Author: Hollyood rep

Hala Matar is the first of her kind. The director tells The Hollywood Reporter she is the first female Bahraini director to make a feature film. After growing up in the Middle East and studying theater at school, Matar studied in America at the University of Virginia. By mistake, she enrolled in a cinematography class, but it ended up changing the course of her life. “I felt like it spoke to me more,” Matar says. “Because I feel like I communicate better visually. Theater concentrates on dialogue.” Now, her most recent project, Electra, will get its premiere on Thursday at…

Paul Anka performed “My Way,” the signature song made famous in 1969 by Frank Sinatra, on stage at a post-premiere dinner for Paul Anka: His Way, a documentary about the Canadian singer-songwriting legend that had a world bow at the Toronto Film Festival. The celebratory dinner at Union Station in Toronto had Anka, now 83 years of age, recounting a career over decades and genres. He recalled at the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami being told by Sinatra at a dinner that he was about to quit show business. “I’ve had enough,” Anka said he was told, but not before Sinatra…

This is not your father’s Traumnovelle. Florian Frerichs’ new adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s famed erotic novella — the work that inspired Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut — promises to be a much more explicit version of the story. The trailer for the film, which opens this year’s Oldenburg Film Festival on Sept. 11, is heavy on the hot and heavy (see below). Nikolai Kinski (Barbarians) and Laurine Price (Phoenix) star a respectable upper-middle-class couple living in Berlin who get drawn into a secret and dangerous world of erotic fantasy. Detlev Buck, Bruno Eyron, and Nora Islei co-star with cameos from Sharon Brauner and Sharon…

A woman (Salma Hayek Pinault) walks into a plaza sparsely occupied by patrons enjoying an afternoon coffee and a magazine and lottery ticket kiosk. She approaches the booth and fingers a stack of newspapers before asking the attendant (Demián Bichir), an older man with rounded shoulders and reading glasses perched on his nose, a question. Her delivery is studied, as if a more natural cadence battles against an inherent severity. She begs the man to close up the shop and have a drink with her. Her mannered sweetness becomes more urgent with his refusal. This is a command, not a…

Harvey Keitel (Bugsy, Pulp Fiction), Faye Dunaway (Bonnie & Clyde, Chinatown) and Cheech Marin (Nash Bridges) feature in an exclusive first-look image from the time travel romance movie Fate. Directed by Jonathan Baker (Lionsgate’s Inconceivable, starring Nicolas Cage, Gina Gershon, and Dunaway), the film, which recently wrapped production in Vancouver, also stars Andrew McCarthy (The Blacklist), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Mena Suvari (Grace and Grit), and Janet Montgomery (Black Swan, Black Mirror). “After losing his leg in a devastating accident, firefighter Sam Ellis (Routh) enrolls in a unique rehabilitation program at a majestic retreat run by Theodore Deo (Keitel),” according…

Inspirational sports dramas usually share key elements — struggle, setbacks, perseverance and hard-fought triumph. Even more effective if the movie centers on a disadvantaged protagonist, either economically or physically, to inject that underdog spirit. Debuting director William Goldenberg has all of that in Unstoppable, the incredible true story of wrestler Anthony Robles, who was born with only one leg but never let that stop him from going after his dream. The special sauce here, however, is the bond of love and support through tough times between Anthony and his mother Judy, stirringly portrayed by Jharrel Jerome and Jennifer Lopez. Goldenberg…

In what seems almost like a cleansing ritual after wrestling with studio horror franchises, David Gordon Green’s Nutcrackers sees the director return closer to his indie roots, observing characters that sprout organically from their rural or small-town environments. This cute fish-out-of-water comedy about the unexpected rewards of a found family tries to approximate the naturalism, lyricism and raw emotion of Green’s early works George Washington and All the Real Girls, but it’s too predictably sentimental to have a comparable effect. The idea came from Green meeting the four spirited young sons of an old friend, and Leland Douglas’ screenplay appears…

James McAvoy‘s directorial debut California Schemin‘ about a hip hop hoax has pre-sold to Studiocanal for the U.K. and Ireland and a range of other international markets. The movie is based on the true story of Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, two friends from Dundee, Scotland, who conned the music industry by using American accents and pretending to be a Californian rap duo called Silibil N’ Brains. The project is based on Bain’s autobiography of the same name, which was re-printed under the title Straight Outta Scotland. The duo’s story was previously told in the 2013 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax. McAvoy will not…

With Seeds, Canadian Mohawk actor Kaniehtiio Horn has embraced the indigenous horror-thriller genre — with some added comedy. “I didn’t want to make a trauma movie,” the Reservation Dogs actor tells The Hollywood Reporter about her directorial debut, a genre-bending home invasion film she wrote, stars in and produced. And she wants her world premiere audience at the Toronto Film Festival to laugh. Heartily. And in the right places. Horn says laughter abounds in indigenous culture and communities — however varied are the tribes and language groups. That’s especially laughing with, and not being laughed at: “Oh my God, we…

Venice has got its sexy back. Erotica of all varieties — gay, straight, kinky and theoretical — is on glorious display at this year’s Venice Film Festival, with plenty of sizzling action on screen and little of it gratuitous. Two of the, em, hottest festival titles this year — Halina Reijn’s Babygirl and the TV series Disclaimer from Alfonso Cuarón — open with orgasms. Babygirl also climaxes to a close, with star Nicole Kidman, playing a tech manager who discovers a taste for BDSM, in a state of near or total undress throughout much of the movie. Queer, an adaptation…