Along our 15 months of existence, DMovies has come across some of the most audacious, thought-provoking and dirtiest movies being made in all corners of the planet. We have visited 19 festivals, as well as written nearly 500 reviews, articles and dirty profiles. So it’s only natural that we identified some long-lost twins along our short yet very intense journey, often with the help of our enthusiastic readers on Twitter. Of course most of these people would rather forget about estranged siblings.
That’s why we decided to dig up the dirt from under family tree of the some of the most recognisable faces in the world of cinema, thereby revealing some of the strangest fraternal relations conceivable. For example, did you know that Nigel Farage has a twin in cinema, and that he could be about to star in a brand new movie? Did you know that fox-hunting supporter Theresa May has a sister that likes killing puppies? And what about the “late” Rowan Atkinson, and the old Frankenstein Herman Munster? You’d never guess where their siblings are now!
So read on find out more about how some of the prettiest and the ugliest faces in cinema relate to people everywhere!
Our first entry is Cate Blanchett playing a homeless man in Manifesto (Julian Rosefeldt, 2016). As soon as we published our review earlier this year from Sundance, we almost instantly received a barrage of tweets pointing to her long-lost twin Ian Beale. He is pictured here in British soap Eastenders, also playing a homeless person.
This is probably the least secretive relation on our list. By now, the entire world has probably realised that Michael Fassbender and Christopher Plummer are identical twins. We can only assume that they froze Fassbender’s egg for a few decades, which would explain the age gap between the two actors!
Not even the extreme make-up can conceal it. The former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has a twin in cinema: the star of the original It (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990). He will probably deny this even given the irrefutable piece of evidence above (well, the man is very good at spin and covering up the truth, we must recognise it). A remake of It will be released this year by Andres Muschietti, but we are not entirely sure whether the role has been given to the controversial politician’s relative.
Geoffrey Rush looks a lot like Einstein, particularly when his hair is disheveled. So it’s no wonder the Australian actor was cast to play the German scientist in the TV series Genius. But Rush has a much closer relative: his identical twin is the late Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti. He has even landed the lead role in Alberto’s upcoming biopic The Final Portrait (Stanley Tucci), which DMovies saw earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival.
This one was spotted by one of our followers on Twitter, who also has a very sharp eye for detail and bizarre resemblances. Who would’ve thought that the American heartthrob Humphrey Bogart and the controversial Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt came from the some womb?
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Cinema and politics do mix. And here’s a testament of it: the former US Secretary of State John Kerry and the 5th Earl of Shroudshire Herman Munster from Germany are undeniably related. We just need to find out where they were born and who was it that crossed the pond!
These two didn’t need to cross the pond, but just the Channel instead. Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean), who fell victim to a death hoax after it was claimed he had died in a car crash earlier this year, and the former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero obviously share the same DNA.
Cruella de Vil and Theresa May were tragically separated at birth, even if the reason for the split remains unknown. Not only to do they share the same facial features, expression and hair, but the two women also nurture a love for killing canines. The only difference is that May goes for foxes, while de Vil goes for Dalmatians.
Well, well, well. Ok, we’ve cheated. These two aren’t twins. They are just siblings instead. June Cowell, who plays the demonic girl in Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla, 1960) is INDEED the sister of the equally evil reality television judge Simon Cowell. Sometimes reality is scarier than fiction!!!
Do you think that we live in a democracy? Think again. It’s 2018, and neoliberalism is steadily morphing into neofacism. The UK is sleepwalking into a totalitarian regime. Extreme surveillance has already been introduced in the shape of apparently harmless RFID tags, and 75% of population already use them. People have become another trackable item in a gigantic Internet of Things. And that’s not all.
This is more or less Andrew Tiernan’s vision of what the UK under extreme surveillance would look like. His terrifying sci-fi flick UK18 shook those who attended the screening last night at the Regent Street Cinema. This highly audacious and low-budget movie makes an unequivocal statement against the ugly surveillance developments already taking place in the UK right now. This is an urgent piece of filmmaking, which everyone should see.
Sadly Andrew Tiernan’s film could be frighteningly prescient. The highly controversial Investigatory Powers Act was passed last November with barely any objections from the political establishment, and very limited exposure in the media. The UK government now has unprecedented powers to snoop on our Internet history. Edward Snowden tweeted: “The UK has just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies”. We are quickly turning into an Orwellian society.
Still from Andrew Tiernan’s UK18.
