Day: March 2, 2016

Categories
Movies

I look forward to seeing them all!!

Here’s your (very early) first look at 2017’s Oscar contenders

The red carpet at Hollywood’s Dolby Theater has barely been rolled up yet, but Tinseltown is already buzzing about next year’s Oscar race.

Prognosticating about Best Picture contenders this far out isn’t for the faint of heart.

One thing’s for sure: After this year’s “diversity crisis,’’ there will almost certainly be more non-caucasians among the nominees next January. And there might even be a female director nominated.

Here, in no particular order, is a selection of films on the horizon that would seem to be contenders based on the talents involved or their subject matter:

  • “Birth of a Nation’’: This film is the current front-runner after its debut at the Sundance Film Festival last month. Writer-director Nate Parker (who appropriated the title of D.W. Griffith’s racist silent classic) stars as Nat Turner, a slave who led a short-lived rebellion in Virginia in 1831.
  • “Manchester by the Sea”: Another one that wowed ’em at Sundance, it stars Casey Affleck as a tortured New England handyman picking up the remains of a broken past. The film was written and directed by playwright Kenneth Lonergan and has been compared to the Oscar-winning “Ordinary People.’’
  • “A United Kingdom”: David Oyelowo, who was snubbed by Oscar when he played Martin Luther King in “Selma,’’ is cast as Prince Seretse Khama, heir to the throne of Botswana who was exiled to London after marrying a white Englishwoman (Rosamund Pike) in the late 1940s.
  • “Queen of Katwe”: Oyelowo also co-stars in this biopic of Ugandan-born world chess champion Harriet Mutesi, played by Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar winner for “12 Years a Slave.’’
  • “The Zookeeper’s Wife’’: Best Actress nominee Jessica Chastain has the title role in this fact-based story of a woman who helped shelter hundreds of Jews from the Holocaust.
  • “Silence”: Martin Scorsese’s first film since “The Wolf of Wall Street’’ is an adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel about two Jesuit priests who face violence when they travel to Japan in search of their mentor. Starring Liam Neeson, Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield.
  • “The Founder”: Michael Keaton stars in this biopic of Ray Kroc, who turned the McDonald brothers’ South California hamburger restaurant into an international empire.
  • “Sully’’: Director Clint Eastwood brings the 2012 “Miracle on the Hudson” tale to the big screen in this biopic starring Tom Hanks as hero airplane pilot Chesley “Sully’’ Sullenberger.
  • “The Girl on the Train”: This adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ best-seller revolves around a divorcée (Emily Blunt) who believes she may be connected to the disappearance of a neighbor. It is directed by Tate Taylor (”The Help’’).
  • “LBJ”: Two-time Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson stars in this decades-spanning biopic of the 36th president of the United States. It’s the first major film in years from director Rob Reiner, nominated as a producer of “A Few Good Men,’’ and co-stars Jennifer Jason Leigh.
  • “Money Monster’’: George Clooney plays a bombastic TV personality who is taken hostage during a live broadcast by a man (Jack O’Connell) irate after one of his bad stock tips. Co-stars include Julia Roberts. Jodie Foster directs.
  • “Florence Foster Jenkins”: Much-nominated Meryl Streep plays the woman widely regarded as the worst singer of all time in this biopic directed by Stephen Frears and co-starring Hugh Grant.
  • “American Pastoral”: Ewan McGregor makes his directing debut and stars in this adaptation of a Philip Roth novel about a man whose life is wrecked by his daughter’s terrorist activities in the late 1960s.
  • “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’’: Two-time Oscar winner Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain”) directs this satire set in Texas during the Iraq war starring Vin Diesel and Kristen Stewart.
  • “La-La Land”: Ryan Gosling plays a jazz pianist who falls for an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) in director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated “Whiplash.’’
  • “Free State of Jones”: Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, a Mississippian who led an armed rebellion against the Confederacy during the Civil War. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays his black wife. Gary Ross (“Seabiscuit’’) directs.
  • “Genius’’: A biographical drama about legendary book editor Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth), co-starring Nicole Kidman, Jude Law (as Thomas Wolfe), Dominic West (Ernest Hemingway) and Guy Pearce (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Categories
Music

Hope anything they produce is at least good.

Guns N’ Roses April Reunion Won’t Include Izzy Stradlin

The founding member says he won’t be joining Axl, Slash & Duff onstage or in the studio.

