Celebrity Life

There's little more comforting than great TV. For the upcoming year of the tiger, we got you covered with the best shows and documentaries to stream for all the TV lovers out there.

Now TV is set to become your one-stop destination for great entertainment with the launch of Now True and Now Studio, two new on-demand services to bring a wide variety of shows and documentaries to suit any taste.

Now True offers a wide range of titles that can help you enrich your understanding - and appreciation - of art, business, travel, and more through inspiring documentaries and biopics. For those who prefer to indulge in masterfully-written fictional stories, Now Studio features an impressive selection of binge-worthy series and movies.

Here are our top 8 picks to stream this month.

A Very British Scandal (on Now Studio)

Claire Foy reprises her role as a royal playing the Duchess of Argyll in A Very British Scandal. This time, she plays a prominent woman who is handling great pressure and public criticism due to the exposure of explicit photos and her divorce.

The Mole Agent (on Now True)

Oscar-nominated documentary feature The Mole Agent centres on an octogenarian going undercover to investigate suspected elderly maltreatment at a nursing home. As the director put it, "it's never too late to reinvent yourself!"

On-shelf date: January 14, 2022

Philly D.A. (on Now True)

This 8-episode documentary series digs deep into the election of the progressive civil rights attorney Larry Krasner and his battles for social justice.

On-shelf date: January 28, 2022

Seeds of Deceit (on Now True)

Dutch docu-series Seeds of Deceit exposes the disturbing story of Dr Karbaat, a renowned doctor in the field of artificial insemination who clandestinely used his sperm to inseminate more than 65 patients.

On-shelf date: January 21, 2022

Press (on Now Studio)

TV drama Press follows the editors and journalists working for British newspaper The Herald and its rival title, The Post. The show smartly exposes the challenges of working in the country's media industry thanks to great characters and writing.

On-shelf date: January 21, 2022

Nike's Big Bet (on Now True)

Legendary track coach Alberto Salazar, backed by Nike, is currently serving a coaching suspension for doping. This documentary questions the truthfulness of the accusations as none of his athletes has ever tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

On-shelf date: January 21, 2022

Adult Material (on Now Studio)

In a male-dominated world, now more than ever, we need to hear the voices of women. TV series Adult Material delves into the adult film industry from the perspective of a mother of three.

On-shelf date: January 28, 2022

Chicago Fire Season 10 (on Now Studio)

Following firefighters around Chicago, this ultra-popular show tells the stories of the brave men and women who risk their lives to safeguard other citizens.

On-shelf date: within January 2022

You can stream all the shows here.

The post 8 Must-Watch TV Shows to Catch in January appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Award-winning filmmaker and director Apichatpong Weerasethakul on his latest film Memoria, working with Tilda Swinton, his art and more.

During Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul's busy summer, he found time to talk to us about his latest film Memoria, which won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, as well as his current art installation at Bangkok's 100 Tonson Foundation.

In conversation with Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul

When his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives received the Palme d’​Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul became the first Southeast Asian director ever to win this top award. Of course, he'd already shown several times at Cannes, beginning in 2002 with Blissfully Yours (which won the Un Certain Regard prize), but his 2010 victory catapulted the soft-spoken director to new heights of stardom on the international art-house cinema circuit.

For Oscar-winning actress and noted cinephile Tilda Swinton, a long-time admirer of Weerasethakul’s work, Uncle Boonmee ranks as one of her all-time favourite films. On the British Film Institute (BFI) website she describes it as, “Slow cinema at its most immersive, lateral and resonant. It’s possible to believe you dreamed Apichatpong’s films after you see them… they certainly take you somewhere you’ve never been before on this Earth.”

Now, more than a decade since the release of that landmark film, the acclaimed British-born film star has the lead role in the enigmatic director’s latest movie, titled Memoria, which had its world premiere on July 15 at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (coincidentally the eve of director Weerasethakul’s 51st birthday). 

In the film, Swinton plays Jessica Holland, a Scottish orchid farmer in Columbia who finds herself unable to sleep after being startled at daybreak by a loud and inexplicable bang only she can hear (this idea stems from an experience the director had during his own first visit to Columbia). She later befriends an archaeologist studying some newly unearthed human remains, and becomes fixated on a 6,000-year-old skull with a hole drilled into it – in order to “release bad spirits”, the archaeologist tells her. Together, the pair visit the excavation site, and then in a small town nearby Jessica encounters a man by the river with whom she begins to share memories. 

