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about: Regina Weinreich

Category: Academy Awards

  • Mark Ruffalo Gives an Impassioned Oscar-Worthy Speech to Save an Arts Space

    Wall Street Journal reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were only 29 and 28 respectfully when they embarked on the unfolding of the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon. Speaking to the well-heeled donors at a benefit at Guild Hall this week, for a staged reading of All the President’s Men, a screenplay…

  • Lupita Nyong’O, Peter Dinklage, Sandra Oh in Twelfth Night: A Dazzling Night at the Delacorte

    PHOTOGRAPH BY EMMA SUMMERTON; STYLED BY NATASHA ROYT. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is so often staged, I brought with me to Central Park, to the refurbished Delacorte Theater, the memory of prior productions of this comedy, fixating on one hilarious wardrobe detail. I couldn’t wait for Malvolio in his yellow socks, the accessory he thinks will…

  • Kieran Culkin in Glengarry Glen Ross: Looking for David Mamet 

    This year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Kieran Culkin can banter with the best of them, in this case, the real estate winners and losers of David Mamet’s now classic “Glengarry Glen Ross.” A natural choice to play Richard Roma, Culkin fast talked his way through A REAL PAIN, as the titular “real pain,” and…

  • Adrien Brody at the Oscars: Don’t Let Hate Go Unchecked

    Hollywood sent a message at this year’s Oscars. Winning Best Actor for his role in THE BRUTALIST, his second for this prize, Adrien Brody hoped for a healthier, happier, more inclusive world: “Don’t let hate go unchecked.” That’s not a small ask. From his first win for THE PIANIST in 2002, the actor whose mother,…

  • Adrien Brody at the 90th New York Film Critics Circle Dinner: Sitting Shiva

    The New York Film Critics Circle celebrated its 90th year this week, at TAO Downtown. Member Rex Reed celebrated his 50th year with the group. Many spoke of the fires in LA. Adrien Brody, reflecting on TAO’s décor with its giant statue mistaken for Buddha, pointed out, that’s Shiva the destroyer before becoming emotional, and…

  • Michael Moore: Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at Hamptons DocFest: Unleashed and Undeterred

    Even Covid could not keep Michael Moore back. Of course, everyone at Hamptons DocFest was disappointed the irascible filmmaker could not make the scene for his Pennebaker Career Achievement Award—named for D. A. Pennebaker and presented by Chris Hegedus–, but show up he did, larger than life on Zoom. “Now everyone can see I really…

  • RaMell Ross’ The Nickel Boys: Re-Viewing Racial Injustice

    Harrowing tales of black boys and men during the Jim Crow era are the meat and potatoes of Pulitzer Prize winning author Colson Whitehead’s fiction. When filmmaker RaMell Ross, who made the acclaimed 2018 documentary “Hale County, This Morning, This Evening,” was given an advanced reading copy of Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, he was working…

  • Sebastian Stan, Timothee Chalamet, Adrien Brody: Among Leading Men at the Gotham Awards 2024

    Old Hollywood likes their leading men handsome and debonair—think Cary Grant, Rock Hudson—but with this year’s Gotham selection of A DIFFERENT MAN for the top prize, Best Feature, a new look grabs at your attention. You have to love an awards season that starts with a celebration of –well, difference. A hit at the New…

  • Hollywood Film Mavens Robert Zemeckis, Tom Hanks, and Doug Liman Praise Gaucho Gaucho: Reinventing Documentary

    Documentary filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck had a shoutout of praise for their 2022 film, THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS –from Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks. These veteran filmmakers, the FORREST GUMP team, are not the only fans. For their latest doc, GAUCHO GAUCHO, about Argentinian cowboys, making the rounds of film festivals to great acclaim,…

  • Remembering Paul Morrissey 

    From the edgy look of his movies—FLESH, TRASH, HEAT, to name a few–you would never think of Paul Morrissey as deeply religious. With his friend and partner Andy Warhol, a fellow Catholic, he made art, collaborating on many cinema-verite films and other ventures including the purchase of cliff-high acreage in Montauk overlooking the Atlantic. The…

  • Luca Guadagnino’s Queer at the New York Film Festival: Daniel Craig Looking for Love

    The novels of William S. Burroughs may be difficult to adapt—just ask David Cronenberg—but in the able imagination of Luca Guadagnino, the transformation of Queer to film is a triumph. The packed audience at the recent Alice Tully Hall premiere, a high point at this year’s New York Film Festival, went wild as the creative…

  • Barbie at the Peninsula: A Doll Rules

    In the doll metaverse, Barbie is queen. A party at the posh Peninsula Hotel brought together her movie creators with members of the Academy to anoint her with awards. The movie about her has had world domination in sales. Even in Morocco, where I saw it when it was released in July along with Oppenheimer—famously…

