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Small thief and parolee Max Dembo is pinned in a parole system that all but guarantees he’ll go back to robbing banks and jewelry stores. Dustin Hoffman has one of his best and most unusual roles, taken from the story of a real bank robber. Directed by Ulu Grosbard, the docu-drama look at the seedy side of Los Angeles is graced with a perfect cast: Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh, and Kathy Bates. Sure, the rotten parole officer drives Dembo back to crime, but pulling jobs is in his blood. It’s one of the best portraits of a criminal ever.

Straight Time

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1978 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 114 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date September 29, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh, Rita Taggart, Kathy Bates, Sandy Baron, Jake Busey.

Cinematography: Owen Roizman

Art Director: Dick Lawrence

Film Editors: Sam O’Steen,...

Robert C. Jones, an Oscar-winning writer and editor whose credits include It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Coming Home and Love Story, has died. He was 84.

“It is with deep sadness that I am writing to tell you the passing of Robert C. Jones, who was a celebrated editor and screenwriter, and a beloved professor at our School,” said Elizabeth Daley of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where Jones served as a professor for 15 years.

Jones was born on March 30, 1936 in Los Angeles. His foray into film work began upon his drafting into the U.S. Army, when he joined the Army Pictorial Center from 1958 to 1960 as a film editor. At the Pictorial Center he edited Army training films, documentaries and several segments of the television program The Big Picture.

After his Army stint, Jones further developed his editing skills for A Child Is Waiting...

Robert C. Jones, the acclaimed film editor behind 1960s and ’70s classics “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and “Love Story” who garnered a screenplay Academy Award for the war drama “Coming Home,” has died. He was 84.

His daughter, Leslie Jones — who is also an Oscar-nominated film editor — confirmed to Variety that Jones died on Feb. 1 following a long illness.

“My Dad had a tremendous impact on my own editing career with whom I worked on several films as his assistant,” Leslie said in a statement. “Like Bob I did not go to film school and had no formal training in editing. But what I learned was that editing does not always require a specific skill set. He taught me that talent instead is guided by a sense of compassion, and integrity, and the search for truth and authenticity. He had all that and more.”

Throughout his career, Jones collaborated with...

With the losses Sunday night for Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”) and Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“1917”) in Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay, respectively, the 2010s now carries a dubious badge in Oscar history: It’s the first decade since the 1960s without a female writing winner.

Gerwig fell to Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”), while Wilson-Cairns and co-writer Sam Mendes were bested by “Parasite’s” Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won — two historic victories in their own right, as Waititi is the first indigenous writer to win, and Bong and Han are the first Asian writing champs.

The last woman to win in either category, solo or as a co-writer, was Diablo Cody 12 years ago for 2007’s “Juno” in original. The adapted category has a longer drought at 14 years, with Diana Ossana, who co-wrote “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) with Larry McMurtry, being the most recent. Since Cody’s victory, 12 women have received bids in original,...

Of the 13 people nominated for the Best Adapted and Original Screenplay Oscars this year, only two are women — one in each category: Greta Gerwig, who adapted “Little Women,” and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who co-wrote “1917” with Sam Mendes. And if either Gerwig or Wilson-Cairns wins, it’d end a 12-year long drought for female champs in the writing categories.

The last woman to nab a writing Oscar, solo or as part of a team, was Diablo Cody in original for “Juno” (2007). In adapted, the dry spell is even longer at 14 years, with Diana Ossana being the most recent, having won for her “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) script with Larry McMurty. Since Cody’s golden night, 12 women have received bids in the original category, including Wilson-Cairns and Gerwig two years ago for “Lady Bird” (2017), while 14 women have been shortlisted since Ossana’s triumph, including Gerwig this year.

As with most non-gendered Oscar categories, there...

Over the last few decades – thanks in part to movies and TV shows like Dazed and Confused, Boogie Nights, Anchorman and HBO's Vinyl – there’s been a pronounced pop cultural tendency to reduce the 1970s to little more than a fabulous parade of campy signifiers like mirrored disco balls, brightly-painted muscle cars, platform shoes, bellbottomed jeans, tube tops, Afro hairdos, pornstaches and piles of cocaine.

It's an understandable impulse, of course. (Who doesn't love Afros or piles of cocaine?) But taking such a superficial approach to the seventies means glossing over the grittier,...

First off, if you haven’t seen Slap Shot, step away, flip on Netflix and stream it. The 1977 film not only the greatest hockey movie ever made, but perhaps the funniest sports comedy, as well. Screenwriter Nancy Dowd – yes, Slap Shot was written by a woman, a fact that still shocks a lot of people, considering it’s a crass, shameless and often misogynistic portrait of male-bonding – penned the story after spending time with her brother, Ned Dowd, a minor league hockey player for the Johnstown Jets. During a phone call with his sister, Ned complained how the

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Filed under: Columns, Cinematical

Once again, blades are flying across the rink, sticks are slapping against the ice and the puck is flying to and fro. Yes, it's hockey season. But today's hockey isn't yesterday's hockey. Our modern sensibilities require a little more refinement, a lot less blood and add safety measures like helmets and improved padding. But it wasn't always this way. In the good ol' days, it was all bare-heads, fiery machismo and bloody fights. The danger and violence were a part of the game just as much as shooting talent and fancy skate work.

