Latest news with #Reichardt
Mint
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Josh OConnor drawn to flawed protagonist in Cannes entry The Mastermind
Britain's O'Connor in two Cannes competition entries Director Kelly Reichardt examines the "bumbling jerk" CANNES, France, May 24 (Reuters) - Rising British actor Josh O'Connor was drawn to how normal his character in "The Mastermind", a suburban dad who cooks up an art heist, seemed when he signed on to U.S. director Kelly Reichardt's new film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. "When we go to the theatres, we see often times the most extreme versions of characters, of human nature. And that's what we know is drama," O'Connor told journalists on Saturday. However, "I find now that I often want to see ordinary people put in kind of extraordinary positions," said the actor who played Prince Charles in the TV series "The Crown." O'Connor's James Mooney is an unemployed carpenter with a wife, played by Alana Haim, and two children in 1970s Massachusetts who decides he wants to steal four paintings by early American modernist Arthur Dove from the local city museum. The plan begins to unravel almost from the get-go as Mooney, with no criminal experience, steals the art but is forced to hide out, away from his family, while police search for him. "The Mastermind" is one of two films in competition for the festival's top prize that star O'Connor, the other being the gay period romance "The History of Sound" with Paul Mescal. The actor described Mooney's overconfident plan as a "work of art in itself," one that comes from privilege and "from generations of men being told that they deserve something more." For the film, director Reichardt said she was interested in exploring New Hollywood's typical "bumbling jerk" character who can do whatever he wants and still be liked by the audience. Examples include Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" or any Jack Nicholson character, said the director of films including "First Cow," "Old Joy" and "Wendy and Lucy." "I'm interested in that tradition, but I'm also interested in breaking it down a little bit and looking at how the parts of it work and then kind of fall apart," she told journalists. Streaming platform Mubi, which bought "The Mastermind," gave the film the resources needed and then did not impose on how it was made, said Reichardt, calling it a "very fortunate thing". "All the arts in America are, like science and education, are really obviously in a very precarious situation right now," said Reichardt, adding: "America's in such a dark place." (Reporting by Miranda Murray; editing by David Evans)
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Kelly Reichardt's 'The Mastermind' receives 8-minute ovation at Cannes premiere
Kelly Reichardt's latest film, 'The Mastermind', premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to a warm reception, with the audience awarding it an 8-minute standing ovation. The film, which marks Reichardt's second entry in the Competition section after 'Showing Up' in 2022, tells the story of JB Mooney, an unemployed carpenter turned amateur art thief, played by Josh O'Connor. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Set in 1970s Massachusetts, 'The Mastermind' follows Mooney's life as it unravels after a botched heist. The film features an ensemble cast, including Alana Haim, , Hope Davis, Bill Camp, and Gaby Hoffmann. Reichardt's direction weaves a narrative that explores themes of identity, morality, and the American Dream. Early reviews praise the film for its subtlety, humour, and O'Connor's performance, as per Deadline. According to Deadline, critics note that Reichardt's minimalist style, marked by long takes and sparse dialogue, adds to the film's emotional depth. The film's period details and cinematography have also been praised for their authenticity and nuance. Mubi will distribute 'The Mastermind' in select territories, including North America, the UK, and India. The Match Factory is handling international sales.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kelly Reichardt on ‘The Mastermind,' Josh O'Connor and What the '70s Have to Teach Us Today
Kelly Reichardt returns to the Cannes Film Festival with The Mastermind, a 1970s-set anti-heist film that's less about the robbery and more about its emotional and social fallout. The latest feature from the First Cow and Showing Up director is another exploration in quiet rebellion and the tension between individual freedom and collective responsibility. Premiering Friday night, it's the last competition film to screen on the Croisette, and among the most anticipated. Art house distributor and streamer Mubi will release The Mastermind in North and Latin America and in select territories, including the U.K. and Germany, with The Match Factory handling international sales. More from The Hollywood Reporter Signature Entertainment Acquires U.K., Irish Rights to Whitney Peak-Starring Horror 'Eye for an Eye' (Exclusive) Vicky Krieps, Christian Friedel Join 'The Idiots' German Director Christian Petzold Named President of Austria's Viennale The Mastermind stars Josh O'Connor as James Blaine 'J.B.' Mooney, an art-school dropout and unemployed carpenter who plans that one big job that will change his life: A daytime heist from a scarcely-guarded local museum. The plot was inspired by several actual snatch-and-grab jobs from the era, including the 1972 Worcester Art Museum heist in which robbers made off with masterpieces from Rembrandt, Picasso and Gauguin. But Reichardt, in her typically fashion, lowers the financial stakes — Mooney's plan is to steal several paintings by the lesser-known early American modernist Arthur Dove — while raising the emotional stakes. Like her 2013 feature Night Moves, about radical environmentalists who plot to blow up a dam, The Mastermind is less about the action than its consequence. The robbery takes place in the opening third. Then Reichardt's heist movie shifts into something else. Mooney's attempt to make it big collapses back on himself, destroying his life and that of those around him, including his increasingly sceptical wife Terri (played by Licorice Pizza star Alana Haim), and his New England-pedigreed parents, Bill and Sarah (Bill Camp and Hope Davis). 