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John Fordisn’t only the most iconic filmmaker behind American Western cinema, but the single most successful director when it comes to the Academy Awards; Ford received a record-breaking four wins for Best Director, even though How Green Was My Valley is the only one of his films that also won the award for Best Picture. The Oscars’ affinity for Ford’s work is understandable, as he both crafted a beautiful style of naturalistic visual storytelling and had the bravery to tackle projects that delved into somewhat controversial material. Although his Oscar-winning films The Grapes of Wrath and The Quiet Manhave since been heralded as classics, Ford won his first Best Director Oscar for the thrilling psychological drama The Informer. An edgy study in morality and guilt, The Informer was a brilliant exercise in tension that was radically ahead of its time.

April is about to be a good month for returning HBO and HBO Max properties.

HBO Max’s list of releases for April 2022 features three hotly anticipated seasons of television. The Flight Attendant, which helped launch HBO Max as a viable spot for good dramedy in 2020, premieres its second season on April 21. That will be followed by another go-around for the sci-fi comedy Made for Love on April 28. Of course, the big ticket item this month is something that HBO Max inherited from its cable cousin. Barry season 3 will continue the story of hitman-turned-actor Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) on April 24.

The TV offerings run much deeper than just returning shows this month. April 7 sees the arrival of Tokyo Vice, a sprawling crime drama with some episodes directed by Michael Mann. The series stars Ansel Elgort as an American journalist embedding himself in Tokyo’s criminal underground in the late ’90s.

Exclusive: Paddy Considine has inked with ICM Partners for representation. The actor recently wrapped HBO’s long-anticipated Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, playing the lead role of King Viserys Targaryen.

Considine’s early big-screen work includes Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People and Jim Sheridan’s In America. He went on to star in Pawel Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love and Last Resort, Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum, Edgar Wright’s movies Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, Richard Ayoade’s movies The Double and Submarine, and Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man among others. He also teamed as a co-writer and star in Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes.

His work in TV includes his role as Father John Hughes in Peaky Blinders, Informer as well as playing Claude Bolton in HBO’s series The Outsider based on the Stephen King novel.

Considine’s feature directorial debut,...

Exclusive: Managers Jeremy Platt and Ben Rowe have joined Grandview. They start today as partners, the first added to the partner roster since the company’s inception. Founded in 2014 by Matt Rosen and Jeff Silver, Grandview alsois partnered with the Brian Kavanaugh Jones and Fred Berger-run production shingle Automatik. The two divisions run autonomously.

Rowe joins from Oasis Media Group, where he worked with David Lonner for nine years. Previously, Rowe was an agent in the Motion Picture Literary department at Wma, where he started his career. Rowe’s client list includes Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), Justin Simien (Dear White People), Jake Schreier (Paper Towns), Hannah Fidell (Long Dumb Road), Aaron Katz (Gemini) and writers Gina Welch, Chuck MacLean (City on a Hill), and Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani (The Informer).

Jeremy Platt joins from Plattform, the company he created in 2014. His clients include...

On the 90th anniversary of the Oscars, Guillermo del Toro was finally welcomed into the Best Director club when he prevailed for his fantasy film “The Shape of Water.” Earlier this awards season del Toro told us that “The Shape of Water” was a “fairy tale for troubled times,” a reference to the movie’s heroine (Sally Hawkins) being a mute woman who falls in love with a sea creature. Besides winning Best Director, del Toro also accepted the prize for Best Picture as one of the film’s producers. Click through our photo gallery above to see our updated Best Director gallery featuring all 90 winners in order.

See 2018 Oscars: Complete list of winners (and losers)

Guillermo del Toro joins a list of former Best Director winners that notably includes his fellow Mexican director friends Alejandro G. Inarritu and Alfonso Cuaron. These three amigos have now won four of the...

“The Shape of Water” is one of two Best Picture Oscar nominees with three acting nominations — the other being “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” — but star Sally Hawkins and supporting players Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins are not predicted to win any of them. If they indeed go 0-3 on Sunday and “The Shape of Water” takes the top prize, the fantasy drama will join eight other Best Picture champs that did not convert any of its three-plus acting nominations into wins.

“Birdman” (2014) was the most recent Best Picture winner not to carry an acting award from at least three nominations, as Michael Keaton, Emma Stone and Edward Norton fell to Eddie Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything”), Patricia Arquette (“Boyhood”) and J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”), respectively. Arquette and Simmons were the supporting frontrunners all season, but Keaton was locked in a tight Best Actor race with Redmayne until the SAG Awards...

In 2009 — when the Academy Awards went to 10 Best Picture nominees for the first time since 1943 — the preferential system of voting, which had been used from 1934 to 1945, was reintroduced. The academy did so as it believed this “best allows the collective judgment of all voting members to be most accurately represented.”

