Milena Canonero, the legendary Italian costume designer known for her collaborations with the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola, Warren Beatty and others, made a rare public speaking appearance in Switzerland, in which she provided insight into her career.
During a talk at the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, where she received this year’s Vision Award on Sunday evening, Canonero recalled her first meeting with Anderson at the Chateau Marmont to discuss The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. “He was really friendly and open-minded,” she said, according to a live translation. “Of course, I was familiar with his movies, including the very early ones. So I was very happy to get to know him.”
Different directors have different focus areas, of course. “Wes is very much involved with the look of his characters,” the costume design legend highlighted. “Objects, decorations, and all these things are very important to him.”
While Kubrick “doesn’t tell you much” until late in the process, “with Wes, it’s a sort of symbiosis,” Canonero said.
About The Grand Budapest Hotel, she recalled that, “I didn’t want to design the usual green or brown or black uniforms, even off-white. It was just by chance that I noticed … this amazing purple color.” She added: “When I met Wes at his countryside home in the U.K., I said … look at this, and he jumped on the chair and said ‘This is it’.”
About the look she developed for Tilda Swinton’s Madame D character, Canonero said: “The film is set in the ‘20s, ‘30s. So I thought about [Gustav] Klimt.”
About her education, Canonero said: “I never went to any costume design school,” but attended special night classes in the U.K. “I learned everything in the U.K. I owe everything to the U.K.” She added: “I never completed my studies in any country of the world, and I keep studying.”
The costume designer then discussed her long-running creative partnership with Francis Ford Coppola, including on Megalopolis, which he self-funded. The director wanted to “focus on the architect Cesar Catilina [played by Adam Driver] rather than Cicero [Giancarlo Esposito], who represents the establishment,” she said. “Francis made it very clear that they are two opposites.” Given the story’s references to ancient Rome, the costumes she presented to the director included historic references.
Canonero explained the movie, which has divided opinions, this way: “It is a fable about a great country, like America, that is in the middle of chaos … and that is crashing.”
Canonero also discussed working with Sofia Coppola on Marie Antoinette, emphasizing that “the evolution of Marie Antoinette was Sofia’s interest.” That, in turn, had an impact on the costume choices. “It’s a completely different 18th century compared to [Kubrick’s] Barry Lyndon’s,” she said. That meant “a lot of creative freedom where you mix up the present and the past with a pop attitude.”
Canonero also traveled to the Swiss fest to introduce a screening of Megalopolis.
She has won four Academy Awards for best costume design, namely for Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire (1981), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, along with three BAFTAs, three Costume Designers Guild Awards, the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, and various other honors.
“Since making her debut as a costume designer on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Milena Canonero has produced some of the most visionary costumes in film history and has shaped our collective imagination through the clothes we see on screen, using colorful fabrics and innovative cuts to draw out the essential natures of some of the most recognizable cinematic creations,” Locarno organizers said when they unveiled her as this year’s honoree.
“Like a Renaissance artist, she has combined the profound wisdom of craftsmanship with the potential of cinema, thus opening infinite spaces for human imagination and expression,” Locarno’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said at the time. “The work of Milena Canonero, beginning with the costumes she designed for A Clockwork Orange, has forever changed the perception of the expressive possibilities of costume design and even beyond, reshaping our thinking about cinema in general.”
Jelly Roll, Bunnie Xo have sparked separation rumours
Jelly Roll’s partner Bunnie Xo seemingly have had enough of the ongoing speculations about the status of her marriage with the Save Me singer.
The 45-year-old appeared on Friday, August 8 episode of podcast, Dumb Blonde during which she addressed the rumours.
“Someone said the other day, ‘They used to always be together, and now you never see them together,’” Bunnie mentioned.
She lifted the curtain on the lack of appearance of the two as a couple, “I’m like, ‘Do you guys not know that for the past six months [that] I’ve been trying to make a baby?’”
“My husband has to work to f***ing bring home the bacon,” Bunnie shared in exasperation about the dynamics of their marriage and the roles the two have adopted in their relationship.
“Luckily, I get the luxury of working from home. He doesn’t. He has to make appearances, but I literally have been on IVF meds for f***ing six months and going through heartbreak and f***ing so much s***,” she unveiled about her IVF journey with the country star.
Bunnie (real name Alyssa DeFord) shared, “That’s why you haven’t seen me [because] mama’s about to pop out. I gotta remind them. I might even do a sexy photoshoot and piss off all the f***ing [haters],”
For the unversed, the two tied the knot in 2016. They do not have any children together, but Jelly Roll (real name Jason Bradley DeFord) has two children from previous relationships.
Prince Harry, Meghan ‘smeared’ William, Kate Middleton in ‘cruelest’ terms
A royal expert has alleged that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry not only made Queen Elizabeth’s final years a ‘misery’ but also ‘smeared’ Kate Middleton and Prince William in the “cruelest and most personal terms.”
The Radar Online quoted royal expert Adam McLeod accusing the California-based royal couple that they had smeared the Prince and Princess of Wales in the “cruelest and most personal terms.”
He further said Meghan and Harry also made the Queen’s final years a “misery”.
McLeod described Archie and Lilibet doting parents as “figures of conspicuous failure” and “ridicule,” pointing to their faltering media deals and lack of public credibility.