In retrospect, it seems almost cosmically inevitable that Swinton and Weerasethakul would one day collaborate on a film. When I spoke to the director, shortly before the Cannes festival, he discussed how he and Swinton have become friends over the years, and how they’d long been searching for the right project to work on. In fact, he wrote the script for Memoria specifically with her in mind.

“It’s not a typical work for her,” Weerasethakul said. “That’s why it took time for us to find the right moment, so that she could be totally committed, for a long stretch of time. It’s quite unusual.” Also unusual is the fact that this is the director’s first film not set in his native Thailand, or with Thai dialogue (it's a mix of English and Spanish). It seems like quite a daring artistic leap to take all at once.

“I know,” he chuckled, “but that’s the beauty. I think that I should have done this a long time ago. I've been working with my own team in Thailand for almost 20 years. So to suddenly shift and go somewhere else with a new team is a bit scary, but it definitely opened up the senses.”

So does this combination of star power and a primarily English script hint that Memoria might be a step in a more commercial direction?

“I have no idea!” he said gleefully. “That’s why I’m excited about Cannes, to find out, because I can never judge my movies, really. But I wouldn't say it’s commercial. That’s why we need so many partners, to contribute little by little,” he adds, listing the countries of production as Colombia, Thailand, UK, Mexico, France, Germany and Qatar, while the movie itself is a Kick the Machine Films and Burning production, in association with Illuminations Films (Past Lives). As for critical reception, the film went on to win a Jury Prize at Cannes – one of the festival’s top honours.

“The film is about the vibration of memories that connect us,” the director said during his acceptance speech, in which he also thanked Swinton for her grace, humour, and heart. “We talked many times about this dream,” he told her from the stage, “and here we are. Our ship has landed.”

In addition to Memoria, Weerasethakul was also part of another Cannes 2021 premiere, having contributed a segment to the anthology film The Year of the Everlasting Storm, alongside such renowned international directors as Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Laura Poitras, and Malik Vitthal.

“I contributed a short film to this omnibus project. All the films reflect the situation we’re in… the pandemic. It was made last year actually, when the situation was quite intense. In my case, I just shot [it in] my bedroom.”

After Cannes wrapped up, Weerasethakul returned to Bangkok, where he put the finishing touches to his art installation, A Minor History, at the 100 Tonson Foundation art space, which runs until January 2022. To some, it seems curious that with all his success in cinema he’s still interested in smaller-scale art exhibitions, but he doesn’t see the two disciplines as mutually exclusive.

“They feed on each other,” he explained. “But, of course, making a movie involves a lot of people and financing, so art installations allow me more freedom to experiment.” Coming from someone whose feature films are most often described as bewildering, inscrutable and hallucinatory, with a marked preference for unconventional narrative structures, this seems an interesting and even amusing statement.

For his exhibit at 100 Tonson, which combines photography and three video channels, Weerasethakul relates how he returned to Thailand’s rural Isaan region, the setting for many of his previous films, for inspiration.

“After the lockdown [last summer] I travelled to the northeast, where I grew up, to see and be inspired by the landscape and the people there. It started from just having no direction at all. I spent a month and a half on the road, mainly along the edge of the Mekong River, passing through my hometown of Khon Kaen, as well as Nong Khai, Nakhon Phanom and Ubon Ratchathani,” he says, adding that the stories he unearthed in the region were mostly about situations that were quite oppressive. 

“In Kalasin, I discovered the ruins of an old cinema that reminded me of those big cinemas I grew up with, so I kind of juxtaposed these ruins – like the skeleton of a dead animal – with the current situation around there, most importantly the disappearance of people,” he says solemnly, alluding to the incident in January 2019 when the bodies of two high-profile Thai political activists, who had fled to Laos seeking sanctuary, were discovered in the Mekong River; very much the victims of foul play. 

In its entirety, A Minor History comprises two halves, which change midway through the scheduled six-month run. Helping with the show’s evolving concept is Manuporn “Air” Luengaram, a well-known Thai curator with whom the director has worked closely in the past.

“The first part is mainly a kind of reminiscing,” Weerasethakul remarks. “A fictionalised story about a person strolling along the Mekong and talking about the floating corpse, and how the Naga [the mythical river serpent] accidentally swallows the corpse and then has to throw up.”

Such pointed political jabs seem destined to stir up controversy, but the director is well-known for ruffling feathers in his homeland. For the Thailand release of his internationally acclaimed 2006 feature film Syndromes and a Century, which had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival that year, the Thai Censorship Board demanded the removal of four scenes (a request the director denied, although he later agreed to a limited release where the cut scenes were replaced by a black screen). As for his award-winning 2015 film Cemetery of Splendour, he never gave it a theatrical release in Thailand for fear that it would also be censored, though it has been screened privately at special film events. 

