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New York icon Martin Scorsese is revealing his go-to films set in the Big Apple.

The auteur curated the screening series “Living, Breathing New York” for the Roxy Cinema, which features screenings of four of his favorite NYC movies out of a full list of Scorsese’s 32 favorite New York movies he’s created and which IndieWire is proud to share below.

“Living, Breathing New York” is curated by Scorsese in celebration of the new release of Olmo Schnabel’s NYC-set thriller, “Pet Shop Days,” which Scorsese executive produced. The film premieres March 15 at the Roxy Cinema in New York, and stars Dario Yazbek Bernal and Jack Irv as two lovers whose whirlwind romance sends them down a rabbit hole of drugs and depravity in Manhattan’s underworld. Willem Dafoe (who starred in Olmo Schnabel‘s father Julian Schnabel’s Vincent Van Gogh biopic “At Eternity’s Gate”), Emmanuelle Seigner, Peter Sarsgaard,...

Method actors are a different breed. Consider Dustin Hoffman. The notoriously intense performer habitually put his directors through their paces by hurtling himself deep into character. It wasn't enough for Hoffman to study the screenplay like it was holy writ; he had to get himself on the same emotional frequency as his characters, even if this meant endangering his physical and mental health. This is what he did on the set of John Schlesinger's "Marathon Man" prior to shooting the classic torture scene wherein Laurence Olivier's Nazi dentist literally attempts to drill information out of him. Hoffman, who was already contending with a divorce at the time, not only deprived himself of sleep but made the hard-partying scene at Studio 54. By the time he was seated in front of Olivier, he was a sweaty, addled mess, which prompted the planet's greatest living Shakespearean actor at the time to ask his co-star,...

The papal drama “Conclave” has been named the best film of 2024 at the Ee BAFTA Film Awards, which took place on Sunday in London.

Voters from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts spread the wealth, giving “Conclave” and “The Brutalist” four awards each and giving two to “Dune: Part Two,” “Wicked,” “Emilia Perez,” “A Real Pain,” “Anora” and “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.”

The win for “Conclave” is the most significant for the film in a season in which “Anora” has been winning most of the major awards. It also gave director Edward Berger two BAFTA Best Film wins in the last three years, following his first for “All Quiet on the Western Front” two years ago.

The only other directors to have two films win the top BAFTA award in a span of three years are Mike Nichols (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Graduate...

Sally Field's 1996 psychological thriller has become a global Netflix hit nearly three decades after its release. Field is a highly decorated actress whose career has spanned over six decades, starting during the 1960s with the sitcoms Gidget and The Flying Nun before transitioning to acclaimed dramatic roles. Field won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1980 for Norma Rae, her second for Places in the Heart in 1985, and earned an additional nomination for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln in 2013.

Though she's best known for starring in acclaimed dramas, Field has shown some versatility and also ventured into darker territory with roles in thrillers. This includes suspenseful projects such as Sydney Pollack's Absence of Malice in 1981, in which she played a journalist entangled in an ethical dilemma. At the height of the genre's popularity in 1996, Field starred in the psychological thriller, Eye for an Eye, delivering a gripping performance...

I’ve always avoided New Year’s resolutions, but this week I happened to recall one that was brief but resolute: I resolved to quit Hollywood.

And I did. Almost.

That decision seems relevant today for reasons that require a bit of history. Consider January 1975, 50 years ago: It was a Hollywood moment that was the opposite of the present, both in numbers and nuance. It was a great time to be around – and not to be.

The audience was expanding and was determined to get scared: Jaws was a smash. But millions also were welcoming the weirdities of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. TV fans were puzzled over something new called SNL, and music fans continued to discover Elton John (still are).

As box office kept growing, opportunity was abundant. Words like “downsizing” or “contracting” were still unknown.

There were hints of quantum change, but just hints: The Hollywood...

Photos (l-r) Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Halston, Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger by Dustin Pittman in New York After Dark (Rizzoli) at Eerdmans Photo: Anne Katrin Titze, featuring work by Dustin Pittman

In the second instalment of our conversation with renowned photographer Dustin Pittman and music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we start out with the New York music scene at Cbgb and Hurrah, then go on to Andy Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Taylor Mead, Jackie Curtis, Sylvia Miles (in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy), Lana Jokel, and Bob Colacello. Dustin also had a distinguished career working with directors such as Alan J Pakula on The Sterile Cuckoo (starring Liza Minnelli), Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, Miloš Forman’s Ragtime, and is seen at a party with Bernadette Peters in James Ivory’s adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s The Slaves Of New York.

Dustin Pittman (in Edie Sedgwick...

Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Throughout his illustrious career, Emmy winner Kiefer Sutherland has collaborated with some of the industry’s finest directors, including William Friedkin and John Schlesinger. Now, he joins forces with the legendary director and actor Clint Eastwood in the film Juror #2. Having directed a few projects himself, Sutherland shared his insights into Eastwood’s directing style. Despite Eastwood’s reputation for playing tough characters, Sutherland found a surprising kindness in him off-screen. This kindness, Sutherland noted, directly influences Eastwood’s approach to working with actors while directing. (Click on the media bar below to hear Kiefer Sutherland) https://www.hollywoodoutbreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kiefer_Sitherland_Clint_Eastwood_Juror_2_.mp3 Juror #2 is now playing in select theaters.

The post Beyond the Tough Guy: Kiefer Sutherland Reveals Clint Eastwood’s Gentle Side In ‘Juror #2’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

New styles, new technology and new voices changed the film industry throughout the 1960s and left the 1970s a brave new frontier for movies. As on-location shooting and lower-budget film making grew in popularity, it allowed for new kinds of stories to be told. Thriller films as we know them were born in this era, with many of the best coming from it. Smaller cameras and experimentation with editing expanded the realm of what was possible when creating these types of stories.

Legendary directors of the 1970s like Steven Spielberg, Sidney Lumet, and Francis Ford Coppola cut their teeth in this genre and helped establish the language for thrillers yet to come. The decade was amazing for thrillers of all genres and is still hard to stack up against, especially when comparing the quality of stunts and editing.

The Driver (1978) Directed By Walter Hill

The Driver is action legend Walter...

Rupert Everett is opening up about his relationship with Madonna.

The 65-year-old My Best Friend’s Wedding star reflected on his time in Hollywood, including working on the 2000 film The Next Best Thing with the 65-year-old pop icon, in an interview on How to Fail With Elizabeth Day.

“Friendships and failure in Hollywood are very difficult things to keep going,” he began.

Keep reading to find out more…

He added that the film “was definitely a strain” on their friendship.

When asked if they’d ever reconnect, he said: “Well, possibly. I don’t know.”

“I think it’s very difficult for her to be in films because everyone has such a preconception. And I don’t know how she could ever be good enough to make people say, ‘Oh, God, that’s really good.’ I think it was great having her in the film,” he went on.

In The Next Best Thing,...

Rupert Everett is looking back at how his friendship with Madonna was strained due to The Next Best Thing movie flop.

The My Best Friend’s Wedding actor recently appeared on the How to Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast, where he reflected on the 2000 John Schlesinger-directed romantic comedy, which starred Everett, Madonna and Benjamin Bratt.

“It was not a failure as such really at the box office because of video sales in those days — Madonna sold a lot of videos — but the film itself didn’t work, even though for a long time, it was the only film that dealt with this issue that was actually then happening and being born,” he explained.

The Next Best Thing follows Abbie (Madonna) who has a one-night stand with her gay friend Robert (Everett) and they agree to raise the resulting baby together. But things get complicated when Abbie starts dating Ben (Bratt).

According to Everett,...

While 2000’s The Next Best Thing was a critical flop, another more personal tragedy happened behind the scenes.

Rupert Everett recently reflected on starring in the John Schlesinger-helmed romantic comedy and how it put a “strain” on his friendship with co-star Madonna, which is why he now looks “the other way” when the film is on TV.

“It was not a failure as such really at the box office because of video sales in those days – Madonna sold a lot of videos – but the film itself didn’t work, even though for a long time, it was the only film that dealt with this issue that was actually then happening and being born,” Everett said on the How to Fail podcast.

Written by Tom Ropelewski, The Next Best Thing starred Madonna as Abbie and Everett as her gay best friend Robert, with whom she has a baby after a drunken night of intimacy.

It's hard to think of a sitcom that typecast its actors more severely than "Gilligan's Island." Even though it only aired for three seasons, the slapstick comedy series about seven castaways marooned on a desert island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean proved inescapable professionally for its entire ensemble.

This was partly due to the albatross of syndication. After its cancellation, "Gilligan's Island" quickly became a favorite with undiscriminating couch potatoes, who got off on the show's laughably simple formula, inane gags, and colorful locale. They loved watching Bob Denver's blundering Gilligan repeatedly sabotage every single effort to get off the island, Ginger doing just about anything, and the Howells somehow living in the lap of bamboo luxury.

The show's enduring popularity was understandably bad news for the future endeavors of its younger performers, particularly Denver, Tina Louise, and Dawn Wells, all three of whom lacked a strong enough pre-...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art

As the career-spanning Johnnie To retrospective continues, a Samuel L. Jackson series includes Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Jungle Fever on 35mm.

Bam

A Duras-Akerman double bill plays Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

NYFF Revivals continues with films by Robert Bresson, Raymond Depardon, and Clive Barker, Compensation, and more.

