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Clem Burke, the longtime drummer for Blondie who played a key role in the New Wave movement and appeared on albums by Pete Townshend, Iggy Pop, and Bob Dylan, died Sunday at the age of 70.

“It is with profound sadness that we relay news of the passing of our beloved friend and bandmate Clem Burke following a private battle with cancer,” the band wrote in a statement. “Clem was not just a drummer; he was the heartbeat of Blondie. His talent, energy, and passion for music were unmatched, and his...

Clem Burke, who as the drummer for the rock band Blondie was the group’s “heartbeat,” died Sunday of cancer. He was 70.

His death was announced today by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band.

“It is with profound sadness that we relay news of the passing of our beloved friend and bandmate Clem Burke following a private battle with cancer,” the statement from Blondie singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein begins.

“Clem was not just a drummer,” the statement continues, “he was the heartbeat of Blondie. His talent, energy, and passion for music were unmatched, and his contributions to our sound and success are immeasurable. Beyond his musicianship, Clem was a source of inspiration both on and off the stage. His vibrant spirit, infectious enthusiasm and rock solid work ethic touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.” Read the statement in full below.

Born Clement...

Kraven the Hunter is part of Sony's Spider-Man Universe. The film was the third addition to the Ssu in 2024 and didn't live up to its potential, becoming a major flop after poor initial reviews.

Luckily, streaming services prove there's an audience for every film and Kraven the Hunter has found its prey. Since its disastrous release in theaters, the movie, which stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular character, has found a lot of success online. Following its release on Netflix, Kraven the Hunter has become a hit, Tudum reveals.

The movie premiered on Netflix on Mar. 13, and for the week between Mar. 10 and 16, the movie climbed up the charts globally. It received 7.1 million views and 15 million hours viewed in just three days on the platform. The numbers become even more impressive, as the film reached the third spot globally and is available only in one territory — the U.S.

Catch a young Keanu Reeve in “Point Break” next month on Plex. A few bank robbers in California are notable for their disguises: They wear masks of modern ex-Presidents Reagan, Carton, Nixon, and Johnson. A suspicious FBI thinks they are actually surfers and sends an agent (Reeves) to investigate. Patrick Swayze and Gary Busey co-star. Kathryn Bigelow, who won the Oscar for “The Hurt Locker” directs.

Watch the “Point Break” trailer

Also the neo-noir “L.A. Confidential” stars Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce as detectives in 1950s Los Angeles investigating a murder case. Based on the James Ellroy novel, the film explores corruption, racism, and sexual obsession. Plus, the production value is first-rate.

Catch the “L.A. Confidential” trailer Watch Now $0+ / month plex.tv Coming in July: all coming July 1 unless otherwise noted Black Death Blade Of The Immortal Boys On The Side Breaking Up Ceremony Date Movie Deck The...

Welsh actor Alexander Vlahos, known for his roles in TV series such as “Merlin,” “Outlander” and “Versailles,” is set to play a British ornithologist who, during a field trip to Sicily, gets involved in more than mere birdwatching.

Shooting is underway in Sicily on the indie drama “Hearts of Salt,” the first feature by London-based line producer Rosa Russo. The passion project is structured as a three-way co-production between Italy, the U.K. and Tunisia, with shooting also planned in the North African country. Tunisia will serve as a second location besides the Italian island.

Though plot details are scarce, “Hearts of Salt” will see Vlahos — who will soon be seen opposite Lindsay Lohan in the Netflix rom-com “Irish Wish” — arrive in Sicily on a mission to study the effects of climate change on bird migrations. However, the ornithologist will soon have to abandon his role as a detached observer...

Morgan Davies plays Danny in Evil Dead Rise, and here's everything there is to know about the young actor. Davies is one of the main characters in Evil Dead Rise, with his performance as the brother of Bridget and Kassie being one of the highlights of the film. Although he has had some roles in the past, many viewers were first introduced to Morgan Davies by Evil Dead Rise, and there's a lot to know about the up-and-coming actor.

Evil Dead Rise is the newest entry in the Evil Dead franchise, introducing Sam Raimi's classic horror series to a whole new generation. Evil Dead Rise is a reboot, with it following up on Raimi's original Evil Dead trilogy as well as the 2013 Evil Dead remake. However, rather than focusing on Ash Williams or Mia Allen, Evil Dead Rise introduces an all-new cast of characters. The film follows Beth...

