Latest news with #Qualley
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Chris Evans Skipped His Movie's Cannes Premiere Because It Was His Mom's 70th Birthday and ‘Some Things You Just Can't Miss'
Ethan Coen's 'Honey Don't!' brought Cannes Film Festival to a flashy close on May 23 with the likes of Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza stunning on the red carpet. But the movie's biggest A-list star, Chris Evans, was nowhere to be found. What gives? It turns out Captain America chose his family over one of the world's most prestigious film festivals. Evans revealed his whereabouts on Instagram (via People) a few days after 'Honey Dont!' screened as the final movie in Cannes' official selection. He wrote on his sotry: 'I wish I could've been with my incredible cast and filmmakers at Cannes, but it was my mother's 70th birthday and there are some things you just can't miss! Congrats everyone!!' More from Variety Bi Gan's Cannes Winner 'Resurrection' Nabbed by Janus Films for North America (EXCLUSIVE) Jafar Panahi Returns to Cheers in Tehran as Palme d'Or Victory Prompts Diplomatic Spat Between France and Iran 'The Love That Remains' Review: Hlynur Pálmason's Exquisitely Tender, Increasingly Haywire Portrait of a Family in Limbo Qualley headlines 'Honey Don't!' as a small-town private detective named Honey O'Donahue, who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church. Evans gives an oversized comedic performance as the church's charming but evil minister. Plaza plays a cop who Qualley has a passionate love affair with until things turn sour. Charlie Day and Billy Eichner round out the supporting cast. 'Honey Don't!' marks the second collaboration between Coen and Qualley, who teamed up last year for the road trip crime comedy 'Drive-Away Dolls.' The Cannes premiere of 'Honey Don't!' proved to be a rowdy affair as the movie was met with a six-minute standing ovation as audience members audibly cheered for Plaza and Qualley. The latter's husband, music producer Jack Antanoff, was in attendance for the event. Coen told the audience that the reaction to the film was 'a fun way to end the festival.' 'Honey Don't' will open in U.S. theaters on Aug. 22 from Focus Features. It's one of two indies Evans has lined up for the summer movie season. The other is 'Materialists,' the A24 romance drama from 'Past Lives' writer-director Celine Song that also stars Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal. That movie launches in theaters June 13. Best of Variety 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz
Business Recorder
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Recorder
‘Honey Don't!' noir brings Ethan Coen's inventive violence to Cannes
CANNES: Ethan Coen, one half of the renowned Coen brothers, had to get even more creative when imagining how to kill off characters for 'Honey Don't!,' his new spin on 1940s LA noir starring Margaret Qualley. 'It's a challenge because we got a lot of good minds out there thinking about it all the time. So it's hard to come up with new ways,' the director told Reuters at the Cannes Film Festival. 'It sounds strange to say, but you want to make the violence fun, not just some like weird sadistic thing for some reason,' he added ahead of Friday evening's premiere. The Coen brothers are known for their notional plot lines juxtaposed with shock violence in films such as 'Fargo' and 'No Country for Old Men,' both of which earned them Oscar awards. In just one example, as seen in the 'Honey Don't!' trailer, a man has a fork violently rammed into the bottom of his chin. 'Somehow I think it (violence) kind of transcends sadism by virtue of its inventiveness,' added Coen, who said he was aiming to capture the feel of friend and fellow director Sam Raimi's early films, which includes cult horror classic 'Evil Dead.' Qualley stars as the Bakersfield, California-based sharp-tongued and seductive private investigator Honey O'Donahue, who gets tangled up with a cult while looking into a woman's death. 'Captain America' actor Chris Evans plays a crooked preacher, while Aubrey Plaza of 'The White Lotus' is Qualley's romantic interest and Charlie Day a homicide detective. 'We wanted to make a film noir that had a lesbian lead character' because there aren't many of those, especially compared with the number of ones with heterosexual characters, Tricia Cooke, Coen's co-writer and wife, told Reuters. Coen and Cooke said they immediately felt it was the right choice to cast Qualley, initially for their similar lesbian cross-country road trip caper 'Drive-Away Dolls' that marked Ethan Coen's first solo film without his brother Joel. 