News

Conny Van Dyke, a singer-songwriter signed to Motown Records who starred in such films as “W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings” and “Framed,” has died. She was 78.

Van Dyke died on Nov. 11 at her home in Los Angeles due to complications of vascular dementia, her son Bronson Page told Variety.

The Detroit native was a longtime colon cancer and stroke survivor. She got her start in the entertainment industry when she was just 15 and a student in high school, making the film “Among the Thorns” with Tom Laughlin, Bill Wellman Jr. and Stephanie Powers. During that time, Van Dyke also worked as a songwriter for Wheelsville Records in Detroit.

In 1961, Van Dyke signed with Motown Records, making her one of the first white recording artists on the label. Her first two singles, “Oh, Freddy,” written by Smokey Robinson, and “It Hurt Me Too,” previously written and recorded by Marvin Gaye, were...

One of the many oddities of "The Boys" is the way that any character, no matter how terrible, suddenly transforms into an audience surrogate the moment they're trapped in the room with Homelander. A-Train is a selfish, murdering jerk, for instance, but it's hard not to relate to him as Homelander starts making fun of his weight and there's nothing A-Train can do about it. Ashley is a power-hungry corporate stooge, but when she develops a hair-yanking habit from the sheer stress of working with Homelander, we have no trouble understanding why. When Homelander shatters the ear-drums of an innocent, Daredevil-inspired supe, Ashley's horrified expression perfectly matches how we feel.

Such is the case with Chase Crawford's The Deep, a character who could've been a main villain in any other show. Introduced as a rapist and further characterized as a shallow loser with an unsettling fish fetish, Deep...

It's not easy for every film to be a hit, but Quentin Tarantino wants his body of work to be as close to perfect as possible. Almost every movie he's ever made has been met with widespread critical acclaim, and he plans to keep it that way. Although there's no surefire way to make every movie a success, there is one method that Tarantino's sticking to — quit while you're ahead.

Two of Tarantino's favorite directors are old Hollywood auteurs Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder. Both have a diverse set of hits in their extensive filmography, from noirs like "The Big Sleep" to musicals like "Some Like it Hot" and Westerns like "Rio Bravo." They also churned out successful movies for decades, but Tarantino and most critics would agree that they continued working past their prime. Making a film like "Rio Lobo," the sequel to "Rio Bravo," is Tarantino's worst nightmare as an artist.

One of the many, many, many problems with the Academy Awards is that with only five nominees in each category — and even with 10 nominees for Best Picture — there's always at least one worthy artist or movie that doesn't get recognized.

In the industry we call these "snubs," and it's a somewhat loaded term that suggests the Oscar voters are deciding, intentionally, not to honor certain filmmakers and their films. While that's certainly a possibility, and there's no denying that the Academy members are human beings full of conscious and unconscious biases, it's also true that in a year full of great artistry in a variety of cinematic fields, at least one person who did amazing work was destined to get left off the ballot, and it's always a real downer for the artist and their fans.

But what if being left off the ballot wasn't the end of their story?...

Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Payback,” “The Only Man in the Sky” and “Barbary Coast,” the three episodes that are part of the June 3 launch of “The Boys” Season 3.

Move over Brangelina and Bennifer, there’s a new celebrity couple in town: Homelight.

The trio of “The Boys” Season 3 premiere episodes ended on the Homelight reveal, which does not bode well for Starlight (Erin Moriarty), who’s trying to take down Vought and Homelander (Antony Starr), her increasingly unhinged co-captain of the Seven. Their forced coupling-up is really just a Vought-engineered bid to increase the social media popularity of the two heroes, and thus the stock price of Vought. The announcement, complete with their couple-name hashtag, also came during the finale of “American Hero,” a fake reality show in the vein of “Drag Race” and “The Bachelor,” designed to add in new members of the Seven.

Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Payback,” “The Only Man in the Sky” and “Barbary Coast,” the first three episodes of “The Boys” Season 3.

Everything is finally going well for Hughie (Jack Quaid) in “The Boys” Season 3 premiere until, as star Claudia Doumit puts it to Variety, “In true ‘Boys’ fashion, just at the end of the first episode, we’ve seen enough of that and we need blood, we want chaos.”

