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An icon of British film beloved by all who worked with her, Dame Maggie Smith sadly passed away last month. For generations, she was a force to be reckoned with playing an incredible array of roles over her long career on stage and screen. With two Academy Awards, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, three Golden Globes, a Tony, and countless nominations, she was loved by both audiences and critics around the world. Enter Our Heroine, Stage Right Maggie Smith was born in Essex to Margaret Hutton and Nathaniel Smith. As many do, Smith started on stage in 1952. At just 17, she made her debut with the Oxford University Dramatic Society playing Viola in a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Oxford Playhouse. She played in many productions with Oxford University, including ‘Cinderella’ (1952), ‘Rookery Nook’ (1953), ‘Cakes and Ale’ (1953) and ‘The Government Inspector’ (1954). In 1956, she made her first appearance on Broadway at...

For most people born in the past three decades, Maggie Smith became a familiar figure as Minerva McGonagall, the transfiguration professor and deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter movies. That strict but kind sorceress dispensed both imperious commands and compassionate counsel in a clipped Scottish brogue from beneath her pointed black hat.

Others might have met her as Violet Crawley, the tart-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, whose advanced age and creeping infirmity did nothing to diminish her Old World authority — “I wouldn’t know, I’m not familiar with the sensation,” she once remarked, on the foreign concept of being wrong — or her precision at landing a cutting put-down.

Smith died today in London, aged 89, and those who know her only from those two signature roles would do well to sample the many jewels elsewhere in her seven-decade filmography.

For...

In the summer of 2022, Charles Melton, who is best known for playing Reggie Mantle on the long-running and popular CW teen soap Riverdale, found himself in an unexpected position. “I was standing outside the door and I heard Julie and Todd talking. I just couldn’t believe where I was,” he remembers. The “Julie” and “Todd” in question were none other than Julianne Moore and her longtime collaborator, director Todd Haynes — their work together includes Safe, Far From Heaven and Wonderstruck — with Melton on hand for a chemistry read for their latest reteaming, May December.

The pipeline from CW supernatural series to Cannes-bound prestige indie drama isn’t well trodden. Throw in the fact that Melton, 32, would be starring opposite not one but two Oscar winners — Moore and co-star Natalie Portman — and landing the role leans toward a coup. Melton has been a part of the requisite YA love stories...

Cate Blanchett is going for her third Oscar with “TÁR,” but before that, she’ll have a chance to capture her third Best Actress BAFTA Award. Should she do so, she’ll move up to second place on the all-time winners list in the category.

A three-time BAFTA champ, Blanchett has two Best Actress trophies for “Elizabeth” (1998) and “Blue Jasmine” (2013) and one for Best Supporting Actress for “The Aviator” (2004). In the lead category, she’s one of 11 with two victories. That list gets drastically smaller the higher you go. She’s looking to become just the fourth person with three Best Actress wins, one shy of Maggie Smith‘s record of four.

Blanchett would join Anne Bancroft, Audrey Hepburn and Simone Signoret as three-time champs — but their ledgers come with a caveat. Until the ceremony in 1969 when they were consolidated into Best Actress, the BAFTAs had two actress categories: Best...

Exclusive: Actors’ union Equity has condemned BBC plans to scrap Radio 4’s 15 Minute Drama slot, an audio institution that has featured stories starring the likes of Helen McCrory, Bill Nighy, and Sian Clifford.

In an open letter to BBC director general Tim Davie, Equity representatives said the plans are part of a pattern of cuts that are “piercing the heart of a vital art form” and undermine the UK’s “booming audio industry.”

“The very direct impact of this loss of work on Equity members will hinder the ability of some to remain in the creative industries,” the letter said. “After a year where work in entertainment and the arts has proved vital to the world’s wellbeing, a workforce which is looking to the BBC to provide quality engagements has found itself abandoned whilst theatre fights to reopen sustainably.”

Signed by Equity general secretary Paul W. Fleming and members...

During a three-hour discussion on a recent episode of “The Empire Film Podcast,” Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino revealed the existence of their makeshift quarantine movie club over the last 9 months. As Wright explained, “It’s nice. We’ve kept in touch in a sort of way that cinephiles do. It’s been one of the very few blessings of this [pandemic], the chance to disappear down a rabbit hole with the hours indoors that we have.” Tarantino added, “Edgar is more social than I am. It’s a big deal that I’ve been talking to him these past 9 months.”

