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Korea Herald
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Jeonju film fest unveils Masters section lineup
From Mike Leigh's latest to Quay Brothers' long-awaited return, lineup showcases legacy alongside bold experimentations The 26th Jeonju International Film Festival has unveiled its Masters section lineup featuring 15 films from acclaimed auteurs and emerging talents for the April 30 to May 9 run. Headlining the selection is Mike Leigh's character study "Hard Truths," starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a caustic London housewife harboring deep emotional wounds. The film marks Jean-Baptiste's reunion with Leigh after her Oscar-nominated role in the 1996 film "Secrets & Lies." Identical twin animators the Brothers Quay end a 20-year feature hiatus with stop-motion fever dream "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass," while Japanese New Wave holdout Adachi Masao delivers "Escape," a nuanced character portrait chronicling a militant's five decades of life on the run. Canadian experimentalist Guy Maddin teams with collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson for political satire "Rumours," featuring Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance as leaders facing an impending apocalypse at a G7 summit. Francois Ozon brings the psychological thriller "When Fall Is Coming," while Christopher Petit and Emma Matthews present the documentary "D is for Distance," a deeply personal chronicle of their son's battle with epilepsy through intimate footage and third-person narration. The lineup includes festival circuit veterans like experimental filmmaker James Benning with "Little Boy," and Romanian director Andrei Ujica, whose "TWST - Things We Said Today" offers an unconventional approach to documenting the Beatles' 1965 Shea Stadium appearance without showing the actual performance. British avant-garde filmmaker John Smith turns the camera on himself in "Being John Smith," using his common name to explore identity and anonymity. His two earlier works, "The Girl Chewing Gum" and "The Black Tower," will also be screened. Canadian director Denis Cote returns to documentary with "Paul," which follows a depressed man who finds purpose performing housework for dominant women. His experimental short "Days Before the Death of Nicky" will also be shown. Two posthumous documentaries from French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard—"Scenarios" and "Expose du film annonce du film 'Scenario'" — round out the program. These works offer rare glimpses into the auteur's filmmaking techniques and creative process. "We've approached this lineup like diamond miners searching for overlooked talents," programmer Moon Sung-kyung said. "It is Jeonju's answer to the question of a film festival's role in our times, while also pointing toward where film festivals should head." The 26th Jeonju International Film Festival will take place from April 30 to May 9 across multiple venues in Jeonju's cinema district.
The Independent
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Mike Leigh's Bafta-nominated Hard Truths will make you laugh and cry
There are Pansy Deacons all over the place. She's the focus of Mike Leigh's Hard Truths – a vessel of formless rage played by Bafta nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste. When a furniture store employee dares to ask her if she needs help, she immediately snaps back with 'Are you threatening me?' and demands to speak to the manager. She picks fights with customers behind her in the checkout queue, with her dentist, with other drivers – with anyone, really, who dares enter her orbit. She complains about charity workers (too cheery), dogs in coats (arrogant), and well-dressed babies ('What's a baby got pockets for? What's it going to keep in its pocket, a knife?'). We're used to this kind of everyday spectacle. The public display of nonconformism. Erratic behaviour. Eccentric garb. Sudden outbursts. We watch these strangers with crooked smiles, betraying some combination of fear, bemusement, and sympathy. Or perhaps, instead, we stare down at the floor and try to disappear them from our minds. These, though, are exactly the sort of people Leigh has always shown an interest in: be it the curdled, isolated masculinity of David Thewlis's Johnny Fletcher in Naked (1993), or the boundless cheer of Sally Hawkins's Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). And when we talk about realism in Leigh's work, about his particular methodology of using extensive rehearsals to develop his scripts in tandem with his casts, it's ultimately about interrogating that spectacle. In the small and gradual reveal of her life – scene by scene, mundane incident by mundane incident – we start to see Pansy's rage as sorrow. It's a symptom of life history, social circumstances, and, inevitably, a sprinkle of late-stage capitalistic ennui. Pansy's anger is so outsized that, from a distance, it seems almost parodic. Leigh – one of the best chroniclers of Britain, past and present – is wise enough not to stifle the instinct to laugh. In fact, Pansy has some pretty solid one-liners: 'Your balls are so backed up you've got sperm in your brain!' She also has health issues, chronic migraines and muscle aches – they're either the source of her stress or a symptom of it. She's wife to a nervous, uncommunicative husband (David Webber) and mother to a son (Tuwaine Barrett), implied to be autistic, that she doesn't know how to care for. There's never any quiet, never any rest. Her mother died recently. She hasn't dealt with it as well as her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin, luminous) because of the differences in their childhoods. 