art deco mansion located in an isolated area of Hungary. Sporting a David Bowie hairdo, Boris Karloff is at his sinister best in The Black Cat (“Do you hear that, Vitus? The phone is dead. Even the phone is dead”), ailurophobic (a.

Once a Partridge brother, always a Partridge brother. David Cassidy is getting love and support from his TV brother and co-star, Danny Bonaduce.

Bonaduce, who played Danny Partridge to Cassidy’s Keith Douglas Partridge, took to Twitter late Monday to send his Partridge Family co-star well wishes.

Watch: David Cassidy Reveals Dementia Diagnosis, Says He Was 'In Denial' Yet 'Always Knew This Was Coming'

“David Cassidy once had a bigger fan club than Elvis & the Beatles. If you’re a fan, now is a great time to send him your love & best wishes,” he wrote.

The 57-year-old actor and radio personality was the first of Cassidy’s co-stars to speak out following the tragic news that the legendary actor and musician had been diagnosed with dementia.

Cassidy, 66, told People about the diagnosis on Monday.

"I was in denial, but a part of me always knew this was coming," Cassidy, who has a long history of the memory...

Bogie's back and Bacall's got him! Or, at least she's got his voice, and a bundle of bandages. A David Goodis hardboiled crime tale becomes an absurd pile of coincidences and accidental relationships, all wrapped up (literally) in a giant plastic-surgery gimmick. Bogart and his new bride Bacall are charming, but there's a show -stealer at large: the great Agnes Moorehead plays the most entertainingly horrible harpy in film history. Dark Passage Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 106 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 16.59 Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Bennett, Tom D'Andrea, Clifton Young, Douglas Kennedy, Rory Mallinson, Houseley Stevenson Cinematography Sid Hickox Art Direction Charles H. Clarke Film Editor David Weisbart Original Music Franz Waxman Written by Delmer Daves from a novel by David Goodis Produced by Jerry Wald, Jack L. Warner Directed by Delmer Daves

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Dark Passage...

Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...

The fate of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel is in the hands of six Connecticut Supreme Court judges. On Wednesday in Hartford, those judges heard testimony to determine if Skakel - who was convicted in 2002 of murdering his neighbor before the conviction was reversed - will receive a new trial or whether he will be sent back to prison to finish his 20-year to life sentence. Skakel's attorney, Hubert J. Santos, contended that the justices should uphold a lower court's ruling that overturned Skakel's conviction on the grounds that his original defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, was inadequate. Santos told the panel...

The fate of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel is in the hands of six Connecticut Supreme Court judges. On Wednesday in Hartford, those judges heard testimony to determine if Skakel - who was convicted in 2002 of murdering his neighbor before the conviction was reversed - will receive a new trial or whether he will be sent back to prison to finish his 20-year to life sentence. Skakel's attorney, Hubert J. Santos, contended that the justices should uphold a lower court's ruling that overturned Skakel's conviction on the grounds that his original defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, was inadequate. Santos told the panel...

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

European Commissioner spoke with the film industry in Cannes.

The debate on the European Commission’s Digital Single Market (Dsm) strategy moved from Brussels to Cannes on Sunday (May 17), with the arrival of Gunther Oettinger on the Croisette.

The European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society flew to the South of France for a whirlwind schedule of meetings with European directors and producers, most of them eager to convey their anxieties over his plans for a Dsm and related changes to copyright law.

Speaking at a conference on culture and the Dsm, organised by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, Oettinger warned Europe risked being left behind if it did not find a way to unify its digital markets.

Click here for video of Oettinger in Cannes

“It’s Google, it’s Amazon and Microsoft, which will be taking the decisions, with a clearly American strategy, the aim being to dominate Europe,” he said.

“The...

★★★★☆Making his return to filmmaking after his adaptation of Douglas Kennedy's novel The Woman in the Fifth (2011), Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski's latest, Ida (2013), is a spare and outstandingly minimalist drama very much in keeping with his cinematic fixation with outsiders who find themselves out of their depths. Set in 1960s Poland and starring Agata Trzebuchowska in her acting debut, the film sees her playing Anna, a sheltered 18-year-old novitiate nun who’s been raised in a convent all her life. On the verge of taking her vows, Anna makes a variety of life-changing discoveries: her real name is in fact Ida and her Jewish parents were killed during the Nazi occupation.

