News

Gladiator still holds the honor of being one of the most epic historical films helmed to date, starring Russell Crowe as he gave the performance of a lifetime as the primary protagonist Maximus. Not only is the flick widely regarded among the most worthy of preserving cinematic gems, but it also ranks among the actor’s best projects to date.

Russell Crowe. | Credits: Gladiator / DreamWorks Distribution.

However, there seem to be some reported stains on this film’s legacy as well. As it turns out, reports and allegations have it that the iconic Unhinged actor actually warned to inflict harm on one of the crew members behind the masterpiece from 2000 while it was still in its production stage, ostensibly tainting both the film’s as well as Crowe’s reputation.

Russell Crowe faced some serious allegations from the Gladiator production days Crowe. | Credits: Gladiator / DreamWorks Distribution.

Fierce, broody, but braveheart,...

There are plenty of films dealing with dark themes in the illustrious filmography of Steven Spielberg. Prior to his success with Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, or Bridge of Spies, the Ohio-born filmmaker, 77, addressed a subject that was more personal to him.

Spielberg helmed the epic historical drama Schindler’s List in the same year (1993), when he broke box office records with Jurassic Park. Adapted from the 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally, the former relates the terrifying true story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who employed thousands of Jews during World War II to keep them safe from the Nazi party’s persecution.

Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List

Starring Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley, the film was a box office hit that won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and gave Spielberg his first Best Director Oscar. However, it is also acknowledged for having introduced the Holocaust to a larger public.

Liam Neeson has given a terrific performance across all the different genres he has starred in, as both a hero as well as a villain. A mastermind, almost all of his portrayals have been critically acclaimed worldwide, earning him the title of being one of the most renowned legendary actors of his time in Hollywood. But there was one movie that made this very legendary actor almost lose it.

Liam Neeson in The Dark Knight Rises

This film was none other than the 1993 globally praised war/documentary masterpiece, Schindler’s List. In fact, the film had such a massive impact on Neeson that it had him weak in his knees before even the cameras rolled for his first scene — so much so that it might have been the very reason the actor ended up giving one of the best performances of his entire career!

Suggested“It was like having a...

Steven Spielberg's 1993 Holocaust drama "Schindler's List" is a harrowing experience just to watch, so one can only imagine what it was like filming it. The film is based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and businessman who helped save the lives of more than a thousand refugees from the Holocaust. He would employ the mostly Polish-Jewish refugees in his factories throughout the war, which gave them protection as industrial workers. These saved refugees would go on to be called the Schindlerjuden, and their story would be shared with the world in the 1982 novel "Schindler's Ark" by Thomas Keneally. "Schindler's Ark" formed the basis for "Schindler's List," which starred Liam Neeson as Schindler, bringing the horrors of the Holocaust to life in stark black and white.

"Schindler's List" became an instant classic, winning seven Academy Awards including one for Best Picture and another for Best Director.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is one of the few films in Oscars history to win Best Picture, Best Director and Best Editing plus prizes for acting and writing. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won Best Director and Best Original Screenplay while they shared in the Best Picture win with Jonathan Wang. Paul Rogers took home Best Film Editing while the film claimed three acting victories: Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis, and Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan.

“Forrest Gump” was the last movie to win these top awards. it won Best Picture in 1995 for Wendy Finerman, Steve Starkey, and Steve Tisch while Robert Zemeckis won Best Director, Tom Hanks won Best Actor, Eric Roth won Best Adapted Screenplay, and Arthur Schmidt won Best Editing.

Several other movies have come close to achieving this feat, with “American Beauty” (2000), “A Beautiful Mind” (2002), ” “No Country For Old Men...

“Maestro” brought together three filmmakers — the sophomore director Bradley Cooper and the screen masters Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese — as producers. “Maestro” chronicles the marriage of famed composer Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and his muse Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). You can catch this acclaimed films in cinemas before it starts streaming on Netflix on Dec. 20. Either way, you’re in for a treat.

While Scorsese has his own film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” in contention for this year’s Oscars, Spielberg is also a producer on the musical remake of “The Color Purple.” (This fact was omitted in the original version of this article due to an editing error.) He is one of the most successful filmmakers of all time and has an Oscars track record to prove it. He’s won two of his nine bids for Best Director: in 1994 for “Schindler’s List” and 1999 for “Saving Private Ryan.” While...

Synopsis

Black Hawk Down

From acclaimed director Ridley Scott (The Martian) and renowned producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pearl Harbor) comes the gripping true story about bravery, camaraderie, and the complex reality of war.

Black Hawk Down stars an exceptional cast including Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, and Eric Bana. In 1993, an elite group of American Rangers and Delta Force soldiers are sent to Somalia on a critical mission to capture a violent warlord whose corrupt regime has led to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis. When the mission goes quickly and terribly wrong, the men find themselves outnumbered and literally fighting for their lives.

The Guns Of Navarone

Academy Award®-winners Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn star as a team of Allied military specialists recruited for a dangerous but imperative mission: to infiltrate a Nazi-occupied fortress and disable two long-range field guns so that 2,000 trapped British soldiers may be rescued.

We shall be entertained!

The cast is shaping up for Sir Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar-winning Roman action-drama “Gladiator.” The latest addition, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is Barry Keoghan, the 30-year-old (but can pass for 15) Irish actor recently nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his turn in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” His previous work includes creepy supporting roles in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” “The Green Knight,” and a quick appearance as the Joker in “The Batman.”

Keoghan is thought to be playing Emperor Publius Septimus Geta. I just looked the guy up on Wikipedia and I think I just had the ending of “Gladiator 2” spoiled in the opening paragraph, so advise against this! I suspect he will be the villain of the new picture.

Another hot relative newcomer in the cast is 27-year-old Irish actor Paul Mescal, similarly coming off an Oscar nomination. His was for Best Actor,...

Steven Spielberg has said the final scene in Schindler’s List, where holocaust survivors visit the grave of Oskar Schindler, was a late addition to the pic and was his way of making sure audiences knew the film’s story was based on real-life facts.

