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The SAG-AFTRA Foundation kicked off Black History Month by launching the fourth season of its Legacy Collection, a series of more than 200 never-before-seen career retrospective interviews.

This season focuses on trailblazing Black film and TV actors — beginning with the late Bill Walker, whose career spanned nearly 50 years and more than 100 films and TV shows, including “The Killers,” “The Long Hot Summer” and “Our Man Flint.” Remember Reverend Sykes, who urges Scout a.k.a. Jean Louise to “stand up, your father’s passin’” as Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch leaves the courtroom near the end of “To Kill a Mockingbird”? That’s Walker in action.

The veteran actor, who also served on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild from 1952 to 1971 (only the third Black person to do so), was interviewed about his life and career just seven weeks before he died in January 1992. Then 95 years old, Walker...

This summer (or winter, depending on where you live), the Criterion Collection will release five movies on Blu-ray and DVD that may be less familiar but are no less potentially fascinating. First up on August 8 is Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point, arriving on Blu-ray for the first time. Curtiz will forever be remembered for Casablanca, but as a Hollywood studio veteran, he applied his talents to a bewildering range of material. Released the same year as the director's Young Man with a Horn (a musician's melodrama) and Bright Leaf, (pro-cigarette Southern drama), The Breaking Point stars John Garfield and Patricia Neal in an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel about the financially-strapped captain of a charter boat who is drawn into illegal activities. On August...

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

Patricia Neal ca. 1950. Patricia Neal movies: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'A Face in the Crowd' Back in 1949, few would have predicted that Gary Cooper's leading lady in King Vidor's The Fountainhead would go on to win a Best Actress Academy Award 15 years later. Patricia Neal was one of those performers – e.g., Jean Arthur, Anne Bancroft – whose film career didn't start out all that well, but who, by way of Broadway, managed to both revive and magnify their Hollywood stardom. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” series, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating Sunday, Aug. 16, '15, to Patricia Neal. This evening, TCM is showing three of her best-known films, in addition to one TCM premiere and an unusual latter-day entry. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Robert Wise was hardly a genre director. A former editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons...

An Italian To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, USA, 1944). Art by Luigi Martinati.

Lauren Bacall, who left us last week after an astonishing 70 years of making movies, was one of the most beautiful women ever to grace a movie screen and the first golden age Hollywood star I ever fell for. With her unmistakeable features—those eyebrows, those lips—she must have been one of the easiest stars to capture in an illustration and thus a gift to poster artists. For most of her career, however, while she was never less than a star, she was rarely a leading lady, playing co-star to her great love Humphrey Bogart in four of her first five movies, then to Charles Boyer, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Rock Hudson, Gregory Peck and so on. As a result, she rarely appeared solo in posters and is often dwarfed by her male co-stars.

“Lauren Bacall models an Mptf Christmas card in 1951.” Courtesy Mptf

Turner Classic Movies will celebrate the life and career of legendary actress Lauren Bacall with a 24-hour marathon of memorable performances, including all four films in which she co-starred with husband Humphrey Bogart.

TCM’s tribute to Bacall, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 89, will air Monday, Sept. 15, beginning at 8 p.m. (Et), and will conclude Tuesday, Sept. 16, her 90th birthday.

“Lauren Bacall was a wonderful and generous friend of ours at TCM, and a great connection to the ‘golden age of cinema,’” said TCM host Robert Osborne. “Personally, I have to admit that she never failed to make my heart beat faster and my voice to stammer when we spoke. Talk about true star quality – that was Bacall. We are truly blessed to have had her as an integral part of our TCM family.”

Turner Classic Movies...

Update August 14: Broadway will go dark: The marquees of Broadway theatres in New York will be dimmed in memory of Lauren Bacall on Friday, August 15, at exactly 7:45 p.m. for one minute.

One of the leading ladies of Hollywood’s Golden Age died today after a stroke. The sultry, fiery Lauren Bacall was 89. MSNBC’s Thomas Robert broke the news in a tweet, and the Bogart estate has confirmed it. She was famous for starring — onscreeen and off — with Humphrey Bogart in such 1940s classics as The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Dark Passage and Key Largo. In one of Hollywood’s great love stories, they married in 1945 and stayed together until his death in 1957. Four years later she married another acting legend, Jason Robards Jr.; they divorced in 1969.

Related: Reactions to Lauren Bacall’s Death

Bacall worked in films consistently through the mid-1960s and...

There are great dangers in being an actor. The cutthroat competition, the grueling days on set… and the obsessed serial killers. Well, that serial killer thing isn't the norm, but it's front and center in Pieces of Talent.

Now available to stream, as well as on DVD and in old school VHS format, Pieces of Talent was co-written and directed by Joe Stauffer. It stars co-writer David Long. He is joined in the cast by Kristi Ray, Jon Stafford (Full Metal Jacket), Barbara Weetman (Stuck in Love) and Taylor Kowalski (Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever).

