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"The Beverly Hillbillies" is the platonic ideal of a high-concept sitcom hook. At its essence, it's simply "Poor folks get stinking rich and move to Beverly Hills." That's probably all CBS needed to hear from creator Paul Henning, who, between 1962 and 1971, exploited this simple premise to the tune of nine seasons and 274 episodes. During this span, "The Beverly Hillbillies" was one of the top-rated shows on TV.

How could such a simple premise, which was never really tweaked, sustain a series for nearly a decade? This question perpetually flummoxed the nation's TV critics, who generally loathed the show, but anyone who gorged on "The Beverly Hillbillies" throughout their formative couch potato years (during its initial run or via syndication) knows the answer is obvious: it's the cast, stupid.

Buddy Ebsen was perfect casting as Jed Clampett, a gentleman of the Ozarks who accidentally discovers oil on his Missouri mountain land...

Sometimes it’s like they read your mind—or just notice upcoming releases as you do. Whatever the case, I’m thrilled that the release of Terence Davies’ Benediction played (I assume!) some part in a full retro on the Criterion Channel this June, sad as I know that package will make me and anybody else who comes within ten feet of it. It’s among a handful of career retrospectives: they’ve also set a 12-film Judy Garland series populated by Berkeley and Minnelli, ten from Ulrike Ottinger, and four by Billy Wilder. But maybe their most adventurous idea in some time is a huge microbudget collection ranging from Ulmer’s Detour to Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard, fellow success stories—Nolan, Linklater, Jarmusch, Jia Zhangke—spread about.

Criterion Editions continue with Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight, Double Indemnity, and Seconds, while Chameleon Street, Karen Dalton: In My Own Time,...

There’s nothing like a good true crime story, and Killing Time‘s teen protagonist Natalie Temple is possibly the genre’s biggest fan. When reporters from her quiet, simple town inform her that her teacher — and fellow true-crime aficionado — Mrs. Halsey was found dead, she takes it upon herself to uncover what really happened.

Rolling Stone shares an exclusive excerpt of the book by the magazine’s own chief research editor Brenna Ehrlich. The first chapter of Killing Time — which is set to be released on March 8 via Inkyard...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWerner Herzog is set to publish his first novel, a semi-fictional retelling of the story of Hiroo Onda. A friend of Herzog, Onda is a former Japanese soldier known for spending 29 years in the jungle on an island in the Philippines, refusing to surrender at the end of World War II. Penguin Random House states that the novel is written in "an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream." Following his erotic nunsploitation film Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven is making the erotic political thriller Young Sinner. The film, according to Verhoeven and RoboCop co-writer Edward Neumeier, will take place in Washington DC and focus on a young staffer "drawn into a web of international intrigue and danger." As this is a Verhoeven film, Neumeir promises that there will be "also be a little sex.

Ovid.tv, which is available in the U.S. and Canada, is proud to announce its wide-ranging selection of films coming in August with 30 documentaries (and one short fiction film) as part of its first ever Doc Month including 24 Exclusive Streaming Premieres.

Highlights include two new documentary features by Vitaly Mansky as well Mila Turajlić’s The Other Side of Everything, which won Best Documentary at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2018. The Independent has hailed this Serbian filmmaker as “one of the most galvanizing voices for political action in contemporary documentary cinema.”

There are also two docs on climate change by David Abel (Entangled and Lobster War), and one short fiction film, Killing Time by Fronza Woods along with her short doc Fannie’s Film. Stop, by Spencer Wolff, examines the class-action lawsuit that challenged the New York City Police Department’s practice of stop & frisk; Sophie Fiennes’ Over Your Cities...

” The body is meant to be seen. Not all covered up ” – Marilyn Monroe

Skin: A History Of Nudity In The Movies , available On Demand August 18th, explores the history of nudity in film, beginning with the silent movie era through present day. The documentary delves into the gender bias concerning nudity in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has pushed for gender equality in feature films today. A deep discussion of pre-code Hollywood and its amoral roots, the censorship that “cleaned up” Hollywood and how the MPAA was formed leads into a discussion of how nudity changed cinematic culture through the decades. It culminates in a discussion of “what are nude scenes like in the age of the #Metoo movement?”

