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The likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Sean Evans and John Mulaney will be battling it out for one of only three Emmy nominations.

With Emmy voting opening, it has emerged that there were only 13 submissions in the Outstanding Talk Series category, meaning that the category has lost one nomination from last year and two from the year before.

Last year, The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert were nominated in the category, with The Daily Show winning.

In 2023, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Problem with Jon Stewart were nominated, with The Daily Show also winning.

It’s a blow for the late-night community, which has been trying to find ways to fix the Emmy category with the...

Late-night television and the Emmys have had a symbiotic, yet complicated, relationship over the years.

Yes, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Michael Che, Colin Jost and Kenan Thompson have hosted the awards show over the last ten years, but no, the TV Academy doesn’t really know what to do with their shows, according to many people behind-the-scenes in late-night.

Over the last three years, there have been rule changes, category swaps and nomination reductions impacting shows such as The Daily Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Saturday Night Live.

Back in 2022, a group of showrunners, led by Ben Winston, then showrunner of The Late Late Show with James Corden, successfully campaigned the TV Academy to cement a fifth nomination. A year later, Last Week Tonight was moved into a new category – Outstanding Scripted Variety...

For his tenth Cannes feature premiere, Arnaud Desplechin chose to present a docu-fictional love letter to cinema. Two years after Brother and Sister was in Competition, Spectateurs (or Filmlovers!) is one of the festival’s Special Screenings, an effervescent walk down memory lane with a director who has helped shape contemporary French cinema for the better. It’s not hard for a Frenchman to be a cinephile––almost everyone is trained in film knowledge, either formally or informally, as part of their cultural upbringing. But Filmlovers! manages to set itself apart from all the other meta-documentaries or essays about how cinema made their director the person they are today. Instead it is both an honest and highly poetic feature that quite naturally absorbs film and literary references to address the structural role cinema has played for both Desplechin himself and our way of viewing the world.

Filmlovers! is narrated by Paul Dédalus,...

Gayle Hunnicutt, the Texas-born actor known for 1969’s “Marlowe” and her role as Vanessa Beaumont in “Dallas,” died on Aug. 31 in London, according to The Times of London. She was 80.

Hunnicutt played Vanessa Beaumont, an English aristocrat who shares an illegitimate son with Larry Hagman’s J.R. Ewing, in the final three seasons of “Dallas” from 1989 to 1991.

Born on Feb. 6, 1943, in Fort Worth, Texas, Hunnicutt made her television debut in 1966 on the NBC sitcom “Mister Roberts.” She guested on several series in the ’60s, including “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Hey Landlord,” “Love on a Rooftop” and “Get Smart.”

On the film side, Hunnicutt starred opposite James Garner in the 1969 neo-noir crime film “Marlowe,” in which she played television star Mavis Wald. She appeared in more than 30 films during her career, including “The Wild Angels,” “P.J.,” “Freelance,” “Running Scared,” “Target” and “The Legend of Hell House” opposite Roddy McDowell.

Hunnicutt married...

Wassim Beji, the French producer of “Boite noire,” and Snd have acquired the adaptation rights to iconic French detective novels “Fantomas” and are planning a film and a series based on the franchise.

A ruthless and multi-faceted thief and assassin, Fantomas “was the first occidental super-villain featured in a serialized format, first through comic strips and later in a radio series,” said Beji, adding that “Fantomas” has also been a source of inspiration for some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, including the surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire.

Created in 1911 by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantomas is one of France’s most popular fictional characters, along with Arsene Lupin. Fantomas was first adapted for the big screen by into a silent crime film serial directed by Louis Feuillade for Gaumont in 1913. The property was later adapted into a crime comedy trilogy starring Jean Marais and Louis de Fines...

“France’S Answer To Bond”

By Raymond Benson

Way back in 1911, French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre created a super-villain who became a worldwide phenomenon in literature, comics, and film—Fantômas, a master of disguise, thief, killer, and head of his own network of criminals. The two authors wrote 32 books featuring the character, and then Allain alone continued with 11 more. There was a serial of silent films made in France beginning with Fantômas. Over the last century, more films, comics, books, and television series were produced, leading up to the hugely popular reboot of the character in the 1960s.

After the success of the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), the French studio Gaumont quickly got into the act of making their own answer to what was becoming a phenomenon. Once From Russia with Love (1963) proved that 007 wasn’t a one-shot wonder, director André Hunebelle and writers Jean Halain...

Composter Bear McCreary has revealed a new video showcasing his theme for the upcoming Child's Play Remake remake. Not only do we get to see McCreary compose the music for the soundtrack, but we can also see that he brought the new theme to life using mostly instruments that were intended as children's toys. Talk about staying on brand.

