Neil Marshall's ‘Compulsion' Set to Premiere at The Mediterrane Film Festival (EXCLUSIVE) – Film News in Brief
Actress Charlotte Kirk ('Duchess') reunites with acclaimed director Neil Marshall ('The Descent') for the steamy thriller 'Compulsion,' co-starring Anna-Maria Sieklucka ('365 Days') and Zach McGowan ('Dracula Untold'). The film will premiere at the Mediterrane Film Festival on June 28 in Malta.
'Compulsion' is set against the breathtaking backdrop of Malta, where two women become entangled in a string of horrifying murders.
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The film, directed by Marshall and co-written with Kirk, was produced by Krystyna Sellnerova. This marks Kirk's fourth consecutive collaboration with director Neil Marshall, following their work on 'Duchess,' 'The Lair', and 'The Reckoning.' Kirk will be a special guest at the festival, along with Sieklucka.
Kirk will next be seen in a slate of upcoming films set for release over the next year, which include 'Exit Protocol,' 'The Possession at Gladstone Manor.' 'Myra: Golden,' 'Jackie The Stripper,' and 'Mistletoe & Toe.'
Kirk is represented by Bobby Moses of Mavrick Artists Agency and Sieklucka is managed by Marta Tarnowska. Opus One Pictures is handling international sales for 'Compulsion' across all territories. Saban Films will release the film in the U.S. this September.
The Mediterrane Film Festival connects filmmakers, audiences, and brands through the power of storytelling, celebrating cinema in one of the world's most captivating cultural crossroads. The Mediterrance Film Festival will begin on June 21 to June 29, showcasing more than 40 films from 20 countries. This year's jury will include director Catherine Hardwicke ('Twilight'), costume designer Charlese Antoinette ('Air'), production designer Rick Carter ('Avatar') and production designer James Price ('Poor Things'), director Mario Philip Azzopardi ('ZOS: Zone of Separation'), and set decorator Elli Griff ('Napoleon') for the third edition of the festival.
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: Tom Dolby, Cindy Huang, Hiro Matsuoka, Jason Reitman, and Teddy Schwarzman Named Board of Trustees
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures has elected Tom Dolby, Cindy Huang, Hiro Matsuoka, Jason Reitman and Teddy Schwarzman to its Board of Trustees.
'The Board of Trustees and I are thrilled to welcome Tom Dolby, Cindy Huang, Hiro Matsuoka, Jason Reitman, and Teddy Schwarzman to our Board of Trustees,' said Academy Museum Director and President Amy Homma. 'Their deep commitment to the mission of our museum will further help bring exciting exhibitions, screenings, programs, initiatives, and collections and help us to grow our audiences from around the globe.'
Serving as the governing body of the Academy Museum, the Board of Trustees will lead the museum toward a sustainable future by adopting sound, ethical, and legal governance and financial management policies in addition to securing adequate resources to advance the museum's mission.
'The Academy Museum's mission is made possible by the support of visionary leadership and a diversity of perspectives,' said Olivier de Givenchy, Chair of the Academy Museum's Board of Trustees. 'I'm thrilled to welcome our new trustees who embody these values and will help guide the museum's continued growth and impact.'
Fellow members of the Board of Trustees include Tom Hanks, Ryan Murphy, Ted Sarandos, Travis Knight, Hiro Matsuoka, Teddy Schwarzman, Regina K. Scully, Kimberly Steward, Janet Yang, and Kevin Yeaman.
The Academy Museum is the largest museum in the world dedicated to global cinema and the arts, sciences, and artists of moviemaking. The museum advances the understanding, celebration, and preservation of cinema through inclusive and accessible exhibitions, screenings, programs, initiatives, and collections.
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Los Angeles Times
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- Los Angeles Times
A ‘Tombstone' tribute to Val Kilmer, plus the week's best movies in L.A.
