Valerie Perrine, Superman and Lenny actor, dies aged 82

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Perrine gained notoriety for a naked TV role and was acclaimed for her roles opposite Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Jeff Bridges Valerie Perrine, who was Oscar nominated for her performance in Bob Fosse’s 1974 Lenny Bruce biopic and played Lex Luthor’s girlfriend in the Richard Donner Superman films, has died aged 82. Writing on Facebook , the film-maker Stacey Souther announced her death, saying: “It is with deep sadness that I share the heartbreaking news that Valerie has passed away.” Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/XBk6d0J via IFTTT
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Napoleon review – Joaquin Phoenix makes a magnificent emperor in thrilling biopic

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Ridley Scott dispenses with the symbolic weight attached to previous biopics in favour of a spectacle with a great star at its centre

Many directors have tried following Napoleon where the paths of glory lead, and maybe it is only defiant defeat that is really glorious. But Ridley Scott – the Wellington of cinema – has created an outrageously enjoyable cavalry charge of a movie, a full-tilt biopic of two and a half hours in which Scott doesn’t allow his troops to get bogged down mid-gallop in the muddy terrain of either fact or metaphysical significance, the tactical issues that have defeated other film-makers.

Scott cheekily imagines Napoleon firing on the pyramids in the Egyptian campaign as well as witnessing the execution of Marie Antoinette (but not the humiliation of Louis XVI by the Tuileries mob, which he might actually have seen). Out of deference moreover, Scott and his screenwriter David Scarpa suppress all mention of Napoleon’s reintroduction of slavery into the French colonies. But above all, there’s a deliciously insinuating portrayal of the doomed emperor from Joaquin Phoenix, whose derisive face suits the framing of a bicorne hat and jaunty tricolour cockade. Phoenix plays Napoleon as a military genius and lounge lizard peacock who is incidentally no slouch on horseback. Others might show Napoleon as a dreamy loner, but for Scott he is one half of a rackety power couple: passionately, despairingly in love with Vanessa Kirby’s pragmatically sensual Josephine. Scott makes this warring pair the Burton and Taylor of imperial France.

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