TV Guide: William Friedkin

Listing: The Exorcist

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:30:00 -0400

Sun Oct 26 12:30 AM BRAVO

Listing: To Live and Die in L.A.

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:30:00 -0400

Thu Oct 16 02:30 AM SHOe

Listing: The Guardian

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:40:00 -0400

Mon Oct 13 01:40 AM HBO2e

Video: William Friedkin on Opera

AMC — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:31:04 -0400

Opera director William Friedkin reveals what the great opera singers really want, and breaks down the real difference between opera and film.

Video: Sorcerer

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:06:31 -0400

The plot of William Friedkin's suspense thriller originated with the same Georges Arnaud novel that inspired Henri-Georges Clouzot's French suspense classic The Wages of Fear (1953). Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou play four men who, for various reasons, cannot return to their own countries. They end up in a dismal South American town where an American oil company is seeking out courageous drivers willing to haul nitroglycerin over 200 miles of treacherous terrain. The four stateless men have nothing to lose -- and, besides, they'll be paid 10,000 dollars apiece, and be granted legal citizenship, if they survive. The suspense is almost unbearable at times, even outdistancing the tension level of The Wages of Fear in certain scenes. Sorcerer had all the earmarks of a moneymaker, but this picture bombed for a rather odd and silly reason: its glaringly inappropriate title. Fans of Friedkin's The Exorcist may have gone home disappointed that not one sorcerer ever rears its ugly head. ~ Hal

Video: Guardian, The

Video Detective — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:13:24 -0400

The Exorcist director William Friedkin made a return to the horror genre with this blend of straightforward suspense and Druid myth-inspired horror-fantasy. The idyllic lives of yuppie couple Phil and Kate (Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell) seem complete when they select the winsome young Camilla (Jenny Seagrove) as a live-in nanny for their newborn child, but the lovely young Camilla -- whose natural sexuality begins to work its spell on Phil -- is not what she appears to be. This becomes shockingly apparent to the audience early in the story when she is set upon by a trio of rape-minded thugs who meet with a particularly nasty fate in the woods, but it seems to take the parents much longer to come to the same conclusion. In fact, the woods are the key to the entire equation, as Camilla is revealed to be a powerful forest entity from Druid mythology who intends to sacrifice her infant charge to a hideous tree-god. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide.

Video: Bug

Video Detective — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:10:09 -0400

Academy Award-winning Exorcist director William Friedkin scuttles deep into the darkest recesses of the traumatized human psyche with this tale of a lonely bartender haunted by the long-ago disappearance of her young son, and the paranoia that emerges when she enters into a tentative relationship with a deeply disturbed drifter. Adapted from the off-Broadway play by Tracy Letts, Bug centers on Agnes (Ashley Judd), who tends bar alongside pal R.C. (Lynn Collins), and has recently moved into a shoddy roadside motel in hopes of avoiding her menacing and recently paroled ex-husband Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.). Upon making the acquaintance of subdued former soldier Peter (Michael Shannon repeating his stage role), a veteran of the first Gulf War, Agnes finally senses that things are looking up. Quietly charming despite his melancholy aura, Peter soon reveals to Agnes that he had contracted a bug while serving in the Middle East, and that it may have been deliberately administered as part of a secret military medical

Video: Hunted, The

Video Detective — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:52:07 -0400

A rogue special-forces soldier is tracked down by his former mentor in this action thriller from director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist). In his first role since winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2001, Benicio del Toro stars as Aaron Hallam, one of the U.S. military's most skilled hand-to-hand combat operatives. In the years following his successful assassination of a Serbian warlord in late-'90s Kosovo, Hallam finds himself plagued by traumatic flashbacks of death and destruction, so much so that when he finally returns home, he regresses into a feral, survivalist state in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. There, he deliberately and elaborately hunts and kills poachers who happen to cross his path. When the FBI investigates the murders, they call in the man who taught Hallam everything he knows: retiree L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones). As the instructor pursues his unhinged former pupil, Bonham begins to learn about key events in Hallam's life that pushed him over the edge. ~ M

Video: To Live And Die In L.A.

Video Detective — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:04:25 -0400

William Friedkin's crime thriller, based on a book by U.S. Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, concerns an arrogant Secret Service official who wants to get his man at any price. Willem Dafoe plays Eric Masters, an ultra-smooth counterfeiter who has managed to sidestep the police for years. He is so up-front about his dealings, in fact, that when some undercover agents try to make a deal with him at his health club, Eric tells them, I've been coming to this gym three times a week for five years. I'm an easy guy to find. People know they can trust me. But when young and eager Secret Service agent Richard Chance (William L. Petersen) finds out that his partner has been cold-bloodedly murdered by Eric, he trains his relentlessness upon capturing Eric -- whether it means robbery, murder, or exploiting his friends and associates. As Chance erases the dividing line between good and evil, he drags his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) and Ruth Lanier (Darlanne Fluegel), an ex-con, down into the maelstrom wi

Video: William Friedkin and Jeanne Moreau

Amazon Video on Demand — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:10:38 -0400

Star director William Friedkin made more than one French connection, his romance with one of Europe's greatest leading ladies was the talk of Tinseltown.

Video: Rules of Engagement

iTunes — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:25:05 -0400

Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson deliver electrifying performances in this "tense, superbly-directed and top-drawer drama"* about what happens when the rules that command a soldier become the rules that condemn him. Colonel Terry Childers (Jackson) is a patriot and war hero. But when a peacekeeping mission he leads in Yemen goes terribly wrong, he finds himself facing a court martial. Accused of breaking the rules of engagement by killing unarmed civilians, Childers' only hope of vindication rests with comrade-in-arms Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones), a military lawyer of questionable abilities. Together, they face the battle of their lives.Directed by Oscar.-winning director William Friedkin and co-starring Guy Pearce, Bruce Greenwood, Anne Archer and Academy Award.-winner Ben Kingsley, Rules of Engagement is "a magnificent movie you must see."** *Jeffrey Lyons, NBC-TV **Larry King, USA Today

Video: "A Conversation"

Yahoo Movies — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:29:23 -0400

Director William Friedkin talks with star Ashley Judd.