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In September 2021, Olivia Colman bagged her first career Emmy for “The Crown” despite having failed on her Oscar bid for “The Father” five months earlier. This made her the 16th performer to triumph at the Emmys after going home empty-handed at the same year’s Oscars and the fourth to do so during the 21st century. The release of the 2024 Emmy nominations ballots confirmed that nine of the 16 actors who lost at the latest Oscars ceremony are capable of joining Colman on said list.

Gold Derby’s current Emmy odds indicate that the man and woman with the best hopes of following in Colman’s footsteps are Ryan Gosling and Jodie Foster, who just earned their respective third and fifth Academy Award notices for their supporting turns in “Barbie” and “Nyad.” They are now generally expected to share in the experience of being first-time acting Emmy nominees thanks to his...

The star of La Dolce Vita and A Man and a Woman, who has died aged 92, had a unique screen presence that was at once alluring and forbidding

The superbly aquiline beauty and patrician style of Anouk Aimée made her a 60s movie icon in France, Italy and everywhere else with a presence at once alluring and forbidding. She had something of the young Joan Crawford, or Marlene Dietrich, or her contemporary, the French model and actress Capucine. Aimée radiated an enigmatic sexual aura flavoured with melancholy, sophistication and worldly reserve. Hers was not a face that could simper or pout: it was the entranced men around her who were more likely to be doing that. Hirokazu Kore-eda once wrote an amusing line that all the great French movie actresses have surnames that begin with the same letter as their first names: Danielle Darrieux, Simone Signoret, Brigitte Bardot … and of...

Doris Day was the Oscar-nominated actress who passed away in 2019 at the age of 97. She excelled in musicals and romantic comedies, bringing a sense of edge and humor to her squeaky-clean demeanor. Although she made only a handful of movies between 1948 and 1968, several of her titles remain classics. Let’s take a look back at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1922, Day got her start as a band singer, making her film debut with the musical comedy “Romance on the High Seas” (1948). He vocal talents benefited her in such films as “Calamity Jane” (1953), “Love Me or Leave Me” (1955), and “The Pajama Game” (1957), and she often sang the title tunes to her films.

She is perhaps best remembered for three frothy romantic comedies she made with sly, square-jawed leading man Rock Hudson and sardonic sidekick Tony Randall: “Pillow Talk” (1959), “Lover Come Back” (1961), and “Send Me No Flowers...

Since the inception of the Academy Awards, the U.S.-based organization behind them has always strived to honor worldwide film achievements. Their extensive roster of competitive acting winners alone consists of artists from 30 unique countries, three of which first gained representation during the 2020s. The last full decade’s worth of triumphant performers hail from eight countries, while 42.1% of the individual actors nominated during that time originate from outside of America.

The academy’s history of recognizing acting talent on a global scale dates all the way back to the inaugural Oscars ceremony in 1929, when Swiss-born Emil Jannings (who was of German and American parentage) won Best Actor for his work in both “The Last Command” and “The Way of All Flesh.” Over the next three years, the Best Actress prize was exclusively awarded to Canadians: Mary Pickford (“Coquette”), Norma Shearer (“The Divorcee”), and Marie Dressler (“Min and Bill...

To celebrate the release of Room at the Top, on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital from 11th March, we are giving away Blu-Rays to 2 lucky winners!

Based on the best-selling novel by John Braine, Room At The Top is Jack Clayton’s debut feature and is one of the earliest examples of the ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’ that helped pave the way for the incoming ‘British New Wave’ of film-makers. Featuring the first open reference to sex as well as the earliest depiction of adultery in a British film, it was a controversial film for the era and was initially refused a certificate by the censors before eventually securing an “X” certificate.

Starring Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears and Donald Wolfit, the film went on to become a major box-office success and opened the floodgates for more adult orientated movies.

The film also gained widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for six Academy Awards,...

Update: A memorial service for Norma Barzman will be held tomorrow from 10 Am-1 Pm at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary in Los Angeles.

Norma Barzman, a prominent screenwriter who was blacklisted due to her involvement with the American Communist Party, died Sunday at her Beverly Hills home, according to a social media post from her daughter Suzo Barzman. She was 103.

Barzman wrote the original story for Never Say Goodbye (1947) starring Errol Flynn with husband Ben Barzman. She was an uncredited writer on The Locket (1946) starring Laraine Day and Robert Mitchum. She wrote Finishing School (1952) and on the TV series Il triangolo rosso (1967). She also appeared as an actress in Theatre 70 (1970) and Pajama Party (2000) as the “Groovy Grandma.”

