Tender Is the Night with Jennifer Jones. Henry King’s 1962 movie adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel – screenplay by Ivan Moffat – starred Best Actress Oscar winner Jennifer Jones (The Song of Bernadette, 1943) in what turned out to be her final star…
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Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs, starring Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin. Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Alida Valli, Pierre Brasseur, Angela Lansbury, Conrad Veidt, Sean Connery, John Wayne, Gene Wilder, silent film stars Mary Philbin and Buster Keaton, and lots of zombies (it’s Halloween, after…
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Director Karan Johar and star Shah Rukh Khan filming My Name Is Khan Following the success of Shah Rukh Khan’s My Name Is Khan, which has grossed $31.9 million worldwide (as per Box Office Mojo; not including India) and became the top Bollywood movie ever…
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Gérard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas (top); the real “black” Alexandre Dumas (bottom). Gérard Depardieu, one of the greatest icons of French cinema, has dismissed claims that he has been miscast as mixed-race author Alexandre Dumas in Safy Nebbou’s big-budget production The Other Dumas / L’Autre…
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Movie couples: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn. In Leading Couples: The Most Unforgettable Screen Romances of the Studio Era (Chronicle Books, 2008), author Frank Miller, whose previous books include Leading Ladies, Leading Men, and Censored Hollywood,…
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Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Directed by Sam Mendes – Winslet’s husband and the director of the 1999 Oscar-winning Suburbia Hell effort American Beauty – the dysfunctional suburbia-set Revolutionary Road was adapted to the screen by Justin Haythe, using as his source…
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“Everybody Comes to Rick’s” vs. Casablanca: A Warner Bros. release, the Michael Curtiz-directed 1942 movie classic stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as war-crossed lovers; Murray Burnett’s and Joan Alison’s play remained unproduced when Warners’ Hal B. Wallis acquired the film rights. Philip G. Epstein,…
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Julie Andrews: Biography signing. Julie Andrews autobiography: Book signing in Westwood Last night, I went to the Borders bookstore in Westwood to see if I could catch a glimpse of Julie Andrews signing her recently published (partial) autobiography Home: A Memoir of My Early Years…
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The Cervantes Center of Arts & Letters will celebrate the birth centennial of Mexican actor-singer superstar Tito Guízar (1908–1999) with a screening of the 1936 cowboy musical (“charro”) Alla en el rancho grande / Over at the Big Ranch this evening at 7pm at USC’s…
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Kathleen Turner. Back in the male-centered 1980s, Bette Midler and Kathleen Turner were the only two Hollywood actresses with more than one or two major domestic box office hits. Turner had a quartet of significant commercial performers: Romancing the Stone (1984), The Jewel of the…
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Author Norman Mailer, as well known for his books as for his convoluted private life, died early today of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was 84. Born on Jan. 31, 1923, in Long Branch, New Jersey, Mailer decided…
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Examples of extravagance in the world’s film capital: The Hollywood Book of Extravagance. The Hollywood Book of Extravagance. How do you write something with that sort of title without falling into the trap of sensationalism or cheap journalism? And could you say something about the…
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I’ve already mentioned film historian Anthony Slide’s great-looking new book Now Playing, which documents the work of artists who created movie posters for urban movie palaces and neighborhood theaters alike, from the silent era to the 1950s. Tony has kindly agreed to answer a few…
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Persona with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 psychological drama Persona and Spike Jonze’s 1999 psycho-bizarro comedy Being John Malkovich will screen as a double feature on Friday, July 20, at 7 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel…
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Joan Crawford. Some have called her the greatest movie star ever, but even if that’s a sort of exaggeration – how does one measure stardom-ness? – Joan Crawford most likely is the film performer who worked most assiduously and for the longest time on creating…
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Satirical novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr, author of the bestselling anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, died Wednesday, April 11. According to his wife, photographer Jill Krementz, Vonnegut had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago. The Indianapolis-born (on Nov. 11, 1922) author, a…