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Adam Sandler performed a song that paid tribute to Saturday Night Live’s 50 years on the air during Sunday night’s anniversary special, but not before he was introduced by retired Hollywood veteran Jack Nicholson.

Nicholson introduced the Grown Ups actor before he began his referential track, where he highlighted infamous SNL moments, pondered when Lorne Michaels will retire and quipped about “finding out your favorite musician is antisemitic.”

Sandler kicked off his performance saying, “everyone in this room has something in common,” pointing out that “all of our lives were changed by the show” before poking fun at some lighthearted moments. He questioned who would “take over the show when Lorne retires” in his lyrics before he appeared to joke that Speedy Rosenthal, a longtime member of SNL’s music department, would be the one to take over Michaels’ spot.

The comedian and actor also seemingly threw a jab at Kanye West,...

It was a big night for Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live as she joined the Five-Timers Club. However, she was welcomed into the elite group by a bunch of mostly Non-Five-Timers Club members.

The actress and comedian kicked off her monologue, saying, “I am so happy to be back, and I am so excited because it is my fifth time hosting. So I’m officially in the Five-Timers Club!”

She then took a moment to acknowledge the sketch comedy show’s band, but shortly after, that’s when the celebrity cameos started, beginning with Paul Rudd, who previously joined the club in 2021.

“I also heard a rumor that you might be doing one of those five-timer sketches featuring awesome celebrity cameos,” Rudd said after popping up in the Studio 8H audience. “So, is there like a script or something I could look at for that?” But unfortunately, Wiig informed...

Timeless titans of the horror genre—including Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee—are featured in a new 9-disc, 26-film DVD set fittingly titled Horror Hall of Fame, coming this October from Mill Creek Entertainment.

Fright fans can keep an eye out for the Horror Hall of Fame DVD set (featuring over 35 hours of film footage) when it's released on October 17th. We have the cover art and full list of films below, and to learn more, visit Mill Creek Entertainment's website. Will you be adding this set to your home media collection this fall?

"Hungry for Horror? Stay glued to the edge of your seat with a 26 film bundle including some of the greatest works from the masters of Horror.

Bat, The - 1959 - Vincent Price

Before I Hang - 1940 - Boris Karloff

Black Room, The - 1935 - Boris Karloff

Boogie Man Will Get You,...

Cad, bounder, dastard... look those words up in an old casting directory and you'll probably find a picture of George Sanders. Albert Lewin's best movie is a class-act period piece with terrific acting from Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Ann Dvorak, John Carradine, Warren William and many more, and a powerful '40s picture that most people haven't discovered, now handsomely restored. The Private Affairs of Bel Ami Blu-ray Olive Films 1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 112 min. / Street Date May 24, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95 Starring George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Ann Dvorak, John Carradine, Warren William, Susan Douglas, Albert Bassermann, Frances Dee, Marie Wilson, Katherine Emery, Richard Fraser. Cinematography Russell Metty Film Editor Joseph Albrecht Original Music Darius Milhaud Assistant Director Robert Aldrich Production Design Gordon Wiles Written by from the novel by Guy de Maupassant Produced by David L. Loew Written Directed by Albert Lewin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson...

Blinded by science! And no, it's not a sequel to Donovan's Reef.  Lew Ayres yanks the living brain out of a dying millionaire, plugs it into his mad lab gizmos, and is soon obeying the know-it-all noggin's telepathic commands to scheme and murder. Gene Evans and Nancy Reagan assist in Curt Siodmak's creative, compelling tale of possession by mental remote control. Donovan's Brain Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date March 22, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Lew Ayres, Gene Evans, Nancy Reagan, Steve Brodie, Tom Powers, Lisa K. Howard, James Anderson, Victor Sutherland, Harlan Warde, John Hamilton. Cinematography Joseph H. Biroc Film Editor Herbert L. Strock Production Design Boris Leven Original Music Eddie Dunstedter Written by Felix Feist, Hugh Brooke from the novel by Curt Siodmak Produced by Allan Dowling, Tom Gries Directed by Felix E. Feist

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Sci-fi and horror...

DVD Playhouse—August 2011

By Allen Gardner

High And Low (Criterion) Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom is a multi-layered masterpiece of suspense and one of the best portraits ever of class warfare in post-ww II Japan. Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy businessman who finds himself in a moral quandary when his chauffer’s son is kidnapped by ruthless thugs who think the boy is Mifune’s. Beautifully realized on every level. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; Documentary on film’s production; Interview with Mifune from 1984; Trailers and teaser. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 4.0 surround.

Leon Morin, Priest (Criterion) One of French maestro Jean-Pierre Melville’s rare non-crime-oriented films, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a devoted cleric who is lusted after by the women of a small village in Nazi-occupied France. When Fr. Morin finds himself drawn to a...

Durham - Once more The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is a four day film festival that plays like it should last a week They show so many films that it’s impossible to even come close to seeing them all. Five theaters are going at once and the only repeats are the award winning movies. It’s hard to pick while going through the schedule. I’ve yet to hear anyone complain about the movie they saw so much as wishing they could have seen two or three of the other ones that were showing concurrently. This is the best festival for documentary film viewers. The 2010 edition kept up the lofty standards with films about basketball, pork, pastries, scoundrels, nomads and undiscovered superstars.

Steve James created the greatest film about the dirty business of Chicago high school basketball in Hoop Dreams. Espn gave him a chance to look into...

Chris Mottalini's photo project documents the brutalist master's houses before they are demolished.

It's been a hard few weeks for historic preservationists. Frank Lloyd Wright's L.A. icon, the Ennis House, is still for sale, after 10 months on the market and a $4.5 million price cut. (Meanwhile, Illinois preservationists race the clock to save another, less-known Wright home.) One of the only buildings New York Five member and influential Cooper Union Dean John Hejduk ever built is under fire by "improvement"-minded owners in Berlin. On a macro scale, funding for historic preservation programs Save America's Treasures, Preserve America, and the National Heritage Areas program is going to be cut in 2011.

But maybe the most depressing example to make the rounds lately is photographer Chris Mottalini's project, "After You Left, They Took it Apart." The photo essay documents three houses by the brutalist master Paul Rudolph in varying states of...

By Michael Atkinson

Filmmaking is all about collaboration and fortuity, as much as we genuflect faithfully to the sacredness of the auteur. Take Carol Reed -- a career that spanned almost four decades, encompassing 33 features, and yet only a few are memorable (not, God knows, his late-career Oscar-winner "Oliver!"). Essentially, Reed finds his way onto the pantheon's higher shelves on the strength of only a handful of films, starting with the trio of startling, precise, infinitely rich features he made in the late '40s, one after the other -- "Odd Man Out" (1947), "The Fallen Idol" (1948) and "The Third Man" (1949) -- and ending a little less auspiciously with "Our Man in Havana" (1959). The rogue factor here is that three out of the four were written by Graham Greene, whose particular ironic-tension story skills gave many a medium-boil filmmaker his best shot at sublimity. The first three -- certainly one of...