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Denis O’Dell, a producer on two Beatles movies as well as “How I Won the War,” “Robin and Marian” and “Heaven’s Gate,” died Dec. 30 from natural causes in Almería, Spain at his home in San José, Cabo de Gata. He was 98.

Father of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” producer Denise O’Dell and grandfather of Denis Pedregosa, producer of Netflix hit “The Paramedic,” O’Dell’s connection with movies stretches back to the ‘40s.

He had already produced six movies, such as Brian Desmond Hurst’s “The Playboy of the Western World” in 1962, before his association with the Beatles, which began in professional terms with O’Dell taking an associate producer credit on Richard Lester’s “A Hard Day’s Night,” starring the Beatles and released in 1964.

O’Dell is generally credited with persuading John Lennon to go to Almería to star in the absurdist WWII drama “How I Won the War,” during...

An old-fashioned, ticking time-bomb suspense thriller, Richard Lester's Juggernaut (aka Terror on the Britannic) (1974) satisfies on the most elemental level: it made me increasingly tense and nervous as I watched. Lester made his directorial debut with the very charming The Mouse on the Moon (1963), then set a new high standard for music-themed films with the still fresh and remarkable A Hard Day's Night and Help!. As I admitted last year, however, "it's been perhaps 20 or 25 years since I tried his [other] 60s films, which didn't appeal to me at the time." I still haven't revised those films, but after enjoying Royal Flash (1975) last year, I couldn't resist stepping back a year or so to Juggernaut. (In this same time period,...

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

Doug Nichol's California Typewriter brilliantly captures the percussion of the keys at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Antiquarian typewriter collector Martin Howard over brunch in the garden of Narcissa, next door to the Standard Hotel, joined me for a conversation on California Typewriter, Doug Nichol's documentary featuring Tom Hanks, John Mayer, Jeremy Mayer, Pulitzer Prize winners David McCullough and Sam Shepard, and a reenactment of Ed Ruscha and Mason Williams' Royal Road Test execution. Martin is the glue of the film as we are taken on an historical journey for his search to purchase a Sholes & Glidden typewriter.

Martin Howard on typewriter Betty Grable: "She uses a Sholes & Glidden in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The Wrong Box (John Mills, Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore), Royal Flash (Malcolm McDowell, Alan Bates, Florinda Bolkan, Oliver Reed), Waterloo (Rod Steiger,...

Recently I watched Richard Lester's Royal Flash (1975), starring Malcolm McDowell, for the first time. Adapted by author George MacDonald Fraser from his own novel, it's a broad and sprightly comic adventure that I thoroughly enjoyed. To be frank, I only purchased Twilight Time's Blu-ray, available since 2013, because it was on sale. I had no memory of the film's U.S. theatrical release in the fall of 1975 and didn't recall any raves about it, either. Also, I've never read any of the acclaimed books by Fraser, a popular series that placed the disreputable Harry Flashman in the center of meticulously researched historical adventures. But I saw and thoroughly enjoyed The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, first during their theatrical releases and then again...

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

Twilight Time is celebrating its 4th anniversary with a major promotion that sees some of their limited edition titles reduced in price through April 3. These are the titles on sale.

Group 1

Retail price point: $24.95

Picnic

Pal Joey

Bite The Bullet

Bell, Book, And Candle

Bye Bye Birdie

In Like Flint

Major Dundee

The Blue Max

Crimes And Misdemeanors

Used Cars

Thunderbirds Are Go / Thunderbird 6

Group 2

Retail price point: $19.95

Rapture

Roots Of Heaven

Swamp Water

Demetrius And The Gladiators

Desiree

The Wayward Bus

Cover Girl

High Time

The Sound And The Fury

The Rains Of Ranchipur

Bonjour Tristesse

Beloved Infidel

Lost Horizon

The Blue Lagoon

Experiment In Terror

Nicholas And Alexandra

Pony Soldier

The Song Of Bernadette

Philadelphia

The Only Game In Town

Love Is A Many Splendored Thing

Sleepless In Seattle

The Disappearance

Sexy Beast

Drums Along The Mohawk

Alamo Bay

The Other

Mindwarp

Jane Eyre

Oliver

The Way We Were...

A film version of Flashman is in the works at 20th Century Fox.

The Victorian character was created for Tom Brown's Schooldays, before author George MacDonald Fraser continued the adventures of the bully as Sir Harry Flashman - a cowardly soldier.

Variety reports that the studio is in the process of developing the feature with Ridley Scott's Scott Free and Peter Chernin's Chernin Entertainment.

The book series ran as 11 novels and one short story collection between 1969 and 2005.

Fraser himself was also a script writer, working on screenplays for The Three Musketeers, Octopussy and Red Sonja.

Flashman was previously seen on screen played by Malcolm McDowell in Royal Flash.

20th Century Fox, Scott Free and Chernin Entertainment are developing "Flashman," an 1830s-set film based on George MacDonald Fraser's period novels.

Fraser published a dozen books, starting in 1969, featuring Sir Harry Paget Flashman. The character is described as an antihero who often runs from danger but usually winds up being acclaimed as a hero.

Ridley Scott and Peter Chernin will produce. Malcolm McDowell played a previous on-screen version of the character in 1975's "Royal Flash".

Source: Variety...

