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When Gena Rowlands passed away last month at the age of 94, New Yorker critic Richard Brody referred to her as the greatest artist of all the actresses he had ever seen onscreen. It’s an assertion that might come across as hyperbole to someone who had never seen Rowlands’ collaborations with her husband John Cassavetes on “Faces,” “Minnie and Moskowitz,” “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Opening Night,” “Gloria,” and “Love Streams,” but even a cursory viewing of any of those performances quickly validates Brody’s claim. And while Rowlands’ work with Cassavetes is her most exalted (and properly so), she achieved great depths of emotional expression for other filmmakers like Woody Allen (“Another Woman”), Paul Schrader (“Light of Day”) and Paul Mazursky (“Tempest”) — not to mention her son Nick, who cast her in a beautiful late-career role in his tearjerker “The Notebook.”

This month both the American Cinematheque and the...

Beloved actor Gena Rowlands has died at the age of 94, it has been confirmed. The star – best known for films like A Woman Under The Influence and Gloria, directed by her husband John Cassavetes – was renowned for her raw and uncompromising performances, making an indelible impact on cinema often while working outside of the Hollywood studio system. Rowlands passed away at home, following a previous diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

While Rowlands made her big-screen debut in 1958’s The High Cost Of Loving, her cinematic collaborations with Cassavetes as director began in 1963 with A Child Is Waiting – and continued through the likes of 1968’s Faces, 1971’s Minnie And Moskowitz, 1974’s A Woman Under The Influence, 1977’s Opening Night, 1980’s Gloria, and 1984’s Love Streams. Their work together marked early examples of independent cinema. A Woman Under The Influence – for which Rowlands won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar...

Actress Gena Rowlands, winner of three Emmy Awards and an Honorary Academy Award in addition to two nominations, died on Wednesday as confirmed by the office of her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. She had been living with Alzheimer’s Disease for five years and was 94 years old.

Rowlands began her career on Broadway in the 1950s, appearing in productions of “The Seven Year Itch” and “Middle of the Night.” She worked in early television, including revered anthology programs like “Studio One” and “The United States Steel Hour.” She also appeared on the jazzy detective program “Johnny Staccato” opposite her husband John Cassavetes.

It was with Cassavetes and his troupe, including Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and Seymour Cassel, that pretty much invented the prestige American independent film, with groundbreaking collaborations like “Faces,” “Minnie and Moskowitz,” and “Opening Night.” This led to Oscar nominations for her leading roles in “A Woman Under The Influence...

The three-time Emmy winner has been celebrated for her vivid portrayals of strong, troubled women, including in 10 films directed by her first husband John Cassavetes

• Peter Bradshaw on Gena Rowlands: the fiercest, most incandescent star of US indie cinema

Gena Rowlands, the Oscar-nominated actor best known for the string of films she collaborated on with her husband, the director John Cassavetes, has died aged 94 her son, Nick Cassavetes, said on Wednesday. In 2024 Nick revealed that she had Alzheimer’s.

A successful actor before and after her films with John Cassavetes, it is nevertheless the string of films she made with her actor-turned-director husband that came to define her career. In Faces (1968), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980) and Love Streams (1984), Rowlands played a series of groundbreaking roles as damaged and yearning women in emotionally committed performances of a kind all too rare in American cinema of the period.

Gena Rowlands, the legendary actress who became one of the first major faces of American independent film through her collaborations with her late husband John Cassavetes, has died at the age of 94.

Rowlands, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died on Wednesday, August 14 in the afternoon at her home in Indian Wells, California, according to multiple media reports. No cause of death was given.

Born in Cambria, Wisconsin in 1930, Rowlands began acting in stage productions in the 1950s, gradually working her way up from regional theater to Broadway before becoming a regular presence on television. By the end of the decade she was frequently leading TV movies and making guest appearances on major network shows.

In 1954, Rowlands married John Cassavetes, who would go on to become her most important collaborator. Rowlands starred in ten films written and directed by Cassavetes, many of which were self-financed and quickly shot...

