Jan Haag, who a half-century ago founded the landmark Directing Workshop for Women at the American Film Institute, has died. She was 90.
The remarkable Haag, who also was an actress, painter, poet, novelist, playwright, writer of travel stories and creator of needlepoint canvases, some of which required hundreds of hours to complete, died Monday in Shoreline, Washington, according to the AFI and the Mb Abram agency.
Haag had directed dozens of educational films for the John Tracy Clinic and the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare when she became the first woman accepted into the Academy Intern Program at the AFI in 1970, three years after it was founded by George Stevens Jr.
She was assigned to Paramount’s Harold and Maude (1971), directed by Hal Ashby, then joined the AFI staff in 1971, and among her duties was to administer the nonprofit’s film grant program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The remarkable Haag, who also was an actress, painter, poet, novelist, playwright, writer of travel stories and creator of needlepoint canvases, some of which required hundreds of hours to complete, died Monday in Shoreline, Washington, according to the AFI and the Mb Abram agency.
Haag had directed dozens of educational films for the John Tracy Clinic and the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare when she became the first woman accepted into the Academy Intern Program at the AFI in 1970, three years after it was founded by George Stevens Jr.
She was assigned to Paramount’s Harold and Maude (1971), directed by Hal Ashby, then joined the AFI staff in 1971, and among her duties was to administer the nonprofit’s film grant program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
- 5/2/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Maggie Rogers has unveiled her third studio album, Don’t Forget Me.
First announced this past February, Don’t Forget Me features 10 new songs, including the previously-released singles “Don’t Forget Me” and March’s “So Sick of Dreaming.” Now, the album has arrived in its entirety, capturing the spontaneous inspiration the musicians were tapped into when it was recorded.
Get Maggie Rogers Tickets Here
As Rogers explained in a statement released around the album’s announcement, “I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon,” Rogers said in a note accompanying today’s announcement. “Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room. An old corvette. Vintage, but not overly Americana. I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car,...
First announced this past February, Don’t Forget Me features 10 new songs, including the previously-released singles “Don’t Forget Me” and March’s “So Sick of Dreaming.” Now, the album has arrived in its entirety, capturing the spontaneous inspiration the musicians were tapped into when it was recorded.
Get Maggie Rogers Tickets Here
As Rogers explained in a statement released around the album’s announcement, “I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon,” Rogers said in a note accompanying today’s announcement. “Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room. An old corvette. Vintage, but not overly Americana. I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car,...
- 4/12/2024
- by Jo Vito
- Consequence - Music
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook.NEWSThe Delinquents.The start of the Academy Awards ceremony was delayed by hundreds of protestors obstructing the red carpet to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.Asghar Farhadi has been cleared of plagiarism charges by an Iranian court after allegations were leveled by a former student, who accused him of stealing the idea for A Hero (2021) from her documentary on the same subject, produced in his 2014 filmmaking workshop.Meanwhile, Alexander Payne has been accused of plagiarizing The Holdovers (2023) “line-by-line” from a screenplay by Simon Stephenson he appears to have read on spec.Thailand is planning to reform its national film industry as part of a “soft power” program, which may include increased production funding, more rebates for foreign productions, and a reduction of state censorship domestically.
- 3/13/2024
- MUBI
When her son was just two months old, Roja Pakari fell ill. After several medical tests, she was eventually diagnosed with incurable bone marrow cancer. Extended stays in hospital for treatment meant she slowly became a stranger to her little boy, who thought the hospital was her home.
Co-directed with fellow Danish filmmaker Emilie Adelina Monies, “The Son and the Moon” is Pakari’s love letter to her son, which she will be premiering at Cph:dox, one of Europe’s leading documentary film festivals, on March 18. Variety is debuting the poster below.
Mixing her own footage with archives of her native Iran shot with a camcorder, the film chronicles the six years since the birth of her son and the diagnosis of her illness: how she survived coma, her desire – in her own words – “not only to survive but to live” despite cancer, and how she reclaimed her place as...
Co-directed with fellow Danish filmmaker Emilie Adelina Monies, “The Son and the Moon” is Pakari’s love letter to her son, which she will be premiering at Cph:dox, one of Europe’s leading documentary film festivals, on March 18. Variety is debuting the poster below.
Mixing her own footage with archives of her native Iran shot with a camcorder, the film chronicles the six years since the birth of her son and the diagnosis of her illness: how she survived coma, her desire – in her own words – “not only to survive but to live” despite cancer, and how she reclaimed her place as...
- 3/13/2024
- by Lise Pedersen
- Variety Film + TV
Maggie Rogers has announced her third album, Don’t Forget Me, which will be released on April 12th via Capitol Records. The title track, which doubles as the lead single, is out today alongside a music video filmed in Super 8. Check it out below.
Rogers wrote Don’t Forget Me over the course of five days in late 2022, early 2023. Her sole collaborator on the project was Ian Fitchuk, who co-wrote eight of the album’s 10 songs and also played the majority of the instruments and served as its co-producer alongside Rogers.
“I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon,” Rogers said in a note accompanying today’s announcement. “Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room. An old corvette. Vintage,...
Rogers wrote Don’t Forget Me over the course of five days in late 2022, early 2023. Her sole collaborator on the project was Ian Fitchuk, who co-wrote eight of the album’s 10 songs and also played the majority of the instruments and served as its co-producer alongside Rogers.
“I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon,” Rogers said in a note accompanying today’s announcement. “Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room. An old corvette. Vintage,...
- 2/8/2024
- by Scoop Harrison
- Consequence - Music
The Killer.How do you make a good movie in this country and be jumped on?Once, in 1967, in the opener for her Bonnie and Clyde review, Pauline Kael asked the opposite question: “How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on?” Now, times have changed. Nothing provokes us to jump and say, “Hold the torches! That’s the key! The way forward.”An automatic film like David Fincher’s new thriller, The Killer, comes and goes with the velocity of a Twitter news cycle: about six fervent days of talk. (The seventh and beyond? Fits and bursts of takes amid miles of silence.) Whether you think it’s good or bad, The Killer has not lingered in the popular consciousness. And I can’t imagine it lingering. It might have passed me by with the similarly fleeting presence of recent moving-image works like Richard Linklater...
- 1/3/2024
- MUBI
James Sanders in Celluloid Skyline: New York And The Movies quotes Deborah Kerr with Cary Grant in Leo McCarey’s An Affair To Remember: “It’s the nearest thing to heaven we have in New York.”
In the first instalment with architect, author, and filmmaker James Sanders, we discuss his timeless and profound book, Celluloid Skyline: New York And The Movies, in which he explores how deeply one informs the other. From Joan Didion’s wisdom to Cedric Gibbons’s dream sets in the sky, we touch on George Stevens’s Swing Time (starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) and Robert Z Leonard’s Susan Lenox (with Greta Garbo and Clark Gable); East River running with Jill Clayburgh and Michael Murphy in Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman.
James Sanders with Anne-Katrin Titze: “One of the aspects of a mythic city is that it can go anywhere ”
The mansion...
