Latest news with #FuryRoad
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Scarlett Johansson crushes it in coral for NYC premiere of Phoenician film
Scarlett Johansson was coruscating in coral as she attended the New York premiere of The Phoenician Scheme on Wednesday. The glitzy event was held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan - and the 40-year-old actress ramped up the glam in a coral-colored strapless Saint Laurent gown. The star - who has a small role in the black comedy - added a lariat necklace and rings from Taffin Jewelry selected by stylist Kate Young. Hairstylist David von Cannon finally let Scarlett's highlighted wavy mane down rather than scraping it into a severe bun like usual. Makeup artist Jian Qiao Lu brought out her bushy brows and natural bee-stung pout with minimal cosmetics. The two-time Oscar nominee plays a deadpan 'titan' character known only as 'Cousin' in the movie, which hits limited U.S. theaters this Friday before a wider U.S./UK release on June 6. Scarlett dutifully posed with The Phoenician Scheme filmmaker Wes Anderson and castmates Scott Shepherd, F Murray Abraham, Hope Davis, Bryan Cranston, Mia Threapleton, Benicio del Toro, Steve Park, Michael Cera, and Tom Hanks. 'It was so great because I got to dip in for, you know, like a short period of time, reunite with some friends, meet new friends and castmates, and get, like, into Wes' world,' Scarlett told Extra on Wednesday. 'You know, these guys had been working so hard - Michael, Benicio, Mia - for, like, months, and then I just got to come in and have fun and then I was like, "All right, see you guys later!" ' The Phoenician Scheme has a 'certified fresh' 76 per cent critic approval rating (out of 90 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes. The Outset co-founder seemed especially chummy with Tom, dressed in a navy-blue suit, who portrays Leland in the absurdist father-daughter flick. Meanwhile, Bryan's red carpet antics amused Scarlett as she posed with F Murray and Mia. Scarlett is still riding high after her six-minute standing ovation for her feature directorial debut Eleanor The Great during the May 20 Cannes Film Festival premiere. The indie drama stars 95-year-old June Squibb as 90-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein, who moves back to New York City from Florida following the death of her best friend of 70 years. Orange you glad: The 40-year-old former child star wore a coral-colored strapless Saint Laurent gown as well as a lariat necklace and rings from Taffin Jewelry Done with the bun: Hairstylist David von Cannon finally let Scarlett's highlighted wavy mane down rather than scraping it into a severe bun like usual Check it out: The actress has a small role as a deadpan 'titan' character only known as 'Cousin' in the espionage black comedy Tom's terrific: Scarlett with with Tom Hanks, who portrays Leland in the absurdist father-daughter flick Indie drama: Eleanor The Great stars 95-year-old June Squibb as 90-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein, who moves back to New York City from Florida following the death of her pal 'Super supportive': Wayfarer Studios co-founders Steve Sarowitz (L, pictured August 9) and Justin Baldoni (R) are credited as executive producers on Eleanor The Great
Tom's Guide
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
‘Mad Max: Fury Road' turns 10 — it's still the best action movie of the 21st century
When thinking about 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' two quotes perfectly describe George Miller's 2015 masterpiece. The first comes from an interview with Steven Soderbergh conducted by The Hollywood Reporter, where he can't explain how Miller pulled it off. 'I don't understand how they're not still shooting that film, and I don't understand how hundreds of people aren't dead,' said Soderbergh. The second comes from Charlize Theron, who starred as Imperator Furiosa and has complicated feelings about the movie. 'I feel a mixture of extreme joy that we achieved what we did, and I also get a little bit of a hole in my stomach,' Theron told the New York Times. 'There's a level of 'the body remembers' trauma related to the shooting of this film that's still there for me.' 'Mad Max: Fury Road' is a stunning tour de force from a true visionary. The post-apocalyptic tale is also mired in controversy for the nightmarish shoot that resulted in fights, altercations, and utter chaos. The mayhem you see on screen reflects the madness occurring between takes. 'Fury Road' reintroduces audiences to Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), the antihero and outlaw who spends his days navigating the dangers of the Wasteland. Max eventually forms an uneasy alliance with Imperator Furiosa, the top lieutenant of cult leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Furiosa escapes the Citadel with Joe's five wives in a War Rig. After aligning with Max, Furiosa and Co. must fend off Joe and his War Boys in an action-packed chase across the desert. After completing "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome' in 1985, Miller took a much-needed hiatus from the franchise. In 1998, Miller finally got an idea while crossing the street in Los Angeles. Per the New York Times, Miller said, 'What if there was a 'Mad Max' movie that was one long chase, and the MacGuffin was human?' Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Miller stuck to that vision when filming began in 2012. 'Fury Road' is one long chase movie — an action spectacle with breakneck pacing, sensational actions, grandiose explosions, and jaw-dropping practical effects. This is a movie where dialogue takes a back seat to visual filmmaking. Max has less than 55 lines of dialogue (not counting Hardy's constant grunts), and yet everything you need to know about him is conveyed through his emotions and facial reactions. Miller has refuted the rumor that 'Fury Road' didn't have a script. Miller relied on storyboards — about 3,500 — to execute his vision. Zoe Kravitz perfectly described the script in that New York Times piece as a 'really long comic book.' When it came to shooting the action, practical effects were king. About 90% of the effects in 'Fury Road' were practical, an unfathomable feat considering how many action movies now shoot on studio lots in front of green screens. There is a myth that 'Fury Road' didn't use CG. Clearly, the film incorporated thousands of VFX shots to enhance, not weaken, the movie as a whole. Speaking of those sequences, Miller likely wanted to give the audience a heart attack because once Furiosa and the Wives escape the Citadel, 'Fury Road' doesn't take its foot off the gas. The cars get faster, the music turns up, and the 'Wait, how did they do that?' moments appear every few seconds. Watching the pole cats swing through the air from vehicle to vehicle is as anxiety-inducing as it comes. The race through the canyon makes 'The Fast and Furious' look like a children's video game. The entire third act is nearly a carbon copy of the first — Max, Furiosa, and Co. driving back to the Citadel. Yet it remains fresh and visually spectacular. 'Fury Road' winning six below-the-line Oscars felt like a surprise in the moment. 10 years later, it should have won every technical award. 'Mad Max: Fury Road' is chaotic, complicated, and confounding. I'm not talking about anything filmed during the two-hour runtime. The behind-the-scenes drama should be the basis of an HBO series. Thankfully, New York Times reporter Kyle Buchannon chronicled the entire making of 'Fury Road' in his excellent book, 'Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road." The oral history chronicles the unbelievable miracle Miller pulled off to make this movie. I encourage everyone to read the book, even if 'Fury Road' as a movie doesn't fit your interests. From heated arguments and dangerous living quarters to brutal weather to unsafe filming conditions, the 'Fury Road' shoot had more explosions behind the set than in front of the camera. Again, Buchanan's book covers most of 'Fury Road's' issues, but here are some standout moments. Hardy and Miller clashed many times, with the actor constantly pushing back at the director's notes. Miller got so frustrated with his star that crewman Mark Goellnicht overheard the director saying he couldn't stop thinking about Heath Ledger and if he got to play Max. The elements played a huge factor, with many of the actors and crew constantly washing their eyes with saline due to the sand. Riley Keough, who played Capable, experienced hypothermia due to the harsh weather conditions of the Numbia. Despite all that, the biggest issue on 'Mad Max: Fury Road' involved the feud between Hardy and Theron. The two stars did not get along, and that's the PG version. Hardy was reportedly very difficult to work with, and he would argue with Theron in the War Rig as the other actors sat and watched in the back seat. Theron compared that 'horrible' experience in the War Rig to 'two parents in the front of the car' arguing. It all reached a heated climax when Hardy showed up three hours late to set, leading Theron to scream, 'Fine the f---ing c--- a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he's held up this crew.' Even members of The Eagles would look at the fight between Hardy and Theron and think it's excessive. Hardy, Theron, and Miller have all since expressed regrets about their actions. However, the contentious relationship did work in the movie's favor. The distrust between Max and Furiosa in the first half of the movie mirrors the real-life relationship between Hardy and Theron. 'Mad Max: Fury Road' was not the first great movie to experience a troubled production, and it most certainly won't be the last. The dysfunction only adds to the film's legacy. The best compliment I can give 'Fury Road' is that it feels like a one-of-a-kind. It's a unique entry in the dystopian genre with a strong case for the best action movie of the 21st century. 'Fury Road' might be a 'Mad Max' movie, but watching the other three movies beforehand is optional, not a requirement. Those first three movies are a proper trilogy about why Max went mad, what led to the disintegration of civilization, and how gas became the ultimate currency. 'Fury Road' is more concerned about the aftermath of humanity's decisions in the first three movies. How can humanity rebuild post-apocalypse? Furiosa's inclusion gave 'Fury Road' a female protagonist, a first for the franchise. Theron's powerful performance as a woman fighting for freedom and rebelling against the patriarchy is right up there with Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley for iconic action heroines. The females in 'Fury Road' also represent hope for the future, a foreign concept in a dystopian world. It's no hyperbole to say that 'Mad Max: Fury Road' was one of the most difficult blockbusters to make this century. I don't envy any of the actors or crew members who had to experience this grueling shoot. Luckily for fans, the pressure of making 'Fury Road' made a diamond of a movie, one that continues to shine brightly 10 years later. What a lovely day, indeed. Rent/buy 'Mad Max: Fury Road' on Amazon or Apple.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How ‘Mad Max: Fury Road' became an unlikely Oscar contender 10 years ago
In the 10 years since Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters, director George Miller's fourth outing in his post-apocalyptic franchise has become universally acclaimed as one of the greatest action movies ever made. Industry bodies like the Academy Awards do not usually celebrate action movies, so momentum has been building for years to create a new category honoring stunt performances. But even before Best Stunt Design finally becomes an official category starting with the 100th ceremony in 2028, Fury Road managed to score six Oscars from 10 nominations, making it the most-nominated film of its year, and still the record-holder for Australian movies at the Oscars. How did that unexpected paradox happen? Don't ask Miller; praise from the Oscars was the last thing he expected of his long-gestating franchise revival, and he remained befuddled by it for a long time. More from GoldDerby 'Sunset Boulevard' star Tom Francis reveals how he plays 'the complete and utter opposite' of Nicole Scherzinger's Norma Desmond 'Murderbot,' 'The Brutalist,' 'A Minecraft Movie,' 'Duster,' and the best to stream this weekend Making the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise, ScarJo vs. AI, catching up with the Gosselins, and what to read this weekend: May 16, 2025 'Who would have thunk it?' Miller told New York Times award columnist Cara Buckley in January 2016, shortly after the nominations were announced. 'The film was like last year, May, and I did not imagine I'd be back here talking about it, which is fine, you know, which is good. When you're in these awards seasons, and people have responded to the film in a positive way, then you say, 'OK, I'll enjoy the party as long as it lasts.'' As he references in that quote, Miller was not a stranger to the Oscars by 2016. Although best known for Mad Max, Miller has also made several movies not based on high-octane action or desert warlords wearing spikes and Speedos. He was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for 1992's Lorenzo's Oil, and for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for 1995's Babe (which he produced but did not direct). He even won Best Animated Feature for 2006's penguin musical Happy Feet. But until Fury Road, the Mad Max movies had gone unrecognized by the Oscars, and Miller didn't expect that to change. 'I used to joke in the cutting room, 'If we don't win an Oscar for this…' But I was kidding around!' Fury Road editor (and Miller's wife) Margaret Sixel told Kyle Buchanan in Blood, Sweat, and Chrome, a book-length oral history of the film. 'George would say, 'No, Margie, this kind of stuff is not Oscar stuff.' He dampened all our expectations.' What changed? The easiest way to say it is that Miller and his many collaborators made a masterpiece. Despite its relatively straightforward construction (the movie is basically one big car chase, there and back), Fury Road is filled with colorful characters and detailed world-building that feels outlandish and resonates with real-world oppression. Fury Road made money in theaters, but in a year dominated by other, even flashier franchise revivals like Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it didn't even crack the top 20 of Hollywood's domestic box office rankings for 2015. Yet almost everyone who did see it raved about it — not just critics and fans, but also awards insiders like Gold Derby's own Zach Laws. 'If ever there was an audience crowd-pleaser that deserved to be nominated, it's George Miller's bold, imaginative Mad Max: Fury Road, a revitalization of this Australian auteur's post-apocalyptic trilogy,' Laws wrote on this very site following the film's May 15-17 opening weekend in the United States. At that early stage, Laws correctly predicted that Fury Road would win Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, and Best Film Editing (proving that Sixel had been right all along). But he also advocated that the film should break through in the top categories of Best Director ('at age 70, [Miller] delivered the kind of nuts-and-bolts entertainment that makes the rest of the summer slate look like child's play') and Best Picture ('the film is not only a great entertainment, but a work of art'). Momentum kept building over the following months. According to Blood, Sweat, and Chrome, a decisive turning point came at the end of the year when Fury Road earned Best Picture from the prestigious National Board of Review. 'That NBR win gave the green light to anyone who was hedging in the critics' groups to be like, 'Yeah, I can vote for this,'' journalist Gregory Ellwood told Buchanan. Sure enough, Fury Road soon earned Best Director and other honors from the Los Angeles and Chicago Film Critics Associations. Then came the 10 Oscar nominations, often when an unconventional competitor maxes out, but Fury Road was actually competing, even for the top categories. In Entertainment Weekly's anonymous Oscar ballot that year, an anonymous 'Oscar-winning actress' advocated for it to win Best Picture ('this movie was the most engaging on every level. It's a great example of why I want to go to the movies — to be completely absorbed in a fictitious world. And I loved that there were so many women in the movie'). At the same time, 'an Academy Award-winning screenwriter specializing in high-stakes drama' pushed Miller for Best Director, saying Fury Road 'had more cinematic gusto than just about all the others put together.' Ultimately, neither of the big ones materialized. Best Picture went to the underdog drama Spotlight (which only won one other award, Best Original Screenplay). The Revenant filmmaker Alejandro J. Iñárritu received his second consecutive Best Director award. Was awarding Iñárritu back-to-back worth missing a singular opportunity to honor Miller for a movie that is much more remembered and celebrated a decade later? Oscar voters certainly seemed to think so; two other anonymous Academy members polled by EW back then praised how Iñárritu 'turned the difficulty of the location and the story into a cinematic spectacle' and 'introduced us to a visual world that we've never seen before.' Ah, well. No one's written a book-length oral history of The Revenant, and Miller himself was just happy for his collaborators who did win — who also thanked him in all of their acceptance speeches. 'We were disappointed that George didn't win, but basically, they were all his awards in a way,' Sixel said. Best of GoldDerby John C. Reilly movies: 15 greatest films ranked worst to best Ian McKellen movies: 12 greatest films ranked worst to best Octavia Spencer movies: 12 greatest films ranked worst to best Click here to read the full article.
Digital Trends
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
We're never going to see a movie like Mad Max: Fury Road again
The second people got their hands on it, Mad Max: Fury Road felt special. The movie, which came 30 years after the last installment in this franchise, felt like a miracle. Set almost entirely in the desert, its sheer scale and intensity were so marvelous that, even though it's a deeply weird movie, the 2016 Oscars simply couldn't resist nominating it for many awards. 10 years later, Fury Road's stature has only grown. Even though we got Furiosa, which I'd argue is every bit as good as Fury Road, Miller's first return to Mad Max since Beyond Thunderdome is undeniably the one with the bigger cultural imprint. It's a movie we're not likely to ever see again, not just because of its greatness, but because no one else will be dumb enough to try. Recommended Videos Fury Road could have been a disaster Part of the reason Fury Road feels like such an overwhelming success is because you get the sense, even just watching the movie, that the whole thing could so easily have gone sideways. The movie is set almost entirely outside, and by her own admission, one of its stars didn't fully understand what they were doing. Charlize Theron said that she was 'incredibly scared' while shooting the film because she had never worked on a project like it and 'didn't always understand the narrative that we were telling.' An entire book was written about the making of Fury Road. The movie could have gone off the rails in so many different places. Instead, it feels like a singular, kinetic achievement because of the person behind the camera and his approach to the material. Fury Road is action filmmaking in its purest form Perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay to director George Miller is that you can watch Fury Road with the sound off and the movie still totally works. Fury Road is kinetic cinema at its finest, a movie where characters' actions are explained almost entirely by how they move and where the point of almost every second of screen time is to see where characters are headed next. It's been pointed out that Fury Road is essentially a two-hour chase scene. The irony is the main characters decide to turn around a little over an hour in and just head back to where they came from. The pointlessness of all that plotting could kill a movie with less visual flair than this one has. Instead, the movie manages to pack a punch not in spite of the circles it sends its characters in, but because of the combination of movement and stasis. These are characters trying to find a better life who realize that they'll have to build one for themselves. Director George Miller is working at the peak of his powers here, and he was given the resources to make what seems to be almost exactly the movie he wanted to make. Furiosa, for all of its brilliance, is slower and more operatic than Fury Road. This is the kind of action cinema we rarely get on this scale, and it rips from the second it starts. It's got a generational performance at its center Fury Road is brilliant enough, but the most remarkable thing about the movie might be that it manages to center its main character's emotional journey through all the chaos that surrounds her. Theron's Imperator Furiosa is such an indelible character that Miller felt the need to make an entire prequel about her. Much of that is thanks to Theron's performance. As Furiosa, she's fierce, vengeful, and protective, a pseudo-mother to the wives that she rescues from imprisonment. The film's most important moment belongs to her and her alone, as she collapses onto a once green desert, realizing that her entire plan is hopeless. It's telling, too, that Furiosa so gracefully takes the mantle from Max and that the movie seems designed to facilitate that transition. The moment when Furiosa nails a shot that Max can't make, using him to steady her rifle, is brilliant and subtle, and one that both Theron and Tom Hardy sell completely. Fury Road was a risk, and one that wouldn't get taken today Fury Road rules because it doesn't feel safe. It's the kind of movie that can only be a home run or a disaster. Thankfully, it was the former. The modern blockbuster is defined in part by the desire to ensure that it will make enough money. That means, in part, sanding all the edges off of every movie until all that's left is the parts that everyone can agree they like. Fury Road has imagery in it that could easily alienate, and that imagery likely did bother at least some people. For all of its success, Fury Road did not gross $1 billion, but it was a success nonetheless because it achieved a kind of word-of-mouth status that is still rare in Hollywood. Few filmmakers ever get the chance to make exactly what they want on this scale, and even when they do, it's not something as daring and impressive as Fury Road. We should celebrate this movie's existence every chance we get. It's one of the great cinematic experiences any of us will ever get, and it seems unlikely we'll get another anytime soon. Buy or rent Mad Max: Fury Road on Amazon or Apple.
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Why Anya Taylor-Joy's Mad Max prequel lost $120m – and why it doesn't matter
Hollywood box office reports can be a disconcerting read for anyone who thinks they understand basic maths. This week, the film industry website Deadline offered up a belter. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which cost $168 million to produce and which made $211m across cinemas, DVD and streaming, somehow still managed to lose $119.6m. The unfortunate (and, on the face of it, inexplicable) figures were revealed in Deadline's annual Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament, which ranks the profitability of the highest-profile theatrical releases in the last calendar year. The biggest winner of 2023 was Disney Pixar's Inside Out 2, which took $650m after all bills were paid, followed by Disney Animation's Moana 2 with $415m and Disney Marvel's Deadpool & Wolverine with $400m. In this era of perpetual industry-wide crisis, one particular studio clearly isn't going to have the bailiffs at the door for a bit. But the Furiosa numbers are especially depressing: by Deadline's calculations, only Joker: Folie à Deux, with its vast production costs and negligible US takings, fared worse. Per the data, Furiosa sunk into the red because Warner Bros' outlay on the project – one blockbuster budget, plus a $108m ad campaign to support it – assumed another Fury Road-sized success would result. But both in the US and internationally, turnout was barely half of what it had been for that now-canonised 2015 predecessor – despite comparably strong reviews and an identical B+ CinemaScore, a stat that reveals the extent to which films meet their opening-night crowd's expectations. So why did the revving legions of Fury Road heads steer clear? The answer – or rather answers – lie in the wider circumstances around the film's release, as well as key creative choices which may have benefitted the film itself (which, to be clear, was one of last year's very best) but only served to dissuade potential viewers from riding eternal, shiny and chrome, or just taking the bus, to their local multiplex. May 2024 was, it transpired, a dreadful time to launch a new movie. America's Memorial Day holiday, the long weekend ending on the last Monday in May, has long been considered a prime site to pitch early summer blockbusters: this year's line-up includes the latest Mission: Impossible and Lilo & Stitch, while Fury Road itself took the slot in 2015. But last year's Memorial Day takings were the feeblest in 26 years, thanks to a thinner release schedule due to the 2023 strikes and a growing awareness that studios were bundling their output onto streaming faster than ever. (Action-comedy The Fall Guy appeared on premium VOD services that very weekend, less than three weeks after opening in cinemas.) Additionally, the majority of premium large format screens – Imax, 4K, Dolby Atmos and the like – had been block-booked by Sony for the early June release of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which gave George Miller's film less than two weeks to be seen in the best possible light. Against that backdrop, Furiosa had to work far harder than its predecessor to quickly pull a crowd. But its stars, Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, weren't the tried-and-true draws that Fury Road's Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron had been nine years earlier, while the film's prequel status meant it had no Max to offer audiences – nor the version of Furiosa they'd come to know last time around. Perhaps most damaging of all, the series' signature we-shot-this-for-real sales pitch had been fatally undermined by an early trailer, whose gaudy palette and unfinished visual effects suggested the whole thing would be an airless CG-drenched trifle, rather than the dust-blown action folk-epic Miller had actually made. Does its commercial failure matter? It certainly seems to have done for the 80-year-old Miller, whose proposed final Mad Max film, another prequel subtitled The Wasteland, hasn't been talked about much since Furiosa's release. And at a tough time for ambitious directors with strong pop sensibilities who aren't called Christopher Nolan, it may make studios even more reluctant to back projects that sit outside the ever-tightening circle of approved IPs. But as far as the film itself goes, Furiosa remains as electrifying as it always obviously was. Far from a money-grubbing trundle back down Fury Road, it's one of the current decade's greatest and most unique blockbusters; an adrenalised collection of legends and lays with their roots coiled deep round silent cinema and ancient myth. Its centrepiece chase, with Tom Burke's dusky Praetorian Jack at the wheel of a war rig and Taylor-Joy's Furiosa clinging to its undercarriage, is the equal of any of Fury Road's mobile battles – the truck is besieged from all sides, including above, by paragliding bandits propelled by industrial fans and lobbing dynamite tipped spears. The plot surrounding it isn't nearly as streamlined as its predecessor's, but comes out in a whispery, Eddaic tumble. It's like listening to campfire stories hauled back through time from beyond the apocalypse, as Chris Hemsworth's Dementus leads multiple raids against the Immortan and his clan, while watching the girl he once made an orphan grow into the only warrior capable of facing him down. Miller's command of early cinema technique makes the whole thing an effortless watch. Yes, it's frenzied in places, but Buster Keaton comedies were too – and like those silent classics, Miller's mayhem has a grace that's missing from almost every other film made today on this scale. Its streaming availability shifts from month to month and place to place, but in the UK it's currently available to watch on NOW and Sky. If you missed it, have a look this weekend, then apply a vigorous kick to your former self's behind for not catching it on the big screen. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
