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The Music That Made Us

What happens when we re-encounter cultural artifacts that were deeply important to us and they’ve changed, or we have, or both?

The 27 Best Movies on Hulu This Week

From Poor Things to All of Us Strangers, here’s everything you need to watch on Hulu right now.

The Filmmaker Who Says AI Is Reparations

Before he used AI tools to make his movies, Willonius Hatcher couldn’t get noticed. Now his AI-generated shorts are going viral and Hollywood is calling.

Nolte: Two-Thirds Prefer to Watch Movies on Streaming over Theaters

Only 34 percent of American adults prefer watching movies in a theater, compared to 66 percent who prefer watching them at home, according to a poll.

Cramming for the Oscars

It’s been a rough year for Hollywood, but the post-awards season landscape offers some hints of hope for audiences.

Revisiting the 2003 Oscars That Were Held Amid the Iraq War

Par : Sarah Bahr
Three days before the 2003 ceremony, the United States invaded Iraq. Despite pleas to delay the awards, the academy went ahead with what became a politics-suffused evening.

Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins arriving at the 2003 Academy Awards. The day before, they had taken part in an antiwar protest.

New Doc Explores the Pitfalls of Colonizing Space

In Doppelgängers³, three look-alikes, including director Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian, go to a cave in Spain to figure out ways Earthlings could avoid repeating history’s mistakes on other planets.

The 16 Sci-Fi Movies You Need to Watch Before You Die

Here’s how to stream the best sci-movies of all time, from Dune: Part Two to The Matrix.

Oscars 2024: How to Watch, When Is It, Nominated Movies

The 96th Academy Awards ceremony celebrating major movies, like Oppenheimer, will air on ABC this Sunday and be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.

A Max Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming

Following in the footsteps of Netflix and Disney+, streaming service Max plans to start restricting password-sharing later this year.

I Found Frank Herbert’s 'Dune' Script. 'Dune: Part Two' Is Better

Par : Max Evry
It’s hard to imagine a weirder film version of Dune than the one David Lynch released in 1984, but Frank Herbert found a way.

Meet the Disney Imagineer Building You a Real-Life Holodeck

If you’ve ever seen a lightsaber at a Disney park or marveled at BB-8, you’ve seen Lanny Smoot’s work. Now, the man with over 100 patents wants you to be able to walk in VR.

‘Mary Poppins’ Gets New Age Rating in Britain for Racist Language

The musical about a nanny with magical powers had been classified for all audiences since 1964, but the British Board of Film Classification has issued new guidance.

Dick Van Dyke, left, and Julie Andrews, right, starred in “Mary Poppins,” which originally received a “U,” or universal, rating in Britain.

Pankaj Udhas, Bollywood Singer and Maestro of the Ghazal, Dies at 72

His soulful renditions of ghazals, or traditional love poems, were featured on the soundtracks of hit Bollywood movies and moved generations of Indians.

The singer Pankaj Udhas at an award ceremony in Mumbai last year.

The 16 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

From Saltburn to Bottoms, these are the must-watch films on the streamer.

Why Beyoncé’s ‘Texas Hold ’Em’ Has Taken Over TikTok

Beyoncé’s new single seems tailor-made for viral dance crazes. It also comes at a time when Universal Music Group artists are still muted on the platform.

Nolte: YTD Box Office down Nearly 50% from Pre-Pandemic Levels

Compared to this same date in 2020 (the last pre-pandemic January and February), the 2024 box office is down nearly 50 percent.

Indian Burglars Return Filmmaker’s Medal

Thieves in southern India kept the cash, the gold and most of the silver, but returned to the scene of the crime with one item, and an apology note.

A view of Chennai, a city in southern India, and the principal residence of the film director M. Manikandan. Unfortunately, his absence from his country home gave thieves an opportunity.

‘Shawshank’ in China, as You’ve Never Seen It Before

A stage adaptation of the film featured an all-Western cast, was performed in Chinese and raised questions about translation, both linguistic and cultural.

A stage production of the film “The Shawshank Redemption,” cast with Western actors speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese, opened in Beijing in January.