We have detailed how the preferential voting system works at the Oscars in the modern era. So, let’s take a look back at those dozen years early in the history of the academy when it first used this complicated counting to determine the Best Picture winner rather than a simple popular vote. (At the bottom of this post, be sure to vote for the film that you think will take the top Oscar this year.)

See Best Picture Gallery: Every winner of the top Academy Award

1934

This seventh ceremony marked the first time that the Oscars eligibility period was the calendar year.

All five of this year’s nominees for Best Director are looking for their first Oscar win. The lucky recipient will join the illustrious list of 69 filmmakers that have won in this category since the first Oscars were handed out in May of 1929. We have compiled the definitive gallery of every Best Director winner in the 89-year history of the Academy Awards, from the first year — which had two recipients — to reigning champ Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”). Click through our detailed Best Director photo gallery above.

At the inaugural Oscar ceremony, two directors were honored– one for comedy (Lewis Milestone for “Two Arabian Nights”) and one for drama (Frank Borzage for “7th Heaven”); the practice was discontinued after the first year. On four occasions, a single director has scored multiple nominations in a single year, the most recent being Steven Soderbergh, who earned noms in 2000 for “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic,...

“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” ended a 26-year drought in Best Supporting Actor, producing two nominees, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, from the same film for the first time since “Bugsy” (1991) stars Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley lost to Jack Palance (“City Slickers”). By all appearances, it’s smooth sailing for Rockwell for the win, which would be the sixth time a Best Supporting Actor winner defeated a co-star in 18 dual duels.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) stars Harry Carey and Claude Rains were the first co-stars to be nominated against each other in Best Supporting Actor, but they lost to Thomas Mitchell for “Stagecoach.” It would be another 32 years — with seven pairs of double nominees in between — before a Best Supporting Actor champ, Ben Johnson, beat a co-star, Jeff Bridges, for 1971’s “The Last Picture Show.”

Three years later, Robert De Niro prevailed over fellow “The Godfather Part II...

It used to be pretty much an Academy Awards norm that the film that won Best Picture also took home the Oscar for Best Director. In recent years that has changed, largely due to the preferential ballot that has been implemented for Best Picture voting. These two categories have split in four of the past five years, with “Birdman” (2014) and its director Alejandro G. Inarritu being the last time they lined up. Currently “The Shape of Water” is in first place to win both categories on Gold Derby’s Oscar charts, so might things get back on track this year?

See 2018 Oscar nominations: Full list of Academy Awards nominees in all 24 categories

A year ago Damien Chazelle won Best Director for “La La Land” while “Moonlight” took Best Picture, becoming the fourth time this decade that the Oscar split occurred. In 2015 Inarritu won Best Director for “The Revenent” (his second...

Next to Universal, few studios have had such a big impact on horror than Rko Radio Pictures. Started in 1927, Rko was the first studio founded to make exclusively sound films, a then-brand-new invention that served as a major draw for the studio. Rko’s life was relatively short (it was killed just 30 years after forming), but during their time, they put out a seriously impressive number of classics, including Top Hat, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Informer, and most notably, Citizen Kane.

Of course, Rko didn’t shy away from horror. While their output wasn’t nearly as prolific as, say, Universal’s, it was still quite impressive, boasting some of the most formative and important horror films of old Hollywood. Rko saw the release of a few all-time classics, including I Walked With a Zombie, The Thing From Another World, King Kong, and the topic of today’s Crypt,...

'The Doll' with Ossi Oswalda and Hermann Thimig: Early Ernst Lubitsch satirical fantasy starring 'the German Mary Pickford' has similar premise to that of the 1925 Buster Keaton comedy 'Seven Chances.' 'The Doll': San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented fast-paced Ernst Lubitsch comedy starring the German Mary Pickford – Ossi Oswalda Directed by Ernst Lubitsch (So This Is Paris, The Wedding March), the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival presentation The Doll / Die Puppe (1919) has one of the most amusing mise-en-scènes ever recorded. The set is created by cut-out figures that gradually come to life; then even more cleverly, they commence the fast-paced action. It all begins when a shy, confirmed bachelor, Lancelot (Hermann Thimig), is ordered by his rich uncle (Max Kronert), the Baron von Chanterelle, to marry for a large sum of money. As to be expected, mayhem ensues. Lancelot is forced to flee from the hordes of eligible maidens, eventually...

Filmmakers and stars have often taken a political stance by choosing which projects to make. But when the Academy Awards ceremony began in 1929 to honor the best in film, this created a more public way to demonstrate opinions about the state of the world, the government or a cause.

