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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Upgraded Very Large Array Telescope Will Spot Baby Solar Systems—If It's Funded
New Mexico's Plains of San Agustin are otherworldly: Silence, sand and sharp plants reign on the valley floor. Knobbly volcanic rock rises above. Pronghorns' legs and jackrabbits' ears break up the landscape. And so, too, does one of the world's largest telescopes. The plains house the aptly named Very Large Array (VLA)—a radio telescope made of 27 different antennas, each of which looks like a home satellite dish on steroids. In the otherwise empty desert, they spread into a Y shape that can extend 22 miles end-to-end. When the antennas are pointed at the same thing in the sky at the same time, they function together as one large telescope, simulating an instrument as wide as the distance between the dishes. In this case, then, images from the VLA have as much resolution as they would if it were a single telescope 22 miles wide: high definition, in other words. The VLA became iconic, and inspirational to a generation of astronomers, thanks to the movie Contact, in which Jodie Foster's character uses the array to hear an alien communication. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] The VLA's antennas, the true stars of the film, simultaneously look like they don't belong in the landscape and also like they've always been here. They haven't, of course, but their construction began in the 1970s, making the VLA the oldest instrument in the portfolio of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). This federally-funded organization builds, maintains and operates radio telescopes that any astronomer—regardless of their institutional affiliation or citizenship—can apply to use. But the VLA, now in its middle age, is due for a replacement. After all these decades, astronomers want something shiny, fully modern and more capable: a new build with all the bells and whistles rather than a charming old Colonial that's been remodeled piecemeal. NRAO is working on that, planning the VLA's proposed successor: the Next-Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). (Astronomers may be scientifically creative, but they are linguistic straight shooters.) On a Friday afternoon in late April, the organization gathered political leaders together, alongside scientists and engineers, to unveil a prototype antenna—one that will be cloned a couple of hundred times to make up the future ngVLA. It loomed on the plains just beyond the partygoers, standing alongside its predecessors, the old and the new in stereo with each other. 'The amount that technology has advanced since the VLA was created is amazing,' says Jill Malusky, NRAO's news and public information manager. 'A VLA antenna and an ngVLA antenna look very different because they are.' Guests wandered near the antennas, checking out a spread of food that included a sculpture, made in the medium of watermelon, of a radio telescope antenna. A chamber quartet played in the background, a single fern fronting them, with an open bar lubricating the event. It was fancy—for science. But for astronomers, the ngVLA is a big deal, and the event was intended, in part, to bolster the political support needed to make it happen. At the moment, it's a proposed project—and still requires final funding. 'Having a physical antenna we can point to, and test, to prove the value of this project is such a milestone,' Malusky says. 'It makes it all more real.' Representing an orders-of-magnitude improvement to the VLA that would complement other radio telescopes in the U.S. and abroad, the ambitious project has the enthusiastic yes of the astronomical community. But whether big-science telescopes, radio or otherwise, will survive the current funding environment remains a dark matter. That uncertainty is part of why NRAO's event elicited a spectrum of emotions for Malusky. 'It's a mix of excitement and trepidation,' she says. 'Can we get people invested in the potential of a major project that is still gathering resources and just over a decade to fruition?' That Friday afternoon, Tony Beasley, director of NRAO, stood at the front of a hardy event tent and faced the prototype. Its dish was made up of shiny panels assembled into an octagon. From its bottom edge, supportive struts held up a secondary reflecting surface and a receiver (basically the radio version of an optical telescope's camera) that looked a bit like the spaceship Foster's character boarded in Contact. The antenna, about as wide as a bowling lane is long, has been designed to collect radio waves from space—beamed from stars that are being born or dying, the stuff between stars, and more. As radio light comes in, it will hit the main dish and bounce up to the secondary reflector and then the receiver, which will catch the waves and turn them into digital signals that will then be sent to computers. As a start, the prototype dish will hook up to VLA's aging ones and gather data alongside them—it will be an apprentice of sorts. 