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Over the course of his long career, Charlton Heston played more than a dozen Biblical and historical figures, some more than once. One of the biggest action heroes of the 1950s, Charlton Heston was a major box office draw during his time in Hollywood, heading a long list of successful and critically acclaimed movies. No single movie stands out as his most famous film, as Heston was responsible for turning several films into household favorites, including Planet of the Apes, The Ten Commandments, and Ben-Hur.

Heston developed a knack for Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments, but never let himself get tied down to a single genre. The actor dabbled in several different areas, trying his hand at Westerns, film noir, romance, science fiction, and war films. But as varied as his career was in Hollywood, there were certainly some noteworthy constants with some of the projects he accepted. One...

Charlton Heston's legacy in the Planet of the Apes franchise lives on in a brief Rise of the Planet of the Apes cameo. The use of Heston's The Agony and the Ecstasy in the movie serves as a subtle nod to the franchise's conflicts between humans and apes. Heston's special appearance in the 2011 reboot pays touching tribute to his iconic role.

The celebrated franchise Planet of the Apes paid tribute to the original movie's star in a subtle and touching manner, 41 years after his last appearance. Originating from the 1963 French novel, La Plante des singes by Pierre Boulle, the first movie Planet of the Apes was released in 1968, starring Charlton Heston. Since then, the franchise has seen the release of nine further movies across its timeline; a tenth movie, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, is scheduled for release in May 2024.

Throughout his career, Charlton Heston starred in several critically successful blockbusters,...

A fire broke out at Rome’s historic Cinecittà Studios on Monday afternoon (Aug. 1) and was extinguished by three teams of firefighters.

The fire broke out in the area where a set depicting renaissance Florence was housed and which was being decommissioned, destroying parts of it. It also disrupted the shoot for Netflix’s sequel to Charlize Theron film “The Old Guard” and threatened the “Big Brother” house.

“The fire has been extinguished. There are no injuries, no poisoning, no serious material damage,” Cinecittà Studios spokesperson Marlon Pellegrini told Afp in a statement.

The cause of the fire is not immediately clear, though conditions are dry and potentially incendiary in Italy, which is undergoing a heatwave.

The studio has history with fire. In 2007, flames engulfed warehouses housing sets for HBO/BBC series “Rome” and 32,000 square feet of studio space were destroyed. And in 2012, some parts of Studio 5, where Federico Fellini...

Since Cinecittà Studios was founded in 1937, the sprawling facilities have driven the golden age of Cinema Italiano.

The famed city of cinema has also, albeit intermittently, been a magnet for international productions and endured wild fluctuations in the country’s political climate, before recently reemerging as a new frontier for the country’s film and TV industry.

Located in the heart of the Mediterranean basin, a short ride from the center of Rome and its airports, Italy’s top production hub has to date, hosted more than 3,000 films that have earned 53 Oscars.

During the period following World War II, the studios forged close ties to Hollywood, which helped the Italian industry gain its international standing.

The myriad Italian pics made at the studios range from Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8½” (1963) to Nanni Moretti’s “Sogni D’Oro” (1981), Sergio Leone’s epic “Once Upon a Time in America...

Andrei Konchalovsky's Sin is showing on Mubi starting June 18, 2021 in the United States.Not once does Michelangelo pick up a brush—or a chisel—in Andrei Konchalovsky’s Sin. Like the Russian icon painter in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, which Konchalovsky co-wrote over five decades ago, the artist is never captured at work and is instead plunged into a war-stricken wasteland, a 16th century Italy that feels, looks, and probably smells like a pestilential nightmare straight out of Dante’s Inferno. There are wars, murders, plots, crooked aristocrats and ungrateful relatives; early on, Alberto Testone’s Michelangelo staggers into Florence’s Piazza della Signoria to see his monumental David preside over a swamp of corpses and severed heads. Time and again, the genius casts his eyes skyward, searching for someone who’ll only show up in the film’s closing shot. There’s a biblical quality to his helplessness, a...

