Latest news with #ChristophWaltz
Irish Times
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Michael Madsen will be remembered for one of the defining cinematic moments of the 1990s
Michael Madsen , who has died of cardiac arrest in California at the age of 67, was involved in a defining cinematic image of the 1990s. His terpsichorean brutalisation, in 1992, of the terrified cop in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs was right up there with Leonardo DiCaprio bellowing 'King of the World' in Titanic and Keanu Reeves evading hurtling bullets in The Matrix. The scene announced an ironic brutality that would run right through pop culture in the last decade of the 20th century. Before and after slicing off the bloodied officer's ear – at which point the camera coyly looks in another direction – Madsen does a horrendous soft-shoe shuffle to Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel. It's hard to think of anybody else with the right combination of mischief and menace to pull it off. [ Michael Madsen, star of Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill and Donnie Brasco, dies aged 67 Opens in new window ] Tarantino had (and still has) a genius for making stars of hitherto mid-ranking actors. He later did that for Christoph Waltz. He bumped Samuel L Jackson up a great many rungs in Pulp Fiction. Madsen had already impressed as Geena Davis's hopeless boyfriend in Thelma & Louise, but Reservoir Dogs seemed to have located a new constellation in the heavens. Here was a charismatic heavy for the ages. A new George Raft. A new James Coburn. That wasn't quite how it worked out. READ MORE Reservoir Dogs: Michael Madsen, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi and Edward Bunker in Tarantino's 1992 film. Photograph: Miramax He toiled with Stakhanovite energy ever since – the Internet Movie Database lists an eye-watering 346 acting credits between 1982 and 2025 – but the great roles in important films kept eluding him. 'I should have at least got a meeting with Spielberg for Private Ryan,' he told the Guardian in 2004. 'LA Confidential was written with me in mind, but Russell Crowe got the part. Go figure.' If, any year this century, you strolled around the Cannes market – a veritable bazaar beneath the Palais des Festivals – his 2-D presence proved unavoidable. 'You get these horrifying straight-to-video things for very little money,' he said. 'Then you go to the Cannes Film Festival, and they got some poster of you, 40ft high, in the worst movie in the world.' Tarantino again made good use of the actor in Kill Bill, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but it feels as if the wider industry never properly knew what to do with him. Madsen was born and raised in the blue-collar city of Chicago. There was creative energy elsewhere in the family. Elaine Madsen, his mother, won an Emmy for producing the documentary Better than It Has to Be in 1983. Virginia Madsen, his sister, is a fine actor with credits on Candyman, The Rainmaker and – securing her an Oscar nomination in 2005 – Alexander Payne's beloved comedy Sideways. Yet Michael Madsen didn't remember receiving much encouragement to take to the stage. 'My father was a firefighter and he wanted me to be a policeman or a firefighter,' he said in 2019. 'I wanted to drive in Nascar. I thought that was my future because I love driving those cars, but life intervened. I accidentally got a part in a film and one thing led to another.' Madsen also spent a while working under John Malkovich in the legendary Chicago theatre company Steppenwolf. He later fondly remembered the dog who nearly upstaged him in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. 'That f**king dog was the best acting teacher I ever had,' he said. Following a move to Los Angeles, he landed small roles in contemporary TV series such as St Elsewhere, Miami Vice and Quantum Leap. Then came that subtle turn in Thelma & Louise. It wasn't a huge role, but it was an eye-catching one. A year later, Reservoir Dogs worked miracles for most members of its impeccably chosen cast –Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi – but, in what now looks like an eerily predictive omen, Madsen just missed out on the next step towards beckoning glory. Tarantino was keen on having him play Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, the role that ultimately revived John Travolta's career, but Madsen was already tied up with Kevin Costner's humdrum Wyatt Earp. Tarantino, who has planned many more films than he has made, never got around to a much-mooted team up between Travolta and Madsen as the Vega brothers. Madsen's manager Ron Smith said cardiac arrest was the apparent cause. Photograph: Anthony Harvey/PA Wire The dark, jowly actor had his personal ups and downs in the years that followed. He was married three times and engaged in a financially ruinous split with his second wife in the mid-1990s. 'I had an entertainment lawyer when I should have had a divorce lawyer,' Madsen, who filed for bankruptcy in 2009, told the Independent. In 2022, Hudson Madsen, his son by DeAnna Morgan, took his own life. Last year, he was arrested on a charge of misdemeanour domestic battery after what his representatives described as 'a disagreement between Michael and his wife'. Yet through it all he never stopped working. Many of the obituaries written over the next few days will describe him as a man out of his time. There is truth in that. 'I like Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, all those cats,' he once said. Makes sense. Like 'those cats', he radiated an unfiltered ruggedness that was drifting out of fashion as the confusing 21st century twitched into being. Like them, he saw acting as a proper job that required manly labour. Few would envy any biographer ploughing through his huge body of work. In recent decades, he appeared (as 'Richard Dawkins'?) in a Telugu-language mystery called Nishabdham, a Star Trek parody with Snoop Dogg called Unbelievable!!!!! and a Turkish horror film called Magi. Yet, when asked in 2019 to select an underrated performance, he pointed to an independent Irish film from 2007. Strength and Honour 'Strength and Honour – I was an Irish American prize fighter,' he remembered. 'It never got any distribution. It went straight to DVD.' Mark Mahon's film, emerging at a time when Irish features were as rare as Irish space shuttles, indeed featured Madsen as a retired fighter who takes up the gloves again to raise funds for his son's life-saving operation. It did, at least, get a limited release in Ireland. 'It came out on DVD with Vinnie Jones on the cover of the f**king thing!' Madsen said. 'It's underrated and forgot about. It's pretty f**king sad because it's a good f**king movie that I was good in.'
Daily Mail
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
'Bonkers and twisted' thriller that 'defies all expectations' is finally free to stream on ITVX
A 'bonkers and twisted' thriller that 'defies all expectations while sucking you in' is finally free to stream as all eight episodes hit ITVX. The Consultant, first released in 2023, depicts the shady titular figure (Christoph Waltz) taking over a mobile gaming company after its CEO is murdered. The cast of the American thriller also includes Nat Wolff, known for his turn in 2015 romantic drama Paper Towns, and The White Lotus 's Brittany O'Grady. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 80 per cent, critics and fans alike have showered it with praise. The series was first released on subscription-based Amazon Prime Video - but after hitting ITV 's on-demand platform at the weekend, it is now entirely free to watch. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. When Sang Woo (Brian Yoon), the wunderkind founder of the LA-based tech company, is shot by a crazed middle schooler, the bad press threatens to see the already struggling company go out of business. His replacement Regus Patoff rules with an iron fist, with things soon turning strange and sinister in the office. And as IT guy Craig and Woo's assistant Elaine (played by Nat and Brittany) do some digging about who their new boss really is, they discover he is even more dangerous than he seems. Tony Basgallop (Inside Men and What Remains) adapted American horror author Bentley Little's novel of the same name to create the thrilling show. He told ScreenRant: 'I think I was led, really, by the novel by Bentley Little.' 'That had a very cruel sense of humour to it, a darkness that I always like to bring into my own work. 'I wanted to kind of match that style that he'd created and it felt like we were a good fit. 'He's a very dark and twisted individual, and I enjoy kind of adding my dark, twisted nature on top of his dark, twisted nature. So, we were building on each other there.' A review by USA Today wrote: 'The series defies all expectations while sucking you into the strange story.' Entertainment Weekly was just as impressed: 'The bonkers comedy-thriller burnishes the familiar deal-with-the-devil conceit with chipper, unapologetic cynicism and appealing performances from its trio of leads.' Culture news site Leisure Byte similarly felt: 'The Consultant is a bonkers show that is a psychologically twisted minefield.' And for anyone immersed in corporate culture, it offers up more than just a bad dream, arts and entertainment site Digital Mafia Talkies said. 