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Gerard Depardieu fails to show up to Paris court case
5 April 2013 4:06 PM, PDT
Actor is charged with drink driving but failed to appear – for the second time – because he is filming in New York
Gerard Depardieu has failed to show up in a French court to face charges of drink-driving because he was filming a movie in New York. It was the second time Depardieu had not appeared for the case, after failing to answer a previous summons in January.
The Paris criminal court scheduled a new hearing for 24 May, according to Depardieu's lawyer, Eric de Caumont. The court agreed to the delay on Friday because investigators turned up new evidence about the incident in November, when Depardieu toppled over on his scooter in Paris and was charged with drink-driving, De Caumont said.
If convicted Depardieu could face up to two years in prison and a €4,500 ($3,800) fine, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.
The 64-year-old actor, who is in the Us to make »
Hannah Betts: Why Eva Mendes and Rosario Dawson resist their own loveliness
5 April 2013 4:06 PM, PDT
Boasters of beauty feel obliged to disown its voodoo in order to reap its benefits
Another day, another resistant beauty quoted in the Guardian. Eva Mendes opined: "I actually really love coming from a very raw place. Any opportunity I get to not wear makeup on set, I take. I really don't care about looking beautiful in a film unless I have to for the character." This statement feels more than slightly disingenuous from a woman who has earned millions as a model selling her face, hair and body.
Last week, Rosario Dawson similarly demurred: "I've tried to fight against it [her beauty]. Looks are fleeting, you know? Your face can change, or something could happen to me. And I don't want to feel like that's all I have to give, because that would be very fragile."
What do we infer from these statements? That beauty is a hostage to fortune that must be fought against. »
- Hannah Betts
Ben Mendelsohn: from soap star to Hollywood
5 April 2013 4:05 PM, PDT
He started in Neighbours, made his name in Oz crime flick Animal Kingdom, turned up in Batman and now, as Hollywood's go-to sleazeball, is pulling heists with Ryan Gosling
"No, no, no – there's absolutely no problem. It's just one of those things, mate. I'd be very inclined to do exactly the same thing, and I know the subsequent fuckin' dread and all the other shit, so please, not at all."
Ben Mendelsohn had me at hello. An unexpectedly chilled-out hello, considering I'd phoned him an hour-and-a-half later than planned, slightly panicky, profusely sorry. Due to bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived email-reading, I'd got the time wrong, I'd got the day wrong, and would have been none the wiser had his publicist not contacted me to ask how the interview had gone. It's 8.30am in La and, luckily for me, not only is Mendelsohn at home in West Hollywood doing not a lot, he's »
- Alex Godfrey
Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig to star in Pinter play on Broadway
5 April 2013 11:33 AM, PDT
The husband-and-wife duo will appear together in Harold Pinter's Betrayal, a play about an adulterous couple
Real-life husband and wife Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz are to play an adulterous stage couple in a Broadway production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal.
Weisz will make her Broadway debut in Pinter's 1978 study in deception, which charts an extramarital affair in reverse.
Her character, Emma, is married to Craig's Robert, but is having an affair with Jerry, played by rising star Rafe Spall.
James Bond star Craig last appeared on Broadway in 2009 in A Steady Rain, where he received positive notices opposite Hugh Jackman even though the play itself did not.
Craig has reportedly signed on for at least two more Bond films following Skyfall, which was the first Bond film to rake in more than $1bn in revenue. It also won two Oscars, including one for Adele's theme song.
Broadway »
Jesús Franco obituary
5 April 2013 10:22 AM, PDT
Prolific Spanish film-maker who specialised in psychedelic gothic horror – often laced with sex and violence
According to the Internet Movie Database, the Spanish film-maker Jesús Franco, who has died aged 82, directed 199 films, from El árbol de España in 1957 to Al Pereira vs the Alligator Ladies in 2012, a record few can match in the era of talking pictures. Given that many Franco films exist in three or four variant versions, sometimes so radically different that alternative cuts qualify as separate movies, his overall tally might be considerably higher.
Born Jesús Franco Manera, he was most often credited – at least on international release prints – as Jess Frank or Jess Franco, though he used a host of pseudonyms, writing scripts as David Khune, composing music as Pablo Villa and co-directing pornographic films (with his long-term muse Lina Romay) as Rosa Almirall. He was a true man of the cinema, whose CV ranged from »
- Kim Newman
Can Josh Trank save the Fantastic Four?