Read More: Meryl Streep Fires Back at Donald Trump in Blistering Speech: ‘We Have the Right to Live Our Lives’

Not everyone has taken this opportunity though, except for maybe wearing the odd ribbon to support awareness or using their attendance (or lack thereof) to show solidarity. Those blessed by winning a coveted statuette, however, can use their actual acceptance speech as a platform to speak out. Although the awards started being televised in 1953, it took until the 1970s until winners began to really take advantage of having a massive audience for their views. And at times, even the Academy itself got political.

‘La La Land’ and ‘Moonlight’ (Courtesy: Dale Robinette; David Bornfriend/A24)

By: Carson Blackwelder

Managing Editor

Nothing is certain at the Oscars, and that absolutely applies to the best picture and best director categories. While it is common for films to win both of these trophies in a given year, sometimes they can go to two different works. There’s a chance that La La Land and Moonlight could split these categories at the upcoming ceremony — but how often does that happen?

Both of these films are considered frontrunners in both the best picture and best director category at the upcoming Oscars. This site’s namesake, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, lists La La Land — written and directed by Damien Chazelle — and Moonlight — written and directed by Barry Jenkins — as the top two contenders in both categories in his latest check-in on the race. The two films have been...

The following text is an excerpt from an essay commissioned by the specialist publishing house Hatori Press (Japan) for a tribute to the great critic, scholar and teacher Shigehiko Hasumi on the occasion of his 80th birthday (29 April 2016). Other contributors to this book (slated to appear in both Japanese and English editions) include Pedro Costa, Chris Fujiwara and Richard I. Suchenski. Beyond Prof. Hasumi’s many achievements in criticism and education (he was President of the University of Tokyo between 1997 and 2001), his ‘method,’ his unique way of seeing and speaking about films, has served as an immense inspiration for a generation of directors in Japan including Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shinji Aoyama. The online magazines Rouge (www.rouge.com.au) and Lola (www.lolajournal.com), co-edited by Martin, provide the best access to Hasumi’s work in English (see references in the notes below).Leos Carax and Shigehiko Hasumi. Photo by Michiko Yoshitake.

By Patrick Shanley

Managing Editor

Director Tom McCarthy’s true story drama about Boston Globe reporters investigating the local Catholic archdiocese and the surrounding child molestation scandal, Spotlight, is a serious Oscar contender, particularly for its star-studded cast.

The film, which won the best ensemble performance award at this month’s Gotham Awards and the Robert Altman award at the Independent Spirit Awards, boasts serious contenders in the best supporting actor category led by performances from last year’s best actor nominee Michael Keaton and former Oscar-nom Mark Ruffalo.

It seems likely that both Keaton and Ruffalo will receive nominations this year, which would be quite a feat in itself as no film has had two of its actors nominated in the best supporting actor category since Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley both earned noms for 1991’s Bugsy (though the supporting actress category has had a number of films with...

The Hurricane

Written by Dudley Nichols

Directed by John Ford

USA, 1937

“My name is John Ford and I make Westerns,” so the legendary filmmaker once declared. As has been pointed out (by Martin Scorsese among others) that statement in a sense discounts the great director’s non-genre works, like the four features for which he won Academy Awards: The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). But with more than 140 directing credits on his résumé, it also sidesteps many lesser known, though quality, Ford films, those that either fall into the middle of the road category or those that are very good, if not quite great. That’s where his 1937 romantic drama The Hurricane comes in.

Produced by Samuel Goldwyn, directed by Ford (two years after The Informer and two years before his groundbreaking Stagecoach [1939]), and written by Dudley Nichols, himself an Oscar-winner for his writing The Informer,...

Maureen O'Hara: Queen of Technicolor. Maureen O'Hara movies: TCM tribute Veteran actress and Honorary Oscar recipient Maureen O'Hara, who died at age 95 on Oct. 24, '15, in Boise, Idaho, will be remembered by Turner Classic Movies with a 24-hour film tribute on Friday, Nov. 20. At one point known as “The Queen of Technicolor” – alongside “Eastern” star Maria Montez – the red-headed O'Hara (born Maureen FitzSimons on Aug. 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, County Dublin) was featured in more than 50 movies from 1938 to 1971 – in addition to one brief 1991 comeback (Chris Columbus' Only the Lonely). Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne Setting any hint of modesty aside, Maureen O'Hara wrote in her 2004 autobiography (with John Nicoletti), 'Tis Herself, that “I was the only leading lady big enough and tough enough for John Wayne.” Wayne, for his part, once said (as quoted in 'Tis Herself): There's only one woman who has been my friend over the...

