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In a perfect world, the Oscars would be a true celebration of everything cinema accomplished the previous year. No one should listen to the naysayers who say that cinema is filled with nothing but remakes and sequels. Anyone who says that isn't a serious person and probably only goes to the theater twice a year anyway. If you look closely enough, you'll find plenty of amazing films that speak to the human condition or comment on modern societal ills in an entertaining way. There are always movies to celebrate, and the Academy Awards should ideally honor all those.

Sadly, the Oscars are often their own worst enemy. Cinephiles just want to have fun during this event, but the ceremony frequently shoots itself in the foot by pandering to people who don't even like movies and eliminating movie clips even though We All Want To See The Performances That Were Nominated.

Lo, the enduring miracle of the film awards year. Just when things begin to look hopeless—and it was looking pretty bleak a month ago—intriguing, maybe even watchable, prospects suddenly sprout. The movies are like Osiris, that old Egyptian resurrection god: You just can’t keep ‘em down.

As August arrives, more than a few adult viewers, unattuned to the ongoing fantasy-and-animation boom, are now peeking around the corner at Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Live origins story. The film was scheduled last week by Columbia Pictures for release on Oct. 11—the 49th anniversary of NBC’s first SNL broadcast, back in 1975.

As historical moments go, that may or may not impress the film Academy’s growing body of foreign-based Oscar voters. But for the domestic crowd, especially those in upper age brackets, the birth of an American comedy phenomenon, still alive some five decades later, is compelling.

Bob Newhart, the iconic comedian and actor who launched a more than six-decade run in show business in 1960 with his introduction of a deadpan, stammering everyman character whose popularity he rode well into his 80’s with a Grammy-winning comedy album and a pair of beloved Emmy-nominated sitcoms, is dead. He was 94 and passed away at his home on Thursday following a short illness. His longtime publicist Jerry Digney announced his death in a press release.

Newhart burst on the scene in 1960 with his album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” the first comedy album ever to top the Billboard charts. It won three Grammy Awards in ’61, including Album of the Year, Spoken-Word Comedy Album and New Artist. Newhart’s first two albums of comedy monologues (the second called “The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!”) in fact held Billboard’s top two spots simultaneously, a rare feat.

SEECelebrity Deaths 2024: In Memoriam...

Bob Newhart, the genteel but sharply satirical comic whose TV series “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” were huge hits throughout the 1970s and ’80s, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 94.

Newhart’s publicist Jerry Digney said he died after a series of short illnesses.

Newhart was also known to younger audiences as Papa Elf in the 2003 Christmas classic “Elf,” his guest spots on “The Big Bang Theory” and most recently appeared in three episodes of “Young Sheldon.”

“The Big Bang Theory” creator Chuck Lorre remembered Newhart, saying in a statement, “For years I begged Bob to appear on one of my shows. He always said no. But then he fell in love with ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and said yes – with two provisions. One: his character had to have an arc that spanned several episodes. And two: he wanted to win an Emmy. We delivered on both. I...

Bob Newhart, the beloved stand-up performer whose droll, deadpan humor showcased on two critically acclaimed CBS sitcoms vaulted him into the ranks of history’s greatest comedians, died Thursday morning. He was 94.

The Chicago legend, who won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best new artist for his 1960 breakthrough record, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, died at his Los Angeles home after a series of short illnesses, his longtime publicist, Jerry Digney, announced.

The former accountant famously went without an Emmy Award until 2013, when he finally was given one for guest-starring as Arthur Jeffries (alias Professor Proton, former host of a children’s science show) on CBS’ The Big Bang Theory.

In 1972, Mtm Enterprises cast the modest comic as clinical psychologist Bob Hartley, who practiced in the real-life Newhart’s favorite burg, Chicago. The Bob Newhart Show would become one of the most popular sitcoms of all time,...

It may possess all the telltale markings of standard-issue fall film fest audience awards fodder, but Ezra, about an 11-year-old who’s unmistakably on the spectrum, earns its crowd-hugging stripes legitimately thanks to its superb ensemble and sensitive direction that never gets in the way of its knowing script.

Bobby Cannavale puts it all on the screen as a New Jersey stand-up comic who constantly butts heads with his ex-wife (Rose Byrne) over the best way of raising their autistic son (impressive newcomer William A. Fitzgerald), while also butting heads with his uncommunicative dad (Robert De Niro).