A bulk of the film club was curated by none other than Martin Scorsese, who sent Wright a recommendation list of nearly 50 British films that Scorsese considers personal favorites. In the five months Wright spent in lockdown before resuming production on “Last Night in Soho” — and before he received the...

The November 2020 lineup for The Criterion Channel has been unveiled, toplined by a Claire Denis retrospective, including the brand-new restoration of Beau travail, along with Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, Nenette and Boni, Towards Mathilde, 35 Shots of Rum, and White Material.

There will also be a series celebrating 30 years of The Film Foundation, featuring a new interview with Martin Scorsese by Ari Aster, as well as a number of their most essential restorations, including films by Jia Zhangke, Ritwik Ghatak, Luchino Visconti, Shirley Clarke, Med Hondo, and more.

There’s also David Lynch’s new restoration of The Elephant Man, retrospectives dedicated to Ngozi Onwurah, Nadav Lapid, and Terence Nance, a new edition of the series Queersighted titled Queer Fear, featuring a new conversation between series programmer Michael Koresky and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman, and much more.

See the lineup below and learn more on the official site.

One of the first ‘kitchen sink realist’ films of the British New Wave is also one of the best English films ever — believable, absorbing, and emotionally moving. The adaptation of John Braine’s novel launched Laurence Harvey as a major star, and English films were suddenly touted as being just as adult as their continental counterparts. It attracted a bushel of awards, especially for the luminous Simone Signoret. Unlike the average Angry Young Man, Joe Lampton’s struggle feels universal — bad things happen when ambition seeks a way through the class ceiling, ‘to get to the money,’ as says Donald Wolfit’s character.

Room at the Top

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date January 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Hermione Baddeley, Allan Cuthbertson, Raymond Huntley, John Westbrook, Richard Pasco, Ian Hendry, April Olrich,...

In the fall of ‘64, while Hollywood was gently satirizing the battle of the sexes with Send Me No Flowers and What a Way to Go!, Europe was at work in the trenches, peppering art houses with piercing dramas like François Truffaut‘s The Soft Skin and André Cayatte’s dual release, Anatomy of a Marriage: My Nights With Francoise and My Days with Jean-Marc (“One Ticket Admits You to Both Theaters”). Perhaps most unforgiving of all was Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater starring Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch and James Mason.

Bancroft plays Jo Armitage, a fragile beauty who responds to her husband’s infidelities by getting pregnant. Finch is Jake, a screenwriter whose recent success has emboldened him to walk on the wild side thereby provoking Jo to over-crowd the nursery. Mason is, once again, the odd man out, the deceptively genial husband of one of Jake’s conquests.

Remember those DVD collections organized by star, that combined favorite actors’ big movies with good titles you might not have seen? Shout Select has gone that route in honor of the great Anne Bancroft, collecting eight titles in one box. They span the years 1952 to 1989 … and are sourced from multiple studios and disc boutiques. Eight, count ’em 8 — no dog-eared transfers, and one is even a fully-appointed Criterion disc. We’re told that Mel Brooks applied some of the clout that made this happen.

The Anne Bancroft Collection

Blu-ray

Shout Select

1952 – 1987 / B&w + Color / Street Date December 10, 2019 / 79.97

Starring: Anne Bancroft, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Widmark; Patty Duke; Peter Finch; Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross; Dom De Luise; Mel Brooks; Jane Fonda, Meg Tilly; Anthony Hopkins.

Directed by Roy Baker; Arthur Penn; Jack Clayton; Mike Nichols; Anne Bancroft; Alan Johnson; Norman Jewison; David Hugh Jones.

This Shout Select compilation disc was reportedly curated by Anne Bancroft’s husband,...

Shout! Factory has released a highly impressive Blu-ray boxed set, "The Anne Bancroft Collection" containing key films from the Oscar-winner's career. Here is the official press release:

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Los Angeles, CA – Celebrate the extraordinary film career of actress/writer/director Anne Bancroft in the first-ever collection of her most iconic performances, The Anne Bancroft Collection, on Blu-ray™ December 10th from Shout! Factory. From Annie Sullivan to Mrs. Robinson, and from Helene Hanff to Anna Bronski, this Oscar®-winning and profoundly versatile actress delivered some of the most poignant and sharply comic characters in modern film.

