Good afternoon Insiders, Jesse Whittock here with you today. Cannes is nearly here, and we’ve got you covered there, along with the rest of the noise from the international film and TV worlds.
Cannes Looms Large
The build-up: The 81st Cannes Film Festival kicks off in less than a week but all the early talk surrounding the fest is about events away from the big screen. The French industry is currently in a state of paralysis as speculation continues to mount in the local film industry over rumors that a bombshell #MeToo exposé will drop on the festival’s first day. There has been talk in the French film industry for weeks that a raft of accusations is due to break in the lead-up and during the upcoming edition. The rumors come amid a fresh #MeToo wave in France, sparked by actress and filmmaker Judith Godrèche’s decision to...
Cannes Looms Large
The build-up: The 81st Cannes Film Festival kicks off in less than a week but all the early talk surrounding the fest is about events away from the big screen. The French industry is currently in a state of paralysis as speculation continues to mount in the local film industry over rumors that a bombshell #MeToo exposé will drop on the festival’s first day. There has been talk in the French film industry for weeks that a raft of accusations is due to break in the lead-up and during the upcoming edition. The rumors come amid a fresh #MeToo wave in France, sparked by actress and filmmaker Judith Godrèche’s decision to...
- 5/10/2024
- by Jesse Whittock
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: British writer, director, and producer Alex Marx will make his feature debut with The Queen of Fashion, a long-gestating biopic of fashion editor, stylist, and iconoclast Isabella Blow, with Academy Award nominee Andrea Riseborough set to produce and play the lead role.
The Queen of Fashion details the ups and downs of Blow’s life championing unknown and marginalized fashion figures like Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, and Sophie Dahl, whom she catapulted to success while struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. The project will be sold in Cannes by Rocket Science for international, with CAA Media Finance arranging financing for the film and handling domestic rights.
Riseborough will star as Blow alongside a robust supporting cast featuring Emilia Clarke as Daphne Guinness, Richard E. Grant as Blow’s father Evelyn Delves Broughton, Fionn O’Shea as Philip Treacy, and Hayley Atwell as Alexandra Schulman. Verity Naughton CDG continues casting key roles,...
The Queen of Fashion details the ups and downs of Blow’s life championing unknown and marginalized fashion figures like Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, and Sophie Dahl, whom she catapulted to success while struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. The project will be sold in Cannes by Rocket Science for international, with CAA Media Finance arranging financing for the film and handling domestic rights.
Riseborough will star as Blow alongside a robust supporting cast featuring Emilia Clarke as Daphne Guinness, Richard E. Grant as Blow’s father Evelyn Delves Broughton, Fionn O’Shea as Philip Treacy, and Hayley Atwell as Alexandra Schulman. Verity Naughton CDG continues casting key roles,...
- 5/9/2024
- by Joe Utichi
- Deadline Film + TV
Prince Azim of Brunei, who also had a minor career as a Hollywood film producer, has died. He was 38.
The son of the enormously wealthy Sultan of Brunei, and fourth in line to the throne, died on Saturday in the capital city Bandar Seri Begawan. As is typical of Muslim countries, his funeral was held shortly after, also on Saturday.
The government made the announcement on national radio. It said that the country has now entered a seven-day period of mourning and that the population should dress accordingly.
No cause of death was given, though local media reports say that he had been ill for some time. Other unconfirmed reports pointed to liver cancer.
Azim had a London-based production company Daryl Prince Productions. His Hollywood credits under the name Azim Bolkiah, included 2014 Hilary Swank-starring “You’re Not You” and 2018 Rupert Everett-starring “The Happy Prince.” The prince and the company...
The son of the enormously wealthy Sultan of Brunei, and fourth in line to the throne, died on Saturday in the capital city Bandar Seri Begawan. As is typical of Muslim countries, his funeral was held shortly after, also on Saturday.
