Contenders in the running to play the star in a new biopic are facing gruelling training to land the part
Age: It’s been going on for months.
Appearance: Immersive course in singing like Madonna, dancing like Madonna and acting like Madonna.
Continue reading...The actor, best known for her role as Lavender Brown, says her symptoms have lasted for weeks
Harry Potter star Jessie Cave has been admitted to hospital after testing positive for Covid-19 while pregnant with her fourth child.
The actor, best known for her role as Lavender Brown in the film adaptations of the hit books, said the virus had hit her hard and her symptoms have lasted weeks.
Continue reading...It is hailed as one of the greatest action movies ever, but making Mad Max: Fury Road was far from easy. Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, director George Miller and a huge cast of creatives recall what went down in the Namib desert
Plenty of movies claim to be mad and filled with fury, taking it to the max. Very few make good on that promise. Like everyone else at the time, my gob got smacked and stayed smacked by George Miller’s deranged post-apocalyptic convoy-chase action spectacular Mad Max: Fury Road. It was so over the top that the top was a distant memory, far beneath my feet.
This was a 2015 revival of Miller’s 70s/80s punk-western franchise Mad Max, taking it to a new level of strangeness and delirium. Tom Hardy plays Max Rockatansky, survivor of a global catastrophe that has made oil and water rare commodities: he does battle with a hateful warlord called Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and makes common cause with a one-armed warrior bearing the gloriously Latinate name of Imperator Furiosa – an amazing performance from Charlize Theron. Monstrous 18-wheeler rigs scream across the scrub, with guitarists aboard playing thrash metal.
Continue reading...To celebrate the release of The Batman, Guardian writers have written about their all-time favorite Caped Crusader films from Adam West to Ben Affleck
Of all the superheroes, DC Comics’ Batman is now endowed with the most Dostoyevskian seriousness. It wasn’t always like this. And, in my heart, my favourite Batman is the first movie version, from 1966, which grew out of the wacky TV show in the era of Get Smart and I Dream Of Jeannie and Mad magazine. As kids, we watched the program religiously on TV, which is where I caught up with the film about Batman and Robin taking on Joker, Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler – never dreaming that it was anything other than deadly serious. I watched it in the same spirit as I now watch Michael Mann films. I was thrilled by the (genuinely) propulsive and exciting “dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner” theme tune (how I resented the vulgar playground joke about what Batman’s mum shouts out of the window to get him in at mealtimes) and quivered at the brilliant, psychedelically conceived title-cards for fights: BAM! I also fanatically pored over the novelisation tie-in – Batman vs The Fearsome Foursome.
The show-stopper was the famous, entertainingly tense sequence where Batman can’t find anywhere to dispose of a smoking bomb, something that surely inspired the later Zucker/Abrahams comedies. Adam West played the sonorous Bruce Wayne and Batman and Burt Ward was Robin (confusingly, his alter ego Dick Grayson was often described as Wayne’s “ward”). Their costumes, with luxuriant silk capes, were gorgeous. Brilliant acting talent lined up for the villains: Latin lover Cesar Romero was the Joker; veteran Hollywood character turn Burgess Meredith was Penguin, Lee Meriwether fused glamour and comedy as Catwoman (replacing TV’s Julie Newmar) and impressionist and night-club comic Frank Gorshin was Riddler. Much is said about the campiness of this show – and yes, there is a case for retrospectively re-interpreting this Batman and Robin as a covert queer statement. (In fact, it was Cesar Romero who kept the press guessing about his sexuality.) But in a way, it was more about goofiness as part of the Sixties Zeitgeist: being silly, even at this level, was countercultural seriousness. I suspect that every single Batman director, from Joel Schumacher to Christopher Nolan, measures their work against the addictive Day-Glo potency of the ’66 Batman. Pow! Peter Bradshaw
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Nosferatu, we run the rule over the stars who have played the virgin-crazed, bloodsucking aristocrat
Also known as Lust at First Bite and Love at First Gulp respectively, these films from the golden age of adult cinema exist in softcore and hardcore versions. Taking his cue from Bela Lugosi, Gillis nails the brooding bloodsucker persona, as well as his co-stars.
