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Phyllis Dalton, the revered British costume designer who created Peter O’Toole‘s iconic white desert robe for David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and won Oscars 24 years apart for her work on Lean’s Doctor Zhivago and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, has died. She was 99.

Dalton died Thursday, The Telegraph reported. No other details were immediately available.

During her storied 50-year-plus career, Dalton also received an Oscar and BAFTA nomination for Carol Reed’s Victorian-era best picture winner Oliver! (1968); won a BAFTA for The Hireling (1973), set in post-World War 1; and landed an Emmy for Clive Donner’s 1982 telefilm The Scarlet Pimpernel, which takes place amid the French Revolution.

She started out as a wardrobe assistant on Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944) and got her first costume designer credit dressing Richard Todd and Glynis Johns on Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue (1953). She even aided the legendary Edith Head on Alfred Hitchcock...

Is Steven Soderbergh preparing to join the “Star Wars” universe? Or is he just a huge fan of George Lucas and Tony Gilroy?

The filmmaker behind classics like “Ocean’s 11” and “Traffic,” as well as the upcoming supernatural horror “Presence,” released his 2024 watch list last week, as he has done for many years now, sharing it via his “Soderblog” under “Seen, Read 2024.” Included on the list are a range of films, television shows, and shorts, as well as novels, short stories, and plays, but of particular note are his multiple viewings of “Star Wars” films across the year, seemingly sparked by his watching the Disney+ “Rogue One” spin-off series “Andor” from Tony Gilroy. Soderbergh and Gilroy are longtime friends and collaborators, the former having helped finance the latter’s “Michael Clayton.” They also did a commentary track together for Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” that’s really worth a listen.

Love them or hate them, obsess over them or ignore them altogether, the Academy Awards are a cultural artifact whose history mirrors the very history of American film. Granted, as a gatekeeping and taste-managing institution, the Oscars have always been better at belatedly following and responding to winds of change in the industry than at anticipating or provoking them, and you could probably count on your fingers the number of times that the Oscar statuette in any given category went to a genuinely bold, bracing, game-changing winner. But they're as good a summation of the congealing of critical and commercial mainstream consensus over the decades as we film buffs have. And, as such, it's fascinating to look at the instances of the ultimate winner being so out of lockstep with that consensus as to cause an uproar.

As we gear up for the 97th Academy Awards in March 2025, it's a...

The tension within Ryan J. Sloan’s indie directorial debut “Gazer” is almost unparalleled: Of course the IndieWire review pointed to comparisons between Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, and Christopher Nolan when it came to decoding just how thrilling the feature is.

“Gazer,” which was among our favorite movies at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, premiered during the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Metrograph Pictures later acquired the North American rights to the neo-noir heist thriller, with Head of Metrograph Pictures David Laub saying in a press statement just how much writer/director Sloan’s vision echoes cinema history.

“‘Gazer’ is a movie born of cinema and those who love it,” Laub said, deeming the feature “a brilliant homage to the unforgettable New York thrillers of the 1970s and 1980s.”

Well, we couldn’t agree more. Sloan, who co-wrote the film with breakout lead star Ariella Mastroianni, filmed “Gazer” over weekends...

In 1984, filmmaker Sydney Pollack returned to Los Angeles from an inspiring trip to the Cinémathèque Française in Paris determined to create an American corollary, a place where film lovers could watch movies, talk about them, and meet the artists who made them. He founded the American Cinematheque with Filmex programmers Gary Abrahams and Gary Essert, and 40 years later, the organization is flourishing, with nearly a thousand screenings a year spread across three L.A. venues.

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies will celebrate the Cinematheque’s anniversary with a trio of films programmed by the organization’s artistic director Grant Moninger, senior Film programmer Chris LeMaire, film programmer Imani Davis, and chief projectionist Benjamin Tucker. Moninger will also appear in conversation with TCM host Eddie Muller to discuss the films and the Cinematheque’s legacy and history.

In keeping with the Cinematheque’s eclectic programming, the three films are as different from...

Producer Paul Maslansky, who came up with the premise for the first Police Academy movie and got help from three world-class directors to push the troubled cult classic Return to Oz past the finish line, has died. He was 91.

Maslansky died Monday of natural causes at a hospital in Los Robles, California, his partner of 16 years, Sally Emr, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The New Yorker made his producing debut in Italy on The Castle of the Living Dead (1964), starring Christopher Lee, and he filmed George Cukor’s penultimate feature, the Elizabeth Taylor-starring The Blue Bird (1976), and Fred Schepisi’s The Russia House (1990), starring Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, in the Soviet Union.

Maslansky, who collaborated often with Oscar winner Alan Ladd Jr., also produced Larry Peerce’s Love Child (1982), starring Amy Madigan in the true story of a woman who is impregnated by a guard in prison and has...

