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After a 14-year run as a feature filmmaker in England (which began during the silent era), Alfred Hitchcock was lured to Hollywood by the bold producer David O. Selznick to direct a big-screen adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's thriller novel "Rebecca." Though the two headstrong men clashed throughout the making of the movie, the finished 1940 film was a commercial and critical smash, topping the box office for the year and taking home the Academy Award for Best Picture. If there had been any doubts as to whether the British director's precise manner of visual storytelling, already perfected in triumphs like "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes," would translate to Hollywood, they were instantly dispelled.

"Rebecca" would prove to be the least Hitchcockian movie the director would make in America, as the master of suspense wasted no time in reverting...

Now that they’ve set the year’s best film for a December 10 debut, the Criterion Channel have unveiled the rest of next month’s selection. John Waters’ films are inseparable from John Waters’ presence, making fitting Criterion’s decision to pair an eight-film retrospective (Multiple Maniacs to Cecil B. Demented) with his own “Adventures in Moviegoing” wherein the director extols virtues of Bergman, Chabrol, Barbara Loden, and Samuel Fuller. His own Polyester will have a Criterion Edition alongside the Bob Dylan doc Don’t Look Back, an iconic film in its own right and, I think, fitting companion to The Unknown with Lon Chaney, also streaming on Criterion. No Country for Old Men and Election receive likewise treatment; the latter appears in “MTV Productions,” a series featuring Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, The Original Kings of Comedy, and (coming close to Freddy Got Fingered for least-expected 2024 addition) Jackass: the Movie.

When putting together a list of the 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, it’s like plunging into a spectacular alternate universe of wit, verve, and style. The director of “Rear Window,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho” has a body of work so deep there are endless ways you can parse it: Maybe you could focus on his obsession with mothers, his approach to time, or the way food and painting pop up throughout his films.

But on a basic level, you also run into a challenge with Hitchcock you face with few other filmmakers, full-stop: The Master of Suspense is one of the rare directors to have a filmography with both the volume and the quality to credibly field a Top 25. With what other filmmakers can you do that? John Ford, certainly (Ford had the most films in our recent list of the 100 Greatest Westerns). Godard or Fassbinder perhaps? They...

By the mid-1950s, Alfred Hitchcock had firmly established himself as the master director of suspense films, but he still enjoyed experimenting with new technology (including 3-D) and collaborating with novice actresses. On May 29, 1954, he released “Dial M for Murder,” in which he incorporated some filmmaking fads of the day and made a star out of an actress whose short career begat a long-lasting legacy. Read on for more about the “Dial M for Murder” 70th anniversary.

The thriller was written by British playwright Frederick Knott, based on his successful stage play two years prior. When retired pro-tennis player Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) discovers his wealthy socialite wife Margot (Grace Kelly) is having an affair with their friend Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), he decides her death would be much more profitable than a divorce. He blackmails old acquaintance Charles Swann (Anthony Dawson) to stage a break-in and murder his wife,...

Cyber Monday is here with even more deals on horror 4K UHDs, Blu-rays, collectibles, and more. Some Black Friday sales are still active, other prices have come down even more, and a bunch of new items have been discounted. Here are this year’s Cyber Monday highlights.

Amazon 4K Uhd Deals:

Assassin’s Creed – $5.99 Maleficent – $7.43 Terminator 2 – $7.99 Suicide Squad – $7.99 Reservoir Dogs – $9.33 John Wick: Chapter 2 – $9.33 Evil Dead Rise – $9.49 The Lost Boys – $9.49 Poltergeist – $9.49 The Blackening – $9.49 Jurassic Park – $9.49 Nope – $9.49 Get Out – $9.99 The Batman – $9.99 Zack Snyder’s Justice League – $9.99 The Suicide Squad – $9.99 Dune – $9.99 The Shawshank Redemption – $9.99 Jaws 2 – $9.99 Everything Everywhere All At Once – $9.99 Edge of Tomorrow – $9.99 Highlander – $9.99 Battlestar Galactica – $9.99 Warcraft – $9.99 Godzilla vs. Kong – $9.99 King Kong (2005) – $10.44 Serenity – $10.49 E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial – $10.99 Ip Man – $10.99 Train to Busan – $11.21 The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – $11.49 Parasite – $11.49 The Goonies – $11.49 Full Metal Jacket – $11.49 The Shining – $11.99 Dr. Strangelove – $11.99 Us – $11.99 Bram Stoker’s Dracula – $11.99 Nobody – $11.99 The Fifth Element – $11.99 The Dark Crystal – $11.99 Halloween Kills – $11.99 Halloween Ends...

The Criterion Channel is closing the year out with a bang––they’ve announced their December lineup. Among the highlights are retrospectives on Yasujiro Ozu (featuring nearly 40 films!), Ousmane Sembène, Alfred Hitchcock (along with Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut), and Parker Posey. Well-timed for the season is a holiday noir series that includes They Live By Night, Blast of Silence, Lady in the Lake, and more.