The gruesome F/X were done by Tony Rosen, who created the Annabelle doll for The Conjuring and its upcoming spinoff.

An autographed copy of the film can be purchased at the Pieces of Talent webstore, where you can also pick up other cool items like a bloody VHS Death Tape and hand-painted David Long bobbleheads.

I know very little about this film, mostly on purpose. I have heard Piece of Talent being mentioned by several friends, and on various Facebook groups that focus on solid indie horror, so it was already on my radar, but I have no idea what it is all about. A press release went out today, announcing that the film was now available on DVD & VHS through the Pieces of Talent website. I’m always excited to check out new indie horror films, even though the typical indie horror output as of late has been a little bit disappointing. However, there are definitely still a few gems that slip through the cracks, and this is shaping up to be one of them, in my eyes. Check out the press release below, and order your copy today.

Synopsis:

Set in the small coastal town of Bright Leaf, North Carolina, Pieces of Talent centers around Charlotte,...

Lauren Bacall (top); Bacall, Mimi Rogers in Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces (bottom) In her 2005 autobiography By Myself and Then Some, Lauren Bacall's updated version of her 1978 bestseller By Myself, the two-time Tony Award-winning actress (for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981) candidly discusses the ballyhoo surrounding her first — and to date only — Academy Award nomination for Barbra Streisand's 1996 romantic comedy-melodrama The Mirror Has Two Faces. Apart from a few film career lulls, Bacall had been working steadily in front of the camera since her film début in Howard Hawks' 1945 adventure-drama To Have and Have Not. But whether as mere on-screen decoration (Key Largo, Bright Leaf, Young Man with a Horn) or as a reliable leading lady (How to Marry a Millionaire, Woman's World, The Fan), she had been invariably ignored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. [...]...

For this week's Doc Talk I'd like to spotlight two highly recommended films involving the South: Ross McElwee's personal ancestry exploration from 2003, Bright Leaves, and Micki Dickoff and Tony Pagano's civil rights film Neshoba: The Price of Freedom, which finally gets a theatrical release this Friday (in NYC; next month it opens in La).

The reason I revisited McElwee's film is primarily because of the recent death of Oscar-winning screen legend Patricia Neal (Hud), who appears briefly in the doc. But it also ended up fitting in somewhat with Neshoba, because both films deal with a Southern history, both concern events that previously inspired fictionalized Hollywood movie plots (Bright Leaf for the former, Mississippi Burning the latter) and both follow modern stories relative to the historical material.

As for Neshoba, aside from the fact that it opens this weekend, I was intrigued about the film's subject matter...

Oscar-winning film star who displayed great courage in her return to the screen

Perhaps the most famous line spoken on screen by the actor Patricia Neal, who has died of lung cancer aged 84, was "Klaatu barada nikto!" in Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). These incomprehensible words, uttered to a robot which carries her into a spaceship, save the world from destruction. Neal won her Oscar for a more down-to-earth performance, as the cynical, world-weary housekeeper Alma Brown in Martin Ritt's contemporary western, Hud (1963). "It was a tough part to cast," Ritt remarked. "This woman had to be believable as a housekeeper and still be sexy. It called for a special combination of warmth and toughness, while still being very feminine. Pat Neal was it."

Perhaps the most telling indication of Neal's gifts was the fact that, although the role was quite a brief one, the...

The Alamo Guide

for April 22nd, 2010

First thing’s first: Best Worst Movie opens this weekend! A few of our opening night showtimes are already sold out, but you should snatch the remaining tickets up quick style. This is the fantastic Troll 2 documentary that’s been entertaining people everywhere since it hit festivals last year. We’ll have cast and crew in attendance and a Troll themed after party at The Highball! Do It!

Also, We Added A Second “Weird Al” Yankovic Show! We have pulled off a great feat hear, and we are Stoked! It’s the same day of the original show (May 22nd) but an earlier show time. Did we mention that the first one sold out in Three Minutes?! I am not even kidding. That shit was serious. This will be too. Be prepared! Tickets go on sale Friday, April 30th.

There’s some other...

The Alamo Guide

for April 15th, 2010

It’S Kick-ass Week! That means, not only does our programming kick ass (as usual! Not to toot our own horn, but you know.. toot toot!), But, the movie that blew our minds at Butt-Numb-a-Thon last year (then again at SXSW) hits theaters Thursday at midnight! Oh! And speaking of huge blockbuster movies that promise to do gangbusters, Iron Man 2 Tickets Are Now On Sale! Click on that link to get yours!

We also have Aussie thriller, The SQUAREopening this Friday, The Action Pack is in it’s last week of The Wedding Singer Quote-along, continuing Ladies Of The 80s and starting The 40 Year Old Virgin Quote-ALONGnext week! Oh, and Street Fighter In Hecklevision! Master Pancakeis moving BRAVEHEARTto S. Lamar this week, Mc FRONTALOTis in town for a screening of Nerdcore RISINGand a performance at The Highball, Hey Homo! rocks Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert,...