CONTENTS Page 3 4-7
8-11
12-15
Editorial Sweet Dreams
Massimo’s idyllic childhood is shattered at the death of his mother. Years later, he is forced to relive his traumatic past and compassionate Doctor Elisa could help him to open up and confront his childhood wounds.
The Sense of an Ending
A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.
The Handmaiden A woman is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, but secretly she is involved in a plot to defraud her.
16-19
Aquarius
20-23
Casting Call
24-27
FilmFest Follower
28 29 30 31 32
Clara, a 65-year-old widow and retired music critic was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Reclife, Brazil. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-story building. All the neighbouring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for the plot. Clara has pledged to only leave her place upon her death.
A variety of casting agencies for actors & actresses.
Tribeca.
Extras DVDs: GUY & MADELINE ON A PARK Extras DVDs: ARRIVAL Extras DVDs: PATERSON The Sense of an Ending (Poster) Sweet Dreams (Poster)
BENCH
PHOTO CREDITS: SODA PICTURES:1,4,6,7,32 STUDIO CANAL:8,10,11,31 CURZON ARTIFICIAL EYE:12,14,15 ARROW FILMS:16,18,19 WARNER BROS:23
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We would like to thank the following people for their help in providing images for this magazine: Ed Frost @ Soda Pictures Anjali Mandalia @ Soda Pictures Jon Rushton @ Jon Rushton Publicity Aneet @ Jon Rushton Publicity
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EDITORIAL This month’s cover feature review is SWEET DREAMS, which reflects on a relationship between a son and his mother, fittingly appropriate for the recent Mother’s’ Day. It is a story that uses flashbacks to reprise a man’s tragic loss of his mother when he was a child in very mysterious circumstances. Now a successful war reporter, he is forced to confront the truth of his past to move on with his life. The film is enriched with superb performances from its cast, particularly from young Nicolo Cabras who plays Massimo as a child. Valerio Mastandrea is the adult Massimo and features on this month’s cover. Aquarius, like Sweet Dreams, has a powerful leading performance: Sonia Braga as Clara, a proud, fierce and vulnerable woman who stubbornly refuses to leave her apartment and sell-up to property developers, who want to transform the site into luxury flats, and have already bought out the rest of the owners, leaving only Clara in the block, and she won’t budge. The film is directed by Brazilian Kleber Mendonca Fiho, who impressed the film world with the edge-of-the-seat thriller Neighboring Sounds. Other films reviewed are the Japanese film The Handmaiden and the Jim Broadbent starrer The Sense of an Ending. We have a special feature about casting and the various options open to aspiring and professional actors and actresses seeking representation. Our regular feature on international festivals, FilmFest Follower, casts its eyes on New York and the Tribeca Film Festival and its exciting programme including Dito Montiel’s The Clapper, starring Ed Helms, Amanda Seyfried and Adam Levine, and Oren Moverman’s The Dinner, starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Steve Coogan. For DVD collectors, three films for you to relish in EXTRAS GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH Damien Chazelle’s first feature which led him to make Whiplash and the amazing La La Land ARRIVAL Starring: Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner When a mysterious spacecraft touches down, an elite team are brought together to investigate whether they come in peace or to make war. PATERSON Starring: Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani The daily observations of a bus driver and a poet who thrives on routine and his wife who is forever getting new ideas. Enjoy the read
Brian Mills Magazine Editor
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Paul Ridler Magazine Designer
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SWEET DREAMS Directed by Marco Bellocchio Starring: Bérénice Bejo, Valerio Mastandrea, Barbara Ronchi, Nicolo Cabras, Giovanni Athos. I lost my mother when I was a kid. I’m now five years older than her. That really freaks me out. - Massimo Marco Bellocchio’s film opened the Directors’ Fortnight at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. It is a screen adaptation of Massimo Gramellini’s best-seller “Sweet Dreams, Little One”. It tells a dense and emotive story of Massimo (Valerio Mastandrea) an accomplished journalist, from his time as a young boy and adolescent to his rise as a successful journalist, covering everything from sporting events to the war in Sarajevo.
