Emma Stefansky

Kevin Smith is recovering from a “massive heart attack” he suffered while performing two standup comedy shows on Sunday night.

How did John McClane know that Hans Gruber was one of the terrorists when they’d only just met?

It’s undeniable that Carrie Fisher was a rare talent — and she’d have to be, to charm the notoriously picky George Lucas with her Star Wars audition. In a recently resurfaced video, originally posted on YouTube in 2006, Fisher sits down to read a scene opposite Harrison Ford (whom Lucas initially didn’t want to cast, but he was so good in the screen tests that Ford became his Han Solo).

Carrie Fisher’s General-Princess Leia Organa was such an iconic character, J.J. Abrams knew he had to bring her back for the new trilogy. We knew that she had been cast in Episode VIII, and with her passing today, some wondered whether she had completed all of her production as Leia before her heart attack. But an official from Lucasfilm assured us today that all of her scenes were “absolutely wrapped.”

It’s difficult, maybe impossible, to say which of Gene Wilder’s many performances is his best. He had the fastest hands in the West as Jim, aka the Waco Kid, in Blazing Saddles, he invited us into a world of pure imagination as the titular candyman from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and he accidentally created a not-so-politically-correct Broadway hit in The Producers.