Donen, who received an honorary Oscar in 1997, also directed On the Town, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Charade
Stanley Donen, the director of Singin’ in the Rain and other classics of the golden age of Hollywood, has died. He was 94.
Related: Charade: The last sparkle of Hollywood
Continue reading...Filmmaker was born to French-Algerian parents and made his home, and his name, in multicultural London. But he never felt a sense of belonging. Then Hollywood called …
Where are you from? It’s a question I’ve always had a hard time with. And since moving to the US four years ago, I’m asked it on a regular basis. Maybe it’s the combination of a brownish face, London accent and French names that throws people off. Who knows? But this question, hearing it asked over and over these past few years, has forced me to confront unresolved questions I have about identity: how I grew up and how those experiences led me to being a director.
People tend to like things compartmentalised and simple, but it’s never been that simple for me. I’ve never had any sense of a “national identity” or, for that matter, a sense of belonging to any one tribe. I’m mixed race: French white mother, Algerian father. So “I’m a Londoner” is my standard go-to short response when the question comes up. That’s the simplest answer I feel comfortable giving without getting into it.
Continue reading...Trump wins for worst actor and worst screen combo, but the Will Ferrell detective comedy scores for worst film and director
President Donald Trump and a comedy movie take on Sherlock Holmes on Saturday topped the annual Razzie awards for the worst performances and films of 2018.
Holmes & Watson, starring Will Ferrell and John C Reilly, was the biggest winner, taking four trophies including worst film and worst rip-off. Reilly also was named worst supporting actor in what Razzie founder John Wilson called the “clueless parody” of the classic detective tale.
Continue reading...Residents of Tlaxiaco say Yalitza Aparicio, up for best actress at the Oscars, has given indigenous Mexicans renewed sense of pride
A couple of young flautists are practising scales in a small windowless room at Tlaxiaco’s Casa de Cultura. The rest of the town band are rehearsing a competition routine with a troop of young folkloric dancers – including Yalitza Aparicio’s two younger brothers – in the grand courtyard, decorated with murals depicting the town’s pre-Hispanic Mixtec warriors and artists.
Aparicio is nominated for best actress at the Oscars, taking place on Sunday, for her astonishing portrayal of a nanny in Alfonso Cuarón’s acclaimed film Roma. If successful, the 25-year-old Mexican, who worked as teacher before she was discovered almost by accident at a casting call held at the cultural centre, will be the first indigenous winner of the award.
Continue reading...Spike Lee’s politically charged cinema has irked the Academy in the past, but his witty take on how a black policeman outsmarted the Ku Klux Klan could prove sweetly timed
“Today’s young generation, they don’t know anything,” says Spike Lee in the Oscar-winning Rumble in the Jungle documentary, When We Were Kings. “Something happened last year, they know nothing about it. There are these great, great stories. These great historic events. I’m not talking about 1850s stuff. They don’t know who Malcolm X is. They don’t know who JFK is. They don’t know Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson. You can go down the line. It’s scary.”
You could interpret Lee’s career, in part, as an exercise in filling those holes in America’s collective memory. Malcolm X is probably the most famous example, with his 1992 film reigniting a debate about the black political leader and his legacy. His documentary 4 Little Girls told the story of the Birmingham church bombing with its eerie parallels to the Charleston church shooting. But even She Hate Me – ostensibly an ethically questionable film about sperm donation – had a section dedicated to the story of Frank Wills, the security guard who raised the alarm about the Watergate break-in, struggled to find work after (he believed he was blacklisted) and who died in extreme poverty in 2000 at the age of 52.
Continue reading...If Alfonso Cuarón’s film triumphs it will prompt some troubling questions for the Academy
If, as the bookies predict, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma triumphs at the Academy Awards, it will open a can of worms. No foreign-language film has ever won. Only two have been nominated for best picture this century (Amour and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). A win for Roma would make history. It would also bring up questions.
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Continue reading...Decision to relegate four awards, including best cinematography and best editing overturned following protests by Martin Scorsese, Brad Pitt and others
Bowing to a backlash that had threatened to engulf an already blunder-plagued Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas) reversed its decision to present four awards during the commercial breaks of this year’s Oscar broadcast.
Related: Who should win? Critic Peter Bradshaw's Oscars picks
Continue reading...Aparicio, the first indigenous woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar, responds to Sergio Goyri’s ‘fucking Indian’ remark
The Oscar-nominated Mexican actor Yalitza Aparicio, who stars in the critically acclaimed film Roma, said on Saturday she was proud of her indigenous roots, after a soap opera star used a racial slur to describe her.
Related: Why Roma should win the best picture Oscar
Continue reading...After 27 years in the movies, the X-Men and True Blood star is sick of having to work extra hard and be extra nice simply because she is a woman
Anna Paquin is supposed to be having a day off. She has been working for two weeks straight, with no break at the weekend, and she has six-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. “So I’m a wee bit tired. But good, really good,” she says. She is dipping into her free time to talk about her new TV series, Flack, because she is not only starring in it, but executive-producing it, too, and it is co-produced through her own company, Casm. She has spent five years trying to get it off the ground, in stops and starts, and they finished filming it just four days before we meet. Hence the tiredness? She nods. “It’s not a name-only credit. I’m a huge control freak. I’m involved in every single aspect of every single decision.”
In person, Paquin is brisk, earnest and articulate, and careful with her words. She was born in Canada in 1982, but grew up in New Zealand, then moved to the US as a teenager for work. She has been in front of the camera since she was nine, when she was cast in Jane Campion’s film The Piano. “I entered this industry in a very backwards sort of way,” she says. “I did one job, won an Oscar, and then people said: ‘Ooh, you have a career now.’” She points out, though, that there is a wealth of talented women in her age group, which means she will “still have to audition my arse off for stuff I really want”, but it does mean that she can generally work on things that she wants to. “I do have the luxury of being a little more choosy because of the circumstances of my career.”
Continue reading...Wandering Earth on track to be one of highest-grossing films in country’s history
China has entered the cinematic space race. Wandering Earth, the country’s first blockbuster sci-fi film, is on track to be one of the highest-grossing films in China’s history.
The film has brought in more than 2bn yuan (£232m) in the six days since its release on 5 February, lunar new year. So far, it is the highest-grossing film released over the holiday season, a peak time for the Chinese box office.
Continue reading...Criminal undercurrents in a sleepy Greek backwater provide the pretext for a disquieting spectacle of strangeness
A drumbeat of anxiety and impending violence thuds insistently from this opaque, disquieting spectacle from Greek film-maker Syllas Tzoumerkas – who has previously directed challenging films such as Homeland (2010) and A Blast (2014) and was screenwriter on the excellent male-midlife breakdown satire Suntan (2016).
Tzoumerkas’s movie goes out on a creaking limb of weirdness. It’s a bizarre, occasionally almost Lynchian film, alienated and alienating, interspersed – initially, at any rate – with dream-visions of biblical scenes in the burning sun. Its borderline preposterous narrative may simply be the pretext for its tableau of strangeness and bacchanal of dysfunction.
Continue reading...It’s a thrilling time to be in movies, says the Oscar-winning director of If Beale Street Could Talk. He talks to playwright Roy Williams about his sky-high hopes for the next generation
“So, you saw the film?” Barry Jenkins is eager to ask the minute we are introduced. He gives good eye contact through those stylish thick-rimmed glasses – not the big-time, Oscar-winning writer-director speaking, but a nervous artist, anxious about the new work he is starting to screen. I love it, I tell him. If Beale Street Could Talk may be only Jenkins’ third feature-length film, but it has already been nominated for three Oscars (best adapted screenplay, best supporting actress, best score), just two years after his Moonlight walked away with the Academy Award for best film. A passionate film about race and love, it’s an added pleasure to see black characters of such complexity on the big screen. British film industry, kindly take note.
Adapted from James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, Beale Street tells the story of a young black couple in 1970s Harlem. When Tish (KiKi Layne) becomes pregnant, they plan to marry – until her fiance Fonny (Stephan James) is set up by a racist police officer for a rape he did not commit. The film explores the different reactions of their siblings and parents, led by Regina King in a standout performance as Tish’s mother, as they fight for Fonny’s freedom.
Continue reading...Celebrated actor who rose to fame in the ‘kitchen sink’ era before evolving into one of the screen greats of the postwar period, has died
• Albert Finney – a life in pictures
Albert Finney, who forged his reputation as one of the leading actors of Britain’s early 60s new wave cinema, has died aged 82 after a short illness, his family have announced. In 2011, he disclosed he had been suffering from kidney cancer.
A publicist told the Guardian that Finney died of a chest infection at the Royal Marsden hospital, which specialises in cancer treatment, just outside London. His wife, Pene, and son, Simon, were by his side.
Continue reading...The actor has said she wishes ‘peace’ to the disgraced mogul’s ‘mind and heart’ and that the time has come for ‘justice to do its work’
The actor Juliette Binoche has called for an end to the public excoriation of Harvey Weinstein and said that the cases should now be left to the courts.
Speaking at the opening press conference for the Berlin film festival, where she is heading the jury, Binoche said that she had encountered no problems in her long relationship with the producer, who has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault. He denies all incidents of non-consensual sex.
