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When HBO’s “The Idol” premiered to a resounding “ugh, really?” from the general public last month, there was a specific label people were quick to apply to the series: vanity project. Who the show was a vanity project for depended on which creator was being complained about at the time. But haters of the instantly despised pop star erotic thriller were practically universal in their assessment that the show was an ego stroke for star The Weeknd and/or series director Sam Levinson: both of whom took their lashings over the course of the show’s five-episode run.

The pair clearly had sky high hopes for the series, to the point that it received a rare TV premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023 before its broadcast debut in June. That was criticized by many as a deeply egotistical push, but its inclusion at the festival did...

In movies, the word “bomb” has always meant two things, generally at the same time. The first and most important definition of bomb is that a movie has lost a disastrous amount of money. Movies, in general, can’t afford to do that — they’re too expensive to produce. Bombs happen, but as a business model they’re not sustainable. A movie that bombs commercially has never been something to write off as a trivial matter.

The second definition of bomb, which is linked to the first (though not automatically), is that a film is spectacularly bad. It is, of course, not axiomatic that a movie that bombs commercially has failed as a work of art. There are movies we think of as classics that crashed and burned at the box office — like “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Blade Runner” or “Intolerance” or “The Long Goodbye.” It’s become almost...

Among the 100 top-grossing domestic movie releases, there have been three occasions when two of those films opened on the same weekend.

“Dr. Zhivago” and “Thunderball” shared Christmas 1965; “The Exorcist” and “The Sting” were Christmas 1973. And on Memorial Day Weekend 1977 there was “Smokey and the Bandit”… and “Star Wars.”

George Lucas’ film, of course, is second only to “Gone With the Wind” in tickets sold. But “Smokey” is #79 all-time, grossing $520 million (all figures here adjusted to 2022 values).

And for that first weekend, “Smokey” was actually #1. All-time, it’s a bigger hit than any “Harry Potter” film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “West Side Story,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” all the “Hunger Games” films, and “Rocky.”

In May 1977, I was in my second year as a film buyer for a local Chicago exhibition chain. At that point, wide releases were not the rule and while Memorial Day was a desirable date, it wasn’t considered summer.

Kenneth Wannberg, composer and Emmy-winning music editor who worked on nearly half of all John Williams’ films dating back to the late 1960s, died Jan. 27 at his home in Florence, Oregon. He was 91.

Wannberg was best known as Williams’ music editor, working closely with the composer on more than 50 of his films. He assisted Williams throughout the scoring process, from providing detailed descriptions of sequences to be scored to more technical aspects such as trimming or modifying music during the last stages of post-production.

He music-edited the first six “Star Wars” films, the first three “Indiana Jones” films and such other landmark Williams scores as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jurassic Park,” “Schindler’s List” and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

During his 50-year career in films, Wannberg worked with many other composers including Bernard Herrmann (“Journey to the Center of the Earth”), Jerry Goldsmith (“The Mephisto Waltz”), Michael Convertino...

A pained observation: The only intriguing stories on Hollywood this week consisted of obits – all kinds of obits. There were obits reminding us of the remarkable lives of Sidney Poitier, Peter Bogdanovich and Betty White. Also speculative obits about the Golden Globes, sentimental obits about the extinct 20th Century Fox and even speculative obits about MGM and ICM.

The obit frame of mind even extended to ticket buyers as a whole. Having anointed such films as West Side Story and The Power of the Dog as automatic award winners, critics wondered why ticket buyers seemed to be boycotting them. Had the movie audience disappeared into streamer heaven?

If the “business” obits were lugubrious, the personal ones often were inspirational. Obits for Poitier, who passed at age 94, documented a rich and fulfilling life – an appropriate reward for risks well taken. He also had strong personal ties with other strong-willed risk-takers, like Harry Belafonte.

Not many movie buffs have the chance to meet, let alone interview or become friendly with, their favorite moviemakers.

Peter Bogdanovich, who died January 6 at the age of 82, managed the trick many times over. First as a film scholar and magazine features writer, then as a filmmaker in his own right, Bogdanovich cozied up to the likes of directors like Ford, Hawks, and Welles, and actors like John Wayne, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart, among countless others.

By some combination of luck and persistence, Bogdanovich saw to it that these men, whose movies he had seen, inhaled, and studied as a youth in New York, became his teachers, mentors, and friends.

He accomplished what had been the dream of every movie buff since before the movies talked: to get to know, in flesh and blood, those icons of the silver screen.

It was with that model in the back of...

Chicago – The work of filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich – who passed away on January 6th, 2022, at age 82 – was inspired by the cinematic language of American movies, which he interpreted through his many classic films. His most fertile and imaginative period were three movies from 1971 through 1973, which began with his masterpiece, “The Last Picture Show.”

Bogdanovich’s personal life was also the stuff of legend, and contributed to to a less inspired creative period after 1973, but he made a major comeback with “Mask” (1985) and didn’t stop there … he directed six more narrative feature films thereafter, two documentaries and seven TV movies.

In 2016: Peter Bogdanovich at the 52nd Chicago International Film Festival

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

Peter Bogdanovich was born in Kingston, New York, the son of Serbian immigrants. An early adapter of film scholarship, Bogdanovich kept a meticulous record of every film he ever saw...

Cybill Sheperd, Barbra Streisand, Jeff Bridges and Cher – stars of the Peter Bogdonavich films The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc? and Mask – remembered the late director today.

