Sundance: Sony Pictures Classics Buys ‘Living’ Remake Starring Bill Nighy

LCD Soundsystem‘s James Murphy along with Jonathan Galkin and Tim Goldsworthy, and they’ve since released records by the likes of LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and Hot Chip.Next month marks the 20th anniversary of DFA’s first releases – The Rapture’s ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ and The Juan MacLean’s ‘By The Time I Get To Venus’ – and the label is set to celebrate the milestone with a special event at the Knockdown Center in New York City on March 26.“Anniversaries, schmaniversaries, but given everything we’ve all collectively been through, this feels like a plausible excuse to throw a party. So that’s what we’re doing,” DFA said in a statement.It’s crazy, really.

Biffy Clyro have announced details of a new documentary called Cultural Sons Of Scotland, premiering on Amazon Prime Video next week (February 25).The new film is described as an “intimate documentary film showing the back-to-basics recording process they adopted to create their ninth studio album, ‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’.“With unprecedented access to the band, the new feature length film takes viewers on the journey with Simon, Ben and James as they return to their home in Ayrshire to create their latest, critically acclaimed album in the most unusual of studio environments.”The synopsis adds: “The film explores how the experience of recording an album in Scotland for the first time prompted the band to reflect on the importance of where they’re from, how this has influenced their career to date and reinforced their lifelong bond as friends and bandmates.”Watch the first trailer for Biffy Clyro: Cultural Sons Of Scotland below.Speaking of the new film, which also traces Biffy Clyro’s 20-year history and sees them return to Glasgow for a massive 2021 show at Glasgow Green, frontman Simon Neil said: “In the same part of the world as I wrote my very first song is where we’re making this record, and there’s something really pure about that.”Drummer Ben Johnston added: “We don’t need all the bells and whistles for us to be fulfilled and happy, we just need the three of us to be making music together and have that vibe in a room – and that’s what keeps our hearts beating.”“Everyone should join a band…” bassist James Johnston said.

Futurama star John DiMaggio has said that he will only return for the show’s revival if the whole cast receives a pay rise.The voice actor, who plays chain-smoking robot Bender in the series, took to social media to explain his conditions to reprise his role.“I’ve been thinking about everything that’s been going on these past months and just to be clear, I don’t think that only I deserve to be paid more. I think the entire cast does,” DiMaggio wrote on Twitter yesterday (February 15).“Negotiations are a natural part of working in show business.

Madonna has revealed that the audition process is underway for her forthcoming film biopic.The singer and actor confirmed back in 2020 that she is co-directing and co-writing the forthcoming film, and later described the project as a “visual autobiography”.After announcing back in October that the script for the untitled biopic was “almost finished”, Madonna has now confirmed that auditions for the film are underway.Posting on Instagram overnight, the singer shared a clip of herself dancing to her track ‘Burning Up’, which was released in 1983.A post shared by Madonna (@madonna)“Auditions for my film are a surreal experience,” she wrote in the caption for the clip.

Future Islands have returned today (February 16) with a brand new track – listen to the groove-led ‘King Of Sweden’ below.The new song follows the standalone track ‘Peach’, which the band released last summer and was their first original track since their sixth album, ‘As Long As You Are’, came out in 2020.It’s not clear yet whether ‘King Of Sweden’ and ‘Peach’ are tasters of the band’s seventh studio album, which they confirmed in 2021 they had already started work on.For now, listen to ‘King Of Sweden’ below.Next week (February 21), Future Islands are set to head out on an extensive UK and European headline tour, their first since 2018.See the full list of dates, which include a show at London’s Alexandra Palace, below.FEBRUARY 202221 – Helsinki, The House Of Culture23 – Stockholm, Annexet24 – Oslo, Sentrum Scene26 – Copenhagen, VegaMARCH 20221 – Berlin, Columbiahalle2 – Warsaw, Palladium Warszawa4 – Munich, TonHalle5 – Zagreb, Tvornica Kulture6 – Milan, Fabrique8 – Barcelona, Razzmatazz9 – Madrid, La Riviera10 – Lisbon, Camp Pequeno12 – Nimes, La Paloma13 – Paris, Olympia15 – Utrecht, Ronda17 – Frankfurt, Batschkapp19 – Lille, Aeronef20 – Antwerp, De Roma21 – Cologne, E-Werk23 – Manchester, Academy25 – London, Alexandra Palace27 – Belfast, Ulster Hall28 – Dublin, Vicar Street31 – Newcastle, Northumbria SU InstituteAPRIL 20221 – Edinburgh, Usher Hall2 – Glasgow, O2 Academy Reviewing Future Islands’ new album ‘As Long As You Are’, NME wrote: “‘As Long As You Are’ maybe an unexpected handbrake turn for Future Islands and it may not be as hit-laden as its predecessor, but it’s a refreshing record in its own right and one that throws up plenty of existential quandaries.”

