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Happy 50th anniversary Jaws. You are undoubtedly one of not only the greatest summer blockbusters of all time but a landmark horror film that lives on in both its quotable lines and music that nearly everyone will know when heard but also its legacy. While we have covered the series nearly to death in almost every fashion possible, I don’t think we have looked at what it did for the movie world as much as we could. While there are knockoffs that try to directly capitalize on the very name that built the foundation, looking at you Cruel Jaws/Jaws 5, there are so many wonderful copycats that were produced that live on in their own special ways. My plan is to cover a few of them over the next couple months and while there are many to discuss either on the merits of so bad they are good or genuine uniqueness,...

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Everyone knows that Hollywood loves a sequel. The industry is so enamored with milking IPs that even box office bombs often get follow-ups, like when somebody greenlit a sequel to Keanu Reeves' 2013 flop "47 Ronin" or when 2011's "Atlas Shrugged: Part I" was savaged by critics and then another one turned up a year later. Because of this, actors will frequently push back against studios' insatiable appetite for sequels and refuse to return for another go round if they think they can see the writing on the wall.

Case in point: Clint Eastwood moved on from his Sergio Leone Western era after his Dollars trilogy had wrapped up, refusing to star in Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "Duck, You Sucker!". Why was the actor-filmmaker so averse to returning? Well, after portraying the Man with No Name for three movies,...

Without the legendary Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood wouldn't be the star as we know him today. Though he had been acting for several years — and was even the leading man in Charles Marquis Warren's classic Western TV show "Rawhide" — before his role in "A Fistful of Dollars" came along in 1964, Leone's second movie skyrocketed Eastwood's career and fame in Hollywood to unforeseen heights. He became a phenomenon in the U.S. through, ironically, a movie that was shot in Spain and directed by a non-American director. Of course, looking back, we now know that Leone was responsible for creating the Spaghetti Western subgenre, which began with "A Fistful of Dollars," the first entry in the Dollars Trilogy.

But back then, even Eastwood himself had no clue how much of a box office juggernaut and culturally influential flick "A Fistful of Dollars" would become in both the near and far future.

Clint Eastwood made his last two Westerns almost three decades apart, but before that, he was synonymous with the genre. Getting his breakthrough with the TV show Rawhide, he became a global star when he starred in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western Dollars trilogy. He made the Man with No Name character famous and became a huge star.

However, Eastwood left the Italian film industry and came back to Hollywood right when Sergio Leone was gearing up for his next masterpiece. The actor was reportedly offered a role in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, but the Gran Torino star rejected it, as he was already done with the director’s style.

Clint Eastwood was tired of Sergio Leone’s style after The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly | Credits: United Artists

Sergio Leone’s The Good,...

A classic Sergio Leone gangster movie is making its way to the free streaming service, Tubi. Once Upon a Time in America will hit Tubi on April 1. The movie stars Robert De Niro, James Woods, Treat Williams, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Danny Aiello, and William Forsythe. The film won two BAFTA Awards in 1985, one for Best Score and another for Best Costume Design.

Leone, who died in 1989 at the age of 60, was known for directing Spaghetti Westerns like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West(1968), and Duck, You Sucker! (1971). Once Upon a Time in America was directed by Leone and based on the 1952 novel The Hoods by Harry Grey. The screenplay was written by Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, and Sergio Leone.

The Director Had to Cut the Movie Down from 10 Hours

With a running time of 3 hours and 49 minutes,...

The Gold Rush of 1849 caused thousands of people to flee the Eastern part of the United States and head west to seek easy money, dug up out of the ground. A lot of the lands Americans were infiltrating weren't being overseen by any kind of widely recognized law, and the boomtowns that hastily formed kind of had to make up their infrastructure as they went along. A whole new world formed: the Wild West. 

American writers of fiction were telling tales of the "Great American Frontier" as early as the 1820s (some bibliophiles may be familiar with the works of James Fenimore Cooper), but the Western literary genre began to explode in the late 1850s and 1860s. Pulp novels began to proliferate across the country, and the "penny dreadfuls" invented a lot of the icons and trappings we see in Westerns to this day: gunslingers, bounty hunters, lawmen, etc. Real-life...

