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One of the unexpected pleasures of this year’s vast SXSW slate of movies is Bunny, a kind of zany comic throwback to extreme indie New York City-centric movies that find a manic energy and rhythm that lets them exist on their own breathless cloud, with a cast of wacky characters moving in and out of frame in action that takes place almost entirely in an East Village tenement, or outside just in front of it.

In some ways Bunny is an oddball cross of Weekend at Bernie’s, Abbott & Costello, Cheech & Chong and a new-age Marx Brothers movie, plus films of the Safdie brothers (particularly Uncut Gems) all the way back to Hal Ashby’s wonderful directorial debut with 1970’s The Landlord, another NYC tenement movie I kept thinking about watching this stew. Throw them all into a blender and you might have something resembling what first-time director...

With his long hair, sunglasses and bellbottoms, Hal Ashby was the epitome of the 1970s flower child, even though he was a decade older than most of the filmmakers working at the time. Though his flame burned brightly and briefly, he left behind a series of classics that signified the nose-thumbing, countercultural attitude of the era, with a bit of humanism and heart thrown in for good measure. Let’s take a look back at all 12 of his films, ranked worst to best.

Born on September 2, 1929 in Utah, Ashby ambled around before becoming an apprentice editor for Robert Swink, working for Hollywood legends William Wyler and George Stevens. He moved up the ranks to become an editor for Norman Jewison, with whom he shared a fraternal and professional relationship. They cut five films together, including “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” (1966), which earned him his first Oscar nomination,...

In September 2021, Olivia Colman bagged her first career Emmy for “The Crown” despite having failed on her Oscar bid for “The Father” five months earlier. This made her the 16th performer to triumph at the Emmys after going home empty-handed at the same year’s Oscars and the fourth to do so during the 21st century. The release of the 2024 Emmy nominations ballots confirmed that nine of the 16 actors who lost at the latest Oscars ceremony are capable of joining Colman on said list.

Gold Derby’s current Emmy odds indicate that the man and woman with the best hopes of following in Colman’s footsteps are Ryan Gosling and Jodie Foster, who just earned their respective third and fifth Academy Award notices for their supporting turns in “Barbie” and “Nyad.” They are now generally expected to share in the experience of being first-time acting Emmy nominees thanks to his...

“An Officer and a Gentleman” star Louis Gossett Jr.’s cause of death was Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Copd), per Friday’s report from the coroner.

The report, which was first obtained by TMZ, lists Copd as his main cause of death, with heart failure and atrial fibrillation as contributing conditions. The actor, who made Hollywood history as the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar, died on March 29 in Santa Monica, Calif.

Gossett Jr. got his start on the stage with roles in plays in the 1950s and ’60s before breaking big with his Emmy-winning role as Fiddler in the 1977 miniseries “Roots.”

In 2022, on the 45th anniversary of the landmark miniseries, Gossett Jr. told TheWrap he never expected that “Roots” would be made.

“The story about [slavery] was we knew it, we heard it from our parents and our aunts and uncles and stuff, but we knew it...

Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. died of a lung condition, according to his death certificate obtained by TMZ. The actor died in Santa Monica on March 29 at the age of 87.

According to the report, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (Copd), was the main cause of death, TMZ says, with heart failure and atrial fibrillation contributing factors.

A cause of death was not known at the time of Gossett’s passing last month.

His family announced the death in a statement on March 29: “It is with our heartfelt regret to confirm our beloved father passed away this morning.” It continued, “We would like to thank everyone for their condolences at this time. Please respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

The first Black actor to win a Best Supporting Oscar, Gossett was born on May 27, 1936, in Brooklyn. He made his stage debut at 17 in a school production of You Can’t Take It with You...

Louis Gossett Jr., the celebrated An Officer and a Gentleman actor who became the first Black man to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, has died at the age of 87.

“It is with our heartfelt regret to confirm our beloved father passed away this morning,” the actor’s family said in a statement Friday (via CNN). “We would like to thank everyone for their condolences at this time. Please respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time.” No cause of death was provided.

Over an onscreen career that spanned seven decades,...

We are sad to report that legendary African-American actor Louis Gossett Jr. passed away on March 28, 2024 in Santa Monica, CA. He was 87 years old at the time of death, and was on his way to celebrate his 88th birthday in May this year. No official cause of death has been given, but Gosset has had health issues in the recent decade, being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010 and being hospitalized for Covid-19 during the pandemic. The news was confirmed by Gossett’s first cousin Neal L. Gossett.

