Broadcaster and celebrity interviewer had been hospitalized in Los Angeles with symptoms of coronavirus
Larry King, the American broadcaster and cable news interviewer of celebrities and public figures, has died. He was 87 and had been hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles with symptoms of the coronavirus.
Related: Larry King: 'The secret of my success? I'm dumb'
Continue reading...The costume designer from the hit French show on how the clothes make the characters – and how you can channel their effortless chic
In France, the hit Netflix series Call My Agent! is called Dix Pour Cent in reference to the fee charged by French cinema agents. For those in the know, the name says it all. For others, like me, the reference was opaque at first, but it sent the message that this is a show – unlike others representing a cliched take on French life, such as Emily in Paris – that positions itself as an insider’s peek into the capital and its movie business.
The many cameos from A-list actors playing themselves – with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sigourney Weaver lined up to appear in season four; Weaver called the series “a love letter to the business” – similarly underlines the show’s proximity to the authentic professional world, something that is subtly shown, too, through its clothes.
Continue reading...Turning a sequel to The Karate Kid into a TV series might not have sounded wise but this blockbuster show has found life in a tired franchise
A modern TV reboot of classic 80s teen film The Karate Kid sounds like an almost comically bad idea. It’s the sort of suggestion you can imagine a creatively desperate TV executive leaving for himself in a panicky Partridgean voice note while drunk on a Tuesday night. So many ways it could go spectacularly wrong, and virtually none where it could go right. And yet, with that very same back-of-a-fag-packet premise, Cobra Kai – the smash new Netflix series – has gone miraculously right, racking up 73 million viewers, according to the streamer’s latest figures.
Related: 'There's chunks of wisdom': How The Karate Kid launched MMA careers
Continue reading...The charming series combines Ocean’s Eleven’s slickness with the implausibility of National Treasure to become the first French series to crack the US top 10
The greatest trick by Lupin, a new French series on Netflix, is disguising substantiveness in plain sight. The show, created by the British showrunner George Kay and inspired by the beloved French character Arsène Lupin, packages over 115 years of inspiration (dating back to the character’s invention by writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905) in a slick, swift escape easily binged in a day. Its star, the French actor Omar Sy, towers over his scene partners, perpetually unreadable yet brimming with charisma; his character, Assane Diop, is a con man with a heart of gold able to turn his outsized presence into an uncatchable master of deception.
Related: Call My Agent: get au fait with the smash hit French comedy-drama
Continue reading...The actor on filming the third series of the hit Netflix comedy, being taught cinema history by Scorsese – and the perils of toilet-training his cat
Asa Butterfield, 23, was born in London and started his acting career aged seven. He landed the lead roles in Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas at 10 and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo at 13. Other film credits include Journey’s End, X+Y, Greed, Son of Rambow and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. He stars as teenager Otis Milburn in the hit Netflix comedy Sex Education and is currently filming its third season.
How is shooting going on Sex Education?
It’s something of a miracle being back on set. When we started, it was a bit like being let out of prison. It was the first time anyone had been in a big group of people for months and we were all overexcited. We’ve slipped into the rhythm of the new normal now. To work is a blessing. I won’t take it for granted again.
Joan Bakewell had been a broadcasting pioneer for more than half a century. And she’s still as forthright as ever. Here, she talks to Sophie Heawood about the empowerment of women, her newly streamlined life and why Boris has got it all wrong about the virus
Joan Bakewell writes in her memoir, The Centre of the Bed, about the moment she became an adult. It was 1949 and she was 17, a hard- working grammar schoolgirl from the industrial north, when her frustrated, depressive mother found a photograph of Joan kissing a boy and set fire to it in front of her eyes. Joan felt deep shame, but the shame began to transmogrify.
“Suddenly I was savagely and tremblingly angry,” she writes. “I was being forged in some bitter fire of my mother’s will, and I must survive the moment and emerge as myself. That was the end of innocence, not the loss of virginity or any fumbling that fell short of it. It was when I crossed into adulthood, knew my own mind and was sure of who I was.” Soon afterwards she left for university, where she joyfully discovered the world of ideas, as well as the one of sex, even though, as a student of the Cambridge women’s college Newnham, such things were banned.
Continue reading...The Sleaford Mods frontman on a favourite singer-songwriter, a hellish horror film and why he spends seven hours a day on Twitter
Jason Williamson, lead vocalist of English electronic punk music duo Sleaford Mods, was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire in 1970. He moved to Nottingham in 1995, where he began working with rock band Spiritualized and electronic duo Bent. In 2009, he met Andrew Fearn and they released the first Sleaford Mods album, Divide and Exit, in 2014. They have since been called “the voice of Britain” by their fans and “the world’s greatest rock’n’roll band” by Iggy Pop. Their latest album, Spare Ribs, is out now on Rough Trade Records. The band will tour the UK in late 2021.
