Skip navigation

Tag Archives: Paul Thomas Anderson

Fiona Apple: six reasons she is the perfect artist for a time of crisis

The singer is known for her honesty in life and her music. Shes been talking about solitude, sobriety and how Quentin Tarantino convinced her to give up cocaine

Its been eight years since Fiona Apple last graced the world with a studio album, but an illuminating profile in the latest issue of the New Yorker, filled with a fair number of wild anecdotes involving her celebrity cohorts, serves to remind us of her brilliance. Here are six reasons why Apple is just the performer we need in this mixed-up, locked-down world.

She doesnt shy away from the difficult topics
Apple has said that her new album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, is about women and not being afraid to speak. Throughout her career she has spoken, in her songs and in the press, about her issues with depression, self-harm, OCD, PTSD, and the fact that, when she was 12, she was raped by a stranger.

In so doing, she paved the way for other women to speak about their experiences, from Kesha to Lady Gaga, and on to the #MeToo movement.

She has the best story about giving up cocaine
Every addict should just get locked in a private movie theatre with QT [Quentin Tarantino] and PTA [Paul Thomas Anderson] on coke, she jokingly told the New Yorker magazine. And theyll never want to do it again.

She can teach us a thing or two about self-isolation
Apple doesnt venture out much these days, save to walk her dog along the beach near her home in Venice Beach, California.

She has learned how to live a little more wisely
Once a bottle-of-vodka-a-day level drinker, Apple is now sober and has been vegan for many years.

She knows her political onions
Last summer, Apple pledged two years worth of earnings from her song Criminal to the While They Wait fund, which finances legal support and necessities for immigrants seeking asylum. In 2017, she released Tiny Hands for the Womens March on Washington. She has said that one of her latest tracks, For Her, was written in a cloud of rage after the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to Supreme Court Justice.

She has her priorities straight
In late 2012, Apple postponed the South American leg of her tour due to the ill-health of her dog, Janet.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/17/fiona-apple-six-reasons-she-is-the-perfect-artist-for-a-time-of-crisis

The most exciting films of 2017: returning auteurs

In the latest in our 10-part series, the films we are most looking forward to next year by the worlds most singular directors

Based on a True Story

Now 83, Roman Polanski remains firmly in the public eye, despite not having shot a film since 2013s ropy Venus in Fur. But Carnage, released a couple of years before that, suggested there was life and fire in the old genius yet, and this one has the great advantage of being scripted by Olivier Assayas. Another meta-fictional thriller in the mould of The Ghost Writer, this one stars Eva Green as a writer who becomes involved with an obsessive admirer.

Call Me By Your Name

Maybe the most intriguing among a strikingly tasty-looking bunch of Sundance titles, Luca Guadagninos latest may not feature Tilda Swinton, but it does look of a brilliant, shimmering kind with the likes of A Bigger Splash. Armie Hammer stars as an American academic who starts a summer love affair with an adolescent boy (Timothe Chalamet) while staying at his parents house on the Italian Riviera. Michael Stuhlbarg is the possibly spluttering papa.

The Death and Life of John F Donovan

Dont expect it to show up at Cannes no way, no how, not after what happened last time but still were reserving space for the latest by enfant terrible Xavier Dolan. Another English-language debut, this one stars Kit Harington as a rising US actor accused by gossip mag editor Jessica Chastain of being a paedophile. The supporting cast is as wow-y as that premise: Natalie Portman, Kathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, Michael Gambon.

Downsizing

Heres one that should make someone who, say, might be on maternity leave from March, feel really sore to miss: Alexander Paynes follow-up to the masterful Nebraska. And its his most ambitious to date: a sci-fi comedy drama starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig (subbing at the last minute for Reese Witherspoon) as a couple who voluntarily decide to be shrunk. But then she backs out at the last minute. Margo Martindale (star of Paynes fantastic Paris short), Jason Sudeikis, Alec Baldwin and Christoph Waltz co-star.

The Handmaiden

Handmaiden.

Heres the only one on this list any of us have seen already: Park Chan-wooks simmering adaptation of the Sarah Walters novel Fingersmith. It premiered at Cannes in May and was warmly received as one of the most erotic movies ever made.

Happy End

Michael Haneke and Isabelle Huppert reunite for his first film since Amour and hers since, well, the trio of brilliant hits she had this year. Details are sketchy, but we know it co-stars Amour lead Jean-Louis Trintignant as well as Mathieu Kassovitz, that it was shot in Paris, Calais and London, and that the migrant crisis might be a backdrop. Nous laimons dj.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The Lobster might not have picked up the acclaim it deserved but Colin Farrell is still in with a shot at the Golden Globes and its certainly upped Yorgos Lanthimoss profile in the US. Hopefully that bodes well for a great launch for this Cincinnati-set drama about a surgeon (Farrell, again) who forms a familial bond with a teenage boy, with apparently disastrous results. Nicole Kidman plays his wife; Alicia Silverstone crops up too, amazingly.

Lean on Pete

Of all the projects to follow 45 Years, Lean on Pete wasnt quite what we anticipated from Andrew Haigh. But whatever that fella dishes out, well take it. Lean on Pete is a racehorse; he and a 15-year-old take the trip from Portland, Oregon, to distant relatives in Wyoming. Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny and Steve Zahn feature.

Mektoub Is Mektoub

The fallout from Abdellatif Kechiches 2013 Cannes win for Blue Is the Warmest Colour did not paint him in the rosiest light. This one is based on Antoine Bgaudeaus novel La blessure, la vraie, about a screenwriter whose personal and professional dealings intermingle during a visit to his hometown on the Mediterranean. Other than that, its a puzzle: the cast is a mystery, but were guessing well find our around late April, when the Cannes contenders are announced.

Metalhead

Its easy to see why Derek Cianfrance might want a change of direction. His last movie, The Light Between Oceans, was a bruising, heartfelt, 100-hankie weepie on which multiple critics poured scorn (leading to Cianfrances wife, no less, writing a letter of protest). The Blue Valentine director this time round is going down the quasi-documentary route with the story of a heavy metal drummer who blows his eardrums out and must learn to adapt to a world of silence.

Redoubtable

As one of the few people who liked The Search, Michel Hazanaviciuss follow-up proper to The Artist (never released in England due to the brutal festival reception), Im a nervous for and excited about this biopic of Jean-Luc Godard, about his courting of the then 17-year-old wife Anne Wiazemsky. Louis Garrel plays the director, Stacy Martin the actor. Brnice Bejo is also in the mix; her relationship with husband Hazanavicius may also have informed their involvement in this one.

The Sisters Brothers

Joaquin Phoenix makes his first appearance on this list, this time in the first English-language film from Jacques Audiard. Based on Patrick DeWitts novel, its about sibling assassins (Phoenix and John C Reilly) pursing a gold prospector across 1,000 miles of 1850s Oregon desert. Audiard was the surprise winner of the Palme dOr at Cannes last year for Dheepan; this looks quite wildly different.

Submergence

Wim Wenders latest sounds faintly bananas. James McAvoy plays an Englishman imprisoned by jihadists in a windowless room on the eastern coast of Africa. Alicia Vikander is a diver prepping to hit the ocean floor in Greenland. The previous Christmas, they had a romance which began on a French beach. How this one will play we have no idea, but Charlotte Rampling co-stars, which suggests swimmingly.

T2

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/dec/22/the-most-exciting-films-of-2017-returning-auteurs