The story begins with the relationship between Massimo as a child, and his mother and the film opens with Massimo dancing with his mother to Danny and the Juniors “Twistin’ All Night Long”. The scene captures the loving bond between mother and son, as we witness Massimo, encouraged by his mother’s dance moves, beginning to soon equal her moves and add some imaginative and innovative steps of his own. Mother and son watch TV together, make scrapbooks, laugh and swoon but then a ghost shadows their happiness, when they watch a late-night showing of the opera Belfagor. The spectre takes the role of a PTSD when one day, like a bolt of lightning, his mother dies. His father explains to him that she had a sudden heart attack, but Massimo doesn’t believe him. Of course there are signs of his mother’s emotional instability when she sings along with a song while looking at her son while he is sitting at a table having done his homework. The lyrics are a painful reminder of her marriage to Massimo’s father and her husband: Stay with me Don’t leave me Make me suffer Make me go crazy Make me be damned But just say yes I’d die for you I live for you Life of my life Stay now I don’t care about the past I don’t care who you’ve been with Stay with me. With me 4
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This cataclysmic event will, of course, become the great drama of his life, and the film jumps back and forth between childhood and maturity, as Massimo turns his love of football into a journalist career, helped by a fateful meeting with Giovanni Athos, who gives him an exclusive on the besieged Sarajevo. But a reminder of his mother triggers an emotional breakdown and leads to him describing his mental and physical state on an emergency-room phone call to a doctor named Elisa (Bérénice Bejo). The success which Massimo attained stemmed from a reply which he made to a letter from a reader of his newspaper, in which he stated that he despised his own mother. He was forever in search of a truth which had denied him: how did she die? The answer has been hidden away in an envelope. What he has been told by everyone, including his father, has been a lie. Massimo, your mum is your guardian angel now. Shall we go and say a prayer for your mum, together?
She can’t just have left without saying goodbye to me!
Meeting Dr Elisa allows Massimo to come to terms with that childhood secret and to finally let go of that much-loved ghost of his. There is a beautiful played-out scene when the adult Massimo is mysteriously invited to a party which is in fact a wedding reception of one of Elisa’s relatives. He is nervous, but calmed by Elisa’s smile. When couples take to the floor to dance, Elisa finds Massimo to dance with her, but he pulls away, telling her that he can’t dance. He watches her as she dances and her moves bring back his childhood memories of dancing with his mother. Suddenly he is dancing again. Dancers begin to step back to give space to Massimo who dances the way he did with the same free abandon and total joy which once impressed his mother and is now at last making him feel life is worth living again. What interested the director, Marco Bellocchio, about the story enough to make a film adaptation of it?
It was producer Beppe Caschetto who suggested it to me; I hadn’t read the book at that point. But when I did, I found that it was a human tragedy that really captivated me. I was won over by the drama in the novel: the death of the mother, being left an orphan when you’re still a kid. Was Gramellini involved in the screenwriting process at all?
No, he never got on board. I wrote the screenplay with Edoardo Albinati and Valia Santella, and the process was rather complicated. The novel covers 30 or 40 years of a person’s life, which meant that we needed to identify where we could condense and summarise.
The DVD will be released on June 12th 2017
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: Madre di Massimo (Barbara Ronchi) and Massimo bambino (Nicolo Cabras) in Sweet Dreams.
Madre di Massimo (Barbara Ronchi) and Massimo bambino (Nicolo Cabras) in Sweet Dreams. 6
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Massimo (Valerio Mastandrea) and Elisa (Bérénice Bejo) in Sweet Dreams
Valerio Mastandrea, Marco Bellocchio, Bérénice Bejo at photo shoot at Cannes.
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THE SENSE OF AN ENDING Directed by Ritesh Batra Starring: Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter, Michelle Dockery, Matthew Goode, Emily Mortimer. How often do we tell our own life story? Do we adjust, embellish, make slight cuts and recreate a new reality? And everything is coming off the rails, how are we not to know that our lives are not entwined. Forever. - Tony Webster Anthony Webster (Jim Broadbent) runs a small antique camera repair shop, dines frequently with his cantankerous ex-wife Margaret (Harriet Walter), and is helping their pregnant, partner-less lesbian daughter Susie (Michelle Dockery). Life for Tony is simple, until the arrival of a letter from a barrister telling him that Sarah Ford (Emily Mortimer in flashbacks) the mother of Tony’s ex-girlfriend from university, Veronica (Freya Mavor, in flashbacks) has died and that she has bequeathed him a small sum of money and a diary that belonged to a former friend and classmate, Adrian Finn (Joe Alwyn). Tony receives the money without any problems, but alas, Veronica (played by Charlotte Rampling in the present) refuses to release the diary to him, and ignores his requests to do so. A series of events occur that forces Tony to confront why Veronica harbours so much resentment towards him. Jim Broadbent plays the protagonist as an unsympathetic and unlikeable figure, a victim of his own repressed sadness and anger. The scenes where Anthony goes toe to toe with Veronica are powerfully portrayed and there is no faulting the rest of the cast. But once again when the main character in the story is boring and uninteresting, then it prompts the mind to come out of the film and think of brighter events than that which is happening on the screen. It is never enough for acting alone to hold the attention of an audience. But there are many more problems to. The timeframe of the film is confusing: approximately seventy-five percent in the present and the rest in flashbacks; the latter is grossly laboured with the characters explaining their own backstories. The Sense of An Ending is uncinematic: cinema is not its comfort zone as it’s story is told through expositions which slows the film and embarrassingly shows that it should never have been made for the big
