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I’m going to ask you a series of questions. Just relax and answer them as simply as you can. It’s your birthday, someone gives you a calfskin wallet. You’ve got a little boy, he shows you his butterfly collection, plus the killing jar.

For years, Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford had very different ideas about how Deckard, the character Ford played in Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner, would respond to those questions/statements. After all, they come from the Voight-Kampff Test, an examination of empathy used to distinguish between human beings and replicants, the artificially created organic beings that Blade Runners like Deckard hunt down and “retire.” Scott had long maintained that Deckard himself was a replicant, resulting in a delicious irony at the center of the film. However, Ford followed the version of Deckard in the source material, the 1968 Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?...

British film director who vied with Hollywood greats and worked with Katharine Hepburn on The Lion in Winter

In 2001 I visited Katharine Hepburn at her town house on East 49th Street, New York. The nonagenarian star had agreed to see me to comment on some photographs I was hoping to use in the book I was writing about her. Perched on a stool in her spartan basement kitchen and sipping tea, she scrutinised the images I laid before her.

A picture of Hepburn and Peter O’Toole on the set of The Lion In Winter (1968) elicited a comment on the third person in the picture. “Dear Tony. Looking so young and thoughtful,” she said, her eyes lighting up. She was referring to Anthony Harvey, the director of the film, who has died aged 87. “A real English gentleman and a brilliant director, one of the best I’ve ever worked with.

Burbank, Calif. May 19, 2015 – On June 2, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Wbhe) will release The John Wayne Westerns Film Collection – featuring five classic films on Blu-ray™ from the larger-than-life American hero – just in time for Father’s Day. The Collection features two new-to-Blu-ray titles, The Train Robbers and Cahill U.S. Marshal plus fan favorites Fort Apache, The Searchers and a long-awaited re-release of Rio Bravo. The pocketbook box set will sell for $54.96 Srp; individual films $14.98 Srp.

Born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, John Wayne first worked in the film business as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer vacations from University of Southern California, which he attended on a football scholarship. He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for himself in action films, comedies and dramas. It was Ford who recommended Wayne to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western,...

Hollywood greats were honored in the Oscars' annual "In Memoriam" reel, but one person's photo was noticeably absent: Joan Rivers. Rivers - who died in September at the age of 81 after she stopped breathing during a throat procedure - was also not included in the recent Grammys memorial. Many know her for her antics on E!'s Fashion Police and the sharp humor in her 2010 documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. But Rivers, per IMDb, boasts 38 acting credits to her name in a career that spans 63 years. She had roles in everything from Spaceballs to Iron Man 3 and...

Maureen O’Hara, now 94, took time to fondly remember the Hollywood greats from her past such as John Wayne and John Ford. Legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki said he was just happy to be in the same room as Maureen O’Hara. Masterful screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere gave a moving tribute to Hollywood’s “forgotten” writers. And Harry Belafonte, winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, galvanized the industry crowd by asking them to aim higher.

Yes, it was quite a night for the four honorees of the Sixth Annual Governors Awards of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Quite a night. And the Academy got this awards season off to a roaring start with this blessedly non-televised celebration of the greats in this business who may not have always been given their due. It has also become a night for major schmoozing and networking among Academy voters and the huge numbers of Oscar hopefuls.

An Original Voice

“We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get shown the door when the company had suddenly flatlined after eight years of phenomenal growth, and what we got was scared.

But it’s to the credit of HBO’s execs that whatever anxieties they may have had, they showed no panic or even nervousness in public. Instead, they poured any concerns into energetically and immediately addressing the question of, “What do we do now?” The world we knew had changed and there was no going back to the Gold Rush days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company required a humongous...

Andy Murray's Us Open victory and the Hillsborough report were only the most moving highlights of an excellent week

Us Open 2012 (R5 Live) | iPlayer

Hillsborough report (R5 Live) | iPlayer

Walter Kershaw: The UK's First Street Artist? (R4) | iPlayer

David Frost's Hollywood Greats (R2) | iPlayer

The older I get, the more I enjoy sport. Not the actual high-kicking in a slimy bikini, necking Disgusto-nrg-Kola side of sport, though it's Ok on special occasions, like parents' evening. No, I'm more enamoured of wrapped-in-a-duvet, tea-and-toast sport. Sport appreciation. Along with most of the British population I'm a world-beating, all-the-medals spectator. The Olympics and Paralympics proved our nation's worth in this, of course: that amazing atmosphere didn't make its way into the stadium without years of spectator practice, slumped with a tinny in front of Match of the Day, listening to the Test match while making a complicated Sunday sandwich, hitting the...

Most stars are just the front-of-house display for an industry that makes fortunes for many others

I asked my mum over the holidays where her big pile of sketches was, because I wanted my sons to see them. She said she'd thrown them away ages ago. I was stunned. I'd loved looking though them all when I was little. Portrait after portrait of actors, all beautifully copied from the movie magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, some of them oil paintings on greaseproof paper, a nimbus of ochre linseed around their edges, most of them pencil on sugar paper. There were a few of Deborah Kerr, whom my mother, as a young woman, had adored. She was my namesake.

My mother's classmate at school in Essex, Maureen Rippingale, had been particularly fascinated by my mother's ability to capture a likeness, even to ratchet up all that glamour and beauty just a tiny bit more.

I've reviewed the ceremony in the thematic / abstract for Tribeca. So let's get a little more specific here for the big roundup (see also: most wonderful moments and fashion review ~ finis!). Worst and Weirdest Moments coming at'cha now. Whether you disagree or agree, I'd love to hear the moments that left you scratching your head or pissed off.

Worst Things About Oscars 09/10

6 Oscar's Weird Relationship To Youth. The Oscars have never been a youthquake. Institutions are primarily for adults and for kids who dream of growing up to become adults. Certain Young Hollywood stars fit right into the glamour -- the history even -- of the industry's big night. You can't have the movies without both the old guard and fresh faces, after all. Cue Lion King music... "It's the circle of life!" But you need to have the type of young stars that don't require mental gymnastics on the...

Actor-turned-director Clint Eastwood is full of praise for his new muse Angelina Jolie - comparing the her to movie icons Katharine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman.

The Dirty Harry star directed Jolie in his new film The Changeling, and insists he was impressed by her beauty, talent and grace.

Eastwood is convinced that Jolie's star quality harks back to the golden age of Hollywood - something rarely seen in other modern-day actresses.

He says, "She's wonderful. To me, she's like a throwback to the women in film of the Forties. Not to say women today aren't great, but back then there was more individuality.

"They didn't have the same Botox look. Angelina has that great individuality, her own look and her own style.

"I think she would have been just as big a name in that era, the same as Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman."...