Guns N’ Roses are doing their best to reunite the band’s classic lineup, but for now, the legendary hard rockers’ 2016 incarnation won’t include founding member Izzy Stradlin.

“At this point in time, I will not be playing at any of the April 2016 GNR shows,” the guitarist told Rolling Stone on Tuesday (March 1) via email. “I’ve also not been in the studio recording or writing with any of the others recently,” he specified. “There is so much speculation, but so very little info, [that] I thought I should reach out.”

Theoretically, the fact Stradlin specifies “April 2016 GNR shows” could leave the door open down the line (they are expected to expand their tour beyond the current six-date itinerary), though for now, this leaves Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan as the only “classic” members on board.

It is also notable that Stradlin calls attention to alleged Guns N’ Roses studio sessions. Previously, these had been rumored through sources like former Slash publicist Arlett Vereecke and former GN’R manager Alan Niven, who even said Stradlin joined them in the studio. However, Guns N’ Roses has given no official word on a new studio album to accompany the tour.

So far, the band has confirmed six 2016 concerts, all in April: two in Las Vegas, two at Coachella and two in Mexico City.

Stradlin quit Guns N’ Roses in 1991 but has been onstage with them a few times since, notably at their 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction

Categories
Concerts

It’s only rock and roll, but I like it…like it…yes I do!!

Rolling Stones to play March 25 show in Havana

The Rolling Stones announced Tuesday that they will play a free concert in Havana on March 25, becoming the biggest act to play Cuba since its 1959 revolution.

The Stones will play in Havana’s Ciudad Deportiva three days after U.S. President Barack Obama visits Havana.

The concert is expected to draw a massive audience in a country where the government once persecuted young people for listening to rock music, then seen as a tool of Western capitalism.

“We have performed in many special places during our long career but this show in Havana is going to be a landmark event for us, and, we hope, for all our friends in Cuba too,” the band said in a statement.

Along with easing many restrictions on foreign music, art and literature, the Cuban government has increasingly allowed large gatherings not organized by the government in recent years. The Stones concert will almost certainly be one of the largest since Cuba began easing its limits on some non-official gatherings in the 1990s.

On the same week as the visits by Obama and The Rolling Stones, the Tampa Bay Rays are also expected to play the first Major League Baseball exhibition game in Cuba since 1999, part of an extraordinary string of events in a country that spent the Cold War isolated from the United States and its allies.

Cuban fans have been buzzing about a possible concert by “Los Rollings” since lead singer Mick Jagger visited Havana in October.

The Havana “Concert for Amity” will cap the Stones’ America Latina Ole tour through seven Latin American cities. The band said it will donate instruments and musical equipment from sponsors to Cuban musicians during their visit.

The biggest musical performance in Cuba to date was held in 2009, when the Colombian singer Juanes drew more than a million people to a show titled “Peace without Frontiers” in Havana’s Revolution Plaza.

That concert angered Cuban-American exiles in the U.S. and its organizers wrangled with the Cuban government over performances by Cuban artists critical of the government. U.S. government contractors also tried to use the concert to promote programs designed to foment political change in Cuba.

The Stones concert is expected to take place in a more relaxed political environment, coming more than a year after Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced that they were declaring detente and moving to normalize relations.

Both governments are now moving rapidly to make the new relationship appear irreversible before the end of Obama’s term.

Categories
Awards

I’m still surprised those “jokes” made it to air.

Oscars 2016: Chris Rock Asians skit, Sacha Baron Cohen crude joke raise ire

Like many, Canadian actor Simu Liu was happy to see Oscars host Chris Rock immediately address the #OscarsSoWhite elephant in the room at Sunday’s Academy Awards

But the reduction of diversity to simply black and white, in addition to stereotyped jokes at the expense of Asians have underlined how marginalized many groups remain in Hollywood.

“As the night went on, I became more and more frustrated,” Toronto-based film, television and stage actor Liu told CBC News.

“Basically, what I got out of the night is that diversity as it pertains to people at the Oscars… was a question of white and black…First Nations, Asian, East Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern — we were just not even visible.”

After the film academy’s all-white list of acting nominees this year led to widespread criticism ahead of the Oscars, Rock generally earned praise for addressing Hollywood’s systemic prejudice in his monologue and throughout the night.

However, his comments almost exclusively referenced blacks. For the most part, other minority groups (other ethnicities, female creators or the LGBT community) were not mentioned in context of more inclusion in the industry.

However, the night did include widely criticized bits that made Asians the butt of the joke.

In one of Rock’s segments, he introduced three Asian children who emerged onstage as PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants, relying on a tired stereotype about Asians being good at math.

“They sent us their most dedicated, accurate and hard-working representatives… Please welcome Ming Zhu, Bao Ling and David Moskowitz,” he said.

“If anybody’s upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone, which was also made by these kids,” Rock added, with his joke sparking outrage online.

Another segment saw actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen turn up onstage in character as his clueless, wannabe-black persona Ali G to present the Oscar-nominated film Room. He made a crude, transparently racist joke.

“I know what you was thinking when I walked on, here comes yet another token black presenter,” he declared.

“But it ain’t just me brethren who has been overlooked, it is all people of all colours. How come there is no [Oscar] for those hard-working yellow people with tiny dongs. You know – the Minions.”

Cohen has since admitted that Oscar organizers had expressly asked him not to dress up as one of his comedic characters, but that he proceeded after Rock gave him a last-minute “thumbs up” when told of the plan upon Cohen’s arrival at the ceremony.

The British actor told a British outlet that he and actress wife Isla Fisher snuck the Ali G elements in and he faked food poisoning to change into his costume.

Sunday’s Oscars, which earned the lowest ratings in eight years, was a setback for diversity, according to a statement from Mee Moua, president and executive director of the Washington-based Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

The show “exposed one of the failings of how we talk about race in America: race relations are not a black-white binary,” she said, according to the Associated Press.

“We need to work together to dismantle the systems that devalue the experiences of minority groups so we can see the tales of the diversity that have shaped our nation reflected accurately.”

The sentiment was echoed by Felix Sanchez, chairman and co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, also based in Washington.

“I was shocked that Latinos and Asians and Native Americans were not a part of [the Oscars] conversation,” Sanchez told AP.

“They have this idea that the paradigm is still black-white and they need to expand the conversation. That it was so narrow is indefensible.”

Categories
Awards

Unfortunately it was another mediocre show with only a few surprises and even fewer moments we’ll have forgotten by next week.

Oscars 2016

From Chris Rock’s opening monologue to the fiery Public Enemy anthem “Fight The Power” that ran over the credits, the 88th annual Academy Awards mounted a sustained and wildly messy assault on Hollywood’s diversity problem, an epic insistence that black lives do matter. ABC’s broadcast could have avoided the controversy of #OscarsSoWhite, which would have been wrong, or dealt with it in one segment or a few segments, which may not have been sufficient. Instead, the show boldly engaged in the debate – even wallowed in it – and let the conversation that framed the entire awards season underline its final night. I’m not sure how much the Oscars affirmed the power of movies on Sunday, but the ceremony did assert the power of our chatter. The subtext of the entire evening seemed to be: If we don’t hit this race thing hard, Twitter’s gonna kill us. And so there was overkill.

One of our very best comedians, Rock was clearly in tough spot. How to critique the film industry on a night in which he was employed to be the industry’s biggest cheerleader? (You could say he was caught between “Chris Rock” and a hard place.) As host, he failed as an ambassador for cinema, and he certainly didn’t succeed at keeping things moving. He wasn’t as smooth as I wanted him to be, and while his roughness produced an energizing rawness, he contributed to a telecast marred by errant direction, dropped sound, and stagehands getting in the way of shots. But as whip to the show’s redemptive ideological and P.R. mission, Rock was provocative and effective, even if the jokes themselves were all over the place.

Beginning the night in an ivory tuxedo jacket, Rock welcomed us to “the white People’s Choice Awards.” He then jokesplained why he didn’t quit the gig after the nominations were announced. (It’s a job – and he couldn’t stand to lose another one to Kevin Hart.) The stand-up that followed tried to have it both ways by legitimizing and critiquing the outrage. After asking why it’s taken so long for people to care so much about diversity, Rock riffed on why African-Americans weren’t complaining about their lack of nominations in the 1960s: “We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer. When your grandmother is swinging from a tree, it’s really hard to care about best documentary foreign short.” The audience laughed – and squirmed. Rock smiled at their discomfort and kept rolling.

Rock blasted Hollywood’s institutional biases and those that would protest it. Not every crack was funny, and his logic wasn’t always sound. He roasted Jada Pinkett Smith, who works on screens big and small and whose most recent credit is the Fox series Gotham, suggesting she didn’t have the authority to call for an Oscar boycott because she was currently a television actress and therefore not eligible for invitation to the movie prom. This from an actor whose most recent screen credit was a guest spot on Empire. (Perhaps Rock didn’t see Magic Mike XXL, which featured Pinkett Smith in a sizable supporting role.) He also seemed to dismiss her as a defensive wife standing up for her slighted man, Will Smith, who failed to receive a nomination for his performance in Concussion. (Why pick on Pinkett Smith? Why make her the face of the boycott movement instead of, say, Spike Lee, who was given a lifetime achievement Oscar last fall, yet whose bold, acclaimed film Chi-Raq was ignored.)

Rock kept pointing outward, diverting our attention to more urgent expressions of racial issues, like police shootings of black suspects. (The audience – or at least Matt Damon – really had no idea how to respond to that one.) I appreciated these jokes for the ways in which they got us thinking about bigger issues than Oscar meritocracy, but at the same time, they risked letting Hollywood off the hook by minimizing the #OscarsSoWhite problem, by saying, “This really isn’t a big deal.” His attempt to conceptualize Hollywood’s racism as “sorority racism” – the latest iteration of a point he’s been making for quite awhile – was too high concept and too soft. I wanted blunter and funnier.

Rock and the show in general produced a cultural good by simply talking about the problem of diversity so much, if not terribly well. It won on volume, not quality. Some bits worked like gangbusters, like the package that inserted Whoopi Goldberg, Tracy Morgan, and Leslie Jones into best picture nominees, either in token roles or replacing the white stars themselves. (Quibble: The Martian spoof – the idea that NASA wouldn’t spend billions and billions of dollars to rescue a black astronaut – has been done before and sharper by others.) Another bit, “Black History Month Minute,” saluted the achievements of… Jack Black.

But the show erred by making Hollywood’s problems with representation seem all about the marginalization of black people instead of addressing how it marginalizes everyone was isn’t white and male. The critique of inclusiveness was wrongly exclusive. When the show did acknowledge other races, it fumbled with stereotypes. Using Asian kids to portray the accountants who tabulate the Oscar votes? Why? Because they’re good at math? Yeesh. (Rock preemptively tried to counter complaint from those who might tweet-shame the joke by making another joke about our devices being made by Asian child labor.)

#OscarsSoWhite wasn’t the night’s only upstaging righteous cause. Lady Gaga turned her performance of “’Til It Happens To You” (from The Hunting Ground) into a forceful protest against campus rape, victim shaming, and a culture that allows sexual violence to flourish. Declaring himself “a proud gay man,” Sam Smith, who took home the Best Song Oscar for “The Writing’s On The Wall” (from Spectre) dedicated his award to the global LGBT community. Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio used his speech to eloquently rail against climate change, environmental ruin, and the powerful forces that would seek to minimize or deny the cost of industry and consumerism run amok. DiCaprio took a lot of heat for how he waged his Oscar campaign, for humblebragging about how much he suffered for The Revenant. I’m not a fan of the movie myself, but he did well by himself with that speech.

The downside of Oscar’s advocacypalooza: nurturing a flawed view of movies as a means to an end instead of art, an ironic if fitting outcome for a glitchy gala that took as its theme a celebration of the filmmaking process. The most entertaining stretch of the evening was the hour in which Mad Max: Fury Road stormed the technical categories and brought waves of charmingly scruffy or exuberantly grateful artists to stage to testify to the power of collaboration. (Bedazzled, super-casual costume designer Jenny Beavan should win all the awards.) I was grateful for the huge upsets that not only pulled us through the too-long broadcast but also redirected our attention back to the movies. Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) beat Sylvester Stallone (Creed) for best supporting actor, a stunner that denied us a sentimental moment for the ages and cost Stallone what might have been his best and last chance to win a statue. In a welcome, smart, and underdog victory, Ex Machina beat Mad Max and Star Wars: The Force Awakens for Best Visual Effects. And to the delight of critics who’ve spent months loudly decrying The Revenant’s seemingly unstoppable march to Oscar glory, Spotlight took home the best picture trophy. Yay, journalism!

