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"Jack and Jill" is Al Pacino's lowest-rated film, sitting at a measly 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Tomatometer consensus reads "impossible to recommend on any level whatsoever." Jennie Punter of Globe and Mail calls the movie "cruel and creepy, not funny." Mary F. Pols from Time magazine wrote, "More than 24 hours has passed since I watched the new Adam Sandler movie 'Jack and Jill' and I am still dead inside." The movie's only achievement is winning all 12 of its Razzie nominations, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Actress (with Adam Sandler winning for both), and Worst Screenplay.

Adam Sandler plays both Jack, an advertising executive, and his twin sister Jill, who is the worst of Jewish stereotypes: an obnoxious, neurotic, and whiny nag. The "humor" is ugly and mean: the cross-dressing invites countless transphobic jokes about her masculine appearance, and there are fatphobic jokes about her...

Author: Competitions

The perfect companion piece to Carol Reed’s The Third Man, post-war spy thriller The Man Between comes to Blu-Ray for the first time, DVD and VOD on 2 January, boasting brand new extra features. To celebrate, we have 3 copies of the film on Blu-Ray to give some lucky winners courtesy of Studiocanal.

Set against the backdrop of a haunted, newly divided Berlin, Ivo Kern (James Mason: 5 Fingers, Spring & Port Wine, Cross of Iron) – a troubled former lawyer now working the Black Market – gets caught up in a cat and mouse chase with potentially tragic consequences as he attempts to free a young British lady (Claire Bloom: Richard III, Look Back in Anger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) who has been kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity. Starring British screen icons James Mason and Claire Bloom Cbe alongside German sweetheart Hildegarde Neff,...

Every year, IndieWire looks beyond the countless top 10 lists written by critics to widen the field. We turn to friends and colleagues in the independent film community — programmers, distributors, publicists and others — to give them the opportunity to share their favorite films and other media from the past 12 months. We also invited them to share their resolutions and anticipated events for 2017.

The Best of 2016: IndieWire’s Year in Review Bible

Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director, Toronto International Film Festival

I’m limiting my list to films that had Us and Canadian theatrical releases in 2016. I saw far more than 10 this year that I liked, but if I have to be brutal, I’ll limit it to the films that lifted me.

1. “Moonlight”

2. “Julieta”

3. “Toni Erdmann”

4. “Cemetery of Splendor”

5. “Arrival”

6. “Fences”

7. “13th”

8. “American Honey”

9. “Things to Come”

10. “Moana”

Michael Barker, Co-President, Sony Pictures Classics

“Now is the winter of our discontent.

By Diane A. Rodgers

This film comes across as something of a vanity project for Pacino, part documentary, part dramatisation of  Shakespeare's Richard III, in an attempt to explore, understand and represent the play to the common man. The film and its aims are ambitious perhaps and in great danger of hilarious and actorly self parody in places ("It has always been a dream of mine to communicate how I feel about Shakespeare to other people") . Although overall Pacino's film is a little confused about what it's exact aims are, it does capture some entertaining aspects of the creative acting and directing process.

Pacino's sincere passion for Richard III, his earnest attempts to analyse it and make it relevant are admirable; the play is complex and interwoven, full of scheming politics, intrigue and backstabbing. He tackles head on a number of issues including the difficulties American actors and audiences face with the language of Shakespeare,...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

"I speak to thee, my heart!" Just in time to ring in the chimes at Midnight as New Years 2016 rolls in. Janus Films has debuted another slightly different trailer for Orson Welles' 1965 classic Chimes at Midnight, also known as Falstaff Chimes of Midnight. Earlier in 2015, we featured the trailer for the 50th anniversary re-release in the UK, and now we have a Us version. Chimes of Midnight is really Welles adaptation of his play Five Kings which was an attempt to combine Shakespeare's works Henry IV, V, VI and Richard III into a single play, reportedly "Welles' favorite of his films." The result is a work that is heralded as a masterpiece, featuring performances by Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, John Gielgud and Jeanne Moreau. Chime in below. Here's the new trailer for the restored re-release of Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight, from Apple: The crowning achievement of Orson Welles’s later film career,...

