Sundance Review: Bill Nighy In ‘Living’, The British Remake Of Akira Kurosawa’s Classic ‘Ikiru’

PAUL Hollywood’s ex-wife took a swipe at the baker yesterday by claiming their marriage was “over seasoned with extra marital affairs.” The Great British Bake Off judge confessed to cheating on Alex Hollywood with TV chef Marcela Valladolid in 2013. And after their 20-year marriage ended in 2017, Paul started dating barmaid Summer Monteys-Fullam.

CHRISTINE McGuinness has confessed she used to survive on less than 300 calories a week during her battle with anorexia.  While working as a dancer in Paris in her teens she admits she ate just a 90 calorie Cup-A-Soup every other day - dangerously under the 2,000 recommended for women per day.  But Christine, 33, has said she has “no regrets”, despite the toll it took on her health. The Real Full Monty star said: “The only thing that got slightly out of control was my eating disorder.

Natalie Imbruglia has weighed in on the row over her friendship with The Masked Singer judge Davina McCall after she won the ITV show. The Australian star, 47 — famed for hits including Torn and Wrong Impression — beat off competition from Charlotte Church as Mushroom and Mark Feehily who was unmasked at Robobunny.

FOOTIE ace Jack Grealish has shared romantic snaps with girlfriend Sasha Attwood on Valentine's Day in a rare display of affection. In one Jack, 26, gets a kiss off his childhood sweetheart, 25, and they pose for another at his club Manchester City.

SHE surprised all her fans when she announced she was expecting her first baby with footballer Darren Randolph today. And it seems Alexandra Burke, 33, has been using every trick in the book to keep her pregnancy underwraps until now.

EASTENDERS fans were left gobsmacked this evening as they spotted the price of the baps Stacey is selling in her new food truck. The character – played by Lacey Turner – recently opened Stacey’s Baps and is selling a bacon roll for just £1.80.

ULRIKA Jonsson broke down in tears this evening as she ended up getting friendzoned on Celebs Go Dating. The 54-year-old was about to ask hunky Jad, 31, to come on a mini break with her after they enjoyed three dates together, but he shut her down, saying there “wasn’t a spark”.

AMANDA Holden stripped down to silk pajamas for a sexy Valentine's Day shoot by her fireplace at home. The Britain's Got Talent judge, who turns 51 this week, looked incredible as she flaunted her age-defying body in the sexy snap.

ACTRESS Laila Rouass has revealed she didn’t enjoy her time on Strictly Come Dancing. The 50-year-old appeared on the show in 2009 and came in fourth place alongside pro Anton Du Beke, but now describes it as “a nightmare”.

NAOMI Campbell’s baby daughter has made her British Vogue debut at just nine-months old. The supermodel, who became a mum last May aged 50, would not elaborate on the tot’s conception and simply said: “She wasn’t adopted – she’s my child.” Naomi stunned her fans when she revealed she had become a mother for the first time last year in an Instagram post which she has since deleted. She has now posed on the cover of the March edition of the fashion bible with her little girl and revealed how she kept her arrival so secret.

FANS looking at Katie Price's Instagram had to do a double-take after the star posted a risque photo with fiancé Carl Woods. The reality star celebrated Valentine's Day with the racy photo that showed the famous couple in a compromising position on a plane.

Michele Tafoya, who worked her final game for NBC on the sidelines of Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI, is leaving sports journalism altogether to join the campaign of Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate Kendall Qualls.

The Sundance Film Festival is revealing award winners for its 2022 edition on Friday afternoon beginning at 2 p.m. PT. Like the rest of this year’s festival, which was forced to go all-virtual because of the recent Omicron surge, the awards ceremony is playing out on Twitter.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter“Living,” an acclaimed re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s classic meaning-of-life story, has been sold to Sony Pictures Classics follow its premiere at Sundance Film Festival.Sony Pictures Classics, the indie division of Sony Pictures, has acquired rights in North America, Latin America, India, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Germany, South Africa, Southeast Asia, and airlines worldwide. A release date has not been announced yet.“Living” was directed by Oliver Hermanus and written by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro.

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.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic“What would you do if you had six months left to live?” asks the doctor who diagnoses a do-nothing bureaucrat with terminal cancer in “Ikiru,” a 1952 masterpiece I suspect precious few of those who see its English-language remake, “Living,” will recall. Quite unlike anything else in Akira Kurosawa’s career, “Ikiru” ranks among the Japanese director’s best: With no samurai battles or set-pieces, the low-key contemporary melodrama raises profound questions about how we choose to spend the limited time we’re afforded, focusing on a stoic functionary about whom even the narrator apologizes, “He might as well be a corpse.”Culturally specific as so much of “Ikiru” may be, its lessons translate quite well to midcentury British society, courtesy of Nobel-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who did the work of adapting it to 1953 London for director Oliver Hermanus (“Moffie”).

Things have not been going well for Emily. Some of it is just terrible luck.

Attempting to remake a classic film is never an easy assignment. Especially when said classic is as revered as Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 drama “Ikiru.” Director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro could have placed the story in contemporary times, making a new version more palatable for some critics, but instead, set it in the exact same era only interchanging London for Tokyo.

Even in its truncated virtual Covid-afflicted form last year, the Sundance Film Festival was remarkably able to debut several movies that a year later we are still talking about in the Oscar conversation including CODA, Jockey, Passing, Flee, and Mass. Maybe this success was due to the fact they all had one word titles, but more realistically it was because despite all the drawbacks, the fest honchos picked very well and now awards voters are enjoying the riches.  As I have been seeing one film after another in this year’s (virtual) fest I find myself looking for that breakout movie or performance which with the right distribution we will be talking about still a year from now. There have been some promising performances so far from the likes of Julianne Moore, Bill Nighy and a couple still to come later, but the wow factor really hit me in seeing Emma Thompson in the British film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, premiering today at Sundance, where to put it mildly, she knocks it out of the park. This is Thompson at her best, a witty, dazzling. and above all brave performance that will undoubtedly be talked about. Her co-star Daryl McCormack  in this two-hander is equally good in the movie which centers on a 60ish widowed mother of two and religious studies teacher who hires a sex worker for a tryst in a hotel room. It is much more complicated than that, in this story of two disparate souls who come together, one full of anxiety and past regrets, the other professional to his core but with a guard he will not let down and a line he will not cross.

score record-breaking pacts despite the fact that all-night bidding wars were conducted over Zoom.This year’s festival has a number of high-profile features that should attract buyers’ attention, either because they feature A-list stars like Lena Dunham, Dakota Johnson and Regina Hall or because they deal with hot topics like abortion rights and religion. There are also a number of documentaries exploring everything from the rise of TikTok to the fight to prevent a climate change catastrophe that could score major sales.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaWhen Aimee Lou Wood would tell people that she was starring in “Living,” a re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s classic story of a terminally ill bureaucrat’s quest for meaning, the response she received terrified her.“Everyone I spoke would tell me it was their favorite film of all time or the most beautiful film of all time,” she says. “It was a lot of pressure.”But after watching the original, she became convinced that “Living,” which moves the setting from Japan to 1950s Great Britain, had used the elements of Kurosawa’s story that made it so powerful, but provided a fresh perspective that’s uniquely its own. It also helped that the film gave Wood, best known for her work as the popular and big-hearted teenager Aimee Gibbs on Netflix’s “Sex Education,” a chance to work alongside one of her acting icons, Bill Nighy.