“Having Peter Bogdonavich as my first acting teacher in my first film, The Last Picture Show, was a blessing of enormous proportion,” Shepherd said in a statement provided to Deadline. “There are simply no words to express my feelings over this deepest of losses. May Peter live long in all our memories.”

In addition to The Last Picture Show (1971), Shepherd starred in Bogdonavich’s Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975).

Shepherd’s Last Picture co-star Jeff Bridges also tweeted, writing, “My heart is broken – my dear friend Peter is no longer with us in the physical form. I loved him and will miss him. What a wonderful artist. He’s left us with the gift of his incredible films and his...

Peter Bogdanovich, the celebrated, Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind classics like The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, as well as a frequent actor, died Thursday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 82. Bogdanovich’s daughter, Antonia Bogdanovich, confirmed his death, saying the director died of natural causes.

Bogdanovich began his career as a film critic and reporter before meeting producer Roger Corman, who’d been so impressed with some of his work that he enlisted him to help out on some of his films. Despite this ostensibly unconventional path into the film industry,...

Peter Bogdanovich, the actor, film historian and critic-turned-director of such classics as The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc? and Mask, died today of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles. He was 82. Family members, who were by his side, said paramedics were unable to revive him.

His daughter, writer-director Antonia Bogdanovich, said of her father: “He never stopped working, and film was his life and he loved his family. He taught me a lot.”

Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery

While he would be best known later for his deadpan turn as the shrink’s shrink in The Sopranos, Bogdanovich exploded onto the cinematic scene in 1971 with The Last Picture Show, a box office hit he wrote and directed that drew comparisons to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and earned the filmmaker his only two Oscar noms — for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay. With a...

On the heels of Edgar Wright’s list of 100 favorite comedy films comes a more niche deep dive into the movie musicals of the 1970s, courtesy of Wright’s friend and fellow filmmaker Rian Johnson. The “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Knives Out” writer-director published a list on Letterboxd citing his 10 favorite movie musicals from the 1970s, from “Cabaret” to “All That Jazz” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

“When you think of the movie musical, the 1970s are not the first decade that comes to mind,” Johnson wrote in a statement. “But I love how that funky vital wilderness between the fall of the studio system and the ascent of the modern blockbuster manifested itself in this genre. One of cinema’s most classic forms was taken up by New Hollywood directors. It resulted in nostalgia as often as innovation, but more often than not the two...

George Morfogen, a veteran stage actor who is best known for portraying the inmate Bob Rebadow on the HBO drama Oz, died Friday at his home in New York, his family announced. He was 86.

Morfogen also showed up in eight films directed by Peter Bogdanovich: What's Up Doc? (1972), Daisy Miller (1974), At Long Last Love (1975), Saint Jack (1979), They All Laughed (1981), Mask (1985), Illegally Yours (1988) and She's Funny That Way (2014).

Morfogen played the murderer Rebadow on 56 episodes over all six seasons (1997–2003) of Oz, created by Tom Fontana. His character, the oldest inmate at the Oswald State Correctional Facility, possessed ...

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

Alongside Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds was the last movie star to bridge the gap between Hollywood’s old school and the Brat Pack-led, Multiplex blockbuster world we still live in today. A TV veteran from the late fifties, Reynolds used his trademark twinklin’ eyes, infectious chuckle, some audacious choices and some good ‘ol Southern charm to become a household name. Between 1978 and 1982, he was bar none, the biggest movie star in the world.

Somehow, despite overwhelming good will from an appreciative audience, Reynolds had a devil at the wheel and over his fifty year-plus career he had a bewildering tendency to shoot out his own tyres, to continue an appropriate racing car metaphor.

A promising football star in college – a sport to which he would return repeatedly in his films – a series of injuries led him to pursue a career as an actor. Appearances in popular shows like Gunsmoke and...

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

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

Burt Reynolds was a guy’s guy, a ladies’ man, the ruggedly handsome alpha male of the entertainment world, who always seemed to be having a good time – whether cracking jokes on TV talk shows with pals like Dom DeLuise or saucily posing nude as a centerfold in “Cosmopolitan” magazine — except maybe when he broke his leg during that ill-fated canoe outing in 1972’s “Deliverance,” his breakout film role. According to his reps on Thursday, the actor is dead at age 82 in his adopted home of Jupiter, Florida.

With a thicket of hair, a dapper mustache and a twinkle in his eye, he often came across as a good ol’ Southern boy in such films as “Smokey and the Bandit,” “W,W. and the Dixie Dancekings” and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” while claiming to be from Georgia. But he was born in Lansing, Michigan, although he would eventually end up in Riviera Beach,...

Burt Reynolds, one of the great movie stars of the ’70s and a massive sex symbol on screen, has died. Reynolds flashed his charisma and his testosterone in largely blockbusters and action films, but he always demonstrated dramatic range and energy even late into his career. Here are some of the actor’s most iconic and memorable movie and TV roles.

Gunsmoke

Reynolds hopped around TV for several years before landing a recurring part on the long-running Western “Gunsmoke.” For three years and 50 episodes he played Quint, a part Native American man who in this scene flips a guy onto a barroom table after he’s called a “dirty half-breed.”

Deliverance

In John Boorman’s classic about a group of men in a perilous fight against nature, Reynolds plays the domineering alpha male, open leather vest, crossbow and all. But the film grapples with themes of masculinity and how being...