'We thought after we met her, well, she'll be good for 'Drive-Away Dolls,' but she'll be great for this other script we had written even then,' Coen added. Shooting sex scenes between Qualley and Plaza was not a challenge, as they both really liked each other, said Coen. They decided to set the film in Bakersfield, which is less well-off than Los Angeles, as part of the revamp of the genre. 'It Was Just An Accident' by Iran's Jafar Panahi wins Cannes' top prize LA has been patented by crime fiction writer Raymond Chandler, and that is its own kind of detective story, said Coen. 'We wanted to do it and not glamorous LA, but very much California, the inland desert,' added Coen, with the idea being to capture the bleakness that inhabits those locations. 'Honey Don't!,' which received lukewarm reviews from critics at Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter, is set to hit U.S. theatres on August 22.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Honey Don't!' Review: Margaret Qualley Is Back, with Even More Panache, in the ‘Drive-Away Dolls' Companion Piece No One Asked For. But It's Throwaway Fun
Margaret Qualley swans through 'Honey Don't!' like a movie star who might have been born in the wrong era, but she's going to make the most of it. Regally tall, in red heels and a white-flowered red dress, her hair in flowing ringlets, her lips pursed with purpose, Qualley plays Honey O'Donoghue, a private detective in Bakersfield who has the deep voice and steady gaze of a hard-boiled femme fatale from the 1950s. Honey, who drives a vintage turquoise Chevrolet SS, has to keep flicking away the propositions of a local cop (Charlie Day) by telling him, 'I like girls.' She's not lying, but the fact that he can't hear it says a lot about the skewed way the world still looks at queer women. The movie, meanwhile, looks up to its heroine in a stylized way that's very Tarantino-meets-Jane-Russell. In another era, Honey would have been treated as an object of adoration, but in 'Honey Don't!' her voice of darkest honey lets you know that she's the one in command. More from Variety 'Yes' Review: Nadav Lapid's Blistering Attack on Israeli Nationalism is an Effectively Blunt Instrument Chilean AIDS Drama 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' Wins Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes Josh O'Connor Art Heist Film 'The Mastermind' Steals 5.5-Minute Cannes Ovation as Director Kelly Reichardt Says 'America Is in a Ditch Right Now' This week at Cannes, the actor Paul Mescal told Variety, 'I think in cinema we're moving away from the traditional, alpha leading male characters.' I've got a bit of news for him: In cinema, it's alpha — alpha males, and alpha females too — that still makes the world go round, and it always will. But we're now in an era when some tastemakers have grown uncomfortable with that. Last year, a number of film critics were not happy with how overtly sexual Margaret Qualley's performance in 'The Substance' was — they treated it as if that dimension of the film was somehow linked to a male-gaze conspiracy. But the unapologetic erotic pow of Qualley's presence is part of what's going to make her a very, very big movie star. She's not retrograde — she's timeless. She's also a witty and cunning actor who knows how to bend a scene to her rhythms. 'Honey Don't' premiered tonight in the Midnight Screenings section of Cannes (I love that Cannes has a Midnight Screenings section — it's sort of like saying 'the grindhouse wing of the Criterion Collection,' which come to think of it is a good idea), and that's exactly where the film belongs. Like last year's 'Drive-Away Dolls,' to which it's a companion piece, 'Honey Don't!' is a deliberate throwaway — a knowingly light and funny mock escapist thriller, one that's just trying to show you a flaky good time. In 'Drive-Away Dolls,' Qualley played a very different character: an erotic libertine named Jamie who talked a mile a minute (her screwball style was an analog of her libido — always on the move), and who got drawn into a caper that was knowingly preposterous (it revolved around a suitcase full of oversize dildos). Honey O'Donoghue is a more buttoned-down character, and the new film has a different tone, less loony tunes and more straight-up neo-noir, with a small-town scuzziness that's established