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During the back half of the 1980s, there was this glamorous, extravagantly talented actor who kept turning up in exploitation movies and pumping them full of an erotic verve they generally didn't deserve. There were any number of beautiful, desirable ladies who could provide the va-va-voom films like "King Solomon's Mines," "Above the Law," and "Action Jackson" required, but the path to stardom has always been different for women, so here was Sharon Stone blowing everyone else who shared a frame with her straight off the screen.

It took no less a cinematic genius than Paul Verhoeven to realize that Stone had supernova star power. After a test run in "Total Recall," he unleashed her on filmgoers the world over with the most stylishly sleazy studio movie ever made in "Basic Instinct." Stone's portrayal of Catherine Tramell is a femme fatale dynamo who belongs in the pantheon alongside Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson,...

"I'm not looking forward to old age..." "Then don't look forward." Sony Pictures Australia has unveiled an official trailer for an Australian family dramedy called The Travellers, opening in cinemas Down Under this October. It's the latest film from acclaimed Aussie filmmaker Bruce Beresford, best known for directing Driving Miss Daisy, Double Jeopardy, and many other movies over decades. It's also written by Beresford, who seems to be tapping into his own experiences to tell this story. Stephen Seary, a stage designer, returns to Australia to say goodbye to his dying mother. What should be a quick trip descends into chaos, drama, and funny moments as he juggles family tension, past lovers, and his desire to return to Europe for a major opera contract. Described as "poignant & heartwarming", The Travellers stars Luke Bracey as Stephen, Bryan Brown, Susie Porter, Shubshri Kandiah, Celia Massingham, and Nicholas Hammond. This looks charming and heartfelt.

Douglas E. Turner, the British rerecording mixer who worked with John Boorman on Deliverance and four other films and with David Lynch on The Elephant Man, has died. He was 93.

Turner died May 5 at his home in Agua Dulce, California, his wife of 37 years, retired sound editor Justine Turner (Dances With Wolves, Field of Dreams), told The Hollywood Reporter.

His rerecording career spanned 36 years, which included 19 at De Lane Lea Studios in London.

Turner worked on Fox’s The X-Files for two seasons (1995-97) and received an Emmy in 1996 for mixing “Nisei,” a third-season episode. He also was nominated in 1989 for the NBC telefilm The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro and in 1990 for the CBS telefilm Caroline?

Plus, he mixed an Oscar-winning short film, an animated version of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea that was released in 1999.

After the Oscar best picture nominee Deliverance (1972), Turner and Boorman...

The television adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s prize-winning book The Narrow Road to the Deep North brings with it a number of firsts. It is acclaimed Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s first work for television and also the first time Euphoria and Saltburn star Jacob Elordi has returned home to lead a major Australian production.

Produced by Sony Pictures Television’s Curio Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios Australia, Narrow Road debuted on Amazon Prime Video on April 18, but the limited series, speaking to its feature-like qualities, premiered its first two episodes at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. In his review, The Hollywood Reporter‘s film critic David Rooney was gushing in his praise of those first two episodes, describing Narrow Road as “big, bold and strikingly cinematic.” “Based on the first 90 minutes, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has potential to stand alongside films like Peter Weir...

I feel a distinct sense of sadness whenever a high-profile filmmaker falls from grace. I recognize how challenging making one movie is, let alone dozens, and I earnestly believe even one hit under your belt is a worthy accomplishment. It’s challenging to keep up forever, though I still often wonder what went wrong. How does one move from A-list hits to B-movie nonsense in the span of just a few short years?

Take filmmaker Bruce Beresford. Beresford is a two-time Academy Award nominee among plenty of other honors. He was a staple in the 1970s and 1980s, helming such classics as Driving Miss Daisy and Crimes of the Heart. In the 1990s, Beresford shifted into less-acclaimed psychological thriller territory. Remember Silent Fall and Double Jeopardy? Yup, those are Beresford. The trend continued into the 2000s, at which point Beresford failed to attract much interest, including in this Hulu chart-topper...

There aren’t many things that Clint Eastwood cannot do. ‘The Man with No Name’ could shoot the rope flawlessly multiple times to save Tuco. ‘Harry Callahan,’ on the other hand, once hijacked a school bus in something as stifling as a suit and tie combo. Yet, when The Bridges of Madison County premiered in 1995, few expected cinema’s ultimate tough guy to break character and become its most surprising romantic hero.

Well, Eastwood’s emotional range in the movie would do much more than just stun the critics post-release. It was a risk that paid off with a global box office of $182 million against a $22 million budget, plus an Oscar nomination for his co-star Meryl Streep. But what’s even more surprising? According to Streep, The Bridges of Madison County made Steven Spielberg weep “for 40 minutes” straight. Now, that’s no ordinary feat.

A weepy romance in Iowa… made by Dirty Harry?...