'You see one antenna out there,' said Beasley, directing the audience's attention beyond the tent, which was being shaken by the wind to such an extent that people also cast their eyes upward to assess its structural integrity. NRAO ultimately plans to build 262 more antennas and spread them across the U.S., with their numbers concentrated in the Southwest. Of those antennas, Beasley continued, '192 of them will be visible from where I'm standing right here.' Together, the ngVLA's antennas could pick up a cell-phone signal from 500 billion kilometers (more than 310 billion miles) away (although that wouldn't be the most likely find). That means it could detect an Android embedded in the Oort Cloud, the collection of comets that makes up the outer part of the solar system. The future telescope's resolution should be high enough to pass a no-glasses eye exam in New York City if the chart of letters were placed in Los Angeles. That precision gives it scientific latitude, allowing it to address some of astronomers' highest-priority questions, such as how planets come to be and how solar systems like ours form. 'You could, say, probe a cloud that is forming planets and find out where the planets are—like individual gaps in the cloud that the planets are carving out,' says David Kaplan, an astronomer and physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Of all the radio telescopes out there, the ngVLA would be the planetary 'flagship' for star and planet formation, Kaplan says. At high radio frequencies and big antenna separations, 'it would be the only game in town.' The ngVLA will also look for the organic molecules and chemical conditions of new solar systems that might someday spur life. It will show how galaxies come together and evolve, use the Milky Way's center to test ideas about how gravity works and investigate how stars develop. And it will hunt black holes and their outbursts. Given those varied abilities, the telescope was highly ranked in astronomers' 'decadal survey,' a yearslong process in which the astronomical community takes stock of its most valued scientific questions and assesses which future telescopes are best suited to find some answers. Funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), which bankrolls NRAO, typically follows the survey's recommendations. The survey recommended the ngVLA as a top priority. 'It can change the landscape,' says Matt Dobbs, a physicist at McGill University, who studies the origin and evolution of the universe and worked on the survey alongside Kaplan. NRAO hopes to start construction on the ngVLA in 2029, with initial operations beginning in 2033. The possibility is a bright spot for American radio astronomy. The VLA is more than 40 years old; the Green Bank Telescope, completed in 2001, is more than 20. And NRAO's latest instrument, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, opened 12 years ago. The latter two, though not new, aren't going anywhere, as far as anyone knows. But they do different kinds of scientific analyses than the VLA does and the ngVLA will. The new telescope does, though, have a whippersnapper nipping at its heels. Another future radio observatory, called the Deep Synoptic Array 2000 (DSA-2000), is planning an order of magnitude more dishes than the ngVLA—2,000 of them. But each will be only around 16 feet across, whereas ngVLA's dishes will measure 60 feet. DSA-2000 will also work at a different radio frequency range than the ngVLA. DSA-2000's development is also moving faster than that of the VLA's successor, though, in large part, that is because the former has relied on private funding more than federal resources, as the ngVLA's prototyping has. In taking a step back from dependence on the NSF, the DSA-2000 crew might be on to something. Just days before the ngVLA ceremony, the NSF canceled more than 400 active grants; one day before, the agency's then director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned. 'This is a pivotal moment for our nation in terms of global competitiveness,' he said in his goodbye letter. 'NSF is an extremely important investment to make U.S. scientific dominance a reality. We must not lose our competitive edge.' No one knows what the future of NSF-funded astronomy, let alone NSF-funded radio astronomy, looks like. President Donald Trump hasn't said much about that particular domain yet. But not building the ngVLA could put that edge in jeopardy. Dobbs, though, holds out hope for the U.S.'s role in radio astronomy's future, in part because of the propulsion of its past. 'The United States has everything it needs to make that project a reality,' he adds. Whether it will do so, though, requires gathering more data from the future. After all, it's bad luck to count your antennas before they hatch. Dobbs has been putting his focus on smaller radio telescopes, such as one called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and its successor, acronymed CHORD. Both map how hydrogen was distributed in the early universe and detect fast radio bursts. Their antennas are cheap(ish), their overall footprint small, and their ambition is limited to specific science—in this case, gas maps. At the prototype-antenna unveiling, then, it made sense that there was a liminal feeling to what was otherwise a celebratory gathering. And it was conspicuous that representatives from NSF, the agency that would fund the telescope's construction and operation, weren't there, which Beasley said was the case 'for various reasons.' Chris Smith, interim director of the NSF's division of astronomical sciences, did send a letter to be read to the wined-and-dined crowd. 'NSF funded this development not just to ensure the technical feasibility of the advanced capabilities of ngVLA,' he wrote. It also supported the prototype as 'a way of creating new innovations in the field of radio astronomy.' And that may be true. But those who gathered at NRAO's event also hope, specifically, that the ngVLA, a receptacle for optimism about the future of radio astronomy in the U.S., will sprout from this dry ground. 'It starts with a single step,' Beasley said at the event—in this case, a single antenna.