Danny Wolf, director of Skin: A History Of Nudity In The Movies , took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about the film.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman August 11th,...

Milla Bell-Hart and Phil Tarl Denson in Impact 2.

Shaun Grant, Jason Smilovic, Kai Wu, Stuart Beattie and Sarah Heyward are mentoring 14 emerging creators in Impact Australia, the offshoot of Us Imagine Impact founded by Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Tyler Mitchell.

Supported by Gentle Giant Media Group and Screen Australia, the inaugural eight-week accelerator program for creative storytellers from across Australia was originally slated to be held in Melbourne.

Due to Covid-19 it is now being held as a virtual program, with a twice-weekly speaker series. It will culminate in Pitch Day, hoped to take place in Melbourne in late 2020, with the ultimate goal of the creators selling their projects.

The 14 creators from across Australia are working on 10 projects:

Carrie Anderson (Nsw) – Bound (TV hour)

Luke Goodall (Vic) and Marc Gallagher (Vic) – Robots Inc. (TV half hour)

Sukhjit Khalsa (Wa) and Perun Bonser (Wa) – One of the Good Ones (TV...

X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner is among four people set for special honors at the 70th annual Ace Eddie Awards. They and the American Cinema Editors trophy winners will receive their hardware during the ceremony next week.

Shuler Donner will receive Ace’s Golden Eddie Award, and film editors Alan Heim, Ace and Tina Hirsch are set for the Career Achievement Award. Cathy Repola, National Executive Director of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, will receive Ace’s Heritage Award, which recognizing an individual’s commitment to advancing the image of the film editor, cultivating respect for the editing profession and dedication to Ace.

“This year’s Career Achievement and Heritage Award honorees have immeasurably contributed to the legacy of Ace and the craft and business of film editing,” Ace President Stephen Rivkin said. “It’s a very special year for us to be recognizing their achievements.”

During her four-decade career,...

Join us for some old-school 16mm Movie Madness! – It’s our monthly 16Mm Double Feature Night at The Way Out Club (2525 Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis)! Join Tom Stockman and Roger from “Roger’s Reels’ for a double feature of two complete films projected on 16mm film. The show is Tuesday February 7th and starts at 8pm. Admission is Free though we will be setting out a jar to take donations for the National Children’s Cancer Society.

First up is Trading Places

Trading Place is a beloved fish out of water comedy from 1983. The filthy rich Duke brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) conduct a cruel experiment on two completely opposite (and completely oblivious) young men to prove that they could quite easily and successfully trade places.

Dan Aykroyd plays business executive Lewis Winthorpe III, a wealthy snob who works for the callous Duke brothers, and Eddie Murphy is Billy Ray Valentine,...

Jim Knipfel Oct 17, 2018

After all these years, Al Adamson’s cult classic Dracula vs. Frankenstein still doesn’t make a damn lick of sense!

Growing up in Wisconsin in the early '70s, I would get home from school, drop my bag, park myself in front of the TV and tune in The Early Show. Every weekday between three and five-thirty, a local station aired sometimes shockingly uncut films, and it was there my cinematic education began. I don’t know who was programming The Early Show, but I would like to shake his hand. The focus was decidedly on genre films,especially horror and recent drive-in hits. Along with scattered Westerns, war movies and mysteries, there were regular week-long Toho and Hammer fests, without a single stupid musical or romantic comedy tossed in to muck things up.

It was through The Early Show that I was introduced to Roger Corman,...

Jim Knipfel Oct 17, 2018

After all these years, Al Adamson’s cult classic Dracula vs. Frankenstein still doesn’t make a damn lick of sense!

Growing up in Wisconsin in the early '70s, I would get home from school, drop my bag, park myself in front of the TV and tune in The Early Show. Every weekday between three and five-thirty, a local station aired sometimes shockingly uncut films, and it was there my cinematic education began. I don’t know who was programming The Early Show, but I would like to shake his hand. The focus was decidedly on genre films,especially horror and recent drive-in hits. Along with scattered Westerns, war movies and mysteries, there were regular week-long Toho and Hammer fests, without a single stupid musical or romantic comedy tossed in to muck things up.

It was through The Early Show that I was introduced to Roger Corman,...

2014 has been a landmark year for comic book movies. Not only did we get two of Marvel's best-ever films (Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier), but the major studios announced enough future superhero adaptations to take us all the way up to 2019.

It's been a pretty landmark year for comic books too. It feels as though more genuinely exciting new titles launched in 2014 than in the past ten years combined, with DC, Marvel and especially Image taking big risks and creating some seriously compelling comics in the process.

We've picked out our 14 favourite comics from this year in terms of big-screen potential:

14. Spread

The Comic: On paper, Spread doesn't sound like the most original book on the market. Like The Walking Dead, it's set in a post-apocalyptic world where survivors fight off gruesome monsters and each other. As with The Thing, those monsters are giant shape-shifting...

The Hamptons International Film Festival also unveils its annual Golden Starfish competition titles.

The Hamptons International Film Festival (Hiff) is to honour filmmaker Joel Schumacher with the Golden Starfish Lifetime Achievement in Directing Award at its 22nd edition (Oct 9-13).

The director of The Lost Boys, Batman Forever and more recently two episodes of House of Cards, will also take part in a “conversation with” session on Oct 11, where he will be also be presented with the award.

Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank will also be in conversation at the festival on Oct 12, where she will receive the Creative Impact in Acting Award.

Swank won Best Actress Academy Award’s in 2000 and 2005 for Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby, and her latest performance in The Homesman will be seen when the film is screened at Hiff.

In addition, Hiff has revealed the 20 films from 15 countries selected for this year’s Golden Starfish competition, including the Us...

Alien and Witches Of Eastwick star Veronica Cartwright is disappointed by ageism in Hollywood, insisting Susan Sarandon gets all the good parts for mature actresses.

The 62 year old, who has been acting since she was nine, admits she's struggling to land decent film and TV roles because a select group of actresses, headed by Sarandon, are going for everything she'd like to be considered for.

Cartwright tells WENN, "There is a group of women that get all of the roles and it just doesn't seem fair when Susan Sarandon gets everything - and now she's willing to do TV. I want to get offered those parts."

But Cartwright feels her fortunes may be turning, thanks to a pivotal role as a terminal cancer patient in new thriller InSight and interest from Quentin Tarantino.

She explains, "I recently met Q coming back from England and we had a long talk and I told him I'd love to work with him. I heard that he made it mandatory for the cast and crew on Grindhouse to watch Macon County Line and my husband (the late Richard Compton) directed that... I thought, 'This is my intro into Tarantino'. I mean, this guy knew every movie that Richard had done.

"We were on this flight and he was on his knees talking to me. It was so cool... I introduced myself and he said, 'Oh, I loved The Invasion of the Body Snatchers!' He didn't know that I had been married to Richard."...

Since the earliest days of American cinema there has been a shadowy counterpart to the commercial mainstream: exploitation movies — pictures whose appeal lies in their sensational treatment and leering promotion of often lurid and prurient material. Pre-1960, when mainstream Hollywood worked within severe restrictions on content, exploitation movies offered audiences titillating glimpses of the deliciously taboo, usually under the guise of being some sort of instructional cautionary against the very subject matter being exploited i.e. sex in “hygiene” movies like The Road to Ruin (1934), drugs in anti-drug movies like Tell Your Children (1936, re-released in the 1960s/70s as camp classic Reefer Madness), and gambling in the anti-vice Gambling with Souls (1936).

By the 1950s, as the studios entered their long post-war decline, downscale producers launched a new vein of exploitation moviemaking, churning out low-budget thrillers (mostly sci fi and horror) aimed squarely at the burgeoning youth audience. Again, the movies were cheap,...