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Last month playwright Jez Butterworth brought his latest work, “The Hills of California,” to Broadway. The haunting family drama explores the relationships between four sisters and their dying mother in their creaky seaside home, seamlessly moving back and forth in time between 1976 and 1955. The play previously bowed in London earlier this year, and before coming stateside it earned two Olivier Award nominations for Best New Play and Best Actress for Laura Donnelly, who reprises her performance in New York.

Since his Broadway debut only 13 years ago, Butterworth has quickly established himself as one of the theater’s most accomplished contemporary playwrights. He has two Tony nominations to his name, for New York debut “Jerusalem” in 2011 and for his Tony-winning epic “The Ferryman” in 2019. Those nominations alone already tie him with theater royalty including Ayad Akhtar, Tony Kushner, Tracy Letts, David Mamet, Lynn Nottage, Eugene O’Neill, and Wendy Wasserstein — all...

Beloved French actor Isabelle Huppert will receive the Lumière Award in the city of Lyon in October.

Created by Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux, the Lumière Film Festival celebrates classic and contemporary cinema each fall. The Lumière Award honors a leading figure in the world of cinema and their entire body of work.

Huppert succeeds German director Wim Wenders who was awarded the prize in 2023. Former recipients include Tim Burton, Jane Campion, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Francis Ford Coppola, Ken Loach, Catherine Deneuve, Jane Fonda, Pedro Almodóvar, Miloš Forman, the Dardenne brothers and Wong Kar-wai, among others.

“It’s a great honor for me to receive the Lumière Award. It’s a magnificent prize, and so is its festival. It’s an award that bears the name of the inventors of cinema! Receiving it fills me with joy and pride,” said Huppert.

A prolific actor who shoots an average...

Steve Carell will make his Broadway debut next spring in the title role of Lincoln Center Theater’s Uncle Vanya, appearing with, among others, Alison Pill as Sonya, Alfred Molina as Alexander Serabryakov and Anika Noni Rose as Yelena.

The production will begin previews Tuesday, April 2, 2024, at Lct’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, opening on Wednesday, April 24. As previously announced, Heidi Schreck (What the Constitution Means to Me) is writing a new translation, and Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery) will direct.

Also joining the cast are William Jackson Harper as Astrov, Jayne Houdyshell as Mama Voinitski and Mia Katigbak as Marina. Complete casting will be announced soon.

The synopsis: Sonya (Pill) and her uncle Vanya (Carell) have devoted their lives to managing the family farm in isolation, but when her celebrated, ailing father (Molina) and his charismatic wife (Rose) move in, their lives are upended. In the heat of the summer,...

Tom Stoppard won the Best Play trophy for “Leopoldstadt” at the 2023 Tony Awards. This is his fifth win in the category, breaking his own Tony record. The theater legend maintains an impressive lead as the winningest playwright in the Best Play category.

“Leopoldstadt” is a sprawling epic which traces the lineage of a Jewish family in Vienna from 1899 to 1955. The play considers important questions of assimilation and identity. The show picked up four wins in total, with additional victories for Brandon Uranowitz in Featured Actor in a Play, Patrick Marber in Director of a Play, and Brigitte Reiffenstuel in Costume Design of a Play.

Stoppard has now won the Best Play category five times in his career, more than any other playwright in history. He previously prevailed for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (1968), “Travesties” (1976), “The Real Thing” (1984), and the three-part epic “The Coast of Utopia” (2007). The Tony Awards do not...

Tom Stoppard’s haunting drama “Leopoldstadt” is the rare non-musical play to become a smash hit on Broadway. After critics fell in love with the gripping historical piece, the show broke the house record at the Longacre Theatre twice, over two consecutive weeks in October. Its highest weekly gross soared to 1,158,051. If this critical and commercial success translates into a Tony Award win for Best Play next spring, playwright Tom Stoppard will best his own record in that top race.

“Leopoldstadt” begins in 1899 Vienna and traces the history of a Jewish family as they move from a period of relative happiness and prosperity into the tumultuous 20th century and its eventual horrors. Patrick Marber directs the quiet epic, which focuses on how countless personal histories have been consumed by war and time. The sprawling cast of 32 includes David Krumholtz, Brandon Uranowitz, Faye Castelow, Arty Froushan, Caissie Levy, and Seth Numrich.

Actor Alec Baldwin pictured at a film screening in 2019 before the tragic shooting. Pic credit: ©ImageCollect.com/William Perez/ImagePressAgency

Alec Baldwin appeared disheveled while stepping out in New York amid the Rust shooting investigation.

The grey-haired actor, who last month said the incident had “taken years off my life,” looked stressed and drained as he walked along a sidewalk in a black polo shirt and grey trousers.

It was in stark contrast to a similar photo of him taken earlier this year.

The photo came after more details emerged surrounding the tragic shooting that left cinematographer Halyna Hutchins dead in October 2021. Not long after, the family of a fallen U.S. Marine re-filed a defamation lawsuit against the actor.

Last week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled as part of a wrongful death lawsuit that Baldwin was primarily responsible for firing the revolver that killed Hutchins. It is...

