News

Beth Howland, four-time Golden Globe nominee for her role in the sitcom Alice has died, age 74.  Boston-born Howland passed away December 31, 2015 in Santa Monica, CA.

Sometimes even the well oiled Disney machine stumbles. This appears to be the case with its reported $170-million sequel Alice: Through the Looking Glass, grossing “just” $100.

Those who’ve seen the latest episodes of Fear the Walking Dead were surely shocked by the appearance of Celia, the 50-something year old woman who takes Travis (Cliff Curtis), Madison (Kim Dickens), and the entire group of survivors into the luxurious ranch owned by Thomas Abigail (Dougray Scott) in Mexico.   Celia can act as either an adorable mother, a witty business woman, or even a ruthless killer; and although it seems that her role in the series concluded along with the mid-season finale, it is not one that will be easily forgotten.

A wunderkind? Self-aggrandizing filmmaker? Ambitious careerist?  All of these labels have been applied, with varying degrees of accuracy or truth, to the Quebecois director-writer-actor Xavier Dolan.  Only 27, the Montreal-based director has been nothing if not prolific, already claiming six features to his credit.

Something new happened at the 69th Cannes Film Festival – for the first time in its history the festival offered a selection of virtual reality shorts and a pavilion dedicated exclusively to the new technology. Included in the VR slate were Invasion! , an animated six-minute short by Madagascar co-director Eric Darnell ; San Francisco’s Penrose Studios’ Allumette, based on Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl”; the “first person reality short film” The Doghouse by Denmark’s VR studio Makropol; and Giant, a “virtual reality experience of war”  by Milica Zec and Winslow Tuner Porter III that had already raised quite the buzz at Sundance.

Just when you thought you had finally figured out all the different options to viewing media, a more recent technological advance rises up demonstrating how to incorporate advances into the viewing experience. Virtual reality director Milica Zec, Winslow Turner Porter III and HP are intent on bringing the viewer into the movie itself: Giant is a short and intense film  inspired by Milica’s youth during the Serbian war.

X-Men: Apocalypse kicked off the weekend with a big $100. 3 million opening in 75 foreign markets.

Ken Loach, a Cannes veteran since 1979, an a Palme D’Or winner in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes the Barley did it again – his I, Daniel Blake took the top prize at the 69th Cannes Film Festival. The drama about a working class family coping with the infernal labyrinth of social welfare bureaucracy was one of best reviewed and liked at the festival, but the win came as a surprise nonetheless.

Ken Loach, one of the greatest living British filmmakers – alongside Mike Leigh and Terence Davies – may become the oldest working director in the UK.  At 80, with a solid body of work that consists of 19 films, he still shows his strong, unfailing commitment to social issues cinema – slanted toward left-wing politics.

We met Danish director and writer Nicolas Winding Refn on the set of his new film, the horror-thriller The Neon Demon, starring Elle Fanning and Keanu Reeves. It's the story of an aspiring model Jesse (Fanning) who moves to Los Angeles, when her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has.