16/10/2025

LYFE THURSDAY | OCT 16, 2025

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Oscar-buzzy Hamnet changed me, actress Jessie Buckley says A CTORS Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal went on a transformative journey in Hamnet , a film that has received rave reviews and early award season buzz. Directed by Academy Award-winning Nomadland son, which leads Shakespeare to write Hamlet .

o Drama offers fictional account of relationship between William Shakespeare, wife Agnes

portray a maturing man. Its depiction of love that transforms through time was “very moving”, he said. “It’s the first time that I’ve spanned the real length of time with him, early 20s all the way through to even a little bit in later life. It was lovely,” the Irish actor said. The film is adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling 2020 novel of the same name, with the author and Zhao co-writing the screenplay. It acknowledges that the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable in Shakespeare’s day. The project was an emotional one for Zhao, who was overwhelmed as

“What was revealed to me through her (Agnes) was a tenderness that I didn’t know I needed to learn and live in. And that tenderness has changed me,” Buckley said on Saturday at the movie’s London Film Festival premiere. “It really reminded me of how potent and powerful storytelling can be. And it’s kind of set a bar, like, I only want to make films that are as brave and as human as this from now on,” the Irish actress said. Normal People , Aftersun and Gladiator II star Mescal said the movie gave him an opportunity to

filmmaker Chloe Zhao, the drama offers a fictional account of the relationship of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes, and the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet in 1596. Set in Stratford-upon-Avon and London, it sees the young Shakespeare teaching Latin to pay off his father’s debts and falling in love with the free-spirited Agnes, described by locals as the daughter of a forest witch. With a focus on their family life, the emotion-filled film follows the highs and lows of their love story as well as the grief over the loss of their

From left: Mescal, Zhao, Buckley. – PIC FROM INSTAGRAM

she arrived at the premiere. “If you see your DP (director of photography), your production designer, your costume designer and just start balling on the red carpet for like 20 minutes, I can’t keep it

together, I think it speaks for itself,” she said. Hamnet , which is produced by Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes, will be released in cinemas globally in late 2025 and early 2026. – Reuters

Guillermo del Toro backs Paris stop-motion animation studio

MEXICAN filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said recently he was teaming up with a Paris film school and Netflix to launch a training studio to help old-fashioned stop-motion animation techniques survive. Stop motion is the oldest form of animation, involving manipulating real-life models to create films frame-by-frame. It dates back to the late 19th century and is best-known nowadays through the Wallace and Gromit or Chicken Run films by British studio Aardman. “The names that are important in stop-motion are all over 50 years old,” del Toro told reporters in Paris at the Gobelins film school in southeast Paris. “Stop-motion is perpetually on the brink of extinction. And it is perpetually preserved by slightly crazy people. It’s a tiny

cult devoted individuals,” joked the filmmaker, who directed the 2022 animated film Pinocchio using the technique. Del Toro, whose latest film Frankenstein starring Oscar Isaac is set to release on Netflix next month, said he valued stop-motion as a craft beyond the reach of artificial intelligence (AI). “In an era in which you can have AI intruding in any other form of animation, this is AI-proof. So that is really good,” he added in the presence of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. The project’s details, such as investment and equipment, are set to be finalised in the coming months. The launch date for the studio will be announced at a later date, according to school director Valerie Moatti. – AFP with very

Martial, sonic prowess been comfortable Kommodus’ Lepidus Plague released his third full length album earlier this year. – PICS FROM INSTAGRAM @KOMMODUSWOLF

Meridians of Sacrifice II is the perfect entry point into either band’s body of work.

with complacency, but MOSII is a clear result of both creative figures pushing themselves to their (current) absolute limits. The results are clear: Kommodus’ side maintains the band’s emblematic ferocity, with tracks like Elegy for a Paladin Star and Osgiliath Seasons being an even more heated theatre of war between raw black metal, hardcore and splashes of weird synthesisers and instruments. On the American side of MOSII, Koreltsak draws from his scabbard songs like Cracks in the Blade Howl from the Darkness and To Holy Ground , melding raw black metal with Japanese motifs better than the project has done previously. Like the drums on The Crossroad of Corpses , the session collaborators that contributed to both sides of the

split are part of Kommodus and Koreltsak’s array of sonic electric, electronic and acoustic arsenal that they deploy great effect, mirroring the prowess of Roman and Japanese warriors and commanders of old. The split album also demonstrates why Kommodus nor Koreltsak may never perform live. Beyond the feverish anonymity both musicians have armoured their identities around, it would be a monumental task attempting to bring the full breadth of their music into a live music setting. If 2023’s Meridians of Sacrifice were rough chunks of steel of promising quality in the early stages of being forged into swords, Meridians of Sacrifice II is the culmination of two distinct blades fully forged, ready to be drawn and used to unfurl flesh from bone.

ALBUM REVIEW

Ű BY MARK MATHEN VICTOR

SURPASSING their 2023 split album, Kommodus and Koreltsak’s Meridians of Sacrifice II (MOSII) is a metamorphosis of both Australian and American projects, with the album seeing the bands thread the needle in delivering an even sharper, searing barrage of songs that fortify their distinct foothold in the realm of black metal. A continuation of what both forces introduced two years ago, MOSII has Kommodus’ Lepidus Plague and Koreltsak P.T.S. take their self-experimentation to greater heights. Neither projects, particularly Kommodus, have ever

Filmmaker del Toro says he values stop-motion as a craft beyond the reach of AI. – AFPPIC