Scientific American
7 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
Futuristic Radio Telescope Will Spot Baby Solar Systems—If It's Funded
New Mexico's Plains of San Agustin are otherworldly: Silence, sand and sharp plants reign on the valley floor. Knobbly volcanic rock rises above. Pronghorns' legs and jackrabbits' ears break up the landscape. And so, too, does one of the world's largest telescopes. The plains house the aptly named Very Large Array (VLA)—a radio telescope made of 27 different antennas, each of which looks like a home satellite dish on steroids. In the otherwise empty desert, they spread into a Y shape that can extend 22 miles end-to-end. When the antennas are pointed at the same thing in the sky at the same time, they function together as one large telescope, simulating an instrument as wide as the distance between the dishes. In this case, then, images from the VLA have as much resolution as they would if it were a single telescope 22 miles wide: high definition, in other words. The VLA became iconic, and inspirational to a generation of astronomers, thanks to the movie Contact, in which Jodie Foster's character uses the array to hear an alien communication. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The VLA's antennas, the true stars of the film, simultaneously look like they don't belong in the landscape and also like they've always been here. They haven't, of course, but their construction began in the 1970s, making the VLA the oldest instrument in the portfolio of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). This federally-funded organization builds, maintains and operates radio telescopes that any astronomer—regardless of their institutional affiliation or citizenship—can apply to use. But the VLA, now in its middle age, is due for a replacement. After all these decades, astronomers want something shiny, fully modern and more capable: a new build with all the bells and whistles rather than a charming old Colonial that's been remodeled piecemeal. NRAO is working on that, planning the VLA's proposed successor: the Next-Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). (Astronomers may be scientifically creative, but they are linguistic straight shooters.) On a Friday afternoon in late April, the organization gathered political leaders together, alongside scientists and engineers, to unveil a prototype antenna—one that will be cloned a couple of hundred times to make up the future ngVLA. It loomed on the plains just beyond the partygoers, standing alongside its predecessors, the old and the new in stereo with each other. 'The amount that technology has advanced since the VLA was created is amazing,' says Jill Malusky, NRAO's news and public information manager. 'A VLA antenna and an ngVLA antenna look very different because they are.' Guests wandered near the antennas, checking out a spread of food that included a sculpture, made in the medium of watermelon, of a radio telescope antenna. A chamber quartet played in the background, a single fern fronting them, with an open bar lubricating the event. It was fancy—for science. But for astronomers, the ngVLA is a big deal, and the event was intended, in part, to bolster the political support needed to make it happen. At the moment, it's a proposed project—and still requires final funding. 'Having a physical antenna we can point to, and test, to prove the value of this project is such a milestone,' Malusky says. 'It makes it all more real.' Representing an orders-of-magnitude improvement to the VLA that would complement other radio telescopes in the U.S. and abroad, the ambitious project has the enthusiastic yes of the astronomical community. But whether big-science telescopes, radio or otherwise, will survive the current funding environment remains a dark matter. That uncertainty is part of why NRAO's event elicited a spectrum of emotions for Malusky. 'It's a mix of excitement and trepidation,' she says. 'Can we get people invested in the potential of a major project that is still gathering resources and just over a decade to fruition?' A Vanguard Antenna That Friday afternoon, Tony Beasley, director of NRAO, stood at the front of a hardy event tent and faced the prototype. Its dish was made up of shiny panels assembled into an octagon. From its bottom edge, supportive struts held up a secondary reflecting surface and a receiver (basically the radio version of an optical telescope's camera) that looked a bit like the spaceship Foster's character boarded in Contact. The antenna, about as wide as a bowling lane is long, has been designed to collect radio waves from space—beamed from stars that are being born or dying, the stuff between stars, and more. As radio light comes in, it will hit the main dish and bounce up to the secondary reflector and then the receiver, which will catch the waves and turn them into digital signals that will then be sent to computers. As a start, the prototype dish will hook up to VLA's aging ones and gather data alongside them—it will be an apprentice of sorts. 'You see one antenna out there,' said Beasley, directing the audience's attention beyond the tent, which was being shaken by the wind to such an extent that people also cast their eyes upward to assess its structural integrity. NRAO ultimately plans to build 262 more antennas and spread them across the U.S., with their numbers concentrated in the Southwest. Of those antennas, Beasley continued, '192 of them will be visible from where I'm standing right here.' Together, the ngVLA's antennas could pick up a cell-phone signal from 500 billion kilometers (more than 310 billion miles) away (although that wouldn't be the most likely find). That means it could detect an Android embedded in the Oort Cloud, the collection of comets that makes up the outer part of the solar system. The future telescope's resolution should be high enough to pass a no-glasses eye exam in New York City if the chart of letters were placed in Los Angeles. That precision gives it scientific latitude, allowing it to address some of astronomers' highest-priority questions, such as how planets come to be and how solar systems like ours form. 