In the first instalment with architect, author, and filmmaker James Sanders, we discuss his timeless and profound book, Celluloid Skyline: New York And The Movies, in which he explores how deeply one informs the other. From Joan Didion’s wisdom to Cedric Gibbons’s dream sets in the sky, we touch on George Stevens’s Swing Time (starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) and Robert Z Leonard’s Susan Lenox (with Greta Garbo and Clark Gable); East River running with Jill Clayburgh and Michael Murphy in Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman.
James Sanders with Anne-Katrin Titze: “One of the aspects of a mythic city is that it can go anywhere ”
The mansion...
- 11/2/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Exclusive: Matthew Wilder has been set to write and direct an untitled film that chronicles the life and work of author Joan Didion.
The plan is to paint a dreamlike day in the life of Didion and California in the late 1960s, when the brilliant young journalist is hurtled from encounters with jailed Manson girls to protesting Black Panthers, and from Nancy Reagan pausing in a photo op to Vietnam War POWs — climaxing with an epilogue in a near-future California where an AI Joan encounters a dystopia beyond her wildest anxiety dreams.
The film, produced under David Michaels’ Enfant Terrible Cinema, will shoot in Los Angeles in the first or second quarter of 2024. Financing is being discussed with potential partners this week at AFM.
A National Book Award winner and recipient of a National Humanities Medal, Didion’s account of grief and loss in 2005’s The Year of Magical Thinking...
The plan is to paint a dreamlike day in the life of Didion and California in the late 1960s, when the brilliant young journalist is hurtled from encounters with jailed Manson girls to protesting Black Panthers, and from Nancy Reagan pausing in a photo op to Vietnam War POWs — climaxing with an epilogue in a near-future California where an AI Joan encounters a dystopia beyond her wildest anxiety dreams.
The film, produced under David Michaels’ Enfant Terrible Cinema, will shoot in Los Angeles in the first or second quarter of 2024. Financing is being discussed with potential partners this week at AFM.
A National Book Award winner and recipient of a National Humanities Medal, Didion’s account of grief and loss in 2005’s The Year of Magical Thinking...
- 11/2/2023
- by Valerie Complex
- Deadline Film + TV
Dispatches From The Picket Line: Actors In NYC Say Offer From A-Listers Was “Righteous And Generous”
This is day 99 of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Actors in New York City nearing day 100 on strike said a polite no thank you Friday to an offer from top stars to fund their health care by lifting the cap on SAG-AFTRA dues — to the tune of more than $150 million over three years — and to rework residual payments to benefit rank-and-file union members.
“It seems like not a good idea,” actor Kathleen Chalfant told Deadline during Friday’s rainy picket outside Netflix offices near Manhattan’s Union Square, in response to a proposal Thursday by A-listers to let their dues rise and, relatedly, to reverse the normal order of residual payouts so that actors at the bottom of the call sheet are paid first.
Union leaders have praised George Clooney and others for “their creativity and earnest desire to help solve the impasse.” But in a letter to members they also said...
Actors in New York City nearing day 100 on strike said a polite no thank you Friday to an offer from top stars to fund their health care by lifting the cap on SAG-AFTRA dues — to the tune of more than $150 million over three years — and to rework residual payments to benefit rank-and-file union members.
“It seems like not a good idea,” actor Kathleen Chalfant told Deadline during Friday’s rainy picket outside Netflix offices near Manhattan’s Union Square, in response to a proposal Thursday by A-listers to let their dues rise and, relatedly, to reverse the normal order of residual payouts so that actors at the bottom of the call sheet are paid first.
Union leaders have praised George Clooney and others for “their creativity and earnest desire to help solve the impasse.” But in a letter to members they also said...
- 10/20/2023
- by Sean Piccoli and Lynette Rice
- Deadline Film + TV
Like its two recent multi-disc predecessors, Joni Mitchell Archives — Volume 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975) collects live and studio vault tapes from a particular era in Mitchell’s career. This one gets off to a seemingly unbeatable start. Much of its first quarter is devoted to an entire live show from Carnegie Hall in 1971, months after Mitchell’s landmark album Blue had been released. Sounding at the top of her game, vocally and instrumentally, Mitchell opens with a swooping, vivacious “This Flight Tonight.” Accompanying herself on guitar, piano and dulcimer,...
- 10/3/2023
- by David Browne
- Rollingstone.com
On Monday, 2nd October 2023, at 7:30 Pm on BBC Two, Season 21 Episode 6 of “Mastermind” will air. In this episode, four contenders will participate, answering questions on their chosen specialist subjects and general knowledge.
The questions in this episode will be posed by Clive Myrie, and they will cover a range of topics. The specialist subjects include the musician Richard Thompson, the popular show “Ted Lasso,” the life and works of Joan Didion, and the remarkable figure of Gandhi.
“Mastermind” is a quiz show where contestants display their knowledge and expertise across a wide array of subjects. It’s a platform for individuals to showcase their intellect and test their memory and understanding.
Tune in to see how these four contenders fare as they respond to questions about their chosen topics and tackle general knowledge queries. It’s an opportunity to witness the pursuit of knowledge and the thrill of competition on “Mastermind.
The questions in this episode will be posed by Clive Myrie, and they will cover a range of topics. The specialist subjects include the musician Richard Thompson, the popular show “Ted Lasso,” the life and works of Joan Didion, and the remarkable figure of Gandhi.
“Mastermind” is a quiz show where contestants display their knowledge and expertise across a wide array of subjects. It’s a platform for individuals to showcase their intellect and test their memory and understanding.
Tune in to see how these four contenders fare as they respond to questions about their chosen topics and tackle general knowledge queries. It’s an opportunity to witness the pursuit of knowledge and the thrill of competition on “Mastermind.
- 9/26/2023
- by Posts UK
- TV Everyday
Of all the stories and sides of Leonard Bernstein that Bradley Cooper decided to leave out of “Maestro,” the most infamous is surely the “Radical Chic” episode. In 1970, a New York magazine cover story, written by Tom Wolfe and entitled “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s,” spent 20,000 words describing, in delectable you-are-there detail, a party thrown by Lenny and his wife, Felicia, at their Park Avenue apartment to raise funds for the Black Panthers. Several of the Panthers were there, mingling with the swells of aristocratic liberal New York, and Wolfe captured the contradictions of that evening in a tone of such scathing perception that it was as if he’d defined the concept of bourgeois political correctness, disemboweled it, and danced on its grave, all in the same moment.
In “Radical Wolfe,” a lively, impeccably chiseled portrait of Tom Wolfe, who died in 2018 (this is the first documentary...
In “Radical Wolfe,” a lively, impeccably chiseled portrait of Tom Wolfe, who died in 2018 (this is the first documentary...
- 9/15/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Olivia Rodrigo recently revealed how she’s gotten into ’80s new wave bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure, and now, she’s named a more current favorite in Rage Against the Machine.
In a new cover story with Rolling Stone, Rodrigo opened up about some of the influences for her excellent sophomore album, Guts. While speaking about the opening track, “All-American Bitch,” she credited two bands as inspiration: Babes in Toyland and Rage Against the Machine.
Rodrigo remembered sleeping with a turntable next to her bed at the age of 14 and being awoken by her mom putting on Babes in Toyland’s sophomore album, Fontanelle, which she would listen to while getting dressed. “Rock in that feminine way, that’s just the coolest thing in the world to me,” she said about the Kat Bjelland-led band.
