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Born in 1920, Walter Matthau was a celebrated performer on both the stage and screen, known for his gruff, rumpled persona. Let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Matthau turned to acting after serving in the United States Army Air Force during WWII. He became a frequent presence on the small screen with appearances in “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Goodyear Playhouse,” and “The Du Pont Show of the Week” (which brought him an Emmy bid in 1963), to name a few. During this period he also appeared in several films, few of them comedies, including “A Face in the Crowd” (1957) and “Fail Safe” (1964).

At the same time, he gained increasing respect as a stage actor with Tony Award-winning performances in “A Shot in the Dark” (Featured Actor in a Play in 1962) and “The Odd Couple” (Actor in a Play in 1965). It was in the latter role of Oscar Madison,...

World-renowned director Steven Spielberg was at the height of his career when he made the Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List," but he wasn't the only filmmaker who was interested in adapting the novel of the same name for the silver screen. The acclaimed director Billy Wilder, an auteur of classic Hollywood cinema who penned and directed such renowned films as "The Apartment" and "Sunset Boulevard," was also vying for the rights to turn this story into a movie. However, by the time Thomas Keneally's evocative historical novel was published in 1993, Wilder's career was already winding down.

For a long time, Wilder enjoyed one of the most prosperous careers in Hollywood. His Oscar-nominated 1944 film "Double Indemnity" is considered the signal film of noir cinema and the model of the femme fatale trope. After Wilder's smashing success "Sunset Boulevard" earned three Oscars in 1951, he quickly went on to release several star vehicles...

Clockwise from top left: The Wicker Man (Warner Bros.), Vanilla Sky (Paramont), Oldboy (FilmDistrict), The Toy (Columbia)Image: AVClub

In Hollywood, it often seems that the sincerest form of flattery is to remake a foreign film. Domestic versions of international hits are a long-running thing in a town where familiarity assumes success,...

Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" marks another groundbreaking entry into an already incredible canon of work, but could it be one of his last? Some of the director's contemporaries like Quentin Tarantino have taken a less-is-more approach to their filmography, vowing to restrict themselves to a certain number of films or stop directing by a certain age. Others, like Martin Scorsese, have decided to work for as long as they can and continue to put out new projects far past retirement age. As for which of these two routes Nolan will choose, he still isn't so sure, but he sees the good in both options.

"The truth is, I understand both points of view," Nolan told CinemaBlend. "It's addictive to tell stories in cinema. It's a lot of hard work, but it's very fun. It's something you feel driven to do, and so it's a little hard to imagine voluntarily stopping.

It's not easy for every film to be a hit, but Quentin Tarantino wants his body of work to be as close to perfect as possible. Almost every movie he's ever made has been met with widespread critical acclaim, and he plans to keep it that way. Although there's no surefire way to make every movie a success, there is one method that Tarantino's sticking to — quit while you're ahead.

Two of Tarantino's favorite directors are old Hollywood auteurs Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder. Both have a diverse set of hits in their extensive filmography, from noirs like "The Big Sleep" to musicals like "Some Like it Hot" and Westerns like "Rio Bravo." They also churned out successful movies for decades, but Tarantino and most critics would agree that they continued working past their prime. Making a film like "Rio Lobo," the sequel to "Rio Bravo," is Tarantino's worst nightmare as an artist.

Jay Weston, producer of films like “Lady Sings the Blues” and “Buddy Buddy,” died of natural causes Feb. 28 at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 93.

Weston first met Billie Holiday at the Newport Jazz Festival — a chance encounter that would ultimately lead to Weston producing a biopic about her starring Diana Ross in 1972. “Lady Sings the Blues” marked Ross’ feature debut and went on to score five Academy Award nominations, including best actress for Ross and original screenplay.

“I read the book and I said to [Holiday’s] agent, ‘I want to make a movie out of it,’” Weston said in a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Business Journal, referring to the jazz singer’s autobiography. “He said, ‘Give me $5,000, and I’ll think about it.’ So I gave him $5,000, and it took 13 years and many $5,000 payments to keep the rights because everybody wanted it.”

The veteran filmmaker...

