After his performance in 2019’s “Rocketman,” Taron Egerton‘s Hollywood star is the highest it’s ever been. And Egerton’s 2022 is off to a great start with AppleTV+.
06.07.2022 - 20:51 / variety.com
Guy Lodge Film Critic“America” is a burdensome title for Israeli director Ofir Raul Graizer’s bright, frangible new film, casting expectations of continent-sized import onto a more individual, interior study of immigrant unrest. Visually iridescent and unexpectedly buoyant even when dealing with matters of plunging personal tragedy, this study of a Chicago-based swimming coach returning to his native Israel after his father’s death — setting off a chain of both present-tense misfortunes and disinterred traumas — braids blunt melodramatic storytelling with a softer, more searching look at conflicted identity, both cultural and sexual.
If the film isn’t always narratively credible, it’s sincerely felt to the last. “America” shares this appealing quality — as well as a few parallel plot points, and a quiet, diffident queerness — with Graizer’s 2017 debut “The Cakemaker,” and should resonate warmly with the same audience that made that film (selected as Israel’s international Oscar submission) an arthouse sleeper.
Once again, Graizer’s original script outlines a bisexual love triangle of sorts, albeit one where the participants are shy to recognize their affections, and where his previous film used the death of a common loved one to set events in motion, here it’s that most classic of melodramatic standbys — an extended coma — that serves the same purpose. Yet “America’s” sensual delicacy and faintly literary formality balances out its occasional reliance on stock cliché: Sometimes, it seems actively out to prove why age-old tearjerker tropes still do the job.Only the film’s opening minutes are set in the eponymous territory, as we’re introduced to shy, handsome thirtysomething Eli (Michael Moshonov) at the Chicago health
.After his performance in 2019’s “Rocketman,” Taron Egerton‘s Hollywood star is the highest it’s ever been. And Egerton’s 2022 is off to a great start with AppleTV+.
Mary Poppins Returns and the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes but he also had memorable parts in Star Trek – where he played three different characters over the years – as well as in David Lynch’s 1991 cult favourite television show Twin Peaks. He was also nominated for an Emmy for his role in the 1978 television miniseries Holocaust, won an Emmy for his role in the 1981 ABC show Masada, about the siege of the Masada citadel in Israel, and was nominated for a BAFTA for one of his first ever film roles in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment in 1966. Like many actors of his generation, he spent years in the theatre before moving to cinema and television, but his career also spanned radio, audio dramas and video games.
Holly Jones Opening up to works from over the whole of Latin America, this year’s Sanfic Industria Series Lab will highlight series currently in development from Uruguay’s Fernando Epstein, Argentina’s Laura Farhi and Peru’s Paola Terán.Epstein’s “The Invisible Ink” proved one of the big winners at June’s Conecta Fiction, marking the first TV work from the renowned Uruguayan film producer (“Whisky,” ”Gigante”).Penned by Farhi, a writer on “Soy Tu Fan,” “Soy Luna” and “Intertwined,” “The Big Leap” won the Filmarket Hub 2022 International TV Pilots Contest.Terán, an assistant editor on Diego and Daniel Vega’s Locarno Fest winning “El Mudo,” will direct “Nobody Rests At Home.” The eight works selected for this year’s Series Lab will be announced during a PUC Film Festival Lima press conference on Monday.Agustina Lumi and Alejandra Marano co-ordinate the Sanfic Series Lab. 2022’s hybrid edition of Sanfic Industria runs over Aug.
Pet of the week: Meet Purin, the athletic beagle breaking multiple recordsWatch the 10 best celebrity TikToks of the week: Kim Kardashian, Drew Barrymore, Ryan Reynolds, and more“Sin Señal” will have you ready to dance in the mirror with a fun music video. The Chainsmokers‘ “Time Bomb” has a fun and catchy beat.
Maya Hawke has learned a lot from her parents.
Deadline reported.His immediate cause of death has yet to be determined.Blacque starred in the hit NBC police drama for its entire run between 1981 to 1987. He also scored an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor in a drama series in 1981.The Newark, New Jersey native was born Herbert Middleton Jr.
Carson Burton Taurean Blacque, beloved for his role of Detective Neal Washington on “Hill Street Blues,” has died. He was 82 years old.Blacque died Thursday according to his son Rodney’s Facebook post. He died in Atlanta following a brief illness, according to reports.For all seven seasons of the popular NBC cop show, Blacque starred alongside Michael Warren, Daniel J.