Olivia de Havilland on Turner Classic Movies: Your chance to watch 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' for the 384th time Olivia de Havilland is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 2, '15. The two-time Best Actress Oscar winner (To Each His Own, 1946; The Heiress, 1949) whose steely determination helped to change the way studios handled their contract players turned 99 last July 1. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any de Havilland movie rarities, e.g., Universal's cool thriller The Dark Mirror (1946), the Paramount comedy The Well-Groomed Bride (1947), or Terence Young's British-made That Lady (1955), with de Havilland as eye-patch-wearing Spanish princess Ana de Mendoza. On the other hand, you'll be able to catch for the 384th time a demure Olivia de Havilland being romanced by a dashing Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, as TCM shows this 1938 period adventure classic just about every month. But who's complaining? One the...

Musical theorist Michel Chion coined the term "synchresis" to define the forging of picture and sound, the way artistry on both sides of the line blurs into our favorite movie moments. Sound design can manifest and warp reality, but film scoring has its own synchresistic effect, albeit one that's rather bizarre. There's no reason music should ever be playing against a film aiming for truth. Yet over 100-plus years of filmmaking, a composer's touch — or restraint — has become an essential part of the medium's power. A musical cue stamps an iconic scene, a director's vision and a film's legacy. There are sense memories connected to the opening notes of an iconic theme. Nevertheless, it took the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a few years to recognize film music's weight-pulling at the Oscars. Film's transition into a synced sound medium kept the business resisting the honor until the 7th...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Oscar buzz continues to follow Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May and its screenings at various film festivals, including the Telluride, Toronto and New York film fests. The film is set to close AFI Fest Thursday and open in Theaters on Friday. Sony Pictures Classics will be pushing for three of its stars to land Oscar nominations: Channing Tatum and Steve Carell for lead actor and Mark Ruffalo for supporting. If the film was to score all three nominations, it would be one of 15 films to land that many actor nominations and the first film since 1991’s Bugsy.

The biographical crime drama about Benjamin Siegel, the infamous gangster known as Bugsy, landed Warren Beatty a lead actor nomination for his role as Bugsy and supporting actor nominations for Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley. None of the actors won.

Veterans Day movies on TCM: From 'The Sullivans' to 'Patton' (photo: George C. Scott in 'Patton') This evening, Turner Classic Movies is presenting five war or war-related films in celebration of Veterans Day. For those outside the United States, Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day, which takes place in late May. (Scroll down to check out TCM's Veterans Day movie schedule.) It's good to be aware that in the last century alone, the U.S. has been involved in more than a dozen armed conflicts, from World War I to the invasion of Iraq, not including direct or indirect military interventions in countries as disparate as Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. As to be expected in a society that reveres people in uniform, American war movies have almost invariably glorified American soldiers even in those rare instances when they have dared to criticize the military establishment.

Andrew V. McLaglen has passed away at his home in the San Juan Islands. He was 94. Wheeler Winston Dixon in Senses of Cinema: "Coming of age when his father, the gifted actor Victor McLaglen, won an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in John Ford’s The Informer (1935), young Andrew worked and lived with the cream of Hollywood’s most original and idiosyncratic artists. In addition to John Ford, he knew and/or worked with John Wayne, William Wellman, Budd Boetticher and Cary Grant, and later carved out a career for himself as a director in the Western genre that few can equal." » - David Hudson...

Andrew V. McLaglen has passed away at his home in the San Juan Islands. He was 94. Wheeler Winston Dixon in Senses of Cinema: "Coming of age when his father, the gifted actor Victor McLaglen, won an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in John Ford’s The Informer (1935), young Andrew worked and lived with the cream of Hollywood’s most original and idiosyncratic artists. In addition to John Ford, he knew and/or worked with John Wayne, William Wellman, Budd Boetticher and Cary Grant, and later carved out a career for himself as a director in the Western genre that few can equal." » - David Hudson...

The 2014 Viennale gets underway on October 23rd and runs to November 6th. The festival has published a preview of their lineup:

Features

Frank (Lenny Abrahamson)

Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

Two Day, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

Li'l Quinguin (Bruno Demont)

Hard to Be a God (Aeksej German)

Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

Mambo Cool (Chris Gude)

Amour fou (Jessica Hausner)

The Last Summer of the Rich (Peter Kern)

Time Lapse (Bradley King)

The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid)

Sorrow and Joy (Nils Malmros)

Suddarth (Richie Mehta)

Macondo (Sudabeh Mortezai)

Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund)

I'm Not Him (Tayfun Pirselimoglu)

Favula (Raúl Perrone)

Buzzard (Joel Potrykus)

A Proletarian Winter's Tale (Julian Radlmaier)

Two Shots Fired (Martín Rejtman)

Mauro (Hernán Rosselli)

The Sad Smell of Flesh (Cristóbal Arteaga Rozas)

Love is Strange (Ira Sachs)

The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)

Why Don't You Play in Hell?...