Donald Petrie's "Grumpy Old Men" was released in theaters on Christmas Day in 1993, serving as that year's "take your parents to see it" film. Prior to "Grumpy Old Men," the film's two stars, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, had appeared in five films together, including "The Fortune Cookie," Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple," "Kotch," "The Front Page," and "Buddy Buddy." The two were so well known for their chemistry, they were often considered one of comedy's great, prevailing duos. To this day, they are often mentioned together, and the two are buried not too far apart in the same cemetery in Westwood, CA.

While Lemmon and Matthau worked together regularly throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, there was a notable gap in their shared résumé. From 1981 until 1993, the pair did not work in tandem — even though they both appeared in Oliver Stone's 1991 film, "JFK," they had no scenes together.

Jay Weston, a veteran producer of Hollywood films including 1972’s “Lady Sings the Blues” starring Diana Ross and 1968’s “For Love of Ivy” starring Sidney Poitier, has died at the age or 93.

Weston, who also built a respected career as a restaurant critic, died at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California.

Weston’s most notable producing efforts likely came on “Lady Sings the Blues,” which was nominated for five Academy Awards. Other features included “Buddy Buddy” (notable for being Billy Wilder’s final film), “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash” and “W.C. Fields and Me.”

Weston was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 9, 1929, to Phillip and Shirley Weinstein. He went to NYU as a pre-med student, but soon switched to an arts curriculum. After earning a BA, he began a career in publicity before being drafted and sent to Korea in 1952. There he started a newspaper, The Hialean,...

Jay Weston, who was working as a publicist when a chance meeting with Billie Holiday at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival would lead to the producing of her 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues, died February 28 of natural causes at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, CA. He was 93.

His death was announced by spokesperson Jeff Sanderson on behalf of the Weston family.

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A prominent restaurant critic later in life, Weston’s show business career in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s was marked by such high points as producing Billy Wilder’s last film, Chu Chu and the Philly Flash with Carol Burnett and Alan Arkin, W.C. Fields...

Jay Weston, who produced the Diana Ross-starring Lady Sings the Blues and Billy Wilder’s final feature, Buddy Buddy, has died. He was 93.

Weston died Tuesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his family announced.

Weston also served as head of ABC’s feature film division, Palomar Pictures, where his first project was the Sydney Pollack-directed They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), nominated for nine Oscars.

And he produced the 1969 Broadway drama Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, starring Al Pacino in a career-launching, Tony-winning turn.

A chance meeting with Billie Holiday at the Newport Jazz Festival led him to securing the rights to her autobiography. He then produced Lady Sings the Blues (1972), the Sidney J. Furie-helmed biopic that collected five Academy Award nominations.

Weston followed with films including W.C. Fields and Me (1976), starring Rod Steiger; Chu Chu and...

Growing up in Philadelphia, I've experienced my fair share of harsh winters. The blizzard of 1996 stands out, but there were a number of other rough years for a while too. Although, when I moved to Chicago a few years ago, I experienced a whole new level of frigid chills. It got even worse when a polar vortex delivered such sub-zero temperatures and precipitation that people were advised not to leave their houses since even the slightest bit of exposed skin could get frostbite within minutes. Seriously, despite this year being relatively tame in comparison, midwestern winters are no joke. And someone else who knew this was Walter Matthau.

By the mid-1990s, the award-winning star of the stage and screen had quite an illustrious career. He had become known for his roles in "Bad News Bears," "King Creole," and "Hello, Dolly!," but fans probably remembered him best from his many...

Summer is about to finally, blessedly be in full swing. And to honor the occasion, Hulu is showing up big with its list of new releases for June 2022.

Hulu is bringing two major TV titles to its stream this month. The first is The Orville: New Horizons on June 2. Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi/comedy started as a simple Star Trek parody on Fox before blossoming into its own entirely sincere space adventuring beast. Now “New Horizons” promises to be a fresh start for the series on Hulu. Next up is Only Murders in the Building season 2 on June 28. Season 1 of this Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez-starring series was a big hit. Let’s see if our favorite podcasters can pull it off once again.

