celebrities
Top celebrities in the geek entertainment and comic convention business. Our favorite geek advocates.
Two stars for Soderbergh’s disappointing The Laundromat
The award for this year’s best opening scene should go to The Laundromat, Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded, non-fiction comedy about the Panama Papers. Shot in what appears to be one long, unbroken take, it’s a walk-and-talk lecture on the history of money delivered by Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca, two notorious lawyers played with irresistible swagger by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas respectively. Oldman, especially, revels in his role as the self-righteous, preening Mossack, pushing his German accent to Herzog-ian extremes, and emphasising his hissing s-es like a villainous snake in a Disney cartoon.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Toronto International Film Festival review: The Goldfinch
“I don’t have to tell you about loss,” Nicole Kidman says softly to Ansel Elgort, whose character’s mother died years before, when a bomb exploded at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. We are well into The Goldfinch by then, but Kidman’s controlled, elegiac manner captures the tone that dominates throughout. John Crowley’s adaptation of Donna Tartt’s novel is beautifully photographed and eloquently told, but too emotionally muted for its own good.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
TIFF review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
nyone even slightly aware of who Fred Rogers was – the soft-spoken, beloved host of Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood, the children’s television program that taught values like kindness and forgiveness – can understand the response of Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a hard-nosed reporter assigned to interview him. “The hokey kid show guy?” he asks, incredulous and insulted. His reaction is a perfect expression of the dread some of us brought to the idea of a film about Mr Rogers, a fear enhanced by what seemed the too-neat casting of Tom Hanks in the lead, one impossibly good guy playing another. But Marielle Heller’s wise, sophisticated A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood turns out to be something rare – a warm-hearted film that even cynics can love.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
For Sama and the female perspective on war
“Everything we know about war we know with ‘a man’s voice’. We are all captives of ‘men’s’ notions and ‘men’s’ sense of war. ‘Men’s’ words. Women are silent.” So writes the Nobel prize- winning journalist Svetlana Alexievich in the introduction to her celebrated book The Unwomanly Face of War.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Why is Judy Garland the ultimate gay icon?
On 25 March, 1969, Judy Garland took to the stage at the Falkoner Center in Copenhagen. As she reached the crescendo of Over the Rainbow – the song which made her a global star aged just 17 – it was unknown to the audience that they were watching her final live performance. Four months later, 47 year-old Garland was found dead in Chelsea, London, after accidentally overdosing on the drugs she had self-medicated with since childhood. One of the headlines would read: “Judy’s voice stilled. The rainbow is gone.”
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Abdus Salam: The Muslim science genius forgotten by history
In 1979, Pakistani scientist Abdus Salam won the Nobel Prize for physics. His life’s work was key to defining a theory of particle physics still used today, and it laid the groundwork for the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson – the particle responsible for giving all other particles mass.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Terminator Dark Fate review: Please terminate this franchise
Well, he did say he’d be back. Arnold Schwarzenegger made that promise in The Terminator in 1984, little realising that “I’ll be back” would become his most famous line of dialogue, or that the homicidal cyborg he was playing would become his defining role. True to his word, he was back for Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991, along with the original film’s writer-director, James Cameron, and its co-star, Linda Hamilton. After that, Schwarzenegger was back for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003, Terminator Salvation in 2009, and Terminator Genisys in 2015, but they wandered further and further from the lean, mean high-concept thrills of the 1984 classic. And now he is back again in Terminator Dark Fate.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
The King review: ‘Diary of a wimpy king’
This story was originally published on 3 September 2019, when The King premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated turn in Call Me by Your Name made him the poster boy for masculinity at its most delicate and sensitive: his cry-athon over the closing credits made sure of that. But he is even more delicate and sensitive as King Henry V in David Michôd’s sombre historical drama, The King. Never mind that the Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s plays started off a hard-drinking party animal. In The King, he is updated to become Emo Hal.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
Why The Piano is the greatest film directed by a woman
In 1993, Jane Campion made history when she became the first woman (and the first New Zealander) to receive the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Her haunting period romance The Piano shared the award with Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, but in BBC Culture’s critics’ poll of the 100 greatest films by women, Campion doesn’t have to share the prize a second time: The Piano was chosen as the number one film in a remarkable list that showcases more than 100 years of female filmmaking.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
