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Prime Video is the place to be in August with an incredible month of new releases. The month kicks off with the premiere of the animated series Batman: Caped Crusader on Aug. 1. The series was produced by J.J. Abrams and The Batman‘s Matt Reeves. We also return to Middle Earth this month with the premiere of The Rings of Power season 2 on Aug. 29.

As far as movies go, the Amazon original Jackpot! arrives on Aug. 15 starring Awkwafina and John Cena. This comedy is set in a world where Lottery winners have to survive until sundown in order to claim their multi-billion dollar jackpot – anyone who kills them before that gets to claim their prize.

The Hobbit trilogy also joins the Prime Video library this month, as do 21 and 22 Jump Street, Superman I-iv, Superman Returns, Night Swim, Drive Away Dolls, and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Here’s everything coming...

In the Antico Teatro in the Sicilian town of Taormina, the 70th edition of the Taormina Film Festival got off to a lively start, with the Nastri d’Argento Awards ceremony, amid a mix of comedy and controversy.

The comedy was on hand with the loudest applause of the evening going to Carlo Verdone and Christian De Sica (above), two “pillars of Italian comedy” as they were introduced by Pilar Fogliati, star of “Confidenze,” and “Romeo Is Juliet.” Pilar herself was a recipient of her first Nastro d’Argento. The Nino Manfredi awards were given by the late actor’s son and film director Luca Manfredi to Emanuela Fanelli, last seen in Paola Cortellesi’s box office hit “There’s Always Tomorrow” as well as to Claudio Bisio, the actor-director who sent a video message of thanks.

Other absent awardees were Margherita Buy and Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore who received a special career prize.

Courtesy of Kino Lorber

by Chad Kennerk

Set in the 1920s, Has Anybody Seen My Gal? gets its name from the once-popular jazz song recorded by the California Ramblers in 1925. Loosely based upon the Eleanor Porter novel Oh Money! Money! (she was also the author behind Pollyanna), the 1952 jukebox musical comedy was given the full Technicolor treatment – a visual bee’s knees in Kino Lorber’s sterling release.

The Universal Pictures title makes good use of Twenties tunes such as ‘Tiger Rag,’ ‘When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along,’ ‘It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More,’ ‘Gimme a Little Kiss, Will Ya, Huh?’ - and of course, ‘Has Anybody Seen My Gal?’. It was directed by studio regular Douglas Sirk, who would go on to make his name with lush, slyly ironic melodramas such as Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind (all with Rock Hudson), There's Always Tomorrow,...

Judy Nugent, the former ’50s child actor who co-starred with Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession, Annette Funicello in the popular Annette serial on ABC’s The Mickey Mouse Club and flew in the arms of George Reeves’ Superman in a 1954 episode of The Adventures of Superman, died of October 26 cancer, surrounded by family at her ranch in Montana. She was 83.

Her death was announced in a family statement released by daughter-in-law Anne Lockhart, the Chicago Fire actor and daughter of Lost in Space star June Lockhart.

A Los Angeles native – she was the daughter of MGM prop man Carl Nugent – Nugent had already appeared in a handful of uncredited roles, including in the 1951 film Angels in the Outfield, when she landed her breakthrough role as Donna Ruggles in the 1949-52 TV series The Ruggles, an early family sitcom starring comic actor Charles Ruggles (Bringing Up Baby). Nugent played the twin...

Judy Nugent, who portrayed one of the twins on the early TV sitcom The Ruggles and a girl who flies around the world in the arms of the Man of Steel on a heartwarming Adventures of Superman episode, has died. She was 83.

Nugent died on Oct. 26 “surrounded by family at her Montana ranch after a short battle with cancer,” according to a family statement shared by her daughter-in-law and Battlestar Galactica and Chicago Fire actress Anne Lockhart (the older daughter of Lassie and Lost in Space star June Lockhart).

The younger daughter of a prop man at MGM, Nugent also appeared in two films directed by Douglas Sirk: as a wise-cracking tomboy who tries to get a blinded widow (Jane Wyman) to snap out of it in Magnificent Obsession (1954), and as one of the daughters of Fred MacMurray and Joan Bennett’s characters in There’s Always Tomorrow (1956).

