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Technically it’s 21, because the Smothers Brothers did it twice. Sue us.

20 Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

The 11th episode of Season One was the first double-hoster, featuring the duo behind Pete and Dud, a wildly popular British satirical odd couple.

19 Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss

Benjamin had hosted solo earlier in his career, but Prentiss’ career took off in its own right, the two had a CBS sitcom called He & She, and they became the first married couple to host SNL in 1980.

18 The Smothers Brothers

Tommy and Dick Smothers graced Studio 8H twice, in 1982 and 1983.

17 Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas

Moranis and Thomas rode their Canadian bro characters, Sctv’s McKenzie Brothers, to an SNL appearance in 1983, multiple commercials and their own movie.

16 Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges

The bros joined up for, among other things, a moderate-to-severely homophobic sketch where a guy comes in for a massage...

aka Bobbie is the best.

After delving into the world of sex work with a discussion of Cam (listen) and getting paranoid with the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (listen), we are concluding our themed Doppelgängers and Deception month with Bryan Forbes‘ controversial and oh-so-timely adaptation of Ira Levin‘s The Stepford Wives.

In the film, Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) moves to the quiet town of Stepford with her husband (Peter Masterson) and children. Shortly after moving, Joanna starts to realize that there’s something not quite right with the suburb’s women: they’re vapid, unfathomably devoted to housework and completely subservient to their husbands. After teaming up with Bobbie (Paula Prentiss) another recent Stepford transplant, Joanna begins to investigate the mystery of Stepford’s wives and makes a horrific discovery.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts,...

Since 1975 nearly a thousand hosts have graced the stage at Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center for “Saturday Night Live.”

Actors, comedians, musicians and even politicians have taken the stage to make America laugh on Saturday night for 50 seasons. Twenty five of these hosts have been inducted into the “Five Timers Club.” The club was first introduced during Tom Hanks’ 1990 monologue, featuring Steve Martin, Elliott Gould and Paul Simon.

During Martin Short’s December 2024 appearance, several Five Timers Club members popped up on the show to welcome him into the club, including Emma Stone, Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Kristen Wiig and more, to give him the ceremonial robe.

Alec Baldwin has hosted the show 17 times, the most in the series’ history, with Martin, Hanks, Buck Henry and John Goodman following close behind.

As the show celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, we have rounded up every person who has hosted the sketch show.

In honor of this year's Election Day in the US, have a look at one of our favorite conspiracy thrillers. The Parallax View, directed by the great Alan J. Pakula, originally opened in theaters June 1974. It's one of many conspiracy thrillers from the 70s about how the US government is super shady and caught up in all kinds of sneaky operations. It's about a reporter's investigation into a secretive organization, the Parallax Corporation, whose business is political assassination. 3 years after witnessing the murder of a senator atop Seattle’s Space Needle, reporter Joseph Frady digs into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the event—and stumbles into a labyrinthine conspiracy far more sinister than he could have imagined. Warren Beatty stars with Hume Cronyn, William Daniels, and Paula Prentiss. I had never seen this movie until the Criterion re-release a few years ago, and it blew me away. Its been stuck in my mind ever since.

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

This September, we’re celebrating Back to School Night with four midnight movies that aren’t just academically themed but also teach the lessons essential to understanding this school of cinema.

First, read the spoiler-free bait — a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film and why we think it’s worth memorializing. After you’ve watched the movie, come back for the bite — a breakdown of all the spoiler-y moments you’d want to unpack when exiting a theater.

The Bait: Happy New World Pictures Day!

“It Gets Bad On Friday The 13th,” reads the inscription in an ancient book with enough power to rule the world. “But It Gets Worse On Saturday The 14th!”

That’s all you really need to know before watching writer/director Howard R. Cohen...

The story of The Stepford Wives by novelist Ira Levin received a film adaption three years after it was written in 1972. The film starred the iconic Katharine Ross (The Graduate), along with a variety of other renowned actors, like Peter Masterson, Paula Prentiss, Nanette Newman, and Tina Louise. It was directed by English director Bryan Forbes who didn't stray too far from the source material. Levin's story reflected fears about the growing popularity of Second Wave Feminism. Women were becoming more financially independent, marital rape was finally outlawed, and Roe v. Wade was implemented by the Supreme Court. The original Stepford Wives was a dystopian horror story for feminists and a dreamy fantasy for male chauvinists.

Warning: the following contains mild spoilers for The Blackcoat’s Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, and Gretel & Hansel.

