News

Bob Uecker, a a Baseball Hall of Famer who spent 54 years as the Milwaukee Brewers play-by-play man, starred in the 1980s sitcom Mr. Belvedere and had a memorable roles in the movie Major League and in Miller Lite ads, died Thursday. He was 90.

His family said Uecker had battled small-cell lung cancer since early 2023.

The Brewers announced the news, saying in part: “Ueck was the light of the Brewers, the soundtrack of our summers, the laughter in our hearts, and his passing is a profound loss. He was the heart and soul of Wisconsin and a dear friend. …. He was a national treasure.” Read the team’s full statement below.

Known for his often self-deprecating wit and warm smile, Uecker had an uneventful six-year MLB career with the Brewers and three other teams in the 1960s. He worked briefly as a scout before joining the Atlanta Braves broadcast team for two seasons.

Bob Uecker, who parlayed six laughable seasons as a light-hitting catcher into a second career in comedy highlighted by hilarious turns in the Major League movies, on The Tonight Show and in beer commercials, died Thursday. He was 90.

A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Uecker was a popular play-by-play man for his hometown Milwaukee Brewers since 1971, and it was the team that announced his death.

On the 1985-90 ABC sitcom Mr. Belvedere, Uecker starred as sportswriter/sportscaster George Owens, who contends with the antics of his three kids (Rob Stone, Tracy Wells, Brice Beckham) and the title character, a sophisticated English butler (Christopher Hewitt) hired to bring order to a suburban Pittsburgh household.

As Harry Doyle, the eternally optimistic (and inebriated) play-by-play announcer for the beleaguered Cleveland Indians in Major League (1989), he tried to put an upbeat spin on the dismal play he was witnessing. When bespectacled rookie...

The Producers

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1967 / 1.85:1 / 88 min.

Starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder

Cinematography by Joseph Coffey

Directed by Mel Brooks

At his most unrestrained, Mel Brooks would have made Voltaire blush. Would such uninhibited comedy survive under the gaze of today’s self-appointed blacklisters? The answer can be found in the success of that very uninhibited Amazon darling—not to mention Academy-approved—Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, the film documents the latest diplomatic outreach of Kazakhstan’s most enthusiastic xenophobe, Borat Sagdiyev. For the past twenty five years Cohen has sicced this deeply racist, anti-Semitic, and somehow weirdly lovable doofus on civilization’s bad actors up to and including bottom-feeder extraordinaire, Donald Trump. Cohen infiltrated much of Maga-world for Borat’s latest adventure which was highlighted by a full-body impersonation of Trump (in a Coppertone-colored skin suit), and a hotel room encounter with the slimy Rudolph Giuliani at his most slithery.

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The Flop That Wasn't

By Raymond Benson

Most folks today may be familiar with The Producers, the Broadway musical comedy that ran for years, toured around the globe, and elicited laughter and joy for audiences of all ages. There are likely less people today who have experienced the original 1967 film upon which the successful musical is based. For decades, though, the movie was all we had.

In the mid-sixties, Mel Brooks was a successful television writer, having worked on hilarious comedies with Sid Caesar, among other works, and later the co-creator of Get Smart. Brooks then came up with what was first intended to be a novel, then a play, and finally a screenplay called Springtime for Hitler—an outrageous satire lampooning the Nazis. The Hollywood producers to whom Brooks pitched the piece were appalled. No audience would accept a “comedyâ€. about Hitler.

I’d never heard of this gem of a British production; now it goes on my list of highly recommended titles. A dock area on the Thames is ‘the pool,’ and the sailors that disembark from the cargo ships are susceptible to the temptations of black market trade. A single eventful weekend traces the fates of a half-dozen young people, the women that like the sailors, and the sailor that gets mixed up in a deadly serious crime. Director Basil Dearden’s excellent cast is mostly unfamiliar to us Yanks, but we get really tied up in their problems. This picture should be much better known. It’s the first English movie to depict an interracial romance, and it does so without sensationalism or special pleading. The best new extra is an interview with actor Earl Cameron, who at 103 years of age has his act (and his memories) totally together.