Paul Engelen died on November 3 at his home in West Sussex, England. He was a famous makeup artist who made players into unforgettable characters in movies and TV shows. Daniel Lawson Johnston, a fellow makeup artist and his son-in-law, said he was 75 years old and had been fighting cancer.

Over more than 50 years, Engelen had an amazing career in which he worked on some of the most famous movies ever made. For his work as a makeup artist, he won two Emmys and was nominated for two Academy Awards, solidifying his reputation as a master.

Engelen got his start in the business as an assistant makeup artist on Carol Reed’s “Oliver!” in 1968. He quickly became a major creative force in the field. Along with six James Bond movies, he worked on Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun” and “Munich,” as well as the first three seasons of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.

Paul Engelen, the British makeup designer who earned two Emmys and two Oscar nominations in a fabulous career that included work on Reds, Batman, The Phantom Menace, Gladiator and Game of Thrones, has died. He was 75.

Engelen died Nov. 3 of cancer at his home in West Sussex, England, his son-in-law (and fellow makeup designer) Daniel Lawson Johnston told The Hollywood Reporter.

Engelen also did makeup for three James Bonds — Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig — on the 007 films The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), Die Another Day (2002), Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008).

He teamed with Blake Edwards on Victor/Victoria (1982), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun (1987) and Munich (2005) and with Ridley Scott on Gladiator (2000), Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and Robin Hood (2010).

Engelen shared his first Academy Award nom with Rick Baker...

Courtesy of StudioCanal

by James Cameron-wilson

I think it’s fair to say that if you poll any film critic or historian and asked them what were the five most notable films to have come out of this country last century, they would count Brief Encounter, A Matter of Life and Death, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man. As such then, it is always a welcome opportunity to return to any one of the gilded quintet, particularly if they have been painstakingly restored to their former glory, as well as top-loaded with reams of informative and educational bonus material, of which the extras here are an embarrassment of riches. In short, released to celebrate the film’s 75th anniversary as part of StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics Collection, this 4K Uhd package is a gift to film buffs: the picture quality is so sharp you can...

Exclusive: William H. Macy has signed to star in crime comedy Too Many Crooks as an on parole career criminal whose bank robbery plan takes an unexpected turn when he discovers a heist is already underway at his chosen target.

Craig Berenson (Snakes on a Plane) and J. Todd Harris (Chicago 7) are producing the picture, written by Eddie Richey (Phoenix) and directed by Raja Gosnell.

Film Mode Entertainment (Fme) has acquired global rights to the movie, which is currently in pre-production, and will launch sales on the title at the AFM next week.

Macy and Fme President Clay Epstein also take executive producer credits on the crime caper which is based on a Donald Westlake short story, for which he was awarded the prestigious Edgar (Edgar Alan Poe) award for Best Short Story in 1990.

Westlake has been acknowledged by many...

The 2015 4K restoration of The Third Man has now been released in Uhd format. The film benefits hugely from both full 4K resolution and High Dynamic Range. Of the two, Hdr is probably more important. Colour is encoded in a linear fashion. At low light levels minor differences in colour can be quite pronounced when compared to higher levels. 98% percent grey (almost black) is twice as bright as 99% grey, whereas the difference between 9% and 10% is relatively small. These differences can be annoyingly noticeable in the dark scenes of some black and white films.

Carol Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker's exceptional use of light and shadow benefits greatly. The shadows are sharper and the wet cobblestones of Vienna's streets glisten in the night. Its a big step up from the 2015 release, which was 4K downscaled to HD. The sound quality is also good. Anton Karas's score...

To celebrate the 75th Anniversary of much-loved British Classic The Third Man which arrives on 4K Uhd for the first time on 4 November, we are giving away a 4K Uhd to a lucky winner!

Written by Graham Greene (Brighton Rock, The Fallen Idol), directed by Carol Reed and featuring iconic performances from Joseph Cotten (Gaslight), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Alida Valli (Eyes Without a Face) and Trevor Howard (Brief Encounters, Sons and Lovers), The Third Man is celebrated for its endlessly quotable lines, superb Oscar-winning cinematography, iconic musical score and for so many wonderfully entertaining, quintessentially cinematic moments.

Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp Westerns, arrives in a bombed-out, post-war Vienna at the invitation of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find him recently dead. His suspicions are raised after learning of a ‘third man’ present at the time of Harry’s death, and...

New York-based Rialto Pictures is gearing up for the release of Studiocanal’s 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 musical comedy “A Woman Is a Woman.”

The film, Rialto’s first release of 2025, stars Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film will hit selected U.S. theaters on Feb. 7.