In 1960, an unassuming man stared through a peephole into the site of a looming murder and forever changed the horror genre. Anthony Perkins shocked the world as Norman Bates, a mild-mannered hotel clerk-turned-murderer in Alfred Hitchock’s iconic Psycho, but the horrific legacy of this transgressive act can still be felt today. After making his screen debut playing a younger version of Norman in Psycho II, Oz Perkins would follow in his fathers footsteps, creating cinematic peepholes with the lens of the camera. But rather than gaze into a shower soon filled with blood, Perkins allows us to peek into a variety of waking nightmares and watch as monsters exert their hideous will. The talented writer and director excels in atmospheric horror navigated by sympathetic young heroines determined to survive.

In 1960, Kirk Douglas had helped to break the Hollywood Blacklist with "Spartacus" by publicly crediting then-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo as the screenwriter. But in 1969, he found himself working with a director who had been anything but helpful to his Hollywood colleagues during the height of McCarthyism. Sadly, this team-up between Douglas and director Elia Kazan also had the unfortunate distinction of being one of the Greek-American filmmaker's most derided films.

"The Arrangement" currently has a 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which should tell you pretty much all you need to know about how this ill-fated drama was received upon release. The film is an adaptation of Kazan's own 1967 novel of the same name and follows LA advertising executive Evangelos Topouzoglou/Eddie Anderson (Douglas) as he endures a protracted nervous breakdown (which is what watching this incredible trailer feels like). Critics at the time were merciless with their condemnation of Kazan's film,...

Yoshio Yoda, who portrayed Fuji Kobiaji, the lovable Japanese prisoner of war who becomes a valued member of the Pt-73 crew led by Ernest Borgnine on the 1960s ABC comedy McHale’s Navy, died Jan. 13 in Fullerton, California, it was announced. He was 88.

Yoda appeared on every one of the 138 episodes of McHale’s Navy during the Universal Television show’s 1962-66 run, plus two movies.

His character deserted from the Imperial Japanese Navy and becomes a Seaman 3rd Class, gladly “serving time” cooking and working for Borgnine’s Lt. Commander Quinton McHale and his crew on the fictional Pacific island base of Taratupa.

Fuji’s presence and identity is meant to be kept a secret from Joe Flynn’s Captain Binghamton, so whenever the boss arrives unannounced, he’s told to “head for the hills!” in a popular running gag.

Born in Tokyo on March 31, 1934, Yoda was studying law at Keio University...

A black comedy with an extremely ironic title, this 1971 film was directed by Ivan Passer and stars George Segal as a drug addict who calls Times Square his home. The supporting cast is reason enough to see it: Paula Prentiss as Segal’s wife, Karen Black as his sometime girlfriend, and Robert De Niro as a crooked cop.

The post Born to Win appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Born to Win (1971).Movie-lovers!Welcome back to The Deuce Notebook, a collaboration between Mubi Notebook and The Deuce Film Series, our monthly event at Nitehawk Williamsburg that excavates the facts and fantasies of cinema's most infamous block in the world: 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. For each screening, my co-hosts and I pick a flick that we think embodies the era of late-night moviegoing and present the theater at which it premiered.Czech New Wave director Ivan Passer—who co-wrote, with Miloš Forman, the Oscar-nominated "Loves of a Blonde" (1965) and "The Firemen’s Ball" (1967)—released his first American film, "Born to Win," in 1971. Starring George Segal and Karen Black, this portrait of addiction went relatively unnoticed for the past 50 years until now: Fun City Editions has recently restored the film and released a gorgeous new Blu-ray. Below, we explore Duffy Square and a few of the locations that...

The latest in our series of writers recommending lesser-known films available to stream is an ode to an unnerving chiller starring Ruth Wilson

There wasn’t a lot of Shirley Jackson in Haunting of Hill House, Netflix’s sensationally scary but very loose adaptation of the prolific American suspense writer’s most famous novel. Mike Flanagan, who wrote and directed the miniseries, drew clearer inspiration from a different master of the macabre – the King, instead of the queen, of bestselling horror fiction. For a closer approximation of Jackson’s uniquely unsettling voice, that gift she had for raising the hairs on the back of a reader’s neck, look instead to a more compact ghost story released by the same streaming service two years earlier. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House isn’t officially based on any of Jackson’s more than 200 published tales. All the same,...

Ivan Passer’s first American film and his first in the English language is a core life-with-a-junkie tale in a cold Manhattan winter. George Segal is the ‘habituated, not addicted’ (he says) user whose married life has already been destroyed. Can he escape with the help of his new girlfriend? Hector Elizondo’s pimp/pusher has no intention of letting that happen. What’s weird is Passer’s frequently light tone — Segal’s criminal antics verge on the absurd. It’s a great film to see Karen Black, a young Robert De Niro and even Paula Prentiss in action, and yet another snapshot of Times Square in its most degraded decade.

