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Let’s face it—most of us had that one flick that freaked us out as kids, yet somehow, we couldn’t look away. Interview with the Vampire (1994) was that film for many. It was one of those rare cases where the blood-curdling gothic drama wasn’t just a vampire flick, but a full-on immersion into dark, eternal immortality. With a cast led by two of Hollywood’s finest—Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt—it should have been no surprise that the film would charm, frighten, and maybe even haunt us a little.

Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire | Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

And let’s get one thing straight: no one, and we mean No One, expected 12-year-old Kirsten Dunst to steal the show. But it’s not all roses and fairy tales in Interview with the Vampire. Dunst once shared that her casting story wasn’t exactly a fairy tale.

Few actresses capture the essence of the “girl next door” ingenue quite like Kirsten Dunst. However, Dunst’s talent extends far beyond this classic film trope, as she has consistently demonstrated her remarkable acting abilities throughout her career.

Kirsten Dunst has had an active acting career since 1989, and moviegoers may know her from many different roles — depending on their generation — such as Mary Jane Watson in the early 2000s Spider-Man franchise or as the forever young Claudia in the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire.

Director Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst on the set of the 1999 American psychological drama film The Virgin Suicides (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

Dunst was born in 1982 and grew up in Brick Township, New Jersey, a far cry from the glitz of Hollywood, with most of its residents from middle and lower-middle-class backgrounds.

Dunst’s family was no different, though they likely fared better than some of Brick Township’s inhabitants.

In 1989, The Walt Disney Company produced an anthology film that banded together two of the most celebrated filmmakers in history. New York Stories, featuring two shorts by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, is meant as a love letter to the Big Apple, but in reality, it's more or less an experiment to allow these master filmmakers to team up. Still, this level of artistic curiosity is neglected in Disney's current business model. New York Stories, which also includes a short by a purebred New Yorker, Woody Allen, tracks one filmmaker in Scorsese on the upswing heading into his middle years and another in Coppola suffering from an unclear vision that signaled his future late-period work.

Martin Scorsese is one of the biggest names in the movie industry and was responsible for some of the greatest films of all time, although many may not be aware of his interesting side projects on television. Scorseses television works date back to the 1980s, as he embraced TV with an anthology release and has since occasionally signed up to direct TV episodes, executive produce documentaries, or even narrate long-standing passion projects. While they may not be as well known as his acclaimed films, Scorsese brought the same level of passion and enthusiasm to television as he has with moviemaking.

Like the best Martin Scorsese movies, the director's TV projects also address his consistent themes of gangsters, faith, and the complexities of human relationships. Scorsese even stepped in to direct the pilot episodes of television shows, laying the groundwork for the series' style and tone, which were then continually emulated throughout the entire series run,...

October 25 will mark 62 years since the release of the first film directed by Francis Ford Coppola: “Come on Out” (later retitled “Tonight for Sure”), a re-edited feature version of three different shorter nudie films he made while a film student at UCLA. It debuted in 1962, right in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis.

With “Megalopolis” opening, he likely has the longest feature film directorial career ever, ahead of Manoel de Oliveira (61 years), Jean-Luc Godard (58), Jerzy Skolimowsky (58), and Frederick Wiseman (56). Clint Eastwood, whose latest film “Juror #2” premieres next month, spans a mere 53 as a director.

To sustain a career that long necessitates a lot of success, which Coppola has had, led by “The Godfather.” But it has been a perilous journey, elongated (“Megalopolis” the most extreme) by his willingness to spend money to keep directing. Of note, his last studio-financed film was “The Rainmaker,” 27 years — and nearly half his career — ago.

The organizing principles of portmanteau films are often quite simplistic. A group of directors tackling a particular genre, for example, or films united by geography. An example of the latter is the straightforwardly-titled New York Stories, of which only Martin Scorsese’s “Life Lessons” is remembered much these days. Jim Jarmusch has made a few united around theme and setting — Coffee and Cigarettes, where famous actors sit down over a brew and a smoke; Night on Earth, where famous actors take cab rides in production-friendly cities around the world; and Mystery Train, where the stories are linked by a setting […]

The post “It Is Like a Palette Cleanser, In a Way…”: Yorgos Lanthimos on Following Poor Things with the Sardonic Portmanteau Film, Kinds of Kindness first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The organizing principles of portmanteau films are often quite simplistic. A group of directors tackling a particular genre, for example, or films united by geography. An example of the latter is the straightforwardly-titled New York Stories, of which only Martin Scorsese’s “Life Lessons” is remembered much these days. Jim Jarmusch has made a few united around theme and setting — Coffee and Cigarettes, where famous actors sit down over a brew and a smoke; Night on Earth, where famous actors take cab rides in production-friendly cities around the world; and Mystery Train, where the stories are linked by a setting […]

The post “It Is Like a Palette Cleanser, In a Way…”: Yorgos Lanthimos on Following Poor Things with the Sardonic Portmanteau Film, Kinds of Kindness first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Nathalie Emmanuel’s first trip to the Cannes Film Festival was certainly a memorable one.

