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Taylor Sheridan is a miniature industry unto himself. He wrote the Oscar hopefuls "Sicario," "Hell or High Water," and "Wind River," as well as the thrillers "Without Remorse" and "Those Who Wish Me Dead." On TV, Sheridan has been blasting barn doors off with "Yellowstone" and its multiple spinoffs, as well as shows like "Tulsa King," "Lioness," and "Landman." These are in addition to a modest acting career that put Sheridan on TV shows like "Walker, Texas Ranger," "Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman," "Party of Five," "NYPD Blue," "Sons of Anarchy," and even "Star Trek: Enterprise." He also plays the supporting character of Travis Wheatley on "Yellowstone" and Charles on the prequel series "1883."

Sheridan has evolved into the modern torch-bearer for Western machismo, and he is often drawn into the dark hearts of manly men. He also seems to love crime stories, tales of criminals/lawmen, and conflicts that end with gunplay.

Sanford and Son, the first mainstream, primetime sitcom in television history with an almost-all Black cast, debuted on NBC on Jan. 14, 1972. Created by Norman Lear, and starring legendary “blue” comedian Redd Foxx as an African American bigot, it was seen as a direct answer to CBS’ All in the Family. But the Bunker family series was a social satire which took its laughs seriously. The Sanfords presented pure comedy, any lessons it taught were intentionally coincidental. The most controversial part of the show, when it first aired, was its lead actor.

Foxx was already an underground comedy legend when Cleavon Little, best known for his role as Sheriff Bart in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, suggested him for the lead in the mid-season replacement. Little wasn’t available, but worked with Foxx on Ossie Davis’s 1970 neo-noir film Cotton Comes to Harlem. Before Foxx played the junk dealer stuck with the bale of genuine Mississippi cotton,...

Sidney Poitier, whose dignity and self-assertion ushered in a new era in the depiction of African-Americans in Hollywood films as the civil rights movement was remaking America, has died, a spokesperson for the Bahamian Prime Minister confirmed to Variety. He was 94. Poitier was the oldest living winner of the best actor Oscar — just one distinction in a career full of distinctions.

“Our whole Bahamas grieves and extends our deepest condolences to his family. But even as we mourn, we celebrate the life of a great Bahamian, a cultural icon, an actor and film director, an entrepreneur, civil and human rights activist and, latterly, a diplomat,” said Phillip Davis, Prime Minister of the Bahamas in a statement. “We admire the man not just because of his colossal achievements, but also because of who he was. His strength of character, his willingness to stand up and be counted, and the way he...

Here's the original trailer for director Norman Jewison's Best Picture Oscar winner for 1967. "In the Heat of the Night" also won Rod Steiger a Best Actor Oscar. Sidney Poitier's Virgil Tibbs proved to be so popular that United Artists brought him back in the sequels "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" and "The Organization".

Click Here To Order Criterion Blu-ray Special Edition From Amazon...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Early marketing for Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods” relished the tease, and the film’s trailers giddily laid out all manner of horror movie tropes while also hinting that much more was at stake than initially met the eye. “You think you know the story,” the film’s first trailer and official poster winked at potential viewers, while piling on horror movie cliche on top of horror movie cliche (did we mention that creepy cabin?).

The implication, of course, was that you didn’t, and that there was a deep secret at the heart of the film. The film itself pulls no such tricks, instead opening with what might otherwise, given all that winking marketing, seem like the big...

Stars: Vince Swann, Barry Bostwick, Michael Jai White, Laila Odom, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Lindsay Lamb, Melanie Loren, Gary Owen, Affion Crockett, Brandon Hirsch, Tyler Crumley, Zac Zedalis, Steven Lee Johnson | Written by Ian Edwards, Stephen Mazur | Directed by Leslie Small

Universal 1440 Entertainment, Universal’s direct to DVD production arm, mine old film franchises once again for a sequel to the Eddie Griffin 2002 blaxploitation comedy Undercover Brother… and you thought a sequel to Benchwarmers was unexpected! Though given we’ve already had new sequels to Kindergarten Cop, Daddy Day Care, the aforementioned Benchwarmers, Cop and a Half, Honey, Bring it On and – get this – even Backdraft; a sequel to Undercover Brother, something of a minor hit back in the day, isn’t that much a surprise. Hell, it beats getting yet Another sequel to The Scorpion King!

This time round Michael Jai White stars as the titular brother and Vince...

