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Elmer Bernstein is one of the greatest composers in the history of film scoring. He broke in writing music for Z-grade schlock like "Cat-Women of the Moon" and "Robot Monster" (forever in the conversation for The Worst Movie Ever Made) and quickly hit the A-list with his scores for "The Man with the Golden Arm," "The Ten Commandments," and "Some Came Running." In a career that spanned over 50 years, he dabbled in every imaginable genre, earning 14 Academy Award nominations (winning only one) without ever overtly repeating himself (a hazard for many movie composers).

How versatile was Elmer Bernstein? He could rouse us with his plucky theme for "The Great Escape," break our hearts with his soaring "To Kill a Mockingbird" score, and find classical grandeur in the frat-boy hijinks of "National Lampoon's Animal House."

He scored Martin Scorsese's luscious "The Age of Innocence" and two ludicrous "Billy Jack" movies.

f it was the summer of the megawatt blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” September has turned into a month of sequelitis with “The Nun 2,” “Equalizer 3” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.” Even Kenneth Branagh’s “A Hunting in Venice,” is the third installment in the actor/director’s Hercule Poirot mystery series. It’s all a bit of a snooze. That wasn’t the case 70 years ago this month.

There were some oddball films that were released September, 1953 including “Cat-Women of the Moon” with Sonny Tufts and Marie Windsor and “The Sins of Jezebel” starring Paulette Goddard. But 70 years ago, audiences were introduced to a new wide-screen format and young actress who would become one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and ‘60s and Clark Gable returning to a role he originated in 1932.

Twentieth Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck unveiled the studio’s new widescreen process Cinemascope...

Getting spoofed is the ultimate compliment for a movie or genre because it means it was something worth making fun of. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, parodies are an absolute love letter to the source material, especially when it comes to sci-fi films that tend to have persnickety fans.

Horror, rom-coms, and disaster films have all had send-ups, but the sci-fi ones land the best because they come from a place of deep respect. It is impossible to successfully spoof something if there is disdain for it. The best sci-fi parodies were made by fans to show appreciation for the films that make it such a special genre.

Related: 10 Sci-Fi Movie Bombs That Are Actually Pretty Good

The World's End Features an Extraterrestrial Pub Crawl

The World's End is Simon Pegg's take on alien invasion films and is kind of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers with way more alcohol.

The following contains spoilers for Insidious: The Red Door, now playing in theaters.

One of the intriguing aspects of Insidious: The Red Door is Patrick Wilson directing. He's known for being on camera as the franchise's lead protagonist, Josh Lambert. But this is his debut in the director's char, leaving fans excited to see his vision. He's no slouch in the horror genre, after all, especially since he's also a linchpin in The Conjuring movies, too.

For Insidious 5, Wilson does a commendable job on and off camera in a chapter that seems to put Insidious on hiatus. However, while there is a tease in the post-credits the Further may still be active, there's another cool Easter egg regarding Wilson himself in the actual credits. Once more, it shows he's a versatile artist.

Related: Insidious: The Red Door Preview Box Office Could Threaten Indiana Jones 5's Second Week Earnings

Insidious 5...

Dated but good-humoured, this 1967 adaptation includes all the era’s popular elements, from villain Terry-Thomas to penny-farthings in haystacks

There’s an serious outbreak of top hats and mutton chops in this amiable adaptation of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, originally released in 1967, when the real world was gearing up for the Apollo moonshot a couple of years later. Produced by the prolific Harry Towers, it adopted the rambling wacky-races format that had proved enduringly popular throughout the 1950s and 60s; most recently with the 1965 hit Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, which it shamelessly capitalised on with its US title (Those Fantastic Flying Fools) as well as redeplying the ubiquitous Terry-Thomas, who played yet another moustache-twirling cad.

Rocket to the Moon is watchable in a bored-Sunday-afternoon sort of way: it’s about whether an international consortium, led by Burl Ives (as Phineas T Barnum) and Dennis Price,...

The idea that Audrey Wells‘ original script for the Netflix film “Over the Moon” was not written as a musical might seem unbelievable but Marjorie Duffield says that the way it was set up fit perfectly to turn it into one. “We were gifted with Audrey Wells’ beautiful script that, strangely, is almost like the perfect libretto to a musical without the songs. Audrey would build her moments to these places where the characters would just have to sing. They just had to move into song,” Duffield, along with co-songwriters Christopher Curtis and Helen Park, tells Gold Derby in our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video above).

Some restructuring of the script was required to make it work better in the mold of a musical but Duffield felt that there were moments in the script that were just begging to musicalized. “Structurally, Audrey almost had these moments just perfectly paced...

