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Jason Statham's star power stems from an earlier era of filmmaking, and thrillers starring tough guys like Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. It's never been a particularly noble genre, but it can be quite engaging in the right hands. There's far less of a market for it these days, when superheroes rule the roost and massive special effects are the order of the day. Even action films hearkening back to their heyday of the 1970s and 1980s like The Fast & The Furious franchise use big budgets and massive ensembles to compete with modern mega-franchises.

Statham's work tends to stay lean and mean, and the actor has both the presence and the physical skills to pull it off seemingly without effort. There aren't many performers or filmmakers specializing in the kind of movies he makes, and while not all of them are masterpieces, he's still found his share of winning efforts.

Nearly ten years after director George Miller returned to the post-apocalyptic wasteland and redefined the action genre with Mad Max: Fury Road, the Australian auteur returned to replace Charlize Theron with Anya Taylor Joy to tell the origin story of the warrior who helped Mad Max cross that fury road in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. And regardless of how underwhelming its box office may be, this high octane prequel will surely stand the test of time alongside the rest of the Mad Max saga, certainly more so than another follow-up from Warner Bros. to a car racing franchise way back in 1984, when the late great Burt Reynolds bid farewell to the formula comedy genre that made him a superstar alongside an all-star cast (Jackie Chan! Frank Sinatra! Tony Danza!) with Cannonball Run II.

The original Cannonball Run was just one of many hit movies between Burt and his stuntman...

The 1984 summer movie season kicked off in May and early June with a flurry of blockbusters. "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" opened to a gargantuan $25 million over Memorial Day weekend, and, unconcerned about getting chopped up in the mega-sequel's wake, Paramount scored a $17 million debut the following weekend with "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." If you're thinking the studios might sit out a weekend while these films dominate the box office, Columbia and Warner Bros opted to throw a couple of haymakers over the June 8 three-day with, respectively, "Ghostbusters" and "Gremlins."

And then, on the fourth weekend of the summer movie season, Hollywood at last took a breather. With kids fresh out of school, the studios sat back and watched the aforementioned titles continue to flourish, while other pricey gambles (e.g. "Streets of Fire" and "Once Upon a Time in America") flopped.

Then on June...

Albert S Ruddy, the Hollywood film and television producer who earned best picture Academy Awards for both The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, has died peacefully following a brief illness. He was 94.

Born in Montreal and raised in New York City, Ruddy began his entertainment career as creator, with Bernie Fein, of sixties TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. He produced features including Robert Redford drama Little Fauss And Big Halsy before being brought in by Paramount as sole producer of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, for which he won his first Oscar in 1973.

Ruddy later served as executive producer on The Offer,...

Hollywood is reeling from the death of Al S. Ruddy, the Oscar-winning producer of such iconic films as The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby. Ruddy passed on May 25 at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center after a brief illness. The multi-hyphenate filmmaker was 94.

“Al was truly one of the great Hollywood mavericks,” The Offer director Dexter Fletcher said in a statement. “One of the last Mohicans who created great movies which still influence and inspire to this day. From humble beginnings to the highest of Hollywood accolades. His was an incredible journey. Achieved through the sheer power of his determination, strong will, irrepressible energy and charm and a rarely matched love for the art of film.”

Fletcher’s Paramount+ miniseries The Offer chronicles the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. It stars Miles Teller as Ruddy and immortalizes the visionary producer’s meticulous work on the 1972 classic.

For his feature debut,...

Albert S. Ruddy, who earned two Best Picture Oscars for producing The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby and co-created TV shows including Walker, Texas Ranger and Hogan’s Heroes, died May 25 at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center after a brief illness, a family spokesman said. He was 94.

Ruddy is one of nine producers ever to earn two or more Best Picture Oscars, and has the distinction of winning them with the largest interval in between — 32 years.

He recently was portrayed by Miles Teller in the Paramount+ miniseries The Offer, which chronicles Ruddy’s experience making the 1972 film that Coppola directed and adapted with Mario Puzo from the latter’s bestselling novel.

Related: Peter Bart: ‘The Offer’ Spins A Mafia Tale About ‘The Godfather’ That’s Really More Fiction Than Fact

“Al was truly one of the great Hollywood mavericks,” The Offer director Dexter Fletcher said in a statement. “One of...

The pitch was "Rambo in an office building." In the 1980s, the idea of a Rambo type in anything, anywhere would at least get your project shuttled down the studio production pipeline. 20th Century Fox rightly believed they had a potential winner in "Die Hard." So why was the project anathema to every A-list movie star in Hollywood?