Continue reading...New York ceremony for film Cold Pursuit called off after actor said friend’s rape made him want to kill black man
The New York celebrity red carpet event on Tuesday for Liam Neeson’s new film Cold Pursuit has been cancelled in the wake of an interview in which the actor said he wanted to kill a black man in response to the rape of a friend who said her attacker was black.
The movie studio Lionsgate declined to comment but a source familiar with the matter said that a red carpet, where movie stars pose for photos and speak with reporters, would be inappropriate.
Continue reading...Actor speaks of ‘shame’ and ‘horror’ he feels over his actions many years ago
In a remarkable new interview, the actor Liam Neeson has claimed that he reacted to the rape of someone to whom he was close by loitering outside a pub for a week wanting to murder a black person.
Neeson, whose career for the past 15 years has been defined by a series of revenge thrillers, was speaking to promote the latest, Cold Pursuit, in which he plays a man avenging the murder of his son.
Continue reading...A tank flattened a camera, M called him a sexist dinosaur and his fights with Onatopp were so rough they needed a padded cell … the Irish actor recalls his 007 debut
The first film I saw when I came to London as a boy was Goldfinger, which starred Sean Connery as 007. In Ireland, I had been brought up on a diet of Old Mother Riley and Norman Wisdom, so it was a bedazzling moment, seeing this lady covered in gold paint. I ended up getting a toy car with an ejector seat, but I didn’t have any aspirations to be James Bond. The character who really captured my imagination was Oddjob, Goldfinger’s bowler-hatted henchman.
Continue reading...From Bond girl to Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike’s versatility has seen her star in some massive blockbusters. Here, she talks about Syria, sleeping under the stars, and the perils of social media…
Rosamund Pike has an intoxicating effect on me. She is so mesmerisingly self-possessed, speaking gently, thoughtfully, in her own time, entirely unafraid of the silences, that it is only after I’ve replayed the interview tape at home and transcribed her soft voice that I realise how wildly luvvieish her claims are. It’s almost delicious. For example, the star of Gone Girl and the new film A Private War says that when, as a child, she sat watching her opera singer parents in their rehearsal room: “All I was really looking at was, do I believe it, do I not believe it? Whether I believed the performance, whether I believed that this was something that was real and human and true. I think all I’ve ever been interested in is truth.” Which she immediately follows with the claim that hers was not a highbrow family, thereby suggesting the existence of a whole raft of brows higher than a childhood spent searching for la verité in your mum and dad’s arias.
We have met up because she plays the war reporter Marie Colvin in A Private War, a film whose American release has gained an average score of 89% on rottentomatoes.com (ie very good reviews) and which is about to open in British cinemas. It is a breathtaking, stop-you-in-your-tracks movie with a lot of the action set during the current Syrian war and it is directed by the documentarist Matthew Heineman who blurs the lines between reportage and feature film.
Continue reading...Actor says $3.1m lawsuit filed in Utah alleging she injured another skier in a 2016 crash is ‘without merit’
Actor Gwyneth Paltrow has been accused in a lawsuit of breaking a man’s ribs and leaving him with a concussion when she smashed into him while skiing at a Utah ski resort in 2016.
Terry Sanderson, 72, claimed during a news conference in Salt Lake City that he heard a “hysterical scream” and was then struck between his shoulder blades on a beginner run at Deer Valley Resort on 26 February 2016. He remembers being thrown forward and losing control of his body before losing consciousness. An acquaintance, Craig Ramon, who witnessed the event, claimed he saw Paltrow hit him squarely in the back.
Continue reading...The next 15 megacities #11: As Hyderabad heads towards megacity status, its film industry is going from strength to strength. Its secret? Cutting-edge VFX and filming in multiple languages
It is rush hour on Monday morning in Hyderabad, but the city’s usual deafening soundtrack of revving engines and blaring horns is absent. The only noise comes from a woman gently sweeping the veranda of one of the large, pastel-coloured mansions nearby. The silence is even more disconcerting when you see the airport near the end of the street, and, just beyond that, a railway station. New York’s Statue of Liberty is a short walk away, as is the splendour of the ancient city of Mahishmati. In fact, Mahishmati is the first place here where I encounter any real noise – the blue special effects screens around the fibreglass throne area are rather flimsy, and a buzz from power tools carries from the adjoining parking lot, where workers are building a pirate ship.
We are in Ramoji Film City, the largest film studio in the world and the beating heart of Tollywood, India’s Telugu-language film industry. And although Ramoji is technically part of Hyderabad, in reality – with its (real) hotels, workshops, soundstages, gardens, post office, banks and restaurants – it is a metropolis in and of itself.
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