Carey Mulligan wins for "Suffragette," hopes awards season will help film gain audience
By Nicole Evatt
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) --Will Smith isn't expecting any pushback from the NFL over his upcoming football drama, "Concussion."
"I don't think it's going to generate too much controversy (with the NFL). There will be a little difficulty in swallowing it, as it was for me. I'm a football dad, you know," said the 47-year-old father of three.
Smith was honored Sunday at the Hollywood Film Awards for his work in "Concussion." He plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic neuropathologist who uncovered the dangerous effects of head trauma on the brain in football.
"You don't want it to be true," Smith said on the red carpet. "I think that the science is really irrefutable and the story of Dr. Bennet Omalu is such a powerful story. I think that it will be difficult at first for some, but I don't think that it's going to be that big of an issue. It's something that we have to accept."
"Concussion" made headlines after The New York Times reported the film was altered to placate the National Football League, a charge director that Peter Landesman and Sony have denied.
The Grammy-winning rapper, who recently appeared on the remix of Bomba Estereo's song "Fiesta," also discussed his return to music after a decade-long hiatus.
"It's such a new exploration for me. The most fun that I have. There's nothing that compares to being on the stage with a hit record. So you know I've been performing a little bit with (DJ Jazzy) Jeff. We've been sneaking out and going to places and working out a little bit. So I think it's going to be magnificent."
Another hot-button honoree Sunday was Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight." Police associations have urged boycotts of Tarantino's movies after the filmmaker said he was "on the side of the murdered" during a recent rally against police brutality in New York.
"We all have a tremendous respect for what police do every day, putting their lives on the line, OK? And I know Quentin feels that way too," said Kurt Russell, who stars in Tarantino's Western, out December.
"Now when it comes to his comments on policemen that's his to comment on," continued Russell. "You don't have to agree every time with everybody to like working together."
The awards show, which has raised eyebrows for giving honors to unreleased films, wasn't televised this year after dismal ratings in 2014.
Still, honorees including Robert DeNiro, Benicio Del Toro, Jane Fonda and Amy Schumer turned out for the glitzy gala in Beverly Hills hosted by James Corden of "The Late Late Show."
Carey Mulligan, who received an award for her historical drama "Suffragette," hoped the attention will help at the box office.
"It's an important film for people to see and to understand what women went through for us to have a vote," she said. "All of this award stuff is very good because it means more people will go and see it."
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More