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Spoiler shields up! This article discusses plot details from the latest episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks."

If "Star Trek: Lower Decks" must end with its fifth and final season (which /Film's Jacob Hall reviewed here), it might as well go out swinging for the fences. That seems to have been the approach from creator/showrunner Mike McMahan and the writing team as a whole so far in this series, in all fairness, but season 5, episode 6 takes this Mo to even greater heights. Titled "Of Gods and Angles," the story sees the crew of the USS Cerritos having to don their diplomacy hats in order to mediate between two disgruntled factions of photon-based lifeforms: alien races made up of cubes and spheres, hilariously enough. Yet, as ridiculous and silly as this gets, the main plot doesn't even take the title for the nerdiest moment of the episode. No, that honor...

You know a comedian had a dark side when he made an entire movie about a clown who witnesses and participates in the Holocaust and that’s still not the most disturbing decision he ever made.

Like too many of his contemporaries, the so-called “King of Comedy” wasn’t exactly chivalrous when it came to his treatment of women or his subjects. In fact, when Jerry Lewis was asked which female comedians he admired at the Aspen U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in 1998, he infamously responded, “I don’t like any female comedians. A woman doing comedy doesn’t offend me but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.” And, to absolutely no one’s surprise, Lewis’ less than stellar treatment of women (and people in general) extended past his...

Andrew Stevens pays loving but not hagiographic tribute to his late mother, famed actress Stella Stevens, in his documentary recently showcased at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. The film convincingly makes the case that its subject, best known for her performances in such pictures as The Poseidon Adventure and The Nutty Professor, is severely underrated, both as an actress and social activist. Stella Stevens: The Last Starlet aims to rectify that perception and, thanks to numerous clips of her work and effusive commentary by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Vivica A. Fox, it succeeds beautifully.

The filmmaker (who appears frequently) admits that his relationship with his mother was rocky, to say the least, in the early years. Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Stevens got married at age 16 and had Andrew, her first and only child, six months later. The marriage soon dissolved, and when she moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career,...

What’s the best time-travel movie of all time? According to astrophysicist Carl Sagan, it’s not the thoughtful sci-fi approaches of Time After Time, Looper or Edge of Tomorrow. The best compliment Robert Zemeckis ever got was when the famed cosmologist bestowed that honor on his comedy, Back to the Future.

Sagan told Zemeckis that the Michael J. Fox movie featured the best time-travel scientific theory he’d seen in a movie. “I didn’t tell him I took it from H.G. Wells,” the director confessed to Bill Maher on a recent Club Random podcast.

“It’s funny to watch a movie about time travel when you are now 40 years past when the movie was made,” Maher observed about jokes that were funny in 1985 about traveling to 1955. “You know, ‘If you know everything about the future, who is president in 1985?’ Ronald Reagan. ‘Yeah, right. And I’ll bet Jerry Lewis is vice president.

For decades, the mysterious fate of Jerry Lewis’ unfinished Holocaust film The Day the Clown Cried sparked rumors and intrigue amongst cinema fans and history buffs alike.

Ambitious yet ill-fated, Lewis’ dramatic directorial debut aimed to confront one of humanity’s darkest chapters through an unconventional lens. But what started as a passion project dissolved into chaos, and the world was denied a glimpse of this controversial work in progress.

Now, a new documentary shines a light on the colorful characters and conflicts that derailed the production from within. Directors Michael Lurie and Eric Friedler piece together the jigsaw puzzle through interviews and archival footage, and—mmost remarkably—oover 30 minutes of scenes we expected were long destroyed. Their film From Darkness to Light rescues key elements from obscurity and brings clarity to this submerged cinematic footnote.

Above all, we hear the story directly from Lewis himself in a rare pre-death interview.

Michel Blanc, a prominent French actor renowned for his versatility in both comedic and dramatic roles, died on October 4th from a heart attack following an allergic reaction. He was 72 years old. Blanc made his mark in the 1978 comedy “Les Bronzés” and its sequels, earning fame for his portrayal of an awkward bachelor. While comedy brought him widespread popularity, he worked hard to show his talents extended beyond it.

Blanc received critical acclaim for his dramatic turns, like winning Best Actor at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival for “Tenue de Soirée.” He also gained recognition for his skills as a writer, taking home a Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 1994 for his self-referential comedy “Grosse Fatigue.” Later in his career, he earned a César for Best Supporting Actor in the 2011 political drama “L’Exercice de l’État.”

Beyond acting, Blanc proved talented behind the scenes as well. He directed several successful films and wrote their scripts,...