But even a charismatic cast could only carry this kind of scenario so far if it hadn’t been for a tender screenplay by Tony Spiridakis, informed by the challenges of rearing his own, now 24-year-old, neurodivergent son, and an assured yet restrained guiding hand from actor-director Goldwyn. Whether or not it emerges as a festival prize contender,...

Richard Pryor did more than reinvent comedy, he changed culture, and not only in America. The five-time Grammy Award-winner, actor, writer, director, and standup icon underwent a series of self-discoveries which he revealed to audiences from the inside out long before co-writing Blazing Saddles, and conquering every aspect of showbiz. He did it without compromise. Listeners can study the growing genius of his most transformative years, 1968 through 1973, on newly remastered vinyl reissues of Pryor’s early live albums released through Stand Up! Records along with Omnivore Records and Pryor’s production company Indigo. Richard Pryor (1968), ‘Craps’ (After Hours) (1971), and the vinyl debut of Live At The Comedy Store, 1973, along with the bonus material, shows the artist’s evolution into a revolutionary force.

As the recordings will attest, Richard Pryor is his own theater troupe. Even without the visuals, we can visualize him inhabiting each and every character. He plays them with love,...

Perry Cross, who served as Johnny Carson’s first producer on The Tonight Show before he exited to run an ABC program hosted by Jerry Lewis that came and went after 13 episodes, has died. He was 95.

Cross died March 9 of kidney cancer at a hospital in Los Angeles, his son, Larry Cross, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Cross started out producing Ernie Kovacs’ CBS weekday morning show in 1952 and also worked on The Red Skelton Hour, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, The Soupy Sales Show, Life With Linkletter, The Garry Moore Show and several Jonathan Winters live specials during his career.

Cross had been producing The Tonight Show in the immediate aftermath of host Jack Paar’s departure on March 30, 1962, guiding the NBC program in Hollywood and New York that featured guest hosts for six months until Carson took over.

NBC wanted Cross to be Carson’s producer,...

If you’re in the mood for a good laugh, you must check out our list of the 10 best stand-up specials of all time. These specials will have you rolling on the floor with laughter. From classic comedians like George Carlin, Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, and Eddie Murphy to more modern comics like Louis Ck and Bill Burr, there is something for everyone on this list. So grab a friend, dim the lights, and prepare to be entertained!

One of the best things about stand-up comedy is that it’s so diverse. You can find something to make you laugh no matter what your sense of humor is like. Whether you prefer observational humor, dark humor, or absurdist comedy, there’s sure to be a special that will tickle your funny bone.

Stand-up comedy has also been around for a long time. It dates back to the 1950s when comics...

Henry Silva, who starred in Johnny Cool, fought Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate and was one of Sinatra’s fellow thieves in Ocean’s 11, among dozens of screen roles spanning a half-century, died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA. He was 95.

An actor whose distinctive face often led to typecasting as the heavy, his 130-plus film and TV credits also include The Bravados, starring Gregory Peck (1958); Cinderfella, with Jerry Lewis (1960); the Rat Pack-led Western Sergeants 3 (1962); Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979); Love and Bullets with Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Rod Steiger (1979); the Burt Reynolds pics Sharky’s Machine (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1982); Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990); Steven Seagal’s first film Above the Law (1988); and Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai with Forest Whitaker (1999).

Along with the title role opposite Elizabeth Montgomery in Johnny Cool...

Producers of this Monday’s Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony have some difficult decisions to make about who to honor during the emotional In Memoriam segment. John Legend will perform “Pieces,” a new song he has written for the tribute. Kenan Thompson will host the 2022 Emmys for NBC at 8 p.m. Et; 5 p.m. Pt.

Our list below includes almost 100 people who made a strong contribution to television and have died since mid-September of 2021 following the previous Emmys ceremony. Only about 40-45 of these people will probably be in the video segment. Certain to be featured will be TV Academy Hall of Fame members actress Betty White and director Jay Sandrich.Other prominent names almost certainly chosen are: Mary Alice (acting winner), Louie Anderson (acting winner), James Caan (acting nominee), Anne Heche (acting winner), Howard Hesseman (acting nominee), William Hurt (acting nominee), Gregory Itzin (acting nominee), Ray Liotta (acting winner), Burt Metcalfe...

Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio have created the extreme fan-boy documentary of counterculture comedian George Carlin’s life, times and personal struggles. It’s jam-packed with juicy bits, particularly highlights of Carlin’s memorable routines like his timeless riff on environmental doomsayers: for decades, he joked that “the planet is fine,” people not so much (“the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas”). Hilarious, driven, able to change with the times, obscene, the wiry Irish Catholic New Yorker appeared 130 times on Johnny Carson over a fifty year career, and inspired comedians from Chris Rock to Stephen Colbert – and, of course, Apatow.

