It’s been a minute since writer/director Baz Luhrmann has made a film. Now, he’s revealed a teaser for his upcoming movie Elvis, his first film since 2013’s The Great Gatsby, revealing just a few choice shots of Austin Butler (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as the King himself. The images play over a slightly sinister version of “Suspicious Minds” plays.
Elvis comes from a script from Luhrmann, Sam Bromell (The Get Down), and Lurhmann’s longtime collaborator Craig Pearce (Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet). Joining Butler in the cast are Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Jimmie Rodgers, Darce Montgomery as Steve Binder, Luke Bracey as Jerry Schilling, Kelvin Harrison Jr. as B.B. King, and Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla Presley.
Elvis will explore the relationship between our titular legend and his longtime manager, Hanks’ Colonel Tom Parker. Spanning more than 20 years, the story will show Elvis and Tom’s relationship across a changing America, and the crucial role Priscilla Presley will play in Elvis’s life.
Luhrmann is at home in big, bold films that use music to help shape larger-than-life events, as well as the interior landscapes of almost mythic figures. Yet we know that the heroes of Greek myth often met grim fates (ditto Shakespeare’s lovers in “Romeo & Juliet,” which Luhrmann remixed into a modern telling in his 1996 film), and Presley’s story certainly has a mythic, tragic arc.
Check out the teaser here. Elvis is due in theaters on June 24, 2022.
Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – JULY 22: Austin Butler attends Sony Pictures’ “Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood” Los Angeles Premiere on July 22, 2019 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
When Halle Berry’s directorial debut, Bruised, hits theaters on November 17, it will boast the first-ever all-female hip-hop soundtrack. Berry, who also stars in the film as a disgraced former MMA fighter, Jackie Justice, seeking redemption in and outside the ring, sought the musical talents of some of hip-hop’s most exciting female stars, including Cardi B, HER, Rapsody, Baby Tate, Cardi, Saweetie, and Flo Milli. The full Bruised soundtrack is made up of 13 songs, six of which are originals written specifically for the movie, including Cardi B’s “Bet It,” City Girls’ “Scared,” and “Saweetie’s “Attitude.” Seven additional tunes were inspired by the film.
The soundtrack was produced by Berry and Cardi B and will be available on November 19, before Bruised begins streaming on Netflix on November 24. Speaking with Variety, Berry gushed about the film’s title song “Automatic Woman,” by H.E.R.
“I have to tell you, one of the things I’m most excited about is the title song that H.E.R. sang… and she killed it. So I can’t wait to share with everyone and am super excited.”
H.E.R. is coming off winning the Academy Award, alongside D’Mile and Tiara Thomas, for their song “Fight For You” from Judas and the Black Messiah, becoming the youngest African-American to win an Oscar at 23. Previously, that distinction belonged to Jennifer Hudson, who was 25 when she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Dreamgirls.
Check out the trailer for Bruised here, which features a song from Young MA:
Here’s the synopsis for Bruised:
Jackie Justice (Halle Berry) is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she’s coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi (Adan Canto) and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter (Shamier Anderson) who promises Jackie a life back in the octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny (Danny Boyd, Jr.) — the son she gave up as an infant — shows up at her doorstep. BRUISED marks the directorial debut of Academy Award winner Halle Berry and also stars Adriane Lenox, Sheila Atim, Valentina Shevchenko, and Stephen McKinley Henderson in a triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out.
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At the beginning of Edgar Wright’s thriller Last Night in Soho, budding fashion student Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is living with her grandmother (Rita Tushingham) in Cornwall, wearing clothes she made herself and experiencing visions of her dead mother (Aimee Cassettari), a situation she and her grandmother seem to agree is just a part of who she is. But an acceptance to the London College of Fashion pulls her away to city life, full of lecherous taxi drivers and snotty roommates. Escaping the latter, introverted Eloise moves into a bedsit run by Ms. Collins (Diana Rigg, in her final film role) who keeps strict rules in her dark, unrenovated London home but otherwise mostly stays out of her young tenant’s way.
The trouble comes at night, when Eloise dreams of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), and in her sleep becomes one with this bubbly, bouffanted aspiring singer eager to make her way in the London nightlife scene of 1965. At first, it’s a lot of fun — daylight Eloise is obsessed with the 1960s, anyway, and she’s eager to tuck herself in at her bedsit and plunge into Sandie’s world, where she mirrors the other woman’s outings to the Café de Paris and her flirtation with a talent booker, Jack (Matt Smith). But Jack turns out to be a pimp, not a manager, whom Sandie can’t escape. As it turns out, neither can Eloise.
The two women slowly meld into one, with Eloise dying her hair blonde and adopting a look that mimics Sandie’s, casting off her homemade looks for more sophisticated pieces, like a white mackintosh and a knee-length black lace dress. Both of these 1960s-era silhouettes are a nod to Sandie’s style, but costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux tucked other hints of the women’s convergence into the film’s costuming. “For instance, after the first time she sees Sandie, we then see Eloise in the arts college in a pink shirt, so it’s a little thing going on there,” Dicks-Mireaux said, while on one of the film’s chief male characters (no spoilers, but keep an eye out) the same pocket-handkerchief appears on both his younger and older self. Meanwhile, the white mac, which most clearly demonstrates the characters’ overlap, wasn’t even in the original script. Dicks-Mireaux introduced the idea before shooting. “Chung-hoon Chung, the DP, was a bit more nervous because it’s quite hard to light shining white at night, but he went with it. He thought it might have some ghostly kind of quality.”
Dicks-Mireaux started the process focused on the film’s period elements, looking to movies like Darling, starring Brigitte Bardot, as a reference. The tented, peach-colored dress Sandie wears when we first meet her was built off a vintage paper pattern. “I quite liked the fact that it was a paper pattern and it wasn’t a high couture design piece,” the costume designer said, “so that she could have bought the pattern and then gone to somebody and said, please make this dress.”
But as Sandie’s situation deteriorates, her built looks give way to flimsier garb, summed up in a basement dance floor montage. “We decided there’d be a few years in her descent, so we started at ’65 and she ends in ’68, when all the skirts became very short,” said Dicks-Mireaux, with Sandie going from a prim red dress based off a Nina Ricci pattern to a collection of original vintage dresses, each one shorter than the last. “We wanted this idea that in the red dress, she was still attractive to the punters, because it was still glamorous. But by the time she’d got to the basement club, she wasn’t attracting the same kind of punter.”
Director Edgar Wright and actor Anya Taylor-Joy on the set of their film LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, a Focus Features release. Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh / Focus Features
When Eloise is awake, we most frequently see her working at her school’s atelier. For her style and that of her classmates, the costume designer visited a fashion college. “I took a lot of pictures, and talked to a couple of students and they were saying, well, you get little groups of fashion — certain types of students who wear certain types of fashion.” Each of the main characters was given a portfolio of what they might be designing, and “we had a fashion consultant, as well, to make sure everything in the classroom was as they would be taught, [from] the way it was pinned to how they laid out the whole of the room.” Dicks-Mireaux also worked with the consultant to design looks for a final fashion show that wouldn’t be beyond anything a student could conceivably create.
