There was a selected scene in “Mothering Sunday,” tailored from Graham Swift’s 2016 novel by screenwriter Alice Birch, that satisfied director Eva Husson she needed to do the movie. After a tryst together with her secret lover, Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), Jane Fairchild (Odessa Younger), a housemaid from a close-by manor, finds herself alone, wandering via the empty rooms of Paul’s dwelling. It’s a sunny Mom’s Day, and everyone seems to be out, ready for Paul to affix them, as Jane lingers. At one level, she finds herself within the English nation property’s huge library, bare, working her fingers over the books.
“I had been that woman,” Husson explains, talking over Zoom from Paris. “I discovered myself in locations I used to be not presupposed to be, strolling round bare and simply actually f—ing feeling the facility of my bare physique. Simply being there. I knew that. I knew that was not going to be creepy or sleazy. And I knew that was not one thing you see typically onscreen: a unadorned lady strolling round books, with out it being sexual. And it was not sexual; it was political. I felt, ‘I’ve bought to do that.’ That’s the scene that made me wish to make the movie.”
For Younger, who was solid remotely from Australia forward of the pandemic, the wordless scenes of Jane in the home have been essentially the most daunting, but additionally what the actress calls the “centerpiece of the film.” She recollects a MasterClass Helen Mirren did as soon as, which sums up the problem the function offered.
“The very first thing [Helen Mirren] does is stroll from the wings onto the stage to the chair,” Younger says, talking individually from New York. “She sits down and says, ‘I simply did the toughest factor that you might presumably do as an actor.’ Which is stroll with an intention. The thought being simply strolling as an individual, with out something however your physique to depend on, is extraordinarily difficult. We shot that sequence for therefore many days — I feel we shot it for a complete week. I used to be bare for a complete week. And there have been so many days the place I believed I used to be the worst actor on the planet. It actually calls into query the work that you just’ve completed. I didn’t wish to go into it and simply wing it as a result of there’s nuance to each second in that library and in that home. It could have been the best problem that the function posed.”
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Josh O’Connor and Odessa Younger within the film “Mothering Sunday.”
(Jamie D. Ramsay / Sony Photos Classics)
“Mothering Sunday” is, in itself, nuanced. Set throughout a number of timelines, with Jane as a maid in 1924 surrounding the movie’s pivotal occasions after which later in her life, the story is delicate and quiet, with a tone that parallels Birch’s work as a author on Hulu’s “Regular Individuals.” The success of the movie depends on the connection between Paul and Jane, who’re mismatched at school standing and availability (Paul is engaged to the daughter of his mother and father’ mates). The connection the characters share is advanced and fueled by the temper of the time interval.
“We talked quite a bit about our characters and the connection between the 2 of them,” O’Connor remembers. “Though I suppose, considering again, what’s so unusual about that relationship between Jane and Paul is that, in some ways, it wasn’t an emotionally deep relationship. Or it didn’t appear that method to us. There was clearly love there, however I feel there was a lot trauma and tragedy from Paul — and from Jane being an orphan — that there was a distance. Throughout that point, I don’t know that individuals have been in a position to articulate these emotions. We dwell in a time the place we are attempting to interact extra with our personal psychological well being and we’ve got extra language out there to elucidate our emotions. I don’t know if then we essentially had that, and there’s a British stiff-upper-lip angle. There was quite a lot of work on character, however quite a lot of it was private and personal, after which we labored these scenes collectively.”
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The viewers doesn’t see a lot of Paul and Jane collectively, despite the fact that their relationship shapes the narrative’s occasions, each in 1924 and later, when Jane, now a author, is in a relationship with Donald (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù). Actually, an early scene captures Paul and Jane’s yearslong historical past in a single glimpse, depicting their lovemaking and its aftermath. The depiction of intercourse is frank and lifelike and options unabashed nudity from the 2 actors. It’s notably spectacular if you notice O’Connor and Younger solely met a couple of week earlier than filming (he took her on an tour to the London Zoo, which O’Connor now says was a questionable selection).
“I consider that nudity is a fantastic interface for intimacy,” Husson explains. “Nudity’s not essentially about intercourse, which is why I beloved the scenes a lot the place they speak bare. They spend far more time bare whereas speaking than whereas having intercourse. There may be a minute of intercourse within the movie, all in all, and all the pieces else is the intimacy round intercourse. We have to see that represented onscreen. Pornography can’t be the one method to have folks represented in sexual conditions as a result of in any other case, we’re going to assume that excessive behaviors are the norm. And it’s not. A whole lot of instances it’s not passionate — it’s simply bare folks speaking, and it’s fully wonderful.”
