Latest news with #Cyrano
UPI
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- UPI
Ashley Williams: 'Barcelona' heroines 'see themselves in each other'
Ali Sweeney (L) and Ashley Williams star in "To Barcelona, With Love," premiering Saturday. Photo courtesy of Hallmark NEW YORK, June 7 (UPI) -- Sister Swap alum Ashley Williams and Hannah Swensen actress Alison Sweeney say they wanted to star in To Barcelona, With Love, and its sequel, To Barcelona, Forever, because the TV movies are about two very different women who find they bring out the best in each other. "Throughout the journey, they also change in different ways and then start to see themselves in each other, which is a really cool thing about our story I really love," Williams told UPI in a Zoom interview Thursday. Premiering on Hallmark Saturday, With Love brings American author Anna (Williams) to Barcelona, the only place in the world where her novel is being celebrated. Once there, she quickly learns that the book -- which she wrote having never visited Spain in real life -- is so popular because U.S. ex-pat and aspiring writer Erica (Sweeney) has beautifully translated it from English to Spanish and added her own thoughtful observations about the country and its people. Erica has a lot to share with Anna, but will that include the secret rewriting of her book? Watch #ToBarcelonaWithLove Saturday at 8/7c and stream the next day on @HallmarkPlus. @Ali_Sweeney #AshleyWilliams #PassportToLove Hallmark Channel (@hallmarkchannel) June 6, 2025 "I love that Erica is a little more buttoned-up and organized," Sweeney said. "She's a little more embracing of this whole European lifestyle, but, also, really afraid to be who she is," she added. "She just kind of has settled for being the friend and translating other people's work and, then, through this series of events, she ends up kind of really needing to push herself and admit how she really feels." Her new friendship with Anna is integral to catapulting Erica out of a comfortable rut. "Anna is living out loud," Sweeney said. "She's just bright and big and has a big personality and is fun and a daredevil. She's a risk-taker and Erica is terrified of taking a risk. ... I think that's a really fun thing they learn about each other." Unaware that Erica is secretly in love with him, Nico (Alejandro Tous), an adorable book-store owner is bewitched by what he thinks is Anna's beautiful writing and enlists Erica's help to court her. Anna is charmed by Nico, too, and also depends on Erica to feed her all the right things to say to him in the tradition of the 19th-century, love-triangle drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, and its 1987 film adaptation, Roxanne, starring Steve Martin, Daryl Hannh and Rick Rossovich. "I was so in love with the idea of getting to kind of borrow the Cyrano idea and play it with Ashley and do the comedy of it," Sweeney said. "I can't tell you how thrilled I am with how it turned out. It makes me laugh every time," she added. "It was such a fun thing to twist it around the two women who are doing the Cyrano thing and then getting to play that kind of physical comedy actually was a dream come true." In addition to being hilarious, these scenes also show Erica and Anna supporting each other, Williams said. "It's: 'Hey, I have confession. I'm in over my head. You're the answer. Can you help me?'" she said. "Erica puts Anna's needs ahead of her own. Erica is deeply in love with this person [Nico], but her fear about coming to terms with that and her loyalty to this fellow female in need [influence her actions]," Williams said. "That is so flawed and so beautiful and something that I relate to as a person who just loves the women in my life more than anything." Williams said the spark for the movie came from an experience she had feeling like a failure about her own writing endeavors, while she was browsing the stacks of best-sellers at an airport newsstand. "I thought, 'Well, i'm such a bad writer that the only way that I would ever have a hit book is if I wrote a book and somebody who's actually a good writer translated it in another language and that became a good book,'" she recalled. "And I was like, 'What a complicated idea, but, also, a good idea for a movie." Williams pitched the concept to screenwriter Julie Sherman Wolfe. "She said, 'Well, we would need another Hallmark actress that spoke a different language,' and, right then, Ali Sweeney -- who I loved and had been friends with for years and always wanted to work with -- was walking by, and I said, 'Ali, do you speak a different language?' And she said, 'Spanish,' and I turned to Julie and I said, 'So, it's in Barcelona.'" The sequel, To Barcelona, Forever, picks up five months after the events of the first film and is set to air on Hallmark June 14. Ron Oliver directed both movies. Williams and Sweeney also have a podcast in which they discuss their adventures in Spain.
