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Bill Maher instinctively knows what doom awaits Democrats on Tuesday’s Election Day, as polling indicates an arrow pointing down for Big Blue,

So despite a few jokes at the top of the show, he spent the bulk of Friday’s Real Time trying to figure out how things went so wrong for an administration that came into office with the most votes in history and control of the legislative branch.

This week’s panel discussion included senior political correspondent for The New York Times and author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Maggie Haberman, and The Washington Post columnist and host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Gps, Fareed Zakaria.

Neither of the guests disagreed with Maher’s rather gloomy assessment of Democrat prospects.

Maher asked why the Supreme Court throwing abortion back to the states had so little impact on voter sentiment.

If Steven Spielberg had his way in 1974, he would've left "Jaws" during preproduction and signed on to direct the prohibition-era comedy "Lucky Lady." If you're asking, "What the heck was 'Lucky Lady'," well, we'll get to that.

Let's skip back a year to 1973. Spielberg had just completed "The Sugarland Express" for producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, and was hearing rumblings about one of the duo's latest acquisitions: a soon-to-be-published novel titled "Jaws" by Peter Benchley. Spielberg wanted the gig, but Zanuck and Brown had already assigned it to Dick Richards on the strength of his critically acclaimed directorial debut, "The Culpepper...

The post Steven Spielberg Worried Jaws Would Sink His Young Career appeared first on /Film.

Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1966/ 1.85:1 / 73 min.

Starring John Carradine, Chuck Courtney, Virginia Christine

Cinematography by Lothrop B. Worth

Directed by William Beaudine

William Beaudine, the human assembly line behind a warehouse full of movies that included Voodoo Man and Bowery Buckeroos, hauls John Carradine onto an over-lit and under-budget stage for another shot at the Count in Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula.

In 1966 Beaudine was very near the end of his career but Carradine reigned for three more decades, giving him ample time for reflection: “I have worked in a dozen of the greatest, and I have worked in a dozen of the worst. I only regret Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula. Otherwise, I regret nothing.”

Shot in eight days, producer Carroll Case and writer Carl K. Hittleman conceived the title as part of a matched set for the drive-in crowd – both Billy and Jesse James...

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe - The Nice Guys Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2 writer and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3 director, Shane Black, sees Farewell, My Lovely, directed by Dick Richards, starring Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling, Arthur Penn's Night Moves with Gene Hackman and Alan J. Pakula's Klute, starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, as inspiration for his Nice Guys, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe dressed by Kym Barrett. Crowe finds Stanley Kubrick's The Killing "still works today" and remarks how Quentin Tarantino uses its "fractured timeline" so well. Gosling grew up with Arthur Lubin's Hold That Ghost and Charles Barton's Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein and deems Fred Dekker's The Monster Squad, co-written by Black, worth quoting.

Ryan Gosling: "I grew up on Abbott and Costello movies." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Producer Joel Silver,...

Take a look at the roots of American campaign image consciousness, and the then-new techniques of cinéma vérité to bring a new 'reality' for film documentaries. Four groundbreaking films cover the Kennedy-Humphrey presidential primary, and put us in the Oval Office for a showdown against Alabama governor George Wallace. The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew & Associates Blu-ray Primary, Adventures on the New Frontier, Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, Faces of November The Criterion Collection 808 1960 -1964 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 53, 52, 53, 12 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 26, 2016 / 39.95 Starring John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Drew, Hubert H. Humphrey, McGeorge Bundy, John Kenneth Galbraith, Richard Goodwin, Albert Gore Sr., Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Pierre Salinger, Haile Selassie, John Steinbeck, George Wallace, Vivian Malone, Burke Marshall, Nicholas Katzenbach, John Dore, Jack Greenberg; Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy Jr., Caroline Kennedy, Peter Lawford. Cinematography Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker,...

“The President’S Reality Show”

By Raymond Benson

Robert Drew was a pioneer who changed the way we think about the documentary film. As first a writer/editor at Life Magazine in the 1950s, and then the head of a unit that produced short documentaries for Time Inc., Drew knew how to tell a story visually. When he formed his own company, Robert Drew & Associates, he was the guiding force for other talented (and later, more well-known) filmmakers such as D. A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pop), Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter), and Richard Leacock, among others. Together they invented a novel way to present a documentary film, something historians coined “direct cinema.”

Documentaries had previously been scripted, usually shot to order, and more often than not, were textbook dull. Drew and his colleagues developed the you-are-there style of following subjects around as they did their business,...

Oldest person in movies? (Photo: Manoel de Oliveira) Following the recent passing of 1931 Dracula actress Carla Laemmle at age 104, there is one less movie centenarian still around. So, in mid-June 2014, who is the oldest person in movies? Manoel de Oliveira Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira will turn 106 next December 11; he’s surely the oldest person — at least the oldest well-known person — in movies today. De Oliveira’s film credits include the autobiographical docudrama Memories and Confessions / Visita ou Memórias e Confissões (1982), with de Oliveira as himself, and reportedly to be screened publicly only after his death; The Cannibals / Os Canibais (1988); The Convent / O Convento (1995); Porto of My Childhood / Porto da Minha Infância (2001); The Fifth Empire / O Quinto Império - Ontem Como Hoje (2004); and, currently in production, O Velho do Restelo ("The Old Man of Restelo"). Among the international stars who have been directed by de Oliveira are Catherine Deneuve, Pilar López de Ayala,...

The Sunday Telegraph's John Preston has set us a riddle. He tells how a house clearance turned up a box of old photographs in which a Fleet Street showbiz writer, Dick Richards, was pictured with a string of 1950s Hollywood stars.

There is Dick discussing a script with Marilyn Monroe, shooting the breeze with Burt Lancaster, eating ice cream with Ginger Rogers and hanging out with Frank Sinatra.

Others show him with Joan Crawford, Charlie Chaplin, David Niven, Walter Pidgeon, Angela Lansbury, Lassie and Roy Rogers with his horse Trigger.

The article reproduces a publicity poster in which Richards is billed as "the liveliest film writer" in the Sunday Pictorial.

But Preston says we know "frustratingly little" about him. I don't recall him and I thought Lionel Crane, or Ralph Champion (or both), were the Hollywood correspondents for the Sunday Pic.

I have discovered, on a site called Whirligig, that...