Other characters took less effort, notably Rigg, famously inimical to fussy costumes. “Diana we had more of a collaboration with because we thought she’d want to be glamorous. But in the end, she didn’t want to be glamorous at all, she wanted to be very comfortable and get her costume on in 15 minutes,” Dicks-Mireaux recalled. “That dictated where she wanted to go with it,” with her final looks remaining fairly subdued. Subtlety was also the order of the day as Eloise’s dreamworld seeps into waking life, with the costume designer offering hints at who in Eloise’s life also existed in Sandie’s, using details from rings to pocket-handkerchiefs. “We tried to put so many layers, so when you watch it again you’ll say, oh, yeah.”
If you missed this weekend’s excellent Saturday Night Live, then you missed not only a bravura performance by host Jonathan Majors but also one of the most compelling live musical performances of the year. Taylor Swift delivered the 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” coming off the heels of her big album release for “Red (Taylor’s Version)” this past Friday, a re-recorded album—Swift had released the original “Red” in 2012. The song is about a breakup, and as Swift moved through the narrative musically, she also performed the stages of the doomed relationship as well. The song was so epic that it was the only one Swift sang during the show (usually, a musically guest plays two 3-4 minute songs). What’s more, this is the first television performance of the extended version of “All Too Well,” and, it accompanied a short film (also titled All Too Well) which Swift directed, which played on a big screen behind her. Like the song, Swift’s film All Too Well is centered on a promising romance that goes sour, with Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) and Dylan O’Brien (Maze Runner) starring.
Swift started out the song playing acoustic guitar, but that was discarded about halfway through as the relationship starts to buckle. Standing on a pile of leaves, Swift progresses from strumming on her acoustic guitar to some light headbanging in the middle, and, in the end, to swaying alongside her two backup singers as they sang an a cappella refrain from the “sacred prayer” outdo. It’s a mesmerizing ten minutes.
Check out the performance below.
And for a taste of the comedy portion of the program, check out Majors in this skit, “March of the Suitors.”
And finally, to stream the full show, check out Hulu here.
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Featured image: SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE — “Jonathan Majors” Episode 1811 — Pictured: Musical guest Taylor Swift performs on Saturday, November 13, 2021 — (Photo by: Will Heath/NBC)
Úna Ní Dhonghaíle, the Dublin-based editor for Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, which Focus Features released November 12, had just attended the film’s premiere in the Northern Ireland capital the day before speaking with The Credits.
“In London, people laughed more. The Belfast audience laughed too, but it wasn’t as loud,” she says. “After the screening, I spoke with a man who said he enjoyed it but it was very emotional because he was also crying.”
Ní Dhonghaíle understood the feeling. She says that from the moment she read Branagh’s “beautiful, magical, poetic, lyrical” script, she knew that people would be touched by his autobiographical story about growing up in working-class Belfast surrounded by family and what it means to leave home.
Actor Jude Hill (left) on the set of BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson/Focus Features
“It is a universal story. My dad is from Northern Ireland — Ken’s family is Protestant working class and mine is Catholic working class,” says Ní Dhonghaíle. “My dad left Northern Ireland in 1960 before this story but there were still such social injustices then; no housing and poor jobs and no voting rights if you were Catholic. When I was growing up, my dad always spoke about the great friendships that existed between Protestants and Catholics. Not many films show that. They focus on the ‘Troubles’ and not the humanity. So as soon as I read Ken’s script I thought, this is a film that I would be privileged to make because I am singing from the same hymn sheet.”
(L to R) Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy” and Ciarán Hinds as “Pop” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Branagh’s coming of age story is set in 1969 Belfast as sectarian violence erupts on the streets of his neighborhood. Shot in black and white, there are bursts of color whenever the ebullient, nine-year-old boy called Buddy (Jude Hill) attends the cinema and delights in watching movies such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and One Million Years B.C.
Belfast is widely considered an Oscar frontrunner not just for Branagh’s script and direction but also for its ensemble cast: Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe as Buddy’s parents and Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds as his grandparents. The most personal of the 19 features Branagh has directed, he wrote the script quickly while in quarantine due to COVID starting in March 2020.
Director Kenneth Branagh (left) and actor Jude Hill (right) on the set of BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit : Rob Youngson / Focus Features
“In just a few months of lockdown, he wrote that script. Can you imagine?” says Ní Dhonghaíle. “It had fifty years of gestation but he wrote it in a short time and it was magnificent.”
Ní Dhonghaíle, whose editing credits include Netflix’s The Crown and Branagh’s 2018 filmAll Is True about the final years of William Shakespeare’s life, was finishing her editing of Branagh’s Death on the Nile, to be released in 2022, when shooting began on Belfast just outside London. The shorthand she shares with Branagh was a major asset since, due to COVID, Ní Dhonghaíle stayed in Dublin while Branagh remained in London.
“We worked by email and telephone,” says Ní Dhonghaíle. “The fact that we worked together prior to lockdown helped, obviously. Ken knew what he wanted; he knew his story and it made him generous in inviting me to collaborate. If I had an idea, he’d say, ‘audition that idea.’ We left no stone unturned. If I suggested something that felt truthful to him, he was able to go with it. [The collaboration] was wonderful but it all starts with the script.”
Working remotely, Ní Dhonghaíle would edit three different versions of a scene from the daily footage. “Ken’s energy knows no bounds. He’d get home at 8 pm after shooting all day and watch all three versions. He welcomed it,” she says.
“The challenge was that so many scenes had a tableau feel to them,” says Ní Dhonghaíle. “The first cut was two hours and 20 minutes with more magic realism. My strength is finding the humanity, the truthfulness in the performances, and preserving it. Because I studied cinematography too, I have an appreciation for the mise-en-scène so I find the shot where the mise-en-scène works strongly — but not so strong that it outstays its welcome. By moving scenes with Ken, we interrogated the storytelling.” For example, she cites the moment when Buddy’s dad must leave home again and return to his job in London. “That scene was supposed to occur earlier,” says Ní Dhonghaíle, “but by moving it later, after the child says he does not want to leave Belfast, that gave a visceral, emotional feel to it. It was no longer expositional; it was more heartbreaking.”
(L to R) Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Ciarán Hinds as “Pop”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Judi Dench as “Granny” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit : Rob Youngson / Focus Features
That scene was one of many that resonated personally for Ní Dhonghaíle and that gives Belfast a universality that seems to connect deeply with audiences. “I have two children and I commute to London so very often I leave at four in the morning. I could empathize as an economic migrant trying to make the best life for your family. That tension exists for so many around the world. I knew it would resonate with a family escaping Syria or anywhere in the world where there is trouble or strife and you must leave your home with just the suitcase you can carry,” she says.
“That spoke to me from the moment I read Ken’s script. It was our passion project. We wanted to do justice for Ken and his family and we also wanted to tell the best story we could. But seeing how much it resonates with audiences — you can’t expect that. It is humbling and heartwarming. I am just so happy for Ken.”
