ReportWire

Tag: Movie premieres

  • Projects featuring Lady Bird Johnson’s voice offer new looks at the late first lady

    Projects featuring Lady Bird Johnson’s voice offer new looks at the late first lady

    [ad_1]

    DALLAS — Texas college student Jade Emerson found herself entranced as she worked on a podcast about Lady Bird Johnson, listening to hour upon hour of the former first lady recounting everything from her childhood memories to advising her husband in the White House.

    “I fell in love very quickly,” said Emerson, host and producer of the University of Texas podcast “Lady Bird.” “She kept surprising me.”

    The podcast, which was released earlier this year, is among several recent projects using Johnson’s own lyrical voice to offer a new look at the first lady who died in 2007. Other projects include a documentary titled “The Lady Bird Diaries” that premieres Monday on Hulu and an exhibit in Austin at the presidential library for her husband, Lyndon B. Johnson, who died in 1973.

    Lady Bird Johnson began recording an audio diary in the tumultuous days after her husband became president following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The library released that audio about a decade after her death. It adds to recorded interviews she did following her husband’s presidency and home movies she narrated.

    “I don’t know that people appreciated or realized how much she was doing behind the scenes and I think that’s the part that’s only just now really starting to come out,” said Lara Hall, LBJ Presidential Library curator.

    “Lady Bird: Beyond the Wildflowers” shows library visitors the myriad ways Johnson made an impact. Hall said the exhibit, which closes at the end of the year, has been so popular that the library hopes to integrate parts of it into its permanent display.

    In making her podcast, Emerson, who graduated from UT in May with a journalism degree, relied heavily on the interviews Johnson did with presidential library staff over the decades after her husband left the White House in 1969.

    “Just to have her telling her own story was so fascinating,” Emerson said. “And she just kept surprising me. Like during World War II when LBJ was off serving, she was the one who ran his congressional office in the 1940s. She had bought a radio station in Austin and went down to Austin to renovate it and get it going again.”

    The new documentary from filmmaker Dawn Porter, based on Julia Sweig’s 2021 biography “Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight” and a podcast hosted by the author, takes viewers through the White House years. From advising her husband on strategy to critiquing his speeches, her influence is quickly seen.

    Porter also notes that Johnson was “a fierce environmentalist” and an advocate for women. She was also a skilled campaigner, Porter said. Among events the documentary recounts is Johnson’s tour of the South aboard a train named the “Lady Bird Special” before the 1964 election.

    With racial tensions simmering following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, President Johnson sent his wife as his surrogate. “She does that whistle-stop tour in the very hostile South and does it beautifully,” Porter said.

    “She did all of these things and she didn’t ask for credit, but she deserves the credit,” Porter said.

    The couple’s daughter Luci Baines Johnson can still remember the frustration she felt as a 16-year-old when she saw the message hanging on the doorknob to her mother’s room that read: “I want to be alone.” Lady Bird Johnson would spend that time working on her audio tapes, compiling her thoughts from photographs, letters and other information that might strike her memory.

    “She was just begging for the world to give her the time to do what she’d been uniquely trained to do,” said Luci Baines Johnson, who noted that her mother had degrees in both history and journalism from the University of Texas.

    “She was just beyond, beyond and beyond,” she said. “She thought a day without learning was a day that was wasted.”

    Emerson called her work on the podcast “a huge gift” as she “spent more time with Lady Bird than I did with anyone else in my college years.”

    “She’s taught me a lot about just what type of legacy I’d like to leave with my own life and just how to treat people.”

    “Every time I hear her voice, I start to smile,” she said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Drake, ‘Fair Play,’ Assassin’s Creed Mirage and William Friedkin last film

    What to stream this week: Drake, ‘Fair Play,’ Assassin’s Creed Mirage and William Friedkin last film

    [ad_1]

    Drake’s latest album called “For all the Dogs,” the corporate movie thriller “Fair Play” starring Phoebe Dynevor, and a game show on CBS that’s being described as Mexico’s version of Bingo are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are the late director William Friedkin’s final movie, “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” and season two of “Quantum Leap” premieres on NBC.

    — The corporate thriller “Fair Play” stars Phoebe Dynevor (“Bridgerton”) and Alden Ehrenreich (“Solo”) as two analysts at the same hedge fund in a secret relationship. The workplace environment — sexist, cutthroat — is not exactly a healthy one for romance. In Chloe Domont’s film, that turns out especially true after Emily (Dynevor) gets a promotion Luke (Ehrenreich) expected for himself. “Fair Play,” which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, was a hit out of the Sundance Film Festival for its streamy scenes and thorny gender dynamics.

    — William Friedkin died in August but the legendary filmmaker of “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” left one movie behind. “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September, is Friedkin’s final film. The movie, which streams Friday on Showtime and Paramount+, adapts Herman Wouk’s oft-revived 1950s play, a courtroom drama about mismanagement and mutiny aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer. Friedkin, whose long filmography is dotted with stage adaptations (including Tracy Letts’ “Bug” and “Killer Joe”), transplants the story from World War II to post-9/11 America. It stars Keifer Sutherland, Jason Clarke and the late Lance Reddick.

    — With the calendar turning to October, a long line of horror films is dutifully making its way to screens. “The Haunted Mansion” slides in on the spookier (rather than the scary) end of the spectrum. The film, based on the Walt Disney theme park attraction, is directed by Justin Simien (“Dear White People”) and stars LaKeith Stanfield as an inspector called on to investigate a haunted house. Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Tiffany Haddish and Jamie Lee Curtis make up the ensemble cast. In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr credited their performances but said the film strains for coherence: “By no means a terrible movie, or even an unpleasant watch, but it’s just missing the magic that makes the trip to the theaters (or Disney World) worth it.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Drake is no stranger to an inventive roll-out: the OVO rapper has a preference for surprise drops (last year’s “Honesty, Nevermind” is evidence enough). But this year, he gave fans a bit of a heads up for his highly-anticipated “For all the Dogs” album. At select dates, on stage at his massively popular “It’s All A Blur” Tour, Drake teased collaborations with Nicki Minaj and Bad Bunny. The latter marks the duo’s first collaboration since 2018’s “MÍA,” where Drake’s Spanish-language singing was heard ’round the world.

    — By the time ’90s country had reached its apex, Reba McEntire was already a giant of her genre for her countless, consistent chart-toppers — including a famous cover of Bobby Gentry’s feminist anthem “Fancy.” Now, she’s preparing to release a collection of acoustic covers of her greatest hits, cleverly titled “Not So Fancy.” The songs transform in this format, notably due to the richness of McEntire’s voice. A standout: Dolly Parton taking the place of Linda Davis on “Do He Love You.”

    — The funny thing about being in a boy band is becoming a man, individuating outside of the group you spent your entire adolescence and young adulthood in, and figuring out what comes next. For Louis Tomlinson, the cheeky, edgy member of the British (and 1/5 Irish) boy band One Direction, the journey hasn’t been an easy one. In his documentary, “All of Those Voices,” available to stream on Paramount+ on Wednesday, Tomlinson navigates extraordinary circumstances with a charismatic ordinariness. Grief, parenthood, identity, and artmaking are explored with such meticulous and realistic care, you’d almost forget this 31-year-old performer was once in the biggest group on the planet.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — “Jane the Virgin” scene-stealer, Jaime Camil, hosts a new game show on CBS called “Lotería Loca.” It’s described as Mexico’s version of Bingo. The show is high-energy, easy to learn and has Sheila E. serving as the house band leader. There’s an opportunity in each episode to win $1 million. “Lotería Loca” debuts Monday on CBS and will also stream on Paramount+.

    — Season two of “Quantum Leap” premieres Wednesday on NBC. It takes place 30 years after the original Scott Bakula version and stars Raymond Lee as Ben, a physicist studying a time travel project called Quantum Leap. When Ben travels back in time, he’s unable to return, but leaps around in the past, inhabiting different bodies. The series also shows Raymond’s colleagues working to bring him back to the present. Episodes also stream on Peacock the next day.

    — Paramount+ taps into the appeal of Korean-produced TV shows with “Bargain.” Adapted from an award-winning short film, the series begins at a faraway motel where men go to meet prostitutes. It’s then revealed the men have been tricked to seek out the motel as a trap for a live black-market sale of human organs, and they’re the ones up for auction. Sounds intense, right? It gets worse. An earthquake hits, kicking off a fight for survival among a group of people who do not trust one another. All six-episodes drop Thursday. Jun Jong-seo of “Money Heist: Korea” is one of the stars.

    — Omar Sy resumes his role as France’s favorite charming professional thief in a seven-episode, third installment of Netflix’s “Lupin.” Sy plays Assane, a man with a gift for disguise and deception, who targets those he believes deserve it. Assane has modeled himself after the protagonist in a book of stories called “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar.” The series began with Assane scheming to avenge the wrongful conviction and death of his late father. In season three, debuting Thursday, Assane’s mother needs his help.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — Basim Ibn Ishaq, the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, needs to use stealth and cunning to survive the mean streets of 9th century Baghdad. That’s quite the change from the blustering, kill-’em-all Viking who led the last installment of Ubisoft’s venerable franchise. For players who enjoy getting the job done without drawing too much attention — you know, like an assassin — Mirage could be a return to form for a series that may have become too ambitious. Ubisoft describes the new chapter as a “heartfelt homage” to the 2007 original that’s more tightly focused on one bustling city rather than sprawling all over the globe. The knives come out Thursday on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One and PC.

    — Let’s leap forward in time to the 1930s, the golden age of pulp, when all sorts of dastardly villains are plotting world domination. The last stand against tyranny is The Lamplighters League, a bunch of “misfits and scoundrels” with the particular sets of skills needed to stop the evildoers. This spunky adventure comes from Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind the cult favorite Shadowrun series. Like those games, it features turn-by-turn, team-based battles, but there are also real-time infiltration sequences that let you get the jump on the bad guys before they even see you. If you like your stealth and strategy mixed with a wry sense of humor, you can join the League on Tuesday, Oct. 3, on Xbox X/S/One and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Drake, ‘Fair Play,’ Assassin’s Creed Mirage and William Friedkin last film

    What to stream this week: Drake, ‘Fair Play,’ Assassin’s Creed Mirage and William Friedkin last film

    [ad_1]

    Drake’s latest album called “For all the Dogs,” the corporate movie thriller “Fair Play” starring Phoebe Dynevor, and a game show on CBS that’s being described as Mexico’s version of Bingo are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are the late director William Friedkin’s final movie, “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” and season two of “Quantum Leap” premieres on NBC.

    — The corporate thriller “Fair Play” stars Phoebe Dynevor (“Bridgerton”) and Alden Ehrenreich (“Solo”) as two analysts at the same hedge fund in a secret relationship. The workplace environment — sexist, cutthroat — is not exactly a healthy one for romance. In Chloe Domont’s film, that turns out especially true after Emily (Dynevor) gets a promotion Luke (Ehrenreich) expected for himself. “Fair Play,” which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, was a hit out of the Sundance Film Festival for its streamy scenes and thorny gender dynamics.