Film Forum

A George Stevens retrospective begins; restorations of The Devil, Probably and Lancelot du lac continue; Shane screens on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

“Kill Yr Landlords” includes work by John Schlesinger, Hal Ashby, and Nikos Papatakis; films by Dovzhenko and Dreyer play in “Essential Cinema.”

Roxy Cinema

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut plays Friday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A Frank Oz retrospective begins; Burden of Dreams and Fitzcarraldo both screen.

Metrograph

Pulp Fiction, There Will Be Blood, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, Lolita, and...

Full Metal Jacket to Oppenheimer; West Wing to Stranger Things, Modine is a showbiz hard worker whose latest role is as a cycling coach. Ask your questions in the comments

Matthew Modine has worked with lots of the greats: Stanley Kubrick, as wise-cracking marine Jt “Joker” Davis in Full Metal Jacket; Jonathan Demme, as a goofy FBI agent in Married to the Mob; John Schlesinger, as a hapless landlord in nightmare-tenant thriller Pacific Heights; Alan Parker, as the avian-obsessed kid in Birdy; and Robert Altman (twice) in Streamers and Short Cuts. More recently he’s had a couple of turns for Christopher Nolan: the Batman-wary deputy commissioner of Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises and American engineer Vannevar Bush in Oppenheimer.

On the small screen, he has played a womanising real estate developer in Weeds, a billionaire inventor in Proof and the evil – no, wait! – saviour doctor who tries...

To a Land Unknown.When Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown (2024) premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight, its rapturous reception was a rare moment of solidarity in a festival environment that otherwise sought apoliticality. The only Palestinian film to be selected across all sections of the Cannes Film Festival, To a Land Unknown offered a vital link to an ongoing, real-world crisis, breaking the bubble of the festival landscape. Palestinian flags soared inside the theater at the film’s debut screening, while down the Croisette at the Théâtre Debussy, several journalists were asked to remove pin badges expressing their political commitments, some to the Palestinian cause and others to the labor activity of the festival workers. What use can a festival have in a time of genocide if it neither acknowledges political struggle nor centers stories by and about oppressed peoples? The story of two refugees, Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and...

If being a Hollywood star consists of having either major box office clout or a few Oscar nominations (and, preferably, at least one win), the great Donald Sutherland never had any of those. Then why, since his death last Thursday at age 88, has he been celebrated the world over as one of the true legends to grace the modern screen?

The reason is simple: the Canadian-born Sutherland, whose incredibly prolific and versatile career kicked off in 1964 with the Italian horror flick, The Castle of the Living Dead, possessed the extremely rare quality — call it a kind of alchemy — where he could disappear into a role and yet somehow remain Donald Sutherland at the same time.

Whether he was playing a sinister Nazi spy (The Eye of a Needle), a boozy G.I. medic (M*A*S*H), an existentially lovesick detective (Klute), the benevolent English patriarch of a classic 19th...

Legendary Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, who died on Thursday after a long illness and a celebrated Hollywood film and TV career, revealed why he never sought dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship by acquiring an American passport.

“Because we don’t have the same sense of humor. It’s true. We don’t. I’m a Canadian through and through,” Sutherland told the CBC radio show Q with Tom Power in March during one of his last media interviews.

Sutherland, who had been living in recent years in Quebec, around 12 miles from the U.S. border, recalled giving that answer to an American border guard who asked why the Canadian actor, who already had a green card to work stateside, didn’t get an American passport to more quickly cross the border to complete errands.

“Anyway, I love the country. I’m very, very proud that they gave me a stamp,...

In Robert Aldrich's 1967 World War II film "The Dirty Dozen," an ambitious army Major named John Reisman (Lee Marvin) is tasked with assembling 12 American soldiers who have all been thrown in military prison for their insubordination and tendencies toward violence. His job is to whip them into shape, as he intends to send them on a particularly dangerous mission: infiltrating a Nazi stronghold. It's easily one of the manliest films ever made, something Aldrich was good at; he also directed "Kiss Me Deadly," "The Longest Yard," and "The Flight of the Phoenix." It's a testament to Aldrich's talent that he also made famously femme films like "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?," and "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte."

The second member of the Dirty Dozen was a character named Vernon L. Pinkley, played by the late, great Donald Sutherland. There is a scene wherein Reisman asks Pinkley -- at the last...

We're very sad to report that Donald Sutherland has passed away at the age of 88 after a long illness.

Sutherland appeared in countless movies and TV shows over the course of his six-decade career, taking on a wide range of roles. Early standouts include Pvt. Vernon Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in M*A*S*H (1970), hippie tank commander Sgt. Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes (1970), and the titular private eye in Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971).

