[...] Renoir had had the experience of war; he had been wounded; he had seen the ruin caused by the First World War; and no one but a bloodthirsty madman or a jingoistic armchair general could have wished a reprise. But in his depiction of the noble yet prejudiced Rauffenstein, Renoir advanced a fiction that, though it served the cause of peace, didn't help France face the real danger across the Rhine, which had something to do with the vast outpouring of popular support that allowed an anti-Semitic, expansionist nationalist to come to power—or even with France's own right wing, which looked there longingly.

By the time Renoir made "Rules of the Game," in 1939, his internationalist humanism had grown bilious; his depiction of the Alsatian gamekeeper Schumacher looked German populism in its ugly face, and he showed a France that kept amused with romantic games as it verged on collapse. But "Grand Illusion," for me, has always been a film that was itself a dream from which Renoir himself needed to awaken. In the long term, Renoir seems to have been right—there seems to be relatively little separating the ideals and the practicalities of ordinary Germans and Frenchmen—but it only took the occupation of France; the near-annihilation of the old Germany; a definitive guilt-trip for both countries regarding the extermination of Europe's Jews; and a pall of Soviet authority for them to realize it.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/05/grand-illusion-renoir.html?printable=true¤tPage=all#ixzz1ugTJApNT

Joyce Redman, a distinguished Irish-born actress widely acclaimed for her intelligent stage presence in Shakespearean drama and French comedy, though probably best known to American audiences for her silent improvisation with a lobster, an oyster, a pear and Albert Finney in the exuberantly lascivious eating scene in the 1963 film “Tom Jones,” died on Wednesday in Kent, England. She was 96.

Her son, the actor Crispin Redman, told the BBC that Ms. Redman died of pneumonia after a brief illness.

Ms. Redman was employed almost nonstop in British theater and television from the 1940s through the 1970s, working with virtually every major repertory troupe in England, including the Old Vic and the National Theater Company, as well as the Comédie-Française in Paris.

Her diminutive size (officially 5-foot-1) and commandingly husky stage voice combined to give Ms. Redman a unique signature that she used to great effect in both dramatic and comic roles.

She was nominated for Academy Awards for best supporting actress in both genres: for her role in “Tom Jones,” based on Henry Fielding’s 18th-century comic novel, and for her portrayal of Emilia, the duped, doomed maidservant in the 1965 film version of “Othello,” with Maggie Smith and Laurence Olivier. She won the award for the role of Emilia.

Her portrayal of a defiant, unbowed, protofeminist Anne Boleyn opposite Rex Harrison’s Henry VIII in the Broadway production of “Anne of the Thousand Days” received rave reviews in 1948.

Excerpt of transcript:

Hollywood is a place where folks are often recognized more for their looks than their talent - and actress Hedy Lamarr was no exception. But it's what she invented in her spare time - to help end that war - that has history turning a kinder eye, linking her to a bombshell of a whole different sort. Lee Cowan reports:

She possessed the kind of beauty that was haunting - an almost smoldering sensuality, with an exotic accent to match.

Even her name - Hedy Lamarr - sounded dark and mysterious. But although she shared the screen with Hollywood legends like Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart, people rarely remember Hedy's talent.

Most remember only her face - a regret she carried with her to her grave.

"The boys abroad, during the Second World War, voted her the most desirable, beautiful actress or pinup that they could possibly see," said writer Richard Rhodes. "So she had a great deal of fame and fortune, but not that inner satisfaction that she wanted in life."

Rhodes is an author best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning work on the making of the atomic bomb - but his most recent book about Hedy Lamarr is just as explosive.

So what got a science writer interested in a half-forgotten celebrity? Quite simply, Hedy's other side - the intellectual side - and had it turned out, it might have been the blueprint for success far beyond Hollywood.

To the untrained eye the drawing is just a maze of wires and switches. But to Richard Rhodes, it was genius. What surprised him most, he told Cowan, was "the sheer inventiveness of the invention."

It was Hedy's idea for a radio-controlled torpedo, guided by a signal that couldn't be intercepted - a technology she called "frequency hopping."

"The first question always is, "What? A Hollywood star? What was she doing inventing some piece of electrical engineering?" said Rhodes.

Her life reads like a Hollywood script: The glamorous movie star by day was, by night, the lonely immigrant channeling an inner Thomas Edison.

"She set aside one room in her home, had a drafting table installed with the proper lighting, and the proper tools - had a whole wall in the room of engineering reference books." That, Rhodes said, was where she "invented."

It was a hobby that remained obscured in the shadow of her celebrity - one she rarely revealed, even to her own son, Anthony Loder: "She was such a creative person, I mean, nonstop solution-finding. If you talked about a problem, she had a solution."

Looking back, Loder - the product of the third of Hedy's six marriages - says his mother's tinkering may have been an escape.

"She wanted to stop all the Hollywood stuff which she didn't really enjoy," he said.

Most of Hedy's inventions - including a better Kleenex box and a new traffic signal - never really went anywhere. But her idea for that torpedo got a patent...

...But Rhodes said when the Navy brass looked at the invention, "They...threw it on the back shelf. The Navy's response really was, 'You should go raise money for the war. That's what you should be doing instead of this silly inventing.'"

So Hedy did precisely that, using her celebrity to raise millions in war bonds - dismissed again for her brains in favor of her beauty.

As time went on, she tried television, but it never fit, and her star slowly faded.

But her notion of "frequency hopping" became the basis for most modern WiFi technology.

"Today, frequency hopping is used with the wireless phones that we have in our homes, GPS, most military communication systems - it's very widely used," said Rhodes.

But it was those building on her idea who got the credit. Hedy had quietly signed her patent over to the Navy, and left it at that. She gave the technology away, and never made a dime off of it.

Whodunit? A final mystery surrounding the work of film legend Alfred Hitchcock— what triggered the crazed bird flocks that helped inspire his 1963 thriller The Birds— appears solved by scientists.

Dying and disoriented seabirds rammed themselves into homes across California’s Monterey Bay in the summer of 1961, sparking a long-standing mystery about the cause among marine biologists. The avian incidents sparked local visitor Hitchcock’s interest, along with a story about spooky bird behavior by British writer Daphne du Maurier.

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Everyone who has written for the Internet has their own horror stories, and this author is no exception; I’ve been called “pretentious,” “painfully philistine,” and “a 13-year with ADD” (and that was all within one article’s comments), and last month’s anti-Eddie Murphy piece drove one reader to bypass comments altogether and track me down on Twitter, so’s to better inform me that the piece was not only “@!$%#ty,” but “biased.” (Imagine that! Bias in an opinion piece!) Ultimately, though, it comes with the territory, and if you’re going to make a (meager!) living voicing an opinion, you’ve got to be prepared to hear some dissent. Sometimes, a lot of dissent.

The beauty of film is that it affects each and every one of us in many different ways. During the holidays, it's no different. The way snowflakes float through the air on a cold, crisp night; the way the Christmas tree glows from a far or simply the way baked goods smell sweet and warm throughout the house, Christmas films give off a heartwarming and tender affect for the holidays. Watching festive movies with the family and friends somewhat becomes tradition and gives us an escape.

Deciding what films you should include to watch in your holiday hustle and bustle isn't easy. There are dozens of remakes and then there are the classics you never get bored of and then again, there are the original stories that just aren't worthy of a view but alas, you're in luck!

In no particular order, here are 12 holiday movies for you, your family and friends to feast your eyes on that are worthy of watching over and over again:

It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore & Henry Travers
Running time: 2 hours 10 mins
The film, which is regarded as a classic and a staple of Christmas television around the world is one of the most recognized holiday films and has been honoured by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made and been placed on AFI's list as one of the most inspirational films of all time. The film directed by Frank Capra, follows George Bailey (James Stewart), a frustrated and deeply depressed man who doesn't realize his full worth until an angel named Clarence (Henry Travers) shows him what life would be like if he never existed. Much of the film is narrated by Franklin and Joseph, unseen angels who dive into flashbacks spanning throughout George's entire life and it's through these flashbacks we see all the people whose lives have been touched by him and the difference one man can make. This film is undeniably worthy of watching at least once a year without the interruption of commercials and is a genuine American classic. There's something about this film that just appeals to all audiences and has lovable value to it.
Available on DVD

Home Alone (1990)
Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Peschi, Daniel Stern & Catherine O'Hara
Running time: 1 hour 45 mins
Everyone enjoys a comedy and this one is a favourite amongst many during the holiday season! Written by the late master of 80s teen comedies, John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus, the film follows Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) and his adventures of being all alone at home during the Christmas holiday as his parents mistakenly left him behind when they fly off to Paris for vacation. While Kevin thinks of this as an opportunity to relish into what he wants to do, he's greeted by intruders – the Wet Bandits and the fun ensues!
Available on DVD

Elf (2003)
Starring: Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, James Caan & Ed Asner
Running time: 1 hour 37 mins
Directed by Jon Favreau, Elf has became an instant classic with fans. Buddy (Will Ferrell), an oversized elf who's really a man raised as an elf, resides in the North Pole and unintentionally wreaks havoc on the elf community. He is then sent to the United States in search of his true identity after learning that his biological father (James Caan) is a businessman in New York City and is on Santa's naughty list. It's a sweet holiday movie for the whole family with just enough comedy and yuletide cheer to put a smile on one's face.
Available on DVD

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo & Randy Quaid
Running time: 1 hour 37 mins
Another Christmas film, one deemed as a modern holiday classic brought to you by the genius writing of John Hughes. It's the third instalment of the National Lampoon's Vacation series and follows the Griswold's as they prepare for Christmas and all its festivities but things never quite run smoothly for Clark (Chevy Chase), his wife Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) and their two kids, Audrey and Rusty. The Griswold's consecutively bad luck runs are worsened by unbearable family guests but he manages to keep going, knowing that his Christmas bonus will be arriving soon.
Available on DVD