Life Imitates Art as a ‘Master and Margarita’ Movie Stirs Russia

Par : Paul Sonne
An American director’s adaptation of the beloved novel is resonating with moviegoers, who may recognize some similarities in its satire of authoritarian rule.

Apple Pulls Popular Movie Piracy App Kimi From the App Store

Before it disappeared on Tuesday, Kimi enabled iPhone owners to stream illegal bootlegs of popular movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer.

'Deadpool & Wolverine' Trailer Hopes Pegging Can Save the MCU

The new Deadpool & Wolverine trailer positions Shawn Levy’s new Marvel movie as something more queer than anything Disney has released before.

Martin Scorsese’s Squarespace Super Bowl Ad Wants You to Put Down Your Phone

In an interview with WIRED, the legendary director says, “It would probably take contact with extraterrestrials to catch our attention.”

Where to Stream 2024’s Best Picture Oscar Nominees

Oppenheimer, Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon—most of this year’s Academy Award nominees are available to watch online. Here’s where to find them.

Here's How ASCII 'Barbie' Came to a Screen Near You

The ASCII Theater, a project from art collective MSCHF, takes movies and breaks them into text. It’s fun—and possibly a copyright violation.

Jack Jennings, P.O.W. Who Helped Build Burma Railway, Dies at 104

He was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and was one of thousands of prisoners whose hardships were the basis for the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”

Jack Jennings was drafted into the British Army and sent to Singapore to fight the Japanese. Weeks later, Britain surrendered the island and Mr. Jennings was taken prisoner.

Minute-Long Soap Operas Are Here. Is America Ready?

Popularized in China during the pandemic, ReelShort and other apps are hoping to bring minute-by-minute melodramas to the United States.

The short features available on the app ReelShort range from romance to revenge to soap opera-esque.

Apple TV+ Is the New HBO

Max just isn't what it used to be. Apple TV+ is where you need to go for must-watch prestige television.

Want to Stream With No Ads? That’ll Cost You

Amazon just rolled out its ad-supported plan, the latest in a string of covert streaming price hikes. The halcyon days of commercial-free content are gone.

With Its WWE Deal, the Netflix Pivot Is Complete

By spending $5 billion for 10 years of WWE’s Raw, Netflix shows just how thoroughly it’s rewritten the old streaming rulebook.

I.S.S. Asks If War Could Threaten the Space Station. The Answer Is More Boring Than the Question

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s new space thriller I.S.S. shows astronauts and cosmonauts fighting for control of the space station. That’s unlikely—and the reality is far more compelling.

Depardieu Sexual Assault Suit Dropped Over Statute of Limitations

Hélène Darras, a French actress, had accused Gérard Depardieu of groping her in 2007 on a movie set. A separate investigation of the actor is proceeding, Paris prosecutors said.

Gérard Depardieu, 75, has denied any wrongdoing, and he has not been convicted in connection with any of the accusations against him.

Nolte: Almost 500 Fewer Lousy TV Shows Aired Last Year

Nolte: In 2022, a sewer pipe delivered some 2,264 TV shows to American households. Last year, that number dropped to 1,784.

A Glimpse at the Future of Streaming in 4 Mind-Blowing Stats

It seems all but inevitable that streamers are going to merge into mega-media entities in 2024. New research shows what those consolidations might look like. Get ready to click on Para-Flix+.

2024 Is Going to Be a Rough Year for TV

Netflix is cutting back on shows, Amazon is laying off Prime Video workers. The boom days of streaming are showing signs of bust.

Netflix Film’s Removal Shows Power of India’s Hindu Right Wing

The movie “Annapoorani” was about a female chef overcoming caste prejudice. Hindu activists said it hurt their feelings.

Netflix pulled a movie that some Hindus considered hurtful.

I Found David Lynch’s Lost 'Dune II' Script

Par : Max Evry
It was only about halfway done, but the script David Lynch wrote for the sequel to his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel, Dune, was still better than Dune Messiah.

