News

David Korda, a prominent member of the Korda family movie dynasty who served as a producer and important film financier in a show business career that spanned more than 60 years, has died. He was 87.

Korda, chairman of the British company Film Finances Ltd., died Sept. 18 at Cromwell Hospital in London, author, editor and film historian Charles Drazin told The Hollywood Reporter. He had been in poor health after a battle with cancer.

Korda’s parents were Zoltan Korda, director of the Ralph Richardson-starring epic The Four Feathers (1939), and actress Joan Gardner (Dark Journey, The Scarlet Pimpernel).

One of his uncles was Alexander Korda, the founder of London Films, the owner of British Lion Films, a producer of such classics as The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and The Third Man (1949) and the first filmmaker to receive a knighthood. Another uncle, Vincent Korda, was a painter and Oscar-winning art director.

After coming up short on his first two Best Actor Oscar bids for “Walk the Line” and “The Master,” Joaquin Phoenix took the gold in 2020 for “Joker.” The film reaped a whopping 11 Oscar nominations and cracked the billion dollar mark at the box office. The sequel, “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which hits theaters October 4, makes Phoenix the 11th Best Actor victor to reprise his winning role in a feature film.

Only one of the first 10 fellows to pull off this double feature earned another Oscar nomination: Bing Crosby (he won for “Going My Way” in 1945 and was nominated for “The Bells of St. Mary’s” in 1946).

Those who preceded Crosby in reprising their winning roles without academy recognition are Warner Baxter, who went on to appear in both “The Cisco Kid” (1931) and “Return of the Cisco Kid” (1939), and Spencer Tracy, who starred in “Men of Boys Town” (1941).

Edward Flanagan portrayer Tracy...

A quarter century after winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted,” Angelina Jolie is hoping to pick up the Best Actress trophy for her performance in “Maria.” In terms of Oscar history, she’d join Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Cate Blanchett, and Renée Zellweger, who all won for featured performances before prevailing again for star turns.

Jolie’s role, that of real-life opera singer Maria Callas, has already been proven to be awards-worthy and won Jane Seymour an Emmy nearly four decades ago. This English rose featured in the 1988 TV movie “Onassis: The Richest Man in the World,” opposite Raul Julia as Aristotle Onassis and Anthony Quinn as his father, Socrates. This remains her only Emmy win from five nominations.

Zellweger won Best Actress for her sensitive portrayal of Judy Garland in the 2020 flick “Judy.” Back in 2001, Tammy Blanchard and Judy Davis took home Emmys for their work...

Anne Boleyn has been played on screen since the silent movie era. She’s been portrayed as a six-fingered boo-hiss villain, a Saturday Night Live punchline, a ghost haunting Princess Diana, and in recent stage musical Six, a Kate Nash-style aitch-dropping popstrel.

Now, Henry VIII’s second wife is trending on TikTok as a new generation gets sucked into the scandals of the Tudor court and stakes their allegiance to her, the Spanish queen unseated for her, the simpering virgin who followed her, or any other player during this eventful period in history when the king of England made the position of queen a revolving door. One thing the new Tudor fans seem to agree upon is that they aren’t #TeamHenry.

Leaving aside most of the one-note portrayals and the TV shows and movies in which Anne Sans Tête is only a bit player in somebody else’s...

Mark Shelmerdine, the veteran producer who revived London Films as an indie powerhouse and played a pivotal role in the development of the international TV distribution market, died October 26 in Santa Barbara surrounded by his family. He was 78.

Among his achievements, he was among the first UK indie TV producers to retain rights to a broadcast production and was a founder of the LA branch of BAFTA.

Shelmerdine’s death was confirmed to Deadline by his friend Brian Eastman. The producer had survived a rare and potentially deadly form of bile duct cancer by receiving a life-saving liver transplant in 2018 through a trial in Houston, and was one of the longest living survivors of the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Houston Methodist Hospital program.

Born on March 27, 1945, Shelmerdine spent part of his childhood in Singapore before moving to the UK. He was awarded a place to attend Sidney Sussex College...

Mark Shelmerdine, the Emmy-nominated producer who remade Alexander Korda’s dormant London Films label into an independent production powerhouse behind projects including I, Claudius, has died. He was 78.

Shelmerdine died Oct. 26 in Santa Barbara after a long illness, friend and fellow producer Brian Eastman told The Hollywood Reporter. After being diagnosed with a rare form of bile duct cancer in 2016, he had a life-saving liver transplant in 2018.