White Christmas (1954)
Starring: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney & Judy Haynes
Running time: 2 hours
Featuring the songs of Irving Berlin, White Christmas is a holiday classic with heart-warming music that finds two army buddies, Bob and Phil who team up with a sister act in order to help their old Army commander save his failing country inn. There's romance, there's comedy, there's dancing and snow. It's the perfect holiday movie to escape to with your family. The film which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1954 for Best Music, Original Song is unforgettably, one of the first films ever shot in VistaVision.
Available on DVD

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Starring: Maureen O'Hara, Natalie Wood, John Payne & Edward Gwenn
Running time: 1 hour 36 mins
Another perennial heart-warming holiday classic, this time about the tale of "Kris Kringle" and the spirit of a little girl who stands firm in what she believes. After a Macy's department store Santa Claus, who claims to be the genuine thing is institutionalized as insane, a good-hearted lawyer fights to prove that the man is really old St. Nicolas much to the city's chagrin. Written and directed by Academy Award winning screenwriter George Seaton, Miracle on 34th Street is a memorable story of family, romance and the evergreen spirit of Christmas.
Available on DVD

A Christmas Story
Starring: Peter Billingsley, Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon
Running time: 1 hour 34 mins
This film has been a holiday classic since its inception back in 1983 and has a growing audience each year. Based on the short stories and partially fictional tales from author Jean Shepherd, the film sees Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), a highly imaginative nine-year old growing up in the 1940s and his point of view of how he and his family spend Christmas one year. He dreams of owning a Red Ryder BB gun and makes it his mission to have it but along the way he faces disagreement from his teachers, his parents and even Santa Claus. In essence, it's a story about childhood and the yearning for that perfect Christmas. It won two of the prestigious Canadian Genie Awards back in 1983, one being for the screenplay written by author Jean Shepherd, Bob Clark and Leigh Brown.
Available on DVD

Love Actually (2003)
Starring: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson & Emma Thompson
Running time: 2 hours 15 mins
Noted by some as a lovely modern day Christmas tale of finding and losing love, Love Actually is a romantic comedy that dives into the different aspects of love and eight very different couples who deal with their love lives in variously diverse and interconnected ways all during the frenzy of the Christmas holiday. Sure it's a long movie but it's worth the watch with great storylines that, like snowflakes, are each separate and light but make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside along with great performances from Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson and Hugh Grant. It's a joyfully entertaining movie and an endearing holiday flick that will leave you smiling and give you the sudden urge to hug someone.
Available on DVD

Scrooged (1988)
Starring: Bill Murray, Karen Allen, Alfre Woodard & Bobcat Goldthwait
Running time: 1 hour 41 mins
An indignant, conceited and selfish TV programming executive who has found great success and wealth through the years has become cold hearted and cruel. On Christmas Eve, he finds himself being haunted and bearing lessons by three spirits. Scrooged is the modern retelling of Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol and was produced and directed by Richard Donner. It's a smart, comedic and entertaining watch with a sardonic edge that keeps the holidays from getting way too sugary for some who aren't into the all-out festive mood. This is a funny film that also proves remakes and new visions from older material need not be redundant.
Available on DVD

The Santa Clause (1994)
Starring: Tim Allen, Wendy Crewson, Judge Reinhold & Peter Boyle
Running time: 1 hour 37 mins
Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) is a divorcee ad-executive with a young son, Charlie. On Christmas Eve, he spends time with his son and inadvertently kills Santa Claus. He soon finds a business card in Santa's pocket that states if anything should ever happen to him that someone should put the suit on and the reindeer will know what to do. Calvin discovers a sleigh and eight reindeer on his roof and puts the Santa suit on to please his son, only to begin delivering toys from rooftop to rooftop. It's a simple and well-crafted family film that is a staple in acclaimed Disney cinema. It's hip and has a likeable comedic twist on the Kris Kringle tale.
Available on DVD

Remember The Night (1940)
Starring: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck & Beulah Bondi
Running time: 1 hour 34 mins
A breezy mix of comedy, drama and romance finds Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck), a pickpocket in New York getting caught for shoplifting right before Christmas and no-nonsense District Attorney, John Sargeant (Fred MacMurray) assigned to prosecute her. Facing a third offense, Leander's trail is set before Christmas but Sargeant generously posts bail for her and postpones her trial as he feels she does not need to spend Christmas in jail. Discovering she is a fellow Hoosier, he generously offers to drop her home but while on their road trip they get lost in Pennsylvania and love blooms along the way. It's an impressively sweet film with fine performances from both Stanwyck and MacMurray; a definite watch for the whole family!
Available on DVD

Die Hard (1988)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman & Bonnie Bedelia
Running time: 2 hours 12 mins
This is not a film you would conventionally think about during the warm and toasty Christmas holidays but it is a Christmas movie of sorts. A Christmas movie of sorts with lots of action, explosions and non-yuletide cheer but remnants of the festive spirit! John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a New York City detective who's just arrived in Los Angeles in time to spend Christmas with his wife (Bonnie Bedelia), unfortunately as timing would have it, a group of terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) is holding everyone in the Nakatomi Plaza building hostage and no one has any way of getting in or out. Will McClane do it? Will he stop the terrorists and save Christmas? Die Hard is a fun watch – not with the whole family, but after dinner when you stop by a friends' house and want to deter from the sugar rushed children. The film's got great pace, great wit and is a thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. This film, after almost 20 years still remains one of the most amusing action films that set a bar for the blockbuster films of that genre.
Available on DVD

This holiday season, whether you're throwing a party and having family and friends over or just lounging on the couch with a loved one, staying indoors from the frequent overwhelming snowfall be sure to watch these timeless classics and don't forget the eggnogand fruitcake!

Whether you're into the classic traditional films or the modern ones with a new-age twist, here are some honourable mentions.

Honorable Mentions:
The Polar Express (2004)
A Christmas Carol (2009)
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
The Bishop's Wife (1947)
A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Mr. Krueger's Christmas (1980)
A Child's Christmas in Wales (1987)
The Ref (1994)
The Holiday (2006)
Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)
The Shop Around The Corner (1940)
A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
The Nativity Story (2006)
How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
One Magic Christmas (1985)
Black Christmas (1974)
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
The Family Stone (2005)
Surviving Christmas (2004)
Mixed Nuts (1994)
I'll Be Home For Christmas (1998)
Bad Santa (2003)

Interested in Christmas tunes? Check out The 12 Days of Christmas...Music.

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Ken Russell, the English filmmaker and writer whose outsize personality matched the confrontational brashness of his movies, among them “Women in Love” and “The Devils,” died on Sunday at his home in Lymington, England. He was 84.

His death was confirmed by a spokesman, Shade Rupe.

A polarizing figure who delighted in breaching the limits of propriety and cinematic good taste, Mr. Russell courted controversy through much of his career. “Women in Love,” a 1969 adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel, was his breakthrough film, and “The Devils” (1971), about a 17th-century outbreak of religious hysteria, was his most notorious. Both caused run-ins with censors.

The flamboyance and intemperance of his movies were all the more notable coming at a time when British cinema and television were still largely known for the kitchen-sink style of social realism. In the 1970s, his most active decade as a feature film director, he made a series of biographical films about artists and rock operas, like his adaptation of the Who’s “Tommy,” which were admired by some for their delirious excesses and dismissed by others as vulgar kitsch.

Mr. Russell’s feature-film career began with a couple of lightweight genre assignments, the romantic comedy “French Dressing” (1964) and “Billion Dollar Brain” (1967), a spy movie with Michael Caine. But it took off with “Women in Love,” a sensuous period piece that connected with the liberated sexual politics of the late ’60s. Although the film was generally well reviewed and a mainstream success — it earned Mr. Russell his one Academy Award nomination for best director and Glenda Jackson an Oscar for best actress — it was also the first glimpse of his flair for provocation.

“Women in Love” became infamous for an extended wrestling scene between the two male stars, Oliver Reed and Alan Bates, that showed full-frontal nudity. It made it past the British censorship board only after Mr. Russell agreed to trim a few shots, though nudity remained.

“The Dance of the Seven Veils,” a broad television drama from 1970, emphasized the connections of the composer Richard Strauss to the Third Reich. The Strauss estate withdrew the music rights, and the film, the last that Mr. Russell made for the BBC, remains out of circulation.

“The Devils,” based on real events that had inspired a play by John Whiting and a book by Aldous Huxley, tells the story of demonic possession at a French convent, complete with exorcism rituals and blasphemous orgies. Mr. Russell, who converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1950s, saw the film as an attack on corruption between the church and state.

Its American investors and the British censors called for cuts. The Catholic Church condemned the movie when it was screened at the Venice Film Festival. An edited version was banned by several local authorities in Britain; it was further trimmed in the United States to avoid an X rating.

Despite his affinity for classical music, Mr. Russell gravitated toward the flashy British rock scene of the day. The connection was made explicit with “Tommy” (1975), his frenzied film version of the Who’s rock opera and concept album. He combined classical and rock music in the follow-up, “Lisztomania” (1975), which starred the Who’s lead singer, Roger Daltrey, as Franz Liszt and featured a cameo by Ringo Starr as the pope.

Critics tended to welcome each new Ken Russell film as target practice. Reviewing “The Devils” in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called Mr. Russell “a hobbyist determined to reproduce ‘The Last Supper’ in bottle tops.” Pauline Kael called him a “shrill, screaming gossip.”

Mr. Russell was not above fighting back. Shortly after the release of “The Devils,” he appeared on live television with the British critic Alexander Walker, who had called the film “monstrously indecent.” Mr. Russell hit him on the head with a rolled-up newspaper.

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"Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

David Zelag Goodman, a prolific screenwriter who, with Sam Peckinpah, wrote “Straw Dogs” and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the romantic comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers,” died on Monday in Oakland, Calif. He was 81.

The cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurological disorder, his wife, Marjorie Goodman, said.

Mr. Goodman’s most memorable work involved converting a Gordon Williams novel, “The Siege of Trencher’s Farm,” into the psychological thriller “Straw Dogs” (1971). The film starred Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician pushed to violence by marauding hooligans at his adopted British home. A remake was released this year.

There always seems to be talk on the Internet about sequels to films - which could be made, should be made, might be made, are being made... I have already come across speculation about whether or not Cowboys and Aliens will have a second installment. Then, of course, there is always buzz about sequels that will be released in the near future. Currently, this includes titles like Avatar 2, Men in Black III, Terminator 5 and Prometheus, the Tony Scott directed prequel to Aliens. (And now Scott is talking about a Bladerunner 2.)

Of course, when it comes to quality, sequels can be good, bad, or in-between. Occasionally they can be as good as  the originals - or almost. Only rarely do they seem to outshine their predecessors.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of movie sequels that I think are among the best. Are some of your favorites included, or do you have another sequel that you like better?

28 Weeks Later, 2007 - Robert Carlyle stars in this sequel to 2002's 28 Days Later. Instead of following four survivors of the zombie inducing 'rage' virus on the run from London to Manchester, we watch the infection spread through an enclosed community set up to 'repopulate' a ravaged country.

2010: The Year We Make Contact, 1984 - Sixteen years after Stanley Kubrick gave us the incredible 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), director Peter Hyams treated us to a sequel that may not be as great as its predecessor, but that can definitely hold its own. As film critic Roger Ebert said, "This is a good movie. Once we've drawn our lines, once we've made it absolutely clear that 2001 continues to stand absolutely alone as one of the greatest movies ever made, once we have freed 2010 of the comparisons with Kubrick's masterpiece, what we are left with is a good-looking, sharp-edged, entertaining, exciting space opera."

Addams Family Values, 1993 - Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci -- with the delicious addition of Joan Cusack -- ham it up in this hilarious sequel to 1991's The Addam's Family. I find it better and funnier than the first.  

After the Thin Man, 1936 - This was the second of the six Thin Man films about a witty detective couple, Nick and Nora Charles, wonderfully portrayed by William Powell and Myrna Loy. (And let's not forget their dog, Asta -- oh, and a young James Stewart has a part, too.) The original, 1934's The Thin Man, was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, while this sequel was nominated for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay.

Aliens, 1985 - Sigourney Weaver returns as Ellen Ripley in a rematch with the alien creature that wiped out her crew in 1979's Alien. Damn, this movie is great! As the tagline says, 'this time it's war.'

 The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935 - Widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all times, this movie classic is a sequel to 1931's Frankenstein. Boris Karloff is back as the monster, while Elsa Lanchester has the dual role of his mate and Mary Shelley.

Escape From Planet of the Apes, 1971 - This is a case of good qualities skipping a movie sequel generation. While 1970's Beneath the Planet of the Apes was a somewhat disappointing immediate sequel to 1968's Planet of the Apes, the third installment in the series, Escape From Planet of the Apes, presents an ingenious twist: three of the evolved apes from the 40th century travel back in time to the 20th, where they are initially caged and studied, much like humans are in their own time. Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall reprise their roles from the original and are joined by fellow chimpanzee Sal Mineo, and humans Bradford Dillman and Ricardo Montalbán. 

Father's Little Dividend, 1951 - Stars Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor return under the direction of Vincent Minelli in the follow-up to the 1950 comedy hit Father of the Bride. In this film, Spencer Tracy has to come to terms with becoming a granddad. (Steve Martin and Dianne Keaton starred in remakes of these two movies: 1991's Father of the Bride and 1995's Father of the Bride Part II. While not bad, I don't think either can really compare with the originals.)

The Four Musketeers, 1974 - Filmed at the same time as 1973's The Three Musketeers. It is a pleasure to watch Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, and Christopher Lee bring these swashbuckling Alexander Dumas tales to life. 

Godfather Part II, 1974 - This combination prequel and sequel to 1972's The Godfather tells more tales of the Corleone crime family. It was the first Hollywood movie to include 'Part II' as part of its official title, and in so doing started the trend of numbered sequels. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture (the only sequel ever to do so) and Best Supporting Actor for Robert De Niro. 

Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior, 1981 - An excellent sequel to 1979's Mad Max, which in turn was followed in 1985 by another equally excellent sequel, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, 1985 - Two words: Tina Turner.

Predator 2, 1990 - In 1987's Predator, the semi-visible alien hunted soldiers Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Jesse Ventura in the jungles of Central America. In this sequel the monster has moved onto the asphalt jungle of Los Angeles, where he preys on cops Danny Glover, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ruben Blades, Gary Busey, and Bill Paxton.

 A Shot in the Dark, 1964 - 1963's Pink Panther focused on the character of a thief played by David Niven, who planned to steal the famous Pink Panther diamond. Peter Sellers' portrayal of bungling French police detective Inspector Jacques Clouseau stole the show to such a degree that plans for A Shot in the Dark, which did originally include the character, were changed to make the movie center around him -- and the rest, as they say, is cinema history.

 The Bells of St. Mary's, 1945 - A sequel to the previous year's Best Picture Oscar winner, Going My Way. Bing Crosby returns as Father Father Chuck O'Malley and is joined by Ingrid Bergman as Sister Mary Benedict, in a story of their effort to save their school from being shut down. Crosby was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for the role in both movies, and won it for his performance in Going My Way. According to Box Office Mojo, when adjusted for inflation, The Bells of St. Mary's is the 50th highest grossing movie of all time!

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, 1982 - In this follow-up to 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew find themselves up against genetically-engineered tyrant Khan Noonien Singh. At the time of its release, Star Trek II was much more well received by critics and fans alike -- rightly so, in my opinion.  

Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991 - in this sequel to 1984's Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger has gone from bad cyborg to good cyborg, while Linda Hamilton's character has toughened up and bulked up to fight and protect her son from a new bad killing machine from the future: the liquid-metal, shape-shifting T-1000, played by Robert Patrick.

Of course, there are many, many more I could have included on this list, but I had to stop somewhere so that we could start talking!

Image from Back to the Future 2: Jaws 19

Yes, Kenny Ortega, the the choreographer on the original film, and the man who brought us High School Musical Michale Jackson's This Is It, plans to direct a re-make of the 1987 hit. The original Dirty Dancing, directed by Emile Ardolino, written by Eleanor Bergstein, starred Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze as Baby and Johnny, a rich kid and a working class dance instructor, who do dancing and other things in a story of class division, back street abortions, and summer love set in a Catskill Mountains resort way back in 1963. What do you think? Is a remake a good idea or a bad idea? And since it's going to be made regardless of what we think, who do you think should be the new Baby and Johnny?

Variety: Lionsgate taps Ortega for 'Dirty Dancing'

Footage from Alfred Hitchcock's first film has been uncovered in New Zealand.

The British director was 24 when 1923 silent film, The White Shadow, was made.

The three reels were found among some unidentified American nitrate prints, which were left at the New Zealand Film Archive in 1989.

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Michael Cacoyannis, a Greek filmmaker whose art-house films and adaptations of Euripides for stage and screen were critically acclaimed, but who was best known as the director of the 1964 Hollywood hit “Zorba the Greek,” died on Monday in Athens. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, an institution for the performing arts he founded in 2003.

Mr. Cacoyannis’s early work brought a new level of respect to Greek filmmaking in the 1950s, when postwar European cinema was dominated by the Italians and French. It also gave exposure to some of Greece’s finest performers. His 1955 film, “Stella,” which won the Golden Globe as best foreign film, featured Melina Mercouri in her first movie role. Irene Papas would appear in many of his productions.

But “Zorba,” his eighth film, created a cultural phenomenon that transcended filmmaking.

Anthony Quinn’s barefooted, dancing, woman-loving Zorba became a symbol of Greek vitality that boosted Greek tourism for decades. For better and worse, it also stamped the Greeks as people with a knack for living for the moment, a characterization that has haunted them during the country’s national debt crisis.

The film won three Academy Awards. But although nominated for best director and best film, Mr. Cacoyannis and “Zorba” lost out to George Cukor’s adaptation of “My Fair Lady.”

Peter Falk died at his Beverly Hills home on June 23, 2011 at the age of 83. He had reportedly been suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Falk is best known for his role as police detective 'Columbo. He starred in 69 episodes of the show from 1968 to 2003. He won four best actor Emmys for the role, as well as a fifth one for his starring role in the 1961 TV drama, 'The Price of Tomatoes.'

Falk also starred on the big screen numerous times and was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor twice - the first time for his role as Abe Reles in 1960's 'Murder, Inc.' and the next one a year later for the character of Joy Boy in 'Pocketful of Miracles.'

He also gave memorable performances in 'The Great Race,' 'A Woman Under the Influence,' 'Murder by Death,' 'Princess Bride,' as well as played himself in two Wim Wenders films, 'Wings of Desire' and 'Faraway, So Close!'

Peter Falk is survived by his wife Shera Danese and two daughters, Catherine and Jackie, from his previous marriage to Alyce Mayo.

These two videos were put together by Alexandros Molfessis of Athens, Greece

Josephine Hart, an Irish-born novelist whose best-selling tale of erotic obsession, “Damage,” inspired the 1992 feature film of that name starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche, died on Thursday in London. Ms. Hart had long been circumspect about her age but was believed to have been in her late 60s.

The cause was cancer, a spokeswoman for her husband, the advertising mogul Maurice Saatchi, told The Press Association, the British news service. Ms. Hart, who was active on the London arts scene as a producer of plays and poetry readings, was known formally as Lady Saatchi: her husband was named a life peer in 1996.

