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NEWS:
MARCH-APRIL 2019
04.30.19:
 The
HBO series CHERNOBYL was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in
New York. Here are some publicity photos that were taken on April 25.
Attending the festival were the three leading
stars - Jared Harris, Emily Watson and Stellan. Here are photos taken at
the screening on April 26.
The following day a press
conference was held at the Beekman Hotel.
That evening Stellan was spotted
with Alexander at the after party for his son's new movie, "The Kill
Team", also screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was noted that
Stellan stood by his son’s side the whole night, drinking beer together
and chatting with friends.
04.16.19:
Terry
Gilliam’s THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE
will have a theatrical release at the end of this week, says distributor
Screen Media. The film was at first only available to be seen as part of
a one-night-only theatrical event on April 10 from Fathom Events, but
the success of that screening prompted a wider theatrical release. The
film will hit theaters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin,
Texas and other top markets starting April 19. The film will also be
released on all major VOD platforms on that day as well and will
continue to expand theatrically throughout the spring and beyond. For a
list of upcoming screenings, visit this
Screen Media link.
04.01.19:
Gold
Derby is Hollywood’s leading source for predictions, analysis and news
covering more than two dozen awards – including Oscars, Emmys, Golden
Globes, and Grammys. They ran an article a couple weeks ago called - "Skarsgård
Supremacy at the Emmys? Alexander, Bill and Stellan could all be
nominated this year." Alexander earned his first Emmy nomination and win
in 2017 for his supporting role in "Big Little Lies". It's predicted
that he could follow his Emmy victory with a Best Movie/Limited Actor
nomination for the British spy drama "The Little Drummer Girl," in which
he plays Israeli intelligence officer Gadi Becker. The film aired in the
states on AMC and is based on a novel by John le Carre.
Brother Bill recently rose to fame
as the evil clown Pennywise in the blockbuster horror film "It" (2017),
and now he’s an Emmy contender for Best Movie/Limited Supporting Actor
for another project based on Stephen King‘s fiction: Hulu’s "Castle
Rock," in which he plays the Kid, a mysterious inmate at Shawshank State
Penitentiary.
Dad Stellan could face off against
his son Bill for Best Movie/Limited Supporting Actor for HBO’s
miniseries "Chernobyl," which premieres in May and tells the true story
of the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster. So, we shall see in a few more
months if any of these predictions will come true.
Speaking of "Chernobyl", you can
now view the trailer
at this link. The five-part series will premiere on HBO on May
6. The trailer is as harrowing as they come, with Stellan's Soviet
Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina, the government official leading
the commission on the Chernobyl incident, slowly realizing the gravity
of the situation while Jared Harris’ Valery Legasov, the leading Soviet
nuclear physicist who was part of the response team, tries to contain
the disaster as much as possible. Meanwhile, Emily Watson’s Ulana
Khomyuk is Soviet nuclear physicist trying to figure out what caused
this situation, in a sort of investigative mystery plot that runs
parallel to the steadily escalating disaster of the radiation poisoning.
If you have access to Amazon streaming videos, you
might want to check out the documentary "The Babushkas of Chernobyl". I
saw it last week and found it very interesting. The film shows a
community of women who defiantly scratch out an existence in the
radioactive Dead Zone surrounding Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4 because they
refuse to give up their family homes.
In
February when filming began in Trollhättan for Norwegian writer/director Maria Sødahl's film
HÅP, a production interview
took place with its leads Stellan and Andrea Bræin Hovig. Here
are several publicity photos:
03.02.19:
In
a recent interview Stellan commented on several of his projects.
In re: Out Stealing Horses
-
"I can’t understand how he
[his character Trond] lives because I can’t stand being alone. That kind
of personality has to do with the long distances and the dark winters
that affect social behavior... Always in this film it was 30 minus
(Celsius) and indoors it was 20 minus. It was also 30 minus in In
Order of Disappearance. Hans Petter loves it. He is that kind of
person. It’s not me. I have a winter coat that Canada Goose handed out.
I’ve never bought any winter clothes, ever. I prefer no clothes. And I
can do that all winter. I walk naked in my home and it’s nice and
comfortable."
