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Rip Torn, who played Garry Shandling’s profane, fiercely loyal producer on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, co-starred in the original Men in Black films and was a major star of Broadway and Off Broadway during a seven-decade career, died today surrounded by family at his home in Lakeville, Ct. He was 88.

The prolific Torn played the unstoppable and unflappable Artie on Larry Sanders, which aired from 1992-98 and followed the behind-the-scenes and onstage antics of a successful late-night network talk show. Along with scoring a Supporting Actor in a Comedy Emmy in 1996, he was nominated for each of the show’s six seasons.

The year Torn won his Emmy, he also had been up for Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his turn on CBS’ Chicago Hope. In 2008, he earned his ninth and final Emmy nom, for his recurring role as Don Geiss on NBC’s 30 Rock.

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I can often spend hours upon hours trawling through iTunes looking for new movies to buy… Usually I’ll randomly come across a title I haven’t seen in years and use the “Cast & Crew” links to make my way down the rabbit hole to the more obscure side of Apple’s digital movie service.

Now whilst many will decry that iTunes is a terrible VOD service due to Apple’s desire to lock its audience to their platforms, if you have an Apple TV or iPad be aware – there are some truly obscure films hidden away in the depths of the vast collection of movies. Some of which have been made available in the UK for the first time since VHS and a Lot that have been added to the service in their original uncut form!

So, with...

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Joe Kraemer

Paramount Pictures

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Daniel Pemberton

WaterTower Music

In his score for Kingsman: The Secret Service, Henry Jackman wants you to know he’s a James Bond fan. He just doesn’t want to tell you. Monte Norman’s iconic guitar riff pops in and out of his score, and brassy John Barry flourishes pepper the background music of Matthew Vaughn’s latest pulpy indulgence. Vaughn and comic book brute Mark Millar’s spy thriller struck a chord with audiences in February with gaudy, gory violence and in-jokes to the Ian Fleming novels it draws from. Strangely though, Jackman’s half-baked music never follows suit, tiptoeing around its homages rather than fully committing to its Roger Moore era obsessions.

The music of Kingsman wants its both ways, retro while still feeling fresh enough for modern box office, a shared paradox with The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,...

On Friday, March 13, Disney will release the live action version of Cinderella from director Kenneth Branagh.

The original animated movie opened on February 15, 1950 to universal acclaim and 65 years later, Cinderella has become one of studio’s most treasured titles.

Branagh has once again turned to the Scottish composer Patrick Doyle for the score. The album features original music by Doyle marking the eleventh time he has teamed with Branagh.

In 1989, the director commissioned Doyle to compose the score for Henry V and they have subsequently collaborated on numerous pictures, including Dead Again, Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, As You Like It and Thor, and most recently Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Doyle scored Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes for 20th Century Fox and Brave for Disney Pixar, which was awarded Best Original Composition for Film at the International Music and Sound Awards.

From the worlds...

In many ways, the western is a dead genre, but I like to think of it as the genre that just won’t die. Like trying to put down the toughest, meanest gunslinger in the old west, the western film keeps popping back up in the least expected times and places… but, not always in the traditional style we’re used to seeing. Call it survival of the fittest, but the western is far from dead, as is apparent with Jon Favreau’s new Cowboys & Aliens, which opens this Friday, July 29th, combining the western with the science-fiction, creating a crossover with twice the fun. In honor of the opening of this rare hybrid, we’re looking at our favorite Western Crossover films this week in Top Ten Tuesday.

Honorable Mention: The Good, The Bad & The Weird

This modern ode to the western from Korean filmmaker Jee-woon Kim is less...

Character actor Joseph Wiseman brought to life the first screen villain for British secret agent James Bond when he played Dr. No in the 1962 film of the same name.

Wiseman played the cool and calculating menace in the first of the long-running series of James Bond films, which initially starred Sean Connery as the British secret agent.

Wiseman was born in Montreal, Canada, on May 15, 1918, and moved to the United States with his family as a child. He began his career on stage and made his Broadway debut in the late 1930s.

Wiseman appeared frequently on television throughout his career, with roles in the 1950s anthology series Suspense, Lights Out, Tales of Tomorrow, and Inner Sanctum. He was featured as Death in a 1954 production of Death Takes a Holiday for Kraft Theatre, and was the Sorceror in a 1958 Shirley Temple Storybook adaptation of The Wild Swans. He starred in the...

The Los Angeles Times reports that author/screenwriter Michael Crichton died yesterday in La. The creator of Jurassic Park and numerous other science-fiction thrillers, who had been privately battling cancer, was 66.

The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.

The Los Angeles Times reports that author/screenwriter Michael Crichton died yesterday in La. The creator of Jurassic Park and numerous other science-fiction thrillers, who had been privately battling cancer, was 66.

The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.