French actor Michel Blanc, best known for his roles in Le Splendid troupe comedy films like the 1978 cult classic Les Bronzés (French Fried Vacation) and its subsequent 1979 and 2006 sequels, died early Oct. 4 at 72 of a heart attack following anaphylactic shock, per the Agence France-Presse.

A fixture in French cinema, his death was mourned by president Emmanuel Macron, who wrote on X: “He made us cry with laughter and moved us to tears. A monument of French cinema, Michel Blanc is gone. Our thoughts go out to his loved ones and his acting accomplices.”

The French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, added in a statement: “This morning the sorrow is immense, as great as his talent. In front of the camera of Bertrand Blier, Robert Altman or Pierre Schoeller, Michel Blanc amazed us with the variety of his acting, but also with his talents as a director with films like “Marche à l’ombre...

Through the years, Martin Scorsese’s 1982 film The King of Comedy has managed to remain an impactful satire of fame, celebrity obsession, and media culture. The film starred the iconic Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin, a delusional and obsessive aspiring comedian who kidnaps a late-night TV host, played by Jerry Lewis, in a desperate bid for fame. Although it was not a major box-office success upon release, the film has since grown in stature.

Martin Scorsese | Credit: Harald Krichel via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

With its biting social commentary, the film has become way more relevant in today’s media-saturated world. However, almost a decade ago, Scorsese opened up about the movie’s lasting relevance, which had people wondering if he might have taken a swipe at the former president, Donald Trump.

Martin Scorsese discusses the relevance of The King of Comedy in today’s society

At its core,...

The talk show is historically tied to network television. NBC, ABC, CBS, all the initials that we know and love. Streaming has taken a big bite out of the talk show apple, though. Platforms like Netflix has done an excellent job of taking the standard talk show and fitting it to their binge-driven release model.

We generally cover the heavy network hitters on this site, like The Tonight Show and The Late Show, but we wanted to take a step back and look at some of the best talk shows that aren't on network TV. The ones that are waiting to be discovered (or rediscovered) on Netflix.

Norm MacDonald Has a Show

Norm MacDonald was a singular talent. He was one of the best Weekend Update hosts in the history of Saturday Night Live, and his glee in pushing buttons basically made him your favorite comedian's favorite comedian.

Read More:...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSChicken Run.After earlier claims that they were “not in jeopardy,” the 29-location Landmark Theatre chain now faces foreclosure, though IndieWire reports that may not be such a bad thing.After releasing a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis that included phony, apparently AI-generated pull quotes attributed to real film critics, Lionsgate has issued an apology and ceremonially fired a marketing consultant.The fast-food chain Chick-Fil-a plans to launch a streaming service, which will apparently include game shows and reality programming.FESTIVALSAhead of its premiere this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, we are pleased to share the first poster for Sofia Bohdanowicz's Measures for a Funeral (2024), designed by Charlotte Gosch of studio other types.

Lewis grappled with serious themes with The Day the Clown Cried, but as this documentary reveals, to the end he remained haunted by its failure

In 1971 Jerry Lewis, America’s most famous comedian, decided to swing for the fences and make his masterpiece. The Day the Clown Cried was a Holocaust tale about Helmut Doork, a hapless party entertainer who becomes a death camp pied piper. Lewis starred and directed, overseeing every aspect of a fraught shoot in Sweden, but the man misstepped badly and the film never saw the light of day. It has since become legend, buried forever and apparently for good reason.

Now along comes Michael Lurie and Eric Friedler’s flawed but engrossing documentary to pick over the wreckage, shine a Uv lamp on the crime scene and – best of all – reveal extended segments of a picture that is destined to remain incomplete. For much of its running time,...

Going into the documentary “From Darkness to Light,” most reasonably well-informed movie fans would know three things about “The Day the Clown Cried,” the Jerry Lewis Holocaust movie that is the subject of this doc: It was ahead of its time, it was never finished and it probably wasn’t any good.

Coming out of “From Darkness to Light,” which premiered on Sunday at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, you’d likely know the same three things, but at least you’d have more context and more evidence that Lewis’ legendary but unseen film is indeed a bad movie. There aren’t any real revelations in the doc, just the sad and tangled story of a questionable idea being undermined by creative choices, business conflicts and a comic icon’s determination to bury something that embarrassed him.

At one point early in the film, Lewis, in a conversation described as...

For over half a century, the tale of a missing movie has puzzled Hollywood: what happened to Jerry Lewis’ infamous dark comedy “The Day the Clown Cried”? Shot in Sweden in 1972, the film told the tale of a clown taken to a concentration camp and tasked with walking children to gas chambers. Controversy in front and behind the cameras meant the film was never released, with only a handful of people having seen snippets of the footage. Until now.