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The cast also includes Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley and Dana Delany. The role was a special one for Kilmer, who titled his memoir 'I'm Your Huckleberry' after a line in the movie. In his original review of the film, Peter Rainer declared the film the latest of the then-in-vogue 'designer Westerns' and highlighted Kilmer's turn, writing, 'Val Kilmer's Holliday is classic camp performance, although it may not have started out that way. His Southern drawl sounds like a languorous cross between early Brando and Mr. Blackwell. Stricken with tuberculosis, his eyes red-rimmed, Doc coughs delicately and matches Ringo line for line in Latin. He also shoots straighter than anyone else in the movie — his powers of recuperation make Rasputin seem like a pushover.' The film will also be playing on July 26 at Vidiots. 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Esther Zuckerman spoke to Friedland about shooting the film at Pasadena's Villa Gardens retirement community in collaboration with staff and residents. The production held a five-week filmmaking workshop, involving the residents as background actors and production assistants. 'It came a lot from the anti-ageist ideas of the project,' Friedland says. 'If we're going to make this film the character study of an older woman that sees older adults as valuable and talented and capacious, let's engage their capaciousness and their creativity on all sides of production.' Tsui Hark's 'Shanghai Blues' in 4K Though he is best known to American audiences for his action movies, Hong Kong director Tsui Hark has been versatile in many other genres. Now getting a new 4K restoration from the original negative for its 40th anniversary is Tsui's 1984 screwball romantic comedy 'Shanghai Blues.' 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Yahoo
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How ‘The Bachelor' Ukraine Has Changed Attitudes Towards Disabled War Vets and TV
With his camera-ready looks and natural charm, Oleksandr 'Teren' Budko seemed like a perfect fit to be selected as the man in the spotlight for the most recently aired season of The Bachelor in Ukraine. But there was a twist: Budko is a military veteran who lost both legs during the war that resulted from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Produced by Starlight Media and Warner Bros. International Television and aired on the STB network, the Ukrainian version of The Bachelor has helped change attitudes towards people returning to civilian life after fighting in the war, according to Starlight executives who spoke at NATPE Budapest this week. 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Whether it's comedies, reality shows, documentaries or scripted content, 'we will keep telling these stories, because we don't always know the name of each one of them, but we will make sure the world knows the stories,' Honcharenko vowed. 'Thank you and thank you for seeing us, our stories, our people, and our fight.' Asked how she and her team approach the balance between offering programming with social impact and providing escapist entertainment during a time of war, the executive told THR: 'We don't believe in separating 'social impact' from entertainment. In fact, we believe the most powerful change happens when impact is embedded in the mainstream — when it lives inside the content people already love. That's why, when we address veteran inclusion, we don't create a single show or campaign. Instead, we integrate it across our entire portfolio: viewers see veterans as contestants on MasterChef, as heroes in our scripted series, as participants in quiz shows and entertainment formats and — yes — also as the lead on The Bachelor. And of course, they are present in our documentaries and news features as well.' For Starlight, it isn't just about visibility. 'It's about reflecting the truth,' Honcharenko explained. 'Ukraine's military is incredibly diverse — people of all ages, backgrounds and professions. Some are career soldiers. Others were teachers, chefs, comedians and entrepreneurs. We try to show this full humanity: not just the trauma or scars of war, but the wit, the brilliance, the humor and the talent that veterans bring back into civilian life. Sometimes we're not telling a story about a soldier — we're telling a story about someone who makes brilliant desserts, or wants to start a business, or makes people laugh. And that's just as important.' During a panel discussion at NATPE Budapest, Anna Kalyna, head of the Starlight Production studio, shared some data that shows how having a war veteran looking for love on The Bachelor has changed attitudes in Ukraine. Starlight made sure to survey attitudes before and after the show aired. Before the most recent season of The Bachelor, 35 percent of people surveyed weren't sure if a veteran with a disability could be seen as sexually attractive, which fell to 16 percent after the show aired. At the same time, the people who felt they could be sexually attractive rose from 52 percent to 71 percent. Similarly, the percentage of people who didn't know if such veterans could have an 'active, fulfilling intimate life' halved from 26 percent to 13 percent, while the percentage of people who felt they could rose from 68 percent to 79 percent. Also rising were the percentages of people who said they could imagine someone in their close circle being open to a relationship or family with a disabled war veteran (from 56 percent to 69 percent) and those who said they were willing to watch content featurng disabled war veterans in leading roles (from 82 percent to 90 percent). 'It was probably the biggest and the most amazing impact we have had for our reality TV shows,' Kalyna concluded. And Starlight expects the impact of the war to have long-term implications. 'The most important market trend we're navigating is the transformation of the audience itself,' Honcharenko told THR. 'In Ukraine, the war has reshaped not just the media landscape — it has changed people. Their needs, sensitivities, humor, emotional capacity and attention are all different now. And that requires us to rethink what we offer, how we tell stories, and why.' 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Catherine Hardwicke Praises Heath Ledger, Talks ‘Twilight' at Mediterrane Film Festival Masterclass
