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This summer, Dorothy and Toto are going to skip down the Yellow Brick Road in the same cutting-edge Las Vegas arena that’s hosted everything from Phish and Backstreet Boys concerts to Mma fights. That’s right, one of Hollywood’s most beloved films, “The Wizard of Oz,” is coming to the Sphere.

But updating the cinema classic for the venue’s massive 16K resolution wraparound interior LED screen required more than a dozen visual effects houses, teams of researchers and archivists, and Jane Rosenthal, the superstar producer behind “The Irishman” and “Meet the Parents.”

As part of this week’s Variety cover story, Rosenthal offered a first look at the secretive project ahead of “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere’s” Aug. 28 opening.

1.) Yes, It Uses AI

The 1939 version of “The Wizard of Oz” was made for a much, much smaller screen than the 160,000-foot one that the Sphere holds.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of the Moving Image

Johnnie To’s The Heroic Trio and To & Ching Siu-tung’s Executioners play in See It Big: Stunts!; John Waters’ Serial Mom screens on Friday and Sunday; Amir Azizi’s Two Dogs shows on Saturday.

Japan Society

A massive Mikio Naruse retrospective, featuring numerous imported 35mm prints, has begun.

Roxy Cinema

Heat shows on Friday; John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath screens on 35mm this Saturday, as does King Vidor’s Stella Dallas; Cinderella plays for free on Sunday, along with a print of All About My Mother.

Film Forum

A restoration of René Clément’s Forbidden Games begins a run (watch our trailer debut); a new 35mm print of 8½ and Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman continue; The Incredibles screens Sunday morning.

Bam

Haydn Keenan’s Going Down, newly restored, begins a run.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its public-oriented Cinéma de la Plage sidebar at its 78th edition kicking off next week.

The sidebar will screen a selection of films, many of which have past Cannes connections, on the big screen on the beach beside the Palais des Festivals.

The titles include Terrence Malick’s drama A Hidden Life about Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter, which premiered at in Competition at the festival in 2019,

Older selections include King Vidor’s 1946 classic Dual in the Sun, presented and restored by Walt Disney Studios in association with The Film Foundation, with the participation of The George Eastman Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, and the involvement of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

Further highlights include Japanese animation director Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 animated feature Angel’s Egg to mark the 40 th anniversary of its release, Oshii is best known internationally...

Oscar-winning Italian composer Nino Rota, who scored “La Dolce Vita,” “The Leopard” and “The Godfather” – among many other masterpiece movies – is set for “Nino” a high-profile documentary being directed by prominent editor, screenwriter and director Walter Fasano.

Fasano is known for his longtime creative collaboration with Luca Guadagnino mainly as an editor on films such as “I Am Love,” on which he served both as editor and co-writer; “A Bigger Splash”; “Call Me by Your Name”; and the doc “Bertolucci on Bertolucci” that Guadagnino and Fasano co-directed. Fasano more recently directed the doc “Pino” about Italian artist, sculptor, and set designer Pino Pascali.

Rota wrote the score for 16 films directed by Federico Fellini, including “La Strada,” “8 1/2,” “Juliet of the Spirits” and “Amarcord,” besides “La Dolce Vita.” He also composed music for Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” and the Sicilian-inspired theme for “The Godfather,” whose “Part II” score won him his only Oscar.

Severin continues their good work in bringing hitherto largely unavailable Russ Meyer titles to home video in glorious new 4K restorations. Their latest releases are Motorpsycho, a gritty genre mashup that’s been unjustly dismissed as merely a “dry run” for the better known Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and the late-period gonzo comedy Up!, involving, among other things, leather gimp masks and an orgy-loving Adolf Hitler.

Motorpsycho, from 1965, starts off as a rip-roaring exposé of a renegade biker gang led by troubled Vietnam vet Brahmin (Stephen Oliver). He’s joined by Slick (Thomas Scott), who has a fondness for his transistor radio, and Dante (Joseph Cellini), whose major signifier as a character is that he spouts off in Italian when he gets excitable. These two are, in true Meyer fashion, little more than caricatures, but Brahmin actually gets to display some nuance in his role. Mind you, these are far...

Hollywood has been around for over a century now—time really does fly! The film industry kicked off in the early 1900s, and since then, it has grown and evolved in ways no one could have imagined. From black-and-white silent films to jaw-dropping CGI blockbusters, filmmaking has come a long way. Audiences expect more with each passing decade, and storytelling techniques keep pushing new boundaries.

But if there’s one thing that has remained constant, it’s Hollywood’s obsession with box office numbers. No matter how visually stunning a movie is or how powerful the performances are, at the end of the day, ticket sales often decide its fate. While critics, awards, and audience appreciation matter, money talks the loudest in the movie business. After all, filmmaking isn’t just an art—it’s an industry that runs on profit. Sure, in a perfect world, creativity would come before cash,...

