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  • Anger who made ‘Fireworks’ no more

    By Associated Press

    Kenneth Anger, the shocking and influential avant-garde artist who defied sexual and religious taboos in such short films as “Scorpio Rising” and “Fireworks” and dished the most lurid movie star gossip in his underground classic “Hollywood Babylon,” has died. He was 96.

    Anger died of natural causes on May 11 in Yucca Valley, California, his artist liaison, Spencer Glesby, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

    Few so boldly and imaginatively mined the forbidden depths of culture and consciousness as Anger, whose admirers ranged from filmmakers Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to rock stars such as the Clash and the Rolling Stones.

    He was among the first openly gay filmmakers and a pioneer in using soundtracks as counterpoints to moving pictures. Well before the rise of punk and heavy metal, Anger was juxtaposing music with bikers, sadomasochism, occultism and Nazi imagery. When the Sex Pistols and the Clash appeared on the same bill at a 1976 concert, clips from Anger’s movies were screened behind them.

    Anger had his greatest commercial success, and notoriety, as the author of “Hollywood Babylon.” Scandal and Hollywood practically grew up together, and Anger assembled an extraordinary and often apocryphal family album, whether pictures from the fatal car crash of Jayne Mansfield or such widely disputed allegations as actor Clara Bow having sex with the University of Southern California football team.

    Completed in the late 1950s and originally published in French, “Hollywood Babylon” was banned for years in the U.S. and was still adult fare upon formal release in 1975, when New York Times reviewer Peter Andrews labeled it a “306-page box of poisoned bon bons” written as if a “sex maniac had taken over the Reader’s Digest Condensed Book Club.”

    “If a book such as this can be said to have charm, it lies in the fact that here is a book without one single redeeming merit,” Andrews concluded.

    Like a studio head trying to build a franchise, Anger released a sequel, the less popular “Hollywood Babylon II,” in 1984. He had said he was working on a third book in recent years, with a chapter dedicated to Tom Cruise and Scientology.

    A balding, dark-eyed man with a frozen stare and a “Lucifer” tattoo across his chest, Anger made films for much of his life and knew everyone from the poet Jean Cocteau to sexologist Alfred Kinsey. He was close enough to Keith Richards that the Rolling Stone would claim that Anger called him his “right hand man.” Mick Jagger and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page wrote soundtrack music for Anger, who in turn helped bring about a Rolling Stones classic by lending a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satanic satire “The Master and Margarita” to Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull passed the novel along to her boyfriend, Jagger, who cited it as the basis for “Sympathy for the Devil.”

    Anger himself rejected Christianity in childhood, saying he preferred reading comics on Sunday. He later joined Thelema, an occult society which urges members to “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will,” and for a time he lived in the house of Thelema founder Aleister Crowley, a friend and mentor.

    Born in Santa Monica, California, Anger was the son of aircraft engineer Wilbur Anglemeyer and cited his grandmother, a costume designer, as an early source for prime Hollywood dirt. He was a child actor who, to much skepticism, claimed to have played the Changeling Prince in a 1935 adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

    Anger also began making movies as a boy and was a teenager when he completed “Fireworks,” a noirish 13-minute silent starring Anger as a young man who fantasizes — in sexually graphic detail — that he has been beaten by a pack of sailors. By this time, the filmmaker had shortened his last name to Anger.

    “I knew it would be like a label, a logo. It’s easy to remember,” Anger told The Guardian in 2011.

    Among the film’s early viewers was Kinsey, who liked it enough to purchase a copy for $100 and ask Anger to help with his landmark research on sexual behavior.

    Anger’s best known works included the surreal occult short “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” and “Scorpio Rising,” a 28-minute production from 1963 in which footage of motorcyclists is accompanied by such hits as Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” and Elvis Presley’s ”(You’re the) Devil in Disguise.” In one especially provocative sequence, the Crystals’ hit “He’s a Rebel” is played to images of Jesus and his disciples from Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic “King of Kings.”

    “Like many people, I was astonished when I saw Kenneth Anger’s ‘Scorpio Rising’ for the first time,” Scorsese once wrote. “Every cut, every camera movement, every color, and every texture seemed, somehow, inevitable, in the same way that images of the Virgin in Renaissance painting seem inevitable.”

    Scorsese would emulate Anger’s style in “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas” and other movies, and Lynch featured Vinton’s drowsy ballad in the 1986 cult favorite “Blue Velvet.” John Waters would praise Anger as one of the directors who “dirtied” his mind.

    Death preoccupied Anger and he was a frequent visitor to Hollywood Forever, the burial site for everyone from Judy Garland to Johnny Ramone. Actor Vincent Gallo, a friend of Anger’s, told the filmmaker that he had purchased a plot for him next to Ramone’s.

    “They’re peaceful,” Anger said during a 2014 interview with Esquire when asked about his affinity for cemeteries. “They’d better be…”

    Kenneth Anger, the shocking and influential avant-garde artist who defied sexual and religious taboos in such short films as “Scorpio Rising” and “Fireworks” and dished the most lurid movie star gossip in his underground classic “Hollywood Babylon,” has died. He was 96.

    Anger died of natural causes on May 11 in Yucca Valley, California, his artist liaison, Spencer Glesby, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

    Few so boldly and imaginatively mined the forbidden depths of culture and consciousness as Anger, whose admirers ranged from filmmakers Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to rock stars such as the Clash and the Rolling Stones.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    He was among the first openly gay filmmakers and a pioneer in using soundtracks as counterpoints to moving pictures. Well before the rise of punk and heavy metal, Anger was juxtaposing music with bikers, sadomasochism, occultism and Nazi imagery. When the Sex Pistols and the Clash appeared on the same bill at a 1976 concert, clips from Anger’s movies were screened behind them.