Other highlights are the recent restoration of Abel Gance’s La roue, an MGM Musicals series with introduction by Michael Koresky, Helena Wittmann’s riveting second feature Human Flowers of Flesh, the recent Sundance highlight The Mountains Are a Dream That Call To Me, the new restoration of The Cassandra Cat, Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, and more.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terry Gilliam, 1988

An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli,...

The most wonderful time of year is nearly upon us! With Halloween season just around the corner, Peacock unveiled an impressive lineup today of more than 100 Halloween, horror, thriller, and spooky season titles hitting the platform this September.

Get ready, the list is massive…

Whether you’re looking for recent releases like Hypnotic, or cult gems like Slither, Peacock invites you to face your fears in September. Binge complete freakish franchises like Chucky, Saw, and Amityville, or tune-in for fun family fare that includes Ghostbusters and Casper. Look for a variety of classic horror to arrive on the streaming service mid-September.

Speaking of “Chucky,” if you’re looking to catch up on the series ahead of season three, Peacock brings “Chucky” season two to their Halloween HQ on September 4. That gives you a whole month to catch up before the October 4 premiere of “Chucky” season three.

Full Peacock Halloween horror highlights below.

Despite his well-earned title as the master of suspense, many of director Alfred Hitchcock's movies left something to be desired. Though he rarely made all-out duds, his hits were so impressive that they set the bar too high for many of his lesser films. Hitchcock also had a habit of returning to the same elements: an innocent man on the run ("The 39 Steps" and "Saboteur"), a pair of murderers where one of them is horrified by the act ("Rope" and "Strangers on a Train"), etc. While this allowed Hitchcock's later movies to feel more refined for viewers who saw the movies as they came out, it can make for a frustrating experience when you're working your way through Hitchcock's filmography decades later.

Hitchcock was no stranger to the fact that some of his movies were stronger than others, even going so far as to publicly complain about what he saw as their shortcomings.

The Oscars don’t always get it right. There have been many notable injustices since the first ceremony took place in 1929, but surely none more surprising than the absence of Alfred Hitchcock’s name from the list of winners.

The man responsible for some of the greatest films ever made, and who committed many of cinema’s most deathless images to celluloid, never won an Academy Award despite being nominated for best director on five occasions: Rebecca in 1940, Lifeboat in 1944, Spellbound in 1945, Rear Window in 1954 and Psycho in 1960.

However, these five movies represent just a small percentage of Hitchcock’s magnificent oeuvre of 52 films. To counteract this injustice, here is my selection of his 20 greatest.

20. Blackmail (1929)

A young woman kills a man who tries to rape her and then finds herself caught between the investigating policeman, who happens to be her fiance, and a blackmailer. Generally considered to be the first British talkie,...

The Oscars don’t always get it right. There have been many notable injustices since the first ceremony took place in 1929, but surely none more surprising than the absence of Alfred Hitchcock’s name from the list of winners.

The man responsible for some of the greatest films ever made, and who committed many of cinema’s most deathless images to celluloid, never won an Academy Award despite being nominated for best director on five occasions: Rebecca in 1940, Lifeboat in 1944, Spellbound in 1945, Rear Window in 1954 and Psycho in 1960.

However, these five movies represent just a small percentage of Hitchcock’s magnificent oeuvre of 52 films. To counteract this injustice, here is my selection of his 20 greatest.

20. Blackmail (1929)

A young woman kills a man who tries to rape her and then finds herself caught between the investigating policeman, who happens to be her fiance, and a blackmailer. Generally considered to be the first British talkie,...

The Oscars don’t always get it right. There have been many notable injustices since the first ceremony took place in 1929, but surely none more surprising than the absence of Alfred Hitchcock’s name from the list of winners.

The man responsible for some of the greatest films ever made, and who committed many of cinema’s most deathless images to celluloid, never won an Academy Award despite being nominated for best director on five occasions: Rebecca in 1940, Lifeboat in 1944, Spellbound in 1945, Rear Window in 1954 and Psycho in 1960.

However, these five movies represent just a small percentage of Hitchcock’s magnificent oeuvre of 52 films. To counteract this injustice, here is my selection of his 20 greatest.

20. Blackmail (1929)

A young woman kills a man who tries to rape her and then finds herself caught between the investigating policeman, who happens to be her fiance, and a blackmailer. Generally considered to be the first British talkie,...

If 2021 has been a calvacade of bad decisions, dashed hopes, and warning signs for cinema’s strength, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming has at least buttressed our hopes for something like a better tomorrow. Anyway. The Channel will let us ride out distended (holi)days in the family home with an extensive Alfred Hitchcock series to bring the family together—from the established Rear Window and Vertigo to the (let’s just guess) lesser-seen Downhill and Young and Innocent—Johnnie To’s Throw Down and Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons in their Criterion editions, and some streaming premieres: Ste. Anne, Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over, and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love.

Special notice to Yvonne Rainer’s brain-expanding Film About a Woman Who . . .—debuting in “Female Gaze: Women Directors + Women Cinematographers,” a series that does as it says on the tin—and a Joseph Cotten retro boasting Ambersons,...