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screen, because anything that is so designed to tell its story rather than show it is destined for an armchair audience and television for a cosy Sunday afternoon viewing on BBC 2, but not for a Saturday evening at your local multiplex. It would even be suited for the theatre, as a play. There it would find an audience that would welcome its dramatics and posturing. The problematic time zone and its attraction to retelling its story from the past and allowing its characters to regurgitate their memories would perfectly fit the theatre, or the play could be structured so that the whole backstory could be told in Act Two. As it is we are left with the screen adaptation. Accepting we have the flashbacks which are meant to function as lynchpins for the plot and must accept the problems which are endemic of the adaptation itself, but the director places faith in his cast and the overall themes of Barnes’ story to move things forward. Let us remember that this is Batra and Payne’s first feature screenplay and do not shy away from making Anthony Webster a disagreeable human being; the sort of relative or so-called friend, that you would hide yourself behind a bedroom curtain and make no attempt to go downstairs and open the front door to let him in. Further, you would probably follow your inhospitable behaviour by peeking through the window to make sure he really was going away. The cast are totally aware that they are in a tragic story and that the main character refuses to see as a tragedy. His anger simmers rather than explodes despite someone trying to stoke what seems to be a dying fire. He is a stoic figure who has crafted his personality around guilt that he will not acknowledge. Ritesh Batra directs long and drawn out scenes, where people speak very quietly and only seem to raise their voices when they are leaving or exhausted from the conversations they have had. They have our full sympathy. Whether we like it or not, we are asked to take up residence in Tony Webster’s head and that is beyond anyone’s endurance. Jim Broadbent cannot be faulted in playing Webster; arrogant, insensitive, inexplicably bad mannered: as when a postman delivers a package to him which he signs for and closes the door on him as the postie cheerfully says: Have a nice (door closes) day. It was a demanding job for the director to turn The Sense of an Ending into a film and Jim Broadbent thought that he had done a wonderful job. The question to be asked, is the story worth telling? Do we really want to hear this man’s life story? Do we want to be entwined with these characters? Will we be entertained? A missed opportunity was to use a voice-over for Tony Webster which would have allowed him to tell his story visually.
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Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent) and Margaret (Harriet Walter) in The Sense of an Ending.
Veronica (Freya Mavor) and Adrian Finn (Joe Alwyn) in The Sense of an Ending. 10
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Sarah Ford (Emily Mortimer) in The Sense of an Ending.
Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent) in The Sense of an Ending.
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THE HANDMAIDEN Directed by Chan-wook Park Starring:Min-hee Kim, Jung-woo Ha, Jin-woong Jo You mustn’t pass that point – Be warned! The snake marks ‘Bounds of A snake! -
Lady Hideko Knowledge’. Uncle Hideko Sook-Hee
The Handmaiden is a lavish perversity dressed-up as art. It is based on a story of Sarah Walters’ 2002 British novel “Fingersmith” and relocated to the Japanese occupation of ‘30s Korea and opens with a scene showing the soldiers entering the country. The highly praised set designs are justified, even to the minutest detail: the Korean contrasting with the Japanese. Production designer Ryu Seong-hie gives full power to her imagination, creating aweinspiring sets rich with period detail, blending Japanese and British architecture. Lady Hideko dressed in a Kimono and Sook-Hee in servile Korean-wear. Sook-Hee is a young pick-pocket employed by Fujiwara, a suave con artist claiming to be a count, to work as a handmaiden for wealthy heiress Lady Hideko. Sequestered in a grand mansion by her pervert black-tongued uncle, who has a library full of pornographic illustrated books, Hideko is trying to find a way out and Fujiwara expects Sook-Hee to help him charm his way into the role of Hideko’s husband. But the plan is complicated when the haughty Mistress begins to fall in love with her new lady-inwaiting. Director Chan wook-Park leaves nothing to the imagination in exploiting the explicitly vulgar sex scenes between Hideko and Sookhee as a voyeuristic excursion into lesbian sex. He creates a cinematic clothes-line to hang his pornographic sequences on. Then we have gratuitous violence when Hideko tortures the Count for letting Sook-hee and Lady Hideko escape. He punishes him by guillotining his fingers and using a drill on him. If you haven’t already stepped out of the movie and mind-travelled to a pleasant location, then this scene may well necessitate it. The Count’s reaction to his finger-severing is incredulous, instead of cries of agony he calmly asks for a cigarette. Though with an
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ulterior motive to kill Hideko, he should still be in agonising pain unless he is inhuman, which I don’t think was Chan wookPark’s intention. At the Cannes Press Conference, Chan wook-Park said that his actresses were comfortable with the eroticism of the story and the intimate scenes which they played. Such graphic sexual exploration that has caused critical condemnation of a film before was In the Realm of the Senses, directed by Nagisa Oshima. It too was an explicit tale of carnal obsession. It was loosely based on a true story about a violent affair between Sada a prostitute and Kichi-zo an innkeeper, who is the husband of the brothel madam, the film met with both censorship and critical acclaim for its representation of a couple seeking to purge themselves of responsibility through sadomasochistic bouts of lovemaking. Their sexual scenes are often watched by geishas, servants, and other prostitutes. Sado and Kichi-zo play sex games, Sada putting items of food in her vagina before feeding them to her lover, and encouraging Kichi-zo to have sex with other partners, including an old woman who comes to sing for them. But Sada eventually grows jealous of Kichi-zo’s continuing sexual relations with his wife, and threatens to cut off his penis. They begin to play asphyxiation games during sexual intercourse, and at last, with his encouragement, Sada strangles her lover, then castrates him.
