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There’s George Foreman the boxer and George Foreman the grill. The Sony biopic out this Friday offers a different George. “I want to spread the word of God,” says Foreman (Khris Davis) in the trailer for “Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World.”

It’s a production from faith-based Sony Pictures’ label Affirm Films. Its first film in 2008, “Fireproof” starring Kirk Cameron, grossed $33 million on a $500,000 budget. To date, the (mostly domestic) global theatrical gross for Affirm titles stands at $520 million — $400 million more than the films’ total production costs.

Directed by George Tillman Jr. and with Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker in a supporting role, “Foreman” may represent the biggest Affirm budget to date. (One source lists it at $34 million.) Prior Affirm budgets topped out at $20 million. It’s also got one of Affirm’s biggest releases, with 2,575 theaters.

Opening prospects are unclear.

Lew Wallace's 1880 novel "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ" has been adapted into film many times. Much like the regular remakes of "A Star is Born," including the 2018 version, every adaptation reveals something about where Hollywood was at the time of its making. The story is a sprawling biblical epic, one that suggests a kind of maximum blockbuster potential, with naval war scenes and gladiatorial combat. Silent adaptations were made in 1909 and 1927, but the most enduring (and human) take on the story was the four-hour 1959 epic directed by William Wyler.

So why did the 2016 take on "Ben-Hur" fail to make any kind of impact -- or even its budget back at the box office? It's not as if the story is any less rich in the current day. Positive memories of the definitive Wyler take on the story surely linger. And that story's brand of action and masculine themes,...

IndieWire reached out to this year’s nominees for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (One Hour), Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour), and Limited Series or Movie, and asked them which cameras and lenses they used — but even more important: Why were these the right tools to create the look of their series? The nominees answers are below, organized by Emmy category and in alphabetical order by series title.

Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour)

“Grown-ish”

Nominated Episode: “Know Yourself”

Format: ProRes Log-c

Camera: Arri Minis

Lens: Leica SummiLux-c’s

Mark Doering-Powell: “Grown-ish” follows Zoey (Yara Shahidi) navigating her college years with a new group of friends. We learn their hopes, dreams, and challenges along the way, while exploring serious topics that one encounters in life and school. The strength of this series is our characters tackling these hard conversations, head on. We frame this in what we call our “aspirational” look,...

One of the most successful remakes in Hollywood history, William Wyler’s eye-popping take on Fred Niblo’s 1925 spectacle Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (itself a remake of a 1907 short version) won 11 Oscars. The climactic chariot race ranks among the greatest action sequences in movie history. That’s Les Tremayne extolling the high-minded hyperbole on the soundtrack.

The post Ben-Hur appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

If we’re going to use it as an insult, let’s define our terms.

The film industry seems to have no shortage of words that either serve as synonyms or subsets of “adaptation,” most of which are brought to you by the letter “R”: reboot, reimagining, rendition, redo, revival, retelling, recreation, reanimation (and looking to the other 25 letters in the alphabet, version, homage, makeover, update). One, however, is not treated quite like the others, and that word is “remake.” When filmmakers bring it up by choice, it usually seems to be to explain why their films should not be thought of by that term, thank you very much.

Perhaps you know exactly what I’m talking about. Or perhaps you think I’m reading far too much into things. After going through over 500 pages of research on remakes and adaptations, I myself thought the latter just as possible as the former.

So...

With a budget of $1.5 million, 2017 Best Picture winner “Moonlight” cost less than a 30-second ad during the Oscars (reported price: $2.2 million). And, among the category’s 89 winners, it stands as the lowest-budgeted film in the Academy Awards’ history.

To determine the 10 least expensive Best Picture winners, we looked back at each year, researched reported budgets, and then calculated them at 2017 dollar values. Although independent films have dominated the Oscars for the last decade, the only indie to make the cut from that period was “Crash.” Nor did Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” or some black-and-white studio classics like “Casablanca” or “The Lost Weekend.”

The 10 straddle almost every decade of the Oscars and come from either independent producers or smaller distributors (four of the 10 were released by United Artists).

For comparison, the most expensive film to win remains “Titanic;” its adjusted budget was $300 million more than “Moonlight.” That total dwarfs the...

"Batman v. Superman": potential blockbuster or "Cleopatra Redux".

By Lee Pfeiffer

The heavily-hyped Warner Brothers super hero epic "Batman V. Superman:  Dawn of Justice" is one of the most heavily promoted films in years. It's also one of the most expensive. Variety estimates that the film's $250 million production budget plus ancillary marketing costs will make it necessary for the movie to gross $800 worldwide just to break even. You read that right: $800 million. One industry analyst says that anything less than a gross of $1 billion will be considered a disappointment. Warner Brothers contends that those figures don't take into consideration ancillary revenues from video and merchandising. Fair enough, but if a film bombs, generally speaking, the merchandise and video sales do, too. If you doubt it, how many people did you see walking around with "Waterworld" or "Howard the Duck" T shirts? Veteran screenwriter William Goldman once said of the film industry "Nobody knows anything.