Following Nitram and The Order, Justin Kurzel goes from strength to strength with his riveting first detour into episodic television, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. While a current of unflinching violence runs through the director’s work, seldom if ever has the blunt shock of bloodletting played in such haunting counterpart to the pathos of brutalized humanity as it does in this adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Booker Prize-winning novel. There’s a lingering soulfulness here that feels new to Kurzel’s work, distilled in an intensely moving lead performance from Jacob Elordi.

Big, bold and strikingly cinematic, the limited series’ first two of five 45-minute episodes were presented as a special gala at the Berlin Film Festival ahead of its Australian premiere on Prime Video in April. Most other major markets will follow, though Sony has not yet closed a deal for U.S. rights. With Elordi’s star on the rise,...

Sometime in the 2000s, comedian Eddie Murphy began experiencing a career slump that, quite sadly, would remain with him for years. Ron Underwood's 2002 sci-fi comedy "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" was a notorious bomb, making only $7.1 million on a $100 million budget. Murphy's cinematic update of "I Spy" from the same year also lost money, and Murphy turned to making mediocre but popular kiddie flicks like "The Haunted Mansion" and "Daddy Day Care" to make ends meet.

In 2006, Murphy received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in "Dreamgirls," but he immediately chased it with the universally hated "Norbit" only months later. "Norbit" made money, but no one seemed to like it. Some have even said that the presence of "Norbit" in theaters harmed Murphy's chance of winning an Oscar that year. He lost to Alan Arkin in "Little Miss Sunshine."

Murphy's next few films were all panned by critics,...

Exclusive: In an expansion of its Lab program, the Black List has named the projects and writers for its inaugural Projects Lab. The six writers are developing feature projects they intend to direct. The Lab program, now in its eleventh year, provides creative mentorship and professional support to promising screenwriters during a weeklong workshop in Ojai, CA.

This year’s writers are Dylan James Amick (The Estranged), Steve Anthopoulos (My Summer in the Human Resistance), Meghan Lennox (Gay For Amy), Alex Murawski (Walking In Iowa), Gabriella Mykal (Fuzzy), and Alexandra Qin (Thirstygirl). The Black List selected these writers from over 1,700 script submissions on blcklst.com.

During the Lab, each writer will develop their screenplay through peer workshops and one-on-one sessions with working professional screenwriting mentors, including Hannah Fidell (A Teacher), Liz Hannah (The Girl From Plainville), Maryam Keshavarz (The Persian Version), Sarah Adina Smith (Birds of Paradise), Axelle Carolyn (The...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a lousy track record when it comes to getting its awards to the most deserving nominees. There are myriad examples of injustices, and, when it comes to Best Picture, a history of settling on a movie that most people at least really like, even if few outright love it. In recent years, we've had the perfectly fine "Spotlight," "Argo," Nomadland," and "Coda" take home the top prize. They weren't the best movies of their respective years, not even close, but they were proficiently directed movies buoyed by excellent performances and accomplished (if somewhat formulaic) screenplays.

The Academy has had a decent five year Best Picture run, but in 2018 there was a galling regression to the bad ol' days when white Hollywood phonies made bogus can't-we-all-just-can't-get-along bromides congratulating themselves for viewing people of different colors and ethnicities as actual human beings. That...

Morgan Freeman is surely one of the most recognizable actors working today — and work he does. While the man has an Oscar to his name and several truly memorable roles in his filmography, that filmography is ... extensive. Freeman churns out movies at about the same rate as, shall we say, Samuel L. Jackson or John Travolta, often lending his significant talent to projects other stars of his caliber wouldn't even consider.

That's not to knock the now 87-year-old, either. Often Freeman elevates these lesser titles simply by being a part of them. But there are a few movies that even the great Morgan Freeman can't save. Yes, for every "Million Dollar Baby" or "Shawshank Redemption" there's a truly bewildering stinker in the Freeman oeuvre that simply couldn't be rescued by the man's gravitas. 2014's "Transcendence," for instance, currently sports a shameful 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, while the "Has Fallen" trilogy can't...

Tom Selleck struggled in films post-Magnum P.I. with poor box office results and critical failures. Her Alibi is considered his worst starring film due to the casting mismatch and flawed premise. Selleck's film career downfall led to his return to successful television roles, eventually overshadowing his film career.

After Tom Selleck was famously denied the chance to play the role of Indiana Jones in the blockbuster 1981 action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Selleck made his feature starring debut with a Raiders of the Lost Ark imitator, the 1983 adventure film High Road to China, also known as Raiders of the End of the World, which nonetheless performed respectably at the box office and showed that he possessed a genuine screen presence.

Sellecks dexterity and effortless charm were effectively showcased in his next feature starring vehicle, the 1984 spy thriller Lassiter, in which the actor exudes the kind of suaveness and...