Though he often played heroic characters, Sutherland also brought life to his share of villains, including a ruthless Nazi spy in Eye of the Needle (1981), and President Snow in the Hunger Games movies. He is also known for his devastating turn as a grieving father in Nicholas Roeg's sinister horror/thriller Don't Look Now (1973), which featured an infamously graphic (for its time) sex scene with Julie Christie.

The prolific actor's résumé also includes:...

Donald Sutherland, the tall, lean and long-faced Canadian actor who became a countercultural icon with such films as “The Dirty Dozen,” “Mash,” “Klute” and “Don’t Look Now,” and who subsequently enjoyed a prolific and wide-ranging career in films including “Ordinary People,” “Without Limits” and the “Hunger Games” films, died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, CAA confirmed. He was 88.

For over a half century, the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor, who received an honorary Oscar in 2017, memorably played villains, antiheroes, romantic leads and mentor figures. His profile increased in the past decade with his supporting role as the evil President Snow in “The Hunger Games” franchise.

Most recently, he appeared as Judge Parker on the series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” and in the “Swimming With Sharks” series in 2022. His other recent recurring roles include the series “Undoing” and “Trust,” in which he played J. Paul Getty, and features “Ad Astra” and “The Burnt-Orange Heresy.

How now, what news: the Criterion Channel’s July lineup is here. Eight pop renditions of Shakespeare are on the docket: from movies you forgot were inspired by the Bard (Abel Ferrara’s China Girl) to ones you’d wish to forget altogether (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing), with maybe my single favorite interpretation (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet) alongside Paul Mazursky, Gus Van Sant, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jarman, and (of course) Kenneth Branagh. A neonoir collection arrives four months ahead of Noirvember: two Ellroy adaptations, two from De Palma that are not his neonoir Ellroy adaptation, two from the Coen brothers (i.e. the chance to see a DVD-stranded The Man Who Wasn’t There in HD), and––finally––a Michael Winner picture given Criterion’s seal of approval.

Columbia screwballs run between classics to lesser-seens while Nicolas Roeg and Heisei-era Godzilla face off. A Times Square collection brings The Gods of Times Square,...

Hollywood actor, artist, director, and screenwriter Daniel Stern has bagged a ton of hilariously iconic roles in comedies throughout his career and has managed to land a spectacular performance in nearly every single one of them. As fans must have already understood after watching him in the Home Alone film series, he is immensely dedicated to his work to the core.

Daniel Stern. | Credit: @therealdanielstern/Ig.

That said, this tremendous commitment once almost had him losing his life while working on his comedy-action from 1981, Honky Tonk Freeway. And, ironically enough, Stern didn’t risk his life this badly while shooting an action scene, but rather, this happened while he was shooting a simple scene, for he accidentally consumed real drugs on set instead of using substitutes!

Daniel Stern Underwent a Life-Threatening Accident During Honky Tonk Freeway

Home Alone actor Daniel Stern had only just started his professional career as an...

As the Cannes Film Festival celebrates its parties and standing ovations, audiences in Hollywood and New York prepare to wallow in despair. And they’ll enjoy it (almost).

The festival called Bleak Week this week will deliver 43 films to an expected audience of 10,000 at theaters including the restored Egyptian in Hollywood, the Aero in Santa Monica and the Paris in New York.

Created by the American Cinematheque, Bleak Week will feature celebrities and Q&a sessions explaining why their projects deal with existential dread, nihilism and “uncomfortable truths,” as Bleak Week creative director Grant Moninger puts it.

Not surprisingly, there surely also will be post-screening alcoholic consumption for filmgoers seeking to ease the pain.

As the Cinematheque details it, Bleak Week was not prompted by Gaza, student protests, geomagnetic storms or the possible loss of yet another studio (Paramount).

Rather, its announced purpose is to honor an important if long-ignored...

Gloria Stroock, who played Rock Hudson’s secretary on McMillan & Wife and appeared in films including Fun With Dick and Jane, The Competition and The Day of the Locust, has died. She was 99.

Stroock died May 5 of natural causes in Tucson, Arizona, her daughter, Kate Stern, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stroock was married to Emmy-winning writer-producer Leonard B. Stern (Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, The Phil Silvers Show, The Honeymooners, Get Smart and much more) from 1956 until his death in 2011 at age 87.

Her late younger sister was Geraldine Brooks, a Tony nominee and Warner Bros. contract player (Cry Wolf, Embraceable You).

Stroock recurred as Maggie, the secretary of Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner Stewart McMillan, on the final three seasons (1974-77) of McMillan & Wife, the NBC series created by her husband.

She portrayed the wife of Richard Dysart’s art director in John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust...