'It's an aftermath film, an unraveling film,' Reichardt says. Set in Framingham, Massachusetts, near Worcester, The Mastermind was shot in Ohio and Indiana, with the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library in Columbus, designed by architect I. M. Pei, standing in for the film's art museum. The film is drenched in 70s analog melancholy, from the lived-in 1970s design palette to the era-specific jazz score from Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor of the Chicago Underground. Reichardt spoke to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of her Cannes premiere about breaking down the heist genre, schooling Josh O'Connor on '70s AM radio, and how the Nixon era marked the start of America's long political decline. What was the origin of this story, the idea to do a heist movie? I've just always been interested in heists. I like to dig around and read about them when they come up —they're fun to read about. And I read an article on the 50th anniversary of the art heist in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1972. The article was about these teenagers who got caught up in an art heist at the Worcester Art Museum. That piqued my interest. So it was just a little seed for how to start telling this story. Did your family background have anything to do with it? Your father was a detective. No, not at all. My dad was a crime scene detective, my mom was an undercover narcotics agent, and my stepfather was an FBI agent. But it wasn't really about that. I mean, while making the film, because it was set in the 1970s, a ton of things came back to me from being a kid then — being in the car all the time, that sort of thing. But there's no biographical element in it. You said it was the 50th anniversary of this particular heist, but were there any specific heists that you based the story of the film on? No, but the Worcester heist was a jumping-off point for sure. Those were snatch-and-grabs like this before security cameras and other measures were put in. Museums had roundabouts in front of them, so robbers could just drive up, retirees were the security guards. Before the Gardner Museum [heist of 1990], there were a lot of these kinds of robberies. At the Worcester Museum, they took a Rembrandt and four huge paintings. That was a little bit of a stepping-off point. I liked the idea of it being in New England, so we set it in Framingham, which is close to Worcester. I wanted it to be smaller, not like masterpieces being taken. It became about painting by Arthur Dove. That was fun to dive into. Was the idea that stealing Arthur Dove paintings, instead of Rembrants makes the whole thing slightly less grand or ambitious? Yeah, it lowers the stakes. I felt it was better for the size of my film, really, and for the ambitions of this character. I felt like it was easier to get my arms around than having it be paintings everyone knows, like Degas or Rembrandt. I went through a lot of different stages of what it would be, but I kept coming back to Dove. I was a little bit worried, to be honest, because Dove paintings are quite small, and on their own they're not majestic necessarily. One could dismiss them or find them unremarkable. He wasn't very popular in the '70s. But Tony Gasparro, the production designer, and I came to believe that if you set them in a room with multiple ones and gave them the prestige of a museum setting, that would carry it. We found one visual of a Dove show from the '70s and riffed off that. For the 70s setting, what is it about that era that resonates now? Well, I liked the idea of taking a sort of classic character — James Mooney [played by John O'Connor] is kind of like a man-boy, and a father and a husband — who makes a big career move and tries to execute it to the best of his ability, then gets stomped on and doesn't know how to recover from it. That's sort of within the conventions of heist thinking — we think of [French director Jean-Pierre] Melville or something. But then there's an undertone of a character who feels detached from what's happening in the country. He's too old to be drafted, he's a middle-class kid with a judge father, and he has two kids. He's not worried about being drafted, so he's not tuned in. The idea that keeps reappearing in the films I've made is this question about the individual versus the person in a community, or in a society, or as a citizen of the world. Can you really remain separate from what's going on around you? Or does the drag of it catch up with you? Are we just all more connected than that? Can you keep yourself separate from the politics around you, which is a particularly important question for artists. Yeah. A lot of people say, 'Well, I'm just not political.' And I think: Do you have a bank account? You're political. Not to be political is a very privileged position. If you can go through life and not worry that someone's going to knock on your door and take you to a prison in El Salvador, then lucky you. It's interesting thinking about the times. I shouldn't go on talking about politics because