Bruce Beresfold’s ‘Ouverture’ Kicks Off Australia Shoot

Australian director Bruce Beresford’s comedy-drama Ouverture has begun shooting in and around the West Australian city of Perth. Luke Bracey. Also among the cast is Rose O’Neill, who plays a former wild child turned nun. Samantha Mumba and Paul Tylak also reprise their roles. Dynamic Television is the producer, with Acorn Media Enterprises co-producing alongside Germany’s Zdf. David Logan is the creator and writer, with Jo Spain also writing. Robin Quinn is the director, and executive producers are Logan, Spain, Seymour, Daniel March, Klaus Zimmermann, James Gibb, David McLoughlin, Mackin and Bea Tammer. Frank Seyberth and Claus Wunn executive produce for Zdf.

Titan Os Partners With Autentic To Launch Six New Fast Channels.

Barcelona-based technology company Titan Os has partnered with German media company Autentic – a joint venture between Patrick Hörl and Jan Mojto’s Beta Film, to launch six new Fast Channels. The channels – named as Autentic History, Autentic Travel, Terra Mater Wild, Adventure Earth, Spiegel TV Konflikte, and Curiosity Now — will play feature documentaries in either German or English tailored to the markets of UK, Ireland, Dach, the Nordics, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. “With so many streaming entertainment options, the key to engaging viewers is the ability to deliver localized content that is relevant to each audience and market,” said Judith Diaz, Content Partnerships Director at Titan Os. Autentic MD Hörl said working with Titan Os would help the company accelerate the growth of its reach in large Fast territories. Titan Os currently runs on Philips TVs across Europe and will soon be running on Jvc devices.

Poland’s Tvp Remaking Banijay Variety Show

Polish network Tvp will become the first in the world to remake Banijay Italia’s variety show Boomerissima. Endemol Shine Poland has begun filming a local remake, with presenter, actor and singer Barbara Kurdej-Szatan hosting. Boomerissima, which will be known locally as Cudowne Lata in Poland, pits generations against each other with celebrities from different eras competing as they bid to refute stereotypes and determine whether things were better in the past. A studio audience decides who wins. Banijay Italia first made the show for Rai 2 in Italy and has run to two seasons to date.

Betty Buckley, the Tony-winning and Grammy-nominated actor and singer, has signed with Sugar23.

Best known for her performances in on stage, particularly for her soaring rendition of “Memory” in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats,” Buckley has also been active in television, film and as a concert performer. Next up, Buckley will star in A24’s “Eternity” opposite Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen. She also is the creator, writer and star of the short animated film “The Mayfly,” which premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival.

Sugar23 was founded in 2017 by Michael Sugar, an Oscar-winning manager-producer who has helped bring the likes of “Spotlight,” “Dickinson,” and “13 Reasons” to screens.

Other theater roles include Buckley’s Olivier-nominated performance as Norma Desmond in the West End production of “Sunset Boulevard” (she later played the part on Broadway). She also starred in the original Broadway production of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” as well as in the cult musical “Carrie.

10 Best Films Of Eddie Murphy, Ranked. (Photo Credit – Instagram)

With his remarkable career, Eddie Murphy has found a place among the best comic actors of this generation. After first gaining fame on Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s, he transitioned to films and has consistently captivated the audience ever since.

From his brilliant comic timing in the Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America franchises to his dramatic roles in Mr. Church and Dreamgirls, the actor has always impressed with his talent. Now that Eddie Murphy has been in the industry for close to five decades and has appeared in numerous projects, here is a ranking of 10 of his best films.

10. Mr. Church (2016)

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Bruce Beresford’s Mr. Church stars Murphy in the titular role of a talented cook hired by a dying woman, Marie, to take...

World-renowned auteur George Miller has been a major force in international cinema for 45 years. A seminal figure of the Australian New Wave film movement, Miller ironically began his career as a doctor before transitioning to feature filmmaking in the late 1970s. Miller, along with his contemporaries Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong, and Bruce Beresford, helped usher in an unprecedented era of economic prosperity and critical acclaim for Australian cinema between 1970 and 1990.

Starting his feature film career in 1979, Miller made his cinematic debut directing Mad Max, commencing one of the greatest action franchises in movie history. A filmmaker of immense range, Miller has worked in a vast array of genres that include action, science fiction, animation, fantasy, comedy, and biographical drama. Throughout his career, Miller has earned six Academy Award nominations, winning once for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year. In addition to the Mad Max franchise, Happy Feet, Lorenzo's Oil,...

Terry Gilliam has been to Cannes with three of his own films since 1983, but one of his favorite memories of the festival takes him back to that very first time, at the 36th edition, as the co-writer and co-star of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Along with Graham Chapman and the film’s director Terry Jones, he’d emerged from the Carlton hotel’s iconic entrance, then bedecked with promotion for the upcoming Bond movie Octopussy, to encounter a camera crew. Jones started grabbing people at random, shouting, “Who Ees Monty Python???” in a ridiculous foreign accent, and got so carried away that, when they reached the hotel’s famous terrace, he accidentally did it to Gilliam too.

The crowd loved it, and the day only grew stranger. Out on the Carlton’s jetty, they gave an interview to British news channel ITN, with Jones hiding behind Graham...

