ReportWire

Tag: movies

  • Deon Cole returns to host NAACP Image Awards, says BAFTA disruption will be addressed

    [ad_1]

    LOS ANGELES — As Deon Cole returns to host the NAACP Image Awards, the comedian-actor is focused on celebrating Black achievement and responding to a recent onstage disruption at the British Academy Film Awards.

    Cole called the incident “terrible” and said the matter would be addressed at the 57th NAACP Image Awards on Saturday, airing live across multiple Paramount networks including BET and CBS. The disruption occurred Sunday when a racial slur was shouted from the audience by Tourette syndrome advocate John Davidson while “Sinners” starsMichael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting during a ceremony that had been prerecorded earlier in the day.

    The NAACP Image Awards honor achievements in entertainment, culture and public service. This year’s ceremony will include tributes to Viola Davis, who will receive the Chairman’s Award, and Colman Domingo, who will be presented with the President’s Award.

    Known for his roles on the sitcoms “black-ish” and “The Neighborhood,” as well as his stand-up comedy, Cole told The Associated Press that he is preparing for both celebration and the unpredictability of live television. Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

    COLE: Just amping up the ante, man. Last year was phenomenal. We had a great time. And anything you do, you always go, “Man, what if we could have did this? We should do this and do that.” And so, this year we gonna do that. We just gonna go there, and just make it fun, make it exciting, spontaneous. It’s going to be a good look.

    COLE: It’s just about balance. It’s almost like cooking. You know how much seasoning to put in there. You know how long to let it cook. It’s the same thing when it comes to comedy, putting the right amount of seasoning in and knowing the right temperature and letting it cook for the right amount of time, and then knowing when to pull it back. I’m glad that they trust me to steer that ship.

    COLE: It happened last year. Kerry Washington went way off script, but it was so great, and it was fun. You can’t have these huge moments and expect people to really stick to the script. They’re gonna act the way that they’re gonna act. So it’s good to see that… My comedic mind is always like, “How do I piggyback on this? How do we make it even funnier, up the ante on it?”

    COLE: It was terrible. I felt like it was terrible. They never really gave an apology. An official apology straight to our brothers. So, tune into the award show. We’re gonna deal with that. We’re gonna touch on that.

    COLE: We live in discomfort. That’s our job to make something uncomfortable comfortable, make you look at it a certain way, make you think of it a certain way. Every comic that’s on stage is talking about something that’s discomfort at some kind of level and trying to bring some normalcy to it. We live in that. We don’t live in everything’s amazing.

    COLE: Viola is from another planet. We are blessed to have her. We don’t know what planet she’s from, but she’s from another planet. She is one of the most powerful actors we have in this game ever. Giving her flowers is everything. She’s winning. She’s so incredible. Colman Domingo is my brother. I’ve worked with him on several projects, and we have a brotherhood. I am so happy that my brother is getting his just due, getting his flowers and everything. He deserves it, and he has so much to offer. I just can’t wait for that moment.

    COLE: It means a lot. It shows the versatility that one has. Being on television with certain TV shows, having success with at least four sitcoms that are still in syndication, I guess people know that I can handle network funny. It’s different than stand-up funny. It’s a whole different ball game. There’s no coincidence that Steve Harvey can do what he does on “Family Feud,” and then he can go over here and destroy a room if he wants to. It’s two different funnies. So for people to trust me to handle it, I appreciate it. I guess it shows that we can do it all.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • “He Responds Very Quickly”: “Jerry Maguire” Child Star Jonathan Lipnicki Just Detailed How Tom Cruise Has Continued To Support Him 30 Years After They Worked Together, And It’s So Wholesome

    [ad_1]

    “I’m always going to look up to that guy, you know? He has been incredible to me,” Jonathan, who worked with Tom when he was just six years old, revealed.

    View Entire Post ›

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Screening at the Berlin Film Festival: Alain Gomis’s ‘Dao’

    [ad_1]

    Mike Etienne and D’Johé Kouadio in Dao by Alain Gomis. © 2026 – Les Films du Worso – Srab Films – Yennenga Productions – Nafi Films – Telecine Bissau Produções – Canal+ Afrique

    Weddings and funerals are perhaps the rituals that most bind cultures across space and time. This affords Dao—the sixth feature by French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis—an enrapturing universality born of detailed specificity, as it presents a funeral commemoration in West Africa alongside a wedding in France a year later. The film places unrelenting emphasis on the meaning behind traditions and their subsequent evolution when people move away and return. And yet, this sharp focus on migration is expressed through liberating artistry, which engenders an alluring familiarity that makes the three-hour runtime feel like a breeze.

    Dao, named for the Taoist belief in an unceasing motion that flows through and unites all things, is a film of anthropological self-reflection, but it is also a surprising exploration of cinematic process. It begins with Gomis offering a documentary peek into his casting—or at least, a peek he frames in documentary form—before dramatizing the more intimate parts of his life. The script was inspired by a funeral ceremony for Gomis’ father in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. The writer-director welcomes us into this personal tale through the lens of his professional identity to highlight how the filmic and the cultural, and the individual and the social, inextricably overlap.

    It’s here, in this pseudo-documentary introduction, that we meet several of the movie’s actors as they first audition and screen test together. These include the nonprofessional Katy Corréa, the film’s eventual lead, who seems reluctant to participate but whose input Gomis actively seeks. In fact, he asks most of his actresses—many of them first- or second-generation Africans in France—what types of roles they fantasize about playing. Some suggest doctors. Others conjure complicated, villainous vixens. The implicit suggestion is that this exercise is about the kinds of complex parts, or even real-world professions, they are often denied.

    Before long, Gomis introduces his bifurcated plot, in which Corréa’s character, the middle-aged immigrant Gloria, returns to her small Guinean village a year after her father’s funeral for a commemoration ceremony. It is also the first time in many years that her French-born daughter Nour (D’Johé Kouadio, also glimpsed in the movie’s opening) has visited the dusty rural locale, making it a long-overdue opportunity to connect with her roots. However, she no longer speaks any of the local languages, such as Wolof and Manjak, if she ever learned them in the first place, leaving her mother to act as interpreter and cultural guide as she meets various aunts, uncles and distant relations.

    The two women are greeted with a mix of beaming pride and subtle disdain by the poverty-stricken village, highlighting the ever-complicated dynamics of postcolonial emigration and its unavoidable class dimensions. It is here, while introducing Nour to her relatives—who inevitably comment on how much she has grown—that Gloria also mentions her daughter’s pending nuptials the following year. This quickly propels us forward in time to the wedding and its lush countryside retreat, as the plot reveals itself to be largely a cinéma vérité depiction of each series of events as they might naturally unfold.

    Cutting unobtrusively back and forth between the wedding and the days-long memorial, Gomis implicitly binds together the two halves of Nour and Gloria’s lived experiences through extended scenes of family gatherings and song and dance. He films these parallel narratives with the same warmth he brought to his musically tinged Congolese family drama Félicité, which in 2017 won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale. Although Dao left this year’s festival empty-handed—a major surprise—it remains a significant contribution to contemporary African cinema.

    DAO ★★★1/2 (3.5/4 stars)
    Directed by: Alain Gomis
    Written by: Alain Gomis
    Starring: Katy Correa, D’Johé Kouadio, Samir Guesmi, Mike Etienne, Nicolas Gomis
    Running time: 185 min.

    There is no dearth of conversations in the village about the lingering effects of colonial rule, and no shortage of awkward interactions either, such as an estranged cousin arriving at Nour’s reception with a surprise pregnant girlfriend. This leads to numerous stilted exchanges and eventually a hilarious scuffle. Gomis orchestrates it all with such free-flowing verve that it feels neither academic nor overly chaotic, but entirely naturalistic, as though he had simply dropped in on a real family and begun filming.

    Gomis builds each extended scene with immense care, both for the moments themselves and for the way they adhere to the larger back-and-forth structure. The result is often euphoric. The aforementioned fisticuffs, despite their sloppiness, become the subject of some of the most rousing filmmaking you are likely to see all year, set against a jazzy soundtrack whose rhythms mirror the movie’s improvised nature. Back in the motherland, the instrumentation takes on more culturally specific tones, but the fundamentals always cross-pollinate: rhythm and percussion, joy and uncertainty.