Two films released, another film shot, and Steven Soderbergh managed to still watch and read a decent amount in 2019. (Note to self: barely using his Twitter account probably helps.) So a favorite tradition continues with today’s release of his annual viewing and reading log on Extension 765, which has a surprise, oddity, or some-such at nearly every turn.

Favorites include: making it through all 181 hours of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Too Old to Die Young in seven days but taking nearly four months to finish Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace; Chinatown and Richard Lester movies appearing on yet another list; he, too, watching Fleabag; seeing a version of his next movie, Let Them All Talk, just under a month after principal photography commenced. And so on and so forth.

All caps, bold: Movie

All caps, bold, asterisk: Short*

All caps: TV Series

Italics: Book

Quotation marks: “Play”

Italics, quotation...

In 91 years, no one has ever been Oscar-nominated for playing a pope. That could change this year if Jonathan Pryce (lead actor) and Anthony Hopkins (supporting) are recognized for the crowd-pleasing “The Two Popes,” as, respectively, Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI.

The film depicts their mutual wariness, which turns into friendship. And thanks to director Fernando Meirelles and writer Anthony McCarten, it also packs a punch in dealing with the men’s very different socio-political backgrounds.

“The Two Popes” sounds like a TV movie that would be shown on cable every Easter. In fact, Italian TV has done a bevy of papal biopics over the years, and America has had a hand in several, including Jon Voight (!) in the 2005 “Pope John Paul II” miniseries.

But Vatican City has rarely appeared on the big screen. “The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965) and “The Shoes of the Fisherman” (1968) were both intended as...

Don’t Torture a Duckling

Blu-ray

Arrow Films

1972 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / Street Date October 2, 2017

Starring Barbara Bouchet, Florinda Bolkan, Tomas Milian, Irene Papas

Cinematography by Sergio D’Offizi

Written by Lucio Fulci, Roberto Gianviti, Gianfranco Clerici

Film Edited by Ornella Micheli

Produced by Renato Jaboni

Music by Riz Ortolani

Directed by Lucio Fulci

Lucio Fulci’s most consistent trait might have been his instability. In fact it may have been the Italian director’s defining quality; lingering throughout his films is the inescapable notion that, no matter how stylish or finely-tuned his mise en scene, he will surely find a way to fly off the rails and take everyone with him. He’s the crazy ex-girlfriend of filmmakers.

Fulci made his rep in the late 70’s and early 80’s with a series of crassly exploitative horror films, high on gore and low on logic. Nevertheless he began his career on...

Seddok, l’erede di Satana (Atom Age Vampire)

Region 2 Pal DVD

Terminal Video Italia Srl

1960 / B&W / 1:66 flat letterbox / 103 min. / Street Date June 12, 2011 / available through Amazon.it / Eur 6,64

Starring: Alberto Lupo, Ivo Garrani, Susanne Loret, Sergio Fantoni, Rina Franchetti, Franca Parisi, Roberto Bertea.

Cinematography: Aldo Giordani

Film Editor: Gabrielle Varriale

Makeup Effects: Euclide Santoli

Original Music: Armando Trovajoli

Written by: Gino De Santis, Alberto Bevilacqua, Anton Giulio Majano; story by Piero Monviso

Produced by: Elio Ippolito Mellino (as Mario Fava)

Directed by Anton Giulio Majano

Let me herewith take a break from new discs to review an Italian release from six years ago, a movie that for years we knew only as Atom Age Vampire. Until sporadic late- night TV showings appeared, it existed for us ’60s kids as one or two interesting photos in Famous Monsters magazine. Forry Ackerman steered away from adult films, with the effect that...

In honor of Halloween, I once again have a special essay-article up, and this time I can name the contributor. Randall William Cook rates special celebrity status around DVD Savant despite being a friend from way, way back. I hope he's writing a book about his career, because his Hollywood experiences range far afield, from UCLA film school, to acting and directing film and TV, to doing special make-ups, animation direction, front-rank stop motion direction, and second unit direction on big features. Heavily into digital work since the 1990s, Randy supervised character animation and sequence direction for the three Lord of the Rings movies, netting him an amazing three Oscars, three years straight. And he's still the same guy from college -- a new Harryhausen or Welles disc comes out, and he wants to know all about it. Oh, and Cook is a fine writer as well -- as I think this thoughtful piece shows.

