Rebecca proves to be the novel that keeps on giving
LOS ANGELES — Daphne du Maurier’s beloved novel Rebecca has seen multiple screen adaptations but the director of the latest film version believes his may be the closest to the 1938 book.
The thriller about a young, naive woman who marries an older aristocrat but finds herself in the shadow of his late wife, Rebecca, was an Oscar best picture winner for director Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. But the ending of the book was changed.
The new film, directed by Ben Wheatley and starring Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristin Scott Thomas, will be released on Netflix on Wednesday.
“I went back to it and kind of re-read it and realized that this is the first script for a feature version of the book that had all the plot in it. Before, there had been things taken out and major story points which had been removed,” Wheatley said.
James, who plays the young woman, said the novel was packed with themes including male-female power dynamics as well as “obsession and jealousy and the patriarchy and everything within a very addictive, commercial, gothic horror thriller romance.”
Scott Thomas, a longtime fan of the book, said she was thrilled to be cast as the manipulative housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, played in the 1940 version by Judith Anderson.
“I reveled in creating her, in creating the image and in the sort of construction of her. But actually doing it, actually being her when they say ‘Action’ and having to be so beastly, it’s actually quite hard,” she said.
“I think people love those sort of stories where something suddenly appears incredibly realistic and true and you can really identify with it and then suddenly it sort of slips into something a bit more of a fantasy,” Scott Thomas said. — Reuters
Borat bounces back just ahead of US elections
LOS ANGELES — In 2006, he shocked the world with his scathing cultural satire of the United States in Borat. Now British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is back with a mockumentary sequel that is garnering mixed reviews two weeks ahead of the US elections.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, available on Amazon Prime from Friday, sees Baron Cohen back in character as racist, sexist Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev who once again travels to America.
This time, the plot revolves around his attempts to marry off his 15 year-old-daughter to Vice-President Mike Pence or, failing that, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York now best known as President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.
“Sequels don’t come more triumphant, or well-timed, than this,” said the Daily Beast in its review on Wednesday.
Variety said the film delivers a “consistent, coherent feature-length narrative, punctuated with outrageous, unpredictable set pieces.”
Few of the film’s pranks were revealed ahead of the release, but reviewers said they include Cohen gate-crashing a political conference dressed as Trump, a coronavirus quarantine stay with supporters of QAnon conspiracy theories, and visits to an abortion clinic and a debutante ball.
“My aim here was not to expose racism and anti-Semitism,” Cohen told the New York Times last weekend in his only major print interview around the film. “The aim is to make people laugh, but we reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism.”
Cohen said he wanted the movie released before the Nov. 3 election because “we wanted it to be a reminder to women of who they’re voting for — or who they’re not voting for.”
While most of the reviews were positive, some found the movie tasteless.
“This joke isn’t funny anymore,” the Hollywood Reporter said, adding that “the Trump years make him (Borat) painfully redundant.” — Reuters
Paul McCartney to release solo album in December
LONDON — Paul McCartney will release McCartney III in December, a new collection of stripped-back songs all written, performed and produced by the ex-Beatle, 50 years after his first solo album.
Recorded this year in Sussex in southern England, McCartney III is mostly built from McCartney’s live takes on vocals and guitar or piano, overlaying his bass playing and drumming.
It joins two other albums — McCartney and McCartney II — created single-handedly by the 78-year-old at critical times in his life, in 1970 and 1980, when he was seeking a creative rebirth.
“I was living lockdown life on my farm with my family and I would go to my studio every day. I had to do a little bit of work on some film music and that turned into the opening track and then when it was done I thought what will I do next?” said McCartney.
He turned to half-finished fragments he’d created over the years.
“Each day I’d start recording with the instrument I wrote the song on and then gradually layer it all up, it was a lot of fun. It was about making music for yourself rather than making music that has to do a job. So, I just did stuff I fancied doing. I had no idea this would end up as an album.”
McCartney’s most recent album is 2018’s Egypt Station, and the musician was still touring last year.
McCartney III is described as offering a vast and intimate range of modes and moods, from soul searching to wistful, from playful to raucous and all points between. — Reuters
