Category: Entertainment

The legendary singer/songwriter Pete Townshend of The Who has cooperated with a documentary feature about his colorful life and career, and specifically about a time that almost destroyed him and his band: when, shortly after the release of the album Tommy, Townshend and The Who tried to make a science fiction rock opera called Lighthouse.

Behind Blue Eyes, which was co-directed by Frank Marshall and Nigel Sinclair, is headed to multiple fall film festivals as a sales title. The film’s backers — it was produced by Kennedy Marshall Documentaries, White Horse Pictures and VICE Studios, and is presented by Sobey Road Entertainment in association with Spirit Music Group, Polygram Entertainment and Trinifold Management — hope it will land a buyer and a spot in this season’s awards race.

Marshall and Sinclair exclusively discussed the film with The Hollywood Reporter.

What was it about Pete Townshend’s story — and specifically the story of Lifehouse — that made you feel this was a film that needed to be made now?

FRANK MARSHALL It’s a fascinating story and very compelling as a film now because the world has finally caught up with it. In 1971, no one could understand what Pete was talking about and he thought Lifehouse had failed. The irony is, 55 years later, we’re living inside his story. 

NIGEL SINCLAIR And the other part of this is that Pete’s reached a point in his career and life where he is prepared to take a very intense look back at his creative process, with all its twists and turns; and that was captivating.

As you dug into this period of Pete’s life, what surprised you most about him or changed your understanding of the man behind the music? 

MARSHALL I was surprised by how intellectual Pete is, his art school background and how he was trying to describe the future with technology. His solution wasn’t destroying technology, but human connection. He wanted to connect to the audience and bring them together through music. And out of that apparent failure came “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” “The Song Is Over” and other amazing music originally connected to Lifehouse.

SINCLAIR What surprised me was how self-aware he was from an early stage in his career. Discovering the link between his childhood torment and the character of Tommy was an extraordinary revelation. The other thing was the intense duality of his personality — the introvert and the extrovert, the rock superstar and the internal artist who wanted to be thought of as a writer not a rockstar.

Lifehouse emerged from a deeply personal crisis that nearly tore apart both Pete and The Who. How did you approach telling that story in a way that captures both the enormous musical ambition of the project and the personal stakes for Pete?

SINCLAIR Ironically, the enormous musical ambition of the project resulted in Who’s Next, which is easily the biggest album The Who released, groundbreaking, and often considered one of the top 10 rock albums of all time. In two days of interviews, Pete opened up his heart and explained how much Lifehouse was intended to reconcile the two sides of his personality, the rockstar and the artist. So its failure was heartbreaking then and, it appears so, now, as he tells it. So many of the later decisions Pete made about his career were so obviously driven by this “disaster.” And maybe from it came the wisdom that gave Pete a greater sense of fulfillment later, and made his relationship with Roger even more powerful.

What do you hope audiences come away understanding differently about Pete Townshend — and his place in music history — after seeing the film?

SINCLAIR Pete Townshend was one of the avatars who took rock and roll as a form of popular music and turned it into an anthem, a generational call to action, for then and for so many generations since. With Townshend, a select group — John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Ray Davies of the Kinks, and a little later David Bowie — gave the music, the lyrics and the performance of rock and roll the power to become an identity for millions and millions of people on earth. If Dylan changed the narrative with his The Times They Are a-Changin’ album, Pete turned it up to another level with the Tommy double album.

Romania has picked its Oscar contender, selecting Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord starring Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan to be its official selection for the 99th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature race.

In the drama about progressive politics, religious faith, and the limits of tolerance, Reinsve and Stan play two fundamentalist parents who relocate from Romania to a small Norwegian village, only to find themselves accused of child abuse, and forced to defend their beliefs, and strict parenting style, in court. The film is in Romanian and Norwegian with substantial portions in English.

Reinsve, hot off her box office success with horror sensation Backrooms, starred in this year’s Best International Feature winner, Joachim Trier’s Norwegian melodrama Sentimental Value.