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

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

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

In the 1970s, Burt Reynolds was arguably the biggest movie star in the world. He had made his name through television, appearing as a regular for 50 episodes on the hit series “Gunsmoke,” then headlining his own series, “Hawk” and “Dan August.” But then Reynolds got his big break in feature films, co-starring in the John Boorman classic “Deliverance” (1972).

Though Reynolds was soon starring in such box-office hits as “The Longest Yard” and “Smokey and the Bandit,” he never abandoned television, utilizing such talk shows as “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (where he was one of the funniest guests ever) to hone his image, strutting on as a sex symbol and then acting like an utter goofball once he sat the guest’s chair. The contrast between the Cosmopolitan centerfold and the delightful talk show guest endeared Reynolds to moviegoers.

In between his more serious films, such as 1979’s “Starting Over,...

We’ve got questions, and you’ve (maybe) got answers! With another week of TV gone by, we’re lobbing queries left and right about shows including Insecure, The Last Ship, Twin Peaks and The Bold Type!

1 | In The Defenders Episode 5, wouldn’t Colleen have smelled that Danny & Co. had just emerged from a sewer? And in Episode 7, did you notice that Matt woke up in a strange police station holding room and made a beeline for a chair he couldn’t have known was there, to grab a coat he could only presume was there? Can we assume that...

One Saturday night this September is going to be more than alright.

Showtime has acquired the rarely seen Prince concert film Sign ‘o’ the Times.

RelatedConnie Britton Joins Showtime’s Smilf

Originally created as a companion piece to his 1987 double album of the same name, the docu-concert features live performances of “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”, “Little Red Corvette” and “U Got the Look” (featuring Sheena Easton).

Prince directed the 84-minute film, much of which was shot at his Paisley Park Studios, as well as during his tour in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Iron Fist baddie Ramon Rodriguez is punching in at The Affair — and it looks like he’s taking aim at Alison’s (Ruth Wilson) heart.

TVLine has learned exclusively that Rodriguez is joining the Showtime drama’s upcoming fourth season for a major arc as Ben, a Marine veteran now employed by the Vha. Ben’s work on Ptsd will intersect with Alison’s new career path as a grief counselor (and, presumably, lead to some heavy petting and then fornication — the show is called The Affair for a reason!).

RelatedBlind Item: Drama Series Poised to Whack Fan Fave — In...

Forget just about everything that happened on Showtime’s Episodes since it last aired in 2015? Read our Season 4 finale recap.

Matt LeBlanc is a man without a plan — or much hope of salvaging his post-Pucks! acting career — in the fifth and final season of Episodes.

Related‘Donald Trump’ to Star in Showtime Comedy, Based on Stephen Colbert Cartoon

The first episode back picks up at least a month after the events of the Season 4 finale. Matt is still hosting Merc’s madcap game show The Box, and contestants are currently in Day 37 of the competition. It’s a gigantic hit for the network,...

The Performer | Tatiana Maslany

The Show | Orphan Black

The Episode | “To Right the Wrongs of Many” (Aug. 12, 2017)

The Performance | For her final Orphan Black performance, Maslany pulled off yet another magic trick: She helped deliver two babies (as Sarah) and gave birth (as Helena) at the same time. (She also welcomed little Kira into the world via intercut flashbacks, for the record.) Even after five seasons of watching Maslany do the seemingly impossible, the chemistry that the actress was able to create with herself as Sarah coached Helena through the birthing process was as astounding as the idea of human clones itself.

Last month, coverage of the 40th anniversary of Star Wars was understandably extensive, with pop-culture publications, daily newspapers, and TV media commemorating a film that by all rights changed the landscape of Hollywood, for better or worse. Conversely, there will likely be relatively little retrospective celebration for William Friedkin’s Sorcerer or Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, two terrific films released roughly one month later in the week of June 19-25. Though they weren’t the first examples of New Hollywood directors following huge successes with more difficult works that flopped (Peter Bogdanovich’s secretly lovely At Long Last Love comes to mind), they stood in 1977 as back-to-back examples of talented filmmakers – one Oscar-winning, the other well on his way to becoming the most-acclaimed director of his generation – overreaching and failing after becoming a bit too full of themselves.

That is, of course, an oversimplification, just as the other charge popularized by the likes of Peter Biskind – i.e. George Lucas’ grand space opera and Steven Spielberg’s personal blockbusters killed Hollywood’s interest in movies for adults – is an oversimplification. In all truth, it isn’t surprising that audiences didn’t go for Sorcerer or New York, New York, two especially challenging-for-the-mainstream features that pushed their creators’ aesthetics to greater extremes than before while tracking in subject matter that was pessimistic even for the time. But while both films and their troubled productions saw directors burned by their ambition, they are also exceptional works showcasing how exhilarating it can be when all commercial sense goes out the window.

Friedkin’s Sorcerer can lay more claim to having been actively harmed by the arrival of Lucas’ megahit, arriving exactly one month later, on June 25, and competing for a thrill-seeking crowd. (One theater reportedly pulled Star Wars for Sorcerer for a week, only to replace it when Friedkin’s film failed to lure an audience.) The film, a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 masterpiece The Wages of Fear, was also hurt by its confusing title — named after one of the trucks transporting dynamite through a dangerous jungle to put out an oil fire — and a budget that ballooned from an initially planned $15 million to $22 million following a difficult production.