Bear McCreary has become an incredibly prolific composer in recent years, having worked on The Walking Dead, 10 Cloverfield Lane and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, amongst many other projects. The video reveals his dedication to his craft, as well as the hauntingly twisted theme for the rebooted version of the Child's Play franchise, which will feature Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky. In a recent interview, McCreary revealed that he tried to actually score the entire soundtrack using only toys. Here's what he had to say about it.

"One...

Back in October, the fifth issue in the comiXology Originals series Elephantmen 2261: The Death of Shorty was released online, and it marked the 50th Elephantmen cover by artist Boo Cook. To celebrate the milestone, Daily Dead was recently provided with a Q&A with Cook for our readers to enjoy. In his wide-spanning reflection on his work, Cook discusses the creative approach to his artwork, collaborating with writer Richard Starkings, and he selects his five favorite covers that he's done for the Elephantmen series.

"Boo, you've been the cover artist on Elephantmen for 50 issues now. What's that mean to you, having such consistency with a series?

Boo Cook: In all honesty, I was quite surprised to discover I’d notched up 50 covers for Elephantmen! Life as a freelancer is kind of a blur plunging from one job to the next, radically changing tack with each new cover or strip,...

Nearly a year after the release of Stephen King's 1922 on Netflix, the Mike Patton score is finally ready to be released this summer. Patton, best known for his work in bands like Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, and Dead Cross, reveals that he was able to flesh out the score for 1922 and add pieces that were not in the movie in the last several months. The singer and arranger also noted that the music business runs at a slower speed than the movie business, and hinted that he was a bit rushed to complete the initial score for 1922.

In a new interview with the Murmur podcast, Mike Patton calls his expanded score of Stephen King's 1922 "a musical statement," instead of just background sounds and moods. The interview also provides a preview of the song Sweetheart Bandits 2: We All Get Caught, which is the final track on the score.

He’s fast on his feet, quick with a gun, and faster with the to-die-for beauties that only existed in the swinging ’60s. The superspy exploits of Oss 117 were too big for just one actor, so meet all three iterations of the man they called Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath . . . seriously.

Oss 117 Five Film Collection

Blu-ray

Oss 117 Is Unleashed; Oss 117: Panic in Bangkok; Oss 117: Mission For a Killer; Oss 117: Mission to Tokyo; Oss 117: Double Agent

Kl Studio Classics

1963-1968 / B&W and Color / 1:85 widescreen + 2:35 widescreen / 528 min. / Street Date September 26, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 59.95

Starring: Kerwin Matthews, Nadia Sanders, Irina Demick, Daniel Emilfork; Kerwin Matthews, Pier Angeli, Robert Hossein; Frederick Stafford, Mylène Demongeot, Perrette Pradier, Dominique Wilms, Raymond Pellegrin, Annie Anderson; Frederick Stafford, Marina Vlad, Jitsuko Yoshimura; John Gavin, Margaret Lee, Curd Jurgens, Luciana Paluzzi, Rosalba Neri, Robert Hossein, George Eastman.

Cinematography: Raymond Pierre Lemoigne...

Yvonne Monlaur: Cult horror movie actress & Bond Girl contender was featured in the 1960 British classics 'Circus of Horrors' & 'The Brides of Dracula.' Actress Yvonne Monlaur dead at 77: Best remembered for cult horror classics 'Circus of Horrors' & 'The Brides of Dracula' Actress Yvonne Monlaur, best known for her roles in the 1960 British cult horror classics Circus of Horrors and The Brides of Dracula, died of cardiac arrest on April 18 in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Monlaur was 77. According to various online sources, she was born Yvonne Thérèse Marie Camille Bédat de Monlaur in the southwestern town of Pau, in France's Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, on Dec. 15, 1939. Her father was poet and librettist Pierre Bédat de Monlaur; her mother was a Russian ballet dancer. The young Yvonne was trained in ballet and while still a teenager became a model for Elle magazine. She was “discovered” by newspaper publisher-turned-director André Hunebelle,...

Though we’re barely into a new calendar year, Kino Lorber has released one of the year’s most notable Blu-ray restorations, a superb presentation of Louis Feuillade’s famous silent serial Fantômas with a five title set ranging from 1913 to 1914. Surprisingly violent and full of cunning twists (based on the pulp novellas of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre), the criminal overlord was an early template for genre cinema staples, including Feuillade’s later iconic characters such as Irma Vep or the crime fighter Judex (each in turn inspiring an innumerable amount of other auteurs, from Fritz Lang to Georges Franju to Olivier Assayas). But this was Feuillade’s first master of disguise, a cold hearted criminal intent on rending all the jewelry and other worldly goods from Belle Epoch Parisian women he could get his greedy fingers on.

