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Ron Ely, the hunky and handsome Texas native who portrayed the Lord of the Jungle on the first Tarzan series for television, has died, his daughter Kirsten told Fox News Digital. He was 86.

He died Sept. 29 at the home of one of his daughters near Santa Barbara, The New York Times reported.

Ely also hosted the Miss America pageant in 1980 and 1981, stepping in for longtime emcee Bert Parks, and presided over a syndicated game show called Face the Music around that time.

The 6-foot-4, blue-eyed Ely had appeared opposite Clint Walker in The Night of the Grizzly and with Ursula Andress in Once Before I Die in films released in 1966 when he was hired to don the loincloth in a new NBC series executive produced by Sy Weintraub.

Ely was offered the Tarzan gig after former NFL linebacker Mike Henry, who had played the Edgar Rice Burroughs creation in three ’60s films,...

by Chad Kennerk

Marilyn Monroe’s Intricate diamonte bracelet from How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Images courtesy of The Hollywood Museum.

Founded in 1928 by Eugene Joseff, Joseff of Hollywood has been providing jewellery rentals to movie studios since the Golden Age of Hollywood. Joseff often worked in tandem with studio costume designers. When censors opposed the cut of Lana Turner’s gowns in the 1948 The Three Musketeers, Joseff designed a brooch to strategically place on the costume. It made the censors happy and gave a regal air to Plunkett’s costumes. The brooches were among the Joseff lots that came up for auction back in 2017.

Though portions of the collection have come to auction in the past, remarkably, Joseff has maintained over 200,000 pieces in their ‘Studio Collection’. A source once reported that up to 85% of the jewellery seen on the silver screen at the height of movie glamour throughout the...

“Anybody got a match?” When 19-year-old Lauren Bacall cast a smoldering glance toward Humphrey Bogart in the 1944 film noir “To Have and Have Not,” she stuck the landing of her Hollywood debut with a precision few stars have achieved before or since. Chin down, eyes lifted, she eclipsed one of the most seasoned leading men in the industry. Even before she uttered one of cinema’s greatest innuendos — “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and…blow” — she had walked away with the film. Critics raved, hailing her as the next Marlene Dietrich and claiming she had better chemistry with Bogart than Ingrid Bergman had in “Casablanca.”

Director Howard Hawks had plucked the Brooklyn-born teenager from obscurity after seeing her in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar. After changing her name from Betty to Lauren and instructing her to keep her voice in its naturally low register,...

Marilyn Monroe‘s star burned brightly and briefly before her untimely death in 1962 at age 36. Yet she managed to enter the pop culture lexicon with just a handful of films, becoming Hollywood’s most memorable sex symbol. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1926, Monroe started off as a model before moving into acting with a series of bit parts, most notably in “All About Eve” and “The Asphalt Jungle,” both released in 1950. She became a leading lady with a trio of 1953 titles: the noir “Niagara,” the musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and the romantic comedy “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

She became iconic thanks to Billy Wilder‘s “The Seven Year Itch” (1955), in which she played a young woman tantalizing her married neighbor (Tom Ewell). Her image was forever burned into our memories thanks to...

Superstar Marilyn Monroe passed away in 1962, but her legacy lives on in the form of several classic movies that still hold up today. The actor and model appeared in plenty of great films across her lifetime, including several that have only grown in public estimation since their release. Among the best: crowd pleasers like "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," "The Seven Year Itch," and "How To Marry A Millionaire," plus stone-cold classics "Some Like It Hot" and "All About Eve."

Surprisingly, though, Monroe's most popular and obviously beloved movies aren't actually her most acclaimed –- at least according to one major metric. Only one of the films she appeared in during her too-short lifetime has a perfect critical score on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, and it's not any of the titles listed above. Instead, that coveted 100% score goes to "Don't Bother To Knock," a comparatively underseen thriller Monroe starred in...

Top to bottom: Lawrence Of Arabia (Columbia Pictures), Avatar (20th Century Fox), Blade Runner 2049 (Warner Bros.)Graphic: The A.V. Club

There are artists who work on such a large scale that seeing their art in person for the first time can completely change your impression of a piece, no...

Marina Cicogna, a film producer and one of the first women to establish herself in the traditionally male cinema environment in Italy, died Saturday in Rome. She was 89.

Cicogna produced several important Italian films, including Metti, una Sera a Cena by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and Indagine su un Cittadino al di Sopra di Ogni Sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) by Elio Petri, with the latter winning the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1971. The New York Times called her “one of the most powerful women in European cinema.”