Eva Husson, prime left, directs actors Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù and Odessa Younger on the set of the film “Mothering Sunday.”
(Robert Viglasky / Sony Photos Classics)
Nonetheless, filming the sequence precipitated some nervousness for O’Connor, who credit Husson and Younger with serving to him really feel comfy. Each second of the intercourse scene was choreographed by Husson, who beforehand explored sexual relationships onscreen together with her 2015 movie “Bang Gang.” It was additionally filmed with as few folks within the room as potential.
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“Nobody needs to be bare, ever, do they?” O’Connor laughs. “What I imply by that’s that we’re all fully self-conscious. However I don’t assume I’d ever do it if I felt it was gratuitous. And I feel there needs to be a purpose. For those who ever get an opportunity to learn — or have learn — the Graham Swift novel, a lot of that relationship is unstated. Partly as a result of they’re unable to interact with language and be emotional in that sense, the nudity offers an enormous sense of vulnerability. We’re working in an artwork type which is to do with photographs, and that tells the story completely.”
“The bubble felt very protected,” Younger provides, referring to each COVID-19 and the fact of the scene. “That was a part of the emotional security as effectively, that you might take it out of your thoughts for a second that hopefully lots of people shall be seeing this and seeing what you’re doing in that second. Which is actually daunting. You may take that out of it as a result of, in that second, you might be simply in a room with just a few folks you might have been working very carefully with for the previous few weeks. And, additionally, on the finish of the day, it’s what we signed up for.”
Olivia Colman, left, and Odessa Younger within the film “Mothering Sunday.”
(Robert Viglasky / Sony Photos Classics)
Though “Mothering Sunday” takes place in historic time durations, Husson didn’t method the movie like a standard British interval piece. The director, who’s French, wished each scene to really feel vivid and infused with daylight — one thing that was difficult with the English climate whereas filming within the fall of 2020. She sees a correlation between as we speak and the Twenties, which is why the movie has such a recent resonance.
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“There was an unbelievable freedom [in the 1920s],” Husson says. “I’m somewhat bit envious to the truth that that they had this very small window in historical past the place they may experiment with issues with out having to label all the pieces. Sexuality was extraordinarily fluid. You didn’t have to outline your self as straight or homosexual or queer or no matter — you might simply go for it and experiment with it, in case you have been fortunate sufficient to be in a creative atmosphere, in fact. I feel that’s the motivation behind Jane’s freedom. She’s from that technology the place the worst has occurred, so it’s like a clean canvas.”
O’Connor provides that the goal was to “get one thing as near the reality [as possible] or one thing that feels as genuine as potential” whereas nonetheless taking the historic context into consideration, and Younger feels that it was finally finest to depart the analysis behind and simply embody the characters.
“There’s actually no distinction to the human soul, regardless of the last decade,” she says. “The story itself, if we wish to go by media portrayals, I feel Jane and Paul’s love story after which Donald and Jane’s love story are each romances that have been forward of their time. Apart from the accent, I feel there was no actual inner distinction to the way it all feels. The story is fairly timeless.”
Rite Here Rite Now is an extremely well-produced directed and concert film that features everyone’s favorite clergyman, Cardinal Copia aka Papa Emeritus IV, as he gives his final performances before his inevitable demise and a new Papa gets ushered in.
Having been an unabashed Ghost fan from Day One, I can say that the film very clearly and cleverly captures the excitement, thrill, and pageantry of a live Ghost performance… er… ritual. Filmed over the course of the last two dates of the 2023 tour at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, fans are treated to an outstanding set of songs that ranges all the back to the first record.
What distinguishes the film from other concert films are the cutaway scenes that form a distinct narrative that tells the story of how Papa IV or “Cardi” as he’s referred to in the film, deals with the end of his own existence as leader of the Ghost congregation. Guided by Papa Nihil, the original Papa from back in the day, Cardi is also helped along by his mother, who has challenges of her own to deal with throughout the film. We actually learn of how Papa Nihil and Mom get together in an animated segment of the film that was played to “Mary on a Cross.”