The “Fast and Furious” franchise star and “Game of Thrones” alum knows what it’s like to be in the spotlight, but Cannes is unique. First, consider the fact that she’s the leading lady in legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s longtime passion project “Megalopolis,” which made its world premiere at the festival. Then, there’s the reality of ascending the famed red steps to the Palais des Festivals.

“This whole experience has been like nothing I’ve ever had before,” Emmanuel told Variety the next day. “That moment was so much bigger and so much grander — I just had no concept of how crazy it would be, how exciting it would be, how many people there would be. … It was quite overwhelming, but really exciting and felt like a real celebration.”

“And obviously,...

Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most revered directors in Hollywood. He enjoyed tremendous success with the Godfather franchise, even if the third and final installment polarized the fans. Regardless, the filmmaker won critical acclaim, and it engraved his name in the annals of cinema history.

Coppola can be credited for adapting the book for the big screen so flawlessly, with each role carefully chosen. However, the production for the third film was mired in problems, accentuated by the fact that Robert Duvall refused to return to complete the trilogy.

Duvall refused to return for the final film (Source: The Godfather)

Why did Robert Duvall turn down Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 3?

Francis Ford Coppola established himself as an esteemed director quite early on in his career. He put together an incredible lineup that brought Mario Puzo’s novel to life, with Al Pacino and Marlon Brando leading the cast.

Kirsten Dunst is opening up about ageism in Hollywood and why she hasn’t been working as much lately.

In a cover story for Marie Claire as part of its 2024 Makers Issue, the Oscar-nominated actress explained that following her role in 2021’s The Power of the Dog, she was only being offered one kind of role: “the sad mom.”

So, instead of taking on any project, Dunst stepped back from acting for two years after the Jane Campion film because she wasn’t being offered the meaty roles she wanted, which she could get lost in and felt were worth her time.

“To be honest, that’s been hard for me … because I need to feed myself,” she told the publication of not working for two years. “The hardest thing is being a mom and … not feeling like, I have nothing for myself. That’s every mother — not just me.

Is there a single director working today with a better track record than Martin Scorsese? Ever since breaking through with his gritty, scrappy crime drama “Mean Streets,” the Italian-American’s name has been synonymous with quality, and he’s kept that train going for several years. Some films were more acclaimed than others, but from the ’70s all the way to the 2020s, Scorsese has remained a consistent top-tier filmmaker, pumping out at least one or two stone-cold classics per decade.

What’s even more impressive is how adaptable and varied the man has proven himself to be. A refrain popular among internet contrarians is that Scorsese is just a dude who makes gangster movies, but one look at the films he’s made over the years shows that only scratches the surface of his capabilities and tastes. While his mafia films like “Goodfellas” and “The Irishman” are obvious greats,...

Quick Links Just Getting Started Opened the Series Oedipus Wrecks is Technically the Highest-Ranked Sicarius Makes Evolution a Requel Memento Mori Brings Rossi and Sicarius Closer Than Ever Forget Me Knots Mirrors the Original Criminal Minds Moose Focuses on Elias Voit Dead End Seemingly Ends the Sicarius Saga Pay-Per-View Breaks the Evolution Pattern True Conviction Explores Voit's Background What Doesn't Kill Us is Underwhelming for Some

Criminal Minds was one of the most popular shows on CBS before it ended in 2020, with a loyal fanbase that's still going strong today. So, naturally, the show was revived in 2022 on Paramount+ and carried on the legacy perfectly. There aren't very many episodes of Evolution yet, but since it got renewed for Season 2, it's the best time to recap and rank the episodes so far.

Criminal Minds: Evolution is a soft reboot of the original show, with both following the FBI's behavioral profilers analyzing the worst-of-the-worst criminals.

With the three and a half hour Killers of the Flower Moon pulling in solid numbers this weekend, we wanted to know what movie in the iconic filmmaker’s filmography has been your favorite. Not necessarily the best, just your favorite. So if the extended music video for Michael Jackson’s Bad is the one you can watch over and over again, by all means click that button! We didn’t include any of his documentaries such as The Last Waltz or Shine a Light but if those are your favorites, click the “Other” button and let us know in the comments why you love them so much.