If Criterion24/7 hasn’t completely colonized your attention every time you open the Channel––this is to say: if you’re stronger than me––their May lineup may be of interest. First and foremost I’m happy to see a Michael Roemer triple-feature: his superlative Nothing But a Man, arriving in a Criterion Edition, and the recently rediscovered The Plot Against Harry and Vengeance is Mine, three distinct features that suggest a long-lost voice of American movies. Meanwhile, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Antiwar Trilogy four by Sara Driver, and a wide collection from Ayoka Chenzira fill out the auteurist sets.

Series-wise, a highlight of 1999 goes beyond the well-established canon with films like Trick and Bye Bye Africa, while of course including Sofia Coppola, Michael Mann, Scorsese, and Claire Denis. Films starring Shirley Maclaine, a study of 1960s paranoia, and Columbia’s “golden era” (read: 1950-1961) are curated; meanwhile, The Breaking Ice,...

Dianne Crittenden, casting director on the original Star Wars who also worked on Pretty Woman, Spider-Man 2 and dozens of other films during a 40-year career, died March 19 at her home in Pacific Palisades. She was 82.

Her friend and colleague Ilene Starger confirmed her passing to Deadline.

Born on August 6, 1941, in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, NY, Crittenden got her start in the entertainment industry working with Howard Zieff, a photographer and director. They worked on advertising campaigns, TV commercials and films.

Her first project as casting director was Terrence Malick’s 1973 drama Badlands, starring Martin Sheen-Sissy Spacek, on which Bruce Springsteen based his song “Nebraska” a decade later. Crittenden worked on a few other films and TV shows, including the Emmy-winning 1976 Sally Field miniseries Sybil, before land the casting-director role of a lifetime — a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

After working with George Lucas on the iconic Star Wars,...

It’s Cape Fear meets ‘The Burbs in director John Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights. Although you might be fooled by Hanz Zimmer’s score, which sounds a lot more like you’re watching Sexy Beetlejuice than a ’90s thriller. This is pure irony, of course, considering the film stars Beetlejuice himself, Michael Keaton, as a conman who is six feet from the edge and thinking maybe doing murder isn’t so far down.

For those of you arguing silently in your heads that Pacific Heights is not a horror movie, let me go ahead and agree with you. It’s a pure thriller. But imagine this for a moment; imagine somewhere out there is a fresh-off Batman Michael Keaton, sitting in a dark room twirling both a razor blade and a large cockroach through his fingers like some sort of emo fidget spinner, plotting you and your significant other’s demise.

Martin Scorsese was at the Berlinale this week for the first time in a decade. His presence to collect an honorary Golden Bear was a reminder of the festival’s glories of yesteryear.

In decades past, Scorsese touched down in Berlin with major works such as Raging Bull (1981), Cape Fear (1992); Gangs of New York (2003 ), Shine a Light (2008) and Shutter Island (2010). It feels a long time since the event — traditionally one of the world’s great cinema showcases — has attracted such movies. In recent years the studio splashes have dried up.

So have memorable movies from A-list arthouse filmmakers. Scorsese this week sang the praises of the event for the encouragement it had given him as an emerging filmmaker. Citing Brian de Palma’s Silver Bear win for his second film Greetings in 1969, Scorsese said the prize had marked a turning point for unknown, independent American directors such as himself, de Palma,...

The New Hollywood revolution was raging in 1971, and studios were rapidly transitioning from old-school leadership to boat-rocking up-and-comers who seemed to have the pulse of the Baby Boomer-driven counterculture. The age of star-studded mega-musicals and old-fashioned oaters was over; movies didn't necessarily need a serrated edge to slash into the zeitgeist, but even a weepie like Arthur Hiller's "Love Story" boasted a lived-in verisimilitude. These films, shorn of backlot artifice, were happening in the real world.

Young moviegoers weren't the only ones craving authenticity. John Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy" couldn't have been voted Best Picture of 1969 without significant support from gray-haired Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members. This was a film that plunged viewers into the seamiest iteration of New York City ever captured by a studio movie, that dealt with issues of sex work and homosexuality so unflinchingly that the MPAA (now known as MPA) gave it an X-rating.

I Heard Her Call My Name upcoming event: Lucy Sante with Griffin Hansbury at Rizzoli in New York on February 12.

In the first instalment with author, critic, and artist Lucy Sante, music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman joined us. In this second instalment we discuss Lucy coming from Belgium as a young boy to New Jersey; fighting to survive school in Manhattan, dandyism, and the unattractive prospect of masculinity; her book Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation And The Promise Of Water for New York City (published by Experiment in 2022), and touch upon Nancy Buirski’s documentary Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy and Jon Voight’s boyishness as Joe Buck in John Schlesinger’s film.

Lucy Sante with Anne-Katrin Titze on going to an all-boys Jesuit high school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan: “I really did not fit in.”

Lucy Sante is...

