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Terrence Malick meets Robert Eggers in You Won’t Be Alone , a bloody—and bloody good—vampire tale that squeezes quite a few new twists out of fundamentally familiar material. Rapturously beautiful and sufficiently different from its bloodsucking brethren to engage fresh interest in aspects of the undead, Australian director Goran Stolevski ’s very confident debut feature goes places its generic brethren never thought of visiting. This Sundance 2022 entry in the World Dramatic Competition section should serve its purpose of putting its creator on the map while providing any number of fresh twists on familiar material. Commercial release via Focus Features is currently pegged for April 1. Stolevski, whose Would You Look At Her won the 2018 Sundance best short film prize, goes far beyond the normal boundaries of generic blood-sucker yarns to bring historical, ethnic and cultural considerations to a table over-spilling with goodies both familiar and esoteric. At first … [Read more...] about Sundance Review: Goran Stolevski’s ‘You Won’t Be Alone’

In his deeply personal story Belfast , writer-director Kenneth Branagh a child’s view of conflict. When he was nine years old, the Troubles in Northern Ireland began and Branagh had to leave his hometown. Belfast follows Buddy, a fictionalized version of Branagh’s childhood self, played by Jude Hill, as he deals with the loss of the peaceful city he has known. While the subject matter is dark, Branagh chose to focus on how a boy and his family cope with the traumatic experience in true Irish fashion, with humor, dancing and music. Hill stars alongside Judi Dench, Caitríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan and Ciarán Hinds. DEADLINE: This was something of a departure for you, so what made you want to tell this story now? KENNETH BRANAGH : Well, it was definitely enhanced by the idea of the lockdown. There was much more introspection, I think, at the beginning of this period. But the desire to write something about Belfast had been with me really ever since I left the … [Read more...] about ‘Belfast’ Writer-Director Kenneth Branagh On Revisiting Childhood Trauma And How “Humor Becomes Not Just Valuable, But A Necessity”

Meat Loaf was a rock & roller like no other: a 300-pound sex symbol with a throat of gold. The singer, who died Thursday , started out in musical theater, and he boasted a clean, commanding voice that spanned both the baritone and tenor ranges. His delivery was a natural fit for both his star-making cameo in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the gorgeously outlandish, Oscar-worthy Jim Steinman –penned melodramas that defined his career: “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” and more. Whatever the song, Meat Loaf didn’t just belt out the words, he fully became the character. Here are 10 of his best performances. “What You See Is What You Get” (1971) Long before Bat Out of Hell or even Meat Loaf playing Eddie in Rocky Horror , he was the second-billed singer in the duo Stoney and Meatloaf (the group was so embryonic for Meat, he hadn’t even split up his name yet.) … [Read more...] about Meat Loaf: 10 Essential Songs

After she wrapped her tour for 2015’s Froot , Marina Diamandis — the Welsh pop star who once performed as Marina and the Diamonds — believed she was ready to quit music altogether. “I felt like Marina and the Diamonds had just become this shell and I was trying to break free of it,” the 33-year-old says, sitting on a couch in Atlantic Records’ New York office. “I just felt completely blocked. It was easier for me to just stop being an artist, which wasn’t the right solution.” She began taking acting classes, which turned out to be a bad move since she was “accessing that same emotional space that was already dead.” But during her second year away, she pivoted completely: The then–ex musician enrolled at the University of London and took two psychology modules for a period six months. Three months after she completed the courses, which focused on attachment theory, she was back to songwriting. Now, Diamandis has returned with a shortened stage name — just Marina … [Read more...] about The Reeducation of Marina Diamandis

When Gus Van Sant began working on Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot more than 20 years ago, the movie looked a whole lot different. Back then, Robin Williams, at the height of his considerable fame, had optioned the memoir of the same name by John Callahan and was set to star as the quadriplegic, recovering-alcoholic Portland cartoonist. And when Robin Williams is in your movie, it looks different. “It was always thought of, I think, as a Robin Williams film – people, including Robin, thought of it like Good Morning Vietnam or Dead Poets Society , one of his films where he’s being both humorous and serious,” Van Sant says. But after the underperformance of comparable movies like Clean and Sober and 28 Days , that was beginning to seem like a risky prospect. “I think the powers that be were like, OK, this is not looking like it can hold up the weight of however much money, $40 million, that they would put into it. That’s my interpretation – I was never told for sure … [Read more...] about Gus Van Sant Goes Back to His Roots

