Latest in The Film That Lit My Fuse

Is there a working actor today who is more versatile than Jeff Daniels? Consider the range: the comedies The Purple Rose of Cairo and Dumb and Dumber and the ferocious dramatic stage turns in To Kill a Mockingbird and God of Carnage to his work in dramas that include his Emmy-winning role in HBO’s Th…

David Alan Grier’s illustrious and varied career began with big dreams from a youth sitting in front of a television in Michigan and absorbing classic film. Grier next stars in The American Society of Magical Negroes, a sharp satirical comedy fable written and directed by Kobi Libii. He began his career…

The German filmmaker Wim Wenders is up for an Oscar for his gorgeously shot Perfect Days, a film about a fastidious man (Koji Yakusho) who cleans toilets in Tokyo who finds happiness and solace in his mundane life. The film is a touching meditation on happiness in simplicity, and how routine sometimes…

Daniel Dae Kim, who most recently stars as Fire Lord Ozai in the Netflix series adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, has established himself as a graceful leading man of Korean descent who has distinguished himself as much onscreen as he has calling out the marginalizing and typecasting of Asians. He…

Paul Giamatti’s turn as the walleyed loner schoolteacher who smells of fish in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers has propelled the actor to be squarely in the mix in the Best Actor Oscar race. This has been a long time coming, as the Yale School of Drama-educated Giamatti has been turning in outstanding…

You will learn everything about Ed Zwick’s matriculation in the school of hard knocks in his just published terrific memoir Hits, Flops, And Other Illusions. Watch here for the creative influences that guided Zwick into a career highlighted by the TV series thirtysomething and My So Called Life, and…

The Sopranos creator David Chase is in Los Angeles this weekend to honor the 25th anniversary of TV’s greatest drama series this Sunday, when he joins Matt Weiner and Terry Winter to swap stories in a sold out event at the American Cinematheque. What better time to hail such an important milestone by…

The first season HBO’s anthology series True Detective changed the game in terms of telling a crime story in a relaxed fashion, allowing great actors to slowly peel their characters down to the core as they attempt to catch a serial killer. Nic Pizzolotto created that 2014 show’s first season, Cary…

While he’s never been busier, David Oyelowo has delivered a career’s worth of terrific performances going back to his work as the empathetic agent Danny Hunter in the British series MI5: Spooks. Oyelowo, whose turns include playing Martin Luther King Jr in the Ava DuVernay-directed Selma, just got a…

LaKeith Stanfield stars in his second straight film with The Harder They Fall writer/director Jeymes Samuel. He moves from an old West gunslinger to a false prophet who finds faith in the days of Jesus Christ in The Book of Clarence, the Legendary Entertainment film just released by Columbia Pictures. The…

At a time when standup comics like Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen and Kevin James were transferring their onstage personas into sitcom, Ray Romano teamed with Phil Rosenthal on Everybody Loves Raymond. The premise — Long Island-based sportswriter tries to co-exist with his long-suffering wife in the midst of…

Given Gary Oldman’s dazzling array of performances turned in since his breakthrough as punk rocker Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy, it’s hard to imagine he had only been Oscar nominated once before he won in 2018 for Darkest Hour. In his performance as Winston Churchill as the flawed leader stared down…