Constance Cummings: Actress in minor Hollywood movies became major London stage star. Constance Cummings: Actress went from Harold Lloyd and Frank Capra to Noël Coward and Eugene O'Neill Actress Constance Cummings, whose career spanned more than six decades on stage, in films, and on television in both the U.S. and the U.K., died ten years ago on Nov. 23. Unlike other Broadway imports such as Ann Harding, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, and Claudette Colbert, the pretty, elegant Cummings – who could have been turned into a less edgy Constance Bennett had she landed at Rko or Paramount instead of Columbia – never became a Hollywood star. In fact, her most acclaimed work, whether in films or – more frequently – on stage, was almost invariably found in British productions. That's most likely why the name Constance Cummings – despite the DVD availability of several of her best-received performances – is all but forgotten.

A long time ago, sometime around 1912, a director by the name of D.W. Griffith packed up his filmmaking wares and took his crew, including favored cinematographer Billy Bitzer and star Mae Marsh, across the water to a relatively mysterious island off the Southern California coast to shoot a short film. The project, Man’s Genesis, subtitled A Psychological Comedy Founded upon the Darwinian Theory of the Evolution of Man (Is that Woody Allen I hear whimpering with envy?), isn’t one for which Griffith is well remembered, in the hearts of either academics or those given to silent-era nostalgia. (One comment on IMDb suggests that no one would ever mistake Griffith’s simple tale of a landmark of human development—man discovers his ability to craft and use tools in order to achieve a specific goal-- for “a serious work of speculative anthropology” and wonders “what the director and his...

Four Australians and three Kiwis have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A record 322 screen practitioners from the Us and around the world have been invited to join the organisation. The previous high was 276 in 2013.

The Down Under contingent comprises visual effects wizards Tim Crosbie and Daniel Barrett, producers Bruna Papandrea and Rebecca Yeldham, sound mixers David Lee and Jason Canovas and writer-director Niki Caro.

Despite the Academy.s efforts to diversify its membership, out of the 25 actors invited to join only seven are women.

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said, .It.s gratifying to acknowledge the extraordinary range of talent in our industry. This year, our branches have recognized a more diverse and inclusive list of filmmakers and artists than ever before, and we look forward to adding their creativity, ideas and experience to our organization..

This year Crosbie was nominated for an...

Three Australians and one Kiwi have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A record 322 screen practitioners from the Us and around the world have been invited to join the organisation. The previous high was 276 in 2013.

The Down Under contingent comprises visual effects wizard Tim Crosbie, producers Bruna Papandrea and Rebecca Yeldham and writer-director Niki Caro.

Despite the Academy.s efforts to diversify its membership, out of the 25 actors invited to join only seven are women.

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said, .It.s gratifying to acknowledge the extraordinary range of talent in our industry. This year, our branches have recognized a more diverse and inclusive list of filmmakers and artists than ever before, and we look forward to adding their creativity, ideas and experience to our organization..

This year Crosbie was nominated for an Oscar for best achievement in visual effects for X-Men: Days of Future Past,...

Eager online press got a look at George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road" Wednesday night in Los Angeles, with the filmmaker on hand to discuss his return to the world of his visionary debut with fellow director Edgar Wright. The unrelenting, cacophonous vehicular gumbo, which is all set to be unleashed on unsuspecting attendees of next month's Cannes Film Festival, hardly feels like the product of a 70-year-old man. And indeed, Miller's enthusiasm for discussing the work was as palpable as that pulsing through every innervating moment of the film itself. "I thought I was done on the first one," Miller said of the original film. "Then the second one came along and it was a way to try it again and do something better. I was just learning how to make films. I'm still learning how to make films. But these things stay in the back of your...

Simone Simon: Remembering the 'Cat People' and 'La Bête Humaine' star (photo: Simone Simon 'Cat People' publicity) Pert, pretty, pouty, and fiery-tempered Simone Simon – who died at age 94 ten years ago, on Feb. 22, 2005 – is best known for her starring role in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic Cat People (1942). Those aware of the existence of film industries outside Hollywood will also remember Simon for her button-nosed femme fatale in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938).[1] In fact, long before Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, and Barbarella's Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm – with a tad of puppy dog wistfulness – in a film career that spanned two continents and a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both...

Seventy-five years after the premiere of "Gone With the Wind" (on December 15, 1939), it seems that nothing -- not the passage of time, not the movie's controversial racial politics, not the film's daunting length, and not even the release of certain James Cameron global blockbusters -- can diminish the romantic Civil War drama's stature as the most popular movie of all time.