    Anger had his greatest commercial success, and notoriety, as the author of “Hollywood Babylon.” Scandal and Hollywood practically grew up together, and Anger assembled an extraordinary and often apocryphal family album, whether pictures from the fatal car crash of Jayne Mansfield or such widely disputed allegations as actor Clara Bow having sex with the University of Southern California football team.

    Completed in the late 1950s and originally published in French, “Hollywood Babylon” was banned for years in the U.S. and was still adult fare upon formal release in 1975, when New York Times reviewer Peter Andrews labeled it a “306-page box of poisoned bon bons” written as if a “sex maniac had taken over the Reader’s Digest Condensed Book Club.”

    “If a book such as this can be said to have charm, it lies in the fact that here is a book without one single redeeming merit,” Andrews concluded.

    Like a studio head trying to build a franchise, Anger released a sequel, the less popular “Hollywood Babylon II,” in 1984. He had said he was working on a third book in recent years, with a chapter dedicated to Tom Cruise and Scientology.

    A balding, dark-eyed man with a frozen stare and a “Lucifer” tattoo across his chest, Anger made films for much of his life and knew everyone from the poet Jean Cocteau to sexologist Alfred Kinsey. He was close enough to Keith Richards that the Rolling Stone would claim that Anger called him his “right hand man.” Mick Jagger and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page wrote soundtrack music for Anger, who in turn helped bring about a Rolling Stones classic by lending a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satanic satire “The Master and Margarita” to Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull passed the novel along to her boyfriend, Jagger, who cited it as the basis for “Sympathy for the Devil.”

    Anger himself rejected Christianity in childhood, saying he preferred reading comics on Sunday. He later joined Thelema, an occult society which urges members to “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will,” and for a time he lived in the house of Thelema founder Aleister Crowley, a friend and mentor.

    Born in Santa Monica, California, Anger was the son of aircraft engineer Wilbur Anglemeyer and cited his grandmother, a costume designer, as an early source for prime Hollywood dirt. He was a child actor who, to much skepticism, claimed to have played the Changeling Prince in a 1935 adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

    Anger also began making movies as a boy and was a teenager when he completed “Fireworks,” a noirish 13-minute silent starring Anger as a young man who fantasizes — in sexually graphic detail — that he has been beaten by a pack of sailors. By this time, the filmmaker had shortened his last name to Anger.

    “I knew it would be like a label, a logo. It’s easy to remember,” Anger told The Guardian in 2011.

    Among the film’s early viewers was Kinsey, who liked it enough to purchase a copy for $100 and ask Anger to help with his landmark research on sexual behavior.

    Anger’s best known works included the surreal occult short “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” and “Scorpio Rising,” a 28-minute production from 1963 in which footage of motorcyclists is accompanied by such hits as Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” and Elvis Presley’s ”(You’re the) Devil in Disguise.” In one especially provocative sequence, the Crystals’ hit “He’s a Rebel” is played to images of Jesus and his disciples from Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic “King of Kings.”

    “Like many people, I was astonished when I saw Kenneth Anger’s ‘Scorpio Rising’ for the first time,” Scorsese once wrote. “Every cut, every camera movement, every color, and every texture seemed, somehow, inevitable, in the same way that images of the Virgin in Renaissance painting seem inevitable.”

    Scorsese would emulate Anger’s style in “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas” and other movies, and Lynch featured Vinton’s drowsy ballad in the 1986 cult favorite “Blue Velvet.” John Waters would praise Anger as one of the directors who “dirtied” his mind.

    Death preoccupied Anger and he was a frequent visitor to Hollywood Forever, the burial site for everyone from Judy Garland to Johnny Ramone. Actor Vincent Gallo, a friend of Anger’s, told the filmmaker that he had purchased a plot for him next to Ramone’s.

    “They’re peaceful,” Anger said during a 2014 interview with Esquire when asked about his affinity for cemeteries. “They’d better be…”

  • Tina Turner, unstoppable superstar whose hits included ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It,’ dead at 83

    By Associated Press

    NEW YORK: Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s and survived her horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at 83.

    Turner died Tuesday, after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, according to her manager. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.

    Few stars traveled so far — she was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her latter years on a 260,000 square foot estate on Lake Zurich — and overcame so much. Physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.

    With admirers ranging from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner was one of the world’s most successful entertainers, known for a core of pop, rock and rhythm and blues favorites: “Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” and the hits she had in the ’80s, among them “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”

    Her trademarks were her growling contralto, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs and the muscular, quick-stepping legs she did not shy from showing off. She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 11 Grammys, was voted along with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 (and on her own in 2021) and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey among those praising her. Her life became the basis for a film, a Broadway musical and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she called her public farewell.

    NEW YORK: Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s and survived her horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at 83.

    Turner died Tuesday, after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, according to her manager. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.

    Few stars traveled so far — she was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her latter years on a 260,000 square foot estate on Lake Zurich — and overcame so much. Physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    With admirers ranging from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner was one of the world’s most successful entertainers, known for a core of pop, rock and rhythm and blues favorites: “Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” and the hits she had in the ’80s, among them “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”

    Her trademarks were her growling contralto, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs and the muscular, quick-stepping legs she did not shy from showing off. She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 11 Grammys, was voted along with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 (and on her own in 2021) and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey among those praising her. Her life became the basis for a film, a Broadway musical and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she called her public farewell.