Directed by Bruce Beresford, Driving Miss Daisy became a success with nine Academy Award nominations and everlasting achievements in Oscar history. The chemistry between Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman was crucial in making the movie timeless. Despite its careful handling of important topics like racism and antisemitism, the film was criticized for not delving deeper into societal conflicts.

Directed by Bruce Beresford and based on a play by Alfred Uhry, the big-screen adaptation of Driving Miss Daisy instantly became a success at the box office and with critics in December 1989 when it received nine Academy Award nominations and several everlasting achievements in Oscar history. Starring just opposite the late but great English actress Jessica Tandy (who played the charming but belligerent Daisy Werthan in the film), prolific actor Morgan Freeman starred as a happy-go-lucky senior chauffeur named Hoke Colburn. Even though they stepped into contrasting characters on the screen, their chemistry was,...

Josh Kramer, a veteran Hollywood executive who produced such films as Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden and Sidney Lumet’s Night Falls on Manhattan, has died following a stroke. He was 67.

Kramer died Nov. 27 surrounded by family and friends in Santa Monica, according to a representative. The producer, who was a graduate of the American School in London, earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University, where he is said to have made a mark creating conceptual art pieces. He then went on to earn his Mba from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

He began his entertainment industry career by working in foreign sales for legendary Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis, specializing in international presales of films by such directors as Sam Raimi, Michael Cimino, Bruce Beresford and David Cronenberg. One such title he shepherded was the iconic documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare.

Kramer went on...

Terry Camilleri Photo: Terry Camilleri Joaquin Phoenix may be the latest actor to play Napoleon Bonaparte, but he certainly isn’t the first (nor will he be the last). Of all the people who’ve played the French emperor, from Marlon Brando to Verne Troyer, one looms large in our collective memories: The water slide-loving,...

Terry Camilleri Photo: Terry Camilleri, Screenshot: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Joaquin Phoenix may be the latest actor to play Napoleon Bonaparte, but he certainly isn’t the first (nor will he be the last). Of all the people who’ve played the French emperor, from Marlon Brando to Verne Troyer,...

When Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” opened on Nov. 18, 1983, directing was very much a man’s world. In the 1970s, there had been a few inroads for women. Italian director Lina Wertmuller was nominated for best director for 1976’s “Seven Beauties” Stateside, actress Barbara Loden, who was married to Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed and starred in the acclaimed 1970 indie drama “Wanda,” which won best foreign film at the Venice Film Festival. She never followed up with another movie and died of breast cancer in 1980.

There was also Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”), Claudia Weill (“Girlfriends”), Martha Coolidge (“Not a Pretty Picture”), Joan Tewkesbury (“Old Boyfriends”) and Joan Darling (“First Love”). But those filmmakers ran into brick walls when they tried to set up projects with the major studios. The late Silver told Vanity Fair in 2021 that a studio executive didn’t mince his word: “Feature films are expensive to make and expensive to market,...

The American Film Institute defines courtroom drama as a genre of film in which a system of justice plays a critical role in the film's narrative. Courtroom dramas have captivated audiences for decades. Battles between lawyers, innocent victims fighting for justice, and the procedures of the legal system are capable of providing endless hours of entertainment.

Courtroom dramas also situate among cinema's most astute genres for examining social and political issues. Racial injustice, moral dilemmas, miscarriages of justice, and abuse of power are all hot-button topics explored by the greatest courtroom dramas.

Related: 10 Best Crime Comedy Movies

Breaker Morant (1980)

Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant is a landmark work of Australian New Wave cinema that tells the story of the 1902 court-martial of Breaker Morant. During the Second Boer War, Harry "Breaker" Morant and five other officers (two others in the film) stood trial for the murders of prisoners of war and unarmed civilians.

From Oliver Stone’s Platoon to John Ford’s They Were Expendable, some of the greatest war movies ever made were the work of filmmakers who actually served in the military. The 400 Blows director François Truffaut famously said that it’s impossible to make an anti-war film (via the BBC), because the inherent spectacle of cinema means that any war movie will inevitably glamorize warfare. However, cinematic portrayals of war are a lot more accurate when they’re helmed by a director who’s actually fought in a warzone and lived through the horrors of war.

There are plenty of terrific filmmakers with a military background who drew on that background to create a realistic war movie. U.S. Army veteran Joseph Sargent directed a great biopic of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. U.S. Army Air Forces veteran Robert Altman satirized the Korean War in his hit dark comedy M*A*S*H.

“Barbie” will soon be unleashed on an eagerly waiting world, and cowriter/director Greta Gerwig would like to provide you with some context, courtesy of her Letterboxd list of films she watched for inspiration, in a clip you can watch above.

Just looking at the list, you can see where some of the inspiration would come from — the candy-colored musical world of “Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie as the titular doll, does bring to mind several of her selections like “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Red Shoes” and “Playtime.” The idea of a character transitioning from one world to another is also pretty apparent in selections like “The Truman Show” and “Heaven Can Wait.”