The annual Christmas Tree Lighting at Rockefeller Center in NYC is almost upon us; the television special will air Wednesday, Dec. 4 on NBC.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree arrived at 30 Rock in mid November, where it will remain until Jan. 7. The tree measures at least 65 feet in height with a 35-feet diameter and is traditionally a Norway Spruce. Trees are donated every year to the Rockefeller Center to be decorated and displayed as a massive holiday season tourist attraction.

Once the holiday season is over, the tree will be donated to Habitat for Humanity, a tradition that began in 2007 when the lumber was used to rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The lumber from the tree will then be used to help build a home for those in need.

“We are thrilled that lumber for the tree will once again be used to build homes with Habitat partner families…During...

Christopher Eccleston and Vicky McClure are among the actors who will read war poetry on More4 during Remembrance Weekend.

On November 9 and 10, More4 will mark Remembrance Sunday with a weekend of poetry and other programming.

This year's coverage will include material that focuses on conflicts from World War I to the present day.

Noel Clarke, McClure and Eccleston will read works by Seamus Heaney, John Agard, Carol Ann Duffy and Dunya Mikhail in short films to be broadcast between programmes.

Last year's poems about World War I will also be featured once again, with readings by Gemma Arterton, Sean Bean, Stephen Graham and Sophie Okonedo.

Other programming will include docudrama The Somme, World War I documentary War Horse: The Real Story, and a first-person retelling of the Falklands' Most Daring Raid.

More4 Commissioning Editor in Specialist Factual John Hay said: "It's easy for those of us who have never been...

Majesco Entertainment – publisher of Zumba Fitness and the downloadable heist-hit Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine – has announced the birth of Midnight City, their new label dedicated to indie gaming.

Two veterans of the game industry will be in charge of the division. Former editor-in-chief of IGN, Casey Lynch, will head up the new label alongside Doug Kennedy, the ex-president and CEO of Reverb Publishing. According to today’s press release, the team’s goal is to provide “customized publishing services, including public relations, marketing, and community content” for indie games that are in need of such things.

The following nine titles, designed by nine different developers, have already signed on with Midnight City. Each game will be making appearances at this weekend’s Pax Prime convention in Seattle:

“Videoball (Action Button Entertainment) – Videoball is an electronic sport game that features the best of basketball, soccer, football, old-fashioned shooters, first-person shooters,...

Box Office Busts! week concludes at Trailers from Hell with TV writer-producer Alan Spencer introducing Stanley Kramer's 1971 film "Bless the Beasts and Children."After a run of distinguished films during the sixties, socially committed producer-director Kramer’s downhill slide accelerated with this somewhat prescient but pretentious adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s well-regarded novel about emotionally disturbed teens at a summer camp who try to prevent a buffalo slaughter. This gimmicky trailer, a faux interview between actor Bill Mumy and a supposed rep of the NRA, would have been more convincing had they cast an actor less familiar than busy character type Douglas Kennedy as the spokesman.

Welcome back to This Week In Discs! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Big Picture Paul (Romain Duris) is a successful lawyer with a wife and two beautiful kids, but something is amiss in his marriage. He envies his neighbor Greg’s casual freedoms, but when he discovers his wife has been loving Greg in some far more physical ways, a conversation between the two men leads to an incident that sends Paul running for his life. This French thriller is based on a novel by Douglas Kennedy, and as they did with Harlan Coben’s Tell No One, the result is a far more literate thriller than we would probably get from Hollywood. Duris is a fantastic actor, and he invests Paul with passion and emotional intensity as his mistake leads to a life he’s always wanted but was afraid to attempt. The...

The 45-year-old son of Robert F. Kennedy, who is on trial for harassment and child endangerment, is claiming he acted out of paternal instinct when he kicked a nurse after she tried to prevent him from stepping outside the hospital with his own baby. During opening statements on Oct .22 for the trial of Douglas Kennedy, 45, his defense lawyers said the father of five was acting out of instinct after he kicked a baby nurse who blocked him from taking his newborn baby outside on Jan. 7. Attorney Celia Gordon said Douglas "just wanted to take his baby out for some fresh air" when he tried to exit the Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York with his newborn son. She added that nurses overreacted and were unnecessarily abrasive. But prosecutor Amy Puerto said Douglas violated hospital policy, and nurses were just enforcing the necessary procedures. After he refused to obey the rules,...

