All posts tagged: strangers

‘Brutally honest’ or ‘ham-fisted cliche’? What does All of Us Strangers say about being gay? | All of Us Strangers

‘Brutally honest’ or ‘ham-fisted cliche’? What does All of Us Strangers say about being gay? | All of Us Strangers

‘It reflects the ignorance of a less tolerant era and the lingering emotional damage this continues to inflict’ Peter Tatchell If you are looking for a sweet, affirmative, feelgood gay movie, All of Us Strangers is probably not for you. It’s a dark, gut-wrenching love story, with a plotline that blurs reality and fantasy. Adam is an isolated, emotionally damaged gay man. He’s struggling to come to terms with the death of his parents when he was 12, and to overcome the sense of outsider otherness he feels on account of his sexuality. Peter Tatchell on Equality Now march, 1992. Photograph: Courtesy Peter Tatchell This inner turmoil shuts down his openness to relationships and leads him to rebuff the doorstep advances of Harry, a younger, seemingly more confident neighbour. Adam then enters a dreamworld of, what if? The two men embark on a passionate affair, with the companionship, love and acceptance that Adam has so long craved – until it comes to a sudden, heartbreaking halt. The saving grace is Adam’s parallel imagined conversation and …

London Critics’ Circle Film Awards: The Zone Of Interest and All Of Us Strangers take top wins as Oppenheimer and Barbie left empty-handed | Ents & Arts News

London Critics’ Circle Film Awards: The Zone Of Interest and All Of Us Strangers take top wins as Oppenheimer and Barbie left empty-handed | Ents & Arts News

The Zone Of Interest and All Of Us Strangers dominated at the 44th annual London Critics’ Circle Awards – receiving three awards each. British director Jonathan Glazer took home director of the year for The Zone Of Interest, which focuses on the lives of Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife, Hedwig. Image: Jonathan Glazer. Pic: PA The film, based on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, also picked up the awards for film of the year and technical achievement. Andrew Haigh’s drama All Of Us Strangers was awarded British/Irish film of the year, as well as picking up actor of the year for its lead Andrew Scott. Image: Andrew Scott. Pic: PA The Irish actor took to the stage to accept the honour and highlighted the film’s success at the box office. “Don’t say those films don’t make money,” he joked and noted that the critic’s response to the film, which focuses on two gay men living in a London tower block, gave it a platform for greater audience …

‘Into the arms of strangers’: child refugees of Nazi Germany remember | Refugees

‘Into the arms of strangers’: child refugees of Nazi Germany remember | Refugees

Hella was given the number 4672, and a small suitcase. She recalls saying farewell to her mother in Vienna, and her bewilderment, aged 11, on arriving at Liverpool Street station in London to an unknown future on 15 March 1939. Alfred, aged six, remembers the tension and his parents’ fear, the Czech salami sandwiches his mother packed for him but that he didn’t touch during the 48-hour journey. He arrived in London in July 1939. Hella Pick, a former Guardian foreign correspondent and diplomatic editor, and Lord Alf Dubs, the Labour peer and former MP, visited Berlin this week to mark the 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport, which rescued them as child refugees. About 10,000 children, mostly Jewish and the majority from Germany, Austria and Czechslovakia, were brought to live with foster families in the UK to save them from the Nazis. “The Kindertransport was a singular operation which saved over 10,000 children and allowed most of them, including me, to make very good lives,” Pick, 96, said. The exhibition – titled I said, ‘Auf …

Andrew Scott Was The Perfect Casting For All Of Us Strangers. Here’s How Director Andrew Haigh Made It Happen

Andrew Scott Was The Perfect Casting For All Of Us Strangers. Here’s How Director Andrew Haigh Made It Happen

All Us Of Strangers might be one of the most moving films of the last decade. The film, which is based on the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, follows a middle aged man named Adam who has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbour, which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a new relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up. To celebrate the release of the movie this weekend, we sat down with director Andrew Haigh to learn more about the making of All Us Of Strangers… So, congratulations! I’m a big fan of your work including Looking and Weekend. In fact, I’ve indoctrinated so many people to Weekend, so I was very excited for this film. My first question is, I feel like there’s so many amazing elements to this movie, but one thing that really stands out is Andrew Scott’s performance. How did you go about casting him and what was it …

People surprisingly accurate at inferring the happiness of strangers, study shows

People surprisingly accurate at inferring the happiness of strangers, study shows

In a study recently published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers have uncovered that strangers can make surprisingly accurate assessments of an individual’s life satisfaction and positive feelings just from brief initial interactions. This novel research sheds light on the subtle cues and indicators that play a role in these snap judgments. The exploration of well-being, a concept that encompasses life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions, has predominantly focused on how individuals assess their own state of happiness. Prior studies have often used reports from people close to the individual, such as family and friends, to validate these self-assessments. However, this new study shifts the focus to the accuracy of well-being judgments made by strangers, a relatively unexplored area. The present research leverages a psychological framework called Brunswik’s lens model — a concept that explains how people infer internal states or traits from observable cues. In other words, this lens model is a way of unpacking how individuals piece together a puzzle of another person’s inner feelings or characteristics based on what …

