People & Places

NEWS/FEATURESARAB TIMES, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2016

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This image released by STX Films shows Hailee Steinfeld (left), and Haley Lu Richardson from the fi lm, ‘The Edge of Seventeen.’ Film will hit the theaters in US on Nov 18. (AP)

Actor Ella Purnell arrives on the red carpet for the premiere of ‘The Jour-ney is the Destination’ during the 2016 Toronto International Film Fes-

tival in Toronto on Sept 14. (AP)

Winfrey Banderas

NEW YORK: Oprah Winfrey’s big investment in Weight Watchers has paid off so far, but her Midas touch could be in question given the company’s recent struggles.

Winfrey bought a 10 percent stake in Weight Watchers for $43.2 million in October and joined the company’s board. The company’s stock more than doubled the day the purchase was announced, and by November, Winfrey’s stake was worth nearly $180 million.

Weight Watchers shares have been in a bit of a freefall since, losing more than two-thirds of their value in less than a year. The value of Winfrey’s shares is down by more than $116 million.

Weight Watchers CEO James Cham-bers announced Monday that he was step-ping down. The company said Winfrey will play an active role in selecting a new leader. (AP)

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LOS ANGELES: Lil Wayne says the racial makeup of the crowd at one of his shows was “clearly a message that there was no such thing as racism”.

The rapper was asked Tuesday on Fox Sports’ “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed” about a show in suburban New York where the crowd was mostly white. He said it was “a perfect example” that racism doesn’t exist. Wayne says the crowd at his shows “has always been everybody”.

Wayne also touched on retirement rumors prompted by a tweet earlier this month. He explained that the tweet stemmed from a money dispute between him and Cash Money Records CEO Bird-man. He said he wouldn’t work with Bird-man again and plans “to walk off free” once the dispute is resolved. (AP)

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MOSCOW: Hollywood actor Antonio Banderas brings his photography work to Russia with his “Women in Gold” exhibi-

Variety

Director Benedict Andrews (from left), producer Jean Doumanian, writer David Harrower, Rooney Mara and producer Patrick Daly attend the ‘Una’ premiere on day 7 of the Toronto International Film Festival at the Princess of Wales

Theatre on Sept 14 in Toronto. (AP)

Stage, screen directorHofsiss dies, aged 65NEW YORK, Sept 15, (AP): Stage and screen director Jack Hofsiss, who won a Tony Award in his fi rst outing on Broadway while helm-ing “The Elephant Man” and kept working despite an accident that left him without the use of his arms and legs, died Tuesday, according to producer and longtime friend Elizabeth McCann. He was 65.

Hofsiss died at his home in Man-hattan after recently being hospital-ized at Mount Sinai Hospital for respiratory distress. “He fell asleep and slipped away from us,” Mc-Cann said Wednesday.

Hofsiss also directed several TV fi lms, including a 1982 adaptation of “The Elephant Man,” a version of “Cat of a Hot Tin Roof” starring Jessica Lange, and “The Oldest Liv-ing Graduate” with Henry Fonda.

tion that opens in Moscow on Wednesday.The display shows the “The Mask of

Zorro” and “The 33” actor’s photographs and portraits of women, who can be seen splashing paint in the air, wearing colour-ful wigs and face paint or huddled around a baby.

“These are not fashion pictures, most of these pictures are almost theatrical, they are fi lled basically with irony and

humour”, Banderas told reporters.The exhibition runs at Moscow’s Multi-

media Art Museum until Nov 3. (RTRS)❑ ❑ ❑

TORONTO: Actor and producer Matt Damon says scheduling prevented him from starring in “Manchester by the Sea”, a fi lm about a man consumed by grief over the death of his brother and who is made

legal guardian of a teenage nephew.Casey Affl eck, brother of actor Ben

Affl eck, was chosen instead to star in the fi lm, which Damon supervised from its inception and produced.

“I wouldn’t have let it go to anyone but Casey”, Damon told Reuters at the fi lm’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday.

For the production, which has been

receiving rave reviews, Damon passed the directing baton to writer Kenneth Lonergan. (RTRS)

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LOS ANGELES: Two Japanese fi lms will appear in competition at the 29th Tokyo International Film Festival next month.

Festival organizers revealed Thursday the competition slots for “Japanese Girls Never Die” and “Snow Woman”.

Based on a recent novel, “Japanese Women,” is directed by Daigo Matsui and stars Yu Aoi, Mitsuki Takahata in a story about the disappearance of a woman and the female activist group re-sponsible for graffiti images of her face. Phantom Film will release the movie in December.