Excellent performers can shine and be recognized in many mediums. This is proven again by the fact that twenty-three of this year’s Emmy nominees have received Tony Award nominations in the past and nine of those nominated actors have won Tony Awards.

“Succession” is the series most predicted to win the Outstanding Drama Emmy again this year. Four of the Emmy nominees for their guest roles in “Succession” were also Tony Award nominees in the past: Dame Harriet Walter, Sanaa Latham, Arian Moayad, and Hope Davis.

Dame Harriet’s 2009 Tony nomination was for Best Actress in the play “Mary Stuart,” playing Queen Elizabeth I of England. Sanaa’s Best Featured Actress Tony nomination was in 2004 for a revival of “A Raisin in The Sun,” starring Sean Combs. Arian’s Tony nomination was in 2011 for “Benghal Tiger at The Baghdad Zoo,” starring Robin Williams, and Hope Davis was up in 2009 for “God of Carnage,...

Director and producer Miloslav Šmídmajer, whose documentary “Milan Kundera – From Joy to Insignificance” features in the Work in Progress section of the Ji.hlava Film Festival this week, has lined-up multiple new projects, he tells Variety.

Šmídmajer’s upcoming films include Czech-Ukrainian-Slovakian co-production “The Man Who Stood in the Way,” about one man who challenged Leonid Brezhnev when the Soviets occupied Czechoslovakia. It is ready to be shot next year.

Also in the works is an adaptation of Zdeněk Hanka’s “North of 65” (“Severně od 65”), a dramatic story of two medics whose dispute affects a whole mission in the Canadian far north. “We have approached a skilled British screenwriter and we are aiming for an international co-production,” says Šmídmajer.

Šmídmajer is ready to direct “Swan,” about a “guy who has really bad luck and it’s just getting worse,” and will also produce Karel Žalud’s documentary focusing on Czech invention S.

There’s much to talk about over The Dinner, a rather cold and over-flowing plate of black comedy and moral conundrums that leaves one with a certain sinking feeling. It’s the first English-language adaptation of Herman Koch’s 2009 best-selling novel of the same name and the latest film from Israeli-American writer-director Oren Moverman. Unraveling in the confined locations — aside from a number of extended flashbacks — of a laughably swank eatery, Moverman’s adaptation of the text has the feeling of a pressure-cooker stage play, the type where everybody shouts and few people listen. Indeed, it’s the type of unpleasantness that might cause the viewer to recall Roman Polanski’s Carnage (or perhaps Yasmina Reza’s stage play upon which Carnage was based), a film that boasted equally detestable characters although, perhaps, played with slightly more subtlety and restraint.

Indeed, simply mentioning Carnage and “subtlety” in the same sentence...

Full casting is today announced for Art at The Old Vic. Tim Key, Paul Ritter and Rufus Sewell star in Yasmina Reza's dazzling study of friendship, prejudice and tolerance. One of the most acclaimed plays of recent times, Art premiered in London twenty years ago and went on to become a phenomenon. Director Matthew Warchus reunites the original creative team.

Two neighbouring couples, both expecting a baby, go to war in this stylish psychological thriller

There is a delicious and elegant nastiness to this psychological suspense thriller from David Farr, making his feature-directing debut. It is a Polanskian nightmare of the upper middle classes, with extravagant flourishes of melodrama and staginess.

The London it shows us is a but like that in Roman Polanski’s 1965 film Repulsion, and the chamber music of polite dysfunction is a little like Polanski’s 2011 version of Yasmina Reza’s play Carnage. We witness an intimately horrible and psychotic duel between two well-heeled couples: one living in the flat below the other. Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore) and Kate (Clémence Poésy) are laid-back friendly professionals; Teresa (Laura Birn) and Jon (David Morrissey) are conservative and uptight. But they have one important thing in common: both Teresa and Kate are pregnant. The unacknowledged competition and resentment lead to a convulsion of fear.

Shakespeare amp Company has announced its lineup for the 2015 summer season, which includes three Shakespeare plays, Henry V, The Comedy of Errors and Hamlet, plus the Regional Premiere of Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti, and the World Premiere of Jane Anderson's Mother of the Maid, starring Tina Packer. In addition, the summer season includes The Unexpected Man by Yasmina Reza, and opens with the provocative new play by Sarah Treem, The How and the Why.

Shakespeare amp Company has announced its lineup for the 2015 summer season, which includes three Shakespeare plays, Henry V, The Comedy of Errors and Hamlet, plus the Regional Premiere of Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti, and the World Premiere of Jane Anderson's Mother of the Maid, starring Tina Packer. In addition, the summer season includes The Unexpected Man by Yasmina Reza, and opens with the provocative new play by Sarah Treem, The How and the Why.