  • Shot in secrecy, Afghan film “Bread & Roses” on horrors faced by women gets Cannes premiere

    By PTI

    CANNES: Documentarian Sahra Mani’s “Bread & Roses”, produced by Jennifer Lawrence’s Excellent Cadaver, has brought to the Croisette the horrors that are being heaped upon women in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

    “Bread & Roses”, which premiered in the Special Screenings section of the 76th Cannes Film Festival, pieces together stories of Afghan women fighting for freedom, education and employment at grave risk to their lives.

    “Bread & Roses” is composed of footage and videos shot in secrecy in Afghanistan, often by women themselves.

    “The primary purpose of my film,” says Mani, “is to amplify the voice of women activists in Afghanistan…We want to tell the world about their situation.”

    “As we set out to make the film, we searched for women who were happy to be in it. Many volunteered,” Mani recounts. “They are surviving against the odds. Life is tough but these women are incredibly brave,” she adds.

    The focus of “Bread & Roses” is on three women – two activists in Kabul, and one in a safe house in Pakistan.”They are now all out of Afghanistan but even those that have escaped to safety have someone or the other left behind in the country,” says Mani.

    ALSO READ: Martin Scorsese debuts ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ in Cannes to thunderous applause

    Mani had been filming in Kabul since 2012.

    In 2021, she was at the Venice Film Festival to pitch a film titled “Kabul Melody”, about Afghanistan’s only music school where boys and girls studied together. While she was there, Kabul fell to the Taliban and she could not return home.

    “My film cannot show even a fraction of what is going on in Afghanistan. I could capture only a small part of the reality,” she says, adding that it isn’t empathy that the women of Kabul are looking for.

    “I want the world to be in solidarity with them.”

    Lawrence was on the stage to present the film along with Mani and Dr Zahra Mohammadi, who features prominently in “Bread & Roses”.

    “Zahra represents all educated and gifted Afghan women, doctors and professionals who have been stopped from working and forced by a totalitarian regime to stay confined within their homes,” says Mani.

    Lawrence had seen Mani’s 2019 documentary, “A Thousand Girls Like Me”, at HotDocs Toronto. It was about a young Afghan woman seeking justice after having been sexually abused by her father for years. Impressed by the film, Lawrence came on board to produce “Bread & Roses” with Mani’s company, Afghan Doc Film House.

    The film was completed just ahead of the Cannes Film Festival.

    “We sent the link to the festival at the very last minute and explained why we were late. I was really happy when I learnt that the film had been accepted,” says Mani.

    CANNES: Documentarian Sahra Mani’s “Bread & Roses”, produced by Jennifer Lawrence’s Excellent Cadaver, has brought to the Croisette the horrors that are being heaped upon women in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

    “Bread & Roses”, which premiered in the Special Screenings section of the 76th Cannes Film Festival, pieces together stories of Afghan women fighting for freedom, education and employment at grave risk to their lives.

    “Bread & Roses” is composed of footage and videos shot in secrecy in Afghanistan, often by women themselves.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    “The primary purpose of my film,” says Mani, “is to amplify the voice of women activists in Afghanistan…We want to tell the world about their situation.”

    “As we set out to make the film, we searched for women who were happy to be in it. Many volunteered,” Mani recounts. “They are surviving against the odds. Life is tough but these women are incredibly brave,” she adds.

    The focus of “Bread & Roses” is on three women – two activists in Kabul, and one in a safe house in Pakistan.”They are now all out of Afghanistan but even those that have escaped to safety have someone or the other left behind in the country,” says Mani.

    ALSO READ: Martin Scorsese debuts ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ in Cannes to thunderous applause

    Mani had been filming in Kabul since 2012.

    In 2021, she was at the Venice Film Festival to pitch a film titled “Kabul Melody”, about Afghanistan’s only music school where boys and girls studied together. While she was there, Kabul fell to the Taliban and she could not return home.

    “My film cannot show even a fraction of what is going on in Afghanistan. I could capture only a small part of the reality,” she says, adding that it isn’t empathy that the women of Kabul are looking for.

    “I want the world to be in solidarity with them.”

    Lawrence was on the stage to present the film along with Mani and Dr Zahra Mohammadi, who features prominently in “Bread & Roses”.

    “Zahra represents all educated and gifted Afghan women, doctors and professionals who have been stopped from working and forced by a totalitarian regime to stay confined within their homes,” says Mani.

    Lawrence had seen Mani’s 2019 documentary, “A Thousand Girls Like Me”, at HotDocs Toronto. It was about a young Afghan woman seeking justice after having been sexually abused by her father for years. Impressed by the film, Lawrence came on board to produce “Bread & Roses” with Mani’s company, Afghan Doc Film House.

    The film was completed just ahead of the Cannes Film Festival.

    “We sent the link to the festival at the very last minute and explained why we were late. I was really happy when I learnt that the film had been accepted,” says Mani.

  • Todd Haynes says he and Joaquin Phoenix are collaborating on period gay romance film

    By PTI

    CANNES: Director Todd Haynes, whose latest film “May December” received rave reviews at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, says he is collaborating with Joaquin Phoenix on a gay love story set in 1930s Los Angeles.