One of the most well-known awards for film are the Academy Awards. Better known as the Oscars, the awards have grown in stature over the years, with their choices becoming a point of discussion among many film fans in the lead up to, and following, the event. Previous winners have included Annie Hall for Best Picture, Tom Hanks for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his work in both Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, and John Ford for Best Director for his work on The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man. The latest incarnation of the awards show, honouring the best in Hollywood from 2013, took place on Sunday, March 2nd. Among the winners were:

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Jared Leto for his role as Rayon in Dallas Buyer’s Club

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Lupita Nyong’o for...

The 85-year history of the Academy Awards is rife with statistical oddities, and one that has the potential to play out this Sunday is among the most intriguing: a split between the films that win Best Picture and Best Director.

Though conventional wisdom has long held that only one film will walk away with both prizes on Oscar night, many pundits are predicting that the awards will instead go to two different movies this year, with "Gravity" director Alfonso Cuaron expected to snag the Best Director statuette, while "12 Years a Slave" (or "American Hustle," depending on where your loyalties lie) is the favorite to win Best Picture.

While such a split has occurred just 22 times since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences started handing out trophies in 1929, four of the first five ceremonies produced a divide between the Best Director and Best Picture prizes. "Wings," dubbed the original...

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Shirley Temple, and Oscar movies: Library of Congress’ March 2014 screenings (photo: Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in ‘Capote’) Tributes to the recently deceased Shirley Temple and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and several Academy Award-nominated and -winning films are among the March 2014 screenings at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus Theater and, in collaboration with the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, The State Theatre, both located in Culpeper, Virginia. The 1934 sentimental comedy-drama Little Miss Marker (March 6, Packard) is the movie that turned six-year-old Shirley Temple into a major film star. Temple would become the biggest domestic box-office draw of the mid-1930s, and, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Sonja Henie, Don Ameche, Loretta Young, and Madeleine Carroll notwithstanding, would remain 20th Century Fox’s top star until later in the decade. Directed by Alexander Hall (Here Comes Mr. Jordan, My Sister Eileen), Little Miss Marker — actually, a Paramount...

Oscar-nominated actor who brought sensitivity and warmth to her most famous role in Imitation of Life

From its earliest days, Hollywood, which has always lagged behind wider social advances, limited the roles of black actors to stock, wide-eyed cowards, simpletons or servants, often referred to as "uncles" and "mammies". Juanita Moore, who has died aged 99, suffered from this limitation by having to play maids throughout most of her long career. However, Moore could have echoed what Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, once said: "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

Where McDaniel as Mammy, Scarlett O'Hara's lovable, sassy servant in Gone With the Wind (1939) was the apotheosis of the black maid, Moore's Oscar-nominated portrayal of Annie Johnson, housekeeper to the glamorous Broadway star Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) in Douglas Sirk...

Julie Taymor, Antonio Monda, Jeffrey Eugenides in a backstage Le Conversazioni: Films of My Life discussion. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze The 2013 Le Conversazioni literary festival celebrating the relationship between art, architecture, literature and film concluded at the Morgan Library & Museum on Thursday, November 7 in New York. Artistic director of Le Conversazioni Antonio Monda discussed with Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides - whose novel was adapted into Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (1999) starring Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, James Woods, and Kathleen Turner - films that influenced their lives and work. Clips from each of Taymor and Eugenides' chosen movies were shown, plus one from the moderator at the end.

The Films of My Life chosen by Eugenides were Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout (1971), Frank Perry's The Swimmer (1968), Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004), and Robert Altman's Nashville (1975).

Antonio Monda introduces Le Conversazioni Films of My Life Photo:...

When TCM asked if I would provide on-camera thoughts for a DVD set of five John Ford films made for Columbia Pictures, I happily said yes. Three of the titles have never been released on disc before. Even so, I didn’t realize how much I would derive from the experience of revisiting these movies—one from the 1930s, three from the '50s, and one from the early '60s. The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) is a breezy comedy the great man made in the wake of his artistic success with The Informer. Edward G. Robinson gives a great performance in a dual role as a milquetoast bookkeeper and his dead ringer, a cold-blooded gangster. And while history would have us believe that it was Frank Capra...