Featured image: (L to R) Caitriona Balfe as “Ma”, Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Lewis McAskie as “Will” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Disney+ Day has lived up to expectations, revealing major announcements from the now 2-year old streaming service, which was launched on November 12, 2019. Those reveals included a lot of Marvel-related content, including plenty of titles that have been rumored but are now official. Here’s a brief tour of what Disney+ has revealed today about their Marvel content.
X-Men ’97 (due in 2023): The beloved animated X-Men series from the mid-90s is being revived by Disney+, which is big news for everyone who loved this show, which ran from 1992 to 1997. Beau DeMayo (The Witcher) will be the series’ head writer.
Spider-Man: Freshman Year: Another animated series that will explore Peter Parker’s early years. Considering the series is set during Peter’s freshmen year, and he was a sophomore during the events of Captain America: Civil War, Freshman Year will explore before Peter’s life before he becomes the youngest Avenger. The series will be led by head writer Jeff Trammel.
Marvel Zombies: Director Bryan Andrews will explore a world in which Marvel superheroes will be battling a zombie plague. This intriguing concept was recently explored in Disney+’s animated Marvel series What If…? (Speaking of What If…?, it’s been renewed for season two.)
Echo: This Hawkeye spinoff was confirmed and will star Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez.
Agatha: House of Harkness: This WandaVision spinoff starring Kathryn Hahn’s bewitching character has been confirmed.
Disney+ also revealed the first footage from the hotly anticipated upcoming Marvel series She-Hulk, starring Tatiana Maslany, Ms. Marvel, starring newcomer Iman Vellani, and Moon Knight, starring Oscar Isaac. Finally, Hawkeye premieres on November 24.
As the Disney+ Day celebrations continue (the streaming service launched on this day, November 12, in 2019), one big reveal the studio has made has to do with the new Predator movie coming our way. Without further ado, we give you the prequel’s title—Prey—and its release date sometime in the summer of 2022 on Hulu. The film, which up until today had been called Skulls, will do something none of the Predator sequels and spinoffs have done—take us back to a time before the 1987 original.
Director Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) directed Prey from a script by Patrick Aison (Kingdom), and the film stars Amer Midthunder (Legion) as the hero of the story. Dakota Beavers and Dane DiLiegro are also in the cast, the latter likely playing the Predator. (DiLiegro has played monsters before, in Sweet Home and American Horror Story.)
Here’s what producers John Fox and John Davis had to say to Colliderabout it when they dished on the movie this past summer:
“It goes back to what made the original Predator movie work. It’s the ingenuity of a human being who won’t give up, who’s able to observe and interpret, basically being able to beat a stronger, more powerful, well-armed force. It actually has more akin to The Revenant than it does any film in the Predator canon. You’ll know what I mean once you see it,” said Davis. Fox added that the time period is early, but wouldn’t elaborate more.
Director John McTiernan’s original Predator gave us the stripped-down, brutal struggle for survival that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s commando Dutch endures in a Central American rainforest against the stronger, more well-armored alien Predator. The six films since, four prequels and the two crossovers with the Alien franchise, have expanded the story around the Predator and the alien race’s origins, but Prey will be the first film in the franchise fully set before the events of the first film.
Here’s the official logline for Prey, which gives you an inkling of the story’s setting and how different this could look from previous installments:
Set in the world of the Comanche Nation 300 years ago, the action-thriller follows Naru, the skilled warrior who fiercely protects her tribe against a highly evolved alien predator.
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What better way to start your Friday than a little Beatles with your coffee. In the first clip from Peter Jackson’s upcoming The Beatles: Get Back, you’ll see the fab four playing “I’ve Got a Feeling,” in footage that was first captured 50 years ago. “I’ve Got A Feeling” eventually ended up on the Beatles’ seminal—and final—album “Let It Be.” So, why are we just seeing it now? That footage, along with 150 hours of audio, was locked in a vault for half a century. The original film recording session, 60-hours worth of it, was shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969, yet it was stored away and went more or less unseen and unheard—until now. Jackson’s docuseries threads all that footage and audio together to give us a look at a seminal recording session in 1969 when the band was attempting to write and record 14 brand new songs before their first live show in more than two years.
The Beatles: Get Back will give us an incredible look inside the Beatles just as the band was coming together, and coming apart. Despite the fact that they were a global phenomenon by 1969, they were nervous about performing on stage after a long stint away from a live audience. They were also attempting to create music up to their standards on an impossible deadline. As superstars, the fab four also had plenty going on in their personal lives, all of which played into their madcap recording sessions and the tensions that arose. During the trailer for the docuseries, there’s a moment where Paul reminds his bandmates that they always did their best work when their backs were against the wall. Their backs were definitely against the wall here, as they were trying to cobble together songs worthy of their previous efforts, and with time running out, and with intrapersonal tensions mounting. The result was one of the most iconic live performances ever, and one of their best albums.
The Beatles: Get Back offers viewers an unprecedented front-row seat to the creation of a masterpiece by one of the world’s most transcendent bands, as well as a chance to take in their last live performance together, the famous rooftop concert on London’s Savile Row.
Check out the first clip below. The Beatles: Get Back hits Disney+ over three days, November 25, 26, and 27.
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Featured image: L-r: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon in “The Beatles: Get Back.” Photo by Linda McCartney. Courtesy Apple Corps Ltd.
Writer/director Kenneth Branagh has mined his childhood experiences in Belfast to create a riveting, sumptuous film. Belfast (opening November 12), which is shot in black and white, captures a time in the summer of 1969 directly following the first riots in the northern part of the city often cited as the beginning of the Troubles. Branagh and his family were in the thick of it, and the film is shot from his perspective through the 9-year-old character Buddy, played by newcomer Jude Hill. Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan play his parents, glamorized versions that capture Branagh’s memory of them, and Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds play his grandparents. The film balances joy and sadness, and expresses the power of family and home in both the best and worst of times, making it perfect viewing as we navigate continued COVID challenges. The Credits spoke to Branagh about his very charming, very personal film.
The film is told from the perspective of the child, Buddy, and he takes part in some really great moments of family togetherness and community. Can you speak to some scenes that best example that, and about the feeling of nostalgic joy with which they are imbued?
My experience as a kid was that these impromptu parties happened a lot. We visited a lot. For instance, the Star Trek scene is inspired by something that happened every Saturday at teatime. Around Five-ish, we would go down to my Granny’s and watch Star Trek. They’d talk about serious things while we watched sci-fi. But in other instances, it would sometimes have to do with somebody getting a bottle of something. It seemed as though the parties happened immediately. My mother absolutely loved dancing. My father, not so much, but he knew she loved it, so he was a willing partner. He used to do jokes, and sometimes little monologues, and everybody seemed to have a turn. It happened very effortlessly. Everyone from our age and younger all the way through to grandparents would be there. So when I came to shoot the film, I knew that this sort of improvised ceilidh was something I wanted to get. In that one scene, the music for it is “Caledonia Swing,” by Van Morrison. Music was incredibly important, and the purchase of a new single meant it would get played over and over again, or there’d be music on the radio. That sense of when things were working, and frankly even when things weren’t working, the rush towards joy, the rush towards something restorative, the rush towards something family-cementing was very important. It was this barely understood but hugely enjoyed experience of knowing exactly where you were. In that world, I had an effortless sense of identity. That’s what the story of the film is unraveling.