The government made the announcement on national radio. It said that the country has now entered a seven-day period of mourning and that the population should dress accordingly.
No cause of death was given, though local media reports say that he had been ill for some time. Other unconfirmed reports pointed to liver cancer.
Azim had a London-based production company Daryl Prince Productions. His Hollywood credits under the name Azim Bolkiah, included 2014 Hilary Swank-starring “You’re Not You” and 2018 Rupert Everett-starring “The Happy Prince.” The prince and the company...
- 10/27/2020
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
In Natalie Krinsky’s directorial debut, “The Broken Hearts Gallery,” Geraldine Viswanathan plays Lucy, a 26-year-old hipster who lives in Brooklyn with two roommates, Amanda and Nadine. Lucy is an aspiring art gallerist whose career takes a hit after she’s fired for delivering an angry drunken toast at an opening, directed at her erstwhile boyfriend, Max. She then meets Nick, and after they become friends, Lucy begins to contend with her lifelong habit of collecting — hoarding? — mementos from past relationships. TriStar Pictures released “The Broken Hearts Gallery” on more than 2,200 screens this weekend.
In Owen Gleiberman’s glowing review of the movie, he writes that writer-director Krinsky “has a witty and spirited commercial voice.” And she does have a lot going on these days, in addition to doing press for “The Broken Hearts Gallery.” She’s imminently pitching two TV shows, one of which she couldn’t discuss, the...
In Owen Gleiberman’s glowing review of the movie, he writes that writer-director Krinsky “has a witty and spirited commercial voice.” And she does have a lot going on these days, in addition to doing press for “The Broken Hearts Gallery.” She’s imminently pitching two TV shows, one of which she couldn’t discuss, the...
- 9/11/2020
- by Kate Aurthur
- Variety Film + TV
Features: Alexander McQueen, Bernard Arnault, Joseph Bennett, Detmar Blow, Isabella Blow, Katy England, Magdalena Frackowiak, Jodie Kidd, Gary James McQueen, Janet McQueen, Joyce McQueen, Kate Moss, Michelle Olley, Dana Thomas | Written by Peter Ettedgui | Directed by Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui
Alexander McQueen’s rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen’s own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Ian Bonhôte’s documentary on the life and work of enigmatic fashion designer and late visionary Alexander McQueen is an extraordinary insight into one of Britains most charismatic exports, revealing a truly endearing character hidden behind such artistic impression that reveals a haunted genius who gave the world his nightmares through the embodiment of fashion.
The examination and journey into the...
Alexander McQueen’s rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen’s own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Ian Bonhôte’s documentary on the life and work of enigmatic fashion designer and late visionary Alexander McQueen is an extraordinary insight into one of Britains most charismatic exports, revealing a truly endearing character hidden behind such artistic impression that reveals a haunted genius who gave the world his nightmares through the embodiment of fashion.
The examination and journey into the...
- 11/26/2018
- by Jak-Luke Sharp
- Nerdly
Eight years since the tragic death of legendary designer Alexander McQueen, a new documentary, McQueen, is providing an intimate look inside the life and mind of the creative genius.
Known for his couture-like creations set against controversial, often morbid fashion shows, the new film (out today in N.Y.C. and L.A.) explores the British designer’s psyche through candid interviews with friends and family. His inner circle takes viewers on his journey from an East End teenager with no formal training to the man who built his own successful brand and who ultimately took his own life on...
Known for his couture-like creations set against controversial, often morbid fashion shows, the new film (out today in N.Y.C. and L.A.) explores the British designer’s psyche through candid interviews with friends and family. His inner circle takes viewers on his journey from an East End teenager with no formal training to the man who built his own successful brand and who ultimately took his own life on...
- 7/20/2018
- by Colleen Kratofil
- PEOPLE.com
It’s 1999, and model Shalom Harlow spins slowly on a turntable wearing a white, belted, oversize blank canvas of a dress. She’s flanked by two robots that spring to life and begin to rotate themselves. The machines jerk and jolt menacingly, then take aim at that dress, blasting it with black and gold spray paint. Harlow reacts first with faux shock and dismay that eventually gives way to a very messy ecstasy.