'You could, say, probe a cloud that is forming planets and find out where the planets are—like individual gaps in the cloud that the planets are carving out,' says David Kaplan, an astronomer and physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Of all the radio telescopes out there, the ngVLA would be the planetary 'flagship' for star and planet formation, Kaplan says. At high radio frequencies and big antenna separations, 'it would be the only game in town.' The ngVLA will also look for the organic molecules and chemical conditions of new solar systems that might someday spur life. It will show how galaxies come together and evolve, use the Milky Way's center to test ideas about how gravity works and investigate how stars develop. And it will hunt black holes and their outbursts. Given those varied abilities, the telescope was highly ranked in astronomers' 'decadal survey,' a yearslong process in which the astronomical community takes stock of its most valued scientific questions and assesses which future telescopes are best suited to find some answers. Funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), which bankrolls NRAO, typically follows the survey's recommendations. The survey recommended the ngVLA as a top priority. 'It can change the landscape,' says Matt Dobbs, a physicist at McGill University, who studies the origin and evolution of the universe and worked on the survey alongside Kaplan. Telescope Prospects NRAO hopes to start construction on the ngVLA in 2029, with initial operations beginning in 2033. The possibility is a bright spot for American radio astronomy. The VLA is more than 40 years old; the Green Bank Telescope, completed in 2001, is more than 20. And NRAO's latest instrument, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, opened 12 years ago. The latter two, though not new, aren't going anywhere, as far as anyone knows. But they do different kinds of scientific analyses than the VLA does and the ngVLA will. The new telescope does, though, have a whippersnapper nipping at its heels. Another future radio observatory, called the Deep Synoptic Array 2000 (DSA-2000), is planning an order of magnitude more dishes than the ngVLA—2,000 of them. But each will be only around 16 feet across, whereas ngVLA's dishes will measure 60 feet. DSA-2000 will also work at a different radio frequency range than the ngVLA. DSA-2000's development is also moving faster than that of the VLA's successor, though, in large part, that is because the former has relied on private funding more than federal resources, as the ngVLA's prototyping has. In taking a step back from dependence on the NSF, the DSA-2000 crew might be on to something. Just days before the ngVLA ceremony, the NSF canceled more than 400 active grants; one day before, the agency's then director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned. 'This is a pivotal moment for our nation in terms of global competitiveness,' he said in his goodbye letter. 'NSF is an extremely important investment to make U.S. scientific dominance a reality. We must not lose our competitive edge.' No one knows what the future of NSF-funded astronomy, let alone NSF-funded radio astronomy, looks like. President Donald Trump hasn't said much about that particular domain yet. But not building the ngVLA could put that edge in jeopardy. Dobbs, though, holds out hope for the U.S.'s role in radio astronomy's future, in part because of the propulsion of its past. 'The United States has everything it needs to make that project a reality,' he adds. Whether it will do so, though, requires gathering more data from the future. After all, it's bad luck to count your antennas before they hatch. Dobbs has been putting his focus on smaller radio telescopes, such as one called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and its successor, acronymed CHORD. Both map how hydrogen was distributed in the early universe and detect fast radio bursts. Their antennas are cheap(ish), their overall footprint small, and their ambition is limited to specific science—in this case, gas maps. At the prototype-antenna unveiling, then, it made sense that there was a liminal feeling to what was otherwise a celebratory gathering. And it was conspicuous that representatives from NSF, the agency that would fund the telescope's construction and operation, weren't there, which Beasley said was the case 'for various reasons.' Chris Smith, interim director of the NSF's division of astronomical sciences, did send a letter to be read to the wined-and-dined crowd. 'NSF funded this development not just to ensure the technical feasibility of the advanced capabilities of ngVLA,' he wrote. It also supported the prototype as 'a way of creating new innovations in the field of radio astronomy.' And that may be true. But those who gathered at NRAO's event also hope, specifically, that the ngVLA, a receptacle for optimism about the future of radio astronomy in the U.S., will sprout from this dry ground. 'It starts with a single step,' Beasley said at the event—in this case, a single antenna.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mia Threapleton Idolized Wes Anderson. Then She Became the Breakout Star of His New Movie
