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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.

Adrien Brody took home his second Oscar on Sunday — Best Actor for The Brutalist — putting him in rarefied air: He is the eighth performer to boast a perfect 2-for-2 record at the Oscars.

The first seven to achieve this are:

1. Luise Rainer: Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937)

2. Vivien Leigh: Best Actress for Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

3. Helen Hayes: Best Actress for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932) and Best Supporting Actress for Airport (1970)

4. Kevin Spacey: Best Supporting Actor for The Usual Suspects (1995) and Best Actor for American Beauty (1999)

5. Hilary Swank: Best Actress for Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Million Dollar Baby (2004)

6. Christoph Waltz: Best Supporting Actor for Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012)

7. Mahershala Ali: Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight (2016) and Green Book (2018)

See The complete list of Oscar winners

Brody nabbed his first Best Actor Oscar for...

One of the most influential auteurs of all time, John Ford is an icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood whose filmography has had an invaluable impact on the history of cinema. Ford began his directorial career in 1917, amassing 147 credits as a director throughout his nearly fifty years working in Hollywood. A filmmaker of immense range, Ford excelled at making war movies, comedies, crime dramas, documentaries, adventure films, and period pieces. However, it is Ford's prowess within the Western genre that truly made him a legend. During his career, Ford directed 56 Westerns, many of which rank among the greatest Westerns ever made.

Ford holds the Academy Award record for most wins for Best Director, winning for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man. Ironically, Ford never won an Academy Award for any of his iconic Westerns. In 1973, Ford became the inaugural recipient...

Every now and then, a film comes along that transcends its genre, reshaping the cinematic landscape and becoming something of a cultural phenomenon. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is one such movie.

Released in 1975, this thriller didn’t just win audiences over; it reinvented the concept of the summer blockbuster. But its influence didn’t stop there. Jaws secured a rare spot in the hearts of filmmakers worldwide, including one of the most celebrated animators of all time, Hayao Miyazaki.

A scene from Jaws | Credits: Universal Pictures

From the pulse-pounding score that sticks to your bones to the ever-tightening noose of suspense, Jaws was a cultural earthquake, setting the stage for the blockbuster era that would follow. And then there’s that shark. It didn’t just swim into our screens—it sunk its teeth into the very heart of Hollywood, leaving a legacy that continues to send ripples through the industry.

John Ford was the four-time Oscar-winning director who made over 140 films in his long career, spanning the silent era through the 1960s. Yet how many of those titles are classics? Let’s take a look back at 20 of Ford’s greatest movies, ranked worst to best.

To this day, Ford holds the all-time Oscar record for Best Director victories with four: “The Informer” (1935), “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), “How Green Was My Valley” (1941), and “The Quiet Man” (1952). Of those, only “How Green Was My Valley” also won Best Picture (Ford also competed as a producer on “The Quiet Man.”).

Interestingly enough, the one Best Director nomination he lost was for the film that had perhaps the most profound impact on his career: “Stagecoach” (1939). The first of many westerns Ford shot in his beloved Monument Valley, it was also the beginning of a long and iconic career with leading man John Wayne,...

Mark your calendars, Oscars fans, because the 97th Academy Awards will air on Sunday, March 2, 2025 on ABC. The annual star-studded ceremony will honor movies released in theaters within the 2024 calendar year of eligibility. AMPAS members will vote on the Oscar winners in 23 categories, including Best Director. But who will win? Here at Gold Derby, thousands of users have been making and updating their 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Director, so let’s take a look at all of the top contenders in our photo gallery below.

These 25 Best Director hopefuls are listed in order of their racetrack odds, which are derived from the combined forecasts of four unique groups: experts we’ve polled from major media outlets, editors who cover awards year-round for this website, top 24 users who had the best accuracy scores last year, and the mass of users who make up our biggest predictions bloc.

There will be five...

Beyond their prowess as groundbreaking creative artists and visionaries of the Old West, John Ford and Clint Eastwood have many commonalities. As directors, the two are incredibly prolific, working non-stop, even at an age when most people retire. Their terse, no-nonsense approach to the art of filmmaking was responsible for countless classics, with many being the most influential films of their respective generations. Oftentimes, Ford and Eastwood are unfairly pigeonholed as "Western directors." Their filmographies are far deeper and more resonant than what's presented on the surface. Beneath their tough-guy personas is an unbridled sensitivity that lingers in all their pictures. With Ford, his most sentimental and personal film, How Green Was My Valley, earned him his lone win for Best Picture and was a formative favorite for Eastwood.

John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara are two legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age who starred in five movies together, the most acclaimed of which is John Ford’s 1952 classic The Quiet Man. Wayne and Irish actor O’Hara first worked together in Ford’s Western romance Rio Grande two years earlier, when their on-screen chemistry quickly became apparent. But it was only with follow-up collaboration The Quiet Man that their acting partnership really came into its own.

The film features a rare comic turn from Wayne as Irish-American boxer “Trooper Thorn” Thornton, who moves to rural Ireland to manage his family’s homestead. O'Hara plays Thornton's love interest, whose brother he must fight in one of John Wayne's best fight scenes to win her hand in marriage. The Duke trades in his usual Stetson hat for a peasant’s flatcap, and his whiskey flask for “one of those black beers,...

Love them or hate them, obsess over them or ignore them altogether, the Academy Awards are a cultural artifact whose history mirrors the very history of American film. Granted, as a gatekeeping and taste-managing institution, the Oscars have always been better at belatedly following and responding to winds of change in the industry than at anticipating or provoking them, and you could probably count on your fingers the number of times that the Oscar statuette in any given category went to a genuinely bold, bracing, game-changing winner. But they're as good a summation of the congealing of critical and commercial mainstream consensus over the decades as we film buffs have. And, as such, it's fascinating to look at the instances of the ultimate winner being so out of lockstep with that consensus as to cause an uproar.

As we gear up for the 97th Academy Awards in March 2025, it's a...

For most of its existence, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has maintained an illustrious aura around its highest honor, the Best Picture Oscar. There have been egregious missteps in this category to be sure, but for the most part, Academy voters wind up zeroing in on a worthy winner; that film may not be your favorite of the year, but you can at least stomach it taking the top prize.

One reason the Best Picture Oscar is so coveted is that everyone in the AMPAS membership, from actors to publicists, gets to participate in the nominating process. Whereas nominees in other categories tend to be determined by members of each branch, Best Picture is a free-for-all, which makes it the truest reflection of how the industry feels about the state of motion pictures in that given year. Sometimes a movie hits hard at the moment ("The Best Years of Our Lives...

His career spanned more than five decades, and his influence on movie-making remains unparalleled. Still, even the biggest movie lovers may not know his name, John Ford. Often associated with Westerns, Ford made movies across genres, pushing the envelope at every turn. His efforts garnered him four Academy Awards for Best Director, a record that remains in place more than 50 years after his death.

Ford started making movies during the era of silent films but moved to Westerns during the 1930s. Notoriously harsh with his actors, Ford collaborated with greats like John Wayne, Henry Ford, and Maureen O'Hara on several occasions. He made several movies with Wayne, including Stagecoach and The Searchers, often regarded as two of the most influential films in cinematic history.

John Ford's Career Started His Career In Hollywood As An Actor

John Ford wasn't the only member of his family who moved to Hollywood from their family home in Maine.

Voting for the 90th New York Film Critics Circle Awards has ended, and all true cinephiles’ eyes are directed to what films the prestigious critics group honored today: Last year, “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Oppenheimer” won the biggest prizes, giving a partial sign of where the Oscar race was going. But not a complete one, as “Killers” won Best Picture and Lily Gladstone won Best Actress at the NYFCC, both awards that were not repeated at the Oscars. NYFCC winner for Best Director Christopher Nolan did win that award at the Oscars a few months later, however.

Cinephilia, not Oscars prognostication, is the true value of the NYFCC awards. And to that end, “Flow,” one of the most acclaimed animated features of the year and one that the Academy should take close note of, received the first award at the voting for the 2024 awards held in NYC on...

Although not the revered classic that Citizen Kane is, How Green Was My Valley beat out the Orson Welles film to achieve the highest honor in the filmmaking business. Along with Casablanca, Citizen Kane is widely regarded as one of the two biggest contenders for the title of the greatest movie of all time. But of those two, only one - Casablanca - actually received the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Like Casablanca would a year later in 1943, Citizen Kane earned a multitude of nominations at the 14th Academy Awards. However, its only win was Best Original Screenplay, which went to Herman J. Mankiewicz. It lost on multiple fronts, with one movie in particular being the biggest reason for Citizen Kane coming up short. Legendary director John Ford, a filmmaker whose legacy is intertwined with John Wayne's, managed to top Citizen Kane with a film he made in-between Ford's collaborations with Wayne.

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On May 16, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out its first two Academy Awards for Best Director to Frank Borzage ("7th Heaven") and Lewis Milestone ("Two Arabian Knights"). This was the only year the organization distinguished between drama and comedy, but it would not be the last time either of these men took home the top prize in their field. Milestone would win again in 1930 for his heartbreaking adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front," while Borzage, a visual storytelling master whose every film you should absolutely watch, triumphed anew in 1932 with the pre-code classic "Bad Girl."