'I want it all to stop,' Pansy tells her, in a rare moment of clarity. Leigh, working with regular cinematographer Dick Pope, who died last October, renders small beauties out of the ordinary. We're drawn in close to Jean-Baptiste's features (the actor reunites with Leigh after her breakout in his 1996 film Secrets & Lies) – titanic in their expressiveness, twisted by an unseen poison. The actor never shaves down any of Pansy's thorns, but lets us love her despite them. Hard Truths withholds catharsis, instead choosing simply to let the shutters swing open on its protagonist's psyche for a brief interlude. After being presented with a small, perhaps meaningless gesture of kindness, Pansy's lips start to quiver, then tear open with hysterical laughter swiftly followed by angry, ancient-sounding sobs. No one in her family knows what to say. They simply let her weep. But Leigh has shown us all we need to see, the soul inside that's always been easier to ignore. Dir: Mike Leigh. Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone. Cert 12A, 97 mins.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The One Show is the most unapologetically weird programme on the BBC
What do Mike Leigh and Steven Bartlett have in common? Very little, surely. I can't see the octogenarian auteur behind Bafta-winning films like Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake kicking back after a long day's shoot with a nourishing glass of Huel and a motivational episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast. Their incongruence is so overwhelming that there's only one cultural force powerful enough to bring these two men together on the same sofa. And that cultural force is The One Show. Since 2006, the 7pm weeknight slot on BBC One has belonged to the broadcaster's premier something-for-everyone-and-no-one grab bag of a magazine show. The delirium-inducing theme tune – trumpet fanfares accompanied by someone shouting 'ONE… ONE… ONE!' at increasing volume and pitch – heralds the start of a televisual rollercoaster, presided over by the perma-cheery Alex Jones, alongside whichever reliable BBC stalwart has been rostered in to be her presenting partner. Each 30-minute episode is an odyssey through current affairs, uplifting local stories and every possible echelon of celebrity. It's like kids' TV for adults, an evening show that should by all rights be airing at 10.30am. The tonal shifts are enough to give you whiplash, defying all accepted rules of cohesive broadcasting. The agenda follows the nonsensical logic of a fever dream: unconnected scene follows unconnected scene with zero explanation. And that's precisely how what should by all rights be one of the BBC's most boring programmes has instead become unapologetically unhinged viewing. I like to think this is why around 3 million people tune in each night, not just because they've forgotten to turn over after News at Six. Take Thursday (23 January) night's broadcast, hosted by Roman Kemp and the unflappable Jones, a One Show veteran of 15 years. First up, Bartlett had to sit through a short video of Harry from season two of The Traitors taking part in an immersive Agatha Christie whodunnit. Then, Leigh and longtime collaborator Marianne Jean-Baptiste joined him on the famous green sofa. All three of them looked on as Carol from the Isle of Wight was praised for her work with service dogs (then enjoyed a ride in a monster truck as a reward). The paradox of The One Show is that every single episode is somehow wildly different and entirely the same. And so Thursday's lineup was at once head-scratchingly unpredictable in the specifics, but utterly representative of the programme's classic formula. We begin with some sort of vaguely topical human interest story. We're introduced to a star guest, there to field softball questions about their latest project. Then, it's time to meet more celebs. For maximum dissonance, they usually hail from a very different strata of fame to the one occupied by their new sofa-mates. Think Tom Fletcher from McFly sitting alongside Kerry Washington. Strictly's Shirley Ballas chatting with Hollywood's go-to villain Mads Mikkelsen. Or Harry Hill thrown together with Dakota Fanning, a woman who has surely never heard of TV Burp. Next up is another VT, which might cover anything