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There have been many stories about Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean bonding during the production of George Stevens’ epic “Giant” in Marfa, Texas, in 1955. Though not exactly a “Harold & Maude” scenario, the 24-year-old Dean also developed a strong friendship with Edna Ferber, the diminutive Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such classic novels as “So Big,” “Showboat,” “Cimarron,” and “Giant,” who turned 70 that summer in Marfa. Ferber, who never married, was seen sitting on the back of Dean’s motorcycle as they would take rides during breaks. And she even tried her hand at twirling the lasso.

Author Julie Gilbert, Ferber’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated grand nice and biographer (“Ferber: The Biography of Edna Ferber and Her Circle”), doesn’t think the two were in love. “He was very young,” said Gilbert, who writes about her great aunt and the making of the Oscar-winning film in her latest book “Giant Love” set for a Dec.

The decades-long history of the Oscars is filled with numerous records. And the acclaimed Hollywood star Cate Blanchett has also earned a place in the history of the prestigious awards with her remarkable performance in the 2004 crime drama The Aviator. Starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, she took on the role of Katharine Hepburn, a four-time Best Actress Oscar winner, who graced the silver screen for over six decades.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett in The Aviator

Based on Charles Higham’s 1993 Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, the film follows Howard Hughes, a pioneering aviator, and film producer, showcasing his rise to success, struggles with mental health, and passionate pursuits in aviation and filmmaking during the golden age of Hollywood.

Cate Blanchett’s Singular Achievement at the Oscars

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett, Martin Scorsese’s 2004 film The Aviator received critical acclaim and numerous accolades. It received 11 nominations at the 77th Academy Awards,...

Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton on the classic sitcom “The Honeymooners,” and was the last surviving member of the cast, died Saturday in New York City. She was 99.

Randolph was in hospice care at the time of her death and died of natural causes, her son, Randy, told TMZ.

Randolph’s character was married to Art Carney’s Ed Norton on “The Honeymooners.” They were the neighbors of Ralph and Alice Kramden, played by Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows.

Born Joyce Sirola to a Finnish American family in Detroit, she got her start in show business when she joined a touring production of “Stage Door” while working at a department store, then moved to New York where she acted in theater and on television in shows such as “Buck Rogers.”

Gleason noticed her in a commercial and cast her in “The Honeymooners” in 1951. It first appeared as a sketch...

Did you have a good Easter weekend? Apologies that this weekend contained no "reader's choice" so we're pushed back one week in that regard. So we thought it time to share some things coming up to help keep us on track...

April 10th - Succession Season Four Review

April 12th - Antiviral (2013) 10th anniversary

April 13th - Cannes Lineup Announced

April 14th - Reader's Choice: Marnie (1964) on Netflix

April 17th - Monday's Stage Door series returns as the Broadway season heats up and Tony buzz rises

April 21st - Reader's Choice: Fatal Attraction (1987) 

April 28th - Reader's Choice: Tba

April 28th - Letters from an Unknown Woman (1947) 75th anniversary

Also this month: April Foolish Oscar Predictions, Interview with Joyland director Saim Saddiq, Interview with rising cinematography star Carolina Costa, the Year in Queer Cinema thus far, Erotic Thrillers on Criterion Channel continues, Love & Death on HBO Max, Polite Society at the movies,...

Cate Blanchett failed to land among this year’s nominees in the Best Supporting Actress race, but the two-time Oscar winner made history anyway with the 94th Academy Awards nominations. By starring in two Best Picture nominees, “Don’t Look Up” and “Nightmare Alley,” Blanchett has been credited in nine movies nominated for the Oscars’ top picture prize. That makes her the only actress ever credited in that many Best Picture nominees, surpassing a record previously held by Olivia de Havilland.

Blanchett’s first role in a Best Picture nominee came for “Elizabeth,” the 1998 film that also gave Blanchett her first Best Actress nomination. Her other Best Picture nominees before this year included all three films in the “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Aviator”, “Babel,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” The twosome of “Don’t Look Up” and “Nightmare Alley” marks the first time Blanchett has appeared in...

On Sunday the next Supporting Actress Smackdown and its companion podcast arrive, with a discussion of the 1937 Oscars and the Supporting Actress nominees. You know what that means. For maximum enjoyment (re)watch Best Picture nominees the Bogart noir Dead End, the actress-stuffed dramedy Stage Door and the epic In Old Chicago as well as two films that were both nominated for two acting Oscars, the thriller Night Must Fall and weepie classic Stella Dallas (all of which are readily available online) and send in your votes by Friday October 1st. Let's meet your fellow panelists, shall we? 

