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The Arrowverse was built upon the culmination of several DC characters pioneering their own television shows on the CW network. However, most fans forget that the entirety of that television universe was spawned from the creativity and the brilliance of the original Arrow show. Starring Stephen Amell as the Emerald Archer, Arrow saw a reimagined look at the character, taking away his quippy lines and Robin Hood-esque design in favor of something darker, as The Dark Knight movies had just shown how gritty superheroes can be. The show was a smash hit, which earned it another season. A new season meant new ideas, and the creators of Arrow thought about the possibilities of the greatest DC universe, eventually leading to the introduction of Grant Gustin as a notably fast scientist from the comics.

The Flash was originally supposed to be in a few episodes of Arrow, the third of which...

When someone stumbles across a photo of Irene Ryan from the 1960s and then sees her character on The Beverly Hillbillies, one question springs to mind: "How old was Irene Ryan when she played Granny?" As a main character throughout the nine seasons of The Beverly Hillbillies, Daisy May Moses, better known as "Granny", was a fixture of '60s and '70s television. Jed's mother-in-law, Granny, is a shotgun-toting, mountain medicine-applying, short-tempered woman who has little patience for the easy, breezy lifestyles of Beverly Hills, California, and always makes sure to let everyone know she's a country girl at heart.

While The Beverly Hillbillies may be one of those '60s sitcoms lost to time and all the network television that came afterward, in the moment, it was hugely popular. Even with big names like Erika Eleniak as Ellie May and Buddy Ebsen as Jed, it's hard to...

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The 1962 sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies" was the first in show creator Paul Henning's unofficial Hooterville Trilogy, a triune that also included 1963's "Petticoat Junction," and 1965's "Green Acres." These three shows were among the most popular of their time and reflected a cultural clash between a growing class of cosmopolitan urbanites and "down home" rural Americans. Working thematically backward, "Green Acres" was about a pair of New Yorkers who move onto a farm, "Petticoat Junction" was about rural hotel owners who often butted heads with a rich railroad executive, and "The Beverly Hillbillies" was about rural characters moving to Beverly Hills. The Hooterville Trilogy was as sure a sign as any that schisms were forming in American society, and Henning was eager to address the injustice of the class divides, often sympathizing with his hillbillies and lambasting the wealthy.

"The Beverly Hillbillies" is the platonic ideal of a high-concept sitcom hook. At its essence, it's simply "Poor folks get stinking rich and move to Beverly Hills." That's probably all CBS needed to hear from creator Paul Henning, who, between 1962 and 1971, exploited this simple premise to the tune of nine seasons and 274 episodes. During this span, "The Beverly Hillbillies" was one of the top-rated shows on TV.

How could such a simple premise, which was never really tweaked, sustain a series for nearly a decade? This question perpetually flummoxed the nation's TV critics, who generally loathed the show, but anyone who gorged on "The Beverly Hillbillies" throughout their formative couch potato years (during its initial run or via syndication) knows the answer is obvious: it's the cast, stupid.

Buddy Ebsen was perfect casting as Jed Clampett, a gentleman of the Ozarks who accidentally discovers oil on his Missouri mountain land...

Tom Lester, the actor who played the guileless, brighter-than-he-seemed farmhand Eb Dawson on CBS’ 1960s sitcom Green Acres, died Monday in Nashville of complications from Parkinson’s disease, his family announced. He was 81.

Born Thomas William Lester in Laurel, Mississippi, Lester set out for Hollywood after graduating from the University of Mississippi. He studied acting with teacher and Petticoat Junction actress Lurene Tuttle, soon coming to the attention of the show’s creator Paul Henning, who was casting another rural comedy within The Beverly Hillbillies-Petticoat Junction universe.

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The show was Green Acres, an alternately hokey and surreal comedy starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as a sophisticated...

Stars: Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp, Ingrid Oliver, Emma Davies, Dean Norris, Casper Christensen | Written by Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning, Dale Launer, Jac Schaeffer | Directed by Chris Addison

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson star as a pair of rival con artists in The Hustle, a remake of 1988′s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (with Michael Caine and Steve Martin), which was itself a remake of 1964′s Bedtime Story, with David Niven and Marlon Brando. That might sound like a tantalising proposition on paper, but the actual film is a profound disappointment with an almost criminal lack of laughs.