Eric Friedler’s and Michael Lurie’s documentary “From Darkness to Light,” world premiering at the Venice Film Festival, shares sections of the 1972 film with audiences for the first time while chronicling the making and the downfall of the famed film. “Everyone interested in film somehow heard about this story. It was always fascinating to us. I grew up with Jerry Lewis and thought it was worthwhile to find out a...

“All you have to do,” says author Shawn Levy, who wrote King of Comedy, the definitive Jerry Lewis biography, is to give the plot summary. “If you just tell people: Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in a drama about a clown in a concentration camp leading children into the gas chambers, people say: ‘What? How have I never heard of this movie, how have I never seen it?’ “

You haven’t seen the film, The Day the Clown Cried. No one has. Jerry Lewis shot it in 1972, but it was never released. And it never will be. It is one of the last white whales of lost cinema, like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune or Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, except Jodorowsky never got to shoot a single frame of his Arrakis epic. And Welles’ opus was eventually finished, 48 years later, thanks to Netflix money. It screened...

A new documentary explores the mystery behind The Day the Clown Cried, a never-finished, never-released 1970s movie set in a second world war death camp

It was a “disaster”. It was “so drastically wrong”. Its creator was “ashamed” and “embarrassed”. “No one will ever see it.” It was “bad, bad, bad”. The film that triggered this outpouring was Jerry Lewis’s catastrophic Holocaust drama The Day the Clown Cried. Shot in the early 1970s, it has notoriously never been officially released in any form, and only tiny snippets of footage have ever made their way into the public arena.

Lewis, at that point in his career, was trying to reinvent himself after his zany-comedy persona of the 50s and 60s was no longer so popular. He got interested in the project and cast himself as Helmut Doork, a down-at-heel clown who ends up in a Nazi death camp where he...

Megalopolis director Francis Ford Coppola has joined Letterboxd, the social cataloguing service where members can rate and review films and keep track of what they’ve watched. I’m a little addicted. Coppola has shared a list of twenty films that he would recommend to any cinephile or aspiring filmmaker, which you can check out below.

French Cancan (Jean Renoir) The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra) Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg) The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey) The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis) The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa) Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu) The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau) The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan) Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau) Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst) A Place in the Sun (George Stevens) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese) After...

Perry Kurtz, a comedian who appeared on Season 8 of America’s Got Talent as well as on The Late Late Show with James Corden, died Thursday in a hit-and-run in the L.A. neighborhood of Tarzana. He was 73.

His death was confirmed by the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s Office. An official cause of death is deferred pending an autopsy.

Perry was struck by a gray Honda Civic at around 11:20 pm Thursday, according to law enforcement sources cited by TMZ. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

TMZ reports a suspect has been arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run causing death.

Kurtz auditioned in the sixth episode of Season 8 of America’s Got Talent, in a rap act about judges Howard Stern, Heidi Klum and Mel B. All three hit the buzzer and he was eliminated from the competition.

His first gig in came in 1977 when he entered a talent...

Deadline has reported that an old jettisoned project by Jerry Lewis may be getting a second chance thanks to a new producer and financier. The iconic comedian reworked a script to The Day the Clown Cried as he directed and starred in the feature in 1972. However, the film would not be released since it would not be completed. According to Deadline, Lewis had disavowed the film and he did his best to make sure it never saw the light of day. Rights issues over the story became complicated. Controversy also surrounded the film due to an outcry over the audacity of Lewis setting a film in the concentration camps involving the deaths of Jewish children at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. Additionally, he was accused of shamelessly using the movie for Oscar bait.

Now, Kia Jam of K. Jam Media has taken to funding the original...

Exclusive: The Day The Clown Cried is getting another chance at the big screen. Rewritten by Jerry Lewis, who starred in and directed a 1972 feature drama that went unfinished and unreleased, the script for the Holocaust tale is being revived by K. Jam Media founder Kia Jam. Jam has been part of the financing and producing of films ranging from The Killing Game to In the Heart of the Sea, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and numerous others.

Jam said he has executed a purchase agreement on the original script by Joan O’Brien and Charles Denton. Lewis took a hand in reshaping it as a starring and directing vehicle. Jam is going back to the original screenplay. He said he has the production financing, and the next step is to secure a filmmaker with the guts to tell a most harrowing story.

Lewis disavowed the film and did...

2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Wolverine's creation and debut in 1974's "The Incredible Hulk" issue #180. For most of that time, it's been accepted that Wolverine was created by writer Len Wein and artist John Romita Sr. However, Roy Thomas — who was Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief in 1974 — has recently (since Wein's death in 2017) been claiming he should be credited as a co-creator of Wolverine as well. Marvel has obliged him.