The story is novel and humorous and allows fans to get a behind-the-scenes look, so to speak, about the tribulations of Cardi, and what he has to do to keep the performance at its peak, however, the main reason to see the film is the concert footage. The viewer feels fully immersed in the experience, with an impressive production quality in terms of both sight and sound.
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Highlights of the film for me were the performances of the opener, “Kaisarion,” which really captured the explosive energy of the band, as well as “Twenties,” performed for the first time live and with skeleton dancers no less! “Twenties” is not one of my favorite Ghost tunes, however, it has a completely different feel to it live.
Another standout was the acoustic “If You Have Ghost,” which featured two cellos and piano accompaniment along with Ghoulette backing vocals. This was from the “B Stage,” giving us a different perspective on the performance and showing us just a glimpse of the emotion from Tobias Forge as he seems to realize the magnitude of what he’s built and created over the past several years.
Carefully curated crowd shots that show the sheer joy of the fans, and the up-close shots of the band make you feel like you’re in the ritual yourself. Meshed with the crowded movie theater, with many folks wearing their Ghost Sunday best, creates a truly devotional experience.
If I had a complaint about the film it would be that we don’t get to see the complete performance of “Miasma,” which the Nameless Ghouls absolutely crush live. I could also complain about the ending – really the after-credits reveal – but I can say it’s done in typical Ghost tongue-in-cheek fashion that will make you slightly angry but will also make you laugh at the same time.
Viewers get to hear a new song during the credits, which has now also been released to the general public, with “The Future is a Foreign Land.” Love the backing vocals by the Ghoulettes on this one as well.
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Tobias Forge continues to impress and outdo himself time and time again. I’ve certainly seen many concert films over the years but Rite Here Rite Now is clearly one of the very best. If you have the chance, be sure to see it.
Rating: 10
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Justin Timberlake knows he’s “hard to love” sometimes but thanked his fans in the Windy City on Friday for doing so anyway, addressing his recent arrest in the Hamptons and subsequent charge of driving while intoxicated in public for the first time.
Apparently, his Tuesday arrest in New York did not “ruin” his world tour after all.
The Grammy and Emmy Award winner, 43, delivered a short but emotional speech Friday night at the United Center in Chicago, the latest stop on his Forget Tomorrow World Tour, as seen in concert footage posted on social media. As the boisterous crowd cheered him on, the former ‘N Sync frontman seemingly humbled himself in front of the sold-out arena.
“We’ve been together through ups and downs and lefts and rights. And, uh, it’s been a tough week. But you’re here and I’m here. Nothing can change this moment right now,” the singer said while holding an acoustic guitar and bowing to his adoring fans. “I know sometimes I’m hard to love, but you keep on loving me and I love you right back. Thank you so much.”
“Now if you’ll oblige me, I’d like to have a little sing-along with you guys,” he added, before launching into the show.
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The “Can’t Stop the Feeling” singer was arrested on Long Island after Sag Harbor police saw his gray 2025 BMW UT run a stop sign and struggle to stay in its lane. Police who pulled him over just after 12:30 a.m. alleged the singer’s eyes “were bloodshot and glassy” and “a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from his breath.”
A police photo of singer Justin Timberlake taken after his June 18 arrest in Sag Harbor, N.Y., on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.
(Sag Harbor Police Department)
“[H]e was unable to divide attention, he had slowed speech, he was unsteady afoot and he performed poorly on all standardized field sobriety tests,” according to court papers obtained by The Times. The “Rock Your Body” singer was booked and held overnight in jail, where his mug shot was taken. He was arraigned hours later in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court, on the eastern end of Long Island, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office confirmed to The Times. He pleaded not guilty, the New York Times reported.
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Timberlake’s spokespeople and his attorney did not immediately respond to the Los Angeles Times’ requests for comment.
In surveillance footage obtained by CNN, a car that matched the police description of Timberlake’s vehicle could be seen running the stop sign near where Timberlake was arrested, but it did not appear to be swerving in the clip.
“The Social Network” and “Trolls” actor had been having dinner and drinks with friends at the American Hotel and was pulled over about a mile away, where he told police officers that he had had only one martini before following his friends home. He refused to take a breath test three times and “performed poorly” on field sobriety tests, police said.
