Noticias

Stephen Kandel, the prolific screenwriter whose work over four decades in television spanned Sea Hunt to Star Trek, Batman to Barnaby Jones and Mannix to MacGyver, has died. He was 96.

Kandel died Oct. 21 of natural causes in his Boston apartment, his daughter Elizabeth Englander told The Hollywood Reporter.

Kandel also wrote multiple episodes of such shows as The Millionaire, The Rogues, Gidget, I Spy, Ironside, The Wild Wild West, It Takes a Thief, Dan August, The New Mike Hammer, Mission: Impossible, Room 222, The Magician, Medical Center, Cannon, Hawaii Five-o and Hart to Hart.

Plus, he co-created Iron Horse, a 1966-68 drama from ABC and Screen Gems that starred Dale Robertson, as a gambler turned railroad baron, Gary Collins and Ellen Burstyn.

“His résumé reads like a Baby Boomer’s dream list of must-see TV,” Tom Weaver wrote in his 2005 book, Earth vs. the Sci-Fi Filmmakers.

Kandel had a hand...

Quentin Tarantino has signed a two book deal with Harper, the HarperCollins imprint. First up is Tarantino’s first work of fiction, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a novel to be published next summer that breathes new life into the characters and the premise of a film that got 10 Oscar nominations and won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Brad Pitt. Tarantino has long been infatuated with the movie novelizations he read voraciously growing up, paperbacks that accompanied a film’s release. He has set in that tradition a book that teases out the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Pitt. Appropriately, the throwback novel will start as a Harper Perennial mass market paperback, alongside e-book and digital audio editions. A deluxe hardcover edition will follow in the fall.

Tarantino’s second work with Harper will be a work of nonfiction, Cinema Speculation. Tarantino has often cited film critic...

Burt Reynolds was a guy’s guy, a ladies’ man, the ruggedly handsome alpha male of the entertainment world, who always seemed to be having a good time – whether cracking jokes on TV talk shows with pals like Dom DeLuise or saucily posing nude as a centerfold in “Cosmopolitan” magazine — except maybe when he broke his leg during that ill-fated canoe outing in 1972’s “Deliverance,” his breakout film role. According to his reps on Thursday, the actor is dead at age 82 in his adopted home of Jupiter, Florida.

With a thicket of hair, a dapper mustache and a twinkle in his eye, he often came across as a good ol’ Southern boy in such films as “Smokey and the Bandit,” “W,W. and the Dixie Dancekings” and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” while claiming to be from Georgia. But he was born in Lansing, Michigan, although he would eventually end up in Riviera Beach,...

Burt Reynolds, a staple of machismo-fueled, good ol’ boy movies from the 1970s and 1980s and an Emmy winner for his role on TV’s Evening Shade, died of a heart attack on Thursday. He was 82.

Reynolds’ long film resume includes free-wheeling larks such as Smokey and the Bandit and Stroker Ace, the comedies Semi-Tough and Cannonball Run, and more serious fare such as Deliverance (which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture), Starting Over, Hustle and The Longest Yard.

In 1998, Reynolds received his first Academy Award nod, for a supporting role in Boogie Nights that also earned him a Golden Globe.

Burt Reynolds, a top Hollywood star of the 1970s whose hits ranged from such classic, easy-going drive-in fare as Smokey and the Bandit to the intense, hunted-men drama Deliverance, died today at the Jupiter Medical Center in Florida. He was 82.

“It is with a broken heart that I said goodbye to my uncle today,” Reynolds’ niece Nancy Lee Hess said in a statement (read it in full below).

With a sly, knowing grin, signature moustache and a unique blend of charm and machismo, Reynolds was a bona fide cultural phenomenon. He became a frequent guest of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, was the first major celebrity nude male centerfold and off-screen romantic partner of such stars as frequent co-star Sally Field and Dinah Shore. Reyrolds would achieve a newfound respect among critics and fans alike for the late-career peak in 1997’s Boogie Nights, for which he earned his only Oscar nomination.

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, Travis Keune, and Tom Stockman

Burt Reynolds, one of We Are Movie Geeks favorite actors, turns 80 today. Happy Birthday Burt!