Born to Win

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Scraping Bottom / Street Date May 31, 2022 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 27.99, from Amazon / 34.99

Starring: George Segal, Karen Black, Paula Prentiss, Hector Elizondo, Jay Fletcher, Robert De Niro, Ed Madsen, Marcia Jean Kurtz,...

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By Todd Garbarini

I have long considered Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation to be his greatest film. The story of a tortured sound recordist, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman in arguably his greatest screen performance), a man who is disturbed by the morality and ethics of his profession. He is secretly recording private citizens in exchange for payment from companies with a vested interest in doing so and whose actions have resulted in several deaths. The film was a long gestating project that came about during a 1967 discussion the director had with fellow director Irvin Kirshner about wiretapping and privacy intrusion. Following the instant success of the release of The Godfather in March 1972, Mr. Coppola was only given the green light to make The Conversation for Paramount Pictures after they begged him to direct The Godfather Part II. One month after the public announcement was made about Mr.

Like everyone else, we love Lucy and celebrate the anniversary of Lucille Ball‘s landmark laffer “I Love Lucy,” which debuted on CBS exactly 70 years ago today on Oct. 15, 1951. The show won the Emmy for Best Situation Comedy twice and Ball claimed two trophies as well.

Ball went on to win two more Emmys for the last two seasons of her second series, “The Lucy Show”. In 1967, she edged out “Bewitched” stars Elizabeth Montgomery and Agnes Moorehead and “That Girl’s” Marlo Thomas. By the way, Montgomery never won an Emmy, despite nine nods, including five for her work as that witch with a twitch. The following year, in what was to be her final Emmy race, Ball prevailed yet again. Her competition: Montgomery and Thomas, as well as Barbara Feldon (“Get Smart”) and Paula Prentiss (“He and She”).

Watch that moment from the 1967 Emmycast when Ball wins. As her...

Don't let the title of Howard R. Cohen's Saturday the 14th fool you. Despite being released in theaters after both Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981), Saturday the 14th has absolutely nothing to do with the iconic slasher franchise. Instead, it takes a satirical look at Hammer horror and Universal monsters, while also laying on a very thick layer of sight gags and jokes - that sometimes stick the landing. John Hyatt, the patriarch of the family, makes a sandwich - during a rather random moment in the movie - that consists of what looked like various deli meats, cheese, a tomato, and topped off with a bit of peanut butter. For any of our readers who may be interested in watching this movie after reading this retrospective, that sandwich is a lot like this movie. There are too many ideas, references, and jokes that don't mesh well together,...

Exclusive: We are hearing that Apple will emerge victorious for the big Sue Mengers biopic project we told you about on Sunday night with Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence circling and Paolo Sorrentino attached to direct. Apple is in advanced talks to get this coveted package which came down to a run-off between the tech corp’s Original Films division and Netflix. There are still moving parts here and details are being worked out.

Apple recently shelled out $200M for a huge Matthew Vaughn feature Argylle. They also spent $120M+ for the global rights to Emancipation, the film package with Antoine Fuqua directing and Will Smith starring, and made a big commitment to Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, all of which Deadline first reported.

Pic is being written by Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo and John Logan. Erik Feig and his Picturestart are producing. Lawrence’s producing partner Justine Polsky is also producing.

A big biopic project about famed talent agent Sue Mengers is being shopped around town Deadline has confirmed with Oscar winners Jennifer Lawrence circling and filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino attached. Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo and John Logan wrote the screenplay about the female agent who crashed the Hollywood boys club of agenting with her brandishing an outsized personality to go with her client list.

We hear that Apple is in the mix for the Sue Mengers project, and has read the script with Netflix also buzzed to be another contender for the project. Apple and Netflix did not return calls tonight when reached.

Mengers had stints at McA, ICM and Wma, and she repped a list of clients that at one time or other included Barbra Streisand, Candice Bergen, Peter Bogdanovich, Michael Caine, Dyan Cannon, Cher, Joan Collins, Brian De Palma, Faye Dunaway, Bob Fosse, Gene Hackman, Sidney Lumet, Ali McGraw,...

Hollywood’s last big all-star war epic in Black & White? Otto Preminger took a happy film company to Hawaii for this enormous saga about the Naval push in the Pacific Theater of WW2, with none other than John Wayne as the competent commander leading the charge. Soap-opera scenes aside, it’s a thrilling epic directed with Preminger’s well-known reserve. The star-gazing isn’t bad either — Kirk Douglas! Patricia Neal! Henry Fonda! Paula Prentiss! The finish is a huge naval battle with impressive live-action special effects, and given a moody music score by Jerry Goldsmith.