Please Welcome...

All five of the upcoming movies for the next Supporting Actress Smackdowns are rentable or free to stream (if so we've indicated where) so play along at home, won'cha? The Smackdowns are popular but they're more fun if You participate and watch and vote.

Tyrone Power and Alice Brady in "In Old Chicago"

Smackdown 1937 -Sunday, October 3rd, 2021

★ Alice Brady in In Old Chicago -a family drama, disaster epic, and sort-of musical Andrea Leeds in Stage Door - a boarding house dramedy which is an absolute must-see for actressexuals since everyone is in it! Anne Shirley in Stella Dallas (Amazon Prime) - a Stanwyck weepie Claire Trevor in Dead End (Amazon Prime) - a Bogart noir May Whitty in Night Must Fall - a mystery starring Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell

Between them these movies scored 18 nominations and 2 Oscar wins with In Old Chicago, Stage Door, and Dead End also vying for Best Picture.

Back in 2018, Michael Stuhlbarg joined an exclusive club of actors who co-starred in three Best Picture nominees during the same Oscars ceremony. The often-hirsute actor played a key role in Best Picture winner “The Shape of Water” and also co-starred in nominees “Call Me By Your Name” and “The Post.”

The trifecta put Stuhlbarg in some select company as only five other performers had pulled off the same feat: John C. Reilly, who was in three of the five Best Picture nominees at the 2003 Oscars — Best Picture winner “Chicago,” “The Hours,” and “Gangs of New York”; Claudette Colbert in 1935 for Best Picture winner “It Happened One Night,” “Cleopatra,” and “Imitation of Life”; Charles Laughton in 1936 for Best Picture winner “Mutiny on the Bounty,” “Les Miserables” and “Ruggles of Red Gap”; Adolphe Menjou in 1938 for “One Hundred Men and a Girl,” “Stage Door” and “A Star Is Born”; and Thomas Mitchell...

We're about to enter the prime Oscar-hopeful months of the year. Excited? But before we do, here's a quick look back at August at Tfe. In case you missed any of this baker's dozen...

Some Highlights

• Interview Nine Perfect Strangers Abe interviews Michael Shannon

• Emmy Categories -we've analyzed many of the top races

• Spencer tease - will Kristen Stewart be up for gold?

• Jennifer Hudson in Respect a big new role for a fine singer

• The Green Knight -Matt has a big crush on Dev Patel

• Phil Tippet -Elisa meets the "mad god" of vfx

• Jeanette Goldstein in Aliens Nick gives a strong genre turn its due

• Gay Best Friend: Chuck and Buck - with White Lotus all the rage, Christopher looks back at Mike White's breakout

• A Room With a View a long-read team retrospective

• How had I never seen...Blue Velvet Ben has never been a...

9 random things that happened on this day, March 10th, in showbiz history...

1938 The 10th annual Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1937. The Life of Emile Zola wins Best Picture, the second consecutive biopic to win, cementing the agonizing fact that Oscar then and now obsesses over the snooziest of all film genres, the biopic, more than any of its far more interesting cousins. It beat screwball classic The Awful Truth, the actressexual bliss of Stage Door, the non-musical Janet Gaynor version of A Star is Born, and other superior films. Meanwhile Luise Rainer became the first actor in movie history to pull off a two consecutive year Oscar coup with her second win for her yellowface performance in The Good Earth...

The Supporting Actress Smackdown will resume in March 2021. Final Season! 

Happy Smackdown to you Happy Smackdown to you

Happy Smackdown you actressexuals,

Happy Smackdown to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

After StinkyLulu graciously let us continue/revive the series here seven or eight years ago (eep!) we've done 35 episodes: 1938, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1947, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and concurrently with Oscar races as they happened 2016, 2017, and 2018. 

So, where to now? 

The Remaining Years

1937- Brady  (In Old Chicago) | Leeds (Stage Door) | Shirley (Stella Dallas) | Trevor (Dead End) | Whitty (Night Must Fall)

1946 - Baxter (The Razor's Edge) | Barrymore  (The Spiral Staircase) | Gish (Duel in the Sun) | Robson (Saratoga Trunk) | Sondegaard (Anna and the King of Siam)

1951 Joan Blondell (The Blue Veil) | Dunnock (Death of a Salesman) | Grant (Detective Story) | Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire) | Ritter (The Mating Season)

1986 - Harper (Crimes of the Heart) | Laurie (Children of a Lesser God) | Mastrantonio (The Color of Money) | Smith (A Room With a View) | Weist (Hannah and Her Sisters...

