Notizie

American director Todd Haynes will be honored by his French peers at this year’s Cannes film festival, receiving the lifetime achievement Carrosse d’Or award from the French Film Directors’ Guild.

The queer cinema pioneer, whose filmography includes Carol, Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, I’m Not There and May December, will receive the award on May 14 at the opening ceremony for Directors’ Fortnight, the Cannes festival sidebar organized by the guild.

“From Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story to Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Carol and May December, your films have been inhabited by a great faith in cinema’s experimental and narrative possibilities,” the guild said of Haynes in a statement. “Your genius is to move and mesmerize us in a single move, combining formal virtuoso with infinite empathy and tenderness. Your films are a haven for anyone who knows the price they have paid for their feelings and their difference.

Actor Heath Ledger died tragically young in 2008 at the age of 28. The loss of the actor at such a young age not only was a huge blow to his family, friends and fans, but also left a huge hole in film history since we will never know what the actor would have accomplished in his later years.

It makes his death even more tragic in a strange way in that Ledger just seemed to be hitting his stride as an actor. His performance as The Joker in "The Dark Knight," released shortly after his death, brought him critical raves and a posthumous Oscar as Best Supporting Actor.

Ledger began acting as a teenager on television in his native Australia. A series of successful roles there and in a few Australian films led to him being cast in the American teenage comedy “10 Things I Hate About You.” With his teen idol good looks,...

In 1975, Vera Brandes, then an 18-year-old student and part-time promoter, organized a concert for Keith Jarrett in Cologne, a recording of which became “The Köln Concert,” the best-selling solo jazz album ever.

Half a century later, director Ido Fluk is in Berlin premiering “Köln 75” about the woman behind this monumental moment in jazz history. One that, ironically, Jarrett has no desire to revive. Fluk speaks to Variety about the fun film – starring John Magaro, recently seen in “September 5,” as Keith Jarrett and rising German star Mala Emde as Vera Brandes – and why it was important “to give Vera the attention, the limelight that she deserves.”

How did the project germinate?

I read a story somewhere in which Vera was mentioned. And I was like: “That’s kind of interesting: she really made this happen, and she’s not getting much attention for it.” I thought it would make a really interesting film.

Tilda Swinton got political as she accepted Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement at its opening ceremony on Thursday night, saying “the inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch.”

In a poetic speech, the Oscar winner lauded the festival as “a borderless realm with no policy of exclusion, persecution or deportation.” The “great independent state of cinema,” she added, is “innately inclusive — immune to efforts of occupation, colonization, takeover, ownership or the development of riviera property.”

She then acknowledged that “state-perpetrated and internationally-enabled mass murder is currently actively terrorizing more than one part of our world,” though she didn’t go into specifics.

“These are facts. They need to be faced,” Swinton continued. “So for the sake of clarity, let’s name it. The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch. I’m here to name it without hesitation or doubt in my mind and to lend...

Ask Ed Lachman about the use of color and the cinematographer provides a perfect layman’s primer in art education.

“Why are hospitals blue and green? Those are restful, peaceful colors. Why are fast food restaurants red and orange? Because those activate our passion and our appetite,” Lachman said in his laid-back, easygoing voice. “Theoreticians on painting, like Goethe in his book in 1810 or Josef Albers in the 1960s, have talked a lot about how color affects the viewer. It’s all very primitive and emotional and I love to play around with that.”

Lachman, for sure, plays with color, as well as four different film formats, in Pablo Larraín’ “Maria,” which depicts the final days of opera star Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie). The work has earned Lachman his fourth Oscar nomination, following nods for “Far From Heaven,” “Carol” and “El Conde.”

Renowned for his artful, adventurous lensing, Lachman recently...

Cate Blanchett “never, ever” thought she “could work in the film industry.”

“I was resigned, happily, to a career in theater. I didn’t think I was that girl. There was a sense women had a certain ‘shelf life’ in the film industry and a certain type of women got to parade on the screen and others didn’t,” she said at the Rotterdam Film Festival Saturday.

Watching Visconti’s “The Stranger” awakened her love for the cinema.

“Our French teacher took us to see it. I learnt more about cinema than I did about French. I don’t think I’ve seen it since, but I was hypnotized by the cinematic storytelling. Also, we grew up in such an incredible moment in Australian cinema-making. I remember watching ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock,’ ‘Sweetie,’ ‘An Angel at My Table.’ I thought: ‘Maybe I will be able to step into that frame...

“Emilia Pérez” Best Actress Oscar nominee Karla Sofía Gascón apologized Thursday for a string of resurfaced tweets that she admitted “have caused hurt.”

The since-deleted tweets, which had been exposed on social media months ago but were dug up again in increasing numbers as the day went on, expressed anti-Islam and -vaccination views, disparaged George Floyd as a “hustler” and complained about previous Oscars ceremonies for being too woke.

“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” Gascón said through Netflix’s PR team. “As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

The attention on her past tweets came after Gascón had come under fire for alleging in...

Audiences are probably pretty accustomed to hearing something like "they just don't make 'em like they used to anymore" in regard to movies. It is definitely a different era of cinema where the big-budget blockbusters get all the attention while the independent and grounded genre films fall under the radar of larger audiences. What's interesting is that the blockbuster trend started some time ago in the late '70s and early '80s when directors like Lucas, Scott and Cameron changed the face of genre filmmaking. One of the genres most affected was science fiction, and it seems like most contemporary big blockbusters exist in this genre. However, popcorn movies are losing more and more substance as the years go by. The remakes and reboots are oversaturating the market, along with the newer interconnected universes.

Back when studios took chances on all kinds of movies, hidden gems and unexpected hits would delightfully find an audience.

David Cross is a man of discerning cinematic taste, as evidenced by the time he sacrificed a $150,000 bonus just to warn all of America not to see his newest movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.

On the latest episode of his podcast, Senses Working Overtime with David Cross, the Arrested Development star chatted with Nick Kroll, and a not insignificant portion of their conversation was about movies.

“I have been in some good movies. I’ve also been in some shit movies,” Cross confessed while somehow resisting the urge to dunk on Chipwrecked again. Although he did admit that most of the films he’s made are actually pretty good. Like how he played Allen Ginsberg in the Bob Dylan-inspired I’m Not There. And also Allen Ginsberg’s father in the Daniel Radcliffe movie Kill Your Darlings.

“I figured you’d played the entire Ginsberg catalog,” Kroll joked. “If...

The 97th annual Oscar nominations were revealed Thursday morning in Los Angeles. And the newest lineup featured a number of historic milestones. Among them this year:

Best Picture With 13 nominations, “Emilia Perez” is the most nominated non-English-language film of all time, beating the record of 10 nominations held by “Roma” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” “Emilia Pérez” and “I’m Still Here” are also the 18th and 19th films predominantly not in the English language to be nominated for Best Picture. Both are nominated for Best International Feature – the first time ever that two nominees from that category have also been nominated for Best Picture. At 3:35, “The Brutalist” is the sixth-longest Best Picture nominee, a few minutes longer than two recent Martin Scorsese movies, “The Irishman” (3:29) and “Killers of the Flower Moon” (3:26). “Cleopatra,” from 1963, is the all-time longest Best Picture nominee at 4:11. Acting categories Seven acting nominees are...

James Mangold’s handsome portrait of the enigmatic singer’s stratospheric early career boasts a barnstorming lead performance yet often slips into heavy-handedness

It’s a remarkable performance. Star of the moment Timothée Chalamet inhabits the loose-limbed, live-wire physicality of the young Bob Dylan and makes an impressively good fist of capturing the frayed hessian of his distinctive voice. Acoustic guitars are plucked and harmonicas honked with the effortless fluency of someone who learned to play almost before they could walk. Chalamet’s Dylan sucks so fervently on his cigarettes it’s as though he’s breathing in the genius of the musical heroes who came before him. But while he radiates insouciant charisma and channels the once-in-a-lifetime talent, he reveals next to nothing about Dylan as a person. This is not necessarily a failure in Chalamet’s acting. It’s a deliberate choice – the film is called A Complete Unknown,...

With “The World According to Allee Willis,” director Alexis Manya Spraic offers a welcome change in an era in which documentary filmmaking frequently follows established patterns. The film beautifully tells the story of a songwriter whose music you’ve probably sung along to, even if you don’t know her name. Willis’s music can be heard in many popular songs, from “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire to the theme song for “Friends,” but her story hasn’t been shared publicly until now.

This documentary is special because of the unique way it tells a life story. Spraic uses Willis’s extensive self-documentation to guide the story rather than following a typical chronological structure. This is reminiscent of Agnès Varda’s later works, where the subject becomes both the storyteller and the subject, creating a rich narrative that feels both intimate and broad.

With an estimated 60 million records sold and a creative output spanning music,...