'Although the official website profiles for The Consultant present it as a dark comedy, it's actually quite horrifying and triggering, especially for people who've traversed the corporate minefield, thereby putting it squarely in the horror genre', its review read. In this aspect, it has been compared to hit Apple TV+ series Severance, a sci-fi thriller which sees employees undergo a medical procedure called 'severance' to give them entirely separate work and home personalities. The show, executive produced and directed by Ben Stiller, has received a whopping 14 Emmy nominations - and has been renewed for a third series. The Guardian said The Consultant was high quality - but could not quite match up to the $20million-per-episode Severance - which 'did everything The Consultant tries to do but far, far better'. It continued: 'Thriller-level fear of the workplace; a sinister, expanding something-is-going-on feeling; two employees who really need to just kiss each other, now, come on; and never quite knowing if the cause of all the weirdness is supernatural, sci-fi, or Other. 'You always felt you knew that it was going somewhere. 'The Consultant, despite Waltz's immaculate lapel-straightening, never quite fills you with that confidence.' It comes after another high-quality show was made available to stream for free in the UK in a huge win for fans. Long-standing cult drama Lost first aired on ABC in America back in 2004 until 2010, becoming immensely popular. It follows the survivors of a plane crash who find themselves stranded on a deserted island in the South Pacific Ocean. Starring Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, and Dominic Monaghan, Lost sees the passengers battle to survive as they deal with a range of questionable creatures. The six-season series has an impressive 86 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, with the second instalment receiving a whopping 100 per cent rating. And now, fans in the UK can stream Lost for free after it launched on ITVX this spring. The Consultant is available to stream on ITVX.
Geek Tyrant
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Mia Goth Teases Guillermo del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN: 'People Are Going to Love How Epic it Is" — GeekTyrant
Guillermo del Toro's long-gestating Frankenstein is finally happening, and if you've been waiting for a version that honors the emotional weight and gothic grandeur of Mary Shelley's original novel, Mia Goth says you're in for something special. Goth, who plays Elizabeth Lavenza in the film, shared some insight during a red carpet chat with Entertainment Tonight at Netflix's TUDUM 2025 event. Her comments tease a film that is dark and dramatic, but also deeply human and visually massive. 'I think people are going to love how epic it is, and the scale of it, it's such a feast. But I think they will also be incredibly moved by it and maybe surprised by how much heart went into this. It's a lifelong project for Guillermo.' Del Toro's passion for Frankenstein is strong. Back in 2007, he said that he 'would kill to make' a faithful 'Miltonian tragedy' version of Shelley's novel. He's been dreaming of it for years, and now, thanks to Netflix, it's finally coming. The cast features Jacob Elordi takes on the iconic role of the monster, a transformation that left Goth floored: she says she was 'totally amazed' and 'just in awe.' Elordi is stepping into the shoes of one of horror's most misunderstood figures, and it sounds like he's doing so with style. Meanwhile, Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein, and Christoph Waltz appears in an as-yet-unnamed but reportedly key role. While Frankenstein has been adapted countless times over the last century, from Karloff's legendary performance to more stylized or sci-fi-heavy interpretations, this version promises a return to the emotional and philosophical core of Shelley's 1818 novel. Goth's comments on the film's emphasis on heart, is what separates Del Toro's monster tales from the rest… his creatures are rarely just creatures. They're metaphors, they're misunderstood, and they're always more than they appear. Frankenstein is set to premiere on Netflix in November 2025, and I'm incredibly excited about seeing Del Toro's vision for this story.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Watch now! Twisted thriller branded "quirky and bingeable" gets new UK streaming home
