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Jeannette Charles, the Queen Elizabeth II look-alike who played the British monarch for laughs in National Lampoon’s European Vacation, in the first Naked Gun movie and in the last Austin Powers film, has died. She was 96.

Charles died Sunday at a hospice facility in Great Baddow, Essex, England, her daughter, Carol Christophi, announced. “Mum was a real character and a force of nature. She had an amazing life,” she said. “She was always respectful of the queen and adored the royal family.”

Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, also at age 96.

Charles spent more than four decades doubling for the head of state before she wound down her career in 2014.

“I think the first time I was recognized [as the queen] was on a trip [in 1971] to Capri in Italy, with my Italian pen friend Florence,” she recalled in a 2012 interview. “Someone shouted ‘Princess Elizabeth’ in Italian, my friend explained her majesty had...

It could have been a straightforward documentary about the David Bowie story — but who wants straightforward when it comes to Bowie? Instead, Moonage Daydream is a gloriously innovative trip into the Thin White Duke’s mind, written, directed, and edited by Brett Morgen. He specializes in portraits of twisted artists, whether that means Hollywood mogul Robert Evans in The Kid Stays In The Picture or Kurt Cobain in Montage of Heck. But his latest goes even deeper, a full immersion in the gaudiest, glammiest of rock-star lives. In one of...

What is not to love about Brett Morgen’s David Bowie doc? The director has created a fascinating paean to Bowie from a montage of archive footage, which includes stage performances, backstage material and some of his most famous interviews. He captures how hugely talented, immensely intelligent and ridiculously sexy Bowie was. Alongside all that, Bowie’s innate niceness and honesty seeps through in virtually every interview. As one weeping fan from the 1970s put it: ‘He’s smashing’. And so is this documentary.

Starting from Bowie’s heyday, the viewer follows the performer onstage for his remarkable Ziggy Stardust tour. His playfulness and sexiness, plus his almost godlike hold over the audience, shine through even fifty years later. Yet Morgen also touches on Bowie’s formative years, his family life in southeast London: the significance of his half-brother Terry, who was institutionalised for schizophrenia for most of his adult...

Brett Morgen’s intimate montage of the uniquely influential artist celebrates his career, creativity and unfailing charm

Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream is a 140-minute shapeshifting epiphany-slash-freakout leading to the revelation that, yes, we’re lovers of David Bowie and that is that. It’s a glorious celebratory montage of archive material, live performance footage, Bowie’s own experimental video art and paintings, movie and stage work and interviews with various normcore TV personalities with whom Bowie is unfailingly polite, open and charming.

As a rock star, Bowie was a unique artist, aesthete, insurgent experimentalist, gender dissident and unrepentant, unselfconscious cigarette smoker. (I wonder if he ever gave that up?) Morgen includes the traditional student-poster gallery of the various icons to whom Bowie can be compared – Oscar Wilde, Buster Keaton, James Baldwin, Aleister Crowley – all perfectly allowable, but none of them quite approximate Bowie’s own sweetness and rock idealism.

From Bono to Domingo, the stars line up to sing the praises of their late friend in Ron Howard’s heart-sinking documentary

Bland, incurious and passionless, this documentary about the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti is like a promotional video licensed by a team of copyright lawyers – and about as challenging as a Three Tenors gig at Wembley stadium. Pavarotti’s glorious voice all but drowns in a 114-minute montage of obsequious syrup.

Director Ron Howard certainly has an important lineup of interviewees: co-tenors José Carreras and Plácido Domingo, first wife Adua Veroni, second wife Nicoletta Mantovani, assistant, student and former lover Madelyn Renee – and also his New York manager Herbert Breslin and London promoter Harvey Goldsmith. Everyone is on their best behaviour, no one speaking out of turn about the great man or each other. Weirdly, the most interesting interview moments come in old archive footage of Pavarotti speaking to Clive James and Russell Harty.

“The Color of Money” wasn’t a Martin Scorsese project: iI was a Paul Newman project. The acclaimed actor, an enormous fan of “Raging Bull,” wrote the director a fan letter asking to make a picture based on a 1984 novel by Walter Tevis. The resulting film is one of Scorsese’s most uncharacteristic, framing the story as comeback narrative for Newman’s pool hustler Fast Eddie Felson — though it’s arguable they never really show him leaving the game at all.

The final film lets Newman’s star persona bounce off the power of a rising Tom Cruise in an oddly sweet and optimistic package, one that would finally win Paul Newman his first Oscar in 1987 for Best Actor. A few weeks before the ceremony, Newman sat down with “Film 87” host Russell Harty to talk about that elusive trophy, as well as what it’s like to be Paul Newman...

Brett Smiley 25th September 1955 - 8th January 2016.

