The trial is likely to be one of the most high-profile judicial events of the century, and will be closely watched by thousands
The rape trial of the fallen movie mogul Harvey Weinstein begins on Monday in a Manhattan courtroom, opening a critical new chapter in the #MeToo movement that seeks justice for victims of alleged sexual assault at the hands of powerful men.
Related: Weinstein set to face his toughest legal challenge yet in New York trial
Continue reading...From Fleabag to Succession, it was hard to disagree with most of the TV awards at this year’s Globes. But all Colman did was sit in a chair looking glum
When it comes to television, the Golden Globes have a long history of getting it wrong. Last year it awarded best comedy to The Kominsky Method, for example. The year before that it went to The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Two years before that the HFPA cast its gaze across the comedy landscape and inexplicably decided that nothing was better than Mozart in the Jungle.
With this in mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking something went badly wrong at the Golden Globes last night because, well, its winners were our winners too. Best drama? Succession, which came first in the Guardian’s best TV of 2019 poll. Best comedy? Fleabag, which came second. Best miniseries? Chernobyl, which came third. The acting awards lined up nicely with this, too; Succession’s Brian Cox won best drama actor, Phoebe Waller-Bridge won best comedy actress and Stellan Skarsgård won best supporting actor.
Continue reading...Actor accuses Weinstein of derailing her career after she ‘resisted his advances’
The actor Rosanna Arquette, one of Harvey Weinstein’s most prominent accusers, says she plans to attend the trial of the disgraced film producer when it starts in New York on Monday.
Arquette will not be giving evidence in the case, but she said she will be there to lend support to the handful of women who have been allowed to give testimony in court of Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse.
Continue reading...Director told the Independent he was ‘tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world’
The director Terry Gilliam has invited renewed backlash after repeating his claim that he is a “black lesbian in transition”, assailing the #MeToo movement as a “witch-hunt” and asserting that some of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims are “adults who made choices”.
The website PinkNews offered swift condemnation, calling the 79-year-old’s comments “a feeble attempt to prove that white men are the real victims”.
Continue reading...Will The Irishman clean up? Or Marriage Story? And how will Once Upon a Time in Hollywood fare? Peter Bradshaw offers a lowdown of the main categories and his predictions and omissions
The best film category is dominated – just like everything else in the cultural conversation around movies – by Netflix, which has the majority of the nominees: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Fernando Meirelles’s The Two Popes.
Continue reading...US actor hit by suspected typhoid while filming survival TV series in Papua New Guinea
The American actor Zac Efron has confirmed he recently fell ill while filming a survival reality TV show in Papua New Guinea.
Australian media had reported that Efron, 32, was flown by helicopter for treatment in Australia after contracting a bacterial infection, possibly typhoid, while shooting the Killing Zac Efron series.
Continue reading...Armando Iannucci is not someone you’d describe as having a commanding presence. He doesn’t want to consume all the oxygen in the room or, with a show of bored impatience, imply that it’s your good fortune to share his company. He may be well known, but there’s nothing of the celebrity about him. Short, balding and understated in manner, he could pass for a provincial loss adjuster come to assess your insurance claim. But he is arguably the most influential figure in British comedy of the past three decades, not to mention an accomplished film director.
When I meet him at a London hotel, he is busy promoting his third feature film, The Personal History of David Copperfield, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s eighth and most autobiographical novel. His first film, In the Loop, grew out of his seminal satirical TV comedy The Thick of It. The second, the highly acclaimed The Death of Stalin, was a darkly comic but historically accurate account of the Soviet dictator’s end and its farcical aftermath.
Continue reading...The former child star has won rave reviews for the hit Netflix show. So why does he feel ambivalent about acting?