If Mia Threapleton had to pick an avatar for her creative awakening as a kid, she might choose a fox. She could have gone with a lion, the animal she'd pretended to be during summer camps and after-school 'acting clubs' with her friends, and which gave her an early peek at the thrill of performing for others. Or maybe a 1930s gangster, courtesy of the childhood viewings of Bugsy Malone; Threapleton vividly remembers seeing a very young Jodie Foster, along with dozens of other kid actors pretending to be Prohibition-era hoods and molls in that 1976 movie, and thinking, How old is she? She looks like she's my age. Can I do that? I could do that. And there were also her parents, who… well, we'll get to them later. All of those figures factored into Threapleton's decision to mention in passing, during her preteen years, that she maybe kinda sorta wanna give the professional acting thing a try. But what really stands out in her memory is one particular fox. It didn't matter that he was just a stop-motion-animated animal. This mammal was witty, a dapper dresser, and a great dancer. Plus this mischievous creature had a lot of eccentric friends. And he seemed to move in a world that felt odd, funny, weird and unique in the best possible of ways. He was, dare we say, fantastic. More from Rolling Stone 'Highest 2 Lowest' Isn't Spike Lee's Best or Worst - Just a Chance to Watch Denzel Go HAM Wes Anderson Questions Logic Behind Trump's Movie Tariffs: 'It Doesn't Ship That Way' That Doc on Shia LaBeouf's Acting School Is Even Crazier Than You've Heard 'Yes, Fantastic Mr. Fox!' Threapleton says, with a machine-gun giggle. 'I remember seeing that movie when I was eight, maybe nine. And the impression I had was, 'This is so cool… Why do I like this so much?' I mean, it's a brilliant movie. But something about it really got me as a kid. It just felt so imaginative and fun. 'That was the first time I was aware of who Wes Anderson was,' she recalls, sitting in front of an open hotel room window overlooking the beaches of Cannes. 'Then a few years later, I saw Moonrise Kingdom, and I recognized his name. And it was like, 'Oh, this is great, too. I love this director! I love his style. I love everything that he's doing here.' It's amazing how his brain works. It's so unique, his sheer Wes-ness. All those Wes-isms are amazing. That movie became an important piece of cinema to me. I don't know how many times I've seen it, but I still watch it to this day. So, you know, when you go from that to, um, this….' She looks around the room, wide-eyed, and the staccato laugh returns. 'It's surreal. A little crazy, to be honest.' That seeing a pair of Anderson's movies was such a formative experiences for Threapleton — now that she stars in one of them — seems like a detail that might have been ret-conned into an origin story. But the 24-year-old British star of The Phoenician Scheme, the latest from the beloved filmmaker that's making its premiere at the Cannes film festival (and hits limited theaters on May 30th, before going wide on June 6th), swears it's true. And she's admittedly still swooning over the fact that she's stepped through the looking glass and somehow, after being so entranced by his work, has now become a cornerstone of a genuine Wes world. Threapleton plays Liesl, the only daughter of wealthy, infamous business tycoon Anatole 'Zsa Zsa' Korda (Benicio Del Toro). Having just survived that latest in a long series of attempted assassinations by his rivals, the industrialist has finally decided to get his affairs in order. Korda has declared that, because his nine sons are, frankly, nincompoops and rapscallions, Liesl will be the sole heir to his fortune. The one caveat: She must avenge his death should he perish. As for Liesl, she's a novitiate who pines for a simple life in a convent, and wants nothing to do with her estranged father. Still, when Korda asks her to accompany him as he secures financing for one last massive project, his daughter relents and trots the globe with her dad, along with a Swedish tutor named Bjorn (Michael Cera). As with most of Anderson's films, there's a who's-who ensemble cast (Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Bill Murray, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe), sophisticated in-jokes and references, and the sort of meticulous mise-en-scène that's inspired rabid fandom among the film-nerd set. Threapleton, however, doesn't just hold her own against a lot of A-listers and an insanely detailed production design. She ends up being the film's secret weapon, courtesy of a less-is-more approach that makes her placid expressions and impeccable comic timing feel like she's channeling Buster Keaton. Told that this vast inheritance will change her life forever, Liesl replies with the world's most barely discernible shrug. It's the sort of perfectly deadpan grace note that compliments Anderson's sense of controlled chaos while giving you a sense of who this character is. 'It's interesting, because I feel like a lot of people would think the environment on his sets are very restrictive, very controlled — and it's not, actually,' Threapleton says. 'Wes loves naturalism, which I know is a weird sentence to say regarding him — but he loves naturalism. He loves nuance. He loves simplicity and subtle complexity in a scene. And while Wes knows exactly what he wants, the end result is kind of like this beautiful collage of moments that were sometimes worked out and planned, and sometimes discovered as we were filming.' She mentions one sequence early on in Phoenician, where a series of shoeboxes are spread out on the floor. Threapleton casually walked over in between shots and hovered over them, her hands on her hips. Suddenly, a head poked out from behind the monitor: Don't move, Wes said. Let's go one more time, but with you standing like that. 