Lucille Desiree Ball

Born: Aug. 6, 1911 in Celeron, N.Y.

Died: April 26, 1989 in Los Angeles

Best known for: CBS comedy series “I Love Lucy” (1951-1957), “The Lucy Show” (1962-68), “Here’s Lucy” (1968-74). As Variety‘s Tom Gilbert observed after her death, “Ball’s elastic facial expressions and precise comic timing catapulted her into an American institution.”

Autobiography: “Love, Lucy,” published posthumously in 1996, from a memoir Ball wrote in the mid-1960s.

Awards: Emmy wins for lead comedy actress in 1953, 1956, 1967 and 1968. Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.‘s Cecil B. DeMille Award, 1979. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Governors Award, 1989

Behind the scenes impact: With her husband and “I Love Lucy” co-star Desi Arnaz, Ball was a TV pioneer who etched an enduring template for TV sitcoms shot on film, which ignited the syndication marketplace for TV. Known for her signature flame-red hair color, Ball was also the first woman to head a major TV studio,...

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.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***Twentieth Century Fox is now to be called Twentieth Century, the name of a company that ceased to be back in 1935 when it swallowed the beleaguered Fox Picture Company. Zanuck's pre-merger studio is actually rather well-represented on home video, considering it existed for less than four years: Zanuck's story instinct, which had served him so well at Warners/First National, may not have fired so consistently, but it gave us punchy entertainments like The Bowery, Blood Money, and The Call of the Wild.The studio's tastes were more eclectic than Warners,...

For my money this is the brightest, most endearing and wittiest ’30s comedy to be given the name ‘screwball.’ Everyone on screen is flawlessly magnificent — Carole Lombard, William Powell, Alice Brady, Gail Patrick, Jean Dixon, Eugene Pallette and Mischa Auer — and Gregory La Cava’s direction is so good, it’s invisible. No kidding, I’ve never watched this with a group or individual that didn’t immediately rank it among the best entertainments they’ve seen.

My Man Godfrey

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 114

1936 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 93 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 18, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: William Powell, Carole Lombard, Alice Brady, Gail Patrick, Eugene Pallette, Alan Mowbray, Jean Dixon, Mischa Auer.

Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff

Film Editors: Ted Kent, Russell Schoengarth

Original Music: Charles Previn

Written by Morrie Ryskind, Eric Hatch from his novel

Produced by Gregory La Cava, Charles R. Rogers

Directed by Gregory La Cava

Screwball...

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...

In 2009 — when the Academy Awards went to 10 Best Picture nominees for the first time since 1943 — the preferential system of voting, which had been used from 1934 to 1945, was reintroduced. The academy did so as it believed this “best allows the collective judgment of all voting members to be most accurately represented.”

We have detailed how the preferential voting system works at the Oscars in the modern era. So, let’s take a look back at those dozen years early in the history of the academy when it first used this complicated counting to determine the Best Picture winner rather than a simple popular vote. (At the bottom of this post, be sure to vote for the film that you think will take the top Oscar this year.)

See Best Picture Gallery: Every winner of the top Academy Award

1934

This seventh ceremony marked the first time that the Oscars eligibility period was the calendar year.

Michael Stuhlbarg may not have received an Oscar nomination Tuesday, but he did join a very exclusive club: He’s the sixth performer to appear in three Best Picture nominees in the same year and the first to do so in 15 years.

Stuhlbarg had supporting roles in “Call Me by Your Name,” “The Post” and “The Shape of Water” — a third of the nine-nominee Best Picture lineup. The last person to accomplish this feat was John C. Reilly for his 2002 slate of “Chicago,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Hours.” Before Reilly, you have to go all the way back to the ‘30s for the first four instances. They are:

1934: Claudette Colbert, “It Happened One Night,” “Cleopatra” and “Imitation of Life”

1935: Charles Laughton, “Mutiny on the Bounty,” “Les Miserables” and “Ruggles of Red Gap”

1937: Adolphe Menjou, “One Hundred Men and a Girl,” “Stage Door” and “A Star Is Born”

1939: Thomas Mitchell,...