Here are a handful of links that I think are worth reading today, for discerning Criterion Collection fan.

Articles

Over on his Criterion Reflections blog, David has just posted his review of Mikio Naruse’s Scattered Clouds:

Since a couple years have passed between my last viewing of a Naruse film (1964’s Yearning, back in 2013, though not reviewed anywhere), I was thus quite eager to sit down and take in Scattered Clouds, available on Criterion’s Hulu channel (and only there, as no version of it on disc is anywhere to be found for the Region 1 market, anyway.)

Don’t miss the Criterion Collection As Haiku blog’s latest entry, on Lonesome.

Jonathan Rosenbaum has republished his review of Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan on his blog, adding:

Even though this is favorable, I think I underestimated the achievement of this first feature; reseeing it a quarter of a century later,...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

Hunchbacked, conniving child-killer or slandered victim of Tudor propaganda? This 1955 film is an exaggeration of a distortion that gets us no closer to the truth

Richard III (1955)

Director: Laurence Olivier

Entertainment grade: B+

History grade: D–

Richard III is one of the most notorious kings in English history. His popularity has revived since his long-lost remains were discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012.

Here now begins one of the most famous, and at the same time, the most infamous of the legends that are attached to the crown of England.

Continue reading...

Editor's Note: RogerEbert.com is proud to reprint Roger Ebert's 1978 entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica publication "The Great Ideas Today," part of "The Great Books of the Western World." Reprinted with permission from The Great Ideas Today ©1978 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

It's a measure of how completely the Internet has transformed communication that I need to explain, for the benefit of some younger readers, what encyclopedias were: bound editions summing up all available knowledge, delivered to one's home in handsome bound editions. The "Great Books" series zeroed in on books about history, poetry, natural science, math and other fields of study; the "Great Ideas" series was meant to tie all the ideas together, and that was the mission given to Roger when he undertook this piece about film.

Given the venue he was writing for, it's probably wisest to look at Roger's long, wide-ranging piece as a snapshot of the...

Los Angeles – The suave, Australian-born Rod Taylor may have been a leading man footnote in the early to mid-1960s, but he did star in a notable classic: the Alfred Hitchcock-directed “The Birds”. His chiseled good looks and sincere acting style were also memorable in a career that spanned more than 50 years. Rod Taylor passed away of a heart attack in Los Angeles on Jan. 7 2015, according to his daughter, Felicia Taylor. He was 84.

Rodney Sturt Taylor was born in Lidcombe, Australia, and was inspired to acting after seeing Sir Laurence Olivier portray Richard III. He played an American – as he would in subsequent roles – in his 1954 debut film, “King of the Coral Sea.” A failed screen test for another role got him a contract at MGM, and he made his debut as a leading man in the popular sci-fi film, “The Time Machine.” What followed was a scatter shot of lead roles,...

Hunchbacked, conniving child-killer or slandered victim of Tudor propaganda? This 1955 film is an exaggeration of a distortion that gets us no closer to the truth

Richard III (1955)

Director: Laurence Olivier

Entertainment grade: B+

History grade: D–

Richard III is one of the most notorious kings in English history. His popularity has revived since his long-lost remains were discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012.

Here now begins one of the most famous, and at the same time, the most infamous of the legends that are attached to the crown of England.

Continue reading...

If all you have ever seen of Shakespeare’s Richard III is Laurence Olivier’s limping, leering, badly made-up monstrosity of a king, then you’re going to have to revise your idea of this most fabulous villain. Richard as Shakespeare wrote him may have been bad, and he may have been twisted, but in his newest iteration he’s far from unattractive. Given that he’s being played by Benedict Cumberbatch, that should hardly be surprising.

The actor has taken on the role of Richard in the BBC’s adaptation of the play as part of the final section of their series The Hollow Crown, which covers all of Shakespeare’s “War of the Roses” plays, beginning with Richard II. Cumberbatch is just the latest in a long line of excellent contemporary actors to take on parts in The Hollow Crown: everyone from Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, and...

Above: 1964 poster for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, Germany, 1920).