Wilson plays low-rent Aussie grifter Penny Rust, whose regular scam involves fleecing gullible men she meets on a dating app. On a train to the South of France, she meets high class con artist Josephine Chesterfield (Hathaway), who immediately schemes to divert Penny from her home turf of Riviera town Beaumont-sur-Mer, on the...

Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are likely to live to reign another day at the box office.

“Avengers: Endgame” is on its way to its third weekend at No. 1 with an estimated $62 million.

The first real challenger to “Endgame’s” rule, Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “Detective Pikachu,” is heading for about $55 million from 4,202 locations after taking in $20 million on Friday.

Ryan Reynolds stars as the cheeky yellow Pokemon with Justice Smith co-starring as Tim, a young man with whom the world class detective teams up to figure out what happened to his partner, who is also Tim’s father. Reviews for the CGI-heavy pic have been mixed, with a 64% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and A- CinemaScore.

Rob Letterman directed the film, which he co-wrote with Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, and Derek Connelly. “Pikachu’s” audience is skewing slightly male, with 59%, and very slightly older, with 51% over the age of 25.

“Avengers: Endgame...

Chicago – As the “Oceans Eight” remake of last year proved, it is simply not enough to redo a film and flip the gender focus. Anne Hathaway may be the kiss of death for this genre, as she appeared both in O8 and the current “The Hustle,” which in turn is a remake of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988). Rebel Wilson, doing what Rebel Wilson does, portrays her sidekick.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

Hathaway and Wilson have little chemistry together, but that is the least of sins for “The Hustle.” Not only is the title lazy as hell, but the whole she-bang (ha) is flat and unfunny. It’s been years since I’ve seen the original – which was in itself a remake of the 1964 film “Bedtime Story” – but both those films must have more life than this tepid exercise in dreck. The screenplay credits list four names, a sure tip that the film we’re about to see is lost,...

There is a smart movie nestled somewhere in director Chris Addison’s romp, “The Hustle,” but you have to weed through a whole lot of foolery to get to it. The new film is ripe for big laughs with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson as, respectively, the snobby British bombshell with sticky fingers and the rough-around-the-edges though equally cunning con artist, but neither actress is given rich enough material to bring the film’s most interesting ideas to the finish line.

Hollywood has had a growing fascination with the female swindler, often to confront a larger issue of sexism and lack of female agency. And for about the first 20 minutes of “The Hustle,” it looks like screenwriter Jac Schaeffer — sharing credit with her antecedents, the creators of 1964’s “Bedtime Story,” Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning, as well as Dale Launer, who wrote that film’s 1988 remake, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” — is...

Universal Pictures has released the second UK trailer for the all-female reboot of ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ ‘The Hustle’ starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson.

Directed by Chris Addison from a script by Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning, Dales Launer and Jac Schaeffer the film stars Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson and Tim Blake Nelson.

The film is a fresh new take on the 1988 movie which starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin as two con artists trying to hustle a single female of her cash only for the duo the finally find out it was a double con.

Also in trailers – Jamie Bell is a confused White Supremacist in trailer for ‘Skin’

The film is released in the UK May 10th

The Hustle Synopsis

In the hilarious new comedy, Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson star as female scam artists, one low rent and the other high class, who team up to take down...

Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway tossed aside any urge to be ladylike and went right into potty-mouthed name-calling when asked to ad-lib for their upcoming film “The Hustle.”

While on “The Graham Norton Show” Friday promoting the female-centered remake of the 1988 comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” Wilson said that there was a lot of improvising during filming, which she and Hathaway really began to enjoy.

“Annie especially,” Wilson said. “She enjoys when I, like, insult her.”

“It’s true. You’re really good at it,” Hathaway acknowledged. “My favorite is when you called me an animatronic c— tease.”

Wilson nodded, “Yeah. On that day, you really looked like her.”

Also Read: Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway are 'Dirty Rotten' Con Artists in 'The Hustle' Trailer (Video)

And Hathaway didn’t pull any verbal punches when it came to swinging back. Watch the video below to see what we’re talking about.

The first official trailer for the new comedy The Hustle, starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, has arrived!

In the hilarious new comedy, Hathaway and Wilson star as female con artists, one low rent and the other high class, who team up to take down the dirty rotten men who have wronged them.

Genre: Comedy Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp Director: Chris Addison Writers: Stanley Shapiro & Paul Henning and Dale Launer and Jac Schaeffer Producers: Roger Birnbaum, Rebel Wilson

The Hustle is in theaters on May 10, 2019!

For more information, visit: Facebook / Twitter...

Move over, Michael Caine and Steve Martin — here come Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson!