A true acting legend, Louis Gossett Jr. was born in New York on May 27, 1936. His mother was a nurse, and his father was a porter. Although he was proficient in sports as well, after his stage debut at the age of 17, his teacher encouraged him to pursue an acting career. Although he obtained a sports scholarship at the NYU and was offered to play basketball,...

Louis Gossett Jr., who won an Emmy for his role in the groundbreaking TV miniseries Roots and an Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman, died Thursday night in Santa Monica. He was 87.

His death was first reported by his nephew to the Associated Press. No cause of death was given.

“It is with our heartfelt regret to confirm our beloved father passed away this morning,” his family said in a statement obtained by Deadline. “We would like to thank everyone for their condolences at this time. Please respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

The first Black actor to win a Best Supporting Oscar, Gossett was born on May 27, 1936, in Brooklyn. He made his stage debut at 17 in a school production of You Can’t Take It with You and soon would successfully audition for the Broadway production Take a Giant Step, then perform in a star-making supporting...

Louis Gossett Jr., the tough guy with a sensitive side who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a steely sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman and an Emmy for his performance as a compassionate slave in the landmark miniseries Roots, has died. He was 87.

Gossett’s nephew told the Associated Press that the actor died Thursday night in Santa Monica. The cause of death is unknown, but Gossett announced in 2010 that he had prostate cancer.

With his sleek, bald pate and athlete’s physique, Gossett was intimidating in a wide array of no-nonsense roles, most notably in Taylor Hackford’s Officer and a Gentleman (1982), where as Gunnery Sgt. Emil Foley he rides Richard Gere’s character mercilessly (but for his own good) at an officer candidate school and gets into a memorable martial arts fight.

He was the second Black man to win an acting Oscar, following Sidney Poitier in 1964.

For the role,...

Hal Ashby was an influential New Hollywood filmmaker who directed a string of gems in the 1970s and '80s. He started out as an editor in the '50s before stepping behind the camera himself with 1970s The Landlord. Although comedies were his specialty, Ashby's movies cover a range of genres, from war drama to biopics, and are often shot through with melancholy. A perennial outsider, Ashby brought an idiosyncratic perspective to all of his stories, especially the offbeat romance Harold and Maude and the social satire Being There.

Exclusive: Change is afoot at Funny or Die, Deadline has learned, with Kathy Goodman now to serve as CEO of the esteemed comedy studio.

After serving as Senior Advisor to owner Henry R. Muñoz III since his acquisition of the company several years back, Goodman steps into the role of Mike Farah, who soon will depart Funny or Die after a run of more than 15½ years. Also departing is Joe Farrell, who has been with the company for nearly 13 years, serving as Chief Creative Officer for the past few.

While transitioning out of their current executive roles, Farah and Farrell will remain executive producers on After Midnight, CBS’s recently launched late-night game show hosted by Taylor Tomlinson, and continue to produce the slate of projects they’ve created. Michelle Rosette remains aboard as CFO, with the search for a new Chief Comedy Officer in charge of development in its final stages.

Oscar-nominated film director and producer Norman Jewison, who steered the 1967 racial drama “In the Heat of the Night” to a best picture Oscar and also helmed such popular films as “Moonstruck,” “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” and “The Thomas Crown Affair,” as well as film musicals “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Jesus Christ Superstar,” died Saturday at his Los Angeles residence. He was 97.

His film career began with fluffy Doris Day comedies like “The Thrill of It All.” But Jewison’s social conscience began to surface with “In the Heat of the Night” and, later, the labor union drama “F.I.S.T.” and other films focusing on racial tensions such as “A Soldier’s Story” and “The Landlord” (the latter of which he only produced), though he never abandoned comedies and romances.

Jewison had his share of box office hits and was usually attuned to the audience pulse, but did...

In The Holdovers, a professor, a student and a grief-stricken cook are stranded together at a New England boarding school over the holidays. The story takes place in the early 1970s, an era whose films are beloved by both Holdovers director Alexander Payne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld. However, they took opposing philosophical perspectives in imbuing their movie with the spirit of that epoch. Though he looked at the work of Hal Ashby for inspiration – particularly The Landlord and The Last Detail – rather than attempt to replicate it, Payne’s approach found him imaging what kind of film he himself […]

The post “If I Had Been Working in the 1970s [But With Today’s Technology], I Would Have Used Digital, I Would Have Used LED Technology”: The Holdovers Cinematographer Eigil Bryld first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In The Holdovers, a professor, a student and a grief-stricken cook are stranded together at a New England boarding school over the holidays. The story takes place in the early 1970s, an era whose films are beloved by both Holdovers director Alexander Payne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld. However, they took opposing philosophical perspectives in imbuing their movie with the spirit of that epoch. Though he looked at the work of Hal Ashby for inspiration – particularly The Landlord and The Last Detail – rather than attempt to replicate it, Payne’s approach found him imaging what kind of film he himself […]