The new restoration, which premiered this year in Locarno, was made from the negative 35mm original copy, digitized by Paris-based post production company Hiventy and realized by Studiocanal with the collaboration of France’s National Center of Cinema (Cnc).

Rialto’s biggest success this year was the 75th anniversary of “The Third Man,” Rialto Co-President Adrienne Halpern told Variety at the Lumière Film Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France.

‘The Third Man’

The 4K restoration of Carol Reed’s 1949 classic, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, was carried out by Deluxe Restoration on behalf of Studiocanal.

Bob Yerkes, the acrobatic stunt performer who slid down a clock tower cable for Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future and hung around the Statue of Liberty under repair for Fred Ward in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, has died. He was 92.

Yerkes died Tuesday of natural causes in Northridge, Darlene Ava Williams, a stunt performer and one of his many mentees, announced.

The amiable Yerkes, who started out in the circus and was a skilled trapeze aerialist and tightrope walker, also plummeted from a helicopter through a roof in Breakout (1975), starring Charles Bronson.

“I was getting ready for the stunt and the guy said, ‘Break a Leg!,” and I broke them both,” he recalled in a 2017 interview. He said he also broke legs while working on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Her Alibi (1989), but, in a career that spanned eight decades, that was the extent of his serious injuries.

Prime Video’s “Killer Heat” is a new mystery thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Nick Bali, a private investigator. It shows Nick traveling to Greece to investigate the shocking death of a wealthy man named Leo Vardakis. Nick is hired by Penelope, Leo’s identical twin brother’s wife. The film takes place entirely on a scenic island and relies on the moodiness of the setting as it unravels new bits of information. It seems heavily inspired by the Hollywood noir classics that redefined the genre conventions decades ago. Fans of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and movies like “Killer Heat,” featuring slow-burn mysteries, can check out this thriller on Prime Video.

This 2024 film is based on Jo Nesbø’s short story – “The Jealousy Man.” The film is directed by Philippe Lacôte, known for directing “Night of the Kings,” a critically acclaimed fantasy drama. Besides Gordon-Levit, the film also stars Shailene Woodley and...

Released 75 years ago this year, Carol Reed’s towering masterwork of film noir, The Third Man, has entered generation upon generation. Now, in celebration of its landmark anniversary, a new book by John Walsh uncovers more about its making. The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film, arriving on shelves October 1 from Titan Books, explores the making of the Graham Greene-scripted classic starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.

The beautifully illustrated book dives deep into the making of the film, from Reed’s filmmaking approach to the battle for ownership between U.S. producer David O. Selznick and British producer Alexander Korda, which developed into protracted legal proceedings to the film’s resonance today for filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and beyond. Featuring unpublished photos and new interviews on the identity of the real-life Third Man and its connections to James Bond, we’re pleased to unveil a handful of materials today.

"As soon as I get to the bottom of this, I'll get the next plane." Studiocanal has unveiled a brand new trailer to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the noir cinema classic The Third Man, long considered Carol Reed's all-timer masterpiece that has remained prominent all these years later. This black & white film noir thriller is set in Vienna, Austria, following a pulp novelist from America who's investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime. Written by Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed and featuring iconic performances from Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli, and Trevor Howard. 1949 Cannes Film Festival winner The Third Man is celebrated for its endlessly quotable lines, the Oscar-winning cinematography, iconic musical score and for so many wonderfully entertaining, quintessentially cinematic moments. With a 4K re-release in UK theaters this fall - plus a 4K Blu-ray release. "Screening in beautifully restored 4K, the...

Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 neorealist drama is unsparing in its depiction of the heavy price of both resistance and collaboration with the Nazi occupation

Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 film is a blazingly urgent and painful bulletin from the frontline of Italy’s historical agony: the Axis power that had belatedly turned against the Mussolini fascists only to be humiliatingly occupied by Nazi Germany on whose orders the dictator was reinstalled in the northern Salò puppet state, resplendent in contemptible impotence and pathos, with Rome at its defeated and compromised centre. It was a film that used the so-recently-devastated real streets and people of Rome on location for a project on which Rossellini started script work well before the end of the war, building on ideas by screenwriter Sergio Amidei with dialogue contribution by the young Federico Fellini.

Rome, Open City is revived as part of the BFI Southbank’s Chasing the Real season of Italian neorealism,...

After making what many people cite as the greatest film ever made, “Citizen Kane” (1941), multi-talented actor, writer, director and producer Orson Welles struggled to live up to the success he achieved when he was just 26 years old. Yet seen today, many of the films he made afterwards have attained a similar acclaim. Let’s take a look back at all 13 of his completed feature films as a director, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1915, Welles first came to prominence as a stage director, mounting groundbreaking productions of “Macbeth,” “Dr. Faustus,” and “The Cradle Will Rock” before forming his own repertory company, The Mercury Theater. In addition to Welles, the Mercury Theater Players included Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Agnes Moorhead, Everett Sloane, George Coulouris, Norman Lloyd, Martin Gabel and Paul Stewart, many of whom would go onto appear in the director’s films.