Barzman was unapologetic about her involvement with the Communist party from 1943-49. In a 2014 interview with the L.A. Times, she maintained that “one should be proud to have been a member...

Under the non de plume John Le Carre, David Cornwall penned a series of best-selling spy novels including “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” ‘The Little Drummer Girl’’ and “The Russia House,” that are cerebral, unadorned, gritty. The antitheist of Ian Fleming’s suave James Bond. In fact, his most popular character George Smiley just blended into the crowd: “Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession,” Cornwall described him in “A Murder of Quality.” “The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colorful adventure of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, had lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer; that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim.”

Before his death at the age of 89 in in December, 2020, Cornwall sat down for a rare interview with award-winning documentarian Errol Morris...

With both Disney and Warner Bros. turning 100 this year, it’s a great time to remember the Golden Age of moviemaking. The business is changing at a precipitous rate, and recent studio mergers have forever altered the longtime map of Hollywood production.

Actors and crew members, like armies, march on their stomachs, and since the dawn of the industry, it’s been up to the studios where they’re shooting to keep them well fortified. Studio executives and office workers, too, needed a convenient place to eat on the lots.

While researching the recent Culinary Historians presentation “Lunching on the Lot,” a 1997 quote from Variety story turned up which deftly explained what studio commissaries meant to the business. “After a gourmet tour of studio eateries, however, one thing is clear — It ain’t the chow that’s important. When the tribe hunkers down for its daily repast, ritual and symbolism are the rule.

In the fall of 2021, Olivia Colman scored her first career Emmy for “The Crown” despite not having succeeded on her Oscar bid for “The Father” that spring. This made her the 16th performer to prevail at the Emmys directly after going home empty-handed at the Oscars and the fourth to do so during the 21st century. Now that the 2023 Emmy nominations ballots have been released, eight of the 16 actors who lost Oscars at the most recent ceremony officially have shots at joining Colman on this list.

Gold Derby’s Emmy odds currently indicate that the man and woman with the best hopes of following in Colman’s footsteps are Brian Tyree Henry and Hong Chau, who just received their first career Academy Award nominations for their respective supporting turns in “Causeway” and “The Whale.” Henry is seeking his second comedy supporting Emmy notice for “Atlanta,” while Chau could pull double...

In the opening scene of Stephan Komandarev’s harrowing drama, Blaga’s Lessons, an elderly Bulgarian woman is making a down payment on a burial plot for her recently deceased husband, a former police officer. She promises the somewhat sleazy cemetery salesman that she’ll get the rest of the money to him shortly. Since she’s a retired teacher living on a meager pension, it’s no small purchase, especially since this particular gravesite is apparently in hot demand.

But before she can finalize the deal, the 70-year-old Blaga (Eli Skorcheva, delivering a magnificent turn) falls victim to a terrible telephone scam. In a traumatic sequence, she receives a call from a man saying he’s a police officer and that she’s being targeted by a gang of thieves. He instructs her to place all her cash and even her wedding ring in a plastic bag and throw...

Along with Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, which won Venice’s Silver Lion last year, and Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, premiering in Cannes’ main competition next week, Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case marks a recent trend of arthouse courtroom dramas that, beyond a few exceptions (such as Henri-George Clouzot’s seldom seen masterpiece, The Truth), have never been a major facet of French cinema.

This is because French trials, unlike American ones, tend to be less dramatic, with fewer rulings by jury (outside of murder cases) and with the judge playing a larger role in the proceedings, reviewing facts and statements in a dry manner. However, there have been a number of highly headline-grabbing trials in France these past years, including that of former President Nicolas Sarkozy for election fraud charges, and another concerning the November 13 terrorist attacks, which have brought the courtroom back into the public sphere.

Cate Blanchett has been on a roll this awards season for her performance as a morally questionable conductor in the character study “TÁR,” and now she’s the front-runner to win Best Actress at the BAFTA Awards on February 19. But can Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) come from behind?

These are the first major industry peer group awards to announce winners for acting, so the results here could be highly consequential to the upcoming Oscars. Remember that Olivia Colman (“The Favourite”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) won here on their way to Oscar upsets. So it’s significant that Blanchett has a substantial lead in our predictions for Best Actress. All of the Experts who have made their predictions as of this writing are predicting Blanchett, as are most of Gold Derby’s Editors, our Top 24 Users, and our All-Star Top 24.

SEEExperts slugfest: BAFTA and DGA winner predictions — plus,...

Cate Blanchett is going for her third Oscar with “TÁR,” but before that, she’ll have a chance to capture her third Best Actress BAFTA Award. Should she do so, she’ll move up to second place on the all-time winners list in the category.

