New Zealand film-maker became a Hollywood fixture in the 90s and 00s, including making Pierce Brosnan’s last 007 movie, before returning to his home country
Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand director of Once Were Warriors and Die Another Day, has died aged 75.
In a statement to Radio New Zealand, Tamahori’s family said he had Parkinson’s and died “peacefully at home”.
Continue reading...Participants ask for their films not to be shown at IndieChina event, which was due to launch this weekend
An independent film festival due to start in New York this weekend has been cancelled after several film-makers pulled out due to harassment from the Chinese authorities, raising concerns about transnational repression.
The inaugural IndieChina film festival was planned to take place between 8 and 15 November. But on 5 November the festival’s curator, Zhu Rikun, posted on Facebook that he had been forced to cancel 80% of the planned screenings because film-makers had pulled out.
Continue reading...Family pays tribute to actor who was a ‘bright, sparky, witty presence on stage and screen’
The Shirley Valentine actor Pauline Collins has died aged 85, her family has announced.
She died peacefully, surrounded by her family, in her care home in Highgate, north London, having had Parkinson’s disease for several years, they said.
Continue reading...Actor who said in 2015 that a Trump presidency would be ‘the end of the world’ says celebrities make no difference to how people vote
Jennifer Lawrence has said she no longer feels it appropriate to speak out against the Trump administration, lest she exacerbate unhelpful debate and further divisions.
“I don’t really know if I should,” said Lawrence in an interview with the New York Times. “During the first Trump administration, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But as we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for.
Continue reading...Halloween weekend failed to make numbers jump, adding up to the weakest monthly performance – other than during the pandemic – for three decades
Box office earnings in October have crashed to levels not seen since the late 1990s, with Halloween weekend becoming the worst of the year so far.
According to a report in Variety, cinema takings for October in North America totalled $425m (£323m), the lowest figure since October 1997, when it was $385m – not counting October 2020, when North American cinemas only took $63m as moviegoing was severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...Akinola Davies Jr’s Nigeria-set drama has 12 nominations, including best film and besr director
Nigeria-set drama My Father’s Shadow is the leading contender at this year’s British independent film awards (Bifas), after it scooped 12 nominations, including best British independent film, best director for Akinola Davies Jr, and best screenplay for Davies’s brother Wale. The film came out ahead of Pillion, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’s coming-of-age relationship story, which got 10 nominations, and biopic I Swear, which got nine.
My Father’s Shadow, which stars Sope Dirisu and is Davies’s debut feature as a director, premiered at the Cannes film festival to admiring reviews. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described it as “a transparently personal project and a coming-of-age film in its (traumatised) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly absent for much of their lives”. The film is yet to be released in the UK, but has already come out in Nigeria.
Continue reading...French-Turkish actor appeared in a string of high-profile films, as well as hit BBC series The Missing
Tchéky Karyo, who appeared in some of director Luc Besson’s biggest hits and a string of international films, died on Friday at the age of 72, his family have announced.
A statement from his wife and children sent to AFP said he had “succumbed to cancer”.
Continue reading...Regional authority is investing €1.5m in the project but has stipulations about featuring ‘identifiable locations’ on screen and the film premiering at an international film festival
The Madrid regional government is hoping to harness the power of film tourism by investing €1.5m (£1.3m) in a new Woody Allen movie that will be shot in and around the Spanish capital and which will be contractually obliged to feature the word “Madrid” in its title.
Regional authorities are confident the 89-year-old film-maker’s next project could do for Madrid what Roman Holiday did for Rome tourism in the early 1950s, and what Sex and the City and Emily in Paris have more recently done to increase visitor numbers to New York and the French capital.
Continue reading...Noah Oppenheim responded to complaints from the Pentagon over the accuracy of the film’s depiction of the US’s defence systems
Warning: contains a spoiler for the plot of House of Dynamite
Noah Oppenheim, the writer of Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear-missile thriller House of Dynamite has responded to complaints from the Pentagon over the accuracy of its depiction of the US’s defence systems, saying he “respectfully disagree[s]”.
In an internal memo dated 16 October obtained by Bloomberg, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said: “The fictional interceptors in the movie miss their target and we understand this is intended to be a compelling part of the drama intended for the entertainment of the audience,” but results from real-world testing “tell a vastly different story.”
Continue reading...Actor who also starred in Midsommar and became a musician was nicknamed ‘the most beautiful boy in the world’ – a title he struggled with all his life
Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor best known for his breakout role in the 1971 film Death in Venice, has died aged 70.
At 15, Andrésen was cast in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, in which he played Tadzio, a beautiful boy with whom an older man, played by Dirk Bogarde, becomes obsessed.
