Maltin on Movies

David Stenn has a good "day job," writing scripts for television (like The L Word and Boardwalk Empire ) but his passion is film history. He has funded restoration of films long thought lost or unavailable, including a recent "find" featuring Clara Bow. He is also the author of two definitive biographies, Clara Bow: Running Wild, first published in 1988 and Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Ha...

Can it really be ten years since Whiplash put filmmaker Damien Chazelle on the map and earned J.K. Simmons his Best Supporting Actor Oscar? We interviewed the versatile actor in 2017 and his stories are worth hearing again. By the way, he remains a good luck charm for writer-director Jason Reitman, with a juicy role in his new movie Saturday Night . And Whiplash is also back on theater screens.

As the cofounder of Boston Light and Sound, Chapin Cutler has built movie theaters from the ground up and transformed unlikely spaces into pop-up cinemas. He's been responsible for 70mm showings of new films by Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino and so much more. He and his wife Deborah run a family-oriented operation and populate their staff with diehard movie nerds who truly care about how...

Jon Burlingame knows everything worth knowing about music for film and television. He teaches the subject at USC's Thornton School of Music, keeps up with current events and newcomers to the field for Variety,  and has just published his seventh book, Dreamsville: Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn, and Music for TV Noir (BearManor Media). Like all of his work it is authoritative, well-written, and fun to...

Haley Joel Osment should need no introduction to moviegoers of any age. He made an indelible impression in The Sixth Sense 25 years ago and became an overnight star, working with the likes of Michael Caine and Robert Duvall in Secondhand Lions and Steven Spielberg on A.I. Articifial Intelligence. After a break from filmmaking he returned to the scene as a versatile young character actor, appearing...

Our guest has been acting for most of her life and her credits include such memorable movies as Swingers, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Boogie Nights, Bowfinger, and The Hangover. In her latest film (which debuts today on demand), Place of Bone , she plays a tough, implacable frontier woman who wields a rifle with authority and intends to protect her teenage daughter at any cost. In Octob...

If you don't think sound editing and mixing is a creative process, think again! Our guests are both nominated for Emmy Awards for their work on the Apple+ miniseries Masters of the Air —and they might be identified as Masters of the Ear. They have created a soundscape that is the equal of a major Hollywood feature, as you'd expect in a high-profile show executive produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzm...

Colm Meaney makes a vivid impression whenever he appears on stage, screen, or television. (His latest, Duchess , debuts on digital today, August 9.) More people probably know him from the two Star Trek series in which he appeared— The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine —but we remember him best as the father in The Commitments and its follow-ups The Van and The Snapper . Leonard and Jessie were p...

You've been entertained by Jim Cummings at some point over the last forty years whether you know it or not: he is the voice of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Darkwing Duck, the Tasmanian Devil, and countless other cartoon characters. And like his hero Mel Blanc, he is not merely "doing" voices—he's acting and singing his heart out. Leonard and Jessie are especially fond of his vocalizing as Ray the Caju...

If his face is familiar, that's because Raphael Sbarge has been working since he was a boy—in theater, television and film. His credits range from Murder, She Wrote and Risky Business to Fear the Walking Dead . More recently he has moved behind the camera, crafting documentaries like Only in Theaters, the story of Los Angeles' beloved Laemmle Theaters chain. That's the project that brought him in...

If you enjoy watching classic films you're probably acquainted with Alan Rode, prolific author, commentator (on numerous DVDs and Blu-rays), and host (with Eddie Muller) of the Noir City Festival, an annual event in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. He also hosts and programs the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival every year in Palm Springs, California. He has several books to his credit, incl...

An Oscar winner (for Mask in 1985) and multiple Emmy winner (for various incarnations of Star Trek ), Michael Westmore carries a name that is synonymous with makeup in Hollywood. He's proud of his heritage, which began with his grandfather in the silent-film era and flourished in the 1930s, when his father and uncles ran the makeup departments at virtually every major studio. He studied art histor...