A three-time BAFTA champ, Blanchett has two Best Actress trophies for “Elizabeth” (1998) and “Blue Jasmine” (2013) and one for Best Supporting Actress for “The Aviator” (2004). In the lead category, she’s one of 11 with two victories. That list gets drastically smaller the higher you go. She’s looking to become just the fourth person with three Best Actress wins, one shy of Maggie Smith‘s record of four.

Blanchett would join Anne Bancroft, Audrey Hepburn and Simone Signoret as three-time champs — but their ledgers come with a caveat. Until the ceremony in 1969 when they were consolidated into Best Actress, the BAFTAs had two actress categories: Best...

Backstage at the Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2020 collection with Hannelore Knuts and creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli Photo: Archivio Fotografico Paolo Di Paolo

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Anna Magnani, Michelangelo Antonioni, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Charlotte Rampling, Grace Kelly, Marcello Mastroianni, Rudolf Nureyev, Sophia Loren, Ezra Pound, Faye Dunaway, Monica Vitti, Giorgio de Chirico, Gina Lollobrigida, Tennessee Williams, Marlene Dietrich, Giulietta Masina, Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Anita Ekberg, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Moravia, and many others were photographed by Bruce Weber’s muse and subject of his latest documentary The Treasure Of His Youth: The Photographs Of Paolo Di Paolo, which starts with an overture of images and film clips. After putting his camera away for decades we see di Paolo return to shoot Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2020 collection.

Paolo di Paolo with Silvia di Paolo and Anne-Katrin Titze on Tennessee Williams: “I...

Simone Signoret stars in a dark tale of love in the belle époque underworld that is a unmissable classic with a pitilessly grim finale

A 70th-anniversary rerelease for this film by a masterly French director who is known for his craftsmanship – but deserves also to be known for his artistry. Jacques Becker’s Casque d’Or is a gripping tragic drama of Parisian lowlife set at the turn of the century, based on news stories and apocryphal tales of the “apache” criminal gangs that roamed the Paris underworld in the belle époque, terrifying and titillating those wealthy boulevardiers who liked to slum it in seedy dives.

Simone Signoret is glorious as Marie (nicknamed “Casque d’Or” for her golden helmet of hair); she is a woman of the night, based on the “gigolettes” tempting gentlemen into dark alleys, who would then be beaten and robbed by the woman’s male accomplices lurking behind her.

To mark the release of Casque D’Or on 28th November, we’ve been given a 4K Ultra HD copy to give away to one winner.

Set in Paris at the turn of the 19th Century, Casque D’Or follows the love affair between gangster’s moll, Marie and reformed criminal Georges Manda. When mob boss, Felix Leca (Claude Dauphin), takes an active interest in their affair, an underworld rivalry ensues leading to a treacherous and tragic end.

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

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Casque D’Or is released on 4K Uhd, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from 28th November 2022

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Open to UK residents only The competition will close 5th December 2022 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available Please note prizes may be delayed due to Covid-19 To coincide with Gdpr regulations,...

Jean-Pierre Melville’s film is a harrowing look at life in the French resistance during World War II. Starring legendary actors Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, and Jean-Pierre Cassel, the film was a political football during its initial release in 1969, but has been reappraised and, more importantly, restored for safekeeping.

The post Army of Shadows appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

The late, great James Caan who died today had a career that spanned 55 years and included classic films such as Howard Hawks’ El Dorado, Michael Mann’s Thief, Rob Reiner’s Misery, Jon Favreau’s Elf and, of course, Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, The Godfather.

Almost from the start, Caan was working opposite screen legends like John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Billy Dee Williams, Robert Duvall, Simone Signoret, Katherine Ross and others.

After The Godfather came roles opposite Barbra Streisand, Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, Elliott Gould, Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Nicolas Cage, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joaquin Phoenix and many, many more.

Click through the image above to see photos of his work through the years.

Launch Gallery: James Caan: A Career In Pictures...

By Lee Pfeiffer

"The Deadly Affair", directed by Sidney Lumet, is the 1967 film based on John Le Carre's 1961 novel "Call for the Dead". Le Carre was riding high during the Bond-inspired Bond phenomenon of the 1960s. Unlike the surrealistic world of 007, Le Carre's books formed the basis for gritty and gloomy espionage stories that were steeped in realism and cynicism. The film adaptation of Le Carre's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" had been released the previous year to great acclaim. Lumet, who made "The Deadly Affair" for his own production company, rounded up top flight British talent including screenwriter Paul Dehn, who had written the film adaptation of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and  co-wrote the screenplay for "Goldfinger".

As with all Le Carre film adaptations, the plot is complex to the point of being confusing. There are many intriguing characters of dubious allegiance to one another,...