It's been a longer than planned journey to screens for Kraven The Hunter, which sees Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing a version of the classic Spider-Man villain, but it'll finally land in October. As has previously hinted, this will be an origin story, with the character turned into more of an antihero. Check out the first trailer…

In this take on the character's story — directed by Jc Chandor from a script by Richard Wenk, Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, Taylor-Johnson plays Sergei Kravinoff, a man with some serious daddy issues. Pushed by his father to be a strong hunter, he ends up instead attacked by a lion and left for dead. But something happens with mixing bloods and he becomes a powerful warrior — who swears to take down the evil his father pours into the world.

Christopher Abbott is playing an antagonist called The Foreigner, while Alessandro Nivola is a new take...

Kraven the Hunter's Red Band trailer drops online, along with the first poster featuring Aaron Taylor-Johnson's villain.

Kraven the Hunter's first trailer reveals a first look at the R-rated flick, with Taylor-Johnson brutally dispatching his enemies. The poster depicts the first official look at Talor-Johnson in Kraven's iconic costume, complete with fur collar over no shirt. The brooding Kraven sits on a throne seemingly made of antlers and skulls, the latter notably largely human. It's occupied by the oft-used tagline "Villains Aren't Born. They're Made."

Related: Kraven the Hunter's 'Big' Villain Teases a Familiar Universe Setting

Kraven the Hunter's R-Rating and Dark Tone

In April 2023, Taylor-Johnson confirmed that Kraven the Hunter would be R-rated. The actor confirmed Kraven the Hunter's R-rating while joining Sony at CinemaCon 2023 to premiere a first look at the Red Band trailer. Along with a look at Kraven battling mercenaries and biting the nose off a foe,...

Despite being set in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, Morbius is mostly self-contained, but the titular Living Vampire does name-drop Venom during the 2022 film. Jared Leto debuted as Doctor Michael Morbius, the second Spider-Man villain to receive a solo film in the emerging Sony Spider-Man Universe, following the releases of Venom in 2018 and Venom: Let There Be Carnage in 2021. While Sony's direction for their new shared universe is unclear, with 2023's Kraven the Hunter set to confuse things even further, Morbius' reference to the symbiote Venom does help to connect these two vastly different projects.

Marvel Comics' Morbius has never been as popular a character as Venom, but Sony's attempts to bring smaller-scale villains from Spider-Man's rogues gallery into their live-action franchise meant that Morbius might have been the perfect choice. Akin to Eddie Brock, a.k.a. Venom, Morbius was reworked as an antihero for his big-screen debut, which saw...

"The Hunter" was not Steve McQueen's finest hour, but it was his final hour-and-a-half on screen, so it's not as forgettable as it might've been. Written by Ted Leighton and Peter Hyams (who was fired from the project prior to principal photography), the lunk-headed action film is based on the real-life exploits of skip tracer Ralph "Papa" Thorson. It's the kind of role McQueen could nail in his sleep, but, despite being ill (though not yet diagnosed) with the cancer that would claim his life in 1980, he's admirably engaged. The movie might stink, but he does the best he can with poorly written material.

TV-movie specialist Buzz Kulik (who made many a grown man cry with 1971's "Brian's Song") is the credited director, but McQueen reportedly called the shots on set. The film is essentially a stunt showcase, and, as such, delivers a few memorable smash-ups. There's a fun car-versus-combine confrontation in a cornfield,...

In the late Seventies, Blondie were the most widely mocked band of Cbgb’s first punk wave — too pop, not rigorous enough. But after they hit Number One in early 1979 with “Heart of Glass,” their pasticheurs-and-proud stance not only made their string of hits a rare shot of excitement on early-Eighties radio, they foretold the way hits of the future would be stitched together from different genres. Blondie look increasingly visionary in the rearview.

It helped that Blondie’s songwriting was, early on, a fairly open door: In its first incarnation,...

Hollywood actress Ariana DeBose, who bagged Academy Award for the Best Supporting Actress for her performance in ‘West Side Story’, is set to star in the psychological thriller ‘House of Spoils’.

She will play an ambitious chef who opens her first restaurant but has to contend with the powerful spirit of the estate’s previous owner who threatens to sabotage her at every turn, reports Deadline.

Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy are directing the project off their script based on their original idea. ‘House of Spoils’ reteams Cole, Krudy, Secret Engine and Amazon Studios following the latter’s acquisition of Cole and Krudy’s Blow the Man Down, produced by Secret Engine, out of 2019 TIFF. According to Deadline, cameras are expected to roll in the fall.

DeBose took home Oscar, BAFTA, Critics Choice and SAG awards for her star-making role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s remake of ‘West Side Story...