Title: The Big Picture Director: Eric Lartigau Starring: Romain Duris, Marina Fois, Catherine Deneuve, Neils Arestrup, Branka Katic, Eric Ruf A contemplative, puzzle-box anti-thriller of the sort that seemingly only the French now make (even though it’s adapted from an American novel by Douglas Kennedy), “The Big Picture” is an artful if overlong drama that connects chiefly as a compelling vehicle for star Romain Duris. To call it understated is its own special sort of understatement; this is a film-as-character-study, but also one that hovers drone-like over its subject rather than digging in for deep psychological insights. The story centers on a lawyer and family man, Paul Exben (Duris), who commutes from [ Read More ]

The post The Big Picture Movie Review 2 appeared first on Shockya.com.

Title: The Big Picture (L’homme qui voulait vivre sa vie) Mpi Pictures Director: Eric Lartigau Screenwriter: Eric Lartigau, Laurent de Bartillat, from Douglas Kennedy’s novel “Big Picture” Cast: Romain Duris, Marina Foïs, Niels Arestrup, Catherine Deneuve, Branka Katic, Rachel Berger Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 10/3/12 Opens: October 12, 2012 What would you rather do—reside in a capital city as a successful businessman, or take your chances traveling to remote areas using your hobby as a photographer to launch a new career? In today’s economy, there’s little doubt that the vast majority would choose the former, though, given the number of college grads who cannot find stable jobs with good [ Read More ]

The post The Big Picture Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Eric Lartigau's French thriller "The Big Picture" opens in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and IFC Center on October 12, and we've got the exclusive North American trailer for the release. Adapted from Douglas Kennedy's novel of the same name (he also wrote "The Woman in the Fifth," the film adaptation of which was released last June), the film stars Romain Duris, who starred as a pianist in Jacques Audiard's brilliant 2005 film, "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," as well as last year's romantic comedy "Heartbreaker" (in which he does a fine job charming Vanessa Paradis and performing some "Dirty Dancing" moves). In "The Big Picture," Duris stars as Paul, a partner in a top Paris law firm with a perfect family who loses everything when he discovers his wife is having an affair and he makes a fatal error. Watch the trailer and read the...

Turns out this movie isn’t about a lady genie inside a liquor bottle like I first believed. It’s another random horror film starring new genre fave, Ethan Hawke. Thanks to JoBlo, we have the first trailer for you.

Pawel Pawlikowski (try saying that three times fast) is directing the movie, based on a Douglas Kennedy novel, which also stars Kristen Scott Thomas (The English Patient). The film follows Hawke (Daybreakers, Gattaca), who goes to Paris to reboot his life, and doesn’t find it to be all romantic cafes and crepes.

Directed and written by Pawel Pawlikowski, The Woman In The Fifth is a French-British-Polish mystery thriller based on the novel by American novelist Douglas Kennedy. As an adaptation of this deeply detailed novel, the film is a pensive and psychological drama, but it doesn’t quite fill you in on everything as you are constantly left to detect what’s real and what’s not.

The Woman In The Fifth centres around a college lecturer named Tom Wicks (Ethan Hawke) who flees to Paris to move closer to his six-year-old daughter Chloe (Julie Papillon), currently living with his estranged wife Nathalie (Delphine Chuillot), as he attempts to escape an implied troubling past couple of years. When robbed of all his possessions on his journey home, Tom takes a job as a watchman for a local crime boss, Sezer (Samir Guesmi), to earn his keep. Here he finds friendship in one of the waitresses,...

We need movies like The Woman in the Fifth, because they remind us how intensely on-fire Ethan Hawke can be. He stars here as Tom Ricks, in a grungy mystery-thriller that starts off as an atmospheric noir and quickly — the film’s barely a tick over 80 minutes — descends into a prickly little personality study. The writer-director, Pawel Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love), has adapted Douglas Kennedy‘s same-named novel with unshrinking ambiguity, allowing Hawke to sink in and fire off one mixed signal after another while never losing the compassion underneath. It’s a satisfying move.

Tom’s an American novelist with one Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted work under his belt. The film opens as he relocates to Paris, in an attempt to smooth things over with his bitter ex-wife, Nathalie (Delphine Chuillot), so that he can see his daughter, Chloé (Julie Papillon), on a more frequent basis. Things go poorly from the very beginning,...

Check out two new posters and 17 photos from the upcoming thriller The Woman in the Fifth. Based on Douglas Kennedy’s novel originally published in 2007, the film revolves around an American writer (Ethan Hawke) who has fled to Paris in the wake of a scandal that cost him his job as a film lecturer [...]