Continue reading...The comedy, whose fourth series hits Netflix this week, shows France’s TV can match its film
Fast approaching 50 and fed up after two exhausting decades at Artmedia, the top talent agency in Paris, Dominique Besnehard decided, one day in 2005, that he would quite like to turn his hand to producing something of his own.
“At the time,” Besnehard told Le Monde, “Desperate Housewives was all over the telly, a huge success. I just thought, with a couple of colleagues, we could maybe make a series a bit like that, but about the job we do for a living.”
Continue reading...Centred on a sex-assault case involving former French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn, this docuseries reveals worryingly outdated attitudes
Most people will have only the haziest recollection of the fallout that occurred after the French presidential hopeful and then head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a room attendant in a New York hotel in 2011. That allows the Netflix documentary Room 2806: The Accusation to possess all the qualities of a slick political thriller. Who will be believed? The immigrant, hotel cleaner, a single parent living in a flat in the Bronx or the globally powerful, immensely rich politician?
This tense, four-part documentary has astonishing material to work with. There is plenty of CCTV footage, filmed from the ceiling, of chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo making her way to the presidential suite, and later, visibly distressed, being shepherded by her supervisor to a subterranean network of shabby staff offices in the bowels of the building, away from the gilded foyer, where she wipes away tears and recounts how she has been assaulted by Strauss-Kahn as she cleaned his rooms.
Continue reading...The Game On actor has had Hollywood success without becoming an A-lister. But working with Malick, Stone and Francis Ford Coppola has made for an interesting career
Sitting in the Los Angeles sun in a T-shirt and a hoodie, Ben Chaplin has a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette between two fingers of the other. He is chipper this morning, if a little wary about technology, after a mishap last year.
“My first Zoom thing was also my first ever Seder dinner,” says the 51-year-old actor. “My girlfriend is Jewish and I was feeling like this total charlatan, this goy, among all her elderly relatives.” Suddenly, the screen turned blue and a curved white line emerged, guided by an unseen hand. “This older voice asked: ‘What’s going on?’ And then you start to see the classic cartoon penis. I’m embarrassed by how funny I found it. I was thinking: ‘Are they going to draw hairs on the balls?’ But then it cut off. Apparently, a kid from one of the families was responsible. Good on him. Hahaha!”
Continue reading...She’s a chaos magician. He’s a density-changing synthezoid. Are Scarlet Witch and Vision really classic sitcom material? The stars of Marvel’s foray into TV reveal how it all came about
Marvel’s 2020 should have gone much differently. Its Black Widow movie and The Eternals should both have been released last year, with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings imminent. But the pandemic struck and now all three have been booted into the middle distance. And so it has now been 18 months since we last heard from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when Avengers Endgame became the highest-grossing movie ever. And in that vacuum, the question of what happens next has only grown more intense. But the answer might not be what anybody expected. Marvel is about to break its silence with WandaVision – and it’s a huge departure. Not only is it the first TV show produced by Marvel Studios, it is also presented in the form of a half-hour sitcom. It is no exaggeration to call WandaVision the weirdest thing Marvel has ever done.
“Weird is good,” says Marvel Studio president Kevin Feige from beneath his trademark baseball cap. “I like weird. After Endgame, after the completion of a 23-movie Infinity Saga, we were soul-searching about what was coming next. WandaVision being our first for Disney+ is perfect. It was always about pushing the boundaries of storytelling, doing something we could only do with the narrative structure of television.”
Continue reading...Her ‘hot and crazy’ novels about feisty women bedding rakish aristocrats have become a Netflix sensation. The writer talks about literary snobs, colour-conscious casting and the curse of Jane Austen
“People look down on romance novels,” says Julia Quinn. “We’re the ugly stepchild of the publishing industry – even though romance novels make so much money for publishers that they’re able to take chances on poetry, literary fiction and other things that don’t really make money.”
This is why Quinn never dreamed that any of her novels – Regency romances in which smart, witty women fall for handsome titled men – would ever make the leap to TV. She was happy with her regular slot at the top of the bestseller lists, if a little irked at the way the genre is looked down on by more literary types. “I dream big, I do,” says Quinn, speaking from her home in Seattle. “But nobody had ever done it, nobody had ever shown any signs of wanting to. And not just my books, but the genre as a whole. If somebody wanted to do a period piece, they wanted to do Jane Austen again.”
Continue reading...Back with a new name – and minus just one core cast member – the 90s classic show will have to update its race and sexual politics for a very different world
Sex and the City is back, with a new name – And Just Like That … – and a new cast, which is to say, the old cast, minus Samantha (Kim Cattrall). Anyone who is surprised to see them recovered from the bruising experience of the movie sequel just has too long a memory. Sex and the City 2 was more than 10 years ago. The statute of limitations on awful moments in culture has long since expired.