After spending the year following the Season 2 finale working for Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Doumit) at the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, Hughie finds out at the end of Friday’s Season 3 premiere that Neuman is a supe herself. She kills an innocent man from her past to keep her status quiet, not knowing Hughie is watching in the shadows, horrified to learn who his colleague and friend truly is.

“I think the biggest challenge in that is,...

Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Payback,” “The Only Man in the Sky” and “Barbary Coast,” the three episodes that are part of the June 3 launch of “The Boys” Season 3.

After hating all super-powered people throughout the first two seasons of “The Boys,” Butcher (Karl Urban) has now become the exact thing he’s despised — at least, for 24 hours at a time. Thanks to Temp V, a brand new Vought serum he’s gotten his hands on, Butcher can now withstand gunshots and shoot lasers from his eyes, which an NRA-obsessed supe named Gunpowder learns the hard way.

On his Season 3 mission to kill Homelander (Antony Starr), Butcher decides to level the playing field a bit by taking Temp V, which makes him super-strong and near-invincible. He and The Boys are also in search of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), a powerful supe who’s been presumed dead for decades.

Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Payback,” “The Only Man in the Sky” and “Barbary Coast,” the three episodes that are part of the June 3 launch of “The Boys” Season 3.

Within the first three episodes of Season 2, “The Boys” blew up a whale by having Butcher (Karl Urban) crash into it with a speedboat. In the Season 3 premiere, the Amazon Prime Video show exploded a smaller, but much more graphic, object in an even more bizarre way.

As “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke previously promised Variety, within the first 15 minutes of the Season 3 premiere, a moment occurs that is “a thousand times crazier” than the whale scene: A superhero named Termite (Brett Geddes) shrinks down and climbs into the urethra of his significant other in order to pleasure him from inside his penis. Termite accidentally sneezes, causing him to quickly grow back up to normal...

[Warning: The following contains Major spoilers for The Boys Season 3 Episode 3, “Barbary Coast.”] Hello, Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles)! Supernatural fans might be happy to see Ackles team up with Eric Kripke again, but Dean Winchester, this character ain’t. As we see through Grace Mallory’s (Laila Robins) recollections to Butcher (Karl Urban) and the team about the time she spent working with the “hero,” there’s not much of anything to love about Soldier Boy. He’s arrogant, misogynistic, and straight-up stupid as he nearly blows up the CIA camp in an attempt to look cool. In fact, the best thing about him might be his death, if it means taking down Homelander (Antony Starr) is possible. Speaking of Homelander, if that speech at the end of the last episode had you thinking he was done for… nope. As Ashley (Colby Minifie) excitedly tells him, he’s up in a major, major way with his base. That...

TV producer and writer Cy Chermak, who produced notable series including “CHiPs,” “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” and “Ironside,” died Friday of natural causes in Oahu, Hawaii. He was 91.

Chermak was born in 1929 in Bayonne, New Jersey as Seymour Albert Chermak. He began his career in Hollywood at the age of 17, going on to become a successful television producer on series like “Conway,” “The Virginian” and “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors.”

Chermak served as an executive producer on the drama series “Ironside” from 1967-1974, where he received three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Drama Series. Some of his other producing credits include “Amy Prentiss,” “Kolchak: The Night Stalker,” “Barbary Coast” and “Murder at the World Series.” Most notably, he produced 125 episodes of the buddy crime action series “CHiPs,” which starred Robert Pine and Erik Estrada as two motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol (Chp).

In the early 1950s, Chermak...

This Warrior review contains spoilers.

Warrior Season 2 Episode 6 heads for the Mexican border for a No Holds Barred tournament that has been teased all season long. Apart from Ah Toy’s (Olivia Cheng) trips to Nellie’s (Miranda Raison) Sonoma winery in the previous episode, Warrior seldom leaves San Francisco except for one notable exception – Season 1 Episode 5: “The Blood and the Sh*t.” That was an outlier tale where Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) and Young Jun (Jason Tobin) were transporting a coffin and got trapped by bandits in a desert saloon with several bystanders.