5 April 2013 10:15 AM, PDT
So far 20th Century Fox has made an almighty mess of its rights to the Marvel comic book heroes – the forthcoming version is the studio's chance to catch up
I've never been a great believer in judging a movie by the studio from which it emanates, and such an approach is dodgy, to say the least, in relation to superhero fare. Nevertheless, it's fair to say that 20th Century Fox is still playing catchup with the current explosion of comic-book movies. Recent X-Men reboot First Class was a step in the right direction, but still felt rushed and ill-crafted in comparison with the best of the Marvel and Warner Bros films. And the studio has so far made an almighty mess of its rights to The Fantastic Four, producing a brace of middling pictures that felt drawn from a time long before Hollywood began taking this kind of stuff seriously. »
- Ben Child
Why Jurassic Park is the perfect 3D rerelease
5 April 2013 8:43 AM, PDT
Hollywood's bandwagon is rolling out the oldies, but for a film to succeed in 3D it has to be truly special – and adored
It's incredibly easy to see the appeal of Jurassic Park's 3D rerelease – scheduled, in the UK, for August. Twenty years have passed since the film first hit cinemas, so now is the perfect time for a commemoration. What's more, the movie came out in the 1990s, a period so painfully in vogue that Buzzfeed cannot stop telling you why it was brilliant 30 times every day. And don't forget that Jurassic Park IV is supposedly a year away, so this is the perfect opportunity to persuade audiences that 3D dinosaurs aren't as naff as they sound.
All bases are covered. Nostalgists, completists, newcomers, people willing to shell out to sit in the dark and get a headache so they can see what the raptor jumping up at »
- Stuart Heritage
Jeremy Irons's bizarre objection to gay marriage
5 April 2013 8:07 AM, PDT
The Oscar-winning actor fears fathers will start marrying their sons to avoid inheritance tax
Age: 64.
Appearance: The Ghost of Fassbender Future.
The actor? Yes, that Jeremy Irons. The one with an Oscar and a penchant for bold political statements.
Such as? Describing smokers as "a minority that cannot speak back", worthy of the same protection as "handicapped people and children". Or calling the fox-hunting ban "one of the two most devastating parliamentary votes in the last century". Or arguing: "If a man puts his hand on a woman's bottom, any woman worth her salt can deal with it."
Classy. And what has he done now? Voiced a truly bizarre objection to gay marriage.
How bizarre are we talking here? Extremely, utterly and bafflingly. As bizarre as a bursar at a bazaar buying basalt for Bashar al-Assad. So bizarre it can be seen from space.
What did he say? "Tax-wise, it's an interesting one, »
'Roger was the movies', says Obama
5 April 2013 7:58 AM, PDT
Twitter is abuzz with recollections and thanks as president, peers and the movie world pay tribute
Actors, directors, fellow critics and the Us president have paid tribute to the eminent American film reviewer Roger Ebert, who has died aged 70.
Ebert, who began writing for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967 and became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize eight years later, died early on Thursday afternoon at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago after revealing a day earlier that he was undergoing radiation treatment for a recurrence of cancer. Many tributes mentioned the critic's famous "thumbs up, thumbs down" verdicts or the familiar "the balcony is closed" sign-off from the long-running Us television film review show At the Movies, which Ebert presented for many years.
Us president Barack Obama said in a statement: "Roger was the movies. When he didn't like a film, he was honest; when he did, he »
- Ben Child
Christopher Walken: five best moments
5 April 2013 7:57 AM, PDT
Currently starring in A Late Quartet, Walken has been a striking presence since his early film roles in the 70s. Here are a few of his most memorable performances
Christopher Walken, star of A Late Quartet, is a prolific performer with more than 100 film and television roles under his belt. Here are just five of his most memorable on screen moments, including suggestions from @guardianfilm Twitter followers @claudism_, @antnield, @missnvholt and @Steph78205. Spoilers and adult material feature in all of the following clips – what scenes would you add to the list?
Christopher was awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Michael Cimino's film. Having been forced to play Russian roulette by his captors as a Vietnam PoW, his character remains deeply affected by the experience once free. This is his last scene in the film.