Read more TV The Orville: Update on “More Ambitious” Season 3 Progress By Kirsten Howard

Aside from the big ticket Hulu originals, there are...

With all the other good fortune that’s fallen upon Clint Eastwood—great looks and talent, for starters—the one that calls out to be noted today is his extraordinary longevity. Sunday, May 31st marks the man’s 90th birthday, a landmark exceptional in itself—most of us would be thrilled to make it anywhere near that threshold of life, not to mention being in such good shape to enjoy it. Congratulations, and happy birthday, Clint!

Beyond simply making it to this enviable life landmark, remaining lucid and able to stand on one’s two feet, there’s the uncommon blessing of being able to do what one loves doing and still be good at it. Not many can claim this pleasure or distinction, so it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate and assess what Clint (as essentially everyone calls him whether they know him or not) has pulled off at this cherishable moment.

Walter Matthau would’ve celebrated his 98th birthday on October 1, 2018. Born in 1920, the actor was a celebrated performer on both the stage and screen, known for his gruff, rumpled persona. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Matthau turned to acting after serving in the United States Army Air Force during WWII. He became a frequent presence on the small screen with appearances in “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Goodyear Playhouse,” and “The Du Pont Show of the Week” (which brought him an Emmy bid in 1963), to name a few. During this period he also appeared in several films, few of them comedies, including “A Face in the Crowd” (1957) and “Fail Safe” (1964).

At the same time, he gained increasing respect as a stage actor with Tony Award-winning performances in “A Shot in the Dark” (Featured Actor in a Play...

Even as Tim Burton's latest phantasmic studio sprawl tends toward momentum of the inert variety, it proves all the more that the filmmaker is indeed moving through time. Not quite 60 years old, Burton is still too young to qualify as an old man. Yet, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children finds itself often in the realm of what's been labeled "old man cinema" - that outwardly laconic pace that defines tail-end work by prominent directors. Kagemusha by Akira Kurosawa, Buddy Buddy by Billy Wilder. This isn't that, but like the older Spielberg and Scorsese of today, we're officially now seeing hints of it. Burton’s emerging aged sensibilities are no less imaginative and transportive than his work was at his fevered, newfangled best all those...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Some actors and directors go together like spaghetti and meatballs. They just gel together in a rare way that makes their collaborations special. Here is a list of the seven best parings of director and actor in film history.

7: Tim Burton & Johnny Depp:

Edward Scissorhands; Ed Wood; Sleepy Hollow; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Corpse Bride; Sweeney Todd; Alice in Wonderland; Dark Shadows

Of all the parings on this list, these two make the oddest films. (In a good way.) Tim Burton is one of the most visually imaginative filmmakers of his generation and Johnny Depp was once the polymorphous master of playing a wide variety of eccentric characters. They were a natural combo. Depp made most of his best films with Burton, before his current ‘Jack Sparrow’ period began. The duo had the knack for telling stories about misfits and freaks, yet making them seem sympathetic and likable.

Billy Wilder’s Buddy Buddy (1981) might be one of the most obvious go-to examples in the annals of conventional wisdom when it comes to the cinephile’s parlor game of pointing out a great director’s greatest foible. Upon release the movie was summarily dismissed by critics and ignored by audiences—it managed a paltry $7 million domestically, three million less than its production budget.

Roger Ebert, in his review, called Buddy Buddy “a comedy without laughs,” one apparently so vile that it could inspire not only audience indifference but also one of the revered reviewer’s laziest pieces of criticism. Ebert’s short piece quickly degenerates into name-calling-- “This movie is appalling” is the first sentence of the review, and the movie’s name goes unmentioned until the second paragraph—sans much in the way of actual insight. And unfortunately the critic’s disdain ends up functioning as a substitute...

For the next twenty-one days we'll be sharing little trivia items as we count down to Hollywood's High Holy Night and surveying each category though we're not ready for the latter part just yet. Sound fun?

 Guess who's the only famous director to ever win exactly 21 nominations? That's Billy Wilder, pictured above with his bounty from The Apartment (1960). He won nominations in Picture, Director, and in the Writing categories over his very long directorial career which stretched from the French language Mauvaise Grain (1934) to the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau comedy Buddy Buddy (1981). His career total: 6 Oscars and a Thalberg!