Even though it also concerns an architect fighting entrenched elites to achieve his singular vision, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist doesn’t bow before the altar of The Fountainhead. Yet he takes a gauntlet thrown down early in King Vidor’s 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel—no place originally exists in architecture, and the past cannot be improved upon—more seriously than either Vidor or Rand. Corbet’s epic, like Adrien Brody’s László Toth, remains unconcerned with choosing between honoring the past and catering to the present. László instead seeks to transcend time altogether, thus equipping his artistry to endure well into the future.

Corbet’s multi-decade survey of post-war America captures the sweeping scope of the novelistic period epics of the studio era, which embodied the cultural might of the United States as it asserted dominance across the globe. But The Brutalist rises above simple pastiche or homage.

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The very first Academy Awards were held on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Douglas Fairbanks, one of the biggest stars of his time, presented every single one of the awards. Right away, the timing was a little off, as the Oscars didn't adhere to specific calendar years for their awards. Instead, the awards were given to all the films released between August 1, 1927, and July 31, 1928.

The Academy continued with the "straddle" schedule for its first five years, considering a "release year" to be August 1 to July 31. Perhaps wanting to keep things a little cleaner, the Academy expanded the year of the 6th Academy Awards, which considered all the films released from August 1, 1932, all the way to December 31, 1933. The 7th Oscars was the first Oscars to finally measure by a proper calendar year. The Awards have been following that pattern ever since.

The new year has begun, and several major characters have officially become part of the public domain. Among them is a certain cartoon sailor with a taste for canned spinach.

Per CBS, Popeye is one of many properties that became public domain as of Jan. 1, 2025. Popeye's very first appearance was in the King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on Jan. 17, 1929. The character was an instant hit with fans, taking over as the strip's central character and eventually causing it to be renamed as Popeye. Depicted as a sailor with abnormally large forearms who gained superhuman strength after consuming spinach, the Popeye character would later be further popularized in animation. Notably, Robin Williams once played a live-action incarnation of the character the 1980 movie Popeye.

Related Disney & Gundam Collide With Bandai's Most Unexpected New Crossover Collectible

An upcoming Mickey Mouse figure from Bandai sees the iconic Disney character transforming into a giant...

Spoilers for "Wicked" follow.

Jon M. Chu's new musical fantasy "Wicked," which is officially called "Wicked: Part I," according to the title card, is based on the hit 2003 Broadway show that was, in turn, based in the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire. The novel, in itself, was a reimagination of L. Frank Baum's 1900 kid-lit classic "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," but Maguire took his book's primary inspiration from Victor Fleming's 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz," arguably the most famous movie of all time. In making an 85-year cycle from the screen, to the page, to the stage, and then back to the screen, "Wicked" retains a lot of the iconography and basic aesthetics of Fleming's film and repackages them for a modern sensibility. 

Some of what audiences will see in "Wicked" will feel natural, as the look and feel of Oz has bled into the mass subconsciousness,...

David O. Selznick was a demanding producer who often interrupted pitches and then bullied filmmakers once their movies started shooting. I wonder how impresarios of his era — Selznick, Sam Goldwyn or Darryl F. Zanuck — would have coped with the unruly YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers or superstar influencers crowding today’s marketplace.

Or how they’d deal with esteemed filmmakers like Alfonso Cuarón, who today are re-inventing and re-structuring their craft to fit the ecocentrics of streamerville?

In a maze of memos, Selznick told George Cukor, then King Vidor, that they lacked the pizzazz to turn Gone With The Wind into a hit. Would he have instructed Passthatpuss to trim his act or Todd Phillips to pull the tunes from Joker 2?

The bottom line, I suppose, is that pop culture has moved to a new rhythm and only sentimentalists worry about the creative debris along the way.

Cuarón’s confounding seven-part...

Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” has already stunned at Venice. Now, the epic drama is unfurling its awards campaign with the first trailer.

“The Brutalist” stars Adrien Brody as László Tóth, a fictional Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor and architect who arrives in America to build a massive modern community center. The film spans 30 years in the life of Brody’s László, ranging from his project with his employer (Guy Pearce) to his rocky marriage with his wife (Felicity Jones).

The cast also includes Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Raffey Cassidy, and Stacy Martin.

“The Brutalist” is writer/director Corbet’s third film after “The Childhood of a Leader” (2015) and “Vox Lux” (2018); he has also acted in films such as “Melancholia,” “Mysterious Skin,” and “Thirteen.” Mona Fastvold co-wrote the script for “The Brutalist,” with Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera comparing the feature to King Vidor’s 1949 adaptation of “The Fountainhead.