Now that awards season is close, everyone is invested in guessing and figuring out which movies and creatives will be nominated in 2025. While the buzz is always the greatest around the big seven categories of director, movie, screenplay, lead, and supporting actors and actresses, the costume design category always presents an interesting opportunity for discussions and to revisit the best movie costumes of the year gone by. 2023's Barbie movie had amazing costumes for Ryan Gosling's Ken, and now it's time to figure out what is the 2024 equivalent.

The best Halloween costumes of 2024 are a good place to start for highlights of the most culturally influential costume moments of the year. From Hollywood blockbusters to indie horror movies, memorable costumes have defined the year, and there's already buzz about costumes for movies releasing next year. James Gunn's new Superman movie starring David Corenswet has an official trailer now,...

The release of A Complete Unknown on Christmas Day brought the legend of Bob Dylan to a new generation, starring one of the era's most beloved actors, Timothée Chalamet, as the perennial American icon. For some, it might be their first exposure to the legendary artist; for others, it might be a new telling of a story that they already know by heart. But while A Complete Unknown might be the first film focused solely on Dylan's early years, it's not the first film to explore what makes him such a mythical figure in pop culture.

There have been documentaries like Martin Scorsese's comprehensive No Direction Home from 2005, or D.A. Pennebaker's fly-on-the-wall look at Dylan's 1965 U.K. tour Don't Look Back, all of which capture something of the artist, but never a complete picture. For an artist as notoriously slippery as Bob Dylan, possibly no single film could...

“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.”

This quote from Bob Dylan, attributed to an interview he gave to the now defunct Beat Magazine in May 1965, might as well be an encapsulation of not just Dylan’s career as one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time, but also his life as a whole. For as much as Dylan’s songs, especially his early work, seem to be tied up in spirit of the times in which they were released, at they’re core, they represent the singer’s own journey, sense of observation, and influences, from Woody Guthrie to Jesus Christ, as well as his personal desires as a constant wanderer. At the moment this quote was given, Dylan himself was breaking from the folk traditions that birthed his entry into the popular culture and redefining himself as an electric musician. From here, Dylan would...

Bob Dylan has won a variety of prestigious awards in his lifetime. The iconic songwriter and musician scored his breakout hit with his 1963 sophomore album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and is known for songs such as "Like a Rolling Stone," "The Times They Are a-Changin'," and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." Some of the most iconic Bob Dylan albums include 1975's Blood on the Tracks and 1997's Time Out of Mind as well as the 1965 albums Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, for which he initially drew controversy for bringing electric instrumentation into folk music.

Dylan's life has been brought to the screen multiple times in movies including the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home and the experimental Todd Haynes drama I'm Not There, in which Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Marcus Carl Franklin all play different facets of Dylan. One of the most...

Timothée Chalamet’s turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown earned praise from critics, including Rolling Stone’s David Fear, but like any biopic, some details and facts get left out or rearranged. The notoriously mercurial Dylan, who had input in the James Mangold biopic, even slipped a made-up scene into the movie.

The movie is based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, which documents Dylan’s pivotal 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival. His plugged-in performance of “Like A Rolling Stone” was controversial among festival attendees, who expected an acoustic set.

When Timothée Chalamet gets out of the car in Manhattan at the start of A Complete Unknown, he’s already the iconic Bob Dylan—dressed from head to toe in corduroy that’s too big for him, a scarf that isn’t warm enough for the winter, and carrying little but a guitar case.

Plot: Four years in the life of Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet), from his discovery by Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) through his eventual rise to fame as a folk singer, through his controversial decision to go electric on the eve of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Review: It’s hard to accurately sum up just how much of a profound effect Bob Dylan had on pop culture. One of the greatest songwriters of all time, for sixty years now, Dylan’s been sitting at the top of the pantheon of music greats, but oddly enough, outside of Todd Haynes’s impressionistic ode to his legend – I’m Not There, and a series of documentaries by Martin Scorsese, no one’s ever tried to tell his story as a traditional biopic until now. Sporting an impeccably assembled cast, James Mangold’s made an excellent companion piece to his own Walk the Line in that...

Timothée Chalamet is coming off a critically acclaimed portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, but he once rapped as Timmy Tim during a high school talent show performance. Chalamet brought that same chaotic energy to a new Nardwuar interview, showing off his deep preparation for playing Dylan and expressing his appreciation for hip-hop.

Filmed at Record Surplus in Santa Monica, California, the interview began with our Film Performer of the Year rolling on the floor to meet Nardwuar. He then read a Minnesota proclamation in its entirety while channeling the Micro Machines guy.