After starring in the TV series Royal Pains for eight seasons and appearing in recurring roles in shows ranging from Ally McBeal to The West Wing, Mark Feuerstein is ready to explode his good-guy image in the new MGM+ crime drama Hotel Cocaine . He's never been so sleazy as this onscreen but as Jessie and Leonard quickly learned, in real life he's a mensch who is devoted to his family and his craf...

Nick Stahl has been working in front of the camera since he was 13 years old and winning young admirers like Jessie because he's so believable in every part he tackles. Mel Gibson chose him to costar in The Man Without a Face, which put him on a fast track to success. His widely varied credits include The Terminator 3, In the Bedroom, The Thin Red Line, and Sin City . After a break he returned to...

This week we introduce you to two more Emmy contenders for their exceptional work. Cian O'Clery directed, executive produced and photographed) the heartfelt documentary series Love on the Spectrum,  which shows how people with autism search for love just like all of us. Mac Quayle is a busy composer of music for film and television who has become a favorite of the prolific producer Ryan Murphy ( S...

This week, we're meeting more fascinating people who are Emmy contenders for their work on high-end television, which nowadays has the production quality of feature films. An Emmy contender in the realm of limited series, All the Light We Cannot See has been adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by the brilliant writer Steven Knight. It draws on the talents of many people, among them our gu...

The brilliant writer-director Steven Zaillian ( Searching for Bobby Fischer ) is a strong Emmy contender for his eight-part adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels, along with the collaborators we spoke to: composer Jeff Russo (an Emmy winner for Fargo ), Oscar-nominated production designer David Gropman, and editors David Rogers and Joshua Lee. Even if you haven't yet watched the series...

Avy Kaufman's name should be familiar to anyone who reads credits, as we do. She has cast scores of films and television series, from The Ice Storm to Succession, and launched many a career along the way. You can hear the pride in her voice when she recounts how she brought young Haley Joel Osment to meet the star and director of The Sixth Sense . Recent credits include some of the most talked-abo...

There's only one Mira Sorvino —Oscar winner for her unforgettable performance in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite , costar of the enduringly popular Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion , Harvard grad (cum laude), mother of four, and daughter of the celebrated actor and singer Paul Sorvino .credentials are pretty amazing; then you talk to her and discover what a quicksilver mind she possesses. To...

Marc Wanamaker is a walking encyclopedia of Hollywood legends and lore. He grew up in the community and soon realized there was history all around him. He began to amass a collection of rare photographs which eventually numbered in the thousands. Marc has been an invaluable resource for authors, scholars, documentarians, and even the movie studios themselves. His newest book, written with Steven B...

If you only think of Clint Howard as Ron Howard's kid brother, it's time to reassess. He and his older sibling recently wrote a joint autobiography called The Boys which explains their loving relationship and points to their actor-parents as lifelong role models. Early on, Clint embraced his destiny as a young-ish character actor. There's almost nothing he hasn't done in his sixty--some years in s...

Frank Marshall's chance meeting with Peter Bogdanovich launched a career that led to him producing Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Jurassic Park movies, among many others, often in partnership with his wife Kathleen Kennedy. Now he's released a record album that returns him to the world his father Jack Marshall inhabited: a long-forgotten session featuring two gifted jazz trumpeters. Chet Baker and J...

Our guest is a five-time Oscar nominee for Best Costumes—most recently for Killers of the Flower Moon, although she is equally lauded for her work on Dune , parts 1 and 2. Her background in the fashion world, and as an art history major, gives her unique credentials for someone who provides costumes for movies. She also has world-class stories to share about her collaborations with such major dire...

Internationally renowned actress, model, and individualist Isabella Rossellini is charm personified. She has a supporting role in Alice Rohrwacher's new import La Chimera, which opens in theaters March 29, and recently completed two seasons of Julia , playing Julia Child's longtime friend and cooking colleague. She also carries with her the torch lit by her famous parents, Ingrid Bergman and Rober...

  His alter egos are world-renowned, but Leonard and Jessie didn't focus on Miss Piggy or Yoda in this conversation, recorded in front of a live audience at Esther's Follies in Austin. The main topic was directing movies, which Oz has done so well for so many years: The Muppets Take Manhattan, Little Shop of Horrors, In & Out, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Bowfinger, and What About Bob? are just a few...