    — William Friedkin died in August but the legendary filmmaker of “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” left one movie behind. “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September, is Friedkin’s final film. The movie, which streams Friday on Showtime and Paramount+, adapts Herman Wouk’s oft-revived 1950s play, a courtroom drama about mismanagement and mutiny aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer. Friedkin, whose long filmography is dotted with stage adaptations (including Tracy Letts’ “Bug” and “Killer Joe”), transplants the story from World War II to post-9/11 America. It stars Keifer Sutherland, Jason Clarke and the late Lance Reddick.

    — With the calendar turning to October, a long line of horror films is dutifully making its way to screens. “The Haunted Mansion” slides in on the spookier (rather than the scary) end of the spectrum. The film, based on the Walt Disney theme park attraction, is directed by Justin Simien (“Dear White People”) and stars LaKeith Stanfield as an inspector called on to investigate a haunted house. Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Tiffany Haddish and Jamie Lee Curtis make up the ensemble cast. In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr credited their performances but said the film strains for coherence: “By no means a terrible movie, or even an unpleasant watch, but it’s just missing the magic that makes the trip to the theaters (or Disney World) worth it.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Drake is no stranger to an inventive roll-out: the OVO rapper has a preference for surprise drops (last year’s “Honesty, Nevermind” is evidence enough). But this year, he gave fans a bit of a heads up for his highly-anticipated “For all the Dogs” album. At select dates, on stage at his massively popular “It’s All A Blur” Tour, Drake teased collaborations with Nicki Minaj and Bad Bunny. The latter marks the duo’s first collaboration since 2018’s “MÍA,” where Drake’s Spanish-language singing was heard ’round the world.

    — By the time ’90s country had reached its apex, Reba McEntire was already a giant of her genre for her countless, consistent chart-toppers — including a famous cover of Bobby Gentry’s feminist anthem “Fancy.” Now, she’s preparing to release a collection of acoustic covers of her greatest hits, cleverly titled “Not So Fancy.” The songs transform in this format, notably due to the richness of McEntire’s voice. A standout: Dolly Parton taking the place of Linda Davis on “Do He Love You.”

    — The funny thing about being in a boy band is becoming a man, individuating outside of the group you spent your entire adolescence and young adulthood in, and figuring out what comes next. For Louis Tomlinson, the cheeky, edgy member of the British (and 1/5 Irish) boy band One Direction, the journey hasn’t been an easy one. In his documentary, “All of Those Voices,” available to stream on Paramount+ on Wednesday, Tomlinson navigates extraordinary circumstances with a charismatic ordinariness. Grief, parenthood, identity, and artmaking are explored with such meticulous and realistic care, you’d almost forget this 31-year-old performer was once in the biggest group on the planet.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — “Jane the Virgin” scene-stealer, Jaime Camil, hosts a new game show on CBS called “Lotería Loca.” It’s described as Mexico’s version of Bingo. The show is high-energy, easy to learn and has Sheila E. serving as the house band leader. There’s an opportunity in each episode to win $1 million. “Lotería Loca” debuts Monday on CBS and will also stream on Paramount+.

    — Season two of “Quantum Leap” premieres Wednesday on NBC. It takes place 30 years after the original Scott Bakula version and stars Raymond Lee as Ben, a physicist studying a time travel project called Quantum Leap. When Ben travels back in time, he’s unable to return, but leaps around in the past, inhabiting different bodies. The series also shows Raymond’s colleagues working to bring him back to the present. Episodes also stream on Peacock the next day.

    — Paramount+ taps into the appeal of Korean-produced TV shows with “Bargain.” Adapted from an award-winning short film, the series begins at a faraway motel where men go to meet prostitutes. It’s then revealed the men have been tricked to seek out the motel as a trap for a live black-market sale of human organs, and they’re the ones up for auction. Sounds intense, right? It gets worse. An earthquake hits, kicking off a fight for survival among a group of people who do not trust one another. All six-episodes drop Thursday. Jun Jong-seo of “Money Heist: Korea” is one of the stars.

    — Omar Sy resumes his role as France’s favorite charming professional thief in a seven-episode, third installment of Netflix’s “Lupin.” Sy plays Assane, a man with a gift for disguise and deception, who targets those he believes deserve it. Assane has modeled himself after the protagonist in a book of stories called “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar.” The series began with Assane scheming to avenge the wrongful conviction and death of his late father. In season three, debuting Thursday, Assane’s mother needs his help.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — Basim Ibn Ishaq, the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, needs to use stealth and cunning to survive the mean streets of 9th century Baghdad. That’s quite the change from the blustering, kill-’em-all Viking who led the last installment of Ubisoft’s venerable franchise. For players who enjoy getting the job done without drawing too much attention — you know, like an assassin — Mirage could be a return to form for a series that may have become too ambitious. Ubisoft describes the new chapter as a “heartfelt homage” to the 2007 original that’s more tightly focused on one bustling city rather than sprawling all over the globe. The knives come out Thursday on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One and PC.

    — Let’s leap forward in time to the 1930s, the golden age of pulp, when all sorts of dastardly villains are plotting world domination. The last stand against tyranny is The Lamplighters League, a bunch of “misfits and scoundrels” with the particular sets of skills needed to stop the evildoers. This spunky adventure comes from Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind the cult favorite Shadowrun series. Like those games, it features turn-by-turn, team-based battles, but there are also real-time infiltration sequences that let you get the jump on the bad guys before they even see you. If you like your stealth and strategy mixed with a wry sense of humor, you can join the League on Tuesday, Oct. 3, on Xbox X/S/One and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Director of migration drama denounced by right-wing leaders as film opens in Poland

    Director of migration drama denounced by right-wing leaders as film opens in Poland

    [ad_1]

    WARSAW, Poland — Right-wing Polish leaders amplified their denunciations of a new feature film by director Agnieszka Holland before its scheduled premiere in the country Friday, accusing the work of defaming Poland with its exploration of a migration crisis along the border with Belarus.

    “Green Border” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. Government officials in Poland have harshly criticized the film for weeks, although most of them acknowledge not having seen it.

    Holland was born in Poland and worked on films there but lives in France. “Green Border” is a harrowing exploration of human suffering in the border zone of forests and swamps between Belarus and Poland, and its fictional characters include depictions of Polish security officials mistreating migrants from the Middle East.

    In an unusual move, Poland’s most powerful politician, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, called a press conference Friday devoted to denouncing the film. He said he believed that Poland’s border guards, army and police “were portrayed shamefully.”

    Polish officials say security personnel have risked their lives to protect Poland from an attack they view as directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kaczynski accused Holland of acting in support of Putin’s alleged plan.

    He also accused Holland of “oikophobia,” an aversion to one’s own homeland, and called the film “simply shameful, repulsive and disgusting.”

    Holland argues that the film does not make any collective assessment of the Polish army or uniformed services, and that it is not intended to slander Poland.

    She and producer Marcin Wierzchoslawski issued a statement Friday saying “Green Border” shows that all humans, whether uniformed officers, refugees or helpers, can behave in different ways in different situations. They said it simply avoids the “black and white propaganda” that surrounds migration.

    Holland and Wierzchoslawski also said that fragments of the film were stolen, altered and broadcast by some media to create a distorted impression of the film, and that they objected to the manipulation.

    Poland has a national election scheduled for Oct. 15. Kaczynski’s ruling Law and Justice party is trying to win a third term in power by stressing its anti-immigration policies. The government’s reputation for keeping immigrants out of the country took a hit with a fraud scandal allegedly involving visas given out at Polish consulates in Asia and Africa in exchange for bribes.

    Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro has compared “Green Border” to Nazi propaganda. President Andrzej Duda picked up the Nazi theme by saying Thursday that some border guards were highlighting their refusal to see the film by using the World War II expression “only pigs sit in the cinema.”

    That expression referred to people during the German Nazi occupation of Poland who went to movie theaters to watch Nazi propaganda.

    Holland has threatened to sue Ziobro. Her father was Jewish, and his parents died in the Holocaust. Her mother was a Roman Catholic who took part in the Polish resistance against the Nazi occupation.

    She said the comparison to Nazi propaganda was offensive because of what Poland suffered during the World War II occupation and given her own family background.

    The officials’ heavy-handed approach to Holland’s film is opening the governing party up to accusations of trying to censor free expression.

    The Interior Ministry said this week that it was telling art house cinemas in Poland that get state support that they must run a clip ahead of “Green Border” showings that promote the border guards to counter what the deputy interior minister called “untruths and distortions.”

    While the characters are fictional, the film tells the story of a crisis that has played out at the Poland-Belarus border for more than two years as migrants from the Middle East and Africa have sought to enter the European Union without authorization.

    Polish border guards have pushed migrants back over the border into Belarus or put them in closed detention centers, and some have died in the area of forests and swamps. Poland has also constructed a tall steel wall to keep them out.

    The film looks at the situation by focusing on the stories of a Syrian family, a Polish border guard and Polish activists seeking to help the refugees.

    European Union officials have accused Russia’s ally Belarus of manufacturing a crisis at the border in an act of “hybrid warfare” by encouraging migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere to use the country’s frontier with Poland to enter the EU.

    The Directors Guild of America on Thursday joined other film industry groups in publicly coming to Holland’s defense, saying it “champions creative expression through the art of filmmaking and decries the recent attacks” against her.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A new documentary reexamines the Louis CK scandal, 6 years later

    A new documentary reexamines the Louis CK scandal, 6 years later

    [ad_1]

    TORONTO — Louis C.K. came to the Toronto International Film Festival six years ago with the hotly anticipated “I Love You, Daddy,” just as allegations of sexual misconduct against the comedian were gaining new prominence.

    The movie sold at TIFF for $5 million, but before it could reach theaters, its premiere was canceled and its release scuttled. After years of rumors, a New York Times article in November that year detailed the allegations of several women who described incidents in which C.K. masturbated in front of female stand-up colleagues.

    Now, a new documentary premiering in Toronto, where C.K.’s downfall began, is delving into one of most debated #MeToo cases. “Sorry/Not Sorry,” directed by Caroline Suh and Cara Mones and produced by the Times, examines the allegations, the fallout for those who came forward and C.K.’s comeback in comedy.

    “In the early years, the advice I was given was: Don’t make this movie,” says Suh, who directed the Barack Obama-narrated docuseries “Working: What We Do All Day.”

    Suh, herself, was a big fan of Louis C.K. and she didn’t immediately register the allegations against the comedian as damning — especially in comparison to other #MeToo cases like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.

    “Honestly, my first reaction was: Is it that bad?” Suh recalls.

    “Sorry/Not Sorry,” which was acquired by Greenwich Entertainment for distribution after its TIFF premiere, reexamines the scandal and its aftermath, particularly in light of C.K.’s thriving comeback. The comic, who acknowledged “these stories are true” in his 2017 apology, won a Grammy for best comedy album last year and in January sold out Madison Square Garden.

    To Mones, it appeared that many people seemed hesitant to talk about the thorny issues of consent and power when it came to C.K. — and that was a good reason to make the film.

    “This lived in a gray area for so many people. That felt unusual among all the stories that were starting to come out,” says Mones. “There are a lot of questions to explore.”

    The filmmakers especially wanted to detail the experience of the women who went public with their encounters with C.K. Some struggled to find success in comedy afterward or were heckled online by his supporters. Comedian Abby Schachner, who notes C.K. didn’t ask permission before masturbating while talking to her on the phone in 2003, speaks about her fears of being publicly defined by the scandal.