from fly tipping to fraudsters (with the bad guys usually played by a game production assistant, wearing a hoodie as a shorthand for dodginess). The celebrities are held hostage throughout – as Al Pacino found out when he tried to walk off mid-broadcast in 2020, wrongly believing that his presence was no longer required. You see the cogs moving in the A-listers' brains as they wonder why their publicist has signed them up to sit and nod politely while they watch Jeff Brazier walking down a suburban high street. Sometimes, they're quizzed on what they've just watched, like when Dame Judi Dench was asked whether she'd ever put her feet up on a train seat (answer: of course not). This quirk is what makes The One Show unique. On ITV, This Morning covers a similarly eclectic array of concerns, but their famous guests are spirited away during the ad breaks, so they never have to weigh in on, say, the UK's pothole epidemic. The Graham Norton Show has a comparably mish-mash approach to celebrity bookings, but Norton doesn't force his A-listers to feign outrage or delight over various mundane concerns that never darkened their own gilded lives. Plus, you get the sense that the Hollywood stars have at least a vague idea who he is, and what show they are on (unlike Pacino, who looked utterly baffled when Jones jokingly asked him if he'd 'been dreaming of The One Show?') The cumulative effect is simultaneously banal and bizarre. None of it makes any sense at all – if historians look back at any random One Show episode in a few centuries, they'll be deeply, existentially confused about what British society deemed important and/or entertaining at the dawn of the third millennium. The comedy icon Mel Brooks put it best during his 2017 One Show appearance. Moments after he'd had Jones and her then-co-host Matt Baker cracking up with his jokes, the presenters performed a tonal handbrake turn and started telling the story of a woman trying to track down her long-lost father. 'What a crazy show this is!' Brooks said, neatly summing up what every guest (and every viewer) had been thinking for years. Of course, it speaks volumes that the jolt from wisecracking celebs to missing family members is by no means the show's most jarring transition. That honour goes to the time when Jones glided from a nature segment to an interview with Ozark's Jason Bateman, using the immortal line: 'Now, from the transformation of the dragonfly… to the transformation of Jason Bateman.' It takes a real lightness of touch to make a clanger like that one work – even if her smiles and enthusiasm grate on your cynical soul, you still have to admit that Jones is very good at her job. Off screen, though, the show's unsung hero is surely its talent booker, who clearly has a) one of the most capacious contact books in the UK entertainment industry and b) the vision and panache required to boldly put together some unfathomable highbrow – lowbrow celebrity pairings. Netflix film Scoop was based on the work of Sam McAlister, the producer who organised Prince Andrew's interview with Newsnight, and I'd just as happily watch a drama about the machinations of The One Show's celeb liaison staff. Perhaps Sheridan Smith, a classic green sofa guest, could star in the lead role. She'd be able to draw on the time when she got stuck in a lift with Stephen Fry moments before they were both set to appear on the programme, in scenes that would've been cut from W1A for being too on the nose. As that gaffe proved, live TV often goes off-piste, and The One Show is no exception. In 2022, the actor Dan Stevens, formerly of Downton Abbey, appeared on the sofa to promote his new show Gaslit, a drama about the Watergate scandal. 'What you've got is a criminal for a leader who is wrapped in a messy war, embroiled in a stupid scandal and surrounded by ambitious idiots, who really should resign,' he said, before quipping that he'd just read 'the intro to Boris Johnson'. The gasps in the studio were audible. It's not just the guests who go off script, either. One of the show's most memorable moments came in 2011, just as the credits were about to roll at the end of an interview with then-prime minister David Cameron. In true One Show style, he'd been seated next to an owl and its handler throughout. 'Just very quickly, how on earth do you sleep at night?' Baker asked, with seconds of screen time to go. The former Blue Peter presenter delivered his zinger with a cheerful charm that gave him plausible deniability. It's entirely possible that he was simply asking Cameron about his nighttime routine, rather than alluding to the impact of Tory austerity – but I like to think of the exchange as a light entertainment Trojan horse. When so much TV now feels like it's been created by an algorithm to provide a frictionless viewing experience, The One Show's unapologetic weirdness makes it feel like an endearing outlier. As Brooks said, this programme is undisputedly 'nuts' – but that's the joy of it. Long may it reign as the most baffling thing on the BBC.
