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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...

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...

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:...

Kenneth Branagh just earned a trio of Oscar nominations for his work producing, directing and writing “Belfast.” The film is an homage to Branagh’s youth growing up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Branagh spoke with Gold Derby senior editor Daniel Montgomery in January, before the Oscar nominations, revealing what it was like to develop an original story, the decision to shoot in black and white and the importance of being part of the awards conversation. Watch the exclusive interview above and read the complete transcript below.

SEEHow to watch ‘Belfast’

Gold Derby: The film is inspired by your own experiences during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, so with something this personal. how do you decide where to draw directly from your own life experience and where to fictionalize for the sake of just telling the best story?

Kenneth Branagh: Well, Daniel, it is a process that I suppose...

In 1989, Kenneth Branagh made his feature film directing debut with “Henry V,” based on the history play by William Shakespeare. He went on to compete in the next year’s Best Director Oscar race, ultimately losing to Oliver Stone (“Born on the Fourth of July”). Now, over three decades later and with 18 more directing credits under his belt, his work on “Belfast” has brought him a second bid in the category, as well as his first for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture.

With those latter two nominations, Branagh makes Oscar history as the first person to contend in seven distinct categories. He started his journey toward this singular achievement by landing a second bid for “Henry V” as its leading man. That made him the fifth person to earn acting and directing Oscar nominations for the same film, after Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, Woody Allen, and Warren Beatty. His...

Sensing a potential trend in the possible nominations of three major Oscars categories — best director, actor and actress — we could see a first-time occurrence for the Academy Awards on Tuesday. However, if you read the tea leaves put forth by the nominations for the DGA and SAG, there’s a strong possibility that all three of those categories may not include a first-time nominee — a first in Oscar history.

For best actor, the SAG lineup recognized all former nominees and winners — Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield, Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). Even the ones on the bubble are once-nominated or crowned, including Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”), Bradley Cooper (“Nightmare Alley”) and Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”). The closest first-timers in the running seem to be Golden Globe nominees Peter Dinklage (“Cyrano”) and Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza...

Pencils down, pass your ballots to the front because the Oscar nomination voting is now closed.

Speaking to voters over the past week, it’s been relatively clear about what voters like and who they’re supporting in a strong year for film.

Nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Feb. 8, and we have the 10 burning questions we want to be answered.

Which movie will lead the nomination tally?

There have been three films that have been nominated for 14 Oscars in history — “All About Eve” (1950), “Titanic” (1997) and “La La Land” (2016). We likely won’t see any film get near tying or beating that record. The three most likely candidates to lead the charge are “Belfast” from Focus Features, “Dune” from Warner Bros. and “The Power of the Dog” from Netflix. You could also add “West Side Story” from 20th Century Studios as a dark horse possibility, especially since its tally seems...

The writing and directing races are being dominated by familiar faces, which can break some records in Oscar’s history.

Suppose the Variety awards circuit Oscar predictions charts are to be believed. In that case, eight of the top 12 candidates for director are former nominees and winners, leaving little room for first-timers, such as Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Lost Daughter”), Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”), Siân Heder (“Coda”) and Reinaldo Marcus Green (“King Richard”). If the Oscar nominees consisted of all former hopefuls, it would be the first time in 71 years that this would occur in the category. The 1950 lineup included George Cukor (“Born Yesterday”), John Huston (“The Asphalt Jungle”), winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz (“All About Eve”), Carol Reed (“The Third Man”) and Billy Wilder (“Sunset Boulevard”).

The hurdles ahead of the potential rookie nominees are significant. Except for Green, all the filmmakers also serve as writers for their movies, and...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andreas Fontana's Azor is exclusively showing on Mubi in many countries starting December 3, 2021 in the series Debuts.In Carol Reed's The Third Man, Harry Lime—for so much of the film a semi-mythic spectre—reaches about for a metaphor for worthy, peaceable dullness to contrast with the culturally fertile ferment of Renaissance-era Italy. He comes up with Switzerland. "In Switzerland," he drawls, in that infuriatingly amused, contemptuous baritone of his, "They had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Swiss director Andreas Fontana's Azor, an impossibly accomplished feature debut in which the character of René Keys becomes a structuring absence to rival Lime's, challenges that assertion. And not just because, as we've all been made aware by the tsk-ing of a thousand pedants since, the cuckoo clock actually originates in Bavaria.

