Category Archives: Film industry

Willing to be set on fire or jump off tall buildings? New Zealand needs more stunt people

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During the pandemic New Zealand has become a safe haven for international film studios, creating a surge in demand for ‘stunties’

Burrowed in a beige building block in Auckland’s industrial east, a neat line of stunt hopefuls wait their turn to take their first step on an “air ram”. With enough power to flip a full sized car, the menacing looking metal pedal is designed to vault the “stunties” high into the air, as if tossed from an exploding building.

Standing by and keeping a watchful eye, Dayna Grant points up to the rafters of the converted warehouse at least 10 metres above, fondly remembering a time she was tossed up high enough to touch the ceiling. But today’s NZ Stunt School class of ex-circus performers, working stunt people, and retirees, won’t come close to that.

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Scarlett fever: why Black Widow has sparked a trend for red hair

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What does a 163% surge in demand for red hair dye tell us about the way Marvel’s latest, and star Scarlett Johansson, have been marketed and received?

If you happen to see an unusually large number of women with red hair today, do not be alarmed. We haven’t been invaded by vikings again, nor is there a Nicola from Girls Aloud convention happening in your vicinity. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the sudden outbreak of redheads, and it is that Black Widow was recently released.

According to the website Justmylook, there has been a 163% spike in demand for the colour since the release of Black Widow, presumably because lots of people sat through two hours and 14 minutes of a film about a woman grappling with the psychological torment of knowing she was part of a Soviet military programme that brainwashed, sterilised and murdered hundreds of abandoned girls, only to think: “Ooh, I bet I’d look lovely with her hair.”

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‘The thought is unbearable’: Europeans react to EU plans to cut British TV

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EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way for more homegrown content

It was during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.

“The elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the programmes afterwards,” she said.

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EU prepares to cut amount of British TV and film shown post-Brexit

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Exclusive: number of UK productions seen as ‘disproportionate’ and threat to Europe’s cultural diversity

The EU is preparing to act against the “disproportionate” amount of British television and film content shown in Europe in the wake of Brexit, in a blow to the UK entertainment industry and the country’s “soft power” abroad.

The UK is Europe’s biggest producer of film and TV programming, buoyed up by £1.4bn from the sale of international rights, but its dominance has been described as a threat to Europe’s “cultural diversity” in an internal EU document seen by the Guardian.

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Cotton plantations and non-consensual kisses: how Disney became embroiled in the culture wars

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The company has been addressing its historical racism and sexism, adding disclaimers to films and altering theme park rides. But these moves have stirred contempt as well as approval

Very little ammunition is required for a culture war these days, so long as your troops are primed to mobilise at the drop of a blog. Julie Tremaine and Katie Dowd, two writers for the online newspaper SFGate, discovered this last month. Their review of the revamped Snow White ride at Disneyland was generally positive, but queried a new scene showing the prince giving Snow White the all-important “true love’s kiss”.

“A kiss he gives to her without her consent, while she’s asleep, which cannot possibly be true love if only one person knows it’s happening,” they wrote. “It’s hard to understand why the Disneyland of 2021 would choose to add a scene with such old-fashioned ideas of what a man is allowed to do to a woman.”

Matters escalated quickly and predictably. Within 24 hours, the review was reported across Twitter and conservative media. Fox News ran 13 segments on the story in one day: “Cancel culture going after Snow White”; “The woke movement taking aim at Disneyland”, etc. Senator John Kennedy was brought on to express his disdain: “We are so screwed … I don’t know where these jackaloons come up with this stuff.” The UK’s Sun chimed in: “Snow White may be CANCELED” [sic]. As did Piers Morgan in the Daily Mail: “Leave Snow White’s Prince alone, you insufferable woke brats.” Then Fox News reported on that: “Piers Morgan slams consent criticism over revamped Snow White ride.” And so forth. All of them triggered by a single paragraph in an online review.

Disney increasingly finds itself caught in the crossfire of these skirmishes. Understandably, to some extent, since it is the biggest target. Already a byword for family entertainment, Disney is now the dominant purveyor of popular culture following its gradual acquisitions of Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Avatar, Alien, The Muppets, The Simpsons and numerous other household-name properties. But having successfully captured entertainment’s centre ground, Disney now finds itself under attack on both flanks. From one side, it is criticised for its old-fashioned and bigoted legacy; from the other, it is criticised for being too “woke”. What’s an unprecedentedly powerful media corporation to do?

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It’s not just racism and sexism. The Golden Globes have been sunk by sheer stupidity

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The preposterous Hollywood Foreign Press Association gravy train might have chugged on for ever if its members had just swallowed their pride and done more for diversity

An investigative report by the Los Angeles Times into the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that notoriously rackety organisation which administers the Golden Globes, has shown an eminently corruptible body drenched in antediluvian attitudes; this has resulted in NBC cancelling its TV coverage of next year’s ceremony and Tom Cruise handing back the three Globes he has personally won over the years.

Related: Golden Globes backlash: Tom Cruise hands back awards and NBC drops broadcast

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Is the devil really Prada? An uneasy history of fashion as cinema’s punchbag

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Slaxx, a new indie horror-satire about a pair of murderous jeans, is the latest film to turn fashion into a baddie. The Guardian’s film critic thinks it is time to change the story

Which professions get a bad press in the movies? TV executives tend to be portrayhed as manipulative and sociopathic. Journalists can be boozy and lazy (although sometimes they’re dishy investigative idealists, like Woodward and Bernstein). Nightclub owners are awful. Dentists are creepy. Hotel receptionists are sinister.

But if there’s one trade that’s somehow perennially getting it in the neck on screen, it’s fashion. The new horror movie from Canadian satirist Elza Kephart – Slaxx – is a case in point, showing a new brand of jeans, unveiled to an elite audience of hipsters at a haughty upmarket store, becoming possessed by the spirits of exploited workers from the developing world who made them. The jeans run violently amok, slaughtering fashion vloggers and Instagram influencers in showers of blood.

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Hollywood Down Under: stars flock from US to film in Covid-free Australia

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Blessed with sunny weather, diverse locations and a ready-made film industry, Sydney and the Gold Coast have become movie powerhouses

On a warmish Wednesday evening early in the year, Paul Mescal was celebrating his birthday and everybody seemed to know. The Irish actor, famous for his neckchain and his leading role in Normal People, was in Sydney, Australia, for a new film, and the word was spreading. He was photographed running in Centennial Park. He was sighted at Tamarama Beach. He popped into an inner-city pub.

But on the list of stars now working in Australia, Mescal – in Sydney for a musical film adaptation of Carmen – is comfortably mid-level. Thanks to its relative freedom from Covid-19 and associated restrictions, Australia – blessed with diverse locations, sunny weather and a ready-made film infrastructure – has become Hollywood Down Under.

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Four women up for best director in strikingly diverse Bafta nominations

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Rocks and Nomadland top scorecard in first British film academy shortlist since radical changes made to improve inclusivity

Four women and three foreign-language directors have been nominated for this year’s Bafta awards in a list whose reach and inclusivity come as a marked contrast to last year’s nominations.

Related: Baftas 2021: the full list of nominations

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Doe-eyed Kristen Stewart might just take the crown as Princess Diana

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In a highly competitive field, the American actor has perfected the put-upon princess look for Spencer, the latest royal biopic

Some films have to work harder than others to get bums on seats. Some can charm audiences with big stars, or the lure of a continuing franchise, or the promise of a scene where King Kong takes a swing at Godzilla like he’s half-cut in a Wetherspoons car park. And then, right at the other end of the scale, is Spencer.

Make no mistake, Spencer will have to be brilliant to make people go and see it. Better than brilliant, even. It will have to be the perfect movie; entertaining and fun and moving and so technically accomplished that film historians will come to view it as the moment that cinema entered a new epoch. Anything less than that and Spencer is done for.

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‘They said I wasn’t hot enough’: Carey Mulligan hits out again at magazine review

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Variety review of black comedy Promising Young Woman prompts actor to speak out on industry’s institutionalised sexism

Carey Mulligan has said she was alarmed after a major publication ran a review of her new film questioning whether she was attractive enough for the role.

Related: Variety's apology to Carey Mulligan shows that the critic's ivory tower is toppling | Peter Bradshaw

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Keira Knightley: I won’t shoot any more sex scenes directed by men

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The actor says she feels very uncomfortable trying to portray the male gaze and says she’s ‘too vain’ to shoot intimate scenes

Keira Knightley has expressed her discomfort with shooting intimate scenes, saying that she will no longer do so if the film is directed by a man.

In conversation with director Lulu Wang and writer-producer Diane Solway on the Chanel Connects podcast, Knightley credited the “male gaze” and her own personal vanity with the decision.

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Breaking point: why Tom Cruise is living a mission impossible

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Analysis: A leaked recording of the movie star yelling at crew on his latest blockbuster is not evidence of tyranny, but the extraordinary strain of keeping the huge undertaking afloat

It is a lonely business, being a Tom Cruise fan in 2020. The heel lifts, the way his arms pump when he runs (nobody runs like Tom Cruise), his Dorian Gray looks: I love Cruise for all of it, and yet I’m aware this is a deeply unfashionable opinion, and one I’m often called on to defend at dinner parties. And so it befalls me, as Cruise’s solitary champion, to step to his aid now, like Ethan Hunt in a tuxedo taking on a posse of earpiece-wearing hitmen, as behind him an orchestra plays Nessun Dorma.