Nugent also...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy)

Everything you need to know about Alice’s (Anna Kendrick) state of mind concerning the abuse inflicted by her boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick) are the words “it’s not like he hurts me.” We feel Sophie’s (Wunmi Mosaku) wince in our bones—”hurt” doesn’t only become noteworthy when wrought by a physical altercation. Alice is glued to her phone to ensure she doesn’t miss a call or text. She wakes up super early to apply make-up and style her hair to Simon’s preference. Parrots all the soundbites he uses to police her eating habits about the toxicity of sugar. And literally pulls her hair out of her head whenever she has a spare second...

February, marking both Black History Month and Valentine’s Day, is the kind of stretch from which a programmer can mine plenty. Accordingly the Criterion Channel have oriented their next slate around both. The former is mostly noted in a series comprising numerous features and shorts: Shirley Clarke and William Greaves up to Ephraim Asili and Garrett Bradley, among them gems such as Varda’s Black Panthers and Kathleen Collins’ Losing Ground; a six-film series on James Baldwin; and 10 works by Oscar Micheaux.

Meanwhile, the 23-film “All You Need Is Love” will cover the blinding romance of L’Atalante, the heartbreak of Happy Together, and youthful whimsy of Stolen Kisses; four Douglas Sirk rarities should leave their mark, but I’m perhaps most excited about three starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Perhaps more bracing are 12 movies by Derek Jarman and four by noir maestro Robert Siodmak. Also a major...

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William Reynolds, who portrayed crime-stopping Special Agent Tom Colby opposite Efrem Zimbalist Jr. on the final seven seasons of the ABC crime drama The F.B.I., has died. He was 90.

Reynolds died Wednesday in Wildomar, California, from non-covid 19 complicated pneumonia, a family spokesperson announced.

The Los Angeles native also starred in three other series, all short-lived: as the trumpet player on the 1959 NBC drama Pete Kelly’s Blues, created by Jack Webb; on ABC’s The Islanders, a 1960-61 adventure show set in the East Indies; and on the World War II-set The Gallant Men, which ran on ABC from 1962-63.

In 1960, Reynolds memorably played a WWII officer who can’t ignore an ominous light on the faces of his men destined to be killed in the acclaimed Twilight Zone season-one episode “The Purple Testament.”

On the big screen, he appeared in the...

William Reynolds, who portrayed Special Agent Tom Colby for six seasons on the television series The F.B.I., died August 24 from non-covid-19 complicated pneumonia, his son Eric Regnolds confirms. He was 90.

Born in Los Angeles, Reynolds was born William de Clercq Regnolds on December 9, 1931. He began his career under contract to Universal Pictures and had credits in Carrie (1952) as Laurence Olivier’s son and The Son of Ali Baba where he was Tony Curtis’ best friend. For 20th Century Fox, he portrayed Rommel’s son opposite James Mason in The Desert Fox.

Hollywood & Media Deaths 2022: A Photo Gallery

Following his military service in Japan during the Korean War, Reynolds co-starred in Cult of the Cobra (1955). In 1959, he starred as trumpeter Pete Kelly in the television series Pete Kelly’s Blues. In 1960-1961, he starred as air charter entrepreneur and adventurer Sandy Wade on the ABC Warner Bros. Television series, The Islanders,...

Writer, director and actress Rebecca Miller discusses a few of her favorite films with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002)

The Ballad Of Jack And Rose (2005)

The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee (2009)

Maggie’s Plan (2015)

Explorers (1985)

The Way We Were (1973)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

Annie Hall (1977)

Repulsion (1965)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Knife In The Water (1962)

The Tenant (1976)

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Persona (1966)

The Magician (1958)

Hour Of The Wolf (1968)

The Virgin Spring (1960)

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Shining (1980)

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Regarding Henry (1991)

Angela (1995)

Badlands (1973)

Casino (1995)

On The Waterfront (1954)

My Dinner with Andre (1981)

Jules and Jim (1962)

The Bitter Tears Of Petra von Kant (1972)

Wings Of Desire (1987)

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Married To The Mob (1988)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Dune (1984)

Imitation Of Life (1934)

Imitation Of Life (1959)

Written On The Wind (1956)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

All That Heaven Allows...