'The Mandalorian' Is Getting a Movie—Which It Should Have Been All Along

Many of the Star Wars shows on Disney+ were often just overly long movies in disguise. Bringing The Mandalorian and Grogu to the big screen rights that.

The Third Man at 75

Culture

The Third Man at 75

One of the greatest movies of a generation was the result of a few serendipitous circumstances.

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As a thirteen-year-old in 1949, I went to the movies every week—my local movie house was just three blocks from my home and a ticket cost fifteen cents. My favorite films were typical of a teenager: Abbott and Costello comedies, westerns, and gangster films. But, as a budding cinephile, one film resonated with me as no other: The Third Man. The day I saw it I sat through two showings, I was so taken by the story and the acting.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of The Third Man, a film that is regarded as England’s greatest cinematic masterpiece according to The British Film Institute. In a sense, it is England’s Citizen Kane.

The film was the work of two of England’s most talented artists: the novelist Graham Greene and the director Carol Reed. They had collaborated the year before, turning a typical Greene tale of mistaken identity and betrayal, the short story “The Basement Room,” into The Fallen Idol, which provided the English actor Ralph Richardson with one of the few films that tapped his talent. (He received an Academy Award nomination for his turn in it.) Reed also had great success right after the war with his grim story of an Irish revolutionary on the run, Odd Man Out, in which he got a brilliant performance from James Mason. Like “The Third Man,” one of the real stars of the film was a city, this time a grim, grey Belfast.

Reed and Greene had been talking about a follow up to their success with” The Fallen Idol” but had produced nothing. Then, while on vacation in Italy, Greene began outlining another story of betrayal against the background of the upheaval that swept post war Europe. Sir Alexander Korda, the British filmmaker, liked the idea of another Reed-Greene collaboration and agreed to finance the film with the backing of the American producer David O. Selznick.

The story’s idea was to focus the film on the black market that flourished in post-war Europe. Instead of a screenplay, Greene wrote the story as a novel which he published following the success of the film. The plot had a down on his luck minor writer traveling to Vienna to take a job with a friend, only to find out the friend was dead. Not convinced of the details of his friend’s death, he sets out to unearth the truth, which gives Greene and Reed an opportunity to undertake another story of deceit and betrayal. 

Selznick suggested Prague as the city to focus on, but Reed preferred Vienna—it had a post-war seediness about it as well as greater historical significance. Also, unlike Prague, it had been bombed late in the war with the central area of its greatest architectural areas hard hit, something Reed believed would give the film an air of authenticity.

Greene regarded the tale as another one of his “entertainments,” stories like This Gun For Hire or Brighton Rock which he did not take seriously and which he used to raise funds for more serious literary projects. A case can be made that his “entertainments” hold up better than novels like A Burnt-Out Case or The Comedians, works that were serious but dull.

While the background filming was carried out in Vienna, Reed and Greene went to Hollywood to fill up the key parts with actors that Selznick controlled. A series of four late night meetings with him left Greene and Reed exhausted but with many of the film’s details worked out and access to a couple of actors under their control. For the part of the writer, Selznick suggested Cary Grant, but he was not interested. Joseph Cotten, who was under contract to him, was then signed to the part. Greene’s name for the character, Rollo Martins, was changed to Holly because Selznick thought “Rollo” had a homosexual sound to it. For the part of the key woman in the story, Harry Lime’s mistress, Anna, Selznick lent them Alida Valli, who was under contract to him and had made a major impression as the voluptuous other woman in his flop of the previous year, The Paradine Case. Greene and Reed believed she would be perfect. 

There was a serious argument about who would play the part of Harry Lime, the so-called “Third Man,” whose role in the screenplay would be small but would serve as a catalyst for the film. Selznick’s choice was bizarre—Noel Coward—but Greene and Reed already had their choice. They wanted Orson Welles because the script they had developed gave him a crucial role—the villain that everyone identifies with and the one that gives the story its powerful impact. The fact that Lime’s character had a lover met with Coward’s overt flamboyance, allowing Reed and Graham to prevail over Selznick’s suggestion.