Throughout the Academy Awards' history, 21 directors have earned more than one Best Director Oscar. 18 have won it twice (Alfonso Cuarón was the most recent filmmaker to join the two-time ranks with "Roma"), while Frank Capra and William Wyler are the only three-time winners.

The Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece “The Godfather” (1972) has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Picture winner ever. The results are from a recent Gold Derby ballot cast by 29 of our film experts and editors, who ranked all 96 movie champs.

Ranking in second place is the Michael Curtiz classic “Casablanca” (1943). Following in third place is the powerful Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” (1993). Rounding out the top five are Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (1974) in fourth place and Billy Wilder‘s “The Apartment” (196o) in fifth place.

At the bottom of the list of the Best Picture winners is “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952) from Cecil B. DeMille. Just above that film in the rankings are “Cimarron” (1931) from Wesley Ruggles, “The Broadway Melody” (1929) from Harry Beaumont, “Crash” (2005) from Paul Haggis, and “Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956) from Michael Anderson.

Our photo gallery above features the full top 10. See the complete rankings of all 96 films below.

The Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece “The Godfather” (1972) has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Picture winner ever. The results are from a recent Gold Derby ballot cast by 29 of our film experts and editors, who ranked all 96 movie champs.

Ranking in second place is the Michael Curtiz classic “Casablanca” (1943). Following in third place is the powerful Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” (1993). Rounding out the top five are Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (1974) in fourth place and Billy Wilder‘s “The Apartment” (196o) in fifth place.

The worst among 96 Best Picture winners is “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952) from Cecil B. DeMille. Just above that film on the bottom of the rankings are “Cimarron” (1931) from Wesley Ruggles, “The Broadway Melody” (1929) from Harry Beaumont, “Crash” (2005) from Paul Haggis, and “Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956) from Michael Anderson.

Our photo gallery below features the full top 10. See the complete rankings of all 96 films below.

Boyz n the Hood was John Singleton's directorial debut, and it earned him an Oscar record that had been untouched for 50 years. Since its release, the movie has been recognized as one of the most significant films of the 1990s, and Boyz n the Hood is credited with having launched the careers of many of its actors. Boyz n the Hood has received numerous awards, and it currently holds a 96% critics approval rating and 93% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The coming-of-age drama explores the lives of teenage boys living in South Central Los Angeles and deals with themes of loyalty, friendship, and love. Along with various accolades for the performers and his screenplay, John Singleton's work on Boyz n the Hood earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director, breaking a record that Orson Welles had set 50 years earlier.

John Singleton Became The Youngest Best Director Oscar Nominee With...

Will the Oscars reflect who won the presidency?

As the country recovers from the emotional rollercoaster of the 2024 presidential election, Hollywood will be coping with this charged political atmosphere at events throughout awards season. And that could determine the movies that Oscar voters choose to elevate. After all, the Academy Awards have a long history of reflecting or commenting on the nation’s political zeitgeist, sometimes defiant, other times conciliatory.

In 2016, the Academy’s selection of “Moonlight” over the presumed frontrunner, “La La Land,” was widely seen as a symbolic rejection of the divisive rhetoric that defined Donald Trump’s win. “Moonlight,” a poignant exploration of a young Black man’s sexuality, stood in stark contrast to Trump’s controversial policies. His Muslim ban would be rebutted by two other honors bestowed in that year’s ceremony: Mahershala Ali’s historic win as the first Muslim to take home a supporting actor Oscar,...

John Ford's success at the Oscars speaks to the director's reputation as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Over the course of his long career in the industry, Ford worked with many of the most prominent actors in Hollywood from the 1920s to 1960s, pumping out a long list of memorable hits at the box office. Many were born from his collaborations with John Wayne, but it's important to note that his own directorial style, not necessarily Wayne or any other actor, that made Ford the Hollywood legend he is today.

Ford's work represents a very distinctive version of America, and his films often centered on specific themes and genres. Ford is well known for making Westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, among many others. John Ford was also well known for having served in World War II and for...

Clint Eastwood's Hollywood career officially began in 1955 when he made a brief, uncredited appearance as a lab technician in Jack Arnold's "Revenge of the Creature." Nine years later, unhappy as a midlevel television star on the CBS Western series "Rawhide," he jetted off to Spain to make a different kind of Western with a very different kind of director named Sergio Leone. The result, "A Fistful of Dollars," changed the face of the genre forever, and set Eastwood down the path to becoming a filmmaker in his own right.