The film is certainly a formidable artistic achievement, a cornerstone of movie history, and a highlight of a year so full of landmark films that 1939 has often been called the greatest year in the history of Hollywood filmmaking. Each viewing of the four-hour epic seems to reveal new details. Still, even longtime "Gwtw" fans may not know the behind-the-scenes story of the film, one as lengthy and tumultuous as the on-screen romance between Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Producer David O. Selznick spent fortunes, hired...

First Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings and first Best Actress Oscar winner Janet Gaynor on TCM (photo: Emil Jannings in 'The Last Command') First Best Actor Academy Award winner Emil Jannings in The Last Command, first Best Actress Academy Award winner Janet Gaynor in Sunrise, and sisters Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge are a few of the silent era performers featured this evening on Turner Classic Movies, as TCM continues with its Silent Monday presentations. Starting at 5 p.m. Pt / 8 p.m. Et on November 17, 2014, get ready to check out several of the biggest movie stars of the 1920s. Following the Jean Negulesco-directed 1943 musical short Hit Parade of the Gay Nineties -- believe me, even the most rabid anti-gay bigot will be able to enjoy this one -- TCM will be showing Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command (1928) one of the two movies that earned...

Howard Hughes movies (photo: Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in 'The Aviator') Turner Classic Movies will be showing the Howard Hughes-produced, John Farrow-directed, Baja California-set gangster drama His Kind of Woman, starring Robert Mitchum, Hughes discovery Jane Russell, and Vincent Price, at 3 a.m. Pt / 6 a.m. Et on Saturday, November 8, 2014. Hughes produced a couple of dozen movies. (More on that below.) But what about "Howard Hughes movies"? Or rather, movies -- whether big-screen or made-for-television efforts -- featuring the visionary, eccentric, hypochondriac, compulsive-obsessive, all-American billionaire as a character? Besides Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a dashing if somewhat unbalanced Hughes in Martin Scorsese's 2004 Best Picture Academy Award-nominated The Aviator, other actors who have played Howard Hughes on film include the following: Tommy Lee Jones in William A. Graham's television movie The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), with Lee Purcell as silent film star Billie Dove, Tovah Feldshuh as Katharine Hepburn,...

In a deal that follows Roma Downey and Mark Burnett coming aboard the MGM/Paramount epic Ben-Hur that Timur Bekmambetov will direct with Jack Huston in the title role, MGM has acquired a 55% interest in Downey, Burnett and Hearst Entertainment’s One Three Media and LightWorkers Media, including all of their interests in such hit shows as Survivor, The Voice, Shark Tank, The Bible and The Apprentice. All this will be consolidated into a new media venture called United Artists Media Group. MGM chairman and CEO Gary Barber made the deal with Burnett, Downey and Steven Swartz, Hearst Corp’s president and CEO. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Uamg will primarily focus on developing, producing and financing premium content across all platforms, including scripted and non-scripted television programs, motion pictures and digital content. Burnett will serve as the CEO of Uamg. Downey will serve as president of LightWorkers Media, the...

Honorary Oscars 2014: Hayao Miyazaki, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Maureen O’Hara; Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award goes to Harry Belafonte One good thing about the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards — an expedient way to remove the time-consuming presentation of the (nearly) annual Honorary Oscar from the TV ratings-obsessed, increasingly youth-oriented Oscar show — is that each year up to four individuals can be named Honorary Oscar recipients, thus giving a better chance for the Academy to honor film industry veterans while they’re still on Planet Earth. (See at the bottom of this post a partial list of those who have gone to the Great Beyond, without having ever received a single Oscar statuette.) In 2014, the Academy’s Board of Governors has selected a formidable trio of honorees: Japanese artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, 73; French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, 82; and Irish-born Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara,...

Today's Useless But Fun Oscar Trivia Numbers Chain!

• 17 years ago The English Patient (1996) won 9 Oscars, driving Julia Louis-Dreyfus Elaine to the brink of madness "quit telling your stupid story about the desert and just die already. die!!!" and making it one of the seven most-Oscared films of all time. (Only Titanic and Return of the King have since beat it). Can Gravity, which has 10 nominations but will definitely lose Best Actress, tie The Patient's record -- it would have to win All of its other nominations -- or do you foresee a "spread the wealth" year?

• Sal Mineo is the only 17 year-old of either gender ever nominated for an Oscar. That nomination came for his role as "Plato" in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Mineo also holds the record of youngest (male) actor to two nominations as he was nominated for Exodus (1960) by the age of 22. He would have turned 75 this...

