Clint Eastwood can add another award to his sagging mantle piece of honors.Eastwood, who is in France to film his latest movie Hereafter, was honored with the Prix Lumiere, an off-shoot of the Cannes Film Festival prizes. The festival honored the work of Eastwood, Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. Eastwood quipped that he wanted to thank the people who edited his film trailers over the decades for inspiring people to see his movies.For more click here
Pinewood Studios, the legendary home of some of the great British films including the James Bond series, had proposed a plan for a massive expansion on their premises. The project would have created permanent recreations of the world's major cities, as well as the construction of 1400 new homes in the serene countryside area where the studios are located. It was the latter aspect of the plan that caused the local council to reject the proposal on the grounds that the construction of so many new residences would have caused irreparable damage to the quality of life of local residents. Pinewood argues that the plan would have created a substantial number of new jobs at a time when the UK is suffering tremendous financial hardship. The studio plans to appeal the ruling. For more click here
Family and colleagues of the legendary James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli will participate in panel discussions as part of the University of Southern California's tribute to the man known by one and all as "Cubby". The events run from November 6-8 in Los Angeles and will feature appearances by Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, Richard Kiel, Maud Adams, Marc Forster, Robert Wade, Neal Purvis, Tom Mankiewicz and others. Additionally, there will be screenings of classic Bond movies and a display of Bond memorabilia from Broccoli's personal archives. Click here for more
On
our second date in my studio apartment, my wife shared her spaghetti dinner with
a decaying corpse who had just climbed out of his grave.
This
not-for-the-squeamish image was from the 1972 horror anthology Tales from the Crypt, which also
featured a skull with cobwebs in its black eye socket. Dirty
Harry’s, .44 magnum pointed at her from another wall, while a hand beckoned
her into 1973’s The Vault of Horror.  Â
You’re
an unusual decorator, she’d said. I told
her it was only art. That I wasn’t the
Starry Night type.
The
rest of my 350 square foot apartment was consumed with over 25 framed pieces of
movie memorabilia from the 1970s, horrifying and violent artwork which
symbolized, paradoxically, the nostalgia I felt for the innocence of my
movie-going youth. Equinox. Race with the Devil. Westworld. Straw
Dogs. The Stone Killer. The French Connection and French Connection II, side by side, over
my sofa. Hell, I knew how to decorate.
They
were photo albums of my movie past, a time when the visceral impact of film
violence communicated, perhaps subconsciously, something of vicarious comfort
to a young teen with feelings of inadequacy about standing up to bullies in
school and talking to girls. Or maybe it
was an escape from our family dinner table conversation which contained terms
like chemotherapy and remission while my mother lay dying in the hospital.
My
first movie poster, which I found when I was 12 in our suburban stationery
store’s moveable metal rack, featured a shot of Bonnie and Clyde and C.W. Moss behind
the bullet-riddled windshield of their getaway car. It wasn’t a movie one-sheet and there was no text
on the poster, only a large image foreshadowing their doom. It remained over my bed for a long time. I wasn’t allowed to see the film, which had
been out for a few years, but I don’t recall my parents ever objecting to the
poster. My bedroom walls were soon
covered with stills I cut out from film books:Â
Cagney, Bogart, Garfield, Lancaster.Â
They exuded power and charisma; they were loved and feared, qualities I
yearned for.
But it wasn’t until
my late thirties that I started seriously collecting posters. Ebay was my Rosebud.  I spent hundreds of dollars on American, Japanese,
German, British, and Mexican material of films from the 60s and 70s. Disaster movies, rats, revenge flicks, fantasy
and horror. One-sheets, half-sheets,
lobby cards, press books, Quads. Every
purchase was a trip back to where I saw the movie and who I was with.