The post “If I Had Been Working in the 1970s [But With Today’s Technology], I Would Have Used Digital, I Would Have Used LED Technology”: The Holdovers Cinematographer Eigil Bryld first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

We’ve all seen our share of stories about inspirational teachers. “The Holdovers” is dedicated to the opposite sort: a hard-ass named Paul Hunham whom everyone hates. The feeling is mutual, as Mr. Hunham considers most of the kids enrolled at Barton Academy to be entitled little monsters, and the administration to be even more corrupt. Judging by the evidence director Alexander Payne provides, Mr. Hunham’s not wrong. But he is uncharitable, and on that count, the movie couldn’t be more different: It’s a generous drama about three wounded souls stranded at Barton over Christmas break, during which this coldhearted boarding school Scrooge gets a welcome chance to thaw.

The year is 1970, but “The Holdovers” is not your typical period movie. Instead, it feels as if Payne (a heroic film preservation advocate) unearthed this vintage artifact from the era in which it takes place. From the old-school...

In the fall of 2021, Olivia Colman scored her first career Emmy for “The Crown” despite not having succeeded on her Oscar bid for “The Father” that spring. This made her the 16th performer to prevail at the Emmys directly after going home empty-handed at the Oscars and the fourth to do so during the 21st century. Now that the 2023 Emmy nominations ballots have been released, eight of the 16 actors who lost Oscars at the most recent ceremony officially have shots at joining Colman on this list.

Gold Derby’s Emmy odds currently indicate that the man and woman with the best hopes of following in Colman’s footsteps are Brian Tyree Henry and Hong Chau, who just received their first career Academy Award nominations for their respective supporting turns in “Causeway” and “The Whale.” Henry is seeking his second comedy supporting Emmy notice for “Atlanta,” while Chau could pull double...

Marlene Clark, an actress and model who rose to fame in the 1970s, has passed away. Per THR, Clark died at her home in Los Angeles on May 18, though no cause of death was immediately revealed. She was 85 years old.

“For 15 years she curated a bustling restaurant scene where underground artists mingled with locals and the stars of film and television,” Clark's friend, Tamara Lynch, said of the news. “She had a vision of culinary excellence coupled with dynamic professional service and would lay out the blueprint for the glamorous L.A. restaurant scene brilliantly casted with her discerning eye."

Lynch added, “Marlene’s style was impeccable. She loved fashion, food and acting. Her large, full laugh that could fill a room will be missed. She leaves behind friends and family that will forever be grateful for her grace, love and beautiful heart. Marlene was one of our finest examples of Black beauty.

Marlene Clark, best known for her portrayals of Lamont’s girlfriend Janet in the 1970s NBC sitcom Sanford & Son and as Ganja Meda in the 1973 horror film Ganja & Hess, has died.

Demond Wilson, who played Lamont on Sanford & Son, paid tribute to Clark on Twitter, writing “Rip beautiful actress Marlene Clark. . . It was a delight to work with you…,” noting she died on May 18. Wilson listed her age as 73, but that has not been confirmed.

Clark joined Sanford & Son in the comedy’s fifth season in 1976 as a recurring opposite Wilson, remaining through the series’ final season the following year.

Raised in the Harlem section of New York City, Clark was a fashion model before her transition to acting.

Her earliest work began in films in the 1960s including For Love of Ivy opposite Sidney Poitier and Putney Swope in 1969, directed by Robert Downey Sr. She went...

Marlene Clark, the statuesque actress who portrayed Lamont’s fiancée on Sanford and Son and stood out in such 1970s’ films as Ganja & Hess, Switchblade Sisters and Slaughter, has died. She was 85.

Clark died May 18 in her home in Los Angeles, her family announced. No cause of death was revealed.

Clark also starred as a reptilian seductress in Roger Corman’s Night of the Cobra Woman (1972) and as one of the suspected werewolves in the British horror film The Beast Must Die (1974), and she was an early victim in the Larry Hagman-directed Beware! The Blob (1972).

Clark played John Saxon‘s secretary in Enter the Dragon (1973), starring Bruce Lee, and her big-screen body of work also included Black Mamba (1974), Newman’s Law (1974), Lord Shango (1975) and The Baron (1977), where she appeared opposite her Beast Must Die onscreen husband, Calvin Lockhart.

