Latest news with #GusVanSant
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Gus Van Sant to Receive Venice Fest's Passion for Film Award
Two-time Oscar-nominated director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk, Drugstore Cowboy) will receive this year's Campari Passion for Film Award at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. The honor recognizes film professionals whose creative work 'reflects a deep and enduring passion for cinema.' Unlike a lifetime achievement award, the Campari Passion for Film Award celebrates artistic vision and the drive to leave a lasting imprint on cinematic storytelling. More from The Hollywood Reporter First-Time Emmy Nominees Let Us in on Their Celebrations TV Production Giant Banijay Records Revenue Gain In First Half of the Year Netflix Reveals 10-Title Colombia Slate Featuring True Crime, Franchise Finales and Political Drama Van Sant will receive the honor in Venice on Sept. 2, ahead of the out-of-competition world premiere of his new film, Dead Man's Wire. The based-on-a-true-story thriller stars Bill Skarsgard, Dacre Montgomery, Colman Domingo, Cary Elwes, Myha'la and Al Pacino. 'I'm truly honored to receive the Passion for Film award,' Van Sant said in a statement. 'My heartfelt thanks to Campari for this recognition — it means a great deal to me. I'm grateful not only for their acknowledgement of my work, but also for their support of one of the world's great institutions of cinema celebration and exhibition. It's a privilege to be part of this tradition, and I deeply appreciate the passion they bring to film.' Venice film festival artistic director Alberto Barbera described Van Sant as 'a unique filmmaker in the landscape of contemporary cinema,' noting his ability to shift between mainstream and art house filmmaking while maintaining a singular creative identity. 'He has made films that have left a lasting mark on the collective imagination,' Barbera said, citing Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Elephant, and Milk. 'A discoverer of talent, he has launched actors such as River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Casey Affleck, Joaquin Phoenix, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.' An iconic figure in American independent cinema since the 1980s, Van Sant has alternated between minimalist and experimental cinema and more mainstream fare, but always with a focus on characters on the margins of society, struggling with addiction, trauma or alienation. After his debut Mala Noche, he gained international attention with Drugstore Cowboy, and secured his critical reputation with My Own Private Idaho, which competed in Venice in 1991. His 1997 feature Good Will Hunting, which made stars out of both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, picked up nine Oscar nominations and won two. His 2008 biopic Milk earned eight Oscar nominations, including wins for actor Sean Penn and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. His more experimental feature Elephant (2003), a languid look at a school shooting, made in response to the Columbine massacre, won the Palme d'Or for best film and best director honors at Cannes. Dead Man's Wire recounts the 1977 hostage standoff by Anthony G. 'Tony' Kiritsis, a former real estate developer who wired a shotgun to his neck in a confrontation with a mortgage banker. Previous winners of Venice's passion for film honor include editor Bob Murawski, cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, composer Terence Blanchard, and production designers Tonino Zera and Paola Comencini. The 82nd Venice film festival runs Aug. 27 to Sept. 9. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 25 Best U.S. Film Schools in 2025 The 40 Greatest Needle Drops in Film History The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Burning Oscars questions heading into Venice, TIFF, and Telluride
As fall festival lineups are revealed, the awards race comes into focus. This week saw major announcements from the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, making the rest of the year for Oscar watchers a bit clearer on which movies will be vying for the top awards. But some mysteries remain. As release dates loom and Telluride remains tight-lipped as usual, a number of presumed Oscar contenders are question marks at the moment. More from Gold Derby 'Freakier Friday' director on Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan's bond on and off set and why the body-swap sequel is 'a fantasy-slash-nightmare' Remembering Ozzy Osbourne: How 'The Osbournes' made him more palatable for awards voters Here are the questions we're asking as we look ahead at the end-of-the-year film festival line-ups. Will A House of Dynamite blowup? The fall release with equal amounts of buzz and mystery surrounding it has to be Kathryn Bigelow's first film in eight years, A House of Dynamite. The movie, which stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, and Greta