Great artist
The death of Gene Hackman came as a massive shock to his fans, including me. He was a flawless actor, especially effective in the tough-man-cop roles. He had a strong personality and was one of the best actors of this generation. He could play any role, without inordinate make-up. In fact, he retained his own natural look, for most of his roles. Yet, he could dissolve into any role, more so, in the tough-guy roles.
His movies like The French Connection, Part 1 and 2, and Mississippi Burning, won him a global audience. He was universally admired for his histrionics and dialogue delivery. The manner of his death leaves many question marks and is sad. This was no way for him to go.
Rajendra Aneja,
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The National
10-04-2025
- The National
Why Rami Malek wants to be the next Gene Hackman
Rami Malek never wanted to be a star. He wanted to be Gene Hackman. 'I've never had any massive expectations in this business,' Malek tells The National. 'I've always just wanted to be a working actor – a journeyman. 'I always loved the character actor. That guy that just kind of appears in things. I remember watching Gene Hackman when I was young. He just kept popping up, until one day I realised 'that's Gene Hackman' – may God rest his soul.' That might sound crazy. After all, if there's any image that's become inextricable from Malek's legacy, it's him standing on stage at the Academy Awards, the first Arab to accept the top acting prize. He made history – and seemed destined for top billing for decades to come. But deep down, he's always wondered how he got there. He didn't get to that stage by striving for attention, he says, he strived for a seat at the table, and stardom was just thrust upon him. 'My family kept me quite humble,' Malek adds. The acting bug first bit him in front of the television as a child, growing up in the 1980s in an Egyptian immigrant household in Torrance, California. It wasn't the marquee stars who caught his eye – it was the familiar faces that drifted across the back of the frame, the scaffolding of every story so fundamental that their skill didn't become obvious until you focused on it. When he thinks back to his Oscars moment, he can't help but feel a bit guilty. He's grateful, he says, but standing in the spotlight feels like he's taking too much credit for himself. 'It's just not about me. I think it's about everybody else. I appreciate those grand moments – the respect you gain from your peers, from the world and from the audience. But I just want to give. And because of that, I've wanted to see what I could do in this business beyond acting for quite some time.' Over the past several years, he's been putting that ethos into practice more and more. Using his well-earned stature, he engineered his latest film, The Amateur, practically from the ground up. Based on the 1980s bestseller, it's a project almost 20 years in the making, originally set up in 2006 to star Hugh Jackman. Not only did Malek revive the dormant project for himself to star, he also signed on as a producer, intricately involving himself in every aspect of production. 'He really had his hands in every single part of this,' says co-star Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Sarah. 'It was really inspiring to watch.' Malek saw the spy thriller as an opportunity to assemble his favourite journeymen and women – taking it upon himself to personally convince actors such as Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne, Holt McCallany, Jon Bernthal, Michael Stuhlbarg and Caitriona Balfe to sign on. 'He tracked us all down. His passion is so infectious,' says Brosnahan. Fishburne echoes: 'Rami manifested this.' Malek is willing to take credit. 'Yeah, I galvanised some of my favourite actors that I've always wanted to work with,' he says with a smile. 'And I'm very proud of that.' And throughout the shoot, which spanned England, France and Turkey, Malek was indelible behind the camera. Even in post-production, he sat with the sound editors, focusing on how they could enhance the experience for the big screen, an aspect he particularly enjoyed. 'There's really nothing like getting into the sound mix,' he says. Balfe, who plays fellow spy Inquiline Davies, says: 'He has time for everybody – it was amazing to watch. He was constantly making sure that things were working the way they should, or if the script needed tweaks, or really anything.' And while this experience will help ensure that he will appear behind the camera more and more in the years to come, the one thing Malek is not concerned about is his acting future. If he gets to continue to be a lead star, great. If not, more than fine. But what he says he really cares about is continuing to play a variety of characters – people who rail against the system and speak for the power of truth. 'Honestly, there's too much going on with me as a human being to ever get pigeonholed,' says Malek. The Amateur is in cinemas now across the Middle East
Gulf Today
07-03-2025
- Gulf Today
Great artist
The death of Gene Hackman came as a massive shock to his fans, including me. He was a flawless actor, especially effective in the tough-man-cop roles. He had a strong personality and was one of the best actors of this generation. He could play any role, without inordinate make-up. In fact, he retained his own natural look, for most of his roles. Yet, he could dissolve into any role, more so, in the tough-guy roles. His movies like The French Connection, Part 1 and 2, and Mississippi Burning, won him a global audience. He was universally admired for his histrionics and dialogue delivery. The manner of his death leaves many question marks and is sad. This was no way for him to go. Rajendra Aneja,
Gulf Today
05-03-2025
- Gulf Today
‘Anora' Oscar win carries Academy Awards into a new era
When Sean Baker's 'Anora' swept the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, its five wins, including best picture, heralded a different kind of Oscar winner. 'Anora,' about an erotic dancer (Mikey Madison, the best actress winner ) who marries the son of Russian oligarch, is atypically explicit for a best picture winner — a class that includes more staid movies like 'The King's Speech' and 'Driving Miss Daisy.' A young woman's relationship to her own sexuality has not been, historically speaking, in the Oscars' wheelhouse. But that's just one quality that makes 'Anora' unique as a best picture winner. The film, made for $6 million and distributed by Neon, was made with little interest in the mainstream. If anything, 'Anora' was more oriented to the Cannes Film Festival, the French citadel of cinema, where it won the Palme d'Or last May — a prize that Baker said meant the most to him. But, increasingly, these are converging movie worlds. In the last five years, four Palme d'Or winners have been nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards, including Bong Joon Ho's 'Parasite' (also distributed by Neon), which became the first non-English language movie to win Hollywood's top prize. 'Anora,' a film that inverts a Hollywood fairy tale like 'Pretty Woman,' is — like many of the winners on Sunday — an unabashedly modern movie and a film comfortable, even proud of the label of 'cinema.' In a movie industry where manufactured franchise stewardship rules the day, 'Anora' was celebrated, in part, because it's the real deal. It's also a more traditional choice than it might seem. Baker, a filmmaker who has sworn off making a series, a studio film or anything for streaming, is an apostle of 70s cinema. At an Oscars that host Conan O'Brien called 'the 97th Longform Content Awards,' 'Anora' — which shared some of the same Brooklyn streets as 'The French Connection' — stood for upholding an increasingly threatened theatrical legacy, with Baker ardently defending a very old-fashioned thing: the big screen. 'Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen. I know I will,' Baker said from the Dolby Theatre stage. 'Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films. Parents, introduce your children to feature films in movie theaters and you will be molding the next generation of movie lovers and filmmakers. And for all of us, when we can please watch movies in a theater and let's keep the great tradition of the moviegoing experience alive and well.' The coronation of 'Anora' was a triumph for independent moviemaking, but that's also been a battle waged and won before. We've seen 'The Hurt Locker' best 'Avatar' and 'Moonlight' defeat 'La La Land.' Last year's crowning of 'Oppenheimer' was, if anything, an exception in a string of smaller best pictures that haven't fit the Oscar mold. 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' the 2023 winner, was antic, lewd and about the furthest thing possible from 'Oscar bait.' What was different this year was that the stiffest competition for 'Anora' wasn't 'Wicked' or 'Dune: Part Two' or any other studio product. It was 'Conclave' and 'The Brutalist.' All of the major award winners on Sunday hailed from movies made independently. At the Oscars, the studios are out of the picture. That trend has been developing for years, but the 97th Academy Awards showed just how much things have changed. In the best animated category, where Universal and DreamWorks' 'The Wild Robot' was the heavy favorite, 'Flow,' a wordless Latvian movie made with open-source software, triumphed instead. 'Any kid now has tools that are used to make these now Academy-winning films,' 'Flow' director Gints Zilbalodis said backstage. 'So I think we're going to see all kinds of exciting films being made from kids who might not have had a chance to do this before.' That win, like those for 'Anora,' suggested the academy's international voters have emerged as a dominant bloc. When the academy, reacting to pressure to diversify its ranks, brought in new members in recent years, it cast a wide net overseas.
