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It was five decades ago long distance swimmer Diana Nyad became part of the cultural landscape with her feats including a recording-setting circling of Manhattan and a 102-mile swim from the Bahamas to Florida she accomplished that in 27 hours. In 1978, Nyad made her first attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida but ended the quest after 40 hours. After segueing to a successful career as a sports journalist on ABC’s “Wild World of Sports” for over two decades, she decided at 60 to try again. She made three attempts felled by asthma, muscle fatigue, jellyfish and a tropical storm.

Nyad’s attempts at the swim were the subject of the 2013 documentary “The Other Shore.” When I talked to her for the L.A. Times a decade ago the then 64-year-old was preparing for her final attempt. “When I first started this in my 20s and when I started again when I turned...

In 1972, Woody Allen scored a surprise success with his audacious sketch comedy film "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)." This rambunctious collection of ribald bits was both uproarious and deceptively off-handed. Suddenly, there was a market for loosely stitched-together, adult-skewing yuk-fests. These movies could be made fast and on the cheap because you didn't need production value to get a belly laugh out of dirty jokes or gratuitous nudity. This was smash-and-grab comedy, and it thrived throughout most of the decade.

One such practitioner of this scandalous style was Ken Shapiro. The counterculture satirist had created an underground comedy hit in New York City with his Channel One Theater, an innovative live show that barraged audiences with tawdry skits via three television sets. With Allen's movie, Monty Python's "And Now for Something Completely Different" and Brian De Palma's "Hi, Mom!" making untoward hay in movie theaters,...

Richard Belzer, a comedian and actor best known for playing Detective John Munch in several NBC crime dramas, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Homicide: Life on the Street, has died at the age of 78.

According to his manager Eric Gardner, Belzer died early on Sunday, February 19, at his home in France.

Bill Scheft, a writer and longtime friend of Belzer, said that he had “lots of health issues.”

In Memoriam 2022: 100 Great Celebrities Who Died In 2022

He made his film debut in the comedic satire The Groove Tube (1974) alongside Chevy Chase. The film contained skits that featured social commentary on television shows of the 70s.

He also served as the warm-up comedian for Saturday Night Live and made three guest appearances on the show in the late 70s.

As John Munch, Belzer played one of the most memorable cops in TV history. He first appeared on NBC’s...

Mariska Hargitay, Ice-t, Christopher Meloni, Laraine Newman and Billy Crystal were among the Hollywood notables paying tribute to Richard Belzer, longtime Law & Order: Svu star and beloved comedian, who died at the age of 78.

Belzer, who writer and longtime friend Bill Scheft confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter had died Sunday at his home in Bozouls in southwest France, was facing health issues.

The performer was known as a legend on the stage and screen, making his movie debut in 1974’s The Groove Tube and warming up audiences in Saturday Night Live‘s early days. A regular detective on the small screen, Belzer’s Homicide character, the recognizable John Munch, first appeared in 1993 on the series’ first episode and made his final appearance in 2016 on Law & Order: Svu. He would appear on the long-running Dick Wolf Law & Order spinoff for nearly 15 years, with Munch retiring from the NYPD in...

Richard Belzer, the beloved comedian who began as an edgy stand-up performer before finding further fame as the cynical but stalwart detective John Munch on Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, has died. He was 78.

Belzer died early Sunday at his home in Bozouls in southwest France, a longtime friend of the actor who does not wish to be identified told The Hollywood Reporter. “He had lots of health issues, and his last words were, ‘Fuck you, motherfucker,'” his friend said.

He made his film debut in the hilarious The Groove Tube (1974), warmed up audiences in the early days of Saturday Night Live and famously was put to sleep by Hulk Hogan.

Belzer’s Munch made his first appearance in 1993 on the first episode of Homicide and his last in 2016 on Law & Order: Svu. In between those two NBC dramas, he played the detective on eight other series,...

Update, 1:48 Pm Pt: A “wasted” Johnny Depp left a “visibly very upset” Amber Heard with a “swollen face” after an alleged 2016 fight, an acquaintance of the actress told a Virginia courtroom today in the former Pirates of the Caribbean star’s 50 million defamation trial.

“It looked like she had been hit in some way,” Elizabeth Marz said in a November 2019 video deposition played for Judge Penny Azcarete, the jury and on-lookers on Wednesday afternoon. Describing that spring night at Depp and Heard’s Dtla penthouse residences six years ago, the close friend of Heard’s pal Raquel “Rocky” Pennington also stated that the actor’s demeanor and presence “frightened me .”