The collection, curated by Bancroft’s husband, the inimitable writer/director/producer Mel Brooks, includes the films Don’t Bother To Knock (1952), The Miracle Worker (1962), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), Fatso (1980), To Be Or Not To Be (1983), and for the first time on Blu-ray™, Agnes Of God (1985), and...

The Nightcomers

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1971 / 1:85:1 / 96 Min.

Starring Marlon Brando, Stephanie Beacham

Written by Michael Hastings

Cinematography by Robert Paynter

Directed by Michael Winner

Between 1944 and 1992 Jack Clayton directed just nine movies but they included some of the most elegant yet clear-eyed films to come out of post-war Britain – from the hard-knock realism of Room at the Top to the broken-marriage reverie of The Pumpkin Eater. A man of letters as well as cinema, his relatively brief career was spent collaborating with writers like Wolf Mankowitz, Harold Pinter and Truman Capote.

Born in London, Michael Winner showed a talent for free-wheeling and mildly racy movies like The Girl-Getters and I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname – cheeky entertainments that helped define the myth of sexy swinging London for stateside audiences.

It was in the early 70s that Winner began to traffic in distinctly American product like Chato’s...

Psyche 59

Blu ray – All Region

Powerhouse

1964 / 1:85:1 / 94 Min. / Street Date – February 25, 2019

Starring Patricia Neal, Samantha Eggar, Curd Jürgens

Cinematography by Walter Lassally

Directed by Alexander Singer

The story of a troubled marriage and a tenacious home wrecker, Psyche 59 is a Brigitte Bardot movie without Bardot – despite its overheated narrative Alexander Singer’s psychosexual potboiler is stuck at room temperature.

Patricia Neal plays Alison Crawford, the unlucky sibling to Samantha Eggar’s hot to trot sister Robin and Curd Jürgens is Eric, the reluctant Romeo in the little flirt’s crosshairs. Jürgens knew the pitfalls of a wandering eye having tangled with Bardot herself in 1956’s And God Created Woman – judging by his reaction to Eggar he hasn’t learned his lesson.

Alison suffers from hysterical blindness and has suppressed the traumatic event that triggered it – her sister’s return unlocks a Pandora’s Box of bad memories but...

Anne Bancroft would’ve celebrated her 87th birthday on September 17. Born in 1931, the actress had a celebrated career on both the stage and screen, becoming one of the few people to win the trifecta of performance awards. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Bancroft made her Broadway debut in William Gibson‘s “Two for the Seesaw,” directed by Arthur Penn. The role brought her a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a play (1958). The very next year, she re-teamed with Gibson and Penn for “The Miracle Worker,” for which she won a second Tony (Best Actress in a Play in 1959).

Following the stage success, Bancroft, Penn and Gibson adapted “The Miracle Worker” to the big screen in 1962. Recreating the role of Annie Sullivan, a teacher struggling to help the deaf and blind Helen Keller (Patty Duke) learn to communicate,...

Anne Bancroft would’ve celebrated her 87th birthday on September 17. Born in 1931, the actress had a celebrated career on both the stage and screen, becoming one of the few people to win the trifecta of performance awards. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Bancroft made her Broadway debut in William Gibson‘s “Two for the Seesaw,” directed by Arthur Penn. The role brought her a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a play (1958). The very next year, she re-teamed with Gibson and Penn for “The Miracle Worker,” for which she won a second Tony (Best Actress in a Play in 1959).

Following the stage success, Bancroft, Penn and Gibson adapted “The Miracle Worker” to the big screen in 1962. Recreating the role of Annie Sullivan, a teacher struggling to help the deaf and blind Helen Keller (Patty Duke) learn to communicate,...

With nearly two years of worthy Blu ray releases under their belt, ranging from traditional favorites like To Sir With Love to rare essentials like Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater, it can be said that UK’s Indicator has finally shed their rookie status. Their newest effort is Hammer Volume Two: Criminal Intent, a well-programmed package of that studio’s little seen crime films featuring two minor classics and a couple of honorable misfires, all in glorious black and white.

The Snorkel

1958 – 74 Minutes

Written by Peter Myers and Jimmy Sangster

Produced by Michael Carreras

Directed by Guy Green

Featuring the sloppiest killer this side of the Coen Brothers and the least curious investigator since Chief Wiggum, 1961’s The Snorkel, with its urbane villain and Riviera scenery, is positively Hitchcockian in its intent but definitely not in its execution.

Shadow of a Doubt dogs this story of a young teen...