(L to R) Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy” and Ciarán Hinds as “Pop” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus FeaturesJamie Dornan (left) stars as “Pa” and Caitriona Balfe (right) stars as “Ma” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Continuing on the theme of Buddy’s perspective, can you talk about your collaboration with Director of Photography Haris Zambarloukos? He often shot from below looking up from Buddy’s view. What are some subjective choices you made in collaboration with your DP to create the look and feel of the film?
Sometimes it was about showing scenes from where Buddy sees it, but sometimes it was also, with certain shot choices, to just go for the feel of what buddy was seeing. An example would be when Dad goes to the back door to face Billy Clanton for the first time. We are very low. His back is huge, and above is a big, intense sky. From my point of view, I said to Harris, ‘You know, this for me this is like a scene where the rancher goes out to the gates of the ranch because the baddies are there, and Ma is back there with the boy, and trying to be defiant and trying to stand as tall as possible. It was also inspired by the poster from Unforgiven, where Clint Eastwood has his hands behind his back. For me, that poster was always about a sense of burden, so I wanted the image to do two things. I wanted to show Buddy sees the big, nervous confrontation for what it is. Also, the difference in the shot size, and the drama of the shot, was part of the unnerving, unbalancing tonal shifts, like the color coming in at surprising moments, to basically have the audience have some experience of this unsettled quality that started as soon as that riot happened. We never really knew where we were after that. Life was lived on a high alert. Without annoying the audience, I wanted the sense of just shifts happening at not necessarily conventional cutting rhythms or necessarily observing what you might expect from a traditional three-act structure. Some of that comes from this memory piece from the nine-year-old’s perspective.
(L to R) Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Ciarán Hinds as “Pop”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Judi Dench as “Granny” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit : Rob Youngson / Focus Features
There is the influence of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs in some beautifully composed shots.
The sort of photographic look was about embracing the idea of placing people in frames. An example is in that same scene where we look at Dad from behind, we also have Mum watching from a window. We have people watching through things. In the case of Caitríona, she’s a beautiful woman in a broken-down window frame, with the black falling away, very dark. It’s like a sort of Renaissance portrait coming to life. She’s very still, as many people are when they’re having to listen to these dangerous things. There’s that sense of seeing through things, seeing through the heat haze, seeing through banisters. There’s a great shot, and I say a great shot because it’s Harris’s shot, where we are looking at the brother, and in the mirror it shows Mum listening, but the voice talking is Pa. You just see this worrying presence over there, and the kid is slightly out of focus. She’s sharp, the kid’s out of focus, and Dad’s voice is the one in the middle of the conversation. Those kinds of slightly unsettling elements to the photography were conscious. It was a lovely collaboration.
There are some great movies of the time as well as a stage play of A Christmas Carol that are the only images in color. It seems to suggest that during this very hard time, stage and screen were an escape that might have been what led you to your career.
Yes. Those experiences were incredibly immersive. That’s what I love about film, and I go all the time still myself. That’s no kind of busman’s holiday. For me, I go for the sheer joy of it. In the 60s, the movies were usually widescreen and the color was so saturated that it was about as different from the often rain-filled Belfast as I could imagine, and certainly as colorful and inviting as an absolute opposite to the danger that basically everybody was having to negotiate. It was my one trip to the theater for many years to come to see that production of A Christmas Carol, and I think it was that sort of storytelling creativity that sparked my imagination. With the cinema, it was the size of the image and the depth of the color. With the theater, it was just the lightness of it.
(L to R) Caitriona Balfe as “Ma”, Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Lewis McAskie as “Will” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit : Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Coming through the pandemic, it really is for many an inspiration to seek kindness. What do you hope for or want for your film to do for people needing a balm after such a hard time and the losses we’ve all had?
Well, I hope for those, like me, lucky enough to have access to family or friends, that we reengage with what is positive and valuable in our lives in the minutiae, and every little moment that one can have to enjoy friendship, laughter, and compassion. I think it’s key that we try to understand those we face every day and have compassion for the fact that he or she is doing their best, and so is everyone else. And maybe if you start to understand that, you release a little pressure and allow space for some laughter in your life, which is always good medicine.
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Featured image: Director Kenneth Branagh (left) and actor Jude Hill (right) on the set of BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Loss and grief permeate Mothering Sunday, a class-crossed romance set in 1924 England as it reels from the collective trauma of the Great War. Director Eva Husson says the movie’s somber mood matched that of the cast and crew since the film was shot in 2020 between pandemic lockdowns.
“I think all of us felt deeply connected to the emotions of the story. It had an effect on us. We were going through the pandemic so it was surreal how close it mirrored the sense of grief in our lives, the collective loss, and how we were all trying to find the beauty and value of life,” says Husson, interviewed during the recent Toronto International Film Festival.
Based on the novel by Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday, which Sony Pictures Classics opens in NY and LA on November 19, layers loss and despair with youthful passion, all centered on one life-altering Sunday as two neighboring upper-crust families who lost sons in the war, the Nivens (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman) and the Sheringhams (Craig Crosbie and Emily Woof), put on brave faces for a mother’s day picnic. Meanwhile, the Sheringham’s sole surviving son, Paul (Josh O’Connor, best known for playing another scion of privilege, Prince Charles in The Crown), is engaged in a secret romance with the Nivens’ orphaned housemaid, budding writer Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young). The lovers’ furtive rendezvous in the Nivens’ empty house unfolds leisurely, until another tragedy strikes.
Husson, who was born in France, acted in movies as a teenager then studied directing at the American Film Institute, wrote and directed the features Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story(2016) andGirls of the Sun (2018). She says that when the Mothering Sunday adaptation by Alice Birch came her way, “it was what I’d been waiting for. I’m a curious being. I like being challenged and I definitely wanted something very far away from Girls of the Sun,” a topical drama about Kurdish women resistance fighters in Iraq.
But Swift’s novella with its shifting timeframes proved formidable for a screen adaptation. Husson says she and Birch “had to start all over in the editing phase. That’s why it took us seven months. It felt fluid on the page and then it wasn’t in the editing, which is normal and expected.” Husson credits producers Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley for “understanding the artistic process and what needs to be done. I felt very blessed; I made the right choice to team up with them.”
To convey 1920s England and its entrenched class system, Husson’s research included reading the diaries of servants. “They were chilling — the absence of empathy of the [upper] classes. You had good employers and people who were very decent but you also had those who were absolutely atrocious. You would just get crushed until the end of your life. Maids would remain maids until their late 70s or when they could not work anymore but there was no retirement. Collective support did not exist. That is hard to comprehend or translate. For someone like Jane, with her intelligence and the instinct to survive, the connection with Paul is meaningful enough to keep her going and nourishes her despite all the tragic things.”