In addition to the punk energy of Babes in Toyland, Rodrigo tapped...
In a new cover story with Rolling Stone, Rodrigo opened up about some of the influences for her excellent sophomore album, Guts. While speaking about the opening track, “All-American Bitch,” she credited two bands as inspiration: Babes in Toyland and Rage Against the Machine.
Rodrigo remembered sleeping with a turntable next to her bed at the age of 14 and being awoken by her mom putting on Babes in Toyland’s sophomore album, Fontanelle, which she would listen to while getting dressed. “Rock in that feminine way, that’s just the coolest thing in the world to me,” she said about the Kat Bjelland-led band.
In addition to the punk energy of Babes in Toyland, Rodrigo tapped...
- 9/12/2023
- by Eddie Fu
- Consequence - Music
Olivia Rodrigo knocked it out of the park on her first try, with her instant classic of a debut, Sour. So expectations have been sky-high for her next move. But the suspense is over: Her excellent new Guts is another instant classic, with her most ambitious, intimate, and messy songs yet. Olivia’s pop-punk bangers are full of killer lines (“I wanna meet your mom, just to tell her her son sucks”), but she pushes deeper in powerful ballads like “Logical.” All over Guts, she’s so witty, so pissed off,...
- 9/8/2023
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
The 2023 writers strike has focused attention on recent developments like artificial intelligence and the transition to streaming.
But for film writers, the key issue in the strike has been a constant battle for more than a generation: How do you get paid for a script once it’s finished?
Screenwriters have long been asked to do free revisions before turning in a “first draft” to the studio, which triggers payment. Typically they agree, even though the Writers Guild of America contract sets out minimum rates for revisions and polishes.
“I have boxes of scripts in my garage that are just draft after draft after draft,” said Emily Fox, a WGA strike captain who was walking the picket lines last week. “And it was all ‘first draft.’ But it was like First Draft A, First Draft B. But if they’re like, ‘You’re not ready to hand it in,’ then...
But for film writers, the key issue in the strike has been a constant battle for more than a generation: How do you get paid for a script once it’s finished?
Screenwriters have long been asked to do free revisions before turning in a “first draft” to the studio, which triggers payment. Typically they agree, even though the Writers Guild of America contract sets out minimum rates for revisions and polishes.
“I have boxes of scripts in my garage that are just draft after draft after draft,” said Emily Fox, a WGA strike captain who was walking the picket lines last week. “And it was all ‘first draft.’ But it was like First Draft A, First Draft B. But if they’re like, ‘You’re not ready to hand it in,’ then...
- 8/23/2023
- by Gene Maddaus
- Variety Film + TV
Clockwise from left: Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry (Apple TV+), Gaga: Five Foot Two (Netflix), Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (HBO), Pamela, A Love Story (Netflix), Cobain: Montage Of Heck (HBO)Graphic: AVClub
Celebrity documentaries run the gamut. There are hagiographies, which all but deify their subjects.
Celebrity documentaries run the gamut. There are hagiographies, which all but deify their subjects.
- 8/4/2023
- by Ian Spelling
- avclub.com
One of the most notorious porn movies in history provides the backdrop for this week’s Minx, which hints at the success that might await the little magazine that could. But is everyone on board with that plan?
It sure seems so in the beginning, at least, as we open at an event’s red carpet like the one in the season premiere. This time, though, it’s not a dream: A swanky Doug and Tina are getting out of a fancy car outside a theater showing Deep Throat. Bottom Dollar Productions is hosting a screening of the controversial adult film,...
It sure seems so in the beginning, at least, as we open at an event’s red carpet like the one in the season premiere. This time, though, it’s not a dream: A swanky Doug and Tina are getting out of a fancy car outside a theater showing Deep Throat. Bottom Dollar Productions is hosting a screening of the controversial adult film,...
- 7/29/2023
- by Kimberly Roots
- TVLine.com
Before indie sleaze, there was porno chic. And if Apple TV+’s recent “City on Fire” brought back to life the fashions and music of the early oughts’ indie sleaze heyday, then Starz’s “Minx” absolutely owns porno chic, down to the last unbuttoned button.
Set during the ‘70s as indefatigable feminist Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) reluctantly teams up with porn publisher Doug Renetti to transform her The Matriarchy Awakens magazine pitch into Minx, a porn magazine for women filled with both feminist theory and schwanzes, the show initially premiered on HBO Max before moving to Starz as a result of the streamer’s content purge. Never mind the new home, though, Ellen Rapaport’s silly, sexy, and serious comedy remains as solidly built as before even as the characters experience radical growth in its sophomore season.
Much of it is spurred by the arrival in the season premiere of Elizabeth Perkins’ caftan and turban-clad Constance,...
Set during the ‘70s as indefatigable feminist Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) reluctantly teams up with porn publisher Doug Renetti to transform her The Matriarchy Awakens magazine pitch into Minx, a porn magazine for women filled with both feminist theory and schwanzes, the show initially premiered on HBO Max before moving to Starz as a result of the streamer’s content purge. Never mind the new home, though, Ellen Rapaport’s silly, sexy, and serious comedy remains as solidly built as before even as the characters experience radical growth in its sophomore season.
Much of it is spurred by the arrival in the season premiere of Elizabeth Perkins’ caftan and turban-clad Constance,...
- 7/28/2023
- by Mark Peikert
- Indiewire
During a star-studded promotional screening of “Deep Throat,” Joan Didion shares a prescient observation. She doesn’t want to — at least, not in that moment. All she wants is to enjoy the lavish party put on to promote Minx magazine. Check that: All she really wants is to be left in peace to use the restroom, but Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond), the editor-in-chief of Minx, can’t contain her giddy inquiries long enough for the acclaimed journalist to relieve her bladder. Joyce wants Joan to write for the magazine; something about “Deep Throat” and what it reflects about the shifting ‘70s culture, if not society at large. Joan isn’t all that interested, and instead encourages Joyce to pen the piece herself — but not before offering her reluctant, rushed assessment of the landmark porno being screened in the adjacent auditorium. “I don’t think it was their intent,” Joan says,...
- 7/21/2023
- by Ben Travers
- Indiewire
What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise again). Ping, a news alert said the actors’ strike was on. Just up the street, SAG-AFTRA was already under media siege. July 13, 2023: It was a hot one in Hollywood, and about to get hotter. As Didion said of the Sixties cultural crisis, “The center was not holding.”
Actors weren’t acting. Writers weren’t writing. Top film reviewers weren’t deigning to review Sound of Freedom, a right wing-connected child-trafficking thriller that slipped past Insidious: The Red Door to lead the box-office for a couple of days, until Tom Cruise took over with Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One.
That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise again). Ping, a news alert said the actors’ strike was on. Just up the street, SAG-AFTRA was already under media siege. July 13, 2023: It was a hot one in Hollywood, and about to get hotter. As Didion said of the Sixties cultural crisis, “The center was not holding.”
Actors weren’t acting. Writers weren’t writing. Top film reviewers weren’t deigning to review Sound of Freedom, a right wing-connected child-trafficking thriller that slipped past Insidious: The Red Door to lead the box-office for a couple of days, until Tom Cruise took over with Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One.
