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“Let’s face it, I had a bad script,” director Michael Bay said on the commentary track of his debut feature film, Bad Boys. Bay isn’t wrong. Bad Boys relies on buddy comedy tropes already established in 1974’s Freebie and the Bean and 1982’s 48 Hrs., complete with nonsense plot points. “But I had real comic talent in my two stars.” Bay of course means Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. Drawn from the popular sitcoms Martin and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Lawrence and Smith saved the movie from the clunky script with their easy chemistry and comic timing.

At one point, however, Bad Boys had two very different stars in mind with a comic chemistry unlike that of Lawrence and Smith.

Live From Miami, It’s Saturday Night!

In the 1980s, there were no greater kingmakers than Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. Not only did the super producers turn...

Alan Arkin, the legendary character actor, has died at age 89. The Arkin family confirmed his passing in a statement to People Magazine. “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and a man. A loving husband, father, grand and great grandfather, he was adored and will be deeply missed.”

Indeed, the legendary Alan Arkin had an incredible, enduring career. He first made a name for himself on stage, but here’s an interesting tidbit – he was nominated for an Oscar for his first movie role: The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. He was a Tony Award winner when he was cast but had yet to make a movie. He won the role because he was raised in a Russian-Jewish household, making him the ideal choice to play the film’s comic hero. Arkin’s performance was so lauded that he became a sensation playing ethnic roles.

Alan Arkin, the versatile actor who finally won an Oscar — for Little Miss Sunshine — after making a career of disappearing into characters with turns that could be comic, chilling or charming, has died. He was 89.

His sons, Adam, Matthew and Anthony, announced the news in a joint statement. “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and a man,” they said. “A loving husband, father, grand and great-grandfather, he was adored and will be deeply missed.”

He had heart trouble and died Thursday at his home in San Marcos, California.

In his first significant role in a feature, Arkin received a rare best actor Oscar nomination for work in a comedy when he played a Russian sailor whose submarine is marooned off the coast of a New England fishing village in Norman Jewison’s The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming (1966).

Two years later,...

Alan Arkin, who won an Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine, was nominated for Argo and two other films, scored six Emmy noms and won a Tony Award, died Thursday at his home in San Marcos, CA. He was 89.

The news was announced Friday morning by his sons, actors Adam, Matthew and Anthony, in a joint statement. Matthew Arkin told The New York Times that his father had suffered from heart ailments.

The statement read: “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and a man. A loving husband, father, grand and great grandfather, he was adored and will be deeply missed.”

Related: Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries

In addition to his Oscar-winning film work, Arkin won a Tony Award for acting in Enter Laughing) and was Tony-nominated for directing The Sunshine Boys. He also was nominated for a half-dozen Emmy Awards spanning 53 years,...

Alan Arkin, an Oscar-winning actor for “Little Miss Sunshine” with a body of work that spans seven decades of stage and screen acting, died June 29 at his home in Carlsbad, Calif, Variety has confirmed. He was 89.

Arkin’s sons Adam, Matthew and Anthony said in a joint statement, “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and a man. A loving husband, father, grand and great grandfather, he was adored and will be deeply missed.”

Arkin, who was known for projecting a characteristically dry wit but could play tragedy with equal efficacy, won his Oscar for his supporting performance in the indie comedy “Little Miss Sunshine” in 2007; he scored an encore nomination for his punchy and profane turn in Ben Affleck’s best picture winner “Argo.” Arkin picked up two earlier nominations in his film career, for “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming...

Gary Kent, an actor, director and, most notably, stuntman whose career is thought to have been an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, died Thursday at an assisted care facility in Austin, Texas. He was 89.

Born on June 7, 1933, in Walla Walla, Washington, Kent’s early film credits include 1959’s Battle Flame, and roles in other low-budget films of the 1960s including The Black Klansman (1966) and biker film The Savage Seven (1968). In 1969, he served as a stunt double for Bruce Dern in the now-cult-classic Richard Rush-directed exploitation film Psych-Out.

Among his other credits were such drive-in movie favorites as Peter Bogdanovich’s first film Targets (1968), featuring Boris Karloff, 1970’s Hell’s Bloody Devils and, the following year, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant and Angels’ Wild Women.

Though he had numerous small acting parts through the era, his most endurable contributions to Hollywood would come as a...

Clockwise from upper left: The French Connection (20th Century Fox), The Matrix Reloaded (Warner Bros.), Death Proof (Dimension Films), Thelma & Louise (MGM)Graphic: AVClub

With the Fast & Furious franchise taking its latest lap—Fast X arrives in theaters Friday—we’re reminded just how much we love a great car chase.

Richard Rush, who picked up two Oscar nominations, best director and adapted screenplay, for his extraordinary 1980 film “The Stunt Man,” starring Peter O’Toole, died April 8 in Los Angeles. He was 91.

His wife Claude said he had been suffering from longtime health issues but that he died comfortably at home. She said in a statement, “He will be remembered for a string of landmark films in the 1960s and ’70s, culminating with his 1980 multi-Oscar-nominated classic, ‘The Stunt Man,’ which is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. To those who were privileged to know and love him, he will be even more warmly remembered, and missed, for his integrity, his loyalty, his endless generosity of spirit and his boundless support and mentorship of other filmmakers, writers or indeed anyone who ever dared to, in the words of his ‘Stunt Man’ hero Eli Cross, ’tilt at a windmill.

Legendary stuntman Buddy Joe Hooker joins Josh and Joe to discuss the movies that made him.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Harold And Maude (1971)

White Lightning (1974)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

White Line Fever (1975)

Bound For Glory (1976)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

The Outsider (1980)

Freebie And The Bean (1978)

Sharky’s Machine (1981)

First Blood (1982)

Night Shift (1982)

Rumble Fish (1983)

Against All Odds (1984)

To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)

F/X (1986)

Tucker The Man And His Dream (1988)

Sea of Love (1989)

Miami Blues (1990)

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Demolition Man (1993)

The Crow (1994)

Waterworld (1995)

From Dusk Till Dawn(1996)

Grosse Point Blank (1997)

Django Unchained (2012)

Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park (1978)

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Kagemusha (1980)

Ran (1985)

The Fugitive (1993)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Casino Royale (2006)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

The Fast And The Furious (2001)

The Strongest Man In The World (1975)

The War of the Worlds (1953)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Bullitt (1968)

Robbery (1967)

S.O.B. (1981)

Vanishing Point...

Tony Sokol Aug 31, 2019

Best known as Rhoda, Valerie Harper started as a dancer and never left the stage behind.

Valerie Harper, whose Rhoda Morgenstern character is an icon of television, died on Friday August 30, eight days after her 80th birthday.

"My dad has asked me to pass on this message," Harper’s daughter Cristina Cacciotti, confirmed on Twitter. “'My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away at 10:06 a.m., after years of fighting cancer. She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest In Peace, mia Valeria. -Anthony.'”

The Emmy winning actor was battling lung and brain cancer, according to Variety. When her brain cancer was first diagnosed in January 2013, Harper was told she had three months to live. While she was never cancer-free, she responded well enough to treatment to compete on Dancing with the Stars. Harper started in show business as a dancer, and her defining...

Beloved television sitcom icon Valerie Harper died this Friday at the age of 80 after a long battle with cancer. American TV audiences in the 1970s grew up with Harper in their living rooms on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” in which she played the self-deprecating Rhoda Morgenstern. Rhoda served as the neurotic, comic foil to the otherwise buttoned-up Mary Tyler Moore. Harper won three Primetime Emmy Awards for her performance, and went on to reprise the cherished role in the spinoff series “Rhoda,” for which she also earned an Emmy, in 1975.

Online tributes have been pouring in for the late actress, who graced the big screen in such films as “Freebie and the Bean” (1974) and “Chapter Two” (1979), and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play for her turn as actress Tallulah Bankhead in “Looped.”

Even when she was down she danced and showed the world that...

Hollywood is mourning the loss of Valerie Harper, the four-time Emmy winner who played Rhoda Morgenstern first on The Mary Tyler Moore Show then its 1974 spinoff Rhoda. The actress, who died today at 80, is being remembered for her strength and good humor in the face of illness.

Harper had a total of eight consecutive Emmy nominations for playing Rhoda — four on Mary Tyler Moore from 1971-74 and four for the spin-off from 1975-78, She also won a Golden Globe for Rhoda — the same year was was nominated for Most Promising Newcomer – Female for the film Freebie and the Bean.

Harper also starred for two seasons in the NBC sitcom Valerie, which continued to run as The Hogan Family after she left in 1987.

Writer/director Mike O’Malley remembered Harper fondly. “Valerie Harper was a wonderful actor,” O’Malley said. “She was, as so many comic actors are, so much more than just funny.

Valerie Harper, the multiple-Emmy-winning sitcom star whose role as the somewhat neurotic Rhoda Morgenstern made her one of television’s biggest and most beloved actors in the 1970s, died today. She was 80 and had been suffering from various cancers for a number of years.

Her family told Kabc-tv entertainment reporter George Pennacchio that Harper had been in a coma for a while before succumbing,

The veteran TV and stage actress was best known for playing sidekick Rhoda Morgenstern on CBS The Mary Tyler Moore Show, then taking the character into her own popular spinoff, Rhoda.

She also starred in the 1980s sitcom, Valerie, which — thanks to some head-butting over creative control with the show producers – saw Harper’s character killed off as an explanation for her exiting the show. It then morphed into Valerie’s Family and later was retitled The Hogan Family.

Harper also had recurring roles on The Office and The Simpsons.

Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda Morgenstern, the brash, Bronx-accented sidekick to the Mary Richards character on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and went on to topline spinoff “Rhoda,” died Friday after being diagnosed with lung and brain cancer in 2009. She was 80.

Her daughter Christina tweeted the news.

My dad has asked me to pass on this message: “My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away at 10:06am, after years of fighting cancer.

She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest In Peace, mia Valeria. -Anthony.”

— Cris (@cristicacci) August 30, 2019

ABC7 first announced the news.

On July 23, her husband Tony Cacciotti posted a message saying he would be “where I belong right beside her” for as long as possible.

Harper won four Emmys for the two hugely popular 1970s shows and performed on the stage and bigscreen as well on appearing on dozens of other series. Through she was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago,...

Mia Farrow and Cyndi Lauper, among other notable Hollywood figures, took to Twitter on Friday afternoon to remember Valerie Harper after news broke that the actress had died earlier in the day following a courageous battle with cancer.

Harper, who collected four Emmy Awards and one Golden Globe for playing brash New Yorker Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then on her own spinoff series, Rhoda, died Friday morning, her family told Kabc-tv entertainment reporter George Pennacchio.

Across a career that spanned nearly six decades, Harper's film credits include Li’l Abner (1959), Freebie and the Bean (1974), The Last Married ...

A crowdfunding page has been started to help TV legend Valerie Harper with the costs of her cancer treatments.

Harper, 79, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009. Then in 2013, doctors discovered she’d developed a rare brain cancer.

Harper’s husband, Tony Cacciotti, started a GoFundMe campaign titled The Valerie Harper Cancer Support Fund on July 8.

“Valerie is currently taking a multitude of medications and chemotherapy drugs as well as going through extreme physical and painful challenges now with around the clock, 24/7 care immediately needed, which is not covered by insurance,” the page says. “This is just part of the daily cost that is without a doubt a financial burden that could never be met alone. This GoFundMe initiative from Tony, is to ensure she receives the best care possible.”

When contacted by Deadline tonight, a rep confirmed that the page is real and said Cacciotti would offer additional comments at a later date.

The new “Shaft” is an upgrade that’s also a downgrade. It’s not a “blaxploitation” movie, whatever that would now look like. It is, rather, a rudely conventional, entertainingly junky badass-for-the-megaplex action comedy. Yet since the film has the audacity — or maybe it’s just the shameless huckster savvy — to go out with the exact same title as the 1971 Gordon Parks classic, as well as the fun-in-a-violent-forgettable-way 2000 John Singleton remake, you may ask: What is this, exactly? A sequel that’s also a reboot, though with the same cast?

Actually, it’s the ultimate subordination of street-thriller attitude: the reduction of “Shaft” to that old thing, a trash-talking shoot-the-works buddy-cop movie — which is just old enough that it may now be sort of a new again thing. For a couple of barely respectable hours, the movie dishes up the cookie-cutter combustibility of crime-fighting partners who are temperamental opposites: a...

Review by Roger Carpenter

We all have so-called “guilty pleasures” in life and I guess my affinity for Color of Night would be considered a guilty pleasure. This film, which has been reviled by critics and viewers alike since it’s 1994 release, and won several Razzie awards upon its release, is one of my favorite films. I absolutely love this film. It’s not a guilty pleasure for me at all because I feel no guilt whatsoever in admitting my love for this film. I cannot tell you how excited I was when I received a screener copy from Kino-Lorber in my mail. So, now that my admission is out of the way, let’s talk about the release itself.

Director Richard Rush, who had not directed a film for 14 years after the success of 1980’s Peter O’Toole vehicle The Stuntman , was tapped to direct Color of Night. Rush...

Anthony “Tony” Ray, the actor-producer son of Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray, died June 29 in Saco, Maine, following a long illness, his family has announced. Ray, who lived in Saco for the last 10 years, was 80.

A graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse and a member of the Actor’s Studio, Ray was on the producing teams of such 1970s hits as The Rose, An Unmarried Woman, Harry and Tonto, and Freebie and the Bean. He was an assistant director throughout the 1960s and into the ’70s on TV series The Iron Horse and Bewitched, films Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Cactus Flower, and, according to his family, Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and John Huston’s The Misfits, among other credits.

Ray, who often went by the name Tony Ray, also worked as an actor, his credits starting in 1957 with Men In War and an uncredited appearance in...

Here’s how one pushed the limits of good taste in 1974. James Caan and Alan Arkin run the gamut of racist, raunchy, sexist & homophobic jokes as bad boy cops breaking the rules, and director Richard Rush delivers some impressive, expensive action stunts on location in San Francisco. Does it get a pass because it’s ‘outrageous?’ The public surely thought so. If the star chemistry works the excess won’t matter. With Valerie Harper, Loretta Swit and Jack Kruschen.

Freebie and the Bean

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1974 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date August 8, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Alan Arkin, James Caan, Valerie Harper, Loretta Swit, Jack Kruschen, Mike Kellin, Paul Koslo, Linda Marsh, Alex Rocco.

Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs

Film Editors: Michael MacLean, Fredric Steinkamp

Original Music: Dominic Frontiere

Written by Robert Kaufman, Floyd Mutrux

Produced and Directed by Richard Rush

‘Buddy’ pictures have been around forever, but I...

By Rob Hunter

Plus 12 More New Releases to Watch This Week on Blu-ray/DVD!

The article ‘Freebie and the Bean’ Is Action/Comedy Perfection appeared first on Film School Rejects.

Cars! Cars! Cars! What climate accord, when we’re celebrating the internal combustion engine! One of the best of the breezy ’70s action comedies, this cross-country road race picture gave us early looks at Gary Busey and Raul Julia in the midst of an always-amusing ensemble of car crazies, out to go from Manhattan to the Pacific in less than two days, at speeds up 175 mph! No 55 speed limit, no catalytic converters!

The Gumball Rally

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1976 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date June 13, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Michael Sarrazin, Raul Julia, Norman Burton, Gary Busey, John Durren, Susan Flannery, Harvey Jason, Steven Keats,

Tim McIntire, Joanne Nail, J. Pat O’Malley, Tricia O’Neil, Nicholas Pryor, Vaughn Taylor, Wally Taylor, Colleen Camp, Lazaro Perez, Med Flory, Lauren Simon, .

Cinematography: Richard C. Glouner

Film Editors: Stuart H. Pappé Gordon Scott, Maury Wintrobe

Original Music: Dominic Frontiere

Written by Chuck Bail,...

It takes a lot to stand out when you’re standing between Robert Mitchum and John Wayne. And it surely isn’t easy when you’re also standing in front of the venerable Howard Hawks. But this was the position 25-year-old James Caan found himself in when he took on the role of Alan Bourdillon Traherne, otherwise known as Mississippi, in Hawks’ 1967 Western, El Dorado. Though Hawks was nearing the end of his filmmaking career (this would be his penultimate movie) and Caan was just at the start of his (following two features and about five years of extensive television work), they were each entering the project under similar circumstances. Indeed, it was their shared experience on the disappointing Red Line 7000 (1965) that left them both wanting. It may have been a personal letdown for Caan, but that film’s poor reception wasn’t a deal-breaker as far as his prospects were likely to continue.

This Alan Arkin-Peter Falk show is finally being recognized as a comedy mini-masterpiece. Afraid of offending his daughter's future father-in-law, a dentist is sucked into a nightmare of crime and jeopardy, as a jolly Chinese airline whisks him away to a rendezvous with danger in a Latin American dictatorship. It's a gem of sustained mirth. The In-Laws Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 823 1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 103 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 5, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Richard Libertini, Nancy Dussault, Penny Peyser, Arlene Golonka, Michael Lembeck, Paul Lawrence Smith, Ed Begley Jr., James Hong, Barbara Dana, David Paymer. Cinematography David M. Walsh Film Editor Robert E. Swink Original Music John Morris Written by Andrew Bergman Produced by Arthur Miller, William Sackheim Directed by Arthur Hiller

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Good grief, I had no idea that Albert Brooks and Michael Douglas remade this movie back in...

Shane Black sets a pair of sound-hearted good-bad guys off on the trail of a missing porn star in a crime caper that’s touched by Anderson, Altman and Hiaasen

Before our emotionally literate, twenty-first century world invented the idea of the “bromance”, we had the buddy comedy: films like California Split, Freebie And The Bean, not to mention Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in The Persuaders on television. Writer-director Shane Black’s horribly enjoyable action comedy The Nice Guys is an jauntily arch return to this tradition, the story of two dishevelled and incompetent private detectives in 1970s Los Angeles — played by Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling — who have been expensively tasked with solving the mystery surrounding the death of a missing porn actress, and what other kind of fascinatingly damaged female character can there be? It’s a comedy hardboiled noir, a plastic Black Dahlia with something of Pt Anderson’s Boogie Nights,...

From the opening shot of the crumbling Hollywood sign, it’s clear that “The Nice Guys” is going to be director Shane Black‘s attempt to capture not only the shabby decadence of 1977 Los Angeles, but also the grimy, down-and-dirty feel of decade-defining cop comedies like “Freebie and the Bean.” (Black knows a thing or two about decade-defining cop comedies, having revitalized the genre with “Lethal Weapon,” which spawned plenty of sequels and copycats in the 1980s.) But there’s a tipping point at which comedy goes from black to bilious, and that’s a balancing act that “The Nice Guys” doesn’t always nail.

The Guard and Calvary were two of my favorite films to release in their respective years. Both reel with a jet black sense of humor and western style morality play where various shades of grey face off in cessation. They also happen to be gorgeous, shot by Larry Smith (Gaffer/Chief electrician on Barry Lyndon/The Shining turned Only God Forgives/Bronson D.P) and composed in sickening symmetry. In short, I was ecstastic to meet the man behind it all, and his down to earth, silly, demeanor, ended up putting me at ease. John Michael McDonagh, talks about his third and bleakest feature film: War On Everyone.

Did anything, such as something in the media, provoke the start of War On Everyone?

There was no sort of big initializing point really. I guess having done The Guard with one kind of obnoxious cop, [that] I wanted to double down on that a little bit.

Silver Skies screens Sunday November 8th at 6:45pm at The Tivoli Theater as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. The film’s director, Rosemary Rodriguez, will be in attendance and will receive Sliff’s ‘Women in Film’ Award.Ticket information for the event can be found Here

Review by Dana Jung.

Today, more than ever, with our shortened attention spans, inundation by multi-media delivery systems, and almost obsessive need for instant information, it is easy to forget the wonderful actors of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s who inspired and influenced us. So many great moments created by sometimes iconic performers live on in the movies and television of certain eras. From Mr. Spock to Archie Bunker, Annie Hall to James Bond, or Mrs. Peel to Lieutenant Columbo, these and other memorable characters fueled everything from fashion choices to sexual fantasies. That’s why the new...

It’s with much defiance that Cargill and I tender our badges and guns and close the book on Buddy Cop July. But before we march out of the precinct, hellbent on solving the case with or without permission, we offer up a bizarre parting shot! 1974’s Freebie and the Bean is a great movie, if completely bonkers and more than a little offensive. Alan Arkin and James Caan play possibly the worst “good guys” ever to supposedly be charged with serving and protecting. The two actors, like rogue cops, refused to play by even the director’s rules and the result is one of those insanely rare occurrences in which the performers are making a completely different movie from the filmmaker…and it works! Ride along with us! You should follow Brian (@Briguysalisbury), Cargill (@Massawyrm), and the show (@Junkfoodcinema). Download Episode #67 Directly On This Week’s Show: Pre-Ramble [0:00 – 1:49] Bean There [1:50 – 49:24] Done That [49:25 – 53:16] Films Discussed: [Click to buy, help us keep the lights on] Get In...

It’s definitely been a week for good-byes.

My daughters and I spent the weekend in the beautiful, still somewhat quaint small town of Auburn, California, helping to lay to rest and celebrate the life of my dear aunt Mary Pascuzzi, my fraternal grandmother’s sister, who was the centered matriarch of her own family and a stabilizing force for all of us in her extended family as well. She, and my grandmother, were big fans of classic-era American movies and enthusiastically encouraged my interest, just one reason why they’re both held dear in my heart and in my memory. And being Italian, they both had more than a casual interest in The Godfather when it came out in 1972. I remember my aunt Mary talking to me about having seen it and wondering, me at the ripe old age of 12, if I’d had a chance to go yet.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Alex Rocco, whose hard scrabble life on the streets of Boston prepared him to successfully play crime figures in films and on television, has died from pancreatic cancer at age 79. During his youth, Rocco ran with the notorious Winter Hill Gang, which was founded by the infamous Whitey Bulger. His association with the gang led him to be incarcerated as well as being suspected of having driven a getaway car used in a murder. At one point, his first wife was almost killed when a bomb exploded in a car she was driving. Rocco, who was born Alexander Petricone Jr, took the stage name of "Rocco" on a whim when he saw a bakery truck bearing the Rocco name on it. Fearing that his associations of the Boston mob would lead to his demise, he spontaneously decided to move to Hollywood. He took an acting class that was taught by Leonard Nimoy,...

I have a curious habit, maybe you have it too, if you are a real movie geek, film fan, cinema addict, what have you.