“If there is a grown ass man coming at you telling you to get your bitch out and swinging a magnum of wine… I ran out,” Marz said in the video of a seemingly out of control Depp. Reinforcing...

Producer Charles Band discusses a few of his favorite films with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Re-Animator (1985) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

Citizen Kane (1941) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Puppet Master (1989)

Dollman (1991)

Trancers (1984)

Corona Zombies (2020)

Cannibal Women In The Avocado Jungle of Death (1989)

Frankenstein (1931) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Wolf Man (1941) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Alex Kirschenbaum’s Wolf Man power rankings

I Bury The Living (1958) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

Face of Fire (1959)

Hercules (1958)

The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary

Jason And The Argonauts (1963) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary

King Kong (1933)

King Kong (1976) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Exorcist (1973) – Oren Peli’s trailer commentary

Star Wars (1977)

The Omega Man (1971)

Castle Freak (1995)

Tourist Trap (1979) – David DeCoteau’s trailer commentary

Laserblast (1978)

Crash!

Legendary screenwriter and director Shane Black discusses some of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

High and Low (1963)

Hard Times (1975) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Glenn Erickson’s 4K Blu-ray review

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Beguiled (1971) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Kino Lorber Blu-ray review, Glenn Erickson’s Twilight Time Blu-ray review

Convoy (1978) – Dennis Cozzalio’s review

8 Heads In A Duffel Bag (1997)

Diner (1982)

The Bodyguard (1992)

12 Angry Men (1957)

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

Fist of Fury a.k.a. The Chinese Connection (1972) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary...

The War on Drugs have released a new song, “Living Proof,” from their upcoming album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, out October 29th via Atlantic Records.

“Living Proof” finds War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel singing sweetly over a swift acoustic strum. Piano, atmospheric synths, and spare percussion help build the song, but there’s not so much an explosion at the song’s peak as an exhale into a tender guitar solo.

“Living Proof” arrives with a music video, directed by Emmett Malloy. Shot on 16mm film, the...

Exclusive: International sales and production company Number 11 Entertainment has set “Queen of Mean” Mma fighter Miriam Nakamoto as lead in action-romance movie Wildwood.

Nakamoto — in her feature debut — will play a young woman on the run from her mother and a pair of hired killers who stumbles into a small town where she’s mistaken for a local girl who mysteriously vanished years earlier.

The film will be directed by Delany Bishop (Terror Eyes) and was written by screenwriter and novelist Cara Vescio, best known for her novel series, Wasted. Keith Wells is producing for Number 11 Entertainment, along with Michelle Seañez, with Number 11 handling world sales.

The pic is scheduled to shoot later this year. Number 11 will be introducing the project to buyers at the upcoming Marché du Film in Cannes.

Dubbed “The Queen of Mean” by her fans, Nakamoto is an eight-time Muay Thai world champion and an Mma fighter,...

The orange waterfall on the cover says it all: My Morning Jacket bliss out on 10 psychedelic, southern-tinged, soft-rock mood-pieces about traveling, getting wasted, and falling in love. The songs are leftovers from the sessions that yielded 2015’s The Waterfall, but they feel less like a tributary and more like their own river. When Covid-19 forced the world into lockdown, frontman Jim James played his iTunes on random and stumbled on “Spinning My Wheels,” a gorgeous ballad about feeling stuck that he and his bandmates had orchestrated with a Rhodes piano...

By Todd Garbarini

Movie-going audience members under the age of forty will not recall motion picture theatrical exhibition in the 1970s. It was a most interesting time when drive-ins and even first-run movie theaters would pair up an older feature film, generally one that was one to two years-old, with the main feature on a double-bill. A handful of theaters in my area used to engage in midnight showings of older films, too. One theater exclusively ran The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) for years while another alternated between Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards (1971), Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same (1976), David Lynch's art-house favorite Eraserhead (1977) and Alan Parker's Pink Floyd The Wall (1982). Other showcases included uncensored bloopers featuring Carol Burnett, the Three Stooges, and Abbott and Costello.

In October 1978, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was unleashed upon the moviegoing public (filming...

Ken Shapiro, writer and director of Chevy Chase’s debut film “The Groove Tube,” died of cancer at age 76, TheWrap has learned. Released in 1974, “The Groove Tube” was a cult hit indie comedy that satirized TV with a series of lewd skits and parodies of commercials. Among them was the skit “Koko The Clown,” a parody of “Bozo The Clown” in which Shapiro, in full clown attire, reads erotica during the show’s “Make-Believe Time.” The film launched the careers of Chase and Richard Belzer, the latter of whom appeared alongside Shapiro in another famous skit from the film called.