Her extraordinary experience and career were recounted in 2021 in the documentary film Marina Cicogna. Life and Everything Else by Andrea Bettinetti and in her autobiography, Ancora Spero, released this year by Marsilio Publishing.

Cicogna died with Benedetta Gardona, her companion of more than 30 years, by her side.

Ahead of receiving the 2023 David Award for Lifetime Achievement this year, Cicogna...

The '80s were a different time; shoulder pads were in, Reaganomics was taking over the country, and in 1984, a hyper-stylish show called "Miami Vice" was about to become all the rage. Before the Florida-set cop series ever premiered on NBC, though, it had already inspired another series, one that seemed to have very little in common with the Michael Mann-produced action show.

That series was "The Golden Girls," the popular and gut-bustingly funny sitcom about women of a certain age that has only become more beloved in the decades since it ended. "The Golden Girls" is remembered for its positive and honest conversations about aging and its characters' penchant for savage, hilarious quips. It also bolstered the fame of its already-famous stars, Bea Arthur ("Maude"), Betty White ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show"), Rue McClanahan (also "Maude"), and Estelle Getty ("Mask"). Put together around a kitchen table, the four...

Just in time for Succession‘s end, let’s look at method acting. The Criterion Channel are highlighting the controversial practice in a 27-film series centered on Brando, Newman, Nicholson, and many other’s embodiment of “an intensely personal, internalized, and naturalistic approach to performance.” That series makes mention of Marilyn Monroe, who gets her own, 11-title highlight––the iconic commingling with deeper cuts.

Pride Month offers “Masc,” a consideration of “trans men, butch lesbians, and gender-nonconforming heroes” onscreen; the Michael Koresky-curated Queersighted returning with a study of the gay best friend; and the 20-film “LGBTQ+ Favorites.” Louis Garrel’s delightful The Innocent (about which I talked to him here), the director’s cut of Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation, and Stanley Kwan’s hugely underseen Lan Yu make streaming premieres, while Araki’s Totally F***ed Up and Mysterious Skin also get a run. Criterion Editions include Five Easy Pieces,...

The movies have a long history of “How to” films including How to Murder Your Wife, How to Steal a Million, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, How to Marry a Millionaire, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog, even How to Train Your Dragon. But the riveting new eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes it to new levels of how-to consciousness with a literal approach to its title and the source material on which it is based, that being Andreas Malm’s radical manifesto of the same name.

The author of that book does not go into exact detail on exactly how you could go about blowing up a pipeline, but instead lays out the urgent necessity to do just that act of property destruction, offering up the belief that this good deed...

To have coffee or to not have coffee, that is the question answered by discontinued decaffeinated instant coffee brand High Point Coffee, who tapped Lauren Bacall as a spokesperson in the 1980s.

The resurfaced commercials put screen legend and “To Have and Have Not” actress Bacall in a new light: Hilariously slinging instant coffee as the easiest way to look refreshed on set. Bacall, who would have turned 98 on September 16, starred in iconic films like “How to Marry a Millionaire,” “Dark Passage,” and “The Big Sleep” before dying in August 2014.

The “Designing Woman” alum starred in “Misery,” “Dogville,” and “Ernest & Celestine” among her final roles. Bacall was married to Humphrey Bogart until his death in 1957; the couple met during the filming of “To Have and Have Not,” and co-starred in a series of films together.

Bacall lent her trademark voice and signature sultry charisma to the High Point Coffee campaign in the 1980s.

Forget about “How to Marry a Millionaire”: Kim Kardashian is flipping the script on the Marilyn Monroe legacy by being a millionaire mogul herself.

Kim (in)famously wore multiple of late icon Monroe’s gowns during the 2022 Met Gala festivities alongside then-boyfriend Pete Davidson. And while the love story between Kim and the “Saturday Night Live” alum will be fodder for Season 2, streaming September 22 on Hulu, the second season of the critically acclaimed hit series truly is a family affair with drama coming from all sides.

“Season 2 is going to be insanity,” Khloe Kardashian says in the trailer, while later admitting she feels like a “fish in a fish bowl” when discussing backlash to a previous article. Khloe also welcomes a son with ex Tristan Thompson, the father of her daughter True Thompson. Khloe’s surrogacy journey was kept a secret for Season 2, but Tristan’s shocking cheating scandal...

Orven Schanzer, a film editor whose career in the entertainment industry spanned 45 years, died in Los Angeles on Jan. 5, 2022 of respiratory arrest. He was 97 years old.

