News

Television was a whole different ball game when "Gilligan's Island" premiered on CBS in 1964. There were prestigious programs like "Playhouse 90" and "Kraft Television Theatre," but the medium was largely viewed as lesser than cinema. Movie stars wouldn't dare diminish their larger-than-life, big-screen stature by taking a role in an hour-long drama, let alone a sitcom. Television is where washed-up actors went to finish out their careers.

Sitcoms could be artfully done in the 1950s and 1960s, as evidenced by classics like "I Love Lucy," "The Honeymooners," and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." On the other hand, they could also result in things like "Mr. Ed," "Car 54, Where Are You?" and "My Favorite Martian." Network executives basically didn't care one way or the other as long as the shows were drawing eyeballs, but when it came to reviews, it's always worth remembering that there are human beings on the receiving end of harsh notices.

Sherwood Schwartz's sitcom "Gilligan's Island" was a tremendous success when it premiered in 1964. The premise is well-known to TV viewers the world over, thanks to its immensely catchy theme song. Five passengers set sail from Hawai'i one afternoon, hoping to take a three-hour boat tour of the island, guided by the Captain and the First Mate of the S.S. Minnow. The ship, however, hit bad weather, was thrown off-course, and crash-landed on an uncharted tropical island. The series showed the travails of the seven stranded castaways as they aimed to survive, and consistently bungled their own attempts at escape. "Gilligan's Island" took place in a cartoonish world, however, where there was no actual scarcity or death. Everything was bright and clean and the castaways generally got along. 

Meanwhile, two years later ... 

William Dozier's adventure comedy series "Batman" was a tremendous success when it premiered in 1966. Its premise...

The Twilight Zone season 1, episode 3: “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”.The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by the benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.—J. G. Ballard, Kingdom ComeRod Serling cuts a striking figure in American iconography. A handsome, shadowy silhouette in a stark suit and tie with a cigarette perched between two fingers, Serling would rhapsodize dark legends from the depths of the nation’s fractured postwar psyche every week on The Twilight Zone (1959–64). Born in Syracuse, New York, Serling maintained his quintessentially East Coast everyman aesthetic even after moving to Los Angeles, following the major players in the television industry. Dark brows furrowed, mouth set in a stern, straight line—Serling wasn’t a vain man, but he was conscious that his image projected this persona and always ensured that he...

Earl Holliman, the actor best known for playing Angie Dickinson’s boss on the 1970s NBC cop drama Police Woman, has died. He was 96.

Holliman died Monday in hospice care at his home in Studio City, his spouse, Craig Curtis, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Holliman won a best supporting actor Golden Globe for portraying Katharine Hepburn’s girl-crazy kid brother in The Rainmaker (1956) — he beat out Elvis Presley for the role — and then appeared in another Burt Lancaster film, as Wyatt Earp’s assistant in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).

In the George Stevens epic Giant (1956), the Louisiana native played the son-in-law of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson’s characters, was the cook in Forbidden Planet (1956) and appeared as the brother of John Wayne, Dean Martin and Michael Anderson Jr. in Henry Hathaway’s The Sons of Katie Elder (1965).

Holliman also portrayed a man with amnesia in a deserted town...

Only deep-cut "Twilight Zone" aficionados will know this, but actor Jay Overholts holds the record for the most number of appearances on the show (Rod Serling himself notwithstanding). Counting voice performances, Overholtz appeared in the following:

In "Where Is Everybody?" he played the voice of a radio reporter. In "One for the Angels", he played a doctor. In "A Thing About Machines", he played an intern. In "Twenty Two", he played the voice on a Pa system. In "The Odyssey of Flight 33", he played an airline passenger (pictured above). In "Static", he played a random background character. In "The Jungle", he played a cab driver. And in "Showdown with Rance McGraw", he played a cowboy.

Overholts didn't have much of an acting career beyond those eight episodes, however. He was in two episodes of "Playhouse 90" in 1959 and turned up in a single episode of "Gunsmoke" as an unnamed character.

Aaron Sorkin does not have much interest in reviving The West Wing. Created by Sorkin, the show ran from 1999 to 2006 and explored the day-to-day reality of life in the White House under President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen). The West Wing has been praised for its accuracy and the incredible performances of its ensemble cast. The show won over two dozen Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes throughout its run. Despite its success, it has never been continued after its 2006 finale.

In an interview with The New York Times, Sorkin explained his lack of interest in a modern revival. While he does enjoy the show and remains pleased with its quality and inventiveness, he feels no need to bring it back. Sorkin even believes that continuing the series today would hamper the memories from his experience developing it. Check out his quote below:

Im always reluctant to go back and visit it,...