Signing Welles did not prove that difficult. He was in Italy making a film of Othello and, as usual, was short of cash. They offered him $100,000, or 20% of the film’s profits, for just a handful of scenes. Ever the poor businessman, Welles took the cash. Considering the film made £280,000 in its initial release and over £1.4 million since, it was a poor choice.

For the English military policeman who leads Martins to the reality of Lime’s criminal career selling watered-down penicillin, Reed signed Trevor Howard, who was coming off a major hit in the 1946 film Brief Encounter. The rest of the cast was provided with a greater sense of authenticity by adding a few well-known Austrian actors.

Selznick worried that the film was too English and would not find an audience in America. He wanted a greater American presence in the film, emphasizing the role Americans played in Vienna, which was divided into four Allied zones. Reed and Greene said they would consider the idea and did change the two leads from Brits to Americans, which satisfied Selznick’s concerns. 

Selznick did insist on one point. He wanted the film to open with an overview of Vienna and its current situation to set the stage for the story. Greene wrote it and Joseph Cotten read it as his character Holly arrived in Vienna. It worked well and did set the scene.

Greene’s screenplay captured Vienna’s bleakness amidst the rubble from the bombing in the last days of the war. By a stroke of luck, preliminary filming had been done in the winter and Vienna looked sad with snow piles, gray, and dirty, still not cleaned up.

Reed’s direction was perfect, with the story moving from one unforgettable scene to another. However, two of the most famous scenes were Greene’s handiwork. The most memorable was the sudden appearance of the supposedly dead Harry Lime. After visiting Lime’s apartment, Holly leaves and watches a cat—Harry’s cat in fact—run along the street to a darkened doorway where it plays with the shoes of a hidden figure. Holly believes it is a policeman following him on the orders of Major Calloway and yells out. At that point, a window opens and shines a light on the man in the doorway. It is Lime. 

Here, another star of the film emerges: the zither-playing of a Viennese artist, Anton Karas. Reed had discovered him, and, while looking for a musical background for the film after rejecting any Strauss waltzes as a cliché, hit upon the idea of the zither, a Viennese popular instrument, to create a musical atmosphere. It turned out to work brilliantly and, in the process, made Karas a celebrity. Indeed, “The Third Man Theme” became a number one hit in England and America.

The most famous scene in the film occurs on a Ferris Wheel in the Prater, Vienna’s entertainment center. Martin and Lime meet, and Martin confronts him about the deaths his penicillin racket is causing. Lime dismisses his concerns, noting that no one would miss those who died: “They were better off.” Welles rewrote Greene’s parting lines for Lime and in the process produced the most memorable moment in the film. Bidding goodbye to Martins, Lime notes: “In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Greene admitted that Welles’s version was better than his; they were the best lines in the film, and he included them in the text of his novel version of the film published in 1950.

Convinced of Lime’s evil in spreading the watered-down penicillin, Martins agrees to turn him over to the police in return for providing Anna papers to remain in Vienna. A trap is set, and Lime tries to flee from the pursuing police through the sewers of Vienna. Cornered and knowing his fate, he begs Martins to shoot him, providing the film the kind of betrayal that so many of Greene’s stories featured.

The ending caused a dispute between Greene and Reed. Greene wanted Martins and Anna to walk off from Lime’s grave together, arguing that the grim story needed a happy ending. Reed completely refused, arguing that went against the whole theme of the film, betrayal. Greene later admitted that Reed was correct. 

The Third Man was a huge success. It not only was the number one box office hit in Britain, earning over £280,000, but it did well in America as well. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, winning only for best black and white cinematography. Reed did win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He would finally capture an Academy Award for directing the musical Oliver!, arguably one of the worst films to win that honor. In a certain sense, The Third Man was the peak of his career. Nor did Greene ever again approximate the success of his screenplay for The Third Man.

The post The Third Man at 75 appeared first on The American Conservative.

Remembering Charlton Heston: Our Extraordinary Man in Hollywood

Culture

Remembering Charlton Heston: Our Extraordinary Man in Hollywood

Before 2023 recedes too far in the past, conservatives should mark the centennial of the late Charlton Heston’s birth.

