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Brent Spiner may have stolen many of the scenes his character, Dr. Brakish Okun, was in in Independence Day and its sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence. But, he is most well known for portraying Commander Data, an android, beginning in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now, the two-time Saturn Award winner is talking about why he decided to ultimately return as Data in Star Trek: Picard, even though he was hesitant at first.

Per CinemaBlend, Spiner appeared in an episode of The Sackhoff Showhosted by Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff, and touched on why he almost passed on the opportunity to play Data again. Fans may recall that Data died in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, and again during Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard.

Brent Spiner Thought He Was 'Too Old'

“Initially, I thought Data has to be young,” Spiner began. “Because it’s like Harpo Marx. Harpo Marx was so wonderful when he was young,...

Brent Spiner quotes Sean Connery in regard to portraying Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard. Spiner began portraying Lt. Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the lovable android became one of the show's most popular characters. Despite his heroic death in Star Trek: Nemesis, Data made a triumphant return in Star Trek: Picard season 3, reuniting with his former USS Enterprise-d crew members.

Complete with an upgraded android body with the ability to experience emotions, Data finally achieved his lifelong dream of becoming (almost) human. Still, it remains to be seen what his Star Trek future holds. In a recent appearance on The Sackhoff Show, Brent Spiner spoke to host Katee Sackhoff about portraying Data and why he decided to reprise the role in Picard season 3. Read Spiner's quotes and watch the video below:

Katee Sackhoff: You’ve played that character [Data] in like 10 different projects.

One of the most obnoxious sitcom tropes is when a show becomes popular enough that celebrities begin appearing on it as themselves. Now, some shows have made it work. Insane guest stars are The Simpsons thing, for example. And Curb Your Enthusiasm is about a guy in show business, so celebrities playing themselves makes total sense. But when a show is about ordinary people yet gigantic household names keep showing up on their doorstep the reality of that world is blown apart.

There have, however, been a handful of times when a celebrity played themselves on a sitcom and actually pulled it off. These are the top five…

5 Marisa Tomei on ‘Seinfeld’

Tomei’s appearance on Seinfeld worked out of sheer absurdity alone. The very idea that the pathetic George Costanza (Jason Alexander) would be exactly her type is funny on its own, but when George and Marisa meet, the comedy is sublime.

As far as movies based on SNL sketches go, A Night at the Roxbury probably had the least to work with. Wayne’s World, MacGruber and even It’s Pat had well-defined characters with reliable bits. The Night at the Roxbury guys, however, didn’t even have names, which is why Steve Koren, who wrote the breakout SNL sketch for those characters, was surprised when Clueless director Amy Heckerling wanted to make a movie about two idiots who aggressively danced up on women in night clubs.

But soon thereafter, Koren, along with Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan who played and created the characters, got to work on the script that would become A Night at the Roxbury.

I recently spoke to Koren about how the original draft was inspired by Saturday Night Fever, how the Marx Brothers contributed to the film’s title and how they sought to include every slang term...

There are few characters in the modern horror landscape who can rival Art the Clown, the deranged maniac who's been at the forefront of the "Terrifier" franchise for more than a decade (if we go back to his feature debut in the "All Hallows' Eve" anthology). Since then, he's become a true icon of the genre, appearing on tons of merchandise and leading unlikely box office success stories, such as 2022's "Terrifier 2." Now, Art is back for a Christmastime massacre in the new "Terrifier 3," which figures to only increase his status as horror's new it boy. But interestingly, for as unrelentingly brutal as Art is on screen, it turns out that the character is influenced by some icons from the comedy world.

/Film's Jacob Hall recently sat down with "Terrifier 3" writer/director Damien Leone, star David Howard Thornton (Art the Clown), and wrestler-turned-actor Chris Jericho. During the conversation,...

The saga of writer-director Damien Leone’s signature horror character Art the Clown began with The 9th Circle, a 2008 short which was recycled with other mini-movies (including a 2011 first draft of Terrifier) into a 2013 anthology film, All Hallows’ Eve. David Howard Thornton didn’t take over the role of the clown until the breakout feature version of Terrifier (2016). His exceptionally committed evil mime performance — imagine Harpo Marx possessed by the Driller Killer — remains the centrepiece of an ongoing series which shows no signs of winding down.

Thornton’s Art — a deceptively simple black-and-white clown costume and make-up, complete with silly miniature hat and rotten-tooth grin — stands out as perhaps the most hateful franchise fiend in contemporary horror, mocking victims as he rips them to gory chunks and taking the time to add petty humiliations like slaps to the back of the head to the grosser, gut-exposing atrocities which are his stock-in-trade.