In Harm’s Way

Blu-ray

Paramount Viacom CBS

1965 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 167 min. / Street Date June 29, 2021 / Available from Paramount Movies / 13.99

Starring: John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Tom Tryon, Paula Prentiss, Brandon De Wilde, Jill Haworth, Dana Andrews, Stanley Holloway, Burgess Meredith, Franchot Tone, Patrick O’Neal, Carroll O’Connor, Slim Pickens, George Kennedy, Barbara Bouchet.

Cinematography:...

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By Todd Garbarini

The late Loren Adelson Singer, who passed away in 2009, has published several novels as an author, among them That’s the House, There (1973), Boca Grande (1974), and Making Good (1993). His first work, 1970’s The Parallax View, published by Doubleday, was written as an answer to his disdain for the printing business he worked at with his father-in-law and proved to be enough of a success to permit him to become a paid author. The inspiration for the book came from the covert operations he assisted in while training with the Office of Strategic Services and was penned following the high-profile political assassinations of the 1960’s. It also provided the blueprint for the film of the same title directed by the late Alan J. Pakula, the second in his informally named “paranoia trilogy,” bookended by Klute (1971) and All the President’s Men...

Paranoia strikes deep! Alan J. Pakula made The Watergate-era conspiracy creepshow in this sinister extrapolation of political trends. Warren Beatty’s investigative reporter thinks he has an inside track to expose and destroy what looks like a shadow assassination bureau. If the technology of 1974 could be made this efficient, our own Brave New World of ‘truth control’ seems even scarier. Pakula and cameraman Gordon Willis found a Panavision style that fully expresses the faceless corporate menace; the ‘Parallax Recruitment Montage’ is still the most terrifying piece of psych-out Agit-prop ever assembled.

The Parallax View

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1064

1974 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 102 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 9, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, Paula Prentiss, William Daniels, Jo Ann Harris, Walter McGinn, Jim Davis, Stacy Keach Sr., Ford Rainey, Richard Bull, Kenneth Mars, Bill McKinney, Craig R. Baxley, Anthony Zerbe.

Cinematography: Gordon Willis

Film Editor: John W. Wheeler...

Like everyone else, we love Lucy and celebrate the anniversary of Lucille Ball‘s landmark laffer “I Love Lucy,” which debuted on CBS exactly 69 years ago today on Oct. 15, 1951. The show won the Emmy for Best Situation Comedy twice and Ball claimed two trophies as well.

Ball went on to win two more Emmys for the last two seasons of her second series, “The Lucy Show”. In 1967, she edged out “Bewitched” stars Elizabeth Montgomery and Agnes Moorehead and “That Girl’s” Marlo Thomas. By the way, Montgomery never won an Emmy, despite nine nods, including five for her work as that witch with a twitch. The following year, in what was to be her final Emmy race, Ball prevailed yet again. Her competition: Montgomery and Thomas, as well as Barbara Feldon (“Get Smart”) and Paula Prentiss (“He and She”).

Watch that moment from the 1967 Emmycast when Ball wins. As her...

by Jason Adams

Impetigore's Tara Basro (L) as "Maya" and Marissa Anita (R) as "Dini"

The concept of the "Funny Best Friend" is nothing new, but I always tend to think of the role in the context of the Romantic Comedy. Think Laura San Giacomo in Pretty Woman, who gets to be so hysterically vulgar and dumb, all the better to make Julia Roberts seem in turn like the classy and smart one. That's what these roles are there in the script for -- these Falstaffian sidekicks, who throw our lead characters' highs and lows into contrast.

But Horror Films have a storied history with these roles as well and this week Shudder premiered one of the best I've seen in awhile -- Marissa Anita playing "Dini" in Indonesian director Joko Anwar's latest fright flick Impetigore. You can drop Anita right down alongside Rose McGowan in Scream, Greta Gerwig...

“I Love Lucy” is the subject of a heartfelt tribute from “Will & Grace” on April 9. In “We Love Lucy,” Grace (Debra Messing), Jack (Sean Hayes) and Karen (Megan Mullally) each imagine themselves as Lucy Ricardo opposite Will (Eric McCormack) as her hubby Ricky. Part of the fun is seeing this trio of talent also play Fred and Ethel in various combinations.

“Will & Grace” and “I Love Lucy” both won Best Comedy Series at the Emmys. The former did it in 2000; Hayes and Mullally won that year as well. McCormack prevailed in 2001 and Messing in 2003. “Will and Grace” is only the third TV series in Emmy history in which all four of the main cast won awards, following “All in the Family” and “The Golden Girls.”

Of the quartet of talent on “I Love Lucy,” it was only the women — Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance — who won over the TV academy voters.

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...

Ivan Passer, a leading figure of the Czech new wave who directed films including “Cutter’s Way,” died Thursday of pulmonary complications in Reno, Nevada, an associate of the family confirmed. He was 86.

