18 h. ago ‘Incompatible with the symbolism’: Yorgos Lanthimos denied permission to shoot new film at the Acropolis

The country’s best-known director was refused by Greece’s culture ministry when he applied to shoot scenes for sci-fi comedy Bugonia at iconic Athens siteGreece’s leading contemporary director has had a request to shoot footage for his new film at the Acropolis in Athens denied by his country’s culture ministry.Yorgos Lanthimos had filed a request to film scenes for sci-fi comedy Bugonia at the fifth-century BC site in April. But in a statement on Thursday, the culture ministry said permission had been refused because “the proposed scenes are incompatible with the symbolism and the values the Acropolis represents”. Continue reading...

Events

24 h. ago ‘To me it’s still funny it’s still stupid’: Bill Murray speaks out about sexual misconduct allegations

The actor said he was ‘barbecued’ after a complaint on the set of Being Mortal in 2022, which shut down production on the filmBill Murray has said he feels he was “barbecued” by a sexual misconduct allegation on the set of a 2022 comedy, which led to the film being cancelled and his reaching a financial settlement with the woman who accused him of straddling her and kissing her. “It wasn’t like I touched her,” said Murray to the New York Times in a new interview. “I gave her a kiss through a mask. And she wasn’t a stranger.”Murray defended his actions to the paper, saying that the complainant was “someone that I worked with, that I had had lunch with on various days of the week”. The actor put his actions down to trying to be amusing in a strained and claustrophobic setting. Continue reading...

Politics

24 h. ago ‘To me it’s still funny it’s still stupid’: Bill Murray speaks out about sexual misconduct allegation

The actor said he was ‘barbecued’ after a complaint on the set of Being Mortal in 2022, which shut down production on the filmBill Murray has said he feels he was “barbecued” by a sexual misconduct allegation on the set of a 2022 comedy, which led to the film being cancelled and his reaching a financial settlement with the woman who accused him of straddling her and kissing her. “It wasn’t like I touched her,” said Murray to the New York Times in a new interview. “I gave her a kiss through a mask. And she wasn’t a stranger.”Murray defended his actions to the paper, saying that the complainant was “someone that I worked with, that I had had lunch with on various days of the week”. The actor put his actions down to trying to be amusing in a strained and claustrophobic setting. Continue reading...

Politics

25 h. ago ‘Unfailing ability to cheer me up’: why The Rebel is my feelgood movie

The next entry in our series of writers highlighting their go-to comfort watches is a look back to the 1961 Tony Hancock comedyFor me, memorable and/or uplifting film experiences tend to be around individual moments – the resurrection scene in The Matrix for example, or Dizzy’s “I got to have you” in Starship Troopers. (Do either really hold a candle to Mel Brooks’s A Little Piece of Poland number in the To Be Or Not to Be remake? The jury is still out.) But without wanting to sound like either a retro bore or a they-don’t-make-’em-like-they-used-to fuddy-duddy, I turn to Tony Hancock’s yuk-heavy feature vehicle from 1961 for its unfailing ability to cheer me up.I think I must have first watched it in the 1980s on TV, after my dad solemnly recited one of the film’s great moments, when Hancock offers a hunk of cheese to a blue-lipsticked beatnik Nanette Newman and says, with a sort of slack-jawed terror: “You do eat food?” Newman, as it happens, is perhaps The Rebel’s most amazing si...

Events

6 d. ago Mr Burton review – the teacher who inspired and encouraged screen legend Richard Burton

Toby Jones plays the spaniel-eyed schoolmaster setting Harry Lawtey’s needy young pupil on course for haughty international stardomThe career of Richard Burton seemed mythic at the time, and more so in retrospect. In Pedro Almodóvar’s latest movie The Room Next Door, Julianne Moore’s character is even shown reading Erotic Vagrancy, Roger Lewis’s account of Burton’s then-adulterous relationship with Elizabeth Taylor in the early 60s, the title taken from Pope John XXIII’s extraordinary denunciation: “You will finish in an erotic vagrancy, without end or without a safe port.” In fact, the nearest thing Burton ever had to a safe port was his inspirational English teacher Philip Burton in Port Talbot, south Wales, whose own frustrated dreams of the theatre were poured into the bright young miner’s son Richard Jenkins, coaching him in acting and even making him his legal ward and getting him to change his surname to Burton to facilitate the teacher’s sponsorship of his Oxford scholarship...

Politics

9 d. ago ‘His genius is elusive’: Harry Lawtey and Toby Jones on bringing Richard Burton back to the screen

In new film Mr Burton, the Industry star plays a young Richard Burton, with Jones as the mentor who helped him find his acting chops. The duo discuss trying to understand a cultural icon – and how to nail that voiceSandringham Road lies in the east of Cardiff; a quiet run of Edwardian terrace houses overlooking Roath Mill Gardens. On a late July day, when the air is warm and the park spills out over its railings, Toby Jones and Harry Lawtey sit on the pavement, wearing matching striped pyjamas. The pair are some way into the filming of Mr Burton, an account of the early life of Richard Burton. Lawtey plays the actor in his younger years, when he was known as Richard Jenkins, and Jones is Philip Burton, the teacher who fostered his young student’s talent. So close would their bond grow that Jenkins would become Burton’s legal ward and take his surname. “Without Philip Burton there would never have been a Richard Burton,” Elizabeth Taylor once wrote. “That great rolling voice that cra...