Born in Manhattan in 1937 and dead from long-term cardiac problems in Hollywood in 2008, Carlin gets the behind-the-music treatment. His heavy-handed father was a loquacious drunk. The W.C. Fields lookalike beat George’s older brother Patrick (also featured in the doc); their battered mother stole...

At Sunday’s WGA Awards, late-night host, comedian and writer Dick Cavett received the Evelyn F. Burkey Award, speaking in his acceptance speech about what writing means to him.

“Writing is one of the great bastions of civilizations. It’s a branch of the art that needs preserving,” he said in the pre-taped segment, “and I thought I’d try to get through this without using the word ‘honor,’ but this is an honor.”

The honoree, who hosted multiple iterations of The Dick Cavett Show over the course of almost two decades, also fondly recalled time spent with the innumerable literary icons that graced his show. “I have been lucky to spend time with some of the most colorful, wonderful people in this county and the world, and they were writers. Ms. Burkey, whose name is on this award, was a real character. She’s done millions of good things for writers,...

Dick Cavett has been named as the recipient of Writers Guild of America, East’s Evelyn F. Burkey Award for 2022. Late Night’s Seth Meyers will present the late night host, comedian and writer with the honor at the virtual WGA Awards ceremony taking place on March 20.

The award, recognizing someone who has brought honor and dignity to writers, was established in 1978 to honor Burkey, who dedicated her professional life to supporting writers, helping to create the Writers Guild of America, East in 1954, and serving as its executive director until her retirement in 1972. Past recipients include James Schamus, Edward Albee, Walter Bernstein, Joan Didion, Claire Labine, Walter Cronkite, Arthur Miller, Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese.

“Thank you to the Writers Guild of America, East for honoring me with the Evelyn F. Burkey Award,” said Cavett. “I am very grateful to receive this distinguished award from my union and want to thank all the people,...

Sunday’s SAG Awards ceremony will return to its normal two-hour live format on TNT and TBS. One of the highlights each year is the special In Memoriam segment. It’s been a particularly rough year with over 100 deaths of prominent actors and actresses who were likely members of SAG/AFTRA. Show producers typically are able to include approximately 40-50 people in a tribute. The 2021 segment saluted 55 people because they had responsibility for 14 months instead of 12.

Among that group will certainly be previous SAG president Ed Asner, who was also a life achievement award recipient. That honorary award was also presented to Sidney Poitier and Betty White, who both died this past year.

SEECelebrity Deaths 2022: In Memoriam Gallery

Who else might be featured in the 2022 tribute? Look for Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis, Oscar nominees Ned Beatty, Peter Bogdanovich and Dean Stockwell, plus Emmy champs Louie Anderson, Michael Constantine, Charles Grodin,...

Our first episode back in the studio! Robert Weide discusses a few of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)

Mother Night (1996)

Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011)

Mort Sahl: The Loyal Opposition (1989)

Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth (1998)

Marx Brothers in a Nutshell (1982)

W.C. Fields: Straight Up (1986)

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Mary Poppins (1964)

The French Connection (1971) – Dennis Lehane’s trailer commentary, Mark Pellington’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Magnificent Seven (1960) – Jesus Treviño’s trailer commentary

The Godfather (1972) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Exorcist (1973) – Oren Peli’s trailer commentary

Patton (1970) – Rod Lurie’s trailer commentary

Mash (1970)

Short Cuts (1993) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Lenny...

Editor’s Note: On Nov. 14, 2005, Variety published the following interview with Mort Sahl. The revolutionary comedian, who died on Oct. 26, provided an unfiltered view on the entertainment industry, from Depression-era cinema and the Hollywood blacklist to how current films tackle race, politics and culture.

For half of the last century and on into the next one, Mort Sahl, 78, has been the comedic conscience of America. Since 1968, when he debuted at San Francisco’s legendary Hungry i nightclub, he’s been walking onstage in his trademark V-neck sweater, a newspaper tucked under his arm, serving notice to every pundit and politician from Eisenhower through Bush that there was nowhere to hide.

He was the original truth-teller, pioneering a new kind of stand-up — barbed bipartisan political humor — paving the way for everyone from Lenny Bruce to Woody Allen to Chris Rock.

In 1958, he co-hosted the Oscars. In 1960, Time magazine put him on the cover,...

