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Hugh Jackman Endured Tough X-Men Stunts. (Photo Credit – Instagram)

Hugh Jackman might have been the unbreakable Wolverine on screen, but Anna Paquin remembers him being put through the wringer while filming the first X-Men. During an interview, Paquin, who played Rogue in the 2000 Marvel blockbuster, shared her behind-the-scenes perspective on Jackman’s grueling stunts. “It’s minus 40 [degrees], and he’s being dropped off some building onto his back repeatedly,” she recalled.

Paquin admitted that watching her co-star endure the punishment wasn’t easy. “He got put through the wringer on that first one and never complained,” she said, emphasizing Jackman’s unshakable professionalism. Despite the physical toll, Jackman remained “a lovely, gracious human being,” according to Paquin. Their bond, forged during long hours on set, made the ordeal even harder to witness.

The two actors shared most of their scenes in X-Men, building an on-screen mentor-student dynamic that extended off-screen.

As the proverb goes, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” so when Kirsty Tickle and Jonathan Boulet from riotous musical duo Party Dozen were looking to create a music video for Coup de Gronk, the first release from their new album Crime in Australia, they immediately reached out to fellow Aussie duo Versus to rekindle the fruitful collaboration which brought us the delightfully cacophonous junkyard-set promo for Macca the Mutt. The creative output and common synergy between regularly featured on Dn directorial team Tanya Babić and Jason Sukadana and the band is immediately recognisable in this third gritty, loud and absorbing video they’ve made together. Coup de Gronk delves into Australia’s seedier underbelly while paying homage to the low-budget, cult world of Ozploitation films. A saxophone is wielded as a vicious weapon, fear follows in their wake and when Party Dozen come to collect forget your pathetic excuses,...

HBO is developing Londongrad, a limited series based on Alan Cowell’s book The Terminal Spy, about poisoned Kbg agent Alexander Litvinenko, with Benedict Cumberbatch set to star as Litvinenko, Deadline has confirmed. Cumberbatch also will executive produce the project via his Sunnymarch production banner.

Written by David Scarpa, Londongrad tells the true story of Alexander Litvinenko, played by Cumberbatch, the former Kgb agent poisoned by the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 in 2006 in England.

Scarpa will executive produce with Cumberbatch. Bryan Fogel will direct and executive produce via Orwell Productions. Len Amato of Crash&Salvage also will executive produce alongside Adam Ackland and Claire Marshall of Sunnymarch.

On the television side, Cumberbatch received Emmy and BAFTA award nominations for his role as detective Sherlock Holmes in BBC’s Sherlock. He also recently starred as the title character in Showtime limited series Patrick Melrose. Cumberbatch received a leading actor Oscar nomination for his...

Netflix just can’t get enough of Elite. The streamer announced Thursday that it has renewed the Spanish-language teen drama for Season 6, well ahead of its Season 5 premiere.

What’s more, Netflix has confirmed three new holiday-themed installments of the short-form spinoff Elite: Short Stories: “Phillipe, Caye, & Felipe” (premiering Wednesday, Dec. 15), “Samuel & Omar” (premiering Monday, Dec. 20) and “Patrick” (premiering Thursday, Dec. 23).

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Six years on, the legacy of Connext can be seen at festival awards ceremonies and in international theatrical and TV deals.

Cannes prizes, international festival plaudits and a social media thumbs up from Ricky Gervais are among the profile -raising moments enjoyed by projects that have participated in Connext, the annual film and TV showcase run by Flanders Image in Belgium.

The event serves as an export platform for film and TV drama made in Flanders and Brussels and has been mounted virtually under the banner Re>Connext for the last two years amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite being forced online and virtual,...

Six years on, the legacy of Connext can be seen at festival awards ceremonies and in international theatrical and TV deals.

Cannes prizes, international festival plaudits and a social media thumbs up from Ricky Gervais are among the profile -raising moments enjoyed by projects that have participated in Connext, the annual film and TV showcase run by Flanders Image in Belgium.