Page Six, citing anonymous sources, reported that the police officer who arrested the singer “was so young that he didn’t even know” who the 10-time Grammy winner was. Another source told the outlet that when he was pulled over, “Justin said under his breath, ‘This is going to ruin the tour.’ The cop replied, ‘What tour?’ Justin said, ‘The world tour.’ ” The remark went viral Tuesday and, along with Timberlake’s mugshot, instantly became a meme.
At the police station, where he spent the night, he handed over his wedding ring, phone, baseball cap, watch and wallet, along with a vape pen and green and blue papers, the kind used for rolling marijuana, according to the New York Times.
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“He was freaking out and stayed up all night when he was in custody,” a source told People on Friday. “He’s insisting he only had one drink and it wasn’t some wild night out.”
Timberlake was charged with misdemeanor driving while intoxicated because he refused to take a breath test when he was pulled over, Timberlake’s attorney Eddie Burke Jr. told Us Weekly. The singer was also given two citations, one for running a stop sign and the other for not traveling in the correct traffic lane, Burke said.
He was released on his own recognizance; no bail was set. His next court date will be July 26 — the same day he is scheduled to be in Kraków, Poland, on his Forget Tomorrow tour. Timberlake‘s arrest took place during a brief break on the tour, which stopped in L.A. last month and will run through December.
He has kept a low profile since the incident. His attorney on Wednesday told TMZ that he and the singer look forward “to vigorously defending Mr. Timberlake against these allegations. He will have a lot to say at the appropriate time.” The outlet also reported that the musician, who does not have a previous arrest record, does not plan to check into a rehab facility — a proactive move often used by celebrities to look good in front of a judge and strike a better plea deal in alcohol- or drug-related legal incidents.
The remarks he delivered Friday in Chicago marked the first time Timberlake publicly acknowledged the arrest since it happened.
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After releasing his sixth studio album, “Everything I Thought It Was,” in March, the hitmaker set off on his Forget Tomorrow world tour in April. The tour is scheduled to continue in Chicago on Saturday before he plays Madison Square Garden in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The musician landed in hot water last year amid revelations in “The Woman in Me,” his ex-girlfriend Britney Spears’ bombshell memoir, that she had an abortion at Timberlake’s behest while they were dating around the turn of the century. Timberlake’s connection to Spears was also scrutinized in 2021 when a series of documentaries about her protracted conservatorship revisited the media’s treatment of the embattled pop princess, which included accepting his spin on their breakup.
Timberlake — now a father of two boys with actor Jessica Biel — took a lot of heat during that time, prompting a public apology to Spears and to his 2004 Super Bowl co-headliner Janet Jackson that acknowledged he “fell short” and benefited from “a system that condones misogyny and racism.”
In the wake of Timberlake’s arrest, Spears’ fans rallied to send her 2011 song “Criminal” — believed to be an allusion to her relationship with Timberlake — back up the charts. Her fans had some success with that endeavor back in January when they staged a digital-music coup to dethrone Timberlake’s new single “Selfish” by streaming her 13-year-old song with the same name.
The swaggering showman is allegedly having a harder time lately landing roles in Hollywood, Page Six reported, and is facing lackluster sales for his tour and latest album, which dropped off the Billboard 200 chart after four weeks.
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“The album didn’t do too well, and I don’t see Justin getting big acting roles right now,” a Hollywood insider told the outlet earlier this week.
“He’s got a bit of an ego,” another industry insider added. “His golden boy image is definitely depleted.”
Meanwhile, the owner of the American Hotel told TMZ that Timberlake would be welcomed back anytime, because he was a model customer, “great guest and a nice guy.”
Likewise, “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King defended the musician Wednesday on air, saying that Timberlake is “a really, really great guy” and adding that the incident was “clearly a mistake” and that she bets “nobody knows it more than he.”
“He’s not an irresponsible person, he’s not reckless, he’s not careless,” King said. “Clearly this is not a good thing, he knows that.”
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Other celebrities have either come out against the singer or come to his defense. Comedian Ricky Gervais used the viral news story as a way to plug his own vodka brand on X. But singer Billy Joel, who was spotted at the American Hotel after Timberlake’s arrest, told a New York news station, “Judge not lest ye be judged.”
On TikTok, footage from Timberlake’s May tour stop in Las Vegas began making the rounds, with users commenting on the crooner’s reddish eyes while performing in the clip and speculating about whether that was a precursor to his Sag Harbor arrest.