Favorite Martin Scorsese Directed FilmWho's That Knocking at My Door (1967)Boxcar Bertha (1972)Mean Streets (1973)Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)Taxi Driver (1976)New York, New York (1977)Raging Bull (1980)The King of Comedy (1982)After Hours (1985)The Color of Money (1986)Bad (Michael Jackson Music Video...

As “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Paramount) debuts in theaters ahead of streaming on Apple, critics are ranking their favorite Scorsese movies. Looking at the auteur’s 26 films by their adjusted box-office gross, it’s a very different outcome.

“Flower Moon” will probably not make Scorsese’s top 10. It’s expected to place in the middle third of the director’s films with a domestic gross projected at up to $100 million. To be one of his 10 highest, it would need to surpass $104 million.

Five of the director’s seven biggest hits came in this century, the most recent being 2013’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Four of his top five star Leonardo DiCaprio including “The Departed,” the director’s biggest hit (both adjusted and unadjusted) as well as his sole Best Picture winner.

Adjusted, here is the box-office order for Scorsese’s 26 feature releases. (Excluded are his two concert documentaries.

The Wes Anderson aesthetic, tone, and style are unmistakable. When this particular writer commented that you can recognize an Anderson film “within 10 seconds,” the subject of this interview interjected, “even less!” — and he’s not wrong. But there’s also the inherent charm of his often recurring cast of stars. Now appearing in his fifth Anderson feature, no one is a bigger fan of Anderson’s work and process than Oscar winner Adrien Brody.

So once you hear that Brody, who talks with obvious joy and understanding about everything from Anderson’s ability to cast incredible young talent and the way he uses animatics to plot his films, is playing a director in “Asteroid City” — a theatrical director, but a director nonetheless — the question seems obvious: is he playing Anderson?

No. Not really. Ok, maybe a little, but certainly not more than his primary inspiration: Elia Kazan.

“I’ve spent a lifetime with filmmakers,...

While Martin Scorsese brought about 20 minutes of footage of Gangs of New York to Cannes Film Festival in 2002, the last time he had an official selection there (not counting New York Stories and My Voyage to Italy) was 37 years ago with After Hours, for which he picked up the Best Director award. Now, after many rumors, he’s officially set to return to the festival where he also premiered Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Palme d’Or winner Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz, and The King of Comedy.

The French festival confirmed today that they will world premiere on Saturday, May 20 in the Grand Théâtre Lumière with Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Tantoo Cardinal, along with additional cast and members of the filmmaking team, in attendance.

While the festival didn’t announce whether the film would be in competition or out of competition,...

Movies That Made Me veteran guest and screenwriter Dan Waters discusses his favorite year of cinema (1989) with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Love At First Bite (1979)

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Demolition Man (1993)

Heathers (1989)

Warlock (1989)

The Matrix (1999)

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Jaws (1975)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Nashville (1975)

Born On The Fourth Of July (1989)

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

Field Of Dreams (1989)

My Left Foot (1989)

Crimes And Misdemeanors (1989)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Sex Lies And Videotape (1989)

Easy Rider (1969)

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

All That Jazz (1979)

Hair (1979)

Alien (1979)

Fight Club (1999)

Office Space (1999)

Magnolia (1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

American Pie (1999)

The Iron Giant (1999)

All About My Mother (1999)

Being John Malkovich (1999)

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Pretty In Pink (1986)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Say Anything… (1989)

Miracle Mile (1989)

True Love (1989)

Powwow Highway (1989)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

Southside With You...

Exclusive: UTA has signed award-winning actor, director, writer and producer Steve Buscemi and his Olive Productions banner for representation in all areas.

Buscemi currently co-stars opposite Daniel Radcliffe in the TBS anthology comedy series Miracle Workers that’s executive produced by Lorne Michaels. He starred in the HBO drama, Boardwalk Empire, which earned him a Golden Globe Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy nominations.

He was also nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for his role as Tony Blundetto in season five of The Sopranos and was nominated for Guest Actor Emmy nominations for his appearances on NBC’s 30 Rock and IFC’s Portlandia.

Some of his film credits include Martin Scorsese’s New York Stories; Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train for which he received an IFP Spirit Award Nomination; Alexandre Rockwell’s Sundance Film Festival Jury Award-winner In the Soup; Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island...