Eastwood's directing career got off to a curiously assured start with the wildly suspenseful thriller "Play Misty for Me," in which the tough, swaggering star of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Dirty Harry" played a victimized Bay Area disc jockey. No one expected this from Eastwood, and it's fair to say no one saw this hugely...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

A Different Man director Aaron Schimberg has assembled an all-35mm retrospective of films that inspired his new feature, including work by Lynch, Lubitsch, Nicholas Ray, and Tsai; the 50th-anniversary restoration of The Conversation begins a run.

Museum of Modern Art

A career-spanning Johnnie To retrospective has begun, featuring the director in-person.

Anthology Film Archives

An Ingrid Caven retrospective includes films by Fassbinder and Eustache; work by Joseph Cornell, Tony Conrad, and Bruce Conner plays in “Essential Cinema.”

Film at Lincoln Center

An essential retrospective of Brazil’s L.C. Barreto Productions continues.

Roxy Cinema

Faces and A Woman Under the Influence screen.

Museum of the Moving Image

A retrospective of the Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden continues; two films by Joanna Hogg screen on Saturday; Young Frankenstein and The Warriors have standalone showings, the latter on 35mm.

Film Forum

The Searchers...

Four made-for-tv Planet of the Apes movies from 1980 are now streaming online, the first time they have been available for viewing since a DVD set was released nearly two decades ago. The four films are actually compilations of episodes from the 1974 CBS Planet of the Apes live-action series. The four films are currently streaming for free on YouTube's Movie Channel.

Some fans of the original 1968 Planet of the Apes film are not even aware that the CBS series or TV films even existed. In September 1974, CBS premiered the series, which was based in the same timeline as the 1968 film starring Charlton Heston. Roddy McDowell was the lone cast member from the original Apes films to return for the series. However, he played a completely new character, Galen, a chimp who helps two astronauts (Ron Harper and James Naughton) who have traveled from the past and crash-landed on their home planet a thousand years later.

Filmed in the freezing Nevada desert under studio pressure, Ford’s 1924 epic was a huge hit. It was the springboard for the director’s astounding career of westerns, idealism and high drama

Had the Oscars been around in 1924, when director John Ford’s epic western The Iron Horse was released, the critically lauded film would have swept up the lot. Though it might be largely forgotten now, this black and white silent movie, which turns 100 on 28 August, marked the point where Jack Ford – a former fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants props guy who also acted a bit, and was first hired as a director by virtue of being available – became master film-maker John Ford, the director many still herald as the greatest of all time. When The Iron Horse was inducted into the Library of Congress film archive in 2011, the official registry citation stated that it “established Ford’s reputation as one of Hollywood...

Any filmmaker worth their salt will acknowledge that the path to greatness comes from seeking inspiration from any source big or small, that could have a deep influence in their process of creating art. Australian director George Miller who has inspired many people through his iconic Mad Max franchise, has also found magic in various places.

Tom Hardy in Mad Max: Fury Road (image credit: Warner Brothers)

Miller expertly rebooted his famous action series in 2015 with Mad Max: Fury Road starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron that went on to become a blockbuster. While talking about different aspects of the film, the director revealed a 40s classic film with a controversial history that served as inspiration for one of his characters.

An Old Hollywood Film Made George Miller Christen This Mad Max Character

George Miller created the dystopian action series Mad Max back in 1979 with Mel Gibson, which was followed...

The studio once known as 20th Century Fox is a younger entity than the other major Hollywood Studios. It was founded in 1935 out of the ashes of Fox Film, compared to Warner Bros (1923), Universal Pictures (1912), Paramount Pictures (1912), Columbia Pictures (1923), and Disney (1923) — the latter being the new parent company of 20th Century Studios.

Still, Fox waited only seven years to take home the top prize at the Oscars. At the 14th Academy Awards, held in 1942, Fox's film "How Green Was My Valley" won Best Picture, presented to Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck. That wasn't the only prize "Valley" won that night: it also got Best Director (John Ford), Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Arthur Miller), and finally Best Art Direction -- Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.

One of the films that "Valley" beat that night was "Citizen Kane" (which got only Best Original Screenplay for director Orson Welles and his co-writer Herman J.

John Ford, the iconic director known for such films as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers and much more, will be the subject of the next edition of the TCM podcast The Plot Thickens, it was announced Wednesday.

“Decoding John Ford,” hosted by Ben Mankiewicz, premieres June 6. The fifth season of the podcast, consisting of seven episodes, will feature never-before-heard archival interviews with the likes of John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Woody Strode and Ford himself.