Continue reading The Woman In The Fifth: Two Posters and 17 Photos on FilmoFilia.

May try Your Patience to the Nth: Pawlikowski’s Comeback Thriller Travels in Familiar Territory

Highly esteemed director Pawel Pawlikowski’s first feature since 2004’s excellent My Summer of Love is an adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s novel, The Woman in the Fifth, an American in Paris thriller with a tweak of Kafkaesque happenings. Much like Kafka’s novel Amerika , which was written without its author ever having traveled there, much of Pawlikowski’s latest feels like a vague dream, though one that’s listless and evaporates quickly upon awakening.

Ethan Hawke stars as an American author, Tom Ricks, suddenly absconding to Paris to be near his daughter. The bespectacled Ricks quickly finds his estranged wife who is anything but pleased to see him. Immediately she calls the police while he searches her flat for his daughter. After he falls asleep on a bus, he discovers he has been robbed...

Last week brought Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut to the shelves in Coriolanus, in which he starred as the eponymous lead alongside Gerard Butler, as well as the likes of Michael Dowse’s Goon, and Madonna’s W.E.

This week has, as ever, a fantastic new selection of films and TV programmes available for purchase from today, including three of my all-time favourite TV programmes. On top of that, there’s an Oscar winner, an Oscar nominee, and one film that everyone was talking about in the run-up to the awards season but was noticeably absent when the Academy Award nominees were announced in January.

My personal picks of the week:

With so much choice, I was forced to divide into two categories of film and TV this week:

James Bobbins’ The Muppets & Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar

Entourage Season 8, Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 & One Tree Hill Season 9

The Muppets Iframe...

Pawel Pawlikowski made his mark on the film world directing poetic documentaries. His first film since the tragic death of his wife in 2006 is ambiguous psychological thriller The Woman in the Fifth. Pawlikowski chose Douglas Kennedy’s best-selling novel as his starting point, but didn’t look at it just as a thriller, so he ended [...]

Continue reading New Trailer and Poster for The Woman In The Fifth on FilmoFilia.

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With Before Sunrise and Before Sunset in his past, Ethan Hawke is no stranger to romance on the big screen. But this time he's dealing with a seemingly fatal attraction in the new trailer for The Woman in the Fifth, an adaptation of Douglas Kennedy's book of the same name which follows a college lecturer (Hawke) who flees to Paris after a scandal costs him his job. In the City of Lights, he meets a widow (Kristin Scott Thomas) who might be involved in a series of murders, and their romance spins out of control when it seems his family is threatened by her obsession with him. Looks provocative and steamy. Here's the first trailer for Pawel Pawlikowski's The Woman in the Fifth originally from Apple: American writer Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) arrives in Paris to be closer to his young daughter who is living with his estranged ex-wife.

Poster 2 for The Woman in the Fifth, starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas Pawel Pawlikowski directs as well as scripting the drama based on the novel by Douglas Kennedy, which is produced by Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta. The Woman in the Fifth opens June 15th, 2012 via Ato Pictures. American writer Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) arrives in Paris to be closer to his young daughter who is living with his estranged ex-wife. Completely broke, he accepts a job as a night guard for a local crime boss. Stationed in a basement office, his only task is to push a button when a bell rings. The tranquility of the night, he hopes, will help him focus on his new novel...

Poster 2 for The Woman in the Fifth, starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas Pawel Pawlikowski directs as well as scripting the drama based on the novel by Douglas Kennedy, which is produced by Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta. The Woman in the Fifth opens June 15th, 2012 via Ato Pictures. American writer Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) arrives in Paris to be closer to his young daughter who is living with his estranged ex-wife. Completely broke, he accepts a job as a night guard for a local crime boss. Stationed in a basement office, his only task is to push a button when a bell rings. The tranquility of the night, he hopes, will help him focus on his new novel...

The main reason we enjoy doing what we do here on Tfs is to share our love for great independent films that may not be on your radar. It’s why we focus our efforts on film festivals and it brings no greater joy to recommend these films once they come out in theaters. While other summer countdowns focus on all the films you’ve been hearing about non-stop for the last year, we’ve got a comprehensive list of the worthwhile independent, limited release features to take note of.

While a few, namely one from Focus Features and another from The Weinstein Company are set to go wide initially, they won’t be as hitting as many multiplexes as The Dark Knight Rises or The Avengers, therefore making for a worthy mention. Check out the list below, which also includes what you may want to skip over blockbuster-wise at the theaters that same weekend,...