Dylan Baker and Judith Ivey have joined fhe cast for the Broadway transfer of London stage hit The Audience, Peter Morgan's play about the weekly tradition of closed-door one-on-one encounters at Buckingham Palace between Queen Elizabeth II and her government leader. Baker, whose Broadway credits include Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius, David Mamet's November and Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage, will play former Prime Minister John Major. His recent screen work includes Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Selma and The Humbling, as well as a recurring role on The Good Wife. Two-time Tony-winner Ivey, who was last on Broadway

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The Digital Era: Real-time Films From 2000 To Today

40 years before, in 1960, lighter cameras enabled a cinéma vérité-flavored revolution in street realism. By 2000, new digital cameras suggested a whole new set of promises, including telling stories that would have been unimaginable within minimum budgets for features even ten years before. In 2000, film purists warned that digital still didn’t look as good as celluloid, but that didn’t stop at least three innovative filmmakers from boldly going where no filmmaker had gone before. Mike Figgis’ Timecode (2000) was the first star-supported (Salma Hayek, Stellan Skarsgard, Holly Hunter, among many others) single-shot project since Rope, underlining that earlier film’s timelessness. If Run Lola Run could do one story three times, then Timecode would do three or four stories one time: the movie is four separate ninety-minute shots shown all at the same time, each in one quadrant of the screen. Where do you look?...

Genre filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's El Rey Network announced today that Alfred Molina (The Da Vinci Code, Spider Man 2) has been cast as Andres Galan in the network's upcoming scripted original set to premiere July 2014. Previously announced cast members include Gabriel Luna, Nicky Whelan and Neil Hopkins.

Created by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and produced in association with K/O Paper Products, the coveted writing/producing team behind Sleepy Hollow, Fringe , Star Trek and the Transformer franchise, Matador will feature Molina as Andrew Galan, a man who built his fortune in the telecom industry, but his true passion is soccer. As owner of the ascendant La Riot franchise, he is celebrated in both the sports and business worlds. But there is another world that he operates in -- as a member of an elite group of powerful global players, ruthless individuals who can effect world events on a scale that one would never imagine. What Galan doesn't know is that there is a mole in his midst. One of his new players, Tony Bravo, is actually an undercover operative, sent in to expose him and his cohorts. As Tony and Galan grow closer, the fate of their relationship may very well determine the fate of the world.

Irreverent and action-packed, Matador chronicles the unlikely rise of Antonio "Matador" Bravo, a popular soccer star, who comes to be known as much for his playboy antics off the field as his dynamic moves on it. But what his fans and family don't realize is that it's all a cover--in truth, he is a skilled covert operative executing missions for a little known branch of the CIA. “Matador” has the kind of fame and notoriety that affords him access to powerful circles of corruption and villainy. But, in balancing the dueling roles in which he's been cast, he will be forced to confront the question of his true identity...and it is this mission which will prove to be his most dangerous.

Robert Rodriguez, El Rey Network's chairman and founder, is set to direct the first episode which will be penned by showrunners, co-creators and executive producers Jay Beattie and Dan Dworkin

An accomplished London-born actor whose diverse and distinguished gallery of performances have led to a lengthy and triumphant career in film, television and the stage, Alfred Molina is best known for his roles in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and Steven Soderberg’s Frida. Molina made his American film debut in Raiders of the Lost Ark and later appeared in Letter to Brezhnev, but his movie breakthrough came two years later when he portrayed Kenneth Halliwell, the tragic lover of playwright Joe Orton, in Stephen Frears' Prick Up Your Ears. His other feature film credits include The Da Vinci Code, Boogie Nights, Magnolia , Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time , The Pink Panther 2, Enchanted April, Not Without My Daughter , The Perez Family, Anna Karenina and Chocolat , among others. On television, he most recently starred on NBC’s Law & Order: Los Angeles and David E. Kelley’s TNT drama series Monday Mornings. Molina’s stage work includes two major Royal National Theatre productions, Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana and David Mamet's Speed the Plow, as well as his Broadway debut in Yasmina Reza's Art, for which he received a Tony Award® nomination. Molina also performed in the highly celebrated UK-based Donmar Warehouse production of Red which opened on Broadway in April 2010 and for which Mr. Molina received rave reviews and a Tony Award® nomination. Most recently, Molina completed the feature film Love Is Strange opposite John Lithgow for director Ira Sachs. The film premiered at Sundance this year, and will be released later in the year by Sony Classics. He also shot the feature films, Swelter for director/writer Keith Parmer, We'll Never Have Paris for director/writer Simon Helberg with co-stars Zachary Quinto and Maggie Grace, Return to Zero with co-star Minnie Driver and The Normal Heart for HBO in which he co-stars opposite Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts.

Matador executive producers are Jay Beattie and Dan Dworkin, also showrunners, alongside executive producers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Andrew Orci. Also joining as executive producers are Heather Kadin of K/O Paper Products; Robert Rodriguez and FactoryMade Ventures and El Rey Network co-founders John Fogelman and Cristina Patwa.

Entertainment One Television (eOne) exclusively represents worldwide distribution rights (with the exception of U.S. broadcast network rights) for El Rey Network's "Matador" and other original scripted series created for the U.S based cable network, to be announced.

About El Rey Network:

El Rey Network is a new 24-hour English-language network founded by maverick filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. Curated by Rodriguez and his artistic collective, the network will unite the most culturally diverse generation in history through fearless, badass and original content that awakens the renegade in everyone. The network's action-packed content is anchored by original signature dramas, feature films, grindhouse genre, cult classic action and horror/sci-fi. El Rey Network LLC (www.elreynetwork.com) is jointly owned by Robert Rodriguez and FactoryMade Ventures with a minority stake held by Univision Networks & Studios, Inc.