Perhaps it was the pedigree. "Die Hard" was an adaptation of Roderick Thorp's action novel "Nothing Lasts Forever," the author's 1979 sequel to his 1966 bestseller "The Detective." That cop thriller had been turned into a 1968 star vehicle for Frank Sinatra, who was nearing the end of his 1960s big-screen comeback. It was a solid hit for 20th Century Fox, but, despite a feint toward grittiness, it was viewed as nothing more than a paycheck gig for the Chairman.

So 20 years later, when Fox spied blockbuster potential in Thorp's sequel (which was...

It's important not to mix up the 1959 John Wayne film "Rio Bravo" with the 1966 John Wayne film "El Dorado." As cinephile Chilli Palmer (John Travolta) points out in the 1995 film "Get Shorty," Dean Martin played the drunk in "Rio Bravo," while Robert Mitchum played the drunk in "El Dorado." Basically the same part. Chilli Palmer also points out that John Wayne played the same role in both films: he played John Wayne.

Dean Martin was no stranger to cinema by 1959, having already appeared in a dozen short films. The bulk of his output, however, was playing more or less himself opposite his comedy partner Jerry Lewis. His first feature film didn't come until 1957, in the Richard Thorpe rom-com "Ten Thousand Bedrooms," coming after splitting with Lewis. Immediately diversifying, Martin went on to star in the war film "The Young Lions" and Vincente Minnelli's "Some Came Running" before appearing in "Rio Bravo.

Director Hal Needham made some of the most popular action comedies of the 1970s, and his frequent collaborations with Burt Reynolds were often his best films. Needham started his Hollywood career as a stunt actor, and that keen eye for action eventually landed him a spot in the director's chair. Reynolds was one of the biggest stars of the '70s, and together they created several amazing films that personified the decade and had a fair amount of laughs to go along with the pulse-pounding action. Though none of their collaborations were Oscar candidates, some were box office smashes that have stood the test of time.

First collaborating in 1977 on Smokey and the Bandit, the duo made a total of seven films together over a span of 20 years. Though Burt Reynolds worked with great directors in his career, his partnership with Needham was a consistent source of hits, and many...

The Incredible Hulk, created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1962, is a character born more from universal monster movies and 1950s sci-fi than more modern notions of complex, interlaced comic book lore. In the original comic books, a spindly physicist named Bruce Banner was exposed to a strange type of radiation while saving a soldier from a nuclear bomb test. Rather than killing him, the radiation mutated his body into that of a bulky, over-muscled brute. He eventually shrunk back to his normal size, but Bruce eventually found that whenever he got angry, he would transform back into an unstoppable radioactive ogre. Indeed, he was so angry, he couldn't speak or think clearly.

The Hulk became one of the more popular characters in a new wave of Marvel Comics that debuted in the 1960s. He was popular enough to be included in the Avengers, a mash-up superhero team comic...

Donn Cambern, the Oscar-nominated Romancing the Stone film editor whose credits also include Easy Rider, The Last Picture Show and Ghostbusters II and was a longtime president of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, died Wednesday, his family told the guild. He was 93.

Born on October 9, 1929, in Los Angeles, Cambern came from a showbiz family. His father was in the music-publishing business, and his mother played harp on movie soundtracks including Top Hat for the Rko Pictures orchestra. He graduated from UCLA in 1952 and landed a gig at Disney as a messenger.

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He began his career in 1960s television, serving as music editor for episodes of I Spy, That Girl and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir along with scores of...

Henry Silva, who starred in Johnny Cool, fought Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate and was one of Sinatra’s fellow thieves in Ocean’s 11, among dozens of screen roles spanning a half-century, died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA. He was 95.

An actor whose distinctive face often led to typecasting as the heavy, his 130-plus film and TV credits also include The Bravados, starring Gregory Peck (1958); Cinderfella, with Jerry Lewis (1960); the Rat Pack-led Western Sergeants 3 (1962); Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979); Love and Bullets with Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Rod Steiger (1979); the Burt Reynolds pics Sharky’s Machine (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1982); Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990); Steven Seagal’s first film Above the Law (1988); and Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai with Forest Whitaker (1999).

Along with the title role opposite Elizabeth Montgomery in Johnny Cool...

Henry Silva, a character actor known for playing bad guys and gangsters in movies like “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Ocean’s 11,” has died.

Silva died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, his son Scott Silva confirmed to Variety. He was 95.

