Latest news with #Sundance
The Sun
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
How trendsetting Brit Anna Wintour became fashion's ultimate force at Vogue – with NO ONE safe from her sharp tongue
SHE came, she saw the fashion world from behind her Chanel sunglasses, she conquered. After 37 years as the formidable force on US Vogue, Anna Wintour is stepping aside as Editor-in-Chief. 6 6 The move marks the end of an era, in which the UK-born power player ruled the fashion industry with a perfectly manicured fist. One flick of her hair or glance and your fate was sealed. Dame Anna, honoured by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017 in full Chanel couture, turned unknown models into stars, transformed 'trashy' celebs into tastemakers, and set trends the high street copied. Her signature razor-sharp bob — which she has had since the age of 14 — needs two daily blow-dries (morning and evening) and near-constant trims. Her attitude is equally polished — and feared. Nicknamed Nuclear Wintour for her icy reputation, she remains fashion's most enigmatic personality. The documentary The September Issue offered a rare peek inside Vogue's Manolo Blahnik-strewn corridors, capturing the chaos of assembling an 840-page edition of the magazine in 2007. Debuting in 2009 at Sundance and grossing around £7million, the film cemented Anna's status as the ultimate force in fashion. Surrounded by 'thin, rich and young' people Her frosty persona inspired The Devil Wears Prada's Miranda Priestly — Meryl Streep's pursed lips and cutting glares were taken straight from the Wintour playbook — and even The Incredibles' eccentric designer Edna Mode was modelled on her. But inside Vogue, Anna's power wasn't a scowl or stare. It was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the bottom of a printout, bearing the a seal of approval 'AWOK' — Anna Wintour OK — which could make or break careers. One star Anna truly legitimised was Kim Kardashian. When she boldly put Kim and then-fiance Kanye West on Vogue's cover in 2014, the fashion elite gasped. Anna Wintour finally sets record straight on Met Gala outfit rule rumor after years of speculation Her response? 'If we only put tasteful people on the cover, no one would talk about us.' Anna also championed other stars — giving Kendall Jenner strong Vogue backing and helping her break into high fashion. She championed Gisele Bundchen in the late 1990s and early 2000s, featuring her on many Vogue covers, and Kate Upton's debut on the front of the magazine in 2013 signalled a shift toward embracing curvier models in the industry. Infamously private, Anna Wintour's influence is impossible to ignore. The Devil Wears Prada even became a musical — proof of her cultural reach. At 75, she kept Vogue not just relevant, but reigning as fashion and culture's ultimate authority. From supermodel golden eras to today's social media trends, Anna transformed the title from a magazine into a global style empire. Every May, she breaks the internet with the Met Gala — her annual, star-studded spectacle where celebrities stun in jaw-dropping looks. What was once a low-key fundraiser transformed under her reign into fashion's most exclusive, over-the-top, meme-worthy night. 6 6 Starting in 2004, Anna harnessed showbiz glamour to skyrocket the event into global fame. Today, from TikTokers to A-listers, the guest list is fiercely selective — just 30 seconds of fame on a bright red carpet holds massive cultural weight. While Anna wields immense power over designer brands and celebrities, she has also had a huge impact on the high street. From her very first Vogue cover mixing budget jeans with couture, she has championed accessible fashion for all. Anna has been key in shaping runway trends that trickle down to high street retailers. In 2009, she launched Fashion's Night Out, turning shopping into a celebrity- studded, cocktail-fuelled event in New York and London, raising funds for causes such as the NYC AIDS Fund and September 11 Memorial until the event ended in 2013. But Anna did not just dip into retail — she transformed the high-street experience. By blending celebrity appeal, charity and immersive theatre, she redefined how brands engage with shoppers. She was a fixture at Topshop's London Fashion Week shows and has long championed luxury-meets-store collaborations — think Balmain x H&M — bringing runway glamour to the masses and giving the UK high street a major boost. FASHION QUEEN In an interview with The Times last year, Anna tipped her hat to Gap for snapping up designer Zac Posen and gave props to Uniqlo for working with Givenchy's former artistic director Clare Waight Keller, who had designed Meghan Markle's wedding dress. The fashion queen said: 'These big mass companies have finally clocked the power of creativity. You wouldn't have seen that ten, 15, even 20 years ago.' Anna has two children — Charles, a psychiatrist born in 1985, and TV producer Katherine, known as Bee, who she had in 1987. Their father is child psychiatrist David Shaffer, who Anna was married to from 1984 to 2020. She is reportedly romantically linked to actor Bill Nighy, though they describe themselves as close friends. Still, in Wintour's world, loyalty can be as fleeting as fashion trends. 