Ken Shapiro, who directed, produced, co-wrote and starred in The Groove Tube, the seminal 1974 sendup of television that marked the movie debuts of Chevy Chase and Richard Belzer, has died. He was 76.

Shapiro died Nov. 18 at his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico, after a long struggle with cancer, his friend Arthur Sellers told The Hollywood Reporter.

Shapiro also directed Chase in another comedy feature, the sci-fi fantasy Modern Problems (1981), which he co-wrote with Sellers and Tom Sherohman.

The Groove Tube employed a hilarious series of skits that spoofed everything from commercials and public service announcements to...

I have no idea why someone said, in the year 2016, “Hey, what this world really needs is a Betty Boop comic book!” It seems like an odd and unlikely thing to say, even if one happened to work in licensing for an entity that happened to own the rights to Miss Boop.

But it must have happened, because that comic book did come out, in four issues, and they were duly collected under the simple and obvious title Betty Boop. (Because, even if this isn’t the first Boop comic ever in the history of the world — though it may well be, for all I know — there’s no possibility of confusion in the marketplace with all of the other Boop collections.)

Luckily, whoever the person who had the brain-spasm in re Betty had the good sense to hire Roger Langridge to write the Boop comic. Langridge has previously translated...

'Amazing Tales from the Archives': Pioneering female documentarian Aloha Wanderwell Baker remembered at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival – along with the largely forgotten sound-on-cylinder technology and the Jean Desmet Collection. 'Amazing Tales from the Archives': San Francisco Silent Film Festival & the 'sound-on-cylinder' system Fans of the earliest sound films would have enjoyed the first presentation at the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, held June 1–4: “Amazing Tales from the Archives,” during which Library of Congress' Nitrate Film Vault Manager George Willeman used a wealth of enjoyable film clips to examine the Thomas Edison Kinetophone process. In the years 1913–1914, long before The Jazz Singer and Warner Bros.' sound-on-disc technology, the sound-on-cylinder system invaded the nascent film industry with a collection of “talkies.” The sound was scratchy and muffled, but “recognizable.” Notably, this system focused on dialogue, rather than music or sound effects. As with the making of other recordings at the time, the...

Justin Blackmon admitted to having "2 drinks" at a local bar before getting behind the wheel of a 2015 Jeep Wrangler ... but appeared Wasted ... this according to the police report obtained by TMZ Sports.  The ex-nfl star was initially pulled over in Ardmore, Ok on Saturday morning when cops spotted a defective brake light on his ride at 2:46 Am ... but when they approached the car, Blackmon reeked of booze.  According to the report, Blackmon had bloodshot...

A run-and-gunner with stunning hand-drawn animation inspired by Max Fleischer, Cuphead is arguably E3's most beautiful game, Ryan writes...

As the dust settles on the frankly manic flow of reveals and announcements from E3’s annual circus, it becomes a little easier to process exactly what’s emerged. The expo saw familiar names bubble up from the past: Fallout 4, Doom, The Last Guardian, even Shenmue III, which few could have seen coming - often to a joyful response.

E3 also saw EA Dice finally give us a look at this autumn’s Star Wars: Battlefront, Nintendo show off Super Mario Maker and Star Fox Zero, while From Software announced Dark Souls III. But as is so often the case at gaming’s largest expo, the most intriguing titles aren’t necessarily the highest-profile. Keita Takahashi’s Wattam looks like a delightfully odd gaming sandpit, while Everyone’s Gone To The Rapture,...

Bill Hader has come a long way since his stint on Saturday Night Live, creating many popular characters and impersonations such as Stefon, Vincent Price and CNN’s Jack Cafferty. He is one of the highlights in such films as Adventureland, Knocked Up, Superbad and Pineapple Express, and so it is easy to see why author Mike Sacks interviewed him for his new book Poking A Dead Frog. In it, Hader talks about his career and he also lists 200 essential movies every comedy writer should see. Xo Jane recently published the list for those of us who haven’t had a chance to read the book yet. There are a ton of great recommendations and plenty I haven’t yet seen, but sadly my favourite comedy of all time isn’t mentioned. That would be Some Like It Hot. Still, it really is a great list with a mix of old and new.

Walt Disney Pictures

Ever since the genesis of animated cinema, filmmakers have been trying to merge the world of pencil and ink with that of reality. In the silent film era, animators such as Max Fleischer pioneered various techniques to make this a possibility, through cartoons like Koko the Clown which, at one point, showed its titular character boxing with a real kitten. Even a young Walt Disney made his mark with the Alice Comedies, which featured a young girl interacting with various animated animals.

