John Ford: Last News

IATSE Studio Mechanics Local 52 in New York has entered into a settlement agreement with James Harker, a nonunion production worker, in which the union has agreed that it will not discriminate against nonunion workers seeking jobs in the film and TV industry.

Star Wars Outlaws is the hotly anticipated open-world game fans of the franchise have been begging for for years, and its creative director has revealed his biggest inspiration for the game came from Sony’s Ghost of Tsushima.In an interview with GamesRadar+, creative director Julian Gerighty said, “It’s super interesting because my biggest reference was Ghost of Tsushima, which is more on the Kurosawa side of inspiration than the Western, the John Ford side of the inspiration for George Lucas.”Star Wars is clearly inspired by Westerns, and Westerns themselves are often inspired by Samurai movies and vice versa, so it’s interesting to see how all these references will be at play within Star Wars Outlaws. Akira Kurosawa, a filmmaker who inspired the aesthetic of Ghost of Tsushima, even studied the work of John Ford.“Red Dead Redemption is phenomenal, [because it treats] the world as a world – not as a checklist of activities that are repeated often,” said Gerighty.

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with an expansive retrospective titled The Lady with the Torch, mounted in collaboration with the studio’s parent company, Sony. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival is set to celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with a retrospective featuring classic titles spawned by the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s. The Locarno retro, titled “The Lady With the Torch –– The Centenary of Columbia Pictures,” is being curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, co-director of Italy’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, which is dedicated to cinematic treasures of the past and organized in partnership with Switzerland’s Cinémathèque Suisse.

Martin Scorsese was presented with the Berlin Film Festival’s Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement on Tuesday evening, with old friend German director Wim Wenders paying a warm personal tribute to the director.

Nick Holdsworth There is a certain inevitability about a film inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel “Steppenwolf,” first published in German in 1927, and two famous Westerns of the 1950s — John Ford’s “The Searchers,” and Howard Hawks’ “Red River.” In acclaimed Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s latest film — also called “Steppenwolf” — two characters who are essentially loners existing outside of the usual moral boundaries of the world come together united in a common task: to save a small boy who has gone missing. The world premiere of “Steppenwolf” is slated for International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition.

Kathy A. McDonald Utah is one of Hollywood’s real-world backlots. The scenic state’s close relationship with moviemakers began 100 years ago during the silent film era when cowboy star Tom Mix shot “The Deadwood Coach” in Southern Utah, and continues today through projects from the likes of multi-hyphenate Kevin Costner.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Roberto Benigni, whose film “Life Is Beautiful” won three Oscars in 1999, has come out of the woodwork to support Matteo Garrone’s Golden Globe-nominated “Io Capitano,” which is Italy’s current Oscar candidate for best international feature film. The revered yet reclusive Italian actor/director, whose most recent big screen role is playing Geppetto in Matteo Garrone’s hit 2019 live-action adaptation of “Pinocchio,” is clearly a big fan of “Io Capitano” (the title translates to “Me Captain”). The movie narrates the Homeric journey of two young African men, Seydou and Moussa, who decide to leave Dakar to reach Europe.

David Lynch had some hesitations about acting in Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans. However, once he took on the role of John Ford, he had one simple request — a bag of Cheetos.

Sometimes you read a quote and think that it can’t possibly be real. You check the source, make sure it’s not The Onion, and if you’re lucky, then you’ve found something so amazing, you just have to share it with the world.

Naman Ramachandran Michael Boyd, theater director and former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has died of cancer. He was 68. His family said in a statement issued via the RSC: “Theater director Michael Boyd has died from cancer.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent O2 Play, the distribution-sales arm of Brazil’s O2 Filmes group, co-owned by “City of God” director Fernando Meirelles, has boarded “Broken” (“Partido”), which is co-directed by Oscar-nominated “City of God” DP César Charlone. O2 Play has acquired Brazilian and world sales rights to the doc feature. O2 Play founder Igor Kupstas will introduce “Broken” to buyers at Locarno Pro, which runs Aug.3-9. Charlone, also “The Two Popes” DP and director of “3%,” South America’s first Netflix series, has directed alongside Sebastián Bednarik (“Maracaná,” “Sangre de Campeones”) and Joaquim Castro (“Máquina do Desejo – 60 Anos do Teatro Oficina”).

