He is a TV news star: His views are populist, his subtext racist. His advocacy is passionate and his TV audience is vast, despite suspicion that he pursues an agenda above and beyond his own.
Some may rush to identify this character – images of Fox News flash before us – but the TV anchor was, in fact, a creation of Paul Newman, a star of a previous generation whose presence seems pervasive in the present.
At a moment when political expression, personal or corporate, seems instantly suffocated, Newman was a courageous free spirit who vented his opinions and put his career at risk in support of them. The superstar is the subject of a riveting new documentary directed by Ethan Hawke prompting praise this week at SXSW. He also is the subject of a revealing, long-suppressed memoir being published this fall by Alfred A. Knopf.
Though he passed in 2008, Newman occupies...
Some may rush to identify this character – images of Fox News flash before us – but the TV anchor was, in fact, a creation of Paul Newman, a star of a previous generation whose presence seems pervasive in the present.
At a moment when political expression, personal or corporate, seems instantly suffocated, Newman was a courageous free spirit who vented his opinions and put his career at risk in support of them. The superstar is the subject of a riveting new documentary directed by Ethan Hawke prompting praise this week at SXSW. He also is the subject of a revealing, long-suppressed memoir being published this fall by Alfred A. Knopf.
Though he passed in 2008, Newman occupies...
- 3/17/2022
- by Peter Bart
- Deadline Film + TV
Warners knocks us out with a beautifully remastered Rko noir. Nicholas Ray's crime tale is like no other, a meditation on human need and loneliness. It's a noir with a cautiously positive, hopeful twist. On Dangerous Ground Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 11, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Anthony Ross, Ed Begley, Ian Wolfe, Sumner Williams. Cinematography George E. Diskant Art Direction Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino Film Editor Roland Gross Original Music Bernard Herrmann Written by A.I. Bezzerides, Nicholas Ray from the novel Mad with Much Heart by Gerald Butler Produced by John Houseman, Sid Rogell Directed by Nicholas Ray
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Warner Archive is known for pleasant surprises, but this one is a real thrill -- one of the very best Rko films noir, reissued in a much-needed beautiful restoration.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Warner Archive is known for pleasant surprises, but this one is a real thrill -- one of the very best Rko films noir, reissued in a much-needed beautiful restoration.
- 10/8/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
With its potent cocktail of Cold War political chicanery, farcical judicial horse-trading and all out betrayal, the Hollywood blacklist has long fascinated American film historians. The majority have tended–not least in the case of Victor Navasky’s excellent 2003 exposé Naming Names–to have a domestic focus. Rebecca Prime’s Hollywood Exiles in Europe is a compelling addition because she has chosen to broaden the picture by addressing the lives and work of the blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers who sought exile in Europe. Story: The Hollywood Reporter, After 65 Years, Addresses Role in Blacklist No mere armchair historian, Prime’s travels have led her to Paris, London
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- 2/12/2014
- by Tobias Grey
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Kids, you may not believe this, but some of us are old enough to remember when you used to have to connect to the Internet via 56k dial-up modems. Or that AOL was once the most popular Internet service provider, so popular that everyone recognized the cheerful "You've Got Mail" alert that sounded when you signed on. Or that the "You've Got Mail" greeting was a promise that there was something exciting waiting for you in your e-mail inbox, not just spam ads for Canadian Viagra. Don't believe us? There's a historical document you should check out, aptly titled, "You've Got Mail."
It's been just 15 years since Nora Ephron's romantic comedy opened (December 18, 1998), but it seems like eons ago, not just because the Internet has evolved so much since then, but because we've all watched the unwitting romance between Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) -- business rivals by day,...
It's been just 15 years since Nora Ephron's romantic comedy opened (December 18, 1998), but it seems like eons ago, not just because the Internet has evolved so much since then, but because we've all watched the unwitting romance between Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) -- business rivals by day,...
- 12/18/2013
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
Screenwriter for Don Siegel and writer/producer of classic TV series, he named many of his colleagues as communists
In 1951, when the screenwriter Richard Collins, who has died aged 98, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (Huac), he named more than 20 colleagues and friends in the film industry as belonging to or sympathising with the Communist party. Although by so doing he saved his Hollywood career, it was an action that cast a shadow over the rest of his life, regardless of his success in film and television as a writer and producer.
According to many, it was a cowardly act, which Collins later tried to justify, as did directors Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk, by saying that it was his patriotic duty, and that Huac knew the names anyway. However, in an interview in Victor Navasky's book Naming Names (1980), Collins called himself "a son of a bitch, a miserable little bastard.