About FactoryMade Ventures:

Founded by John Fogelman and Cristina Patwa, FactoryMade develops, produces and oversees media and entertainment franchises in partnership with leading Hollywood talent and global brands and investors. The company founded El Rey Network and Tres Pistoleros Studios with renowned filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and Univision Communications, Inc. It also forged a joint venture with leading Mexican wrestling league Lucha Libre Aaa and four-time Emmy® Award winner Mark Burnett and Hearst Corporation’s One Three Media. It executive produces a slate of scripted and non-scripted television shows including From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, the remake of the cult classic by Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and Matador, an original production with Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Previously, the team spearheaded the creation of Hasbro’s film business and television business with Transformers, G.I. Joe, Hasbro Studios and the Hub Network with Discovery Communications, and created retail’s first digital gaming and commerce platform Hsn Arcade.

About Entertainment One:

Entertainment One Ltd. (Lse: Eto) is a leading international entertainment company that specializes in the acquisition, production and distribution of film and television content. The company’s comprehensive network extends around the globe including Canada, the U.S., the UK, Ireland, Spain, Benelux, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South Korea. Through established Entertainment and Distribution divisions, the company provides extensive expertise in film distribution, television and music production, family programming and merchandising and licensing. Its current rights library is exploited across all media formats and includes more than 35,000 film and television titles, 2,800 hours of television programming and 45,000 music tracks. Through strong relationships with broadcasters and content providers, eOne Television International has successfully sold eOne’s original and third-party productions to over 500 broadcasters in 150 countries, including key Us networks and international pay TV channels.

Stage and screen actor best known for his roles in Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley and Harry Potter

The talented and idiosyncratic character actor Roger Lloyd Pack, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 69, achieved national recognition, and huge popularity, as Colin "Trigger" Ball, the lugubrious Peckham road sweeper in John Sullivan's brilliantly acted comedy series Only Fools and Horses. He appeared alongside David Jason's Del Boy and Nicholas Lyndhurst's "plonker" Rodney from 1981 for 10 years, with many a seasonal "special" for another decade.

This success cemented a career in which, up to that point, he had played important roles at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Almeida theatre in north London – he was a notably anguished Rosmer in Ibsen's Rosmersholm at the National in 1987, opposite Suzanne Bertish – without recognition any wider than usually appreciative reviews.

His enhanced status led to another...

Comedian and actor best known for the satirical television show Bremner, Bird and Fortune

John Fortune, who has died aged 74 after a long illness, was a distinguished member of the Oxbridge generation of brainy comedians who turned British entertainment inside out in the early 1960s, along with his friend, college contemporary and writing partner, John Bird, as well as Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, David Frost, Eleanor Bron and John Wells.

From his earliest days on Ned Sherrin's Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, the successor in 1964-65 to the satirical television magazine That Was the Week That Was, through to the comedy shows with Rory Bremner in the 1990s and beyond, he was a fixture of barely surprised indifference, with a wonderful line in deflationary, logical understatement. Tall and gangly, with a warm and ready smile but a performance default mode of aghast,...

New York -- Broadway theaters will dim their marquee lights for one minute before curtain time Wednesday evening to honor the memory of James Gandolfini. The actor, who died suddenly last week in Italy at age 51, was best known for his television and movie roles, most notably on the landmark HBO series The Sopranos. Photos: James Gandolfini's Life and Career in Pictures But his Broadway credits included a Tony-nominated leading performance in God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's four-character comedy-drama about the primitive behavior lurking beneath polite social restraint. That all-star 2009 production also featured Jeff Daniels,

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Roman Polanski's Venus in Fur hit me like a breath of fresh air on the morning of my eleventh and final day of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Opening with a sequence I'd more associate with a Tim Burton and Danny Elfman collaboration, we're greeted by a wicked rain storm and an upbeat, gothic score from Alexandre Desplat as the camera splits a tree-lined street. The perspective veers right to reveal a rundown Paris theatre. The camera comes to rest in front of the theatre doors, which eventually swing open to reveal Thomas (Mathieu Amalric), a stage writer working to put together his directorial debut, but after seeing 30 actresses he still can't seem to find the right one to play the lead role, Vanda. He turns and we learn it wasn't just a camera we were tracking into the theater, but a sopping wet actress (Emmanuelle Seigner), late for her audition.

Despite acting rivalries, it's striking how few genuine feuds there have been in the tribe of British actors over the last 100 years

The news that Alec Guinness felt a personal distaste for Laurence Olivier, reported in this morning's papers, didn't exactly come as a bolt from the blue. I recall reading in one theatrical biography that Guinness was deeply offended when, while both men were playing at the Old Vic in 1937, Olivier made caustic enquiries as to what may or may not have happened when Guinness paid a weekend visit to Gielgud's country cottage. The two men, both as actors and as people, were as different as chalk and cheese: Guinness a fastidious miniaturist, Olivier a strange mix of the earthy and the exalted.