It was a surprise to many of her admiring fans that the legendary Carol Burnett was not already immortalized with her handprints in the iconic Hollywood cement. That fact finally changed on Thursday as she was surrounded by friends, co-stars and family at a brief ceremony outside of the Tcl Chinese Theater.

Before cementing herself for decades of tourists to visit, she said, “I grew up just a few blocks from here, Yucca and Wilcox. It was a block north of Hollywood Boulevard. And when I was a little girl, I can’t begin to count the times my grandmother and I would walk up her to Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Betty Grable was one of my favorites, and I remember bending down and putting my hands on her handprints, never dreaming that someday I’d be putting my hands here 80 years later.”

See‘Palm Royale’ scene stealer Carol Burnett...

While obviously based on the original comic books and the cartoon series, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie had some influences from elsewhere in pop culture. Looking back at the film in a new chat at WonderCon with Cbr's Kevin Polowy, Tmnt screenwriter Bobby Herbeck addressed his influences while sharing how Star Wars played a big part in the presentation of the movie's battle scenes.

"The first thing I did was, I watched the Four Musketeers movie with Michael York," Herbeck said of his research when writing the film. "When they were out fighting, the Four Musketeers, they'd have that smart-alecky stuff with each other, right? Or, they'd stab a guy, and have some quip to make. You know, it had that smile in it. And, the Marx Brothers were also in my head, the shenanigans."

Related Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Unveils First Trailer, New...

Georgia Holt, best known as Cher's mother, made a cameo appearance on I Love Lucy, showing her talent before mainstream success. Holt played a model in two episodes of I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show, adding to her list of acting credits. Georgia Holt's final on-screen appearance was as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race, showcasing her diverse career in entertainment.

Georgia Holt appears on I Love Lucy and even those who are aware of the identity of pop superstar Cher's mother may have missed her. The classic CBS sitcom I Love Lucy had many celebrity guest stars. Rock Hudson, Harpo Marx, and John Wayne all took time out of their impressive and busy careers to appear on the show, a testament to its ubiquity and wide appreciation. Throughout I Love Lucy's six seasons, it was inevitable that there would also be appearances by actors who were not famous yet,...

Until recently, the oldest entertainment program known to survive on color videotape was NBC’s An Evening with Fred Astaire, broadcast live on October 17, 1958.

But now, a rare color videotape of the Kraft Music Hall Starring Milton Berle that predates the Astaire special by nine days has been discovered. The tape will be shown at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood on Saturday, February 24th at 7:30 Pm in a program that is free and open to the public.

“The Berle Kraft tape is the oldest known color videotape of an entertainment program,” said Mark Quigley, the John H. Mitchell Television Curator at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. “Entertainment” is a key distinction. The oldest known color tape is of the NBC Washington studios dedication ceremony on 05-22-1958.

“With the introduction of videotape technology in the broadcast industry starting in 1956, one of...

Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy acknowledges David Tennant as the only other actor to achieve playing two Doctor Who iterations. McCoy first wore Colin Baker's costume during his tenure as the Sixth Doctor to film the regeneration scene before officially becoming the Seventh Doctor. Tennant's return as the Fourteenth Doctor comes at the perfect time for the show's 60th anniversary and is motivated by his age and the return of showrunner Russell T Davies.

Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy recently acknowledged David Tenant as the only other actor to achieve a rare accomplishment in Doctor Who. The classic British sci-fi show, which originally premiered in 1963, follows the many adventures of a powerful being known as the Time Lord. Over the years, the Doctor Who role has been portrayed by thirteen different talented actors, including Christopher Eccleston, Jodie Whittaker, and Peter Capaldi, among others. During the classic era, Colin Baker was dismissed as the Sixth Doctor,...

In the 1936 Disney short "Mickey's Polo Team," Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and the Big Bad Wolf go head-to-head on the polo field with a foursome of '30s comedy legends: Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, and Laurel & Hardy. Kind of. It's a cartoon, obviously, and the real-life movie stars didn't really officially contribute to the short but the basic essence of the comedians is captured through the eccentric, caricature-like depictions.

Outside of mustache maintenance tips, it’s hard to see what common ground Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali and cartoon mogul Walt Disney could possibly hope to find.

Upon schlepping his easel, exotic pets, and political baggage onto American shores, Dali mentioned in a letter in 1937, “I have come to Hollywood and am in contact with three great American Surrealists — the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille, and Walt Disney.” No one is sure if he was joking or not, as he was not actually in contact with Disney for many years. Harpo Marx? That seems way more likely. But Dali also walked an anteater on a leash with a straight face, so it’s hard to know what he was thinking. Working with a guy who catered to kids might have been exactly the counter-intuitive decision that he savored, much in the Alice Cooper singing on The Muppets variety.

Irrespective of Dali’s thought process,...