Published in 1991, “Damage” was Ms. Hart’s first novel. It told the story of a powerful, married member of Parliament (played by Mr. Irons in the film), who embarks on a steamy, ultimately disastrous affair with his son’s fiancée, Anna (Ms. Binoche).

Immensely popular, the novel spent 11 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list in hardcover and another 7 in paperback. It was translated into many languages.

Leonard Kastle, an opera composer who unexpectedly found a niche in film history as the writer and director of the low-budget 1969 crime-thriller film “The Honeymoon Killers,” died on Wednesday at his home in Westerlo, N.Y. He was 82.

The death was confirmed by Cecelia Levin, his niece.

In the 1950s and ’60s Mr. Kastle enjoyed a modest reputation as a composer of melodic, romantic operas and as a musical director of works for the stage.

Fame arrived by an unexpected route. Warren Steibel, the producer of “Firing Line” with William F. Buckley Jr. and of Mr. Kastle’s television operas, was given $150,000 by a rich friend to make a film. He hit on the idea of making a grim, documentary-style work based on the story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who were known as the Lonely Hearts Killers.

Fernandez was a balding lothario, Beck his obese lover. Together they sought out victims by reading newspaper personal ads, and when Fernandez had won the trust of those they contacted, they robbed them. The couple murdered two of their victims and the 2-year-old daughter of one as well. Fernandez and Beck were electrocuted at Sing Sing in 1951.

At the request of Mr. Steibel, who died in 2002, Mr. Kastle sifted through the trial records at the Bronx County Courthouse. Then, after studying scripts by Fellini, Pasolini and Truffaut, he wrote a screenplay.

Both men envisioned the film as a cinematic rebuttal to “Bonnie and Clyde.” “I was revolted by that movie,” Mr. Kastle said in an interview for the 2003 Criterion Collection reissue of his film on DVD. “I didn’t want to show beautiful shots of beautiful people.”

For his director, Mr. Steibel hired Martin Scorsese, whose first film, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?,” he had seen recently. But as filming began near the summer home that Mr. Steibel and Mr. Kastle shared in New Lebanon, N.Y., trouble loomed.

It quickly became apparent that Mr. Scorsese’s deliberate, painstaking approach would break the budget and play havoc with the shooting. Mr. Kastle said that after Mr. Scorsese and Oliver Wood, the cinematographer, spent an entire afternoon filming a beer can in a bush, it was clear they would need another director.

When Mr. Scorsese’s replacement, an industrial filmmaker named Donald Volkman, also proved unsatisfactory, Mr. Kastle stepped into the breach. Against the odds, he turned out a quirky masterpiece.

“The Honeymoon Killers,” with Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler in the lead roles, stunned moviegoers and critics. Brutal, unblinking and ruthlessly honest, with a powerful undercurrent of black comedy, it quickly earned an exalted place in American cinema.

Dana Wynter, who ran from the pod people in the 1956 science-fiction classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” died on Thursday in Ojai, Calif. She was 79.

The cause was congestive heart failure, her son, Mark Bautzer, told The Los Angeles Times.

Ms. Wynter was seen frequently on television in the 1950s and ’60s and had roles in movies including “Airport” and “The List of Adrian Messenger.” But she was best known for her role opposite Kevin McCarthy in “Body Snatchers,” Don Siegel’s film about residents of a small California town who are replaced by emotionless duplicates grown from plantlike pods.

A low-budget movie released with little fanfare by Allied Artists, “Body Snatchers” developed a cult following for its paranoid atmosphere and its thinly veiled social commentary. It has since been remade several times.

Arthur Marx, who wrote screenplays for film and television and a best-selling book about his father, "Life With Groucho," died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by his son Steve.

As a child Mr. Marx spent several years on the road with Groucho Marx and the rest of the Marx Brothers' vaudeville act — Chico, Harpo, Gummo and later Zeppo — before enjoying a celebrity-filled youth in Los Angeles as the brothers rose to stardom.

His own show-business career was varied and long, writing Hollywood screenplays and scripts for some of television's most popular sitcoms.

But his father's life and career provided Mr. Marx with perhaps his richest source of material. "Life With Groucho," published in 1954, captivated readers with its sharp but affectionate portrait of Groucho — who peppered the narrative with kibitzing footnotes — and its shrewd account of the show-business milieu in which he thrived. A sequel, "Son of Groucho," was published in 1972.

Mr. Marx and Robert Fisher, a former writer for Groucho, also wrote the book for a 1970 Broadway musical about the Marx Brothers, "Minnie's Boys," with Shelley Winters in the lead role of Minnie Marx, and "Groucho: A Life in Revue," which was produced Off Broadway in 1986.

Taken together, Arthur Marx's two books about his father offered a bittersweet picture of life in the Marx home. He described himself as desperate both to escape from his father's shadow and to please him, an impossible task. The comic genius who kept millions in stitches was, in his private life, miserly and emotionally distant.

For this Saturday Matinee article, I decided to write about the movie going experience rather than focus on one particular film. What started me thinking about this was remembering movies I had seen as a child and young teen. I grew up in Huntington, WV at a time (late 50s and early 60s) when children were not ferried around from one extracurricular activity to another. For the most part, we were left alone to amuse ourselves. Sometimes that meant running around in the woods near our house. Sometimes it meant riding bikes or playing board games or shooting marbles. Sometimes simply sitting quietly and reading a book. But on a fairly regular basis, our parents would pack us into the car and drop us off at the Keith-Albee Theater downtown for a Saturday matinee. It was the Keith-Albee that defined the movie going experience for me as a child.

The Keith-Albee Theater in Huntington opened its doors in 1928. From Wikipedia:

At the time it was built the Keith-Albee Theatre was the second biggest theater in the United States, after the Roxy Theater in New York City. Seating approximately 3,000 patrons, it exemplified the opulence and grandeur of the 1920’s with a Mexican Baroque design style. Intricate plasterwork, chandeliers, and balconies create an atmosphere of sophistication, along with cosmetic rooms, smoking rooms, and fireplaces for men and women in the restrooms adjoining the main lobby. The Keith-Albee Theatre, which cost $2 million to construct in 1928, was dubbed a “temple of amusement” by Huntington’s Herald-Dispatch newspaper. The opening day performance on May 8, 1928 featured performer Rae Samuels, nicknamed the “Blue Streak of Vaudeville” for her versatile acting ability. The theatre survived a major flood in 1937.

The Keith-Albee Theatre was equipped with a Wurlitzer organ to accompany live performances and motion pictures. The organ was capable of creating almost any sound effect needed for silent films shown in the theater. This original organ was removed and sold in the 1950’s after live music had lost some of its appeal.

During my childhood, the theater still retained much of its original grandeur. This was the place where the Junior Women’s Club put on their annual shows, where I once watched my mother dance across the stage in some horrible hula number while munching on homemade fudge sold from the aisles by the non-performers. This was the place where I went to see movies. I’ll be honest. I don’t remember every single movie that I saw there. But a few do stand out:

1. A Hard Day’s Night – I was in the fourth grade when Meet the Beatles was released. Like many young girls, I had an ongoing love affair with The Beatles (George) that lasted into my teen years. We would rush to the record store downtown whenever a new album was released. (Yes, there was a record store. No coffee. No books. Just records. Rows of little 45s in their individual sleeves. Rows of colorful albums with heartthrobs prominently featured on the covers.) We thronged to the Keith-Albee to see A Hard Day’s Night when it was released in 1964. I was 10. And there we were, a hoard of young girls ensconced in the plush velvet seats, surrounded by lavish chandeliers and gilt, screaming at the top of our lungs while The Beatles cavorted across the screen in a movie so light on plot as to be positively airy. It was a heavenly experience then and one that still brings a smile to my face today.

2. The Happiest Millionaire – Okay, not exactly a classic film, not even one of Disney’s best. But in 1967 I was 13, still young enough to find Fred MacMurray comforting and definitely young enough to have a full blown crush on Tommy Steele. I adored that movie. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why. The clearest memory I retain is of someone dancing across the screen with an alligator on a leash. But I adored it. What comes back to me most strongly is the feeling of sheer bliss as I sat in the familiar comfort of the Keith-Albee and gave myself over to a fantasy. I was able to simply be a child.

3. The Graduate – Like The Happiest Millionaire, The Graduate was released in 1967. It is probably indicative of the schizoid nature of 13-year-olds that seeing this movie also stands out as one of my most vivid movie going experiences at the Keith-Albee. What comes to mind when I think about this movie is, well, sneakiness. I went with a girlfriend. (I’m not too sure now whether it was Muffy or Jan or Kathy or possibly Martha.) We were not old enough to see the movie but decided to try and get in anyway. So we straightened ourselves up, pasted “mature” looks on our faces and nonchalantly handed our money over at the ticket booth. To our surprise, we were in! I actually remember this movie pretty well though it’s likely that some of the plot details come to me from subsequent viewings over the years. I do remember sitting in the balcony of the Keith-Albee. I do remember the final scenes of the movie with some degree of clarity; can picture them on the theater’s screen. And I do remember wondering a) what all the fuss was about and b) what it was about the movie that I didn’t quite understand. Thirteen can be kind of a horrible age.

So the Keith-Albee was with me through childhood and into puberty, until my family packed up and moved to Chicago. It was a constant in my young life. When I think about the experience of going out to see a movie, there is a part of me that yearns for the opulence and familiarity of that particular theater. Oh, I know how movie theaters have improved over the years. We have surround sound. We have more ergonomically designed seats. We have TECHNOLOGY. But no matter how high tech and impressive today’s theaters may be, I don’t believe I will ever find one that provides me with the same amount of emotional satisfaction as the Keith-Albee Theater did when I was young.