After spending months talking about his long-nurtured dream project, Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola embraced the chance to depart from promo tour talking points.

Calling Megaloplis “a great adventure,” Coppola affirmed with a smile in accepting his DGA Honor on Thursday night, “I decided tonight I wouldn’t say anything I’ve been saying.”

After being given the award by his granddaughter, Gia, Coppola said he was delighted to spin yarns about “how the Director’s Guild was founded.” While he didn’t do so in linear fashion, the 85-year-old filmmaker had the audience in the palm of his hand as he recounted giants of cinema and his personal touchstones, paying tribute to masters like Billy Wilder, King Vidor and Samuel Goldwyn.

When he met Jean Renoir, Coppola recalled, the French filmmaker gave him a “beautiful smile” and shook his hand “like he was welcoming me to this profession that he loved so much.

Even though it also concerns an architect fighting entrenched elites to achieve his singular vision, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist doesn’t bow before the altar of The Fountainhead. Yet he takes a gauntlet thrown down early in King Vidor’s 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel—no place originality exists in architecture, and the past cannot be improved upon—more seriously than either artist. Corbet’s epic, like Adrien Brody’s László Toth, remains unconcerned with choosing between honoring the past and catering to the present. They instead seek to transcend time altogether, thus equipping their artistry to endure well into the future.

Corbet’s multi-decade survey of post-war America captures the sweeping scope of the novelistic period epics of the studio era, which embodied the cultural might of the United States as it asserted dominance across the globe. But The Brutalist rises above simple pastiche or homage.

Notebook is covering the Locarno Film Festival with a series of correspondence pieces written by the participants in the Critics Academy.Illustrations by Lucy Jones.In our second missive from the Locarno Critics Academy, Leonard Krähmer, Lucía Requejo, and Katarina Docalovich put the filmmakers of the present in conversation with retrospective selections—particularly the films presented in “The Lady with the Torch,” the festival’s 2024 Retrospective surveying the history of Columbia Pictures, curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht.The Crowd.Dear Kat and Lucía,Prioritizing the retrospective at a major festival like Locarno—which claims to be a haven for exciting new voices, where the Cineasti del Presente are put in the spotlight, and where cinema is questioned about its futures and dead ends—could be misconstrued as a relapse into nostalgia. There may be some truth to this, but short-circuiting the new and the old can cause a productive tension, perhaps...

Filmmaker Brady Corbet has premiered features twice before at Venice, but never at this scale.

“The Brutalist” is the director’s first feature since 2018’s “Vox Lux,” which starred Natalie Portman as a pop star haunted by a school shooting. Before that, Corbet also premiered “The Childhood of a Leader” (2015) at Venice, announcing a singular cinematic voice after years of acting in indies like “Melancholia,” “Simon Killer,” “Mysterious Skin,” and “Thirteen.”

As Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera revealed during the July 23 press conference announcing the lineup, “The Brutalist” will premiere in competition. It’s also a whopping 215 minutes long, which includes a 15-minute intermission. The film was shot on Vista Vision by Lol Crawley, director of photography on the celluloid-made “Vox Lux” and “The Childhood of a Leader” as well as Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise” more recently. Barbera confirmed that the Italian film festival will screen “The Brutalist” in 70mm,...

It's well known to fans of "The Wizard of Oz" that actor Ray Bolger was originally cast to play the Tin Man and famed comedian Buddy Ebsen was cast as the Scarecrow. They swapped roles at Bolger's insistence, as Bolger had a personal attachment to the role; he was inspired to become an actor after seeing Vaudevillian Fred Stone play the part on stage when Bolger was a child. Ebsen was fine with changing roles, although he had to drop out of production due to makeup problems. The silvery Tin Man makeup contained powered aluminum and Ebsen breathed in big clouds of it, making him sick. At the time, many merely assumed Ebsen had an allergy. Ebsen was replaced with Jack Haley, and the makeup was altered to be a paste instead of a powder.

With the possible exception of "Star Wars," no film's production has been more meticulously recorded...

Filmax has acquired international rights to Spanish thriller “Nina,” the new feature written and directed by Andrea Jaurrieta (“Ana by Day”) that bows at this week’s Málaga Film Festival as one of its higher profile titles in main competition.

Loosely based on the play of the same name by José Ramón Fernández, which borrows elements of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” “Nina” tells the story of a woman, an actress, who returns to her home town on Spain’s rugged northern coast seeking to take revenge on a celebrated writer. As she encounters past acquaintances, including a once close childhood friend, and faces dark memories, she begins to question whether vengeance is the only way forward.

