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Oh, Hello comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll opened the 32nd Spirit Awards with a monologue that poked fun at Mel Gibson, Donald Trump and Steve Bannon.

"We like to think of these awards as the ones without Mel Gibson," Kroll said of the Oscar-nominated Hacksaw Ridge director. "People wondered: how long would it take Hollywood to forgive someone for anti-Semitic, racist hate speech?' The answer: Eight years!"

Mulaney added, "So look out for the 2024 Oscars, when the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award goes to Mr. Steve Bannon."

Kroll and...

"I was there. I never saw any abuse of any animal. If there had been, I would have walked," Dennis Quaid told Et on Monday, addressing allegations that one of his canine costars had been abused on the set of his film, A Dog's Purpose.

Controversy arose when footage leaked last week that purported to show a trainer seemingly forcing a scared German shepherd, Hercules, into the water. Now, Quaid has spoken out, claiming that the video "does not tell the whole story."

Watch: 'A Dog's Purpose' Star Josh Gad 'Shaken and Sad' After Seeing Controversial Video, Investigation Launched

Universal Pictures

"My experience is that the animals were treated great. There was no animal abuse," Quaid explained. "That video that someone took and sold for money and held on to for a year and a half until right before the film's coming out, does not tell the whole story. First of all, it's been edited...

Italian creator of the satirical film Mondo Cane and its 'shockumentary' successors

When the Italian film director Gualtiero Jacopetti, who has died at the age of 91, made Mondo Cane (A Dog's Life) in 1962, he tapped into people's curiosity and provided the strangest commercially successful film in the history of cinema. Audiences not yet accustomed to cheap air travel or the idea of globalisation were unprepared for its colourful National Geographic-style montages of "primitive" rites and "civilised" wrongs. The following year, they flocked to see the film's sequels, Mondo Pazzo (Mad World, or Mondo Cane No 2) and La Donna nel Mondo (Women of the World).

Mondo Cane was a film made out of a compilation of pithy sequences depicting strange rituals from around the globe. But while Jacopetti documented the peculiarities of what was then described as the third world, he also mocked the alleged superiority of western culture. The...

"'Even a Man Who is Pure in Heart': Filmic Horror, Popular Religion and the Spectral Underside of History," an essay that appeared in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture in 2005, piqued Michael Guillén's interest in its author, Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare, "a native Montrealer and 'monster kid' who teaches courses on genre cinema and monsters in the Humanities department of John Abbott College." So they met up a few weeks ago at the Fantasia International Film Festival and Michael's transcription of their conversation — touching on national identities, filmmakers who straddle the high and the low, "the knowledge systems of ordinary people" and more — is one of the week's best reads, which is why I wanted to point it out right at the top of this little roundup of horror-related items.

The splashiest of these will surely be Jason Zinoman's survey of "a diverse collection of filmmakers about the scariest movie they'd...

There's a quote attributed to W.C. Fields: "Never work with children or animals." While "Supernatural" has had its fair share of creepy kids on set, it's relatively rare that series star Jared Padalecki works with animals (his own pets notwithstanding).

As we've seen in previews for upcoming episodes, though, Padalecki did ride a horse for the upcoming Old West themed episode. When Zap2it caught up with him at the PaleyFest event on Sunday, we had to ask him if that old Fields quote rang true in his experience.

Luckily, Padalecki has some experience with horseback riding. His wife, Genevieve Cortese Padalecki, is an accomplished equestrian - she starred on ABC Family's "Wildfire," about a horse ranch, for four seasons. "It was so fun," Padalecki says. "I love riding horses. I'm not a great, great rider - my wife is. She did a show about a horse for four years,...

Here at Zap2it, we interact with tons of TV fans, and it's always refreshing to see when fans turn their mutual admiration for a show or actor into a way to give back to the community. "Supernatural" fans are a passionate bunch, and they've always been highly active in using their power for good.

One great example of that is SupportSupernatural.com, which has raised over $50,000 in two years for actor Jared Padalecki's favorite cause, A Dog's Life Rescue animal shelter in Los Angeles, a volunteer-run organization. The fundraiser, run by "Supernatural" fans Lindsay Warren and Heather Vitas, has set another lofty goal for 2011: they want to raise $30,000.

