| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | 'I'm angry about a lot of things': Japanese actor Minami on Johnny Depp and their new eco-drama | | by Ryan Gilbey Aug 13, 2021 | | The actor and painter explains why the world needs to see Minimata, the new film about the mercury poisoning scandal that W Eugene Smith helped expose Like Cher or Madonna, Minami is a one-name wonder. “I have my French and Japanese family names,” the 34-year-old actor says over video call from a pink hotel room in Tokyo. “But ‘Minami’ is simpler.” She gives a single, decisive nod. “Just write ‘Minami.’” She chose the mononym at 13 when she featured in her first film, Battle Royale, a gory cult thriller about schoolchildren fighting to the death on an uninhabited island. “When I went back to school, everyone said: ‘Your arms are all bruised, you have scratches, what’s going on?’ They thought my parents were beating me.” Even when telling a story like this with dark undertones, her manner is insistently perky, as though she doesn’t want the listener to misread her as dour. When I ask about her Battle Royale audition, for instance, she blithely recalls “walking into the room and there were 10 men, and they asked me if I could do a handstand, and two of the men held my legs against the wall to help me …” I must be grimacing because she breaks off from the anecdote to reprimand me lightheartedly: “Don’t make that face! It was all fine.” Continue reading... | | | | | Curse of the Batsuit: why Val Kilmer found it hard to measure up | | by Ben Child Aug 13, 2021 | | Kilmer has told of the alienation he felt on the set of Batman Forever as Michael Keaton discusses his imminent return to the role in The Flash It’s hardly surprising that two men who have played Batman on the big screen, Val Kilmer and Michael Keaton, should have such wildly different memories of pulling on the character’s cape and cowl. Kilmer, who starred in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever in 1995, is widely seen as one of the worst dark knights of all time, saved only from the ignominy of rock bottom by George Clooney’s rock-faced performance in its 1997 sequel Batman & Robin. Related: 'I'm sucking up your IQ!': what 90s Batman tells us about Hollywood Continue reading... | | | | | Disney reports post-Covid rebound as theme parks reopen | | by Mark Sweney Aug 13, 2021 | | Streaming service Disney+ attracts 12m new subscribers, with company beating analysts’ forecasts The reopening of theme parks and 12 million new subscribers to Disney+ fuelled a post-pandemic recovery at the world’s biggest entertainment company, which beat Wall Street expectations in the quarter to 3 July. Disney+ reached a global user base of 116 million in the quarter, ahead of analyst estimates of 115 million, dispelling fears that growth was slowing after the company missed targets in the second quarter. Continue reading... | | | | | Beckett review – sturdy Netflix thriller provides simple throwback pleasures | | by Benjamin Lee Aug 13, 2021 | | A Luca Guadagnino-produced thriller about a man, played by John David Washington, on the run in Greece is an enjoyable homage to 70s conspiracy movies The *throws hands in the air and gives up* title of the new Luca Guadagnino-produced thriller is a telling sign of a film that no one knows quite what to do with. When Netflix picked it up late last year, it was switched from Born to Be Murdered (which sounds like a Lifetime movie starring Tori Spelling) to Beckett (which sounds like a comedy about either a wise-cracking detective or a mischievous dog or a wise-cracking detective who is also a mischievous dog), both rather awful and both rather far from what the film really is: a curious combination of propulsive on-the-run action and naturalistic Euro drama, too mainstream for the arthouse crowd and too arthouse for the mainstream, now hoping to find its place on a platform where anything and everything goes. Related: Vivo review – sweet but forgettable Netflix animation is Pixar-lite Continue reading... | | | | | Dan Stevens: 'The bodice ripper never quite goes away, I don't think it ever will' | | by Zoe Williams Aug 13, 2021 | | Ever since his days on Downton Abbey, the actor has segued seamlessly between British period drama and high-rolling US sci-fi. He talks about playing a robot – and why he has moved on from romance When I speak to Dan Stevens, he’s in Los Angeles, shooting Gaslit, a forthcoming TV show that sounds like the definitive deep dive into the Watergate scandal. It’s full of big hitters – Stevens and Betty Gilpin playing John and Mo Dean, Sean Penn and Julia Roberts as John and Martha Mitchell – and is based on the podcast Slow Burn, which is marvellous, if you get a minute and want a refresh on who these people are. Ever since his years on Downton Abbey, Stevens, 39, has been very much in that glossy league, moving seamlessly between British period drama and high-rolling US sci-fi – he is the lead in Legion, Noah Hawley’s epic addition to the Marvel universe – with hybrid projects in between. Blithe Spirit, for example, a British reinvention of Noël Coward’s classic, with a sort of American reverence for the past, and a partly US cast. It wasn’t very well-reviewed, but that’s beside the point; this is an actor who makes sense in many contexts, for whom there is very high demand. That – although like everyone he says he has had “chunks of months here and there” without work – has been the story of his career since his first professional job, cast as Orlando by Peter Hall in As You Like It. Hall had spotted him in a university production of Macbeth. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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