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A24 are delivering a special gift to Max this December, as Leo Reich’s acclaimed stand-up show Literally Who Cares?! hits the streamer. The comedian has already won over the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Off-Broadway with runs of the show, but this performance was taped at EartH in London. Consider checking it out – if A24 got involved in the project, you know you’ll definitely see something weird and special.

But if you’re looking for something more serious, add the new three-part documentary series Murder In Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning to your watch list this month. The upcoming series delves into the fallout from the investigation into Charles “Chuck” Stuart’s 911 call reporting that he and his pregnant wife, had been shot in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood in 1989.

Here’s everything coming to (and leaving) HBO and Max this month…

HBO and Max New Releases – December 2023

December...

Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is destined to be a classic in its own right, already garnering nearly half a billion dollars at the box office in under a week. The film, about a stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) in the grips of an existential crisis that sees her going to the Real World, is all manner of fun and wacky, with a number of Old Hollywood influences.

Gerwig herself has cited a number of features that either directly or indirectly inspired “Barbie,” starting with the 1939 Technicolor classic, “The Wizard of Oz.” That film, with its now iconic transition between Kansas and the land of Oz, no doubt factored into how the feature approaches color. The idea of a character transitioning from one world to another draws comparisons to “The Truman Show” and “Heaven Can Wait.”

Among the more nuanced, less obvious films, Gerwig took inspiration from “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,...

The projects, all feature debuts aside from one, will receive €60,000 to support either their production or their post-production.

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund (Hbf) has selected four projects for its first-ever Hbf+ Europe: Post-production Scheme, alongside eight projects for minority co-production support.

Scroll down for full list of projects

The projects, all feature debuts aside from one, will receive €60,000 to support either their production or their post-production. Hbf+Europe supports projects from filmmakers based in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe, and encourages European co-production of said projects.

Among the...

“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” season 8 continued on June 9 with the sixth episode streaming on Paramount+. For the first time ever, RuPaul Charles announced a “second way to win” in addition to earning the coveted crown and $200,000 prize given to the traditional winner. One of the eliminated queens will also be named Queen of the Fame Games and earn a $50,000 cash prize.

The queens still in the running at the start of episode 6 were: Alexis Michelle, Jaymes Mansfield, Jessica Wild, Jimbo, Kahanna Montrese, Kandy Muse, and Lala Ri.

Check out our full recap of episode 6 below to find out what happened when the queens got rid of all the wire hangers in “Joan: The Unauthorized Rusical”:

Relieved that Ru saved Kahanna Montrese and Jessica Wild from possible elimination, the queens returned to the Werk Room in high spirits to congratulate the two bottom queens on having another chance to prove themselves.

Peter Meyer, who represented the likes of Tom Hanks, James Caan and William Shatner as a talent agent at William Morris before spending the past three decades leading his own management firm, has died. He was 68.

Meyer died May 14 in his Los Angeles home after a five-year battle with sarcoma, his sister, writer-producer Patricia K. Meyer (The Women of Brewster Place), announced. Survivors also include his son Chris Meyer, a talent agent at CAA.

After training under legendary Wma agent Stan Kamen, Meyer was hired as a talent agent in June 1978. His clients would include actors Sterling Hayden, Kevin Costner, Kathleen Turner, Christopher Walken, Steve Guttenberg and David Hasselhoff.

After 11 years at Wma, he launched Meyer Management in 1990 to represent directors, writers, producers and authors, selling their work and facilitating their employment across all entertainment platforms.

He repped Jeffrey Reiner (Friday Night Lights), Michael Sloan and Tony Eldridge (The Equalizer...

Singapore-based film production outfit Potocol, whose “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” by Jow Zhi Wei bowed at the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation 14plus competition, has revealed a diverse Asian slate.

Potocol’s recent triumphs include Bangladeshi filmmaker Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s Cannes selection “Rehana Maryam Noor” and Indonesian director Makbul Mubarak’s Venice winner “Autobiography.” The company, led by Jeremy Chua who is currently at the Berlinale, has a growing reputation for championing the rise of young filmmakers from across Asia.

Potocol has four films in post-production and several more in development. Nicole Midori Woodford’s debut feature “Last Shadow at First Light” is a supernatural road trip drama that follows a Singaporean teenager tracing the footsteps of her missing mother in Japan and explores the ripple effects of a traumatic event subconsciously buried within the family unit.

A winner of several project development and market prizes at Seafic,...

Burbank, Calif., January 17, 2023 – Training Day, starring Academy Award winner Denzel Washington and Academy Award® nominee Ethan Hawke and directed by Antoine Fuqua, will be released on Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack on February 28 and Digital on February 7, it was announced today by Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment.

Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ 2001 crime thriller Training Day was directed by Fuqua from a screenplay by David Ayer (The Fast & The Furious). Washington won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Detective Alonzo Harris, and Hawke was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Office Jake Hoyt.