Gena Rowlands, the wife and muse of John Cassavetes whose unvarnished abilities found in such films as Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night and Gloria put her in the pantheon of acting legends, died Wednesday. She was 94.

Rowlands died surrounded by family members at her home in Indian Wells, California, according to TMZ. A spokesperson for WME, where her son, writer-director Nick Cassavetes, has representation, confirmed her death. She had battled Alzheimer’s since 2019.

Rowlands received Oscar nominations for her performances in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), where she played an isolated, emotionally vulnerable housewife who lapses into madness, and Gloria (1980), where she sparkled as a pissed-off child protector who rails against the Mob.

She lost out to Ellen Burstyn of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Sissy Spacek of Coal Miner’s Daughter in those Academy Award races. Her greatness wasn’t formally acknowledged by the Academy...

Gena Rowlands, whose seminal and fearless performance in “A Woman Under the Influence” inspired a generation and who starred in many other John Cassavetes features as well as the romance “The Notebook,” died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, Calif. She was 94.

Her death was confirmed by the office of her son’s agent. In June, Nick Cassavetes, who directed his mother in “The Notebook,” shared that the three-time Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Rowlands’ role as Mabel Longhetti in the 1974 drama “A Woman Under the Influence,” written for her and directed by husband John Cassavetes, landed the actor the first of two Academy Award nominations. The other nom was for “Gloria” (1980), also directed by her husband. In November 2015, she was awarded an honorary Academy Award at the annual Governors Awards in recognition of her storied career.

“Working this long? I didn...

It’s a fairly big month on Prime Video in March, at least compared to the other streaming service offerings! There are are two major films arriving on Amazon’s streamer. The first is a remake of the Patrick Swayze action classic Road House. Stepping into the late Swayze’s shoes? A crazy-jacked Jake Gyllenhaal, who really seemed to want to go the extra mile for this project.

The other big film coming to Prime Video is Ricky Stanicky, and the plot sounds really fun! It follows three friends who have always blamed their mistakes on an imaginary guy called Ricky Stanicky. When they have to finally introduce people to Stanicky, they decide to hire a washed-up actor (John Cena) to impersonate him. Hilarity ensues, maybe? But if neither of those make your watchlist, there’s also the return of the animated hit series Invincible.

Here’s everything coming to...

Gena Rowlands is the Ocar-nominated thespian who made a name for herself thanks to a series of manic, high-wire performances in several films, many of them directed by her late husband, indie maverick John Cassavetes. But how many of her titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 12 of Rowlands’s greatest films, ranked worst to best.

After making a name for herself with bit parts onstage and onscreen, Rowlands flourished when she became the muse of Cassavetes, who she married in 1954. A fellow performer, Cassavetes would raise money from appearing in movies like “The Dirty Dozen” (1967) and “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), immediately funneling the funds into his own projects. His wife was usually front and center, as were their family members and friends.

Rowlands’s operatic performances were a perfect match for her husband’s improvisational, energetic films, including “Faces” (1968), “Minnie and Moskowitz” (1971), “Opening Night” (1977) and “Love Streams” (1984). Her...

Amazon Prime Video has popped off with plenty of new content for March 2023 with original shows and some great catches for films to stream. “Top Gun: Maverick” will arrive March 24, and Jordan Peele’s “Nope” before that on March 21. For those anticipating “Creed III,” the first two films starring and directed by Michael B. Jordan will become available at the beginning of March along with all of the “Rocky” films as well as “Cinderella Man” for the broader boxing buff community. A theatrical release from 2022, “The Silent Twins,” starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrence arrives March 7.

Friday March 3 will see “Daisy Jones & The Six” rock the world when the band’s epic limited series comes out. Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Suki Waterhouse, and more will bring Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel to life. Other shows to look forward to on the streamer are Donald Glover’s horror series...

With its list of new releases for March 2023, Amazon Prime Video might be rolling out its most impressive monthly lineup yet.

