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It’s sad news today. Ted Kotcheff, the Canadian filmmaker who directed First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s, and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, has died at the age of 94.

Kotcheff got his start working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as the youngest director on staff. However, he was briefly jailed and branded a communist after his first visit to the United States, which led to his leaving to work in London. He memorably helmed Underground, an episode of Armchair Theatre in which one of his principal actors actually died in the middle of the live shoot. He scrambled to re-structure the story during the commercial break while the other actors improvised, unaware that their fellow cast member had just passed away.

When Kotcheff returned to Canada, he helmed The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which starred Richard Dreyfuss as a brash young Jewish Montrealer who embarks on a string of get-rich-quick schemes to gain respect.

Ted Kotcheff, the versatile, two-time Palme d’Or nominee who directed more than two dozen movies including First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s, Fun with Dick and Jane, North Dallas Forty and Wake in Fright and exec produced hundreds of episodes of Law & Order: Svu during a six-decade career, died Thursday. He was 94.

Family members confirmed the news to Canada’s The Globe and Mail.

Born on April 7, 1931, in Toronto, Kotcheff began his career as a producer and director in 1950s and ’60s TV there. He became an important member of the 1960s fraternity of filmmakers in England, distinguishing himself with the films Life at the Top and Two Gentlemen Sharing. He also won a BAFTA TV Award in 1972 for the BBC drama Play for Today.

By the 1970s, he was focused on longform projects, including features and several made-for-tv movies. He helmed and co-wrote the Australia-set 1971 thriller Wake in Fright,...

Sian Barbara Allen, a onetime Universal contract player who appeared in the films You’ll Like My Mother and Billy Two Hats and played a love interest of Richard Thomas’ John-Boy on The Waltons, died Monday. She was 78.

Allen died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, after a battle with Alzheimer’s, her family announced. She often played characters with “great vulnerability and uncommon empathy,” they noted.

In telefilms, Allen starred with Bette Davis and Ted Bessell as the title character, a housekeeper in a mansion, in 1973’s Scream, Pretty Peggy at ABC; with Claude Akins, John Savage and Patricia Neal in the 1975 tearjerker Eric at NBC; and with Anthony Hopkins and Cliff DeYoung in 1976’s The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, also at NBC (she played the wife of the famed aviator).

Born on July 12, 1946, in Reading, Pennsylvania, Allen was raised by her mother, Ruth, and her grandmother, Etta.

After she graduated from Reading Senior High School,...

Sian Barbara Allen, the actor known for numerous television roles and her lead role in “Scream, Pretty Peggy” alongside Bette Davis, died Monday in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Allen’s death was confirmed to Variety with the cause of death being Alzheimer’s disease.

In the ’70s and ’80s, Allen had numerous roles in popular TV shows, including “The Waltons,” “Columbo,” “The Rockford Files,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “Gunsmoke,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “The Incredible Hulk.” Allen also wrote the “Just for Laughs” episode of “Baretta” in Season 4.

In her film work, she starred alongside numerous stars, including Patty Duke, Rosemary Murphy and Richard Thomas in “You’ll Like My Mother” (1972), Bette Davis in “Scream Pretty Peggy” (1973) and Gregory Peck and Jack Warden in the Western “Billy Two Hats” (1974). She also played Anne Morrow alongside Anthony Hopkins in “The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case” (1976). Allen earned a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising New Actress...

Actor Gregory Peck may be best known for his Oscar-winning performance as Atticus Finch in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird, but over the course of his decades-long career, Peck appeared in more than 50 projects, including a western that many may have forgotten. Peck, along with Desi Arnaz Jr, the son of iconic duo Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, starred in 1974’s Billy Two Hats,which is now streaming on Prime Video.

Billy Two Hats takes place after a bank robbery gone wrong and the titular character, Billy Two Hats (Arnaz Jr.) is captured by Sheriff Gifford, played by Jack Warden. Billy’s partner, Arch Deans, played by Peck, rescues him, but ends up getting shot in the leg, leaving him unable to ride a horse. Billy, refusing to leave his partner behind, builds a cot that can be carried by horse, and they continue their journey, which makes them more...

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...

Norman Jewison, who directed Best Picture Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night and nominees Fiddler on the Roof, A Soldier’s Story, Moonstruck and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, also producing the latter four, died peacefully Saturday, January 20. He was 97.

