News

One of the most successful actors and directors that the world has ever witnessed, Clint Eastwood remains a pop-culture icon even at the age of 94. Bursting onto the scene with his ice-cool breakout turn in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, Eastwood would go on to cement his status as cinema's quintessential badass with his bow as anti-hero cop Harry Callahan in the wildly popular Dirty Harry movie series. Complementing his best movie character roles with a string of acclaimed directorial efforts over the years, the American also boasts four Academy Award wins from 11 nominations.

A Western icon, many of Eastwood's best movies take place within the genre he made his name in. However, the actor has also demonstrated a penchant for starring in or directing a number of prominent war movies throughout his career. Typically bringing his accomplished style of film making to the table with great effect, Eastwood's performances,...

Social media is always posting clips of belligerent airline passengers having meltdowns even getting into fisticuffs with flight attendants and fellow travelers. But today’s outbursts look positively tame to compared to the ill-behavior of the passengers and even the crew on a plane bound to San Francisco from Honolulu in “The High and the Mighty,” which opened in L.A. on May 27, 1954. The film went into general release in July. They drink, they cry, they fight and even restrain a passenger who has a gun.Meanwhile, the young pilot nearly loses it, the veteran pilot is haunted with memories of a crash, the navigator is a nervous wreck. Smoking, even by the crew, is allowed.

Directed by William A. Wellman, who helmed another airplane classic 1927’s Oscar-winner “Wings,” adapted by Ernest Gann from his best seller and produced by star John Wayne and his partner Robert Fellows, “The High and the Mighty...

On the morning of January 23, 2024, actor Gary Graham, star of the "Alien Nation" TV series, the cult classic "Robot Jox," and multiple-time "Star Trek" supporting player, passed away at the age of 74. Graham had a prolific acting career, appearing in single episodes of many of the hottest TV shows of his day, including "Starsky & Hutch," "The Incredible Hulk," Knots Landing," "CHiPs," "T.J. Hooker," "Hunter," "M.A.N.T.I.S.," "Diagnosis Murder," "Ally McBeal," "Jag," and "Nip/Tuck." He had an easy demeanor, allowing him to play comedic affable characters just as well as intense, serious ones.

Trekkies likely know Graham best for playing Soval on "Star Trek: Enterprise." Soval was the snippy Vulcan ambassador who oversaw Earth's very, very slow transition from post-war ruin to a thriving society ready for space exploration. In the timeline of "Star Trek," humanity discovers warp-speed flight while the world is recovering from nuclear devastation. On the very first Earth warp flight,...

Conny Van Dyke, a singer-songwriter signed to Motown Records who starred in such films as “W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings” and “Framed,” has died. She was 78.

Van Dyke died on Nov. 11 at her home in Los Angeles due to complications of vascular dementia, her son Bronson Page told Variety.

The Detroit native was a longtime colon cancer and stroke survivor. She got her start in the entertainment industry when she was just 15 and a student in high school, making the film “Among the Thorns” with Tom Laughlin, Bill Wellman Jr. and Stephanie Powers. During that time, Van Dyke also worked as a songwriter for Wheelsville Records in Detroit.

In 1961, Van Dyke signed with Motown Records, making her one of the first white recording artists on the label. Her first two singles, “Oh, Freddy,” written by Smokey Robinson, and “It Hurt Me Too,” previously written and recorded by Marvin Gaye, were...

After Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” soared with both critics and audiences last year it scored with the academy last month earning six Oscar nominations including Best Picture. The Tom Cruise blockbuster is in a dogfight for this top award with the likes of “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “The Fabelmans” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.”

Turning the clock back over nine decades, the very first Best Picture winner in Oscars history was another high-flying Paramount release, 1927’s “Wings,” which also claimed the prize for best engineering effects. Directed by 30-year-old World War I vet William A. Wellman, who was snubbed, “Wings” revolves around two young smalltown men Jack (Charles “Buddy” Rogers) and David to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember...