For “Heaven Can Wait,” Gerwig said that the movie is “extremely high concept, but always human… There’s nothing about it that makes you feel distanced from it. It totally works even though...

Melbourne, July 13 (Ians) The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (Iffm) has announced the nominations for its 14th edition, which includes titles such as ‘Darlings’, ‘Kantara’, ‘Pathaan’ and ‘Bhediya’, among many others.

This year, the festival welcomes a new addition to its jury panel, the Oscar-winning Australian filmmaker Bruce Beresford, known for directing films such as ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ and ‘The Contract’.

The Iffm advisory committee after meticulous consideration of hundreds of films and series from across Indian cinema, have finalised the nominations of films and series which have been released between June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023.

Leading the pack in the film categories, including Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Actress, are notable productions such as ‘Darlings’, ‘Monica O My Darling’, ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ and ‘Kantara’.

In the Ott category, series such as ‘Trial By Fire’, ‘Jubilee’, and ‘Delhi Crime Season 2’ have garnered the highest number of nominations. The winners of the prestigious...

Exclusive: Multi-Oscar nominated director Bruce Beresford is set to direct The Place I Belong about pro golfer Moe Norman.

The Place I Belong follows the rise of Norman, from caddie and bowling alley pinsetter to playing the Masters and on the pro tour. His eccentric behavior led Moe to be bullied out of the sport he loved, but he became an unknown legend, playing and winning smaller tournaments, setting course records, living hand to mouth, sometimes sleeping in his car or in sand traps at the courses he played.

David Carver is producing. Carver co-wrote screenplay with Mark Bergen, Josh Schorr and Todd Korgan, based on previous versions by Joshua Michael Stern, David Lee Miller and Eric Adams.

David Steinberg and Robyn Todd are EPs. Wayne Gretzky and Janet Gretzky are co-producers.

Beresford has directed over 25 films including the four-time Oscar winning Best Picture Driving Miss Daisy” which grossed over $145M WW back in 1989-1990. He also helmed Tender Mercies which won two Oscars and one Golden Globe; Breaker Morant.

Says Beresford, “The central character is delightfully eccentric and the story of his amazing life and career those around it, is told with humor, compassion, sophistication and insight. I enthusiastically accepted the offer to direct such a fascinating group of characters and story, told on and off the golf course.”

Carver adds, “Bruce’s skill with the period piece genre, particularly in transformational roles, and the simple fact that he makes very classy movies, has us overwhelmed with appreciation that he will be directing our 25-year passion project.”

Beresford is represented by David Gersh of The Gersh Agency. Steinberg and Todd are represented by Jason Weinberg and Michael Rosenberg of Untitled Entertainment.

Rob Young, a Canadian sound mixer whose 40-year career in the industry included an Oscar nomination for his work on the Clint Eastwood best picture winner Unforgiven, has died. He was 76.

Young died June 11 in Albi, France, of complications from a fall in Morocco while on a food tour, his wife, Yvonne Young, announced.

Young also was nominated for BAFTA awards for Unforgiven (1992) and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), for a Cinema Audio Society prize for Joe Johnston’s Jumanji (1995), for a Genie Award for Phillip Borsos’ The Grey Fox (1983) and for a Golden Reel Award for Bryan Singer’s X2 (2003).

The New Brunswick native mixed Roxanne (1987) and The Russia House (1990) for director Fred Schepisi, the first two First Blood films in 1982 and ’85 for Ted Kotcheff and George P. Cosmatos, respectively, and the first two Night at the Museum movies for Shawn Levy in 2006 and ’09 (not to mention The Pink Panther...

Legendary filmmaker Spike Lee shook the world with the summer release of his 1989 drama Do the Right Thing. For those unfamiliar with the picture, Do the Right Thing follows Mookie Blackmon, an employee of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, as he spends one hot summer day delivering pizzas throughout New York City’s Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn neighborhood. While making his deliveries, Mookie encounters and interacts with the neighborhood’s colorful characters in a thoughtful examination of race and class. However, despite Do the Right Thing being considered one of the greatest films of the 1980s (specifically the best film of 1989 by acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert), the Academy Awards opted to award the Bruce Beresford-directed period dramedy Driving Miss Daisy, a less controversial film, with the Best Picture honor at the 1990 Academy Awards.

Among the film’s brilliant acting performances is Lee as Mookie, the late Danny Aiello as Sal, frequent...

George Miller's "Mad Max" was a wild undertaking. The dystopian action flick, which envisioned an Australia verging on lawlessness due to a worldwide oil shortage, became a box office sensation on the strength of its calamitous, perilously practical high-speed car chases and fiery crashes. U.S. cinema was hardly lacking for such entertainment, but there was a breakneck, open-road fury to Miller's film that set it apart from its stateside counterparts.