“Holocaust denial was on the rise again — that was the entire reason I made the movie in 1993,” he told The Sunday Times during a recent interview. “That ending was a way to verify that everything in the movie was true.”

Spielberg continued to say that before Schindler’s List, he had never made a film that “so directly confronted a message” that he believed the world needed to hear.

“It had a vital message that is more important today than it even was in 1993 because antisemitism is so much worse today than it was when I made the film,” he added.

In addition to the film’s powerful political message,...

For Sunday’s Oscars 2020 ceremony on ABC, producers had a difficult decision of which film industry people would make the cut and who would unfortunately be left out of the “In Memoriam.” For the segment, for the song “Yesterday” performed by Grammy champ Billie Eilish.

Visit our own Gold Derby memoriam gallery for the year of 2019 and the just launched gallery for 2020.

SEE2020 Oscars: Full list of winners (and losers) at the 92nd Academy Awards

Over 100 people in the film industry, many of them academy members, have passed away in the past 12 months. Here is a list of the some of the names included in the tribute:

Danny Aiello (actor)

Jim Alexander (sound)

Bibi Andersson (actor)

Ben Barenholtz (executive)

Kobe Bryant (producer)

Diahann Carroll (actor)

Seymour Cassel (actor)

William J. Creber (production designer)

Doris Day (actress)

Stanley Donen (director)

Kirk Douglas (actor/producer)

Robert Evans (executive)

Peter Fonda (actor)

Robert Forster (actor)

Harriet Frank,...

One of the most significant additions to the Academy Awards ceremony around 30 years ago has been the In Memoriam segment. Producers find the perfect blend of music, photos and clips for the short annual presentation.

Which of the past Oscar winners and nominees from many different branches will be featured this Sunday, February 9, on the Oscars 2020 ceremony for ABC? Some of the most likely to be included will be acting nominees Danny Aiello, Diahann Carroll, Doris Day, Kirk Douglas, Peter Fonda, Robert Forster, Sylvia Miles, Michael J. Pollard and Rip Torn. How about major creatives such as Stanley Donen, Robert Evans, Buck Henry, Andre Previn and John Singleton?

Visit our own Gold Derby memoriam gallery for the year of 2019 and the just launched gallery for 2020.

SEEWho is Performing at the Oscars 2020?: Full List of Presenters and Performers

Over 100 people in the film industry, many of them academy members, have...

The Holocaust survivor and best picture winner for Schindler’s List passed in Croatia yesterday

Branko Lustig, Holocaust survivor and two-time best picture winner of Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator died yesterday, aged 87, at home in Croatia.

His death was announced by the Festival of Tolerance, a Jewish film festival in Zagreb of which Lustig had been president for the past 11 years.

Born in 1932 to a Croatian Jewish family, Lustig was a prisoner of the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, where his father and grandmother died in a gas chamber. Most of his family...

Steven Spielberg has offered a touching remembrance of Branko Lustig, the Holocaust survivor who produced “Schindler’s List” with Spielberg and Gerald Molen and died Thursday in Croatia.

“I was heartbroken to hear of Branko’s passing and my thoughts are with his family and friends,” Spielberg said. “When we first met to discuss ‘Schindler’s List,’ he insisted his award-winning film credits were irrelevant, and that his qualification to work on the film was simple and singular. Rolling up his sleeves to reveal a numeric tattoo from Auschwitz, he left me speechless and our lovely friendship of nearly three decades was born in that intimate moment.”

“Emerging from the horror of the Holocaust, his personal journey is a triumph of hope and determination; a story to which children from some of today’s unthinkable environments can aspire,” Spielberg concluded. “He will be truly missed.”

As a boy, Lustig was...

Lawrence G. Paull, who was an Oscar-nominated production designer on the classics “Blade Runner” and “Back to the Future,” has died. Paull died on Nov. 10 in La Jolla, California. He was 81.

Among Paull’s other credits are Robert Zemeckis’ “Romancing the Stone” and Ron Underwood’s “City Slickers.” He also worked on “Born Yesterday,” “Predator 2,” “Harlem Nights,” “Escape From L.A.” and “Naked Gun 33-1/3: The Final Insult.”

“I was very saddened to read of Larry’s passing,” director Ridley Scott said in a statement. “I haven’t seen him in a number of years. But I remember I was always struck by his staunch and faithful support of the strange plan for the unique world of ‘Blade Runner.’ Between Syd and myself, and Larry, it was a challenging, monumental task for him and against all odds. The proof is in his work in the film. So I guess We won.

Branko Lustig, a two-time Oscar-winning producer who survived the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, has died. He was 87.

Lustig’s death was confirmed on Thursday by the Festival of Tolerance, the Jewish film festival for which he served as president of for the past 13 years. The Yad Vashem center in Jerusalem told the Associated Press that Lustig died in Croatia on Thursday.

Lustig was born in Osijek in 1932, which was then a part of Yugoslavia, the Associated Press noted. During World War II, he lost many of his family members in concentration camps, including his grandmother and his father.

Later in life,...

Branko Lustig, the Oscar-winning Croatian producer behind Schindler’s List and Gladiator, has died at the age of 87.

Lustig’s death was reported by local press in Croatia and an obituary was posted on the website of the Festival of Tolerance, a Jewish film festival for whom Lustig served as president for 10 years.

Russell Crowe also tweeted about his death. “What an amazing life he led. From the horrors of WWII to the glory of two Academy Awards. He said to me once “you disagree with me a lot, but you’re always my friend on the days I need you”. Yes. Much love Branko. Always your friend,” Crowe said.

Born in 1932, Lustig was a survivor of both the Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen concentration camps during World War II and his experiences in the camps were captured in Schindler’s List.

According to the Festival of Tolerance, Lustig’s film career spanned more than 50 years,...

Holocaust survivor and Academy Award winner Branko Lustig, who nabbed best picture Oscars for “Schindler’s List” and “Gladiator,” has died at his home in Croatia. He was 87.

His death was announced on the website for Festival of Tolerance, which Lustig oversaw as president since 2008.

Lustig was born in Osijek, Yugoslavia, in 1932 to a Croatian Jewish family. He was a prisoner of the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World War II. Most of his family members were killed during the war, including his father and grandmother, who died in a gas chamber.

Lustig began work in the Yugoslavian film industry in the mid 1950s. He served as location manager for Norman Jewison’s “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1971, as an assistant director on Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Tin Drum” and as a supervisor on Alan J. Pakula’s “Sophie’s Choice.”

He met Steven Spielberg after he moved to...

Branko Lustig, an Oscar-winning producer of the Best Picture winners “Schindler’s List” and “Gladiator,” has died, according to an announcement Thursday via the Festival of Tolerance. He was 87.

Lustig, who was the president of Croatia’s Festival of Tolerance – the Jewish Film Festival, died in his home in Zagreb, Croatia. He worked in the film industry for 50 years and was a survivor of the Holocaust, having spent time in both the Auschwitz and BergenBelsen concentration camps during World War II.

Many of his family members were lost in the concentration camps, and his grandmother specifically was killed in a gas chamber, and his experience there helped inspire some of the stories for Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List.”

Also Read: Niall Tóibín, Irish Actor Known for 'The Nephew' and 'Far and Away,' Dies at 89

Lustig worked in the film industry in his home of Croatia before moving to Los Angeles in the 1980s.

Branko Lustig, a Croatia-born Jew who survived the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and went on to win two best picture Oscars, died Thursday at his home in Zagreb, Croatia. He was 87.

The Festival of Tolerance, a Jewish film festival that Lustig oversaw as president for more than a decade, announced his death on its website. 

Lustig spent more than 50 years in the film industry, starting on local productions made under the state auspices of what was then Yugoslavia. A job as location manager for Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof (1971) led to more international ...

Branko Lustig, a Croatia-born Jew who survived the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and went on to win two best picture Oscars, died Thursday at his home in Zagreb, Croatia. He was 87.

The Festival of Tolerance, a Jewish film festival that Lustig oversaw as president for more than a decade, announced his death on its website. 

Lustig spent more than 50 years in the film industry, starting on local productions made under the state auspices of what was then Yugoslavia. A job as location manager for Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof (1971) led to more international ...

In honor of the 25th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Schindler’s List, Universal Pictures will re-release the film in theaters with digitally remastered 4K picture and Dolby Atmos sound.

This film is hailed as being "one of the most significant endeavors in the history of cinema." It tells the powerful true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust.

It is the triumph of one man who made a difference and the drama of those who survived one of the darkest chapters in human history because of what he did. Meticulously restored from the original film negative in pristine high definition and supervised by Spielberg, Schindler’s List is a powerful story whose lessons of courage and faith continue to inspire generations.

The movie won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Co-starring Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes,...

Universal Pictures will release a restored version of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” on Dec. 7 for a limited theatrical engagement to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its opening.

“Schindler’s List” follows the enigmatic Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. The film has been remastered in 4K, Dolby Cinema, and Dolby Atmos. Spielberg supervised the restoration from the original film negative.

The film won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director for Spielberg. It also won Oscars for composer John Williams, screenwriter Steven Zaillian, director of photography Janusz Kaminski, art directors Allan Starski and Ewa Braun, editor Michael Kahn, and producers Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen, and Branko Lustig. It was also a strong box office performer with $320 million worldwide.

Spielberg shot “Schindler’s List” in black-and-white over 72 days in Poland with the goal of giving the...

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Universal will be re-releasing the movie in a limited engagement on December 7, with picture and sound digitally remastered as overseen by the filmmaker. This includes a release in formats such as 4K, Dolby Cinema and Dolby Atmos.

Schindler’s List was a very personal film for Spielberg and it went on to win seven Oscars including Best Picture and his first as Best Director. It also is one of the top-grossing black-and-white films at the domestic box office with $96M, part of its $321.3M worldwide take. Schindler’s List tells the story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. The movie was released on December 15, 1993, and played limited before breaking 1,000 theaters in the middle of March 1994.

Co-starring Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, the film also earned Oscars for composer John Williams,...

Tribeca Film Festival’s retrospective screening of “Schindler’s List” marked the first time the cast had seen the acclaimed movie in 25 years.

“I feel so blessed I had the opportunity to tell this story,” said Steven Spielberg, who won Oscars for best directing and best picture for “Schindler’s List” in 1993. “Twenty-five years later, I sat through the whole film, which I hadn’t done in so long, and I was just proud.”

Spielberg and cast members Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Embeth Davidtz, and Caroline Goodall were greeted after the screening with a standing ovation at the Beacon Theater in New York.

During the panel, Spielberg set the record straight on the origins of “Schindler’s List”: Is it true Martin Scorsese could have directed it? “Yes, that’s true.” Is it true Mel Gibson could have been cast in the lead? “That’s not true.”

The lead...

Tonight’s Schindler’s List retrospective event at the Tribeca Film Festival yielded more than a few familiar stories. But it also brimmed with unchecked emotion from director Steven Spielberg and four of his cast members, including Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley, who all watched the film with a theatrical audience for the first time in nearly 25 years.

Moments after the lights came up after the screening and a long ovation from the Beacon Theatre crowd had subsided, Spielberg said he last saw the film with a theatrical audience in 1993, when it had a series of European premieres. “There were so many moments that washed over me,” he said, his voice charged with emotion.

Asked by moderator Janet Maslin of The New York Times for his reaction to seeing it again, he said, “I watched the film and I was just …. proud. I’m very, very proud.” He later added...

The Hollywood Reporter has published an important feature on Hollywood's last Holocaust Survivors. The subjects are Bill Harvey, Ruth Posner, Dario Gabbai, Celina Biniaz, Leon Prochnik, Meyer Gottlieb, Branko Lustig, Curt Lowens, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Robert Clary.