A new book, Giger: Debbie Harry Species – Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo, will document the early Eighties collaboration between the Blondie frontwoman and artist H.R. Giger. Harry commissioned Giger a couple of years after he achieved international fame for designing the phantasmagoric “xenomorph” in the movie Alien for the cover art of her 1981 solo debut, KooKoo. The album will be reissued on October 7, and the book will come out on November 11.

Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, who is also a photographer, captured the process and has been holding onto his behind-the-scenes photos for decades.

Blondie are set to release the first definitive collection of their work in the 124-track archival box set Against the Odds 1974 – 1982. The curated collection, remastered from original analog tapes and cut at Abbey Road Studios, features three-dozen previously unreleased recordings. It arrives on Aug. 26.

“It really is a treat to see how far we have come when I listen to these early attempts to capture our ideas on relatively primitive equipment,” Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry said in a statement. “Fortunately the essence of being in a band in the early...

We have a photo to share with you today of Sophia Lillis in the title role in the upcoming Oz Perkins-directed film Gretel and Hansel.

The story for the film is set “a long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside,” and it follows a young girl who “leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.”

The film also stars Samuel Leakey (MotherFatherSon) as Hansel, Alice Krige as Holda, Jessica De Gouw (Arrow) as young Holda, and Charles Babalola (The Legend of Tarzan) as The Hunter.

Check out the photo and let us know if you’re intrigued by this iteration of the old classic!

By Tim Greaves

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One of the most surprising things about director Roger Christian’s 1982 chiller The Sender, which screams America from almost every fibre, is that it’s British made. With a cast and crew of varied nationality and narratively set in America – location work took place in Georgia – all the studio work for the Paramount Pictures production was actually shot on stages at Shepperton in the UK.

British born Christian himself was a former Academy Award winning art director on the first Star Wars (and a nominee in the same category for Alien). On the other end of the ‘accomplishments to be proud of’ scale, however, he’s the man responsible for the woeful Battlefield Earth, so it’s fair to say his cinematic career was mixed. The Sender, his debut in the director’s chair, resides on the upper end of that scale.

Service called KinoHerz is globally accessible but some films will be geo-blocked according to the rights availability.

The German Producers Association (Vdfp) has launched its own TVoD (transactional video on demand) platform, KinoHerz, to achieve a greater visibility and accessibility for its members’ films.

Titles available in this non-exclusive service include international successes such as Maren Ade’s Everyone Else and Toni Erdmann, Emily Atef’s 3 Days In Quiberon, Fatih Akin’s Tschick as well as documentaries like Tristan Ferland Milewski’s Dream Boat and Arne Birkenstock’s Chandani und ihr Elefant.

The Vdfp’s member companies also have a...

Take a look at new images of actress Milla Jovovich ("Monster Hunter") posing for the latest issue of "InStyle" (Russia) magazine, wearing Balmaine, Celine, Marni and a whole lot more, photographed by Yu Tsai:

"Monster Hunter" is the upcoming Screen Gems live-action fantasy action thriller, written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson ("Resident Evil"), based on Capcom's "Monster Hunter" video game series...

...starring Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, T.I., Meagan Good and Diego Boneta, opening theatrically September 4, 2020.

"...a 'United Nations' military team falls into a portal to an alternate dimension...

"...where the humans defend themselves against vicious creatures. 

"The two groups work together to defend the portal to prevent the monsters from entering the portal and invading Earth..."

Jovovich plays 'Captain Natalie Artemis', member of the Un military team, Tony Jaa is 'The Hunter', a skilled warrior who fights the monsters, Clifford "T.I.

From Brazilian oil-rig workers to a German U-boat crew, from a Chinese concubine to a Spanish spy in Ava Gardner’s home, international TV has served up some memorable characters this year. Variety’s international correspondents take a trip around the world and pick a dozen buzzed-about shows — some of which can be seen soon on Hulu, Amazon Prime and HBO. As for the others — paging Netflix!

“Iron Island” (Brazil)

Following a group of oil workers, “Iron Island” was a big-ticket action drama for Brazilian powerhouse Globo, which went all out on the series’ VFX. With a raft of local talent, it follows the protagonists’ high-pressured lives at home and work. Accidents happen, love blossoms, and events ultimately have widespread political ramifications in the 12-part series.

“The Story of Yanxi Palace” (China)

A hit in China and beyond, “The Story of Yanxi Palace” runs to a hefty 70 episodes, posing a...

Buenos Aires — Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian novelist, once wrote that reality in Latin America is too compelling to ever be ignored in its fiction. Yet, as WWII raged, Jorge Luis Borges, perhaps the greatest of Argentine writers, pointedly published “Ficciones,” fantasy tales, often philosophical speculation given narrative form.

