Latest news with #TheFountainhead
Scroll.in
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Start the week with a film: ‘Mountainhead' is a grim satire about tech billionaires
The world hasn't yet recovered from the blockbuster series Succession. Meanwhile, the show's creator Jesse Armstrong has moved on to films, making his directing debut with a grim satire about tech billionaires. Mountainhead, which is out on JioHotstar, is a tract for the times. Written and directed by Armstrong, Mountainhead has characters who breathe a rarefied air that lets them believe that they can run the planet. Spoiler alert: they actually do. Four very rich men visibly modelled on Silicon Valley luminaries gather at a mountainside retreat for what is meant to be an 'intellectual salon'. The house is owned by lifestyle app founder Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), who is worth only $521 million, not as much as his 'best buds' Venis (Cory Michael Smith), Randall (Steve Carell) and Jeff (Ramy Youssef). It's a 'no deals, no meals, no high heels' occasion, Hugo says, one of the many hollow statements made over two days. The world beyond the mansion is spiralling out of control, thanks to artificial intelligence-powered disinformation flowing from Venis's social media site Traam. As riots rage and countries are pushed to the brink, Venis smirks, while Hugo and Randall debate the possible benefits. Only Jeff appears to be concerned about the real-world consequences of deepfakery. Or is Jeff's dissenting views, which lead to him being labelled a traitor, a reflection of the quartet's tendency to roast each other whenever they assemble? Words fly thick and fast, with enough insults to fill a book. Extraordinarily entitled, self-obsessed and rude as a result, the men speak their hearts out on bothersome government regulations and the inability of mortals to understand what they have created. The film's title is a play on Ayn Rand's libertarian bible The Fountainhead, which is namechecked by Jeff at one point. Despite the carefully controlled temperature on the inside, the thin air on the outside seeps into the house, setting off chaos. The veneer of friendship barely conceals competitiveness between the men, for whom comparing net worth is serious business. The confined setting plays to Jesse Armstrong's strengths. The 109-minute film's critique of amoral Silicon Valley culture, while a bit overstretched, is carried out through strongly etched characters and superbly judged performances. Ramy Youssef is brilliant as the casually dressed, politically aware Jeff, who appears to have wandered in from a jog. Cory Michael Smith nails the smooth-faced and soulless social media site owner whose resemblance to a certain someone is chilling. The savage exchanges are initially hilarious, but the humour is soon overtaken by tragedy, and then fear. That too is intentional in a movie in which grandiose pronouncements have the ring of shocking truth about the world inhabited by billions but controlled by the billionaires. Play Also start the week with these films:
Arab Times
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Arab Times
A tech bro-pocalypse in ‘Mountainhead'
LOS ANGELES, June 1, (AP): 'Succession' fans rejoice. Jesse Armstrong has again gathered together a conclave of uber-wealthy megalomaniacs in a delicious satire. 'Mountainhead,' which the 'Succession' creator wrote and directed, is a new made-for-HBO movie that leaves behind the backstabbing machinations of media moguls for the not-any-better power plays of tech billionaires. Or, at least, three billionaires. Their host for a poker weekend in the mountains at a sprawling estate named after Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' is Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), the solo member of the group not to reach, as they say, 'B-nut' status. His net worth is a paltry $521 million. The others are three of the wealthiest men in the world. Randall (Steve Carell) is their senior, a kind of Steve Jobs-like mentor they all call 'Papa Bear.' Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who runs the world's leading AI company, calls Randall the 'Dark Money Gandalf.' Lastly, but maybe most notably, is Venis (Cory Michael Smith), whose social media platform boasts 4 billion users globally. But the latest update to Venis' platform, named Traam, is causing havoc. As the four gather at Hugo's isolated perch in the Utah mountains, news reports describe violence sweeping across Asia due to an outbreak of deepfakes on Traam that have wrecked any sense of reality. Yet what's real for this quartet of digital oligarchs - none of whom has a seemingly direct reallife corollary, all of whom are immediately recognizable - is more to the point of 'Mountainhead,' a frightfully credible comedy about the delusions of tech utopianism. Each of the four, with the exception of some hesitancy on the part of Jeff, are zealous futurist. On the way to Mountainhead, a doctor gives Randall a fatal diagnosis that he outright refuses. 'All the things we can do and we can't fix one tiny little piece of gristle in me?' Dialogue But together, in Armstrong's dense, highly quotable dialogue, their arrogance reaches hysterical proportions. While the cast is altogether excellent, this is most true with Smith's Venis, a tech bro to end all tech bros. As the news around the world gets worse and worse, his certainty doesn't waver. Earth, itself, no longer hold much interest for him. 