Back in January we reported that Warner Bros. was in negotiations with Steven Spielberg‘s Amblin Entertainment to remake Joe Dante‘s 1984 holiday horror-comedy classic Gremlins. The negotiations must have worked out because the studio is moving full speed ahead on the remake and they have already tapped a well-known name in the horror genre to take on producing duties.

Seth Grahame-Smith, the author of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, will produce the Gremlins reboot alongside David Katzenberg. Most recently Grahame-Smith adapted Vampire Hunter into a feature film released last year and worked on the script for a Beetlejuice sequel that Tim Burton may still direct. Burton, who produced Vampire Hunter for director Timur Bekmambetov, also collaborated with Grahame-Smith on his Dark Shadows movie that belly flopped at the box office last May. The writer was also retained by Fox to rewrite their long-gestating Fantastic Four reboot that Josh Trank is still on board to direct.

Legendary director Steven Spielberg has his next movie lined up, American Sniper. The movie will be based on the autobiography of the the deadliest sniper the U.S. military has ever had, Chris Kyle, which is titled American Sniper: The Autobiography Of The Most Lethal Sniper In U.S. Military History.

Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper was the one who optioned the book, and is also set to star. Cooper set the project up with Warner Brothers, who will team with DreamWorks to make the movie. Jason Hall (Paranoia) penned the script.

Stanley Kubrick was and always shall be one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of the moving image. Over the course of a forty-six-year career in directing he made thirteen films, many of them timeless classics and a few undisputed masterpieces that not only influenced generations of filmmakers to come but also forever changed the way films are made and regarded.

Kubrick was a master whose legacy in cinema will endure forever in the continuing impact his films have on the moviegoers who discover them and the directors who studied his works and used the lessons they learned to shape their own careers, including Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, Michael Mann, Wes Anderson, Lars Von Trier, and of course Steven Spielberg.

It’s Thursday morning and I’m watching the theatrical cut of George Lucas’s 1977 film Star Wars as I make my final Oscars predictions, which you can read here below. At the 50th Academy Awards in ’78, Star Wars was nominated for 10 awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and ended up taking home six: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound.

Back in those days, there were only five Best Picture nominees: Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, Star Wars, The Turning Point. Ultimately, Star Wars would lose to Woody Allen‘s neurotic romantic comedy Annie Hall, even though Lucas’s sprawling space saga had changed the film industry – and the world – forever.

Fast-forward to 2013, where the casual filmgoer may argue that the Academy Awards are irrelevant because they don’t reflect popular taste. The truth is – they never have, and that was never the purpose. Overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy Awards were created to maintain and celebrate a standard of excellence that is often contradictory to box-office returns and pop culture trends.

A Tumblr blog entitled Cinephilia & Beyondhas uncovered a very interesting piece of movie memorabilia that fans of the Indiana Jones films will find very interesting: original pages from what looks to be a fifth draft screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark written by Lawrence Kasdan, complete with handwritten notes by star Harrison Ford.

You can check out those pages with the notes here below.

It is fascinating to see how actors and actresses approach their roles of varying size, be it the lead in a multi-million dollar film or the understudy to the fifth lead in an off-Broadway play. Constantin Stanislavski, the legendary Russian theater actor and director best known for being the grandfather of “Method” acting, once famously said, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” Great performers invest themselves in their characters with true dedication even if they’re only on camera for a brief scene.