A genuine ‘sleeper’ hit, this ‘all in the family’ noir pits innocent childhood against cold blooded murderers. Little Bobby Driscoll witnesses Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman committing a murder, and can’t get Mom and Dad to believe him because of a habit of crying Wolf. But the killers believe him … and they live right upstairs. The beautifully made film evokes a rough, broken-down block in New York City in great detail. Rko’s new boss Howard Hughes did what he always did with a hot feature ready to release: he shelved it for more than a year. The Wac’s restoration is eye-opening.

The Window

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 73 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date September 21, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman, Anthony Ross, Richard Benedict.

Cinematography: Robert De Grasse, William O. Steiner

Art Directors: Sam Corso, Albert D’Agostino,...

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Having helped shape modern cinema, Alfred Hitchcock is revered as one of the most prolific directors in history and this year, his birthday falls on Friday the 13th.

That date couldn’t be more fitting for the Master of Suspense. Hitchcock released over 50 films in his 60-year career amassing a catalog of classics such as “Rear Window,” “Psycho,” “The Birds,” “Marnie,” “North by Northwest,” “Vertigo,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” and “Rebecca.”

Although he never won a Best Director Oscar, Hitchcock cemented his place as a cinematic genius. Beyond the virtuosic camera techniques that gave audiences unique points of view and ways of identifying with his characters (even when they’re doing...

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Turner Classic Movies:

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Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will celebrate the life and career of iconic actor, producer and director Norman Lloyd with a programming tribute on Monday, June 14. Lloyd, who passed away on May 11 at the age of 106, was known for playing the saboteur himself in Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942) and was part of original company of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater. His eight-decade career saw him work in all media including Broadway, television, film, and radio, with stints as director and producer. He attended the TCM Classic Cruise in 2011 and 2013 and attended all but one TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood.

The following is the complete schedule for TCM's on-air tribute to Norman Lloyd:

TCM Remembers Norman Lloyd – Monday, June 14

8:00 p.m. Saboteur (1942) – A young man accused of sabotage goes on the lam to prove his innocence.

Norman Lloyd, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur and portrayed Dr. Daniel Auschlander on NBC’s St. Elsewhere, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, as Variety reports. Lloyd’s friend, producer Dean Hargrove, confirmed his death to Variety. He was 106.

The Hollywood veteran’s eight-decade career spanned theater, radio, film and TV, where he served in a variety of roles including director and producer. While his own name may not be widely recognized, he was deeply respected within industry circles and worked with some of the...

American actor was best known for his roles as the villain in Hitchcock’s Saboteur and as the kindly Dr Daniel Auschlander on TV’s St Elsewhere

Norman Lloyd, whose distinguished stage and screen career that put him in the company of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin and other greats, has died. He was 106.

Lloyd manager, Marion Rosenberg, said the actor died Tuesday at his home in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles.

Actor known for Alfred Hitchcock films and “St. Elsewhere” died at 106

Hollywood is in awe of the legendary career of Norman Lloyd, who died this week at age 106 after having worked with everyone from Orson Welles to Judd Apatow to Charlie Chaplin to Alfred Hitchcock.

Karl Malden once referred to Lloyd as “the history of our business,” and it shows in his enormous filmography, in which he worked as an actor, director and producer, not only continuing to work well past age 100 but being willing to share stories and histories with other film fans at screenings of classic films all across town.

“What a career. From Welles to Apatow. #Rip Norman Lloyd,” actor Ben Stiller said in reacting to Lloyd’s death.

“Look up mensch in the dictionary. There’s a picture of Norman Lloyd,” Brent Spiner added.

Lloyd was perhaps best known as Dr. Daniel Auschlander on the long-running ’80s series “St. Elsewhere,...

Actor, director, and producer Norman Lloyd passed away Monday, May 10 at the age of 106. The actor, a regular staple in the classic film community, was a jack-of-all trades with a career going back to the golden year of 1939. Lloyd’s most notable credits include Alfred Hitchcock’s “Saboteur” and “Spellbound,” the television series “St. Elsewhere,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence,” and Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck” which he starred in at the age of 100.

Lloyd was born Norman Perlmutter in Jersey City, New Jersey on November 8, 1914. Lloyd started working the vaudeville circuit in New York at age nine. When he graduated high school, he started attending classes at NYU but dropped out quickly. He worked his way up through repertory theater companies before starring on Broadway in 1935.

The budding star soon met Orson Welles, and when Welles launched his famed Mercury Theatre troupe, Lloyd was one of the first members.

Norman Lloyd was the last one standing. For a long time, it looked like an extended, slow-motion foot-race between Norman and Olivia de Havilland as to who would be the final significant figure from Hollywood’s golden age to pass from Earth to the eternal cinematic firmament. But Olivia left us in July of last year at 104, and now Norman, two years older, has joined all the others who helped make Hollywood what it was. The parade has now definitively, conclusively, gone by.