A striking number of Oscar-nominated acting talent from 2021 got their start at a young age, with the power and excitement of performing for the screen grabbing them early and never letting go. Kristen Stewart began acting at age 8, and just received her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Princess Diana in “Spencer.” She recently spoke to Nicole Kidman, who landed her fifth nomination with her portrayal of Lucille Ball in “Being the Ricardos” for Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” about their youthful careers. Stewart spoke of discovering fame with “Twilight.” “When I started doing that movie, I was 17 and I was just a little inside-out person,” Stewart said. “I was walking around with all my blood on the outside of my body.”

Kidman replied: “I was 14. I remember Anthony Minghella saying to me, ‘You are skinless.’ I think that’s what you’re describing. Vulnerable, exposed, everything you are going through is for consumption.

In film history, the anthology genre is the most challenging. Episodic films often have several directors and screenwriters which gives them an inconsistent tone and quality. But the genre’s pitfalls haven’t stopped such filmmakers including Akira Kurosawa (“Dreams”), the Coens (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”), Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”); Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese (“New York Stories”); and Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller and Steven Spielberg (“Twilight Zone: The Movie”).

Wes Anderson joined them with his latest film “The French Dispatch,” which received a nine-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. The comedy brings to life three stories from an American magazine published in a fictional French city and features his stock company of actors including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson.

If you are a fan of the genre, here are the best anthology movies that...

Exclusive: Emmy winner Steve Buscemi has wrapped production on his newest feature The Listener, starring Emmy nominee Tessa Thompson, Deadline has learned.

The contained film written by Oscar nominee Alessandro Camon (The Messenger) features only one on-screen role. It tells the story of Beth (Thompson), a helpline volunteer who is part of the small army that gets on the phone every night across America, fielding calls from all kinds of people feeling lonely, broken, hopeless, worried.

Over the last year, the tide has become a tsunami, and as Beth goes through her shift, the stakes rise: is this the night she will lose someone? Save someone? Put a mind at ease? Make someone smile?

Eventually, Beth’s own story comes to light, revealing why she does it. All along we remain with her: listening, comforting, connecting – patching the world back together, one stitch at a time…...

We’ve all been there: Endlessly scrolling through the hundreds of movies served to you by the Netflix algorithm — only to come to the conclusion that there’s just nothing to watch. Then on to Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video, or any one of the other major streaming services, only to be faced with the same problem.

What if the solution to the paradoxical problem of too many choices but nothing to watch lies in yes, another streaming service? The team behind a newly launched streamer, Curia, hopes that could be the case.

Rather than hundreds of options served up by technology, Curia wants to deliver “only the good stuff” by programming around 80 features a month in a rotating selection of collections like this month’s New York Stories, featuring “King of New York,” “Light Sleeper,” and eight other films that take viewers across the boroughs and through decades. For just $3.99 a month,...

Since the moment 4K discs hit the market, the Star Trek movies have been among sci-fi fans’ most eagerly anticipated titles. This week the first four have finally arrived on the format in the “Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection” set, and I’m happy to say it was worth the wait – the transfers on all four titles, particularly the original, are immaculate. Revisiting them back-to-back, the most interesting thing about the films is how different each one is from the one that came before it; there’s a surprising degree of trial and error as the filmmakers apply varied methods […]

The post Star Trek, “Vengeance Trails,” Ashes and Diamonds and Criterion’s “New York Stories”: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

China Lost and Found: Eight Films by Jia Zhangke

One of the greatest directors to emerge in this young century, Jia Zhangke has captured his native country like few others. The Criterion Channel is now spotlighting his stellar body of work, including the new restoration of his debut Xiao Wu (1997), along with Platform (2000), Unknown Pleasures (2002), The World (2004), Still Life (2006), 24 City (2008), A Touch of Sin (2013), and Mountains May Depart (2015). Also playing is the documentary Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang from 2014.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas)

In the quarter-century since its debut, Olivier Assayas’ hilarious, mischievous, altogether unclassifiable Irma Vep stands merrily uninterested in many things contemporary movies are meant to be interested in—not ultra-sophisticated narrative gimmickry...

Next month’s Criterion Channel selection is here, and as 2021 winds down further cements their status as our single greatest streaming service. Off the top I took note of their eight-film Jia Zhangke retro as well as the streaming premieres of Center Stage and Malni. And, yes, Margaret has been on HBO Max for a while, but we can hope Criterion Channel’s addition—as part of the 63(!)-film “New York Stories”—opens doors to a more deserving home-video treatment.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy, Bruno Dumont’s Joan of Arc duology, and Criterion’s editions of Irma Vep and Flowers of Shanghai also mark major inclusions—just a few years ago the thought of Hou’s masterpiece streaming in HD was absurd.