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60 years ago this September, Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name stepped on screen for the first time in Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars." It would be a few more years until the low-budget Spaghetti Western made it to America, but the actor's star power and the director's talents were instantly recognizable for early adopters – even if critics took longer to get on board. By the time Leone had released two more Eastwood-led films, rounding out what became known as the Dollars Trilogy, Eastwood's narrowed eyes and steely attitude had become a fundamental image of the movie cowboy.

The Dollars trilogy, which continued with "For A Few Dollars More" and concluded in 1966 with "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," is now celebrated as one of the best on-screen Western sagas of all time. The genre would...

Clint Eastwoods critically acclaimed Dollars Trilogy is coming to a streaming platform. The movies will arrive on Tubi on Sept. 1, giving Western fans the chance to watch the classic films.

The trilogy is perhaps most famous for launching Clint Eastwood's career as a leading man. Eastwood's portrayal of the Man with No Name became iconic, characterized by his stoic demeanor, sharp wit, and efficient gunplay. Alongside Eastwood, the films featured a strong supporting cast, including Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, whose performances in For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, respectively, are particularly memorable.

Related Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone's Greatest Spaghetti Western Is Getting a Remake

One of the most celebrated spaghetti Western movies of all time is getting a remake.

The Dollars Trilogy, directed by Sergio Leone, is one of the most iconic series in the history of cinema,...

Sergio Leone revolutionized western cinema with iconic villains like Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West. Lee Van Cleef's Colonel Douglas Mortimer gave the Man with No Name a formidable partner in For a Few Dollars More. Harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West, played by Charles Bronson, brought a new antihero dynamic to Leone's films.

From the Man with No Name to Once Upon a Time in the West’s Frank, spaghetti western pioneer Sergio Leone is responsible for some of the western genre’s greatest villains and antiheroes. Leone blazed the trail for Italian cinema’s brutal, bloody, darkly comedic take on the American western with A Fistful of Dollars, his westernized remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Leone followed this up with two sequels – For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – to complete the Dollars...

How you situate Sergio Leone’s epic, acerbic A Fistful of Dynamite within the filmmaker’s larger body of work just might depend on which title it bears when you watch it. The original Italian title, Giù la testa, is probably best rendered by the thematically appropriate Keep Your Head Down, but Leone insisted the film go out under the looser translation Duck, You Sucker! It’s a line that recurs several times throughout the film, one that Leone insisted was authentic American slang of the era, though clearly it isn’t any such thing.

The replacement title A Fistful of Dynamite attempts to link it with Leone’s earlier A Fistful of Dollars, but this one gets far darker and more serious than the more “innocent” tales of adventure that form the Dollars trilogy. Probably the most appropriate title was the one applied to it by the French: Once Upon a Time…...

The sun is setting on Summer. As October brings in waves of ghouls and goblins and other nefarious creatures, some may find themselves longing for a return to the scorching heat of the Wild West. That's not to suggest that the Western genre doesn't have its own share of frightening concepts. Ragged gunmen robbing banks, monstrous animals roaming the countryside, and even the harsh climate itself all amount to a terrifying time. Wouldn't it be great to vicariously experience the horrors of the American frontier through a free-to-use streaming service? Maybe Tubi, for instance?

Granted, Tubi's upcoming Western films don't exactly elicit the same kind of fear response found in your typical horror movie. That doesn't mean that they're worth ignoring, however. From newer titles to some returning classics, Tubi's Westerns for October 2023 are sure to remind you of just how dangerous the frontier was as we enter cooler weather.

Sergio Leone is widely considered to be the quintessential maestro of the Spaghetti Western, but his last foray into the genre, Duck, You Sucker! is often overlooked. Perhaps this lack of recognition could be chalked up to the numerous name changes it underwent. European releases had it pegged as Once Upon a Time... the Revolution while United Artists released it as A Fistful of Dynamite. Regardless of its other coinages, Leone's penultimate picture is a fascinating example of his artistry. It is where he is at his most experimental, with the pair of James Coburn and Rod Steiger providing hilarious banter filled with emotional and political cores.

Sergio Calderón, best known for his work on “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”, “Men In Black” and “The Ruins” and more has died. He was 77.

A rep for Calderón confirmed the sad news Wednesday, telling Et, that the actor was surrounded by family at the time.

