All posts tagged: kieran culkin

‘A Real Pain’ gets achingly close to the real quandaries of Holocaust remembrance

‘A Real Pain’ gets achingly close to the real quandaries of Holocaust remembrance

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — After arriving in Poland for a weeklong Holocaust “roots” tour, Benji, one of two Jewish American cousins whose trip is depicted in the new movie “A Real Pain,” has a meltdown in the first-class section of the Warsaw-Lublin train. Benji (Kieran Culkan) wrestles with an eerie sense that as he walks in the footsteps of Jews put on cattle cars on the way to concentration camps, his privilege obscures the real horror of the Shoah. It’s a feeling many American Jews experience when they encounter Holocaust sites: the sense that their existence is an unintended consequence of this catastrophe and to return means to explore the violent rupture that destroyed the world that could have been. Benji’s cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) watches this outburst and is horrified. But Benji is insistent: If a Holocaust tour isn’t the time to grieve, then when is? “A Real Pain,” about the cousins’ trip to Poland to honor their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, after her death, builds on a host of earlier movies about the Holocaust, adding …

‘A Real Pain’ is a real triumph

‘A Real Pain’ is a real triumph

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — You will go to see “A Real Pain” because of the all-star cast of Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed it), Kieran Culkin (whom many of us loved in “Succession”) and Jennifer Grey (welcoming her back to the big screen). You will go to see this movie because it is the story of the relationship between David Kaplan and Benji Kaplan, two Jewish cousins, each with their own quirks. If you had watched the series “Succession,” you will nod knowingly, as Kieran does a great job of reprising the personality traits of Roman Roy, his character from that show. You will go to see this movie (or, at least, I did) because it takes place in Poland and is the story of those two cousins and a tour group seeing various Jewish sites in Poland. During the tour, Benji and David take a side trip to a small town in Poland to find their late grandmother’s old house. (This is based on a trip that Jesse and his now-wife took to his …

Tribeca Festival 2024 Sets ‘Footloose,’ ‘Mean Streets’ Screenings

Tribeca Festival 2024 Sets ‘Footloose,’ ‘Mean Streets’ Screenings

Published by Sam

The Tribeca Festival has set its talks, reunions and retrospective screenings for its 2024 edition. The festival’s Storytellers series will feature talks with Judd Apatow, Andy Cohen, Kieran Culkin, Michael Stipe, Laverne Cox, Kerry Washington in conversation with Nicole Avant and Jon Batiste celebrating Nat King Cole with author and music journalist Marcus J. Moore. And its Directors series will feature a conversation between director Gus Van Sant and Vito Schnabel, whom Van Sant recently directed in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. Tribeca will also celebrate the 50th and 40th anniversaries of Mean Streets and , respectively, with screenings of both films followed by conversations with Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Nas after Mean Streets and Kevin Bacon after Footloose. Steven Spielberg is also bringing a 50th anniversary screening of his theatrical debut, The Sugarland Express, to Tribeca and will participate in a conversation after the screening. And the festival will continue this year’s 25th anniversary celebration of the premiere of The Sopranos with a Beacon Theatre screening of the documentary Wise Guy directed …

Kieran Culkin Gives Kieran Culkin-est Interview Ever At 2024 SAG Awards

Kieran Culkin Gives Kieran Culkin-est Interview Ever At 2024 SAG Awards

Published by skeptic

Kieran Culkin showed off the sarcastic attitude that he and his Succession character have become known for at Saturday’s SAG Awards. Red carpet interviewer Elaine Welteroth claimed Kieran told her to “save it” with the compliments until the cameras were rolling, although he disputed this. “I said, ‘Shut up,’ actually, that’s what I said, not ‘save it,’” he quipped. “I have to hold the microphone? I hate doing this. And then you’re gonna say nice things to me? I don’t know what to do. And there’s a screen with my face on it that I have to look at?” Kieran previously admitted that some of the trappings of fame can make him uncomfortable. He tried to deflect Welteroth’s attention by outing her for being barefoot during the interview. After saying one of her shoes was “killing” her, Welteroth tried to revert course by stating “this isn’t about me.” Kieran, however, felt otherwise. “It’s kind of about you though, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, it’s kind of your show and you’re only wearing one shoe …

Pedro Pascal Was ‘A Little Drunk’ For His Glorious SAG Awards Acceptance Speech

Pedro Pascal Was ‘A Little Drunk’ For His Glorious SAG Awards Acceptance Speech

Published by skeptic

Pedro Pascal is officially in the running for giving the greatest awards speech of all time. On Saturday night, the Last Of Us star won a SAG Award for his performance in the post-apocalyptic US drama, and leapt on stage after beating Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen, Brian Cox and Kieran Culkin, as well as The Morning Show actor Billy Crudup. “This is wrong for a number of reasons: I’m a little drunk, I thought I could get drunk and thank you HBO,” said Pedro with a quivering voice at the podium, before he truly let loose. “Jeez Louise, I’m making a fool of myself, but thank you so much for this!” While Pedro’s captive audience erupted into cheers — including his friend and awards season “rival” Kieran Culkin — Pedro used his literal platform at that moment to thank the SAG-AFTRA union for helping him survive as a struggling actor. “I’ve been in the union since 1999, so this is an incredible fucking honour,” he said. Then, as the audience reacted, he assured them: “We’re on …