I could implore you not to sleep on The Hottest August and Point Blank and Variety and In the Cut or, look, so many Ernst Lubitsch movies,...

In The Good Place, D'Arcy Carden is a series highlight as Janet, the programmable guide and infinite knowledge source who provides residents of the titular destination with whatever they desire. This Good Janet accomplishes her many tasks with a smile on her face.

Related: The Good Place: 10 Best Life Lessons Janet Taught Us

While Good Janet and her various iterations obviously rock, her opposite Bad Janet (also played by Carden) turns out to be pretty cool, too. Bad Janet, as her name implies, hangs out in the Bad Place, slinging insults with the same verve Good Janet applies to her compliments. This brings up a pressing question: which Janet would make a better pal in the eternal afterlife?...

In her new film “On the Rocks” — premiering at the New York Film Festival on its way to AppleTV+ in October — writer-director Sofia Coppola may well have crafted the quintessential Bill Murray role. But this is a father-daughter story, and the daughter is no less important; it helps, obviously, that both Coppola and co-lead Rashida Jones know a thing or two about larger-than-life dads, but it also matters that Jones is enough of a skilled actor and comic that she more than holds her own opposite the equally larger-than-life Murray.

Murray’s Felix is an old-school charmer, a deadpan wit, and a bon vivant, but he’s also an adoring father and grandfather, and he’s capable of accessing and acknowledging regret and loss. It would be a banquet for any actor, but the character has been so crafted for this particular performer that one suspects we will think of...

Every character on Friends has a particular charm. They all react to each other in a way that, even if you could only see the effect, it wouldn’t be hard to guess the cause. An eye roll from Joey or Chandler? Ross probably just admitted that he gave up sports to become a scientist. A frustrated sigh from Ross? Phoebe probably just told him the “truth” about gravity. Either that or he just found out that Rachel's father is in town.

Related: Friends: 10 Life Lessons That Are Still Applicable Today

However, when it comes to Monica there always seemed to be a bit of fear involved. Here are 10 times that the characters on Friends seemed afraid of Monica.

Richard Price, the acclaimed screenwriter of The Color of Money and co-creator of HBO’s limited series The Night Of, will be the recipient of the WGA East’s Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement. The award will be presented February 1 at the 72nd annual Writers Guild Awards at New York’s Edison Ballroom.

The author of nine novels, Price joined the guild in 1984 after writing the screenplay for The Color of Money, which was directed by Martin Scorsese, starred Paul Newman and Tom Cruise and earned Price an Oscar nomination. He worked with Scorsese again in 1987 for his segment in New York Stories, a three-part film that also featured contributions from Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola, and Woody Allen.

Widely acclaimed for writing some of the most thought-provoking crime dramas, Price ‘s film work throughout the 1990s continued to receive critical and box office success. He wrote...

All below-the-line artists are tasked with interpreting a director’s vision through their craft, but the editor’s contribution is often the hardest to separate. As Stanley Kubrick said, “Editing is the only unique aspect of filmmaking which does not resemble any other art form.” That ability to jump through time and space, to show the viewer an image, cut, and connect it to something entirely different to create new meaning, rhythm, and emotion is at the core of how a director guides the audience.

Further complicating the ability to measure their contribution is how our favorite auteurs often rely on the same editors, forming professional marriages that span decades. Where does Steven Spielberg’s visual efficiency end, and Michael Kahn’s precision start? Could Spike Lee boldly shift tonal gears, if Barry Alexander Brown wasn’t there to preserve internal consistency? How much of Sofia Coppola’s distinct pace...

Our friends at Le Cinéma Club further their role as forces for good in this horrible world with “Women to Watch: Five Shorts by New, Exciting Voices”–both entirely what it sounds like and far more involving than your standard showcase of contemporary American films by women. Case in point is their kick-off title, Moving, which recently screened as part of this year’s New York Film Festival program “New York Stories.” Its single-idea premise–a woman (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross), moving to a new apartment, attempts carrying a mattress up a flight of stairs–births a perspective any New Yorker will painfully recognize: per writer-director-editor Adinah Dancyger, “a love/hate letter to a beautifully unreasonably place, where we struggle endlessly to create sanctuaries in our small rooms with mediocre views.”

Hardly a second is wasted in Dancyger and Gross’s interplay, and details that what most other times be...

Kirsten Dunst had a secret. When shooting 2016’s “Hidden Figures,” she was struggling with how to portray Vivian Mitchell, a supervisor to Octavia Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan that barely hides her hostility and contempt for the mathematician.