Jewison’s film career spanned more than four decades and seven Oscar nominations — three for Best Director and the four for Best Picture. His films received a total of 46 nominations and 12 Academy Awards. In 1999, Jewison was honored with the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award at the Academy Awards. He also collected three Emmy Awards for his work in television.

A smattering of his other wide-ranging work includes The Hurricane, Agnes of God, Rollerball (1975) and Jesus Christ Superstar, all of which he also produced. As a producer, Jewison had an eye for talent, as well.

By John M. Whalen

Ted Kotcheff’s “Billy Two Hats” (1974) is one of those off-beat kind of movies they made back in the mid-Seventies when studios still believed in small, realistic films that focused on character more than shoot-outs, believable story lines more than special effects and solid performances by seasoned actors who knew their craft more than flashy histrionics by shiny boys and girls who just stepped off the front pages of the supermarket tabloids. It’s not a great film by any means. It’s slow, and a bit heavy handed in getting across the themes contained in Alan Sharp’s (“Osterman Weekend,” “Ulzana’s Raid”) script, but it’s worth watching, if only so you can say you’ve seen the only “Kosher Western” ever made.

57-year-old Gregory Peck, speaking with a thick Scottish accent, stars as Arch Deans, a bank robber on the run with his...

Fans of this show know it as the It's a Wonderful Life of war movies, an intensely moving tale that restores feeling and tenderness to people crippled by loss and despair. The stellar pairing of top star Gregory Peck and Burmese unknown Win Min Than is unique in movies and not to be missed. The Purple Plain Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1955 / Color /1:66 widescreen / 100 min. / Street Date April 5, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Gregory Peck, Win Min Than, Brenda De Banzie, Bernard Lee, Maurice Denham, Lyndon Brook, Anthony Bushell, Josephine Griffin Cinematography Geoffrey Unsworth Art Direction Donald M. Ashton, Jack Maxsted Film Editor Clive Donner Original Music John Veale Written by Eric Ambler from a novel by H.E. Bates Produced by John Bryan, Earl St. John Directed by Robert Parrish

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

How can one convey the way a picture grows on one? I liked The Purple Plain...

This week on Off The Shelf, Ryan is joined by Brian Saur to take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week of September 15th, 2015, and chat about some follow-up and home video news.

There are some audio problems towards the very end of the episode, when Skype decided it had enough of our shenanigans.

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Episode Links & Notes Follow-up Refresh, refresh, refresh William Becker Arrow’s Free Shipping Exploitation.tv Apple TV Ripping discs MakeMKV Handbrake The Wirecutter’s recommendation Don Melton’s scripts News Scorpion Releasing – Grizzly & Where the Boys Are ‘84 up for pre-order at Screen Archives Shout / Scream Factory: Garbage Pail Kids cover art New Releases American Experience: Walt Disney The Beast The Big Picture Billy Two Hats Blind Chance Disneynature: Monkey Kingdom Eaten Alive Fast & Furious 1–7 Collection Furious 7 Hanna-Barbera Specials Collection Hidden Agenda House of the Long Shadows...

Swashbuckling screenwriter behind Rob Roy, Ulzana's Raid and Night Moves

Alan Sharp, who has died of brain cancer aged 79, once claimed that as a screenwriter he was most interested in "moral ambiguity, mixed motives and irony", all of which are applicable to two of his best movies, the western Ulzana's Raid (1972), directed by Robert Aldrich, and the thriller Night Moves (1975), directed by Arthur Penn. Most of his screenplays were written in the 1970s and reflect the era in which America was suffering the effects of the Vietnam war and post-Watergate paranoia. This goes some way to explaining the bleakness and cynical sense of destiny in Sharp's films, which he called "existential melodramas".

He was born in Alyth, near Dundee. Although the majority of his scripts were set in the Us, where he lived for many years, Scotland remained pre-eminent in his character and culture. His script for Rob Roy (1995), a...

The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Fred Weekend Shopping Guide - your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

(Please support Fred by using the links below to make any impulse purchases - it helps to keep us going…)

I had worries that The King’s Speech (Anchor Bay, Rated R, Blu-Ray-$39.99 Srp) wouldn’t live up to all of the kudos that had been thrown its way, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a genuinely enjoyable cinematic experience about a very personal struggles of a very private figure, held together by a genuinely stellar cast. Bonus materials include a behind-the-scenes featurette, a cast and director Q&A,...