We know that sounds like something straight out of a press release but in this case, it’s actually true! Prime Video, bless it, has some excellent original titles like The Boys and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but its monthly release updates have often been less inspiring than its TV peers. That’s certainly not the case with March 2023 though.

Prime Video gets its streaming party started early by premiering the first three episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six on March 3. This series, based on a book of the same name, tells the fictional Behind the Music-esque story of an equally fictional band. Then, on March 17, Amazon’s partnership with Donald Glover bears its first fruit with the series about obsessive fandom called Swarm. Reggie Jackson documentary Reggie premieres...

March is still winter, no matter which animal you ask, which means it’s still completely acceptable to cancel all plans and curl up under a blanket in front of the TV. Prime Video’s movie library updates throughout the month, with most of its new additions on March 1 — including the “Rocky” saga, multiple “Carrie” adaptations, “12 Angry Men,” and more.

For Prime users who love books and TV, March means the highly-anticipated premiere of “Daisy Jones & the Six,” based on the best-selling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The eponymous Daisy (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne’s band (Sam Claflin) make a mean match, starting with a hit single and leading to what seems like endless fame and glory. But where there is success there is peril, and both the band’s rise and an electric connection with Daisy threaten Billy’s marriage and everyone’s personal lives. James Ponsoldt,...

Venice Competition jury president Julianne Moore was speaking at today’s press conference.

Curation is an essential function of film festivals, according to Venice Competition jury president Julianne Moore.

“Curation matters so much,” said Moore, speaking at the opening press conference for the 2022 festival. “Venice is people gathering this extraordinary work for us all to discover.”

The US actress described her first experience of curation, through her local cinema as a 10-year-old in Juneau, Alaska, where she saw John Cassavetes’ 1971 film Minnie And Moskowitz.

Moore said her reaction was, “What is this? What is this world out there? How do I fit in?...

Julianne Moore, who is presiding over the Venice Film Festival jury, spoke at a press conference on Tuesday morning that kicked off the 79th edition of the movie gathering.

She reminisced about how she first came to Venice as an actress on the American soap opera “As the World Turns” in 1986. “I never, ever in my life though I would be the head of this jury,” Moore said. “And If you had told me that one day I was going to head the jury of the Venice Film Festival I would have fallen into the canal, honestly.”

Asked about the importance of film festivals during a time of change in the movie industry, as streaming threatens theatrical distribution, Moore pointed out that “curation matters so much.”

“It’s people gathering extraordinary works for us all to discover,” Moore said, before revealing a formative film experience she had as a child.

Bodies break in “Halloween Kills.” Blood paints walls, knives show real ingenuity when finding new parts of the body to carve up, and a pair of eyeballs burst like grapes under the weight of two sausage-like thumbs. And for all that, for all the carnage Michael Myers unleashes on the residents of Haddonfield, Il, a masked madman might be the lesser of their concerns. Because even as they live with the toll and trauma of killer Mike’s many reigns of terror, a far weightier Chef’s Knife of Damocles hangs over the townspeople’s heads — that $159.3 million the 2018 “Halloween” reboot banked at the domestic box-office.

To the townspeople’s corporeal misfortune, the $159.3 million check — $255.6 million worldwide! — was cashed by a Hollywood where successful performances don’t get sequels, they get sagas. Where one film’s promise that “Evil dies tonight” runs headfirst into next year’s promise of a threequel,...

The actor/comedian/writer/director joins us to talk about some of the objectively bad movies he loves.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Explorers (1985)

Chinatown (1974)

Suicide Squad (2016)

The Oath (2018)

The Last Movie Star (2018)

Tango and Cash (1989)

The Thing (1982)

Runaway Train (1985)

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Conrack (1974)

Volcano (1997)

Dante’s Peak (1997)

Earthquake (1974)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Independence Day (1996)

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Road House (1989)

Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)

Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

The Greatest Showman (2017)

West Side Story (1961)

Chicago (2002)

The Producers (1967)

Outbreak (1995)

Volunteers (1985)

Splash (1984)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Philadelphia (1993)

Bachelor Party (1984)

Con Air (1997)

Bad Boys (1995)

The Rock (1996)

Mandy (2018)

Out For Justice (1991)

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

Goodfellas (1990)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Hard To Kill (1991)

Above The Law (1988)

Under Siege (1992)

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)

The Asian Connection (2016)

Contract To Kill (2016)

The Perfect Weapon (2016)

Sniper: Special Ops (2016)

The Glimmer Man (1996)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Contagion (2011)

Other Notable Items

The...

