Latest news with #Megalopolis
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Karina Longworth on Late Style, Unfashionable Auteurs and Season 20 of Her Film History Podcast ‘You Must Remember This'
Late style can seem like a safe haven for the modern movie lover. Whether its the sparse styling of Clint Eastwood's 'Juror #2' or the multi-million-dollar gonzo flair of Francis Ford Coppola's 'Megalopolis,' there's a vital, existential intrigue to directors who may seem over the hill, or encased in amber, and who can be easily dismissed as unfashionable. 'Nobody will admit that about Clint Eastwood though! Everybody on the internet is a Clint auteurist,' Karina Longworth says, chuckling. The film historian and former critic has been the writer and host of her podcast 'You Must Remember This' since 2014. 'It was definitely that in terms of 'Megalopolis.' … It is very easy to write off Coppola as a rich old man who doesn't have to answer to anyone but himself and to say that that's a problem. But the out-of-timeness, looking backwards and forwards, is what's exciting about it.' More from Variety Cynthia Erivo to Narrate New 'Wicked' Audiobook Jessie Buckley to Narrate Leah Hazard's Novel 'The Anatomy of Us' for Audible (EXCLUSIVE) 'Contagion' Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns Asks AI to Write a Sequel to Pandemic Film in Audible Original Series 'What Could Go Wrong?' - and He's Stunned by the Results For the latest season of her podcast, Longworth transports listeners to the New Hollywood— a time when filmmakers like Coppola and Eastwood were about to take power, just as Golden Age mainstays like John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock (among the subjects this season) felt the ground shift beneath them, or even crack open to swallow them whole. Longworth says she nearly titled this season 'Late Style,' but instead selected the more evocative 'The Old Man Is Still Alive,' sourced from an interview quote by George Cukor. 'The season gave me a chance to watch a lot of movies from directors I love that I hadn't seen yet,' Longworth says. The host is speaking over a Zoom call from London, where she is introducing a British Film Institute screening series tied to 'The Old Man Is Still Alive.' Selections include Henry Hathaway's Western 'True Grit,' which won John Wayne an Oscar at the age of 62, and Cukor's little-seen final film 'Rich and Famous,' a Candice Bergen-Jacqueline Bisset two-hander that Longworth likes much more than Cukor's Oscar winner 'My Fair Lady' (more on that later.) The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles is hosting a similar series beginning in May. There's a bit of a dark running joke to 'The Old Man Is Still Alive.' Each episode ends with an account of its subject's death before immediately, ruthlessly cutting to credits. Longworth broke that format for her two-part finale on John Huston, whose uneven, unwieldy final stretch include masterpieces like 'Fat City,' an Oscar darling in 'Prizzi's Honor' and unexpected money grabs like 'Annie' — all helmed by Huston as his health declined. Unlike the season's other subjects, who largely stopped working years before their deaths, Huston was prolific through his later life. His final feature, conveniently titled 'The Dead' and starring his daughter Anjelica, was released after he died in 1987. 'At first, everybody was like, 'Well, I guess he was a fraud. He made 'Maltese Falcon' and 'African Queen,' but he's lost it.' Then everybody starts changing their mind around 'Fat City' in the '70s,' Longworth says. 'Then by 2011, it had swung the other way to, 'Well, maybe he wasn't so great.' I cut out something at the end of that episode. There was a biography of Huston called 'Courage and Art.' I had ended the episode with a review that spent the first five paragraphs being like, 'I'm not sure there was any courage here, and I'm not sure there was art.'' Indeed, all the directors featured on 'The Old Man Is Still Alive' faced brutal pans — some uncalled for, some richly deserved. American film critics were beginning to adopt a more adversarial philosophy, influenced by the auteur theory calcified in Cahiers du cinéma magazine. The new approach came just in time to celebrate Golden Age filmmakers while they were still alive — and also, in many cases, to decry their latest works as out of touch. Even Huston, who had recent commercial hits and Oscar attention right before his death, was first remembered by his earlier films in his New York Times obituary. Are filmmakers more often defined by the work they do at younger ages? 