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Michael Schlesinger, a renowned repertory executive who worked at United Artists Classics, Paramount and Sony Repertory, died Jan. 9. He was 74.

Schlesinger died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for a rare form of cancer.

Schlesinger was known for being instrumental in restoring and releasing classic films over multiple decades. While working at Sony Repertory as vice president, he oversaw the 70mm restoration of “Lawrence of Arabia.” When he was at Paramount Pictures Distribution, he worked on the 50th anniversary release of “Citizen Kane,” which included Orson Welles’ famously incomplete “It’s All True.”

Joseph McBride, an author and film historian and friend of Schlesinger’s, wrote in his tribute that “Mike was a true mensch. Every cinephile had a friend in Mike Schlesinger. He was passionate about preserving and distributing classic films. He stuck his neck out for film history while working for major studios...

US-based OneTwoThree Media has inked sales on Vardan Tozija’s M following its best film win at UK genre festival Grimmfest.

The film has sold to the US, where it is titled Beyond The Wasteland (Well Go USA), France and French-speaking territories (Condor Distribution), Germany and German-speaking territories (Meteor Film), Latin America (A2 Filmes), Cis (Treblo Media), Australia (Bounty Entertainment), Korea (Jaye Entertainment), Japan (Pflug) and the Philippines (Crystalsky Multimedia).

Set in a near-future world ravaged by a virus, M follows a young man who must journey through this shattered environment amid the remnants of humanity. It debuted at Cinedays...

Song and dance man or gangster? Few stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era could claim they were equally well known for two such diverse genres. Yet, the legendary James Cagney worked hard to be able to make such a claim.

He was born on July 17, 1899, in New York City. His family was poor, and Cagney was sickly as a child. While growing up in a rough neighborhood, he learned a variety of skills, including tap dancing, street fighting, baseball and boxing. When he was 19, his father died, and he took odd jobs to help support his mother and siblings. On a whim, he auditioned for a role of a chorus girl in a local production. Although he had never had professional training, he landed the role and learned the dances from watching the other performers – and it never bothered him to dress as a girl and perform. Despite his mother...

Billy Wilder was the six-time Oscar winner who left behind a series of classically quotable features from Hollywood’s Golden Age, crafting sharp witted and darkly cynical stories that blended comedy and pathos in equal measure. Let’s take a look back at 25 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Wilder was born to a family of Austrian Jews in 1906. After working as a journalist, he developed an interest in filmmaking and collaborated on the silent feature “People on Sunday” (1929) with fellow rookies Fred Zinnemann, Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer. With the rise of Adolph Hitler, Wilder fled to Paris, where he co-directed the feature “Mauvaise Graine” (1934). Tragically, his mother, stepfather and grandmother all died in the Holocaust.

After moving to Hollywood, Wilder enjoyed a successful career as a screenwriter, earning Oscar nominations for penning 1939’s “Ninotchka” and 1941’s “Hold Back the Dawn” and “Ball of Fire.” He...

Kris Kross Amsterdam, the renowned musical trio, has joined forces with Mexican pop singer Sofía Reyes and British rapper Tinie Tempah to deliver a scintillating summer hit, ‘How You Samba.’ This extraordinary international collaboration pays homage to the timeless classic ‘Samba de Janeiro’ by Bellini, infused with a fresh twist. ‘How You Samba’ has captured the vibrant spirit of the summer season, earning scores of international radio support and climbing various international charts, including going #1 in the Official Top 40 Chart in the Netherlands, further solidifying the songs growing popularity and success.

Following their monumental success in the Netherlands, with the most streamed track of 2022, Kris Kross Amsterdam returns with a dance record that harkens back to their earlier international hits. Remember chart-toppers like ‘Sex’ and ‘Whenever,’ which have amassed a staggering one billion streams combined. The trio has previously teamed up with notable artists such as Shaggy, Conor Maynard, and Cheat Codes.

