Question: In a recent column you answered a question about the classic Michael Caine/Laurence Olivier movie Sleuth, and it reminded me that I heard some time ago that they were remaking it with Caine in the Olivier role and a younger actor in Caine's old part. Is this true?
Answer: There's been talk for the better part of five years that Stephen Frears was going to direct a rem
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Question: Are ensemble casts ever recognized with an Oscar that's designed especially for a group of actors who worked really well together? Or does someone always have to be singled out as a lead or supporting player? Answer: Although the SAG Awards, which are given by the Screen Actors Guild, regularly honor ensembles, the Academy Awards only recognize individuals. But there have been instances in which all the actors with speaking roles are nominated. They include Sleuth (1972) — which, to be fair, has only two speaking roles, but both Michael Caine and Sir Laurence Olivier were nominated in the best-actor category — and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Virginia W
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Question: When I was about 15, I saw a movie on AMC starring Michael Caine as a bad guy who murdered another man's mistress. I remember he dressed in a bunny suit and hid clues in the man's house about the murder (diamonds in a glass of water, shoes in the coal cellar). I'd like to get it so I can watch the entire movie, but I don't remember the title. Can you help me?
Answer:
The movie is Sleuth (1972), with Michael Caine and Sir Laurence Olivier as two men playing a lethal game of cat and mouse. Though Caine's character is having an affair with Olivier's wife, nothing about either ma
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Question: I was reading recently in your column about Sleuth and got to wondering: Wasn't it remade with Michael Caine as the author and Christopher Reeve as the younger man? Answer: Although Deathtrap (1982) isn't a remake of Sleuth (1972), there are similarities, first and foremost that it's also an adaptation of a stage play (by Ira Levin rather than Anthony Shaffer) and it focuses on the cat-and-mouse head games between a successful older writer (Michael Caine, who played the young buck opposite
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Question: What is the smallest cast a modern, mainstream, full-length feature film has ever had?
Answer: I can think of a handful of independent features that have only one cast member, but in terms of mainstream fiction films I would have to go with Sleuth (1972), which is a two-man show. It's a psychological thriller set in a 16th-century country mansion where wealthy author Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier), who writes diabolically clever mysteries, plays humiliating head games with the younger man (Michael Caine) who's having an affair with his wife.
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