A certain number of movies that I have seen and loved with all my heart were losers at the box office or were mercilessly slammed by critics, usually both. This doesn’t happen all the time, mind you. I know a bad movie when I see one. But several times I have seen a movie on opening day and loved it so much I was sure it would be a big hit and be loved by critics and film goers, nope, not all the time.

Here then is my own personal and highly eccentric top ten list, with some honorable mentions, of movies that lost out, yet I love them still, many of them desperately, hysterically, madly do I love these films, well anyway… let me tell you about it.

Talking to two people on the phone is always weird, but it's even weirder when the two people you're talking to are both very, very silly. This is what happened when I got on the phone to chat with two of the stars of Disney's terrific new sports movie "Million Dollar Arm": Bill Paxton and Alan Arkin.

In the film, Jon Hamm's sports agent concocts a seemingly ludicrous plan to drum up interest -- he travels to India to recruit two young, nonprofessional cricket players to compete in a pitching contest worth a million dollars and a professional baseball contract. The kids, of course, have no idea what American baseball is or, for that matter, what America is, but he tries just the same. Paxton plays Tom House, a USC coach who agrees to help train the boys, and Alan Arkin plays Ray Poitevint, a scout who accompanies...

On this week's episode of The Golden Briefcase, Tim and Jeremy are joined by guest Kevin Carr from Fat Guys at the Movies and Film School Rejects to go through their latest picks of the week, the newest DVD & Blu-ray releases and much more. The main topic of the night was a discussion on the fascinating acting career of Kevin Costner, in honor of his new action film 3 Days to Kill hitting theaters this week. The guys talk over Costner's busy career, some of his best and, of course, worst performances ever, then wrap up the evening by discussing if/what Kevin Costner should do next in the realms of acting and directing. Listen in! Download #188 or Listen Now: [audio href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/firstshowing/EP188.mp3" title="The Legendary Kevin Costner Talk (Guest: Kevin Carr)"]The Golden Briefcase #188/audio] Subscribe via: RSS or iTunes Previous Episode: Of Machines and Men (Guest: Brian Salisbury) Our Guest: Kevin Carr: @kevincarr Picks of the Week: Jeremy: Freebie and the Bean...

Black and Mild: Toonen’s High Octane Adaptation a Bit Derivative

If you could imagine The Hangover remade as a drug fueled action thriller with stylizations that mimic rather than pay homage to early Guy Ritchie flicks, then you’d have something like Aren Toonen’s sophomore film, Black Out on your hands. While it’s slickly paced, this Dutch adaptation of a Swedish novel by Gerben Hellinga may satisfy pulp hounds that prize quick cuts and torrential tangents of backstory and flashback to insistently command their wandering attention, but there’s not much by way of innovation. Sexy babes with tough attitudes and nonsensical outfits stretch the limits of its tenuous believability, but its hyperkinetic design reveals the film to be a simple sugar, a quick burn whose buzz wears off well before the end credits.

Waking up next to a bloodied corpse in his bed, Jos Vreeswijk (Raymond Thiry...

The studio quietly launched WB Archive Instant. According to the website, it enables subscribers who pay $9.99 a month opportunities to watch what the company calls “rare and hard-to-find” content. The moldy oldie movies include The Americanization Of Emily, A Face In The Crowd, Freebie And The Bean, and Black Legion. TV shows include The Adventures Of Superman, 77 Sunset Strip, and Cheyenne. New users can try the Warner Bros service two weeks for free. But for now it’s just available on PCs and Macs — no mobile devices — and televisions connected to a Roku box. Only the Roku can handle HD streams.

This article is dedicated to Andrew Copp: filmmaker, film writer, artist and close friend who passed away on January 19, 2013. You are loved and missed, brother.

****

Looking at the Best Actor Academy Award nominations for the film year 2012, the one miss that clearly cries out for more attention is Liam Neeson’s powerful performance in Joe Carnahan’s excellent survival film The Grey, easily one of the best roles of Neeson’s career.

In Neeson’s case, his lack of a nomination was a case of neglect similar to the Albert Brooks snub in the Best Supporting Actor category for the film year 2011 for Drive(Nicolas Winding Refn, USA).

Along with negligence, other factors commonly prevent outstanding lead acting performances from getting the kind of critical attention they deserve. Sometimes it’s that the performance is in a film not considered “Oscar material” or even worthy of any substantial critical attention.

Feature Ryan Lambie Dec 26, 2012

David Ayer's cop drama End Of Watch made sixth place in our list of favourite 2012 films. Here's Ryan's take on it...

The latest in our film of the year countdown, as voted for by the entire writing team of Den Of Geek, is the superb End Of Watch. Here's why it made the list...

7th place: End Of Watch

We've been here before. Two cops in a car, city streets full of criminals outside. Arrests. House searches. Fights. Chases. From Freebie And The Bean via 48 Hrs and Lethal Weapon and beyond, the buddy-cop thriller has been parodied and raked over countless times over the past 40-or-so years. End Of Watch, however, brings with it enough energy, atmosphere and great writing to not only breathe life into the genre, but also make it one of the most unexpectedly powerful and memorable movies of 2012.

It helps that...

This chase comedy doesn't have too many real laughs and is disconcertingly serious about all the motor love

Some petrolhead japes in this souped-up, retro-styled chase movie, calling up memories of Smokey and the Bandit and Freebie and the Bean, but with the non-pc attitudes and vocab erased or ironised away. It's amiable, but the more miles it clocks up, the more this film looks like a vanity vehicle for its co-director, writer and star, Dax Shepard. He plays Charlie Bronson, a guy who has taken witness protection in a no-horse town in the middle of nowhere, having testified against some scary bank robbers back in La. But Charlie is now in a mature relationship with Annie (Kristen Bell), an academic sociologist specialising in non-violent conflict resolution. When Charlie offers to bust his protection conditions to drive Annie to a job interview at UCLA, he runs into his old associates,...

Gary Oldman as Jackie Flannery in State Of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990, USA):

Long considered one of the most talented actors in cinema, it’s very strange that his outstanding acting as the younger brother of Ed Harris’ local crime boss in this underrated film doesn’t get talked about nearly enough when discussing Oldman’s body of work. This is a must-see performance for all Oldman fans. For the record, State Of Grace is a far better Irish mob film than The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006, USA), primarily because it contains much better acting across the board. Oldman was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011, UK/France).

Other notable Gary Oldman performances: Prick Up Your Ears (Stephen Frears, 1987, USA), Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992, USA), True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993, USA), Leon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994, France), Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997, USA), The Contender (Rod Lurie,...

Taking a page from the successful programs that Warner Bros. and other studios have launched, Amazon has unveiled their “Never Before On DVD” store, which will make DVD copies available for films and television shows that have not yet made the leap to home video.

The catalog currently boasts more than 2,000 titles from the vaults of Disney, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, most of which had already been available from Warner Archive or other similar services. It also includes current content (mostly in the form of reality television) from CBS Networks, Lionsgate Home Entertainment, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon and Universal Studios Home Entertainment, with seasons of short-lived TV shows like "Mr. Sunshine" or "Dark Blue" appearing on disc for the first time.

The store will utilize Amazon’s CreateSpace DVD on demand service, which literally makes discs and packaging after you have ordered them,...

With the Academy Awards for the 2011 film year in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to take a look at one of the event’s most consistently fascinating categories: Best Supporting Actor. The most interesting story in the category this year isn’t who got nominated, it’s who didn’t. More specifically, Albert Brooks was completely robbed of a nomination for his performance as film producer turned lethal gangster Bernie Rose in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.

As much as I’d like to say I was surprised by this, considering both the quality of performance and Brooks’ slew of nominations from other critical circles, in light of the Academy’s history of overlooking outstanding supporting performances, I simply can’t.

Following is a chronological look at a number of performances richly deserving of a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination.

In some cases, the performances are in films...

Attitudes to race and sex in 70s films may seem comically outdated, but have we moved on – or are we just pretending?

Amid the typically elegant praise in Peter Bradshaw's recent tribute to 1971's The French Connection came a mention of "the shock of the old" – a dizzying glimpse of the gulf between then and now, partly caused by the movie's dated approach to race. I know the feeling. My own came this week after reacquainting myself with one of British cinema's most gleefully perverse moments: Frenzy, the tale of a sex killer haunting Covent Garden, which was released a year later and marked Alfred Hitchcock's return to England.

It's a rich and fascinating film, loaded with old-school panache and cheeky invention – witness the late Anna Massey stepping out on to a busy London street, to be greeted not with the expected racket but unnerving silence. It's also...

Stay off the streets and stay in with a movie…that takes to the streets.

Los Angelenos are aflutter with impending chaos. And, if you don’t live in Los Angeles, you probably don’t understand. (I live here and I’m not sure I fully understand.) But this weekend (July 15-17), the City of Los Angeles has gotten it in its mind to shut down the 405 Freeway, one of the central lifelines for the (frankly absurd) amount of traffic that hits Los Angeles on a daily basis. This means that, functionally, no one’s going anywhere this weekend and the entire West side of Los Angeles is going to be choked off by the cold, unrelenting hands of the Los Angeles Dot.

