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“At my signal, unleash hell.” For those of us that were alive back in the year 2000 and avid movie fans, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was an event. While historical dramas aren’t especially rare nowadays, back then, they were relatively rare. Sure, there was the occasional Braveheart or Rob Roy, but they weren’t considered a bankable genre. Yet, that all changed when director Ridley Scott, whose career was at a low ebb following the failure of almost every movie he made in the 90s decided to revive the so-called “sword and sandal” genre with a gritty, lavish redux of the historical epic.

In the fifties and sixties, these types of movies were commonplace, although in movies like The Robe or Ben-Hur, they usually told biblical tales. That changed a little with Spartacus, El Cid, and The Fall of the Roman Empire, but before long the genre was considered a...

I will describe him as I see him. He is a great, soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with a huge mouth.

Ruben Fleischer's 2018 film "Venom" features a truly strange creature at its center. The film's main character is Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) a reporter from San Francisco who has fallen on hard times. Unexpectedly, he is attacked by a living blob of alien glop from beyond the stars, and the tar-like being seeps into his skin and occupies his body. The being, calling itself Venom, begins to communicate with Eddie psychically, encouraging him to hurt others and to generally be more reckless and daring. Occasionally, the glop seeps out from Eddie's body and wraps itself around his exterior, transforming them both into a slick, goo-skinned humanoid monster with massive puffy eyes and hundreds of razor-sharp teeth. In human form, Venom loves to bite off people's heads and eat them.

Brady Corbet, the director of “The Brutalist,” is still trying to figure out the best way to deliver the print for his film to the Venice Film Festival, where it will debut next month. That’s because the epic 215-minute story of a Holocaust survivor forging a new life in America will be shown in 70mm, which means that all 26 reels of film will need to travel in four Pelican cases from Los Angeles to Italy, weighing in at approximately 300 pounds.

“We may have to buy a couple of plane tickets,” he said, shortly after Venice unveiled its lineup. “We have to figure out the best way to get it through customs in order to hand deliver it in time.”

But Corbet has been resisting the digital tide for years, having shot his two previous films, “Vox Lux” and “The Childhood of a Leader,” on celluloid. That’s become something...

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It often feels like movie marketing is an unimaginative, flood-the-zone proposition in our age of pre-sold, IP-driven blockbusters. But as we've recently been reminded via the carefully crafted ad campaigns for smaller genre efforts like "MaXXXine" and "Longlegs", marketing departments are still a vital part of the business. How you sell each movie has certainly changed with the evolution of the media landscape, but even the biggest films will always need some kind of push. After all, audiences aren't likely to flock to a movie that has zero presence in the marketplace.

There really isn't an exception to this rule. The closest you're liable to find might be the August 5, 1953 release of Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity." Based on James Jones' critically acclaimed novel set at the U.S. Army's Schofield Barracks in Hawaii just prior to the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor,...

At the Academy Awards in 1929, Charles Reisner's "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" was nominated for Best Picture. "Revue" is a relative obscurity to modern audiences — even less well-known than that year's Best Picture winner "The Broadway Melody" — and it may even baffle certain viewers. True to its title, "The Hollywood Revue" is a collection of musical numbers, comedic sketches, and dramatic scenes, all played out "live" on a theater stage. A curtain closes and opens in between each number, and two emcees — Jack Benny and Conrad Nagel — introduce each vignette.

Such filmed stage performances may look a little odd to the modern eye, but they were common throughout the '20s and '30s. Few audiences had access to high-end live theater, and Hollywood was happy to step in to provide. Studios would distribute such revues as, essentially, a Broadway substitute, allowing distant viewers to experience the theater events...

It’s been inferred since last year that Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming Jesus film would take an aslant approach to the greatest story ever told. Put simply and enigmatically by the man himself: “I don’t know what it’s going to be, exactly. I don’t know what you’d call it. It wouldn’t be a straight narrative. But there would be staged scenes. And I’d be in it.”

After furthers confirmations and intimations of what the film, an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s A Life of Jesus, will constitute, Father Antonio Spadaro––with whom Scorsese conversed for a series of interviews that form the recently published Italian book Dialoghi sulla fede (Dialogues on Faith)––has given Variety a close view of its intentions. Per Scorsese’s hopes to remove negative onuses from religion, Spadaro said the feature seeks “to recover this original experience that he had of the fully embodied,...

The Book of Clarence, Jeymes Samuel’s follow-up to all-Black Western The Harder They Fall, is, without doubt, the funkiest biblical epic ever put on screen. The film, which opened across the U.S. on Friday, Jan. 12 — nicely nestled between Christmas and Easter — is a combination of comedy, drama and satire, at turns sacred and profane, a mash-up of Monty Python’s Life of Brian with sword-and-sandal epics of another era, from The Ten Commandments to The Robe.