The credits of "Deadpool & Wolverine" included the following accreditation: "Wolverine created by Len Wein, John Romita Sr., Herb Trimpe, and Roy Thomas." Thomas subsequently wrote an op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter about finally receiving credit as a creator of Wolverine in a film. The headline quote? "My Name Should Have Come First."

Wein's widow, Christine Valada, has been a vocal opponent of Thomas staking this claim on Logan. (Thomas is the only one of Wolverine's four credited creators who is still alive.

Mitzi McCall, the trailblazing comedian, actress and half of the comedy duo McCall and Brill, died Thursday in Burbank. She was 93.

Born on Sept. 9, 1930, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, her comedic talents were evident early in life, leading to a distinguished career that spanned over seven decades. She emerged as a prominent voice in the male-dominated comedy world, paving the way for future generations of female comedians.

McCall’s legacy is perhaps most enduringly marked by her work with her husband, actor and comedian Charlie Brill, as part of the comedy duo “McCall and Brill.” The pair became television staples, gracing numerous variety shows, including a memorable appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” during The Beatles’ American debut in 1964 — a moment that has since become television history.

Mitzi’s career began in the late 1940s with a stage debut at the Pittsburgh Playhouse in “Strange Bedfellows” in 1948. In the early 1950s, she...

Comedian and actress Mitzi McCall of comedy duo McCall and Brill died Thursday at 93 years old, according to a statement from her representative. She died in Burbank at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, surrounded by loved ones.

McCall began in the 1950s and made a name for herself on the comedy scene. She was best known for her work as a team with her husband, Charlie Brill. They became mainstays on the era’s variety shows, including “The Ed Sullivan Show” — and were even on the episodes where The Beatles made their American debut.

“Mitzi McCall’s life was a testament to the power of laughter, and her influence on the world of comedy will be remembered for years to come,” the statement from her representative reads. “Her legacy will live on through the countless laughs she inspired and the doors she opened for future generations.”

She appeared on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In...

Mitzi McCall, the delightful actress and sitcom writer who partnered with her husband, Charlie Brill, in a sketch comedy act that famously floundered between sets by The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, has died. She was 93.

McCall died Thursday at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, her family announced.

The pint-sized Pittsburgh native also played the dry cleaner’s wife who wears a fur coat owned by Jerry’s mom on the 1994 Seinfeld episode “The Secretary,” and she was the mother of Carol Leifer’s optometrist character on the 1997-98 WB sitcom Alright Already.

McCall had a thriving career as a voiceover artist; she played Mother Goose on Mother Goose and Grimm and worked on other animated projects including The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, Paw Paws, Darkwing Duck, Yo Yogi! and Ice Age (2002).

And she wrote for shows including 13 Queens Boulevard, Eight Is Enough, One Day at a Time,...

Much has been said of the overwhelming ingenuity of Jean-Luc Godard’s early films, but less so about just how well the director knew how to work around budgetary limitations. Alphaville, a dystopian sci-fi noir set in an Orwellian world of omnipresent surveillance run by a malevolent artificial intelligence, sounds at first blush like a large-scale work filled with the sort of macro world-building one typically sees in blockbusters. But Godard, working with next to no resources, captures the oppressiveness of totalitarian government through the claustrophobic conditions of repressed citizens. Ordinary Parisian streets and buildings are captured as they are, though in inky shadow, so that a certain kind of present-day dilapidation comes to suggest futuristic social decay.

Godard takes private detective Lemmy Caution and illustrates Alphaville’s themes of social tension and incipient fascism by demolishing the man’s image. Godard secured Eddie Constantine, who had already played Caution...

Roy Thomas took over from Stan Lee as Marvel Comics editor-in-chief in 1972, and has been credited as the co-creator of several characters, including Vision, Carol Danvers, Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

However, there is one particular hero he's been lobbying for recognition in having a hand in creating along with Len Wein, John Romita Sr. and Herb Trimpe for many years: Wolverine.

Thomas was finally given his credit in Deadpool and Wolverine, but the news has not sat well with everyone, including the late Len Wein's widow Christine Valada.

“I’m not privy to what the financial arrangements might be [with Thomas] and I don’t particularly care,” Valada said in an interview with Forbes earlier this year. “This is not about finances. This is about stolen valor. This frankly calls my husband a liar for his entire career.”

In any case, the credit stands, and Thomas has now shared his thoughts...

Former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas is speaking out against the pervasive notion that there is “superhero film fatigue” amid the MCU reshuffling.

In an opinion piece for The Hollywood Reporter, Thomas wrote that while he is not particularly a fan of the “Deadpool” films, the crossover feature “Deadpool & Wolverine” could revitalize the genre.