’12 Years a Slave’: Italian posters racist? (Brad Pitt in ’12 Anni Schiavo’ poster) As 2013 comes to a close, 12 Years a Slave has become embroiled in some healthy, Oscar-friendly controversy. A couple of Italian posters for the film have focused on its white supporting players, Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, instead of on black protagonist Chiwetel Ejiofor. Since then, Italian distributor Bim has issued contrite apologies; Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment, the film’s international sales agent, has demanded a recall of the “unauthorized” posters (it’s unclear if no character posters featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor were ever created, or if they were just not on display); the U.S. media and their cohorts elsewhere have played their usual role in pushing hot buttons and creating controversy — much to the delight of both their advertisers and their viewers/readers; and everyone is now aware of how relevant to our early 21st century world...

Cary Grant and Randolph Scott marriages (See previous post: “Randolph Scott and Cary Grant: Gay Lovers?“) The English-born Cary Grant was married five times: Charles Chaplin’s City Lights leading lady Virginia Cherrill (1934-1935), Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton (1942-1945), Grant’s Every Girl Should Be Married and Room for One More co-star Betsy Drake (1949-1962), Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Heaven Can Wait Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Dyan Cannon (1965-1968), and Barbara Harris (1981-1986). Note: Cary Grant’s last wife was not the Barbara Harris of Nashville, Family Plot, and A Thousand Clowns fame. Cary Grant died at age 82 after suffering a stroke on November 29, 1986, while preparing for a performance of his one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in Davenport, Iowa. (Photo: Cary Grant and Randolph Scott ca. 1933.) The Virginia-born Randolph Scott was married twice: wealthy socialite Mariana duPont Somerville (1936-1939) and Patricia Stillman, from 1943 to his...

Ramon Novarro is Ben-Hur: The Naked and Famous in first big-budget Hollywood movie saved by the international market (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro: Silent Movie Star.") Turner Classic Movies’ Ramon Novarro Day continues with The Son-Daughter (1933), on TCM right now. Both Novarro and Helen Hayes play Chinese characters in San Francisco’s Chinatown — in the sort of story that had worked back in 1919, when D.W. Griffith made Broken Blossoms with Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess. By 1933, however, the drab-looking, slow-moving The Son-Daughter felt all wrong. (Photo: Naked Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur.) Directed by the renowned Clarence Brown (who guided Greta Garbo in some of her biggest hits), The Son-Daughter turned out to be a well-intentioned mess, eventually bombing at the box office. And that goes to show that Louis B. Mayer and/or Irving G. Thalberg didn’t always know what the hell they were doing with their stars and properties.

Ramon Novarro: Mexican-born actor was first Latin American Hollywood superstar Mexican-born actor Ramon Novarro, the original Ben-Hur and one of MGM’s biggest stars of the late ’20s and early ’30s, has his Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" day on Thursday, August 8, 2013. First, The Bad News: TCM will not be presenting any Ramon Novarro movie premieres. And that’s quite disappointing. (Photo: Ramon Novarro ca. 1925.) There’ll be no The Midshipman (1925), the first time Novarro was billed above the title (back then the official recognition of True Stardom) and featuring one of Joan Crawford’s earliest film appearances, or Forbidden Hours (1928), a vapid but great-looking The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg redux, with the always charming Renée Adorée as the commoner loved by His Majesty, Michael IV — that’s Novarro. Excellent prints of The Midshipman and Forbidden Hours can be found in the Warner Bros. film...

Paul Henreid: From Eleanor Parker to ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (photo: Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker in ‘Between Two Worlds’) Paul Henreid returns this evening, as Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013. In Of Human Bondage (1946), he stars in the old Leslie Howard role: a clubfooted medical student who falls for a ruthless waitress (Eleanor Parker, in the old Bette Davis role). Next on TCM, Henreid and Eleanor Parker are reunited in Between Two Worlds (1944), in which passengers aboard an ocean liner wonder where they are and where the hell (or heaven or purgatory) they’re going. Hollywood Canteen (1944) is a near-plotless, all-star showcase for Warner Bros.’ talent, a World War II morale-boosting follow-up to that studio’s Thank Your Lucky Stars, released the previous year. Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and Pirates of Tripoli (1955) are B pirate movies. The former is an uninspired affair,...

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson rumors and gossip: Tabloid ‘news’ equals profits Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have been used as grist for the planet’s countless rumor mills since Catharine Hardwicke’s Twilight became the worldwide sleeper hit of 2008. Following the Kristen Stewart and Rupert Sanders "scandal" in late summer 2012, "news" reports about Stewart and Pattinson breaking up, getting back together again, dating others, etc., have become not just daily, but, in the age of instant online "reports," second-ly occurrences. Now, who has the most to gain from the barrage of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson gossip articles? The above drawing — sent to me by a follower on Twitter — makes it clear. Besides the tabloid publications themselves, Summit Entertainment and, within the last year or so, its sibling/parent company Lionsgate Pictures, have had the most to gain. Really, would the Twilight movies have been so tremendously successful without the possibility (or reality,...