Hollywood finally decided to get serious about the Korean War debacle with a pro-Army, anti-politics battle epic that blames our own negotiators as much as the enemy. Director Lewis Milestone and star Gregory Peck lead a full company of favorite actors in a gritty story of ugly combat in absurd conditions: die taking territory today, give it back to the enemy later.

Pork Chop Hill

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 196

1959 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date December 28, 2022 / Available from [Imprint] / au 34.95

Starring: Gregory Peck, Harry Guardino, Rip Torn, George Peppard, Carl Benton Reid, James Edwards, Bob Steele, Woody Strode, George Shibata, Norman Fell, Robert Blake, Lew Gallo, Biff Elliot, Charles Aidman, Barry Atwater, Leonard Graves, Martin Landau, Ken Lynch, Chuck Hayward, Gavin MacLeod, Bert Remsen, Buzz Martin, William Wellman Jr., Titus Moede, Harry Dean Stanton, Clarence Williams III..

Cinematography: Sam Leavitt

Production Designer: Nicolai Remisoff

Art Director: Edward G. Boyle

Production Illustrator:...

The three musical remakes of a “A Star is Born” have regretfully overshadowed William A. Wellman’s 1937 original version. But a new 4K restoration from the original nitrate three-strip Technicolor camera negative is a revelation vividly illustrating that the first version of the heartbreaking tale of the up-and-coming actress marrying a fading star losing his battle with alcoholism is a masterpiece. As exhilarating as the musical versions with Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand and Lady Gaga belting out such tunes as “The Man Who Got Away,” “Evergreen” and “Shallow,” the original proves that sometimes simpler is better.

Warner Archive recently released the Blu-ray of this new restoration and the TCM Classic Film Festival presents its theatrical premiere on April 21. Produced by David O. Selznick, who was the executive producer of an earlier version of the Hollywood story, 1932’s “What Price Hollywood?,” the 1937 drama was one of the first three-strip Technicolor films produced by Hollywood.

Bill Field, who played a vintage Wurlitzer organ nearly every weekend for 52 years at Old Town Music Hall, the L.A. area’s longest running film revival house, has died at age 80.

Field, who had suffered from strokes and prostrate cancer, died June 28 of what was described as natural causes. Although his performing pace had slowed in recent months, he was still playing host for each program at the venue until it was forced to close due to the pandemic in March.

Old Town Music Hall was — and in Field’s absence, may continue to be — a sort of out-of-body experience for lovers of early 20th century film and music in southern California, offering a portal into another world from behind an unassuming facade in sleepy downtown El Segundo. What Field created was an experience you couldn’t really have anywhere else in the nation, much less elsewhere in greater Los Angeles.

“A Gallant Gesture”

By Raymond Benson

The novel Beau Geste by Percival Christopher Wren was published in 1924 and has been adapted to film no less than four times and parodied a few instances as well. It’s a classic story of the French Foreign Legionnaires set in the years between the turn of the 20th Century and the First World War, and for nearly a hundred years it has been deemed one of the great adventure tales.

The 1939 adaptation, directed by William A. Wellman, was the second filmed version and is generally considered the best and certainly most well-known variation (the first was a silent picture made in 1926 and starring Ronald Colman). With an outstanding cast that includes Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, J. Carrol Naish, Broderick Crawford, Albert Dekker, and even a young Donald O’Connor, Beau Geste is indeed a rousing “Arabian” action flick,...

It’s a classic from the Golden Year of 1939, directed in fine style by Wild Bill Wellman and well cast with Paramount stars Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston, and with Brian Donlevy as one of the movies’ most hissable villains. The popular story has been remade and spoofed innumerable times, yet this remains the indelible best version. A commentary with William Wellman Jr. and Frank Thompson points out many things we didn’t notice before, including where some excised scenes belong, and what originally happened in them.

Beau Geste

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1939 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 112 min. / Street Date April 7, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, J. Carrol Naish, Albert Dekker, Broderick Crawford, Charles Barton, James Stephenson, Heather Thatcher, George P. Huntley, Donald O’Connor, Billy Cook, Martin Spellman, Ann Gillis, David Holt, Henry Brandon, Nestor Paiva, Francis McDonald.

