An Appreciation: Last News

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticPeter Scolari, who died Friday at 66, had a long and decorated acting career, with starring roles in “Bosom Buddies” and “Newhart.” But a late triumph — and the performance for which, for many, he’ll be most widely remembered — was his Emmy-winning turn on HBO’s “Girls.” As Tad, Hannah Horvath’s father, Scolari brought rare sensitivity and care to a tricky character who evolved radically through the show’s run.

Guy Lodge Film Critic The list of Oscar-winning directors for short films who have gone on to major careers in the feature-length realm is shorter than you might imagine. Andrea Arnold, Martin McDonagh and Claude Berri achieved arthouse success; David Frankel made multiplex hits like “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Marley & Me.” But perhaps only Taylor Hackford, a winner in 1979 for an affecting little mockumentary titled “Teenage Father,” became a full-scale Hollywood brand — a name associated with a certain temperature of sleek studio gloss and versatile genre smarts.

Alan K. Rode The death of actress-activist Marsha Hunt this week is a historical watershed and a personal loss. Marsha was one of the last living actors who began her movie career during the Great Depression in 1935. She became part of a now vanished Hollywood, initially at Paramount then at MGM, that bound contracted talent to studios with artists having little to no say over their choice of roles and careers. Nevertheless, she thrived in the studio system by becoming somewhat less than a genuine movie star and more of a consummate professional actress.   Marsha’s career was derailed by the Blacklist, a perfidious period of American history that has been endlessly chronicled and misunderstood. Never a Communist or radical, she was a forthright liberal who refused to accept her voice being marginalized by the endemic sexism and politics of the period. Marsha was the final survivor of the Committee of the First Amendment, an action group of film actors, directors and writers founded by screenwriter Philip Dunne, actress Myrna Loy, and directors John Huston and William Wyler. Members of the group flew to Washington D.C. on October 27, 1947 to protest the HUAC hearings investigating so-called subversive Communist influence in the motion picture industry. From a public relations perspective, the group’s involvement backfired and many people in the group subsequently had to seek political cover. After the pamphlet “Red Channels” was published in June 1950, naming Marsha and 150 other artists, journalists and writers by falsely portraying them as subversives who were manipulating the entertainment system, she had a great deal of trouble finding work in Hollywood.

Steven Gaydos Executive VP of ContentOn the release of what was to be the late Monte Hellman’s final feature film in 2011, critic Steve Erickson noted “Monte Hellman is the ultimate outlaw filmmaker.”A decade earlier, filmmaker-critic Kent Jones wrote that “anything written in America about Monte Hellman … cinema’s most under-appreciated great director … must be a defense.”Decades before Jones’ astute assessment, film critic David Thomson had noted, “No system could digest the willful arbitrariness of Monte Hellman’s best films,” which is probably as clear an explanation of why Hellman made only one Hollywood Studio film in a directing career that stretched from 1959 to 2011 and included stints as Jack Nicholson’s filmmaking

Holly Gleason Like a secret handshake, you can still measure the rock and Midwestern bonafides of people, especially those who grew up in Ohio and surrounding states in the ‘70s and ‘80s by whether they knew the Michael Stanley Band. In Cleveland, especially, Stanley was an artist who felt every bit as important as Detroit’s Bob Seger, Indiana’s John Mellencamp and even Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen, who also captured working class lives, loves and disappointments with an authenticity as gritty as it was charged.