Born Oct. 13, 1924 in Kansas City, Kan., Schanzer served in World War II before beginning a career in film on the post-production side at 20th Century Fox in Jan. 1947.

Schanzer broke out of the Fox mailroom by working for three years as Fox studio chief Darryl Zanuck’s “errand boy,” leading him to his career in editing. Schanzer helped cut Marilyn Monroe vehicles like “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “The Seven-Year Itch.”

“It was a love affair with Fox, it was so wonderful. I’d wake up in the morning and really couldn’t wait ’till I got to the studio,” Schanzer recalled in a 2019 interview.

Schanzer also cut Jayne Mansfield films and the TV series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

IndieWire reached out to this year’s nominees for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (One Hour), Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour), and Limited Series or Movie, and asked them which cameras and lenses they used — but even more important: Why were these the right tools to create the look of their series? The nominees answers are below, organized by Emmy category and in alphabetical order by series title.

Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour)

“Grown-ish”

Nominated Episode: “Know Yourself”

Format: ProRes Log-c

Camera: Arri Minis

Lens: Leica SummiLux-c’s

Mark Doering-Powell: “Grown-ish” follows Zoey (Yara Shahidi) navigating her college years with a new group of friends. We learn their hopes, dreams, and challenges along the way, while exploring serious topics that one encounters in life and school. The strength of this series is our characters tackling these hard conversations, head on. We frame this in what we call our “aspirational” look,...

“I’m considered a scholar, but unfortunately that hasn’t made me rich.”

Cinedigm, the leading independent streaming entertainment company super-serving enthusiast fan bases, announced today that The Film Detective, the classic film restoration and distribution company, is releasing Flight to Mars (1951) on special-edition Blu-ray and DVD, July 20.

Flight to Mars blasted into theaters at the dawn of the 1950s science-fiction boom from legendary producer Walter Mirisch (Some Like It Hot, The Magnificent Seven, West Side Story, The Great Escape, The Pink Panther). Filmed in gorgeous Cinecolor with special effects ahead of its time, Flight to Mars stands as an eye-popping, must-have feature for any fan of the science-fiction genre.

Starring Marguerite Chapman (The Seven Year Itch, Coroner Creek, Destroyer, A Man’s World, Parachute Nurse) and Cameron Mitchell (The High Chaparral, Hollywood Cop, Monkey on My Back, How to Marry a Millionaire), the film follows five Earthlings who land...

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Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most iconic figures in Hollywood history, and pop culture at large. The blonde bombshell, born Norma Jean Baker, became one of Tinsel Town’s biggest stars appearing in over 35 movies during her career and wracking up a collection of classic films such as “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “The Seven Year Itch,” “Niagara,” and “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

Monroe died by drug overdose in 1962, but the tragic passing further cemented her place as a cultural icon. To celebrate her birthday, we searched the web to dig up some of the coolest and unique merchandise inspired by the late actress and model. You’ll find everything from books to movie box sets,...

The Bloodhound Release: "Arrow Video will release Patrick Picard’s debut feature The Bloodhound in the US and UK on VOD on March 15th, and BluRay on March 22nd, 2021

First-time feature director Patrick Picard brings a fresh take to one of the best-known stories from the master of mystery and the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, in his new slow-burner horror-thriller The Bloodhound, a hauntingly atmospheric tale described by The Hollywood News as “an impressively stylish and intellectual debut”.

Francis, a dispossessed young man, is summoned to the secluded home of his wealthy childhood friend, Jp Luret, who is suffering from a mysterious affliction. Upon his arrival, Francis realizes that Jp and his ethereal twin sister Vivian are the sole surviving members of the privileged Luret family, whose legacy has been one of depression and self-destruction, and the only occupants of their family estate.

5 random things that happened on this day, January 22nd, in showbiz history

1954 The 11th Golden Globes are held. The Robe wins Best Drama but there wasn't a Best Comedy or Musical category for 1953 films. How strange... I mean Kiss Me Kate And Roman Holiday And Calamity Jane And How to Marry a Millionaire And The Band Wagon were all right there! But really it's true of almost every awards institution that the first decade plus is rife with inconsistencies. The Globe only really settled into the traditional field of nominees and categories we have now later in the 1950s.