The 89 year old Clary rose to fame on the CBS sitcom, Hogan's Heroes, a long-running show starring Bob Crane, that featured life in a WWII P.O.W. camp. Born in France to an Orthodox Jewish family, in real life, Clary was the only one of 14 family members to survive until the liberation.

Read More…...

New Line Cinema

Everyone knows that Jaws, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, The Crow, 47 Ronin and absolutely anything directed by David O. Russell had punishing shoots, but what about those ones you might not be quite so familiar with?

From Best Picture-winning classics to low-budget horrors, contemporary sci-fi flicks and everything in-between, these movies were all assailed by huge production problems, be it creative arguments on set or acts of God, which tested the mettle and patience of just about anyone working on them.

Though many of these movies are best remembered for, well, just being great movies, dig a little deeper and there are some juicy tales of how everyone involved suffered for their art, and though for some the juice may not have been worth the squeeze.

15. Gladiator Fox

Why It Was Hell: Developing Gladiator’s script was an absolutely agonising process, going through countless drafts such that, a mere two weeks before shooting,...

Here’s an exclusive first-look at Anne Frank: Then And Now, which explores the lives of Anne Frank and the eight Palestinian girls cast to play her in a retelling of Frank’s famous diary. Part drama and part documentary, it was shot in Arabic with English subtitles. The film was shooting in Gaza in July when the Israel-Gaza war broke out, sending cast and crew scrambling for cover from incoming Israeli airstrikes. More than 500 Palestinian children and one Israeli child were killed during the seven-week conflict. The film, which is seeking distribution, was directed by Jakov Sedlar and produced by Auschwitz survivor and two-time Oscar-winning producer Branko Lustig (Schindler’s List, Gladiator). Anne Frank was written and co-directed by Sedlar’s son, Dominik Sedlar.

We here at Tfh have always thought of the great Vilmos Zsigmond as one of "our" movie icons, having begun his distinguished cinematographic career in the humble swamps of low budget exploitation before rising on his own merit to a justly celebrated mainstream career. So it is with fond memories of the likes of The Sadist, The Name of the Game is Kill, The Time Travelers and Five Bloody Graves that we congratulate him on this latest award: From The Daily News - The legendary Hungarian-American cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, director of photography of the soon-to-be-released film ‘Atatürk,’ will receive a Life Time Achievement Award today from the 67th Cannes International Film Festival 2014.

In an extraordinary, Academy Award-winning career spanning some six decades, Zsigmond’s outstanding credits include “The Deer Hunter” and “Heaven’s Gate” directed by Michael Cimino, “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” and “Sugarland Express” by Steven Spielberg,...

Berlin – Oscar winning producer and production manager Branko Lustig (Schindler's List, Gladiator), who as a boy survived three years in two Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, has said that forgiveness is ultimately the only option for anyone who has experienced such unimaginable cruelty. He spoke Tuesday night to a largely German audience in Berlin at the premiere of Night Will Fall, a new work-in-progress documentary about the circumstances surrounding the films shot by Allied troops when they liberated Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Madjanek and other concentration camps at the end of WWII. Lustig, 81, said "you cannot live your

read more...

"Schindler's List" already looked like an instant classic the moment it was released 20 years ago this week (on December 15, 1993). Shot in timeless black-and-white, Steven Spielberg's based-in-fact account of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved 1,200 Jews from the Polish city of Krakow during the Holocaust by putting them on his factory payroll, became a landmark film, becoming the definitive depiction of the Holocaust for many viewers around the world. It also made a star out of Ralph Fiennes, an A-lister out of Liam Neeson, and an Oscar-winner out of Spielberg, who proved once and for all that he was not just a director of kiddie fantasies.

Two decades have done nothing but burnish the film's reputation as an artistic masterpiece and educational tool. Still, even though everyone's seen it, there's plenty you probably don't know about how it got made, from the project's birth in a Beverly Hills luggage store,...

Today, July 11, is the memorial day for the 11,000 victims of war killed during the four year siege of Sarajevo. The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. Serb forces of the Serbian Republic and the Yugoslav People's Army besieged Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 during the Bosnian War. The siege lasted three times longer than the Siege of Stalingrad and a year longer than the Siege of Leningrad.

"We used that tunnel to transfer the rushes during the end of the war for the shooting of Perfect Circle by Ademir Kenovic!" -- Sylvain Bursztehn

This legendary film festival began during the seige and served as a part of the spiritual resistance put up by the brave people of the town of some 400,000 people.  This 18th edition opened with Angelina Jolie presenting her Bosnian war film In the Land of Blood and Honey.

Branko Lustig, two-time Academy Award Winner for Best Picture spoke about the early origins of Schindler's List.  After asking whether he should speak in Croatian or Bosnian, he settled on English stating, "I am not Angelina Jolie.  I am not George Clooney.  You have an old Jew in front of you." This Croatian Jewish survlivor of Auschwitz made a cameo appearance as the Maitre D of an exclusive SS nightclub in the film.  Leopold Federberg, the owner of a leather goods shop near the Beverly Wilshire Hotel told the first story of Schindler which MGM originally optioned and developed long before Universal acquired it for Steven Spielberg.  He appeared  in the film as "Poldi". The reason the child was in red, the only colored element in the black and white film, was as a symbol of all the children who were murdered in the Shoah.  Lustig bore witness to the murder and hoped this film would be instrumental in eliminating such wars.  However, he was proven wrong as he witnessed the second genocide in his lifetime, that of the Bosnian Muslims by the Serbians, an equally horrendous event.

Today in Sarajevo all programs centered around the genocide.

Six years ago the festival added a Talent Campus, the only other one in Europe (there are also Talent Campuses (Campi?) in Tokyo, Guadalajrara and Buenos Aires).  I am honored to have been invited here to discuss selected shorts with their producers and directors as a part of the strategic planning for future screenings and future careers for the flmmakers.

We are also seeing films such as Los Salvajes from Argentina, I, Anna starring Charlotte Rampling and Gabriel Byrne and many films from the area of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and other Balkan nations.  Sarajevo, btw, was also the site of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by a terrorist which set off World War I and was home to Sephardic Jews driven from Spain during the Inquisition.  It is home to Muslims, Jews, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

This trip marks the last of the summer for us which began in Cannes.  We've gone from Cannes to Nice, Clug (Transylvania Film Festival), Berlin (Jewish Film Festifal), Paris (Champs Elysees Film Festival), Moscow and St. Petersburg (Doors), Paris again and now Sarajevo.

What stands out most from all these trips is the vibrancy and optimism of the new generation of the Eastern European film community.  The wealthy West Europe fears cutbacks in media funds and looks down from its peak while this fresh generation of Eastern European nations seem to understand the need to work together developing their talents and aiming upward as a whole.  Though exhausted by two months of travel, I feel elated to know that such a fresh new crop of talent is now planting its roots in the fertile soil of the world of cinema.

Exclusive: Branko Lustig and Daniela Cretu have launched a new film production company. First Born Films gets off the ground with The Godmother, the true story of Griselda Blanco, who is also known as “The Godmother of Cocaine” and “Black Widow,” who became the first and only woman in history to head a major Colombian drug network. Lustig and Cretu have made a life rights deal with Blanco and her family, and also her youngest son Michael Corleone (named from The Godfather character) for a film that chronicles the rise and fall of the woman who became the wealthiest, deadliest, most notorious and most wanted drug lord in the world. Her exploits were chronicled in the documentary Cocaine Cowboys 2. Frank Baldwin is writing the script, and Goodfellas author Nicholas Pileggi will produce with Lustig and Cretu. They are aiming for a fall start and are currently scouting shooting locations and will be traveling to Colombia,...

A few days ago we wrote about possible candidate for leading role in Angelina Jolie Bosnian film, Vladimir Rajcic.

But today we have new information regards to male main character in Jolie’s directorial debut and information comes directly from producers of the film.

Vladimir Rajcic was in talks to take over leading role in this yet untitled, love story set during the Bosnian war, but unfortunately he is forced to turn down the part.

Currently, Rajcic is very busy with his own project and that’s a movie about Nikola Tesla which he is producing with Oscar Wining Producer Branko Lustig (Schindler’s List, Gladiator).

Now the big question is who can lead and take over, because Rajcic was perfect candidat for this role.

Last Year Golden Globe contender was more than great for this part.

Serbian press saying that will be very hard to find actor which can match Rajcic in short time.

A new book claims the Australian actor was not a model of courtesy on the set of Ridley Scott's Gladiator

Russell Crowe threatened to kill a veteran producer with his bare hands during a 3am phone call while filming his Oscar-winning role in Gladiator, according to a new book. Branko Lustig, 77, a Holocaust survivor, immediately telephoned Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles and asked to leave the production.

The claims are made in Nicole Laporte's The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies and a Company called DreamWorks, which is published next month. It chronicles the history of the film studio, founded by Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen in 1994, which bankrolled Gladiator.

Crowe's exact words, according to the book, were "You motherfucker. I will kill you with my bare hands". He was apparently angry at Lustig's refusal to pay his assistants what the actor...

Russell Crowe apparently threatened to kill a veteran producer with his bare hands, a new book claims. A tell-all book by Nicole Laporte claims the New Zealand-born, naturalized Australian actor phoned 77-year-old "Gladiator" producer Branko Lustig at 3 a.m. one day to threaten his life.

"The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks" reveals details about the making of "Gladiator," in which Crowe had starred in 2000.

According to an excerpt of the book obtained by Gawker, Crowe, who hadn't come to full stardom then, was incensed because he believed DreamWorks was paying his assistants cheaper than normal.

He allegedly called Lustig, a Holocaust survivor, at 3 a.m. in England, and said, "You motherf*****. I will kill you with my bare hands."...

According to a new book, Hollywood A-lister Russell Crowe threatened to kill a producer with his bare hands, over payment of his assistants, during filming of Gladiator. Journalist Nicole Laporte recounts the incident in her new book The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company called DreamWorks.’ Back in 2000, Crowe allegedly rang Branko Lustig, 77, and swore at him, saying: "I will kill you with my bare hands." Lustig, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, reported the matter to Steven Spielberg, whose DreamWorks studio was backing the film. He was later asked to ...

London, April 28- According to a new book, Hollywood A-lister Russell Crowe threatened to kill a producer with his bare hands, over payment of his assistants, during filming of ‘Gladiator’.

Journalist Nicole Laporte recounts the incident in her new book ‘The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company called DreamWorks.’

Back in 2000, Crowe allegedly rang Branko Lustig, 77, and swore at him, saying: “I will kill you with my bare hands.”ustig,.

Russell Crowe allegedly threatened to kill one of the producers working on his blockbuster Gladiator over a pay dispute, according to a new tell-all book.

The actor was the star of Sir Ridley Scott's 2000 epic, which raked in more than $450 million (£300 million) at the global box office and won five Oscars.

But Crowe was left fuming when he discovered assistants working on the film were receiving paltry wages - and allegedly threatened producer Branko Lustig with violence unless the issue was resolved.

In Nicole Laporte's book The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company called DreamWorks, Lustig alleges Crowe told him, "You motherf**ker. I will kill you with my bare hands."

And the threat left Lustig so shaken, he considered calling DreamWorks boss Steven Spielberg to resign from the project.

He adds, "(I said,) 'Steven. I'm leaving. Russell wants to kill me. I'm leaving.'"

Crowe's spokesperson says of the claims, "I've been told that (online retailer) Amazon already has the book discounted. Go figure."

Laporte's book goes on sale next month.

By Staff

Per the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, Russell Crowe threatened to kill a producer while shooting “Gladiator.”

Arguing with producer Branko Lustig, 77, over pay for his assistants on the film, Crowe is to have said “I will kill you with my bare hands.”

Such words didn’t fall lightly on Lustig’s shoulders – he was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Following the feud, Lustig phoned DreamWorks head Steve Spielberg and gave him his resignation.

