Category: Entertainment

For director Leon Le, the problem isn’t a lack of stories about Vietnam, instead it’s how they’ve been told. “Vietnamese stories have been told through a very dated, very disrespectful, ignorant lens,” he says.

His sophomore film, “Ky Nam Inn,” in competition in the features section of the Fribourg International Film Festival, returns to 1980s Saigon, following a translator, a war widow and her young son in the years after reunification.

For Le, the film is less about plot than what comes after conflict. “It’s not just a love story between a man and a woman,” he says. “It’s reconciliation between the winner and the loser, between the North and the South,” he adds. “What are we going to do now, after the war has ended, after the foreigners have left, and we have to live with each other again?”

That idea runs through the film’s structure. The central character works as a translator, adapting French classic “The Little Prince” into Vietnamese. “Once we settled on ‘The Little Prince,’ everything started clicking,” Le says. “Khang’s journey started echoing what the Little Prince is going through.” The choice also reflects the peeling back of historical layers. “We can play into the aftermath of not only what the American war left behind, but also colonization and what the French left behind.”

To build the visual identity of the film, Le, who left Vietnam at 13, draws on his own memories, still intact decades later. “I still recall a very particular afternoon when the sun was all pink, and kids were flying kites,” he says. “I can immediately transport back to that moment.” “I don’t think it’s a conscious thing,” he adds. “I just feel like that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Ky Nam Inn” leans into specificity, whether from the arrangement of objects in a room to the gestures of its characters, details the director says have stood out to international audiences. For Le, however, that attention is simply a natural part of the process. “That’s just basic storytelling,” he notes.

That attention to lived experience is central to how he approaches storytelling. “Who am I making this movie for?” Le ponders. “It has to be for the Vietnamese audience first.” Trying to explain cultural details for Western viewers, he adds, often distorts them. “Nobody would ever say, ‘Vietnamese people have this saying,’” he explains. “You don’t present your life like that. You don’t explain your culture to yourself.”

He also points to a broader issue. “There’s not enough stories about Vietnam for audiences to differentiate between what’s real and what’s just a version of it,” Le says. “Whatever you put out there, people are going to think it’s real.” That, he says, raises the stakes. “There’s a responsibility when you tell the story of a group of people that’s not mainstream.”

Screening in Fribourg, a festival long dedicated to global cinema beyond the Western mainstream, offers a different kind of resonance for Le. “We’re not alone,” the director says. “There are people who want to hear our voices.”

But that recognition isn’t what drives him. “With my first film and this film, I made no money whatsoever, no salary, not a single dime,” he says. “There’s no reason for me to do any of this if it’s not from love.”

Rob and Michele Singer Reiner were remembered Saturday night during this year’s Human Rights Campaign gala dinner in Los Angeles.

Kelley Robinson, president of the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, recognized the late couple’s work in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage. “When Prop 8 passed in 2008, Rob and Michele stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a real-life league of queer Avengers,” Robinson said. “I’m talking about Chad Griffin and Christina Schocky, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami, Justin Mikita and Adam Umhoefer, who’s here tonight.

“And from that moment when they locked arms, they decided to launch the American Foundation for Equal Rights and that legal team took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court and won for our rights and for our lives,” she continued. “Rob and Michele were and are superheroes. They showed us what real allyship is. They were courage embodied and most importantly, they never stopped giving a damn – not for themselves or for self-image but for the good of all of us.”

Rob and Michele were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home on Dec. 14. Their son Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in their deaths. He pleaded not guilty on Feb. 23, and is being held without bail. He is facing two counts of murder with an enhancement that could carry the death penalty or life without parole if he is convicted.

At the start of the HRC program, gala chairman Todd Hawkins dedicated the night to the Reiners. “They helped make it possible for LGBTQ+ people to marry the person they love,” he said, adding, “I remember looking out from this very stage last year. Rob and Michele were right there cheering us on with everything that they had. We may have lost them in the physical sense, but we have never lost their spirit, their fire, their fight, their energy, their friendship, their influence and their everlasting impact. So tonight, we dedicate this evening to them. We remember them, we honor them.”

Lisa Kudrow and RuPaul presented writer, director and producer Michael Patrick King with the Visibility Award.

The television impresario, a mastermind behind “Sex and the City,” “And Just Like That,” “The Comeback,” and “2 Broke Girls,” among many other projects, talked about not coming out as gay until he was 36. “To be clear I was never confused who I was. I knew who I was from a very young age,” King said.

He described a photo of him taken when he was three years old. “This toddler, me, is looking straight into the camera wearing my mother’s sheer summer curtains wrapped around me as a gown…and one with a veil over my head,” King said. “And I am holding a bouquet of plastic flowers that I took from the vase on the top of the TV…On the back of this photo in my mother’s handwriting, it says, ‘Michael being the bride. 3 years old. Favorite outfit.’ And yeah, my mother was shocked when I told her I was gay 33 years later.”

King wondered aloud why it took him as long as it did for him to come out. “Every single thing I learned about how society hated gay people, maybe,” he said. “And even in a family as filled with as much love as mine, the societal shame got in and told me not to be vocal, not to be meek. All those years, I was letting society hold me back from becoming who I was meant to be.”

See photos from the Human Rights Campaign gala below.

“SNL U.K.’s” Weekend Update returned in the show’s second week with one-liners about U.S. and Iran’s mixed messages about a deal to end the war, the death of the owner of OnlyFans and more.

Paddy Young kicked off the show with a zinger about Trump and Iran communicating very different things about a potential deal to end the current conflict.