As the Academy celebrates 85 years of great films at the Oscars on February 24th, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is set to take movie fans on the ultimate studio tour with the 2013 edition of 31 Days Of Oscar®. Under the theme Oscar by Studio, the network will present a slate of more than 350 movies grouped according to the studios that produced or released them. And as always, every film presented during 31 Days Of Oscar is an Academy Award® nominee or winner, making this annual event one of the most anticipated on any movie lover’s calendar.

As part of the network’s month-long celebration, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has graciously provided the original Academy Awards® radio broadcasts from 1930-1952. Specially chosen clips from the radio archives will be featured throughout TCM’s 31 Days Of Oscar website.

Hollywood was built upon the studio system, which saw nearly ever aspect...

Another jam-packed edition of the Tuesday podcast here at RopeofSilicon where Laremy gets made fun of by the Broken Lizard boys, we discuss Warner Bros. moving The Great Gatsby, we saw the Man of Steel teaser trailer, we're answering your questions, over/unders, buy or sells and just generally talking about anything and everything movies. As always, I have broken down this episode on a minute-by-minute basis if you would like to skip ahead and below I have featured the information on how to download the podcast, find us on iTunes or merely just listen in your browser. 00:00-00:41 - Introduction 00:42-4:54 - Revisiting Elijah's 3-D comments briefly 4:55-7:30 - Summer Box-Office Challenge Update (chart below) 7:31-8:53 - Teasing Friday's podcast and what will happen with The Bourne Legacy review 8:54-14:33 - Security guard sighting 14:34-16:44 - Warner Bros.

Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim movie image: Idris Elba Prometheus‘ Idris Elba will soon be Pacific Rim‘s Idris Elba. Two movies beginning with a "p" and featuring nasty aliens set on destroying the human race. This is one thing I never get about alien invasion movies: with human beings intent on destroying themselves or looking the other way as their world goes to rot, why would aliens take the time to destroy us? They just have to wait a few decades (or less) and the job will be done for them. Well, let’s go for something more philosophically challenging: Guillermo del Toro’s affirmation that Pacific Rim star Charlie Hunnam, 32, is "the right side of honest and good looking that you don’t want to punch him in the face. You want to have a pint with the guy. You want to take him to the pub.

Zoe’s continues her journey through the turbulent history of one of Hollywood’s most influential studios, as we arrive at MGM's post-war golden era. Plus, a bit of 3D, too...

As the end of World War II approached, a new world dawned for MGM – a world which had changed dramatically. Attitudes and lifestyles had changed, but most importantly audiences had changed. Here was an opportunity: MGM’s chance to start afresh. And so in 1944, MGM embarked on what would become the most successful period in its history. After the war, the slate was wiped clean.

Gone were the tired, tried-and-tested formulas, and gone were the aging names and stars, as a new unit was established at MGM. It was up to this unit, anchored by an experienced producer and made up of bright young talent, to transform MGM’s signature high-production style into something new and modern in order...

"Frederica Sagor Maas, a pioneering female screenwriter who scored her first big success with The Plastic Age, a smash hit for 'It Girl' Clara Bow in 1925, died Jan 5." She was 111. Mike Barnes in the Hollywood Reporter: "Because she was a woman, Maas was typically assigned work on flapper comedies and light dramas. Her efforts includes such other Bow films as Dance Madness (1926), Hula (1927) and Red Hair (1928); two films featuring Norma Shearer, His Secretary (1925) and The Waning Sex (1926); the Greta Garbo drama Flesh and the Devil (1926); and the Louise Brooks film Rolled Stockings (1927)…. In 1927, she married Ernest Maas, a producer at Fox, and they wrote as a team but struggled to sell scripts…. The pair, interrogated by the FBI for allegedly Communist activities, were out of the business by the early 1950s. Ernest Mass died in 1986 at age 94. In 1999, at the urging of film historian Kevin Brownlow, Maas published her autobiography,...

Screenwriter Frederica Sagor Dead at 111: Wrote Movies for Norma Shearer (photo), Clara Bow, Louise Brooks Now, whether Frederica Sagor's Hollywood Babylon-like tales bear any resemblance to what actually happened at studio parties and private soirees, I can't tell. But on the professional side, one problem with the information found in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim is that studios invariably used numerous writers, whether male or female, in their projects. Usually, in those pre-Writers Guild days, only two or three contributors received final credit, not because of the uncredited writer's gender but in large part because the final product oftentimes had little — if anything — in common with the original source. While doing research for my Ramon Novarro biography, I went through various drafts, written by various hands, of his movies. A Certain Young Man, for instance, went through so many changes (including director, cast, and title), that the final film...