Set safety regulations were not quite what they are today in the 1970s; in fact, they were practically non-existent in Australia. Though the country's cinema was in the midst of a "New Wave" of its own as the 1980s approached, the films being made by Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong, and Bruce Beresford were atmospheric dramas that asked viewers to soak in the eerie beauty of the land down under. They were not stunt-heavy affairs. "Mad Max" was,...

Barry Humphries, the Australian entertainer whose gladioli-waving alter ego Dame Edna charmed and roasted celebrities, all with a Cheshire grin, outrageous eyewear, a “Hello, Possums!” greeting and a flurry of caustic wit, died Saturday. He was 89.

Humphries died at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney of complications from hip surgery, his family announced.

“He was completely himself until the very end, never losing his brilliant mind, his unique wit and generosity of spirit,” they said. “With over 70 years on the stage, he was an entertainer to his core, touring up until the last year of his life and planning more shows that will sadly never be.”

He portrayed Dame Edna Everage — whom he called a “gauche, garrulous Melbourne housewife with a very shrill voice who was obsessed with interior decoration” — for more than six decades across cabarets, clubs, stage and screen as one of the world’s oldest continual comic creations.

Australian satirist Barry Humphries, known for his onstage and TV drag persona Edna Everage and for his character Sir Les Patterson, has died. He was 89.

The BBC reported that Humphries had been in hospital in Sydney, Australia, and had been suffering from complications following surgery in March.

“A great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind, he was both gifted and a gift,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said following the news of Humphries’ death.

“Rip Barry Humphries – one of the greatest ever Australians – and a comic genius who used his exuberant alter egos, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, to say the otherwise unsayable. Also an infallibly brilliant Spectator contributor. What a loss,” said former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Twitter.

Rip Barry Humphries – one of the greatest ever Australians – and a comic genius who used his exuberant alter egos, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson,...

Exclusive: Daredevil: Born Again actress Sandrine Holt has joined David Cronenberg’s next movie, The Shrouds opposite Guy Pearce, Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger.

The project, which Deadline first reported, starts production on May 8 in Toronto and stars Cassel as Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a novel device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. This burial tool installed at his own state-of-the-art – though controversial cemetery allows him and his clients to watch their specific departed loved one decompose in real time. Karsh’s revolutionary business is on the verge of breaking into the international mainstream when several graves within his cemetery are vandalized and nearly destroyed, including that of his wife. While he struggles to uncover a clear motive for the attack, the mystery of who wrought this havoc, and why, drive him to reevaluate his business, marriage and fidelity to his late wife’s memory,...

Mark Hansson and Valdez Flagg will be honored at the 75th Annual DGA Awards for their career achievements and “extraordinary service” to the guild. Hansson, a veteran first assistant director, will receive the Frank Capra Achievement Award, and Flagg, a longtime stage manager, will receive the Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award.

“Mark Hansson and Valdez Flagg have steadfastly worked to support the rights of their fellow members while being two of the top directorial team professionals in our industry for more than 30 years,” said DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter. “The Guild thrives when talented members like Mark and Valdez step up and contribute to their Councils, Committees and our Guild priorities for the benefit of all members.”

Hansson, a DGA member since 1990, has more than 130 assistant director credits. His television Ad work has been recognized on productions that have received seven DGA Award nominations – Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm,...

By now, we've all come to accept Arnold Schwarzenegger in pretty much any acting role he feels like filling. We've seen him follow a complete arc from action hero to comedy star to real-life politician, and at this point, it's become normal that he once played Danny Devito's brother and a male scientist that impregnated himself. In 1996's "Jingle All The Way," director Brian Levant showed us Schwarzenegger as just an ordinary family man, shortly after James Cameron portrayed him as a secret agent that defrauds his family into believing he's an average guy. He might not always be very believable in any of these roles, but he's far more convincing than he has any right to be.

In 2022, we've gotten used to these performances, and we can look back with nostalgia, numb to the absurdity of them all. But back in 1990, the idea of casting Schwarzenegger as the...

Puberty Blues is a 1981 coming-of-age film directed by Bruce Beresford, based on the novel by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey. It follows the lives of two high school girls on the precipice of teen angst; sex, surf, school, and fitting in with the cool crowd. The film is set in Australia during the late 1970s, specifically in and around the beaches of Cronulla, an area of southern Sydney, a middle-class beachside suburbia.

Welcome back to Oscars Playback, in which Gold Derby editors and Experts Christopher Rosen and Joyce Eng revisit Oscar ceremonies and winners of yesteryear. This week, in our first bonus episode, we cover the 62nd Academy Awards in 1990, honoring the films of 1989.

This ceremony, which marks Billy Crystal‘s hosting debut — his first of nine — was topped by “Driving Miss Daisy,” whose four wins from nine nominations included Best Picture and Best Actress for Jessica Tandy, who at 80 became the oldest acting winner at the time. It won despite a directing snub for Bruce Beresford, becoming the first film since “Grand Hotel” in 1932 to win Best Picture without a directing bid. It is, of course, now more common as “Argo” (2012), “Green Book” (2018) and “Coda” (2021) have achieved it. Would Beresford have won had he made it in or would Oliver Stone (“Born on the Fourth of July”) still have prevailed?