“Snow Woman” is a reinterpretation of a single chapter from a famous book of Japanese ghost stories. It is the third fi lm as director by actress turned producer Kiki Sugino, and will be released next year by Wa Entertainment. (RTRS)

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LOS ANGELES: Emmanuelle Seigner and Eva Green are set to star in Roman Polanski’s psychological thriller “Based on a True Story (“D’apres une histoire vraie”), which will be sold internationally by Lionsgate.

Olivier Assayas, who nabbed the best director prize at Cannes for supernatural drama “Personal Shopper” starring Kris-ten Stewart, is co-writing the fi lm with Polanski. “True Story” tells the story of a writer (Emmanuelle Seigner) whose life and mind are endangered by an obsessive woman (Eva Green). (RTRS)

Celebs

Off red carpet?

Miley Cyrustakes standLOS ANGELES, Sept 15, (AP): If a celebrity doesn’t walk a red carpet, are they still a celebrity?

In the next phase of her career, that’s the bold question Miley Cyrus will face after her unprec-edented vow to “never do a red car-pet again.”

With Hollywood’s awards sea-son kicking off at Sunday’s Prime-time Emmys, will other celebs side-step the frenzy and follow Cyrus off the carpet? In show business, such a daring declaration could have im-plications beyond what’s beneath those designer heels.

In recent years, media shenanigans on red carpets have prompt-ed push-back from such A-listers as Ju-lianne Moore, Reese Wither-spoon and Jen-nifer Aniston.

Last awards season, they

opted against sticking their well-manicured and bejeweled hands in front of E!’s “mani-cam,” while younger actresses like Jena Malone and Elizabeth Moss publicly mocked the paw parade.

“I couldn’t care less, to be hon-est,” said Emmys host Jimmy Kim-mel after ceremoniously unrolling the red carpet Wednesday morning outside the Microsoft Theater. “I’ll be up in my dressing room staring at people on the red carpet while it’s happening.”

AppearanceCyrus’ last appearance on a red

carpet was back in December at the premiere of the Netfl ix fi lm “A Very Murray Christmas.” Cyrus ominously captioned an Insta-gram photo of herself posing on it: “(hashtag)mylastredcarpet4eva.” Apparently, she meant it.

“I had to do the premiere, and I will never do a red carpet again,” the singer-actress said in the October is-sue of Elle magazine , out Wednes-day. “Why, when people are starving, am I on a carpet that’s red? Because I’m ‘important’? Because I’m ‘fa-mous’? That’s not how I roll. It’s like a skit — it’s like ‘Zoolander.’”

Stacy Jones, president of enter-tainment marketing agency Hol-lywood Branded, said stars who shun the red carpet lose fame and fortune. She expects Cyrus, who is appearing as a coach on the latest season of the NBC singing com-petition “The Voice” and starring in the upcoming Amazon series “Crisis in Six Scenes,” will likely miss out on future roles and deals because of her decision.

“It’s part of the job,” Jones said. “In today’s world, when you sign up to be a celebrity, you’re signing up to be in the limelight. You’re going to be in gossip columns and have paparazzi follow you. You will have fans idolize you. It’s dam-aging to your career and people you work with to say you won’t be part of the glitz and glamour that comes along with the job.”

TransformedOver the past nine decades, the

red carpet has transformed from simply serving as an elegant en-trance to Hollywood premieres and ceremonies into a publicity-gener-ating business where celebrities are expected — and often paid — to pose in front of logos and be probed by the media.

Now, it’s not just about fl ashing smiles for photographers and an-swering the clichéd question, “Who are you wearing?” On today’s red carpets, awareness is raised and brands are built.

Jones said she once worked with a company that sponsored a pre-miere party at the Toronto Inter-national Film Festival where the fi lm’s star refused to walk down or pose on the red carpet. The com-pany decided that night to pass him over for a seven-fi gure deal to sup-port his music project.

“Miley has worked so hard to get where she is in celebritydom,” Jones said. “It doesn’t make sense that she would give up any chance in the spotlight to at least support the projects and causes she cares about in her life.”

While many celebs control when they’ll appear, how they’ll look and who they’ll talk to on red carpets, it’s virtually unheard of for a star to publicly announce a complete boycott of the long-established practice, said Bonnie Fuller, editor-in-chief of celebrity site Holly-woodLife.com.

“I don’t think this is going to set off a trend,” Fuller said. “It’s inte-gral to the promotional aspect of be-ing a celebrity to do red carpets. It’s usually part of a contract.”

Fuller noted the anti-carpet stance is in itself part of building Cyrus’ brand. The performer has spent the past fi ve years shedding her wholesome “Hannah Montana” reputation in favor of a wild child image.