With the tone set, Nardwuar gifted Chalamet with a record by the rapper and actor formerly known as Common Sense, whom he praised as an inspiration to idols like Kid Cudi and Lupe Fiasco.

After a brief detour into an early role in Law & Order, Nardwuar skillfully connected Chalamet’s Times Square viewing of The Dark Knight...

Timothée Chalamet is coming off a critically acclaimed portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, but he once rapped as Timmy Tim during a high school talent show performance. Chalamet brought that same chaotic energy to a new Nardwuar interview, showing off his deep preparation for playing Dylan and expressing his appreciation for hip-hop.

Filmed at Record Surplus in Santa Monica, California, the interview began with our Film Performer of the Year rolling on the floor to meet Nardwuar. He then read a Minnesota proclamation in its entirety while channeling the Micro Machines guy.

With the tone set, Nardwuar gifted Chalamet with a record by the rapper and actor formerly known as Common Sense, whom he praised as an inspiration to idols like Kid Cudi and Lupe Fiasco.

After a brief detour into an early role in Law & Order, Nardwuar skillfully connected Chalamet’s Times Square viewing of The Dark Knight...

Bob Dylan is certainly not a subject that has been lacking in terms of screen representation, as his life story has been the subject of many influential films, including Todd Haynes’ kaleidoscopic biopic I’m Not There and Martin Scorsese’s epic documentary No Direction Home. However, James Mangold was able to showcase a different point in Dylan’s history with A Complete Unknown, which focused on the period in the 1960s in which he switched from traditional folk music to the use of electronically amplified instruments. Timothée Chalamet is pretty much perfect casting, and is able to nail all the mannerisms that Dylan fans have come to know by heart. However, A Complete Unknown is also an incredibly compelling portrayal of Joan Baez, who is played in a breakout performance by Top Gun: Maverick star Monica Barbaro.

Let’s face it. Theatre has been the most successful place for stories about popular musicians. Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” is selling big on Broadway, as is “Mj.” “A Beautiful Noise,” about Neil Diamond ‘s professional and personal history, had a nice run there, and is touring the country after its run in Los Angeles. We’ve had “Tina,” “Jersey Boys,” The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud,” Carole King’s “Beautiful” and others. A new musical is being tested now about Frank Sinatra. But the most exciting news arrives this spring, when recent Tony winner Jonathan Groff portrays Bobby Darin.

But movies about musical stars? A mixed bag. (including Kevin Spacey in a bad one about Bobby Darin) Documentaries have been the safest form to chronicle the life of famous musicians: Ones about David Crosby, Joan Baez, Springsteen, and Linda Ronstadt. And, of course, “Woodstock” and Martin Scorsese’s “Last Waltz.

You probably don’t know her name, but you definitely know her face — bright and beaming, covered in chestnut hair, a few feet away from a blue Volkswagen bus. She’s wearing a green loden coat she just bought on a eight-month trip to Italy, a perfect match for the black leather boots on her feet, trudging through the slushy snow of New York’s Greenwich Village. She’s clutching the arm of Bob Dylan, whose hands are keeping warm in his denim pockets. His brown suede coat is absolutely...

A splash of auteurish openings on Christmas Day, with Focus Features’ Nosferatu, Searchlight’s A Complete Unknown, A24’s naughty Babygirl and Rachel Morrison’s The Fire Inside, is poised to send the holiday week’s box office to a potential $280 million tally. That puts it on par with last year’s holiday week that was boosted by Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Wonka, Migration and The Color Purple.

Christmas week 2021 holds the post-Covid record for the most made by movies with $292.4M during that time, a majority of that from Sony/Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Still, it’s interesting. Even though there isn’t a massive, oxygen-sucking tentpole in the marketplace, the heavy supply of family titles in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Mufasa, Wicked and Moana 2. plus the new offerings, are making for a lucrative season. Comscore projects we’ll end 2024 at $8.75 billion, just 3% shy of 2023’s $9 billion tally.

What Was Christian Bale’s first film? ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

Although, Christian Bale’s first movie wasn’t some indie flick or feel-good family drama. Nope, it was Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987), and Bale was just 13. A war epic as a debut? Bold.

Let’s set the scene. Bale, a Welsh kid with zero formal acting training, landed a Spielberg movie. He played Jim Graham, a privileged British boy whose world is flipped upside down when he’s tossed into a WWII internment camp. Heavy stuff, right? But Bale owned it. Critics couldn’t stop raving about this kid, and Spielberg knew he had gold on his hands.