Michael Peña is headed to Fantasy Island. Deadline reports the Narcos: Mexico star has joined the upcoming movie based on the ABC TV show.

The series starred Ricardo Montalban as Mr. Roarke, a mysterious figure who runs an island where visitors can realize their greatest fantasies. The cast also included Hervé Villechaize, Wendy Schaal, and Christopher Hewett. The show ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.

Read More…...

Gary Beach, who earned a Tony Award in 2001 for Mel Brooks’ Broadway musical “The Producers,” died Monday in Palm Springs, Calif., his agent Steven Unger confirmed. No cause of death was given.

Beach also earned Tony nominations for playing Lumiere in Disney’s 1994 Broadway adaptation of “Beauty and the Beast” and the drag star Albin in the 2004 revival of Jerry Herman’s “La Cage aux Folles.”

But he is best remembered for his turn as the flamboyantly gay director Roger de Bris who tries to stage the musical-within-a-musical “Springtime for Hitler” in Brooks’ musical comedy “The Producers.”

He won wide acclaim — and one of the show’s record-breaking 12 Tony Awards — for the role, first played by Christopher Hewett in Brooks’ 1967 film of the same name. “I am the happiest boy in the fifth grade,” he said on accepting the award on the stage of Radio City Music Hall.

Also Read:...

"We've got to find the worst play ever written!" Studiocanal UK has debuted a short new trailer for a 4K restoration re-release of Mel Brooks' original comedy classic The Producers, which first hit cinemas in 1968. They're celebrating the film's 50th anniversary, and putting it back in theaters for one day only this August (in the UK). There's no Us plans yet, but we expect to hear something soon. Brooks' The Producers is about two producers who decide to make a flop Broadway show since it will make them more money than a hit. They go on to produce the hilarious show Springtime for Hitler. Gene Wilder stars in the film, along with Zero Mostel as his producer cohort, with Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn, Lorenzo St. DuBois, Lee Meredith, Estelle Winwood, Christopher Hewett, and Andreas Voutsinas. Jawohl! This is a major comedy classic and a film that everyone should have seen by now anyway.

We are in the throngs of springtime so it can only mean one thing: it’s time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of movie history’s funniest–and controversial–cult comedies turned classics, The Producers. Returning to nationwide movie theaters for two days only, Sunday, June 3, and Wednesday, June 6 at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. (local time), Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies and Rialto Pictures are bringing back the Mel Brooks‘ comedy masterpiece in a brand-new 4K restoration (at select theaters) so that moviegoers can properly laugh, groan, and laugh again at washed up Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and his neurotic accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) as they attempt and epically fail at cashing in on a seemingly surefire flop: a musical extravaganza singing the praises of the Third Reich.

The shock-inducing, rib-tickling Springtime for Hitler becomes an unexpected and unfortunate smash hit, and...

Without “The Producers,” there might never have been “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” and “Spaceballs.” And yet Mel Brooks’ movie debut (which earned him the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) was the most original work of his career, combining subversive humor with a tender bromance between Zero Mostel’s Max Bialystock and Gene Wilder’s Leo Bloom. This was no genre bender, but it was a cultural assault on fascism and complacency, and it was ahead of its time in elevating the Lgbt artistic community.

In honor of its 50th anniversary, “The Producers” opens the TCM Classic Film Festival Thursday night at the Chinese Theater IMAX in Hollywood with a digital 4k restoration courtesy by Studiocanal. For the 91-year-old Brooks, the cult favorite-turned comedy classic was a miracle that launched his celebrated film career as writer-director.

“It was very simple: You can make more money with a flop than with a hit,...