An erotic pipe dream, a nostalgic nodding to a bygone era, a love triangle against the backdrop of politically turbulent times, a hyper-aesthetic foray into adult animation… there’s no easy way to sum up “No 7 Cherry Lane.” Veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Yonfan returns from his semi-retirement to feature filmmaking after a decade with a venture he has never handled before, an animation. Though you won’t find any sign of debutante’s restraint or insecurity. He perfectly knows what tools he needs and how to utilize them to achieve the desired effect.

“No.7 Cherry Lane” Screened at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival

Yonfan blends animations styles and techniques with ease, meticulously crafting each frame. The production process involved the conversion of 3D models of characters into 2D hand drawings and panting backgrounds on rice paper. Esthetical tropes range from art deco, Japanese animation, woodcut printing, scroll paintings to pencil sketches,...

In film history, the anthology genre is the most challenging. Episodic films often have several directors and screenwriters which gives them an inconsistent tone and quality. But the genre’s pitfalls haven’t stopped such filmmakers including Akira Kurosawa (“Dreams”), the Coens (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”), Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”); Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese (“New York Stories”); and Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller and Steven Spielberg (“Twilight Zone: The Movie”).

Wes Anderson joined them with his latest film “The French Dispatch,” which received a nine-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. The comedy brings to life three stories from an American magazine published in a fictional French city and features his stock company of actors including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson.

If you are a fan of the genre, here are the best anthology movies that...

Impact X Capital, a Black entrepreneur owned venture capital firm seeking to invest £100 million ($137 million) for underrepresented entrepreneurs, is launching Impact X Studios to fund, develop and package international content with an focus on diversity and inclusion.

A creative capital vehicle for underrepresented talent, Impact X Studios is being launched by Erica Motley, a well-connected TV industry veteran who is creative partner at Impact X, and Eric Collins, the CEO of Impact X who is also a tech entrepreneur and investor.

“Impact X was launched for founders from underrepresented communities – mainly Black and female entrepreneurs – and now we’re aiming to do the same for the creative content industry in Europe, Africa and the Carribeans,” said Motley, who pointed out that the recent success of “Bridgerton” and “Lupin,” two shows with Black protagonists, are game-changers as they show that there is a “massive audience for distinctive storytelling with multicultural characters.

by Cláudio Alves

This week, we've been celebrating Simone Signoret's centennial, an unlikely sex-symbol of the midcentury and an even more atypical Oscar champion. Previously, Daniel wrote about the French actress' brief appearance in La Ronde, and Eric paid tribute to what's probably her most excellent vehicle, Casque d'Or. Now that it's my turn to wax poetic about Madame Signoret, I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. You see, even before the centennial celebrations, the actress had been on my mind. Though, it wasn't because of a film she starred in or individual performance. Watching the animated film No. 7 Cherry Lane, I can't help but think that no one will ever be able to create a more beautiful homage to this star than director Yonfan…...

by Eric Blume

Today is the centennial of French Oscar-winner Simone Signoret.  Daniel paid lovely tribute to her last night for her brief role in 1950's La Ronde.  Her next big film, director Jacques Becker's 1952 movie Casque d'Or, made her a star six years before Oscar embraced her with Room at the Top. Becker captures all of Signoret's magic in this turn-of-the-century Paris underworld story.  It doesn't hurt that he has his cinematographer, Robert Le Febvre, lighting her in a gloriously celestial way throughout the movie...

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is a series on Production Design.

Thursday marks 100 years since the birth of iconic French actress Simone Signoret. But how to celebrate? By my count, she was in three films nominated for Best Production Design. One of them, Is Paris Burning?, I covered way back in 2016. Another, Ship of Fools, also nabbed Signoret her second nomination for Best Actress. Unfortunately, it’s something of a bloated and maudlin mess.

That leaves us with La Ronde, a film made shortly before Signoret really burst into international stardom. She’s barely in it, playing a Viennese sex worker who bookends the meandering narrative. Even so, it’s her movie star quality that makes the whole thing work - that and the magic of Jean d’Eaubonne’s Oscar-nominated production design, of course. The film is Max Ophüls’s adaptation of an Arthur Schnitzler play, a circular jaunt that slips from paramour to paramour.

“No. 7 Cherry Lane” is the sort of animated film that can completely knock you for a loop if you don’t know what’s coming, and director Yonfan is totally fine with that. The film sports a pair of erotic fantasy sequences that got walkouts at some press screenings at the Venice Film Festival, but Yonfan told TheWrap that he had a blast making those scenes because…it was just fun!

