News

From their feature film debut with the exquisite India-set drama “The Householder” in 1963 to their final collaboration on 2005’s sumptuous historical epic “The White Countess,” director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant were cinema’s most reliable director-producer team, a couple (in both work and life) responsible for a filmmaking streak that consisted of dozens of great movies and no bad or indifferent ones. Noteworthy for their supreme attention to visual detail, highly literate screenplays (often written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), and flawlessly cast ensembles, the films of Merchant Ivory Productions were near-annual gifts that were often undervalued; unlike less prolific auteurs like Stanley Kubrick, Ivory never made us wait for his movies, which made it easier to take them for granted.

Not that Merchant Ivory Productions lacked box office success or acclaim in their time; “A Room with a View” (1985) was a bona fide smash that won three Academy...

Season 2 of the hit Netflix Addams Family series Wednesday is expected to start filming in Ireland (season 1 was shot in Romania) by the end of this month, and some new cast members are joining in on the fun this time around. Last week, we learned that Steve Buscemi (Fargo) has been cast as the new principal of Nevermore Academy, and now Variety reports that Thandiwe Newton has signed on to play an unspecified role.

Newton’s previous credits include Westworld, All the Old Knives, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Rogue, The Slap, Vanishing on 7th Street, 2012, ER, W., Norbit, The Pursuit of Happyness, Crash, The Chronicles of Riddick, Mission: Impossible II, Beloved, Jefferson in Paris, Interview with the Vampire, and Flirting, among many others.

The first season of Wednesday consisted of eight episodes. The show comes to us from Millar Gough Ink, Tim Burton Productions, Toluca Pictures, and MGM Television,...

Joanna Merlin, who created the role of the daughter Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway and served as a casting director for Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince and Bernardo Bertolucci, has died. She was 92.

Merlin died Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disorder, her daughters, documentary filmmaker Rachel Dretzin (Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey) and actress Julie Dretzin (The Handmaid’s Tale), announced.

Merlin also portrayed the dance teacher Miss Berg in Alan Parker’s Fame (1980) and recurred as Judge Lena Petrovsky for more than a decade on NBC’s Law and Order: Svu.

Her acting résumé included the films Hester Street (1975), All That Jazz (1979), Baby It’s You (1983), The Killing Fields (1984), Mystic Pizza (1988), Class Action (1991) and City of Angels (1998) and such TV shows as Naked City, The Defenders, East Side/West Side, Homeland and The Good Wife.

Merlin cast the original Broadway productions of Sondheim’s Company,...

How long before a Donald Trump biopic? Meanwhile, from young Obama to stately Abraham Lincoln, some White House incumbents fare better than others on the big screen

At long last, Donald Trump is out of the White House. His story, one suspects, is far from over: any screenwriters hovering eagerly to write the quintessential film about America’s 45th president would be best advised to keep their powder dry. But write they eventually will – the presidential biopic practically being the due of most men who have held the position, however eventfully or otherwise. Few stick around for long in the popular imagination: when last did you have the urge to watch Merchant Ivory’s dreary Jefferson in Paris (1995; not even streamable) or Ron Howard’s righteously bland Frost/Nixon (2008; iTunes)?

Cinema has certainly done a lot for Richard Nixon, who got one of the funniest of all Hollywood political satires in Andrew Fleming’s smart,...

Michael Lonsdale, who starred as the mad villain Hugo Drax in the Bond film Moonraker and the dogged detective in the Fred Zinnemann-directed crime thriller The Day of the Jackal, has died. He was 89.

Lonsdale died Monday at his home in Paris, his agent, Olivier Loiseau, told the Afp.

Born in Paris, Lonsdale portrayed Louis XVI in Jefferson in Paris (1995) and appeared in other notable films including Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose (1986), James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day (1993), John Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998) and Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005) during his busy six-decade career.

He also received a ...

Michael Lonsdale, who starred as the mad villain Hugo Drax in the Bond film Moonraker and the dogged detective in the Fred Zinnemann-directed crime thriller The Day of the Jackal, has died. He was 89.

Lonsdale died Monday at his home in Paris, his agent, Olivier Loiseau, told the Afp.

Born in Paris, Lonsdale portrayed Louis XVI in Jefferson in Paris (1995) and appeared in other notable films including Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose (1986), James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day (1993), John Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998) and Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005) during his busy six-decade career.

He also received a ...

