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Douglass Fake, founder of leading movie soundtrack label Intrada and producer of more than 700 albums of movie and TV music, died Saturday at a Richmond, Calif., hospital after a long illness. He was 72.

Fake’s many credits include the first complete restoration of Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Waterfront,” a lavish 5-cd release of Elmer Bernstein’s “The Ten Commandments” and the debut of several Henry Mancini scores including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” previously only available in abridged pop recordings.

Among the label’s best sellers were expansions of previously incomplete recordings of such classics as John Williams’ “Jaws,” Alan Silvestri’s “Back to the Future” and Jerry Goldsmith’s “Alien.” Fake also supervised the re-recording of a dozen albums of classic film music including Bernard Herrmann’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and Miklos Rozsa’s “Ivanhoe,” “Spellbound” and “Julius Caesar.”

A longtime film-music fan, Fake launched Intrada Records...

Jim Brown, among the NFL’s greatest players at any position who went on to star in Hollywood Films like “The Dirty Dozen” and “Any Given Sunday,” has died, his wife Monique Brown said Friday on Instagram. He was 87.

Brown’s singular dominance in the NFL of the late 1950s and 1960s was unmatched. Brown made the Pro Bowl in every season from 1957-1965, was a three-time Mvp, and won a championship with the Cleveland Browns in 1964. Of his nine seasons, he led the league in rushing yards for eight, and held most of the league’s major rushing records upon his retirement.

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Brown was born in St. Simons Island, Georgia, the son of a pro boxer and a homemaker. He excelled at every sport he tried, from football and baseball to lacrosse and track. His average of 38 points per game,...

Jim Brown, one of the greatest players in the history of the National Football League (NFL), who shocked the world by retiring during his prime after receiving his third Most Valuable Player (Mvp) award and pivoting to becoming an actor, starring in hit films like The Dirty Dozen and Ice Station Zebra, has died at age 87.

Brown was a star athlete at Syracuse University, being not only a dominant football player, but also one of the greatest lacrosse players ever. He lettered on the track team, averaged over 15 points a game for the basketball team and finished fifth in the National Championship decathlon in 1955. Still, he was obviously best known for his success on the gridiron, and when he graduated, he entered the draft for the NFL. He was picked by the Cleveland Browns with the sixth overall pick in the 1957 NFL Draft.

It was almost instantly evident that Brown was a generational talent.

Whitman co-starred with John Wayne in the hit 1961 film "The Comancheros".

By Lee Pfeiffer

Stuart Whitman, the popular leading man of feature films and television, has passed away from natural causes at age 92. Whitman generally showed a tough guy persona in films, and although he usually played a hero, he could also occasionally impress as a villain, as well. Among his more memorable films was "The Mark", a 1961 production that earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination as a child molester who is trying desperately to redeem himself. Other key movies include "The Comancheros" in which he co-starred with John Wayne, "The Longest Day", "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines", "Rio Conchos", "Murder, Inc." and "Ten North Frederick". In 1965, Whitman scored as a killer in the desert adventure film "Sands of the Kalahari". From that point on, however, he was increasingly consigned to roles in "B" movies. However, he...

Actor Stuart Whitman, an Oscar nominee for his role as a convicted child molester in the 1961 movie “The Mark,” died on Monday of natural causes surrounded by his family at his ranch house in Montecito, Calif., his son Justin told Variety. He was 92.

Whitman had more than 200 film and television credits. His movies include “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,” “The Longest Day,” “The Comancheros,” “The Sound and the Fury,” “Johnny Trouble,” “Hound-Dog Man,” “The Story of Ruth,” “Murder, Inc.,” “Convicts 4,” “Shock Treatment,” “Rio Conchos” and “The Day and the Hour.” Whitman made his film debut in 1951 in “When Worlds Collide.”

He replaced Richard Burton in the role of Jim Fuller on “The Mark,” which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor. He lost out to Maximilian Schell, who won for “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Whitman portrayed a child molester who gets out of prison and seeks the aid of a psychiatrist,...

By John M. Whalen

“Barquero”(1970) stars Lee Van Cleef as Travis, an ex-gunslinger living a quiet life as the owner/operator of a barge that is the only way to cross the river at a certain spot between Texas and Mexico. When we first see him he’s in bed with Nola (Marie Gomez), a hot looking Mexican chick who likes to suck on cigarillos. Everything’s fine until the creepy Fair (John Davis Chandler) shows up at his doorstep leering down at the naked Nola and says he and two men with him want to go across the water to Texas. Travis doesn’t like the way he’s looking at Nola and tells him “A ride across the river is all your money’s going to buy.” They get across and Fair pulls a gun on him and tells his amigos to tie him up.