Continue reading...The actor talks about joining the MCU, his friendships with BTS’s V and the rest of the ‘Wooga Squad’, and the social and economic issues behind his TV hits Itaewon Class and Fight for My Way
In an early scene of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, a brief conversation between rich student Min-hyuk and his friend Ki-woo proves a crucial moment in the multi-Oscar winning film. “Tutor a rich kid. It pays well,” the scooter-riding Min-hyuk tells the impoverished Ki-woo, who lives in a semi-basement home with his family. And when Min-hyuk offers Ki-woo the opportunity to take over his job as a tutor for the rich Park family, he acts as a bridge between the two worlds, and sets the plot of the film in motion.
Min-hyuk is played by Park Seo-joon, and despite the brevity of Park’s appearance in Parasite, it will have been the first time most international audiences will have got a good look at him. Park is a big name in South Korea however, thanks to a string of successful domestic TV series – mostly romantic comedies such as She Was Pretty and Fight for My Way – and the Netflix hit Itaewon Class. Now his international profile is about to be raised, after it was confirmed he will be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Captain Marvel 2: The Marvels, appearing alongside Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Zawe Ashton, making him the third South Korean actor to join the MCU.
Continue reading...The films he produced or greenlit won more than 50 Oscars and 150 nominations
Alan Ladd Jr, the Oscar-winning producer and studio boss who as a 20th Century Fox executive greenlit Star Wars, has died. He was 84.
Ladd died Wednesday, his daughter Amanda Ladd-Jones, who directed the documentary Laddie: The Man Behind the Movies, wrote in a Facebook post. No cause of death was given.
Continue reading...Despite more than 100 screen credits of his own, the actor sounded pretty confused about the basics on Marc Maron’s podcast
For approximately a full hour, the latest episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast goes absolutely swimmingly. The episode’s guest, Sam Elliott, rumbles on amiably about all manner of subjects, and he seems to be building a genuine rapport with Maron. And then, almost as a closing afterthought, Maron asks Elliott: “Did you see Power of the Dog?”
And then everything went to hell.
Continue reading...Valérie Lemercier directs and plays both old and young versions of the Canadian singer in a bizarre film that digitally superimposes her face on to the head of a young girl
Here is an utterly bizarre fictionalised biopic of Canadian singing star Céline Dion, whose opening scenes will have audiences screaming and running out of the cinemas the way they were mythically supposed to have done at the Lumière brothers’ first silent movie about the arriving train. Even now, I still can’t believe I have seen it.
Valérie Lemercier (from Claire Denis’s Vendredi Soir) directs and stars, playing Aline Dieu – a made-up version of Dion – the youngest of 14 children in Quebec, all the kids kept in line by their formidable working-class mum Sylvette (Danielle Fichaud). Young Aline shows precocious singing talent and her parents send a demo tape to ageing record producer Guy-Claude Kamar (Sylvain Marcel), a version of the real-life René Angélil, who is to become her manager, husband and soulmate as Aline begins her ascent to mega-selling glory, culminating in the Titanic theme My Heart Will Go On and legendary Vegas residencies.
Continue reading...Friends become possessed by conspiracy theories after moving into Epstein’s old apartment in this smirking love letter to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut
In 2019, reviewing a re-release of Eyes Wide Shut, Peter Bradshaw pointed out that in the age of Epstein, the idea of a secret society of the rich and powerful exploiting the vulnerable no longer seemed far-fetched. Now comes The Scary of Sixty-First, a kind of cinematic love letter to Stanley Kubrick set in the New York of Eyes Wide Shut, about Jeffrey Epstein and the conspiracy theories around his death. It’s a shallow, outrage-baiting movie out to shock but not much else. Disappointingly, the director and co-writer is supersmart switched-on Dasha Nekrasova, an actor who plays Kendall’s press adviser Comfrey in Succession and co-hosts the Red Scare podcast.
The movie begins like an episode of Girls: friends Noelle (co-writer Madeline Quinn) and Addie (Betsey Brown) move into a suspiciously cheap rented apartment in Manhattan’s swanky Upper East Side. Eli Keszler’s pounding synth-y score signals something is up; so too does the creepy second bedroom, which has a mirror on the ceiling and doors that lock from the outside. Then comes a knock at the door. A woman credited only as The Girl (played by Nekrasova, possessing Chloë Sevigny levels of aloof cool), tells them that the apartment was previously owned by Epstein.