A generic spy story becomes an inspired light comedy with the application of great talent led by the star-power of Walter Matthau. Matthau’s CIA spook hooks up with old flame Glenda Jackson to retaliate against his insufferable CIA boss (Ned Beatty) with a humiliating tell-all book about the agency’s dirty tricks history. Matthau’s sloppy, slouchy master agent is a comic delight; Ronald Neame’s stylishly assured direction makes a deadly spy chase into a wholly pleasant romp.

Hopscotch

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 163

1980 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 105 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 15, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Sam Waterston, Ned Beatty, Herbert Lom, David Matthau, George Baker, Ivor Roberts, Lucy Saroyan, Severn Darden, George Pravda.

Cinematography: Arthur Ibbetson, Brian W. Roy

Production Designer: William J. Creber

Film Editor: Carl Kress

Original Music: Ian Fraser

Written by Bryan Forbes from a novel by Brian Garfield

Produced...

British cinema probably isn’t the main cultural wave that most people associate with the ’60s, but New York City’s own Film Forum is seeking to rectify that with their upcoming film festival, The Brit New Wave. Spanning over 16 days with 30 films on the slate, the festival is honoring an eclectic and varied time in film history.

Read More: How the SXSW 2017 Film Festival Shows Us the Future of the Movies

The festival will screen films such as the Beatles classic “A Hard Day’s Night,” Laurence Olivier’s “The Entertainer,” Michael Caine’s “Alfie,” Anne Bancroft’s “The Pumpkin Eater,” as well as films from Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Burton, and the debuts of Albert Finney, Julie Christie, and Alan Bates.

Additionally, the theater will also give a special run to the new restoration of John Schlesinger’s debut feature, the rarely-seen kitchen sink drama “A King of Loving,...

One week a month, Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by the week’s new releases or premieres. This week: In honor of Kenneth Lonergan’s magnificent Manchester By The Sea, we’re giving a standing ovation to other movies written and/or directed by playwrights.

The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

Maybe it’s too large a claim for a nearly forgotten domestic drama, but there’s a scene in the Harold Pinter-scripted The Pumpkin Eater that by all rights should’ve been one of the iconic moments of ’60s cinema. A deeply unhappy, alienated housewife, Jo (Anne Bancroft), goes walking after confirming her husband’s infidelity. She walks to Harrods and stares at a fountain. She stares at refrigerators, exotic birds, and a man tuning pianos. Then, in the middle of the black-and-white tiled floor, she stops. The camera stays at her back and a subdued refrain by Georges Delerue...

Richard Johnson, the British actor who appeared in such films as The Haunting and The Pumpkin Eater but turned down an offer to play James Bond in the first 007 film, has died. He was 87. Johnson, who was married to actress Kim Novak for a brief time in the 1960s, died after a short illness at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea, London, the BBC reported.    A stage veteran and founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Johnson signed with MGM and appeared in the war drama Never So Few (1959), starring Frank Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida and

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Richard Johnson, the British actor who appeared in such films as The Haunting and The Pumpkin Eater but turned down an offer to play James Bond in the first 007 film, has died. He was 87.

Johnson, who was married to actress Kim Novak for a brief time in the 1960s, died after a short illness at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea, London, the BBC reported.    A stage veteran and founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Johnson signed with MGM and appeared in the war drama Never So Few (1959), starring Frank Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida and Steve McQueen.   In the frightening film The Haunting (1963),...

We just celebrated the career of cinematographer Oswald Morris this past November on his birthday with a visual tribute. I regret to inform that the fine Dp has passed away at 98 on St. Patrick's Day.

Director John Huston (left) and Oswald Morris (right) size up a scene

I first became a fan of his, without knowing I was (you know how that is at the beginning of cinephilia) when I saw the puppet classic The Dark Crystal (1982) which was his last film. That film was so technically ambitious at the time and a visual triumph in many ways. I've been meaning to watch it again just to feel the presence of actual objects with weight and shadow in the time of CGI.

In the obit at The Telegraph he tells a good story about one of his true breakthroughs: Moulin Rouge (1952):

In 1952, Morris “broke every rule in the book...

Here's new contributor Diana D. Drumm to with a trip back to a film that opened today in 1964...

We open at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, with all of its bubbles and laughter and cinema. A jury, including the likes of Fritz Lang and Charles Boyer, peer at a roster featuring now-classics The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Pumpkin Eater alongside cult favorite The World of Henry Orient... Oh, you haven’t heard of The World of Henry Orient?