    The filmmaker said the script of his next film is based on some ideas pitched by “Joker” star Phoenix, who is credited as a story writer on the project alongside Haynes and Jon Raymond (“Mildred Pierce”).

    “The next film is a feature that’s an original script that I developed with Joaquin Phoenix based on some thoughts and ideas he brought to me,” Haynes said

    We basically wrote with him as a story writer.”Me and Jon Raymond and Joaquin share the story credit. And we hope to be shooting it beginning early next year.

    ALSO READ: Cannes 2023: ‘In the Rearview’ spotlights Ukrainians escaping war & Polish efforts to help them

    It’s a gay love story set in 1930s LA,” Haynes told entertainment website IndieWire during a conversation at the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival.

    The director said Phoenix was pushing him to “go further”. “This will be an NC-17 film,” he added.

    Haynes also said he has more features planned as well as “really exciting” episodic projects.

    “I’m going back to work with Kate Winslet with something she brought me for HBO,” he said.

    His latest is “May December”, starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman as a formerly scandalised teacher and the actress who connects with her as she prepares to play her in an independent film.

    CANNES: Director Todd Haynes, whose latest film “May December” received rave reviews at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, says he is collaborating with Joaquin Phoenix on a gay love story set in 1930s Los Angeles.

    The filmmaker said the script of his next film is based on some ideas pitched by “Joker” star Phoenix, who is credited as a story writer on the project alongside Haynes and Jon Raymond (“Mildred Pierce”).

    “The next film is a feature that’s an original script that I developed with Joaquin Phoenix based on some thoughts and ideas he brought to me,” Haynes saidgoogletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    We basically wrote with him as a story writer.”Me and Jon Raymond and Joaquin share the story credit. And we hope to be shooting it beginning early next year.

    ALSO READ: Cannes 2023: ‘In the Rearview’ spotlights Ukrainians escaping war & Polish efforts to help them

    It’s a gay love story set in 1930s LA,” Haynes told entertainment website IndieWire during a conversation at the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival.

    The director said Phoenix was pushing him to “go further”. “This will be an NC-17 film,” he added.

    Haynes also said he has more features planned as well as “really exciting” episodic projects.

    “I’m going back to work with Kate Winslet with something she brought me for HBO,” he said.

    His latest is “May December”, starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman as a formerly scandalised teacher and the actress who connects with her as she prepares to play her in an independent film.

  • RRR’s British governor Ray Stevenson dies at 58

    By Associated Press

    Ray Stevenson, who played the villainous British governor in “RRR,” an Asgardian warrior in the “Thor” films, and a member of the 13th Legion in HBO’s “Rome,” has died. He was 58.Representatives for Stevenson said that he died on Sunday but had no other details to share on Monday.Stevenson was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1964. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and years of working in British television, he made his film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight.” In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a knight of the round table and several years later played the lead in the pre-Disney Marvel adaptation “Punisher: War Zone.”Though “Punisher” was not the best-reviewed film, he’d get another taste of Marvel in the first three “Thor” films, in which he played Volstagg. Other prominent film roles included the “Divergent” trilogy, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “The Transporter: Refueled.”A looming presence at 6-foot-4, Stevenson, who played his share of soldiers past and present, once said in an interview, “I guess I’m an old warrior at heart.”On the small screen, he was the roguish Titus Pullo in “Rome,” a role that really got his career going in the United States and got him a SAG card, at the age of 44. The popular series ran from 2005 to 2007.

    Ray Stevenson

    “That was one of the major years of my life,” Stevenson said in an interview. “It made me sit down in my own skin and say, just do the job. The job’s enough.”In the Variety review of “Rome,” Brian Lowery wrote that “the imposing Stevenson certainly stands out as a brawling, whoring and none-too-bright warrior — a force of nature who, despite his excesses, somehow keeps landing on his feet.”He was Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails,” Commander Jack Swinburne in the German television series “Das Boot,” and Othere on “Vikings.”Stevenson also did voice work in “Star Wars Rebels” and “The Clone Wars,” as Gar Saxon, and has a role in the upcoming Star Wars live-action series “Ahsoka,” in which he plays a bad guy, Baylan Skoll. The eight-episode season is expected on Disney+ in August.In an interview with Backstage in 2020, Stevenson said his acting idols were, “The likes of Lee Marvin (and) Gene Hackman.”“Never a bad performance, and brave and fearless within that caliber,” Stevenson said. “It was never the young, hot leading man; it was men who I could identify with.”Stevenson has three sons with Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Caraccia, who he met while working on “Rome.”

    Ray Stevenson, who played the villainous British governor in “RRR,” an Asgardian warrior in the “Thor” films, and a member of the 13th Legion in HBO’s “Rome,” has died. He was 58.
    Representatives for Stevenson said that he died on Sunday but had no other details to share on Monday.
    Stevenson was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1964. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and years of working in British television, he made his film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight.” In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a knight of the round table and several years later played the lead in the pre-Disney Marvel adaptation “Punisher: War Zone.”
    Though “Punisher” was not the best-reviewed film, he’d get another taste of Marvel in the first three “Thor” films, in which he played Volstagg. Other prominent film roles included the “Divergent” trilogy, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “The Transporter: Refueled.”
    A looming presence at 6-foot-4, Stevenson, who played his share of soldiers past and present, once said in an interview, “I guess I’m an old warrior at heart.”
    On the small screen, he was the roguish Titus Pullo in “Rome,” a role that really got his career going in the United States and got him a SAG card, at the age of 44. The popular series ran from 2005 to 2007.