They have names like Rambo, Bigfoot, Wolf, Dog, Lady, Smurf, Swede, Boom Boom. They live, for now, up in the hills of Colombia, high enough that clouds roll in and blanket the fields during pick-up soccer games. (Just to make things interesting, they all play blindfolded.) They have kidnapped an American engineer (Julianne Nicholson) who they call “Doctora”; sometimes, the young women looking after her braid her hair. They answer to “The Messenger” (Wilson Salazar), a small, muscular man who represents “The Organization.” They shoot guns, stage guerilla attacks, perform...

“Monos” takes place in the dense jungles and foggy mountaintops of northern Colombia, but it may as well be another planet. Director Alejandro Landes’ thrilling survivalist saga tracks a dysfunctional group of young militants as they traipse through perilous terrain, engaging in savage behavior while toying with their mortified American hostage (Julianne Nicholson), but they never reveal their motivations. Equal parts “Lord of the Flies” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” Landes’ third feature distills guerrilla warfare into sheer anarchy.

By stripping away the sociopolitical context, “Monos” provides a window into power-hungry mayhem on the fringes of society that could happen anytime, anywhere — but depicts its hectic showdowns with a you-are-there intensity that could only take place in the present. Aided by “Under the Skin” composer Micah Levi’s thunderous score, Landes delivers a suspenseful encapsulation of alienated youth enmeshed in pointless battles that can only lead to further destruction.

It’s surprisingly easy to forget that “BlacKkKlansman” is a Spike Lee joint. Not only does it open with an extended sequence from “Gone with the Wind” (not a Spike Lee joint), but it also spends a good amount of time parsing the fundamental dilemma of Jewish-American identity, and takes place in the snow-white hills of Colorado Springs … which in this country, is pretty much as far from Crooklyn as you can get.

Sure, the usual Lee flourishes pop up here and there — from the introductory text promising this buddy-cop biopic is “some fo’ real shit,” to the gorgeous conveyor-belt shot at the climax, and the sobering mic drop of news footage that brings things to a close — and the whole thing is kissed with his cock-eyed anger. But so much of this movie seems like it could’ve been made by anybody. It couldn’t have been — it wouldn...

Racial issues in the south. Small town police department. Best Picture nominee at the Oscars. Lead performance frontrunner to win. These are certainly descriptions of 2018 Oscar contender “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri” starring Frances McDormand but they also describe the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture 50 years ago: “In the Heat of the Night” (watch the video above).

With “Get Out” and “Three Billboards” as big awards hits for 2017 and “Moonlight” as Best Picture the previous year, it looks as though films dealing with racism and civil rights have risen to a new level of recognition from the Academy. One of the first to be embraced by Oscar voters was the 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night,” a crime drama about an African-American detective (Sidney Poitier) and bigoted police chief (Rod Steiger) in rural Mississippi.

SEEOscar Best Picture Gallery: History of Every Academy Award-Winning Movie

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By Lee Pfeiffer

The year 1967 marked the high point of Sidney Poitier's screen career. He starred in three highly acclaimed box office hits: "To Sir, With Love", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "In the Heat of the Night".  The fact that Poitier did not score a Best Actor Oscar nomination that year had less to do with societal prejudices (he had already won an Oscar) than the fact that he was competing with himself and split the voter's choices for his best performance. "In the Heat of the Night" did win the Best Picture Oscar and immortalized Poitier's performance as Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia detective who finds himself assigned to assist a redneck sheriff (Rod Steiger, who did win the Oscar that year for his performance in this film) in a town in the deep south that has experienced a grisly unsolved murder. When Steiger's character, resentful for...

Academy Award-winning actor Sidney Poitier made a rare public appearance on Thursday at the TCM Classic Film Festival to take in a celebratory 50th-anniversary screening of one of his most enduring and iconic films, In the Heat of the Night.

In the audience at Hollywood’s Chinese Theater during opening night festivities of the classic movie cable channel’s annual film festival, Poitier, 90, rose for a sustained standing ovation that roared for several minutes prior to the screening of the groundbreaking 1967 film.

Made at the height of civil rights tensions in America, Poitier played Philadelphia homicide detective Virgil Tibbs, who...

Broadway’s delightful — but wickedly accurate — satire of big business was brought to movie screens almost intact, with the story, the stars, the styles and dances kept as they were in the long-running show that won a Pulitzer Prize. This is the place to see Robert Morse and Michele Lee at their best — it’s one of the best, and least appreciated movie musicals of the 1960s.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date March 14, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Robert Morse, Michele Lee, Rudy Vallee, Anthony Teague, Maureen Arthur, Sammy Smith, Robert Q. Lewis, Carol Worthington, Kathryn Reynolds, Ruth Kobart, George Fennemann, Tucker Smith, David Swift.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Film Editor: Allan Jacobs, Ralph E. Winters

Original Music: Nelson Riddle

Art Direction: Robert Boyle

Visual Gags: Virgil Partch

From the play written by Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows,...

