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Director/Tfh Guru Allan Arkush discusses his favorite year in film, 1975, with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Rules of the Game (1939)

Le Boucher (1970)

Last Year At Marienbad (1961)

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

Topaz (1969)

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Hollywood Boulevard (1976) – Jon Davison’s trailer commentary

The Innocents (1961) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

The Earrings of Madame De… (1953)

Rope (1948) – Darren Bousman’s trailer commentary

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)

The Awful Truth (1937) – Charlie Largent’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Duck Soup (1933) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Going My Way (1944)

Nashville (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Dan Perri’s trailer commentary

M*A*S*H (1970)

Shampoo (1975) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Bonnie And Clyde (1967) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

The Nada Gang (1975)

Get Crazy (1983) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Night Moves (1975) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) – Katt Shea’s trailer...

The stars of the excellent new comedy doc Joy Ride discuss some of their favorite two handers with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Graduate (1967) – Neil Labute’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Cocoon (1985)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964)

Police Academy 3: Back In Training (1986)

Crooklyn (1994)

Call Me Lucky (2015)

Shakes The Clown (1991)

A History Of Violence (2005)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Artists And Models (1955) – Tfh’s global trailer search

Joy Ride (2021)

Joy Ride (2001)

Stay (2005)

Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006)

Capturing The Friedmans (2003)

Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s review

Sleepless In Seattle (1993)

The Producers (1967) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

My Friend Irma Goes West (1950)

Delicate Delinquent (1957)

Keyholes Are For Peeping (1972)

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Charlie...

Nicolás Zukerfeld’s There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways Of Showing A Man Getting On A Horse (No Existen Treinta Y Seis Maneras De Mostrar Cómo Un Hombre Se Sube A Un Caballo), his tribute to Raoul Walsh, co-written and expertly edited with Malena Solarz, is a highlight of the Currents program in the 58th New York Film Festival.

The 1924 Douglas Fairbanks adventure The Thief of Bagdad; the 1933 musical Going Hollywood with Bing Crosby; Rita Hayworth and Olivia de Havilland and James Cagney in the 1890s stage world of Strawberry Blonde (1941); the 1958 Norman Mailer adaptation The Naked And The Dead; the 1960s Biblical drama Esther And The King, with Joan Collins in the title role - it isn’t easy to pick only one Raoul...

He was the anarchic funnyman who went from comedies with Dean Martin to inspired cinematic brilliance with The Nutty Professor. Martin Scorsese pays tribute to his King of Comedy star

The first time I saw Jerry Lewis, it was on television with his partner Dean Martin. This was in the late 40s when TV was just beginning – the medium was new and so were Martin and Lewis. We were used to comedy “teams” such as Abbott and Costello, the straight man who fed the lines to the comedian, which grew out of vaudeville. Martin and Lewis took it all to another level. Martin himself was funny, and he was also smooth, romantic, and he sang. They got into a groove and Lewis would take off into pure anarchy. Pretty soon, they were stars of the big screen as well – they started in the My Friend Irma pictures and then they...

Las Vegas – For Jerry Lewis, the “King of Comedy” wasn’t just a mere nickname, but an apt description for his long career and influence. He went from being the most popular entertainer of an era, to notable and studied filmmaker, to charity spokesperson and finally to comic legend. Jerry Lewis died in Las Vegas on August 20th, 2017. He was 91.

When the gawky 19 year-old Lewis met the suave singer Dean Martin in 1946, little did they know that they would become the most popular act in America for several years. Their box office draw was white-hot, so much so that neither of them could keep up with the blur of what happened to them. They eventually broke up at the height of their fame in 1956, during which Martin famously said, “Jer, when I look at you, all I see is a dollar sign.” The second phase of Lewis’s career would be about his prolific filmmaking,...

I annoyed Jerry Lewis once by asking him about The Day the Clown Cried, a movie he starred in and directed in 1972, and then refused to release. "It's awful," said Lewis of the Holocaust drama in which he starred as a circus clown who entertains Jewish children as he leads them to their deaths in Nazi gas chambers. Why not show it and let the world decide? "I'm ashamed of it," Lewis told me flatly. When I pressed him, he flashed a look that could be subtitled "End of Discussion.

Tony Sokol Aug 21, 2017

Versatile, innovative and controversial, Jerry Lewis leaves a legacy of laughs and charity work.

Jerry Lewis, the legendary comedian, actor, singer and philanthropist, has died at the age of 91.

Lewis is as well known for starring and directing films like The Nutty Professor, Cinderfella, and The Bellboy as he is for his marathon fundraising telethons on Us TV for Muscular Dystrophy. He first found fame with his legendary ten-year partnership with Dean Martin.