Apparently, Crowe was also a diva about his signature line in the film: “And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” After Ridley Scott pulled the mule to water, Crowe still thought it was a rancid piece of dialogue and told the director, “I’m the greatest actor in the world and I can make even —- sound good.”

The account of the spat is covered in the...

Russell Crowe reportedly threatened to kill a producer on the set of Gladiator. According to The Daily Telegraph, a new book alleges that the actor threatened to kill producer Branko Lustig in a dispute over pay for his assistants. He was said to have telephoned the producer in the early hours of the morning, swearing at him and saying: "I will kill you with my bare hands." The star also reportedly had a problem delivering his now famous line, "I will have my (more)...

The 24th Israel Film Festival, which runs from June 3-18 at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills and Lammele's Fallbrook 7 in the San Fernando Valley, will kick off with Reshef Levy's autobiographical drama "Lost Islands," the top-grossing and most honored film in Israel last year.

At the opening-night and awards gala at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre on June 3, Iff Awards will be presented to John Fishel, president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles; producer Robert Lantos; producer Branko Lustig; and songwriter Diane Warren.

In addition to "Islands," the fest's feature film lineup consists of: Ronit Elkabets and Shlomi Elkabetz' "7 Days"; Paul Schrader's "Adam Resurrected"; Avraham Kushnir's "Bruriah"; Ori Ravid's "Eli & Ben"; Marco Carmel's "Father's Footsteps"; Dror Zahavi's "For My Father"; Eitan Green's "It All Begins at Sea"; Igal Burstyn's "Out of the Blue"; Omri Givon's "Seven Minutes in Heaven"; and Shmuel Beru's "Zrubavel."

The...

Hounsou Tackles Thulsa Doom: Djimon Hounsou has partnered with Dynamite Entertainment to star in and produce a bigscreen feature about immortal sorcerer Thulsa Doom, a central figure in the Conan the Barbarian and Kull comicbooks. Doom was portrayed by James Earl Jones in 1982's Conan the Barbarian. Planned pic will showcase the origins of the flawed hero and show how his road to hell was paved with good intentions. [Variety] Producers team for Papillon Redo: New Spanish production shingle Atlantia Canarias is teaming with L.A. producers Branko Lustig and John Kelly for a remake of the Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman starrer Papillon. Currently in the earliest stage of development, with no screenwriter or director attached, Papillon will shoot in English on a budget of about $90 million, Lustig said. As someone that thinks Papillon is the best McQueen movie (yup, better than Bullitt, Magnificent Seven, etc.) I think this is a Horrible idea.

This review was written for the theatrical release of "American Gangster".The title is catchy but misleading. Frank Lucas was less an "American Gangster" than an original Old Gangster in sable, a caricature in the tradition of '70s blaxploitation flicks.

He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.

So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from "The Godfather" and "Serpico" to "Superfly" and "Shaft". But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe ("A Good Year") and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's "Training Day".

Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in "Shaft", and Lawrence Fishburne twice in "The Cotton Club" and "Hoodlum".) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.

Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.

Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.

It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.

Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.

Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.

In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.

If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as "The Godfather" and "Serpico" contain iconic scenes and sequences. "American Gangster" contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.

The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So "American Gangster" finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.

AMERICAN GANGSTER

Universal

Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production

Credits:

Director: Ridley Scott

Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian

Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson

Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott

Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan

Director of photography: Harris Savides

Production designer: Arthur Max

Music: Marc Streitenfeld

Costume designer: Janty Yates

Editor: Pietro Scalia

Cast:

Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington

Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe

Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor

Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin

Eva: Lymari Nadal

Lou: Ted Levine

Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith

Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes

Moses Jones: RZA

Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.

Dominic: Armand Assante

Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee

Running time -- 157 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

The title is catchy but misleading. Frank Lucas was less an American Gangster than an original Old Gangster in sable, a caricature in the tradition of '70s blaxploitation flicks.

He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.

So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from The Godfather and Serpico to Superfly and Shaft. But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe (A Good Year) and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's Training Day.

Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in Shaft, and Lawrence Fishburne twice in The Cotton Club and Hoodlum.) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.

Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.

Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.

It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.

Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.

Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.

In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.

If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as The Godfather and Serpico contain iconic scenes and sequences. American Gangster contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.

The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So American Gangster finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.

AMERICAN GANGSTER

Universal

Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production

Credits:

Director: Ridley Scott

Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian

Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson

Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott

Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan

Director of photography: Harris Savides

Production designer: Arthur Max

Music: Marc Streitenfeld

Costume designer: Janty Yates

Editor: Pietro Scalia

Cast:

Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington

Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe

Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor

Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin

Eva: Lymari Nadal

Lou: Ted Levine

Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith

Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes

Moses Jones: RZA

Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.

Dominic: Armand Assante

Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee

Running time -- 157 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

Kingdom of Heaven is probably about as good a movie as anyone could make about the Crusades. This was a ghastly though vitally important stretch of history when Western civilization, whipped up by religious fervor and bitter poverty, confronted the Muslim world with both the sword and cultural arrogance.

Director Ridley Scott and writer William Monahan have managed to put a positive spin on that tragic swath of history in an epic entertainment that seeks and actually finds honor, romance and spiritual redemption amid the slaughter. Brilliantly cast and produced -- hallmarks of Ridley Scott films -- Kingdom fulfills the requirements of grand-scale moviemaking while serving as a timely reminder that in the conflict between Christianity and Islam it was the Christians who picked the first fight.

Boxoffice response should be solid domestically with even greater ticket sales coming from overseas. The Fox release is unlikely to trigger protests from Islamic groups as the main quarrel is between Christians with widely differing agendas. When they appear at all, the Arabs, then called Saracens by Westerners, are portrayed as honorable and brave. They are also two-dimensional but two out of three isn't bad.

Monahan's screenplay traces the astonishing and improbable ascendance of a French blacksmith, unloved by God -- or so he believes -- who in short order finds himself the sole defender of the Holy City of Jerusalem against a vast Saracen army led by legendary Muslim figure Saladin.