Biographical pictures and historical dramas can often go the way of cinematic hagiography, particularly when the subjects are involved in the project’s development. In one of the most extreme examples of such a scenario, Albert Speer, aka “Hitler’s architect,” had dreams of making his life story, consisting of delusional self-mythologizing as a “good Nazi,” into a Hollywood feature backed by Paramount Pictures. As Nazi Germany’s Minister of Armaments and War Production and close friend to the Führer, Speer oversaw 12 million slave laborers, 2.5 million of whom died, yet he evaded a death sentence during the Nuremberg Trials and received just 20 years in prison. While his proposed film was never made, the new documentary Speer Goes to Hollywood explores the process and proves more successful as a look into denial of a horrific reality than the title’s conceit of a Nazi attempting to break into the studio system.

Speer Goes to Hollywood director Vanessa Lapa on Albert Speer: “The dissonance, the clash that occurs between what we know and the book and what we hear on the tapes, it’s mind-blowing and very disturbing.” Photo: Walter Frentz Collection, Berlin

In 2014, I met Vanessa Lapa at Film Forum in New York with her co-producer Felix Breisach for a conversation on The Decent One (Der Anständige), based on previously unseen family diaries, photographs and private letters found in Heinrich Himmler's home. We spoke about Marlene Dietrich singing as a marker of time in her documentary, if Hannah Arendt's Banality Of Evil works here and how the writings were obtained, transcribed and put on film. Now in the fall of 2021, Vanessa joined me on Zoom to discuss Speer Goes To Hollywood, co-written with Joëlle Alexis, and her take on the interviews done by Andrew Birkin with Albert Speer...

“Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man.”

The Second Volume of the Award-Winning 4K Ultra HD Collection From Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Olumbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection Volume 2 – Six Iconic Films from the Acclaimed Columbia Pictures Library Debuts on 4K Ultra HD For the First Time. Anatomy Of A Murder ~ Oliver! ~ Taxi Driver ~ Stripes ~ Sense And Sensibility ~ The Social Network. Exclusively Available on 4K Disc in this Limited Edition Set,

Includes an 80-Page Hardbound Book on the History & Impact of the Films and Over 30 Hours of New and Archival Special Features

Following the overwhelming response to last year’s award-winning Volume 1 collection, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is proud to debut six more acclaimed and beloved films from its library on 4K Ultra HD disc for the first time ever, exclusively within...

Andy Kelleher’s accomplished drama debut is packed with deft performances as its characters make the best of a grim situation

Andy Kelleher has directed documentaries about the film-makers Carol Reed, Alan Clarke and Chris Petit, but now makes an accomplished fiction debut with a film hovering in the edgelands of London, the south-east and on the protracted plains of middle age, receding out towards uncertainty. It concerns a medical diagnosis that should be devastating, but – aided by a deftly off-key performance from lead actor Cathy Naden – actually functions as an awakening.

Naden plays fortysomething history lecturer Kathy, whose impulsive behaviour has begun to unsettle her friends. Stuck in a zombie marriage, she takes up with gangly, long-haired landscape gardener Nick (Jerry Killick) after throwing him a line next to his vintage BMW: “You can take me for a spin some time.” Alarmingly forthright has become her social modus operandi.

It’s a peculiarity of Michael Caine’s bluff Cockney star persona that he could have plausibly played Fagin in any adaptation of “Oliver Twist” over the last 50-odd years; it’s an unfortunate failure of judgment that he has chosen to finally do so in “Twist.” Nominally updating Charles Dickens’ much-filmed yarn of crime, punishment and improvised family to the streets and rooftops of 21st-century London, Martin Owen’s film instead feels instantly, even desperately, outmoded, using all the graffiti, parkour and streetwear it can to disguise the fact that it has no fresh angle on the material at all — merely a heist-by-numbers subplot straight out Guy Ritchie’s drafts bin, welded to Dickens’ coming-of-age narrative with all the poetry of a press release for a brand collaboration.

Released directly and with minimal fanfare to the U.K.’s Sky Cinema streaming service in the January lockdown, “Twist” is...

The year of 1969 saw the moon landing of the Apollo 11’s Eagle module, Richard Nixon sworn in as the 37th president of the United States, the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village ushering in the gay rights movement, the Tate-La Bianca murders by the Manson Family, the landmark Woodstock Music and Arts Fair which attracts 400,000, the tragic and violent Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway and even Tiny Tim marrying Miss Vicki on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

But one major event was basically ignored by the mainstream media: the Harlem Cultural Arts Festival which took place June 29-August 24 at the Mount Morris Park. Founded by Tony Lawrence, the festival celebrating Black pride, music and culture features such landmark performers as Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension and Mahalia Jackson. And when the NYPD refused to supply security,...