6 6 Her decades-long friendship with the late Andre Leon Talley — once her trusted right-hand at Vogue — ended bitterly after he was pushed aside. In his 2020 memoir The Chiffon Trenches, Talley claimed she preferred to surround herself with 'thin, rich, and young' people. Ouch. Top designers haven't escaped her icy glare either. After various scandals, names such as John Galliano and Dolce & Gabbana were swiftly frozen out of Vogue's world — proving that even fashion royalty are not safe from her. Yet despite the many ups and downs, one thing is certainly true. Anna Wintour is a force, a legend and one hell of a woman whose influence stretches far beyond the pages of Vogue. She will now focus on her roles as Global Editorial Director and Chief Content Officer at the magazine's publisher Condé Nast. Whoever is picked to take over her old job better be able to fill her Manolo Blahnik pumps.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Eva Victor's Sundance Darling ‘Sorry, Baby' Debuts In Limited Release
A24's black comedy , comedian and actor Eva Victor's feature writing and directing debut produced by Barry Jenkins, opens at Lincoln Square and Angelika in NY, and the Grove and Century City in L.A.. This was one of the buzziest titles in Sundance and one of the few there to sell in a major deal — for about $8 million. 'A star is born, and so is a born filmmaker,' said Deadline's review, with Pete Hammond calling it 'one of the most assured and heartfelt films I have seen in a very long time.' It went on to close the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes. More from Deadline Venice Prize Winning 'Familiar Touch's Fresh Take On Aging, Caregiving; Korean Hit 'Hi-Five'; Marlee Matlin Doc & Rebel Wilson In 'Bride Hard' - Specialty Preview Sundance Audience Award Winning 'Prime Minister', Israeli-Iranian Sports Drama 'Tatami', 'Sex' & 'Simple Minds' Hit Theaters - Specialty Preview TIFF People's Choice Award Winner 'The Life Of Chuck' Latest Indie To Test Box Office Revival With Neon Gifting Campaign - Specialty Preview The film lands amid a box office boom with another big weekend led by F1 and M3GAN 2.0. Indie distributors have been carefully evaluating whether the rising tide of the past few months lifts all boats and has been rather upbeat so far. Victor, a standup comedian whose credits include HBO's Billions, also stars as Agnes, a young woman who begins to work through a trauma when a beloved friend on the brink of a major milestone visits, and the non-linear narrative keeps audiences guessing. Also stars Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll Lynch, Louis Cancelmi, Kelly McCormack. Sorry, Baby is Rotten Tomato Certified Fresh with critics at 97%. IFC Films debuts Berlin premiering at 375 theaters. See Deadline review. Rose (Fiona Shaw) and her daughter Sofia (Emma Mackey) travel to the Spanish seaside town of Almería to consult with the shamanic Dr. Gómez, a physician who may hold the cure to Rose's mystery illness, which has left her wheelchair bound. In the sun-bleached town, Sofia, who has been trapped by her mother's illness all her life, starts to shed her inhibitions, enticed by the persuasive charms of enigmatic traveler Ingrid (Vicky Krieps). Hope Runs High Films is out with Tomás Gómez Bustillo's at IFC Center. July 5 in L.A., July 6 in Seattle, July 19 in San Francisco. Nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards (Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay, and Best Cinematography). Chronicles is set in a tiny Argentinian town where a pious yet competitive woman decides that staging a miracle could be her ticket to sainthood. After discovering a lost statue, she orchestrates a grand reveal that will finally anoint her as the most admired woman in town. But before the unveiling, a jarring event forces her to reevaluate everything she once took for granted. At 100% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes (31 reviews). Greenwich Entertainment's on the iconic British band blur (Song 2, Girls & Boys). Directed by Toby L. Follows friends and bandmates Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree coming together to record its first album in eight years, the chart-topping The Ballad of Darren, and prepare for the biggest concerts of their career, two sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium. With footage of the band in the studio and on the road, plus performances of their much-loved, seminal songs. World premiered at Sheffield DocFest. Greenwich also acquired the director's sister film blur: Live At Wembley Stadium. Abramorama opens Elliot Kirschner doc on Robert Reich at the Quad Cinema. In LA July 10 at the Landmark Nuart, adds other cities thereafter and is holding one-day theatrical screenings June 30 (and July 14 and September 17) powered by Gathr at arthouse theaters in Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Berkeley, Phoenix, Miami and Washington, D.C. The event cinema company helps indie helmers self-distribute their films. Restoration, re-releases: Wong Kar Wai's romantic masterpiece from Janus Films opens at the IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center this weekend, at LA's Laemmle Royal and Glendale next. Fathom is re-releasing Amy Heckerling's thisSunday on the film's 30th anniversary. MORE Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 'The Buccaneers' Season 2 Soundtrack: From Griff To Sabrina Carpenter
Cosmopolitan
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
Sorry, Baby: How Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, and Lucas Hedges Created 2025's Best Movie
Forgive me for what is about to be a bit of a sentimental beginning to this story. As a person who covers movies for a living, I've often heard stories of critics or editors going to film festivals and seeing the start of a legendary career. People speak with reverence about seeing Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992, for example, or Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides at Cannes in 1999. Those stories are always accompanied with a sense of wonder, like they can't believe they were lucky enough to be in that place at that time to witness that thing. I've always hoped to have a moment like that myself. And this year, with Sorry, Baby premiering at Sundance, I finally got the chance. Eva Victor's beautiful directorial debut, which comes out in limited release today, follows Agnes, (played by Victor) a grad student who experiences something traumatic at the hands of a person they trust. The story focuses less on the traumatic event itself and on all the ways Agnes tries to cope and heal after the fact, especially as the people around them start to move on with their own lives. It blends a sharp poignancy about grief with moments of humor and light, relying on the comedic sense Victor used in the front-facing videos they became known for. Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice, Mickey 17) plays Lydie, Agnes's best friend and anchor, and Lucas Hedges (Ladybird, Manchester by the Sea) plays Gavin, Agnes's neighbor. They both try to keep Agnes grounded as she moves through her own healing. The movie earned glowing reviews out of Sundance and is produced by Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of Moonlight. Cosmopolitan sat down with the movie's three leads to talk through making the movie in less than four weeks, how Victor got both Ackie and Hedges to hop on board, and why the friendship at the center is the real romance. Eva Victor: It did influence the setting of the film. I felt very inspired by it, and I felt that it was both upsettingly cold and dreary and lonely, and also at the same time very romantic. I loved that. It's a very personal story, but I found a lot of joy in creating parts of it. Maine was a huge part of the creation of the story. I grew up in San Francisco and there's no seasons. Seasons tell time in a way that feels so weird, and you feel time differently, and winter is so weird in terms of loneliness. When we finally decided to shoot near Boston, it was about finding locations that felt sort of analogous to the places I had imagined them taking place in Maine. EV: The whole shoot was supposed to have snow, and we scheduled it at that exact time to try to capture snow, and it snowed the weekend before, and then the last shot of the film, there was a little snow coming down. We couldn't even use that because it didn't match. Then I found out that happened to Certain Women, Kelly Reichardt's movie, and I was like, okay, so it's a good thing. Eva: Always non-linear. It was always starting with the friendship weekend away, the joy of that. You have to fall in love with