The Hollywoodland Revue

Rudolph Valentino was still one of Hollywood's biggest legends in the late 1940s, more than twenty years after his death. The silent screen idol was born in Italy and had died suddenly at the age of thirty-one in 1926. His death unleashed unprecedented public hysteria with women fainting in front of Campbell's funeral home in New York while newspapers published dozens of pages of tributes to him and Hollywood came to a standstill to mourn him. For movie producers in the late forties looking back on the silent film era, Valentino's rags-to-stardom-and-death story fit perfectly with the biographical film that flourished during the post-war era. However, it turned out to be very difficult to make a film about his life.

Hollywood gathered once again beneath the glittering lights of the Dolby Theatre for the 98th Academy Awards, and while the ceremony stretched late into the evening—as Oscar nights inevitably do—it unfolded with unusual energy, humor, and a sense that the industry had rediscovered how to entertain itself. Hosted by Conan O'Brien, the evening balanced sharp comedy with genuine celebration of filmmaking, producing one of the tighter ceremonies in recent memory even if the clock still drifted well past its scheduled ending.

When the Academy Awards are presented tonight, the presenters, nominees, guests, and members of the press will file into the Dolby Theatre for the evening’s celebration. What most of them likely do not realize—or perhaps never considered—is that the very ground beneath their seats was once the site of the legendary Hollywood Hotel, owned and operated by the formidable Almira “Mira” Hershey.

Jacob Elordi might be one of the hottest young actors working today, but to understand how he got here, and why his name is being whispered in awards season circles, you have to understand how hard he's fought against the version of fame that's been offered to him. Raised in Brisbane, Australia, on June 26, 1997, Elordi was not born into money or status. His humble beginnings kept him grounded—and quite literally far away—from the world of fame that now surrounds him, and it informs the way he thinks about his career to this day. Pursuing acting was originally a means to gain recognition, quite the opposite of fame; it was a way out of obscurity—followed by a very unwanted burst of notoriety.

Edward Everett Horton remains one of Hollywood’s most beloved character actors — the fluttering sophisticate with impeccable timing and an unmistakably gentle wit. Audiences adored him, directors trusted him, and generations of filmgoers felt affection for him long after he left the screen.

Every weekend brings a fresh selection of films competing for the attention of moviegoers, and the mid-March lineup offers a varied mix of romance, horror, comedy, and independent drama. Whether you are in the mood for an emotional literary adaptation, a supernatural chill, or an offbeat art-house curiosity, theaters are offering several distinct options. Below is a brief guide to the most notable wide and limited releases arriving this weekend, with a quick look at their stories, the talent behind them, and how critics and audiences are responding.

Every year there is at least one movie that becomes a love-it or hate-it phenomenon. People will walk out of theaters wondering what they just watched and talk about it for years to come. Bugonia was that movie for 2025. The film, a weirdly hilarious sci-fi thriller from provocateur director Yorgos Lanthimos, was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture. Continuing Lanthimos's body of work that explores the absurdity of people, paranoia, and moral ambivalence, Bugonia was perhaps predictable for people who have seen his previous works with Emma Stone Poor Things and The Favourite. The film represents another bold and unsettling cinematic experiment.

At his death in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1930 newspapers around the nation reported the passing of a man whose life sounded almost mythical. William H. Taylor, known in movie colony circles as “Billy the Scout,” had been reported age 103. He was said to have been a veteran of both the Civil War and the westward Indian campaigns and had been one of the oldest people associated with motion pictures in their earliest years. Taylor's life had spanned the bloody violence of the nineteenth century frontier and the development of the motion picture industry which would in turn dramatize that era.

Few icons are as instantly identifiable as the shimmering gold statue familiarly referred to worldwide as “Oscar.” Clasping his sword in front of him and perched atop a movie reel, the Academy Award trophy has become synonymous with movie greatness. But the journey to its creation is as intriguing as the films it honors, dating back to the birth of Hollywood and the film industry’s efforts to gain prestige, professionalism and artistic credibility.

Timothée Chalamet’s latest controversy did not begin with a manifesto, a feud, or even a calculated provocation. It began, as so many modern celebrity flare-ups do, with an offhand remark delivered in a live conversation, clipped for social media, and then detached from the room in which it was said. During a CNN and Variety town hall taped before students at the University of Texas at Austin and aired on February 21, 2026, Chalamet and Matthew McConaughey were discussing audience attention spans, the marketplace for “serious” films, and whether art should survive because institutions insist on preserving it or because audiences actively demand it.

By the time dawn broke over Hollywood on Christmas morning, 1928, the house at 6622 Iris Drive in Whitley Heights had already passed into local legend. What had begun as a holiday gathering at the home of actress Lottie Pickford—sister of Mary Pickford and once a familiar name in silent-era cast lists—ended instead as a police blotter bonanza, complete with fistfights, bloodied hands, frantic neighbors, and headlines that blared of Hollywood excess spilling into violence.

It's one of the great lost films of silent cinema. Four Devils (1928), F. W. Murnau's second American film and his most obscure Hollywood endeavor, was made in the immediate aftermath of Sunrise and released right before the sound revolution began. Because of its timing, the film hit theaters at exactly the wrong moment to succeed as a movie that valued poetry over gimmick. It's doubly unfortunate because Four Devils wasn't forgotten or unpopular upon release—it was praised, debated, and considered by most people to be a major success.