News

"The Godfather" trilogy is one of the most quotable series of films in cinema history. While the second and third installments of the series have their memorable lines, it's 1972's "The Godfather" which contains the bulk of the trilogy's most indelible dialogue. To illustrate the point: it seems everyone and their father has a Marlon Brando-as-Don Corleone impression in their back pocket (whether that impression is any good or not is another matter), and while the main reason for that is due to Brando's unique take on the character, it wouldn't be half as popular to do at parties and whatnot without the excellent lines from the film to back it up.

Most of this dialogue comes courtesy of "Godfather" author Mario Puzo, with co-screenwriter and director Francis Ford Coppola choosing to include the bulk of Puzo's prose in his screen adaptation. Although some of the dialogue in...

Don Murray, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance opposite Marilyn Monroe in the 1956 film adaptation of William Inge’s play “Bus Stop,” has died. He was 94.

His son Christopher confirmed his death to the New York Times.

In the 2017 reboot of “Twin Peaks,” he played Bushnell Mullins, the chief executive of Lucky 7 Insurance.

Murray also starred in the fourth entry in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes”; played Brooke Shield’s father in “Endless Love”; and recurred on prime-time soap “Knots Landing” as Sid Fairgate.

Reviewing “Bus Stop,” directed by Joshua Logan, the New York Times said: “With a wondrous new actor named Don Murray playing the stupid, stubborn poke and with the clutter of broncos, blondes and busters beautifully tangled, Mr. Logan has a booming comedy going before he gets to the romance. A great deal is owed to Mr.

Don Murray, the venturesome actor who earned an Oscar nomination for playing a rodeo cowboy smitten by Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop, then spurned Hollywood’s attempts to mold him, has died. He was 94.

Murray’s son Christopher announced his dad’s death to The New York Times without providing details.

The actor was also known for the interesting parts he went after in such serious films as A Hatful of Rain (1957), The Hoodlum Priest (1961) and Advise & Consent (1962).

Fresh off a starring role in a 1955 Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, Murray was sought by director Joshua Logan to portray Bo Decker, the naive Montana man who falls for the chanteuse Chérie (Monroe), in Bus Stop (1956). It was his first movie, and he was 26 at the time.

“No one could have been less equipped for the job,” he once said. “I was a New...

Robert De Niro has been working in Hollywood for almost six decades now, with eight Oscar nominations to his name and two wins. His most noted collaboration has been with director Martin Scorsese, with whom he has done 10 films, including their latest partnership on “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which was released October 20 through Apple Original Films. In celebration of the western crime epic, let’s take a look back at De Niro’s eight Oscar nominations in 45 years; seven for acting and one for producing.

His first Oscar nomination and victory came on the heels of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic crime film “The Godfather” with the equally successful second installment “The Godfather Part II” (1974), in which De Niro plays a young Vito Corleone, played by Oscar winner Marlon Brando in the first movie. Just like Brando, De Niro triumphed at the 1975 Oscars for the character, albeit in the...

There are a great many people out there who like to say that “The Godfather Part II” is superior to “The Godfather.” Al Pacino is not one of them. The 82-year-old actor went uptown to the 92nd St. Y on Wednesday to sit for an hour-long schmooze as part of their “People Who Inspire Us” series. During the conversation, he dished on a number of subjects, including the movie that sent his career into orbit.

“You see, ‘The Godfather’ is more entertaining,” he said. “‘Godfather II’ is this study, this personal thing for Francis [Ford Coppola]. ‘Godfather I,’ I saw it recently, it’s always got two or three things going on in a scene. You’re always in the story, you’re going. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, it’s storytelling, it’s really storytelling at its best. ‘Godfather II’ sort of linearizes, and [it’s] kind of different,...

Click here to read the full article.

Henry Silva, the rugged New York actor who portrayed heavies and heroes of various ethnicities in a career highlighted by turns in A Hatful of Rain, The Manchurian Candidate and Johnny Cool, has died. He was 95.

Silva died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his son Scott Silva told The Hollywood Reporter.

Silva also played the Draconian commander “Killer” Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), just one in a lineup of his bad guys seen in The Tall T (1957), The Bravados (1958), Il Boss (1973), Sharky’s Machine (1981), Above the Law (1988), Dick Tracy (1990) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

“Henry Silva is one of those guys you most likely will recognize even if you don’t know his name,” onetime Crimespree magazine writer Dave Wahlman wrote in 2016. “His face is something straight...