Training Day was produced by Bobby Newmyer and Jeffrey Silver. The film also stars Scott Glenn, Cliff Curtis (Live Free or Die Hard), Dr. Dre (Set It Off), Snoop Dog (The Wash), and Eva Mendes.

Ultra HD* showcases 4K resolution with High Dynamic...

The show Dead to Me, created by Liz Feldman and starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, premiered on Netflix in 2019 and was an instant success. This dark comedy takes a look at grief and loss, female friendships, single parenting, murder, and does it all with a little bit of, sometimes inappropriate, humor.

The series has been a major hit for Netflix with the first season earning Applegate a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. The second season upped the stakes which paid off considering the show earned four Primetime Emmy Awards nominations including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actress nominations for both Applegate and Cardellini. While awards are nice, all fans really care about is finding more black comedies similar in tone to Dead to Me. While they might be hard to come by in the TV world, there are plent of hilarious black comedy movies out there.

Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman).The lineup for the 75th-anniversary edition of the festival has been announced, including new films by Helena Wittmann, João Pedro Rodrígues, Aleksandr Sokurov and others, alongside retrospectives, tributes, and much more.Piazza GRANDEAlles über Martin Suter. Ausser die Wahrheit. (Everything About Martin Suter. Everything but the Truth.) (André Schäfer)Annie Colère (Blandine Lenoir)Bullet Train (David Leitch)Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murder) (Costa-Gavras)Delta (Michele Vannucci)Home of the Brave (Laurie Anderson)Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk)Last Dance (Delphine Lehericey)Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman)My Neighbor Adolf (Leon Prudovsky)Paradise Highway (Anna Gutto)Piano Piano (Nicola Prosatore)Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao)Semret (Caterina Mona)Une femme de notre temps (Jean Paul Civeyrac)Vous n'aurez pas ma haine (You Will Not Have My Hate) (Kilian Riedhof)Where the Crawdads Sing (Olivia Newman)Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann).Concorso INTERNAZIONALEAriyippu (Declaration) (Mahesh Narayanan)Balıqlara xütbə...

Creche-Lar (1978).First of all, we here are working so they don’t make flower vases or muses out of us.—Mulheres: uma outra históriaA metal worker toiling on the factory floor. A sex worker standing on a street corner. A breastfeeding mother marching in a protest. Contrasting, sometimes contradictory images of women at work recur throughout “Mulheres: Uma Outra Historia,”a new program currently streaming via Another Screen. Curated by feminist journal Another Gaze and the non-profit Cinelimite, the collection presents six short documentaries made by Brazilian female filmmakers spanning the late-1970s to the mid-1990s. Together, these films offer a revelatory insight into the lives of women in the country during a period of social revolution, charting the influence of a growing feminist movement at every level of society, from the chambers of the National Congress to the brothels of the red-light district.The central preoccupation of “Uma...

As he glancingly returns to the genre with his new film, Cry Macho, it’s worth taking a look at the last Western that Clint Eastwood made, 1992’s Unforgiven. While he’s circled back to certain themes and concepts endemic to the Western in films since then, Unforgiven was his last film specifically and explicitly set in the Old West and was — as he said at the time — his final word on the subject.

Eastwood has pretty much stayed true to that, even as Unforgiven stands nearly 30 years later as a masterpiece in its own right and arguably one of the greatest Westerns of all time.

Much as Cry Macho attempts to strip away modern myths about what it means to be a man or “macho,” Unforgiven tears down the longstanding mythology built around the American Old West and propagated through scores of Westerns that Hollywood pumped out for decades.

Rhonda Fleming, whose long career embraced filmdom’s Golden Age and the early days of television, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. at age 97. No cause was given, but her death was confirmed by her secretary.

Fleming was known as the “Queen of Technicolor” for her stunning red hair and green eyes, which lit up appearances in such films as Out of the Past and Spellbound. Overall, she appeared in more than 40 films, working with directors Alfed Hitchcock, Jacques Tourneur and Robert Siodmak, among other film greats.

Her best-known films included the 1948 musical fantasy A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Bing Crosby, the 1957 Western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and the noir Slightly Scarlet, alongside John Payne.

Fleming was the costar to some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including four films with Ronald Reagan before he entered politics. She worked with Glenn Ford, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster,...

Rhonda Fleming, the actress who starred in films like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” and Jacques Tourneur’s “Out of the Past,” has died. She was 97.

Fleming’s secretary Carla Sapon confirmed the news to TheWrap, stating that she passed away on Wednesday in Santa Monica, California.

Fleming appeared in more than 40 films, which included Robert Siodmak’s “The Spiral Staircase,” the 1948 musical fantasy “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” the 1957 Western “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and the noir “Slightly Scarlet.”

Over the years, she worked with people like Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Bob Hope and Ronald Reagan, with whom she made four films. Her other credits include “Pony Express,” “The Big Circus” and most recently, “The Nude Bomb” in 1980.

Fleming was born as Marilyn Louis in Hollywood, California, in 1923. She began working as a film actress while attending Beverly Hills High School, and was discovered by...