“We can confirm that Sergio passed away this morning,” his rep shared. “He was in the hospital previously with a bout of pneumonia, not sure that was the cause. He was surrounded by family at the time.”

Calderón played Pirate lord, Captain Eduardo Villanueva of the Adriatic Sea, in 2007’s “At World’s End”, the third instalment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. He also lent his voice to the “At World’s End” video game, where he again starred as the Pirate lord.

The late actor shared several shots from his time on set via social media, including photos of...

Sergio Calderón, the actor recognizable from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Men In Black and The Ruins and many other projects over course of his six-decade career in films and television, died this morning surrounded by family, his spokesperson confirmed to Deadline. He was 77.

In At World’s End, Calderón played one of the film’s Pirate Lords, Captain Eduardo Villanueva of the Adriatic Sea. The actor posted photos to social media of himself and franchise star Johnny Depp as well as rock star Keith Richards, who played the Pirate Lord of Madagascar and Depp’s father in the film.

If someone tries to take your gun, it better be someone like #KeithRichards a true #Legend! pic.twitter.com/Yx4YbB3qTk

— Sergio Calderon (@mrsergecalderon) August 22, 2017

In Mib, Calderón played José, the character whose head is displayed on the end of a sword to Tommy Lee Jones’ K, another...

Mexican character actor Sergio Calderón, best known for playing the “head on a stick” in 1997’s “Men in Black” and Capt. Vallenueva in 2007’s “Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End,” died this morning surrounded by family, according to his spokesperson. Calderón was 77.

Although the cause of death was not publicized at press time, Calderón was previously in the hospital with a bout of pneumonia.

The actors’ other notable credits include Sergio Leone’s “Duck, You Sucker!” (1971), in which Calderón played a Mexican revolutionary. Additionally, in John Huston’s “Under the Volcano” (1984), he played a violent Mexican chief of police opposite Albert Finney.

On the television side, Calderón starred on the debut episode of NBC’s “The A-Team” in 1983, where he made a guest appearance as the flamboyant bandit Malavida Valdése. He later returned to the show in its third season as the river pirate El Cajón (translating...

Sergio Calderón, the amiable Mexican character actor who made his mark in such notable films as The In-Laws, Men in Black and Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, has died. He was 77.

Calderón died Wednesday in a Los Angeles hospital of natural causes, a family spokesman announced.

Calderón portrayed a Mexican revolutionary at the turn of the 20th century in Duck, You Sucker! (1971), written and directed by Sergio Leone, and was a murderous Mexican chief of police opposite Albert Finney in John Huston’s Under the Volcano (1984).

He guest-starred as the colorful bandit Malavida Valdése on the premiere episode of NBC’s The A-Team in 1983, then returned as the river pirate El Cajón (The Coffin) at the start of the show’s third season a year later.

Calderón played Alfonso, one of the Hondurans, in the Arthur Hiller comedy The In-Laws (1979) — it was the role that got...

Horror Feature “My (Best Friend’S) Head Exploded” to Premiere in June: "Writer/Director Scott Bryan’s puppet-filled existential horror feature, “My (Best Friend’S) Head Exploded,” will have its two-weekend world premiere this June.

“My (Best Friend’s) Head Exploded” is a rebellious, existential, terrifyingly messy puppet feature made out of material things by actual people. It tells the story of Lydia, a coming-of-ageless vampire forced to deal with the loss of her best friend, Sam, after the pair conjures a moment of complete clarity which causes Sam’s head to explode.

In the aftermath, Lydia must contend with old ghosts, generational trauma, oppressive authority figures, and the confusing fear of infinity to set reality right and save her own sanity.

“I love making weird stuff that a studio would be afraid of and a computer couldn’t replicate,” Bryan said.

The film will show at the Salem Witch Board Museum in Salem,...

He reinvented the Western with his Dollars trilogy, but how does Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time... trilogy rate alongside each other? Westerns were once one of Hollywood's biggest genres, but by the end of the '60s, they were in decline. Audience tastes began to drift away from the often simplistic depictions of Good vs Evil that more traditional "Oaters" depicted. That said, Sergio Leone's unofficial Yojimbo remake A Fistful Of Dollars gave the ailing genre a stylish violent shot in the arm and made Clint Eastwood a movie star.