Olivier was a king among actors, and, like many Shakespearean monarchs, jealously guarded his throne. That's a polite way of saying that he wasn't always generous to potential rivals.

Best European Film Amour (Love) Austria/France/Germany, 127 min Written & directed by Michael Haneke Produced by Margaret Menegoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka & Michael Katz Barbara Germany, 105 min Written & directed by Christian Petzold Produced by Florian Koerner von Gustorf & Michael Weber Cesare Deve Morire (Caesar Must Die) Italy, 76 min Directed by Paolo & Vittorio Taviani Written by Paolo & Vittorio Taviani, in collaboration with Fabio Cavalli Produced by Grazia Volpi Intouchables (Untouchable) France, 108 min Written & directed by Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano Produced by Nicolas Duval Adassovsky, Yann Zenou & Laurent Zeitoun Jagten (The Hunt) Denmark, 111 min Directed by Thomas Vinterberg Written by Thomas Vinterberg & Tobias Lindholm Produced by Morten Kaufmann & Sisse Graum Jørgensen Shame UK, 96 min Directed by Steve McQueen Written by Steve McQueen & Abi Morgan Produced by Iain Canning & Emile Sherman European Director 2012: Nuri Bilge Ceylan for B?R Zamanlar Anadolu’Da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) Michael Haneke for Amour...

The Pianist director has signed up to direct adaptation of David Ives's award-winning play, starring Emmanuelle Seigner

Art looks set to imitate life as Roman Polanski prepares to direct his wife in a film about a director's shifting, compromised relationship with his muse. Venus in Fur, adapted from the Tony award-winning stage-play by David Ives, will star Emmanuelle Seigner as Vanda, the apparently fragile actor who auditions for a role in a sadomasochistic drama. French actor Louis Garrel has signed on to play the director.

Polanski's version of Venus in Fur will relocate the action from New York to Paris, the director's regular base since he fled the Us in 1978. "I've been looking for a chance to make a film in French with Emmanuelle for a long time," he said in a statement. "Reading Venus in Fur, I realised the moment had arrived."

Seigner, 46, has previously worked with Polanski on Frantic,...

Many plays with an art theme have been written over the past decades, chief among them Yasmina Reza's Art, which shows the positive and negative effects of art on everyday life, but in John Logan's Red, it is the artist Mark Rothko himself who holds court, and the audience shares his space with him for two hours. This intimate exposure is awe-inspiring as lyrically expressed by John Logan, and is fiercely conveyed by Alfred Molina as Rothko and Jonathan Groff as Ken his 'employee' on the Taper stage through September 9.

The Old Globe today announced the cast and creative team for the San Diego Premiere of God of Carnage, written by Yasmina Reza and translated by Christopher Hampton. The Tony Award-winning comedy is directed by Richard Seer and will run July 27 Sept. 2 in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, part of the Globes Conrad Prebys Theatre Center. Preview performances run July 27 Aug. 1. Opening night is Thursday, Aug. 2 at 800 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online at www.TheOldGlobe.org, by phone at 619 23-globe or by visiting the Box Office at 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park.Check out photos of the cast below...

Kermit and the gang hit the shelves last week with the release of James Bobbins’ The Muppets, and this week brings Daniel Radcliffe in his first feature following Harry Potter in James Watkins’ The Woman in Black, which topped the UK box office three weeks in a row back in February, and has been one of 2012’s biggest earners internationally.

Not too bad a follow-up, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Surprisingly few new titles coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week. But next week brings with it Charlize Theron in Young Adult, along with the Blu-ray releases of Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle and Tales from Earthsea, so be sure to get your pre-orders in early for them. Because who can resist Studio Ghibli?

My picks of the week:

James Watkins’ The Woman in Black & Roman Polanski’s Carnage

The Woman in Black Iframe Embed for Youtube...

★★★★☆ Carnage (2011) sees director Roman Polanski returns to the minimalist cinematic stencil of his claustrophobic debut Knife in the Water. Adapted from Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage and starring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christopher Waltz, Polanski's latest foray into the bourgeoisie world of Manhattan is a perfectly pitched, pressure cooker of a chamber piece with a ferociously cynical comedic framework.

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The Woman in Black; Carnage; Safe House; House of Tolerance

After scaring the jeepers out of parents who couldn't believe their Harry Potter-loving offspring were allowed to watch this kind of thing, The Woman in Black (2012, Momentum, 12) ships up on DVD in the same slightly trimmed version that avoided a 15 certificate through judicious shortening. Having co-written the supremely nasty My Little Eye and gone for the jugular in the viscerally satirical Eden Lake, director James Watkins here foregrounds atmosphere over shocks, looking toward the templates of The Orphanage and The Others with impressively shiversome results.

Deftly adapted by Kick-Ass screenwriter Jane Goldman from Susan Hill's novel (which itself owed a debt to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House), this gas-lit period creeper sees Daniel Radcliffe's dowdy lawyer Arthur Kipps sent to close the affairs of an abandoned house whose grounds are separated from the world by a foggy causeway.

Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage played to a decent critical reception when it opened earlier in the year and much of the credit has to go to the cast which the director brought together.