The director’s purpose was to show that the story of crazy love was a true manifestation of passion, taken to the ultimate extreme. In comparison, Chan wook-Park’s The Handmaiden seems quite tame, and of course it’s storyline is one of ultimate love rather than lust; the latter is experienced when Sook-hee realises that Lady Hideko is totally naïve and inexperienced in sexual matters and takes on the role of her teacher and consequently her lover. The lesbian narrative of the film has been likened to Blue is the Warmest Colour, which was about Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) and Emma (Lea Seydoux) meeting and falling in love. Adele leaves her boyfriend, breaking his heart, for Emma. But Adele is finding her place, her sexuality, and is destined to leave Emma too. Again, there are explicit sex scenes between Adele and Emma and the camera does not shy away from them, but eagerly explores their bodies. But it is the acting of the two actresses which is so convincing that one could be forgiven in believing you are watching a documentary. The Handmaiden, like aforementioned films, shares the same sexual explicitness making one’s imagination totally redundant. If you are out to be shocked and horrified – then The Handmaiden should meet your requirements, otherwise be warned!
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Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) and Uncle Kouzuki (Jin-woong Jo) in The Handmaiden.
Count Fujiwara (Jung-woo Ha) and Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) in The Handmaiden. 14
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Sook-hee (Tae-ri Kim) and Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) in The Handmaiden.
Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) and Sook-hee (Tae-ri Kim) in The Handmaiden.
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AQUARIUS Directed by Kleber Mendonsa Filho Starring: Sonia Braga, Maeve Jinkings, Irandhir Santos, Humberto Carrao. It’s impressive what people say about lack of education, and they always refer to poor people, but lack of manners isn’t in poor people, it’s in rich, well educated people like you, the elite, who think they are privileged, who don’t stand in line, you know? People like you who took a ‘business’ course, but lack basic human decency, who have no character, you know? No character, no I mean, you do have a character, your character is money, all you’ve got is your shit-eating smile; that’s what you got. - Clara
Brazilian director Kleber Mendonsa Filho’s second feature Neighboring Sounds caused quite a stir when it was released in 2012. It was about life in a middle-class neighbourhood in present day Reclife takes an unexpected turn after the arrival of an independent private security firm. The presence of these men brings a sense of safety and a good deal of anxiety to a culture which runs on fear. Filho’s latest is again set in Reclife, Brazil. It focuses on a 65year-old widow and retired music critic, who was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Reclife. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-story building, built in the 1940s, in the upper-class, seaside Boa Viacem Avenue. All the neighbouring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for that plot. Clara has pledged only to leave her place upon her death and will engage in a cold war with the company. She has angered her neighbours because they can’t collect their agreed payment until she’s out of the building. As the days begin to mount, so does the tension and the methods that are used by the property developers to get Clara to leave. For Clara, a fiercely independent woman, her home is full of cherished memories, full of secret meanings and intimate echoes of her past, and she will not budge in her determination to stay. And Cara’s love of music acts as a comforting cocoon of nostalgia as she has a huge vinyl collection which she is constantly dipping into and solidifies her personality and love of music which plays such an 16
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integral part of the storyline: tracks by Queen, including the 1980 set opening sequence, and then injecting the use of “Fat Bottom Girls” which she plays at full volume to try and shut out the obnoxious sound of noise coming from the apartment above, and so attempt to take back control of her own environment – and life. Music again dominates in the first part of the film, called “Clara’s Hair”. It starts with a pair of car headlights piercing the darkness and highlighting the sand, before its occupants start listening to “Another One Bites the Dust” at full blast and join a family party to celebrate Aunt Lucia’s birthday. At the party, every generation mingles quite naturally and we learn that Clara, Lucie’s niece, has just won her fight against a very serious illness, and explains her short hair and the title of the first chapter of the movie. What follows a spectacular ellipsis, and we are again back in the present day, with Clara now sixty-something. Her life consists of dips in the ocean, tai chi, dancing on her own, group laughter therapy on the beach, lying in her hammock on the balcony, night-clubbing with her old girlfriends, family gatherings, caring for the little ones, and above all picking out songs from her LP collection. Technological advances in how music is shared also becomes an interesting sub-tangent within the film, as Clara is grilled in an interview about her comfort with MP3s due to acknowledged expertise on records, having so many long players. Her answer is an astute one – the method by which we continue to experience music is not so much a problem, but something tangible is lost when these progenitors of memory lose their aspect of physicality. The film’s ultimate success is due to the outstanding performance of Sonia Braga who dominates every scene in which she is in, and that is most of them. Numerously nominated for awards, it is only a matter of time before she justifiably claims one. She can next be seen in John Turturro’s “Going Places”, which is a spin-off of “The Big Lebowski”. It centres on the notable bowler Jesus Quintana, played by Turturro. Kleber Mendonsa Fiho’s next film is co-directed with Juliano Dornelles and is called “Bacurau”. It is about a filmmaker who decides to travel to a village in the interior of Brazil to make a documentary. As days go by, he begins to discover that the locals are not exactly what they appear to be and hide dangerous secrets. “Aquarius” premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.