them in order to later care. In the edit, we experimented with many versions of how that beginning moved. And our final realization is that if you don't have this moment where Naomi does this thing where she's like, you're fucking your neighbor, Gavin, waving her arms around, the film doesn't work. I want to start the film with the joy and the love, because then there's something you lose. And I also wanted to give Agnes this fighting chance of being a whole person. As a society, we often flatten people who've been through that sort of trauma. Naomi Ackie: It's what I love about filmmaking. Every film feels like a student film. Every single one. Lucas Hedges: Even Mickey 17? Naomi: To an extent, yeah. You're always conscious of time, and you're always running around. It's like a house. No matter how big it is, you'll always feel it. Eva: No matter the budget, time is time. Lucas: Every human is mortal and every film is mortal. There's no amount of money you can do to make something immortal. Eva: And sometimes time is a constraint that's beautiful. Naomi: It's like when you watch a toddler and they start making their first words. You're actually watching someone build the language for the first time. That's really, really cool. And usually that language evolves over time. With Eva, with Zoë, the film you make is who you are. And then if you're a part of that first creation of that first language, then you have the privilege of getting to watch how that evolves over time. When I'm going to watch Eva's next movie, I can see how they stretched. Naomi: Yeah, I did actually. It was even in feedback that we got about their friendship, this reminds me of me and my best friend. It also made my job very easy, to enact that idea of a really strong bond and a friendship. Friendships are romantic. They're the loves of your life. And you get to choose it. Eva: When I was looking for this partner on the film, I would always say, Agnes is the moon and Lydie is the sun. Naomi: And I'm a Leo, so that makes sense. Eva: Then I met Naomi, and she was so awesome. And then we read together. I fell in love with her, honestly, and it really elevated the film. The film doesn't work if this friendship doesn't work. And it was this huge exhale from everyone, we found this person who makes the film. I feel like God touched me in sending me Naomi. Naomi: Oh, don't you dare! That's very nice. Eva: It was just right. That she wanted to do the movie is crazy. I'm still not over that she wanted to do it. Lucas: The letter mattered more after I read the script, because the letter takes on the context of the script. I read the letter, and then I read the script, and then I was like, Oh, I can't wait to read the letter again, because now I know who this person is. I got to read something and fall in love with the story, and then immediately connect with it as Lucas. It was a cherry on the top. Immediately I wrote my response, but it was 11 p.m. so I couldn't send it until I got up. I got up early the next day to reach out to my manager. And I sleep in, so... I woke the fuck up. Lucas: I pictured him being an opera singer. The film is operatic almost, in terms of the emotions. Even the sets, it feels like somebody could just start singing. He also felt big, in a way that was full and yet also inherently silly. And there's something about an opera singer that's inherently kind of laughable. What they do is so earnest. They're stuck in a gesture so large that you can't help feeling bad for them. Eva: The experience Agnes is having is the classic thing of being left behind. Lydie shows up with their partner, who is a funhouse mirror, evolved version of Agnes. Agnes has been the baby, and Agnes is like, I'm not the baby anymore. And so the baby takes on this pain of, I'm not gonna get all the love anymore, which is inherently selfish. In moments after trauma, the way to survive is to just think about yourself, which is selfish to people around you, but it's also necessary for survival. Though Lydie has done all this generous loving and care, the end of the film is the first time Agnes is able to see outside herself and see Lydie's need, which is wanting to go on a walk with her partner. Agnes watching the baby for 20 minutes is obviously a super small thing that doesn't balance anything out, but is a moment of, this isn't about me. And I think for Agnes, that's huge. And then Agnes seeing the baby, that's the moment when Agnes is like, I'm going to be able to give you what Lydie gave to me. It's really small, and it's not at all balanced. But I think that is the small change of going from FOMO to, I am of use, just not how I used to be.
Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Eva Victor on Finding a New Vocabulary for Trauma in 'Sorry, Baby'
Pop culture has come a long way from 1980s cinema's deployment of sexual assault as a gag (a la John Hughes' Sixteen Candles). But the grammar movies and television use to dramatize such crimes remains by and large unsophisticated. Even #MeToo thrillers and biopics, the projects that on paper appear most likely to confront the subject with the deftest hand, have been known to whiff on their promise; they either treat the abuse as the character, as in Blonde, or the character as a cypher, as in Promising Young Woman, and as such, fail to fulfill their promise as cultural commentary. Maybe these projects can be forgiven for the letdown; assault isn't easy to talk about, to reenact on set, or to watch on screen. It might just take another perspective on the subject—say, that of a comedian—to compel pop culture to expand its visual vocabulary for telling stories about it. Enter Eva Victor, whose feature debut, Sorry, Baby, premiered at Sundance earlier this year to hosannas (including a screenwriting prize) and sold to A24 for a reported $8 million at a festival where buyers weren't shelling out for much. Chief among its praises was that the movie depicts the utterly life-change effect of sexual violence on a victim while simultaneously depicting how the world continues to turn, inexorably, after they've been attacked. 'Something bad happened to Agnes,' reads the official synopsis. 'But life goes on - for everyone around her, at least.' Victor's background as a writer for sites like Reductress, and perhaps especially their Twitter video sketches (where they frantically rant about, for instance, the bright side of the USPS getting dismantled), inform the tone of Sorry, Baby. The humor comes easily but not at the expense of the somber reality it attempts to capture. Apart from writing and directing, Victor plays the lead, Agnes, a grad student in a small, rural town trudging through her days, coming to terms with an assault she endured by her advisor and professor, Preston (Louis Cancelmi); the film takes a chronologically disordered structure, beginning a year after the attack, then flashing back to that time in her life, and to that moment, orchestrated with a chilling sense of distance—a contrast to bubblier moments between Agnes and her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who has since moved to New York City, and on with her life. Sorry, Baby doesn't make light of what happens to Agnes. Rather it finds lightness in spite of it. Here, humor—sardonic, wry, and silly—is a balm. Since its Sundance debut, the film has played many festivals, from Cannes to Independent Film Festival Boston, which picked Sorry, Baby as the capstone for this year's edition of the fest. (The film's production took place 30 miles north of the city, in the coastal town of Ipswich, though Victor's buzz was just as much the reason for attending the fest's closing night as their choice in shooting locations.) While in town for the April festival, Victor sat down to talk about how Sorry, Baby leans on comedy to express the experience of living post-assault. Excerpts of that conversation are below, ahead of the movie's June 27 theatrical release. Victor: Totally. It's interesting, because I think of Agnes as very isolated, which is in some ways the opposite of privacy; isolation is being alone, not by choice, but because you're running from something, like your fear that people will devastate you, and so you make yourself lonely for that reason. Whereas privacy is you saying, 'I've chosen to give myself this time as an act of care for myself.' I do think that as an artist, I crave privacy because that is when you get to really check in with yourself. It's really hard to check in with yourself when you're surrounded by voices, and people. There are conscious things and subconscious things in the film that people are telling me about that are interesting, but I think Agnes is maybe on the dark side of that coin. There's very little people are pointing out in terms of threads in the film that I didn't plan. Because you spend so much time working on every element of the film, there's nothing you see on screen that's not been thought out, or tried a different way; everything you see is a choice. I can explain to you why every single thing exists in the film as it does. The thing I find really exciting is when people notice threads in the film that were more intense in the script, but had to get cut down for different reasons. I love a watcher who sees those little things, and pulls out little secrets that are in the film–but I can't tell you [what they are] because someone will have to watch it to see them. But I do like when people watch with a curious eye about why certain things are happening at certain points in the film; there are little secrets along the way. So much of the joy of making a film is you do your part in creating the film as well as you can to be as effective as possible for you, and then people come to it and find what they need to find in it. That's the joy of being a moviegoer: you get to take from a film what you want. It exists to be something for different people, and to exist in these really specific ways based on what you're coming in with. In terms of humor, it's a really powerful coping mechanism, and it gets you through really dark days. Things are so