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Kevin Kline and Jon Tenney need to make room on the stage for Laura Linney as she joins the cast of MGM+’s upcoming eight-episode series American Classic. Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin (The Prom, Slings and Arrows) co-created American Classic, with Hoffman directing the series focusing on a narcissistic Broadway star looking to bring his old stomping grounds back to form.

Here’s an official description of American Classic courtesy of MGM+:

“American Classic centers on Broadway star and notorious narcissist Richard Bean, played by Kline, who suffers a spectacular public meltdown and returns to his hometown and the family-run theater where he first became aware of his own brilliance. When he arrives, he is shocked to discover that his father, the former artistic director, has lost a step and that the once-respected theater, now run by his brother Jon (Tenney), played by Tenney, and his wife Kristen (Linney), has become,...

William Shakespeare once said, “All the world’s a stage,” but for Kevin Kline, the stage is a way of life, and his love for theater is vast. MGM+ announced today an eight-episode series order for American Classic, a half-hour comedy series from o-creators Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin (The Prom, Slings and Arrows). American Classic stars Kevin Sline as Richard Bean and Jon Tenney as Jon Bean. Hoffman directs the series, with production kicking into high gear later this year in New Jersey.

Here’s an official description of American Classic courtesy of MGM+:

“American Classic centers on Broadway star and notorious narcissist Richard Bean, played by Kline, who suffers a spectacular public meltdown and returns to his hometown and the family-run theater where he first became aware of his own brilliance. When he arrives, he is shocked to discover that his father, the former artistic director, has...

Two comedies. Two difficult productions. One flat-out classic. The stories of The Producers and Fierce Creatures are explored in this episode.

When it comes to making your feature directorial debut, The Producers isn’t a bad way to get off the mark! But Mel Brooks’ now much-loved comedy faced a bumpy path to the screen, not least the struggle to write it in the first place. That, and the kind of subject matter that Hollywood studios didn’t have much desire to go near.

Plus, it turned out that the fate of the film owed a bit of a debt to Peter Sellers.

After the success of A Fish Called Wanda meanwhile, the question was asked: would John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin and Kevin Kline come back for a sequel? Well, not quite: and despite Fierce Creatures being billed as an ‘equal not a sequel’, the comedy had a very,...

While two of Monty Python’s most famous former members, Eric Idle and John Cleese, are embroiled in a very public feud, it wasn’t always this way. In recent weeks, Idle has been vocal about how he feels the Monty Python estate is being handled, with him targeting Terry Gilliam and his daughter, Holly, who manages the rights, directly. John Cleese jumped to their aid, writing on X (perhaps in a tongue-in-cheek way) that (referring to Idle) “we always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge.”

Now, this might need to be taken with a grain of salt, as Cleese has a notoriously dry wit. Let’s not forget that he eulogized his best friend, Graham Chapman, by saying, “Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard! I hope he fries.” That was lovingly tongue-in-cheek, although Idle and Cleese always...

On the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel, we will be posting one full movie every other day throughout the week, giving viewers the chance to watch them entirely free of charge. The Free Movie of the Day we have for you today is the dark comedy All at Sea, starring Brian Cox. You can watch it over on the YouTube channel linked above, or you can just watch it in the embed at the top of this article.

Directed by Robert Young from a screenplay by Hugh Janes, All at Sea has the following synopsis: Two retired sailors, Wally and Skipper, are old workmates and best friends for 40 years now living at an old folks’ home in Norway. One day, Wally finds Skipper dead and he wants a burial at sea, the old-fashioned way, as he promised him. Wally isn’t going to let the fact that he doesn’t have a boat,...

Comedian Jonah Ray discusses his favorite year in cinema (1994) with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Airport (1970)

Airport 1975 (1975)

Airport ’77 (1977)

Airplane! (1980)

Basket Case (1982)

Destroy All Neighbors (Tbd)

Satanic Hispanics (2022)

Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022)

Black Christmas (1974) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s franchise power rankings

Tales From The Crypt (1972)

Donnie Darko (2001)

Pooka! (2018)

Pooka Lives! (2020)

Harvey (1950) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

Ed Wood (1994)

Black Dynamite (2009)

Bride Of The Monster (1955) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s review

Glen Or Glenda (1953)

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Frankenweenie (2012)

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Dumb And Dumber (1994)

Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery (1997)

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)

The Mask (1994)

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

Scream (1996)

Evil Laugh (1986)

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Clerks (1994)

The Search For One-Eye Jimmy (1994)

Cabin Boy (1994)

Scary Movie 2 (2001)

Scary Movie 4...

The stars of the 1988 comedy movie A Fish Called Wanda have reunited in a new photo posted online of Jamie Lee Curtis and John Cleese. On her personal Twitter account, Curtis posted an image of herself standing alongside Cleese along with an original image of the two of them together in the classic movie. "Something's fishy here.... oh right, We Are Old! Wanderful lunch with John Cleese," Curtis writes in the caption, adding the hash tag #notdeadyet. The two both look great and even better together, and you can take a look at the amusing photo in the tweet below.

Something’s fishy here.... oh right, We Are Old! Wanderful lunch with @JohnCleese . #notdeadyetpic.twitter.com/gzDGDvHcIA

— Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) March 12, 2020

A Fish Called Wanda was written by John Cleese and was the final movie of director Charles Chrichton. The heist movie follows a gang of diamond thieves who...

If one erases the centuries long horrible treatment of animals, circuses were a lot of fun; a place for families to go and see acrobats and feats of derring-do and munch really stale boxed popcorn. Now we’re left with Cirque De Soleil, in which only the humans die trying to entertain us. You could skip all that though and just head to the Vampire Circus (1972), where the performers will gladly strip you of your coin and your life. It’s a Hammer event, and those are always worth a peek behind the tent.

Released by Twentieth Century Fox stateside in October, Vampire Circus received middling reviews at best; however, modern critics have cited it as one of Hammer’s better latter day efforts – an opinion I’m more than happy to share.

But first, a story. It’s the mid 1800’s, and a little village in Eastern Europe has...

Back in 2018, Jaime Lee Curtis proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that her classic Scream Queen character, Laurie Strode, ain't nothin' to f*ck with - thanks to David Gordon Green's Halloween (2018). And now that Blumhouse and Green have recently started rolling cameras on the next film in the series, Halloween Kills, the Fierce Creatures and True…...

With Together Again, Jesse Hassenger looks at actors and directors who have worked together on at least three films, analyzing the nature of their collaborations.

Among the countless contributions Roger Ebert made to film criticism, the Kevin Kline Mustache Principle may not rank highest, but it has provided a lasting and extremely helpful lens for recognizing one actor’s intentions. Put simply: In movies where accomplished stage and film performer Kevin Kline sports some kind of facial hair, he signals that he is playing comedy. In movies where he is clean-shaven, he is usually serious. It’s not iron clad, but even the exceptions tend to prove the rule: When Kline appears clean-shaven in the comedies Fierce Creatures and Wild Wild West, he balances the scales by taking on dual roles in both movies, allowing him to have his beard and shave it, too.

The Kevin Kline Mustache Principle is...

Margaret here to break it to you that British comedy icon John Cleese is done with the movies. So he claimed, anyway, at a promotional appearance for his new memoir, So Anyway..., at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

In answer to a fan who asked about upcoming film projects, he flippantly announced that at age 74 he is too near death to work on new movies. "I have only got five or six years left, and then I will be gone." Noting the upside that this exempts him from worry about Isis or Ebola, he quips: "Most of the best people are dead - I will be in excellent company having a wonderful time." Perhaps he's not serious about quitting film; many of his showbiz peers have cried retirement only to be back at work almost immediately. (Remember when Steven Soderbergh claimed to be retiring and then it turned out he has no idea what that means?...

John Cleese has said that he does not plan to make any more films and is looking forward to his death.

The actor spoke about his plans for the remaining years of his life while promoting his autobiography So Anyway...

When asked about the potential for follow-ups to A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures, he told The Mirror: "No, because it is too much like hard work.

"It is two-and-three-quarter years and I am too old for that process. If I started on it now I would die.

"I have only got five or six years left and I will be gone - I won't have to worry about Isis or Ebola, I am looking forward to it.

"Most of the best people are dead - I will be in excellent company, having a wonderful time."

He added that he has never been "huge friends" with his fellow Monty Python stars.