If this year’s Pci Film Directors Assn, showcase at Ventana Sur is anything to go by, some young Argentine filmmakers are having it both ways, creating films which straddle the fiction-reality divide, or enroll fabrication and myth to large effect. Their films, sneak peaked in brief extracts or teaser trailers at the Pci’s annual Work in Progress showcase during Ventana Sur, and underscored the diversity of Argentine filmmaking, a cause championed by Pci and its around 100 directors, and an indication of the depth of talent of Argentine filmmaking.

“7h 35” is a case in point. The feature debut of Javier Van de Couter,...

Italy’s state broadcaster Rai is leading the way in the country’s international TV boom.

Though pay-tv Sky Italia and Netflix are churning out some edgier Italian shows for the international marketplace, the bold Italian pubcaster is now riding high after making a splash at the Venice Film Festival with the world premiere of HBO/Rai’s powerful female friendship saga “My Brilliant Friend,” based on the first of Elena Ferrante’s globally best-selling novels.

Next up are its buzzed-about “The Name of the Rose” series, starring John Turturro, and the third season of Frank Spotnitz’s hit “Medici” saga, currently shooting in Italy.

“My Brilliant Friend,” which Rai fiction chief Eleonora Andreatta started developing before the book’s big success, marks a milestone for Italy’s TV industry because unlike Sky’s crimer “Gomorrah” and Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Young Pope,” it’s classic highbrow TV of the...

Canadian director Christian Duguay is directing the third season of Frank Spotnitz’s “Medici” television saga, which has started shooting in Rome with Italian actor Francesco Montanari attached to play radical preacher Girolamo Savonarola, who became leader of Florence after the Medici family’s overthrow in 1494.

Duguay succeeds Jon Cassar (“24”), who helmed “Medici: Masters of Florence. The Magnificent Part I,” which was the show’s second season.

Montanari, who broke out internationally with Sky’s “Crime Novel,” more recently played the relentless anti-Mafia prosecutor who is the central character in pubcaster Rai’s hit “The Hunter.” He won the best performance prize for this role at the Cannesseries festival in April.

In the third “Medici” season, “Medici: Masters of Florence. The Magnificent Part II,” Florentine statesman and ruler Lorenzo De Medici, played by Daniel Sharman, “has become a man who will have to fight against his demons and defend Florence...

Beta Film announces project at annual pre-miptv dinner in Cannes.

German drama powerhouse Beta Film and Austria’s Red Bull Media House are joining forces on a high-end scripted mega series inspired by football and provisionally entitled The Net.

The project spans 40 hours of drama, divided into five stand-alone, eight-episode series revolving around characters linked in some way to the world of football, whether it be as a fan, player, coach or footballer’s wife.

German opera and theatre director Matthias Hartmann – who is known for his out-of-the-box productions of Fidelio and La Bohème – came up with the concept with...

Rome – Canneseries competition entry “The Hunter” is being hailed as a watershed production for Italian pubcaster Rai and certainly stands out as the most innovative show among a Rai content package just picked up by Amazon Prime Video.

About a real Palermo prosecutor with a killer instinct for tracking down top Mafiosi, ”The Hunter” is produced by Rome-based Cross Productions — which is controlled by Germany’s Beta Film — in tandem with Rai Fiction. The 12-episode “Hunter” skein reconstructs the vigorous reaction prompted in 1993 by the 1992 bomb murders of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. An anti-Mafia effort of unprecedented scope was unleashed that led to hundreds of arrests and marked a turning point in Italy’s fight against Cosa Nostra.

This pivotal hunt is narrated through multiple prisms but mainly through that of young and ambitious provincial prosecutor Saverio Barone, played by Francesco Montanari (“Crime Novel”). His character is...

The event launches in Cannes this April.

Canneseries, the international TV festival launching in Cannes this April (7-11), has revealed the ten series in its official competition selection.

Scroll down for full line-up

The titles include Killing Eve created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) and starring Sandra Oh and Fiona Shaw, and Aquí En La Terra, created by Gael García Bernal with Kyzza Terrazas and Jorge Dorantes.

The titles were selected by Canneseries artistic director Albin Lewi.

The festival was founded by David Lisnard, mayor of Cannes and presided by former French culture minister Fleur Pellerin. It will run alongside Miptv.

The Cannes Intl. Series Festival has unveiled an ambitious inaugural Competition lineup including Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Killing Eve, starring Sandra Oh, Here on Earth, co-created by Gael García Bernal, and The Hunter, a new Italian Mafia drama sold by Gomorrah co-producers Beta Film. (Scroll down for full line-up.) Canneseries will take place between April 4-11 in Cannes at the Palais des Festivals alongside the Miptv market. The majority of the lineup will be world…...