Uff. what an unpleasant month this is / that was! The world continued to go insane, people are still denying climate change despite more and more frequent tragedies like what's happening in Texas and, on a more personal level, at Tfe HQ your host Nathaniel threw his back out most severely. As a result the blogging was less prolific. Now that recovery is finding some momentum (crosses fingers) expect a return to normalcy after the Labor Day holiday. First up: The Toronto International Film Festival, our favorite annual event that isn't awards show related.

Icymi a dozen highlights From August

• Grace & Frankie's Costumes - Emmy nominated and deservedly so

• Best Actress in a Limited Series - the hottest Emmy category. Who to vote for?

• Sunset Blvd Musical Movie Rumors - the most discussed post of the month

• Best Screen Owls oh, the randomness!

• Soundtracking: The First Wives Club - you don't own them!

Stage Door Records are pleased to announce the previously unreleased studio demo recordings of David Heneker's musical Half A Sixpence will be released on September 29th, 2017.

Stage Door bringing you intermittent theater reviews when we manage to get there. Here's Nathaniel R

It's so basic to binge plays during Tony season as opposed to a more sensible and committed once-a-month diet of live theater. Alas, just as the more familiar mainstream obsession of the Oscar circus encourages studios to backload their releases to the last quarter of the year, most of the "big" theater shows open as late as they can for Tony consideration. This makes April and May a madhouse of theater-going for those who care about such things. Because most of the musicals are too expensive, I've been catching up with the plays. We've already covered The Little Foxes (a must see) and the Pulitzer-winning economic tragedy Sweat. So let's talk Six Degrees of Separation nominated for 2 Tonys: Best Revival of a Play and Best Leading Actor (Corey Hawkins).

"Chaos, control. Chaos, control. You like,...

Stage Door bringing you intermittent theater reviews when we manage to get there. Here's Nathaniel R

Awards have a way of hyping certain creations, especially the modest kind, to a point where disappointment is an obvious risk. The gifted playwright Lynn Nottage is only 52 but Sweat is already her second Pulitzer winner for Drama (the first was for Ruined). This places her in the rather astonishing company of prolific geniuses Tennessee Williams and August Wilson, and just one prize away from Edward Albee (!) and marks her as the most awarded living playwright and the most awarded female playwright, living or dead. As a result I spent the first act of Sweat wondering what the fuss was about. The Fuss does not identify itself in the second act but by then you can meet the play halfway with its likeable flawed characters and appreciate Nottage's earnest thematic thrust as the play...

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1892  One of Old Hollywood's most undersung but talented 1930s directors Gregory La Cava is born. Classics include Stage Door and My Man Godfrey

1913 Famed abolitionist and American hero Harriet Tubman dies of pneumonia. So glad she's getting biopic treatment soon. And twice over!

1938 The 10th annual Oscars are held with The Life of Emile Zzzzzola winning Best Picture and Louise Rainer taking her consecutive Best Actress prize but the most enduring anecdote was of course the theft of Alice Brady's Oscar for In Old Chicago.

1958 Sharon Stone is born in Pennysylvania

The 1959 Golden Globes (and more) are after the jump...

Burlesque: it’s more than just a Cher movie from a couple of years ago! That (okay, maybe not exactly that) is what Joe Manning’s new documentary “Burlesque: Heart of the Glitter Tribe” sets out to prove.

The new documentary, which follows twelve performers who get open and honest about this exotic art form, explores the world of burlesque and its growing popularity across the U.S. It invites audiences to get up close and personal with the people who combine striptease with modern dance, comedy, and even — wait for it — fire acts for a living.

Read More: Film Acquisition Rundown: Bleecker Street Buys ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas,’ Grasshopper Gets New Jem Cohen and More

In our exclusive clip, performer Angelique DeVil talks about how dance “makes her alive.” It’s a neat example of how the film combines what happens on stage with a candid and personal interview,...

Delve deep inside the burlesque dance movement with our exclusive clip from the upcoming documentary entitled Burleseque: Heart of the Glitter Tribe, which will receive a theatrical release on March 3. This clip showcases one of the dancers, Zora Von Pavonine, who explains that she takes inspiration from the high-end "couture" fashion lines designed by Jean-Paul Gauthier and Alexander McQueen, which are much more "radical" than their other clothing lines. This clip also shows Zora designing and putting these elaborate outfits together herself, which has taken quite a toll on many aspects of her life.

This film from XLrator Media explores not only dancers like Zora, but also the growing popularity of burlesque across the U.S., and its evolution to "neo-burlesque," which is a combination of several elements such as the classic striptease and other modern dance forms, with comedy, and, in some cases, fire acts. This clip also reveals...

When the Academy moved Barry Jenkins’ script for “Moonlight” to the Adapted Screenplay category, the Oscar race for Original Screenplay became a battle between two writer-directors. While Damien Chzelle’s reboot of the Hollywood musical is a strong contender throughout its 14 nominations, and Oscar voters will tick plenty of “La La Land” boxes on their ballots, it’s still rare for an original musical to land a screenplay win. (Alan Jay Lerner’s “An American in Paris” and Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” are exceptions.)

That’s why lauded playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan could win this race.

Here’s how Original Screenplay is shaking out:

Kenneth Lonergan (“Manchester by the Sea”)

The Oscar could go to the comeback writer-director for his tragic New England family drama.

Lonergan initially struggled with “Margaret” star Matt Damon and John Krasinski’s story idea about a man with a tragic history who must face...

When the Academy moved Barry Jenkins’ script for “Moonlight” to the Adapted Screenplay category, the Oscar race for Original Screenplay became a battle between two writer-directors. While Damien Chzelle’s reboot of the Hollywood musical is a strong contender throughout its 14 nominations, and Oscar voters will tick plenty of “La La Land” boxes on their ballots, it’s still rare for an original musical to land a screenplay win. (Alan Jay Lerner’s “An American in Paris” and Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” are exceptions.)

That’s why lauded playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan could win this race.

Here’s how Original Screenplay is shaking out:

Kenneth Lonergan (“Manchester by the Sea”)

The Oscar could go to the comeback writer-director for his tragic New England family drama.

Lonergan initially struggled with “Margaret” star Matt Damon and John Krasinski’s story idea about a man with a tragic history who must face...

To watch Mike Mills‘ two most recent features, Beginners and 20th Century Women, are such warm and open-hearted experiences that I was led, in my review of the latter, to wonder if he’s ever been unsympathetic to anybody. Actually sitting down with the writer-director does nothing to make me think otherwise, though he could’ve been a total bastard and I’d still want to pick his brain about his new film. It’s too rich and satisfying a work for me not to have many questions.

Also of little surprise is how quickly the discussion can turn towards a personal place, but one doesn’t follow-up a film about the last days of their gay father with a film reflecting on their relationship with their mother and not tip their hand a bit more than the average subject. Don’t think it’s too heavy, though: what follows...

It all started with writer-director Mike Mills paying heed to his mother, his sisters, his female friends, and his wife. “He’s a genuine feminist,” said Greta Gerwig in our video interview. “I don’t think many men deserve that title. He’s a listener.”

“20th Century Women,” inspired by his mother and sister and their love of “underdog, misbegotten, impossible houses” when he grew up in Santa Barbara, is set in 1979 and tells the story of Jamie, a teenage boy (Chicago discovery Lucas Jade Zumann) being raised by his single, strong-minded, Depression-era older mom (Annette Bening) who has never been psychoanalyzed and doesn’t care to share what insights she may have about herself.

Mills honed the script for nearly three years before he found his actresses. After having dinner with Bening he decided that she had some of his late mother’s contrary spirit, he told me. “She has strength,...

It all started with writer-director Mike Mills paying heed to his mother, his sisters, his female friends, and his wife. “He’s a genuine feminist,” said Greta Gerwig in our video interview. “I don’t think many men deserve that title. He’s a listener.”

“20th Century Women,” inspired by his mother and sister and their love of “underdog, misbegotten, impossible houses” when he grew up in Santa Barbara, is set in 1979 and tells the story of Jamie, a teenage boy (Chicago discovery Lucas Jade Zumann) being raised by his single, strong-minded, Depression-era older mom (Annette Bening) who has never been psychoanalyzed and doesn’t care to share what insights she may have about herself.

Mills honed the script for nearly three years before he found his actresses. After having dinner with Bening he decided that she had some of his late mother’s contrary spirit, he told me. “She has strength,...

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1873 Wc Handy famous musician is born in Alabama. The first credited use of his music in a movie was in the original Scarface (1932). That same song "St Louis Blues" is his most popular with Hollywood and has been used in dozens of movies since including The Aviator and The Great Gatbsy recently.  But Blue Jasmine got all feisty and went with "Aunt Hagar's Blues" instead.