I’ve written a lot about the German designer Hans Hillmann in these pages and elsewhere, and the current exhibition running through September 27 at the Kemistry Gallery is a must-see if you’re in London (there are some great images of the exhibit here if you’re not), but I only recently came across the work of a peer and compatriot of Hillmann’s, Karl Oskar Blase. Born the same year as Hillmann, on March 24, 1925, and now in his late 80s, Blase was, like Hillmann, a professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. Art director of the German design magazine Form, Blase designed every cover of the magazine from 1957 to 1968. He is also renowned as a designer of stamps.

Throughout the 1960s Blase also designed film posters for the revival house Atlas Films (as did Hillmann). His posters are mostly a...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

Look, it's Shakespeare's 450th birthday. We at Riot are generally concerned with internet memes and Zac Efron's musculature, but let's give credit where its due: These are real celebs kicking real ass in real Shakesperean roles and no one's worthy. And we can't contain ourselves.  So, here are 10 people kicking thine ass in Shakespearean roles and leaving you in the mortal, pathetic dust. 1. Meryl Streep Serving You Death Sass In "The Taming Of The Shrew'2 Judi Dench With Gunpowder Eyes And A Kevlar Heart In "Twelfth Night" 3. Ralph Fiennes Is A Hotheaded Traitor Bad-ass In "Coriolanus," So Just Deal With It. 4. Kate Winslet Has A Song For You Losers, And It's A Heartbreak And A Goddamn Treasure In "Hamlet" 5. Now Is The Winter Of You Melting At The Computer, Because Kevin Spacey Is A Hunchbacked Hellraiser In "Richard III" 6. This Is CNN? Close, Moron, It's James Earl Jones...

Blu-ray Release Date: Jan. 21, 2014

Price: Blu-ray $Tba

Studio: Twilight Time

Charlton Heston heads into battle in Khartoum.

The 1966 historical action adventure movie Khartoum makes its Blu-ray debut in January, 2014 from Twilight Time.

The exotic epic film concerns the ill-fated expedition of British General Charles Gordon (Charlton Heston, The Ten Commandments) in late 19th-century Sudan, an attempt to halt the incursion of the fanatical Muslim leader, Muhammad Ahmad (Laurence Olivier, Richard III), the self-styled Mahdi (“The Expected One”).

Directed by Basil Dearden and Elliot Elisofon and written by Robert Ardrey, Khartoum is a large-scale widescreen (it was shot in Cinerama) roadshow extravaganza filled with battle sequences, stunning desert landscapes, and political intrigue involving British Prime Minister Gladstone (Ralph Richardson, The Four Feathers).

As supplier Twilight Time prints up only 3,000 copies of each title, be prepared to pre-order this one directly from distributor Screen Archives as soon as the prebook date is announced,...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 4, 2013

Price: DVD $24.99, Blu-ray $34.99

Studio: Cohen Film Collection/Entertainment One

Gloria Swanson and Laurence Olivier test out the viability of their marriage vows in Perfect Understanding.

Cinema icons Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard) and Laurence Olivier (Richard III) star in the 1933 romantic comedy Perfect Understanding, the only film the pair made together.

Judy (Swanson) and Nicholas (Olivier) are a young society couple who marry based on the “perfect understanding” that they will be allowed to enjoy extramarital adventures and never let jealousy come between them.

That arrangement is soon put to the test when a drunk Nicholas sleeps with a former lover (Nora Swinburne, TV’s The Forsythe Saga). When he returns to Judy, he is guilt-ridden and confesses his indiscretion. Judy forgives him, but Nicholas is soon battling his own feelings of jealousy when he comes to believe that Judy has slept with an old friend of hers (John Halliday,...

More than 500 years later, historians and archaeologists have unearthed, and then validated the skeleton remains of the two-year term King of England, and in the same token, the Criterion folks issue the crisp, restored Blu-ray edition of Laurence Olivier’s Richard III, his third feature as a director following 1944′s Henry V and 1948′s Hamlet. In 1957, the film earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. During the same year, the film won Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film.

The great Olivier is Richard the Duke of Gloucester, a man with an insatiable appetite for power. He often smiles but his heart is full of poison. Assisted by the corrupt Duke of Buckingham (Ralph Richardson, Doctor Zhivago), he plans to kill his brother George (John Gielgud, The Elephant Man) and two nephews, while winning the heart of the vulnerable The Lady Anne (Claire Bloom,...

"I can smile, and murder while I smile," confides that notorious noble, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, "and frame my face to all occasions." For Laurence Olivier, pronouncing "frame" like "feign," it's an auspicious beginning. In Shakespeare's words, he finds his performer's credo. Spoken in the opening moments of "Richard III" (1955), the third in actor/director/adapter Olivier's cinematic trilogy of Shakespearean works, they are the Bard's words, and Gloucester's, too. But they do not in fact appear in "Richard III" -- rather, Olivier's pilfered them from Gloucester's monologue in Act III of "Henry VI, Part 3." The lines flow seamlessly from the original text -- it was only in searching for an accurate quotation that I discovered the discrepancy -- and yet illuminate Richard's damaged dissembling. Olivier knew, almost preternaturally, that the interest lay in the interpretation, in twisting the page to fit the screen, though only to a point. This...

Culver City, Calif. — A few months before the bones of Richard III were discovered below a parking lot in Leicester, England, the infamous British monarch was the focal point of a very different type of reclamation project halfway around the world in Culver City, California. There, Colorworks, Sony Pictures’ digital intermediate facility, applied the finishing touches to an exhaustive 4K restoration of “Richard III,” Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film adaptation of the Shakespeare play.

The project was completed under the auspices of The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization formed in 1990 by Martin Scorsese to preserve endangered films. The group has supported the restoration of over 600 films to date. The restored “Richard III” is being released in April on Blu-ray by Criterion.

“We’re so pleased to have been able to support this stunning restoration thanks to the generosity of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and with the support of our partners: Janus Films,...

Martin Scorsese continues to devote his energy to The Film Foundation with support for their restoration and preservation efforts to save deteriorating classic movies — many on the brink of being lost forever.

Pierre Etaix (Criterion Collection) My familiarity with Pierre Etaix is virtually zero. I only just received this brand new collection of the French director's five films a couple of days ago and only last night was I able to begin screening any portion of it, watching 30 minutes of Yo Yo, and taking in the zaniness for the first time. I watched his introduction to the film, him talking about the death of his father, his love of the circus and of Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 and I knew there was going to be something of a kinship here, but I can't give you a full report just yet. This Criterion set includes all of Etaix's films including five features -- The Suitor,Yoyo, As Long as You've Got Your Health, Le grand amour and Land of Milk and Honey -- and three shorts -- Rupture, the Oscar-winning Happy Anniversary and Feeling Good.

Made and released at a time when male homosexuality was a criminal offense in England, Victim (1961) is a film I'm surprised I have not heard more about. The story centers on a blackmailer targeting high profile, closeted Londoners, with a focus on Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde) a married barrister whose past comes calling in the early stages of the film only he chooses not to answer, the consequences of which drive much of the film's narrative. Farr must decide if he'll risk his career and place in society to stand up for what's right. Given the social climate with relation to homosexuality, the film was released in 1961 with an X rating (adults only) from the BBFC. 44 years later, Victim would be resubmitted for classification and receive a PG rating from the same organization, citing the reasons, "contains mild language and sex references." Between those 44 years it would be re-rated two...

Every month the folks at Criterion Collection select a number of classic and contemporary films deemed culturally and/or artistically significant and then take great pains to remaster them for a Blu-ray transfer to help preserve them for another generation of cinephiles. If you love film, then you can appreciate the public service Criterion Collection does for the medium when it offers us HD remasters of cinematic classics like 1984's Repo Man (starring Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez), the Teinosuke Kinugasa's samurai tale Gate of Hell, Laurence Olivier's take on Shakespeare's Richard III, and David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burrough's drugged out head trip novel Naked Lunch led by Peter Weller. Additionally, this April, Criterion Collection has assembled a collection of 5 films by French filmmaker Pierre Etaix. For details on all of this month's releases, just keep reading.

Read more...

This week: Bill Murray as President Franklin D. Roosevelt is the highlight of "Hyde Park on Hudson," which should in no way be considered a historically accurate account of Fdr's meeting with the King and Queen of England in 1939.