Friedkin, hot off the Oscar-winning The French Connection and hugely successful The Exorcist, already had a reputation for his temperament and arrogance. They were in full force on Sorcerer: he clashed with cinematographer Dick Bush, who left halfway through filming, as well as producer David Salven, whom Friedkin fired after fights over the expensive location shoots. Friedkin extensively clashed with Paramount brass, sometimes reasonably (kicking executives off set after perceived interference), sometimes amusingly but questionably (the evil oil execs pictured in the film are actually Gulf & Western’s executive board, and they repaid him by not promoting the film). The jungle shoot itself was hell, with about 50 people quitting following injury or illness while Friedkin himself contracted malaria and lost 50 pounds.

But it’s only appropriate that the making of Sorcerer was so desperate, given the story it tells. Friedkin’s worldview has always been bleak and cynical, and Sorcerer may be the purest expression of that. Its heroes are a hard-bitten New Jersey hood (a spectacularly testy Roy Scheider) hiding out after shooting a mobster’s brother, a crooked French banker (Bruno Cremer) on the run following fraud accusations, a Palestinian terrorist (Amidou) behind a Jerusalem bombing, and a Mexican hitman (Francisco Rabal) who gets in on the job after murdering the fourth driver (Karl John), apparently a fugitive Nazi. The film presents their crimes as facts and without real judgment, their rottenness just another bad part of a burned-out, brutal world.

Where The French Connection and The Exorcist gave viewers visceral thrills early on and some sense of right and wrong (even if it’s fatally compromised), the early action in Sorcerer is more painful, with suicide, terrorism, and the loss of friends and partners forming the four prologues introducing the men at this film’s center. Friedkin then drops us into squalor and despair in a small South American town where the heat and rain are nearly as oppressive as the police state, the work is dangerous and pays little, and the mud seems to soak up any sense of hope. It’s little wonder that they might take up the dangerous assignment of driving through an arduous jungle landscape with unstable explosives that could set off at any moment. When you’ve been driven into no man’s land by your sins, any way out is worth it — no matter how unlikely it is that you’ll survive.

The actual drive up to the oil well doesn’t begin until about halfway through and takes on the tone of an unusually fraught funeral march for the protagonists. Friedkin’s immediate, docurealistic style helps ground the proceedings as set-pieces grow more heightened, most memorably when the drivers guide their trucks over a deteriorating bridge as the river beneath it overflows — the most expensive sequence in the film, as well as the most difficult-to-shoot of Friedkin’s career. As Popeye Doyle’s car chase in The French Connection and Regan & Chris MacNeil getting jerked around in The Exorcist evince, Friedkin always had a gift for making scenes that were already dangerous in conception even more tactile and nerve-wracking. Here, his emphasis on the mechanics of the crossing – the snapping rope and wood – as well as the fragility of the bodies attempting to cross (particularly as one rider steps outside to guide the truck and risks getting thrown off or crushed in the process) make the danger of their situation all the more palpable.

Yet there’s a more existential doom permeating the film compared with the nihilism of his earlier efforts, a more complete melding of his hard-bitten style with expressionistic touches that peppered The Exorcist. Part of that comes from Tangerine Dream’s ethereal score, which accentuates a sense that the elements are set against the drivers. But Friedkin also lends the film’s grungy look a sort of otherworldly menace, whether the camera soars through gorgeous greenery while a fire burns in the background or Scheider envisions a stream of blood soaking the dirt. Even the small moments of beauty (e.g. a butterfly hiding from the rain or a woman briefly dancing with Scheider) seem to tease the protagonists and underline their utter hopelessness. By the time we reach a grim conclusion, Friedkin has taken us through a world without mercy or decency, in which fate mocks even the most resilient of us.

Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, released just a few days earlier on June 21, was less plausibly affected by the release of Star Wars, and more likely the victim of critics and audiences being put off by its mix of glossy, Vincente Minnelli-esque musicality and aggressive, John Cassavetes-influenced verisimilitude. Scorsese, with the story of a creative and personal relationship collapsing under the weight of jealousy in a postwar environment, sought to bring to the forefront the unhappiness lurking under the surface of films such as Meet Me in St. Louis and My Dream is Yours.

It, like Sorcerer, had a difficult production, with the director battling a severe cocaine addiction while breaking up with then-wife Julia Cameron and carrying out an affair with lead actress Liza Minnelli. The film’s herky-jerky rhythms and circular intensity seem to take cues from that tension, the big-band musical numbers clashing with deliberately repetitive improvisations and screaming matches. Scorsese had mixed realism with melodrama (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore) and grit with florid formalism (Taxi Driver) previously, and would go on to marry his classic and New Hollywood interests more palatably in Raging Bull. But New York, New York isn’t a marriage so much as it’s a push-pull war, one that’s sometimes exhausting.

Acknowledging the unattainability of Hollywood fantasies makes it no less vital a love letter. Scorsese opens with an astonishing crane shot on V-j Day as Robert De Niro’s Jimmy gets lost in the excitement of a crowd, only to appear under an arrow that both pinpoints and isolates him. De Niro’s first interactions with Minnelli’s Francine, meanwhile, are less a meet-cute, more an ongoing, insistent harassment that eventually wears down her defenses. The entire opening sequence communicates a sense of spiritual and personal emptiness amid celebration, an early warning that not all is well in the postwar era.

