Screenwriter of new Jurassic World film on keeping the franchise fresh while honouring legacy
David Koepp, screenwriter of new Jurassic film, Jurassic World: Rebirth, on keeping the franchise fresh while honouring its legacy and working with Steven Spielberg.
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Moving new film Elio is Pixar's best in years
Animation studio Pixar has had a somewhat spotty track record in recent years, with films like Lightyear, Onward and Turning Red failing to connect with audiences. Let's hope the same fate doesn't befall its latest offering, Elio – it's arguably the best Pixar film since 2017's acclaimed smash hit Coco. Elio (Yonas Kibreab) is the film's titular hero, a young boy now living with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana) after his parents met a tragic end. The movie gets us up to speed with efficiency: Elio is parentless and friendless, has a deep obsession with outer space – and an intense yearning to be abducted by aliens. He spends his nights on the roof of his house, trying to commune with anyone in space who'll listen, begging them to beam him up. Elio's aunt works on an army base with an astronaut program and space-monitoring satellites – which means Elio gets his wish relatively early in the piece when aliens pick up on his messages and beam him up. This is where the film comes alive, as Elio is beamed directly to the 'Communiverse,' a sort of UN gathering of peaceful aliens from across the galaxies. Pixar have done an incredible job bringing the various aliens to life, with inventive and at times genuinely jaw-dropping animation (wide shots of the Communiverse bring to mind the beauty of Coco 's 'marigold bridge' scenes). But it's not all happy up in space: The aliens are under the assumption Elio is the leader of earth, and soon he's thrust forward to negotiate with a fearsome, violent warlord named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett, playing a character responsible for the film's few scenes that may frighten young children – or at least, did in my screening). There are shades of Mickey 17 to the young alien Elio befriends, a slug-like creature named Glordon (Remy Edgerly) who's much less fearsome than he appears. It's genuinely moving to watch Elio make a friend for the first time, as the pair's epic adventure unfolds towards one of those classic Pixar endings that will keep children satisfied - and will have adults wiping away tears as the credits roll.
News.com.au
2 hours ago
- News.com.au
Rebel Wilson suffered terrifying on-set accident that nearly left her ‘permanently disfigured'
When it comes to acting, Rebel Wilson goes all in. During a recent interview with Access Hollywood, Wilson detailed the moment her nose got 'split open' while filming her new movie, Bride Hard. 'In a fight scene, a gun accidentally got whacked across my face,' Wilson said. 'It was just a freak accident, and my nose got split open, so I left set. It was really my last night of shooting. I was like, 'How unlucky can I be?'' The incident occurred during 'the last fight sequence' on the schedule, and resulted in a 'pool of blood.' 'I was freaking out,' she added. 'They take an ambulance and they have to call a plastic surgeon, because if they didn't, I would have been permanently disfigured. So we got the plastic surgeon, they did all the stitches, and you can't tell now, really, you can't tell.' Wilson isn't the only celebrity who has opened up about a recent on-set mishap. Charlize Theron revealed that while filming her latest action-packed project, Apex (which she filmed in Australia), she sustained a painful injury after doing some of her own dangerous stunt work – without protective equipment. 'Our crew delivered a really impressive movie, and yours truly did some stunts and action – without a harness, sometimes,' Theron said at Netflix's 2025 upfront presentation earlier this week, according to Entertainment Weekly. 'Don't tell Netflix.' 'It's actually a miracle that I'm here today,' she noted. The Mad Max: Fury Road actress continued to detail the risks involved while she worked on her physically demanding role. 'Apex only wrapped like a week ago, so I'm fresh off the mountain. I still have some Australian dirt under this pretty manicure, and my cute boot is hiding a fractured toe … I can go on and on and on, but I won't.' Despite the physical toll, Theron, 49, remained in good spirits as she recovered. 'I can honestly say that shooting 'Apex' was one of the most incredible experiences of my life,' she added.
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Materialists, starring Pedro Pascal and Dakota Johson, is not the cheesy rom-com it appears
After the wistful, what-if heartache of 2023's Past Lives, Celine Song has now set her sights on the zero-sum game of dating. Fast Facts about Materialists What: A love triangle between a New York matchmaker, her ex and a wealthy, seemingly perfect suitor. Directed by: Celine Song Starring: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal Where: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Surprised Materialists slyly presents as a glossy 2000s rom-com, a milieu well suited for the writer-director's elegant dialogue and her eye for luminous New York backdrops. There was every expectation that this anticipated follow-up — with its heftier budget and an A-list cast — would take a crowd-pleasing turn. Instead, Song takes on the genre with a contemporary cynicism. Her glamorous cosmopolitan setting is host to a trio of deluded, self-loathing characters, its Cinderella fantasy joylessly reduced to its class components. Speaking to the ABC's Screen Show, Song outlines the film's primary tension: "None of us are merchandise; we're people. So why is it that we treat ourselves, and each other, like we're merchandise?" At the centre of Materialists' love triangle is Lucy (a wry Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker whose craft revolves around a ruthless calculus of compatible incomes, ages, weights and heights between New York's elite. Dating is taken as a capitalist enterprise, with clients being assigned market value, then traded accordingly. Song recalls her own experience in that profession, in which intimate desire and needs were defined by terms that felt more relevant to an insurance company or a morgue. "That's the kind of language that they were using to describe the person who has to be the love of your life. The gap between that and what I knew about love, and what I know about love, felt so vast. "That really fascinated and stressed me out, it's really the reason why I wanted to make this movie." Taking after Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, Pedro Pascal plays an old-money private equity investor, Harry, who's all too familiar with the rules of the game. He's the perfect suitor for Lucy, whose sole, immutable criterion for a mate — having watched her parents torn apart by financial hardship — is independent wealth. Beyond preventing a future of bickering over bills, Harry's considerable largesse makes her feel valued. Lucy's ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), is a struggling actor on the opposite end of New York's economic strata, still confined to the cramped apartment of his 20s. When they reunite at a wedding for one of Lucy's clients, he's working a side gig as a cater waiter, which barely keeps him afloat. Lucy playfully suggests they may be soulmates — but above all, he's a bad financial decision. In screenings, Song found that the reveal of Harry's $12 million apartment could be relied upon to induce an audible response, no matter the audience. "Wealth is the most seductive thing; it is the greatest drug that is possible in modern society," Song says. "When you think about the Victorian romances, we have not come very far from talking about marriage and love only in relation to how much it's going to secure your life." Materialists is bracingly honest, even cruel, in its depiction of Lucy's world. Her myopic outlook has the underlying logic of pick-up artistry, in which sexual attraction can be distilled into formula, and courtship is merely bartering. She can only treat Harry's romantic proposition with an intense disbelief; why would a "unicorn" like him settle for someone like her? Song has a disarming way of testing the audience's own beliefs, in part because our engagement with dating apps and social media seems to affirm that same impoverished mindset. You won't see another film this year that so openly discusses the romantic odds for shorter men, which feels serendipitously timed with the recent announcement of Tinder's height filter. When Lucy describes a problem client, Sophie (Zoë Winters), as being a "nice girl" who's ultimately "not competitive", it's easy to relate to her thinking: dating apps are flooded with people whose best qualities are not on their surface. "Social media is contributing rapidly and very negatively towards the commodification of human beings … it just all becomes about expressing a value," the director says. The more we buy into that system, the more we have to lose. "Your whole life is going to be about modifying not just each other, but also yourself." The messy, unsparing drama of Materialists doesn't always cohere with its knowing deployment of rom-com tropes. Passion is kept at a minimum while misery is laid on thick, with precious few jokes peeking through. Lucy's spiritual rot is broadened into staggering obliviousness, particularly in a subplot that indelicately handles the darker implications of her work. While Lucy's chemistry with Harry (or rather, Harry's assets) is deliberately distant, John doesn't quite inspire the kind of longing to work as a counterbalance — or perhaps there's an inherent disconnect between watching a star as bright as Chris Evans playing someone so downtrodden, even if his own acting career has been in the doldrums as of late. (Naturally, Johnson is perfect at playing a character whose own aloofness seems to keep her at a distance from the human race, and relishes in dithering put-downs when the film calls for it.) Materialists may well be a hostile viewing experience for unsuspecting audiences — it's certainly not recommended as a first-date movie. But the piercing clarity of Song's approach holds up once the shock wears off, and lays bare the inadequacies of how we negotiate romance. "I'm always trying to depict a business deal of some kind; sometimes love is on the table, and sometimes it isn't."