“While Trump has been insisting that Iran wants a deal so badly, an Iranian military spokesperson has said, quote, ‘Our first and last word from the very first day has been, is and will remain: Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you. Not now and not ever,’” Young said, adding: “Oh my God, just kiss already!”

Later on in the segment, the death of OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky came up. “So gentlemen, when you’re visiting the site this week, lower your penises to half mast,” Young joked. “Beautiful funeral, by the way. Wasn’t a dry tissue in the house.”

Young and co-anchor Ania Magliano then debuted a new bit titled “hand-in-hand,” where they delivered some good news amidst all the bad. “And now, it seems like the whole world is at war. Russia and Ukraine, the Middle East, Chappell Roan and that tiny girl,” Magliano said. “War. We could just making jokes about it. But first, we just want to check: Are you OK?”

“This is hand-in-hand with Anya and Pad,” Young said. “We’re here to tell you that it’s going to be OK,” Magliano added, as Young finished her sentence: “Because we’ve got each other.”

“World War III. Sounds scary, huh? But we’ve already had two,” Magliano continued. “And don’t they say good things come in threes?”

Carrying on the topic, Magliano pointed out that “if London gets bombed, house prices will drop.”

“And so will house numbers,” she added. “We’ll all get to live across the two houses that are left. Like in ‘Friends’!”

Shinya’s Tsukamoto’s “Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?” is headed to Japanese cinemas.

The film rounds out the Japanese director’s informal trilogy of 20th-century war films, coming after “Fires on the Plain” – which landed in the main competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival – and “Shadow of Fire.” The project gestated for seven years before reaching the screen.

Rodney Hicks takes the title role. The actor is known for his involvement with Broadway’s “Rent” from its opening to its closing night run, and for his turn as Uncle Charlie in the Netflix series “Forever.” Triple award-winner Geoffrey Rush – who has taken home Oscar, Emmy and Tony honors over his career – plays VA physician Dr. Daniels, a role that follows celebrated credits including “Shine,” “The King’s Speech” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. Tatyana Ali, familiar to audiences from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and the Emmy-winning “Abbott Elementary,” plays Nelson’s wife Linda. The film also marks the screen debut of Mark Merphy, who portrays Nelson as a young man in flashback. Filming took place across the U.S., Thailand, Vietnam and Japan.

The film is rooted in the real-life account of Allen Nelson, an African American veteran of the Vietnam War who, after returning from combat, went on to give more than 1,200 lectures throughout Japan bearing witness to his wartime experiences. Nelson, who is buried in Japan, spoke candidly about his inner torment as someone who had taken lives during the conflict — the psychological terrain that Tsukamoto has described as “the wounds of those who perpetrated war.”

The film traces Nelson’s journey from a poverty-stricken childhood in New York through his decision to enlist in the Marines at 18, seeing in military service a path out of discrimination and hardship. After a stint at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, he was dispatched to the Vietnam front lines in 1966. He came home five years later plagued by sleeplessness, hair-trigger fear responses and fractured family ties that ultimately left him living on the streets. Dr. Daniels eventually intervenes in an effort to pull him back from the edge.

Tsukamoto has said he first came across the original nonfiction book while immersed in research for “Fires on the Plain,” and that it never left him. He described the filmmaking process as a seven-year tug of war between wanting to tell the story and being overwhelmed by its darkness. “In today’s world, where conflicts are raging in various places, I’ve come to feel this reality more acutely than ever,” Tsukamoto said.

The film is produced and distributed in Japan by Kinoshita Group and Kino Films, the company behind the local release of “Conclave” and the upcoming Japanese rollout of the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” in June.

Tsukamoto’s body of work stretches back decades, taking in the internationally celebrated body-horror film “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” (1989) and the samurai drama “Killing” (2018), which also competed in Venice’s main section. The Japan release announcement was timed to coincide with National Vietnam War Veterans Day on March 29.

James Tolkan, best known for roles in “Top Gun” and the “Back to the Future” franchise, died on Thursday in Saranac Lake, N.Y. He was 94. 

News of Tolkan’s death was announced by Michael Klastorin, a unit publicist on “Back to the Future Part II” and “Back to the Future Part III,” as well as by writer-producer Bob Gale and on the franchise’s website.

Tolkan’s career spanned more than five decades. His first TV credit was for the 1960 series “Naked City” and his last credit was for the 2015 film “Bone Tomahawk.” Though Tolkan is perhaps most recognized for his work in the “Back to the Future” trilogy, in which he played principal Mr. Strickland in the 1985 original and 1989 sequel. In 1990, he returned as the grandfather of his character for the third film.  

Tolkan is also known for his appearance in “Top Gun.” In Tony Scott’s 1986 action film, Tolkan played Commander Tom Jardian, also known by the nickname Stinger, alongside stars Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Meg Ryan and more. 

He also had roles in films including “WarGames,” “Stiletto,” “Abduction,” “They Might Be Giants,” “The Amityville Horror,” “Off Beat,” “Armed and Dangerous” and more. He had roles in TV shows like “Leverage,” “A Nero Wolfe Mystery,” “The Pretender,” “Early Edition,” “Nowhere Man,” “Cobra” and “The Wonder Years,” among others. 

Tolkan was born on June 20, 1931 in Calumet, Michigan and attended Coe College and the University of Iowa after joining the U.S. Navy. He ultimately traveled to New York, where he studied at The Actors Studio with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg.

Tolkan is survived by his wife, Parmelee, whom he met on the set of “Pinkville,” an off-Broadway play, in 1971. 

An obituary on the Back to the Future website asked for donations to your local animal shelter, animal rescue organization or Humane Society chapter.