I'm not some expert. But if I think of Vietnam — and then Watergate, and Iran-Contra, and Iraq — it feels like the beginning of American disillusionment with government. It's hard to believe, but when you go back and look at the Watergate hearings with someone young now, they almost laugh at the idea that people were so taken aback and saddened to learn that the president was a liar. And now the country just embraces the outward lie, almost like it's more honest. Like: Yeah, this guy's a fraud. What a curve in a lifetime. Fifty years is a big spiral — but what a quick arc it seems. Did you give Josh O'Connor and the cast any homework to get them into the 70s mindset? I gave them all a film by Jeff Kreines, a documentary I love [1974's The Plaint of Steve Kreines as Recorded by His Younger Brother Jeff]. It captures the region and a family dynamic that I really liked. Hope Davis, Bill Camp, Alana Haim, and Josh all watched it. That was a big thing. Don Slepian, the music supervisor, and I made some tapes for Josh of what would've been on the radio at the time — just so he'd be familiar with what AM and FM were playing. Mostly AM. I gave Alana the Joan Didion essays. I can't remember what else I gave them — some image books, things like that. Josh also chose to watch some things on his own. Alana's really into that period, so she's already hip to it. Can I ask about the music? It seems like classic '70s jazz. You've never really done that before. I've never used that much music at all. That was a lot more music for me. This trumpet player and composer, Rob Mazurek, plays with percussionist Chad Taylor in the band Chicago Underground. The music supervisor turned me on to them, gave me a bunch of stuff. I gave her things I was listening to —some Coltrane, Sun Ra, Bill Evans from that period — when I was writing. I knew it would be a jazz score and minimalist in terms of players and instruments. She gave me people to listen to, and I loved Rob and Chad's music. I used some of it as temp, figured out the scenes we'd use it in, and started a long process with a music editor — I'd never worked with one before. Rob created new music for scenes in the film. He's in Marfa, Texas, and recorded there. It was a really interesting, long, and challenging process. But really interesting. I see connections with your other work, especially in the structure—it's similar to : the event, the heist, happens at the beginning, and it's all about the aftermath. Yeah. It's a kind of tilted-boat structure. I started with the heist, and then: what happens next? It's funny but the music really helped with that. For a while, the character and I had the parameters of a genre that then sort of peters out, just like his plan. He knows what moves to make, as in Night Moves, but there's not much planning for the aftermath. The film, too, no longer has a structure to follow after the first quarter. From a heist movie, it kind of organically turns into another genre. For a while, I thought, 'What have I done to myself?' But I liked how it turned. The music helped buoy it, so it still worked as a whole. The music functions one way during the heist, and another way after. Will Josh make the red carpet? He missed the one for The History of Sound because he was shooting on another film. Yes, he finished shooting yesterday [Wednesday] and left to fly here, so he should be in good shape. 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
Business Insider
27-04-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
BTIG Reaffirms Their Hold Rating on Tri Pointe (TPH)
BTIG analyst Carl Reichardt maintained a Hold rating on Tri Pointe (TPH – Research Report) on April 25. The company's shares closed last Friday at $30.33. Stay Ahead of the Market: Discover outperforming stocks and invest smarter with Top Smart Score Stocks. Filter, analyze, and streamline your search for investment opportunities using Tipranks' Stock Screener. Reichardt covers the Consumer Cyclical sector, focusing on stocks such as PulteGroup, Taylor Morrison, and DR Horton. According to TipRanks, Reichardt has an average return of 14.0% and a 55.38% success rate on recommended stocks. In addition to BTIG, Tri Pointe also received a Hold from RBC Capital's Michael Dahl in a report issued on April 24. However, on the same day, Evercore ISI maintained a Buy rating on Tri Pointe (NYSE: TPH). TPH market cap is currently $2.75B and has a P/E ratio of 6.75.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Germany's far-right AfD wants to win 45% in regional vote next year
Inspired by big gains in last week's parliamentary elections, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is setting its sights on gaining control of a regional government for the first time in next year's state elections. The party wants to win 45% of the electorate in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and therefore be able to name the state's premier or top leader, AfD state chairman Martin Reichardt said on Sunday. The goal is to make Saxony-Anhalt, which is west of Berlin, the first German state to be led by an AfD government, he said at the opening of a state party conference in Magdeburg, the state capital. Germany's domestic intelligence agency is monitoring the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt as a confirmed right-wing extremist group. "Saxony-Anhalt will become the blue beacon of Germany," Reichardt said referring to the colour associated with the party. In last week's national parliamentary election, the AfD was the top party in the state with 37.1% of the vote. Nationally it came in second but it will not be in the government because other parties have refused to work with it.
