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He was one of the biggest screen icons and one of the most colorful real-life characters in Hollywood history. Still considered the king of swashbucklers more than 60 years after his death, Errol Flynn’s success was a combination of happenstance, luck and his ability to charm.

Errol Leslie Flynn was born on June 20, 1909, in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia to an affluent family. A natural born rascal, he was thrown out of several private schools, and eventually wandered, working odd jobs. He fell into acting quite by chance when he won the role of Fletcher Christian in the Australian film “In the Wake of the Bounty” (1933). There are conflicting stories of how he landed this part, but it is the film that piqued his interest in acting, and eventually caught the attention of Warner Bros. executives.

In Hollywood, a combination of luck and Flynn’s athleticism and charm landed him the lead...

The name Errol Flynn is still synonymous with the Classic Hollywood era decades after his death and a look back on his best movies explains why this is the case. Errol Flynn was one of the first true movie stars. An Australian-born actor, Flynn moved to Hollywood in the early ‘30s after gaining a few minor roles in Australian movies. In California, Flynn became a bigger star than he could have ever dreamed when he got the lead role in 1935’s Captain Blood. This classic swashbuckling adventure movie proved that Flynn had charisma to spare and, before long, he was one of Hollywood’s most in-demand leading men.

A string of hits followed, as well as a turbulent private life and some legendarily troubled productions like Flynn’s infamous Adventures of Don Juan. However, despite Flynn’s hard-partying lifestyle and on-set spats, the actor remains one of the biggest and...

Exclusive: Netflix is adapting bestselling author Don Winslow’s novels The Dawn Patrol and The Gentlemen’s Hours for features. Charlène Favier is aboard to direct, with Chernin Entertainment and The Story Factory’s Shane Salerno producing. They are out to high level writers to script the film.

The deal comes as Winslow just released City on Fire, the first in a trilogy that he announced will be his swan song from novel writing after a long career of bestsellers. He has numerous film and TV deals for his other works. The City on Fire series was acquired by Sony Pictures and Elizabeth Gabler’s 3000 label for north of 5 million. Winslow also has The Border about to begin production as an FX series, after Fox acquired it for 6 million. Winslow separately set his Neal Carey novels with Knives Out helmer Rian Johnson for MRC and Peacock, and has the novel...

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“Geek Love”

By Raymond Benson

One of the more unique entries in the film noir movement of the 1940s and 50s is the 1947 melodrama, Nightmare Alley. Based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the picture was made only because Tyrone Power expressed the desire to star in it after reading the grim tale of a carnival barker who rises to the top of the charlatan world, only to ultimately fall hard to rock bottom.

While classified as film noir, the picture has little of the usual trappings of the movement. There is no central crime in the story, there are no cynical detectives, and one can argue that there are no femmes fatale. It is only in the visual presentation that one can consider Nightmare Alley an item of film noir—the high contrast black and white photography, the heavy light and shadows,...

He was one of the biggest screen icons and one of the most colorful real-life characters in Hollywood history. Still considered the king of swashbucklers 60 years after his death, Errol Flynn’s success was a combination of happenstance, luck and his ability to charm.

Errol Leslie Flynn was born on June 20,1909, in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia to an affluent family. A natural born rascal, he was thrown out of several private schools, and eventually wandered, working odd jobs. He fell into acting quite by chance when he won the role of Fletcher Christian in the Australian film “In the Wake of the Bounty” (1933). There are conflicting stories of how he landed this part, but it is the film that piqued his interest in acting, and eventually caught the attention of Warner Bros. executives.

SEEOscar Best Actor Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

In Hollywood, a combination of luck and Flynn...

Freshly divorced from American-International Pictures, Roger Corman leaps into the filmic mainstream with a fairly large-scale World War One aviation picture. He competes with the big studios but retains his nonconformist attitude: his retelling of the story of the Red Baron fixates on the theme of the death of chivalry in combat. For his star player Corman picks John Phillip Law, whose on-screen persona is a good fit for one of the first warrior aces of the sky.

Von Richthofen and Brown

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date May 21, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: John Phillip Law, Don Stroud, Barry Primus, Corin Redgrave, Stephen McHattie, Hurd Hatfield

Robert La Tourneaux, Ferdy Mayne, Peter Masterson, Clint Kimbrough, George Armitage.