    However, the biggest difference between the movie’s two halves is perhaps the level of rootedness in each ritual. The village commemorations are centuries old, and Nour learns their meaning for the first time as each tradition unfolds. In contrast, her wedding is a patchwork of cultures, both French and West African, with popular English-language tunes and even made-up a cappella songs included for good measure. As much as Dao is a film about death, it is also, as its title suggests, a film of cultural rebirth and of finding oneself in moments of uncertainty—not just individually, but collectively—and of conjuring tangible things and ethereal ideas to pass down.

    And yet, despite the movie highlighting the distinction between native and diaspora cultures, the very roots of tradition loop back around by its end in lucid fashion. Gomis never equivocates and avoids didacticism through a robust presentation of the village’s folkloric beliefs, which, when it comes to memorializing the dead, center on finding certainty through spiritual communion to better understand how the deceased died and what they leave behind. Regardless of where Gomis places his camera—in the place he is from or where he is headed—he finds people at their most vulnerable, reconnecting with old friends and lovers and preserving or creating rituals to confront the uncertainty of existence itself.

    Through all this, Gomis’s filmmaking embodies the very concept of Dao—perpetual spiritual motion that binds people together despite historical tumult. The result is a work of documentary simplicity imbued with a sense of occasion. When it begins, you may only have a faint sense of who is who. But three hours later, it’s as though you have spent a lifetime with these families that now feel like your own.

    More in Movie Reviews

    Screening at the Berlin Film Festival: Alain Gomis’s ‘Dao’

    [ad_2]

    Siddhant Adlakha

    Source link

  • Video: ‘Sentimental Value’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    [ad_1]

    Hi, I’m Joachim Trier. I am the director and co-writer of “Sentimental Value.” So we wanted the film to start with a strong character scene, and Renate Reinsve was always in our mind when we wrote the character of Nora, the oldest daughter in this family, and we put her professionally as an actor in the National Theater, where Renate has actually done some work herself in real life. We did a lot of research in this old, beautiful building where Henrik Ibsen used to do his original plays and for the first time in the late 1800s, so it’s rather a renowned building. So Nora has stage fright. She’s a star. She is going to go on stage as the lead in this big production about a witch hunt in Norway in the late medieval times that Eskil Vogt and I invented and wrote. We had to create a theater piece in here. But she’s scared of going on stage. And here we have Anders Danielsen Lie as well, our wonderful friend from many films, and he plays one of her colleagues at the theater. I was interested in exploring the approach avoidance mechanism of stage fright, which almost as a picture of something bigger, as something that we can all feel that we’re deeply drawn to something that makes us who we are, yet we are either disgusted or scared of it: to be that thing which we could be. That ambivalence really sets us into a strange place for the character, but also a very, I find, intriguing place because it’s very much what the film is about is about the ambivalence between people who are working artistically and the inability to create a life and a home outside of that kind of fictional space that they work within. We also wanted to have a bit of fun in the beginning, have a bit of a dynamic scene. There’s a bit of running. There’s comedic bits of her asking her colleague to slap her even though he doesn’t want to. But it goes deeper. This is a real sense of deep anxiety in her. Renate is an incredible actor. And it was quite hard for her, actually, to go into this because she doesn’t have stage fright, but she has to open up the possibility of it in herself. And I think she does an amazing job. All these people around her, some of them are actors, some of them are non-actors. We tried to find a group that would show how the ensemble spirit at a theater functions. The film is also very much about the two families, the family on a film set or in a theater troupe, and the family at home, and how you move between them. So I thought there was something kind of like the mice in “Cinderella” the beautiful — they’re stitching up her dress, and when she’s about to appear on stage, no one in the audience will see how everything is just stuck together by duct tape and anxiety and people barely making it. It looks very elegant and impressive. And I think that’s for all of us who create something, even movies. It’s barely stitched together by gaffer tape, and we just hope that the audience will feel something and engage with it. It’s the mystery of creating something. There’s also the comedic idea of the pressure of an audience anticipating. And I think after “The Worst Person in the World,” I think Renate, my co-writer Eskil Vogt and myself, all of the team, we had a bit of stage fright. We had a bit of writer’s anxiety. We had a bit of performance anxiety of, how are people going to deal with our next one? Maybe they won’t like it. All of that comes into being creative. I’m a third-generation filmmaker. My grandfather was a film director. My parents were in movies. My other grandfather was a painter. I know about this almost shameful need to express yourself in public and then at the same time feeling sometimes very low about it. And insecure and on some strange level, I believe that vulnerability is what also creates a space for the audience to engage with art. Hopefully mirror themselves. See that this is a human thing. It’s not just a sophisticated construction. It’s something where it’s living and breathing and there’s risk in it. And that makes me very moved when I go to the theater, which is by the way, not my world at all. I had to do a lot of exploring. I’m a 100 percent film person. I grew up loving movies, and theater was something I’ve always admired, but I get moved by the risk that the actors take, the vulnerability of going on stage to pretend you’re “Hamlet” for a whole night. There’s something beautiful about that. And finally, we see here Nora gaining the power in herself to pull this off. And she’s actually a really good actor.

    [ad_2]

    Mekado Murphy

    Source link

  • David Bowie’s daughter was in a treatment program when star died, recalls being forcibly taken from home

    [ad_1]

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    David Bowie’s daughter said this week that when she was a teenager, she was forcibly taken from her home and put in multiple “dehumanizing” treatment centers, and this all happened while her father was dying of cancer.

    “Treatment made me realize how much I had to fast-forward my teenage years,” she said in a lengthy Instagram video on Feb. 18. “I found myself longing to be a teenager even though I was one, just not in the conventional sense.”

    Alexandria “Lexi” Zahra Jones, the daughter of Bowie and supermodel Iman, said she started seeing a therapist before she was 10 years old after her parents and teacher noticed something was “off.”

    “That was around the time I had my first anxiety attack,” she said.

    Split of David Bowie and his daughter (Lexi Jones/Instagram; Larry Busacca/WireImage)

    Jones explained that a few years after that, “things got heavier. I started to feel depressed, like my mind was turning against me.”

    The 25-year-old said she was failing in schools, struggling with a learning disability and hated the way she looked, “and I developed bulimia when I was 12.”

    “I started self-harming when I was 11,” she continued. “I don’t know why I felt the way I felt. I just knew I was miserable. I felt stupid, incompetent, like unworthy, useless, unlovable. And having successful parents kind of only made it worse.”

    Eventually, she turned to drugs and alcohol after her father was diagnosed with cancer, which she said was her “breaking point.” “I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do and more because I was angry, I was scared, I was numb, but I was free, until I wasn’t,” she added.

    As her mental health declined, she said she lashed out and was “cruel” to people because she was searching for respect by becoming someone people “feared.”

    PARIS HILTON DETAILS TRAUMA, ABUSE AT ‘TROUBLED TEEN’ FACILITY, KIDS HAVE DIED ‘IN THE NAME OF TREATMENT’

    On a weekday morning after she had gotten ready for school, she said her mom called her into the living room and her mom, dad and godmother were all standing there.

    “I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do and more because I was angry, I was scared, I was numb, but I was free, until I wasn’t.”

    — Lexi Jones

    She said her dad read her a letter to her that ended, “I’m sorry that we have to do this.”

    She continued, “Then two men came through the door, and they were both well over six feet tall. They told me I could do this the easy way or the hard way. I chose the hard way. I resisted. I screamed. I held onto the table leg. They grabbed me. They put their hands on me. They pulled me away from everything I knew, and I was screaming bloody murder” for someone to help her.

    APP USERS CLICK HERE FOR POST

    But Jones said her parents just watched. “They were crying, but they let it happen.”

    The men looped a rope around her, she explained. “I felt like cattle. I felt stripped of any right to stay in my own life.”

    She was forced into a black SUV.

    “I was alone, I was in a car with two strange men, and they wouldn’t tell me where we were going, and I just sat there completely horrified and silent,” she said.

    Once she arrived at the wilderness center, she said she was strip-searched, and she was issued clothes that included snow pants and hiking boots.

    The experience she said as a “city girl” was completely unfamiliar to her.

    “This was not camping. This felt like boot camp’s weird cousin,” she said. “And it was disguised as something therapeutic.”

    DAVID BOWIE’S HAIRDRESSER, ‘TOUR MADAM’ RECALLS WARNING SINGER HE WAS HANGING OUT WITH 16-YEAR-OLD FAN 

    During her three months at the wilderness camp, she said she was only allowed to communicate with people from outside the camp once a week through letters, and even then, “only approved people were allowed to write to us or hear from us.”

    During her time there, they made meals over fires, they built themselves and set up tarps that they slept under on a yoga mat and sleeping bag.