Some links for further information on and some great interior photos of the Keith-Albee:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith-Albee_Theatre

http://www.pawv.org/endgrd05/keithalbee.htm

Some information on the three movies mentioned in this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hard_Day%27s_Night_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiest_Millionaire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Graduate

Legendary television and film director Sidney Lumet is dead. Lumet, who was 86, died of lymphoma at his home in New York, a city he used as a backdrop in countless films. A former actor, who started directing live television drama in the 1950s, he directed his first feature film, 12 Angry Men, in 1957, and released his last , Before the Devil Knows You're Dead , in 2007. In the intervening 50 years he directed over 40 movies, which racked up 14 Academy Award nominations, including four for Best Director: 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982). Although he never won the directing award, Dog Day Afternoon did receive a Best Picture Oscar, and in 2005 he received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement for "brilliant services to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture."

Lumet was once asked why he made movies. His response was a simple, “I do it because I like it and it’s a wonderful way to spend your life.”

He was a fortunate man to be able have such a long and successful career dedicated to something he apparently enjoyed so much -- and we in the audience were very fortunate, too.

Here are the films of Sidney Lumet:

1957 12 Angry Men, with Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb
1958 Stage Struck, with Henry Fonda, Susan Strasberg
1959 That Kind of Woman, with Sophia Loren, Tab Hunter
1959 The Fugitive Kind, with Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani
1961 A View from the Bridge, with Raf Vallone, Jean Sorel
1962 Long Day's Journey Into Night, with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards
1964 The Pawnbroker, with Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald
1964 Fail-Safe, with Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau
1965 The Hill, with Sean Connery, Harry Andrews
1966 The Group, with Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett
1967 The Deadly Affair, James Mason, Harry Andrews
1968 Bye Bye Braverman, George Segal, Jack Warden
1968 The Sea Gull, with Vanessa Redgrave, Simone Signoret
1969 The Appointment, with Omar Sharif, Anouk Aimée
1970 King: A Filmed Record...Montgomery to Memphis, narrated by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
1970 Last of the Mobile Hot Shots, with Lynn Redgrave, James Coburn
1971 The Anderson Tapes, with Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam
1972 Child's Play, with James Mason, Robert Preston
1972 The Offence, with Sean Connery, Ian Bannen, Trevor Howard
1973 Serpico, with Al Pacino
1974 Lovin' Molly, with Anthony Perkins, Beau Bridges
1974 Murder on the Orient Express, with Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman
1975 Dog Day Afternoon, with Al Pacino, John Cazale
1976 Network , with Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty
1977 Equus, with Richard Burton
1978 The Wiz, with Diana Ross, Michael Jackson
1980 Just Tell Me What You Want, with Alan King, Ali MacGraw
1981 Prince of the City, with Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach
1982 Deathtrap, with Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon
1982 The Verdict, with Paul Newman, Jack Warden
1983 Daniel, with Timothy Hutton, Mandy Patinkin
1984 Garbo Talks, with Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver
1986 Power, with Richard Gere, Julie Christie, Gene Hackman
1986 The Morning After, with Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges
1988 Running on Empty, with River Phoenix, Judd Hirsch
1989 Family Business, with Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman
1990 Q & A, with Timothy Hutton, Nick Nolte, Armand Assante
1992 A Stranger Among Us, with Melanie Griffith, John Pankow
1993 Guilty as Sin, with Don Johnson, Rebecca De Mornay
1997 Night Falls on Manhattan, with Andy García, Ian Holm, Lena Olin, Richard Dreyfuss
1997 Critical Care, with James Spader, Kyra Sedgwick
1999 Gloria, with Sharon Stone, George C. Scott
2004 Strip Search, with Glenn Close, Maggie Gyllenhaal
2006 Find Me Guilty, with Vin Diesel, Alex Rocco
2007 Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney

Do you have a favorite Sidney Lumet film?

Annie Girardot, a versatile French actress who played the doomed Milanese streetwalker in Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers" and, moving easily from drama to comedy, became France's most popular actress of the 1970s, died on Monday in Paris. She was 79.

Her granddaughter, Lola Vogel, announced her death but did not state the cause.

Ms. Girardot had been treated for Alzheimer's disease for nearly a decade and for the last two years had lived in a Paris nursing home. In France, she became the public symbol of the disease, and her daughter and granddaughter kept the public informed of her decline.

Ms. Girardot never achieved the international renown of Jeanne Moreau or Brigitte Bardot, but she overtook both of them in French popularity polls in 1972, a year after appearing in "To Die of Love." The film, about a schoolteacher who is driven to commit suicide after her love affair with a student comes to light, broke box-office records in France.

IN Godard's Pierrot le Fou, director Sam Fuller made a memorable cameo, chomping on a cigar and describing for Jean-Paul Belmondo's character the essence of moviemaking: "A film is like a battleground. There's love, hate, action, violence, death ... in one word: emotion." There is plenty of fraught emotion in two of Fuller's most flamboyant black-and-white films of the early 1960s, The Naked Kiss (1964) and Shock Corridor (1963), now reissued by Criterion in handsome packages full of extras and with essays illustrated by Daniel Clowes.

The Naked Kiss opens with the frenetic immediacy scored to raucous sax-filled jazz. In agitated, hand-held-camera close-up, a prostitute named Kelly (hard blonde Constance Towers) attacks her pimp with her spike-heel shoe. He desperately reaches for her head, only to pull off her wig; she finishes the job bald and then faces the screen as if it were a mirror and puts herself back together. All this before the title appears.

Tura Satana, an actress whose authoritative presence, exotic looks and buxom frame commanded the attention of viewers of Russ Meyer's 1965 cult movie "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!," died on Friday in Reno, Nev.

The cause was believed to be heart failure, her longtime manager, Siouxzan Perry, said. She said Ms. Satana was 72, though other sources listed her birth date as July 10, 1935, which would have made her 75.

Born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi on the Japanese island of Hokkaido to a father of Japanese and Filipino descent and a mother who was Cheyenne Indian and Scots-Irish, Ms. Satana spent part of her childhood in the World War II Manzanar internment camp for Japanese-Americans in California before her family settled in Chicago.

Her Asian background and appearance and the fact that her physique developed early led to frequent harassment and assaults, and she lived an itinerant life, working as an exotic dancer and nude model.

After playing a supporting part in the 1963 Billy Wilder comedy "Irma la Douce," Ms. Satana found her breakthrough role in "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!," a Meyer exploitation film that, in stark opposition to the director's later works, featured no nudity. In the film she played Varla, the leader of a gang of go-go dancers who kidnap a couple, murder the boy and force the girl to follow them on further lawless adventures.

Ms. Satana's portrayal of Varla as a brazenly violent but unapologetically feminine woman who frequently upbraids the men who dare to ogle her — when a gas-station attendant tells her he believes in "seeing America first," Varla replies, "You won't find it down there, Columbus!" — earned her a cult following that endured long after the drive-in era.

Modern-day psycho-horror legend Anthony Hopkins is in negotiations to play the original master, Alfred Hitchcock, in a new non-fiction movie about the director's life and film career. The Hollywood Reporter relays that Hopkins is talking to production company Montecito to star in a big-screen adaptation of Stephen Rebello's 1998 book, 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.'

The book focuses on the story of Hitchcock's decision to make the now-famous horror movie and the struggle he had to finance and get support for the film. The script, which was written by 'Black Swan' scribe John Laughlin and which Sacha Gervasi is in talks to direct, may concentrate more on his relationship with his wife, Alma Reville.

Eastwood's film will be the fourth version of the story, which first made it to the screen in 1937.

Beyonce is in talks to play Esther Blodgett, the small-town girl who arrives in Hollywood dreaming of fame. She meets and falls in love with Norman Maine, an alcoholic former matinee idol who guides her to stardom but finds his own career on the wane.

The role of Maine is yet to be cast but Robert Downey Jr and Russell Crowe have each been linked to the role.

Last year, the legendary singer sent out a press release to The Associated Press stating she wanted Oscar-winning superstar Halle Berry to tackle the lead role in an upcoming biopic about the powerhouse songstress. During a recent phone interview on "The Wendy Williams Show," Franklin said Berry is set to star in the project.

"Halle Berry is my pick," Franklin said to a swell of cheers from the daytime-TV audience. The soul veteran said Berry has been tapped to play an adult version of Franklin but added..."There's a young Aretha that has yet to be named."

[...]

In September, Franklin said that, in addition to Berry, she wanted Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington and Oscar nominee Terrence Howard to appear in the film. The "Respect" diva had apparently already been in touch with the stars, saying that the trio were "enthusiastic about the project and have agreed to take on these roles, subject to further negotiation." The script will be based on her 1999 autobiography "Aretha: From These Roots."

It's hard to believe, but, as he enters his ninth decade, Eastwood is as focused, ambitious and driven as he was when he directed his first film at the age of 41. He has been racking up lifetime achievement awards since the Nineties, before he had even embarked on this late stage of his career – one that many consider to be his most creative and productive.

He is in New York to attend the premiere and party for his latest film, Hereafter, a drama written by the British screenwriter Peter Morgan and starring Matt Damon, who was also in his last movie, Invictus.

In his most recent films – Mystic River, Flags of Our Fathers, Gran Torino, Invictus – Eastwood has been pushing audiences to think about difficult and sometimes uncomfortable themes. This time he is posing the question of what happens after death: Hereafter is a drama that explores three characters' search for answers about their own lives in the face of what lies beyond.

In San Francisco, a reluctant psychic (Damon) tries to break free from the bereaved people seeking help in contacting loved ones; in Indonesia, a journalist (Cecile de France) has a near-death experience in a tsunami; while, in London, a twin loses the brother who has always guided him.