It was the Mercury Theater’s transition into...

Image: Clockwise from top: The Crying Game by Palace Pictures, The Banshees of Inisherin by Searchlight Pictures, The Secret of Kells by New Video

When you think about Ireland, the first thing that comes to mind may not be the country’s robust film industry. But the fact is that...

To celebrate the release of a brand-new 4K restoration of director Carol Reed’s A Kid for Two Farthings, on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital from 26 February, we are giving away Blu-Rays to 2 lucky winners!

Starring Celia Johnson, Diana Dors, David Kossoff and Jonathan Ashmore in his sole acting role, the film is packed with memorable supporting characters including the affectionate Mrs Abramowitz (Irene Handl), blowsy fashionista Lady Ruby (Brenda de Banzie) crooked jewellery salesman Ice Berg (Sid James) and finicky tailor Madam Rita (Sydney Tafler).

In the vibrant Petticoat Lane community of East London, amidst the hustle and bustle of the ancient market, small shops and open-air vendors, Joe (Jonathan Ashmore) lives with his mother, Joanne (Celia Johnson) above the Kandinsky tailor shop, where Joanne also works.

Joe is innocently and earnestly determined to make the lives of his impoverished, hard-working neighbours better. Hearing Mr. Kandinsky (David Kossoff) tell a...

Without Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the films and career of Martin Scorsese would be very different. “Mean Streets” would be less red (thank those titular “Red Shoes”), the title fight in “Raging Bull” wouldn’t have been preceded by that thrilling oner (thank the duel in “Colonel Blimp”), and we wouldn’t have that audacious flash of yellow in “The Age of Innocence,” an idea swiped from the red-hot climax of “Black Narcissus.”

Scorsese has always been admirably honest about his tendency to steal from the best, and “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger” is at its most fun when Marty talks the audience through how the ironic filmmaking duo’s most striking images reshaped the canon. And what — to him — ultimately made them worth stealing.

These seemingly spontaneous moments are well-illustrated by director David Hinton, a BAFTA-winning documentarian who also made an episode of the...

An array of stars portray warm-hearted Londoners in comedy pivoting around a young boy who is a sunny ancestor to Kes

Carol Reed’s 1955 film is a rich slice of gentle, sentimental comedy, adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his own novel. It’s a little bit broad and not in the class of The Third Man or The Fallen Idol, but forthright and heartfelt, and boasting a veritable aristocracy of British character acting talent.

In the bustling world of Petticoat Lane in London’s East End, then the traditional home of the Jewish community, a shy little boy called Joe mopes and daydreams around the place; he’s played by Jonathan Ashmore, with the rather non-East-End stage-school child actor voice that was common in those days. (Ashmore left showbusiness after this one screen appearance and grew up to be a distinguished scientist.) His cheerful but careworn mum Joanna (Celia Johnson) is sadly missing her husband,...

Here are two words for those who believe Christopher Nolan can’t possibly lose the Best Director race at this year’s Academy Awards for “Oppenheimer”: Bob Fosse. And here are three more: Francis Ford Coppola.

When you think about how many consider Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece “The Godfather” to be perhaps the greatest American film ever made, it might shock them to learn that while the film won Oscars in ’73 for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor for Marlon Brando, Coppola lost the director race to Fosse for “Cabaret.” Nothing against Fosse or his iconic musical, but his win over Coppola was shocking even if deserved. The lesson is that you simply never know what might happen on Oscar night. “Oppenheimer” could clean up, as is being widely predicted, and Nolan could still somehow miss out even though all indicators tell us it’s a done deal.

SEEOscar...

It seems only natural that Severin Films would follow up its two Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee box sets with a collection of some of the more offbeat entries in the filmography of Peter Cushing, Lee’s legendary Hammer Films co-star. Cushing Curiosities collects five films and the remaining episodes of a TV series that highlight the diverse aspects of Cushing’s always authoritative on-screen persona. Featuring crisp new 2K restorations sourced from original elements, Severin’s compelling new set comes complete with loads of bonus materials, including some priceless audio interviews with the man himself and commentaries by historians, as well as Peter Cushing: A Portrait in Six Sketches, a 200-page book by film historian Jonathan Rigby.

Cushing appears as a stiff-necked yet urbane airline pilot in 1960’s Cone of Silence, a modestly compelling exposé based on the actual investigation into a 1952 airplane crash. Reprimanded for a crash that killed his copilot,...

