Latest news with #TheBeguiled
See - Sada Elbalad
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
Clint Eastwood Has Found His Next Movie
Yara Sameh There's just no stopping Clint Eastwood. The acclaimed actor and director has confirmed that he's already working on another movie, after keeping audiences on the edge of their seats with "Juror No. 2". While it's true that Eastwood will be celebrating his ninety-fifth birthday this year, the director looks very eager to continue his trajectory as one of the biggest icons in the history of cinema. Eastwood sounded very confident when talking about his health to Kurier, but the icon refused to give any details surrounding the premise of his next endeavor. Time will tell what Clint Eastwood is baking in the oven right now. The last time audiences got to enjoy the magic of Clint Eastwood's talent on the big screen was last year when Juror #2 depicted a man ridden with guilt during a murder trial. Justin Kempt (Nicholas Hoult) was called up for jury duty. The character was surprised when, while listening to the details of the murder case, he realized he might have been involved in the victim's death. Toni Collette and J.K. Simmons also starred in this legal thriller that earned more than $24 million at the global box office. Before the devastating story of Justin Kemp reached the big screen, Clint Eastwood had been working on Cry Macho and Richard Jewell. Warner Bros. has been the studio to produce the legendary artist's recent directorial efforts. The company has been working alongside Clint Eastwood for years, giving the director a blank canvas to develop the acclaimed stories he has put out throughout the latest stage of his career. It remains to be seen if Warner Bros. will also produce Eastwood's next project. Clint Eastwood's next movie will mark the next step in an unrivaled trajectory in the entertainment industry. Thanks to stories such as "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" and "The Beguiled", Eastwood became one of the most recognizable people in the history of cinema. Regardless of what his next movie ends up dealing with, the prolific star has consolidated his name thanks to his unforgettable performances and ka een eye for storytelling. A release date for Clint Eastwood's next movie hasn't been announced yet. read more New Tourism Route To Launch in Old Cairo Ahmed El Sakka-Led Play 'Sayidati Al Jamila' to Be Staged in KSA on Dec. 6 Mandy Moore Joins Season 2 of "Dr. Death" Anthology Series Don't Miss These Movies at 44th Cairo Int'l Film Festival Today Amr Diab to Headline KSA's MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 Festival Arts & Culture Mai Omar Stuns in Latest Instagram Photos Arts & Culture "The Flash" to End with Season 9 Arts & Culture Ministry of Culture Organizes four day Children's Film Festival Arts & Culture Canadian PM wishes Muslims Eid-al-Adha News Ayat Khaddoura's Final Video Captures Bombardment of Beit Lahia News Australia Fines Telegram $600,000 Over Terrorism, Child Abuse Content Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Sports Neymar Announced for Brazil's Preliminary List for 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers News Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly Inaugurates Two Indian Companies Arts & Culture New Archaeological Discovery from 26th Dynasty Uncovered in Karnak Temple Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War Arts & Culture Zahi Hawass: Claims of Columns Beneath the Pyramid of Khafre Are Lies News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks News Shell Unveils Cost-Cutting, LNG Growth Plan
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nicole Kidman to Receive Kering's ‘Women in Motion' Award in Cannes
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways PARIS — Nicole Kidman will receive another accolade in Cannes. The actress, who was given a special prize in 2017 when she starred in four films that year, will be honored with this year's Kering Women in Motion award. More from WWD 'I am proud to join this list of extraordinary women who've received this honor before me — artists and trailblazers I deeply admire. The Cannes Film Festival has been a part of my life for over 30 years and I am thrilled to add this incredible recognition to the many memories I've made here,' Kidman said. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Kering prize, which recognizes female artists and directors. 'For this anniversary edition of Women in Motion, Nicole Kidman, who fully embodies the spirit of the program, was an obvious choice. Through her artistic standards, her committed choices and her concrete action to change representations in cinema, she is a powerful illustration of what Women in Motion has been defending for a decade,' said Kering chairman and chief executive officer François-Henri Pinault. 