“I hope that it does its little part to get the slightly stalled MCU back on track, which should be doable,” Thomas penned. “There’s no such thing as ‘superhero film fatigue‘ — only an impatience with movies that are poorly done and don’t respect the original material.”

Thomas continued that he is “overjoyed” at the box office success of the R-rated film starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, who reprises the Wolverine character after his turn in “Logan.”

“I’ve never been much of a fan of the ‘Deadpool’ franchise, and I have real trouble taking...

Roy Thomas was hired by Stan Lee in 1965 as staff writer and succeeded him as Marvel editor-in-chief in 1972 when Lee became the publisher. He is known for his work as the co-creator of numerous popular characters, including Vision, Carol Danvers, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. But until this month’s Deadpool & Wolverine, he was not officially credited in a movie as a co-creator on Wolverine, recognition he lobbied Marvel for and received in 2022. That new credit has rubbed some corners of the internet (and some in the creator community) the wrong way, in part because he was an editor at the time of Wolverine’s 1974 creation, and editors generally do not receive such credits. This feeling intensified after Christine Valada, the widow of late Wolverine co-creator Len Wein, expressed her displeasure publicly. Thomas has said the credit only formalizes what he has maintained for decades — that he initiated the...

The 1966 "Batman" TV series -- one of the best TV shows of all time -- wasn't shy about including shameless cameos. Early in the show's run, the producers invented an organic conceit that would allow famous people to literally poke their heads in for a moment to deliver a few lines of dialogue. While Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward) were scaling the side of a building -- something they did often -- a celebrity guest would open a window to see who might be making noise on their outside wall. The series featured peek-ins from Sammy Davis, Jr., Jerry Lewis, Art Linkletter, Don Ho, and Dick Clark. 

Other notable stars also provided peek-ins, but many appeared in character, playing their roles from other hip TV shows at the time. Ted Cassidy, for instance, appeared as Lurch from "The Addams Family." Werner Klemperer had a cameo as Colonel Klink from "Hogan's Heroes.

Susan Seidelman with Anne-Katrin Titze and music producer/99 Records founder Ed Bahlman: “Music has always been important in my movies.”

In the first instalment with Susan Seidelman on her memoir, Desperately Seeking Something (St. Martin’s Press), and her career as a filmmaker, we start out discussing the jacket choices for Susan Berman, Madonna, Ann Magnuson (Frankie in Making Mr. Right with John Malkovich), and Emily Lloyd.

Susan Berman as Wren in Smithereens and Madonna as Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan

We move on to the influence of Jacques Rivette’s Celine And Julie Go Boating, her love of Billy Wilder films, being named after...

In the latest installment in the “Beverly Hills Cop” franchise, “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” premiering on Netflix next week, “Zola” star Taylour Paige plays daughter to Eddie Murphy’s classic character Axel Foley, but it seems she’d rather be taking on his older roles. A huge fan of Murphy’s reinterpretation of the Jerry Lewis comedy “The Nutty Professor,” she said in a recent piece for The New York Times that she couldn’t help but quote it back to him on repeat.

“I recited every line to him almost every day I shot with him,” Paige said. “I had a lot of questions, like, ‘How do you play six to eight people believably?’”

Paige has spoken previously of her admiration for Murphy. In a profile for Empire, she said, “I grew up watching ‘The Nutty Professor’ and ‘Dr. Dolittle.’ It was like I knew him — it was surreal.

Jerry Lewis wasn’t exactly the easiest person to please, as evidenced by *gestures to the countless stories of him being a raging infantile d-bag for no reason*. So remaking one of Lewis’ classic movies while he was still alive must have been a little like kicking a nest full of petty, misogynistic hornets.

The Nutty Professor was one of Lewis’ most famous comedies, telling the story of an incel scientist who concocts a serum that turns him into a handsome psychopath. Judging from the original trailer, this basic premise was considered a big twist back in 1963. Lewis even urged audiences to “not reveal the middle of this picture.”

The 1996 Eddie Murphy-starring version of The Nutty Professor originated with producer Brian Grazer. As Grazer recently told a classroom full of children during the “Story Corner” segment of John Mulaney’s Everybody’s in L.A., in order to land the rights to the film,...

An unseen interview that captures comedian Richard Lewis holding court at Greenblatt’s Delicatessen in Hollywood is set for release on Saturday, June 29.

Filmmaker/Documentarian Gregg Barson conducted the Lewis interview for his 2011 documentary, Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis.