    Ray Stevenson

    “That was one of the major years of my life,” Stevenson said in an interview. “It made me sit down in my own skin and say, just do the job. The job’s enough.”
    In the Variety review of “Rome,” Brian Lowery wrote that “the imposing Stevenson certainly stands out as a brawling, whoring and none-too-bright warrior — a force of nature who, despite his excesses, somehow keeps landing on his feet.”
    He was Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails,” Commander Jack Swinburne in the German television series “Das Boot,” and Othere on “Vikings.”
    Stevenson also did voice work in “Star Wars Rebels” and “The Clone Wars,” as Gar Saxon, and has a role in the upcoming Star Wars live-action series “Ahsoka,” in which he plays a bad guy, Baylan Skoll. The eight-episode season is expected on Disney+ in August.
    In an interview with Backstage in 2020, Stevenson said his acting idols were, “The likes of Lee Marvin (and) Gene Hackman.”
    “Never a bad performance, and brave and fearless within that caliber,” Stevenson said. “It was never the young, hot leading man; it was men who I could identify with.”
    Stevenson has three sons with Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Caraccia, who he met while working on “Rome.”

  • Cannes 2023: ‘In the Rearview’ spotlights Ukrainians escaping war & Polish efforts to help them

    By Associated Press

    WARSAW: When Polish filmmaker Maciek Hamela first began evacuating Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war on their country, he wasn’t intending to make a film. He was one of the many Poles extending humanitarian aid to neighbors under attack, and had turned down an offer to film a television investigation there.

    But the reflections of the people he was transporting to safety in his van were so poignant that soon he began filming them. He asked a friend who is a director of photography to help him film — and drive — and directed his camera squarely back at his passengers as they traversed their war-scarred land.

    The result is “In the Rearview,” a documentary film being shown at the Cannes film festival in France as part of a parallel program devoted to independent cinema. It is not in competition.

    A Polish-French co-production, it takes place almost entirely in Hamela’s van, with the camera capturing the harrowed passengers, one group after another in countless journeys made between March and November of 2022.

    The result is a composite portrait of men, women and children traversing a devastated landscape of bombed-out buildings and past checkpoints with dangerous detours caused by mines and collapsed bridges and roads.

    The 84-minute film shows a little girl so traumatized that she stopped speaking. There is a Congolese woman who was so badly injured that she has undergone 18 operations since Hamela evacuated her. A mother with two kids who pass by the Dnieper River; believing it to be the sea, the kids ask their mother if she will take them there after the war.

    “The way we set up the film was to see the reflection of the war in these very small details of ordinary life and the life that we all have,” Hamela told The Associated Press in an interview in Warsaw before he flew to Cannes.

    There is also some humor, with one woman commenting ironically that she had always wanted to travel. A woman escaping with her cat saying it needed a bathroom break.

    The crew of the documentary ‘In the Rearview’, Maciek Hamela, from left, Kseniia Marchenko, Larysa Sosnovtseva, Yura Dunay, and Anna Palenchuk stand on a rug damaged by a bomb in the town of Lukashivka in Ukraine on the Boulevard de la Croisette during the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, Sunday, May 21, 2023. (Photo | AP)

    In order not to exploit the people he was helping, Hamela told them a camera was in a car before he picked them up. And they only signed forms giving him permission to use the footage after they had arrived safely at their destinations so they would never feel that was a condition for his help.

    “In the Rearview” also documents one of the many Polish efforts to help Ukraine. When Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, there was a massive grassroots effort to help across Poland, with regular people taking time off work to travel to the border with Ukraine to distribute food. Some picked up strangers and took them to shelters or even into their own homes.

    Hamela began on day one to raise money for the Ukrainian army. By day three he had bought a van to transport Ukrainians from the Polish border and convinced his father to open his beloved summer home to strangers.

    Soon Hamela heard from a friend of people in eastern Ukraine needing to be rescued, and he began driving to the front lines of the war to pick them up. Some emerged from basements where they had been sheltering in terror.

    When the war began, Hamela had been working on a documentary about a crisis at Poland’s border with Belarus. Large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and Africa had been trying to cross that border in 2021. Poland and other European Union countries viewed that as an effort organized by Russia’s ally Belarus to destabilize Poland and other EU countries.

    Poland reacted by building a wall to stop the migrants, resulting in some dying in the forests and bogs of the area.

    The war in Ukraine led Hamela to drop that project, which was to have focused on the indifference in some Polish border communities to the plights of the migrants and refugees.

    Having observed both crises up close, he sees a connection.

    “This is my personal take on this, but I really think it was meant to antagonize Poles against all refugees in preparation for the war with Ukraine,” he said.

    Hamela, who is now 40, was also active in supporting Ukrainians involved in the pro-democracy Maidan Revolution of 2014, which led to Russia’s initial incursions into Ukraine.

    He says the world shown in his documentary could hardly be further from the glamorous world of Cannes, and he hopes it will remind people of how high the stakes are in Ukraine.

    “We’re trying to use this coverage to remind everybody that the war is still going on and lives need saving. And Ukraine is not going to win it without our help,” he said. “So that’s the ultimate task with this film.”

    WARSAW: When Polish filmmaker Maciek Hamela first began evacuating Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war on their country, he wasn’t intending to make a film. He was one of the many Poles extending humanitarian aid to neighbors under attack, and had turned down an offer to film a television investigation there.