In a life bracketed by two pandemics, the Spanish flu of 1918-20 and the ongoing Covid onslaught, this Jersey and Brooklyn boy born into modest circumstances first strode onto the New York stage in 1932, was the last surviving member of Orson Welles’ and John Houseman’s Mercury Theater and made his startling film debut in 1942 as the villain who fell from the top of the Statue of...

Norman Lloyd, the Emmy-nominated character actor who worked with Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock before landing major roles in 1980s hits like “Dead Poets Society” and “St. Elsewhere,” has died. He was 106.

A family friend confirmed the news to Deadline.

The New Jersey native, born Norman Perlmutter, got his start in the New York theater scene of the 1930s, much of it federally subsidized through the Federal Theatre Project. He became a charter member of Orson Welles and John Housman’s Mercury Theatre, where he played the prophetic Cinna the Poet in an acclaimed 1937 production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”

Lloyd first broke out on the big screen playing a Nazi spy in Hitchcock’s 1942 thriller “Saboteur,” then returned as a psychiatric patient in 1945’s “Spellbound” with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. Hitchcock later hired Lloyd as a director and associate producer on his 1950s anthology TV series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Actor, producer and director Norman Lloyd, best known for his title role in Hitchcock’s “Saboteur” and as Dr. Daniel Auschlander on NBC’s “St. Elsewhere” and famously associated with Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 106.

His friend, producer Dean Hargrove, confirmed his death and said “His third act was really the best time of his life,” referring to the many historical Hollywood retrospectives and events Lloyd had participated in over the past few decades. Lloyd often said his secret to his long and mostly illness-free life was “avoiding disagreeable people,” Hargrove recounted.

Lloyd was hand-picked by Alfred Hitchcock to play the title character and villain in 1942’s “Saboteur,” and it was his character who tumbled to his death from the top of the Statue of Liberty in the pic’s iconic conclusion.

But the hard-working multihyphenate gained his highest profile only...

With each year, our connection to the Golden Age of Hollywood grows dimmer as the performers and creators of that era pas on, and I'm saddened to report that we've lost another one of the greats. Norman Lloyd, who appeared in a number of classic films including Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur, died yesterday at the age of 106. Driven by his mother's love of theater,…...

Norman Lloyd, the Emmy-nominated veteran actor, producer and director whose career ranged from Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur and acting with Charlie Chaplin in Limelight to St. Elsewhere, Dead Poets Society and The Practice, died May 10 in his sleep at his Los Angeles home. He was 106. A family friend confirmed the news to Deadline.

During one of the famous Lloyd birthday celebrations, Karl Malden said, “Norman Lloyd is the history of our business.”

Blessed with a commanding voice, Lloyd’s acting career dates back to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre troupe, of which he was the last surviving member. He was part of its first production — 1937 a modern-dress adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar on Broadway titled Caesar.

He originally was cast in Welles’ epic Citizen Kane and accompanied the director to Hollywood. When the filmmaker ran into his proverbial budget problems, Lloyd quit the project and returned to New York,...

Norman Lloyd, the actor, producer and director whose collaborations with Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht and Jean Renoir made him a legend — albeit an off-the-radar one — in Hollywood, died Tuesday morning. He was 106.

Lloyd died in his home in Los Angeles, his son, Michael, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lloyd portrayed the villain who plummets from the Statue of Liberty at the climax of Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942) and appeared as the crusty Dr. Daniel Auschlander on NBC’s acclaimed 1980s hospital drama St. Elsewhere.

His first love was the theater, and he was asked by Welles and John Houseman to join their legendary Mercury Theatre in the ...

Norman Lloyd, the actor, producer and director whose collaborations with Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht and Jean Renoir made him a legend — albeit an off-the-radar one — in Hollywood, died Tuesday morning. He was 106.

Lloyd died in his home in Los Angeles, his son, Michael, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lloyd portrayed the villain who plummets from the Statue of Liberty at the climax of Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942) and appeared as the crusty Dr. Daniel Auschlander on NBC’s acclaimed 1980s hospital drama St. Elsewhere.

His first love was the theater, and he was asked by Welles and John Houseman to join their legendary Mercury Theatre in the ...

For many dozens of Norman Lloyd’s closest friends, one of the most highly anticipated events of every year has long been the great character actor Norman Lloyd’s birthday party on November 6. The countdown to 100 was a much-relished slow-motion occasion, but Norman has long since put that milestone in the rear-view mirror. Still vigorous, mentally alert and blessed with a booming voice that could doubtless still be heard from the back row of a large theater’s second balcony, Norman a few days ago turned 106. Olivia de Havilland long ran a close second to Norman in Hollywood’s longevity department but, with her death last July, Norman has the field all to himself. It will certainly be a while until any Hollywood figure now in their 90s will threaten the actor’s record.