When one ponders the filmography of Douglas Sirk, one languishes in his successful meditation on stifled American lives in his 1950s soapy melodramas, the period with which he would eventually be most celebrated. It’s now unavoidable to speak of Sirk without mentioning the influence of his films from this decade on Todd Haynes or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But it’s a select number of titles, some of them remakes of earlier Hollywood melodramas themselves, which take up the bulk of the conversation. But for all the hyperbolic anguish of a Magnificent Obsession or the detrimental social issues of All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life, Sirk also completed a handful of highly insightful, more psychologically attuned portraits, one of the best being 1955’s There’s Always Tomorrow (released the same year as Heaven and the little seen Rock Hudson period piece Captain Lightfoot).…...

Kino Lorber has released three Barbara Stanwyck films in a boxed set collection. Here is the official announcement:

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This collection feature three classic films starring screen legend Barbara Stanwyck:

Internes Can’T Take Money (1937) – Young Dr. James Kildare, interning at a clinic, falls for his patient Janet Haley. The feeling is mutual, but Janet has a secret she will not divulge: She’s the widow of a bank robber who hid their daughter before he died and she is desperately trying to find the little girl. She will use anyone—including Dr. Kildare—to get her child back. The doctor’s association with gangster Hanlon, whose injuries Kildare secretly patched up, and Janet’s connection with gangster Innes (Stanley Ridges, Black Friday), who’s helping her find her daughter, bring it all to a rousing head filled with action, suspense and the unexpected!

The Oscar winning co-writer and producer of Brokeback Mountain takes us on a cinematic journey through her life, and talks about the pleasures of writing with Larry McMurtry and Joe Bonnano, and what Ken Kesey’s favorite movie was.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Good Night, And Good Luck (2005)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Red River (1948)

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Hud (1963)

Piranha (1978)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

They Drive By Night (1940)

Kings Row (1942)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)

The Grapes of Wrath (1942)

Buffalo Bill (1944)

Laura (1944)

Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950)

The Day of the Triffids (1963)

Moby Dick (1956)

Village of the Damned (1960)

Written on the Wind (1956)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956)

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Brazil (1985)

Lost In La Mancha (2002)

The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996)

The Fisher King (1991)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

A History of Violence...

by Cláudio Alves

Despite being one of Old Hollywood's most electrifying actresses, Barbara Stanwyck feels somewhat forgotten (apart from cinephiles) when compared to her contemporaries like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford or Ingrid Bergman. The one role that arguable does keep her immortal with the mainstream is the devilish Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, the noir to end all noirs starring the greatest femme fatale of them all. Still, to believe that Stanwick was essentially a noir vixen is unfair to her grand legacy. More than many actresses of her time, she rejoiced in hopping from genre to genre, unencumbered by exclusive contracts to studios that might want to pin her down to one type of role.

Because of that, she was able to experiment with the extremes of Pre-Code libertinism (Baby Doll), weepy melodrama (Stella Dallas), historical epics (Titanic), tragic romances (There's Always Tomorrow) and even camp...

Film FestivalShilpa Krishnan Shukla, a Malayali based in Singapore, has been making films since 2008 and wanted the challenge of working in languages she was less familiar with.CrisShilpa Krishnan Shukla knows English and can understand Hindi very well. That was enough for directing Tashi, a bilingual film she made last year. She enjoyed the challenge of back-and-forth translations so much, she decided to take it one step further this year. Now, she’s made an anthology of eight films, in eight Indian languages. Kathaah@8 (Stories@8), Shilpa's anthology in Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese, Bengali, Telugu, and Punjabi, is part of the World Cinema category of the International Film Festival of Kerala, 2019. A Malayali living in Singapore, Shilpa is happy to bring the film home to Kerala and premiere it at the Iffk. “After Tashi, I wanted to make it more challenging by working in languages that I was even less familiar with.

