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Warning: Contains spoilers for Dan Da Dan episodes #1-#2.While one of Dan Da Dans two main characters is typically called Okarun, his real name is the much more innocuous Ken Takakura. That happens to be the same name as Momos favorite actor, however, and with her wanting to do everything to ignore her blossoming attraction to Okarun, she coined the nickname to help disassociate him from any romantic feelings.

What makes the joke about Momo forcing a nickname onto Okarun even better is that Ken Takakura isnt someone made up for the story; rather, Okaruns namesake, Ken Takakura, was one of the most celebrated actors in the history of Japanese cinema, which sells the joke far more than it would if Okaruns namesake was a fictional character. As popular as Ken Takakura is in Japan, though, hes likely less recognizable to English fans, but Dan Da Dan makes for...

Gerald Fried, the Oscar-nominated, oboe-playing composer who created iconic gladiatorial fight music for the original Star Trek series and collaborated with Quincy Jones to win an Emmy for their theme to the landmark miniseries Roots, has died. He was 95.

Fried died Friday of pneumonia at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, his wife, Anita Hall, told The Hollywood Reporter.

After meeting Stanley Kubrick on a baseball field in the Bronx in the early 1950s, Fried wound up scoring the filmmaker’s first four features: Fear and Desire (1953), Killer’s Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957).

Fried also supplied the music for such cult Roger Corman classics as Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), The Cry Baby Killer (1958) and I Mobster (1959). He also worked with directors Larry Peerce on One Potato Two Potato (1964) and The Bell Jar (1979), as well as with Robert Aldrich on The Killing of Sister George (1968), What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?...

Composer Gerald Fried, who won an Emmy for the landmark miniseries “Roots” and whose 1960s scores, from “Star Trek” to “Gilligan’s Island,” left an indelible impression on a generation of TV watchers, died of pneumonia Friday at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport, Ct. He was 95.

His wide-ranging career included scoring five early Stanley Kubrick films, including “Paths of Glory” and “The Killing”; receiving the only Oscar nomination ever given for a documentary score, 1975’s “Birds Do It, Bees Do It”; and earning five other Emmy nominations for music in specials, TV movies and miniseries.

The prolific Fried scored approximately 40 films, some three dozen TV-movies and miniseries, and episodes of another 40 TV series during a career that spanned more than six decades.

Among his most famous TV series music was from the original “Star Trek.” He scored five episodes of the series, most famously the Spock-in-heat episode “Amok Time,” which...

It’s cold-blooded murder, I tell ya! Feisty Ruth Gordon goes undercover to find the evidence of homicide at Geraldine Page’s desert home, where companion-housekeepers keep disappearing. Robert Aldrich produced this marvelous, E-Ticket battle between celebrated actresses, and the result is a creative new solution for retirement finance problems!

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date January 8, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon, Rosemary Forsyth, Robert Fuller, Mildred Dunnock, Joan Huntington, Peter Brandon, Michael Barbera, Peter Bonerz, Richard Angarola, Claire Kelly, Valerie Allen, Martin Garralaga.

Cinematography: Joseph Biroc

Film Editors: Frank J. Urioste, Michael Luciano

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written by Theodore Apstein from a novel by Ursula Curtiss

Produced by Robert Aldrich

Directed by Lee H. Katzin (and Bernard Girard)

Few fans of Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen realize that he used the windfall profits...

Blu-ray fans are now well aware that many great movies unavailable in the U.S., can be easily found in Europe. One of the best westerns of the ’70s is this jarringly realistic cavalry vs. Apaches drama from Robert Aldrich and Burt Lancaster, which used the ‘R’ rating to show savage details that Hollywood had once avoided. In this case it works — the genuinely scary movie is also a serious meditation on violent America.

Ulzana’s Raid

(Keine Gnade für Ulzana)

All-region Blu-ray + Pal DVD

Explosive Media

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date November 9, 2017 / available through the Amazon Germany website / Eur 17,99

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Richard Jaeckel, Bruce Davison, Jorge Luke, Joaquín Martínez, Lloyd Bochner, Karl Swenson, Douglass Watson, Dran Hamilton, Gladys Holland, Aimee Eccles, Tony Epper, Nick Cravat, Richard Farnsworth, Dean Smith.