'That may or may not be true, but this season is dedicated to showing why it shouldn't be in every case. And the related thing is Quentin Tarantino's pledge of, 'I have to retire before I get old, because old men don't make good movies.' I hope this season is a counterpoint to that argument,' Longworth says, then adding. 'I just don't believe that Quentin Tarantino is not going to make a movie in his sixties.' First of all, it's not like 'Beau Is Afraid' is easier to make than 'Juror #2.' It's not like there aren't younger people who aren't making movies that are highly ambitious and very strange. The other thing I would say is that — in terms of having to find their own financing — that happened to a lot of these old men as well. Something that is underdiscussed, about how we got from the studio system to the new Hollywood back to a new studio system, is this period in the early '60s where the studios technically still existed, but they were outsourcing to independent producers. Guys like Vincente Minnelli had a hard time navigating that new world; they were expected to put together packages, find financing, find stars. The studio system used to do this stuff for them. I hadn't really thought about that, but it became so evident in the research. And it's one of the things that makes the season relevant to today, because technology has completely changed how movies get financed, made and distributed. There's no grand design, really. It happens when I'm moved to say something about a specific film, usually that I want to champion. And sometimes it's negative, especially when it's something like 'My Fair Lady.' George Cukor is somebody that has made four or five masterpieces. For this to be the one to get the institutional attention — that's a crime. When I get angry about something, I slip into film critic mode. Not that many more were considered, because not that many fit into the basic parameters. They had to have a meaningful start in Hollywood in the '20s, '30s or '40s, and they had to still be working in the '60s, '70s and '80s. I considered Anthony Mann, but there wasn't enough of a change and he didn't work very late. I considered Robert Wise, but a lot of the Robert Wise movies that I'm passionate about were from the first half of his career. I wasn't very well-equipped to talk about 'Star Trek: The Movie.' I considered Elia Kazan, but I've talked about him on the podcast when I did an episode on Barbara Loden. I mean, did we really need to hear my thoughts on 'Sound of Music' when I have so many thoughts about 'My Fair Lady'? I hadn't and that is not a film that a 44-year-old should see for the first time. For the episode, I had written a passage about how I don't know that I'd love 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' if I saw it for the first time today. I'll never be able to completely dismiss it because I had this emotional relationship to it when I was becoming a teenager, idolizing Audrey Hepburn for being so beautiful and glamorous. But I can't step into the brain of a child when it comes to 'My Fair Lady.' It's not enough for me that she starts wearing dresses halfway through. I always tell people if you haven't seen 'Birth of a Nation' — don't. You'll get what you need to get out of it from reading intelligent writing about it. It's so grueling to watch. I don't do illegal downloading; I just don't know how. I prefer to pay for things if there's any way to do that. So I buy a lot of DVDs, sometimes importing. If I absolutely can't find something, there is the Russian streaming site, but I feel bad even linking to it. That's how I was able to see this Henry Hathaway movie 'The Witching Hour,' which is terrific. I hope that somebody restores it and makes it available. I don't know about more than the others. It's more that I started doing this show in 2014 and things have changed quite a bit in terms of the way people watch movies since then. Nothing makes me angrier than when people say, 'Everything's available on the internet.' I'm a big proponent of continuing to have physical media in your life. I mean, well this is breaking news, but I'm going back to school to study film preservation. One of the things that made me want to do that is the experience that I have as a film historian struggling to see things. You can rent John Ford's '7 Women' on Apple in the worst transfer I've ever seen. The fact that John Ford — who any cinephile would consider one of the most important directors of all time — his final movie just looks like garbage is a travesty. I'd like to be a small part of that change. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025 The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins
Vogue Singapore
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue Singapore
Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson wreak havoc in Die My Love
Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival Cannes isn't Cannes without its big, bold misses. Last year's edition had them in spades: Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis , Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez , Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope , and David Cronenberg's The Shrouds , to name but a few. This year, I'm sorry to report that one of them is Lynne Ramsay's breathlessly awaited Die My Love , a searing drama about a woman in the midst of a spectacular breakdown, which stars none other than Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Sissy Spacek, and LaKeith Stanfield. Given Ramsay's distinctive, highly respected oeuvre— Ratcatcher , We Need to Talk About Kevin , You Were Never Really Here —and the caliber of these movie stars, on paper this seemed to be a prospective Palme d'Or frontrunner, before going onto Oscar glory. In reality, it isn't and shouldn't be. We meet our two gorgeous leads, Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson), in the dilapidated farmhouse they now occupy. Two former New Yorkers with creative ambitions—she, to write a great American novel; he, to record an album—they have inherited it from Jackson's uncle, who recently passed away, and intend to put all of this new space to good use. They do—but not in the way they expected to. An electric, head-spinning montage zips us forward in time, as they dance together with reckless abandon and have desperate, hungry sex on the floor. Soon, Grace is pregnant, and then their son, Harry, is six months old, as she wonders what happened to them. Now, their previously wild, open, and limitless lives revolve around the baby, and they have begun to drift apart. As that union erodes, Grace visits the distressed Pam (Spacek), Jackson's mother, who lives nearby and, since her own husband's death, can most often be found sleepwalking down a local highway, rifle in hand. Grace also develops a strange obsession with a biker (Stanfield) who stalks their house. Oh, and she's pushed further to the edge when Jackson brings home an excitable puppy, who barks all night while the baby cries and he continues to sleep soundly. The conditions are in place for an explosive downward spiral: there are infidelities, followed by an attempt at reconciliation, and then everything goes awry once again in epic fashion. Through it all, though, there's no real method to the madness. Grace and Jackson scream and shout—that's the pitch their relationship begins at, and it largely stays that way—but we're often unsure exactly why, beyond a vague awareness of the parental and martial responsibilities that weigh on them. Their relationship, despite being the heart and soul of Die My Love , lacks any actual complexity on the page, and as individuals they're not fully believable, either. Perhaps because of this, I felt even more acutely aware of the fact that they're supposed to be tired, depressed, down-on-their-luck new parents, but still look like the stunningly beautiful Dior ambassadors they actually are. Lawrence doesn't, however, let this stop her from having the time of her life. She crawls through the tall grass with the prowess of a deadly cheetah, barks ferociously at Jackson's dog, randomly crashes through windows, drags her nails down walls until they bleed, and, in one scene, ends a late-night feed with her baby by absent-mindedly painting with her breastmilk. These big, bombastic performances have long been the Oscar winner's calling card, from David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle to Darren Aronofsky's Mother! , and she seems totally at home as a destructive whirlwind consuming everything in her path—though in her quieter moments, I found myself increasingly baffled by her motivations. Several critics at Cannes have already labeled her as one to watch ahead of the 2026 Oscars, and if an effective comeback narrative is constructed (it's been a staggering 12 years since her Academy Award win and a decade since her last nomination), then I could certainly see it—despite its outlandishness, her turn is pure Oscar bait. However, considering Babygirl 's Nicole Kidman recently missed out for a similarly out-there portrayal, also with copious amounts of casual nudity, it's certainly not guaranteed, either. Elsewhere, Spacek is an entertaining presence, too, and Pattinson is wholly committed, but both, like Lawrence, are let down by a script—a loose adaptation of Ariana Harwicz's novel of the same name, by Ramsay, renowned playwright Enda Walsh, and Conversations with Friends ' Alice Birch—which gestures at trauma without digging its claws into it. The editing is frantic and the images that flash across the screen arresting, but none of this can distract from the fundamental lack of substance. It's a lot of empty provocation; a frantic throwing of things at the wall; much sound and fury signifying nothing, which ends up akin to the much more self-serious and arthouse Nightbitch , Marielle Heller's equally flawed, Amy Adams-led portrait of a mother's unravelling. In truth, we need many more onscreen depictions of the turbulence and unspoken horrors of motherhood, but Die My Love —a two-hour marathon which sent countless people at my evening Cannes screening to sleep, a real feat for a film this shouty—unfortunately, just isn't it. This story was originally published on