As for the future, the director reveals a small glimpse of what he’s working on. “It’s another strange project, combining film and performance, but I cannot tell you much about it yet,” he said. However, he did indicate it's influenced by the ongoing pandemic and also touches on his continuing interest in exploring the theme of sleep. 

“At the same time I’m developing local works where I really want to focus on the political situation in Thailand,” he continues. “We are living in a very ‘crossroads’ moment. The new generation has a totally different attitude from my generation. There’s been such a shift in the past 10 to 20 years in this country.”

And while he’s probably too humble to say it outright, outspoken artists such as Weerasethakul have played a major role in keeping the spirit and momentum of that shift alive.

(Image credits: All stills used from the film Memoria are courtesy of ©Kick the Machine Films, Burning, Anna Sanders Films, Match Factory Productions, ZDF/arte and Piano, 2021)

This story was first published in the August 2021 issue of Prestige Thailand and online on Prestige Thailand here.

The post Director Mike Figgis on Story Narratives and Filming in Hong Kong appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

A vision of new Parisian style mixed with Californian cool, actress and model Annabelle Belmondo, granddaughter of the late film star Jean-Paul, has been stealing the limelight with her work on screen, on the runways and in the pages of magazines such as this.

She tells us about her just-released movie American Night and how she developed her style.

Tell us about this exciting new film project.

I have a few exciting things coming out. My movie, American Night, was presented at the Venice Film Festival, and it was amazing to see the final product on the big screen at such a prestigious event.

As an actress, what would be your ideal role?

I’d love a role that would push my boundaries as an actress, a role that would make me have to go deep into a character and really steps away from any role I’ve played before.

What does fashion mean to you?

Fashion is a way of expressing and empowering myself. I strongly believe in the power of clothes as a statement that reflects my identity and my origins.

Describe your earliest style inspirations.

My earliest style inspirations were my mom [Florence Belmondo] and grandma [the dancer Elodie Constantin]. I loved watching my mom get dressed and always wanted to be in her closet and try her clothes on. I grew up in the US and my mother has a very French style, very different from the other women in our town, which really influenced the way I dress today.

Talk us through the evolution of your own style since your teens.

I went through many different phases as far as my style goes. When you’re a teenager, that’s the moment when you try different things and are very influenced by your friends until you finally figure out your own style. But moving to Paris was really the starting point in my fashion journey – there’s so much inspiration, from what other women wear to the Parisian lifestyle. That really defined how I dress today.

You grew up in the US and are now based in France. How do the two countries compare in terms of fashion?

It’s difficult to have a binary point of view of this. The US is such a diverse country, where styles really differ depending on the states or cities you’re talking about. I think the two locations have some differences, but I’ve learned to combine the best of both worlds.

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

Right now, I’m in a very Fleetwood Mac period and I’m constantly listening to their song “Everywhere”, so for now that would be it. What do you like to wear for a party? I love wearing a women’s suit, which I think is the most chic style – like a vintage Saint Laurent suit. Nothing beats that!

With limited travel since Covid-19, where do you miss going and what would you like to do there?

I really missed being able to go to the US during Covid, but fortunately, it’s been possible in the last couple of months. I really missed my friends and my family over there. But once I can, I’d love to go to Hong Kong – I miss those late-night cocktails at Upper House with the stunning view of the city.

(HERO IMAGE: OUTFIT DIOR)

French Twist: Annabelle Belmondo on American Night and Developing Her Style

PHOTOGRAPHY JACQUES BURGA
STYLING CARLOS FREIXEDA
MAKE-UP AND HAIR BENOÎT CLAVERIE

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As Chaumet's CEO Jean-Marc Mansvelt tells us, bringing the house's 240-year heritage into the modern era is an immense task that amounts to a "daily obsession". But if the new pieces in the Chaumet Joséphine collection are anything to go by, the Place Vendôme stalwart is heading in the right direction.

What kind of woman today does the Joséphine collection appeal to?

First, it’s about a woman with a certain character. Because when you choose to wear a tiara on your finger, you’re making a choice of distinction, a choice of character. You’re sending a message to say you’re not like everyone else and you have a certain strength and a certain personality. But also a sense of virtuosity, grace and beauty, because it’s not for women who want to be too provocative.