Full disclosure, this writer has rewatched the entirety of NBC’s landmark political drama “The West Wing,” all seven seasons/156 episodes, roughly 10 times. This may read as a lot for some, but considering the show’s been around 25 years come September 22, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the viewership habits of more die-hard fans. According to Nielsen, since being dropped on Max in 2020, the series has clocked 212 million viewing hours, but not amongst those tuning in is the show’s creator, Aaron Sorkin.

“I’m always reluctant to go back and visit it, out of fear that it won’t live up to the memory of making it,” Sorkin said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “There have been a couple of times when I’ve had to go back and watch an episode. Four years ago, we did a get-out-the-vote special, staged...

TV dramas have come a long way since the days of Playhouse 90, Hallmark Hall of Fame and Net Playhouse – all of which won Emmys for best drama in the 1960s. Even the category’s name has evolved since then, from Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Drama to Outstanding Dramatic Series or Outstanding Series-Drama and the current Outstanding Drama Series.

Click through a gallery of the shows that have taken home to marquee Emmy Award since 1960 – from the elegance of The Defenders and the period tech of Mission: Impossible through cop shows including Police Story, Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue; medical shows Marcus Welby, M.D. and ER, the legal offices of L.A. Law and The Practice; such quirky fare as Picket Fences, Northern Exposure and Ally McBeal; and into the antihero tales of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad – and many more.

Along the way you’ll...

Before "Salem's Lot" returned to the zeitgeist with a highly-anticipated reboot movie, the Stephen King classic was a miniseries that shook the world. Directed by "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" mastermind Tobe Hooper, the two-part 1979 series was event TV at its spookiest.

The original "Salem's Lot" limited series has never been among the best King adaptations out there, but it holds a unique place in pop culture history thanks to its status as one of the earliest on-screen takes on a King book — plus some truly frightening moments. Several members of the show's sprawling ensemble cast, including David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin, and vamp actor Reggie Nalder, have passed away in the decades since "Salem's Lot" first beamed its way into our collective consciousness. Of the actors who are still with us, several have gone on to award-winning careers in film and television, while others retired or found fulfillment in other careers.

Netflix’s “The Crown” could be set to join an exclusive Emmys club by winning the award for Best Drama Series for its final season.

The period show wrapped up late last year by exploring the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales; the premiership of Tony Blair; and the wedding between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. This sixth season saw the return of Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Phillip, Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Dominic West as Charles, and Elizabeth Debicki asDiana. The show earned rave reviews.

Aramide Tinubu (Variety) noted: “With this devastating first section of its final chapter, Netflix’s crown jewel bids farewell to an icon, and retakes its throne.”

Melanie McDonagh (Evening Standard) observed: “This season is even more plagued than the rest by us knowing what happens. The interest is in how we get there. And boy, Peter Morgan fills the gaps.

Sydney Pollack was the Oscar winning filmmaker who could’ve branded himself as Hollywood’s favorite journeyman, crafting solid entertainments for over 40 years. But how many of his titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at all 20 of his films as a director, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1934, Pollack got his start as an actor, studying under legendary New York teacher Sanford Meisner. He cut his teeth is television, appearing in such shows as “The Twilight Zone,” “Playhouse 90” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” before transitioning into directing for the small screen. Even after making a name for himself behind the camera, he kept popping up onscreen, starring in “The Player” (1992), “Husbands and Wives” (1992), “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999), “Changing Lanes” (2002), “Michael Clayton” (2007) and his own “Tootsie” (1982), to name but a few.

It was this experience as a performer that made him a favorite with actors, including Robert Redford, with whom he made seven films.

Sidney Lumet was the Oscar-nominated director who proved incredibly prolific during his career, directing over 40 movies in 50 years, from his feature debut “12 Angry Men” (1957) through his cinematic farewell “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” (2007). But how many of those titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 20 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born on June 25, 1924, Lumet got his start as a child actor, appearing in “One Third of a Nation” (1939) when he was 15 years old. After serving during WWII, he quickly began directing Off-Broadway plays before moving into the burgeoning medium of television, where he helmed hundreds of live teleplays. While working on episodes of “Playhouse 90,” “Kraft Theater” and many more, he honed his abilities to shoot quickly and economically.

His turned to movies with “12 Angry Men,” an adaptation of Reginald Rose‘s TV drama about a lone juror (Henry Fonda) holding out during a murder trial.

While most families spend their nights huddled around the TV watching the latest PG-rated family-friendly fodder, horror writer Akela Cooper’s family was up to something a little more sinister. “I watched a lot of R-rated horror movies with my brother, sister and my parents,” Cooper recalls with a laugh. Often anxiously enthralled by the latest creature feature or delightfully spooked by a certain sweater-clad dream demon hell-bent on terrorizing small-town teenagers while they slept, Cooper felt she didn’t have a fighting chance to rebel against the innate pull of eventually becoming a professional Hollywood horror writer.