Barson remembered it being one of the most hysterical interviews he ever conducted, and that’s saying plenty, because he was fortunate enough to sit down with such legendary comedians for his documentary — Richard Belzer, Chevy Chase, Billy Crystal, Eddie Murphy, Carl Reiner, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jerry Lewis himself.

“I didn’t want it to end because I was treated to a one-man, private sit-down comedy extravaganza,” Barson said, recalling the Lewis moment.

When Barson revisited the material in its entirety, he had over an hour of unseen interview footage that highlights Lewis’s frenetic improvisational style of stand-up.

Barson decided Lewis’s birthday on June 29th would be...

Willie Mays, the incandescent center fielder for the New York and San Francisco Giants whose unmatched blend of speed and power made him a cultural icon and one of the finest players in the history of baseball, died Tuesday. He was 93.

“It is with great sadness that we announce that San Francisco Giants Legend and Hall of Famer Willie Mays passed away peacefully this afternoon at the age of 93,” the San Francisco Giants shared on its official X (formerly Twitter) account.

A day before his death, Mays said that he would not be in attendance when the Giants face the St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field in Alabama on Thursday in a game honoring him and the Negro Leagues (he began his baseball career with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues).

“I’m not able to get to Birmingham this year but will follow the game back here in the Bay Area,...

Hiram Kasten, renowned for his memorable roles in television, including his appearances on ‘Seinfeld’, has passed away at the age of 71. Kasten battled multiple health issues over the last seven years, including prostate cancer and Crohn’s disease. In recent months, he privately disclosed to loved ones that he was terminally ill. Despite his health challenges, he continued to receive support and affection from friends, who engaged with him through frequent Zoom calls, which his wife Diana credited with extending his life by approximately two months.

Hiram Kasten began his entertainment career in stand-up comedy in 1978, making a mark in the New York City and New Jersey comedy scenes. He was notably passed by Jerry Seinfeld at an audition at ‘The Comic Strip’, marking a significant milestone in his career. Known for his distinctive style and charisma on stage, Kasten was admired for his homage to comedy greats like Alan King,...

British filmmaker Peter Chelsom became obsessed with photography at the age of 13 after his father gifted him a Kodak Retinette 1B camera for his birthday. “Suddenly everything became photography,” says the veteran director of films like 2001’s Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale and the 2004 Jennifer Lopez-starrer Shall We Dance. “I was obsessed with it. And that’s why I became a filmmaker.”

Now the director, who has been a resident of the Lunigiana region of Tuscany for many years, is preparing to host Dream Role, an exhibition of 50 photographs, many of them previously unpublished, that capture not only moments with the famous actors he’s worked with over the years but also everyday moments and childhood places from Chelsom’s life.

From June 22 to July 14, 2024, at the historic Fortino Leopoldo I in Forte dei Marmi, on the Tuscan coast, Chelsom will display his private collection, featuring a...

Terry Gilliam has been to Cannes with three of his own films since 1983, but one of his favorite memories of the festival takes him back to that very first time, at the 36th edition, as the co-writer and co-star of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Along with Graham Chapman and the film’s director Terry Jones, he’d emerged from the Carlton hotel’s iconic entrance, then bedecked with promotion for the upcoming Bond movie Octopussy, to encounter a camera crew. Jones started grabbing people at random, shouting, “Who Ees Monty Python???” in a ridiculous foreign accent, and got so carried away that, when they reached the hotel’s famous terrace, he accidentally did it to Gilliam too.

The crowd loved it, and the day only grew stranger. Out on the Carlton’s jetty, they gave an interview to British news channel ITN, with Jones hiding behind Graham...

Eric Newman was the showrunner for the Netflix series “Narcos” in 2015 when Sofia Vergara – then in the middle of her run starring as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on the multiple Emmy-winning comedy “Modern Family” – invited him to her home to pitch him on the idea of her fronting a project where she portrayed the Colombian drug “queenpin” Griselda Blanco. “Obviously I knew her work and was a fan of hers,” Newman recalls. “I also knew she (Vergara) was Colombian, which is an important distinction. And I knew a lot about Griselda Blanco and was fascinated with her as a character. I felt that if Sofia was willing to take the risk…just the thought that she was interested in doing this was appealing. So I went into the meeting very excited and hopeful that I would be met with a level of passion and conviction that would help make my decision very easy – and I was.

Luis Ospina, interviewed shortly before his death, recalls a fierce career that applied the lessons of the French New Wave to his work

Jorge Carvalho’s brief documentary is a study of the Colombian documentarist and film-maker Luis Ospina, the founder of the Grupo de Cali; named after his home town of Cali in Colombia, it was an artists’ collective including director Carlos Mayolo and the writer Andrés Caicedo, whose early death at 25 helped make him a legendary figure of Colombian literature. They were formed in radical opposition to what Ospina and others saw as the dullness and complacency of Colombian cinema, and in sympathy with leftist currents in moviemaking after Godard. The Californian-educated Ospina himself displays a classic New Wave reverence for the American masters such as Hawks and Ford, in whose company he includes Jerry Lewis without any hesitation. Ospina and the Grupo de Cali were the subject...