'When a great actress works with nearly 20 female directors in the space of a few years, she shows the world just how vibrant and alive the talent of women in cinema really is. Through all these projects, and of course through her production company, Nicole Kidman has given those who write, direct and tell stories all the visibility they deserve,' said festival president Iris Knobloch. 'It is this strong, singular and resolutely modern voice that we are proud to celebrate this year with Kering,' Knobloch added. In 2017 one of Kidman's featured films was Sofia Coppola's 'The Beguiled,' and she used the press conference to call for more female filmmakers in the industry. Kidman said that only about 4 percent of major films that year were directed by women, and she publicly pledged to shoot with a female director every 18 months. In the eight years since, she has worked with 19 female directors, including Halina Reijin on 'Babygirl' and Mimi Cave on 'Holland,' as well as produced series with women directors such as 'Big Little Lies' under her Blossom Films banner. 'Her rich filmography, of which she is the patient author, and her masterful, unsettling performances have left their mark on the history of contemporary cinema,' said festival head Thierry Fremaux. 'Role after role, and with the nuances, strengths and flaws specific to each character, she has portrayed women who break free from their shackles.' The Kering Women in Motion gala will be held on May 18. The Cannes Film festival will run May 13 to 24. Best of WWD Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Picnic at Hanging Rock at 50: how a low-budget whodunnit became a cultural juggernaut
Half a century after it landed in cinemas, the extent of Picnic at Hanging Rock's enduring legacy seems both astonishing and improbable. This half-a-million-dollar bush whodunnit, in which a group of schoolgirls and their teacher inexplicably disappear during an outing to Hanging Rock in central Victoria on Valentine's Day 1900, has managed to make its mark among fashion's foremost names, infiltrate the world of teen magazines, and run an implausible gamut of cinematic influence. Alexander McQueen riffed on it in 2005; 20 years later, brands like Zimmermann are still turning Picnic into runway fodder in Paris. Sofia Coppola referenced it twice, first for a Marc Jacobs ad, and then again for her gauzy, sexy remake of The Beguiled. Today the film counts a new demographic in its ever-growing fanbase: cosmopolitan 20-somethings. Last year Peter Weir attended a screening of Picnic at the Cinemathèque française in Paris; he believes about 80% of attendees were young people. As Picnic marks its 50th anniversary, feted with a 4K rerelease, the director has a few theories about why the film has proved so evergreen. 'Not only is the mystery at the heart of the film unsolved,' Weir says, 'but there is no message in the film. No lecture, no polemic. Picnic belongs to the viewer.' Others find the film's success a bit of a head-scratcher. 'I truly love all of Peter Weir's films,' says Jacki Weaver, who played Minnie, the sympathetic maid at exclusive all-girls' boarding school Appleyard College. 'But Picnic is probably my second least favourite. That it has achieved a place in the pantheon is a tribute to the film-making genius of Peter Weir – and a mystery to me.' Picnic's journey to the pantheon began with a conversation in early 1973. Children's TV host Patricia Lovell – an aspiring producer, and a one-time colleague of Weir – had read Joan Lindsay's ethereal, idiosyncratic 1967 novel and recognised its cinematic potential. She wanted to know if the director – only 28, and yet to helm a full-length feature – agreed. Three months later, Lovell and Weir were in Langwarrin, 50km south of Melbourne, staking their claim to Picnic in the author's living room. 'Joan's main concern was the ending,' says Weir. 'If I'd suggested we had to have a solution to the mystery of the girls' disappearance I would, politely, have been shown the door.' Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Weir and Lovell's timing was perfect. By 1973 Australian film-makers had embraced the influence of 60s European art cinema, been liberated from the nation's tawdry history of cultural censorship, and were enjoying, for the first time, a suite of government-funded initiatives intended to revive the nation's moribund industry. The fruits of this era, dubbed the Australian New Wave, include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Newsfront, My Brilliant Career and Breaker Morant. Picnic at Hanging Rock, filmed in just over a month in early 1975, arrived at the crest of this wave: a perfect convergence of the right people at the right point in their careers. At the time, then-Sydney film festival director David Stratton – who visited the set – wrote of the 'pervasive feeling among everyone concerned that something very special was in the making'. Kim Dalton, second AD on Picnic, remembers it similarly: 'Clearly it had a resonance, potentially a poetry, a narrative that lifted it above just the normal run-of-the-mill feature film,' he says. 