In the surreal Ganja & Hess (1973), directed by Bill Gunn,...

Simone Cleary (Kate Hudson) greets Shriver (Michael Shannon) in Michael Maren’s whimsical A Little White Lie

Michael Maren’s whimsical A Little White Lie (adapted from Chris Belden’s book Shriver) stars Michael Shannon (also a producer), Kate Hudson (executive producer), Don Johnson, and M Emmet Walsh with Kate Linder, Romy Byrne, Mark Boone Junior, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Jimmi Simpson, Wendie Malick, and Zach Braff.

Honoré de Balzac, Jerzy Kosinski and Hal Ashby’s Being There, starring Peter Sellers (shown to Olivia Colman by Toby Jones in Sam Mendes’s Empire Of Light), The Landlord, Harold And Maude, Linda Lavin and Harris Yulin in A Short History Of Decay, Max Frisch’s I’m Not Stiller and Call Me Gantenbein, John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses, Marcel Proust’s Remembrance Of Lost Time, Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper,...

While there are many sitcoms about a group of friends who help each other through everything that life has to offer, there is something special about New Girl. The characters feel like legitimately regular people who aren't perfect and don't really care about being perfect, either. Of course, people should also watch New Girl because it's hilarious, and that is all thanks to the clever dialogue. There are so many quirky jokes in every episode that make the show worth watching time and time again. Even if someone watched it five times over, they might not catch everything.

Most of the best New Girl quotes are lines that aren’t just memorable because they’re funny, but because they leave an impression on the audience about the characters. All the actors in the series have impeccable timing, and all of them have great one-liners. Fans have been able to revisit...

It was the original cult film. A movie you had to show your girlfriend or boyfriend so they understood you. And it was the comedy Variety called “as much fun as a burning orphanage.”

Making “Harold and Maude” wasn’t easy, and releasing it to the general public was even harder. But 50 years on, the touching, droll and subversive story of a troubled teenager, played by Bud Cort, who falls in love with a nearly 80-year old free spirit, played by Ruth Gordon, still feels fresh and funny.

The idea for the film was hatched by Colin Higgins, a UCLA film student who lucked into a job cleaning the pool of a producer and ended up selling his script to Paramount. Director Hal Ashby fought the establishment at every turn, nearly getting the production shut down. Released with almost no marketing on the same date “The Godfather” was supposed to premiere,...

Saul Turteltaub, the prolific writer and producer who worked on “The Carol Burnett Show,” “Sanford and Son,” “That Girl,” and “What’s Happening!!” died Thursday of natural causes. He was 87.

Director Howard Murray, who worked closely with Turteltaub, confirmed the news on social media. “Just heard that one of my favorite people on the planet has died. Saul Turtletaub along with his partner Bernie Orenstein created some of the funniest sitcoms ever to grace television,” he wrote. “But that’s only a small part of his legacy. Saul was by any measure, a mensch among mensches.”

During Turteltaub’s career, he garnered three Emmy nominations, including one for the first season of “The Carol Burnett Show,” which shot the comic into stardom. He was also responsible for jumpstarting the careers of countless actors including George Clooney, Richard Pryor, Dana Carvey, Nathan Lane, Garry Shandling and Meg Ryan.

Over the course of his 50-year career,...

It’s the brightest debut feature of 1970, and perhaps the warmest movie ever about the American race divide. Hal Ashby and Bill Gunn’s work is inspired: rich boy Beau Bridges buys a slum tenement and launches a wonderful ensemble comedy-drama in confrontation with the fantastic quartet of actresses — Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey and Marki Bey. The humanist picture doesn’t cheat on its subject matter. The cast list contains fresh debuts and and more best-of-career showings: Louis Gossett Jr., Melvin Stewart, Susan Anspach, Robert Klein.

The Landlord

Blu-ray

1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date May 14, 2019 / 29.95

Starring: Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey, Walter Brooke, Louis Gossett Jr., Marki Bey, Mel Stewart, Susan Anspach, Robert Klein, Will Mackenzie, Trish Van Devere, Hector Elizondo, Marlene Clark, Gloria Hendry, Bobby V. Garvin.

Cinematography: Gordon Willis

Film Editor: William A. Sawyer, Edward Warschilka

Original Music: Al Kooper

Written by...

Exclusive: Will Ferrell and Adam McKay have mutually decided to branch out separately and refocus their creative efforts. This will wind down one of the longest creative partner relationships in town. The duo met when they were hired the same day on Saturday Night Live in 1995, and 13 years ago they formed with Chris Henchy the multi-platform comedy generating production company Gary Sanchez, later branching into a female-centric offshoot, Gloria Sanchez. They also teamed on a bunch of comedy classic hit movies, including Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers and The Other Guys. McKay directed those films and Ferrell starred in them.