And though times have changed, there's no movie that signifies hockey season better than 'Slap Shot.' Sure, there are flicks like 'Youngblood' that might try and fight for the top spot, but nothing compares to the film where real hockey players took to the ice with actors who knew how to skate.

Filed under: Columns, Cinematical

Once again, blades are flying across the rink, sticks are slapping against the ice and the puck is flying to and fro. Yes, it's hockey season. But today's hockey isn't yesterday's hockey. Our modern sensibilities require a little more refinement, a lot less blood and add safety measures like helmets and improved padding. But it wasn't always this way. In the good ol' days, it was all bare-heads, fiery machismo and bloody fights. The danger and violence were a part of the game just as much as shooting talent and fancy skate work.

And though times have changed, there's no movie that signifies hockey season better than 'Slap Shot.' Sure, there are flicks like 'Youngblood' that might try and fight for the top spot, but nothing compares to the film where real hockey players took to the ice with actors who knew how to skate.

Joan Jett may have loved rock'n'roll but it almost killed her former band, the Runaways. John Patterson thinks it's time we faced the music

There are some rock'n'roll movies, like Floyd Mutrux's American Hot Wax and Bob Zemeckis's I Wanna Hold Your Hand, that manage to convey the palpable sense – palpable, that is, to a hormone-wracked teenager – that rock'n'roll can literally save your life. A particularly wrenching scene in the former has its lead character, a teenage Brill Building songwriter, sobbing with gratitude backstage at one of DJ Alan Freed's early Moondog Matinee rock'n'roll revues in 1955, as she gratefully acknowledges that this music came along for her at exactly the right moment in her life, and that said life would be empty and pointless for her without it. That scene always destroys me.

The Runaways has a little of this feeling, but given the already ruined lives of...

Living in California celebrity enclave Malibu Colony really paid off for actor Bruce Dern - he landed a role in movie classic Coming Home following a neighbourhood scramble to complete the film when Al Pacino and director John Schlesinger quit the project.

The actor, who was Oscar nominated for his role in the 1978 Vietnam War movie, was a last-minute addition to the film - and feels he was only asked to take part because he was a neighbour of Schlesinger's replacement Hal Ashby.

Dern tells WENN Pacino and Schlesinger walked away from the film after two days of shooting, leaving producer Jerome Hellman desperate to replace them in less than a week - or risk studio bosses scrapping the project.

Dern recalls, "Jerry Hellman lived in Malibu Colony; I lived in Malibu Colony and Hal Ashby lived in Malibu Colony. Jerry went to Hal, gave him the script for Coming Home and said, 'Can you shoot Thursday?' He said, 'It's Tuesday night!' He said, 'What's the rush if I started Monday?' Hellman said, 'The rush is two other movies about Vietnam started last week - Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter - but I don't have explosions or war in my script.

"He said, 'I got the word 'home', and United Artists will shut my movie down if we don't continue on.' So, in 36 hours, Hal went to work.

"Jon Voight, who was playing my role, went up and played Pacino's role, Luke Martin. I lived on the same street as Hal, so he said, 'What about the Dernster for Captain Bob?' So in I come. (Co-star) Jane Fonda went along with it because she was kind of the silent producer of the piece and we marched right on through."

The film was destined to be a great success - Fonda and Voight won Best Actress and Actor Oscars, and Nancy Dowd, Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones shared the Best Screenplay prize.

Dern adds, "That was another twist - the three writers had never met each other. They all three wrote individual scripts. Nancy Dowd was hired by Jane Fonda, who gave her $25,000 to write a triangular love story set in Vietnam. Waldo Salt, who had written Midnight Cowboy with Jerry Hellman, wrote the screenplay and had a stroke and was in an oxygen tank and couldn't write anymore, so Bob Jones, who was the editor on Coming Home and had been in Vietnam, took over and became the scriptwriter.

"The day after the Oscars Jerry Hellman called Jane Fonda and says, 'Who's Nancy Dowd - because we just got a call from the Writers Guild saying she gets equal credit and equal money for the script because she won the Oscar. What do we do about her because she wants a piece of the movie?' Jane said, 'Oh God, I forgot to tell you - she wrote the script!'"...

Dean Parisot (Fun with Dick and Jane, Galaxy Quest) will be directing Universal's upcoming Slap Shot remake. According to Variety, this redo of the classic 1977 sports comedy will be adapted by scribe Peter Steinfeld (21) from Nancy Dowd's original work with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) producing. Slap Shot hopes to enjoy the success of another sports redo, The Longest Yard, which earned $158 million to become the second highest earning football movie ever.

If you've seen 1981's Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, you probably watched a lot of late-night cable in the 1980s. Its presence there inspired a cult following, which found punk inspiration in its tale of a teen girl band that briefly makes it big with enthusiastically amateurish anti-consumerist diatribes. The long-overdue DVD release will probably expand that cult. Though Stains is hilariously clueless about the way rock actually works, even though music-industry veteran Lou Adler directed it, the film has a weird integrity, striking and holding a chord designed to resonate with rebels-in-the-making. It's easy to see how the movie fell through the cracks. The screenplay by Slap Shot and Coming Home writer Nancy Dowd—who pulled her name from the film—has its roots in punk, but by the time of the film's aborted 1981 release, punk's moment as an object of mainstream fascination had already passed. A...