“There’s A Significant Shift Occurring Within The Creative Mindset”: As Karlovy Vary Kicks Off, Leading European Execs Dissect The Biz

Robert Downey Jr. and Jimmy Fallon are going down memory lane and remembering the time they auditioned for Nancy Meyers’ The Holiday.

Howard Stern that fellow Oscar winner Kate Winslet couldn’t hold back her contempt over his attempt to pass for an Englishman during a unique joint audition for Nancy Meyers’ “The Holiday,” back in 2006, with Winslet, Cameron Diaz, and “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon. “[Jimmy and I] both got called in just as seat-fillers,” the “Oppenheimer” and “Iron Man” actor recalled. “Jack Black is getting his part and Jude Law is definitely getting my part, but [Meyers] needed someone to read with the gals, and we’re sitting there going, ‘It’s about to happen for us.’”“I was like, I’ve got to have a better English accent than Jude Law at this point, and Winslet said, ‘That is the worst British accent I’ve ever heard in my life,'” Downey Jr.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. and Jimmy Fallon crashed a recent episode of “The Howard Stern Show” and revealed they auditioned together for Nancy Meyers’ 2006 romantic-comedy “The Holiday.” Downey Jr. read for the part later played by Jude Law, while Fallon auditioned for Jack Black’s role. Both actors knew they weren’t Meyers’ frontrunner picks at the time, and Downey Jr. was well aware Jude Law was stiff competition. “We both got called in just as seat fillers…[director Nancy Meyers] needed someone to read with the gals and we’re sitting there going, ‘It’s about to happen for us,’” Downey said, adding that he felt he was a “shoe-in” to steal the part away from Law. “And I was like, ‘I’ve got to have a better English accent than Jude Law at this point.’ And Winslet said, ‘That was the worst British accent I’ve ever heard.’ And I was like, ‘I’ll check out now, but I’m taking the gummy bears from the minibar.'”

Drake is finding himself under the covers with TikTok star Bobbi Althoff.

Norwegian cinema has been enjoying a moment lately, what with Joachim Trier’s crowdpleasing The Worst Person in the World pulling up to Drive My Car in the Oscar race and Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick of Me carving out a rep on the festival circuit. The Hypnosis, Ernst de Geer’s feature debut, sits somewhere between the two of them, fashioning a fitfully funny relationship drama that tilts at some very modern windmills (coaches, gurus, new-tech start-ups, workshops that involve blue-sky thinking) within a framework similar to Kristian Levring’s 2008 Danish drama Fear Me Not, in which a man’s personality changes after he becomes addicted to an experimental drug. The Hypnosis doesn’t quite follow that film’s melodramatic course, but there are similar thoughts raised about the human mind.

Jessica Kiang At a festival the size and stature of the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary, new discoveries are a daily occurrence. But it is rare that at festival’s end, one of the most excitingly buzzy emergent names should be that of a filmmaker who died 27 years ago and who has languished in relative obscurity – certainly in the Anglophone world – ever since. And yet here we are, at the tail end of an 11-film Yasuzo Masumura retrospective – the biggest of its kind ever mounted at an international film festival – that has proved, in a word, revelatory.  It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year, you could feel it happen in real time during the screenings of Masumura’s  “A Cheerful Girl” (1957), “Hoodlum Soldier” (1965), “Spider Tattoo” (1966) and so on.  

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has concluded yet another wonderful week of cinematic discoveries. Previously announced awards were given to a variety of contributors to global cinema.

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 30 – July 8) came to a close this evening with an awards ceremony that bestowed two key prizes to contemporary Bulgarian drama Blaga’s Lessons (Urotcite Na Blaga) by director Stephan Komandarev.

For writer-director Naqqash Khalid, questions are more important than answers and this premise is something the academic-turned-filmmaker explores heavily in his debut film In Camera, which recently premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The bold film, which opened to positive reviews after it screened in the fest’s Proxima section last week, is the first feature to come out of the 2019 iFeatures slate, the low-budget Creative UK scheme from the UK’s BFI Film Fund and BBC Film. 

Will Tizard Contributor From auditioning for “every John Hughes movie that I never got in” to having Oliver Stone yell at her in a helicopter over her pronunciation of “’Nam,” Robin Wright confesses she’s seen Hollywood from all sides over the years. Speaking to admiring crowds at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where Wright is being honored with the festival president’s award, the actor-director-producer recalled a career that began at age 14 — which, in many ways, is really beginning to take off now. Of “The Princess Bride,” the beloved 1987 Rob Reiner sardonic fairytale, she said, “It was not a hit.” Of course, the film made up for low box office scores with VHS sales and is now considered a classic.

There’s a fine line between stylized direction and direction that is so fussy that it gets in the way of a film’s actors. Unfortunately for Emma Westenberg’s directorial debut, “You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder,” that’s a line she does not navigate successfully.

Ewan McGregor has said he used to show his kids the “worst toilet in Scotland” scene from Trainspotting.The actor, who had his breakthrough role as drug addict Mark Renton in the 1996 film, discussed introducing his children to his filmography at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.Speaking to press at the festival (via Variety), where he was joined by his daughter Clara, McGregor said: “I wasn’t there when Clara watched Trainspotting for the first time. But I did used to show my kids the toilet scene. Just for a laugh.

The raucous period drama “Firebrand” was the official opening-night film at the 57th annual Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on Friday night in the spa resort town outside Prague, but there was a lot more going on in and around the Grand Hall at the Hotel Thermal than just the on-screen battle between Alicia Vikander’s Catherine Parr and Jude Law’s King Henry VIII. It also included the presentation of awards to Vikander and Russell Crowe, the usual complement of opening-night speeches, an extended dance number that appeared to be performed on ice skates (though it wasn’t on ice but on an artificial surface that mimicked ice but could be walked on safely) and, during breaks and after the movie, complete concerts by the British band Morcheeba and by Crowe’s nine-piece band, Indoor Garden Party.

The 57th Karlovy Vary Film Festival opened last night with a spirited musical performance from Russell Crowe, and the energy remained high this evening with actor Ewan McGregor in town to receive the fest’s honorary President’s Award.

Alicia Vikander got the support of her husband Michael Fassbender while being honored at the 2023 Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Will Tizard Contributor From indoor ice skating feats to Russell Crowe rocking the crowd, the 57th edition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival has launched with all its unconventional charisma intact. Audiences who had to weather a downpour clearly showed no signs of dampened spirits as they cheered the fest’s opening gala dancers on ice skates, then rose to their feet to applaud guests Crowe and Alicia Vikander, both of whom accepted honors for their robust range of film work. Vikander, in accepting the award of fest president Jiri Bartoska, said she was moved to be celebrated in the Czech Republic, where her international career first took off with the 2012 shoot of “A Royal Affair.”

Self-seriousness is a common trait in the world of European cinema, but the opening night of the 57thKarlovy Vary International Film Festival was a wholly playful affair, starting with the most unexpected sight of a troupe of acrobatic ice-skating showgirls spinning and whirling through fake snow and dry ice. MC Marek Eben followed in a similarly feelgood vein, with a dryly witty monologue that touched on current affairs in the Czech Republic and the wider world without getting too heavily into the politics. A “surprise” appearance by festival stalwart Jiří Bartoška, whose attendance was initially in doubt, occasioned the first standing ovation of the night.

Nearly 30 years ago, creators of Essence Magazine came to New Orleans to celebrate the publication's 25th anniversary with a salute to Black women highlighting culture, empowerment conversations with the nation's thought leaders and, of course, music. The Essence Music Festival has since morphed into the Essence Festival of Culture, which, in its 29th year, kicks off Thursday and goes through July 3 across various venues in downtown New Orleans.The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center will hold most of the free workshops, vendor exhibits and celebrity meet-and-greets.

EXCLUSIVE: After it emerged that over 300 actors had written to SAG-AFTRA leadership that they are “prepared to strike” if the guild doesn’t “get all the way there” during talks with the studios, the number of actors signing the letter has more than tripled overnight.

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.