No matter where fate propels Oliver Twist—from the workhouse to the funeral home to the hideout of a master pickpocket—the orphan maintains a fierce sense of who he is, plus a willingness to stand up for himself and, yes, even ask for more in his pursuit of a loving home. And Benjamin Pajak, the actor who plays him, is on a similarly dogged quest: a nearly one-kid glorious mission to rescue the New York City Center’s lumpy revival of Lionel Bart’s 1960 musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel Oliver Twist.

If it felt like hyperbole to praise the 10-year-old playing Winthrop Paroo in the revival of The Music Man as the most electrifying performer on stage, there’s no need to pull punches now that he’s taken on a title role. Indeed, Pajak, now 12 years old, is a marvel in Oliver! For one, his...

(Welcome to Did They Get It Right?, a series where we take a look at an Oscars category from yesteryear and examine whether the Academy's winner stands the test of time.)

If you're ranking the most important years of American cinema, it's pretty difficult not to slot 1967 at number one. That year brought forth a major cultural and artistic shift in the medium, forever changing what American audiences thought cinema could be. This was the arrival of the New Hollywood and featured films that did more than just push the boundaries of mature subject matter, sex, violence, and politics on screen. They destroyed them. The two pillars of the year were Arthur Penn's bloody, sexy "Bonnie and Clyde" and Mike Nichols' coming-of-age dramedy "The Graduate," each becoming two of the three highest-grossing films of the year.

When the 1968 Oscars ceremony rolled around, both films found themselves in the best picture category.

Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences attempts to award Oscars to the “best” film or artist in each category that year, and each year it fails at least a few times.

There is always room for disagreement on what constitutes “best”: how can we possibly compare Toy Story 3, Inception and The King’s Speech? And yet voters did just that in 2010.

It is similarly impossible to nail down all the egregious choices in academy history, but here are a few of the most glaring errors, with just days to go until the 2023 ceremony. Starting with the granddaddy of them all...

How Green Was My Valley

Beat: Citizen Kane to Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography in 1941

It takes a bit of searching these days to find someone who has a) seen John Ford’s Welsh melodrama How Green Was My Valley and b...

Chaim Topol, who became professionally known solely by his last name in a career that included starring in “Fiddler on the Roof” on stage and screen and co-starring in the James Bond movie “For Your Eyes Only” and the sci-fi film “Flash Gordon,” died Thursday in Tel Aviv after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 87 years old.

Topol’s death was confirmed by Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, who described him as a “gifted actor who conquered many stages in Israel and overseas, filled the cinema screens with his presence and especially entered deep into our hearts.”

Topol began his long association with the starring role of Tevye the milkman in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1967, appearing in the West End production, which ran for 2,030 performances. He starred in Norman Jewison’s 1971 film version, which carried a budget estimated at $9 million and garnered a domestic gross of $80 million.

It’s easy to get caught up in awards season excitement as the Oscars approach – the glitz and glamour of the red carpet generating global talking points, memes and pub chatter for weeks on end.

But when it’s really broken down, the Oscars are essentially just a microcosm of Hollywood. It’s a depressing fact that films directed by previous winners have more chance of being nominated than those directed by newcomers.

Because of this, the best film in any given year almost never wins the evening’s most coveted prize – in fact, it’s sometimes not even nominated in the first place. The ceremony in 2021, which saw Parasite take home the top prize, was a rare exception.

Over the decades, there have been countless glaring omissions – films that were nominated but were beaten by far inferior films and classic films that failed to secure a single nomination.

As the 2023 Oscars approach,...

Although he’s one of the most celebrated filmmakers who ever lived, Stanley Kubrick never received an Academy Award for Best Director. Kubrick joined Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ingmar Bergman in the exclusive club of directors who have been praised as trailblazers in their field but were never honored by the Academy for their directorial talent. Throughout his career, Kubrick made many great movies that would go on to feature on 'AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies'. But, sadly, every chance the Academy had to give Kubrick a Best Director award, they ended up giving it to someone else.

Known for his signature blend of dark humor, mind-bending imagery, and profound themes, Kubrick helmed some of the most acclaimed films in cinema history. From the political satire of Dr. Strangelove to the spacefaring surreality of 2001: A Space Odyssey to the unsettling terror of The Shining, Kubrick was a master of many genres and styles.

The 76th BAFTAs take place on Sunday, February 19 at the Royal Festival Hall with Richard E. Grant hosting. Germany’s ‘”All Quiet on the Western Front” leads with 14 nominations, followed by 10 for “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and nine for “Elvis.”

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts was founded in April 1947 as the British Film Academy by luminaries including David Lean, Carol Reed, Charles Laughton, Laurence Olivier, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Lean was named chairman of the awards that would “recognize those which had contributed outstanding creative work towards the advancement of British film.” Eleven years later, the British Film Academy merged with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors.

