Neighbours complaining of building noise from property in Mawgan Porth, reports say
It is the latest sequel in the long-running saga over the luxury ecohome Cate Blanchett is building in a picturesque seaside town in Cornwall once dubbed “Hollywood-on-Sea”.
Neighbours have accused the actor of destroying family holidays with the building noise from the property in Mawgan Porth, it has been reported.
Continue reading...Adam McKay’s celeb-packed Netflix comedy aims to be a farcical warning of climate change but broad potshots and a smug superiority tanks his message
When persuading someone to change their mind on a major topic, what’s being said isn’t always quite as important as how it’s said. If a person feels attacked or disrespected or condescended to, they’ll turn off their brain and block out the most rational, correct arguments on principle alone. Homo sapiens are odd, emotional creatures, more amenable to a convincing pitch than poorly presented rightness. It’s why we vote for the guy we’d gladly have as a drinking buddy over the somewhat alienating candidates with a firmer grasp on the issues. It’s why we feel heartbreak when the worst person we know makes a great point.
Adam McKay’s new satire Don’t Look Up, a last-ditch effort to get the citizens of Earth to give a damn about the imminent end of days spurred by the climate crisis, appears to be at least somewhat aware of this defect in human nature. It’s all about the difficulty of compelling the disinterested to care, in this instance about a gargantuan comet hurtling toward the Earth on a collision course of imminent obliteration, an emphatic if rather ill-suited, metaphor. (Everyone’s blasé about global heating in part because it’s so gradual, because it isn’t a force of instant destruction with a due date in an immediate future we’ll all live to see.) Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence portray astronomers Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky, flummoxed to find that no one’s all that alarmed about the “planet-killer” they’ve discovered – not the grinning daytime cable-news dummies played by Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett, not the White House led by Trump-styled president Meryl Streep and not the American people.
Continue reading...Adam McKay’s star-studded climate change satire with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence et al lands its gags with all the aplomb of a giant comet
A comet is on a collision course with Earth. The targets in this shrill, desperately unfunny climate change satire directed by Adam McKay are more scattershot. According to stoner PhD student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor, Dr Randall Mindy (a self-consciously tic-y Leonardo DiCaprio), the asteroid is the size of Mount Everest and due to hit in six months.
The pair try to warn Meryl Streep’s President Orlean about the impending “extinction-level event”, only to find her preoccupied by the midterm elections. They attempt to raise awareness on breakfast TV, but anchors Jack and Brie (Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett) can’t help but give their bad news a positive spin. The only person with enough money to intervene is tech entrepreneur Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), who wants to mine the comet for its “$140tn worth of assets”. Party politics, celebrity gossip and social media memes are swiped at too. It feels cynical, then, when Timothée Chalamet shows up with no real narrative purpose other than to snog Lawrence.
In cinemas now and on Netflix from 24 December
Continue reading...The stars of Adam McKay’s apocalypse satire Don’t Look Up discuss their worst fears, their favourite conspiracy theories and their final moments on Earth
If a massive meteor were expected to collide with Earth in six months’ time, what would our leaders do? Everything in their power to stop it? Or everything possible to leverage it for political and financial gain?
How about the rest of us? How would we cope with the prospect of impending apocalypse? By facing the end of the world with sobriety and compassion? Or drowning ourselves in sex, drugs and celebrity gossip? Might some of us even enjoy the drama?
Continue reading...In this extract from her essay collection Upturn, the actor considers the disruptions of the pandemic and the renewed fervour for social and economic justice
The other day I had to go into town for a dental appointment. I put on all sorts of lovely clothes as if I were going out to dinner and an opening night. The prospect of being out and about was both exhilarating and daunting. I so desperately wanted to be among people and in the city, but I’d also completely forgotten what an event was. The dentist did not seem surprised by my sartorial over-commitment – but then, I was not the first patient he had seen since lockdown.
As a person working in the arts sector, the lockdown was strangely familiar on one level – a lot of actors get stuck in a kind of limbo waiting for someone else to give them permission to do what they are good at. It was as if we were all waiting by the phone for our agent to call. It was also strangely unfamiliar because the community that holds us together, the audiences, as well as the changing of the shows and the new releases, were all put on hold too. The flow between us all was severely affected, and I was both heartened and horrified when it began to surface online. Heartened because the urge to express ourselves and the desire to communicate seems undaunted by anything. Horrified because the worst place to rehearse and perform is alone in the mirror, and sometimes the phone is just a mirror.
Continue reading...Venice film festival jury chief backs Berlin event’s move towards gender-neutral prizes
The Hollywood star Cate Blanchett has said she would rather be called an actor than an actress.
The Australian, who is heading the jury at the Venice film festival, gave her backing to Berlin festival’s controversial decision last week to do away with gendered prizes and only give a best actor award.
Continue reading...She stole the show in Orange Is the New Black. Now the actor is playing the first black woman to seek the US presidency – and rejecting suggestions she gets a ‘Hollywood smile’
Shirley Chisholm was a woman of many firsts. She was the first black woman elected to Congress, the first black candidate to seek the presidency, and the first woman, full-stop, to participate in a US presidential debate. She introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation, most championing racial, economic and gender equality, and is often credited as paving the way for Barack Obama. In doing so, she occupied a space that many black women recognise: the solitary seat as the only such face at the table.
Uzo Aduba, who plays Chisholm in the acclaimed new FX series Mrs America, says that this was a key factor in bringing this formidable politician to life. “That feeling of being the ‘only’,” she says, speaking via Zoom with a warm smile on her face. “It was important to get that right.”
Continue reading...The actor has sustained a ‘nick to the head’ in what she told former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard was a minor incident
Cate Blanchett has sustained a cut to the head following a chainsaw accident at her home in East Sussex.
The Oscar-winning actor, who relocated from Sydney to Crowborough last year, was asked how lockdown was going by former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard on her podcast last week.
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