“Horror speaks to me in ways other genres don’t,” Cooper says. “And I think it’s because horror and sci-fi allow you to address real-world issues with a kind of shiny veneer that allows you to have a message without people feeling like it’s preachy.” Specifically, Cooper cites an influential episode,...

The Judge, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall, subtly references Duvall's feature film debut in To Kill A Mockingbird. Both The Judge and To Kill A Mockingbird share themes of corruption and murder, creating ethical dilemmas for the characters. Despite mixed reviews, The Judge gained popularity on Netflix for its powerful legal drama and strong cast performances.

Robert Duvall's role in The Judge includes a major callback to his feature film debut that was released more than 6 decades ago. Directed by David Dobkin, The Judge is a powerful legal drama that gained popularity on Netflix in May 2024 after originally being released in 2014. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, earning just a 48 Metascore and a 49% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Judge has strong ratings among audiences.

Duvall, the celebrated actor who starred in The Godfather (1971), The Godfather Part II (1974), Network (1976), and Apocalypse Now (1979), leads the cast of The Judge alongside...

Parting is such sweet sorrow, particularly when it comes to Emmy voters. In recent years, the TV academy has given goodbye hugs to four Best Drama Series contenders for their final seasons: “Succession” (2023), “Game of Thrones” (2019), “Breaking Bad” (2014) and “The Sopranos” (2007). The only other dramas to land on this farewell list all hail from many decades ago: “Upstairs, Downstairs” (1977), “Elizabeth R” (1972), “The Bold Ones: The Senator” (1971) and “Playhouse 90” (1960). Will “The Crown” now become the ninth such program at the upcoming 2024 Emmys?

According to Gold Derby’s early Emmy odds, “The Crown” is way out front to win Best Drama Series for its sixth and final season. Rounding out the likely Top 8 nominees are “The Morning Show,” “The Gilded Age,” “Slow Horses,” “Loki,” “3 Body Problem,” “The Curse” and “Sugar.” Netflix notably split up the last episodes of “The Crown” into two parts — the first part streamed November 16 and dealt...

Like most areas of the entertainment industry outside of acting, casting and costuming, television writing was generally one big boys club until women began making (incremental) inroads during the 1990s. There were trailblazers like "I Love Lucy" scribe Madelyn Pugh, but that trail was walked far too infrequently for far too many years.

Anyone who possessed a conscience knew this was unacceptable, which is why it's disappointing that a politically progressive (particularly for his era) writer like Rod Serling never made a concerted effort to work at least one female writer into "The Twilight Zone" mix during the series' five seasons (which stretched from 1959 to 1964). To be fair, Serling did adapt the work of women for certain episodes; in fact, a tale that many consider the show's finest half-hour, "Time Enough at Last," was based on a short story by sci-fi/fantasy writer Lynn Venable. But he never managed to...

Severin follows up their 2023 collection of Italian gothic titles with an essential second volume that brings together three films and a miniseries. Each work takes a very different approach to the gothic as both a visual aesthetic and a set of thematic preoccupations. The results range from virtually archetypal to resolutely revisionist. For this well-appointed set, Severin provides a veritable bounty of bonus materials: new restorations, alternate cuts, commentary tracks, cast and crew interviews, visual essays, even a soundtrack CD.

Antonio Margheriti’s Danza Macabra, from 1964, is one of the very best Italian gothic films. It simply oozes with atmosphere courtesy of Riccardo Pallottini’s moody monochrome cinematography, and, while the violence remains relatively restrained, Margheriti brazenly pushes the envelope when it comes to nudity and some suggestive sexual content. Likely as a bid to cash in on Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle, Danza Macabra not only claims to be...

“Succession” went out on top for its fourth and final season, ending up with six Emmys Monday night including the top prize. The HBO series took home the prize for outstanding drama series for the second consecutive year and third consecutive season. It joins other three-peaters like “The Defenders,” “Dragnet,” “Playhouse 90” and “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

While accepting the prize, series creator Jesse Armstrong said, “We want to thank HBO. This wasn’t necessarily an easy show to commission right at the very beginning.”

He went on to say hello to “Jeremy Strong, who’s making a movie and Lucy, who’s made a baby. We send our love to both of them.”

Armstrong then grimly joked, “This is a show about family, but it’s also about when partisan politics and news coverage gets intertwined with divisive right-wing politics. After four seasons of satire, that’s a problem I understand we have now fixed.

Rod Serling is primarily known for creating and developing the majorly popular anthology series "The Twilight Zone," on top of being the charismatic host who bookended every episode with valuable insight. Airing for five seasons, "The Twilight Zone" was home to tales that ranged from the nostalgic to the macabre, often sprinkled with a touch of science fiction and horror that reflect everyday societal ills. Interested in telling stories that pushed the boundaries of network TV while evading censorship, Serling and his talented team of writers came up with scripts that forayed into a liminal space they dubbed The Twilight Zone, where anything was possible and nothing could be taken for granted.