Pamela Tiffin, star of the 1962 remake of “State Fair” who enjoyed major success in the U.S. and Italy before retiring from acting in 1974, died Friday of natural causes. She was 78.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tiffin was hospitalized at the time of her death.

Born Pamela Tiffin Wonso in Oklahoma City but raised in Chicago, she began a public career as a teen model in the late 1950s. Her film career began during a trip to Los Angeles in 1961 when, while visiting the Paramount lot, she was spotted by powerhouse producer Hal B. Wallis and given a screen test.

She very quickly saw success as a burgeoning movie star, landing as her second film role one of the leads in Billy Wilder’s 1961 cold war comedy “One, Two, Three” starring James Cagney. She followed that up by landing the lead role of Margy Frake in the 1962 remake of the...

Pamela Tiffin, the 1960s starlet who was discovered in the Paramount commissary on the way to memorable turns in such films as State Fair, The Pleasure Seekers, Come Fly With Me and Harper, has died. She was 78.

Tiffin died Wednesday of natural causes in a hospital in New York, her daughter Echo, an actress, video director and music supervisor, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Tiffin received Golden Globe nominations for her first two features, both released in 1961: as most promising newcomer — female for Summer and Smoke and as best supporting actress for her comedic performance in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three (1961).

In 1964,...

"One, two, three...!" Freestyle Digital Media has released a trailer for an indie dramedy film titled Teenage Badass, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Grant McCord. This was supposed to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this year before it was cancelled, and will now launch on VOD in the fall. Set in 2006, Teenage Badass follows a band when they score a shot to play on the local news. But as all of their dreams start to become a reality, the band's egocentric singer / songwriter threatens to make them lose everything they have worked for. The story actually follows the drummer, played by Mcabe Gregg; and the lead singer Kirk Stylo is played by Evan Ultra. Also starring Julie Ann Emery, Kevin Corrigan, James Paxton, Madelyn Deutch, Elsie Hewitt, and Dillon Lane. The tone in this trailer is all over the place, and it seems like just some...

Song and dance man or gangster? Few stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era could claim they were equally well known for two such diverse genres. Yet, the legendary James Cagney worked hard to be able to make such a claim.

He was born on July 17, 1899, in New York City. His family was poor, and Cagney was sickly as a child. While growing up in a rough neighborhood, he learned a variety of skills, including tap dancing, street fighting, baseball and boxing. When he was 19, his father died, and he took odd jobs to help support his mother and siblings. On a whim, he auditioned for a role of a chorus girl in a local production. Although he had never had professional training, he landed the role and learned the dances from watching the other performers – and it never bothered him to dress as a girl and perform. Despite his mother...

Bavaria Studios — often described as the heart of the Bavaria Film group — may be one of Europe’s largest and most state-ofthe-art film and television production facilities, but it also boasts an illustrious past that long ago cemented its place in cinematic history.

Film pioneer Peter Ostermayr founded the studios, originally known as Münchener Lichtspielkunst, in 1919. Six years later, a young Alfred Hitchcock arrived at the site in Grünwald, south of Munich, to shoot his first film, “The Pleasure Garden.”

It was renamed Bavaria Film in 1932 by new owners. A decade later, Germany’s Nazi government merged it into the Ufa-Film group along with several other companies. Productions continued at the studios in the post-war era and Bavaria was eventually reprivatized in 1956.

A number of high-profile U.S. pics shot there during that time, including Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory” with Kirk Douglas in 1957. Douglas returned the following...

Wikie the killer whale is making waves for being the first orca caught on camera mimicking human speech.

Video of the feat shows the whale, who lives at Marineland Aquarium in Antibes, France, repeating after one of her handlers with vocalizations that sound similar to the words “Hello,” “Bye Bye” and “One, Two, Three.”

According to Afp, this is a first of its kind scientific demonstration that is especially exciting to researchers because Wikie was able to produce the human sounds even though the vocal anatomy of a human is far different from that of a killer whale.

Wikie was...