The cad to end all cads, Sir Harry Paget Flashman, has already stepped once from the pages of George MacDonald Fraser’s work and on to the screen, in the shape of Malcolm McDowell in 1975’s Royal Flash. Ridley Scott thinks the character can still work in movies, as he’s teaming up with 20th Century Fox to develop a film around him.Flashman, who originally appeared in Thomas Hughes’ 1857 novel Tom Brown’s School Days was spun by Fraser into a lucrative series of 11 novels and a collection of short stories that together form The Flashman Papers. Alhough Flash himself was fictional, he rubbed shoulders (and occasionally other things) with many real-life historical people in the books, as his adventures take him through a variety of notable events including the Charge Of The Light Brigade and the Crimean War. Despite his cowardly tendencies and capacity for self-preservation, he’s a capable,...

Blu-ray Release Date: Dec. 10, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $Tba

Studio: Twilight Time

Malcolm McDowell is Harry Flashman in 1975's Royal Flash.

The 1975 British comedy-adventure film Royal Flash, adapted by George MacDonald Fraser from his novel (the second in the popular 12-book series, The Flashman Papers), offers a tale about that energetic cad, Harry Flashman (Malcolm McDowell, A Clockwork Orange), taking reluctant if opportunistic part in 19th-century history.

In the movie, Flashman is drawn into a plot to impersonate a prince engineered by the fearsome Otto von Bismarck (Oliver Reed, Tommy) and must utilize all his wily talents to emerge unscathed.

Directed by Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, Petulia), the film also stars Alan Bates (Women in Love), Florinda Balkan, Britt Ekland, Joss Ackland (The House that Dripped Blood) and a young Bob Hoskins (Made in Dagenham) in one of his earliest film roles (albeit, a small one).

As supplier Twilight...

Django Unchained | Broadchurch | Royal Flash | Motel Hell | Gone In 60 Seconds

Django Unchained

The thing that must annoy Tarantino's detractors more than anything else is that he's usually right. Here, he makes an overlong, bloody, talky movie in a genre no one touches these days (the western). Then he goes and scores the biggest hit of his career with it.

Set in the antebellum American south, Jamie Foxx's slave Django is freed by Christoph Waltz's cheerful and charming bounty-hunting ex-dentist Dr King Schultz. They team up to find Django's wife and rescue her from plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, clearly enjoying a rare villainous role) and his devious house slave Stephen (an utterly terrifying Samuel L Jackson). Tarantino is far too much of a chatterbox to let so much as a few seconds go by without dialogue (westerns usually have a lot of space). No matter, he...

The sCare Foundation has announced that it will honor Malcolm McDowell with a Lifetime Achievement Award at its Halloween Benefit this weekend:

Los Angeles, CA — The sCare Foundation announced today it will honor legendary actor Malcolm McDowell (Rob Zombie’s Halloween, A Clockwork Orange) with the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award at its 2nd Annual Halloween Benefit on October 28, 2012. The evening will be held at the Conga Room at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles, and will include great entertainment, a silent auction and plenty of exciting prizes. The evening will benefit the life-saving programs of the Hollywood Homeless Youth Project (http://hhyp.org/), as well as Safety Harbor Kids (http://www.safetyharborkids.org/).

“Malcolm is an amazing actor and true professional,” said sCare Foundation founder, Malek Akkad. “He’s always been an ardent supporter and we’re excited to be able to honor him in this way. Besides being one of our greatest actors,...

The sCare Foundation announced today it will honor legendary actor Malcolm McDowell (Rob Zombie’s Halloween, A Clockwork Orange) with the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award at its 2nd Annual Halloween Benefit on October 28, 2012.

The evening will be held at the Conga Room at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles, and will include great entertainment, a silent auction and plenty of exciting prizes. The evening will benefit the life-saving programs of the Hollywood Homeless Youth Partnership, as well as Safety Harbor Kids.

“Malcolm is an amazing actor and true professional,” said sCare Foundation founder, Malek Akkad. “He’s always been an ardent supporter and we’re excited to be able to honor him in this way. Besides being one of our greatest actors, he has always shown unwavering support to our cause, and his generosity and compassion truly appreciated.”

Malcolm McDowell is arguably among the most dynamic and inventive of world-class actors,...

Sixty boxes of notes and photographs cover 40-year career of director who worked with Beatles and on Superman films

Richard Lester – the movie director who helped give the Beatles big screen success in the 1960s before finding more fame with The Three Musketeers and Superman franchises – has donated his archive to the nation.

The BFI National Archive yesterday announced that it had acquired more than 60 boxes of letters, scripts, notes, receipts and photographs covering Lester's 40 year career in the TV and movie business.

Highlights include early drafts for the film A Hard Day's Night – then simply called The Beatles – and letters from stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch and Spike Milligan.

Lester, now aged 78, has had a long association with the BFI, standing in for Jean-Luc Godard when he failed to turn up for the first John Player lecture in 1968. "The organisation has always been very helpful to me in different ways,...

Christopher Cazenove, who has died of septicaemia aged 64, always dreamed of being a film star, although his father – a brigadier in the Coldstream Guards – wanted him to follow in his military footsteps. Ironically, when Cazenove fulfilled his acting ambitions, he made his name as the blue-eyed, clean-cut hero Lieutenant Richard Gaunt in The Regiment (1972-73). The drama series, following a 1970 pilot, traced the fortunes of the Cotswolds Regiment at the turn of the 19th century – from the Boer War to service in India – through the lives of two families, the Gaunts and the Brights. Cazenove's fame was confirmed when he was featured on the cover of Radio Times.

The old Etonian seemed happy to become typecast playing aristocrats. On television, he was also seen in Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill (1974) as George Cornwallis-West, a...