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Shia LaBeouf, 38, Is Nearly Unrecognizable at Cannes
Shia LaBeouf attended the photocall for Slauson Rec at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 18. The actor sported a white t-shirt with a black jacket and a pair of slacks as he posed for photos. His hair was slicked back and more salt-and-pepper than it has been and he sported a full mustache and a light beard. He also wore sunglasses as he posed for photos at the event. Prior to flying across the pond for this year's Cannes Film Festival, LaBeouf spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about Slauson Rec, a documentary about the Slauson Recreation Center in Los Angeles, which he founded in 2018. 'When this thing comes out, it isn't any worse than what's been said about me previously. Maybe it reifies people's ideas about me. I think, at heart, I'm a good guy. Am I f----- up? Yes. Is my process ugly and disgusting? Yes. Have I done horrible s--- in the past that I'm going to have to make amends for the rest of my life? Yes. Does this movie change any of that? No. Does it also allow my people to get a foot into this f------ industry? Yes. So gas pedal down, green light go," he told the outlet. The doc's Cannes debut was announced just one week prior to the festival's start. These days, LaBeouf doesn't often make public appearances. The 38-year-old has made headlines for all sorts of negative things, including public outbursts and arrests, and, in 2014, the actor said that he was "retiring" from life in the public eye. "In light of the recent attacks against my artistic integrity, I am retiring from all public life," he wrote on X, according to CBS News. "My love goes out to those who have supported me." The post has since been removed from the platform. Last year, LaBeouf turned heads in Cannes when he walked the red carpet for the premiere of the film Megalopolis with bleached blonde hair.
San Francisco Chronicle
19-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Francis Ford Coppola Winery owner shutters production facility in latest Wine Country closure
The owner of Francis Ford Coppola Winery has closed one of its two production facilities. Delicato, which purchased the winery from the famous film director in 2021, closed the Francis Ford Coppola Winery Too production facility in Geyserville and laid off 15 employees, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice filed earlier this month with California authorities. The layoffs at 22281 Chianti Road, Geyserville, took effect on May 15, according to the filing. Most of the employees worked in wine production roles; all were offered severance. Delicato, the fourth largest U.S. wine producer, is best known for supermarket brands like boxed wine Bota. Vice president of communications Brent Dodd told the Chronicle that the company has 'ample production capacity' throughout its California facilities and has moved production from the Chianti Road winery to its nearby Francis Ford Coppola Winery, 'which remains fully open for tasting, restaurant, pool, bottling and crushing.' Delicato is one of several major wine companies to downsize this year amidst a worsening global wine downturn. Earlier this month, Duckhorn announced the closure of three tasting rooms and plans to phase out four brands. In April, Jackson Family Wines confirmed layoffs and Constellation Brands sold off a huge chunk of its wine portfolio. Lawrence Wine Estates has also recently laid off employees, closed a winemaking facility and consolidated much of its production. Delicato acquired the Francis Ford Coppola Winery Too facility, formerly known as Virginia Dare Winery, along with the Francis Ford Coppola Winery and label, plus a vineyard. (Coppola had purchased the Virginia Dare facility, originally the home of Geyser Peak Winery, in 2014.) As part of the deal, which Coppola told the Wall Street Journal was worth about $650 million, the director joined Delicato's board of directors and received an equity stake in the company. Coppola, who still owns his noted Napa Valley wine estate, Inglenook, said he borrowed $200 million against that equity stake to help fund his controversial and costly film 'Megalopolis.' Despite the recent facility closure, the Coppola acquisition seems to have paid off for Delicato. The Coppola Diamond brand, featuring a wide array of wines priced under $20, accounts for 1.2 million cases of Delicato's $16 million case production and surpasses Bota, which is at 900,000 cases, according to Wine Business.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes Dealmakers Are Already Sick of Talking About Trump's Tariffs