Orlando Bloom plays this hero named Balian, who has just buried a wife, a suicide following the death of their infant son, in France in 1184. Then along comes a Crusader, Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson), on a recruiting mission back home. Godfrey abruptly declares himself to be Balian's father and wants him to come away with him to the Holy Land to create his life anew.

This promise of rebirth and forgiveness lies at the heart of the story the film wants to tell. Indeed much contemporary thinking has been transposed on the 12th century, but then how else to make the Crusades relevant or even palatable to modern audiences?

Kingdom takes place during the reign in Jerusalem of a Christian king, Baldwin IV, who forged a fragile peace to keep Saladin's army at bay and permit all three monotheistic religions, the Christians, Muslims and Jews, to worship within city walls. Jerusalem, Godfrey declares to his son, is a true kingdom of heaven -- "a kingdom of conscience, a kingdom of peace." Here a peasant can reinvent himself as a knight by swearing allegiance to noble ideals such as "speak the truth," "safeguard the helpless" and "do no wrong." Thus can a peasant wind up with a very nice piece of property along the road to Jerusalem so long as he keeps it safe for all pilgrims.

Initially, the surly and Godless Balian rejects his father's offer. Then the movie indulges in its strangest and most off-putting episode. Balian brutally slays a village priest, whose minor sin is the theft of a crucifix from the corpse of Balian's wife. He then runs to papa and his rag-tag followers for protection. The village police come a-calling, a slash-and-stab battle ensues and nearly everyone winds up dead and dad is mortally wounded. Not a great beginning in the nobility and righteousness business.

Dad lasts as far as Messina, gateway for the Holy Land, where he dubs his son a knight. Balian then falls under the not always watchful care of his dad's Hospitaler (David Thewlis), a kind of knight-confessor. A shipwreck and deadly duel precede Balian's entry into Jerusalem, where his father's knights conveniently recognize his dad's sword and swear fealty to the son.

Balian takes one look at his dad's acreage outside town and notices there is no water. So he digs a well and everyone is happy about the new master. You mean nobody thought to dig a well in the desert before this peasant came along?

Balian quickly becomes a political insider within the Christian rulers of the Holy City. Young king Baldwin is dying of leprosy so hideous he hides his face behind a silver mask. His beautiful sister Sibylla (French actress Eva Green) is unhappily married to a thug, Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas), who waits in the wings to assume the throne. Meanwhile, Guy plots with red-headed maniac Reynald of Chatillon (Brendan Gleeson) to stir up trouble among the Saracens to create a pretext for war.

The king's advisor Tiberias (Jeremy Irons) strives unsuccessfully to calm the situation as events spin out of control with Balian's affair with Sibylla, the king's death and, well, you know things never go right in the Middle East.

The crux the matter is Balian's refusal to allow Baldwin to remove Guy from the picture so Balian can marry his sister and peacefully rule the city after the king's passing. This is a kingdom of conscience, remember, and apparently Balian's knightly conscience will not allow the killing of a tyrant but is willing to countenance the deaths of thousands and the fall of Christianity in Jerusalem that results from his decision.

The film wisely avoids showing the slaughter of Guy's army by forces lead by Saladin (Syrian film star and director Ghassan Massoud). The film's focus is the siege of Jerusalem and Balian's defense of the city against impossible odds through strategic guile. This is a truly memorable sequence of military planning and action involving huge, mobile engines that hurl heavy rocks against the walls, a sky filled with deadly arrows, burning pitch and sulfur poured on attackers and vicious hand-to-hand combat. It is, in Balian's words, "a fight for the people's safety and freedom," freedom being a relative term in the 12th century.

There are no false notes among the cast. Bloom makes a worthy hero, neither overplaying his hand nor striving to rob the movie of its ensemble quality. Green is suitably enigmatic and sultry, but the script falls to flesh out her character. Irons and Thewlis are British thespians playing wise counselors in a period drama as only British thespians can. Csokas and Gleeson are glorious punks without a scintilla of moral compunction or religious fervor in their greedy, blood-thirty grabs for power. In fleeting moments, Neeson and Massoud play battle-scared, weary warriors with comforting aplomb.

Harry Gregson-Williams' music contains nice Eastern touches but can be a tad aggressive on occasions. Arthur Max's set designs (abetted by CGI) create a finely detailed Holy City and its environs while John Mathieson's cinematography goes in for an appealingly darker palette than epics usually get. The battle sequences are among the best in recent memory -- which says a lot, not only for their intensity but their restraint from exploitative gore.

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

A Scott Free production

Credits:

Director/producer: Ridley Scott

Writer: William Monahan

Executive producers: Branko Lustig, Lisa Ellzey, Terry Needham

Director of photography: John Mathieson

Production designer: Arthur Max

Music: Harry Gregson-Williams

Costumes: Janty Yates

Editor: Dody Dorn

Cast:

Balian: Orlando Bloom

Sibylla: Eva Green

Tiberias: Jeremy Irons

Hospitaler: David Thewlis

Reynald de Chatillon: Brendan Gleeson

Guy de Lusignan: Marton Csokas

Godfrey of Ibelin: Liam Neeson

Saladin: Ghassan Massoud

MPAA rating: R

Running time -- 144 minutes...

Jeremy Irons has made his way to Kingdom of Heaven for helmer Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox. Irons joins a cast that includes Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Eva Green, Marton Csokas, David Thewlis and Brendan Gleeson. Set in 12th century Europe and the Far East, the William Monahan-penned script revolves around a young peasant (Bloom), who becomes a knight, saves a kingdom and falls in love with a princess (Green) during the crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries. Irons will play Tiberias. Scott is producing through his Fox-based Scott Free Prods., with Branko Lustig serving as an executive producer. At Scott Free, the project is being overseen by Lisa Ellzey. At the studio, TCF topper Hutch Parker is overseeing. Shooting in Spain and Morocco, the film started lensing Monday. The Academy Award-winning Irons is repped by CAA. His recent credits include Callas Forever, And Now ... Ladies and Gentlemen, Last Call and the upcoming Being Julia.