Lakeith Stanfield leads an A-list cast — which includes James McAvoy, David Oyelowo, Anna Diop, Benedict Cumberbatch and Alfre Woodard — as the titular Clarence, a street hustler and religious skeptic in early A.D. Jerusalem who spots Jesus Christ preaching to the masses and thinks imitating a Messiah might be a way to make some easy cash. This is not your father’s biblical epic. Clarence likes to get high. A lot. There...

It’s not every day that a filmmaker will rise up during an interview and recite Old Testament tales and sing out their favorite hymn. Well, hallelujah, brother Jeymes Samuel for spreading the gospel’s good news.

The director’s spectacular Jesus in the hood movie, The Book of Clarence, starring a mighty fine Lakeith Stanfield playing a charlatan wannabe Messiah, shakes up the toga and peepy toe genre.

Samuel’s movie has its world premiere Wednesday at the BFI London Film Festival. The Legendary Pictures production is released through Tristar with congregations taking their pews from January 12, 2024.

The movie’s thrilling prologue kicks off with a rip-roaring, wheel-screeching chariot race with Mary Magdalene thrashing the lads.

The moment was of course inspired by the iconic chariot scene between Charlton Heston’s Judah Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd’s Messala in William Wyler...

f it was the summer of the megawatt blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” September has turned into a month of sequelitis with “The Nun 2,” “Equalizer 3” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.” Even Kenneth Branagh’s “A Hunting in Venice,” is the third installment in the actor/director’s Hercule Poirot mystery series. It’s all a bit of a snooze. That wasn’t the case 70 years ago this month.

There were some oddball films that were released September, 1953 including “Cat-Women of the Moon” with Sonny Tufts and Marie Windsor and “The Sins of Jezebel” starring Paulette Goddard. But 70 years ago, audiences were introduced to a new wide-screen format and young actress who would become one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and ‘60s and Clark Gable returning to a role he originated in 1932.

Twentieth Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck unveiled the studio’s new widescreen process Cinemascope...

Leonardo DiCaprio has reaped an even dozen Oscar nominations for acting. His first bid was back in 1994 in Best Supporting Actor for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” After a gap of more than a decade (including being snubbed for “Titanic), he contended for Best Actor in 2005 for “The Aviator” and in 2007 for “Blood Diamond.” He then earned two nominations for Martin Scorsese‘s “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2014 as both producer and star. Two years later, he won Best Actor for “The Revenant.” Most recently he competed in lead in 2020 for Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Those five Best Actor nominations match the tallies of the likes of Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, and James Stewart.

DiCaprio reunites with Scorsese this year for the historical epic “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The film tells the true story of the Osage reservation in...

Betta St. John, who portrayed the lovely island girl Liat in the original Broadway production of South Pacific and starred as a princess alongside Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the MGM romantic comedy Dream Wife, has died. She was 93.

St. John died June 23 of natural causes at an assisted living facility in Brighton, England, her son, TV producer Roger Grant, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The California native played one of the survivors of an airline crash, who is chased by a crocodile in Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957) — the first Tarzan film in 15 years and the first one in color — and then returned for Tarzan the Magnificent (1960). Both films starred Gordon Scott as the King of the Jungle.

St. John also starred with Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth and Robert Taylor in All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953); with Victor Mature, Piper Laurie and Vincent Price in the 3-D adventure Dangerous...

Richard Burton was an Old Hollywood legend, and though he was nominated for many Oscars, he never actually won one. Burton was already an accomplished dramatist from his time in the theater when he made his feature film debut in 1949, and it was clear from the start that he had star power. Only three years after his big screen debut, Burton was nominated for his first Academy Award, and his illustrious career would see him rake in several Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards. Even in the theater, Burton was a star player, and he was rewarded with a Tony Award among other theatrical accolades.

Despite a career that put him at the top of Hollywood's upper echelon, the Academy Award eluded him over his five decades in the business. Though Burton wasn't the only Hollywood legend to never win an Oscar, his impressive body of work was shockingly unrecognized by the Academy,...

Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film "Dial M for Murder" is one of the filmmakers' delightfully nasty little thrillers wherein the audience is asked to sympathize — and ultimately kind of care for -- a horrendous villain. Ray Milland plays Tony, a retired tennis player who has learned that his wife Margot (Grace Kelly) has been having an affair with an American named Mark (Robert Cummings). Rather than merely divorce, Tony elects to have Margot murdered. He colludes with an old criminal buddy named Charles (Anthony Dawson) to commit the murder for him. Charles, being blackmailed, agrees.

What follows is a hotbox procedural tracing Tony's plan for the murder, the elements that go right, and the elements that go horribly, horribly wrong. Most notably: When Charles attacks Margot, she fights back and kills him with a pair of scissors. Oops.

"Dial M for Murder" was filmed in 3D, and it's difficult to understand why.