Leone's "Spaghetti" Westerns succeeded by breaking the rules of the genre too. Eastwood's Man with No Name was an anti-hero with no problem shooting first and using others to achieve his goals. Leone only made three further movies after finishing work on the Dollars movies, with this trio forming his unofficial Once Upon A Time... trilogy. They...

Between the pore-rich tightness of his close-ups and the mysterious, patient grandeur of his landscapes, Sergio Leone took the Hollywood-forged myths that enraptured him as a child and created one of cinema’s most influential oeuvres.

Considering Leone’s impact, from those sun-cooked, Ennio Morricone–scored westerns through the nostalgic sweep of his final film, “Once Upon a Time in America,” there’s never not a good time to enjoy a detailed, clip-rich tribute to the legendary Italian filmmaker, and now we have Francesco Zippel’s gratifying biographical appraisal “Sergio Leone: The Italian Who Invented America,” making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Cineastes who watch it should start pulling those Leone DVDs from the shelf beforehand; you’ll want them handy when the parade of praised sequences and behind-the-scenes insight is over, and after interviewee-superfan Quentin Tarantino offers up an amusing post-credits anecdote built around the shorthand...

Director Sergio Leone's impact on cinema is still felt thanks to his "Dollars Trilogy" of Westerns: "A Fistful of Dollars," "For A Few Dollars More," and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," three films that revolutionized the Western genre and introduced Clint Eastwood as a star to be reckoned with.

But with the enormous success of those films, Leone found himself pigeonholed, only able to find quick financing for further Western adventures and not other types of movies he hoped to make. Leone was less interested in making endless shoot-em-ups than he was in making films that observed America from an outsider's perspective, which is partially why the gap between 1971's "Duck, You Sucker" and 1984's "Once Upon a Time in America" was so huge. Leone even turned down the chance to direct "The Godfather" in order to pursue his own vision of early 20th century crime, its relationship to politics,...

Sergio Leone's filmmaking instincts were unerring. Once he got his feet under him with "A Fistful of Dollars," he made masterfully composed widescreen Western epics that were dense with references to their genre predecessors. You don't have to be a movie buff to fall in love with a Leone film, but your enjoyment is certainly enhanced, particularly on multiple viewings, when you realize how deftly he's integrated the works of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and so on into his mythic vision of the West. And while his Italian perspective, which spawned the label "Spaghetti Western," gave these films a vaguely European sensibility, he largely connected with audiences the world over because he spoke fluently the language of cinema.

Leone might've been an articulate filmmaker, but he was far from loquacious. He only spoke when he had something to say. This is why, after the completion of "Duck, You Sucker...

Alex Cox attacks the Reagan years with a political tale sung in the key of the Italo Spaghetti Western: expect plenty of slow motion shots of stylish pistolero mercenaries fighting for the historical ‘filibuster’ William Walker. Look him up, he’s the patron saint of every neocon and would-be soldier of fortune. Everybody on this show goes the whole 9 yards in commitment, with Ed Harris in the lead — they filmed in Nicaragua. It may be director Cox’s finest film, packed with vivid images and surreal anachronisms — and a terrific music score by Joe Strummer.

Walker

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 423

1987 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 94 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 12, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Ed Harris, Richard Masur, Rene Auberjonois, Xander Berkeley, Peter Boyle, Marlee Matlin, Alfonso Arau, Pedro Armendáriz Jr., Gerrit Graham, William O’Leary, Blanca Guerra, Miguel Sandoval.

Cinematography: David Bridges

Production Designer: Bruno Rubeo

Art Directors: Cecilia Montiel, Jorge Sainz

Film Editors: Alex Cox,...

Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America is as epic as The Godfather, gorier than Goodfellas, and as streetwise as Mean Streets. It tells a full history, from childhood to old age, street hustles to political suicides, community toilets to opium dens. The version which is right now available on Netflix has been amazingly restored by Italy’s Bologna Cinematheque L’Immagine Ritrovata lab. I don’t think I have ever seen the film so clear, and it is a perennial to me, as is The Godfather.

It’s true, even the most devoted gangster fan and cinephile doesn’t watch Once Upon a Time in America as often as The Godfather, and it’s got Robert De Niro at his most gangta. For one thing, Leone’s film has never been as accessible. It is not shown regularly on any kind of broadcast channel, and even the...