Well, that isn’t so surprising, even considering its headliner, the late great Peter Sellers, it’s been lost to TCM and cult nostalgists. In terms of Sellers’s filmography, it’s sandwiched between two biggies -- Dr. Strangelove and A Shot in the Dark (this loaded schedule along with a marriage to Swedish bombshell Britt Ekland would lead to his first major heart attack in 1964).

Sellers stars at the eponymous “Henry...

Oscar-winning British cinematographer who worked on a wide range of film classics

The Oscar-winning British cinematographer Oswald Morris, who has died aged 98, will be remembered for many classics, including Moulin Rouge, Fiddler on the Roof, Moby Dick and Lolita. He worked with some of the great directors, John Huston, Sidney Lumet, Carol Reed, Stanley Kubrick and Franco Zeffirelli. Many of Morris's films are landmarks in the history of colour cinematography. For Moulin Rouge (1952) he used filters to create a style reminiscent of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec. For Fiddler on the Roof (1971), which won him an Oscar, he filmed with a silk stocking over the lens to give a sepia effect.

Morris also shot popular favourites such as The Guns of Navarone (1961), Oliver! (1968), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975), and photographed acting luminaries: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart.

Jack Clayton's masterpiece is full of repressed sexual hunger and throbbing darkness

Fifty-two years young, Jack Clayton's masterpiece The Innocents is as unsettlingly beautiful and insolubly ambiguous today as it was on the day it was released, and remains, along with Robert Wise's The Haunting, one of the great British psychological horror movies. Based on Henry James's The Turn Of The Screw – derived by screenwriters Truman Capote and John Mortimer from the 1950 Broadway stage adaptation by William Archibald – it's a perfect alignment of script and director, stars and subject matter, and it offers a ton of subsidiary pleasures in its casting (including Peter Wyngarde, a decade before Jason King, and Martin Stevens, the lead blond psycho kid from Village Of The Damned).

The striking camerawork comes courtesy of Freddie Francis, who less than two years later would embark upon a second career as a successful director...

Let's sing a big raucous happy birthday to 98 years young Oscar winner Oswald Morris who is still with us! That's a lot of candles. And a lot of great movies.

The British born Morris only ever received Oscar nominations for big screen musicals (Oliver!, Fiddler on the Roof , and The Wiz) but that's hardly the full picture of his career. Though reknowned for his use of color -- his cinematography on Moulin Rouge (1952, recently discussed) was particularly innovative -- he also won prizes for his black and white work, most notably: Moby Dick, The Pumpkin Eater, The Hill, and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Other well known pictures include Equus, The Guns of Navarone, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and a couple of Liz & Dick adventures (The Taming of the Shrew and Reflections in a Golden Eye). His awards haul includes 1 Oscar, 3 BAFTAs, 3 British Society of Cinematography wins and...

Interview Ryan Lambie 8 Oct 2013 - 06:19

We talk to producer Robert Watts about his remarkable career in movies, which includes the Star Wars trilogy, Roger Rabbit and more...

With a career stretching back to the 1960s, British film producer Robert Watts played a key role in making some of the most influential films of the 1970s. Just a quick glance over his credits as a producer reveals an extraordinary career, which includes Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and its sequels, the first three Indiana Jones films, and the groundbreaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Those films are but the tip of the iceberg; before Star Wars, he worked on two James Bond films - Thunderball and You Only Live Twice - collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey, and, in films such as Man In The Middle, Darling and Papillon, worked with such legendary actors as Robert Mitchum,...

A friend, who was perhaps not quite tactful enough to become the movie producer he wanted to be, once met the actress Kerry Fox, and told her that her work in Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table was the best female film performance he had ever seen, "Apart from Maggie Smith in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne."

While one might think that coming second in the whole of cinema history was still doing pretty well, and that there's no shame in coming second to Maggie Smith in anything, and that the addition of another name and title to the statement shows that my friend had really thought about it and wasn't just blowing smoke up the Fox ass, she apparently didn't look all that pleased. Perhaps she would prefer to be judged up against all actors, not just a female subset. But perhaps the problem was that...

The far-from prolific Jack Clayton has the right to be considered a great filmmaker purely on the basis of The Innocents, The Pumpkin Eater and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, but only the first of these is well-known, and the rest of his scattershot career shows little of the thematic consistency beloved of auteurists. His nature was to be interested in a wide range of things, and he didn't make enough movies to tie them all together into an artistic personality coherent enough to suit critics. But interested parties should check out Neil Sinyard's excellent study of the filmmaker.