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 34 Episode 15

Once again, cartoon violence and mental health go hand-in-hand in solving all dysfunction. The Simpsons proves it’s never too late for a Christmas gift. “Bartless” merrily defaces It’s a Wonderful Life with a purple crayon and drops a new perspective under the Simpson family tree. Bart, the self-proclaimed poster child for evil children, may serve an even lower purpose.

The central story takes place the night after Marge and Homer hear a prank Bart pulled in the elementary school library actually inspired an interest in books to kindergarteners. It forces them to reevaluate a lifelong relationship. The question over whether Marge and Homer like Bart, or only forced to love him, is as raw a nerve as you can poke in any family, and the Simpsons are every family.

Eschewing the couch gag entirely, “Bartless” presents the best opening act for many seasons.

Slasher maniac Art the Clown is back, and so is actor David Howard Thornton in the highly anticipated slasher sequel Terrifier 2.

Following his gruesome demise in the first film, a sinister presence has brought Art back to life to rein terror on the residents of Miles County. On Halloween night, he returns to the unassuming town and sets his sights on fresh prey: a teenage girl and her little brother.

Bloody Disgusting, Cinedigm, and Iconic Events are bringing Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2 to theaters nationwide on October 6 – get your tickets now! Ahead of the release, Thornton chatted with Bloody Disgusting about how changes in the makeup process evolved the killer clown in this sequel, along with an increase in the actor’s confidence.

Thornton said of his mindset coming into Terrifier 2, “I think I was a lot more excited this time around. I think there’s a...

When the process of gathering materials for “Lucy and Desi” started, producer Jeanne Elfant Festa remembers was not prepared for the discovery that Lucy Arnaz Luckinbill would find. “I was in her pantry. I was literally stretching and I looked up and I saw a lockbox. I said ‘Lucy, what is that?’” she tells Gold Derby during our Meet the Experts: TV Documentary panel (watch the exclusive video interview above). Arnaz discovered that the surprise of the lockbox contained several of Lucy’s tapes that included recordings from after Lucy and Desi were divorced as well as Desi, Vivian Vance and the kids reenacting their favorite scenes from “I Love Lucy” with Lucy directing them. “It was just so beautiful because it also instilled the relationship that we all wanted to cling to, which is the throughline of the film. They maintained that respect and love for each other until...

Our first episode back in the studio! Robert Weide discusses a few of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)

Mother Night (1996)

Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011)

Mort Sahl: The Loyal Opposition (1989)

Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth (1998)

Marx Brothers in a Nutshell (1982)

W.C. Fields: Straight Up (1986)

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Mary Poppins (1964)

The French Connection (1971) – Dennis Lehane’s trailer commentary, Mark Pellington’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Magnificent Seven (1960) – Jesus Treviño’s trailer commentary

The Godfather (1972) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Exorcist (1973) – Oren Peli’s trailer commentary

Patton (1970) – Rod Lurie’s trailer commentary

Mash (1970)

Short Cuts (1993) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Lenny...

Mummies may be par for the course on Halloween, but when the Disney Channel gets involved, the undead creatures take on a life of their own. Just on time for the holiday comes “Under Wraps,” a movie about a 4000-year-old mummy named Harold (Phil Wright) who is brought back to life by three friends.

Since Harold speaks only through a series of grunts, Wright’s expertise as a dancer and choreographer were key as he uses physicality to help define the character. Writer and director Alex Zamm provided Wright with a personal reference when describing how he envisioned the role, recounting when his son was “a constipated toddler who would walk in this way, lumbering forward, teetering always off balance.”

Beyond Zamm’s son, physical comedians like Harpo Marx and Lucille Ball became touchstones of Harold’s development.

Apart from the broad strokes of physical comedy inspiration, Harold’s look...

You’ve probably seen John Belushi’s screen test for Saturday Night Live. It’s been floating around the internet for a while, and shows up on the occasional SNL original-cast docs. Part of the four-minute clip opens R.J. Cutler’s Belushi, his portrait of the comedian premiering on Showtime (starting November 22nd). By the time he got to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the Chicago-born, Albanian-American 26-year-old had already become the Tasmanian devil of Second City’s stage shows, the standout’s of National Lampoon’s off-off-Broadway satire Lemmings and Michael O’Donoghue...

When it comes to Old Hollywood screenwriters, there are few names that loom larger than Mankiewicz. That is probably because between two very different Mankiewicz brothers, some of the greatest screenplays of all-time were penned. In the case of Herman J. Mankiewicz that included The Wizard of Oz (1939), San Francisco (1936), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and a little movie called Citizen Kane (1941). And it’s in the latter’s style filmmaker David Fincher is visiting Mank’s life.