Pedro Pascal and Kieran Culkin Make Up at SAG Awards Following 2024 ‘Feud’ (Exclusive)

Pedro Pascal and Kieran Culkin Make Up at SAG Awards Following 2024 ‘Feud’ (Exclusive)

Published by Sam

Pedro Pascal and Kieran Culkin are publicly squashing their beef and potentially doing it with a kiss.  Talking with ET’s Nischelle Turner backstage from the 2024 SAG Awards — where Pascal, 48, and Culkin, 41, competed against each other in the Oustanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series category — the pair cleared the air and commented on whether or not they truly would be kissing at some point during the evening.  “You said we would make out,” Culkin told his fellow nominee and the category’s winner.  “I said that we would make out,” responded Pascal, who won the award for HBO’s The Last of Us.  “False,” replied the Succession star.  The odd but hilarious commentary is a reference to Pascal’s post-win interview with Tan France, in which he said that he would be kissing his competitor after finally besting him to win one of the major awards during the season.  “I’m going to make out with Kieran tonight. That will be my revenge,” he told the Queer Eye star.  During the interview with …

How Natasha Lyonne Got All Five Culkin Brothers to Appear in New Show

How Natasha Lyonne Got All Five Culkin Brothers to Appear in New Show

Published by Sam

Prime Video adult animated series The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy features not just one Culkin — with Kieran Culkin voicing one of the main characters — but all five brothers working together for the first time, and it turns out Natasha Lyonne helped make it all happen. Lyonne, who executive produced and costars in the show, has been longtime friends with both Kieran and Macaulay Culkin, “so Kieran came up for the role of Dr. Plowp and in a crazy turn of events, the bird alien [character that he plays] had four brothers [in the script] before he was cast. So he had the four brothers already and when we cast Kieran we were like, ‘You have four brothers! That’s ridiculous, what fate,’” showrunner Cirocco Dunlap told The Hollywood Reporter at the Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday. “Kieran was the one who suggested it, he was like, ‘We could get my brothers’ and I was like, ‘What? Yes, yes we should.’ And they’re so wonderful, they’re so funny, they’re very empathic and very …

Kieran Culkin Talks About What It Was Like Working With His Famous Ex

Kieran Culkin Talks About What It Was Like Working With His Famous Ex

Published by skeptic

Kieran Culkin has no qualms about working with a famous ex. The Succession actor recently joined forces with his former girlfriend, Emma Stone, for the two’s new movie, A Real Pain. While Kieran stars in the film, Emma produced it through her production company, Fruit Tree. “She’s great,” Kieran of Emma during an interview with E! News’ The Rundown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where A Real Pain made its premiere. “She’s a really wonderful person.” He also said there’s an unexpected benefit to working with someone you know so well on a project like a movie, where you can face a lot of unknowns. “It’s nice because you go into a job and most of the time you don’t really know anybody,” Kieran said. “But in this case, going in, I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, well at least that part’s taken care of.’” Emma Stone and Kieran Culkin pictured together in 2009 Bruce Glikas via Getty Images Kieran told Rolling Stone in an interview earlier this month that he finds it “funny” to think …

50 Best Things About Hollywood Film & TV

50 Best Things About Hollywood Film & TV

Published by Sam

Let’s not sugarcoat it — 2023 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for Hollywood. For starters, obviously, there were the strikes, which for nearly five months turned backlots into ghost towns, costing the industry an estimated $6 billion in lost wages and other collateral economic damage. Then there were the layoffs, beginning at Disney and spreading like an apocalyptic virus to Paramount, Amazon, NBCUniversal, Lionsgate and beyond. Box office, although up a tick from 2022, still lagged far behind pre-pandemic grosses, with even superhero movies like The Marvels tanking. Streamers began pulling back on original content, the incredible shrinking broadcast TV audience continued to miniaturize itself, and there were new fears over the rise of the machines (you know, AI and whether it’ll soon replace your job) — all of which made Hollywood in 2023 feel a bit like one of those doomsday landscapes in Max’s end-of-the-world drama The Last of Us. Illustration by Justin Metz But hold on. Take a deep breath before burrowing farther into your underground bunkers. Because despite all the …

Jennifer Grey discusses working with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin

Jennifer Grey discusses working with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin

Published by Sam

When Jennifer Grey received the script for A Real Pain, she was — like most of the country — deeply entrenched in the final episodes of Succession. The actress, who is best known for her work in movies like Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, was considering a role in the story (written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg) about two cousins who join a Jewish heritage tour in Poland to reconnect with their late grandmother and visit the town that she fled before the war. Kieran Culkin was already attached to star as the lead opposite Eisenberg, and Grey says she was excited about the possibility of working with the actor responsible for some of the show’s finest work. “And then I read the script, and I went from excited to elated,” she told THR during a panel at the St. Regis Deer Valley, sponsored by Screenvision. “It’s a very deep movie, about relationships and grief and loss and identity and resilience. Jesse’s tone is so human and accessible and vulnerable and funny. Immediately, …