A scene from “Mothering Sunday.” Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics/www.robertviglasky.com
The film’s centerpiece scene is the intimate afternoon encounter between Paul and Jane before he must leave for the picnic where his engagement to Emma will be announced. As a former actress, Husson understood the vulnerability of both actors who are naked for much of the scene.
“Nudity … must move the story forward, If not, what is the point of it? When Paul undresses Jane, in traditional films, it’s more the male gaze. But I do not show Jane naked at that moment. It is all about what she feels: closeness and voices and touch.”
Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) and Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor) in “Mothering Sunday.” Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics/www.robertviglasky.com
Jane and Paul’s physical and emotional closeness contrasts with the other characters who have repressed their emotions. Husson understood this, too. “Ultimately you have to dig deep inside and access your inner world. I just happen to come from a family where that kind of repression is the norm, on my dad’s side. Those characters felt very familiar to me. I find it heartbreaking and touching and I wanted to pay homage to that,” she says. “It is intrinsic to British culture. At the same time, there’s an extraordinary funny yet tragic humor that comes though in Olivia Colman’s one liners.”
Mrs. Niven (Olivia Colman) and Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) in “Mothering Sunday.” Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics/www.robertviglasky.com
Mothering Sunday portrays a very different society than the one usually associated with “the roaring twenties,” says Husson. “Everyone was in grief mode for what just happened. A lot of men had just disappeared; children and partners and future fathers. What a collective sense of loss and shock. So no wonder that when you find a connection like Paul finds with Jane, you lose yourself. Feeling safe is one of the most precious things in life. It’s naive to think that moment will translate to all of life, but it is essential and no one can take that away from her or from him.”
Featured image: Donald (Sope Dirisu) and Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) in “Mothering Sunday.” Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics/www.robertviglasky.com
Set in 1920s Harlem and based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, Passing, actress Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut tracks the relationship of two light-skinned Black women, Irene and Clare, who’ve taken opposite paths toward safety and recognition. Former childhood acquaintances, a chance run-in reveals the women’s abiding interest in one another, and as they reinsert themselves into each other’s lives, the differences between Irene and Clare take their toll on the stability each woman had achieved.
Irene (Tessa Thompson) lives in Harlem with her doctor husband, Brian (André Holland), and their two young sons. The family is Black. Clare (Ruth Negga), whom Irene runs into at a fashionable hotel on a hot summer’s day, is at first almost unrecognizable to her old friend — passing as a white woman, Clare is married to a rich white man, John (Alexander Skarsgård). During their accidental reunion, she seems airily glib about the precarious life she’s built for herself, and the world she left behind. When John shows up at the hotel room, he announces to Irene, in her only passing moment in the film, that he hates Black people, despite believing that he doesn’t know any.
Irene’s quiet fretfulness deepens as Clare, suddenly eager to experience her old life in Harlem, gets involved with Irene’s civic work and her world at home with Brian and the boys. Shot in black and white, using lomo anamorphic lenses from the 1970s, and cropped to the center to achieve a 4:3 aspect ratio, Passing has a vintage look that’s hard to tack onto any particular era. Noting that Hall turned down financing offers in color, knowing from the start the film would work best in black and white, cinematographer Edu Grau (A Single Man, The Gift, The Way Back) spoke with us about how he used lighting to play with skin tone and our perception of it, enclosed characters in their beehive-like worlds thanks to the 4:3 aspect ratio, and what he took from Larsen’s original novel to get the storytelling exactly right.
How did you get started shooting a black and white film?
We shot on a color camera because that’s the market standard, but we never even considered making this movie in color. It was always conceived and thought of as a black and white movie. But you have to use a color camera because the black and white cameras are not as good.
In that case, how do you account for the color, knowing the final product needs to be in black and white?
Basically, you lose all the color saturation in all the monitors so you’re only seeing the movie in black and white. There are a few things you have to consider and they change, obviously, from color to black and white. Especially the color contrast — there is no color separation if the wall is red and the face is the same level of contrast or brightness. You have to work around it. You have to use the black and white, which is quite easy to use and quite beautiful. Black and white, at the end of the day, is a simplification of an image — you lose the color as a noise or disturbing element. It’s all about contrast and brightness and the use of light and shadow. It’s a joy as a cinematographer to be given that opportunity, to play with black and white, and the light and shadows are telling you something — about the characters, about the story, about how we perceive that. It’s actually part of the storytelling. It’s always a joy when that happens when the form and the meaning are related.
The film opens on very light, bright black and white tones. How did you arrive at that?
Rebecca Hall, the director, was always very adamant at having a very bright, summer feel for the movie to not disguise to the audience what color the skin was of each character at the very beginning. So you have these questions. At the end of the day, it’s about this, skin color, and who is passing for what. It was important for us to make a movie about colorism in black and white, and not being able, at the beginning of the film, to tell who was who. At the beginning, it’s summer, and our character Irene, played by Tessa Thompson, is in a white world. We wanted to portray that that character is kind of undercover. It was very interesting, the fact that, making that part of the film so white, enabled us to explore the other dynamics of color throughout the movie. We start in white, we explore the grayness, we go into pure shadows, pure black at some point, and then we end up in white at the end scene as well. We were trying to play with black and white and all the shades in between.
In contrast to the opening scenes, Irene’s Harlem brownstone is dim, cozy, and enveloping. How did you decide how you wanted to light the brownstone interior?
That was the world where Irene shows us who she truly is. That’s why it’s full of mirrors. That’s why there’s brightness but also darkness. When we’re at home, in our nest, we show our true identity, more than the one we show to the world. For us, it was important to get into that intimacy of Irene and discover who she truly is, even though she’s showing a different side of herself to the world. We discover her Blackness. I also liked the idea that her whole world is a beehive. The way it’s framed, the 4:3 aspect ratio, and how enclosed the framings are, there are no surroundings. Four-three doesn’t allow you to show a lot of the world; it’s very character-centric. They are enclosed in that aspect ratio, in the world they’re living in. What we’re portraying here is how this world gets disrupted by exterior forces that we can’t always control. In this case, it’s a friend from childhood who comes in, is passing, and lives a totally different life than Irene, even though they came from the same place. We liked that way of playing that the home is the safe place but it’s also your true identity, and that’s where you’re more scared or challenged by yourself. You can escape the world, but you can’t escape yourself. And Irene has to deal with her world and all her personal issues when she’s at home. A lot of the drama in the movie happens in her home.
Totally. We looked at Hitchcock, British period, old classics, black and white, 4:3. But we also didn’t want to make our film too period-y. We also looked at new 4:3 black and white films, and we learned from all of them and just went our own way. It was like, so, what would tell our story the best and hasn’t been done and is truly contemporary? That’s also why we shot on anamorphic lenses, which didn’t exist during the black and white era of filmmaking. We added grain later. We did a lot of new techniques and new compositions as well. We kind of mixed and matched. We’re telling a story that happens in the late 1920s in Harlem, [but] we didn’t want it to be seen as old. We see this as if it has no time. It’s still happening. We’re all passing for something all the time. We’re all hiding something from the world. In a way we also wanted it to be a movie that can be watched and rewatched and it doesn’t get old. That’s what we tried to achieve, a movie that looked and felt contemporary and old, and also difficult to say when it was shot.