Australian-born director Fred Schepisi has a varied filmography, spanning ”Roxanne,” “Six Degrees of Separation” and “Fierce Creatures,” among other credits, but one of the steadiest through-lines in his work is a keen grasp of human imperfection. It’s interwoven into his latest effort as well, “Words and Pictures,” which stars Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche as New England prep school teachers — he’s a rakish if blocked writer and functional alcoholic, she’s a prickly abstract painter stricken with rheumatoid arthritis — at odds over which mode of expression can convey greater meaning. For ShockYa, Brent Simon had a chance to speak to Schepisi one-on-one this week, about his movie, language, the educational inspiration he [ Read More ]

The post Exclusive: Director Fred Schepisi Talks Words and Pictures, Next Projects appeared first on Shockya.com.

Over the last decade or so, a particular trend in Hollywood has arisen: taking a beloved British comedy and Americanizing it. It’s happened to Bedazzled, The Ladykillers and Last Holiday. In the cases of Bedazzled and Last Holiday, major roles were changed from male to female. All three films were updated and modernized to give a more “hip” take on the material. But the reviews were mixed at best. More recent British comedies are not immune to this trend either, as evidenced by the remake of Death at a Funeral.

Maybe there’s just something about British comedy that makes it difficult to be successfully Americanized. That’s why so many American versions of British sitcoms fail and shows like All in the Family, Sanford and Son and The Office are the exception, not the rule.

As a lifelong fan of British comedy films, there are some that I...

Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney. Australian actor-writer-director Bille Brown, who performed on Broadway and the West End and in the films Killer Elite, The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader and Fierce Creatures, died Sunday in a Brisbane hospital. He was 61 and had been battling bowel cancer. William “Bille” Brown began his career in the early 1970s at the Queensland Theater Company with Geoffrey Rush, among others. In 1976 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in productions at London’s Aldwych and Haymarket Theaters and with the Chichester Festival Theater and English National Opera. He had two further engagements with the RSC, from 1986–88 and 1994–96. He was an artist-in-residence at the State University of New York in 1982 and made his Broadway debut in 1986 in Michael Frayn’s Wild Honey with Ian McKellen. He returned to Australia to live permanently in 1996. His Australian film credits include The Dish,...

• Tim Robbins will star in and direct the dramedy Man Under, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Chloe Moretz on board to play members of a family who deal with the repercussions of a photograph of them getting displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Though he recently directed a couple episodes of HBO’s Treme, this will be Robbins’ first time helming a feature film since 1999′s Cradle Will Rock. Ann Cherkis penned the script. [Variety]

• Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans) has joined, and Benedict Cumberbatch (i.e. Benny Batch) is in talks to join, Absolutely Anything,...

Chicago – Though British author Neil Gaiman’s six-part, three-hour miniseries “Neverwhere” first aired in 1996, it feels like a relic from a much earlier period in television’s past. Before digital technology enabled small-screen dramas to appear visually indiscernible from major film productions, in-camera effects and handcrafted sets were the norm. It’s inspiring to observe just how much can be achieved on a shoestring budget.

In light of the film’s subsequent books and stage versions, including Lifeline Theatre’s successful 2010 adaptation, it’s clear that Gaiman’s witty adventure series has struck a chord with audiences around the world. Seen fifteen years after its initial release, the show holds up remarkably well. It utilizes the London Underground’s transit system as the jumping off point for its parallel fantasy world (known as “London Below”), with various creatures and lands inspired by actual locations. For example, the angel Islington (played...

Residents offering free and paid space have become a viable alternative for the packed conference.

The annual South by Southwest conference has become a networking treasure drove for technology insiders, a proving ground for ambitious startups, and a place to reunite with old friends (who, ironically enough, often live in the same city). Unfortunately, official hotels were booked up weeks ago and according to Hotels.com, there are zero hotels available within a 25 mile radius of the conference center.

There were 33,200 registrants for last year's interactive and film portion, and officials tell Fast Company that they expect a spike of 30-40% for Interactive this year. So, where does everyone stay? Crowdsourced housing websites, where residents offer up a free or paid space in their own home, have become an important alternative to procrastinators and last-minute conference crashers. (For SXSW attendees still looking for a place, we have a list of...