- 7/16/2023
- by Michael Cieply
- Deadline Film + TV
Inspired by the vestiges of a bygone industrial age in places like Flint and Ypsilanti, as well as the enduring grandeur of Tahquamenon Falls, Sufjan Stevens’s Michigan was, to borrow from William Butler Yeats by way of Joan Didion, something of a “slouch towards Bethlehem.” Set against the backdrop of a nation grappling with the effect of globalization, the slow creep of post-modern isolationism, and the trauma of 9/11, the album serves as both a freeze-frame of an era and a signpost of a new direction for indie music in 2003.
Michigan was the first entry in Stevens’s 50 States Project, with a proposed album about each state in the United States. The ambitious series was ultimately revealed to be, at least in part, a joke, with only one other album—2005’s Illinois—ever completed.
Michigan isn’t just Stevens’s home state, but a microcosm of the broader challenges faced...
Michigan was the first entry in Stevens’s 50 States Project, with a proposed album about each state in the United States. The ambitious series was ultimately revealed to be, at least in part, a joke, with only one other album—2005’s Illinois—ever completed.
Michigan isn’t just Stevens’s home state, but a microcosm of the broader challenges faced...
- 6/28/2023
- by Jackson Rickun
- Slant Magazine
I swear, this review is not a defense of Che Diaz.
I won’t apologize for their crimes against stand-up comedy, their pursuit of gold in the Identity Olympics, or the way they make their paramour Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) walk on egg shells whenever they’re breathing the same air. Sara Ramirez’s Che is smarmy and self-absorbed. They’re ostensibly a comic by profession, but have no clue how to produce or wield humor. (“The only thing I’m worried about is that spice all over your lips,” they clunkily purr to a fretting Miranda. “Because I’m not trying to have curry-lingus later.”) Che is what haters’ dreams are made of. And if Twitter memes are to be taken as fact, they are the complete opposite of a fan favorite: They’re a fan bête noire.
Which is precisely why I love the existence of Che Diaz. On...
I won’t apologize for their crimes against stand-up comedy, their pursuit of gold in the Identity Olympics, or the way they make their paramour Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) walk on egg shells whenever they’re breathing the same air. Sara Ramirez’s Che is smarmy and self-absorbed. They’re ostensibly a comic by profession, but have no clue how to produce or wield humor. (“The only thing I’m worried about is that spice all over your lips,” they clunkily purr to a fretting Miranda. “Because I’m not trying to have curry-lingus later.”) Che is what haters’ dreams are made of. And if Twitter memes are to be taken as fact, they are the complete opposite of a fan favorite: They’re a fan bête noire.
Which is precisely why I love the existence of Che Diaz. On...
- 6/21/2023
- by Robyn Bahr
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
When I was a kid, I had the feeling I was undercover as a boy. I was on a little league baseball team called the Chesapeake Bagel Bakery Bagels, which means I was a Bagel, though I never felt like I deserved the name. I was certain that the other boys on the team were going to look at me and see that I was somehow different, that I was attracted to them and wanted to tear their circular-bread-emblazoned uniforms off, that I was a Danish in a Bagel uniform. I was terrible at being in the closet. When we played Truth or Dare, I would dare my friends to kiss me, and then intentionally laugh loudly to emphasize how hilarious and not at all sexy I found that idea.
I was big, and awkward, and I used to have a recurring dream that I was an animated character in a world of live-action people,...
I was big, and awkward, and I used to have a recurring dream that I was an animated character in a world of live-action people,...
- 6/17/2023
- by Will Graham
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Robert Gottlieb, the legendary editor at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker who helped shape the work of many of the world’s greatest writers over the past six decades, has died, according to Knopf and The New Yorker. He was 92.
A partial list of the literary talents whose work Gottlieb edited includes Nobel laureates such as Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul; bestselling novelists such as John le Carré, Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury; Hollywood types such as Elia Kazan, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Nora Ephron and Lauren Bacall; Pulitzer Prize-winners such as John Cheever, Katharine Graham and Robert Caro; and even a president, Bill Clinton.
Gottlieb was featured in the documentary Turn Every Page, directed by his daughter Lizzie, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. The film focuses on Gottlieb and Caro as...
A partial list of the literary talents whose work Gottlieb edited includes Nobel laureates such as Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul; bestselling novelists such as John le Carré, Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury; Hollywood types such as Elia Kazan, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Nora Ephron and Lauren Bacall; Pulitzer Prize-winners such as John Cheever, Katharine Graham and Robert Caro; and even a president, Bill Clinton.
Gottlieb was featured in the documentary Turn Every Page, directed by his daughter Lizzie, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. The film focuses on Gottlieb and Caro as...
- 6/14/2023
- by Tom Tapp
- Deadline Film + TV
Many L.A. neighborhoods regularly welcome new hotels, but Santa Monica not so often. Until earlier this year, Ocean Avenue hadn’t seen a fresh property open in 11 years. But the debut of The Georgian in April seems to have kicked off a new chapter for the classic coastal city, which in recent months has also been blessed with two major hotel transformations and, later this year, will see another brand-new luxury bolthole added to its beloved seafront strip.
And there’s all the more reason to plan a trip or staycation in order to sample the area’s latest foodie favorites such as Coucou (218 Main St.), a convivial Cali-French mashup bistro in a former art gallery just over the border in Venice, and Isla (2424 Main St.), serving wood-fired seafood and potent cocktails. Also hot: Bar Monette (109 Santa Monica Blvd.), the hood’s latest source for perfectly blistered pizza thanks to chef Sean MacDonald.
And there’s all the more reason to plan a trip or staycation in order to sample the area’s latest foodie favorites such as Coucou (218 Main St.), a convivial Cali-French mashup bistro in a former art gallery just over the border in Venice, and Isla (2424 Main St.), serving wood-fired seafood and potent cocktails. Also hot: Bar Monette (109 Santa Monica Blvd.), the hood’s latest source for perfectly blistered pizza thanks to chef Sean MacDonald.
- 6/10/2023
- by Kathryn Romeyn
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Blonde Redhead are back with Sit Down for Dinner, their first new album since 2014. Out September 29th, the LP features the lead single, “Snowman,” and will be supported by a tour of North America, the UK, and Europe.
Sit Down for Dinner was written over a five-year period in locations spanning from New York City and upstate New York to Milan and Tuscany. The album’s lyrics address the inescapable struggles of adulthood, whether it’s a communication breakdown, wondering which way to turn, or holding onto your dreams.
Band member Kazu Makino found inspiration for the album from a passage in Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, that resonated with the uncertainty of the early pandemic months and the temporarily lost ritual of eating dinner with her parents far away in Japan: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and...
Sit Down for Dinner was written over a five-year period in locations spanning from New York City and upstate New York to Milan and Tuscany. The album’s lyrics address the inescapable struggles of adulthood, whether it’s a communication breakdown, wondering which way to turn, or holding onto your dreams.
Band member Kazu Makino found inspiration for the album from a passage in Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, that resonated with the uncertainty of the early pandemic months and the temporarily lost ritual of eating dinner with her parents far away in Japan: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and...