Lewis paired with Dean Martin in 1946. Starting in nightclubs, Martin and Lewis moved their way through almost countless radio shows and made 16 movies. The pair costarred in such films as My Friend Irma (1949), At War With the Army (1950), Sailor Beware (1952), The Caddy (1953), Living It Up (1954), You’re Never Too Young (1955), and Artists And Models (1955). The last movie they made together was Hollywood Or Bust (1956).

After the partnership ended, Lewis teamed with director Frank Tashlin...

Above: Danish poster for Geisha Boy (Frank Tashlin, USA, 1958).On March 16 Jerry Lewis turns 90 years old, making him one of the oldest living great filmmakers along with Jonas Mekas (93), Seijun Suzuki (92), Stanley Donen (91), D.A. Pennebaker (90), Claude Lanzmann (90) and Andrzej Wajda (90). And if you have any doubt about his status as one of the great auteurs go and see any of the films he directed at Museum of Modern Art's’s current retrospective: Happy Birthday, Mr. Lewis: The Kid Turns 90.To flip through the films of Jerry Lewis in poster form is to encounter an awful lot of crossed eyes, toothy grins and outsized heads on small bodies (a familiar trope for comedians in movie posters whether it's Fernandel or Cantinflas or Buster Keaton.) That said, Lewis also seems to have inspired illustrators around the world. The French love Jerry Lewis, as the cliché goes, but so, it seemed, did the Germans,...

"Dance, dance, feel it all around you Dance, dance, dance, Never thought love had a rainbow on it See the girl dance See the girl dance."- Neil Young, "Dance, Dance, Dance"***When I watched Katy Perry’s recent Super Bowl performance I got very excited. There was a lot of shrieking. So much so that my roommate, who had been diligently watching screeners of important art films one floor below, came up to see what was happening. A friend who was over to watch the game, who I often go to repertory movies with, later told another friend he had never seen me so excited. The third friend watching it with us, she’s a writer, was also excited. In her excitement she sent all of her twitter friends a picture. In my own excitement I sent yet a fourth friend a text message. ******My text message may have been sent off haphazardly,...

Becoming Anita EkbergThe Film Society of Lincoln Center’s "Art of the Real" series, which recently unspooled its second season, has become New York’s annual showcase for the “hybrid” film, experimental works that, despite a more than tenuous relationship with the documentary tradition, oscillate between fiction and nonfiction. Now that documentary has become unmistakably fashionable (a banal subplot in Noah Baumbach’s dreary comedy, While We’re Young, is even spawned by cartoonish version of a debate over “documentary ethics”) the schism between films such as The Hunting Ground and Merchants of Doubt, which resemble feature-length 60 Minutes stories, and the sort of documentaries programmed at film festivals like Doclisboa and Cph: Dox has grown even wider. Art of the Real, laden with an amalgam of festival favorites and classic precursors of cinematic hybridity (this year’s Agnés Varda retrospective is a case in point) is certainly a cheerleader for...

Update, Sunday 4:10 Pm: Adds anecdote about Back From Eternity, below: The blond beauty who added a smoldering Swedish sensuality to the pantheon of European 1950s and ’60s screen sirens that included Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot, died Sunday in Rocca di Papa, near Rome, according to reports confirmed by Deadline. She was 83.

She had lived in Italy for decades since a starring role, opposite Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s groundbreaking 1960 La Dolce Vita, made her an international sex symbol. In the film she she played Sylvia, a Swedish-American movie star who arrives in Rome and captures the attention of Mastroianni’s night-crawling paparazzo, who takes her on a moonlit tour of the city. In one of the episodic film’s most famous scenes, Sylvia — poured into a strapless, form-fitting black gown — wades into the Trevi Fountain, beckoning her suitor to follow.

Later she pointedly, and frequently, remarked that...

By Lee Pfeiffer

The cruel loss of legendary cinematic figures continues into the new year with the death of Anita Ekberg in Italy at age 83. The precise cause of death is not known at this time but she had suffered from a long illness. Ekberg was Swedish by birth but was often mistaken as a native of Italy because of her close association with Fellini and his films. She was named Miss Sweden as a teenager and competed in the Miss Universe contest before her statuesque figure ensured a career in show business during an era when full-bosomed sex sirens were all the rage. Hollywood studios were particularly on the lookout for the next exotic European beauty and Ekberg filled the bill perfectly. She slogged through bit parts uncredited in major studio productions before landing a prominent role opposite John Wayne and Lauren Bacall in the 1955 hit "Blood Alley" (in...

“It was I who made Fellini famous, not the other way around” – Anita Ekberg

According to reports (La Stampa), Anita Ekberg has died at age 83.

The Swedish-born actress and sex-symbol of the 1950s and `60s was immortalized bathing in the Trevi fountain in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Ekberg also starred in King Vidor’s War And Peace and alongside Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in 1956’s Hollywood Or Bust which she won a Golden Globe award for “Most Promising Newcomer.”