In the 1980s, Shelmerdine co-founded the Los Angeles branch of BAFTA and the Association of Independent Television Producers, which helped shape the sector that now dominates British TV production. He also published self-help books written by his late wife, Susan Jeffers.

The first of three children, Shelmerdine was born on March 27, 1945, in Buckinghamshire, England. His father, Dick, worked as a police office in Singapore and the Bahamas and as a postmaster in Gloucestershire, England.

Shelmerdine started out as an accountant at Coopers & Lybrand and Taylor Clark Ltd.

If Everything Everywhere All at Once‘s Michelle Yeoh wins the best actress Oscar on March 12, she will become the first Asian to do so. But she’s not the first to be nominated: Merle Oberon preceded Yeoh 87 years ago — though no one knew it at the time.

The star of 1935’s The Dark Angel, for which she was nominated, kept her Indian heritage hidden her entire life. Born in Bombay to a Sri Lankan-Maori mother and white father, Oberon grew up in poverty in Calcutta. When she was 17, she moved to England to pursue acting; fearing backlash from a racist entertainment industry, she claimed she was born in Tasmania and that her birth certificate was lost in a fire.

She broke out playing Anne Boleyn in director Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1933, which led to her being cast in Sidney Franklin’s World War I drama The Dark Angel,...

The public considers the Academy Awards as a Hollywood event. True, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is headquartered in Southern California, and most of the best pic contenders are American and/or in the English language. But Oscar history proves they have been an international event from the beginning.

In the first year (1927-28), there were nominations for directors Herbert Brenon (born in Ireland) and Lewis Milestone (born in Moldova), plus a special award to Charlie Chaplin (from the U.K.).

The next five years saw two noms apiece for directors Ernst Lubitsch (Germany) and Josef von Sternberg (Austria). And the second best actress Academy Award was given to Canadian Mary Pickford.

The early years of Oscar featured a slew of non-Americans. Aside from mega-star Chaplin, the list of early Academy Award winners includes Emil Jannings, George Arliss (U.K.), Claudette Colbert (raised in the U.S. but...

In the 125 years since the first play based on the life of 17th century author Cyrano de Bergerac premiered, the classic underdog tale’s eternal relevance has been proven time and time again. Its simple love triangle premise has served as the basis for many stage and screen adaptations, two of which captured the attention of Oscar voters. José Ferrer and Gérard Depardieu both earned academy recognition for their portrayals of de Bergerac, and now Peter Dinklage is gunning for a Best Actor bid for starring in the new film “Cyrano.” If he succeeds, the character will become one of only a handful in Oscars history to have inspired three nominations.

Dinklage, who bagged four Emmys during his eight-season tenure on “Game of Thrones,” first played de Bergerac during the Off-Broadway run of the stage musical from which his film derives. His potential Oscar nomination would come 71 years after Ferrer’s,...

This year’s Oscar race is in a bio rhythm, with a huge percentage of films based upon real people and events.

Merriam-Webster defines “biopic” as simply a biographical movie. That’s true, but there’s a wide range under that umbrella term, as this year’s contenders remind us.

They include films that span several years, including: “A Journal for Jordan” and “King Richard”; some cover multiple decades, such as “House of Gucci,” the Aretha Franklin pic “Respect” and “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”

Other films, including “Being the Ricardos,” focus on a moment in time, which becomes a prism for exploring the era and the lives of various individuals.

Narrative films are not documentaries, so every pic takes liberty with the facts. Some take this to the extreme, such as “Spencer” (in which the life of Princess Diana borders on a horror film and begins with the disclaimer...

The world of the Tudors has long fascinated audiences, whether they be film fans or those watching on television. Nearly every generation has their take on Henry VIII and his legendary wives, from Charles Laughton’s 1933 feature “The Private Life of Henry VIII” to Showtime’s mid-aughts series “The Tudors.” Even on Broadway, one can see Henry’s six spouses sing about their lives in an ongoing production simply titled “Six.” Evolving beyond these stories as much as it’s building from them, the AMC+ limited series “Anne Boleyn” moves the Tudor discussion into a new realm: one not confined by the gender of who’s telling the story, nor their race.

