Latest news with #Schoenbrun
Mint
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
What to watch this week: ‘Gram Chikitsalay', ‘The Royals', and more
Prince Aviraaj falls for career-minded Sophia in this clash-of-cultures series. The eclectic cast has Bhumi Pednekar and Ishaan Khatter in the lead, and support from Zeenat Aman and Sakshi Tanwar. Created by Rangita and Ishita Pritish Nandy. (Netflix) A man honours his late mother by opening an Italian restaurant run by actual nonnas (grandmothers) as the chefs. Starring Vince Vaughn, Lorraine Bracco,Talia Shire, Brenda Vaccaro, Joe Manganiello and Susan Sarandon. Directed by Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower). (Netflix) A couple reunite in heaven. He was bedridden for a large part of his life and she took care of him. In heaven, the tables are turned: he's in his 30s and she's in her 80s. Starring Kim Hye-ja (The Light in Your Eyes) and Son Suk-ku (The Roundup; Nothing Serious). (Netflix) Actor and newly minted Padma Bhushan awardee Ajith Kumar stars in this action-comedy that entered the ₹ 100-crore club within five days of its theatrical release in April. Directed by Adhik Ravichandran, the film has Ajith playing a retired gangster who has to pick up the cudgels once again to help his son out. The cast also includes Trisha Krishnan and Arjun Das. (Netflix) TVF isn't known for fixing what isn't broken. Their latest series is squarely in Panchayat territory, a droll comedy-drama about an idealistic young doctor (Amol Parashar) who tries to revive a village clinic. Created by Deepak Kumar Mishra. (Amazon Prime) Jane Schoenbrun's 2024 film, I Saw the TV Glow, starring Justice Smith and Jack Haven, begins with dreamy unreality and ends with necessary struggle. It's a film that speaks to the trans experience, but in a complex, fractured manner. It's a shattering, haunting work, so unlike the explanation-driven American cinema of today that it seems to invent its own language. Schoenbrun instinctively arrives at a Lynchian kind of dread. Yet, I Saw the TV Glow is also achingly beautiful. Schoenbrun and cinematographer Eric K. Yue use saturated colours and shimmers of neon the way Gregg Araki, a pioneer of New Queer Cinema, did in the 1990s. (Netflix) Two members of a special forces group called Shadow Force break the rules by falling in love with each other. They have a child and are living a regular life. But then their old employer comes after them, and they're forced to go underground. Shadow Force has a standard action movie premise. But Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces, The Grey) has made a career out of tough actioners. And it will be intriguing seeing Kerry Washington (Scandal, Django Unchained) in fight mode. Her co-lead is Omar Sy, best known for playing the titular thief in the Netflix series Lupin. Also starring Mark Strong, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Cliff 'Method Man' Smith. (In theatres)
Washington Post
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The ambitious writer-director bringing trans stories to the screen
Next in Arts & Entertainment The ambitious writer-director bringing trans stories to the screen By Shane O'Neill February 11, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EST 0 Sorry, a summary is not available for this article at this time. Please try again later. Jane Schoenbrun had just gotten back from the Valentino runway show in Paris. It was a new experience for them. They were seated near Jared Leto. 'I never thought, when I was a young boy growing up in the suburbs, that I'd be here today,' they said with a giggle. Much has changed for Schoenbrun, 38, since they left their hometown of Ardsley, New York. They've written and directed two critically acclaimed films, 'We're All Going to the World's Fair' and 'I Saw the TV Glow,' they've gotten a book deal and they've been embraced by the entertainment industry and the media as one of the most distinctive trans voices of their generation. Their moody, ethereal work, which nods to horror and sci-fi, can leave viewers with more questions than answers. 'It took me, like, a year of therapy to just be confident enough to tell people that I wanted to make a movie,' Schoenbrun said. Their therapist advised them to spend a week just pretending to be a filmmaker. 'And I did and I was like, 'Maybe that's the secret,'' they said. 'And I did it again when I wrote a novel last year.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement They're still getting used to a world in which they don't have to pretend to be what they want to be. 'I've had this experience a bunch over the last couple of years of being like, 'I don't have to feel like the weirdo in the corner here, actually,'' Schoenbrun said. Schoenbrun was sitting in the bedroom of their home in Hudson, New York, shared with their partner of 19 years. Their relationship has evolved into a framework they describe as 'non-hierarchical polyamory.' 'We got straight married in 2014 and then we both came out as extremely gay later on,' they said. 'We've just supported each other through so much change and evolution and continue to do that.' Schoenbrun described their transition — which also coincided with the opening of their relationship — as being akin to a second puberty. 'In many ways it feels like I'm learning things that other people learned at 16,' they said. 'Like, I'm literally going through my first-ever breakup right now.' Puberty, whether it is one's first or second, is hard. But being close to that sense of dislocation and growing pain has served Schoenbrun well artistically. Their insight into the psyche and aesthetics of being a misfit is what made them a rising film talent in Hollywood. An experimental storyteller Their first film, 2021's 'We're All Going to the World's Fair,' was a lyrical and experimental story told largely through internet browser screens. It followed a child traversing the internet, finding sinister online challenges, ChatRoulette-style live streams, and a grown man who might be a good friend and guide to her (although it's hard to say for sure). Story continues below advertisement Advertisement The film attracted the attention of Fruit Tree, the production company founded by Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCary, who partnered with A24 to make 2024's 'I Saw the TV Glow.' Schoenbrun deliberately wrote their second film to be more ambitious. ''World's Fair' was a movie I made for $100,000 in the woods, and 'Glow' was like 40 times that in size and scope.' Jack Haven, left, and Justice Smith starred in Jane Schoenbrun's film 'I Saw the TV Glow,' which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. () It centers on a friendship between two teenagers forged by deep shared fandom for a sci-fi TV show. One of the teens is trying to forge an identity while avoiding the wrath and attention of a domineering dad played by Fred Durst, the lead singer of the nu-metal band Limp Bizkit. Schoenbrun's first film had oblique references to the trans experience, but 'I Saw the TV Glow' offered a more direct allegory. 'The film is 100 percent a trans narrative, both because I'm trans and because this was born of a very specific experience of an egg crack,' Schoenbrun said, using a slang term for the process of a trans person coming to terms with their gender. 'Obviously, I don't want to be pigeonholed — the ways that identity can be commodified can be an incredibly limiting factor in art,' they said. 'But also the movie is absolutely coming from inside my own experience of transness.' The film was a hit on the festival circuit, winning a few awards and a spate of good reviews. Schoenbrun wanted to expand on the success of that film for their next project. They explained their ambitions using the work of the rock band Radiohead: 'If 'TV Glow' was my 'Creep,' then what's my 'OK Computer'? What's my epic?' The answer was their first novel, 'Public Access Afterworld,' which will be published by the Random House imprint Hogarth in late 2025 or early 2026. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Schoenbrun described the book as a dense, interwoven science fiction novel about a trans girl working as a content moderator for a streaming platform who discovers a cult of people who think that screens can function as portals to other planes of existence. 'It takes us to World War II, to space, to the '90s,' they said. 'My films tend to be vibey and atmospheric and ethereal, so I'm excited for people to read the novel because so much happens.' And they also recently finished the screenplay, currently titled 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,' a slasher movie that investigates the horror trope of the trans serial killer in films like 'Psycho,' 'The Silence of the Lambs,' 'Sleepaway Camp' and 'Dressed to Kill.' 'It's a movie about learning how to start living in your body and to start having good sex and to stop seeing yourself as that transsexual monster and to start seeing yourself as a person who deserves to exist in the world,' they said. 'It's basically a comedy,' they explained. 'It's got so much blood. It's going to be a messy one.'
