Category Archives: Film

An oral history of Fame: ‘We were dancing on cars in the epicentre of porn and filth!’

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It was the late director Alan Parker’s most enduring hit, capturing what it was to be young and ambitious in the hot, gritty New York of 1980. The cast and crew reflect on the acting, fighting, flirting and fallout

• ‘The most important experience of my youth’: Fame star Barry Miller on Alan Parker

Forty years ago, Alan Parker’s musical about a group of teenagers at the New York High School for the Performing Arts was released.

Originally titled Hot Lunch after one of the composer Christopher Hope’s key numbers, the film is a crowd-pleaser with a heart of ice. For all the fun and legwarmers, this isn’t some starry-eyed fantasy. Rather, its edge and pessimism make it a remarkably responsible piece of film-making, with a conclusion about the wisdom of pursuing a career in the arts that is ambivalent at best.

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‘I always knew I was wired differently’: why David Arquette went from Hollywood to wrestling

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He was the star of the Scream films, became a heavyweight world champion – and, with the deaths of his sister Alexis and best friend Luke Perry, still has demons to grapple with

I always had a soft spot for David Arquette. From the first time I spotted him, in a bit part in Beverly Hills 90210, and ever after, whether he was playing the dorky policeman in the Scream films, carrying offbeat indie films such as Dream with the Fishes, or playing a Jewish rebel in the Holocaust film The Grey Zone, he radiated a sweet likeability you just can’t fake. It was cheering to spot his goofily handsome face onscreen, like finding your brother’s funny friend hanging out in your kitchen when you got home from school.

The baby brother of acclaimed actors Rosanna, Patricia and Alexis, his talent was obvious; he was on the cover of Vanity Fair’s 1996 Hollywood issue alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Benicio del Toro. He was so watchable that, even though his character was supposed to die in the first Scream, Wes Craven rejigged the script so that he became the backbone of the franchise.

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Letters reveal British objections to plot of Bridge on the River Kwai

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War Office feared war movie would ‘not go down well with British public’

The adventure war film The Bridge on the River Kwai may have swept the board of awards and attracted acclaim as one best films of the 20th century, but the War Office was very nervous “it would not go down well with the British public”, documents reveal.

Letters between the Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel and the UK War Office, from whom he was seeking permission for RAF cooperation in making the 1957 film, show tensions over how its plot depicted the conduct of British officers.

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Antonio Banderas reveals he has coronavirus on 60th birthday

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The actor has said he is celebrating in quarantine and otherwise relatively unaffected, other than being ‘a little bit more tired than usual’

The actor Antonio Banderas has confirmed on Twitter that he is suffering from coronavirus. In a message posted on 10 August, his 60th birthday, the actor said he was forced to celebrate in quarantine but reassured followers that his health was largely unaffected.

Quiero contaros lo siguiente... pic.twitter.com/u579iBVLM0

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Geena Davis: ‘As soon as I hit 40, I fell off the cliff. I really did’

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The Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own star wanted to be an actor from the age of three. She discusses sexual harassment, improving representation, and why she’s so glad she had kids in her 40s

“Are you in your bed like I am?” Geena Davis asks. It is late at night and I am talking to Davis by Zoom, me in my bed in London, her in hers in Los Angeles. I tell her that I only just resisted getting into my pyjamas for this call.

“Ha ha! I changed into a sweatsuit!” she says, and she is, indeed, in an all-white sweatsuit. Yet even in athleisure, she still looks like a golden-era Hollywood beauty. Davis made her movie debut in Tootsie in 1982, in which she first appeared in just her bra and knickers, to Dustin Hoffman’s memorable confusion. But it was always easy to picture her in a film from the 1940s, wearing a long satin dress, holding a martini glass and making a snappy comeback to Cary Grant.

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The Matrix director: I’m glad film recognised as trans metaphor

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Lilly Wachowski expresses pleasure that the film’s ‘original intention’ has become commonplace understanding among fans

Lilly Wachowski, who co-directed the Matrix films with her sister, Lana, has confirmed that they should be read as allegories for the transgender narrative. Subsequent to the films’ release, both sisters came out as trans – Lana in 2012 and Lilly in 2016 – and some fans have since identified apparent resonances for the experience in the movies.