Over the course of ten months, the organization will be giving away 10 prize packs donated by Creation Entertainment -- they're the ones who run the highly successful "Supernatural" conventions. In order to be eligible to win a prize pack,...

Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, Vittorio Gassman, Big Deal on Madonna Street (top); Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, The Great War (middle); Anna Magnani, Totò, The Passionate Thief (bottom) Mario Monicelli, the (co)writer-director of Italian cinema classics such as I soliti ignoti / Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), La grande guerra / The Great War (1959), and I compagni / The Organizer (1963), leapt to his death from a fifth-story hospital window in Rome. Monicelli, who had been suffering from prostate cancer, was 95. Though not nearly as internationally known as, say, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Franco Zeffirelli, Monicelli was perhaps the best portraitist of Italian sociopolitical mores during the second half of the 20th century. For instance, one of Monicelli's earliest efforts (co-directed with Steno aka Stefano Vanzina), Vita da cani / A Dog's Life (1950), chronicled the travails of a provincial theater troupe in post-World War II Italy. Aldo [...]...

About two years ago I started watching Charlie Chaplin films for the first time. I watched City Lights, The Great Dictator, The Kid, The Gold Rush and, of course, Modern Times. I didn't instantly take to his style of comedy or commentary, not the same as I instantly fell in love with Buster Keaton's work in The General, but as I watched each film my appreciation began to grow.

With only a few films under my belt when it comes to Chaplin and Keaton, I would probably still place myself more in Keaton's camp than Chaplin's. But with the thought of Criterion potentially adding the rest of Chaplin's classic features to their collection, and if the Blu-ray releases are as spectacular as their treatment of Modern Times, that won't stop me from wanting more, more, more.

Modern Times is the first Chaplin feature Criterion has added to their collection,...

In honor of "Supernatural" hottie Jared Padalecki's 28th birthday today, we thought we'd pause for a moment to take a stroll down memory lane.

Ten years ago, Padalecki was cast in "Gilmore Girls" as Dean Forester, the cute guy who makes Rory (Alexis Bledel) question her decision to ditch public school and attend her expensive private school in Hartford.

Misty water-colored memories, we know. But he was just so darn cute! Today, he's better known as Sam Winchester on "Supernatural," and "cute" isn't exactly the word we'd use to describe him. Let's just say he's been working out a bit.

If you're in the mood to celebrate Padalecki's birthday today, we know he'd appreciate a donation to A Dog's Life Rescue, his favorite charity. A Dog's Life is an animal rescue organization in Los Angeles that helps abandoned pets find good homes. Padalecki has been working with the organization for years.

This past May, the Criterion Collection e-mail newsletter announced that Janus Films had acquired the rights to distribute the works of Charlie Chaplin theatrically. We all celebrated in the notion that we would be able to hopefully see new clean prints of his incredible body of work, as well as the idea that these titles would inevitably make their way into the Criterion Collection.

Whether these titles would be available individually, in box sets (either in Criterion proper, or in the Eclipse Series), or some combination of the two, we still have not heard a definitive statement from Criterion. It is highly likely that we’ll get an announcement for either November or December, as many would love a complete Charlie Chaplin box set to find it’s way onto their holiday wish list.

Last month, Janus unveiled a poster image, as a placeholder on their website for an upcoming Charlie Chaplin sub-site,...

...this moment in Modern Times is near perfection. For those that don't know what's going on in the scene, he had the lyrics to the song he was supposed to sing on his cuffs, which you will notice fly off almost immediately. One thing interesting about the song Chaplin sings is that it is the first time you hear the Tramp's voice as he sings "Je cherche apres Titine" in French/Italian gibberish but his actions lead the audience to understand what he is supposed to be singing about entirely. If you are yet to familiarize yourself with Chaplin or are looking for a refresher course on April 16 TCM is set to run 10 Chaplin films in a row including Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), A Dog's Life (1918), A Day's Pleasure (1919), The Kid (1921), Pay Day (1922), A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), A King in New York (1957) and...