“Art should not be so serious. You should have fun and have a wild imagination and sometimes let it run away a little bit to get yourself loose,” Yonfan said in an interview for TheWrap’s Awards Screening Series. “A lot of people have called my movie ‘kitsch’ and I don’t mind it because ‘kitsch’ is only a word.”

Yonfan has directed 14 films over his decades-long career, but “No. 7 Cherry Lane” is his first venture into animation. The...

While longer Best Actress-nominated performances are rarer than ones contending for Best Actor, there has been a significant amount of them over 92 years. Indeed, 44 have surpassed 90 minutes of screen time, and the overall longest nominated performance of all time comes from this category. Here is a look at the 10 longest ever nominated for the award:

10. Rosalind Russell (“Auntie Mame”)

1 hour, 48 minutes, 23 seconds (75.59% of the film)

Over the course of 16 years, Russell competed for the Best Actress Oscar four times, and her final bid was for playing an eccentric socialite who is tasked with raising her nephew. All four of her nominations were for relatively long performances, averaging one hour, 30 minutes, and 42 seconds and over 71%. She never won, and lost in 1959 to Susan Hayward, who was on her fifth and final nomination for her one-hour, 15-minute, and 26-second performance in “I Want to Live!”.

9. Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”)

1 hour, 49 minutes, 55 seconds (83.87% of...

Yonfan, the LGBT pioneer of Hong Kong art cinema, embraces animation for the first time with “No. 7 Cherry Lane” (currently streaming on Moma’s Virtual Cinema through February 4). It’s a love letter to a bygone Hong Kong from 1967, when he was a 20-year-old photographer and aspiring director caught up in the political turbulence and cinematic excitement of the era.

“‘No. 7 Cherry Lane’ is very different from all the other animations that I know of,” said Yonfan, who is not a fan of animation but was intrigued with the imaginative possibilities of the medium for his adult drama. The film represents his remembrance of the Hong Kong riots against the background of the Cultural Revolution in China.

“This is when people started denouncing the Vietnam War and there were many movies like ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ that came out and they were very revolutionary. It seems timely with the [recent] protests in Hong Kong,...

In the 92-year history of the Academy Awards, a dozen of the 44 performers nominated for their work in languages other than English have won. The first to be nominated was “Johnny Belinda” star Jane Wyman who delivered her heartbreaking performance in American Sign Language. She won Best Actress in 1949. Thirteen years later, Sophia Loren won this same award for her work in Italian in “Two Women.”

That screen legend is in contention again this year for her searing portrayal in Italian of a Holocaust survivor who takes care of the children of streetwalkers in “The Life Ahead.” This Netflix drama was directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. He and Ugo Chiti adapted Romain Gary’s 1975 novel “The Life Before Us,” which was also the source of the Oscar-winning 1978 French drama “Madame Rosa,” starring Simone Signoret.

After Loren made Oscar history, there have been two more winners for performances in Italian:...

While performances that win the Oscar for Best Actor are usually longer than those that win Best Actress, a solid amount of lengthy roles have won in the lead female category. The average screen time among Best Actress winners is one hour, four minutes, and 41 seconds, and plenty of much longer ones have triumphed. Here is a look at the 10 longest winners of all time. (And here’s the list of the 10 shortest winning performances for Best Actress.)

10. Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”)

1 hour, 29 minutes, 18 seconds (82.67% of the film)

Portman received her first Best Actress nomination and win in 2011 for her role as ballerina Nina Sayers. While nine performances with higher amounts of screen time had already won in the category, Portman’s became the one with the second-highest percentage. Hers is also one of only 25 performances ever nominated for the award with a screen time total of over 80%.

9. Julie Christie (“Darling”)

1 hour,...

Even though the Best Actress Oscar has been given out since the first Academy Awards ceremony, there is no clear way of determining whether shorter or longer performances are more likely to win. An even mix of both have prevailed over the past 92 years, performances that have won Best Actress hold more overall lead acting records than those that have won Best Actor. Here is a look at the 10 shortest winners in the category. (And here is the equivalent list for Best Actor.)

10. Katharine Hepburn (“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”)

43 minutes, 26 seconds (40.20% of the film)

Over three decades after her first nomination resulted in a win, Hepburn finally won a second Best Actress Oscar for her role as Christina Drayton, a mother whose liberal views are challenged when her daughter announces her intention to marry a Black man. She would go on to finish her career with four wins in...

John Huston directed his father Walter to an Oscar in 1948 for “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and his daughter Anjelica to one in 1985 for “Prizzi’s Honor.” Edoardo Ponti, 47, could well do the same for his mother, Sophia Loren, who shines in the acclaimed new Netflix drama “The Life Ahead.”

