Activists protest against director who pleaded guilty to statutory rape in US but fled before sentencing
Police and protesters clashed briefly outside the French “Oscars” ceremony on Friday evening as the Franco-Polish film director Roman Polanski was awarded the prize for best director.
Immediately after the announcement there was shouting and booing among the audience, and the two actors who announced the award quickly left the stage.
Continue reading...As actor’s libel case continues in London, high court hears details of messages allegedly sent about Amber Heard
Texts allegedly written by actor Johnny Depp contained death threats against his then wife Amber Heard, London’s high court has heard.
In November 2013, Depp allegedly sent a text to actor Paul Bettany saying: “Let’s burn Amber.” The same day, he allegedly texted Bettany saying: “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f–k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she is dead.”
Continue reading...Brand ambassador pledges ‘work will be done’ after children are filmed toiling on Guatemalan farms believed to supply company
George Clooney has said he is “surprised and saddened” by the alleged discovery of child labour on farms used by coffee giant Nespresso, the brand for which he has long served as ambassador.
The Oscar-winning actor and director, who during school holidays worked on his own family’s tobacco farm in Kentucky, vowed that “work will be done” to improve conditions after a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, due to air next week, filmed children picking coffee beans and hauling sacks on six Guatemalan farms believed to supply Nespresso.
Continue reading...It was the year feminists wreaked havoc on the beauty contest. Now their story has been made into a film starring Keira Knightley. They look back at that dramatic moment
It was the most dramatic feminist event since Emily Davison threw herself under the king’s horse in 1913 in the name of women’s suffrage. Now, the 1970 Miss World protests – during which feminist activists dramatically flour-bombed the stage – is getting a Hollywood makeover. The film Misbehaviour will document the period of fizzing excitement and possibility marked by the demonstrations. “Miss World epitomised everything I believed was wrong,” says one of the protesters, Jenny Fortune. “It felt as if we were stopping the patriarchy in its tracks.”
“We all believed in revolution back then,” says Jo Robinson, another one of the activists who hurled flour and old vegetables at the host, Bob Hope, that night. “We all believed the world could be changed, and we all believed we could do it.”
Continue reading...LA case, announced before Manhattan trial began, focuses on charges for two alleged attacks over two days
The verdict in the New York case against Harvey Weinstein is only the beginning of the movie mogul’s prosecution, with separate charges against the disgraced producer ahead in Los Angeles.
In the most high-profile trial of the #MeToo movement yet, a New York jury on Monday found Weinstein guilty of third-degree rape for an attack in a New York hotel and guilty of a criminal sex act for forcing oral sex on a former television production assistant. The fallen titan of Hollywood, who was taken away in handcuffs, could face 25 years in prison and will have to register as a sex offender.
Continue reading...Jury indicated that in three counts they have reached their decision, and will now break and return to deliberations on the other two counts on Monday
The jury at Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial in New York appears to have reached a verdict on three of the five counts facing him, though they are deadlocked on the most serious charge – predatory sexual assault.
Shortly after the lunch break on Friday, the five men and seven women of the jury were called back into court having indicated that in three counts they have reached their decision. These are: the count that alleges the fallen movie mogul forced oral sex on a then Project Runway production assistant, Miriam Haley, in 2006 and two counts of rape in 2013 of a woman who the Guardian is not naming as her intentions on identification are unclear.
Continue reading...This account of the tough, troubled life of naive artist Antonio Liguabue boasts a committed performance from actor Elio Germano
Georgio Diritti has directed a lovely-looking and fervent film about the life of the 20th-century naive artist Antonio Ligabue, who suffered poverty and mental illness throughout his life but whose fierce, primitive, impassioned studies and sculptures of animals and human portraits made him celebrated in his own day as an authentic unschooled genius, and an object of cult fascination from the metropolitan elite who perhaps regarded him as comparable to Van Gogh. (There was another biopic in 1978, with Suspiria star Flavio Bucci in the lead.)
The Italian actor Elio Germano stars as Ligabue here, with a performance that has something of both Daniel Auteuil and Daniel Day Lewis — and also, maybe, a little of Sacha Baron Cohen. He plays him with the stoop, the shuffle, the fierce glare, the occasional equine twitch of the head and teeth-baring and drooping lower lip. This is a congenital dysfunction but also the natural brusqueness of the creative spirit and someone who does not suffer fools gladly (despite or because of being dismissed as a fool all his life). And for all that Ligabue once lived an almost feral existence, he is someone with some sense of the good things in life, particularly a decent meal in a restaurant.
Continue reading...Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith who travels to cover the story of mercury poisoning that caused horrendous disfigurements
Minamata is not a masterpiece and there are one or two cliches here about western saviours and boozy, difficult, passionate journalists who occupy the perennial Venn diagram overlap between integrity and alcoholism. This movie’s producer-star Johnny Depp has form on this score, with his starstruck impersonation of Hunter Thompson. And once again, he has chosen a role in which he wears a hat indoors. But Minamata is a forthright, heartfelt movie, an old-fashioned “issue picture” with a worthwhile story to tell about how communities can stand up to overweening corporations and how journalists dedicated to truthful news can help them.
Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith whose glory days were in the second world war and the decades following, working for Life magazine in that now-forgotten era when analogue cameras were incapable of lying and magazines with compelling photos could command newsstand sales.
Continue reading...President says US has trade problems with South Korea and wonders if ‘we can get Gone With the Wind back’
Donald Trump has taken a jab at the Oscars for awarding this year’s best picture honor to Parasite, because the film is South Korean.
“How bad were the Academy Awards this year?” Trump asked a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The crowd responded with loud boos.
Continue reading...The jury began deliberating their verdict Tuesday, asking to see emails with names of women Weinstein allegedly tried to silence
The jury at Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial in New York have asked to see emails in which the movie mogul highlighted the names of potential accusers and handed them to investigators he employed, to try and silence the women and prevent them going public with their allegations.
Just hours after the seven men and five women of the jury began deliberating their verdict on Tuesday, they began asking the judge at the New York supreme court a series of detailed questions. They wanted to see copies of all emails where “certain women’s names are highlighted in red”.
Continue reading...McGowan tweets that she ‘lost sight of the bigger picture’ after calling fellow actor a ‘fraud’
Rose McGowan has expressed regret for her attack on Natalie Portman over the latter’s Oscar dress “protest”, which took aim at the exclusion of women from the best director Academy Award nominations.
Related: Rose McGowan: Natalie Portman's Oscars dress protest 'deeply offensive'
Continue reading...As YouTube celebrates its 15th birthday, we talk to five early adopters about how the all-singing all-dancing platform has evolved
Late on the evening of 14 February 2005, Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen registered the website YouTube.com. Two months later, when the first video (of Karim briefly describing the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo) was uploaded, a platform was launched that has gone on to change the world.
Today, more than 2bn of us visit YouTube monthly, and 500 hours of footage is uploaded every minute. That’s a far cry from the 18-second video that started it all. Its stars are multi-millionaires: YouTube’s highest earner in 2019 was an eight-year-old called Ryan, who netted $26m. The number of creators earning five or six figures has increased by more than 40% year on year. At first, users earned a few hundred pounds for mentioning products in their videos; now they can make hundreds of thousands, and much more through exclusive brand deals. Not many like talking about their income: it makes them less relatable.
Continue reading...Movie producer ‘loved’ closing remarks of his lawyer, who questioned motives of accusers
Harvey Weinstein looked cheerful at the end of five hours of closing remarks in the New York supreme court, despite facing possible life imprisonment.
As he trundled down the corridor on his walking frame, smiling broadly at reporters, he was asked what he thought of the final pitch to the jury made by his lead lawyer, Donna Rotunno. “I loved it,” he said. “I called it the Queen’s speech.”