For the fourth time in five years, the Best Supporting Actor Oscar race features a pair of co-star nominees. Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee earned two of “The Power of the Dog’s” 12 nominations on Tuesday. They are the 21st duo to be nominated together in what is a new Oscar trend after the category went 26 years without co-star nominees.

After “Bugsy” (1991) produced bids for Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley, Best Supporting Actor did not see a pair of co-star nominees until 2017’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” fielded Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson. Since then, “The Irishman” (2019) nabbed comeback nominations for Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, and last year, the Oscars tossed in a major curveball when voters nominated Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield, who had been campaigned in lead, in supporting. And now we’ve got Plemons and Smit-McPhee. Sometimes when you open the floodgates, it just doesn’t stop.

The Oscars threw one of the biggest curveballs this season when voters nominated both “Judas and the Black Messiah” stars Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield in Best Supporting Actor. But that plot twist, no matter how head-scratching it was, has allowed Kaluuya to join a special club. With his victory on Sunday night, he is now the seventh Best Supporting Actor winner to beat a co-star.

The first six people to accomplish this are Ben Johnson (1971’s “The Last Picture Show”), Robert De Niro (1974’s “The Godfather Part II”), Jason Robards (1977’s “Julia”), Timothy Hutton (1980’s “Ordinary People”), Jack Nicholson (1983’s “Terms of Endearment”) and Sam Rockwell.

Johnson defeated co-star Jeff Bridges, who was on his first of seven nominations. De Niro overcame two co-stars, Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg. Robards claimed his second straight supporting trophy over “Julia” co-star Maximilian Schell. Then-20-year-old Hutton became the category’s...

John Frankenheimer’s biggest production since Grand Prix turns the touchy subject of international terrorism into a frightening, outlandish story of a plot to kill thousands of spectators during one of America’s defining rituals, the Super Bowl. Black September operative Marthe Keller seduces disturbed Viet vet Bruce Dern into perpetrating the crime; Israeli agent Robert Shaw races to stop them. The super-crime is both outrageous and credible — making the show seem very modern, even prophetic. True to form, Frankenheimer filmed much of the movie’s final 40-minute suspense sequence during a real Super Bowl game.

Black Sunday

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 34

1977 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date February 23, 2021 / Available from Viavision / 34.95 au

Starring: Robert Shaw, Bruce Dern, Marthe Keller, Bekim Fehmiu, Fritz Weaver, Steven Keats, Michael V. Gazzo, William Daniels, Walter Gotell.

Cinematography: John A. Alonzo

Film Editor: Tom Rolf

Original Music: John Williams

Written by Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross, Ivan Moffat...

You know, once the floodgates open, it’s kinda hard to stop. After a 26-year drought, the Best Supporting Actor Oscar category has now featured double nominees from one film for the third time in four years. Granted, no one expected the head-scratching combo of “Judas and the Black Messiah” stars Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield to be nominated in this category, but hey, it happened. Their bids come a year after “The Irishman” produced nominations for Al Pacino and Joe Pesci and three years after “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” ended the dry spell with Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, the latter of whom won. Kaluuya remains the frontrunner to win — by a wide margin — which would mark the seventh time a Best Supporting Actor champ defeated a co-star.

“Judas” is the 20th film to yield multiple supporting actor nominations. The first was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), whose...

Four of the featured fellows in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” — Sacha Baron Cohen, Frank Langella, Eddie Redmayne and Mark Rylance — made the BAFTAs longlist of 15 contenders for Best Supporting Actor. We are predicting that Cohen, who also reaped Golden Globes and SAG bids, will earn a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Rylance, who won this award in 2015 for “Bridge of Spies,” is jockeying for the fifth slot.

Four-time Tony winner Langella and Redmayne, who took home the Best Actor Oscar in 2014 for “The Theory of Everything,” are longer shots than another of the supporting actors in the film: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II makes our Top 10 for his searing portrayal of Bobby Seale.

Since the supporting acting categories were introduced in 1937, 19 films have reaped bids for at least two of their male featured players. As you can see from the list below, it took till the ninth time that this...