Cinematography: Michael Reed

Film Editor: Alan Collins

Original Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Written by John William Corrington, Joyce H. Corrington

Produced by Gene Corman, Jimmy T. Murakami

Directed by...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” what is the best war movie ever made?

Read More‘Dunkirk’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Monumental War Epic Is The Best Film He’s Ever Made Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow), The New Yorker

Howard Hawks’ “The Dawn Patrol,” from 1930, shows soldiers and officers cracking up from the cruelty of their missions — and shows the ones who manage not to, singing and clowning with an exuberance that suggests the rictus of a death mask. There’s courage and heroism, virtue and honor — at a price that makes the words themselves seem foul. John Ford’s “The Lost Patrol,...

John Monk Saunders is a good example of the screenwriter-as-auteur in the sense that he had a tone (mordant, tragic) and a set of concerns (Wwi aerial combat and its effects) that were consistent throughout his work, almost to the point of claustrophobia. Saunders was an airman himself, and like his characters, he just couldn't leave it behind. A recurring theme of his work is that war is not only traumatic, but addictive. Ace of Aces is a typical work: Saunders would achieve greater glory with William A. Wellman (Wings, 1927), Howard Hawks (The Dawn Patrol, 1930) and, best of all, with William Dieterle and The Last Flight in 1931. Ace of Aces is a relatively minor-league outing. Though director J. Walter Ruben delivers a few elaborate tracking shots, the film belongs mainly to the writer and the Rko effects team—Vernon L. Walker, who worked on Citizen Kane and King Kong, stitches...

Gary Cooper movies on TCM: Cooper at his best and at his weakest Gary Cooper is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 30, '15. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any Cooper movie premiere – despite the fact that most of his Paramount movies of the '20s and '30s remain unavailable. This evening's features are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Sergeant York (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town solidified Gary Cooper's stardom and helped to make Jean Arthur Columbia's top female star. The film is a tad overlong and, like every Frank Capra movie, it's also highly sentimental. What saves it from the Hell of Good Intentions is the acting of the two leads – Cooper and Arthur are both excellent – and of several supporting players. Directed by Howard Hawks, the jingoistic, pro-war Sergeant York was a huge box office hit, eventually earning Academy Award nominations in several categories,...

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ca. 1935. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was never as popular as his father, silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in one action-adventure blockbuster after another in the 1920s (The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad) and whose stardom dates back to the mid-1910s, when Fairbanks toplined a series of light, modern-day comedies in which he was cast as the embodiment of the enterprising, 20th century “all-American.” What this particular go-getter got was screen queen Mary Pickford as his wife and United Artists as his studio, which he co-founded with Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charles Chaplin. Now, although Jr. never had the following of Sr., he did enjoy a solid two-decade-plus movie career. In fact, he was one of the few children of major film stars – e.g., Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Angelina Jolie, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis – who had successful film careers of their own.

In 1935 director Howard Hawks had a reputation for directing fast action films that were shot like screwball comedies. Before the Hays code, he directed Paul Muni as an Al Capone persona for the “most violent picture” of the time, Scarface (1932). Films about violent sports and vehicles and the men in control of them also got the Hawks treatment with The Dawn Patrol (1930), The Crowd Roars (1932), and The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933). The tagline for that last one’s poster reads: “Girls! There’S A New Passion In Your Life!” Hawks’ strengths lie in that spectacle of unfettered action for the boys, star power for the girls. His marketing image had stepped out of genre pictures before with more straightforward dramas Tiger Shark (1932)and Today We Live (1933). In Twentieth Century (1934), Hawks even ventured into full screwball territory (I’d wager that the Code taking away his violent sensibilities may have something to do with this,...

Fay Wray and John Monk Saunders, later film career [See previous article: "Fay Wray King Kong: Never a Superstar."] Robert Riskin died in 1955. Wray had been previously married (1928-1939) to writer and aviator John Monk Saunders, a Best Original Story Oscar winner for the aviation drama The Dawn Patrol (1930), and the writer of two Fay Wray movies: the aforementioned Legion of the Condemned and The Finger Points. An alcoholic who developed a serious drug problem during his marriage to Wray, Saunders committed suicide in 1940, the year after the couple’s separation became final. (Photo: Fay Wray and Jack Holt in Frank Capra’s [...]...

Errol Flynn Movies: The Charge Of The Light Brigade Errol Flynn Movie line-up on Turner Classic Movies 3:30 Am Green Light (1937) An idealistic doctor sacrifices his career to protect an elderly surgeon. Dir: Frank Borzage Cast: Errol Flynn, Anita Louise, Margaret Lindsay. Bw-85 mins. 5:00 Am Northern Pursuit (1943) A Mountie tracks a downed Nazi flyer through the Canadian wilderness. Dir: Raoul Walsh Cast: Errol Flynn, Julie Bishop, Helmut Dantine. Bw-93 mins. 6:45 Am The Dawn Patrol (1938) A flight commander in France almost cracks under the pressure of sending men to their deaths. Dir: Edmund Goulding Cast: Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, David Niven, [...]...

Errol Flynn Movies TCM: The Charge Of The Light Brigade 3:30 Am Green Light (1937) An idealistic doctor sacrifices his career to protect an elderly surgeon. Dir: Frank Borzage Cast: Errol Flynn, Anita Louise, Margaret Lindsay. Bw-85 mins. 5:00 Am Northern Pursuit (1943) A Mountie tracks a downed Nazi flyer through the Canadian wilderness. Dir: Raoul Walsh Cast: Errol Flynn, Julie Bishop, Helmut Dantine. Bw-93 mins. 6:45 Am The Dawn Patrol (1938) A flight commander in France almost cracks under the pressure of sending men to their deaths. Dir: Edmund Goulding Cast: Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, David Niven. Bw-103 mins. [...]...

If the Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the west coast of Italy last night, looks familiar to you, it's likely that it's because it's the cruise ship that's the setting for the first movement of Jean-Luc Godard's Film socialisme ("It's less a tourist cruise than an international summit of bastards," wrote David Phelps in June). The accident, which cost the lives of three people and injured many more (and around 40 of the 4000 passengers are still missing), occurred on the same evening that a rogue vigilante group going by the name of Standard and Poor's downgraded the credit ratings of nine eurozone countries.

Which brings us to our first set of DVDs. A Forum topic on Artificial Eye's release of its Theo Angelopoulos Collection has been rumbling along for half a year now and, with the third volume coming out next month, David Jenkins has a good long...

They shall beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks;

One nation shall not raise the sword against another,

neither shall they learn war any more.

Isaiah 2:4

War is a nation’s ultimate commitment of blood and treasure. As such, the stories a people tells about its wars – and don’t tell – and the ways it remembers its wars – or chooses to forget them – tells us much about the kind of people they consider themselves to be at different times in their history, as well as the kind of people they really were…and are.

For most of the 20th century, the war film was a Hollywood staple. From one era to the next, war movies documented the nation’s conflicts, reflected the national consciousness on particular combats as well as on thinking going far beyond any one, particular war. They’ve been propagandistic and revisionist,...

After John Travolta and Uma Thurman joined yesterday, Variety reports Emile Hirsch has joined the ensemble cast of Oliver Stone‘s Savages. After appearing in Speed Racer, Into The Wild, Milk, and Taking Woodstock, the actor has taken a bit of a break, but is now returning in full force. He has the sci-fi invasion film The Darkest Hour coming this December and Killer Joe next year, while he is currently shooting The Hotel Life. His Savages role is unknown but Blake Lively will play our lead character O and you can read our previous story below.

In the adaptation of Don Winslow’s hit novel, Travolta will play the character of Dennis, a “burned out DEA agent” while Thurman will play O’s mother, Paqu. Already cast is Taylor Kitsch as former Navy Seal Chon, Aaron Johnson as Ben, Salma Hayek as Mexican “cartel queen-pin” Elena, and Benicio Del Toro...

If we can all collectively forget about Be Cool, this is the true Pulp Fiction reunion we’ve been waiting for. Deadline reports Oliver Stone is currently in talks with Uma Thurman and John Travolta for his upcoming drama Savages. They also confirm that one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential In The World, Blake Lively, has joined the film has our lead character O.

In the adaptation of Don Winslow’s hit novel, Travolta will play the character of Dennis, a “burned out DEA agent” while Thurman will play O’s mother, Paqu. Already cast is Taylor Kitsch as former Navy Seal Chon, Aaron Johnson as Ben, Salma Hayek as Mexican “cartel queen-pin” Elena, and Benicio Del Toro as the “vicious cartel enforcer Lado.” Check out a full synopsis of the novel below and this sounds like a nice rebound after the disappointing Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Oliver Stone is putting together one hell of a cast for his next project titled Savages, which is based on Don Winslow’s novel of the same name. The cast already has Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Salma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro attached to star in the film, which revolves around pot dealers and the Mexican drug cartel.