From the AP:

Ekberg’s lawyer Patrizia Ubaldi confirmed she died in Rome Sunday morning following a series of illnesses. She had been hospitalized most recently after Christmas. Ubaldi said a ceremony would be held in the coming days at a Lutheran church in Rome, and that Ekberg had specified that her remains be cremated.

Ubaldi also said that in her last days Ekberg was saddened by the illness and her advancing age.

"Anita Ekberg, immortalized by her performance in Federico Fellini's 1960 film La Dolce Vita, died Sunday near Rome," reports the Afp. "She was 83." From TCM: "Coming to America after winning the Miss Sweden beauty competition in 1950, Ekberg soon secured herself a contract with Universal Pictures and began a string of appearances in such features as Blood Alley (1955), Hollywood or Bust (1956) and the historical epic War and Peace (1956). Often eclipsing her work on screen, however, were the alleged romantic liaisons with many of Hollywood's most powerful leading men, including Tyrone Power, Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra. Sub-par genre pictures with titles like Sheba and the Gladiator (1959) were fast becoming Ekberg's stock-in-trade before Fellini cast the stunning actress in La Dolce Vita, instantly making her co-star Marcello Mastroianni an international superstar, but oddly, doing little to advance her career." » - David Hudson...

"Anita Ekberg, immortalized by her performance in Federico Fellini's 1960 film La Dolce Vita, died Sunday near Rome," reports the Afp. "She was 83." From TCM: "Coming to America after winning the Miss Sweden beauty competition in 1950, Ekberg soon secured herself a contract with Universal Pictures and began a string of appearances in such features as Blood Alley (1955), Hollywood or Bust (1956) and the historical epic War and Peace (1956). Often eclipsing her work on screen, however, were the alleged romantic liaisons with many of Hollywood's most powerful leading men, including Tyrone Power, Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra. Sub-par genre pictures with titles like Sheba and the Gladiator (1959) were fast becoming Ekberg's stock-in-trade before Fellini cast the stunning actress in La Dolce Vita, instantly making her co-star Marcello Mastroianni an international superstar, but oddly, doing little to advance her career." » - David Hudson...

Jack Reynor is on the verge of transforming into something big. The 22-year-old actor costars alongside Mark Wahlberg and fellow newcomer Nicola Peltz in Transformers: Age of Extinction, director Michael Bay's latest flick in his megahit action franchise (in theaters tomorrow, June 27). Here, we give you five things you must know about Reynor. 1. Homeland: He may have been born in Colorado, but Reynor has a thick Irish accent. He and his human rights lawyer mom Tara O'Grady moved back to her native Ireland when he was just two years old. 2. Hollywood or Bust: After he did some acting in Ireland, Reynor decided to move to Hollywood in 2012 after getting good reviews at the Toronto Film...

Above: Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa.

Cinephilia & Revolution

A familiar practice in Persian film literature is that of the “cinematic memoir”—personal reminiscences of the film culture of pre-Revolutionary Iran.

Bolstered by a nostalgic tone, these autobiographical texts deal with the themes of childhood, adolescence and encounters with cinema in a Westernized Iran. The authors of such memoirs frequently depict Iran as a haven for cinephiles. Considering the number of films that were shown in pre-Revolutionary Iran and the diversity of their origins, this may be taken as an accurate characterization.

Such melancholic documentations of the past echo the feelings of a generation lost, misplaced and confused after the Revolution; people who are utterly unable tore-situate themselves in the new post-Revolutionary nation and after the trauma of an eight year war. However, this longing for a paradise lost can function as a kind of subjective history of film culture in Iran; while by...

In the 1980s, there was a belief by a lot of old-timers in the business that the corporate culture of the decade with the downfall of professional wrestling in their era. But now in 2013, I honestly think another culture has infiltrated the business and may be the end of wrestling as we know it. What can the scourge of wrestling be these days? I think all you have to do is look at the WWE and you have your answer. Hollywood.

Now, you may hear that and instantly think of talking about The Rock. I’m not. Vince McMahon has said in multiple interviews that he calls what they do “making movies” and a “variety show” instead of professional wrestling. The chairman of the WWE is desperate for acceptance by the entertainment media wanting them to see him as an equal in the media conglomerate space. The word wrestling had...

Cinema Sex Sirens, published by Omnibus Press,  is a unique collection of photographs of female stars of the '60s and '70s.

That period marked a new era of frankness in society and the movie industry lost no time in following suit after some 25 years of censorship and self-imposed regulations. The women who became the new erotic goddesses also became world-famous and defined a generation's view of sexuality.