As the drama and disruption that is coronavirus continues, people are looking for ways to temporarily forget the chaos that seems to be sweeping the globe. Thankfully, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn is here to perhaps assist you with that, as well as offer you a way to best use your time should you currently be under self-isolation. Gunn has taken to social media to suggest ten movies that are well worth your time, and might just help you get over the Covid-19 worry, even if just for a moment.

James Gunn's recommendation list is just varied enough to appeal to almost everyone, with an assortment of movies from all around the world. He has also chosen a lot of movies that flew under the radar, which not only increases the chance of most people having never seen them, but also giving movie fans the opportunity to see...

With the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world, many are finding themselves in quarantine as they self-isolate, as per widespread instructions for those who might be suffering from the illness. These are obviously troubling times for all of us, but on a personal level, it’s also been difficult for folks to know what to do with themselves while stuck inside all day.

Writer/director James Gunn has stepped forward with a neat idea for how film fans can turn this difficult period into a positive, though – why not use the free time to stream some often overlooked movies that deserve your attention? The Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker shared his personal top 10 recommendations, while also encouraging his followers to list their own picks in the replies.

Gunn’s own choices should contain at least one movie that piques your interest as he’s pulled from across the various genres, decades...

Above: French grande for Long Weekend. Artist Léo Kouper.Update: Sadly, because of coronavirus precautions closing down all of Lincoln Center yesterday, this series has been cancelled. It may only ever exist in poster form.One of the most interesting and eclectic New York repertory series in many a moon starts today at Film at Lincoln Center. Titled “Mapping Bacurau,” the series has been handpicked by filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles to highlight the varied cinematic influences behind their current arthouse-meets-grindhouse sensation. The result is a baker’s dozen of eccentric horror movies, spaghetti westerns, revenge saga,s and essential texts of the Cinema Novo movement. Having art directed the U.S. poster for Bacurau with illustrator Tony Stella and designer Midnight Marauder, it was fascinating to see how the posters for these films had echoes in our final design, even if only coincidentally. One of which was...

By Fred Blosser

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Sergio Leone’s “Giù La Testa,” later retitled not once but twice for American release, opened in Italy in October 1971 to great expectations by the director’s fans. According to the preeminent Leone expert Sir Christopher Frayling, in an informative audio commentary included in a new Blu-ray edition of the film from Kino Lorber Studio Classics under its second U.S. title, “A Fistful of Dynamite,” the Italian phrase meant something like “keep your head down.” In other words, in times of social convulsion like the bloody 1913 Mexican revolution portrayed in the movie, save yourself unnecessary grief and keep as low a profile as you can. Toshiro Mifune’s wandering samurai in “Yojimbo” offered similar advice: “A quiet life eating rice is best.” In Leone’s film, James Coburn and Rod Steiger starred as mismatched partners -- a fugitive...

Following up his Oscar win earlier this year for Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight, the legendary composer Ennio Morricone seems to be as busy as ever. Ahead of his 88th birthday this fall, he’s currently on tour and on the same day that we’ll hear his new score for Terrence Malick‘s Voyage of Time, he’s set to release a new album.

The composer has signed a new record deal with Decca Records and the first album to be released is Morricone 60, which celebrates his six decades of work. Featuring a selection of new recordings with Czech National Symphony Orchestra, it includes themes from his Sergio Leone films, The Mission, Cinema Paradiso, and more, as well as his recent Oscar-winning work.

“After the success of The Hateful Eight score, I’m delighted to be returning to Decca with my own record deal – an extraordinary moment in my 60th professional anniversary year,...

Ennio Morricone accepts an Honorary Academy Award during the 79th Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, CA, on Sunday, February 25, 2007.

The Weinstein Company has released a 7-minute video from the actual recording session of L’Ultima Diligenza per Red Rock (versione integrale) from The Hateful Eight.

Featuring the legendary composer, Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight is nominated for 3 Academy Awards this year, including Best Original Score.

In The Hateful Eight, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter,...