The event serves as an export platform for film and TV drama made in Flanders and Brussels and has been mounted virtually under the banner Re>Connext for the last two years amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite being forced online and virtual,...

Patrick Swayze’s two biggest movies were 1987’s “Dirty Dancing” and 1990’s “Ghost.” But in between, he made a movie that, while not a huge box office hit at the time, has become one of his best-known films. Road House released in 1989, has become a cult classic over the years, with new viewers constantly discovering […]

The post Cult Classic ‘Road House,’ Through The Eyes Of Patrick Swayze appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

Oh, here’s another reason to love Italian cinema: they will jump on a known property faster than you can say The Asylum. But I’m talking less about the new, self-conscious models of mockery and more of the Use the Name, a Setting, and a Character school of “flattery”. For instance Patrick Still Lives (1980), the unofficial sequel to Patrick (1978), the surprise Australian hit, isn’t even a sequel but rather a reboot: same premise, similar setting, same name. All the boxes are checked for my kind of flick, and it has the added bonus of being rung through the Italian filter to end up in a place far removed (yet equally as entertaining) from the original. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Patrick Still Lives (Aka Patrick vive ancora) opened in Italy in May; Wikipedia (that beacon of true report) notes that “It is known primarily for...

Twenty participants from 13 European countries selected for scheme organised by the Erich Pommer Institut.

A new career enhancement programme for female producers in the European drama series sector has revealed its first cohort of 20 participants.

The inaugural edition of the Series’ Women edition, organised by the Erich Pommer Institut (Epi), includes producers from 13 European countries and will foster access to industry markets, support the building of professional networks and offer access to top industry experts as mentors to take the producers’ careers to the next level.

Among those selected are Belgium’s Sarah Marks, a producer on Tim Mielants’ comedy-drama...

High School romance movies are not about high school romances. You may think you know the beats, the form and the codes, but as Words On The Bathroom Wall, which is available to Rent on Digital from today, proves, the genre isn’t really a genre at all. Teenagers at school fall in love in coming of age romances, of course, but they also crop up in horror films, in science fiction, in thrillers, in musicals, in mysteries. The stories can be harrowing and happy, terrifying or tender.

What connects them isn’t the prom scene, the bit in the showers or the quirky teacher, they’re not even, really, films about love, or sex, or the lack there-of. The best High School love stories are about discovering who you are. Words is a sweet and self-aware school movie, sure, and its central romance to an extent runs along those familiar grooves,...

Portugal’s cash rebate scheme, introduced in 2018, is attracting major international productions and new production outfits and facilities, and providing significant leverage for domestic film and TV productions.

Shoots slowed during the pandemic, with several projects lensed in bubbles, but production is expected to surge in the second half of 2021.

The current cash rebate is tabbed at 25/30% of eligible production spend and may be upwardly revised in the near future.

€22.5 million ($27.5 million) in total cash rebate has been disbursed since 2018, roughly equally split between international shoots and 100% Portuguese productions and co-productions.

High-profile projects include Ira Sachs’ “Frankie,” with Isabelle Huppert, Richard Stanley’s “The Color Out of Space,” starring Nicolas Cage, Marco Pontecorvo’s “Fatima,” with Harvey Keitel, and three Bollywood pics. These projects have accessed cash rebate per pic varying between €631,000 and €1.9 million ($2.4 million) Portugal is also shaking up its production eco-system. Pubcaster Rtp has shifted from telenovelas to...

Indira Varma has joined the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series at Disney Plus, Variety has confirmed.

The details of the character Varma will play are being kept under wraps. She joins previously announced series lead Ewan McGregor, who will reprise the role of Kenobi from the films. Hayden Christensen will also appear, once again playing the role of Anakin Skywalker, a.k.a. Darth Vader.