Gena Rowlands celebrates her 89th birthday on June 19, 2019. The Oscar-nominated thespian made a name for herself thanks to a series of manic, high-wire performances in several films, many of them directed by her late husband, indie maverick John Cassavetes. But how many of her titles remain classics? In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of Rowlands’s greatest films, ranked worst to best.

After making a name for herself with bit parts onstage and onscreen, Rowlands flourished when she became the muse of Cassavetes, who she married in 1954. A fellow performer, Cassavetes would raise money from appearing in movies like “The Dirty Dozen” (1967) and “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), immediately funneling the funds into his own projects. His wife was usually front and center, as were their family members and friends.

SEEHonorary Oscars: Full gallery of acting recipients includes Charlie Chaplin, Angela Lansbury, Gena Rowlands

Rowlands’s...

Come get your Q on! The 12th Annual QFest St. Louis, presented by Cinema St. Louis,runs April 28-May 2, 2019, at the Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar) .The St. Louis-based Lgbtq film festival, QFest will present an eclectic slate of 28 films. The participating filmmakers represent a wide variety of voices in contemporary queer world cinema. The mission of the film festival is to use the art of contemporary gay cinema to spotlight the lives of Lgbtq people and to celebrate queer culture. The full schedule can be found Here

The 12th Annual QFest St. Louis continues Monday April 29th. Here’s Monday’s schedule:

5:00pm April 29th: Holly Near: Singing For Our Lives – This is a Free screening

(though tickets are required from box office)

Singer, songwriter, and social activist Holly Near has been performing and acting for more than 50 years, and in the process she’s created what Gloria Steinem calls...

Prolific actor Seymour Cassel, who received an Academy Award nomination for “Faces” and appeared in Wes Anderson films including “Rushmore,” died Sunday in Los Angeles of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 84.

Cassel was a veteran of dozens of independent films, appearing in multiple roles in films directed by John Cassavetes and Anderson. In addition to playing Bert Fischer in “Rushmore,” he appeared in “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”

Cassel was born in Detroit on Jan. 22, 1935. His early career was tied to Cassavetes and he made his movie debut in an uncredited role in Cassavetes’ first film, “Shadows,” in 1958 and became an associate producer on the project. He co-starred with Cassavetes in “Too Late Blues” and “The Webster Boy” and appeared on “The Lloyd Bridges Show” in the episode “A Pair of Boots” directed by Cassavetes. His early TV credits included “Twelve O’Clock High,” “Combat!,...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. John Cassavetes's Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) is showing July 17 - August 16, 2018 in the United Kingdom and July 15 - August 14, 2018 in many countries around the world.It is difficult to write about a John Cassavetes film. His work, which is so elusive and textured in form and style, is deeply experiential. Watching his films is an immersive, enthralling, and often challenging experience. Although Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) is, in many ways, one of Cassavetes’s more accessible, straightforward and lighthearted films, it also embodies the meandering, irrational, and at times absurd and chaotic style that has come to define his body of work. Minnie and Moskowitz is Cassavetes’ revisionist take on the screwball comedy, following its titular protagonists Minnie Moore (Gena Rowlands) and Seymour Moskowitz (Seymour Cassel) as they negotiate the most unlikely of romantic courtships over a brief but intense four days.