Rhonda Fleming, star of the 1940s and ’50s who was dubbed the “Queen of Technicolor” and appeared in “Out of the Past” and “Spellbound,” died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif., according to her secretary Carla Sapon. She was 97.

Fleming appeared in more than 40 films and worked with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock on “Spellbound,” Jacques Tourneur on “Out of the Past” and Robert Siodmak on “The Spiral Staircase.”

Later in life, she became a philanthropist and supporter of numerous organizations fighting cancer, homelessness and child abuse.

Her starring roles include classics such as the 1948 musical fantasy “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” alongside Bing Crosby, 1957 Western “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and the noir “Slightly Scarlet” alongside John Payne.

Her co-stars over the years included Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Rock Hudson and Ronald Reagan, with whom she made four films. Other notable roles included Fritz Lang...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

One has to appreciate Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s winking self-awareness in calling his new feature Creepy. It’s as if the Coen brothers released a film entitled Snarky, or Eli Roth named his next stomach-churner Gory. Kurosawa, who’s still best known for Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001), two rare outstanding examples of the highly variable J-Horror genre, instills a sense of creepiness into virtually anything he does, regardless of subject matter. His latest, which sees him return to the realm of horror after excursions into more arthouse territory, certainly lives up to its name and has a lot of fun doing so. – Giovanni M.C. (full review)

Where...

Two fiction and three documentary projects from Southeast Asia will receive production grants from Bangkok-based fund.

Bangkok-based film fund Purin Pictures has unveiled the two fiction and three documentary projects that will receive production grants in its spring 2020 funding round.

The two fiction projects, which receive $30,000 each, are The Women, directed by Myanmar’s The Maw Naing, about a group of female factory workers protesting unjust treatment, and This City Is A Battlefield, from Indonesia’s Mouly Surya, a period drama set in the aftermath of the Second World War (see full details below).

The three documentary projects, which receive grants of $15,000 each,...

Exclusive: CAA has inked Portuguese actress Daniela Melchior, who will next star as supervillain Ratchatcher in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros.

The character in DC lore is known for its ability to control rats and stage a variety of crimes throughout Gotham City.

Melchior is known for her roles in the Portuguese period feature The Black book directed by Valeria Sarmiento, based on the novel from Camilo Castelo Branco. She also starred in the feature Parque Mayer from Mgn Filmes and directed by António-Pedro Vasconcelos.

Melchior also voiced the lead role of Gwen Stacy in the Sony Pictures Portugal Animation version of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

On the TV side she has shot five TV series in her home country: Valor da Vida, A Herderia, Ouro Verde, Massa Fresca and Mulheres, all for Portugal’s Channel Tvi.

She continues to be represented by Brave Artists Management...

One project from Sri Lanka –Sanjeewa Pushpakumara’s “Mother”– and another from Myanmar –The Maw Naing’s “The Women”– won ex-aequo, the main kudos at the Locarno Festival’s Open Doors co-production forum.

The winning projects share a high sensitivity towards female-related issues, a trend among many of the participants this year. The $50,000 award was split between the two.

Produced by Youngjeong Oh at Yangon-based One Point Zero, “The Women,” the third feature of The Maw Naing (Karlovy Vary-premiered “The Monk”) turns on the struggles of four women who have moved from remote villages to the city of Yangon, Myanmar to work and get a better life. The four women share a bedroom near the city factory area.

“Despite working hard and keeping their hopes high, they can’t escape from poverty. Their lives are not strongly connected, but from their present, we can see their past and future. I...

‘The Women’ by Myanmar’s The Maw Naing wins the top prize of €30,300.

Filmmakers from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal were among the winners of this year’s edition of the Locarno Festival’s Open Doors project showcase.

Myanmar-based poet, artist and filmmaker The Maw Naing won the Open Doors production grant of €30,300 for his second narrative feature film project The Women.

The drama about four women from remote villages who travel to the city in search of work is being produced by the Berlin-based Yangon Film School and the director’s own production company One Point Zero. The...

Updated: Following a couple of Julie London Westerns*, Turner Classic Movies will return to its July 2017 Star of the Month presentations. On July 27, Ronald Colman can be seen in five films from his later years: A Double Life, Random Harvest (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942), The Late George Apley (1947), and The Story of Mankind (1957). The first three titles are among the most important in Colman's long film career. George Cukor's A Double Life earned him his one and only Best Actor Oscar; Mervyn LeRoy's Random Harvest earned him his second Best Actor Oscar nomination; George Stevens' The Talk of the Town was shortlisted for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. All three feature Ronald Colman at his very best. The early 21st century motto of international trendsetters, from Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Turkey's Recep Erdogan to Russia's Vladimir Putin and the United States' Donald Trump, seems to be, The world is reality TV and reality TV...