Happy 50th birthday to Paul Simon ’s self-titled solo album — the funniest, nastiest, leanest, meanest, and possibly weirdest masterpiece of his great career. When the singer-songwriter dropped Paul Simon on Jan. 24, 1972, it was a shock to a pop audience that was expecting more sweetness in the Simon and Garfunkel mode. But this album was his big Garfunkel Purge, embracing his bitchy wit. It was considered a commercial flop, too eccentric for the millions who liked him better with Artie around. It usually gets overlooked in his story. But for some fans, including this one, it’s the best album he’s ever made, with or without the other guy. For Simon, it was simple. As he told Rolling Stone at the time, “I didn’t want to sing ‘Scarborough Fair’ again.” So he slammed the lid on his G-funk era with a vengeance, going his own way. The album has two monster hits, “Mother and Child Reunion” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” But there isn’t an orchestra in sight. He lets … [Read more...] about Surviving Garfunkel: How Paul Simon Found His Voice and Made His First Solo Masterpiece

Paul Simon has never had much use for drugs beyond a brief flirtation with LSD in the 1960s. But in early 1998 when his Broadway musical The Capeman closed after a mere six-week run, he turned to a powerful South American hallucinogenic, ayahuasca, to numb the pain. He’d first encountered it nearly a decade earlier when he went to South America to record The Rhythm of the Saints , but it had never been quite so useful to him. He’d dumped millions of his own dollars into the musical only to see critics tear it to shreds. He needed an escape. “The feeling was almost indescribable,” Simon told biographer Robert Hilburn. “You couldn’t imagine feeling any better, and the afterglow would last for days. It also enabled me to hear new sounds in my head, which led to me being able to write songs much faster than before.” Simon had rarely talked about his ayahuasca use before sitting down with Hilburn, and it was just one of many revelatory things he told the veteran Los Angeles Times … [Read more...] about Inside Paul Simon’s Definitive New Biography

Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race. Kenneth Branagh has told the most epic stories of all between Shakespeare, Agatha Christie and Marvel. For his latest, Belfast , Branagh chose a more intimate and personal one. Based on his own childhood growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, Branagh wrote and directed Belfast . Nine-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill) overhears bits and pieces about The Troubles in Ireland. He witnesses some of the violence in the street, but he’s more concerned with playing with his friends, and why his father (Jamie Dornan) is gone so much of the time. Buddy watches a lot of movies and television, the arts that would become Branagh’s forte. He sees his father as a big-screen hero and his mother (Caitriona Balfe) as his safe space. His grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds) also live in Belfast and are a constant in his life. … [Read more...] about ‘Belfast’: Read The Screenplay For Kenneth Branagh’s Look Back At Growing Up In Northern Ireland

EXCLUSIVE: 2020 was a year of utter bewilderment as movie theaters went largely dark from Covid, and studios grappled with a complete stoppage of distribution. But with great chaos, came great opportunity as Lionsgate vets Mike Polydoros and Will Preuss decided to open the doors to PaperAirplane , a first-of-its kind marketing agency which is liaison between movie theaters, studios and theatrical media ad agencies, creating and fostering in-theater promotions. Polydoros, who was instrumental in delivering the in-theater marketing success of numerous blockbusters, including The Hunger Games franchise, Knives Out , and La La Land , saw the need for a one-stop solution between cinemas and studios for in-theater marketing. That efficiency is achieved via PaperAirplane’s Hanger, a centralized hub of proprietary digital movie marketing assets which studios upload to, and movie theaters download from, i.e. DCP trailers, social media videos and graphics, custom and exclusive … [Read more...] about Cinema Marketing Firm PaperAirplane Helps Exhibition Take Flight During Pandemic

UPDATE : SPC has confirmed Deadline’s scoop on the Living deal. Find the release below our original break. EXCLUSIVE : Living , one of the Sundance buzz titles since its January 21 premiere, has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for around $5 million for North American and some international territories, Deadline hears. This after a brisk auction involving the likes of Neon, Bleecker Street, and Focus Features. The Oliver Hermanus-directed drama stars Bill Nighy , Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp and Tom Burke. Pic takes place in 1952 London, where veteran civil servant Williams has become a small cog in the bureaucracy of rebuilding England post WWII. As endless paperwork piles up on his desk, he learns he has a fatal illness. Coaxed by a vivacious colleague, he begins his quest to find some meaning in his life before it slips away. Scripted by Kazuo Ishiguro, the film is based on the Akira Kurosawa film Ikiru. CAA Media Finance brokered the deal. The … [Read more...] about Sony Pictures Classics Closes Sundance Deal For Bill Nighy Starrer ‘Living’