Serling's legacy eclipses "The Twilight Zone," of course, as the screenwriter/playwright was also involved in penning the scripts for films like "Patterns," which was televised by the Kraft Television Theater in 1955. He additionally wrote scripts for shows...

The former most popular episode of "The Twilight Zone" had a bumpy road to success. The season 3 outing "Nothing in the Dark" may have left a strong impression on viewers with its passionate take on mortality, but some of its casting choices left those involved worried it wouldn't work at first. Namely: a young Robert Redford, still in his earliest years on screen, apparently didn't make a strong positive impression with his performance.

"He was very new," episode director Lamont Johnson is quoted as saying in Marc Scott Zicree's book "The Twilight Zone Companion." Johnson, who also helmed such famous chapters as "The Shelter" and "Five Characters in Search of an Exit," didn't outright disparage Redford's performance as one of just three characters in the episode, but Zicree notes that he wasn't great in the chapter in which he interviews the filmmaker. While Johnson wasn't outright critical of the actor,...

Rod Serling was successful before "The Twilight Zone," but he was far from famous, at least outside of writer circles. After he came back from fighting in World War II, Serling took his talents as a writer and actor to the radio before branching out into screenwriting for feature films and then the strange new world of television. 

He wrote for a popular series called "Playhouse 90," an anthology drama show where each episode played out more like a proto-Movie-Of-The-Week. This experience was filled with ups and downs for the creative mastermind, most notably in his fight with the censors who balked whenever he tried to address any of the pressing issues of the time, like racism, in his work. 

His next project would see Serling's work get its full due and then some. "The Twilight Zone" is still an institution all these decades later, in large part due to...

Piper Laurie, who blossomed as an actress only after extricating herself from the studio system and went on to rack up three Oscar nominations, has died. She was 91.

Laurie’s manager Marion Rosenberg confirmed the news to Variety, writing, “A beautiful human being and one of the great talents of our time.”

Laurie scored her first Oscar nomination for her work opposite Paul Newman in 1961’s classic poolhall drama “The Hustler,” in which she played an alcoholic who memorably tells Newman’s character, “Look, I’ve got troubles and I think maybe you’ve got troubles. Maybe it’d be better if we just leave each other alone.”

Though she informally retired to raise a family for more than a decade, she returned to film and television in the mid-’70s and racked up an impressive roster of characterizations, including Oscar-nominated turns in “Carrie” and in “Children of a Lesser God,...

The modest aims of director William Friedkin’s final film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, are evident from the start. The film is an adaptation of Herman Wouk’s 1954 two-act play of the same name, which the author adapted from his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny. And both Wouk’s play and Friedkin’s film jettison the book’s maritime actions to focus solely on the military tribunal that results from it.

That means that nearly the entire film takes place within a small hearing room where military judges hear arguments for and against Lieutenant Stephen Maryk (Jake Lacy), who faces both discharge and imprisonment for usurping the command of Lt. Commander Phillip Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland) during a storm. Maryk and a handful shipmates argue that Queeg lost control of his senses and had to be displaced, but the burden of proof for upending the military’s fiercely maintained chain...

At 5’2, Mickey Rooney may have been small in stature, but he had a huge personality and was one of the biggest stars in the heyday of the Golden Era of Hollywood. He had one of the longest careers of any entertainer, with a body of work that spans nine decades in the industry, including vaudeville, films, television, radio and the stage.

Rooney was born Joe Yule, Jr. on September 23, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York. At 17 months old, he made his stage debut in his parent’s vaudeville act, and made his motion picture debut in 1926. In 1927, he starred in the first of several short films in the “Mickey Maguire” series, and adopted the stage name “Mickey Rooney.” He made 78 of these comedies, and also received great notices in films such as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935). Then in 1937, he made the film that would establish his star status. “A Family Affair” was...

Although he had a career in theatre, radio, and feature films, writer/producer Rod Serling's legacy is inexorably tied to the medium of television. That's for very good reason, of course: not only did Serling create multiple television series that has withstood the test of time (such as "Night Gallery"), but he also was responsible for shaping a good deal about television as we've come to know it. For instance, the teleplay he wrote for an episode of "Kraft Television Theatre" entitled "Patterns" was so popular that the series decided to rebroadcast it in its entirety, thereby creating the concept of the "rerun."

As such, Serling was deeply entrenched in the rise of television, and that meant having to deal with growing pains and emerging annoyances. In order to continue experimenting with the form of TV and pushing the envelope of what types of stories could feature there, Serling...