Andrei Konchalovsky's Sin is showing on Mubi starting June 18, 2021 in the United States.Not once does Michelangelo pick up a brush—or a chisel—in Andrei Konchalovsky’s Sin. Like the Russian icon painter in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, which Konchalovsky co-wrote over five decades ago, the artist is never captured at work and is instead plunged into a war-stricken wasteland, a 16th century Italy that feels, looks, and probably smells like a pestilential nightmare straight out of Dante’s Inferno. There are wars, murders, plots, crooked aristocrats and ungrateful relatives; early on, Alberto Testone’s Michelangelo staggers into Florence’s Piazza della Signoria to see his monumental David preside over a swamp of corpses and severed heads. Time and again, the genius casts his eyes skyward, searching for someone who’ll only show up in the film’s closing shot. There’s a biblical quality to his helplessness, a...

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 21

Abe comes in from the cold on The Simpsons Season 32, episode 21, because it’s cold. “The Man from G.R.A.M.P.A.” is a tepid espionage chiller about an increasingly insignificant spy, but a room with a working window at the Springfield Retirement Home lies in the balance.

The episode opens with the uneasy soundtrack of intrigue as the titles tell us we are in London in 1970 at the office of the MI5. The British spies are toasting their youngest and brightest star, Terrance, voiced by Stephen Fry, who also voices the Head of the MI5, and will go on to voice his own father and daughter. He is that kind of spy, an Englishman unafraid to dress in drag. His then-most recent operation in Prague only left 11 dead, which for British Intelligence is barely a parking ticket.

If you’ve been jealous of those across the pond that get access to The British Film Institute’s streaming service BFI Player Classics, one will be delighted to hear it’s now coming to the United States. Launching on May 14, the curated collection––which will have offering distinct from its UK counterpart––will kick off with over 200 British or British co-production films picked by BFI experts.

With work by legendary directors Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Ken Russell, and Ken Loach, it also includes a number of ground-breaking British filmmakers who deserve more attention, including Horace Ové, Laura Mulvey, Ron Peck; Menelik Shabazz, Sally Potter, Gurinder Chadha (I’m British But… 1989), Waris Hussein, and John Akomfrah.

“BFI Player Classics brings together a collection of British films – the cinematic DNA of the UK – that is essential for anyone who wants to see and understand the best of British film,” said Robin Baker,...

BFI Player Classics includes Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955), Ken Russell’s feature debut French Dressing (1963).

The British Film Institute will launch BFI Player Classics as a stand-alone streaming service in the US featuring a curated roster of classic UK cinema on May 14.

The platform arrives with more than 200 UK or UK co-productions picked by BFI experts, and includes work from as Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Ken Russell, and Ken Loach.

BFI Player Classics includes titles like Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955), Russell’s feature debut French Dressing (1963), and Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol (1948).

Films not currently available across...

UK Screen Industries Survey Highlights Socio-Economic Imbalance

A new survey has found that the majority of people working in the UK’s screen industries are from a background that is classified as ‘privileged’. The survey, conducted by the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre and backed by ScreenSkills, analyzed data from the latest edition of the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey in 2019. Their research found that 53% of those surveyed from the screen industries, including the film, TV and games businesses, were from a privileged background. Looking specifically at the careers of key creative roles, specified here as arts officers, producers and directors, the number rose to 61%. That was in comparison with 38% across all industries. The definition of having a privileged background is those who had at least one parent whose job was a higher or lower managerial, administrative or professional occupation. In contrast, the screen industries employed only 25% from a ‘working class’ background,...

Chloe Zhao won at the Directors Guild of America Awards on April 11 for her helming of “Nomadland.” The guild has a great track record of previewing the Best Director winner at the Academy Awards. Since aligning its awards with the academy, only eight of the DGA picks failed to pick up an Oscar bookend. That stat makes Zhao all but certain to become the second female helmer to prevail at the Academy Awards after Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow numbers among the 55 DGA winners for best director of the year who went on to claim bragging rights as the helmer of the Oscar winner for Best Picture. But we are just coming off two of those 17 years when there was a disconnect between the guild and the academy.

In 2020, Sam Mendes won his second Directors Guild Award for helming the WWI drama “1917” but the Oscar went to “Parasite” director Boon Jong Ho,...

