Scoring over 500 movies and television shows, as well as over 100 classical works, film composer Ennio Morricone (who passed away at 91) wrote, orchestrated, and toured ceaselessly, refining and expanding his repertoire to accommodate different visions and the ever-shifting sounds of the day. Yet despite its eclecticism — or …
Read More »Carl Reiner: Exit Laughing
Carl Reiner didn’t mean to create The Dick Van Dyke Show — or, rather, he didn’t mean to create a show for Dick Van Dyke. When he sat down to write what was then called Head of the Family, Reiner was basing its hero, Rob Petrie, on his own experiences …
Read More »Trailers of the Week: 'The Innocence Files,' 'Normal People,' 'Punk'd' and More
Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert The 2020 Coachella may be postponed until October, but fans have the YouTube Original documentary to get through this festival-less spring. Billie Eilish, Moby, Ice Cube and Perry Farrell all speak to Coachella’s legacy. “Everybody knows what Coachella is,” Eilish says as the clip …
Read More »Harmonies, Heroes and Heroin: New Doc Traces the Story of Doo-Wop
“Harmony, harmony, harmony — no band, no nothing,” explains Charlie Thomas of the Drifters in director Brent Wilson’s Streetlight Harmonies, a new doc tracing the history of doo-wop (available on VOD). Doo-wop could be swoony and romantic, playful and mischievous. It was the sweet-voiced sibling to the insouciant rock & …
Read More »Best TV/Streaming to See in Mar.: 'Westworld,' 'Amazing Stories,' 'Plot Against America'
Penske Media may earn a commission from purchases made from our links. This month, viewers will have their choice of fictional dystopias (in addition to the real one happening outside our doors, naturally). You can visit an alternate reality America in which fascism has taken hold, clock in at a …
Read More »Oscars 2020: Why the 'Parasite' Best Picture Win Was Revolutionary
You could tell Jane Fonda knew she was making history by the way she smiled, pausing for a second before reading out the Best Picture title. Watch her face. It’s almost as fun to re-view that moment as to have witnessed, in real time, what happened right after it. Sorry, …
Read More »A Deck of Jokers: Ranking the Movies' Clown Princes of Crime
Through the years, as the Batman legend has kept evolving, so has his arch-villain nemesis: the Clown Prince of Crime. Every era gets the Joker it deserves, and under the greasepaint, this most iconic of bad guys is a complex character: He needs to be funny to become truly terrifying. …
Read More »12 Best Movies at Toronto Film Festival 2019
Every person who heads to the Toronto International Film Festival — especially those who hope to take the pulse of the upcoming awards-circuit season — comes with certain expectations. Maybe these notions are industry-driven (the trades and the prognosticators says A and B are the big films to beat for …
Read More »Manson Lives: Actor Damon Herriman on Playing the Cult Mastermind — Twice
The Australian actor Damon Herriman is probably best known for playing the dimwitted hillbilly Dewey Crowe on FX’s long-running drama Justified. But after this summer, he’ll go down in history as the best actor ever to portray Charles Manson, the so-called hippie-death-cult leader who got several of his minions to …
Read More »Toronto 2019: 'Knives Out' Is an A-List Agatha Christie Mystery A La Mode
Agatha Christie didn’t invent the whodunnit, that literary subgenre featuring unexpected corpses, gaggles of suspects, eccentric supersleuths and parlor-room denouements. She did a lot to embed it in the popular imagination, however, and the grande dame’s spirit is all over Knives Out, Rian Johnson‘s ingenious spin on her signature deductive-detective …
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