Meanwhile, in a...

Them!

Directed by Gordon Douglas

Written by Ted Sherdeman

1954, USA

In that filled-to-bursting canon of 1950s science fiction cinema, movies range from true film classics – like the Hawksian The Thing from Another World (1951), and that alarm bell about human desensitization, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – to cheapie craptasmagoriums like Beginning of the End (1957 – giant grasshoppers crawling over photographs of downtown Chicago), and It Conquered the World (1956 – “It” being an alien that looks like a devil-faced carrot with lobster claws). I’d go as far as to say the consensus is probably there’s just a few of the former, and a whole stinking pile of the latter. But scattered (thinly, I’d have to say) between those poles are movies neither classic nor crap, but made with enough craftsmanship to be eminently and repeatably watchable. You know: just good, damned fun! One of my faves from that group: Them! (1954).

A...

Recent hot cinema topics such as the portrayal of the Mandarin character in Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 and speculations about what classic Star Trek villain Benedict Cumberbatch’s character in J.J Abrams’ Star Trek: Into Darkness was modeled after leading up to the film’s release, among others, underline the importance of great villains in genre cinema.

Creating a great cinematic villain is a difficult goal that makes for an incredibly rewarding and memorable viewer experience when it is achieved.

We’ll now take a look at the greatest film villains. Other writing on this subject tends to be a bit unfocused, as “greatest villain” articles tend to mix live-action human villains with animated characters and even animals. Many of these articles also lack a cohesive quality as they attempt to cover too much ground at once by spanning all of film history.

This article focuses on the 1970’s,...

This article is dedicated to Andrew Copp: filmmaker, film writer, artist and close friend who passed away on January 19, 2013. You are loved and missed, brother.

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Looking at the Best Actor Academy Award nominations for the film year 2012, the one miss that clearly cries out for more attention is Liam Neeson’s powerful performance in Joe Carnahan’s excellent survival film The Grey, easily one of the best roles of Neeson’s career.

In Neeson’s case, his lack of a nomination was a case of neglect similar to the Albert Brooks snub in the Best Supporting Actor category for the film year 2011 for Drive(Nicolas Winding Refn, USA).

Along with negligence, other factors commonly prevent outstanding lead acting performances from getting the kind of critical attention they deserve. Sometimes it’s that the performance is in a film not considered “Oscar material” or even worthy of any substantial critical attention.

The Western was a movie staple for decades. It seemed the genre that would never die, feeding the fantasies of one generation after another of young boys who galloped around their backyards, playgrounds, and brick streets on broomsticks, banging away with their Mattel cap pistols. Something about a man on a horse set against the boundless wastes of Monument Valley, the crackle of saddle leather, two men facing off in a dusty street under the noon sun connected with the free spirit in every kid.

The American movie – a celluloid telling that was more than a skit – was born in a Western: Edwin S. Porter’s 11- minute The Great Train Robbery (1903). Thereafter, Westerns grew longer, they grew more complex. The West – hostile, endless, civilization barely maintaining a toehold against the elements, hostile natives, and robber barons – proved an infinitely plastic setting. In a place with no law, and where...

"When I wrote 120 Malay Movies I tried to watch all of the 34 movies that P Ramlee directed. I almost succeeded." Amir Muhammad (The Last Communist, Malaysian Gods) would eventually see 33; Sitora Harimau Jadian (1964) seems to have been lost. He tells us the story of how he came upon what amounts to P Ramlee's own novelization of Sitora Harimau Jadian, "describing what happens in his movie, scene by scene. The book is slim, only 124 pages, and I'm glad it was also fleshed out with pictures from the movie (which might be the only chance we will ever get to 'see' it)." He gives us a sample and then announces that he's republishing the book, which will be out next month and already has a fan page.

Another book. Today's review of Geoff Dyer's Zona comes from Nathan Rogers-Hancock at Cinespect.

Reading. Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel) once managed a...

Sun City - What are you going to when it comes time to retire? Do you really have enough money saved up to last you for the rest of your life? Can you hold out till Willard Scott puts you on the Smuckers jar and wishes you a happy 100th? Will you really be enjoying the good life with round the clock sponge baths from young orderlies? Have you done the math to figure out how much it’ll cost for a day at a retirement community in 20 years? Can your 401K hold out?

Odds are the answer is a resounding, “Maybe?”

The golden years require platinum reserves. With talk that Medicare is about to be destroyed, your budget for health insurance is about to go completely out of control. When is the last time Blue Cross hyped individual policies for people hitting 90? Even the most frugal of senior citizens...