1959 Room at the Top premieres in the UK...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.***Henry King was a reliable workhorse for Fox for most of his career: thirty years of it. He was there before the Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century. He brought skill and sensitivity to his work, and certain of his films, particularly those centered around a sentimental but sincere love of Americana, are real works of Hollywood art.He became the third director to tackle CinemaScope with King of the Khyber Rifles (1953), a very loose remake of John Ford's The Black Watch (1929). By now, though little in the way of a working theory existed on effective use of widescreen, certain problems were becoming apparent: composing for the (extremely) wide frame,...

Lori Nelson, the 1950s starlet who was kidnapped by an amphibious monster in Revenge of the Creature and portrayed Barbara Stanwyck’s younger daughter in Douglas Sirk’s All I Desire, has died. She was 87.

Nelson had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years and died Sunday at her home in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, her daughter Jennifer Mann said.

In Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952) and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955), Nelson played Rosie Kettle, one of the daughters of the characters played by Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride in the Universal series of films.

Nelson also made her mark in I Died a Thousand Times (1955), a remake of the Humphrey Bogart classic High Sierra in which she portrayed the club-footed love interest of Jack Palance’s crook; Pardners (1956), working opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in their penultimate film together...

I am sure that we have all been affected in one way, or in a lot of ways, because of the current global pandemic. So, with that, I would like to say to anyone reading this that I hope you are safe and healthy. One of the ways that I was affected by the lockdowns came in like a wrecking ball that I could not have anticipated—I lost a connection to not only myself, but my dreams—which included my passion for horror. When it came time to watch Motel Hell (1980) for our Class of 1980 retrospective, I panicked, as I couldn't get out of bed let alone watch a movie and write coherent thoughts on it. That was until about two and a half weeks ago when I decided to face problems again and give it one more try, and it was the best decision that I could have made.

Don’t call them Bad Movies — when something’s this enjoyable, other verbal put-downs are more appropriate. This low-grade German sexploitation horror pic spent its full budget on its roster of frisky Berlin showgirls. After years of study, experts have finally proven that it was filmed with a camera. Severin’s special edition does justice to a cult non-classic with an uncut original German version, plus a second American version and extra alternate scenes. Alexander D’Arcy’s scary horror-face is a childhood monster magazine memory. The creepy title critter looks like a land crab morphed with a really pissed-off Woody Woodpecker.

Horrors of Spider Island

Blu-ray

Severin Films

1960 / B&w / 1:665 widescreen / 84, 79 min. / Ein Toter hing im Netz, It’s Hot in Paradise / Street Date June 16, 2020 /

Starring: Harald Maresch (Temple Foster), Helga Franck, Alexander D’Arcy, Helga Neuner, Rainer Brandt, Dorothee Parker, Gerry Sammer, Eva Schauland, Helma Vandenberg (Helma van den...

Wondering what Barbara Eden is up to in 2020? Your wish is Let’s Make a Deal‘s command.

The legendary I Dream of Jeannie star is one of several celebrity guests joining the CBS game show as part of its special “Decades Week” event — which celebrates the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s — and TVLine has an exclusive first look at her appearance on Tuesday. And, yes, it even ends with her using those iconic Jeannie powers. (They’re real, Ok? Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.)

More from TVLineAs Five-0 Ends, Meaghan Rath Lands a Lead Role in...

David Crow Feb 7, 2020

We unpack one of Birds of Prey's best moments, and what evoking Marilyn Monroe means for both Harley Quinn and Margot Robbie.

For nearly 70 years, it’s been an evocative image. The woman and alleged object of all men’s desire stands atop a stage surrounded by admirers. Dressed in pink and with blonde hair that’s just so chic, she hums something about diamonds, the comfort they afford, and also, in a way, about the power dynamic between men and women. It was eye-catching when Marilyn Monroe did it in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and it has sharper edges for Margot Robbie in Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.

Robbie’s Marilyn Monroe homage has been at the center of Warner Brothers’ Birds of Prey marketing, from trailers to official clips. After all, what else says this ain’t your typical...

Every filmmaker hopes to make a good movie, but sometimes the impact is bigger than expected.

Neon’s “Parasite” is one example of a 2019 film hitting a nerve. Writer-director Bong Joon Ho’s film has been praised for its originality and daring shifts in tone. It also has resonance due to its subject matter: the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

“Parasite” is only one of the year’s films that address this zeitgeist subject, also including “Hustlers,” “Joker,” “Knives Out” and the French “Les Miserables,” to name a few. It’s not a new theme: In prehistoric times, some people were no doubt troubled that other cave dwellers had more than they did.

But the subject found new expression in 19th century novels from writers including Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens. In 1902, Maxim Gorky’s play “The Lower Depths” was a sensation with its depiction of people at a homeless shelter.

