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The retrospective Frank Capra, The American Dreamer is showing April 10 - May 31, 2017 in the United Kingdom.Frank CapraFrank Capra has fallen badly out of fashion in recent decades. While still well-known for the extraordinary Depression-era purple patch that produced It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the critics have rarely been kind. His work is routinely derided as “Capra-corn” for its perceived sentimentality and “fairy tale” idealism while the man himself is written off in favour of contemporaries Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch.Elliot Stein, writing in Sight & Sound in 1972, attacked Capra’s “fantasies of good will, which at no point conflict with middle-class American status quo values”, arguing that his “shrewdly commercial manipulative tracts” consist of little more than “philistine-populist notions and greeting-card sentiments”. Pauline Kael found him “softheaded,” Derek Malcolm a huckster hawking “cosily absurd fables.” To an extent,...

The “Slumdog Millionaire” team is on its way to tackling the story of a real-life heir to billions.

Oscar winners Danny Boyle, Simon Beauty, and Christina Colson are reuniting for “Trust,” an anthology series that will focus on the strange 1973 kidnapping of oil fortune heir John Paul Getty III. Production on the limited series begins in London and Rome this June for a January 2018 release, the network announced Friday.

Read More: ‘Feud: Bette and Joan’ Main Titles: How That Striking Vintage Opening Sequence Got Made

In the ultimate case where money really can’t buy you happiness, the Getty family is as rich and dysfunctional as they come. The original J. Paul Getty was once named the richest living American by Fortune magazine in 1957 for founding the Getty Oil company. In 1966, “Guinness Book of Records” named him the world’s richest private citizen and estimated his worth at approximately $1.2 billion,...

Holiday films are meant to celebrate the spirit of the season. They wouldn’t really be all that interesting without a villain who wants to ruin it. We pick 10 of the best.

Holiday movies often teach lessons about the importance of sharing, helping others, giving thanks, etc. One method these storied films use to highlight the importance of the ideas they promote is by featuring someone who doesn’t follow them. This person is someone who may even hate those ideas. So much so that they try and prevent people from practicing them, or exploit those that do for their own benefit. These characters are the villains of holiday movies, and without them, the lessons being taught would not have as much impact. These are our picks for the 10 best holiday movie villains.

10. Granville Sawyer - Miracle on 34th Street

Worst Thing They Did: Attempted to commit Santa Claus to...

It’s a question heard throughout many homes during the holiday season. No, not “Who spiked the eggnog with lighter fuel?” We’re talking about the big man himself, Santa Claus, and whether or not he truly exists. I’m still out on this one, but it seems that one filmmaker firmly believes in Saint Nicholas. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower writer-director, Stephen Chbosky, has signed up to helm the festival family romp Santa Is Real, which will also double as a musical to add a dose of extra holiday jollies!

Walden Media and New Regency are behind the pic, which is based on the upcoming novel Santa Claus Is for Real: A True Christmas Fable About the Magic of Believing, by Charles E. Hall and Bret Witter. However, despite the title, the novel is not about The Santa Claus, who is oft spotted chomping down on mince pies...

Well this is certainly an unexpected project for The Perks of Being a Wallflower writer/director Stephen Chbosky to tackle as his followup, but that probably means it's the interesting, right thing to do. Chbosky is attached to direct Santa is Real, a family musical from New Regency and Walden Media. The script will be written by Larry Stuckey (who also wrote Little Fockers.) This movie is actually based on a true story that will be chronicled in the upcoming book by Charles E. Hall and Bret Witter titled Santa Claus Is For Real: A True Christmas Fable About the Magic of Believing. I didn't really think this would be the next move for Chbosky, but that's what I get for making assumptions. Hit the jump for more on Santa is Real. THR had the story on this new project. Here's the official synopsis for the book: A heartwarming...

Oh my goodness. The Los Angeles Times’ theater critic, Charles McNulty, is calling out film critics for what he perceives as our lack of critical rigor. Because he’s seen a few of the year’s Oscar-bait flicks, and he doesn’t think they’re all that great:

By overwhelming critical consensus, 2013 was a banner year for movies. End-of-the-year lists, that dependable fruitcake of entertainment journalism, arrived with festive unanimity. It was a “tremendous” (the Atlantic’s Christopher Orr), “amazing” (the New Yorker’s Richard Brody), “flat-out, stone-cold, hands-down spectacular year in movies” (the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday).

As a theater critic who loves spending his free nights plunged in cinematic darkness, I couldn’t haven’t been more excited to get these reports amplifying the raves that came fast and furious all fall. There’s nothing I like better than bingeing on Oscar bait in late December when...

The 2013 Eisner Award Winners have been announced at San Diego Comic-Con with Chris Ware leading the wins for his celebrated work Building Stories, alongside Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga which also won a number of awards.

The Eisners are awarded each year at the San Diego Comic-Con and are the most prestigious awards in the comics industry, being the comics equivalent of the Oscars.

The Eisners are named after Will Eisner, one of the most celebrated artist/writers in comics whose works included creating the superhero series The Spirit as well as his masterpiece, A Contract with God, one of the best books of the 20th century.