“I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention,” Lilly told Netflix Film Club on 4 August. “The world wasn’t quite ready for it. The corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”

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Disney opts for digital-first release of Mulan, shocking cinema owners

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Mulan is first blockbuster to go straight to streaming in response to Covid-19 shuttering cinemas

Disney’s decision to bypass cinemas and offer its latest big budget film Mulan directly to streaming subscribers for $29.99 could signal the beginning of the end for the traditional movie-going experience – and forever change the long-established business model underpinning the Hollywood blockbuster.

The surprise move has stunned cinema owners, who had been banking on the film, along with Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller Tenet, to jump-start box office takings as theatre chains struggle to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

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Dan Aykroyd and John Landis: how we made The Blues Brothers

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‘For some of the crew working nights on the film, cocaine was almost like coffee. I never liked it myself but I wasn’t going to police others’ behaviour’

My original script was called The Return of the Blues Brothers and had two movies in it. John Landis turned it into a manageable 150 pages. He was the keystone of the project – he pulled it all together.

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Alan Parker, director of Midnight Express and Bugsy Malone, dies aged 76

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Director who first made his mark in the 1970s and had later hits including Fame and The Commitments, became the chair of the UK Film Council

•Peter Bradshaw on Alan Parker: a maker of glorious films with a gift for connecting with audiences
•A life in pictures

Alan Parker, the British director behind a string of hits including Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, and The Commitments, has died aged 76.

The news was announced by a representative, who said he had died on Friday “after a lengthy illness”.

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Chateau Marmont in Hollywood to become members-only hotel

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Celebrity hangout will allow select group to own shares in ‘world’s best real estate’

The Chateau Marmont, a Hollywood hotspot and hangout for nearly a century, will be converted into a members-only hotel over the next year.

The owner, André Balazs, confirmed his plans to turn the 91-year-old building into a hotel at which a select group of members could buy into “a piece of a portfolio of the best real estate in the world”, the Los Angeles Times reported.

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Seth Rogen: ‘I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel’

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Actor says when he was younger he wasn’t told Palestinians lived on land that became the Jewish state

Seth Rogen has said he was “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel” as a young Jewish person, stoking controversy around the country’s sometimes fraught relationship with many North American Jews.

The Canadian-US actor, who attended Jewish camp and whose parents met on a kibbutz in Israel, said the fact that the Jewish state was created on land where Palestinians were living had always been omitted.

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Again Once Again review – elegant meditation on the pains of motherhood

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This engaging, philosophical film unpicks the challenges faced by a young mother trying to reconnect with the life she had before her son’s birth

A woman leaves her boyfriend to visit her mum in Buenos Aires, taking their three-year-old son with her – not sure yet if it’s a holiday or a breakup. She hasn’t worked since her son was born and is having an emotional and intellectual crisis. She feels almost non-existent. “I don’t see myself. Who am I?”

This is an elegant, elusive debut from the Argentinian playwright Romina Paula, who picks away at the fantasy that motherhood leads to instant fulfilment. Her film is like an arthouse version of the sitcoms Motherland and Catastrophe, with fewer laughs and more philosophical introspection. It has the feel of a feminist essay that has been semi-dramatised for screen – with Paula starring as a fictional version of herself and her real-life mum and son Ramón playing themselves.

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Olivia de Havilland: Hollywood’s queen of radiant calm | Peter Bradshaw

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The Gone With the Wind star, known for her lifelong feud with her sister as much as the bewitching brilliance of her acting, and the last link to Hollywood’s golden age

Olivia de Havilland established herself for ever in the film world’s collective memory at the age of 22, as the wise, gentle and beautiful Melanie Hamilton in the colossal epic Gone With the Wind. The film appeared in 1939 as war was breaking out in Europe: the mighty theme of old orders being swept away was especially potent. De Havilland was an exemplar of radiant womanly calmness, a polar opposite to the capricious sexiness of Vivien Leigh’s bewitching belle Scarlett O’Hara. The role probably encumbered her with something stately and reserved, which she never entirely lost – though with a hint of mystery and suppressed emotional tumult, on screen and off. Because, however sedate her image, De Havilland was the subject of two of the juiciest scandals of Hollywood’s golden age: her relationship with longtime co-star Errol Flynn, and her lifelong feud with her sister and rival Joan Fontaine.

