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Nicholas Pryor, the busy character actor who portrayed Tom Cruise’s father in Risky Business and Kathleen Robertson’s dad on Beverly Hills, 90210 during a career that spanned seven decades, has died. He was 89.

Pryor died Monday of cancer at his home in Wilmington, North Carolina, his wife, actress Christine Belford, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In a note to be delivered to THR after his death, he wrote: “Nicholas Pryor was enormously grateful to have been, for nearly 70 years, a working actor.”

From 1997-2002, Pryor played the former spy Victor Collins on the General Hospital spinoff Port Charles, culminating a long career in daytime soap operas that included stints on The Secret Storm, The Edge of Night, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, All My Children and Another World.

Pryor recurred on Fox’s Beverly Hills, 90210 as A. Milton Arnold, the chancellor of California University and father of Robertson’s Claire Arnold,...

Doctor Who’s Ncuti Gatwa and W1A’s Hugh Skinner will star in a National Theatre revival of Oscar Wilde’s play about courtships, betrothals, and confused identities. The Importance of Being Earnest also stars three-time Olivier Award winner Sharon D. Clarke playing the imperious Lady Bracknell.

Director Max Webster, making his Nt debut, told Deadline exclusively that casting Gatwa and Skinner as the idle bachelors Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing -both leading double lives – who pursue two young women, both determined to marry someone called Ernest, and with Clarke as the dreadnaught dowager decreeing her own rules of class, taste, and propriety, was “a dream come true.”

Webster and the Nt’s casting director Alastair Coomer have also assembled Richard Cant to play Reverend Canon Chasuble and comic genius Amanda Lawrence as Miss Prism in the 1895 satire, which will...

David Yates has directed some of the biggest movies in the world. While he was initially known for smaller character-driven miniseries like 2001's The Way We Live Now, 2003's State of Play, and 2004's Sex Traffic, in 2007, he directed Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and, from that point on, became the guiding director of the Wizarding World franchise. He closed out the original series with 2009's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the epic two-part finale, 2010's Harry Potter and the Death Hallows Pt. 1, and 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2.

In 2016, he helmed two big-budget Warner Bros. productions, The Legend of Tarzan and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. He ushered the Wizarding World into a new era with two more films, 2018's Fantastic Beast and the Crimes of Grindelwald and 2022's Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore. After more than...

David Yates Set For Raindance Icon Award

David Yates is set to receive the Raindance Film Festival’s Icon Award. The Harry Potter filmmaker will receive the award at the festival’s Opening Gala party on October 25. Yates grew up in St. Helens, Merseyside. He won his first BAFTA Award for the BBC miniseries The Way We Live Now, starring Matthew Macfadyen and Shirley Henderson. Yates went on to helm the last four of the blockbuster Harry Potter films. “The Raindance Festival has been part of our filmmaking landscape for over thirty years, championing and showcasing the work of emerging writers, producers, and directors, from all over the world,” Yates said. “Elliot and his team have encouraged, inspired, and helped educate so many along the way, including me, and it’s an honor to be the recipient of a Raindance Icon Award as we celebrate and enjoy the work of...

British filmmaker David Yates, known for his extensive work across the “Harry Potter” universe, will be the 2023 recipient of the Raindance Icon Award.

Previous recipients of the Raindance Film Festival award include Vanessa Redgrave, Jonathan Pryce, Gemma Arterton, Michael Caine, Sally Hawkins, Jude Law, Olivia Colman, Terry Gilliam, Guy Richie and Ken Loach.

Yates won his first BAFTA for BBC miniseries “The Way We Live Now” (2002) and the Directors Guild of Great Britain Award for “State of Play” (2003). In 2004, Yates directed “Sex Traffic,” winning another BAFTA.

The filmmaker then directed the the last four of the “Harry Potter” films, culminating in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.” In 2016, he directed the action adventure “The Legend of Tarzan” and then returned to J.K. Rowling’s world of wizards with “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” the same year. “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” in 2018 and “The Secrets of Dumbledore” in 2022 followed.

"Peaky Blinders" star Cillian Murphy has always been perfectly frank about his experiences shooting the bloody drama TV show. The herbal cigarettes are a lot, the haircuts were "alarming," and don't even get the actor started on the as-yet unmade sequel film. The role of Tommy Shelby has no doubt been one of the most rewarding of Murphy's career — it's earned him a BAFTA, among other awards — but the process of bringing the complex period piece to life surely took some getting used to. Case in point: In 2019, Murphy told the Birmingham Mail he needed a short guide from one director in order to understand the show's non-chronological shooting schedule.

"We could be doing episode four in the morning and the finale in the afternoon," Murphy told the outlet. He added: "It was an incredibly mindf***ing shoot, so I got our director Tim Mielants to draw up four...

On the Friday after Tom Wambsgans became the new puppet CEO of the Waystar-Royco media empire, the actor who has spent the past five years essaying the character’s ups, downs, and withering one-liners is propping up the bar of a small boutique hotel in London’s Chelsea. Matthew Macfadyen is nursing a lime tonic and contemplating a rest after several months of hard work on Succession’s blockbusting fourth season. In some other world, one imagines his fictional alter-ego is already discovering the poison in the chalice of the job he has spent a lifetime coveting. Macfadyen, instead, is content simply to think ahead to a quiet family dinner, and to reflect on the adventure of his past half decade.

“I’ll miss it,” he says quietly of his time on Succession. “It was such a lovely, lovely job.”

So confidently has Macfadyen brought his character to life through...

Exclusive: Netflix might have had a bumpy few weeks, but the streamer is poised to strike the first major Cannes deal on a hot market package.

We understand Netflix is closing up a 50M+ world rights deal for Pain Hustlers, with A Quiet Place star Emily Blunt attached for director David Yates (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore).

Pic, introduced to buyers at the Cannes Film Market by The Veterans and CAA Media Finance, is due to begin production in late August.

Pain Hustlers is said to be tonally similar to such films as The Big Short, American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street. The film centers on Liza Drake (Blunt), a high-school dropout dreaming of a better life for her and her young daughter, who lands a job with a failing pharmaceutical start-up in a yellowing strip mall in Central Florida. Liza’s charm, guts and drive catapult...

Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer) is attached to star in the upcoming film Pain Hustlers, from director David Yates (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore). Pic will be introduced to buyers at the Cannes Film Market by The Veterans and CAA Media Finance, going into production in late August.

Pain Hustlers is said to be tonally similar to such films as The Big Short, American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street. The film centers on Liza Drake (Blunt), a high-school dropout dreaming of a better life for her and her young daughter, who lands a job with a failing pharmaceutical start-up in a yellowing strip mall in Central Florida. Liza’s charm, guts and drive catapult the company and her into the high life, where she soon finds herself at the center of a criminal conspiracy with deadly consequences.

Wells Tower wrote the script. Lawrence Grey will produce under his Grey Matter Productions banner,...

Alec Bojalad Jul 9, 2019

I Love You, Now Die tells the infamous story of Conrad Roy, Michelle Carter and their love affair that led to text-assisted suicide.

When I was 16, I acquired two important firsts: my first girlfriend and my first cell phone. The two entities were basically inseparable in my mind. Even though my girlfriend lived in the same town as I did and attended the same school, I would wager that 80% of our conversations existed via text messaging on my silver Motorola.

We were always in contact, texting messages that contained deeply philosophical (or so I thought) musings on our shared love and also the most inane bullshit imaginable. My mom once had to have an intervention with me as our shared cell phone plan was reaching an astronomical cost. I toned down the incessant texting as best I could, but in the end, my mom just had to...

Educational value of its title aside, The Sun Is Also a Star is a fairly limp romantic drama that attempts (and fails) to tie its core relationship to The Way We Live Now. It might seem glib to look at this movie, in which two strangers meet by happenstance and fall in love while spending […]

The post ‘The Sun is Also a Star’ Review: A Well-Meaning But Ultimately Limp and Creepy Romance appeared first on /Film.

The dream has come true... In the prophetic past of 1986, Talking Heads frontman emeritus David Byrne veered off the promising road of his successful art/rock band long enough to make a movie. Warner Brothers was good enough to provide the necessary bunch of money for it, and well, here we are. Byrne’s finished product is a movie unlike most any other; about all of us, and The Way We Live Now. Its stories may not be strictly true, but they nevertheless constitute True Stories. This is a film about a bunch of people in Virgil, Texas, a place that’s completely normal. Of course, if Texas, in the film, is a state all its own, then fictional small-town Virgil, celebrating its 150th anniversary of statehood...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Anselm Kiefer: Transition From Warm to Cool  Gagosian Gallery, NYC Thru Septemer 1, 2017

An older creative man who finds energy in their work from having a new young love in his life can represent a wonderful coda. In 1857 when Dickens was 45 years old, he fell in love with the 18-year old actresses Ellen Ternan, a passion that lasted the rest of his life. In 1917 the composer Janacek met Kamila Stösslová, 38 years his junior, who inspired a host of new works. A young woman's sexual ecstasy is the central theme of a suite of new pieces by Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian on 21st Street in Chelsea, up until September 1st.

There are a lot of things in this show that he is famous for -- giant, stage-sized paintings and vitrines with large books in them. The paintings are as thick as condo walls with loopy written inscriptions on them. Recently we have...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: What was the most surprising movie of the 2017 summer movie season?

Kate Erbland (@katerbland), IndieWire

“Girls Trip”!!! I can’t think of a more pleasant movie-going experience I’ve had this summer, and I saw a screening of “Dunkirk” in IMAX where my hair was literally blown back from my head and a screening of “Rough Night” where everyone was given glasses of rose and bachelorette crowns before they walked in, so I’ve done some living this season. There’s nothing quite like seeing a raucous comedy in a packed theater filled with people who are having just as much fun as you are.

Nicholas Hoult and Laia Costa are a dull millennial couple addicted to Tinder in this visually slick yet emotionally vapid take on modern relationships

The young people today – they can’t stop screwing! Well, if this movie is any indication, anything is welcome if it keeps these people from talking.

Newness, the latest from director Drake Doremus, is a gorgeously shot film with an emphasis on beautiful people in closeup, striking interior design and impressionistic shallow focus. The screenplay, unfortunately, is equally shallow, and that’s a bit of a problem when it wants so hard to make a grand pronouncement about The Way We Live Now.

Continue reading...

USA's new drama "Mr. Robot" is bursting with storytelling devices that, individually, have been overused in recent years to the point of irritation. Excessive narration to explain every character, every plot twist, and every emotion our hero is feeling? Check! A hero described in the press notes as a "vigilante hacker," and who spends enough time sitting at a keyboard in the first two episodes to live up to that moniker? Check! (Though at least no one on the show refers to themselves as a hacktivist.) Abundant grand pronouncements about The Way We Live Now, most of them just wrapped in vague anti-corporate sentiments? Check! A central character suffering from enough undefined mental health issues that large swaths of the show's story and other characters may exist only in his head, thus allowing the creative team to pull the rug out from under the audience whenever and wherever they please?...

The trolling is coming from inside the house! Mere emojis can't capture the plugged-in joys of the first hour or so of haunted-internet teen flick Unfriended, which knives with dexterous wit The Way We Live Now. Here's a clutch of horny high school dopes hanging out on Skype, getting doxed to death by what seems to be the vengeful ghost of Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman), a young woman who committed suicide a year before. (She had been cyberbullied.)

We see this play out exclusively through the screen of another young woman's laptop: Blaire (Shelley Hennig) indulges in amusingly listless sex-chat with her boyfriend, Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm), scored to songs from the Spotify account she occasionally clicks up from the taskbar. Sometimes, after a scare, she'll Google...

Even before he won an Academy Award for "12 Years a Slave," John Ridley had an interesting, eclectic career. He's written for sitcoms ("The John Larroquette Show") and dramas ("Third Watch") and even produced Wanda Sykes' talk show. A decade before "Empire," he created a hip-hop industry drama for Upn called "Platinum." As a novelist, he's written science-fiction ("Those Who Walk in Darkness"), pulp ("Everybody Smokes in Hell") and historical fiction ("A Conversation with the Mann"), among other genres. Whether by design, opportunity, or simply a sense of restlessness — one of the most vivid characters in any of his books is Brain Nigger Charlie from "The Drift," a hobo who can no longer relate to the anchored middle-class existence from which he descended — Ridley has avoided being pigeonholed in a business that tries to do that with everyone, and particularly with artists of color. That sense of ambition and motion...

The Skeleton Twins, starring Saturday Night Live alums Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader, chronicles the reunion of dysfunctional twin siblings after a long estrangement.

Both Maggie (Wiig) and Milo (Hader), whose father committed suicide when they were teenagers, enter the film making their own suicide attempts. Before Maggie can swallow a bottle of pills, she gets a phone call informing her that her gay, aspiring actor brother is in the hospital in Los Angeles. She convinces him to come live with her and her husband – whom she's cheating on – in suburban New York, where the two reconnect while wading through the muck they've created in their lives.

'The Skeleton Twins' Reviews

Impressed with Wiig and Hader's dramatic acting chops, critics have praised The Skeleton Twins, directed by Craig Johnson from a screenplay he wrote with Mark Heyman. The talented actors give the somewhat formulaic plot of the film...

Stop right now. Thank you very much.

Right now, Emma Stone is technically promoting The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – and not, as it turns out, a reunion of the U.K.’s best girl group. But this weekend, the star went on The Graham Norton Show, explained her love of the fab five once again, and had a major freak-out when she thought the gals might be in the building (they weren’t).

“I feel like I’ve been talking about the Spice Girls more on this press tour than I have about the movie,” Stone explained. She’s not wrong:...

Review Tom French 12 Sep 2013 - 22:00

Tom is impressed by episode one of new BBC drama Peaky Blinders, which bursts out of the gates with real verve and style...

This review contains spoilers. Read our spoiler-free review, here.

When I agreed to review Peaky Blinders for Den of Geek some weeks ago, I must admit I had little idea what I was signing up for. I had no clue what the programme would be about. I even thought the name was a little naff. So to have haphazardly stumbled across the most intelligent, stylish and engrossing BBC drama in ages is a real joy.

It follows the titular Peaky Blinders gang, a group of criminals that wear razor blades in their caps - hence the name - and strike fear into the hearts of those living in the slums of post-wwi Birmingham on the cusp of the 1920s. Leader of the Blinders is Tommy Shelby,...

Indie-ish singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright is prepping the release of his new (Mark Ronson-produced, swoon!) album Out of the Game and has enlisted the services of his real-life friend "Dark Shadows" actress Helena Bonham Carter to bring her signature strangeness to the video for the album's titular lead single.

The video is set in a library overseen by Bonham Carter, who lip-synchs the lyrics to Wainwright's track while pacing around lamenting what must be a sad, strange life. (Girl can emote! She deserves an Oscar for her performance in this video alone, y'all!)

It's a weirdly transfixing video. Wainwright appears as three different library patrons who end up in a creeptastic make out session with each other, and by the clip's end, Bonham Carter has come undone both figuratively and literally. The closing shot features the Oscar nominee clad in just lingerie reading the book "The Way We Live Now.

Hold on to your sonic screwdrivers, Whovians. The Doctor is headed to the big screen.

"Harry Potter" director David Yates has teamed up with BBC to create a "Doctor Who" movie, according to Variety. Yates will develop the movie with BBC Worldwide's exec VP of programming and production, Jane Tranter.