In the three months since “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount) opened, its box office performance domestic (658 million) and foreign (674 million) deserved nearly all the hype. And when it reaches 660 million domestic, “Maverick” will — in unadjusted numbers — become the biggest-grossing Paramount release in its history, replacing the 1997 release of “Titanic.”

This is where the hype train comes to a halt. If you believe “Maverick” has grossed more than “Titanic,” you could also buy a home in Los Angeles today for 180,000 — the average home price in 1997. Inflation changes things and “Titanic” earned its spot when the average ticket price was 4.59 — half of the current average, last calculated in 2019 as 9.17.

“Top Gun: Maverick” should end its domestic run with 700 million-725 million domestic gross. Based on adjusted figures, that would land it somewhere between #4 and 7 among all Paramount releases, with “Titanic,” “The Ten Commandments,” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” safely ahead; “The Godfather,” “Forrest Gump,...

From “The King of Kings” to “The Northman,” hundreds of films have premiered within the storied walls of the Tcl Chinese Theatre, which celebrates its 95th anniversary May 18.

Indeed, as early as 1933, the famed movie house appeared in other media as a boilerplate for how a premiere should, and often does, look like. Since then, the theater played itself in dozens of television shows and movies, some of which went on to debut on its iconic screen. The forecourt holds the signatures and imprints of concrete immortalization.

The former Grauman’s Chinese Theatre will fete its 95 years by launching a full year of programming, while also navigating premieres for first-run films and special events including the annual TCM Film Festival. It repertory programming was scheduled both in the big house and at its sister location, the Tcl Chinese 6.

“We’re going to be having screenings of seminal movies that have...

No two ways about it: April’s a great month for the Criterion Channel, which (among other things; more in a second) adds two recent favorites. We’re thrilled at the SVOD premiere of Hamaguchi’s entrancing Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, our #3 of 2021, and Bruno Dumont’s lacerating France, featuring Léa Seydoux’s finest performance yet.

Ethan Hawke’s Adventures in Moviegoing runs the gamut from Eagle Pennell’s Last Night at the Alamo to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, while a 14-film John Ford retro (mostly) skips westerns altogether. And no notes on the Delphine Seyrig retro—multiple by Akerman, Ulrike Ottinger, Duras, a smattering of Buñuel, and Seyrig’s own film Be Pretty and Shut Up! That of all things might be the crown jewl.

See the full list of April titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

—

3 Bad Men, John Ford, 1926

Aar paar, Guru Dutt,...

One of the gentle touches of “Pretend It’s a City” is that there are usually other people in the room where Fran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese are chatting. Not just the crew members who worked on the Netflix doc series to record the conversation between two of New York City’s highest profile ambassadors, but — as shown when the camera pulls back at the beginning and end of a few episodes — a handful of other patrons standing by the bar or setting up shots at a nearby pool table.

That’s the “slice of New York life” element of “Pretend It’s a City” that gives this seven-episode season its best moments. Stitching together clips from public talks and b-roll of Lebowitz making her way across the streets of Manhattan, a majority of the series is centered in talks from opposite ends of a table. It’s the most elegant form of old friend catch-up,...

Call them "sword and sandal" films or whatever name you choose, gladiator movies have been a popular genre throughout the decades, especially in the 50s and 60s. Actors from Kirk Douglas and Victor Mature to Russell Crowe have all been successful in films such as Spartacus, The Robe, and Gladiator, respectively. In its day, the genre was as popular as the Western.

Related: 5 Classic Sword-And-Sandal Movies (& 5 That Are Underrated)

Though there aren't very many made these days, every decade or so, a filmmaker will throw their hat into the arena, giving modern audiences a taste of the kind of battle-tinged epics that used to thrill audiences, young and old.

Updated on May 28th, 2021 by Kristen Palamara: Gladiator movies were some of the most popular movies in the genre and have been popular for decades from the 1914 movie Cabiria to the 1963 Jason and the Argonauts and the more modern 2011 The Eagle.

9 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

click to enlarge

1936: Henry Fonda (then 31 years old and a fresh new face at the movies) marries his second wife, socialite Francis Ford Seymour (then 28). Their marriage will be unhappy and end tragically in 1950 (with her suicide), but their union will produce one of the great inventions of the 20th century: Jane Fonda. 

1953: Biblical epic The Robe starring Richard Burton and Jean Simmons, world premieres in New York. It's the first movie shot in CinemaScope, "the new dimensional photographic marvel you can see without glasses"...

Glenn Close just set a new Oscar record, and not in a good way. With Close’s loss at the 91st Academy Awards for “The Wife,” she now has seven nominations and no wins, more than any other actress in film history. Amy Adams, Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter all have six Oscar misfires, with Adams joining that list during Sunday’s ceremony. As for male actors with the most at-bats without a home run, Close now ties Richard Burton at seven while Peter O’Toole is still in the record books at eight. Click through our photo gallery above for a closer look at Close’s seven Oscar nominations.