Cinematography: Joseph Biroc

Film Editor: Michael Luciano

Original Music: Frank De Vol

Written by Alan Sharp

Produced by...

In a war film, what’s the difference between nasty exploitation and just plain honest reportage? André De Toth made tough-minded action films with the best of them, and this nail-biting commando mission with Michael Caine and Nigel Davenport is simply superb, one of those great action pictures that’s not widely screened. To its credit it’s not ‘feel good’ enough to be suitable for Memorial Day TV marathons.

Play Dirty

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 118 min. / Street Date October 17, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Michael Caine, Nigel Davenport, Nigel Green, Harry Andrews.

Cinematography: Edward Scaife

Film Editor: Jack Slade

Art Direction: Tom Morahan, Maurice Pelling

Original Music: Michel Legrand

Written by Lotte Colin, Melvyn Bragg, from a story by George Marton

Produced by Harry Saltzman

Directed by André De Toth

Some movies that were ignored when new now seem far more important, perhaps due to the tenor of times.

The quintessential shot in Robert Aldrich’s filmography is that of a close-up, held for a smidgen longer than the normal length one would think appropriate for such a shot. The face the camera is focusing on is usually a signifier of the most central element in Aldrich’s films: tension. Whether it’s melodrama (Autumn Leaves, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), war pictures (Too Late the Hero, Attack!), or Westerns, both sober and jocular (Ulzana’s Raid and 4 For Texas, respectively), ideological and external forces wrestle within the psyche that defines Aldrich’s cinema. Metrograph's all-35mm retrospective in New York offers us the opportunity to survey the oeuvre of the auteur who hammered out his cinematic legacy with the vigor of an undoubtedly indignant and irreverent artist. Too Late the Hero (1970)Consistency across genre and modes of filmmaking marks Aldrich as one of the last great studio auteurs,...

Japanese actor Ken Takakura has died in Tokyo, aged 83.

The veteran, who boasted a six-decade-spanning movie career, had suffered from lymphoma.

Since making his film debut in 1956, Takakura appeared in over 200 films.

Known as the 'Clint Eastwood of Japan', he garnered a reputation for playing resolute heroes and yakuza gangsters.

Takakura made his Hollywood debut alongside Henry Fonda and Michael Caine in Too Late the Hero.

Other notable roles included turns in Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza, and Michael Douglas's Black Rain.

Takakura received the Order of Culture from the Japanese Emperor and also won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Actor on four occasions.

Word has just come over the news wires in Tokyo that legendary Japanese actor Takakura Ken has died. Probably most recognisable to Western audiences for his role as an Osaka cop assigned to babysit Michael Douglas in Ridley Scott's 1989 flick Black Rain, Takakura had a career spanning close to 50 years in Japan, creating numerous legendary screen characters and appearing nearly 150 films.Born Oda Goichi, Takakura became famous for his brooding, stoic portrayals of yakuza, samurai and detectives. Among his most famous films are Brutal Tales of Chivalry (Showa Zankyo-den, 1965), Abashiri Prison (Abashiri Bangaichi, 1965) and Too Late The Hero (1970). He worked with Yamada Yoji in 1977's brilliant road movie The Yellow Handkerchief, as well as in big budget action films such...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run was pivotal in launching his career as a credible actor and leading man. Although considered a comedy classic today, the 1969 film actually lost money at the time of its release.

By Brian Hannan

All you need is top stars and top directors and making movies is easy. Surely you couldn’t miss with a line-up that included Sean Connery, Steve McQueen, Michael Caine, Dustin Hoffman, Lee Marvin, Omar Sharif, and directors of the calibre of Robert Aldrich (hot after The Dirty Dozen), John Boorman (Point Blank) and Woody Allen. Or so ABC must have thought when it set up a movie division in the late 1960s. Delving into the archives recently, I discovered that Sam Peckinpah’s rodeo picture Junior Bonner (1972) starring Steve McQueen was a box office stinkeroo. The picture lost $2.8m (about $15m in today’s money). Not just on domestic release,...

