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It’s hard to believe but this article is based on a true story: A man who started to play the piano in Tsarist Russia, and who learned music in the Soviet Union and Weimar Germany, became one of the most prolific composers of the most American film genre, westerns. The scene: A lone man rides his horse into a nondescript town.

In 1921, after the court case in which actor Fatty Arbuckle was tried for rape and murder (and eventually acquitted), Universal was the first studio to insert so-called ‘morality clauses’ in actors’ contracts. The clause read: “[H]e (she) will not do or commit anything tending to degrade him (her) in society or bring him (her) into public hatred, contempt, scorn or ridicule, or tending to shock, insult or offend the community or outrage public morals or decency, or tending to the prejudice of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company or the motion picture industry.

From climbers stuck on Mount Everest to citizens trapped underneath the rubble in Kathmandu, Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake shows what it was like to experience the deadly 2015 natural disaster from different locations and perspectives. The new three-part Netflix documentary centers around 25 survivors who share their harrowing stories through sit-down interviews and personal footage.

Black Adam is still the number-one movie in France. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra with Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, and Pierce Brosnan, the movie is about the slave Black Adam who is freed from his earthly tomb and ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world by using the almighty powers he got from the Egyptian gods.

On February 23, 1956, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association held the 13th Golden Globes at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The lavish nightclub, known as Hollywood’s “first playground of the stars,” was the top venue of the Golden Globes for 10 of the next 12 years.

At the London Film Festival, writer-director Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, In Fabric, The Duke of Burgundy) presented his new film, Flux Gourmet, followed by a Q and A after the screening.  This eccentric film isn’t for everyone, and is, indeed, an acquired taste.

In the 1950s, there were a few years when multiple films were awarded the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film (now Best Non-English Language Film), and 1955 was one of those years. The 12th Golden Globes were held on February 24, 1955, at the Ambassador Hotel, and, befitting the organization’s international roots, four foreign films were voted the winners by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Throughout the history of the Golden Globes, music has been an important reflection of the times. As we look back during our 80-Day Countdown to the Globes this week, we look at stories on this website about 1953, a great year for musicals with five memorable Hollywood musicals nominated for Best Comedy/Musical.

For Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, having made Pinocchio is a dream now achieved since he began thinking of his own version of the story 15 years ago. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a new version of Carlo Collodi's classic tale, told with stop-motion animation techniques.

After fifty years of non-stop praise and film history case study, The Godfather: Part I, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece about family patriarch Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is as young and looks as great as ever.   We were reminded of its overall importance by a special screening at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, with the Golden Globe and Academy award-winning Nino Rota’s score played live by a 60-piece orchestra of LA’s most talented orchestral musicians, conducted by Scott Terrell.