Orlando Bloom, hot off his recent success in a trio of epic films, has signed on for the lead role in director Ridley Scott's period epic Kingdom of Heaven for 20th Century Fox. In the story set in 12th century Europe and the exotic Far East, Bloom will star as a young peasant who becomes a knight, saves a kingdom and falls in love with a princess. The film was penned by William Monahan and is being produced by Scott through his Fox-based Scott Free production banner. Branko Lustig is executive producing the project, which has a January production start date planned and will shoot in Morocco.

ER star Goran Visnjic has been awarded $5,000 in libel damages from a Croatian magazine. The actor - who was born in Croatia - sued Globus magazine after they claimed Visnjic and his wife were living in a Los Angeles mansion without paying any rent. The article, titled Secret Of The 1.5 Million Dollar Villa also accused the star of using family ties to get his role as Doctor Luka Kovac on ER. The court concluded the allegations were false, partly as a result of rent receipts Visnjic produced in evidence. It was also accepted that Visnjic got his breakthrough ER role thanks to hard work and not to any connection with Hollywood producer Branko Lustig.

The wait has been worth it. DreamWorks Pictures has finally launched its first movie, and it's a smartly calibrated, mainstream entertainment.

Starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman as a perfectly mismatched duo fighting world terrorism, "The Peacemaker" will certainly be a big moneymaker this fall on the domestic front, and down the line it should score winning international numbers and counter this country's sorry trade deficits.

Wired around the current, post-Cold War hot plot -- renegade terrorists hijack nuclear missiles within a dysfunctional Russia -- "The Peacemaker" is the cineplex equivalent of the airport paperback novel, Robert Ludlum's side of the rack. It's a crafty pasting of front-page reality, including the horrors in Bosnia, on top of well-proven story formulas. And it's torqued by the battling banter between Clooney and Kidman.

In screenwriter Michael Schiffer's complex but tightly compacted scenario, Clooney and Kidman step out in a variation of the battling-buddy movie. Except for the fact that they aren't exactly buddies: she's Dr. Julia Kelly, a straight-laced nuclear scientist and acting head of the White House Nuclear Smuggling Group, and he's Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe, an Army Special Intelligence officer. When a trainload of nuclear warheads is hijacked by terrorists in the Russian boonies, they're paired up to track down the terrorists before they can, say, deliver the nukes to Iran or, for instance, blow up the U.N. building. And, the clock is not just ticking, it's going fast-forward.

Although it may not beat out "L.A. Confidential" for the most subplots in a movie award, "The Peacemaker" is crammed with a heavy story-load, from geopolitics to the psychology of blue-collar women who have risen to the top of a male-dominated profession. Fortunately, Schiffer and director Mimi Leder don't allow the story to jam up, or for that matter, even slow down. Unfortunately, this full-throttle surge is somewhat akin to the traveler who doesn't stop to smell the roses along the way.

The best stuff is off the beaten plot: It's the human stuff, not the braininess of the narrative or the gadgetry of the effects, that's the highlight. In short, the movie's most refreshing and memorable moments involve the interplay between the loosey-goosey intelligence officer and the by-the-book nuclear scientist.

To be sure, even a movie as professionally scoped and intricately blueprinted as this one would fall flat if the chemistry between the leads wasn't there. And, Clooney, with his salt-and-pepper flair and seat-of-his-pants daring, is a believable and wonderfully appealing action hero.

Studio executives who are familiar with films before 1985 might recall a chap named Cary Grant who outwitted and outscrambled the bad guys in such winners as "North by Northwest" and didn't need a membership at Gold's Gym to do it.

Although his constant head tilting has become somewhat of a distraction, Clooney's suave edginess brings a welcome verve to a genre in need of tone rather than bulk. Similarly, Kidman's intelligent and appealing performance as, essentially, Clooney's brainy straightwoman, is refreshingly strong-spirited. She has the presence and confidence that makes one recall the best of strong-woman performers -- Rosalind Russell types who could dish it out and take it, no punches pulled.

Overall, Clooney and Kidman make an excellent pairing and could generate a franchise for DreamWorks, particularly if their battling banter is not shackled by overly busy plotting. Think William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Supporting players are well-selected and generally personalize some standard-issue roles. Armin Mueller-Stahl is particularly outstanding as an old-school Cold Warrior, and Marcel Iures remarkably manages to convey his terrorist character's psychology not in simplistic black-and-white tones but rather in the cracks of credible human frailties.

Technically, the film's Byzantine plotting is complemented by an appropriately murky look; credit cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann for the threatening tones. Editor David Rosenbloom's kinetic cuts bring thrust to the loaded story, while Hans Zimmer's stentorian music is a terrific blast in the great full-horned tradition of "The Guns of Navarone".

THE PEACEMAKER

DreamWorks Pictures

A Mimi Leder film

Producers:Walter Parkes, Branko Lustig

Director:Mimi Leder

Screenwriter:Michael Schiffer

Executive producers:Michael Grillo, Laurie MacDonald

Director of photography:Dietrich Lohmann

Production designer:Leslie Dilley

Editor:David Rosenbloom

Co-executive producer:John Wells

Costume designer:Shelley Komarov

Music:Hans Zimmer

Co-producers :Pat Kehoe, Leslie Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn

Casting:Risa Bramon Garcia, Randi Hiller

Visual effects supervisor:Michael Backes

Second unit director:Conrad E. Palmisano

Color/stereo

Cast:

Thomas Devoe:George Clooney

Julia Kelly:Nicole Kidman

Dusan Gavrich:Marcel Iures

Alexander Kodoroff:Alexander Baluev

Vlado Mirich:Rene Medvesek

Hamilton:Gary Werntz

Ken:Randall Batinkoff

General Garnett:Jim Haynie

Shummaker:Alexander Strobele

Appleton:Holt McCallany

CPN Beach:Michael Boatman

Senator Bevens:Joan Copeland

Santiago:Carlos Gomez

Dimitri Vertikoff:Armin Mueller-Stahl

Running time -- 122 minutes

MPAA rating: R...