Absolutely. After I got the script, I read the book. All the subtext of the book was difficult to understand by only reading the script. So I thought, you know, it was very interesting to learn about the characters, to deep dive into the story. So I could understand what was going through the characters’ minds, basically. That also enabled me to put the camera and the light in a certain place and understand the storytelling a lot better. I thought it was an important part of the pre-production work. The adaptation of the book that Rebecca did is phenomenal. It’s very true to the book. But there are some nuances she created based on the characters that were not in the book, so it was interesting to see both sides of the story and understand it.
How was working with Rebecca Hall as a director?
I’ve worked twice with Rebecca as an actress, on The Awakening and The Gift. I was the DP, and so we knew for sure that we got along. We come from a similar background, we have a similar sensibility in a lot of ways. Working with her was a joy. She’s a super talented smart director with a vision. It’s not the usual thing. She has a strong vision of how she wants the movie to be, feel, and when you have a doubt or question, she always has the right answer. It was a super productive and interesting learning experience for me. I’ve done 19 or so movies and I still learn a lot, shooting with Rebecca. It was super challenging, respectful, and enjoyable.
The official trailer for writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos is here, giving us a longer glimpse at Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as the legendary Hollywood power couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Sorkin’s film will follow Lucy and Desi during a particularly tumultuous week of production on their groundbreaking, massively popular show I Love Lucy. Lucy finds herself at the center of a political smear campaign and the couple’s romantic and professional life comes under unbearable scrutiny—all while they need to put on a show.
Sorkin knows his way around a story set behind the scenes of a television production. His shows Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Newsroom were both set on set, on a Saturday Night Live-like sketch show in the former, and on a CNN-like news program in the latter. In Being the Ricardos, Sorkin has set his sights on one of the most transformative talents of the 20th century in Lucille Ball (Desi Arnaz was no slouch, either), and his ear for dialogue seems tailor-made for the legendary comedienne. Being the Ricardos will take us from a Monday table read through the live show on Friday and behind the closed doors of one of the most transformative television shows ever made. It will also take inside one of Hollywood’s most fruitful, fitful relationships.
Joining Kidman and Bardem are a deep bench of great performers, including J.K. Simmons, Jake Lacy, Nina Arianda, Alia Shawkat, Linda Lavin, Clark Gregg, and Tony Hale. Being the Ricardos will open in theaters on December 10, and then onto Amazon Prime Video on December 21.
Check out the official trailer here:
For more on Amazon Prime Video, check out these stories:
“People would say, ‘wow, you’re so braved, you’re so empowered,'” Alanis Morissette says at the top of the official trailer for HBO’s Jagged, a documentary that tracks her rise to stardom, “I can’t write all these songs without obviously being disempowered,” she adds. For those of us who came of age in the 90s, Alanis Morissette really did seem like a force of nature, and her album “Jagged Little Pill” seemed to come out of nowhere in 1995 and change, or at least tilt, the musical landscape overnight. Yet as is often the case for success stories, especially for women, and especially for women entering the male-dominated world of rock, Morissette’s rise was far from smooth. She succeeded because her talent was undeniable, and her strength proved greater than the gatekeepers who have rather seen the Canadian gal stick to writing dance-pop songs like her first two albums.
Jagged comes from director Alison Klayman, who utilizes excellent archival footage from Morissette’s career and chart’s her course, from a young Canadian pop star to the young woman whose skills were so undeniable that even America’s crusty, misogynistic rock gatekeepers couldn’t deny her. “Was there room for Alanis in rock?” one person asks during the trailer, “no,” he continues, “but you try ignoring the song…you’re not going to write a better song than ‘You Oughta Know.'”
“Empowerment as a young woman in the 90s singing about it was not good news for the patriarchy,” says Morisette, “you were just immediately shut down.” Yet Morissette would not be denied, and Jagged will reveal how she broke into the male-dominated world of rock and prevailed, finding her own voice in the process.
Check out the trailer below. Jagged hits HBO on November 18.
Here’s the official synopsis for Jagged:
HBO’s JAGGED, directed by Alison Klayman (“The Brink,” “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”) and executive produced by Bill Simmons (HBO’s “Andre The Giant,” “Showbiz Kids”), continues the Music Box series, taking viewers to 1995, when a 21-year-old Alanis Morissette burst onto the music scene with the first single off her ground-breaking album, “Jagged Little Pill.” With a rawness and emotional honesty that resonated with millions, and despite a commercial landscape that preferred its rock stars to be male, she took radio and MTV by storm and the album went on to sell 33 million copies. Featuring an in-depth interview with Alanis, as well as never-before-seen archival material, JAGGED explores her beginnings as a young Canadian pop star, the rocky path she faced navigating the male-dominated music industry, and the glass ceiling she shattered on her journey to becoming the international icon and empowered artist she is today.
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
We are just a month and change away from swallowing the red pill and seeing Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix: Resurrections. As we near the premiere date, some of the film’s stars are starting to talk about their experiences making the movie. Granted, no one is spilling any beans (or blue and red pills, as it were), but for newcomers to the franchise like Jessica Henwick, getting to take part in Wachowski’s iconic sci-fi series was an intense experience. Not only was leveling up to The Matrix‘s caliber of fight choreography a challenge—to say nothing of doing it with Neo himself, Keanu Reeves—but so, too, was the sudden three-month break in filming due to the pandemic.
Henwick plays Bugs, a new character with a very familiar tattoo—a white rabbit—the very same tat that once lured Neo (Keanu Reeves) into his original quest in the very first film. Henwick is one of the film’s new faces, alongside Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Christina Ricci, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. They’re all joining Reeves and fellow franchise veterans Carrie-Anne Moss and Jada Pinkett Smith. For Henwick, no stranger to epic productions having worked on Game of Thrones (she played Nymeria Sand, one of the Sand Snakes) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (as X-wing pilot Jessika Pava), the action sequences and shooting style of The Matrix: Resurrections was next level.
Speaking to Colliderabout her new anime series Blade Runner: Black Lotus, Henwick dished on her experiences entering the world of The Matrix:
“That’s somewhere I felt pressure because those fights are so seminal [to The Matrix]. Those moments from the original have stayed in my head, so many of those fight beats, [so] that was really where I was intimidated going into it. I knew I had to be performing up here. You’re performing with Keanu. It’s John Wick. He knows what he’s doing. You can’t hold him back, in any way. I had to give it my all. I devoted myself to it. We trained pretty hard in the run-up and we kept training all the way through filming. When we were shut down for COVID and we went off three months, I still was at home training every day, even though we didn’t know if we were going back. When we got shut down for COVID, Lana said, ‘Well, maybe that’s it. Maybe we won’t come back and film the rest of it. Maybe the new Matrix will go down as this legendary film which is incomplete, and no one will ever be able to see it. Maybe that’s what this is meant to be.’ And we were all going, ‘No, you have to finish the film.’ But she really did toy with the idea of just calling it quits…For me, even though I didn’t know whether we would come back, I couldn’t think about that, and so I trained throughout the entire break because I just had to focus. I just had to be positive and go, ‘No, we’re gonna go finish the film. We have to. This can’t be how my Matrix journey ends.'”