The BBC is celebrating the art of the literary adaptation by screening a variety of classics on BBC Four. More details here.

The BBC is quite rightly celebrated for its rich history of book to screen adaptations, such as the iconic 1995 version of Jane Austen’a Pride And Prejudice to Cbbc’s hugely successful adaptation of Dame Jacqueline Wilson’s Tracy Beaker series.

It has now put together a season of 14 adaptations from the BBC archive, some of which have rarely been seen since their original broadcast.

The dramas are:

The Great Gatsby

Toby Stephens, Mira Sorvino and Paul Rudd lead the cast in this 2000 BBC adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel on the American dream in the jazz age.

Small Island

Naomie Harris, Ruth Wilson, David Oyelowo, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ashley Walters star in this 2009 TV version of Andrea Levy’s novel focusing on the lives and...

Adapted from Nathanael West’s scabrously funny 1939 novel, The Day of the Locust reunites the creative triumvirate of producer Jerome Hellman, director John Schlesinger, and screenwriter Waldo Salt, who had previously teamed up for Midnight Cowboy. Superficially, the two films would seem to be quite different. One is a contemporary tale shot documentary-style on the mean streets of late-’60s New York. The other is an exquisitely detailed period piece filmed largely on Paramount soundstages in L.A. Midnight Cowboy favors gritty realism, while The Day of the Locust descends into a kind of deranged surrealism. But the films are linked since they both focus on loners and outcasts, salaciously prod the seedy underbelly of their milieus, and expose the unforgiving flipside of the American Dream.

The biggest difference between the two films is that Midnight Cowboy mitigates its ultimately tragic denouement with a certain tenderness between its damaged protagonists.

Shirley Anne Field, the British leading lady who starred alongside Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Kenneth More in Man in the Moon — all in 1960 — has died. She was 87.

“It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday, Dec. 10, surrounded by her family and friends,” a spokesperson announced.

“Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”

For her first Hollywood film, Field passed up John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving to star opposite Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner in the World War II drama The War Lover (1962). It was a decision she would regret, she explained in a 2009 interview.

“I finally had a chance to go to Hollywood and become a worldwide name.

Above: first US teaser poster for Poor Things. Design by Vasilis Marmatakis.I don’t know whether it’s because of the power of Yorgos Lanthimos, or the popularity of Emma Stone, or the sheer genius of designer Vasilis Marmatakis, or a combination of all of them, but three out of the four most liked posters on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram over the past six months have all been posters for Lanthimos’s latest, Poor Things. The teaser above is now the most liked poster ever on my feed.Breaking up the Poor Things monopoly at number two is Polish designer Maks Bereski’s fan-art design for Ridley Scott’s yet-to-be-released Napoleon, which also went through the roof with over 4,000 likes when I posted it in June in conjunction with my article on Bereski and his favorite movie posters. Instagram likes are a fickle thing but it...

In the 1960s, there were few cameramen who shared Nicolas Roeg’s ability to render sirenic, jittery sensuality at 24 frames per second—and this was an era whose dominant culture arguably cracked open and redefined the sensual palate. Even more impressively, Roeg’s gift often manifested itself most lucidly while serving the orgiastic gimmicks of Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Mask and the bucolic splendor of John Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd with the guarded glee of a merry prankster spiking a corporate water cooler with LSD.

But it’s not just that Roeg successfully snuck timely art into the mise-en-scène of those and other studio-centric films, it’s that he seemed incapable of recording anything but subtle art within whatever limitations his aspect ratio enforced. And so while Walkabout may have been his proper directorial debut, it’s far more significantly his final cinematographic statement.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa)

Six years after directing his last feature, Dustin Guy Defa returns with The Adults, a film of complicated shared histories and gradually revealing inner lives. With his relatively sprawling Person to Person, Defa followed a wide array of characters over five interweaving storylines. This time he focuses on one family and, closer still, on an unmistakable feeling: that of moving out and growing up, only to return home and realize all that delicately assembled adulthood was merely a façade. Playing out across a leafy town in upstate New York, The Adults follows a trio of siblings as they reunite: the brother who went away and the sisters who did not. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream:...

Wes Anderson beamed with joy as his 40-minute short film “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” received a nearly 4-minute standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere.

Prior to the screening, Anderson was given Cartier’s Glory to the Filmmaker Award, which was presented to him by his frequent collaborator Alexandre Desplat. Anderson humbly accepted the honor, remarking that he had researched the award in advance and observed that it had been given to filmmakers “at their premieres of some of their worst movies.”

“I hope I’m not going to repeat that,” he wisecracked.

After the quirky comedy — starring Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch and Dev Patel — played its end credits, it became clear that Anderson had not joined that list of worst movies, but he continued to convey humility, bashfully waving goodbye to the crowd before the applause had fully ceased.