Steps away from set pieces featured in the Gladiator franchise inside Malta's historic Fort Ricasoli, veteran filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke delivered an epic two-hour-plus masterclass fitting of its backdrop during the Mediterrane Film Festival on Wednesday morning. Hardwicke, who is also currently serving on the island fest's jury, covered nearly all aspects of the craft for the 'Fix It in Prep' session which was moderated by The Hollywood Reporter. She recalled how she made so many of the films on her resume like the gritty drama Thirteen, the skateboarding pic Lords of Dogtown, the beloved teen vampire classic Twilight, the friendship tearjerker Miss You Already, the genre series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities and more. 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She added that Bella started in the film wearing 'more Eart tones' but by the end of Twilight, as her character has grown closer to Edward and the Cullen family, 'she's dressing like the Cullens' with a blue jacket and more vampire-approved color ways. Hardwicke, who launched the successful franchise based on the best-selling book series, also recalled how she came to direct the first film in the series. 'They gave me the script and said, 'Are you interested in directing any of these?'' she said, noting that it was in development at the time at Summit Entertainment. 'At the time, every studio in Los Angeles turned down Twilight and it was in turnaround. Nobody thought it would make one penny [because it was a young female lead. I read the script and thought it was terrible. I went and read the book and I saw there were a lot of fans that were passionate about it. So I said, 'I want to take a meeting.'' Once she arrived for a meeting with the development team at Summit, Hardwicke claims she offered a bold reaction to the material. 'I took the script and said, 'This goes in a trashcan but we're going to make it closer to the book and what matters in the book. Here are some ideas.' They said, 'OK, we agree with you. We'll hire you.'' The rest is history. Speaking of the past, Hardwicke also recalled how she boarded 2005's Lords of Dogtown starring Heath Ledger, Emile Hirsche and Victor Raskuk about the origins of skateboarding culture in Venice, Calif., in the 1970s. 'David Fincher was supposed to be directing it and he wanted to make it for $75 million,' Hardwicke said of the respected filmmaker who eventually fell out over budgetary and creative issues with executives at Columbia Pictures where it was in development. Hardwicke, coming off the critical success of Thirteen, figured she could find 'a trickier way or cheaper way' to make the film about a sport she was super passionate about. 'Amy Pascal was the studio head at the time, and she liked skateboarding and grew up in L.A.,' she noted of the high-profile Hollywood executive-turned-producer with whom she took a meeting. 'I walked into the first meeting. I was dressed in my Dogtown t-shirt, I lived in Venice and I had Dogtown swag all over, I had a whole plan for shooting the movie and I had skateboards with me. [Amy] had seen Thirteen and she really liked it. I pitched how to do it for a better budget, and I don't know how but I got the job.' Hardwicke said at several points during the presentation that as a director, she always likes to be where the action is rather than away from the actors sitting in video village. One such anecdote she shared is how during filming one of the surfing scenes in Lords of Dogtown, star Ledger complained that the water was too cold. 'We had been working all day for six hours in the morning, and then after lunch he and the older guys came up and I heard [Heath] say, 'Fuck this, man, it's too cold, I'm not doing this.' At that moment, I swam over to him and he didn't know it was me. I go, 'Hey, Heath, what's up man. I've been in here all morning, it's awesome isn't it?' And he's, like, if she's in here, I can't complain. Let's shoot. Sometimes as a director, you have to do more radical things like you're asking your actors to do. You can't say I want you to do it if you're not doing it yourself. That's my philosophy.' Hardwicke played a scene from the film that featured Ledger, playing the character Skip Englbom, who was based on a real person, as he is shaping a surfboard while singing along to Rod Stewart's 'Maggie May.' She praised Ledger's effortless authenticity and how he was intent on using that track despite its high price tag. 'Look at all his movies, Heath really works with his body. He has a different body posture in every movie and different vocal qualities,' explained the filmmaker. 'Heath wanted the song, 'Maggie May,' and we could not afford the song because they wanted a zillion dollars. On the day, I had [two songs ready] including the one we had permission for and we could afford. At the end, he goes, 'I fucking hate that song, we need to do 'Maggie May.' I had a take of the other one in the can so I wouldn't get fired from my first studio movie, and then we did 'Maggie May' and of course you see it's integral to the scene. He moves with it, and then we went back and got permission.' Near the end of the presentation, Hardwicke also teased her latest film, the indie homeless drama Street Smart starring Isabelle Furhman, Yara Shahidi, Michael Cimino, Daniel Zovatto and Skeet Ulrich. The night before she left for Malta, Hardwicke said she finished working on the music for the film, which is set in Venice and follows a group of unhoused as they navigate the streets with their big dreams. Scenes from the film were shoot in her Venice home, which doubled as the film's production office for the quick 20-day shoot. '[The characters] are all based on real people, and we had one real person [who acts in the film] who really was in the foster care system,' she said of the first time actor who is one of the leads. 'We found housing for him the week before we started shooting with Covenant House, which is a beautiful global organization for kids that have aged out of the foster care system. He got his first apartment and he starred in his first movie.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts
