The Conversation News

He made some of the most influential movies of our time a ' The Godfather , The Godfather: Part II and Apocalypse Now .

FOR the past few years, Francis Ford Coppola has been free to follow his heart and make small, self-funded personal films a ' all thanks to grapes.

THE WAY WE WERE: Stephen Schiff wrote for the Phoenix in the late '70s and early '80s. InA his deep survey , Gerald Peary hardly conceals his opinion that Boston is the epicenter of film criticism.

BIRTHDAY GAL: Actress Cindy Williams was born in Van Nuys, Calif., on this date in 1947.

This week I got to sit in on both hours of Sound on Sight & in the second hour I became the first woman in this history of Sound on Sight to lead into a show.

I miss Gene Hackman. I've been kind of obsessed with him for years, and still believe that no matter how bad a movie may be, it's worth watching if he's in it.

You still have time to enter to win a set of six great new movie posters from classic Hollywood courtesy of Turner Classic Movies -- I have two sets of the six posters to give away, and to win all you have to do is enter your name in the comments section of this post -- all part of my celebration of my blog birthday.

This weekend: 'Mad Men,' 'Psych,' 'Monk,' 'True Blood,' 'Merlin,' Miss Universe, Gene Hackman, Angela Lansbury, Don Hewitt The most notable offering this weekend? The smashing second episode of " Mad Men" at 10 p.m. Sunday on AMC.

Coppola goes indie Francis Ford Coppola gestures during an interview in Buenos Aires, the setting for his film Tetro.

Play nice? Tetro doesn't even like the word "nice." Vincent Gallo gives it his all for Francis Ford Coppola's latest feature.

Artist: Coppola, Francis Ford In the beginning, The Corleones made him famous, and Francis Ford Coppola is still making films about family.

Francis Ford Coppola consistently refers to the writing and directing of his recent films Youth Without Youth and Tetro as "my second career." This might strike filmgoers as odd, given that Coppola's first career was also as a filmmaker, nominated for 11 Oscars for the Godfather trilogy and the Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now.

Director Francis Ford Coppola is back as writer, director and producer. The maestro of "The Godfather" saga, "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse Now," to name a few fabulous movies, is back on the big screen with "Tetro," a gorgeously filmed family drama about rivalry and secrets in an artistic American/Italian family from Argentina.

Sandwiched between two era-defining, career-eclipsing gangster flicks, Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 thriller is more than just a breather between winning Oscars; this ode to paranoia is a pitch-perfect encapsulation of both the nauseaous vibe of Nixon's Amerikkka and the artistic vitality of New Hollywood's darker impulses.

Cazale and Streep in 1976. T he seventies-era golden age of American film has been so exhaustively romanticized that it's hard to believe anything, or anyone, has been overlooked-until you consider the actor John Cazale.

Francis Ford Coppola made four great movie masterpieces in a row in the commercial studio system - "The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part Two," "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse, Now." He is probably the only living American filmmaker of whom that can be said.

Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich in "Tetro" Francis Ford Coppola's family drama teems with melancholy -- and energetic humor.

Making great wine is like making a great film, according to director Francis Ford Coppola -- it's defying the impossible.

He immortalized the "smell of napalm in the morning" in "Apocalypse Now," but Robert Duvall's first meeting with director Francis Ford Coppola was no indication of the fruitful relationship to come.

Francis Ford Coppola is in his house, in the hills overlooking the Napa Valley, where his grapes are grown, where his wine is made.