But here’s the thing about early fame—it comes with a price. After all the buzz, Bale went full ninja mode on his personal life, dodging the spotlight whenever he could. This wasn’t some child star chasing...

James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown takes its title from one of the most famous rock songs of all time and most of its information from Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties. Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone” has been covered by artists as disparate as Bob Marley and the Wailers, Green Day and the actual Rolling Stones, while Wald’s book uses 368 pages to explain the cultural significance of just 24 hours in Bob Dylan’s storied career.

A whole industry has grown up around Dylan, with followers collecting books about him, bootleg recordings and, in one case, even rooting through his trash can (a stunt that crossed a line for more serious “Dylanologists”). He has been touring regularly, all over the world, for 60 years, and yet he remains a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

Music biopics are some of the most complicated films to make. There’s endless room for interpretation, style, exploration, and creativity — and it’s all anchored by a subject worthy of a closer look. Unfortunately, that closer look doesn’t always end up worthy of its subject. For as many incredible music biopics over the years, there have been just as many failed attempts to crystalize the careers of the beloved melody makers of history.

As for James Mangold’s Timothee Chalamet-starring Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, it lies somewhere towards the latter. Mangold had big shoes to fill on this project, ones that previously fit like a glove. The filmmaker is responsible for the impeccable 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, a film that is considered a pinnacle of biographical filmmaking — and naturally, a film that looms large like Mangold’s latest is bound to be stacked against his triumphant Cash piece.

From the moment he stumbled out of the Midwest and into Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan, né Robert Zimmerman, has blurred truth and fabulism in ways that resist the subsequent decades of obsessive study of his life and work. And the best attempts to unpack the artist, from Martin Scorsese’s willfully slippery documentaries to Todd Haynes’s cubist ciné-portrait I’m Not There, have engaged with this tall-tale aspect of Dylan’s life.

At first glance, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, an account of Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) arrival in New York and rapid ascent to folk stardom, ostensibly follows suit in accepting the mystery of this iconoclastic artist. On an early date with girlfriend Sylvie, the pair see the film Now, Voyager, which she interprets as the story of a woman overcoming her past to become her true self. Dylan disagrees, saying that Bette Davis’s protagonist simply constructs...

“Walk the Line” was hardly the first Hollywood movie that dared to serve up a facsimile-driven portrait of a singularly original artist, as though lightning-in-a-bottle creative genius could ever hope to be recaptured by studio notes and a three-act structure, but if writer-director James Mangold didn’t invent the standard-issue music biopic, I would argue that he committed the far more reprehensible crime of perfecting it — of so perfectly crystallizing the sub-genre in the public imagination that it had to be destroyed from several different angles at once. Arriving at essentially the same time some two years later, Jake Kasdan’s “Walk Hard” and Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There” both humiliated Mangold’s 2005 Johnny Cash biopic for its formulaic inauthenticity; one was a parody and the other a prism, but each of those (under-performing) cult classics so devastatingly exposed the paint-by-numbers essence of Mangold’s Oscar-winning hit that Hollywood naturally...

The Bob Dylan Cinematic Universe is a-changing. Dozens of films about the legendary singer-songwriter already exist — including two documentaries by Martin Scorsese, the experimental 2007 drama I’m Not There from Todd Haynes (which saw no fewer than six actors take on Dylan’s famous drawl), and the bizarre 2003 drama Masked And Anonymous, in which Dylan played a version of himself and served as co-scribe, writing under the pseudonym ‘Sergei Petrov’.

There have been many, many ballads of this thin man. This latest effort comes from James Mangold, the filmmaker whose 2005 Johnny Cash film Walk The Line inspired the music biopic parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the standard by which all music biopics must now be judged. To its credit, A Complete Unknown deftly avoids such clichés.

Chalamet’s musical talent is unimpeachable, his renditions gazed upon by many reverent ‘listening faces’...

It is, instead, a straightforward, clear-eyed musical drama.

By most accounts, indie cinema legend Ed Lachman is on track to land his second consecutive Oscar nomination for a collaboration with the great Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín. The cinematography legend was nominated last year for the arresting black-and-white photography of Larraín’s satirical gothic fable El Conde; and he is back in contention in the best cinematography category this season with his exquisitely painterly work on Maria, the Angelina Jolie-starring Netflix biographical film about the life and inner world of the great 20th-century opera diva, Maria Callas.

The Hollywood Reporter recently sat down with Lachman for a special session of THR Presents to discuss in detail how Maria was crafted — the complex array of camera, lighting and color choices that went into the film’s arresting but elegant imagery, the nature of Lachman’s collaboration with Jolie and Larraín, and the various principles that have come to inform...

