Ethan Hawke ‘Hijacked’; Amanda Seyfried on the Farm; Florence Pugh Looks Uncomfortable

Ethan Hawke tells us he couldn’t say no to making his new doc about Paul Newman and Joanna Woodward; how to get Amanda Seyfried in your short film; Florence Pugh finds things a little suffocating in the new Don’t Worry Darling trailer. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

ICYMI: Here’s our list of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals 2022.

Ethan Hawke: “I tried to figure out a way to very gracefully say no,” says Ethan Hawke of his new HBO Max documentary The Last Movie Stars, about the love story of Paul Newman and Joanna Woodward. “And I couldn’t get the word ‘no’ out of my mouth. And I think I tricked myself into thinking — you know how you do that sometimes — like,’Oh, yeah, I can run a marathon, it’ll be easy.’” And so he, he says. he agreed to be “hijacked.” You can read Margeaux Sippell’s story on Ethan Hawke here or just watch the interview here:

R.I.P. Shonka Dukureh: The singer and actor who played Big Mama Thornton in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis was found dead in her Nashville apartment, police said. She was 44 and had two young children. Police said no foul play was suspected. She had worked with artists including Jamie Lidell and the Royal Pharaohs, Nick Cave, Mike Farris and Pete Rock.

Greetings From Montreal: Where I continue to cover the Fantasia Film Festival, and where attendees meow at the start of every screening. I love it. I’ve met many incredible filmmakers, and stories of them and their films will be here soon. But in the meantime, please enjoy this piece about The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra, which is about a deadly fungus and isn’t even close to the most upsetting movie I’ve seen here.

Indy Shorts: One of the buzziest films at the Indy Shorts International Film Festival, now underway in Indianapolis, is Eli Powers’ “Skin & Bone.” Powers is a promising, hardworking young filmmaker who has bounced between crewing on films for the likes of Paul Schrader and David O. Russell and making his own films. In the latest MovieMaker podcast and in this story, he explains how he got Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried and her husband, The Newsroom star Thomas Sadoski, to star in “Skin & Bone.” (Hint: Powers was her assistant on several films.) You can listen to our full interview with Powers on the latest MovieMaker podcast on Apple or Spotify or here:

Speaking of Festivals: The Valley Film Festival in Los Angeles has announced eight films that will screen at the festival’s Laemmle NoHo 7 Theatre, coming up August 3-7. They include opening night film Two Dash One One, by Nate Hapke, in which two young lovers reexamine their relationship in the afterlife; closing night film Silent River, by Chris Chan Lee, in which a man at a desert hotel, estranged from his wife, meets a woman who looks remarkably like her; and Trip Jenning’s documentary Elemental, narrated by David Oyelowo, about how to defeat superfires. You can learn more here.

It Isn’t Lost on Us: That Amanda Seyfried and Ethan Hawke, prominently featured in today’s Rundown, both starred in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. Would you believe that Eli Powers talks a bit about First Reformed on the podcast? He does!

Yet Another Reason to See Nope: The new Jordan Peele film, which arrived in theaters yesterday, includes the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, about the father of the atomic bomb played here by Cillian Murphy. I wish I could share it with you but it isn’t online.

Bang, Bang, Tick Tock: Would you settle for the hyper stylized trailer for Olivia Wilde’s upcoming Don’t Worry Darling starring Frances Pugh and Harry Styles? Pugh plays a woman who starts to feel… suffocated by her idyllic community.

Main image: Eli Powers and Amanda Seyfried on the set of “Skin & Bone.”