Tag: AFP

Here are the nominees in key categories for the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, which will be handed out on January 5.

Surreal musical “Emilia Perez” led all contenders with 10 nods, followed by “The Brutalist” at seven and “Conclave” at six.

– FILM –

Best film, drama

“The Brutalist”

“A Complete Unknown”

“Conclave”

“Dune: Part Two”

“Nickel Boys”

“September 5”

Best film, musical or comedy

“Anora”

“Challengers”

“Emilia Perez”

“A Real Pain”

“The Substance”

“Wicked”

Best actor, drama

Adrien Brody, “The Brutalist”

Timothee Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown”

Daniel Craig, “Queer”

Colman Domingo, “Sing Sing”

Ralph Fiennes, “Conclave”

Sebastian Stan, “The Apprentice”

Best actress, drama

Pamela Anderson, “The Last Showgirl”

Angelina Jolie, “Maria”

Nicole Kidman, “Babygirl”

Tilda Swinton, “The Room Next Door”

Fernanda Torres, “I’m Still Here”

Kate Winslet, “Lee”

Best actor, musical or comedy

Jesse Eisenberg, “A Real Pain”

Hugh Grant, “Heretic”

Gabriel LaBelle, “Saturday Night”

Jesse Plemons, “Kinds of Kindness”

Glen Powell, “Hit Man”

Sebastian Stan, “A Different Man”

Best actress, musical or comedy

Amy Adams, “Nightbitch”

Cynthia Erivo, “Wicked”

Karla Sofia Gascon, “Emilia Perez”

Mikey Madison, “Anora”

Demi Moore, “The Substance”

Zendaya, “Challengers”

Best supporting actor

Yura Borisov, “Anora”

Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain”

Edward Norton, “A Complete Unknown”

Guy Pearce, “The Brutalist”

Jeremy Strong, “The Apprentice”

Denzel Washington, “Gladiator II”

Best supporting actress

Selena Gomez, “Emilia Perez”

Ariana Grande, “Wicked”

Felicity Jones, “The Brutalist”

Margaret Qualley, “The Substance”

Isabella Rossellini, “Conclave”

Zoe Saldana, “Emilia Perez”

Best director

Jacques Audiard, “Emilia Perez”

Sean Baker, “Anora”

Edward Berger, “Conclave”

Brady Corbet, “The Brutalist”

Coralie Fargeat, “The Substance”

Payal Kapadia, “All We Imagine as Light”

Best non-English language film

“All We Imagine as Light”

“Emilia Perez”

“The Girl with the Needle”

“I’m Still Here”

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”

“Vermiglio”

Best cinematic and box office achievement:

“Alien: Romulus”

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”

“Deadpool & Wolverine”

“Gladiator II”

“Inside Out 2”

“Twisters”

“Wicked”

“The Wild Robot”

Best animated feature

“Flow”

“Inside Out 2”

“Memoir of a Snail”

“Moana 2”

“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”

“The Wild Robot”

– TELEVISION –

Best drama series

“The Day of the Jackal”

“The Diplomat”

“Mr & Mrs Smith”

“Shogun”

“Slow Horses”

“Squid Game”

Best drama actor

Donald Glover, “Mr & Mrs Smith”

Jake Gyllenhaal, “Presumed Innocent”

Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”

Eddie Redmayne, “The Day of the Jackal”

Hiroyuki Sanada, “Shogun”

Billy Bob Thornton, “Landman”

Best drama actress

Kathy Bates, “Matlock”

Emma D’Arcy, “House of the Dragon”

Maya Erskine, “Mr & Mrs Smith”

Keira Knightley, “Black Doves”

Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”

Anna Sawai, “Shogun”

Best musical or comedy series

“Abbott Elementary”

“The Bear”

“The Gentlemen”

“Hacks”

“Nobody Wants This”

“Only Murders in the Building”

Best musical or comedy actor

Adam Brody, “Nobody Wants This”

Ted Danson, “A Man on the Inside”

Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building”

Jason Segel, “Shrinking”

Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”

Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”

Best musical or comedy actress

Kristen Bell, “Nobody Wants This”

Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”

Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”

Selena Gomez, “Only Murders in the Building”

Kathryn Hahn, “Agatha All Along”

Jean Smart, “Hacks”

Best limited series or TV movie

“Baby Reindeer”

“Disclaimer”

“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”

“The Penguin”

“Ripley”

“True Detective: Night Country”