There was also a conspicuous amount of ribald irreverence. For a brief moment, I worried that the spirit of the Golden Globes had possessed the Oscars. Sarah Silverman joked about her “heavy Jewish boobs” and boning James “not a grower or a shower” Bond. Jared Leto joshed about merkins (and encouraged us to Google it if we didn’t know what a merkin was.) And yet, strangely enough, only one Donald Trump joke, unless I missed something (Andy Serkis had the honor). Maybe the most subversive stunt of the night was Rock selling Girl Scout cookies to the audience on behalf of his two daughters – a bit of business that produced the spectacle of wealthy Hollywood people (most of them white, of course) waving wads of cash in the air. He raised over $60,000. Way to make them pay, Rock.

Categories
Awards

Congrats to them all!!

Oscars 2016: See the Full Winners List

It was a very musical Oscars ceremony, with Lady Gaga, The Weeknd and Sam Smith all performing and up for best original song.

Oscars 2016: All Our Coverage Here

But who won? See all the winners below:

Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight — WINNER

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant — WINNER
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room — WINNER
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Directing
The Big Short, Adam McKay
Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller
The Revenant, Alejandro G. Iñárritu — WINNER
Room, Lenny Abrahamson
Spotlight, Tom McCarthy

Best Original Song
“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey
Music and Lyric by Abel Tesfaye, Ahmad Balshe, Jason Daheala Quenneville and Stephan Moccio
“Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction
Music by J. Ralph and Lyric by Antony Hegarty
“Simple Song #3” from Youth
Music and Lyric by David Lang
“Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground
Music and Lyric by Diane Warren and Lady Gaga — WINNER
“Writing’s On The Wall” from Spectre
Music and Lyric by Jimmy Napes and Sam Smith

Original Score
Bridge of Spies, Thomas Newman
Carol, Carter Burwell
​The Hateful Eight, Ennio Morricone — WINNER
Sicario, Jóhann Jóhannsson
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, John Williams

Foreign Language Film
Embrace of the Serpent
Mustang
Son of Saul — WINNER
A War

Documentary Feature
Amy, Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees — WINNER
Cartel Land, Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin
The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen
What Happened, Miss Simone?, Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby and Justin Wilkes
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, Evgeny Afineevsky and Den Tolmor

Documentary Short Subject
Body Team 12, David Darg and Bryn Mooser Chau,
Beyond the Lines, Courtney Marsh and Jerry Franck
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, Adam Benzine
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy — WINNER
Last Day of Freedom, Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies — WINNER
Sylvester Stallone​, Creed

Animated Feature Film
Anomalisa
Boy And The World
Inside Out — WINNER
Shaun The Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There

Best Animated Short Film
Bear Story, Gabriel Osorio and Pato Escala — WINNER
Prologue, Richard Williams and Imogen Sutton
Sanjay’s Super Team, Sanjay Patel and Nicole Grindle
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, Konstantin Bronzit
World of Tomorrow, Don Hertzfeldt

Visual Effects
Ex Machina — WINNER
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Martian

Sound Mixing
Bridge Of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road — WINNER
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Sound Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road — WINNER
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Cinematography
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Fury Road
The Revenant — WINNER
Sicario

Production Design
Bridge Of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road — WINNER
The Martian
The Revenant

​Costume Design
Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road — WINNER
The Revenant

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl — WINNER
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Adapted Screenplay
The Big Short — WINNER
Brooklyn
Carol
Martian
Room

Original Screenplay
Bridge of Spies
Alex Garland
Inside Out
Spotlight — WINNER
Straight Outta Compton

Makeup and Hairstyling
Mad Max — WINNER
100 Year Old Man
The Revenant

Film Editing
​The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road — WINNER
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Categories
People

May he rest in peace.

Tough-guy journeyman actor George Kennedy dies at 91

LOS ANGELES (AP) — George Kennedy, the hulking, tough-guy character actor who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a savage chain-gang convict in the 1960s classic “Cool Hand Luke,” has died.

His grandson Cory Schenkel says Kennedy died on Sunday morning of old age in Boise, Idaho. He was 91.

He had undergone emergency triple bypass surgery in 2002. That same year, he and his late wife moved to Idaho to be closer to their daughter and her family, though he still was involved in occasional film projects.