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The Killruddery Film Festival takes place this weekend, in Killruddery House. It’s a festival with a difference as it specialises in silent film (as well as the classics). The silent films that are shown are all accompanied by live music. This years festival will screen South, a 1920 documentary about Shackleton’s expedition to the the south pole. John Ford fans are in for a treat too as The Informer and The Iron Horse will also screen. The full programme can be found here. This year they will have in attendance, Kevin Brownlow probably the worlds greatest expert in silent film, the legendary Maurice Galway, Stephen Horne and Morgan Cooke who will be the musicians accompanying all the silent film. Best of luck to the crew on the festival.

Jeanne Crain: From Pinky to Margie Jeanne Crain, one of the most charming Hollywood actresses of the ’40s and ’50s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" featured player on Monday, August 26, 2013. Since Jeanne Crain was a top 20th Century Fox star for about a decade — a favorite of Fox mogul Darryl F. Zanuck — TCM will be showing quite a few films from the Fox library. And that’s great news. (Photo: Jeanne Crain ca. 1950.) (See also: “Jeanne Crain Movies: TCM’s ‘Summer Under the Stars’ Schedule.”) Now, my first recommendation is actually an MGM release. That’s Russell Rouse’s 1956 psychological Western The Fastest Gun Alive, an unusual movie in that the hero turns out to be a "coward" at heart: quick-on-the-trigger gunslinger Glenn Ford is reluctant to face an evil challenger (Broderick Crawford) in a small Western town. But why? Jeanne Crain is his serious-minded wife...

Classic American novels are all the rage in Hollywood these days.

After the success of "The Great Gatsby," the next big literary adaptation may be a new movie version of "The Grapes of Wrath." Deadline reports that Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks are in talks to acquire the film rights to the 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by John Steinbeck. Spielberg won't direct the film, just produce.

"Grapes of Wrath" has been made into a movie once before, in 1940 by director John Ford. Spielberg has often talked about Ford's influence on him. "Ford's in my mind when I make a lot of my pictures," he once said. A 15-year-old Spielberg even met the legendary filmmaker of "The Searchers," "Stagecoach," "The Informer," and "How Green Was My Valley." Ford won a record four Best Director Oscars (Spielberg currently has two).

The Depression-era story follows the Joads, a family of tenant farmers, as they venture...

Liam O'Flaherty's novel The Informer, in which an Ira man rats on a comrade for the reward money and endures a night of agonizing guilt, punishment and redemption, has been filmed thrice, and all three versions are of interest. Jules Dassin's proto-blaxploitation version, Uptight! (1968), is the least impressive, but does boast fine performances by screenwriters Jason Bernard and Ruby Dee, who take lead roles, and the always imposing Raymond St. Jacques and Roscoe Lee Browne. The climax, scored to Booker T. and the M.G.'s "Time is Tight" (a.k.a. The Blues Brothers' theme) is pretty exciting, once you get over the shock.

John Ford's 1935 The Informer is the most faithful and famed, though its reputation is not as high as it once was. At times the Rko production, with its Max Steiner score and hulking performance from Victor McLaglan, recalls King Kong (McLaglan...

The “adult” Western – as it would come to be called – was a long time coming. A Hollywood staple since the days of The Great Train Robbery (1903), the Western offered spectacle and action set against the uniquely American milieu of the Old West – a historical period which, at the dawn of the motion picture industry, was still fresh in the nation’s memory. What the genre rarely offered was dramatic substance.

Early Westerns often adopted the same traditions of the popular Wild West literature and dime novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries producing, as a consequence, highly romantic, almost purely mythic portraits the Old West. Through the early decades of the motion picture industry, the genre went through several creative cycles, alternately tilting from fanciful to realistic and back again. By the early sound era, and despite such serious efforts as The Big Trail (1930) and The Virginian (1929), Hollywood Westerns were,...

Continuing our daily countdown, here is the second installment out of 30, in the list of the 300 Greatest Films Ever Made. These are numbers 290-281.

290) Immortal Beloved (1990) Bernard Rose USA

 

289) The Kid (1921) Charlie Chaplin USA Silent

 

288) Up (2009) Peter Doctor/Bob Peterson USA Animated

 

287) The Last Emperor (1987) Bernardo Bertolucci Italian/British/Chinese

 

286) Lolita (1962) Stanley Kubrick British

 

285) The Informer (1935) John Ford USA

 

284) McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) Robert Altman USA

 

283) Mystic River (2003) Clint Eastwood USA

 

282) The Lady Vanishes (1938) Alfred Hitchcock British

 

281) Young Frankenstein (1974) Mel Brooks USA

280-271 coming next.