Eastwood, who filmed in Paris, London, Hawaii and San Francisco, says: "We don't know what's on the other side. People have their beliefs about what's there or what's not there, but nobody knows until you get there."

It is not something he thinks or worries about. "Whatever's out there is out there," he says with a shrug as we talk in a hotel suite a couple of hours before the premiere. "I don't think much about the hereafter because I feel you're given one opportunity to live in this world, and you have to do the best you can with the life you've got."

[...]

He is already at work on his next movie, an as-yet-untitled film about the life of J Edgar Hoover, the founder of the FBI, who will be played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Nice selection of clips (dance) from Bollywood flics,

Video proof!

In honor of the new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, The Daily Beast has calculated the 30 the highest-grossing films based on books, with only one Harry Potter movie making the list -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone coming in at number 30. Here are the top 15:

1, Gone With the Wind

Based on: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Director: Victor Fleming
Released: 1939
Original box office gross: $198,676,459
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $1,606,254,800

2, The Sound of Music

Based on: The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta von Trapp
Director: Robert Wise
Released: 1965
Original box office gross: $158,671,368
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $1,132,202,200

3, The Ten Commandments

Based on: The Hebrew Bible
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Released: 1956
Original box office gross: $65,500,000
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $1,041,450,000

4, Jaws

Based on: Jaws by Peter Benchley
Director: Steven Spielberg
Released: 1975
Original box office gross: $260,000,000
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $1,018,226,600

5, Doctor Zhivago

Based on: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Director: David Lean
Released: 1965
Original box office gross: $111,721,910
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $986,876,900

6, The Exorcist

Based on: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Director: William Friedkin
Released: 1973
Original box office gross: $232,671,011
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $879,020,900

7, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Based on: Snow White by the Brothers Grimm
Director: David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen
Released: 1937
Original box office gross: $184,925,486
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $866,550,000

8, The 101 Dalmatians

Based on: The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
Director: Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Wolfgang Reitherman
Released: 1961
Original box office gross: $144,880,014
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $794,342,100

9, Ben-Hur

Based on: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace
Director: William Wyler
Released: 1959
Original box office gross: $74,000,000
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $779,100,000

10, Jurassic Park

Based on: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Director: Steven Spielberg
Released: 1993
Original box office gross: $357,067,947
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $685,336,400

11, The Graduate

Based on: The Graduate by Charles Webb
Director: Mike Nichols
Released: 1967
Original box office gross: $104,901,839
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $680,292,600

12, The Godfather

Based on: The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Released: 1972
Original box office gross: $134,966,411
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $627,434,400

13, Forrest Gump

Based on: Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Released: 1994
Original box office gross: $329,694,499
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $624,437,600

14, Mary Poppins

Based on: Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers with illustrations by Mary Shepard
Director: Robert Stevenson
Released: 1964
Original box office gross: $102,272,727
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $621,545,500

15, Thunderball

Based on: Thunderball by Ian Fleming
Director: Terence Young
Released: 1965
Original box office gross: $63,595,658
Box office gross adjusted for inflation: $594,660,000

The entire list of 30 movies is available here. Is your favorite among them or do you have another (or others) you like better?

Note: I made a few adjustments for the poll, so that it would include the Harry Potter film and the two Lord of the Rings movies (The Two Towers and The Return of the King) that are on the Daily Beast's list.

Thanksgiving, arguably America's most popular holiday, is not as popular as the 4th of July, Halloween or Christmas when it comes to cinema themes or settings. In addition, it seems most Thanksgiving-related movies have been made relatively recently, with not very many made in the first half of the 20th century. However, there have been some memorable films that have something to do with the holiday or its history, including the following. (Click on a movie title to view a video clip, or to see more information on the film.)

Captain John Smith and Pocahontas 1953 - directed by Lew Landers, starring Anthony Dexter, Jody Lawrance, Alan Hale Jr.

Hannah and Her Sisters 1986 - directed by Woody Allen, starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow as Hannah, Michael Caine as her husband, and Barbara Hershey and Dianne Wiest.

Home for the Holidays 1995 - directed by Jodie Foster, starring Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, Dylan McDermott, Geraldine Chaplin, Steve Guttenberg, Cynthia Stevenson with Claire Danes, Austin Pendleton and David Strathairn.

The House of Yes 1997 - directed by Mark Waters, starring Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Geneviève Bujold, Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Tori Spelling.

The Ice Storm 1997 - directed by Ang Lee, starring Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Sigourney Weaver.

The Myth of Fingerprints 1997 - directed by Bart Freundlich, starring Julianne Moore, Roy Scheider and Blythe Danner.

National Lampoon's Holiday Reunion 2003 - directed by Neal Israel, starring Judge Reinhold, Bryan Cranston and Penelope Ann Miller.

The New World 2006 - directed by Terrence Malick, starring Colin Farrell, Q'Orianka Kilcher, Christopher Plummer, and Christian Bale.

An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving 2008 - directed by Graeme Campbell, starring Jacqueline Bisset and Helene Joy

One Special Night 1999 - directed by Roger Young, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews.

Pieces of April 2003 - directed by Peter Hedges, starring Katie Holmes, Derek Luke, Sean Hayes, Alison Pill, Oliver Platt, and Patricia Clarkson

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles 1987 -directed by John Hughes, starring John candy and Steve Martin.

Plymouth Adventure 1952 - directed by Clarence Brown, starring Spencer Tracy, Gene Tierney, Van Johnson, Leo Genn with Barry Jones, Dawn Addams, Lloyd Bridges and John Dehner.

Pocahontas 1995 - Walt Disney animated film, directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, with the voices of Christian Bale, Irene Bedard, Judy Kuhn, Linda Hunt, Billy Connolly, and Gordon Tootoosis. *

Pocahontas: The Legend 1995 - directed by Danièle J. Suissa, starring Sandrine Holt, and Gordon Tootoosis. *

Squanto: A Warrior's Tale 1994 - directed by Xavier Koller and starring Adam Beach.

What's Cooking? 2000 - directed by Gurinder Chadha, starring Mercedes Ruehl, Kyra Sedgwick, Joan Chen, Lainie Kazan, Maury Chaykin, Julianna Margulies, Alfre Woodard, and Dennis Haysbert.

Are one of these your favorite, or do you have another Thanksgiving related movie to add to the list?

* Trivia: Gordon Tootoosis was in both of the 1995 Pocahontas movies

"Before there was Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Chan, whichever incarnation of James Bond that floats your boat, or Chuck Norris, there was John Wayne, the original action hero.

"There's been almost no real movement on the eagerly anticipated, long-gestating Ghostbusters 3 for months. Because of that there's been no reason to believe the movie
, despite the best intentions of people like Ivan Reitman
and Dan Akyroyd, will ever happen at all let alone any time soon. Except now, out of nowhere, not only does the oft reliable Production Weekly believe it's happening, they believe Sony
has actually set a start date for filming.

"Jack Nicholson talks about UFO's and our antiquated system."

Still photos from "Casablanca"

Quotes from the movie.

The buzz is that Australian director Baz Luhrmann, of 'Moulin Rouge' would like to make a new film adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, 'The Great Gatsby.' The book has inspired four previous movies:

* The Great Gatsby (1926 film), silent movie starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson and Neil Hamilton
* The Great Gatsby (1949 film), starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field and Macdonald Carey
* The Great Gatsby (1974 film), starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow and Sam Waterston (Video clip)
* The Great Gatsby (2000 film), made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Mira Sorvino and Paul Rudd (Video clip)

In this new version it is reported that likely leads are Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway (although some people may think he would make a better Gatsby), and Amanda Seyfried as Daisy Buchanan.

Would you like to see a new film adaptation of this classic book? If so, who do you think would make a great Great Gatsby? And who could do service to Daisy? What about Nick and the other roles?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE, February 20, 201: Baz Luhrmann to film 3D Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio in Sydney, Australia.

In a coup for the Australian film industry and the Keneally government, Luhrmann has brushed New York - where the classic tale is set - and will instead shoot a 3D version in NSW.

Luhrmann has already secured Leonardo DiCaprio to play Jay Gatsby in the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, one of the film industry's most anticipated projects.

DiCaprio, who commands $20 million a movie, will reprise the role made famous by Robert Redford in 1974, with 25-year-old British actress Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, played by Mia Farrow in the original.

Tobey Maguire is tipped to play young bachelor Nick Carraway, rounding out an all-star cast.

The Warner Bros-backed film will be produced at Sydney's Fox Studios and will be the first live-action 3D movie shot in NSW.

Filming will begin in August and last 17 weeks before 30 weeks of post-production.

Luhrmann and his wife Catherine Martin will re-create famous New York and Long Island landmarks from the 1920s.

"Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

Heist movies; caper cinema; films with intricate plots woven around attempts to steal something: money, jewelry, art objects, antiques, gold, secret plans...anything! Some of my favorites are:

(Click on the title to view a video clip of the movie's trailer.)

To Catch a Thief - 1955: Oscar award winning movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Grace Kelly. Need I say more?

The Pink Panther - 1964: The film that spawned a classic series. Dashing David Niven as the thief, and a perfect Peter Sellers as the immortal Inspector Clousseau.

Topkapi - 1964: Peter Ustinov gets involved in a caper to steal a jewel encrusted dagger from an Istanbul museum.

The Thomas Crown Affair - 1968: directed by Norman Jewison. Steve McQueen tries to stay ahead of the sexy insurance investigator Faye Dunaway. (Great theme song, too: The Windmills of Your Mind.)

The Great Train Robbery - 1979: Written and directed by Michael Crichton, Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down star in this film based on based on the Great Gold Robbery of 1855.

A Fish Called Wanda - 1988: Another comedy caper, this one involving the theft of $20 million in diamonds and the subsequent fight among the theives over the loot. Starring John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michale Palin.

Jackie Brown - 1997: Pam Grier. 'Nuff said.

Ronin - 1998: Directed by John Frankenheimer, starring Robert De Niro and Jean Reno as two former intelligence agents tracking down a mysterious MacGuffin through the streets of Paris.

The Thomas Crown Affair - 1999: Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo star in a remake of the 1968 film. Faye Dunaway has a cameo.

Snatch - 2000: Guy Ritchie directed Jason Statham, Benicio Del Toro, and Brad Pitt in this comic crime thriller. The movies tag line said it all: "Stealin' Stones and Breakin' Bones."

Sexy Beast - 2000: Excellent performances by Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley.

Flawless - 2007: What can I say? Michael Caine and Demi Moore were flawless in this diamond heist tale set in 1960s London.

I know there are many more good heist movies. Do you have a favorite?

"The French resist the Nazis with an emotional rendition of La Marseillaise."

ORIGINAL LINK NOT WORKING-- USE THIS ONE INSTEAD.

As everyone knows who sets up a Newsvine account they offer a couple of places to recommend films and books and Internet news sites that you think others may enjoy or find informative. Since this is being posted in World News I'm going to confine my article to strictly films this time. As a sort of aside, I have noticed that many Newsvine participants/ seeder/writers have not posted their recommendations and, quite frankly, I don't know why not?

First of all let me apologize for the number of pictures attached to this article, but I am hoping that someone, even if it's just one person, will look at one of the pictures and decide to take a chance to rent that film and see if they might enjoy it themselves. While I realize that there is probably not another single person on Newsvine who agrees completely with my recommendation list, I suspect that there are several who agree with some if not most of them. However, much more importantly, I hope that there are some who have never heard of one or more of the films and takes the time to watch the ones they know. I don't think that they will be disappointed with the experience.

Some of the films that I recommend are familiar to many and I'm not going to go into a detailed synopsis on each. I will instead just make a few words comments on them and hope that you will, if you have not before, watch them yourself. The films are not really in any order of preference or as a 1 to 10 type list (though they are really (currently) 13 films listed), except for the one at the top of the list "Casablanca" which is, without a doubt (IMHO) the single greatest film ever made. Other then that they are presented in no particular order.

First of all is "Casablanca". To me it is the consummate Hollywood film. It is the peak of and the very description of Hollywood film making at it's best. It's the obvious choice.

Next (and again, after Casablanca, these are in no particular order) is "Inherit the Wind" with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March. A titanic issue presented by two true giants of film (and one of the greatest directors of all time, Stanley Kramer). The whole time watching it you feel that every single supporting actor or actresses turned in their best effort ever, just to avoid disappointing these two giants. And you'd be right.

Next is "Becket". Not withstanding the truth that many historical pieces are fantastic (Cleopatra anyone?) this one is like a gourmet meal because it's two stars, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, could read the phone book and make it sound like Macbeth. Both are at the very pinnacle of thier craft here.

Next is "To Kill a Mockingbird". What more needs to be said? Gregory Peck was decided in a poll to be the greatest superhero ever in film because if this role and he deserved it.

Next is a piece on the light side. "Monty Python's, The Meaning of Life". Yes, some Python fans rate "The Holy Grail" above this one, but I just can't. What a wonderful, silly diversion from life! Pure cotton candy!

Next is "The American President". Now I'm not a huge Michael Douglas fan (though Annette Bening is one of the hottest ever on screen and what an actress!), however his conversion back to doing the right thing is incredibly inspirational and this film should be required viewing for every President the second they are elected or (maybe especially) when they are re-elected.

The next one never, ever got the attention it deserved. It's called "Fail Safe", with Henry Fonda and Larry Hagman, in an early role. It is the cold war personified. Even more so then "Doctor Strangelove" it shows the cold war in it's starkest terms. Blood for blood. Millions of lives in exchange for millions of lives, to save hundreds of millions of more lives.

Next is another Gregory Peck film, though not one of his most famous. It's called "Gentleman's Agreement" and it's about the culture of anti-semitism in the United States post WWII. It was for Peck a very career dangerous role and I admire him because he stepped aside of his agents and the studio and did it anyway. Besides the supporting role by John Garfield and the direction of Elia Kazan are worth the effort all by themselves.

Now another historical piece. "The Lion in Winter", with Peter O'Toole and Kate Hepburn. This one is a sort of sequel to "Becket", but is so much more. Kate Hepburn won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role in a first time tie vote (with Barbara Streisand for "Funny Girl"), but the film also features great acting by a young Timothy Dalton and, in his very first feature film, a future giant of acting Sir Anthony Hopkins.

The next film (IMHO) ranks as one of the single greatest anti-war films of all time. A film in where a General makes a horrific mistake, but rather then punishing him the French Army insists (as they really used to do) on picking out three soldiers at random to be tried and executed for cowardice. It's called "Paths of Glory" and if you have not seen it, it is impossible to describe with any real justice. See it if for no other reason then Kirk Douglas's incredible performance as Colonel Dax and for the incredible direction of the immortal Stanley Kubrick.

Now, a small film that garnered very little at the box office, but is beginning to grow as a sort of cult film, "Slingblade" starring Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton wrote, directed and starred in this film about a developmentally disabled man who murdered his mother and her lover and then was released into a more modern world many years later. If you love or hate Thornton, watch this film anyway. His ability to stay in character and the nuances he brings to the role is a wonder to behold.

Something lighter again. "Paint Your Wagon", with Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seeburg. Yes, I know the singing is for the most part not all that good (except for the fantastic voice of Harve Presnell singing "Mariah" (damn near worth watching the film just for that!)). That said, every time I watch Lee Marvin singing "I was born under a wandering star" I still get choked up.

Last, but certainly not in any possible way least, is a quiet masterpiece that far too few people have not really seen. Keith Olbermann makes reference to it, but it has been one of my top ten favorite films of all times for four decades, "A Face in the Crowd". For any person who thinks of Andy Griffith as just Sheriff Taylor, this film will reveal a whole different side to his incredible acting abilities. Once you watch this you will realize that, if he had not found a home on TV, he would have been lauded as one of the single greatest dramatic film actors of our time. Add him to a great script, fantastic direction (by, again,
Elia Kazan), supporting roles by Patrica Neal, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick (in her first role) and Tony Franciosa and you can see the richness of this film. You are doing yourself a terrible disservice if you have not seen this cautionary and wonderful tale. It is as valid today as it was in 1957 and was a precursor to the nearly equally great "Network" with Peter Finch and William Holden.

So, tell me. What films (if any) did you recommend and why? If you didn't, would you like to recommend a few now. This is posted under world news because great films are world wide and are not confined to just any site's entertainment section.

I went to see the new Robin Hood film last week. Having read several less than flattering reviews, I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was - although Russel Crowe's Irish sounding accent was a little off-putting at times. It had a pretty good ending too, which tied things together nicely and set it up as a prequel to other Robin Hood stories. Although I certainly would never characterize this ending as one of the best I have ever seen, it did get me thinking about the subject of movie endings I did think were great. So, here is my list of 'best movie endings ever' for your consideration:

Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 - if you can stomach the slow-motion carnage, this strangely beautiful finale will stay with you.

Casablanca, 1942 - On a tarmac: the end of a love affair, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Citizen Kane, 1941 - Rosebud revealed.

Dead Again, 1991 - "The door just closed."

Dr. Strangelove, 1964 - Petter Seller's yelling, "Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!" followed by Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again. Priceless.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982 - "I’ll be right here." Awww.

Fargo, 1996 - A little mundane domestic contentment at the end of a gory crime movie.

Gone With The Wind, 1939 - "After all, tomorrow is another day."

Good Night, and Good Luck, 2005 - "Good night, and good luck."

Planet of the Apes, 1968 - Charlton Heston's painful cry under the beached remains of Lady Liberty.

Psycho, 1960 - "They’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know. And they’ll say, 'Why she wouldn’t even harm a fly.' "

Memento, 2001 - Let's just say it's a total surprise.

Shane, 1953 - "Shane, come back!" I'm choking up as I write this.

The Shawshank Redemption, 1994 - Andy and Red reunited on a sunny Mexican beach.

The Silence of the Lambs, 1991 - That "I’m having an old friend for dinner" phone call.

Some Like it Hot, 1959 - 'Daphne': "I'm a man!" Osgood Fielding III: "Nobody's perfect."

Thelma and Louise, 1991 - Floor that Ford Thunderbird convertible, gals!

Warning: Some contain strong language!

One of many memorable moments in the film Casablanca...

"Chinatown is to Los Angeles as Taxi Driver is to New York.

"Movies about New York tend to present it as either a dream setting for romance or a gladiatorial arena designed to kill you or drive you nuts. (A third group, practically as dead as the dodo, depicts it as just another place where people are trying to raise their families and live their lives.) ...

A movies and related city for each: New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Austin, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Portland, Baltimore.

For fans and scholars of the silent-film era, the search for a copy of the original version of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" has become a sort of holy grail. One of the most celebrated movies in cinema history, "Metropolis" had not been viewed at its full length — roughly two and a half hours — since shortly after its premiere in Berlin in 1927, when it was withdrawn from circulation and about an hour of its footage was amputated and presumed destroyed.

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"This is a musical montage I put together based on AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movies Quotes. The list was made in 2005 and was first aired on CBS as a special to commemorate the 100 greatest quotes as voted by 1500 critics, artists, and historians.

Excellent collection of stills from the movies....

Although I rarely say this in public, I must admit Republicans do some things very well. I can't think of any right off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's something. But one thing they do particularly badly, is social and cultural criticism.

One thing partisan Republicans do spectacularly badly, is understand cinema. Their film criticism is generally so incredibly shallow and superficial that it borders on error for that reason alone, not counting the times when their interpretation is grossly mistaken from the start, favoring a default position of finding insult and injury to themselves and their imagined folk (or sometimes praise for those they delude themselves into believing they champion, rather than providing insight and understanding of the work at hand.