In 1951, when the screenwriter Richard Collins, who has died aged 98, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (Huac), he named more than 20 colleagues and friends in the film industry as belonging to or sympathising with the Communist party. Although by so doing he saved his Hollywood career, it was an action that cast a shadow over the rest of his life, regardless of his success in film and television as a writer and producer.
According to many, it was a cowardly act, which Collins later tried to justify, as did directors Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk, by saying that it was his patriotic duty, and that Huac knew the names anyway. However, in an interview in Victor Navasky's book Naming Names (1980), Collins called himself "a son of a bitch, a miserable little bastard.
- 2/20/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Amid all the publicity over the Huffington Post-aol sale last week, few have focused on the PR wizard who played a stealth role in its success. Lloyd Grove on the enigmatic Ken Lerer.
Pay attention to the man behind the curtain-even if he doesn't want you to.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Huffington Post Readers Revolt Against AOL
Branding and media-relations wizard Kenneth Lerer barely has a public profile. This is by design: He likes to operate under the radar. His rather boring Wikipedia entry is only 237 words long. That's an astounding achievement given that he has spent more than three decades at the white-hot center of corporate wheeling and dealing, playing pivotal roles, and making fortunes several times over, in the crisis PR business, the ultimately disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger-and now his latest coup, the jaw-dropping $315 million sale of The Huffington Post to AOL.
For the past six years Lerer,...
Pay attention to the man behind the curtain-even if he doesn't want you to.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Huffington Post Readers Revolt Against AOL
Branding and media-relations wizard Kenneth Lerer barely has a public profile. This is by design: He likes to operate under the radar. His rather boring Wikipedia entry is only 237 words long. That's an astounding achievement given that he has spent more than three decades at the white-hot center of corporate wheeling and dealing, playing pivotal roles, and making fortunes several times over, in the crisis PR business, the ultimately disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger-and now his latest coup, the jaw-dropping $315 million sale of The Huffington Post to AOL.
For the past six years Lerer,...
- 2/14/2011
- by Lloyd Grove
- The Daily Beast
Nora and Delia Ephron. From PatrickMcMullan.com. “It’s the Vagina Monologues without the vaginas” is how the Ephron sisters (writers Nora and Delia) describe their wise and witty little play Love, Loss, and What I Wore, based on the best selling 1995 memoir by Illene Beckerman. It opened last night at off-Broadway’s Westside Theatre to a standing ovation. The play isn’t about sex, per se; it’s about clothes and accessories and the funny sad mocking memories they conjure up at various turning points in women’s lives. The cast will change every four weeks. For the first month Rosie O’Donnell, Tyne Daly, Katie Finneran, Natasha Lyonne, and Samantha Bee of The Daily Show are performing; I have to say they are all absolutely wonderful. After the show I walked to the party at the Bryant Park Grill with writer-director Ethan Silverman. It was a cool lovely...
- 10/2/2009
- Vanity Fair
"Nothing can stop the march of an informed people" is one of the many messages found in Rick Goldsmith's stirring documentary about newspaperman-author George Seldes, an educational and mostly reverential portrait of a muckraker who never compromised on principles and rarely passed up a chance to take on the powerful and corrupt.
Playing an Academy Award-qualifying one-week run at Laemmle's Monica, "Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press" is also an enriching encounter with the issues behind reporting the news in this century, such as the sometimes insidious relationship between advertising and editorial policy.
In his first feature-length documentary, producer-director-editor Goldsmith employs a punchy, direct style reminiscent of a hard news story. Ed Asner gives voice to many of Seldes' writings, culled from his innumerable articles, letters and many books, while Susan Sarandon provides the just-the-facts narration.
More than 500 photographs, headlines and articles are used graphically as is incredible archival footage from many sources.
Most remarkable is Seldes himself, who is perfectly lucid and engaging at age 98. (He died at age 104 in July 1995.) Interviewed at his Vermont home, surrounded by hundreds of unanswered letters and still working on an old Underwood typewriter, Seldes couldn't be gentler, although his professional voice made dictators and despots tremble through the decades.
The son of Russian Jewish immigrants who lived in the utopian Jewish colony of Alliance, N.J., Seldes first made waves in 1909 as a cub reporter for a Pittsburgh paper, where his story about a rapist preying on co-workers in a local business was killed when the advertising department used it as blackmail against the man's employers.
Exposing the "prostitution of the press" became a lifelong mission of Seldes, but his career as a foreign correspondent in World War I, the young Soviet Union and 1920s Italy made him a tireless opponent of official and self-imposed censorship. In 1924, he reported on Benito Mussolini's links to the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, an anti-fascist, and was eventually expelled from the country.