The Disney Corporation was going through a somewhat incoherent spell itself in the early eighties, commissioning unusually sombre, bizarre, scary or adult movies which it then didn't know how to sell: Altman's Popeye, Carroll Ballard's Never Cry Wolf, Dragonslayer (in which the Disney Princess gets eaten by baby dragons), Tron,...

Jean Dujardin, Uggie Jean Dujardin backstage getting licked by Uggie during the 84th Academy Awards Awards ceremony held at the Hollywood and Highland Center on February 26, 2012. Jean Dujardin was the year's Best Actor winner for his performance as a fading silent-film star in Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist. Uggie was a Golden Collar winner for his star-making turn as the fading silent star's faithful animal companion. Now, months before Dujardin became the first Frenchman to win an Oscar in the acting categories, he had already been chosen as the Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. Though not a common occurrence — chiefly because Cannes winners are usually non-Americans performing in non-English-speaking roles — there have been a number of Cannes Best Actor / Best Actress winners who went on to win or be nominated for Oscars. Those include Christoph Waltz for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, William Hurt for Hector Babenco's Kiss of the Spider Woman,...

Below you will find a list of movie that Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright has never seen. Not long ago Wright went out and asked his friends and fans to recommend some movies they thought he may have missed over the last thirty years of his life. He got recommendations from Quentin Tarantino, Daniel Waters, Bill Hader, John Landis, Guillermo Del Toro, Joe Dante, Judd Apatow, Joss Whedon, Greg Mottola, Schwartzman, Doug Benson, Rian Johnson, Larry Karaszeski, Josh Olson, Harry Knowles and hundreds of fans on this blog.

From these recommendations, Wright created a master list of recommended films that were frequently mentioned. The director now wants the fans to choose which of the films on the list he should watch on the big screen.

Wright is holding a film event at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles called Films Edgar Has Never Seen.

Edgar Wright's latest epic project [1] has him partnering with Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, Joss Whedon, Bill Hader, Guillermo Del Toro, Joe Dante, Greg Mottola, Harry Knowles, Rian Johnson and, probably, several of you. Like all of us, Wright has a bunch of classic and cult films he's never seen. Unlike all of us, he has the means to see them for the first time on the big screen and will do just that in December [2] at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles during Films Edgar Has Never Seen. The director of Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World asked both his famous friends (some of which are listed above) and fans to send in their personal must see lists and, from those titles, Wright came up with one mega list from which he'll pick a few movies to watch December 9-16. After the jump check...

Before we called them MILFs or cougars – long before – there was only Mrs. Robinson. She was a mid-1960s adolescent fantasy come true; the sexy, available older woman/housewife next door with an appetite for young not-quite-men/not-quite-boys. She became so indelibly, boldly etched in the public consciousness that the name became a noun – and, for young males, a hope – and the referenced fodder for a thousand if-only-they-were-true Letters to Penthouse.

But the character in the movie The Graduate (1967) was no exercise in wish fulfillment, no Weird Science (1985) or Risky Business (1983) teen’s wet dream. Rather, Mrs. Robinson was a devouring suburban nightmare, a paean to unmoored youth and disillusioned adulthood and life-draining, soul-killing upper middle class ennui.

Over four decades later, the name still resonates, her portrait so deeply carved into the pop culture by Anne Bancroft’s letter perfect Oscar-nominated performance that Mrs. Robinson remains the proto-milf/cougar,...

With the DVD market in free fall, Hollywood studios are getting creative about finding new ways to pump up the home-entertainment dollar. Now you can have a custom-made copy of Anne Bancroft’s “The Pumpkin Eater” or Noel Coward’s 1933 Best Picture winner “Cavalcade.” Over the last year, MGM, Warner Brothers, Sony and others have begun to offer obscure, previously unavailable movies via DVD-on-demand and streaming. For a fee of approximately $20, many of the major studios will now burn select titles to disc. By custom-burning DVDs or streaming cult-favorite films from depths of...

