A good comeback is like a great third act in American lives; it's the triumphant return, the end of the story. James Cagney retired in 1961, then made a triumphant comeback in 1981 with Ragtime. But a good movie never deals with the aftermath of the comeback. Just as often as not, the comeback leads to nothing. Cagney died a few years after the hubbub. Though we all love a good comeback, the following is a list of comebacks that weren't the end of the story, and didn't provide the inspiring coda that they could have.

1. Sylvester Stallone in Cop Land (1997)
Stallone's is one of the most fascinating, dramatic careers in cinema. His fame is so huge that his name and face -- or at least his characters -- are known the world over. He had a fairytale rise to fame with Rocky (1976), complete with tales of writing it in a weekend. He has a lot of charisma, and earned an Oscar nomination for acting. He has directed eight feature films and contributed to the screenplays for nearly twenty. People whisper about how smart and savvy he is behind the scenes.

"I'm in the Marlon Brando business." -- Marlon Brando

A nearly three-hour retrospective of the mercurial actor's life, Brando proceeds chronologically from his unrequited attachment to his distant drunk of a Nebraska mother to a post-war rise through the ranks of New York theater and fortuitous pairings with Stella Adler and Elia Kazan, to unexpected movie stardom, to has-been movie stardom, to political activism, to a measured critical rebirth and finally to an increasingly sad elderly life marked by erratic jaunts onto shows like Larry King Live and an elaborate prankishness that poorly camouflages an exhausted lothario's boredom with old age. "The first two-thirds of Marlon's life was in his body and the last third was in his mind," someone tells us, the implication being that Brando felt cheated by that trade-off and spent his final years playing with the only toy he had left, his celebrity. We hear about him summoning one well-known actor to his house on the pretense of collaborating on a film, only to tell them when they arrive that he's discovered a way to power his house with electric eels.

Since much of his life is old hat to the target audience, the pleasures of Brando mostly derive from the little moments snuck in here and there -- new memories from a fellow actor or new takes on one of his films, and so on. One the most interesting sequences, for my money, is a somewhat negative reassessment of Brando's role in Apocalypse Now. Robert Duvall, in his interview, feels obliged to point out that the performance is something of a non-starter because Kurtz was obviously supposed to be a military type, whippet-slim and muscled-up, while Brando practically had to be wheelbarrowed onto the set. It's also made clear that Coppola confided to the cast that Brando showed up for the film without having done any kind of mental preparation either. Dennis Hopper gets in a good jab, noting that "Marlon didn't care about your money" and digging up the old story about Brando demanding $75K for a five-minute close-up that was needed immediately after the point that he was no longer contractually bound to be there.

• Rod Colbin (1923-2007) - Actor who appears in Frances, John Hus and Yes, Giorgio. He was also a fencing master who taught Marlon Brando and James Dean. He died February 4. (Daily India)
• Peter Ellenshaw (1913-2007) - Oscar-winning matte artist (pictured) for Mary Poppins. He also received nominations for Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Island at the Top of the World and The Black Hole. He mostly worked on Disney pictures, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Darby O'Gill and the Little People, but his career spanned from René Clair's The Ghost Goes West to Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. His son, Harrison, is also a matte artist and visual effects supervisor and was also nominated for The Black Hole. Peter Ellenshaw died February 12, in Malibu, California. (Cartoon Brew)
• Ray Evans (1915-2007) - Oscar-winning songwriter of "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" from The Man Who Knew Too Much, "Buttons and Bows" from The Paleface and "Mona Lisa" from Captain Carey, U.S.A. He was nominated another four times; all nominations and wins were shared by his partner Jay Livingston. The duo also wrote the hit Christmas tune "Silver Bells," which was introduced in The Lemon Drop Kid and they appeared together in Sunset Blvd. He died of a heart attack February 15, in Los Angeles. (LA Times)
• Pál Erdöss (1947-2007) - Hungarian director who won the 1983 Golden Camera at Cannes for The Princess. He also directed Countdown and Homo Novus. He died after a long illness February 14. (MTI)
• Ryan Larkin (1943-2007) - Oscar-nominated animator of the 1969 short En Marchant. He also supplied material for Agency. He died of brain cancer February 14, in Canada. (AWN)

It's been almost ten years since Tony Kaye's American History X debuted. Okay -- it's been exactly eight years last week, but it's been close enough to ten for the director to be prepping for a 10th Anniversary DVD. In order for everything to run smoothly with the special edition release, he's patched up things with New Line, the studio he fought with over the final cut of History, which was his first feature. In these eight years since that film's release, Kaye has not been able to put out another feature -- possibly because of his reputation following the New Line battle. However it's not as if Kaye was idle during that time-- and has been screening his newest project, a documentary about abortion titled Lake of Fire. The doc premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was reportedly well-praised, but Kaye's still trying to find distribution for it. It is unclear whether distributors are apprehensive in dealing with Kaye out of fear that he will put them through a similar battle as he had with New Line. Since Kaye claims to have spent 16 years and upwards of $8 million on the film, it would be a shame if no company bites with a substantial deal, especially since Kaye's announced that he does not need to make anymore changes to it, even though he kinda wants to.

In addition to shopping Lake of Fire, Kaye is keeping very busy and with many projects for the future. Aside from his success directing commercials and music videos (including the new Johnny Cash video for "God's Gonna Cut You Down"), he's apparently doing well as a director-for-hire and is currently working on special assignments for Johnson and Johnson and the United Arab Emirates. For his next fictional feature, he will be concentrating on a script by Robert McKee titled Madness (this would ironically be the first feature film written by McKee, who is famous for his books and seminars on the craft of screenwriting -- he is the guy portrayed by Brian Cox in Adaptation), which focuses on a doctor with a cure for schizophrenia who marries a former patient.

• "Is there any director more entitled than [David] Cronenberg to put his feet up and make a few bucks directing a nice popcorn movie for a change?" Jonathan Dee on Cronenberg's best.
• Allyson Hollingsworth's art is featured prominently in Steve Martin's Shopgirl; her life is featured prominently in the novella on which it was based. In this profile, she frustratingly refuses to dish on her real-life relationship with Martin, but she talks about pretty much everything else.
• "[George] Clooney seems to be the one Big Star, give or take a Bono, who has managed to have his cake and credibility, too." David Carr talks to the triple-threat on the eve of Good Night, and Good Luck's premiere at the New York Film Festival.
• "This is the best thing I ever did," says Joaquin Phoenix, explaining his decidedly non-anonymous participation in AA. "It takes a lot of courage to look at yourself in a rigorously honest way. And I like rigor.''
• Joe Queenan calls Marlon Brando's Fan-Tan a "thrilling example" of the curious genre of celebrity art side-projects: "Ultimately, the question of whether these oddities cut the mustard becomes irrelevant. The only thing worth asking is: "Gee willikers! What occasioned this?"

Johnny Depp will be hosting a documentary on BBC Radio 2 on September 27. The documentary will focus on the life of Hollywood legend James Dean fifty years after a car crash ended his life. Then, on October 2,  Val Kilmer will host a documentary about Marlon Brando. BBC simulcasts on the Web, so folks outside of the UK should be able to listen in as well.