Exclusive: Westworld Emmy winning actress Thandie Newton will headline Julian Higgins’ feature directorial debut God’s Country for Cold Iron Pictures and The Film Arcade, Deadline has learned.

The neo-Western thriller is set in the bleak winter landscape of the Mountain West. Newton plays a college professor living on her own at the edge of the national forest. One day she confronts two hunters trespassing on her land, triggering a battle of wills with dangerous ramifications.

Screenwriter Shaye Ogbonna adapted the script with Higgins from James Lee Burke’s short story Winter Light. Burke is The New York Times bestselling author of the Dave Robicheaux detective series and numerous other novels. He has received two Edgar Awards and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. Burke’s 40th novel will be released this year.

The deal involves buying the Merchant Ivory brand, reports Variety, along with global distribution rights to 21 features and 9 documentaries and shorts. James Ivory will continue to supervise the brand as creative director of the collection. He will consult with Charles S. Cohen on the restoration, re-release and marketing of each film. The deal does not include studio films “A Room With a View,” “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” “Jefferson in Paris” and “Remains of the Day.” The filmmaking team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory partnered in Merchant Ivory for a series of English-language films in India starting with 1963’s “The Householder,” starring Shashi Kapoor, followed by 1965’s “Shakespeare Wallah.” Moving to the United States and England, Merchant Ivory collaborated with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala on such films as “Howards End,” based on the E.M. Forster novel, which was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including best...

Coming to theater on April 3rd is the film Effie Gray.

The film explores the fascinating, true story of the relationship between Victorian England’s greatest mind, John Ruskin, and his teenage bride, Euphemia “Effie” Gray, who leaves him for the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais.

Effie Gray is the first original screenplay written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Emma Thompson. In this impeccably crafted period drama, Thompson delicately and incisively probes the marital politics of the Victorian Era, and beyond.

Dakota Fanning stars as Effie Gray Ruskin. The cast includes Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Tom Sturridge, David Suchet, Greg Wise, Claudia Cardinale, James Fox, Sir Derek Jacobi and Robbie Coltrane.

The film is produced by Andreas Roald (Terrence Malick’s Voyage Of Time) and Donald Rosenfeld (Malick’s Tree Of Life and Voyage Of Time).

Producer Donald Rosenfeld spent 1987 to 1998 as President of Merchant Ivory Productions, in charge of the financing...

New York — Cicely Tyson, who returned to Broadway this season for the first time in 30 years, has taken home the Tony Award for best leading actress in a play.

In Horton Foote's "The Trip to Bountiful," Tyson plays a widow in 1953 whose only desire is to revisit her old home in Bountiful and recapture purpose she lost when she left for Houston.

Tyson, 88, beat out Laurie Metcalf, Amy Morton, Kristine Nielsen and Holland Taylor.

Tyson was nominated for an Oscar for her role in "Sounder" in 1972. Other film credits include "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Bustin' Loose" and "Jefferson in Paris."

She won Emmys for "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" and "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All." She was also nominated for her role in the miniseries "Roots."...

Composer who scored nearly every Merchant Ivory film from The Europeans onwards and was an integral part of the brand

The Guinness Book of Records notes that the 44-year collaboration between the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the American director James Ivory was the longest in the history of cinema. They might equally have added the screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who joined the duo from the start. And a member of Merchant Ivory Productions for almost as long was the composer Richard Robbins, who has died after suffering from Parkinson's disease, aged 71.

The Ivory-Robbins working partnership, which lasted over three decades, outdid in longevity such celebrated director-composer unions as Federico Fellini-Nino Rota, Michelangelo Antonioni-Giovanni Fusco and Alfred Hitchcock-Bernard Herrmann. Robbins scored nearly every Merchant Ivory production from The Europeans (1979) onwards, and was an integral part of the film company's brand.

The reason for the...

Historical action film about early Us president drives a stake through the heart of the Men in Black

Fresh blood

A cursory glance reveals that king of the heap is Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, with £1.12m. However, in reality, the high-concept historical actioner landed in fifth place for the weekend, with £744,000. The discrepancy between those two figures is accounted for by preview takings on Wednesday and Thursday, enough to send the film leapfrogging over its rivals. Bekmambetov's film was always going to be a tricky sell at the UK box office: films about early Us presidents have tended not to flourish here (anyone recall Jefferson in Paris, from 1995?). As for star Benjamin Walker, he's hardly a marquee name in the Us either, but at least he enjoys some profile there for stage hit musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, about another early Us president.