Passer was a close friend and collaborator of the late Czech filmmaker Milos Forman. Passer met Forman at a boarding school for delinquents or children who had lost their parents during the war (other students included Vaclav Havel and Jerzy Skolimowski). They reunited at film school in Prague, where he began collaborating on Forman’s films including “Loves of a Blonde” and “The Firemen’s Ball.” Passer’s first feature was the 1965 film “Intimate Lighting.”

Passer and Forman escaped Prague in 1969 as Russian tanks were advancing, when they pretended to be visiting Austria for the weekend. Though they lacked exit visas, a border guard who was a fan of Forman’s let them cross to safety, Passer told Variety...

It’s wacky, daffy and incredibly square, yet Frank Tashlin’s late career Doris Day romp has a certain gotta-watch interest factor: the male cast of clowns performs the sexist comedy well, and Ms. Day’s fantastic screen personality brightens everything. Space-age executive lothario Rod Taylor hires Doris just for romantic purposes, while Arthur Godfrey, John McGiver, Dom DeLuise, Edward Andrews, Paul Lynde and Dick Martin execute dated slapstick amid ‘futuristic’ gadgets from the days of Buck Rogers.

The Glass Bottom Boat

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date March 26, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Doris Day, Rod Taylor, Arthur Godfrey, John McGiver, Dom DeLuise,

Ellen Corby, Edward Andrews, Eric Fleming, Paul Lynde, Dick Martin.

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Film Editor: John McSweeney

Original Music: Frank DeVol

Written by Everett Freeman

Produced by Everett Freeman and Martin Melcher

Directed by Frank Tashlin

The great director Frank Tashlin is...

With politics on our minds for Election Day, we've created this list of the best politically-motivated films. We promise they will cause less anxiety and be more fun than actual politics.

Although ultimately important, politics can lead to conflict and stress. Also, bureaucracy in action can be just plain boring. Thankfully, when Hollywood makes films about politics, they tend to be exciting, thought-provoking, and empowering. Full of juicy conspiracy theories, shedding light on real life events, and empowering the viewer to make a difference in the world around them, political thrillers are an important and entertaining sub-genre.

To help get your mind off of the turmoil that is election day, I put together this list of the best political thrillers. To be considered for this list, I tried to only consider films where the politics are the main motivation for the films’ plot. Here, I define politics as a struggle...

Every year, Scream Factory gives horror fans a bunch of new home media releases to look forward to at their annual Comic-Con panel, and this year is certainly no exception, as they've announced an exciting slate of horror Blu-rays on the horizon, including a four-film Critters collection, The Craft, a Candyman Collector's Edition release, the Urban Legend films, and many more!

Complete special features will be revealed at later dates, but in the meantime, we have a look at Scream Factory's official announcement and image of all the newly announced Blu-ray titles:

From Scream Factory: We’ve been teasing it for weeks and now the night is here! We just revealed a whopping 14 upcoming Blu-ray releases in person at our Comic Con panel. The following are the exciting titles and all the details we have at present moment, so we please ask that you read all the way through.

The Women’s Liberation Movement, or more commonly known as Women’s Lib, was in full swing by the mid-’70s. The fight for equality raged on from the late ’60s until…well, what time have you got? It was only natural for the arts to comment on the growing and vocal discontent within the feminist community, and so it was that The Stepford Wives (1975) hit the screen (based on the Ira Levin novel) with a resounding thud. Regardless, it plays as a witty indictment of male morals and suburban blandness.

Distributed by Columbia Pictures in mid-February, The Stepford Wives only brought in $4 million, was wildly derided by critics who thought it hit none of its intended targets, and screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) disagreed with many of the changes imposed by British director Bryan Forbes (International Velvet). Disgruntlements aside, it holds up remarkably well and...

It’s finally here in all its glory, the Howard Hawks movie nobody loves. The epitome of clueless ’60s filmmaking by an auteur who left his thinking cap back with Bogie and Bacall, this show is a PC quagmire lacking the usual compensation of exploitative thrills. But hey, it has a hypnotic appeal all its own: we’ll not abandon any movie where Teri Garr dances.

Red Line 7000

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1965 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date September 19, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: James Caan, Laura Devon, Gail Hire, Charlene Holt, John Robert Crawford, Marianna Hill, James (Skip) Ward, Norman Alden, George Takei, Diane Strom, Anthony Rogers, Robert Donner, Teri Garr.

Cinematography: Milton Krasner

Film Editors: Bill Brame, Stuart Gilmore

Original Music: Nelson Riddle

Written by George Kirgo story by Howard Hawks

Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks

Critics have been raking Howard Hawks’ stock car racing epic...