There are a whole lot of things that Robert Redford is famous for: acting, directing, co-founding the Sundance Film Festival, being incredibly handsome, even running Hydra from within the United States government ... the list goes on and on and on. He became a silver screen icon in classic films like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Way We Were," "The Sting," "Three Days of the Condor," "The Natural," "Sneakers," and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." He even won an Academy Award for directing the acclaimed 1980 drama "Ordinary People."

But in spite of all that there's one thing that Robert Redford is not famous for, and that's his tireless work in the horror genre. That's because, despite an acting career that spanned 60 years, he never really made any horror films. You'd have to go way back to 1962 to find Redford's last real brush with the supernatural, but it's well worth the journey.

Inga Swenson, the versatile actress best known for memorable portrayals of combative women on the TV hits Soap and Benson, has died. Her son confirmed the news to TMZ. Swenson was 90.

Swenson’s involvement on the shows began with a multi-episode arc on Soap in 1978 as the conniving revenge-seeking Ingrid Svenson, the Swedish birth mother of Corinne Tate (Diana Canova). That led to a new role on the show’s spinoff, Benson, as Gretchen Kraus, an autocratic and combative German cook.

Over the course of the latter Swenson’s character was frequently at odds with Benson (Robert Guillaume) himself, often trading insults with him as he sought to run household affairs for Governor Eugene X. Gatling (James Noble). Despite their rivalry, Benson and Kraus later became close friends on the show. Swenson was Emmy nominated three times for the role, in 1980, 1982 and 1985.

A year before her first TV credit – an...

Screenwriter Bo Goldman, who has won multiple Academy Awards for his work, has sadly passed away.

The New York Times reports that Goldman died on Tuesday in Helendale, California. The news was confirmed by his son-in-law, Todd Field, who helmed Tár. A cause of death hasn't yet been shared. Goldman was 90 years old.

Related: Louise Fletcher's Cuckoo Nest Asylum Was Full of Future Supervillains

A talented screenwriter, Goldman has won two Academy Awards for his writing. This includes winning the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975. That script, co-written with Lawrence Hauben, also earned him a Writers Guild of America Award along with a Golden Globe. Goldman was back at it in 1980 when he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film Melvin and Howard. That movie would also garner Goldman a WGA Award, among several others. In 1992, Goldman would...

When Bo Goldman, the two-time Academy Award screenwriter of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Harold and Maude," passed away on July 25, 2023 at the age of 90, the world lost a master dramatist and a razor-sharp observer of human behavior. Hailed by his Hollywood peers as a "screenwriter's screenwriter," Goldman possessed an unerring ear for dialogue and a cliche-eschewing sense of narrative. Be it a wistful satire of the American dream or a bruisingly authentic depiction of divorce, his name on the poster guaranteed an honest, offbeat view of humanity.

And it almost never happened. Goldman was born in the midst of the Great Depression on September 10, 1932. His father owned a chain of department stores that had fallen on hard times, but that didn't stop the besieged patriarch from sending his son to the prestigious likes of Phillips Exeter and Princeton University. It was at the latter institution that Goldman discovered a love for theater,...

Screenwriter Bo Goldman, who won Oscars for his scripts to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard” and was among a select group of film scribes including Robert Towne and William Goldman considered to be among that generation’s best, died Tuesday in Helendale, Calif., his son-in-law, director Todd Field, confirmed to the New York Times. He was 90.

Goldman was also Oscar nominated for 1993’s “Scent of a Woman.”

The 1976 Oscar he shared with Lawrence Hauben for co-adapting Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was a particularly impressive achievement considering that “Cuckoo’s Nest” represented only Goldman’s second screenplay and the first to be produced. The win for adapted screenplay was part of a sweep for the film that also included victories for best picture, director, actor and actress. No movie had won those five awards since 1934’s “It’s a Wonderful...

Bo Goldman, the late-blooming guru of screenwriting who received Academy Awards for his work on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Melvin and Howard, has died. He was 90.

Goldman died Tuesday in Helendale, California, his son-in-law, director Todd Field, told The New York Times.

Goldman’s first screenplay was, years after he wrote it, directed by Alan Parker for Shoot the Moon (1982), which featured Diane Keaton and Albert Finney in a raw, seriocomic drama about a disintegrating marriage.

He also co-wrote the Mark Rydell-directed rock drama The Rose (1979), starring Bette Midler in an Oscar-nominated turn, and Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman (1992), which netted him his third Academy Award nom (and Al Pacino the best actor Oscar, too).

Goldman was one of the handful of screenwriters — Paddy Chayefsky, Francis Ford Coppola, Horton Foote, William Goldman, Billy Wilder and Joel and Ethan Coen among them — to win Academy...