In this week’s International TV Newswire, Scandinavia’s Nent announces its latest Viaplay original, “Partisan,” DirecTV Go hits three new Latin American territories; “Blockbusters” will open the Edinburgh Intl. TV Festival; and Endemol Shine Poland announces theatrical for “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

Nent Announces Viaplay Original ‘Partisan’

Swedish broadcaster Nordic Entertainment Group (Nent) has ordered “Partisan,” an original five-part drama series to be produced for its Svod platform, Viaplay.

Fares Fares, star of “The Nile Hilton Incident” and HBO’s “Chernobyl,” will headline and act as creative producer on the series, and says he’s been looking for a project in Swedish for some time.Filming has already begun, headed by director Amir Chandin and produced by Johanna Wennerberg for Warner Bros. Sweden. It’s set to premiere on the platform in 2020.

Set in the secluded rural village of Jordnära, the five-part crime thriller will deconstruct the seemingly...

Marilyn Monroe was known as one of the most iconic sex symbols of Hollywood in the 1950s and early 1960s, and the late Hollywood actress continues to be a sex icon for many till date.

Have you heard of the phrase 'Pulling off a Marilyn Monroe'? Well, she was the one who invented the term.

She started her career in showbiz by becoming a pin-up model and continued to be the poster girl symbolizing vintage Hollywood glamour till the very end.

Before starting a career in acting, Monroe, born on June 1, 1926, was known as Norma Jeane Mortenson and worked in an aircraft factory. Her tryst with showbiz started when she was spotted when a photo-journalist was clicking photographs of the factory.

There was no looking back. She created a controversy with her shoot for Playboy Magazine, but it also opened many opportunities for her.

From posing in a skimpy bikini,...

Marilyn Monroe would’ve celebrated her 93rd birthday on June 1, 2019. Her star burned brightly and briefly before her untimely death in 1962 at age 36. Yet she managed to enter the pop culture lexicon with just a handful of films, becoming Hollywood’s most memorable sex symbol. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1926, Monroe started off as a model before moving into acting with a series of bit parts, most notably in “All About Eve” and “The Asphalt Jungle,” both released in 1950. She became a leading lady with a trio of 1953 titles: the noir “Niagara,” the musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and the romantic comedy “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

SEE25 best couples in film history – Romantic movies in time for Valentine’s Day [Photos]

She became iconic thanks to Billy Wilder‘s “The Seven Year Itch” (1955), in...

It starts as an irresistible riff on Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, with Andrew Garfield standing in for Elliott Gould as an Angeleno stoner and Peeping Tom-turned-amateur-detective named Sam. It ends … well, we’re still not sure where this movie ends, exactly. In this wannabe spellbinder from writer-director David Robert Mitchell, whose breakthrough scarefest It Follows proved that he knows his way around a dreamscape, Sam is about to be evicted from the apartment he can’t pay the rent on. Comic books are strewn everywhere, plus a...

Fiery dame Susan Hayward carries this far-flung ‘women’s epic’ to delirious romantic extremes, as her Irish heroine defies nature and exploits admirers to claim the hunky Dutchman of her dreams. Using apartheid-ridden South Africa as a background for a cheerful white conquest wasn’t as touchy an idea in 1955 as it is now, but it should have been. Just the same, Henry King’s film is an impressive production from the early years of CinemaScope.

Untamed

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 111 min. / Street Date January 22, 2019 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Richard Egan, John Justin, Agnes Moorehead, Rita Moreno, Hope Emerson, Brad Dexter, Henry O’Neill, Eleanor Audley, Kevin Corcoran, Philip Van Zandt.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Barbara McLean

Original Music: Franz Waxman

Visual Effects: Ray Kellogg, Matthew Yuricich

Written by Talbot Jennings, Frank Fenton, Michael Blankfort, William A. Bacher from a novel by Helga Moray.

Lauren Bacall would’ve celebrated her 94th birthday on September 16. The Hollywood icon showed no signs of slowing down, continuing to work until her death in 2014 at the age of 89. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Bacall made her feature debut with Howard Hawks‘ adventure yarn “To Have and Have Not” (1945). The film was a landmark for the actress in both her career and her life, since it was how she met her future husband Humphrey Bogart. The two would become a legendary couple off-screen and on, making three subsequent features together: “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Dark Passage” (1947), and “Key Largo” (1948).

