Sergio Leone: Last News

Joe Leydon Film Critic If Sergio Leone had ever signed on to make one of those ‘70s Blaxploitation oaters that once provided steady employment for Fred Williamson, it likely would have looked and sounded much like “Outlaw Posse,” a wildly uneven but cumulatively entertaining shoot-‘em-up that finds Mario Van Peebles doing triple duty as director, screenwriter and star. Quadruple duty, actually, if you count his credit as an executive producer.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian cinema is in the spotlight at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles where the screening series “Ennio Morricone: Essential Scores from a Movie Maestro,” programmed in partnership with Cinecittà, is currently playing to sold-out audiences. The Oct. 6-Nov.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Giuliano Montaldo, the prolific Italian director, actor and film industry executive, whose works comprise powerful political drama “Sacco and Vanzetti” about the Massachusetts trial and execution in 1927 of accused Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, has died at his home in Rome. He was 93.

Pirates of the Caribbean and Men In Black, has died at the age of 77.A family spokesperson confirmed the actor’s passing yesterday (May 31) and confirmed that he died in a Los Angeles hospital of natural causes.He had a successful acting career that spanned over six decades, kicking off with the 1971 thriller Duck, You Sucker – where he worked with renowned director Sergio Leone – and The Bridge in the Jungle, which starred John Huston.He achieved a Screen Actors Guild card for his appearance in the 1979 comedy classic The In-Laws, and also appeared in Huston’s 1984 drama Under the Volcano. He went on to play several characters in the NBC hit series The A-Team.Sunday mood, a lot of great things unfolding pic.twitter.com/1f96oyEbYa— Sergio Calderon (@mrsergecalderon) September 17, 2017He famously played the ‘head on a stick’ held by an alien in the 1997 movie, Men in Black, however, one of his best-known roles was as Captain Vallenueva, starring alongside Johnny Depp and Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards in 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End.Calderón’s other appearances include horror film The Ruins, comedy sequel Little Fockers and the Pamela Adlon series, Better Things.

Clint Eastwood never quits.

,  and  and more has died. He was 77.A rep for Calderón confirmed the sad news Wednesday, telling ET, that the actor was surrounded by family at the time.«We can confirm that Sergio passed away this morning,» his rep shared.

Prolific actor and director Clint Eastwood was born on this day, May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California.  He and his family moved a number of times before settling in Piedmont, California, reports Britannica. Eastwood was drafted during the Korean War and stationed in California — and upon his discharge from the Army in 1953, Eastwood moved to Hollywood.

Over the course of 144 minutes, Philip Yung’s true-crime drama Where the Wind Blows covers an awful lot of ground. An epic in the style Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in New York, it pairs Asian superstars Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok in a story spanning several decades of police corruption in Hong Kong during its time as a British colony. The detail is sometimes dense, but the tone turns playful and refreshingly light at times, and there’s even a memorable musical routine for “The God of Dance” Kwok.

Nicolas Cage is learning to be a girl dad, and he's thrilled about it!While on the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting his new Western drama,, Cage spoke to ET's Rachel Smith and opened up about life as a new father. He and wife Riko Shibata welcomed their first child together earlier this month, August Francesca Coppola Cage, and the new father's relearning that sleep's going to be hard to come by as a new dad.«Well, I actually had about five hours sleep and total over five days,» he said. «So I was getting one hour a night.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Francesco Zippel’s Sergio Leone doc, which premieres on Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, is the first portrait of the Italian master made with full support of his children Raffaella and Andrea. Titled “Sergio Leone: The Man Who Invented America,” the high-profile doc is premiering in the Venice Classics section for docs on cinema. It features an impressive list of voices holding forth on what makes Leone special for them. Among these are: Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Giuseppe Tornatore, Frank Miller, Darren Aronofsky, Damien Chazelle and Robert De Niro (see clip). But aside from Leone’s visionary talent as a director what emerges is that as his career escalated from the so-called “Dollars Trilogy” to “Once Upon a Time in the West” through to his final masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in America,” Leone’s life was steeped in two inextricably linked passions: film and family. 