'That's the shot in the film. He's constantly paying attention in case something random or unplanned catches his eye.' Which is a good way of describing how Threapleton suddenly found herself meeting her cinematic idol-slash-future director in London, sharing tea and reading a few very select pages from The Phoenician Scheme's script. The actor was one of a gajillion other hopefuls with a few credits to her name — a recurring part on Apple's The Buccaneers, a prominent role in the BBC anthology series I Am…Ruth; more on that second one in a minute — that sent in a self-shot tape via an agent, circa May 2023. She had no real sense of what the project was, and how Liesl might fit in to a much bigger, immaculately composed picture. 'There was no 'more of this, less of that, hit this beat more,' she says. 'I just did what felt right, without any context. And it felt right to sort of underplay it.' According to Anderson, he'd already seen over a thousand other auditions by the time Threapleton's tape arrived. Something about hers immediately stood out. 'She just seemed like she was in a documentary about the scene,' the director says, via a voice memo sent from a post-Cannes-premiere jaunt to Milan. 'I could see her thoughts. You could tell she was really listening, reacting, thinking about what was happening in front of her. Which isn't always the case.' After Threapleton did a callback, she was invited to meet with Anderson in London. She was admittedly anxious over an encounter with the person who'd made two of her favorite movies, until he opened the door of his hotel room and, per her recollection 'he was wearing pink socks, hotel slippers, stripy linen trousers and a blue linen shirt with clear, quite small glasses. And I thought, Look at him! Oh, I'm not nervous now at all. Let's have some fun here.' Threapleton and Anderson proceeded to chat 'about everything but the movie: the world, our mutual dislike of social media, films that we admired, things that we enjoyed, books that we liked. A get-to-know-you kind of conversation. And then I think probably about the hour mark, we both sort of went, 'Perhaps let's do some acting now? I think we should?'' She and Anderson's friend, the writer-director-actor Fisher Stevens, read some scenes together. A few weeks later, Mia was asked to do a two-day screen test. She felt good. Then Mia was told it would be with Benicio Del Toro, who'd be playing her father. She felt sick to her stomach. 'It's the usual, 'Oh my god, I'm going to act against this person. Oh my god, I'm going to meet this person. Oh my god, I hope I don't look like a mess,'' Threapleton says, twisting in her seat at the memory. When Del Toro walked in on the first day of her test, she shyly introduced herself. He immediately gave her a handshake and a hug. 'Completely put me at ease. I realized, he's just this huge purring cat. Or maybe Benicio is like a big bear. A very big, very talented, very disciplined bear with an incredible sense of concentration. 'I think I've mentioned this in an interview before,' she adds, 'but at one point early on during filming, Benicio came up to me and asked, 'You good?' I replied, 'I mean, it's really happening now, isn't it?' And he just said, 'It's ok, we're going to do it together.' Then when he wrapped, I went up to give him a hug goodbye, and he said, 'See, I told you, we did it together.'' The second day, Threapleton says, involved hair, make-up and costumes — what Anderson calls 'a sort of mock up of what they might be like as the characters.' At one point, they were trying to put together Liesl's all-white habit together, and they couldn't find a veil. The outfit was not quite coming together. Threapleton spotted a napkin on a lunch cart. She asked: Does anybody have any hairpins? Then the actor pinned the napkin to her head, and voila. There was Liesl. By that point, however, she had already been cast. 'I don't think I've told her this, at least not officially,' Anderson says. 'But five minutes into that second day, she already had the part. And when you saw her read against Benicio… I mean, he's a very imposing figure, and about a foot and a half taller than Mia, for one thing. But if you were to say who seemed to have the power in the relationship in the scenes, you would tend to lean towards the nun.' (Apparently Del Toro's endorsement had been secured at the end of the first day; according to a BBC interview, after Threapleton left, the Oscar-winner turned to Anderson and said, 'She can go toe to toe… she may be short, but she's terrific.') Once Threapleton arrived on set after a few days of rehearsal with Del Toro and Michael Cera, she said she had to continually 'mind fuck myself because I'm working with those guys, and also Riz Ahmed, and Richard Ayoade, and Tom Hanks, and Brian Cranston, and it's like, wait, they are my coworkers? What's going on here?!' Still, it's not like Threapleton hadn't shared the screen with super-famous movie stars before, even so early into a promising career. And this is probably a good moment to return to the subject of her parents. Mia's father is the director Jim Threapleton. Mia's mother is Kate Winslet. The Titanic star had acted with her daughter in the aforementioned I Am…Ruth episode, playing a mom concerned over social media's effect on her child's mental health. When Winslet won a BAFTA for her role, Mia was sitting beside her; you can see her sobbing during the acceptance speech, after Mom thanked her costar/offspring from the stage. 'That whole experience was very intense,' Threapleton says, nodding. 'Everything was improvised, but the director [Dominic Savage] would direct us in different rooms, so when we both came in to do the scene, neither of us knew what the other one was going to do. It's so clever, because it made for such an electric — and sometimes, quite frightening at times — energy within the scene. But it was also organic, because we didn't have a plan. We had a plan of, like, where the scene was going, but we didn't know what the other one was going to say to get to that point. And sometimes Dominic would pull one of us aside and go, 'Yeah, more of that. Or, like, really push her body. Really piss her off this time.' It was extremely full-on.' 'It's funny, because I had no idea who her mother was,' Anderson admits. 'It was only after I'd watched Mia's audition video a few times and went to look up what else she'd done that I discovered: Wait, she's Kate Winslet's daughter? Then I went back and watched her video again, and I swear if you listen closely, you can hear someone doing an East London accent offscreen, playing the scene with her. Maybe I'm projecting here — I've never discussed this with either of them — but perhaps she worked with her mother on it. Perhaps she had the advantage of a very good collaborator. Again, I don't know for sure. But what that immediately told me was: She's open to collaborating. What I saw and heard when I rewatched it was someone working with another person to make a scene come to life, in a way that was absent from the thousands of other auditions. It impressed me even more.' Threapleton remembers the moment she told her mom that she was thinking about trying her hand at acting, and that the initial response was: ''I thought you wanted to be a marine biologist?' And the she said, Well, ok, it's hard work, but it's great work, go and do it. She recognized that I was serious, and also that I wanted to sort of do it on my own. And yeah — I kind of tried, fell down a bit, and sort of managed to make it happen. I mean, that's what been so amazing about it, in that I had a supportive environment and I had to find my own way. I wanted the experiences of it, the high points and low points, to be mine. Not someone else's. 'There was no guarantee, in other words,' Threapleton adds. 'So to be able to get work on my own, and then have that work be in a Wes Anderson movie, is…' Once again, her eyes widen. 'It's all very much a dream. I'm just taking this one day at a time. Talk to me after the premiere.' 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Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Resurrection' Review: Director Bi Gan's Beguiling, Beautifully Realized Journey Through the Life, Death and Possible Rebirth of Cinema
One of the most audacious young auteurs working today, 35-year-old Chinese director Bi Gan makes movies that don't pull you in as much as they slowly wash over you. Moody, melancholic and filled with daunting technical feats, especially the director's signature logistics-defying long takes, his films are beautifully realized meditations on nostalgia and loss in which the cinema is often a character itself. In his beguiling new feature Resurrection, movies are both subject and object of a story spanning a hundred years of film history, from the silent era to the end of the last century. Reflecting on the seventh art's past, present and possible future at a moment when many believe it to be in its death throes, Bi Gan has crafted a time-tripping, genre-jumping paean to the big screen in which he revives the films he loves and then buries them a second time over — hoping, perhaps, to resurrect cinema in the process. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'A Private Life' Review: A Delightfully Paired Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil Escape Injury in a Messy but Pleasurable Genre Collision Cannes: Hasan Hadi's 'The President's Cake' Wins Directors' Fortnight Audience Award 'Heads or Tails?' Review: John C. Reilly Plays Buffalo Bill in a Wacky Italy-Set Western With Ambition to Burn Tailor-made for those viewers who fantasize about being trapped in the Criterion closet, this dreamy 156-minute behemoth is certainly not for mainstream arthouse fans hoping to catch a glimpse of the next Oscar favorite. But it's a rewarding watch that gives us another idea of what movies can do, even if Bi Gan seems to be mostly mourning their demise. Death and dreams are indeed at the center of a phantasmagorical narrative divided into five long chapters, plus a short epilogue, each told in the specific style of its epoch. Bi loosely connects them through a premise that only a crazy film lover like him could conjure up: In a parallel world that may be our own, people no longer dream and can therefore live forever. The select few who choose to keep dreaming are known as 'Fantasmers,' leading existences that burn brightly but shortly. And then there are 'The Other Ones,' whose job is to awaken the Fantasmers from their illusive slumbers. Does that make sense? Too bad, but anyway plot and plausibility are far less important than the experiential qualities Resurrection offers those willing to accept its fairy tale-like pitch. Bi guides us into his fantasy world during an opening section, set during the silent film era and narrated with intertitles, where The Other One (Shu Qi, star of several classic Hou Hsiao-Hsien movies) pursues a Nosferatu-like Fantasmer (Jackson Yee) across a merry-go-round of studio décors straight out of the German Expressionist period. You don't have to know your movie history to understand what Bi is doing in that sequence, though it certainly helps. His film is packed with nods to other films that trace the evolution of cinematic style and craft, from the jerky hand-cranked illusions of the 1910s and 20s to the roving Steadicam shots of the past era. Early on, the score by French electro group M83 either copies or barely remixes Bernard Herrmann's themes from Vertigo — which, as all good Hitchcock fans know, is another story of death and resurrection. Those themes quite literally bleed