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Clara (Sara Braga) in Aquarius
Clara (Sara Braga) in Aquarius 18
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Clara (Sara Braga) in Aquarius
Clara (Sara Braga) in Aquarius
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CASTING CALL CALLING ACTORS What are the options for actors looking to get noticed? Who do you send your showreel to? Do you need an agent? There are numerous casting companies and various ways that actors can find work by being with a casting agency.
SPOTLIGHT Spotlight connects professional performers with casting opportunities around the world. Performers on Spotlight are recognised by agents and casting professionals as the most talented in the industry. That’s why Spotlight is used every day by casting directors looking to find the best performers for their film productions or an eagerly-anticipated television drama series. Spotlight is the best way to promote yourself as a professional performer and get noticed by casting directors. THE STUDIOS. They have three spacious, purpose built spaces with air-conditioning and natural light, an extensive waiting area and reception space, client kitchen, Nespresso coffee machine, teas and bottles of water, flexible task seating and furniture; plus, Wi-fi.
THE KIT. Sony HVR-Z7 High Definition Cameras. Adjustable lighting rig with Dedo lights and Lowel Softboxes. Adobe On-Location video capture software. 18% grey infinity backdrops and flooring. THE CASTING PACKAGE All the following are included in their hourly rate. Reception service Casting forms and printed colour photos Camera operator Casting webpage to view clips and stills online Link to printable Spotlight CVs Zip download (MP4 video Files and Jpegs) Downloadable casting log DVD (upon request) Datadisc (upon request) Shortlist webpage (upon request) Casting webpage demo
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CASTING CALL PRO CCP is the leading casting website of its kind, posting thousands of auditions each year to 64,606 professional members. Over 39,247 casting directors, producers and agents use their innovative service to post jobs and search for professional acting talent. Once you are a member you will get access to a whole host of features to help you forge a successful career. JOBS More than 52,000 actors already rely on CCP to source work, find an agent and network. You can browse and apply for all the latest paid jobs and auditions. TAILORED ALERTS Be informed first! Receive instant job alert emails for all roles matching your skill set. OPPORTUNITIES Build your portfolio, gain experience and collaborate. Casting Call Pro provides live access to industry opportunities. FIND AN AGENT Be proactive in seeking representation: search our Agency Directory, keep track of who has open books, and contact agents through the site. Maintain control of your agency applications and get notified when your requests are received and viewed. CAREER TOOLS: EMPLOYER DIRECTORY Access our Employer Directory, which gives you direct access to the contact details of thousands of potential employers. SERVICE PROVIDERS Search our directory of photographers, and browse our showreel & voiceover providers. View members’ testimonials to help you choose. NETWORKING Join the conversation! Support a campaign or seek advice, and be heard by thousands of peers and industry professionals. GUIDES Optimise your career progression with advice, top tips and insights from leading industry experts. MEDIA GALLERY Make the most of your online portfolio, where you can feature all of your latest images. CUSTOM SHOWCASE Upload up to 20 showreels, voice samples or documents. Premium Members – Make unlimited changes to your profile at no extra cost. CREATE a WEBSITE Our template builder makes it easy for anyone to design a professional website. ADD YOUR CONTENT Customise your personal website’s design, and export media from your Casting Call Pro profile. FREE HOSTING We’ll host all of your images at no additional cost. MOBILE READY No matter where you are…Casting Call Pro is optimised for any device, for 24/7 access! ACTOR OF THE WEEK Seeking extra exposure across Casting Call Pro? We’re on the lookout for success stories. Tweet us to find out more!
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CASTING NOW CastingNow.co.uk is a casting resource for everyone in the entertainment business. It is run by ex-casting and TV professionals who have contacts and inside knowledge of the industry. We not only provide the latest and best new castings and opportunities but also a platform to showcase your talents. For a low monthly fee from just £3.99 per month our members get to promote themselves including photo’s, video and audio showreels via their profile page – and most importantly are able to apply to as many of the latest jobs for actors, presenters, extras, models, dancers, singers and musicians as they want – with just one click of a button! There are opportunities for everyone, all shapes and sizes and all ages. We have helped cast people from 16 to 86, some with loads of experience and others with none. As a member you may get work in one of two ways: You will be contacted directly by a casting agent or producer who has searched the site, viewed your profile and thinks you’re what they’re after. Or, you apply directly to one of our castings and if the casting agent likes your profile they will respond with details of an audition or casting. If you’re applying for work as an ‘extra’ you may well get booked without them even seeing you! Remember: We are not an agency, we do not take commission on any work you may get through our site – everything you earn you keep!