In the year 2021, just how many actors from one film can land a nomination in an Oscars category? The last time it occurred in the Best Supporting Actor race was in 1975 when Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg were all nominated for “The Godfather, Pt. II” (three actors were also nominated for “The Godfather” in 1973). 46 years later can Netflix pull off three nominees for “The Trial of the Chicago 7”?

Continue reading Oscars 2021: Best Supporting Actor Contenders & Predictions at The Playlist.

After a 26-year dry spell, we’ve now had double nominations in the Best Supporting Actor Oscar category twice in the last three years. “The Irishman” became the 19th film to score multiple supporting actor bids on Monday, for Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, just two years after Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell did the same for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017).

“Three Billboards” was the first film to garner double bids since “Bugsy” (1991) fielded Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley. Three films earned three in the category: 1954’s “On the Waterfront”, 1972’s “The Godfather” and 1974’s “The Godfather Part II”.

Pacino and Pesci are up against Brad Pitt (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”), Tom Hanks (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”).

See Here’s the full list of Oscar nominations

In the previous 18 instances, six people have prevailed against a co-star for a 33.3 percent success rate,...

Francis Ford Coppola recently worked cinephiles into a frenzy by saying that, after an eight-year absence from filmmaking, he’d finally begun work on long-planned passion project “Megalopolis,” a film that’s always been dogged by funding issues. That followed his unspooling of “Apocalypse Now: Final Cut” at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, which cut certain scenes from 2001’s extended “Apocalypse Now Redux” while adding back some of the “weirder” elements lost from the 1979 theatrical cut. “Final Cut” will be released on Blu-ray in August.

“Apocalypse Now” — and what it says about how a work of art can shape-shift, in both its own form and in the minds of viewers and critics — was the reason for a wide-ranging new interview with Coppola conducted by Rolling Stone‘s David Fear. The whole Q&A is a reminder of what a forward-looking thinker the “Godfather” filmmaker is; he even almost kicked...

Actor Carmine Caridi, best known for portraying Carmine Rosato in "The Godfather: Part II", is dead. He was 85.

Caridi died on Tuesday after being in a coma at a hospital here, his representatives told variety.com.

"From Broadway, to film and television, Carmine spent over six decades entertaining audiences, and nothing made him happier. His talent, wit, warmth, and charm will be missed.

"Carmine passed peacefully, surrounded by friends and family at Cedars Sinai Hospital," the representatives said in a statement.

The actor's character in "The Godfather: Part II" played a key role in the territorial feud with Frank Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo.

The veteran actor also appeared in "The Godfather: Part III" as a different character, Albert Volpe, an investor in Michael Corleone's casinos who is killed in an attack at a hotel in Atlantic City.

He also starred in TV shows including "Phyllis," "Starsky and Hutch,...

Carmine Caridi, the actor best-known for portraying Carmine Rosato in “The Godfather: Part II,” has died. He was 85.

Caridi died on Tuesday, his reps confirmed to Variety. He had been in a coma at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. TMZ first reported the news.

His Carmine Rosato character in “The Godfather: Part II” played a key role in the territorial feud with Frank Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo. Studio executive Robert Evans said in his 1994 memoir “The Kid Stays in the Picture” that Caridi was director Francis Ford Coppola’s first choice for the role of Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather.” However, Evans, he said in the book, thought Caridi was too tall for the role, which instead went to James Caan.

The veteran actor also appeared in “The Godfather: Part III” as a different character, Albert Volpe, an investor in Michael Corleone’s casinos who is killed in an...

While it is a common complaint that there aren’t enough good roles for women in films nowadays, “The Favourite” had the reverse problem in that it had almost too many good roles for actresses. The film offers Oscar caliber roles for three performers as it tells the tale of Queen Anne and two women who compete to be her “favourite.” The film inspired a lot of debate in the early days of the Oscar derby as to what categories the film would campaign its three actresses. Ultimately it was decided to place Olivia Colman in Best Actress and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz in Best Supporting Actress. All three were nominated, thus placing Stone and Weisz in direct competition with each other. In taking a look back on Oscar history since the supporting categories were introduced at the 9th ceremony, are Stone and Weisz in danger of splitting the vote?...