Although Norman continues to receive visitors at his cozy, tree-enshrouded home on the Westside, the usual boisterous November 6 gathering at a generous neighbor’s place was clearly not possible this year. Instead, over the weekend he presided over a crowded Zoom affair to accommodate the many guests he normally encounters in person. Then on Monday, my son Nick and I were joined by Los Angeles Film Critics Association president Claudia Puig and her husband Jerry Taylor to present Norman with a special new Legacy Award, recognizing Norman’s exceptional contributions to film and the arts over a nearly nine-decade career. Among the highlights encompassing his 1930s stage work with the likes of Pierre Fresnay, Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey, Orson Welles, John Houseman and Aaron Copland; his film debut as the villain who fell from the Statue of Liberty in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur; and his extensive subsequent work in film, theater and television (most famously in for his long run as Dr. Auschlander in St. Elsewhere) decades afterwards (his final film appearance—to date—came in Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck in 2015).

As is his custom during these socially dismal days, Norman receives visitors while sitting at a table in his breakfast room, which opens upon an outdoor patio where his guests can sit. One is required to speak loudly and clearly — something Norman does as a matter of habit, having been well trained to pitch his voice to the back of the most cavernous theaters. He also inspires one to match him in the unfashionable art of precise enunciation, at which he excelled on Monday as he enthused about Joe Biden’s victory.

But most of Norman’s thoughts and comments focused on another Brit-made-good, Charlie Chaplin. Norman recalled how he was taken to Chaplin’s home one day in the early 1940s to play tennis and was soon not only a regular on Chaplin’s court but also an actor in Limelight. Norman boomed out memories of the one Hollywood figure he considered a true genius for a good 20 minutes, many of them centering upon tennis (they were evidently very well matched).

If you listen to the brief accompanying snippet, you’ll get a sense of Norman’s continued dedication to theatrical enunciation and diction.

On Nov. 8, Norman Lloyd will celebrate his 106th birthday, which is just one more accomplishment for a man whose nearly-100-year career is filled with amazing milestones. Lloyd worked as an actor, director and/or producer in theater, the early days of radio, film and TV. He wasn’t a household name, but he has always been well known and respected within the industry — not only for his work, but for the people he worked with. That list includes Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Elia Kazan, Jean Renoir, Robin Williams, Martin Scorsese, Denzel Washington, Mark Harmon, Cameron Diaz, Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer.

As his contemporary Karl Malden summed up in 2007, “He is the history of our industry.”

Lloyd was born Norman Perlmutter Nov. 8, 1914, in Jersey City, N.J. He took singing and dancing lessons and was a paid professional by the age of 9. He performed with...

Rhonda Fleming died last Wednesday in Santa Monica, California. The 97-year-old actress, who had left a successful 15-year career as a leading lady in studio films 60 years ago, was correctly noted in her obituaries as “the Queen of Technicolor” because of her flaming red hair, as well as her significant presence as a film noir actress, particularly in Jacques Tourneur’s masterpiece “Out of the Past” (1947).

Her films included a number of now-acclaimed auteurist titles like Budd Boetticher’s “The Killer Is Loose,” Allan Dwan’s “Slightly Scarlet” and “Tennessee’s Partner,” and Fritz Lang’s “While the City Sleeps,” to go along with more mainstream titles like “The Spiral Staircase” and “The Gunfight at O.K. Corral.”

Unlike actresses like Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren, and others who made multiple films with Alfred Hitchcock, Fleming is less identified with the master. But he provided her with her breakout role in 1945’s “Spellbound.

George Takei has lived through cataclysmic times, but he’s never given up his hope for a better future. You can see this sense of hope in his choices of projects, whether it’s the vision of Gene Roddenbery in Star Trek or in his most recent project, narrating two stories by Ken Liu for Serial Box.

“Many of my friends are saying, ‘This is cataclysmic, what we’re living through. It’s dystopian, everything being destroyed, this is the end of the earth,’” he says. “I tell them, ‘No, we go through many cataclysms.’ And I tell them about my childhood.”

As a child during World War II, Takei’s family was taken to Japanese Internment Camps. At five, he thought living in the swamps of Arkansas, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers, was a great adventure. For his parents, it was sheer cataclysm. Forced from their home at gunpoint,...

We thought it was time to update this list after a recent sad passing as well as more celebratory news: this weekend Bernie Koeppel from The Love Boat turned 87, Marisa Pavan turned 88, Olympia Dukakis turned 89, and Gena Rowlands turned 90. Happy birthday to all of them. Anyway here's the list. Lots of great rental ideas herein...

200 Oldest Living Screen Stars

105 years young

Norman Lloyd (11/08/14) 

Most recently seen in the supporting cast of Trainwreck. He started as a Hitchcock player and later became a Hitchcock producer ("Alfred Hitchcock Presents") which led to a long producing career on TV (two Emmy nods). Other acting roles: Dead Poet's Society, The Flame and the Arrow, Wise Guy and St Elsewhere.

103 years young

Olivia de Havilland (7/1/1916) 

This centenarian is the oldest bonafide Movie Star alive and had already won Best Actress twice by the time she was 33 for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949). Olivia's...

