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Tom Luddy, co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival and producer of numerous films for Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, died February 13 at a nursing home in Berkeley, CA, where he had been under care for dementia. He was 79.

The festival announced Luddy’s death this morning. The news comes two months after the death of another Telluride co-founder, Bill Pence.

Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Bill Pence Dies: Telluride Film Festival Co-Founder Was 82 Related Story Telluride Review: Werner Herzog's 'Theater Of Thought'

“The world has lost a rare ingredient that we’ll all be searching for, for some time,” said Julie Huntsinger, executive director of the Telluride Film Festival. “I would sometimes find myself feeling sad for those who didn’t get to know Tom Luddy properly. He had a Sphinxlike quality that took a little time to get around, for some.

Mubi's retrospective For Ever Godard is showing from November 12, 2017 - January 16, 2018 in the United States.Jean-Luc Godard is a difficult filmmaker to pin down because while his thematic concerns as an artist have remained more or less consistent over the last seven decades, his form is ever-shifting. His filmography is impossible to view in a vacuum, as his work strives to reflect on the constantly evolving cinema culture that surrounds it: Godard always works with the newest filmmaking technologies available, and his films have become increasingly abstracted and opaque as the wider culture of moving images has become increasingly fragmented. Rather than working to maintain an illusion of diegetic truth, Godard’s work as always foreground its status as a manufactured product—of technology, of an industry, of on-set conditions and of an individual’s imagination. Mubi’S Godard retrospective exemplifies the depth and range of Godard’s career as...

Feeling like a poor stage-to-screen adaptation in the lineage of Rent or The Producers — just without catchy songs to redeem it — Wonder Wheel is an undercooked offering from Woody Allen. Justin Timberlake plays Mickey Rubin, a fit lifeguard in a one-piece bathing suit. As is painfully clear in the opening scenes, if you’re going to cast one of the biggest pop stars in the world, at least use him for what he’s good at.

Timberlake begins the film with narration about his time at Nyu and burgeoning writing career. He does his best Allen impression, over-enunciating every word, but the character isn’t your typical, neurotic Allen surrogate. Allen instead writes the neurosis into Ginny, Kate Winslet’s character, a desperate housewife who is cheating on her husband, Humpty (Jim Belushi), with Mickey. Lacking the neurotic charm that made Jesse Eisenberg’s Cafe Society turn so endearing, Timberlake struggles with delivery here,...

Author: Daniel Goodwin

National Geographic’s first scripted drama series Genius charts the incredible life of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. As well as his scientific endeavours, the story tells of the icon’s rise from modest beginnings, his struggle to be taken seriously by his establishment and peers as an intellectual radical during a time of global unrest.

Genius also tells of Einstein’s tumultuous love affairs, his anti-Semitic battles in Europe and problems he faced as a husband and father which made for an exhilarating, challenging life. HeyUGuys met with first episode Director and Executive Producer Ron Howard, Exec Producer Gigi Pritzker, Geoffrey Rush (Einstein) and Emily Watson (Elsa Einstein) to discuss the series, its origins and process of bringing such remarkable characters back to life…

Gigi Pritzker (Exec Producer): “We spent a number of years with numerous writers, trying to work Einstein’s story into a three...

Director and documentarian Mark Hartley scores both a film history and comedy success with this ‘wild, untold’ account of the 1980s film studio that was both revered and despised by everyone who had contact with it. The ‘cast list’ of interviewees is encyclopedic, everybody has a strong opinion, and some of them don’t need four-letter words to describe their experience!

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

On a double bill with

Machete Maidens Unleashed!

Blu-ray

Umbrella Entertainment (Au, all-region

2014 / Color / 1:77 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date April 4, 2017 / Available from Umbrella Entertainment / 34.99

Starring: Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus, Al Ruban, Alain Jakubowicz, Albert Pyun, Alex Winter, Allen DeBevoise, Avi Lerner, Barbet Schroeder, Bo Derek, Boaz Davidson, Cassandra Peterson, Catherine Mary Stewart, Charles Matthau, Christopher C. Dewey, Christopher Pearce, Cynthia Hargrave, Dan Wolman, Daniel Loewenthal, David Del Valle, David Paulsen, David Sheehan, David Womark, Diane Franklin, Dolph Lundgren, Edward R. Pressman,...