    Lexi with her dad David Bowie when she was young

    Lexi with her dad, David Bowie, when she was young. (Lexi Jones/Instagram)

    “We dug holes in the ground to use as bathrooms far away from the site,” she said. “And every time we used the bathroom we had to count out loud so that staff would keep track of us.”

    When she first arrived, she said she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone else in her group because new people at the camp are considered a “potential safety risk until they can evaluate your behavior and decide if you’re fit to be incorporated in the group.”

    “So, until then you’re invisible in a way that’s really hard to describe,” she added.

    She said some of the therapy was helpful, but some of it felt like she had been “cracked open and left exposed.”

    Despite that, the girls in her group were a great support to her, and she said they made each other feel human, “even in a place that was stripping that away from us.”

    “But still the whole experience felt dehumanizing,” she said, “like the whole point was to take away every basic human comfort and need” so that they would behave “right” to earn back small privileges.

    She said they were only allowed to shower once a week, had no mirrors and weren’t allowed to know what time it was.

    DAVID BOWIE WAS ‘A CHEERFUL SOUL,’ PHOTOGRAPHER SAYS, ‘HE CAME TO PLAY’

    While she said she may have gained some things while she was there, “I didn’t choose to be there and if you don’t choose change, it’s hard to know what change even means.”

    While different, she said that all the girls shared the same thing: “We’d been treated like we were bad when we were just scared.”

    She said she knew how lucky she was because she wasn’t physically abused there, “because that’s not the case for a lot of kids.”

    “But still the mental and emotional manipulation I experienced is something I will not forget.”

    After the wilderness camp, she said she was sent to a residential treatment center in Utah for more than a year where she felt like everything she’d worked for at the wilderness center “disappeared” because she said she had gained respect and privileges there, but the moment she got to Utah it was “like starting over.”

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

    Once again, she was strip-searched, had to count while she used the bathroom and was watched while she slept.

    Lexi with her mom Iman

    Lexi with her mom as a toddler.  (Lexi Jones/Instagram)

    She said she did well there, but messed up sometimes because she was 15, including when she kissed a girl once.

    As punishment, she had to go back to being watched all the time and wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone for several weeks.

    “It felt like solitary confinement, and I felt like a prisoner,” she revealed.

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

    Still, she met one of her best friends there and had a great teacher who kindled her love of art.

    “All of this was happening while my dad was only getting more sick back at home,” she said, adding that for the first time in a long time she wanted to be there with him.

    Bowie died while she was still at the program.

    “I was not there,” she said. “I had the luxury of speaking with him two days before on his birthday. I told him I loved him, he said it back and we both knew.”

    After that, she said a social media post that said he died surrounded by his whole family made her physically ill.

    “I had the luxury of speaking with him two days before on his birthday. I told him I loved him, he said it back and we both knew.”

    — Lexi Jones

    “I’ve accepted it,” she said. “I’ve tried not to internalize it or feel guilty but sometimes I still have those moments where I wish things were to be different.”

    At the program, she said the program structured her grief process with how she was supposed to handle it. She thought at the time that was normal.

    David Bowie and Iman in 2011

    David Bowie with wife, Iman, in 2011. (Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for DKMS)

    Once she went back home just before she turned 16, she said it was “sensory overload” with too much freedom, and she spiraled back into old patterns and was soon sent away to another treatment center.

    The repetitive cycle of being sent from place to place made her feel like “a problem being passed off.”

    She said every place seemed to mold her into something different that she didn’t ask to become, and soon she stopped asking where she was going.

    The point of her post, she concluded, was to show what those places do to a person and the “parts of yourself you lose in the process of being fixed.”

    “As much as I went through things that no kid should have to go through, I also became someone I’m proud of,” she added.

    She said having to learn “healing before I knew algebra” wasn’t fair, “but it’s a part of who I am now, so, no, this is not just a story about trauma, it’s a story about how I was shaped not just by what hurt me but by what I built in response to it.”

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    And while she wishes it had happened under better circumstances, “I can’t pretend it didn’t shape me into someone who sees people deeply, who feels things deeply, who creates from that place.”

    She said she still scans rooms for rules she doesn’t know about and feels guilty for freedom, but she’s also proud of herself “because I finally get to define healing for myself.”

    Fox News Digital has reached out to a rep for Iman for comment.

    Related Article

    Paris Hilton vows to fight ‘until every child is protected’ after detailing alleged abuse

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Jonte Richardson Steps Down as BAFTA Judge

    [ad_1]

    Photo: BAFTA via Getty Images

    Jonte Richardson says he will no longer serve as a judge in the BAFTAs’ emerging talent category after how they handled the airing of racial slurs at last night’s ceremony. “After considerable soul-searching, I feel compelled to withdraw from the BAFTA emerging talent judging panel. The organisation’s handling of the unfortunate Tourette’s N-Word incident last night at the awards was utterly unforgivable,” he wrote on LinkedIn on February 22. “I cannot and will not contribute my time energy and expertise to an organisation that has repeatedly failed to safeguard the dignity of its Black guests, members and the Black creative community.”

    When Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting on stage, John Davidson, the inspiration for the movie I Swear, about his life with Tourette’s, shouted the N-word, and that moment was included in the broadcast. During the show, host Alan Cumming explained what happened. “You may have heard some strong and offensive language tonight,” he shared. “If you have seen the film I Swear, you will know that film is about the experience of a person with Tourette’s syndrome. Tourette’s syndrome is a disability, and the tics you have heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette’s syndrome has no control over their language. We apologize if you were offended.” The wording of the initial apology during the broadcast did not feel appropriate, especially because other parts of the show were edited out.

    “However, when an organisation like BAFTA, with its own long history of systemic racism, refuses to acknowledge the harm inflicted on both the Black and disabled communities and offer an appropriate apology, remaining involved would be tantamount to condoning its behaviour,” Richardson continued. “I hope BAFTA leadership comprehend the damage they and the BBC have caused and take the necessary steps to ensure their production staff are inclusive enough to prevent such an issue in the future.”

    [ad_2]

    Alejandra Gularte

    Source link

  • Oscar run is bittersweet for brother and friend who made film after death of journalist Brent Renaud

    [ad_1]

    LOS ANGELES — When Craig Renaud’s big brother and collaborator in covering years of wars and humanitarian crises Brent Renaud was killed by Russian forces firing on his vehicle in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, he was thrown into a world of horrible loss and uncertainty.

    One thing was clear, though. He needed to keep filming. His brother would’ve expected nothing else.

    “It was a conversation we had a lot. What would we do if somebody was killed? And it was a promise to each other that we would keep filming and telling the story,” Oscar nominee Craig Renaud said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have been covering this for almost 20 years in wars with other people. Why would it be any different when it happens to one of us?”

    The result, three years later, was “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” and an Academy Award nomination for best documentary short film. It’s brought mixed feelings for Craig Renaud and his producer and collaborator on the film Juan Arredondo, a photographer seriously wounded in the attack who was working with Brent Renaud on a project about refugees for Time Studios.

    “I don’t think this is the documentary that we wanted to be celebrated for,” Arredondo said. “I don’t think I ever dreamed of doing a documentary about my friend dying.”

    Craig Renaud said he has lingering survivor’s guilt for not being at his brother’s side, and Arredondo, who desperately tried to keep Brent Renaud alive after they were shot, has more than enough of his own.

    “It is unbelievably incredible to be able to honor him like this and have him immortalized and his name being in the name of the film and have people be talking about him at this level,” Renaud said. But, he added, “every time we have a screening, we are reliving that trauma.”

    The film unsparingly shows Brent Renaud’s dead body. We see it covered with a jacket in the immediate aftermath attack, and later in a coffin being sealed to ship back to the brothers’ Arkansas home. We see his brother filming him up close, showing the war scars on the lifeless face, and explaining why he needs to.

    And we see the deeply emotional meeting in a Ukraine hospital between Craig Renaud and Arredondo, who would need 13 surgeries and two years of physical therapy to recover.

    “I miss my friend,” Arredondo says through tears. “I miss him too,” Renaud says.

    “The gift of this film,” Arredondo told the AP four years after that moment, “is to heal in some way, to give closure to some of those questions that I had.”

    Despite its inevitable darkness, most of the film’s 37 minutes celebrate the life’s work of its subject, who won a Peabody and several other awards for his reporting with his brother before his death at 50. It opens quietly, with him thoughtfully and sympathetically interviewing a teen migrant from Honduras on his journey to the U.S. Another key scene comes at a hospital crowded with wounded people in Somalia, where a patient summons Brent to him.