See 2019 Oscars: Full list of winners (and losers) at the 91st Academy Awards [Updating Live]

For her role as Joan Castleman, the repressed wife of a Nobel Prize-winning author (Jonathan Pryce), Close earned her fourth bid for Best Actress. Her co-nominees this...

Fiery dame Susan Hayward carries this far-flung ‘women’s epic’ to delirious romantic extremes, as her Irish heroine defies nature and exploits admirers to claim the hunky Dutchman of her dreams. Using apartheid-ridden South Africa as a background for a cheerful white conquest wasn’t as touchy an idea in 1955 as it is now, but it should have been. Just the same, Henry King’s film is an impressive production from the early years of CinemaScope.

Untamed

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 111 min. / Street Date January 22, 2019 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Richard Egan, John Justin, Agnes Moorehead, Rita Moreno, Hope Emerson, Brad Dexter, Henry O’Neill, Eleanor Audley, Kevin Corcoran, Philip Van Zandt.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Barbara McLean

Original Music: Franz Waxman

Visual Effects: Ray Kellogg, Matthew Yuricich

Written by Talbot Jennings, Frank Fenton, Michael Blankfort, William A. Bacher from a novel by Helga Moray.

There remains one group we’ve yet to hear from when it comes to the Best Films of 2018: The directors who made them. IndieWire has reached out to a number of our favorite filmmakers to share with us their lists and thoughts on the best of the year.

As is advisable with creative people, we gave the directors a great deal of freedom in how they reflected on the year in moving images. What follows is everything ranging from traditional Top 10 lists to a director like Lynne Ramsay writing passionately about her favorite film of the year, with lists that span TV, theater, the Kavanaugh hearings, WWE, and much more.

52 directors, so many of whom were behind our favorite films of the year – films like “Hereditary,” “Leave No Trace,” “First Reformed,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” “Eighth Grade,” “Destroyer,” “Mid90s,” “Bisbee ’17,” “Madeline’s Madeline,” “Black Mother,” “The Tale,...

Stars: Ferdy Mayne, Leon Askin, Jeffrey Combs, Luca Bercovici, Nita Talbot, Leon Askin, Jennifer Starrett, Barbara Pilavin, Alan Stock | Written and Directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane

Fandom takes on a whole new meaning when a group of film loving college students decide to pay the ultimate respects to their favourite horror icon, the recently deceased Conrad Radzoff (Ferdy Mayne). How do they do this? Hold a memorial? Have a Radzoff horror marathon? Nope, they decide to steal his freshly buried body and give hime the ultimate farewell house party back in their mansion! Like most cases however, this is one of those instances were one of your heroes is actually an arsehole (Cough-Tom Savini-Cough!). You see, Radzoff had an often fatal temper. Not even a cameo from Leon Askin (The Robe) is safe! To make matters infinitely worse for our group of corpse stealing cinephiles, Mayne decides to...

The book was raw & dirty, and did you read what that girl did with that guy on page 167? Racking up a stack of Oscar nominations, Peyton Place became one of the big hits of its year, launched the careers of several young actors, and proved that Hollywood could pasteurize most any so-called un-filmable book. Lana Turner is the nominal star but the leading actress is Diane Varsi, in her film debut.

Peyton Place

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 157 min. / Street Date March 14, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Arthur Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Lee Philips, Terry Moore, Russ Tamblyn, Betty Field, David Nelson, Leon Ames, Mildred Dunnock.

Cinematography William Mellor

Art Direction Jack Martin Smith, Lyle R. Wheeler

Film Editor David Bretherton

Original Music Franz Waxman

Written by John Michael Hayes from the book by Grace Metalious

Produced by Jerry Wald

Directed by Mark Robson

What’s this,...

Jimmy Stewart holding the wrong number of fingers up for our exercise!We're so close to the big show. Voting ends Today. And then it's all over but the big night (and recapping and contemplating celebratory madness). For today's trivia item with the number 5, a random sampling of men... stepping away from the ladies for a minute. (gasp)

Five time male winners

John Barry (composer, Dances with Wolves, Out of Africa, Born Free, etc)

Johnny Green (composer on lots of musicals)

Fred Hynes (sound on lots of musicals)

Dennis Murren (visual fx: Terminator 2, Innerspace, The Abyss, etc)

Edward Selzer (animated short films: Speedy Gonzalez, Sylvester & Tweety shorts, etc)

Lyle Wheeler (art direction: The King and I, The Robe, The Diary of Anne Frank, etc)

John Williams (composer: Star Wars, Schindler's List, etc)

Francis Ford Coppola (writer/director/producer: The Godfather, etc)

Actoriffic-ness after the jump.

