News

Before 1967's A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood's career consisted primarily of several uncredited roles in films with dull titles like Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula! (1955), and one-off performances in anthology series like the dryly named waterlogged drama Navy Log (1955) and the much more memorable Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). Before Eastwood's teeth-gritting snarl and perpetual sun-in-the-eye squint became as intrinsic to American popular culture as Twinkies, the actor was in dire need of a proper vehicle to coax the latent hard-ass from his slumber.

In those early years, it was 1959's Rawhide, in which Eastwood portrayed the precocious ramrod Rowdy Yates, a former Confederate Army soldier. If any of those early performances could be said to provide an inkling as to what sort of gruff underbelly could be scratched with the right material, it was Rawhide. In Yates, we have a nascent iteration of the type of character...

Tom Laughlin: ‘Billy Jack’ actor-filmmaker who died last week helped to revolutionize film distribution patterns in North America (photo: Tom Laughlin in ‘Billy Jack’) Tom Laughlin, best known for the Billy Jack movies he wrote, directed, and starred in opposite his wife Delores Taylor (since 1954), died of complications from pneumonia last Thursday, December 12, 2013, at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles County. Tom Laughlin (born on August 10, 1931, in Minneapolis) was 82; in the last dozen years or so, he suffered from a number of ailments, including cancer and a series of strokes. Tom Laughlin movies: ‘The Delinquents’ and fighting with Robert Altman In the mid-’50s, after acting in college plays and in his own stock company while attending university in Wisconsin, Tom Laughlin began landing small roles on television, e.g., Climax!, Navy Log, The Millionaire. At that time, he was also cast...

Following up on our chat with Leonard Nimoy (read part I here), the actor talks about his latest appearance on Fringe. In “Momentum Deferred,” his character, Massive Dynamic founder William Bell, meets up with Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) for the first time since last season’s finale.

Although Bell was mentioned throughout Fringe’s first season, he was only seen that one time and remains a mysterious figure. “I’ve had some wonderful and creative conversations with [creators] J.J. Abrams, Bob Orci, Alex Kurtzman, the writers and showrunner Jeff Pinkner to try to create from scratch a character who has never been seen before, who has only been referred to,” Nimoy says. “There are certain things that were given, which is that he’s a powerful figure, very wealthy and obviously an intelligent man with a scientific background.

“But in terms of characteristics, we started from scratch, and in ‘Momentum...