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How now, what news: the Criterion Channel’s July lineup is here. Eight pop renditions of Shakespeare are on the docket: from movies you forgot were inspired by the Bard (Abel Ferrara’s China Girl) to ones you’d wish to forget altogether (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing), with maybe my single favorite interpretation (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet) alongside Paul Mazursky, Gus Van Sant, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jarman, and (of course) Kenneth Branagh. A neonoir collection arrives four months ahead of Noirvember: two Ellroy adaptations, two from De Palma that are not his neonoir Ellroy adaptation, two from the Coen brothers (i.e. the chance to see a DVD-stranded The Man Who Wasn’t There in HD), and––finally––a Michael Winner picture given Criterion’s seal of approval.

Columbia screwballs run between classics to lesser-seens while Nicolas Roeg and Heisei-era Godzilla face off. A Times Square collection brings The Gods of Times Square,...

Movie titles don’t necessarily make or break a movie on their own, but this is a look at ten movies where their titles didn’t do them any favors.

In the realm of zaney movie titles, I can appreciate those that are trying to be fun or silly, like 1964’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies or even Dude, Where’s My Car? Those are passable because they actually give you an idea of what to expect while perhaps generating a chuckle or a shake of the head. I can even deal with lame puns and wordplay in titles, as long as they make sense for the material at hand. Examples include Blacula! or Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. Even titles that are so straightforward they end up being dumb aren’t lying or misleading to us, and so they shouldn’t...

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will open the 2014 edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival with the world premiere of a brand new restoration of the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (1955). TCM’s own Robert Osborne, who serves as official host for the festival, will introduce Oklahoma!, with the film’s star, Academy Award®-winner Shirley Jones, in attendance. Vanity Fair will also return for the fifth year as a festival partner and co-presenter of the opening night after-party. Marking its fifth year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place April 10-13, 2014, in Hollywood. The gathering will coincide withTCM’s 20th anniversary as a leading authority in classic film.

In addition, the festival has added several high-profile guests to this year’s lineup, including Oscar®-winning director William Friedkin, who will attend for the screening of the U.S. premiere restoration of his suspenseful cult classic Sorcerer (1977); Kim Novak, who...

Judy Holliday may have had a knack for playing the "dumb blonde," but she certainly was a cut above the rest.

Born Judith Tuvim in 1921, Holliday possessed an Iq of 172 -- like we said, she was no dummy. The Old Hollywood star rose to fame playing Billie Dawn in the stage and film adaptations of "Born Yesterday," for which she won Best Actress at the Academy Awards.

Through her films like "The Marrying Kind" and "Phffft!," the New York native embodied 1950s elegance in full-figured skirts, lace detailing and pristine updos. Sadly, Holliday died of breast cancer at the young age of 43 in 1965.

In honor of her birthday on June 21, we're taking a look back at her classic on-screen style.

Photos:

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Kim Novak to attend Cannes 2013 Vertigo screening Kim Novak will be in attendance at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, festival organizers have announced. Novak will be present at a Cannes Classics screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo, which has been recently restored. For all it’s worth, Vertigo was the top movie at the most recent (2012) Sight & Sound decennial poll of film critics and filmmakers. (Photo: Kim Novak Vertigo.) Vertigo was also a source of controversy in early 2012, when Kim Novak took out an ad in one of the trade publications claiming she felt she had been violated ("I want to report a rape") after finding bits from Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo music in Ludovic Bource’s eventually Oscar-winning The Artist score. Besides the Vertigo screening, Kim Novak will also be a presenter at Cannes’ closing ceremony on Sunday, May 26. According to the festival’s press release, Novak first...

This cleverly told story of a doomed marriage is underpinned by two outstanding central performances

Somerset Maugham began his novel The Razor's Edge by remarking that "death ends all things and so is the comprehensive conclusion of a story, but marriage finishes it very properly and the sophisticated are ill-advised to sneer at what is by convention termed a happy ending". As with quite a few things, that wise old cynic was wrong; many of the great dramas truly begin after the curtain has come down on a wedding. Nearly all of Jack Lemmon's films, for instance, concern disastrous marriages, and his second picture was called Phffft!, an onomatopoeia for the sound of a marriage expiring like a dying match. Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine, which he co-scripted with Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne, is an account of the passionate, protracted Phffft! that concludes the marriage between Dean (Ryan Gosling...

A look at what's new on DVD today:

"Bitter Feast"

Directed by Joe Maggio

Released by Mpi Home Video

When a food critic ("Humpday"'s Justin Leonard) takes a butcher knife to the restaurant of a celebrity chef (James LeGros), the chef plots the ultimate revenge in this gory satirical thriller from director Joe Maggio. (My review from the Los Angeles Film Festival is here.)

"Case 39"

Directed by Christian Alvart

Released by Paramount

2010 is probably a year best forgotten by Renee Zellweger, who not only appeared in the execrable "My Own Love Song," which went straight to Netflix, but also this thriller that was filmed in 2006, but didn't see a release until last fall. Zellweger stars as a social worker whose latest case involving a child (Jodelle Ferland) that she believes is a victim of abuse leads to something far more terrifying. Bradley Cooper and Ian McShane co-star.

"Catfish...

Sony has released a six-dvd boxed set tribute to Jack Lemmon, marking the first-time release of these films in the DVD format. Here is the official press release. Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In a career that spanned half a century, Jack Lemmon was truly America’s Everyman. Although he worked in every genre from musical to western, he truly excelled at comedy, turning in a series of nuanced performances that garnered worldwide acclaim. On June 9, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (Sphe) honors one of the most versatile and accomplished actors in Hollywood history with The Jack Lemmon Film Collection, in partnership with Chris Lemmon, Jack’s son and biographer. This must-have six-disc boxed set features five classic performances from the gifted two-time Academy Award® winner for Save the Tiger (1973) and Mister Roberts (1955). The set includes Phffft! featuring Kim Novak, Operation Mad Ball, featuring the film debut of Ernie Kovacs,...

Actor and author Chris Lemmon.

Chris Lemmon Sheds Light On Jack Lemmon: The Man Behind The Magic

By

Alex Simon

Contrary to popular belief, not all movie stars’ offspring had dysfunctional lives filled with drug abuse, domestic violence and self-destruction. Some children of stars have even gone on to live “normal” lives outside of La-la land, and hold their famous parents in high esteem. Take the case of Chris Lemmon. Born June 22, 1954 in L.A., Chris is the son of two-time Oscar winning actor Jack Lemmon and actress Cynthia Stone. Although his parents divorced when he was young, Chris remained close to both throughout their lives and penned a tribute to his father, (who passed in 2001) called A Twist of Lemmon in 2006, published by Algonquin Books.

A successful actor in his own right and a graduate of Cal Arts, Chris Lemmon most recently has collaborated with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment...