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Director Martha Coolidge, Producer Wage Bitter Fight for Control of Holocaust Drama
11 hours ago | Variety - Film News | See recent Variety - Film News news »
Veteran director Martha Coolidge is embroiled in an ugly battle with a Polish-Canadian producer for control over an independent feature about a love story set amid the Holocaust.
The producer, businessman Zbigniew Raczynski, fired Coolidge last month, alleging that she caused the production to spiral out of control, nearly doubling its $8.4 million budget. Coolidge — who was the first female president of the Directors Guild of America — enlisted the DGA to help her fight back, and won an arbitration ruling on Tuesday granting her control of the film.
Also on Tuesday, Raczynski filed a lawsuit in L.A. Superior Court, alleging that Coolidge physically attacked him on set and wore a Nazi SS officer’s outfit — including a Nazi hat — while filming scenes depicting the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The film — titled “Music, War and Love” — is nearly completed, but is stuck in limbo between Raczynski, who financed it and has barred Coolidge from the editing room, »
- Gene Maddaus
Berlinale: ‘Sworn Virgin’ Director Laura Bispuri Set For ‘Daughter of Mine’ (Exclusive)
17 hours ago | Variety - Film News | See recent Variety - Film News news »
Italian director Laura Bispuri, whose transgender-themed “Sworn Virgin” was a 2015 Berlinale competition standout, will shoot Sardinia-set motherhood drama “Daughter of Mine,” about a young girl torn between her natural mother and her adoptive one.
Germany’s The Match Factory is on board as both co-producer and world sales agent.
Principal photography is scheduled to start this summer on “Daughter,” which centers around a 9-year-old girl who, while living an apparently ordinary family life, meets a woman who lives nearby and gradually discovers that this woman is her real mother. This prompts a competition for her affection between her adoptive mother and the biological one. “The girl is torn between the two,” said producer Gregorio Paonessa, co-chief of Rome’s Vivo Film.
Two A-list Italian actresses, whose names are still being kept under wraps, will play the antagonistic mothers.
Paonessa pointed out that this “very contemporary theme” is “set against an »
- Nick Vivarelli
'Patti Cake$' to Open New Directors/New Films in NYC
15 hours ago | The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News | See recent The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News news »
Patti Cake$ is ready for the Big Apple.
Fresh off its world premiere at Sundance, the Fox Searchlight suburban rapper comedy will open the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films festival, which funs March 15-26 in New York City.
The film stars Danielle Macdonald as an aspiring rapper from New Jersey named Patricia “Killa P” Dombrowski, and marks the feature directing debut of Geremy Jasper, the music video director who also wrote the screenplay.
Dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent, »
- Ashley Lee
‘American Horror Story’ Election? Ryan Murphy Reveals New Theme for Season 7
3 hours ago | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news »
First, we joked about Donald Trump becoming president. Then, we joked that his win was 2016’s real American horror story. Now, Ryan Murphy is doing what he does best: taking our jokes and turning them into terrifying TV.
In an interview on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” the producer, writer, director, and creator of “American Horror Story” was asked if he had any news to share about the upcoming season.
“Well, I don’t have a title,” Murphy said. “But the season that we begin shooting in June is going to be about the election that we just went through.”
Read More: ‘Legion’: Noah Hawley’s ‘Romance of the Mind’ Might Be Hiding a Heart of Darkness
Cohen, surprised, almost cut to the next segment, but followed up by asking if there would be a Donald Trump character in the new season.
“Maybe,” Murphy responded.
- Ben Travers
‘Legion’: Noah Hawley’s ‘Romance of the Mind’ Might Be Hiding a Heart of Darkness
4 hours ago | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news »
[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Legion” Season 1, “Chapter 2.”]
Maybe the wild premiere left me Fubar, but the opening of “Legion’s” second episode gave off major “Apocalypse Now” vibes. David’s ominous, deadened voiceover recalled Martin Sheen’s war-torn work in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic. The song — “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads — served as a modern stand-in for The Doors’ “The End,” which would be far too on-the-nose (and overused) to be repurposed yet again, but the notes guided a slow, seemingly peaceful riverboat ride; an iconic wartime image, countlessly repurposed in many an action film, but never so effectively alluding to the horrors hidden on each riverbed as in the Oscar-winning 1979 film.
Read More: ‘Legion’ Premiere: The 9 Moments That Make It a Masterpiece
And there are horrors lurking in “Legion” — literal and figurative. As sunlight shone through the trees above, men in “black masks, boots, and the one they called, ‘The Eye, »
- Ben Travers
‘Manchester By the Sea’: Why Kenneth Lonergan’s Script Is A Screenwriting Master Class
6 hours ago | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news »
“Manchester By the Sea” writer-director Kenneth Lonergan was a playwright first. He’s often lauded for his dialogue, rich character development, and the performances he gets from actors. Taken as whole, these descriptions could be interpreted as being a kind way of saying that his film is insufficiently cinematic.
That would miss the point. Like his previous films, “You Can Count on Me” and “Margaret,” his script for “Manchester By the Sea” draws a great deal of its power by taking advantage of the way movie audiences absorb story.
Building the Mask
At the beginning of “Manchester,” we watch Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), an apartment building handyman, react to his tenants — the indecisive man with a plumbing problem, the woman crushing on him as he unclogs her toilet bowl, a confrontational woman bizarrely accusing him of wanting to watch her take a shower. He’s comically expressionless as he goes about his work. »
- Chris O'Falt
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