Ivor Novello last film: 'Autumn Crocus' (photo: Ivor Novello and Fay Compton in 'Autumn Crocus') Can a plain looking, naive spinster school teacher ever find real love in faraway places? This was a question asked by Shirley Booth in Arthur Laurents' 1952 stage play The Time of the Cuckoo; Katharine Hepburn in the 1955 David Lean-directed film version, Summertime (1955); and Elizabeth Allen in the 1965 Richard Rodgers-Steven Sondheim musical adaptation, Do I Hear a Waltz? Can such a woman's yearning for romance ever be satisfied? "Yes" and "No," according to Basil Dean's fine 1934 British film Autumn Crocus, which marked the last film appearance of British stage and screen superstar Ivor Novello (Alfred Hitchcok's The Lodger). Autumn Crocus starts out during the holiday season, when two British schoolteachers decide to spend their vacation together on the Continent. Soft-hearted Jenny Grey (Fay Compton) longs to see the Austrian Alps,...

Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac may as well be subtitled The Agony and the Ecstasy. At least that’s the vibe reverberating from a new series of posters promoting the erotic movie about one woman’s lifetime of sexual adventures and relationships. The agony is ours, in some cases, as these O-face photos couldn’t be more overt (and a few are a little icky), and the ecstasy… well, that’s self-evident.

Von Trier is reportedly working on two different versions of the two-part, five-hour film, a softcore version that is scheduled to be released in Denmark on Dec. 25 and...

At the beginning of last year, Mike Daisey was ready to blow up. He had spent years nurturing a certain kind of intense but small-scale acclaim in the theater, performing haranguing, wistful monologues, which he never wrote down, to people who shared his core suspicions about the world — that we’re all ridiculous, that living requires some delusion, and that maybe we’re all just, in our semi-self-aware way, fucked. His critique of the mystical delights of consumer capitalism, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, was adapted for “This American Life,” which made Daisey’s poly­morphous, principled outrage at last scalable beyond the cabaret. But then it all blew up in his face. The public-radio broadcast was retracted by host Ira Glass, and Daisey’s self-styled profile as a higher-purpose grouser-crusader beaten to hell because he … well, fudged some parts. Misled. Made some stuff up — you know,...

Charlton Heston: Moses has his ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day Charlton Heston is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star on Monday, August 5, 2013. TCM will be presenting one Heston movie premiere: Guy Green’s Hawaiian-set family drama Diamond Head (1963), in which Heston plays a pineapple grower, U.S. Senate candidate, and total control freak at odds with his strong-willed younger sister, the lovely Yvette Mimieux. Also in the Diamond Head cast: France Nuyen, Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winner George Chakiris (West Side Story), The Time Tunnel‘s James Darren, and veteran Aline MacMahon (Gold Diggers of 1933, Five Star Final) in one of her last movie roles. And last but not least, silent film star Billie Dove reportedly has a bit role in the film. (Photo: Charlton Heston ca. 1955.) (Charlton Heston movies: TCM schedule.) Now, with the exception of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, in which Charlton Heston...

Painting over Michelangelo's sexuality does little to help this informative but insipid tale of his work on the Sistine Chapel

The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)

Director: Carol Reed

Entertainment grade: D+

History grade: B–

During his own lifetime, sculptor, architect and painter Michelangelo Buonarroti was considered to be the greatest artist in Europe.

Facts

The film begins with a formal 12-minute history lesson on Michelangelo's life and work. It includes a tip for American audiences at the time of the film's release that the sublime Pietà of St Peter's was then on display at the New York World's Fair. This piece of information now does little but give historians conniptions at the thought someone might have dropped it on the way. The intent to inform is laudable, but a fictional film should really be able to convey its subject without a lecture – and this lecture sets a regrettably pompous tone...