Next month will mark the return of New York City’s Quad Cinema, a theater reshaped and rebranded as a proper theater via the resources of Charles S. Cohen, head of the distribution outfit Cohen Media Group. While we got a few hints of the line-up during the initial announcement, they’ve now unveiled their first full repertory calendar, running from April 14th through May 4th, and it’s an embarassment of cinematic riches.

Including the previously revealed Lina Wertmüller retrospective, one inventive series that catches our eye is First Encounters, in which an artist will get to experience a film they’ve always wanted to see, but never have, and in which you’re invited to take part. The first match-ups in the series include Kenneth Lonergan‘s first viewing Edward Yang‘s Yi Yi, Noah Baumbach‘s first viewing of Withnail and I, John Turturro‘s first viewing of Pather Panchali,...

Big screen spectacles rarely come as awe inspiring as Akira Kurosawa's "Ran." The legendary director's 1985 masterpiece deserves to be seen on the big screen (like nearly all of his movies), but there's no better time, as it's been giving a fresh, 4K restoration. Read More: Akira Kurosawa's 100 Favorite Movies Includes Films By Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, And More Kurosawa's take on Shakespeare's "King Lear," which sets the story during Japan's 16th century civil wars, is simply epic, with the director employing a massive cast of extras, live horses, and beautiful location work to pull it all together. Really, there should be little other convincing you need to track this down at a cinema near you. The restored "Ran" first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, is now traveling around the country in limited release, and will hit home video in the U.

In 1960, Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature film, Breathless, would make him an icon of French cinema, inaugurating a career that has consistently expanded society’s definitions and expectations of cinema. That film alone would have reason enough to consider him an important filmmaker, but Godard went on to direct fourteen more features through 1967, culminating with his attack on bourgeois culture, Weekend.

Following this extraordinary run of films, Godard found himself at a moment of great change. His romantic and artistic partnership with Anna Karina had ended, to be replaced with a new (but short-lived) marriage to Anne Wiazemsky, who would serve as a bridge to the current youth culture. Godard’s politics had also changed considerably since the 1950s. His conservatism, a relic of his parents’s politics, had been replaced with an interest in Maoism and an increasing distaste for anything evoking America. (Classic Hollywood cinema initially got a pass,...

For fans of trashy, low-budget action films, Cannon Films defined the 1980s. The company was revitalized, after a decade-long rocky start, by director Menahem Golan and producer Yoram Globus, Israeli cousins now seen by many as the dollar-store precursor to the Weinstein brothers. As tasteless as they were unscrupulous, Golan and Globus are responsible for a flood of Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and Jean-Claude Van Damme films, not to mention cheapy ninja-sploitation films, eccentric art-house films (including Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear and John Cassavetes's Love Streams), and, uh, Lou Ferrigno as Hercules. This week, Warner Brothers collected a ten-film DVD/Blu-Ray box set to coincide with and bolster the release of Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, director Mark Hartley's funny, informative documentary. In the spirit of Hartley's inclusive doc, we present a list of the ten most Cannon-y moments included in the box set.

We’re just a week removed from The Avengers: Age of Ultron, and already people are moving on to talk about the next one. Captain America: Civil War is the next chapter (after Ant-Man) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and this one, (really, you guys) is the one you’ve been waiting for, not the one that came out seven days ago, whatever it was called.

The film involves a rift between the Avengers, particularly Captain America and Iron Man, and how Cap leads the new Avengers to deal with some political strife. We already know that it’s set to include a cameo with Spider-man, but now several other cast members were announced this week. First, Emily VanCamp, who appeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, will be reprising her role. Second is Paul Rudd, who after being introduced in Ant-Man will make an appearance in Civil War as well.