'I just want to get us transhuman!' he shouts. Progress (along with net worth) is their cause, and much of the farce of 'Mountainhead' derives from just how much any semblance of compassion for humanity has left the building. It's in the way Venis blanches at the mention of his baby son. It's in the way, as death counts escalate in the news on their phones, they toy with world politics like kids at a Risk board. In one perfectly concise moment, Venis asks, sincerely, 'Do you believe in other people?' If 'Succession' filtered its media satire through family relationships, 'Mountainhead' runs on the dynamics of bro-styled male friendship. There are beefs, hug-it-out moments, passive-aggressive put downs and eruptions of anger. Part of the fun of Armstrong's film isn't just how their behavior spills into a geopolitical events but how it manifests, for example, in which room everyone gets. All of 'Mountainhead' unfolds in the one location, with white mountaintops stretching in the distance outside the fl oor-to-ceiling windows. It could be a play. Instead, though, it's something that either hardly exists anymore or, maybe, exists everywhere: the made-for-TV movie. There's no lack of films made for streaming services, but many of them fall into some in-between aesthetic that couldn't fill a big screen and feel a touch disposable on the small screen. But 'Mountainhead' adheres to the tradition of the HBO movie; it's lean, topical and a fine platform for its actors. And for Armstrong, it's a way to keep pursuing some of the timely themes of 'Succession' while dispensing lines like: 'Coup-out the US? That's a pretty big enchilada.' 'Mountainhead,' an HBO Films release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 109 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
‘Jesse Armstrong injects steroids into how people use and abuse power': Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef on working with Succession creator in Mountainhead
Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, who produced and wrote the Emmy Award-winning show, is all set to make his directorial debut with Mountainhead, a film also about a pack of crazy, perverse, self-consumed billionaires. Four of the wealthiest billionaires of America meet at a weekend villa on a mountain head as the world goes to war, thanks to their capitalistic excesses. The title is a cheeky take on Ayn Rand's 1943 seminal book The Fountainhead, and a character even refers to the interior designer of the mountain-head villa as Ayn Bland. In an exclusive interview with SCREEN, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef, who play two of the four billionaires, talk about working with Jesse Armstrong, the tone-deafness of the modern billionaire, and how Elon Musk-like tech billionaires are shaking things up. I love the scene in which the four of you, all billionaires, scale up a snow-clad mountain, write your respective net worth on your bare chests, and then scream that at the top of your lungs. Do you feel like a billionaire needs to have a bit of crazy in them? Cory: (Laughs) That's a great question! Do they need to be? No, they can be. That much money just protects you from your own behaviour and failures. Not physically, if you mess up your money, otherwise in terms of personal behaviour, you're allowed to do a lot, which is a problem. Ramy: Ya, you're allowed to remain a child or whatever it is that you want. And I just want to tell you that the scene, that you describe so brilliantly, it was so cold! And I just want you to know that. After watching Succession and working with him in Mountainhead, what is it about Jesse Armstrong that he gets the elite, the entitled, the wealthy so right? Ramy: He knows how people talk. That's really interesting because that's not how he talks. He's not writing what he knows. He's one of the kindest people I've worked with, especially considering how brilliant he is. It's all in the dialogue. We get scripts all the time to act in, and usually it takes what, 15 pages to figure out what it is. With Jesse, you'll have it known in five minutes. Because it's so clear. Cory: Yeah, and he injects steroids in the way people use and abuse power. He's able to write it in a really disturbing and entertaining way, unlike anybody else. I read a review which referred to Mountainhead as 'White Lotus winter retreat.' Do you see that parallel? And how do you think the singular setting of a luxurious villa atop a snow mountain add to the film's themes? Ramy: People just tend to compare things with other things that just came out because our memories are getting shorter by the moment. So I don't see that link, but what I do see is the isolation allows these guys to not want to confront their feelings. But because there's an actual and a metaphorical blizzard around them, they're confined to face their feelings in a way they don't want to. That makes the pressure cooker really unique and fun. Cory: And unlike The White Lotus, and to the disappointment of a lot of viewers, it's also not very romantic (laughs). Also Read | Succession: Bidding goodbye to one of the greatest television dramas of our time