Pope Movies (photo: Anthony Quinn in ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’) [See previous post: "Pope Francis Movie in the Works?"] Now, do we need another Pope Movie? Well, actually there haven’t been that many. Most notable among the Pope Movies of decades past are Michael Anderson’s widely lambasted The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), with Anthony Quinn as what one pundit called "Zorba the Pope," and Nanni Moretti’s widely acclaimed comedy-drama We Have a Pope, with Michel Piccoli as a cardinal who reluctantly is elected chief of the Catholic Church. Here are a few more: Rex Harrison hammed it up as Pope Julius II to Charlton Heston’s equally risible Michelangelo in Carol Reed’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965); Liv Ullmann played the title role in Michael Anderson’s critically massacred Pope Joan (1972), about the alleged medieval female pope; and Finlay Currie reverentially incarnated the official first pope, St. Peter, in Mervyn LeRoy’s dreary (and...

In a transparent attempt to piggyback on a major news event and use it as an excuse to talk about films, here are some of our favourite cinematic popes

Following news that Benedict XVI is to be the first pope to resign in 600 years, we introduce the only important matter for debate: what are the best on-screen portrayals of pontiffs? Here are a few of our favourites, including nominations from @guardianfilm Twitter followers @Lazslokovacs, @farah0912‏, @nigelfloyd, @pafster, ‏@DulachG, ‏@filipequintans and ‏@FPSFilm.

1. Robbie Coltrane in The Pope Must Die

The film might not have been a classic, but Robbie Coltrane is certainly one of the most memorable movie popes.

Reading on mobile? Watch the clip on YouTube

2. Rex Harrison in The Agony and the Ecstasy

Rex Harrison is a remarkably shouty Pope Julius II, butting heads over the painting of the Sistine chapel with an even shoutier Michelangelo in Charlton Heston.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is letting you decide what classic films they will release on Blu-ray for the first time.

That’s right, your vote counts. Fans vote for their favorite classic titles through the “Voice Your Choice” campaign.

Click Here To Vote

Here is an portion the news release:

Los Angeles (January 15, 2013) – Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment announced today its partnership with the ultimate film discussion website, Home Theater Forum, for a one-of-a-kind campaign, Voice Your Choice, allowing film enthusiasts to decide which classic films they would like to see digitally restored and transferred to Blu-ray for the very first time. The program celebrates Fox’s most notable films from the 1930’s thru the 1960’s featuring performances by famous actors such as Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, John Wayne and more. Throughout the campaign, fans will also have the opportunity to write in and submit additional titles.

This year’s New York International Fringe Festival boasts roughly 200 shows, all of which are hoping that the festival might be the beginning of a longer life onstage. And their aspirations are not unwarranted. Quite a few FringeNYC graduates have gone on to achieve further success, both on the New York stage and around the country, not to mention launching the careers of some very talented artists.Here are a few Fringe alumni that have gone on to bigger things!“21 Dog Years”Long before achieving infamy with “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” monologist Mike Daisey achieved fame with “21 Dog Years.” By now it feels like a period piece. Daisey, an Amazon.com employee, reflects on the turn-of-the-last-century tech boom and bust. Daisey’s show was more than just a rant or a cautionary tale. It was fast-paced comic exploration of just how easy it is for the idea of easy.

Thirty-six years ago today, on April 25th, 1976, filmmaker Carol Reed passed away. One of the greatest directors ever to come out of the U.K., Reed started out as an actor, but gained fame as a writer-director in the late 1930s and 1940s, thanks to films like "Night Train To Munich," and the outstanding "Odd Man Out" and "The Fallen Idol." Later, he'd also find success with films like "Trapeze," "Our Man In Havana," "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and "Oliver!," for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, beating out Stanley Kubrick's "2001" and Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers."

But Reed's undisputed masterpiece is "The Third Man," a 1949 film noir based on a screenplay by the great British writer Graham Greene. The film involves a writer of Westerns, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who comes to post-war Vienna after being promised a job by his childhood friend Harry Lime.

Before the curtain falls on the 15 minutes of ridiculousness that is the distressing dilemma of Mike Daisey, there is one more act: Daisey’s latest apology, which in reality should have been given eons ago and saved face for Daisey, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and everyone involved in the Apple factory farce.