“Nina” stars Goya-winning actress Patricia López Arnaiz (“Ane is Missing”) as the titular character and San Sebastián Silver Shell winner Darío Grandinetti, famed for his performance in Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her,...

Victor Fleming's mid-film director switch saved both The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind from production troubles in 1939. The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind faced cursed productions and notorious crew changes plaguing their filming processes. Despite The Wizard of Oz's lasting legacy, Gone with the Wind emerged as the bigger hit with a higher box office haul and more Oscar wins.

The exact same behind-the-scenes change saved the classic Hollywood films The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind from troubled productions in 1939. At face value, The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind couldn't be any more different. The Wizard of Oz is a wondrous musical fantasy film that follows Kansas native Dorothy Gail's wild adventure through the magical land of Oz, and Gone with the Wind is an epic historical romance set in the American South following the torrid...

Director changes mid-film have saved classics like The Wizard of Oz and Jaws, enhancing their success. Even big-budget movies like Gone with the Wind and Spartacus have seen director changes for a better outcome. An insightful takeaway centers on the fact that sometimes a director change can save a film from failure.

There have been certain occasions when the making of a film was just not working out as planned, and it became a necessity to replace the movie’s director while production was already underway. While this was always likely a massive decision for the movie’s producers to make, it was sometimes the only way to save a film from a doomed production and ensure that the end product could make it to theaters. In some cases, the original director left the film under contentious circumstances but, for those involved, it was the only way to ensure the movie was completed.

In his last dramatic and interminable years, Michael Cimino spent his days in solitude rewatching old movies in the Bel-Air mansion he bought during his heyday. On the rare occasions that he ventured out, he drove a Rolls-Royce he acquired while making The Deer Hunter in 1978, his chauffeur having left long ago, as well as his success.

Even in those final moments, he did everything he could to show a winning image to Hollywood, a town that had ostracized him ever since the colossal Heaven’s Gate fiasco that had bankrupted United Artists during the early ’80s. He had a perpetually ironic, scornful smile, but he was the first to know how pointless, even miserable, that act was. The only thing he had left from his triumphant years was some money, and he would show up at the hangouts of movers and shakers like the Polo Lounge, where he often ended...

February––particularly its third week––is all about romance. Accordingly the Criterion Channel got creative with their monthly programming and, in a few weeks, will debut Interdimensional Romance, a series of films wherein “passion conquers time and space, age and memory, and even death and the afterlife.” For every title you might’ve guessed there’s a wilder companion: Alan Rudolph’s Made In Heaven, Soderbergh’s remake, and Resnais’ Love Unto Death. Mostly I’m excited to revisit Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, a likely essential viewing before Megalopolis.

February also marks Black History Month, and Criterion’s series will include work by Shirley Clarke (also subject of a standalone series), Garrett Bradley, Cheryl Dunye, and Julie Dash, while movies by Sirk, Minnelli, King Vidor, and Lang play in “Gothic Noir.” Greta Gerwig gets an “Adventures in Moviegoing” and can be seen in Mary Bronstein’s Yeast,...

Few movies are as sadistic as King Vidor's 1946 psychological Western, Duel in the Sun. The characters have chaotic lives, forbidden romances, and dysfunctional families, and at the end of the film, each of them is in a worse place than before. The film even has an unhelpful gun-toting preacher who is supposed to help with the chaos. This Golden Age of Hollywood's star-studded film, while brilliant in some areas, is perhaps a result of the post-World War II trauma. Jennifer Jones as Pearl Chavez particularly goes through immense suffering. Throughout the film, her life is paved with so much pain that the slightest glimpse of brightness blindfolds her into a sadomasochistic relationship. At a time when films were rated based on their moral standing, Duel in the Sun had no chance with the censors. It failed to pass the moralistic list of guidelines by the Hays Code and religious review boards at the time,...

When people think of open-air ice skating in New York City, well, they probably conjure up the festive Christmas-y confines of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Unless they're old. Baby Boomer old. For members of the generation that protested the Vietnam War before turning into conservative zombies who treat Fox News as an informational IV drip, there is first and foremost the image of the late Ryan O'Neal's Oliver Barrett IV gazing forlornly at the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park as Francis Lai's brilliantly overwrought main theme jerks tears from our ducts with a vicious intensity worthy of Pinhead.

Most Boomers won't get that reference. And for those born as early as the Reagan era who are generally incurious about movies, you probably haven't watched Arthur Hiller's "Love Story." It is a film of its time, but, oh, what a film it was, at least commercially. Based on Erich Segal...

Top: Napoleon (Gaumont), Middle: Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure (Orion Pictures), Bottom: Napoleon Bunny-Part (Warner Bros. Pictures)Graphic: The A.V. Club

Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 21, 1821, but the iconic French emperor has lived on (and on and on) in numerous movies and television shows. Esteemed director Ridley Scott, who...

It’s not every day that Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson team up. But IndieWire has learned they will today: The three directors have scheduled an emergency call with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav about the layoffs of Turner Classic Movies’ top brass.

The network laid off much of its leadership yesterday, including executive VP and general manager Pola Changnon; senior VP of programming and content strategy, Charles Tabesh; VP of brand creative and marketing Dexter Fedor; VP of enterprises and strategic partnerships Genevieve McGillicuddy, who also served as the director of the annual TCM Film Festival; and VP of studio production Anne Wilson.

These people were responsible for everything from curating lineups, to shooting intros and outros, and for creating original shows, documentaries, and video essays that serve as major contributions to American cultural history.

Scorsese has often said he has Turner Classic Movies on...

Founded in 1953, bought by Julio Fernández in 1987 and now run by his brother Carlos Fernandez and daughter Laura Fernández, Filmax is one of its biggest true-blue independent studios in Spain, involved in film and TV production, and movie distribution, international film and TV sales and exhibition.

How it got there is another question. “At Filmax, we’ve always bet on creative talent. In Spain, there’s always been creative talents that have revolutionized its sector: Architects, artists and designers,” says Laura Fernández, a Filmax executive producer. “Filmax has known how to find talent in all parts of film production: Composers, screenwriters, DPs, casting, VFX and directors.”

Jaume Balagueró’s “Nameless” gave Filmax its first experience of fulsome international pre-sales at 1999’s Mifed, helping to usher in a golden age of Spanish auteur genre that resonates to this day.

A director on “Polseres Vermelles,” the original Catalan version of “The Red Band Society...

It’s not surprising, really, that the end of the 1932 Academy Awards was interrupted by a vote counter proclaiming an error in the Best Actor category. With every award already announced—including Fredric March’s Best Actor for his transformative (and problematic) performance in Rouben Mamoulien’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—and the banquet set to conclude, someone had to trudge up on the stage to say that Wallace Beery had been snubbed, that he too had won the Best Actor award for his performance in King Vidor’s boxing drama The Champ, that the Academy had made an utterly predictable mistake.

This Mother’s Day weekend, let’s celebrate self-sacrificing, feuding, exhausted, loving screen mums, from Stella Dallas to Lady Bird, Mommie Dearest to 20th Century Women

We often talk a bit flippantly about female movie stars past a certain age being consigned to “mum roles”: blandly supportive background figures who pop up merely to nag or nurture when required. “Mum” shouldn’t be a byword for mainstream cinema’s laziest, most ageist and least dimensional instincts when it comes to female characterisation; the best films about motherhood treat it as a state of being, not just as a balm for others.

Many of the so-called “women’s pictures” of Hollywood’s golden age hinged on complex, conflicted portrayals of motherhood. King Vidor’s excellent 1937 version of Stella Dallas (Amazon Prime Video) is the mother-daughter weepie to end them all, powered by Barbara Stanwyck’s wrenching performance as a working-class...

This past year, we've had a lot of discussions about whether Brendan Fraser should have been cast in Darren Aronofsky's "The Whale" due to him requiring a fat suit to play the role. On the one hand, we are all happy to see Fraser be given a lead role by a major director, which hasn't happened in many years. On the other, it is yet another entry on the long list of roles that should presumably have gone to fat actors but didn't. The likelihood that a central character is explicitly written to be large is already incredibly small, but if all those parts are getting taken by actors who need padding and prosthetics to make themselves appear large, when else are fat actors going to be given opportunities to lead films?

As someone who is indeed fat, I often find myself frustrated by this, but I also understand...

Babylon (2022).Hollywood has been making movies about movies for almost as long as there have been movies. This is not surprising given the town’s penchant for self-mythologizing; the dramatic potential of silver-screen fame, always an Icarus flight on wax wings melting in the California sun; and the allure of a glimpse behind the scenes into the factory where the dreams are made. It would be hypocritical to mock the self-importance of a place that exerts such an inexhaustible fascination—on me, I own, and probably on you—and Hollywood’s addiction to turning the cameras on itself has produced a few masterpieces of clear-eyed ambivalence. It has also revealed, even in less successful efforts, a strain of insecurity and self-loathing under the celebratory tinsel. Some films portray the industry as crass and cruel, spitting out used-up stars and corrupting artistic integrity; some exploit chaotic, unhinged movie sets for laughs or thrills.

Los Angeles, Jan 16 (Ians) Gina Lollobrigida, the 1950s Italian bombshell who starred in films including ‘Fanfan la Tulipe’, ‘Beat the Devil’, ‘Trapeze’ and ‘Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell’, has died. She was 95.