Reading on mobile? Watch the clip on »
- Adam Boult
Roger Ebert: share your favourite quotes
5 April 2013 7:30 AM, PDT
Tell us your favourite lines and reviews from the much-loved film critic, who died this week
To say that film Roger Ebert, who has died from cancer aged 70, had a way with words would be an understatement. In a career spanning five decades, the Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer won a huge international following thanks to his brilliant, often acerbic, but always engaging criticism. Admirers have been sharing some of their favourite lines of his on Twitter with the hashtag #EbertQuotes – below are a few highlights, but what else would you add? Are there any Ebert film reviews that stand out for you as favourites?
For the uninitiated, there's a wealth of Roger Ebert quotes here and here, and for a mnore comprehensive look at his work visit rogerebert.suntimes.com.
"To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion." #EbertQuotes
— Lo! »
Death penalty film-makers hit the road to profile America's exonerees
5 April 2013 7:27 AM, PDT
London documentary crew are driving across the Us to tell the stories of 10 former death row inmates who have been exonerated – and to highlight the injustices of capital punishment
They belong to a very small and extremely unusual club that has only 142 members. The factor that unites them is that they have all experienced America's capital punishment system at first hand, yet lived to tell the tale.
This is the club of death row exonerees. Its members include Kirk Bloodsworth, the first death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA evidence in 1993 and now an anti-death penalty campaigner of national renown.
Then there is Damon Thibodeaux, who walked free last September, an innocent man, from the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana where he spent 15 years in the shadow of the death chamber. And the only woman in this peculiar group, Sabrina Butler, who was wrongfully sentenced to death by Mississippi »
- Ed Pilkington
The Guardian Film Show podcast: Spring Breakers, A Late Quartet, Yurt and The Expatriate
5 April 2013 7:17 AM, PDT
This week we're stripping to our bikinis and hitting the beach with Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers; fiddling through issues of infidelity and jealousy with a tortured string ensemble in A Late Quartet; roaming the quiet hills of Anatolia with Yurt (Home) and racing round Antwerp with the CIA on our tail via the action thriller The Expatriate. With Peter Bradshaw and Catherine Shoard.
This is the audio-only version of The Guardian Film Show
Henry BarnesPhil MaynardCatherine ShoardPeter Bradshaw »
- Henry Barnes, Phil Maynard, Catherine Shoard, Peter Bradshaw
Yurt (Home) – review
5 April 2013 7:01 AM, PDT
A quiet and reflective drama from the Turkish actor-turned-writer-director, Muzaffer Özdemir, but the overal effect is inertia
Muzaffer Özdemir is the award-winning Turkish actor who had the lead role in Uzak, the 2002 movie by Nuri Bilge Ceylan a director whose ascent to world-cinema greatness was made complete by his recent austere drama Once Upon a Time In Anatolia. Özdemir now makes his debut as writer and director of this quiet and reflective drama. An architect, suffering pangs of ill-health on a camping holiday that almost amounts to a breakdown, seeks solace by revisiting the countryside of his childhood, but he is – predictably – disturbed to find that it is changing, and his unease is greater than ever. Perhaps his own profession is part of the forces that are contributing to the change.
Home is a movie indebted to Ceylan: it is slow, calm, thoughtful and well shot, but I'm bound to »
- Peter Bradshaw
A Late Quartet – review
5 April 2013 6:49 AM, PDT
This drama about a string quartet in chaos after their cellist develops Parkinson's is a great grownup surprise
A Late Quartet is one of the week's most unexpected pleasures. What could have been a TV movie is actually a heartfelt, intelligent, unassumingly well-constructed picture about a musician who has been diagnosed in the early stages of Parkinson's. Admittedly, there are moments when it looks a bit middlebrow, a little soap opera-ish, and it inevitably suffers in comparison with Michael Haneke's Amour, which it calls to mind in one scene. But there's also a forthright unsentimentality driving the drama.