“You know what my secret was?” Dunst says with a laugh. “I pretended that my character was in love with Octavia Spencer, but couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t rationalize it any other way. So all my anger and pent-up frustration was I was just so in love with Octavia.”

Dunst has been finding her way deep into characters since she was a child, making her film debut at age 7 in Woody Allen’s “Oedipus Wrecks” segment of 1989’s “New York Stories” before achieving stardom at 12 opposite Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in 1994’s “Interview With the Vampire.” She’s proven she can play everything from a sunny cheerleader in...

“Pretty Bad Actress” is a pretty muddled movie, distinguished by vertiginous tonal shifts, wildly uneven performances, hit-and-miss satirical thrusts, and cavernous gaps in narrative logic. Indeed, it’s not entirely clear just when this strained farce — involving a fallen-from-grace former child star who may get a career boost from her own kidnapping — is supposed to take place. Conspicuous displays of VHS tapes, flip-top phones, and other period indicators appear to be hallmarks of a 1990s period piece. Sporadically, however, there are pop-culture references that suggest a contemporary timeframe. Even before writer-director Nick Scown springs a brazenly absurd third-act plot twist, it’s tempting to entertain the possibility that, hey, maybe everybody involved in this untidy enterprise simply made things up as they went along.

Despite being cast in the title role, Heather McComb actually gives a credible and creditable performance that consistently stands out as one of the film’s few saving graces.

Chicago – The acting career of Illeana Douglas began with director Martin Scorsese and flourished in her first lead role for “Grace of My Heart” (1996). She is best known today for hosting the “Trailblazing Women” series on Turner Classic Movies, and in Part Three of a three part interview with HollywoodChicago.com, she talks about feminism, the essence of directors she has worked for, plus her grandmother Helen Gahagan, the third female Congress representative in U.S. history.

Illeana Douglas was born in Massachuetts, the daughter of Gregory Douglas, the son of 1930s movie star Melvyn Douglas (Helen Gahagan was his wife). She got the show biz bug as a young teenager, when she was able to visit her grandfather on the set of “Being There” (1979). After high school she moved to New York City to pursue a career. She studied acting while working various jobs, and met Martin Scorsese while...

Chicago – The acting career of Illeana Douglas began with director Martin Scorsese and flourished in her first lead role for “Grace of My Heart” (1996). She is best known today for hosting the “Trailblazing Women” series on Turner Classic Movies, and in Part Two of a three part interview with HollywoodChicago.com, she talks about her approach as an actor and how early influences defined that style.

Illeana Douglas was born in Massachuetts, the daughter of Gregory Douglas, who was the son of 1930s movie star Melvyn Douglas. She got the show biz bug as a young teenager, when she was able to visit her grandfather on the set of “Being There” (1979). After high school she moved to New York City to pursue a career. She studied acting while working various jobs, and met Martin Scorsese while he was editing “The Last Temptation of Christ.” She made her film debut in...

Chicago – Long before 2017, the year of notable recognition for women filmmakers, the actress, producer and author Illeana Douglas launched the film series “Trailblazing Women” on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 2015. Her goal was to achieve recognition for the pioneering efforts of women in early film history and beyond.

“Trailblazing Women” had its third season in October of 2017, and again Douglas was the host. She has been an advocate for women throughout her show business career, besides having the ancestry cache of her grandfather – Oscar-winner Melvyn Douglas – who was a movie star and character actor from the 1930s through the 1980s.

Actress/Author Illeana Douglas in Chicago

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Illeana Douglas was born in Massachuetts, the daughter of Melvyn Douglas’ son Gregory and his wife Joan. She got the show biz bug as a young teenager, when she was able to visit her...

Welcome to another installment of Movies to Show My Son. This is the blog series where I discuss movies I can’t wait to show my son in the future. I’ll be covering my own personal experience with the movie, movie and life lessons I hope he will learn, and lastly my concerns about showing said film. This week’s film is Star Wars.

My Memories:

I know many can point to the exact moment they sat down and saw Star Wars for the first time. They can speak to it as the ultimate religious experience where they transcended their physical forms to become one with the force. For me, I cannot recall the first time I saw Star Wars, or if going in I knew about who Luke’s dad was or if I was ever properly prepared for what I was about to witness. Of course, I watched it,...

A “born and bred New York person,” production designer Mark Friedberg was a natural fit to design Todd Hayne’s latest, Wonderstruck. Having worked with Haynes on Far from Heaven and Mildred Pierce, Friedberg considers it his mission to tell New York stories. “I love the city. It’s in my blood,” the production designer says. “I am of it.” Wonderstruck gave Friedberg the opportunity to explore New York in two periods—the ’20s and the ’70s—while pursuing other artistic…...