History has been made at the 73rd annual DGA Awards. Nomadland director Chloé Zhao has won the marquee prize for Nomadland, marking the second time the DGA has given the guild’s top prize to a female director after Kathryn Bigelow for 2008’s The Hurt Locker.

Zhao, along with fellow DGA nominees David Fincher for Mank, Lee Isaac Chung for Minari and Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman, also is nominated in the Best Directing Oscar category.

Zhao used her acceptance speech to thank and honor the work of each of her fellow nominees, beginning with Fennell. “Emerald, you are so brilliant, so daring, and in such control of your craft with a unique voice, I can’t wait to see what thought-provoking journey you’re going to take us on next. Lee, your film touched me on such a personal level. You’re able to show us so much...

Colette Photo: Robert Viglasky Colette, 10pm, BBC2, Friday, April 2

Keira Knightley embodies the French writer as she undergoes a transformation through the course of Wash Westmoreland's film, from a naive provincial who becomes increasingly liberated as her books about saucy schoolgirl Claudine - sold under the name of her husband Willy (Dominic West) - begin to sell like hot cakes. Westmoreland allows the complexity to shine in the relationship between Colette and Willy, as Colette blossoms and begins to take control of her own story, while Denise Gough puts in a scene-stealing supporting performance as Missy, with whom Colette engages in a same-sex relationship. Read what Westmoreland had to say about the influence of Max Ophüls, La Belle Époque and on the relationships in Colette, plus  our full review.

The Third Man, BBC4, Thursday, April 1

Carol Reed's cast iron classic is worth catching no matter how many times you've seen it -.

The Directors Guild of America has been handing out awards for 72 years. Fifty-five of its picks for the best director of the year went on to claim bragging rights as the helmer of the Oscar winner for Best Picture. This translates into a success rate of 6%. That eclipses the track record of both the PGA (21/31 = 68%) and SAG (12/25 = 48%).

But we are just coming off back-to-back years when there was a disconnect between the guild and the academy. In 2020, the DGA honored Sam Mendes for his helming of “1917” and the PGA picked it as their pic of the year. SAG saluted the cast of “Parasite,” which went on to sweep the Oscars bagging Best Picture and Best Director for Boon Jong Ho, who also shared in the original screenplay win.

In 2019, Alfonso Cuarón won the DGA prize for “Roma” but “Green Book” took home the top prize at the Academy Awards.

On Tuesday (March 10), the Directors Guild of America announces the nominees for the 73rd annual edition of the DGA Awards. The DGA is aces at forecasting the eventual Oscar winner. Since the guild aligned itself with the academy calendar in 1950, 62 DGA champs have gone on to win at the Academy Awards as well; the most recent of the eight misses came in 2020 when Sam Mendes (“1917) won with the guild but Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) took home the Oscar.

But be warned: the Directors Guild of America does less well predicting the eventual five Academy Awards nominees. There are usually one or two differences between the slate selected by the 16,000 plus members of the DGA, which includes helmers of TV fares and commercials, and the choices of the 564 members of the directors branch of the academy.

For the first 15 years of the DGA Awards, there were anywhere from four to 18 nominees.

Above: English-language festival poster for There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse. Design by Marcelo Granero.So another nine months have gone by since I last did one of these round-ups. As I’ve been doing for many years, I have tallied up the most popular posters featured on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram (previously Tumblr). The biggest surprise, not least to its designer, was the popularity of a festival poster for an experimental Argentinian film There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse which has racked up some 2,335 likes to date and was the third most popular design I posted in the whole of 2020 (after the two Parasite posters that topped my last round-up). When I say it’s surprising it’s because film recognition tends to play a big part in the popularity of posts,...

When an individual is cast against type, the results are always interesting. Armando Iannucci has made a reputation as a writer and director of cutting-edge contemporary comedies, from BBC’s “I’m Alan Partridge” to HBO’s “Veep,” and including his Oscar-nominated work as a writer of 2010’s “In the Loop.”

So he may seem an unlikely match for Charles Dickens, but Searchlight’s “The Personal History of David Copperfield” turns out to be a perfect vehicle for him.

“I was re-reading ‘David Copperfield’ about 10 years ago and was struck at how very funny and modern he is,” Iannucci tells Variety about the much-filmed tale. He cast Dev Patel as the title character — again, a piece of casting against type that works very well.

Iannucci and co-writer Simon Blackwell make the work feel up-to-date, not by inserting anachronistic topics or attitudes; the film seems contemporary because it focuses on the characters...