In Fincher’s first film at Netflix, the modern filmmaker is teaming with Gary Oldman, still fresh off his Oscar win for playing Winston Churchill, to offer a highly stylized and intriguing interpretation of the life and times of Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz at time when the silver screen was still black and white, and life in a smoke-filled Tinseltown took on an ambiguous gray.

With a teaser trailer absolutely dripping with atmosphere,...

Our 100th Guest! Comedy icon Martin Short joins us to discuss a few of the movies that made him.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Innerspace (1987)

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

On The Waterfront (1954)

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

Terms Of Endearment (1983)

Moby Dick (1956)

The Exorcist (1973)

King Kong (1933)

A History Of Violence (2005)

A Song To Remember (1945)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Annie Hall (1977)

The Oscar (1966)

Sleeper (1973)

Bananas (1971)

City Lights (1931)

September (1987)

The Harder They Fall (1956)

Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Schindler’s List (1993)

Kiss Me Stupid (1964)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)

The Bad And The Beautiful (1953)

Ben-Hur (1959)

Spartacus (1960)

The Ten Commandments (1956)

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

The Graduate (1967)

Klute (1971)

Blow-Up (1966)

Blow Out (1981)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

Burn! (1970)

Reflections In A Golden Eye (1967)

Grease 2 (1982)

The Conversation (1974)

Back To The Future (1985)

Other Notable Items

Saturday Night Live TV...

Vincente Minnelli took time out from expensive MGM shows like Gigi to knock off this tale about the London debutante season, a light-comedy Cinderella story without satire or social comment. Young Sandra Dee and John Saxon come off well, but the show belongs to stars Rex Harrison and especially Kay Kendall, whose comedy timing and finesse lift the tame, weightless material.

The Reluctant Debutante

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date May 26, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Rex Harrison, Kay Kendall, John Saxon, Sandra Dee, Angela Lansbury, Peter Myers, Diane Clare, Charles Herbert.

Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg

Film Editor: Adrienne Fazan

Written by William Douglas-Home from his play

Produced by Pandro S. Berman

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Not often mentioned as a highlight of Vincente Minnelli’s career, The Reluctant Debutante is enjoyable now for the comedy playing of Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall. Harrison hadn’t been...

Movies to watch when you’re staying in for a while, featuring recommendations from Dana Gould, Daniel Waters, Scott Alexander, and Allison Anders.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Destroy All Monsters (1969)

Planet Of The Apes (1968)

Beneath The Planet of the Apes (1970)

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971)

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (1972)

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes (1973)

Suparpie

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

Hello Down There (1969)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Thirteen Days (2000)

Stalker (1979)

Last Year At Marienbad (1961)

No Exit (1962)

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Sleeper (1973)

The Tenant (1976)

Final Cut: Ladies And Gentlemen (2012)

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)

La classe américaine (1993)

The Sex Adventures of a Single Man a.k.a. The 24 Hour Lover (1968)

The Omega Man (1971)

Soylent Green (1973)

Knives Out (2019)

The Hunt (2020)

Banana Split (2020)

The Cocoanuts (1929)

Animal Crackers (1930)

Monkey Business (1931)

Horse Feathers (1932)

Duck Soup (1933)

A Night At The Opera (1935)

The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971)

Susan Slade (1961)

My Blood Runs Cold...

The great Larry Wilmore joins us to share some very personal double features.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

1917 (2019)

Animal Crackers (1930)

Duck Soup (1933)

My Little Chickadee (1940)

A Night At The Opera (1935)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

The Parallax View (1974)

Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Jaws (1975)

The Stepford Wives (1975)

The Party (1968)

The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

Richard Pryor: Live In Concert (1979)

Richard Pryor: Live And Smokin’ (1971)

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986)

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Lenny (1974)

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

Lolita (1962)

Caligula (1979)

The Night of the Iguana (1964)

The Elephant Man (1980)

What Would Jack Do? (2020)

Blue Velvet (1986)

The Apartment (1960)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Double Indemnity (1944)

The Sting (1973)

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid...

Josh Samuel Frank will be speaking Monday November 11th at 1pm at Jewish Community Center’s Staenberg Family Complex in Creve Coeur (2 Millstone Blvd) as part of this year’s 2019 St. Louis Jewish Book Festival. Ticket information can be found Here

Giraffes on Horse­back Sal­ad was a Marx Broth­ers film, writ­ten by mod­ern art icon Sal­vador Dali who’d befriend­ed Har­po. Reject­ed by MGM, the script was thought lost for­ev­er. But author Josh Frank found it, and, with come­di­an Tim Hei­deck­er and Span­ish comics cre­ator Manuela Perte­ga, he’s re-cre­at­ed the film as a graph­ic nov­el in all its gorgeous, full-col­or, cinematic, sur­re­al glo­ry. It is the sto­ry of two unlike­ly friends, a Jew­ish super star film icon, and Span­ish painter,...