Continue reading...Concerts, dance recitals and exhibitions have been postponed indefinitely after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted responses from the cultural sphere, with Russian artists and companies beginning to feel the repercussions of decisions taken by the Kremlin. Not only has Russia been stripped of two prestigious events – the Champions League men’s final and Formula One’s Russian Grand Prix –but an increasing number of performances by Russians are being cancelled worldwide.
Continue reading...Matt Reeves’ film is spectacular and well-cast but an intriguing saga of corruption devolves into a tiresome third act
That definite article means it’s the genuine article. Adding “the” to Batman’s name has become a huge part of the brand identity, a sign of how elemental and atavistic this shadowy figure is supposed to be. You can imagine some growly voice saying “the Batman” – but not Tom Holland putting on a deep baritone to say he’s “the Spider-Man”, or Henry Cavill booming he’s “the Superman” (although maybe you could have Billy Joel stride into a dark Gotham City bar to raspingly confront “the Piano Man”).
Director and co-writer Matt Reeves has created a new Batman iteration in which Robert Pattinson reinvents billionaire Bruce Wayne as an elegantly wasted rock star recluse, willowy and dandyish in his black suit with tendrils of dark hair falling over his face; but Wayne magically trebles in bulk when he reappears in costume and mask as the Dark Knight, his whole being weaponised into a slab-like impassivity. And this of course is happening in the sepulchral vastness of Gotham City, the brutal and murky world which Christopher Nolan thrillingly pioneered with his Dark Knight trilogy and made indispensable for imagining Batman on screen.
Continue reading...Netflix phenomenon and Apple’s deaf family drama make history at this year’s SAG awards ceremony
The indie drama Coda has won big at this year’s Screen Actors Guild awards, picking up best ensemble in a movie and best supporting actor for Troy Kotsur, who is the first ever deaf actor to win an individual SAG award.
The Apple drama about a deaf family was bought for $25m from last year’s Sundance film festival and has also been nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture.
Continue reading...Playing Batman finally puts the boy from Barnes on the A-list, after years spent sabotaging any hope of mainstream success
At first glance, it looks like a neatly managed movie star career path: the graduation from teen-franchise heart-throb to a starring role in a superhero flick. But Robert Pattinson’s journey from Twilight – which made him, along with co-star and sometime girlfriend Kristen Stewart, one of the most famous people on the planet – to the latest incarnation of the nocturnal vigilante Bruce Wayne in The Batman, has been intriguingly circuitous.
He took a decade-long detour through arthouse and auteur cinema, through offbeat roles – the freaks and weirdos, the feckless and the fundamentally untrustworthy – before he finally circled back, via scene-stealing supporting performances in The King and Tenet, into the kind of lead role which cements an actor’s A-list status. It could be viewed as a risky strategy, but it is one that paid off handsomely. Pattinson, who is now 35, has honed his mercurial talent. He is not just a movie star, he’s a thrillingly unpredictable and daring character actor. And he has nurtured something that is in short supply in his generation of groomed and polished media-savvy contemporaries: a refreshing oddball eccentricity.
Continue reading...Even the worldwide smash Encanto failed to satisfy millions of cinemagoers who now demand homemade fare
Matt William Knowles, a 36-year-old Hollywood actor, has been packing for a forthcoming trip to China in the past week. He’s looking forward to his first China visit since the pandemic. “The last time I was in China was late 2019 when I served as the honorary mayor for a village in southern China.”
While his career in Hollywood continues to blossom, finding work in China hasn’t been easy these past few years for Knowles. The pandemic changed the film industry, and the deteriorating diplomatic relations between America and China sandwiched individuals like him who straddle both nations. For a period of time in 2019, amid a souring trade war between the two countries, Chinese studios put an informal ban on American actors.