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Before 2023 recedes too far in the past, conservatives should mark the centennial of the late Charlton Heston’s birth. Heston not only fought back against Hollywood’s leftward political drift, but, over a long entertainment career, he courageously embodied values of family, work, civility, and principle that made him one of America’s greatest film icons.  

Heston was born on October 4, 1923, starting childhood in the idyllic Michigan backwoods until suffering the searing loss and separation that came with his parents’ divorce. The young boy never forgot an enduring life lesson about the wellspring of happiness. Across a remarkable career in which Heston would reach the top of Hollywood’s glitterati, bask in international adulation, and dine with world leaders, he always kept family as his touchstone, remaining devoted to his wife Lydia until death and making fatherhood his highest duty. 

Heston’s youthful passion for acting led to a scholarship to study theater at Northwestern University. After World War II service in the Aleutians, he and his young actress wife went off to New York to make their theater careers on the Broadway stage. Heston’s natural skill set, rugged stage presence, and old-fashioned persistence paid off as he established himself in early live-television productions in New York. Hollywood then found him.

Heston began a film career that would put him in Hollywood’s first tier with the 20th century’s finest dramatic actors such as Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and James Stewart. A common theme of their cinematic storytelling was the portrayal of flawed characters and bitter conflict that also showcased the best of the human spirit. Heston would make over 100 pictures, with some half a dozen among the finest in American filmdom. 

His masterpiece, Ben-Hur, a hugely successful MGM blockbuster released in 1959, is sweeping historical fiction worthy of rediscovery by each new generation of movie-watchers. Old Hollywood at its best, Heston’s Ben-Hur reconnects us to Roman antiquity and the world of Jesus Christ. His remarkable portrayal of the Jewish prince, Judah Ben-Hur, immortalized from Lew Wallace’s novel, rightly won the Academy Award for Best Actor.  

Ben-Hur’s famous chariot-race spectacle, created without computerized special effects, is still among the best action sequence to come out of Hollywood. The viewer must see it on the silver screen, feel the shaking vibrations of the thundering stallions, hear the deafening crowd and absorb the panorama shots of the vast Roman colosseum. In preparing for Ben-Hur, Heston actually learned to drive a chariot rig, and the famed director, William Wyler, dedicated an incredible three months of work to capturing the crucial four minutes used in the film. Heston later described the shoot:  

Our four thousand extras found they had only to watch the race, which they did with the full frenzy of their Roman ancestors, cheering the chariots thundering through the turns. When we did the long shot of [Ben-Hur] cantering through the victory lap, our extras screamed like a Super Bowl crowd as I slowed past Messala lying crumpled on the sand.  Suddenly, with no direction, the crowd began to drop out of the stands and caper after the white team. An Arab snatched up Messala’s helmet and pranced, brandishing it like a trophy; a wonderfully spontaneous, golden moment that remains in the film.

Ben-Hur is probably more compelling for modern audiences than Heston’s other classic from antiquity: The Ten Commandments. Shot on location in Egypt with 14,000 extras, plus 15,000 animals, Commandments was a Wagnerian-scale film production by legendary Hollywood mogul Cecil B. DeMille, who spared no expense to recreate one of the Old Testament’s greatest stories. The film thrust the young Heston, cast as Moses, into international stardom and—unimaginable in today’s Hollywood—made a tremendous cinematic statement in celebration of our Western foundational values of faith, freedom, and family.  

Another great DeMille classic that featured Heston was The Greatest Show on Earth, a compelling human-interest drama of the mid-twentieth American circus in its heyday. Filmed in 1951 Technicolor, the picture leaves us a realistic docudrama of the traveling and sprawling entertainment enterprise of a three-ring circus with all its cavernous tents, aerobatic performances, and exotic creatures—all now lost to history. The Greatest Show unconsciously preserves a portrait of contented 1950s America; it records a society and time that today’s Hollywood only wants to deconstruct, but that DeMille and Heston (and other fine actors) ennobled. 