Christopher Walken gives a gentle and atypical performance as Peter, a much-loved and admired cellist, the emotional linchpin of the Fugue Quartet, which has been together for 25 years. He is older and wiser than the others: first violinist Daniel (Mark Ivanir), and the second violinist Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Juliette »
- Peter Bradshaw
Spring Breakers – review
5 April 2013 6:41 AM, PDT
Director Harmony Korine may lech over Spring Breakers' bikini-clad heroines, but he's also on their side in his funniest and least irritating film yet
Spring break is getting to be like prom night or Thanksgiving: an alien American institution we've consumed so much in pop culture that it's almost as if we Brits have experienced it in our rainy Brit lives. Anyway, we're expected to be in on the cultural reference – in this case, lithe, young college kids partying super hard in sunny Florida during the March vacation.
The Glasgow comic Kevin Bridges famously took a stand against this Americanisation, dourly recalling watching high school movies with "spring break" scenes: "We didn't have 'spring break'; we had the Easter holidays." Like a Christmas movie in December, this film has actually been released at the correct seasonal time, although it means less in the shivering UK than in the Us. »
- Peter Bradshaw
$35,000 kit allows new film home screenings
5 April 2013 5:25 AM, PDT
Hollywood studio Universal is first to offer the service, aimed at film stars – with each viewing costing $500
The experience filmgoers have been waiting for since the dawn of Hollywood has arrived: the chance to see new releases at home on the same day they hit cinemas. There is, however, a catch: to view Jurassic Park 3D this weekend you will first need to install projection equipment costing $35,000 (about £23,000), while each viewing costs $500 a pop (£330).
Prima Cinema has teamed with Hollywood studio Universal to offer the new service, which is targeted at super-rich film stars and other celebrities. The $35,000 price tag covers a digital box allowing movies to be delivered via the internet: once downloaded, they can be viewed just once at a cost of $500. Prima inspects every client's home cinema to ensure there are no more than 25 seats, so the service cannot be used to set up a commercial cinema business. »
- Ben Child
Roger Ebert: stimulating, authoritative critic with formidable internet presence
5 April 2013 3:49 AM, PDT
The Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer, who has died aged 70, had an open, personal approach with an unadorned writing style
The last email I received from Roger Ebert was a brief note three years ago, after I had written about his remarkable courage and candour in revealing to the world the effects of surgery on his jaw, following a cancer operation. I had also included his 1988 book Two Weeks In The Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook in my top 10 list of books about the Cannes festival – it's a tremendously engaging and readable memoir about Cannes and the south Of France; incidentally, it includes Ebert's own line drawings. "I hope Chaz and I run into you at Cannes in May," he wrote – Chaz of course being his wife, and the absolute bedrock of his personal and professional life. Sadly I never did get to see him, or rather I saw him only from afar, »
- Peter Bradshaw
Viral Video Chart: Finding Dory, April fools' jokes, sea lion disco dances
5 April 2013 3:35 AM, PDT
Ellen de Generes announces movie sequel, and there are more fishy tales in our roundup of spoof stories
Ellen de Generes has had a running gag in her CBS show in which she berates Disney's Pixar for not producing a sequel to hit animation Finding Nemo. On Tuesday's show, she herself highlighted the extent of her obsession, pointing out that there have been sequels to Toy Story, Cars and Shrek, but none so far to the aquatic adventure. Then she revealed that there will be a sequel – in which she will reprise the role of Dory – to be released in 2015. She ended by telling children: "Kids, let that be a lesson to you. Anything is possible if you're patient and you beg hard enough on national television." (Of course, it helps if you're friends with Hollywood producers who will tell you first.)
Ellen sets up the news about Finding Dory »
- Dugald Baird
Eva Mendes: 'I don't care about looking beautiful'
5 April 2013 2:41 AM, PDT
In her new film, The Place Beyond the Pines, she ditches glam, playing a hard-grafting waitress opposite real-life partner Ryan Gosling. She talks about how the role mirrors her upbringing and, er, why her dog's face should be pixellated
"If you see Mike Leigh," says Eva Mendes, "tell him Mendes really wants him. And I do a good cockney." So I did. Or, rather, I emailed his agent. Mendes had already done the heavy lifting. "I sent him a note maybe like eight years ago," she says, a little giddy, "and I'm sure he had no idea who I was. And then I ran into him and he was lovely. So I just hope these last eight years I've maybe done something that he's liked or could see potential in, so we could possibly work together." His films are magical, she says; they move her to tears. "I come from »
- Catherine Shoard
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