Joseph L Mankiewicz

"A bad penny always turns up" is a platitude that packs an unexpected existential punch, at least in the sardonic world of New York playwright Mac Wellman. In Wellman's Obie Award-winning short play, the titular "Bad Penny" opens a portal to the...

The curtain has come down on "At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper." The aisle may vanish too. Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert and columnist Richard Roeper are cutting ties with the TV franchise that Disney-ABC Domestic Television has syndicated...

Move over Ebert and Roeper. Here come the two Bens. Ben Lyons of E! Entertainment Television and Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies today were named co-hosts of what was described as "the new generation" of "At the Movies" by the Walt Disney Co.'s...

(B) One would imagine it is something of a bittersweet triumph for an actor to endure long enough to revisit a glory moment from his youth, albeit from the vantage point of an older character. Unlike many of his classically schooled contemporaries in...

Remaking "Sleuth" seems unnecessary, really. Anthony Shaffer's endlessly circulated stage thriller was filmed in 1972 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in a prestige project featuring Laurence Olivier as the mystery writer and Michael Caine as the hairdresser who...

One would imagine it is something of a bittersweet triumph for an actor to endure long enough to revisit a glory moment from his youth, albeit from the vantage point of an older character. Unlike many of his classically schooled contemporaries in England,...

Jude Law, who starred in the "Alfie" remake, will take on another of Michael Caine's previous film roles, this time teamed with Caine himself. The British actors have signed on to star in Kenneth Branagh's remake of the 1970s thriller "Sleuth." The...

Nobody writes songs about January in Paris. It's cold and bleak, and the impenetrable rain clouds make 8 a.m. as dark as midnight. It's perfect weather for going to the movies, which is what I do. But I also go to the movies in Paris in April, May and...

Julius J. & Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch's "Casablanca" script, adapted from the play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, has been saluted as the greatest screenplay ever by the members of the Writers Guild of America. The...

What do you think of the WGA list? ++++++++++++++++++++ || 1. || CASABLANCA Screenplay by Julius J. & Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch. Based on the play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison || || 2. || THE GODFATHER...

Marlon Brando, a two-time Oscar winner whose riveting performances transformed acting from a remote craft to a naturalistic art form, has died, the Associated Press announced today. He was 80. An actor's actor whose skill was envied by generations of...

Part I -- An American hero -- and antihero Beyond anything else, Marlon Brando is the towering original who came out of the Midwest 58 years ago and electrified Broadway and then Hollywood with the visceral excitement and veracity of his acting. He...