To revisit that film for a second, though, its flaw was neither the excruciating dialogue nor the amateurish, uncertain plot; rather, its gorging consumerism, the signature shoe-fetishism of the series applied to every known item that a woman could buy. It held up a mirror to 21st-century excess and nobody, but nobody, liked what they saw. One IMDb reviewer called it a “terrorist motivational tool”. (In this it had a lot in common with the third volume of Fifty Shades of Grey; I have thoughts on that segue, from genuine lust to a sad, consumer simulacrum, as a metaphor for late capitalism, but I’m saving those for my PhD.) In the series itself, the shopping element was more of a running joke, a self-deprecating nod to the fact that intelligent, empowered, evolved women can still do really stupid things, such as spending their lunch money on earrings. There is no reason for the film to have stained the televisual side of the franchise.
Continue reading...Adnan Oktar was detained in 2018 along with more than 200 other suspects in his group
A Turkish court has sentenced a Muslim televangelist who surrounded himself with scantily clad women he called “kittens” to more than 1,000 years in jail for sex crimes.
Adnan Oktar preached creationism and conservative values while women in revealing outfits – many of whom appeared to have had plastic surgery – danced around him to upbeat music in the TV studio.
Continue reading...The Years & Years frontman is starring in Russell T Davies’ new drama about the Aids crisis. He talks about bulimia, his ‘dark’ clubbing days – and how he learned to enjoy filming sex scenes
Olly Alexander was so certain he was destined for success that he saw a therapist to help him prepare for his future fame. It was 2014 and his band Years & Years had just signed to Polydor when he visited the shrink.
“I said: ‘The album’s coming out and I really want it to be successful,’ and he said: ‘What happens if it isn’t?’ I said: ‘Well, that’s not an option because I have planned it in my diary since I was a teenager.’”
Continue reading...The rebooted show will be called And Just Like That... and will feature the original stars, apart from Kim Cattrall
Sex and the City will be given a 2021 makeover, US streaming service HBO Max has announced.
Long-swirling rumours that the video-on-demand arm of the prestige TV brand was considering commissioning a revival of the 90s and 00s show were confirmed on Sunday night US time when three of the four stars of the original show, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis, shared a trailer for the series on social media platforms.
Continue reading...The scene-stealing star of the French comedy series - a word-of-mouth Netflix hit - on her journey from a prank show in Paris to co-stardom with Matt Damon
“I bought a few sheep during lockdown. Nobody told me they’d eat all my plants. How Parisian is that?” I’m discussing the pandemic with actor Camille Cottin, who during the first Covid lockdown last year decamped from her apartment in the French capital to do up an old farmhouse in Normandy. Now, she’s back in Paris, preparing for what will be a huge year. Already a star in her native France, Cottin is making the leap to major Hollywood roles. Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater, in which she co-stars with Matt Damon, is due for release in the autumn. She is currently polishing her English for her role in Ridley Scott’s Gucci biopic, which starts shooting in a few months and features Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci and Lady Gaga his ex-wife. And she has just signed up for a huge project that she’s not yet allowed to talk about.
Before all that comes the fourth and final season on Netflix later this month of Call My Agent!, the word-of-mouth hit drama that has found new fans looking to binge during lockdown. As Andréa – tough, ruthless, gay, and agent to some of France’s biggest movie stars – Cottin’s is the standout role in a show that has brought her international attention, including a role in series three of Killing Eve.
Continue reading...The actor and singer on RuPaul’s Drag Race, learning how to be loved, and why no actor could play him in the film of his life
Born in Pennsylvania, Billy Porter, 51, studied drama and moved to New York in 1991 to appear in Miss Saigon. He went on to star in Kinky Boots, winning the 2013 Tony award for best actor in a musical, and a Grammy for the soundtrack. In 2018, he was cast in Netflix’s Pose, which will return for a third series. He is married and lives in New York state.
What is your greatest fear?
That I will be forgotten and my legacy won’t matter.
Apted made his name with the brilliant Up TV series that examined people’s lives every seven years, before going on to become a film-maker of distinction, whose influence cannot be overstated
Michael Apted, who has died aged 79, was a British movie director who – like Ken Loach and Ken Russell – earned his stripes working on TV. But it was his destiny to help create an epic ongoing masterpiece for the small screen with truly cinematic scope and beyond: current-affairs television which had the scale of cinema, combined with the Mass Observation Project and the Roman census.
Granada Television’s Seven Up! from 1964, was, to quote a comedy of the era, not so much a programme, more a way of life. It took 14 British children at the Jesuit age of seven (that is, the age at which the Jesuits’ St Ignatius of Loyola famously said he could “show you the man” if schooled early enough) and interviewed them about their lives and opinions – seven from a working-class background and seven from a posher caste. Then it was updated every seven years, finally spanning 56 years.
British director made films Coal Miner’s Daughter and The World is Not Enough, and the long-running Up documentary series
The British director Michael Apted has died at the age of 79.
The film-maker and documentarian was known for films such as Gorillas in the Mist and Coal Miner’s Daughter, as well as his long-running series of Up documentaries.
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