I’m told they remain close friends, but it is expected that their Paramount-based production labels will wind down over time. They will continue to see through their existing projects to completion and develop them with the attached producers. They will work together on their extensive slate of shared projects,...

For our most comprehensive year-end feature, we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2018. We’ve asked our contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions–those personal lists will be shared in the coming days–and, after tallying the votes, a top 50 has been assembled.

It should be noted that, unlike our previous year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly be discussing more during the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2018 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2019.

50. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)

For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies,...

When was the last time you watched Being There? Sure, everyone namedropped the Peter Sellers movie, about an idiot savant who watches TV and becomes a major political player, when a certain someone got elected President. And yes, Criterion put out a lovely DVD of it last year. But when was the last time you sat down and actually watched it? How about Coming Home, the returning-veteran movie that won Jon Voight and Jane Fonda respective Oscars, and helped usher in a wave of Vietnam movies? Or Shampoo, arguably Warren Beatty...

The so-called “New Hollywood” of the 1970s was driven by a number of filmmakers, many of them film school trained, who broke with many established modes of production and benefited from the opportunities afforded them by the collapse of the old studio system. Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma, Robert Altman, Terrence Malick, William Friedkin, and others debuted films or made their breakthrough works during this period. One major director of this era who’s rather less often cited is Hal Ashby, who had a remarkable run of great films in the 70’s. Seven films in nine years, to be exact: The Landlord (1970), Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Like many people, Amy Scott first came to the work of iconoclastic director Hal Ashby through “Harold and Maude.” The singularly joyful and macabre love story has been a staple of repertory theaters and college video viewings since it was released in 1971. “It blew my mind, it shifted my personal narrative,” says Scott, who makes her feature documentary directing debut with “Hal,” which screened this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival and opens in selected theaters on Sept. 7.

After being introduced to Ashby through her friends in film school, Scott continued her career as an editor, and when she read the biography “Being Hal Ashby: The Life of a Hollywood Rebel,” she realized that there was still no documentary about the seminal filmmaker.

Despite creating so many distinctive films of the 1970s, including “Coming Home,” “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo,” “Bound for Glory,” and “Being There,” which Scott calls his masterpiece,...

By the time Hal Ashby made it to the director’s chair in 1970 after a stint as one of the most acclaimed film editors of the 1960s, he’d grown out his hair to a shaggy fullness more in keeping with the hippie-ish message he sent over the airwaves when accepting his 1968 Oscar for editing “In the Heat of the Night”: “I hope we can use all of our talents and creativity for peace, and for love.”

Ashby would never lose his vibey guru mien thereafter, and through the Me Decade, he turned out a remarkable stretch of socially conscious, bitingly funny and character-rich pictures — including “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo” and “Being There” — that have made him a giant among cineastes who see the ’70s as Hollywood’s most satisfyingly adult and uncompromising period. But if there’s still the sense that Ashby isn’t as sanctified as American...

• Brain Pickings Marilyn Monroe's unpublished poems on the anniversary of her death

• Vulture Every Tom Cruise performance ranked. Interesting and sound choices mostly though I don't understand the #1 choice at all.

• TV Line The Americans wins big at the Television Critics Awards while Killing Eve is named best new series

• Salon has a piece on MoviePass troubles that is the most sane and balanced I've read. (I'm so sick of the disdain most articles have for a subscription that has meant so much to so many people and convinced them to see more movies - only a good thing!)

• Coming Soon Patrick Stewart to lead Star Trek again

• EW Lance Bass is buying the Brady Bunch house. Wha?

• Variety... spoke too soon. Lance Bass lost the house again. And it upset about the shady dealings!

Heated Discussion Point

As you may have heard by now Chloe Moretz has dissed...

Smackdown in 3 Parts

• The Write-Ups

• Podcast Companion Part 1

And now the conclusion!...

Pt 2 (39 minutes)

On the second half of the Supporting Actress Smackdown podcast we discuss Hal Ashby's debut film The Landlord (1970) starring Beau Bridges and Lee Grant. We theorize about why it's not more famous and what would have happened with the great African-American actress Diana Sands if she hadn't died so soon after the movie. We also make some time for the Best Picture nominee Five Easy Pieces and its abundance of actressing, not just Karen Black!

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Thanks again to the panelists: Mark Blankenship, Dan Callahan, Denise Grayson, Lena Houst, and Bobby Rivers . Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?...