At Cannes last year, Jon Voight's weapon of choice was the crossbow phallus. In a scene in Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis (a Cannes competition title last year), Voight, playing the deranged capitalist Hamilton Crassus III, pulls back a bed sheet to reveal it conceals not his grotesquely exaggerated manhood, as his wife Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) had expected, but a device even more dangerous and deadly. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent' Lands at CW Mads Mikkelsen to Star in 'Sirius,' Directorial Debut From Christopher Nolan's Editor Lee Smith 'Eddington's' Matt Gomez Hidaka on Being Directed by Ari Aster and Acting Opposite Joaquin Phoenix Executives heading to Cannes this year are feeling a lot like Plaza. They are tempted to mock Voight, with his Trump-backed plan to Make Hollywood Great Again, while still fearing the damage the 'special ambassador' could do to the international film industry. Voight's plan, a confusing stick-and-carrot combination of taxes and tariffs on 'foreign-made films' and new but vague promises of domestic production incentives, has rattled the film world. It will be the talk of the Croisette. 'At all the panels, all the cocktail parties, all the dinners, people are just going to keep bringing it up: 'What have you heard? What do you know? What do you think?' It's going to get tiring,' says Simon Williams, a film financier with London-based group Ashland Hill Media Finance. 'By the end of Cannes, we're all going to be sick of talking about it.' In perhaps a preview of what's to come, at a May 8 press event for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, a journalist tried to ask about the Trump/Voight plan. Tom Cruise quickly shut them down, requesting 'questions about the movie' instead. The film, which will have its world premiere in Cannes on Wednesday, was shot all over the world, taking advantage of just the kind of foreign production incentives Trump and Voigt have in their sights. 'We're going to have Tom Cruise on the red carpet in Cannes and all anyone will want to talk about is Trump and tariffs,' quipped one U.S. production exec who is not involved with M:I 8. 'Trump has succeeded, once again, in making it all about him.' Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, a Focus Features production which shot mainly on German soundstages in Studio Babelsberg, could face similar tariff scrutiny when it premieres in Cannes next week. But there are only a handful of major American movies at the festival this year and the others were either shot in the U.S. — Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest in Brooklyn, Ari Aster's Eddington in New Mexico — or were set up as international productions from the get-go, as with Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague, a French-language movie set, and shot, entirely in Paris. Few expect the Trump/Voight plan to disrupt the production schedules of the major studios, at least in the short term. The proposals, from a 120 percent tariff on foreign incentives to new U.S. tax breaks for films that meet an ill-defined 'American cultural test,' are still just suggestions, not legislation. Until it's clear if, when and how the plan will become law, the studios will carry on as usual. 'The studios have slates to fill so they're moving forward, with no major reshoring of any projects that we've been talking about,' says Nicholas Simon of Indochina Productions, a leading production service firm in Southeast Asia, whose credits include HBO's The White Lotus and The Sympathizer. The immediate impact of the Trump/Voight plan will be felt most strongly in the independent sector, among the hundreds of producers, distributors, sales agents and financiers heading to the Cannes film market. On the surface, Cannes' Marché du Film looks ready for a banner year, with record attendance figures — 2025's market is expected to match or beat last year's record of 15,000 accredited execs — and a lineup of projects and packages as good, or better, than any Marché of the past decade. 