It’s appropriate that Netflix dropped the sixth season of “Black Mirror” on June 15, the same day that Emmy voting began. The series isn’t eligible for this year’s awards, of course, but it has been a dominant force at the Emmys for years, even sparking a rule change that affects a number of other anthology programs this year.

And because of that rule change, it’s going to be a lot harder for any of those other programs — which include “Documentary Now!” and “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities” — to be nominated for Emmys this year.

First, a little background. “Black Mirror,” created by Charlie Brooker and first airing in 2011, was inspired by the classic 1950s and ’60s series “The Twlight Zone,” in which Rod Serling used each episode to tell a different story — usually creepy or scary, usually with a twist, always with a moral. Back then,...

Wes Anderson has explored many distinctive milieus over the years, from the fictional Zubrowska of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” to the bottom of the sea in “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” and “Isle of Dogs.” However, “Asteroid City” may be Anderson’s most personal backdrop yet, as its chief subject is storytelling itself.

A playful meta narrative that defies simple categorization, “Asteroid City” functions as three movies in one: It’s the colorful story of a Junior Stargazers convention in a midwestern desert town circa 1955, but it’s also a 1950s TV play called “Asteroid City,” and on top of that, a behind-the-scenes look at a troubled playwright (Edward Norton) working on the aforementioned play. There’s an alien played by Jeff Goldblum, but also Jeff Goldblum playing an alien. Got all that?

In addition to being a movie about acting, “Asteroid City” is an acting showcase. Anderson regular...

Imagine you’re a filmmaker, and you’ve assembled a dream cast of A-list stars, crack character actors, and your usual stock company of famous faces. Your production-design team has gifted you with a set that’s evocative of a 1950s Southwestern desert landscape, complete with Monument Valley vistas and Route 66 iconography. The costume designer has absolutely nailed the period couture, from cowpoke denim-on-denim to aristocratic golf duds to bewitching fitted dresses. The sunbaked color palette suggests a faded postcard from family vacations past. A longtime friend and fellow idiosyncratic...

Wes Anderson’s latest absurdist comedy is about many things, part homage to Playhouse 90, part play-within-a play, but at the core of it is a bunch of travelers marooned in the desert western town of Asteroid City.

Of the many stuck, err, visiting in a funk are Scarlett Johansson’s movie star character Midge Campbell with her science-obsessed teenage daughter, and Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenback who hasn’t told his three young daughters that their mother has passed. Amid it all, there’s a young adult stargazers science contest filled with various innovative experiments and scholarship money to boot for the participants which the military out in the desert is sponsoring.

This gaggle of folks — are they in some sort of purgatory? Or is the movie some sort of self-reflection on behalf of Anderson during Covid when he was developing the script? The latter question was asked at...

With apologies to Guns N’ Roses: Don’t take me down to the Asteroid City / Where the tropes are tired and the gags ain’t witty / Make it stop (Oh, won’t you please make it stop).

To clarify an important point upfront, I’m no Wes Anderson hater. I get that he’s the most parody-able of contemporary American directors, with his taste for painstakingly designed retro-theatrical artifice, for boxes within narrative boxes, for framing and camera movement choices identifiable from a mile away, characters that drip drolleries and plots that plunge fearlessly into manneristic preciousness. But when all the elements click into place, Anderson’s manicured worlds can be enchanting places to visit. Or they can be suffocating constructs that wring all the charm out of his signature storytelling style. Which brings us to Asteroid City.

Premiering in the main Cannes competition ahead of its June 23 release through Focus,...

With its abundance of positive reviews and heaps of industry accolades, “Succession” can unequivocally be counted as one of the most highly revered series in TV history. Judging by the impression its final batch of episodes have made on viewers so far, it seems like it will be the show to beat at the upcoming Emmys. After winning Best Drama Series in 2020 and 2022, the HBO hit could now take the prize for its farewell installment, emulating just seven other programs.

The fourth and final season of “Succession,” which premiered on March 26, follows the fractured Roy family as they close in on the inevitable reality of patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) no longer being in charge of Waystar Royco. As hard as they try to distance themselves from him, Logan’s emotionally stunted adult children continually find it impossible to escape his powerful influence.

SEEExperts slugfest: Guessing the 2023 Emmy guest categories

The...

Logan Roy f—ing wins and so does “Succession.” The HBO hit has won Best Drama Series at the Emmys the last two times it was eligible and is the runaway favorite in the odds to snag a third trophy for its fourth and final season. Should that happen, “Succession” will join a quickly expanding list of shows to win the series honor for its last season.

Prior to 2000, only five shows that ran for multiple seasons managed to take home the top prize with its final outing: “Playhouse 90”, “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, “Upstairs, Downstairs”, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Barney Miller”. It’d be 23 years before another farewell coronation occurred. “Everybody Loves Raymond” won comedy series in 2005, its second total, for its ninth and final season. Two years later, “The Sopranos” cut to black with its second drama series statuette for the second part of its sixth and final installment.