Related: Top bun: Tom Cruise's cake-mailing habit proves he's a real Christmas miracle | Stuart Heritage

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Joker ‘a betrayal’ of mentally ill people, says David Fincher

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Mank director rails at the risk-averse production strategy of major Hollywood studios

Mank director David Fincher has described Todd Phillips’ Oscar-winning Joker as “a betrayal” of mentally ill people.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Fincher was reflecting on Joker’s surprise success at the box office in a wide-ranging attack on the risk-averse production strategy of the major Hollywood studios. Saying that studios “don’t want to make anything that can’t make them a billion dollars”, he also suggested that occasionally “challenging” material can get support, if there is solid previous evidence of commercial potential.

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Cross-border toilet trips at Chester cinema fall foul of Welsh Covid rules

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Loos for Storyhouse’s Halloween drive-in screenings were just over Welsh side of the line

Drive-in cinemagoers in Chester were almost caught short after it emerged anyone using the toilets, located across the Welsh border, would be breaking coronavirus lockdown laws.

Ticket-holders for the Storyhouse’s Moonlight Drive Halloween showings could breathe a sigh of relief on Friday, after the cinema confirmed it had found a way out of the tight spot.

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Netflix indicted by Texas grand jury over ‘lewd visual material’ in Cuties

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French film about pre-teen girls who form a dance group is called ‘prurient’ in Tyler County prosecution. Netflix defends story as social commentary against sexualisation

Netflix has defended the controversial film Cuties after it emerged the streaming giant is facing a criminal charge in Texas over the movie’s allegedly “lewd” depiction of children.

Cuties follows an 11-year-old Senegalese girl living in Paris who rebels against her conservative family’s traditions when she becomes fascinated with a “free-spirited dance crew”.

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Why Netflix is a lifeline for African film-makers

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The streaming giant’s ambitious initiative Made By Africa, Watched By the World is a welcome platform for the continent’s overlooked cinematic talent

‘Have you ever had someone tell your story, take your voice … and replace your face until no one else can see or hear you?” These are the powerful words that Nigerian actor/director Genevieve Nnaji speaks to introduce the Netflix initiative Made By Africa, Watched By the World. Mixing new, original content with older African classics that have not previously been streamed elsewhere, this initiative, much like Strong Black Lead (2018), aims to showcase content that centres black stories but – unlike Strong Black Lead – it will be by and about Africans. It creates a path for stories that specifically address different slices of the African experience to see the light of day and reach a wider audience. Considering that there’s a growing feeling among Africans that inaccurate representation on screen is a given, that’s a good thing for everyone.

So what does Made By Africa, Watched By the World give us? Netflix has purchased previously produced content and also produced its own, both TV shows and films. Kagiso Lediga and Pearl Thusi have followed up their 2018 romantic drama Catching Feelings with a TV show, Queen Sono, about an undercover spy, that premiered earlier this year. Nick Mutuma’s coming of age drama, Sincerely Daisy, is having its highly anticipated premiere on Friday, while other Kenyan films – Tosh Gitonga’s romcom Disconnect and Tom Whitworth’s Poacher – have also found a home on Netflix.

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Tony Todd on Candyman, Black Lives Matter and seeing stars cry on the set of Platoon

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The actor who terrified a generation in the 90s horror classic returns to the role for the sequel – and for a documentary looking back at the gruelling shoot on Oliver Stone’s iconic 1986 war movie

Tony Todd chuckles heartily. “Why in the fuck would I go to a mirror, with me in the mirror – the actor who played the role – and call out my own damn name five times?” I have just asked the dumb – but obligatory – question of whether he has ever dared utter Candyman’s fatal invocation. Todd played Daniel Robitaille, AKA the Candyman, the hook-handed, bee-spouting yet swoonsome spectre from the 1992 horror classic. “I have never waded in that water. I don’t even listen to people when they come to me and say that. I cut them off. They try it; they want to me stop them or something.”

Todd is probably getting quite a bit of this right now. Candyman was already enjoying a critical revival in the last few years as Black Lives Matter and other social movements gathered headway; despite, or perhaps because of, its white director (the Englishman Bernard Rose), it was able to smuggle in a theme that was exceptional for a 90s horror film: the psychic cost of centuries of oppression of African Americans. Now, after the George Floyd protests and with a Jordan Peele-produced sequel imminent, interest in this unusually sensitive piece of Hollywood product is white-hot.

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I’m Covid vulnerable: dare I do my bit to save our cinemas?

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Britain’s beleaguered picture palaces desperately need bums back on seats. But some filmgoers have to consider the risks more than others

Lockdown in the UK cost its cinemas an estimated £111m in lost revenue, and their annual income could be down 60% on last year’s. Abandoned filming means there are few enticing titles in the pipeline, and production safety guidelines are hampering new production. If cinemas are to survive while socialdistancing slashes their capacity, they’ll have to fill as many as they can of their remaining available seats.

Filmgoers will need to show up in force, whatever their age, gender or physical condition. I’m an ardent film fan; unfortunately, I’m also male and medically vulnerable, which makes me low-hanging fruit for Covid’s scythe. An over-75-year-old is 623 times more likely to die from the disease than an under-45-year-old. Men are over twice as much at risk as women, and a dodgy cardiovascular system doesn’t improve your chances.

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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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