Anthony Mann

As much as any other filmmaker who found a niche in a given genre, in the 10 Westerns Anthony Mann directed from 1950 to 1958 he carved out a place in film history as one who not only reveled in the conventions of that particular form, but also as one who imbued in it a distinct aesthetic and narrative approach. In doing so, Mann created Westerns that were simultaneously about the making of the West as a historical phenomenon, as well as about the making of its own developing cinematic genus. At the same time, he also established the traits that would define his auteur status, formal devices that lend his work the qualities of a director who enjoyed, understood, and readily exploited and manipulated a type of film's essential features.

Though he made several fine pictures outside the Western, Mann as an American auteur is most notably recognized for his work in this field,...

The New York Film Festival is finally about to begin and here is Glenn on one of the must-sees of the fest, Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language.

Much like the film itself, you’ll have to bear with me here. If I get lost or end up on tangents then don’t worry – it’s not only to be expected, but probably the intent. This will probably be messy, but this is a film titled Goodbye to Language so I feel it’s a safe zone, yes? You see, there is a lot to talk about. How about the use of 3D that is perhaps the best I have ever seen. And then there’s the bravura directions that director Jean-Luc Godard goes even once you think you may have his shtick down. And that’s before we get into the concept of subjectivity of ideas. For all I know,...

Though his name is most commonly associated with the Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris action movies that Cannon Films churned out in the 1980s, Menahem Golan, who has died at the age of 85, also produced films directed by the likes of John Cassavetes (Love Streams), Andrei Konchalovsky (Maria's Lovers and Runaway Train), Robert Altman (Fool For Love), Franco Zeffirelli (Otello), Barbet Schroeder (Barfly), Norman Mailer (Tough Guys Don't Dance) and, perhaps most famously, Jean-Luc Godard, whose adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear features Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Julie Delpy—and Woody Allen. » - David Hudson...

Though his name is most commonly associated with the Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris action movies that Cannon Films churned out in the 1980s, Menahem Golan, who has died at the age of 85, also produced films directed by the likes of John Cassavetes (Love Streams), Andrei Konchalovsky (Maria's Lovers and Runaway Train), Robert Altman (Fool For Love), Franco Zeffirelli (Otello), Barbet Schroeder (Barfly), Norman Mailer (Tough Guys Don't Dance) and, perhaps most famously, Jean-Luc Godard, whose adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear features Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Julie Delpy—and Woody Allen. » - David Hudson...

The filmmaker behind the Death Wish sequels and such 1970s and ’80s Cannon Group actioners as The Delta Force the Lou Ferrigno-led Hercules died today in Jaffa, Israel, Haaretz reports. Menahem Golan was 85. The big-personality Israeli producer, writer and director was behind dozens of films during a nearly half-century career, featuring stars including Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. He also directed many of the films, including 1986’s Delta Force with Lee Marvin and Norris, and Stallone’s Over The Top the following year. Those and many others were produced by Cannon Entertainment, which Golan started with his cousin Yoram Globus. Cannon’s output also included such decidedly non-action fare as Bolero (1984), starring Bo Derek and George Kennedy; the Mario Van Peebles starrer Rappin’ (1985); A Cry In The Dark (1988), starring Meryl Streep and Sam O’Neill; and Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear (1987). But the action...

Photo by Quentin Carbonell

Despite the fact the Festival de Cannes—for whatever reason—did not want Abel Ferrara's Welcome to New York, Cannes itself got the film, first in three separate cinema screenings staged during the festival, and then simultaneously online in France through video on demand. Wild Bunch, the film's producers, staged this alt-Cannes premiere as if it were a real one, complete with a press conference with director Abel Ferrara, screenwriter Christ Zois, and actors Gérard Depardieu and Jacqueline Bisset, as well as a series of interviews with the talent provided for the press.

I was able to participate in a roundtable conversation with the director, who was generous in time, spirit and patience with his surrounding journalists. For more on the film itself, see my report from Cannes, as well as Marie-Pierre Duhamel's report from Paris.

Question: I read somewhere that this film was...

My dear President, dear festival director and dear colleagues,

Once again, I thank you for inviting me to the festival, but you know I haven't taken part in film distribution for a long time, and I'm not where you think I am. Actually, I'm following another path. I've been inhabiting other worlds, sometimes for years, or for a few seconds, under the protection of film enthusiasts; I've gone and stayed.

[Cut to a scene of Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution in "Alphaville"]

Eddie Constantine/Lemmy Caution: "I don't feel comfortable in this environment anymore. It's not longer 1923, and I'm not longer the man who fought through the police barricades, the man who fought behind the scenes with a gun in my hand. Feeling alive was more important than Stalin and the Revolution."

The risk of solitude is the risk of losing oneself, assumes the philosopher because he assumes the truth is to wonder about metaphysical questions, which are actually the only ones the everyone's asking.

Rather than writing a simple letter to explain his absence from the press conference for his latest Cannes entry, "Goodbye to Language," at the Cannes Film Festival today, instead, legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard created a video "Letter in motion to (Cannes president) Gilles Jacob and (artistic director) Thierry Fremaux." The video intercuts from Godard speaking cryptically about his "path" to key scenes from Godard classics such as "Alphaville" and "King Lear" with Burgess Meredith and Molly Ringwald, and quotes poet Jacques Prevert and philosopher Hannah Arendt. You can see the video in motion below, but we've translated the key bits for you as well: My dear President, dear festival director and dear colleagues, Once again, I thank you for inviting me to the festival, but you know I haven't taken part in film distribution for a long time, and I'm not where you think I am.  Actually, I'm following another path.

RatPac Entertainment, the Hollywood financing co-venture between Brett Ratner and James Packer, is investing in Mark Hartley.s documentary on. the once-prodigious filmmakers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

RatPac gets North American rights in return for its investment in Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

Hartley (Patrick, Not Quite Hollywood) is shooting the documentary which profiles Golan and Globus, Israeli-born cousins nicknamed the .Go-Go Boys. who bought Cannon in 1979, moved to the Us and churned out dozens of films, mostly cheap and rapidly-shot.

Their output included Missing in Action, two Death Wish sequels, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, American Ninja, Kickboxer, 52 Pick-Up and Masters of the Universe.

They also produced more eclectic fare such as Andrei Konchalovsky.s Academy Award-nominated Runaway Train, John Cassavetes. Love Streams, Jean-Luc Godard.s King Lear and Fred Schepisi.s Evil Angels.

Hartley is interviewing directors and stars who worked for Cannon...

To accompany the exhaustive retrospective of the films of Jean-Luc Godard (49 programs in 21 days) that started as part of the New York Film Festival and runs through the end of October, I had planned to select my ten all-time favorite posters for Godard’s films. But when I sat down to the task and laid out the ten I’d chosen in front of me, the result was a selection of posters so overly familiar as to be banal. It looked like the postcard rack of any film bookstore in Paris. Much as I had hoped to choose less obvious designs, when it came down to it the posters created for Godard’s films in the 60s are hands down among the greatest film posters ever made: Clément Hurel’s Breathless, Chica’s Une femme est une femme, Jacques Vaissier’s Vivre sa vie, Georges Kerfyser’s Band à part and Une femme mariée,...

This is a talk given by French director of photography Caroline Champetier at the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival in October 2012, originally published in two parts on the festival’s site (www.fif-85.com). This translation is being published with their kind permission. This year's festival will take place from October 16-21, Kelly Reichardt will be the guest of honor. Many thanks to Emmanuel Burdeau, programmer of the festival, Jordan Mintzer and Caroline Champetier.

Caroline Champetier: I’ve always tried to take a step back from what I’m doing. The more I work, however, the less I’m able to deal with this exercise. I just finished production on Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust and have barely said goodbye to David Teboul, a young director who I worked with on Cinq avenue Marceau (2002), a film I think very highly of and that’s about Yves Saint Laurent’s last collection.

The Toronto International Film Festival is about to launch a retrospective celebrating the work of Holy Motors director Leos Carax, arguably the most important, or at least interesting, working French director. The director's triumphant return to the cinema with Holy Motors last year after a 13 year absence from feature filmmaking is indeed a cause for celebration, and a perfect opportunity to revisit his singular career. The Tiff retro will include all 5 of Carax's feature films: Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang, Les Amants du Pont Neuf, Pola X and Holy Motors.Over the last 30 years, Carax has made only 5 features, along with a couple of shorts, music videos and some cameo appearances in other directors' films -- Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear (1987), Lituanian...