Mort Sahl, the acerbic comic whose pioneering style paved the way for such boundary-breaking comedians as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin, died Tuesday at his home in Mill Valley, CA. He was 94.

A friend confirmed his death to The New York Times.

Showbiz & Media Figures We’ve Lost In 2021 – Photo Gallery

Known for his topical social commentary, he boldly skewered politicians and others in a harsh but clean stand-up act. He hosted the first Grammy Awards in 1959, co-hosted the 1959 Academy Awards and a year later became the first comedian featured to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. He also guest-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson multiple times during the 1960s.

Born on May 11, 1927, in Montreal, Sahl’s family moved to Los Angeles when he was a child. After a stint in the Air Force, he graduated from USC in 1950. By the mid-’50s he was doing stand-up,...

Mort Sahl, a trailblazing political satirist whose biting wit and uncompromising intellect broadened the world of conventional standup comedy, died Tuesday in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 94.

The New York Times confirmed his death with his friend, Lucy Mercer.

In 1953, when Sahl first appeared at the Hungry i, a San Francisco folk singer’s hangout, he was an unknown with little stage experience. But his rapid-fire monologues about politics, social trends and fads quickly earned him the nickname “Rebel Without a Pause.”

“The three great geniuses of the period were Nichols and May, Jonathan Winters and Mort Sahl,” Woody Allen told New York magazine in 2008. Allen credited Sahl’s intellectual brand of humor for getting him into comedy. “He was the best thing I ever saw,” Allen said in another interview. “He totally restructured comedy. He changed the rhythm of the jokes.”

In 2011, his live 1955 recording “Mort Sahl at Sunset...

Mort Sahl, the caustic, kinetic stand-up comedian of the late 1950s and early ’60s whose unflinching bipartisan barbs defined political satire for a generation of Americans, has died. He was 94.

Sahl, described as “Will Rogers with fangs” by Time on Aug. 15, 1960, when he made history as the first stand-up to be featured on the magazine’s cover, died Tuesday at his home in Mill Valley, California, his friend told The New York Times.

Starting with his first performance in 1953 at the famed hungry i nightclub in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, Sahl fearlessly ridiculed every U.S. president from Dwight D. Eisenhower (“Kennedy and the ...

Mort Sahl, the caustic, kinetic stand-up comedian of the late 1950s and early ’60s whose unflinching bipartisan barbs defined political satire for a generation of Americans, has died. He was 94.

Sahl, described as “Will Rogers with fangs” by Time on Aug. 15, 1960, when he made history as the first stand-up to be featured on the magazine’s cover, died Tuesday at his home in Mill Valley, California, his friend told The New York Times.

Starting with his first performance in 1953 at the famed hungry i nightclub in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, Sahl fearlessly ridiculed every U.S. president from Dwight D. Eisenhower (“Kennedy and the ...

Legendary movie star, Last Call‘s Bruce Dern, joins Josh and Joe to discuss a few of his favorite movies and moments.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Cowboys (1972)

Last Call (2021)

Silent Running (1972)

The Long Goodbye (1973)

The Reivers (1969)

The War Wagon (1967)

Support Your Local Sheriff (1969)

The Shootist (1976)

Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949)

Wild River (1960)

Viva Zapata (1952)

Castle Keep (1969)

The Big Knife (1955)

Attack (1956)

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Suspicion (1941)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Great Gatsby (1974)

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

Ben-Hur (1959)

The Trial (1962)

Great Expectations (1946)

The Sound Barrier (1952)

Oliver Twist (1948)

The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)

Rko 281 (1999)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Mank (2020)

The Chase (1966)

The Formula (1980)

Shine (1996)

All That Jazz (1979)

A Decade Under The Influence (2003)

Shane (1953)

The Sons Of Katie Elder (1965)

The King Of Marvin Gardens (1972)

Deliverance (1972)

Nebraska (2013)

Twixt (2011)

The ’Burbs (1989)

About Schmidt (2002)

Sideways (2004)

The Descendants (2011)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Charade (1963)

The Truth About Charlie...

Gary Gunas, executive producer of such Broadway musicals as The Who’s Tommy, Jekyll & Hyde and Ragtime, died today of pancreatic cancer at his home in London. He was 73.

His death was announced by his husband Bill Rosenfield.