Steven Spielberg is a pure visual storyteller. You can watch most of his movies on mute, and figure out the plot via the meticulous composition of each shot and how it flows into the next. Since the advent of sound, the number of directors capable of or interested in crafting a film in this manner has gradually dwindled. Movies nowadays are generally dialogue delivery systems. So we must savor our Spielbergs, and, if this style of filmmaking interests you, learn from them.

Framing and mise-en-scène are critical elements, but guiding your audience from shot to shot is every bit as important. Cutting from the master to a close up or whatever angle most clearly conveys the story is an art in itself. So while Spielberg will always cite David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" as "the film that set me on my journey," he feels equally indebted to a filmmaker from roughly the same era,...

Click here to read the full article.

Clu Gulager, the real-life cowboy from Oklahoma known for his turns on The Tall Man, The Virginian, The Last Picture Show and horror movies including The Return of the Living Dead, has died. He was 93.

Gulager died Friday of natural causes at the Los Angeles home of his son John and daughter-in-law Diane, they told The Hollywood Reporter.

Gulager also portrayed the protégé of hitman Charlie Strom (Lee Marvin) taken out by a mob boss (Ronald Reagan) in Don Siegel’s The Killers (1964), a race-car mechanic opposite Paul Newman in Winning (1969) and a detective working alongside John Wayne’s character in John Sturges’ McQ (1974).

More recently, he showed up on the big screen in such critical darlings as Tangerine (2015), Blue Jay (2016) and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

Gulager’s performance in The Killers convinced Peter Bogdanovich to cast him as Abilene,...

A growing number of consumers are defying the media maze by paying a visit to their neighborhood movie theaters. It’s simpler to buy a ticket than re-subscribing to Netflix or Disney+.

Well, not necessarily. Half way into a new movie this week I realized that I’d mistakenly bought a ticket to a podcast, not a film. At least, the podcast seemed to be the principal protagonist. Had I misread the promotion for Vengeance, or had the filmmakers switched mediums mid-production?

In an earlier era, prospective filmgoers could study reviews and festival coverage or scan magazines before buying tickets. Filmmakers themselves were schooled in aiming their films (and budgets) at specific demos. There was strategy amid the chaos.

Filmmakers today often have no idea whether their work may be headed for theaters or streamerville, or what windows may await them.

In some cases, therefore, they apparently change their minds...

James Olson, who starred opposite Joanne Woodward in 1968’s Rachel, Rachel, played a surgeon investigating a deadly alien organism in the 1971 sci-fi classic The Andromeda Strain and survived the notorious Broadway flop Breakfast at Tiffany’s starring Mary Tyler Moore that closed before it opened in 1966, has died. He was 91.

His April 17 death at his home in Malibu was reported by the Malibu Times.

Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery

A familiar character on television and in film for four decades before retiring in 1990, Olson received his first national exposure in the title role of Kraft Theatre‘s 1956 TV installment The Life of Mickey Mantle, following up that high-profile performance with guest appearances throughout the decade and into the 1960s among them Robert Montgomery Presents, Have Gun – Will Travel, Playhouse 90, Route 66, The Defenders and The Magical World of Disney.

His breakthrough film role came in 1968 with Rachel,...

Nehemiah Persoff, who appeared as Barbra Streisand’s rabbi father in “Yentl” and had roles in hundreds of films and TV series including “Some Like It Hot” and “Twins,” died Tuesday in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was 102.

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Dahlia Reano. Beyond prolific, Persoff racked up almost 200 credits in film and TV in a career that began in the very earliest days of television.

Persoff broke through in the 1959 movie “Some Like It Hot,” in which he played mobster boss Little Bonaparte. (The actor had been the last surviving member of the cast.) Early in his career, he was known for playing villainous tough guys, such as in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man,” starring Henry Fonda, and “Al Capone,” starring Rod Steiger, in which he had a substantial role as Johnny Torrio, the mobster who mentored Capone only to be replaced by him.

Everything old is new again. Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed remake of “West Side Story” has garnered seven Oscar nominations. That haul is impressive but pales next to that of the 1961 original which reaped a whopping 11 bids. Not surprisingly, it was the big winner at the 34th annual Oscars. These took place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on April 9, 1962 with Bob Hope hosting.

The Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein–Stephen Sondheim landmark Broadway musical waltzed away with 10 wins including Best Picture, Director (shared for the first time) and for supporting players Rita Moreno and George Chakiris.

Robbins also received an honorary Oscar that night for his “brilliant achievement in the art of choreography on film.” Ironically, Robbins had received his walking papers from his directing duties 45 days into production. Wise told me in a 2002 L.A. Times interview that the production was behind schedule and over-budget.

