Brian Garfield, an author best known for his novel “Death Wish” which spawned a popular movie franchise of the same name, died Dec. 29 at his home in Pasadena, Variety has confirmed. He was 79.

After his birth to parents Frances O’Brien and George Garfield, Garfield grew up in Arizona where he wrote his first novel “Range Justice” at the age of 18.

Soon after, he began writing prolifically, producing more than 70 books and printing more than 20 million copies world wide. His most popular work, “Death Wish,” also led to the creation of one of Hollywood’s longest-running film franchises starring Charles Bronson as well as a 2018 reboot with Bruce Willis.

After seeing the film, Garfield was famously disappointed, prompting the author to write a sequel to the novel in 1975 titled “Death Sequence.” Like its predecessor, the novel was adapted into a film in 2007 by director James Wan and actor Kevin Bacon.

Michael Parks, longtime Hollywood mainstay and beloved character actor and singer, has passed away at the age of 77. The news was announced by filmmaker Kevin Smith, who took to his Instagram to share that “the best actor I’ve ever known” and his “cinematic muse,” had died. No cause of death was named.

Smith directed Parks in both his “Tusk” and “Red State,” having relished the longtime actor’s career since first seeing him in Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn.” Though Parks’ career stretched back to 1960, when he made his screen debut on TV’s “Zane Grey Theater,” in recent years, the supporting standout had enjoyed a revival at the hands of both Quentin Tarantino (who Smith deemed Parks’ “biggest fan”) and Smith, who continued to craft roles for the singular actor.

I hate to report that my cinematic muse #michaelparks has passed away. Michael was, and will likely forever remain,...

McLaglen with his father Victor on the set of Rawhide with Clint Eastwood.

Andrew V. McLaglen, the son of famed character actor Victor McLaglen, who went on to a successful career as both a television and feature film director, has died at age 94. McLaglen got into directing by working on popular television Westerns in the 1950s and 1960s such as "Rawhide" and "Have Gun, Will Travel". He collaborated with John Wayne on the 1963 Western comedy "McLintock!", which proved to be a boxoffice smash. He would collaborate with Wayne on numerous other films such as "Hellfighters", "Cahill: U.S. Marshall", "The Undefeated" and their most acclaimed joint project, the 1970 Western "Chisum" which proved to be a favorite of President Richard M. Nixon. (Some of Nixon's  political adversaries  theorized that the film inspired him to launch the secret war in Cambodia.) McLaglen also excelled at making action adventure films such as...

0:00 - Intro 6:30 - Review: The Cabin in the Woods 22:55 - Review: Titanic 3D / A Night to Remember 46:50 - Headlines: Hunger Games Sequel Director Wish List, Mel Gibson vs. Joe Eszterhas, Sin City 2 Finally Happening, Looper Trailer 1:04:05 - Other Stuff We Watched: Sherlock: Season 1, American Reunion, Tim Richmond: To the Limit, The House of Steinbrenner, Fernando Nation, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, U-Turn, Our Idiot Brother, Impractical Jokers, Derek, Indie Game: The Movie, Francophrenia, Tchoupitoulas, The Red Chapel, The Hills Have Eyes: Part II, The Quatermass Experiment, The Last Hard Men, Roadracers, The Ring 1:48:50 - Junk Mail: Why Can't DC Comics Get It Together?, Movies We Watched at School, Cool Soundtracks for Movies That Suck, HBO Shows on DVD, Sneaking into Movies 2:09:45 - This Week's DVD Releases 2:11:25 - Outro 2:15:40 - Spoiler Discussion: The Cabin in the Woods...

Shrewd film publicist who later achieved success as a producer

A masochistic Hollywood decree insists that press agents must be depicted on screen as loathsome toadying creatures, and movie moguls as vulgar, mercenary despots. Walter Seltzer, who has died aged 96, was both a press agent and a producer, but he failed to conform to either of the self-perpetuating stereotypes. As a press agent he was persuasive rather than pushy; as a producer, he believed in consensus decision-making.

Undoubtedly his greatest achievement as a press agent was in his promotion of Marty (1955), a gentle, small-scale study of the mundane with no star names. Seltzer believed so much in the Harold Hecht/Burt Lancaster production that the promotional campaign for the film was more expensive than the film itself: $400,000 compared to $343,000. Among Seltzer's tactics was his sending prints of the film to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,...

We keep getting letters from readers around the world that add interesting insights into the fact that Fox reused portions of Jerry Goldsmith's previous scores for the 1976 western The Last Hard Men. Now comes this informative letter:

My name is Gergely Hubai. I'm a Hungarian film music author.

I feel that I must clarify this particular story. This is what happened: Jerry Goldsmith never worked on The Last Hard Men (he was working on The Omen at that time). What happened was that Andrew. McLaglen requested an avantgarde score from composer Leonard Rosenman, which was eventually thrown out because it turned out it wasn't what he was looking for. Apparently he wanted to reflect the early 20th century setting by having contemporary avantgarde music playing in the picture or something to that effect. Eventually the studio pulled out a number of cues from previous Goldsmith Westerns, including 100 Rifles and Stagecoach.

The plot thickens: we're now told that Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Last Hard Men also incorporated some of his work from the 1965 spy movie Morituri! Graham Rye's letter regarding Jerry Goldsmith's score for 100 Rifles which was recycled for The Last Hard Men, has drawn a number of comments from readers, some of whom have shed some light on the mystery of why such a revered composer might want to use a previous score in a new movie:

Hi Lee

Well Graham is both correct and incorrect about the soundtrack for the above. The story of The Last Hard Men score is that a score by Leonard Rosenman was rejected and, whether due to time constraints or cost, Fox simply chose to track the movie with cues from three Jerry Goldsmith Fox westerns (100 Rifles, Rio Conchos and the remake of Stagecoach) and also his score for the thriller Morituri.

Issue #4 covers the filming of 100 Rifles in our tribute Jim Brown: The First Black Action Hero. Here, big Jim gets up close and personal with Raquel Welch in their groundbreaking love scene. Following our recent reference to the 1976 western The Last Hard Men, Graham Rye wrote to tell us that Jerry Goldsmith's score for the film was primarily lifted from his earlier work on 100 Rifles.

See if you agree with Graham's observations:

"It was more or less the same score, slightly differently arranged, but the main them was the same. I remember from when I originally saw The Last Hard Men in the cinema. As I sat watching it, I thought, "Blimey, he's used the same score from 100 Rifles (a score I particularly enjoyed in 1969) - crafty bugger!" I had a LeRoy Holmes LP that covered a number of western themes, one of which was 100 Rifles. I think...

Remake rights to the 1952 classic Western High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, were acquired Monday at AFM by producer Mark Headley, actor Christopher Mitchum and their business partner, Toni Covington.

Rights were secured from actress Karen Sharp Kramer, wife of the late Stanley Kramer, producer of the iconic original about a town marshal forced to face a gang of killers by himself.

The newly formed Los Angeles-based High Noon Prods. is seeking a director and a star to play the lead and hopes to begin shooting early next year with a target budget of about $20 million, Headley said.

Mitchum, son of actor Robert Mitchum, worked on the Westerns The Last Hard Men with Charlton Heston and James Coburn in 1976 and Rio Lobo with John Wayne in 1970. He noted that he had wanted to remake High Noon for years.

Kramer confirmed the deal but declined to reveal its terms.

The original High Noon was written by John Cunningham and Carl Foreman and directed by Fred Zinnemann; it was based on pulp short story, The Tin Star.