With undertones of The Seven Samurai, it was an homage to spaghetti westerns, complete with a classic ride into the sunset and even a “The End” credit. It was one of the best episodes of Season 1, almost a standalone story because it did nothing to advance the overarching tale, while this new episode is pivotal...

Ryan Lambie Oct 11, 2017

In the late 1970s, an aborted feature film would have given the Klingons a striking movie outing...

It's March 1977, and there's a very odd party going on at Paramount. The champagne's flowing, the glasses are clinking, but the atmosphere's far from celebratory.

See related Arrow season 6: UK air date announced Arrow season 6: Rick Gonzalez interview Arrow season 5 episode 23 review: Lian Yu

Writers Alan Scott and Chris Bryant, who for the past six months had been working on a Star Trek movie script, have decided to leave the project following numerous rewrites and conflicted ideas from producers.

Susan Sackett, who was Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry's personal assistant at the time, was one of several people at that party. "The occasion was one of celebration," Sackett wrote in the seventh issue of Starlog magazine, "yet touched with the sadness of saying 'au revoir' to old friends.

Los Angeles – He was 7 foot 2 inches tall, an imposing figure that made for one of the most memorable James Bond villains. Richard Kiel portrayed “Jaws” in two Bond films – “The Spy Who Loved Me” and “Moonraker” – and left an unforgettable mark as a character actor with a distinctive look and persona. Richard Kiel died at age 74 on September 10th, 2014.

Richard Kiel in 2010

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Richard Kiel was born in Detroit, Michigan, and made his first appearance in the TV show “Laramie” in 1960. Throughout the 1960s, he made appearances in low budget horror movies and television, most notably in a famous episode of “The Twilight Zone,” entitled “To Serve Man,” and in the TV series “The Wild, Wild West.” It was a western series in the 1970s, “The Barbary Coast,” that caught the attention of the Bond producers, and the villain Jaws was born.

London, May 19: Richard Kiel found popularity when he played one of the most memorable Bond villain 'Jaws' in the 1977 movie 'The Spy Who Loved Me' and 'Moonraker' in 1979.

The 7f 2in actor, who continues making TV shows and films to this day, said that initially he wanted to become a lawyer but his family could not afford the expenses due to the big recession in 1958, Daily Express reported.

The international star, who has acted in many movies including 'The Mean Machine', said that his appearance in 'Barbary Coast' got him noticed by the Bond people.

Michigan-born Kiel said that even though he considered Jaws to.

Today marks the 80th birthday of William Shatner. It's hard to think of any other actor who's had such a long and varied career on the small screen. In addition to starring as Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek, one of the medium's most popular shows, Shatner has starred in seven other shows as well -- Star Trek: The Animated Series, Barbary Coast, For the People, T.J. Hooker, Rescue 911, Boston Legal, and currently $#*! My Dad Says.

And, who could forget his memorable guest shots on shows like The Twilight Zone, Dr. Kildare, 77 Sunset Strip, The Defenders (the 1960s original), Mission: Impossible, Columbo, TekWar, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and The Practice?

He's also starred on Broadway, starred in numerous feature films and TV movies, written many books, released "singing" albums, directed movies, produced and narrated specials, pitched computers...

Another week, another This Week in Comics, where we bring you a breakdown of some of the comics that are out to buy, or just read off the shelf, in your local comic store each and every week. And don’t forget to check out Pull List feature every fortnight where we take a closer look at some of the comics worth buying, and some not.

Note: Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores due to shipping and fulfillment issues, etc.

Gn = Graphic Novel; Hc = HardCover; Tp = Trade Paperback

Aspen

Executive Assistant Iris #5 (Joe Benitez Cover)(resolicited)

Executive Assistant Iris #5 (Eduardo Francisco Cover)(resolicited)

Executive Assistant Iris #5 (Ale Garza Cover)(resolicited)

Avatar Press

Crossed Family Values #2 (of 6)(Jacen Burrows Regular Cover)

Crossed Family Values #2 (of 6)(Red Crossed Retailer Incentive Cover)

Crossed Family Values #2 (of 6)(Paul Duffield Torture Cover)

Crossed Family Values #2 (of 6)(Jacen Burrows Wraparound Cover...