World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
The LFF surprise film revealed, Red Rising heads to Paramount, the first post-merger releases, Busan crowns its winners & The Color of Money turns 40.
Morning, all. After yesterday’s busy Friday at the cinema, we finally have the answer to the question that’s been keeping London’s festival-goers guessing.
London Film Festival: The festival’s annual surprise film, screened at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday night, turned out to be Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, the story of how Sylvester Stallone fought to write and star in the original Rocky. Farrelly took the stage beforehand to introduce it, praising newcomer Anthony Ippolito, who plays Stallone, and the cast includes Matt Dillon as Stallone’s father, Stephan James as Carl Weathers, AnnaSophia Robb and P.J. Byrne. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman called it a cleverly crafted crowd-pleaser, and said Ippolito gets Stallone just right. It opens in UK and Ireland cinemas on 6 November, via Entertainment Film Distributors, and in the US in select cinemas on 6 November before expanding on 20 November, timed for the original film’s 50th anniversary on 21 November. Last year’s surprise was Tuner. Cue the Bill Conti theme and a mass outbreak of air-punching.
Red Rising heads to Paramount: Paramount has acquired the film rights to Pierce Brown’s science-fiction series Red Rising, with The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence attached to direct. Six novels have been published so far, with a seventh and final instalment, Red God, on the way. There’s no word yet on casting, a start date or a release date.
The first post-merger releases: Two films this weekend are the first Paramount and Warner Bros. releases since the merger. Street Fighter comes from Legendary through Paramount, as I mentioned yesterday, and Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 classic The Devils, a Warner Bros. film, is getting a limited 4K re-release in US cinemas. It’s hard to think of two films with less in common. I just saw The Devils at an LFF screening I can confirm that the print is sparklingly high quality.
Busan crowns its winners: The 31st Busan International Film Festival closed on Thursday, with Majid Majidi’s Midday Meal winning the Best Film award, worth $37,000, which gives it automatic Oscar eligibility. Lee Yun Chan won Best Director for the Taiwanese film To Be Ordinary, the Special Jury Prize went to the Indonesian-Japanese co-production Ibuku, and the New Currents Award went to the Punjabi-language Indian film Birds in the Dark. Variety reports that the festival, which was celebrating its first edition since being recognised as an A-list festival, drew its biggest audiences since 2015.
Forty years of The Color of Money: Martin Scorsese’s sequel to The Hustler opened in US cinemas 40 years ago today. Paul Newman returned as Fast Eddie Felson, now an ageing hustler mentoring Tom Cruise’s cocky young pool shark, months after Cruise had been flying fighter jets in Top Gun. Newman won the Best Actor Oscar for it, at his seventh nomination, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The pool cue twirling alone is worth the price of admission.
Birthdays: Felicity Jones turns 43 today, star of The Theory of Everything and Rogue One, and Eminem, who turns 54, starred in 8 Mile.
That’s all for today.
Subscribe
Don’t forget, you can subscribe to One Mann’s Movies to receive future reviews by email right here. No salesman will call!