A.S.Byatt: Last News

Clayton Davis Amazon and MGM may have completed their $8.5 billion merger in March, but don’t expect to see “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” the fantastical love story from director George Miller, streaming on Prime Video on Aug. 31 when the film opens.Miller is a true believer in cinema and the movie theatres that house them. “It would be very painful to know that your movie will be first seen on streaming,” he tells Variety.“There’s a commitment that they can’t change.

Pat Saperstein Deputy EditorIt’s fall film festival season and there’s a whole new crop of literary-minded films coming to screens through the rest of the year. Since the films that premiere at festivals like Telluride, Venice, Toronto and New York are the ones that fill awards  nominations lists a few months later, the festivals provide an early peek at the movies that will be front and center at the Oscars, film critics awards and all the other end-of-year kudosfests.But there’s a way to get to know many of these works even before they premiere at festivals and come to streaming or movie screens: get familiar with the books they’re based on.

Clayton Davis With audacious directors, courageous actors and unforgettable stories that have touched the lives of cinephiles on a global scale, Focus Features has been a fixture in the Hollywood firmament for two decades.Since its inception, 14 Focus films have been nominated for best picture: “The Pianist” (2002), “Lost in Translation” (2003), “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), “Atonement” (2007), “Milk” (2008), “A Serious Man” (2009), “The Kids Are All Right” (2010), “Dallas Buyers Club” (2013), “The Theory of Everything” (2014), “Darkest Hour” (2017), “Phantom Thread” (2017), “BlacKkKlansman” (2018), “Promising Young Woman” (2020) and “Belfast” (2021).Marking the 20th anniversary of its first theatrical release, Variety is ranking the 30 best Focus Features films so far.In the summer of 2002, the arthouse studio released its first feature, “Possession,” a romantic drama with Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart. Directed by Neil LaBute and adapted from the novel by A.S.

When ranging out of Mad Max territory, George Miller’s films are highly diverse and unpredictable in nature, and never has this proved more the case than with his time-traveling, narratively far-ranging new drama, Three Thousand Years of Longing. In this Cannes Film Festival competition entry, the director delves back into old texts to examine the nature and power of legendary stories that have endured for centuries in a way that is both sharply creative and a bit off-putting; the film begins on quite a high, only to slowly deflate as it works its way toward its modern-day ending.

Clayton Davis The genie is out of the bottle for the dynamic director George Miller and his newest venture “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” starring Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. You’ll hear the awards comparisons that call it Miller’s version of “The Shape of Water” (2017), Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winner for best picture, but it’s closer to Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” (2012) but with an accessible and soulful core. It’s a love story to the storytellers, and a love letter to mankind.

Zack Sharf George Miller electrified the Cannes Film Festival with “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” his first directorial effort since “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Miller’s latest, starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, earned a six-minute standing ovation after its world premiere at Cannes’ Palais theater.A love letter to storytelling and its tropes and parables passed down through history, “Three Thousand Years” follows a solitary academic (Swinton) and a burdened genie (Elba) she finds in a bottle in the markets of Istanbul. His history unfolds in the stories of those who had found him before.While his memories were relayed in dazzling ancient locations with heavy special effects, half of the film is spent in a hotel room (the same that Agatha Christie lived in when she wrote “Murder on the Orient Express,” a bellhop tells Swinton).

Wilson Chapman editorSeven years after the critically acclaimed “Mad Max: Fury Road,” George Miller is back in the director’s chair for the epic romance film “Three Thousand Years of Longing.”Based on the 1994 short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by English writer A. S. Byatt, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” stars Tilda Swinton as Alithea, a brilliant scholar who encounters a Djinn (Idris Elba) imprisoned in an urn.