Mort Sahl, the acerbic comic whose pioneering style paved the way for such boundary-breaking comedians as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin, died Tuesday at his home in Mill Valley, CA. He was 94.

A friend confirmed his death to The New York Times.

Showbiz & Media Figures We’ve Lost In 2021 – Photo Gallery

Known for his topical social commentary, he boldly skewered politicians and others in a harsh but clean stand-up act. He hosted the first Grammy Awards in 1959, co-hosted the 1959 Academy Awards and a year later became the first comedian featured to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. He also guest-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson multiple times during the 1960s.

Born on May 11, 1927, in Montreal, Sahl’s family moved to Los Angeles when he was a child. After a stint in the Air Force, he graduated from USC in 1950. By the mid-’50s he was doing stand-up,...

Early into the pandemic, Thomas Schlamme got a call from Aaron Sorkin. There’d been talk about hosting a Zoom-based reunion of the cast of “The West Wing” doing a reading from an episode as a benefit for the Actors Fund, and since Sorkin and Schlamme were both original executive producers on the show, Sorkin asked his longtime friend and collaborator if he wanted to be involved. As the president of the Directors Guild, Schlamme already had his hands full as the industry reeled from the total shutdown, so he demurred; besides, it was just going to be a bunch of talking heads reading from a script, so Schlamme figured Sorkin didn’t really need a director, anyway.

Roughly four months later, Sorkin called Schlamme again.

“‘You remember that thing I talked about, the Actors Fund?'” Schlamme recalls Sorkin saying. “‘It’s kind of morphed into something completely different.

In 1958, CBS’ “Playhouse 90” won the first-ever Primetime Emmy award for dramatic anthology series, beating out nominees including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Hallmark Hall of Fame” and “Studio One.”

The anthology Emmy category only lasted a year, but a variation of “outstanding dramatic program,” which mostly recognized individual episodes of anthologies such as “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” continued until the 1970s.

Now, we’re in a new age of anthologies, spurred by filmmakers eager to tell their stories in episodic fashion. This year, that includes Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe,” which film critics attempted to claim as their own when crafting their end-of-year lists but is now an Emmy contender.

But as programming trends come and go, it’s not easy for a bureaucratic body such as the Television Academy to keep up. Hence the recent confusion over what to do with entries including Netflix anthology “Black Mirror.” The streamer found...

After exploring “The Civil War,” “Baseball” and “Country Music,” award-winning documentarian Ken Burns and his frequent collaborator Lynn Novick examined the importance of being Ernest Hemingway in their three-part PBS documentary “Hemingway.” Premiering in April to strong reviews and Emmys buzz, the series weaves Papa’s biography with excerpts from his fiction, non-fiction, and personal correspondence. The series also reviews the mythology around the larger-than-life Hemingway, who penned such classic novels as “The Sun Also Rises,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “The Old Man and the Sea,” to reveal the truth behind the bravado.

Feature film adaptations of Hemingway’s works had mixed results. Hemingway Bff Gary Cooper excelled in 1932’s “A Farewell to Arms” and 1943’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” receiving an Oscar nomination for the latter. John Garfield gave one of his strongest performance in 1950’s superb noir “The Breaking Point,” based...

Johnny Crawford, who found early fame in the 1950s as an original Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club and even more success as the son of Chuck Connors’ title character in the 1959-63 Western series The Rifleman, died Thursday two years after an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and a recent battle with Covid-19 . He was 75.

Crawford’s death was announced on his website.

According to the Johnny Crawford Legacy website maintained by his family and friends, the “passed away peacefully” last night with wife Charlotte by his side. “Sadly, Johnny was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and he was living in a memory care residence before contracting Covid-19, then pneumonia,” the site states. “After a temporary placement at a skilled nursing facility, he was recently moved to an excellent smaller care home close to his wife.”

Born John Ernest Crawford in Los Angeles into a theatrical and musical family – his...

At 25, Shira Haas would be the youngest Best Movie/Limited Actress winner at the Emmys in 50 years, since a 23-year-old Patty Duke prevailed for the 1970 movie “My Sweet Charlie.” 1958 and 1978 are the only other years that the award has gone to actresses in their 20s: 27-year-old Polly Bergen for “Playhouse 90” and 29-year-old Meryl Streep for “Holocaust” respectively. Haas broke through with her performance in “Unorthodox,” which was her American television debut. The four-episode miniseries from Netflix follows Haas’s character Esty Shapiro as she runs off to a new life in Berlin, leaving behind her family and ultra-Orthodox Jewish upbringing in New York.

SEEour interview with nominated writer Anna Winger.

Speaking to Gold Derby this spring (watch the exclusive interview above), Haas says about her journey, “It’s so hard to leave a place, especially when it’s the only thing she knows. Those are the only people that she also loves.