Also new this week are two Criterion Collection Blu-ray debuts: Laurence Olivier's "Richard III" ("My kingdom for a horse!") and David Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" ("Exterminate all rational thought").

'Hyde Park on Hudson'

Box Office: $6.4 million

Rotten Tomatoes: 38% Rotten

Storyline: Based on the private journals and diaries of Margaret 'Daisy' Suckley (Laura Linney) that were found after her death, this biographical comedy drama takes a look at the events surrounding a pivotal historical meeting in upstate New York between President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray) and the King and Queen of England on the eve of World War II. The British royals walk into an awkward domestic situation as Fdr's wife,...

Laurence Olivier’s ‘Macbeth’ Screenplays Unearthed A British professor has stumbled across Laurence Olivier’s screenplays for a 1950s movie version of Macbeth which were thought to have been lost. The University of Exeter’s Jennifer Barnes was researching Olivier’s film version of Richard III at the British Library’s Laurence Olivier Archive when she came across references to Macbeth scripts. Olivier had tried to mount the filmed version of Shakespeare’s play, but it was shelved due to financing problems. He would and wife Vivien Leigh would have played not only Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but also two of the three witches, the screenplays reveal. Olivier also planned to cut out the “Is this a dagger I see before me?” line, The Guardian reports. While he was still alive, Olivier contended there were no surviving copies of his screenplay, but Barnes said “I was going through the catalog...

Imposing stage and screen actor whose work ranged from Shakespeare to The Bill

The character actor Bernard Horsfall, who has died aged 82, appeared in television, films and on the stage for more than half a century. Tall, imposing and authoritative, he appeared in many of the major television series from Z Cars and Dr Finlay's Casebook to Casualty and The Bill, and in Doctor Who took no fewer than four roles.

In 1968 he played Lemuel Gulliver in The Mind Robber, where he was encountered by Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor, in the Land of Fiction. The following year he returned as a Time Lord in The War Games. In 1973, with Jon Pertwee now donning the time-traveller's cape, he played the Thai chieftain, Taron, in the six-part Planet of the Daleks. And finally, he was another Time Lord, Chancellor Goth, in the 1976 story The Deadly Assassin, famously battling with Tom Baker...

English lecturer stumbles across 'nonexistent' screenplay in British Library for film scuppered by financial problems

For more than 50 years it has been one of the great questions of British cinema: what would the celebrated actor and director Laurence Olivier have done with Shakespeare's Macbeth if he had managed to make a big-screen version?

Olivier, who was bitterly disappointed when his attempt to film the play was scuppered by financial problems, tried to shroud the project in mystery during his lifetime, saying there were no surviving copies of his screenplay and teasing fans and critics that nobody would ever have any idea how his version would have compared with those of Orson Welles or Roman Polanski.

But now an academic searching for something quite different has stumbled upon 13 versions of the lost screenplay among papers and discovered that Olivier had some surprises in store.

For example, Olivier and his then wife...

Blu-ray Release Date: April 23, 2013; DVD Release Date; April 9, 2013

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

With the 1955 historical war drama film Richard III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier (Hamlet) brings Shakespeare’s masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to mesmerizing cinematic life.

Olivier is downright diabolical—and captivating–as 15th Century England’s Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through a set of murderous machinations, steals the crown from his brother Edward.

Co-starring including Ralph Richardson (Long Day’s Journey into Night), John Gielgud (Arthur), and Claire Bloom (The King’s Speech), the classic Richard III is filmed in the gloriously widescreen VistaVision format and Technicolor, making it one of the most visually inspired of all big-screen Bard adaptations.

Criterion previously issued a single disc DVD edition of Richard III back in 2004. The new Criterion release is a two-disc set that includes all the bonus features that appeared on the first incarnation, as well...

Photos for Fast Six, The Wolverine, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, and the cast of Mortal Kombat: Legacy 2.

Posters for The Sweeney, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Mood Indigo, Jack the Giant Slayer, Gambit, The Host, The End of Love, Epic, and the final episode of Fringe.