'I think everybody felt that.' That Picnic still casts so potent a spell rests as much upon its ambiguous ending as its iconic, sumptuous aesthetic: frilled lace dresses, sheaths of summer bushland, beautiful girls captured with a halo of backlight in moods of gaiety and longing. A helping of Beethoven's Emperor concerto, as well as editor Max Lemon's penchant for artsy superimposition, elevates the film's haughty airs. Where early-70s Australian films leaned into the colourful, ribald and commercial, Picnic was the departure, a decisive charge towards art. Visual references include British photographer David Hamilton, as well as Botticelli's Renaissance masterpiece Primavera, Frederic Leighton's Flaming June and, of course, William Ford's At the Hanging Rock. Pop artist Martin Sharp, who'd made album covers for Cream and been tried for obscenity while editing countercultural magazine Oz, also happened to be the world's foremost expert on Joan Lindsay's book. Weir kept him on hand as the film's 'artistic adviser'. Weaver fondly recalls Weir's 'delicate aesthetic sensibilities'. 'Peter possesses a fine intellect,' she says. 'The soul of a poet.' Turning up each day in a straw hat and sandals, he liked playing background music to generate atmosphere on set. 'Peter's persona was absolutely in keeping with the mood of the film,' says Dalton. 'There was something slightly ethereal about him.' If Weir concocted the ethereal, it was Russell Boyd's job to capture it. His photography wrung a liquid lusciousness out of Australian light that has secured Picnic's hallowed place in the annals of Tumblr and Instagram film fandom. He shifted frame rates, draped silk sheets in the tree line, and shot the girls' final minutes of innocence with, yes, a wedding veil over the lens. Sometimes his brilliance bubbled up extemporaneously. When a generator went crashing down the slopes of the Rock, Boyd ad-libbed a bounce light with some sheets of polystyrene. ('The sort of thing you make coolers out of,' he would later recall.) Assisted by John Seale – who would later win an Oscar for shooting The English Patient – Boyd made working on the Rock look easy; in fact it was anything but. This, after all, wasn't an orderly film set but an ancient volcanic formation. Hanging Rock – or Ngannelong – had served as a site of ceremony for Wurundjeri, Taungurung, and Dja Dja Wurrung men for tens of thousands of years. Judith Dorsman, costume designer on Picnic, tells Guardian Australia of her almost sisyphean struggle to keep everything pristine while shooting in the bush. 'All those white gloves,' she recalls. 'We had six million pairs of white gloves. Everything was white. And you're on a rock. My God.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Production soon decamped to Martindale Hall, a Georgian villa nestled in South Australia's Clare Valley, doubling as Appleyard College. Graham Walker, prop guy on Picnic, had a mansion to dress and no money to dress it with. With charisma and knack for improvisation, he made do. 'I'd find places, hire, buy, steal, borrow and get it back, all out of a Volkswagen Kombi van,' he says. 'Later I'd have people ring saying, 'That bed we lent you – when are you bringing it back?'' 'It was a wonderful shoot,' says Weaver. 'Like a long summer camp.' For the producing team, however, it was less idyllic. A week from her first shooting day, Picnic's top-billing star, Oscar-winning British actor Vivian Merchant, told the team she had pneumonia and could no longer play headmistress Mrs Appleyard. In the scramble for a replacement, six actors were contacted; only Welsh Bafta-winner Rachel Roberts was available. 'She was, I think, a terrible shock to everybody,' Pat Lovell told Cinema Papers in 1976, 'because I don't quite know whether the McElroys [the film's producers, Hal and Jim McElroy] or Peter realised how powerful an actress she was.' Powerful is putting it mildly. Her performance – intricate down to the alveolar trills – lends this rough-hewn bush flick its true star quality. But Roberts, a longtime alcoholic, managed to make some equally spectacular drama off screen. One night during the shoot, according to a 2004 documentary, she ran out of her motel room naked, hooting and yelling in the courtyard, as cast and crew watched on with bemusement. On other days, Guardian Australia was told, she could barely leave her motel room. Yet she was, beneath it all, a thespian to the bone: as Weir said in February, Roberts even refused to wear the wig made for Merchant because, in the traditions of the English theatre, it was not the done thing. 