'120 Beats per Minute' trailer: Robin Campillo's AIDS movie features plenty of drama and a clear sociopolitical message. AIDS drama makes Pedro Almodóvar cry – but will Academy members tear up? (See previous post re: Cannes-Oscar connection.) In case France submits it to the 2018 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, screenwriter-director Robin Campillo's AIDS drama 120 Beats per Minute / 120 battements par minute, about the Paris Act Up chapter in the early 1990s, could quite possibly land a nomination. The Grand Prix (Cannes' second prize), international film critics' Fipresci prize, and Queer Palm winner offers a couple of key ingredients that, despite its gay sex scenes, should please a not insignificant segment of the Academy membership: emotionalism and a clear sociopolitical message. When discussing the film after the presentation of the Palme d'Or, Pedro Almodóvar (and, reportedly, jury member Jessica Chastain) broke into tears. Some believed, in fact, that 120 Beats per Minute...

Filmmakers, Actors and Actresses and Hollywood’s A-listers turned out for the first Oscar awards show of the season – the 7th annual Governors Awards.

The star-studded evening was held in Hollywood, CA, on Saturday. (Nov 14, 2015)

The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award went to Debbie Reynolds, and Honorary Awards were presented to Spike Lee and Gena Rowlands at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center.

The Honorary Award, an Oscar statuette, is given “to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.” The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, also an Oscar statuette, is given “to an individual in the motion picture arts and sciences whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.”

Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs opened the 2015 Governors Awards with a tribute to the Paris tragedy and spoke about The Academy’s response...

©A.M.P.A.S.

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted Tuesday night (August 25) to present Honorary Awards to Spike Lee and Gena Rowlands, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Debbie Reynolds.

All three awards will be presented at the Academy’s 7th Annual Governors Awards on Saturday, November 14, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center.

“The Board is proud to recognize our honorees’ remarkable contributions at this year’s Governors Awards,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “We’ll be celebrating their achievements with the knowledge that the work they have accomplished – with passion, dedication and a desire to make a positive difference – will also enrich future generations.”

Lee, a champion of independent film and an inspiration to young filmmakers, made an auspicious debut with his Nyu thesis film, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads,” which won...

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted Tuesday night (August 25) to present Honorary Awards to Spike Lee and Gena Rowlands, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Debbie Reynolds. All three awards will be presented at the Academy’s 7th Annual Governors Awards on Saturday, November 14, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center®. “The Board is proud to recognize our honorees’ remarkable contributions at this year’s Governors Awards,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “We’ll be celebrating their achievements with the knowledge that the work they have accomplished – with passion, dedication and a desire to make a positive difference – will also enrich future generations.” Lee, a champion of independent film and an inspiration to young filmmakers, made an auspicious debut with his Nyu thesis film, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads,” which won a Student Academy Award® in...

Gena Rowlands, who turns 85 today, is a cinema nonpareil who showed many faces in the films of her husband: a broken-down housewife in "A Woman Under the Influence," a washed-up thespian in "Opening Night," a desperate call-girl in "Faces." Cassavetes originally wrote "A Woman Under the Influence," the raw story of a lovably mad housewife who is also a danger to herself, as a play for his muse and partner. But it proved to be too exhausting for a stage production and so the maverick indie director turned to family and friends, including Peter Falk, who co-stars in the film as Rowlands' patient husband, for money and rounded up AFI students to make this volatile film that nabbed them both Oscar nominations. Listen below to a rare 90-minute interview about the film, and filmmaking. This was Rowlands fifth pairing with Cassavetes after "Shadows," "A Child Is Waiting," "Faces" and "Minnie and Moskowitz.

Netflix giveth and Netflix taketh away.

While everyone's favorite subscription streaming service is adding a ton of awesome movies and TV shows in December, it's also yanking a huge list of popular titles from its library. Below is said list. I'm especially sad to see "Dirty Dancing" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" go. Those movies are the sh...

Watch them while you can!

