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This essay is excerpted from Hollywood High: a Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies, by Bruce Handy, out May 20 from Avid Reader Press.

Leap Day, 1940. The city: Los Angeles. The place: the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, where Hollywood’s biggest names were gathered for the 12th annual Academy Awards ceremony. Among the stars smiling for the cameras: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamar, and emcee Bob Hope.

Professional jealousy was not the evening’s theme, not officially. So surely no one resented the fact that by one important measure — the measure — the answer to the question: Who is the biggest star in the room? was . . . .

None of the above.

Just a month earlier, the nation’s theater owners had conducted their annual poll and named not Gable, not Davis, not Stewart, but the young,...

This week’s film quiz, should you choose to accept it, features questions about the Mission: Impossible movie franchise.

Over time, the Mission: Impossible franchise has become one of Hollywood’s most reliable staples. After running (practically galloping) for almost 30 years, Tom Cruise’s adventures as Ethan Hunt will apparently culminate in next Wednesday’s big release, The Final Reckoning, so we’re marking the occasion with a quiz round all about the thrills and spills so far.

Once you’ve completed this week’s quiz, you’ll find a link to a separate post with the correct answers at the bottom of this post. As always, this is just for fun, but please let us know how you did in the comments (scores out of 30 this week!) and give us any other lovely feedback. And after that, this film quiz will self-destruct in five seconds…

Round One – This Week...

Michael and Danny Philippou have an unusual and refreshing take on the horror genre. In their feature film directorial debut, Talk to Me, they proved that emotional stakes bring something special to scares. The two have taken that aesthetic with their latest, Bring Her Back. And, the other night, I got to see it for myself! To note, I sat in the very front row of the damn theatre in a packed house – a seat that can easily ruin a good movie – and it was mesmerizing. You can look out for a full JoBlo review later in the month, but there is much to love in this creepy examination of loss, which also just got a special Mother’s Day spot you can check out above!

After the screening, the audience tuned in for a live stream interview with Michael and Danny, and their enthusiasm for what we had just witnessed was invigorating.

Tom Cruise has spoken for the first time about how he suggested to Stanley Kubrick that his then wife Nicole Kidman star opposite him in 1999s Eyes Wide Shut “because obviously she’s a great actress.”

The actor makes the rare public acknowledgement of Kidman’s thespian abilities in the May issue of Sight and Sound, the film magazine published by the British Film Institute.

Cruise will be honoured by the BFI on Monday with the awarding of a distinguished BFI Fellowship.

He joins the ranks of other BFI Fellows including giants of the calibre of David Lean, Bette Davis, Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Thelma Schoonmaker, Derek Jarman, Martin Scorsese, Satyajit Ray, Barbara Broccoli, Michael G Wilson, Spike Lee and Christopher Nolan.

The actor-impresario will also discuss his career In Conversation at the BFI cinema complex on London’s Southbank on Sunday evening. Cruise activity is at full speed ahead...

The Children's Hour Photo: 1961 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved

San Sebastian Film Festival will dedicate the retrospective of its 73rd edition to US screenwriter Lillian Hellman, who worked alongside filmmakers including William Whyler, Arthur PEn, William Dieterle and George Roy Hill.

Hellman, who also wrote plays and novels, was born in 1905 and died, at the age of 79 in 1984. The retrospective will encompass all of her work for the big screen, which ranged from the Thirties through to the Sixties.

Retrospective will be dedicated to Lillian Hellman Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival

Among the films screening are Wyler's The Little Foxes (1941), starring Bette Davis, which had a screenplay based on Hellman’s own play and starring Bette Davis and The Children’s Hour (1961), by the same director, starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. Other entries will include The Chase (1966) by Arthur Penn, which considers widespread violence and racism riddling...

The Museum of Modern Art is spring cleaning its archives for a special ode to Old Hollywood. The exhibit “Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography,” which will open June 28, 2025 and be on display through June 21, 2026, features the best studio shots of iconic stars such as Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Harry Belafonte, and more.

This is the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be showcased from the Museum Department of Film’s film stills archive since 1993. “Face Value” will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, with studio photography of Joan Crawford, Louis Armstrong, Carole Lombard, Louise Brooks, Mia Farrow, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Buster Keaton, Anna May Wong, W. C. Fields, Hattie McDaniel, Lupe Velez, Mae West, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Spencer Tracy, and Oprah Winfrey, in addition to the aforementioned stars. Historical figures such as Jackie Robinson, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,...

WeAreMovieGeeks.com attended the TCM Film Festival in Hollywood over the weekend and as usual, it did not disappoint! The theme of this year’s festival was Grand Illusions: Fantastic Worlds On Film and it was chock full of all the sci-fi, fantasy, and film-noir selections anyone could ask for!