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More Best Picture Oscar winners have had sequels than you may think. This lot, in fact...

There’s still an element of snobbery where sequels to certain films is concerned. Whereas it’s now almost compulsory to greenlight a blockbuster with a view of a franchise in mind, it’s hard to think of most Best Picture Oscar winners being made with a follow-up in mind. Yet in perhaps a surprising number of cases, a sequel – or in the case of Rocky, lots of sequels – have followed.

These cases, in fact…

All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)

Followed by: The Road Back

Don’t be fooled into thinking sequels for prestigious movies are a relatively new phenomenon. Lewis Milestone’s 1930 war epic All Quiet On The Western Front, and its brutal account of World War I, is still regarded as something of a classic. A solid box office success,...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Originally planned to screen as a 30-minute preview at AFI Fest, Ava DuVernay’s Selma, centered on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, premiered in its entirety and stirred up more Oscar buzz ahead of its Christmas Day release.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Farber says the film is “intelligently written, vividly shot, tightly edited and sharply acted,” and that it “represents a rare example of craftsmanship working to produce a deeply moving piece of history.” Meanwhile, Paul Webb’s screenplay and David Oyelowo’s portrayal of Dr. King have been praised. The Wrap’s James Rocchi says, “Oyelowo’s performance would be impressive enough if it merely recreated the icon we now revere as perfectly as he does through a variety of methods… But Oyelowo, and Webb’s screenplay, also give us a rich, rewarding portrait of King as a man,...

Prolific television director Don Medford, who is perhaps best known for the two-episode finale of the 1960s drama The Fugitive, died December 12 at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 95. His family reported the death Wednesday. The 1967 conclusion of Fugitive, the popular series about a man falsely accused of murdering his wife (played by David Janssen) and relentlessly pursued around the country by a determined detective (Barry Morse), was seen by a then-record of an estimated 78 million viewers — a milestone that stood until the “Who Shot J.R.” episode of Dallas drew an estimated 83 million in 1980. Medford’s TV career stretched from the early 1950s Tales Of Tomorrow through the late ’80s Jake And The Fatman. Among the many major and varied series he worked on were the anthologies Alfred Hitchock Presents and The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables with Robert Stack, M Squad with Lee Marvin,...

Don Medford, a prolific TV director who helmed the final installment of the landmark 1960s ABC drama The Fugitive — at the time the most-watched series episode in history — has died. He was 95. Medford died Dec. 12 at West Hills (Calif.) Hospital and Medical Center, his daughter Lynn told The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday. Medford had been a resident of the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s retirement home in Woodland Hills since 2001, she said. In a career that spanned nearly a half-century, Medford also directed The Organization (1971), the third film in which Sidney

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This all came to me thanks to a virtual chat I had recently with a friend about the reboot of the the Alex Cross detective thriller series, based on the novel franchise written by James Patterson, which Idris Elba was once attached to take over, only to be recently replaced with Tyler Perry.

Alright so… my research tells me that Virgil Tibbs was the first black fictional character to have a film franchise centered around him, that was backed by a Hollywood studio. Sidney Poitier starred in 3 successive films as Virgil Tibbs: In The Heat Of The Night (1968), They Call Me Mister Tibbs (1970), and The Organization (1971). The last 2 were not as good as the first, but I’d say that The Organization was superior to They Call Me Mister Tibbs.

All 3 were released by United Artists.

The first film in the franchise was based on the 1965 novel or the same name,...

This all came to me thanks to a virtual chat I had earlier today with a friend about Idris Elba recently signing on to take over for Morgan Freeman in a reboot of the the Alex Cross detective thriller series, based on the novel franchise written by James Patterson.

Alright so… my research tells me that Virgil Tibbs was the first black fictional character to have a film franchise centered around him, that was backed by a Hollywood studio. Sidney Poitier starred in 3 successive films as Virgil Tibbs: In The Heat Of The Night (1968), They Call Me Mister Tibbs (1970), and The Organization (1971). The last 2 were not as good as the first, but I’d say that The Organization was superior to They Call Me Mister Tibbs.

All 3 were released by United Artists.

The first film in the franchise was based on the 1965 novel or the same name, by John Ball,...