Not funny enough, or too hip for the house? I found the Coen Bros.' send-up of old-fashioned movie madness good fun, with some great new actors. If you like droll comedy combined with spot-on recreations of old movie genres, this show can't lose. And there has to be somebody out there who wants to see George Clooney in a skirt. Hail, Caesar! Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Universal Pictures Home Entertainment 2016 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date June 7, 2016 / 34.98 Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Channing Tatum, Veronica Osorio, Heather Goldenhersh, Max Baker, Clancy Brown, Fisher Stevens, Patick Fischler, Robert Picardo, Christopher Lambert, Robert Trebor, Michael Gambon (voice), Dolph Lundgren. Cinematography Roger Deakins Film Editors Ethan and Joel Coen Original Music Carter Burwell Produced by Tim Bevan, Ethan and Joel Coen, Eric Fellner Written and Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen...

Tired of stupid sword 'n' sandal costume pictures? Robert Rossen's all-star bio-epic of the charter founder of the Masons is a superior analysis of political ambition and the ruthless application of power. Yeah, he's wearing a blond wig, but Richard Burton captures the force of Alexander without camping up Asia Minor. Alexander the Great Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 136 min. / Ship Date March 15, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Richard Burton, Fredric March, Claire Bloom, Danielle Darrieux, Barry Jones, Harry Andrews, Stanley Baker, Niall MacGinnis, Peter Cushing. Cinematography Robert Krasker Art Direction Andrej Andrejew Film Editor Ralph Kemplen Original Music Mario Nascimbene Produced by Gordon Griffith, Robert Rossen Written and Directed by Robert Rossen

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Critical opinions aren't supposed to flip-flop with every screening of a film, but I have to admit that my appreciation of Robert Rossen's 1956 epic Alexander the Great...

Cat Grant: One time at a party, Paul McCartney swore to me that he and Yoko were the closest of friends. He was more convincing.

Cat Grant not accepting Kara Danvers’ statement that she (Kara) is not Supergirl

Rey: There are stories about what happened.

Han Solo: It’s true. All of it. The Dark Side. The Jedi. They’re real.

Listen Up! Spoilers Abound, So If You Don’t Want To Know, Don’t Read This Column.

A few weeks ago, four days before Christmas to be exact, I said that I loved Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and had problems with Supergirl. While I still love Episode VI of a saga that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there are two things that bother me. Silly things, to be sure, but just enough to pick at my enjoyment a teensy bit:...

Iran could become a major market for the Us studios, surpassing even the UAE, if sanctions are lifted as planned under a long-negotiated nuclear deal between the country and major world powers, according to 20th Century Fox executive vice president, Emea, Paul Higginson.

“Let’s see what actually happens and the timeline but as far as I’m concerned Iran is a very important potential market of 80 million people.As soon as we’re able to engage with the market, we will,” Higginson told Screen.

“Will they let us in? That’s for them to decide what they want to do. We’re available. We want to be involved in that market and we want to communicate. Communication improves understanding and we want to do business there. I think it would be important for the development of film, both inside and outside of Iran, if we were engaged there. I don’t see any downside.”

Following a landmark...

Stars: Ferdy Mayne, Leon Askin, Jeffrey Combs, Luca Bercovici, Nita Talbot, Leon Askin, Jennifer Starrett, Barbara Pilavin, Alan Stock | Written and Directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane

“There was Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, and Conrad Ragzoff! They were all stars who lived and died. But only one returned…”

Fandom takes on a whole new meaning when a group of film loving college students decide to pay the ultimate respects to their favourite horror icon, the recently deceased Conrad Radzoff (Ferdy Mayne). How do they do this? Hold a memorial? Have a Radzoff horror marathon? Nope, they decide to steal his freshly buried body and give hime the ultimate farewell house party back in their mansion! Like most cases however, this is one of those instances were one of your heroes is actually an arsehole (Cough-Tom Savini-Cough!). You see, Radzoff had an often fatal temper. Not even a...

“Wealthy men are never old!”

How To Marry A Millionaire screens Saturday morning, November 21st, at 10:30am at The Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Ave, St. Louis). This is a fundraiser for The Cottey College Scholarship Fund and admission is $10.

How To Marry A Millionaire is a 1953 romantic comedy based on the plays The Greeks Had a Word for It by Zoe Akins and Loco by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert. The film stars Marilyn Monroe, St. Louis’ own Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall as three gold diggers along with William Powell, David Wayne, Rory Calhoun, Cameron Mitchell, Alex D’Arcy, and Fred Clark.It was directed by Jean Negulesco and produced and written by Nunnally Johnson.

In order to meet wealthy husbands, three beautiful women take an apartment in one of Manhattan’s most affluent areas, on the corner of East 55th St. and Sutton Place. Naive moocher Betty Grable...