In the late 1920s and '30s, he began a series of books critical of the so-called free press, covered the Spanish Civil War with his wife, Helen, and warned repeatedly of the "really great war for which youth is being prepared."
In 1940, he and Communist writer Bruce Minton founded the newsweekly In Fact. They had a falling out after a year, but Seldes continued putting out the publication for a decade, influencing politicians and youthful truth-seekers from Daniel Ellsberg to Ralph Nader (who are among several interviewees in the film).
His exposure of the hazards of cigarette smoking was in stark contrast to the misleading advertising of the industry that was ubiquitous in American newspapers and magazines.
The list of fights goes on, including major campaigns against the National Association of Manufacturing and J. Edgar Hoover. With the Cold War in full swing, Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist crusade helped bring an end to In Fact, but Seldes continued to write books and eventually appeared in Warren Beatty's "Reds" as one of the "witnesses."
Truly an American original, Seldes' legacy is one that speaks courageously to a new generation that must never forget another of his benchmark statements: "A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press."
TELL THE TRUTH AND RUN:
GEORGE SELDES
AND THE AMERICAN PRESS
Goldsmith Prods.
Producer-director-editor Rick Goldsmith
Writers Sharon Wood, Rick Goldsmith
Music Jon Herbst
Cinematographers Stephen Lighthill,
Witt Monts, Will Parrinello, Vic Losick
Narrator: Susan Sarandon
Voice of Seldes' writings: Ed Asner
With: George Seldes, Ralph Nader, Daniel Ellsberg, Victor Navasky, Marian Seldes
Color/black and white
Running time -- 111 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Playing an Academy Award-qualifying one-week run at Laemmle's Monica, "Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press" is also an enriching encounter with the issues behind reporting the news in this century, such as the sometimes insidious relationship between advertising and editorial policy.
In his first feature-length documentary, producer-director-editor Goldsmith employs a punchy, direct style reminiscent of a hard news story. Ed Asner gives voice to many of Seldes' writings, culled from his innumerable articles, letters and many books, while Susan Sarandon provides the just-the-facts narration.
More than 500 photographs, headlines and articles are used graphically as is incredible archival footage from many sources.
Most remarkable is Seldes himself, who is perfectly lucid and engaging at age 98. (He died at age 104 in July 1995.) Interviewed at his Vermont home, surrounded by hundreds of unanswered letters and still working on an old Underwood typewriter, Seldes couldn't be gentler, although his professional voice made dictators and despots tremble through the decades.
The son of Russian Jewish immigrants who lived in the utopian Jewish colony of Alliance, N.J., Seldes first made waves in 1909 as a cub reporter for a Pittsburgh paper, where his story about a rapist preying on co-workers in a local business was killed when the advertising department used it as blackmail against the man's employers.
Exposing the "prostitution of the press" became a lifelong mission of Seldes, but his career as a foreign correspondent in World War I, the young Soviet Union and 1920s Italy made him a tireless opponent of official and self-imposed censorship. In 1924, he reported on Benito Mussolini's links to the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, an anti-fascist, and was eventually expelled from the country.
In the late 1920s and '30s, he began a series of books critical of the so-called free press, covered the Spanish Civil War with his wife, Helen, and warned repeatedly of the "really great war for which youth is being prepared."
In 1940, he and Communist writer Bruce Minton founded the newsweekly In Fact. They had a falling out after a year, but Seldes continued putting out the publication for a decade, influencing politicians and youthful truth-seekers from Daniel Ellsberg to Ralph Nader (who are among several interviewees in the film).
His exposure of the hazards of cigarette smoking was in stark contrast to the misleading advertising of the industry that was ubiquitous in American newspapers and magazines.
The list of fights goes on, including major campaigns against the National Association of Manufacturing and J. Edgar Hoover. With the Cold War in full swing, Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist crusade helped bring an end to In Fact, but Seldes continued to write books and eventually appeared in Warren Beatty's "Reds" as one of the "witnesses."
Truly an American original, Seldes' legacy is one that speaks courageously to a new generation that must never forget another of his benchmark statements: "A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press."
TELL THE TRUTH AND RUN:
GEORGE SELDES
AND THE AMERICAN PRESS
Goldsmith Prods.
Producer-director-editor Rick Goldsmith
Writers Sharon Wood, Rick Goldsmith
Music Jon Herbst
Cinematographers Stephen Lighthill,
Witt Monts, Will Parrinello, Vic Losick
Narrator: Susan Sarandon
Voice of Seldes' writings: Ed Asner
With: George Seldes, Ralph Nader, Daniel Ellsberg, Victor Navasky, Marian Seldes
Color/black and white
Running time -- 111 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 10/14/1996
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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