Considering everything that's been happening on the planet in the last several months, you'd have thought we're already in November or December – of 2117. But no. It's only June. 2017. And in some parts of the world, that's the month of brides, fathers, graduates, gays, and climate change denial. Beginning this evening, Thursday, June 1, Turner Classic Movies will be focusing on one of these June groups: Lgbt people, specifically those in the American film industry. Following the presentation of about 10 movies featuring Frank Morgan, who would have turned 127 years old today, TCM will set its cinematic sights on the likes of William Haines, James Whale, George Cukor, Mitchell Leisen, Dorothy Arzner, Patsy Kelly, and Ramon Novarro. In addition to, whether or not intentionally, Claudette Colbert, Colin Clive, Katharine Hepburn, Douglass Montgomery (a.k.a. Kent Douglass), Marjorie Main, and Billie Burke, among others. But this is ridiculous! Why should TCM present a...

Jennifer Leigh Williamson Jun 13, 2017

As far back as the 1920s, cinema has brought us feminist heroes. Here's a bunch of films way ahead of their time...

“I never realised until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.” - Katharine Hepburn

Feminism, equality of the sexes. Often when watching old movies, the sexism of the time can catch you off guard. Bums are pinched, bimbos bounce, old maids glower and you shake your head and sigh, glad that those times have (mostly) passed. So when we see classic films with strong, intelligent, impressive, witty, ambitious, feminist female characters, equals to their male counterparts, we sit up and take notice. There are many great classic films with impressive female characters, too many to list here. This article is about the characters that have inspired me personally. Classic feminist films way ahead of their time.

Spoilers ahead...

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc...

If your favorite “Feud: Bette and Joan” character is Pauline, Alison Wright gets it.

“I kind of love her too,” she told IndieWire. “She’s a strong, assertive, capable, able woman, and not a victim in any sort of sense. She’s got her head screwed on pretty tight. Ryan [Murphy] initially described her as being whip-smart and cool as a cucumber, so that’s an attractive concept right there.”

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

Wright first became familiar to FX audiences as another 20th century secretary, “poor Martha” of “The Americans.” But the two characters couldn’t be further apart. As the loyal and clever assistant to director Robert Aldrich (played in the show by Alfred Molina), Pauline represents a rare breed of Hollywood women for the year 1962 — an aspiring director, who in this week’s episode has the...

The recent box office success of The Boss firmly establishes Melissa McCarthy as the current queen of movie comedies (Amy Schumer could be a new contender after an impressive debut last Summer with Trainwreck), but let us think back about those other funny ladies of filmdom. So while we’re enjoying the female reboot/re-imagining of Ghostbusters and those Bad Moms, here’s a top ten list that will hopefully inspire lots of laughter and cause you to search out some classic comedies. It’s tough to narrow them down to ten, but we’ll do our best, beginning with… 10. Eve Arden The droll Ms. Arden represents the comic sidekicks who will attempt to puncture the pomposity of the leading ladies with a well-placed wisecrack (see also the great Thelma Ritter in Rear Window). Her career began in the early 1930’s with great bit roles in Stage Door and Dancing Lady.

In Scenic Routes, Mike D’Angelo looks at key scenes, explaining how they work and what they mean.

“It’s all about men!” proclaimed the poster for 1939’s The Women, and the marketing department wasn’t kidding. Adapted from the hit play by Clare Boothe Luce and directed by George Cukor (who was well known for his superlative work with actresses, though being pigeonholed as Hollywood’s go-to guy for “women’s films” reportedly annoyed him), this lengthy melodrama passes the Bechdel test, but just barely, and only thanks to a few quick conversations about fashion. Virtually all of the dialogue concerns the various characters’ husbands—specifically, whether or not they’re cheating and whether/how to hang onto them if indeed they are. That doesn’t make it a bad movie, of course, but it is a tad ironic, given the film’s unusual conceit: For the entirety ...

Valley of Love star Isabelle Huppert Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special, starring Michael Shannon, Kirsten Dunst and Jaeden Lieberher, prompted Isabelle Huppert to bring up Mud in our conversation on Guillaume Nicloux's haunting Valley Of Love. Anaïs Romand, George Cukor's The Women with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell and Woody Allen's Magic In The Moonlight came to mind.

Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, last seen on the screen together in Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), play a long divorced couple brought together by the death of their son. Similar in effect to what Nicloux did with The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, fictional plot and biographical details merge so that in the end, only truth matters, once it has made its way through fact and fiction.

Isabelle Huppert: "For me, it's a great film about cinema ..."

Huppert, whose character is never named, arrives first in Death Valley.

Jean Simmons is the original frustrated Mad Housewife who runs away from a 'dream marriage' in search of something more fulfilling. Uncompromising, adult, and making use of an interesting cast. Plus, the soundtrack uses Michel Legrand's incomparable song "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" The Happy Ending Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 112 min. / Ship Date January 19, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Jean Simmons, John Forsythe, Shirley Jones, Teresa Wright, Nanette Fabray, Bobby Darin, Kathy Fields, Tina Louise, Dick Shawn, Lloyd Bridges, Karen Steele, Erin Moran. Cinematography Conrad Hall Original Music Michel Legrand, lyrics Alan & Marilyn Bergman Produced, Written and Directed by Richard Brooks

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I looked at some of the poster artwork for The Happy Ending, and yes indeed, one of the main styles is indeed like the cover of this disc -- a photo of a rusty garbage...