Ponti, the youngest of Loren’s two sons with her late husband, producer Carlo Ponti, is a graduate for USC School of Cinematic Arts and worked as an assistant with such directors as Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman. He first directed his mother in his 2002 debut “Between Strangers.” Loren won the David di Donatello Award for their 2014 collaboration on “The Human Voice” based Jean Cocteau’s 1930 one-act play “The Human Voice.”

For “The Life Ahead,” Ponti and Ugo Chiti adapted Romain Gary’s 1975 novel “The Life Before Us,” which was also the source of the Oscar-winning 1977 French drama “Madame Rosa,...

What becomes a legend most?

Well, in the case of the Oscar-winning 86-year-old Sophia Loren, a terrific role in the new Netflix movie “The Life Ahead,” which premiered on Nov. 13 to rave reviews. The film is also a valentine from her youngest son Edoardo Ponti who co-adapted and directed the drama based on Romain Gary’s 1975 novel “The Life Before Us.”

Loren plays Madame Rosa, a former prostitute and Holocaust survivor living in Naples who now takes care of children of prostitutes. But she has her hands full with her latest charge, a 12-year-old Senegalese immigrant named Momo (Ibrahim Gueye). Rosa may seem like the ultimate earth foster mother, but she is haunted by fevered memories of her time at Auschwitz and more and more frequently drifts away from reality.

If the plotline of “The Life Ahead” sounds familiar, the Gary novel was originally adapted as “Madame Rosa,” an Oscar-winning...

The stately star is as magnetic as ever as a Holocaust survivor and creche worker who takes in a troubled Senegalese boy

At 86, Sophia Loren returns to the screen for the first time in 10 years in this sentimental tale for Netflix, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. It’s adapted from the novel The Life Before Us by Romain Gary, which was first filmed in 1977 as Madame Rosa with Simone Signoret in the title role.

Related: Sophia Loren: 'The body changes. The mind does not'...

Prolific composer Diane Warren has written nine number one songs and had 32 tunes hit the Top Ten on the Billboard Charts. She has won a Grammy, an Emmy, a Golden Globe and three consecutive Billboard Music Awards for Songwriter of the Year. She’s also be named ASCAP’s Writer of the Year three times and was inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame in 2001. But one honor that has eluded her is the Academy Award. Though she hasn’t reach Susan Lucci territory (she finally won an Emmy for “All My Children” on her 19th nomination) Warren has been a bridesmaid at the Oscars 11 times.

But she may well win this year for her wistful ballad “Io Si (Seen)” from the Italian-language Netflix drama “The Life Ahead,” which begins streaming Nov. 13. Laura Pausini, who recorded the song, co-wrote the Italian lyrics with Niccolo Agliardi.

The legendary 86-year-old Oscar-winner Sophia Loren...

Six years ago, Sophia Loren emerged from retirement to film Jean Cocteau’s “The Human Voice” — her version of the one-act play that Tilda Swinton and Pedro Almodóvar recently adapted during lockdown, and which Anna Magnani and Ingrid Bergman had each tackled decades before. In the 25-minute project, which was directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, Loren plays a woman alone but for her housekeeper in an Italian villa, speaking to the man she once loved via a shaky phone connection.

“The only thing left between us is this telephone wire,” Loren says in the film, her voice torn.

In a way, that short feels like a forecast of Loren’s life today, as the coronavirus has forced so many into isolation — including the still vibrant acting legend, who laughs easily and often over the course of a career-spanning 90-minute phone call. The Italian star, the first person from any...

The last time Romain Gary’s novel “The Life Before Us” was turned into a movie, the year was 1977, the film was “Madame Rosa” and the result was an Oscar win for Best Foreign Language Film and a Cesar Award for star Simone Signoret as the title character, a Holocaust survivor and former prostitute taking care of a young Algerian boy.

Gary’s book is now headed back to theater screens in a new, Italian-language adaptation titled “The Life Ahead,” directed by Edoardo Ponti and starring Ponti’s mother, who happens to be the legendary actress Sophia Loren in her first feature-film role in more than a decade. It’s easy enough to see why she came out of semi-retirement for the film – not only is it the third time she’s worked with her son, after 2002’s “Between Strangers” and the 2014 short “Human Voice,” but it’s one of...

The last time most of us saw Sophia Loren on screen, we barely saw her at all: not just because her role in 2009’s star-spangled musical deadweight “Nine” was so minor, but because Rob Marshall’s film was so enamored of the shimmery silver radiance generated by its various luminaries that it often forgot to look at them directly. That’s not a failing of “The Life Ahead,” her first feature-length starring vehicle in 16 years, and that alone makes it something of an event. That extraordinary face, regal and leonine as she heads into her mid-eighties, is so generously and adoringly cradled by the camera, it sometimes seems she has to be yanked out of scenes entirely for the narrative to progress.

