Free Republic

Pretty much any movie with Peter Sellers in it is my favorite movie, but especially his starring roles in the Pink Panther movie series. In this particular scene in I think is "The Pink Panther Strikes Again", Inspector Jacques Closeau is the midst of tracking down former Chief Inspector Dreyfus and stop him from using the Fosbender Lazer weapon again. At the hotel, Closeau enters to get a "reum", and while the elderly gentleman is examining the check-in card afterward, Jacques encounters a scruffy, small canine. "Does your dog bite?" Closeau inquires. "No," replies the German mountain innkeeper. With that,...

Burt Kwouk, who played martial arts expert Cato in the comic “Pink Panther” films, has died. He was 85. Kwouk’s agent, Jean Diamond, said in a statement that he “passed peacefully” on Tuesday. She didn’t give a cause of death. Born in northwest England and raised in Shanghai, Kwouk had his breakthrough film role in “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” in 1958, and appeared in the James Bond films “Goldfinger” and “You Only Live Twice.” …

This free money giveway is even better than than the Twitter lunacy we are witnessing in the Bay Area, SoCal, and Colorado. FREE MONEY! Watch people jump into a huge vat of cow fertilizer, urine, and blood to get the free money in the classic 1969 movie -- THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN. Quite a commentary on society.

Stuart Freeborn, the British make-up artist renowned for his contributions to 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Star Wars films, has died at the age of 98. Largely self-taught, his six-decade career saw him create make-up and prosthetics for such cinematic legends as Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.

Today being New Year's Eve Eve so to speak is the inspiration for this Sunday's feature. The triumvirate of Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini's only non-Inspector Clouseau comedy. It basically concerns a blacklisted Indian actor who gets accidentally invited to a swank Hollywood party and the ensuing chaos that occurs. It's a very loosely structured film but makes for an amusing time capsule of 1968 Hollywood. Worth watching if you're a fan of Sellers, Edwards and/or Mancini.

A list of unused titles for Dr. Strangelove, lifted from Stanley Kubrick’s notebooks From the notebooks of Stanley Kubrick comes this most excellent list of movie titles that never saw the light of day, but were evidently considered for the film that Kubrick would eventually name Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. There are plenty of mentions of Dr. Strangelove, bombs, and even implications that one should love and cherish said "wonderful bomb," but you won't find the final title in this list. Still, it gives one pause to think how this movie...

IN the week of the 30th anniversary of his death, friends and family of comedy genius Peter Sellers are to gather in Brighton tonight to celebrate his life and career. His eldest daughter Sarah is joined by Sellers’ Pink Panther co-star Burt Kwouk, Inspector Clouseau’s Chinese man-servant Cato in the hit films. Guests at the Duke of York’s Picture House will watch a screening of Sellers’ film Dr Strangelove.

Victoria Sellers, the troubled daughter of the late actor Peter Sellers and the actress Britt Ekland, is to be deported to Britain after being arrested for immigration violations in Hollywood last night. Ms Sellers, who starred in a sex tips video and has spent time in American jails for drug and robbery-related offences, is being held at an immigration centre in Orange County, California, according to a spokesman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

We’ll get back to John Edwards’ extraordinary comment about how the Kerry/Edwards ticket will cause cripples to walk and raise the dead. We begin, however, with one of the more extraordinary remarks by the ticket’s minions who now blanket the nation and infest the airways. This week on Linda Vester’s “Dayside” program on Fox, I saw an incredible burst of honesty by Chad Clanton, Deputy Director of Communications for the Kerry Campaign. The subject was the proposed broadcast on the 62 stations of the Sinclair Broadcast Group of “Stolen Honor,” a documentary which focuses on the reaction of veterans and...

There's an exhilaration in seeing artists at the very top of their form: It almost doesn't matter what the form is, if they're pushing their limits and going for broke and it's working. We can sense their joy of achievement - and even more so if the project in question is a risky, off-the-wall idea that could just as easily have ended disastrously. Hal Ashby's Being There is a movie that inspires those feelings. It begins with a cockamamie notion, it's basically one joke told for two hours, and it requires Peter Sellers to maintain an excruciatingly narrow tone of...

It is even stranger than Dr Strangelove himself. North Korea, the Stalinist dictatorship that is threatening to plunge the world into nuclear confrontation, has quietly set up a makeshift embassy in Finchley, a north London suburb which was once the home of Peter Sellers. The diplomatic base - the first that the Pyongyang regime has had in Britain - lies hidden inside a 1930s semi-detached house, a far cry from the grandiose symbolism more often associated with the country's "Great Leader", Kim Jong-Il. The choice of a borough that was previously best known as the former constituency of Lady Thatcher...