Among the new entrants,...

Actress Thandie Newton has hit out at Hollywood's casting couch culture, revealing she was targeted by "gross" directors trying to "exploit" her naivety.

The English actress broke into the mainstream with her role in 1994 movie Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles and went on to find international fame the following year with her role in Jefferson In Paris.

Now she's revealed she was twice targeted by sleazy producers in the early days of her career, claiming one director made footage "literally shooting up my skirt" and a photographer forced her to pose for snaps while bending over a desk and wearing a leather miniskirt.

And when she accidentally met the same snapper earlier this year she was tempted to confront him over the incident - but decided to leave it unsaid because he was with his family.

Newton tells Stella magazine, "I had this real eruption of emotion. I didn't because his kids were there, but I wanted to say, 'Shame on you'... It's a minority of people who want to exploit you in the creative world, but if you want to be opportunistic in that way, it's brilliant."...

As it turns out, Gwyneth Paltrow's recently revealed hidden talent has been music to her mother's ears since she was a little girl.

Paltrow has expanded her repertoire considerably over the past year, adding singing to her on-camera skills -- and in a big way. From crooning her way through "Country Strong" and performing at the Oscars to singing in guest spots in "Glee," the actress has turned herself into an emerging musical star.

Blythe Danner, speaking at the press conference for her upcoming sci-fi comedy "Paul," discussed Paltrow's foray into music, and just how excited she is about it.

"I love it. She's been singing since she was a baby and we used to make up songs in bed at night time from the time she was born practically and she'd be singing and I'd be singing the harmony above a third, and then she'd go off and...

Filed under: Features, Cinematical

Nick Nolte has played many memorable characters, but one in particular -- Wade Whitehouse in 1998's 'Affliction' -- edges out the others by a hair for its intensity and sheer guts. Nolte's an actor whose scrappy physicality and distinctive, gravelly voice are just the proverbial icing on the cake of his power on-screen. Whether playing heavies in gritty dramas ('Q&A,' 'Mulholland Falls'), romantic leads ('The Prince of Tides') or comedic characters ('Down and Out in Beverly Hills,' 'Tropic Thunder'), Nolte is always compelling. Even his less successful roles ('Jefferson in Paris') are at least interesting.

Nolte turns 70 this week, a good time to voice our appreciation for the man who -- even through some tough personal travails, notably a battle with alcoholism -- has puts enormous amount of heart and soul into his movies,...

Filed under: Features, Cinematical

Nick Nolte has played many memorable characters, but one in particular -- Wade Whitehouse in 1998's 'Affliction' -- edges out the others by a hair for its intensity and sheer guts. Nolte's an actor whose scrappy physicality and distinctive, gravelly voice are just the proverbial icing on the cake of his power on-screen. Whether playing heavies in gritty dramas ('Q&A,' 'Mulholland Falls'), romantic leads ('The Prince of Tides') or comedic characters ('Down and Out in Beverly Hills,' 'Tropic Thunder'), Nolte is always compelling. Even his less successful roles ('Jefferson in Paris') are at least interesting.

Nolte turns 70 this week, a good time to voice our appreciation for the man who -- even through some tough personal travails, notably a battle with alcoholism -- has puts enormous amount of heart and soul into his movies,...

Los Angeles - Actress Gwyneth Paltrow was honoured Monday with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. The Oscar-winner, 38, was awarded the star ahead of her appearance as a country music star in the movie Country Strong. Paltrow's other films include Shakespeare in Love, for which she won a best actress Oscar in 1998, Iron Man, The Good Night, Proof, Sylvia, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Royal Tenenbaums, Emma and Jefferson in Paris. 'I feel so honoured to be getting this star on the Walk of Fame,' Paltrow said. 'The idea that my grandchildren can one day come and see my name on the sidewalk is very overwhelming.' *** ********* Rapper Ja Rule pleads guilty to gun charge...

Chicago – The expansive and intuitive prose poetry of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf” comes to life in Tyler Perry’s film adaptation “For Colored Girls.” Thandie Newton portrays Tangie (color Orange) and saturates the character with a precise truth.