Ramon Novarro swimming in his Los Feliz Hills house Lloyd Wright's Samuel-Novarro House is back in the market, as per Curbed Los Angeles. Located in the Los Feliz Hills, the eastern section of the Hollywood Hills, the house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son Lloyd Wright in the late 1920s. In order to pay for Wright's services, personal secretary Louis Samuel embezzled money from the financial holdings of his boss, Hollywood star Ramon Novarro (photo), to gamble in the stock market. Novarro had had such confidence in Samuel that he had given his former dance classmate/intimate companion power of attorney over his financial affairs. The market crash in late 1929 and the extended bear market that followed wiped out Samuel's investments. As I wrote in Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro, upon discovering he didn't have enough funds to buy a new car, "the star who had...

Barbara Kent, a minor leading lady during the transition from silent to sound films, died October 13 in Palm Desert, in Southern California. A resident of the local Marrakesh Country Club, Kent was either 103 or 104. No cause of death was given. Barbara Kent was never a star. Not even close. In fact, most of her 35 movies were probably forgotten the week after their release. Paradoxically, Kent has become one of the most important performers of the silent era. No, not because she was Harold Lloyd's leading lady in his first talkie, Welcome Danger (1929). Or because of her career highlight: romancing Glen Tryon in Paul Fejos' naturalistic drama Lonesome (1928), frequently compared to F. W. Murnau's Sunrise. Barbara Kent has taken an importance incommensurate to her actual movie career because she was the very last individual to have had notable adult leads in American silent films. Everybody else, from Lillian Gish to Joan Crawford,...

Joan Fontaine-Charles Boyer in Rare The Constant Nymph on TCM. [Photo: Miriam Jordan, Neil Hamilton in Two Heads on a Pillow.] Besides the Edmund Goulding-directed Joan Fontaine-Charles Boyer-Alexis Smith movie The Constant Nymph, other Library of Congress Film Archive entries on Turner Classic Movies tonight include Two Heads on a Pillow (1934), a B comedy directed by William Nigh, an important late silent-era director (Lon Chaney's Mr. Wu, Ramon Novarro's Across to Singapore) later stuck with second-rate fare. Apparently a sort of Adam's Rib predecessor, Two Heads on a Pillow features former silent-era leading man Neil Hamilton (Batman's Commissioner Gordon) and minor leading lady Miriam Jordan as once-married attorneys involved in a divorce case. It's probably worth watching even if only because of its cast, which also includes silent-era veterans Betty Blythe (the title role in the now-lost The Queen of Sheba) and Claire McDowell (Ramon Novarro's leprosy-stricken mom in Ben-Hur,...

Press Release:

New York, August 17, 2011 -The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Alexander Payne.s The Descendants will be the Closing Night Gala selection for the 49th New York Film Festival (September 30-October 16). Nyff.s main slate of 27 feature films was also announced as well as a return to the festival stage of audience favorite, On Cinema (previously titled The Cinema Inside Me), featuring an in-depth, illustrated conversation with Alexander Payne.

The 2011 edition of Nyff will also feature a unique blend of programming to complement the main-slate of films, including: the Masterworks programs, additional titles added to the previously announced Ben-hur, Nicholas Ray.s We Can.T Go Home Again and Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating the Nikkatsu Centennial, as well as Views from the Avant-Garde, and several special event screenings, all of which will be announced in more detail shortly.

.In many of the films in this year.s Festival,...

John Garfield, Joan Crawford, Humoresque John Garfield is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" star on Friday, August 5. TCM will be presenting twelve John Garfield movies, in addition to the 2003 documentary The John Garfield Story. There will be no TCM premieres — but don't blame TCM for that. Garfield was a Warner Bros. star and Warners' movies belong to the Time Warner library; in other words, his films are always available. In fact, I believe the only John Garfield movie that has never been shown on TCM is 20th Century Fox's 1950 drama Under My Skin. [John Garfield Movie Schedule.] Much like Warners' James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and Errol Flynn, Garfield was a tough guy at a tough studio. Come to think of it, even Warners' women were tough: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Glenda Farrell, and, off screen, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Leslie (both of...

In 1925, the dawning of a new age in film that is right around the corner can already be seen. One of the largest steps is not only seeing film, but also hearing it. A big step towards this process was made when Western Electric and Warner Bros. decide to work together in order to make a system to make motion pictures with sound.

We also see the beginning of the use of foul language in the cinema. While the most infamous early use is most well-known as appearing in Gone With the Wind, The Big Parade beat their “damn” by fourteen years. The Big Parade, an epic silent war film used a title card that said, “March and sweat the whole damned day…”, marking one of the earliest uses of a curse word in an Us film.

Special effects in film even took a huge step forward. Not only were...

Marion Davies Monumental Painting by Federico Beltrán Masses Rudolph Valentino's Travis Banton-designed matador outfit from Blood and Sand; Mary Pickford's period hat from the 1924 historical drama Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall; the charioteer helmet worn by Francis X. Bushman in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur, filmdom's biggest worldwide blockbuster until Gone with the Wind; a blue suit and signature hat from the Harold Lloyd estate; Douglas Fairbanks' costumes from the 1929 version of The Taming of the Shrew; Greta Garbo's green velvet dress from Anna Karenina; Marilyn Monroe's 'subway' dress from The Seven Year Itch; Audrey Hepburn's Cecil Beaton-designed dress from My Fair [...]...

