Gérard Depardieu: actor Hélène Darras files complaint of sexual assault

Allegations French star actor groped Darras on set is second official complaint after Charlotte Arnould accused the actor of rape in 2018A second actor has filed an official complaint against Gérard Depardieu, claiming the French star sexually assaulte…

Allegations French star actor groped Darras on set is second official complaint after Charlotte Arnould accused the actor of rape in 2018

A second actor has filed an official complaint against Gérard Depardieu, claiming the French star sexually assaulted her on the set of the 2007 film Disco.

Full details of Hélène Darras’s allegations against the French star will air on the French investigative news show Complément d’Enquête on Thursday evening.

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How Nicholas Winton saved 669 children (and counting) from the Holocaust: ‘He became everybody’s grandfather’

Four generations owe their lives to the man who brought trainloads of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Britain in 1939. The original refugees remember the Kindertransport – and the shy stockbroker who got them on itNicholas Winton didn’t like to …

Four generations owe their lives to the man who brought trainloads of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Britain in 1939. The original refugees remember the Kindertransport – and the shy stockbroker who got them on it

Nicholas Winton didn’t like to make a fuss. The British humanitarian was a modest and unassuming man, who was loth to grandstand about his achievements. The fact that he helped to save 669 children from the Holocaust was a secret he kept for many years. “If there was something that needed doing and nobody was doing it, Nicholas would step in,” says John Fieldsend. “That was the motto for his life.”

Fieldsend, 92, a retired Anglican vicar who lives in London, was one of the children Winton rescued just before the second world war broke out. Winton, a stockbroker, went to Prague in 1938 to help refugees from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), an area that had just been annexed by Germany. After seeing the awful conditions in the camps where they lived, he felt compelled to try to save the children from the threat of the Nazis. His remarkable story has now been made into a film, One Life, with Johnny Flynn and Anthony Hopkins playing the younger and older versions of Winton.

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How Nicholas Winton saved 669 children (and counting) from the Holocaust: ‘He became everybody’s grandfather’

Four generations owe their lives to the man who brought trainloads of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Britain in 1939. The original refugees remember the Kindertransport – and the shy stockbroker who got them on itNicholas Winton didn’t like to …

Four generations owe their lives to the man who brought trainloads of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Britain in 1939. The original refugees remember the Kindertransport – and the shy stockbroker who got them on it

Nicholas Winton didn’t like to make a fuss. The British humanitarian was a modest and unassuming man, who was loth to grandstand about his achievements. The fact that he helped to save 669 children from the Holocaust was a secret he kept for many years. “If there was something that needed doing and nobody was doing it, Nicholas would step in,” says John Fieldsend. “That was the motto for his life.”

Fieldsend, 92, a retired Anglican vicar who lives in London, was one of the children Winton rescued just before the second world war broke out. Winton, a stockbroker, went to Prague in 1938 to help refugees from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), an area that had just been annexed by Germany. After seeing the awful conditions in the camps where they lived, he felt compelled to try to save the children from the threat of the Nazis. His remarkable story has now been made into a film, One Life, with Johnny Flynn and Anthony Hopkins playing the younger and older versions of Winton.

Continue reading...

Joram review – old and new worlds collide in pressure cooker man and baby-hunt

Director Devashish Makhija slowly ramps up the tension with a sharp eye for oppressive realism and social satire as a father tries to out run his oppressors in this gritty thrillerWhere many thrillers programmatically crank up tension with every scene …

Director Devashish Makhija slowly ramps up the tension with a sharp eye for oppressive realism and social satire as a father tries to out run his oppressors in this gritty thriller

Where many thrillers programmatically crank up tension with every scene and every beat, Devashish Makhija’s third feature feels different; this manhunt is weighed down by an almost agonised oppressiveness. Joram’s protagonist Dasru (Manoj Bajpayee) is barely able to choose a course of action until compelled out of desperation, and his police pursuer Ratnakar (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) is not much better. There’s no escape in this pressure cooker from omnipresent societal exploitation and cynicism – with only Makhija’s compassion for the marginalised to compensate.

A tattooed member of the “scheduled tribes” from the eastern state of Jharkhand, Dasru lives in exile as a Mumbai labourer. When Phulo Karma (Smita Tambe), a tribal leader from the same region, pitches up on his construction site electioneering, she recognises him from his former life: a jungle rebel fighting against the appropriation of local lands by her husband’s iron-ore mining outfit. Dasru is bewildered when he comes home to find his wife Vaano (Tannishtha Chatterjee) brutally murdered and trussed upside down, forcing him to flee into the streets with his three-month-old daughter Joram in a sling.

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Oppenheimer to finally be released in Japan after ‘Barbenheimer’ backlash

Internet references conflating the two films drew anger in Japan, which was twice attacked by nuclear weapons during the second world warAudiences in Japan will finally get to see Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan’s hit biopic about the creator of the nu…

Internet references conflating the two films drew anger in Japan, which was twice attacked by nuclear weapons during the second world war

Audiences in Japan will finally get to see Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan’s hit biopic about the creator of the nuclear bomb – following criticism that it was marketed in a way that trivialised the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The movie’s distributor in Japan, Bitters End, said on Thursday that the film, which examines L. Robert Oppenheimer’s moral quandary over his key role in the world’s first nuclear attack on 6 August 1945, would be released in 2024.