Mother-daughter relationships have always been the stuff of great drama. And the Oscars are no exception. Three decades ago the “Moonstruck” acting duo Olympia Dukakis and Cher both won gold for playing a strong-willed New York Italian mother and her feisty daughter. Six years later, as a mute Scottish teacher and her de facto interpreter in New Zealand, Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin repeated that twofer triumph with Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

Onscreen mother-daughter conflict has resulted in other dual Academy Award nominations: selfless Barbara Stanwyck tricked Anne Shirley into marrying rich in tearjerker “Stella Dallas” (1937); Meryl Streep’s big mouth inspired a rebellious Julia Roberts in “August: Osage County” (2013); Piper Laurie was literally crucified by Sissy Spacek in “Carrie” (1976). At the start of this decade, Mo’Nique won an Oscar portraying the sexually abusive parent of fellow “Precious” nominee Gabourey Sidibe. Back in 1984, both Shirley MacLaine and...

When indie director Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) became the first woman of color to tackle a $100-million tentpole, Disney’s upcoming sci-fi/adventure, “A Wrinkle in Time,” her biggest fear was tackling VFX. But at Saturday’s Visual Effects Society Summit at the Sofitel Hotel in Beverly Hills, DuVernay described how, as a black woman from Compton, she learned to incorporate the technical language into her storytelling arsenal.

“I pride myself as the queen of the scene in a room…I know how to make the past and the present,” said DuVernay during her keynote Q&A the day after winning a BAFTA Britannia Award. “I don’t know how to make the future — until now.”

One Step at a Time

But when Ilm visual effects supervisor Rich McBride (Oscar-nominated for “The Revenant”) broke the process down into layers, the experience became a transformation.

“There are pieces of the puzzle that...

Maybe Todd Haynes has always been too smart for his own good. The 56-year-old director has been making films for nearly 40 years, but in some ways he’s still the Brown semiotics grad who can’t resist the siren’s call of form. As he admits, “I like to set up obstacles at times, because movies are ultimately about what the spectator brings to them.”

That would seem to make him an unlikely candidate to direct a young-adult adaptation, but his “Carol” and “Velvet Goldmine” costume designer Sandy Powell knew better. When she discovered Brian Selznick’s 2011 graphic novel “Wonderstruck,” which intertwines stories from 1927 and 1977 in a young-adult mystery with little dialogue, she encouraged him to adapt it for Haynes on spec.

Indeed, Haynes found the “Wonderstruck” screenplay downright Haynesian. “Brian’s script was so ornately and attentively cinematic,” he said. “Not just the movie references, but the use of...

Alicia Silverstone is ready to revisit the halls of Bronson Alcott High School.

The 41-year-old actress has once again donned her Clueless character Cher Horowitz’s famous yellow plaid mini-skirt and blazer outfit, posing during a taping of Lip Sync Battle alongside Chrissy Teigen and the host’s 18-month-old daughter Luna Simone.

“How am I supposed to sleep? I think I’ve asked for 2 photos in my entire life. @AliciaSilv and Beyoncé,” Teigen, 31, tweeted Sunday alongside a photo of the trio.

Related: Jeremy Sisto Reveals Clueless Kiss with Alicia Silverstone Was a Childhood Dream Come True

While it’s unconfirmed...

With a release date for The Punisher finally confirmed (it drops next month), it’s clear that the slew of Netflix superhero series are keen to maintain the momentum that’s been building since April 2015. Ever since Daredevil launched Marvel’s run of small screen adventures via the streaming service, we’ve never had to wait too long to revisit the New York stories. The Defenders closed several long-running chapters when it debuted in August and now, the aforementioned spinoff will pick things up in November.

But, while the frequent new additions have been great for fans, the regularity has caused some critical fatigue of late. More recent series under the Marvel/Netflix umbrella have suffered under the weight of continued expectation. As a result, reviews have been a good ways off the mass acclaim that the first few achieved. While this had some impact on viewing figures for the later entries,...

The final deadline for submitting each country’s film for consideration for the foreign-language Oscar was October 2. Last year 85 were finally deemed eligible by the Academy; this year the number is a record 92. Haiti, Honduras, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Senegal and Syria are first-time entrants. These films are vying for the initial shortlist of 9, and final five nominations to be announced on January 23. See the final list below.

Read More:Oscar Announces Changes for Foreign-Film Voting: Now Simpler! (Sort Of.)