De Niro continues playing Jimmy as a halfway point between his insecure, jealous bruiser in Raging Bull and his relentless, obnoxious pest in The King of Comedy, but Scorsese finds some truth in his and Francine’s romance (even as it’s rotting from the inside out) in their musical performances, with the two finding a better balance and greater chemistry as they perform “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me.” Their partnership flourishes out of a mutual recognition of talent — or, in his case, recognition of greater possible success together. Still, that balance begins to tip whenever Francine asserts herself, as in a scene where she tries to pep up the band following one of Jimmy’s criticisms, only for him to tear her down. And the film’s most gorgeous images undermine any possibility of happiness between the two, with De Niro proposing (badly: “I love you… I mean, I don’t love you. I dig you; I like you a lot”) in front of a fake forest.

Purposefully, the film’s first two hours give more emphasis to Scorsese’s more discursive side, major arguments between Jimmy and Francine getting interrupted by Jimmy’s ability to get into a minor argument with anyone he encounters. It’s in the final third that focus shifts to the director’s inner formalist and New York, New York turns into a proper musical with the remarkably bittersweet “Happy Endings” sequence. Francine’s finally given a chance to flourish as a performer, unhindered by Jimmy’s jealousy, and Scorsese jumps into an unabashedly stagey finale not unlike that of The Band Wagon or An American in Paris.

Yet the climax still reflects the inherent unhappiness in Francine’s life, telling a story of a relationship ended by success, only to double back and conclude with a wish-fulfillment coda that only makes it more painful. We’ve already seen the truth in the lives of Francine and Jimmy, and no rousing performance of “Theme from ‘New York, New York’” is going to change that. Their final encounter twists the knife further, giving one last tease of possible reconciliation before recognizing that it’s impossible, leaving Jimmy with a final, lonely shot echoing that V-j Day opening.

Audiences and critics largely rejected New York, New York and Sorcerer, with neither film making its budget back or earning the raves their makers had come to expect, but time has been kind to both. They haven’t exactly seen widespread reevaluation as their makers’ best works — Sorcerer wouldn’t be too far off for this writer, and Scorsese’s film has its passionate advocates — but they’ve developed cult followings and at least partly shaken off their previous distinctions as merely ambitious follies. Perhaps it’s appropriate that they’re not as widely cited as Taxi Driver and The Exorcist – they’re pricklier than their more popular predecessors, better suited as advanced viewing than introductory works. They may not generate thousands upon thousands of appreciations 40 years later, but they’re there, waiting for curious viewers to make a discovery.

From the moment that “Dog Years” begins, the question isn’t if Burt Reynolds is playing a thinly veiled version of himself, but rather why? The aging, hobbled, and financially insecure Hollywood icon stars as Vic Edwards, an aging, hobbled, and financially insecure Hollywood icon.

And lest there be any confusion about the central conceit of this sweet-natured but fatally half-realized meta-drama about growing old and giving up, writer-director Adam Rifkin (“Detroit Rock City”) introduces his fictional hero with footage from one of Reynolds’ vintage talk show appearances, dubbing over the real actor’s name with that of his latest character.

The message comes through loud and clear: Burt Reynolds is communing with his past and coming to grips with the images that continue to haunt him, but he’s also adding one more (or one last) character to his wrinkled body of work. Unfortunately, while either one of those...

Chicago – If Peter Bogdanovich had only been a film writer and critic, he still would have made a major contribution to cinema culture. But he also chose to direct, and besides producing arguably one of the best American films ever made (“The Last Picture Show”), he continues to work and fulfill his creative vision.

Bogdanovich was honored at the 52nd Chicago International Film Festival with a Gold Hugo Career Lifetime Achievement designation, which was augmented with a magnificent documentary about a period in his career called “One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich and the Lost American Film.” The film tells the story of “They All Laughed” (1981), a post modern screwball comedy starring Audrey Hepburn, John Ritter and Dorothy Stratten. Bogdanovich was in a relationship with Stratten during the production of the film, and she was murdered by her ex-husband while the film was being edited. The tragedy, the prescience of...

The recent box office success of The Boss firmly establishes Melissa McCarthy as the current queen of movie comedies (Amy Schumer could be a new contender after an impressive debut last Summer with Trainwreck), but let us think back about those other funny ladies of filmdom. So while we’re enjoying the female reboot/re-imagining of Ghostbusters and those Bad Moms, here’s a top ten list that will hopefully inspire lots of laughter and cause you to search out some classic comedies. It’s tough to narrow them down to ten, but we’ll do our best, beginning with… 10. Eve Arden The droll Ms. Arden represents the comic sidekicks who will attempt to puncture the pomposity of the leading ladies with a well-placed wisecrack (see also the great Thelma Ritter in Rear Window). Her career began in the early 1930’s with great bit roles in Stage Door and Dancing Lady.

Nickelodeon gets no love. And yet its place in the popular, Biskind-approved narrative of The Decline and Fall of Everyone in the 1970s New Hollywood is a bit uncertain. It comes after the despised At Long Last Love (1975), which ought to mark the same point in Peter Bogdanovich's career as Sorcerer for Friedkin, Heaven's Gate for Cimino and especially One from the Heart for Coppola. True, critics didn't go for it, except in the sense of savaging it, and the public didn't go to it, in any sense, but it certainly didn't attract the tsunami of opprobrium that P-Bog's Cole Porter musical, sung live, brought down upon the heads of the director and his entire cast.

Like his musical, his comedy about early Hollywood (it climaxes with the premiere of Birth of a Nation) now exists in two versions, as Bogdanovich revisited the film, inserting a few deleted moments...