Daisey once again took to his blog for his most recent apology, only this time the playwright-slash-performer decided to abandon trying to explain his good intentions and instead took full blame for the debacle.

He apologized first to his audiences: “It made me grateful…to have audiences come...

Another day, another Andrew Lloyd Webber show on Broadway. EW got an exclusive look at the flashy revival of Jesus Christ Superstar, which officially opened on Thursday. The Book of Mormon announced a free-ticket lottery for its one year anniversary, which will no doubt make fans cheer “maha naibu eebowai.” Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) showed his business-casual side in EW’s first look at Roundabout Theatre Company’s upcoming Harvey. Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs continued to make headlines, with the latest being Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s supportive stance behind the heavily-criticized show.

Our job as a theater is to create that contract anew with every performance, and then tofulfill it.We did not do that with The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs. We wouldnot have called it nonfiction had we known that incidents described in the piece werefabricated. We didn't know, and the result was that our audience was misled. The piecehad a powerful, positive impact on the world, and we are proud of that. But that doesn'trelieve us of the responsibility of honoring our contract with our audience.

Washington -- A Washington theater is apologizing for calling a one-man show that purported to show horrific working conditions at Chinese factories that made Apple products a work of nonfiction.

Performer Mike Daisey was recently forced to admit he made up parts of the show called "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs."

Still, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company said Wednesday that it plans to bring the play back to Washington this summer. It was first performed at the Washington theater in 2010 before moving onto other cities including New York.

The theater's artistic and managing directors say they stand by the show as a piece of theater. They say art is different from journalism.

Revelations that some claims in the show weren't true led to retractions by public radio's "This American Life" and corrections by other news organizations including The Associated Press.

The phrase “based on a true story” has become weak currency in the world of storytelling, and unfortunately it keeps getting worse.

The latest downgrading occurs at the hands of performer Mike Daisey and his falsehood-perforated theater monologue The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, about the exploitation of Chinese workers who manufacture Apple products.

Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life presented an entire episode this past weekend to retract and correct its very popular January show that featured Daisey’s now-discredited reporting. The entire program can be found here, and it’s compelling listening – even if you...

Mike Daisey has released a statement on his official blog urging critics to focus on the bigger story of the nature of Apple’s Chinese manufacturing, rather than his admission that he fabricated important parts of his one-man show.

“If you think this story is bigger than that story, something is wrong with your priorities,” writes Daisey, whose The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs addresses working conditions of Apple employees in Chinese sweatshops. The off-Broadway production was the focus of a segment on Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life, which has since been retracted after word circulated...

Mike Daisey, the off-Broadway performer who admitted that he made up parts of his one-man show about Apple products being made in Chinese sweatshops, has cut questionable sections from the monologue and added a prologue explaining the controversy.

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater, where the monologue is being performed, said Saturday that Daisey has “eliminated anything he doesn’t feel he can stand behind” from the show and added a section at the beginning in which he addresses the questions raised by critics. Eustis called the prologue “the best possible frame we could give the audience for...

Foxconn Technology Group, the biggest maker of iPhones and iPads for Apple, said today that it has no intention of taking legal action after a Us radio show retracted some claims about activity in its factories. However, the company said that the broadcast, which led to further investigation of working standards in Apple's supply chain, has "ruined" its corporate reputation. Last week, radio show This American Life pulled an episode which was highly critical of working conditions at Foxconn factories in China, after admitting that it contained "numerous fabrications". The episode in question, originally aired on January 6, was based heavily on the one-man theatrical show of actor Mike Daisey, entitled The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In a statement issued to Reuters, Foxconn spokesman Simon Hsing said: "Our corporate image has been (more)...

New York – Dramatic license or fraud? The question might not be quite so cut-and-dried, but that in essence is the nature of the debate that arises from Friday’s decision by This American Life, the popular show produced by Chicago-based Wbez and distributed by Public Radio International, to retract its January 6 episode featuring excerpts from Mike Daisey’s solo show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Photos: Apple Products in TV and Movies That two-hour monologue parallels self-professed tech geek Daisey’s love of all things Apple with his assessment of Jobs’ complex personal and

read more...