The TCM Classic Film Festival opened April 24th with a 45th Anniversary screening of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back at the Tcl Chinese Theater followed by a conversation with filmmaker George Lucas.

Here’s a wrap-up of what we saw over the weekend.

Superman The Movie (1978)

Guest: Michael DeLuca (WB)

First up was Superman the Movie, from 1978. Starring Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder, this is long considered the penultimate Superman movie. And there have been a few since, but none compare with this masterpiece. In attendance to present the film was Michael DeLuca, Co-Chair and CEO of Warner Bros.

John Waters was among the handful of celebs at the 50th annual Chaplin Gala in New York Monday night to tribute friend and collaborator Pedro Almodóvar. The Spanish Oscar-winning “Talk to Her” and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” director received Film at Lincoln Center’s equivalent of a lifetime achievement award with remarks from his beloved screen muse Rossy De Palma, John Turturro, Richard Peña, and Dua Lipa, and even a flamenco dance from Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Waters’ speech, though, was the night’s most memorable and mischievous — no surprise from the “Pink Flamingos” director and Pope of Trash — with Waters praising Almodóvar as “the best filmmaker in the world” while singling out how generous the “Room Next Door” director is with complex roles for women.

Waters recalled “a completely insane club kid party for me when I appeared with my films in Malaga, Spain,” praising Almodóvar as “never pretentious,...

Pedro Almodóvar did not hold back on his opinion of Donald Trump as he accepted the 50th annual Chaplin award from Film at Lincoln Center on Monday evening in Manhattan.

As the celebrated Spanish filmmaker expressed his gratitude for the honor at Alice Tully Hall, he said, “I doubted if it was appropriate to come to a country ruled by a narcissistic authority, who doesn’t respect human rights. Trump and his friends, millionaires and oligarchs, cannot convince us that the reality we are seeing with our own eyes is the opposite of what we are living, however much he may twist the words, claiming that they mean the opposite of what they do. Immigrants are not criminals. It was Russia that invaded Ukraine.”

“Mr. Trump, I’m talking to you, and I hope that you hear what I’m going to say to you,” Almodóvar continued. “You will go...

Cora Sue Collins, the charming child actress of the 1930s and ’40s who worked alongside such legends as Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Irene Dunne and Merle Oberon during her brief but sensational career, has died. She was 98.

Collins died Sunday at her home in Beverly Hills of complications from a stroke, her daughter, Susie Krieser, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Collins played younger versions of Colbert in Torch Singer (1933), Frances Dee in The Strange Case of Clara Deane (1932) and Keep ‘Em Rolling (1934), Loretta Young in Caravan (1934), Oberon in The Dark Angel (1935) and Lynn Bari in Blood and Sand (1941).

“I must have the most common face in the world,” she said in a 2019 interview. “I played either the most famous actresses of the ’30s as a child or their child. They made me up to look like everybody.”

The MGM contract player also was William Powell and Myrna Loy’s...

The 59th Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival will feature a tribute to 1940s American screen star John Garfield.

“We are excited to remember the exceptional but somewhat forgotten career of a pioneer of what, in his day, was an unusually realistic approach to acting by showing 10 titles,” Kviff’s artistic director and the tribute’s curator Karel Och said. “No fewer than eight of them will be screened from the 35mm prints.”

Born on March 4, 1913 as Julius “Julie” Garfinkle, he was one of the first to captivate film and theater audiences with the acting style later known as Method acting. As an intuitive co-creator of the techniques championed by the Actors Studio, he influenced icons such as Marlon Brando, James Dean and Paul Newman.

His nearly quarter-century acting career was influenced by the political situation in the U.S. at the time. Garfield first appeared on stage on the eve...

In the "Gunsmoke" episode "The Jailer", Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake) and Matt Dillon (James Arness) are kidnapped by a bitter old woman in a black dress. Her name is Etta Stone, and she was played by the legendary Bette Davis (who was credited as "Miss Bette Davis"). Etta aims to hang Matt, as he killed her husband — a criminal — several years before. The old woman feels as if Matt himself committed a crime with his murder, however, and needed to face her own frontier justice. The episode also starred "Gunsmoke" regular-guest Bruce Dern (star of "Nebraska") as Etta Stone's son.

Working with a star of Davis' stature was, according to the trivia section on IMDb, intimidating for the "Gunsmoke" cast. Even though the show had been a hit for 12 seasons by the time "The Jailer" aired, there were still levels of fame that Arness and especially Blake weren't used to dealing with.

As he makes his transition from “Saturday Night Live” into cinema with films like “Wicked” and Andrew Ahn’s upcoming re-imagining of Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet,” Bowen Yang is taking time out to pay homage to the filmmakers who have shaped his tastes. Taking a quick trip to the Criterion Closet, he offered his praise to filmmakers such as Wim Wenders and Whit Stillman, but reserved his highest appreciation for the “pope of trash” himself, John Waters.

Describing Waters as “probably my favorite director ever,” Yang took home his film “Multiple Maniacs” and highlighted the filmmaker’s ability to turn the “abject” into something “beautiful and elevated and filmic.”

“What Divine and Mink Stole do in the church, kind of the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen,” said Yang. “I’m not a pearl-clutcher. It takes a lot to shock me. John Waters is a timeless shocker.

Sian Barbara Allen, a Golden Globe-nominated TV actress who appeared in such hits as The Waltons and L.A. Law, died today at the age of 78 in Chapel Hill, N.C. The cause of death was Alzheimer’s Disease.

A prolific television performer of the ’70s and ’80s, Allen was born on July 12, 1946 in Reading, Penn. Raised by her mother and grandmother, upon graduating high school, she received a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse, which sparked her career. She studied with the highly regarded acting teacher Peggy Feury as part of the Journeyman program at the storied Mark Taper Forum.

Afterward, she was soon hired as one of the last contract players at Universal Studios, eventually booking roles on such series like Gunsmoke, Cagney & Lacey, The Incredible Hulk, Hawaii Five-0, Columbo, The Rockford Files and others. She was also the first woman to pen a script for an episode of Baretta,...

Sian Barbara Allen, a onetime Universal contract player who appeared in the films You’ll Like My Mother and Billy Two Hats and played a love interest of Richard Thomas’ John-Boy on The Waltons, died Monday. She was 78.

Allen died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, after a battle with Alzheimer’s, her family announced. She often played characters with “great vulnerability and uncommon empathy,” they noted.

In telefilms, Allen starred with Bette Davis and Ted Bessell as the title character, a housekeeper in a mansion, in 1973’s Scream, Pretty Peggy at ABC; with Claude Akins, John Savage and Patricia Neal in the 1975 tearjerker Eric at NBC; and with Anthony Hopkins and Cliff DeYoung in 1976’s The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, also at NBC (she played the wife of the famed aviator).

Born on July 12, 1946, in Reading, Pennsylvania, Allen was raised by her mother, Ruth, and her grandmother, Etta.

After she graduated from Reading Senior High School,...

Sian Barbara Allen, the actor known for numerous television roles and her lead role in “Scream, Pretty Peggy” alongside Bette Davis, died Monday in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Allen’s death was confirmed to Variety with the cause of death being Alzheimer’s disease.

In the ’70s and ’80s, Allen had numerous roles in popular TV shows, including “The Waltons,” “Columbo,” “The Rockford Files,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “Gunsmoke,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “The Incredible Hulk.” Allen also wrote the “Just for Laughs” episode of “Baretta” in Season 4.

In her film work, she starred alongside numerous stars, including Patty Duke, Rosemary Murphy and Richard Thomas in “You’ll Like My Mother” (1972), Bette Davis in “Scream Pretty Peggy” (1973) and Gregory Peck and Jack Warden in the Western “Billy Two Hats” (1974). She also played Anne Morrow alongside Anthony Hopkins in “The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case” (1976). Allen earned a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising New Actress...

When Danny and Michael Philippou drop something, you pay attention. The Australian YouTubers-turned-genre-wunderkinds shook the horror scene with Talk to Me. Naturally, when I got the invite to a special A24 event in Los Angeles to see two exclusive scenes from their follow-up feature , Bring Her Back, I showed up like my life depended on it. Because maybe it did.

Talk to Me was truly personal for me. When I escaped Russia and was prepping my second short, The Power of the Strike, I saw the Philippous’ debut feature at its European premiere in Berlin, my jaw unhinged, and then immediately booked another screening. I was obsessed not just with the film’s merciless tension and visceral sound design, but also with the Philippous themselves. These guys get horror. They love horror. And they know how to make you suffer beautifully. That energy is contagious.

Now, this energy is back,...

Bruce Glover, a prolific actor who appeared in films like Diamonds Are Forever and Chinatown and acted alongside Bette Davis and Anne Bancroft on Broadway, died at the age of 92, his son, Back to the Future actor Crispin Glover announced on Instagram.

Crispin Glover shared a series of old and newer photos of his father on social media, as well as a family picture featuring himself and his mother, alongside the caption: “Bruce Herbert Glover / May 2, 1932 – March 12, 2025.”