Feuillade remains one of the most prolific auteurs of all time,...

The French filmmaker's landmark crime serial, "Fantômas" (1913-1914), is coming to Blu-ray (Kino Lorber, $49.95) in what promises to be one of the most exciting releases of 2016. The 4K restoration, produced by Gaumont and the Centre National du Cinéma, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Française, to celebrate the films' 100th anniversary, will be available Jan. 5.  Based on the French pulp novellas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, "Fantômas" stars René Nacarre as the titular "assassin in black," pursued over the course of five features by the indefatigable Inspector Juve (Edmund Bréon) and his friend, journalist Jérôme Fandor (Georges Melchior). Feuillade, whose serials "Les Vampires" (1915) and "Judex" (1916) confirmed him as a master of the form, deserves consideration alongside Fritz Lang ("Dr. Mabuse") as a pioneer in the...

Warner Brothers

To say that the comic book movie is here to stay may seem like a glib understatement. In 2014 alone there are no less than five massive scale mainstream blockbuster movies being released based on Marvel Comics properties alone (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Big Hero 6). Yet it was barely a decade ago that film critics, audiences and analysts perceived the raft of contemporary big screen comic book adaptations as a passing fad, a bubble that would soon burst.

Of course films based on comic books (or comic strips) are nothing new, but just how did we get from a time when movies and TV were strictly y’know for kids, cheap and throwaway, to the current dominance of comic adaptations as the blockbuster form? Just as paper comics have their own ages, from...

Above: 1979 poster for Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1979).

I recently discovered the posters of Polish artist Andrzej Krajewski, or I should say that I recently discovered his best work. I had seen some of his work before (and had featured one terrific 1970 design on my Tumblr) but its cartoony style—reminiscent of, and possibly influenced by, the 1960s work of Push Pin Studio in New York—wasn’t really my thing. But I obviously wasn’t looking in the right places or at the right posters.

Around the same time I came across the London-based Polish poster webstore Eye Sea Posters which may not be the most comprehensive Polish poster site on the web (that would be this one) but is certainly the most elegantly designed. Set up by James Dyer two years ago, the site allows you to browse by artist as well as by genre or subject matter,...

Above: 1968 poster for Grand Prix (John Frankenheimer, USA, 1966).

Last weekend I came across a bizarre poster, which you can see below, for Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause: a late 60s Czech design which reimagines James Dean as a long haired, barefoot East European hippie. This got me digging into the work of its author on the estimable and essential Czech movie poster site Terry Posters (named in honor of Terry Gilliam). The artist Eva Galová-Vodrázková was born in 1940 and, after studying at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague, designed numerous film posters between 1966 and 1972 (Terry Posters has forty-two of them on their site). Her bio says she gave up poster design after “normalisation changes in the venture,” whatever that means, and has since worked as a textile designer. What attracted me to her poster work is a certain devil-may-care quality—evidenced in her Rebel—coupled with a powerful sense of composition.

Actor Vincent Cassel ("Mesrine: Part 1 - Killer Instinct") has been cast to play the 'Joker-like' villain 'Fantômas', in the upcoming feature adaptation, from director Christophe Gans ("The Brotherhood Of The Wolf").

"Fantômas", created by writers Marcel Allain (1885–1969) and Pierre Souvestre (1874–1914) in 1911, is one of the most popular characters in French crime fiction, appearing in a total of 32 volumes written by the two collaborators, then a subsequent 11 volumes written by Allain after Souvestre's death.

The character has also been the basis of numerous film, television, and comic book adaptations, typified as a ruthless bastard, loyal to no one, while maintaining abilities as a master of disguise, usually appearing under an assumed identity.

With a budget set at $70 million, Gans will also write the screenplay for the "Fantômas" 'detective fantasy' feature, with David Martinez, from an original story by Thomas Langmann.

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "Fantomas...

"Fantômas."

"What did you say?"

"I said: Fantômas."

"And what does that mean?"

"Nothing. . . . Everything!"

"But what is it?"

"Nobody. . . . And yet, yes, it is somebody!"

"And what does the somebody do?"

"Spreads terror!"

This extract from the opening of Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre's original Fantômas novel crystallizes the character's sinister appeal. Louis Feuillade's first 1913 serial capitalizes on the same abstraction and threat. The title figure is a function, rather than a character. It's fruitless to think in terms of motivation. His actions are all that matters. Despite the period decor, the immediacy of Feuillade's street locations gives his work a modern edge, like a gaslight melodrama gatecrashing a newsreel, and so does his antagonist: the shadowy, violent, incomprehensible force of destruction and terror.

 "Criminals who operate in the grand manner have all sorts of things at their disposal nowadays. Science has done much for modern progress, but...