Varma currently stars in the ABC legal drama “For Life.” She is also known for appearing as Ellaria Sand in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Her other recent TV credits also include “Patrick Melrose,” “Paranoid,” and “Carnival Row.” On the film side, her most recent releases were the crime thriller “Crisis” and “The One and Only Ivan,” the latter of which debuted on Disney Plus. She is repped by Gersh, Principal Entertainment LA, and Dalzell & Beresford Ltd.

McGregor confirmed that he was returning to play Kenobi...

Fresh off Sundance and a series of compelling interviews about how she chronicled the Covid-19 outbreak in China and its rampage across the the U.S., Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath will have its New York premiere as the opening film in the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight 2021.

The twenty-year old fest will be virtual, running from March 18 to April 5, with 18 documentary features, short films and special projects. Two films are world premieres and several are North American premieres, including the closing selection, Julien Faraut’s Les sorcières de l’Orient (Oriental Witches), the account of a historic Japanese women’s volleyball team and its meteoric ascent to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

The lineup includes Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers’ Inside the Brick Wall; Mohamed Soueid’s The Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer; Rosine Mbakam’s Delphine’s Prayers; Anthony Banua-Simon’s Cane Fire; Ali Essafi’s...

Winners for the 2020 New Zealand Television Awards were announced today, with the event becoming of the few physical screen award ceremonies to be held during the pandemic.

The Luminaries, produced by Southern Light Films and Working Title TV, was the big winner in the drama craft categories with multiple wins including Best Script: Drama for Eleanor Catton, who adapted her Man Booker Prize-winning book for television, Best Director: Drama for Claire McCarthy, Best Cinematographer: Drama for Denson Baker, Best Production Design for Felicity Abbott and Daniel Birt, Best Costume Design for Edward K. Gibbon, Best Makeup Design for Jane O’Kane and Best Post Production Design for Alana Cotton. Lead actor Himesh Patel, who played Emery Staines in the series, won the award for Best Actor.

Taika Waititi, Paul Yates, Jemaine Clement won the Best Comedy award for season 2 of their Wellington Paranormal, while Yates also won Best Script: Comedy for the same program.

Belgian film Patrick showcases the average male form, setting it apart from movies that often present it as comedy or combat

In terms of an attention-grabbing tagline, the Belgian movie Patrick had me at “Naturist campsite handyman loses his hammer”. Don’t expect anything saucy, though: Patrick, out on digital platforms on Friday, is a spare, sombre character study, set in a woodland community where everybody happens to be naked. After a few minutes, you stop noticing, even though the film occasionally embraces the absurdism, especially in a fight scene between two angry naked men in a flimsy mobile home.

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Sometimes the more you look for something the less chance you have of finding it. “If you really want something you have to try to not want it so much,” says director Tim Mielants, describing how his character Patrick finally cracks the case of his missing favorite hammer.

The zen exercise doesn’t just work for the obsessive lead character in his debut feature of the same name. It was essentially what allowed the director to finally shoot the story that had preoccupied him since his youth in Belgium.

Interviewed by Variety film critic Peter Debruge, the helmer was speaking at the Variety Critics Corner series at the 54th Karlovy Vary film fest.

Mielants, a veteran director of small-screen series such as “Peaky Blinders” and “Legion,” says he was trying too hard to break into film for years before finally finding his way to the realization of “Patrick,” competing at...

Beta Cinema has acquired the dark, offbeat comedy “Patrick,” the feature debut of Flemish director Tim Mielants (“Peaky Blinders”), which will world premiere in competition next month at the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival. Variety has the exclusive trailer.

Featuring Kevin Janssens, Jemaine Clement and Bouli Lanners (“Rust and Bone”), “Patrick” is the story of a handyman at his father’s naturist campsite who dedicates his spare time to designing and building furniture. When he loses his trusted hammer, his search to retrieve it takes him to the furthest corner of the campgrounds—a journey that takes on existential meaning when his father passes away. As the life he long took for granted suddenly shifts course, Patrick embarks on a tragicomic quest that might ultimately help him become a new man.

“Patrick” is produced by Bart Van Langendonck of Savage Film. Beta Cinema will handle all international rights outside Benelux.