Lee, was announced by its distributor, Netflix, a little over a month ago with a teaser poster and a logline — and since then, not a peep. No trailers, no stills, nothing. But now the film has a premiere. A House of Dynamite will roll out at the Venice Film Festival. So what does the return of the first female Best Director look like? Is her next film destined for another showdown at the Oscars with ex-husband James Cameron and Avatar: Fire and Ash? Will One Battle After Another and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere screen anywhere? Two of the big presumed players of this awards season have yet to announce festival berths. An 11-time nominee, Paul Thomas Anderson has been an automatic entry into the conversation, but he has been skipping festivals as of late. The last film of his to debut at a fest was 2014's Inherent Vice, and with One Battle After Another's Sept. 26 release date quickly approaching, a last-minute Telluride premiere looking like the only possibility. The same question applies to Scott Cooper's biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which has a bit more time to roll out thanks to a late October release date. If the inevitable Jeremy Allen White campaign for Best Actor is going to launch at a festival, Telluride is where it will start rocking. Is The Testament of Ann Lee the next Brutalist? Last year, Brady Corbet's The Brutalist came out of Venice with major awards heat. This year, that film's cowriter Mona Fastvold is looking to follow that same trajectory with The Testament of Ann Lee, a period musical shot in 70mm about the founding of the Shakers starring Amanda Seyfried that was also penned with Corbet. And like The Brutalist, The Testament of Ann Lee will be seeking a distributor at the festival. Could multiple Oscar nominations be the films' next similarity? Is Gus Van Sant back? It's been seven years since Gus Van Sant's last feature directorial effort, but you would be forgiven for thinking it had been longer. The two-time Oscar nominated director is returning to material more in the vein of 2008's Milk, his last well received film, with Dead Man's Wire, a true-crime story starring Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, and Colman Domingo. Is Daniel Day-Lewis back-back? Another title missing from festival slates is Anemone, the feature directing debut of Ronan Day-Lewis, whose last name is not a coincidence. The project brought Ronan's dear-old dad, Daniel — missing from screens since Phantom Thread — out of retirement for a second time. But will one of the greatest actors of his generation stay back? Can Steven Soderbergh out-Soderbergh himself? Releasing two movies in a single year is old-hat for Steven Soderbergh. He's done it a few times, and in one of those cases — 2000 with Traffic and Erin Brockovich — went up against himself for Best Director (and won). With the announcement of The Christophers, starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel and premiering at TIFF, that will bring Soderbergh's 2025 total to three (after Presence and Black Bag). Could the Oscars bring about Soderbergh v. Soderbergh v. Soderbergh? (Almost definitely not, but it's fun to imagine.) Best of Gold Derby Everything to know about 'The Batman 2': Returning cast, script finalized Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') Click here to read the full article. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘How To Train Your Dragon' Won't Be Laggin' At Summer Box Office With $175M-$185M Global Start For Live-Action Redo
Domestic box office estimates for this week's opening of the live-action adaptation of Universal/DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon are between $65 million-$75 million-plus at 4,000 theaters, and don't be shocked if this beloved title overperforms. This isn't Gus Van Sant's take on Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, meaning a shot-for-shot version of the original 2010 movie — and that's even with original HTTYD architect Dean DeBlois behind the camera. There's a lot of heart and there's a lot of flying swoops that set this live-action reboot apart (even if Toothless the Dragon looks similar to his animated version), not to mention Mason Thames and Nico Parker's respective turns as Hiccup and Astrid; the duo take entire ownership of the characters. No carbon copies here. More from Deadline 'How To Train Your Dragon' Review: Live-Action Take Subtly Stretches The Original's Wingspan – Annecy Film Festival 'Materialists' Review: Dakota Johnson Measures Value Of Love Between Chris Evans And Pedro Pascal in Celine Song's Sublime Romcomdram Nico Parker On 'How To Train Your Dragon' Backlash Over Her Casting: "I Just Don't Care" Critics on Rotten Tomatoes are 81% fresh; the original animated movie was 99% certified fresh. HTTYD will have all the firepower of PLFs, 4DX, ScreenX and the entire Imax network of 413 screens. Estimates for the full international opening through Sunday point