Streaming services are a crucial addition to modern civilization, but only in December do they become a truly indispensible survival tool. Whether curled around your laptop in order to keep warm or retreating to your favorites queue in a desperate attempt to hide from your loved ones, this is the season when having something good to watch can mean the difference between life and death.

Fortunately for us, Netflix, Hulu, and the other major hubs have busted out the big guns just in time. From indisputable classics to contemporary gems,...

Sergio Leone Week! concludes at Trailers from Hell, with director Brian Trenchard-Smith introducing "Duck, You Sucker!"Considered one of his most overtly political films, this final Leone western is a melancholy action film steeped in memory. It looks to have influenced Leone collaborator Bernardo Bertolucci’s own politically charged historical epic, 1900. Peter Bogdanovich was originally contracted to direct but ankled when he bridled at having to imitate Leone’s baroque pictorial style. James Coburn’s Irish revolutionary role was intended for Jason Robards and Rod Steiger’s Mexican peasant for Eli Wallach. When a shortened version was released in America to boxoffice indifference in 1971 the title was changed to A Fistful Of Dynamite. Also known in Europe as Once Upon A Time…The Revolution. It was banned in Mexico until 1979.

Feature Paul Martinovic Jan 18, 2013

With Django Unchained out now in the UK, Paul looks back at Sergio Leone's classic Dollars trilogy that helped inspire it...

Howard Hawks, one of the most successful Western directors of all time and a key influence on Sergio Leone, once said a great movie can be defined as one with "three great scenes, and no bad ones." There can be few directors who understood the power of great scenes quite as strongly as Leone, the director of the Dollars trilogy and de facto godfather of the spaghetti western.

Some might argue his emphasis on great individual moments was to his detriment, as the MacGuffin-laden plots of his films seem to exist mainly as devices on which he can hang his elaborate setpieces, and were subsequently labeled as exercises in pure style. While the artistic and intellectual merits of the three films are up for debate,...

For someone who's considered one of the greatest filmmakers in history, Sergio Leone was not especially prolific. While he worked extensively as an assistant director (with credits including "Bicycle Thieves," "Quo Vadis" and "Ben Hur"), he was only credited on seven films across his thirty-year career (with uncredited direction work on three others -- "The Last Days Of Pompeii," "My Name Is Nobody" and "A Genius, Two Partners and A Dupe").

But given that those films include some of the greatest Westerns -- the Man With No Name trilogy, and "Once Upon A Time In The West" -- and a wonderful crime epic, "Once Upon A Time In America," it's hard not to mourn that we didn't get more films from the director, who passed away 23 years ago today, on April 30th, 1989. But it wasn't for a lack of trying, as there were a number of other projects that Leone considered,...

With Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists marketed under a variety of different names outside the UK, James looks at a few other alternate movie titles…

Sailing across screens this week we’ve got The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists, which promises viewers a rip-roaring comic caper brought to stop-motion plasticine life by Aardman Animations.

It’s got inept buccaneers, a delightfully daft plot, Brian Blessed providing the voice of the Pirate King and a swordfighting Queen Victoria with a steampunk skirt. With a great big Wallace & Gromit smile I eagerly embrace this eccentric concoction and skip to the cinema guaranteed to have a cracking time.

It’s only in the United Kingdom, though, that audiences will be taking theatre seats to see The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists. Elsewhere around the globe, cinemagoers will be acquainting themselves with The Pirates! Band Of Misfits. That’s the case...

Above: Image from Maurice Binder's title sequence for Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

Sleep Little Lush

This follow-up to the previous soundtrack mix, Hyper Sleep, is very much the same animal: a chance gathering of mesmerizing music tracks, carefully arranged to focus on the interstitial character of film music—its ability to distill into hallucinatory moments, the most sensual or emotional qualities of a film’s nature, and amplify these sensations to increase their temporal impact. With this idea of music as intoxicant in mind, the passing this year of John Barry was a loss of one of the great “perfumers” of film composing (for more on music as perfume, see Daniel Kasman’s “Herrmann’s Perfume”). The beautiful themes that Barry scored for the world of 007 that open this collection set the spell for a kaleidoscopic (largely) 60s and 70s sample of some of the best film music written by Ennio Morricone,...