Debbie Reynolds ca. early 1950s. Debbie Reynolds movies: Oscar nominee for 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown,' sweetness and light in phony 'The Singing Nun' Debbie Reynolds is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 23, '15. An MGM contract player from 1950 to 1959, Reynolds' movies can be seen just about every week on TCM. The only premiere on Debbie Reynolds Day is Jerry Paris' lively marital comedy How Sweet It Is (1968), costarring James Garner. This evening, TCM is showing Divorce American Style, The Catered Affair, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and The Singing Nun. 'Divorce American Style,' 'The Catered Affair' Directed by the recently deceased Bud Yorkin, Divorce American Style (1967) is notable for its cast – Reynolds, Dick Van Dyke, Jean Simmons, Jason Robards, Van Johnson, Lee Grant – and for the fact that it earned Norman Lear (screenplay) and Robert Kaufman (story) a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination.

By Doug Oswald

“Fraulein” begins with a close-up shot of the spires of a Gothic cathedral, organ music playing on the soundtrack and air-raid sirens blaring as a statement appears on screen: “Cologne on the Rhine during the last weeks of World War II.” The scene moves down to street level as German civilians and soldiers run for bomb shelters as destruction rains down on them. An American prisoner of war makes his escape during the chaos and he stumbles upon the home of a college professor and his daughter.

Mel Ferrer plays the American Pow, Captain Foster MacLain. He meets the Fraulein of the movie, Erika Angermann, played by Dana Wynter. She helps him evade capture during a search of her father’s home. We learn about a fiancé she has not seen in over two years. She learns later from a letter that he has been wounded and is in a hospital.

‘Gone with the Wind’ actress Mary Anderson dead at 96; also featured in Alfred Hitchcock thriller ‘Lifeboat’ Mary Anderson, an actress featured in both Gone with the Wind and Alfred Hitchcock’s adventure thriller Lifeboat, died following a series of small strokes on Sunday, April 6, 2014, while under hospice care in Toluca Lake/Burbank, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Anderson, the widow of multiple Oscar-winning cinematographer Leon Shamroy, had turned 96 on April 3. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1918, Mary Anderson was reportedly discovered by director George Cukor, at the time looking for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s film version of Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller Gone with the Wind. Instead of Scarlett, eventually played by Vivien Leigh, Anderson was cast in the small role of Maybelle Merriwether — most of which reportedly ended up on the cutting-room floor. Cukor was later fired from the project; his replacement, Victor Fleming,...

David Crow Apr 20, 2019

Several years ago, it appeared as though the Biblical Epic had risen in Hollywood. After all, it once reigned over all...

At this point, the genesis of the Hollywood Noah’s Ark adaptation is almost as famous as the biblical flood narrative itself: a legendary director takes on one of the Bible’s most famous Old Testament stories from Genesis, one with an angry God, an angrier flood, and a lot of requisite special effects that are essential to pull off the proper disaster. The movie is big, the movie is controversial, and the movie costs so much that the studio is demanding multiple edits of the picture for the most effective commercial appeal.

I’m of course referring to Noah’s Ark, the 1928 early talkie directed by Michael Curtiz, the man who would go on to make such Hollywood masterpieces as The Adventures of Robin Hood...

Today's Useless But Fun Oscar Trivia Numbers Chain!

• 17 years ago The English Patient (1996) won 9 Oscars, driving Julia Louis-Dreyfus Elaine to the brink of madness "quit telling your stupid story about the desert and just die already. die!!!" and making it one of the seven most-Oscared films of all time. (Only Titanic and Return of the King have since beat it). Can Gravity, which has 10 nominations but will definitely lose Best Actress, tie The Patient's record -- it would have to win All of its other nominations -- or do you foresee a "spread the wealth" year?

• Sal Mineo is the only 17 year-old of either gender ever nominated for an Oscar. That nomination came for his role as "Plato" in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Mineo also holds the record of youngest (male) actor to two nominations as he was nominated for Exodus (1960) by the age of 22. He would have turned 75 this...

Michael Ansara, the actor best known for playing Kang, a Klingon warrior on three versions of Star Trek, died Wednesday at the age of 91 at his home in Calabasas, CA. The Hollywood Reporter first reported the news.

Ansara’s former publicist and longtime friend Michael B. Druxman confirmed the news. Druxman told EW: “Michael and I have been friends since 1968. He was my best friend. He had a long illness. He died at home. He was a great guy, and a wonderful actor.” He added: “I really miss him.”

Born to American parents in Syria, Ansara had an extensive career in television and movies,...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 12, 2013

Price: DVD $19.99

Studio: Paramount

Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr are Samson and Delilah.

Producer/director Cecil B. DeMille’s (The Ten Commandments) 1949 classic epic film Samson and Delilah finally makes it’s official DVD debut following years of, er, unofficial editions and poorly transferred imports.