Naturally, this has become a bit of a cultural meme (surely confusing anyone who doesn’t live in Los Angeles) dubbed by internet pun genii as “Carmageddon.

How have you never heard of retired filmmaker Richard Rush? He twice directed Jack Nicholson in late '60s-era Aip films (Psych-Out, Hell's Angels on Wheels), kick started the buddy cop genre with Freebie and the Bean, won the notorious Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture with Color of Night, and was once praised by François Truffaut as his favorite American filmmaker after seeing his incredible 1980 genre-twister The Stunt Man—now on Blu-ray and an Ultimate Edition DVD from Severin Films:

It defied all odds to become the most unexpected and acclaimed cult hit of the '80s, and it remains one of the most slyly subversive and thrillingly original action/comedy/drama motion pictures of all time. The legendary Peter O'Toole—in an iconic Oscar-nominated performance—stars as director Eli Cross, a deliciously megalomaniacal madman commanding a film-set circus where a paranoid young veteran (Steve Railsback) finds himself maybe replacing a dead stunt man,...

Screen legends really don’t come much more legendary than Peter O’Toole who, amongst his many achievements, has racked up eight Best Actor Academy Award nominations in his now almost 60-year-long career. O’Toole received the sixth of those noms for playing, with flamboyant brilliance, the manipulative and devilish film director Eli Cross in Richard Rush’s 1980 film The Stunt Man. This paranoia-fueled comedy about a Vietman vet who hides from the cops by becoming a stuntman on a World War I movie is out today on Blu-ray in a package that also includes a two hour making-of doc and a Rush career retrospective,...

DVD Playhouse December 2010

By

Allen Gardner

America Lost And Found: The Bbs Story (Criterion) Perhaps the best DVD box set released this year, this ultimate cinefile stocking stuffer offered up by Criterion, the Rolls-Royce of home video labels, features seven seminal works from the late ‘60s-early ‘70s that were brought to life by cutting edge producers Bert Schneider, Steve Blauner and director/producer Bob Rafelson, the principals of Bbs Productions. In chronological order: Head (1968) star the Monkees, the manufactured (by Rafelson, et al), American answer to the Beatles who, like it or not, did make an impact on popular culture, particularly in this utterly surreal piece of cinematic anarchy (co-written by Jack Nicholson, who has a cameo), which was largely dismissed upon its initial release, but is now regarded as a counterculture classic. Easy Rider (1969) is arguably regarded as the seminal ‘60s picture, about two hippie drug dealers (director Dennis Hopper...

Craig here with this week's Take Three

Today: Alan Arkin

Take One: Three-hundred-and-sixty-three words about one performance

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001) was a solemn little indie film. I caught at random back in ’06 - and returned to it this week for Take Three. It’s one of those character-driven, multi-plot-strand affairs, à la Short Cuts - one of the many that came in the wake of Magnolia etc - where the cast are individually designated an appropriately emotional storyline to battle through. It was worth seeing (twice) for Arkin’s greatly measured, affecting performance. His character, Gene English, comes across as initially unlikeable; he’s a difficult, workaholic manager for an insurance firm, none too cheery day-to-day, largely due to the utter joylessness of his life, but brusquely committed to his work regardless.

Alan Arkin as Gene in Thirteen Conversations About One Thing

On a few rare occasions director...

In our latest Summer Blockbuster Preview, we take a look at action comedy The Other Guys, starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg…

What Is It?

Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are two New York detectives who live in the perpetual shadow of their macho, alpha male colleagues, Danson and Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson). While the latter are out on the streets busting criminals, hanging on to the roofs of moving cars and having "all the sex with women we don't want to have, but have to", the unassuming Gamble and Hoitz are chained to their desks in front of their computers and quietly getting on each other's nerves.

For reasons unclear from the footage we've seen, Gamble and Hoitz find themselves on the beat in their Toyota Prius, and soon find themselves embroiled in a series of car chases, gun fights, and tough interrogations.

Who's Behind It?...

Repertory theaters on the coasts are truly offering a window onto the world this spring, with Jia Zhangke and Bong Joon-ho retrospectives, as well as New French Cinema in New York, "Freebie and the Bean," "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" and Jason Reitman's favorite films invade Los Angeles, and the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin is offering a fond farewell to the video cassette. But consider this a hello to seeing classics, oddities and rarities on the big screen over the next few months.

Cities: [New York] [Los Angeles] [Austin] More Spring Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]

[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]

New York

92YTribeca

Is there a more energetic way to start the spring than with a screening of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (Feb. 20, with editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny in attendance)? Perhaps not, but it's only the start of an exciting spring season at the 92YTribeca Screening Room, which will present several special events over the next few months.