DC Comics has revealed a new 1:6 scale "Man of Steel" statue which offers a closer look at Henry Cavill's Superman costume. Click here to check out the statue.

"Criterion's April slate includes Alex Cox's 'Repo Man,' Laurence Olivier's 'Richard III,' Teinosuke Kinugasa's 'Gate of Hell,' a box-set featuring five films by French comedy filmmaker Pierre Etaix, and a Blu-ray version of David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch'…" (full details)

"'The Da Vinci Code' and 'Angels and Demons' author Dan Brown has announced 'Inferno,' his fourth novel featuring Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.

This spring, The Criterion Collection have both cult and classic movies on their mind, and their newly announced April slate will have for something for fans of either category -- or both. Kicking things off, Alex Cox's "Repo Man" finally arrives after being rumored for quite some time. The Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton starring flick uses a journey between a repo man and a young punk he takes under his wing to delve into Los Angeles and '80s America. The Criterion disc will come stacked with extras including commentary, interviews, deleted scenes and even the edited TV version, supervised by Cox. But oddly enough, there's not much about the soundtrack, though we guess that's what former Born Against member Sam McPheeters will cover in his essay. For those looking for something a bit more high brow, Laurence Olivier's "Richard III" will get the wacky C.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Park Circus film distributors in the UK:

Leading international classic and repertory film distributor Park Circus is pleased to announce a stellar line-up of restorations and newly discovered classics as part of the 2012 BFI London Film Festival Treasures from the Archive strand.

Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse, starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr, receives its UK premiere in a sparkling new digital restoration courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing. The film will screen on the 12th and 13th October.

Following a world premiere at Cannes, Sony Pictures’ restoration of David Lean’s Lawrence Of Arabia will be screened in a stunning 4K digital presentation on 20th October. This will be the first time the 4K version of the film screens in the UK. Released in 1962, the film celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with a return to cinemas worldwide. Lawrence Of Arabia,...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

The short answer, via Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1955 A taste of the long answer: Think of the movies from 1955 that would have become available this year. You could have shared clips online with your friends. You could have shown the full films in your local theater. You could have spliced and remixed and made documentaries about them. Instead, here are a few of the movies that we won’t see in the public domain for another 39 years: • The Seven Year Itch, directed by Billy Wilder; starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell • Lady and the Tramp, Walt Disney Productions’ classic animation • Mister Roberts, directed by John Ford; starring Henry Fonda, James Cagney, and Jack Lemmon • Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly • The thriller The Night of the Hunter, directed...

For Mark Rylance, it's Rooster in Jerusalem. For Alison Steadman, it's Bev in Abigail's Party … leading actors on the parts they will never escape

Mark Rylance

Plays Johnny "Rooster" Byron in Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, which opened at the Royal Court in 2009 and travelled to Broadway. It has just returned to London, where it is showing at the Apollo theatre in the West End.

Jerusalem first came to me in 2003, when I was too busy running the Globe. Back then it was called St George's Day. The pages were written with an old typewriter and it was very raw, so different to anything else. Sometimes, instead of characters' names, there was just pages of dialogue. It reminded me of how much as a kid I had resonated with adults outside of society, how much I liked their language and stories.

I got busy with other projects and they saw other actors.

Getty Jesper Christensen

“The Debt,” a new espionage thriller coming out next week, promises to do for gynecology what the 1976 film “Marathon Man” did for dentistry.

The film, a big-budget adaptation of an obscure 2007 Israeli movie called “Ha-Hov”—it means “The Debt” in Hebrew—stars Helen Mirren as Rachel Singer, a former Mossad agent with a troubled conscience stemming from a botched 1967 mission to capture a Nazi war criminal.

The acclaimed Danish actor Jesper Christensen gives a riveting performance as Singer’s nemesis,...

This coming Friday, July 15, marks the birthday of the greatest of all Dutch painters, Rembrandt van Rijn. Born 505 years ago, I figured now was as suitable an occasion as I’d ever have to review Rembrandt, this fine biopic from 1936 starring Charles Laughton, part of Eclipse Series 16: Alexander Korda’s Private Lives.