Movies Being Dropped by Netflix on December 1st

"1941" (1979)

"The Apostle" (1997)

"Audrey Rose" (1977)

"The Believers" (1987)

"Better than Chocolate" (1999)

"Blood & Chocolate" (2007)

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" (2008)

"Chaplin" (1992)

"The Choirboys" (1977)

"The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County" (1970)

"Coffee and Cigarettes" (2003)

"The Cold Light of Day" (1996)

"The Constant Gardener" (2005)

"Count Yorga, Vampire" (1970)

"Cry-Baby" (1990)

"Dirty Dancing" (1987)

"Double Indemnity" (1944)

"En la Cama" (2005)

"Event Horizon" (1997)

"Eye for an Eye" (1996)

"Fairy Tale: A True Story" (1997)

"First Knight" (1995)

"Five Easy Pieces" (1970)

"Foreign Student" (1994)

"Free Men" (2011)

"Funny Lady" (1975)

"The Ghost and Mrs Muir" (1947)

"The Girl from Petrovka...

Oscar-nominated actress Gena Rowlands will receive the La Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement kudos this winter, the org announced today. In an acclaimed career that’s spanned six decades, Rowlands nabbed Academy Award nominations for her iconic roles in two of her ten films for filmmaker/husband John Cassavetes, Gloria and A Woman Under the Influence. She won the Golden Globe for the latter and snagged three Emmy wins on the small screen.

Rowlands’ films include Faces and Minnie and Moskowitz for Cassavetes, Another Woman for Woody Allen, Lonely Are The Brave with Kirk Douglas, Night On Earth for Jim Jarmusch, Unhook the Stars, The Notebook, and Yellow for son Nick Cassavetes, and Broken English for daughter Zoe Cassavetes. Career Achievement honorees who were voted on by members of Lafca in recent years include Richard Lester, Frederick Wiseman, and Doris Day.

Love Streams

Directed by John Cassavetes

Written by Ted Allan and John Cassavetes

USA, 1984

Love Streams, John Cassavetes’ final film as an actor and penultimate film as director, is also one of his most unusual features. While his distinctive work can oftentimes be divisive, it’s easy to see how this film more than most others could be rather off-putting to those not appreciative of, or even accustomed to, his filmmaking technique.

Cassavetes adapted the film with Ted Allan, based on the latter’s play, and the film’s structure is one of the more vexing of its attributes. Dropped into two parallel lives, with little to no backstory, only gradually are we able to piece together certain details. First, there is Robert Harmon (a worn and weary Cassavetes, his failing health evident). Harmon is a writer, a drunk, and a womanizer, and he is supposedly working on a book about nightlife,...

A Woman Under The Influence 40th Anniversary Screening In Los Angeles

By Todd Garbarini

Probably the best known film of the late film director John Cassavetes’ career, A Woman Under the Influence (1974) is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a screening at the Landmark Theatre at 10850 West Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles, CA 90064 on Wednesday, May28th at 7:00 pm. The film’s star, actress Gena Rowlands, is scheduled to appear in person.

From the press release:

In Person!

An Evening with

Star Gena Rowlands!

Director John Cassavetes'

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

40th Anniversary!

Wednesday, May 28 at 7:00pm

at The Landmark

A Woman Under the Influence received two Oscar© nominations in 1974—best actress Gena Rowlands and best director John Cassavetes. The film tells the story of a wife and mother whose unstable behavior leads her husband (Peter Falk) to commit her to a mental institution. At the time of its release,...

The BFI has posted this clip from "A Personal Journey Through American Movies," wherein Martin Scorsese discusses the influence of writer-director-actor John Cassavetes (1929-1989). "Relationship were all he was interested in: the laughter and the games, the tears and the guilt, the whole roller coaster of love," says cinephile Scorsese. Watch below. As a fledgling filmmaker in the early '70s, Scorsese was literally taken in by Cassavetes, who let the young Scorsese sleep at one of the "Minnie and Moskowitz" locations and gave him an assistant sound editor's credit. Scorsese has said that the two films that most informed his career were Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" and Cassavetes' "Shadows." ...

Ken Jacobs' The Guests, a 3D-remix of an 1896 Lumière brothers' film of a group of people walking towards the camera into a church wedding (and, in a sense, into the audience of the cinema), exploits an optical phenomenon in which the lateral movement within the image can be used to create 3D by putting two frames, slightly apart temporally, together. It's a process Jacobs himself gleefully described at the screening, making a point of distinguishing this method from his previous approaches to 3D. Essentially, in this case, it is a temporal dis-alignment which controls and creates this illusion of depth. Time creates the space.