A generation of Indians will remember Lollobrigida from her sensational appearance at the 1978 International Film Festival of India (Iffi), where her flirty exchanges with Kabir Bedi were grist for the gossip magazine mill as well as politically incorrect comparisons between her physical attributes and those of Zeenat Aman.

Kabir Bedi, in his autobiography ‘Stories I Must Tell’, recalls a famous face-off Praveen Babi had with Lollobrigida at a party the Italian actress hosted in his honour for playing Sandokan in the famous Italian television series. The temperamental Indian actress was upset with Lollobrigida because she was apparently getting too comfortable with Bedi.

Lollobrigida also provided fodder for film magazines when it was rumoured that she was being cast by...

Gina Lollobrigida, the 1950s Italian bombshell who starred in films including ‘Fanfan la Tulipe’, ‘Beat the Devil’, ‘Trapeze’ and ‘Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell’, has died. She was 95. A generation of Indians will remember Lollobrigida from her sensational appearance at the 1978 International Film Festival of India (Iffi), where her flirty exchanges with Kabir Bedi were grist for the gossip magazine mill as well as politically incorrect comparisons between her physical attributes and those of Zeenat Aman.

Kabir Bedi, in his autobiography ‘Stories I Must Tell’, recalls a famous face-off Praveen Babi had with Lollobrigida at a party the Italian actress hosted in his honour for playing Sandokan in the famous Italian television series. The temperamental Indian actress was upset with Lollobrigida because she was apparently getting too comfortable with Bedi.

Lollobrigida also provided fodder for film magazines when it was rumoured that she was being cast by Krishna Shah in his Indo-American movie,...

Tributes are pouring in for Gina Lollobrigida, one of Europe’s biggest movie stars, who died on Monday at the age of 95.

A global sex symbol during the 1950s and ’60s, Lollobrigida worked with Hollywood heavyweights such as Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn and Rock Hudson.

Sophia Loren was one of the first people to pay tribute to “La Lollo,” as the Italians called her. Loren said in a statement she “is deeply shaken and saddened” by the news of Lollobrigida’s death.

The two divas had parallel careers in Italy and Hollywood and were often considered rivals.

Italy’s Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano tweeted: “Adieu to a diva of the big screen, protagonist of half a century of Italian cinema. Your charm will remain eternal. Ciao Lollo.”

“Ciao Gina. With You the last diva has left us,” Tweeted actor director Giulio Base, whose wife, Filming Italy festival chief Tiziana Rocca,...

Gina Lollobrigida, the 1950s Italian bombshell who starred in films including “Fanfan la Tulipe,” “Beat the Devil,” “Trapeze” and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” has died. She was 95.

According to Italian news agency Lapresse, Lollobrigida died in a clinic in Rome. No cause of death has been cited. In September she had had surgery to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall, but she recovered and competed for a Senate seat in Italy’s elections held last year in September, though she did not win.

After resisting Howard Hughes’ offer to make movies in Hollywood in 1950, Lollobrigida starred with Gerard Philipe in the 1952 French swashbuckler “Fanfan la Tulipe,” a fest winner and popular favorite.

Her first American movie, shot in Italy, was John Huston’s 1953 film noir spoof “Beat the Devil,” in which she starred with Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones. The same year she starred with Vittorio De Sica in Luigi Comencini’s “Bread,...

Tár writer/director Todd Field discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

You Only Live Twice (1967) – Dana Gould’s trailer commentary

Tár (2022)

Man With A Movie Camera (1929)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

The Big Parade (1925)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Crowd (1928)

Star Wars (1977)

The Servant (1963)

Parasite (2019) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

The Three Musketeers (1973) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Figures In A Landscape (1970)

M (1931)

M (1951)

I Am Cuba (1964)

The Cranes Are Flying (1957) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Letter Never Sent (1960)

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)

The Towering Inferno (1974) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary

The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

The Sting (1973)

The World of Henry Orient (1964) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Thelma And Louise (1991)

Murmur Of The Heart (1971)

The Silent World (1956)

Opening Night (1977)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976) – Larry Karaszewski’s...

Despite being one of the most recognizable filmmakers in cinematic history, Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar during his illustrious career. With landmark films to his name like Psycho (1960) and Rear Window (1954), the Master of Suspense was snubbed on the grandest stage of cinematic achievement on a handful of occasions. Though almost all of his over 50 feature films are noted for their technical prowess and timelessness, Hitchcock suffered from a lack of success when it came to accolades and awards. His films have won a slew of awards on their own, but the director himself was never honored with an Oscar.