Despite her hefty filmography, Bacall received just one Oscar nomination in her career: Best Supporting Actress for “The Mirror Has Two Faces” (1996), in which she played Barbra Streisand‘s domineering mother. After victories at the Golden Globes and SAG,...

David Robert Mitchell is a nostalgic. His debut feature, The Myth of the American Sleepover, paid tribute to such teenage dramas as American Graffiti and the work of John Hughes. Its follow-up, the terrific It Follows, ranks amongst the smartest and most effective specimens in John Carpenter’s vast and variegated suburban horror legacy. Mitchell has now tried his hand at an L.A. noir with Under the Silver Lake, which owes as big a debt to The Long Goodbye, Mulholland Drive, and Inherent Vice (to mention but three of the most conspicuous referents) as it does Thomas Pynchon’s labyrinthine, paranoia-laden narratives.

The set-up is instantly familiar: Sam (Andrew Garfield), an unemployed comic book and video game enthusiast (read: geek), falls in love with his beautiful and enigmatic neighbor, Sarah (Riley Keough). She disappears soon thereafter, and Sam learns from the news that she and a local billionaire, as well as two other women,...

When I tell you that “Under the Silver Lake,” David Robert Mitchell’s seductive and disturbing Los Angeles head-trip noir, is basically a sustained homage to David Lynch, and that Mitchell achieves the exact look and mood and pace and vibe he’s going for, you may think that it’s the kind of movie you’re going to get excited about. To a degree, you should. But the comparison comes with a major qualifier: There are moments when “Under the Silver Lake” evokes David Lynch the tranced-out Hollywood Babylon yarn-spinner of “Mulholland Drive” — but mostly, it’s an homage to the Lynch who gnaws on the weirder fringes of the everyday-surreal, the Lynch of “Lost Highway” or even, at times, the reboot of “Twin Peaks.”

“Under the Silver Lake” is a down-the-rabbit-hole movie, at once gripping and baffling, fueled by erotic passion and dread but also by the code-fixated opacity of conspiracy theory.

So much time, so few movies to see. Scratch that. Reverse it.

Running a little later than usual this year, the 2018 Turner Classic Movies Film Festival gets under way this coming Thursday, screening approximately 88 films and special programs over the course of the festival’s three-and-a-half days, beginning Thursday evening, and no doubt about it, this year’s schedule, no less than any other year, will lay out a banquet for classic film buffs, casual film fans and harder-core cinephiles looking for the opportunity to see long-time favorites as well as rare and unusual treats on the big screen. I’ve attended every festival since its inaugural run back in 2010, and since then if I have not reined in my enthusiasm for the festival and being given the opportunity to attend it every year, then I have at least managed to lasso my verbiage. That first year I wrote about...

The actress is mostly remembered for her good looks, but what about her impressive performances?

In Richard Dyer’s book Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, he writes that Marilyn Monroe was “the most visible star”: an actress whose life was put on display, and remains so over 50 years after her death. She is one of the most iconic Hollywood stars of all time, her face instantly recognizable to even those who have never seen any of her movies. She is a symbol of beauty, glamor, cinema, femininity, blondness, sexuality, and tragedy. While the world speculates about her personal life — who was she romantically involved with? How did she die? What was she really like? — her career as an actress is overshadowed by her fame.

While she may not have been the greatest actress of all time, she certainly had her fair share of talent and intelligence, and always worked incredibly hard to bring her...

When Marilyn Monroe passed away in 1962, she was already an icon – but her legacy has surpassed any thing she could have imagined. Her visage adorns every type of paraphernalia imaginable, her impersonators crowd Times Square and Hollywood Boulevard, and of course, there was that time that superfans could buy a lock of her hair aboard a cruise ship for a reasonable $8,000.

And at an auction hosted by Julien’s, which began on Thursday and will continue through the weekend, one of the actress’s most recognizable gowns, the one she wore to wish President John F. Kennedy a very sexy happy birthday,...

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.

One week a month, Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by the week’s new releases or premieres. This week: Equity inspires a look back at other films set in the corporate world.

The Best Of Everything (1959)

By 1959, director Jean Negulesco had already helmed two movies depicting the lives of three young women looking for love in the big city: How To Marry A Millionaire and Three Coins In The Fountain. For The Best Of Everything, based on twentysomething editor Rona Jaffe’s novel, Negulesco moved the setting to the glamorous world of New York publishing. In a lovelorn typing pool, ambitious Caroline (Hope Lange), innocent April (Diane Baker), and glamorous Gregg (early supermodel Suzy Parker) are all felled by the cads they love.