Films that mixed live-action with animation became increasingly more popular in the 1940s, once again thanks to the efforts of Walt Disney. Since then, there have been over one-hundred films to practice this technique. However, few have been able to stay in popular culture, and have largely been forgotten over the years. The difficulty to make a compelling film whilst combining what are two separate...

It is hardly a novel concept to bring up realism when talking about animated films. From noting the “fingerprints” on the toy-based characters of The Lego Movie (2014) to remarking upon Pixar’s advancements in replicating hair and clothing, popular criticism of computer animated movies are as apt to discuss advancements in realistic CGI as they are plot or character development. Throughout the history of feature animation, be it hand drawn, stop-motion, or computer generated, there has been an ongoing endeavor to capture reality. The first animated feature by Walt Disney Studios is no exception. Released in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a technical marvel as much as it was an artistic and financial success. But aside from merely taking steps to emulate reality, Snow White exhibits traits that mirrored emerging trends in realist live action filmmaking, including deep focus photography and simulated camera movement.

Even the plot structure...

Growing up in the 1970s, there were plenty of movie parodies that broke down into two camps: the really smart ones that required a familiarity with film and culture (Blazing Saddles, et. al.) and those that were outrageous fun (Kentucky Fried Movie, The Groove Tube). The latter also showcased up and coming talent before and behind the camera, shooting on a shoestring so the studio had a low-risk offering. The other thing the latter films offered were the vignette approach, letting different creative types strut their stuff, making for an uneven but generally entertaining experience. That same approach was recently used (and Kentucky Fried Movie cited as an inspiration) to mount the not very good Movie 43, out now on disc from 20th Century Home Entertainment. The difference is that it was made by a ton of talented, pedigreed cast and crew yet still managed to be offensive, unfunny, and amusing.

Peter Farrelly Talks Movie 43, in theaters this weekend

Peter Farrelly, who usually directs alongside his brother Bobby, is flying solo with Movie 43, which finds him helming two of the short segments that make up this anthology comedy starring most, if not every, big name actor in Hollywood. He is also a producer behind this epic tale about a down-on-his-luck filmmaker trying to make his own Movie 43 after 42 failures. Peter's segments include "The Catch" with Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet, and "Truth or Dare" with Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant, both of which revolve around blind dates gone bad.

We recently caught up with Peter for a chat about the film, in which he went into the history of the project, and shared some of its secrets. Here is our conversation.

Back in 2010, we got some photos of Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant standing outside of a hospital,...

To say that you have to see Movie 43 to believe it is by no means a recommendation. This would-be comic anthology of short films featuring major stars clearly was inspired by such ’70s-era raunch fests as The Kentucky Fried Movie and The Groove Tube. But despite the dizzying array of talent involved both in front of and behind the camera, this god-awful exercise is so painfully unfunny, so screamingly bad that it immediately qualifies as one of the worst films of all time. An unbelievable roster of A-list stars, including two current Oscar nominees and

read more...

Related: 17 Film Directors Walk Into A Bar… Here’s a first look at Movie 43, a film that I’ve written about several times here, because I loved those raunchy 70s comedies The Groove Tube and Kentucky Fried Movie, and because the filmmakers who put this together, –Peter Farrelly, Charles Wessler and John Penotti, Ryan Kavanaugh and Tucker Tooley–assembled such a killer cast of directors and actors for these completely inappropriate comic vignettes. The final cast, in alphabetical order: Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Leslie Bibb, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Bobby Cannavale, Kieran Culkin, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, John Hodgman, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Justin Long, Stephen Merchant, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Chris Pratt, Liev Schreiber, Seann William Scott, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Naomi Watts, and Kate Winslet. Relativity Media will release it January 25. Here’s a Red Band trailer:

Comedy Central...

It's rare that you can trace an entire genre of movies to a single source, but you can with modern film comedy. Most of the landmark comedy films and filmmakers of the past 35 years can track their lineage back to one picture: "The Kentucky Fried Movie," which opened exactly 35 years ago this week (on August 10, 1977). The film may not be as well remembered today as other hits from the same family, like "Airplane!", "Animal House," "Trading Places," or the "Naked Gun" and "Scary Movie" films, but "Kentucky" was enormously influential in terms of its source material (the vast array of movies and TV fare absorbed by the first generation to grow up in front of the tube), its envelope-pushing raunchiness, and even the way its gags were staged and paced (if you didn't like one joke, another would come along in just a few seconds). Seen today, "Kentucky Fried Movie" may look dated,...