The expert said: “They have no talent; no appetite for the hard yards of dedicated work.”
The royal expert also accused Meghan and Harry of ‘smearing the monarchy’ and ‘damaging the Commonwealth’ with allegations of racism and personal attacks on the Royal Family.
Adam McLeod continued: “They besmirched their kin, the Crown and indeed this country with baseless charges of the rankest racism – this from a man who once mocked an Army comrade and was even snapped, smugly, in Nazi uniform.”
He also urged King Charles to stand firm, saying “Charles III must let the King rule him in this, and not the man.”
Is Bob the Builder Dead? Why Viral Tweets Sparked Confusion: know details
Social media is buzzing with news that the beloved British animated children’s character Bob the Builder has died at age 26.
The news has sparked a mix of reactions with many unsure how to treat this news- as a tragic event or just another internet joke.
Here’s everything you need to know to separate the rumors from facts:
Viral posts claim Bob was ‘shot in Atlanta’
According to dozens of viral tweets, Bob was allegedly found dead in Atlanta with three gunshot wounds to the chest.
Some posts even claim that police are searching for the culprit, adding a fake crime scene backstory to make the claim sound more authentic.
One user wrote, “Damn, Bob the Builder was living that gangster life, RIP Bob.”
One user, optimistic about Bob the Builder being alive, read: “Hope the news of Bob the Builder being found dead is wrong.”
Let’s separate fact from fiction
In reality, the rumour comes from a lyric in a rapper JID’s latest song, Community, where he says, “I’ll put a bullet in Bob the f**in’ Builder ‘fore they try and kick us out the building.”
And that was the line JID’s fans picked up and now the rest is history.
This line from JID’ recent song release, Community became an internet sensation, stormed X (formerly Twitter) which has so far garnered over 300,000 likes, and 38,000 tweets with over 18 million views.
The over-the-top claims, paired with dramatic fake news edits, has sparked outrage in online spaces, with thousands joining in on the joke and mock-demanding JID’s arrest.
Who’s Bob the Builder? Every detail here
Meet Bob the builder, the ultimate DIY hero beloved by millennials and Gen Z.
Bob the Builder, was a British animated series created by Keith Chapman, launched in 1998, follows the adventures of Bob and his crew of chatty tools and, machines as they tackle building projects and solve problems.
With his iconic catchphrase “Can we fix it? Yes, we can!”, Bob teaches kids the value of teamwork, creativity, and perseverance.
A global hit, Bob’s feel-good vibes and can-do attitude have made him a beloved character worldwide!
A couple of days before our interview, in late July, Sharon Stone announced on Instagram that her mother had died. When we meet over video link, I express my sympathies. Stone is known for her straight talking, but now she outdoes herself. “Mom, Dot, actually died a few months ago, but I was only ready to tell the public about it now because I always get my mad feelings first when people die.” What kind of mad, I ask – grief, confusion, loss? She smiles. “A little bit of anger and a little bit of ‘I didn’t fucking need you anyway’, you know!”
Now she’s laughing. “My mom wasn’t of a sunny disposition. She was hilarious, but she said terrible things to me. Dot swore like a Portuguese dock worker.” Which takes us to her mother’s final days. “She said: ‘I’m going to kick you in the cunt,’ to me probably 40 times in the last five days. But that was her delirium. And when the last thing your mother says to you before she dies is: ‘You talk too much, you make me want to commit suicide,’ and the whole rooms laughs, you think: that’s a hard one to go out on, Mom! But that’s how she was. This lack of ability to find tenderness and peace within herself.”
Stone doesn’t do small talk. The actor, who became a household name with the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct, is here to chat about her new film, Nobody 2, but the movie is going to have to wait. Stone talks about what she wants to talk about and today family dysfunction has top priority. To be fair, this makes sense – its impact has dominated much of her life, despite being hidden from the public until her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice.
That was when she revealed her maternal grandfather was a violent abuser and a paedophile. She said there hadn’t been a day in her mother’s life when Dot had not been beaten by him, from the age of five until she left the family home at nine to go into domestic service. Stone also said he had abused her and her sister when they were little girls.
You never know what to expect with Stone. Horrifying trauma in one sentence, shopping at Cos the next. She’s at home in Los Angeles when we talk and looks fabulous – blond bob, huge pink specs, pearls “the size of small quail eggs”, a white shirt baggy enough for David Byrne, white trousers ripped in all the right places. She moves away from the smartphone, so I can see. “I will show you my entire ensemble. The shirt’s down to my knees. Let me get where you can see all of me. Let me put you on my bookshelf and then you can see all of me.” Now, she’s using her smartphone as a mirror. “I’m putting a little lipstick on for you.” I tell her I like her glasses. “Oh thanks. I’m a glasses whore, I have to be honest.”
‘She was hilarious, but she said terrible things to me’ … with her mother in 2002. Photograph: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Stone has often talked about being shy to the point of agoraphobia, but there is little sign of it today. As Dot said, she’s a talker: let the camera roll and you’ve got yourself a one-woman show. Imagine a scatological Norma Desmond as written by Alan Bennett.
Her voice is deep and mafioso raspy. She talks in italics, deals in extremes, tells outrageous story after outrageous story, segueing between the savage and the empathic, naming names to give libel lawyers a heart attack, before finishing her sentences with: “Right?” as if daring you to disagree.
For now, though, she’s not finished with Dot. Stone is 67 and for much of her life she thought her mother hated her. It was only later, when they became much closer, that she understood how troubled Dot’s life had been and the repercussions this had had for Stone and her siblings. Stone says Dot had a terrible death. “She was desperately afraid that when she died her mother and father would be there. She didn’t want to die, because she didn’t want to see them, because they were so awful. So I convinced her that I had put them in jail and they were not going to be there. She was in such hell.” She pauses. “Nobody comes through this life intact. So why do we pretend that one does?”
Her mother certainly didn’t. Nor, for that matter, has Stone. In her memoir, she describes being locked in a room with her grandfather and her sister. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, merging the specific with the abstract so you’re never sure exactly what happened. At one point, she walks into a room when he appears to be sexually abusing her sister. Did he sexually abuse Stone, too? “Yes. And when I said so in my book, everybody went crazy about it and said I was telling other people’s stories. They were like: you’re telling your sister’s story, or this story, or that story. And I wasn’t telling anybody’s story. I didn’t name anybody’s name in my book. Not anybody unless they did any good.” It’s classic Stone, told with utter conviction – although she did name her sister.
Was her sister upset with her? “She’s refused to read my book, even though she encouraged me to write it, as did my mom, and I dedicated my book to Mom.” Did her grandfather sexually abuse her mother, too? “Yes, of course, and all of her sisters. That’s why she was removed from her home when she was nine. In her gym class, she was bleeding through the back of her uniform and her teacher brought in social services. They removed her shirt and she had been so badly beaten that her back was covered in scars and blood.
“I think the abuse is why all of her sisters went crazy. They were all treated for mental health problems. There were five of them and only my mom lived past 50. And they had a couple of other sisters who died in their early childhood.”
I ask how long her grandfather abused her for. “I got away from him by the time I was five or six, before he was super sexually abusive to me. I was a very savvy kid. I got away with much lighter abuse than other people did.”
Stone knows she has upset people by exposing family secrets, but she’s willing to pay the price. “When you’re the person to break the family chain, nobody likes you, right? Your family doesn’t like you, your friends don’t know what is happening with you. People just think you’re crazy and there’s something wrong with you.”
Although Stone’s relationship with her mother was troubled, she did observe a loving relationship between her mother and her father, Joe. Despite him being a harsh disciplinarian in her early years, Stone went on to have a wonderful relationship with Joe, a factory worker who became a tool and die manufacturer. He was a huge influence on her, telling her that if she wanted respect she had to demand it, and showing her how to assert herself in a man’s world. “My dad and I were tighter than two coats of paint.”
I tell Stone I could listen to her talking about her family for ever, but we should talk about movies – particularly Nobody 2. She doesn’t seem to hear, because she has moved on to the contemporary US. “In my country, in a democracy, there is a thing that we have to respect the office of the president whether or not you agree with what’s happening. When the president decides to remove democracy, does that remove our agreement to respect the office of the presidency?”
‘If you don’t like mothers and you don’t like women, you’re not going to get very far with creativity and expansiveness’ … with her eldest son, Roan, in 2021. Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images
That’s a good question, I say. What do you think? She says she doesn’t know, that she’s a Buddhist and in Buddhism they call it a koan – a paradoxical riddle that invites deep thought rather than a simple answer. She talks about the way the rights of protected minorities are being removed: “In our current administration, any disability is considered a fuck-off.”
Take dyslexia, she says. Her son Roan has it “and he is running three corporations”, including Cahuenga Media Group, a production and licensing company that focuses on music, television and film-related media. Her brother Patrick, who died in 2023, had it and was a “brilliant” master carpenter. She points out that many architects and scientists are dyslexic. “But what we’re looking at now in America, is: ‘OK, no more disabilities.’ Suddenly, nobody with disabilities has value. OK, we’re gonna fire everyone in these scientific jobs. And guess what? France is taking all of our scientists.”
Blimey! It’s not easy to keep up with Stone or get a word in (evidence suggests scientists are moving from the US to France because of the government’s funding cuts). She’s straight on to misogyny: “The sweetest fruit is at the end of the branch. These are the things that nature tells us, Mother Nature, Mother Gaia, Mother Earth. But if you don’t like mothers and you don’t like women, you’re not going to get very far with creativity and expansiveness.”
Does it feel like an anti-women time in the US? She removes her glasses and pins me with her glare. “It doesn’t matter, because we make you. And we care for you. And we raise you. And we feed you. And we house you. And we show you where your stuff is, because you couldn’t find your fucking socks without us. So if you don’t have our intrauterine tracking device to help you find your ass in a snowstorm, I don’t know what you would do. So you can be as anti-women as you want to be, and you can make babies in a test tube if that’s the world you want to live in – and have a good time!”
I assume she’s addressing Donald Trump, but it feels personal. I don’t want to live in that kind of world, I protest meekly. “Exactly! It’s never meant to be that way, because birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, so the rest of this stuff is just nonsense. To me. OK? Because I am very much in league with Mother Nature, Mother Gaia.”
The young Stone was exceptionally bright, as she’s quick to tell me. She describes herself as “fiercely intelligent” (two well-chosen words) and her IQ is reportedly 154 (genius level). She skipped several grades at school; at 15, she and four boys were sent to Edinboro State College in Pennsylvania as an “experiment”, three years ahead of most of their peers. She majored in English literature and excelled at golf, but left before graduating. “My college professor was furious when I was leaving for modelling,” she says. “He was like: ‘You’re throwing away your career,’ because he really thought my career was in writing.”
She moved to New York and became a successful model. In 1980, she made her movie debut as an extra in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, dazzlingly Monroe-esque, planting a kiss on a train window. She moved to Hollywood and took lessons from the acting coach Roy London, who also taught Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr, Forest Whitaker and Geena Davis. Over the next decade, she played numerous forgettable parts in forgettable films and television shows.
Breakthrough … with her co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall. Photograph: Carolco Pictures/Allstar
In 1990, Paul Verhoeven cast her opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the science fiction classic Total Recall. When she discovered Verhoeven’s next film was about an enigmatic writer and murder suspect called Catherine Tramell, she was determined to get the part. The problem was, Verhoeven, the screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas, and the male lead, Michael Douglas, didn’t want her, not least because she was largely unknown. Twelve actors (including the top choice, Michelle Pfeiffer, as well as Davis, Julia Roberts, Debra Winger and Kathleen Turner) are said to have turned down the part, which was regarded as risque and risky. Even when she started filming, Stone was convinced they were still looking for a replacement.
Basic Instinct was a huge success, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1992 and taking more than $350m worldwide. More significantly, it was the talking point of the year. LGBTQ+ campaigners picketed it because they believed the depiction of Tramell was homophobic – a rare high-profile lesbian or bisexual character in a blockbuster and a sociopath at best. Critics scavenged over the film’s cultural carrion. Was it exploitative tack or, as the feminist academic Camille Paglia proclaimed, a compelling exploration of sexuality and power dynamics? Paglia said Stone gave “one of the great performances by a woman in screen history”, calling Tramell “a great vamp figure, like Mona Lisa herself, like a pagan goddess”.
And then there was that image. Or, at least, the idea of it. A split-second long – too short to fully register. Yet, somehow, almost seeing her vulva as she uncrossed her legs was more scandalous than simply seeing it. Stone said she had been duped into the shot, writing in her memoir that she was asked to remove her underwear to prevent light reflection and told nothing revealing would be shown. She had no idea it would be used as it was. Appalled, she considered legal action against the film-makers, but ultimately accepted the shot because it was true to Tramell’s character and artistic truth trumped personal humiliation. Basic Instinct made Sharon Stone and, to an extent, destroyed her. Astonishingly, that one image came to define her.
‘I didn’t know that this moment would change my life’ … recreating the infamous leg-cross scene from Basic Instinct at the GQ Germany awards in 2019.
She’s still proud of the film and regards it as a great performance – one only she could have given. The problem is, she says, casting directors deliberately conflated her with Tramell. “They said I was just like the character, like, somehow, they found someone who was just like that and she slipped into the clothes and it was magically recorded on film. Not that it was a difficult part to play and that 12 other actresses of great fame and fortune turned it down. Then, as it played everywhere on the globe for the next 20 years, people started to go: ‘Do you think this really has anything to do with the fact that we thought we saw up her skirt? I think maybe it’s actually a pretty good performance.’
“So it went from me being nominated for a Golden Globe and people laughing when they called my name in the room to people giving me standing ovations and making me the woman of the year. People came to recognise: she’s not going away, the film’s not going away, the impact of the film is not going away.” When she was named GQ Germany’s woman of the year in 2019, she recreated the scene, talked about the importance of empowerment and said, devastatingly: “There was a time when all I was was a joke.”
The film didn’t go away, but Stone did. After Basic Instinct, she made one great movie, turning in an outstanding performance as the damaged con artist Ginger McKenna in Martin Scorsese’s Casino. And then, I begin to say …
She finishes the sentence for me. “And then I got nothing. I never got any more parts.” Why? “I really wish you could tell me. Sometimes I think it was because I was too good.” Stone is not averse to bigging herself up. Nor is she averse to a conspiracy theory.
“Sometimes I think when you get nominated for an Academy Award and the greatest living actor on the planet doesn’t, that’s an imbalance in the male-female dynamic that is not great.” Does she mean Robert De Niro, her Casino co-star? She nods, before suggesting it wasn’t De Niro that was upset, but the powers that be.
Stone returns to the “too good” theory, telling me about a party she was at with Hollywood’s glitterati before the Oscars ceremony. “We were in this very small room. Sidney Poitier was there, Woody Allen, everyone. Francis Coppola came up to me and he put a hand on my shoulder, like my dad used to when something really serious was about to happen. And he said: ‘I need to tell you something and it’s really hard.’ He said: ‘You’re not going to win the Oscar.’ And I said: ‘What?’ And he said: ‘You’re not going to win the Oscar, Sharon.’ I went: ‘Why?’ And he went: ‘I didn’t win it for The Godfather and Marty didn’t win it for Raging Bull and you’re not going to win it for Casino.’