'Fame has to be left on the outskirts of the set,' says Weir. 'Once an actor crosses into that magic circle they have a job to do. The best, like Rachel, understand this.' At the time of its release, Picnic was the most seen and best reviewed Australian film to date. Its months-long run in domestic cinemas saw it gross $1.5m by March 1976. No Australian film had felt so consequential. 'Picnic was the first Australian film of that generation that was a serious film and an enormous success,' says Stratton. He remembers people seeing it 'again and again because they were trying to work out what happened'. Although US distributors didn't pick up on Picnic until 1979, it had by then broken into several far-flung markets. Audiences admired it at Cannes and in Canada; the Italians gave it a baroque poster and retitled it Il lungo pomeriggio di morte – The Long Afternoon of Death. The costume designer, Judith Dorsman, recalls how in the years after Picnic's release, its famed dresses were 'all hired out to girls to wear for weddings when they got married. They were worn to death. Every man and his dog got married in them'. The only one who didn't go for it, apparently, was Joan Lindsay. Speaking to Film Quarterly in 1980, Weir recalled that Lindsay had 'considerable reservations' about the film upon its release. 'You've changed the tone,' she told him. 'I didn't write it with that kind of feeling.' Weir's film is a haunted repertory of beautiful dreams, heraldic visions, memories gained and lost. If Lindsay had ensured her ambiguous ending would be respected, she could do nothing to prevent a cast and crew of great artists from feeling their way into the gaps of her story. The result was an art film with an Australian touch, ever beguiling all these years later – a film which, after five decades, still belongs to its viewers. The new 4K digital restoration of Picnic at Hanging Rock is screening at Palace cinemas in Melbourne, Ballarat, Sydney, Brisbane, Byron Bay, Canberra and Perth from until 16 April.
The Guardian
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Beguiled: Clint Eastwood's 1971 version is a sweaty, southern hothouse
On paper, Don Siegel's 1971 southern Gothic melodrama The Beguiled appears the perfect candidate for a remake: a critical and commercial failure in its own time, its infamous reputation helped it linger in the margins of popular consciousness. Sofia Coppola would have thought as much when she directed her own take on Thomas P. Cullinan's source novel in 2017. While Coppola's version is full of distinct beauty, Siegel's original stands alone in its unyielding thorniness – that may have seemed like a career misstep for star Clint Eastwood upon its initial release, but now stands clearly as one of the most potent subversions of the masculine archetype he helped popularise. Eastwood plays John McBurney, an unscrupulous corporal fighting for the Union during the waning days of the American civil war. Wounded in rural Mississippi, McBurney is found drenched in his own blood by 12-year-old Amy, out picking mushrooms despite the many potential dangers. Amy takes the wounded McBurney to the seminary where she boards. Soon, his presence both as an enemy soldier and a man throws the ecosystem of the Confederate-sympathising, all-women school into disarray. McBurney immediately sets to work smooth-talking his way into the good graces of formidable headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Geraldine Page), naive schoolteacher Edwina (Elizabeth Hartman), and Hallie (Mae Mercer), the enslaved woman forced to do much of the physical labour around the school. Being boarded up inside the school's music room with a grave injury to his leg does little to dissuade McBurney from imprinting his sexual presence upon both boarders and faculty any which way he can – through charm, manipulation, and ultimately physical dominance. It's a setup that has only grown queasier over time. Eastwood commits to the lurid and the artful in equal measure; his McBurney is both brutish charm and self-serving facetiousness. The bolder McBurney's lies and manipulations, the more relaxed and convincing he becomes, right up until the mask slips off to reveal a raging entitlement underneath. It's an all-timer scumbag performance. Geraldine Page too takes southern stereotypes and finds countless flecks of subtlety as the headmistress. But the most stinging member of the ensemble is Mae Mercer, whose portrayal of Hallie heightens the power dynamics at play within the school. McBurney is an anti-slavery Unionist; the camaraderie he initially offers Hallie, missing from her interactions with the other women, is ripped away when she doesn't comply with his demands. Her character is excised in Coppola's remake, robbing the material of a terrifyingly frank demonstration of the collision between power, race and gender. To capture these ever-shifting