to the $110M range, with room for upside. That takes the global start for the movie produced by Marc Platt, Adam Siegel and DeBlois to $175M-$185M. The international take includes offshore previews, which will roll up into that number. Through Monday, the previews estimate is $21.8M (see more detail below). HTTYD started significant overseas previews last weekend and begins official rollout Wednesday, with all international box office markets in the mix through Friday save Japan which flies in September 5. How to Train Your Dragon is rated PG for kissing. The movie before P&A cost $150M net, shot with tax credits in Ireland. Stateside previews for How to Train Your Dragon start 2 p.m. Thursday. There's some question as to how hard the fourth weekend of will eat into Toothless' take, with the former live-action take of the Disney toon expected to do around $20M in the U.S. and Canada, off 38% week over week. The notion as of this minute is that there's room for both adaptations of these beloved feature toons. Lilo & Stitch made $3.6M in its third Monday, with a running cume of $339.2M. HTTYD is big in unaided awareness and first choice with women under 25, through currently pacing behind Lilo & Stitch at the same point in time before its opening. In February, How to Train Your Dragon's Super Bowl spot amassed north of 370M global views on YouTube and yielded the most online engagement of any trailer shown during the game. The official trailer dropped February 12, when it also trended on YouTube and played on such movies as Captain America: Brave New World, A Minecraft Movie and Thunderbolts*. HTTYD trailers to date have clocked three quarters of a billion views to date. Note that HTTYD has no significant holidays ahead overseas, but European majors love the previous animated movies as does Latin America, especially Brazil and Mexico. Korea and Australia also have a sweet spot for property is well known in China, where the 2014 and 2019 films released (grossing a combined $120M at historical rates). As per the norm in recent times, the market is uncertain, but the film is leading presales on Friday and Saturday. There are popular HTTYD-themed attractions at the Universal Beijing Resort including a character meet-and-greet and an 'Untrainable' terms of overall comps, it's not cut-and-dried. If we look at animation to live-action transfers, we're pretty much in Disney-only territory which is a different beast based on the historical nature of those IPs. Meanwhile, it's not apples-to-apples to comp the HTTYD toons to a flesh-and-blood yet, looking at the previews, we can extrapolate overall good news. Direct comps are again ornery since the sneaks include varied amounts of screenings and non-traditional opening days. Still, here's a sample of what's transpired with HTTYD's early previews overseas: Korea began previews June 6, reaching $4.3M after four days and leading each day, playing across 1,644 screens, including 26 Imax. It has a fantastic 99% CVG Egg score. UK & Ireland kicked off previews Monday, grossing $1.2M across 1,600 screens (54 in Imax) and at No. 1 on the day with a 41% market share. Germany on Monday grossed $1.1M in previews across 1,075 screens. France has grossed $1.4M in previews through two days. Across all of Latin America, HTTYD opened in 1,681 locations. Hiccup's jump-start in Brazil is $2.7M. Mexico grossed $2.1M in Saturday-Sunday previews this past weekend across 812 the nearly $1.7B overall that the animated franchise has grossed, $1.1B comes from international. There's another wide entry and that's A24's Materialists from Oscar nominee Celine Song, which currently counts 89% certified fresh with critics on RT. The outlook is $7M-$8M for the feature, which cost around $20M. You want more romantic comedies? You want more movies for women? Well, then here's an original starring Dakota Johnson as an upscale matchmaker torn between the wealthy unicorn guy, played by Pedro Pascal, and the poor b.f. with a heart of gold, played by Chris Evans. Sony bought foreign on Materialists. Unaided awareness and first choice is best with women over 25, and just a point behind in each category from Anyone But You. Let's see where this one goes as it's a crowd-pleaser with a lot of quotable lines and an ending that will keep women and men debating well after they leave the theater. Materialists is rated R for hanky panky with Pedro. Previews begin at 1 p.m. Thursday. Lionsgate's second weekend of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is looking to be around $11M, off 55%. On Monday, the Len Wiseman-directed movie did $2.05M, taking the running total on the Thunder Road production to $26.5M. Best of Deadline List Of Hollywood & Media Layoffs From Paramount To Warner Bros Discovery To CNN & More Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media
The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘People raised hell': why shouldn't Scarlett Johansson and James Franco play queer characters?