Susan Anspach died on April 2 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 75.

Anspach's son, Caleb Goddard, announced her death to the New York Times and said the cause was coronary failure.

Anspach was best known for her roles in 1970s films including Bob Rafaelson's Five Easy Pieces, Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love, and Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam.

Later in her career, Anspach landed recurring roles on television series. She starred in the NBC primetime soap oepra The Yellow Rose as Grace McKenzie. She also appeared in the 13-hour mini-series Space and the comedy The Slap Maxwell Story.

Raised in Queens, New York, Anspach graduated from William Cullen Bryant High School before becoming involved with musical theater. She starred in multiple Broadway and off-Broadway shows, such as “Hair” and “A View from the Bridge” with Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. Her first feature...

Hal Ashby’s The Landlord, made in 1970, is probably the best movie of the 1970s not to be widely known by younger audiences, and even by some older audiences whose appreciation of the last great era of American moviemaking needs to be expanded beyond go-to classics like The Godfather and Chinatown and Taxi Driver. It’s Ashby’s first directorial effort, after work as assistant editor and chief film editor on The Diary of Anne Frank, The Cincinnati Kid and In the Heat of the Night, and it finds Ashby delighting in the freedom of fashioning experimental rules of editorial and visual expression in the process of translating a script from Bill Gunn (Ganja and Hess), based on Kristin Hunter’s novel, into what stands today as one of the funniest, most honest, cogent and probing explorations of race and American race relations in movie history. We had it on...

The latest stage of Richard Linklater’s freewheeling career takes him back to the 1970s with Last Flag Flying, a 44-years-belated sequel to Hal Ashby’s masterpiece The Last Detail. It’s difficult to call much of anything from Linklater a surprise at this point: he seems as comfortable at the helm of a studio comedy powered by Jack Black’s manic energy as he does a decade-plus-spanning epic about the journey from childhood to adolescence. Last Flag Flying may not stand as one of Linklater’s defining works, but it does signal a kinship with the New Hollywood director, whose run from 1970-1979 was as inspired as any other from that era — before he got burned (and burned-out) and died too young at the age of 59. Ashby and Linklater have a shared ability to make a film built on discursive moments flow narratively, an affinity for counterculture movements or...

In his new memoir, “Making Rent in Bed-Stuy: A Memoir of Trying to Make It in New York City,” filmmaker, author, and professor Brandon Harris explores his unique coming-of-age in the city — and community — that he loves. Incidentally and not at all accidentally, the book includes a reflections on a number of essential films that shaped Harris’ journey, from Spike Lee joints to underappreciated indies and even Hal Ashby’s “The Landlord.”

In celebration of the book, Harris has also curated a series at Brooklyn’s Alamo Drafthouse under the same title, featuring four films that speak directly to his novel and his experience, including tonight’s screening of “The Landlord.”

Read More: How Today’s ‘Nonsensical’ Blockbuster Filmmaking Can Learn a Lesson From American Movies of the ’70s

Check out our exclusive excerpt from “Making Rent in Bed-Stuy: A Memoir of Trying to Make It in New York City...

A 50th anniversary screening of the Oscar best picture winner In the Heat of the Night will kick off the eighth annual TCM Classic Film Festival on April 6 in Hollywood.

Sidney Poitier, who starred as Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs in the landmark drama, is scheduled to appear at the screening at the Tcl Chinese Theatre alongside Oscar-winning producer Walter Mirisch, director Norman Jewison, composer Quincy Jones and actress Lee Grant.

Grant also will be the subject of a tribute that will featuring a screening of her debut film, Detective Story (1951), as well as The Landlord (1970). And, as The Hollywood Relporter previously...

Had he only worked for a period of roughly ten years, Michael Chapman would still be among the best-regarded cameramen of his time. How else to qualify the man who acted as operator on Klute, Husbands, The Landlord, The Godfather and Jaws, as well as cinematographer on The Last Detail, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Hardcore, The Last Waltz, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers? (The decades-blurring Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is no small achievement, either.) But then he’d go on to helm All the Right Moves (a key early point in Tom Cruise’s career), then photographed (to name but a few) The Fugitive, Scorsese’s video for Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” and, of course, Space Jam. How many people in his trade can lay claim to that wide a berth?

Chapman’s been retired for nearly ten years — his last feature, Bridge to Terabithia, was released...