The Berlin International Film Festival will present Willem Dafoe with an Honorary Golden Bear in recognition of the actor’s life work, the festival announced Tuesday. Following the presentation on Feb. 20, the festival will screen Daniel Nettheim’s 2001 film “The Hunter” starring the actor. Dafoe has over 100 film credits to his name, including “The Loveless,” “Roadhouse 66,” “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “Platoon,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Cry-Baby,” “Mississippi Burning,” “American Psycho,” “Spider-Man,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Aviator,” “Inside Man,” “Mr. Bean’s Holiday,” “The Fault in Our Stars,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “John Wick” and most recently “Murder on...

Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will also receive Berlinale Cameras.

Source: Murray Pictures/Berlin Film Festival

‘Songwriter’

Erik Poppe’s Anders Breivik drama ‘U - July 22’ has been added to the competition line-up for 2018 Berlin Film Festival, it was announced today (6 Feb) at the official programme press conference.

Dieter Kosslick, in his penultimate year as festival director, also revealed that the final Berlinale Special title will be Ed Sheeran documentary Songwriter, directed by Murray Cummings. Both films will have their world premieres in Berlin.

It was announced that Willem Dafoe, Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will be honoured at the event, which runs from 15 Feb-25 Feb.

Dafoe, nominated for an Oscar this year for The Florida Project, will be presented with an Honorary Golden Bear on February 20 before a screening of Daniel Nettheim’s 2011 film The Hunter. The festival will screen 10 of his films, including Antichrist, Mississipi Burning and [link...

Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will also receive Berlinale Cameras.

Source: Murray Pictures/Berlin Film Festival

‘Songwriter’

Erik Poppe’s Anders Breivik drama ‘Utoya, July 22’ has been added to the competition line-up for 2018 Berlin Film Festival, it was announced today (6 Feb) at the official programme press conference.

Dieter Kosslick, in his penultimate year as festival director, also revealed that the final Berlinale Special title will be Ed Sheeran documentary Songwriter, directed by Murray Cummings. Both films will have their world premieres in Berlin.

It was announced that Willem Dafoe, Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will be honoured at the event, which runs from 15 Feb-25 Feb.

Dafoe, nominated for an Oscar this year for The Florida Project, will be presented with an Honorary Golden Bear on February 20 before a screening of Daniel Nettheim’s 2011 film The Hunter. The festival will screen 10 of his films, including Antichrist, Mississipi Burning and Platoon. Dafoe served a member...

Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will also receive Berlinale Cameras.

Source: Wiki Commons

Willem Dafoe

Erik Poppe’s Anders Breivik drama ‘Utoya, July 22’ has been added to the competition line-up for 2018 Berlin Film Festival, it was announced today (6 Feb) at the festival’s official programme press conference.

Dieter Kosslick, in his penultimate year as festival director, also revealed that Willem Dafoe, Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will be honoured at the event, which runs from 15 Feb-25 Feb.

Dafoe, nominated for an Oscar this year for The Florida Project, will be presented with an Honorary Golden Bear on February 20 before a screening of Daniel Nettheim’s 2011 film The Hunter. The festival will screen 10 of his films, including Antichrist, Mississipi Burning and Platoon. Dafoe served a member of the festival’s International Jury in 2007.

Kosslick announced that the Berlinale Camera award, which pays tribute to personalities or institutions that have a made a unique contribution to film...

Richard Venture, the prolific character actor who lent gravitas to the best picture Oscar nominees All the President's Men, Missing and Scent of a Woman and dozens of other films and TV shows, has died. He was 94.

Venture died Dec. 19 in Chester, Connecticut, his daughter Rebecca told The Hollywood Reporter.

Venture was especially memorable as Peter Sellers' valet in Hal Ashby's Being There (1979) and as a cop who commits suicide in Steve McQueen's final film, The Hunter (1980).

His body of work also includes roles in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), The Greatest (1977), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Onion Field (1979), Touch and Go (1986), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), The Sicilian (1987), Courage Under...

Even though Christmas is technically over, that doesn’t mean there still aren’t a few gifts for genre fans this week in the form of some killer Blu-ray and DVD releases. It’s a relatively quiet day for home entertainment debuts, but the films coming home on December 26th make up an entertaining assortment of viewing experiences to get you through this final week of 2017.

