John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon" opens with an unsolved mystery. The introductory text talks about a prized statuette of a falcon encrusted in rare jewels — a gift from the Knights Templar to Spain's Charles V — which was stolen by pirates and lost to history for years. After a string of murders and attempts to swipe a black bird statuette occur, private investigator Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is compelled to crack a mind-boggling case involving rogues with their eyes on the prized artifact. This bird statue, dubbed the Maltese Falcon, has since evolved into an unforgettable MacGuffin, where the value of the actual prop skyrocketed over the years, changing several hands while being sold at auctions at exorbitant prices.
According to Vanity Fair's 2016 Hollywood issue, the last-known auction for the falcon was held in 2013, where the official bidding kept soaring until it hit the $3 million mark and was sold for $3.5 million.
According to Vanity Fair's 2016 Hollywood issue, the last-known auction for the falcon was held in 2013, where the official bidding kept soaring until it hit the $3 million mark and was sold for $3.5 million.
- 6/13/2024
- by Debopriyaa Dutta
- Slash Film
China’s unwitting creative phenom Yang Zhigang, known as Busifan, presents an imaginative, heartwarming and gleefully chaotic animated journey in his latest feature, “The Storm,” selected to screen in main competition at this year’s Annecy Festival.
The auteur previously worked in telecommunications and never formally studied filmmaking, yet emerged as a self-taught cult figure on China’s animation circuit via its Flash scene in 2004 with “The Black Bird,” a seven-act episodic that craftily followed a wary warrior and his avian aide.
With his brutal and defiant debut feature, 2017’s “The Guardian” (“Dahufa”), Busifan disconnected from the rules imposed by the commercial market as he sussed out his inner turmoil for the script. This solidified him as a boundary-breaking artist, and the film’s simmering success served to bolster the region’s independent movement and further out-of-the-box concepts.
Busifan followed this underground acclaim with an Academy Award nomination for his...
The auteur previously worked in telecommunications and never formally studied filmmaking, yet emerged as a self-taught cult figure on China’s animation circuit via its Flash scene in 2004 with “The Black Bird,” a seven-act episodic that craftily followed a wary warrior and his avian aide.
With his brutal and defiant debut feature, 2017’s “The Guardian” (“Dahufa”), Busifan disconnected from the rules imposed by the commercial market as he sussed out his inner turmoil for the script. This solidified him as a boundary-breaking artist, and the film’s simmering success served to bolster the region’s independent movement and further out-of-the-box concepts.
Busifan followed this underground acclaim with an Academy Award nomination for his...
- 6/7/2024
- by Holly Jones
- Variety Film + TV
Felix Silla, the actor who donned the full-body hair suit and bowler hat as Cousin Itt on the original The Addams Family television series, has died at the age of 84.
Silla, who also played the robot Twiki on the sci-fi series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, died Friday following battle with pancreatic cancer, the Hollywood Reporter writes.
Silla’s Buck Rogers co-star Gil Gerard confirmed the actor’s death on Twitter, “Felix died just a few hours ago and the only good I can draw from his passing is...
Silla, who also played the robot Twiki on the sci-fi series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, died Friday following battle with pancreatic cancer, the Hollywood Reporter writes.
Silla’s Buck Rogers co-star Gil Gerard confirmed the actor’s death on Twitter, “Felix died just a few hours ago and the only good I can draw from his passing is...
- 4/17/2021
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Felix Silla, best known as the gibberish-spouting Cousin Itt on the 1960s TV sitcom The Addams Family, died today from pancreatic cancer. He was 84 and died in Las Vegas, according to a tweet from Gil Gerard, who costarred with him on the 1979-81 NBC series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
Silla donned a full-body hairpiece, sunglasses and a bowler hat to achieve the role of Cousin Itt, who could only be understood by members of the Addams Family, thanks to his strange mumbling. The role was one of several where Silla’s face went unseen, including appearances as robot Twiki on Buck Rogers and as a hang-gliding Ewok in Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi.
One role where he could be seen was as the villain Litvak, who took on George Segal’s Sam Spade Jr. in The Maltese Falcon sequel The Black Bird (1975).
Born in Italy,...
Silla donned a full-body hairpiece, sunglasses and a bowler hat to achieve the role of Cousin Itt, who could only be understood by members of the Addams Family, thanks to his strange mumbling. The role was one of several where Silla’s face went unseen, including appearances as robot Twiki on Buck Rogers and as a hang-gliding Ewok in Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi.
One role where he could be seen was as the villain Litvak, who took on George Segal’s Sam Spade Jr. in The Maltese Falcon sequel The Black Bird (1975).
Born in Italy,...
- 4/16/2021
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Above: US 30" x 40" poster for The Black Bird. Art by Drew Struzan.As you might be able to tell from the name-above-the-title tagline above, George Segal, who died last month at the age of 87, was a big deal in the 1970s. By the ’90s, when I started getting into the films of both Segal and his one-time co-star and fellow traveler Elliott Gould, both of these New York-born Jewish superstars of the ’70s had been reduced to playing sitcom fathers on TV: Gould in Friends and Segal in Just Shoot Me. (And by the 2010s Segal was best known as a sitcom grandfather on The Goldbergs.) But Segal’s films in particular have not survived well in the public memory, perhaps because he devoted his career mostly to comedy and a kind of dark, sophisticated relationship comedy at that. California Split, the film he made with Gould for Robert Altman...
- 4/2/2021
- MUBI
Giler was also a screenwriter on films including ‘Alien3’ and ‘The Money Pit’.
David Giler, a producer and writer on the Alien franchise, has died aged 77. He had been suffering from cancer and died at his home in Bangkok on December 19.
Walter Hill, his long-time producing partner with whom he co-wrote the story for Aliens and screenplay for Alien3, said: “If you knew David, you knew he was special.
“The magic of his personality is hard to describe: funny, angry, extremely knowledgeable, extremely well read; it was my privilege to write and produce with him, and more importantly, to have...
David Giler, a producer and writer on the Alien franchise, has died aged 77. He had been suffering from cancer and died at his home in Bangkok on December 19.
Walter Hill, his long-time producing partner with whom he co-wrote the story for Aliens and screenplay for Alien3, said: “If you knew David, you knew he was special.
“The magic of his personality is hard to describe: funny, angry, extremely knowledgeable, extremely well read; it was my privilege to write and produce with him, and more importantly, to have...
- 12/22/2020
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
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