‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ Film Review: Mock Rock Biopic Is Ridiculous Fun

Russia has opted not to submit a film in the Best International Feature category at the 95th Oscars. The decision, revealed late Monday night, was made by the Russian Film Academy and comes as the country’s ties with the west have deteriorated amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story has been praised in early reviews following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.Directed by Eric Appel in his directorial debut, the biographical parody film stars Daniel Radcliffe as ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic and loosely follows the musician’s life and career, while serving as a satire of the biopic genre.Alongside Radcliffe, the film stars Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, and Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson as Al’s parents.

The Howard Stern Show” that she turned down a role in one of Allen’s movies — after a 1995 comedy special where she addressed the child abuse charges against the director.“I had done an HBO special where I said everything about him,” she said. “And then I got on my show. So it’s the first year of my show and I get a call and they said, ‘He wants you to be in [‘Sweet and Lowdown’].

Aaron Carter revealed that he willingly entered a rehabilitation program in an attempt to regain custody of his 10-month-old son Prince.

A few minutes before the North American premiere of “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” director Evgeny Afineesvky summed up his state of mind in a single word: “exhausted.”That makes sense, because “Freedom on Fire” screened at the Toronto International Film Festival about six months after Afineevsky and his team began working on it, barely more than a month after its final footage was filmed and only a few weeks after Helen Mirren recorded narration for a scene that comes early in the documentary.For Afineevsky, who landed Oscar and Emmy nominations for 2015’s “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” this sequel of sorts was made in a six-month rush, including just three months of editing after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February of this year. “The urgency of the movie,” the Russian-born director told the audience before the Tuesday morning TIFF screening, “is to not neglect the situation right now.”Certainly, urgency is a hallmark of “Freedom on Fire,” a harrowing document shot by dozens of people inside Ukrainian cities as the Russian army conducted a bombing campaign and an invasion that seemingly targeted civilians, despite Vladimir Putin’s claims that Russia was there to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country, and to somehow “free” it – though as more than one person in the film points out, the Russian offensive has resulted in ordinary citizens being freed from their lives, their homes, their families.The director’s first film about Ukraine, “Winter on Fire,” was an on-the-ground look at the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising, in which student protests against the Russian-backed president drew a brutal response but resulted in the removal of the president.

Daniel Radcliffe’s Weird Al film has gone down a treat at Toronto International Film Festival. Also starring Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, the project, titled Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, follows the life and career of the Grammy winner, who is known for his hits included Eat It (a parody of Michael Jackson’s Beat It) and Amish Paradise (Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise). The Harry Potter actor takes on the title role and well and truly got into character, donning his signature moustache and a curly wig.

The secret to “Weird Al” Yankovic’s estimable powers is that he’s flagrantly, proudly, irresistibly uncool. He plays the accordion, one of the few instruments that no musician in human history has ever gotten laid for mastering, and he uses it to perform polka-themed parodies redolent of cornball Borscht Belt acts far from any sector of comedy even adjacent to ‘edgy.’ His songs reflect this much in that they’re basically about nothing, riffs on relatable banalities like finishing your dinner, or absurdities like Amish hip-hop.

rocky romance with Madonna, who then became a Yoko Ono-esque wedge between him and his band. Michael Jackson definitely did not release “Beat It” after Yankovic wrote “Eat It.” Was cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar a Weird Al superfan who offered him 1 billion pesos to perform at his birthday party? Who’s to say?What Yankovic and director/co-writer Eric Appel have done, brilliantly in spots, is parody Yankovic’s own life while sending up the whole biopic genre.

Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliff) is a curly-haired, awkward kid with no friends and no excitement in his life. Until one day when he ends up at a turnt-up polka party where he wow’s the party crowd by shredding on the accordion. His parents, Mary and Nick Yankovic (Julianne Nicholson and Toby Huss), disapprove of him playing, and his relationship with them becomes strained.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” the winningly daffy-droll postmodern satirical biopic about the beloved cult song parodist of the MTV era, Al (Daniel Radcliffe), weird but not yet “Weird,” is sitting around with his roommates when lightning strikes — or, at least, bologna. One of the roommates asks Al to name the thing he’d most like to do in the world. Al, speaking with a fervor bigger than mere desire — he’s talking about nothing less than a dream — replies, with stoic conviction, “Make up the words to a song that already exists.” Moments later, the Knack’s “My Sharona” is blasting away on the radio, and just after he’s taken a package of bologna out of the fridge, he has his a-ha moment. The lyrics come to him in a flash: “Oo my little hungry one! Hungry one! Open up a package of MY bologna…” An irresistible parasitical fake star is born.  

Daniel Radcliffe is making a rare red carpet appearance with his girlfriend!

magic of movies genuinely registers as a vibe in Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” a frustratingly uneven and often meandering period drama written by Mendes, loosely drawing remembrances from his own formative years. And he pulls from “a lockdown mindset,” too, as the director put it before his ’80s-set film’s world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, a melancholic state of being marked by feelings of loneliness and even fear that things we love (like movie theaters) would be lost forever in a post-pandemic world.Perhaps because his inspirations seem to be so extensive here, it often feels like Mendes is searching for a story within a bottomless well of moods and ideas throughout “Empire of Light.” Ironically enough, this undisciplined disposition is the exact opposite of the kind of taut restraint that was at the core of “1917,” his previous, tightly orchestrated and end-to-end choreographed film.“Empire of Light” starts with an admiration towards the enchanted majesty of cinemas, as Hilary (an affecting Olivia Colman, with an impressively wide-ranging emotional scale) preps the beautiful movie palace she works at for its daily opening, her gentle touches aided by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ soothingly nostalgic score.

never doped its athletes, Putin’s administration shifted to claiming that Rodchenkov was a rogue agent who did it all himself and is now a traitor. The evidence clearly suggests otherwise, but the Olympic ban is essentially toothless: It prohibits the Russian Olympic committee from being part of the games but allows athletes to compete under the “Olympic athletes from Russia” banner.