News

As the format continues to gain traction, here’s our regularly-updated list of upcoming 4K Ultra HD disc releases in the UK.

Sitting alongside our list of upcoming DVD and Blu-ray releases (that you can find here), we’re also keeping a calendar for those who support the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc format. As we learn of new UK releases, we’ll add them to this list.

We have started adding shopping links too. We’d be obliged if you clicked on them, as it really helps us in our quest to make the Film Stories project of magazines, website and podcast profitable. We’re a 100% independent publisher, and we quite like drinking coffee. It’d be lovely to afford some more.

Without further ado, here are the titles we know about…

Out now

10th February: Cronos

10th February: The Italian Job (original)

10th February: Weird Science

10th February:...

A glimpse at upcoming UK DVD and Blu-ray release dates well into 2025: here’s what’s coming to disc and when.

Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note that all dates are for the UK.

Also: We’ve started adding affiliate links. If you click on those, we benefit, and can spend more money paying more people to write more things for this website. No pressure, just hugely obliged.

Obviously in the current climate everything is subject to change, of course…

Just released

First Time On UK Blu-ray: No Way Out (Film Stories Blu-ray #2)

First Time On UK Blu-ray: Bull Durham (Film Stories Blu-ray #3)

This week

24th February: Demons At Dawn

24th February: Doctor Vampire (Eureka Classics)

24th February: Chantal Akerman collection volume 1

24th February: What Happened Was…

24th February: The Cat...

Crossing Delancey, Spine #1250, will be available in the Criterion Collection on February 18th, 2024.

Beginning the new year with a lighthearted and joyous romantic comedy feels like the right way to get things started. I’d never seen Crossing Delancey prior to this week. To be honest, I wasn’t even familiar with its existence, but after watching it it’s easy to see that it’s an important and influential entry in the romantic comedy genre. Filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver delivers a heartfelt and genuine look at the difficulties that accompany love and accepting love in return.

Related The 100 Greatest Movies of All-Time Crossing Delancey plot

Izzy (Amy Irving) is an independent, self-sufficient young woman living in Manhattan. As a bookstore manager, she’s content with her freedom, but is forced to reevaluate her life and her needs when she becomes engaged in a complicated love triangle with two very different men.

Warner Bros. Discovery may not be ready to launch a free ad-supported streaming TV (Fast) service of its own just yet, but the company is on the lookout for ways to boost its digital ad revenue. Its latest tactic is to add free movies to YouTube. Wbd has put more than 30 full-length films on the social video platform to stream at no cost, as long as you don’t mind putting up with a few commercials.

Key Details: Movies featuring Kevin Bacon, Chevy Chase, Robert De Niro, and other stars are streaming free on YouTube. None of the films are currently available to stream on the company’s platform Max. Wbd licenses plenty of content to Fast platforms, but has made no public progress on its own Fast platform. Sign Up $9.99+ / month max via prime video

The list of movies from Wbd that are now available to stream free on YouTube can be seen here.

Over the years, Warner Bros. has tried to monetize its catalog of older movies through different subscription streaming services, including FilmStruck — which it shut down less than a year after it launched in 2018.

Now, Warner Bros. Entertainment has quietly taken a new approach to bringing its content to YouTube to farm its film catalog for digital ad revenue.

Since the start of 2025, the company has released 31 movies on Warner Bros.-owned YouTube channels, all available for free. The movies include ads, unless you are a YouTube Premium subscriber. Warner Bros. has published a YouTube playlist with the free movies, available at this link.

The titles are varied and cut across genres, with some films on the list dating back decades. The movies include “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando, “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” starring Eddie Murphy, “Oh, God!” featuring George Burns in the titular role, “The Mission” starring Robert De Niro,...

As the movie world exits the January doldrums and coasts on Sundance into the romance and Marvel offerings of February, savvy cinephiles still pay closer attention to what’s heading to their small screens. Each month The A.V. Club does our part to keep you up to date on the...

Forty-five years after “Honeysuckle Rose,” Amy Irving is set to release an album of her interpretations of 10 Willie Nelson songs — all picks suggested to her by Nelson, who also contributes a guitar solo to a song plucked from that film, “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”

The forthcoming album, “Always Will Be,” is teased today with a title track that features a guest appearance by Amy Helm, a singer-songwriter in her own right and the daughter of Levon Helm. (Listen below.) Steve Earle is among the other featured artists on the album, due out April 25 on Queen of the Castle/Missing Piece Records. Irving will promote the new record with a handful of gigs, starting with a show May 4 at City Winery in New York City and another at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, NY on May 31.

“Always Will Be” is the second musical effort from Irving, known for...

Exclusive: Leah Fay Goldstein and Peter Dreimanis, the singers of Canadian alt-rock band July Talk, have been set to star in indie feature Middle Life from writer-director Pavan Moondi (Sundowners).

Joining them are Luke Lalonde, lead singer of the band Born Ruffians and who also starred in Moondi’s movie Sundowners, Norah Sadava (Mouthpiece), and actor-comedian Colin Burgess (Dad and Step Dad).

Middle Life follows a new mom who unexpectedly saves a stranger from a roadside accident. Over the next 18 months, the two form an unlikely friendship that shifts their perspectives and adds a spark of spontaneity to their everyday lives.

Pic is produced by Peter Dreimanis, Pavan Moondi, Jared Raab, Leah Fay Goldstein, and Dean Perlmutter of Toronto’s Smash Arts, and is financed independently by undisclosed sources. Executive producers include Josh Warburton of Vulture Culture Films, Mark Homza and Phillipe Leblanc of Time and Tide Entertainment, Chetan Bhanot,...

I consider myself something like a student, autodidact or otherwise, of cinema and––even still, must confess––had not ever grasped the concept of Argentine noir. Credit to Criterion Channel, who’ll expand my horizons with February’s program (concisely titled “Argentine Noir”) that includes one known title––Pierre Chenal’s Native Son, an Argentine film from a French director adapting an American novel about the African-American experience in Chicago––and five I look forward to discovering. Retrospective-wise, their wide-reaching Claudette Colbert program could double as a lesson in Old Hollywood, between Capra, Stahl, DeMille, Lubitsch, Sirk, and Sturges. February, of course, brings Black History Month and Valentine’s Day: the former engenders a series featuring films such as Nothing but a Man, Portrait of Jason, and Losing Ground; the latter brings “New York Love Stories,” from Carol to Crossing Delancey to, curiously, Annie Hall, which likely would not have...

Physical media collectors, take note. The Criterion Collection has announced six new Blu-ray releases coming in February 2025, including titles from some of today’s most beloved auteurs and one famously elusive late-career work from a French New Wave legend.

The slate is headlined by Jean-Luc Godard’s “King Lear,” an essential work from the “Breathless” director’s experimental period that has long been unavailable to own or stream. The film uses William Shakespeare’s tragedy as a jumping off point for a postmodern riff on art in a world decimated by the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. While it shares little DNA with the actual play that shares its name, “King Lear” contains some of the most striking imagery of Godard’s filmography, including the director himself donning a Rastafarian wig made entirely of electrical cables. The nonlinear film is a pastiche of influences, references, and ideas that stands out to many...

The Criterion Collection has unveiled its February 2025 lineup, featuring 4K Uhd upgrades for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love and Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos. Also among the lineup is one of the great rom-coms, Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, alongside Gus Van Sant’s second feature Drugstore Cowboy.

Jean-Luc Godard’s first English-language feature King Lear and Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance are also coming to the collection, the latter featuring Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998), a documentary by Kevin Macdonald and Chris Rodley Influence and Controversy: Making “Performance” (2007), a documentary about the making of the film.

Check out the cover art below and learn more here.

The post Criterion Collection’s February 2025 Lineup Features Paul Thomas Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Crossing Delancey & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

An essential series of Jacques Rozier restorations begins.

Roxy Cinema

Fidelio, our four-film program with Chapo Trap House’s Movie Mindset, has an encore with Eyes Wide Shut on a spectacular 35mm print this Friday and Saturday, the latter day also bringing The Ghost Writer on 35mm; Nathan Silver presents Crossing Delancey on 35mm and Mike Leigh’s Meantime; “City Dudes” returns on Saturday.

Bam

Films by Spike Lee, Chantal Akerman, Lucrecia Martel, and more play in “Sweat!“; recent restorations are given a showcase, including a special premiere of The Spook Who Sat By the Door.

Museum of the Moving Image

70mm prints of 2001, Tenet, and Far and Away screen.

Film Forum

A Blaxploitation series, featuring classics and discoveries alike, begins; Army of Shadows continues.

Anthology Film Archives

Buñuel and Dalí play in “Essential Cinema.”

Museum of Modern Art...

There's a scene midway through Chuck Russell's 1994 comedy The Mask that stands out as an absolute comic masterstroke—zero CGI cartoon antics required. Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) squirms under the magnifying glass of Lt. Mitch Kellaway (Peter Riegert), the detective sizing up the lowly bank clerk in his dinky apartment.