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John Ford is The Western. Instrumental in elevating the genre and crafting more iconic films than can fit in a saddle bag, the director had a filmmaking career spanning 63 years and managed to make eye patches cool on top of building a legendary resume. Sporting four Oscars (for How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath, The Informer and The Quiet Man), Ford saw the work of a filmmaker as a way to make a living, a job not to be seen through romance or puffery. Still, it’s impossible to overstate his influence. If you could ask David Lean, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and other masters who inspired them, they’d all bring up Ford’s name. The directors we all look up to, look up to him. So here’s a bit of free film school (for fans and filmmakers alike) from the man who made Jimmy Stewart play Wyatt Earp so audiences wouldn...

Orson Welles, Citizen Kane

Elizabeth Taylor's jewels have just fetched a record-setting $115 million. Chances are Orson Welles' Oscar for his 1941 classic Citizen Kane won't be sold for even one hundredth of that amount next December 20. Still, Welles' golden statuette is bound to its anonymous seller much more than the $1 price tag stipulated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to all post-1950 golden statuettes.

Considered one of the masterworks of world cinema, Citizen Kane lost the Best Picture Oscar of 1941 to John Ford's family/labor relations drama How Green Was My Valley. Welles the director also lost the Oscar in that category to Ford — who by then already had two Best Director statuettes at home (for The Informer, 1935, and The Grapes of Wrath, 1940). Welles and co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (brother of All About Eve writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz) did, however, take home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Julianne Moore, Far from Heaven For decades, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards have been considered a precursor of the Academy Awards. Movies, performers, directors — and later cinematographers and screenwriters — singled out by the Nyfcc usually have gone on to receive Oscar nominations, oftentimes the golden statuette itself. The New York critics awards also have the reputation of being "snooty" and "artsy." Are they? When it comes to serving as a precursor of the Academy Awards, the answer would have to be a resounding Yes despite a number of Nyfcc winners eventually bypassed by (most of) the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters. As for the Nyfcc's "artsy" choices … Well, that depends on your idea of "artsy." If choosing John Ford's box-office disappointment The Informer as Best Film of 1935 makes the New York critics artsy, then they were. If selecting a couple of non-Hollywood British actresses (Celia Johnson,...

By John Exshaw

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Anyone fortunate enough to be within a day’s ride of Dublin on Tuesday, 1 November, should saddle up bright and early to catch the Irish Film Institute’s 40th anniversary presentation of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite, to be introduced by Leone biographer and Spaghetti Western top-gun, Sir Christopher Frayling. Also participating in the event will be director John Boorman, who assisted Leone in finding the locations used in the film’s Irish flashback sequences, and Ireland’s top special-effects expert, Gerry Johnston, who worked on the action scenes shot in Toner’s pub in Dublin’s Baggot Street.

Frayling, whose last appearance at the Ifi (introducing Once Upon a Time in the West) was the highpoint of the 2000 season, will use extracts from such films as John Ford’s The Informer...

In its ongoing series of tributes to Hollywood figures (including James Dean, Katharine Hepburn and Gregory Peck), the U.S. Post Office is adding iconic directors John Ford and Frank Capra to the list. Both will be honored with Great Film Directors postage stamps in 2012. John Ford dukes it out in my personal pantheon of best directors of all time with Akira Kurosawa. The stamp features John Wayne in The Searchers, which Peter Bogdanovich considers one of the four Westerns that "must be seen by any civilized person". While Ford's Best Director Oscar-winners---The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man--are all must-sees, I prefer the great westerns Rio Grande, My Darling Clementine, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and ...

Gina Herold Gabriel Byrne, left, and Enda Walsh

Directors Jim Sheridan and Enda Walsh chatted with actor Gabriel Byrne yesterday at MoMA about their own films and others, as part of “Revisiting The Quiet Man: Ireland on Film,” an exhibit which runs through June 3. John Ford’s classic 1952 story about Sean Thornton (John Wayne), an American boxer born in Ireland who returns to Innisfree and falls in love with Mary Kate Danneher (Maureen O’Hara), is more than just a feel-good St.

(from left) Jack Lally, Anthony Molinari, Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in The Fighter

Photo: Paramount Pictures Last week was a big week for Oscar prognosticators. Starting last Sunday we had the Los Angeles and New York film critics weigh in with their best of 2010. Then the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild added their nominations. Then, just last night the Satellite Awards were announced and while they aren't exactly the best indicator of what films are going to do what, they add their own numbers to the formula. Patterns have formed and front-runners have clearly been sorted, but there are still some questions up in the air.

After the dust settled, The Social Network was the clear Best Picture front-runner. This, however, can be attributed to more than just one thing. Obviously, the critics have been all over it, but when predicting Oscar's Best Picture you have to remember...

