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Haskell Wexler, an 89 year-old Academy Award Winning cinematographer, is turning his camera on the Occupy LA movement for his latest political and social documentation. The groundbreaking cinematographer and film director has been in the business since the early 1960s, starting out with documentaries, then breaking into Hollywood with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which he won his first Oscar. He went on to shoot such famous and well respected films as In the […]
Richard Gordon, producer and executive producer of science fiction and horror films died Tuesday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, reports the LA Times. He was 85. Gordon’s career included such credits as a “Fiend Without a Face” and “The Haunted Strangler,”; he also ecutive-produced movies such as “Corridors of Blood” with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, “The Haunted Strangler” with Karloff, “Island of Terror” with Peter Cushing and “Fiend Without a Face” […]
Director Roman Polanski attended the 7th Zurich Film Festival to accept the lifetime achievement award that was intended for him two years ago, to honor his outstanding career achievements as a filmmaker. Almost two years to the day, Polanski was arrested on his way to the festival ceremony to receive the award. The World Premiere of a full-length non fiction film followed the ceremony. In the documentary, Polanski reportedly briefly addressed the sexual assault case, […]
Greek-cypriot film director Michael Cacoyannis died in Athens on Monday aged 89, his cultural foundation said reports AFP. Cacoyannis shot to fame with the triple-Oscar winning “Zorba the Greek” in 1964, an adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis-penned novel which starred Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Pappas among others. He was also know for his film “Electra”, based on the Euripides tragedy, which received two awards at Cannes in 1962.
One-hit writer and director, Leonard Kastle, of his first and only film, “The Honeymoon Killers,” reportedly died May 18 at his home in Westerlo, N.Y., after a brief illness, said Tina Sisson, a friend. He was 82. “The Honeymoon Killers,” released in 1970, is described as a “grimly realistic, low-budget, black-and-white crime drama about a lowlife lothario and his overweight nurse lover whose partnership in conning lonely women leads to murder.” “The Honeymoon Killers” was […]
Actress Jane Seymour reportedly said to CNN at the red carpet premiere of her new IFC movie “Love Marriage Wedding” on May 17 that she believed “there will be lots of information coming people’s way…I heard about two more [out of wedlock kids] somebody else knows about. I even met someone who knows him well.” Yesterday on “The View” Friday, Seymour regretted her remarks, saying, “I’m so beyond sorry and appalled that I found myself […]
Bruce Ricker — a Cambridge, Massachusetts -based director and producer of documentaries whose best-known film, “The Last of the Blue Devils’’ (1979), is a jazz classic — died of pneumonia Friday in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. He was 68. Mr. Ricker specialized in documentaries about jazz, popular music, and film history. Read more in Boston Globe image via Boston Globe
Donald Krim, a film distributor, president of’ Kino International, a company founded in 1977 and acquired by Mr. Krim in 1978, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 65. Among the films imported by Kino as a result of Mr. Krim’s festival explorations were Percy Adlon’s “Zuckerbaby” (1985), Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s “Himatsuri” (1986) and Michel Khleifi’s “Wedding in Galilee” (1988). Mr. Krim also helped to introduce the work of such art-house stalwarts as […]
Jackie Cooper, Emmy-winning director of “M*A*S*H” and other hits, plus known to moviegoers as Perry White, editor of The Daily Planet, in four “Superman” films died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 88. His agent, Ronnie Leif, said Mr. Cooper died in a hospital after a short illness. Read more in NY Times
Yvette Vickers, an actress best known as the femme fatale in two late 1950s cult horror films, “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead Wednesday at her Benedict Canyon home. She was 82. The body’s mummified state suggests that she could have been dead for close to a year, police said. Read more in the LA Times
After announcing that the 8th Beijing Independent Documentary Film Festival has been cancelled, the festival’s artistic director, Zhu Rikun, has reportedly resigned from the festival’s foundation, closed his production house, Fanhall Studio, and fled the Chinese capital. Zhu Rikun has worked on many independent Chinese documentaries including “Karamay” (2010), in which director Xu Xin carries out a forensic examination of a fire that broke out in the far western Chinese province of Xinjiang in 1994. […]
Tim Hetherington, the director and producer of the Oscar-nominated Afghan war documentary “Restrepo,” was killed while covering the Libyan conflict in the city of Misurata on Wednesday, and three photographers working beside him were wounded, one fatally, when they came under fire. He was 40 years. Reports said they had been working together near the front lines when they were struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. Restrepo, winner of Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sudance […]