Rlj Entertainment is keeping busy on Tuesday with a pair of brutally awesome movies—Joe Lynch’s Mayhem and S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99—and for those of you who may have missed it in theaters, the Flatliners remake comes home to both formats as well. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is coming to 4K this week, too, and you can see Wesley Snipes take on aliens in The Recall, to boot.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (Rlj Entertainment, 4K Ultra HD/Blu,...

It’s the most celebrated, the most special, the most significant watch of all time; Rolex is symbolic of many things in the movies: style, wealth, attitude, and perhaps most importantly, taste. That is not to say a Rolex is elitist, but rather that the wearer on screen, anyone from James Bond to Steve McQueen, is someone possessed of the knowledge that there is no better. Rolex is the pinnacle.

The history of Rolex on film is not nearly as interesting as the scope of its wearers and how this simple act of either discreet or ostentatious display can define character. Take James Bond, a man whose breeding was forced upon him; he developed taste and nurtured it. Roger Moore’s incarnation of 007, the most overlooked style wise, is 100% a Rolex customer – even if his custom Submariner in Live and Let Die (1971) was modified somewhat by Q Branch. Sorry, but...

Later this month, my father will be in La, and Toshi is already asking me what movie he's going to get to watch with Grandaddy this time. As we covered in an earlier Film Nerd 2.0, my dad shared some John Wayne films with Toshi and Allen during a vacation to Big Bear a few years ago, and they both connect John Wayne to my father now, exactly the same way I did when I was their age. Today, my father turns 76 years old, and one of the things that I love about our relationship was the way he defined certain icons of cool for me because I saw what they meant to him. Steve McQueen, for example. I can't think of McQueen without thinking of my dad. On more than one occasion, I was able to get him to stop cold in his tracks simply by flipping past a cable...

A while back, when we released the 400th episode of the Sound On Sight podcast, a few close friends and longtime listeners requested we compile a list of our favorite shows we recorded over the years. Now that the podcast has officially come to an end, I decided to finally set aside some time in my schedule and give them what they want. Initially, I set out to pick ten, but after 500 recordings and 8 long years, it was simply too hard to choose so few, so I opted for 20 instead. In selecting these episodes, I tried to show the wide range of genres we covered over the years, including Spaghetti Westerns, Italian Horror, Southern Gothic, underground cult, family friendly, foreign language and even Hollywood classics. We’ve been blessed with several guest hosts and interviews with many filmmakers including genre legends George A. Romero and John Landis, to name a few.

Made entirely with CG, Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn will premiere at Walker Stalker Fan Fest in July. Also in this round-up: release details for Wave 7 of Funko's Comic-Con 2015 exclusive figures and The Sender and Student Bodies Blu-rays.

Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn: "Night Of The Living Dead: Darkest Dawn is a new fully CG take on the 1968 classic, “Night of the Living Dead.” This is the story of a group of survivors fighting to stay alive when a mysterious plague unleashes the undead on New York City. Barricaded in an abandoned apartment building, the characters from the original film face new terror and question each other’s compassion and sense of humanity as they fight to stay alive against the army of the walking dead...It was directed by Krisztian Majdik, Zebediah Y. Desoto, and written by David Schwartz, Zebediah Y. De Soto, Jib Polhemus,...

The Simpsons has pastiched hundreds of movies in its time. From Hitchcock to Kubrick to Disney, we select our top 30 favourites...

The Simpsons has a long history of peppering its stories with pop culture references, and some of the show’s finest gags stem from the world of cinema. These have ranged from the briefest of quotes, to full on shot-for-shot parodies and extended episode-long homages.

Most striking in trying to put this list together was the sheer volume of movie references there are to choose from. In pretty much any given episode of The Simpsons, there are at least a couple, with nods to James Bond, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the work of Alfred Hitchcock proving three of the most regular candidates. The tributes to numerous great horror movies in the show’s Treehouse Of Horror episodes could have been used to fill this list all on their own.

Ryan Lambie Nov 1, 2017

With The Silence Of The Lambs back in UK cinemas, we look at the creepy stories movie villains tend to tell...

Occasionally, a movie villain will pause for a moment to deliver a brief story or anecdote. And often, these apparently incidental tales tell us a lot about an antagonist's state of mind, experiences or warped worldview.

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We've compiled a selection of 20 here. Some of them are blackly funny. Many are disturbing. One or two are even moving. The first one's very strange. All of them bring something unique to each particular film in which they appear, and all of them are laced with a delicious hint of menace. Spoilers for each of the films inevitably lie ahead...

20. Xander - Enemies Closer (2013)

"When I was a little boy at my grandmama's place,...