David Crow Jul 11, 2019

Gary Oldman will play Herman Mankiewicz for David Fincher in Mank. It will cover the making of Citizen Kane and The Wizard of Oz.

David Fincher and Gary Oldman finally working together feels like it’s destined to be movie history, but the fact that it’s occurring for a Herman Mankiewicz biopic is doubly on-the-nose. The film, which will reveal how a newspaper man became the screenwriter of what many consider to be the finest film ever produced, 1941’s Citizen Kane, is set-up for Fincher at Netflix, indicative of an ever growing relationship between the streaming service and Oscar nominated auteur. It also promises to be a personal film for the director as his own father, Jack Fincher, wrote the screenplay.

The film, which is currently titled Mank, is one Fincher has wanted to make since 1997—so after Se7en and The Game but before Fight Club...

Tony Sokol Mar 2, 2019

Graphic novel Giraffes on Horseback Salad puts together the Salvador Dalí Marx Brothers film that was never made.

The iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí was obsessed with the anarchic harpist Harpo Marx and wrote a screenplay for what he hoped would become a Marx Brother movie. Or Dalí didn't hope, as he considered the screenplay art enough. The upcoming graphic novel Giraffes on Horseback Salad pieces together what some papers have called one of the greatest movies never made. Written by Josh Frank, Giraffes on Horseback Salad comes out from Quirk Publishers on March 19.

"Grab some popcorn and take a seat," reads the official book synopsis. "The curtain is about to rise on a film like no other! But first, the real-life backstory: Giraffes on Horseback Salad was a Marx Brothers film written by modern art icon Salvador Dalí, who’d befriended Harpo. Rejected by MGM, the script was thought lost forever.

Reportedly the biggest-budgeted and most widely released Bollywood production ever, “Thugs of Hindostan” is an exuberantly excessive masala of swashbuckling heroics, broader-than-broad comedy, propulsively choreographed action, and raucously caffeinated song-and-dance sequences. Writer-director Vijay Krishna Acharya, a creative force behind the popular “Dhoom” movies, has borrowed freely from Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean,” even to the point of having Indian superstar Aamir Khan often come across as a smudged carbon of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow while playing a similarly unreliable rogue. But for all its recycled elements and predictable narrative stratagems, this diverting Diwali-timed extravaganza stands on its own merits as a lightly satisfying popcorn epic — provided, of course, you have a taste for such over-the-top amusement.

During the darkly majestic opening scenes — set in 1795, when the Indian subcontinent was known as Hindostan — Acharya provides the impetus for a tale of rebellion, revenge, and redemption as members of a...

Welcome to this week’s Ring of Honor review, right here on Nerdly. I’m Nathan Favel and this turned out to be a big night for the league and we will be able to enjoy people beating the hell out of each other for money. Don’t walk away… Renee.

Match #1: The Briscoes beat Coast 2 Coast – Ring Of Honor World Tag Team Titles Match My Take: 3.5 out of 5

This was a much slower match than you would have expected from these two teams, but the action was structured properly and felt like a real competition, rather than a stunt show, so it was worth the viewing. C2C has had a quiet year of success, high-lighted by their undefeated streak, which I barely noticed, at all. C2C is a really good team in this match, with fluid tag work that is reminiscent of the Motor City Machine Guns at their peak.

It's a strange piece of pop culture history from a time when Kiss ruled the world. A legendarily wacky production full of hilariously ridiculous anecdotes resulted in one awesomely bad made-for-tv movie, starring a super-powered Kiss vs. an evil inventor and some robot imposters at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Here we're taking a look at 10 things you never knew about Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.

It was supposed to be A Hard Day's Night meets Star Wars

NBC aired Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park a few days before Halloween, 1978. At the time, few things were bigger in pop culture than Star Wars and Kiss. Worn out by rigorous touring and recording schedules and the worsening substance abuse problems of Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, some of the Kiss guys and the people around them saw comic books, television, and movies as the next logical steps for...

Ninety years after Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford first floated the idea of creating a museum for the movie business, the completion of Hollywood’s first major movie museum is finally nearing. Architect Renzo Piano and officials from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences traveled to Manhattan Monday to preview the project for East Coast press.

After fits and starts, funding headaches and clashing visions, the 300,000-square-foot Academy Museum will open in mid-2019. Its backers, AMPAS, better known as the group that hands the Oscars, promise that the museum will be an immersive experience that will feature everything from screenings to talks to props and items from iconic movies.

“It’s much more than a museum,” said Academy Museum director Kerry Brougher at the Plaza Hotel. “It’s a hub for film lovers…to come and experience film in different ways.”

The museum will cost in excess of...