John F. Kennedy's nephew has been charged with harassment and endangering the welfare of a child following an alleged altercation with hospital nurses last month.

Douglas Kennedy was accused of twisting Anna Lane's wrist and kicking Cari Luciano to the ground as he tried to take his newborn baby out of the maternity ward of a Westchester, New York hospital on 7 January.

The broadcast journalist was arrested and arraigned on Thursday, but he has denied any wrongdoing.

He tells the New York Post, "She tried to grab the baby from my arms. I was shocked and was simply trying to protect my son."

And the 44 year old's attorney, Robert Gottlieb, vows to fight the claims, adding, "We are confident that the Westchester district attorney, once she is able to evaluate all the evidence, will dismiss the charges. The reason it's clear that this is a money grab is that within days they (plaintiffs) had hired a personal-injury lawyer."...

Douglas Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy, has been accused of assaulting maternity nurses after trying to take his son off the floor for a walk, USA Today is reporting. A lawyer for the group of nurses at a Westchester, New York hospital, who saw Kennedy take the child, said they weren’t sure if he had the required written permission to leave the ward. When they approached him, they claim he attacked and injured them. The local NBC affiliate obtained a security video that shows the nurses trying to stop Kennedy from using an elevator. They then tried to block him from using a stairwell. However, the two sides...

Douglas Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy is facing charges of harassment and endangering the welfare of a child after an incident last month in which he tried to take his son from the maternity ward but ended up attacking nurses attempting to stop him from taking the child away. While they are misdemeanor charges and the doctor in charge takes his side, he is accused of kicking and forcefully grabbing the wrist of one of the nurses, and security video shows the altercation.

Douglas fought with nurses after he tried to take his newborn son from the maternity ward in a Westchester hospital. Robert F. Kennedy's son Douglas Kennedy was arrested after an altercation with nurses on Jan. 7, NBC New York, reports. Police claim Douglas attempted to take his newborn son from the Westchester hospital and was stopped by two nurses, who told him he could not take the baby. Douglas then allegedly became violent with the staff members. The 10th son of Robert and Ethel Kennedy faces misdemeanor charges of harassment and endangering the welfare of a child. Douglas and his wife Molly Kennedy call the allegations "absurd." Watch video of the alleged incident!

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

Bringing together the Oscar-nominated calibre of both Ethan Hawke (Training Day) and Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) certainly sounds promising for writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest film, The Woman in the Fifth.

Artificial Eye have put out the first UK trailer for the film, with thanks to ComingSoon.net for the tip-off, and it gives us a look at the thriller and darkness that we can expect from the film when it arrives next month.

“American writer Tom Ricks comes to Paris desperate to put his life together again and win back the love of his estranged wife and daughter.

When things don’t go according to plan, he ends up in a shady hotel in the suburbs, having to work as a night guard to make ends meet.

Then Margit, a beautiful, mysterious stranger walks into his life and things start looking up. Their passionate and intense relationship...

Here's a UK trailer for the upcoming Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas thriller, The Woman in the Fifth.  The film is based on Douglas Kennedy's book, which revolves around a college lecturer who flees to Paris after a scandal costs him his job. In the City of Lights, he meets a widow who might be involved in a series of murders.

Here's the Synopsis:

A captivating thriller, The Woman In The Fifth tells the gripping story of an American professor who relocates to Paris to win back his wife and daughter but finds himself falling for the charms of a mysterious siren. Directed by BAFTA Award-winner Pawel Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love), the film stars Academy Award®nominee Kristin Scott Thomas (Sarah's Key; Nowhere Boy) and Academy Award®nominee Ethan Hawke (Before Sunset; Dead Poets Society) and is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Douglas Kennedy.

Pawel Pawlikowski, who won BAFTAs as most promising newcomer for debut feature Last Resort and the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film in 2005 with My Summer of Love, adapts Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Woman in the Fifth. Ethan Hawke stars as a college lecturer who relocates to the City of Light to win [...]

Continue reading The Woman In The Fifth UK Trailer with Ethan Hawke on FilmoFilia.

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The UK trailer for Pawel Pawlikowski's thriller The Woman in the Fifth is online and can be watched below. The June 15 release stars Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Based on Douglas Kennedy's novel, the film revolves around an American who has fled to Paris in the wake of a scandal that cost him his job as a film lecturer at a small university. He takes up with a widow who might be involved in a series of murders.

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