Ah, yes, says Asa Butterfield, the young star of the explicit and brilliant comedy of sex manners, Sex Education. Butterfield is recalling one of the stranger milestones of his acting career, “my first, big, on-camera wank. That was a fun day on set.” With a second series of the hit Netflix show due to debut online soon, the 21-year-old Londoner has come to a diner in King’s Cross to eat an oozing burger and talk with some pride about a show that first set the internet humming back in January 2019. Part hyperactive teen comedy and part public health broadcast, Sex Education, created by British/Australian screenwriter Laurie Nunn, turned out to be that rare cultural thing: a show that filled a hole we didn’t know was there.
“I think it did a great job of normalising young people’s fears, and quirks, and hang-ups around sex,” Butterfield says. He plays Sex Education’s central character, a preternaturally wise teenage boy called Otis, who takes it upon himself to advise his sixth-form peers on the intricacies of sexual contact and sexual politics. “When I first signed up, I knew it would be interesting, risky, that the scripts were treading new ground. I guess I hoped the show would be talked about a bit. But I didn’t expect it to connect so instantly, so overwhelmingly, with so many people.”
Continue reading...Musician recognised alongside stars of sport, politicians and hundreds of ordinary people
Sir Elton John has received the highest acknowledgement in a new year honours list in which hundreds of ordinary people were recognised alongside household names from sport, the arts, entertainment and politics.
The singer and songwriter was awarded the Companion of Honour for a remarkable career spanning more than five decades, in which he has sold more than 300m records worldwide, and used his fame to promote the work of 23 charities, including his own Aids foundation. He becomes one of only 64 people apart from the monarch who can hold the honour at any one time.
Continue reading...The Star Wars fan has been immortalised in a visual dictionary as Ri-Lee Howell, Jedi master and historian
A college student hailed by police as a hero for preventing more injuries and deaths after a gunman opened fire in a classroom has been immortalized as a Jedi by the production company behind the Star Wars franchise.
News outlets report the family of Riley Howell, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte student who is described as a huge Star Wars fan, was tipped off by Lucasfilm in May that it planned to honor him in a forthcoming book, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - The Visual Dictionary.
Continue reading...The Magnum photographer grew up behind the iron curtain. As a documentary charts his journey where Israel and Palestine meet, Koudelka talks about challenging official narratives – and himself
There’s a surreal moment near the start of Koudelka Shooting Holy Land, a documentary about the acclaimed photographer Josef Koudelka. He has pointed his lens at one of the concrete barriers that separate Israel and Palestine but has been stopped by an official and a heavily armed soldier. His local assistant, Gilad Baram, is trying to smooth things over. “It might result in a book,” Baram tells the soldier. “He is a one of the most renowned photographers worldwide. He is a photographer with an agency called Magnum.”
Suddenly the atmosphere changes. “Magnum? Ah, I know it,” says the soldier, his stern face breaking into a smile. A short discussion later, a friendly handshake and all is well.
Continue reading...Disney removes clip to avoid censor giving film higher age rating
A scene showing a lesbian kiss has been cut from the Singaporean version of the Star Wars film The Rise of Skywalker.
The country’s media regulatory body said Disney removed the clip to avoid the film being given a higher age rating. It is PG13, which means parental guidance is advised for children under 13.
Continue reading...New version of widely derided movie starring Idris Elba and Judi Dench to get CGI update
A new version of Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of the musical Cats with “improved visuals” is reportedly being sent to cinemas after a barrage of negative reviews in which the film was hammered for its “disturbing” CGI effects.
On Sunday, the Hollywood Reporter said it had seen a note that was sent by Universal Studios to thousands of cinemas in the US confirming that a new version with “some improved visual effects” was being distributed to chains.
Continue reading...He’s about to appear in what might be his best film yet. So why is one of Britain’s finest actors so convinced he can’t act? Robert Pattinson talks to Alex Moshakis about stage-fright and why he couldn’t say no to a role in The Lighthouse
Do you want to hear a funny thing about Robert Pattinson? Robert Pattinson is convinced he doesn’t know how to act. Willem Dafoe can act, Pattinson thinks. Willem Dafoe can act the socks off anyone in the business. And Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin Phoenix could tie his shoelaces on film and be nominated for an award. And Bruce Willis – Bruce Willis! – now there’s a leading man. But Robert Pattinson? Nope. “I only know how to play scenes, like, three ways,” he says. Three! That’s all. Despite more than a decade in the industry. “I’m nervous on, like, every single movie.”
Pattinson, who is 33, is sitting in a booth in a low-lit restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, dunking table bread into a pot of something. It’s the early evening, dark and cold outside. He has arrived from rehearsals for The Batman, which started not long ago and which are taking place, to his delight, in the studio in which he filmed Harry Potter in the mid-aughts. The Batman is the first time he’s worked in a studio in “like, forever,” and his first mainstream leading role since he retired his best-known character, Twilight’s Edward Cullen, sexy vampire. That was in 2012.
Continue reading...The Flight of the Conchords star, who is guest curating the New Zealand festival, reflects on his career and the cost of compromise
Although he’s one of Wellington’s best-known pop cultural exports – as a musician, songwriter, actor and comedian – nobody makes a fuss when Bret McKenzie arrives in a central city cafe.
Fuss wouldn’t be entirely unwarranted. McKenzie’s portrayal of a particular type of socially awkward, deadpan New Zealander helped put the country’s dry humour on the map. And the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords – in which he performs with Jemaine Clement – so enraptured Hollywood that he could still be there if he wanted to, churning out season after season of the acclaimed TV show of the same name.
Continue reading...Kaja Sokola was known as ‘Jane Doe’ in earlier class action lawsuit, and is now removing herself from that suit and going public
A former Polish model has accused disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexually assaulting her when she was a 16-year-old aspiring actress, according to a newly filed lawsuit.
Related: Twenty-three women accuse Harvey Weinstein of ‘trying to gaslight society’
Continue reading...Agriculture department says fictional country from Marvel movies was used to test systems and was not meant to remain visible
Trade talks between Captain America and Black Panther didn’t quite pan out, it seems. Wakanda, the fictional home of the Marvel superhero, is no longer listed as a free trade partner of the US.
Until Wednesday, the made-up east African country was listed on the drop-down menu for the agriculture department’s foreign agricultural service’s tariff tracker along with Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.
Continue reading...Actor and producer of a film about Fox News head Roger Ailes describes self-blame and anger about alleged incident early in her career
Charlize Theron has spoken in detail about her experience of sexual harassment at the start of her acting career, saying she found it frustrating that she “didn’t do all of those things that we so want to believe we’ll do in those situations”.
Theron was speaking to NPR to coincide with the release of Bombshell, a drama about the ousting of Fox News head Roger Ailes over accusations of sexual harassment, in which she plays former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Continue reading...Disgraced mogul tells New York Post he feels his pioneering work in gender equality has been ‘eviscerated’
Harvey Weinstein has complained he feels like “the forgotten man” and that his “pioneering” work championing movies directed by and about women has been “eviscerated” in the wake of multiple sexual assault allegations against him.
The 67-year-old producer, once one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, has faced accusations of sexual assault and harassment from dozens of women.
Continue reading...From her landmark early films with Jean-Luc Godard to later work such as The Nun, Karina’s beauty and charisma shone out
It was Anna Karina’s fate, or curse, to be perpetually described as an “icon” or a “muse”: a devastatingly beautiful figurehead and inspiration-figure to all those male directors doing the creating or critics doing the rhapsodising – one male director-cineaste in particular. She certainly was every bit as beautiful as everyone ceaselessly said, but it was her easy charm, intelligence and grace which made that beauty visible and made it exist. It was the kind of acting talent that made her whole style and address to the camera look easy, or not like acting: the kind of thing that bad or inexperienced actors – or very good male stars – foreground as an effortfully meaningful performance. And she had parallel careers as singer, producer, director and novelist.
Related: Anna Karina, French new wave icon – a life in pictures
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