To coninicde with the film’s release next Monday on DVD and Blu-ray we’ve got an exclusive clip of Jodie Foster talking about her part in the set-up, how seeing the play (or, in her case, not seeing the play) helped her and her fellow actors and the underlying feelings stirred up as the evening descends into pettiness and worse.

Here’s Jodie Foster talking about this film,...

Roman Polanski‘s next movie will be D, described as a political thriller based on the infamous Dreyfus Affair. Polanski (photo), 79 next August 18, will once again work with The Ghost Writer‘s novelist / screenwriter Robert Harris. The Dreyfus Affair revolved around French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish man who was sentenced to life in prison for passing military secrets to the Germans in 1894. Though eventually proven innocent, Dreyfus languished for several years in solitary confinement on Devil’s Island. Partly as a result of the efforts of progressive novelist Émile Zola and others outraged by widespread corruption and bigotry within the ranks of France’s military establishment, Dreyfus was pardoned in 1899. Seven years later, he was officially exonerated of all charges. "I have long wanted to make a film about the Dreyfus Affair, treating it not as a costume drama but as a spy story,” Polanski was quoted as saying in a statement.

Atlantis Productions In the Heights, Disney's The Little Mermaid has just released the poster for its upcoming production of Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning play God of Carnage, starring Lea Salonga Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo Next to Normal, Love, Loss, And What I Wore, Adrian Pang The Full Monty, They're Playing Our Song, and Art Acua The Romance of Magno Rubio, Kitchen Musical. To be directed by Bobby Garcia In the Heights, Disney's The Little Mermaid, God of Carnage will premiere in Manila in July, and in Singapore in November through a partnership with Singapore Repertory Theatre. Check it out below...

Chicago – Why doesn’t “Carnage” live up to its pedigree? With a certified genius like Roman Polanski behind the camera, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play as its source, and a cast in which three of the only four roles are played by actors who have won Oscars, one might have expected this to be a creative home run. It’s not. It’s a decent rental and there are some strong performances, but it’s not quite what it should have been. And a mediocre Blu-ray release from Sony does nothing to change that opinion.

Blu-ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster & John C. Reilly) are in a socially awkward position. Their son has been assaulted and they have invited the abuser’s parents, Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet & Christoph Waltz), over to discuss the incident. As they cordially converse over cobbler, social and moral issues come to the surface and eventually explode.

Arriving on DVD and Blu-ray today, Carnage is the big-screen adaptation of Yasmina Reza'S hit stage play of the same name. Directed by Roman Polanski, the cast consists of Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz. After a playground altercation turns nasty, two sets of parents get together to talk things out and eventually prove that children [...]...

Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, The Artist Jean Dujardin can't win 'em all. For his (in my humble opinion brilliant) performance as a fading silent-film star in Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, he was voted Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, the British Academy Awards, the SAG Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Australian Film Institute Awards (as Best International Actor). He was also chosen as the Best Actor of 2011 by both the London Film Critics Circle and the Academy of French Film Journalists. [List of César winners.] Earlier this evening, however, Dujardin lost the Best Actor César du Cinéma. The 2012 French equivalent of the Oscars went instead to comedian Omar Sy, who co-stars with François Cluzet in the feel-good box-office blockbuster Intouchables / Untouchable. Perhaps enough members of the French Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Crafts were envious of Dujardin's international success and/or felt he had already won too many awards. Or...

Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller in Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius, A Separation: César Winners Pt.1 Best Actor Sami Bouajila, Omar m'a tuer / Omar Killed Me François Cluzet, Intouchables / Untouchable Jean Dujardin, The Artist Olivier Gourmet, L'exercice de l'État / The Minister Denis Podalydes, La conquête / The Conquest * Omar Sy, Intouchables / Untouchable Philippe Torreton, Présumé coupable / Guilty Best Actress Ariane Asquaride, Les neiges du Kilimanjaro / The Snows of Kilimanjaro * Bérénice Bejo, The Artist Leila Bekhti, La Source des femmes / The Source Valérie Donzelli, La guerre est déclarée / Declaration of War Marina Foïs, Polisse Marie Gilain, Toutes nos envies / All Our Desires Karin Viard, Polisse Best Supporting Actor * Michel Blanc, L'exercice de l'État / The Minister Nicolas Duvauchelle, Polisse Joey Starr, Polisse Bernard Lecoq, La conquête / The Conquest Frédéric Pierrot, Polisse Best Supporting Actress Zabou Breitman, L'exercice de l'État / The Minister Anne Le Ny, Intouchables / Untouchable Noémie Lvovsky, L'Apollonide,...

Two of cinema’s key advantages as a medium are its mastery of space and time, and its impression of reality. These two traits are not necessarily related: after all, in reality we often find ourselves stuck in one space for hours on end. Unlike theatre, though, cinema offers the possibility to change location frequently, and it is the norm for screen time to diverge from real time: cinema can cover days, months or years in just under two hours. When a film restricts itself to one location, it’s often a sign that it is based on a play. Since its beginnings, cinema has had to shun the notion of filmed theatre in order to establish itself as an art form in its own right rather than a recording device. For this reason, directors need to carefully adapt plays in order to make them cinematic.

