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Stars: John Phillip Law, Lee Van Cleef, Mario Brega, Luigi Pistilli, Anthony Dawson, Jose Torres, Franco Balducci | Written by Luciano Vincenzoni | Directed by Giulio Petroni

Every so often, a film gallops out of the dusty plains of cinema history and plants its boots squarely on your chest. Death Rides a Horse, directed by Giulio Petroni, is one such Spaghetti Western that does more than check the genre’s boxes; it kicks them over and sets them on fire with an icy stare and a whiff of Ennio Morricone’s signature music trailing behind.

I went into Death Rides a Horse expecting nothing more than the usual revenge-fueled romp through tumbleweeds and six-shooter justice. What I got instead was a surprisingly tight, brooding, and stylishly constructed tale of vengeance – one that refuses to rush and, instead, simmers like a slow-burning fuse winding its way to an inevitable explosion.

The story is...

Britney Spear’s ex Jason Alexander, who snuck onto her property and tried to bust through her locked bedroom door the day of her backyard wedding to Sam Asghari, has accepted a plea deal in the felony stalking case.

Alexander, who was married to Spears for only 55 hours in 2004, appeared in a California courtroom Thursday and pleaded no contest to aggravated trespassing and battery, both misdemeanors. Court records show that his felony stalking count and a misdemeanor vandalism count were dropped under the deal with Ventura County prosecutors.

Law enforcement...

Just four hours before Britney Spears married Sam Asghari in the yard of her California mansion, her first-husband Jason Alexander crept onto her property uninvited, sprinted into her home with a security guard on his tail, bolted upstairs, and tried to bust through her locked bedroom door, the guard testified Monday.

Spears was inside the bedroom at the time, preparing for her June 9 fairytale-themed wedding, security guard Richard N. Eubeler told the court.

Eubeler said he and Alexander were face-to-face outside the door once Alexander realized it wouldn’t open.

Production scheduled to commence in spring / summer.

Xyz Films has reported robust territory sales at Efm on Nick Cassavetes’ upcoming boxing drama Cus And Mike starring Anthony Hopkins as Mike Tyson’s legendary trainer Cus D’Amato.

Patriot Pictures head Michael Mendelsohn is producing the true story about how D’Amato turned Tyson from an adolescent street thug into the world’s youngest heavyweight boxing champion and one of the most feared pugilists the sport has ever seen.

Xyz Films has struck deals in Italy (Eagle Pictures), Spain (A Contracorriente), Middle East (Falcon), Poland (Kino Swiat), Eastern Europe (Prorom), Portugal (Nos...

Joseph Baxter Feb 20, 2020

Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins headlines biopic Cus and Mike, set to play Mike Tyson’s legendary trainer, Cus D’Amato.

Anthony Hopkins is set to bring his Oscar-and-Emmy-winning repertory skill set to the boxing ring… well, a ring-adjacent location, anyway, set to play trainer Cus D’Amato, in a developing fact-based film project about how the legendary prepper of pugilists molded one fighter in particular, Mike Tyson.

The launch of Berlin's European Film Market (Efm) has yielded a most intriguing project from Patriot Pictures, a biopic titled Cus and Mike, which, as revealed by Deadline, will have Hopkins headline as the titular trainer. The film is set with The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes, who will work off an original screenplay by Desmond Nakano, based on Montieth Illingworth’s 1991 biography, Mike Tyson: Money, Myth, and Betrayal.

Knighted Welsh legend Hopkins’s role as D’Amato – who wrought two-time heavyweight...

Exclusive: In an intriguing Berlin Efm addition, Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins has been set to star in Cus And Mike, the story of Mike Tyson’s legendary trainer Cus D’Amato and how he moulded the fighter into becoming the youngest heavyweight title winner ever and one of the most ferocious boxers of his generation.

The Patriot Pictures film, which is set to be a character study as well as a sports-biopic, will be directed and written by The Notebook and John Q filmmaker Nick Cassavetes, based on the original screenplay by Desmond Nakano, and the book Mike Tyson: Money, Myth, and Betrayal by Montieth Illingworth.

Xyz Films and Patriot are handling world sales at the Efm in Berlin and are aiming to shoot in spring/summer 2020.

The film will chart how the tough but brilliant D’Amato became a father-figure to the wayward adolescent Tyson who would go on to become...

Bruce Willis has been set to play legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato in Cornerman, the biopic written and directed by Rupert Friend. Friend and Aimée Mullins are producing for Circus Florist Films with Marc Butan and Ara Keshishian producing for MadRiver Pictures. A fall start is eyed. CAA is handling U.S. rights and Imr International will begin foreign sales in Cannes this week.

The Bronx-born D’Amato trained such storied fighters as Floyd Patterson, José Torres and Mike Tyson and was known for developing the Peek-a-Boo style. He boxed as a featherweight and lightweight amateur in his younger days but never got a professional license. Throughout his career, he also had dust-ups with the boxing establishment. When D’Amato died in 1985, Patterson said, “There will never be another manager or person who cares about his fighters the way Cus did.”

Cornerman is set in the 1980s Catskills where...

Bruce Willis is playing boxing trainer Constantine ‘Cus’ D’Amato in the drama Cornerman. The film will take place in 1980s New York and explore how D’Amato – by then famous for training champion fighters like Floyd Patterson and José Torres – found and mentored future heavyweight champion Mike Tyson (who was only a teenager at the time). Cornerman will further serve as the feature directing debut for Homeland and Hitman: Agent 47 star Rupert Friend, who will draw from his own script.

Kino Lorber brings the 1967 spaghetti Western Face to Face to Blu-ray this month, one of director Sergio Sollima’s most notable titles, previously released on DVD as a box-set with the two other titles in Sollima’s trilogy The Big Gundown (1966) and Run, Man, Run (1968). Noted for imbuing his work with a bit of actual social and historical context, there’s a bit more substance than usual for a film relegated to the periphery of a movement dominated by a mere handful of notable names. Though it’s ultimately not at the same level as iconic works by Sergio Leone and hasn’t reached the same level of reappraisal as several other retroactively recuperated directors, it features more nuanced characterizations in its complex narrative structure than is usually evident in other titles of the era.

Boston professor Brad Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonte) is suffering from poor health, and is forced...

(Dick Cavett, above.)

(Note: This article is currently appearing in Venice Magazine. Talking with Dick Cavett was one of the true pleasures of my time doing these printed Q&A's, as I was getting to conduct an interview with one of the all-time great interviewers, about doing interviews. Below are the highlights of our talk.)

by Terry Keefe

During the varied runs of his television talk show, Dick Cavett arguably conducted in-depth interviews better than anyone in the media before or since.

From 1968 to 1975 on ABC, and then later from 1977 to 1982 on PBS, “The Dick Cavett Show” hosted a literal who’s who of both America and the world. The guest list included Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Noel Coward, Salvador Dali, Mel Brooks, Katherine Hepburn, and Ingmar Bergman, to name just a few.

The show was unique in its time,...

Singer hit with six months of probation for stripping in Dallas streets.

By Gil Kaufman

Erykah Badu

Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images

The global publicity bump Erykah Badu got for stripping down to her essentials and walking the streets of Dallas for her "Window Seat" video shoot was probably well worth the $500 fine she finally paid last week.

A Dallas city spokesperson said the singer paid the maximum fine and agreed to serve six months probation for the stunt, in which she was filmed slowly taking off her clothes as she walked through Dealey Plaza, the site of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The incident took place on March 13, and a defiant Badu entered a not guilty plea in April to a charge of disorderly conduct.

"I thought it was a move for women and men and children who feel they weren't good enough," Badu told MTV News...