Continue reading...Lockhart started out on stage at age eight and appeared in scores of television series and feature films
June Lockhart, the popular actor known for her work in film and television, has passed away at the age of 100.
She died on Thursday night of natural causes, with daughter June Elizabeth and granddaughter Christianna by her side, according to People.
Continue reading...Jury says documentary about killing of Argentinian campaigner Javier Chocobar brings ‘a measure of the justice’ denied by the courts
A documentary about the murder of the Indigenous activist Javier Chocobar has taken the top prize at the London film festival, with the jury calling it “a measure of the justice” that has long been denied by the courts.
The Argentine film-maker Lucrecia Martel’s first documentary, Landmarks, won the best film award in the festival’s official competition, it was announced on Sunday.
Continue reading...In response to pledge, company has claimed in a statement that its policies ‘prohibit discrimination of any kind’
Warner Bros Discovery has rebuked a pledge signed by more than 4,000 film industry figures to not work with Israeli film institutions “implicated in the genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”, saying that such a pledge would likely violate its internal policies.
In a statement to Variety, a spokesperson said the company “is committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful environment for its employees, collaborators, and other stakeholders”.
Continue reading...Experimental film-maker’s works included Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Cobra, and Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son
Renowned experimental film-maker Ken Jacobs, whose works such as Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Cobra and Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son made him a key member of the underground film circuit of the 1960s, has died aged 92. His son Azazel Jacobs, also a film-maker, told the New York Times that he died of kidney failure in hospital on Sunday.
Described by the New York Times as “the éminence grise of the American avant garde”, Jacobs and his wife Flo, with whom he collaborated on much of his work, straddled the worlds of experimental art and American new wave film-making, along with the likes of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He was a founding member of New York’s Film-Makers’ Co-Operative and the first director of the Millennium Film Workshop in 1966, both of which offered a space for film-makers working outside the mainstream and which are still operating today.
Continue reading...The actor said that their French farm will be free of paparazzi, teach them self-sufficiency and let them see his handyman skills, such as fixing the coffee machine
George Clooney has said that his decision to base himself in France was informed by the desire to give his children a better start in life than if they had remained in the US.
The actor, 64, who has eight-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander, with his wife, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, gave a lengthy interview to US Esquire magazine while staying at his Italian villa on Lake Como.
Continue reading...Films of old favourites help lift toy sales 8% this year, with 2026 Masters of the Universe movie tipped for similar
A wave of “newstalgia” has fuelled a step up in growth of UK toy sales, with the muscle-bound 80s hero He-Man the latest retro name tipped for a revival thanks to the big screen.
After falling almost 4% in 2024, UK toy sales are up 8% so far this year, buoyed up by the Minecraft and Lilo & Stitch films as well as parents rebuying toys they once owned as children such as Care Bears and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, according to new data.
Continue reading...More than 1,200 industry figures claim the pledge is ‘a document of misinformation’ and that much of the Israeli film and TV industry are ‘often the loudest critics of government policy’
More than 1,200 entertainment industry figures have signed a new open letter rejecting the recent high-profile pledge by thousands of their peers to boycott Israeli films over the war in Gaza.
Stars including Liev Schreiber, Mayim Bialik, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Debra Messing are among those who have lent their names to the letter, which says the previous pledge “advocates” for “the erasure of art”.
Continue reading...Viewers outraged after same-sex wedding scene changed in Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie
An Australian horror film featuring a scene with a same-sex wedding was reportedly digitally altered for release in mainland China, transforming the gay couple into a heterosexual one, provoking outrage from viewers who spotted the change.
The critically acclaimed film Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, was released in selected cinemas in China on 12 September. It follows the journey of a young couple who move to the countryside and encounter mysterious and grotesque changes to their bodies.
Continue reading...Oscar winner’s comments come days after suspension of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC and Disney, a decision heavily criticised by major stars including Pedro Pascal and Olivia Rodrigo
Angelina Jolie has said “I don’t recognise my country” amid the threats to free speech in the US, saying “anything anywhere that divides or limits personal expressions and freedoms from anyone, I think, is very dangerous”.
At Spain’s San Sebastián film festival on Sunday, the Oscar winning actor was asked by a journalist: “What do you fear as an artist and an American?”
Continue reading...Distinctive and critically acclaimed films and drama series from ‘a big hub of talent’ are appealing to audiences around the world
When it comes to film-making, Norway has long been left watching on while its Nordic neighbours Sweden and Denmark put out hit after hit by luminaries such as Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg and Ruben Östlund.
But after years in the shadows, the country has finally found its place in the international spotlight with a number of distinctive, relationship-centred and critically acclaimed films and television shows in what many are describing as a Norwegian “golden age”.
Continue reading...