Heading for Spring Break somewhere? Long before Girls Gone Wild, kids of the Kennedy years found their own paths to the desired fun in the sun, and most of them came back alive. MGM’s comedic look at the Ft. Lauderdale exodus is a half-corny but fully endearing show, featuring the great Dolores Hart and the debuts of Connie Francis, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton.

Where the Boys Are

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, Jim Hutton

Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton, Frank Gorshin, Barbara Nichols, Chill Wills.

Cinematography: Robert Bronner

Art Direction: Preston Ames, George W. Davis

Film Editor: Fredric Steinkamp

Original Music: Pete Rugolo, Neil Sedaka, George Stoll, Victor Young

Written by George Wells from a novel by Glendon Swarthout

Produced by Joe Pasternak

Directed by Henry Levin

Ah yes, in 1960 first-wave Rock...

“Schoolgirl Crushed”

By Raymond Benson

George Roy Hill’s 1964 comedy, The World of Henry Orient, is based on a novel by Nora Johnson that fictionalizes her own experiences as a schoolgirl in New York City when she and a friend allegedly had crushes on pianist Oscar Levant. She and her father, Nunnally Johnson, adapted the book to screenplay.

It’s the story of two mid-teens, competently played by newcomers Merrie Spaeth (“Gil”) and Tippy Walker (“Val”), who attend a private girls school in the city. Gil’s parents are divorced and she lives with her mother and another divorcee in a nice Upper East Side apartment. Val’s parents are still married, but unhappily, and they’re constantly traveling the world for her father’s (Tom Bosley) business. This leaves Gil and Val to indulge in precocious imaginary “adventures” around the city.

Val develops an infatuation on eccentric womanizing concert...

Rebecca Clough Jan 13, 2017

Samuel L Jackson, Colin Farrell, Kirk Douglas, Denzel Washington and more, as we explore underrated political thrillers...

Ask someone for their favourite political thrillers and you’re likely to get a list of Oscar-winning classics, from JFK to The Day Of The Jackal, Blow Out to Argo. But what about those electrifying tales that have slipped under the radar, been largely forgotten or just didn’t get the love they deserved? Here are 25 political thrillers which are underappreciated but brilliant.

See related Star Wars: Episode IX lands Jurassic World director 25. The Amateur (1981)

Generally, the first hostage to get shot in a heist movie is considered insignificant; luckily this time the young woman killed by terrorists has a devoted boyfriend who vows to avenge her death. Charles Heller (John Savage) already works for the CIA, so he’s able to use secret information to blackmail his bosses into...

Hauntings and mind games provide the chills in two superior Halloween releases from Osgood Perkins and Nicolas Winding Refn

It’s Halloween eve, and while DVD distributors have oddly refrained from flooding the shelves this week with apposite horror fare, Netflix has held up their end of the bargain with some class. Landing on the streaming service after last month’s Toronto festival premiere, Osgood Perkins’s I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is one of the year’s most elegant chillers. Not a film of gut-knotting shocks, it hits the back of your neck like an icy draft blown through a lace curtain. The spirit of classic mystery novelist Shirley Jackson courses through Perkins’s film in more ways than one, with Paula Prentiss (in her first major film role in 35 years) playing a senile, Jackson-inspired horror writer tormented by the spectre of one of her own literary creations.

Writer/director Osgood Perkins has premiered two horror movies at the Toronto International Film Festival in as many years, with “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” debuting at the fest last month. Anyone intrigued by that alluring title — or the fact that Perkins is the son of Anthony “We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes” Perkins — won’t have to wait long, as the film is headed to Netflix this week. Watch its trailer below.

Read More: Tiff Rounds Out Slate With ‘Blair Witch,’ ‘Free Fire,’ ‘The Bad Batch’ and Many More

Ruth Wilson stars in the haunted-house thriller, informing us via voiceover narration that “I am 28 years old — I will never be 29.” She plays an in-home nurse for an elderly author of Shirley Jackson–like novels whose most famous, unsettling work may or may not be connected to the house she lives in.

Read More:...

"The pretty thing you are looking at is me. But it is me that still cannot see any of what is coming." Netflix has debuted the trailer for an indie horror thriller titled I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House, which is actually opening this week in time for Halloween weekend. Best to get it out and available now while people are in the mood for some creepy horror. Ruth Wilson stars as a young nurse who moves into a secluded old house to care for an elderly, reclusive horror novelist who barely even acknowledges her. As expected, not all is right and some kind of malevolent force seems present with them. Things take a turn for the worse after she reads the woman's novel. Also starring Paula Prentiss, Lucy Boynton and Bob Balaban. I like the cinematography in this, the bold framing makes things seem even creepier.