- 5/30/2023
- by Eddie Fu
- Consequence - Music
According to our current combined predictions, Jodie Comer (“Prima Facie”) is the frontrunner to win Best Actress in a Play at this year’s Tony Awards with 12/5 odds. She already won an Olivier a couple of months ago for her work in the West End production. She would be the fifth Tony winner in this category for a one-woman performance.
In Suzie Miller‘s one-woman show, Comer plays Tessa, a barrister from working-class origins who must deal with an unexpected event that forces her to confront the patriarchal power and morality of the law.
When it comes to solo performances at the Tonys, four have prevailed in this category before. In 1977 Julie Harris won her fifth and final competitive accolade for her portrayal of Emily Dickinson in William Luce‘s “The Belle of Amherst.” In 1986 Lily Tomlin won for playing multiple characters in Jane Wagner‘s “The Search for Signs...
In Suzie Miller‘s one-woman show, Comer plays Tessa, a barrister from working-class origins who must deal with an unexpected event that forces her to confront the patriarchal power and morality of the law.
When it comes to solo performances at the Tonys, four have prevailed in this category before. In 1977 Julie Harris won her fifth and final competitive accolade for her portrayal of Emily Dickinson in William Luce‘s “The Belle of Amherst.” In 1986 Lily Tomlin won for playing multiple characters in Jane Wagner‘s “The Search for Signs...
- 5/29/2023
- by Jeffrey Kare
- Gold Derby
Awkwafina is an indie filmmaking champion from Queens.
The “Nora From Queens” co-creator and star acknowledged the impact of indie films on her adolescence, recalling her own coming-of-age as an Asian-American woman forging a diverse cultural identity based on pop culture influences.
“I first went to the Asia Society when I was in high school. My dad was an avid supporter and we’d always go to shows and talks there together. It was a resource for us Ramones, Joan Didion, and Jay-Z-loving Asian Americans growing up to learn more about our own cultural identities,” Awkwafina said during the 2023 Asia Society Southern California Gala (via Variety). “And I think that it’s that kind of self-motivation to curate and cultivate our identities as Asian people, is where cultural vision is born.”
She continued, “I want to encourage all of you today — in the case that you are the parents...
The “Nora From Queens” co-creator and star acknowledged the impact of indie films on her adolescence, recalling her own coming-of-age as an Asian-American woman forging a diverse cultural identity based on pop culture influences.
“I first went to the Asia Society when I was in high school. My dad was an avid supporter and we’d always go to shows and talks there together. It was a resource for us Ramones, Joan Didion, and Jay-Z-loving Asian Americans growing up to learn more about our own cultural identities,” Awkwafina said during the 2023 Asia Society Southern California Gala (via Variety). “And I think that it’s that kind of self-motivation to curate and cultivate our identities as Asian people, is where cultural vision is born.”
She continued, “I want to encourage all of you today — in the case that you are the parents...
- 5/24/2023
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
In the experimental montage that opens “Persona,” a bare-chested teenage boy caresses a screen upon which the faces of two women slowly morph back and forth. It’s easy to imagine Todd Haynes being tempted to start his deep-as-you-want-to-go rabbit-hole drama “May December” the same way, seeing as how this endlessly fascinating movie focuses on the blurring of the lines between a Hollywood star (Natalie Portman) and her true-crime character (Julianne Moore), who was caught in a sexual relationship with a 7th grader at the age of 36. The movie wants to know: Can playing this Mary Kay Letourneau-like tabloid sensation really answer what makes such a woman tick?
A heady director whose entire oeuvre feels ripe for film-studies dissertations, Haynes makes movies not merely to be watched, but to be analyzed and deconstructed after the fact. From the rich Douglas Sirkian pastiche of “Far From Heaven” to the queer...
A heady director whose entire oeuvre feels ripe for film-studies dissertations, Haynes makes movies not merely to be watched, but to be analyzed and deconstructed after the fact. From the rich Douglas Sirkian pastiche of “Far From Heaven” to the queer...
- 5/20/2023
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Mercilessly photogenic melodrama saddled with faintly patronising shtick as Phillipa Soo has to choose between new fiance and returning husband thought to be dead
Adapted from the eponymous novel by BookTok favourite Taylor Jenkins Reid, this sanitised melodrama is so algorithm-baked and slathered in life lessons it makes butane-sniffing seem like the preferable option. Phillipa Soo plays Emma, a Massachusetts bookseller caught in the living hell of a Shang-Chi/Point Break sandwich: about to marry her childhood best friend Sam (Simu Liu), she is bowled over when previous hunk of a husband Jesse (Luke Bracey) – who went missing in a helicopter crash on their first wedding anniversary – suddenly turns up with full Robinson Crusoe beard.
Jesse actually has been trapped on a desert island for four years. But that’s the level of subtlety Andy Fickman’s mercilessly photogenic love triangle operates on, initially hyping up Emma and Jesse’s...
Adapted from the eponymous novel by BookTok favourite Taylor Jenkins Reid, this sanitised melodrama is so algorithm-baked and slathered in life lessons it makes butane-sniffing seem like the preferable option. Phillipa Soo plays Emma, a Massachusetts bookseller caught in the living hell of a Shang-Chi/Point Break sandwich: about to marry her childhood best friend Sam (Simu Liu), she is bowled over when previous hunk of a husband Jesse (Luke Bracey) – who went missing in a helicopter crash on their first wedding anniversary – suddenly turns up with full Robinson Crusoe beard.
Jesse actually has been trapped on a desert island for four years. But that’s the level of subtlety Andy Fickman’s mercilessly photogenic love triangle operates on, initially hyping up Emma and Jesse’s...
- 5/2/2023
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
Writer David Grann is one of the premier nonfiction storytellers of our time. His bestseller The Lost City of Z transported readers into the Amazon on a quest for a mythical civilization (and became a 2016 movie starring Charlie Hunnam). He followed up in 2017 with The Killers of the Flower Moon, a blistering investigation into a series of unsolved murders of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma during the early 1900s (the film adaptation, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, premieres at Cannes this month). Grann’s masterful...
- 4/16/2023
- by Sean Woods
- Rollingstone.com
Ron Bernstein, a veteran rights agent who has brokered adaptive deals for modern classics like “No Country for Old Men” and “Blackhawk Down,” has joined the Agency for the Performing Arts.
He will serve as senior vice president of media rights, a mantle he will take up after a 23-year run at ICM Partners. Bernstein joins APA partners Steve Fisher and Debbie Deuble Hill in the publishing and media rights group. APA president Jim Osbourne announced Bernstein’s hire, effective Thursday. The addition is another big score for APA as the representation business continues to shift amid consolidation.
Over a long and enviable career, Bernstein has represented some of the most acclaimed novelists, authors and journalists in the marketplace and sold the rights to countless feature films, limited series and shows to major buyers.
Clients expected to join Bernstein at APA include Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Mark Bowden, John Burdett,...
He will serve as senior vice president of media rights, a mantle he will take up after a 23-year run at ICM Partners. Bernstein joins APA partners Steve Fisher and Debbie Deuble Hill in the publishing and media rights group. APA president Jim Osbourne announced Bernstein’s hire, effective Thursday. The addition is another big score for APA as the representation business continues to shift amid consolidation.