Hal Roach looks on as technicians install Vitaphone equipment in his studio screening room, ca. 1928. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) 'A Century of Sound': Q&A with former UCLA Preservation Officer Robert Gitt about the evolution of film sound technology Long before multi-track Dolby stereo and digital sound technology, there were the Kinetophone and the Vitaphone systems – not to mention organ and piano players at movie houses. Much of that is discussed in A Century of Sound, which chronicles the evolution of film sound from the late 19th century to the mid-1970s. A Century of Sound has been split into two parts, with a third installment currently in the planning stages. They are: Vol. 1, “The Beginning, 1876-1932,” which came out on DVD in 2007. Vol. 2, “The Sound of Movies: 1933-1975,” which came out on Blu-ray in 2015. The third installment will bring the presentation into the 21st century.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

A performative exploration of Australia’s own Orry-Kelly, perhaps most infamously known as Cary Grant’s lover, Women He’s Undressed is a playful look at the man behind the costumes worn by Marilyn Monroe, Betty Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Rosalind Russell, and Errol Flynn, amongst other legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The film’s story is told via an electrifying mix of first-person interviews, performances of Orry-Kelly’s letters, and archival materials, including clips from his films Some Like It Hot, The Maltese Falcon, Les Girls, and Arsenic and Old Lace.

The film’s charms exist in the performative elements contextualized amongst the film’s interviewees. Director Gillian Armstrong (known for her narrative films Little Women and Oscar and Lucinda) paints a picture partially routed in national pride, about a small town boy from rural New South Wales who makes good in Hollywood. The fragmented nature of the narrative...

Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

During his career, George Cukor was often referred to as a “women’s director” for his facility with foregrounded female performers: Katharine Hepburn in no less than 10 collaborations, Jean Simmons in The Actress, the women in The Women. By that logic, Paul Feig is our Cukor: beginning with Bridesmaids (since we’ve confined I Am David and Unaccompanied Minors to the rubble of collective amnesia), he’s established himself as a specialist in female-led comedy, following up with The Heat and now Spy. In interviews prior to Bridesmaids‘ release, he mused that the film better not bomb or he’d have messed it up for women in comedy for decades. If none […]...

During his career, George Cukor was often referred to as a “women’s director” for his facility with foregrounded female performers: Katharine Hepburn in no less than 10 collaborations, Jean Simmons in The Actress, the women in The Women. By that logic, Paul Feig is our Cukor: beginning with Bridesmaids (since we’ve confined I Am David and Unaccompanied Minors to the rubble of collective amnesia), he’s established himself as a specialist in female-led comedy, following up with The Heat and now Spy. In interviews prior to Bridesmaids‘ release, he mused that the film better not bomb or he’d have messed it up for women in comedy for decades. If none […]...

A few costume design links on this fine day.

Orange is the New Black

Jenn Rogien talks about this season’s costumes.

Colleen Atwood

She’s making handbags now, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, look a bit like a cross between Fendi and Hermès.

Jem and the Holograms

Soyon An is the stylist tasked with bringing the best dressed cartoon of all time to life.

The Women

Kay Noske nails it again with this post about Adrian’s brilliant and totally bonkers costumes.

Pretty Little Liars

Video: Even if you haven’t seen the show (it’s huge in the Us), this interview with uber cool costume designer Mandi Line is well worth four minutes of your time.

Maleficent

Costumes from Maleficent that look magnificent. Sorry.

Designing Hollywood

Tyranny of Style contributor Brianne Gillen visits the Fidm Museum, which is presently celebrating the overlooked art of costume sketches. A few photographs of the finally realised garments too.

It all begins with a freeze frame of a dirt road somewhere in Yorkshire county, lined with trees whose lush foliage converges above in an arch. What could it be if not a portal? The movie itself, meanwhile, has not even started as we watch the opening credits, encased in large old-fashioned frames, slowly fade away—a device consistently favored by Alain Resnais who opened each of his 19 features likewise, holding off the films themselves until the screen no longer contained any visual surplus. The freeze frame comes to life as the camera pans farther down the road; then we find ourselves in a theatrical set.

We have been here before, of course. Resnais' Smoking/No Smoking, also based on a play by British playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, is set in Yorkshire as well. Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter) borrows from the five-hour diptych its theatrical setting, one...

1. The term "gaslight." The Ingrid Bergman thriller "Gaslight" -- released 70 years ago this week, on May 4, 1944, wasn't the original use of the title. There was Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play "Gas Light," retitled "Angel Street" when it came to Broadway a couple years later. And there was a British film version in 1939, starring Anton Walbrook (later the cruel impresario in "The Red Shoes") and Diana Wynyard.