It’s a way to set your personality. And then of course, there are two major reasons to become a client of Joséphine. On one side, it remains one of the favourite pieces chosen for a bridal purpose. It’s connected to the initial history of Chaumet, the history of the power and love between Napoleon and Joséphine. And Napoleon is known everywhere, that’s incredible. There’s another type of client on the other side of the connection with the pearls, the coloured stones, something a bit easier and more accessible.

This year, Chaumet's creations have also incorporated sleeker, more modern takes on the tiara. Can you tell us a bit about the new high jewellery?

After many creations that were a bit more tiara-like, a bit more decorative, more visible, more baroque in a certain way, we wanted to enrich the collection with new ways to mix and match, and to go for designs that were slicker, with a more minimalist approach, because that’s also the style of today. We have a feeling that clients today are a little more understated, and we have the capacity to create beauty through a fine line, rather than an accumulation. So one of our high- jewellery pieces, which is sort of a V with a stone in suspension, doesn’t shout about its design. It’s all about balance.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the Joséphine collection...

But we don’t mark it that way for two reasons. I always feel that if you start doing anniversaries for everything, then at the end, what’s the meaning in it? Last year, when we did the 240 years of Chaumet, that was slightly different. For Chaumet, our heritage is much longer than a decade, it’s about centuries. Instead, this year, we’re celebrating our connection with the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon, which is significant in Europe and in France. We’ve done an exhibition at 12 Place Vendôme that was open to the public which tells the love story of Napoleon and Josephine through 150 different objects, beautiful loans from museums and private owners.

Which piece proved to be the most challenging piece in the collection?

The most discussed and the most debated one was the watch. Because we’re clearly a jeweller, and we’ve focused all our efforts and attention on jewellery. But since a few years ago, we’ve reassessed and repositioned what watches mean for Chaumet. It’s true that with the business of watches within Chaumet, we’ve really tried to be coherent with what the story of watchmaking for Chaumet is as a jeweller. One of our challenges was to look at the market – in the market, 90 percent of watches are round – and nobody’s waiting for Chaumet to create a round watch, because we already have thousands of beautiful options on the market.

We decided on a shaped watch, and it wasn’t very difficult to settle on the pear shape, like an illusion of a diamond. We also faceted the watch’s dial.

How do you balance 240 years of heritage behind a brand and stay relevant at the same time?

That’s really the obsession every single day. How do we continue the narrative, the link to the story? Since the pandemic, we’ve seen clients choose Chaumet because there’s longevity. And so it becomes a daily obsession of ours to convey this message to our clients through different means, including the digital approach, so we can speak to the needs of our audience today. We also go through the traditional channels and have books and exhibitions. I regularly write down on paper in two columns: on one side, how much do we tell the story of Chaumet, and on the other, how do we take a contemporary approach, either through the narrative or through using different tools? I take a step back and ask myself is there a balance? If we’re going too much in one direction, maybe it’s time to rebalance. It’s in everything we do.

The post 6 Celebrity Documentaries To Watch Right Now appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The casino is a classy, exciting and intense setting, which makes it the perfect backdrop for a movie scene. When you think of a casino, the chances are that you’ll picture elegantly dressed crowds, sipping martinis, all stood around the table, and placing their bets. The likelihood is that this image has either been procured […]

The items, which include Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber, and an 11-foot "Alien" spaceship, are tipped to fetch up to half a million dollars each.

The post Top Gun’ helmet and ‘Alien’ spaceship in Hollywood props auction appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

The items, which include Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber, and an 11-foot "Alien" spaceship, are tipped to fetch up to half a million dollars each.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.

As the dust settles on yet another month of isolation, I’m beginning to think films are my best chance of an escape this year. Despite…

The post The 12 Best Movies Set in Africa appeared first on World of Wanderlust.

Assembled from components worn by different actors throughout the iconic space film, celebrate Stanley Kubrick’s opus with a piece of film history.

The post Object of Desire: 2001 A Space Odyssey spacesuit appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

Assembled from components worn by different actors throughout the iconic space film, celebrate Stanley Kubrick’s opus with a piece of film history.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.

For over 100 years, people have been making movies. Over time, as they have become more profitable, their budgets have vastly increased. Though you can [...]

The post Most Expensive Movies Ever Made appeared first on Most Expensive Thing.

You have to spend money to make money, and when you’re talking about Hollywood blockbusters, that means tens of millions just to get a hit [...]

The post Most Expensive Movie Scenes Ever Filmed appeared first on Most Expensive Thing.