See...

I loved "Driving Miss Daisy" before I even saw the movie, actually. I remember running around as a kid teasing slow drivers — and slow-moving people in general for that matter — by calling them Driving Miss Daisy because I thought the movie was about an old lady who drove slowly and held up traffic. When I finally watched the 1989 comedy-drama, it only reinforced my adoration. Jessica Tandy shined in her role as Daisy Werthan, an elderly but prideful white Jewish widow who, from the late 1940s and into the early '70s, develops a bond with her kindly Black chauffeur, Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) in Georgia. In my eyes, "Lean on Me," "The Shawshank Redemption," and "Driving Miss Daisy" are Freeman's best movie roles.

Miss Daisy and Hoke's relationship helped shape my knowledge of race relations during the civil rights era beyond the documentaries I watched in school. For example,...

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Lenny Von Dohlen, star of Twin Peaks and Electric Dreams, has died. He was 64.

He died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles after a long illness, according to his longtime manager Steven J. Wolfe.

Von Dohlen made his film debut in Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies, a performance that landed him the leading role in MGM/UA’s Electric Dreams.

He also scored leading roles for Under the Biltmore Clock, Blind Vision, Jennifer 8, Ed Zwick’s Leaving Normal, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and the title role in Billy Galvin, where Von Dohlen starred opposite Karl Malden.

Born in Augusta, Georgia and raised in Goliad, Texas, Von Dohlen grew too tall to realize a childhood dream of becoming a jockey.

So after majoring in drama at the University of Texas, he turned to theater. In New York, he created roles in Asian Shade,...

“Coda” is one of two Best Picture Oscar nominees with just three nominations, the other being “Licorice Pizza,” and a month ago, you would’ve said its chances of winning all three were close to nil. How the turntables. After bagging two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two BAFTAs, the Producers Guild of America Award and the Writers Guild of America Award in the past three weeks, “Coda” is well positioned to win all three of its categories — Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor — which would make it the seventh Best Picture champ to win every category for which it was nominated.

The first six are “Wings”, “Grand Hotel”, “It Happened One Night”, “Gigi”, “The Last Emperor” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”. Yes, “Grand Hotel” was only nominated for Best Picture and won, something that likely will never happen again. The early...

Next month’s Mubi lineup for the U.S. has been unveiled, with a major highlight being their recent release Lingui, The Sacred Bonds and more films from director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (read our recent chat with him). Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft., two of last year’s highlights, will also arrive.

Two recent Cannes premieres, the Adèle Exarchopoulos-led Zero Fucks Given and Peter Tscherkassky’s Train Again will also finally come to the U.S. courtesy of Mubi. In terms of older highlights, Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, Hong Sang-soo’s The Power of the Kangwon Province, Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold, Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion, and more will arrive.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

March 1 | The Willmar 8 | Lee Grant | Down and Out in America: Lee Grant’s Documentaries

March 2 | Train Again | Peter Tscherkassky | Brief Encounters

March...

Exclusive: Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actor, director, producer Rob Morrow has signed with More/Medavoy Management.

Morrow is best known for his portrayal of Dr. Joe Fleishman on the critically acclaimed, long-running series Northern Exposure, as well as his role as Don Eppes on Numb3rs.

Morrow is currently shooting a recurring role in Super Pumped for Showtime and can be seen in a continuation of his multi-season recurring role as Adam Dequillio opposite Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis in Billions. He also will recur in Starz’s series Shining Vale, starring Courtney Cox and Greg Kinnear, and appears in an upcoming episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Behind the camera, Morrow has served as Executive Producer and director of nine out of ten episodes of the second season of the BET series, Games People Play. His past directing credits include The Fosters, Necessary Roughness, NCIS: New Orleans, HBO’s Oz, and...

Buddy Holly is getting a lot of love on what would have been his 85th birthday, had we not lost him so many years ago. The rock 'n' roll pioneer, who was known for several big hits like "Peggy Sue" and "That'll Be the Day," is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of all time. The Beatles were notably big fans of Holly's work with the late singer's style also influencing other big names like Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and Elton John.

Sadly, Buddy Holly died at the age of 22 in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959. The day has become known as "The Day the Music Died," as beloved singers Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper also died in the crash along with pilot Roger Peterson. Because Holly had been such a workhorse as a musician, he had new music coming out for years after his death.

CinefestOZ Film Festival has awarded actress Isla Fisher its Screen Legend prize for 2021.

The award recognises an Australian actor or filmmaker of international repute and their role in supporting excellence in Australian filmmaking.

Fisher, who was born in Oman and grew up in Perth, has been a fixture of Australian screens since she was nine, when she started in TV commercials before being cast as Shannon Reed in Home & Away, a role she played for three years.