Facebook and Instagram are making it harder for strangers to DM teens

Facebook and Instagram are making it harder for strangers to DM teens

Meta continues to steadily roll out updates for younger users in an attempt to bolster their safety and privacy. On Thursday, the tech company announced some of its most restrictive measures yet—in theory. Teens users, by default, will no longer receive direct messages on Instagram and Facebook from anyone that isn’t a follower or connection. “Connections,” according to Meta, are those people that users have “communicated with” in some way, such as sending text messages, voice or video calls, or accepting message requests. A similar update is also going into effect on Facebook, with messages only allowed from friends and “people they’re connected to through phone contacts, for example.” Instagram previously restricted anyone over 18 years old from messaging younger accounts that did not already follow them back. The expanded rules will automatically apply to global users under the age of either 16 or 18, depending on their country’s laws, who now also cannot message other teens they are not connected to. Similarly, group chats with teens can only include their friends or connections, and …

Andrew Scott: All of Us Strangers actor says we should stop assuming people’s sexuality

Andrew Scott: All of Us Strangers actor says we should stop assuming people’s sexuality

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Andrew Scott has shared his view on the negative impact of assuming people’s sexuality in a new interview. The 47-year-old actor has been widely praised for his performance in the drama All of Us Strangers, in which his character, screenwriter Adam, finds himself drawn to his neighbour Harry (played by Paul Mescal) while dealing with his grief over the death of his parents. Scott, who is gay, has spoken out about the harm that can be caused when people assume others are heterosexual by default – and how it affected him as a young person. Speaking in the forthcoming edition of Attitude magazine, out on Friday 16 February, the Fleabag star said: “I don’t think that there is one particular point, but I do think if we could erase the assumption in our society that everybody is straight until proven otherwise, it would make an enormous difference to people.” He …

All of Us Strangers: loneliness is our deepest shame – can cinema help us confront it?

All of Us Strangers: loneliness is our deepest shame – can cinema help us confront it?

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Olivia Laing wrote the book on loneliness. Over a decade ago, the British writer moved to New York City for the love of a man who then called it off. She stayed and sought out artists who anchored her solitude to the city. “I was possessed with a desire to find correlates,” she wrote in 2016’s The Lonely City, “physical evidence that other people had inhabited my state”. The book was both a memoir and a deeply researched biopic of 20th-century artists, among them Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol, who lit up the sensation of loneliness. There is a paradox to work that is created from an artist’s sense of dislocation – it can welcome the painfully isolated back into the human fold. As one of Laing’s artist subjects, David Wojnarowicz, told photographer Nan Goldin for Interview magazine, “We can all affect each other by being open enough to make …

Poor Things, Saltburn, All Of Us Strangers: Get ready for sex on screen in 2024 | Ents & Arts News

Poor Things, Saltburn, All Of Us Strangers: Get ready for sex on screen in 2024 | Ents & Arts News

If you’ve read anything about Emma Stone’s latest film Poor Things, you’ll know the big takeaway: there’s lots and lots of sex. Stone plays Bella Baxter, a woman who was pregnant before she died, only for a scientist to bring her back to life and replace her brain with that of the still-living baby. (Yes, you read that correctly). Bella has the mind of an infant, but the needs of a young woman discovering what life is all about. The story of a Frankenstein-inspired sex-obsessive might sound too bizarre to work, but the film has been universally praised by critics and is already winning awards – Stone was named best actress at the Golden Globes at the weekend. And it’s not the only movie currently making headlines for its NSFW sex scenes (or not suitable for watching with your parents, as many found out the hard way over Christmas). Image: Barry Keoghan and Emma Stone Filmmaker Emerald Fennell‘s class satire Saltburn features full-frontal nudity, graphic sex, and a bathwater scene that will leave you speechless, …

‘Go and talk to strangers – it’s fun’: why speed dating is having a moment | Dating

‘Go and talk to strangers – it’s fun’: why speed dating is having a moment | Dating

Lilian no longer knows how many times she’s deleted all the dating apps from her phone. Somehow, she always reinstalls them. While she says she hates “the apps”, as they are now known (begrudgingly or affectionately, depending on your success), going clubbing or hanging around at a pub is “not where you meet people”. Lilian says dating apps have made romance feel like another chore to manage. In place of locked eyes and butterflies there’s monotonous swiping, weighing up someone’s potential from a few judiciously selected snapshots. A detail of a mural at the Soda Factory bar, during the Speed dating night, Surry Hills, Sydney. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian Calculate wrong and you risk wasting another night figuring out how to leave a date politely. Get too invested in a sure-seeming bet and risk falling into a pit of despair when they ghost. “I had been single for quite a while and was at a point in my life where I really wanted to meet someone,” the 32-year-old says. But this time, instead of initiating …