Now Theresa May wants to withdraw the UK from the European Convention of Human Rights, which would give her carte blanche to implement the most draconian measures imaginable, without any regards to human rights and civil liberties. The only country ever to abandon the Convention was Belarus, often described as the last dictatorship in Europe.
The screening was followed by a very exciting debate with Andrew Tiernan, the actress Shona McWilliams, the street artist Mark McGowan (aka Artist Taxi Driver), the artist Nick Reynolds and the researcher/ writer Wayne Anthony (author of the book Class of ’88). They urged people to stand up and resist the current government, and agreed that voting at the next general elections on June 8th is key to that. Mark delivered a particularly passionate speech against “Brexshit” and the racism attached.
Below are pictures from the lounge, the cinema, the Q&A and the drinks afterwards!
“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men” – that’s the message inside Burning Sands, feature film by Gerard McMurray, who was raised in New Orleans. The film has Trevante Rhodes from the Best Picture Oscar winner Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016) as a supporting actor, and this is not the only similarity between the two films. Burning Sands is a hazing drama almost entirely formed by black actors.
Zurich (Trevor Jackson) is one of the most popular freshmen at Frederick Douglass University, in Pennsylvania. He has joined a prominent and traditional fraternity on campus, seeking brotherhood and compassion. Just like in the film Goat (Andrew Neel, 2016), it is clear that the physical and emotional struggle implied in belonging to a fraternity will end in a tragedy. In this case, it is even stronger, as the violent images reveal some notion of twisted control system where black people abuse black people.
The film is divided in the days of the week culminating at Hell Night, in which freshmen undertake the last task so that they finally are “accepted” within the fraternity. Throughout the week, Zurich is tested to the limits of his sanity. It is imperative for him not to quit – that would be a dishonour. Even the university dean (Steve Harris, also in Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, 2015) trusts Zurich will get “to the other side”. The dean believes that “humiliation builds humility”.
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Hazing rituals range from the ludicrous to the extreme
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Some innovative aspects of the film include the use of voiceover as a clear expression of Zurich’s thoughts. While his body is failing – he is wounded, probably with a broken rib, and short of breath – his mind is telling him to go on. For him, struggle stands for progress.
There is also a wise and meaningful camera move during Hell Night. Zurich and other four freshmen are in a car waiting for the oppressive senior students to lead them to the last task. It is a thrilling moment. Whilst the freshmen leave the car, the camera stays inside, revealing a sense of vulnerability. The same feeling is pervasive throughout Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2015), which was produced by McMurray.
Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987) is also a big influence for the filmmaker. The opening scene in Kubrick’s cult movie shows the young soldiers having their heads shaven under the sound of “Hello Vietnam” by Johnnie Wright. Kubrick opted not to show the barbers, only the soldiers. In Burning Sands, black seniors are cutting the hair of the black freshmen under the sound of a rap music. McMurray chose to portray the barbers and the boys on the same take. The black rhythm speaks up for the code of silence that those boys share.
Burning Sands is out at Netflix on Friday, March 10th. Don’t forget to watch the film trailer below:
Where Jodorowsky’s 2013 The Dance Of Realitydocumented his small town childhood, Endless Poetry deals with his subsequent life in Chile’s capital city Santiago. His conservative family wants him to study medicine while he proclaims himself a poet and moves in with the two Cereceda sisters who love art above all things. The older Carmen sculpts while the younger Veronica dances. The latter gives him some money and tells him to go out and find his muse.
He runs into poetess Stella Diaz, played by actress Pamela Flores who also plays his opera-singing, housewife mother Sara. Both women are confident, dominant figures, but where Sara is a devout Catholic, Stella paints selected parts of her body and thinks nothing of, say, exposing her breasts to a male stranger as an excuse for punching him in the face. As they embark on a relationship, Stella proves the dominant force and in time Alejandro leaves her.
Alejandro then meets and befriends the poet Enrique Lihn (Leandro Taub). Their ensuing provocations include walking over a parked lorry and through both an old woman’s house and an underground car park in order to traverse the city in a straight line.
Aiming more at poetic effect than linear, autobiographical narrative, Jodorowsky not only directed but also wrote and designed both productions. At key moments he appears onscreen too as his present day self to offer advice to his younger self (played in Endless Poetry by his son Adan who also contributes a memorable score). His relationship with his father (Jodorowsky’s elder son Brontis) is explored via both an earthquake where father encourages son to be confident however difficult the circumstance and a final parting on a Santiago pier where son is movingly reconciled with father by shaving off the latter’s hair.
Further equally unconventional imagery is thrown at us just as Jodorowsky and Lihn pelt a bourgeois poetry audience with meat and eggs. A man lacking hands instructs male party-goers to use their hands to caress his lover’s body. Jodorowsky has sex with his best friend’s dwarf girlfriend. Maria Lefebre (famed dancer Carolyn Carson) does a tarot reading utilising a naked teenage boy who sports a growing erection. Staged with panache, such unusual scenes deliver a stream of consciousness awash with colourful characters to make for arresting viewing. Yet infuriatingly Jodorowsky’s true self may be hidden behind such autobiographical artifice, compelling though it is.
Endless Poetrywas out in cinemas in January 2017, when this piece was originally published. It has now been made available on DVD, Blu-ray and VoD. It’s on Mubi in December 2020.
This 80-year-old English director from the small town of Nuneaton is the most recognisable face of British working-class realism, with a career spanning more than five decades, and more than 60 films for both cinema and television. He also counts two Palme d’Or awards under his belt: The Wind that Shakes the Barley in 2006 and I, Daniel Blake this year, plus a number of accolades from every corner of Europe and the world.
I, Daniel Blake saw its theatrical release just 11 days ago, and it has since stirred a lot of controversy. The rivetting drama tells the story of the eponymous 59-old widower and carpenter living in Newcastle (played by Dave Johns). Daniel has had a heart attack and his GP and physiotherapist will not allow him to go back to work. Tragically, he gets caught up in the red tape of the callous benefit system. The outcome isn’t rosy, with the stress of the procedure triggering a fatal heart.
Victor Fraga, editor at DMovies, met up with Ken at the offices of his film production company Sixteen Films for an exclusive interview . We asked him dirty questions about his though-provoking feature, his left-wing political allegiances, Cannes, Brexit, Truffaut, George Lloyd, Cathy and Daniel. The well-mannered cricket-lover has views that are both accurate and sobering. So read on!
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DMovies – Two thousand and three hundred people in the UK died between December 2011 and February 2014 after they were deemed fit to work, according to figures published by the DWP in August 2015. That’s 2,300 Daniel Blakes. Where did we get it so wrong?
Ken Loach – Well, I don’t think we got it wrong. This is a deliberate policy of government to drive people out of the benefit system. They know what they are doing; they know that they are humiliating and destroying people by how they operate, by forcing sick people to go through an assessment in order to get the means to survive. And in that situation of course people will die. That’s unfortunate collateral damage for the government.
DM – Our reader Richard Banker said in a Facebook comment of our review of I, Daniel Blake: “The whole system was brought in by New Labour in 2008 with the Employment Support Regulations 2008 and awarding Atos Origin the contract. It has taken the Labour Party till now with the advent of Jeremy Corbyn to finally repudiate the system. I will be watching it”. Do you agree with Richard?
KL – I absolutely agree. The Labour Party under Blair and Brown was, in some ways, hardly distinguishable from the Tories, and they did bring this system in. The Party now under Jeremy Corbyn is a different Party, politically. The Shadow Minister of Housing said that Labour would end the assessments and rely instead on doctors and consultants, the real medical experts to provide the answers, and they would also end the punitive sanctions regime. These sanctions drive people’s lives into chaos. There’s nothing in their fridge, nothing in their bank account. They have nothing. They become hungry, and they can’t get warm. The government uses hunger as a weapon to discipline people.
Your reader is dead right. That was Labour indeed. Thank God that Labour Party no longer exists, except for the few idiot backbenchers who attack Corbyn all the time. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell is very different.
DM – The Welfare State is now over 100 years old. Do you think the former Chancellor of Exchequer and Prime Minister David Lloyd George would be proud of what has been achieved in a century?
KL – I wouldn’t say the Welfare State began with Lloyd George. I would say it began with the Clement Attlee government of 1945. There has been some things put in place by Lloyd George, but the Welfare State as we know began with the establishment of free healthcare, support for the most vulnerable. This was brought in at a time of full employment, but sadly successive governments have allowed this system to be eroded – and that’s another significant element. The Welfare State also exists in housing, that’s another aspect that came in my Nye Bevan. This also includes social care: organisations in community supporting old and disabled people. The whole idea of being looked after from the cradle to the grave, that came in with Attlee, and that’s what the Tories have been dismantling for years.
DM – And do you that Attlee and Bevan would be proud of what has been achieved?