The Independent
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The One Show is the most unapologetically weird programme on the BBC
What do Mike Leigh and Steven Bartlett have in common? Very little, surely. I can't see the octogenarian auteur behind Bafta-winning films like Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake kicking back after a long day's shoot with a nourishing glass of Huel and a motivational episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast. Their incongruence is so overwhelming that there's only one cultural force powerful enough to bring these two men together on the same sofa. And that cultural force is The One Show. Since 2006, the 7pm weeknight slot on BBC One has belonged to the broadcaster's premier something-for-everyone-and-no-one grab bag of a magazine show. The delirium-inducing theme tune – trumpet fanfares accompanied by someone shouting 'ONE… ONE… ONE!' at increasing volume and pitch – heralds the start of a televisual rollercoaster, presided over by the perma-cheery Alex Jones, alongside whichever reliable BBC stalwart has been rostered in to be her presenting partner. Each 30-minute episode is an odyssey through current affairs, uplifting local stories and every possible echelon of celebrity. It's like kids' TV for adults, an evening show that should by all rights be airing at 10.30am. The tonal shifts are enough to give you whiplash, defying all accepted rules of cohesive broadcasting. The agenda follows the nonsensical logic of a fever dream: unconnected scene follows unconnected scene with zero explanation. And that's precisely how what should by all rights be one of the BBC's most boring programmes has instead become unapologetically unhinged viewing. I like to think this is why around 3 million people tune in each night, not just because they've forgotten to turn over after News at Six. Take Thursday (23 January) night's broadcast, hosted by Roman Kemp and the unflappable Jones, a One Show veteran of 15 years. First up, Bartlett had to sit through a short video of Harry from season two of The Traitors taking part in an immersive Agatha Christie whodunnit. Then, Leigh and longtime collaborator Marianne Jean-Baptiste joined him on the famous green sofa. All three of them looked on as Carol from the Isle of Wight was praised for her work with service dogs (then enjoyed a ride in a monster truck as a reward). The paradox of The One Show is that every single episode is somehow wildly different and entirely the same. And so Thursday's lineup was at once head-scratchingly unpredictable in the specifics, but utterly representative of the programme's classic formula. We begin with some sort of vaguely topical human interest story. We're introduced to a star guest, there to field softball questions about their latest project. Then, it's time to meet more celebs. For maximum dissonance, they usually hail from a very different strata of fame to the one occupied by their new sofa-mates. Think Tom Fletcher from McFly sitting alongside Kerry Washington. Strictly 's Shirley Ballas chatting with Hollywood's go-to villain Mads Mikkelsen. Or Harry Hill thrown together with Dakota Fanning, a woman who has surely never heard of TV Burp. Next up is another VT, which might cover anything from fly tipping to fraudsters (with the bad guys usually played by a game production assistant, wearing a hoodie as a shorthand for dodginess). The celebrities are held hostage throughout – as Al Pacino found out when he tried to walk off mid-broadcast in 2020, wrongly believing that his presence was no longer required. You see the cogs moving in the A-listers' brains as they wonder why their publicist has signed them up to sit and nod politely while they watch Jeff Brazier walking down a suburban high street. Sometimes, they're quizzed on what they've just watched, like when Dame Judi Dench was asked whether she'd ever put her feet up on a train seat (answer: of course not). This quirk is what makes The One Show unique. On ITV, This Morning covers a similarly eclectic array of concerns, but their famous guests are spirited away during the ad breaks, so they never have to weigh in on, say, the UK's pothole epidemic. The Graham Norton Show has a comparably mish-mash approach to celebrity bookings, but Norton doesn't force his A-listers to feign outrage or delight over various mundane concerns that never darkened their own gilded lives. Plus, you get the sense that the Hollywood stars have at least a vague idea who he is, and what show they are on (unlike Pacino, who looked utterly baffled when Jones jokingly asked him if he'd 'been dreaming of The One Show?') The cumulative effect is simultaneously banal and bizarre. None of it makes any sense at all – if historians look back at any random One Show episode in a few centuries, they'll be deeply, existentially confused about what British society deemed important and/or entertaining at the dawn of the third millennium. The late comedy icon Mel Brooks put it best during his 2017 One Show appearance. Moments after he'd had Jones and her then-co-host Matt Baker cracking up with his jokes, the presenters performed a tonal handbrake turn and started telling the story of a woman trying to track down her long-lost father. 