The Scarlet Empress (1934), starring Marlene Dietrich, John Lodge, Sam Jaffe, Louise Dresser and “a supporting cast of 1,000 players,” is director Josef von Sternberg at his most grandiose and excessive, which is just another way of saying “at his best,” at the height of a state of expressive delirium no other director has ever really matched. (Though many have, either consciously or subconsciously, tried– I wonder if Ken Russell ever admitted envy for von Sternberg or this film.) Von Sternberg’s paints his pictures with gasp-and-giggle-inducingly broad strokes, but his approach is no joke. There’s an exhilarating strain of claustrophobia in the director’s films which is given its freest rein here. His frames are burdened with grandeur, luxury and horror closing in, and he achieves a genuine sense of epic sprawl and decadence, despite the orchestrated sense that the whole of Russia, royalty as well as the entirety of its oppressed,...

Updated: Following a couple of Julie London Westerns*, Turner Classic Movies will return to its July 2017 Star of the Month presentations. On July 27, Ronald Colman can be seen in five films from his later years: A Double Life, Random Harvest (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942), The Late George Apley (1947), and The Story of Mankind (1957). The first three titles are among the most important in Colman's long film career. George Cukor's A Double Life earned him his one and only Best Actor Oscar; Mervyn LeRoy's Random Harvest earned him his second Best Actor Oscar nomination; George Stevens' The Talk of the Town was shortlisted for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. All three feature Ronald Colman at his very best. The early 21st century motto of international trendsetters, from Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Turkey's Recep Erdogan to Russia's Vladimir Putin and the United States' Donald Trump, seems to be, The world is reality TV and reality TV...

It’s a big holiday weekend, so Hollywood has concocted a new flick that’s a perfect match for that very special day. It’s an ode to mothers everywhere, but it’s not sugary and sappy, no hearts and flowers here. That’s because it’s the sophomore feature film from Amy Schumer, so it’s more than a touch tart and spicy. Two years ago the superstar of stand-up and cable TV (the critical and ratings darling of Comedy Central) stormed the multiplex with the hit comedy romance (which she wrote) Trainwreck. For this follow-up , she’s decided to share the screen (top billing, above the title in the ads) with a movie veteran. Of course, she had terrific co-stars in her previous flick (Bill Hader, future Oscar-winner Brie Larson and NBA icon LeBron James, for gosh sake). But this time Amy’s part of a team similar...

Albert Einstein: physicist, Nobel laureate, romantic and … owl? Trying to get a handle on the complex person whose name is literally synonymous with genius was the biggest challenge for Nat Geo Channel’s first scripted anthology series, which even has the title “Genius.”

Einstein was best associated with his theory of relativity, which is one of the two pillars of modern physics, and his mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc². Beyond the science and iconic shock of grey hair, though, was a man who started out very differently from how we now perceive him.

Read More: Ron Howard Avoided Directing TV Until ‘Genius,’ and He Has a Reason for That — IndieWire’s Turn It On Podcast

“The goal of the show is to really humanize, get under the skin of Albert Einstein,” showrunner Ken Biller said. “We discovered that he lived this big, bold, brash, complicated, messy life.”

Einstein as a...

Time to get ready for more I Love Lucy. CBS is planning to air a special on its network this May! The special will feature two colorized episodes aired back to back! The episodes will show off guest stars Harpo Marx and Van Johnson.CBS released a press statement sharing more about the episodes. Check that out below.Legendary comedian Harpo Marx and motion picture star Van Johnson are the guests on The New I Love Lucy Superstar Special, a new one-hour special featuring two colorized back-to-back episodes of the 1950s series, to be broadcast Friday, May 19 (9:00-10:00Pm, Et/Pt) on the CBS Television Network.The two episodes, "The Dancing Star," featuring Van Johnson, and "Harpo Marx," with comedian Harpo Marx, are newly colorized with a nod to the 1950s period in which they were filmed. This is similar to...

The Parker family’s dysfunctional antics will continue, now that TBS has given a green light to Season 3 of The Detour.

RelatedSamantha Bee, TBS to Host Rival White House Correspondents’ Dinner

The Detour closes out its sophomore run with a new episode tonight at 10/9c, followed by a super-sized season finale, which will be presented with limited commercial interruption at 10:30.

“Season 2 has been so smart, hilarious and wrong,” TBS Svp Thom Hinkle said in a statement. “And from the early nuggets I’ve gotten from [creators] Jason [Jones, who also stars] and Sam [Bee], Season 3 is going to be even more effed up.”

RelatedCable...

What a Way to Go!

