Paul Schrader Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” has already received a handful of strong first reactions, but now comes a huge claim from “Taxi Driver” writer and “The Card Counter” director Paul Schrader. The Oscar nominee attended the New York premiere of Nolan’s atom bomb epic and took to social media afterwards to hail it as “the best, most important film of this century.” “If you see one film in cinemas this year it should be ‘Oppenheimer,'” Schrader added in a Facebook post shared widely across social media. “I’m not a Nolan groupie but this one blows the door off the hinges.” “Oppenheimer,” based on the 2005 book “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, tracks the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II through the eyes of theoretical physicist and Manhattan Project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer. Cillian Murphy stars in the lead role. The film also features Matt Damon as Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh and Benny Safdie also star.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Warner Bros. Discovery raised the hackles of some in the film community with last month’s launch of Max — the reskinned and renamed version of HBO Max — because the new service’s content details pages consolidated writers, directors, producers and others under a single “creators” heading. Five weeks after issuing a mea culpa and promising to fix the situation, WBD has now updated the listings in Max. The updates appear to be live on platforms including the max.com website and iOS and will be rolling out across all device platforms this week. For example, on Max, Oscar-winning film “Raging Bull,” starring Robert De Niro, now includes the following listings: Directors: Martin Scorsese; Writers: Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin; Producers: Irwin Winkler, Robert Chartoff; Based on Source Material by: Jake La Motta, Joseph Carter, Peter Savage. When Max launched on May 23, the service grouped all of those individuals under a single “creators” heading.

Sophia Scorziello editor The man who directed a scene so bloody it was filmed in black and white to avoid an NC-17 rating has some qualms with violence in film. In an hourlong conversation at the Cannes Film Festival, Quentin Tarantino addressed some parts of his book “Cinema Speculation” and he teased his 10th and final film, “The Movie Critic.” As a serious grind-house fanatic, Tarantino discussed the place of violence in his own films and in classics like John Flynn’s “Rolling Thunder” and Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” On John Flynn’s “Rolling Thunder” “It was the movie that made me start taking myself seriously as a film critic,” Tarantino said of “Rolling Thunder.”

facing pushback from viewers on social media as well as the Directors Guild of America and Writers Guild of America. “We agree that the talent behind the content on Max deserve their work to be properly recognized,” a Warner Bros.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Warner Bros. Discovery’s newly launched Max lumped film directors and writers under a single “creators” heading — a change that prompted a backlash from filmmakers and Hollywood’s directors and writers guilds. Now the company is changing the listings back, blaming the issue on a technical “oversight.” “We agree that the talent behind the content on Max deserve their work to be properly recognized,” a Max spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. “We will correct the credits, which were altered due to an oversight in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max and we apologize for this mistake.” The move drew ire amid the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, in which the union is seeking to reach a new contract with major studios.

Naman Ramachandran Universal’s “Fast X” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £5.8 million ($7.3 million), according to numbers released by Comscore. In second place, Disney’s “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3” continued its strong run in the territory, adding £2.8 million in its third weekend for a total of £28.9 million. In its seventh weekend, Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” earned £544,283 in third position for a total of £51.8 million. Lionsgate’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” debuted in fourth place with £327,197. Rounding off the top five was another debut, Sony’s “Beau Is Afraid,” with £231,370. The other debut in the top 10 was Trafalgar Releasing’s “Don Giovanni – Met Opera 2023,” which bowed in ninth position with £99,842.

In today’s episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo gets in the weeds with Joel Edgerton (“Warrior,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “Thirteen Lives”). The talented writer/actor/director is promoting his latest film, “Master Gardener,” directed by the great Paul Schrader.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Black Flies,” a movie that keeps working to get high on its own intensity, Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan play paramedics who spend their nights driving through hell (I mean, Brooklyn). There are countless shots of the two in their EMS van, riding along under the tracks of an overhead subway train — the exact kind of grungy Brooklyn boulevard that Popeye Doyle went smashing through in the famous “French Connection” car/subway chase. As Rut (Penn) and Cross (Sheridan) patrol the borough neighborhood of Brownsville, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden sections of New York City, those overheard tracks become part of the film’s meticulously oppressive visual design. The two have so little breathing room they can barely see the sky. After a while, though, you start to think: Don’t these guys everdrive down a side street? Like everything else in “Black Flies,” those subway tracks are stylish signifiers of doom that are a little too in-your-face.

“Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I told You” (Crown), Williams, 70, reveals this and plenty of other secrets. A singer and songwriter with deep Southern roots — born in the Louisiana city of Lake Charles — her songs tell tales of love, lust and loss, God and the devil. The most jarring stories in the book are about Williams’ mother, Lucille, who suffered from mental illness.She writes of a time when she was 3 and her mother locked her in a closet, because, her father told her, ‘You were being a typical 3-year-old and crying and she couldn’t handle it.’ “When I think about it now, it sounds so horrible.

As Sanctuary, Zachary Wigon’s twisted tale of a dominatrix and her wealthy client, opens in NY and LA, David Lancaster of producer Rumble Films recalls a speedy 18-day shoot on a custom-made set in Brownsville, Brooklyn in late summer of 2021. It was Covid, so not the easiest time for indie financing.

Warner Bros’ Beetlejuice 2 has continued to round out its cast with the addition of Willem Dafoe (Inside), sources have confirmed to Deadline.

Leave it to Paul Schrader to keep criticizing his filmmaking peers well into his seventies. IndieWire reports (via Interview Magazine) that Schrader had some choice words about other New Hollywood directors revisiting their previous films, and warned about the “slippery slope” of fooling around with finished products.

Variety Staff Follow Us on Twitter Variety has hired acclaimed magazine writer Stephen Rodrick to be a chief correspondent for the publication. In his new post, Rodrick will write cover stories and longform pieces about Hollywood, movies, TV shows and important figures in the entertainment industry. His work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, New York and The New Yorker. He has spent the past decade writing for Rolling Stone. “Stephen is one of the best magazine writers in the country,” say Variety co-editors-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh and Cynthia Littleton. “His arrival at Variety comes in a year where we are experiencing unprecedented digital growth. We are so excited to start publishing his beautiful, literary writing in the pages of our weekly print magazine and online.”

As the world awaits the theatrical release of Paul Schrader‘s latest outing, “Master Gardner” on May 19, news arises of his purported next picture. So what’s Schrader up to next? How about a reunion with “American Gigolo” star Richard Gere?   READ MORE: ‘Master Gardner’ Review: Paul Schrader Builds A Fitting Ending To His Plagued Man Trilogy [Venice] The Film Stage reports that Schrader and Gere will work together for the first time in 43 years on the director’s next film.

The first trailer has arrived for “Master Gardener”, the latest from writer-director Paul Schrader.

After flirting with obsolescence in the late 2000s, writer/director Paul Schrader has been experiencing something of a career renaissance. His original screenplay for 2017’s “First Reformed” was nominated for an Academy Award, and his 2022 follow-up “The Card Counter” appeared in numerous critics’ annual “best of” lists. Now, the acclaimed filmmaker’s momentum will be tested once again with the arrival of his latest opus “Master Gardener.” Here’s the indie crime thriller’s official synopsis: “Narvel Roth is the meticulous horticulturist of Gracewood Gardens, a beautiful estate owned by wealthy dowager Mrs.

via Twitter). “I rather like the provincial origins of the Oscars: Hollywood coming together to celebrate its own.”JUST IN: Paul Schrader, writer of TAXI DRIVER (1978) and world-renown filmmaker responsible for FIRST REFORMED (2018) and THE CARD COUNTER (2021) calls Oscars too “woke” and says the Oscars are too “international” and must “return to its origins.” pic.twitter.com/ARVxlrVjN6Schrader continued, less coherently: “Barry Diller is right.

EXCLUSIVE: Sigourney Weaver has joined the cast of Apple Original Films and Skydance’s The Gorge starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy. Scott Derrickson is on board to direct with Zach Dean penning the script, which he sold on spec to Skydance last year. In addition to starring, Teller will serve as executive producer on the film.

Alicia Allain, a producer and actress who started in the business as a hair stylist, has died according to a social media post by her husband, John Schneider. She was 53.

I Am Cuba would probably still be locked away in a vault in Russia,” Scorsese continued. “He also produced films that really counted, by Werner Herzog, Paul Schrader, Norman Mailer, Jean-Luc Godard, Barbet Schroeder, Agnieszka Holland and others.

Regardless of what critics are saying about “Babylon,” there’s no denying that Damien Chazelle is a smart filmmaker, who typically goes out of his way to bring a level of authenticity and respect to his subject matter. Whether that’s the trials and tribulations of a young drummer in music school in “Whiplash” or NASA missions in “First Man,” you always get the feeling that Chazelle strives for accuracy in his very intricate filmmaking style.

Earlier this year, we spoke with Ethan Hawke about his soulful Apple TV+ movie, “Raymond and Ray,” co-starring Ewan McGregor and directed by Rodrigo Garcia. It’s a humanist meditation on brotherhood, family, grief, and trying to come to terms with that parent you had major issues with now that they’re gone (read our review).