  • Michael Mann’s Ferrari Closes the New York Film Festival: The Triumph and Disaster of Fast Cars and Men

    The roar of engines and strain of race cars careening around a sharp curve make for the panache of the New York Film Festival’s final picture, but the real drama of Ferrari takes place within walls. As Enzo Ferrari, a brooding charismatic silver-haired Adam Driver is haunted by loss—of father, brother, son, friends–, he speaks…

  • Unscripted: The 76th TONY Awards 

    The Writers’ strike was on everyone’s mind at the 76th annual TONY awards on Sunday night. Opening with a gorgeous dance number on the expansive United Palace Theater stage, the TONY show was its own Broadway show on upper Broadway that is, in the heights, Washington Heights. We do know that Lin-Manuel Miranda has enormous…

  • Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Air: Courting a Legend 

    Who knew basketball great Michael Jordan had a secret weapon? I don’t mean the Nike Air sneaker, the subject of a compelling, smart new movie, Air, but his mom Doloris Jordan who brokered the Nike endorsement deal and championed her son, when he was a rookie, to the top. Under the superb direction of Ben…

  • Afterthoughts: Kudos to An Oscars with Class

    Even the pre-Oscar buzz augured a return to old-school. The academy had its wits about them awarding Everything Everywhere All at Once, which, for the most part, swept the earlier awards. When that phenomenon began, the world seemed divided: some could not understand its metaverse. Others said, it spoke to them. Because the latter group…

  • Jessica Chastain in A Doll’s House: Ibsen for our Time

    Revolving on the barren Hudson Theater stage in an expansive orbit for 20 minutes before the first words of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll’s House are spoken, Jessica Chastain as Nora Helmer sits stationary as she in her chair marks the periphery. The edgy blacks and whites are not the way you imagine this classic Ibsen…

  • A Rendez-vous with Virginie Efira: The French Film Festival Returns

    While many quibble with this year’s Oscar list for its lack of female directors, this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema; a yearly event hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and Unifrance, features two women with superb films. For Opening Night, Alice Winocour’s Revoir Paris, translating to Paris Memories, stars this year’s Cesar winner for Best…

  • Charlie Mackesy’s Journey: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse

    Jet-lagged as you might expect for a British writer/illustrator just arriving from L.A., having promoted his film, and looking as you might imagine a mad scientist crossed with Gene Wilder, Charlie Mackesy held forth at a luncheon at the Whitby Hotel, signing cupcake boxes, posters, copies of his book, and telling a story about how…

  • Oscar Nominations: The Andrea Riseborough Upset

    Oscar watchers did not see Andrea Riseborough coming, even though she was on the tip of Cate Blanchett’s lips as she accepted a Critics Choice award for Best Actress for her tour de force performance in Tar. In almost a whisper, the formidable Blanchett, a frontrunner who has already won a slew of awards, noted…

  • Steven Spielberg at the Golden Globes: The Awards Season Heats Up

    Everyone gets a kick out of Jennifer Coolidge’s loopy discourse. As demonstrated at the Golden Globes ceremony this week, nobody does it better, but the antic Ke Huy Quan, whose award for Best Supporting Actor-Motion Picture for his work in Everything Everywhere All at Once started the evening off, comes close. In a flash of…

  • Ragtime at Bay Street Theater: Listen to Mother

    The heart of the dazzling revival of Ragtime at Bay Street Theater is Mother, a character of enormous compassion. As played by Lora Lee Gayer, she’s a lovely presence who saves an abandoned black baby and his mother Sarah (Kyrie Courter), and navigates her well-to-do New Rochelle family through the vagaries and scandals of early…

  • Lost Illusions: A Classy Take on a French Classic

    The French can be vicious, bringing backstabbing to a fine art. Just look at les Liaisons Dangereuses. This year’s winner of seven Cesars, including Best Film, went to Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Honore Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a splendidly captivating romp through 19th century Paris via the extravagant “illusions” of a young, determined, and talented poet,…

  • Oscars So Real in 2022: No Offense Intended

    Despite a contretemps at the Oscars—a slap seen round the world—the ceremony and awards proceeded as expected, apace, with favorites winning all around. When Will Smith accepted his Best Actor award, he tearfully mentioned defending family, as his character Richard Williams did coaching his daughters Venus and Serena to top tennis honors. Of course, Smith…

  • Oscar Picks 2022

    Fair is fair. Choosing among the pleasures of this year’s best movies could not have been easy. Awards, particularly the Oscar voters’ choices announced this morning, reflect a nuanced vision: I am especially heartened by the nods to two of my favorite actresses, Jessica Chastain and Penelope Cruz in two outstanding of this year’s films:…