In re: In Order of
Disappearance and American version Cold Pursuit, both
directed by Hans Petter Moland -
"Our version did very well but I
hope that every film Hans Petter does should enable him to do another
one. That’s the problem: you have to bring in some money or you can’t
make films any more. Out Stealing Horses was really hard to
finance. If you send it to a banker they say, 'There is not a gun, not a
chase, nothing.'"
[Watch a Berlinale interview with
Stellan
at
this link.]
In re: Norwegian writer/director Maria Sødahl's film
Håp (Hope) -
A
couple of years ago at Christmas she (Maria) got lung cancer that got
cured and then the next Christmas she got a brain tumor that was
stemming from that. She’s written a film about a Christmas with six
children when you’re told you’re going to die. So basically I’m playing
Hans Petter in that film. But I’m not playing him—he’s so slow it would
be too boring." Asked if it were funny, Stellan replied, "Sometimes. But
with a death sentence, there are some limitations to the fun."
In
re: Dune -
"It’s
like The Avengers. It’s a delicious cast. I’ve just got the book
and am going to read it now. I’m playing a small but important role.
Most of all I wanted to work with Denis Villeneuve."
In
re: The Painted Bird -
"It’s
finished. It's based on the novel by Jerzy Kosinski and is about a young
boy who meets different people on the road. Harvey Keitel is one and I’m
another. Udo Kier is in it too. It’s one of the darkest books ever
written and you want to shoot it in black and white and not in English.
And you want to shoot it over two or three years. There’s no way you’re
going to get a dime back. So that’s why it was important that it got
made." Asked where it will premiere, Stellan answered, "Maybe in
Cannes."
In re:
Chernobyl -
 "It's
a five-hour HBO mini-series that comes out in May. I think it will be
good. It’s very well written. It’s with Emily Watson who I haven’t
worked with since Breaking the Waves. We don’t fuck in this one
though! There’s no market for it any more. Jared Harris is playing the
main role and he’s fantastic. I
play the Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina who had the
responsibility to take care of the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the clean
up. Jared plays a Soviet scientist who Shcherbina brings in because he
knows about nuclear reactors and Shcherbina doesn’t. What’s interesting
about it is not the catastrophe itself but what makes or creates a
catastrophe like that. It’s because it’s a system, an infallible system.
The Soviet system was infallible, that was the ideology. It’s like any
religion. It could be nationalism that goes too far. You think your
nation is infallible–we’ve seen examples of that. What happens then is
that you have to adjust reality to fit this image of infallibility. So
there were flaws in those reactors that were hidden even from the people
running them because it couldn’t be that they had bad reactors in the
Soviet Union. Why don’t we immediately say we have a catastrophe and we
need all the help we can get? No they said nothing happened; they said
it’s all fine. Then of course that wasn’t correct."
A
long-awaited film will screen in theaters one night only this April.
Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don
Quixote premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year and
will screen in select theates for one night only - April 10th. A
complete list of participating theaters is available via
Fathom Events, where tickets can be purchased as well. Besides
Stellan, the film stars Jonathan Pryce, Adam Driver, Olga Kurylenko and
Jordi Molla. Driver stars as Toby,
an advertising director working on a Don Quixote-based project who gets
sucked into the delusions of a cobbler – played by Jonathan Pryce –
who’s convinced he’s the real Don Quixote. In an attempt to make amends
for an earlier project that altered the fortunes of a small Spanish
village, Toby accepts his role as Sancho Panza and joins Don Quixote on
his journey.
Gilliam has famously been working on his Don Quixote film for over two
decades. The project began in the late Nineties – with Johnny Depp cast
as Toby and Jean Rochefort as Quixote – but a variety of mishaps
derailed the project, as chronicled in the 2002 documentary, Lost in
La Mancha. Gilliam made numerous attempts to revive the project over
the next decade until he finally began production again in spring 2017.
Here's a link to an 11-minute interview with Stellan and Olga Kurylenko
discussing the film.
Click here to view interview.
Nice
to see Stellan's portrait in the Stockholm Metro.
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