Otto Preminger Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” one of the best reviewed films of the Cannes competition, which was bought by Neon, examines the collapse of a marriage and a mother-and-son relationship in a documentary-style courtroom drama. The chamber piece is driven by Sandra Hüller’s (“Toni Erdmann”) nuanced performance as a successful German novelist on trial for the murder of her husband (Samuel Theis), who died in mysterious circumstances in a remote corner of the snowy French Alps. Their visually impaired 11-year-old son (Milo Machado Graner) is called on the witness stand, prompting a dissection of Sandra’s conduct as a wife and a mother. Supporting roles are played by Swann Arlaud and Antoine Reinartz.

Harry Belafonte has died at the age of 96. Belafonte died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said Paula M. Witt, of public relations firm Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis.

Guy Lodge Film Critic “Carmen” didn’t begin life as an opera: French Romantic writer Prosper Mérimée conceived this tale of Spanish passion and tragic jealousy in 1845, thirty years before his compatriot Georges Bizet brought it into its best-known, aria-rich form. But it’s a story that thrives on operatic delivery, hinging on emotions so large and loud they beg to be sung at the top of one’s lungs. That makes it the opera that filmmakers can’t leave alone, even as they tend to switch out the music: Its screen interpretations range from Otto Preminger’s Broadway-rooted “Carmen Jones” to Jean-Luc Godard’s daring, Beethoven-infused “First Name: Carmen” to Robert Townsend’s Beyoncé-starring “Carmen: A Hip-Hopera.” With the plainly titled “Carmen,” ballet star and first-time feature director Benjamin Millepied joins that club, mostly eschewing song in an attempt to conjure the material’s intensity through dance. He is only intermittently successful.

Oscar-winning writer Christopher Hampton is in talks to write a screenplay with French director Anne Fontaine about iconic feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Nelson Algren’s transatlantic affair.

Mylene Demongeot, whose career spanned 70 years of French and British cinema appearances, died today at age 87 in a Paris hospital. No cause of death has been reported.

Related: Jean-Luc Godard: ‘Film is over. What to do?’ Born in Paris in 1930, Godard grew up and went to school in Nyon, on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Malina Saval Associate Editor, FeaturesAcre, Israel is a city of contrasts and multitudes. Perched on the country’s northern coast, skimming the teal blue Mediterranean, the ancient port town is a convergence of Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Druze cultures stretching back millennia.

EXCLUSIVE: Producer Sam Okun and his Sam Okun Productions banner have optioned worldwide film and TV remake and sequel rights to a pair of classic films directed and produced by three-time Oscar nominee Otto Preminger: 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder and 1962’s Advise & Consent.

Casting director and producer Don Phillips who helped launch the careers of such actors as Sean Penn, Matthew McConaughey and Mary Steenburgen, passed away on Thanksgiving Day from natural causes. He would have turned 81 on Dec. 21.