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XXX: The Return of Xander Cage review – Vin Diesel goes full throttle in action-movie silliness
6 hours ago
After being killed off, Diesel’s lumbering lunkhead Xander Cage returns for another helping of goofy action that’s rooted in the absurd 1990s mode
Vin Diesel’s plump-necked, vest-wearing action hombre Xander “XXX” Cage has come lumbering back onto the big screen, delivering sleepy zingers in that growly laryngeal voice, for the first time since 2002. Sadly, it’s the least anticipated franchise renewal imaginable. Only the release of a new Police Academy film could cause less excitement. But Vin, great ridiculous beefcake lunk that he is, does provide us with some fun.
Diesel became the action genre’s lost hero after the first XXX film, in which he played the skateboarding XXX-treme sports guy recruited by Samuel L Jackson to fight for justice. Then he got killed off for the 2005 sequel when Diesel’s fee demands got reportedly XXX-cessive and he was ignominiously replaced by Ice Cube. From then on, »
- Peter Bradshaw
Lionel Richie to produce Sammy Davis Jr biopic
11 hours ago
Based on a memoir from 1965, the production will involve all of the late singer’s heirs after years of legal disputes
A biopic of the singer Sammy Davis Jr is finally heading to the big screen after years of legal disputes.
According to Deadline, the film will be based on the 1965 memoir Yes I Can: The Story Of Sammy Davis Jr, co-penned by Davis and his wife Jane, as well as the author Burt Boyar. The heirs to his estate will join producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mike Menchel and Lionel Richie. Bonaventura’s credits include the Transformers franchise.
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- Guardian film
Al Gore's Inconvenient Sequel to open Sundance in acutely political year
13 hours ago
Politics looks set to overshadow Utah film festival’s 2017 edition, with a march by women film-makers, a documentary on Donald Trump’s presidential victory, and a slew of films on climate change. Then there’s Jack Black’s skit on polka
The first film on the screening schedule for the 2017 edition of the Sundance film festival is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, a follow-up to his 2006 Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Truth to Power is Gore’s second blast of righteous rhetoric in the cause of climate activism, but the screening has taken on a new urgency as the festival, which starts on 19 January in Park City, Utah will be preoccupied by events 3,000 miles away. The presidential inauguration of Donald Trump takes place in Washington DC on Friday, the festival’s second day, and is likely to cast its shadow over the entire event. »
- Andrew Pulver
Cary Grant in screwball comedy His Girl Friday – video
14 hours ago
To mark what would have been Cary Grant’s 113th birthday, watch a scene featuring the super-smooth comedy maestro opposite Rosalind Russell in comedy classic His Girl Friday. Directed by Howard Hawks, His Girl Friday has Grant playing cynical newspaper editor Walter Burns, whose star reporter and ex-wife Hildy Johnson is about to embark on her second marriage; Walter sets out to sabotage the wedding and win Hildy back
• His Girl Friday is out now on Blu-Ray
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- Guardian Staff
Francis Ford Coppola’s wines to be only brand served at Oscars for three years
15 hours ago
The Oscar-winning film-maker and vineyard owner has struck a deal to supply the Academy Awards, following similar arrangement at Sundance
Francis Ford Coppola has struck a deal to be the official wine sponsor to the Oscars. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Francis Ford Coppola Winery has signed an agreement to supply the Academy Awards for the next three years, as well as the 2017 Sundance film festival.
The deal covers the Academy Award ceremony from 2017 to 2019, as well as allied events such as the Governors Ball, the official Oscars after-party, for which Coppola and the winery’s director of winemaking, Corey Beck, have created custom blends and commemorative labels.
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- Andrew Pulver
Saudi Arabia to continue ban on 'immoral, atheistic' cinema
19 hours ago
The head of the country’s religious authority has said that legalising cinemas and concerts would ‘open doors to evil’
Proposals to reopen cinemas in Saudi Arabia have been strongly dismissed by the current head of the country’s religious authority.
“Motion pictures may broadcast shameless, immoral, atheistic or rotten films,” said the grand mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, on his weekly television programme.
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- Catherine Shoard
White Men Can't Jump remake in the works
17 January 2017 12:03 PM, PST
Kenya Barris, creator of hit TV show Black-ish, is teaming up with athletes Blake Griffin and Ryan Kalil to make new version of 1992 comedy
A remake of the 1992 comedy White Men Can’t Jump is set to hit the big screen.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the updated take on the film will come from the Black-ish creator, Kenya Barris. He will write the script and produce the film alongside the athletes-turned-producers Blake Griffin and Ryan Kalil.
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- Guardian film
Live-shooting with Woody Harrelson at 2am: 'There's something about the terror of it I love'
17 January 2017 9:49 AM, PST
In 2002, the star ended up in jail after being chased through London by police. Now he’s turning that wild night into a single-take movie starring Owen Wilson and Willie Nelson to be beamed live into cinemas. What could possibly go wrong?