“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” ended a 26-year drought in Best Supporting Actor, producing two nominees, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, from the same film for the first time since “Bugsy” (1991) stars Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley lost to Jack Palance (“City Slickers”). By all appearances, it’s smooth sailing for Rockwell for the win, which would be the sixth time a Best Supporting Actor winner defeated a co-star in 18 dual duels.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) stars Harry Carey and Claude Rains were the first co-stars to be nominated against each other in Best Supporting Actor, but they lost to Thomas Mitchell for “Stagecoach.” It would be another 32 years — with seven pairs of double nominees in between — before a Best Supporting Actor champ, Ben Johnson, beat a co-star, Jeff Bridges, for 1971’s “The Last Picture Show.”

Three years later, Robert De Niro prevailed over fellow “The Godfather Part II...

Some moviegoing experiences change your life: “2001: A Space Odyssey” at Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome; “The Tree of Life” accompanied by a 100-piece symphony orchestra; “The Shining” restored and retrofitted for IMAX. And for the more than 1,000 people at Radio City Music Hall yesterday, it was watching “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II.”

Read More: ‘The Godfather’ Reunion: Robert Duvall Imitates Marlon Brando’s Laugh and Other Highlights From Closing Night at Tribeca

Francis Ford Coppola’s crime saga closed out the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival with a 45th anniversary celebration that included restoration screenings of the first two parts and a conversation with Coppola and the cast, including Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Diane Keaton. While the chance to see the cast reunited was a once-in-a-lifetime event, so was the opportunity to experience the full power of “The Godfather” surrounded by cinephiles. And after 45 years, a few things have become abundantly clear.

By Patrick Shanley

Managing Editor

Director Tom McCarthy’s true story drama about Boston Globe reporters investigating the local Catholic archdiocese and the surrounding child molestation scandal, Spotlight, is a serious Oscar contender, particularly for its star-studded cast.

The film, which won the best ensemble performance award at this month’s Gotham Awards and the Robert Altman award at the Independent Spirit Awards, boasts serious contenders in the best supporting actor category led by performances from last year’s best actor nominee Michael Keaton and former Oscar-nom Mark Ruffalo.

It seems likely that both Keaton and Ruffalo will receive nominations this year, which would be quite a feat in itself as no film has had two of its actors nominated in the best supporting actor category since Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley both earned noms for 1991’s Bugsy (though the supporting actress category has had a number of films with...

Before he received acclaim as a writer/director of such films as Brother from Another Planet (’84), Matewan (’87), and The Secret of Roan Inish (’94), John Sayles made a splash on the horror scene as the writer of fun, clever satires such as Piranha (’78) and The Howling (’81). However, he did another that doesn’t get nearly as much love, and that’s his ode to an overgrown reptile, Lewis Teague’s Alligator (’80). Which is a shame, as it is just as much of a blast as the other two.

Alligator was released in July to solid reviews, and tripled its budget in returns, bringing in $6.5 million U.S. Not too bad for an independent (Group 1 International Distribution Organisation Ltd., the fine folks behind Ufo’s Are Real), and a good indicator that horror fans are always up for a smart romp. Alligator glides through that sweet swamp filled with fear and good humor.

By Lee Pfeiffer 

The good news is that Timeless Video is releasing multiple films in one DVD package. The bad news is that one of these releases, although featuring two highly-watchable leading men, presents two stinkers. Love and Bullets is a 1979 Charles Bronson starrer that Roger Ebert appropriately described at the time as "an assemblyline potboiler". The film initially showed promise. Originally titled Love and Bullets, Charlie, the movie had John Huston as its director. However, Huston left after "creative differences" about the concept of the story and its execution on screen. The absurdity of losing a director as esteemed as Huston might have been understandable if the resulting flick wasn't such a mess. However, one suspects that, whatever the conceptual vision Huston had for the movie may have been, it must have been superior to what ultimately emerged. Stuart Rosenberg, the competent director of Cool Hand Luke took over...

Clint Eastwood revisited Harry Callahan three more times, usually whenever his career was in the dumps. If Dirty Harry was a cultural phenomenon and Magnum Force a respectable follow-up, the rest are uninspired cash-ins. The main law Harry enforces in these sequels is the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Given Dirty Harry‘s San Francisco setting, something like The Enforcer (1976) was inevitable. After all, San Fran hosted Haight-Ashbury, hippie capital of the world; was a favored site for Black Panther and Sds protests; headquarters of the nascent gay rights movement; victim of Weathermen bombings and the racially-charged Zebra murders. Writers Gail Morgan Hickman and S.W. Schurr based their script, originally titled “Moving Target,” on the Symbionese Liberation Army which kidnapped Patty Hearst. Dean Riesner (who cowrote the original Harry) and Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night) polished the film.