This is the grand finale of a fashion show but plays like a dreamy message from the future, and audience members sitting too close to that fantastical interaction probably went home happily paint-spattered themselves. It would become a memorable pop culture moment in a career full of them for designer Alexander McQueen, who died in 2010 at age 40, a man whose sense of the theatrical defined his work.
Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s elegant, mournful documentary “McQueen...
This is the grand finale of a fashion show but plays like a dreamy message from the future, and audience members sitting too close to that fantastical interaction probably went home happily paint-spattered themselves. It would become a memorable pop culture moment in a career full of them for designer Alexander McQueen, who died in 2010 at age 40, a man whose sense of the theatrical defined his work.
Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s elegant, mournful documentary “McQueen...
- 7/20/2018
- by Dave White
- The Wrap
There are few stories more compelling — or tragic — than that of the tortured artist who rises from obscurity only to be crushed under the weight of success. Equally as rare are designers so influential they need only one name: Versace, Dior, Galliano, McQueen. Alexander McQueen is the closest thing to fashion royalty we’ve had in this century, a true visionary who transcended the fashion world to become an internationally recognized artist. His garments teetered between the gorgeous and the grotesque, his runway shows could pass as performance art, and his collections were often chic and shocking all at once. His posthumous 2011 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Savage Beauty,” was the eighth most popular show in the museum’s history, and the most visited for the Met’s Costume Institute.
The polished new documentary, “McQueen,” charts the late designer’s rise from English country boy to fashion’s enfant terrible,...
The polished new documentary, “McQueen,” charts the late designer’s rise from English country boy to fashion’s enfant terrible,...
- 7/20/2018
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Lee Alexander McQueen was just 40 when he hanged himself at his London home in 2010, on the eve of his mother’s funeral. His suicide made headlines. But it was the revolution he started in fashion that is still being felt and fiercely debated – you don’t escape censure when you tag your early 1990’s collections with names like, “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims” and “Highland Rape.” The designer insisted his work reflected the brutality of the world without colluding with it. The argument about that still rages.
In their unmissable documentary McQueen,...
In their unmissable documentary McQueen,...
- 7/19/2018
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
MaryAnn’s quick take… There’s so much fresh air in this stunningly good biography that it feels like you’ve never encountered a rags-to-riches, tortured-artist story before. Not just for fashion lovers. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing
I’m “biast” (con): so not interested in fashion
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) women’s participation in this film
(learn more about this)
A model, Shalom Harlow, in a simple white dress rotates on a turntable while robotic arms spray-paint the garment in striking swaths of black and chartreuse. This sequence in McQueen had me in tears of joy and wonder, and I honestly have no idea why. Visually, it’s shocking and striking and probably the last thing you’d expect to see on a fashion runway, so perhaps it was the surprise that moved me? I don’t know much about fashion and...
I’m “biast” (con): so not interested in fashion
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) women’s participation in this film
(learn more about this)
A model, Shalom Harlow, in a simple white dress rotates on a turntable while robotic arms spray-paint the garment in striking swaths of black and chartreuse. This sequence in McQueen had me in tears of joy and wonder, and I honestly have no idea why. Visually, it’s shocking and striking and probably the last thing you’d expect to see on a fashion runway, so perhaps it was the surprise that moved me? I don’t know much about fashion and...
- 6/8/2018
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s documentary conveys the outrageous glory of the designer’s work and poignantly unpicks his inner issues
Since the fashion designer Alexander McQueen took his own life at the age of 40 in 2010, he has been mythologised in a colossally successful exhibition in London and New York entitled Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, and there has been a projected movie – now reportedly on hold – to which Jack O’Connell and Andrew Haigh were once attached as star and director. Now there is this sombre, thorough, intelligent and informative documentary by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui giving us the moving story of a working-class boy with fierce and original talent who began as a tailor’s apprentice in Savile Row before getting mentored into the big league by fashion writer and salonnière Isabella Blow, and whose increasingly outrageous and confrontational shows made him one of the fashion world’s biggest stars.