    “There were questions to be asked and perspectives to be brought forth. And those perspectives are really of the women who came forth,” says producer Kathleen Lingo. “What happens when a woman says the truth? What happens to her?”

    There are several notable people from the comedy world interviewed in the film, including comedian Jen Kirkman, who first alluded to some of C.K.’s behavior in a podcast in 2015. Comedian Megan Koester, “Parks and “Recreation” co-creator Michael Schur and Noam Dworman, owner of New York’s Comedy Cellar, also appear in the film.

    But it’s also notable who isn’t in the film. Louis C.K. isn’t interviewed and didn’t respond to the filmmakers’ requests to comment. And the filmmakers say nearly every prominent comic they reached out to didn’t want to be interviewed.

    At the same time, C.K. has returned to stand-up and often performed material about the scandal. In his 2020 self-distributed special “Sincerely Louis C.K,” he began by asking the crowd about their last few years. “Anybody else get in global amounts of trouble?” he said.

    Later in the special, he more specifically addressed the misconduct incidents.

    “If you want to do it with someone else, you need to ask first,” said C.K. “But if they say yes, you still don’t get to go ‘Woo!’ and charge ahead. You need to check in often, I guess that’s what I’d say. It’s not always clear how people feel.”

    Whether comments like these have been enough to constitute atonement is one of the overarching questions of “Sorry/Not Sorry.”

    “Our intent was to make a film that was very fact-based,” says Suh. “We don’t want to speculate: Why did he do this? Just laying out the facts might be helpful.”

    “Sorry/Not Sorry,” which is expected to be released next year, arrives after a series of setbacks for the #MeToo movement. The filmmakers are hoping to refocus the conversation.

    “It feels like every time there’s a news event, it’s like: ‘#MeToo is failing’ or ‘#MeToo is succeeding,’” says Lingo. “It’s been, what, six years, and I think it’s an incredibly groundbreaking movement. We’re still in the middle of it.”

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • In Toronto, Paul Simon takes a bow with a new career-spanning documentary

    In Toronto, Paul Simon takes a bow with a new career-spanning documentary

    [ad_1]

    TORONTO — After a three-and-a-half-hour documentary on his life, Paul Simon had only sympathy for the audience.

    “You’re probably exhausted,” Simon told the crowd after the premiere of Alex Gibney’s “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon” on Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

    The 81-year-old Simon, himself, hadn’t watched the film before its debut, and he didn’t watch it Sunday, either. “I’ll get up the courage to see it, no doubt,” he promised.

    The film, which is seeking distribution at TIFF, is an expansive look at Simon’s decades-spanning career, from growing up in Queens, New York, with Art Garfunkel to the success of “Graceland,” the sensational 1986 album he made with South African musicians.

    “In Restless Dreams,” which takes its name from a lyric in “The Sound of Silence” (“In restless dreams I walked alone”), also intimately captures Simon painstakingly assembling his latest album, “Seven Psalms,” which was released in May.

    He began the album, his first in several years, he says, after a dream in 2019 in which he envisioned an album of seven songs. His work at his home studio in Wimberly, Texas, was made more difficult by Simon’s hearing loss in his left ear, throwing off his musical equilibrium.

    “I haven’t accepted it entirely, but I’m beginning to,” Simon told the audience of his hearing loss in a post-screening Q&A.

    Simon reached out to Gibney, the veteran documentarian of “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” and “Taxi to the Dark Side,” after admiring his 2015 documentary “Sinatra: All or Nothing at All.” Though the cameras took some adjusting to, Simon was content for Gibney to assemble a narrative around his life.

    “Having the truth about me depicted by an observer is very interesting to me,” Simon said. “I think I’m probably not the person to want to describe what the truth is. I’m biased on both sides. I overestimate myself and I dislike myself to a sufficient degree that I’d rather give it to someone else to document.”

    Further, Simon said, he wished some of his earlier recording sessions had been filmed, like those for 1970’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or “Graceland.” “In Restless Dreams” does include some rare footage, including 16mm dailies from the making of the 1969 documentary “Songs of America” and early rehearsals of “Graceland.”

    After some prodding, Simon acknowledged that he is still making music and recently wrote a new song. Ideas are also still coming to him at night, too.

    “The other night I dreamed again,” Simon said, to applause. “I dreamed it would be a good idea if I wrote a song called ‘It’s What’s His Name.’ ”

    ___

    Follow Associated Press Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • ‘Opus,’ the farewell of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, will premiere at Venice Film Festival

    ‘Opus,’ the farewell of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, will premiere at Venice Film Festival

    [ad_1]

    TOKYO — Sitting alone before a grand piano in a stark studio, Ryuichi Sakamoto takes the listener on a journey of his life, playing 20 of his compositions.

    Shot entirely in black and white, on three 4K cameras, the film “Opus,” directed by Neo Sora, is the Japanese composer’s farewell, poetic yet bold, and deeply heartfelt.

    Its world premiere is set for the Venice International Film Festival next month. The filming took place over several days, just a half year before his death on March 28 at 71.

    Sakamoto had been battling cancer since 2014, and could no longer do concert performances, and so he turned to film.

    He plays pieces he had never performed on solo piano. He delivers a striking, new slow-tempo arrangement of “Tong Poo,” a composition from his early days with techno-pop Yellow Magic Orchestra that catapulted him to stardom in the late 1970s when Asian musicians still tended to be marginal in the West.

    “I felt utterly hollow afterward, and my condition worsened for about a month,” Sakamoto says in a statement.

    He speaks only a few lines in the film.

    “I need a break. This is tough. I’m pushing myself,” he says barely audibly in Japanese, about midway through the film.

    He also says, “let’s go again,” indicating he wants to play a sequence again.

    For the rest of the nearly two-hour film, he lets his piano do the talking.

    The notes resonate from his fingers, lovingly shot in closeups, sometimes slowly, one pensive note at a time. Other times, they come jamming in those majestically Asian-evocative chords that have defined his sound.

    After each piece, he lifts his hands up from the keys and holds them there in the air.

    “Opus” is a testament to Sakamoto’s legendary filmography. He composed for some of the world’s greatest auteurs, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Brian DePalma, Takashi Miike, Alejandro G. Inarritu, Peter Kominsky and Nagisa Oshima.

    The film is also evidence he remained active until the very end. He performs an excerpt from his meditative final album “12,” released earlier this year.

    By the time Sakamoto starts playing the melody from Bertolucci’s 1987 “The Last Emperor,” the emotions are almost overwhelming. The soundtrack, which also included musician David Byrne, won both an Oscar and a Grammy.

    Sora, the director, who was raised in New York and Tokyo, says he and the crew were determined to capture the sense of time and timelessness, so crucial in Sakamoto’s art, in what everyone knew might be his final performance.

    All the sounds that usually get taken out in post-production, rustling clothing, clicking nails or Sakamoto’s breathing, were purposely kept, not minimized in the mix.

    “Part of the reason why we decided to shoot in black and white was because we thought that also highlighted the physicality of his body, with the black and white keys of the piano,” said Sora, named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2020.

    Sakamoto first came up with a set list, and the filmmakers worked out with him in advance a detailed plan for a visual narrative and concept.

    Designed as a film from the get-go, not just a documentary of a performance, the work features the lighting design, artful long takes and Zoom-lens closeups concocted by Bill Kirstein, the director of photography.

    “We were able to get shots of hands and keys that we were never able to get before,” said Kirstein, comparing the film’s imagery to a drawing.

    Hundreds of pounds of weights were laid on the floor so the camera dolly could move silently without creaking.

    A memorable moment comes toward the end when Sakamoto plays “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” from the 1983 Oshima film bearing the same title and starring David Bowie and Golden Lion-winner Takeshi Kitano.

    Sakamoto also acted in the film, portraying a World War II Japanese soldier who commands a prisoner-of-war camp. He was young, barely in his 30s. Yet in so many ways he remained unchanged as that frail silver-haired bespectacled man, crouched over his piano.

    As the film moves to the final tune, Sakamoto has disappeared, gone to that other world that some call heaven. The piano, under a spotlight, is playing on its own, a reminder his music is eternal, and still here.

    —-

    Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A funeral home in El Salvador offers pink coffins with Barbie linings

    A funeral home in El Salvador offers pink coffins with Barbie linings

    [ad_1]

    SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A funeral home in El Salvador has taken Barbie mania to an extreme, offering pink coffins with Barbie linings.

    It’s all designed so you can be a Barbie fan till the day you die — and even after that.

    The pink metal coffins are on sale at the Alpha and Omega Funeral Home in the city of Ahuachapán, near the border with Guatemala.

    Owner Isaac Villegas said Friday he had already offered the option of pink coffins before the July premiere of the Barbie movie. But the craze that swept Latin America convinced him to decorate the cloth linings of the coffins with pictures of the doll. The coffins are also decorated with little white stars.

    “I said, ‘We have to jump on this trend,’” Villegas said of the coffins, noting “it has been a success.”

    He said the funeral home has already launched a promotional campaign around the Barbie boxes, and has sold 10 of them. Though that doesn’t mean 10 people have actually been buried in them — many people in El Salvador buy a pre-paid package for future burial.

    Villegas said that until a year ago, families had preferred traditional coffins in colors like brown, black, white or gray. But a year ago, he sold his first pink coffin to family who wanted their very happy relative buried in a happier-colored coffin.

    Now he has no plans to turn back, though he still offers darker colors.

    “We are going to have more pink coffins, because people are asking for it,” he said.

    Latin America jumped on Barbie mania with pink-colored tacos and pastries, commercial planes bearing the Barbie logo, political ads, and even Barbie-themed protests.

    The famous doll’s theme has also taken a macabre tone.

    In July, anti-government demonstrators dressed up two women in pink and put them in giant Barbie boxes in the main square of Lima, Peru’s capital, to protest President Dina Boluarte, under whose administration police have often clashed with protesters.

    And in Mexico, a sister of one of Mexico’s 112,000 missing people began sewing doll outfits to make a “Searching Mother” Barbie, referring to the volunteers who fan out across Mexico’s dusty plains to search for gravesites that might contain their children’s remains. Her creator, volunteer searcher Delia Quiroa, hopes to publicize the plight of mothers who have to carry out the searches and investigations police won’t do.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Venice Film Festival unveils A-list lineup with ‘Priscilla,’ ‘Ferrari,’ ‘Maestro’ amid strikes

    Venice Film Festival unveils A-list lineup with ‘Priscilla,’ ‘Ferrari,’ ‘Maestro’ amid strikes

    [ad_1]

    Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein drama “Maestro,” Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Presley movie, Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” David Fincher’s “The Killer” and Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” will make their world debuts at the Venice International Film Festival this fall.

    Organizers announced the lineup Tuesday for the 80th edition of the festival, which — despite the flashy names behind the films — could have a little less Hollywood glamour than usual gracing its picturesque docks and red carpet come September if the Hollywood actors and writers strikes stretch on. As part of the strike, actors cannot promote projects from the studios and streamers with whom the union is negotiating.

    The prestigious film festival already lost one high-profile premiere to the labor disputes in the U.S. in Luca Guadagnino’s tennis drama “Challengers, ” starring Zendaya, which had been set to play in the opening night slot but has now been pushed to 2024. But Alberto Barbera, the director of the Venice Film Festival, said Tuesday that the strikes’ effects on the festival lineup had otherwise been minimal.