Image: 20th Century Fox/Getty Images

The movie is about as sexist as you can get on both sides, to an almost absurd (and ...

As I watched Fox’s Lucifer the other night, I uttered my all-too common refrain “Oh, that’s from a comic book.” Even I am amazed how often I recite it. The frequency with which we all say that simple phrase is proof that Geek Culture is thriving in 2016.

But in many ways Geek Culture never went away, it’s just that the momentum driving pop culture has gained so much visible traction in the last few years. This week I’m turning back the clock to 1954 to take a look at something that seems unique, but actually isn’t unique at all. I’d like to focus on comic that was a copy of another wildly popular comic. But therein lies the charm. Amazingly, its publication resulted in a ban from the state of Massachusetts, a police raid and an arrest.

Panic was EC’s other parody comic and...

An awkward thing happened to the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Revenant as it trekked into theaters last last year in hopes of picking up award show nominations: A rumor put the film in headlines but for reasons that none of its publicists were happy about. In early December, 20th Century Fox spokespeople were forced to clarify that no, the film does not feature a scene in which its star is raped by a bear. DiCaprio himself later weighed in on the rumor, calling it "absurd," and when the film finally hit theaters on Christmas Day, audiences saw that the rumor...

Jules Dassin didn’t do much in the way of subversion. At least not cinematically. He didn’t have many overarching themes to his work, he didn’t twist his genre films into something they weren’t. What he did was utilize every one of the handful of tools he was given, and pushed his films to their absolute breaking point. His subversion was a sort of perversion, an excess of imagination and a willingness to show the world as he saw it. If that meant creating a filmography that looked suspicious to the House Committee of Un-American Activities, well, that was just the natural result of having an eye and an ear for how the common man lived.

It can’t have helped that his last film before the blacklist order came down was Thieves’ Highway, an all-out indictment of capitalism cloaked in the noir-drenched mode of a typical Fox gritty,...

Prolific Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy continued an impressive output of work during the collapse of the studio system of the 1950s, churning out twelve titles that decade and starting his own production company associated with Warner Bros. Though his career would taper off in the mid-to-late 60s, he was known for a helming a wide variety of genres. However, his later career would see a return to musical inclinations, though not all of them have withstood the tests of time. One such obscure item in his filmography is 1953’s Latin Lovers, an ‘exotic’ romantic pseudo-musical comedy of rich people’s errors starring one of LeRoy’s most famous credited ‘discoveries,’ Lana Turner. Here, she’s swathed in decadent black and white numbers as a woman of impressive and independent financial means, victim to a shared paranoia of the historically sensitive wealthy American in that she believes men only want her for her money.

“Wealthy men are never old!”

How To Marry A Millionaire screens Saturday morning, November 21st, at 10:30am at The Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Ave, St. Louis). This is a fundraiser for The Cottey College Scholarship Fund and admission is $10.

How To Marry A Millionaire is a 1953 romantic comedy based on the plays The Greeks Had a Word for It by Zoe Akins and Loco by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert. The film stars Marilyn Monroe, St. Louis’ own Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall as three gold diggers along with William Powell, David Wayne, Rory Calhoun, Cameron Mitchell, Alex D’Arcy, and Fred Clark.It was directed by Jean Negulesco and produced and written by Nunnally Johnson.

In order to meet wealthy husbands, three beautiful women take an apartment in one of Manhattan’s most affluent areas, on the corner of East 55th St. and Sutton Place. Naive moocher Betty Grable...

Dolores Hart, Pamela Tiffin and Lois Nettleton are flight attendants aiming to snag three attractive, wealthy husbands right out of the air -- Karl Boehm, Hugh O'Brien and Karl Malden. There's more social comment in this 'coffee, tea or me' romantic comedy than can be found in a graduate thesis about the sexual habits of liberated stewardesses. And Hey, Frankie Avalon warbles the classy title tune! Come Fly with Me DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1963 / Color / 2:35 enhanced widescreen / 109 min. / Street Date June 30, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 18.49 Starring Dolores Hart, Hugh O'Brian, Karlheinz Bohm, Pamela Tiffin, Lois Nettleton, Karl Malden, Dawn Addams, Richard Wattis, Andrew Cruickshank, James Dobson, Lois Maxwell, John Crawford, Robert Easton, Maurice Marsac, George Coulouris, Ferdy Mayne. Cinematography Oswald Morris Film Editor Frank Clarke Original Music Lyn Murray Written by William Roberts from a book by Bernard Glemser Produced by Anatole De Grunwald Directed by Henry Levin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

What?...