The first awards were handed out on May 29, 1949 at the Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square to honor films released in Britain in 1947-48. Best Picture went to William Wyler’s 1946 release “The Best Years of Our Lives,...

Harry Lime in "The Third Man" is one of cinema's greatest villains and certainly not the kind of person you'd want to spend much time with in real life. He's a sociopathic black marketeer whose cynical line in diluted penicillin causes untold suffering and death to his many child victims. Yet, played with typical charm and devilment by Orson Welles, he is simply irresistible. Even on repeat viewing with full knowledge of his heinous activities, it's impossible not to be captivated by him from the moment he first appears in a doorway with an incorrigible smirk spread across that big moon of a face.

Lime is onscreen for less than 10 minutes but he may be Welles' greatest performance as an actor, tapping into the elusive enigma of the multi-faceted artist and self-proclaimed charlatan. After leaving the U.S. for self-imposed exile in Europe in 1947, he took the role for money,...

Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences attempts to award Oscars to the “best” film or artist in each category that year, and each year it fails at least a few times.

There is always room for disagreement on what constitutes “best”: how can we possibly compare Toy Story 3, Inception and The King’s Speech? And yet voters did just that in 2010.

It is similarly impossible to nail down all the egregious choices in academy history, but here are a few of the most glaring errors. Starting with the granddaddy of them all...

How Green Was My Valley

Beat: Citizen Kane to Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography in 1941

It takes a bit of searching these days to find someone who has a) seen John Ford’s Welsh melodrama How Green Was My Valley and b) did not do so out of a morbid curiosity...

Pop quiz — what's the best movie that stars Orson Welles, but that he didn't direct? I'll bet that most of you answered "The Third Man," and rightfully so.

Released in 1949, "The Third Man" is set and filmed in post-World War 2 Vienna. Pulp author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in the city to meet his old friend Harry Lime, only to find himself investigating Lime's death. As it turns out, Lime isn't so dead after all.

Who better to play this old friend than Cotten's old director? Across their long partnership, Welles had directed Cotten at the Mercury Theatre, on the radio, and in film. "Citizen Kane" was actually a smoother career launcher for Cotten than it was for Welles himself.

Now, who did direct "The Third Man"? That would be Carol Reed, a British director and pioneer of European film noir. He'd previously directed "Odd Man Out," about an injured...

When cameras rolled on the Viennese location shoot of "The Third Man" in October 1948, director Carol Reed's villain wasn't even in the city. Orson Welles had signed on to play shady racketeer Harry Lime, but in a bid to raise his fee (via BBC Four), he wouldn't agree to arrive until absolutely necessary. With Welles' reputation as an unreliable troublemaker, Reed might have been forgiven for privately wondering if he was going to show up at all. In the meantime, he shot around him, using a body double and hiding the character in the film's celebrated shadows (via Financial Times). Would Reed's decision to fight powerful producer David O. Selznick on casting the maverick come back to haunt him?

Thankfully, Welles kept to his word and arrived by train in Vienna on the date agreed -- Reed said in an interview with journalist and author Charles Thomas Samuels for...

Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front earned 14 BAFTA Award nominations on Thursday morning in London, including one for Best Film. The other Best Film nominees are Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere all at Once and Todd Field’s Tár.

The following photo gallery includes BAFTA Awards Best Film winners from 1990, starting with Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas through last year’s winner, The Power of the Dog, from Jane Campion.

Some notable BAFTA highlights:

Most awards won by a single film: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), with nine wins.

Most nominations received by a single film: Gandhi (1982), with 16 nominations.

Most nominations without winning an award: Women in Love (1969) and Finding Neverland (2004), with 11 nominations each.

Oldest person to win an award: Emmanuelle Riva winning Best Actress in a Leading Role for Amour (84 years old).

Youngest...

Los Angeles, Jan 16 (Ians) Gina Lollobrigida, the 1950s Italian bombshell who starred in films including ‘Fanfan la Tulipe’, ‘Beat the Devil’, ‘Trapeze’ and ‘Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell’, has died. She was 95.

A generation of Indians will remember Lollobrigida from her sensational appearance at the 1978 International Film Festival of India (Iffi), where her flirty exchanges with Kabir Bedi were grist for the gossip magazine mill as well as politically incorrect comparisons between her physical attributes and those of Zeenat Aman.

Kabir Bedi, in his autobiography ‘Stories I Must Tell’, recalls a famous face-off Praveen Babi had with Lollobrigida at a party the Italian actress hosted in his honour for playing Sandokan in the famous Italian television series. The temperamental Indian actress was upset with Lollobrigida because she was apparently getting too comfortable with Bedi.

Lollobrigida also provided fodder for film magazines when it was rumoured that she was being cast by...