The stage and screen actor, whose career spanned 50 years and 140 TV and film credits, was also an honorary member of The Rat Pack. He starred alongside Frank Sinatra in both “Ocean’s 11” (1960) and “The Manchurian Candidate,” (1962) in which he played one of the 11 casino robbers in the classic caper film. Also in 1962, they both appeared in “Sergeants 3” and would go on to collaborate on the TV movie “Contract on Cherry Street” (1977) and “Cannonball Run II” (1984) with Dean Martin.

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Henry Fuhrmann, Longtime LA Times Editor Who Championed Inclusive Writing in Journalism, Dies at 65

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Henry Silva, the rugged New York actor who portrayed heavies and heroes of various ethnicities in a career highlighted by turns in A Hatful of Rain, The Manchurian Candidate and Johnny Cool, has died. He was 95.

Silva died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his son Scott Silva told The Hollywood Reporter.

Silva also played the Draconian commander “Killer” Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), just one in a lineup of his bad guys seen in The Tall T (1957), The Bravados (1958), Il Boss (1973), Sharky’s Machine (1981), Above the Law (1988), Dick Tracy (1990) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

“Henry Silva is one of those guys you most likely will recognize even if you don’t know his name,” onetime Crimespree magazine writer Dave Wahlman wrote in 2016. “His face is something straight...

Greetings, you foul-smelling oafs! “Smart” Mark D. Mark here to fill in for Nathan Favel, who is probably at home using his mother’s ashes as kitty-litter, because he’s such a wimp. Nathan will receive the credit while I, “Smart” Mark D. Mark, will do all the work, because Donald J. Trump is Making America Great Again. I tire of watching Impact Wrestling squander their potential on the likes of WWE rejects and unpromoted prize fights that lead to no buckos in the banko. Emergence: Night 1 is upon us and it will bring us a main event featuring The North, who are seeking to regain the Impact World Tag Titles from The Motor City Machine Guns. America versus Canada…beat that Canuck ass boys! With an X-Division Title match to start us off, let’s embark on the great venture of your life, you pathetic squelches.

Match #1: Rohit Raju def.

Tony Sokol May 14, 2019

Tim Conway's approach to comedy was so off-kilter his Carol Burnett Show acting partners couldn't keep straight faces.

It always appeared there were two jokes going on when Tim Conway took a turn on stage on The Carol Burnett Show. He was acting for the audience, but he was also trying to break up his co-performers. This gave the audience a view into an inside joke being tossed around by the troupe, and sometimes it looked like he was pulling a gag on his fellow performers. Tim Conway had a genius for making almost every line appear to be off-script and improvised. The quintessential in-the-moment comic performer died at 8:45 a.m. on May 14, in the Los Angeles area, according to Variety.

Conway was first noticed as Ernest Borgnine's sidekick on the 1960s sitcom McHale's Navy, an honor he continued when the pair reunited for SpongeBob SquarePants,...

John Peter Kousakis began his career in 1979 as a production assistant on the television mini-series The French Atlantic Affair, which led to work as a second assistant director on Chips. From there Kousakis worked as an Ad on some of the most popular series of the era, including The Greatest American Hero, The Fall Guy, and The A-Team, but he caught the directing bug during his first foray into features, working as a second Ad on the Burt Reynolds-Hal Needham car chase extravaganza Cannonball Run II. Since then he has moved back and forth between production management positions and […]...

John Peter Kousakis began his career in 1979 as a production assistant on the television mini-series The French Atlantic Affair, which led to work as a second assistant director on Chips. From there Kousakis worked as an Ad on some of the most popular series of the era, including The Greatest American Hero, The Fall Guy, and The A-Team, but he caught the directing bug during his first foray into features, working as a second Ad on the Burt Reynolds-Hal Needham car chase extravaganza Cannonball Run II. Since then he has moved back and forth between production management positions and […]...

This past week Burt Reynolds, perhaps the most self-deprecating movie star to ever cruise to box-office domination, died during a hospital stay in Jupiter, Florida, at the age of 82. “I’m pretty passionate about my work,” he once said, “even though I sometimes have this realization on the second day of shooting that I’m doing a piece of shit. So, I can do one of two things: I can just take the money, or I can try to be passionate. But the name of the boat is still the Titanic.” Yes, on top of being effortlessly likable and undeniably sexy, Reynolds was naturally funny too. And yes, there are a lot of confirmed pieces of shit floating around out there in which he received top billing. But even if the bad ones in his oeuvre outnumber the good ones (and I would argue that this is indeed the case...

My wife and I were watching “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson” one night in April, 1985 when Burt Reynolds came on as one of Johnny’s guests. I was interested in the banter between them for a couple of reasons.

