Author: Hollyood rep

Director and producer Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours, The Reader) and Sonia Friedman, the theater producer behind such West End hits as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Stranger Things: The First Shadow, have boarded A Friend of Dorothy, a short film starring Miriam Margolyes (Harry Potter, The Age of Innocence) and Stephen Fry (Gosford Park, Wilde) as executive producers. Supported by Age U.K., the movie marks the filmmaking debut of writer-director Lee Knight, who also serves as an executive producer on the short.  A Friend of Dorothy follows “Dorothy (Margolyes), an elderly woman living alone, whose unexpected…

Bette Midler is offering a brief update on Hocus Pocus 3.  The original movie set around the witchy Sanderson sisters debuted in 1993, with the long-awaited sequel arriving to Disney+ in 2022. Following the success of Hocus Pocus 2, Sean Bailey, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production, confirmed a third film was in the works in June 2023.  Fast forward over two years since Bailey’s announcement, Bette Midler, who plays one of the three Sanderson sisters, told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live that she has seen a script for Hocus Pocus 3.  “Well, you know, they…

A small circus coming to rural England turns out to open up new opportunities and perspectives for a young woman in Calif Chong’s feature film High Wire, which world premiered at the 69th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), which wraps on Sunday. “Go-Wing’s future feels predetermined,” reads a synopsis for the movie, which Chong co-wrote with Jackie Lam. “Days are filled with working at her father’s Chinese takeaway and studying. Beneath her sense of duty is a crushing loneliness and the prospect of a life unfulfilled. So, when an acrobatic circus comes to town, with a little accidental blackmail, Go-Wing is…

A girl moves around a Chinese restaurant, talking to her working mother in Under the Wave off Little Dragon, a short film from Luo Jian, which is featured at the 69th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF). The Mandarin-, English- and Welsh-language movie is 14 minutes long and part of an LFF collection of shorts screening under the title “Discovering Home.” “A Chinese girl growing up in a Welsh fishing village rejects her mother’s folklore, until she experiences one magical encounter,” reads a synopsis for the film starring Kexin Wang as the young and curious FeiFei. It also features Ah Mui Lau, Jessica…

Sian Clifford (Fleabag) as a narcissistic and lonely aristocrat in outrageous outfits and a camera crew chasing her through an English mansion are the stars of mockumentary Lady, the feature directorial debut of Samuel Abrahams, which he co-wrote with his partner Miranda Campbell Bowling. The film world premieres Thursday evening at the 69th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF). Laurie Kynaston (Fool Me Once), who worked with Clifford in BBC drama Life After Life, and Juliet Cowan also star in the movie, which mixes offbeat satire, ridiculous comedy, a healthy dose of surrealism and a warm-hearted exploration of how even the most privileged…

There he stood, in a red raincoat draped dramatically over a white suit, perched 30 feet above Piccadilly Circus for the Oct. 1 London premiere of Tron: Ares. What was Jared Leto doing up there, greeting his public like some interstellar overlord? Drumming up excitement for his latest blockbuster release, of course. The stunt was straight out of the Leto playbook — involving bombast, tall buildings and shoulder-length hair jostled by the elements — but didn’t succeed at its primary mission: driving audiences to theaters. Like a Light Cycle slamming into a Jetwall, Tron: Ares was savagely derezzed at the box…

Things just aren’t what they used to be! Or are they? And is that good, bad, or ugly? Nostalgie, a fiction short directed by Kathryn Ferguson, the Belfast-based filmmaker known for the likes of Sinéad O’Connor documentary Nothing Compares, will raise questions like that in your mind. And more! “A 1980s popstar receives a surprising invitation to perform, pulling him out of musical retirement and into a moral dilemma,” reads a synopsis for the 19-minute short that stars Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, Kin, Mayor of Kingstown, The Wire). Jessica Reynolds (Kneecap) and Michael Smiley (Bad Sisters, Alien: Earth,…

Woody Allen paid tribute to his former muse, romantic partner and lifelong friend Diane Keaton, who died on Saturday, aged 79, in a heartfelt essay published in The Free Press. “It’s grammatically incorrect to say ‘most unique,’ but all rules of grammar, and I guess anything else, are suspended when talking about Diane Keaton,” writes Allen about the Oscar-winning actress and style icon. “Unlike anyone the planet has experienced or is unlikely to ever see again, her face and laugh illuminated any space she entered.” Allen recalled meeting Keaton when she was cast opposite him in his 1969 play Play…

There’s a very funny scene in Ron Howard’s frothy 1984 interspecies rom-com, Splash, in which Daryl Hannah, playing a mermaid in Manhattan who swaps her tail for legs, skips out to buy suitable land attire. Given that she emerged from the sea naked, she throws together an outfit from the Tom Hanks character’s closet. The “fish out of water” turns up on a Bloomingdale’s womenswear floor in a men’s black suit, white shirt, black leather derbies and what looks like a school tie. The ensemble instantly brings a horrified saleslady scurrying over: “Oh my God, darling, darling, darling! That outfit…

After a quarter century as a working actor, it’s hardly surprising that Bradley Cooper would be drawn for subject matter to the cathartic nature of performing and its effect on relationships. What’s less expected is that all three of his highly accomplished films as director have used that spark in such different ways. A Star Is Born explored the arc of a couple respectively experiencing the glow of the spotlight and the chill as it dims, while Maestro weighed the creative genius of an impassioned artist against the limited oxygen left for a uniquely complex love story. In Cooper’s tenderly…