1889 Playwright George S Kaufman is born. He wins two Pulitzers and his work has been adapted to films many times including classics like You Can't Take It With You, Dinner at Eight, The Man Who Came to Dinner and Stage Door.

1907 Oklahoma becomes the 46th State...

As part of Nyff Directors’ Dialogue series, 20th Century Women’s Mike Mills was interviewed by artistic director of the festival, Kent Jones. Here are excerpts from the conversation reported by Murtada.

Bening, Mills and Elle Faning at Nyff premiere

Dorothea is Humphrey Bogart

Mills based the main character in 20th Century Women - Dorothea played by Annette Bening - on his memories of his mother. She used to always tell him “In my next life I’ll be married to Bogart”, so while writing the movie Mills would ask himself what would Bogart say whenever he was stuck. To him Dorothea was like many of the characters Bogart played; underdogs who don't win, fail valiantly, make great jokes along the way and always help the weakest person in the room.

Ginger Rogers in Stage Door

Dorothea was also inspired by the character Ginger Rogers played in 1937’s Stage Door.

A quarter-century ago, Disney gave book-lovers a leading lady they could really relate to. Belle became an immediate favorite for any girl who, like Belle, would rather have her nose stuck in a book than doing just about anything else. Beauty and the Beast is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a new home video release of the film. On that edition, there are over five hours of bonus materials from previous releases and a handful of new featurettes — including a couple that the folks who are bookworm Disney fans will particularly enjoy. One featurette spotlights Walt Disney’s two-month trip to Europe in 1935, where he bought 335 books; many of them are those tales as old as time: fairy tale collections that are still in Disney’s archives and that inspired later Disney films. In another featurette, called “Menken & Friends: 25 Years of Musical Inspiration,” Beauty and the Beast’s...

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.

In Stage Door we talk theater, usually making some form of movie connection because that's how we do things...

I don't know anything about Bluegrass music but I wouldn't have connected it to the Melodrama form. If I tried to tell you the plot of Steve Martin's Broadway show "Bright Star," you wouldn't even believe it, so I shan't. Let's just say that if the plot were a movie it would be a silent film with wild eyed pantomiming it's so Big with oversized emotional rug-pulling. I was just crazy about the music but the book not so much. (On the night I attended it was all worth it because Steve Martin made a surprise appearance. There he was as the curtain raised for Act 2, playing on his banjo. He was loving it and so was the very very appreciative crowd. How lucky that he picked our night to show up!

In the Stage Door column we review theatrical productions, often with one eye on their movie origins or connections.

We first alerted you to the glorius full bodied talent of Benjamin Walker way back in 2011 writing:

You're in for such a treat when you see him on the big screen. Major charisma he has. Big stardom awaits.

The movie career didn't happen quickly in the way we imagined despite a couple of lead roles (The Choice, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) but that major charisma is still blinding on stage. It's impossible to miss even when the strobe lights are flashing. And flash they do in his latest show. He's recently returned to Broadway as soulless Patrick Bateman in American Psycho the Musical. Yes, that American Psycho. The best selling 1991 novel turned initally troubled 2000 arthouse horror flick turned cultural mainstay and now a Broadway musical. We recite all the history to...

On Monday's (the "dark" night for many shows) Stage Door, we talk theater ...and often its film connections.

Arthur Miller's classic allegory about the Salem witch trials The Crucible is back on Broadway for a limited engagement currently scheduled to run through July. Expect Tony nominations as it's a gripping night of theater with high profile actors like Saoirse Ronan as the vengeful aggressive Abigail, fresh off her Oscar nomination, and acclaimed Brits Ben Whishaw and Sophie Okonedo as the doomed Proctors.

The Crucible has only been adapted to cinema twice, once in French in 1957 and most famously in English in 1996 with Winona Ryder, Daniel Day Lewis and Joan Allen (Oscar-Nominated) in the principle roles. That film was no classic so it's easy for the current production to obliterate it in the mind's eye. But for Joan Allen's utterly brilliant rendering of Goody Proctor. [More...]...

We didn't do our usual Stage Door column this past Monday (on account of no theater trips this week) so let's talk Aaron Tveit since we're focusing on male actors for a change this month. While he originally made his mark in stage musicals (including in the DiCaprio role in Catch Me If You Can) the small screen seems to have eaten up his time since. Nevertheless this week's "Miscast" benefit concert reminded us of his inarguable charisma. (More on that concert in a minute)

 

He hasn't done enough movies given how perfect he was as Enjolras in Les Misérables (2012) but at least we got to see him do Grease Live early this year. Unfortunately he's highly vulnerable right now at falling into the trap that many stage stars do where they end up wasted in TV genres like political, hospital, lawyer, or cop shows  that actors with far less...