Rome’s historic Cinecittà Studios on Monday afternoon (Aug. 1) and was extinguished by three teams of firefighters. The fire broke out in the area where a set depicting renaissance Florence was housed and which was being decommissioned, destroying parts of it.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentSince Cinecittà Studios was founded in 1937, the sprawling facilities have driven the golden age of Cinema Italiano.The famed city of cinema has also, albeit intermittently, been a magnet for international productions and endured wild fluctuations in the country’s political climate, before recently reemerging as a new frontier for the country’s film and TV industry.Located in the heart of the Mediterranean basin, a short ride from the center of Rome and its airports, Italy’s top production hub has to date, hosted more than 3,000 films that have earned 53 Oscars.During the period following World War II, the studios forged close ties to Hollywood, which helped the Italian industry gain its international standing. The myriad Italian pics made at the studios range from Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8½” (1963) to Nanni Moretti’s “Sogni D’Oro” (1981), Sergio Leone’s epic “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), Giuseppe Tornatore’s “The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean” (1998) Paolo Sorrentino’s “Il Divo” (2008) and, more recently, his TV series “The New Pope” in 2019.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn the Italian town of Vejano, local hunters gather to share stories rich enough to inspire movies. Over the past decade, filmmakers Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis have been dutifully documenting these sessions — some fact-based, others blurring the lines of reality — translating them to screen via films that entertain, while also testing what audiences might believe.

Jane Campion had a few choice letters in response to Sam Elliott’s criticism of her film "The Power of the Dog" during the DGA Awards Saturday night. The director, who was asked for her response about the actor’s shocking comments, refused to hold back. "I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H," the 67-year-old told Variety before the ceremony.

The Power Of The Dog, labelling him “sexist”.Last month, the A Star Is Born actor took aim at the “allusions to homosexuality” in the Netflix film, as well as an LA Times article that talked about the “evisceration of the American myth”, and called the film “a piece of shit”.The Western film follows Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, a sexually repressed ranch owner, and his fraught relationship with his brother (Jesse Plemons), his brother’s new wife (Kirsten Dunst) and her son (Kodi Smit-McPhee).During Elliott’s interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, the host noted that homosexuality is “what the movie’s about”, the actor going on to call Campion “a brilliant director”.However, Elliott then added: “What the fuck does this woman from down there [New Zealand] know about the American west? Why the fuck did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana? And say this is the way it was? That fucking rubbed me the wrong way.”Responding to Elliott’s criticism, Campion told Variety: “I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor.

After Sam Elliott made headlines over his controversial comments about the Oscar-nominated The Power of the Dog, the film’s creative team swiftly came to the project’s defense.

Jane Campion is defending her movie.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorDirector Jane Campion didn’t hold back Saturday night at the DGA Awards when asked for her response to caustic and homophobic comments that veteran actor Sam Elliott made recently about Campion’s Oscar contender “The Power of the Dog.”“I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor,” Campion told Variety before the ceremony. “The West is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range.

Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.

The talent and influence of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who died in 2020 aged 91, is undeniable. Synonymous with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and the instantly-recognizable “wah-wah-wow” theme-tune to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” the extent of his output was phenomenal at over 500 film scores.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentViacomCBS International Studios and Italy’s Leone Film Group have forged a strategic partnership by signing a long-term agreement to co-produce a wide range of Italian content for the global market. This potentially milestone pact between VIS and Leone — the prominent indie production and distribution shingle owned and operated by late master director Sergio Leone’s children Raffaella and Andrea — will create “vast opportunities for the development and creation of Italian language content, original, scripted, and unscripted formats,” the companies said in a joint statement.“As part of its commitment to investing in quality content as a strategic lever to generate value for all platforms globally,