    But the reflections of the people he was transporting to safety in his van were so poignant that soon he began filming them. He asked a friend who is a director of photography to help him film — and drive — and directed his camera squarely back at his passengers as they traversed their war-scarred land.

    The result is “In the Rearview,” a documentary film being shown at the Cannes film festival in France as part of a parallel program devoted to independent cinema. It is not in competition.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    A Polish-French co-production, it takes place almost entirely in Hamela’s van, with the camera capturing the harrowed passengers, one group after another in countless journeys made between March and November of 2022.

    The result is a composite portrait of men, women and children traversing a devastated landscape of bombed-out buildings and past checkpoints with dangerous detours caused by mines and collapsed bridges and roads.

    The 84-minute film shows a little girl so traumatized that she stopped speaking. There is a Congolese woman who was so badly injured that she has undergone 18 operations since Hamela evacuated her. A mother with two kids who pass by the Dnieper River; believing it to be the sea, the kids ask their mother if she will take them there after the war.

    “The way we set up the film was to see the reflection of the war in these very small details of ordinary life and the life that we all have,” Hamela told The Associated Press in an interview in Warsaw before he flew to Cannes.

    There is also some humor, with one woman commenting ironically that she had always wanted to travel. A woman escaping with her cat saying it needed a bathroom break.

    The crew of the documentary ‘In the Rearview’, Maciek Hamela, from left, Kseniia Marchenko, Larysa Sosnovtseva, Yura Dunay, and Anna Palenchuk stand on a rug damaged by a bomb in the town of Lukashivka in Ukraine on the Boulevard de la Croisette during the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, Sunday, May 21, 2023. (Photo | AP)

    In order not to exploit the people he was helping, Hamela told them a camera was in a car before he picked them up. And they only signed forms giving him permission to use the footage after they had arrived safely at their destinations so they would never feel that was a condition for his help.

    “In the Rearview” also documents one of the many Polish efforts to help Ukraine. When Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, there was a massive grassroots effort to help across Poland, with regular people taking time off work to travel to the border with Ukraine to distribute food. Some picked up strangers and took them to shelters or even into their own homes.

    Hamela began on day one to raise money for the Ukrainian army. By day three he had bought a van to transport Ukrainians from the Polish border and convinced his father to open his beloved summer home to strangers.

    Soon Hamela heard from a friend of people in eastern Ukraine needing to be rescued, and he began driving to the front lines of the war to pick them up. Some emerged from basements where they had been sheltering in terror.

    When the war began, Hamela had been working on a documentary about a crisis at Poland’s border with Belarus. Large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and Africa had been trying to cross that border in 2021. Poland and other European Union countries viewed that as an effort organized by Russia’s ally Belarus to destabilize Poland and other EU countries.

    Poland reacted by building a wall to stop the migrants, resulting in some dying in the forests and bogs of the area.

    The war in Ukraine led Hamela to drop that project, which was to have focused on the indifference in some Polish border communities to the plights of the migrants and refugees.

    Having observed both crises up close, he sees a connection.

    “This is my personal take on this, but I really think it was meant to antagonize Poles against all refugees in preparation for the war with Ukraine,” he said.

    Hamela, who is now 40, was also active in supporting Ukrainians involved in the pro-democracy Maidan Revolution of 2014, which led to Russia’s initial incursions into Ukraine.

    He says the world shown in his documentary could hardly be further from the glamorous world of Cannes, and he hopes it will remind people of how high the stakes are in Ukraine.

    “We’re trying to use this coverage to remind everybody that the war is still going on and lives need saving. And Ukraine is not going to win it without our help,” he said. “So that’s the ultimate task with this film.”

  • Seoul city to turn purple to celebrate the 10th anniversary of BTS next month 

    By IANS

    SEOUL: Major landmarks in Seoul will be turned purple next month in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the K-pop superband BTS since its debut.

    According to music industry sources, Hybe, the K-pop powerhouse behind the group, and the Seoul metropolitan government are discussing jointly holding various events to commemorate the anniversary, reports Yonhap.

    Creating a special event place, called ‘ARMY Road’, after the name of the band’s global fandom, at the city’s major landmarks is also one of the plans in the discussion, the sources said.

    City officials expect the events will help boost Seoul’s tourism industry, which has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    BTS has been holding its own commemorative events and festival weeks around its debut day, which falls on June 13. Even during the period when large in-person events could not be held due to the pandemic, it had large-scale online meet-and-greet events for fans to interact with other fans around the world.

    As this year is a significant year marking its 10th anniversary, similar events are expected to be held even though some members are on their mandatory military duty.

    “We’re going to announce when our plans for the events are decided,” a Hybe official said on condition of anonymity.

    The K-pop septet will release a memoir, titled ‘Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS’ in honour of its 10th anniversary in South Korea and the United States, and a commemorative stamp in the home country.

    SEOUL: Major landmarks in Seoul will be turned purple next month in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the K-pop superband BTS since its debut.

    According to music industry sources, Hybe, the K-pop powerhouse behind the group, and the Seoul metropolitan government are discussing jointly holding various events to commemorate the anniversary, reports Yonhap.

    Creating a special event place, called ‘ARMY Road’, after the name of the band’s global fandom, at the city’s major landmarks is also one of the plans in the discussion, the sources said.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    City officials expect the events will help boost Seoul’s tourism industry, which has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    BTS has been holding its own commemorative events and festival weeks around its debut day, which falls on June 13. Even during the period when large in-person events could not be held due to the pandemic, it had large-scale online meet-and-greet events for fans to interact with other fans around the world.