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published November 1, 2012.

Fifty years ago this month, Marilyn Monroe passed away from a suspected accidental drug overdose (although conspiracy geeks love to contemplate more nefarious scenarios). The commemoratives are already showing up on magazine and newspaper entertainment pages, cable channels have announced their Marilyn film fests and documentary tributes. There’s little of worth I can add either in academic consideration or aesthetic appreciation to all the testimonials as well as the previous fifty years of ruminating in print and on film re: the lasting appeal of La Monroe. I can only wonder, with a sort of melancholy amazement, over the fact we’re still talking about her all these years later.

That persistent hold she has on popular culture is a fascinating study in itself. Her career had already been faltering when she died, she’s been gone a half-century, yet there...

Los Angeles, Calif. (October 2, 2015) – In 1915 William Fox founded Fox Film Corporation and forever changed the course of cinema. Over the next century the studio would develop some of the most innovative and ground-breaking advancements in the history of cinema; the introduction of Movietone, the implementation of color in partnership with Eastman Kodak, the development of the wide format in 70mm and many more. Now in honor of the 100th anniversary of the studio, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will celebrate by releasing some of their most iconic films that represent a decade of innovation.

Starting today, five classic films from the studio will be made available digitally for the first time ever – Sunrise (1927), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Man Hunt (1941), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). Throughout the rest of the year a total of 100 digital releases will follow from Fox’s extensive catalog, including 10 films...

Twilight Time brings Sam Fuller’s exotic 1955 color noir House of Bamboo to Blu-ray, a resplendently colorful film and the first major Us production to film in post-war Japan. While Fuller re-tooled Harry Kleiner’s script for the 1948 film The Street with No Name to meet his own offbeat needs, the film experienced a rather cool reception, garnering praise for Joseph MacDonald’s cinematography (and has since been hailed by sources as some of the best uses of widescreen photography in the history of cinema) but little else. Following on the heels of successful black and white titles like Hell and High Water (1954) and the acclaimed film noir Pickup on South Street (1953), it’s a harder title to classify, featuring Fuller’s usual signature of off-balance touches in a production that now seems ahead of its time (especially compared to something like 1964’s black and white provocation The Naked Kiss...

"Trainwreck," the new Amy Schumer/Judd Apatow movie, examines the plight of one snarly woman as she exits her familiar world of sexual freedom and hangovers for a detour into serious romance. Though several eye-popping cameos and supporting performances buttress the film, Schumer's performance is the acting triumph of "Trainwreck." Without her shaky conscience and burgeoning sense of fulfillment, the movie's conventional story might feel staid. Thankfully, it's anything but. Schumer's performance marks a welcome addition to cinema's long line of strident, hilarious female protagonists. We're celebrating that lineage with a list: the 20 best female-driven comedies ever. Some are old and some are new, but all are marked by a degree of cosmopolitan fun and nerviness -- and the occasional slap from Cher. 20. "How to Marry a Millionaire" We remember Lauren Bacall as a glamor girl with a damning grimace, but let's start revising that narrative to include her chops as a comic force.

Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy with Fred Astaire - Stanley Donen's Funny Face

Spring in New York comes alive with Haute Couture on Film featuring the work of Hubert de Givenchy in Stanley Donen's Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson, presented by Eye For Film's Anne-Katrin Titze on April 7.

See creations by Pierre Cardin in Jacques Demy's Bay Of Angels (La Baie Des Anges) with Jeanne Moreau, Claude Mann, Paul Guers and Henri Nassiet. Emanuel Ungaro made the clothes for Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes' Gloria with Julie Carmen and Buck Henry. Coco Chanel in Jean Renoir's The Rules Of The Game (La Règle Du Jeu) dressed Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély and Odette Talazac. Be dazzled by Christian Dior in Jean Negulesco's How To Marry A Millionaire with Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall. Yves Saint Laurent's...

On a high floor in the famous Dakota building in New York City's Upper West Side lived screen legend Lauren Bacall. Surrounded by personal treasures, the late actress spent more than 30 years in the space, decorating it with memories that spanned decades. Following Bacall's death in August, an estimated $3 million worth of her jewelry and art will be auctioned off March 31 and April 1 at Bonhams New York. Her Manhattan home is also now up for sale. Valued at $26 million (she bought the property in 1961 for $48,000), the luxe apartment overlooks Central Park at 1 W. 72nd St. in a landmark building...