Justin Kelly and I first met in 2008 when I was sent to Los Angeles to interview Gus Van Sant. I breezed into the screening room where Van Sant was viewing a rough cut of his film Milk, and promptly tripped over the film-maker's Australian shepherd Milo, who was snoozing in the dark. Kelly was minding the dog that morning, so in some small but unshakable way I will always blame him for my spectacular stumble. Kelly was the editorial assistant on Milk, which starred Sean Penn as the assassinated San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, and James Franco as his lover. Kelly then went on to direct Franco on two occasions as gay characters based on real people: activist Michael Glatze, who renounces his former life after finding religion in I Am Michael; and the escort, porn producer and convicted murderer Joe Kerekes in King Cobra. Consequently, Kelly has had a ringside seat for the whole 'queerbait' argument over whether straight or apparently straight actors should play LGBTQ+ roles. 'I never saw James's performances as him 'pretending' to be gay,' he tells me from among the jaunty cushions in his mother's guest bedroom in Prescott, Arizona, where he has stopped off during a road trip. 'I just saw him as being interested in playing all kinds of characters. He knew he could help these cool queer movies get made and give someone like me a chance to direct. When we were doing press, journalists would throw him some shade, and I'd be like, 'He's bringing these incredible queer stories to the screen, so what's the problem?'' The term 'queerbaiting' wasn't in circulation when I Am Michael opened in 2015. 'Once it started floating around, I became very irritated by it,' Kelly says. 'I think it's fucking bullshit. Since before Stonewall, gay people have been asking the straight world to accept us and not treat us differently. And now we finally have these huge names – actors, musicians – telling the world that not only should you not be homophobic but that maybe it's fucking cool to be gay … and people are mad? I'm like, 'What is wrong with you?'' He is laughing and spluttering. 'That's what we've been asking for all this time!' Such complaints may be guided partly by the misapprehension that work is being snatched away from LGBTQ+ talent. 'Dare I veer into a controversial example?' asks Kelly. 'Scarlett Johansson was going to play a trans character, then people raised hell, so she dropped out.' He is referring to the still unmade Rub & Tug, for which Johansson was cast as the real-life trans male gangster Dante 'Tex' Gill, before she stepped down from the film in 2018. 'It would have been a great story to get out there. Who knows how many people it would have inspired? But it fell apart. And now that movie is gone. I think queer people should feel bummed about that. I mean, imagine ScarJo at the Oscars for playing a trans man: that would've been major. The important thing to remember is – guess what? – famous actors get indie queer films financed. And we need visibility.' After twice working with Franco, who spent more than a decade teasing the world that he might be gay, Kelly directed Kristen Stewart in JT LeRoy, about a notorious real-life literary hoax. Until Stewart came along – and came out – no other modern performer of comparable calibre and status had expressed queer sexuality so emphatically through their choices of roles. In JT LeRoy, she stars as Savannah Knoop, a non-binary artist who agreed to pose as the (male) author of a brace of queer novels that were in fact the work of Knoop's older sister-in-law. Stewart has also been revelatory as a diffident night-school teacher pined over by a timid student in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, and as a queer, steroid-pushing gym boss in Rose Glass's lurid B-movie-style romp Love Lies Bleeding. Much of the frisson in her two films with Olivier Assayas – Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper – derives from the effect of her being not quite tangible, or just out of reach. In both, Stewart is a peripheral or ephemeral figure: a curious position for one of the world's most photographed faces. Personal Shopper, JT LeRoy and Spencer, in which she plays Princess Diana, all provide Stewart with fastidious scenes of dressing and undressing that hint at the divestiture or cultivation of layers, defences and secrets. The sense is that the actor is exposing some unseen inner dimension, expressing her own queerness through a series of masks. Attaching Stewart to JT LeRoy was nothing short of a coup. She came out publicly on Saturday Night Live in 2017, being greeted with cheers after describing herself as 'like, so gay'. Kelly had met her a few years earlier to discuss the script, which he and Knoop adapted from Knoop's book Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy. 'Kristen made it clear that she'd brought her girlfriend with her,' he says, 'and I remember thinking, 'Ooh, I know she's gay and no one else does!'' It took several years to secure financing. So why did Stewart hang on? 'She was very connected to the material. I brought it up one time when we were shooting in Winnipeg. We would go to this small-town gay bar where everyone would stare and send over drinks. I told Kristen, 'Part of me was wondering if you were gonna get 5,000 other great offers and bail.' And she said, 'I would have done this movie at any point. I was afraid it might never happen because it's such a cool story that it could have been too cool for people to put money into, or to understand.'' The timing couldn't have been better. 'Since she wasn't officially out when she signed up, she jumped at the opportunity to play Sav, who was not just a lesbian but a queer woman who now identifies as non-binary – but at that time did not. There are already non-binary aspects to the character in the movie, though, in all the going back-and-forth between being a boy and a girl.' Stewart worked closely with Knoop. 'Kristen and Sav really hit it off. Sav's a true artist: their whole style, their clothing. They wear the weirdest shit, it's fucking incredible. Kristen was so into them as a person. One of the things she brought, I think, came from not being out at that point. Sav, the character, was pretending to be JT while also in the closet about being potentially trans and potentially non-binary, and not knowing how to put that out into the world. And Kristen was going through a similar thing: at that level of fame, you're potentially gonna get attacked or ostracised for coming out. That idea of hiding part of one's identity was something she wove into the character so beautifully in these very quiet ways. You can see in a lot of her roles that she's dealing with identity. As Princess Diana, she's trying to figure out who she is as someone who doesn't want to be that famous.' Her performance in Love Lies Bleeding, though, is the one that Kelly maintains is the closest to the Kristen Stewart he knows. 'In JT LeRoy, she was playing someone so different from herself, even though there was that connection of both having a secret. Whereas I saw more of Kristen in Love Lies Bleeding, more of the real person in terms of being a badass bitch. I think it was a chance for her to do so many things she's always wanted to do. To play a version of herself and to be super-fucking-gay. To have those sex scenes, the stuff about fingering, the 'I wanna spread you' line, licking the protein shake that spills on her girlfriend's body, taking men down. All things that I believe she was dying to put out there.' Looked at from this distance, I Am Michael and JT LeRoy play like cracked mirror images of each other. Both are inspired by real-life identity crises and capitalise on the actors' off-screen baggage. Just as Stewart's experience of being in the spotlight while hiding parts of herself informed JT LeRoy, so Franco's teasing about his own sexuality enhanced I Am Michael, a film that hinges on the sincerity or otherwise of his character's conversion. A formerly gay man trying to convince the world he is now straight was being played by a straight actor who had long hinted that he might be gay. 'I don't think I was conscious of it at the time,' says Kelly. 'But now you bring it up, it probably did help. We're watching this guy question his sexuality. It might also have helped him play the character as well. I don't know whether James is gay or not.' He smiles. 'I mean, everyone's a little bit gay, so …' This is an edited extract from It Used to Be Witches: Under the Spell of Queer Cinema by Ryan Gilbey, published on 5 June by Faber. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply. Ryan Gilbey will be in conversation with Dorian Lynskey at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London, on 4 June, and with Guardian theatre critic Arifa Akbar at the Cinema Museum, London, 15 June.