Born in Depression-era Chicago, Glover showed an early interest in performance. While in school he thought about becoming a painter or pursuing a football career. Later on, as an art student, he was asked by a fellow classmate to don a near 100-pound Gorilla suit for a gig “toss[ing] her around” during her stripping act, and thus began his foray into acting. Being drafted in the U.S. Army for the Korean War delayed his plans,...

Bruce Glover, the unorthodox actor who portrayed Mr. Wint, the assassin with the distinctive aftershave who partnered with Putter Smith’s Mr. Kidd in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, has died. He was 92.

His son, Back to the Future actor Crispin Glover, shared on Instagram that he died March 12. No other details of his death were immediately available.

Glover played Deputy Grady Coker alongside Joe Don Baker as Sheriff Buford Pusser in the unexpected box-office hit Walking Tall (1973), then returned for the 1975 and ’77 sequels that had Bo Svenson as the lead.

The Chicago native also portrayed a redneck thug in Stanley Kramer’s Bless the Beasts and Children (1971); Duffy, an associate of Jack Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes, in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974); and a brutish debt collector leaning on a hustler (James Coburn) in Walter Hill’s Hard Times (1975).

Glover performed in hundreds of plays, appearing on...

He protects, he attacks, and he sure has everyone’s backs. Sakamoto Days anime lives up to this idea in every sense. There are comedy, action, drama, and slice-of-life elements, which makes it supreme. It is John Wick coded, that’s for sure, but Yuto Suzuki gives our hero his unique flair.

From coupons to click pens, Sakamoto isn’t your usual hitman who needs a gun to protect himself. He proved that you do not need to follow in the footsteps of gunslingers to look cool. You could make do with chopsticks even, but Season 2 needs to take it up a notch, and here’s why.

Shin, Sakamoto, and Lu in the anime| Credit: Tms Entertainment

Now, the first season ended last week, and it was rather underwhelming for most of us. This isn’t what we would call a finale now, would we? But Second Cour is around the corner,...

Over the last four decades, few figures in the world of film have given as much to the form as Thomas Cruise Mapother IV — or, as we know him best, Tom Cruise. Across 47 films and counting, cinema's real-life action man has run, jumped, climbed, flown, cycled, dived, danced, danced some more, fought, and even breathed his own carbon dioxide, all in service of making the big screen experience as big as it can possibly be. Now, in recognition of his years of service to cinema, both as an actor and producer, the BFI have today announced they'll be celebrating Cruise by awarding the star their highest honour — the BFI Fellowship.

The official press release from the BFI announces that "The Fellowship recognises Cruise’s achievements as an extraordinary, versatile actor whose career has spanned everything from critically acclaimed dramas and romances to dark thrillers and high-octane action films." What's more,...

Tom Cruise is set to receive the British Film Institute’s highest honor, the BFI Fellowship.

The Hollywood star — currently in the U.K. shooting Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s as-yet-untitled film for Warner Bros. and Legendary — is being recognized for both his “achievements as an extraordinary, versatile actor,” according to the BFI, and his “huge contribution to the UK film industry.”

Indeed, alongside Iñárritu’s project, Cruise has spent a large proportion of the last few decades living and working in the U.K., where he has shot numerous “Mission: Impossible” films on location around the country. He famously broke his ankle while filming “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” in London, while much of the final installment, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” rumoured to be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May, was shot in the U.K. at both Longcross Studios and in the Lake District.

Outside of the spy franchise,...

Tom Cruise is expressing his gratitude after it was unveiled on Thursday that he’ll be awarded the British Film Institute’s (BFI) highest accolade, the BFI Fellowship.

The Fellowship recognizes Cruise’s achievements across a decades-spanning career, as well as his contribution to the U.K. film industry as a producer who has shot numerous projects in Britain. This includes his Mission: Impossible films, which have been filmed on location in London, Birmingham, and Yorkshire.

Cruise’s support of the British film industry has therefore cultivated a wealth of talent in the country, bringing jobs, skills, and training to citizens across the U.K. BFI Film Academy and BFI Future Skills programme alumni have worked on the last two Mission: Impossible movies.

“I am truly honored by this acknowledgment,” the actor said. “I’ve been making films in the U.K. for over 40 years and have no plans to stop.

Winning an Academy Award can be a pivotal moment in an actor's career. Many go their entire careers without earning the honor, ultimately settling for an Honorary Oscar to acknowledge their body of work—titans like Barbara Stanwyck, Peter O'Toole, and Cary Grant fit into this category. Some actors have only one Oscar despite decades of consistent work in timeless classics—here's where legends like Al Pacino, James Stewart, and Bette Davis fit. More special are those who managed to win two Oscars for their efforts, including the likes of Marlon Brando,Dustin Hoffman, and more recently, Emma Stone.

Into the Woods: Lesage Explores Wounded Masculinities

In Vincent Sherman’s 1943 Bette Davis-led melodrama Old Acquaintance, the complex relationship between a pair of female frenemies becomes increasingly complicated throughout their lifetime. Resignedly, they rely on a metaphorical phrase to explain their relationship – “There’s always what’s left of the icing.” The same wistful sentiment cannot be said for the troubled relationship between two men in Philippe Lesage’s latest agonizing, unpredictable melodrama Who by Fire, which focuses on a pair of artists whose notable professional relationship dissolved years ago, now reuniting at a log cabin along with a handful of related guests.…...

While All Elite Wrestling fans know her as high-maintenance, low-saturation champion “Timeless” Toni Storm, moviegoers will meet her Clara Mortensen in Ash Avildsen’s Mildred Burke biopic “Queen of the Ring,” in theaters now.

As both a lifelong wrestling fan and an active participant in the sport, Storm says she was honored to embody an early women’s wrestling pioneer like Mortensen. “It was surreal for me, very surreal. Clara, she was a real person once upon a time. I felt like there was an uncanny resemblance as well. I had no idea I looked so good in yellow.”

Despite limited footage, Storm worked to nail Mortensen’s specific in-ring mannerisms. “I studied absolutely everything and really tried to nail stepping into the role of a female wrestler from the 30s and 40s. When I was filming the actual wrestling part of it, I really tried to make it look...

Julia Garner will no doubt garner applause for her masterful Criterion Closet picks, ranging from auteurs Spike Lee to Bong Joon Ho. Yet it was two distinct features that propelled the “Ozark” star to personally pursue acting: “All About Eve” and John Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence.”

And if those seem like odd pairings, let Garner herself explain.

“The first film that I’m going to pick is my favorite film, ‘All About Eve.’ Bette Davis is incredible. Anne Baxter, who plays Eve Harrington, is incredible,” Garner said during a visit to the Criterion Closet. “I watch this movie at least once a year, sometimes multiple times a year. I just think this is a perfect film, and I think everybody should watch this.”

“All About Eve” stars Davis as an aging famed stage actress, who becomes the object of obsession by her titular fan-turned-protege assistant (Baxter). Joseph L. Mankiewicz...

The 2020s are a new golden age for horror. The once-derided genre is gaining long-deserved respect and even the red carpet treatment. In 2024, A-list stars took prominent roles in some of the year’s best and scariest flicks. Heretic featured Hugh Grant as the cheerful cult leader-slash-college professor-slash-titular heretic terrorizing Mormon missionaries. Brat Pack alum Demi Moore tackled the Hollywood machine in the gut-wrenching body horror The Substance. This time, it’s John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush, two long-established, serious actors, who have charged into the horror renaissance, this time tackling an especially scary subject — senility and senior abuse.

Directed by James Ashcroft, a New Zealand actor with an impressive directing roster, The Rule of Jenny Pen is already poised to be the most disturbing horror thriller of the year. Based on the short story of the same name by Owen Marshall, the story follows the imperious and arrogant yet...

Whenever you get veteran stars on the level of John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush in leading roles on screen, attention must be paid.

This teaming, and opportunity for Lithgow (79) and Rush (73) in an industry that doesn’t often offer this kind of chance for its veteran stars. is rare. But in director James Ashcroft’s creepy nursing home drama The Rule of Jenny Pen they get one and go for it with no brakes applied. It is deliriously delicious to watch, if sometimes difficult to digest.

Actually, it is almost impossible to see this film and not compare it to the swath of horror films offered to veteran golden age stars, well past their prime, in the 1960s with everything from Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte to Lady in a Cage, Dead Ringer, What’s The Matter With Helen? and on and on. But the movie that comes firmly to mind...

The Academy Awards have been handing out a Best Actress trophy since the very first ceremony in 1928. Janet Gaynor for a combo of 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans was the first recipient for his leading roles.

Since then, only one woman has won the category four times: Katharine Hepburn for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond. Next with three is Frances McDormand. The ladies with two lead wins have included Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Jodie Foster, Glenda Jackson, Vivien Leigh, Luise Rainer, Emma Stone, Meryl Streep, and Hilary Swank. Streep holds the record of most lead nominations at 17.

The oldest winner was Jessica Tandy (Driving Miss Daisy) at age 80. The oldest nominee was Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) at age 85. The youngest winner was Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser...

Oscars 2025 (Photo Credit – Prime Video)

The 97th Academy Awards will air on Sunday, March 2, 2025. It will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The event will be live-streamed in India on Monday in the wee hours of 5 A.M. on March 3, 2025. There are only a few hours left, so the red carpet has been rolled out, champagnes have been kept on ice, celebs are getting ready to turn heads with their glamorous looks, and we are waiting for the new batch of Oscar winners.

Conan O’Brien is going to host the event this year. Everyone is anticipating the big night to celebrate the huge wins. Before the celebration for this year begins, here’s a list of actresses, from Meryl Streep and Jane Fonda to Katharine Hepburn and others, who have won the maximum number of Oscars over the years. Scroll ahead.

Katharine Hepburn (4 wins out of 12 nominations...

Hollywood has given us some truly iconic celebrity rivalries, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Taylor Swift and Kanye West, Vin Diesel and The Rock. But here’s one you might not have had on your 2024 bingo card, Michelle Trachtenberg vs. Blake Lively. Yes, you read that right. Georgina Sparks vs. Serena van der Woodsen wasn’t just happening on the Upper East Side, it allegedly bled into real life too.

Michelle Trachtenberg and Blake Lively in Gossip Girl | Credits: The CW

The tea is piping hot, and it comes courtesy of a friend of Michelle Trachtenberg’s, who recently spilled some serious behind-the-scenes drama. So, if you ever thought Blake Lively was effortlessly beloved by everyone she worked with, buckle up. Oh, and while we’re at it, we’ll also take a little detour into Michelle’s response to the recent Justin Baldoni lawsuit.

Michelle Trachtenberg couldn’t stand...

Nancy Olson, the last living star of Billy Wilder’s seminal Hollywood satire Sunset Boulevard, still remembers Oscar night 1951. The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won three.

Olson, 96, shared her recollections on a recent episode of It Happened in Hollywood, The Hollywood Reporter‘s eyewitness film history podcast.

Olson was just 22 at the time, and Sunset Boulevard was only her second picture in a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. The role — Betty, a studio reader with ambitions to be a screenwriter — earned her a best supporting actress nomination.

“I did not expect to win and I did not win,” Olson told host Seth Abramovitch. “I felt very rewarded being nominated and that was quite enough.”

She says she sensed her fate was sealed when she entered the Pantages Theatre and was ushered to her less-than-prime spot. “I was seated in the back, on the side,” Olson says.

The statuette,...

The New York City Opera is set to showcase a poignant concert featuring works by composers who faced significant challenges during the 20th century. The performance, titled “Music of Survival: Works by Weinberg, Korngold, and Rovner,” aims to bring attention to overlooked musical legacies and contemporary compositions that echo themes of resilience.

The concert will feature the NYC Opera Orchestra, conducted by Constantine Orbelian, with cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper and soprano Elizaveta Ulakhovich as soloists. The program includes lesser-known cello concertos by Mieczysław Weinberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, two composers whose works were neglected during the Holocaust and its aftermath. Weinberg’s Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra op.52 and Korngold’s Cello Concerto in C op.37 will be performed, showcasing the composers’ artistry and emotional depth.

The event also marks the American premiere of Gennady Rovner’s Symphony Metamorphosis, a contemporary piece that bridges past and present, performed by soprano Elizaveta Ulakhovich.

Crimes of the Future: Mascaro Envisions Trouble Ahead

“Getting old ain’t no place for sissies,” a quote often attributed to Bette Davis (or similar variations of the sentiment) easily applies to The Blue Trail, Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro’s fourth feature which depicts a near-future world where the elderly are conscripted against their will to an isolated concentration camp so the country’s youth can more easily focus on working. While darkly comedic in tone, it’s also a life changing odyssey for its central protagonist, a spry seventy-seven-year-old woman who is unwilling to obey these newly imposed orders. Pleasurably mordant in its critique of governmental propaganda disguising violence and inhumanity, Mascaro showcases lead Daniela Weinberg as a witty, resourceful woman who is far from ready to walk gentle into that good night.…...

Hollywood is a pressure cooker of talent, ambition, and, of course, drama. With fame comes competition, and with competition comes some of the biggest celebrity feuds. Whether it’s actors clashing over roles, musicians battling for the top spot on the charts, or directors and stars butting heads over creative differences, the entertainment world is never short of rivalries.

Sometimes it’s a friendly tension, other times it spirals into a full-blown war, especially when egos, relationships, and big money are involved. Some stars simply can’t stand each other, and when their disagreements spill into the public eye, it’s impossible to look away. Fans take sides, social media erupts, and what starts as a private spat often turns into a headline-grabbing saga.

From career battles to personal vendettas, here are the celebrity feuds of all time that had everyone talking!

30. Sean Young and James Woods

The feud between...

Smoking was having a comeback – until the director’s death after an emphysema diagnosis complicated its allure

David Lynch was a smoker. With an American Spirit perpetually locked between his teeth, he figured fire and smoke as magical textures in his films. To Lynch, cigarettes weren’t merely delicious, but sacred: they gave him the impression of breathing in the world, then blowing it back out again with fabulous grace.