The only director more celebrated in terms of total nominations in multiple categories is Woody Allen with 24 career nods, the huge bulk of which are for Best Original Screenplay (where he's nominated again this year for Blue Jasmine). Billy Wilder is also in second place in terms of total Best...

A film director can work for decades and never make anything approaching a good film. Often within the movie industry, wannabe directors can strive for years and years and never get close to making a feature film – that’s what makes the directors on this list so extraordinary. They have been extraordinarily consistent over a substantial amount of time, never allowing the quality of their art to shrink.

Some of the very greats have made poor films. Hitchcock made numerous clangers such as Family Plot, Topaz and Lifeboat amongst his formidable filmography. Francis Ford Coppola, director of the greatest film of all time (The Godfather Part II) has not made a good film for a while now and Billy Wilder did his best to taint his legacy with his late career output of Fedora and Buddy Buddy.

I decided a certain criteria was needed for a list like this, so put simply,...

Quentin Tarantino Says Death Proof Is the “Worst” Film He’s Ever Made; Watch Full Directors Roundtable Interview

THR‘s roundtable interviews are always entertaining and this year’s director’s roundtable is one of the best. It’s a one-hour conversation that involves Quentin Tarantino, Ben Affleck, Ang Lee, Tom Hooper, David O. Russell, and Gus Van Sant. There are a few highlights but the Internet is buzzing with Tarantino’s comments about retiring and his film Death Proof.

“I’m really well versed on a lot of directors’ careers, you know, and when you look at those last five films when they were past it, when they were too old, and they’re really out of touch with the times, whether it be William Wyler and ‘The Liberation of L.B. Jones’ or Billy Wilder with ‘Fedora’ and then ‘Buddy Buddy’ or whatever the hell. To me, it’s all about my filmography,...

John Patterson: He's made some classics and is seen as the godfather of modern Hollywood but the world is still not wild about Billy Wilder

I've never quite forgiven the critic Andrew Sarris for backing down on his famously negative assessment of Billy Wilder's movies in his 1968 auteur-based survey The American Cinema. Far from placing Wilder in his pantheon of the greatest directors, Sarris quarantined him within his starkly named Less Than Meets The Eye section, alongside other figures of contestable quality such as John Huston, Lewis Milestone and Fred Zinnemann. The book contains dozens of imperishable phrases and judgments, but few stick in the mind like the opening of his Wilder demolition: "Billy Wilder is too cynical to believe even his own cynicism." Oof. And still true.

Sarris later conceded most of his ground, possibly because even bad 60s Wilder (the shriller stuff that was in the...

"I want to thank three persons,” said Michel Hazanavicius, accepting the 2012 Best Picture Oscar for “The Artist.” “I want to thank Billy Wilder, I want to thank Billy Wilder and I want to thank Billy Wilder.” He wasn’t the first director to namecheck Wilder in an acceptance speech. In 1994, Fernando Trueba, accepting the Foreign Language Film Oscar for "Belle Epoque" quipped, "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so, thank you Mr. Wilder." Wilder reportedly called the next day "Fernando? It's God."

So just what exactly was it that inspired these men to expend some of the most valuable seconds of speechifying airtime they'll ever know, to tip their hats to Wilder? And can we bottle it?

Born in a region of Austria/Hungary that is now part of Poland, Wilder's story feels like an archetype of...

To prove that lightning seldom strikes in the same place twice, we take a look at ten romantic and bromantic movie pairings that failed to work a second time...

We all know and recognise the thought process behind many studios’ decisions to re-cast actors opposite one another after a successful first film together. Whenever a lot is made of two actors’ supposed chemistry alongside one another, the standards are set unusually high for a repeat performance.

One of things that makes that elusive on-screen chemistry so hard to define is that it has often proven so difficult to replicate. Here are ten pairings that have fallen into the ever-expanding trap of diminishing returns. Oh, and if you care to celebrate it with much gusto, happy Valentine’s Day to you all. I shall be celebrating it with a bucket of KFC – not that I’m bitter or anything...

Tom Hanks...