King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963).
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It’s east versus west, giant reptile versus mega-mammal, the “Big G” versus the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Godzilla vs. Kong a new slugfest from Legendary Pictures is set to be released in theaters and on HBO Max on March 31, 2021. But it won t be the first time these two iconic movie monsters have faced off. They met once before in 1962’s
King Kong vs. Godzilla a crossover battle for the ages that also featured a rampaging octopus and a future Bond Girl. Not to mention the craziest tree-related violence you’ll ever see outside an M. Night Shyamalan flick.
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February 8, 2021 marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Lana Turner, the ice-blonde goddess of the silver screen whose film credits include
The Postman Always Rings Twice,
Peyton Place,
The Bad and the Beautiful, and
Imitation of Life. Though she was a Hollywood icon, Turner s real life was as dramatic and tragic as any of the heroines she ever played onscreen (if not more so).
1. Lana Turner s father was murdered when she was a child.
Lana Turner born Julia Jean Mildred Francis Turner on February 8, 1921 in Wallace, Idaho had one of the most dramatic off-screen lives of any star of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The tragedy began when Turner was just 9 years old and her father a conman and sometime-bootlegger named Virgil M. Turner was beaten to death after winning money at a card game. His murder was never solved.
The Godfather Part III (1990).
Paramount Home Entertainment
The Godfather (1972) and its 1974 sequel,
The Godfather Part II, exist on the same “unassailable” level of cinema history that s typically reserved for only a handful of other films, including
Citizen Kane. These are the rare movies that carry the kind of reputation that few people would ever dare challenge. Perhaps that’s why a lot of people, especially the ones loudly declaring
The Godfather s greatness, seem to ignore the very existence of
The Godfather Part III.
Francis Ford Coppola returned to the well of his greatest commercial and critical success in 1990 for
The Godfather Part III, and it promptly became an unwelcome addition to an accomplishment that by all accounts was already perfect. Much of the negative attention was directed at the fact that Coppola cast his daughter Sofia (who was not then or now an actor) in a pivotal role, and generally repeated too many elements of its predecessors to com
Some people discovered J.K. Simmons through
Oz, the gritty prison drama that put HBO on the map. Others noticed him in Sam Raimi’s
Spider-Man (2002), as the cigar-chomping J. Jonah Jameson. Still more discovered him only a few years ago, when he accepted an Oscar in 2015 for Damien Chazelle’s
Whiplash
. But Simmons didn’t just materialize in the late 1990s. The beloved character actor, who was born on January 9, 1955, has been around for decades he was just delivering singing telegrams for part of that time. What else should you know about his life and career? Well for starters, here’s his real name …
Heathers (1989).
It’s doubtful that the dark comedy
Heathers, with its shocking violence and politically incorrect teen-speak, would likely ever be made today at least not by a major studio. But the biting 1989 satire was widely embraced by film critics and its (initially tiny) audience.
1.
Heathers was written by a video store clerk.
Daniel Waters moved to Los Angeles during the 1980s and was working at what he described as “the least cool video store in Silver Lake when he wrote
Heathers. In 2008, Waters insisted to The Hollywood Interview blog that he was working on the whole video store clerk-to-screenwriter metamorphosis before I knew it was a cliché.