    As this year is a significant year marking its 10th anniversary, similar events are expected to be held even though some members are on their mandatory military duty.

    “We’re going to announce when our plans for the events are decided,” a Hybe official said on condition of anonymity.

    The K-pop septet will release a memoir, titled ‘Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS’ in honour of its 10th anniversary in South Korea and the United States, and a commemorative stamp in the home country.

  • Martin Scorsese debuts ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ in Cannes to thunderous applause

    By Associated Press

    CANNES: Martin Scorsese unveiled “Killers of the Flower Moon” at Cannes on Saturday, debuting a sweeping American epic about greed and exploitation on the bloody plains of an Osage Nation reservation in 1920s Oklahoma.

    Scorsese’s latest — starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro — is one of his most ambitious. Adapting David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, it stretches nearly three and a half hours and cost Apple $200 million to make.

    Nothing has been more anticipated at this year’s Cannes Film Festival than “Killers of the Flower Moon” — a historical epic, a bitter crime film and a Great Plains Western — which appeared to meet those expectations. It drew a lengthy standing ovation and repeated cheers for Scorsese, 80, who premiered his first film at Cannes since 1985’s “After Hours.”

    “We shot this a couple of years ago in Oklahoma. It’s taken its time to come around but Apple did so great by us,” Scorsese said, addressing the crowd after the screening. “There was lots of grass. I’m a New Yorker.”

    The red carpet drew a wide spectrum of stars. Along with the film’s expansive cast, attendees included Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as actors Cate Blanchett, Salma Hayek, Paul Dano and Isabelle Huppert.

    William Belleau, from left, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tantoo Cardinal, director Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Cara Jade Myers, Lily Gladstone, and Jillian Dion at the premiere of the film ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ at Cannes. (Photo | AP)

    Though Grann’s book affords many possible inroads to the story, Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth center their story on Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio, in his seventh collaboration with Scorsese), a WWI veteran who falls for Mollie Brown (Gladstone), the member of a wealthy Osage family.

    Since finding oil reserves on their land, the Osage were then the richest people per capita in the country. But that wealth is closely controlled by appointed white guardians. A series of murders prompts increased panic among the Osage, who are preyed on by a host of greedy killers.

    Though Grann’s book devoted many pages to the connections between the cases and the birth of the FBI, less time is spent in Scorsese’s film on the murder investigations. (Jesse Plemons plays an agent from the just-formed Bureau.) Instead, “Killers of the Flower Moon” captures the manipulation and murders of Native American people through the dynamics in Ernest and Mollie’s relationship.

    “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is playing out of competition in Cannes, opens in U.S. theaters on Oct. 6.

    CANNES: Martin Scorsese unveiled “Killers of the Flower Moon” at Cannes on Saturday, debuting a sweeping American epic about greed and exploitation on the bloody plains of an Osage Nation reservation in 1920s Oklahoma.

    Scorsese’s latest — starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro — is one of his most ambitious. Adapting David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, it stretches nearly three and a half hours and cost Apple $200 million to make.

    Nothing has been more anticipated at this year’s Cannes Film Festival than “Killers of the Flower Moon” — a historical epic, a bitter crime film and a Great Plains Western — which appeared to meet those expectations. It drew a lengthy standing ovation and repeated cheers for Scorsese, 80, who premiered his first film at Cannes since 1985’s “After Hours.”googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    “We shot this a couple of years ago in Oklahoma. It’s taken its time to come around but Apple did so great by us,” Scorsese said, addressing the crowd after the screening. “There was lots of grass. I’m a New Yorker.”

    The red carpet drew a wide spectrum of stars. Along with the film’s expansive cast, attendees included Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as actors Cate Blanchett, Salma Hayek, Paul Dano and Isabelle Huppert.

    William Belleau, from left, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tantoo Cardinal, director Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Cara Jade Myers, Lily Gladstone, and Jillian Dion at the premiere of the film ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ at Cannes. (Photo | AP)

    Though Grann’s book affords many possible inroads to the story, Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth center their story on Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio, in his seventh collaboration with Scorsese), a WWI veteran who falls for Mollie Brown (Gladstone), the member of a wealthy Osage family.

    Since finding oil reserves on their land, the Osage were then the richest people per capita in the country. But that wealth is closely controlled by appointed white guardians. A series of murders prompts increased panic among the Osage, who are preyed on by a host of greedy killers.

    Though Grann’s book devoted many pages to the connections between the cases and the birth of the FBI, less time is spent in Scorsese’s film on the murder investigations. (Jesse Plemons plays an agent from the just-formed Bureau.) Instead, “Killers of the Flower Moon” captures the manipulation and murders of Native American people through the dynamics in Ernest and Mollie’s relationship.

    “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is playing out of competition in Cannes, opens in U.S. theaters on Oct. 6.

  • Harrison Ford officially retires Indiana Jones, a role he’s essayed for 40 yrs

    By IANS

    CANNES: Hollywood star Harrison Ford is officially ready to retire his ‘Indiana Jones’ character — the swashbuckling, fedora-wearing adventurer — a legendary role he has inhabited in five films across 40 years, reports ‘Variety’.

    “Is it not evident?” the 80-year-old actor joked at the Cannes Film Festival’s Friday press conference for the action-adventure. “I need to sit down and rest a little bit.”

    In returning to the character for one last time, adds ‘Variety’, Ford expressed a desire to see “a completion of the five films”. He added: “I wanted to see the weight of life on him. I wanted to see him require reinvention. I wanted him to have a relationship that wasn’t a flirty movie relationship.”

    ALSO READ: ‘Indiana Jones’ swings into Cannes Film Festival; Harrison Ford honored before joyous festivalgoers

    Director James Mangold’s ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ isn’t playing in competition, but it’s one of the buzziest premieres at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It marks Ford’s return to the festival for the first time since the fourth chapter, ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ (2008), notes ‘Variety’.

    ‘Dial of Destiny’ premiered on Thursday night at the Palais, where, according to ‘Variety’, Ford was greeted with a movie star welcome, with thousands of fans screaming his name and the audience inside the theatre showering him with applause.

    He also received a tribute award to celebrate his lengthy Hollywood career, ranging from blockbusters such as ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Blade Runner 2049’ to ‘The Fugitive’ and ‘Witness’.

    “It’s indescribable. I felt … I can’t even tell you,” an emotional Ford said while reflecting on the prior night. “It’s just extraordinary to see a relic of your life as it passes by. With the warmth of this place and sense of community, the welcome is unimaginable. It makes me feel good.”

    CANNES: Hollywood star Harrison Ford is officially ready to retire his ‘Indiana Jones’ character — the swashbuckling, fedora-wearing adventurer — a legendary role he has inhabited in five films across 40 years, reports ‘Variety’.

    “Is it not evident?” the 80-year-old actor joked at the Cannes Film Festival’s Friday press conference for the action-adventure. “I need to sit down and rest a little bit.”

    In returning to the character for one last time, adds ‘Variety’, Ford expressed a desire to see “a completion of the five films”. He added: “I wanted to see the weight of life on him. I wanted to see him require reinvention. I wanted him to have a relationship that wasn’t a flirty movie relationship.”googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    ALSO READ: ‘Indiana Jones’ swings into Cannes Film Festival; Harrison Ford honored before joyous festivalgoers

    Director James Mangold’s ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ isn’t playing in competition, but it’s one of the buzziest premieres at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It marks Ford’s return to the festival for the first time since the fourth chapter, ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ (2008), notes ‘Variety’.

    ‘Dial of Destiny’ premiered on Thursday night at the Palais, where, according to ‘Variety’, Ford was greeted with a movie star welcome, with thousands of fans screaming his name and the audience inside the theatre showering him with applause.

    He also received a tribute award to celebrate his lengthy Hollywood career, ranging from blockbusters such as ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Blade Runner 2049’ to ‘The Fugitive’ and ‘Witness’.

    “It’s indescribable. I felt … I can’t even tell you,” an emotional Ford said while reflecting on the prior night. “It’s just extraordinary to see a relic of your life as it passes by. With the warmth of this place and sense of community, the welcome is unimaginable. It makes me feel good.”

  • Sean Penn’s ‘Black Flies’ shocks Cannes with graphic imagery

    By IANS

    LOS ANGELES: ‘Black Flies’, the Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan film about emergency medical first responders, smacked the Cannes Film Festival in the face with a brutal world premiere.

    Splattered brains, dead dogs, an addict giving birth with a needle dangling from her arm – these and a litany of other horrors confronted Penn and Sheridan, who play veteran and rookie paramedics, respectively, at the New York Fire Department, reports ‘Variety’.

    Interestingly enough, the black-tie screening at the Grand Palais enjoyed the dose of reality, giving the film a five-minute standing ovation.

    “We carry the misery,” a weary Penn tells Sheridan in the film of their chosen profession. That’s an understatement, as chaos unfolds neighbourhood by neighbourhood in a portrait of an unforgiving city.

    As per ‘Variety’, ‘Black Flies’ stars Sheridan as Ollie Cross, a young paramedic in New York City who is mentored by Penn’s more-experienced EMT. The two are forced to face extreme violence during their shifts, from blood-soaked gunshot wounds to disturbing scenes of domestic violence and life-threatening pregnancies, forcing Ollie to confront his beliefs about life and death.

    Legendary boxer Mike Tyson also stars in the film as Chief Burroughs, Sheridan and Penn’s superior officer.

    LOS ANGELES: ‘Black Flies’, the Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan film about emergency medical first responders, smacked the Cannes Film Festival in the face with a brutal world premiere.

    Splattered brains, dead dogs, an addict giving birth with a needle dangling from her arm – these and a litany of other horrors confronted Penn and Sheridan, who play veteran and rookie paramedics, respectively, at the New York Fire Department, reports ‘Variety’.

    Interestingly enough, the black-tie screening at the Grand Palais enjoyed the dose of reality, giving the film a five-minute standing ovation.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    “We carry the misery,” a weary Penn tells Sheridan in the film of their chosen profession. That’s an understatement, as chaos unfolds neighbourhood by neighbourhood in a portrait of an unforgiving city.

    As per ‘Variety’, ‘Black Flies’ stars Sheridan as Ollie Cross, a young paramedic in New York City who is mentored by Penn’s more-experienced EMT. The two are forced to face extreme violence during their shifts, from blood-soaked gunshot wounds to disturbing scenes of domestic violence and life-threatening pregnancies, forcing Ollie to confront his beliefs about life and death.

    Legendary boxer Mike Tyson also stars in the film as Chief Burroughs, Sheridan and Penn’s superior officer.