Gina Lollobrigida, the 1950s Italian bombshell who starred in films including ‘Fanfan la Tulipe’, ‘Beat the Devil’, ‘Trapeze’ and ‘Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell’, has died. She was 95. A generation of Indians will remember Lollobrigida from her sensational appearance at the 1978 International Film Festival of India (Iffi), where her flirty exchanges with Kabir Bedi were grist for the gossip magazine mill as well as politically incorrect comparisons between her physical attributes and those of Zeenat Aman.

Kabir Bedi, in his autobiography ‘Stories I Must Tell’, recalls a famous face-off Praveen Babi had with Lollobrigida at a party the Italian actress hosted in his honour for playing Sandokan in the famous Italian television series. The temperamental Indian actress was upset with Lollobrigida because she was apparently getting too comfortable with Bedi.

Lollobrigida also provided fodder for film magazines when it was rumoured that she was being cast by Krishna Shah in his Indo-American movie,...

Gina Lollobrigida, the 1950s Italian bombshell who starred in films including “Fanfan la Tulipe,” “Beat the Devil,” “Trapeze” and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” has died. She was 95.

According to Italian news agency Lapresse, Lollobrigida died in a clinic in Rome. No cause of death has been cited. In September she had had surgery to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall, but she recovered and competed for a Senate seat in Italy’s elections held last year in September, though she did not win.

After resisting Howard Hughes’ offer to make movies in Hollywood in 1950, Lollobrigida starred with Gerard Philipe in the 1952 French swashbuckler “Fanfan la Tulipe,” a fest winner and popular favorite.

Her first American movie, shot in Italy, was John Huston’s 1953 film noir spoof “Beat the Devil,” in which she starred with Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones. The same year she starred with Vittorio De Sica in Luigi Comencini’s “Bread,...

Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian film sensation whose exotic charms made her an international sex symbol of postwar cinema, has died, Italian news agency Ansa reported Monday. She was 95.

The dark-haired, independent beauty, of whom Humphrey Bogart once quipped, “She makes Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple,” died in a clinic in Rome, her former lawyer Giulia Citani told Reuters.

For her first well-known English-speaking role, Lollobrigida appeared as Bogart’s wife in John Huston’s Beat the Devil (1953), shot on location in Italy. She starred as the glamorous queen in Solomon and Sheba (1959) and was there when Tyrone Power collapsed and died during production (Power was replaced by Yul Brynner).

Perhaps most famously, Lollobrigida stood out in Carol Reed’s Trapeze (1956) as Lola, a high-wire artist caught in a love triangle with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. The movie achieved a high degree of realism by having the actors perform most of their own stunts.

Leave it to Edgar Allan Poe. While many probably associate the mercurial author and poet with horror milestones like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he’s also widely credited with inventing the detective story with his 1841 publication, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Since then the genre of detective fiction has spanned untold numbers of short stories, novels, plays, radio shows, TV series, and of course, movies.

One of the subsets of detective fiction, the whodunit, remains almost interchangeable with the genre itself and one of its most popular variations. From the urbane, eccentric likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to the more grizzled Sam Spade and Mike Hammer, to the shapeshifting meta-detective Ellery Queen, stories that allow the reader or viewer to solve the mystery right alongside the protagonist are an entertainment staple to this day, as borne out by...

For such a complex and troubling film, Spike Lee's 1989 film "Do The Right Thing" has a simple premise. On the hottest day of the year, in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, tensions escalate to an unbelievable degree. Its citizens' sense of community is fractured over the course of the day as small incidents stack up, gradually building to an unforgettable climax set at a pizzeria that has seen it all. And the imagery that follows is burned into the mind of every viewer -- the heat felt in every sweaty close-up throughout the movie explodes into a fiery intensity.

In some ways, "Do The Right Thing" has a reputation for grit, for telling an honest story set in a predominantly Black American neighborhood, where every racial group has issues with every other racial group. The racial enmity is chaotic, all-encompassing, such that even the most likable characters in the movie express...

Filmmaker Sally Potter discusses a few of her favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Orlando (1992)

Look At Me (2022)

The Roads Not Taken (2020)

Singin’ In The Rain (1952) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

On The Town (1949)

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Whisky Galore! (1949) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

8 ½ (1963) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

Jules and Jim (1962) – Michael Peyser’s trailer commentary

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) – Charlie Largent’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Persona (1966)

On The Waterfront (1954) – John Badham’s trailer commentary

Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

Citizen Kane (1941) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Third Man (1949) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

Come And See (1985) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Cranes Are...

A fire broke out at Rome’s historic Cinecittà Studios on Monday afternoon (Aug. 1) and was extinguished by three teams of firefighters.

The fire broke out in the area where a set depicting renaissance Florence was housed and which was being decommissioned, destroying parts of it. It also disrupted the shoot for Netflix’s sequel to Charlize Theron film “The Old Guard” and threatened the “Big Brother” house.

“The fire has been extinguished. There are no injuries, no poisoning, no serious material damage,” Cinecittà Studios spokesperson Marlon Pellegrini told Afp in a statement.

The cause of the fire is not immediately clear, though conditions are dry and potentially incendiary in Italy, which is undergoing a heatwave.

The studio has history with fire. In 2007, flames engulfed warehouses housing sets for HBO/BBC series “Rome” and 32,000 square feet of studio space were destroyed. And in 2012, some parts of Studio 5, where Federico Fellini...

A wealth of film and TV titles are available at launch on streamer Studiocanal Presents, which is now available as an Amazon Prime Video channel in the U.K.

Some 300 films and series from Studiocanal’s catalogue are available at launch, including Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now: Final Cut” in 4K; Brian Helgeland’s “Legend”; Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis”; a digitally restored version of Carol Reed’s “The Third Man”; Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here,” zombie horror “Train to Busan” and Céline Sciamma’s “Girlhood.”

Also available are Nicolas Roeg’s “The Man Who Fell To Earth” and Sidney Lumet’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” award-winners “Manchester by the Sea” and “Room,” seminal titles like Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour” and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” and modern British classics “Submarine” and “Four Lions.” Other recent additions include Sharon Stone classic...

Since Cinecittà Studios was founded in 1937, the sprawling facilities have driven the golden age of Cinema Italiano.

The famed city of cinema has also, albeit intermittently, been a magnet for international productions and endured wild fluctuations in the country’s political climate, before recently reemerging as a new frontier for the country’s film and TV industry.

Located in the heart of the Mediterranean basin, a short ride from the center of Rome and its airports, Italy’s top production hub has to date, hosted more than 3,000 films that have earned 53 Oscars.

During the period following World War II, the studios forged close ties to Hollywood, which helped the Italian industry gain its international standing.

The myriad Italian pics made at the studios range from Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8½” (1963) to Nanni Moretti’s “Sogni D’Oro” (1981), Sergio Leone’s epic “Once Upon a Time in America...

Since making his feature directing debut with “Hard Eight” (1996), Paul Thomas Anderson has proven his versatility and unique artistry with eight subsequent films, all of which he also wrote. Over the past two dozen years, he has been nominated 11 times across four Oscar categories, with his three most recent bids having come for directing, writing and producing 2021’s “Licorice Pizza.” This marks his third inclusion in a Best Director lineup after landing bids for “There Will Be Blood” (2007) and “Phantom Thread” (2017).

See 2022 Oscar nominations: Full list of nominees in all 23 categories

In this year’s directing race, Anderson faces Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”), Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”), Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) and Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”). Hamaguchi is the only first-timer in the bunch, while Spielberg is the only previous directing winner, having triumphed for both “Schindler’s List” (1993) and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998); this is his eighth nomination in the category.

Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences attempts to award Oscars to the “best” film or artist in each category that year, and each year it fails at least a few times.

There is always room for disagreement on what constitutes “best”: how can we possibly compare Toy Story 3, Inception and The King’s Speech? And yet voters did just that in 2010.

It is similarly impossible to nail down all the egregious choices in academy history, but here are a few of the most glaring errors. Starting with the granddaddy of them all...

How Green Was My Valley

Beat:Citizen Kane to Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography in 1941

It takes a bit of searching these days to find someone who has a) seen John Ford’s Welsh melodrama How Green Was My Valley and b) did not do so out of a morbid curiosity...

Showbiz in Soho is artificial, gaudy and vulgar, but Laurence Harvey’s slick promoter-con man thinks he can cheat at the pop music game. Cliff Richard is his new discovery, a teen crooner who digs the bongo drums. Wolf Mankowitz’s portrait of talent, glitz, and double-dealing in music and TV showbiz also stars Sylvia Syms as a Soho stripper and Yolande Donlan as a singing star trying to make a comeback. The disc contains director Val Guest’s uncut original version.

Expresso Bongo

Blu-ray

Cohen / Kino Lorber

1959 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 111 106 min. / Street Date January 18, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Laurence Harvey, Sylvia Syms, Yolande Donlan, Cliff Richard, Meier Tzelniker, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Eric Pohlmann, Gilbert Harding, Hermione Baddeley, Reginald Beckwith, Avis Bunnage, Sally Geeson, Kenneth Griffith, Burt Kwouk, Wilfrid Lawson, Patricia Lewis, Barry Lowe, Martin Miller, Susan Hampshire, Peter Myers, Lisa Peake, The Shadows.

Cinematography: John Wilcox

Art Director:...