Who can blame director Edoardo Ponti? His star is not only a last-of-a-generation icon, but his own mother: The film, modest and often maudlin on its own storytelling terms,...

The same Romain Gary novel that became the Oscar-winning 1977 French drama, Madame Rosa, earning a César Award for Simone Signoret in the title role, gets relocated from Paris to a Southern Italian coastal town in The Life Ahead. This sensitive contemporary remake, set in one of the hubs of the Euro-Mediterranean migrant crisis, reshapes the work as a vehicle for director Edoardo Ponti’s celebrated mother, Sophia Loren, back on the screen after a 10-year absence. Audiences will warm to the handsomely crafted Italian-language Netflix feature, a sentimental yet satisfying labor of love.

From her priceless appearances in the classic comedies ...

The same Romain Gary novel that became the Oscar-winning 1977 French drama, Madame Rosa, earning a César Award for Simone Signoret in the title role, gets relocated from Paris to a Southern Italian coastal town in The Life Ahead. This sensitive contemporary remake, set in one of the hubs of the Euro-Mediterranean migrant crisis, reshapes the work as a vehicle for director Edoardo Ponti’s celebrated mother, Sophia Loren, back on the screen after a 10-year absence. Audiences will warm to the handsomely crafted Italian-language Netflix feature, a sentimental yet satisfying labor of love.

From her priceless appearances in the classic comedies ...

Eight months ago, Netflix scooped up “The Life Ahead,” Italian USC grad Edoardo Ponti’s third collaboration with his mother, two-time Oscar-winner Sophia Loren, returning to the screen at age 86 for the first time in almost a decade. It’s easy to see why the streamer wanted to buy the Italian movie. Like the 1977 foreign-language Oscar-winner “Madame Rosa” starring Simone Signoret, Ponti’s film is adapted from Romain Gary’s 1975 French novel “The Life Before Us.” He moved the setting from France in the ‘70s to a contemporary Italian seaside town, but the story is much the same.

Madame Rosa is a tough Auschwitz survivor and former prostitute who cares for the children of streetwalkers. Her doctor asks her to look after a sullen 12-year orphan Muslim who reluctantly returns her filched purse. At first, the Sudanese boy seems intractable, getting into fights with her other kids and selling drugs...

Eight months ago, Netflix scooped up “The Life Ahead,” Italian USC grad Edoardo Ponti’s third collaboration with his mother, two-time Oscar-winner Sophia Loren, returning to the screen at age 86 for the first time in almost a decade. It’s easy to see why the streamer wanted to buy the Italian movie. Like the 1977 foreign-language Oscar-winner “Madame Rosa” starring Simone Signoret, Ponti’s film is adapted from Romain Gary’s 1975 French novel “The Life Before Us.” He moved the setting from France in the ‘70s to a contemporary Italian seaside town, but the story is much the same.

Madame Rosa is a tough Auschwitz survivor and former prostitute who cares for the children of streetwalkers. Her doctor asks her to look after a sullen 12-year orphan Muslim who reluctantly returns her filched purse. At first, the Sudanese boy seems intractable, getting into fights with her other kids and selling drugs...

In her first feature film role since her turn in Rob Marshall’s Nine in 2009, the legendary Sophia Loren is starring in The Life Ahead, a new Netflix international production. Starring alongside newcomer Ibrahima Gueye, she plays the role of his ward, forming an indelible bond in seaside Italy. Ahead of a release this November, Netflix has now debuted the first trailer for Edoardo Ponti’s new feature.

A remake of Madame Rosa, the 86-year-old Loren plays Madame Rosa, a role previously played by Simone Signoret to critical acclaim. A holocaust survivor and former prosistute in sea-side Italy, she takes in a muslim orphan named Momo (Gueye) as her ward after an undisclosed tragedy rendered him orphaned. The relationship begins tersely as Momo had previously robbed her but begins to evolve into between the two survivors of two separate worlds brought together by their shared tragedies in life.

See the trailer below.

In 1984, the Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren (“Two Women”) and her then-11-year-old son Edoardo Ponti starred in the TV movie “Aurora.” That little-remembered film began a lovely collaboration between the legendary actress and Ponti, Loren’s younger son by her late husband, producer Carlo Ponti.

Edoardo Ponti gave up acting and switched to directing after earning a fine arts degree in 1998 from USC in film directing in production. And he directed Loren for the first time in the 2002 drama “Between Strangers.” Mother and son both earned acclaimed for their 2014 short, “The Human Voice,” based on Jean Cocteau’s one-act 1930 play.