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1964 / Color B&W / 2:35 enhanced widescreen 1:37 flat Academy / 111 min. / Street Date February 7, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, Robert Cummings, Dick Van Dyke, Reginald Gardiner, Margaret Dumont, Fifi D’Orsay, Maurice Marsac, Lenny Kent, Marjorie Bennett, Army Archerd, Barbara Bouchet, Tom Conway, Peter Duchin, Douglass Dumbrille, Pamelyn Ferdin, Teri Garr, Queenie Leonard.

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Film Editor: Marjorie Fowler

Original Music: Nelson Riddle

Written by: Betty Comden, Adolph Green story by Gwen Davis

Produced by: Arthur P. Jacobs

Directed by: J. Lee Thompson

Want to know what the producer of Planet of the Apes was up to, before that milestone movie? Arthur P. Jacobs was an agent for big stars before he became a producer, which positioned him well for his first show for 20th Fox, What a Way to Go!

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1859 Billy the Kid, future legendary outlaw, is born. He's been played in movies and TV by actors like Buster Crabbe, Hugh O'Brian, Paul Newman, Clu Galager, Val Kilmer, and perhaps most famously by Kris Kristofferson, BAFTA nominated for Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (1973)

1887 Boris Karloff, villainous movie icon (Frankenstein, The Mask of Fu Manchu, Scarface, etcetera) is born

1888 Harpo Marx is born...

Mariann Lewinsky curates several strands at Bologna's festival of restored or recovered films, Il Cinema Ritrovato: this year, she commemorated the centenary birth of the Dada movement and Krazy Kat with her Krazy Serial, in which surviving episodes of incomplete serials were jammed together with shorts and newsreels. The finest moment was perhaps when one serial ended and another, Abel Gance's The Poison Gases, began, but with it's opening title long lost, so that the caption "A few minutes later" seemed to join to wholly unconnected narratives.The preceding serial was Jacques Feyder's bizarre spoof, The Clutching Foot (Le pied qui étreint), which I realized from pervious excursions to Bologna was a parody not just of serials in general but of 1914's The Exploits of Elaine in particular, in which Pearl White was regularly menaced by a secret society led by the hooded and spasm-wracked mastermind The Clutching Hand.

Savant UK correspondent Lee Broughton analyzes one of his favorite pictures starring Stacy Keach, who seemed to make only cult items in the '70s and '80s. William Peter Blatty dishes out a thick mix of comedy and dark soul-searching about the human condition as a Caligari- insane asylum, but with new twists. The Ninth Configuration Second Sight Region B Blu-ray 1980 / Colour / 2.35:1 enhanced widescreen / 118 m. / available through Amazon.uk Starring Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Jason Miller, Ed Flanders, Neville Brand, George Dicenzo, Moses Gunn, Robert Loggia, Joe Spinell, Tom Atkins. Cinematography Gerry Fisher Production Design William Malley Film Editors Peter Taylor, T. Battle Davis, Roberto Silvi, Peter Lee-Thompson Original Music Barry DeVorzon Written, Produced and Directed by William Peter Blatty from his novel

Reviewed by Lee Broughton

(Note: Savant reviews as a guest at Tfh. Here I stretch my prerogatives by presenting a review from Lee Broughton, a valued U.

Who are the funniest, wackiest, cleverest, wittiest comic actors in the history of film and television? Take a look at our list and see who we came up with.

The top 25 laugh-getters…

#25…George Carlin: Probably the best stand-up comedian of all-time. He brilliantly satirized American culture, mixing his liberal social commentary with an often unapologetically coarse and dirty style of language. His penchant for obscenities was most evident in his trademark routine “Seven words you can never say on television”. No one was better at mocking the excesses of American culture than Carlin.

#24…Robin Williams: He had a manic energy and great improvisational skills. His hyper, free-form style inspired many comedians to follow, such as Jim Carrey. He shot to fame in the TV series Mork & Mindy, before breaking away to very successful movie career, appearing in films like Good Morning Vietnam, The World According to Garp, Mrs. Doubtfire and Popeye.

Groucho Marx in 'Duck Soup.' Groucho Marx movies: 'Duck Soup,' 'The Story of Mankind' and romancing Margaret Dumont on TCM Grouch Marx, the bespectacled, (painted) mustached, cigar-chomping Marx brother, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 14, '15. Marx Brothers fans will be delighted, as TCM is presenting no less than 11 of their comedies, in addition to a brotherly reunion in the 1957 all-star fantasy The Story of Mankind. Non-Marx Brothers fans should be delighted as well – as long as they're fans of Kay Francis, Thelma Todd, Ann Miller, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Allan Jones, affectionate, long-tongued giraffes, and/or that great, scene-stealing dowager, Margaret Dumont. Right now, TCM is showing Robert Florey and Joseph Santley's The Cocoanuts (1929), an early talkie notable as the first movie featuring the four Marx Brothers – Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo. Based on their hit Broadway...