September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011

American actor Cliff Robertson died at the age of 88 on Saturday September 10 from natural causes.

To the younger generation (God…I sound like my Dad!) Cliff Robertson will be best remembered as Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, also seen in flashback in Spider-Man 2 and 3.

In my childhood, he was a very familiar face in the mid sixties and seventies. Many of the films that he appeared in probably won’t register with most people but he made a big impact with me. Maybe it was Robertson’s calming demeanour and intelligent delivery that made you believe in every character that he played. You also felt that you knew him like some favourite Uncle.

He played Mosquito pilot wing commander Roy Grant in the British war film 633 Squadron (64). At the time I didn’t think that it was at all strange for an American officer to fly with the Raf.

Cliff Robertson passed away Saturday in Stony Brook, NY. The Oscar winner was 88. In 1969, Robertson took home the gold beating out Alan Arkin ("The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"), Peter O'Toole ("The Lion in Winter"), Alan Bates ("The Fixer), and Ron Moody ("Oliver!"). But Robertson's performance in "Charly" was deemed the best of the year (see clip below).

In 2002's "Spider-Man," Robertson, playing Uncle Ben, uttered the famous line that became the crux of the franchise -- "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility."

Here's more on the brilliant life of Cliff Robertson from the NY Daily News:

Robertson, a native of La Jolla, California, had already won an Emmy when he had his moment of big-screen recognition in 1968 -- 13 years after his feature debut in "Picnic." Though he played JFK as a young naval officer in "Pt 109 " - released five months before Dealey Plaza -- and gave an icy...

Robertson relaxing on the set of P.T. 109.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Oscar winning actor Cliff Robertson has died at age 88. He passed away a day after his birthday. Robertson had a long and illustrious career that began in the golden days of television and extended to the Spiderman movies of recent years. Although he generally played quiet, dignified characters, Robertson marched to his own drumbeat- a trait that earned him respect but that also damaged aspects of his career. In 1977 when he was still very much an in-demand leading man, Robertson ignored advice to hush up a scandal that involved the head of Columbia Pictures, David Begelman, who had utilized Robertson's name in a bizarre check forging scandal. Begelman was momentarily disgraced, payed a small fine and was later rewarded for his crime by being appointed as the head of MGM. Meanwhile, Robertson found his own career went into immediate decline.

New York — President John F. Kennedy had just one critique when he saw photos of the actor set to play him in a World War II drama.

The year was 1963 and actor Cliff Robertson looked convincing in his costume for "Pt-109," the first film to portray a sitting president. Kennedy had favored Robertson for the role, but one detail was off.

Robertson's hair was parted on the wrong side.

The actor dutifully trained his locks to part on the left and won praise for a role he'd remain proud of throughout his life.

Robertson, who went on to win an Oscar for his portrayal of a mentally disabled man in "Charly", died of natural causes Saturday afternoon in Stony Brook, a day after his 88th birthday, according to Evelyn Christel, his secretary of 53 years.

Robertson never elevated into the top ranks of leading men, but he remained a popular actor...

I’ve just woke up to some sad news this morning that Cliff Robertson, the classic Hollywood actor who immortalised Peter Parker’s inspirational father figure Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, passed away yesterday, just one day after his 88th birthday.

Today, September 11th 2011, was the day I was to run a few articles trying to remember those who we lost on that most dreadful of days ten years ago but now my prayers are also with Robertson’s family as I recall the amazing career he had.

Ironically, Robertson & The Twin Towers can be remembered together in one movie. In Sydney Pollack’s excellent conspiracy thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975), Robertson plays the Deputy Director of CIA New York City who is making Robert Redford’s life hell and his base is an office high-up in the World Trade Center. It’s quite amazing to go...