Dave Worrall and Lee Pfeiffer's gallery illustrates a luminous collection of idealized women and offers a fascinating insight into the movies' depiction of female sexuality during the '60s and '70s. From the indisputable legends to actresses whose used their beauty to gain fame in the short-term through exploitation movies, this book provides little-known insights into their lives and careers.

Foreword by Sir Roger Moore

Chapters include:

Hollywood Or Bust: The Early Years

...And God Created the Sex...

Why Harvey Weinstein's parties are the best fun, a producer who's struck gold early on, and the stars come out for the London Critics' bash

What a swell party that was

After the Baftas, there was really only one place to be — the Weinstein/Momentum party that opened the new W Hotel on Leicester Square. I had a nice chat about vintage sunglasses with Mark Ruffalo; discussed favourite works of art with Anton Corbijn and Sally Hawkins; talked at length with Colin Firth (yes, he still wears Tom Ford); was dwarfed between David Gandy and Lily Cole, the two supermodels who reportedly checked into a suite together soon after and became the hotel's first guests — I hope I was some sort of aphrodisiac; I met Tim Burton, who's rather shy in such situations, and Helena Bonham Carter, who isn't; Ronnie Wood was sitting on a couch with a girl...

Best Male LeadRonald Bronstein"Daddy Longlegs"Beginner's luck? Ronald Bronstein is an award-winning writer-director of indie films. But in writer-directors Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie's film "Daddy Longlegs," he makes his film acting debut. Here he plays Lenny, a divorced father of two young boys who has little grasp on parental responsibility and skill, and even less good judgment.When we first meet Lenny, he pompously mouths off to the school principal in a juvenile defense of his two boys. That scene sets our teeth on edge for what's to come. Lenny takes his sons on vacation with a woman he first met at a bar the night before. He brings the kids to his job as a projectionist, then lets them run wild and even operate the projector—badly. Told he can't bring them again, he gives them a wee dose of sedatives that sends them into Stage 4 sleep for days on end.

During a remarkable four-year stint in the mid-’50s, Frank Tashlin, a famed Warner Brothers animator turned live-action writer-director, launched a sustained, multi-faceted satirical attack on a broad spectrum of entertainment. In 1955, he took on comic books and the hysteria they provoked in Artists And Models. In 1956, he turned his attention to a crazy, seemingly ephemeral fad called rock ’n’ roll with The Girl Can’t Help It.The same year, he reunited with Artist And Models stars Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on the cinematic satire Hollywood Or Bust before ending his glory years with the giddy ...

Actress Emma Stone -- best known for her turns in "Superbad" and "Easy A" -- is hosting "Saturday Night Live" Oct. 23. But exactly who Is Emma Stone?

Here's an easy A to Z list of all the things you need to know about this up-and-coming star.

For a guide to all the 2010 fall movies, click here!

Emma Stone: A to Za is for Actress

Emma Stone wanted to be an actress for as long as she can remember.

Actress Emma Stone -- best known for her turns in "Superbad" and "Zombieland" -- is hitting her comedic stride as the lead in the upcoming high-school flick "Easy A," playing a straight-a student who pretends to sully her reputation to gain popularity. But exactly who Is Emma Stone?

Here's an easy A to Z list of all the things you need to know about this up-and-coming star.

For a guide to all the 2010 fall movies,...

No 81: Anita Ekberg

Sociologists and cultural historians agree that the 1950s was the decade in which the United States fetishised the breast. Jane Russell, for whom Howard Hughes had devised a special bra in the mid-40s, truly came into her own, and she was joined by Marilyn Monroe for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1953, the year Playboy was launched. In 1952, Anita Ekberg was a Look magazine cover girl; by January 1956, she was on the cover of Life.

Born in Malmö, the sixth of a blue-collar worker's eight children, Ekberg was voted Miss Sweden (her official vital statistics were 39-22-36) and went to America in 1951 for the Miss Universe competition. She didn't win and she spoke little English, but she got a movie contract with Universal, and though she took little interest in the dramatic coaching they offered, she found herself in demand for minor roles at other studios,...

With 2009 rounding to a close, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we thought we’d shake things up a bit. Last year we polled the contributors to The Notebook to find some general consensus on what movies everyone liked. For our 2nd Annual Writer’s Poll, we’re doing things differently.

I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2009—in theaters or at...

Beginner's luck: According to NBC, Saturday Night Live newcomer Jenny Slate won't be fired or even have to wear a scarlet "F" on her mangy, featured player forehead for her now-notorious accidental swear word during Saturday's premiere episode. Slate, who uttered "f*ckin" when meaning to say "freakin" during a sketch called "Biker Chick Chat," committed the puritanical offense well after primetime, meaning SNL is not likely to garner fines from the Federal Communications Commission. In fact, host Megan Fox is the one who should be in trouble, more for what she didn't say than what Slate did. See her faux pas (and video of Slate's slip of the tongue) after the jump.