Actor who made her name in comedy films as an acid-tongued, gravel-voiced tyrant

Eileen Brennan, who has died aged 80, had been a stage actor since the late 1950s, but it was as a largely comic presence in Us cinema of the 1970s and early 1980s that she was most widely admired. As the pitiless Captain Doreen Lewis, putting a dippy new recruit – Goldie Hawn – through her paces in the hit military comedy Private Benjamin (1980), she wore her trademark look: a solid frizz of red hair, a clenched, sneering smile and an expression of withering incredulity. Then there was the gravelly voice: a heard-it-all whine to match that seen-it-all face. It sounded like bourbon on the rocks. Actual rocks, that is.

Captain Lewis epitomised the sort of role Brennan was best at – and which she was still playing as late as 2001, when she made the first in a run of appearances...

Eileen Brennan has died at the age of 80.

The actress was perhaps best known for her Oscar-nominated role in 1980 comedy Private Benjamin opposite Goldie Hawn.

She passed away at her home in Burbank, Los Angeles after a battle with bladder cancer, her managers confirmed.

Brennan was known for her distinct, husky voice and sharp presence on screen.

Hawn said in a statement: "Our world has lost a rare human. Eileen was a brilliant comedian, a powerful dramatic actress and had the voice of an angel."

Brennan was nominated for a 'Best Supporting Actress' Oscar for her role as Us Army Captain Doreen Lewis in Private Benjamin.

She later reprised the role in the TV version of the film from 1981 to 1983, winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her work.

Earlier in her career, Brennan received a BAFTA nomination for playing waitress Genevieve in The Last Picture Show.

Other films...

Veteran actress Eileen Brennan, nominated for an Academy Award for "Private Benjamin," died Sunday at the age of 80. The stage, television, and film star passed away after battling bladder cancer.

Brennan started out in the theater, originating the role of Irene Molloy in Broadway's "Hello, Dolly!" From there, she graduated to feature films, becoming a prolific and recognizable supporting actress in movies like "The Last Picture Show"; "The Sting," opposite Paul Newman; and "Clue," as Mrs. Peacock. Director Peter Bogdanovich was a big fan of Brennan's, casting her in "Last Picture Show," "Daisy Miller," and "At Long Last Love."

Her most acclaimed role came in 1980's "Private Benjamin," in which she played the stern, tough-talking captain of Goldie Hawn's character. Brennan received an Oscar nomination, and later, when she reprised the part in the TV adaptation, won a Golden Globe and Emmy.

In 1982, after dining with Hawn, Brennan was hit by a car.

Long before director Tom Hooper decided to capture every stutter, breath, and shaky note on-set in last year's musical adaptation of “Les Miserables,” the 1975 Burt Reynolds-starrer “At Long Last Love” captured the same immediacy just as well, but garnered none of Hooper's acclaim. The film was a flop both critically and financially, and -- alongside two other such failures -- sidelined its helmer, Peter Bogdanovich, for a spell. But with the musical now experiencing a re-release on Blu-ray, the legendary director spoke recently about the unexpected occasion, and much more. Aside from the on-set soundtrack (maintained by tiny earpieces in the actors' ears), “At Long Last Love” also beat “De-Lovely” to the Cole Porter punch, featuring 18 songs by the prolific composer throughout. And during a recent conversation on Kcrw's The Business, Bogdanovich recounted how the film re-entered his life. “Somebody called me and said 'At Long Last Love' is.

Feature Ivan Radford Jan 24, 2013

In the wake of Les Misérables' success, Ivan takes a look at how the musical has reinvented itself in the modern era...

Do you hear the people sing? The refrain, bellowed by fans of Les Misérables whenever a French flag is in sight, was given a new meaning when Tom Hooper’s magnificent adaptation of the musical arrived in cinemas earlier this month. Because for the first time in years, we really could hear them - live, on camera.

It's an inspired decision by director Tom Hooper, who ignored the usual route of actors recording a track beforehand and miming for the cameras and instead gave them all an earpiece connected to a piano and told them to let their vocal chords rip.

The result? A cast full of people acting rather than lip-syncing - a raw edge often missing from studio song-fests. It's a...

Tom Hooper's gamble of filming Les Misérables with on-set singing has resulted in a work of unusual power and colour

Asked who was France's greatest poet, André Gide responded with the famously rueful answer: "Victor Hugo, hélas!" Cameron Mackintosh, the impresario who brought Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel's Les Misérables to London and transformed it into a worldwide phenomenon after its mild Parisian success and disastrous British first-night reception, would give a rather more positive response. I was in that first-night audience on 30 September 1985, and shared the general opinion that it was an indifferent show, shallow and somewhat forced in tone. I emerged with only one song planted in my head, Master of the House, sung by Alun Armstrong as Thénardier, the outrageously opportunist innkeeper, a number that struck me as rather like You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two from Oliver!

I wasn't writing about the...

Ned Wertimer, best known for his role as Ralph the Doorman on the long-running CBS comedy The Jeffersons has died. The 89-year-old actor died at a Los Angeles-area nursing home on January 2, following a November fall at his Burbank home, his manager Brad Lemack tells The Associated Press. The Buffalo, New York native appeared in dozens of TV shows from the 1960s through the 1980s, including Gunsmoke, I Dream Of Jeannie, Mork & Mindy, Mayberry R.F.D., and Mary Tyler Moore, but it was his role as Ralph Hart, the uniformed, mustachioed doorman at the luxury apartment building on The Jeffersons that he is best remembered. He appeared in all 11 seasons of the All In The Family spinoff that aired from 1975 to 1985. He also appeared in numerous feature films including Hometown U.S.A., Mame, The Pack, At Long Last Love and The Impossible Years. His most recent film appearance was in 2007′s Pirates...

