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Daddio review – Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn take a bumpy ride


The two stars do their best with a psychologically limited two-hander that takes place in a taxi from JFK airport to Manhattan
One would be forgiven for thinking that the one-location two-hander Daddio was born from the many restrictions introduced by the advent of Covid, a safe and easy way to make something, anything in the pandemic’s darkest days. It might have made it all a little easier to like, or at least admire, if that were the case but the film, set in a cab ride from JFK airport to Manhattan, has been in the offing for far longer. Originally conceived as a stage play, it transformed into a Black List script in 2017 attracting the attention of Daisy Ridley before morphing once again into a low-key, low-interest fall festival premiere, shot at the end of last year, ushered to the screen by its star and producer, Dakota Johnson.

She plays a programmer landing in New York after a trip to see her half-sister, finding herself in a cab driven by Sean Penn’s chatty everyman. Their back and forth makes up the entirety of the film, fraught questions over age, gender, sex and daddy issues dominating the ride. There are echoes of Steven Knight’s ingenious thriller Locke, a film that pushed us to the edge of our seats via Tom Hardy’s string of relatively mundane yet breathlessly tense car calls or Michael Mann’s Collateral where Jamie Foxx’s cab driver is forced into a violent partnership with Tom Cruise’s backseat assassin. But while it’s easy to see where Daddio might have taken a lurch into genre territory, it’s a far more grounded psychodrama with touches of comedy, a simple story of two people getting to know each other, a dream for screentime-hungry actors wanting a challenge, less so for those of us watching.
It starts out as something of a nightmarish worst-case scenario for those of us who prefer to stay silent in the back of a taxi with Penn’s salt of the earth cabbie firing question after question at his politely accommodating passenger, nosily inserting himself into her business. When the journey is forced into a halt with an accident up ahead, small talk turns into something of more substance, at least in comparison with what came before, but it’s never quite as gripping or surprising as it needs to be given the no-frills setup. There’s a vital crackle missing from their interplay, one that both actors try their hardest to insert, but writer-director Christy Hall’s dialogue is too expected, too run-of-the-mill to ever really grab us. There are flashes of something more intriguing when Hall shows a refreshing frankness towards sex and how it feeds into the way both characters see themselves and the world around them but too quickly she then opts for easy psychology to tidily explain the hows and whys. It’s not that these types – the bleach blonde other woman with daddy issues and the philandering blue-collar cabbie who speaks in fortune cookie-isms – don’t exist it’s just that they have existed too many times for us to find interest in them existing again, at least without any new insight.

While Hall’s script might keep us at a remove, her direction takes us closer to something that feels more real, managing to conjure the specific thrill of travelling from the airport to the city at night, the hum of possibility increasing with every mile and finding ways to make what could have felt like a static location come alive, putting us in the car right next to her characters. Life is also breathed into the film by her two stars, making the very most of the limited exercise, Johnson further proving herself to be magnetic regardless of the material (a skill learned early from the Fifty Shades franchise) and Penn bringing a movie star ease we haven’t seen from him for too long. They almost make it work but, like us, they’re searching for something that isn’t quite there, a thankless road to nowhere.

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‘I am officially off the market’: When Margot Robbie revealed she made the ‘conscious’ decision of not dating actors


Margot Robbie revealed her decision to not date actors because of the media scrutiny that came with a public relationship of two high-profile actors
Back in 2015, A-lister Margot Robbie made a declaration that she would not be dating any actors. The actress may have alluded to her fiance Tom Ackerley, who she married the following year in 2016. In an exclusive interview with Marie Claire, she revealed that being in a relationship as an actor herself came with its own set of challenges. She believed that dating someone who was popular would add on to the media scrutiny.

Margot Robbie opened up on why she made a conscious decision to not date actorsTalking to Marie Claire, she claimed, “I am officially off the market.” She then shared the reasoning behind her decision and added, “I made a conscious decision not to date actors.” She continued to explain, “But not because I hate actors. That’s a nasty generalization to make, and that’s not the case. People take such an interest in your love life when you have a profile, it puts a lot of stress on a relationship.”
The Barbie actress continued, “So two people with profiles, I figure it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.” This came after reports of her locking lips with Tarzan co-star Alexander Skarsgard started making rounds. It was reported that she was caught kissing the actor during the Sundance Film Festival.

Margot Robbie revealed she opted for a minimal lifestyle even after becoming an actorIn the interview, Robbie also opened up about how she was adapting to fame. She shared, “I have a normal 24-year-old life. If I were a waitress, I’d probably have the exact same lifestyle. I’d go to the same clubs I go to already, live in the same house with the same housemates, hang out with the same people.”
However, Margot Robbie tied the knot with Tom Ackerley who is an English producer and actor. The duo met on the sets of 2013 movie Suite Francaise where Tom was working as an assistant director. Post marriage, both of them launched their production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

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Monica Bellucci and Tin Burton at lunch in the restaurant in Selci Lama


For All Saints’ Day, the Hollywood star from Tiferno returned to his native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and then visit his parentsOn the occasion of the All Saints’ Day celebrations, the Hollywood star of Tiferno origin, Monica Bellucci, returned to her native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and to visit her father Pasquale and her mother Brunella.Flanked by her current partner Tim Burton, she went to lunch, together with about twenty old friends, at the Osteria del Musicista, which has always been her favorite restaurant, in Selci Lama.Menu dedicated to typical dishes of the area, which includes an appetizer with breadsticks lined with coppa, duck in porchetta and grilled pork livers, polenta with wild boar sauce accompanied by the very typical cappelletti in broth.To conclude, a dessert based on fried “ciaccia” with Nutella and roasted chestnuts.
Having paid the bill and greeted the restaurant owner and lifelong friend, Roberto Polchi, Monica brought home cappelletti and broth for a family dinner.

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‘Rocky’ Was Quite Different In His Original Screenplay, Sylvester Stallone Claims


Sylvester Stallone took his friend’s advice on a rewrite of the original screenplay to Rocky. A few tweaks later, he was on his way to major success.
In the new Netflix documentary Sly, Stallone discussed how he initially conceived of the project, which had a much harder edge. In the early version, Rocky was depicted as a “thuggish” character, inspired by Martin Scorsese’s crime drama, Mean Streets.

But Stallone’s perspective changed when a friend read the script and thought the boxer was too cruel for audiences to actually care about him.
Stallone recalled her crying.

“She goes, ‘I hate Rocky. I hate him. He’s cruel. He hits people. He beats them up.’”
Stallone took it to heart, and asked what he could do to soften the character.

“I said, ‘what if you stop short of it?’ Like, maybe he almost did. He could have, that’s his job, but he doesn’t?’ ‘That’d be nice,’” he added. “I said, ‘What if he had a girlfriend or something?’ ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ So I go back, start writing that: ‘Girlfriend. Nice.’”
$117 million in box office later, a franchise was born.

Stallone also revealed that actor Dolph Lundgren sent him to the hospital during one fight scene in Rocky IV.
“Dolph Lundgren… he pulverized me,” Stallone says in the documentary. “Later that night, my heart started to swell—which happens when the heart hits the chest—and then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels. Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care, where I’m surrounded by nuns, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s curtains.’”
Stallone was in the hospital for nine days following the incident, praying for “one more round.”
“For the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all,” Stallone told Lundgren. The Swedish actor joked in a separate interview that all he did was “obey orders,” explaining, “[Stallone] was the boss. I did what he told me.”
Doctors allegedly told Stallone that he received a blow to the ribs that made his heart rattle around in his ribcage, a condition typically seen in head-on collisions. “I did hit a bus, of sorts,” Stallone joked.

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