in the opening credits, where all the names are niftily embedded in the signage of Bakersfield's dilapidated stores and restaurants. The movie is the second in what its director, Ethan Coen, has now said will be a trilogy of tales — something you wouldn't exactly have guessed after 'Drive-Away Dolls' came out, since that movie got no respect and made all of $5 million. Yet as one of the only critics who liked it, I was up for seeing 'Honey Don't!,' and I wasn't disappointed. What Ethan Coen and his wife, Tricia Cooke (they write these films together and she edits them), are up to is fun and 'progressive' in just the right anti-pious way. In each film, the Qualley heroine is casually and unabashedly queer (as is Tricia Cooke), and the hook of the films — the hook of the entire trilogy, if we can now at least conjecture — is that these are riffs on lesbian experience that are meant to be not the least bit responsible. 'Honey Don't!' is set in a less specified era than 'Drive-Away Dolls,' which took place in 1999. Honey, in her office, keeps her contacts in a Rolodex and seems very pre-computer, though that might just be part of her noir aura. The plot, once again, targets the hypocrisy of Middle America — in this case, the Four Way Temple, a local church that opens itself up to troubled parishioners, all so that its leader, the Reverend Drew (Chris Evans), is kept supplied with a ready flock of vulnerable young women he can dress up in S&M regalia and bed down with at will. Drew, who has televangelist hair and preaches with a head-mic, is a cult leader and criminal, involved in drug dealing and worse. The film spins around the murder of one of his followers, and the mishaps that escalate out of trying to cover it up. That sounds a bit nuts and is, especially since the movie plays it as a dry joke. (It's nice to see Chris Evans enjoy himself portraying a piece of trash.) If 'Drive-Away Dolls' felt like 'Raising Arizona Lite,' this one is closer to 'Blood Simpler,' though it's really a sleazeball hangout movie in the spirit of 'The Big Lebowski' and 'Repo Man,' with a wink at Raymond Chandler. In 'Honey Don't!,' the main purpose of the crooks is to keep us company. Honey has family complications, like a troubled sister (Kristen Connolly) and a punk niece (Talia Ryder) with an abusive boyfriend. And an interesting overlap between Honey and the heroine of 'Drive-Away Dolls' is that neither one can seem to maintain a relationship. Honey gets involved with MG (Aubrey Plaza), a cop who lives in what looks on the inside like a suburban version of the 'Psycho' house, and thanks to the downbeat grit of Plaza's performance, their affair feels sexy and genuine in all too many imperfect ways. It's been seven years since the Coen brothers made a film together, and in that time, during which they declared the end of their creative partnership, the career of each brother has played out in a surprising way. Fairly or not, I always thought of Joel Coen as the mover and shaker, and Ethan as the little brother tagging along. (Joel is now 70; Ethan is 67.) And when Joel directed the first post-Coen brothers film, his bedazzling version of 'The Tragedy of MacBeth' (2021), that image remained intact. It didn't change when Ethan made his sharp YouTube clip job of a Jerry Lee Lewis documentary, 'Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind' (2022), or last year when he came out with 'Drive-Away Dolls.' But now that Ethan Coen, with Tricia Cooke as his creative partner, has committed himself to the minor but engaging vision of these films, giving Margaret Qualley such a winning pedestal for her talent, I'd say it's he who suddenly looks like the mover and shaker. 'Honey Don't!' is set to open late this summer. But I'm already avid to see who Qualley's going to play in chapter three. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Pink Villa
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Cannes 2025: Aubrey Plaza Makes First Red Carpet Appearance Since Husband Jeff Baena's Tragic Death With Co-Star Margaret Qualley
Aubrey Plaza made a return to the public eye on Friday (May 23) at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, marking her first red carpet appearance since the death of her husband, filmmaker Jeff Baena. Attending the premiere of her latest film Honey Don't!, the 40-year-old actress was seen receiving comfort and support from her co-star Margaret Qualley in a touching moment captured on video. Dressed in a sheer nude gown adorned with beaded embellishments and a white strapless bodysuit underneath, Plaza looked elegant as she posed for photos outside the Palais des Festivals. She completed her look with statement earrings, gold peep-toe heels, and soft brunette curls. Qualley, 30, who stunned in an off-the-shoulder cream gown with a black bow, was spotted rushing to Plaza's side on the carpet, wrapping an arm around her in a visibly supportive gesture. The cast, which also includes Charlie Day, Talia Ryder, and Lera Abova, were joined by director Ethan Coen and co-writer Tricia Cooke at the film's French premiere. Honey Don't! is a dark comedy that follows small-town PI Honey O'Donahue (played by Qualley) as she navigates a series of bizarre deaths. Plaza plays a local police officer working alongside her. The film is slated for theatrical release on August 22, and marks Plaza's first return to acting on the big screen following her husband's passing. Baena, 47, tragically died by suicide in January 2025. Reports later confirmed that he and Plaza had separated in September 2024, with the actress residing in New York at the time of his death. An autopsy confirmed no substances were involved, and that Baena had been undergoing therapy. A medical report also revealed Plaza had raised concerns about his wellbeing just months before. Though visibly emotional, Plaza's graceful presence at Cannes and her reunion with co-stars signaled a slow but steady reentry into public life after an unimaginable personal loss. With Honey Don't! marking her professional comeback, and the support of her cast clearly evident, Plaza's appearance was both a powerful show of resilience and a reminder of the community rallying around her.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Federal Boulevard businesses, DPD prepare for busy Cinco De Mayo weekend
DENVER. (KDVR) — With Cinco de Mayo celebrations happening across the city this weekend, specifically along Federal Boulevard, businesses and Denver police are in preparation mode. Starting tomorrow, Denver police will be reducing traffic to one lane in each direction along Federal Boulevard for the celebration. They are also encouraging safe and sober driving. The lane reduction will be from Sixth Avenue to West Mississippi Avenue. Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger aircraft, lands at DIA Federal Boulevard is lined with Mexican and Hispanic-owned businesses, like El Camello Western Wear. There, manager Angel Torres says it's preparation time for a big weekend. 'It might be a little chaotic, but hopefully it'll bring some business to us also, that's really what we are hoping for, get a little more traffic coming into the store,' Torres said. They're going to have live music and other vendors set up in front of the store in partnership with a neighboring restaurant. Torres says El Camello is a family business and they look forward to enjoying the weekend, seeing cruisers ride and celebrate. 'People like to cruise up and down Federal, so hopefully with that traffic, it will catch people's eyes. We are going to have a curb sale going on out front, so hopefully that's another eye catcher for us,' Torres said. DPD says it's important to perform these lane reduction measures every year and plan to have officers out to enforce. 'This is done because we need room for our emergency personnel, fire, paramedics, police to be able to have the ability to get north and south to get into the neighborhood, but also creates safe environment for those who want to celebrate Cinco De Mayo,' said Brad Qualley, District 4's Commander. See the latest traffic conditions in Denver on FOX31 Qualley says if they start to see a lot of heavy congestion into neighboring streets they will begin phase two of these traffic calming measures. That's where they potentially can close off certain east and westbound streets into those neighborhoods to allow for residents to move through their areas. DPD is also encouraging safe and sober driving. 'It's going to be a really nice weekend it looks like, so we are anticipating a lot of folks out there. We are asking for patience with people getting in and out of the neighborhoods. We really want people to enjoy themselves, but we also want them to do it safe,' Qualley said. There will be a city-wide juvenile curfew. Those under 18 years old will be subject to curfew enforcement beginning at midnight on Friday and Saturday and 11:00 p.m. on Sunday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