A bi-weekly look at issues in contemporary film culture and technology.

***

In spite of its prestige pic credentials, Tom Hooper's Les Misérables is almost endearingly eccentric. Almost. Shot from odd angles with distortive wide-angle lenses which often give the impression that space is warping and shifting around the characters, the film strikes an awkward balance between showy glitz and intentional roughness. Most importantly, there's the film's central gimmick: instead of lipsyncing, the leads performed most of their singing live on the set.

As gimmicks go, it's an interesting one; whether talking or singing, voices coming from moving or seated or costumed bodies sound nothing like voices recorded in a studio. The sound of "live" voices—flat notes and all—singing along to an off-screen orchestra mirrors the film's glamorous / scuzzy visual aesthetic.

It's a risky idea, and a lot of the time it doesn't quite gel. Russell Crowe, for instance,...

New York -- Tom Hooper, the director of intimate character studies like the Oscar-winning "The King's Speech," the HBO miniseries "John Adams" and the TV drama "Longford," would not seem the sort of chap likely to make a sprawling adaptation of a beloved Broadway musical.

"I've always had an epic filmmaker within me clamoring to get out," explains the British director.

That much becomes clear in Hooper's new film, "Les Miserables." From the musical based on Victor Hugo's novel, the film is an enormous, star-studded affair overlaid on a French revolution canvas yet painted with a naturalistic brush.

The film, which has been nominated for four Golden Globes, has returned Hooper to the thick of the Oscar race two years after the Academy Awards' coronation of "The King's Speech." A few months after that film won best picture and best director for Hooper, he was onto "Les Miz," spending the "capital,...

The review embargo for Tom Hooper's "Les Miserables" has lifted. Critics are singing the praises of the film's strong performances (Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman are standouts), and admire the successful hybridizing of the musical with the Victor Hugo source material, but for some the film sags under its own bombast. Review roundup below. One of the dividing lines between same-old and must-see is a filmmaker willing to take a huge risk in pursuit of the new new thing. In this case, Tom Hooper had the balls to do what Peter Bogdanovich failed at so memorably with "At Long Last Love"--have his actors sing live on set. Hooper had newer technology. While Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced to a live orchestra, Hooper had a pianist on set watching a monitor, accompanying the singers live, tuning in to their rhythm and cadence, as they acted while they sang.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 14th, 2012

A co-founder in 1994 of the Slamdance Film Festival, Dan Mirvish is a busy director, screenwriter and producer. Labeled a “cheerful subversive” by The New York Times, and “Hollywood’s Bad Boy” by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mirvish has made quite a name for himself in the world of Independent Film. He remains actively involved with Slamdance, frequently serving as master of ceremonies and mentor to the incoming crop of filmmakers each year. The festival has served as a launching pad for such filmmakers as Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception), Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace), Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity).

Most recently, Mirvish has directed the feature Between Us, based on the hit Off-Broadway play of the same name and starring Julia Styles, Taye Diggs, Melissa George, and David Harbour. Mirvish co-wrote the screen adaptation with original playwright Joe Hortua...

Nearly every one of the great directors who came of age in the 1970s -- including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, William Friedkin, Peter Bogdanovich, Michael Cimino -- had his own personal Waterloo. Within five to ten years of their breakouts, they'd each shot a massive flop, an epic where ambition and ego had outraced maturity and restraint. Coppola had "One from the Heart," Spielberg had "1941," Friedkin had "Sorcerer," Bogdanovich had "At Long Last Love," and Cimino (most infamously) had "Heaven's Gate." In Scorsese's case, the iceberg was his lavish musical "New York, New York" (released 35 years ago this week, on June 21, 1977). Its failure not only marred his career, it nearly killed him. The disaster may have begun with Scorsese's stylistic approach to the movie, a clash between incompatible filmmaking modes of the old Hollywood he admired and the new Hollywood he'd helped replace it with. It was...

It only took legendary filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich over three decades to write another film about the ins and outs and ups and downs of the theater – and who can blame him after the massive bomb that was At Long Last Love - but Squirrels to the Nuts sounds just zippy enough to really make it. Bogdanovich has written the script for the new film and will also direct (a double duty he hasn’t pulled off since 1990′s Texasville), but it’s the film’s producers, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, who should really set the tone for the film. Variety reports that the “quirky indie comedy” centers on a “hooker-turned-Broadway-thesp and the recurring intersection between those two facets of her life.” There’s nothing like prostitution to really keep you on your toes. Rising star Brie Larson will play the hooker with a heart of gold tap shoes, which sounds like yet another role that will...

I saw Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love (1975) at Anthology Film Archives as part of its Hollywood Musicals of the 1970s series and had that uncanny experience of falling in love with a movie that everyone else seems to hate. The movie is almost universally panned. Its Tomatometer score is just 10%, Pauline Kael called it "stillborn" and "vapid," and even my favorite critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, called it "probably Peter Bogdanovich's worst film." But I couldn't help myself: I loved it.