Early in the documentary It Was All a Dream, the veteran music journalist and filmmaker dream hampton (stylized in lowercase as an homage to the scholar bell hooks), moseys around the offices of The Source magazine, filming her colleagues. The hip hop periodical was, in its early days, a wellspring for understanding the nascent genre. “I learned to be a fan and a critic of some of the greatest artists of a generation,” hampton says in a voiceover that accompanies brief scenes of debate among writers and interviews with editors. The Detroit native moved to New York in 1990 to study film at NYU and a few months later, she joined The Source’s staff.
Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, It Was All a Dream chronicles hampton’s early years in New York. The Surviving R. Kelly (2019) executive producer culls footage from her personal archives (shot between 1993 and 1995) and sets those clips against poetic excerpts of pieces she wrote for The Source, Spin, Village Voice and Vibe between 1993 and 1999.
It Was All a Dream
The Bottom Line
Affirms the importance of archival work.
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Venue: Tribeca Film Festival (Spotlight Documentary) Director-screenwriter: dream hampton
1 hour 23 minutes
As a young hampton cruises through the streets of Brooklyn with Biggie Smalls, her present-day self recites early musings about hip hop as a genre of “kamikaze capitalists” and young Black boys “who quickly expanded their tightly wound worlds then set them afire.” Her meditations are drafts, evidence of a feminist thinker and genre custodian in the making.
Hampton wrestles with the reality of hip hop’s commercial traction and misogynistic impulses. The doc is buoyed by her unbridled enthusiasm for tackling big questions of gender, capital and craft. She interviews Biggie, Method Man and Snoop and holds court with Nikki D, Hurricane G and LeShaun. On the table for discussion: albums, aspirations and the unrequited love between men and women in the genre.
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More than a time capsule of an exciting moment in hip-hop, It Was All a Dream makes a compelling case for fastidious documentation and preservation, especially in music journalism. (Hampton recently directed an episode of Netflix’s docuseries on female rappers, Ladies First.) The film is a trove of information about some of the earliest days in a genre some people thought wouldn’t survive. It shows how contemporary conversations about distribution and misogyny extend into the past, where they were also topics of fervent debate.
When hampton convenes with rappers like Nikki D, LeShaun and executives like Tracey Waples to talk about fortifying a community of women in hip hop, it adds a thrilling layer to the current landscape, which includes, for example, new-gen collaborations between Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B.
An interview with Richard Fulton, owner of the coffee and jazz house Fifth Street Dicks in Los Angeles, about who will own the distribution rights of hip hop records in the future connects to Vince Staples and other rappers’ ongoing reflections on the insatiable greed of music labels. It Was All a Dream, like so many archival works, reminds us that the past is the present is the future.
As a window into the past, It Was All a Dream contextualizes parts of hip hop and pushes against convenient amnesia. Hampton takes us around the country, from Bedford Stuyvesant to Venice Beach, to show how rappers in different locales experiment with rhyming styles and samples. She loosely organizes her doc around geography, using title cards with neighborhood names to demarcate a new section.
Hampton also digs into modes of self-expression and coastal beefs; she lets artists wax poetic about what their music will help them achieve. Hip hop, then and now, was a site of play, a political tool, a repository for hopes and dreams.
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It Was All a Dream also offers rare perspectives from some of the genre’s greatest acts and enduring villains. Biggie freestyling in the studio; Lil’ Kim leaning into the window of his car in one scene; Diddy, whose recent sexual assault allegations have shaken the industry, grooving to a beat. The grainy, shaky and occasionally underlit footage gives It Was All a Dream a coarseness that makes the doc feel more intimate.
In The Source office, hampton interviews managing editor Chris Wilder, who doubles down on the importance of the publication: “Thirty years from now, if hip hop comes and goes, people will look at The Source to see what happens,” he says.
Listening to Wilder’s words and watching hampton, armed with her camera, confidently interviewing friends and observing mundane moments in the lives of these artists, inspires questions about the current music media landscape. Some of the magazines hampton wrote for still exist in theory, but many have been gutted by lack of funding, venture capital shuffling, the dramatic shift from print to digital and the ease with which charlatans can cosplay as journalists on social media.
Still, a record must be kept and someone must do the keeping. Driven by an awareness of hip hop’s profundity and a commitment to how its story should be told, hampton documented, becoming a custodian of the genre’s history. It Was All a Dream brims with the green energy of an enthusiast and affirms the power individual archives play in building a community narrative.