"For those still immune to the glories of Douglas Sirk’s cinema, the 25-film retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (most in 35 mm) is a rare opportunity to see what they’ve been missing," writes Tony Pipolo in Artforum, topping our overview of the series: Richard Brody on All I Desire, Melissa Anderson on Imitation of Life and There's Always Tomorrow, Max Kyburz on Written on the Wind, Justin Stewart on Sleep, My Love, plus an appreciation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder: 'Film is like a battleground,' Sam Fuller, who once wrote a script for Douglas Sirk, said in a film by Jean-Luc Godard, who, shortly before he made Breathless, wrote a rhapsody on Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die. But not one of us, Godard or Fuller or me or anybody else, can touch Douglas Sirk." » - David Hudson...

"For those still immune to the glories of Douglas Sirk’s cinema, the 25-film retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (most in 35 mm) is a rare opportunity to see what they’ve been missing," writes Tony Pipolo in Artforum, topping our overview of the series: Richard Brody on All I Desire, Melissa Anderson on Imitation of Life and There's Always Tomorrow, Max Kyburz on Written on the Wind, Justin Stewart on Sleep, My Love, plus an appreciation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder: 'Film is like a battleground,' Sam Fuller, who once wrote a script for Douglas Sirk, said in a film by Jean-Luc Godard, who, shortly before he made Breathless, wrote a rhapsody on Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die. But not one of us, Godard or Fuller or me or anybody else, can touch Douglas Sirk." » - David Hudson...

Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk (December 23 – January 6) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York gathers a substantial number of the German auteur's classic films together with more obscure titles, some of which may deserve elevation into the higher ranks of his oeuvre. Already, in the past few years, There's Always Tomorrow (1956) has crept up the league table of Sirkian melodrama, mainly because it became easier to see and people recognized that it could stand comparison with All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959), or nearly so.Some Sirk movies will, however, never be quite respectable, but in a way I love them for that. His period movies often dive headlong into Hollywood kitsch in a way that his once-despised weepies mainly avoid. There's a trio of movies playing with George Sanders which exemplify this in their different ways. Summer Storm (1944) was Hollywood's...

Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk (December 23 – January 6) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York gathers a substantial number of the German auteur's classic films together with more obscure titles, some of which may deserve elevation into the higher ranks of his oeuvre. Already, in the past few years, There's Always Tomorrow (1956) has crept up the league table of Sirkian melodrama, mainly because it became easier to see and people recognized that it could stand comparison with All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959), or nearly so.Some Sirk movies will, however, never be quite respectable, but in a way I love them for that. His period movies often dive headlong into Hollywood kitsch in a way that his once-despised weepies mainly avoid. There's a trio of movies playing with George Sanders which exemplify this in their different ways. Summer Storm (1944) was Hollywood's...

If There's Always Tomorrow (1956) tends to get overshadowed in the Douglas Sirk canon—it's bracketed on either side by All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Written on the Wind (1956)—that may be because it's missing the two elements that define his most famous melodramas: color and Rock Hudson. Sirk's Technicolor films comprise his most widely known, widely praised, and widely available work, and not without reason. A command of the spectrum is arguably the director's key stylistic trademark and definitely one of his most important, helping him elevate even the flimsiest soap opera material to cinematic expressionism, driving emotions to impossible highs and playing his soulful characters against the seemingly insurmountable artificiality of their world.

So credit There's Always Tomorrow for choosing a format equally suited to its (relatively) toned down narrative. It's another suburban melodrama, but the gloriously preposterous plot twists of something like Magnificent Obsession (1954) or Imitation of Life (1959) are nowhere to be found.

Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn admits it's tough not being able to defend her downhill skiing gold medal in Sochi, especially after working hard to battle back from an earlier knee injury, only to suffer a second one. "It's hard. I just want to be there but I can't," says Vonn, 29, who made the difficult decision to sit out this Olympics once she realized her knee was too unstable to compete. Vonn, the most accomplished female skier in U.S. history, credits her mom, Lindy Lund, with helping her stay positive no matter what challenge she has faced. "My mom...