Still, the glossy 1944 MGM version remains the best-known telling of the tale, with the title an apparent reference to the flickering Victorian lamps that are part of Gregory's (Charles Boyer) scheme to make wife Paula (Bergman) think she's seeing things that aren't there, thus deliberately undermining her sanity in order to have her institutionalized so that he'll be free to ransack the ancestral home to find the missing family jewels.

This version of Hamilton's tale was so popular that it made the word "gaslight"into a verb,...

Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week

"Veronica Mars"

What's It About? Everyone's favorite teen Pi Veronica Mars is all grown up. She's living in NYC with Piz and just about to snag a plum lawyer gig when she's called back to Neptune to help out her ex Logan. In typical Logan fashion, he's in legal hot water - this time around, he's accused of murdering his girlfriend. Oh, it's also their high school reunion. Fun times!

Why We're In: Okay, if you're a diehard Marshmallow, chances are you're already getting a copy of the movie from Kickstarter. But, hey, while you wait for them to be sent out, why not snag an extra copy or two?

Moviefone's Top Blu-ray of the Week

"Ace in the Hole" (Criterion)

What's It About? Kirk Douglas stars as a ruthless reporter scheming to keep his latest scoop in the headlines. A classic film noir,...

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies who have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Mary Anderson (1918-2014) - Actress. She's best known for playing Maybelle Merriwether in Gone with the Wind and was also one of the ensemble players in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (see her as Nurse MacKenzie below). Other movies include The Asphalt Jungle, The Women and Cheech and Chong's Next Movie. She died on April 6. (THR) Daniel Anker (1964-2014) - Documentary filmmaker who received an Oscar nomination for Scottsboro: An American...

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While he’ll always be best known for his 1928 silent masterpiece, The Passion of Joan Arc (or for his atmospheric 1932 horror film, Vampyr), Danish auteur Carl Theodor Dreyer had a rich and varied filmography that ranged from 1919-1964. Criterion has remastered a 1925 comedy from the director, Master of the House, the first of his films to be adapted from a play (Tyrant’s Fall by Sven Rindom) rather than a novel. A prescient treatise on domestic issues, the film was enormously popular upon release, but it would be the last comedic venture for Dreyer (the only other being 1920’s The Parson’s Widow). Known to enthusiasts of Dreyer, it’s a title that’s been overshadowed by the director’s notoriously somber works, therefore making it ripe for rediscovery.

A harried yet unquestionably doting wife, Ida Frandsen (Astrid Holm) waits hand and foot on her three children as she goes...

It's Diana's last report from the TCM Film Festival which closed this weekend. One more from Anne Marie is coming up and it's a wrap. Take it away, Diana...

Ben & Anna Kendrick at The Women screening

In one of the few overlaps in our Tcmff schedule, Anne Marie and I sat down for the all-star classic The Women (1939). We've both watched the film a countless number of times - it's such a treat. The El Capitan organist played a variety of film standards (including the Star Wars theme) as we chuckled and waited for the introduction. The cherry on top? Anna Kendrick, cool girl exemplar, was the special guest, there to introduce the comedy classic alongside TCM stalwart (and object of many TCM fangirls’ affections) Ben Mankiewicz.

Walking out on stage, Kendrick sported a chic yet casual look with a black tee, black skinny jeans and black heeled boots paired...

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will pay tribute to Oscar® winner Joan Fontaine and eight-time Oscar® nominee and honorary Academy Award® recipient Peter O’Toole with tributes Today Sunday, Dec. 29.

The Fontaine collection features Blonde Cheat (1938), The Women (1939), Born To Be Bad (1950), Ivanhoe (1952), Fontaine’s Oscar-nominated roles in The Constant Nymph (1943) and Rebecca (1940), and her Oscar-winning performance in Suspicion (1940).

In the evening, TCM will pay tribute to O’Toole with his Oscar-nominated performances in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) and My Favorite Year (1982). Also featured will be a special encore telecast of Peter O’Toole: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival, a one-hour extended interview with TCM host Robert Osborne taped before a live audience at the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival.

The following is the complete lineup for TCM’s on-air tributes to Joan Fontaine and Peter O’Toole:

Sunday, Dec. 29

All times are Et/Pt.

TCM Remembers Joan Fontaine

6:30 a.

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will pay tribute to Oscar® winner Joan Fontaine and eight-time Oscar® nominee and honorary Academy Award® recipient Peter O'Toole with tributes on Sunday, Dec. 29.

The Fontaine collection features Blonde Cheat (1938), The Women(1939), Born To Be Bad (1950), Ivanhoe (1952), Fontaine's Oscar-nominated roles in The Constant Nymph (1943) and Rebecca (1940), and her Oscar-winning performance in Suspicion (1940).

In the evening, TCM will pay tribute to O'Toole with his Oscar-nominated performances in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) and My Favorite Year (1982). Also featured will be a special encore telecast of Peter O'Toole: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival, a one-hour extended interview with TCM host Robert Osborne taped before a live audience at the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival.

In addition to TCM's on-air tributes, short memorial videos are available on the TCM website and YouTube channel:

TCM Remembers Joan Fontaine

TCM Media Room: http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/938673/Joan-Fontaine-tcm-Original-tcm-Remembers.