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Olivia de Havilland, star of Gone with the Wind, dies at 104

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Double Oscar-winning actor, who won acclaim for multiple Hollywood costume dramas before moving to Paris, has died

Olivia de Havilland, the fragrant queen of the Hollywood costume drama, has died at the age of 104.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, her publicist said she had died from natural causes in Paris, where she lived.

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Mel Gibson was hospitalised with coronavirus in April

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The actor spent a week in a Los Angeles hospital after contracting the illness and was treated with the drug Remdesivir

The actor Mel Gibson spent a week in hospital after contracting coronavirus earlier this year, his representatives have confirmed. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph Australia, the spokesperson said: “He tested positive in April and spent a week in the hospital. He was treated with the drug Remdesivir, while in the hospital, and has tested negative numerous times since then as well as positive for the antibodies.”

News of the hospitalisation of Gibson, 64, emerges a month after the actor fought back against allegations of anti-semitism and homophobia by Winona Ryder. A representative for Gibson denied the allegations and accused Ryder of lying “about it over a decade ago, when she talked to the press, and lying about it now”.

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The Rifleman review – Latvian war epic aims high

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This trench-warfare tale is its country’s biggest box-office success, but it is guilty of some bad misfires

The Rifleman is the top-grossing film of all time at the Latvian box office and if you had to guess at the kind of film that would inspire such nationwide enthusiasm, you’d guess it was something like this: a lavishly mounted, lion-hearted first world war epic based on a book banned by the Soviets for 60 years.

Oto Brantevics stars as Arturs, a 16-year-old who signs up in 1915 to fight the Germans, alongside his brother Edgars (Raimonds Celms) and father Vanags (Martins Vilsons). Both Arturs and his dad are outside the required age range for the army, but rules are bent on account of the father’s exceptional marksmanship. Thus, three men of the same family set off to war, fighting sometimes for the Tsar, sometimes for the Red Army – but always, really, for each other.

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Amber Heard said Johnny Depp tried to suffocate her with pillow, court told

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Makeup artist says she concealed Heard’s cut lip and bruises after alleged attack

Amber Heard had a cut lip and bruises that she said had been inflicted by Johnny Depp, who she said had tried to suffocate her with a pillow, Heard’s regular makeup artist has told a court.

Giving evidence via video link from California, Mélanie Inglessis said she was called by Heard to the Hollywood couple’s penthouse apartment in Los Angeles in December 2015 and helped to conceal the injuries so that Heard could appear on a US chat show the next day apparently unblemished.

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Once There Was Brasília review – sci-fi odyssey into Brazil’s murky politics

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An intergalactic refugee travels through time to modern-day Brazil in an eerie tale that has real-life corruption at its heart

Brazilian director Adirley Queirós here cobbles together something comparable, though far more lo-fi, to Wong Kar-wai’s 2046: a haunted, backwards-looking sci-fi assembled from textures of the past, which encourages you to pick through the wreckage of political ideology it strews in its wake. Wellington Abreu plays WA4, a Mad Max-style refugee from outer space who, as punishment for an illegal land occupation on his own planet, is sent to Earth to assassinate the real-life former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek on the inauguration day of the capital city, Brasília, in 1961. But his ship crash-lands in the present day, in the satellite city of Ceilândia, an overflow enclave for the dispossessed that represents how the country’s utopia has been thwarted.

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Hostage siege ends after Ukrainian president endorses Joaquin Phoenix film

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Gunman surrenders after video recommending 2005’s Earthlings posted on Facebook

A gunman in Ukraine armed with an automatic rifle and grenades has surrendered to police and released 13 hostages after the country’s president consented to his demand to recommend the 2005 film Earthlings starring Joaquin Phoenix.

The niche film recommendation, delivered by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over Facebook, helped end an hours-long standoff in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, where 44-year-old Maksym Kryvosh seized a bus and demanded that dozens of government officials admit to being “terrorists”.

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Amber Heard says she punched Johnny Depp to defend her sister

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Actor tells court she feared Depp would push her sister down the stairs like he allegedly did to Kate Moss

Amber Heard has admitted punching her ex-husband Johnny Depp, saying it was to prevent him from pushing her sister down a flight of stairs and claiming he had previously done this to his ex-girlfriend Kate Moss.

Giving evidence for a second day at the high court in London, Heard recalled an incident in March 2015 in the couple’s Los Angeles penthouse when she struck Depp because, she said, she wanted to protect her younger sister Whitney.

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