On March 15, 1985, ABC debuted Mr. Belvedere at 8:30 p.m. as a midseason replacement airing immediately after that other show about a wise-cracking butler, Benson. The show centered on a proper British butler (Christopher Hewett) adjusting to life working for the Owens family of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. And for six seasons, characters on the show and the people watching them chose not to think too much about how strange it was that a middle-class family would have a live-in butler. The show hit that family-comedy sweet spot right along with Family Ties, Growing Pains, Full House and The Cosby Show,...

On March 15, 1985, ABC debuted Mr. Belvedere at 8:30 p.m. as a midseason replacement airing immediately after that other show about a wise-cracking butler, Benson. The show centered on a proper British butler (Christopher Hewett) adjusting to life working for the Owens family of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. And for six seasons, characters on the show and the people watching them chose not to think too much about how strange it was that a middle-class family would have a live-in butler.

The show hit that family-comedy sweet spot right along with Family Ties, Growing Pains, Full House and The Cosby Show,...

While New Yorkers have plenty of opportunity to see classic films on the big screen, you'll be hard pressed to find a lineup as front to back awesome as the Film Society Of Lincoln Center's "15 For 15: Celebrating Rialto Pictures."

The series honors the reknowned arthouse distribution shingle founded in 1997 that has brought some of the best known (and previously unknown) classics of cinema to American audiences. And the selection here by programmers Scott Foundas, Eric Di Bernardo and Adrienne Halpern represents the breadth and scope of the films Rialto has put their stamp on, ranging from the French New Wave ("Breathless") to film noir ("Rififi") to comedy ("Billy Liar") and more. There is something here for everybody and with the series kicking off tonight, we've got a special prize for some lucky readers.

Courtesy of Film Society Of Lincoln Center, we've got a copy of the excellent Rialto DVD...

Great news for those who remember some classic American TV shows as Shout! delivers wonderful collections of TV history to relive or experience for the first time. Finally "Room 222," "Ironside", "Mr. Belvedere," and "My Two Dads" are available thanks to the Shout! team, who have repackaged an array of memorable catalog titles - select releases of TV-dvd and film catalog titles (Shout! Factory Exclusives), available for purchase directly from the official online store site. To order visit www.shoutfactorystore.com Here's a rundown of what terrific days of yore TV you can stock up on: Mr. Belvedere: Season Four (3-dvd Set) Featuring all 20 original episodes from the complete fourth season, Mr. Belvedere (Christopher Hewett) is back to...

Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic, and not-so-classic, movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies like Silverado, Dead Calm and The Quick and the Dead as well as Fringe Season One also on the Blu-ray.

Check them out.

Movies

Bedknobs and Broomsticks ~ Angela Lansbury, Roddy McDowall (DVD)

Catwoman ~ Halle Berry (Blu-ray)

Crank 2: High Voltage ~ Jason Statham, Amy Smart, David Carradine (DVD and Blu-ray)

Creepshow ~ Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielsen (Blu-ray)

Dead Calm ~ Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Billy Zane (Blu-ray)

Requiem for a Dream ~ Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly (Blu-ray)

Freddy vs. Jason ~ Robert Englund, Monica Keena (Blu-ray)

Friday ~ Ice Cube, Chris Tucker, Nia Long (Blu-ray)

Halloween...

Frank Dungan and Jeff Stein's Mr. Belvedere (1985-1990) entertained a large audience last six seasons. Mr. Belvedere is the story of Gwen Davenport's 1947 novel of the same name. Christopher Hewett plays the role of  Mr. Belvedere in the show.

Mr. Belvedere is a  much traveled British gentleman who comes down to the Owens household and settles there in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pa. Finding an advertisement of a housekeeping job placed by mother Marsha (played by Ilene Graff), Mr. Belvedere replies to it and manages to bag the job. But he is much discouraged by father George (played by Bob Uecker) and inspired by ultimate enrapture of children Kevin (played by Rob Stone), Heat....