BBC America later confirmed that a movie was in production, though it stopped short of confirming Yates' involvement, stating via Twitter, "A Doctor Who feature film remains in development w/ BBC Worldwide Productions in La. As of yet no script, cast or production crew in place."

With a "Doctor Who" movie, Yates and BBC hope to translate the long-running British television series' success to a grander, feature-film scale. Yates said they're currently looking at writers and will likely need two or three years to "get it right."

No stranger to adaptations with high expectations, Yates directed "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,...

Doctor Who Gets Big-screen adaptation

It seems like a long time coming for one of the longest running series in the world to finally get a big-screen adaptation.”Harry Potter” director David Yates is teaming up with the BBC to turn its iconic sci-fi TV series “Doctor Who” into a bigscreen franchise.

Yates, who directed the last four Potter films, told Variety that he is “developing a Doctor Who movie with Jane Tranter, BBC Worldwide’s L.A.-based exec VP of programming and production.”

“We’re looking at writers now. We’re going to spend two to three years to get it right,” he said. “It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.”

There is no doubt that it will need to become something it never has for the mainstream, big-screen arena. For years Doctor Who has been a cult classic in America while a national treasure in Britain,...

The Observer's critics pick the season's highlights, from Degas to Depp, and Britney to the Bard

September

1 Theatre: Decade In a former trading hall on London's St Katharine Docks, Rupert Goold's production evokes the legacy of 9/11, with the help of Simon Schama and Abi Morgan. Until 15 October.

4 Pop: Adele After her summer to die for (No1 album, ubiquitous single), Adele starts her UK tour in Plymouth. She's in London on the 19th and 20th and ends in Glasgow (25).

6 Dance: Tezuka New evening-length piece by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, inspired by the work of renowned Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka. Starring Daniel Proietto, the piece features a specially commissioned score by Nitin Sawhney. At Sadler's Wells until 10 September.

8 Pop: Bestival The Isle of Wight weekender always has a hefty line-up: this yearboasts new kids James Blake and Odd Future alongside the Cure, Brian Wilson and Björk.

9 Theatre: We are Three Sisters...

Harry Potter Film on Twitter just released an image you are going to want to see. Don’t worry. You won’t even need to use your wand. We have got it for you right here and right now. Up above you can see that even Draco Malfoy must face the end of the amazing films. The poster matches previously released character promo art, like this one, featuring Hermione.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part two hits theaters on 15 July 2011 in both 3D and 2D. Some critics thought part one got slow in the middle. I don’t think that will be a problem this time around!

For you wizards in training we have trailers , we have TV spots, we even have a special look behind the scenes! Enjoy!

Directed by David Yates (The Way We Live Now, The Young Visitors, UK’s State of Play), Deathly Hallows, part two stars Daniel Radcliffe,...

I hereby nominate Justin Bieber documentary "Never Say Never” as the time capsule for our millennial moment. It is the film that cuts closest to The Way We Live Now, plus it’s the only sign-of-the-times that’s been remixed and retrofitted as an all-singing, all-dancing 3D extravaganza. Though it lacks obvious artistic ambition, “Never Say Never” is a genuinely groundbreaking experiment in convergence-media aesthetics: part concert documentary, part reality-tv contrivance, part ...

Salute Your Shorts is a weekly column that looks at short films, music videos, commercials or any other short form visual media that generally gets ignored.

Since the late '90s, one of the main ways for a young filmmaker to get noticed and, with any luck, make his or her way into feature films, was to direct music videos and commercials. This route has allowed directors to get paid while gaining experience, with the added benefit of no small amount of creative input for works being made. That it’s worked out that way is fortunate, but all things considered, sort of random. There’s also another way that directors can transition smoothly from smaller projects to larger, which is the move from television to film. For whatever reason, though, it’s not particularly common, especially these days. But David Yates, the director of the final four Harry Potter movies,...