The month began with final thoughts on last year's Oscars (yes, those were the 2015 Oscars no matter what search engines, IMDb, and the web say!) and the final podcast of the season. And then we bravely tried to forge ahead unmoored to any one topic, though we immediately lost our more fairweather readers. Damn you random people who aren't reading this!  Ah, well. They'll be back next season. 

March Highlights

get caught up if you missed anything! 

Random March Highlights!

Hello My Name Is Doris and Krisha acting showcases for older women 

Gods Of Egypt and Batman v Superman bad movies: enjoyable & not

2016 Calendar a tentative list

McCambridge Centennial we had fun writing these!

Returning Series

Posterized checked in w/ Sally Field & Saoirse Ronan. How familiar are you?

Best Shot hit Atonement (2007), and Daredevil (2016)

Stage Door attended Broadway revivals The Color Purple & The King and I

Tues Top Ten celebrated...

(1981-1989 – The Three Dragons)

After the early 1980’s, Golden Harvest started to branch out into the modern-day world leaving behind the Kung Fu cinema age and progressing into something massive. From 1981 onwards, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao (The Three Dragons) were about to embark on a sensational journey, progressing from there Kung Fu genre into modern-day Martial Arts and stunt work, something Shaw Brothers were left behind and Golden Harvest was to be the new global company.

Jackie Chan back then headed to the United states to try to break into the international market, but the movies he appeared in didn’t really take off and Jackie was also disappointed with the filming of The Big Brawl. Jackie felt he never had chance to show off his action choreography and wasn’t given the space to add his world of experience to the movie. Although it was Directed...

Charles Brackett ca. 1945: Hollywood diarist and Billy Wilder's co-screenwriter (1936–1949) and producer (1945–1949). Q&A with 'Charles Brackett Diaries' editor Anthony Slide: Billy Wilder's screenwriter-producer partner in his own words Six-time Academy Award winner Billy Wilder is a film legend. He is renowned for classics such as The Major and the Minor, Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment. The fact that Wilder was not the sole creator of these movies is all but irrelevant to graduates from the Auteur School of Film History. Wilder directed, co-wrote, and at times produced his films. That should suffice. For auteurists, perhaps. But not for those interested in the whole story. That's one key reason why the Charles Brackett diaries are such a great read. Through Brackett's vantage point, they offer a welcome – and unique – glimpse into the collaborative efforts that resulted in...

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:   Fan Build of the Day: Have a ghost that needs busting? The Diy Prop Shop tells us how to make a Ghostbusters ghost trap:   Fan Made Posters of the Day: BossLogic designed two posters for Captain America: Civil War, including the one with Iron Man being punched by Captain America below. See the other, depicting Iron Man smashing through Captain America's shield at Live for Films.    Abridged Movie of the Day: Finally catch up with the entire Back to the Future trilogy in only 1.21 minutes (via Devour):   Vintage Image of the Day: Lucille Ball and Katharine Hepburn with their Stage Door director, Gregory La Cava, in 1937. Cate Blanchett has already...

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Lucille Ball: The glamour look. Cate Blanchett to play Lucille Ball: Actress won Oscar for incarnating Ball's fellow Rko contract player Katharine Hepburn Two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett is reportedly slated to star in a biopic of former Rko and MGM actress and big-time television comedienne Lucille Ball. Aaron Sorkin, Oscar winner for David Fincher's The Social Network, will be responsible for the screenplay. According to Entertainment Weekly, the Lucille Ball film biopic will focus on Ball's two-decade marriage to her I Love Lucy costar Desi Arnaz. In 1960, the couple had an acrimonious divorce that supposedly “shocked” clueless fans unable to tell the difference between TV reality and real-life reality. Their children, Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucie Arnaz, had modest acting careers in film and on TV in the '70s and '80s. As per the EW.com report, they're both producing the planned Lucille Ball biopic.