alliances, the camera careens, crawls, corkscrews and swoons, as lithe and pliant as the branches of the willow trees encircling the school. The all-girls boarding school – all muslin, white lace and straw hats set amid a forbidding natural landscape – plays like a demented inverse of Picnic At Hanging Rock. In candlelight and shadow, these images feel like a waking nightmare. Director Don Siegel was no stranger to crafting films that condemned the very things they seemed to embody. His earlier sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a political Rorschach test of the McCarthy era – the titular body snatchers construed either as communists or their McCarthyist pursuants depending on who you talked to. While on one hand, The Beguiled seems to channel a genuine chauvinistic fear of the consequences of second-wave feminism's sexual revolution, Siegel posits that men have good reason to fear: they are more than deserving of retribution. Revenge, here, isn't best served cold – but rather hot, sweaty and southern. The Beguiled is available to stream on Binge in Australia and available to rent in the UK and US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
Buzz Feed
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
The Internet Is Praising Nicole Kidman For Working With 19 Female Directors Over 8 Years
It feels like Nicole Kidman is everywhere lately. If we don't see her for the first couple seconds of every AMC movie, then she's undoubtedly starring in the year's biggest films and TV shows. But don't be fooled by her frequency. There's a method to the madness. In an interview for Time, Nicole revealed why she never stops working and how she's using her star power for women filmmakers. You probably didn't know that Nicole once pledged to work with a woman director every 18 months during the height of the #MeToo movement, and she's more than delivered on that promise. According to Time, Nicole has worked as an actor and producer with a woman director on 19 film and TV projects over the past eight years. The UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report states that women directed fewer than 15% of theatrical films. Nicole believes, "It can be changed, but it can only be changed by actually being in the films of women." In May 2017, at the Cannes Film Festival, Nicole told The Sydney Morning Herald that she made a conscious effort to work with women directors. "I think it's necessary. It's very much a part of my contribution now, pretty much to say every 18 months — I'm making a movie with a female director because that's the only way the statistics are going to change when other women start to, 'no I'm actually going to choose only a woman now.'" "Every 18 months, there has to be a female director in the equation," she said. Last year, when Nicole recalled her pledge in a Deadline interview, she felt in her head that 18 months might be "too long" and considered perhaps "every six months to a year" was more accurate. She was right. The 57-year-old actor surpassed her pledge with her involvement in projects attached to women filmmakers. There's Jane Campion's Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017): Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled (2017): David E. Kelley's Big Little Lies, which was directed by Andrea Arnold and Jean-Marc Vallée: Karyn Kusama's Destroyer (2018): David E. Kelley's The Undoing (2020), which was directed by Susanne Bier: Niko Tavernise Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch's Roar (2022): Lesli Linka Glatter and Clark Johnson's Love & Death (2023): Lulu Wang's Expats (2024): Jenna Lamia's The Perfect Couple (2024): Vicky Jenson's Spellbound (2024): Halina Reijn's Babygirl (2024): On top of all that, Nicole has upcoming projects as the executive producer and star of Samantha Strauss's The Last Anniversary, Liz Sarnoff's Scarpetta, and Mimi Cave's Holland (2025). Unsurprisingly, the internet is praising Nicole for intentionally working with women. "Nicole Kidman walks the walk! She's not just talking about supporting female directors, she's actively creating opportunities for them. This is what real change looks like," one person wrote. "See how easy is to find women from diverse backgrounds when you try?" this user suggested. Another user said, "It's easy to find women from different backgrounds when you really try. When you put in the effort, it's not hard. You just have to look and you'lll find them... Lol." "I love this. Good job putting women on. Especially when we're underpaid and overlooked," this person wrote. And finally, this person said, "Will never again ding this queen for overexposure and the nonstop onslaught of new work." So, next time you get ready to complain about Nicole being in every movie — remember it's for a good reason. Do you have a favorite Nicole Kidman movie? Share in the comments.