TCM says Mankiewicz will “strip back the mythology to reveal Ford’s brilliance — alongside the often ugly, uncomfortable truths about his life and movies, asking whether we can ever truly separate art from the artist.”

“John Ford is a mercurial figure. Not surprisingly given his stature, the stereotypes about Ford are incomplete,” the host said in a statement. “This is a man defined by contradictions: he revered...

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Photo: Best Picture Snubs

Oscars 2024 is in a few days. With Cillian Murphy, Bradley Cooper, Margot Robbie, 'Barbie', Christopher Nolan, 'Oppenheimer', 'Maestro', all vying for the gold Academy Award, let us take a look at the past winners who were snubbed.

The Oscar for Best Picture may be the highest honor that a film could earn, but the Academy members who vote on the matter are anything but infallible--in fact, some of them don’t even watch the nominated movies at all. Audiences are often disappointed by the pick for Best Picture, but subjectivity mandates that there will always be some reasonable dissent--that said, this article will look back at some of the most widely agreed upon upsets that warrant a closer inspection.

Related...

Every cinephile knows that “What was the best movie of the year?” and “What movie will win Best Picture at the Oscars?” are two entirely different questions. In 2023, the answer for both was arguably the same.

The Daniels’ “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — A24’s mind-bending mother-daughter story about life’s unexplainable questions and the lengths we will go for love — won over audiences and critics before taking home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (for Ke Huy Quan), Best Supporting Actress (for Jamie Lee Curtis), and Best Original Screenplay at the 95th Academy Awards. Still, despite the film’s accolades, it has its critics — and you’re likely to find many a pundit who feels that the top prize ultimately should have gone to Todd Field’s chillier, less crowd-pleasing “Tár” instead.

As long as there have been award shows, movie fans have...

David Bordwell, the noted film scholar, teacher, author and researcher known for sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm of cinema with movie lovers everywhere, has died. He was 76.

Bordwell died Thursday after a long illness, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced. He taught at the school from 1973 until his retirement in 2004 and was its Jacques Ledoux Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the time of his death.

For more than two decades, Bordwell supplied commentaries, visual and written essays and interviews for films in the Criterion Collection and was seen and heard on 50 insightful episodes of Observations on Film Art on the Criterion Channel.

In a statement, Criterion called him “a great, longtime friend and a tireless champion of cinema who spent decades imparting his wisdom and passion onto film lovers around the world.”

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Bordwell wrote his essential textbooks Film Art: An Introduction,...

He simply may have watched more movies than anyone else alive. That’s the kind of legendary detail that followed film scholar David Bordwell, dead at 76 after a long struggle with a degenerative lung disease.

Was that true? Impossible to determine, and Bordwell’s cinephilia was never about bragging or the accumulation of knowledge to score points — but instead, to share with others and enrich our collective understanding of cinema. If you studied film on any level in academia, you almost certainly have heard his name.

For several generations of film students, you read Bordwell’s “Film Art: An Introduction” in your fall freshman Film 101 class. That was me in 2004, and I believe that book was already on its seventh edition by that point — it had first been published in 1979. If you went deeper into your studies, you’d undoubtedly encounter his “Film History” textbook as well. Both of these...

Although he has personally competed for the Best Picture Oscar as a qualifying producer of just four films, Martin Scorsese is responsible for directing 10 of the top Academy Award category’s nominees, including 2024 contender “Killers of the Flower Moon.” This recent improvement upon his total makes him only the third filmmaker in Oscars history to helm a double-digit amount of Best Picture nominees. Including him, six people who were already credited with directing at least one nominee rose higher in the ranks this year.

The previous Scorsese films that vied for Best Picture are 2007 winner “The Departed” (for which he earned his sole directing trophy) and nominees “Taxi Driver” (1977), “Raging Bull” (1981), “Goodfellas” (1991), “Gangs of New York” (2003), “The Aviator” (2005), “Hugo” (2012), “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2014), and “The Irishman” (2020). Of the 10, he received producing notices for the most recent four and directing bids for all but “Taxi Driver.” The only ones who...

The moment Elvis Presley stepped in front of the camera for his second appearance on "The Milton Berle Show" in 1956, there was no doubt that this young man was destined for more than pop music superstardom. Much more.

Conversationally, he was downright adorable with his boyish good looks and aw-shucks Southern shyness, but once the music kicked in he was transformed into a hunk of burning lust. That gyrating pelvis and run-riot voice spurred sexual awakenings in living rooms across the country (in full view of outraged parents). To teenagers, Elvis belted out a call to rebellion. To parents, he was a pompadoured incubus. To Hollywood, he was singing, swaggering box-office gold.