Born in 1946 – 20 years before the US surgeon general pronounced for the first time that cigarettes could cause cancer – Lynch came up in a time when American glamor was buttressed by cigarettes and cinema. Actors like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis danced a beautiful and foolish waltz with death, smoke in hand, while cigarettes were considered the sine qua non of the artist’s life, an ashtray piled up with butts evidence of a good day’s work. “I always associated...

Months after the passing of South African actress Esta TerBlanche, the cause of her death has been officially confirmed.

The beloved All My Children star, who was 51 at the time of her passing in July 2024, succumbed to an intracranial hemorrhage caused by blunt force trauma to the head.

All My Children – Medical Examiner Confirms Cause of Death

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner determined that the injury was likely the result of a ground-level fall and ruled the manner of death as accidental.

An intracranial hemorrhage, commonly referred to as a “brain bleed,” occurs when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures, leading to internal bleeding and oxygen deprivation. The Cleveland Clinic notes that such incidents can stem from traumatic injuries, high blood pressure, or other underlying health conditions.

TerBlanche was discovered unresponsive in her Los Angeles home on July 19, 2024, and was pronounced dead at 11:10 a.m. The medical...

Not every horror movie needs a sprawling franchise to leave its mark on audiences. While some of the genre’s most iconic films have given rise to sequels, prequels, and entire cinematic universes, others succeed as powerful standalone stories. These films don’t rely on follow-ups to expand their terror. Instead, they deliver a complete and unforgettable experience, packing their supernatural scares into one self-contained narrative that lingers long after the credits roll.

Standalone supernatural horror movies often benefit from this focus, creating intricate and haunting tales that don’t need to stretch their mythology or recycle familiar tropes. They offer fully realized stories, unique atmospheres, and devastating climaxes that remain effective without the promise -- or threat -- of a sequel. And when one-off horrors really master the art of supernatural dread, they don't let you go.

The Tension Is On Fire In Burnt Offerings 1976 Image via MGM

A keystone of '70s horror,...

“The Librarians” begins with a quote: “It was a pleasure to see things burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.”

Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder’s illuminating documentary — premiering at the Sundance Film Festival — offers a rattling look at coordinated efforts to ban books. More importantly, it introduces viewers to the everyday and increasingly vital heroes pushing back: the librarians who sound the alarm to both legislative and grassroots attempts to pull books from school and public libraries.

The opening quote comes by way of “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury’s dystopian classic about the ways that book burning and censorship are instruments of authoritarianism. The scene that follows that incendiary opener features a woman sitting in a chair, her back to a window, her face in the shadows. She’s the spitting image of an endangered whistleblower or a witness against a cartel.

Justin Baldoni's media team will have to come up with some stronger hit pieces if they think they can weasel their way out of this current PR disaster.

As every gossip outlet in the English language continues to proclaim in explosive headlines designed to make heads spin in the check-out line, the It Ends with Us star and director is currently embroiled in the most high-profile celebrity feud with former co-star Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds since Bette Davis and Joan Crawford turned the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? into a war zone. Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and creating a toxic work environment on It Ends with Us in a lawsuit filed late last year, and Baldoni has since shot back with dizzying $400 million defamation countersuit against Lively, her publicist Leslie Sloane and Reynolds, whom Baldoni's lawyer believes created the character of...

A few fun facts about Oscar statuettes: 

The award is 13-and-a-half inches tall, and the award, overall, weighs about eight-and-a-half pounds. The statues are made of solid bronze and are plated in real gold. During metal shortages during World War II, the Oscars were made out of painted plaster, although winners were permitted to swap them for bronze ones once the materials were plentiful again. 

It's been said that handing an Oscar too much can make the gold tarnish, so Oscar winners have to be careful with them. The statuettes are made by an art foundry in Chicago called Polich Tallix, the same firm that handled the work of Roy Lichtenstein, and the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. 

The statuettes also, technically, don't belong to the voters or to the people who win them. Indeed, starting in 1951, the Motion Picture Academy introduced a new rule forbidding recipients from...

This weekend sees the wider release of a film that would probably be referred to as “Oscar bait” since it stars two actresses who have that “golden guy” and it’s directed by a beloved and celebrated filmmaker. With the latter, this shares a similar distinction with another lauded “end of the year” work, Emilia Perez. No, this isn’t a musical. The common thread is that Perez was made by a French director who is telling a story in the Spanish language, while this new release has a Spanish helmer working completely in English for the very first time after nearly half of a century in cinema. And though it’s set in today’s modern world it harkens back to the movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age”. It becomes clear to cinephiles the moment they enter (if it’s ajar…a big plot point) The Room Next Door.