The Oscar race is already underway for categories devoted to below-the-line crafts — cinematography, costume design, editing, makeup and hairstyling, music, production design, sound and visual effects.

Voting began on Feb. 1 to determine a shortlist of possible nominees culled from all eligible contenders in the four craft categories that use a two-step process: score, original song, visual effects and makeup & hairstyling.

Voters have until Feb. 5 to narrow down all the contenders to a shortlist of semifinalists: 15 each in the Best Original Score and Best Original Song categories, 10 each in Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Best Visual Effects. (The shortlists will be announced on Feb. 9 ahead of the March 15 announcement of nominees.)

Here are our thoughts on what might advance in the four below-the-line categories that use shortlists.

“News of the World” (Universal Pictures)

Best Original Score

The Music Branch’s shortlists are typically short on surprises — and when those do happen,...

As voting opens for the Oscar shortlists on Feb. 1, the picture is slowly coming into focus: Academy composers and songwriters are faced with one of the most diverse batches of scores they’ve ever heard.

The approximately 350 members of the Academy music branch are sifting through dozens of films to try and single out 15 scores and 15 songs worthy of placement on its shortlists, which will be revealed Feb. 9. These preliminary choices will be narrowed down to five final nominees in each category, to be announced March 15.

Best Original Score

It’s a surprisingly competitive year, making predictions even more difficult. But the music branch likes to reward familiar names, so look for such past winners as Alexandre Desplat (“Grand Budapest Hotel”) for his alternately melancholy and hopeful score for “The Midnight Sky”; Ludwig Göransson (“Black Panther”) for his propulsive, synth-orchestra hybrid for the intense spy thriller “Tenet”; and Howard Shore...

Of course, 2020 was a year like no other when it came to screen entertainment. As the coronavirus pandemic shut down productions across the U.S., it allowed Netflix to continue churning out content from its deep arsenal of movies and series.

Last year, Netflix put forth no fewer than eight original song contenders, including contributions from Taylor Swift and John Legend. What are the chances the streamer will dominate, and ultimately win, in the category? Two words: Diane Warren.

The legendary songwriter has been nominated for original song 11 times, but never won. If the Academy feels she’s long overdue, “Io Si (Seen),” her contribution to Netflix’s “The Life Ahead,” the Sophia Loren starrer whose song is performed in Italian by Laura Pausini, is as deserving as they come. Warren wrote the lyrics in English before it was translated. As she explains of the film’s two main characters,...

On today’s Crew Call, we speak to the songwriters of Netflix-Pearl Studio’s animated feature Over the Moon, Helen Park, Marjorie Duffield and Christopher Curtis, whose live-musical theater sensibilities were brought together for a story about a young Chinese girl, who after losing her mother, builds a rocket ship and blasts off to space, looking to meet a mythical moon goddess.

Curtis was an Outer Critics Circle nominee for Broadway’s Chaplin; Duffield, a Jonathan Larson Memorial Fellow for Sit-in at the Five and Dime, and Park a three-time Drama Desk Award nominee who had penned the off-Broadway musical Kpop. The trio bonded over chardonnay and fleshed out the feature’s songs during the spring of 2018 in an AirBnB. A key anthem in the feature is one song by its protagonist Fei Fei, “Rocket to the Moon”, in contention this awards season, in which she builds the...

A trio of songwriters — Christopher Curtis, Helen Park and Marjorie Duffield — created the tunes at the heart of animated musical “Over the Moon,” the story of a young girl with a passion for science who seeks to prove the existence of the legendary Moon Goddess in the tales her recently departed mom would tell her. The film’s anthemic central song, “Rocket to the Moon,” distributed by Milan Records and available Aug. 28, will be the first taste of the much-anticipated picture, coming to Netflix in the fall.

The movie marks the directing debut of longtime animator Glen Keane, who has worked on Disney classics including “Aladdin,” “Pocahontas” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It stars Cathy Ang as the voice of 12-year-old Fei Fei, who remembers her mother (Ruthie Ann Miles) regaling her with the Chinese folktale of Chang’e (Phillipa Soo of “Hamilton”), the goddess who holds the secret of immortality.

“I hate her! I hate dat qveen!” Despite being one of the most maladroit sci-fiers of the ’50s, color and ‘scope and Zsa Za Gabor’s hilarious accent make this Allied Artists offering a must-see head scratcher. Bad taste! Tacky art direction! Infantile sexist humor! The word on the street is that the Me Too movement has this embarrassing howler on their kill list.

Queen of Outer Space

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 80 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming, Laurie Mitchell, Dave Willock, Paul Birch, Lisa Davis, Patrick Waltz, Barbara Darrow, Joi Lansing, Marilyn Buferd, Mary Ford, Marya Stevens, Laura Mason, Lynn Cartwright, Kathy Marlowe, Coleen Drake, Tania Velia, Norma Young, Marjorie Durant, Gerry Gaylor, Brandy Bryan, Ruth Lewis, June McCall.

Cinematography: William P. Whitley

Film Editor: William Austin

Sam Gordon and Ted Mossman: Props

Visual Effects: Jack Cosgrove...

Character actor William Phipps, who starred in sci fi films of the 1950s and voiced Prince Charming in 1950’s “Cinderella,” died Friday, June 1 at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 96.

Phipps’ friend and entertainment industry author Tom Weaver announced the news, adding that Phipps had been battling lung cancer, which was complicated by pneumonia.

Phipps was born in Vincennes, Ind., on Feb. 4, 1922. In 1939, he enrolled at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill., where he studied accounting and planned to pursue it as a career while continuing what was then an acting hobby on the side.

In 1941, Phipps decided to forgo his Eiu studies and moved to California to pursue his acting dream. He later enlisted in the Navy after his brother Jack was shot down over the South Pacific, serving as a radioman aboard six ships between 1942 and 1945. After his discharge, he returned to Hollywood and used the G.

Worlds where powerful women rule just to be dethroned.

In classic sci-fi from the 1950s and 60s, there’s a very specific subgenre that deals with alien planets or hidden worlds populated entirely by women. In the video store where I used to work in Portland, Or, Movie Madness, we called this subgenre “Male Chauvinist Fantasies/Nightmares,” because that’s usually how these flicks go: male astronauts/explorers discover a world where the only inhabitants are lovely alien ladies who’ve gone too long without the company of men. This works itself out in one of two ways: it’s a fantasy world of a commitment-less sex and blind idolatry on the part of the women, or it’s a nightmare, the women are alone for a reason, and that reason usually revolves around breeding men to death. Either way there’s a lot of sex implied, but the connotations fluctuate.

We...

I've got a pretty awesome fan-made trailer for Captain America: Civil War that you've gotta check out! It reimagines the film as if it had been directed by the legendary Ed Wood. The trailer was cut together by Darth Blender using footage from a variety of films from the '30s, '40s, and '50s. You will find a list of those films below the embed. The trailer is surprisingly entertaining, and I think you'll enjoy it.  

Films used to create this trailer include:

- Adventures Of Captain Marvel (1941).

- Captain America (1944).

- Cat-Women Of The Moon (1953).

- King Of the Rocket Man (1949).

- Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940).

- Spy Smasher (1942).

- The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

- The Green Archer (1940).

- The Fighting Devil Dogs (1938).

- The Avengers (1961).

Shall we sing the praises of actress Marie Windsor? A self--assessed Queen of the Cheapies, she was anything but cheap, gracing some of the better films noirs and delivering some of the most deliciously acidic dialogue ever heard on screen. The woman doesn't just have bedroom eyes, she has bedroom everything, and a wicked smile to go with it.

No Man's Woman Blu-ray Olive Films 1955 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 70 min. / Street Date October 27, 2015 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring Marie Windsor, John Archer, Patric Knowles, Nancy Gates, Jil Jarmyn, Richard Crane, Louis Jean Heydt, Percy Helton, Morris Ankrum. Cinematography Bud Thackery Film Editor Howard A. Smith Original Music R. Dale Butts Written by John K. Butler story by Don Martin Produced by Rudy Ralston Directed by Franklin Adreon

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Marie Windsor is really something in Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil, lounging around in an effort to seduce John Garfield.

More than 30 movies shot in 3D will be released this year. And they are all starting to look the same to Stuart Heritage

There's a lot riding on Tangled. Disney's musical revamp of the Rapunzel tale – its 50th animated movie – cost a reported $260m, which makes it the second most expensive movie ever. But can we expect Tangled to be much different from the 30-plus other 3D movies due this year? We may even get a 3D Great Gatsby. The more 3D movies there are, though, the more the genre emerges as one boasting some rigid conventions. Here's a ticklist of 10 . . .

1 The over-the-top trailer

When a 3D film is advertised before the screening of a 2D one, it will go to great lengths to make sure everyone understands exactly what a rollercoaster ride 3D is. In the case of Saw 3D, this meant releasing a trailer that showed audience members...