Since the fashion designer Alexander McQueen took his own life at the age of 40 in 2010, he has been mythologised in a colossally successful exhibition in London and New York entitled Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, and there has been a projected movie – now reportedly on hold – to which Jack O’Connell and Andrew Haigh were once attached as star and director. Now there is this sombre, thorough, intelligent and informative documentary by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui giving us the moving story of a working-class boy with fierce and original talent who began as a tailor’s apprentice in Savile Row before getting mentored into the big league by fashion writer and salonnière Isabella Blow, and whose increasingly outrageous and confrontational shows made him one of the fashion world’s biggest stars.
- 6/6/2018
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The skull was the signature motif of the Alexander McQueen design house well before its brilliant, volatile founder committed suicide in 2010. A symbol of dark, sparse morbidity that always jarred amid the more straightforwardly glamorous imagery of McQueen’s haute couture rivals, it was fully emblematic of a design sensibility always intended to disrupt sensuality with violence, to query what the fashion industry held sacred and beautiful. Since his death, however, the logo has functioned as a monument to his memory — perhaps even a bittersweet reminder that the signs of his tragic demise were always there.
In their supremely elegant and engrossing documentary “McQueen,” Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui appropriate the skull as a sleek, flexibly recurring cinematic image, restyling it from chapter to chapter as a marker of both McQueen’s evolving aesthetic and his deteriorating state of mind. It’s a device that could be gauche, but is...
In their supremely elegant and engrossing documentary “McQueen,” Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui appropriate the skull as a sleek, flexibly recurring cinematic image, restyling it from chapter to chapter as a marker of both McQueen’s evolving aesthetic and his deteriorating state of mind. It’s a device that could be gauche, but is...
- 5/5/2018
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
McQueen is a documentary that, like its subject, transcends the industry it portrays. Enchanting and heartbreaking, it’s an enlightening film about a man who had an incredible amount of talent, and pursued his ambitions regardless of the cost.
Near the beginning of McQueen, somebody that knew Lee makes a point that many people now say they discovered the fashion designer, but that you can’t discover talent, you can only help talent along – Lee discovered himself.
That feels as true of McQueen as it is of anyone with true intrinsic talent. Lee Alexander McQueen was the fashion prodigy who grew up in the East End of London, his dad was a black cab driver and his mother looked after him and his three siblings. After college, Lee’s mother suggested he head to Saville Row and try and get an apprenticeship. He succeeded, and changed jobs a couple of times during his apprenticeship,...
Near the beginning of McQueen, somebody that knew Lee makes a point that many people now say they discovered the fashion designer, but that you can’t discover talent, you can only help talent along – Lee discovered himself.
That feels as true of McQueen as it is of anyone with true intrinsic talent. Lee Alexander McQueen was the fashion prodigy who grew up in the East End of London, his dad was a black cab driver and his mother looked after him and his three siblings. After college, Lee’s mother suggested he head to Saville Row and try and get an apprenticeship. He succeeded, and changed jobs a couple of times during his apprenticeship,...
- 4/27/2018
- by Rachael Kaines
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
The first on-screen credit of “Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami” reads: “Hats designed by Philip Treacy.” It’s an entirely appropriate announcement of values, a reminder that style and substance are indistinguishable for Jones, the film’s enduring singer-actor-model-muse.
Treacy, millinery king of the outlandish fascinator (think Kate and William’s wedding and the late Isabella Blow), has no interest in understatement, and neither does the outlandishly fascinating woman whose body becomes a collaborating force with his work.