Best limited series or TV movie actor

Colin Farrell, “The Penguin”

Richard Gadd, “Baby Reindeer”

Kevin Kline, “Disclaimer”

Cooper Koch, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”

Ewan McGregor, “A Gentleman in Moscow”

Andrew Scott, “Ripley”

Best limited series or TV movie actress

Cate Blanchett, “Disclaimer”

Jodie Foster, “True Detective: Night Country”

Cristin Milioti, “The Penguin”

Sofia Vergara, “Griselda”

Naomi Watts, “Feud: Capote vs the Swans”

Kate Winslet, “The Regime”

Best performance in stand-up comedy on television:

Jamie Foxx, “Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was”

Nikki Glaser, “Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die”

Seth Meyers, “Seth Meyers: Dad Man Walking”

Adam Sandler, “Adam Sandler: Love You”

Ali Wong, “Ali Wong: Single Lady”

Ramy Youssef, “Ramy Youssef: More Feelings”

– FILMS WITH MOST NOMINATIONS –

“Emilia Perez” – 10

“The Brutalist” – 7

“Conclave” – 6

“Anora” – 5

“The Substance” – 5

Ridley Scott’s long-awaited “Gladiator” sequel has not even hit US theaters yet, but the veteran director is already hard at work on a third installment.

“Gladiator II,” which arrives in North American cinemas Friday, stars Irish actor Paul Mescal (“Normal People”) as Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the multiple Oscar-winning original.

A bloody, blockbuster epic of revenge, treachery and — yes — gladiators, it has drawn positive reviews and already hauled in a muscular $87 million at the global box office since opening in several countries last week.

“Given the performance in the rest of the world that we’ve seen yesterday, there’s certainly going to be a ‘Gladiator III,’” said Scott, in Los Angeles on Monday for the movie’s glitzy US premiere.

“Because it also becomes financial, and you’d be insane not to consider a third version,” said the British director of seminal films such as “Blade Runner” and “Thelma & Louise.”

The plot of “Gladiator II” was also “planned to leave it wide open to a sequel,” added Scott, a famously prolific filmmaker who is still directing roughly a film per year at the age of 86.

The second film opens with Lucius — sent into exile by his mother to avoid certain death in Rome — battling in vain to defend his adopted North African home city from the arrival of seemingly unstoppable Roman soldiers.

Captured as a prisoner of war, he is brought back to the imperial metropolis, where he must prove his worth in the Colosseum in order to exact revenge on invading general Marcus Acacius, played by Pedro Pascal.

Danish actress Connie Nielsen reprises her role as Lucilla from the 2000 original, while Denzel Washington is already earning Oscar buzz for his conniving, mercurial and highly flamboyant ringmaster, Macrinus.

“Jewelry, sandals and everything — I just looked like a Roman pimp… I couldn’t put on enough rings,” joked Washington on Monday.

– ‘Political’ –

Mescal — whose character battles bloodthirsty baboons, rhinos and sharks in addition to humans in “Gladiator II” — also expressed excitement about returning for another film.

But he said Scott had discussed a new direction for the plot that would not simply “go back to the arena as we know it.”

“The last time I spoke to (Scott) he said he had nine pages. Yesterday, he said he had 14,” Mescal told journalists.

“I would be excited for it to go into a more political sphere,” with Lucius thrust into a world of court intrigue that he does not want to inhabit, like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” added Mescal.

Asked how the second film’s themes tackled power and politics differently, some 24 years after the original Scott said: “They’re exactly the same.”

“A super-rich man thinks he can take over the Empire. Is that familiar?” he said, just days after billionaire Donald Trump’s re-election as US president.

“We don’t learn historically anything. We keep repeating the same mistakes. We’re going through exactly the same thing right now in several parts of the planet,” he added.

A “meta” detective series in which a struggling Asian waiter becomes the unlikely hero of a police procedural-style criminal conspiracy, “Interior Chinatown” satirizes Hollywood’s stereotypical treatment of minorities — while also nodding to the progress the industry has belatedly made.

The new show, out on Disney-owned Hulu next Tuesday, is based on the critically adored novel by US author Charles Yu, who is of Taiwanese descent.

Yu’s 2020 bestseller delivered a humorous takedown of racism in US society through the adventures of Willis Wu, a Hollywood extra reduced to playing roles like “Background Oriental Male” but who dreams of one day being promoted to “Kung Fu Guy.”

Yu now serves as the TV series’ creator and showrunner.