The actress are playing two dueling scam artists in The Hustle, the gender-swapping remake of Caine and Martin’s hilarious 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

In the film’s first trailer, which dropped Tuesday, the unnamed characters played by Hathaway, 36, and Wilson, 38, team up to swindle a naive tech prodigy (Tony winner Alex Sharp) out of his fortune.

Like their male counterparts before them, both women couldn’t be more opposite. Hathaway’s character is a high-brow British schemer with a pension for stolen jewels, while Wilson...

Universal Pictures has released the first UK trailer for the all-female reboot of ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ ‘The Hustle’ starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson.

Directed by Chris Addison from a script by Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning, Dales Launer and Jac Schaeffer the film stars Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson and Tim Blake Nelson.

The film is a fresh new take on the 1988 movie which starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin as two con artists trying to hustle a single female of her cash only for the duo the finally find out it was a double con.

Also in trailers – ‘Dumbo’ takes flight in new TV spot

The film hits cinemas May 10th.

The Hustle Synopsis

In the hilarious new comedy, Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson star as female scam artists, one low rent and the other high class, who team up to take down the dirty rotten men who have wronged them.

“The Hustle” is the second gender-swapped remake Anne Hathaway has starred in after last year’s “Ocean’s 8.” And she’s now teaming up with Rebel Wilson for this new take on “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” the 1988 comedy starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin as a pair of con artists who team up for a big score.

MGM released the first trailer for “The Hustle” Tuesday, and in it, Wilson plays an amateur con artist who is taken under the wing by Hathaway’s elegant pro, sporting a sophisticated British accent no less. Their motto is that men will always underestimate women, and they can use that to their advantage.

Hathaway asks Wilson in the trailer, why are women better suited to the con job than men? “Because we’re used to faking it,” Wilson replies. “Because no man will ever believe a woman is smarter than she is.”

Also Read:...

Instead of touting itself as a female remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which hasn't really worked for some of the redos in recent past, MGM has simply changed the title to The Hustle, hoping to avoid the fan outrage that plagued Ghostbusters 2016 and Ocean's 8. Today, we get the first trailer and poster, and obviously, the title itself is a bit of a hustle cause, yes, this is descriptively a direct remake, though told with a twist.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was itself a remake, and also got a title change. Everything starts with the 1964 movie Bedtime Story, starring Marlon Brando and David Nevin. Then it was Steve Marin and Michael Caine who more famously took on the con. Now it's Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson scamming their way into our hearts. And whoever is at the forefront of this deceptive tale, it still appears to be as funny as it ever was.

Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway will give “dirty rotten men” a run for their money this spring – that’s the tagline in this new trailer for MGM’s The Hustle, a female-centric remake of 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. That comedy starred Steve Martin and Michael Caine.

Directed by Chris Addison, with a screenplay by Stanley Shapiro & Paul Henning and Dale Launer and Jac Schaeffer, The Hustle stars Hathaway and Wilson as two con artists – “one low rent and the other high class,” says MGM – who team up to “take down the dirty rotten men who have wronged them.”

In the trailer, Wilson poses as a grieving sister seeking her missing sibling. “I’m here to find my sister. She’s been taken by men who sell hot white virgins to kajillionaires on yachts,” she tells a stranger on a train, racial specificity and all.

The Hustle is produced by Roger Birnbaum and Rebel Wilson.

A celebration is in order for the Clampett clan. Thirty five years ago today, The Return of the Beverly Hillbillies debuted on CBS.The 1981 TV movie was written by Paul Henning, the creator of the original Beverly Hillbillies series, and featured the Clampetts reuniting a decade after the show ended in 1971. While Buddy Ebsen reprised his iconic role as Jed, the original Jethro (Max Baer Jr.) was replaced by Ray Young.Read More…...

The NoHo 7, the Playhouse 7, and the Royal in Los Angeles will all be showing a double feature of two of Doris Day’s best-known films on Monday, August 29, 2016. At 7:00 pm The Man Who Knew Too Much, the classic 1956 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, will be screened as part of its 60th anniversary. At 4:30 pm and again at 9:30 pm, 1961’s Lover Come Back, directed by Delbert Mann, will be screened as part of its 55th anniversary.

From the press release:

Doris Day Double Feature

Part of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: laemmle.com/ac.

Click here to buy tickets to the 4:30Pm Lover Come Back (includes admission to the 7Pm The Man Who Knew Too Much).