Over a long and enviable career, Bernstein has represented some of the most acclaimed novelists, authors and journalists in the marketplace and sold the rights to countless feature films, limited series and shows to major buyers.
Clients expected to join Bernstein at APA include Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Mark Bowden, John Burdett,...
- 4/13/2023
- by Matt Donnelly
- Variety Film + TV
It was recently announced that ever-prolific online content factory Buzzfeed would begin using artificial intelligence technology to generate articles — so can A.I. screenwriting be far behind? Amid a surfeit of production company idents at the outset of “One True Loves,” the presence of Buzzfeed Studios’ logo brings that question to mind; the rigidly generic love story that ensues keeps it there. In fact, this adaptation of a 2016 bestseller by Taylor Jenkins Reid (“Daisy Jones & The Six”) was scripted by the author herself, in collaboration with her husband Alex. There’s scant evidence of personal investment, however, in this clean, anodyne drama of messy romantic conflicts, in which everyone from director Andy Fickman to stars Simu Liu, Phillipa Soo and Luke Bracey is working in strict get-the-job-done mode.
The bland proficiency on display throughout “One True Loves” is galling in a story that calls for ripe emotional excess, conceived...
The bland proficiency on display throughout “One True Loves” is galling in a story that calls for ripe emotional excess, conceived...
- 4/6/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Inglourious Basterds.My first memory of watching a movie in a theater was when I was seven, and it was a double bill: Peter Pan and Kill Bill: Vol. 2.Whenever my divorced father came to visit me, he would always bring me to the movies. He had wanted to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 on its opening-weekend release, April 16, 2004. This meant I’d be watching the former by myself. This was our little ritual: we’d pay for one, we’d sneak into another movie, then he’d drop me home with my mother.Peter Pan—which was released on Christmas 2003, and which the Regency Commerce, the local cineplex in East Los Angeles where I’d frequently watch films in Spanish dubs, had held over for nearly four months after the holiday season—looked like a safe enough kids’ movie to my father. Surely I’d be kept rapt for the two hours and change.
- 2/28/2023
- MUBI
Wrapping up an impressive list of honorees, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival aimed its tribute spotlight on the annual outstanding directors of the year program on Friday night at the Arlington Theater. A late-breaking cancellation by The Daniels, behind Everything Everywhere All at Once, pared down the onstage talent, but the leaner context placed more intensive focus on two directorial sensations from the 2022 film harvest, Todd Field (Tár) and Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin).
There was much to talk about over the course of the 90-minute session onstage. Both directors are in key pivot points in their careers, and both have been graced by triple-threat Oscar nods, for best picture, best director and best screenplay categories. On the Oscar stats front, the evening’s moderator, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, pointed out that each director had films leading actors to Oscar nominations — Field with six such assists and McDonagh with seven.
There was much to talk about over the course of the 90-minute session onstage. Both directors are in key pivot points in their careers, and both have been graced by triple-threat Oscar nods, for best picture, best director and best screenplay categories. On the Oscar stats front, the evening’s moderator, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, pointed out that each director had films leading actors to Oscar nominations — Field with six such assists and McDonagh with seven.
- 2/18/2023
- by Josef Woodard
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance film festival: thoroughbreds and Bad Education director Cory Finley makes an ambitious misstep with a jumbled comedy about controlling aliens
It’s become a depressingly familiar rite of passage for a director of vim and promise to stumble when they ambitiously decide to adapt a book that should have probably stayed on the shelf. Back in 2018, Blue Ruin and Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier came a cropper when he tried to wrangle William Giraldi’s unwieldy Hold the Dark to the screen. At Sundance in 2020, Dee Rees followed Pariah and Mudbound with a clunky, critically loathed attempt to turn Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted into a coherent film. And just last year Andrew Dominik and Noah Baumbach made their worst films to date with Blonde and White Noise respectively.
A strong attachment to the source material can of course be a good thing, a passion that...
It’s become a depressingly familiar rite of passage for a director of vim and promise to stumble when they ambitiously decide to adapt a book that should have probably stayed on the shelf. Back in 2018, Blue Ruin and Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier came a cropper when he tried to wrangle William Giraldi’s unwieldy Hold the Dark to the screen. At Sundance in 2020, Dee Rees followed Pariah and Mudbound with a clunky, critically loathed attempt to turn Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted into a coherent film. And just last year Andrew Dominik and Noah Baumbach made their worst films to date with Blonde and White Noise respectively.
A strong attachment to the source material can of course be a good thing, a passion that...
- 1/25/2023
- by Benjamin Lee in Park City, Utah
- The Guardian - Film News
Todd Field's "Tár," easily one of the best films of 2022, was a long time in the making. It is the first feature film Field made since "Little Children," which came out in 2006. In the intervening 16 years, Field attempted to make multiple projects, most of them based on his favorite books, to no avail. Among the filmmaker's unmade projects were an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," a political thriller he co-wrote with Joan Didion, an autobiographical film about his childhood experiences working for the defunct Portland baseball team called the Mavericks, and a biography of Bowe Bergdahl, an American prisoner of war. It wouldn't be until "Tár" that his filmmaking career would finally pick up again, his third feature as a director, having made his debut in 2001 with the Best Picture Oscar nominee "In the Bedroom."
Prior to 2001, Field appeared in numerous films as an actor. Most notably,...
Prior to 2001, Field appeared in numerous films as an actor. Most notably,...
- 1/19/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
I am alone in the house. But I know she’s upstairs listening. If I keep the cartoons loud enough maybe she won’t hear me put on my Batman slippers. I shuffle softly to the door and pull it open just enough to squeeze through into the hall. There’s the front door. The bunch of keys on the mat where my mum posted them through the letterbox. Will I be able to find the right key in time? I look up and Jesmar is there, standing at the top of the stairs, with her patchwork playsuit, placid smile and straw-coloured fringe. The air is electric and I can hear a terrible moaning. I need to run but suddenly I’m swimming through concrete. Where is the key –
“Sir?” There is a light on my face. “Sir! Are you alright?” The air hostess is standing over me. The moaning is very loud now.
“Sir?” There is a light on my face. “Sir! Are you alright?” The air hostess is standing over me. The moaning is very loud now.
- 1/15/2023
- by Ben Bryant
- The Independent - Film
In 2001, director Todd Field made his directorial debut with "In the Bedroom," an intense drama based on the 1979 short story "Killings" by Andre Dubus. "In the Bedroom" is about the tenuous nature of family, class, the impossibility of emotional healing, and the horrors of justice. It boasted excellent performances from Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, and Marisa Tomei, and was nominated for five Academy Awards. It's handily one of the best films of the year. It would be five years before Field would return to directing with "Little Children," based on the novel by Tom Perrotta. That film also gazed into the suburbs and found helicopter parents, unhappy marriages, not-very-cathartic infidelity, and, most notably, a released sex criminal trying to reintegrate into a world that loathes him. That film was nominated for three Academy Awards, although it was quite a bit more mawkish and melodramatic than Field's previous effort.
That was...
That was...