    “Priscilla,” an A24 film based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir “Elvis and Me,” stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi and was widely expected to be in the festival. Coppola also launched “Somewhere” in Venice in 2010. “Priscilla” will be competing for the Golden Lion alongside “Ferrari,” the buzzy racing drama starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, and Penélope Cruz as his wife Laura, based on Brock Yates’ biography.

    Yorgos Lanthimos’ highly anticipated “Poor Things,” with Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo, will also have its bow on the Lido. Lanthimos previously launched “The Favorite” at Venice in 2019; it would go on to score 10 Oscar nominations and win one.

    DuVernay’s film, “Origin,” meanwhile, is based on the book “Caste” and the life of its author, Pulitzer winner Isabel Wilkerson. The movie stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

    Netflix will once again have a big presence at the festival with “Maestro,” directed by and starring Cooper as the legendary composer, opposite Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre, and Fincher’s “The Killer,” with Michael Fassbender playing an assassin. The streamer is also bringing Pablo Larraín’s “El Conde,” a dark comedy in which Augusto Pinochet is a vampire, as part of the competition titles.

    Another buzzy competition title is Michel Franco’s “Memory,” with Jessica Chastain and Peter Skarsgaard.

    Venice has never been a festival to shy away from controversial directors and has programmed new films from both Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.

    Polanski is back for the first time since 2019 with “The Palace,” about a New Year’s Eve in 1999 in a Swiss hotel, with John Cleese and Mickey Rourke. Allen is debuting his first French movie, “Coup de Chance.” Luc Besson, who was recently cleared of charges in a rape case, will also be on the Lido with “Dogman,” starring Caleb Landry Jones.

    The jury presiding over the main competition this year is full of high-profile directors, including Damien Chazelle, Jane Campion, Martin McDonagh and last year’s Golden Lion winner Laura Poitras.

    In addition to the Polanski and Allen films, also playing out of competition are Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl-inspired “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” with Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel and Ralph Fiennes; Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft”; Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man”; Frederick Wiseman’s “Menus Plaisirs – Les Troisgros”; and William Friedkin’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Marshall.”

    Venice is a top launching ground for awards hopefuls and has, in recent years, debuted Oscar-nominated films like “The Whale,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Tár,” “The Power of the Dog,” “A Star is Born” and “La La Land.” It’s also the first major stop of the busy fall film festival season, with Toronto, Telluride and the New York Film Festivals close behind.

    Like the Cannes Film Festival, celebrity is a huge part of the Venice iconography: Think of Lady Gaga perched on the side of a water taxi in her black Jonathan Simkhai bustier dress, or Timothée Chalamet vamping in that backless red halter top by Haider Ackermann. Last year there were also viral moments aplenty thanks to the cast of “Don’t Worry Darling” and the alleged “spit-gate,” in which internet spectators wondered if Harry Styles had spit on his co-star Chris Pine at the film’s premiere.

    It remains unclear whether any Hollywood talent will be able to make the journey this year. Barbera said at this point that some actors and actresses will not be able to attend but, without getting specific, said that talent from independent fare will be able to grace the red carpets and press conferences.

    The Venice Film Festival runs from Aug. 30 through Sept. 9.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Steph Curry doc, Greta Van Fleet, ‘Justified’ returns and ‘Minx’ survives

    What to stream this week: Steph Curry doc, Greta Van Fleet, ‘Justified’ returns and ‘Minx’ survives

    [ad_1]

    A documentary on Apple TV+ that chronicles the atypical path Stephen Curry took to becoming a basketball legend plus new tunes from the rock band Greta Van Fleet are among the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are Laura McGann’s documentary “The Deepest Breath” which plunges into the world of free diving and Starz has given the workplace comedy “Minx” a new home and a berth for season two.

    NEW MOVIES TO STREAM

    — Laura McGann’s documentary “The Deepest Breath” plunges into the world of free diving, a sometimes deadly sport in which divers descend into watery depths with only a nose plug to defend from fluctuations in air pressure. The film, which made a well-reviewed debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January, premieres Wednesday on Netflix. It’s an immersive descent into a silent underwater realm and the risk-takers compelled to sink themselves to the ocean floor. McGann’s film recounts the story, in particular, of two divers — Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan — brought together in love and tragedy.

    — Steph Curry is a four-time NBA champ, two-time MVP and nine-time all-star, so naming a documentary about the transformational shooting guard “Underrated” is, itself, a kind of provocation. But “Stephen Curry: Underrated,” which debuts Friday, July 21, on Apple TV+, chronicles the atypical path Curry took to becoming a basketball legend, with many doubters along the way. The film, directed by the well-respected Bay Area filmmaker Peter Nicks, is further proof of a modern NBA truism: No matter how much he wins, Steph Curry is easy to root for.

    — A cinematic highpoint of the first half of the year, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes’ “Tori and Lokita,” begins streaming Tuesday on the Criterion Channel. It’s a heart-wrenching immigrant drama about 11-year-old Tori (Pablo Schils) and 16-year-old Lokita (Joely Mbundu), two African immigrants living in an unnamed Belgian city. Only Tori has the necessary papers to stay, and immigration authorities are pressing Lokita, dubious of her claims that Tori is her brother. In my review of “Tori and Lokita,” I wrote that “their bond is something more profound than blood, a product of shared circumstance and mutual perseverance.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    NEW MUSIC TO STREAM

    — The Grammy-winning rock band Greta Van Fleet is back with a “Starcatcher,” a strong album that shows the quartet’s maturity and embraces a more prog rock and psychedelic flavor. The first single, the sprawling, Woodstock-y “Meeting the Master,” made the top 40 of Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. Producer Dave Cobb took the guys back to their roots as a live band. A few days after the release, Greta Van Fleet kick off a new tour in Nashville at the Bridgestone Arena and will make stops at Madison Square Garden in New York and The Forum in Los Angeles and London’s OVO Arena Wembley. (Lava/Republic Records)

    — Blur, who helped put the pop into Britpop, is releasing their first album in eight years, “The Ballad of Darren.” Among the 10 new tracks is the wistful, joyfully building “The Narcissist,” with the lyrics: “I’m going to shine a light in your eyes/You will probably shine it back on me. But I won’t fall this time,” and the sloppy rocker “St. Charles Square.” The band wasn’t planning on another album. “It really is most unexpected,” bass player Alex James told Rolling Stone magazine. “We didn’t know we were pregnant, and we gave birth in the supermarket car park. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s a beautiful boy!’” (Parlophone)

    — AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy

    NEW SERIES TO STREAM

    — Eight years after the series finale of “Justified” on FX, Timothy Olyphant returns as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in “Justified: City Primeval.” The limited series takes Givens to Detroit as the lawman hunts down a murderer played by Boyd Holbrooke. The story is based on the Elmore Leonard novel “City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit.” Olyphant’s daughter, Vivian, plays Givens’ daughter on the show. The cast also includes Aunjanue Ellis. At a gathering of TV critics earlier this year, Olyphant said he “really didn’t have any concerns” playing the character again. “I just thought that I’d love to be there for it.” The first two episodes of “Justified: City Primeval” premiere Tuesday on FX.

    — It’s charter boat season for Captain Jason and Chief Stew Aesha as they set sail in Australia with a new crew of deckhands, stewards, and a chef in season two of “Below Deck: Down Under.” Besides the expected inter-personal drama from a Bravo show among the crew and demanding, occasionally unruly guests, the “Below Deck” cast must also contend with an aging yacht that has a lot of problems. “Below Deck: Down Under” debuts Monday, July 17.

    — Despite favorable reviews, “Minx” was canceled late last year in a cost-cutting move by the streamer formerly known as HBO Max. The decision came as “Minx” was in production on its second season. Luckily, Starz swooped in to give the comedy a new home and season two returns Friday, July 21. Starring Jake Johnson and Ophelia Lovibond, “Minx” is set in the 1970s and follows Lovibond’s Joyce, a young feminist who teams up with a seedy publisher named Doug (Johnson) to create the first erotic magazine for women. Season two follows the team behind Minx magazine dealing with sudden success.

    — Tyler Sheridan has another new TV series and this one is not a Western. “Special Ops: Lioness” stars Zoe Saldana, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Kelly and newcomer Laysla De Oliveira. Saldana plays Joe, a member of a secret team of spies with the CIA. They recruit a young woman – played by De Oliveira – to go undercover and become friendly with a wealthy woman whose family is believed to have ties to a terror organization. The first two episodes premiere Sunday, July 23 on Paramount+.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    NEW VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY

    — Nintendo’s Pikmin may not deliver the star power of Mario, Zelda or Pokémon, but it does have a devoted cult audience who have been waiting 10 years for Pikmin 4. The setup hasn’t changed: You are an astronaut who has crash-landed on an alien planet, and you need help from the plant-like title critters to survive. Any one Pikmin by itself is too small to get much done, so you need to summon and corral dozens of them at once to explore your new home and battle the native wildlife. The major addition on this expedition is an eager “space dog” named Oatchi who’s happy to give your Pikmin a ride. It’s the kind of chill puzzle-adventure that may appeal to gamers who fell in love with Animal Crossing during the pandemic, and it arrives Friday, July 21, on the Switch.

    — There’s nothing like playing a visual puzzle game — say, Portal or The Witness — when you want to settle into a kind of Zen groove. Aficionados of such brain-benders have been buzzing about Viewfinder, from Scotland’s Sad Owl Studios. Each level is a maze of sorts, but to get from one end to the other you need to tinker with reality. You have a magical camera that lets you take two-dimensional images, like paintings and photographs, and drop them into 3-D settings so they become part of the environment and fill in the gaps. The result is as trippy and elegant as an M.C. Escher drawing. Prepare to have your mind blown Tuesday on PlayStation 5 and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The friendship behind summer’s most charming comedy ‘Theater Camp’

    The friendship behind summer’s most charming comedy ‘Theater Camp’

    [ad_1]

    There is quite a bit of history between the team behind “Theater Camp,” a loving satire of musical theater kids and their teachers that opens in theaters Friday.

    Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman are all, first and foremost, theater kids themselves. They’re also longtime friends. Lieberman has been making things with Platt since they were in high school. Galvin and Gordon are best friends and did a play together about a decade ago. And Galvin and Platt are currently engaged.

    It’s Platt and Gordon’s relationship that stretches back the furthest, though. Both children of parents in the entertainment industry, they’ve been friends since they were 3 years old.

    “I was deeply in love with him,” Gordon laughed in an interview with her collaborators during the Sundance Film Festival. “He came out to me and didn’t want to be with me, but I still tried for years.”

    The ins and outs of all of their collaborations, musical workshops, web series, comedy videos and hours improvising would require a flow chart to process fully. But what it boils down to is when the four found each other, they didn’t want to let go.

    About five years ago, they found themselves with a moment between projects and decided that they would finally do something together. So they “stole” some kids from Galvin’s old performing arts high school in Manhattan and put together a short film about a musical theater camp.

    “It seemed like the most natural world for us to jump off the ledge into together as this comedy collective for the first time,” Platt said. “We all felt like it really suited us tonally and emotionally. It was exactly the kind of thing we wanted to make. (The short) was a quite a janky, very fast, very, very, very cheap, quick little moment. But it definitely set off an alarm in all of us.”