Between 1956 and 1972, Elvis starred in 31 features and two concert films. There were lulls (particularly when his popularity faded prior to his 1968 comeback special), but for the most part Elvis reliably packed 'em in. According to producer Hal B. Wallis...

Clint Eastwood's favorite John Ford movie is How Green Was My Valley, showcasing his appreciation for Ford's work beyond Westerns. How Green Was My Valley's influence on Eastwood as an actor can be seen in his ability to make unsentimental characters charismatic and easy to root for. Ford's influence on Eastwood as a director can be seen in the themes and plot choices of his films, such as the exploration of family, community, and masculinity.

While Clint Eastwood’s most-loved John Ford movie might not be a Western, it is still no surprise that this classic topped the list of the director’s favorites. Ford was a legend in the Western genre, and Eastwood even called the filmmaker one of his favorite directors. Eastwood became a major mainstream star shortly after Ford’s career came to a close, meaning that the pair never got to work together. However,...

John Ford holds the record for the most Best Director Oscar wins with four, a milestone that no current director has come close to achieving. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Ang Lee, and Clint Eastwood, who have two Best Director wins, would need two more to equal Ford's record and three to surpass it. Despite the larger pool of filmmakers in the modern industry, John Ford's record remains impressive and unlikely to be broken in the near future.

John Ford made history at the Academy Awards 71 years ago by the filmmaker holding a certain record, one that will likely not be eclipsed in the near future. Since 1929, the Academy Awards - more commonly known as Oscars - have been the barometer for success in the film industry. Oftentimes during Oscar season, studios build up a release slate consisting of movies that should get nominated for Oscars. This will...

Voting for the 89th New York Film Critics Circle Awards has ended and the awards have been announced. The NYFCC winners list is one of the most anticipated in the awards season leading up to the Oscars, partly due to it being the first major critics group to issue awards each year, partly due to the exceptional caliber of its members (among whom IndieWire’s Kate Erbland and David Ehrlich are counted) and partly due to their inclination to embrace true cinephilia rather than awards season narratives. Check out the full winners list below.

“Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Oppenheimer,” and “May December” were the only films to win two awards each. “Flower Moon” won the top prize, Best Film, along with Best Actress for Lily Gladstone. Christopher Nolan won Best Director for “Oppenheimer,” which also took Best Cinematography for Hoyte van Hoytema. The two films, from Apple and Universal respectively,...

If you saw "The Fabelmans" — and judging from the film's underwhelming box office, you probably didn't — you might think you know exactly how Steven Spielberg broke into show business. Snap Wexley hired him to work on the hit TV sitcom "Hogan's Heroes," he got great advice from an ornery John Ford, and the rest was history.

Except Steven Spielberg didn't really work on "Hogan's Heroes," and he didn't get advice from John Ford when he was actually starting out in the industry. Instead, he met the legendary director of "How Green Was My Valley" and "The Searchers" when he was only 15 years old. It turns out that Steven Spielberg isn't really above smudging the truth a bit in his movies, if he thinks the truth gets in the way of a good story.

And like all good stories, "The Fabelmans" had to end somewhere. It didn't take "Sammy Fabelman" into his actual,...

Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest movie makers of all time, with titles such as “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” and “The Irishman.” The Academy Awards think that highly of him, too. Scorsese has reaped nine Best Director nominations. That tally ties him with Steven Spielberg. Here’s the breakdown of Best Director bids for both of them:

Scorsese:

“Raging Bull” in 1981 — lost to Robert Redford for “Ordinary People.” “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1989 — lost to Barry Levinson for “Rain Man.” “Goodfellas” in 1991 — lost to Kevin Costner for “Dances With Wolves.” “Gangs of New York” in 2003 — lost to Roman Polanski for “The Pianist.” “The Aviator” in 2005 — lost to Clint Eastwood for “Million Dollar Baby.” “The Departed” in 2007 — Won. “Hugo” in 2012 — lost to Michel Hazanavicius for “The Artist.” “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2014 — lost to Alfonso Cuarón for “Gravity.” “The Irishman” in 2020 — lost to Bong Joon Ho for “Parasite.

Exclusive: The hammer just went down over the weekend on the one and only Oscar win for Citizen Kane, a 1941 movie many still consider the crown jewel of Hollywood, the greatest ever made.

In a Heritage Auctioneers “Hollywood Entertainment” auction that among many other items featured several from the career of Kane’s star, director and co-writer Orson Welles, the prize get was his 1941 Oscar for Original Screenplay that he shared with Herman Mankiewicz. Of the film’s nine nominations including Picture, Director and Actor for Welles, it was the single victory for the movie (How Green Was My Valley won Best Picture). The Welles statuette had a starting bid of $250,000 and sold to an unknown bidder for $645,000 (inclusive of buyer’s premium).