British actress Jodie Turner-Smith, starring as the doomed queen whose ambition bound her to the chopping block, found Boleyn’s story incredibly relevant. “Women are still put in boxes in this way,” Turner-Smith told IndieWire. “This is the...

By now we all know that the film the Academy selects as the “Best Picture” of any given year is rarely the actual Best Picture, but some years it’s hard to explain why they picked what they picked. Never mind “Shakespeare in Love” beating “Saving Private Ryan,” because at least “Shakespeare in Love” is a handsome production with a witty script. Never mind “Dances with Wolves” beating “Goodfellas,” because at least “Dances with Wolves” is a respectable western. We’re taking a look at the films that we can’t watch, even in a vacuum, without cringing nowadays. And when you compare them with the nominees that didn’t earn the Oscar, it’s just plain hard to justify why the Academy voted the way it did.

“The Broadway Melody” (1929)

The second Best Picture winner, and the first synch sound movie to win the top prize, was innovative for the time.

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 16: Alexander Korda’s Private Lives.

About the films:

Though born to modest means in Hungary, Alexander Korda would go on to become one of the most important filmmakers in the history of British cinema. A producer, writer, and director who navigated toward subjects of major historical significance and mythical distinction, Korda made a name for his production company, London Films, with the Oscar-winning The Private Life of Henry VIII. He then continued his populist investigation behind the scenes and in the bedrooms of such figures as Catherine the Great, Don Juan, and Rembrandt. Mixing stately period drama with surprising satire, these films are exemplars of grand 1930s moviemaking.

Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation by Cecil Beaton

This week marks the 90th birthday of her majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born in 1926. The Queen celebrates two birthdays each year: her actual birthday on the 21st of April and her official birthday on the second Saturday in June. (Trooping of the Colours)

She is the world’s oldest reigning monarch as well as Britain’s longest-lived. In 2015, she surpassed the reign of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, to become the longest-reigning British monarch and the longest-reigning queen regent in world history.

Looking to celebrate her Majesty’s birthday? First, everyone rise for the national anthem of the United Kingdom.

God save our gracious Queen!

Long live our noble Queen!

God save the Queen!

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us:

God save the Queen!

For more on the Queen’s schedule, visit the official site: www.

Next in line to inherit the throne of Royal films is Diana. The film takes audiences into the private realm of one of the world’s most iconic and inescapably public women – the Princess of Wales, Diana (two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts) — in the last two years of her meteoric life.

On the occasion of the 16th anniversary of her sudden death, acclaimed director Oliver Hirschbiegel (the Oscar-nominated Downfall) explores Diana’s final rite of passage: a secret love affair with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews, “Lost,” The English Patient), the human complications of which reveal the Princess’s climactic days in a compelling new light. Diana is in select theaters now.

As long as filmmakers have been bringing the lives of England’s Kings and Queens to the silver screen have moviegoers been going to the cinemas to be schooled in British Monarchy.

So Arise, Sirs and Ladies,...

This coming Friday, July 15, marks the birthday of the greatest of all Dutch painters, Rembrandt van Rijn. Born 505 years ago, I figured now was as suitable an occasion as I’d ever have to review Rembrandt, this fine biopic from 1936 starring Charles Laughton, part of Eclipse Series 16: Alexander Korda’s Private Lives.

Korda is one of the most influential and dynamic figures in the history of UK cinema, founder of London Films and the first man ever granted knighthood for his work in the English film industry. Along with his brothers Zoltan and Vincent, he played a major part in creating some of the most fondly remembered British films of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, including The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Four Feathers, That Hamilton Woman, The Thief of Bagdad, The Third Man and Laurence Olivier’s version of Richard III.

As anyone who’s paid even the slightest attention...

Well, I've finally done it, I've seen all of the Oscar Best Picture winners. But I've also updated my personal list of "Must Watch Movies" and I still have 171 movies to go. This is a list I've compiled using the AFI Top 100 American Movies, Roger Ebert's Greatest Movies list, Oscar Best Picture winners, Tiff's Essential 100 Movies and several incarnations of the IMDb Top 250.

On Friday I actually updated the list, adding the latest IMDb Top 250 to my previous list and now have a total of 294 films that have at one time or another been on IMDb's Top 250 and actually have two new films I need to watch that weren't on there previously -- The Celebration (1998) and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984). Ebert has also been updating his list of greatest movies and I had to add a few there as well.

Overall it makes for a list...