    A few years would go by before they got the greenlight for the feature, helped by Picturestart and Topic Studios, as well as Jessica Elbaum, of Will Ferrell’s Gloria Sanchez Productions, who’d gotten to know Gordon and Galvin during “Booksmart.”

    “I’m such a nerd, so I knew who Jessica was,” Gordon said. “We got lunch one day and she said ‘I feel like you want more than this. I feel like you want to write things.’ She’s done that to Noah too. She’s really good at spotting people who want more.”

    “Theater Camp” is the feature debut for Gordon and Lieberman. They all wrote the screenplay, and everyone but Lieberman acts in the film. The premise is that a documentary crew has come to make a film about a crumbling but beloved upstate New York camp, AdirondACTS, run by Amy Sedaris’ character. In the first few minutes she has a seizure, and her son, a finance bro (Jimmy Tatro), steps in to try to run the camp. Gordon and Platt play camp teachers and former students, while Galvin is a techie with unsung talents.

    “We don’t often give a voice to the tech people,” Galvin said.

    Nearly all of the scenarios in the film are based on things that have happened to them or stories they’ve heard from friends.

    “Theater is a world of people who are so absurd and in their own worlds. You can get away with them doing things that are ridiculous,” Lieberman said. “But you also want to find a way to ground it.”

    “The Bear” breakout Ayo Edebiri — nominated this week for an Emmy — plays a new hire, who tries to hide the fact that she has no experience teaching musical theater.

    “We all have moments with teachers who are so formative and meaningful and also, like, wildly absurd,” Platt said.

    Though all the 20-somethings have been in the business for most of their lives, making “Theater Camp” was still a baptism by fire in some ways. They only had 19 days to shoot, which they did last summer at a defunct camp in upstate New York, and then had to feverishly edit the film to get a cut to Sundance in time for this year’s festival. This was made more complicated by the fact that “Theater Camp” was also largely improvised.

    “There’s about 47 different versions of this movie. Some of them are bad, some of them are good,” Gordon said. “But like Christopher Guest edits for a year!”

    Still the set was a joyous place and all took care to make sure it was a fun experience, especially for their young co-stars. Some of their favorite moments ever were at school performances and theater camps and they wanted to recreate that.

    “It felt like being in a real theater program,” Gordon said. “Even if they messed up, that could be turned into a beautiful moment. I think everyone was scared when we were pitching this movie. How are the kids going to improvise? And they improvised around all of us. They were amazing.”

    The truth and history in “Theater Camp” runs deep, from real footage of Platt and Gordon performing together as kids, up through some more dramatic elements in which the co-dependent friends have a fight.

    “I just felt totally, completely free to be intense and unlikable and funny and weird and all of the things necessary in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced,” Platt said. “We’ve all been part of things where the making of it just really didn’t live up to what the project was. And even if it came out beautifully, there was something either challenging or difficult about the making of it. The fact that people can look back on this experience separate from the product and be like, ‘This was so fun and I’m going to remember this positively’ is the best thing.”

    The film premiered to positive reviews at Sundance earlier this year and was quickly acquired by Searchlight Pictures for a theatrical release in the summer — the ideal scenario. But the making was already a peak.

    “There will never be another quite like it,” Platt said.

    ___

    A version of this story first ran during Sundance on Jan. 20, 2023. It has been updated to in advance of the film’s release Friday.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Indiana Jones’ box office destiny? A lukewarm $60 million debut in North America

    Indiana Jones’ box office destiny? A lukewarm $60 million debut in North America

    [ad_1]

    Indiana Jones, and executives at the Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm, made a somewhat dispiriting discovery this weekend. Moviegoers didn’t rush to the theater in significant numbers to see “ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and say goodbye to Harrison Ford as the iconic archaeologist.

    The film, reportedly budgeted north of $250 million, came in on the lower end of projections with $60 million in ticket sales from 4,600 North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday.

    Including $70 million from international showings in 52 markets, “Dial of Destiny” celebrated a $130 million global opening. It easily earned the No. 1 title but was not the high-rolling sendoff for one of modern cinema’s most iconic actor/character pairings that anyone hoped. Disney is projecting that it will make $82 million domestically through the fourth of July holiday and $152 million globally.

    “Dial of Destiny” is the long-delayed fifth installment in the Steven Spielberg/George Lucas-created adventure series that began in 1981, and the first Spielberg himself hasn’t directed. Veteran James Mangold stepped in to take the reins overseeing the Spielberg-approved script, which finds an older Dr. Jones retiring from his university job and swept up on a new adventure with his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

    “It’s impressive that a franchise that’s over 40 years old is No. 1 at the box office. But there’s no question there were higher hopes for the debut of this movie,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “This is Indiana Jones. This is a summer movie icon.”

    The film made its splashy premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, with a fitting celebration of Ford, who has said this was his last time playing the character.

    But then it was hit with lukewarm reviews. This was an unexpected and unwelcome hurdle, considering it was coming after the maligned fourth film, 2008’s “Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Another contributing snag was that a significant portion of the target audience, older viewers, don’t tend to buy many tickets on opening weekend for big blockbusters. But even “Crystal Skull,” budgeted at a reported $185 million, managed to gross over $790 million.

    “Sometimes reviews don’t matter, but the sentiment coming out of Cannes was very powerful,” Dergarabedian said. “It set off a narrative where people were already feeling disappointed and they hadn’t even seen it.”

    Second place went to “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” with $11.5 million, bringing its domestic total to around $340 million. “Elemental” landed in third place with $11.3 million.

    Aside from “Dial of Destiny,” the weekend’s other main new opener was the animated “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” which debuted in sixth place with $5.2 million.

    “Dial of Destiny’s” underwhelming debut comes just a few weeks after both Warner Bros.’ “The Flash” and Disney/Pixar’s “Elemental” had lackluster openings in North America. “Elemental,” like Indy 5, also premiered at Cannes to middling reception.

    And yet, “Elemental” in its three weeks in theaters has held on much better than “The Flash,” which plummeted again to $5 million, bringing its domestic total to $99.3 million. Disney also saw similarly promising holds with “The Little Mermaid,” now at over $280 million domestically and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3″ which has grossed over $345 million. After the holiday, Disney will be responsible for nearly half of the summer box office earnings.

    “The entire story isn’t told on the opening weekend,” Dergarabedian said.

    Disney has a “clear weekend” ahead with no competing blockbusters, when studio heads can reasonably hope for more families and older audiences to buy tickets. But things will only get more challenging for “Dial of Destiny” in the coming weeks with a crowded July. “Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part I” opens on July 12, followed by “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” on July 21.

    “The ups and downs at the box office are giving us whiplash,” Dergarabedian said. “And we’re still on the cusp of some of the biggest movies of the summer.”

    Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

    1. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $60 million.

    2. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” $11.5 million.

    3. “Elemental,” $11.3 million.

    4. “No Hard Feelings,” $7.5 million.

    5. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” $7 million.

    6. “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” $5.2 million.

    7. “The Little Mermaid,” $5.2 million.

    8. “The Flash,” $5 million.

    9. “Asteroid City,” $3.8 million.

    10. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” $1.8 million.

    —

    Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Taika Waititi’s soccer pic ‘Next Goal Wins’ set for Toronto Film Festival premiere

    Taika Waititi’s soccer pic ‘Next Goal Wins’ set for Toronto Film Festival premiere

    [ad_1]

    Taika Waititi’s soccer comedy “Next Goal Wins” will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall, organizers said Wednesday

    This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Michael Fassbender, center, in a scene from “Next Goal Wins,” which will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall. (Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

    The Associated Press

    Taika Waititi’s soccer comedy “ Next Goal Wins ” will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall, organizers said Wednesday.

    The Searchlight Pictures film is based on a true story and stars Michael Fassbender as a Dutch-American soccer coach assigned to help the struggling American Samoa national team in its quest to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The team at that point was best known for suffering the worst loss in international football history — a 31 to 0 game against Australia in 2001.

    Waititi and co-writer Iain Morris based the film off of a 2014 British documentary of the same name, from Mike Brett and Steve Jamison, which chronicled the comeback attempt. The new film also stars Oscar Kightley, Kaimana, Will Arnett and Elisabeth Moss.

    “Next Goal Wins” is the first major Hollywood film this year to stake its claim on the busy fall film festival season, where many studios debut awards hopefuls. Waititi’s last film to premiere at Toronto, “Jojo Rabbit,” went on to win the best screenplay award at the Oscars. TIFF’s 48th edition runs from Sept. 7 to Sept. 17.

    “We’re thrilled to welcome Taika back to the festival and share his audacious take on the most popular sport in the world,” said TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey in a statement. “’Next Goal Wins’ is perfect for TIFF fans of the beautiful game looking for their football fix until the 2024 World Cup arrives.”

    Searchlight Pictures will release “Next Goal Wins” in theaters on Nov. 17.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Chelsea Peretti on her directorial debut ‘First Time Female Director,’ premiering at Tribeca

    Chelsea Peretti on her directorial debut ‘First Time Female Director,’ premiering at Tribeca

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — Chelsea Peretti plays a first-time director in her directorial debut: “First Time Female Director.”

    The film premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival takes an acutely meta premise in lampooning the tumultuous experience of an inexperienced woman brought in to a direct a play at a small, local theater in Glendale, California, after its original male director is accused of misconduct.

    In one scene, while Peretti’s character bangs a trash can lid and shouts “Learn your blocking,” a cast member grumbles, “We replaced a predator with a female disaster.”

    Things went far smoother for Peretti, the 45-year-old comedian and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star, during her first time behind the camera. “First Time Female Director,” which is up for sale at Tribeca, brings together a cast of funny people, including Megan Mullally, Kate Berlant, Andy Richter and Megan Stalter, along with cameos from Amy Poehler (a producer) and Peretti’s husband, Jordan Peele.

    “It was like a crazy summer camp as an adult,” Peretti says.

    “First Time Female Director” takes a satire of small-town theater and puts it in the context of a post-#MeToo entertainment world. For Peretti, it was a way to make something unabashedly silly with a little commentary on some of the shifts she’s experienced in recent years in Hollywood, she told The Associated Press in an interview.

    AP: Where did the idea for this begin?

    PERETTI: Weirdly, it started from me as sort of challenging myself to come up with something by booking a UCB slot years ago, and just forcing myself. I wanted to do a fake excerpt from a play. And I thought it would be funny to then have like a pretentious Q&A about it with the cast, and act like we’re a theater group and this is part of a real play. I went to so much theater as a young person. I was very intimately a lover of theater. But also, anything I love is also fair game to make fun of.

    AP: In the upheaval of the entertainment industry in the wake of #MeToo, were there things in how Hollywood responded that struck you as funny?

    PERETTI: Well, 100%. I think some things have felt like they moved so fast. Most of my career there was an absolute misogynistic tone in the response to what I was doing. And then one day all of a sudden there was shock and pearl clutching that these things are happening. And I’m like: “Where were you for the last 20 years? Where were you for all my YouTube comments that I’ve endured?” It’s been such a whirlwind that I was trying to process it in this project.