Jack Nicholson found his personal favorite role in this fine road picture: Navy signalman Buddusky, charged with escorting sad-sack prisoner Randy Quaid to prison. Hal Ashby's direction and Robert Towne's script pitches the story at the human scale favored by '70s director-driven filmmaking. The Last Detail Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 104 min. / Ship Date January 19, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Clifton James, Carol Kane, Michael Moriarty, Luana Anders, Kathleen Miller, Nancy Allen, Gerry Salsberg, Don McGovern, Pat Hamilton, Michael Chapman, Jim Henshaw, Derek McGrath, Gilda Radner, Jim Horn, John Castellano. Cinematography Michael Chapman Film Editor Robert C. Jones Original Music Johnny Mandel Written by Robert Towne from the novel by Darryl Ponicsan Produced by Gerald Ayres Directed by Hal Ashby

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Bring up the 'golden age' of director-driven movies in the 1970s and the...

Theodore Bikel. Theodore Bikel dead at 91: Oscar-nominated actor and folk singer best known for stage musicals 'The Sound of Music,' 'Fiddler on the Roof' Folk singer, social and union activist, and stage, film, and television actor Theodore Bikel, best remembered for starring in the Broadway musical The Sound of Music and, throughout the U.S., in Fiddler on the Roof, died Monday morning (July 20, '15) of "natural causes" at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. The Austrian-born Bikel – as Theodore Meir Bikel on May 2, 1924, in Vienna, to Yiddish-speaking Eastern European parents – was 91. Fled Hitler Thanks to his well-connected Zionist father, six months after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938 ("they were greeted with jubilation by the local populace," he would recall in 2012), the 14-year-old Bikel and his family fled to Palestine, at the time a British protectorate. While there, the teenager began acting on stage,...

Producer Robert Evans, circa 1970s, in the documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture.

Robert Evans: The Kid Is Alright

By

Alex Simon

I interviewed legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans in 2002 for Venice Magazine, in conjunction with the release of the documentary "The Kid Stays in the Picture," adapted from his iconic autobiography and audiobook. Our chat took place at Woodland, Evans' storied estate in Beverly Hills, in his equally famous screening room, which mysteriously burned down a couple years later. Evans was still physically frail, having recently survived a series of strokes, but his mind, his wit and his charm were sharp as ever, with near total recall for people, places and stories. Many, many stories. Here are a few of them.

It’s a widely-held belief that the years 1967-76 represent the “golden age” of American cinema. Just look at a few of these titles: Rosemary’s Baby,...

Olivia de Havilland picture U.S. labor history-making 'Gone with the Wind' star and two-time Best Actress winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 (This Olivia de Havilland article is currently being revised and expanded.) Two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland, the only surviving major Gone with the Wind cast member and oldest surviving Oscar winner, is turning 99 years old today, July 1.[1] Also known for her widely publicized feud with sister Joan Fontaine and for her eight movies with Errol Flynn, de Havilland should be remembered as well for having made Hollywood labor history. This particular history has nothing to do with de Havilland's films, her two Oscars, Gone with the Wind, Joan Fontaine, or Errol Flynn. Instead, history was made as a result of a legal fight: after winning a lawsuit against Warner Bros. in the mid-'40s, Olivia de Havilland put an end to treacherous...

Oscar 2015 winners (photo: Chris Pratt during Oscar 2015 rehearsals) The complete list of Oscar 2015 winners and nominees can be found below. See also: Oscar 2015 presenters and performers. Now, a little Oscar 2015 trivia. If you know a bit about the history of the Academy Awards, you'll have noticed several little curiosities about this year's nominations. For instance, there are quite a few first-time nominees in the acting and directing categories. In fact, nine of the nominated actors and three of the nominated directors are Oscar newcomers. Here's the list in the acting categories: Eddie Redmayne. Michael Keaton. Steve Carell. Benedict Cumberbatch. Felicity Jones. Rosamund Pike. J.K. Simmons. Emma Stone. Patricia Arquette. The three directors are: Morten Tyldum. Richard Linklater. Wes Anderson. Oscar 2015 comebacks Oscar 2015 also marks the Academy Awards' "comeback" of several performers and directors last nominated years ago. Marion Cotillard and Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress Oscars for, respectively, Olivier Dahan...

John Boorman's career is littered with misfires, maybe the price we pay for the huge artistic risks he takes. In between the early triumphs of Point Blank (1967) and Hell in the Pacific (1968) and his masterwork Deliverance (1972) lies Leo the Last, which gets very little love and not even the kind of scornful attention accorded to catastrophes like Zardoz (1974) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

Maybe this is because bad drama has kitsch value, whereas bad comedy nobody can stand, and Leo the Last appears, at times, to be attempting humor, a surprising choice for Boorman whose very humorlessness can seem a strength in his successful films and a weakness in his failures. There's something heroic about the fact that it apparently never occurred to Boorman that a man having sex wearing full plate armor (Excalibur), Sean Connery in thigh boots, bandoliers and nappy (Zardoz) and Linda Blair doing a musical...