Based on Roald Dahl’s 1977 short story collection,...

With festivals beckoning and box office wobbling, this obnoxious question looms ever larger: What’s next?

The strikes will end and a new season will begin but where’s that next cycle of movies and streaming content that represent groundbreaking ideas? Where will they come from?

A quick survey of past groundbreakers poses some answers, all of them disturbing.

Breakthrough movies of years past have represented the unpredictable product of corporate guile (The Avengers), artistic monomania (Avatar) or accidents of history (Barbie).

Some hits invaded the zeitgeist because they were relentlessly defiant (Midnight Cowboy) or simply inevitable (Harry Potter). Ironically, some of Hollywood’s most culturally ambitious movies were distributed at moments when films were being largely ignored by the filmgoing public – Doctor Zhivago (1965) or Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

Cinema, as with every form of pop culture, has gone through cycles of bold innovation as well as pervasive failure. Hollywood, circa the early 1960s,...

Netflix has shared the release date for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, a new short film by Wes Anderson adapted from Roald Dahl’s short story of the same name. After its September 1st premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the title will land on streaming Wednesday, September 27th.

The 39-minute-long The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar stars leading man Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, a compulsive gambler who discovers a new method of cheating. Ralph Fiennes will also star in the film as Dahl, while Dev Patel, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade round out the ensemble cast.

This marks the second time Anderson has brought a Dahl story to the screen, following 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. In an interview with IndieWire earlier this year, he explained that he’d long been wanting to adapt Henry Sugar — the Dahl family had even set it aside for him...

This fall, quirky auteur Wes Anderson follows up this year’s Asteroid City with another project slated to stream on Netflix in the fall. The movie is The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and surprisingly, it’s only a short film. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar clocks in at 39 minutes and is scheduled to premiere on the streaming service on September 27. Prior to its premiere on the content platform, Netflix is also proud to announce that the Wes Anderson short will also be making its debut at the Venice Film Festival.

The official logline for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar from Netflix reads,

“A beloved Roald Dahl story about a rich man who learns about a guru who can see without using his eyes and then sets out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling.” In typical Wes Anderson fashion, the filmmaker has assembled an all-star cast for his project.

Wes Anderson’s latest take on Roald Dahl comes to Venice and Netflix this fall.

Anderson writes and directs the short film adaptation of Dahl’s 1977 story “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.” Anderson previously helmed the Dahl adaptation “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which earned Oscar nominations for Animated Feature and Original Score in 2010.

Per the official synopsis, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is a beloved Roald Dahl story about a rich man who learns about a guru who can see without using his eyes and then sets out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling.

Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade star in the 39-minute short film, which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival out of competition.

“For years I wanted to do ‘Henry Sugar,'” Anderson told IndieWire earlier this year. “They set this story aside for me because I was friends with them.

If you thought the animatronic rats, chickens and bloodhounds that could break out in song – or revolt – at any time were the scariest part of Chuck E. Cheese, then you never encountered Kiefer Sutherland inside of one. It didn’t help that he had just starred as a rapist and murderer in 1996’s Eye for an Eye.

Speaking at the Fan Expo Chicago (via Entertainment Weekly) over the weekend, Kiefer Sutherland recalled his experience in public soon after playing Robert Dobbs, the man who goes unconvicted after killing Sally Field’s daughter in Eye for an Eye. “After Eye for an Eye opened, I took my daughter, who was eight years old, into Chuck E. Cheese…I’ve never seen parents leave a place so fast with their children in my life. My daughter actually thought I’d rented the place for just us. Because within 10 minutes, everybody was gone.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEvil Does Not Exist.The Venice Film Festival has unveiled its full lineup, featuring new films from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Sofia Coppola, and Yorgos Lanthimos in competition, alongside buzzy titles like David Fincher’s The Killer and Michael Mann’s Ferrari.There's lineup news from Toronto as well. So far, TIFF has revealed its opening night selection, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (better original title: How Do You Live?), as well as its gala, special, Platform, and nonfiction presentations. On the docket are new films from Raoul Peck, Kitty Green, Atom Egoyan, and Richard Linklater, among others. The Platform section will open with Kristoffer Borgli's Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage; he portrays an academic who begins appearing in people's dreams.Dream Scenario.REMEMBERINGPee-wee's Big Adventure.Comedian and actor Paul Reubens—best...

Lelia Goldoni, who was cast in the lead role for John Cassavette’s race-centered film “Shadows,” died over the weekend at the age of 86.

The actress died on Saturday at the Actors Fund Home in Engelwood, New Jersey, Goldoni’s friend, Jd Sobol, told TheWrap on Thursday.

