Steve Mcqueen

So you're going around modeling your life and your wardrobe after Kurt Cobain because he's so grungy and so now and so cool. And just as you've got the hang of shooting heroin and tying a plaid shirt around your waist, they change the rules. Comb your hair, iron your jeans and switch to cigarettes. The dictators of style have determined that Steve McQueen, who died of cancer in 1980, is the ideal man of the '90s. Need proof? In their current issues, both Esquire Gentleman and Gentlemen's Quarterly carry homages to McQueen: the man and the wardrobe.

THERE'S an exciting figure in movies named Steve McQueen, but he did not star in "The Great Escape," he isn't dead, isn't white, and isn't even a Yank. The new Steve McQueen is a London-born and -based filmmaker who won major acclaim for his first feature, "Hunger," in 2008, about an Irish Republican Army hunger strike, and has caused a stir with his second feature "Shame," a frank (rated NC-17) and visually distinctive look at the life of a sex addict. It stars Michael Fassbender (who played Bobby Sands in "Hunger")

10:15 tonight TCM Fans of cinematic car chases rank the one in this 1968 action drama one of the best ever. Set in San Francisco, it stars ultracool Steve McQueen (right) as a cop helping to guard a prosecution witness in a high-profile trial.

The Colonial Theater in Phoenixville once hosted Broadway-bound musicals and even Houdini. It went out of business in 1996, but was restored with the help of a $75,000 grant from the Phoenixville Community Health Foundation and reopens today. Part of the 1958 Steve McQueen movie, "The Blob," was filmed at the Colonial.

Robert E. Relyea, 82, the film producer and director whose credits included The Magnificent Seven and West Side Story , died March 5 in Los Angeles. Mr. Relyea's career spanned more than 40 years. He worked with stars such as John Wayne on The Alamo and Elvis Presley on Jailhouse Rock . He collaborated with Steve McQueen on several films, including Bullitt , Le Mans and The Reivers . Mr. Relyea started as an MGM crew member in 1955 and served as president of production at MGM-United Artists from 1997 to 2001.

When you know a movie's directed by a conceptual artist dabbling in motion pictures, it's usually helpful to bring along a sharp object. That way, you can stab yourself in the leg to stay awake during two hours of non-narrative, non-topless, non-zombie, non-car-chase pictorial over-indulgence. But as movies by dabblers go, "Hunger" stands out. It's by Irish video artist Steve McQueen (yes, that's his name), and it's his visually arresting take on the 1981 hunger strike by IRA leader Bobby Sands, ultimately leading to his death, and the deaths of nine other inmates at Belfast's Maze Prison.

All the allusions yesterday were to Superman and Robocop, but what Gov. Florio was talking about sounded more like the old TV western Wanted, Dead or Alive. In the days of black-and-white television, Steve McQueen was a bounty hunter, tracking down the lawless bad guys who had a price on their heads. In the living color of today's reality the problem is catching polluters who illegally dump, pour and drain toxic chemicals, medical waste, trash and other pollutants. Florio wants New Jersey residents to start tracking down those dumpers - and he's willing to put a price on those bad guys.

Earl E. Rowe, 81, an actor who starred as the police chief in the The Blob, a 1958 science-fiction classic filmed in Chester County, died of complications from Parkinson's disease Friday at the Lutheran Home in Moorestown. Mr. Rowe, who formerly lived in Delran in Burlington County, worked on Broadway, in soap operas and in commercials. But his most famous role was Lieutenant Dave, the small-town police chief fighting to keep a slithering ball of goo from eating Downingtown. Mr. Rowe was part of a cast and crew that in 1957 filmed the campy flick for $125,000 in Phoenixville, Downingtown and Chester Springs.

WITH "SHAME," Michael Fassbender continues to, uh, flesh out one of the great calender-year acting feats in recent history. When has an actor ever been so good in so many different roles? He was an impeccable Rochester in "Jane Eyre," and somehow managed to look respectable in "X-Men Origins" wearing his Magneto helmet, a piece of headgear that defeated even the great Ian McKellen. And we've yet to see him as Carl Jung in "A Dangerous Method. " Now comes "Shame," an NC-17 movie starring Fassbender as Brandon, a man with a compulsive need to consume pornography and pursue anonymous sexual encounters.

Jack Harrison, 97, who survived the Great Escape plot by Allied prisoners in a German prison in World War II, died June 4 at a veterans' home in Bishopton, Scotland. As one of the camp's gardeners, Mr. Harrison helped dispose of the dirt excavated from three escape tunnels. He was 98th on the list of about 200 inmates designated to make the escape on March 24, 1944, but only 76 got away before guards detected the breakout. The breakout was celebrated in the 1963 film The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen and James Garner.

