Actor brings seven-decade career to close, saying he wants to go out on a high note after his last role in The Great Escaper
Michael Caine has confirmed his retirement at the age of 90, drawing to a close a glittering career in which he won two Oscars.
After his comments last month that he was “sort of retired”, Caine made it official, telling the BBC’s Today programme: “I keep saying I’m going to retire. Well I am now.
Continue reading...Director recalls enjoyment of making highest-grossing film of the year and says she was ‘so moved’ by response
Greta Gerwig has spoken of her “thrill” at the “incredible reaction” to Barbie, her existential comedy and the runaway hit film of the year.
Talking to Succession and Peep Show co-creator Jesse Armstrong at an audience during the London film festival at the BFI Southbank, Gerwig, 40, recalled standing covertly at the back of cinemas in New York during the film’s opening weekend, asking the projectors to “turn up the volume” and being “so moved” by the warmth of audience response.
Continue reading...Clive Nwonka says genre should stand with traditions such as the French new wave and British social realism
The black British urban genre should be as valuable to British film culture and academia as the French new wave and British social realism, a leading academic has said.
Clive Nwonka, an associate professor of film, culture and society at UCL, began his academic research in 2010, during a critically important era of black representation in British film and TV.
Continue reading...The revered director and lyrical chronicler of working-class life in Distant Voices, Still Lives, died peacefully at home after a short illness
Terence Davies, the film-maker regularly hailed by critics as among Britain’s greatest, has died aged 77.
The Liverpool-born director, perhaps best known for his semi-autobiographical study of working-class family life Distant Voices, Still Lives, starring Pete Postlethwaite, was working on a new project at the time of his illness and only two years ago released Benediction, starring Jack Lowden in the role of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Continue reading...Director in London for Killers of the Flower Moon premiere says it is time to ‘rethink what you want to say and how you want to say it’
Martin Scorsese has urged young film-makers to use new technology for “serious” work, as he emphasised the importance of cinema over content.
Speaking at a Screen Talk at the BFI London film festival hosted by the British film-maker Edgar Wright, Scorsese – arguably America’s highest status film director – said the industry’s “period of reinventing” didn’t have to spell the end of auteur-led film-making.
Continue reading...The London museum has been granted special access to the world-famous toy’s archives in California and will explore her history ‘through a design lens’
If this summer’s blockbuster movie has left you longing for more Barbie in your life, help is at hand. An exhibition on the history of the world-famous long-legged doll is to open at the Design Museum in London next year.
The museum says it has been granted special access to the Barbie archives in California, and dozens of rare and unique items will be displayed to tell the story of the brand over the course of 65 years.
Continue reading...The Old Oak, about tensions in a former mining village when refugees arrive, has touched a nerve more raw now than when filming began
The veteran film-maker Ken Loach is famous for storylines that depict life’s bleakest injustices. But his latest film has touched a political nerve that is more raw now than when it was conceived before the pandemic.
Loach, now 87, has said that The Old Oak, which opened in cinemas on Friday, will be his last in a career spanning more than six decades. The six-week shoot was challenging, he says, but plays down the difficulties of making a big film at his age with the sight in one eye almost gone.
Continue reading...Writers Guild of America said its members could return to work while a ratification vote takes place for fresh three-year contract
Hollywood writers will officially end their five-month strike on Wednesday, as union leaders approved an agreement made with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and sent the full details of the new contract to union members for ratification.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) said in a statement on Tuesday evening that its members could return to work at midnight tonight, while a ratification vote takes place on a new three-year contract with Hollywood studios.
Continue reading...Coogan will follow in Peter Sellers’ footsteps to play multiple roles in stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical war film
Steve Coogan is to star in Armando Iannucci’s stage adaptation of the satirical war film Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The play, set to open in London next autumn, reunites the pair who worked together more than 30 years ago on the BBC radio comedy On the Hour, in which Coogan played Alan Partridge, and on subsequent Partridge projects.
Continue reading...Writers Guild of America says agreement on pay and conditions ‘due to the willingness of this membership to exercise its power’
The tentative deal reached between Hollywood and studio executives has been received well by those on strike and others within the industry.
Members from the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who took on the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) with demands that included better pay and residuals, and safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence, shared their collective relief.
Continue reading...Emma Heming Willis says she has been ‘care partner’ to husband, 68, after actor was diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration
Six months after Bruce Willis was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, it is “hard to know” whether the actor, known for roles in Die Hard and Pulp Fiction, is aware of the extent to which his condition has worsened, his wife has revealed in a new interview.
Emma Heming Willis also told Today’s Hoda Kotb in an interview broadcast on Monday that she has been a “care partner” to her husband since the moment of the diagnosis.
Continue reading...Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border tells story of brutal treatment of a Syrian family trying to get to Europe
A prize-winning film sharply critical of the Polish government’s attitude to refugees has opened at cinemas across the country, after being attacked in the run-up to its release by members of the Polish government.
Green Border, a feature film by the celebrated director Agnieszka Holland, won the special jury prize in Venice last month. It tells the story of a Syrian family trying to get to Europe via the Belarus-Poland border in 2021, and the brutal treatment they receive at the hands of Polish border guards.
Continue reading...Series with 370m views echoes Chinese state media calls for return of cultural relics
A viral series on the Chinese version of TikTok about a jade teapot that turns into a woman and escapes from the British Museum is to be adapted into an animated film.
The plot of Escape from the British Museum, a series made by two social media influencers, echoes Chinese state media calls for the British government to make amends for “historical sins” and return Chinese cultural relics.
Continue reading...Cord Jefferson’s story of a novelist (Jeffrey Wright) grappling with the publishing industry’s expectations of black writers is now practically guaranteed serious Oscar consideration
American Fiction, the literary satire starring Jeffrey Wright as a novelist grappling with the publishing industry’s expectations of black writers, has won the Toronto international film festival’s influential People’s Choice award, a result that practically guarantees it serious Oscar consideration and contention for major awards.
Described by the Guardian as “hilarious and withering”, American Fiction triumphed over pre-festival favourites such as Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers and Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Boy and the Heron, which were named the runners-up. It is written and directed by Cord Jefferson, a credited writer on TV shows including The Good Place, Watchmen and Station Eleven, and now making his feature directing debut.
Continue reading...Knighted in 2022, Trinidad-born Ové directed the first black British feature and documented the arrival of reggae to the UK
Horace Ové, regarded as the pioneer of black British film-making, died on Saturday at the age of 86, his son has announced.
Ové directed the first black British feature, Pressure, in 1976 and was also the first to document the arrival of reggae music to the UK with 1971’s Reggae.
Continue reading...Actors were on the board of Thorn when their letters defending convicted rapist Danny Masterson came to light
Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis have resigned from the board of the anti-child sexual abuse charity he founded amid swirling criticism of their defense of fellow actor and convicted rapist Danny Masterson.
Kutcher told the board of Thorn he was standing down immediately as its chair in a letter written on Thursday and posted to the organization’s website. Kunis’s role as an observer on the board ended at the same time.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Continue reading...Los Angeles officials intervened to block the tearing down of the property and are considering it for historic preservation
The final home of Marilyn Monroe – and the only residence she ever owned independently – will remain standing for now after Los Angeles officials intervened to block the property’s demolition.
The news that the new owners of 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, where Monroe died at age 36, filed for demolition permits had attracted widespread outrage. Los Angeles city councilwoman Traci Park said she received hundreds of calls urging her to save the Spanish colonial-style house in the city’s Brentwood neighborhood.
Continue reading...Actors say letters were not meant to undermine victims of Masterson, who was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for rape
Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis apologized on Saturday for character letters the celebrity couple wrote on behalf of fellow That ’70s Show actor Danny Masterson before he was sentenced for rape this week.
A judge in Los Angeles on Thursday sentenced Masterson to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women in 2003.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Continue reading...Director attacks ‘extremes’ of movement while promoting Coup de Chance, his 50th film, at Venice film festival, as well as addressing persistent interest in historic allegations against him
Woody Allen has voiced his support for the #MeToo movement while promoting his new film, adding that he sometimes finds cancel culture “silly”.
The director’s career has lately been mired by a recent refocusing in social media on an allegation made against him in 1993, when his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, said he had sexually assaulted her in an attic at the time of the custody battle between Allen and Dylan’s adoptive mother, Mia Farrow.
Continue reading...Actor famous for Amélie, The Bureau and La Haine, which he also wrote and directed, reportedly in a ‘worrying’ condition
The French actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz is in a “worrying” condition after a motorbike accident in greater Paris on Sunday, authorities say.
The 56-year-old, who is best known for his 1995 film La Haine and his role in the 2001 film Amélie, was on a motorcycle training course at the time, a police source told Agence France-Presse.
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