Now Stone will be able to add a few more A-list celebrities to the his already powerful cast. Deadline reports John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Blake Lively are all said to be joining the film. Travolta will play a burned out DEA agent, Lively will play Ophelia and Thurman will play Ophelia’s mom, Paqu. Hit the jump to read a bit more about the story.

Savages tells the story of Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch) who are two pot dealers who find themselves dealing with the Mexican drug cartel...

A year ago Oliver Stone signed up [1] to direct an adaptation of the Don Winslow novel Savages, and a month ago Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone, X-Men: First Class, The Hunger Games) was set for a key role [2]. But some things have changed. While Oliver Stone is still making the movie, Jennifer Lawrence has dropped out thanks to her schedule for The Hunger Games. While her role has to be recast, Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) is now in talks to play one of the two main roles, and Salma Hayek is being eyed for another. Deadline [3] says that Taylor Kitsch is in talks for one of two pot growers who are coerced into working for a Mexican drug cartel after the cartel kidnaps their young female friend. Aaron Johnson is looking like he'll be the other grower, and Salma Hayek is reportedly a main choice to play one of the cartel leaders,...

At this time last year, the name Jennifer Lawrence meant very little to casting directors in Hollywood. Now she has an Oscar-nomination under her belt, is about to be a super hero [1] and is set to top line an Oliver Stone movie. Lawrence is in final talks to star in Savages, based on a critically-acclaimed book by Don Winslow that was previously announced to be directed by Stone [2]. She'll play Ophelia, the simultanious-girlfriend of two marijuana dealers who get caught up in some serious personal and financial trouble. Stone hopes to shoot the film in June and is looking at several A-list actors to play the drug dealers including Leonardo DiCaprio, Aaron Johnson, Tom Hardy, James Franco and Garrett Hedlund. Read more about the project after the break. Deadline broke the news [3] of this project which is being independently produced, though several studios are rumored to be interested in acquiring it.

Howard Hawks's films – The Big Sleep, His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby – are among the most enjoyable ever made in Hollywood, with sublime performances by Bogart and Grant and Bacall. Just don't call him an 'artist'. By David Bromwich

Howard Hawks took legitimate pride in a certain professionalism, but "artist" and "work of art" were alien terms for him. He appreciated the wit of Faulkner's saying to him the first time they met: "I've seen your name on a check."

Setting it up and putting it together, working with actors and the script: these were his elements of film. Hawks knew what a cameraman should do – Lee Garmes brought to Scarface the desert surface Hawks knew he wanted – but he made no pretence about placing lights or finding angles. He was an experimenter whose greatest successes were happy accidents. The standard genres – comedy, melodrama, western, film noir – he took...

The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) The Dawn Patrol (Howard Hawks) Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch) Morocco (Josef von Sternberg) Not So Dumb (King Vidor) Liliom (Frank Borzage) Part Time Wife (Leo McCarey) Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock) The Royal Family of Broadway (George Cukor) Laughter (Harry D’Arrast) All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone) Juno and the Paycock (Alfred Hitchcock) Abraham Lincoln (D.W. Griffith) Rain or Shine (Frank Capra) The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh) Up the River (John Ford) Madam Satan (Cecil B. DeMille) Let’s Go Native (Leo McCarey) The Virtuous Sin (George Cukor) Men Without Women (John Ford) The Blue…...

As happens every year around this time, the cable spectrum has been heavily laced with programming throughout the week commemorating Veterans Day. HBO trundled out its full epic and brutal miniseries The Pacific for a one-day re-run broken up by the debut of the James Gandolfini-hosted documentary War Torn 1861-2010, a disturbing look at the psychological scars America’s soldiers have suffered in every conflict since The Civil War; The History Channel ran an all-day marathon of Ww II in HD, sprinkling its commercial breaks for the week with commemorative spots; AMC ran a day of war movies like The Enemy Below (1957) and A Few Good Men (1992) under the umbrella, “Vets Best” ; and so on.

The bulk of memorializing programming focused on World War II – unsurprising, in that it remains, to this day, America’s greatest, defining, and least morally problematic war. Even 65 years later, despite a half-century of...