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

From Batman to Spider-Man, Wireless to Green Man and Carousel to Götterdämmerung, the Observer's critics pick the season's highlights. What are you most looking forward to? Post your comments below

Download a pdf of this calendar here

July

1 Pop The Stone Roses

The third resurrection of the Roses has already swung from thrill to farce. Fans gibbered with joy at their surprise Warrington gig in May, but by Amsterdam Ian Brown and Reni were at loggerheads. This last of three homecoming gigs at Manchester's Heaton Park will not be uneventful.

3 Film The Amazing Spider-Man

Marvel Comics' flagship superhero, the red-and-blue clad "web-slinger" Spider-Man, gets a Hollywood reboot not 10 years after the character was last blockbuster-ised. Impressive Brit Andrew Garfield plays Spidey this time; Marc (500 Days of Summer) Webb directs. Early reviews: amazing.

4 Dance Dance Gb

English National Ballet, Scottish Ballet and National Dance Company Wales join forces in a high-velocity...

Several famous actors, including Michel Piccoli, Pierre Arditi, Lambert Wilson, and Mathieu Amalric, receive the same phone call informing them that Antoine d'Anthac, a prominent playwright who would frequently cast all of them, has passed away. Summoned to the late man's estate by his well-mannered butler, they arrive to see Antoine's videotaped last will and testament: speaking from the screen, the deceased asks his lifelong friends to evaluate a contemporary take on his play, Eurydice, adapted by a much younger company. As the projection begins, the spectators involuntarily repeat the familiar dialogue, as if it were lifted out of their shared favorite movie; so the performance begins on its own and the spacious living room suddenly turns into a small-town railway café. Orpheus starts his soft fiddle-scraping. He is about to meet Eurydice.

"The playwright's duty," Jean Anouilh, French dramatist, once wrote, "is to produce plays on a regular basis.

Let’s first address the flying superhero in the room: No, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark doesn’t (quite) make our list of the worst stage shows of 2011. (You can check out our Mormon-led best list here.) In the end, we decided Spidey’s aerial effects are pretty darned cool, though all too brief, and the retooled show isn’t as unwatchably overwrought as Julie Taymor’s original version. Instead, our evil eye is trained on the year’s even more offensive theatrical blunders like the misguided revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (pictured, with Jessie...

"Gilbert Adair, the acclaimed critic who had some of his own novels turned into successful films, has died aged 66," reports Catherine Shoard in the Guardian. "Adair won the respect of cineastes with volumes such as A Night at the Pictures (1985), Myths & Memories (1986), Hollywood's Vietnam (1981), Flickers (1995), Surfing the Zeitgeist (1997) and with his translation of the letters of François Truffaut (published in 1990). He was a prolific journalist, writing a regular column for the Sunday Times in the 1990s, as well as for this paper — last year he interviewed the French filmmaker Alain Resnais."

As a screenwriter, Adair will be remembered for his collaborations with Raúl Ruiz (The Territory in 1981, Klimt in 2006, Blind Revenge in 2010) and Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers in 2003, based on his own novel, The Holy Innocents). Richard Kwietniowski's Love and Death on Long Island (1997) is based on Adair's novel.

In January 2010, Adair wrote in the Guardian, "I yield to...

New Doc Will Chronicle Infamous ’80s Exploitation

Production Outfit From Acclaimed Director Mark Hartley

Drafthouse Films, the distribution arm of the world-famous Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, announced today the acquisition of all Us rights to Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story Of Cannon Films from world-wide sales agent Celluloid Nightmares. From acclaimed cult film documentarian Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood, Machete Maidens Unleashed), the film centers on the story of two Israeli-born, movie-obsessed cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who in pursuit of the “American dream” launched an indie studio that would produce over 120 exploitation films from 1979-1989 turning a renegade outfit into the proclaimed “seventh Hollywood major.” The film is currently in pre-production in Australia with Producer Veronica Fury and Executive Producers Xyz Films (upcoming Sony Pictures release The Raid). A theatrical release is being planned for late 2012 to coincide with a traveling roadshow retrospective of Cannon’s seminal films.