Harry battles the People’s Revolutionary Strike Froce, led by...

'A Hatful of Rain' with Lloyd Nolan, Anthony Franciosa and Don Murray 'A Hatful of Rain' script fails to find cinematic voice as most of the cast hams it up Based on a play by Michael V. Gazzo, A Hatful of Rain is an interesting attempt at injecting "adult" subject matters – in this case, the evils of drug addiction – into Hollywood movies. "Interesting," however, does not mean either successful or compelling. Despite real, unromantic New York City locations and Joseph MacDonald's beautifully realistic black-and-white camera work (and the pointless use of CinemaScope), this Fred Zinnemann-directed melodrama feels anachronistically stagy as a result of its artificial dialogue and the hammy theatricality of its performers – with Eva Marie Saint as the sole naturalistic exception. 'A Hatful of Rain' synopsis Somewhat revolutionary in its day (Otto Preminger's The Man with a Golden Arm,* also about drug addiction,...

Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson on the Oscars' Red Carpet Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson at the Academy Awards Eli Wallach and wife Anne Jackson are seen above arriving at the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony, held on Sunday, Feb. 27, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. The 95-year-old Wallach had received an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in November 2010. See also: "Doris Day Inexplicably Snubbed by Academy," "Maureen O'Hara Honorary Oscar," "Honorary Oscars: Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo Among Rare Women Recipients," and "Hayao Miyazaki Getting Honorary Oscar." Delayed film debut The Actors Studio-trained Eli Wallach was to have made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Academy Award-winning 1953 blockbuster From Here to Eternity. Ultimately, however, Frank Sinatra – then a has-been following a string of box office duds – was cast for a pittance, getting beaten to a pulp by a pre-stardom Ernest Borgnine. For his bloodied efforts, Sinatra went on...

By Alex Simon

For the one person on the planet who's never see the Godfather films--spoilers Ahead.

Few characters in film history have displayed the cunning, charm and utter moral ambiguity as that of Tom Hagen, the Corleone family lawyer in Francis Coppola’s first two Godfather films. In Mario Puzo’s novel, as well as the film adaptation, it’s revealed that Hagen (played by Robert Duvall) was found living on the street as an 11 year-old by pre-teen Sonny Corleone (played in the film as an adult by James Caan) and unofficially adopted by Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) as one of their own. Puzo’s novel reveals that Don Vito never formally adopted Tom, as he felt it would have been disrespectful to the boy’s real family, who were torn apart by their father’s alcoholism.

Throughout both films, Hagen remains the voice of reason and rational thinking,...

"We Can't Stop," Miley Cyrus' inescapable take on Rihanna's strip-club anthems, has snaked its way into the song of the summer race, nipping at the heels of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Daft Punk's "Get Lucky." Depending on where you fall on the love-hate continuum that Miley's recent output has inspired, that's either great or bad news, but in either case, there's hope: a new remix from New Jersey native Mike Gazzo and New York producer, HuffPost blogger and DJ extraordinaire Kalkutta.

The rework, which is debuting exclusively on HuffPost Entertainment, sees Gazzo and Kalkutta leaving Mike Will's syrupy (and admittedly entrancing) beat behind for a two part anthem that blends electro house and something that approaches moombahton without falling for the trap-inflected style that's currently the rage in electronic dance music.

"We were inspired by artists like Zedd and Hardwell to change up the two drops as well as the tempo,...

 

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin continues its "Weird Wednesday" cult movie screenings with the rarely seen "B" action flick Kill Castro which boasts macho leading men Robert Vaughn, Stuart Whitman and Woody Strode (plus Godfather II Oscar nominee Michael V. Gazzo) in a 1980 CIA thriller that has about dozen other titles in various video incarnations. It's directed Chuck Workman, who has gone on to be an acclaimed documentary maker. The flick will be shown on March 13. Click here for info and to view trailer. ...

Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” features three credible contenders for Best Supporting Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz. There have been three instances when three actors have been nominated at the Oscars in Supporting Actor for the same film: Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Rob Steiger for “On the Waterfront” (1954); James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Al Pacino for “The Godfather” (1972); and Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo, and Lee Strasberg for “The Godfather, Part II” (1974). The Waterfront" trio lost to Edmond O'Brien ("The Barefoot Contessa") while the "Godfather" fellows were bested by Joel Grey ("Cabaret"). DeNiro did pull off a win for his performance as the young Vito Corelone. The chances of all three "Django" dudes getting nominated aren’t good, especially with competition from the likes of Tommy Lee J...

Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray, A Hatful of Rain Don Murray (Oscar nominee for Bus Stop) and Eva Marie Saint (Oscar winner for On the Waterfront) are scheduled to be present for a discussion at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica this evening following a screening of Fred Zinnemann's 1957 drama A Hatful of Rain, which stars Murray, Saint, Best Actor Oscar nominee Anthony Franciosa, and Lloyd Nolan. Based on a play by Michael V. Gazzo (perhaps best-known for his Oscar-nominated performance in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II), A Hatful of Rain is a portrayal of a dysfunctional all-American family. Family members include a Korean War veteran-turned-junkie (Murray), his wife (Saint), his "no-good" brother (Franciosa), and the brothers' self-centered father (Nolan).

On Saturday, March 26th, the Directors Guild of America hosted another event in celebration of their 75th Anniversary. Last month, they honored George Lucas with a screening of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) and discussion between Lucas and Christopher Nolan. This time, the DGA hosted a panel honoring Lucas's benefactor, Francis Ford Coppola. Unlike the Lucas event, the DGA did not screen one of Coppola's many feature films, but asked three directors, David O'Russell (Three Kings, The Fighter), Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen), and Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood) to prepare short reels of some of their favorite scenes as a spring board for discussion. Each director's selections were fairly classical while also featuring some oddities: Hardwicke picked ten minutes from Apocalypse Now (1979), P.T. Anderson chose a selection from The Conversation (1974), my personal favorite of Coppola's films, and an odder choice, Youth Without Youth...

A Hatful Of Rain (1957) Direction: Fred Zinnemann Cast: Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray, Anthony Franciosa, Lloyd Nolan, Henry Silva Screenplay: Michael V. Gazzo, Alfred Hayes, Carl Foreman (originally uncredited); from Gazzo's play Oscar Movies Don Murray, Eva Marie Saint, A Hatful of Rain Based on a play by Michael V. Gazzo, A Hatful of Rain is an interesting attempt at injecting "adult" subject matters — in this case, the evils of drug addiction — into Hollywood movies. "Interesting," however, does not mean either successful or compelling. Despite real, unromantic New York locations and Joseph MacDonald's beautifully realistic black-and-white camera work, this Fred Zinnemann-directed melodrama feels anachronistically stagy as a result of its artificial dialogue and the hammy theatricality of its performers — with Eva Marie Saint as the sole naturalistic exception. Somewhat revolutionary in its day (Otto Preminger's The Man with a Golden Arm, also about drug addiction, had come...

By John H. Foote

The Godfather Part II (1974) – ****

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Is there a greater American film than The Godfather Part II (1974)? If there is, and I do not believe there is, I have yet to see it.

What Coppola achieved in The Godfather (1972) was something quite extraordinary, making a film that explores the American Dream corrupted yet achieved. The Corleone family came to this country dirt poor, yet achieved enormous wealth and power through a life of crime. Yet they are presented to us as hard working, a loving family, a group of people who truly care for each other, yet go to work and perhaps do murder if they find it necessary to do so.

Written as a pulp novel, Coppola worked with writer Mario Puzo to shape the screenplay, deepen the story, and gave it an operatic sense of tragedy that was almost Shakespearean in its execution.

As the dust settles on the 2008 Oscar nominations, I thought it was time for a look back at some of the eyebrow raising choices the Academy has made in its 81 years of handing out shiny prizes. Actually, that's kind of a lie -- I was bored on Saturday night and decided to watch Thunderbolt and Lightfoot on Hulu. I have this dorky habit of looking up film trivia on IMDb whenever I've watched a movie -- and there I was amazed to learn that a baby-faced Jeff Bridges had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1974 for this offbeat film. That knowledge kind of blew me away. He was good, certainly, but Oscar worthy? It must have been a weak year or something.

Er, no. 1974 gave us Chinatown, The Godfather Part II, Murder on the Orient Express, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, The Great Gatsby, and much, much more. Thus,...