We know that they did come back and finish filming and that Henwick’s Matrix journey will continue to the film’s premiere date. The Matrix: Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max on December 22.
For more on The Matrix: Resurrections, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: KEANU REEVES as Neo/Thomas Anderson in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions’ “THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
You may have heard of a little South Korean Netflix series called Squid Game. Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, Squid Game was an astronomical success story for Netflix and all involved, so a second season of the international sensational seemed inevitable. Yet it wasn’t until now, thanks to an interview with the Associated Press, that we got confirmation the show that brought in 130 million viewers will indeed return.
Here’s what Hwang Dong-Hyuk told the AP:
“So there’s been so much pressure, so much demand and so much love for a second season. So I almost feel like you leave us no choice! But I will say there will indeed be a second season. It’s in my head right now. I’m in the planning process currently. But I do think it’s too early to say when and how that’s going to happen. So I will promise you this…Gi-hun will come back, and he’ll do something for the world.”
For the seven of you who haven’t seen Squid Game yet, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is the main character, an unemployed man living with his ailing mother who has a penchant for racking up gambling debts with the wrong people. The series posits a world in which Gi-hun and likewise down-on-the-luck individuals, including a North Korean refugee, a loathsome gangster, a once-promising but now deeply in debt businessman, and a Pakistani immigrant all compete in a series of lethal children’s games. The winner will rake in a windfall of some 45.6 billion won. The losers all die.
The first season was a masterclass in how to create bingeable TV. The performances, the production design, the costumes, the perfect pacing, the mystery (who is putting on these games, and why?), the fact it takes direct aim at rapacious capitalism and its inherent violence on the lower class—once you started watching Squid Game it felt like there was no escape. Spoiler alert—while season two only exists in the mind of Hwang Dong-Hyuk at the moment, what we know is Gi-hun will be at its center, having come out on top of the Squid Game and now, a changed man, hellbent on taking down everyone involved in the sadistic enterprise.
The cast for season one was sensational. Joining Lee Jung-jae was Park Hae-soo, Jung Ho-yeon, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung. Season two will require almost an entirely new cast, save for Lee Jung-jae and, we’re guessing, undercover cop Jun-Ho (Donald Chang), who we saw shot and fall off a cliff, but, crucially, we never saw him actually die. This usually means the character will make a dramatic return.
Check the interview clip below with creator Hwang Dong-hyuk.
COMEBACK SQUID: Hwang Dong-hyuk, the director, creator, writer of #SquidGame says the show will be back with more Gi-hun adventures. pic.twitter.com/uqC1DIdZqy
Writer/director Mike Mills has quietly made some of the most humane, affecting films of the past decade. Two standouts were 2010’s Beginners, which focused on the reverberations after a young man (played by Ewan McGregor) learns that his father (Christopher Plummer) has terminal cancer—and a young male lover. The film was, as the New York Times Denis Lim wrote at the time, “frankly autobiographical.” It was also one of that year’s most surprising, tender films. Then came 20th Century Women in 2016, a semi-autobiographical film that centered on a teenage boy and the women who help raise him. Those women are played by Annette Bening, as his mother, Elle Fanning as his best friend, and Greta Gerwig as a tenant staying at his mother’s boarding house in 1979 Southern California. With 20th Century Women Mills had delivered another potent, emotionally resonant film that was as joyous to watch as it seemed it was to act in.
Which brings us to the official trailer for C’mon C’mon, Mills’ latest film, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny, a middle-aged radio journalist traveling the country interviewing kids about their lives and where they think the world is headed. Shot in black-and-white, the film tracks Johnny’s journey as he ultimately agrees to help his sister, Viv (Gaby Hoffman) take care of her 9-year old son, Jesse (Woody Norman). What follows is a transformational relationship for both Johnny and Jesse, but this being a Mills film, it comes at an oblique angle, funny, authentic, and bittersweet.
This is Phoenix’s first role since Joker, and he really couldn’t have taken on anything as far removed from that performance as he does here. Critics have already seen—and loved—the film. This official trailer will give you a sense of why.
C’mon C’mon hits theaters on November 19, 2021. Check out the trailer below.
Here’s the official synopsis for C’mon C’mon:
Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) and his young nephew (Woody Norman) forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they are unexpectedly thrown together in this delicate and deeply moving story about the connections between adults and children, the past and the future, from writer-director Mike Mills.
Featured image: Joaquin Phoenix, Woody Norman (L-R). Courtesy of A24.
Leonardo DiCaprio gravitates towards difficult roles, so it’s hardly surprising he’s in final talks to play the infamous religious cult leader Jim Jones in MGM’s upcoming film. Deadlinereports that DiCaprio is close to finalizing the deal for the feature written by Scott Rosenberg that’s centered on Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple religious group and the driving force behind the November 1978 mass suicide—of more than 900 people— at his Jonestown settlement in 1978. Jones and a few others masterminded the massacre using cyanide-laced punch at their jungle commune in Guyana.
This wouldn’t be the first time DiCaprio played a historical figure. He took on the difficult role of Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, the dashing conman Frank Abagnale in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, and the fur trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass in Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant, which earned DiCaprio an Oscar for Best Actor.
DiCaprio would both star and produce the film alongside Jennifer Davisson for their Appian Way production company. Rosenberg, who penned Venom, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and Jumanji: The Next Level will also executive produce.
DiCaprio can next be seen in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, where he plays an astronomer who has made an awful discovery—a Mount Everest-sized comet orbiting within the solar system is on a collision course with Earth. After that, you’ll see him reteaming once again with Martin Scorsese in Killers of the Flower Moon, the adaptation of David Grann’s book about the murders of wealthy members of the Osage people in Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s after massive oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. DiCaprio plays schemer Ernest Burkhart in the film, after originally signing on for the role of Tom White, one of the federal agents sent to investigate the case. DiCaprio ultimately switched roles with Jesse Plemons.
Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 28: Leonardo DiCaprio speaks onstage during the 2019 Global Citizen Festival: Power The Movement in Central Park on September 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Global Citizen)
Director Pablo Larraín did not set out to make a horror movie with Spencer. But his unconventional portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales (Kristen Stewart), set over Christmas weekend in the early 1990s as her marriage to Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) is unraveling along with her psychological state, offers an eerie interpretation of the British royal’s turbulent inner world.
“It’s not that I wanted to make a horror movie. I wanted to make a movie from her perspective and the difficulties she was facing,” says Larraín in a Zoom interview the day before Neon released Spencer in theaters.
“As with the [other] movies I’ve made, I can have a very specific idea of what it is but I know that I am entering a void of uncertainties, and instead of being scared by them I try to embrace them, to incorporate them into the process,” Larraín says. “I knew that once we enter [Diana’s] point of view, it could turn into a psychological state of panic and horror.”
Larraín, the Chilean director best known in the US for his English-language debut Jackie (2016) starringNatalie Portman, found the film’s tone of gothic horror and haunting poetry in moments that include Diana wandering alone through her abandoned childhood home and the specter of Anne Boleyn, the beheaded wife of King Henry VIII. But certainly, he knew that his star was up to the task of taking Diana into an otherworldly realm. He says Stewart, who seems to have a lock on a best actress Oscar nomination for her fearless portrayal of Diana, British accent and all, was always his first choice for the demanding role.
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
“I called her on the phone and talked to her about it and it was a very odd conversation because there was a lot of silence. We were both listening to each other and I was wondering, are we going to do this? And she said, ‘Dude’ — in a very American accent — and then we just got right into the process,” Larraín says. “Once you have a Chilean director, then anything is possible, I guess. So the idea that Kristen Stewart is American was not a problem. It was most challenging for her more than for anyone else. I cannot articulate a very long or responsible answer [about why she was cast]. The truth is, it just felt right. There are things related to mystery that Diana had that Kristen Stewart has. She’s a very gifted actress but it can be indescribable, which is what you ultimately want.She took it very seriously and she went for it. But the most important thing is to have the proper emotional approach.”
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
Larraín credits screenwriter Steven Knight for the film’s emotional center: Diana’s relationship with her two young sons, William (Jack Nielen) and Harry (Freddie Spry). But that focus grew sharper as shooting progressed. “I admit that I thought the movie we were making was more about identity. But, as we talked about, there are the things you discover as you make it. Thanks to those boys who played Williams and Harry, we were making a movie mostly about motherhood,” he says. “There are probably very few things I have in common with them for a million reasons but I saw the reality of someone who is protected by a mother. That is very beautiful and it’s probably the most relevant thing that Diana ever had in her life and it made her stronger.”
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
A mother trying to shield her young children from the glare of the world’s spotlight is just one of many things Diana shares with Jacqueline Kennedy, as Larraín depicted in Jackie which was set in the days following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“I don’t think this movie would exist without Jackie,” says Larraín. “It gave me the angle and the energy to approach this story. There are many things in common — they were women who helped shape the last half of the century; they were fashion icons and pop icons; they were linked to powerful families and powerful husbands. They had tragic lives but were able to shape their own identity in that context. They weren’t just witnesses or victims to their environment; they were able to stand out and say ‘this is what I am,’ and were able to struggle and go there. That’s why we relate to them. If Jackie is a movie about memory and grief, I think Spencer isabout motherhood and identity.”
Larraín also credits Knight for the important dynamic between Diana and some of the servants who prove to be closer allies than members of the royal family. “She did have a lot of interaction and was very close to people on the staff. Most of her friends were there. Steve chose to have the family more in the background and have the servants, especially Maggie who is played by Sally Hawkins, and Darren who’s played by Sean Harris, as most close to her and he created an intimacy through those characters. It was a very bright idea because what you can see in those scenes is a very honest Diana. She’s not expected to do what she is ‘supposed to do’ in front of Charles or the queen.She’s just talking to someone [with whom] she can open her heart.”
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
Besides Knight and Stewart, Larraín surrounded himself with top-notch craftspeople including French cinematographer Claire Mathon, famous for her lensing of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Atlantics in 2019. Mathon shot Spencer mostly in 16mm says Larraín, with one-third of the film, the night scenes, shot in 35mm. Longtime collaborator Sebastián Sepúlveda, who edited Larrain’s Jackie, Ema (2019), and The Club (2015), also edited Spencer.
But one of the most important contributions may have come from an unlikely source: Larraín’s own mother. The director says he drew on his memory of how much she loved Diana.
“I saw my mother connect with Diana as I grew up,” he says. “When Diana died in 1997, I saw her very sad and I realized that hundreds of millions of people around the world were moved as well. I realized that Diana was a person born to privilege and had access to all these things but was trapped inside a complicated, very unusual, very particular family situation because it is the only family like that on the planet trapped in history and tradition.”
Remember last month when Chris Pratt revealed he was on set for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but it turned out that filming hadn’t yet begun? Well, filming has officially begun. Writer/director James Gunn shared an image from set on Twitter, so now we know that the galactic gang really is back at it.
The photo includes the usual suspects from the Guardians franchise—Sean Gunn (Kraglin), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Dave Bautista (Drax), and Karen Gillan (Nebula). You’ll notice two new faces, however. One of those belongs to Will Poulter, who was recently cast to play Adam Warlock. Another new face in the photo is Chukwudi Iwuji, who plays Clemson Murn in Gunn’s upcoming HBO Max series Peacemaker, which is a spinoff from The Suicide Squad. There’s no word yet on whether this means that Iwuji is, in fact, in Vol. 3.
Check out Gunn’s tweet here:
It’s been a strange & long & at times challenging journey to get here, but the obstacles along the way have only made this moment more blissful. Back on set with my Guardians family for the first day of shooting #gotgvol3pic.twitter.com/DrF8ZV8bvz
Not much is known about the plot of Vol. 3 at this juncture, of course. Poulter’s casting as Warlock was a big reveal, confirming that the promise of the post-credit scene in Vol. 2 which introduced the character was now going to be fulfilled. We also know that some of the Guardians will be appearing in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder, which likely means that we might not be getting much Thor and Star-Lord frenemy action in Vol. 3.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is set to hit theaters on May 5, 2023.
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Sometimes it’s the smallest detail that makes the biggest difference. This is the case in the new poster for Spider-Man: No Way Home, which features everyone’s favorite web-slinger (Tom Holland) facing off against the supervillain Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), whose mechanical tentacles dominate the majority of the image. But, in the background, another legendary supervillain is visible—yup, that’s Green Goblin.
This is technically the first bit of concrete proof that the Green Goblin, the villain in Sam Raimi’s very first Spider-Man when Tobey Maguire was Peter Parker, will be in the film. Sure, we saw some of the Goblin’s exploding pumpkin bombs and heard his laugh in the trailer, we but we never saw him. Now we do. And this Green Goblin reveal isn’t the only hint in the poster—you’ll notice a yellow lightning bolt, which is the prime color of Electro (Jamie Foxx), who we met in Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 when Andrew Garfield was Spidey. We’re still waiting on confirmation that the man who played Green Goblin in the first Spider-Man, Willem Dafoe, is reprising his role. At least we know Goblin’s in the film.
The reason these vanquished villains are able to return in No Way Home is because Peter Parker, in a desperate plea for help from Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), accidentally opens up the multiverse and makes it possible. Beginning where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off, the new film opens with the world knowing Spider-Man’s identity, so Parker turns to Doctor Strange to try and erase that knowledge from everyone who found out. An accident during the spell, however, unleashes the multiverse, and suddenly Peter Parker is forced to deal with villains from across said multiverse.
Check out the poster here:
The poster for “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Courtesy of Sony Pictures.
Here’s the official synopsis for Spider-Man: No Way Home:
For the first time in the cinematic history of Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood hero is unmasked and no longer able to separate his normal life from the high-stakes of being a Super Hero. When he asks for help from Doctor Strange the stakes become even more dangerous, forcing him to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man.
Spider-Man: No Way Home swings into theaters on December 17, 2021.
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