For those of us who grew up during the decade of big hair and excess, just the mere sight of the Cannon Films logo is enough to conjure more than a boatload of nostalgia. Thanks to Drafthouse Films said boat is soon to be sailing our way!

From the Press Release

Drafthouse Films, the distribution arm of the world-famous Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, announced today the acquisition of all Us rights to Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films from world-wide sales agent Celluloid Nightmares.

From acclaimed cult film documentarian Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood, Machete Maidens Unleashed), the film centers on the story of two Israeli-born, movie-obsessed cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who in pursuit of the "American dream" launched an indie studio that would produce over 120 exploitation films from 1979-1989, turning a renegade outfit into the proclaimed "seventh Hollywood major."

The film is currently in pre-production in Australia.

With Thor, Tom Hiddleston has shot from indie star to Hollywood. Next stop, Spielberg

Tom Hiddleston turns up for breakfast at a central London hotel dead on time and breathlessly thrilled. Though the 30-year-old has already had an impressive career, renowned as one of the most penetratingly intelligent actors of his generation and working with directors as illustrious as Michael Grandage and Terence Davies, travelling here on the tube he had a Hollywood moment. He saw a poster of Thor for the first time.

He sits forward eagerly. "It's a wildly exciting time. I've never been in a film that has posters on the tube. And it's not even my face on the poster." The Thor poster shows a close-up of Chris Hemsworth as the god of thunder; Hiddleston plays his Machiavellian brother Loki, the god of mischief. On screen, the two actors are brawn and brain, large and little.

With reports out of France that Woody Allen is shooting a cameo for the film "Paris Manhattan," a comedy from first-time director Sophie Lellouche in which part of the plot revolves around a pharmacist (Alice Taglioni) so obsessed with his work she prescribes DVDs of his films to patients, the 75-year-old filmmaker continues a tradition of picking peculiar projects to appear in outside of his own.

In a career that's entering its fifth decade, Allen has starred in just six films he hasn't directed ("Play It Again, Sam," "The Front," "Scenes From a Mall," the 1996 "Sunshine Boys" TV remake, "Antz" and "Picking Up the Pieces") and limited himself to a handful of other uncredited cameos. Though he's scarcely performed in anything in recent years - his last role as an actor was in 2006's "Scoop" - some of his most intriguing roles have come in the films in which he's scarcely seen,...

Starting today, Film Society of Lincoln Center outdoes itself. Israeli production company Cannon films flavored the 1980s with some of the best genre pics of the decade. Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus worked with filmmakers like Woody Allen (acting only), John Frankenheimer, Nicolas Roeg, Jean-Luc Godard, John Cassavetes, Jerry Schatzberg, Barbet Schroeder and even Norman Mailer, all of whom will be on display in this retrospective. Actors like Mickey Rourke, Christopher Reeve, Dennis Hopper, Morgan Freeman, Roy Scheider, Jon Voight, Gena Rowlands, Oliver Reed, and yes, people, the peerless Rebecca DeMornay. Highlights include opener Street Smart (which also screens on November 24th with Schatzberg in person), King Lear, Love Streams, Barfly and especially 52 Pick-Up. 52 Pick-Up is one of those great, underrated thrillers. For some reason Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, a colorless, thin narrative exercise which relies upon its exploration of a world previously unseen, gets much more credit in this sub-genre.

HollywoodNews.com: The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted last night to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to producer-director Francis Ford Coppola and Honorary Awards to historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, director Jean-Luc Godard and actor Eli Wallach. All four awards will be presented at the Academy’s 2nd Annual Governors Awards dinner on Saturday, November 13, at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center®.

“Each of these honorees has touched movie audiences worldwide and influenced the motion picture industry through their work,” said Academy President Tom Sherak. “It will be an honor to celebrate their extraordinary achievements and contributions at the Governors Awards.”

Brownlow is widely regarded as the preeminent historian of the silent film era as well as a preservationist. Among his many silent film restoration projects are Abel Gance’s 1927 epic “Napoleon,” Rex Ingram’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse...

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted last night to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to producer-director Francis Ford Coppola and Honorary Awards to historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, director Jean-Luc Godard and actor Eli Wallach. All four awards will be presented at the Academy’s 2nd Annual Governors Awards dinner on Saturday, November 13, at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center.

“Each of these honorees has touched movie audiences worldwide and influenced the motion picture industry through their work,” said Academy President Tom Sherak. “It will be an honor to celebrate their extraordinary achievements and contributions at the Governors Awards.”

Brownlow is widely regarded as the preeminent historian of the silent film era as well as a preservationist. Among his many silent film restoration projects are Abel Gance’s 1927 epic “Napoleon,” Rex Ingram’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse...

tuesday top ten returns! It's for the list-maker in me and the list-lover in you

The Cannes film festival wrapped this weekend (previous posts) and the most recent Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Secret in Their Eyes is still in the midst of a successful Us run. That Oscar winning Argentinian film came to us from director Juan Jose Campanella. It's his second film to be honored by the Academy (Son of the Bride was nominated ten years back). The Academy voters obviously like Campanella and in some ways he's a Hollywood guy. When he's not directing Argentinian Oscar hopefuls he spends time making Us television with episodes of Law & Order, House and 30 Rock under his belt.

So let's talk foreign-language auteurs. Who does Oscar love most?

[The film titles discussed in this article will link to Netflix pages -- if available -- should you be curious to see the films]

Best Director winners Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) and Milos Forman

(Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

Please Note:...

How do you make a king leer? Put the queen in a bikini. Yes, an old joke from The Simpsons, but as literary jokes go – it’s a goodun. The Bard has always been something of an obsession for actor Al Pacino. In the late 1990s, he directed a documentary – Looking For Richard – then he teamed up with Il Postino’s Michael Radford for an adaptation of Merchant Of Venice.

Now Pacino and the Rad are getting back together, so say Total Film, along with a.c.e. cinematographer (see what I did there?) Benoit Delhomme to have a crack at King Lear.

Lear is one of Will Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy’s and no doubt Pacino will be ‘ooh-ahing’ all the way to the bank with this. King Lear is the story of an old king who decides to divvy up his kingdom to his daughters without realising what a bunch of scheming,...

It's Not A Great Sign When...: ...you announce your revered film festival's lineup and pretty much the first thing everybody on the receiving end says is, "Yeah, but what about this one?..." And this goes across the spectrum of cinephilia. On the one hand, I've heard from friends and Some Came Running commenters who are disappointed that the current Cannes lineup as announced is bereft of new and much-anticipated work from Hou Hsiao-Hsien (The Assassin), Jia Zhangke (Moving the Arts and/or The Age of Tattoo) and—not that the list stops here!—Terrence Malick (Tree of Life). And, on the other hand, you have Jeffrey Wells, who apparently has mistaken Cannes for an offshoot of Spike TV or Starz or something, "requesting" "some kind of...market screening" of...wait for it...Sylvester Stallone's upcoming monkey-gland injection The Expendables. "We're speaking of the ultimate rube social event...

It began with a tweet.

As only one of many Kurosawa fans excited by the Criterion Collection's announcement last year that they would soon release Ran on Blu-ray, I was shocked when @criterion, which I follow, suddenly sent out a tweet last April saying that the release had been scrapped. I can't remember if I was sipping liquid at the time or not, but rest assured that if I was, a legendary spit-take must have occurred.

At the time, I didn't know that the cancellation was due to the licensing of certain Criterion-released films being pulled by rights-owner StudioCanal, who are now putting these films out on Blu-ray under their own umbrella, distributed in the Us by Lionsgate home video. The first wave of this collection is made up of three celebrated classics from three different countries: Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt and the original The Ladykillers.

It began with a tweet.

As only one of many Kurosawa fans excited by the Criterion Collection's announcement last year that they would soon release Ran on Blu-ray, I was shocked when @criterion, which I follow, suddenly sent out a tweet last April saying that the release had been scrapped. I can't remember if I was sipping liquid at the time or not, but rest assured that if I was, a legendary spit-take must have occurred.

At the time, I didn't know that the cancellation was due to the licensing of certain Criterion-released films being pulled by rights-owner StudioCanal, who are now putting these films out on Blu-ray under their own umbrella, distributed in the Us by Lionsgate home video. The first wave of this collection is made up of three celebrated classics from three different countries: Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt and the original The Ladykillers.

(Christopher Walken, above.)

[We continue with our postings of some of the best interviews from the previous decade that have thus far only appeared in print, but not on our site. This interview was conducted by our good friend in New York, filmmaker Michael Wechsler. It originally appeared in Venice Magazine in 2003. Walken was just coming off a terrific performance in Catch Me If You Can. This is one of the better talks Walken has ever given. He speaks a lot about his process, in very entertaining fashion, making this a must-read for any aspiring actors.]

Christopher Walken: Dancer in the Dark

by Michael Wechsler

He dances. He can carry a tune. He has become a regular host on "Saturday Night Live." He loves Jerry Lewis, cats, Bugs Bunny, cooking and painting.

Oh, wait, I'm forgetting a few small details. He also won an Academy Award in 1978 for playing a suicidal soldier in Vietnam, gave audiences a lifetime of nightmares and sadistic chuckles playing a heavy in King of New York and a thug amongst thugs in True Romance, and to this day has one of the most recognizable hairstyles of anybody gracing the Silver Screen.

Frankly, I was more than a little nervous about interviewing Mr. Walken, based purely on his resume of psychologically unstable characters. My initial thought was ‘I hope he's nothing like the folks he's played.' Looking through Walken's roles of the past three decades, it feels...

James Cameron in Los Angeles with 70Mm prints of "Aliens" and "The Abyss"?!?! The Dardenne brothers in New York for a career retrospective?!?! The instant cult classic "The Room" with Tommy Wiseau live in Austin?!?! Be still my heart. There's something for all tastes this summer on the West Coast, the East Coast and as you'll notice, the Third Coast on our calendar of the must-see events on the repertory theater circuit in May, June and July. And don't miss our look at the indie films that are hitting theaters or headed to online, VOD or DVD premiere this summer.

Anthology Film Archives

With the New York Polish Film Festival (May 6-10) and first-runs of the docs "Ice People" (May 1-7) and "Audience of One" (May 8-14) and Ken Jacobs' reinvention of his 1969 work "Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son" with the 3D "Anaglyph Tom" (May 15-21) taking up the Anthology's screens,...

On the heels of the Slumdog Millionaire victory at the Oscars, Variety is reporting that one of its stars, Freida Pinto has signed on to the latest (and as yet untitled) Woody Allen film. It will the be second film role of the model-turned-actress's career.

Frieda Pinto

And she'll be in excellent company, as Oscar-nominated actress Naomi Watts will be her co-star, along with Josh Brolin and Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Watts, one of my favorite actors, is a busy woman these days. She's currently shooting Mother and Child with Samuel L. Jackson and Annette Bening, and is in pre-production on the film Need with her Bff Nicole Kidman. She'll also play Goneril in the film adaptation of King Lear, which stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Keira Knightley.

Naomi Watts

Allen's film starring Pinto and Watts will shoot in London this summer.

With Allen at the helm, I don't think there's much...

PARIS -- French director Jean-Luc Godard has been charged and fined by a Paris court for using text from a book by French writer Viviane Forrester in his 1987 film King Lear without her consent and without crediting her, French news agency Agence France Presse reported Wednesday. The court ordered Godard and his production company Bodega Films to pay Forrester and Les Editions du Seuil, the publisher of her book La Violence du Calme (The Violence of Calm) €5,000 ($6,315) each in damages, AFP reported. The judge also prohibited the film from being shown until the author is added onto the credits. Godard's King Lear, starring Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Peter Sellers and Burgess Meredith, was released in 2002. Neither Godard nor Bodega Films could be reached for comment.