Rudolph Valentino, Blood and Sand Hollywood Heritage will celebrate Rudolph Valentino's birthday on Wednesday, May 11. The event will include screenings of the abridged version of Blood and Sand (1922) and the short Rudolph Valentino and His 88 American Beauties; rare photographs and artifacts on display in the lobby of the Hollywood Heritage Museum; and the presence of Donna Hill, author of Rudolph Valentino, The Silent Idol: His Life in Photographs. In addition to Blood and Sand, directed by Fred Niblo (Ben-Hur) and co-starring Nita Naldi (photo) and Martha Mansfield, Valentino starred in a number of major hits of the 1920s, among them Rex Ingram's epoch-making The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Beyond the Rocks, Monsieur Beaucaire, The Eagle, and Son of the Sheik. Born on May 6 in Castelanetta, Italy, Valentino died unexpectedly in 1926 at the age of 31. According to the Hollywood Heritage press release, in Rudolph Valentino, [...]...

Rex Ingram directing Scaramouche (top); Henri Matisse, Rex Ingram (middle); Rex Ingram, the actor-director, with off-screen girlfriend Rosita Garcia in Baroud (bottom) Rex Ingram Part I In Beyond Paradise, I wrote that "Ingram's unquestionable talent was matched only by his arrogance, fiery temperament, and lack of respect for authority." Indeed, those qualities were his undoing. A couple of years after his falling out with June Mathis and Rudolph Valentino, Ingram was heartbroken when he was passed over for the job of directing Goldwyn Pictures' monumental Ben-Hur, which was to be shot in Italy under Mathis' supervision. After two more years had gone by, both Mathis and her chosen director, Charles Brabin, were fired from the out-of-control project. But instead of replacing Brabin with Ingram, the top brass at Metro-Goldwyn opted for the more malleable Fred Niblo. (Ironically, Ingram's own discovery, Ramon Novarro, landed the role of Judah Ben-Hur after leading...

Jedi, goofy flight attendants, a possessed young girl, and two journalists on the brink of discovery are among the characters to be honored for film preservation. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has named 25 motion pictures to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Among the films to be preserved are George Lucas' "Return of the Jedi," "Airplane," William Friedkin's "The Exorcist," and Alan J. Pakula's "All The President's Men." This year.s selections bring the number of films in the registry to 550.

Each year, the Librarian of Congress, under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, names 25 films to the National Film Registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant, to be preserved for all time. In other words, these films are certainly not the "best" (but we can argue that each movie truly represented high quality) but they are works of art...

Lamberto Maggiorani in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves Some good and/or unusual offerings tonight on Turner Classic Movies. Silent Sundays will feature the 1925 version of The Wizard of Oz. Directed by and starring silent-film comedian Larry Semon, The Wizard of Oz features Dorothy Dwan in the role that would become associated with Judy Garland, especially in the minds of some gay men — and that's one mystery I've never been able to fathom. I mean, why Judy's Dorothy? Why Dorothy to begin with? Why not Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face? Or Norma Shearer in Let Us Be Gay? Or Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs? Or Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro? Or Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur? Or Frances Dee in Blood Money (or The Gay Deception or I Walked with a Zombie)? Why not Toto or Asta? It's a mystery. Albert Lamorisse's Academy Award-winning...

As news breaks that MGM has risen out of bankruptcy, this writer would like to take a moment and remember when this studio first entered the news, with its formation being the result of a corporate merger on Wall Street over eighty years ago. Following this merge, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would be the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood, from the end of the silent film era through World War II.

The man behind the merger was Marcus Loew, the owner of a large theater chain known as Loew’s Theatres. Wanting to provide a steady supply of films for his theaters, he had purchased both Metro Pictures Corporation and Goldwyn Pictures. However, both of these companies lacked leadership, and Loew was unable to spare his longtime assistant, Nicholas Schenck, as he was needed in New York City to oversee the theater chain. The answer came to Loew when his visited the...

Marion Davies in King Vidor's Show People Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which decades ago was the most financially stable of the Hollywood studios, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday. MGM — initially Metro-Goldwyn — was formed through the amalgamation of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Productions in 1924. Goldwyn, by then no longer associated with Samuel Goldwyn, was the largest production company of the three, but the out-of-control superspectacle Ben-Hur had badly damaged the studio's already shaken finances. Louis B. Mayer, initially with the assistance of second-in-command Irving Thalberg, ruled over the MGM fiefdom for more than a quarter of a century, though both Mayer and Thalberg had to answer to Loews, Inc.'s New York office. In about fifteen minutes Turner Classic Movies viewers will be able to catch a glimpse of the glorious MGM of yore in King Vidor's Show People (1928), a silent comedy classic starring Marion Davies as...

Ramon Novarro, Enid Bennett, The Red Lily Early Mexican-born screen heartthrob Ramon Novarro is back on Turner Classic Movies this evening with a presentation of Fred Niblo's silent melodrama The Red Lily (1924). That will be followed by another Ismael Rodríguez effort, Las mujeres de mi general ("The Women of My General"), a 1951 starring Mexican icon Pedro Infante as a rebel general torn between two women, as TCM continues its celebration of 100 years of the start of the Mexican Revolution (which coincides with Hispanic Heritage Month). The Red Lily isn't one of Novarro's best silent films. Both in terms of style and plot, it's quite dated. In fact, it probably felt dated even back in 1924. Historically, The Red Lily is important merely as the the second time Novarro worked with director Fred Niblo, who would guide him the following year in the monumental Ben-Hur, and as Novarro's first effort [...]...

The union of two great Hollywood families

'The pretentiousness, the bogus enthusiasm, the constant drinking and drabbing, the incessant squabbling over money, the all-pervasive agent, the strutting of the big shots ... the constant fear of losing all this fairy gold and being the nothing they have never ceased to be, the snide tricks, the whole damn mess is out of this world." This is Raymond Chandler on Hollywood. And it doesn't get much more Hollywood, or much messier, than the story of the Selznicks and the Mayers.

Hollywood always likes to intermarry, for better, but usually for worse, and the marriage of David O Selznick and Irene Mayer in 1930 saw the union of two of the greatest of all the Hollywood dynasties.

Selznick was a young film producer, the son of Lewis J Selznick, who was born in Kiev, Ukraine, emigrated to America and eventually became a head of a film studio.

Are you celebrating Mexico today?

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

I'm eating tacos for dinner because it's the least I can do. And I'm also perusing amazing photos of Mexican film stars of yore like the deliriously sexy Lupe Vélez and one star of the right now... Señor Bernal of course. Also deliriously sexy. Especially in closeups.

So I thought we'd drool on six of the earliest crossover sensations tonight with a few films of note (for one reason or another) for each of their careers. If you'd like to investigate further, click on the links. Enjoy!

Lupe Vélez The Gaucho, 1927 | Hot Pepper, 1933 | The Girl From Mexico, 1939

Ramon Novarro Scaramouche 1923 | Ben-Hur 1925 | The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, 1927

These silent stars had volatile lives and careers, both ending with tragic deaths. Vélez career was a series of ups and downs and some say she was bipolar. She had several movie star affairs...

Sunday evening sees the biggest movie awards event of the year. The 82nd Academy Award ceremony is taking place at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. Billions will be watching with bated breath as a variety of stars smugly congratulate each other. Oh, come on, you know it’s just the greatest promotional event ever created!

What do awards mean anyway? Haven’t they always been a little bit pointless and strange? Two-time Oscar winner William Friedkin has lambasted them the day since he got hold of one, make that, two. Of course, he was a supreme egotist in the 1970s, but he has a good point. He’s not the only creative talent to stick two fingers up at Oscar. Marlon Brando famously sent a Native American to collect his award for The Godfather and George C. Scott, who won for Patton in 1970, called the event “a meat parade”.

Anyway,...

If you're in the neighborhood of the Kodak Theatre and can't get into the Oscars this weekend, try the next best thing. Drop by the Hollywood Museum one block away – it's located in the Max Factor Building at 1660 N. Highland Ave., where you can see costumes and artifacts from leading nominees like "The Hurt Locker," "The Blind Side," "Inglourious Basterds," "Julie & Julia," "The Young Victoria," "Bright Star," "(500) Days of Summer" and "Star Trek" mixed in with treasures from Oscars past, like "Gone With the Wind," "Ben-Hur," "Gladiator" and even the first film to win best picture, "Wings." I serve as guest curator every year to organize this exhibition titled "And the...

Mel Sloan, an influential faculty member at the USC School of Cinematic Arts for more than 50 years, died Jan. 12 from pneumonia at his home in Van Nuys, Calif. He was 86.

Sloan served on the Sca faculty from 1946 until his retirement in 1997. He taught a wide variety of courses for undergraduates and graduates, including classes in his specialty, editing, and influenced such future movie makers as Irvin Kershner, Randal Kleiser, George Lucas, Walter Murch, Gary Rydstrom and Robert Zemeckis.

"Mel's remarkable legacy will live on through the storytellers and scholars who had the privilege of studying under him at the school," Sca dean Elizabeth Daley said. "With a genuine commitment and enthusiasm for teaching, he trained and nurtured generations of students who have gone on to shape the art form and the industry."

A native of the Bronx, Sloan interrupted his studies at USC with the outbreak of World War II...