Newton is familiar to audiences as a performer in many notable films. After making a memorable debut in the Australian film “Flirting” (1992), she has been featured in “Jefferson in Paris” (1995), “Beloved” (1998), “Mission Impossible II” (2000), the TV show “ER,” “The Pursuit of Happyness” (2006) and as Condoleeza Rice in “W.” (2008). She might be best remembered for her role as Christine in the Oscar winning Best Picture of 2005, “Crash.”

Confronting Themselves: Thandie Newton as Tangie and Whoopi Goldberg as Alice in ‘For Colored Girls’

Photo Credit: Quantell Colbert for © Lionsgate

Thandie Newton was in Chicago recently to promote For Colored Girls. HollywoodChicago got the...

Thandie Newton has revealed that she refused to toast the success of her first film because she was busy revising for exams. The actress, who starred in 1995 movie Jefferson in Paris, studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University. The Daily Mail quotes Newton as saying: "I was studying for my finals at Cambridge during the Cannes Film Festival. I went to a party on the beach for the film I (more)...

Thandie Newton refused to join in boozy celebrations to toast the success of her 1995 movie Jefferson In Paris - because she was busy revising for her university exams.

The actress studied Archaeology and Anthropology at the U.K.'s prestigious Cambridge University when one of her early films debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Newton shunned the bar with her castmates at the annual movie event - choosing instead to revise for her degree.

She says, "I was studying for my finals at Cambridge during the Cannes Film Festival. I went to a party on the beach for the film I was in, Jefferson In Paris, but I didn't get drunk because I knew I had to revise.

"I wasn't going to the college bar and having fun, so I probably ended up working more than most people. I carried on making films while I was at Cambridge. I don't regret it because if I hadn't, maybe I wouldn't be an actress."...

Thandie Newton has revealed that she felt intimidated by Gwyneth Paltrow when they first met. The Crash star said she had found Paltrow "effortlessly cool" when they co-starred in 1995 movie Jefferson In Paris. She told The Guardian: "I think I went through my mid-life crisis when I was in my early 20s. I think a lot of women spend their 20s thinking, 'I don't know what I am doing, do I like myself?' And I had that to an extreme. "I remember (more)...

Producer Ismail Merchant, who, along with James Ivory, brought such acclaimed literary adaptations as A Room with a View and Howards End to the screen, died Wednesday in London; he was 68. Reports on Merchant's death cited that he had been ill for some time and had undergone surgery for abdominal ulcers, and passed away at a London hospital surrounded by family and friends. Born in Bombay and educated both there and in New York, Merchant studied film at USC and early in his career produced and directed a number of acclaimed shorts. His film work brought him to the attention of New York's Asia Society, which commissioned him to make a documentary about Delhi. In India, he met American director James Ivory, and in 1961 the two embarked on a career together (both personally and professionally) that would result in more than 40 films; the first was The Householder (1963), based on the novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who, as their longtime screenwriter, was effectively the third "partner" in Merchant-Ivory Films. Initially, Merchant-Ivory was formed with the charter of making English-language films in India for international release, and their films reflected the conflicts between Indian and British culture. In the early '70s, they tentatively explored new territory . specifically 1920s Hollywood . with The Wild Party, but wouldn't find success outside of India-based films until 1979's The Europeans, based on the Henry James novel, which marked their first major literary adaptation. Small but acclaimed films followed, including Jane Austen in Manhattan and Heat and Dust, but Merchant-Ivory made a name for itself in the mid-'80s with two Oscar-nominated films: 1984's The Bostonians, featuring an Academy Award-nominated performance by Vanessa Redgrave, and their breakout hit, 1985's A Room With a View, the sublime adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel. The film made a star of a young ingénue named Helena Bonham Carter, established Merchant-Ivory as the highbrow literary filmmakers, and received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture (it won three). Taking on Forster again, Merchant-Ivory made the groundbreaking gay-themed drama Maurice in 1987 before unsuccessfully trying on modern-day Manhattan in Slaves of New York. After that film, Merchant-Ivory returned to classic literary adaptations including Mr. and Mrs. Bridge and two back-to-back Best Picture nominees, Howards End (eight Oscar nominations and three wins, including Best Actress for Emma Thompson) and The Remains of the Day (also eight nominations). Merchant's remaining films, from Jefferson in Paris (1995) to Le Divorce (2003) were relatively well-received, but never achieved the heights of his previous films. No further details regarding Merchant's death were forthcoming, and a statement was expected to be released later in the day. --Prepared by IMDb staff...