Manori Ravindran International EditorThe New Yorker has acquired Israeli documentary shorts “Holy Holocaust” and “Herd.”Jerusalem-based sales agent Go2Films has secured a worldwide digital distribution deal with the publication for the pair of award-winning films. “Holy Holocaust” is directed by Osi Wald and Noa Berman-Hertzberg, while “Herd” is helmed by Omer Daida.Both films are currently nominated for Israeli Academy Awards and have played at international festivals.
What could’ve been…
A change of plans. Khloé Kardashian and ex-boyfriend Tristan Thompson were thinking about their “long-term future” when they decided to have a second child — but plans changed when she learned about his paternity scandal.
Taron Egerton can't seem to escape the rumors. The 32-year-old actor denied more theories that he's set to play the iconic character, speaking up on SiriusXM's Pop Culture Spotlight with Jessica Shaw this week. The tidbit marks over two years of speculation surrounding Egerton's potential casting — ET first spoke to him about the rumor at 2019 Comic-Con. «It's really flattering that people think that I'm the guy to do it,» Egerton said this week, «but there's no truth.» In 2019, Egerton voiced an almost identical sentiment.
EXCLUSIVE: The Simpsons animator Erick Tran has teamed with film and TV-focused NFT and DeFi marketplace Mogul Productions to create what’s believed to be the world’s first animated NFT series — with Hollywood the inspiration.
NBC Nightly News on Sunday devoted the first 14 minutes of the broadcast to a single story: The shootings that unfolded in four major cities during the previous night.
Paul Walter Hauser (“Richard Jewell”) is also a movie buff — so it’s no surprise that he describes his Emmy-worthy turn as “Black Bird” serial killer Larry Hall in cinematic terms — including Hall’s “Vincent D’Onofrio in ‘Full Metal Jacket’ stare.”“I’d say for my process … is that if I treated [the role] some other way it takes the humanity out of it and I’m kind of leaning into this tendency to overact,” Hauser, 35, told The Post. “So rather than be like, ‘Wow, I’m playing a serial killer so I better get ready’ … [Hall] was a human before he was a murderer, before he was a rapist, so you don’t want to play a killer like a killer.
Alissa Simon Film Critic“Every big story is made of little stories,” a novice Egyptian newsreel director patiently explains to those who question his footage in the epic historical drama “Image of Victory.” It’s also a truism that pithily describes veteran Israeli helmer Avi Nesher’s engrossing 19th feature, which highlights young people during a dramatic time of history and brims with small episodes of courage, passion and humor.Inspired by real events, the film provides a nuanced look at circumstances leading up to the June 1948 fighting at Kibbutz Nitzanim, viewed from both the Egyptian and Israeli perspectives. Its consideration of how storytelling and visual images can be weaponized makes it a tale with great resonance for these times.
Apple TV+.The six-episode drama, adapted from James Keene’s 2010 book, “In With The Devil,” revolves around Keene (Taron Egerton, “Rocket Man”), a charismatic, armed-to-the-teeth Chicago drug dealer and son of an ex-cop (Ray Liotta in his final role) who, in 1996, is busted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.Shortly thereafter, he’s offered a deal: transfer to a maximum-security prison in Missouri and befriend high-talking, mutton-chopped serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser, “Richard Jewell”). If he can elicit a confession from the next-level-creepy Hall, who’s suspected in the murders of at least 14 young girls, Keene’s sentence will be commuted.
Shot in lush super 16mm, Jake Paltrow’s “June Zero” takes a unique look back at the execution of Adolf Eichmann after his trial in Israel during the early 1960s. Told in a triptych, the film follows 13-year-old Libyan immigrant David (Noam Ovadia), who claims to have worked on the oven where Eichmann’s corpse was incinerated.
EXCLUSIVE: Television producers Dana Eden and Shula Spiegel and their production company Donna and Shula Productions have signed with CAA. The duo are best known for producing Tehran, the first international series purchased and produced by Apple TV+.
The Locarno Film Festival has announced the full line-up and juries for its 75th edition, which is due to unfold August 3-13.
Jessica Kiang However many books and movies take it as their subject, a historical travesty on the incomprehensible scale of the Holocaust must always contain within it an uncountable number of untold stories. Given this wealth of untapped dramatic potential, it’s all the more perplexing that American director Jake Paltrow should choose to refer to his family’s Jewish heritage (the Paltrows have Belarusian and Polish Jewish ancestry) with “June Zero,” a polished, well-performed but thinly stretched attempt to communicate the seismic impact of Adolf Eichmann’s 1962 execution on Israeli society.