into the film's succeeding chapters, which encompass a WWII-era film noir involving a trenchcoated investigator (Mark Chao); a Buddhist temple in the 1960s or 70s whose crumbling ruins give birth to a menacing spirit; a tale of magic and trickery involving a rich mobster (Zhang Zhijian) regretting the loss of his child; and a dazzling thriller set in a red-light district on the eve of the last millennium. The Fantasmer reappears in each section as a different character with a new look, propelled from epoch to epoch by The Other One. (Don't ask how this all happens.) He never ages and can seemingly live forever, just like the F.W. Murnau character of the silent movie part — or the actual vampire we see in the penultimate chapter. When, toward the start of the movie, 35mm film stock is inserted into the Fantasmer's back, Bi seems to be suggesting that vampires and cinema have a lot in common: Both can survive eternally as long as they remain in the dark. For the latter, that means being projected onto a screen in front of an audience, which is why Resurrection begins and ends with scenes inside of a movie theater, one coming to life and the other melting away. This is heady stuff and probably won't interest those who can't recognize many scenes — such as a recreation of the Lumière brothers' pioneering short L'Arroseur Arrosé, which gets projected later on — as metaphors for, or homages to, film itself. And yet Bi's talent for creating transfixing set-pieces, which at times recalls the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, allows you to get submerged by his movie without always knowing what you're watching. You just need to keep your eyes open and go with the flow. And it's worth doing that in order to reach the 1999 chapter, during which the director stages another formidable, seemingly impossible long take that sees the Fantasmer and his elusive love interest (Li Gengxi) wandering through a riverside wasteland, from the closing minutes of the last century until the dawn of a new one. Reteaming with DP Dong Jingsong, who pulled off a similar feat in Long Day's Journey into Night, Bi tries to top himself this time by shifting points of view within the same unending shot, racing down corridors and into rave parties, then into a karaoke scene interrupted by brutal gunfire, until we're suddenly aboard a ship as the sun begins to rise on the year 2000. Such sequence-shots, now known unfortunately as 'oners,' tend to be destined for film lovers as well, who can admire the high level of craft it takes to pull them off. Bi is bold and unabashed when it comes to displaying (some would say showing off) his technique, nor does he hide his many references (in the case of the red-filtered long take, there are hints of Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels and Hou's Millennium Mambo). He also doesn't hide the fact that Resurrection is both a celebration of the art he loves and something like an inhumation. It looks back at its past with longing and regret, while failing to clearly see its future — especially at a time when people go to the movies much less than they used to. And yet there's a hopefulness in Bi's enigmatic concoction, not necessarily in what it's saying but in how it's being said, finding exquisite new forms in old and dead ones so that the cinema can keep on living. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
Daily Mirror
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'Best horror movie of all time' with 95% rating is leaving Prime Video
Prime Video subscribers don't have long left to watch the Oscar-winning horror film. An Oscar-winning film, hailed by horror fans as 'one of the creepiest thrillers ever', is leaving Amazon Prime Video in just a few days. The Silence of the Lambs, first screened in 1991, will be available for viewing on the streaming service until Sunday, 1st June. The plot revolves around Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee, who enlists the assistance of psychopathic serial killer Hannibal Lecter to apprehend another rampant murderer. Directed by Jonathan Demmem, this nineties classic is widely regarded as one of Hollywood's finest psychological thrillers, thanks in no small part to its star-studded cast. It features two-time Academy Award winners Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal, and Jodie Foster as Clarice. Both actors bagged Oscar awards for their performances, with Hopkins scooping the Best Leading Actor award and Foster clinching the Best Leading Actress accolade at the 1992 ceremony. The drama's accolades didn't stop there, it also nabbed the coveted Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards. And this chilling film didn't just win over the Academy, it also captivated critics and casual cinema-goers alike. Rotten Tomatoes critics awarded the film an almost flawless 95 percent score, with audiences rating it similarly, reports Surrey Live. More than three decades after its release, fans still regard the Demmem feature as a horror masterpiece. "The Silence of the Lambs is one of the creepiest and most intense thrillers ever made," wrote one Rotten Tomatoes user. One fan lauded the film, remarking: "Will always remain one of the greats. Hopkins and Foster shine properly in character here. Directing is first class. "Gripping and always shifting between the dark and light, doubt and facts, bizarre and sense, psycho and insane logic. Intelligent and intriguing. Absolute benchmark classic." "Best horror movie of all time. Jodie Foster at her best and a thriller that checks all the boxes," enthused another. An exuberant fourth viewer proclaimed: "GREATEST VILLAIN OF ALL TIME!!! The acting, story, characters are so incredible." The Silence of the Lambs is streaming now on Prime Video