Some people aren't interested in film criticism because opinions are subjective. To a certain extent, we'll always be imposing our own values onto works of art rather than drawing out the ideas and attitudes that we suspect rightfully belong there. But since our emotional response to a film often derives—even subconsciously—from our interpretation of it, our evaluations are trapped in a circular loop, since we're judging movies...

There's a whole lot of Cole Porter coming down the pike this week: Peter Bogdanovich's legendary (and infamous) musical At Long Last Love, featuring 16 Porter compositions, pops up on the Netflix Instant roster on April 1 and will screen several times in April and May on the Fox Movie Channel. Meanwhile, De-Lovely, the Porter biopic starring Kevin Kline, makes its Blu-Ray debut on April 5 from MGM Home Entertainment. Funny thing, though -- De-Lovely wound up being such a stinker that At Long Last Love suddenly started smelling sweeter.

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the grand-scale movie musical was the equivalent of today's big-budget 3D sci-fi actioners--star-packed blockbusters, often based on Broadway hits that were guaranteed to bring in hefty box office hauls. 1965's "The Sound of Music," one of the last whoppers of the genre, for instance, became the biggest film of all time on its release, and remains the third highest grosser of all time when adjusted for inflation. But a series of expensive flops, from "Doctor Dolittle" to "At Long Last Love" and "New York, New York," saw the genre fall out of favor, and…...

Part II: The Producers Take Back The Reins

By the late 1970s, the tremendous creative license the major studios under a new generation of production chiefs had granted the young tyros of the 1960s – Coppola, Scorsese, et al – had expired as each managed to deliver at least one, major, back-breaking flop. For Scorsese, it had been the grim musical New York, New York (1977, $13.8 million U.S. vs. a budget of $14 million); Peter Bogdanovich turned out a streak of losers including period piece Daisy Miller (1974), comedy Nickelodeon (1976), and another disastrous musical, At Long Last Love (1975, $1.5 million U.S./$6 million cost); after the back-to-back hits of The French Connection and The Exorcist, William Friedkin delivered Sorcerer (1977, $6 million U.S. against a crushing $22 million cost); and Francis Coppola, after a string of commercial and/or critical home runs including The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), The Godfather Part II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979), turned out One from the Heart...

Director Peter Bogdanovich.

Interviewing Peter Bogdanovich for the April 2002 issue of Venice Magazine was a thrill for me. Like Francis Coppola, John Frankenheimer, and William Friedkin before him, Bogdanovich was one of those filmmakers whose one-sheets hung on my bedroom walls growing up. Plus the fact that he himself had a renowned career as a film historian and interviewer of his own childhood heroes, such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, and dozens of others, made our talk a real feast.

Not long after the article was printed, I received a letter with a New York City postmark. The note enclosed said simply: “Dear Alex, thanks for doing your homework so well, and thanks for the good vibes. All the best to you of love and luck, Peter Bogdanovich.”

Our chat remains one of my favorites during my 15 year tenure as a film writer. --A.S.

Peter Bogdanovich’S...

Cole Porter?s love affair with Paris is brilliantly evoked by this delightful farce ? last seen on Broadway in 1938. Master, Baron von Hummer (James Zanelli) and his valet, Gaston (Kevin Kraft), switch places and fall in love with mistress, Mme. Von Baltin (Kate Merrily) and maid, Maria (Jennifer Evans) who have also switched places. Adding spice to this amorous stew is Ida, the Baron?s jilted paramour (Christy Morton), and ?the outraged husband? (Todd Faulkner). Bill Coyne appears as chauffeur, messenger and waiter (at different times).Songs include: I Am Gaston; By Candlelight; Alpha to Omega; At Long Last Love; What Is that Tune?; For No Rhyme or Reason; Let?s Put It to Music; I?m Back in Circulation; I?m Going In For Love; What Shall I Do? This work was written as a chamber piece but arrived on Broadway in a much larger version. Not only are we restoring the original libretto,...

Mamma Mia!

Starring Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd

Rated PG-13

I have decided to not stop writing my review of Mamma Mia! until I run out of bad things to say about it. Pack a lunch; you're going to be here a while.

First, I should be a champ and tell you what I liked about it. Ok, fair enough: Greece looks absolutely beautiful whenever this film was shot; though she hasn't needed to be impressive in her past few roles, Meryl Streep clearly still has that thing that only she has, especially when she belts out the only truly worthwhile musical number in the movie, "The Winner Takes it All;" and Amanda Seyfried (Big Love) is incredibly exuberant and happy to be here.

And now that that's out of the way...

You've been to a party or on a night out...

Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone drove each other mad on the set of their new movie by calling out the titles of each other's worst films whenever they met. Reynolds, 65, who stars alongside Stallone in Driven - which Stallone himself wrote - says that he couldn't resist an opportunity to poke fun at the Rocky star, 54, because he was the only member of the cast old enough to remember his failures. Reynolds laughs, "I had so much fun with him because these kids were so reverent to Sly and I would kid him because I'm one of the few guys who knows he did make a few turkeys and I would mention the titles as I'd walk by then he'd turn round to me and call out something like 38 titles." Reynolds, who happily admits he made some "frighteningly bad" movies during his lengthy career, says his personal favourite is the 1975 movie At Long Last Love, in which he co-starred with Cybill Shepherd. He says, "I would say - gee, it's a toss up - At Long Last Love, because I sang and danced. But we did it live, we sang live. Everybody else could sing, Cybill sings pretty good. "I made a couple of movies that were just frightening they were so bad."...