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Simon Brew Oct 10, 2016

On the 12th anniversary of his death, we revisit the day Christopher Reeve surprised the world at the Oscars...

On May 27th 1995, the late Christopher Reeve’s life changed forever. An enthusiastic horse rider, he was taking part in a dressage event in Virginia. All had been going well, until his horse – ‘Buck’ – went to tackle the third fence of the course, and abruptly stopped. Reeve was thrown from the horse, landing headfirst.

Reeve’s first and second vertebrae in his spine were shattered, instantly leaving him paralysed from the neck down, and no longer in control of his breathing. And whilst, over time, he would get to a point where he could breathe for around 90 minutes at a time away from his ventilator (as much through sheer bloody-mindedness and utter determination), things would never be the same for him.

Yet the big screen Superman became, in...

Christopher Reeve Foundation for spinal cord and stem cell research (photo: Darryl Hannah and Christopher Reeve in 'Rear Window') (See previous post: "'Superman' Christopher Reeve and his Movies: Ten-Year Death Anniversary.") In his 1998 autobiography Still Me, Christopher Reeve recalled: "At an especially bleak moment [prior to an operation that might result in his death], the door [of his hospital room] flew open and in hurried a squat fellow with a blue scrub hat and a yellow surgical gown and glasses, speaking in a Russian accent. For the first time since the accident, I laughed. My old friend had helped me know that somehow I was going to be okay." The "old friend" was the recently deceased Robin Williams, whom Reeve had befriended while both were studying at Juillard. Eventually, Reeve became a staunch advocate for spinal cord and stem cell research, sponsoring with his wife the Christopher Reeve Foundation — later renamed the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (and formerly known...

Since horror, as a genre, tends to have a smaller viewing audience than action films, romantic comedies, and tear-jerking love stories, it seems like the available titles are at a higher risk for going on manufacturing moratorium. When that happens, fans of the genre frequently turn to eBay bidding wars, scouring pawnshops, and even trying to locate bootleg copies of the title in question for no less than a king’s ransom. Vigilant collectors, such as myself, tend to keep an eye on titles we suspect are at risk for going out of print... for example, Code Red and Blue Underground both tend to have a good number of titles go out of print at any given time. Staying on top of titles destined for moratorium makes the cash one must fork over for a copy of an in-demand title much less painful; often when a film first falls out of production,...

Review by Sam Moffitt

After seeing the wonderful new movie Hitchcock in a theater and now seeing it again on Blu-Ray I thought it might be nice to revisit one of the Master of Suspense’s own films, preferably one I had not seen in some time. Family Plot was Sir Alfred’s last film and a pretty good finale to an amazing career that started in the silent era, an apprentice ship at Ufa Studio’s in Germany, watching no less a master film maker than Fritz Lang and ended in the 70’s when all the rules of film making were being broken by a bunch of young mavericks who changed the language of film altogether.

When I was a kid I loved everything about Hitchcock. I read his mystery magazine avidly, often in high school study hall instead of reading from a text book. My Mother would let...

Producer Charlie Lyons The Water Horse, The Guardian, Ladder 49, director Jay Russell The Water Horse, Ladder 49, My Dog Skip and actor Tim Guinee NBCs Revolution, Showtimes Homeland, Iron Man I amp II worked for two years to acquire the theatrical stage rights to the most famous and beloved of all noir short stories, Rear Window aka It Had to be Murder. This unique producing consortium announced today their plans to mount a Broadway production of the iconic and haunting tale of the wheelchair bound witness to a possible murder in his neighboring New York City apartment. Although the Broadway rights in this story have been repeatedly sought over the years from the Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust and its predecessors, this is the first option ever granted.

Lifetime’s TV-movie remake of the beloved 1989 film Steel Magnolias had the same unnecessary-bordering-on-sacrilegious quality as ABC’s 1998 remake of Rear Window starring Christopher Reeve. Did I enjoy it? Yes, sometimes I did. That said, I watch Smash. I can quote things that Honey Boo Boo’s mother has said. Five years ago, I voluntarily attended an abysmal elementary school production of Pippin – having no connection to anybody in its cast — and laughed more than I winced. I’ve seen Riding the Bus With my Sister five times, and I’ve never seen Lawrence of Arabia. I suppose my point is that, when it comes to taste, I am an unreliable narrator.But even though it was campy garbage, the Magnolias remake sadly added up to no more than the sum of its parts, which were treacly cogs clumsily manipulated into the length of a TV movie with all of...