Mélita Toscan du Plantier has spent the best part of two decades running Morocco’s Marrakech International Film Festival.

EXCLUSIVE: Actress Sandrine Holt (American Gigolo) has signed with Silver Lining Entertainment for management.

To this day, not only is “Taxi Driver” thought of as one of the best American films of all time, but it’s also one of the most influential. However, most of the discussion about Martin Scorsese’s thriller, written by Paul Schrader, is focused on the performance of Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle.

Magnolia Pictures has snapped up U.S. rights to Master Gardener — the latest starry feature from Academy Award nominee Paul Schrader (First Reformed), which world premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival and most recently screened at the New York Film Festival. Pic is slated for release next year.

Paul Schrader always knew that “Master Gardener” would be controversial.

Filmmaker Paul Schrader revealed some of the details of his next project at the New York Film Festival during the Q&A for his beautiful and more optimistic new film, “The Master Gardener.”  During the discussion with NYFF’s Dennis Lim and the film’s stars Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver, Schrader said his next film would be about a “trauma nurse working in Puerto Rico.” But as he detailed, in his conversation about “The Master Gardener” and the so-called God’s Lonely Man trilogy that includes “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter,” this vocation, trauma nurse would just be the “occupational metaphor” used to hide what the film is really about.

Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver are stepping out to promote their new movie.

As we are seeing this film festival season return to what we all knew and loved pre-pandemic, we are so excited to have one of the longest-running U.S.-based film festivals return for its 60th year (yes, 60!!).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic There’s a genre I like so much I can never get enough of it — I call it the Biopic About Someone You Wouldn’t Make a Biopic About. The form came into existence, in a certain way, with “Sid and Nancy,” but it was all but patented by the screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who planted it on the map, in 1994, with “Ed Wood” (still the “Citizen Kane” of the genre), then went on to script “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” “Man on the Moon” (about Andy Kaufman), “Big Eyes” (about the painter Walter Keane and his wife, Margaret, who turned out to be the painter behind the throne), and “Dolemite Is My Name” (about the fluky hustler-comedian Ray Moore). There have been films in the genre from other quarters, like Paul Schrader’s superb “Auto Focus” (about the TV star Bob Crane and his video-fetish sex life), going right up through the recent Toronto Film Festival sensation “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”

on Showtime), “American Gigolo” is based on the 1980 Schrader film of the same name, starring Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton. The series follows Julian Kaye (Jon Bernthal), a former gigolo who spent 15 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. After he’s exonerated, he scrambles to rebuild his life — which includes putting together the puzzle of who framed him for the crime, and also reuniting with his former flame, Michelle Stratton (Mol). “[Jon Bernthal] is fantastic.

An Armani-clad Richard Gere cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in a black Mercedes-Benz as Blondie’s “Call Me” blares, sets the tone not only for Paul Schrader’s classic neo-noir “American Gigolo,” but also, as Karina Longworth posits in the latest season of her podcast You Must Remember This, the erotic ’80s. So, of course, this deep into the era of reboots, the film was ripe for a television re-imagining.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic With its pulsing burble of Blondie music and its chilly aesthetic, the 1980 Paul Schrader film “American Gigolo” is a showpiece of what would soon be the Reagan decade. Some 42 years later, a TV adaptation feels lost in time, and searching for an argument for its existence. Starring Jon Bernthal and with a pilot written and directed by “Ray Donovan’s” David Hollander (whose ties to Paramount Television Studios were severed during production), “American Gigolo” is lead-footed, and prurient rather than hot. And Bernthal seems at sea here, an unusual look for a star whose coiled charisma has elsewhere served him well. His Julian Kaye — whose name is shared with Richard Gere’s character in Schrader’s movie — emerges from a 15-year sentence we’re told happened about a decade and a half ago, but nothing about Julian’s world feels of the present day, or of Earth. Julian, we understand, was wrongfully convicted; Rosie O’Donnell’s Detective Sunday is attempting to crack the case of what really happenned, while a swirling remembered attraction between Julian and Gretchen Mol’s Michelle threatens Julian’s chances at finding a post-prison equilibrium.

“I made a new life for myself from flowers,” marvels the green-thumbed Narvel Roth. “How unexpected is that?” To be fair, it’s about the only plausible thing that happens in Paul Schrader’s Venice Film Festival out of competition entry Master Gardener, an incredibly silly but fitfully entertaining noir-tinged drama that follows so neatly on from First Reformed and The Card Counter that it’s almost as if Schrader has patented his own sui generis subgenre, a mix of the sublime and the ridiculous that just about works if you’re prepared to walk the line with it.