The Establishment liberals, like the editors of Newsweek aren't much better (see: The Boomer Files and 1968: The Year That Changed Everything), but at least their criticism is insipid and superficial, obvious and cautious without being idiotically juvenile. They look at the surface and respond to it. (I suppose we all have to sit through another wave of Baby Boomer "analysis" thanks to that perfect representative of state-the-obvious Establishmentarianism, Tom Brokaw.)

And while establishment liberals tend to re-state the obvious and pride themselves for that, quite a bit of paleo-conservative cultural criticism is interesting, indeed, profound, if also occasionally misguided. George McCartney, a paleo-conservative, is a fine and honest film critic. I Love My Mother; his review of Sicko, is worth reading even if you don't agree with it.

But partisan Republicans pretty much don't get it. They are unsatisfied with the obvious but unable to discern deeper truths. They scratch the surface, then imagine they find the same thing underneath every time, mostly imagining it anyway. So then all you end up with is scratched surface.

This seems to be not just a failing of one or two Republicans but a widespread tendency. The conservative National Review ballyhooed a cover story on "The 100 Best Conservative Movies" in 1994 followed shortly afterwards by the conservative Heritage Foundation's Policy Review listing their 80 favorite conservative movies. Then National Review came up with a second list of another 100 conservative movies generated by readers' suggestions.

One amazing fact is that out of this list of well over 200 films (with some overlap), not one person thought to include one of the best and most interesting of all conservative movies, despite the fact that all three articles include a category of "anti-Communist" movies: the Italian-made adaptation of Ayn Rand's We The Living (Noi Vivi), which I saw a couple of times on late-night Canadian television, and which, scratchy subtitles and fuzzy print and all, is surprisingly faithful to the original. The conservatives, if they weren't ignorant of the film's very existence, might have been slightly embarrassed by the fact that most film scholars believe the film to have been at least partially financed by Mussolini's Fascist regime, but if that inconvenient fact doesn't bother a liberal like me, why should it bother them?

William Bennett (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities!) urged former Republican presidential nominee Senator Robert Dole to see Independence Day, claiming it was a movie about "marriage" and "American ingenuity" and "American leadership."

Huh? There is a throwaway marriage scene in which two longtime cohabitants finally receive the benefit of clergy, and where a spectacularly mismatched divorced couple reconcile, thereby compounding the mistake they made the first time they got married, but No--this movie is not about marriage, it's about kicking alien ass.

Of course, Bennett only wanted to make sure that Senator Dole's updated critique of Hollywood films wouldn't be subject to the same very minor criticism his original denunciation suffered, namely, that he hadn't seen the films he presumed to comment on. And that little oversight led to the Senator making the rather embarrassing mistake of praising Forrest Gump for being about family values and attacking Quentin Tarentino's True Romance for being about loveless sex. But: Forrest Gump is the movie about loveless sex, and True Romance is the one about family values.

When a narrative consists mainly of a string of random events, unlikely coincidences or acts of Providence, the theme is defined, or at least most clearly evident, in the exercise of Free Will which almost invariably begins this style of narrative. This is because--except for a few existentialist works--a narrative consisting of a random series of events implies a random universe, life without meaning (that could be true by the way, but it doesn't sell books or movie tickets). Any sophomore literature student reading works from Homer's Odyssey to Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy knows this. So what, I ask, is the act of Free Will that propels the young Forrest Gump on his remarkable career? When Mrs. Gump prostitutes herself to Principal Hamilton to ensure Forrest's admission to the regular school. Loveless sex. By the same token, True Romance has to be about family values, because if Clarence and Alabama don't love each other, don't marry, don't create a family, then the film is completely incoherent, random and meaningless, in other words, it would not speak to a mass audience, which it certainly did.

But the best evidence of Republican misunderstanding is in the introduction to the original list of 100 in the National Review, written by Spencer Warren, in which he identifies the film Easy Rider as one of the seminal influences on "Hollywood's nihilistic themes and chaotic styles." But Warren is entirely mistaken. As is Michael Medved, famously right-wing famous movie critic.

In Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons , his recent autobiography, Medved tells us that:

On a Saturday night in the Fall of 1969, during my first semester in law school, I went out with a half-dozen fellow students to see the new movie sensation Easy Rider. I hated almost everything about the movie, and we argued about it over burgers and fries. I specifically remember that my classmate Hillary Rodham felt especially enthusiastic about what she understood to be the message of the film: when the violent rednecks in their pick-up truck with its prominent gun rack, senselessly murder the two hippie bikers (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper), she thought the movie made a powerful statement about intolerance and conformity and the repressed rage among the exploited yahoos of the American underclass. I insisted that the cruelty and viciousness depicted in the film bore no connection to the heartland or southern communities I knew, and suggested that the local townsfolk would be more likely to feed and welcome long-haired visitors than to shoot them. The argument continued into the night with most of my friends defending the movie and attacking our "sick society" but I stubbornly held my ground. [emphasis added]

Here we see at once both the banal obviousness of the of establishment liberal interpretation and the patronizing offense-taking of neoconservative complainers at an imagined insult to "American" culture supposedly lurking just beneath the surface of a cultural artifact.

The most famous line of dialogue in the film is probably "We blew it," spoken by Wyatt (Peter Fonda) to Billy (Dennis Hopper) by the campfire just before the final scene. The late Terry Southern, who wrote the original treatment and shares screenwriting credit with both Fonda and Hopper, literally went to his grave refusing to explicate this cryptic line. In 1995, with an enigmatic smile, Peter Fonda also refused to even speculate on the meaning of the line despite persistent questioning by Charles Grodin on his old CNBC show.

But I think I may have misspoken: Fonda's smile wasn't enigmatic, it was a condescending and patronizing smirk. And Terry Southern surely died with that same grin on his face because the answer to that question is right there for all to see. Southern--witness Doctor Strangelove--was a great satirist and all great satirists are moralists at heart, as is evident from the Ancient Roman satirists Horace and Juvenal, through the Enlightenment's Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope to HBO's Bill Maher and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart. Fonda and Southern are laughing because they played a great joke on us, and for almost 30 years, nobody's gotten it.

The joke is this: Easy Rider is a CONSERVATIVE movie. It is not "nihilistic" and "chaotic." Not only does this movie celebrate family values, it celebrates traditional family values. But even more than that, Easy Rider argues for the enduring strength and power of faith in God as it explicitly rejects hedonism, atheism, and nihilism. This theme is evident throughout the film from the moment the travelers leave Los Angeles to the final climatic scene.

The first episode in Wyatt and Billy's journey to Mardi Gras occurs at a desert ranch where the travelers are briefly stranded by a flat tire. The rancher provides the necessary tools, then invites the men to supper with his large family. After prayer around a large outdoor table--before which the ignorant and impious Billy had to be reminded to remove his hat--Wyatt insistently and sincerely compliments the rancher on his "spread" and the life he has built there, repeated for emphasis.

Then picking up a hitchhiker, the wanderers stop for gas at Sacred Mountain, with the word "Sacred" from the gas station's sign splashed in big red letters across the screen as they pull in. Camping on the mountain, the cryptic hitchhiker admonishes Billy for disrespecting the site; once again Billy's irreverence and impiety are exposed to criticism. Reaching the hitchhiker's destination, the travelers find a commune hard at work planting crops. The laughter of children animates the episode until Wyatt and Billy join a second Circle of Prayer, movingly and famously depicted by a 360-degree pan of the inhabitants as they pray for the wherewithal to be as generous to others as others had been to them. The commune is a family as traditional as the rancher's family: underneath the beads and tie-dyed fabric is the agrarian extended family functioning in a classic pastoral.

But, although invited to stay, the travelers move on. They meet George the drunken liberal lawyer (Jack Nicholson) before continuing on towards New Orleans, stopping to camp, where George is killed by locals. Using a free pass inherited from George, they decide to visit a brothel--to the tune of "Kyrie Eleison," ("Lord have mercy"), drawn from the Electric Prunes psychedelic but authentic and respectful version of the Latin Catholic Mass in F Minor--where they encounter two prostitutes under cathedral ceilings and within walls covered by religious icons. Visiting a church graveyard, they drop acid and commence an unpleasant trip of weeping, shuddering and anxiety--amid frame after frame of sacred imagery and a comforting voice-over of a young girl saying a Rosary as a funeral unfolds before them.

On Mardi Gras night they camp, and Wyatt speaks those famous words, "We blew it" in response to Billy's shallow, juvenile excitement at the fact that "We're rich, man!" "We're free," Billy goes on, claiming to be "set for life" and ready to retire to Florida, but Wyatt quietly repeats his judgment: "We blew it." The next day, Ash Wednesday--the Christian Holy Day of atonement and repentance, the day when Catholics memento mori, that is, "contemplate death"--the story ends suddenly and shockingly on a country road in Southwest Louisiana.

If this narrative had been Medieval, could there be any doubt at all of the theme or the moral teaching intended? Sinners wander the countryside on a secular quest, encountering God's message but failing to acknowledge Him. They seek worldly pleasure at the expense of spiritual fulfillment, finding treasure and discussing it under a tree, only to finally to die a horrid death by the wayside.

As a matter of fact, such a tale was written in the Middle Ages, by Geoffrey Chaucer within the Canterbury Tales (the first "road movie"?), in "The Pardoner's Tale." Chaucer, unquestionably a moralist, was also a great satirist, as we see in the vicious lampoon of the venal and grossly hypocritical Pardoner, who preaches all his sermons on the theme of "The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10) while selling indulgences and false relics to his ignorant congregations.

Admittedly, many of the parallels may be mere coincidence. The Pardoner claims (lines 344-45):