It, uh, gets a little complicated from there.

Heritage Auctions

This is not the original Oscar statuette that Welles — who didn’t even attend the actual ceremony — won.

This article contains spoilers for Good Omens season 2.Good Omens season 2 continues Aziraphale and Crowley's adventure, all while featuring plenty of amazing cameos. The second-season guest spots not only bring fresh faces to the Prime Video show but a spate of wonderful actors too. Adapted from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's book of the same name, Good Omens season 1 follows the novel closely. However, with no sequel material to pull from, Good Omens season 2 presents an entirely new storyline crafted by Gaiman, which centers on the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley.

Good Omens season 2 delves deeper into the timeless bond between Aziraphale and Crowley, which illustrates how their interactions and experiences influence each other over the ages. While the inaugural season also boasts notable cameo appearances, such as David Morrissey, Benedict Cumberbatch, and even Gaiman, Good Omens season 2 doesn't disappoint either, thanks to appearances from Oscar winners and well-known character actors.

Over a year after his untimely death in May 2022, Ray Liotta has just been honored with a Primetime Emmy nomination for his supporting performance on the Apple TV+ limited series “Black Bird.” This recognition comes after he received Critics Choice and Gold Derby TV Award notices for the same role. As the 11th person (and first in 25 years) to posthumously compete for an Emmy as a non-continuing program performer, he is just one step away from breaking new ground as the first deceased limited series acting winner in TV academy history.

Liotta’s “Black Bird” character, James Keene Sr., is the father of real-life convict James Keene Jr., whose 10-year prison sentence for dealing narcotics was ultimately shortened after he helped coax a confession out of serial killer Larry Hall. Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser also received 2023 Emmy nominations for their respective lead and supporting performances as Keene Jr.

(Welcome to Did They Get It Right?, a series where we look at Oscars categories from yesteryear and examine whether the Academy's winners stand the test of time.)

When we think of great Hollywood directors, we think of names like John Ford, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, and moving on up to the likes of Steven Spielberg. These are filmmakers who not only had strong artistic and creative instincts and abilities, but they also knew how to translate those skills into making films that appealed to gigantic mass audiences. They made the films that Hollywood always strives to make.

Unquestionably, another filmmaker who belongs on that list is Alfred Hitchcock, the so-dubbed "Master of Suspense." That moniker suits him perfectly, as he was able to craft some of the most tense pictures ever produced in Hollywood. He perfectly understood set-up and payoff. He knew how to ride the line between euphemism and explicitness,...

Howard Hawks was the Oscar-nominated director who has become a favorite among cinephiles, praised as a master of genre entertainments. But how many of his titles have remained classics? Let’s take a look back at 20 of Hawks’ greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1896, Hawks had a background in engineering and aviation before turning to filmmaking during the silent era. He proved himself to be a versatile talent, adapting his direct, fast-paced style to a variety of genres, including comedies, westerns, film noir, adventures (“Only Angels Have Wings”), gangster epics (“Scarface”) and war dramas.

Although Hawks often explored the codes of masculinity in films starring Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and Cary Grant, he was noted for his strong-willed, fast talking female characters, coined the “Hawksian woman.” The battle of the sexes was never more evenhanded than it was in one of his films, thanks to the likes of Katharine Hepburn,...

For well over four decades, the name “John Ford” has been synonymous with Hollywood classics.

Ford has been hailed as one of the greatest directors of all time, with a long list of acclaimed films that have won multiple Academy Awards. His subject matter ranged from westerns to war movies and even his own slice of Irish-American culture.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the life and career of John Ford, discussing his early years in Hollywood and the lasting impact he has had on cinema today. We’ll also explore some memorable moments from his cinematic legacy.

So whether you are a film buff or just have an appreciation for classic movies, join us as we pay tribute to the legendary filmmaker John Ford.

John Ford. By Allan warren – Own work, Cc By-sa 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16706120 Overview of John Ford...

With final Oscar balloting closed on March 7, we’re continuing with our sixth annual series of interviews with Academy voters from different branches for their unfiltered takes on what got picked, overlooked, and overvalued in the 2023 award season. Interview edited for brevity.

Best Picture

Well, this year is the year of the repeat for me. I watched more movies a second time to try and figure out why I didn’t like them the first time.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” I watched three and a half times. I thought it was a generational thing. But then everyone else I know loved it. So I watched it once in the theater and I go, “I don’t really get it.” And I tried it a second time on the [Academy screening] portal. And I gave up halfway. And then it won all the awards. And I said to myself, “I’m not sure,...

Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences attempts to award Oscars to the “best” film or artist in each category that year, and each year it fails at least a few times.

There is always room for disagreement on what constitutes “best”: how can we possibly compare Toy Story 3, Inception and The King’s Speech? And yet voters did just that in 2010.

It is similarly impossible to nail down all the egregious choices in academy history, but here are a few of the most glaring errors, with just days to go until the 2023 ceremony. Starting with the granddaddy of them all...

How Green Was My Valley

Beat: Citizen Kane to Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography in 1941

It takes a bit of searching these days to find someone who has a) seen John Ford’s Welsh melodrama How Green Was My Valley and b...

When a couple of Hollywood awards veterans (read: Medicare recipients) get together to slug it out on Zoom about their issues with some past Oscar decisions in advance of the 95th Academy Awards next Sunday. well, let’s just say the dust tends to fly. That’s what happened a few days ago when Gold Derby editor, president and founder Tom O’Neil and news and features editor Ray Richmond met up to weigh in on some of the things that have stuck in their craw during the first 94 years of the ceremony. Watch the video slugfest above.

What did they talk about? Well, O’Neil tossed out the opening salvo in asking if there’s ever been a worse decision and bigger outrage than the one in 1942 that found “Citizen Kane” – “The greatest movie ever made according to every AFI survey,” he noted – losing out for Best Picture to “How Green Was My Valley.

For nearly 100 years, pundits have predicted the outcome of Oscar voting. Sometimes it’s an educated guess, but it’s a guess nevertheless, since a minimal number of PricewaterhouseCoopers execs know the actual tallies and they never talk. So pundits often look to Oscar history to back up their theories, like tribal natives trying to predict their future by watching smoke from a volcano.

Too often, people talk about voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as if they work as a unit: “They will never vote for this” or “they always love such-and-such.” One of the fun aspects of predictions is that Academy history is like Scripture: You can always find something to back up your claims.

This year, voters nominated 10 very different films for best picture. Each has inspired predictions about why it couldn’t win because “they” won’t go for it. But actually,...

If you read our Gold Derby combined odds for Oscar Best Picture, you see that the race is over and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is about to be crowned at the Academy Awards on March 12. But the favorite doesn’t always win the horserace. Upsets happen. The longshot comes in. Jaws drop. Calculations go awry. Something that no one could see coming winds up coming in. Chaos reigns.

And we love it.

If there is anything we’ve learned, it’s that there are no guarantees. Films that the majority think should have won, don’t. That’s particularly true in hindsight. “Citizen Kane,” widely regarded as the finest film of the 20th century, lost. So did the film many consider to be Martin Scorsese’s best, “Raging Bull.” “Moonlight” beat “La La Land.” “Crash” upset “Brokeback Mountain.” “Shakespeare in Love” upended “Saving Private Ryan.” “Chariots of Fire” snared the trophy over “Reds.

Even the Academy Awards, one of TV's most sophisticated ceremonies, can be the subject of controversy every once in a while. Getting nominated is no easy task, and winning requires much more than just talent and goodwill. While the Oscars value quality and diversity to a certain extent, at the end of the day the awards go to those who carried out the most effective campaigns. To make the battlefield fair for everyone, the Academy has implemented plenty of new rules throughout the years, limiting Q&As with the directors and stars, taming lobbying practices, and bringing any post-nomination parties for a particular film or celebrity to a halt (via Oscars.org).

Even with new rules added every year, there's always room for problems. The Oscars have been going on ever since 1929, and the Academy continues to learn from its mistakes. Over the decades, scandals only piled up: multiple actors refused their Oscars,...

In seven-time Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner The Fabelmans, David Lynch cameos as an iconic filmmaker who helps tell the story of Steven Spielberg's own path to becoming a great director. The film, a (mostly) autobiographical look at Spielberg's youth — his introduction to filmmaking, his parents' divorce, and bullying issues — blurs the line between reality and fiction, highlighting the power of filmmaking as a way to provide perspective and control. It was confirmed that Lynch joined the cast in early 2022, and his performance, however brief, does not disappoint.

In the film's final moments, Sammy Fabelman (Spielberg) starts a job with the producer of Hogan's Heroes, who brings him across the hall to meet the "greatest director ever." After the secretary tells Sammy, he'll have to wait for a moment. He notices the posters adorning the walls of the waiting room — the films of John Ford, frequently referenced in The Fabelmans,...