The Consultant, the "quirky and bingeable" thriller starring Christoph Waltz, has found a new streaming home in the UK. The series, originally released on Prime Video in 2023, sees the two-time Academy Award winner play Regus Patoff, a "mysterious" consultant who takes charge of a mobile gaming company following an "unspeakable" tragedy. Based on Bentley Little's 2015 novel of the same name, The Consultant has now found a new streaming home in addition to Prime Video, with all eight episodes of the series being added to ITVX in the UK this weekend. Billed as a "twisted comedic-thriller", The Consultant explores the "sinister relationship between boss and employee," the latter of whom begin to fear for their lives after Regus imposes "new demands and challenges" on the company. Co-starring Aimee Carrero and Brittany O'Grady, the series received generally positive reviews from critics upon its release, with the thriller currently possessing an approval rating of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes from 44 reviews. Related: Despite noting its "lack of depth", the site's critical consensus said that the "diverting twists" and "slick presentation", in tandem with Waltz's "menacing charm", helped to "compensate" for its shortcomings. The Australian described the series as "quirky and bingeable" as they lauded the performances of Waltz and O'Grady, while The Wrap dubbed it a "solid addition to the horror genre" and an "interesting take on corporate culture". Related: "The Consultant is as fast-paced as it is darkly comic, mixing corporate satire and moral dilemmas," wrote TV Guide as they called it simultaneously "clever and ridiculous", while USA Today said the series was "macabre, twisty and just a little bit twisted". "This bonkers comedy-thriller burnishes the familiar deal-with-the-devil conceit with chipper, unapologetic cynicism," wrote Entertainment Weekly as they praised the "appealing" performances, while Variety described the show as an "engaging watch". The Consultant is streaming now on ITVX. Digital Spy's first print magazine is here! Buy British Comedy Legends in newsagents or online, now priced at just £3.99.£18.99 at at Audible£99.00 at Amazon at at at EE at at £328.00 at at at at at EE at at at at at at at Amazon at at at at Sky Mobile at at at EE£19.00 at Game at at at Pandora£123.99 at at at Game£259.99 at at Three at at Pandora at at at at at at at $15.00 at at £1199.00 at AO at at Fitbit£49.99 at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at John Lewis£39.97 at at at Amazon£157.00 at John Lewis at at at at at John Lewis & Partners at £44.99 at at at at at at Fitbit£6.62 at at Amazon at at Three$29.85 at at at at at John Lewis & Partners£15.99 at Amazon£119.99 at at at Apple£699.00 at at at at at Amazon at at at at at at Three£379.99 at at at at John Lewis at at EE at Audible at at at at at at at at John Lewis at EE at at £379.00 at at at at Amazon at at at Apple at at at Samsung at at at at Three at Apple at at John Lewis at $365.00 at Microsoft at crunchyroll£1199.00 at AO£79.00 at Samsung£449.00 at John Lewis£79.98 at at Amazon at at at at at John Lewis & Partners£79.98 at at at Microsoft at at at Microsoft at at at John Lewis at at at at Amazon at now at at at John Lewis & Partners at at at at Microsoft at at John Lewis at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at You Might Also Like PS5 consoles for sale – PlayStation 5 stock and restocks: Where to buy PS5 today? IS MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7 THE BEST IN THE SERIES? OUR REVIEW AEW game is a modern mix of No Mercy and SmackDown
Geek Tyrant
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Trailer For Director Luc Besson's DRACULA Starring Caleb Landry Jones and Christoph Waltz — GeekTyrant
Director Luc Besson ( Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element ) has made his own Dracula movie, which is officially titled Dracula: A Love Tale , and the trailer has been released giving us a look at what his vision for this classic story looks like. Besson's take on the story will focus on the beginning of Dracula's life and his relationship with his wife. 'In the 15th century, Prince Vladimir (Caleb Landry Jones) denies God after the brutal and cruel loss of his wife. 'He inherits a curse: eternal life. He becomes Dracula. Condemned to wander through the centuries, he has only one hope left: to find his lost love.' 'Centuries later in 19th century London, Vlad sees a woman resembling his late wife and pursues her, sealing his own fate.' This is a very different kind of project and genra for Besson and I'm interested in checking it out. The movie also stars Zoë Bleu Sidel, Christoph Waltz, Matilda de Angelis, and Guillaume de Tonquédec. The movie also features music by Danny Elfman. EuropaCorp will released the film, Dracula: A Love Tale movie in French cinemas starting July 30th, 2025 this summer. There's no US release date set yet.