News and notes from all over the TV world:

- Fox's "Broadchurch" remake "Gracepoint" has added former "Gossip Girl" actor Kevin Zegers to its cast. Zegers ("The Mortal Instruments") will play a reporter in the small town where the murder mystery takes place, a role similar to the one Jonathan Bailey played in the British show.

- New-ish cable channel Pivot has acquired rights to two classic teen dramas, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Veronica Mars." The two shows will debut on Jan. 13 and air weeknights at 10 and 11 p.m. Pivot, which launched in August, is in about 40 million homes.

- Robert Rodriguez's "From Dusk Till Dawn" TV series on El Rey Network has added three more actors. Most notable among them is "Friday Night Lights" alum Adrianne Palicki, who will play a woman from Seth Gecko's (D.J. Cotrona) past named Vanessa Styles. Also added are Gary Busey's...

The world lost two acclaimed actors this past week, with the passing of Oscar winner Joan Fontaine and eight-time Oscar nominee Peter O’Toole. To remember these two icons of the silver screen, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will be airing programming tributes on Dec. 29 featuring several of each actor’s movies. Related: Remembrances 2013: A Farewell To Celebrities We Lost In 2013 Lineup of TCM Tributes to Joan Fontaine and Peter O’Toole Sunday, Dec. 29 (all times are Et/Pt) TCM Remembers Joan Fontaine 6:30am – Blonde Cheat (1938) 7:45am – The Women (1939) 10:15am – Born to Be Bad (1950) Noon … Continue reading →

The post TCM to remember Joan Fontaine and Peter O’Toole with programming tributes appeared first on Channel Guide Magazine.

Joan Fontaine, who won the Best Actress Oscar for Alfred Hitchcock's 1941 classic Suspicion, has died in her California home at age 96. Fontaine began her film career playing attractive but nondescript characters until Hitchcock cast her as the female lead in his 1940 film version of the bestseller Rebecca opposite Laurence Olivier. The film earned her an Oscar nomination and elevated her to one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses. In 1943 she received a third and final Oscar nomination for The Constant Nymph. Fontaine also won rave notices in the film version of the Gothic novel Jane Eyre, starring opposite Orson Welles. In both films she played an innocent woman whose husband is harboring a shocking secret that is unveiled within the walls of a stately but foreboding country manor. Fontaine's other major films include Ivanhoe, The Emperor Waltz, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, This Above All, The Women, Gunga Din,...

First Peter O'Toole, and now Joan Fontaine (née Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland)? It's going to be a rough week. Hollywood lost another of its living giants this weekend when Ms Fontaine passed away of natural causes at 96 years of age. The two-time Hitchcock heroine, bizarrely the only actor to ever win an Oscar in one of his films, is survived by her daughter Debbie and her older estranged sister Olivia. Though Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland are the most successful sister movie stars of all time (both A listers, Oscar winners, and stars of at least one immortal classic) they were famously competitive, never got on well, and haven't spoken since 1975!

The actress would undoubtedly shoot us one of those delicious cocked eyebrow looks to hear her sister mentioned so prominently in all of her obituaries but Old Hollywood Mythology is too enticing to ignore. 

Though her career was very successful in the 40s,...

Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine has died, per the AP and multiple news reports. She was 97. Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland to British parents in Japan, Fontaine began her film career under contract with Rko in films like The Man Who Found Himself (1937), her official onscreen “introduction,” A Damsel in Distress (1937) opposite Fred Astaire, and George Cukor’s The Women (1939). A year after leaving Rko, Fontaine starred in the gothic thriller Rebecca as a woman haunted by her new husband’s (Laurence Olivier) dead wife. The film, Alfred Hitchcock‘s American debut, was nominated for 11 Oscars and won two including Best Picture. Fontaine earned her first Best Actress nod and reteamed with Hitch the following year for another domestic thriller, Suspicion, which won her the Academy Award over sister Olivia de Havilland, who was herself nominated for Hold Back The Dawn. Fontaine’s third Best Actress nomination was awarded for 1943′s The Constant Nymph.

Academy Award-winning actress Joan Fontaine, the leading lady known for her string of roles as demure, well-mannered and often well-bred heroines in the 1940s, and the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, died today at her home in Carmel, California; she was 96.

Known best for her back-to-back roles in two Alfred Hitchcock thrillers -- the 1940 Best Picture winner Rebecca and the 1941 film Suspicion, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar, making her the ony actor in a Hitchcock film to receive an Academy Award -- she and her sister were enshrined in Hollywood lore as intense rivals, and their rivalry reached a peak of sorts when Fontaine beat de Havilland for the 1941 Best Actress Oscar.

