Free Republic

NEW YORK – Director Arthur Penn, a myth-maker and myth-breaker who in such classics as "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Little Big Man," refashioned movie and American history and sealed a generation's affinity for outsiders, died Tuesday night, a day after his 88th birthday. Daughter Molly Penn said her father died at his home, in Manhattan, of congestive heart failure. Longtime friend and business manager Evan Bell said Wednesday that Penn had been ill for about a year. A memorial service would be held before the end of the year. Penn's older brother was photographer Irving Penn, who died in October...

Dede Allen, the film editor whose seminal work on Robert Rossen's "The Hustler" in 1961 and especially on Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" in 1967 brought a startling new approach to imagery, sound and pace in American movies, died Saturday. She was 86.

By far the movie’s gravest insult to posterity, however, is its treatment of the Texas Ranger captain, Frank Hamer, who may (or may not) have been instrumental in bringing them down. As seen in the movie, Hamer (played by Denver Pyle in an uncharacteristically dour performance) is a kind of harsh Puritan ideologue, so righteous that when Bonnie (whom Dunaway has made us love) flirtatiously poses for a funny snapshot with him, he spits savagely in her face. He considers her so morally tainted that he is sickened by her. Then later, like a serpent in a garden, he coos...

Duff vs. Dunaway may turn out to be more exciting than the Bonnie and Clyde remake. Former Disney queen Hilary Duff is set to tackle Faye Dunaway's legendary role of Bonnie Parker, one-half of crime's notorious duo, in The Story of Bonnie and Clyde — news that did not sit well with Dunaway. "Couldn't they at least cast a real actress?" Dunaway reportedly scoffed last week.

KINGSTON — Jennifer Hyatte was sentenced today to life in prison without a chance for parole for the 2005 murder of a prison guard and the wounding of another guard in an attempt to free her husband, George Hyatte. Before she was led out of the courtroom, Jennifer Hyatte tearfully apologized to the family and friends of her victims. “For all of the hurt and pain that I have caused you all … I can’t ask you to forgive me, because what I’ve done is unforgivable,” Hyatte said in Criminal Court at the Roane County Courthouse. The former prison nurse...

As New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote recently, forty years ago this summer the movie that changed the movies premiered. Anybody old enough to remember films before Bonnie and Clyde can testify to the jolting power of Arthur Penn’s kinetic blend of blue-grass slapstick, Depression-era nostalgia, and gruesome, stylized violence. But something else was revealed then, something that I, 14 at the time, was too callow and ignorant to notice behind the cinematic innovations––the moral idiocy that has since come to define pretty much most of American popular culture. Bonnie and Clyde staked a claim to a moral seriousness...

Clinton Fights to Keep Impeachment TabooAfter Spat, Campaigns Know to Expect Swift Reprisal for Any Hint of the Scandal By Anne E. Kornblut Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 25, 2007 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new commandment for the 2008 presidential field: Thou shalt not mention anything related to the impeachment of her husband. With a swift response to attacks from a former supporter last week, advisers to the New York Democrat offered a glimpse of their strategy for handling one of the most awkward chapters of her biography. They declared her husband's impeachment in 1998 -- or,...

Former United States vice-president Al Gore described the US and Australia as the "Bonnie and Clyde" of the global climate crisis for failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Gore, now an environmental activist, likened the two countries to the notorious American bank robbers during a visit to Australia to promote his film on global warming -- "An inconvenient truth". The Kyoto Protocol aims to restrict the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and the US and Australia are the only two developed countries that haven't ratified the pact. "I sincerely believe if Australia joined the rest of the...

I am at a loss for words

Larry Buchanan, the filmmaker who has died aged 81, specialised in the niche market for what he called "guerrilla filmmaking" - truly dreadful B-movies with such names as Zontar, the Thing from Venus; Curse of the Swamp Creature; Naughty Dallas and Mars Needs Women, a film which reputedly features in every list of the worst movies ever made. But even this last title found a market, and reached its widest audiences in a version dubbed into Yiddish. Buchanan combined the roles of producer, director, screenwriter, editor and, where appropriate, voice-over narrator. He was unashamed, even proud, of tacky production values,...