The other day I spoke with my great old friend Norman Lloyd, and I do mean great and I do mean old. As an actor, Norman's credentials stretch back to the Federal Theatre days of the mid-1930s — he's the last surviving member of Orson Welles' legendary 1937 Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar — and he made his Hollywood debut as the villain who falls to his death from the top of the Statue of Liberty in Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 Saboteur. His most recent screen appearance was in Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer's Trainwreck; Norman always ...

The other day I spoke with my great old friend Norman Lloyd, and I do mean great and I do mean old. As an actor, Norman's credentials stretch back to the Federal Theatre days of the mid-1930s — he's the last surviving member of Orson Welles' legendary 1937 Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar — and he made his Hollywood debut as the villain who falls to his death from the top of the Statue of Liberty in Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 Saboteur. His most recent screen appearance was in Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer's Trainwreck; Norman always ...

THR checked in with probably the one person in Hollywood who was alive during the last great global epidemic — the Spanish flu — to see how 105-year-old Norman Lloyd is holding up.

"Like everyone else, I’m captive in my own house," the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur and NBC’s St. Elsewhere said over the phone. "But there’s nothing I need at the moment." Lloyd, who was 4 years old (and in New Jersey) when the 1918 pandemic hit, now lives in Brentwood.

This story first appeared in the March 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter ...

THR checked in with probably the one person in Hollywood who was alive during the last great global epidemic — the Spanish flu — to see how 105-year-old Norman Lloyd is holding up.

"Like everyone else, I’m captive in my own house," the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur and NBC’s St. Elsewhere said over the phone. "But there’s nothing I need at the moment." Lloyd, who was 4 years old (and in New Jersey) when the 1918 pandemic hit, now lives in Brentwood.

This story first appeared in the March 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter ...

Nehemiah Persoff & Barbra Streisand in Yentl (1983)Papa can you hear me? 

Papa can you watch me... fly...

Mark Allison Jul 11, 2019

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Hitchcock's spy thriller, we look at how the classic actioner set the template for a new kind of movie.

This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

Alfred Hitchcock was never content with mastering a single genre. Having spent the 1950s perfecting the murder mystery (Rear Window), crime drama (To Catch a Thief), and psychological thriller (Vertigo), the master of suspense ended the decade by turning his lens to the world of spies and statecraft.

Now 60 years on from its premiere in Chicago, North by Northwest remains the perfect espionage thriller, providing the template for James Bond, Ethan Hunt, and six decades of imitators.

Eschewing the slow-burn suspense and hushed atmosphere of Hitchcock's earlier spy thrillers like The 39 Steps (1935) and Saboteur (1942), North by Northwest pioneered a new breed of action cinema rooted in larger-than-life adventure and momentous setpieces. Indeed, the...

Production scheduled to start in South Australia in September.

Sam Worthington will star in the upcoming Australian thriller Gold, which Saboteur Media represents worldwide and has introduced to Cannes buyers.

President of distribution Mark Lindsay has begun talks on the Croisette on the story about two men travelling through a remote desert who stumble across what they believe it the biggest gold nugget ever found.

They hatch a plan to excavate the treasure. One leaves to secure equipment while the other stays behind to protect the discovery.

Anthony Hayes (Animal Kingdom) also stars and the producers aim to announce more cast in Cannes.

Saboteur Media has launched sales in Cannes on thriller Gold, which is set to star Avatar’s Sam Worthington and Anthony Hayes (Animal Kingdom).

Pic centers on two men traveling through the remote desert who stumble across the biggest gold nugget ever found and hatch a plan to protect and excavate the gold. One leaves to secure equipment while the other stays behind to protect the discovery.

Script is from Hayes and Polly Smyth and the film will be directed by Hayes. The film is being produced by John Schwarz (The Hunter’s Prayer) and Michael Schwarz (Killerman) through their company Deeper Water Films and Hayes via Rogue Star Pictures. More cast is due to be announced during Cannes.

The Australian production was developed with the assistance of Screen Australia, South Australian Film Corporation and Film Victoria and is due to commence principal photography in September in South Australia.

Mark Lindsay,...

Ana de Armas (Blade Runner 2049) and Demián Bichir (The Hateful Eight) are set to star in drama-thriller Jsa, screenwriter David Franzoni’s (Gladiator) reworking of hit Korean film Joint Security Area, which was directed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy).

Franzoni has scripted and will direct the feature about the love affair between a U.S. Marine and a female Spanish infantry lawyer (De Armas) who is sent by The Hague to investigate a shoot-out between Marines and Mexican special forces.

Producers are Terry Botwick, Paul Yi, Marcus Englefield, and George Lee. Saboteur Media’s Nick Quested, David Kennedy and Mark Lindsay are executive producers.

Saboteur/Goldcrest will launch sales at the Efm. Pic is scheduled to go into pre-production this coming fall.

Lindsay stated, “We are thrilled to be working with such a talented writer-director as David Franzoni on what we believe will be a must have project for buyers. This...