Starring Victor Mature (The Robe) and Hedy Lamarr (My Favorite Spy) in the title roles, Samson and Delilah tells the story of the Bible’s fabled strongman and the woman who seduces and betrays him as it brings to life Samson’s incredible feats, including his battle with a lion, his single-handed assault on a thousand Philistine soldiers, and the spectacular climax in which he pulls down a pagan temple. Still, that Delilah is no slouch either…

Also starring George Sanders (All About Eve) and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate), the lavish production earned five Academy Award nominations and won...

For moviegoers growing up in the last 20-30 years, big is the new normal. I’m talking about those big-budget, over-produced, effects/action-packed extravaganzas that are as expected and routine an arrival as a commuter bus, and never more so than during the summer months. Come a rise in temperatures, there’s an almost ceaseless parade of these megabuck behemoths through multiplexes starting in May and continuing until the kids go back to school, one rolling out almost every week.

Consider these May-August releases and their eye-popping price tags:

5/4: Marvel’s The Avengers — $220 million

5/11: Dark Shadows — $150 million

5/18: Battleship — $209 million

5/25: Men in Black 3 — $250 million

6/8: Prometheus — $120-130 million

7/3: The Amazing Spider-Man — $220 million

7/20: The Dark Knight Rises — $250 million

7/31: Total Recall — $200 million

8/5: The Expendables 2 — $100 million

For those of you who haven’t been keeping count, that’s a little over $1.7 billion in productions...

Grant Bowler / Richard Burton: Liz & Dick Grant Bowler as Richard Burton in Lifetime’s fall movie Liz & Dick looks less convincing than Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor. Burton met Taylor at the time the two were making Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. A troubled production, Cleopatra was initially to have starred Taylor, Peter Finch, and Stephen Boyd, under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. Mamoulian left, Taylor fell seriously ill, nearly died, and had to have a tracheotomy performed. The end result was a Best Actress Academy Award for her troubles (and for Butterfield 8) and brand new leading men for Cleopatra: Richard Burton as Marc Antony and Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar. By then, Cleopatra also had a new director: two-time Best Director Oscar winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz. A respected stage and screen actor in the ’60s, Richard Burton was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Best Supporting Actor...

The art of the glass shot or matte painting is one which originated very much in the early ‘teens’ of the silent era. Pioneer film maker, director, cameraman and visual effects inventor Norman Dawn is generally acknowledged as the father of the painted matte composite, with other visionary film makers such as Ferdinand Pinney Earle, Walter Hall and Walter Percy Day being heralded as making vast contributions to the trick process in the early 1920’s.

Boiled down, the matte process is one whereby a limited film set may be extended to whatever, or wherever the director’s imagination dictates with the employment of a matte artist. In it’s most pure form, the artist would set up a large plate of clear glass in front of the motion picture camera upon which he would carefully paint in new scenery an ornate period ceiling, snow capped mountains, a Gothic castle or even an alien world.

I come to praise Sword & Sandal movies -- not to bury them. But with Wrath of the Titans and the Sword & Sandal/sci-fi mash-up John Carter not exactly setting the world on fire -- along with recent disappointments like Immortals and Conan -- it's getting more difficult by the day to believe that the Sword & Sandal movie can survive the recent fumbling of this otherwise great genre. And that's a shame, because the Sword & Sandal movie -- known for its gladiatorial games, pagan orgies, depraved emperors, and the occasional snarling cyclops -- may represent the most colorful and enduring movie genre of all time. So for the uninitiated, what exactly is a Sword & Sandal movie? Like its cousin the Biblical epic, a Sword & Sandal movie -- or 'peplum,' named after a type of ancient Greek garment -- is typically set in the ancient Mediterranean world, and dramatizes the fight for freedom.

Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi in Oscar nominee (but not DGA nominee) David Lean's Summertime DGA Awards vs. Academy Awards 1948-1952: Odd Men Out George Cukor, John Huston, Vincente Minnelli 1953 DGA (12) Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, Above and Beyond Walter Lang, Call Me Madam Daniel Mann, Come Back, Little Sheba Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Julius Caesar Henry Koster, The Robe Jean Negulesco, Titanic George Sidney, Young Bess DGA/AMPAS George Stevens, Shane Charles Walters, Lili Billy Wilder, Stalag 17 William Wyler, Roman Holiday Fred Zinnemann, From Here to Eternity   1954 DGA (16) Edward Dmytryk, The Caine Mutiny Alfred Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder Robert Wise, Executive Suite Anthony Mann, The Glenn Miller Story Samuel Fuller, Hell and High Water Henry King, King of Khyber Rifles Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, Knock on Wood Don Siegel, Riot in Cell Block 11 Stanley Donen, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers George Cukor, A Star Is Born Jean Negulesco,...

Martita Hunt, Jean Simmons in David Lean's Great Expectations Jean Simmons is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of June. Though never a major box-office draw, Simmons either starred or was featured in a number of the most important movies of the '40s, '50s, and '60s. Among those are Laurence Olivier's Best Picture Oscar winner Hamlet (1948), Henry Koster's CinemaScope blockbuster The Robe (1953), Stanley Kubrick's historical drama Spartacus (1960), and Richard Brooks' film adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry (1960). On Tuesday, June 7, TCM will be showing five of Simmons' early British films: David Lean's film version of Charles Dickens' Great [...]...