Osgood Perkins strays far from mainstream normalities with his more “intellectual” approach to horror (you’ll understand once The Blackcoat’s Daughter releases this Fall). Technically, I wouldn’t even call I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House a horror movie – more a chilling page-turner, like some visual representation of written word. Jump-scares and tropes are thrown away for artistic reverence, basing tension on our comprehension of the path laid by a cryptic narration.

Scenes don’t just play out, they’re explained through wordy prose by a character who insists she’ll be dead by the time Perkins draws his final scene. That’s not a spoiler, it’s the confirmed trajectory from the protagonist’s first spoken lines. This is one of those brainier, more ambitious takes on dreamy thrills, which will remain divisive amongst genre audiences – with your reaction resting solely on your appreciation for dry,...

Keep up with the always-hopping film festival world with our weekly Film Festival Roundup column. Check out last week’s Roundup right here.

– The BFI London Film Festival has announced its full program, running October 5 – 16. The festival will screen a total of 193 fiction and 52 documentary features, including 18 World Premieres, 8 International Premieres, 39 European Premieres. There will also be screenings of 144 short films, including documentary, live action and animated works. A number of directors, cast and crew are expected to take part in career interviews, Screen Talks, Q&As and Industry Talks: Lff Connects during the fest.

The festival has previously announced both its opener — Amma Asante’s “A United Kingdom” — and its closer — Ben Wheatley’s “Free Fire” — and those titles are joined by a bevy of new additions. Highlights include “The Birth of a Nation,” “Nocturnal Animals,” “Manchester By the Sea,” “La La Land” and many more. You can check...

By Lee Pfeiffer

On June 16, the Warner Archive will release the 1975 screen version of Neil Simon's comedy classic "The Sunshine Boys" as a Blu-ray special edition. The film stars Walter Matthau and George Burns as Lewis and Clark, a legendary vaudeville comedy team who have not been on speaking terms since they broke up their act eleven years ago. For their work in the film, Matthau was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, George Burns won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and Richard Benjamin, who co-stars as Matthau's harried nephew and agent who tries the Herculean task of reuniting the team for a television special about comedy greats, won a Golden Globe award. Cinema Retro had the opportunity to speak with Richard Benjamin about his memories of working on the film.  

Cinema Retro: "The Sunshine Boys" must have had a very personal meaning to you, given the fact that your uncle,...

Kristen Stewart, 'Camp X-Ray' star, to join cast of 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' Kristen Stewart to join 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' movie After putting away her Bella Swan wig and red (formerly brown) contact lenses, Kristen Stewart has been making a number of interesting career choices. Here are three examples: Stewart was a U.S. soldier who befriends an inmate (Peyman Moaadi) at the American Gulag, Guantanamo, in Peter Sattler's little-seen (at least in theaters) Camp X-Ray. She was one of Best Actress Oscar winner Julianne Moore's daughters in Wash Westmoreland and the recently deceased Richard Glatzer's Alzheimer's drama Still Alice. She was the personal assistant to troubled, aging actress Juliette Binoche in Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria, which earned her a history-making Best Supporting Actress César. (Stewart became the first American actress to take home the French Academy Award.

Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week

"Belle"

What's It About? This 18th century English romance is about Dido Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a biracial woman raised by her aristocratic great uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Mansfield. She grows up alongside her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) as equals and best friends, but as they come of age, their differences become all too apparent -- to each other and to their would-be suitors. Meanwhile, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) is facing a trial as Lord Chief Justice of England that could change the future of slavery. Will Dido find love on her own terms?

Why We're In: It's an elegant period piece perfect for Jane Austen fans, and it's a subtle but effective examination of the intersection of class and race in 18th century England. Mbatha-Raw is fantastic, and director Amma Asante has an excellent eye for detail.

Moviefone's Top Blu-ray of the...

When city couple Walter and Joanna move to a peaceful New England backwater, they discover that the women cater to their husbands' every need without question. It's almost like they're made to order or something... Butch and Sundance writer William Goldman delivers a strong adaptation of Ira Levin's chilling bestseller, with Katharine Ross and Paula Prentiss starring alongside director Bryan Forbes' own wife, former washing-up icon Nanette Newman.

Oscar Sunday is three months from today, March 2, 2014 and this year, it’s anyone’s game. The Academy has a history of playing up all the glamour and suspense, and this year should be no different.

As of today, Gold Derby‘s Top 5 Best Picture predictions for the 86th Academy Awards are: 12 Years A Slave, Gravity, Saving Mr. Banks, Captain Phillips and American Hustle.

Hit Fix’s Top 5 are: Gravity, 12 Years A Slave, Saving Mr. Banks, Captain Phillips and Inside Llewyn Davis.

In what’s classic TV, take a look at the opening of the 43rd Academy Awards in 1971, featuring an introduction by Academy President Daniel Taradash.