    AP: A few years ago on “Conan,” you joked about noticing an uptick in the audience for your stand-up special because viewers were looking for comedy from “people who aren’t rapists.”

    PERETTI: I do remember saying that. There were so many comedians that were outed for varying levels of horrific misogyny that I started really contemplating the last 20 years of my life, going: “Wow, I was trying to get a pat on the head from a lot of these people. I was being told to emulate half these people.” It was a revelation and it’s been so inspiring, people like Megan Stalter who are this younger generation. I was told never dress sexy when you’re doing stand-up. I’m watching all these younger women break all these rules and having the time of their lives. That’s the way to do it, you know? So it’s been such a period of reflection. And obviously the pandemic was this pause button in which you could really reflect on, “Wow, I was on a sitcom! That’s cool.” And: “Whoa, my stand-up life was tumultuous in many ways.”

    AP: You kind of hold a funhouse mirror up that tumult in “First Time Film Director.” Even what the audiences in the film cheer for is kind of a joke.

    PERETTI: When I started stand-up, I was told the audience is never wrong. And I have to say I disagree. I think the audience is wrong sometimes. I remember going to Carolines on Broadway and having a joke that I was really excited to work on and going up and just absolutely bombing. Now, probably that was my fault. But then I remember a guy going up after me and doing a bit about double-sided dildos and just destroying. I was going: “I don’t know if they are right.” Andy Warhol was right that everyone’s famous now. All these comedians have podcast empires. Everyone is preaching to their own choir in a way.

    AP: Yet instead of skewering some of the male comedians you were thinking about, you mostly make fun of yourself in the film.

    PERETTI: (Laughs) Well, this is a recurring theme for me. Like, it’s not fun satirizing Trump. It’s more fun satirizing people that you know intimately and love. I would have a really hard time like writing about a businessman. Speaking of another adage, write what you know. I know self-doubt. I know failure. I know feeling like people don’t like me.

    AP: But I gather your experience directing went better than your character’s?

    PERETTI: I really loved it. I often feel that, when you’re being directed as a comedy actor, that directors try to keep you in line a little bit. Like, if you have a big idea, they almost want you to rein it in. When some of these actors on this movie had ideas, I was like: “Let’s do it!” And so many of them were brilliant. As a rule, every comedian I know holds these strange obsessions. Heather Lawless was like: “Can I have Band-aids on my finger when I’m driving?” And Jermaine Fowler was like, “Can I roll around in a pile of cords?” And I’m like, “Yeah!” I just love saying yes to people.

    AP: You seem quite game to try new things, like film directing, or making a coffee-themed concept album.

    PERETTI: Sometimes before doing standup, I get really anxious a lot of times, especially in new venues. And I would be backstage and I just go, “F—- it.” I feel like you just have to have this part of you that says, “F—- it.” I always want to be like trying new things and I always want to be growing. That’s the fun of being creative to me. And that doesn’t mean that all these ideas work. But I love spontaneity and following inspiration and seeing what happens.

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Homecoming on film: Award-winning Mariupol documentary screened for 1st time in Ukraine

    Homecoming on film: Award-winning Mariupol documentary screened for 1st time in Ukraine

    [ad_1]

    KYIV, Ukraine — The award-winning film “20 Days in Mariupol” made its premiere in Ukraine on Saturday, seen for the first time by some of the Ukrainian medics and first responders who were chronicled in the documentary about how Russian forces bombed and blasted their way into the southeastern port city last year.

    Repeated standing ovations in a packed Kyiv cinema, mixed with tears and hugs, greeted those Ukrainian civil servants who toiled nearly non-stop in and around a Mariupol hospital that was a centerpiece of the film about the city early on in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

    For some, the screening served as an unsettling flashback to their own brush with death in the city — a fate inescapable for untold numbers of other victims of Russia’s invasion, including toddlers, infants and expectant mothers whose final moments were caught on video shown in the film.

    “It was very hard emotionally because it reminded me of when we were leaving Mariupol, there were still a lot of casualties,” said Serhii Chornobrivets, 25, an ambulance worker who treated countless patients in the city, and is now a military medic. “I could have saved more people, but I didn’t.”

    “Watching that movie brought all those feelings back,” he added.

    Many viewers the documentary, a joint project between The Associated Press and PBS Frontline, expressed their gratitude that the footage eventually got out to the world for history’s sake.

    The documentary by Associated Press journalist Mstyslav Chernov was built on some 30 hours of film from reporting along with AP photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and AP producer Vasilisa Stepanenko about the earliest phase of the Russian invasion of Mariupol.

    They were the three international journalists to hold out longest in Mariupol during the Russian siege, serving as the world’s eyes and ears amid the horrors of the onslaught. Their work along with Paris-based colleague Lori Hinnant won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize award for public service for the AP in May.

    As communications networks collapsed and Russian forces closed in, it was never certain the footage would get out. Some was sent in snippets by mobile phone, the rest carried out in the journalists’ final flight from the city.

    “After this material was published, the entire world started helping us — as the real fighters that we are,” said Volodymyr Nikulin, a Mariupol police officer and a standout of the documentary for his cool-headed determination that word of the devastation reach a global audience. “Already this movie has become part of our history.”

    The 94-minute film has received numerous award, including at the Cinema for Peace competition, the Cleveland International Film Festival, and at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it had its world premiere. A wider opening in U.S. theaters begins next month.

    “I hope it gives voice to all Ukrainians,” said Chernov, expressing his hope that it could help pave the way for international justice and accountability. “It’s painful to think how small this piece really is … those 20 days are a tiny fraction of all the tragedies that happened” in many parts of Ukraine.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What to stream this weekend: Foo Fighters, ‘The Idol,’ LeBron James and ‘American Gladiators’ doc

    What to stream this weekend: Foo Fighters, ‘The Idol,’ LeBron James and ‘American Gladiators’ doc

    [ad_1]

    There’s new music from Foo Fighters, the buzzy HBO series “The Idol” starring Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd and a documentary about the breakthrough TV show “American Gladiators” among the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a LeBron James’s origin story and a TV show where contestants compete to transform nostalgia cars into life-sized Hot Wheels.

    NEW MOVIES TO STREAM

    — LeBron James’s origin story is dramatized in the new film “Shooting Stars,” debuting exclusively on Peacock on Friday. Based on the 2009 book, written by James and “Friday Night Lights” author Buzz Bissinger, the film looks at how he and his childhood friends (the self-anointed “fab four”) rose to basketball prominence on their high school team in Akron, Ohio. He and his friends would help lead their St. Vincent-St. Mary’s team to three state championships in four years. James is played by newcomer Marquis “Mookie” Cook, who co-stars with “Stranger Things’” Caleb McLaughlin as Lil Dru, Avery S. Wills Jr. as Willie McGee and Khalil Everage as Sian Cotton in the Chris Robinson-directed film.

    — Sydney Sweeney, of “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” takes a starring role in “Reality,” available now on HBO and Max. (Read AP’s review here. ) She plays former U.S. Air Force member and NSA contractor Reality Winner who was accused of leaking classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The film is based on actual dialogue between Winner and the FBI agents (Josh Hamilton and Marchant Davis) who showed up at her doorstep to interrogate her in 2017. It’s the directorial debut of Tina Satter, who adapted her 2019 play “Is This a Room?” and has gotten rave reviews since its debut at the Berlin Film Festival.

    — Method acting is in the spotlight in a new series that debuted on The Criterion Channel on Thursday, along with a conversation between Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and Isaac Butler, who wrote a book on the matter (“The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned How to Act.”) The films feature performances by noted disciples like Sidney Poitier, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando. Included among the 25 titles are George Stevens’ “A Place in the Sun,” Sidney Lumet’s “12 Angry Men,” Elia Kazan’s “Splendor in the Grass,” Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” and “Carnal Knowledge,” Bob Rafelson’s “Five Easy Pieces” and Warren Beatty’s “Reds.”

    — AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr

    NEW MUSIC TO STREAM

    — Foo Fighters have a new album, the first since the death of the band’s drummer, Taylor Hawkins. The rockers say the 10-track “But Here We Are” is “a brutally honest and emotionally raw response to everything Foo Fighters endured over the last year.” The lead, driving single is “Rescued,” with the lyrics “I’m just waiting to be rescued/Bring me back to life. Kings and queens and in-betweens/We all deserve the right.” The new album, out Friday is produced by Greg Kurstin and Foo Fighters. Hawkins died last year during a South American tour. (Read AP’s review here.)

    — Bob Dylan’s re-recordings of old songs, which first premiered on Alma Har’el’s 2021 film “Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan,” will be released on audio formats for the first time on Friday. The collection includes “Forever Young,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” The 14 tracks include “Watching the River Flow,” a bluesy jewel. The full-length “Shadow Kingdom feature” film will also be available for download and rental on June 6. (Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings)

    — The Revivalists return with their fifth full-length album, promising more of their spicy gumbo of horn-accented alt-rock, blues, folk and gospel. “Pour It Out Into the Night” is out Friday and the New Orleans-based band offers three very different takes on their sound, with the driving anthem “Kid,” the folky “Down in the Dirt” and the political protest tune “The Long Con,” with the lyrics “Every day they take away/A little piece of you/a little piece of me.” The band this summer are performing at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. (Concord Records)

    — This week will offer a chance to honor Kenny Rogers with some rare songs he left behind. The 10-track “Life Is Like a Song” features eight never-before-heard recordings, spanning 2008-2011, including covers of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” and Lionel Richie’s “Goodbye,” as well as his duet with Dolly Parton, “Tell Me That You Love Me.” The collection is curated and executive produced by the late Country Music Hall of Famer’s widow, Wanda Rogers. Two bonus tracks include a cover of the Mack Gordon/Henry Warren standard, “At Last” and the Buddy Hyatt-penned “Say Hello to Heaven.” (UMe)

    — AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy

    NEW SERIES TO STREAM

    — “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson has a new gritty HBO series called “The Idol” starring Lily-Rose Depp and Abel Tesfaye, also known as the recording artist The Weeknd, who is a co-writer and co-executive producer. Depp plays a recording artist in LA who, after a nervous breakdown, enters a disturbing relationship with a self-help guru/cult leader played by Tesfaye. “The Idol” has already garnered a lot of buzz for an alleged toxic work environment off camera and reportedly gratuitous sex scenes that are also violent, which the cast and Levinson have denied. The show premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where Levinson acknowledged at a press conference that while it is a “provocative” story, the media coverage has convinced him “we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.” “The Idol” premieres Sunday on HBO.

    — A new miniseries offers a history lesson on the 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms in office. Co-executive produced by Bradley Cooper and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, “FDR” delves into some of the most pivotal times in Roosevelt’s life including when he contracted Polio disease and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down, when U.S. forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and his marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt who became a champion for human rights. The three-night miniseries premiered its first episode Monday on History.

    — ESPN’s award-winning “30 for 30” series returns with “The American Gladiators Documentary,” a two-part film examining the history of the former syndicated reality-competition show. It also reveals “American Gladiators” had a dark underbelly, involving greed, addiction and blackmail. Former contenders and crew members are interviewed. It premiered Tuesday.