René Navarre as Fantômas Fantômas (1913-1914) Fantômas in the Shadow of the Guillotine (1913), Juve vs. Fantômas (1913), The Murderous Corpse (1913), Fantômas vs. Fantômas (1914), The False Magistrate (1914) Direction: Louis Feuillade Screenplay: Louis Feuillade; from Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain's novels Cast: René Navarre, Edmond Bréon, Georges Melchior, Renée Carl, Jane Faber True cinephiles know what to say when asked to explain the relative aggregate crumminess of the films they've bothered to see in 2010: "Too many lousy genre movies … everything's based on some pre-sold franchise property … one sequel after another…" Well, bully for true cinephiles – they can go waste their time at whatever dour, sexless movie Clint Eastwood's directing this week. The rest of us will be left to enjoy Kino's recent boxed set of Louis Feuillade's Fantômas films which, in addition to committing each of the above-enumerated crimes, is one of the best archival releases [...]...

Actor Vincent Cassel ("Mesrine: Part 1 - Killer Instinct") has been cast to play the 'Joker-like' villain 'Fantômas', in a new feature adaptation from director Christophe Gans ("The Brotherhood Of The Wolf").

"Fantômas", created by writers Marcel Allain (1885–1969) and Pierre Souvestre (1874–1914) in 1911, is one of the most popular characters in French crime fiction, appearing in a total of 32 volumes written by the two collaborators, then a subsequent 11 volumes written by Allain after Souvestre's death.

The character has also been the basis of numerous film, television, and comic book adaptations, typified as a ruthless bastard, loyal to no one, while maintaining abilities as a master of disguise, usually appearing under an assumed identity.

With a budget set at $70 million, Gans will also write the screenplay for the "Fantômas" 'detective fantasy' feature, with David Martinez, from an original story by Thomas Langmann.

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "Fantomas...

Rarely do I run full press releases for new home video titles, but this is a special exception. Kino International, in association with Gaumont Films in France, has announced the release of a 3-dvd box set of all five of Louis Feuillade's Fantômas films. The box set's street date is September 21, 2010. None of these films have never been legitimately available on DVD in North America so this really is a cause for celebration. See the press release below for full details.

Kino International Releases A 3-dvd Box Set With Five Feature Films Starring The French Character FANTÔMAS

New York, NY - August 4, 2010 - Kino International, in a special arrangement with Gaumont Films in France, is proud to release for the first time in the United States a 3-dvd box set with a total of seven previously unreleased films featuring the French character FANTÔMAS, created by Marcel Allain (1885-1969) and...

French director Christophe Gans is back! Gans will be in charge for writing and directing a big-screen adaptation of Fantomas, based on the series of the popular French crime fiction novels about “an ingenious but amoral master of disguise and sadistic killer.”

And guess what! There are rumors that already include Vincent Cassel and Jean Reno! Perfect cast or what?

Of course, we had a chance to hear that Fantomas is going to be 3D spectacle, shot in English and French.

If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s how it goes: “Written by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, and first published in 1911, the 43 “Fantomas” novels follow Fantomas, an ingenious but amoral master of disguise and sadistic killer. He is totally ruthless, gives no mercy, and is loyal to none, not even his own children.

He is a master of disguise, always appearing under an assumed identity, often...

Hollywood hasn’t been kind to Christophe Gans. After he made a splash with the excellent Brotherhood of the Wolf, he followed it up with the big screen interpretation of Silent Hill, a film that didn’t completely work for me but one that featured more than one or two great visuals and auditory moments which inflicted a bit of terror (particularly the siren). I hadn’t given Gans another thought until today when I saw his name attached to a new project which caught my attention for another reason all together.

Turns out that Vincent Cassel has signed on to appear as the titular Fantômas in Gans’ take on one of the most popular characters of French crime fiction. Now comes the difficult call: will this adaptation stay close to the source material which seems a little more serious or go down the route of André Hunebelle’s 1964 version which sounds far more comedic?...

Established 1974! Our news column has been remade on the web.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld (left), the man behind Men In Black, will next tackle Tom Swift. By the way, that’s Oscar-winning makeup wizard Rick Baker at right.

The Remake Game

It isn’t really a remake since past attempts to film Tom Swift didn’t ever succeed. However, Variety reports that director Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family & Men In Black movies) is now on board a new Swift film project at Columbia Pictures. Tom Swift, of course, was the third most popular of the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s multiple series of teen mystery/adventure novels (behind the better-known Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys). Edward Stratemeyer created the boy scientist who invented atomic submarines and flying cars and engaged in various Sf-styled exploits (actually penned by a small army of ghost writers under the Victor Appleton pseudonym over the decades). Swift...