Born in Manchester, Ct, Gunas began his career Off Broadway in 1969 as an apprentice company manager for the musical Promenade. In the 1970s he shifted to Broadway productions and tours, working in the office of Marvin A. Krauss Associates as a company manager, associate Gm and eventually general manager on many shows including Godspell, American Buffalo, Beatlemania, Dancin’, Woman of the Year, Dreamgirls and Best Musical Tony winner La Cage aux Folles, as well as notable revivals of Gypsy, starring Angela Lansbury; King Richard III, starring Al Pacino; and Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman.

During that time period, Gunas also general managed stage performances by such performers as Peter Allen,...

In “Robin’s Wish,” a documentary about the last days of Robin Williams, the comedian’s widow, Susan Schneider Williams, recalls one of the first times that she could tell something was seriously off. Robin called her from Vancouver, where he was shooting the third “Night at the Museum” film, and he couldn’t calm himself down. He was having a panic attack over the fact that he couldn’t remember his lines; at times, he was having trouble remembering even one line of dialogue. That wasn’t a problem he’d ever had before, and given that he was one of the most mentally nimble people ever created, you can see how disturbing this might have been. Shawn Levy, the “Night at the Museum” director, recalls Robin telling him, “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not me anymore.” His mind, says Levy, “was not firing at the same speed.

Orson Bean, whose subtle wit made him a staple on television in the 1950s and 1960s, was killed in a pedestrian traffic accident Friday in Venice, Calif. He was 91 and his death was confirmed by the Los Angeles County coroner.

Bean was struck by a car and killed while crossing Venice Boulevard in Venice at 7:35 Pm. A “car coming westbound did not see him and clipped him,” Los Angeles Police Department Captain Brian Wendling told ABC7.

A second driver, who “was distracted by people trying to slow him down” then struck Bean, Wendling said.

Bean was crossing the busy street to get to the Venice Resident Theatre. His wife of 27 years, actress Alley Mills, was reportedly already at the location.

Both drivers remained at the scene and cooperated with police. Investigators have initially said they believe the crash was an accident.

Many remember Bean from his appearances on talk shows,...

Sixty prominent citizens are marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day by calling for new investigations into the assassinations of 4 men -- assassinations that changed the world -- John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The group -- The Truth and Reconciliation Committee (Trc) -- believes all 4 assassinations were the result of conspiracies that were covered up by the government. Members of Trc include Oliver Stone, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen,...

On a sunny late August day in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, extras on Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino’s Amazon series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, are dressed in tweed and wool winter suits, overcoats and dresses, suitable for going holiday shopping in late ‘50s Midtown Manhattan.

It’s the next-to-last day of shooting on the series about a housewife who turns to standup comedy following an unexpected upheaval in her home life. The show has leased out an old bank and transformed it into the opulent cosmetics section of the B. Altman department store from that era. A downpour scuttled an outdoor scene from the night before, so there's a lot of scrambling to get the schedule back on track. But since the business of New York can't be disrupted, the extras mingle with the diners at the pizzeria next door, making for an odd mix of Manhattan's elegant past and Brooklyn's gentrified present.

This certainly isn't the...

Shelly Berman—who helped transform stand-up comedy from a string of Borscht Belt-ready gags toward observational monologues, and did so while sitting down—has died at the age of 92. Berman broke out in the late ’50s alongside a new generation of neurotically investigative satirists like Mort Sahl, Bob Newhart, and…

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Shelley Berman, Grammy winning and Emmy-nominated actor and comedian, later known for playing Larry David’s dad on Curb Your Enthusiasm, has died. Berman died early Friday morning of complications from Alzheimer’s at his home in Bell Canyon, CA with Sarah, his wife of 70 years, by his side, his publicist Glenn Schwartz confirmed. He was 92. Often seated on a stool, sometimes pretending to have a telephone in his hand, Berman, along with Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, was a…...

Now as I was young and fuzzy, mired in what we were assured was a university education, just beginning to pull my head out of my… Okay, look – no need for vulgarity here. Let’s leave it at this: I was pulling my head from the sand and becoming aware of kinds of culture other than what I was being fed to us by radio and movies (that Bob Hope! What a stitch!) and that alien entity in the living room we called “the teevee” or “the television” or simply “the set.”

(No need for further elaboration: we had only two sets, the one in the living room and the one Mom kept tucked away somewhere and that we saw only on the most festive of occasions, such as Christmas and the like, Oh, and full disclosure; I’m not sure we ever really had a holiday meal on the family set.