I liked Reynolds a lot. Though he had of late been starring in cornball chase movies like “Stroker Ace,” “Cannonball Run” and the “Smokey and the Bandit” films, I would be forever grateful for his dramatic performance in the 1972 “Deliverance.” What a movie! He’d also shown his range in Alan J. Pakula’s light romantic comedy “Starting Over.” Plus, he was just a lot of fun.

More urgently, I was interested because he was on the show to promote a new movie adapted from Elmore Leonard’s novel “Stick.” He was both the movie’s star and its director and, a few months earlier, I’d been on the...

Much has been written about the New Hollywood of the 1970s and how it was formed by a group of bearded film-school grads who grew up on a diet of cinema and broke the hidebound rules of the studio system. But there’s no talking about American film in the Me Decade without discussing the impact of Burt Reynolds, the iconic star who encapsulated so much of the era’s freewheeling attitudes and post-modern sensibilities.

Unlikely the falsely humble stars of yore, Reynolds clearly reveled in being a movie star, whether he was yukking it up on Johnny Carson’s couch or mugging through silly all-star extravaganzas like “The Cannonball Run.” He had the cool of the Rat Pack, but in a way that seemed more attainable to a country mired in recession; Reynolds’ public vibe always leaned closer to a six-pack and a Trans Am than to martinis and limousines.

While looking for the appropriate Burt Reynolds clip to lead off a tribute to the iconic 1970s movie star, who died today at 82, my first impulse was… Well, if I’m being honest, my first impulse wasn’t technically a Reynolds clip at all, but an SNL sketch featuring Norm MacDonald as Reynolds as Turd Ferguson. My first serious impulse was from that time Johnny Carson smeared whipped cream on Reynolds’ groin:

And my second real thought was the blooper reel that ran at the end of The Cannonball Run...

Burt Reynolds, one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men during the ’70s and early ’80s in such films as “Deliverance,” “Smokey and the Bandit, “The Longest Yard” and “Semi-Tough,” has died. His rep confirmed that he died Thursday in Jupiter, Fla. He was 82.

He later earned an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ode to skin flicks, “Boogie Nights.” He had been set to appear in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Hollywood.”

Reynolds’ appeal lay in his post-modern macho posture undercut by a wry self-awareness, which he used to good effect in comedies as well as action films. For a period during the ’70s he was the nation’s top box office draw. But after one too many bad movies, his popularity waned. He returned to television, where he’d gotten his start, mostly in Westerns, and produced his own sitcom, “Evening Shade,” which brought him an Emmy.

After languishing in development hell since 2011, Warner Bros. is moving forward once again on their Cannonball Run remake, with Doug Liman in early talks to direct. The last we had heard about this project was almost exactly a year ago, when the studio brought in Rawson Marshall Thurber (Central Intelligence) to direct, but this new report reveals that a deal was never struck with Thurber. Liman will now be working from an existing draft by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon (Night at the Museum franchise), although the studio is said to be seeking a new writer.

Both The Cannonball Run (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1984) were directed by legendary stuntman/filmmaker Hal Needham, with the first written by Brock Yates, who created the actual race the movie series is based on. The original Cannonball Run was actually not a race at all, with only one "team" participating, Car & Driver magazine...

If 1,500 dead people can’t take the shine off Adele’s birthday celebrations, maybe these corpse-strewn disaster-movie themes can work for her in future

Adele just had a Titanic-themed birthday party. First, let’s make it clear this wasn’t the singer’s fault. Adele has just turned 30, which means she was nine when Titanic came out. She was right at the age where you unquestioningly watch and rewatch a film over and over again until you absorb every line and nuance into your very soul. I had a similar thing with Cannonball Run II.

Jim Nabors and Frank Sutton in "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C".

By Lee Pfeiffer

Jim Nabors, who epitomized the image of a friendly country boy, has died at age 87 at his home in Hawaii. Nabors was plucked from obscurity when Andy Griffith caught his nightclub act in L.A. in the early 1960s and cast him in the role of Gomer Pyle, the affable but simple-minded filling station attendant in "The Andy Griffith Show". The program was always among the top shows in the ratings and Nabors' exposure on the show gained him instant fame. The character of Gomer became as iconic as Griffith's Sheriff Andy Taylor and Don Knotts' deputy Barney Fife. Nabors' popularity extended into a second career as a pop singer. When he first sang on an episode of "The Andy Griffith Show", many viewers thought his operatic baritone voice was dubbed. However, they soon...