Coming-of-age thriller stars Sofia Hublitz from Ozark, Madelyn Cline of Stranger Things, Boy Erased.

Saboteur Media will handle worldwide sales rights to Afm-bound What Breaks The Ice, a thriller mentored by Richard Linklater that features rising stars from hit shows like Ozark, Glow, and Stranger Things.

The coming-of-age thriller centres on two 15-year-old girls whose summer takes an unexpected turn when they become accidental accomplices in a fatal crime.

Sofia Hublitz (Ozark), Madelyn Cline, Joel Allen (Never Goin’ Back), Shakira Barrera (Glow), Erik Jensen (Messengers), Catherine Curtin and Aimee Mullins (Stranger Things) star.

Rebecca Eskreis makes her feature directorial debut,...

Distribution exec was speaking at the annual Pfm keynote in London.

Michael Barker, who co-founded distributor Sony Pictures Classics, has warned that there is an unsustainable amount of films being released in cinemas.

The New York-based exec said that on a recent Friday in the city, there were 42 new openers in cinemas, when not long ago the number would’ve typically been less than half of that.

“There’s too much content being generated and there’s no room. A lot of them don’t deserve to be in theatres and should be on those other platforms [online services such as Amazon and Netflix],” he commented.

Marsha Hunt, Norman Lloyd, June Lockhart and Barbara Perry will receive the SAG-AFTRA Founders Award for their historic contributions to the union. The special tribute for “meritorious service” to their fellow actors will be presented Saturday at the union’s national board meeting.

“I am so honored to recognize the extraordinary achievements of these courageous actors and leaders,” said SAG-aftra president Gabrielle Carteris. “Their pioneering spirit and advocacy for their union and peers in those early years was pivotal and helped to make us who we are today.”

Hunt, who turns 100 on Wednesday, is one of the last survivors of the Hollywood Blacklist. She joined SAG in 1938 and was a SAG board member from March 1945-November 1947 under presidents George Murphy, Robert Montgomery and Ronald Reagan. In the 1950s her name appeared in “Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television,” and, like many others at the time,...

SAG-AFTRA is awarding Marsha Hunt, Norman Lloyd, June Lockhart, and Barbara Perry the Founders Award for their contributions to the union.

The tribute, to be presented Oct. 21 during the SAG-aftra National Board plenary, honors early members of SAG-aftra’s predecessor unions, SAG, and AFTRA. Hunt is 100 years old, and Lloyd is 103. Lockhart is 93 and Perry is 95.

SAG-aftra President Gabrielle Carteris said, “I am so honored to recognize the extraordinary achievements of these courageous actors and leaders. Their pioneering spirit and advocacy for their union and peers in those early years was pivotal and helped to make us who we are today.”

Perry became a Screen Actors Guild member in 1934, one month before her 13th birthday and a year after SAG was founded. When she joined, she was already a professional who began her career at the age of four. During World War II, she was an entertainer on...

Production scheduled for spring 2019.

New York-based Saboteur Media will launch worldwide sales at Afm on the upcoming gothic teen vampire film Carmilla starring Lin Shaye from Insidious and Robert Englund from A Nightmare On Elm Street.

Production is scheduled to start in New York in April May 2019 on Carmilla, which is inspired by the 19th century Irish novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu that predated Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 26 years.

The story takes place in New England where a young woman recovering from an accident is taken into the home of Puritan pastors. Her arrival sparks a sexual awakening in the ministers’ twins,...

In the last shot of Alfred Hitchcock’s final (and underrated) “Family Plot,” impostor-psychic-turned-kidnapper Barbara Harris looks straight at the camera and winks. It was only time in Hitchcock’s career that he broke down the fourth wall, and the gesture felt like his goodbye to his fans.

Harris died August 21 at 83 of lung cancer. Her notable roles included “A Thousand Clowns,” “Nashville,” “The Seduction of Joe Tynan,” and a supporting actor Oscar nomination for “Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?” But for Hitchcock fans, her death reminds us that 42 years have passed since the master’s last film, and fewer of his actors are still alive.

It’s nearly impossible to track every actor who appeared in his work. (Anyone from Hitchcock’s early British films would have had to be a very small child.) However, there are still a number...

Those who are familiar with the city of Chicago will get to see some of its downtown destroyed in “Rampage,” a bread-and-butter Dwayne Johnson vehicle that is heavy on plot and light on character and reason and thrills. This film is based on an arcade video game that featured large-sized creatures knocking down buildings and running amok, but that basic idea has been swamped here by too many convoluted plot lines and extraneous characters.

“Rampage,” which is directed by Brad Peyton (“San Andreas”) and written by four credited male screenwriters, begins with a flat-out rip-off of the ending of the first “Alien” movie from 1979. A rather impressive single shot in space takes us smoothly into a spaceship in distress, where we see disembodied body parts floating in the cabin area. The remaining female crewmember manages to escape, but she is not long for this world or this movie.