- 1/10/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and its subsequent U.S. release on Oct. 7, Todd Field’s “Tár” has become a rare thing: a much-discussed art-house film that demands your attention, if not your obsession. On repeat viewing, Cate Blanchett’s performance as the famous conductor Lydia Tár deepens and becomes more complicated, beautiful and upsetting, as the enigmatic layers of Field’s screenplay continue to unfold for the audience. Now, Variety is exclusively exhibiting the script for the first time.
In Variety’s Jan. 5 cover story, Field and Blanchett discussed the making of “Tár,” why they were interested in this story, and how they created this character. They had met a decade earlier over dinner to discuss a project with Joan Didion that ended up not happening, and Field had written Lydia Tár — a character he’d been thinking about “for about 10 years,” he said — for Blanchett alone.
In Variety’s Jan. 5 cover story, Field and Blanchett discussed the making of “Tár,” why they were interested in this story, and how they created this character. They had met a decade earlier over dinner to discuss a project with Joan Didion that ended up not happening, and Field had written Lydia Tár — a character he’d been thinking about “for about 10 years,” he said — for Blanchett alone.
- 1/9/2023
- by Kate Aurthur
- Variety Film + TV
Had all gone according to a very vague plan, Jacques Demy's "Model Shop" would've turned Harrison Ford into a movie star — or, at the very least, it would've given him his first lead role. Columbia Pictures had zero faith in the unknown Ford, so they insisted on Gary Lockwood, who'd just played Frank Poole in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Opera." Needing to make a living to support his young family, Ford became a carpenter.
Being a carpenter in Hollywood brought Ford into the homes of several prominent artists (e.g. Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne). Producer Fred Roos, a Francis Ford Coppola associate, was especially taken with Ford, and introduced him to Coppola's friend and filmmaking protege George Lucas. Maybe this charming, ruggedly handsome handyman could bring Bob Falfa, the street-racing rival to Paul Le Mat's John Milner, to rakish life in "American Graffiti."
Ford delivered,...
Being a carpenter in Hollywood brought Ford into the homes of several prominent artists (e.g. Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne). Producer Fred Roos, a Francis Ford Coppola associate, was especially taken with Ford, and introduced him to Coppola's friend and filmmaking protege George Lucas. Maybe this charming, ruggedly handsome handyman could bring Bob Falfa, the street-racing rival to Paul Le Mat's John Milner, to rakish life in "American Graffiti."
Ford delivered,...
- 12/8/2022
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
Click here to read the full article.
Each week, The Hollywood Reporter will offer up the best new (and newly relevant) books that everyone will be talking about — whether it’s a tome that’s ripe for adaptation, a new Hollywood-centric tell-all or the source material for a hot new TV show.
Rights Available
Small Game by Blair Braverman (WME)
The author, who appeared on Naked and Afraid in 2018, channeled her experience on the reality show (and from her competitive dog-sledding past) into this twisty thriller about contestants on a survival series abandoned in the wilderness by a TV crew.
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (WME)
Octopi are having a moment in pop culture, and in this work of literary fiction with shades of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, a doctor hired by a tech firm travels to a remote archipelago to investigate a very smart, very dangerous new species of cephalopod.
Each week, The Hollywood Reporter will offer up the best new (and newly relevant) books that everyone will be talking about — whether it’s a tome that’s ripe for adaptation, a new Hollywood-centric tell-all or the source material for a hot new TV show.
Rights Available
Small Game by Blair Braverman (WME)
The author, who appeared on Naked and Afraid in 2018, channeled her experience on the reality show (and from her competitive dog-sledding past) into this twisty thriller about contestants on a survival series abandoned in the wilderness by a TV crew.
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (WME)
Octopi are having a moment in pop culture, and in this work of literary fiction with shades of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, a doctor hired by a tech firm travels to a remote archipelago to investigate a very smart, very dangerous new species of cephalopod.
- 12/1/2022
- by Seija Rankin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Simon & Schuster has acknowledged that the recently sold limited edition copies of Bob Dylan’s newest book contained replica autographs.
Priced at 599 (£420) per copy, each copy of The Philosophy of Modern Song had supposedly been hand-signed by the “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer himself. The publisher had even included certificates of authenticity with each order.
Although, once customers began receiving their books on Friday 18 November, some began comparing photos of their copies.
They soon came to the realisation that 17 variations of Dylan’s signatures had been recreated using an autopen, an automated signing device.
When fans requested refunds, the publisher initially refused, insisting that they were indeed hand-signed.
However, within 48 hours, Simon & Schuster sent out emails to customers on Sunday (20 November) apologising for the “mistake” and offering them a full refund.
According to Variety, customers were also told that they could keep the copy at no cost.
The publisher...
Priced at 599 (£420) per copy, each copy of The Philosophy of Modern Song had supposedly been hand-signed by the “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer himself. The publisher had even included certificates of authenticity with each order.
Although, once customers began receiving their books on Friday 18 November, some began comparing photos of their copies.
They soon came to the realisation that 17 variations of Dylan’s signatures had been recreated using an autopen, an automated signing device.
When fans requested refunds, the publisher initially refused, insisting that they were indeed hand-signed.
However, within 48 hours, Simon & Schuster sent out emails to customers on Sunday (20 November) apologising for the “mistake” and offering them a full refund.
According to Variety, customers were also told that they could keep the copy at no cost.
The publisher...
- 11/22/2022
- by Inga Parkel
- The Independent - Music
Click here to read the full article.
Since the beginning of her career, showrunner Liz Feldman has been laser-focused on making people laugh. A teenage stand-up, she joined The Groundlings after college and worked for mentor Ellen DeGeneres before writing on a string of traditional broadcast sitcoms. But with Dead to Me, her Netflix comedy-mystery with a high character mortality rate, Feldman’s aware that the third and final season might make some viewers cry when it drops Nov. 17.
“I want people to feel things,” Feldman says of her homage to grief, starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini. (Both actresses have received Emmy noms for their roles.) “If anything, the pandemic only made me want to tell this story more. What we all went through was not just grief, it was a very weird and ambiguous grief.”
Feldman is primarily focused on celebrating these days. She and her wife, musician Rachael Cantu,...
Since the beginning of her career, showrunner Liz Feldman has been laser-focused on making people laugh. A teenage stand-up, she joined The Groundlings after college and worked for mentor Ellen DeGeneres before writing on a string of traditional broadcast sitcoms. But with Dead to Me, her Netflix comedy-mystery with a high character mortality rate, Feldman’s aware that the third and final season might make some viewers cry when it drops Nov. 17.
“I want people to feel things,” Feldman says of her homage to grief, starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini. (Both actresses have received Emmy noms for their roles.) “If anything, the pandemic only made me want to tell this story more. What we all went through was not just grief, it was a very weird and ambiguous grief.”
Feldman is primarily focused on celebrating these days. She and her wife, musician Rachael Cantu,...
- 11/14/2022
- by Mikey O'Connell
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Click here to read the full article.
