“If all of the people who hate ‘Ishtar’ had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.” So said Elaine May in 2006, two decades after the Warren Beatty-Dustin Hoffman comedy she wrote and directed had become synonymous with “extravagant flop.” (The film grossed $14.4 million on a $55 million budget.)

Up until May 22, 1987 (the day it opened in theaters, 25 years ago), advance buzz on “Ishtar” was contentious; it was either a brilliant comic masterpiece or a textbook case of overreach on the part of two giant Hollywood egos to whom no one could say, “No.” After the film’s release… same thing. To this day, the movie is roundly mocked for its alleged awfulness (often by people who’ve never seen it), while a passionate cult of fans insists it’s a lost work of misunderstood genius that never got its proper due from critics or moviegoers.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle….

“The Movie of ‘Tomorrow,’” quipped the posters for the 1982 film version of “Annie.” As it turned out, the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical, which premiered 30 years ago this week (on May 17, 1982), may indeed have been ahead of its time….

“The Thomas Crown Affair” was one of the most stylish movies of the 1960s — stylish for the icy cool of Steve McQueen as the millionaire who robs banks for kicks; for the similarly frosty cool of Faye Dunaway as the investigator who plays an erotic game of cat-and-mouse with him; for the costumes of Theadora Van Runkle, who helped make Dunaway a fashion trendsetter in “Bonnie and Clyde” and did the same for her here with no fewer than 29 haute-couture outfits; for the jazzy score of Michel Legrand, including the Oscar-winning ballad “The Windmills of Your Mind”; and for the camera trickery of director Norman Jewison, the first Hollywood filmmaker to shoot heist scenes and love scenes in split-screen.

(Source: news.oviefone.com)

Sure, Hollywood is fixated on the young, chasing teenage dollars, looking for the next fresh hotties, and sending stars over 25 to the glue factory get botoxed. And yet, this summer, some of the most eagerly anticipated movies are coming from directors old enough to collect Social Security. There’s Ridley Scott, behind this year’s most anticipated sci-fi epic, “Prometheus;” there’s Woody Allen, with another comedy/travelogue, “To Rome With Love”; and there’s Oliver Stone, with all-star crime thriller “Savages.” Not bad for directors who are 74, 76, and 65, respectively….

Tough choice this weekend: You could go to the multiplex and catch such acclaimed new features as superhero epic “The Avengers,” romantic comedy “Think Like a Man” or stop-motion animation gem “The Pirates! Band of Misfits.” Or, you could stay home and watch new episodes of brainy period drama “Mad Men” or the sprawling fantasy “Game of Thrones.”

But many people will probably wait until those movies come out on Netflix and stream them at home, or DVR those series and then watch them in blocks. At that point, with the viewing experience digitized, flattened, squeezed, shrunk, re-shaped, and rescheduled for our convenience, the distinction between whether the story began as a movie or TV show won’t matter anymore.

That’s why it’s quaint to read an article like James Wolcott’s in the recent “television issue” of Vanity Fair magazine, arguing for TV’s supremacy over movies, or a rebuttal like Mark Olsen’s, in the Los Angeles Times, insisting that movies still rule. The truth is, while each has its advantages, the digital tsunami threatens to wash those differences away, to the point where all that remains are our endless demand for visual storytelling and an industry rushing to meet it….

One thing’s for sure: The frosting on her birthday cake will be like buttah.

As Barbra Streisand turns 70 on Tuesday, you’d think her reputation would be secure. She’s conquered every medium, she’s one of only a dozen or so members of the EGOT club (people who’ve won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), and she’s one of the most popular and best-selling singers of all time. Still, despite her two Oscars, her Hollywood career has never gotten its due….

What’s Jack Nicholson’s secret? Maybe it’s the eyebrows, hovering like ironic quotation marks over every line reading. Maybe it’s the hooded eyes, which hold the threat of danger or the promise of joviality — you’re never sure which. Same with that sharklike grin. Or maybe it’s the voice, which has evolved over the years from a thin sneer to a deep rumble, but is always precisely calibrated to provoke a reaction. Put them all together, and they say: “I am a man to be reckoned with. Ignore me at your peril.”

Nicholson, who turns 75 on April 22, is often criticized for relying on his bag of tricks, for just showing up and doing Jack Nicholson (though indeed, he often seems to have been hired precisely for that purpose). But he’s also capable of burrowing deep into a character, finding his wounded heart, and revealing the ugly truth without fear or vanity. Moviegoers don’t always love the subtler Nicholson as much as the broader-played rabble rouser, but both have made him an institution, one of the most Oscar-lauded actors alive (he has three trophies, the same as sometime co-star Meryl Streep, and 12 nominations, more than anyone but Streep).

It’s easy to forget that Jack wasn’t always Jack, that he was nearly 20 films into a career marked by low-budget genre pictures before he finally clicked with 1969’s “Easy Rider,” or that he spent a decade doing some of his best work playing seething anti-heroes before his string of unforgettable, more cartoonish performances (beginning with 1980’s “The Shining”) that have bedazzled younger Nicholson fans. Or that alongside his classic turns have been a fair number of experimental performances or parts done as favors to old friends that were often fascinating failures or outright stinkers.

For the last 15 years, Nicholson has worked only when he felt like it, which has been about once every couple of years. Still, he’s amassed a catalogue of 62 films going back more than half a century, a roster that’s full of landmarks, trifles, noble failures, and underrated gems. He’s almost always provocative and never dull. Here, then, are Nicholson’s movie roles, rated from best to worst.

For some reason, Robert Mitchum’s Max Cady in the original “Cape Fear” lands at only No. 28 on the AFI’s list of the top 50 on-screen villains of all time. (That’s just one notch above Mitchum’s Rev. Harry Powell in “Night of the Hunter,” a similarly terrifying killer, the one with “L-O-V-E” and “H-A-T-E” tattooed on his knuckles.) Really, Mitchum’s Cady ought to be much higher up. After all, there are plenty of stalkers and murderers on the list, but how many also imbue their characters with such a perverse air of sexual menace?…

On paper, it’s a tough sell: a black-and-white movie set in one room, with an all-male (and all-white) cast, with no action except for a heated war of words among a dozen guys. Indeed, “12 Angry Men” — which opened 55 years ago last week (April 13, 1957) — with its shoestring budget, was a financial flop, and while it was nominated for three Oscars (including Best Picture), it lost them all to the splashier, more colorful, wide-screen epic “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Yet today, “12 Angry Men” is considered a classic, not just for its riveting script and top-notch acting, but also for how it made a virtue of its stagy limitations….