It is almost midnight on Monday evening and Woody Harrelson is showing me around the set for his directorial debut, Lost in London. An unused building in the centre of the capital has been commandeered to house assorted locations including a club with burlesque trimmings where gold statues dangle from the ceiling and a police station complete with cells and interview rooms.
There’s just one problem: Harrelson doesn’t seem to know where he is. “Hold on,” he mumbles. “I lost track of what floor we’re on. Where’s the …?” His bleariness has always been a considerable part of his charm: that sleepy Texan drawl, that quizzical gaze, »
- Ryan Gilbey
No thanks for your time: the worst movie auditions from A-list stars
17 January 2017 7:39 AM, PST
La La Land reminds us of the brutality of the auditioning process – something that even Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts can remember
Every actor has a bad audition story, a recollection of how they managed to mangle their one big chance at stardom. These stories are so ubiquitous that, in La La Land, Emma Stone’s character gets to act one out for us. And the most effective way that Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali has thought to beat La La Land at the Oscars is to appear on talkshows and discuss the time he screwed up a Game of Thrones audition by sitting on the wrong type of chair.
Related: When celebrities used Myspace: the profiles A-listers try to forget
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- Stuart Heritage
La La Land leapfrogs Star Wars in UK – but can't change Les Misérables's record
17 January 2017 5:17 AM, PST
The Golden Globe-winning musical has knocked Rogue One off the top of the UK box office, while awards rival Manchester By the Sea landed at No 6
Golden Globe-winning musical La La Land has opened strongly at the UK box office, taking well over £6m in its first weekend to dominate the charts. No other film comes close, with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in second place on £1.8m – though the latter film is in its fifth week of play.
Director Damien Chazelle’s homage to the Hollywood musical, which stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, is distributor Lionsgate’s widest ever UK release, with 606 screens. It proved justified, as the film achieved a site average over £10K after near-universal rave reviews. However, it still fell short of the record figures for a musical achieved by Les Misérables, which opened in 2013 with £8.12m.
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- Andrew Pulver
Montana anti-meth campaign casts Frozen's Elsa as jailbird addict
17 January 2017 4:20 AM, PST
The Montana Meth Project has taken a creative approach to intellectual property in a billboard campaign urging the princess – raddled and handcuffed – to let it go
A sequel to Frozen, Disney’s biggest ever hit, is scheduled for release in 2019 – but a sneak, if unothordox, peek at what its characters have been up to in the interim has recently been released by the Montana Meth Project.
The Mmp, which urges citizens in the Us state to quit drugs, has channelled its citizens’ love for the Disney movie in a new billboard campaign apparently starring Princess Elsa.
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- Catherine Shoard
Amy producer reportedly in talks to make Tony Blair film
17 January 2017 4:00 AM, PST
Representatives of the former primer minister are rumoured to have met with James Gay-Rees, producer of Amy, Senna and Supersonic
The makers of the Oscar-winning documentary Amy are working on a film about former prime minister Tony Blair, it has been reported.
According to the Telegraph, members of Blair’s staff met producer James Gay-Rees, whose On the Corner production company was behind the Amy Winehouse film, which won the best documentary Oscar in 2016, as well as Formula One documentary Senna and music film Oasis: Supersonic.
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- Andrew Pulver
Breaking bad: Hollywood wakes up to the power of dark, dangerous women
16 January 2017 11:00 PM, PST
Forget sobbing suffering beauties. From Rebecca Hall’s unlikable newsreader to Jessica Chastain’s ruthless lobbyist, this is the year of the unsympathetic, deeply flawed femme. Thank goodness for that
The good news is that there are some great female characters coming up in the cinema in 2017. The bad news, if you’re looking for inspirational feminist role models, is that you won’t always find them in the movies. Lurking behind such obvious audience-pleasing instances of fine upstanding womanhood as Taraji P Henson plotting a course through the cosmos in Hidden Figures, or Rachel Weisz taking antisemitism to court in Denial, lies a monstrous army of deeply flawed femmes – perverse, prickly, deluded, depressed, obsessive, venal, scary. Well, I say hurrah for that.
First up, though, is the unfeasibly perfect Natalie Portman in Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, not so much a biopic of Jacqueline Kennedy as a tone poem evoking »
- Anne Billson
Rogue One's CGI resurrection tech: how 'ghosting' will change Hollywood
16 January 2017 9:23 AM, PST
Peter Cushing-style reappearances might soon be used to solve all kinds of problems, from Ben Affleck’s discomfort in the Batsuit to Benedict Cumberbatch’s busy schedule
It’s already possible to be in two places at once in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Benedict Cumberbatch proved during several out-of-body experiences in last year’s Doctor Strange. So the New York Post story that the Sherlock star has been replaced by a body double for the shooting of scenes as the sorcerer supreme in the forthcoming McU instalment Avengers: Infinity War Part One should come as no shock. Moreover, with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story having shown you don’t even need to be alive to star in a new movie, we should hardly be surprised that an actor no longer has to be on set to get involved in a shoot.
Disney has denied that Cumberbatch’s »
- Ben Child
La La Land: the ending, the songs, the jazzsplaining – discuss with spoilers
16 January 2017 7:46 AM, PST
It’s won more Golden Globes than any other film, and took a projected £6m at the UK box office in its first weekend. Deservedly so? Here’s your chance to discuss the film without blowing the plot for others
Few films have raised expectations quite so headily as Damien Chazelle’s third feature. Right from its Oscars-launchpad premiere on the opening night of Venice (where Gravity and Birdman had both debuted in past years), this one was tipped for the top. Hollywood has predictably gone gaga over it; reviewers followed suit. On Sunday, it won seven Golden Globes, more than any other film ever. Were you suitably swooning after you saw it? Or does such buildup inevitably lead to an anticlimax once you’re actually sitting in front of it?
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- Guardian Film
Hidden Figures soars above La La Land to top the Us box office
16 January 2017 7:14 AM, PST
Comfortably beating La La Land to the No 1 spot, the film about black female Nasa mathematicians retains dominance as Monster Trucks crashes and burns
Space-race drama Hidden Figures – about a group of black female mathematicians who were instrumental in getting the Apollo missions off the ground – has retained its position at the top of the Us box office as a slew of more obviously commercially targeted films failed to score with audiences.
Related: Hidden Figures review – black women Nasa boffin pic defies its formula
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- Andrew Pulver
Rogue One VFX head: ‘We didn’t do anything Peter Cushing would’ve objected to’
16 January 2017 6:13 AM, PST
The visual effects supervisor and co-writer of the Star Wars prequel, John Knoll, has addressed the ethics of digitally resurrecting dead actors
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s visual effects supervisor John Knoll has hit back at critics of the decision to digitally resurrect Peter Cushing as the Grand Moff Tarkin, a character who previously appeared in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope.
Speaking to Yahoo Movies, Knoll – who shares a story credit on Rogue One, as well as being chief creative officer for FX house Industrial Light & Magic – responded both to criticism of the look of the work, and the ethics of doing it in the first place.
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- Andrew Pulver
The Founder review: Michael Keaton supersizes McDonald's and births Trump's Us
16 January 2017 4:10 AM, PST
Fascinating, subtle film on the machinations of Ray Kroc, the ruthless, insecure man who made a burger joint an empire and sold out its originators
All this film’s irony and ambiguity are showcased in the title, though Birth of a Salesman was an alternative that occurred to me. The Founder is an absorbing and unexpectedly subtle movie about the genesis of the McDonald’s burger empire. There is an avoiding of obviousness that resides in its clever casting of not-immediately-dislikable Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the needy, driven, insecure marketing type with the predatory surname who masterminded a nationwide franchising for the original California hamburger restaurant in the 1950s; finally taking it away from its owners and revolutionary fast-food pioneers, Dick and Mac McDonald, played by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch.
Keaton is never the cartoon bad guy, not even at the very end. His moonfaced openness makes him look like a giant, »
- Peter Bradshaw
Tom Hardy fuels James Bond rumours
16 January 2017 3:30 AM, PST
The Taboo actor has said he’s interested in the role and expressed enthusiasm about a further collaboration with director Christopher Nolan
The actor Tom Hardy has confirmed interest in playing James Bond – by refusing to discuss the matter. Speaking to the Daily Beast, Hardy was keen to express enthusiasm at the interviewer’s suggestion Inception director Christopher Nolan take over the franchise.
“Oh, wow, Chris would be amazing!” said Hardy. “Wow, that would be cool. That would be so cool.”
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- Catherine Shoard
A British film with a Punjabi heart: director’s personal take on partition
16 January 2017 2:53 AM, PST
A new account of the human toll of India’s breakup premieres next month
The opening lines of Viceroy’s House, British director Gurinder Chadha’s epic new film, are barked out in Hindi by a tough colonial Scot at the head of a vast team of flunkies who, only 70 years ago, were ensuring the smooth running of the 340-room palace in New Delhi that was headquarters for British rule of an entire subcontinent. The scene then shifts to two Indian staff overheard irreverently discussing an alabaster bust of Queen Victoria, the empress who “never even set foot in India”.
It is a world familiar from popular films and television dramas set during the Raj. But something is different. The traces are being kicked over after 200 years of subservience. The British are about to relinquish their hold on the “jewel in the crown” of empire.
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- Vanessa Thorpe
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