Washington Post/Getty Images Mike Daisey, the creator and star of “The Agony and the Ectasy of Steve Jobs.”

When I first encountered “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” the episode of “This American Life” featuring monologuist Mike Daisey on Apple and the practices of its Chinese contract manufacturer Foxconn, I resisted passing it along.

Dozens of people sent it to me and urged me to share the link with others. I’d listened to the show; I thought it was enormously compelling.

The season is revving up, there’s only 85 days left until the Tonys, and one of the most anticipated plays of the spring, Death of a Salesman, just opened—but the stage news that had everyone talking this week was the revelation that monologist Mike Daisey had fabricated parts of his off-Broadway hit The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Yet, there were also good things going on: David Strathairn joined Jessica Chastain in next season’s The Heiress, Universal hired Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes to adapt another big screen Gypsy, and Val Kilmer announced he will play...

On Friday, NPR's "This American Life" retracted an entire episode about inhumane working conditions at the Apple products manufacturing facility in China, after an internal investigation determined that some facts in the story were fabricated. The episode was an excerpt of performance artist and monologist Mike Daisey's one-man show, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," in which Daisey describes his visits to a factory owned by Foxconn that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen, China."Daisey lied to me and to 'This American Life' producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast." Glass said. "That doesn't excuse the fact that we never should've put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake." You can also read a press release that details the ways Daisey's theatrical production was misleading to "This American Life" fact-checkers.This weekend's episode of "This American.

If you can't make it out to the Public Theater in New York City to see Mike Daisey perform his explosive "The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs," never fear: tens of thousands of people now have the power to stage Daisey's one-man play themselves, including you, if you so choose. Daisey's radical decision to offer his script to the public as a free download on his Web site has resulted in 60,000 downloads in only a few days, reports Playbill:

A representative for Daisey said that within the first 48 hours of Agony and the Ecstacy's online publication Feb. 21, over 42,000 individuals had downloaded the script. The figure had risen to over 60,000 as of Feb. 24.

Playbill also reports that Lance Baker, a Chicago-based stage and film actor, will be among the first to perform the play, premiering it in Chicago at the Red Orchid Theatre on March 5.

For decades, Daisey has alchemized his obsessions into monologues.

The agony and the ecstasy

The Glasgow Film Festival got into full swing on Friday with the gala premières of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Trishna, two films that take very different perspectives on the conflict between tradition and Western values in modern India. Almanya - Welcome To Germany launched the festival's German strand and there was a chance to see beautifully shot art documentaries <a ...

dapd The image of Apple’s founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, is displayed on one of the company’s MacBook Pro laptop computers at the Apple Store in Little Rock, Ark., Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011.

Mike Daisey is a talker: The fireball performer, whose repertoire of one-man-shows includes a monologue he delivers over 24 hours, especially warms to subjects most people ignore.

But his current obsession—the working conditions among Chinese factory employees who build iPhones and iPads—is the subject of...

The Public Theater welcome back Mike Daiseys critically acclaimed The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs on Tuesday, January 31 for an extended run in the Martinson Theater. Created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory, the return engagement of The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs will run an additional five weeks to March 4. Tickets, priced at 75-85, are on sale now. Tickets can be purchased at 212 967-7555 or www.publictheater.org.

The Public Theater welcome back Mike Daiseys critically acclaimed The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs on Tuesday, January 31 for an extended run in the Martinson Theater. Created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory, the return engagement of The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs will run an additional five weeks to March 4. Tickets, priced at 75-85, are on sale now. Tickets can be purchased at 212 967-7555 or www.publictheater.org.

In October of 2010, Sound on Sight asked me to do my first commemorative piece on the passing of filmmaker Arthur Penn. I suspect I was asked because I was the only one writing for the site old enough to have seen Penn’s films in theaters. Whatever the reason, it was an unexpectedly rewarding if expectedly bittersweet experience which led to a series of equally rewarding but bittersweet experiences writing on the passing of other filmdom notables.

