Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...
- 9/22/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...
- 9/16/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...
- 2/6/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
By Lee Pfeiffer
It was a long road for John Steinbeck's 1947 bestseller The Wayward Bus to make it on to the silver screen. The steamy novel about sexually frustrated people who find themselves on an arduous bus ride over dangerous terrain was considered too steamy to adapt to film. At various stages George Stevens and Howard Hawks were involved in film adaptations that never saw fruition. By the time censorship had been relaxed, it was the late 1950s and Fox finally decided to push the envelope by financing the film at the urging of Darryl F. Zanuck, now an independent producer. What emerged was a pale shadow of once-prestigious product. Gone were Stevens, Hawks and Marlon Brando, who was once attached to the film. Instead, an unknown director, Victor Vicas, convinced Zanuck and Fox to allow him to helm the movie. The cast is still impressive, with two of...
It was a long road for John Steinbeck's 1947 bestseller The Wayward Bus to make it on to the silver screen. The steamy novel about sexually frustrated people who find themselves on an arduous bus ride over dangerous terrain was considered too steamy to adapt to film. At various stages George Stevens and Howard Hawks were involved in film adaptations that never saw fruition. By the time censorship had been relaxed, it was the late 1950s and Fox finally decided to push the envelope by financing the film at the urging of Darryl F. Zanuck, now an independent producer. What emerged was a pale shadow of once-prestigious product. Gone were Stevens, Hawks and Marlon Brando, who was once attached to the film. Instead, an unknown director, Victor Vicas, convinced Zanuck and Fox to allow him to helm the movie. The cast is still impressive, with two of...
- 8/12/2012
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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