Director Amy E. Scott is turning her longtime love of director Hal Ashby, who brought us "Harold and Maude" and "Coming Home" and a dozen other gems in the 70s and 80s, into a feature-length documentary tribute. (Videos after the jump.) Currently in the home stretch of its Indiegogo campaign, "Once I Was: The Hal Ashby Story" will cover the director's life and career from debut feature "The Landlord" (1970) through his death in 1988. It has so far raised $48,000 of its $50,000 goal. And with 11 days to go, it should cross the finish line.  Exec producers (and Ashby fans) Fred Beebe and Brian Miller recently jumped aboard the project, lovingly summarized here by the director herself: I had to skip film class as a college freshman to see "Harold and Maude." As a student, we were being fed a steady diet of Stanley Kubrick, Chris Marker and Jean Luc Godard- but...

Joan Lorring, 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, dead at 88: One of the earliest surviving Academy Award nominees in the acting categories, Lorring was best known for holding her own against Bette Davis in ‘The Corn Is Green’ (photo: Joan Lorring in ‘Three Strangers’) Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee Joan Lorring, who stole the 1945 film version of The Corn Is Green from none other than Warner Bros. reigning queen Bette Davis, died Friday, May 30, 2014, in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow. So far, online obits haven’t mentioned the cause of death. Lorring, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, was 88. Directed by Irving Rapper, who had also handled one of Bette Davis’ biggest hits, the 1942 sudsy soap opera Now, Voyager, Warners’ The Corn Is Green was a decent if uninspired film version of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 hit play about an English schoolteacher,...

Virtuoso cinematographer Gordon Willis, trailblazer of the New Hollywood who gave us everything from 1920s New York in "The Godfather" to 1970s Manhattan in the films of Woody Allen, has died. He was 82. Late Dp Conrad L. Hall called Willis, who was born in New York into a show business family, the Prince of Darkness. Beginning in 1970 with four films, including Hal Ashby's "The Landlord," Willis became one of the great maestros of shadow and light. His lensing of Alan J. Pakula's 1971 gritty, paranoid thriller "Klute" -- starring Jane Fonda as a call girl, in an Oscar-winning performance -- paved the way for many auteur collaborations. The following year, in 1972, Willis shot Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" -- ultimately going on to film the entire trilogy -- and gave us so many iconic images of of Marlon Brando skulking in the shadows as Don Vito Corleone. Entertainment...

One of Hollywood's most celebrated and influential cinematographers has died. Gordon Willis was 82. Suzanne Berestecky of the Chapman Cole & Gleason funeral home in Falmouth, Mass., confirmed Monday that he died and that the home is handling arrangements. Details on Willis's death were not immediately available. Willis was nicknamed The Prince of Darkness for his subtle but indelible touch on such definitive 1970s releases as The Godfather, 'Annie Hall and All the President's Men. He retired after the 1997 movie The Devil's Own. Through much of the 1970s, Willis was the cameraman whom some of Hollywood's top directors relied on during one of filmmaking's greatest eras.

One of the most joyous sequences in American film is the opening of Woody Allen's "Manhattan." As Allen's character Isaac speaks in voice-over, Gershwin's remarkable "Rhapsody In Blue" plays. "Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. No, make that… he romanticized it all out of proportion. Better. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. Mm. No. Let me start this over." Don't bother, Woody. You got it right the first time, and to provide that black-and-white counterpoint to the soaring sounds of Gershwin, cinematographer Gordon Willis shot some of the greatest images of New York City ever burned onto celluloid. Black-and-white felt like a perfect form of expression for Willis, who was referred to by many filmmakers as "The Prince Of Darkness,...

One of the most joyous sequences in American film is the opening of Woody Allen's "Manhattan." As Allen's character Isaac speaks in voice-over, Gershwin's remarkable "Rhapsody In Blue" plays. "Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. No, make that… he romanticized it all out of proportion. Better. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. Mm. No. Let me start this over." Don't bother, Woody. You got it right the first time, and to provide that black-and-white counterpoint to the soaring sounds of Gershwin, cinematographer Gordon Willis shot some of the greatest images of New York City ever burned onto celluloid. Black-and-white felt like a perfect form of expression for Willis, who was referred to by many filmmakers as "The Prince Of Darkness,...