To read The National Review’s “Politically Incorrect Guide Memorial Day Movies” is one of those moments where you seriously wonder if conservatism in the Trump Era isn’t just one big episode of “Punk’d.” Written by Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, the list was an attempt to highlight war movies for conservatives to watch on Memorial Day – many of which are fantastic – but are bizarrely packaged and advertised as movies that will piss off liberals.

Read More: ‘Dunkirk’ Trailer: Christopher Nolan Says It’s ‘Not a War Film,’ But It Still Looks Unbearably Intense

“These movies portray serving one’s country in uniform as something to be revered and respected, not dismissed,” boasts the Twitter promo for the piece. Its marketing is a straw-man argument, so it’s first important to establish a few matters of fact.

During the Vietnam War, there was liberal...

Ten years ago I attended the Lone Pine Film Festival for the first time. It was the 17th annual celebration in 2006 of a festival dedicated to the heritage of movies (mostly westerns, but plenty of other genres as well) shot in or near the town of Lone Pine, California, located on the outer edges of the Mojave Desert and nestled up against the Eastern Sierra Mountains in the shadow of the magnificent Mt. Whitney. The multitude of films that could and have been celebrated there were most often shot at least partially in the Alabama Hills just outside of town, a spectacular array of geological beauty that springs out of the landscape like some sort of extra-planetary exhibit, a visitation of natural and very unusual formations that have lent themselves to the imaginations of filmmakers here ever since near the dawn of the Hollywood filmmaking industry.

In writing about the...

What's the right thing to say about a closeted movie career in an industry that feeds on gossip? There's plenty to say, if you're Tab Hunter. The '50s heartthrob breaks his silence with a remarkably candid and positive account of his astonishing, unique Hollywood experience. Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray FilmRise 2015 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date August 23, 2016 / 19.95 Starring Tab Hunter, Allan Glaser, Clint Eastwood, Connie Stevens, Portia de Rossi, Robert Wagner, Debbie Reynolds, Lainie Kazan, George Takei, Noah Wyle, John Waters, Liz Torres, Tab Hunter, Dolores Hart, Terry Moore, Don Murray, Robert Osborne, Darryl Hickman, William Wellman Jr., Rae Allen, Rona Barrett, Venetia Stevenson, Rex Reed, Etchika Choureau, Marilyn Erskine, Henry Willson, Shannon Bolin, Eddie Muller, Ronnie Robertson, Gary Giddins, Tamara Asseyev, Neal Noorlag, Marilyn Gevirtz, Jo-An Cox Bunton, Lou Simon, Evelyn Kramer. Cinematography Nancy Schreiber Film Editor Jeffrey Schwarz Original Music Michael Cudahy Produced by Allan Glaser, Neil Koenigsberg,...

Gregory Peck from ‘Duel in the Sun’ to ‘How the West Was Won’: TCM schedule (Pt) on August 15 (photo: Gregory Peck in ‘Duel in the Sun’) See previous post: “Gregory Peck Movies: Memorable Miscasting Tonight on Turner Classic Movies.” 3:00 Am Days Of Glory (1944). Director: Jacques Tourneur. Cast: Gregory Peck, Lowell Gilmore, Maria Palmer. Bw-86 mins. 4:30 Am Pork Chop Hill (1959). Director: Lewis Milestone. Cast: Gregory Peck, Harry Guardino, Rip Torn. Bw-98 mins. Letterbox Format. 6:15 Am The Valley Of Decision (1945). Director: Tay Garnett. Cast: Greer Garson, Gregory Peck, Donald Crisp. Bw-119 mins. 8:15 Am Spellbound (1945). Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov, Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, Bill Goodwin, Norman Lloyd, Steve Geray, John Emery, Donald Curtis, Art Baker, Wallace Ford, Regis Toomey, Paul Harvey, Jean Acker, Irving Bacon, Jacqueline deWit, Edward Fielding, Matt Moore, Addison Richards, Erskine Sanford, Constance Purdy. Bw-111 mins. 10:15 Am Designing Woman (1957). Director: Vincente Minnelli.

For moviegoers growing up in the last 20-30 years, big is the new normal. I’m talking about those big-budget, over-produced, effects/action-packed extravaganzas that are as expected and routine an arrival as a commuter bus, and never more so than during the summer months. Come a rise in temperatures, there’s an almost ceaseless parade of these megabuck behemoths through multiplexes starting in May and continuing until the kids go back to school, one rolling out almost every week.

Consider these May-August releases and their eye-popping price tags:

5/4: Marvel’s The Avengers — $220 million

5/11: Dark Shadows — $150 million

5/18: Battleship — $209 million

5/25: Men in Black 3 — $250 million

6/8: Prometheus — $120-130 million

7/3: The Amazing Spider-Man — $220 million

7/20: The Dark Knight Rises — $250 million

7/31: Total Recall — $200 million

8/5: The Expendables 2 — $100 million

For those of you who haven’t been keeping count, that’s a little over $1.7 billion in productions...

by Nick Schager

[This week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the star-studded babies-'a-poppin' rom-com What to Expect When You're Expecting.]

Never has a movie made having children seem less appealing than It's Alive, Larry Cohen's terrifying examination of personal and parental anxieties. Cohen's genre gem is unquestionably a horror film, but its mutant-monster terror is its least scary element, not to mention the one Cohen cares least about, a fact made plain from a prolonged introduction sequence in which Lenore (Sharon Farrell) awakens in the middle of the night to inform husband Frank (John Ryan) that the baby is ready to go. That news instigates preparations to depart to the hospital, including getting dressed, packing up clothes, and waking their 11-year-old son Chris (Daniel Holzman) and taking him to stay with friend Charley (William Wellman Jr.), arrangements that Cohen depicts with a laid-back sweetness—be it Frank sticking a cat in slumbering Chris' face, or affecting a jokey Western patois as they drive through the night...

By Jonathan Melville

Is there something about classic movie fans that makes us more obsessive than your average cinemagoer? Does the fact that we often have to search for years for that obscure Western or noir on DVD mean we're more appreciative when we finally see it? Would most of us rather watch a 1960s Bond movie at the multiplex than a modern CGI-fest?

Those are some of the questions I asked myself as I left my home (and DVD collection) in the UK to fly 5,000 miles to the third annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood over the weekend of 12-15 April 2012. A gathering of thousands of movie aficionados from around the globe, this spin-off from the Us cable TV channel promises attendees that they'll see some of the best films ever made, often in the company of the people who made them, in the way they were meant to be seen.

Latest Additions Include Star-Studded Appearances, Noted Film Historians,

An Opening-Night Poolside Screening of High Society (1956)

And a Vanity Fair Showcase of Architecture in Film

Complete Schedule for 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival

Now Available at http://www.tcm.com/festival

With just over two weeks left before opening day, the 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival continues to expand its already-packed slate with new events and live appearances:

On opening night of the festival, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel will be the site of a poolside screening of the lavish Cole Porter musical High Society (1956), starring Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Actresses Maud Adams and Eunice Gayson will attend a 50th Anniversary screening of the James Bond classic Dr. No (1962) and participate in a conversation about being “Bond Girls.” Filmmaker Mel Brooks will be on hand to introduce his brilliant parody Young Frankenstein (1974). Filmmaker John Carpenter will introduce his favorite film, the...

It’s a phrase out of the music industry: one-hit wonders. Those bands that come out of nowhere, hit the top of the charts with a catchy – maybe even impressive – single, or have one chart-topping album, and then never seem to be able to hit that sweet spot again. Anybody remember Boston’s second album? Another hit single after “96 Tears” from Jay and the Mysterians?

But they’re not alone. There’s not an area of entertainment where the phenomenon doesn’t exist. Rod Serling never topped The Twilight Zone, and Chris Carter never came up with another series as good as The X Files. Fitzgerald wrote a lot of impressive stuff, but never matched The Great Gatsby, and drank himself to death over it (well, Zelda being crazy didn’t help). Michael Cimino copped an Oscar for The Deer Hunter (1978), and then began a long, spectacular flameout.

It happens.