Here’s another walking-and-talking film from festival favorite Hong Sang-soo, encapsulating a sliver of Korean life with his customary elusive delicacy. Shot largely in creamy black and white, Berlin competition entry The Novelist’s Film centers on the meeting between two artists who, for different reasons, have simply stopped working.

This Morning presenters Alison Hammond and Dermot O'Leary were left in tears of laughter during the latest episode, as one guest shared his wild "spanking" story.The ITV show welcomed former rich kid tutor Matt Knott to the sofa to discuss his memoir A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super-Rich.One part of the interview saw Matt recall his experience with a wealthy Russian family, which ended with him being spanked by a naked Russian oligarch in his own personal sauna.The funny anecdote left Alison and Dermot in floods of laughter as the lively pair giggled between themselves.Matt said of the oligarch: "He invited me to have a sauna, which being an oligarch, he had one in his basement and he walked in completely naked."He was showing me who's boss and it was surreal."As Alison and Dermot chuckled, he added: "Then, part of the traditional Russian [sauna] experience is that you get spanked."At this point, Alison doubled over in laughter and Dermot put a hand to his mouth. Matt concluded his funny tale with: "There's not a line in the tutoring handbook about what you do when a naked Russian oligarch offers to spank you.""The client is always right, so I let him spank me as much as I liked.

The managing director of a kitchen company has been jailed for more than six years for his part in a £10 million cocaine smuggling operation.

David Bowie‘s The Man Who Fell To Earth.The classic sci-fi movie, based on Walter Tevis’ 1963 novel of the same name, marked one of Bowie’s most memorable roles, as Thomas Jerome Newton – an alien posing as a human in an attempt to save his home planet.Nighy joins Chiwetel Ejiofor, Naomie Harris and Rob Delaney who were all previously announced for the Showtime series.“I was honoured to be invited to play the part of Thomas Jerome Newton that glorious David Bowie made so famous,” said Nighy in a statement to Deadline.“I was keen to work with Chiwetel and Naomie again. I think the story is terrific and brilliantly expressed.

Bill Nighy (Love Actually) has been tapped to star opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris in Showtime’s The Man Who Fell To Earth drama series, based on the Walter Tevis novel and the cult classic 1976 film starring David Bowie. Nighy will play the role played by Bowie in the film in the series, which comes from Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet and John Hlavin. It will premiere later this year.

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.

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.

EXCLUSIVE: Living, one of the Sundance buzz titles since its January 21 premiere, is near a deal to be 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.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNetflix has emerged victorious in a bidding war for director Lee Daniels’ next movie.Several Hollywood players, including MGM and Miramax, were vying for rights to the Oscar-nominated director’s upcoming project. Netflix’s $65 million price tag — a hefty sum covering the film’s production budget and buyouts — secured the sale, according to Deadline Hollywood, who broke the news.The movie reunites Daniels and Andra Day, who recently worked together on Hulu’s musical biographical drama “The United States vs.

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.

I have always had a philosophy that if you are going to do a remake, remake a movie that didn’t work the first time like Howard The Duck,not a classic by a great filmmaker. Well, the latter is exactly what director Oliver Hermanus (Moffie) and Nobel Prize winning screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains Of The Day, Never Let Me Go) have had the audacity to do in “reimagining” (the popular term for remakes today) iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s highly praised 1952 drama Ikiru. And they haven’t even bothered to change the early 50’s era in which it takes place, only the location and language. moving from Japan to England. Despite my reservations I am happy to say Living, which has its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival today, works very well and that is solely thanks to the loving care these filmmakers have put into a new version exactly 70 years after the first was released.  Of course it helps to have a writer on the level of the great and admired Ishiguro who vowed to be faithful to the script of Ikiru by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni. There have been some character enhancements, a new love story and other touches but this all holds up and shines a light on life and purpose all this time later as it centers on a decades-long straight-laced office bureaucrat (played in the original by Takashi Shimura) who has been lost in grief for many years following the death of his wife but only discovers the magic of living himself when he is told he is going to die. The other blessing for this version is in the absolutely 100% perfect casting of Bill Nighy who could not be better as the man in question, Mr. Williams.

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.