“I grew up watching TV in the ’80s and ’90s, and I just never saw Asians on TV. It’s as if they didn’t exist,” he told a press conference in July.

“They existed in real life when I’d go outside, but they weren’t somehow in my screen. And so, that sort of shaped me in wanting to tell this story.”

Even a decade ago, Yu’s literary creation would likely have been ignored by Hollywood.

But in recent years, breakout successes for Asian American productions like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” not to mention South Korean hits “Parasite” and “Squid Game,” have proven the commercial appetite for diverse storytelling.

Hong Kong-born US actor Jimmy O. Yang, who appeared in “Crazy Rich Asians,” stars as Wu in “Interior Chinatown.”

Oscar-winning New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”) directs the pilot episode.

– ‘Metaphor’ –

Viewers are introduced to Wu as an ordinary waiter at a restaurant in Los Angeles’s Chinatown — but quickly find out that he also appears to reside within a police procedural.

In these scenes, “Interior Chinatown” adopts the visual codes and tropes of a TV cop drama. Wu is relegated to a background character role, as the series’ Black and white cop duo solve crimes.

Even more strangely, unexplained cameras are shown filming Wu and his colleagues, reminiscent of “The Truman Show.”

The distortion of reality echoes the premise of the original novel, which was itself written in the form of a television screenplay.

“It’s such a great metaphor for what it means to be Asian American in this country,” said Yang.

“But at the same time, it’s a universal story of someone longing to be more, someone finding themselves in their career.”

When Wu witnesses a kidnapping, twists and turns see this background actor take on increasingly important roles in the narrative of a criminal intrigue.

“He moves on to be kind of like a guest star. And then the tech guy, which, of course, I played before. So it really drew a lot of parallels to my own career,” said Yang.

– ‘Mind-bending’ –

The series blends English, Mandarin and Cantonese dialogue.

Among its characters is Lana Lee, a mixed-race novice cop, who is assigned a case in Chinatown by superiors who incorrectly assume that she must know her way around the Asian neighborhood.

The irony was not lost on actress Chloe Bennet, born Chloe Wang to a Chinese father and white American mother, who in real life had to change her last name in order to land roles in Hollywood.

“My journey through the industry is so meta for Lana,” she told the press conference.

“I literally was told at the beginning of my career… ‘You’re just not white enough to be the lead, but you’re not Asian enough to be the Asian.’”

Wu’s best friend Fatty Choi, played by comedian Ronny Chieng (“The Daily Show”), provides a hilarious counterpoint to audiences’ pre-conceived notions of Asians as the “model minority.”

A video game-addicted stoner, Choi aggressively lectures the restaurant’s demanding white customers that they are “not the center of the universe.”

“To do something this cool, this meta, this mind-bending and smart — social commentary, but not hitting people over the head with it… this is the stuff that you only dream of being able to do,” he said.

One Direction star Liam Payne consumed cocaine, alcohol and a prescription antidepressant before falling to his death from a Buenos Aires hotel balcony last month, Argentine prosecutors said Thursday.

The prosecutor’s office added that three people were charged with supplying him with drugs and one of them was also charged with abandoning a person in a vulnerable state.

“The results of the toxicological studies, which have been communicated to his family, revealed that, in the moments prior to his death and over a period covering at least his last 72 hours, Payne had traces of polydrug use of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his body,” the prosecutors said.

Payne was found dead on October 16 after plunging from the balcony of his third-floor room at the CasaSur Hotel in the Argentine capital.

An autopsy found he died after sustaining “multiple traumas” and “internal and external hemorrhaging” from the fall.

One of the highest-grossing live acts in the world in the 2010s, One Direction went on indefinite hiatus in 2016.

Payne went on to enjoy a degree of solo success but his career had languished recently.

His death at age 31 prompted a global outpouring of grief and condolences from family, former bandmates, fans and others.

– Three charged with drugs supply –

Prosecutors said one of the three people charged in the case had accompanied him on a daily basis during his stay in Buenos Aires and was charged with abandoning a person who later died as well as supplying him with narcotics.

The second suspect is a hotel employee accused of twice supplying Payne with cocaine while he was staying at the CasaSur. A third person is also accused of supplying him with the drug on October 14, two days before his death.

The prosecution ruled out self-harm and the “physical intervention of third parties” as the cause of Payne’s death, saying that the injuries he sustained were compatible with those caused by a fall.

“Payne was either not fully conscious or was in a state of markedly diminished or absent consciousness at the time of the fall,” the report said.

He was found dead after hotel staff called emergency services to report “a guest who is overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol, and destroying his room.”

– Body flown home –

The toxicological report was published a day after the singer’s father Geoff Payne repatriated his body to Britain aboard a flight from Buenos Aires to London.

Payne’s death has prompted a debate about whether the music industry has a duty of care for the mental health of stars who find fame at a young age.

The singer from Wolverhampton in central England had spoken publicly about struggles with substance abuse and the pressures of teenage stardom.

He first auditioned for the hugely popular television talent show “The X Factor” at the age of 14 but was unsuccessful.

Two years later he hit gold on the program, which teamed him up with Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik to form One Direction.

Over the next six years, the group enjoyed global fame and legions of screaming fans, selling more than 70 million copies of their five albums. They went on four world tours and won nearly 200 awards.

Payne is survived by a seven-year-old boy, Bear, with Girls Aloud star Cheryl Tweedy.

Could the dragons of Westeros finally be coming to the big screen?

At least one “Game of Thrones” movie is in very early stages of development, trade outlets The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline reported Thursday.

The original HBO “Game of Thrones” television show became a global cultural phenomenon during its eight-season run from 2011-2019, garnering huge audiences and a record 59 Emmys.

Based on George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novel series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the hit show about violent, feuding noble families has already spawned TV spinoff “House of the Dragon,” with more small-screen adaptations confirmed to be in the works.

But while Martin and “Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have discussed potential movies based on the universe in the past, parent company Warner Bros Discovery has been opposed to bringing the franchise to theaters.

The Hollywood Reporter suggested Thursday that recent leadership changes at the studio, and the success of franchises that have hopped between big and small screens such as “The Batman,” “Dune” and the upcoming “Harry Potter” TV series, may have finally prompted a change.

Warner Bros “has been quietly developing at least one film” set in the “Thrones” universe, it reported.

Deadline said there have been only “preliminary discussions,” and no stars are yet attached to the proposed movie.

“We have no comment on this,” a Warner spokeswoman told AFP.

amz/nro

Argentine police raided on Wednesday the Buenos Aires hotel where former One Direction star Liam Payne died after falling from his third-floor balcony, a police source told AFP.

Police officers from the special investigations and technology divisions were sent to the Casa Sur Hotel by the prosecutor’s office “to seize elements of interest for the investigation,” said a police source who asked not to be identified.

Television images showed a handful of agents working on computers at the lobby counter.

The 31-year-old British pop singer was found dead after staff called emergency services twice to report a guest “overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol” was “destroying” a hotel room.

He had spoken publicly about struggles with substance abuse and coping with fame from an early age.

Wednesday’s raid came a day after the Argentine prosecutor’s office met with the musician’s father, Geoff Payne, and assured him that his son’s toxicology studies had not been released by that institution.

US media reported on Monday that Payne had a cocktail of drugs in his system when he died.

ABC and TMZ said “pink cocaine” — containing methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA — had been found during a partial autopsy, citing anonymous sources familiar with the preliminary tests.

The prosecutor’s office said it had not “disclosed any specific technical report outside the exclusive framework of the investigation and the judicial process corresponding to the case.”

Although there is no stipulated deadline for the results of the toxicological analyses, an official from the Public Prosecutor’s Office told AFP that they could be concluded this week.

Investigators were examining cell phones, computers, photographs and videos from security cameras, and have taken “numerous witness statements to reconstruct the victim’s final hours and the scene of the events,” the public prosecutor’s office said.

Post-mortem results indicated that the 31-year-old was alone at the time of the fall and “was going through an episode of substance abuse,” prosecutors have said.

One of the highest-grossing live acts in the world, One Direction went on indefinite hiatus in 2016. Payne went on to enjoy solo success.

Two survivors of a deadly 2017 suicide attack on an Ariana Grande concert in northern England in 2017 won a harassment claim on Wednesday against a former television producer who claims the attack was a hoax.

Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall for harassment and data protection breaches over his assertions in several videos and a book that the attack at the Manchester Arena, which killed 22 people, was staged.

The pair suffered life-changing injuries in the attack, carried out by an Islamist extremist in May 2017, which also left some 100 others injured.

Martin Hibbert was paralysed from the waist down while his daughter Eve, who was aged 14 at the time, suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Hall has claimed his actions — which have included an incident of filming Eve Hibbert outside her home — were in the public interest and that “millions of people have bought a lie” about the attack.

Described as an independent journalist and broadcaster, the High Court in London noted he had claimed “elements within the state and involving ordinary citizens (including the claimants)” participated in the “deception”.

He has maintained they performed as “crisis actors” and that “no one was injured or died”, the court said.

In a 63-page judgment, judge Karen Steyn ruled Hall had harassed the Hibberts with his “false narrative” but opted not to decide the data protection claim at this stage.

Steyn said Hall had “abused media freedom” to make his claims for “commercial gain… sufficient to enable him to continue his work”.

“Over a period of years, he has repeatedly published false allegations, based on the flimsiest of analytical techniques, and dismissing the obvious, tragic reality to which so many ordinary people have attested,” the judge wrote.

“All of this conduct has a natural tendency to cause serious distress, especially when those targeted are vulnerable.”

She will invite lawyers from both sides to make “further submissions” before deciding on appropriate “relief”, as well as on the data protection claim.

The suicide attack, as concert-goers were leaving the show at the Manchester Arena in northwest England, was carried out by 22-year-old Salman Abedi, who was from Manchester but of Libyan descent.

Inspired by the Islamic State group, he used a homemade shrapnel bomb to target crowds of mostly young people who had been attending the concert by the US pop star, as well as parents who had come to pick up their children.

Fans mourning Liam Payne’s death turned out across Britain and beyond at organised vigils Sunday, with at least 1,000 gathering in central London to pay tribute to the former One Direction star.

It came four days after Payne died aged 31 following a fall from the balcony of his Buenos Aires hotel room, prompting an outpouring of grief and condolences from family, former bandmates, fans and others.

Investigators have said he appeared to have been “going through an episode of substance abuse”.

Those at the London memorial at the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park were encouraged in social media posts to bring “flowers, letters, balloons, pictures” and did not disappoint.

Gathering in the rain under umbrellas bearing those things and more, the crowd of mainly young people sang One Direction songs after also standing in silence for periods.

“He was such a big part of our childhood — we just came to pay our respect,” student Katie Etchells, 20, wearing a One Direction t-shirt, told AFP.

She was one of many who said that they at first thought word of his death was “fake news”, calling the realisation it was true “very upsetting”.

“I think he’ll be happy to know that so many people does love him,” a tearful Luna Franco, 20, from Italy, told AFP.

– ‘Unify’ – –

Musician Shukhrat Turdikhodjaev, 21, said he had gone from “disbelief at first” to shock on hearing Payne had died.

He added the turnout showed that the singer “was able to connect and unify so many different people”.

Elsewhere, news reports and social media posts showed hundreds also gathered in the Scottish cities Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as Paris, New York, Stockholm and many other places.

Fans were also set to gather later Sunday in Birmingham in central England — near Wolverhampton where Payne was born and raised.

He would shoot to fame around the world as a teenager in the hugely successful pop group One Direction, which formed in 2010 after its members appeared on “The X Factor”.

Sunday’s meet-ups mirror gatherings seen across Latin American in recent days.

In Buenos Aires, tearful fans have continued to mass in front of the Casa Sur Hotel, where Payne plunged to his death and an altar dedicated to him has been created full of flowers and messages.

On Friday, his father Geoff Payne visited the scene, thanking fans gathered there in a shared moment of grief.

Meanwhile Mexico City, the Ecuadorian capital Quito and various towns and cities in Colombia are among the other places to have seen impromptu ceremonies for Payne.

– ‘Just really sad’ –

Anguished reactions have continued to stream in, including from Girls Aloud star Cheryl Tweedy, Payne’s former partner and the mother of their seven-year-old boy, who called his death an “earth shattering event”.

Payne’s One Direction bandmate Zayn Malik said Saturday on X that he was postponing the current US leg of his tour until January, citing “the heartbreaking loss experienced this week.”

Payne died from “multiple traumas” and “internal and external haemorrhaging” after the fall from the hotel, an autopsy found.

It suggested he had not tried to stop his fall and was in a state of “semi or total unconsciousness” before his death.

The singer, who had spoken publicly about struggles with alcohol and coping with fame from an early age, was alone at the time and appeared to be “going through an episode of substance abuse,” prosecutors have said.

Back in London, fan Chelsea Willy, 20, summed up the feelings of those mourning the loss.

“It is just really sad,” the actress said. “I’ve been a fan of him since I was very little,” she added, noting she cried on learning the news.