On February 11th, 1936, Reynolds was born in Waycross, Georgia, before his family moved to Jupiter Florida, where his father served as Chief of Police. Young Burt excelled at sports and played football at Florida State University. He became an All Star Southern Conference halfback (and was earmarked by the Baltimore Colts) before injuries sidelined his football career. He dropped out of college and headed to New York with dreams of becoming an actor. There he worked in restaurants and clubs while pulling the odd TV job or theater role. Burt was spotted in a New York City stage production of Mister Roberts and signed to a TV contract and eventually had recurring roles in such shows as Gunsmoke (1955), Riverboat (1959) and his own series, Hawk...

Hollywood stuntman and film director who scored huge successes with Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run

Upset by the critical response to his work, the stuntman turned film director Hal Needham, who has died aged 82, took out advertisements in Variety and other trade papers. They featured quotes from negative reviews for his movies including Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and The Cannonball Run (1981), alongside a wheelbarrow overflowing with dollar bills.

Needham made a point. His rumbustious 1977 directorial debut had grossed over $100m – an enormous return on its modest budget. He was still milking that particular creation some 20 years later, producing and directing a series of television movies, including Bandit Goes Country and Beauty and the Bandit.

These and other films, many of which starred Burt Reynolds, were seen by an audience of hundreds of millions worldwide, yet few reference books acknowledged his 45-year-long career — an unjustified omission, if only...

Stuntman and Burt Reynolds director Hal Needham dead at 82: Received Honorary Oscar in November 2012 Veteran stuntman and stunt coordinator Hal Needham, whose stunt-work movie credits ranged from John Ford Westerns to Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and who directed a handful of popular action comedies starring Burt Reynolds, died today, October 25, 2013, in Los Angeles. Needham, who had been suffering from cancer, was 82. (See also: "Stunt Worker Hal Needham: Honorary Oscar 2012".) Born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 6, 1931, Hal Needham began his long Hollywood stuntman career in the mid-’50s. A former tree trimmer and paratrooper, and a motorcycle and car racer, Needham performed stunts in both big-screen and small-screen Westerns, such as John Ford’s 1962 classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring John Wayne and James Stewart; the all-star 1963 Best Picture Academy Award nominee How the West Was Won; and the television series Have Gun - Will Travel, doubling for star Richard Boone.

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, Travis Keune, and Tom Stockman

We like to celebrate the movie tough guys of the ’70s here at We Are Movie Geeks and at Super-8 Movie Madness. We’ve posted Top Ten lists to tie into Super-8 shows featuring Charles Bronson (Here), Clint Eastwood (Here), and Lee Marvin (Here). This month we’re going to honor the #1 top money-making star for five consecutive years – 1978 – 1982 – Burt Reynolds. On February 11th, 1936, Reynolds was born in Waycross, Georgia, before his family moved to Jupiter Florida, where his father served as Chief of Police. Young Burt excelled at sports and played football at Florida State University. He became an All Star Southern Conference halfback (and was earmarked by the Baltimore Colts) before injuries sidelined his football career. He dropped out of college and headed to New York with dreams of becoming an actor. There he worked in restaurants...

Of the two biggest franchise-launchers of 1977, one involved a pair of rebellious outlaws with a shaggy sidekick, a runaway heroine, a Mutt-and-Jeff pair of tall-short comic relief characters, epic-length chases, spectacular stunts, and endless vehicular mayhem. The other was "Star Wars." Yep, we're talkin' "Smokey and the Bandit," which opened 35 years ago this week (on May 27, 1977) and wound up grossing more money than any movie that year except for George Lucas' interstellar road adventure. It also launched a truckload of sequels on film and TV, gave Burt Reynolds his most iconic role, helped make movie stars out of country guitarist Jerry Reed and TV sitcom starlet Sally Field, provided a career comeback for Jackie Gleason, and sent Pontiac Trans Am sales soaring. Still, as popular as Reynolds and his muscle car were, there's plenty about "Smokey and the Bandit" that you may not know. Read on to learn Bandit's real name,...

Everett Peter Falk

Before Peter Falk came along with his iconic portrayal of Lt. Columbo, TV detectives were never people like us. For the most part, they were a smug and self-assured bunch, comfortable in their mental, moral, and physical attributes and their obvious superiority over not only the bad guys, but everybody else, too.

They were smooth and elegant, like Gene Barry’s millionaire homicide cop Amos Burke, or stalwart do-gooders like Jack Webb’s by-the-book Joe Friday, or...