At last, our long national nightmare is nearly over.

It only seems like the much-decorated Max comedy “Hacks” has been away forever. It’s actually been less than two years. Overcoming strikes by writers and actors and a health crisis involving star Jean Smart – who won the Emmy for Best Comedy Actress in each of the show’s first pair of seasons – the series returns for Season 3 on May 2. The streamer will roll out two episodes on May 2, 9, 16 and 23 before running the finale of the nine-episode season on May 30.

“Hacks” was something of an Emmy juggernaut in 2021 and 2022 before going Awol due to a 10-month production delay in 2023. It earned 15 nominations in its first season and 17 in its second. It converted six of those 32 nominations (which included a pair of Best Comedy series bids) to wins, including the two for Smart as well as for the show’s writing and directing.

Marlon Brando – the man whom Time magazine crowned the greatest actor of the 20th century back in 1998 – would be celebrating his 100th birthday today had he not died 20 years ago. Born on April 3, 1924, Brando was a fascinating if divisive character, a perpetually enigmatic figure whose impact not only on the acting profession but on American popular culture itself can’t be overstated. He starred in numerous iconic roles, from Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” to Terry Malloy in “On the Waterfront” to Julius Caesar in “Julius Caesar” to Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.”

While he wound up nominated for eight Academy Awards and six Golden Globes and won two of each, it was the one honor Brando rejected, of course, that came to define his awards legacy: his Best Actor win for “The Godfather” in 1973 in which he sent actress and purported Native American representative Sacheen Littlefeather (a.

There are entire generations that have no idea that Steve Martin was a stand-up comedian. They may recognize him as one-third of the trio that’s turned Only Murders in the Building into a streaming hit, or the long-suffering patriarch of the Father of the Bride movies, or maybe as that guy with the funny mustache who was in that one thing with Beyoncé (i.e. 2006 Pink Panther reboot). Some might have watched Parenthood or Planes, Trains and Automobiles with their parents when they were younger. He’s the celebrity who,...

Drake Bell was as much of an icon to 2000s kids as John Lennon was to the children of the 1960s. During an interview, the Drake & Josh star explained why he had a tattoo inspired by one of John’s most famous quotations. The quotation appeared in one of the former Beatle’s most enduring songs.

Drake Bell has tattoos inspired by John Lennon and The Beach Boys

During a 2011 interview with PopSugar, Bell discussed his tattoos. “‘War Is Over,’ it’s from John Lennon, it spoke to me,” he said. “I’m a huge fan of Lennon. The feather on my arm means a lot of things, depends on what the day is and which mood I’m in. I have Lennon’s glasses on my back. They have a broken lens, which is something that spoke to me.” Yoko Ono famously included John’s bloodied glasses on the...

Roxy Cinema

Our 35mm presentation of Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance screens on Saturday and Sunday; Jessica Hausner’s Hotel plays on Friday, as does a Frank Tashlin / Jerry Lewis double-bill of Hollywood or Bust and The Geisha Boy; The Bridges of Madison County and Lenny Cooke play on Saturday, while One Hand Don’t Clap shows Sunday; Red Rock West plays Saturday and Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Films by Jean-Luc Godard and more play in Afterimage.

Museum of Modern Art

The essential work of Ernie Gehr plays in a new retrospective.

Film Forum

The Japanese horror series continues with Ugetsu, Throne of Blood, Audition, Godzilla, and more; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang plays on 35mm this Sunday.

IFC Center

The End of Evangelion plays this Sunday; The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, Under the Silver Lake, and The Shining play late.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: House of Tolerance on 35mm...

Jerry Lewis was the comedic legend who starred in dozens of films, remaining active until his death at 91 in 2017. But how many of those titles, many of which he also wrote and directed, remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest movies, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1926, Lewis initially gained attention as one half of the team Martin and Lewis, opposite future Rat Packer Dean Martin. The combination of Martin as the lady-killing straight man and Lewis as the spastic goofball started as a night club act and a radio program. They appeared in 17 films together before their breakup in 1956.

He went on to star in, direct, and write a series of slapstick comedies laced with hints of sentimentality. In titles such as “The Bellboy” (1960), “The Ladies Man” (1961), “The Nutty Professor” (1963), and “The Patsy” (1964), Lewis played a lovable, rubber-faced dork who won our hearts while grating on our nerves.