Korda is one of the most influential and dynamic figures in the history of UK cinema, founder of London Films and the first man ever granted knighthood for his work in the English film industry. Along with his brothers Zoltan and Vincent, he played a major part in creating some of the most fondly remembered British films of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, including The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Four Feathers, That Hamilton Woman, The Thief of Bagdad, The Third Man and Laurence Olivier’s version of Richard III.

As anyone who’s paid even the slightest attention...

Stars bring a character to life on the screen; but behind them is another kind of actor that brings life to that character’s world. They are the seasoning which turns a good meal into a great meal, the chinking keeping a cold wind from blowing through the holes in a script. Call them what you will: supporting players, character actors, familiar faces, second bananas. To most viewers, their names mean nothing, and a headshot over their obituary usually draws little more than an, “Oh, yeah, that guy!” They rarely get their due, often only at their passing, which, sadly, makes it time to give one of the best his due – Michael Gough, who died this week at the age of 94.

All of his obits usually start with saying he was best known for his role as Batman’s faithful butler Alfred in the Tim Burton version of Batman (1989) and its three sequels.

Actor with poise and presence, best known as Alfred the butler in Tim Burton's Batman

The actor Michael Gough, who has died aged 94, was an arresting presence on stage, television and film for the entire postwar period, notably as the butler Alfred Pennyworth in Tim Burton's Batman movies. Eventually he just voiced roles, as with the Dodo Bird in the same director's Alice in Wonderland film last year, but always to striking effect.

Gough started in the Old Vic company in London before the second world war, but it took till 1946 for his career proper to get off to a flying start in the West End, in Frederick Lonsdale's But for the Grace of God. The fistfight-to-the-death scene was done with such startling verisimilitude that nearly all the stage furniture was demolished nightly, and Gough broke three ribs and injured the base of his spine. So copiously...

Genre TV and Movie fans are mourning the loss of British actor Michael Gough who died at the age of 94 at his home in England. He was best known in this country for playing Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler in the 80′s and 90′s Batman films.

Gough had a long and illustrious career including memorable roles in Laurence Olivier’s Richard III (1955, Out of Africa (1985) and The Citadel (1983). Genre fans will remember him though in multiple roles in British horror films throughout the 1960′s and 1970′s like Hammer Film Productions’ Dracula (1958), Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and Satan’s Slave (1976). Science-fiction fans may remember him in multiple roles in Doctor Who as Councillor Hedin and the Celestial Toymaker. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award in 1970 for his supporting role in The Go-Between.

In more recent years he became a staple of Tim Burton...

Michael Gough, the man known around the world as the most recognisable cinematic incarnation of Batman’s loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth during the 1980s and ‘90s, has died at the age of 94. But beyond his time spent cocking a disapproving yet paternal eyebrow at the likes of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney, Gough was an accomplished actor on the stage and screen.Born in Malaysia in 1916, Gough launched his career on television, starring in BBC TV movie Androcles and the Lion. He then made the leap to the big screen with two films, both in 1948 – Anna Karenina and Blanche Fury.His time on screen saw him tackle everything from Shakespeare plays (Richard III, Julius Caesar and more) to Dh Lawrence adaptations (Women in Love) to epics such as Out of Africa. He also tapped his comedy side as Dr Paul Flammond in Top Secret!But when Tim Burton...

Michael Gough, the beloved British character actor whom many will remember from the pre-Chris Nolan "Batman" movies, has passed away aged 94. Born in Kuala Lumpur, Gough made his film debut in 1947 in "Blanche Fury" and went on to achieve fame in British television.

He made two memorable appearances as villains in "Doctor Who" - first as the titular villain of the second Doctor serial "The Celestial Toymaker" in 1966, then as a Time Lord councillor in league with Omega in the fifth Doctor serial "Arc of Infinity" in 1983. He also married Anneke Wills, an actress who played one of the Doctor's companions on the show.

Gough's other memorable small screen turns include a famous episode of "The Avengers" as the wheelchair-bound Dr. Armstrong, and his role as the British Prime Minister in Ian Curteis' "Suez 1956".

His big screen credits are even more impressive with key roles in Harold Pinter's "The Go-Between,...