Classic Hollywood was a pinnacle time for some of the most infamous on-screen duos, such as John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. While the pages of cinema history are full of notable pairs, one dynamic duo, Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis, deserves to be at the top of the ranks. Ironically, it's also one that doesn't really come to mind when discussions of "all-time best on-screen duos" happen.

Humphrey Bogart owes his involvement in his most famous movie, Casablanca, to the gangster character he played in High Sierra. By starring as Rick Blaine opposite Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, Bogart solidified his status as one of Hollywood's biggest stars and the stage for him to become a cinematic icon. Prior to the film, Bogart was already a veteran actor, but hardly the top actor in the industry.

Most of his acting experience stemmed from Humphrey Bogart's numerous gangster movie roles. Though most weren't particularly memorable or have any individual importance to his career, they kept him busy through much of the 1930s. Toward the end of the decade, Bogart's roles grew more and more significant, with the actor appearing in films like Dark Victory with Bette Davis in Angels With Dirty Faces. All of these parts can be seen as stepping stones toward Bogart joining the Casablanca cast as the male lead,...

Warning: This article discusses topics of racism, violence, and death.

The 1960s is a great era for murder mystery movies. The decade is remembered for several classic movies everyone must watch in their lifetime, and while the earliest murder mystery films are typically from the ‘40s and ‘50s, the subgenre truly blooms in the ‘60s. Plenty of classic 1960s movies were ahead of their time, and to this day, audiences are still enthralled by these old titles.

No murder mystery is the same. Although audiences nowadays are treated to the complex narratives of movies like Knives Out, for example, these ‘60s titles prove that an old-fashioned murder investigation is a timeless concept. From secret villainous protagonists to strained and exhausted detectives, murder mystery movies from the ‘60s are like no other, and they play a significant part in how the titles we see today are formed.

Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte...

John Wayne made a secret appearance on famed Western series Wagon Train - though his voice still gave him away. There's a persistent rumor John Wayne turned down Gunsmoke, one of the longest-running TV shows in history. While major stars regularly cross over from movies to television now, this was almost unheard of back in the 1950s, and an actor of Wayne's stature would never have even considered fronting a TV show. Still, Wayne recorded an intro to Gunsmoke as a favor to leading man James Arness.

Aside from Gunsmoke, another of the major Western shows from this period was Wagon Train. Running for eight seasons, this followed the misadventures of the titular wagon train as it made its way to California and encountered guest stars like Charles Bronson, Leonard Nimoy and Bette Davis along the trail. Wagon Train itself was partly inspired by John Wayne's first major film The Big Trail...

You did it, Golden Globes. You made it to 2025.

It sounds crazy, but the unkillable tenacity of the Golden Globes is such a surprise, it’s downright heartwarming. Just a couple of year ago, it looked like the end of the line for the drunkest, messiest, tackiest, ditziest, and bitchiest of award shows. No network would even air it anymore. But everybody loves a comeback story, right? And lo and behold, the Globes are back to officially kick off awards season. Give it up to new host Nikki Glaser, who made the night a blast.

Bette Davis, one of the best actresses of all time, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress 11 times in her career. Some persnickety Oscar historians might say that she was nominated only 10 times, though, as her nomination for 1934's "Of Human Bondage" was one of the very few write-in votes ever permitted by the Academy. Records show that Davis, although not officially nominated by the Academy, still came in third that year.

Davis only won two Oscars, however. The first was for her performance in "Dangerous" in 1935 and the second was for playing a Scartett O'Hara-like role in "Jezebel" in 1938. Her performance in "Jezebel," Hollywood would eventually learn, was the first in a streak of nominations that would last for five straight years. In 1939, Davis was nominated for her performance in "Dark Victory." 1940 would see her nominated for "The Letter." In 1941, it was for "The Little Foxes," and...

Meryl Streep is the best of the best.

Her performance in Sophie’s Choice (1982) has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Actress winner ever, according to a Gold Derby ballot cast by 21 of our film experts, critics, and editors, who ranked all 97 movie champs.

Diane Keaton ranked second for Annie Hall (1977), with Jodie Foster following in third for The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Liza Minnelli for Cabaret (1972) and Vivien Leigh for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) rounded out the top five.

At the bottom of the list of the Best Actress winners is Mary Pickford for Coquette (1929). Just above that film in the rankings are Luise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Helen Hayes for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932), Loretta Young for The Farmer’s Daughter (1947), and Marie Dressler for Min and Bill (1931).

Another recent Gold Derby poll of cinema experts declared The Godfather (1972) as the greatest Best Picture Oscar winner of all...