Time Out
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Virginia Gay is bringing back Calamity Jane for an exclusive run at Sydney Opera House
If you had the good fortune of seeing theatremaker and all-out triple-threat Virginia Gay kick down the saloon doors and tear up the stage as Calamity Jane, then you'll immediately understand two things. Firstly, why Gay's gender-bending turn as the iconic frontierswoman is so joyously unforgettable. And secondly, you'll get why we're losing our minds over the announcement that Calamity Jane is coming back this October. 'I love the show, and I love what it does to people,' said Gay, speaking exclusively with Time Out about this exciting announcement. 'Audiences never stop asking for it – and sometimes, apparently, you should give an audience what they want!?' Packed with spontaneity and joy (and a load more queer subtext than you might expect from a show based on a real-life person who lived in America's Wild West era) this witty show sold out multiple seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and on tour after opening in 2017. The role also earned Gay the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actress, enchanting audiences and critics alike – but stepping back into Calamity's cowboy boots is not something that she ever expected to do again. However, it was last year, when she was rehearsing a special one-off reprisal of the character for a fundraiser to celebrate ten years of the Hayes, that the spirit of 'Calam' was brought back to life. 'I said to Richard, god, you know, if I thought my knees could take it, I'd do this show again,' she said. 'And a week later, the Opera House called.' 'When we were doing the original seasons of Calam, the dream was always [to stage it in] The Studio at the Opera House, because we could convert the entire space into the Golden Garter… So when this call came a week after I said those immortal words, I was like, okay, I truly did not imagine going back to this character, but okay – one last go in the saddle,' continued Gay. Adapted from the beloved film starring Doris Day, this raucous yet intimate show should certainly scratch an itch for any theatregoers who fell in love with Gay's Boomkak Panto, which took over Belvoir St Theatre in the summer of 2021, as well as those of us holding out hope for a Sydney staging of Cyrano – Gay's gender-flipped take on the literary classic Cyrano de Bergerac, which has delighted audiences in Melbourne, Perth and abroad in London and Toronto. Collectively, Gay describes 'the lo-fi Joy explosion' of these shows as 'the confetti cannon trilogy'. 'I think both Boomkak and Cyrano were both hugely impacted by what I learned through Calamity. Like, what you can ask of an audience, and the way that you can be in liminal space. But at no point are you sacrificing the emotional truth of the characters or the weight of the twist, even while you are peppering people with jokes,' says Gay. 'That's, you know, one of the functions of laughter, to get people to take off their armor.' 'This is such a weird thing to say about a Wild West show, but I think our version of Calamity Jane is so uniquely Australian. It's got such an Australian sense of humor in it. It's got such irreverence, such mischief, it snubs its nose to authority.' This new staging of Calamity Jane will also feature an all-new cast, and Gay is excited to see what a new batch of actors will bring – but also, she's excited for the joy that an all new audience will get out of it. 'I think that joy is really important. Sometimes people think of it as as frippery, but I think actually, when the world is scary, joy is really fucking powerful, and joy that connects all sorts of audiences to a story like this is powerful. I think that is so wonderful, that a show can bring disparate generations and disparate world views together through joy. Nothing feels important in the show, but the act of joy, especially queer joy, is so valuable.' Calamity Jane is produced by One Eyed Man Productions in association with Neglected Musicals and Hayes Theatre Co. It will play exclusively at the Sydney Opera House from October 14 – November 16. Tickets start at $89+bf. Insiders presale starts 9am, Tuesday May 13; What's On presale starts 9am, Wednesday May 14; and General Public tickets are on sale from 9am on Friday, May 19. Find more info & book here.
New York Times
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Voyeurs,' ‘Cyrano' and More Streaming Gems
'Cyrano' (2022) Edmond Rostand's late-19th-century play 'Cyrano de Bergerac' has proved to be quite a durable text, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise; few things translate as well, no matter the period or genre, than the feeling that the person you love could never feel the same. This adaptation by the director Joe Wright ('Pride & Prejudice'), first presented onstage by the New Group in 2019, changes the source of the title character's low self-image: Instead of an oversize nose, he is of undersize height. Peter Dinklage is marvelous in the starring role, finding the cockiness and bluster that Cyrano uses to compensate, while showing the beating heart just under that hard surface. He also provides a pleasant baritone for the songs by members of the National, which are the film's other key deviation from Rostand's original. They're a masterstroke, beautifully conveying the longing and regret of this tragic tale. 'The Last Stop in Yuma County' (2024) Three cheers for this A+ premise: The pumps are empty at the last gas station for 100 miles and the truck with the refill is running late, so stranded motorists are killing time at the diner next door — among them, two crooks who made off with a trunkful of bank loot. The writer and director Francis Galluppi works from his own Swiss watch of a script, equally influenced by 'The Desperate Hours' and the dusty neo-noirs of the 1990s, where the turns are unpredictable yet organic and precise, and there are chances for every one if its character actors to shine. Snappily paced, delightfully stylish and refreshingly bleak, this movie is an assurance that we're going to hear much, much more from this gifted first-time filmmaker. 'The Voyeurs' (2021) There's a fair amount of nostalgia these days for the erotic thrillers of the 1980s and '90s, but most of those with fondness for the subgenre are recalling such major studio releases as 'Basic Instinct' and 'Indecent Proposal.' This Amazon original hews more closely to their direct-to-video stepchildren (celebrated in the recent documentary 'We Kill for Love'), glossy entertainments with interchangeable titles like 'Body Chemistry' and 'Naked Obsession,' in which beautiful squares are tempted out of their vanilla sexual boxes, often with deadly results. Said squares are played here by Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith, as a young couple whose trendy new apartment offers an unobstructed view of their beautiful and randy neighbors (Ben Hardy and Natasha Liu Bordizzo). Their voyeurism is presented as fairly understandable; we all like to watch, the writer and director Michael Mohan assures us. But then the situation gets sticky. It's a touch overlong, with a plot twist (or two) too many, but 'The Voyeurs' delivers the lurid thrills it promises, along with compelling performances by Smith (of last year's 'I Saw the TV Glow') and Sweeney (with whom Mohan would team up again, for 'Immaculate'). 'Official Competition' (2022) The self-importance of art house filmmakers and Method actors is delightfully skewered in this showbiz comedy from the Argentine directors Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn. Penélope Cruz is a brilliant but bonkers director, hired by a rich industrialist to film an acclaimed novel that he has never bothered to read. She hires two diametrically opposed actors — an actor's-actor theatrical legend (Oscar Martínez) and a gorgeous, dimwitted movie star (Antonio Banderas) — and the sparks fly. All three actors are clearly having a gas sending up their profession (and perhaps settling some scores), while Duprat and Cohn, who wrote the script with the Duprat brother Andrés, build their inside-baseball satire to a fever pitch. 'Every Secret Thing' (2015) The gifted documentary filmmaker Amy Berg ('Deliver Us From Evil') makes her narrative feature debut with this tricky and prickly adaptation of the Laura Lippman novel. Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald are excellent as teenage girls suspected of kidnapping a baby, and their complex dynamic recalls the knotty codependency of 'Heavenly Creatures,' while Elizabeth Banks brings a haunted tenderness as the lead police detective. Berg has a good feel for the story's small-town setting, building menace and dread out of everyday assumptions and offhand interactions. 'Never Rarely Sometimes Always' (2020) Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) is a 17-year-old with an unwanted pregnancy. She can't terminate it in the small Pennsylvania town where she lives, so she gets on a bus with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) and heads to New York City. It's a simple premise, but the writer and director Eliza Hittman ('Beach Rats') spins their journey into both a quiet howl of fury (the bureaucratic hoops Autumn must jump through are infuriating, and played as such) and a modest yet powerful character study. 'Look Into My Eyes' (2024) The documentary filmmaker Lana Wilson ('Taylor Swift: Miss Americana') profiles seven New York City psychics, and it's easy to imagine how such a portrait could have been cynical, or even cruel. Instead, 'Look Into My Eyes' is deeply empathic, not only to the clients who come with questions — some tiny and specific, others as big as any we can ask — but also to these souls who try to answer them. Wilson isn't concerned with anything as binary as 'fake' or 'real'; she wants to know what draws these people together, what affirmation is provided by their interactions. Unsurprisingly, many of the psychics are struggling actors and writers, and they have moments of doubt and failure both in and out of their sessions. Some of it is sad, and some of it is funny, but it's never simple. Wilson takes her subjects seriously, and by the film's conclusion, so do we.
