13 h. ago ET actor fought Steven Spielberg over ‘uncomfortable’ scene: ‘This was a family film’

Actor Dee Wallace, who played the mother of a young boy who befriends a space alien, recalled reaching a ‘compromise’ with the director on set over a scene she worried would disrupt the movie’s ‘purity’

Culture

6 d. ago ‘I stopped talking to my parents – and life opened up’: Heather Graham on family, ageing and ‘creepy’ film

The actor has seen the best and worst of Hollywood, from directors like Paul Thomas Anderson to the notorious Harvey Weinstein. She talks about her #MeToo moment, her difficult childhood and her new movie, Chosen FamilyFor almost all her life, Heather Graham says, she was a “people pleaser”. It was encouraged in childhood, she says, this obligation to put others’ needs above her own, and it endured even after the 1997 film Boogie Nights had made her a star and she had severed all contact with her “judgmental, authoritarian” parents.Now 55, Graham was in her 40s before she recognised her self-sabotaging tendencies, and tried to correct course. “I realised, no, actually I can just ask myself, ‘What do I want?’ and make myself happy,” she says over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. “I wish I could have had this when I was 20 or 15. If I wasn’t trying to please other people, what would I have done?” It affected her romantic life and sometimes her work. “There were moments where I feel ...

Society

1 week ago Neirud review – a mysterious family relationship that unravels Brazil’s complex social fabric

Film-maker Fernanda Faya weaves together a loving homage to her circus performer grandmother and her elusive companionBuried secrets bubble to the surface in Brazilian film-maker Fernanda Faya’s tender and searching documentary, which seeks to disentangle the hidden knots of her fascinating family tree. The film opens with lovingly recorded home videos of various gatherings, including her childhood birthday celebrations, the only time of the year when her paternal grandmother, Nelly, would visit. A formidable woman of Roma ancestry, Nelly came from a long line of skilled circus performers, an illustrious ancestry that ended when Faya’s father did not join the family business.One particular aspect long eluded Faya: Nelly was always seen with woman called Neirud, whom Faya called aunt, but their actual relationship was a mystery; when Neirud died, her house was emptied of all personal photos and keepsakes. Through meticulous research, Faya gradually uncovered Neirud’s story. A Black w...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘The grief takes your breath away’: how death transformed a loving family – and shaped a remarkable film

Nik and Maria Payne were raising their ‘wild and free’ children in the Norwegian countryside when cancer turned their lives upside down. The reluctant stars of A New Kind of Wilderness talk about a world without MariaPeace hangs over a farm in rural Norway. The last of the melting snow lingers in hummocks and bikes are strewn outside the Payne family’s small rented cottage. Nik Payne materialises from behind the barn where he has been feeding the cows. One of his three children, Falk, 12, is lying on the sofa with a fever and a Biggles novel; later, Freja, 15, and Ulv, nine (known as Wolf or Wolfie), return from school. Their home is as warm and chaotic as any family’s – boots and coats strewn in the hallway, a fridge covered in photos, shelves of books – but with a few differences: there is no television and behind the living room door is an unobtrusive, very personal shrine.The Paynes find themselves the reluctant stars of a film, A New Kind of Wilderness, which has won awards at ...

Events

2 w. ago Chosen Family review – fluid directing by Heather Graham ballasts enjoyable romcom

Graham denounces her toxic family and begins a new relationship, before discovering her beau’s preteen daughter to be a tiny psychopath in a tutuFor younger readers not well versed in last-century cinema, Heather Graham was one of the hottest ingenues in Hollywood throughout the 1990s; her greatest performance was arguably as Rollergirl in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. Recently, she’s taken up writer-director duties (she made her debut in 2018 with a comedy called Half Magic) while continuing to star as well, and this sophomore effort impresses with its mildly acidic observations of contemporary mores. There aren’t exactly belly laughs in this tale of single yoga instructor Ann (Graham), but quite a few of zingers and bits that stick the landing nicely thanks to fluent direction and good comic timing from Graham and her excellent supporting cast, which is filled out by cracking actors who might not often be given as much spotlight as they get here.That’s entirely fitting giv...

Society

2 w. ago Good American Family star reveals the harrowing scene that 'nearly killed him' to film while telling dark true tale of Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace

Mark Duplass, who stars alongside Ellen Pompeo and British newcomer Imogen Faith Reid in the Disney+ drama has shared how shooting one agonizing scene with Imogen 'killed' him.

Events