Hitchcock was nominated for the Best Director Oscar five times over his lengthy career but came up short every time. The Oscars are known for their controversy in awarding the wrong people, and other accomplished auteur directors like Robert Altman and King Vidor were also nominated and lost the prestigious award five times.

Although Universal had struck on big hits with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in 1923 and "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1925, studio honcho Carl Laemmle, Sr. was no fan of the horror genre. It was his monster-obsessed son, Carl Laemmle, Jr., that encouraged the studio to adapt the then-popular stage production of "Dracula" to film. The movie, released in 1931 and directed by Tod Browning, was stagey and nightmarish, and it deeply burned itself into the collective unconscious. Bela Lugosi, as Dracula, taught the world how vampires behave. 

"Dracula" was one of Universal's biggest hits, and Carl Jr. knew that multiple more monster projects could be instantly pushed into the pipeline. The 1930s saw the release of "Frankenstein," "Dracula's Daughter," "The Invisible Man," "Bride of Frankenstein," "The Black Cat," "The Invisible Ray," "Werewolf of London," "The Raven," and scads of others. Horror became the studio's niche.

The wave of popular horror films at Universal,...

Do you know when the first movie premiere in Hollywood history was held?

On Oct. 18. 1922 Sid Grauman opened his movie palace the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. with superstar Douglas Fairbank’s latest swashbuckler “Robin Hood.” The red carpet was rolled out for Fairbanks, his wife Mary Pickford and their good friend (and partner in United Artists) Charlie Chaplin. It cost 5 to attend the premiere. And the movie, which was the top box office draw, played there exclusively for several months. The Egyptian cost 800,000 to build and took 18 months to complete for Grauman and real estate developer Charles E. Toberman. It is currently being renovated by Netflix in cooperation with the American Cinematheque.

“Robin Hood,” directed by Allan Dwan, was one of the most expensive movies of the silent era, costing just under 1 million. The castle was the biggest set ever made for a silent movie. Some scenes feature over 1,200 extras.

John Wayne only received credit for directing two films throughout his 50-year career, but his fingerprints are all over many of his star vehicles. Having cut his teeth during the silent era under the tutelage of masters like John Ford, King Vidor, and Michael Curtiz, Wayne became an expert in the manufacture of movies. He understood camera placement, framing, how long to hold onto a shot, and when to cut. Though it was Ford who made him a star with 1939's landmark Western "Stagecoach," Wayne is as responsible for burnishing his big-screen image as any of his behind-the-scenes collaborators.

In Scott Eyman's biography "John Wayne: The Life and Legend," the author reveals that The Duke's experience knocking out programmers for Republic Pictures taught him that the difference between a B movie and an A movie was the "difference ... between a quick punch to the jaw and the expression on a face.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

As a restoration of Three Colors: White begins its run, a massive retrospective of King Vidor gets underway.

Anthology Film Archives

A series on Warhol’s durational cinema runs this weekend; Essential Cinema has Buñuel.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers plenty scintillating—prints of Black Sunday (on 16mm), Showgirls, and Carnival of Souls all have multiples showings this weekend—while Ciao! Manhattan and The Assassination of Jesse James return 35mm and a 16mm animation program runs on Sunday.

Paris Theater

Close Encounters, Suspiria, Cold Water, and Death on the Nile all screen in a “Directors Selects” series.

IFC Center

A series on Los Angeles films is underway—including They Live, The Long Goodbye, and the new restoration of Heat—while the Lost Highway continues; The Shining and Taxi Driver has late showings.

Film Forum...

US one sheet for Our Daily Bread.Though he was a name-above-the-title director back in the day and made some of the enduring classics of American cinema, the great Hollywood director King Vidor is no longer remembered as Hollywood royalty. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Vidor made some 50 feature films over the course of 40 years, was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Director (in 1979 he was finally awarded an Honorary Oscar), and some of his films—The Crowd (1928) and Hallelujah! (1929) in particular—are die-hard masterpieces. Starting today, New York’s Film at Lincoln Center will be showing 20 of Vidor’s features in an attempt to redress the balance and revitalize his reputation. It is the first major US retrospective of his work since “Rediscovering King Vidor” ran at the Public Theater in 1994, on the 100th anniversary of his birth..Restlessly exploring multiple genres, working from the...

Taylor Swift made a rare public appearance at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, in conversation with the indie director Mike Mills to discuss her short film for “All Too Well.” She spoke with Mills for an hour at New York’s Beacon Theatre, giving a fascinating look into her creative process. This was a whole new side of Dr. Swift — meet Film Geek (Taylor’s Version).

Taylor has gone radio silent on social media for most of the year. She gave her NYU commencement speech last month, but she got even more personal here,...

