Gossip Central

Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody and Three Great Actresses in The Favourite: It’s Good to be Queen

“I don’t sing. I never touched a piano,” Rami Malek told filmmakers at his audition for Bohemian Rhapsody. That did not stop him from incarnating Freddie Mercury, Queen’s frontman until he died of AIDS, in a role that just earned Malek a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Drama and may be a prelude to an Oscar nod.

At a luncheon at the Russian Tea Room this week celebrating his achievement in Bohemian Rhapsody members of the academy praised his performance as he explained how he managed to electrify the screen. To get the right moves and music, he got Eddie Redmayne’s movement coach, and then he watched Mercury and danced around at home for a year. “When Brian May of Queen was on set, I did my best version of Freddie. I was working on him so long, I fell in love with him,” Malek gushed. “I keep blowing him kisses.”

Glenn Close Honored at the Museum of the Moving Image Gala: “With One Look”

It was the lustful look as Glenn Close’s character locked eyes with Michael Douglas at dinner in the clip from the unforgettable Fatal Attraction that was truly the show stopper at the 583 Park Avenue party space where The Museum of the Moving Image held their gala honoring Close’s extraordinary career on stage and screen this week. Everyone knows what follows, from the boiled rabbit to the bathtub in this game changer for cinema history, and if this were the only movie Close ever did, the only role she ever occupied, it would distinguish her legacy. Add to that her Cruella DeVille in 101 Dalmations, her Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard recently revived on Broadway, and her role opposite the formidable Jonathan Pryce in her current movie, The Wife. Her demeanor can morph in a moment, paced meticulously as you measure her emotion. You may even gasp, breathless.

Gotham Awards: Showing Up is its Own Reward

Traditionally, the IFP Gotham Awards kicks off the film season’s tributes. As celebrations go, this decidedly downtown dinner brings together New York’s movie making elite while honoring films in Oscar-like categories. A balcony at Cipriani Wall Street becomes a giant schmooze fest, a meet and greet for many before the big events in Los Angeles, before the night’s filet mignon is served, and while the nominees for Best Actor, Feature, etc. continue to be hopeful. There, Ethan Hawke pontificated about Claire Denis and how she should receive a Gotham. We could not praise him enough for his movie Blaze, one that he directed about a music legend. That was before he took home a Best Actor statue for his performance in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, and Schrader received his for Best Screenplay. But the night was young.

Alfonso Cuaron Goes Local: Roma at the Whitby Hotel

No Oscar list this season will fail to have Alfonso Cuaron’s latest masterpiece Roma at the top. On critics’ minds: will the award be for Best Foreign Language Film or a straight Best Picture? But that’s not what’s on this director’s mind. Already an Oscar winner for Gravity, he turned his talents to a black & white, acutely detailed, Spanish and indigenous language realization of a key figure in his childhood, a maid he renamed Cleo who came to live with his family in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. A mother figure to him, from a disadvantaged class, he asks himself, what does she represent in the world of now?

Margarethe von Trotta’s Anxiety of Influence: Searching for Ingmar Bergman

Actress, director Margarethe von Trotta was not thinking of making a documentary film, but when offered the opportunity to honor Swedish director Ingmar Bergman who would be 100 this year with a film about him, she could not say no. Von Trotta is best known for her feature films, Rosa Luxemburg, Rosenstrasse, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (co-written and co-directed with her ex-husband Volker Schlondorff), among them, now screening at Quad Cinema for a retrospective of her work. And with Criterion putting together a boxed DVD set of Bergman’s films, she accepted the challenge of making the documentary, wondering, she told me this week on the phone from Munich, “how can I make a film about such a genius?” Told, do it in a personal way, she made Searching for Ingmar Bergman a most insightful, entertaining tribute from one filmmaker to another.