Click here to buy tickets to the 7Pm The Man Who Knew Too Much (includes admission to the 9:30Pm Lover Come Back).

Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics presents a tribute to Doris Day,...

As with any actor whose work I love, there are films that stand out as particularly great in the career of Steve Martin, and one of those films is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. There are many great things about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Michael Caine is a perfect foil for Martin, whose work as nascent con man Freddy Benson is inspired. Frank Oz does a terrific job of creating this romantic, beautiful French fantasyland where people are going to believe the incredible lies told by Freddy and Caine’s master bullshit artist Lawrence Jamieson. Glenne Headly gives one of her most nimble performances as Janet Colgate, the poor defenseless tourist who ends up targeted by Freddy and Lawrence. Ian McDiarmid, best known to the fanboy nation as Emperor Palpatine, is dry and deadly as Arthur, Lawrence’s manservant. Miles Goodman’s score is terrific, one of the great comedy scores of the ‘80s,...

Actor Mike Minor died Monday, January 25, 2016, at age 75. Predeceased by his father, producer Don Fedderson, mother Tido Fedderson, and younger brother Gregg Fedderson, Minor is best known for playing Steve Elliot on Petticoat Junction. He also had roles on four now-cancelled soap operas: Another World, All My Children, As the World Turns, and The Edge of Night.

Minor was married to his Petticoat Junction co-star Linda Henning (Betty Jo) from 1968 until their divorce in 1973. Her father, Paul Henning, created both Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies, and executive produced Green Acres. All three countrified TV shows were cancelled by CBS between 1970 and 1971, in what is referred to to as the "rural purge," which began when networks started targeting the 18-49 year old viewer ratings demographic.

Read More…...

Wesley Mead Dec 22, 2016

Wesley counts down the penultimate 20 entries in the top 100 Christmas TV episodes of all time list: from number 40 to 21...

This article was first published in December 2015. Read entries 100 - 81 here, entries 80 - 61 here, and entries 60 - 41 here.

See related New on Netflix UK: what's added in December 2016? New Us sci-fi, fantasy and horror shows for 2016 15 underappreciated books: sci-fi, fantasy, horror fiction Another Earth: an interview with director Mike Cahill

Since the medium’s infancy, viewers have enjoyed sharing holidays with their favourite television characters. We grow invested in our friends on screen over the years; spending Christmas with them is a rite of passage, a chance for us to share tradition from our world with the fictional ones we see on screen. Some shows embrace the season wholeheartedly, characters in good spirits and enjoying the trappings of the season; others skew a little darker, bringing the more oppressive,...

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Wesley counts down the penultimate 20 entries in the top 100 Christmas TV episodes of all time list: from number 40 to 21...

Read entries 100 - 81 here, entries 80 - 61 here, and entries 60 - 41 here.

Since the medium’s infancy, viewers have enjoyed sharing holidays with their favourite television characters. We grow invested in our friends on screen over the years; spending Christmas with them is a rite of passage, a chance for us to share tradition from our world with the fictional ones we see on screen. Some shows embrace the season wholeheartedly, characters in good spirits and enjoying the trappings of the season; others skew a little darker, bringing the more oppressive, burdensome side of the holidays to life. Either way, Christmas episodes tend to demonstrate the strengths of our favourite series, and it’s long been a festive ritual of mine to wheel out old DVD sets and settle...

By Lee Pfeiffer

I have always been a great admirer of Paul Henning, the crooner-turned-tv producer/writer of some of the best-loved shows of the 1960s. It was Henning who gave a voice to rural audiences by creating such classic TV series as The Beverly Hillbilllies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. If you revisit any of them today, they remain far superior to most contemporary sitcoms. Henning not only created shows that have timeless appeal, but he also brainstormed the concept of interweaving characters and plot devices between the series- a stroke of genius that brought cross-promotion marketing to new levels. Henning also prided himself on making his country characters eccentric, but never idiotic. They were simple people living simple lives and if they seemed to exist in a time warp, they were all honest, admirable folks. It was always the sophisticated city slickers who would get their comeuppance at...

Paul Henning, the radio and TV writer-producer who created the 1960s silly-sitcom triptych of The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, has died. He was 93. Henning, who lived in Toluca Lake, Calif., died Friday in a Burbank hospital of natural causes. He had been sick for some time, his daughter Carol said. Henning's broad CBS comedy farces, starting in 1962 with the debut of Hillbillies, have endured as icons of their era and remained popular in reruns in syndication and on cable.