Flavorwire is back with a sequel to "And Introducing … Famous Faces in Their Film Debuts" appropriately titled "Encore -- More Famous Faces In Their Film Debuts" (and appropriately set to Jay-z's "Encore"). The short videos are mashups of acting debuts by big-time movie stars. This time around, the film covers more than 30 stars including Leonardo DiCaprio's childhood appearance in "Critters 3" from 1993, Seth Rogen in "Donnie Darko" from 2001 and Chevy Chase in "The Groove Tube" from 1974. How many can you name?

Watch below for "Encore -- More Famous Faces In Their Film Debuts:"...

Naomi Watts joins Homeschooled segmentNaomi Watts and Liev Schreiber have signed on to star in Will Graham's Homeschooled segment in Peter Farrelly and Charles Wessler's Untitled Comedy shorts anthology, according to Production Weekly.

Originally set up at Overture Films, the project kicked into high gear after the producers met with Relativity Media last December. The brainstorming session lead to a revamp of the central premise of the film.

There is a unifying storyline for a series of sketch comedies in the vein of the 1970s hits The Kentucky Fried Movie and The Groove Tube.

Untitled Comedy comes to theaters in 2010 and stars Gerard Butler, Chloe Moretz, Naomi Watts.

And to clarify, this is not a comedy that’s currently lacking a title. Untitled Comedy is the title. The film, which is currently in production, will be composed of a series of loosely related comedic sketches, featuring a plethora of different actors and directors. If you think it sounds a little bit like those atrocious Movie movies (you know, the ones brought to you by 2 of the 6 writers of Scary Movie), rest assured that Farrelly and co. have assembled a heap of high-end talent to bring their sketches to life. Stepping in front of the camera will be Elizabeth Banks, Gerard Butler, Kieran Culkin, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Sean William Scott, Tony Shalhoub, Emma Stone, Matt Walsh, Patrick Warburton, Naomi Watts, and Kate Winslet. Behind the camera, Elizabeth Banks, Bob Odenkirk, Brett Ratner, Griffin Dunne, and Farrelly himself have already helmed sequences, with...

Monty Python's 1983 film "The Meaning of Life" effortlessly set the gold standard in sketch comedy movies -- which, for clarification, we'll define here as feature-length anthologies of stand-alone comic bits that don't serve to push along any overarching storyline. But while the Pythons' greatest film (gauntlet thrown down!) omitted a plot, their skits were still tied together by the most timeless of through lines: the trials of human life, presented in chapters like "The Miracle of Birth," "Middle Age" and "Death." Furthermore, 1971's "And Now For Something Completely Different," a re-filmed compilation of greatest hits from the first two pioneering seasons of "Monty Python's Flying Circus," is arguably the silver medalist of its kind, and good luck coming up with a third film that actually deserves the bronze.

The cold, hard truth is that sketch comedy movies are nearly impossible to pull off, and most are doomed to fail the test of time.

Richard Belzer, who has become a familiar face on TV's crime beat on such shows as Law & Order: SVU, is returning to his comedic roots. The actor is teaming up with Maverick Films, the production company run by Madonna and Guy Oseary, to create an episodic, sketch-style comedy feature called This Is America. Belzer will star, co-write and executive produce through his McBelz Enterprises. Larry Charles, best known for writing and directing Seinfeld and Mad About You, will direct and co-write. Belzer's longtime manager Eric Gardner is producing though his Panacea Entertainment shingle. "I think people are ready for a mirror to be held up to the culture in a really funny way -- in a way the 'South Park' movie did or some of the Monty Python movies did -- and really reflect culture, mores and politics," Belzer said. One of Belzer's earliest efforts was the 1974 sketch comedy The Groove Tube.

Richard Belzer, who has become a familiar face on TV's crime beat on such shows as Law & Order: SVU, is returning to his comedic roots. The actor is teaming up with Maverick Films, the production company run by Madonna and Guy Oseary, to create an episodic, sketch-style comedy feature called This Is America. Belzer will star, co-write and executive produce through his McBelz Enterprises. Larry Charles, best known for writing and directing Seinfeld and Mad About You, will direct and co-write. Belzer's longtime manager Eric Gardner is producing though his Panacea Entertainment shingle. "I think people are ready for a mirror to be held up to the culture in a really funny way -- in a way the 'South Park' movie did or some of the Monty Python movies did -- and really reflect culture, mores and politics," Belzer said. One of Belzer's earliest efforts was the 1974 sketch comedy The Groove Tube.