"How do you get rats off an island?" From Skyfall's Silva to Harry Lime, we took at the menacing little stories told by 20 screen villains.

Occasionally, a movie villain will pause for a moment to deliver a brief story or anecdote. And often, these apparently incidental tales tell us a lot about an antagonist's state of mind, experiences or warped worldview.

We've compiled a selection of 20 here. Some of them are blackly funny. Many are disturbing. One or two are even moving. The first one's very strange. All of them bring something unique to each particular film in which they appear, and all of them are laced with a delicious hint of menace.

20. Xander - Enemies Closer (2013)

"When I was a little boy at my grandmama's place, she had a lovely goose. I named her Edith, after the French singer Edith Piaf..."

We begin with a delightfully weird story from Peter Hyams' 2013 thriller,...

98 years old. Remarkable. I can't imagine making it to 98. I can't imagine the breadth of life experience you could have in that amount of time. Eli Wallach leaves behind a truly great filmography and a family life that is enviable, having been married to the same woman, Anne Jackson, since 1948. She had a hell of a filmography herself, and they had three children together. I am in awe of anyone who can build a life that solid for that long, never mind someone who works in the film industry, where relationships are, at best, impermanent, and at worst, inconsequential. Wallach will leave an amazing legacy onscreen, but he was part of something larger, a total shift in the way acting was approached, and telling his story is telling the story of that paradigm change. He was part of that first wave of Method actors who made the jump from their...

Nobody's really having that a great time in Mystic Falls, but life was rougher than normal for Jeremy Gilbert last year. Not only did his sister become a vampire that he, temporarily, wanted to kill since he was secretly part of an ancient supernatural assassin squad, but Jeremy also died himself before being resurrected by his beloved who he then watched die for her efforts.

Season five picks up several months after Bonnie's death, which Jeremy has spent the summer keeping secret by ghostwriting text messages to everyone in her life. But, if you can believe it, that's not the biggest change in Jeremy's life this year as Steven McQueen told me when I recently visited The Vampire Diaries. Keep reading to find out how all these secrets wreak havoc on Jeremy's mental state and how the character's physical state is wreaking havoc on Steven's cookie cupboard!

ETonline: When this season picks up, where's Jeremy's...

Is there such a thing as a perfect film? Perhaps. You could certainly argue that personal taste plays into the question of perfection too much -- one man's triumph is another's disaster. And even so, there are so many possible things that can go wrong with a film -- one duff performance, one ill-conceived shot, one poorly-written scene -- that it's almost an impossible task. But dammit if we don't consider "Chinatown" to be as close as you can get to being perfect.

Starting with a devilishly complex, yet brilliantly simple script from Robert Towne, still one of the finest ever written, it displays top class at every level, from Roman Polanski directing at his peak (in his last American film), to ace performances from Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and Walter Huston, to Jerry Goldsmith's all-time-great score. It's hard to ask for much more from a film. "Chinatown" was...

All good things must come to an end. And now, so must Dog the Bounty Hunter.

After eight (8!) seasons of the hit reality show, A&E have passed on a ninth season of their cameras following professional bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman and his family of lovable fugitive-recovery agents as they go about recovering fugitives and wearing their sunglasses indoors. It was a good run, folks, and it certainly lasted longer than anyone really could have imagined, even in this age of ur-celebrity. Apparently, “creative differences” were the reason the show has come to an end, though the loads of “behind-the-scenes controversy” probably also began to harm more than it helped.

But rather than just go negative and dip into my bag of mullet jokes, I thought I’d give something else a go. Last month, while talking about something else, I squabbed a bit about how a few years...

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By Tom Lisanti

Steve McQueen: The Actor and His Films by Andrew Antonaides and Mike Siegel from Dalton Watson Fine Books is one of the finest, most lavish movie books about a single actor that I have ever read. All of iconic superstar Steve McQueen’s films are equally discussed from his classics (The Blob, The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Cincinnati Kid, The Sand Pebbles, Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair, Papillon), to his lesser known earlier movies (Never Love a Stranger, The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery)An Enemy of the People, The Hunter), to his misfires (The Honeymoon Machine, Soldier in the Rain, Baby the Rain Must Fall), to his TV series (Wanted: Dead or Alive). Most coffee table-type movie books that I have encountered are extravagantly- made, featuring glorious photographs, but containing very little substance. However, Steve McQueen...

After ten days of watching nearly 70 films and conducting a handful of interviews, the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival has concluded. While we just hit our three-year anniversary, it was actually my fifth year at the festival and it remains one of my favorite experiences of the year. While it is more straight-to-business than something like Sundance, the breadth of films available is stunning.