Bette Davis outdoes Joan Crawford in the slapping department in the 1956 drama Storm Center, in which Davis plays a librarian concerned about civil liberties Following the lead of Time Warner, Sony Pictures has started the distribution of on-demand DVDs of rare (or somewhat rare) classics and not-so-classics found in its library. Columbia Classics has yet to offer Bette Davis in The Menace, Jean Arthur in The Most Precious Thing in Life, or Melvyn Douglas in The Lone Wolf Returns, but among their dozens of releases are a number of goodies. For instance: 10 Rillington Place (1970), Richard Fleischer's psychological study of a serial killer played by Richard Attenborough. Address Unknown (1944), directed by (mostly) art director William Cameron Menzies (Oscar winner for Gone with the Wind), and starring Paul Lukas (Best Actor Oscar winner for Warners' Watch on the Rhine). Jack Clayton's British drama The Pumpkin Eater (1964), starring Peter Finch, [...]...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: Have you ever wanted to raid a studio’s vault and order the movies you want on DVD, instead of waiting for execs to decide which titles they were going to release? Well, we’re a little closer to that dream becoming a reality.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment just opened the Columbia vault, offering to consumers a selection of films never before released on DVD. The studio’s new program, dubbed “Screen Classics by Request,” lets you purchase authentic, high-quality DVDs of more than 100 classic movie titles covering a 75-year span from the Columbia Film Library. Those who visit www.Columbia-Classics.com make their selection and, upon purchase, receive a made-to-order DVD showcased with original theatrical art, when available. It’s like custom-ordering the DVD you want … when you want it.

Additional titles will be made available monthly through the Web site, and will retail at $19.94, plus shipping.

Mad Men at the Movies In this series we discuss the film references on Mad Men. And now for Season 4 we're also discussing the show in general. Previously: Live From Times Square, 60s Box Office Queens, Catherine Deneuve and...Gamera?

Episode 4.4 "The Rejected"

In this episode Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) faces both personal joy and career drama and combines them in cunning fashion. He sure is a 'high Wasp'. Don's secretary Alison gets a smashingly played exit scene (goodbye Alexa Alemanni. We hardly knew ye. But we liked what we knew. Pssst Mad Men will work wonders on your reel. You were great.) And Peggy attends an underground party winning both male and female attention. Plus, Ken Cosgrove returns (yay!).

Right before Ken's name surfaces, Pete and Harry are arguing about the printing of a newspaper ad.

Pete: I don't care if she looks like a Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican girls buy brassieres.

While you’re already getting your big Academy Awards party ready in time for the telecast on March 7th, we’ve got something for even bigger movie fans to enjoy. Of course, we’re talking about a movie marathon!

All month long, Turner Classic Movies will be running over 360 Academy Award nominated and winning films, back to back, with an interesting twist. In the vain of the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” each film will have a common actor or actress from the previous film.

For example, tomorrow night’s schedule consists of The Graduate with Anne Bancroft and William Daniels, which goes into Reds which stars Daniels and Jack Nicholson, into Chinatown with Nicholson and John Huston. Though we’re already about two weeks into the marathon, there are still plenty of great films to look forward to, including some TCM firsts like Gladiator, Titanic, Alien, and Trading Places.

Actress Anne Bancroft, who won an Oscar for The Miracle Worker and a place in pop culture history as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, died Monday of cancer; she was 73. The wife of comedian Mel Brooks, Bancroft died in New York at Mt. Sinai Hospital. One of the most popular actresses of the '60s, Bancroft's career started off dubiously in the '50s with a number of B movies for 20th Century Fox such as Gorilla at Large and Demetrius and the Gladiators. The studio also renamed the young actress, who was born Anna Maria Louise Italiano and originally went by Anne Marno; given a list of names, she chose the dignified Bancroft. However, fulfilling roles for the versatile TV and movie actress didn't follow, and Bancroft left both big and small screens for Broadway in the late 50s, winning two Tonys, for Two for the Seesaw and The Miracle Worker. When Hollywood came calling to adapt both films, Bancroft lost the role in the former to Shirley MacLaine. However, when studio heads wanted a more glamorous actress for the role of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker, director Arthur Penn put his foot down and refused to budge. Then faced with a minimal budget, Penn created a gripping black-and-white film which won Oscars in 1962 for both Bancroft and co-star Patty Duke (as Helen Keller). That role was followed by another Oscar-nominated performance in The Pumpkin Eater and the acclaimed The Slender Thread and 7 Women. In 1967, however, Bancroft did a total 180 from her saintly persona as Annie Sullivan and donned leopard-skin lingerie for her role as the wily Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, which nabbed her another Oscar nomination and permanent enshrinement in film history. By then, she had seduced not just Dustin Hoffman but the filmgoing public as well, and for the rest of her career she was pretty much able to call her own shots. She worked almost non-stop through the '70s and '80s in both comedic and dramatic films, including The Turning Point (another Oscar nomination), The Elephant Man, To Be or Not To Be (directed by her husband), Agnes of God (her last Oscar nomination), 84 Charing Cross Road, and Torch Song Trilogy. In the '90s Bancroft took a number of character roles, most notably as a mysterious old con woman in Malice, a menacing senator in G.I. Jane, a comedic matriarch in Home For the Holidays, an elegant trainer of a young assassin in Point of No Return, and an updated Mrs. Havisham in Great Expectations; she most recently appeared in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, for which she received an Emmy nomination. Bancroft is survived by her husband, whom she married in 1964, and their son, Max. --Prepared by IMDb staff...