Katharine Hepburn movies. Katharine Hepburn movies: Woman in drag, in love, in danger In case you're suffering from insomnia, you might want to spend your night and early morning watching Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" series. Four-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Katharine Hepburn is TCM's star today, Aug. 7, '15. (See TCM's Katharine Hepburn movie schedule further below.) Whether you find Hepburn's voice as melodious as a singing nightingale or as grating as nails on a chalkboard, you may want to check out the 1933 version of Little Women. Directed by George Cukor, this cozy – and more than a bit schmaltzy – version of Louisa May Alcott's novel was a major box office success, helping to solidify Hepburn's Hollywood stardom the year after her film debut opposite John Barrymore and David Manners in Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement. They don't make 'em like they used to Also, the 1933 Little Women...

Adolphe Menjou movies today (This article is currently being revised.) Despite countless stories to the contrary, numerous silent film performers managed to survive the coming of sound. Adolphe Menjou, however, is a special case in that he not only remained a leading man in the early sound era, but smoothly made the transition to top supporting player in mid-decade, a position he would continue to hold for the quarter of a century. Menjou is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Day today, Aug. 3, as part of TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" 2015 series. Right now, TCM is showing William A. Wellman's A Star Is Born, the "original" version of the story about a small-town girl (Janet Gaynor) who becomes a Hollywood star, while her husband (Fredric March) boozes his way into oblivion. In typical Hollywood originality (not that things are any different elsewhere), this 1937 version of the story – produced by...

“Edwin Drood” comes to Atlanta; a horror homage plays at the Plaza Theatre; and a film about an autistic teen on his first date wins Best Film at the Disability Film Challenge. It’s this week’s Atlanta News Roundup. “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” Now at Stage Door PlayersCharles Dickens’ famously unfinished novel, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” is running at the Stage Door Players through August 2. Books and music were written by Rupert “The Piña Colada Song” Holmes, who won five Tonys for his production in 1985, including Best Musical (when it was known simply as “Drood”). Tickets are available here though they’re selling out quickly. “Solitude” Has Many MastersThough it’s not yet Halloween, two filmmakers—one who is from Atlanta—have paid homage to the suspense masters and slash-meisters of the past with “Solitude,” a horror film that includes shooting styles that reflect the different filmmaking eras,...

The world of Web Series is about as diverse as it gets. From format, to genre, to production quality, they’re everywhere, and some of them take the opportunity to go for a risk.

Being un-Google-able is a risk, as is being a fairly tame show with a name like Cam Girls, but the series, which hits June 1st is surprisingly layered for something that only has 4-6 minutes to get things done.

The story revolves around Liv (Kate Bond), and the journey that leads her to becoming a Cam Girl. As she mentions in the trailer, she starts at the beginning. It’s actually a well-developed road that highlights the odd, and unforeseeable turns our lives may take. A new job, a new friend, a friend’s husband who has spy cams all over his house… the usual.

The show isn’t exactly comedic, or dramatic, and those who...

Laura Benanti is joining a Radio City Stage Door Tour as a surprise celebrity tour guide. However, the tourists aren't quite as excited as Laura, and she leads them on a meandering, improvised and mostly erroneous tour of the Great Hall. Spoiler alert they make it out... eventually. Below, watch as Benanti takes on the city in her latest episode of 'Workin' It'...

For me, Anthony Newley is Matthew Mugg. It wouldn't be until 2015 that I discovered that Anthony Newley is responsible for some of my favorite music, and that he wrote a ton of material with Leslie Bricusse. This piqued my curiosity in Stage Door Records' release of Anthony Newley Sings The Good Old Bad Old Days, which is an altogether fun and somewhat important album for historical reasons.

For our roundup of current goings on, we begin in New York, where you can see Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Eve Arden and Lucille Ball in Gregory La Cava’s Stage Door (1937), surveys of the careers of John Carpenter, Lynn Hershman Leeson and John Boorman, a car company promo by Nagisa Oshima, Jim Jarmusch riffing on Man Ray and documentaries by Wang Bing and Lav Diaz at MoMA. Plus: Billy Wilder in Berkeley, Lewis Klahr in San Francisco, James Benning in Hamburg, Noël Burch in Brussels and more. » - David Hudson...

For our roundup of current goings on, we begin in New York, where you can see Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Eve Arden and Lucille Ball in Gregory La Cava’s Stage Door (1937), surveys of the careers of John Carpenter, Lynn Hershman Leeson and John Boorman, a car company promo by Nagisa Oshima, Jim Jarmusch riffing on Man Ray and documentaries by Wang Bing and Lav Diaz at MoMA. Plus: Billy Wilder in Berkeley, Lewis Klahr in San Francisco, James Benning in Hamburg, Noël Burch in Brussels and more. » - David Hudson...