‘I am a big fat loser like Marty Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola’ … with Robert De Niro in Casino, for which she earned an Oscar nomination. Photograph: Archive Photos/Getty Images
“I looked at him and he went: ‘They can’t hear opera. And when you lose, Marty and I are going to be in the room, Sharon, and we want you to know you’re going to lose with us and we are there with you. But your performance will stand the test of time. Over the years, no one will remember who won and lost, but they will remember your performance.”
The way she tells the story, with such po-faced gravitas, is some performance in itself. She continues, in the voice of Coppola: “‘And what you have to do as an actress is remember you are not a regular actress, you are an opera singer. And not everyone will understand you, and not everyone will understand your ability. You will lose with Marty and you will lose with me, but you will always be in our losers’ circle.’” She finally allows herself a smile. “So that is what I have carried through my life – that I am a big fat loser like Marty and Francis Ford Coppola.”
It’s hard to know why Stone didn’t get offered the roles she deserved after Casino, although, aside from the conspiracy theories, there were some other reasons. In 2000, she and her second husband, Phil Bronstein, adopted Roan and she focused on motherhood. A year later, at 43, she had a near fatal stroke. It’s a miracle she survived – she says her brain bled for nine days and doctors gave her a 1% chance of survival. She had to relearn to walk, speak and read.
Incredibly, she made a full recovery, but offers of work dried up. “In those days, as a woman, if something happened to you, you were done,” she says. “It was as though you did something bad or wrong. So even when I wanted to come back to work, it was like: ‘Sure, you can do four episodes of Law and Order,’ and that’s it. I did everything I was allowed to do to pay my penance for getting sick.” How long did that last? “That went on and on and on and on and I made nothing. And it just eventually became impossible to work.”
When she was offered parts, she says, they were rubbish. “I reached the point where, after my stroke, and nobody wanting me, and people wanting me to do this silly, diminished work, I decided that I’m not going to work any more.” She corrects herself. She decided not to accept roles she didn’t like, which in effect meant not working.
She believes she has continued to be punished for Basic Instinct by the industry and in her private life. Stone says that when she and Bronstein got divorced in 2004, the film played a significant role in her losing custody of Roan. “They had my eight-year-old on the stand at one point, asking him if they knew his mother did sex movies.” She claims they reduced her to a soft pornography actor, then suggested that made her an unsuitable mother. She says the battle for Roan lasted 11 years, at which point she was finally given responsibility for Roan again. Nevertheless, at the end of her book, she thanks Bronstein and his wife “for finding a path to a whole, healthy and blending family with me. There is no greater gift.” As she says, she looks for the positive.
In 2005, she adopted her second son, Laird, now 20, as a single parent, followed by her third son, 19-year-old Quinn, a year later. With no quality film work coming in, she focused on the art forms she had loved as a child – writing and painting. Her gorgeous impressionist and abstract expressionist paintings now sell for tens of thousands of dollars. The titles (Quaaludes, Hoisted on My Own Petard, If We Make It) could be short stories.
I ask what the painting It’s My Garden, Asshole is about. “I was with a friend who was in her early 40s and had just had her second baby after losing her first. We were discussing how her in-laws had the audacity to tell her they thought she was a little too fat from the second pregnancy when a drone flew over my back yard. I thought: so many people have a lot of opinions about what we should do with our bodies and our faces while we’re delivering life on this planet, and taking care of everybody, and I was like: ‘You know what, it’s my garden, asshole!’”
‘I’m having a fun time’ … at Torino film festival in 2024. Photograph: Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images
Stone also became an activist, raising millions for people with HIV. In 2016, at 58, she went back to university to get the degree she had started at 15. “When Hillary [Clinton] was running for president and said: ‘You can do anything,’ I thought: that’s true, I should get my degree.”
Since Basic Instinct 2 in 2006 – much disparaged by critics and which she called “a piece of shit” – Stone has made few movies of note. But things are changing. This month, she’s back with Nobody 2, about a nobody, played by Bob Odenkirk, who turns out to be a top assassin. “Now, I’m making good films. I was good in Nobody 2 and I know it.” She certainly looks as if she’s having fun as the crime boss Lendina. Stone says when she was offered the part, she insisted on transforming her into a feminist hero. “I said: ‘I need this villain to be more personal to me.’ I don’t want to play villains unless they touch the zeitgeist. So I wanted this villain to feel as if she came out of social media, because that is the most scary thing right now.”
Why is she so often cast as a villain? “I think very beautiful, smart people are perceived in very specific ways. Because I’m a woman who is beautiful, it’s easier to have me not be emotionally intelligent, not have me be deep, not have me be tender and full. People don’t really believe that a beautiful woman is accessible to them.” And inaccessibility, she says, is regarded as a form of villainy. “Men don’t even ask you to date because they can’t imagine you are accessible to them. Within society, we have never said a woman can be beautiful and smart. And kind. And nice. And funny. And a mom. And the breadwinner. No, no, no, no. She couldn’t be all those things, because then, oh my God, she would be equal to a man! If I was beautiful and smart and nice, what would happen to society?”
Five more minutes, the publicist says. Stone is on a roll. “I could be UN person of the year, which I was [she was named the UN Correspondents Association global citizen of the year in 2023 for her humanitarian work]. I could pitch ideas to the United Nations and have them fulfilled and no one may ever know. I could be a Nobel Peace Summit award winner [in 2013 for her HIV and Aids work] and an Einstein winner [she won the Einstein Spirit of Achievement award in 2007, also for her HIV and Aids work]. I could win these awards, but we can’t also have me be nice, or kind, or compassionate, because what would happen? The. World. Would. Fall. Apart.”
Actually, I say, one of my favourite films of hers is one in which she is kind. In The Mighty, she plays the mother of Kieran Culkin’s Freak, a 12-year-old with a terminal condition. She says it’s one of her favourites, too. “And you know why I got that film? I’ll tell you exactly why I got that film. I got that film because I had a production deal with Harvey Weinstein and after years of him paying for my offices and my staff, paying for everything, he realised he wasn’t getting anything he was hoping for. And he turned around and said: ‘I’ve got this children’s book and I have to produce it.’” She stops, briefly. “But I was not going to fuck Harvey Weinstein.”
Did he try it on with her? “Well, I’m not the girl he’s going to take into a hotel room naked and I’m not the girl he’s going to grab. I am the girl he threw across the room at a cocktail party. And I am the girl that he hit. And I am the girl whose ass he grabbed, but I’m not the girl he’s going to rape or molest and I’m not the girl he’s going to ask for a massage, right? But I am the girl he’s going to give a production deal to and going to get fed up with and give a children’s movie to deal with.”
Stone has been associated with amfAR, an Aids research foundation, for 30 years, hosting many of its fundraising galas. In 2007, Weinstein got involved with the charity. “Harvey then put himself on the board, right? And backstage he would shove me around and yell at me and come on stage and grab the mic from me and try to make these inappropriate deals with his friends, like we’re gonna take that money from that guy on this item. Then I’d take the mic from him and say: ‘Harvey, get off the stage, I call the numbers, we’re not taking that deal.’
“I’d come off the stage and he’d shove me across the room and go: ‘Don’t humiliate me,’ and I’d go: ‘You’re a crook, Harvey, get your fucking hands off me.’ He did not try to fuck me, but he was definitely physically violent with me. He slapped me, he threw me across the room, he shoved me around countless times.”
Last question please, the publicist says. Perhaps she’s as exhausted as I am. Stone is over the top, a little unreliable, thoroughly immodest and rather magnificent.
But it feels as if she has barely started. There is so much more to talk about. She has not even mentioned the time the producer Robert Evans advised her to have sex with her Sliver co-star, William Baldwin, to save the film and get a better performance out of him. (She was appalled and refused.) Or the time she had her breasts reconstructed after having benign tumours removed and the surgeon gave her a nonconsensual breast enlargement because he thought she would be grateful.
A couple of days before our interview, it was announced that Eszterhas, the Basic Instinct writer, was planning a reboot. Would she take part in it? She laughs. “There’s not going to be a Basic Instinct reboot. I hate to break it to you, but Joe Eszterhas couldn’t write himself out of a Walgreens drug store.”
It’s 20 minutes since the publicist told me to wrap up. I’m beginning to feel guilty, but Stone is still happily talking about empty nest syndrome, now that her youngest boys have left for college, and her plans for the future. She says she may lease out her home because she has so many projects on the go in so many places. She mentions her part in the new series of Euphoria and “a beautiful film” called In Memoriam that she has already completed.
It sounds like you’re in a good place, I say. “I’m having a fun time. All of a sudden, the kids are out and I’m like: now what am I going to do? I think going back to work is what’s happening.” Despite everything – the abuse, the stroke, the fallout from Basic Instinct, the losses – she says she has always been a glass-half-full kind of gal. Actually, she says, even an empty glass can have its positives. “It can get refilled, right? Sometimes an empty glass is what you need.”
The Golden Horse Film Project Promotion has selected 14 television series for its 2025 edition, headlined by an adaptation of Yang Shuang-zi’s U.S. National Book Award-winning novel “Taiwan Travelogue.”
Japanese screenwriter Yoshida Erika, known for her work on “Cherry Magic!,” is adapting “Taiwan Travelogue” for World Softest Productions. Producer Maehata Sachiko and Chang Chen-yu are developing the series, which examines colonial-era Taiwan through a romance between a Japanese writer and local interpreter in 1938.
Several projects represent international partnerships. Director Yang Chih-lin helms “Good Days” for Neverland Entertainment, with producer Holly Chan Yu-shan overseeing the Taiwan-Japan co-production about an office worker returning to her hometown. “The Life Changers” connects Taiwan and South Korea via Select Entertainment, with director Hsu Fu-hsiang and producers Danielle Yen and Mio Liang tracking a screenwriter seeking vigilante justice. Director If Chen reunites with GrX Studio producer Lee Wen-yi for Taiwan-U.S. collaboration “The Ones I Killed and The Ones Who Killed Me,” adapting a serial murder case spanning decades and continents.
Comedy-drama offerings include director Wong Yee-lam’s “Let-Go List” for Zero One Film, produced by Chen Yi-ching and written by Ruby Chen, about a professional organizer confronting his own past. Golden Horse winner Bamboo Chen executive produces “The South Way Station” for Kingyo Productions, with director Wang Chia-chun and producer Kuo Jo-chi following an unlikely friendship at a remote train station. Director Liao Shih-han helms “Ageless” for Creative Group, with producers Pan Chung-wei and Amee Lin Kuei-min exploring an unconventional family dynamic between an ageless woman and single mother.
Crime thrillers feature prominently. “Liminal” is a Taiwan-Singapore co-production from JUO Studios, 22ND Creatives & Productions, and Kusu Films, with director Lin Yen-ting and producers Charlyn Ng and Nelson Chang following a student investigating her friend’s disappearance.
Fantasy offerings include “Leopard Island,” an animated project from baibaiyy studio with directors Huang Ping-an and Chang Chun-yu exploring emotional transformation on a mysterious island. Director Tseng Ying-ting returns with “The Undying” for Love Me Tender Productions, with producer Lin Shiang-ling overseeing a story about resurrection and family secrets. Su Hui-yu directs sci-fi allegory “The Five Ways of Life” for Ping Film Production and Jing Moving Image, with producers Chen Ping-chia and Huang Jing-han creating a parallel Taiwan under authoritarian rule.
Real-world inspiration drives several selections. Directors Jae Yang and YC Tom Lee helm “Judoka” for Renegades Entertainment, with executive producers Lu Wei-chun and Jonathan H. Kim backing a story of 1990s judo athletes whose international romance faces political obstacles. Director Sun Chieh-heng creates “Human and Animal Hazard Affairs Handling Agency” for Unseen Film Studio, featuring a girl using psychic abilities to communicate with animals while solving crimes.
Directors Nelson Yeh and Herb Hsu collaborate on “Oriental Beauty” for Good Image Co., with producers Tama Pan and Gisele Yeh exploring women’s choices across 160 years of tea culture history.
The program has generated tangible results from previous years. “Our Bar” has launched on streaming platforms, with “Undertaker” scheduled for Q4 release. Additional titles including “The Fixers,” “Boys and Spirits,” and “Connecting to You” are in various stages of production.
The industry event runs Nov. 17-19 in Taipei. Award winners will be revealed at the Nov. 19 closing ceremony.
Iqrar ul Hassan is hands down one of the most famous anchors of Pakistan. He got famous for Sar e Aam and went on to host several shows and transmissions. He is known not just for his fierce hosting style but also his personal life and multiple marriages, all of which are very public. Iqrar is married to three journalists with his third wife coming into his life not too long ago.
Iqrar ul Hassan married hos third wife Aroosa Iqrar who lives with his first wife. The bonding between these wives is also considered legendary. Iqrar was a guest on Ali Hamza’s show and revealed what he likes and dislikes about Aroosa.
Iqrar ul Hassan shared that Aroosa is very full of life and lively. She is innocent and at the same time very intelligent. Both him and his first wife love that about Aroosa. What he dislikes is how considerate she is of his feelings. She sometimes hold back and does not share her own feelings as she is thinking about Iqrar’s mood.
This is what he revealed:
Internet is not happy with his statements. One user said, “He had an affair with Aroosa for 8 years.” Another added, “What is this man about praising all his wives all the time.” One said, “This man cannot be loyal to anyone.” This is what happened:
Hania Aamir is facing criticism from activist Shaniera Akram after posting a video to her Instagram of herself riding recklessly on a scooter without any safety precautions. Akram has been a vocal proponent of road safety, previously calling out other celebrities for not wearing seatbelts or putting their children in dangerous situations and sharing videos of it.
The video, posted by Aamir in a carousel on Saturday, shows the actor standing behind a man riding a scooter, wearing heels and dancing. The clip quickly circulated online, catching the attention of Akram, who issued a strongly worded statement.
“I worked so hard for so many years with hospitals and doctors to try to influence the youth of Pakistan to wear helmets and ride safely. This is like a dagger to my heart!” she wrote on her Instagram stories. “Celebrities have the power to influence millions. It breaks my heart when this is abused.”
Akram stressed how dangerous such stunts can be, not only for the person involved but also for the audiences that may be tempted to copy them. “As a mother, I know how impressionable influencers are on our children. For one stupid post, there could be thousands of casualties. This does not sit well with me.”
She added that while she does not enjoy calling out celebrities, she felt compelled to speak up in this case: “If I can influence the influencers not to post such reckless or irresponsible content, then it is worth it. Hate me if you want, but I can’t sit back when so many people have died doing these stunts for popularity.”
In a follow-up post, Akram clarified she had nothing personal against Aamir. “She should know better than this. It’s not rocket science; it’s illegal and stupid. I really hope that she sees this is not okay and sets it straight with a post that reminds her followers not to copy this kind of behaviour. And thank God nothing happened to her.”
So far, Aamir has not responded publicly to Akram’s remarks. The original video remains on her Instagram, and her most recent post features behind-the-scenes photos from a project — including other stunt shots.
Akram’s frustration is understandable. Celebrities don’t owe the public their private lives, but they do bear responsibility for the public content they choose to share, especially when it’s the kind of content that could endanger lives if imitated. Aamir has 19 million followers and so her reach is even greater than the average celebrity.
Social media reach is a powerful tool, but with that power comes the responsibility to not glamourise recklessness, particularly in a country where road safety is already an ongoing crisis.