I say rewarding because it gave me a nostalgic-flavored chance to revisit certain work and the people behind it; a revisiting which often brought back the nearly-forgotten youthful excitement that went with an eye-opening, a discovery, the thrill of the new. Writing them has also been bittersweet because each of these pieces is a formal acknowledgment that something precious is gone. A talent may be perhaps preserved forever on celluloid, but the filmography...

Due to extraordinary demand, The Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis Executive Director Patrick Willingham announced today that Mike Daiseys critically acclaimed The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs will return in January for an additional five week run in the Martinson Theater. Created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory, The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs began previews at The Public on October 11, officially opened on October 17, and was originally scheduled to close on November 13. It was extended an additional three weeks to December 4. The return engagement will run January 31 to March 4, 2012. Tickets, priced at 75-85, are on sale now. Public Theater Member tickets are 40. Tickets can be purchased at 212 967-7555 or www.publictheater.org.

Comedy apparently doesn’t come in threes. The triple-threat writing team behind Broadway’s Relatively Speaking — Woody Allen, Ethan Coen, and Elaine May — failed to impress this week, earning only a C+ from EW senior writer Clark Collis. Luckily, our reviewers saw three other higher-ranking Off-Broadway plays. Read the highlights below.

Relatively Speaking: “This trio of comedies,” writes Collis, “is, comparatively speaking, far from any of its creators’ finest work.” Of the three C+ vignettes that make up Speaking, Collis likes May’s the best, as only she “seems to have really put her heart and soul into her one-act.

Cilento and Connery with their son Jason in the 1960s: happiness would be short-lived in the tumultuous marriage.

 

Australian actress Diane Cilento has died at age 79. The multi-talented actress had already won acclaim for her work on stage when she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the 1963 classic Tom Jones. Cilento divorced her first husband to marry Sean Connery in 1962-the year his first James Bond movie premiered. With Connery's rise to international superstar, the couple could not cope with the fame and constant intrusions on their private lives. The marriage ended after 12 years and Cilento married acclaimed playwright Anthony Shaffer. She also had a second career as an author. Among her most memorable films are The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Wicker Man and Hombre. For more click here...

Alluring Australian actor best known for her role in The Wicker Man

Such is the superficial nature of fame that the Australian-born actor Diane Cilento, who has died of cancer aged 78, was best remembered as the wife of Sean Connery from 1962 to 1973, during the height of his fame as James Bond. The attractive, blonde, husky-voiced Cilento would be more fittingly recalled for her roles in a dozen or so British films in the 1950s and 60s, to which she brought a dose of much-needed sexuality. However, her best-known part was in the cultish The Wicker Man (1973), her last British picture before returning to her homeland.

Born in Brisbane, she was the daughter of Sir Raphael and Lady Phyllis Cilento, both physicians. Much to their initial disappointment, Diane decided against following them into the medical profession. After winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, at the age...

Diane Cilento, the Australian actress once married to Sean Connery and who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1963 for Tom Jones, has died aged 78. Cilento was reckoned to be one of the best actresses of her generation in the early 60s, but she had the misfortune to appear on the scene at a time when roles for young women in British cinema mostly consisted of either nurses or well-brought-up gals. Movie producers did not know how to use her lubricious sexuality, which director Tony Richardson caught when she played Molly, the sexy gamekeeper’s daughter Tom Jones. Hollywood tried to push her as a sex symbol opposite Charlton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) and Paul Newman in Hombre (1967). But it was her marriage to Sean Connery during the 60s — then at the peak of his Bond fame — which took up most of her energy. They had one son together,...

Australian actress Diane Cilento has died after losing a lengthy battle with ill health. She was 78.

The Academy Award nominee, who was previously married to Bond star Sir Sean Connery, passed away at the Cairns Base Hospital, in Cairns, Australia on Thursday.

Cilento moved to England in the 1950s after winning a scholarship at London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), and she soon started acting in British films.

During her career she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in a 1956 production of Tiger at the Gates, while she picked up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for 1963's Tom Jones.

She also starred with Charlton Heston in 1965's The Agony and the Ecstasy and with Paul Newman in 1967 western Hombre.