'What a crazy show this is!' Brooks said, neatly summing up what every guest (and every viewer) had been thinking for years. Of course, it speaks volumes that the jolt from wisecracking celebs to missing family members is by no means the show's most jarring transition. That honour goes to the time when Jones glided from a nature segment to an interview with Ozark 's Jason Bateman, using the immortal line: 'Now, from the transformation of the dragonfly… to the transformation of Jason Bateman.' It takes a real lightness of touch to make a clanger like that one work – even if her smiles and enthusiasm grate on your cynical soul, you still have to admit that Jones is very good at her job. Off screen, though, the show's unsung hero is surely its talent booker, who clearly has a) one of the most capacious contact books in the UK entertainment industry and b) the vision and panache required to boldly put together some unfathomable highbrow – lowbrow celebrity pairings. Netflix film Scoop was based on the work of Sam McAlister, the producer who organised Prince Andrew's interview with Newsnight, and I'd just as happily watch a drama about the machinations of The One Show 's celeb liaison staff. Perhaps Sheridan Smith, a classic green sofa guest, could star in the lead role. She'd be able to draw on the time when she got stuck in a lift with Stephen Fry moments before they were both set to appear on the programme, in scenes that would've been cut from W1A for being too on the nose. As that gaffe proved, live TV often goes off-piste, and The One Show is no exception. In 2022, the actor Dan Stevens, formerly of Downton Abbey, appeared on the sofa to promote his new show Gaslit, a drama about the Watergate scandal. 'What you've got is a criminal for a leader who is wrapped in a messy war, embroiled in a stupid scandal and surrounded by ambitious idiots, who really should resign,' he said, before quipping that he'd just read 'the intro to Boris Johnson'. The gasps in the studio were audible. It's not just the guests who go off script, either. One of the show's most memorable moments came in 2011, just as the credits were about to roll at the end of an interview with then-prime minister David Cameron. In true One Show style, he'd been seated next to an owl and its handler throughout. 'Just very quickly, how on earth do you sleep at night?' Baker asked, with seconds of screen time to go. The former Blue Peter presenter delivered his zinger with a cheerful charm that gave him plausible deniability. It's entirely possible that he was simply asking Cameron about his nighttime routine, rather than alluding to the impact of Tory austerity – but I like to think of the exchange as a light entertainment Trojan horse. When so much TV now feels like it's been created by an algorithm to provide a frictionless viewing experience, The One Show 's unapologetic weirdness makes it feel like an endearing outlier. As Brooks said, this programme is undisputedly 'nuts' – but that's the joy of it. Long may it reign as the most baffling thing on the BBC.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marianne Jean-Baptiste decries lack of great roles for black women
Hard Truths star Marianne Jean-Baptiste has said there is still 'a dearth of great multilayered roles for black women' in the UK and Hollywood, a week after missing out on an Oscar nomination. Jean-Baptiste, who became the first black British woman to be nominated for an Oscar in 1997, told the Radio Times she had been forced to compromise in her career because of the lack of complex roles on offer. 'Sadly, there is a dearth of great multilayered roles for black women to play both in the US and the UK,' she said. 'I don't know if it's changing. I really don't.' Jean-Baptiste was not nominated for an Oscar for her starring role in Mike Leigh's family drama, Hard Truths, where she plays Pansy, a middle-aged woman on the verge of a breakdown – despite being some people's favourite to win the best actress category. Jean-Baptiste left the UK in 1999, citing a lack of opportunities at the time. After her best actress nomination for her depiction of the 'quietly heart-breaking' Hortense in Leigh's Secrets & Lies, she struggled to get work. Two years after starring in a Palme d'Or winning film, she, like many black British actors, moved to the US. The question of why she left has followed her around her entire career. In a interview with the Guardian in 2015, she said she was sick of being asked about it. 'I can't tell you why I've not been invited to a party,' she said. 'You need to go to the host and say: 'Why didn't you invite her to the party?'' Asked why she felt she had to leave, she told the Radio Times: 'Well, I didn't feel as though I had to do anything, but I was being offered work in the States. I love the life it opened up for me. 'Initially, I went back and forth because my husband and I had two young daughters. After two years, we all moved to LA, and I didn't work in England again for about 12 years. I enjoy working in London, but I've got that Cali lifestyle. I love going to the beach, I love the optimism and slower pace.' After moving to Hollywood, Jean-Baptiste established herself in the US as a star of both big and small screen appearing in the long-running television series Without a Trace. She appeared regularly on the UK stage, notably as pastor Margaret in the National Theatre's The Amen Corner, and she also starred in debbie tucker green's hang at the Royal Court in 2015, and appeared in the second series of Broadchurch.