It took the Bond series 15 years and 10 movies to get to the ridiculed “Moonraker.” The laddish spy franchise “Kingsman: The Secret Service” series, based on Mark Millar’s comic book, has done it in one leap with the bloated, inexplicably un-entertaining follow-up “Kingsman: The Golden Circle.” Given that the movie struggles to justify its existence from scene to scene, and so ill-uses a VIP table’s worth of stars/actors — Elton John, Halle Berry, Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum and Jeff Bridges — the better comparison might be to “Cannonball Run II.” At least “Moonraker” had Roger Moore’s bespoke suavity as.

Warner Bros. is gearing up for a “Cannonball Run” reboot, with “Dodgeball” director Rawson Thurber and “Reno 911” creators Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant in talks to direct and write, reports Deadline.

Read More: ‘Baywatch’ Review: The Rock and Zac Efron Deliver A Splashy Summer Hit Full of Dick Jokes

The project will relaunch the franchise begun by Hal Needham’s “The Cannonball Run” in 1981, a slapdash comedy starred Frank Sinatra, Burt Reynolds, Jackie Chan, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise, Farrah Fawcett, and many other stars of the time. The Fox release was universally panned by critics, but was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year. Warner Bros. followed that up in 1984 with “Cannonball Run II,” and Orion released a third film, “Speed Zone,” in 1989. The franchise centers around a cross-country car race, inspired by a real race that took place throughout the 1970’s.

Read More: Thomas Lennon is a...

More than five years after a Cannonball Run remake was first put into development by Warner Bros., the studio is finally moving forward on the project. Warner Bros. has brought on Rawson Marshall Thurber (Central Intelligence) to direct this new version of Cannonball Run, with the writing team of Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (Night at the Museum franchise) coming aboard to write the script. Andre Morgan, who produced the original Cannonball Run movies, is producing alongside Alan Gasmer, although no production schedule was released at this time.

We first heard about a Cannonball Run remake in October 2011, when the studio was reportedly considering Guy Ritchie and Shawn Levy to direct the film. That report also claimed that Guy Ritchie was eyeing Brad Pitt to star, while Shawn Levy wanted Ben Stiller. The studio was reportedly trying to secure financing from General Motors, through a deal that would showcase...

2017-04-15T03:52:18-07:00'Fate of the Furious' Heads for Decent $100-Million Opening Weekend

The box office gas needle for Universal’s The Fate of the Furious is currently staying steady with what we saw on Friday at 12 noon: $45.5M for today and $100.1M for the weekend at 4,310 theaters, the widest pre-summer release ever.

While that figure is at the lower end of where tracking saw the sequel (many forecasted it as high as $110M), there isn’t a major studio in town who would say that’s an awful opening for a movie, especially for an eighth title in an action franchise, one that’s specifically built around car stunts and crashes. Burt Reynolds could only wish that back in the day his 1980s cinematic car series Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run had the type of B.O. momentum that the Fast and Furious franchise possesses.

As Oscar-nominated coming-of-age drama Mustang hits cinemas, can you identify which car is from which movie?

I Am Legend

You, Me and Dupree

Mr and Mrs Smith

The House Bunny

Footloose

Cannonball Run II

Starman

Supergirl

Thunderball

Diamonds Are Forever

You Only Live Twice

Goldfinger

Death Race 2000

Nighthawks

Tango & Cash

Lock Up

Mission: Impossible III

War of the Worlds

Knight and Day

Minority Report

Death Becomes Her

Twins

Pretty Woman

Big Business

Menace II Society

Dangerous Minds

Candyman

The Pelican Brief

Scream

Varsity Blues

10 Things I Hate About You

The Faculty

Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious 5

Fast & Furious 6

Fast & Furious 7

Misery

Nobody's Fool

Grumpy Old Men

Cliffhanger

0 and above.

You're out of gas

1 and above.

You're out of gas

2 and above.

You're out of gas

3 and above.

You're out of gas

4 and above.

Backseat driver

5 and above.

Backseat driver

6 and above.

Backseat driver

7 and above.

Speed freak

8 and above.

After several years in development, Warner Bros. is finally moving forward on a new incarnation of The Cannonball Run. Deadline reports that the studio has secured the rights to the original 1981 classic, hiring Etan Cohen to write the script and direct. This report claims the studio doesn't consider this project a "remake," but rather a "relaunch" of the franchise.

