Frank Capra Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The Directors Guild of America is pushing for a contractual provision that would give TV directors more time and responsibility in the editing room, sources told Variety. The DGA is negotiating its new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The current contract expires on June 30. One of the key issues on the table is “creative rights” in television. TV directors have an absolute right under their existing contract to prepare a “director’s cut,” which is the first cut after the editor’s assembly. That right dates to 1964, when director Frank Capra led the charge to enshrine it in the DGA contract.

Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) is pushing forward with Christmas Karma, a contemporary Bollywood musical set in London and inspired by Charles Dickens’ seminal A Christmas Carol, with Kunal Nayyar (The Big Bang Theory) signed on to lead an ensemble cast. 

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with an expansive retrospective titled The Lady with the Torch, mounted in collaboration with the studio’s parent company, Sony. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival is set to celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with a retrospective featuring classic titles spawned by the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s. The Locarno retro, titled “The Lady With the Torch –– The Centenary of Columbia Pictures,” is being curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, co-director of Italy’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, which is dedicated to cinematic treasures of the past and organized in partnership with Switzerland’s Cinémathèque Suisse.

When Harry Met Sally fans! This Wednesday, Meg Ryan makes a rare TV appearance to honor her WHMS costar, Billy Crystal, when he is feted at the Kennedy Center Honors. The televised ceremony—which always airs during the last week of the year—recognizes artists who have made profound contributions to American culture through the arts.When Harry Met Sally is over 30 years old, but it is arguably the most quoted film in Ryan's and Crystal's movie careers, so it only makes sense that Ryan would want to pay homage to one of the greatest romcoms—and films—of our time.

It’s a Wonderful Knife. Kennedy’s debut effort, 2020’s Freaky, a robustly entertaining riff on body swap films, co-written with Christopher Landon, was met with both critical and audience acclaim.

In the 22nd week of his Deadline podcast Strike Talk, Billy Ray sits with WGA Negotiating Committee co-chairs David Goodman and Chris Keyser to learn what happened inside the room during the negotiations and what gains were made in the deal struck Sunday with the AMPTP.

It is only appropriate that Sony’s terrific new comedy, Dumb Money starts with the Columbia Pictures logo. That was the studio that Frank Capra famously helped build with his movies where the little guy triumphs over the corporate bad guys. Dumb Money is positively Capraesque in the way it tells its David vs Golitath improbable story about how an internet geek started a movement that blew up the heretofore loser stock of shopping mall game store GameStop and became the toast of Wall Street while bankrupting a couple of billionaire hedge funds in the process. It had its World Premiere tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival before its theatrical release later this month.

Who can forget the delightful hitchhiking scene in It Happened One Night, or Clarence the angel earning his wings in It’s a Wonderful Life, or Mr. Smith collapsing in the midst of his epic filibuster in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?

EXCLUSIVE: Frank Capra has long been considered one Hollywood’s most successful, influential and complex film directors and, in the new feature documentary Frank Capra: Mr America, which is premiering at the Venice Film Festival later this week, audiences will get a chance to view previously unseen archives that examine the Sicilian-born director’s rags-to-riches story whilst unpicking his complicated relationship with America. 

Tom Joyner, who was First AD on such notable titles as Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, George Roy Hill’s Slapshot and Clint Eastwood’s Bronco Billy, died February 22 after a long battle with cancer and heart disease. He was 79.

“Oscar Wars” (HarperCollins), Michael Schulman reports on nearly a century of history and ignominy: from SAG boycotts, blacklists, bankruptcy and corruption to streakers, sex pests, racism and high embarrassment — not to mention certain slap-happy actors.“What are the Academy Awards, anyway?” he writes. “They’re an industry party—like a convention of landscapers, but with better outfits.

, has died. She was 97. Mathews Funeral Home in Albany, Georgia, confirmed the death on Monday, writing in an obituary that she «passed peacefully of natural causes» on Aug. 18. Patton Moss was best known for her role as Ruth Dakin Bailey in Frank Capra's , the wife of Todd Karns' Harry Bailey and sister-in-law of protagonist George Bailey, played by James Stewart.

in a Facebook post by co-star and former child actor, Karolyn Grimes.“We have another angel! Virginia Patton Moss. She was 97 years old,” Grimes wrote. “She is now with her beloved Cruse.

confirmed that Patton passed Thursday, Aug. 18 at an assisted living home in Georgia.Patton dazzled screens in the 1940s, starring as the female lead in 1947’s “The Burning Cross” and 1948 Western “Black Eagle.”Born in 1925 in Cleveland, the Ohio-native was raised in Portland, Oregon before moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting.