This year saw artist/writer Chris Ware pick up the lion’s share of the awards for his book/construction project Building Stories, winning Best New Graphic Album, Best Writer/Artist, Best Lettering, and Best Publication Design.

Also among the winners...

Comic-Con International has released the complete list of nominees for the 2013 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. The winners of the award will be revealed during the annual ceremony held at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 19.

Official Press Release

Comic-Con International (Comic-Con) is proud to announce the nominations for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards 2013. The nominees, chosen by a blue-ribbon panel of judges, reflect the wide range of material being published in comics and graphic novel form today, from crime noire to autobiographical works to cartoon adventures.

Three titles lead the 2013 list with 5 nominations each. Chris Ware’s critically acclaimed Building Stories (published by Pantheon) has nods for Best Graphic Album–New, Best Writer/artist, Best Coloring, Best Lettering, and Best Publication Design. Also garnering 5 nominations are Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Fatale (published by Image) and Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye (published by Marvel...

Comic-Con International is proud to announce the nominations for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards of 2013. The nominees, chosen by a blue-ribbon panel of judges, reflect the wide range of material being published in comics and graphic novel form today, from crime noir to autobiographical works to cartoon adventures. Three titles lead the 2013 list with 5 nominations each.

Chris Ware’s critically acclaimed Building Stories (published by Pantheon) has nods for Best Graphic Album–New, Best Writer/artist, Best Coloring, Best Lettering, and Best Publication Design. Also garnering 5 nominations are Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Fatale (published by Image) and Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye (published by Marvel). Both are nominated for Best Continuing Series, Best New Series, Best Writer, Best Penciller/Inker, and Best Cover Artist. (Fatale also shares the coloring nomination for Dave Stewart.)Close behind with 4 nominations are Boom!/kaboom’s Adventure Time (Best New Series,...

Christmas has a hell of a PR agent. A good PR maximises the audience for their client, always looking for lateral markets beyond the core appeal of the product. So if Christmas is fundamentally about giving, goodwill and forgiveness, there's no harm - from a PR's point of view - if it can also be made to be about sex, death and loneliness too. We seem to have had our traditional - and always sad - fusillade of pre-Christmas celebrity deaths this year, and if we're lucky, the period between now and new year will bring no new and nasty surprises in that line.

In the meantime our TV screens have filled up customarily with ads for perfume and booze which remind us that Christmas is also a Pagan-style locus for celebrations of the carnal and sensory. And with campaigns targeted at those who have no invite to the celebrations...

Just like every year, Forbes magazine put together a list of the richest fictional characters, adding six news one in the 2010 edition. The average net worth is $7.3 billion and the nine returning members are now worth $79.8 billion, up 9% since last year. Topping the list is newcomer Carlisle Cullen, the patriarch of the Cullen coven of vampires from the "Twilight" franchise. The character is 370 years old and has accumulated a fortune of $34.1 billion, mostly thanks to his long-term investments made with the aid of his adopted daughter Alice, who picks stocks based on her ability to see into the future. Some characters missing from the list are Lex Luthor and Dr. Evil. And I though Ozymandias was worth much more. Check out the full list below, which shows the rank, name, worth, and the source of the money. 1: Carlisle Cullen - $34.1 billion (Compound interest, Long-term investments) 2: Scrooge McDuck - $33.5 billion (Mining,...

Previously on Lost: Desmond participates in Charles Widmore's race around the world, unsuccessfully. Desmond turns a key that causes all sorts of bad electromagnetic-related things to happen. Desmond sees flashes of the future. Desmond shouts "Pen-nay!" to the skies, the powerful sound of his love dissipating in the island air before reaching the heavens. Desmond is locked behind a door on a submarine. Widmore dives in and out of mountainous piles of gold, Scrooge McDuck-style. Juliet whispers, "It worked," with her dying breath after detonating a bomb named after an Archie Comics character. Hurley eyes a box of Dharma Ding Dongs with lust in his eyes.

Please join us as we wake from a fevered, restless sleep and scribble some advanced mathematical equations which, when solved, provide the Answers to the Questions raised by this week's episode of everyone's favorite time-travel soap opera:...

Previously on Lost: Desmond participates in Charles Widmore's race around the world, unsuccessfully. Desmond turns a key that causes all sorts of bad electromagnetic-related things to happen. Desmond sees flashes of the future. Desmond shouts "Pen-nay!" to the skies, the powerful sound of his love dissipating in the island air before reaching the heavens. Desmond is locked behind a door on a submarine. Widmore dives in and out of mountainous piles of gold, Scrooge McDuck-style. Juliet whispers, "It worked," with her dying breath after detonating a bomb named after an Archie Comics character. Hurley eyes a box of Dharma Ding Dongs with lust in his eyes.

Please join us as we wake from a fevered, restless sleep and scribble some advanced mathematical equations which, when solved, provide the Answers to the Questions raised by this week's episode of everyone's favorite time-travel soap opera:...