Their latest collaboration-and Loren’s first film since “The Human Voice”- is the Italian drama “The Life Ahead,” a contemporary adaptation of Romain Gary’s 1975 best-seller “The Life Before Us.” The still-stunning 86-year-old Loren plays a Holocaust survivor named Madame Rosa who becomes unlikely friends with a rebellious 12-year-old...

Exclusive: Add Sophia Loren to the growing list of those whose names we are likely to hear come this Oscar awards season.

The legendary star and 1961 Best Actress Academy Award winner for Two Women, as well as the recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 1991 inscribed “for a career rich with memorable performances that has added permanent luster to our art form,” is returning to movies in The Life Ahead. She stars as Madame Rosa, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who now makes a meager living raising a number of children of prostitutes with whom she once walked the streets. Among those she takes in is Momo, a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan who steals her candlesticks. After he is forced to apologize, they form a relationship audiences around the world are not likely to soon forget when the previously undated film premieres worldwide on Netflix on November 13.

I would call this vintage Loren,...

Italian movies are taking a sharper turn towards genre storytelling, though classic auteur titles remain a strong component of the country’s cinematic output. Below is a compendium of standout cinema Italiano projects in various stages.

“Non Mi Uccidere” (“Don’t Kill Me”) Young director Andrea De Sica, who helmed the bulk of teen series “Baby” for Netflix, is set to shoot a horror film geared towards the same youth demographic as the show. It’s based on a bestselling Gothic novel about a 19-year-old named Mirta who, with her older lover, Robin, dies of a drug overdose. She then reanimates alone to find out that in order to continue living, and cherishing the memory of Robin’s love, she must eat living humans. Shooting is expected to start soon. Cast is being contractualized. Pic is the director’s sophomore feature after “Children of the Night,” a coming-of-age story set...

Jean-Pierre Melville’s most accomplished, most personal movie gets a new reissue. Ignored in 1969 and released in the United States only 37 years later, this somber, ultra-realistic look at the French resistance has never been equalled. Forget thrilling adventure tales with daring escapes, patriotic oaths and beautiful spies; Melville presents resistance activities in the Occupied territory as a fearful grind leading in one direction only. Criterion’s extras include an interview piece with historical operatives, who still argue points of strategy.

Army of Shadows

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 385

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 145 min. / L’Armée des ombres / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 7, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret, Claude Mann, Paul Crauchet, Christian Barbier, Serge Reggiani, André Dewavrin.

Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme, Walter Wottitz

Film Editor: Françoise Bonnot

Original Music: Eric De Marsan

Written by Jean-Pierre Melville from the novel by Joseph Kessel

Produced by Jacques Dorfmann

Directed...

A legendary movie star’s dubious memoirs outrage her daughter – played by Juliette Binoche – in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s stylish, seductive family drama

The title is a deadpan challenge, and it is up to us to decide where exactly this movie and its characters live in the disputed territory around truth, untruth, near-truth: the comforting fiction that we all create around what we remember of our lives. This is the first non-Japanese-language film from auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda (Palme d’Or winner at Cannes in 2018 for his film Shoplifters) and he has come to France for a very elegant and insouciant family drama set in Paris, which he has directed from his own script, translated from the original into French by Léa le Dimna.

Catherine Deneuve gives a seductive and self-aware performance as Fabienne Dangeville, a creamily well-preserved movie star in her mid-70s who is a legendary figure in her native land – opinionated,...

Stuart Whitman, the rugged actor who starred on TV's Cimarron Strip and received an Oscar nomination for playing a convicted child molester trying to rid himself of psychological demons in The Mark, has died. He was 92.

Whitman died Monday of natural causes at his home in Montecito, California, his son Justin told The Hollywood Reporter.

In his big-screen heyday, Whitman also wooed Joanne Woodward in The Sound and the Fury (1959), starred opposite Simone Signoret as an American pilot downed in Nazi-occupied France in The Day and the Hour (1963) and portrayed the heroic American Orvil Newton in Those Magnificent Men in Their ...

Stuart Whitman, the rugged actor who starred on TV's Cimarron Strip and received an Oscar nomination for playing a convicted child molester trying to rid himself of psychological demons in The Mark, has died. He was 92.

Whitman died Monday of natural causes at his home in Montecito, California, his son Justin told The Hollywood Reporter.

In his big-screen heyday, Whitman also wooed Joanne Woodward in The Sound and the Fury (1959), starred opposite Simone Signoret as an American pilot downed in Nazi-occupied France in The Day and the Hour (1963) and portrayed the heroic American Orvil Newton in Those Magnificent Men in Their ...