CAST IT TALENT Cast it Talent was launched in 2008. The mission of Cast It Talent is to give actors the opportunity to join the Cast It database and make their info readily available to Casting Directors. We want to give Actors and Agents the entry into the electronic casting process that is happening on Cast It, and by doing this our Cast It users have an easier way to get expanded access to talent more quickly. Our focus with Cast It was to make the Casting Director’s life easier with a clean, simple and easy-to-use site. Our goal is the same with Cast It Talent - we are making the process easy and available to actors and agents, with the same clean and simple approach.
Ryan Gosling used Cast It Talent to cast his lead actor, Ian De Caestecker in Lost River. He found it was easy and “You don’t need an agent to audition. You get these wildly intimate auditions. You really get a sense of the person. It’s not a generic process. I asked all the guys who auditioned to do two things: to do that Robert Frost poem from ‘The Outsiders’ and to dance”. He had his actors dance to get a good read on the performers, from the song they chose to the way they moved. Of the poem reading, Gosling said he was looking for someone who didn’t read it a “emotional way”, without any ‘salt or pepper’. Ian read it like he had to do it for school, resentfully, and that’s what he wanted. He said of why he chose the actor: “He’s selfless and gives the scenes to the other actors. It’s a beautiful quality. When he danced he did the waltz with an imaginary girl and he kept leaving the frame. He just had me”.
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IMDb Pro Casting opportunities for new movies, TV series and more. The online site offers invaluable information for casting directors on actors and crew. For each actor or actress, you will find their filmography and once the casting director has chosen them for the film that they are casting, they will find the person that they will need to contact to get them. TALENT AGENT MANAGER REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICIST
Ian De Caestecker in Lost River.
Ryan Gosling shooting Lost River.
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FilmFest Follower
TRIBECA 19TH – 30th APRIL U.S. NARRATIVE COMPETITION AARDVARK Directed by Brian Shoaf Starring: Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Jon Hamm. A therapist spends her time listening to other people’s problems whilst battling her own anxieties. Her professional and personal worlds collide when her newest patient walks through the door.
ABUNDANT ACREAGE AVAILABLE Directed by Angus MacLachlan Starring: Terry Kinney, Amy Ryan, Max Gail. Two siblings are trying to recover over the recent death of their father, when they are unexpectedly disrupted by the sudden arrival of three mysterious brothers, camping on their land.
BLAME Directed by Quinn Shephard Starring: Quinn Shephard, Chris Messina. An outcast seeks solace in fantasy worlds, when a high school drama teacher casts her in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”.
THE ENDLESS Directed by Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead Starring: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead. After escaping a cult as teenagers, bothers Aaron and Justin return to their former home after receiving a mysterious message. While Aaron is quickly drawn back into the fold, Justin remains uneasy.
FLOWER Directed by Max Winkler Starring: Zoey Deutch, Kathryn Hahn. A rebellious and quick-witted 17-year-old, kills time with her friends gawking at older men in bowling alleys and sexually scheming guys out of their money.
KEEP THE CHANGE Directed by Rachel Israel Starring: Brandon Polansky, Samantha Elisofon.
In a support group for adults living with autism, David meets a woman with similar learning challenges, and they quickly forge an intimate bond.
LOVE AFTER LOVE Directed by Russell Harbaugh Starring: Andie MacDowell, Chris O’Dowd. Following the death of their family’s patriarch, a mother and her adult sons feel emotionally untethered.
ONE PERCENT MORE HUMID Directed by Liz W. Garcia Starring: Julia Garner, Juno Temple.
Two childhood friends home from college for a hot New England summer, attempt to enjoy parties and skinny-dipping and the usual vacation hijinks, when a shared trauma in their past resurfaces and becomes increasingly difficult to suppress.
THIRST STREET Directed by Nathan Silver Starring: Lindsay Burdge, Damien Bonnard.
Grieving over a lover’s suicide, Gina loses her grip on reality after falling for a suave Parisian bartender.
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INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE COMPETITION THE DIVINE ORDER (Switzerland)
Directed by Petra Volpe Starring: Marie Leuenberger, Max Simonischek. The story of Nora, a quiet housewife from a quaint village searching for the fierce suffragette leader inside her.
ICE MOTHER
(Czech Republic) Directed by Bohdan Slama Starring: Zuzana Kronerova, Pavel Novy.
Hana lives alone in a big villa with only weekly visits from her two belligerent sons and their families to look forward to. Then one day, while on a stroll with her grandson, she rescues an elderly ice swimmer from drowning.
KING of PEKING
(China, USA, Australia) Directed by Sam Voutas Starring: Zhao Jun, Wang Naixun, Han Qing.
A father and his son are travelling film projectionists, screening Hollywood movies for local villagers. Faced with losing custody of his son, he starts selling illegal bootleg DVDs out of the old movie theatre where he works, despite his son’s objections.