Back in 2011, we reported that Warner Bros. was in discussions to team up with auto manufacturer General Motors for a Cannonball Run remake. At that time, the studio was eyeing directors such as Guy Ritchie (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian). It seemed that deal never went through, but now the studio has acquired the sequel and remake rights from the copyright holders, original The Cannonball Run writer Brock Yates, the estate of director Hal Needham and Fortune Star Ltd.

The Cannonball Run starred Burt Reynolds,...

"The Godfather" star Abe Vigoda‬ has died, aged 94.

The character actor passed away in his sleep at his home in New Jersey on Tuesday morning (January 26), his daughter Carol Vigoda Fuchs tells The Associated Press.

The Brooklyn, New York native began acting in the theatre as a teen and went on to establish himself with parts in Broadway productions of Marat/Sade, The Man in the Glass Booth, Inquest, and Tough to Get Help.

However, his breakout role came after he was cast as veteran mobster Salvatore Tessio in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather in 1972.

He also featured in a flashback sequence at the end of The Godfather Part II, and later became known for his portrayal of Detective Sergeant Phil Fish on 1970s sitcom Barney Miller and its spin-off series, Fish.

Vigoda's other film credits include Cannonball Run II, Look Who's Talking, and Joe Versus the Volcano.

Vigoda (left) with Richard Castellano and Marlon Brando in "The Godfather" (1972)

By Lee Pfeiffer

Abe Vigoda, whose hang-dog expression and low-key mannerisms help propel him to fame, has passed away at age 94. Vigoda toiled in films and TV without notable success until director Francis Ford Coppola cast him in the key role of Tessio, a mob lieutenant in the Corleone crime family in the 1972 classic "The Godfather".  Tessio was one of the most trusted "employees" of the Corleone family but following the death of its patriarch Vito Corleone, Tessio is discovered to be planning the assassination of the new godfather, Michael Corleone. Memorably he is led away to his execution with typical understated emotion. Vigoda's stock in the film industry rose immediately and he became a popular character actor, appearing in such films as "The Cheap Detective", "The Don is Dead", "Newman's Law", "Look Who's Talking" and "The Cannonball Run II...

While we aren't even one month into 2016, the entertainment industry has already lost several notable icons. Today, Variety reports that beloved character actor Abe Vigoda passed away in his New Jersey home at the age of 94. The news was confirmed by his daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, who revealed he passed from natural causes.

Abe Vigoda was born February 24, 1921 in New York City, to Lena (Moses) and Samuel Vigoda, both Russian Jewish immigrants. His father was a tailor on the Lower East Side. The actor made his first stage appearance at the age of 17 and performed n small theater shows for over 20 years. He had roles in notable off-Broadway productions such as "Richard III" in 1960 and 1961, "The Cherry Orchard" in 1962-63, "A Darker Flower" in 1963 and "The Cat and the Canary" in 1965. The actor made his Broadway debut with a role in a revival of "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul...

It’s definitely been a week for good-byes.

My daughters and I spent the weekend in the beautiful, still somewhat quaint small town of Auburn, California, helping to lay to rest and celebrate the life of my dear aunt Mary Pascuzzi, my fraternal grandmother’s sister, who was the centered matriarch of her own family and a stabilizing force for all of us in her extended family as well. She, and my grandmother, were big fans of classic-era American movies and enthusiastically encouraged my interest, just one reason why they’re both held dear in my heart and in my memory. And being Italian, they both had more than a casual interest in The Godfather when it came out in 1972. I remember my aunt Mary talking to me about having seen it and wondering, me at the ripe old age of 12, if I’d had a chance to go yet.

Actor Alex Rocco, best known for playing mobster Moe Green in the 1972 classic The Godfather, passed away on Saturday in his Studio City, California home at the age of 79. The actor's stepson, Sean Doyle, confirmed to The Los Angeles Times that the actor passed away after losing his battle with pancreatic cancer. The actor's long career spanned 50 years, with over 150 TV and film credits.

Alex Rocco was born Alessandro Federico Petricone Jr. in Boston, who caught the acting bug at the age of 30, when he took an acting class to meet women. After moving to Los Angeles, he took a class taught by Leonard Nimoy, who promptly kicked him out because he couldn't understand his thick Boston accent. He then enrolled in a speech class which transformed his Boston accent with a New York accent, which Leonard Nimoy said he could work with. He made his acting debut with the 1965 Russ Meyer film Motorpsycho!

Los Angeles – He was 7 foot 2 inches tall, an imposing figure that made for one of the most memorable James Bond villains. Richard Kiel portrayed “Jaws” in two Bond films – “The Spy Who Loved Me” and “Moonraker” – and left an unforgettable mark as a character actor with a distinctive look and persona. Richard Kiel died at age 74 on September 10th, 2014.