Continue reading...The director of The Arbor and The Selfish Giant returns to her favourite city for her new film. She talks about celebrating lives on the margins and how an ice-rink kiss changed her life
Would you like coffee?” Clio Barnard asks. “Is goat’s milk OK?” Ooh, that sounds exciting, I say. “There’s oat milk, too.” Barnard is scouring the fridge. “We’ve even got regular cow milk.” It’s early morning when I arrive at her house. Though, as she explains repeatedly, it’s not her house – she’s just renting it while working in London and Essex. It reminds me of Ali & Ava, her lovely new film. Every time Ali tells his friends that Ava is a teacher, she corrects him with “teaching assistant”. Details are important to Barnard.
“Right, would you like some breakfast?” She couldn’t be a warmer host. Then we sit down to talk, and suddenly she’s a bag of nerves. She loses her words, apologises for going blank, and looks to her producer Tracy O’Riordan for support. She eyes my recorder enviously. “I’d much rather be the person with the tape machine on the table asking you questions.” She pauses. “I’m quite a shy person, Simon.”
Continue reading...He may star in The Batman, but his taste is more arthouse thrillers and experimental theatre. He discusses overacting, bad accents – and being cast as a charmer by his wife
Peter Sarsgaard peers into the webcam, half-man, half-beard. “I’m in the Kenny Rogers camp right now,” says the 50-year-old actor. “I look like a dropout. Whenever I’m not working, I feel like I’m growing hair in case I need it for the next movie.”
His sleepy grin matches the rest of him: bed head, bed eyes, bed voice. It is this apparent languor that makes his glinting wit and flashes of cruelty stand out sharply on screen. He can be creep, charmer or both. “I don’t tell myself I’m the antagonist or the protagonist,” he says. “They can figure that out later.”
Continue reading...Bringing Spideys old and new together was a masterclass in giving audiences what they want, and points to what Batman v Superman got so wrong
Fan service has come a long way since 2006, when studio New Line allowed its audience to basically crowd-think the entirety of Samuel L Jackson action epic Snakes on a Plane. Back then, somebody high up thought it would be a really good idea to start borrowing lines for Jackson to say (while fighting off those airborne reptiles) from a hyped-up geek community who had been spending most of their spare time discussing the unreleased movie on fan forums and blogs. The best/worst of them ended up being the legendary (for all the wrong reasons) line: “Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” Up there with Jackson’s famous Ezekiel 25:17 speech about the path of the righteous man it really wasn’t.
This week Marvel and Sony have shown how to do fan service properly. And all it took was a staged meme featuring all three webslingers from global megasmash Spider-Man: No Way Home pointing at each other. The image recalls a famous still from episode 19 of the 1967-1970 animated Spider-Man show, in which a Spidey-impostor – clue, he’s really a criminal – tries to impersonate the masked wallcrawler. It’s since been used millions of times in social media posts, often to illustrate moments when celebrities meet each other (according to the Know Your Meme website).
Continue reading...The film and TV writer answers your questions on advising Boris Johnson, dining with Alan Partridge characters and whether he still has OJ’s confession
How bored are you with people asking how bored you are with people asking if reality has become impossible to satirise? ritasueandbob
I’m extremely bored. But I don’t think it has. A lot of people have forgotten that life is real. It’s not something you can invent and occasionally rewrite. Life is something you’re stuck with, to deal with head on and not hide from.
Continue reading...After 30 years of critical acclaim, the actor has finally found mainstream success at 44. She talks about Hollywood’s dangerous beauty standards, turning down misogynistic scripts – and why her TV show about possible teenage cannibals is so much fun
It would not surprise me if Melanie Lynskey had deliberately matched her pale blouse to the pale curtains behind her, and her pale complexion, the better to blend into the background. After 30 years of critical acclaim, but not mainstream fame, Lynskey is getting noticed and it feels very, very strange to her. Her show, Yellowjackets, has steadily become a hit. Lynskey is not quite the lead in this ensemble piece, but near enough, as one of four fortysomething women who survived a plane crash as teenagers, and went through some savage stuff, involving murder and almost certainly cannibalism.
Likened to a mix of Lord of the Flies, Lost and Mean Girls, with a pleasing amount of 90s nostalgia, it has become one of the most talked-about shows of the moment. “It’s funny to be on something that people are watching,” Lynskey says with a laugh. “It’s a different experience.”
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