The latest issue of Cinema Retro (#20) is now shipping to subscribers all around the world. As we publish in the UK, those subscribers always get their copies first. However, the latest issue just arrived from the other side of the pond and has now been shipped out to all other regions. Readers will have it in their hot little hands very soon.

Cover story on Candy starring Ewa Aulin as the sexy teen nymph in an all-star fiasco that involved Marlon Brando, Ringo Starr, James Coburn and Walter Matthau. Dean Brierly examines how such a sure-fire project turned into one of the worst movies ever made. This issue's Film in Focus is Earthquake, the 1974 blockbuster starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and many other familiar faces in one of the most successful films of the genre. Ross Warner reminds why the film remains a guilty pleasure and Thomas Hauerslav of the web site In70mm.

“What did you expect? ‘Welcome, sonny’? ‘Make yourself at home’? ‘Marry my daughter’? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.” — Blazing Saddles

But dang, did they cut a dashing figure in a gray uniform. I’m talking about you, Rock Hudson. Look at the rakish bend of your hat brim! Aren’t you just the handsomest Confederate I’ve seen since Bill Compton traded his uniform for a pair of fangs!

One of my new cinematic fascinations (if you’ll forgive such a pompous label) is the way Hollywood and pop culture imagines the Civil War. It’s not something I ever thought about beyond Gone With the Wind, Firefly, and True Blood, but it’s an intriguing subset of American culture.

Since no cannonball has been left unturned when...

The fun part of Western Wednesdays is discovering little gems like Rio Conchos that were lost in the shuffle of giants like John Wayne. Lacking any big stars or cult iconography like Django’s coffin, they just sit on Netflix waiting for someone to dig them up.

Rio Conchos is a slow burn of a movie, more of a Western noir than a real shoot ‘em up. Everyone has an agenda, no one can be trusted, and you’re just not sure who is going to screw it all up and make off like a bandit. It also starts off rather typical with the usual trope of “There’s been a raid, a bunch of rifles are missing, and they’re going to wind up in the hands of Apaches!”

Naturally, a disparate bunch of men are assigned the task of tracking down the rifles — a bitter ex-Confederate (Richard Boone...

The Outlaws is Coming!

Turner Classic Movies (North America) will have a rare showing of The Three Stooges' last feature film, The Outlaws is Coming! tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 7:30 Am (Est). The 1965 film co-stars Adam West, who would soon become a major star due to his role as Batman. If that isn't enough to keep you indoors, at 6:00 tomorrow morning, Fox Movie Channel launches a back-to-back lineup of top-notch westerns beginning with John Wayne's North to Alaska and continuing with Rio Conchos starring Richard Boone, The Undefeated starring Wayne and Rock Hudson, Bandolero! with James Stewart, Dean Martin and Raquel Welch and, finally, Take a Hard Ride starring Jim Brown and Lee Van Cleef.

The terrific rip-snorting 1964 western Rio Conchos will get a rare American TV broadcast today on Fox Movie Channel at 2:00 Pm (Est) - letterboxed and uncut. The movie has never been released on DVD. The film stars Richard Boone, Anthony Franciosa, Edmond O'Brien, Stuart Whitman and Jim Brown, in his first major film role. Curiously, it's a loose remake of John Wayne's The Comancheros, which had only been released by Fox only three years before.

The plot thickens: we're now told that Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Last Hard Men also incorporated some of his work from the 1965 spy movie Morituri! Graham Rye's letter regarding Jerry Goldsmith's score for 100 Rifles which was recycled for The Last Hard Men, has drawn a number of comments from readers, some of whom have shed some light on the mystery of why such a revered composer might want to use a previous score in a new movie:

Hi Lee

Well Graham is both correct and incorrect about the soundtrack for the above. The story of The Last Hard Men score is that a score by Leonard Rosenman was rejected and, whether due to time constraints or cost, Fox simply chose to track the movie with cues from three Jerry Goldsmith Fox westerns (100 Rifles, Rio Conchos and the remake of Stagecoach) and also his score for the thriller Morituri.

Actor Tony Franciosa has died after suffering a massive stroke. He was 77. Ironically, his death comes less than a week after that of Shelley Winters - one of his four wives. Franciosa made his movie debut in 1957's A Face In The Crowd and won a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his role in A Hatful Of Rain the same year. But, despite an impressive big screen start, Franciosa failed to live up to his initial promise and after acclaimed roles in films like The Long Hot Summer (1958) and Rio Conchos (1964), he turned his attention to TV. He found small-screen stardom on the TV series The Name Of The Game, among other shows. He returned to the big screen for roles in late 1970s/early 1980s action movies like Firepower and Death Wish II and made his last appearance on the big screen in City Hall in 1996.