Her career internationally took off with The Wedding Crashers, followed by a range of roles in films such as Rango, The Great Gatsby, Nocturnal Animals, Definitely, Maybe , Now You See Me, Hot Rod, The Brothers Grimsby alongside her husband Sacha Baron Cohen, and Blithe Spirit. Her most recent role is in Stan/Peacock’s upcoming series Wolf Like Me, opposite Josh Gad.

Fisher studied commedia dell’arte in Paris at the renowned L’école Jacques Lecoq performance school,...

Claude Gonzalez and Frans Vandenburg have been following the stranger-than-fiction life of filmmaker John Farrow for over 10 years.

Born in 1904 in Marrickville, Sydney, John Farrow’s curious story ranges from fleeing Australia at age 17 to penning a Tahitian French Dictionary, winning an Oscar for co-writing Around the World in 80 Days, to being highly religious and conservative and married to the glamorous Hollywood star Maureen O’Sullivan. Yet on the flip side he obscured his past from his family and fathered an illegitimate son.

As a director, producer, writer and actor he was prolific, making 50 films and working with people like John Wayne, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. He fathered seven children, including Mia Farrow.

Gonzalez and Vandenburg’s documentary – part mystery, biography and film noir – includes interviews with family members in the US and Australia, and with leading filmmakers and critics including Bruce Beresford, Phillip Noyce, Philippe Mora,...

Chloe Zhao won at the Directors Guild of America Awards on April 11 for her helming of “Nomadland.” The guild has a great track record of previewing the Best Director winner at the Academy Awards. Since aligning its awards with the academy, only eight of the DGA picks failed to pick up an Oscar bookend. That stat makes Zhao all but certain to become the second female helmer to prevail at the Academy Awards after Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow numbers among the 55 DGA winners for best director of the year who went on to claim bragging rights as the helmer of the Oscar winner for Best Picture. But we are just coming off two of those 17 years when there was a disconnect between the guild and the academy.

In 2020, Sam Mendes won his second Directors Guild Award for helming the WWI drama “1917” but the Oscar went to “Parasite” director Boon Jong Ho,...

The Directors Guild of America has been handing out awards for 72 years. Fifty-five of its picks for the best director of the year went on to claim bragging rights as the helmer of the Oscar winner for Best Picture. This translates into a success rate of 6%. That eclipses the track record of both the PGA (21/31 = 68%) and SAG (12/25 = 48%).

But we are just coming off back-to-back years when there was a disconnect between the guild and the academy. In 2020, the DGA honored Sam Mendes for his helming of “1917” and the PGA picked it as their pic of the year. SAG saluted the cast of “Parasite,” which went on to sweep the Oscars bagging Best Picture and Best Director for Boon Jong Ho, who also shared in the original screenplay win.

In 2019, Alfonso Cuarón won the DGA prize for “Roma” but “Green Book” took home the top prize at the Academy Awards.

Frank Moreno, who was known for screening films at Cannes for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures to purchase and distribute in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, died Wednesday in Florida. He was 82 and died after a brief battle with cancer, according to his daughter.

Moreno was a promoter for such Art films as Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, both the biggest US grossing pictures of the directors’ careers up to that point.

He also touted Volker Scholondorff’s The Tin Drum, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1980; Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant; Fantastic Planet, the winner of numerous animated awards; and Bergman’s The Magic Flute.

In addition, Moreno acquired and distributed many mainstream commercial pictures, including The Private Eyes, starring Tim Conway and Don Knotts; managed theater circuits, including one out of Florida; and was a consultant to movie producers,...

Colin Hanks, Diane Guerrero and hip-hop star Nelly have joined the cast of the Buddy Holly biopic “Clear Lake,” directed by Bruce Beresford.

“Clear Lake” tells the story of how Holly and other famous musicians of the late 1950s gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll while changing the trajectory of civil rights in America. The 22-year-old Holly tragically died in a plane crash outside Clear Lake, Iowa, on Feb. 3, 1959, along with Ritchie Valens, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson.

Hanks (“Fargo”) will co-star as Norman Petty, Holly’s brilliant but often controlling manager and producer. “Orange Is the New Black” star Guerrero has been cast in the role of Holly’s wife, Maria Elena Holly. Nelly, who is currently appearing on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” will play Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Chuck Berry.

Variety reported on Oct. 8 that Ruairi O’Connor had been...

Colin Hanks, Diane Guerrero and hip-hop star Nelly have joined the cast of Clear Lake, the Buddy Holly-inspired biopic to be directed by Bruce Beresford.

They join Ruairi O’Connor, the Spanish Princess star, earlier tapped to play Holly, the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer who, along with Ritchie Valens, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson, died in a plane crash outside a snowy Clear Lake, Iowa, on Feb. 3, 1959.

Hanks will co-star as Norman Petty, Holly’s manager and producer, while Nelly will fill the role of Chuck Berry. Orange Is the New Black star Guerrero will play María Elena Holly,...