Richard Kiel in 2010

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Richard Kiel was born in Detroit, Michigan, and made his first appearance in the TV show “Laramie” in 1960. Throughout the 1960s, he made appearances in low budget horror movies and television, most notably in a famous episode of “The Twilight Zone,” entitled “To Serve Man,” and in the TV series “The Wild, Wild West.” It was a western series in the 1970s, “The Barbary Coast,” that caught the attention of the Bond producers, and the villain Jaws was born.

Remembered best as Jaws, the towering steel-toothed villain of James Bond movies, Richard Kiel has passed away at the age of 74. No cause of death was given. The news was confirmed late Wednesday evening by Kelley Sanchez, director of communications at Saint Agnes Medical Center. Richard Kiel's agent Steven Stevens also reported on the news, both parties refusing to provide further details.

Richard Kiel was a giant of a man, standing at 7-foot-2-inches. He captured the public's attention in the 1977 James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me opposite Roger Moore. Jaws was a cable-chomping henchman who towered over his co-stars. The villain was so popular, he was brought back for the 1979 Bond adventure Moonraker. Of his advisory, Bond would quip, "His name's Jaws. He kills people."

The role of Jaws was an iconic one that Richard Kiel could never seem to get away from. Despite this, he...

Best known as James Bond's formidable foe Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, actor Richard Kiel has passed away at the age of 74. Reaching a height of 7 foot 2 inches, the metal toothed henchman is the most iconic role the actor played, but through his career he has also stared in the likes of 1974's The Longest Yard, Cannonball Run II, Happy Gilmore, as well as lending his voice to Tangled. For bringing to life one of the most memorable bad guys in cinema history, we thank you Sir. The thoughts of everybody here at The Movie Bit are with his friends and family during this hard time.

Richard Kiel, best known for playing Jaws in the James Bond films, has died at the age of 74.

Some sad news came in overnight. Richard Kiel, who sprung to fame playing Jaws in a pair of James Bond movies, has died at the age of 74.

Kiel appeared alongside Roger Moore in both The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, yet his film career also covered the likes of Cannonball Run II, Happy Gilmore and Force 10 From Navarone. His casting, particularly in his earlier work, made specific use of his 7 foot 2 inch height, but then more recently, he also lent his voice to the Disney movie Tangled.

He died in California, and is survived by his wife and four children.

Rest in peace Mr Kiel, and thanks for some very fine memories.

Movies News Simon Brew Richard Kiel 11 Sep 2014 - 06:30...

The towering actor who played the mercenary assassin Jaws in a pair of Roger Moore-era 007 movies and the enigmatic alien in one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone died today. Richard Kiel would have turned 75 on Saturday. His agent of 35 years, Steven Stevens Sr, told Deadline that Kiel died this afternoon at St. Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, CA. The 7-foot-2 actor with the crooked smile got his start in early-1060s TV, appearing in such series as Laramie, Thriller and The Rifleman. He appeared in the 1962 sci-fi feature The Phantom Planet before landing the chilling Twilight Zone role. In “To Serve Man,” he played a representative of an advanced, giant alien race called the Kanamits, who alight on Earth amid what seems to be peace and good will. Kiel delivers a mysterious encrypted book to a meeting of the United Nations, and the episode soars from there.

Earlier this afternoon, TMZ was informed that Richard Kiel had passed away at the age of 74. The 7-foot-2 actor used his imposing size to play one of the most memorable Bond villains of all-time, 'Jaws.' Kiel played henchman with steel-capped teeth for two Roger Moore-led Bond films, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979). At this moment, there is no information how or why the actor passed away, but we do know Kiel suffered a broken leg last week and was recuperating in a hospital in Fresno, California. His death comes three days before what would've been his 75th birthday. Kiel will also be remembered for his roles in Happy Gilmore, the original The Longest Yard and Cannonball Run II. In this 11th film of the series, Agent 007(Roger Moore) is assigned to investigate a hijacked space shuttle. Along the way, he joins forces with Nasa scientist Holly Goodhead...

In honor of the 2014 summer movie season, Team HitFix will be delivering a mini-series of articles flashing back to key summers from years past. There will be one each month, diving into the marquee events of the era, their impact on the writer and their implications on today's multiplex culture. We continue today with a look back at the summer of 1984. I turned 14 on May 26, 1984, just as the summer movie season was getting started. These days, the summer movie season seems to begin in mid-March, and I think it's because studios want real estate that they can own. And it feels like the appetite for event films is something the audience has year-round now, so if you're able to make something that excites the audience, why not find a place for it where it's not going head to head with all the other giant event films of the year? For the purposes of this piece,...