Of course, there is...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 20, 2012

Price: DVD $30.99, Blu-ray $35.99

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Dark comedy movie Carnage had a brief run in theaters at the end of 2011 and was nominated for two Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical Motion Picture Golden Globe awards, one for Jodie Foster and the other for Kate Winslet.

Foster (The Beaver) and Winslet (Contagion) star as wives and mothers who, with their respective husband, John C. Reilly (Cyrus) and Christoph Waltz (Water for Elephants), meet to discuss a fight involving their 11-year-old sons. Zachary (Elvis Polanski, Roman’s son), son of Winslet and Waltz, struck his classmate Ethan (Eliot Berger), son of Foster and Reilly, resulting in a missing tooth. Foster and Reilly invite Winslet and Waltz to their Brooklyn apartment to deal with the matter, but what begins as a cordial meeting quickly turns into childish behavior.

The film was directed by Roman Polanski...

Roman Polanski's claustrophobic comedy brilliantly unpicks the veneers of middle-class politeness

In 1996, I wasted an evening (actually an hour in the theatre and a journey into the West End) seeing Art, Yasmina Reza's vapid play about three French friends arguing over the aesthetic merits of a blank canvas one of them has bought. So I didn't bother with her much vaunted God of Carnage when it opened here and around the world three years ago to the masochistic amusement of enthusiastic middle-class audiences, apparently pleased to see themselves and their friends in a corridor of distorting mirrors.

The prospect of seeing yet another exposé of bourgeois hypocrisy reminded me of a 1950s New Yorker cartoon in which a bland, middle-aged hostess is presenting a bearded, long-haired young man in jeans to a tweedy, middle-aged guest, who's saying: "No, madam, I do not want to meet a spokesman for the Beat Generation.

What would you do if somebody thumped your child? It's fiction's big question at the moment, one that's been asked in an award-winning novel, Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap, an award-winning film, Susanne Bier's In a Better World, and an award-winning play, Yasmina Reza's The God of Carnage, which has now been made into a film by Roman Polanski. Renamed Carnage, and relocated from Paris to New York, it all takes place one afternoon shortly after the son of Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz has whacked the son of Jodie Foster and John C Reilly around the head with a stick. The grown-ups pride themselves on being impeccably civilised, so they get together in Foster and Reilly's tasteful Brooklyn apartment to weigh up what should be done.

Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz finally found Hollywood fame at the age of 55.

His expressions are able to suggest a simmering undercurrent of menace that could erupt at any moment. It made him perfect as a nasty Nazi in Inglourious Basterds, the gangster villain in Green Hornet, a cruel circus owner in Water For Elephants and the scheming Cardinal Richlieu in The Three Musketeers.

His latest role is in Roman Polanski's Carnage, an adaptation of Yasmina Reza's hit play God of Carnage, which is released in cinemas this weekend.

It centres on two Brooklyn couples - played by Waltz, Kate Winslet, John C Reilly and Jodie Foster - who meet to discuss a fight between their sons in a park. Slowly, and under the influence of alcohol, the adults' decorum disintegrates into an all-out showdown.

Waltz, whose role has been described as a gleeful ringmaster delighting in the savagery beneath everyone's civilised veneer,...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Carnage, the latest work from one of the world’s most controversial directors, Roman Polanksi, is very much the sort of film a director decides to make once the yearning for awards season recognition is mostly in the rear view, and those potentially awkward twilight years have begun to set in. That’s certainly not a complaint, though, and while Polanski’s latest film probably won’t light up either the Academy or the box office, that ultimately takes little away from what is a marvellously constructed chamber piece, a savage comic drama adapted from Yasmina Reza’s acclaimed play God of Carnage.

The overwhelming majority of Carnage takes place within the confines of one apartment, owned by Michael and Penelope Longstreet (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster), whose son was beaten viciously with a stick by another child. The other child’s parents, Alan and...

2012 promises to be a fantastic year in cinema. Not too long ago, we posted a list of thirty of our most anticipated films of 2012, and so I decided I would keep track of my favourite films released each month. Here are my five favourite films released in January.

#1- We Need To Talk About Kevin

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

UK

Hell best describes Lynne Ramsay’s latest feature, her first in nine years ever since her brilliant and much overlooked Morvern Callar. Many critics have criticized the film for the characters portrayal, but they seem to be missing the point. One would assume the movie is about its titular character, but the movie really isn’t about Kevin at all. We Need To Talk About Kevin is all about perception – in this case, in how Eva perceives the world, how she regards her son and how she views situations in her past.

Tried and tested on stage from Paris to London to Broadway, New York, Yasmina Reza’s successful play God of Carnage was always going to present a challenge being adapted for film by the playwright herself. However, the key to the story – shortened to Carnage – is the power of the acting talent assigned to play the parents; director Roman Polanski’s excellent casting of Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly as the Longstreets, and Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz as the Cowans is the absolute tour de force of the film.

