13 articles
Russia May Ban Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Over Josh Gad’s Gay Character
19 hours ago | Variety - Film News | See recent Variety - Film News news »
The Russian government is coming under pressure to ban Disney’s live-action movie “Beauty and the Beast” for allegedly contravening a 2013 law that prohibits “gay propaganda” aimed at children.
In Bill Condon’s film, LeFou (Josh Gad) has a crush on Gaston (Luke Evans). Condon told Attitude magazine that LeFou’s role is groundbreaking.
“It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it,” he said. “And that’s what has its pay-off at the end, which I don’t want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”
Gad spoke to Variety about being Disney’s first openly gay character during film’s L.A. premiere. “As subtle as it is, I »
- Leo Barraclough
Akira Kurosawa’s Shelved Script ‘The Mask of The Black Death’ to Be Produced in China
21 hours ago | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news »
Akira Kurosawa’s shelved script “The Mask of The Black Death” will finally see the light. Chinese studios Huayi Brothers (“Dragon Blade,” “Mojin: The Lost Legend”) and CKF Pictures (“Chongqing Hot Pot,” “Mojin: The Lost Legend”) will produce the film based on the late Japanese filmmaker’s screenplay. The studios made the announcement Wednesday during a press conference in Beijing, as reported by Chinese newspaper Global Times.
“Mask is one of Kurosawa’s films that never made it to the big screen,” said director/producer Chen Kuo-Fu, founder of Ckf Pictures. “So we thought, ‘Why don’t we make the film for him?'”
The legendary filmmaker wrote the script for “The Mask of The Black Death” based on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death. »
- Yoselin Acevedo
Anton Yelchin’s Sci-Fi Short ‘Rise’ Being Developed Into Feature-Length Movie
3 March 2017 6:47 PM, PST | Variety - Film News | See recent Variety - Film News news »
“Hacksaw Ridge” producer Brian Oliver and Filmula’s Johnny Lin are developing a feature-length version of the dystopian short “Rise,” which starred the late Anton Yelchin.
The five-minute short, directed by David Karlak, takes place in a world where man’s attempt to create artificial intelligence has spun wildly out of control, leading to a war between man and machine. Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton wrote the script for the short.
Oliver and Lin will fully finance and produce the feature film. They obtained the rights through Warner Bros., where the project had been set up initially, in the hopes of developing a franchise.
Lin is an executive producer on Tom Cruise’s upcoming crime thriller “American Made.” Oliver received a best picture Oscar nomination as a producer of “Black Swan,” and also produced “Black Mass,” “A Walk Among the Tombstones,” and “Everest.” He’s the founder of Cross Creek »
- Dave McNary
‘Logan’ Roars to $33 Million at Friday Box Office
22 hours ago | The Wrap | See recent The Wrap news »
“Logan” is off to a strong start at the box office, making $33 million from 4,071 screens after bringing in $9.5 million at Thursday night previews.
Though Fox’s dark, violent Wolverine finale isn’t expected to reach the heights of its fellow R-rated superhero flick “Deadpool,” which made $47 million on its opening Friday en route to a $132 million weekend, “Logan”‘s opening weekend is expected to hold up well compared to that of previous Wolverine films.
On their first full day in theaters, 2009’s “X-Men Origins:. »
- Jeremy Fuster
Miriam Colon, Latina Film and Theater Pioneer Known for ‘Scarface,’ Dies at 80
21 hours ago | Variety - Film News | See recent Variety - Film News news »
Puerto Rican actress Miriam Colon, best known for playing Al Pacino’s mother in the 1983 film “Scarface,” has died. She as 80.
Her husband told the AP that Colon died on Friday following medical complications from a pulmonary infection.
While perhaps best known for appearing in Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone star-studded remake of the 1932 gangster film, Colon made her mark on the entertainment community through various film and television roles, as well as founding the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York.
Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Colon began acting in high school and local plays until 1953 when she became the first Puerto Rican to enroll in the famed Actors Studio, founded by Elia Kazan.
During her early career, Colon appeared in television shows including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and westerns such as “Gunsmoke,” and “Bonanza.” With several Broadway credits to her name, in the »
- Seth Kelley
Viceroy’s House review – gripping political drama with a populist edge
5 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Director Gurinder Chadha delivers a lavish yet heartfelt account of the household caught in the middle of India’s partition
Following my somewhat sniffy review of Gurinder Chadha’s uneven 2010 supernatural comedy It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, several British Asian viewers contacted me to say that the film was far funnier and more affecting than I had allowed, but required specific cultural knowledge (which I lacked) to be fully appreciated. Quite the opposite is true of Viceroy’s House, Chadha’s heartfelt and very personal drama about the traumas of partition, which strives to dramatise the epochal events of 1947 for the widest possible audience, including those who know nothing of the independence of India or the creation of Pakistan.
Cynics may complain that the resulting drama plays to the gallery as it personalises complex politics with its broad-stokes characters and Gosford Park-style heritage appeal. Yet despite an oddly underdeveloped »
- Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
‘Logan’ Getting Larger With $85M+ Opening; Slices March R-Rated Records
6 hours ago | Deadline | See recent Deadline news »
5th Update Sunday Am: Typically superhero movies organically see a double-digit percent decline in their Friday-to-Saturday grosses. Not Logan. The 20th Century Fox/Marvel Wolverine threequel collected an estimated $31.2M in its second day of release, down a low 6% from Friday’s $33.1M. This translates into an $85.2M weekend opening, which if that figure holds into the morning, will make the Hugh Jackman movie the 5th best opening for an R-Rated movie ahead of Fifty Shades… »
Certain Women review: Kelly Reichardt fashions a minor miracle
6 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
These subtle and intimate small-town stories starring Michelle Williams and Kristen Stewart add up to an unassuming masterpiece
With her sixth feature, Kelly Reichardt more than ever feels like a director who is using cinema in a way that is wonderfully at odds with our expectations for the medium. While mainstream cinema often feels like an assault, pinning us back in our seats, and her arthouse contemporaries tend to prefer showy gestures and directorial techniques that declaim themselves, Reichardt’s low-key, intimate films draw us in. Her work is subtle, deliberately anti-dramatic. Her approach goes beyond naturalism and lands somewhere between painful introversion and acute empathy. As such, Certain Women won’t appeal to everyone.
But for those who connect with Reichardt’s approach – and I count myself among them – the film is a minor miracle. Based on the writing of Maile Meloy, it is loosely a triptych of stories in which nothing much happens, »
- Wendy Ide
Trespass Against Us review – a voyage round father and son
6 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Brendan Gleeson and Michael Fassbender forge a convincing family dynamic in this otherwise inconsistent British drama set among the Traveller community
This British debut (the director previously worked in TV) has something of the oppressive threat of the similarly themed Australian drama Animal Kingdom. Both stories are set against the unpredictable outlaw backdrop of a crime dynasty; both explore the near impossibility of escaping from an environment that both supports and suffocates. But what sets Trespass Against Us apart is the fact that its milieu, the Traveller community, is one rarely seen outside Gypsy wedding-style TV series.
There are tonal inconsistencies – the ending in particular seems inappropriately wacky and absurd. But the tricky bond between Brendan Gleeson’s looming patriarch Colby Cutler, a personality so strong that he can – and does – convince his family that the world is flat, and his son Chad (Michael Fassbender) is nicely handled. Chad would »
- Wendy Ide
Fist Fight review - crass comedy
6 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
A bullying mob mentality informs this far-fetched tale of a fight between American high school teachers
Charlie Day deploys his most irritating strangulated voice and twitchy performance as a high-school English teacher who finds himself challenged to a fight by a fellow teacher (Ice Cube) in this crass, painfully overstated comedy. Day plays Andy Campbell, a meek husband and soon-to-be father who understandably fails to cover up the fact that his colleague smashed up a desk with a fire axe. With its bullying mob mentality and inexplicable character motivation, this is film-making for people who watch YouTube clips of happy-slapping for kicks.
Continue reading »
- Wendy Ide
Doctor Strange; Endless Poetry; The Young Offenders and more – review
6 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Benedict Cumberbatch makes for an odd superhero in a feast of enjoyable claptrap, while Alejandro Jodorowsky offers exhausting yet exhilarating visions
“Strange” is not an adjective that slots very comfortably into the lexicon of Marvel movies. Bound by formula and conceived by committee, the comic brand’s steady supply of superhero spectacles may, in their best incarnations, merit the odd “fantastic” or “awesome” from generous fans — but strange, uncanny or unexpected they most certainly are not. And yet along comes Doctor Strange (Disney, 12), with its whoa-dude scramble of hallucinogenic imagery, a curiously aloof eponymous hero in the shape of Benedict Cumberbatch, and, just for the hell of it, Tilda Swinton as his invisibly ancient, shaven-headed mentor, spouting serene aphoristic wisdom and teaching teleportation. (Ok, that’s just par for the Swinton course.) These aren’t exactly David Lynch levels of peculiarity, but it’s at least enough to merit the title Doctor Odd. »
- Guy Lodge
Logan review – a howl of feral rage from Wolverine
6 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Hugh Jackman’s wounded superhero leads a bloodthirsty return to form for the X-men series
Previous Wolverine screen outings suddenly feel a little fluffy and domesticated next to the feral rage of Logan. This is the adamantium-clawed assault of a movie that fans have been waiting for all along. But just as the film-making starts to feel legitimately dangerous, the subject, Hugh Jackman’s troubled mutant, is starting to lose his punch. Something is poisoning him from the inside; it takes longer to recover from each new bout with the forces that would see his kind wiped from the face of the earth.
Once again, Wolverine unwillingly finds himself in a protector role. He is nursemaid to both the ailing Professor X (neat sound design captures the effect that brain disease has on the world’s most dangerous mind). And to Laura (Dafne Keen, compelling), a child in whom he »
- Wendy Ide
The Student review – a forceful and provocative lesson from Russia
6 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Far-right extremism causes havoc in a Russian school in this strident but timely tale
A teenage boy finds religion, causing waves through his school in contemporary Russia. Slightly strident in tone, but unnervingly timely, this slow-burning drama works as a small-scale satire of the rise of extremist rightwing views and religious intolerance. Director Kirill Serebrennikov employs elegantly choreographed, long, unbroken takes to absorbing and sometimes uncomfortable effect, as Veniamin (Pyotr Skvortsov) mounts a concerted assault against his liberally inclined science teacher.
There is a theatricality to the film that can feel a little overbearing at times – it’s hard to sympathise with the grandstanding central character – but this is forceful and provocative film-making.
Continue reading »
- Wendy Ide
Headshot review – the most insanely violent film of the year
6 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Thrilling fight scenes and dizzyingly relentless action elevate this Indonesian adventure to headspinning heights
The title gives just a hint of the full extent of cranial damage crammed into this dizzyingly relentless action movie. Heads are shot, punched, kicked, clobbered with typewriters, dented with retractable truncheons and submitted to some particularly grisly eye-socket trauma. Indonesian genre specialists the Mo Brothers (Timo Tjahjanto, Kimo Stamboel) tackle the martial arts genre, and the result is the most insanely violent film of the year.
The whiplash pencak silat skills of Iko Uwais (star of The Raid and both star and fight choreographer of this film) and his Raid co-star Julie Estelle are showcased, alongside those of a host of expendable other fighters. Notable are Very Tri Yulisman, playing a killer hipster with ironic spectacles and a Hoxton haircut, and Sunny Pang, radiating evil as the Father from Hell, a powerful crime boss with »
- Wendy Ide
‘Custody’ Review: Viola Davis Can’t Save This Wildly Messy Lifetime Movie
11 hours ago | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news »
“Custody” is the cliched wedding toast of movies. Actually, it’s the drunken cliched wedding toast of movies, in that it starts by defining the title — “the protective care or guardianship of someone or something,” in case you’re unfamiliar with the lofty legal term — before spiraling wildly off-topic, delving full-on into the lives of the wedding guests and often forgetting why these stories are relevant to the happy couple.
In other words, it’s a mess, and if you’re purely interested in Viola Davis’ involvement, I urge you to skip to the first and only paragraph below staring with “Viola Davis” (or the one ending with “our beloved Vi Vi”).
To continue the wedding analogy, our happy couple at the heart of “Custody” is Sara Diaz (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and her kids. A single mother working at a dry cleaner, Diaz is constantly worried about her kids getting into trouble, »
- Ben Travers
‘Shin Godzilla’ Takes Seven Japan Academy Prizes
11 hours ago | Variety - Film News | See recent Variety - Film News news »
“Shin Godzilla,” a CGI-heavy reboot of the iconic Godzilla series, took seven Japan Academy prizes at the awards ceremony in Tokyo on Friday, the most of any of the nominees. The film, which earned $72 million at the Japanese box office last year, scooped best picture and best director honors for co-directors Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, who brought Toho’s signature series back to the screen after a 12-year hiatus.
The best actor prize went to Koichi Sato for his turn as a police public relations officer haunted by a long-ago murder case in Takahisa Zeze mystery/thriller “64.” Rie Miyazawa received the best actress trophy for her portrayal of a mother dying of terminal cancer in the Ryota Nakano drama “Her Love Boils Bathwater.’
The year’s biggest hit, animation “Your Name,” won awards for best script and music, as well as the most popular film prize. Best animation honors, »
- Mark Schilling
‘Rise:’ Short Film Starring Anton Yelchin To Be Made Into a Feature — Watch the Original Here
12 hours ago | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news »
The Sci-fi short “Rise,” starring the late Anton Yelchin and directed by David Karlak, will be made into a feature. Producers Johnny Lin (“Bernie”) and Brian Oliver (“Black Swan”) —from Filmula and Cross Creek, respectively— obtained the feature rights from Warner Bros., as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
Read More: ‘Thoroughbred’ Review: Anton Yelchin’s Final Performance Highlights Cory Finley’s Remarkable Debut
The short is based on a screenplay written by Karlak with by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (“Saw” films, “The Collector”). Here is the official description of the short film: A dystopian future, where man’s attempt to create artificial intelligence has spun wildly out of control, leading to a war between man and machine.
Read More: Martin Scorsese’s 1990 Short Documentary About Giorgio Armani is Now Streaming Online — Watch
“Brian and I are extremely excited to have an opportunity to build a film franchise based on »
- Yoselin Acevedo
Martin Scorsese Announces Initiative to Restore Classic African Films — Watch Trailer
14 hours ago | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news »
Martin Scorsese has launched an initiative to locate, restore and preserve classic African movies. Scorsese’s The Film Foundation has partnered with the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (Fepaci) and Unesco to create The African Film Heritage Project (Afhp). As part of this initiative, 50 films with “historic, artistic and cultural significance,” will be restored.
Read More: Martin Scorsese’s 1990 Short Documentary About Giorgio Armani is Now Streaming Online — Watch
The initiative will be lead by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, which was established in 2007 “to ensure that the most vulnerable titles don’t disappear forever… Along the way, we’ve come to understand the urgent need to locate and preserve African films title by title in order to ensure that new generations of filmgoers —African filmgoers in particular— can actually see these works and appreciate them,” the renowned filmmaker said in a statement.
Read More: Martin Scorsese is Heading to Netflix, »
- Yoselin Acevedo
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