The tale of Aron Ralston's auto-surgery is leading the new wave of amputee pics that have flooded the box office in recent years

Both 127 Hours and True Grit are superb motion pictures that deserve to be honoured at the Oscars on Sunday. In the first, James Franco delivers a gritty performance as an outdoorsy loner who gets trapped in a deserted ravine and must rise to the occasion or die. In the second, newcomer Hailee Steinfeld plays a feisty cowgirl who will stop at nothing to bring her father's murderer to justice.

On the surface, these films would seem to have very little in common, other than the excellent performances of the young stars. Yet, there is in fact an odd connective tissue linking the films. Both movies feature indomitable protagonists who fall into a mountain chasm with two good arms and come out with just one. In 127 Hours,...

Yesterday, I had the opportunity so speak for about 30 minutes over the phone with the legendary British stage and screen actress Claire Bloom, one of the great talents and beauties of the past century. Bloom, who made her film debut 63 years ago and has co-starred with countless greats — among them Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Rod Steiger, and Paul Newman — is still going strong at the age of 79. Most recently, she gave a brief but memorable performance as Queen Mary, the mother of King Edward Xiii (Guy Pearce) and King George VI (Colin Firth), in “The King’s Speech” (The Weinstein Company, 11/24, R, trailer), which the Screen Actors Guild rewarded with a best ensemble nomination.

Click Here To Listen To Audio Of Our Conversation!

Over the course of our conversation, Bloom and I discussed…

her early theater- and movie-going experiences/acting inspirations (her mother loved Shakespeare and...

It’s a poor thing, to command in love.

Have you ever been to a Renaissance Faire? I’ve been to a few over the years, though I’m far from being a regular attender. The last Ren Faire I visited was when I took my family to one here in Michigan sometime in the early 2000s when The Lord of The Rings was at the zenith of its pop-culture ascendancy and my kids were into stuff like swords and magic and capes and gowns.

I figure most readers would know what I’m talking about, but for those who don’t… Ren Faires are public events where people who are into that sort of thing are employed or pay admission to dress up in the garb of various types of medieval personae, spending a day, a weekend or longer getting into the roles and habits of Europeans who lived around 500 years ago or so.

My father, Bob Cuff, who has died aged 87, was a film technician who specialised in matte painting – a post-production technique used to create a background for live action scenes, providing images that would be otherwise impossible or too expensive to shoot. He contributed mattes and other effects to films including The Guns of Navarone, Dr Strangelove and The Life of Brian. His skills also earned him a commission to render Jayne Mansfield's chest more "respectable" for a TV programme in the late 1950s.

Bob was born in Ilford, Essex, and educated at St Paul's school in south-west London. During the second world war, he became a land worker. He did his national service as a psychiatric nurse. After graduating from Camberwell School of Arts in 1951, he joined the special effects department at Shepperton studios, where he formed a lifelong working partnership with the visual effects specialist John Mackey. Between...

Christian McKay has been teased about his uncanny resemblance to Orson Welles, a comparison he did not like. He wanted to be compared to Richard Burton. Still, when he found himself relegated to playing eunuchs in Shakespearean productions—"and that's several rungs lower than spear carriers," he says—followed by 18 months of unemployment, he reappraised the idea of Welles as a kind of alter ego. McKay performed the one-man show "Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles," by his pal Mark Jenkins, at the Edinburgh Festival and in London, Toronto, and New York. In Gotham, the actor was seen by Richard Linklater, who cast him as Welles in his film "Me and Orson Welles." McKay admits it's a meteoric career leap. Nevertheless, he acknowledges there's something to be said for being an unknown. "Audiences aren't going to say, 'There's so-and-so trying to be so-and-so,' " says the 36-year-old Lancashire, England,...

According to press reports today, actress Claire Bloom - best known for appearing in Laurence Olivier's film version of Richard III (1955), as well as being married to actor Rod Steiger - has been cast in either or both of the final Tenth Doctor 2009 Specials The 78 year old star - who most recently appeared in BBC One's New Tricks in 2008 and on stage in London stage in Arthur Allan Seidelman's production of Richard Alfieri's Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks alongside Billy Zane also appeared...