Virginia Patton, who played George Bailey’s sister-in-law in the holiday staple It’s A Wonderful Life, died in an assisted living facilty on Aug. 18. She was 97.

J. Kim Murphy Virginia Patton Moss, a former actress who was the final surviving adult cast member of Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” died on Aug. 18 in Albany, Ga.

Alissa Simon Film Critic“Every big story is made of little stories,” a novice Egyptian newsreel director patiently explains to those who question his footage in the epic historical drama “Image of Victory.” It’s also a truism that pithily describes veteran Israeli helmer Avi Nesher’s engrossing 19th feature, which highlights young people during a dramatic time of history and brims with small episodes of courage, passion and humor.Inspired by real events, the film provides a nuanced look at circumstances leading up to the June 1948 fighting at Kibbutz Nitzanim, viewed from both the Egyptian and Israeli perspectives. Its consideration of how storytelling and visual images can be weaponized makes it a tale with great resonance for these times.

With his 8th Oscar nomination for directing today, Steven Spielberg joins a very select group of four filmmakers who have received 8-plus Best Director nominations. They include Billy Wilder, who also has 8, his contemporary Martin Scorsese, who has 9, and the great William Wyler, who earned 11 total directing nominations.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s True Colours has taken international sales on “Perfect Strangers” director Paolo Genovese’s new movie, a comedy drama titled “The First Day of My Life.”The Rome-based sales company will be launching pre-sales at the upcoming online EFM market on Genovese’s latest concept pic, which has echoes of Frank Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.”Based on Genovese’s novel of the same title, which was a bestseller in Italy, “The First Day of My Life” revolves around four characters on the brink of taking their lives who make a pact with a stranger with supernatural powers, played by “The Great Beauty” star Toni Servillo. The mystery man gives them a chance to travel forward in time to see for a week how their friends and relatives would react to their deaths and what the world would be like without them.

Spike Lee will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Achievement in Motion Picture Direction at this year’s DGA Awards, Directors Guild of America President Lesli Linka Glatter announced today.

J. Kim Murphy Spike Lee will receive the lifetime achievement award for distinguished achievement in motion picture direction from the Directors Guild of America. The group announced Lee as the recipient of the organization’s top honor on Wednesday morning.“Icon.

Pete Buttigieg’s profile is rising within the Biden administration, thanks in part to passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. 

compelling this film is over 70 years after it was initially released. Jimmy Stewart stars as George Bailey, a man who gave up on his personal dreams in a selfless act for his town and future wife.

NBC announced its yearly December dates for the holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life today. Frank Capra’s timeless story will be shown twice in December, including on Christmas Eve. The specific dates are Saturday, December 4 from 8-11 p.m. and a repeat December 24 at 8 p.m.

Frank Capra. Louis B.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorWalt Disney, Frank Capra, Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash and Alex Trebek are among the entertainment industry figures who have been added as honorees in the National Garden of American Heroes monument project unveiled by President Donald Trump in July.As he began his final 48 hours as President, Trump issued an amended executive order on Monday that added dozens of names slated to be honored in the the planned statuary park.

It’s A Wonderful Life.The actor and stand-up comedian will be reading the part of George Bailey, originally played by James Stewart in Frank Capra’s 1946 holiday classic.Davidson will be joined by Maude Apatow, who he starred opposite in Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island.

I blame Frank Capra and John Ford and Aaron Sorkin … and even Steven Spielberg. Because of them, my idea of American politics was forever captured by the image of a rumpled Jimmy Stewart standing up to the forces of evil in Mr.

Also on this day: British forces under Gen. John Burgoyne surrender to American troops in Saratoga, N.Y., in a turning point of the Revolutionary War.Guglielmo Marconi begins offering limited commercial wireless telegraph service between Nova Scotia and Ireland.

“Pictures are for entertainment — messages should be delivered by Western Union.” The line has been variously attributed to half a dozen old-school Hollywood producers, from Samuel Goldwyn to Frank Capra, but the sentiment captures how classic studio types endeavored to separate political statements from popular cinema.