The frontrunners include Sweden selected Ruben Östlund’s hilarious Palme d’Or-winner “The Square” (October 27, Magnolia Pictures), an art-world satire shot in majority Swedish with some English from stars Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, and Dominic West, thus giving Östlund another shot after “Force Majeure” was a surprise 2015 Oscar omission.

Germany’s choice, Fatih Akin’s “In the Fade” (December 27, Magnolia Pictures), won Best Actress for Diane Kruger at Cannes.

Blake Lively is ringing in her 30th year in sweet style.

The former Gossip Girl actress turned the big 3-0 on Friday, and celebrated over the weekend with her tribe that included fellow star Anna Kendrick and Lively’s Bff jewelry designers Lorraine Schwartz and Ofira Sandberg.

“Best bday surprise = my sisters from a different mama @lorraineschwartz @ofirajewelz Love you til I’m 40. But not a day longer,” Lively captioned a selfie of the stylish trio, holding up a sign reading “Happy Birthday Blake.”

Related Video: Did You See Ryan Reynolds’ Hilarious Birthday Wish to Wife Blake Lively?

“Wishing you...

Woody Allen officially revealed the cast of his new untitled feature film starring Timoth&#233e Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name), Elle Fanning (The Beguiled), and Selena Gomez (Spring Breakers). The film has already secured theatrical distribution through Amazon Studios. No production schedule or release date have been given for this new project. This will be the director's fourth time working with Amazon Studios since 2016.

Last year marked Allen's first collaboration with Amazon Studios, which acquired and released Caf&#233 Society, which starred Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Parker Posey, Corey Stoll and Anna Camp. Amazon Studios financed and distributed the filmmaker's first foray into television, Crisis in Six Scenes, which the filmmaker also starred in alongside Miley Cyrus, Elaine May, Rachel Brosnahan, John Magaro, Lewis Black, Max Casella and Joy Behar. The filmmaker's third collaboration with Amazon Studios is his latest feature film, Wonder Wheel

Allen's latest completed theatrical...

The summer movie season may start winding down by early August, but for cinephiles, that’s when the real fun begins. While the fall season festivals — epitomized by the trio of awards season influencers Telluride, Toronto and New York — are a massive platform for major prestige titles at the end of the year, the Locarno Film Festival has the jump on all of them, and provides the most diverse range of cinema you’ll see anywhere in the world.

The 70th edition, announced this week, provides the latest example. No festival embodies the “something for everyone” philosophy better than Locarno, which complements its cinephile-oriented sections with another one exclusively designed for wider audiences. That would be the Piazza Grande, where 16 features screen outdoors for an audience of 8,000 people. But rather than simply showcasing the same summer blockbusters that have dominated the box office, the Piazza features international efforts well suited to pleasing massive crowds,...

Welcome to another installment of Movies to Show My Son. This is the blog series where I discuss movies I can’t wait to show my son in the future. I’ll be covering my own personal experience with the movie, movie and life lessons I hope he will learn, and lastly my concerns about showing said film. This week’s film is Spider-Man 2.

My Memories:

When I think back to when I first saw Spider-Man 2 I become nostalgic for a much simpler time watching movies. Comic book movies were in their infancy and no one was complaining about superhero fatigue. There was just unmitigated excitement for the next big movie we were going to get. I remember even thinking Daredevil was a good movie the first time I saw it just because I was excited to see these characters on the big screen. Also, we were having...

The ensemble comedy drama explores intersecting lives in New York City

The post New York Stories Intersect in the Person to Person Trailer appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

Multiple New York stories come together in Dustin Guy Defa’s Person to Person, an ensemble piece that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The film was shot on 16mm, which lead The Film Stage’s Dan Mecca to comment, “There is certainly — and commendably — a worn look to this version of New York City, thanks in large part to cinematographer Ashley Connor and her use of Super 16. If not for cell phones and other modern tech, we could be in the middle of a Woody Allen picture from the 1980s.”

Featuring a cast that includes Abbi Jacobson, Michael Cera, Tavi Gevinson, Isiah Whitlock, Jr., George Sample III, Olivia Luccardi, Hunter Zimny, Ben Rosenfield (here meeting a better fate than on Twin Peaks), and Philip Baker Hall. Watch the first trailer below.

During a single day in New York City, a variety of characters grapple with the mundane, the unexpected, and the larger questions permeating their lives. An investigative reporter struggles with her first day on the job, despite help from her misguided boss; a rebellious teen attempts to balance her feminist ideals with other desires; and a young man seeks to reconcile with his ex-girlfriend, even as her brother threatens revenge. Meanwhile, an avid music lover traverses the city in search of a rare record for his vinyl collection.

Person to Person opens in theaters and VOD on July 28.