Heston’s vast film output also includes other timeless gems that, like great literature, hold up for modern viewers: El Cid; 55 Days at Peking; The Greatest Story Ever Told; Khartoum; and Midway. It was not by coincidence that Heston gravitated to retelling great historical drama; he was captivated by the subject, explaining in his memoirs:

I’d liked history in school, but always slid through to the easy B, not digging at it. When I first undertook real research, preparing parts, I began to realize what I’m now convinced is true: History is not only the most important subject, in the end it may be the only subject.

Heston developed an impressive ability to assess historical records and a thirst for character authenticity. Throughout his career, he researched intensely, reviewed and edited scripts, in preparing to recreate a wide smorgasbord of historical giants such as Richelieu, Mark Antony, and Thomas Jefferson. The actor recreated the persona of Andrew Jackson (in The President’s Lady and The Buccaneer) better than anyone in film. At its finest, Heston’s character presentation, such as his intense portrayal of Michelangelo in the 1965 drama, The Agony and the Ecstasy, made the story.

Heston always remained at home in theater, regularly interrupting his film career to return to the stage to hone his craft with some of the best, such as Laurence Olivier. Constantly demanding more of himself, Heston understood that engaging live audiences made him better on the silver screen. As with history, the actor was widely read in philosophy and literature, deeply in his element with the Bible and Shakespeare. Heston rendered several of the Stratford bard’s great characters as well as any Hollywood actor of his generation. 

On occasion, he may have carried his Shakespeare passion too far. Heston’s determination to make moving pictures out of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra both flopped. The fact that Shakespeare’s rich dialogue rarely works in film never deterred the stage actor in Heston, who late in his career played in Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet, which also lost money. Sadly, Heston was never captured on film performing Henry V; the actor’s commanding bass voice was perfect for delivering King Henry’s Eve of Saint Crispin’s Day speech. (Branagh, however, made Henry V into a movie and turned a profit.)

For a Hollywood overlord, Heston was remarkably self-critical and magnanimous, and, unlike other sensitive Tinsel-Town actors like Marlon Brando, he kept his ego in check for the betterment of finishing projects, in the best of the-show-must-go-on tradition. It was Heston’s personal generosity and negotiations with the studio that ensured that the 1958 Orson Welles classic Touch of Evil finally got made. Heston delivered a fine performance in Evil, but always striving for acting perfection, he later regretted portraying his Mexican police-chief character as too American. Heston lauded Welles as Hollywood’s most creative talent.  

Heston also saved director Sam Peckinpah’s bacon in completing the Western Major Dundee. Known to show up drunk on the set, Peckinpah infuriated Columbia studio executives who wanted to pull the plug on the movie; Heston saved the project by contributing his salary to cost overruns. In his memoirs, Heston still praised Peckinpah’s many talents; but he also recounted a revenge moment on the set when in frustration, the actor actually drew his saber, while mounted on horseback, and charged the annoying and besotted director. 

Comfortable riding horses and handling firearms, Heston was a natural in Westerns, starring in several fine films of the genre, including The Big Country, a William Wyler-directed saga led by Gregory Peck, whom Heston would always consider a friend and an “intelligent liberal.” Released in 1958, The Big Country gloriously portrayed the pioneering men and women who transformed the American West before a woke Hollywood remade their lore into a European occupation story. Heston considered another Western, Will Penny, the intensely personal drama of a tough loner cowboy, as one of his finest film performances. 

Many fans consider Heston’s Planet of the Apes his most innovative picture. As a 1968 statement-movie, Apes not only opened a new genre in science fiction, but its dystopic message struck an eerie nerve with Cold-War era moviegoers. The actor went on to star in other science-fiction cult classics such as Soylent Green and The Omega Man, the latter picture pairing Heston with an African-American love interest, a somewhat ground-breaking step in its day. 