His biggest acting achievement came in “Cool Hand Luke,” a 1967 film about a rebellious war hero played by Paul Newman who is bent on bucking the system as a prisoner on a Southern chain gang. Its theme of rebelling against authority and the establishment helped make it one of the most important films of the tumultuous 1960s.

Kennedy played the role of Dragline, the chain-gang boss who goes from Luke’s No. 1 nemesis to his biggest disciple as Newman’s character takes on folk hero status among fellow inmates. The movie garnered four Academy Award nominations, and Kennedy was named best supporting actor.

Newman and Kennedy provided a spectacular one-two punch — Luke as the reticent anti-hero, Dragline as an illiterate brute. They shared several memorable scenes, including one in which Kennedy’s character wins a bet by getting Luke to eat 50 eggs in an hour.

After the critical and commercial success of “Cool Hand Luke,” Kennedy carved out a niche as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable supporting actors. He had parts in several action flicks in the 1970s, played Leslie Nielsen’s sidekick in the “Naked Gun” spoofs and was J.R. Ewing’s business rival in the final seasons of “Dallas.”

One of his strongest supporting roles was in the hit 1970 film “Airport,” which spurred the run of 1970s disaster pictures. Kennedy played Joe Patroni, a no-nonsense, cigar-chomping troubleshooter who stubbornly guides a jetliner stuck on a snow-clogged runway out of harm’s way.

The film spawned several sequels (Kennedy was in all of them) and landed Kennedy a Golden Globe nomination.

Kennedy said his acting ambitions were cemented when he was a young child.

“I remember listening to a radio program when I was young and it made me feel good and I remember telling my mom that I wanted to make people feel the way this radio program made me feel,” Kennedy said in 1995.

“I got some great breaks, and I wound up being an actor.”

His film career began to take flight in the early 1960s. He starred in 1963’s “Charade,” a whodunit that features Kennedy, Cary Grant, James Coburn and Walter Matthau seeking out the $250,000 they suspect was left behind by Audrey Hepburn’s dead husband. His other acting credits in the 1960s included “The Dirty Dozen” and “Guns of the Magnificent Seven.”

Kennedy once called “Charade” the favorite movie in which he appeared.

“It had Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, music by Henry Mancini; it was shot entirely in Paris,” he said in 1995. “I have nothing but wonderful memories.”

Kennedy became regular face in action movies in the 1970s after the success of “Airport,” including “Earthquake” and “Death on the Nile.” During this time he also starred in the CBS crime show “The Blue Knight” where he played a Los Angeles cop. He made several film and television appearances in the early and mid-1980s, but few were successful.

He turned to comedic roles in the 1980s and 1990s, the most memorable being the three “Naked Gun” films.

Among his later credits was a small role in Wim Wenders’ 2005 film, “Don’t Come Knocking.” Kennedy’s last on-screen role was in the 2014 remake of “The Gambler,” which starred Mark Wahlberg.

Kennedy was born in New York in 1925. He started acting at the age of 2 when he joined a touring company production of “Bringing up Father.” Five years later, he became a disc jockey with a kids radio show.

He enlisted in the Army at 17 and served in World War II, opening the first Army Information Office that provided technical assistance to films and TV shows. Kennedy spent 16 years in the Army and left as a captain.

After his Army stint, Kennedy made his television debut in “The Phil Silvers Show” in 1955 and had a variety of guest appearances in the Westerns “Have Gun, Will Travel,” ”Cheyenne” and “Gunsmoke.”

Kennedy, an avid reader, also dabbled in writing and published a couple of murder mysteries.

Schenkel remembered sitting in on an autograph session in London with his grandfather.

“I sat behind him for hours that day watching the hundreds of fans in line waiting to meet my grandpa,” Schenkel recalled. “At the end of the day we sat in our hotel room eating room service and he said to me, ‘Seeing all those people I was able to bring a little enjoyment and happiness into their life — That is why I did it.'”

In later years, Kennedy became an advocate for adopted children. He had four adopted children, including his granddaughter Taylor, whose mother, also adopted by Kennedy, had become addicted to drugs and alcohol.

“Don’t let the fact that you’re 77 or 70 get in your way. Don’t let the fact that you’re a single parent and you want to adopt get in your way,” Kennedy said in a Fox interview in 2002. “That kid, some place right now, cold and wet, needs somebody to say, “I love you, kid, good night.'”