“Heavenly shades of night are falling…it’s twilight time”, and we’re not talking about sparkly teen vampires. No, those lyrics from the Platters golden oldie could very well be used as the theme for this movie, and perhaps its iconic lead actor. As many “golden age” film stars reach their “golden years”, they often look toward a project that may be the perfect coda to their long career, maybe a farewell to their screen persona. Hey wouldn’t you rather ride into the sunset with The Shootist (as John Wayne did) than headline a flick called Trog ( Joan Crawford’s finale’)? Perhaps this is the case for fabled film funny man Jerry Lewis. At the tail end of the “golden age” of Hollywood (1948), he and then partner Dean Martin ruled the box office for eight years. After their split, Jerry had even greater success as a solo for a good twelve years,...

Jerry Lewis turned 90 in March. Many fans, me included, wished hard to see this legendary comedian and virtuoso filmmaker cut loose on screen one more time. Max Rose doesn't grant that wish. For starters, his first film in 20 years is not a comedy — it's a sober, sad-eyed study of an old man on the ropes. Max, a former jazz pianist who never quite made it, sits alone in a house haunted by memories, mostly of his wife Eva (the great Claire Bloom) who has just died. At her funeral, his eulogy is tortured,...

Just like that, it’s fall already. The first round of films fresh out of Tiff and Venice and Telluride are making their ways to theaters and living rooms nationwide. And now, we enter the last third of the year, with plenty of titles to be excited about. Below, you’ll see every planned theatrical release for the month of September, separated out into films with wide runs and limited ones. (Synopses are provided by festivals and distributors.)

Each week, we’ll give you an update with more specific information on where these films are playing. In the meantime, be sure to check our calendar page, where we’ll update releases for the rest of the year. Happy watching!

Week of September 2 Wide

Morgan

Director: Luke Scott

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Boyd Holbrook, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kate Mara, Michelle Yeoh, Paul Giamatti, Rose Leslie, Toby Jones

Synopsis: A corporate troubleshooter is sent to a remote,...

A film centering on octogenarians isn’t an easy sell. Not even when you get a legend like Jerry Lewis to come out of retirement to deliver his first starring role in twenty years. So you have to give Daniel Noah credit — he got it done. And after a few years producing some effective genre films with his shingle SpectreVision, Max Rose also becomes a return for him to the director’s chair. He admits that he couldn’t see anyone else doing the material justice, the script itself based in part on the struggles he witnessed with his grandfather when his grandmother passed away. This passion project looks to shed light on the emotional turmoil of love as it pertains to a segment of society we often dismiss: senior citizens.

Love runs deep. At least we hope it does — the divorce rate probably has something else to say about this fact.

Jerry Lewis is returning to the film world in a feature that surely won’t be quite what you expect.

Max Rose, which hits Sept. 2 in New York and expands throughout September and October, is the story of a jazz pianist who suddenly has reason to question his sixty-five year marriage. This leads to an exploration of his own past, with, we must guess, rather surprising results.

From writer/director Daniel Noah, the film also stars Kevin Pollak, Claire Bloom, Dean Stockwell, Kerry Bishé, Mort Sahl, and many more.

The film hit Cannes a few years ago, which apparently led to no great rush to bring it to audiences, but that’s likely to be a testament to the somber, “life reflection” nature of the subject as much as anything.

It’s, apparently, a film riddled with nostalgia for its own sake, and perhaps one of the curiosities of what...

Back in 1982, 22-year-old novice documentary filmmaker Robert Weide wrote a fan letter to his idol, novelist Kurt Vonnegut, asking if he'd be interested in a documentary about his work and life. Vonnegut agreed, although he couldn't imagine anyone would be interested in a film about a writer. "He said, 'I don't know how you make a film about me, but you're welcome to try," Weide told Indiewire. Fast forward 33 years. Weide has since directed four acclaimed, award-winning documentaries on comedians, including W.C. Fields, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen. He was also the principal director and an executive producer of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" for the show's first five years.  Vonnegut died in 2007 and now Weide and documentary filmmaker Don Argott have turned to Kickstarter to raise $250,000 to bring "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time" to life. "It's always been a question of either not having the money or not having the time -- but.

Jumping on writer-performer Larry Wilmore exponentially rising career, the Writers Guild of America, East (Wgae) announced Tuesday morning that the comedian will host the 67th annual Writers Guild Awards New York. Known best for his appearances on "The Daily Show," Wilmore he built a career out of writing. The comedian created, wrote and executive produced "The Bernie Mac Show," earning him a 2002 Emmy Award for “Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series” and a 2001 Peabody Award. Getting his foot in the door as a writer-producer on sitcoms like "In Living Color," "Sister, Sister," "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," Wilmore pulled strings on some of the biggest comedies of the last decade. He was has been nominated for four Writers Guild Awards, including three for his work on "The Office." He continues to work as an Executive Producer on ABC’s new comedy "Black-ish." In May 2014, Comedy Central announced that Wilmore would...