Robert E. Relyea, 82, the film producer and director whose credits included The Magnificent Seven and West Side Story , died March 5 in Los Angeles. Mr. Relyea's career spanned more than 40 years. He worked with stars such as John Wayne on The Alamo and Elvis Presley on Jailhouse Rock . He collaborated with Steve McQueen on several films, including Bullitt , Le Mans and The Reivers . Mr. Relyea started as an MGM crew member in 1955 and served as president of production at MGM-United Artists from 1997 to 2001.

The immigrant saga Restless City is winning deserved praise for its stunning visuals, and some understandable gripes about its pokey pace. The movie is directed by Andrew Dosunmu, a Nigerian fashion photographer who came up through the ranks of the Yves St. Laurent empire, and his eye for the artfully arranged composition is evident in Restless City, the story of a Senegalese New York City street vendor (Sy Alassane) in a dangerous relationship with the girlfriend (Sky Grey)

The Garner Files A Memoir By James Garner and Jon Winokur Simon & Schuster 273 pp. $25.99 Reviewed by Jonathan Storm   Tall and handsome, one-quarter Cherokee, with an aw-shucks demeanor that he carried from Oklahoma to Hollywood with little else, James Garner has battled his way through 50 years of movies and two of the all-time great TV shows. "I just wanted a clean job for decent money," he says in The Garner Files , a memoir written with Jon Winokur, a graduate of Temple University, that harps constantly on his dislike for pretentiousness and, particularly, pretentious actors.

WITH "SHAME," Michael Fassbender continues to, uh, flesh out one of the great calender-year acting feats in recent history. When has an actor ever been so good in so many different roles? He was an impeccable Rochester in "Jane Eyre," and somehow managed to look respectable in "X-Men Origins" wearing his Magneto helmet, a piece of headgear that defeated even the great Ian McKellen. And we've yet to see him as Carl Jung in "A Dangerous Method. " Now comes "Shame," an NC-17 movie starring Fassbender as Brandon, a man with a compulsive need to consume pornography and pursue anonymous sexual encounters.

THERE'S an exciting figure in movies named Steve McQueen, but he did not star in "The Great Escape," he isn't dead, isn't white, and isn't even a Yank. The new Steve McQueen is a London-born and -based filmmaker who won major acclaim for his first feature, "Hunger," in 2008, about an Irish Republican Army hunger strike, and has caused a stir with his second feature "Shame," a frank (rated NC-17) and visually distinctive look at the life of a sex addict. It stars Michael Fassbender (who played Bobby Sands in "Hunger")

Barry Feinstein, 80, a photographer who chronicled the lives of seminal rock 'n' roll stars of the 1960s, and who was perhaps best known for the stark portrait of Bob Dylan on the cover of the 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin' , died Oct. 20 near his home in Woodstock, N.Y. Besides his work with Dylan, Mr. Feinstein established his reputation as one of rock's semiofficial official chroniclers with two 1970 photographs: one of Janis Joplin,...

ALLENTOWN'S AMANDA SEYFRIED , who has been adopted by Tattle as our favorite "local" actress, was on the phone from L.A. to talk about her new movie, "In Time. " The call started out ironically, because the publicist got on first to say the interview had to be cut short - so like Amanda's character Sylvia in "In Time," our time was quickly running out. Cut to the chase: Amanda was thrilled about working with writer-director Andrew Niccol ("Gattaca"). "It's really high-concept science fiction," she said, "but he grounds everything.

IF YOU'RE LIKE ME, you've watched the Phanatic dancing atop the home dugout thousands of times and wondered, "How does he not get hit in the head with a foul ball?" Wonder no more. Wednesday night, the Phanatic took his act on the road to Allentown, entertaining the IronPigs fans in Coca-Cola Park. In the top of third inning, with one of the Indianapolis Indians at the plate and the Phanatic standing atop the dugout on the first-base side, bop , the Phanatic was struck in the neck by a foul ball.

It promises to be as frightening as a dive into the Black Lagoon, an expedition to Skull Island, or a night in the woods at Camp Crystal Lake. And that's how people like it. The fifth annual Terror Film Festival opens Thursday, presenting three days of the creepiest independent films to be found this side of the Borgo Pass. "People like being scared," said festival director Felix Diaz, who is also a producer, writer, and performer. "There are a lot of levels and shadings, and academic intellectualism, but in the end: It makes your heart race.

Never in the history of film has such a silly idea yielded such an awesome legacy: Let's release a school of nasty, razor-toothed piranha in a lake stocked with a gaggle of bouncy coeds. The formula worked in 1978 for Roger Corman's little fish opus Piranha , a low-concept Jaws rip-off written by John Sayles and directed by Joe Dante that went on to become a beloved horror comedy cult classic. It remains as potent 32 years later with the mind-blowing film freak-out Piranha 3D , an awe-inspiring, stomach-churning journey into blood, gore, and boobs directed by one of France's most talented horror auteurs, Alexandre Aja ( P2 , Mirrors )