On the morning of the day when he won the Academy Award, Dr. Haing S. Ngor was a busy man. Just after dawn, outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, he was clicking off TV interviews, one after another: "A.M. Los Angeles,"…
The images in movies are countless, but only a handful have become part of our collective memory. Gene Kelly created one of them by singing in the rain. Delirious with love, he splashed through puddles and twirled his umbrella, he…
John Malkovich for Mr. Hyde, yes. But Gary Sinese, surely, for Dr. Jekyll? That's sort of the way the two actors positioned themselves a week or so ago, at a benefit for Steppenwolf Theater. Actors don't often like to talk…
NEW YORK I went to the screening of Oliver Stone's "Nixon" expecting to see Atilla the Hun in a suit and tie. What I saw surprised me as much as anything this unpredictable director has ever done: a portrait of…
Howard Higman, who liked to be part of a good conversation, died last week in Boulder, Colo.
I'm analyzing Jack Nicholson's career for him. He's frowning behind a cloud of cigarette smoke and trying to look interested. We're sitting in a room at the Excelsior Hotel at the Venice Film Festival, the day after the premiere of…
Louis Malle, who died last week at 63, was a director whose movies caused scandal sometimes for their content, sometimes for their style, sometimes for both. The respected French filmmaker, married since 1980 to actress Candice Bergen, died Thursday at…
Elisabeth Shue played the girlfriend of "The Karate Kid." And the girlfriend who got marooned in time in the second and third "Back to the Future." And the baby-sitter in "Adventures in Babysitting." And Tom Cruise's girlfriend in "Cocktail" (Leonard…
It's the morning after the world premiere of "Leaving Las Vegas" at the Toronto Film Festival in September, and I am still under the spell of this remarkable film. It stars Nicolas Cage as a man who loses his family…
VENICE, Italy When Mira Sorvino was trying to decide what to do with her life, her father advised her not to try acting if there was anything else she liked better. Her father, of course, is the actor Paul Sorvino,…
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