Calls are growing for the 1994 film to be freed from YouTube hell – but is it there because evil Hollywood execs tried to kill it, or is it just a really bad film?

Why exactly are we so fascinated with bad movies? Perhaps it is simple schadenfreude, the delicious mental backwards engineering required to work out just exactly how somebody somewhere decided that the John Travolta-led, Scientology-infused Battlefield Earth, or Ed Wood’s frightful Glen or Glenda were anything approaching a good idea. It cannot be that we actually want to watch these things, for where is the thrill in experiencing completely inept film-making unless it really is about taking pleasure in other people’s creative failure?

The situation becomes even more preposterous when we consider those movies that have always been so terrible that nobody should ever be able to witness them on the big or small screen. Jerry Lewis...

Jodie Foster, the two-time Oscar-winning actress riding high off her performances in Nyad and True Detective: Night Country, will be honored with a hand and footprint ceremony during the TCM Classic Film Festival, it was announced Tuesday.

Foster, 61, will leave her mark in cement in the courtyard of the iconic Tcl Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on Friday, April 19 during the 15th annual event.

“The truth is Jodie Foster deserves a hand and footprint ceremony solely for her work in 1976 alone — films she made when she was 13 years old — Taxi Driver, Bugsy Malone, Freaky Friday and The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. You could see her range already,” said TCM host Ben Mankiewicz in a statement.

“Nearly 50 years later, we have an answer to this question: ‘What is a Jodie Foster character?’ The answer is: There is nothing she can’t play. If you want evidence of that,...

Jackie Loughery, who parlayed a victory in the first Miss USA pageant into an acting career that included a prominent role opposite future husband Jack Webb in the 1957 military drama The D.I., has died. She was 93.

Loughery died Friday in Los Angeles, Webb biographer Dan Moyer told The Hollywood Reporter. “She was like a mother to me and called me her kid,” he said.

The Brooklyn native also served as Johnny Carson’s assistant on a game show and appeared in the Western comedy Pardners (1956), starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; the melodrama Eighteen and Anxious (1957), starring William Campbell; and the political drama A Public Affair (1962), starring Edward Binns.

And for television, Loughery portrayed the niece of the title character (Edgar Buchanan) on the 1955-56 syndicated Western series Judge Roy Bean.

Loughery played a cautious shop owner named Annie who is romanced by a tough U.S. Marine drill sergeant...

After The Daily Show went more than 12 months without being able to find a host to replace Trevor Noah in time to cover a presidential election in which neither major party has been able to find candidates to replace Joe Biden or Donald Trump, the Comedy Central series kicked off a run of fresh episodes with an interim, part-time new host… Jon Stewart.

Whether you find Stewart’s return to be an act of triumph or a sign of desperation — he’ll be doing Monday night shows until November’s election — the venerable performer slid back into the hosting chair like no time had passed since his August 2015 departure.

This didn’t feel like Jon Stewart doing a Jon Stewart impression, exactly. But it definitely felt like Jon Stewart doing a Jon-Stewart-as-host-of-The-Daily-Show impression — a difference without a distinction unless you watched Stewart’s short-lived Apple TV show or caught...

Until recently, the oldest entertainment program known to survive on color videotape was NBC’s An Evening with Fred Astaire, broadcast live on October 17, 1958.

But now, a rare color videotape of the Kraft Music Hall Starring Milton Berle that predates the Astaire special by nine days has been discovered. The tape will be shown at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood on Saturday, February 24th at 7:30 Pm in a program that is free and open to the public.

“The Berle Kraft tape is the oldest known color videotape of an entertainment program,” said Mark Quigley, the John H. Mitchell Television Curator at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. “Entertainment” is a key distinction. The oldest known color tape is of the NBC Washington studios dedication ceremony on 05-22-1958.

“With the introduction of videotape technology in the broadcast industry starting in 1956, one of...

Variety’s annual Showrunners Dinner presented by A E Studios on Thursday night gathered writers recognized on the publication’s annual TV Producers Impact List, as well as several of this year’s Emmy nominees. In addition, megaproducer Chuck Lorre was honored with Variety’s first Norman Lear Award.

Held at Merois, on the rooftop of the Pendry West Hollywood, the Variety Showrunners Dinner included a very funny acceptance speech by Lorre, who pointed out some of the similarities — but more humorously, the differences — between the two icons.

“I think everyone here understands the enormity and significance of Norman Lear’s body of work,” Lorre began. “So in accepting this award, I don’t think it’s false modesty to take a moment and focus on the very large differences between his career and my own. For starters, Norman Lear began his career writing for Hollywood legends like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.