Christmas is a bit like the flu. You are forced to lie around all day, watch crap TV, consume lots of food you wouldn’t normally eat, and each year both seem to arrive earlier and than the last. This year I had flu fashionably early,setting the trend in July while London’s utterly loathsome and incompetent major, Boris Johnson has been bribed by Disney to switch on the Oxford Street Christmas lights purely to coincide with the release of, A Christmas Carol, this week. They even allowed the films star Jim Carrey to switch the buggers on!!!!! Yet, directed by Robert (Forest Gump , Back to the Future) Zemeckis this 3D animated adaptation of the Dickens tale is not aimed at kids of all ages. I’d say, due to it’s thoroughly creepy protagonists, nightmarish scenes of ghouls taking their jaws off and spectres chasing ol’ Scrooge through dark alleys,...

Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" has been retold so many times and in so many forms since its first printing in 1843 that it would be difficult to come up with a new way to tell this most famous of Christmas tales. And after such classic rebrandings as Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Scrooged and less classic remakes like The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, filmmakers had few avenues left to explore with this tale of redemption and turkey. That is, until director Robert Zemeckis saw an opportunity to take a story we all know and turn it into a 3-D extravaganza that actually skews much closer to Charles Dicken’s original text than most of the reincarnations before it.

With little alteration, this version of "A Christmas Carol" stays true to its source material. Ebeneezer Scrooge (played by a reigned-in Jim Carrey) is the original grumpy old man—a money lender who...

IImagine if Eeyore, Oscar the Grouch, Scrooge McDuck, and Grumpy from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were related. Throw in a dash of the Addam's Family and you'd be at a good place to start understanding the concept behind The Gloomers. With the tagline "No matter how bad your day has been, The Gloomers day is always worse.", the family greets you with slick flash-animation, a catchy theme song, and the promise that this won't be all gloom and doom...there is a lot of laughs to be had as well. Behind The Gloomers are some veteran broadcast TV vets. Charles Mechem, the former CEO of Taft Broadcasting, which owned animation studio Hanna Barbera from 1967 until 1990 serves as the outfit's 'Chairman.' His son Dan serves as CEO and penning the series is senior writer Neal Barbera, son of the late Joe Barbera. Neal often wrote or co-wrote episodes...

DVD Playhouse—October 2009

By

Allen Gardner

The Wizard Of Oz 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’S Edition (Warner Bros.) A true highlight in digital restoration technology, Warner Bros. restoration of the 1939 classic is cause for celebration. The Technicolor of the late ‘30s looks as though it was shot yesterday, and is especially stunning on Blu-ray, which was produced by scanning each of the film’s original Technicolor camera negatives using 8K resolution. From this scan, a final “capture” master was created in 4K, yielding twice the resolution seen in the master utilized for the film’s previous DVD release. Judy Garland’s Dorothy is charming as ever, and the entire cast: Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch, are all stellar. Four disc set bonuses include: Sing-along track; Documentaries and featurettes; Two 1914 silent films produced by Oz author L. Frank Baum, based on his stories...

Disney has officially unveiled the trailer for their upcoming animated take on the classic Charles Dicken's tale of A Christmas Carol. Tae a look!

A Christmas Carol, a multi-sensory thrill ride re-envisioned by Academy Award&#174-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, captures the fantastical essence of the classic Dickens tale in a groundbreaking 3-D motion picture event.

Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) begins the Christmas holiday with his usual miserly contempt, barking at his faithful clerk (Gary Oldman) and his cheery nephew (Colin Firth). But when the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come take him on an eye-opening journey revealing truths Old Scrooge is reluctant to face, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it's too late.

In theaters November 6th, A Christmas Carol stars Jim Carrey, Cary Elwes, Bob Hoskins, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn, Tom Hanks and Michael J. Fox.

Everyone likes to pick out trends each Comic-Con, but at this year's four-day geek bacchanal, where the film panels once again have equal (if not greater) priority to comic books, there seems to be a genuine one developing as the faceless franchises that usually reign over the convention have given way to the some of the world's best directors pushing the limits of their craft. Sure, "Twilight" fans camped outside the San Diego Convention Center (forming what our own Matt Singer dubbed the "Twiline") for a glimpse of Robert Pattinson yesterday, and Saturday's "Iron Man 2" panel, said to include Mickey Rourke and Scarlett Johansson in addition to Comic-Con vets Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr., will likely be one of the Con's major events. Yet it was watching Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" footage yesterday morning that made me realize that, just as Neil Gaiman, Todd McFarlane and...

Leave it to Quentin Tarantino to find a climax unique in the history of war movies. Also trust Qt to get away with a war movie that consists largely of his unique dialog style, in which a great deal of action is replaced by talk about the possibilities of action. His "Inglourious Basterds," which premiered Wednesday morning here at Cannes, is a screenplay eight years in the writing, and you can't fill 148 minutes with descriptions of special effects. At least not if you're a motormouth like Tarantino.

My review will await the film's August 21 opening. I know, I wrote a lot about "Antichrist," but with this one I'd like to hold out until opening day. No, that doesn't mean I disliked it. It means it inspired other kinds of thoughts--about Cannes, Tarantino, and the way the movie industry seems to be going these days.

"Why," Mr. Tarantino, he was asked...