“The Wizard of Oz” is the all-movie; in my film school days, professors would use King Vidor’s canon cornerstone as a teachable exemplar for just about everything, from the usage of color to the dream-logic of cinema to the mechanisms of Golden Age Hollywood manufacturing. The new documentary “Lynch / Oz” applies this lens as a way of seeing the works of David Lynch with greater clarity and understanding, and in doing so, draws on the seemingly infinite number of angles from which the foundational fantasy can be analyzed.

Continue reading ‘Lynch / Oz’ Review: Alexandre O. Philippe Curates A Deep Dive Into David Lynch’s ‘Wizard Of Oz’ Obsession [Tribeca] at The Playlist.

Sensing a potential trend in the possible nominations of three major Oscars categories — best director, actor and actress — we could see a first-time occurrence for the Academy Awards on Tuesday. However, if you read the tea leaves put forth by the nominations for the DGA and SAG, there’s a strong possibility that all three of those categories may not include a first-time nominee — a first in Oscar history.

For best actor, the SAG lineup recognized all former nominees and winners — Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield, Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). Even the ones on the bubble are once-nominated or crowned, including Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”), Bradley Cooper (“Nightmare Alley”) and Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”). The closest first-timers in the running seem to be Golden Globe nominees Peter Dinklage (“Cyrano”) and Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza...

Westerns are populated with cowboys, gunslingers, bandits, Native American, horses, cows and buffalos. But the genre is much more complex than shoot-‘em-ups. In fact, the best Westerns are Shakespearean in nature exploring such universal subjects as love, hate, revenge, greed, power and good versus evil. One of the most popular sub-genres is the “ranch” Western where the patriarch or matriarch — remember Barbara Stanwyck in “The Big Valley”– governs with a strict and often violent hand. They act like they are above the law and often take legal matters into their own hand. They are often widowers or widows and have sons who run the spectrum from hero to villain.

Jane Campion’s highly acclaimed Netflix Oscar-contender “The Power of the Dog” falls into this sub-genre. Set in Montana in 1925, the story revolves around the charismatic but sadistic Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) who relishes being the master of a cattle rancher.

The November 12, 1958 edition of The Village Voice featured the first installment of the column “Movie Journal” by Jonas Mekas.

“Movie Journal” would become what the Underground Film Journal would argue was the most significant organizing tool of avant-garde cinema created by Jonas, even more so than the Film-makers’ Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives he helped found. But what was the column like before it gained such notoriety?

Well, we don’t have to guess. The book collection Movie Journal doesn’t start reprinting Jonas’s columns until 1959, but the entire archives of the Voice are online.

As a weekly publication, the Voice only published twelve “Movie Journal” columns in 1958. The Underground Film Journal has read all twelve and extracted what films Jonas reviewed each week; as well as made notes of significant avant-garde film happenings.

Jonas reviewed only a few avant-garde films those first two months, including Maya Deren...

In today’s parlance, Nina Mae McKinney, a performer of incomparable magnetism and impressive versatility, would be called “Black famous.” Although she burst onto the silver screen in a landmark feature, MGM’s Hallelujah, mainstream stardom eluded her. Hallelujah was one of the first studio pictures with an all-Black cast, and its director, King Vidor, was a leading filmmaker in the nascent industry. McKinney was lauded as the first Black movie star, and it seemed the sky was the limit for this triple-threat actor, singer and dancer. But with no Black filmmakers in its studio system, Hollywood had no particular compulsion ...

In today’s parlance, Nina Mae McKinney, a performer of incomparable magnetism and impressive versatility, would be called “Black famous.” Although she burst onto the silver screen in a landmark feature, MGM’s Hallelujah, mainstream stardom eluded her. Hallelujah was one of the first studio pictures with an all-Black cast, and its director, King Vidor, was a leading filmmaker in the nascent industry. McKinney was lauded as the first Black movie star, and it seemed the sky was the limit for this triple-threat actor, singer and dancer. But with no Black filmmakers in its studio system, Hollywood had no particular compulsion ...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDario Argento's Dark GlassesFollowing his appearance in Gaspar Noé's Vortex, Dario Argento returns to directing with Dark Glasses, his first feature since Dracula 3D (2012). Starring Asia Argento and Andrea Zhang, the thriller follows a serial killer, a blind sex worker, and a 10-year-old Chinese boy in Rome's Chinese community. John Woo is also set to make a return to Hollywood with Silent Night, a "no dialogue" action film about a father (played by Joel Kinnaman) who seeks to avenge his son's death. Film Labs, a "worldwide network of artist-run film laboratories," now has a new website! The website includes more than 500 films made at artist-run film labs from Vancouver to South Korea, as well as technical resources and distribution information. Dancer, choreographer, theatrical director, and filmmaker Wakefield Poole has died. A pioneer of the gay pornography industry,...