Legendary musician Bob Dylan is an enigmatic figure, so what would he make of a biopic about his life and career? Well, a recent tweet from the singer-songwriter reveals that while he hasn’t seen “A Complete Unknown,” he’s not mad about it either.

“There’s a movie about me opening soon called ‘A Complete Unknown’ (what a title!),” says the Nobel Prize winner. “Timothée Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.” One thing he’s sure to recommend, though, is the source material: “The film’s taken from Elijah Wald’s ‘Dylan Goes Electric’ — a book that came out in 2015. It’s a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport. After you’ve...

Bob Dylan apparently has yet to see “A Complete Unknown” – can someone over at Searchlight get this man a screener please? – but he expressed faith in the film’s star, whom he affectionately calls “Timmy.”

“There’s a movie about me opening soon called ‘A Complete Unknown’ (what a title!),” Dylan wrote on his verified X account. “Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”

That might’ve been a sly reference to “I’m Not There,” the 2007 film starring multiple actors as different versions of the songwriting legend from Hibbing, Minnesota.

There’s a movie about me opening soon called A Complete Unknown (what a title!). Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he...

It’s very surprising that despite being one of the most successful movie stars of the last several decades, Richard Gere has yet to receive his first Academy Award nomination. Between starring in a Best Picture winner (Chicago), a classic romantic western (Days of Heaven), a beloved romantic comedy (Pretty Woman), an effective legal thriller (Primal Fear), and a fascinating music biopic (I’m Not There), Gere always seems to be passed over, even when his co-stars are recognized. While the continued ignorance of his work may be due to some underlying political motivations, Gere deserves to be in the Best Actor race this year for his performance in Oh, Canada, the powerful new drama from Paul Schrader.

American director, screenwriter and producer Todd Haynes has been named president of the international jury of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. The Berlinale diamond jubilee (a 75th anniversary) will take place from February 13-23, 2025.

”Todd Haynes is a dazzlingly gifted writer and director with an impressive range; his body of work is at once stylistically versatile but also unmistakably his,” Berlinale Director Tricia Tuttle said in a Thursday statement. “Ever since his debut feature ‘Poison’ won the Teddy Award in 1991, the Berlinale has followed and loved his filmmaking, and we are overjoyed to have him join the festival as the President of the International Jury for our 75th edition.”

The Teddy Award is the festival’s queer-film prize. “Poison” also won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Haynes’ 2002 film “Far From Heaven” was nominated for four Oscars.

His other notable work includes “Safe” (1995), “Velvet Goldmine” (1998), the...

Veteran filmmaker Todd Haynes will head the competition jury at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival.

The announcement was made this morning by the festival. In a statement, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle described Haynes as a “dazzlingly gifted writer and director.”

“His body of work is at once stylistically versatile but also unmistakably his,” Tuttle said. “Ever since his debut feature Poison won the Teddy Award in 1991, the Berlinale has followed and loved his filmmaking, and we are overjoyed to have him join the festival as the President of the International Jury for our 75th edition.”

One of the pioneering voices of 90’s American cinema independent cinema, Haynes made his feature with Poison, an experimental sci-fi flick starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan Gayle Norman, Scott Renderer, and James Lyons. The film won the queer film prize at the Berlinale, in 1991, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

U.S. director, screenwriter and producer Todd Haynes will be the president of the international jury of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival early next year.

“Todd Haynes is a dazzlingly gifted writer and director with an impressive range; his body of work is at once stylistically versatile but also unmistakably his,” said Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle on Thursday. “Ever since his debut feature Poison won the Teddy Award in 1991, the Berlinale has followed and loved his filmmaking.”

Over nearly 40 years, Haynes has been “one of the most bold and distinctive filmmaking voices in U.S.-American cinema, beloved for his great sensitivity in exploring the interior worlds of outsiders and women, and his fascinating investigations into gender and identity,” Berlinale organizers said. “His skill at creating complex characters has attracted many of the world’s finest actors. Stars such as Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway,...

A fan-favorite movie starring the late great Heath Ledger has found a new streaming home. A Knight's Tale will arrive on Prime Video on November 1.

Ledger, who won an Academy Award for portraying the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, stars in 2001's A Knight's Tale as the main protagonist William Thatcher, a peasant squire posing as a knight to compete in tournaments. He earns victories and the friendships of notable historical figures like Edward the Black Prince and Geoffrey Chaucer. The film drew inspiration from Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale," part of The Canterbury Tales. The movie's ensemble cast includes Rufus Sewell, Paul Bettany, James Purefoy, Alan Tudyk, Shannyn Sossamon, Laura Fraser, and Mark Addy. A Knight's Tale opened to mixed reviews and grossed just over $117 million worldwide against a $65 million budget.