We covered as much as possible from upcoming major releases to indies that may never get distribution here in the Us. I’ve rounded up everything below, starting off with our top favorites. Note that I didn’t include Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive since it is now in wide release, but it surely would have made the top 10 and you can read our review here. Click the titles of films to check out our full reviews.

The Best

50/50 (Jonathan Levine)

Drawing from a dark time in his own life,...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: Sales news out of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival was steady, with deals being negotiated throughout the festival instead of landing in massive waves either near the start or finish of the 11-day fest.

Major titles harboring Oscar aspirations, from Steve McQueen’s “Shame” and Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights” to Luc Besson’s “The Lady,” struck deals during Tiff 2011, part of an announced 31 films that left Toronto with distribution deals in place. Outside of the awards game, films that will find niche audiences (such as Bobcat Goldthwait’s pitch-black comedy “God Bless America,” the action hit “The Raid,” or Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister”) learned they’d be distributed to larger audiences in time.

“It’s good to see that the Festival has once again provided a solid foundation to facilitate film sales,” said Cameron Bailey, Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival.

News is rolling out of Toronto for this year's festival, with the Galas and the Special Presentations sections announced.  As always with Tiff, the sheer number of films can seem overwhelming, but with new films by David Cronenberg (A Dangerous Method, pictured above), Terence Davies (!), Francis Ford Coppola, Wang Xiaoshuai, Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, and William Friedkin added to big names that premiered already this year (including Almodóvar, Von Trier, Nanni Moretti, and Nicolas Winding Refn) it looks like the 2011 iteration will be as packed with must-see cinema as ever before.  We'll be updating this listing as new lineups are announced.  See Tiff's official website for details.

Galas

Albert Nobbs (Rodrigo Garcia, Ireland) Butter (Jim Field Smith, USA) A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, France/Ireland/UK/Germany/Canada) From the Sky Down (Davis Guggenheim, USA) A Happy Event (Rémi Bezançon, France) The Ides of March (George Clooney, USA) The Lady (Luc Besson,...

Now in its 36th year, the Toronto International Film Festival announced a selection of films in the 2011 Galas and Special Presentations programmes. The selection comprises 10 Galas and 43 Special Presentations, including 31 World Premieres.

The festival has become a hot spot for a number of big films - and this year is no exception. The Brad Pitt film Moneyball will debut at the festival, as well as, Butter starring Jennifer Garner and Hugh Jackman; A Dangerous Method, starring Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, and Viggo Mortensen, and The Ides of March from George Clooney, who also stars in the film.

The 10-day festival will run from September 8 to 18 and feature world premieres from a number of esteemed directors including, Cameron Crowe, Roland Emmerich, Francis Ford Coppola, Marc Foster, Alexander Payne, Sarah Polley, Jennifer Westfeldt, and Wang Xiaoshual.

“The international scope and diversity of voices in these programmes are impressive and inspiring,” said Piers Handling,...

If you're more interested in the typical fall slate of festival entrees than summer's glut of tentpole action fare, this is a great week. The Toronto International Film Festival announced the first wave of films that will play the fest in September. This is a batch of about 50 titles, which makes up only a small chunk of the programming. Usually Tiff features between two and three hundred films. But these are some of the highest-profile entries. Below you'll find rundowns on the new films from George Clooney, Bennett Miller, Jay & Mark Duplass, Todd Solondz, Francis Ford Coppola, Cameron Crowe, Sarah Polley, Fernando Meirelles, Lars von Trier, Marc Forster, Steve McQueen, Alexander Payne, and Lynne Ramsay. No announcement yet of the Midnight Madness programming choices, always some of my faves, but this is a great start. This is quite the list -- there are easily thirty films here that could be potential top ten for 2011 candidates,...

The Toronto International Film Festival is once again proving to be a major stop on the festival circuit. The announcement was released yesterday of 53 titles, including 31 world premieres, and some of the biggest names of the year are among them. Most, if not all, of the films I am most looking forward to will be in attendance, and with the festival just around the corner, the time to get excited for these offerings is now.

Check out the full release below.

Now in its 36th year, the Toronto International Film Festival® today unveiled a selection of films in the 2011 Galas and Special Presentations programmes. The selection comprises 10 Galas and 43 Special Presentations, including 31 World Premieres. Running from September 8 to 18, this year’s Festival presents the world premieres of films from directors Bruce Beresford, Luc Besson, Rémi Bezancon, Cameron Crowe, Terence Davies, Mathieu Demy, Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass, Roland Emmerich, Julian Farino,...