The death of Brett Smiley has removed one of the most obscure, but fascinating facets from the chipped, black nail varnished footnotes of rock. Until the turn of the new century his most slender of reputations rested only in the minds of those fortunate enough to possess his lone single "Va Va Va Voom," a wonderfully effete confection which surfaced in Britain in the fading months of 1974. Over-hyped and over the top, this California pretty boy import pouted and pranced like a stick thin bleached and back combed Goldie Hawn in platform boots. He emoted huskily: "I've gone so crazy I'm a certified nervous wreck. A little bit eccentric Ha! Screaming like a discotheque,"  made the cover of Disc magazine as the prettiest boy in the world and managed to briefly render Marc Bolan butch and reveal Sweet as the dockers in drag that they truly were.

Good horror/comedies stick in your mind long after you have watched them, great horror/comedies will get quoted to death and revisited many, many times. The bad ones? They get forgotten just as soon as the credits roll, and deservedly so. Edgar Wright’s 2004 flick Shaun of the Dead, to me anyway, is the modern benchmark for this tricky little sub-genre. It was a film that showed an obvious and knowledgeable love of the genre yet managed to keep the laughs coming thick and fast with an absolute gem of a script. It was, and still is, almost the perfect horror comedy.

With that in mind I move on to Tucker and Dale vs Evil, a Canadian lensed film, which looks to eschew zombie in favor of the other horror movie staple; the Hillbilly. Ever since Deliverance made us want to squeal like a pig back in 1972 the Hillbilly...

Producer of popular BBC television dramas

Alan Shallcross, who has died aged 78, epitomised the BBC television producer of the 1970s and 80s. Always dapper, never without a tie and eminently respectable, Alan had a passion for drama and a respect for writers, actors and the creative process. He knew what he wanted and he got it by searching out talented individuals, nurturing them and then watching them weave their magic in his productions.

In those days, when Paul Fox was controller of BBC1 and Christopher Morahan was head of plays, the BBC drama department bubbled with life. Producers such as Alan were given commissioning power. The writer Brian Phelan, who worked with him often, has described how they went out to lunch, chewed over an idea and, if all was well, went ahead and did it: no committees, no commissioning department, just one producer with an eye for a good...

The next title in the "Rare And Unseen" DVD collection is "David Bowie", available November 23, 2010.

"...Most famous for his alter-ego, the ostentatious, androgynous 'Ziggy Stardust' during the glam-rock era of the early 1970's, David Bowie has continually reinvented his music/image, regarded as an influential innovator, particularly in rock music.

"He has had numerous top ten hits, notably 'China Girl', 'Modern Love', 'Starman', 'Space Oddity', 'Under Pressure' and 'Let's Dance', among many others. Bowie is also a multi-instrumentalist, singing vocals as well as playing electric, acoustic, and twelve string guitar, keyboards, alto, tenor, piano, harmonica, xylophone, tambourine, drums, percussion and many other instruments, making him one of the most multi-talented musicians in the world.

"Told through missing-believed-wiped archive interviews and rare and unseen footage, this insightful DVD is a worthy addition to any Bowie collection..."

Unseen footage includes film from the ITN archive, lost and now restored TV...

Mvd Visual and Wienerworld report that the new DVD "Cliff Richard- Rare And Unseen" will receive a North American release, July 27.

"...'Cliff Richard "Rare and Unseen"' takes an inside look at the talented, charismatic, singer-songwriter and actor who dominated the British popular music scene in the late 1950's and early 1960's, before and during The Beatles' first year in the charts.

"From his UK chart-topping successes to being a TV and film personality, Richard has made his mark in the entertainment industry, playing, recording and conquering the planet for five decades - noted as the only artist to have had a number one single in the UK in five consecutive decades, doing so from the 1950's through to the 1990's..."

The collection of rare footage features original film/videos of the singer, including newsreels/photographs from private collections.

Features include the newly-restored "Newcastle City Hall" religious special, the Russell Harty Interviews,...

Mvd Visual and Wienerworld report that the new DVD Cliff Richard- Rare And Unseen will receive a North American release, July 27. "...'Cliff Richard "Rare and Unseen"' takes an inside look at the talented, charismatic, singer-songwriter and actor who dominated the British popular music scene in the late 1950's and early 1960's, before and during The Beatles' first year in the charts. "From his UK chart-topping successes to being a TV and film personality, Richard has certainly made his mark in the entertainment industry. He played, he recorded and conquered the planet for five decades - and he is the only artist to have had a number one single in the UK in five consecutive decades, doing so from the 1950's through to the 1990's..." The collection of rare footage showcasing original film/videos of the singer, also includes newsreels/photographs from private collections. Features include the newly-restored...