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Oppenheimer to finally be released in Japan after ‘Barbenheimer’ backlash

Internet references conflating the two films drew anger in Japan, which was twice attacked by nuclear weapons during the second world warAudiences in Japan will finally get to see Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan’s hit biopic about the creator of the nu…

Internet references conflating the two films drew anger in Japan, which was twice attacked by nuclear weapons during the second world war

Audiences in Japan will finally get to see Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan’s hit biopic about the creator of the nuclear bomb – following criticism that it was marketed in a way that trivialised the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The movie’s distributor in Japan, Bitters End, said on Thursday that the film, which examines L. Robert Oppenheimer’s moral quandary over his key role in the world’s first nuclear attack on 6 August 1945, would be released in 2024.

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Sundance 2024: Kristen Stewart, Saoirse Ronan and Steven Yeun lead lineup

The 40th edition of the Utah-based film festival will also feature new films from director Steven Soderbergh and actor turned film-maker Chiwetel EjioforNew films starring Kristen Stewart, Saoirse Ronan and Steven Yeun will premiere at next month’s Sun…

The 40th edition of the Utah-based film festival will also feature new films from director Steven Soderbergh and actor turned film-maker Chiwetel Ejiofor

New films starring Kristen Stewart, Saoirse Ronan and Steven Yeun will premiere at next month’s Sundance film festival, celebrating its 40th year.

The lineup for the Utah-based festival boasts an array of film and TV premieres that highlight the “vitality of independent storytelling” with almost half coming from first-time directors.

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Sundance 2024: Kristen Stewart, Saoirse Ronan and Steven Yeun lead lineup

The 40th edition of the Utah-based film festival will also feature new films from director Steven Soderbergh and actor turned film-maker Chiwetel EjioforNew films starring Kristen Stewart, Saoirse Ronan and Steven Yeun will premiere at next month’s Sun…

The 40th edition of the Utah-based film festival will also feature new films from director Steven Soderbergh and actor turned film-maker Chiwetel Ejiofor

New films starring Kristen Stewart, Saoirse Ronan and Steven Yeun will premiere at next month’s Sundance film festival, celebrating its 40th year.

The lineup for the Utah-based festival boasts an array of film and TV premieres that highlight the “vitality of independent storytelling” with almost half coming from first-time directors.

Continue reading...

In Todd Haynes’s May December, icy restraint might leave you too cold

Netflix’s provocative drama, starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, plays on juicy tabloid fascination but there’s something missingExpensive and atmospheric as it looks, there’s a whiff of trash culture from the very first lines of the film May …

Netflix’s provocative drama, starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, plays on juicy tabloid fascination but there’s something missing

Expensive and atmospheric as it looks, there’s a whiff of trash culture from the very first lines of the film May December, which inflamed the age-gap discourse since its Netflix release last weekend and has already garnered accolades for Riverdale’s Charles Melton as best supporting actor. Our first introduction to Gracie, the arch, lispy housewife played by Julianne Moore, is in her airy kitchen; anticipating the arrival of a famous actor, she off-handedly recalls her own meeting with Judge Judy.

Off-handed is Gracie’s way – she’s prolific at the brag or barb wrapped in tissue paper. So, too, is the film, directed by Todd Haynes from a screenplay by Samy Burch, which summarily reveals its conceit through a series of overly deferential questions and strained niceties. Gracie’s husband Joe (Melton) is chiseled, smooth-faced and diffident, in noticeable contrast to her wrinkles and brittle temperament. The famous actor Elizabeth (an excellent Natalie Portman) is visiting the couple and their three children because she is playing Gracie in a movie about their headline-grabbing relationship, which began when she was 36, he 12, and both worked at a pet store.

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In Todd Haynes’s May December, icy restraint might leave you too cold

Netflix’s provocative drama, starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, plays on juicy tabloid fascination but there’s something missingExpensive and atmospheric as it looks, there’s a whiff of trash culture from the very first lines of the film May …

Netflix’s provocative drama, starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, plays on juicy tabloid fascination but there’s something missing

Expensive and atmospheric as it looks, there’s a whiff of trash culture from the very first lines of the film May December, which inflamed the age-gap discourse since its Netflix release last weekend and has already garnered accolades for Riverdale’s Charles Melton as best supporting actor. Our first introduction to Gracie, the arch, lispy housewife played by Julianne Moore, is in her airy kitchen; anticipating the arrival of a famous actor, she off-handedly recalls her own meeting with Judge Judy.

Off-handed is Gracie’s way – she’s prolific at the brag or barb wrapped in tissue paper. So, too, is the film, directed by Todd Haynes from a screenplay by Samy Burch, which summarily reveals its conceit through a series of overly deferential questions and strained niceties. Gracie’s husband Joe (Melton) is chiseled, smooth-faced and diffident, in noticeable contrast to her wrinkles and brittle temperament. The famous actor Elizabeth (an excellent Natalie Portman) is visiting the couple and their three children because she is playing Gracie in a movie about their headline-grabbing relationship, which began when she was 36, he 12, and both worked at a pet store.

Continue reading...