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
Continue reading...The film Richard Jewell promotes the trope that women sleep their way to the top. It’s sexist, insulting – and nonsensical
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Continue reading...Oscar-nominated character actor made his breakthrough in Moonstruck and appeared in The Godfather Part II
Danny Aiello, the veteran character actor best known for roles in The Purple Rose of Cairo, Do the Right Thing and Moonstruck, has died aged 86. According to TMZ, his family confirmed Aiello had died in hospital on 12 December after an infection.
Born in 1933, Aiello grew up in the south Bronx, living with his five siblings and mother after his father had left the family. After serving in the army, working as a bus driver and a nightclub bouncer, Aiello turned to acting in his mid-30s, with his first significant role, as a New Jersey barman in Louis LaRusso’s 1975 play Lamppost Reunion.
Continue reading...The former first lady of the Philippines is revealed as a monstrous, loathsome, absurdly queenly figure in Lauren Greenfield’s superb documentary
Lauren Greenfield’s film about the Philippines’ former first lady Imelda Marcos reveals a grotesquely self-pitying, wholly unrepentant and very rich woman, who has clearly still kept her hands on a great deal of the American aid money that successive US presidents once gave the Philippines in return for suppressing communism and civil rights and showing hospitality to US naval power – cash that she and her husband, Ferdinand, looted from the public purse and salted away abroad.
Related: 'She's an unreliable narrator': Lauren Greenfield on her Imelda Marcos documentary
Continue reading...Fleabag creator says she was never told 007 script role was to help with female characters
Phoebe Waller-Bridge will be only the second woman ever credited on a Bond movie script but she has insisted gender was not the reason she was hired.
The Fleabag creator said it was “mad” and “exciting” to work on No Time to Die, in which Daniel Craig will play 007 for the final time. But there was never a conversation about her being there to help with the film’s female characters.
Continue reading...Director tells how getting every detail right was crucial to helping his cast understand emotions of war
Wasted youth, random violent death and the folly of armed conflict are the big themes of 1917, Sam Mendes’s orchestral symphony of a first world war film. But for the director and the team who made it alongside him, no detail was too small to consider.
“It was very important, the question of historical accuracy,” said Mendes. “We had two very fine historical advisers, Andy Robertshaw and Peter Barton, who are world renowned. And one military adviser, Paul Biddiss, who was also brilliant.”
Continue reading...This powerful, immensely moving documentary follows the courageous medical staff who must treat injured children as bombs fall around them
Feras Fayyad, the young Syrian documentary-maker who filmed Last Men in Aleppo (and was himself imprisoned and tortured by Bashar al-Assad’s regime), returns with a chilling, shaming film made over two years inside a Syrian hospital in Ghouta, the city besieged by the Syrian government for five years until 2018.
If there is a chink of hope here it’s Amani Ballour, the hospital’s manager, a paediatrician in her late 20s. “I know this life is tough. But it’s honest,” she says. Her deep sense of purpose is humbling – it carries her through hellish days treating dozens of bloodied and badly injured children. Her gentleness with patients is desperately moving, too.
Continue reading...As the Disney movie earns $1bn at the global box office, the actor says ‘I feel like I’m going to be overlooked and underestimated for a long time’
Mena Massoud, the Egyptian-Canadian actor who played Aladdin in the recent Disney live-action remake, has said he hasn’t had a single audition since its release.
Massoud told the Daily Beast: “I’m kind of tired of staying quiet about it … I want people to know that it’s not always dandelions and roses when you’re doing something like Aladdin. ‘He must have made millions. He must be getting all these offers.’ It’s none of those things. I haven’t had a single audition since Aladdin came out.”
Continue reading...Ahead of the launch on Tuesday of the Guardian’s films of the year countdown, our critic selects his personal choice of the movies, directors and performances of 2019
• The Braddies are listed in alphabetical order, rather than ranked in terms of merit
Once again, the awards season comes to its climax with my “Braddies” for the calendar year, a selection of my personal awards that exists entirely independently of Guardian Film’s best-of-the-year countdown.
As ever, there are 10 “nominees” in 10 categories: film, director, actor, actress, supporting Actor, supporting Actress, documentary, cinematography, screenplay, directorial debut. There is also the single-entry nomination in the special category: quirkiest future cult classic most likely to beoverlooked by the boomer MSM establishment. The nominees are listed in alphabetical order and readers are invited to vote below the line for their preferred winner – and complain about omissions.
Continue reading...The chronicle of an activist who filmed the destruction in Aleppo wins prizes for best film, documentary, director and editing
For Sama, the acclaimed documentary about life under siege in the Syrian city of Aleppo, has unexpectedly triumphed at the British independent film awards, winning the top prize, best British independent film, as well as best documentary and best director for Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts.
Described by the Guardian’s Mike McCahill as a film to “break your heart and sear your soul”, For Sama is a chronicle filmed by Syrian activist-director al-Kateab as Aleppo is targeted during the country’s ongoing civil war. Al-Kateab spends much of the time in a hospital where her husband, Hamza, works, recording the destruction and horror. For Sama won a total of four Bifas, including best editing – previously announced with other Bifa “craft” awards on 15 November.
Continue reading...A prosaic script lets down Mati Diop’s visually arresting, ghostly first feature
Although set in suburban Dakar, this beguiling debut feature from Mati Diop is a film that walks between worlds. The story is woven in the hinterland amid wealth and poverty, love and expediency, this life and the supernatural. It’s silkily enigmatic and unpredictable, and certainly unlike anything else you will see this year.
It took me a second viewing to engage with the tonal shifts of the story of Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), promised in marriage to a wealthy man, but who loves Souleiman (Ibrahima Traore), a construction worker who disappears at sea in search of a better life. Diop has a keen eye for a poetic image: the film opens with a shot of bustling streets dwarfed by the monstrous, looming haunch of a half-built tower. Later, there’s an achingly pensive shot of the sleeping quarters of the men who have left, their beds still rumpled from warm bodies; bottles of Victory aftershave primed for a night out that will never come. But the lyricism of the photography by Claire Mathon is not matched by the screenplay, which Diop co-wrote with Olivier Demangel and which seems rather flat and declamatory next to the eerie magic of the film’s gauzy light.
Continue reading...The late film star was a trailblazer for diversity in fashion and film. His loss deprives the growing Chinese entertainment industry of a fine talent
Taiwanese-Canadian actor Godfrey Gao was famous for being the first Asian international supermodel but he was much more than just a pretty face – he had a reputation for being one of the friendliest stars in an intensely competitive industry.
“He was known for being a very nice guy,” says Cecilia Pidgeon, a former celebrity editor at GQ China. “He had a very good reputation among other actors. He was always nice to his fans. All of the colleagues he worked with only had good things to say.”
Continue reading...