For Melissa McCarthy, finding the perfect wig can make or break a performance.

Like Peter Sellers, Harpo Marx and other comedy greats before her, McCarthy understands the power of a good wig.

"I just think wigs and makeup and costumes completely transform me when I read a character I really, really love," the Spy actress says in an interview with People and Entertainment Weekly editorial director Jess Cagle. She describes finding the right hairpiece as "incredibly important."

McCarthy, 44, explains that when she reads a new character's lines in a script, she knows "immediately what they look like."

After painting that mental picture,...

Where else to present a concert version of a new, original Broadway musical titled Song Of Solomon than at the Actors' Temple. The historic building, constructed in 1923, has been designated a national landmark and the synagogue has been home to many of the greats in show business. Some of it's members and congregants were Al Jolson, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, Eddie Cantor and countless other lesser-known actors, comedians, singers, playwrights, composers, musicians, writers, dancers and theatrical agents. Academy Award winner Shelley Winters kept the High Holy Days in the Actors Temple. as well as The Three Stooges, and Harpo Marx who attended services. Ed Sullivan, whose wife Sylvia Weinstein was Jewish, was also a member.

Dear Danny,

I also rode the Tokyo Tribe rollercoaster, and my head hasn’t stopped spinning yet. Slamming together the most rabid excesses of the worlds of manga comics and hip-hop music, it’s a continuous blitzkrieg: Sono’s ne plus ultra of sheer brio, and, along with Godard’s Adieu au language, the festival’s most assaultive sensory experience so far. Its pinwheel neon hues, inflamed camera movements and acrobatic gangland mugging are straight-up dilations of Seijun Suzuki’s vintage gonzo pulp—indeed, the first time I ever heard Japanese rapping on screen was during a brief interlude in Suzuki’s mock-opera Princess Raccoon. I doubt even that veteran iconoclast, however, could have dreamed up the bit in Tokyo Tribe when the vile underworld kingpin (Riki Takeuchi), swollen like an obscene parade float, pulverizes a field of warring gangs with a Gatling gun held, of course, crotch-level. Such moments of absolute glee abound,...

You don’t know why you haven’t watched it. Your nerdier friends have loved it since it was on PBS back in the day, and you knew a girl in high school who knit her own giant scarf during homeroom because that actor who looked kind of like Harpo Marx wore one when he played “the Doctor.” Maybe you’re like me, and when Doctor Who fandom started pushing Star Wars and Star Trek out of your local comic convention, your adolescent heart turned cold and rejected the low-budget British sci-fi series out of hand.But now you feel out of step. It’s one of those zeitgeist-y Game of Thrones “Winter Is Coming” moments, and you’re on the outside, looking in. You’ve heard that the new (well, newish, the reboot was almost ten years ago) Who is more popular in the U.S. than it’s...

We're continuing this periodic summer project where we revisit classic sitcom episode. This week we're going waaaay back to the 1950s for one of the most famous television half hours of them all: "Job Switching," from "I Love Lucy" season 2, coming up just as soon as I show you the creases on these silk stockings... "Job Switching," which first aired in 1952, is by far going to be the oldest episode we do in this series (unless "The Honeymooners" magically starts streaming before the summer is out), and I'm going to be very curious for your reactions to it. Ken Levine occasionally will do posts where he asks his readers what they think of vintage sitcom episodes, and the reaction tends to be mixed, and leaning more towards negative among people who didn't grow up in one of the previous peak periods for multi-cam comedy. In terms of sitcoms that have...

How did Oprah Winfrey first nab the job of hosting A.M. Chicago back in 1984? By sending in an audition tape that was compiled overnight, and details how the would-be media mogul came to have a name that's somewhere between a biblical reference and Harpo Marx. Photos: The Resurgence of Oprah Winfrey Earlier this week, the Own channel posted a YouTube clip of Winfrey's original 1983 audition tape, which she introduced as a reel she put together overnight with an editor, since she didn't keep track of her stories as well as she should have. Wearing a black-and-cream

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Feature Alex Westthorp 16 Apr 2014 - 07:00

Alex's trek through the film roles of actors who've played the Doctor reaches Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy...

Read the previous part in this series, Doctor Who: the film careers of Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker, here.

In March 1981, as he made his Doctor Who debut, Peter Davison was already one the best known faces on British television. Not only was he the star of both a BBC and an ITV sitcom - Sink Or Swim and Holding The Fort - but as the young and slightly reckless Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great And Small, about the often humorous cases of Yorkshire vet James Herriot and his colleagues, he had cemented his stardom. The part led, indirectly, to his casting as the venerable Time Lord.

The recently installed Doctor Who producer, John Nathan-Turner, had been the Production Unit Manager on...