It was the heart of winter when Tár writer-director Todd Field and editor Monika Willi unexpectedly took up residency at a 15th century Scottish nunnery outside Edinburgh. They had intended to meet up in London, but another Covid-19 lockdown in early January 2022 waylaid their plans. As it turned out, the nunnery and the silence were a perfect environment to foster the filmmaker’s storytelling tempo and sense of discipline. Amid long walks watching the seasons slowly change, he and Willi got to work, spending nearly four months stringing together the melody of his first film in 16 years.
Tár stars Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, a fictional world-renowned conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic who is brought down for exploiting power to pursue relationships with younger protegées, including a woman who commits suicide. The maestro is in denial regarding the influence of social media in...
It was the heart of winter when Tár writer-director Todd Field and editor Monika Willi unexpectedly took up residency at a 15th century Scottish nunnery outside Edinburgh. They had intended to meet up in London, but another Covid-19 lockdown in early January 2022 waylaid their plans. As it turned out, the nunnery and the silence were a perfect environment to foster the filmmaker’s storytelling tempo and sense of discipline. Amid long walks watching the seasons slowly change, he and Willi got to work, spending nearly four months stringing together the melody of his first film in 16 years.
Tár stars Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, a fictional world-renowned conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic who is brought down for exploiting power to pursue relationships with younger protegées, including a woman who commits suicide. The maestro is in denial regarding the influence of social media in...
- 11/12/2022
- by Pamela McClintock
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Click here to read the full article.
Two just-opened art exhibits showcase the work of powerfully influential women who trained their keen focus on L.A. and the film industry, while a retrospective look at the oeuvre of South African artist William Kentridge opens Nov. 12 at The Broad.
Joan Didion: What She Means Hammer Museum, Westwood
Like Joan Didion herself, this new show paying homage to the famed Slouching Towards Bethlehem writer is the perfect blend of East and West coasts. Curated by her friend and mentee, New Yorker writer and critic Hilton Als, to reflect her interests and inspirations, the show tracks the places Didion lived and visited (Berkeley, Hawaii, Miami, El Salvador). Works such as Betye Saar’s 1966 assemblage View From the Palmist Window and Ed Ruscha’s 1966 photo series Every Building on the Sunset Strip join photos and archival materials, including a film poster for 1976’s A Star Is Born,...
Two just-opened art exhibits showcase the work of powerfully influential women who trained their keen focus on L.A. and the film industry, while a retrospective look at the oeuvre of South African artist William Kentridge opens Nov. 12 at The Broad.
Joan Didion: What She Means Hammer Museum, Westwood
Like Joan Didion herself, this new show paying homage to the famed Slouching Towards Bethlehem writer is the perfect blend of East and West coasts. Curated by her friend and mentee, New Yorker writer and critic Hilton Als, to reflect her interests and inspirations, the show tracks the places Didion lived and visited (Berkeley, Hawaii, Miami, El Salvador). Works such as Betye Saar’s 1966 assemblage View From the Palmist Window and Ed Ruscha’s 1966 photo series Every Building on the Sunset Strip join photos and archival materials, including a film poster for 1976’s A Star Is Born,...
- 11/6/2022
- by Jordan Riefe
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Fright master Tobe Hooper’s 1982 movie has Steven Spielberg’s fingerprints all over it, but has a disturbing, satirical edge that’s all its own
The 80s classic gets a Halloween re-release for its 40th anniversary: a supernatural chiller and anti-gentrification satire that came out the same year as Et – Mr Hyde to that film’s Dr Jekyll, perhaps – and one of the most Spielbergian films not actually directed by Steven Spielberg. It is also a movie with its own particular flavour of sadness, owing to the early deaths of two of its stars: Dominique Dunne, daughter of author Dominick Dunne and niece of Joan Didion, killed in the year of the film’s release by her violent ex-boyfriend, and Heather O’Rourke, who died in 1988 at 12 years oldafter suffering cardiac arrest and septic shock connected with a bowel condition.
It was directed by horror maestro Tobe Hooper, who claimed to...
The 80s classic gets a Halloween re-release for its 40th anniversary: a supernatural chiller and anti-gentrification satire that came out the same year as Et – Mr Hyde to that film’s Dr Jekyll, perhaps – and one of the most Spielbergian films not actually directed by Steven Spielberg. It is also a movie with its own particular flavour of sadness, owing to the early deaths of two of its stars: Dominique Dunne, daughter of author Dominick Dunne and niece of Joan Didion, killed in the year of the film’s release by her violent ex-boyfriend, and Heather O’Rourke, who died in 1988 at 12 years oldafter suffering cardiac arrest and septic shock connected with a bowel condition.
It was directed by horror maestro Tobe Hooper, who claimed to...
- 10/21/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Julie Messinger—accent on the “mess”—discovers her husband is a serial cheater whose conquests happen to be most of Julie’s best friends. Joan Didion and Joan Micklin Silver took their turns writing the script till Elaine May stepped in to finish the screenplay under a pseudonym. Dyan Cannon stars as Julie and Laurence Luckinbill plays her scheming husband.
The post Such Good Friends appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
The post Such Good Friends appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
- 10/10/2022
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
A long and belated 16 years after his last film, filmmaker Todd Field has returned with something of a masterpiece with “TÁR,” starring Cate Blanchett. A bold, audacious, uncompromising work, “TÁR” centers on power and all its forms, its transactional nature, and the way it’s seemingly granted and taken away with lighting speed in our modern world. The film focuses on conductor Lydia Tár (Blanchett), a composer at the very apex of her field, a polymath, genius, conductor, and Egot who has got more than a few skeletons in her closet.
Continue reading Todd Field Says Cate Blanchett Would Have Starred In His Unproduced Joan Didion-Written Political Thriller at The Playlist.
Continue reading Todd Field Says Cate Blanchett Would Have Starred In His Unproduced Joan Didion-Written Political Thriller at The Playlist.
- 10/10/2022
- by Rodrigo Perez
- The Playlist
Celebrated actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, speaking to an audience at the Zurich Film Festival, shared her experiences filming Celyn Jones and Tom Stern’s “The Almond and the Seahorse,” the valuable instructions received from Lars von Trier, and the challenges of shooting a documentary about mother Jane Birkin.
Based on the play of the same name by Kaite O’Reilly, who wrote the screenplay with Jones, “The Almond and the Seahorse,” which screens in Zurich’s Gala Premieres section, revolves around two couples struggling with severe brain injuries. Toni (Gainsbourg) is dealing with her partner Gwen (Trine Dyrholm), who no longer is the same person that she was before. She finds support in Sarah (Rebel Wilson), whose husband Joe (Jones) is suffering from a similar brain injury.
Gainsbourg said it was these four characters that attracted her to the film. “There are two couples and the two partners of the ones wounded,...
Based on the play of the same name by Kaite O’Reilly, who wrote the screenplay with Jones, “The Almond and the Seahorse,” which screens in Zurich’s Gala Premieres section, revolves around two couples struggling with severe brain injuries. Toni (Gainsbourg) is dealing with her partner Gwen (Trine Dyrholm), who no longer is the same person that she was before. She finds support in Sarah (Rebel Wilson), whose husband Joe (Jones) is suffering from a similar brain injury.
Gainsbourg said it was these four characters that attracted her to the film. “There are two couples and the two partners of the ones wounded,...
- 10/1/2022
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
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