Two of my favorites in the great star’s wide filmography, today certainly considered B movies, include Heston’s first Hollywood appearance: Dark City; it is a well-acted film-noir murder story showcasing a young Heston, in his late 20s, already with a commanding big-screen presence. I also recommend a forgotten sleeper entitled Secret of the Incas, an adventure story filmed on location in Peru. Heston stars as a rugged and opportunistic gringo in South America, the original Indiana Jones, freebooting through the ruins of Machu Picchu.

Interestingly, Hollywood legend also recounts several movies that Heston could have—should have—made, but for whatever reason did not. These what-if’s include replacing William Holden in the intense POW drama Stalag 17 and taking John Wayne’s role in The Longest Day. Heston also turned down Deliverance. Imagine Heston, instead of Gregory Peck, in the great 1977 biopic of General Douglas MacArthur. 

Heston’s 1995 autobiography, In the Arena, written from daily journal notes that he kept throughout his long career, is a treasure-trove of Hollywood stories that gives us the insider’s view of all the great (and non-great) films that consumed his professional life. Unlike so many other Hollywood memoirs, Heston does not whitewash or lambast, but writes thoughtfully and honestly about his many acting challenges: successes and missteps, with all the inadequacies and weaknesses. Recounting a public life in a viciously competitive business, Heston is remarkably generous.

Chuck Heston was a political man, but he was not a politician. He did consider running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in California, but wisely turned down that career change because he was in his heart a thespian. Ronald Reagan mentored Heston in politics, both men having served in one of Hollywood’s toughest jobs: president of the Screen Actors Guild. Heston did not consider Reagan a great actor, but admired Reagan’s negotiating skills and considered him a gifted statesman who “understood the idea of performance.”  

Like Reagan, Heston was a Democrat who could rightly complain that the party grew radical and left him. Heston claimed to have experienced a conservative epiphany while contemplating the famous 1964 “Goldwater for President” billboard that proclaimed: “In your heart, you know he’s right.” True or not, Heston’s conservatism steadily grew in increments; but more than an ideological right-winger, he was always a man of principles. 

Heston traveled to combat zones to show support for our troops in a conflict that he suspected Washington was mismanaging. He was proud to have supported Dr. Martin Luther King and been present for the great 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Heston would have seen fealty to the U.S. Constitution as the lodestar that guided him, consistently, to march with King and later to stand with the NRA in defense of Second Amendment rights. 

In 1988, Heston played Sir Thomas More in a television adaptation of Robert Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons, a role he savored and performed to great acclaim. Heston liked to quote More’s line in the story that expressed the actor’s own special adherence to principle and honor: “When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water. And if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.” Fine theater from a great man.

The post Remembering Charlton Heston: Our Extraordinary Man in Hollywood appeared first on The American Conservative.

The 22 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024

From Dune: Part Two to Deadpool 3, these are the movies we can’t wait to see in the coming year.

Italy’s Raucous Holiday Classics Are Not Your Standard Hallmark Movies

Gleefully vulgar, the genre known as “Cinepanettone” once dominated Italy over the holidays. Italian revelers recently flocked to the alpine town where many of the films were set.

Jerry Calà, who played a piano bar singer in the 1983 Italian comedy “Christmas Holiday,” during a celebration this month in Cortina, Italy.

‘Parasite’ Actor Lee Sun-kyun Found Dead at 48

Par : John Yoon
Mr. Lee, a familiar face on Korean television and movie screens, rose to international fame after starring in the Oscar-winning film.

Lee Sun-kyun arriving at a police station for questioning over accusations of illegal drug use in Incheon, South Korea, last week.

The 15 Best Movies You Missed in 2023—and Where to Watch Them

From raunchy teenage sex comedies to dare-to-be-different biopics, 2023 was a big year for fantastic films that somehow slipped under the radar. Here’s how to stream them all.

Kerala Cinema Offers a Subtler View of India

“Kaathal,” about a closeted gay politician, is the latest example of what Kerala’s movie industry has become known for: nuanced films that find box office success.

A poster for “Kaathal” in Kochi, a city in the state of Kerala in southern India.

The Hollywood Strikes Stopped AI From Taking Your Job. But for How Long?

The year was dominated by talk of what artificial intelligence could do—and what it could do better than most humans.
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