Cyrus

Timberlake kicks off concert docu at TIFF

‘Barry’ tells of Obama’s identity struggleTORONTO, Sept 15, (RTRS): Film-maker Vikram Gandhi’s ‘Barry’ tells the story of a young man with an ab-sent father struggling to fi nd his iden-tity in a big city. It is also the tale of an individual who would decades later become US President Barack Obama.

The fi lm, which had its world pre-miere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, is set in 1981 and draws on Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” to frame his formative years.

But it also takes creative license with the story, with love interest Char-lotte (Anya Taylor-Joy) an amalgam of three white girlfriends from his time studying at Columbia University in New York City.

The 20-year-old future president, played by Devon Terrell, makes friends easily but feels as out of place when Charlotte takes him to meet her parents at a country club as when he joins his basketball buddy at a party in a Harlem housing project.

“Because this man is such a char-ismatic, celebrated person, I think it’s important to see that he was once struggling with the same identity is-sues as so many other people,” Gan-dhi, who also studied at Columbia, said in an interview.

ReplacementMonths away from the election to

choose Obama’s replacement in the White House, Gandhi said the fi lm feeds into an early-onset nostalgia for what the fi rst US president of color represents.

“He’s not even out of offi ce but we

miss already what Obama stands for,” he said, contrasting that with the cam-paign of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

“There’s something incredibly de-cent and humble in Barack Obama and I fi nd that Donald Trump is preying on the darkest parts of our psyche,” he said.

For Terrell, himself of mixed race, the tale of Obama’s early years goes beyond race.

“I think everyone in life, no matter race or religion, we try to fi nd a place to put ourselves,” said the US-born ac-tor who grew up in Australia.

In his fi lm debut, the 23-year-old has won plaudits for his command of Obama’s mannerisms, the early ver-sions of his measured responses to dis-cord and debate.

“Terrell nails the clipped vibe of awareness, and a youthful version of the stare, to an uncanny degree,” Vari-ety wrote in a review of the fi lm.

‘Barry’ does not yet have a US dis-tributor. It will be released in Canada by Elevation Pictures.

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Pop star Justin Timberlake’s new concert documentary was a joy to make because the lack of rigid plot or story structure makes shooting such productions the “purest form of fi lm making,” director Jonathan Demme said on Wednesday.

“Justin Timberlake and the Ten-nessee Kids,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday, was fi lmed at the fi nal per-formances of the singer’s world tour in

Las Vegas in January 2015.It begins with a pre-show band hud-

dle and then launches within minutes into the action-packed dance and mu-sical spectacle from onstage.

Narrative“When we fi lm music, to me that’s

the purest form of fi lm making,” Demme said in an interview in Toron-to with Timberlake. “There’s no script that has to be followed. The only nar-rative is the music itself.”

Demme, known for “Philadelphia”, “The Silence of the Lambs,” and concert fi lms such as “Stop Making Sense” with Talking Heads, said being in the middle of the show makes even a non-musician such as himself feel part of the music.

“We’re feeling it, so intense, and capturing it, it’s like, ‘We’re in the band now!’” he said.

The film, which will be released on Netflix on Oct 12, is a culmina-tion of Timberlake’s 134 shows and 2 years on the road on a tour billed as one of the highest-grossing of the decade.

Timberlake said on Wednesday he initially was nervous because he was being himself, instead of portray-ing characters as he usually does on screen.

“Last night I had a bit of that,” he said. “I was going like, ‘Oh, wow, a lot of people are going to see this now.’”

But Demme had told him that, in a way, performing on stage was playing a character as well, Timberlake said.

“Being on stage is intuitive but it’s also a bigger version of yourself,” he

said.Timberlake is a Demme fan and

said the movie maker had captured the concert well, including his supporting cast. While Timberlake was the focus, the fi lm did not neglect the Tennes-see Kids, Timberlake’s 25-piece band whose members were given liberal screen time.

“I feel proud for everyone else in the show, the musicians and the dancers, because they’re such a part of what’s happening,” Timberlake said.

“I just kind of feel like I’m stand-ing in the middle of them. I’m really happy for them to be showcased the way that they are.”

Also:TORONTO: A musical reunion be-tween Justin Timberlake and Brit-ney Spears could be in the works after the singer said he’s up for collaborat-ing with his ex-girlfriend.

Spears said “Justin Timberlake is very good” last month while discuss-ing whom she would like to work with one day. Timberlake, 35, said in an in-terview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that he would “be open to talking about” working on a song with Spears.

“It seems like a crazy idea, so I don’t know. I have a 17-month-old”, he said, laughing. “I don’t know any-thing. But yeah, that’s very fl attering and could be something fun”.

Spears, 34, and Timberlake were castmates on Disney’s early 1990s version of the “Mickey Mouse Club”. They dated for three years before breaking up in 2002. (AP)

Film