With this weekend's release of the video game adaptation Need for Speed, the cross-country auto-race movie is back. So, let's get out our copies of The Cannonball Run, Cannonball Run II and other similar movies and see which one darts to the front of the pack. If not those two Burt Reynolds vehicles, then how about the related semisequel Speed Zone? Or one of the earlier, unrelated movies based on the same race, The Gumball Rally or Cannonball? And before that, don't forget the cult classic Two-Lane Blacktop, which was a major inspiration on the real Cannonball contest.  Not all movies of the genre and that time period dealt with coast-to-coast races, though. Vanishing Point and the Smokey and the...

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Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies who have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Gabriel Axel (1918-2014) - Danish director whose Babette's Feast won the 1987 Oscar for Best Foreign Film (see the win below). His other work includes Royal Deceit and a part of Lumiere and Company. He died on February 9. (THR) Sid Caesar (1922-2014) - Comic actor and writer and legendary TV host who appears in the movies Grease, Grease 2, Cannonball Run II, Silent Movie, History of the World, Part 1 and It's a Mad, Mad...

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Hollywood stuntman and film director who scored huge successes with Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run

Upset by the critical response to his work, the stuntman turned film director Hal Needham, who has died aged 82, took out advertisements in Variety and other trade papers. They featured quotes from negative reviews for his movies including Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and The Cannonball Run (1981), alongside a wheelbarrow overflowing with dollar bills.

Needham made a point. His rumbustious 1977 directorial debut had grossed over $100m – an enormous return on its modest budget. He was still milking that particular creation some 20 years later, producing and directing a series of television movies, including Bandit Goes Country and Beauty and the Bandit.

These and other films, many of which starred Burt Reynolds, were seen by an audience of hundreds of millions worldwide, yet few reference books acknowledged his 45-year-long career — an unjustified omission, if only...

Stuntman and Burt Reynolds director Hal Needham dead at 82: Received Honorary Oscar in November 2012 Veteran stuntman and stunt coordinator Hal Needham, whose stunt-work movie credits ranged from John Ford Westerns to Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and who directed a handful of popular action comedies starring Burt Reynolds, died today, October 25, 2013, in Los Angeles. Needham, who had been suffering from cancer, was 82. (See also: "Stunt Worker Hal Needham: Honorary Oscar 2012".) Born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 6, 1931, Hal Needham began his long Hollywood stuntman career in the mid-’50s. A former tree trimmer and paratrooper, and a motorcycle and car racer, Needham performed stunts in both big-screen and small-screen Westerns, such as John Ford’s 1962 classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring John Wayne and James Stewart; the all-star 1963 Best Picture Academy Award nominee How the West Was Won; and the television series Have Gun - Will Travel, doubling for star Richard Boone.

Nashville, Tenn. -- Actor George Lindsey was remembered Friday as the grinning Goober who made television viewers laugh for three decades on "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Hee Haw."

A public memorial service drew an estimated 400 people who paid last respects to Lindsey, 83, who died Sunday.

He was the beanie-wearing Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" from 1964 to 1968 and its successor, "Mayberry Rfd," from 1968 to 1971. He played the same jovial character, a mechanic, on "Hee Haw" from 1971 until it went out of production in 1993. Reruns of those shows are still seen on TV.

Griffith did not attend, but sent a statement that was read by country music broadcaster Keith Bilbrey at the service at Westminster Presbyterian Church.

"George was a better joke teller than me, and I will say here that I `borrowed' jokes from George that he may have `borrowed' from Minnie Pearl," Griffith confessed. "George told me his...

Nashville, Tenn. -- Actor George Lindsey was remembered Friday as the grinning Goober who made television viewers laugh for three decades on "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Hee Haw."

A public memorial service drew an estimated 400 people who paid last respects to Lindsey, 83, who died Sunday.

He was the beanie-wearing Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" from 1964 to 1968 and its successor, "Mayberry Rfd," from 1968 to 1971. He played the same jovial character, a mechanic, on "Hee Haw" from 1971 until it went out of production in 1993. Reruns of those shows are still seen on TV.

Griffith did not attend, but sent a statement that was read by country music broadcaster Keith Bilbrey at the service at Westminster Presbyterian Church.

"George was a better joke teller than me, and I will say here that I `borrowed' jokes from George that he may have `borrowed' from Minnie Pearl," Griffith confessed. "George told me his...