British actress Jean Simmons earned an Oscar nomination early in her career for her portrayal of Ophelia in Laurence Olivier’s 1948 production of Hamlet. Years later she starred as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the 1991 remake of the Gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows.

Simmons was born in Crouch Hill, London, England, on January 31, 1929. She began studying dance in the early 1940s, and made her film debut in 1944. She made an impression as Estrella, the spoiled young lady, in David Lean’s 1946 film adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectation, and her performance in Hamlet (1948) established her as a star.

Simmons continued her career as the passionate slave girl Kanchi in 1947’s Black Narcissus, and was Caroline Ruthyn in the 1947 Gothic horror Uncle Silas (aka The Inheritance). She starred in the 1952 screen adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion with Alan Young and Victor Mature, and co-starred with Richard Burton...

The late actor was celebrated for her beauty and talent, but she had a streak of mischief that made her unforgettable

Jean Simmons was only 12 years older than me, and as I grew up I cut out a lot of pictures of her from magazines like Picturegoer and the Sunday papers. Can you credit that in those days – the late 40s and the early 50s – there were Sunday papers in Britain (such as the Pictorial, the Graphic, the Dispatch) that ran pictures of pretty movie stars in their underwear or swimsuits?

Well, Jean was pretty; I believe the captions also added that she was "saucy" (and I supposed they knew). The big picture for Jean's fans, who had scissors and a scrapbook ready, was The Blue Lagoon. That was 1949, and it had Jean and Donald Houston washed up on a desert island, doing their best for clothes and falling in love.

Cinema lost another lovely and classic face over the weekend, as actress Jean Simmons passed away, according to the New York Times. She was 80.

Simmons' career often reads like a lesson in what might have been. She rose to early success in films such as David Lean's Great Expectations and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (which earned her an Oscar nomination) before running afoul of her contract holder, Howard Hughes. After rejecting his advances, he attempted to ruin her career and cost her the lead in Roman Holiday. Simmons held out, and managed success with roles in Young Bess, Footsteps in the Fog, Guys and Dolls, and The Actress.

Due to financial strain, she quietly accepted any role offered, and Simmons became known as the quiet lady who supported great men in films like The Robe, The Egyptian, Desiree, Elmer Gantry, and Spartacus. She always rose above the material, and...

British-born film star known for her roles in Great Expectations and Spartacus

Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, had a bounteous moment, early in her career, when she seemed the likely casting for every exotic or magical female role. It passed, as she got out of her teens, but then for the best part of 15 years, in Britain and America, she was a valued actress whose generally proper, if not patrician, manner had an intriguing way of conflicting with her large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief – or more than her movies had in their scripts. Even in the age of Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor, she was an authentic beauty. And there were always hints that the lady might be very sexy. But nothing worked out smoothly, and it is somehow typical of Simmons that her most astonishing...

Philip French pays tribute to the Rank Organisation starlet who went on to become one of Hollywood's most luminous actresses

Jean Simmons, who has died at the age of 80 of lung cancer in Santa Monica, California, was among the finest, most beautiful British movie actresses of the postwar years. She was one of only two from that great 1940s flourishing of our native industry under J Arthur Rank to become a major star in Hollywood; the other was Deborah Kerr, with whom she twice appeared.

Born in 1929, the daughter of a gym teacher who had represented Britain in the 1912 Olympics, she grew up in Crickle­wood, north London, of which she once disloyally remarked: "No Cricklewood girl would ever admit to being from there." She got a deal of work as a child actress, without becoming a child star (her most memorable early appearance is singing at a forces concert...

British Actress Jean Simmons passed away on Friday evening at her home in Santa Monica, CA from lung cancer. She was 80 (Jan. 31, 1929- Jan. 22, 2010). While her definitive acting roles are in Hamlet (Ophelia), Elmer Gantry (Sister Sharon Falconer), and Guys And Dolls (Sister Sarah Brown), my personal favorites were her parts in Hollywood’s Swords and Sandals epics of old.

As Varinia in Spartacus:

and Diana in The Robe:

Forever the working actress, Miss Simmons provided the voices in such animated films as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Council Member), Hayao Miyazakis’ Howl’S Moving Castle (Grandma Sophie), and 2005’s Thru The Moebius Strip (Shepway). She saw two Academy Award nominations in Lead and Supporting, awarded 2 Golden Globes, and won an Emmy for her portrayal of stoic matriarch Fiona ‘Fee’ Cleary, in The Thorn Birds. In 2003, Miss Simmons received the OBE (Order of the British Empire) for her services to drama.