Following in the tradition of great What Culture arguments for films such as Jurassic Park, Star Wars and Jaws, it’s now time for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to step forward and shoot all contenders down for the prestigious title of greatest film of all time. No other film is as iconic, as epic or as purely cinematic as Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti western, which combines everything that’s remarkable about about the work of the late Italian director into one astonishing piece of filmmaking.

Here’s 50 reasons why The Good, the Bad and the Ugly might just be the greatest film of all time.

1. Clint Eastwood as Blondie (Aka: The Man With No Name/The Good)

Where better to start than Clint Eastwood’s effortlessly cool return as The Man With No Name, or as he is actually named here, Blondie. A man of few words,...

By John Exshaw

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Anyone fortunate enough to be within a day’s ride of Dublin on Tuesday, 1 November, should saddle up bright and early to catch the Irish Film Institute’s 40th anniversary presentation of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite, to be introduced by Leone biographer and Spaghetti Western top-gun, Sir Christopher Frayling. Also participating in the event will be director John Boorman, who assisted Leone in finding the locations used in the film’s Irish flashback sequences, and Ireland’s top special-effects expert, Gerry Johnston, who worked on the action scenes shot in Toner’s pub in Dublin’s Baggot Street.

Frayling, whose last appearance at the Ifi (introducing Once Upon a Time in the West) was the highpoint of the 2000 season, will use extracts from such films as John Ford’s The Informer...

While we wait to see how Darren Aronofsky's jury will divvy up the Lions in Venice this evening, a big batch of autonomous organizations and critics associations such as Fipresci have already handed out their awards … Diego Lerer and Neil Young rank the films they've seen in Venice … Gautam Valluri introduces the new, fourth issue of Projectorhead, featuring Adrian Martin on Sergio Leone, Anuj Malhotra on Bong Joon-ho, Kaz Rahman on Emir Kusturica, interviews with Kumar Shahani and cinematographer Martin Ruhe and more … Michel Gondry returns to France for The Foam of Days, with Audrey Tautou, Léa Seydoux, Romain Duris and Jamel Debbouze … Arnaud des Pallières's Michael Kohlhaas will feature Mads Mikkelsen and Bruno Ganz … But the most controversial project in the works has to be Mel Gibson's biopic based on the life of Jewish hero Judah Maccabee — with a screenplay by Joe Eszterhas, no less.

Image:...

Stargate Universe starts again from the beginning, while That Mitchell and Webb Look and Misfits repeats end. Plus - lots of movies to watch out for!

The next seven days are full of final sips and refills beginning tomorrow morning, Saturday August 14th with a repeat broadcast from the first moments of Stargate Universe. The series' three part opener, Air, introduces the unprepared crew of Destiny and parts 1-3 will run in succession on Sky2 starting at 9:00am. The next three episodes Darkness, Light, and Water will be shown on Wednesday, August 18th beginning at 9:00pm.

Saturday night, August 14th at 10:00pm on Channel 4, the final episode of the first series of the unlikely and often unlovable superpower-imbued Misfits is repeated. It's an important one to catch if you haven't seen it, and to refresh your memory if you have. The second series, due in autumn,...

Since the announcement of this year’s selected films, the Cannes film festival machine has whirred on, with additions to that line-up and confirmation of some of the Out of Competition activities that attendees can look forward to.

One particular highlight is the Cannes Classics programme of films, a selection of restored films and rediscovered lost films, as part of the build up to their re-release in cinemas or on DVD. The programme traditionally includes some massively important films: the 2009 fest offered the mouth-watering triptych of Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948), Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite (1971) and Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), and this year’s line-up is just as eye-catching.

This year’s Cannes Classic programme lines up as follows (with additional detail of their restoration, and the ceremony attached to the screening):

- La Bataille Du Rail (The Battle of the Rails) (France,...

I have always been moved in some way or another by film music, but no one has created a bigger lump in the throat or watered my eyes more than Ennio Morricone.

He made film music transcend the film. He made me realize that film music could invoke emotions that went beyond just playing sad or tense or action themes. His music became the emotional anchor of the films he scored. This is music that didn’t have to make you think of the film it was used in, but gives your life its own score. I know that may be getting a little carried away, but that’s how I’ve always viewed it.

Being a (very) amateur composer myself, I always fall back on not just his work but the context of how it’s placed in movies. The few cues that were written before filming especially in...