If the 14th annual TCM Classic Film Festival had an official focus, it was on the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros., from the opening night premiere selection of a restoration of “Rio Bravo” to a celebration of the 50th anniversary of “The Exorcist.” Almost equal in emphasis, though, by virtue of the guests brought in, was a celebration of the ingenues-turned-leading-ladies of the 1960s, who now represent the elder guard of a Hollywood golden age — Angie Dickinson, Ann-Margret and Shirley Jones.

Dickinson had the highest profile of any star at the festival, being the belle of the ball at the Thursday screening of “Rio Bravo” in the big house at the Tcl Chinese Theatres, where most of the screenings were held. But there was just as much outpouring of affection for Ann-Margret, who turned up for a Q&a (and birthday cake) following “Bye Bye Birdie” on Saturday, and Jones,...

Oscar-nominated actress Amy Irving is ready to release her first album.

The performer tells The Hollywood Reporter that Born In a Trunk, featuring 10 cover songs pulled from her life and career, will be released digitally on April 7. “Why Don’t You Do Right?” — the first single which Irving sang as Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit — will be available on digital platforms on March 3.

Irving, 69, made her film debut in Brian De Palma’s Carrie in 1976 and two years later was in supernatural thriller The Fury. Her role in Yentl earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress and she scored best actress Golden Globes nominations for Crossing Delancey and Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna. She also has a number of stage credits, earning an Obie Award for her off-Broadway performance in a production of The Road to Mecca.

Born In a Trunk also features Irving covering songs...

Writer, director and actor Michael Showalter joins hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)

The Baxter (2005)

Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015)

Runaway Daughters (1994)

Clueless (1995)

Bagdad Cafe (1987)

Coda (2021)

The Long Goodbye (1973) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Jaws (1975) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Sugarbaby (1985)

City Slickers (1991)

Attack! (1956) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Paris, Texas (1984) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

Pretty In Pink (1986)

Escape From New York (1981) – Neil Marshall’s trailer commentary

Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1986)

The Warriors (1979)

The Thing (1982) – Jesus Treviño’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Innerspace (1987) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Christine (1983)

Crossing Delancey (1988)

Annie Hall (1977) – Robert Weide’s trailer commentary

When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

The Fugitive (1993)

The Big Sick (2017) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Between The Lines...

Most people, cinephiles or not, know Carol Kane as Valerie, bossy wife to Billy Crystal’s Miracle Max in “The Princess Bride.” Her face may have been tough to recognize under all that old age make-up, but her distinctive warble is unmistakable, causing new generations to fall in love with her as Kimmy’s eccentric landlady Lillian in “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”

But Kane wasn’t always the incomparable character actress we know and love today, and younger audiences may be surprised to learn that her early career included some more dramatic turns, most notably in her Oscar-nominated performance in Joan Micklin Silver’s 1975 masterpiece “Hester Street,” which is receiving renewed interest with a gorgeous 4k restoration from the Cohen Film Collection.

In “Hester Street,” the young Kane plays a Jewish immigrant who arrives in New York to find her husband (Steven Keats) already happily assimilated into American life. She has...

A look at all the stars in movies, TV, music, sports and media we’ve lost this year

Mike Fenton

The “E.T.” and “Back to the Future” casting director died Jan. 1. He was 85 years old.

Joan Micklin Silver

The director known for acclaimed films “Hester Street” and “Crossing Delancey” died Jan. 1 due to vascular dementia. She was 85.

Gerry Marsden

Gerry Marsden, lead signer of the British pop band Gerry and the Pacemakers, died Jan. 3 after an infection of the heart. He was 78.

Kerry Vincent

“Food Network Challenge” judge and cake designing expert Kerry Vincent passed away Jan. 4. She was 75 years old.

Tanya Roberts

Former Bond Girl and star of “A View to Kill” and “That 70s Show” Tanya Roberts was confirmed dead Jan. 5 after initial misleading reports that she had passed away, then was still alive. Roberts died of a urinary tract infection that spread to other organs, and she was 65 years old.

Film-maker best known for the 1988 romantic comedy Crossing Delancey

A sensitivity to cultural differences, a playful looseness with actors, and a nose for the churn and thrust of interpersonal relationships were among the characteristics of the film-maker Joan Micklin Silver, who has died aged 85 of vascular dementia. She was 40 when she made her debut with Hester Street (1975), the story of a young Russian-Jewish woman arriving in late-19th-century New York only to struggle to match her husband’s aplomb in adapting to their adopted culture.

Shot in black and white and scripted largely in Yiddish with subtitles, the film was self-distributed by her husband, Raphael D Silver, known as Ray, who worked in real estate. He volunteered to produce it after being appalled by the sexist responses his wife received; one studio executive had told her that “women directors are just one more problem we don’t need”. The picture attracted rapturous reviews,...

The late film-maker Joan Micklin Silver exploded the cliches of modern romances. If only others would do the same

The director Joan Micklin Silver, who died last week, was – to use the kind of cliche she abhorred – a pioneer. She was a female director at a time when studio executives were more than comfortable with being openly sexist, telling Silver: “Women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”

She made distinctly Jewish movies, as opposed to the kind of Jewish-lite movies that were – and are still – Hollywood’s more usual style. Her two greatest films, Hester Street (1975), about a Jewish immigrant couple (Steven Keats and Carol Kane) on the Lower East Side in the 1890s, and the peerless 1988 romcom Crossing Delancey, about a modern young woman (Amy Irving) who is reluctantly fixed up with a pickle seller (Peter Riegert), are to When Harry Met Sally what the Netflix...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Joan Micklin Silver on the set of Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979). Trailblazing filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver, best known for films Hester Street (1975) and Crossing Delancey (1988), has died. In an interview with Film Comment in 2017, Silver described the will she possessed as a woman filmmaker who wished to spotlight stories about female relationships and women's labor: "I didn’t want to feel like the woman director. I wanted to feel like one of many women directors."The 71st edition of the Berlin Film Festival will be replacing this year's physical event with a virtual European Film Market in March, and a "mini-festival with a series of onsite world premieres" in June.The International Film Festival Rotterdam has also announced the lineup for this year's hybrid multi-part 50th edition, to be presented between February 1-...

One of the few women film-makers working in Hollywood in the 1970 and 80s was best known for her Jewish-themed films set in New York’s Lower East Side

Joan Micklin Silver, the American film-maker best known for the Jewish-inflected romcom Crossing Delancey and the largely Yiddish-language immigrant romance Hester Street, has died aged 85. The New York Times reported that Silver’s daughter Claudia said the cause of death was vascular dementia.

Silver was both one of the few female directors operating in US cinema in the 1970s, as well as one of the few film-makers that tackled specifically Jewish material – still a rarity in a Hollywood that had traditionally been dominated by Jewish figures in production and studio roles.

Joan Micklin Silver, a film director who broke several barriers for female filmmakers, died Thursday at her Manhattan home. She was 85 and her death was attributed to vascular dementia by her daughter.

Silver’s 1975 film Hester Street, the story of an immigrant Jewish couple on the Lower East Side of Manhattan set in the 1890s, was turned down by various studios as “too ethnic.” Silver also faced discrimination as a female film director. So backed by family members, she made the movie on a low budget in 34 days. The black and white film was in Yiddish with English subtitles.

Ms. Silver’s husband, Raphael D. Silver, was a tireless supporter. A commercial real estate developer, he financed the film and even worked to get it distribution. The film went on to earn $5 million after its October 1975 debut, a massive increase from its $370,000 budget. Actress Carol Kane was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award.

Joan Micklin Silver, the trailblazing director behind “Hester Street” and “Crossing Delancey,” died on Thursday in Manhattan due to vascular dementia, her daughter Claudia Silver told the New York Times. She was 85.

Silver was outspoken about her experiences confronting sexism, misogyny and anti-Semitism within the entertainment industry.

“I came of age for film at a time when sexism was pretty strong. And although I could get work as a writer, I couldn’t get work as a director at all. And I had the experience of watching young men who had made shorts as I had, prize-winning shorts as I had, moving on to directing films and I couldn’t do it,” Silver said in a 2005 interview with the Directors Guild of America.

In 1975, she wrote and directed the indie film “Hester Street,” a low-budget production based on Abraham Cahan’s novella “Yekl” about a young Jewish couple who emigrated...

Joan Micklin Silver, who forged her own way as a female director in the 1970s and ’80s and helmed seven features including “Crossing Delancey” and “Hester Street,” died Thursday in Manhattan. She was 85.

Her daughter, Claudia Silver, told the New York Times the cause was vascular dementia.

The 1975 independent film “Hester Street” was the story of a Jewish immigrant couple in the 1890s. The low-budget black and white film, in Yiddish with English subtitles, proved a hard sell to studios, and was eventually financed by her husband, real estate developer Raphael D. Silver. It won rave reviews and earned $5 million at the box office, an impressive amount at the time. The 21-year old Carol Kane was nominated for a best actress Oscar for her role as the wife, Gitl.

The 1988 romantic comedy “Crossing Delancey” was also set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side Jewish community. Starring Amy Irving, Sylvia Miles and Peter Riegert,...

Joan Micklin Silver, the director of films like “Crossing Delancy,” “Hester Street,” and “Between the Lines” died on Thursday at the age of 85, The New York Times reports. Her daughter, Claudia Silver, told the paper that the cause of death was vascular dementia. In addition to Claudia, Silver’s survivors include two other daughters, Dina and Marisa Silver; a sister, Renee; and five grandchildren. Her long-time husband, Raphael D. Silver, died at age 83 in 2013 after a skiing accident in Park City, Utah.

An indie pioneer who first got her start writing a series of educational films for companies like Encyclopedia Britannica and the Learning Corporation of America in the 1970s, Silver was long aware of the barriers that would likely prevent her from entering into the male-dominated filmmaking milieu.

And yet the Omaha native soon made her own opportunities, including writing and directing her first film, the low-budget drama 1975 “Hester Street.

Joan Micklin Silver, the pioneering independent female director behind Hester Street and Crossing Delancey, among many other titles, who fought to bring Jewish stories to the silver screen, has died. She was 85.

Silver died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan of vascular dementia, Silver’s daughter, Claudia, told The New York Times.

Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska to Russian Jewish parents, Silver left home to attend Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Not long after her graduation in 1956, Silver married the son of a Cleveland-based Zionist rabbi, Raphael D. Silver, and the couple settled in Cleveland, where Silver taught ...

Joan Micklin Silver, the pioneering independent female director behind Hester Street and Crossing Delancey, among many other titles, who fought to bring Jewish stories to the silver screen, has died. She was 85.

Silver died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan of vascular dementia, Silver’s daughter, Claudia, told The New York Times.

Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska to Russian Jewish parents, Silver left home to attend Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Not long after her graduation in 1956, Silver married the son of a Cleveland-based Zionist rabbi, Raphael D. Silver, and the couple settled in Cleveland, where Silver taught ...

Tony Sokol Jun 12, 2019

Sylvia Miles was the original Sally on the Dick van Dyke Show, and a fixture of New York's entertainment world.

Iconic New York stage and screen scene-stealer Sylvia Miles died at age 94, according to Variety. Miles created a string of incredibly memorable, very New York characters, often with very little screen time. She was on the screen for six minutes in Midnight Cowboy (1969), about five and a half minutes in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for both. She only sold two apartments in Wall Street and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Miles had three short scenes selling Amy Irving to the pickle guy in Crossing Delancey.

Her starring role in Andy Warhol's Heat, is no less memorable, though criminally under-watched. A take on the classic Sunset Boulevard, as if any of Warhol's movies weren't, Miles played the Gloria Swanson...

Sylvia Miles, who earned two Oscar nominations – one for her memorable role as a poodle-owning Upper East Side matron who hooks up with Jon Voight’s hustler in Midnight Cowboy and one for a five and a-half minute scene with Robert Mitchum in Farewell My Lovely – has died.

Her friend, publicist Mauricio Padilha, confirmed to The New York Times that Miles died Wednesday in Manhattan. Padilha said she died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital. She was 94.

Miles was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscars for her roles in Midnight Cowboy and in 1975’s Farewell My Love She also appeared in Wall Street and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, among numerous other movies, plays and TV series.

Miles was also a long-time fixture on the New York party scene, often carousing with Andy Warhol and his Factory crowd. She was notable for her continuing appearances...

While this reviewer is always up for a tub of popcorn and a screening of 'Crossing Delancey' or 'Muriel's Wedding,' Suzy Conn's spirited Chick Flick, The Musical is more accurately aimed at connoisseurs of the genre those whose everyday conversation is packed with quotes from Nora Ephron screenplays and who are experts at determining which chardonnays go with Barbra and which with Meryl.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.News Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria.The lineup for this year's Venice Film Festival has been announced. In-competition titles include Carlos Reygadas' open-relationship romance Where Life is Born (the auteur's first feature in 5 years), Shinya Tsukamoto's much-anticipated samurai film Killing, and Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale, a Gothic revenge story set in Tasmania. The Venice Documentaries section joins an eclectic range of heavy-hitters, from Gastón Solnicki (Kékszakállú) and once-retiree Tsai Ming-liang, to Errol Morris and Frederick Wiseman, whose Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library screened in competition at the festival last year.Meanwhile, the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival has followed suit, releasing the names of the films set to premiere at its Special Presentations and Galas. Notably, this edition reunites the festival with Barry Jenkins, whose James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk will have its world premiere.

Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, her studio romantic comedy about a thirtysomething trying to escape her Lower East Side roots, is the epitome of the New York Woman series the Quad has been running all month. After a difficult experience at United Artists with her 1979 masterpiece Chilly Scenes of Winter, Silver took on her biggest production yet, an adaptation of Susan Sandler’s stage play, Crossing Delancey. The Nebraska native returned to examining Jewish identity in New York, as she did in her first film Hester Street, but instead of immigrants at the turn of the century, her focus was […]...

Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, her studio romantic comedy about a thirtysomething trying to escape her Lower East Side roots, is the epitome of the New York Woman series the Quad has been running all month. After a difficult experience at United Artists with her 1979 masterpiece Chilly Scenes of Winter, Silver took on her biggest production yet, an adaptation of Susan Sandler’s stage play, Crossing Delancey. The Nebraska native returned to examining Jewish identity in New York, as she did in her first film Hester Street, but instead of immigrants at the turn of the century, her focus was […]...

This article marks Part 8 of the 21-part Gold Derby series analyzing Meryl Streep at the Oscars. Join us as we look back at Meryl Streep’s nominations, the performances that competed with her, the results of each race and the overall rankings of the contenders.

When Meryl Streep first collaborated with filmmaker Fred Schepisi, reaction to their work was decidedly muted. “Plenty” (1985) came and went from theaters in no time, spending all of one week in the box office top 10. In 1987, both Streep and Schepisi had better luck, the former contending at the Academy Award for her turn in “Ironweed” and the latter directing the popular Steve Martin comedy “Roxanne.”

In 1988, Streep and Schepisi gave collaboration another shot. While “A Cry in the Dark,” adapted from John Bryson‘s book “Evil Angels” (1985), was hardly a crowd-pleaser, the picture and Streep’s performance garnered abundant critical acclaim. The film would mark...

In a career that began with “sex lies and videotape” in 1989, “Logan Lucky” is Steven Soderbergh’s 26th theatrical release. It will extend his record as the top-grossing American director to come out of the independent scene in its formative years — a period we’ll define as 1975 (Joan Micklin Silver’s “Hester Street”) through 1992 (Quentin Tarantino’s debut, “Reservoir Dogs”).

To be clear, Soderbergh’s an outlier; his billion-dollar box office dwarfs every other indie filmmaker. However, looking at the performance of his contemporaries who got their start in that indie film movement, you may be surprised at who’s on the list. (Note: “Outside wide release” means less than 1,000 screens. Also, the list doesn’t include directors like Sam Raimi and Abel Ferrara, who have independent roots but were not discovered via the film festival/arthouse pathway, or Alan Rudolph, another significant ’80s figure; he started in horror films in the early ’70s.

Aliya Whiteley Jan 10, 2017

Sigourney Weaver, Cher, Harrison Ford and more join our celebration of the New York romantic comedy...

New York has been celebrated so many times in movies. In the 1980s alone we had kids dancing on yellow taxis in Fame, the public library being haunted in Ghostbusters, and the ongoing visions of Scorsese and Allen, to name only a fraction of offerings. But I think that the romantic comedies that set their stories in the Big Apple during the 80s created a real and lasting charm about the city that can still be felt today.

Here's a look at three of those romantic comedies that highlighted different aspects of life in New York. When you watch them, nearly 40 years on, it's easy to feel a nostalgia for it all: the big hairdoes of the feisty heroines; the shoulder pads of the heroes; the Manhattan skyline with the World...

Chicago – Quirky Greta Gerwig is at it again (being quirky), and this time she’s looking for solutions in “Maggie’s Plan.” The made-in-New-York-City film has overtures of Woody Allen, combined with “Crossing Delancey.” Director Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) produces a valentine to all her influences and settings.

Maggie (Gerwig) is a single woman with a “plan.” She will use in-vitro fertilization in order to have a child, given that her track record with relationships is not good. Through her academic work, she meets John (Ethan Hawke), a professor whose shaky marriage to Georgette (Julianne Moore, adopting a Meryl Streep-like accent) is distracting his plans to finish his novel. John and Maggie hook up, and John leaves his marriage to be with her, and their newborn daughter. Maggie now has executed her plan, but was it the right one?