Cilento married second husband Connery in 1962, but the marriage ended in 1973 after nine years. The pair share a son, actor Jason Connery.

The actress then went on to marry playwright Anthony Shaffer, who she met when she appeared in his 1973 film The Wicker Man. The couple was married until Shaffer's death in 2001.

Oscar-nominated actress Diane Cilento -- famous for her 11-year marriage to Sean Connery -- died Thursday in Queensland, Australia ... according to a state official. Cilento earned a best-supporting actress nomination for her role in the 1963 film " Tom Jones ." She also starred in " Hombre " opposite Paul Newman and " The Agony and the Ecstasy " with Rex Harrison and Charlton Heston . Diane was very involved in theater -- spending most of her later years running an open-air theater in the Queensland rainforest.

Diane Cilento, a tall, voluptuous, sometimes blonde/sometimes brunette beauty best remembered for her Academy Award-nominated performance in the 1963 Oscar winner Tom Jones, died in Cairns, in the north of Queensland, according to an online report in the Australian publication The Newsport/Port Douglas Daily. The report says Cilento was 81; as per the IMDb, she had turned 78 yesterday. The cause of death, "after a long battle with illness," hasn't been disclosed. Born to a family of doctors on Oct. 5, 1933, in Brisbane, Queensland, Cilento began her film career in British and British-set Hollywood productions of the early 1950s. By mid-decade, Cilento was already getting cast in leads and semi-leads, in mid-level fare such as Roy Ward Baker's Passage Home (1955), opposite Anthony Steel and Peter Finch, and Alan Bromly's The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp (1956), in the title role as an angel who, in order to fulfill her mission on Earth,...

Getty Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the 2010 Apple World Wide Developers conference on June 7, 2010 in San Francisco, California.

Amid the mourning for the late Steve Jobs: enter Mike Daisey.

Daisey is the creator and performer of “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” an unsparing look at the Apple visionary and working conditions at Chinese factories that create iPhones and iPods. New York’s Public Theater said Thursday his show will start performances this Tuesday as scheduled.

Despite Jobs’s recent death,...

They win awards and critical acclaim – but are in-depth documentaries under threat? Mark Lawson talks to film-makers about risk-taking, total immersion and the cult of celebrity

Is this a good time for factual film-making? It depends on your definitions of fact and film. There are executives and directors who complain that there are too few documentaries on television these days; and yet programmes from Brian Cox's The Wonders of the Universe to My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding have large and enthusiastic audiences. The problem is that what traditionalists mean by documentary (Adam Curtis's new series) is quite different from the star vehicles and "constructed reality" shows (Made in Chelsea, The Only Way is Essex) that are currently popular.

The past decade has also seen a big increase in the number of documentaries made for cinema. The success of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Morgan Spurlock's...

Though I’ve never actually read The Agony and the Ecstasy — I was too busy watching reality TV — this classic literary title perfectly encapsulated tonight’s Dancing With The Stars results show. It was as if DWTS‘ producers spent too much time watching Survivor and decided to create a quasi in-house immunity challenge that asked: How much pain and pleasure can we inflict on our viewers within two bloated hours of primetime TV?

Let us count the ways! Here goes:

The Agony:

* Filler alert! The DWTS Troupe’s utterly unnecessary opening number to a medley of past winning freestyle songs.

Star Trek prop worn by Leonard Nimoy expected to fetch £700 at Hollywood memorabilia auction

Framed above the fireplace or simply sported by its owner, this is one movie collectable that would be a guaranteed conversation starter. One of the ears worn by Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock in the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture is to be auctioned tomorrow.

The appendage, one of Spock's most recgonisable features, is part of a pair acquired from the prop master on the film, and has been lovingly preserved.

"It was carefully wrapped up, which is important because silicone latex can deteriorate," a spokesman for the auctioneers, Premiere Props in Los Angeles, told the Daily Express.

"Spock's ears are an iconic part of Star Trek and fans across the world would love to own it – we've already had lots of bids," he said. Conservative estimates suggest the ear is likely to fetch around £700.

The half-human,...