    — Gearheads will rev up for “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge,” where contestants compete to transform nostalgia cars into life-sized Hot Wheels. Hosted by auto expert Rutledge Wood and featuring celebrity guests including Anthony Anderson, Joel McHale and Terry Crews, the winner of each episode gets a $25,000 prize. Jay Leno, known for his own love of automobiles and rare car collection, appears in the finale episode where the winner is awarded $50,000 and have their creation turned into an actual Hot Wheels diecast model that the public can purchase. “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge” debuted Tuesday on NBC.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    NEW VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY

    — As Mick Jagger once sang, summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street. For aficionados of Capcom’s venerable Street Fighter series, that time can’t come soon enough. Street Fighter 6 — the franchise’s first release since 2016 — brings back 18 fan-favorite brawlers for more one-on-one punching and kicking. The new edition also lets you create your own avatar from scratch and go cruisin’ for a bruisin’ in cities all over the world. And there’s a battle hub where you and your friends can start fight clubs, compete in tournaments and play old-school Capcom arcade games. The fists and feet start flying Friday on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Foo Fighters, ‘The Idol,’ LeBron James and ‘American Gladiators’ doc

    What to stream this week: Foo Fighters, ‘The Idol,’ LeBron James and ‘American Gladiators’ doc

    [ad_1]

    There’s new music from Foo Fighters, the buzzy HBO series “The Idol” starring Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd and a documentary about the breakthrough TV show “American Gladiators” among the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a LeBron James’s origin story and a TV show where contestants compete to transform nostalgia cars into life-sized Hot Wheels.

    NEW MOVIES TO STREAM

    — LeBron James’s origin story is dramatized in the new film “Shooting Stars,” debuting exclusively on Peacock on Friday, June 2. Based on the 2009 book, written by James and “Friday Night Lights” author Buzz Bissinger, the film looks at how he and his childhood friends (the self-anointed “fab four”) rose to basketball prominence on their high school team in Akron, Ohio. He and his friends would help lead their St. Vincent-St. Mary’s team to three state championships in four years. James is played by newcomer Marquis “Mookie” Cook, who co-stars with “Stranger Things’” Caleb McLaughlin as Lil Dru, Avery S. Wills Jr. as Willie McGee and Khalil Everage as Sian Cotton in the Chris Robinson-directed film.

    — Sydney Sweeney, of “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” takes a starring role in “Reality,” coming to HBO and Max on Monday, May 29. She plays former U.S. Air Force member and NSA contractor Reality Winner who was accused of leaking classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The film is based on actual dialogue between Winner and the FBI agents (Josh Hamilton and Marchant Davis) who showed up at her doorstep to interrogate her in 2017. It’s the directorial debut of Tina Satter, who adapted her 2019 play “Is This a Room?” and has gotten rave reviews since its debut at the Berlin Film Festival.

    — Method acting is in the spotlight in a new series debuting on The Criterion Channel on Thursday, along with a conversation between Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and Isaac Butler, who wrote a book on the matter (“The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned How to Act.”) The films feature performances by noted disciples like Sidney Poitier, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando. Included among the 25 titles are George Stevens’ “A Place in the Sun,” Sidney Lumet’s “12 Angry Men,” Elia Kazan’s “Splendor in the Grass,” Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” and “Carnal Knowledge,” Bob Rafelson’s “Five Easy Pieces” and Warren Beatty’s “Reds.”

    — AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr

    NEW MUSIC TO STREAM

    — Foo Fighters have a new album, the first since the death of the band’s drummer, Taylor Hawkins. The rockers say the 10-track “But Here We Are” is “a brutally honest and emotionally raw response to everything Foo Fighters endured over the last year.” The lead, driving single is “Rescued,” with the lyrics “I’m just waiting to be rescued/Bring me back to life. Kings and queens and in-betweens/We all deserve the right.” The new album, out Friday, June 2, is produced by Greg Kurstin and Foo Fighters. Hawkins died last year during a South American tour.

    — Bob Dylan’s re-recordings of old songs, which first premiered on Alma Har’el’s 2021 film “Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan,” will be released on audio formats for the first time on Friday, June 2. The collection includes “Forever Young,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” The 14 tracks include “Watching the River Flow,” a bluesy jewel. The full-length “Shadow Kingdom feature” film will also be available for download and rental on June 6. (Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings)

    — The Revivalists return with their fifth full-length album, promising more of their spicy gumbo of horn-accented alt-rock, blues, folk and gospel. “Pour It Out Into the Night” is out Friday, June 2 and the New Orleans-based band offers three very different takes on their sound, with the driving anthem “Kid,” the folky “Down in the Dirt” and the political protest tune “The Long Con,” with the lyrics “Every day they take away/A little piece of you/a little piece of me.” The band this summer are performing at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. (Concord Records)

    — This week will offer a chance to honor Kenny Rogers with some rare songs he left behind. The 10-track “Life Is Like a Song” features eight never-before-heard recordings, spanning 2008-2011, including covers of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” and Lionel Richie’s “Goodbye,” as well as his duet with Dolly Parton, “Tell Me That You Love Me.” The collection is curated and executive produced by the late Country Music Hall of Famer’s widow, Wanda Rogers. Two bonus tracks include a cover of the Mack Gordon/Henry Warren standard, “At Last” and the Buddy Hyatt-penned “Say Hello to Heaven.” (UMe)

    — AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy

    NEW SERIES TO STREAM

    — “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson has a new gritty HBO series called “The Idol” starring Lily-Rose Depp and Abel Tesfaye, also known as the recording artist The Weeknd, who is a co-writer and co-executive producer. Depp plays a recording artist in LA who, after a nervous breakdown, enters a disturbing relationship with a self-help guru/cult leader played by Tesfaye. “The Idol” has already garnered a lot of buzz for an alleged toxic work environment off camera and reportedly gratuitous sex scenes that are also violent, which the cast and Levinson have denied. The show premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where Levinson acknowledged at a press conference that while it is a “provocative” story, the media coverage has convinced him “we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.” “The Idol” premieres Sunday, June 4 on HBO.

    — A new miniseries offers a history lesson on the 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms in office. Co-executive produced by Bradley Cooper and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, “FDR” delves into some of the most pivotal times in Roosevelt’s life including when he contracted Polio disease and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down, when U.S. forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and his marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt who became a champion for human rights. The three-night miniseries premieres its first episode Monday, May 29 on History.

    — ESPN’s award-winning “30 for 30” series returns with “The American Gladiators Documentary,” a two-part film examining the history of the former syndicated reality-competition show. It also reveals “American Gladiators” had a dark underbelly, involving greed, addiction and blackmail. Former contenders and crew members are interviewed. It premieres Tuesday.

    — Gearheads will rev up for “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge,” where contestants compete to transform nostalgia cars into life-sized Hot Wheels. Hosted by auto expert Rutledge Wood and featuring celebrity guests including Anthony Anderson, Joel McHale and Terry Crews, the winner of each episode gets a $25,000 prize. Jay Leno, known for his own love of automobiles and rare car collection, appears in the finale episode where the winner is awarded $50,000 and have their creation turned into an actual Hot Wheels diecast model that the public can purchase. “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge” debuts Tuesday on NBC.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    NEW VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY

    — As Mick Jagger once sang, summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street. For aficionados of Capcom’s venerable Street Fighter series, that time can’t come soon enough. Street Fighter 6 — the franchise’s first release since 2016 — brings back 18 fan-favorite brawlers for more one-on-one punching and kicking. The new edition also lets you create your own avatar from scratch and go cruisin’ for a bruisin’ in cities all over the world. And there’s a battle hub where you and your friends can start fight clubs, compete in tournaments and play old-school Capcom arcade games. The fists and feet start flying Friday, June 2, on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ wins Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or; 3rd time female director wins top honor

    ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ wins Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or; 3rd time female director wins top honor

    [ad_1]

    Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in a ceremony Saturday that bestowed the festival’s prestigious top prize on an engrossing, rigorously plotted French courtroom drama that puts a marriage on trial.

    “Anatomy of a Fall,” which stars Sandra Hüller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. One of the two previous winners, Julia Ducournau, was on this year’s jury.

    Cannes’ Grand Prix, its second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” a chilling Martin Amis adaptation about a German family living next door to Auschwitz. Hüller also stars in that film.

    The awards were decided by a jury presided over by two-time Palme winner Ruben Östlund, the Swedish director who won the prize last year for “Triangle of Sadness.” The ceremony preceded the festival’s closing night film, the Pixar animation “Elemental.”

    Remarkably, the award for “Anatomy of a Fall” gives the indie distributor Neon its fourth straight Palme winners. Neon, which acquired the film after its premiere in Cannes, also backed “Triangle of Sadness,”Ducournau’s “Titane” and Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” which it steered to a best picture win at the Academy Awards.

    Triet was presented the Palme by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female filmmakers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that.” This year, a record seven out of the 21 films in competition at Cannes were directed by women.

    After a rousing standing ovation, Triet, the 44-year-old French filmmaker, spoke passionately about the protests that have roiled France this year over reforms to pension plans and the retirement age. Several protests were held during Cannes this year, but demonstrations were — as they have been in many high-profile locations throughout France — banned from the area around the Palais des Festivals. Protesters were largely relegated to the outskirts of Cannes.

    “The protests were denied and repressed in a shocking way,” said Triet, who linked that governmental influence to that in cinema. “The merchandizing of culture, defended by a liberal government, is breaking the French cultural exception.”

    “This award is dedicated to all the young women directors and all the young male directors and all those who cannot manage to shoot films today,” she added. “We must give them the space I occupied 15 years ago in a less hostile world where it was still possible to make mistakes and start again.”

    After the ceremony, Triet reflected on being the third female director to win the Palme, following Ducournau and Jane Campion (“The Piano”).

    “Things are truly changing,” she said.

    Speaking to reporters, Triet was joined by her star, Hüller, whose performance was arguably the most acclaimed of the festival. (The festival encourages juries not to give films more than one award.) But “Anatomy of a Fall” did pocket one other sought-after prize: the Palme Dog. The honor given to the best canine in the festival’s films went to the film’s border collie, Snoop.

    The jury prize went to Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” a deadpan love story about a romance that blooms in a loveless workaday Helsinki where dispatches from the war in Ukraine regularly play on the radio.

    Best actor went to veteran Japanese star Koji Yakusho, who plays a reflective, middle-aged Tokyo man who cleans toilets in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” a gentle, quotidian character study.

    The Turkish actor Merve Dizdar took best actress for the Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses.” Ceylan’s expansive tale is set in snowy eastern Anatolia about a teacher, Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), accused of misconduct by a young female student. Dizdar plays a friend both attracted and repelled by Samet.

    “I understand what it’s like to be a woman in this area of the country,” said Dizdar. “I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women who are fighting to exist and overcome difficulties in this world and to retrain hope.”

    Vietnamese-French director Tràn Anh Hùng took best director for “Pot-au-Feu,” a lush, foodie love story starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel and set in a 19th century French gourmet château.

    Best screenplay was won by Yuji Sakamoto for “Monster.” Sakamoto penned Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s nuanced drama, with shifting perspectives, about two boys struggling for acceptance in their school at home. “Monster” also won the Queer Palm, an honor bestowed by journalists for the festival’s strongest LGBTQ-themed film.

    Quentin Tarantino, who won Cannes’ top award for “Pulp Fiction,” attended the ceremony to present a tribute to filmmaker Roger Corman. Tarantino praised Corman for filling him and countless moviegoers with “unadulterated cinema pleasure.”

    “My cinema is uninhibited, full of excess and fun,” said Corman, the independent film maverick. “I feel like this what Cannes is about.”

    The festival’s Un Certain Regard section handed out its awards on Friday, giving the top prize to Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature, “How to Have Sex.”

    Saturday’s ceremony drew to close a Cannes edition that hasn’t lacked spectacle, stars or controversy.

    The biggest wattage premieres came out of competition. Martin Scorsese debuted his Osage murders epic “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a sprawling vision of American exploitation with Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Harrison Ford’s Indy farewell, launched with a tribute to Ford. Wes Anderson premiered “Asteroid City.”

    The festival opened on a note of controversy. “Jeanne du Barry,” a period drama co-starring Johnny Depp as Louis XV, played as the opening night film. The premiere marked Depp’s highest profile appearance since the conclusion of his explosive trial last year with ex-wife Amber Heard.

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    ___

    For more coverage of this year’s festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/cannes-film-festival

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Wes Anderson on his new ’50s-set film ‘Asteroid City,’ AI and all those TikTok videos

    Wes Anderson on his new ’50s-set film ‘Asteroid City,’ AI and all those TikTok videos

    [ad_1]

    CANNES, France — When Wes Anderson comes down from Paris for the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France, he and his actors don’t stay in one of Cannes’ luxury hotels but more than an hour down the coast and well outside the frenzy of the festival.

    “When we arrived here yesterday, we arrived at a calm, peaceful hotel,” Anderson said in a interview. “We’re one hour away, but it’s a total normal life.”

    Normal life can mean something different in a Wes Anderson film, and that may be doubly so in his latest, “Asteroid City.” It’s among Anderson’s most charmingly chock-full creations, a much-layered, ’50s-set fusion of science fiction, midcentury theater and about a hundred other influences ranging from Looney Tunes to “Bad Day at Black Rock.”

    “Asteroid City,” which Focus Features will release June 16, premiered Tuesday in Cannes. Anderson and his starry cast — including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Margot Robbie, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright and Adrien Brody — arrived all together in a coach bus.

    The film, which Anderson wrote with Roman Coppola, takes place in a Southwest desert town where a group of characters, some of them nursing an unspoken grief, gather for various reasons, be it a stargazing convention or a broken-down car. But even that story is part of a Russian Doll fiction. It’s a play being performed — which, itself, is being filmed for a TV broadcast.

    All of which is to say “Asteroid City” is going to give all those Tik Tok videos made in Anderson’s distinct, diorama style fresh fodder for new social-media replicas, both human-made and AI-crafted. Anderson spoke about those Tik Toks in an interview the day before “Asteroid City” debuted in Cannes, as well as other questions of style and inspiration in “Asteroid City,” a sun-dried and melancholic work of vintage Anderson density.

    “I do feel like this might be a movie that benefits from being seen twice,” Anderson said. “Brian De Palma liked it the first time and had a much bigger reaction on the second time. But what can you say? You can’t make a movie and say, ‘I think it’s best everyone sees it twice.’”

    ___

    AP: It’s quite a treat to read in the movie’s opening credits “Jeff Goldblum as the alien,” before you even know there’s an alien. That seems to announce something.

    ANDERSON: We naturally were debating whether this is necessary in the opening credits. I said, “You know, it’s a good thing.” It’s a little foreshadowing. In our story, it’s not a expansive role. But part of what the movie is to me and to Roman, it has something to do with actors and this strange thing that they do. What does it mean when you give a performance? If somebody has probably written something and then you study it and learn and you have an interpretation. But essentially you take yourself and put it in the movie. And then you take a bunch of people taking themselves and putting themselves in the movie. They have their faces and their voices, and they’re more complex than anything than even the AI is going to come up with. The AI has to know them to invent them. They do all these emotional things that are usually a mystery to me. I usually stand back and watch and it’s always quite moving.

    AP: The alien may signal doom for the characters of “Asteroid City,” and there are atomic bomb tests in the area. Is this your version of an apocalyptic movie?

    ANDERSON: The apocalyptic stuff was all there. There probably were no aliens, but there certainly was a strong interest in them. There certainly were atom bombs going off. And there had just been I think we can say the worst war in the history of mankind. There’s a certain point where I remember saying to Roman: “I think not only is one of these men suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress that he’s totally unaware of, but he’s sharing it with his family in a way that’s going to end up with Woodstock. But also: They should all be armed. So everybody’s got a pistol.

    AP: Since maybe “Grand Budapest Hotel,” you seem to be adding more and more frames within frames for Russian doll movies of one layer after another. Your first movies, “Bottle Rocket” and “Rushmore” are starting to seem almost realistic by comparison. Do you think your films are getting more elaborate as you get older?

    ANDERSON: Ultimately, every time I make a movie, I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do and then figure out how to make it such that we do what I want. It’s usually an emotional choice and it’s usually quite mysterious to me how end up with how end up. The most improvisation aspect of making a movie to me is writing it. I have a tendency to obsess over the stage directions, which are not in the movie. With “Grand Budapest” we had multiple layers to it, and “French Dispatch” certainly had that. This one is really split in two but there’s more complex layers. We know the main movie is the play. But we also have a behind-the-scenes making of the play. We also have a guy telling us that this is a television broadcast of a hypothetical play that doesn’t actually exist. It’s not intention to make it complicated. It’s just me doing what I want.

    AP: Have you seen all the TikTok videos that have made in your style? They’re everywhere.

    ANDERSON: No, I haven’t seen it. I’ve never seen any TikTok, actually. I’ve not seen the ones related to me or the ones not related to me. And I’ve not seen any of the AI-type stuff related to me.

    AP: You could look at it as a new generation discovering your films.

    ANDERSON: The only reason I don’t look at the stuff is because it probably takes the things that I do the same again and again. We’re forced to accept when I make a movie, it’s got to be made by me. But what I will say is anytime anyone’s responding with enthusiasm to these movies I’ve made over these many years, that’s a nice, lucky thing. So I’m happy to have it. But I have a feeling I would just feel like: Gosh, is that what I’m doing? So I protect myself.

    AP: People sometimes miss in your films that the characters operating in such precise worlds are deeply flawed and comic. The ornate tableaux may be exact but the people are all imperfect.

    ANDERSON: That’s what I would aspire to, anyway. In the end, it’s a lot more important to me what it’s about. I spend a lot more time writing the movie than doing anything to do with making it. It’s the actors who are the center of it all to me. You can’t simulate them. Or maybe you can. If you look at the AI, maybe I’ll see that you can.

    AP: In “Asteroid City,” you combined an interest in really disparate ideas — the ’50s theater of Sam Shepard with the automat. How does a combination like that happen?

    ANDERSON: We had an idea that we wanted to do a ‘50s setting and it’s got these two sides. One is New York theater. There’s a picture of Paul Newman sitting with a T-shirt on and a foot on the chair in the Actors Studio. It was about that world of summer stock, behind the scenes of that, and these towns that were built and never moved into. That becomes the East Coast and the West Coat and the theater and the cinema. There’s a series of dichotomies. And one of the central things was we wanted to make a character for Jason Schwartzman that was different from what he’s done before. The things that go into making a movie, it eventually becomes too much to even pin down. So many things get added into the mix, which I like. And part of what the movie is about is what you can’t control in life. In a way, the invention of a movie is one of those things.

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Natalie Portman and Todd Haynes dive into the nature of performance in ‘May December’ at Cannes

    Natalie Portman and Todd Haynes dive into the nature of performance in ‘May December’ at Cannes

    [ad_1]

    CANNES, France — CANNES, France (AP) —

    In Todd Haynes’ tonally shape-shifting “May December,” the first announcement of the movie’s playful intentions comes with a theatrical zoom in, a few lushly melodramatic piano notes and the frightful announcement that there no more hot dogs in the fridge.

    That moment — which Haynes says signals “that there’s something coy happening in the language of the film” — is just a taste of what’s to come in “May December,” a delicious and disquieting drama laced with comedy and camp that Haynes premiered over the weekend at the Cannes Film Festival.

    Natalie Portman stars as an actor researching an upcoming film that’s to dramatize a scandal from 20 years earlier. She comes to Savannah, Georgia, to spend time with Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), who years earlier become tabloid fodder for a sexual relationship with a seventh grader. Now, she’s seemingly happily married to him, Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), with kids of their own and suburban barbeques to host.

    The film, scripted by Samy Burch, takes a light but deliberate touch in navigating through thorny themes of performance and identity. As Portman’s character grows increasingly like Gracie, ethical borders begin to tumble away.

    “It was tonally such an amazing script and so rigorous,” Haynes said in an interview alongside Portman. “It kept shifting the way you felt about or trusted one character versus another. That whole process as it maneuvered through the course of the script was such a compelling experience. And I just thought: Wow, how could you translate into visually?”

    “May December,” which is seeking a distributor in Cannes, is the first time Haynes (who has regularly worked with Moore) has made a movie with the 41-year-old Portman. For her, “May December” was a chance to not only work with a director she’s long admired but explore some of her own fascinations.

    “It poses a lot of the questions I’m most obsessed by about performance, about the purpose of art, about innocence,” says Portman, also a producer on the film.

    “When you explore all those layers — playing someone who’s playing someone, making a movie of a movie in a movie — there’s so many layers of artifice, and what truth we can get out of artifice — which is the kind of alchemy of what we do,” adds Portman. “We’re using lies to tell the truth, and it’s magic.”

    “May December” has some unofficial roots in reality. Gracie isn’t very different in certain ways from Mary Kay Letourneau, a Washington State schoolteacher who went to prison after a relationship with a boy in her sixth grade class.

    Questions of identity and artifice have run through Haynes’ filmography, including the sumptuous ’50s romance “Carol,” the Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama “Far from Heaven” and his most recent film, the documentary “The Velvet Underground.” In Portman, he found an actor who shared a similar approach to film.

    “A lot of narrative filmmaking and fiction-making has an internal desire to redeem oneself through the process, to sort of affirm one’s own aims. That’s the thing that I’m not particularly interested in as a director,” says Haynes. “And I’m drawn to actors who feel similarly, who are actually interested in creating a distance between maybe their own values and ideas and those portrayed in the character.”

    He praised Portman’s eagerness to engage with “and lean into the most disquieting aspects of the character.”

    Portman has famously played some real-life figures, like Jacqueline Kennedy (“Jackie”), which required copious amounts of research. But in “May December,” she plays an actor far more reckless than herself. Yet even in a performance that could have easily slid into satire, Portman deftly inhabits her.

    “Most artists who tell stories want to hold up their ethical standpoint in the light. It can be vampiric to take human emotion and human story and capitalize on it and tell a story,” Portman says. “But hopefully the energy that you come to it with is empathy and the curiosity to explore someone’s human behavior and someone’s inner self. That it’s an act of empathy and not an act of bloodsucking.”

    There were long conversations with Haynes and Moore as they prepared to make “May December” in a 30-day shooting spring. But, unlike her character, Portman’s preparation for the part was mostly already done.

    “Well,” Portman says smiling, “I’ve spent my whole life researching how to be an actress.”

    ___

    Follow AP Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    [ad_2]

    Source link