I was driving through Griffith Park, on my way to don my monkey puppet for the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, when I went past the filming for Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill. In it, he plays both the brother and annoying sister of the title. As I went past, I saw Mr. Sandler decked out in his requisite fat suit and wig, spazzing around on a soccer field. I was the scariest thing I saw all night.

As an actor, I always wonder why certain folks feel the need to play several characters in the same film. I'm not talking about when actors have to play twin brothers or sisters or what have you, I mean that they play two separate characters entirely. It always seems odd to me. And it always seems like there are several actors who do this more frequently than most.

I think the record...

Monty Python star Michael Palin is keen to reprise his acting career - but only "if the right thing comes along".

The British actor last appeared on the big screen in 1997's Fierce Creatures, the sequel to A Fish Called Wanda, and he has since gone on to present a number of travel documentaries.

But Palin is now hoping to land another film role, although he's adamant he wouldn't be able to dedicate too much time to a movie project because of his adventure series.

He tells Britain's Daily Express, "I want to act again. But not in a big movie. It would have to be a small one because my travel documentaries are quite intense and take up time.

"But I do love acting still so if the right thing comes along I would do it."...

Around this time of year, it's hard not to reflect upon Jamie Lee Curtis -- the actress, activist, children's-book author and HuffPost blogger whose performance in John Carpenter's original Halloween made getting scared personal (and suburban), simultaneously launching her storied career. She's come a long way from fending off unstoppable slasher Michael Myers three decades ago (and then, when the genre returned to trendiness, cleverly fending him off again). From Trading Places and Perfect to Forever Young and Fierce Creatures, it's not unreasonable to dub her an icon of '80s and '90s hipness, a quality which she's craftily transformed into maternal roles in more recent movies like Freaky Friday, Beverly Hills Chihuahua and You Again. Lee Cohen interviews Jamie Lee Curtis. Elegant, astute and ticklishly real, Ms. Curtis (a.k.a. Lady Haden-Guest) recently spent a long, fun October day amongst friends and fans...

Kevin Kline is misunderstood. His performances on stage and screen over the past four decades are so seamless that audiences often attribute his characters’ traits to him. That is, of course, a tricky proposition that he observes with a healthy dose of humor.

Kline mused on the topic and several more in an interview leading up to the release of The Extra Man, which opened in several major markets this weekend as part of its continued national rollout. Hit the jump for the audio and transcript, along with tales of his love for Ricky Gervais, why he’d never run for President and John Cleese’s humorous take on Kline’s performance in The Big Chill.

Kevin Kline’s career path started on a piano bench. Born and raised in St. Louis, he entered the University of Indiana as a music major before a freshman year acting class convinced him to switch to theater.

Warning: graphic images. Made ya look, didn't I? Wtfigo (is going on)? I am shocked and saddened by the seemingly insurmountable amount of visual carnage that is being pushed as news. With the advent of the internet and 3G and 4G technology, images and streaming video of gruesome accidents, attacks and yesterday, on this very site, images of a stoning. I hope these gruesome images result in some social change and public outrage but I fear it will be just a spectator sport for so many. In the sequel to A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures, a New Zealand media tycoon talks of buying the TV rights to executions. That was a parody, a clever social statement and a fiction. Today, it is seems seconds away from becoming a grim reality. Watch an NFL player have his legged snapped or a...

It is now 40 years since the legendary and hugely influential comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus was first broadcast in the U.K. How do we know this? Well, partly because Python member John Cleese is so unbelievably decrepit. "I'm old and incontinent!" laughs the comedian. The Python crew's 40th anniversary is also being marked by a series of events. Tonight the five surviving members (Cleese, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam) will reunite for an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Tomorrow they will grace (and possibly silly walk across) the stage of New York's...

Welcome to another edition of Movies That Deserve a Second Life. If you need a refresher on what I’m referring to by “second life,” check out the Action/Adventure Edition. If you’re caught up, read on to see what funny flics I felt were unfairly ignored/disliked upon its release or have been forgotten in the years since its release.

Comedy is almost certainly the most subjective of all genres. What makes one person laugh is guaranteed to make another yawn or wrinkle his/her brow. Some find juvenilia in poor taste while others bust a gut. Everyone claims to have a sense of humor, but almost no one enjoys every type of humor there is, from dry wit and pungent satire to bodily fluid gags and intentionally groan-worthy puns. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say that no one (besides myself) will be satisfied with every choice.