Director Rebecca Miller (center) with Greta Gerwig and Bill Hader...

“Today, the only reminder that this stretch of (Manhattan’s) SoHo was once a forest of filling stations known as Gasoline Alley is a coffee shop of the same name that sells single-origin coffee beans from Burundi.” • Sarah Maslin Nir, “With Gas Station’s Closing, A Fuel Desert Expands in Manhattan,” The New York Times, April 22, 2016

“On a block where a kebab could once be had at 2 a.m. from Bereket, the 24-hour Turkish restaurant that was forced to close in 2014, there will now be a 30,000-square-foot Equinox gym and spa with a lounge and juice bar; condo residents will be able to access the two-story gym through a private entrance. Gone too, are places like Ray’s Pizza and Empanada Mama. While such spots and the unmemorable single-story buildings that once housed them could not claim any historic significance, they were popular haunts that gave the area its character…...

Lakeshore Entertainment announced additional casting on American Pastoral with David Strathairn as “Nathan Zuckerman,” Peter Riegert as “Lou Levov,” Uzo Aduba as “Vicky” and Valorie Curry as “Rita Cohen.”

The film adaptation, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel written by Philip Roth also stars Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning, with McGregor directing.

American Pastoral follows Seymour “Swede” Levov, a legendary high school athlete, who grows up to marry a former beauty queen and inherits his father’s business. Swede’s seemingly perfect life shatters when his daughter rebels by becoming a revolutionary and committing a deadly act of political terrorism during the Vietnam War.

American Pastoral’s adapted screenplay was written by John Romano (Lincoln Lawyer) with filming scheduled for September 2015 in Pittsburgh, Pa. American Pastoral will be produced by Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi.

Strathairn won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival and earned nominations from the Academy,...

Since November 2014, I’ve been working on the first biography on director Joan Micklin Silver, known for Crossing Delancey (1988), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), Between the Lines (1977) and her breakthrough feature Hester Street (1975), starring Carol Kane in one of the earliest independent film performances to be nominated for the Academy Award. Most of Silver’s films find comic discomfort in juxtaposing the “old world” with the modern world. >> -Daniel Kramer...

Since November 2014, I’ve been working on the first biography on director Joan Micklin Silver, known for Crossing Delancey (1988), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), Between the Lines (1977) and her breakthrough feature Hester Street (1975), starring Carol Kane in one of the earliest independent film performances to be nominated for the Academy Award. Most of Silver’s films find comic discomfort in juxtaposing the “old world” with the modern world. >> -Daniel Kramer...

It's a shock to go back and watch "Midnight Cowboy" 45 years after its debut (on May 25, 1969) and see how raw and otherworldly it looks. After all, the X-rated Best Picture Oscar-winner has been so thoroughly assimilated into American pop culture that even kiddie entertainments like the Muppets have copied from it.

The tale of the unlikely friendship between naïve Texas gigolo Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and frail Bronx con man Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), "Midnight Cowboy" was initially considered so risqué that it's the only X-rated movie ever to win the Academy's top prize (though after it won, the ratings board reconsidered and gave the film an R). Still, the film featured two lead performances and a few individual scenes that were so iconic that homages (and parodies) have popped up virtually everywhere. (Most often imitated is the scene where Ratso, limping across a busy Manhattan street, is nearly...

Indie producer Raphael D. Silver died March 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah, two days after a skiing accident in Deer Valley. He was 83. The real estate developer lived in New York City and East Hampton. The production company Silverfilm, which he ran with his wife of 57 years, director Joan Micklin Silver, produced her 1975 debut film “Hester Street” and others including her 1988 “Crossing Delancey, which earned Amy Irving a Golden Globe nomination, and Boston-area film "Between the Lines," starring Jeff Goldblum and John Heard. Silver directed two micro-budget films, 1978's "On the Yard," starring Heard," and "A Walk on the Moon" in 1987. Silver pioneered the entrepreneurial model of filmmaking that continues to this day, according to Ira Deutchman, the chairman of Columbia University’s film program. Silver was a director of the Independent Film Project. Early on, Silver participated in Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and was also on the board of the Big Apple Circus.

Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers: This year's top per-theater average by far Written and directed by Harmony Korine, and starring James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine, Spring Breakers pulled in an estimated $270,000 at three locations (one in Los Angeles, two in New York City) this weekend (March 15-17) as per studio estimates found on the web site Box Office Mojo. The (very) low-budget crime comedy-drama averaged a hihgly impressive $90,000 per site. That's this year's best per-theater average so far by a wide margin. (Pictured above: James Franco and director Korine. What you see on Franco's arm is the map of Florida, in case you hadn't noticed.) Spring Breakers vs. The King's Speech, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty For comparison's sake, in late '10, the Tom Hooper / Colin Firth drama The King's Speech averaged $88,863 per theater on its first weekend in release; late last year, the...

How well do actors and directors recall the details of their own work? We decided to put Emmy- and Tony-winning actor David Hyde Pierce to the test. The Frasier actor is now starring Off Broadway in Manhattan Theatre Club’s Close Up Space (opening Dec. 19) as a harried book editor with an estranged daughter, a scared intern, a useless office manager, and only one brilliant (if loud) author. But first, he must play Ken Jennings in our career Jeopardy! challenge. The category: his 30 years in showbiz.

1. In what theater did you make your Broadway debut in 1982′s Beyond Therapy?

The Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

With a recent influx of middling romantic comedies, it's easy to forget how different the genre used to be. Now very polished and only a success if it stars 40 different actors/actresses each with three minutes of screen time, movies including "Green Card" and "Crossing Delancey" showed a different side of things. Instead of drowning audiences in star power, they offered a down-to-earth and complex female individual with an unfortunate penchant for choosing the wrong guy. It was easy to figure out who to root for, but there was something more to it. It may have been the comfortable aura…...

Christoph Waltz, Mo’Nique, Carey Mulligan: Academy 2010 Invitations The 2010 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invitees are: Actors Tobin Bell – Saw, The Firm Vera Farmiga – Up in the Air, The Departed Miguel Ferrer – Traffic, RoboCop James Gandolfini – In the Loop, Get Shorty Anna Kendrick – Up in the Air, Twilight Mo’Nique – Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire, Phat Girlz Carey Mulligan (right) – An Education, Public Enemies Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker, 28 Weeks Later Ryan Reynolds – The Proposal, X-Men Origins: Wolverine Latanya Richardson Jackson – Mother and Child, Losing Isaiah Peter Riegert – Traffic, Crossing Delancey Sam Robards – A.I. Artificial Intelligence, American Beauty Saoirse Ronan – The Lovely Bones, Atonement Zoe Saldana – Avatar, Star Trek Adam Sandler – Funny People, Punch-Drunk Love Peter Sarsgaard – An Education, Boys Don’t Cry Gabourey Sidibe – Precious: Based on the Novel [...]...

135 filmmakers and executives have been invited by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to join its ranks. Recent Oscar nominees and winners such as Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Mo'Nique, Carey Mulligan, Jeremy Renner, Gabourey Sidibe and Christoph Waltz have been invited to join; but even "Saw's" Tobin Bell and "Avatar's" Zoe Saldana received invites.

New members will be "baptized" in an invitation-only reception in September at the Academy's Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills.

Here's a complete list of the 2010 invitees:

Actors

Tobin Bell -- "Saw," "The Firm"

Vera Farmiga -- "Up in the Air," "The Departed"

Miguel Ferrer -- "Traffic," "RoboCop"

James Gandolfini -- "In the Loop," "Get Shorty"

Anna Kendrick -- "Up in the Air," "Twilight"

Mo'Nique -- "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," "Phat Girlz"

Carey Mulligan -- "An Education," "Public Enemies"

Jeremy Renner -- "The Hurt Locker,...

On Friday (June 25, 2010) the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences extended invitations to join the organization to 135 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures. Those who accept the invitation will be the only additions in 2010 to the Academy.s roster of voting members.

.The work of these individuals has been appreciated by moviegoers all around the world,. said Academy President Tom Sherak. .The Academy is proud to invite each and every one of them..

The 2010 invitees are:

Actors

Tobin Bell . .Saw,. .The Firm. Vera Farmiga . .Up in the Air,. .The Departed. Miguel Ferrer . .Traffic,. .RoboCop. James Gandolfini . .In the Loop,. .Get Shorty. Anna Kendrick . .Up in the Air,. .Twilight. Mo.Nique . .Precious: Based on the Novel .Push. by Sapphire,. .Phat Girlz. Carey Mulligan . .An Education,. .Public Enemies. Jeremy Renner . .The Hurt Locker,. .28 Weeks Later” Ryan Reynolds . .The Proposal,. .X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Latanya Richardson Jackson . .Mother and Child,...