Anne Bancroft died at New York City's Mount Sinai Medical Center on Monday following a battle against uterine cancer. She was 73. The late screen icon won a Best Actress Oscar in 1963 for her portrayal of Helen Keller's teacher in The Miracle Worker, but she will always be most remembered for her role as Mrs. Robinson in 1967's The Graduate. Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano in 1931 to Italian immigrant parents living in New York City's Bronx district, and they recognized their daughter's talent for entertaining before she reached her third birthday. The late actress' movie career began in 1952 when Hollywood studio Twentieth Century Fox gave her a contract and a more screen-friendly name. After a series of unsuccessful low budget movies, Bancroft moved to Broadway and won a Tony for her role opposite Henry Fonda in the play Two For The Seesaw. Bancroft went on to make the lead role in the original stage production of The Miracle Worker her own before returning to Hollywood to resume her big screen career. Following her Academy Awards success in 1963, Bancroft was unsuccessfully nominated on a further four occasions for acclaimed performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977) and Agnes Of God (1985). Bancroft wed comedian and The Producers creator Mel Brooks in 1964, and they enjoyed 41 years of marriage and the birth of their son Maximilian in 1972 before her death on Monday.

Actress Anne Bancroft, who won an Oscar for The Miracle Worker and a place in pop culture history as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, died Monday of cancer; she was 73. The wife of comedian Mel Brooks, Bancroft died in New York at Mt. Sinai Hospital. One of the most popular actresses of the '60s, Bancroft's career started off dubiously in the '50s with a number of B movies for 20th Century Fox such as Gorilla at Large and Demetrius and the Gladiators. The studio also renamed the young actress, who was born Anna Maria Louise Italiano and originally went by Anne Marno; given a list of names, she chose the dignified Bancroft. However, fulfilling roles for the versatile TV and movie actress didn't follow, and Bancroft left both big and small screens for Broadway in the late 50s, winning two Tonys, for Two for the Seesaw and The Miracle Worker. When Hollywood came calling to adapt both films, Bancroft lost the role in the former to Shirley MacLaine. However, when studio heads wanted a more glamorous actress for the role of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker, director Arthur Penn put his foot down and refused to budge. Then faced with a minimal budget, Penn created a gripping black-and-white film which won Oscars in 1962 for both Bancroft and co-star Patty Duke (as Helen Keller). That role was followed by another Oscar-nominated performance in The Pumpkin Eater and the acclaimed The Slender Thread and 7 Women. In 1967, however, Bancroft did a total 180 from her saintly persona as Annie Sullivan and donned leopard-skin lingerie for her role as the wily Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, which nabbed her another Oscar nomination and permanent enshrinement in film history. By then, she had seduced not just Dustin Hoffman but the filmgoing public as well, and for the rest of her career she was pretty much able to call her own shots. She worked almost non-stop through the '70s and '80s in both comedic and dramatic films, including The Turning Point (another Oscar nomination), The Elephant Man, To Be or Not To Be (directed by her husband), Agnes of God (her last Oscar nomination), 84 Charing Cross Road, and Torch Song Trilogy. In the '90s Bancroft took a number of character roles, most notably as a mysterious old con woman in Malice, a menacing senator in G.I. Jane, a comedic matriarch in Home For the Holidays, an elegant trainer of a young assassin in Point of No Return, and an updated Mrs. Havisham in Great Expectations; she most recently appeared in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, for which she received an Emmy nomination. Bancroft is survived by her husband, whom she married in 1964, and their son, Max. --Prepared by IMDb staff...