In addition to those never-wrong hat decisions, what follows in the winning documentary from Sophie Fiennes (“The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”) is two hours of contrasts that inform one another: sweat-inducing concert footage, intimate family reunion moments, steel-spine business negotiations, recording-studio drama, and a steadfast commitment to personal glamour that sees its subject in a Parisian hotel suite enjoying a champagne breakfast wearing nothing but a fur coat, as though this were a daily occurrence. (And it very well could be.)
Also Read: 'Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami' Gives Toronto a Big Dose of Disco Diva
At age 69, Jones remains an unclassifiable icon, a tireless CEO of her own aesthetic, and a willful iconoclast. We witness the recording artist who scolds legendary Jamaican music producer Robbie Shakespeare for not showing up to the studio when she needs him, the cultural force who mocks contemporary audiences’ unwillingness to party all night long, and the grandmother who coos over her son’s newborn.
We’re treated to the Studio 54 legend who harnessed a hurricane’s worth of nerve and seamlessly transitioned into 80s New Wave diva status, taking her worshipful Lgbtq audience along for the ride without ever succumbing to fuzzy nostalgia as the years went by. We travel with the devoted family member going home to Jamaica who picks up the beat of a lived-in domesticity with people who’ve known her since childhood. She’s somewhat more than one documentary can contain.
Fiennes knows this and doesn’t try to overstuff the film. Rather than cram seven decades’ worth of biographical events into 120 minutes — there’s a glimpse of Andy Warhol but you can forget learning anything new about Dolph Lundgren — Fiennes approaches Jones’ unique position with a clear, unsentimental directness, unburdened with shaping an easy narrative or lazy hagiography, resolutely concerned with the present. This means that longtime fans will enjoy a relatively demystifying glimpse into Jones’ private life as she lives it today, and newcomers will find themselves pleasantly confused.
Also Read: Grace Jones Throws Shade at Rihanna, Kanye West, Miley Cyrus for Being Copycats
The filmmaker allows Jones the space to be the crowd-pleasing singer in the concert hall whose expectations for herself “are much higher than [that of the audience],” the artist in the “bloodlight” of the recording studio working to create relevant new music, and the hometown hero sharing bami (a type of bread) with elderly Jamaican neighbors.
Jones, for her part, makes no qualitative distinctions between the spaces she occupies, not in the worlds of music, fashion, and art, nor in her day-to-day tending of a family and business. When she goes to a Jamaican church service and then, in another sequence, performs “Amazing Grace” with an attitude that may or may not be a little self-aggrandizing, it all feels exactly right. Fiennes frames Jones in collaboration with the artist’s own fluidly presentational sense of self: her shifting style, and often her very accent, dependent on her audience and location, as though performance is everything she knows.
Watch Video: First Trailer for Mister Rogers Doc 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Might Make You Cry
And because this sort of existence requires tenacity over the long haul, Jones is never without a point of view. She’s shown fighting a French TV producer who not only wants her to take off her face-obscuring hat, but also subjects her to unappealing set design and sexy background dancers. (“We are visual artists. We know what things look like,” she sniffs, the shade finely calibrated for the moment.) She’s seen ruminating on the abusive religious childhood foundations of her self-described “scary” public persona, all the while dealing tenderly with that same Pentecostal family.
It’s a life — and now a film about a life — built from disparate strands of experience, but one that makes sense exactly because she is Grace Jones, and being Grace Jones means synthesizing Grace Jones from all available material. That she continues to share this with audiences is a bonding act of disco generosity, one only appreciated with repeated nights out dancing to “Pull Up to The Bumper.”
And that’s not really something a documentary can do for you. Like Jones herself, you have to put in those late hours on your own.
Read original story ‘Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami’ Review: She’s Almost Too Much for One Film At TheWrap...
Treacy, millinery king of the outlandish fascinator (think Kate and William’s wedding and the late Isabella Blow), has no interest in understatement, and neither does the outlandishly fascinating woman whose body becomes a collaborating force with his work.
