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Stanley R. Jaffe, a former Paramount Pictures president who became the youngest studio chief in history and later won a Best Picture Oscar for producing Kramer vs. Kramer and was nominated for Fatal Attraction, died today. He was 84.

CAA, which repped Jaffe, confirmed his death to Deadline.

Jaffe was a decade into his career when he produced Kramer vs. Kramer, the riveting 1979 child-custody drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, both winning lead acting Oscars — Streep’s first of three. It also scored Best Director and Adapted Screenplay Oscars for director Robert Benton.

He followed that by producing Taps, about a mutiny at a soon-to-close military academy, starred Timothy Hutton and launched the careers of such future stars as Tom Cruise, Sean Penn and Giancarlo Esposito.

Those films came after Jaffe produced the 1969 Richard Benjamin-Ali MacGraw drama Goodbye, Columbus; I Start Counting (1970); the Jeff Bridges Civil War-era Bad Company (1972); and...

This month’s home media releases are off to a fun start as a few of my favorite movies from 2020 are headed to Blu-ray and DVD this week—Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter and Josh Ruben’s Scare Me. Beyond that, we have a pair of titles from Vinegar Syndrome that genre fans are going to want to pick up on Tuesday—Cthulhu Mansion and Dark Tower—and there are a few other titles being released on March 2nd, too, including Where is She?, Vampire Virus, and the Nicolas Cage Collection.

Cthulhu Mansion

After a drug deal gone wrong, a group of punks attempt to flee a local amusement park by taking a mysterious old magician named Chandu (Frank Finlay; Lifeforce) and his beautiful daughter hostage. While trying to evade the police, the punks force Chandu to take them to his secluded mansion where they plan to seek...

The disturbing British coming-of-age thriller I Start Counting (1970), starring Jenny Agutter, makes its US Blu-ray debut on a pristine remastered Region A disc, loaded with fresh extras, courtesy of boutique label Fun City Editions.

Adapted from the 1966 novel of the same name by Audrey Erskine Lindop, I Start Counting is a welcome relic of its era: it is distinctively late-1960s in its fashions and characterizations, and it is decidedly British in its affectations, despite harboring a rather risque subject matter.

I Start Counting

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1970 / Color / 1.85:1 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date November 24, 2020 / available through Vinegar Syndrome / 24.99

Starring: Jenny Agutter, Bryan Marshall, Simon Ward, Clare Sutcliffe.

Cinematography: Alex Thomson

Film Editor: Keith Palmer

Composer: Basil Kirchin

Written by Richard Harris

Produced by David Greene and Stanley R. Jaffe

Directed by David Greene

Lovesick, imaginative 14-year-old Wynne Kinch (a young Jenny Agutter) is convinced that her much older, 32-year-old...

By Dawn Dabell

A subject which seems to rear its head more and more in today’s society is paedophilia. It feels like every other week brings with it some story of a TV star, singer, film star or MP who has preyed upon young and vulnerable victims for their sexual gratification. That’s not counting the number of domestic cases or the growing problem of online abuse and degradation against minors. Thankfully the culprits are in a minority, but such stories - when they break - send ripples of shame and outrage throughout the journalistic world.

Film-makers have been tackling this most difficult of subjects for longer than people realise. One example is Hammer’s Never Take Sweets From A Stranger (1960), which was largely dismissed by critics when released, but is actually a very well-executed attempt which highlights the horrors of child molestation. If nothing else, it is worth...

Martin Scorsese's Paradiso Outdoor Cinema, St Germans

Scorsese isn't the first person you picture paddling in a Cornish estuary, but Port Eliot Festival has persuaded him to curate a season of evening double bills. His selection is defiantly old school – 1974's Murder On The Orient Express is the most recent. There are sumptuous epics such as The Leopard and The Red Shoes, and classic noirs Human Desire and The Narrow Margin. For more up-to-date fare (and more shelter), the parallel Paradiso Piccolo indoor event has newer documentaries and features including Project Nim, Velvet Goldmine and author Kevin Sampson introducing his rock'n'roll saga Powder.

Port Eliot, Thu to 24 Jul

The Flipside With Jenny Agutter, London

From The Railway Children to Walkabout, Logan's Run to An American Werewolf In London, Jenny Agutter has long occupied a special place in the hearts (and fantasies) of a certain demographic. Those foragers of the...

This latest, unwanted addition to the 'stalker thriller' genre might already have the 2012 Razzies sewn up

The competition for worst movie of the year is at its fiercest, oddly, in the first months of the year – that post-Christmas graveyard of shelved and botched movies, a dumping ground for backfired investments and projects. Disgraced, orphaned and despised, spring releases run headlong for the shadows in shame, like cockroaches, oblivion their only destination, a Golden Razzie their only acclamation.

So step up, The Roommate – a wan, college-based nightmare about getting dormitoried up with a complete stranger who turns out to be a jealous, possibly bi-curious, certainly bi-furious psychopath – now a sterling contender for that worst picture Razzie in 2012. In addition to being an airless and sinewless exercise in how not to manufacture suspense, delineate relationships or surprise an audience even once, Roommates shows the bottoming out of a trend that goes back...