After the Cowans’ son, Zachary (Polanski’s own son Elvis) ‘disfigures’ the Longstreets’ son, Ethan (Eliot Berger) with a stick in the park, the Longstreets, Penelope (Foster) and Michael (Reilly) invite the Cowans, Nancy (Winslet) and Alan (Waltz) over to their apartment to discuss what course of action should be taken next. However, a civilised, albeit contrived meeting unravels into childish chaos.

Kate Winslet is seen by many as one of the greatest actresses Britain has ever produced. While for some she will always be Rose DeWitt in Titanic, she has never rested on her laurels and has constantly picked interesting and challenging roles. February sees her appear in Roman Polanski’s latest film Carnage. Based on the play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, it’s a savage, hilarious comedy about two couples who are drawn together when their respective sons get into a fight – and end up squabbling more than the kids! Winslet is excellent (as is the rest of the all-star cast), and received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in Carnage, giving us the perfect opportunity to look at some of the greatest performances of her career…

Heavenly Creatures

Between making splatter comedies in his native New Zealand and changing the history of cinema with Lord Of The Rings,...

Roman Polanski brings together the likes of Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet for his latest movie, Carnage. But is it any good?

Carnage, an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play God Of Carnage, is Roman Polanski’s latest cinematic effort in his somewhat bizarre and tumultuous career. Having done fairly well with his last film, The Ghost, which followed the largely negative feelings for his Oliver Twist adaptation, the stakes, and hopes, for Carnage were a little higher.

The film follows an unfolding and impossibly expanding conversation between two pairs of parents, the Longstreets and the Cowans, who are brought into dialogue together due to an altercation in the playground at school between their two young sons.

Their children’s fight caused the Longstreet’s boy to lose two of his teeth, and as such, the parents get together to discuss in a civilised manner what should be done about the situation.

In the hands of Roman Polanski, the one-room chamber cinema of Carnage lives up to its name, says John Patterson. Spoiler alert! It all ends messily

"Mmm … Francis Bacon?" says Kate Winslet to Jodie Foster, leafing through a coffee-table book devoted to the master of the cramped interior and the silent scream, "cruelty and splendour, chaos and balance …" Later she will vomit violently and at considerable length all over this same book but for now, she's offering a neat summary of the virtues of Roman Polanski's toothsomely claustrophobic Carnage, from Yasmina Reza's stage play.

One apartment – the film's entire set – holds two bourgeois New York couples meeting to discuss their sons, one of whom has knocked out the other's front teeth, and to effect some kind of settlement between the boys. Add Polanski to this toxic cocktail of passive-aggressive PC liberalism (Foster) v Darwinian corporate sharkiness (Christoph Waltz...

Starring Kate Winslet, John C Rielly, Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz, Carnage is the new film from master filmmaker Roman Polanski. To mark the film’s cinema release on 3rd February, we have a bundle of great DVDs, including The Guard, Four Lions and The Brothers Bloom, plus a Carnage poster, to give away!

Based on Yasmina Reza’s play “The God Of Carnage” A showdown between two kids about eleven, in a local playground. Swollen lips, broken teeth… Now the parents of the “victim” have invited the parents of the “bully” to their apartment to sort it out. Cordial banter gradually develops a razor-sharp edge as all four parents reveal their laughable contradictions and grotesque prejudices. None of them will escape the ensuing carnage.

To be in with a chance of winning the competition, click next to go to the question and entry form.

Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener have joined the cast of Charlie Kaufman's next film, "Frank or Francis," New York magazine's Vulture blog reports.

Kaufman has already enlisted Steve Carell, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage and Kevin Kline to feature in the film. Carell will play a prolific actor/director irked enough by a nuisance web commenter (Black) that he seeks to confront and correct him. Cage will play a washed-up actor hosting the Academy Awards, while Kline will take on an unconventional dual role, playing both the inventor of a mechanical head designed to create the perfect movie script and the head itself.

Both Winslet and Keener have worked with Kaufman before; Winslet earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in 2004's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," while Keener got an Academy nod for her part in 1999's "Being John Malkovich."

Winslet recently starred in Roman Polanski's adaptation...

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival last September, Roman Polanski’s latest film, Carnage, is just a couple of weeks away from coming out here in the UK. If you’ve missed our coverage of the film so far, you can catch up on it all right here, most recently including the UK trailer towards the end of last year.

With the release now imminent, Empire have a great new UK quad poster to share with us, featuring the film’s four principals front and centre, twice. So we get to see Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz, each doubled up.

“A showdown between two kids: about eleven, in a local playground. Swollen lips, broken teeth… Now the parents of the “victim” have invited the parents of the “bully” to their apartment to sort it out. Cordial banter gradually develops a razor-sharp edge as all four...

Third poster for Roman Polanski's Carnage, starring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly. The Sony Pictures Classics comedy helmed and scripted by Polanski and Yasmina Reza, based on the play “God of Carnage” by Reza, opened December 16th in limited areas, and has grossed over $1.66 million domestically. Overseas, the film has pulled in over $20 million. Carnage is a razor sharp, biting comedy centered on parental differences. After two boys duke it out on a playground, the parents of the “victim” invite the parents of the “bully” over to work out their issues. A polite discussion of childrearing soon escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents revealing their true colors. None of them will escape the carnage.