Fjord premiered in Cannes, where it won the Palme d’Or for best film. Neon snatched up the film for domestic release ahead of the festival. Under new Academy rules, the Palme d’Or win meant Fjord received automatic entry qualification for the Best International Feature category, whether Romania chose to pick it or not.

The film’s star power and its hot-button themes, as well as the Palme d’Or prestige, could help Mungiu secure his first-ever Oscar nomination. The Romanian director won the Palme d’Or back to 2007 victory with his breakout 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, but that film was not put forward for the Academy Awards, triggering an outcry. His 2012 feature Beyond the Hills was Romania’s official Oscar pick and it made the shortlist, but did not secure a nomination. Fjord looks like a strong contender in this season’s race, not just for Best International Feature but in other categories, particularly Best Original Screenplay.

To date, the only Romanian film to be nominated for an Oscar is Alexander Nanau’s documentary Collective, about an investigation into hospital corruption in the wake of a nightclub fire. Collective was nominated for two Academy Awards, in both the Best Documentary and Best International Feature categories. A Romanian film has yet to win an Oscar.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the 15 films on the best international feature film shortlist on Dec. 15. The five nominees will be announced Jan. 21, 2027. The 99th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 14, 2027.

Jennifer Aniston and Jim Curtis took a very public step in their relationship on Wednesday, sitting down together for a conversation at 92NY.

The event was held in celebration of Curtis’ new book The Book of Possibility, and saw Aniston interview the transformational coach and wellness expert — who she’s been dating for over a year — on stage.  

“This is very, very exciting. It is quite an honor to be here, especially with you, Jim Curtis,” Aniston told the crowd, before launching into a story about how she grew up going to gym class and playing dodgeball in the 92NY building. “It’s quite a full circle moment to be back here with you, speaking of dodging balls,” she teased, wondering, “Have I completely embarrassed you?”

“Not yet. We’re still on track here. First question please,” Curtis joked back. She began by asking him about his journey to wellness and self-help, after growing up in Boston (where “we didn’t suffer woo-woo,” Curtis said) and having a finance career on Wall Street. Eventually, he hit an “ultimate low” with his health and relationships, and wound up in the hospital with a scary diagnosis.

“I just said, ‘You know what? I’ve reached rock bottom and it’s time to change,’” Curtis told the crowd as he got emotional. Aniston responded, “You reached this point where you’re met with two roads, and you definitely took the road less traveled in your case.”

Curtis has walked with a limp since he was young due to lesions on his spinal cord, and admitted that when people would ask why, he’d say he got into a motorcycle accident.

“I was so shameful that I had a medical condition, that I was broken in some way, that I thought that a motorcycle accident was at least a little macho, right? It’s like this identity of the macho strong man,” he said. “It didn’t come with the connotation and shame of ‘this could get worse’ and ‘should we hire you?’ and that’s what was thinking in my head.” Curtis added, “I overcame that with self-acceptance and self-love and it was a long journey in which I realized I could have done it quicker, and that’s what this book is about.”

The couple also drew some comparisons between their professions, as Aniston mused that “if you’re a director and you have an actor, depending on who your actor is — some actors, they’re just like, ‘I want to bleed this character from my veins, so please talk to me.’ And then there’s others that are like, ‘Just give me a line reading. I want to be a Nobu by eight.’” Curtis coaches a wide-range of clients, many that are quite successful, and had to learn how to speak to each person differently.

“People think like I’m ‘look into my eyes’ type of thing,” Curtis joked, referencing his work as a hypnotherapist. “Really what our conversations as a coach is is asking the right questions so people can understand themselves more… I’m lucky enough to have worked in finance. I’m lucky enough to have worked in media and the entrepreneurial companies, and so I can speak that language to that person in a way that isn’t like ‘believe in the source of love that you are, straight from the heavens.’ That doesn’t fly.”

Before jumping to some audience submissions, Curtis told Aniston, “Those were fantastic questions, by the way — and I know that we kind of went over those questions,” as she jumped in, “I didn’t ask you one question that was prepared. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Their banter continued as the transformational coach joked that the hardest part of working on the book was choosing the cover: “Is that a good enough picture of me? How does my hair — you know. How many times did I ask you, ‘Is this a good picture of me to put on this cover?’”

“A lot,” Aniston responded, teasing him with the next question, “What did you learn about yourself while writing the book? You got a good picture.” At the end, Curtis threw a few questions to Aniston, with her admitting she had to “overcome a very deep, deep fear of public speaking” to do the event with him.

After a 30-minute chat, Aniston exited the stage and Curtis led the crowd in a guided meditation — but first, he had to get a feel for the audience. “How many people here meditate on a regular basis? And be honest, how many people here just came here to see Jennifer Aniston interview me?” he laughed. “How many people here, despite that, are willing to try some meditation? How many people here are worried I’m going to try to hypnotize you and you’ll act like a chicken?”

The Book of Possibility hits shelves on Tuesday.

Ted Lasso returned with a new episode on Wednesday — though hardcore fans will likely have already watched it when it drops on Apple TV on Tuesday nights. Season four, episode five of Apple’s hit comedy, titled “Riches of Embarrassment,” has romantic woes around every corner — for both the veteran cast and some of the newbies on Richmond’s new women’s football team. It’s the clearest sign yet that this workplace comedy is leaning into relationship-drama territory, a tendency that’s bubbled below the surface since Ted first landed in England and we all fell for this early-pandemic-era surprise hit.

The episode marks the season’s halfway point, with several of Ted Lasso’s romantic entanglements hitting another crossroad. Keeley is looking to rekindle a romance with Roy, but her timing sours when she learns his “10-date experiment” is over — and that the last five rendezvous were all with the same woman. Beard confronts Jane after attending her experimental meta play, and she agrees to stop performing in it herself, only for the show to become the toast of London and get picked up for a West End run. And then there’s the very rich, poor-in-love Rebecca, who gets an unexpected visit from her suitor Matthijs. It’s a relationship where the pitfalls keep coming: the hopeful news of his move to London loses its shine once it becomes clear it’s less about getting closer to Rebecca and more about staying close to his daughter’s mother.

And then there’s the football. The Lady Greyhounds face the formidable Chelsea in their biggest match yet, on their home turf. Ted pulls a classic Ted Lasso and manages to keep the team motivated, even as he juggles the fresh challenge of managing Coach Chilton’s struggles.

Amid all that romantic chaos, it’s the titular, mustachioed, warm-hearted coach who manages to dodge relationship hell himself — not that his team doesn’t try to drag him in. The episode opens with a photo of Ted eating a hot dog alone in public, sent to the Lady Greyhounds’ group chat and opening the floodgates of scrutiny about who their coach really is beneath all that face fuzz. When the team ambushes him with questions about his personal life, he deftly dodges them — much like the show itself has dodged the topic all season. Maybe that’s setting us up for something more later on.

By the end of the episode, frustration abounds: Matthijs wants to hit pause on his relationship with Rebecca; Keeley’s plan to rekindle things with Roy has backfired right when she was finally ready to make a move; and Beard, in a subplot unrelated to the rest of the episode’s relationship woes, is still tangled up with a partner the show frames as successful but far from healthy. Coach Chilton, meanwhile, has to sit out the season’s final game after using her position to exact some revenge on the team. And capping it all off, the Lady Greyhounds suffer a surprisingly close loss to Chelsea.

But never fear — this is Ted Lasso, where our feel-good American coach always shows up with a folksy quote to soften the blow of reality, one that also happens to sum up the season so far. “That’s one of the great things about sports,” Ted tells Coach Chilton after the team’s stinging loss. “There’s always another chance.”