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In the roughly eighty outsize years he actually had on this earth, writer/director John Huston seems to have lived several lives and lifetimes. Those who remember him best for his occasional acting forays (most memorably as Noah Cross in “Chinatown”) should also explore Huston’s indelible work behind the camera.

It probably won’t surprise too many of you out there that Steven Spielberg is the highest grossing movie director of all time. His personal net worth is edging up to $3 billion. Does this make him inaccessible or out of touch with his fellow mortals? Not a bit. As his canon of movies attests, Spielberg stays very much in tune with us ordinary humans (even when his subject matter is the otherworldly).

Space certainly gives us humans plenty to think about, and the question of what lies beyond our solar system is still awaiting a full answer. This year, the revived series “Cosmos” had us scratching our heads as we contemplated the abyss, and even with the laws of physics greatly simplified, the universe is still too big for our primitive brains to grasp. Now comes director Christopher Nolan’s thinking person’s space movie “Interstellar,” and with it, a renewed interest in the possibilities of “out there.”

She was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1908, and was, by her own admission, a Yankee.

Why, one has to ask, is it not pure megalomania whenever directors direct themselves? Simply put, this is a breed of actor (and director) who understands the vision so completely that the need to control every element, even their own performances, overrides all doubt. Of course, this could look quite a lot like megalomania, or it could simply be pure genius. Or perhaps a bit of both.  For many auteurs, it feels perfectly natural. Orson Welles started out with the Big Bang of "Citizen Kane," his first feature film — with credits for directing, producing, co-writing, and starring — crafting what many critics agree is the best movie of all time.  

Movies are palaces of the imagination, showing us places we can’t go, either because they are closed to us, or too far away, or they never existed in the first place. Place is a star in its own right, and the places where movies are set are often the key to the psychology of the piece. Sometimes the setting, and set, is found already built, seemingly just waiting for a camera to come and create an iconic image. And then there’s the house (or an entire city) that must be built from scratch in order to realize the director’s vision. These are sets that go way beyond the functional — they actually advance the mood, flavor, and drama of the piece. We invite you to open the door to these houses with stories to tell.   

Ben Bradlee’s death on Tuesday at age 93 truly feels like the passing of an era. Thus it seems only fitting to revisit the movie that immortalizes him, the times he lived in, and the heroic stand he took: Alan J. Pakula’s “All The President’s Men” (1976).  This riveting, true-life story centers on the history-making reporting by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) back in 1972, as they track a tiny, throwaway story about a bungled burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington’s Watergate building. That story eventually leads all the way up to the office of the President, and topples Richard Nixon. Guiding the process with a steady hand throughout is Bradlee (played by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar for this). It was inspired casting, but the gifted Robards fully earns his statuette. “All the President’s Men” milks all the inherent suspense around the unfolding mystery of the Watergate scandal, and the parlor game of guessing the real-life identity of key intel informant “Deep Throat” (Hal Holbrook). Stars Hoffman and Redford also work off each other beautifully. But for anyone interested in the machinery of free speech in this country, watch the movie again for those memorable scenes between Robards’s Bradlee and his editorial staff. 

Name almost any type of film and it’s likely Robert Wise made at least one of them.   Whether it's a horror movie, a science-fiction outing, a war picture, an ensemble drama, a suspense film or a musical, Wise handled it, usually in exceptional fashion. (The only area he really didn’t tackle was pure comedy.)   Yet predictably, his versatility didn’t play well with some film commentators of his time who prescribed to the “auteur” theory, which lent more significance to directors who consistently followed a signature style in their work.

George Gershwin, born on this day in 1898, miraculously created a vast body of popular music in a very short time. His work ranged from pop songs, to orchestral pieces, to more than 30 musicals written for the Broadway stage, usually with his older brother Ira as lyricist.