Johnson plays a primatologist named Davis Okoye who used to work in the military before focusing on saving gorillas from poachers. He has a bond with an albino gorilla named George, a frisky primate who has been taught sign language by Okoye (including how to give someone the middle finger).

Watch Video: 'Rampage': Dwayne Johnson Is Back to Save the World in New Trailer

Johnson is given a knowing star entrance where we see him from behind and the camera moves in before he turns to speak, and it doesn’t really matter what he says. Everything about Johnson’s performing style is stripped-down, earnest, simple, and somewhat comical, and he has gotten a lot of mileage out of that.

That space opening comes back into play when we find out about an experiment based around a new technology called Crispr, which was pioneered by a geneticist named Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) as a way of helping her dying brother. But Crispr was diverted and fell into the hands of the villainous Claire Wyden (Malin Akerman), who is looking to make lots of money off of the technology with the help of her bumbling henchman Brett (Jake Lacy).

Also Read: 'Rampage' Moves Up One Week to Make Room for 'Avengers: Infinity War'

Claire and Brett have hired a military outfit to do some dirty work for them, and this outfit is led by Burke (Joe Manganiello). Peyton sets up yet another star entrance from behind for Manganiello as he walks to a helicopter before turning to speak, and this is bewildering because it turns out that Manganiello is barely in this movie.

Yet another character is introduced, Agent Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who seems to exist just to relay lots of plot exposition and generally grind the movie to a halt. Morgan plays this part in a Christoph-Waltz-in-a-Tarantino-movie fashion, with lots of self-satisfied smiles and an obnoxiously slow delivery of his lines.

There comes a point where we finally get to an oversized George and an oversized flying wolf and an oversized crocodile-dinosaur hybrid wreaking havoc in downtown Chicago, and this is fairly diverting at first. We do get to see what looks like the John Hancock Building slowly fall over to the ground, but this is pretty much the extent of the imaginative destruction here.

Watch Video: Conan O'Brien Tries - And Fails - to Be Dwayne Johnson's Stunt Double in 'Rampage'

If you’re going to destroy most of downtown Chicago, why not have one of the creatures kick the Adler Planetarium into the water, or pick up and hurl the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier like a discus? The effects are just competent here, and sometimes less than that. There comes a point when one of the characters falls into George’s mouth, and this descent is no more or less visually convincing than when Alfred Hitchcock had Norman Lloyd fall off of the Statue of Liberty in “Saboteur,” a movie that was made over 70 years ago.

In the middle of the building wreckage, Johnson mainly just stands around and sometimes delivers a one-liner for a would-be laugh. There isn’t anything much at stake here, and when the movie tries to get sentimental about Okoye’s feeling for George, it becomes static and empty.

There’s no romance with Harris’s Kate, and when they mention that possibility toward the very end it doesn’t feel at all organic. “Rampage” is a movie that gets buried in its own top-heavy plot, collapsing itself under that weight just like the Chicago-area buildings do on screen.



Read original story ‘Rampage’ Film Review: Dwayne Johnson’s Monster Movie Collapses Like a Skyscraper At TheWrap...

by Nathaniel R

Harry Belafonte in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

The great activist, musician, and movie actor Harry Belafonte is turning 91 years young today (there's a concert tonight in his honor at City College here in NYC), and we wantto wish him a very happy birthday. My parents had one of his vinyl albums and I loved his voice as a wee one.

This birthday reminded me that it's been a long time since we updated our celebratory list of elderly screen stars who are still among us! We've been keeping this list for several years now and the rich line of comments over the years reminds us of how glad we are that the internet can bring so many people together to appreciate the magical craft of acting. Watch an old movie or TV show this month and discover a surviving talent that you didn't even know to love before!

In the late 1970s, an associate professor in the Philosophy department at Johns Hopkins (thesis title: "The Nature of the Natural Numbers") began publishing essays on Hollywood movies. George M. Wilson wasn't the first person to undergo this shift in specialism. At the start of the decade, Stanley Cavell had published The World Viewed, a series of "reflections on the ontology of film." But Cavell had always been concerned with how works of art enable us to think through philosophical themes such as knowledge and meaning, and he held a chair, at Harvard, in Aesthetics. Wilson differed in that he brought a range of analytic gifts to an ongoing revolution: the close reading of American cinema, conceived as part of the "auteur" policy of Truffaut and other writers at Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s, and concertedly developed in the following decades by critics in England such as V. F.

Universal has released a highly impressive Blu-ray set, "The Alfred Hitchcock Collection", on Blu-ray. The set contains fifteen special editions of the Master's top films as well as ten original episodes of "The Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television series. The set is packed with 15 hours of bonus extras and includes an illustrated, 58-page collector's booklet with extremely rare international poster art and film stills. Films included in the set are:

Psycho The Birds Vertigo Rear Window North by Northwest The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 version) Marnie Saboteur Shadow of a Doubt Rope The Trouble with Harry Topaz Frenzy  Torn Curtain Family Plot. 

 

Holiday gifts like this don't get any more impressive (or sinister) for the movie lover in your life.

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