In addition to those never-wrong hat decisions, what follows in the winning documentary from Sophie Fiennes (“The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”) is two hours of contrasts that inform one another: sweat-inducing concert footage, intimate family reunion moments, steel-spine business negotiations, recording-studio drama, and a steadfast commitment to personal glamour that sees its subject in a Parisian hotel suite enjoying a champagne breakfast wearing nothing but a fur coat, as though this were a daily occurrence. (And it very well could be.)
Also Read: 'Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami' Gives Toronto a Big Dose of Disco Diva
At age 69, Jones remains an unclassifiable icon, a tireless CEO of her own aesthetic, and a willful iconoclast. We witness the recording artist who scolds legendary Jamaican music producer Robbie Shakespeare for not showing up to the studio when she needs him, the cultural force who mocks contemporary audiences’ unwillingness to party all night long, and the grandmother who coos over her son’s newborn.
We’re treated to the Studio 54 legend who harnessed a hurricane’s worth of nerve and seamlessly transitioned into 80s New Wave diva status, taking her worshipful Lgbtq audience along for the ride without ever succumbing to fuzzy nostalgia as the years went by. We travel with the devoted family member going home to Jamaica who picks up the beat of a lived-in domesticity with people who’ve known her since childhood. She’s somewhat more than one documentary can contain.
Fiennes knows this and doesn’t try to overstuff the film. Rather than cram seven decades’ worth of biographical events into 120 minutes — there’s a glimpse of Andy Warhol but you can forget learning anything new about Dolph Lundgren — Fiennes approaches Jones’ unique position with a clear, unsentimental directness, unburdened with shaping an easy narrative or lazy hagiography, resolutely concerned with the present. This means that longtime fans will enjoy a relatively demystifying glimpse into Jones’ private life as she lives it today, and newcomers will find themselves pleasantly confused.
Also Read: Grace Jones Throws Shade at Rihanna, Kanye West, Miley Cyrus for Being Copycats
The filmmaker allows Jones the space to be the crowd-pleasing singer in the concert hall whose expectations for herself “are much higher than [that of the audience],” the artist in the “bloodlight” of the recording studio working to create relevant new music, and the hometown hero sharing bami (a type of bread) with elderly Jamaican neighbors.
Jones, for her part, makes no qualitative distinctions between the spaces she occupies, not in the worlds of music, fashion, and art, nor in her day-to-day tending of a family and business. When she goes to a Jamaican church service and then, in another sequence, performs “Amazing Grace” with an attitude that may or may not be a little self-aggrandizing, it all feels exactly right. Fiennes frames Jones in collaboration with the artist’s own fluidly presentational sense of self: her shifting style, and often her very accent, dependent on her audience and location, as though performance is everything she knows.
Watch Video: First Trailer for Mister Rogers Doc 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Might Make You Cry
And because this sort of existence requires tenacity over the long haul, Jones is never without a point of view. She’s shown fighting a French TV producer who not only wants her to take off her face-obscuring hat, but also subjects her to unappealing set design and sexy background dancers. (“We are visual artists. We know what things look like,” she sniffs, the shade finely calibrated for the moment.) She’s seen ruminating on the abusive religious childhood foundations of her self-described “scary” public persona, all the while dealing tenderly with that same Pentecostal family.
It’s a life — and now a film about a life — built from disparate strands of experience, but one that makes sense exactly because she is Grace Jones, and being Grace Jones means synthesizing Grace Jones from all available material. That she continues to share this with audiences is a bonding act of disco generosity, one only appreciated with repeated nights out dancing to “Pull Up to The Bumper.”
And that’s not really something a documentary can do for you. Like Jones herself, you have to put in those late hours on your own.
Read original story ‘Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami’ Review: She’s Almost Too Much for One Film At TheWrap...
- 4/12/2018
- by Dave White
- The Wrap
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