Continue reading...This coolly even-handed documentary dips into the lives of an ivory poacher and a stressed-out wildlife ranger trying to obstruct the illegal trade
Jon Kasbe’s documentary When Lambs Become Lions has been much praised on the festival circuit, and it is cleverly and effectively made, seeking to grip you the way a thriller would. Yet I’m not sure that I was completely on board with this film, which appears to have smoothly carpentered its narrative in the edit. Is it almost too good to be true?
The film gives us a coolly even-handed study of some ivory hunters in Kenya – and also the rangers, the hunters of the hunters, who have to roam through the landscape, in their camouflage gear and assault rifles, on the lookout for those who are illegally killing elephants for their tusks.
Continue reading...McGowan posts Facebook attack on Portman, who wore a gown embroidered with names of female directors snubbed at awards
Activist and actor Rose McGowan has labelled Natalie Portman a “fraud” for wearing a dress to the Oscars embroidered with the names of female film-makers including Greta Gerwig and Lulu Wang who were passed over for best director nominations.
In a post on Facebook, McGowan said Portman had made “the kind of protest that gets rave reviews from the mainstream media” but was “more like an actress acting the part of someone who cares. As so many of them do.”
Continue reading...It started as an online prank, but Jediism now claims more UK adherents than Scientology. But is it a religion, a philosophy – or just a joke?
In the middle of a field in South Carolina, Alethea Thompson closed her eyes and attempted to sense her way forward. Thompson, now 35, had spent years trying to find a spiritual home and had decided to try something new. This exercise was meant to teach her to “to trust in your ability to sense things and know that you’re not going to fall, you’re not going to get hurt,” she says. And was part of her training to become a Jedi.
After 12 years with the Force Academy, an online community that provides educational courses on Jediism, Thompson is today a Jedi master. She explains that the Force Academy and most Jedi organisations don’t prescribe strict rituals: there are no requirements on diet or clothing and no mass-style services. Jedis do, however, follow a code of ethics that centres on resisting negative emotions and promoting peace. They also believe in the Force – the ubiquitous energy field described in the Star Wars movies – and mindfulness is central to their belief system. “The foundation of who we are is meditation,” says Thompson. “I will meditate for about 30 minutes, but it’s not always the same kind of meditation. So, I don’t sit there all the time and just hum. Meditation comes in many forms and that’s what I try to teach in the community.”
Continue reading...Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean satire wins top prize after taking best director, international film and original screenplay
After an awards season marked by its predictability, the Oscars delivered a spectacular final-reel twist on Sunday evening, naming capitalist satire Parasite best picture.
Bong Joon-ho’s comedy-drama about an impoverished family who infiltrate the household of a wealthier one is the first film not in the English language to take the top prize. It also took best director, best original screenplay and best international film.
Continue reading...Follow all the action from Hollywood as we find out who’s wearing what, who’s winning what and whose acceptance speech is dropping jaws
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Now for best animated feature. Beanie Feldstein just introduced Mindy Kaling. Is that how this is going to work without a host? A person announces a person who announces a winner? That seems like at least one step too many.
We already have a news story about Brad Pitt winning. Not that anyone was expecting it or anything.
Continue reading...Non-profit initiative Giver Her A Break creates online portal to replace commercials with showcase for female film-makers
The Oscars ceremony is no stranger to the act of protest, but this year will see arguably its most unique demonstration yet, because it won’t be taking place outside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles but inside the telecast itself.
Non-profit initiative Give Her A Break has created an online portal that allows viewers to watch the awards as normal, but one with one key difference: every ad break will be replaced with a showcase for a female-directed film.
Continue reading...Bean, 91, who starred in Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman and Desperate Housewives, died on Friday night after collision in Venice
Orson Bean, the witty actor and comedian, was hit and killed by a car in Los Angeles, authorities said. He was 91.
The Los Angeles county coroner’s office confirmed Bean’s Friday night death, saying it was being investigated as a “traffic-related” fatality. The coroner’s office provided the location where Bean was found, which matched reports from local news outlets.
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