Toronto Review: Benjamin Millepied’s ‘Carmen’

Get ready, Scream fandom! This week’s 20 Questions On Deadline guest is Melissa Barrera.

Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson are exploring new business ventures. The two long-time friends have partnered up with Thomas Ashbourne Craft Spirits to create their own cocktail line, called Margalicious Margarita.

Mexico has selected five-time Academy Award winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truth as its official entry to the best international film category of the Oscars.

Dr. Frank Rubio traveled to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan.

What a night! Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson rocked matching all-black looks while celebrating the launch of their new cocktail at the Thomas Ashbourne Craft Spirits and Fleishigs Magazine event in New York City on Sunday, September 25.

World-weary gumshoe Philip Marlowe has been played most famously by Humphrey Bogart but also by James Garner, Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum and sundry others. Enter Liam Neeson, 70 this year but still apparently capable of disabling five assailants at once with the right small arms and some smashable furniture in Marlowe, Neil Jordan’s frisky film noir pastiche. He’s in tough company. He also has a tough crowd – film noir purists, who are legion – to please.

Nestled behind luxury designer storefronts on the most famous street in Beverly Hills lies a new Mexican steakhouse that is already making a huge splash in the L.A. restaurant scene. The Hideaway is the latest hot spot from celebrity party producers Jeffrey Best and Ken Jones of Best Events, as well as nightlife titans JT Torregiani, Sylvain Bitton and David Jarrett of Warwick.

Paramore have added a New York gig to their upcoming 2022 North American comeback tour – find details below and get tickets here.The trio are set to return with new single ‘This Is Why’ next month (October 28), having returned to the stage three weeks earlier (October 2) to begin their run of gigs.On November 13, the band will play the Beacon Theatre as part of the tour, which runs until November 19, where they play the Corona Capital festival in Mexico.Tickets for the New York gig will go on sale on Friday, September 23 at 10am ET here, and fans can register their interest here today (September 19) and tomorrow (20).Discussing the ticket situation for the show in a statement, Paramore said: “As many of you know, we partnered with Ticketmaster for our Los Angeles shows to control the ability to resell tickets strictly through Ticketmaster’s Ticket Exchange Program, preventing anyone from reselling tickets for profit.“We really wanted to use the same program for this show, but unfortunately New York state law does not allow for the restriction of ticket resale pricing. However, the new law does require resellers to disclose what they originally paid for the ticket alongside their asking price.”The statement added: “We heard your feedback and plan to implement the Ticket Exchange Program moving forward whenever possible, but every show’s ability to participate will rely on their respective state laws.“With that said, we’re still doing our best to get NYC tickets in the hands of our fans by using Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform.”A post shared by paramore (@paramore)Last week, the band added two Los Angeles concerts to their 2022 itinerary.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Signalling Mexican giant exhibitor-distributor Cinépolis’ gradual return to producing since the pandemic, the company has partnered once more with producer Javier González-Rubio of Invicta Films, here on film critic Hugo Lara’s second feature, “Serendipia” (“Serendipity”). “We are excited to be embarking on this new journey with Invicta Films and strengthening our partnership. ‘Serendipia’ is a captivating story that will touch the hearts of audiences around the world and with it, Cinépolis proves once again our commitment to Mexican cinema,” said executive producer Miguel Rivera, VP global programming and content, Cinépolis.

As the Toronto International Film Festival comes to its official Closing Night we say goodbye to the re-energized fest for another year, but not before we say ‘hello Dali’ or actually the final World Premiere of the festival, Daliland  which picks up the celebrated artists’ life in its later years focusing on the odd relationship between his and his controlling wife. If only this film stuck to that idea and didn’t take a detour into a misbegotten coming of age plotline about the young assistant both Dalis take a shine to in their own way.

“Melissa Barrera made a splash on the IMDb Starmeter chart last summer, literally dancing into our living rooms, and our hearts, with ‘In the Heights,'” IMDb founder and CEO Col Needham said. “We are so proud to recognize her as our newest recipient of an IMDb Starmeter Award and are thrilled to celebrate her incredible performances, for which entertainment fans and professionals have flocked to IMDb and IMDbPro to learn more about her and her work.”The Mexico native began her career actings telenovelas before moving to the U.S.

Watching Peter Farrelly’s new film, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, and knowing little about it going in, I kept thinking this would be a totally absurd, beyond belief story if it isn’t one that really happened. By the end I saw it is indeed 100% true, proving life can sometimes be stranger than fiction.  As such it turns out to be one of the more memorable, and certainly heartfelt movies this year, as well as a Vietnam War movie that couldn’t be further from The Deer Hunter, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now,  but a character-driven drama that defies logic but makes you believe once again in the power of the human spirit. This is the rare Vietnam film seen from the POV of a civilian, a key reason it works as well as it does.

The mix of musical genres in the title of this Toronto Film Festival Gala Presentation reflects the wildly uneven tone of this rare drama from Tyler Perry Studios, a lush romantic musical telling the story of a Southern lynching with echoes of the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi 1955. An imminent bow on Netflix is probably the best strategy for it; Perry may have his following, but it’s hard to imagine a crossover audience for A Jazzman’s Blues.

Adam Benzine Guest Contributor By Adam Benzine  The Venice premiere of Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 drama “Roma” made an overnight star of Yalitza Aparicio, whose memorable performance as family nanny Cleo kicked off a three-month whirlwind that culminated with her becoming the first Indigenous Mexican to receive an Oscar nomination for best actress.  The Venice premiere of Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 drama “Roma” made an overnight star of Yalitza Aparicio, whose memorable performance as family nanny Cleo kicked off a three-month whirlwind that culminated with her becoming the first Indigenous Mexican to receive an Oscar nomination for best actress. 

Natalie Portman and her husband Benjamin Millepied were dressed to the nines on Sunday when they represented his film Carmen for its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The 41-year-old Oscar winner had all eyes on her thanks to her glowing gold-and-silver ensemble, while her husband, 45, looked dapper in a suit as they led the other stars at the premiere. Carmen, which is based on both the musical and the opera of the same name, marks the French dancer and choreographer's directorial debut.

My Policeman, which had its World Premiere today at the Toronto International Film Festival, has its roots  in a novel by Bethan Roberts  which was actually based on a complicated love relationship between famed novelist E.M. Forster (A Room With A View, Howard’s End, Maurice), his male lover of 40 years, a policeman named Bob Buckingham, and Buckingham’s wife May Hockey who slowly came to realize her husband had a long standing affair with Forster, but even after he had suffered a series of strokes took care of the author in his later life so deep was their friendship. Roberts changed  the names and fictionalized it all for her book which is now the basis of Ron Nyswaner’s (Philadelphia) screenplay which explores the love triangle of three freewheeling friends in 1957 who each was hobbled by the mores of the time, repressing rather than expressing their own sexuality, even as the sexual desires and confusion hit a boiling point.

Chevalier is a biopic about violin virtuoso Joseph Bolonge Chevalier de Saint George directed by Stephen Williams and written by Stefani Robinson.

Natalie Portman keeps close to husband Benjamin Millepied at the premiere of Carmen during the 2022 Toronto Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Sunday (September 11) in Toronto, Canada.

Lena Dunham directs the Medieval comedic drama Catherine Called Birdy. The film is an adaptation of the book by the same name by Karen Kushman and stars Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper.