No./6
So. Raised By Wolves. This is very much not the Caitlin Moran Wolverhampton-set sitcom. It’s a really bloody weird sci-fi HBO series, directed by Sir Ridley Scott. Or at least, he’s directed the first episode.
How involved is he?
Well, his production company is producing it. And he hasn’t directed any TV in decades. It’s a big deal.
I doubt he would have directed the pilot if he wasn’t all over it.
So I think Earth has been destroyed by something, and it’s set on a distant planet, where humanity is being repopulated. Also there are robots. And aliens.
That looks like City Hall a bit.
And that looks like the BT Tower. That’s
Camden as it looks right now.
Is she like a Terminator?
I think she’s like a benevolent Terminator. So, I guess, Arnie in Terminator 2. Anyway, she’s telling the story of the Three Little Pigs here. But then there’s a literal representation of that story, because we see a house made out of sticks. And then bricks.
Is this a show about construction? In different gravity fields, straw could actually be a better material.
There’s a lot of mixed metaphors here: they’re raised by wolves, but also the wolf is trying to blow the little pigs’ house down.
Is the mother robot the wolf, then? In some ways, Jo, we are all the wolf.
I’m not. I think I’m the sheep... That guy with the mullet looked really familiar. Are there any named actors in this? Travis Fimmel. In Vikings, I believe. What the hell is happening here? Is it an ice cube holder?
It’s like how you’re supposed to cut a mango. That’s the answer to how you stop wolves: you build your house out of mango. What is this thing?
Is it like a Xeno-wolf? A space wolf? It looks like the half-alien thing that Noomi Rapace gave birth to in Prometheus. It feels like something from the year 2000.
It feels like something from the year 3000, more like!
It’s got very video-game-cut-scene
With new releases entirely absent during the summer months, movie fans spared no expense in making Steven Spielberg’s classic dinonightmare number one at the box office, 27 years after it was first released, adding a respectable $1.3 million to its cumulative billion-dollar gross. Re-releases of The Empire Strikes Back, Ghostbusters and Jaws also gave cinemas an uncanny retro feel — like stepping into a deepcleaned time machine.
Feeling betrayed by Mulan’s shock move to Disney+, French cinema-owner Gerard Lemoine felt the most rational response to the situation was to beat the shit out of a foyer display stand. It’s possible to both appreciate the frustration of losing a film to streaming, and find the impotent rage of a man solemnly assaulting a bit of corrugated cardboard quite funny.
Drive-in cinemas have proved to be socialdistancing pioneers in the pandemic. That was especially true for one weekend in April, when the Ocala Drive-in in Florida was the only
cinema to report box office in the entire
United States. Only the most dedicated of film fans would have made the road trip to the town of Ocala (pop: 60,000) to see either war/mime biopic
Resistance or psychological thriller
Swallow — which brought in a grand total of $33,456 in takings.
Cinema’s normally loud-and-bombastic trailers have looked confused and indecisive this summer. Tenet quietly removed its date after repeated delays; others were more creative. A24’s Zola featured the text “Coming This...”, before being deleted in real-time with the more bet-hedging “Coming Soon”. Free Guy’s trailer, meanwhile, announced its new date with the ‘fingers crossed’ emoji.
This is a Toy Story without a happy ending: a ton of delayed blockbusters, including
Top Gun: Maverick, Minions: The Rise of Gru and Fast & Furious 9, have seen their merchandise jump the gun. You can’t just release a Gru plushie on Disney+, it seems. “The train had already started moving on these toys and there was no way to stop it,” said James Zahn, senior editor at The Toy Insider. A Godzilla Vs. Kong toy even accidentally revealed one of the film’s new monsters
— the ‘Warbat’.
THE OUTPOURING OF grief over losing Olivia de Havilland, at 104 years old, tells us something about the finality of it, knowing that the last major star of Golden Age Hollywood has left us. From her Technicolor swooning in The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938) to her quiet strength in The Heiress (1949) and her enduring power in Gone With The Wind (1939), it is certain there will not be another like her. She was the last living co-star of some of the greats of American movie culture; the last woman alive to tell you John Huston and Errol Flynn once got into a fistfight over her; and certainly among the last to intimately describe the experience of a now-bygone studio system which kept its stars carefully corralled and stage-managed on everything from diet to public appearances.
But de Havilland was not merely a symbolic fixture for a bygone past, or a figure of nostalgia. With her warm brown eyes and poised demeanour, she was initially cast at her home studio of Warner Bros. as a sweet romantic lead of the ’30s, in films such as Captain Blood (1935) and Dodge City (1939). Yet lying beneath her rosy prettiness was steel ambition. When the studio tried to keep her under her seven-year contract after it had run out, she fought back in court — and where others failed, de Havilland won. The De Havilland Law, as it is sometimes called, would free future actors from the unfair labour practices that kept them from making creative choices with their roles.
In the late 1940s, de Havilland would go from strength to strength in a string of psychologically complex and celebrated films, and although she never studied Method acting in any official capacity, she closely studied the real-life behaviour of mentally ill women in an actual institution for The Snake Pit (1948).
De Havilland would win her first Academy Award for Best Actress around this time, too, for To Each His Own (1946), playing an unwed mother who gives up her baby and spends most of her life trying to get her child back. It was clear that de Havilland favoured roles — mentally ill women or unwed mothers, for example — which were not only in contrast to her earlier pedigreed persona, but were of people often ignored in mainstream culture. In this as in many other things, she was a woman ahead of her time.
There is a moment in one of her greatest films — William Wyler’s The Heiress (1949), a period-set romantic drama opposite Montgomery Clift — where de Havilland
becomes resigned to a life of loneliness. She plucks furiously at her cross-stitch, dropping her head down to focus on it, keeping her shoulders in a prim posture while her bowed head tells another story. It so encapsulates her command of body language, her elegance, and the swell of passion and intelligence hidden behind her poised exterior. She won her second Academy Award for the role.
In saying goodbye to her, we say goodbye to a whole era of moviemaking, but also to a unique and commanding screen presence. Maybe eight-time co-star Errol Flynn said it best in They Died With Their Boots On, in his last scene on screen with her: “Walking through life with you, ma’am, has been a very gracious thing.”
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND
STELLAN SKARSGÅRD IS not afraid of stirring up trouble. The veteran Swedish actor is just as at home courting controversy with film such as Nymphomaniac as he is singing to ABBA in Mamma Mia!. His latest — a brief turn as a Nazi soldier in The Painted Bird, a gruelling black-and-white World War II drama with savage scenes of violence — is as controversial as they come. Now 69 and still as prolific as ever, he talks to Empire about violence on screen, his old pal Lars von Trier, falling asleep in front of Diane Keaton, and his future in the MCU.
The Painted Bird makes for a very traumatic viewing experience…
Oh, it’s ruined your weekend, hasn’t it? It’s not the best date-night movie if you want to get laid!
Not quite! But it is very violent. Do you think the black-and-white photography makes it more palatable?
Yes, it’s an aestheticising choice that almost puts a filter between you and the material, but at the same time it can seduce you and bring that material closer to you. It’s like one of those European films from the ’60s. The language is not the dialogue because there isn’t any, almost. It’s a cinematic language. If you see it in a cinema it is breathtaking.
Is it possible to go too far when depicting violence?
It’s complicated. Violence is unpleasant but it’s most often seen as entertaining. The last film that Lars von Trier did, The House That Jack Built, got criticised for the violence being unpleasant. To me, that was an absurd criticism because violence is supposed to be unpleasant. I see the horror [in The Painted Bird] but I’m not devastated by it. There is a filter so you see the horror but at the same time, you’re exposed to the beauty of it. It’s a strange creature.
The Painted Bird is just under three hours long. Are you comfortable with long running times?
How long is a story? I know people who spend six hours watching a series. People feel that they lack time but [think of ] the amount of time we spend on the internet or our phones! We just lack concentration.
What’s the longest film you’ve sat through?
Lars von Trier’s uncut Nymphomaniac. Which was five hours.
Well, you were in that — were you contractually obliged to see it?
[Laughs] I was sat in a nice cinema on my own so everything was ideal. It’s like going into a 19th-century novel by Dickens or Dostoyevsky. You’re ready to accept that this is a story that doesn’t come with a beginning, a middle, and who’s going to get who at the end. So you sit down and let uncle Lars tell you a story and that’s a universe to be in, if you can take his universe.
Speaking of universes, when are you back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
I haven’t heard from them. But I wouldn’t mind. I had a four-film deal and two were used for Thor movies and two for the Avengers. I remember saying to [Marvel boss] Kevin Feige, “Is there really any money in this comic-book thing?” He looked at me like I was a fucking idiot. Which I was, of course.
If Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster is going to be Thor (in Thor: Love And Thunder), it seems only fair that you are in that movie too.
I think so. Me and Kat Dennings, too. We were a good trio.
People walked out of the Painted Bird premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Have you ever walked out of a movie?
No, but I’ve fallen asleep during one. I had a mental walkout.
What film was that?
It was Looking For Mr. Goodbar with Diane Keaton, many years ago. I can’t say it was anything wrong with the film since I really didn’t see it and I could very well just have been exhausted. Or drunk.
How has lockdown been treating you?
I haven’t stopped working for the past four years so it’s been nice to have some quality time with the family. We’re not the fucking Waltons. Sometimes it’s a clash between the Waltons and the Addams Family. Sometimes we’re skipping on rainbows and it’s all lovely, then the next minute there’s a school playground fight.
Since we last spoke to you, your team [Liverpool] has won the league... Yes! Which has been magnificent. What a wonderful experience to share with my children.
What’s their secret? [Manager Jürgen] Klopp’s just got them playing for each other. We have some magnificent players but it seems there are no egos, as an observer looking in. They all play for him, play for the shirt and play for the team. It’s just a great combination.
You have some football skills yourself? Yeah, I’m alright, I can kick a ball. I help coach my son’s football team. Johnny, the manager, lets me be his sidekick. I’ll be good cop and he’ll be bad cop. At the minute, he’s doing more of the technical aspect and I’m doing more of the fitness side. So they don’t really like me right now.