NEWTON (India)
Directed by Amit V Masurkar Starring: Rajkummar Rao, Anjali Patil.
Newton becomes the torch bearer for political fairness when he volunteers to head up a polling station in the deepest jungle for 76 remote voters.
NOBODY’S WATCHING
(Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, USA, Spain) Directed by Julia Solomonoff Starring: Guillermo Pfening, Rafael Ferro.
Nico finds himself staying afloat with odd jobs bartending and babysitting, after giving up a successful soap opera career for a chance to make it in New York.
NOVEMBER (Estonia)
Directed by Rainer Sarnet Starring: Rea Lest, Jorgen Liik. A pagan, black and white world, where the characters’ search for meaning in their surroundings and ponder the existence of the soul.
SAMBA
(Dominican Republic) Directed by Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas Starring: Laura Gomez, Algenis Perez Soto
After spending 15 years in an American jail, Cisco returns to the Dominican Republic, yet is unable to get a job.
SON OF SOFIA
(Bulgaria, France, Greece) Directed by Elina Psykou. Starring: Viktor Khomut, Valery Tcheplanowa.
An 11-year-old boy runs away from his home when he learns that an elderly man that his mother works for is his new father.
TOM OF FINLAND
(Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany) Directed by Dome Karukoski Starring: Pekka Strang, Lauri Tilkanen.
Cult artist finds inspiration in his European post-war surroundings, even as conservative Finland is not quite ready for his transgressive work.
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SPOTLIGHT NARRATIVE THE BOY DOWNSTAIRS Directed by Sophie Brooks Starring: Matthew Shear, Deirdre O’Connell. Diana, a single New Yorker, is searching for an apartment. She seemingly finds a jewel of a home until realizing her downstairs neighbour is her ex whose heart she broke.
BUSTER’S MAL HEART Directed by Sarah Adina Smith Starring: Rami Malek, DJ Qualls, Kate Lyn Shell. A mind-bending thriller in which the typical rules don’t apply, least of all to a man who cannot be certain of anything he’s done.
CHUCK Directed by Philippe Falardeau Starring: Liev Schreiber, Elizabeth Moss. A liquor salesman from New Jersey who went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali. He suffered numerous losses, knockouts and broken noses in his ten years in the ring.
THE CLAPPER Directed by Dito Montiel Starring: Ed Helms, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Levine. A professional audience member gains unwanted notoriety when a latenight talk show turns his life into a national obsession, threatening a budding relationship.
DABKA Directed by Bryan Buckley Starring: Evan Peters, Al Pacino. When a rookie journalist has an inspiring chance encounter with his idol, he uproots his life and moves to Somalia looking for the story of a lifetime.
THE DINNER Directed by Oren Moverman Starring: Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan. Two brothers are locked in sibling rivalry and are forced to come head to head over a dinner with their wives, resulting with their dark family secrets being revealed.
LITERALLY, RIGHT BEFORE AARON Directed by Ryan Eggold Starring: Cobie Smulders, Justin Long. Still reeling from his breakup with his college sweetheart, Adam’s world is thrown into further chaos when he is surprisingly invited to attend her wedding.
THE LOVERS Directed by Azazel Jacobs Starring: Debra Winger, Tracy Letts, Melora Walters. A long-married couple, both seriously involved with other people, resolve to call it quits. To their surprise, their decision reignites a dormant spark.
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MANIFESTO Directed by Julian Rosefeldt Starring: Cate Blanchett. We witness a series of vignettes which draw upon artist manifestos that question the true nature of art. A chameleonic Blanchett gives a tourde-force performance as she transforms in each segment like never.
PERMISSION Directed by Brian Crano Starring: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Gina Gershon. Anna and Will are the definition of long-term monogamy, and with great careers, an impending marriage, and a potential new home, things couldn’t be better. But after a close friend’s joke about her nonexistent sexual experience hits too close to home, Anna proposes to Will, an experiment to broaden their horizons without sabotaging their relationship.
ROCK’N ROLL Directed by Guillaume Canet Starring: Guillaume Canet, Marion Cotillard, Gilles Lellouche. Real-life couple Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard play themselves in this satirical comedy about a couple dealing with aging in the limelight. After Guillaume gets told by a co-star that he’s just not cool anymore, he goes to extreme lengths to prove her wrong, putting his happy domestic life to the test.
SWEET VIRGINIA Directed by James M Dagg Starring: Imogen Poots, Jon Berthal, Rosemarie DeWitt. A gritty neo-Western about the predator in each of us, and the prices we pay to start over.
TAKE ME Directed by Pat Healy Starring: Taylor Schilling, Pat Healy. Ray is in the boutique simulated business, which is a threadbare market. When a mysterious call contracts him for a weekend kidnapping with a handsome payday at the end, he jumps at the chance. But the job isn’t all that it seems.
