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2009 | 2008

6 articles from 2009

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Oscar... Now With More Spirit Fingers

23 October 2009 8:36 PM, PDT | FilmExperience | See recent FilmExperience news »

Shankman's got spirit!

Do you follow the Oscar show news in the way you follow the Oscars? I don't so much, despite this life I lead constantly writin' about the awards themselves. I care who hosts to some degree but I tend to ignore the rest. But I found it interesting this week when director Adam Shankman (Hairspray) was named as one of the producers and his choreography skills were noted as a reason to be enthused about this assignment. At least he has a sense of humor about his, um, limited history with the big event I was one of Paula Abdul's 'Under the Sea' pirates," Shankman said. "The last time I was at the Oscars, I was in Lycra, with a pirate hat on. Shankman's presence must mean more musical numbers. I'm all for musical numbers provided they rehire Hugh Jackman as host. He was so fine last year. »

- NATHANIEL R

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Brando & Kelly's Home Movies To Hit The Big Screen

7 October 2009 3:01 PM, PDT | WENN | See recent WENN news »

Rarely seen home movies shot by and featuring Marlon Brando, Gene Kelly and the late Natalie Wood are to be screened as part of a quirky one-day film festival in Hollywood.

The candid footage will screen during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ presentation of Hollywood Home Movies II: Treasures from the Academy Film Archive on 17 October at the Linwood Dunn Theater.

The event is already sold out.

A spokesperson for the Academy says, "The Academy Film Archive houses a wide variety of such films and will present a selection of excerpts including footage of Marlene Dietrich, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Judy Garland, Paulette Goddard, Betty Grable, Alfred Hitchcock, Harpo Marx, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Stewart, Esther Williams and Loretta Young."

Hollywood Home Movies II is being presented in conjunction with Home Movie Day, an annual international celebration of amateur films and filmmaking. »

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Five Movies That Are Just As Blasphemous As ‘Angels & Demons’

15 May 2009 11:00 AM, PDT | MTV Movies Blog | See recent MTV Movies Blog news »

by John Constantine

Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons” is a gripping tale in which a Harvard professor works to derail an Illuminati plot to blow up the Vatican. No problems with that, right Pope? Not blowing up is a good thing, even if Professor Langdon (Tom Hanks) wants to fling open some of your more skeleton-filled closets in the process!

Well… no. That’s actually sort of a big problem, the whole hidden secrets being brought to light angle. Enough of a problem to have earned the film adaptation of “Angels” an official ban from the highest church. Which isn’t to say that this is the only example out there of blasphemous filmmaking. Check out these Hell-bound gems of the silver screen.

“Bruce Almighty”/”Evan Almighty”

If there’s one thing the Vatican hates, it’s imitators. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” and all that jazz. »

- Adam Rosenberg

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Pre-Code Wellman and Godard's Code Unknown

31 March 2009 7:17 AM, PDT | ifc.com | See recent IFC news »

William "Wild Bill" Wellman was always more renowned for his reportedly rough and tumble extra-cinematic resume (delinquent, pilot, stuntman) than for his mostly orthodox films -- from his nearly 40-year career, only a handful of astute genre epics remain lodged in the cultural front-brain today: "Nothing Sacred" and "A Star Is Born" (both 1937), "Beau Geste" (1939), and "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943). They're all beautifully judged, visually eloquent and delicately acted films (compare Fredric March in "A Star Is Born" to the rest of his mannered '30s work, and you get a taste of Wellman's touch), particularly "Ox-Bow," wherein Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda are unnervingly in touch with the wages of frontier violence.

Still, Wellman worked long enough in the studio system to assure a certain homogeneity to most of his work, and so the payload of early Wellmans delivered in Warner/TCM's new Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume Three have as »

- Michael Atkinson

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Actor Ricardo Montalban Dies at 88

14 January 2009 2:28 PM, PST | IMDb News

Ricardo Montalban, the dashing Mexican actor who gained fame for two iconic television roles -- that of the vengeful Khan in Star Trek and the mysterious Mr. Roark in Fantasy Island -- died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles; he was 88. No cause of death was given, though it was known that Montalban had suffered from complications after undergoing 9 1/2 hours of spinal surgery in 1993 to alleviate an injury he suffered in 1951 while filming the western Across the Wide Missouri. The surgery, however, did not resolve his medical problems, and he found himself primarily confined to a wheelchair. A career in Mexican films led to Hollywood and an MGM contract in 1946, and he was cast in a number of Esther Williams films (his American feature debut was in 1946's Fiesta opposite the swimming star) as well as westerns and dramas opposite such stars as Lana Turner and Jane Powell.

After leaving MGM in the mid-fifties, Montalban appeared on numerous television shows, though it was his singular turn as the villainous Khan Noonien Singh, one of a group of genetically engineered "supermen" in the "Space Seed" episode of Star Trek for which he became most remembered, and he reprised that role in the 1982 box office hit Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. By the time that film was released, Montalban had also become famous to a new generation of television viewers as the enigmatic Mr. Rourke, the host of the ABC Saturday night staple Fantasy Island (1978-1984), where he would preside over cautionary tales of those who wished to have their most desired fantasies fulfilled. (Around the same time, Montalban did a number of commercials for the Chrysler Cordoba, where his exhortations of the cars "rich Corinthian leather" would become an affectionate pop culture reference.)

After his role as Khan, Montalban continued to appear in television (most notably on the Dynasty spin-off The Colbys) and in film (as the villain of the comedy The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!) until his surgery curtailed his acting career. Montalban continued to work, however, appearing in all three of the Spy Kids films and doing voice work for the television shows Kim Possible and Family Guy. Montalban's wife, Georgiana Young (the younger sister of actress Loretta Young) died in 2007; the two had been married since 1944 and had four children. »

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Ricardo Montalban Dies At 88

14 January 2009 2:20 AM, PST | PEOPLE.com | See recent PEOPLE.com news »

Ricardo Montalban, the velvet voiced Mexican born actor who greeted the plane as Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island, died in his Beverly Hills home Wednesday. He was 88. His son-in-law Gilbert Smith tells People that Montalban had been in declining health for months and died from "complications of advancing age." "He was in peace," said Smith, who said that the actor was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. "He will be missed," added Smith.Born in Mexico City and partially educated in the U.S., Montalban began his career in the early '40s playing bit parts on Broadway and lead »

- Oliver Jones

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2009 | 2008

6 articles from 2009

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