Two years ago, on the eve of his eagerly awaited Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, I sat down with Mike Nichols to look back on his remarkable career. During those two-plus hours together at the Mark Hotel in Manhattan, the legendary director, then 80, reminisced about a life of highs and lows that began as a bright-eyed young boy who fled Nazi Germany for America. "I remember everything about getting on the boat in Germany in 1939," Nichols said. "I was 7, my brother was 3, and my father was already in New York setting up his practice as a doctor. German Jews couldn't leave the country,...

The recordings Woody Allen made of his comedy routines in the mid-Sixties will once again be available at an affordable price. November 25th will see the release of a comprehensive two-disc set – The Stand-Up Years: 1964 – 1968 – which will contain everything from the three records Allen released in the Sixties, along with a previously unreleased routine and more bonus audio. The additional material comprises 25 minutes of excerpts from the 2012 film Woody Allen: A Documentary, in which he discusses how stand-up comedy changed his life, as well as liner notes by the documentary's producer and director,...

He was an Oscar-winning superstar, but around his neighborhood of Tiburon, in the San Francisco Bay area, Robin Williams was known as a friendly cyclist who loved to walk his pug, Leonard, and share quiet dinners out with his wife. And in the week before his death on Aug. 11, Williams stuck to many of his familiar routines. On Aug. 5, he and his wife, Susan Schneider, had dinner at one of their favorite local spots, Joe's Taco Lounge in Mill Valley, before attending the Mark Pitta & Friends comedy show at the Throckmorton Theatre, where the couple stopped by most Tuesday nights.

He was an Oscar-winning superstar, but around his neighborhood of Tiburon, in the San Francisco Bay area, Robin Williams was known as a friendly cyclist who loved to walk his pug, Leonard, and share quiet dinners out with his wife. And in the week before his death on Aug. 11, Williams stuck to many of his familiar routines. On Aug. 5, he and his wife, Susan Schneider, had dinner at one of their favorite local spots, Joe's Taco Lounge in Mill Valley, before attending the Mark Pitta & Friends comedy show at the Throckmorton Theatre, where the couple stopped by most Tuesday nights.

"...when I was a comic, I’d be on the Johnny Carson show, I’d take over the Johnny Carson show, I’d host it and promote and promote. The next week I’d go to Vegas, and they’d start moving around the potted plants to make the room look smaller. And they’d move them in so it didn’t look so empty," Woody Allen recently told New York Observer. "I’ve never been a draw in my life, in any medium … my record album came out when Newhart, Shelley Berman, Cosby, Mort Sahl, Nichols and May [all had hits]. And I was a hot comic at the time. Very disappointing.” And so Allen's six decade exploration in self-deprecation continues. He also told the newspaper about a long-gestating movie project he'd like to make regarding Hollywood legend Bob Hope. But he claims few would want to see it. With his latest...

Shelley Berman, the wildly popular “sit-down” comic of the late 1950s and ’60s who, after his career came unhinged following an outburst caught on camera, concentrated on acting and played Larry David’s father on Curb Your Enthusiasm, has died. He was 92.

A standout in a golden era of comedy that included other observational masters like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and Bob Newhart, Berman died early Friday morning at his home in Bell Canyon, Calf., according to a post on his official Facebook page. He had a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

Inside Shelley Berman, his live record...

So, how on Earth does a movie, made at the height of fame for both Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, not get released? That's a complicated one to answer, but for comedy fans, the 1984 movie "Nothing Lasts Forever" is something of a holy grail film, but thanks to the (probably temporary) powers of the interwebs, you can see the film that MGM apparently twice prevented from screening at the Cannes Film Festival. Written and directed by longtime "Saturday Night Live" veteran Tom Schiller, "Nothing Lasts Forever" is ambitious stuff, telling the story of a young man ("Gremlins" star Zach Galligan) who gets caught in the machinations of a totalitarian retro/future New York City. Aykroyd plays Galligan's boss, Murray gets an extended cameo, Mort Sahl, Lawrence Tierney, Imogene Coca and Larry “Bud” Melman take on supporting roles, and Howard Shore provided the score. So what happened? It's hard to say.