While the name Douglas Sirk has long been a familiar one, The Tarnished Angels marks the first of his films I have actually taken the time to watch. After building his name on high profile studio melodramas, this particular film indicates a somewhat less commercial venture for the German-born director. Given free reign by Universal after the success of All That Heaven Allows and There's Always Tomorrow among others, Sirk chose to adapt William Faulkner's downbeat Depression-era novel, Pylon, and cast the three lead performers from his earlier film, Written On The Wind, in far darker, more compromised territory. Rock Hudson stars, way against type, as Burke Devlin, a dishevelled, drunken newspaperman who stumbles upon the bizarre, nomadic lives of travelling daredevil pilots. Roger Shumann...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

"Dan Callahan's Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman is a serious book about a serious woman, less a biography of an actress than a biography of her career," writes Scott Eyman in the Wall Street Journal. "Mr Callahan follows her choices of roles and tries to capture what she was saying about herself through her acting. It was an astonishing career, whose impressive outlines only became clear in retrospect. Most actors want to be loved — it's the Achilles' heel of the profession — but Stanwyck seems to have been after something else: respect."

Introducing his interview with Dan Callahan at the L, Mark Asch notes that "Dan concludes that Stanwyck was the most open, raw, unshowy and affectless of the Golden Age movie queens, in both her performances and offscreen attitudes; he builds a compelling personal narrative out of her contradictions: her bootstrapping tough-broad self-sufficiency (this slum kid was a...

'The video is so good, it's an individual interpretation,' co-director Laurieann Gibson tells MTV News.

By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Matt Elias

Lady Gaga

Photo: Getty Images

There are many memorable moments in Lady Gaga's "Judas" video, but perhaps none is as unexpected as the final scene. Gaga, dressed in a very big wedding dress, is stoned to death.

Gaga has done religion before; her "Alejandro" video was filled with religious iconography, causing quite a hubbub last year. Now, perhaps her most moving statement in this religious-themed video is her own death at the end.

"The video is so good, it's an individual interpretation, and as for me, personally, the dress, the wedding dress, you're the bride, Christ is the bridegroom, and to marry hope, faith, inspiration is ultimately the idea that no matter what anybody says, your purity is in your heart," co-director Laurieann Gibson told MTV News about the finale.

If you watched "Cougar Town" Monday night, you heard Laurie (Busy Philipps) give out a number to call for Bobby's fledgling Penny Can business: 1-855-pennycan.

As we told you last week, that's an actual working number. If you call, there's a very good chance you'll get connected to Philipps, another member of the show's cast or one of its creators, Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence.

"We're all fighting over it," Lawrence tells Zap2it, "it" being the phone with the Penny Can number (you might also hear Bobby -- Brian Van Holt -- giving instructions on how to order your very own Penny Can can). Courteney Cox was due to have it Monday evening (April 18) and was planning to take calls during the taping of "Jimmy Kimmel Live," where she's a guest.

"Christa [Miller, Lawrence's wife] and I will go after that," Lawrence tells Zap2it. "Some people are going to have it through the night,...

America's first female VP candidate on a major party ticket died today at 75. Lynn Sherr, who traveled with Ferraro on her groundbreaking 1984 campaign, recalls the congresswoman's electrifying debut, the way she inspired women all over the country-and how she handled her loss with grace. Plus, Mark Katz remembers Geraldine Ferraro's great sense of humor.

Geraldine Ferraro opened the door to her Washington congressional office, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to the mirror above her fireplace. "C'mere," she said in her brisk Queens cadence. "C'mere. I have to see what everyone's talking about."

It was the summer of 1984, the first time I'd met her, and the two of us stood side by side gazing at each other's reflection. Everyone, it seems, was right. We did look alike, with our nearly identical short, thatched, and blond-streaked hair, our high cheekbones and strong chins. True, I was some four inches taller than the congresswoman,...

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Everything changes – fashions, interest rates, the fortunes of nations – but there will always be low-budget horror films. And most of them will be terrible. Every now and then, though, along comes a movie with a little ambition and originality. Director Chris Smith's previous two movies – tube-train shocker Creep and team-building terror Severance – were worthy efforts, but here all the pieces fall into place and Smith delivers something cryptic, accessible and more than a little terrifying. It's not a film to be assessed as it progresses, rather one to consider as a whole, before rewatching it to marvel at its smart assembly. It starts off unpromisingly with a small group gathering for a nice day out yachting. Single mum Jess (Melissa George, supplying the movie's meagre star power) seems shaken and distracted. A storm capsizes the boat. Then, just as you think you know what kind of movie this is,...