'I've seen packages announced for this market the likes of which I've never seen before, with A-listers that never went to the independent world,' says Pia Patatian, president of production and sales group Cloud9 Studios, whose Cannes slate includes Barry Levinson's thriller Assassination, starring Jessica Chastain, Brendan Fraser, Al Pacino and Bryan Cranston, and the Toni Collette/Andy Garcia romantic comedy Under the Stars. This year's Cannes market features new projects with Scarlett Johansson, Sydney Sweeney, John Cena, Gal Gadot and Penélope Cruz, among many, many others. 'That these talents are now in the independent section means something, it means we're actually in a very good moment,' says Patatian. 'Even if there are issues.' The main issue is uncertainty. The Cannes market runs on trust. Distributors pre-buying rights for film packages have to trust that producers can deliver their film on time and on budget. Producers have to trust in their financing plan, including international subsidies or tax incentives. Sellers have to trust that the minimum guarantees, or MGs, the upfront payments a buyer pledges for the rights to distribute a film, are on the level. Buyers doing negative pickups, taking a finished film for a set fee, have to trust they can recoup. But the Trump/Voight plan means no one can trust anything anymore. Buyers can't trust producers will be able to deliver on their budgets because producers won't know if they have to add a line to their spreadsheet that reads 'U.S. tariffs.' 'If I shoot a film in the U.K. and get 1 million pounds from the tax credit, will there be a 120 percent tariff on that, so selling it to the U.S. would cost an additional 1.2 million?' asks Williams. 'Everything is in the details, and, so far, with the tariffs, there are no details, no clarity, only speculation.' 'North America is still the cornerstone territory for most indie financing, but what happens when the cornerstone starts to wobble?' asks Simon. 'Those independently financed projects — the Cannes-financed, negative pickups, the foreign presale models — those are in a more precarious place. Cannes is going to tell us a lot. Are people going to stop trusting U.S. MGs? I'm concerned over what the situation might do to bank and investor confidence.' Most of the art house and non-English-language projects in Cannes — a good chunk of the market — have little to worry about. Bollywood action movies, German rom-coms and social realist dramas from the Dardenne brothers don't rely on U.S. domestic audiences to make bank. It's a different story for English-language movies, from awards season dramas — think of the Hungary-shot The Brutalist — to genre fare of the Jason Statham/Gerard Butler/Liam Neeson variety. The business plan of those features often involves an international shoot, with tax breaks and other soft money incentives to make the numbers work, and upside revenues dependent on a U.S. sale. 'Those movies don't depend on the U.S. to get financed, so you can still get them made, but without the U.S. there's no upside,' says Dirk Schweizer, head of the German division of pan-European production and distribution group Vuelta. 'That can make these projects unattractive for financiers.' Already, there are signs producers are looking to reassure buyers their projects will go ahead, tariffs or not. The script for Getting Rid of Matthew, a hot rom-com title, from Love Hard director Hernán Jiménez, set to star Emma Roberts, Luke Wilson and Heather Graham, was sent out to Cannes buyers by sales outfit Architect with the words 'to film in the U.S.' printed prominently on its title page. Financiers are running the numbers, weighing whether to pause productions or forge ahead with the added risk. 'Films that we are shooting now, or films that have been shot, we're not going to stop doing them, because putting films on pause brings with it a ton of difficulty. You've spent money on legal closing, you can lose cast. It can cause more damage than not,' says Williams. 'But for projects where we're in early stages, it might make more sense to wait this out. Hopefully, by mid-June we'll have a better idea if there will be tariffs and what exactly that will mean.' But, come Trump or come tariffs, Cannes will still be Cannes. The independent film industry survived the COVID shutdown, the dual Hollywood strike and the seismic disruption of the streaming revolution. Whatever Voight whips out next, buyers will still need movies and there will still be sellers around to provide them. And anyway, those hotel suites, cocktail receptions and beach fêtes are pre-paid and nonrefundable, so we might as well kick back and enjoy the party. Patrick Brzeski and Mia Galuppo contributed to this report. Best of The Hollywood Reporter '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 The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