SZA responds to Selena Gomez’s latest social media update
Selena Gomez sparked a surprising reaction with her latest post and left a lot of her followers confused – including SZA.
The 35-year-old R&B songstress took to Instagram on Sunday, August 10, and wrote a hilarious comment on the Fetish hitmaker’s latest post.
The Luther songstress shared that the Disney alum’s post, showing pictures from Lil Dicky’s wedding night, confused her as she took it to be Gomez’s own wedding with fiancé Benny Blanco.
“This caption .. I panicked so crazy, yay dave !!!,” SZA wrote in the comment with laughing emojis.
Gomez’s caption read, “About last nights wedding,” without reference to whose wedding it was.
Blanco’s friend and longtime collaborator, Lil Dicky, whose real name is Dave Burd, got married to Kristin Batalucco on Saturday night, August 9.
The update seemed to confuse Gomez’s audience because of the wedding rumours surrounding her and the music producer.
The couple has allegedly rescheduled the wedding after it was revealed that they were getting married in September.
The new date is kept under the wraps and the duo has kept tight-lipped about further details into their wedding plans.
Emma Thompson‘s palpable aura of capability and down-to-earth shrewdness has seldom been better deployed than in “The Dead of Winter.” Without the star channelling the blunt good sense and sing-song Minnesotan vowels of “Fargo’s” Marge Gunderson, Brian Kirk‘s midwestern midwinter thriller would amount to little more than an episode of “Criminal Minds” with a bigger landscape photography budget.
With her, however, the film just about performs against genre expectations regarding suspense and blood-in-the-snow violence, while also delivering a lesson in the potential for heroism of ordinary older women. Contrary to the impulse — in cinema and in the world — to ignore or at best wildly underestimate this cohort, “The Dead of Winter” regards the wisdom accrued by one such sixty-something, over the course of a decent life lived well and lovingly, as little short of a superpower.
In a Minnesota house blanketed in snow adjoining the bait-and-tackle store she runs, a widow (Thompson) mourns the recent passing of her beloved husband. She packs up her truck with ice fishing equipment and drives miles through spectacular frosted forests on the bittersweet mission of scattering his ashes, per his request, at the frozen lake on which, decades prior, they had their first date. A quirk of Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb’s screenplay is that the characters remain largely unnamed, so it’s a bit of a shock to discover late on that our resourceful heroine is in fact called Barb.
Barb stops for directions, at a cabin occupied by a well-wrapped-up, bearded gent (Marc Menchaca), who accounts for the sinister splash of scarlet on the driveway with a gruff single-word explanation: “Deer.” His behavior is suspicious, but his directions are good. Barb spends the evening on the lake, fishing and reminiscing on the ice.
We reminisce along with her, through a rather unnecessary series of literal, weightless flashbacks to her younger self (played by Thompson’s daughter Gaia Wise) that are much less expressive and evocative than the simple shots of Thompson’s face as she looks through old photos or picks through a battered tackle box. Or, indeed, as she gazes with happy-sad-tired-lively eyes across the terrain’s forbiddingly beautiful vistas, which come courtesy of DP Christopher Ross and Finland, doubling for frozen wilds of the North Star State.
It’s not until the second time she visits the cabin that Barb discovers the reason for the bearded man’s caginess. Peering through a boarded-over window, she spies a terrified young woman (Laurel Marsden) tied up and gagged in the dusty basement. Immediately, despite the usual Screenwriting 101 contrivances like dodgy cellphone reception, a stalled vehicle and an ongoing scarcity of ammunition, she moves into into full-on, single-minded, kick-ass rescue mode, though some old habits, like apologizing for cursing every time she so much as says the word “damn,” die hard. And soon she discovers that ol’ beardy is not the main architect of malfeasance here. His wife (Judy Greer) is the crazy-eyed, wild-haired mastermind of the dastardly scheme, her motivation for which is perhaps hinted at by the Fentanyl lollipops she constantly sucks on, sometimes two at a time.
As it transpires, Barb may have more in common with the bearded man than it first appears. He too is expressing his devotion to an ailing spouse: It just manifests in a very different way to Barb’s tender care, briefly glimpsed, for her husband in his dying days But aside from one fertile and well-performed confrontation scene between the two, this is one of many available thematic strands that is left unexplored. Couple that to the severe underdevelopment of Greer’s character beyond “resentful psycho” and, despite the ongoing pleasures of watching Thompson shoot guns and plot escapes and perform surgery on herself using a fishhook, the unmistakable chill of missed opportunities hangs in the air.
Eventually, en route to a finale that strives for tragic poetry the rest of the film scarcely earns, the narrative ice wears so thin that it cracks under the weight of a moment’s thought. Why, given the acreage of empty space available, do the deranged duo set up their grim workshop a few feet away from Barb’s ice shelter? How does Barb, so competent and practised an outdoorswoman, manage to lose not only her bright red mitten but also her treasured wedding ring at a vital juncture? And why does she go to all the trouble of writing a supportive message in the frost of the basement window, and then neglect to wipe it off before it betrays her presence to the kidnappers? These are plot holes big and deep enough to drop a lure into and hook a fat trout. Yet sidestep them and “The Dead of Winter” entertains, largely due to Thompson’s sturdy portrait of grace clad in a sensible, fleece-lined overcoat of gumption.