Cory, your character in the film defends the misinformation on his social media platform Tram (Twitter + Instagram?) by arguing that when movies were first made, the audience thought the train on the screen is going to hit them. But the solution was not to stop making movies, but make as many, and of different kinds. Do you agree with that justification? Cory: Generally, if you barrage people with so much information, it confuses, scares, and irritates them. They get a little sensory overload. They can't process all of it. Ya, we see that happening in our culture in a lot of respects. Ramy: Yeah, and I don't believe in trying to stop technology, mainly because that's impossible. So I'm an accelerationist to a level. But we'll have to figure out our own boundaries in terms of technology. We needed to do that even before this AI boom anyway. I think people will look back at this time and get shocked at how much we were on our phones because there'll be a new etiquette, a new way of interacting with these things. Hopefully, in a place where there isn't any tech at all. That's the best option! Cory: That's so optimistic I may have to choose not to believe it. Mountainhead drops on Jio Hotstar this Sunday on June 1.
San Francisco Chronicle
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: Jesse Armstrong's ‘Mountainhead' imagines a tech bro-pocalypse
'Succession' fans rejoice. Jesse Armstrong has again gathered together a conclave of uber-wealthy megalomaniacs in a delicious satire. 'Mountainhead,' which the 'Succession' creator wrote and directed, is a new made-for-HBO movie that leaves behind the backstabbing machinations of media moguls for the not-any-better power plays of tech billionaires. Or, at least, three billionaires. Their host for a poker weekend in the mountains at a sprawling estate named after Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' is Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), the only member of the group who hasn't reached, as they say, 'B-nut' status. His net worth is a paltry $521 million. The others are three of the wealthiest men in the world: Randall (Steve Carell) is their senior, a kind of Steve Jobs-like mentor they all call 'Papa Bear.' Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who runs the world's leading artificial intelligence company, calls Randall the 'Dark Money Gandalf.' Lastly, but maybe most notably, is Venis (Cory Michael Smith), whose social media platform boasts 4 billion users globally. But the latest update to Venis' platform, named Traam, is causing havoc. As the four gather at Hugo's isolated perch in the Utah mountains, news reports describe violence sweeping across Asia due to an outbreak of deepfakes on Traam that have wrecked any sense of reality. Yet what's real for this quartet of digital oligarchs — none of whom has a seemingly direct real-life corollary, all of whom are immediately recognizable — is more to the point of 'Mountainhead,' a frightfully credible comedy about the delusions of tech utopianism. Each of the four, with the exception of some hesitancy on the part of Jeff, are zealous futurists. On the way to Mountainhead, a doctor gives Randall a fatal diagnosis that he outright refuses: 'All the things we can do, and we can't fix one tiny little piece of gristle in me?' But together, in Armstrong's dense, highly quotable dialogue, their arrogance reaches hysterical proportions. While the cast is altogether excellent, this is most true with Smith's Venis, a tech bro to end all tech bros. As the news around the world gets worse and worse, his certainty doesn't waver. Earth, itself, no longer hold much interest for him. 'I just want to get us transhuman!' he shouts. Progress (along with net worth) is their cause, and much of the farce of 'Mountainhead' derives from just how much any semblance of compassion for humanity has left the building. It's in the way Venis blanches at the mention of his baby son. It's in the way, as death counts escalate in the news on their phones, they toy with world politics like kids playing the 'Risk' board game. In one perfectly concise moment, Venis asks, sincerely, 'Do you believe in other people?' If 'Succession' filtered its media satire through family relationships, 'Mountainhead' runs on the dynamics of bro-styled male friendship. There are beefs, hug-it-out moments, passive-aggressive put-downs and eruptions of anger. Part of the fun of Armstrong's film isn't just how their behavior spills into a geopolitical events but how it manifests, for example, in which room everyone gets. All of 'Mountainhead' unfolds in the one location, with white mountaintops stretching in the distance outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. It could be a play. Instead, though, it's something that either hardly exists anymore or, maybe, exists everywhere: the made-for-TV movie. There's no lack of films made for streaming services, but many of them fall into some in between aesthetic that couldn't fill a big screen and feel a touch disposable on the small screen. But 'Mountainhead' adheres to the tradition of the HBO movie; it's lean, topical and a fine platform for its actors. And for Armstrong, it's a way to keep pursuing some of the timely themes of 'Succession' while dispensing lines like: 'Coup-out the U.S.? That's a pretty big enchilada.'
San Francisco Chronicle
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Movie Review: A tech bro-pocalypse in Jesse Armstrong's 'Mountainhead'
'Succession' fans rejoice. Jesse Armstrong has again gathered together a conclave of uber-wealthy megalomaniacs in a delicious satire. 'Mountainhead,' which the 'Succession' creator wrote and directed, is a new made-for-HBO movie that leaves behind the backstabbing machinations of media moguls for the not-any-better power plays of tech billionaires. Or, at least, three billionaires. Their host for a poker weekend in the mountains at a sprawling estate named after Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' is Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), the solo member of the group not to reach, as they say, 'B-nut' status. His net worth is a paltry $521 million. The others are three of the wealthiest men in the world. Randall (Steve Carell) is their senior, a kind of Steve Jobs-like mentor they all call 'Papa Bear.' Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who runs the world's leading AI company, calls Randall the 'Dark Money Gandalf.' Lastly, but maybe most notably, is Venis (Cory Michael Smith), whose social media platform boasts 4 billion users globally. But the latest update to Venis' platform, named Traam, is causing havoc. As the four gather at Hugo's isolated perch in the Utah mountains, news reports describe violence sweeping across Asia due to an outbreak of deepfakes on Traam that have wrecked any sense of reality. Yet what's real for this quartet of digital oligarchs — none of whom has a seemingly direct real-life corollary, all of whom are immediately recognizable — is more to the point of 'Mountainhead,' a frightfully credible comedy about the delusions of tech utopianism. Each of the four, with the exception of some hesitancy on the part of Jeff, are zealous futurists. On the way to Mountainhead, a doctor gives Randall a fatal diagnosis that he outright refuses. 'All the things we can do and we can't fix one tiny little piece of gristle in me?' But together, in Armstrong's dense, highly quotable dialogue, their arrogance reaches hysterical proportions. While the cast is altogether excellent, this is most true with Smith's Venis, a tech bro to end all tech bros. As the news around the world gets worse and worse, his certainty doesn't waver. Earth, itself, no longer hold much interest for him. 'I just want to get us transhuman!' he shouts. Progress (along with net worth) is their cause, and much of the farce of 'Mountainhead' derives from just how much any semblance of compassion for humanity has left the building. It's in the way Venis blanches at the mention of his baby son. It's in the way, as death counts escalate in the news on their phones, they toy with world politics like kids at a Risk board. In one perfectly concise moment, Venis asks, sincerely, 'Do you believe in other people?' If 'Succession' filtered its media satire through family relationships, 'Mountainhead' runs on the dynamics of bro-styled male friendship. There are beefs, hug-it-out moments, passive-aggressive put downs and eruptions of anger. Part of the fun of Armstrong's film isn't just how their behavior spills into a geopolitical events but how it manifests, for example, in which room everyone gets. All of 'Mountainhead' unfolds in the one location, with white mountaintops stretching in the distance outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. It could be a play. Instead, though, it's something that either hardly exists anymore or, maybe, exists everywhere: the made-for-TV movie. There's no lack of films made for streaming services, but many of them fall into some in-between aesthetic that couldn't fill a big screen and feel a touch disposable on the small screen. But 'Mountainhead' adheres to the tradition of the HBO movie; it's lean, topical and a fine platform for its actors. And for Armstrong, it's a way to keep pursuing some of the timely themes of 'Succession' while dispensing lines like: 'Coup-out the U.S.? That's a pretty big enchilada.'