The New York City native was born on Oct. 1, 1936, and got her start in the entertainment business during the 1940s, with one of her first roles being a cameo in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “House of Strangers” in 1949. That same year she also had a role in John Huston’s “We Were Strangers.”

Martin Scorsese later brought Goldoni on to star as a friend of Ellen Burnstyn’s character in his 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Her resume also included performing in the original “The Italian Job” (1969), John Schlesinger’s “The Day of the Locust” (1975) and Robert Mulligan’s “Bloodbrothers.”

Goldoni, who...

Lelia Goldoni, who sparkled as the lead in John Cassavettes’ Shadows and played a friend of Ellen Burstyn’s character in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, has died. She was 86.

Goldoni died Saturday at The Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey, her friend Jd Sobol announced.

Goldoni also appeared in the original The Italian Job (1969), in John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust (1975), in Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and in Robert Mulligan’s Bloodbrothers (1978).

A second cousin of famed New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, Lelia Vita Goldoni was born in New York on Oct. 1, 1936. She was raised in Los Angeles, where she was one of the Lester Horton Dancers alongside Alvin Ailey and Carmen de Lavallade.

Goldoni studied acting with Jeff Corey and at age 19 moved back to New York, where she became a student at a drama...

Joe Buck (Jon Voight) with Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) in John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy

In the second instalment with Nancy Buirski on Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy (special advisor Martin Scorsese) we discuss Jon Voight as Joe Buck with the little girl reading a Wonder Woman comic, Jennifer Salt’s Crazy Annie and Sylvia Miles’s Cass in Midnight Cowboy. John Schlesinger with Dp Adam Holender showing New York the way it really was, a Roberta Flack song and William Wyler’s adaption of Lilian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, starring Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn, Nancy’s longtime cinematographer Rex Miller, Far From The Madding Crowd and Vietnam, Brian De Palma on Dennis Hopper and the “international invasion”, and screenwriter Waldo Salt also came up.

Nancy Buirski on Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt) with Joe Buck (Jon Voight): “Many of the women in...

When Midnight Cowboy came out in 1969, Miami Herald critic John Huddy heralded its arrival with a string of superlatives: “Staggering, shattering, heartbreaking, hilarious, tragic, raw and absurd.”

Over the years, the ranks of its admirers has only grown, among them documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski.

“I remember feeling that it was a really radical film,” recalls Buirski, who first saw Midnight Cowboy sometime after its original release. “It felt different from anything I had seen… It was like a gut punch.”

Director Nancy Buirski

Buirski’s documentary Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, now playing in limited release in New York, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Detroit and other cities, digs into the loam that produced such a bleak yet beautiful flower of a film. Midnight Cowboy hit theaters the same year as Hello, Dolly! and Paint Your Wagon but unlike those celluloid larks, John Schlesinger’s film...

Footage of late Sixties New York City seamlessly sways into Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy stealing a handful of plum tomatoes and a coconut from a fruit stand with help from his new sidekick Joe Buck (Jon Voight). “These Eyes” sing Guess Who, and Lucy Sante comments that the film “could be an advertisement for anti-glamour and yet by doing this it manages to express the zeitgeist.”

Nancy Buirski’s masterful Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited with Anthony Ripoli is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s multiple Oscar-winning film. Based on James Leo Herlihy’s novel, adapted by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, with costumes by Ann Roth, Midnight Cowboy features an impressive supporting cast, including Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and...

Desperate Souls, Dark City and The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy director Nancy Buirski on Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo: “They become appealing because of these wonderful performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.”

Nancy Buirski’s masterpiece is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, screenplay by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, costumes by Ann Roth, and starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman with Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and Bob Balaban. Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited by Anthony Ripoli, features on-camera interviews shot by Rex Miller with Lucy Sante, Brian De Palma, Edmund White, Michael Childers, Charles Kaiser, Jim Hoberman, Ian Buruma, Voight, Vaccaro, Balaban, Holender, and Jennifer Salt.

Brenda Vaccaro with John Schlesinger: “Ann Roth saved my life,” says Vaccaro, “by putting me in that fur coat.”

The evocative, wide-ranging, and evermore timely documentary drops us...

A movie, good, bad or indifferent, is always “about” something. But some movies are about more things than others, and as you watch “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy,” Nancy Buirski’s rapt, incisive, and beautifully exploratory making-of-a-movie documentary, what comes into focus is that “Midnight Cowboy” was about so many things that audiences could sink into the film as if it were a piece of their own lives.

The movie was about loneliness. It was about dreams, sunny yet broken. It was about gay male sexuality and the shock of really seeing it, for the first time, in a major motion picture. It was about the crush and alienation of New York City: the godless concrete carnival wasteland, which had never been captured onscreen with the telephoto authenticity it had here. The movie was also about the larger sexual revolution — what the scuzziness of “free love” really looked like,...