Maggie Gyllenhaal Crosses the Line as The Kindergarten Teacher

1 Jake Gyllenhaal, hosting a special screening of his sister’s new film, The Kindergarten Teacher, at Metrograph, was all praise for Maggie Gyllenhaal. “I’ve been watching her act all my life,” he smiled broadly at a crowd that included Christopher Lloyd, Israel Horowitz, Diane Sawyer, and many others including his Wildlife director Paul Dano and co-writer Zoe Kazan. The titular kindergarten teacher joins a roster of edgy women brought to life by Gyllenhaal’s ample talents. Think Secretary where her character enjoys a good spanking. In this movie, she’s a thwarted poet who recognizes the poetic gifts of one of her students, a five-year old Jimmy Roy played by one of the producer’s children’s classmate Parker Sevak. Wishing to nurture his verse, Gyllenhaal’s Lisa goes creepy, unacceptable. Every parent will get the willies watching what she does, all with a “good heart.”

The Price of Everything: Poons, Koons, and Balloons

“Contemporary art is a luxury brand,” declared HBO’s Richard Plepler, introducing Nathaniel Kahn’s excellent, entertaining documentary, The Price of Everything, at a posh premiere at MoMA last week. “And the artist is our last best hope.” These words were not lost on a crowd that included artists like George Condo, Marilyn Minter, Larry Poons and Jeff Koons, all featured in the film. In addition, museum curators, private collectors, and auction house personnel were all part of the mix celebrating a movie about a market that keeps its prices up. After all, “you can’t have a golden age without gold,” as someone wisely put it. All the while, the work created on camera, as some question what makes art art, or good art, seems to ignore the vagaries of commerce, allowing the money minded to thrive.

The Times of Bill Cunningham Premieres at the New York Film Festival

When New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham would train his camera on you—whether at a posh opening or on the street—it made your day. Anna Wintour --Cunningham photographed the Vogue editor since she was a teen—famously used to say, “One dresses for Bill.” His discerning eye assessed celebrities and civilians alike, snapping those with elan, style, joie de vivre. His attention would say, You had “IT.” This beloved New York icon, who died in 2016 at age 88, is revived in a new documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, Mark Bozek’s loving tribute. Featuring an interview with Cunningham at its center, this entertaining documentary premiered at Alice Tully Hall this week, one of several stellar non-fiction selections at this year’s New York Film Festival.

Free Solo: High at Lincoln Center

If any one can make the perilous professional sport of rock climbing sexy and glamorous, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi can. In Free Solo, their latest documentary (the couple made the extraordinary Meru), they turn their lens on renowned climber Alex Honnold, as he fulfills a dream, to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Of course he had done this before, utilizing all the tools of his trade including ropes, but now he wants to go it without. Needless to say, many have died attempting to climb without this support. To add to the drama, Alex is also in a relationship with Sanni. The charm of Free Solo is that the film goes into Alex’s personal, eccentricities, living in a van, eating with a spatula as his utensil of choice. He’s quite the barbarian, softened by a lovely blond who teaches him to say, I love you.

Jane Fonda in Five Acts: Hair Epiphanies and Other Revelations

Despite a long and distinguished career making film portraits as creator of PBS’ American Masters series, Susan Lacy will not just do anyone. She proclaimed at a Q&A with Alec Baldwin at a Hamptons International Film Festival pre-screening of her HBO documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, she would not make a film about someone she does not like, “like someone who I want to get out of the White House.” “I really understand,” replied Baldwin, scrunching up into his best Trump face. “I really, really do.”

Reflecting on her PBS time, recounting the genesis of American Masters, Lacy spoke about her certainty that stories on culture-shifting figures such as James Baldwin, Joni Mitchell, Judy Garland, and her favorite, Leonard Bernstein, were inherently dramatic, often geniuses fighting against cultural mores, or their own demons. That was a difficult sell, but she prevailed. Now making films for HBO, like last year’s superb Spielberg, she does not have to raise the money. HBO just asks, what’s your budget?