    “You are very honest and faithful, the way you hold that camera,” the man says. “It is not just (that) you’re just holding it, you are doing it from your heart.”

    Craig Renaud says he hesitates to tell the story behind that clip because people will think he made it up.

    “Brent came to me in a dream and was like, ‘You missed the right footage,’” he said. “I went back and I kept digging. And I found that moment. And to this day, that is my favorite moment of the film. I mean, when I first discovered it and watched it, I just had chills all over my body.”

    The Russia-Ukraine war has loomed large among Oscar documentaries.

    “20 Days in Mariupol” from The Associated Press won best documentary feature in 2024. Last year, “Porcelain War,” about Ukrainian artists in the war, was a nominee. This year’s feature category includes “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” in which a teacher pushes back against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s control of information in Russia during the war.

    The glitter of awards season has stayed secondary to the work Renaud and Arredondo have returned to. Renaud spoke to the AP from Panama. Arredondo was on assignment in Colombia, where he was raised. He was summoned by the New York Times when he was at the Oscar nominees luncheon, in a ballroom where he was being feted alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet.

    “I strongly believe that what we do matters,” Arredondo said. “I think what happened to us, helped me think that this is my purpose and this is why I survived. I have to continue to do it.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • As ‘Outlander’ Ends, Caitríona Balfe Enters a Brave New World—One She’s Long Been Building For Herself

    [ad_1]

    Heughan and Balfe as Jamie and Claire on season eight of Outlander in 2026.Robert Wilson

    Now that the horny antics of Heated Rivalry are sweeping the globe, what would Balfe tell breakout stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams about navigating their newfound fame? “I haven’t seen Heated Rivalry yet,” she admits. “But it seems that phenomenon far eclipses our show. You got to just be grateful for the experience,” Balfe continues, adding with a laugh: “And make sure that you send messages to your parents not to watch certain episodes.”

    And a word of warning from one half of TV’s most beloved onscreen couples to another: know when to log off. “The fans have been beyond generous, sending so much love towards us, and initiatives we’ve supported. That has far eclipsed the negativity,” says Balfe. But she’s also learned the value in staying offline. “In the beginning, we were all so much more active on social media, or at least I used to be back in the day before it became a cesspool,” she says. “It’s hard not to absorb some of it. But then you quickly realize these people aren’t in my life. My life is not online.”

    These days, Balfe utilizes her social platform to raise awareness for causes close to her heart, including the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “I’ve always been politically literate and voiced my opinions before I was an actor,” she says. “If you’re standing up for children, that just goes without saying. That to me isn’t even being political, that’s being a human being. We should all be able to just blanketly agree that children should be protected. That shouldn’t be picking a side. If you’re alive at this moment, you should be able to just live how you want.” Although Balfe is inclined to get politically involved, each actor must make that decision for themselves, she adds, “I don’t think that we should be policing each other.”

    Balfe often felt a calling towards advocacy during her eight seasons on Outlander. At the start of season five, she and Heughan became executive producers alongside mainstay EPs Ronald D. Moore, Maril Davis, and Matthew B. Roberts. “The writers changed every season. Sam and I were the throughline that had to filter all these different voices that were coming in so that the character remained the same throughout,” she explains now. “Like with any job, if you’re going to be somewhere for a decade, you need to keep growing. You need to keep adding to your skillset, otherwise you become stagnant.”

    [ad_2]

    Savannah Walsh

    Source link

  • Winners of the 2026 British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs

    [ad_1]

    LONDON — Winners of the 2026 British Academy Film Awards, announced Sunday:

    Film — “One Battle After Another”

    British Film — “Hamnet”

    Director — Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”

    Actor — Robert Aramayo, “I Swear”

    Actress — Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”

    Supporting Actor — Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”

    Supporting Actress — Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners”

    Rising Star (voted for by the public) — Robert Aramayo

    Outstanding British Debut — Akinola Davies Jr. and Wale Davies for writing and directing “My Father’s Shadow”

    Original Screenplay — Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”

    Adapted Screenplay — Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”

    Film Not in the English Language — “Sentimental Value”

    Musical Score — “Sinners”

    Cinematography – Michael Bauman, “One Battle After Another”

    Editing – Andy Jurgensen, “One Battle After Another”

    Production Design — “Frankenstein”

    Costume Design – Kate Hawley, “Frankenstein”

    Sound — “F1”

    Casting — Lauren Evans, “I Swear”

    Visual Effects — “Avatar: Fire and Ash”

    Makeup and Hair — “Frankenstein”

    Animated Film — “Zootropolis 2” (released in the U.S. as “Zootopia 2”)

    British Short Film — “This is Endometriosis”

    British Short Animation — “Two Black Boys in Paradise”

    Children’s and Family Film – “Boong”

    Documentary – “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”

    Outstanding British contribution to cinema — Clare Binns, Creative Director of PictureHouse Cinemas

    BAFTA Fellowship — NBCUniversal Entertainment chairperson Donna Langley

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Coldplay kiss-cam’s Kristin Cabot hits Miami beach in bikini before crisis conference keynote

    [ad_1]

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Coldplay kiss-cam’s Kristin Cabot is enjoying some fun in the sun ahead of her keynote speech at a crisis communications conference in Washington, D.C.

    The former HR executive for Astronomer was photographed enjoying a day at the beach in Miami, Florida, on Friday, Feb. 13. 

    In the photos, the 53-year-old mom of two can be seen showing off her toned abs in a baby blue bikini, which she paired with a large sunhat and a pair of sunglasses, as well as a few chains around her neck, gold jewelry around her wrists and another pair of sunglasses in her hands.

    She can be seen cooling off and bracing for waves as she stands ankle-deep in the water.

    Cabot paired her blue bikini with a sunhat, sunglasses and gold jewelry. (MiamiPIXX/VAEM / BACKGRID)

    COLDPLAY KISS CAM WOMAN SLAMS GWYNETH PALTROW FOR ASTRONOMER AD: ‘WHAT A HYPOCRITE’

    Cabot first gained national attention when a video of her and her boss at the time, former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron, enjoying a romantic moment at a Coldplay concert went viral in 2025.

    The two were caught cozying up with each other on the Jumbotron, and once they realized the attention was on them, Cabot immediately turned away and dodged the camera, while Byron exited the frame. 

    Kristin Cabot in a sunhat and a blue bikini while in Miami, Florida in February 2026

    Cabot took a dip in the water while visiting the beach in Miami, Florida. (MiamiPIXX/VAEM / BACKGRID)

    “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin joked as the audience laughed.

    Following the scandal, Cabot submitted her resignation as head of HR at Astronomer, while Byron was first placed on leave and then later resigned.

    During an interview with The New York Times in December 2025, Cabot opened up about the now-infamous night and what it cost her.

    Kristin Cabot standing on the beach in a blue bikini in Miami, Florida.

    Cabot showed off her toned abs while cooling off in a blue bikini in Miami, Florida. (MiamiPIXX/VAEM / BACKGRID)

    “I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” Cabot said. “And it’s not nothing. And I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay. I want my kids to know that you can make mistakes, and you can really screw up. But you don’t have to be threatened to be killed for them.”

    She went on to say that she had previously opened up to Byron about issues in her marriage and recalled him telling her he was “going through the same thing,” adding that that admission “sort of strengthened our connection.” She recalled kissing him for the first time at the concert after a few drinks and then wrapping his arms around her.

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

    Once they appeared on-screen, she said “it was like someone flipped a switch” and that she “was so embarrassed.” What followed was intense scrutiny on social media, with Cabot saying she was doxxed and received over 500 calls a day in addition to death threats.

    “My kids were afraid that I was going to die, and they were going to die,” she said.

    Cabot will be speaking about her experience and how she was able to “take control of her narrative and rewrite her story” following the Coldplay scandal, as the keynote speaker during the “Taking back the narrative” panel at the PRWeek Crisis Comms Conference in Washington, D.C., on April 16.

    She will be joined on stage by journalist and communications professional Dini von Mueffling.

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

    Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin questioned if the couple was having an affair as he caught them on the Kiss Cam.

    Cabot is set to be the keynote speaker and discuss how she was able to “rewrite her story” following the Coldplay kiss-cam controversy. (@calebu2/TMX)

    “While attending a Coldplay concert in July and unwittingly appearing on the kiss-cam for a few seconds, Kristin Cabot’s life blew up in an instant,” the event description read. “Online harassment, constant death threats, and 300 billion views to date: a never-ending media frenzy. From the outside, it was an amusing, if unflattering meme; but for her, everything changed that day.”

    It continued: “Cabot experienced firsthand the extremity of public shaming that women have long experienced when in the negative spotlight of the media, one their male counterparts often seem to avoid. During this session, the former Astronomer chief people officer and her PR representative, industry legend Dini von Mueffling, share the strategy — both immediate and long-term — that has helped Cabot take control of her narrative and rewrite her story.”

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    Lori Bashian is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. 

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • It’s a quiet box office weekend as ‘GOAT’ edges ‘Wuthering Heights’

    [ad_1]

    It was a battle of the holdovers at the North American box office this weekend, with the family friendly film “GOAT” edging out the R-rated “Wuthering Heights.”

    Sony Pictures Animation’s “GOAT” took in $17 million, while Warner Bros.’ “Wuthering Heights” earned $14.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. Both films are in their second weekend.

    Overall, it was a quiet weekend at movie theaters around the country, with new offerings all opening under $10 million. Those results applied to the faith-based sequel “I Can Only Imagine 2,” the Glen Powell black comedy “How to Make a Killing” and the horror film “Psycho Killer,” which currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. One bright spot in theaters was Baz Luhrmann’s immersive documentary “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” which earned $3.3 million from only 325 locations in its limited IMAX release. That film expands to nationwide distribution on Feb. 27.

    “GOAT” dropped a slim 38% in its second weekend in theaters, which the studio attributed to positive word-of-mouth. The Stephen Curry-produced movie, about a small goat with big sports dreams (voiced by “Stranger Things’” Caleb McLaughlin) has made over $58.3 million. Globally, its running total is at $102.3 million.

    “Wuthering Heights” meanwhile fell 57% from its opening last weekend, bringing its domestic total to $60 million. Internationally it added another $26.3 million, pushing its global total to $151.7 million against an $80 million production budget. The movie’s top international market continues to be the U.K., where it has made $22.5 million alone.

    Third place for the weekend went to Lionsgate and Kingdom Story’s “I Can Only Imagine 2,” a follow-up to the 2018 Dennis Quaid movie that made $86 million against a $7 million budget. The sequel opened with $8 million, a far cry from the first film’s $17 million launch, though that was in line with expectations. It did score a rare A+ CinemaScore.

    Amazon and MGM’s “Crime 101” fell 59% in its second weekend, bringing in $5.8 million to take fourth place. The Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo heist thriller has now made $24.7 million against a reported $90 million budget. “Send Help” rounded out the top five with $4.5 million.

    “How to Make a Killing” landed in sixth place with $3.6 million. A24 released the StudioCanal movie in 1,600 North American theaters. The film, loosely inspired by “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” stars Powell as a man who, in a quest to acquire a $28 billion inheritance, decides to kill off his family members. Directed by John Patton Ford (“Emily the Criminal”), “How to Make a Killing” was not well-received by critics: it’s sitting at a “rotten” 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.

    “Pyscho Killer,” released by 20th Century Studios, fared much worse and opened outside of the top 10. The horror-thriller written by Andrew Kevin Walker ( “Seven” ) and directed by Gavin Polone (a notable television and film producer in his directorial debut) tanked in its first weekend in theaters with $1.6 million in ticket sales from 1,110 theaters. Audiences were not any happier with it than critics; According to PostTrak, only 31% of ticket buyers would “definitely recommend” it.

    With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

    1. “GOAT,” $17 million.

    2. “Wuthering Heights,” $14.2 million.

    3. “I Can Only Imagine 2,” $8 million.

    4. “Crime 101,” $5.8 million.

    5. “Send Help,” $4.5 million.

    6. “How to Make a Killing,” $3.6 million.

    7. “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” $3.3 million.

    8. “Solo Mio,” $2.6 million.

    9. “Zootopia 2,” $2.3 million.

    10. “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” $1.8 million.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Mark Ruffalo Questions James Cameron’s Criticism of the Netflix-Warner Bros Deal

    [ad_1]

    Photo-Illustration: Images: Getty Images, Illustration: Vulture

    Mark Ruffalo isn’t buying into James Cameron’s plea to Congress to reconsider the Netflix-Warner Bros deal. Cameron wrote a letter to Senator Mike Lee, who’s on the antitrust committee, claiming that if Netflix bought Warner Brothers, it would destroy the film industry. But Ruffalo questions whether Cameron would have a different viewpoint if Paramount were buying WB. “So… the next question to Mr Cameron should be this…’Are you also against the monopolization that a Paramount acquisition would create? Or is it just that of Netflix?’,” Ruffalo shared on Threads, alongside a link to an article about Cameron’s letter. “I think the answer would be very interesting for the film community to hear and one that should be asked immediately. Is Mike Lee against the Paramount sale as well? Is he as concerned about that as he is the Netflix sale?”

    Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, also had some words for Cameron as well. “I respect Mr. Cameron enormously and I love his work. But his letter to you knowingly misrepresents ourposition and commitment to the theatrical release of Warner Bros. films,” Sarandos began. He then explains that he met with both Cameron and Lee and reiterated his promise of a 45-day distribution window. He also claimed that if Paramount Skydance bought Warner Bros instead of Netflix, it would cut about $16 billion from the film industry to offset the purchase. Right now, Paramount Skydance is still in its 7-day window of discussion with Warner Bros to try to make another offer, and shareholders still have to vote to approve the deal in March. But right now, it seems like the only ones happy with the current deal are Netflix.

    [ad_2]

    Alejandra Gularte

    Source link

  • Dennis Quaid slams extreme left shift in Hollywood: ‘What used to be, you can’t be anymore’

    [ad_1]

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Dennis Quaid is commenting on how much politics have changed in recent years.

    During an appearance on “The Greg Laurie Show,” the 71-year-old actor shared where he stands politically and how much the landscape has changed over time.

    “The Things have gone so extremely, so far left right now,” Laurie said during his conversation with Quaid. “I saw a podcast — it was Bill Maher and Dana Carvey, and I’m forgetting the other guy’s name — but anyway, I think it was Dana Carvey said, ‘I’ve told my friends in Hollywood I’m a Clinton Democrat, and some of them are calling me a Nazi now.’”

    Quaid said that “you can’t do that,” and compared being a Clinton Democrat to being “a neo-con, on the right side or whatever. What used to be, you can’t be anymore.”

    Quaid said there is no longer a middle ground when it comes to politics. (Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)

    ROBERT DAVI CLAIMS HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST PERSISTS OVER TRUMP SUPPORT

    The actor then described himself as a “common-sense independent,” although he said he tends to “lean more conservative in my head.”

    “I’m just for common sense, is really what I am,” Quaid said.

    Later in the podcast, Laurie asked Quaid about spending time with President Donald Trump.

    He called Trump “very surprisingly approachable and very funny, and really genuine. He wouldn’t be president if he wasn’t genuine, because the people who voted for him, they know that he has their best interest at heart.”

    Dennis Quaid in a black shirt looking at camera

    Quaid had high praise for Trump during the podcast. (Diana King for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

    Quaid has always spoken about how proud he is to be American, telling Fox News Digital in July 2024 that he “was born in the greatest country ever to be on the Earth.”

    “When you look at it, as flawed as it is, it’s better than everything else that has come before. And, you know, I really believe in the wisdom of the American people as a whole,” he said. “We just need to get our act together and start, you know, believing in ourselves again, because I believe that the president reflects the people.”

    Quaid had the opportunity to portray his “favorite president” on screen when he starred as Ronald Reagan in the 2024 movie, “Reagan,” honoring the nation’s 40th president.

    Dennis Quaid at the movie guide awards

    Quaid previously called America “the greatest country ever.” (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

    When speaking with Fox News Digital in a separate interview in July 2024, the “Parent Trap” star shared that he nearly turned down the starring role in the film out of “fear.”

    “Reagan was my favorite president personally, and he was also such a recognizable figure around the world, sort of like Muhammad Ali,” he said. “Everybody knew what he looked like, sounded like, and so that was a pretty scary proposition.”

    He explained that he feared judgment from others and “feeling unworthy” of stepping into Reagan’s shoes, adding that he didn’t want it to seem as if he was doing “an impersonation of him.”

    It wasn’t until he visited Reagan’s ranch in Southern California and got a sense of the man he was behind the scenes when he decided to take the role.

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

    Dennis Quaid wears a plaid shirt as Ronald Reagan with wife Nancy Reagan

    Quaid portrayed 40th President Ronald Reagan in the 2024 biopic “Reagan.” (ShowBiz Direct)

    He noticed “three remote controls like back in the ’80s when you had to use three remote controls to get the TV to work.”

    “Then, a note from Nancy, you know, on how to do it,” he said of working the remote controls. “Also just the land itself. You could see that it was him that did all the work there. You could feel it. And that’s when, after that, I said ‘Yes, I’ll do this,’ because I found a way in.“

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    Lori Bashian is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. 

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • In Oscar-Nominated Documentary ‘The Perfect Neighbor,’ Police Catch—But Never Stop—a Killer

    [ad_1]

    When Ajike Owens was alive, she dreamed of becoming a famous entrepreneur. “You laugh at me,” she’d tell her mother, Pam Dias, “but one day the whole world’s going to know my name.” Years later, filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir thought about Owens’s avowal while sifting through the 30-plus hours of police body-camera footage and audio recordings that make up The Perfect Neighbor, her Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary about the two years leading up to Owens’s killing.

    The documentary tells the story of Susan Lorincz, who regularly called police to the otherwise tight-knit Florida community where Owens was raising her four children to complain about neighborhood kids playing near her rented property. On June 2, 2023, Lorincz rang authorities over a dispute involving Owens’s children, roller skates, and a missing iPad. Minutes later, the white 58-year-old Lorincz fatally shot her Black neighbor, 35-year-old Owens, through her closed front door.

    Susan Lorincz tells her side of a neighborhood dispute, as captured in police body-cam footage that fuels much of The Perfect Neighbor.Courtesy of Netflix

    As the case against Lorincz was coming together, attorneys for Owens’s family gained access to hours of police body-camera footage through the Freedom of Information Act. Reviewing it alongside her producing partner and husband, Nikon Kwantu (whose cousin was Owens’s best friend, Kimberly Robinson-Jones), Gandbhir said it “reminded us of films like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. The community had lived a real-life horror film. So we wanted to create something that placed you in the community.” To raise both media awareness around Owens’s killing and money for the family, Gandbhir and her editor, Viridiana Lieberman, made a film in which cops inadvertently serve as cinematographers.

    Image may contain Adult Person Face Head Photography Portrait Senior Citizen and Hair

    Geeta Gandbhir is a double Oscar nominee for The Perfect Neighbor (best documentary feature) and The Devil Is Busy (best documentary short).Bryan Derballa/Getty Images

    Some have argued that watching a film told largely through the very same system that failed Owens could make viewers identify too closely with law enforcement. “We were really not that concerned with the perspective of the police. They were just the vehicle to showcase this community as they were. When the police come into communities of color, surveillance can be used to criminalize,” Gandbhir tells Vanity Fair in response. “We wanted it to humanize.”

    She doubles down on the belief that “our society essentially failed this community. [The police] didn’t see them as worth protecting. Susan was able to weaponize her race and privilege. And by not realizing she was a danger to the community and probably herself, her life is ruined too,” Gandbhir continues. “She’s ostensibly spending the rest of her life in jail. And as an abolitionist at heart, I really wish that on no one.”

    Lorincz attempted to utilize Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law as a defense, arguing that she was legally allowed to use deadly force because she feared for her life when Owens banged on her door demanding to speak after her son said Lorincz threw a pair of skates at him. This was also the successful legal tactic of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in 2013. In 2024, Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 25 years in prison. She has appealed her conviction.

    [ad_2]

    Savannah Walsh

    Source link

  • Eric Dane’s Most Memorable Roles: A Career to Rewatch

    [ad_1]

    Many remember Dane as Dr. Mark Sloan, the instantly recognizable “McSteamy” of Grey’s Anatomy. But his career extended far beyond one nickname or one towel scene. Over two decades, Dane appeared in action thrillers, superhero films, prestige cable dramas, and romantic comedies, displaying a versatility that surprised viewers who only knew him from television.

    Grey’s Anatomy

    Dane joined Grey’s Anatomy as a guest star in 2006 and became a series regular by Season 3. That infamous towel scene, when Mark Sloan emerged from the shower, became a cultural moment, dubbed a “watercooler moment” by the show itself.

    But Dane’s performance was more than eye candy. Mark Sloan’s journey from a self-absorbed womanizer to a devoted father figure and Lexie Grey’s true love offered Dane an emotional arc rich with complexity. Over six seasons, he balanced charm, arrogance, vulnerability, and heartbreak in a way that made Mark Sloan a fully realized character. Dane left the show in 2012, ending one chapter of his career while setting the stage for new challenges.

    Euphoria

    As Cal Jacobs in Euphoria, Dane delivered one of his most intense performances. Cal is a closeted father whose repressed desires turn into predatory behavior. Dane’s portrayal required the ability to evoke both sympathy and discomfort, showing a man broken by shame who also harms others.

    Acting alongside Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, and Jacob Elordi, Dane’s work stood out in a series famous for its raw approach to trauma. He continued filming Season 3 even after his ALS diagnosis, with those episodes scheduled to premiere on April 12, 2026. Knowing his real-life circumstances adds an additional layer of admiration for his dedication and courage.

    The Last Ship

    After leaving Grey’s Anatomy, Dane took his first leading role in TNT’s The Last Ship, produced by Michael Bay. He played Navy Commander Tom Chandler, tasked with saving humanity after a global pandemic wipes out 80% of the population.

    The series, which ran from 2014 to 2018, combined action, leadership, and high-stakes drama. Dane carried the show with authority, portraying Chandler as both strong and human, capable of doubt, fear, and hope. Unlike other roles that emphasized his looks, here he anchored a show with gravitas, proving his range as an actor. In hindsight, the show’s pandemic storyline has a new resonance, highlighting the intensity of Dane’s performance.

    X-Men: The Last Stand

    Dane appeared briefly as Jamie Madrox, also known as Multiple Man, in Brett Ratner’s 2006 X-Men sequel. Playing a mutant who creates duplicates of himself, Dane was a henchman for Ian McKellen’s Magneto during the film’s climactic battle.

    Though small, the role demonstrates Dane’s willingness to embrace comic book and genre projects early in his career. It’s a reminder that he could navigate both serious drama and playful, imaginative worlds with ease.

    Marley & Me

    In Marley & Me (2008), Dane played Sebastian Tunney, a polished colleague who receives the more glamorous assignments while Owen Wilson’s character is left with mundane work.

    While the film focuses on John and Jennifer Grogan’s family life with a mischievous Labrador, Dane’s presence adds charm and subtle humor. He never overshadows the leads but enhances the dynamic, proving his ability to support and complement a story rather than dominate it.

    Burlesque

    In the 2010 musical Burlesque, Dane played Marcus, a wealthy developer threatening to buy and demolish the titular club. Starring Cher and Christina Aguilera, the film is flamboyant and campy, and Dane leans fully into the role of the slick villain.

    The movie required him to play a foil without undermining its over-the-top tone. He brought a grounded presence to a world of glittering costumes and big musical numbers, balancing charisma with menace.

    Bad Boys: Ride or Die

    His co-star Martin Lawrence reflected on working with Dane after his death, writing on Instagram: “My condolences go out to the family of @realericdane 🙏🏾 I can tell you firsthand — solid brotha, true professional, and brought that presence every single time. Much love! #ericdane #badboysfamilyforlife.” Knowing Dane was already experiencing early symptoms of ALS adds depth to his appearance in the film, showing his professionalism and commitment.

    Notable Mentions

    While Eric Dane is best remembered for roles like Mark Sloan in Grey’s Anatomy and Cal Jacobs in Euphoria, his career included many other projects that showcase his versatility. These performances may be less well-known but are worth revisiting.

    In television, Dane appeared in the mini-series Kabul (2025), a tense drama exploring conflict and human resilience, and Borderline (2025), where he played a complex character navigating moral gray areas.

    His film roles spanned genres and tones. In One Fast Move (2024) and Dangerous Waters (2023), he embraced action and suspense, proving again that he could carry high-stakes roles. In character-driven stories like Americana (2023), Little Dixie (2023), and American Carnage (2022), Dane delivered layered performances that balanced charm and emotional depth.

    Earlier in his career, Dane also appeared in The Ravine (2021) and the 2006 romantic comedy Wedding Wars alongside Jon Stamos, showing a lighter, approachable side to his work. Beyond these, Dane appeared in numerous supporting roles across television and film, consistently adding presence, nuance, and credibility to every project he joined.

    These roles serve as a reminder that while certain characters became iconic, Eric Dane’s career was built on steady dedication, range, and a willingness to take on a wide variety of stories.

    Final Performances and Legacy

    Dane’s final projects included Amazon’s Countdown (June 2025) and a guest role in NBC’s Brilliant Minds (November 2025), where he played a firefighter living with ALS. His portrayal of a character confronting the same disease he faced in real life was described by co-stars as “heartbreaking” and “brave.”

    In a 2025 interview with The Washington Post, Dane said, “I don’t really have a dog in the fight when it comes to worrying about what people think about me. This is more of a: ‘How can I help? How can I be of some service?’” He added, “If I’m going out, I’m gonna go out helping somebody.”

    Dane’s career was defined by range, courage, and dedication. From hospital hallways to high seas, from comic book battles to intimate family dramas, he left a lasting impression that goes far beyond one nickname. Rewatching his work now is both a tribute and a reminder of the talent, heart, and resilience Eric Dane brought to every role.

    [ad_2]

    Kayla Morgan

    Source link

  • Video: ‘The Secret Agent’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    [ad_1]

    My Name is Kleber Mendonça Filho and I wrote and directed “The Secret Agent.” This sequence takes place in 1977 and it comes quite late in the film. I kind of knew it would be an important sequence for “The Secret Agent,” because this is where we finally get to spend some time with the people who are staying at Sebastiana’s building, and it would always be a challenging sequence from the point of view of writing and also of shooting. So we have Isabél Zuaa playing Tereza Victória. We have Licínio Januário, who plays her husband. Hermila Guedes plays Claudia. João Vitor Silva plays Haroldo. Tânia Maria, of course, who’s playing Dona Sebastiana. We have Lula Terra and also Gal, who’s asleep, and we have Robson, who plays Clóvis. The whole sequence was incredibly challenging because we had one night. This is a night shoot. We shot from 7 p.m. until 4:30 a.m. and my biggest concern was that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to each and every character and to honor them, because I love each and every one of these characters. And also these actors. And with two cameras, anamorphic Panavision lenses, three mics, about 30 crew, three dogs, a cat. We had a lot to get done, not only in terms of the shots, but also dramatically because the sequence begins very light hearted and then it moves towards a change in the atmosphere in the room. But the whole sequence, I think, works because of the great acting and also because of quite a lot of affection that comes through in the text. Wagner’s character, he takes a “why not, what the hell” attitude towards hiding his name. He just reveals who he is and that has an effect on his friends. Licínio always very skeptical as Antonio, Tereza Victória’s husband in the film. They are from Angola. And slowly we bring new layers of meaning in terms of what it means to be getting by in an authoritarian regime, in a situation where you’re under threat. [TELEPHONE RINGING] The telephone, the way it rings, we mixed it a little louder than it would probably sound. Nadia Comaneci, the great Romanian gymnast, is in the background there with Wagner. And this is when Sebastiana truly shows how much she cares for these people. She actually says, I don’t want you to feel sad. Let me show you my little museum. And this moment, I think, it really opens up a new window into the film because we now realize that Sebastiana herself, she has a history in another country, and she has gone through a lot in life, much like everybody else in the film and much like all these characters. I never really wanted to do this sequence handheld. I always thought that it should be exactly the way it looks: very precise shots, well composed. I really wanted the actors and the characters to live within the frame without any extra energy coming from the camera itself and the Panavision aspect ratio, really, I think it’s amazing to get people into the frame. And Gal, little Gal, she was supposed to have a few lines in the film, but she was so sleepy and I thought, let’s just let her sleep. And then at some point I asked Evgenia, let’s get a few shots of her actually sleeping. And sure enough, when we were editing the sequence, we had a look at her sleeping, and I think it’s a beautiful way to end the sequence. She’s actually sleeping and maybe dreaming of a better Brazil.

    [ad_2]

    Mekado Murphy

    Source link

  • Met Opera’s 2026-27 season has 17 productions, its fewest in at least 60 years

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — Despite encouraging box office figures for the season’s first half, the financially strapped Metropolitan Opera scaled back its 2026-27 schedule with its fewest productions in at least 60 years.

    The Met announced Thursday it will present 17 productions, its lowest total in a non-truncated season since the company moved to Lincoln Center in 1966. There are just five new stagings, and revivals of three popular operas account for 71 of the 187 individual opera performances (38%): Puccini’s “Tosca” and “La Bohème,” and Verdi’s “Aida.”

    “It makes more sense for us, and this is an experiment — to present these works in extended runs,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “And by double-casting them, it also is more economic in terms of how many different shows are playing in one week.”

    Ticket sales of 72% this season are up from 70% in the first half of 2024-25.

    “Basically, it’s back to pre-pandemic levels,” Gelb said. “We’re not grossing as much money because the average price per ticket is slightly less than it was, because we have a younger audience and more discounted tickets.”

    Mason Bates’ “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” which opened the current season in its world premiere, sold 84% of tickets in a success rate that prompted the Met to schedule an extra four performances this month.

    “One of my goals at the Met is to stimulate new audiences with new works,” Gelb said. “This one was one of the most successful we’ve presented so far.”

    “Kavalier” was followed by an English-language holiday time staging of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” (83%), Bellini’s “I Puritani” (82%), Puccini’s “Turandot” (77%), Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” (74%), “The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess” (73%), and Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment,” Bizet’s “Carmen,” Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” and “Bohème” (68% each).

    Lagging were Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and Strauss’ “Arabella” (64% each) and Giordano’s “Andrea Chenier” (57%).

    Next season opens on Sept. 22 with a new production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” starring soprano Lise Davidsen and directed by Louisa Proske.

    Composer Missy Mazzoli’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” based on George Saunders’ novel, has its world premiere on Oct. 19 and stars Christine Goerke, Stephanie Blythe, Anthony Roth Costanzo and Peter Mattei in a staging directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.

    There are three new-to-the Met productions: Janáček’s “Jenůfa” starring Asmik Grigorian in a Claus Guth staging that debuted at London’s Royal Opera in 2021 (Nov. 16); Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” with Sondra Radvanovsky and SeokJong Baek in a Richard Jones staging that premiered at the English National Opera in 2014 (Dec. 31); and the company premiere of Kevin Puts’ “Silent Night” featuring Elza van den Heever and Rolando Villazon in a James Robinson staging first seen at the Houston Grand Opera last month (March 8, 2027).

    A gala with more than two dozen stars is scheduled for May 25, 2027, to mark the company’s 60th season at Lincoln Center.

    “We’re in a kind of golden age of opera singing,” Gelb said. “The only difference between today and 30 or 40 years ago is that 30 or 40 years ago opera was much more in the cultural mainstream.”

    “Lincoln” was not included among the eight simulcasts to move theaters due to a post-pandemic drop in audience.

    “A title that is unknown, even with whatever maximum efforts of marketing and publicity that are done, will underperform to a degree where it is not really financially viable for the movie theaters or for us,” Gelb said.

    A Simon McBurney staging of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” was postponed as part of budget tightening that included 22 layoffs and 4-15% temporary salary cuts.

    “Unfortunately, I have to wear two hats,” Gelb said. “I have to wear my artistic hat, and I have to wear my financial hat.”

    Next season will be Gelb’s 20th as general manager, and he says he intends to retire when his current contract expires in 2030.

    “That certainly is our current plan,” Gelb said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Bad Bunny lands first lead acting role in

    [ad_1]

    Bad Bunny is set to star in his first leading role in the film “Porto Rico” alongside Javier Bardem, Viggo Mortensen and Edward Norton.

    The feature film, described as “an epic Caribbean western and historical drama,” will be René Pérez Joglar’s directorial debut. Pérez Joglar, known as Residente, is a 34-time Latin Grammy and Grammy-award winning Puerto Rican rapper and actor who recently starred in “Frank & Louis,” which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

    Pérez Joglar and Bad Bunny, born Benito Martínez Ocasio, are longtime collaborators and friends. Two of Puerto Rico’s biggest stars are now coming together for “Porto Rico,” which will tell a story of the island based on true events.

    Bad Bunny and Residente attend The Latin Recording Academy’s 2021 Person of the Year Gala on Nov. 17, 2021, in Las Vegas.

    John Parra/Getty Images


    “I have dreamed of making a film about my country since I was a child. Puerto Rico’s true history has always been surrounded by controversy,” Pérez Joglar said in a news release. “This film is a reaffirmation of who we are — told with the intensity and honesty that our history deserves.”

    While “Porto Rico” will be Bad Bunny’s first lead role, the artist has appeared in several other high-profile films, including Darren Aronofsky’s “Caught Stealing,” and “Happy Gilmore 2,” acting alongside Adam Sandler and Travis Kelce.

    The Oscar-winning film director Alejandro González Iñárritu is executive producing the film, which is in pre-production. Its release date has not been set. 

    The film was co-written by Pérez Joglar and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Alexander Dinelaris, who wrote “Birdman,” which was directed by Iñárritu and starred Norton.

    Norton, who is producing the film, likened “Porto Rico” to other iconic films that he and Pérez Joglar love like “The Godfather” and “Gangs of New York.”

    “Everybody knows what a poet of language and rhythm René is,” Norton said in the news release. “Now they’re going to see what a visual visionary he is as well. And bringing him and Bad Bunny together to tell the true story of Puerto Rico’s roots is going to be like a flame finding the stick of dynamite that’s been waiting for it.”

    Pérez Joglar earlier this month congratulated Bad Bunny on social media following his Super Bowl halftime show, sharing multiple images of them together over the years and saying “Orgulloso de ti,” which translates to “I’m proud of you.”

    US-PUERTORICO-POLITICS-CORRUPTION-DEMO

    Bad Bunny and Puerto Rican rapper Residente take part of a demonstration demanding then-Gov. Ricardo Rossello’s resignation in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on July 17, 2019.

    ERIC ROJAS/AFP via Getty Images


    The two have long been outspoken about Puerto Rico and its rich history. In 2019, they helped lead protests urging then-Gov. Ricardo Rosselló to resign following corruption arrests in his office and his role in a vulgar group chat.

    In:

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A movie that takes liberties with ‘Wuthering Heights’? Scholars are OK with that

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — If you’re looking for someone to debate the new “Wuthering Heights” movie with, you might want to start with Lucasta Miller. She’s a British author, editor and critic who has published an acclaimed study of the Brontë sisters and wrote the preface for the Penguin Classics edition of “Wuthering Heights.”

    When she had the chance to see Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel last week, she was well aware of the liberties taken by the director, but was otherwise unbothered.

    “It would be meaningless to criticize it for that, just as it would be to criticize a grand opera that plays fast and loose with the plot,” Miller says. “I wasn’t asking for a faithful adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ but whether it works on its own terms. And my sense is that it does.”

    Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” was the box office leader last weekend, bringing in more than $34 million in North America alone, despite mostly negative reviews that found the movie both overdone and unsatisfying. Even before its release, Brontë obsessives questioned some of Fennell’s choices: casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff instead of a dark-skinned actor closer to how Brontë described the character; making explicit the sexual attraction between Heathcliff and Cathy that is suppressed in the book; having the famously dark-haired Cathy, her coloring a literary signpost for danger and allure, played by the blond Margot Robbie.

    “All adaptations choices in terms of casting that don’t always fit character or character descriptions — and this film has certainly been in the spotlight for that reason,” says Brontë scholar Claire O’Callaghan, a senior lecturer at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England. “In terms of Cathy, I was skeptical initially, but having seen the film, it is a good performance, and Margot Robbie really brings out Cathy’s spoiled and selfish nature in ways that other adaptations have paid less attention to.”

    Authors have long lamented the fates of their books once filmmakers acquire rights. But countless adaptations have served as showcases for artful crystallization, or innovative license. “The Godfather” movies are widely regarded as superior to the original Mario Puzo novel, and differ notably from the book, even with Puzo assisting on the screenplays. Billy Wilder’s film version of the James M. Cain thriller “Double Indemnity” had the main protagonist, played by Fred MacMurray, tell his story through a dictation machine, a twist that Cain himself thought so ingenious he wished he had used it in the book.

    Among current Oscar contenders, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is the loosest of takes on Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” while Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” departs from the Maggie O’Farrell novel of the same name in various ways common to adaptations, from compressing characters to altering the narrative structure. O’Farrell, who helped write the screenplay, has said her collaboration with Zhao was an education in how to condense a story for film.

    “You know, the book is mine, it’s my baby, but the film is Chloé’s adaptation,” she told The Associated Press in December. “And the film feels not like my child, more like a kind of niece or nephew. And that’s exactly as it should be.”

    “Wuthering Heights” fans are likely to care much more about fidelity to the novel than would the average reader of “The Godfather.” But as O’Callaghan and other Brontë experts note, you’d need a multi-hour streaming series to faithfully replicate the 1847 book, which runs some 400 pages and has a timeline extending beyond the lives of Cathy and Heathcliff. The best known versions, including Fennell’s and the 1939 movie starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, essentially eliminate the second half of the book.

    “Some TV versions have attempted to capture the whole book, as have some films, like the 1992 adaptation (starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche),” O’Callaghan says. “But what film and TV can’t do is maintain the ambiguity in Emily’s novel — the fact that her book is both a tragic love story and a revenge novel and a tragedy. Film and TV tend to focus on one of those for clarity and to focus dramatic tension.”

    Fennell told the AP during a recent interview that she was inspired by her early memories of the novel, how she responded to it as a teenager: “There are things I have added for my own needs, because I loved the book so much and I always desperately needed some kind of sense for it to go a little further,” she said.

    Miller likened the movie to a fairy tale, “stylized and extravagant,” and thought Fennell “quite insightful about using the language of fairy tales.” O’Callaghan found it “quite Tim Burton-esque in its surreal perspective.”

    “It radically departs from the book, but I still found it entertaining even if I’m unsure if I’d claim to like it,” she says.

    ___

    Associated Press journalist Sarah Jones-Smith contributed reporting from Los Angeles.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Robert Duvall, Oscar-Winning Actor, Dies At Age 95

    [ad_1]

    As Tom Hagen, the trusted consigliere to the Corleone crime family in The Godfather saga, Robert Duvall did what he did better than any other actor of his generation—a generation that fed and fueled the New Hollywood revolution of the late ‘60s and ‘70s—he listened.

    Make no mistake, Duvall was a bona fide Hollywood star with seven Oscar nominations and one win (for 1983’s Tender Mercies) to his credit. But deep down, the California native was a character actor through and through. On screen, he was authentic and selfless, pushing those around him to shine a little brighter than they otherwise would have. Showboating just wasn’t his style. Instead, he propped up others like a reinforced steel buttress, never demanding the close-up or the girl. No one could turn a side dish into an entrée like Duvall did during his brilliant seven-decade career. “It all begins with and ends with talking and listening,” Duvall once said. “I talk, you listen; you talk, I listen…. That’s the journey in an individual scene. There’s no right or wrong; just truthful or untruthful.”

    Duvall died on Sunday, February 16 at age 95, his wife Luciana Duvall announced Monday via Facebook. “Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” she wrote. “Thank you for the years of support you showed Bob and for giving us this time and privacy to celebrate the memories he leaves behind.”

    Scrounging for any kind of role in 60s New York, chasing girls, lending money to whichever of them was the most broke, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Duvall shared the risks, the rejections, and a fascination with the human drama. As they remember, stardom was unlikely—and irrelevant.

    Born in San Diego in 1931, Robert Duvall was the child of a Navy rear admiral and a mother who had put her own acting ambitions aside to raise a family. His father thought that Duvall would follow in his footsteps with a career in the military, but instead the path that the young man would forge was his mother’s unfulfilled one.

    After graduating from Illinois’ Principia College where he majored in drama, Duvall served in the army from 1953 to 1954, narrowly missing out on the Korean War. On the GI Bill, he began studying at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City under the legendary Sanford Meisner. His classmates included two other struggling actors, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, with whom he shared a shabby apartment when they weren’t passing one another on the way to menial jobs and no-hope auditions. They were hungry, in every sense of the word.

    Duvall paid his early dues in New York’s exploding off-Broadway scene in the late ‘50s, taking parts in such stage classics of the era as Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. About that production, Hackman recalled to Vanity Fair: “In the first rehearsal, Bobby already had this kind of physical thing he was doing—like an animal—kind of glided across the stage. I was really impressed.” Night after night, performance after performance, tears would wet Duvall’s cheeks during his final monologue. By the early ‘60s, Duvall had segued into supporting roles on television (Naked City, The Twilight Zone) and eventually motion pictures. As luck would have it, Duvall’s debut film would become an instant classic—1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird—in which he played the misunderstood small-town bogeyman Boo Radley. Hoffman told Vanity Fair in the same 2013 article, “The feeling was that Bobby was the new Brando. I felt he was the one, and probably I wasn’t.”

    [ad_2]

    Chris Nashawaty

    Source link