KL – I think that Clement Attlee would have been dismayed, and Nye Bevan would have been incandescent with rage. I think Nye Bevan would be alongside Corbyn. Attlee was more defined by his time, while Bevan had underlined social principles in his heart, which would have aligned him with Corbyn.
Ken Loach and Victor Fraga at the offices of Sixteen Films. If Cathy was alive, she’d be in a room half this size.
DM – It’s 50 years since you made Cathy Come Home. So let’s move the years back. If Daniel Blake was born 50 years earlier and was unable to work, at the time of Cathy, do you think that he would have survived?
KL – I think that’s a really good question. I think Daniel certainly would have survived because he would have received his sickness pay. He would have not been humiliated and tested time after time. There would have been no cruel regime to get him out of the office as quickly as possible. Not only would he have survived, but the health service would have been better set up to look after him. There weren’t cutbacks in beds, in nursing care. Everything was owned and controlled by us all. It was a proper National Health Service. Daniel wouldn’t have been forced into another heart attack back then.
DM – Let’s turn things around. Had Cathy been born 50 years later, would she be homeless right now?
KL – She probably would be homeless if she lived in London because the housing crisis is much worse now than it was 50 years ago. The arrangements for homeless people are different now. She would probably be in a hostel in room half the size of this room [an average double size room, pictured above] with three kids, including her baby, feeding, eating, sleeping and doing school work, all in one place. So maybe she wouldn’t be homeless, but that’s where she would be.
DM – The French filmmaker Truffaut once famously said that the words “British” and “cinema” were an oxymoron. Yet, it was a French Festival, Cannes, that gave you possibly the most important accolade of your career, and twice: the Palme d’Or. On the other hand, American awards such as the Oscars haven’t recognised your work as emphatically, despite the enormous cultural affinity between the US and the UK. Why do you think that is?
KL – I hope Truffaut was joking. I think the French take cinema more seriously. They don’t see it as a commodity, as a product to make money, like Americans do. They have a wider view of cinema. Of course I was delighted to receive this accolade from the French. Well, the jury isn’t exclusively French, it’s international, but the French audiences have been incredibly generous to us. They have always screened our films to a very wide public. They are very conscious of our depth.
It would be nice to meet with François Truffaut, share a glass and change his mind!
KL – It’s a fake patriotism. There’s always exceptions, but by and large the traditional Sunday night television period dramas are nostalgic, like a Christmas card. People walking through snow and not getting damp. That’s ok, as long as we know what it is, but you need the corrective of films and stories that tell the truth rather than a kitsch nostalgia.
Gordon Brown once said that we need to stop apologising about the British Empire, but I don’t recall there ever being an apology. The British Empire was founded on land conquests, enslaving people, transporting them to other countries, stealing people’s natural resources, exploitation, brutality, concentration camps. We do need to tell the truth about that. I’m not saying we should wallow in guilt. This is what happened and we need to know our history, that’s all. The fake patriotism of Britannia rules the waves is nonsense.
Still from I, Daniel Blake (Dave Johns on the top right)
DM – Can you mention a few names in film or television of people who do a good job in portraying an authentic Britain?
KL – I prefer not to name people because I don’t want to miss anyone out, and also because my memory is rubbish. I think there’s a lot of hugely talented young people who could do it. There are also brilliant writers out there, and they need producers who can work with them, and of course we need the television channels to commission the right work. And not be cowered by management, or be micromanaged. No one should be chipping in and telling them what to do.
DM – Let’s talk about post-Brexit Britain. Do you think being British now means the same as before the referendum?
KL – The debate over Europe was complicated. On the left, a lot of people opposed the EU as an economic project because it’s a neo-liberal project favouring business. It doesn’t mean that they refuse to work with the EU corporation. They might want to stay or to leave for tactical reasons.
The position of the right is that they had a romantic idea of British sovereignty and English, of us as a separate nation. This is very strong in both English and British consciousness. Britannia Rules the Waves is part of this nostalgia.
A lot of people on both sides felt alienated and neglected, like no one spoke to them. So they voted against the establishment, against what Westminster was telling them. The Leave vote was a complicated mixture of all that.
This [conjecture] has raised up old memories of dislike of immigrants. It’s very disturbing. We need very strong political leadership from the left in order to change this, in the interest of ordinary people.
DM – Will you be dealing with the subject of immigration and xenophobia anytime soon?
KL – I don’t know yet. I’ll have to wait and see first what the future brings!