The big A-listers of the day all appeared at the Oscars – Goldie Hawn, Jeanne Moreau, Melvyn Douglas, Ryan O’Neal, Leigh Taylor-Young, George Segal, Jennifer Jones, Lee Grant, Maximilian Schell, Ginger Rogers, Jack Nicholson, Ali McGraw, Robert Evans, Quincy Jones, Sally Kellerman, Jim Brown,...

Bryan Forbes dies at 86: Directed Katharine Hepburn, Leslie Caron, the original The Stepford Wives Director Bryan Forbes, whose films include the then-daring The L-Shaped Room, the all-star The Madwoman of Chaillot, and the original The Stepford Wives, has died "after a long illness" at his home in Virginia Water, Surrey, England. Forbes was 86. Born John Theobald Clarke on July 22, 1926, in London, Bryan Forbes began his film career as an actor in supporting roles in British productions of the late 1940s, e.g., Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Small Back Room / Hour of Glory and Thornton Freeland’s Dear Mr. Prohack. Another twenty or so movie roles followed in the ’50s, including those in Ronald Neame’s The Million Pound Note / Man with a Million (1954), supporting Gregory Peck, and Carol Reed’s The Key (1958), supporting Sophia Loren and William Holden. Bryan Forbes director Despite his relatively prolific output in the previous decade,...

"Who are those guys?"

George Roy Hill doesn't get written up much these days. People either like some of his films or not, but don't usually have much to say about them. In the breadth of subjects and tones he tackled, the former TV director certainly made it hard to perceive an authorial voice, and even his visual style was inconsistent, veering between the flatly televisual and a more nouvelle vague playfulness. Regular collaborator William Goldman praised him as one of the greats precisely because of his versatility, but he seems destined to be recalled for only a couple of movies, and as an able journeyman rather than as a unique artist.

The World of Henry Orient (1964) is a charming oddity. It deals with a fantasy world concocted by two 14-year-old schoolgirls in New York, based around a minor local celebrity, concert pianist Henry Orient (Peter Sellers), whom they encounter...

  When I filmed "Stepford Wives," Paula Prentiss said to me, "When I don't like my wardrobe, I cut it up." While I didn't have the audacity of Paula Prentiss, I did want to cut out my outfit for a crucial party scene. Then there was Tina Louise, who did her own hair and makeup. She took over a bedroom in a home in Westport, Conn., which the film company had rented. We were told, "Don't go into the bedrooms," but this didn't stop Tina. She dismissed the hair and makeup team...

Last year Showtime introduced TV audiences to a new side of Matt LeBlanc in a new series titled Episodes. This show had LeBlanc starring as Matt LeBlanc. Clever, no? Of course this LeBlanc was a little ruder and a lot cruder than the image we had of the actor when he starred in Friends and Joey. This Showtime show had the actor making fun of himself and it worked.

The new series also benefited from having actors Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig playing a married pair of writers. These writers had a hit show in London and were thrilled when television executive Merc Lapidus (John Pankow) wanted to create a TV series based on an Americanized version of their show. To their amazement he hired Matt LeBlanc to star in the show and changed the whole concept to suit Matt's personality.

In the show last year LeBlanc had a one...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Gene Siskel and I fought like cats and dogs, and we made some good television.

During those early years for "Sneak Previews" our favorite occupation was dreaming up "special editions" which were sort of like the "think pieces" we wrote for our papers.

I hadn't seen those shows for years, but it turns out they were safely slumbering in the vaults of Wttw/Chicago, our public television station. Starting Friday, we're going to be airing the best of those old shows on "Ebert Presents At The Movies."

Our favorite special edition was titled "Going to the Movies with a Critic." The idea was to follow the process of reviewing a single movie from beginning to end. The show opens with Gene and me receiving a call from John Iltis, then (and now) a Chicago movie publicist. It was...

Rock Hudson Andrew Davies and Andre Shafer's Rock Hudson: Dark and Handsome Stranger was screened in the 2010 Berlin Film Festival's Panorama sidebar. [Rock Hudson documentary synopsis.] Universal star Rock Hudson, one of the top box-office attractions in the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s, died of AIDS complications in his Beverly Hills home in 1985. Hudson, who was gay, lived a closeted life; he was briefly married to his agent's secretary and reportedly managed to broker a deal with scandal sheet Confidential when the gossip rag threatened to expose him. Among Hudson's best-known vehicles are Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven Allows (1955), both co-starring Jane Wyman; George Stevens' Giant (1956), in which Hudson's co-stars were Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, and for which he received his only Best Actor Academy Award nomination; Charles Vidor's poorly received but highly popular A Farewell to Arms (1957), with Jennifer Jones; Robert Mulligan's...