Oscar-winning film producer behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus and The English Patient

The career of the film producer Saul Zaentz, who has died aged 92, was marked not only by his independence (his productions were often largely self-funded) but also by his dedication to each individual film. Unlike most producers, who have numerous projects on the go, Zaentz worked on just one at a time. This resulted in a relatively short CV but one with a high share of Oscars, including three best picture winners: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984) and The English Patient (1996).

Zaentz was born in Passaic, New Jersey, the youngest of five children of Russian-Polish Jewish parents, Morris and Goldie. An avid reader and a fan of pop music, movies and sport, he ran away from home as a teenager to work at the St Louis Cardinals baseball team's training camp, then rode...

Parkland and other movies about JFK's assassination show just how far to the right Hollywood has shifted. Alan J Pakula's classic film, however, is a high point of New American Cinema

• John F Kennedy assassination: 50 years of conspiracy in film and fiction

• All Alex von Tunzelmann's Reel History assessments of the JFK films

Just about the only interesting things about the new Hollywood movie Parkland is its demonstration of how far Hollywood has shifted to the right over the last couple of decades.

John F Kennedy was quite a conservative president. He opposed the March on Washington and did little to promote the cause of civil rights, whereas Hollywood celebrities as diverse as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, and Steve McQueen joined the march and heard Martin Luther King discuss his dream. Nevertheless Kennedy's murder sent shockwaves through the liberal Los Angeles community. The humourist Mort Sahl remarked that Kennedy...

The assassination of JFK and the conspiracy theories that followed have proved irresistible to writers and artists, from Oliver Stone to Stephen King

• Mark Lawson on the 10 best books inspired by JFK

The grassy knoll. The book depository. Any further description of the location is superfluous. We know where we are, and when. Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963: the scene of the assassination of President John F Kennedy. History assumes mythic proportions when its very familiarity requires no further explanation or scene-setting; when it provides instead a well-signposted point of departure for artistic creativity. The matter of Dallas has been as resonant in the fiction and film of the past half century as the story of the Trojan war was in the literature of classical antiquity. Only Hitler and the Nazis rival its influence on the modern imagination.

Yet the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination will not be marked by consensus.

Filmed in the UK in 1965, this rare footage captures Allen in his pomp – and telling jokes that feel absolutely fresh

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Title: The Woody Allen Show

Year: 1965

The set-up: If you've seen the original Casino Royale movie, my sympathy. Even by the standards of 1960s sex comedies, it is an embarrassing mess. It did make one oblique contribution to world culture, however. In 1965, when Woody Allen was in the UK filming it (playing the villain, whose plan is to make all women beautiful and exterminate all men taller than himself), he recorded a quick half-hour for Granada Television. So far as anybody knows – or at least so far as I do – it is the only complete Woody Allen standup show that exists on film.

Usually standup comedy ages about as well as a tomato, becoming furred by quaintness after only a few years,...

In this extract from his forthcoming book, the Observer's new film critic, Mark Kermode, examines how the internet has changed the role of the professional reviewer. When everyone has an opinion, what value does the critic retain?

"Forrest Gump on a tractor." Those five words are probably my favourite film review ever. More importantly, they constitute the most damaging hatchet job I ever encountered, managing to do something I had often argued was impossible – to kill a movie stone dead. I didn't read them in a newspaper or on a blog, I didn't hear them on the radio or television; rather, they were whispered in my ear by a trusted friend and colleague, David Cox, as the house lights went down on a screening of David Lynch's The Straight Story.

I'd been really looking forward to that movie. I've been a huge Lynch fan ever since being blindsided by...

DVD Release Date: Oct. 8, 2013

Price: DVD $29.98

Studio: Somerville House/Entertainment One

Bill Maher takes the mic in The Best of An Evening at the Improv.

Television’s wildly popular An Evening at the Improv originally premiered as a series of one-hour shows in 1982 on A&E and featured the hottest stand-up comics of the day.

Somerville House’s four-disc, 12-hour collection The Best of An Evening at the Improv features the hysterical work of more than 100 comedians culled from the first 52 hours of the series, including spots by such beloved old-school shtick-meisters as Milton Berle, Shecky Greene, Shelley Berman, Jackie Mason and Mort Sahl alongside such soon-to-be-superstars as Jerry Seinfeld, Howie Mandel, Jim Carrey, Richard Lewis, Bob Saget, Arsenio Hall, Billy Crystal, and Bill Maher.

The Improv Club opened its doors in Los Angeles in 1974, the second Improv venue to be opened by founder Budd Friedman following his original outlet in New York City.