THUMPER Directed by Jordan Ross Starring: Eliza Taylor, Pablo Schreiber. A troubled new girl in a school harbouring a deep secret, attracts the attention of a volatile gang leader.
THE TRIP TO SPAIN Directed by Michael Winterbottom Starring: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon. Another chapter in their hilarious road trip series.
45TH ANNIVERSARY DOUBLE-FEATURE SCREENING OF THE GODFATHER & THE GODFATHER PART 2. The festival will close with a special screening at the RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL of Coppola’s classics which he will attend along with Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Sire and Robert DeNiro.
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EXTRAS
DVDs MbM’s Recommendations
GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH Directed by Damien Chazelle Starring: Jason Palmer, Desiree Garcia, Sandra Khin. A full-fledged song-and-dance, tap-and-jazz musical, Damien Chazelle’s Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench boldly recasts the 1940’s MGM musical tradition in a gritty cinema verite style, resulting in an exuberant celebration of romance and music, and one of the most critically-acclaimed first features. Guy and Madeline have been dating for three months, but the excitement of first love has faded. When another woman catches Guy’s eye, sparks fly - spelling the end of Guy and Madeline’s romance. But when things don’t work out quite as planned, Guy must decide whether to try to win Madeline back – even if it may be too late. Their story unfolds in a world of jazz and tap, featuring original music composed by Justin Hurwitz and recorded by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra.
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EXTRAS *AUDIO COMMENTARY by DIRECTOR DAMIEN CHAZELLE & COMPOSER JUSTIN HURWITZ *DELETED SCENES *BEHIND-THE-SCENES FEATURETTE *MAKING A SONG FEATURETTE *THEATRICAL TRAILER *ESSAY BY FILM CRITIC AMY TAUBIN
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ARRIVAL Directed by Denis Villeneuve Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlberg. When mysterious spacecraft touch down across the globe, an elite team – led by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) are brought together to investigate. As nations struggle to coordinate a response, mankind teeters on the verge of global war, leaving Banks and the team in a race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity’s very existence. We have heard so much about how women need to be given leading roles, well, here in this quite brilliant film, Amy Adams plays a linguist professor who receives an assignment of interpreting extra-terrestrial language by aliens to define whether they come in peace or to make war, is a leading role for an actress in which Amy Adams carries the film on her shoulders in an outstanding Oscar-worthy performance, of which she was amazingly not nominated. The movie, is based on an award-winning 1998 short story by Ted Chiang titled “Story of your Life”, it was bought by Paramount in a then-record $20 million deal at the start of the 2014 Cannes. French Canadian Denis Villeneuve is one of the few foreign filmmakers to excel in Hollywood. Villeneuve said that everyone was seduced by the script and the idea that Amy Adams was attached to the project. She was the first choice to play Louise Banks, she loved the script and said OK in 24 hours. Amy came in early, earlier than Villeneuve would have thought. He was doing “Sicario”, so “Arrival” had to wait; otherwise the film would have been shot much sooner. It was well worth the wait.
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EXTRAS *XENOLIHGUISTICS: UNDERSTANDING ARRIVAL *ACOUSTIC SIGNATURES: THE SOUND DESIGN *NONLINEAR THINKING: THE EDITORIAL PROCESS PRINCIPLES OF TIME, MEMORY & LANGUAGE
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PATERSON Directed by Jim Jarmusch Starring: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani. Adam Driver gives a career-best performance as Paterson, a bus driver in the New Jersey city of the same name. He is also a poet, recording his daily observations and thoughts into a notebook. He thrives on routine: he drives his bus route, he goes home for dinner with his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), he walks his dog Marvin, visits his local bar for one beer. By contrast Laura’s world is ever -changing, with new projects and ideas striking her daily. The film quietly observes the triumphs and defeats of daily life, along with the poetry evident in its smallest details. The narrative has a time-span of just one week in Paterson’s life, each day captioned. He is remarkably stress-free and he writes his poetry in his breaks and before his shift. A tell-tale sign of his passion can be glimpsed in his driver’s cab: Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems”. Once his shift is over, he returns home to his loving wife Laura, who excitedly tells him of her latest creative pursuit, which ranges from painting everything in their home black and white, which includes her clothes, to sending for a guitar so that she can learn to play it and become a Country and Western star, or she is baking cakes to enter a competition as another dream for her is to open her own bakery. Laura is just very talented and both she and Paterson support each other’s work. Theirs is an ideal relationship because they accept each other as they and don’t try to change them. Paterson is part of the community, he is good hearted and optimistic, a good listener and conversationalist. He is passionate about poetry. He is a face-to-face person and doesn’t have a mobile phone. The namesake town is a character in itself and in the aforementioned bar, we meet Doc the barman who pins a tableau of pictures of local heroes on the wall, the main one being Lou Costello who partnered Bud Abbott in the famous comedy double-act of the 1940s. This film is about contented people, which makes it a treasured rarity.
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EXTRAS *Q & A with ADAM DRIVER *TRAILERS
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