bizarre and absurd sometimes that laughing is the only way through, and I do think a lot of the funny stuff happens when Agnes and Lydie are able to be witnesses together. Things are a little less funny when Lydie's not there, but when Lydie's there, they're this united front; they're kind of like warriors in this thing together, in this weird world. I think the reason the doctor scene, without giving too much away, lands is because both Agnes and Lydie are contending with how absurd the moment is, but they have each other. On some level, if Lydie's there, you know that Agnes will be okay. Yeah. And, when Agnes is alone, these two women are creating a real gaslighting energy, and she has no one to convene with and say, 'That was weird, right?' She's completely alone, and these women are so unified. Building the tone after the middle of the film was about figuring out how humor moves through that. There's the doctor scene, which does have some humor to it; then the HR scene, which is her by herself, gets a lot darker. And then she runs into Gavin, played by Lucas Hedges, and then there's comedy in that scene because of the absurdity of Agnes coming in really hot and Gavin being this whimsical neighbor. So, it's about finding ways for the humor to go through these waxing and waning moments in the film, and taking the audience along for that journey. Watching this made me think about the way media sensationalizes trauma. [The film] is holistic in the sense that Agnes' life is shaped by what happens to her, but it isn't the entire movie; we aren't forcibly living in that sensation the entire time. I wonder if you feel that we need to develop our language to talk about that theme. Totally. I only know how to talk about my experience with this film, but it's really interesting; the film does a deliberate job at giving you the language it wants to use. The film calls it the 'bad thing,' and the only person who says the word 'rape' is the doctor. So the film is carefully moving through the language of that topic, and it's interesting reading the way people write about the film so far, because we deliberately have a log line that's meant to be more holistic. I don't want anyone to feel surprised in a scary way seeing the film, but it's meant to hold one's hand while watching it, and it's interesting having writers use the word 'rape' or use the phrase 'sexual assault,' which makes sense; I understand. But it's a really interesting experience, since the film tries to create its own language for this topic. I don't know if our world has all the words it needs to talk about this, and I think our world really has trouble with nuance. It's good that there's more work about this, because every experience of sexual trauma is different, and everyone deserves a voice in speaking about their own experience; I hope that we get to a place where we understand how to talk about it without it being crass, or maybe not crass, but violent. I don't know. I'm figuring it out. I definitely know how I want to talk about it, and everything I want to say is in the film. So watch the film and you can figure out what I think. You mention nuance; that's something hard to come by. I feel like empathy is key. I wish that whenever I've had panic attacks while driving, John Carroll Lynch would've shown up and handed me a sandwich. Me too. That's why I made that happen for myself. Well, you have that divine power. You can make that happen for yourself. Yeah. He's wonderful. He is. Now at the risk of stating the obvious, that feels important; that scene contrasts with the scene with the doctor, the scene with HR, where there's zero empathy whatsoever. Yes, the doctor calls 'the bad thing' what it is; but he should care about how that makes others feel. Did that play into your calculus? 'How is this word going to make the people I'm showing the movie to feel?' Yeah, definitely. I made the film for the person I was that needed this film, so making sure nothing felt what would've been incredibly triggering to me, to the point where I couldn't watch it, felt important. In terms of empathy, it's an interesting question; looking at the doctor, and looking at the HR women, they're people doing what their job told them to do. These are the institutions that make it hard for people to feel safe after something horrible happens, and they are the facilitators of that. But they're not evil in their core; they're trying to do their jobs. It's just that they don't understand that their job is doing something hurtful. With the professor, Preston, Louis [Cancelmi] and I spent so much time talking about the real warmth and respect he has to have for Agnes in the scenes we see him in, so that the audience doesn't see him as a bad guy until she does. We didn't want to undermine Agnes' experience of him by showing that he has these dark colors, until it's too late, which is what Agnes experiences too. Each character being as complicated as possible, in the midst of this intense story about something really scary, was a way through it for me; it's not about good and evil, it's about these people who are incredibly flawed, who are incredibly hurtful.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sundance's potential impact on students is 'impossible to summarize,' CU Boulder chancellor says
Though it is still two years away, the University of Colorado Boulder is excited for all of the opportunities the Sundance Film Festival will bring.