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Heath Ledger asked fans to judge him through movies (Photo Credit – Facebook)

Heath Ledger’s legacy remains as powerful as ever, even after sixteen years of passing. The legendary star, who died of an accidental overdose of medications, shocked the Hollywood industry and his fans, who already knew the star was suffering from mental health issues.

Ledger rose to fame in 10 Things I Hate About You, but his iconic role as Joker in The Dark Knight earned him widespread acclaim. His intense dedication to acting made him an unforgettable star.

Heath Ledger Wanted His Fans To Remember Him For His Movies

Heath Ledger starred in several projects, including The Patriot, Lords of Dogtown, The Brothers Grimm, I’m Not There, Monster’s Ball, Casanova, and Candy. While the actor’s work speaks for itself, he once shared how he wanted his fans to remember him. He said, “I never had money...

A new trailer just dropped for A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold’s highly anticipated biopic about the legendary Bob Dylan starring Timothée Chalamet. The story ends around 1965, meaning that we won’t get a scene in which Chalamet bangs a tiny Ikea wrench against a microphone while wearing old age makeup.

A Complete Unknown looks like a boilerplate Hollywood music biopic, full of eye-rollingly obvious moments. And it’s nearly impossible to accept these types of formulaic music biopics, not just because Hollywood has practically run the genre into the ground at this point, but because they were so perfectly parodied in 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Mangold has admitted to enjoying Walk Hard, which was primarily a send-up of his previous music biopic effort, Walk the Line. But for some reason, he seems to be leaning into those Dewey Cox-esque elements again, rather than avoiding them.

Saoirse Ronan is getting some of the best reviews of her career for “The Outrun,” an intense drama about a woman battling her addiction to alcohol. No surprise then that she ranks among the top 5 on our Best Actress chart. She also has a featured role in Steve McQueen‘s upcoming “Blitz” as a mother in search of her missing boy in war-torn London. Currently we have her on the cusp of reaping a bid in Best Supporting Actress as well. Expect Ronan to crack the top 5 after “Blitz” drops at the London Film Festival on Wednesday (Oct. 9).

This Irish actress, who has already racked up four Oscar nominations to date, would join these dozen performers who pulled off this double play (the seven winners are in gold.)

1. Fay Bainter (1939)

Best Actress, “White Banners”

Best Supporting Actress, “Jezebel”

2. Teresa Wright (1943)

Best Actress, “The Pride of the Yankees”

Best Supporting Actress,...

Naomi Ackie takes on the difficult task of portraying the late, great Whitney Houston, but does Naomi Ackie sing in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody? Directed by Kasi Lemmons from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten, the Whitney Houston biopic has all the genre trappings, but its Ackies performance as the chart-topping singer that really sells the story. As with most music biopics, I Wanna Dance With Somebody tells the true story of an icon beloved by countless fans.

There is obviously a lot of pressure on the movie to get certain aspects right and that is especially true of the actor tasked with playing someone who most of the audience already knows so well. With this being Ackie's breakout performance, she had a lot to live up to in playing Whitney Houston and recreating her most famous singing performances. While some actors in biopics do their own singing,...

Not since the Wachowskis swung for the fences with "Cloud Atlas" has so much money been spent on a motion picture with such a strong flavor of potential fiasco. To describe "Better Man" to someone who has not seen it is to watch their face scrunch into disbelief, because surely you're pulling their leg.

It's wholly believable that the director of "The Greatest Showman" would make a biopic following the life of English pop star Robbie Williams. And it's a full-blown musical too, with characters breaking into songs outside of the concert sequences. It's also believable, albeit eyebrow-raising, to learn that the film is stylized to the point of pure absurdity, with its musical sequences defying all laws of cinema and reality, frequently tearing the film into the realm of pure, literal fantasy. And while it hits every expected musician biopic trope, it may surprise some to learn that it...

For the last 20 years, the music biopic genre has remained a steady constant, frequently elevating young actors to Oscar-winning fame and reviving musical legends as cinematic gods. From 2004s Ray to 2024s Back to Black, music biopics have seen wildly different results at the box office, with half of the list eclipsing the $100 million mark. Creating the perfect rendition of this genre means marrying a star actor with a musical personality, but reaching box office success requires a bit of luck and a pinch of cosmic intervention.