Chicago – There are some stories that are so resonant that they can be told generation after generation and not lose any of their power. The basic foundation of “Mutiny on the Bounty” is so inherently strong that it has supported several acclaimed versions but perhaps the most beloved is still the 1935 Best Picture winner starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton. Joining in a wave of classics hitting the new format during holiday season 2010, “Mutiny on the Bounty” is now available on Blu-ray.

Blu-Ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

The actual mutiny on the Hms Bounty in 1789 has been warped for the sake of fiction through several mediums over the years but the foundation has stayed the same — one man leads his people against their brutal leader. The facts of the actual mutiny may have been warped significantly in “Mutiny on the Bounty” but it got the essentials right as Fletcher Christian (the charismatic Clark Gable...

As part of the Guardian and Observer Film Season, we settled down for an afternoon matinee of John Wayne romance The Quiet Man, as voted for by you. What happened when Andrew Pulver turned on Channel 4 at 12:05pm?

11.42am: Last night Michael Hann roughed it out with Daniel Craig in gangster thriller Layer Cake. The night before, Steve Rose and David Thomson tried to decipher David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.

Today, we're going for a change of pace, as Guardian film editor Andrew Pulver watches The Quiet Man, in which John Wayne plays a retired boxer who romances Maureen O'Hara in Ireland.

11.46am: But we need your help. Let us know what you reckon to the film. Does the Duke convince? Is this one of John Ford's finest? Post a comment at the bottom of the thread, tweet @guardianfilm or email Andrew Pulver.

11.49am: Hello everyone. Never...

An early silent film directed by legendary moviemaker John Ford has been discovered in a stash of 75 rarities recently uncovered in New Zealand.

The 1927 feature, titled Upstream, tells the story of a romance between a Shakespearean actor and a girl from a knife-throwing act, and was previously thought to have been lost. Only 15 per cent of Ford's early works are believed to have survived into the present day.

The movie was released eight years before Ford won his first Academy Award for The Informer - he went on to land four coveted Best Director trophies, including prizes for The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley.

The collection, discovered in a remote storage vault deep in New Zealand's movie archives, also includes 1923 film Maytime starring a young Clara Bow, and Won in a Closet, directed by and starring Mabel Normand.

Executives at the New Zealand Film Archive have struck a deal with America's National Film Preservation Foundation (Nfpf) and several other organisations, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Museum of Modern Art (Moma), to have the reels returned to the U.S. for preservation, according to Variety.com.

The Nfpf has called the collection "a time capsule of American film production in the 1910s and 1920s", while Jamie Lean, of the New Zealand Film Archive, adds, "We hope that our example will encourage other international partners who have safeguarded 'lost' American films for decades to share their long-unseen treasures with the world community."...

Many movie buffs love to complain about the Oscars, me more so than anyone else, but I have to admit something. If you break down the awards decade by decade, from the 1930s to the "noughties," the Best Director category shaped up to be the best one, ever, over these past ten years. Let's take a look.

The 1930s: Frank Borzage won, but for one of his less interesting movies, Bad Girl. John Ford won for The Informer, a gorgeous film that has since fallen out of favor with critics and fans. I'm not even sure what to say about Norman Taurog for Skippy or Frank Lloyd for Cavalcade. (Has anyone seen those movies in the past 30 years?) Frank Capra won three times (!) during this decade. I like Capra, but I don't really love him; I'd say he probably deserved one Oscar, maybe for It Happened One Night, but not...

Sunday evening sees the biggest movie awards event of the year. The 82nd Academy Award ceremony is taking place at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. Billions will be watching with bated breath as a variety of stars smugly congratulate each other. Oh, come on, you know it’s just the greatest promotional event ever created!

What do awards mean anyway? Haven’t they always been a little bit pointless and strange? Two-time Oscar winner William Friedkin has lambasted them the day since he got hold of one, make that, two. Of course, he was a supreme egotist in the 1970s, but he has a good point. He’s not the only creative talent to stick two fingers up at Oscar. Marlon Brando famously sent a Native American to collect his award for The Godfather and George C. Scott, who won for Patton in 1970, called the event “a meat parade”.

Anyway,...

To see the answer, click on the "Continue reading" link underneath the photos below.

Answer: John Ford won the most Oscars for directing (four):  "The Quiet Man," 1952; "How Green Was My Valley," 1941; "The Grapes of Wrath," 1940; "The Informer," 1935. Frank Capra was a three-time winner: "You Can't Take It with You," 1938; "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," 1936; "It Happened One Night," 1934. William Wyler also triumphed three times: "Ben-Hur," 1959; "The Best Years of Our Lives," 1946; "Mrs. Miniver," 1942). Photos: 20th Century Fox (John Ford), MGM (William Wyler), Columbia Pictures (Frank Capra)

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