A look at what's new on DVD today:

"Calvin Marshall" (2010)

Directed by Gary Lundgren

Released by Passion River

Steve Zahn exemplifies the adage those who can't do teach as a college baseball coach who never was quite good enough to make the majors who sees something of himself in an enthusiastic but unskilled player (Alex Frost) that he keeps on the team in writer/director Gary Lundgren's feature debut.

"Chelsea on the Rocks" (2009)

Directed by Abel Ferrara

Released by Hannover House

"Bad Lieutenant" director Ferrara compiles a biography of the famed Chelsea Hotel in New York through archival footage, reenactments and interviews with the many artists who have stayed there throughout the years from Milos Forman and R. Crumb to Ethan Hawke and Gaby Hoffman.

"Claang the Game" (2009)

Directed by Stefano Milla

Released by Triumphant Entertainment

A game of "Claang," a strategy-heavy match of wits, leads to a discussion...

If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Middle Men yet (check out my review here) then you’re missing out on one of the more original and exciting films to come out this year. For those who have seen the film, you would know that its based on a true story, but what you might not know is that its based on one of the films producers Christopher Mallick.

Mallick is a maverick in every sense of the word, emerging victorious from the Wild West of the burgeoning Internet culture and commerce. He is now using his success to follow his dream of making movies. He’s also got a great mentality about the process, trying to remain true the way it was done when films were truly great and only producing original content. I was fortunate enough to have a lengthy one-on-one interview with Chris where he...

Reuters reported this week that the owners of the short story that inspired Alfred Hitchock’s 1954 film Rear Window are suing Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks, its parent company Viacom Inc, and Universal Pictures. Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust holds the rights to “Murder From a Fixed Viewpoint,” a short story by Cornell ...

Christopher Reeve, the star of Superman, whose later riding accident made him a worldwide spokesman for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure in Mount Kisco, New York. He was 52. Reeve suffered cardiac arrest on Saturday at his Pound Ridge, NY, home, and then slipped into a coma, and died Sunday at a hospital surrounded by his family. The son of a journalist and a novelist, Reeve was born on September 25, 1952 in New York. He started on the stage: at the age of 10 he appeared in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeoman of the Guard at McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J. Reeve moved to television with a stint on the daytime soap opera Love of Life but was launched into stardom when he beat out 200 other aspirants as the eponymous character of Richard Donner's 1978 film Superman. The film was a box-office smash as was the follow-up, Superman II. Reeve would play the role of Superman, and his dual identity, Clark Kent, four times and even though the budgets, and the quality of the films eventually decreased, Reeve continued to imbue his super-hero persona with sly humor and the bumbling reporter alter-ego with quiet integrity. Reeve was not content to merely play the Krypton survivor, however, and almost immediately began to play against type. He took a role as an actor whose obsession leads him to travel back to the turn of the 19th century in the cult-classic Somewhere in Time, as the scheming playwright in a dangerous triangle in Deathtrap, and an American who presence sparks changes in a British household in The Remains of the Day. Reeve struggled to free himself of the association that made him famous over the years, with varying results. He only agreed to play the role in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace if he could help shape the script, earning him a writing credit for the anti-nuclear weapons film. A new chapter in Reeve's life began on May 27, 1995 at a Virginia horseshow when his chestnut Thoroughbred stopped short on a fence. Reeve, whose hands were caught in the bridle, was pitched forward onto the ground. He fractured the two top vertebrae of his neck and injured his spinal cord, rendering him a quadriplegic and reliant on a ventilator to breathe. Initially suicidal, the actor turned his energy toward recovery. Though the process was slow and painful, Reeve astounded doctors by regaining sensation over 70 percent of his body and even moving one of his fingers. He went further than thought possible and, with the assistance of electrodes, was even able to go for long sessions without his ventilator. With some interim successes, Reeve returned to his craft, acting in the television version of Rear Window, lending credibility to the story of a man whose infirm situation turns him into a voyeur. He also went behind the camera, directing 1997's In the Gloaming and The Brooke Ellison Story, about a family coping with a spinal chord injury. Reeve became a tireless lobbyist for spinal cord injury patients, calling for insurance reform for catastrophic injury and, most recently, lending his name to the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act, which could create five centers across the US to support people with paralysis. The act is currently before Congress. In addition to his invincible role, it may be his inspirational courage and perspective that may be remembered the most about Christopher Reeve. Quoted in Reader's Digest Reeve said: "Your body is not who you are. The mind and spirit transcend the body." Reeve is survived by his parents, his brother, his wife, Dana Morosini, and his three children (Will, 12, from his marriage to Morosini and Matthew, 25, and Alexandra, 21, from a relationship with Gae Exton). --Prepared by IMDb staff...