It's an imperfect film, and an imperfect application of 3D, but within the space of The Guests (who are the real guests?), these imperfections point to a strange alternate dimension of images. How far can we stretch an image to find more within in it?...

Xan Cassavetes has had one hell of a showbiz story. Daughter of John and Gena, she made her screen debut in her father's films Husbands and Minnie and Moskowitz. Trawling the Lower East Side art-punk scene during early 80's, she found herself at both Krs-One and Madonna's very first shows. Later, she toured for almost ten years with the group Shrine before taking up the family business in 2004 with the documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession. We spoke this past fall at the incredible Strasbourg International Fantastic Film Festival, where her erotic vampire feature KIss of the Damned took the top prize. How many times do you get to write that? Twitch: Let's start with a softball question. Why chose this as your fiction debut? Well, I didn't choose it...

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

Riffing on Terek Puckett’s terrific list of director/actor collaborations, I wanted to look at some of those equally impressive leading ladies who served as muses for their directors. I strived to look for collaborations that may not have been as obviously canonical, but whose effects on cinema were no less compelling. Categorizing a film’s lead is potentially tricky, but one of the criteria I always use is Anthony Hopkins’s performance in Silence of the Lambs, a film in which he is considered a lead but appears only briefly; his character is an integral part of the story.

The criteria for this article is as follows: The director & actor team must have worked together at least 3 times with the actor in a major role in each feature film, resulting in a minimum of 2 must-see films.

One of the primary trends for the frequency of collaboration is the...

"A downbeat homage to bright-lights showbiz dramas, an epic orchestration that indulges in stubbornly obsessive riffs, Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977) seems to value awkwardness and indecision above all else," writes Dan Callahan for Alt Screen, and much of what follows is pretty rough medicine for those of us who love this film. "Coming off the success of Taxi Driver (1976), Scorsese secured a big budget and MGM sound stages for what was meant to be his tribute to and deconstruction of classic Hollywood musicals, but the tribute got lost somewhere in the deconstruction." The movie "plays out like some errant crossbreeding of Charles Vidor's Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and John Cassavetes's Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)."

It's screening as part of Hollywood Musicals of the 1970s and 1980s, Part 1: The 1970s, a series opening tomorrow at Anthology Film Archives and running through June 26. In his overview for the L,...

Sitting between the uneven Husbands and the economic beauty of A Woman Under the Influence, Minnie and Moskowitz was John Cassavetes sixth time directing a feature and like most of his work he does so with confidence and a singular vision.

Minnie (Gena Rowlands) is a museum curator, attractive and reasonably well off. Her love life isn’t too good though and after the man she is seeing, the already married Jim (John Cassavetes), cruelly dumps her in front of his son she is immediately set up on a disastrous blind date. Following this blind date debacle, a particularly amusing scene featuring Val Avery as the hapless suitor Zelmo, Minnie runs into Seymour Moskowitz.

Whilst Seymour might not seem on the surface like much of a catch, his own mother points out that “he parks cars for a living!”, he is doggedly persistent and clearly infatuated with Minnie. So begins their relationship,...

The wonderful sci-fi geek site i09.com recently linked out to an La Times interview with producer Gary Kurtz, and i09 believed it to be the first time that Kurtz had spoken in-depth, on the record, about the creation of Star Wars and the issues he had with George Lucas during the making of The Empire Strikes Back that led to a massive falling out between the two creative partners.

Well, not so.

I’d done a massive interview with Kurtz back in 2002, which goes into a lot more detail about the falling out, plus Kurtz’s other work on American Graffiti and with Jim Henson on The Dark Crystal.

Here is that interview…

-Ken Plume

Originally Published November 11, 2002

In many projects, there are “unsung heroes”… people whose contributions are extensive, but have been overshadowed by the passage of time (or the bluster of others).

One of those “unsung heroes” is producer Gary Kurtz,...