3 d. ago ‘These guys are idiots’: Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black call out government’s Harvey Milk erasure

Team behind Oscar-winning biopic of the groundbreaking gay politician hits back at decision to remove his nameSean Penn, the Oscar-winning actor of the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk and Milk writer Dustin Lance Black have spoken out against US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to remove the gay rights icon’s name from a navy ship.“This is yet another move to distract and to fuel the culture wars that create division,” Black told the Hollywood Reporter in a phone call on Wednesday. “It’s meant to get us to react in ways that are self-centered so that we are further distanced from our brothers and sisters in equally important civil rights fights in this country. It’s divide and conquer.” Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago ‘People raised hell’: why shouldn’t Scarlett Johansson and James Franco play queer characters?

If big names can get films telling fascinating queer stories green-lit, does their own sexuality really matter? In this extract from his new book, Ryan Gilbey takes a fresh look at the ‘queerbaiting’ conundrumJustin Kelly and I first met in 2008 when I was sent to Los Angeles to interview Gus Van Sant. I breezed into the screening room where Van Sant was viewing a rough cut of his film Milk, and promptly tripped over the film-maker’s Australian shepherd Milo, who was snoozing in the dark. Kelly was minding the dog that morning, so in some small but unshakable way I will always blame him for my spectacular stumble.Kelly was the editorial assistant on Milk, which starred Sean Penn as the assassinated San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, and James Franco as his lover. Kelly then went on to direct Franco on two occasions as gay characters based on real people: activist Michael Glatze, who renounces his former life after finding religion in I Am Michael; and the escort, porn producer an...

Politics

1 week ago ‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom

Best known as Hawkeye in the TV series M*A*S*H, the 89-year-old actor, director and writer has another hit on his hands with a revamp of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons. He talks about his Parkinson’s disease, Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald TrumpAlan Alda never expected this. The 89-year-old is back topping the charts with an update of his film The Four Seasons. In 1981, Alda wrote, directed and starred in the movie about three inseparable couples who holiday together every quarter until divorce, envy and angst intervene.Now the film has been turned into a TV series by Tina Fey, with Alda as a producer and, at the time of writing, it is the fourth most watched show on Netflix. “It’s really interesting to have my work appeal to a new generation of very smart writers,” he tells me on a video call from New York. What gave him even more pleasure was watching a screening of the original movie a couple of weeks ago. “The people were laughing at the same things they were...

Politics

2 w. ago Sentimental Value review – Stellan Skarsgård is an egomaniac director in act of ancestor worship

Cannes film festivalJoachim Trier’s entertaining drama sees Norwegian auteur-on-the-slide Skarsgård putting his showbiz family through the wringer in the service of his fading careerHere is an exuberant, garrulous, self-aware picture about an ageing and egomaniac film director and his two grownup daughters; it comes from Norwegian film-maker Joachim Trier, who gave Cannes the marvellous romantic drama The Worst Person in the World in 2021, starring the award-winning Renate Reinsve, who stars in this one as well. The film cycles through a range of moods and ideas, and finally delivers a fair bit of that sentimentality from the title; it’s a movie of daddy issues and cinematic adventures in the manner of Fellini and Bergman, with a gag about overhearing a therapist’s session through the heating pipes, pinched from Woody Allen’s Another Woman.Stellan Skarsgård plays preening auteur Gustav Borg, whose career is on the slide; many years ago he left his wife, Sissel, a psychotherapist, an...

Politics

2 w. ago A Private Life review – Jodie Foster is a sleuthing shrink in French

Cannes film festivalFoster plays a psychoanalyst who suspects her client may not have killed herself, and sets out to investigate with ex-husband Daniel AuteuilRebecca Zlotowski serves up a genial, preposterous psychological mystery caper: the tale of an American psychoanalyst in Paris, watchably played by Jodie Foster in elegant French, who suspects that a patient who reportedly committed suicide was actually murdered. Zlotowski is perhaps channelling Hitchcock or De Palma, or even late-period Woody Allen – or maybe Zlotowski has, like so many of us, fallen under the comedy spell of Only Murders in the Building on TV and fancied the idea of bringing its vibe to Paris and transforming the mood – slightly – into something more serious.Foster is classy shrink Lilian Steiner, stunned at the news that her client Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira) has taken her own life. She is also furiously confronted by Paula’s grieving widower Simon (Mathieu Amalric), who believes she bears some resp...

Events

3 w. ago Sean Penn declares Jennifer Lawrence ‘the last movie star’ in Hollywood

Penn says ‘movie star manufacturer ran out’ around the time Hunger Games actor started in Hollywood

Culture

3 w. ago What's happened to Sean Penn? Fans horrified by Hollywood star's appearance as he makes bombshell claims

Sean Penn's fans were shocked by the actor's 'rough' appearance on the Louis Theroux Podcast on Monday.

Events

3 w. ago Sean Penn says he’d work with Woody Allen again ‘in a heartbeat’ despite sexual abuse allegations against director

Penn appeared in Allen’s 1999 film ‘Sweet and Lowdown’

Economics

3 w. ago Sean Penn says he’d work with Woody Allen again ‘in a heartbeat’

The actor, who was speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast, also cast new light on his meeting with former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and had harsh comments on both Donald Trump and Elon MuskSean Penn has reiterated his defence of Woody Allen, saying he would “work with him in a heartbeat”.Penn was speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast, and told Theroux that while he felt he didn’t know Allen well enough to know for certain that “100% this didn’t happen”, he said: “The stories are mostly told by people that I wouldn’t trust with a dime. It just seems so heavily weighted in that way.” Continue reading...

Economics