Politics

1 week ago Free screening of new Mr Burton film coming to Ayrshire cinema

Free screening of biographical drama Mr Burton starring Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey and Lesley Manville will be on Ayr's Astoria Cinema next week

Culture

1 week ago Nathan Lane says ‘homophobia is alive and well’ in Hollywood

In a Vanity Fair interview The Producers and The Birdcage star claimed that being an out gay actor cost him roles in his careerThe Producers star Nathan Lane says that “homophobia is alive and well” in Hollywood and that being an out gay actor cost him roles.In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lane said that his breakthrough film role in the 1996 comedy The Birdcage, in which he played a flamboyant drag queen in a long-term relationship with Robin Williams’ club-owner, failed to lead to a significant movie acting career, reporting that his then agent told him: “Maybe if you weren’t so open about your lifestyle, it would have.” Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago #YouToo, Gwyneth Paltrow? Intimacy coordinators make sex scenes safe for all, not just A

The film star is among those undermining a role that was created out of the #MeToo movement to protect the powerlessHow instructive to hear Gwyneth Paltrow’s views on intimacy coordinators, the people hired to supervise intimate scenes in film and television. Talking to Vanity Fair magazine about her big screen comeback, in Josh Safdie’s ping pong film, Marty Supreme, the actor, 52, joked of her sex scenes with 29-year-old Timothée Chalamet: “I was like, ‘I’m 109 years old. You’re 14’.”Paltrow also said: “There’s now something called an intimacy coordinator (IC), which I did not know existed.” When the IC spoke to her: “I’m like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on’ We said, ‘I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back’.” She added: “I don’t know how it is for the kids who are starting out, but if someone is like ‘OK, then he puts his hand here’ I would feel as an artist very stifled by that.” Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Big stars, little shine: is anyone actually watching Apple TV+ shows?

The service might boast A-listers like Natalie Portman and Colin Farrell but in a competitive streaming landscape, it’s struggling to be heardNext week Apple TV+ launches The Studio, a Seth Rogen comedy about the rapidly changing landscape of the film industry. Episodes follow a beleaguered executive as he’s forced to make an ugly IP movie, because streamers are in dominance and this is all traditional studios are left with.For a show explicitly about the death of the theatrical experience to be made by a disruptive streamer – one funded by the deep pockets a global tech megacorp to boot – is unquestionably a show of power. Or at least it would be, were it not for a new report claiming that Apple TV+ is currently losing a billion dollars a year. Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago 'Creepy' Snow White Disney change slammed in reviews as remake is tipped for brutal award

Disney's latest live-action remake saw the iconic 1937 film Snow White come to life, but critics have slammed a number of factors in the productions, while bookies have tipped it to flop

Events

2 w. ago Adolescence star Owen Cooper, 15, has already filmed his next TV role alongside White Lotus star

The actor is set to star in romantic comedy-drama Film Club, alongside White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood (who plays Evie) and House of the Dragon star Ralph Davis. (who portrays Noa).

Culture

3 w. ago Protection's Siobhan Finneran starred in '80s comedy film classic that’s really filthy

One of the country's hardest working actresses kicked off her career in a 1980s cult classic that was saucy and a social satire

Culture

3 w. ago 'Perfect' comedy airing on television this weekend and where you can watch for free

"One of the best comedy movies of all time" is airing on television tonight, here's where you can watch the film for free

Culture

3 w. ago 'One of best comedies of all time' airing on tv this weekend

A movie that has been dubbed "one of the best comedies of all time" is airing on television tonight.

Events

3 w. ago Blake Lively suffers further humiliation as new movie gets scathing reviews from two top Hollywood outlets

The film is a follow-up to her hit 2018 crime comedy A Simple Favor, starring her alongside Anna Kendrick with direction by Paul Feig of Bridesmaids fame.

Culture

3 w. ago Ambitious 'Palace Park' plan at site of Ayrshire town's former cinema

The site of the former Vogue Cinema and bingo hall has been earmarked for the exciting development.

Politics

3 w. ago Friendship review – Tim Robinson spirals in a darkly hilarious comedy

SXSW film festival: The star of I Think You Should Leave brings a similar brand of comedy to this strange and genuinely funny film about a friendship breakupFew adult experiences sting as much as a friendship breakup, a rejection in some ways more personal, hurtful and confusing than that of a romantic partner. And few actors are better equipped to mine the weird vulnerabilities, fixations and feelings of a platonic split like the cult comedy king Tim Robinson, co-creator and star of the Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave (ITYSL). Over three seasons, Robinson has built up a devoted in-the-know following for his situational comedy, generationally playing unrepentant characters with no impulse control or allegiance to social scripts, people whose untidy feelings derail otherwise normal situations into absurd tangles.In other words, not the type of people to take rejection well. With Robinson as the unfortunate half of a buddy dump, Friendship, writer-director Andrew DeYoung’...

Politics

3 w. ago ‘I’m all for strange’: Sister Midnight’s Karan Kandhari on his punk rock debut, two decades in the making

The director talks about his genre-trampling film Sister Midnight, the hilarious and gory story of a female force of nature stifled in an arranged marriageOne of the most powerful scenes in Sister Midnight is also a quiet and unexpected one. The protagonist, Uma, sits idly with her neighbour Sheetal outside their adjoining homes in Mumbai. To pass the time, the bored housewives pretend to be divorcing one another. Amid the role play, Uma turns to her confidant and says: “I’m tainted goods, I’m a divorcee. But it’s OK. I’ll wear this like a badge and go forth to the hills, form a manless nation and build a monolithic altar to the pussy.”The statement captures what is so provocative about the film – it turns societal norms on their head and dares to ask: what if we did things differently? At its core, the film feels quite feminist. “That word comes up a lot,” says director Karan Kandhari. “I’m happy people can see the film like that, but I didn’t set out to make something with an agen...

Politics