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in 1917 in Tokyo, Japan, Fontaine suffered from recurring ailments throughout her childhood, resulting in her mother moving both her and Olivia to California. While her mother, stage actress Lillian Fontaine, desired for both her daughters to be actresses, it was only Olivia who initially pursued an acting career, as Fontaine returned to Japan for two years when she was 15 years old to live with her father, who divorced Lillian in 1919. Upon returning to the states, Fontaine found that Olivia was already becoming an established actress, and began to embark on her own career. Starting out in theater, Joan initially changed her name to Joan Burfield, then Joan Fontaine (so as to avoid confusion with her sister), and soon found herself in moderately noteworthy parts in such films as You Can't Beat Love (1937), A Damsel in Distress (1937, opposite Fred Astaire) and Gunga Din (1939, alongside Cary Grant, her future leading man in Suspicion). Though she garnered more notice in 1939 in the supporting part of naive newlywed Peggy Day in the classic comedy The Women, she was far eclipsed in fame and reputation by her sister, who had already starred along Errol Flynn in a number of romance adventures, and who received her first Oscar nomination for the blockbuster Gone With the Wind.

It was the same man who cast de Havilland in Gone With the Wind who would make Fontaine into a major star. Looking to follow up the monstrous success of Gone With the Wind with another noteworthy literary adapation, producer David O. Selnick snapped up the rights to the Daphne du Maurier bestseller Rebecca, in which an unnamed, demure heroine -- known only as "the second Mrs. de Winter" -- is taunted by the memory of her husband's first wife, the beautiful and seductive title character. Selznick brought director Alfred Hitchcock over for his first American production, cast matinee idol and rising star Laurence Olivier as moody, mysterious husband Maxim de Winter, and embarked on a Scarlett O'Hara-style talent search for his leading lady. Rejecting Loretta Young, Margaret Sullavan, Vivian Leigh (then Olivier's wife), and a then-unknown Anne Baxter along with hundreds of other actresses, Selznick decided on Fontaine, who though not an established star projected the right mix of beauty, insecurity, and tenacity needed for the part. Fontaine's insecurity, however, was heightened by Olivier's sometimes cruel treatment of her on set, as he had lobbied aggressively for Leigh to get the role, and Hitchcock capitalized on her inferiority complex to shape her performance. The resulting film, released in 1940, was an unqualified critical and financial success, catapulting Fontaine into the tier of top Hollywood leading ladies, establishing Hitchcock firmly in the United States, and nabbing the film 11 Academy Award nominations, includine ones for both Fontaine and Olivier; it would go on to win Best Picture.

Selznick, pleased with the combination of Hitchcock and Fontaine, signed the two on for a follow-up about a demure heiress who begins to suspect that her playboy husband is out to murder her for her money. Initially titled Before the Fact, it would later be retitled Suspicion, and Cary Grant was cast as the charming but caddish husband. Though the final ending of the film was tinkered with -- studio heads thought making Grant guilty would be bad for box office, and insisted on a twist to make him actually heroic -- it was another success, earning three Oscar nominations, including Fontaine's second Best Actress nod. It was at the 1941 Academy Awards that Fontaine, once considered the also-ran to her movie star sister, beat Olivia de Havilland for the Best Actress Oscar (de Havilland had been nominated for Hold Back the Dawn). In what became part of Hollywood and Academy Award legend, Fontaine coolly rejected her sister's efforts at congratulations, and What had always been a fractious relationship since childhood became officially estranged. Hollywood wags often reported that because de Havilland lost to her sister, she would retaliate by winning two Oscars -- in 1946 for To Each His Own and 1949 for The Heiress -- in order to top Fontaine. The two would officially stop speaking to one another in 1975.

Fontaine received a third Oscar nomination in 1943, for the music melodrama The Constant Nymph, and that same year essayed the title role in the commercially successful if moderately well-regarded version of Jane Eyre opposite Orson Welles. She remained a star throughout the 1940s, appearing in the comedy The Affairs of Susan (1945), the thriller Ivy (1947), and opposite Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz (1948). Fontaine also gave what many consider to be her best performance in 1948's Letters from an Unknown Woman, Max Ophuls' romantic drama opposite Louis Jourdan. In 1945 she divorced her first husband, actor Brian Aherne, and in 1946 married producer William Dozier, whom she would divorce in 1951. Two years later, she was embroiled in a bitter custody battle with him over their daughter, Debbie, and the ongoing lawsuit would prevent Fontaine from accepting the role of frustrated military wife Karen Holmes in the Oscar-winning drama From Here to Eternity -- Deborah Kerr was instead cast, and received an Oscar nomination for the part.

Though she continued to work throughout the 1950s, most notably in the lavish Technicolor adaptation of Ivanhoe (1952), Ida Lupino's film noir The Bigamist (1953), and in the pioneering if often campy racial drama Island in the Sun (1957), her work in both film and television lessened, and her last film appearance was in Hammer Films horror movie The Devil's Own (1966). Television work followed in the 1970s and 1980s, and Fontaine received a Daytime Emmy nomination for the soap opera Ryan's Hope. She published an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978, and after the television film Good King Wenceslas (1994), retired officially to her home in Carmel, California.

Fontaine is survived by her daughter, Debbie Dozier.