McKinley Franklin editor Finis Dean Smith, a stuntman regular in John Wayne Westerns who turned to Hollywood after becoming an Olympic gold medalist, died Saturday. He was 91.  Smith was born in Breckenridge, Texas and began his athletic career competing in track and field competitions, earning All-American status in the 100-meter dash in 1952. He went on to win varying athletic championships, culminating in his inclusion on Team U.S.A. as a member of the 4×100-meter relay team at the Helsinki Olympics, where he would win the gold medal. Following his graduation from University of Texas at Austin, Smith would play for the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers for a few years ahead of his career in the entertainment industry. 

The great Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar is a rabid fan of the western genre but until now had never made one, and also has only dabbled in directing any english language film with the exception of the 2020 short, The Human Voice that starred Tilda Swinton. His latest movie is also a short, just 31 minutes, but he finally got to do his western in english, and it is a nice homage to the form and those great directors who made it that way, one it is safe to say could only have come from this master of cinema, and a true cineaste himself. Almodovar brought the finished product to its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival today and, if flattered by the attention, the ghosts of John Ford, Howard Hawks, John Sturges, Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh , and Sam Peckinpah may be surprised at the twist in Strange Way Of Life that this 73 year old fanboy has given it.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Republic Pictures, an historic movie label founded in 1935 and shuttered in 1967, has been revived by parent company Paramount Global. The banner will function as an acquisitions play, releasing titles acquired by Paramount Global Content Distribution. “We’ve chosen to revitalize the Republic banner given its storied history of delivering popular movies to a global audience, ” said Dan Cohen, Paramount chief content licensing officer and newly-named president of Republic Pictures. “With our best-in-class global distribution teams working to identify the best homes around the world, we aim to continue that legacy by offering audiences great entertainment across all genres.”

As a producer, Mirisch aggressively recruited top filmmakers such as Billy Wilder and Norman Jewison, then gave them freedom to craft the movies as they saw fit.“We offered these filmmakers what they needed,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1983. “Billy could call me up and say, `I’d next like to do a picture about so-and-so’ — and that’s all we’d need to know.

With two days to go until Christmas, I can’t think of a better gift for film lovers or those with an interest in iconic forces in the entertainment industry than the 2022 autobiography My Place in the Sun, which chronicles the life of George Stevens Jr — now 90 and still going strong in a remarkable career that has traversed the highest corridors of Hollywood to Washington, D.C.

Near the beginning of Sean Egan’s recently-published piece in the U.K. publication The Critic, are the following assertions: “new Scorsese films are routinely an hour too long…his directorial talent has never been as great as occasional masterpieces like Goodfellas (1990) tricked us into believing it was.”

JUST IN: The Duke John Wayne suffered from ill health"I did not admire him. But he seduced me mercilessly. 'I promise you I will do the best job I possibly can,' he said.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic No director has done more to deconstruct the myth of the suburban American family than Steven Spielberg. Dissertations have been written and documentaries made on the subject. And now, at the spry young age of 75, Spielberg himself weighs in on where his preoccupations come from in “The Fabelmans,” a personal account of his upbringing that feels like listening to two and a half hours’ worth of well-polished cocktail-party anecdotes, only better, since he’s gone to the trouble of staging them all for our benefit. Spielberg’s a born storyteller, and these are arguably his most precious stories. From the first movie he saw (“The Greatest Show on Earth”) to memories of meeting filmmaker John Ford on the Paramount lot, this endearing, broadly appealing account of how Spielberg was smitten by the medium — and why the prodigy nearly abandoned picture-making before his career even started — holds the keys to so much of the master’s filmography. More similar to Woody Allen’s autobiographical “Radio Days” than it is to European art films such as “The 400 Blows” and “Amistad” (the more highbrow models other directors typically point to when re-creating their childhoods), “The Fabelmans” invites audiences into the home and headspace of the world’s most beloved living director, an oddly sanitized zone where even the trauma — which includes anti-Semitism, financial disadvantage and divorce — seems to go better with fresh-buttered popcorn.

John Wayne classics such as The Searchers and Stagecoach saw his health deteriorating terribly in the early 1970s. After breaking a hip, Ford had to get used to a wheelchair and was moved from his Bel Air home to Palm Desert to be treated for cancer. In October 1972, the Screen Directors Guild paid tribute to him and in March the following year, the American Film Institute honoured the director with a Lifetime Achievement Award.