Music biopics are a unique movie genre in that they crystallize contemporary cultures mythology stories. Superstars like Freddy Mercury, Tupac, and Elvis sit atop the Pantheon of musical legends, and the event-style biopic blockbusters of today aim to capture their larger-than-life heros journey. These recent titles showcase the development of music biopics from star vehicles to bona fide mega-blockbuster hits with lofty budgets...

Back in 2007, Christian Bale had only one "Batman" movie on his resumé, and Russell Crowe hadn't yet tortured audiences with his vocal performance in the film version of Les Misérables. They also appeared in a Western movie together, and years after its release, people are going wild for the movie on Netflix.

"3:10 to Yuma" — which was written by Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt, and Derek Haas and helmed by future "Logan" director James Mangold — tells the story of a rancher who's down on his luck and ends up taking a risky assignment to bring down a famous outlaw, with Bale as rancher Dan Evans and Crowe as outlaw Ben Wade. The film, which is both an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's short story and a remake of a 1957 take on the story, boasts a pretty stacked cast and includes Logan Lerman, Ben Foster, Gretchen Mol, Alan Tudyk, and even the late legend Peter Fonda.

Capturing the essence of rock ‘n’ roll on film is often difficult. It’s not just about the music; it’s about the attitude, urges, style, and passion to get to the heart of a form of expression that conjures inner demons and lets them out to play. Movies like Airheads, This is Spinal Tap, Detroit Rock City, Metalhead, School of Rock, Heavy Metal, and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School stand tall as some of the best of what cinema has to offer regarding the raw, inspirational power of rock ‘n’ roll. This year, we have Deaner ’89, an exploratory and nostalgia-tinged comedy about Dean Murdoch, a headbanger on the verge of emerging from his heavy metal cocoon in the small town of Haylen, Manitoba, Canada.

We recently had the pleasure of raising our horns alongside actor, musician, and writer Paul Spence and versatile comedic actor Will Sasso during an...

Cate Blanchett charmed Venice Film Festival on Thursday night as Alfonso Cuarón’s new erotic Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer” received a five-minute standing ovation.

The two-time Oscar winner was the star attraction on the Lido, with the crowd inside the Sala Grande bursting into applause when she made her entrance ahead of the screening. Blanchett was dressed in a sleek black pantsuit with an open back draped in pearls, while co-star Sacha Baron Cohen went 007-style with a white tuxedo jacket.

Adding some Gen-z kudos to the occasion, singer Olivia Rodrigo was in attendance in support of her boyfriend Louis Partridge, who also stars in the series. However, she didn’t walk the carpet and sat a few seats away from the actor. After the screening, she ignored attempts by several members of the crowd to catch her attention as they shouted “Olivia!”

Earlier in the day at the “Disclaimer” press conference,...

Cate Blanchett is back on the Lido this year to attend the Venice Film Festival in support of her starring turn in Alfonso Cuáron’s Apple TV+ limited series Disclaimer.

Her appearance on red carpets during the 81st edition of Italy’s iconic gathering of cinephiles can only mean one thing: Blanchett is delivering show-stopping ensembles in collaboration with longtime stylist Elizabeth Stewart.

Below are all of the Oscar winner’s looks from the festival, with regular updates as she continues to make appearances during the 81st installment. Speaking of, during a Disclaimer press conference held on Thursday, the Volci Cup award winner for best actress (in 2007 for I’m Not There and in 2022 for Tár) was questioned about her red carpet choices here this year.

A reporter brought up Blanchett’s fashion as a way of asking her if she had any red carpet surprises planned for Venice on the...

One of Heath Ledger's most beloved movies will hit Paramount+ next month. The late actor is perhaps most well-known for giving an iconic, Academy-award-winning performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

Ledger's A Knight's Tale will arrive on Paramount+ on September 1. Co-produced and directed by Brian Helgeland and released by Columbia Pictures, the 2001 medieval action comedy stars Ledger as William Thatcher, a peasant squire posing as a knight to compete in tournaments. He earns victories and the friendships of notable historical figures like Edward the Black Prince and Geoffrey Chaucer. The film drew inspiration from Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale," part of The Canterbury Tales. The movie's ensemble cast includes Rufus Sewell, Paul Bettany, James Purefoy, Alan Tudyk, Shannyn Sossamon, Laura Fraser, and Mark Addy. A Knight's Tale opened to mixed reviews and grossed just over $117 million worldwide against a $65 million budget.

Related Joker Director Confirms the Fate of...