Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on February 19, 2025, 04:10:42 PMI haven't seen Manderlay in a while, but is it really considered an "artistic failure"?

QuoteAccording to Hoffman, "I Want Your Sex" is a BDSM dominatrix drama — one that has a surprising overlap with his latest film, Simon West's "Old Guy." While "Old Guy" has Hoffman playing an assassin learning from an elder hitman (Christoph Waltz), "I Want Your Sex" also pits Hoffman alongside an older mentee ... but for eroticism, rather than violence.

Cooper Hoffman follows the love — quite literally for his upcoming feature "I Want Your Sex."

Hoffman, who made his acting debut in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Licorice Pizza," is set to co-lead Gregg Araki's upcoming psychosexual thriller "I Want Your Sex." Amid the trend of older woman, younger man romances, Hoffman plays the "sexual muse" of a renowned artist (Olivia Wilde). "I Want Your Sex" was announced in August 2024 and began production in Los Angeles in October 2024. The feature, which co-stars Charli xcx, is currently in post-production.

According to Hoffman, "I Want Your Sex" is a BDSM dominatrix drama — one that has a surprising overlap with his latest film, Simon West's "Old Guy." While "Old Guy" has Hoffman playing an assassin learning from an elder hitman (Christoph Waltz), "I Want Your Sex" also pits Hoffman alongside an older mentee ... but for eroticism, rather than violence.

"All the movies I've done have, I think, been pretty drastically different," Hoffman told IndieWire in a recent interview. "Now, I do everything to try to put myself in as uncomfortable of a position as I can. I think every actor would say that, but it really is true. I just did a movie with Olivia Wilde where she's a dominatrix to me and that made me so uncomfortable. ... I am someone who is very interested with the idea of what will love make you do. 'I Want Your Sex' is a really intense adventure that this person goes on because he's in love."

He added, "You can connect it to 'Old Guy,' [in] that my character lost a lot of love at a young age, and that drives [him] to kill people. Where does it all stem from? It tends to stem from either a place of trying to gain [love] or grieve the loss of love. Not that those two movies are anywhere similar, but I do think that human beings all kind of stem from one place."

As Hoffman likens his passion for roles to being as enthused about a new lover, he wanted to put some distance between himself and "I Want Your Sex" after wrapping the feature. "I haven't seen anything," Hoffman said of Araki's film. "Gregg does all these editing on his own. It's just him in a room, locked in, and I think that I will be one of the last people to see it. It's his baby now. To be honest, I don't want to see it until it's done. I don't want to have any control over it. That's a string you don't want to pull on."

Hoffman instead pointed to how working with co-star Wilde was one of the "fucking coolest" experiences he's had on set (the actor also confirmed that there was an intimacy coordinator on the production). "I've had the privilege of working with a lot of cool people. Olivia is one of my favorite scene partners ever," Hoffman said. "She couldn't have been more cool about all of it. She was protective of me in a nice way, but also knew when to let me be. I couldn't have asked for a better partner in crime."

Hoffman told IndieWire that his experience on "Old Guy" has impacted how he approaches other films, like "I Want Your Sex." "This was like the second movie I had ever done. I did 'Licorice Pizza' [in 2021] and then I did this, and this movie really kind of put me in my place a little bit, because I think I thought I knew what I was doing and I didn't," Hoffman said of "Old Guy," adding that he filmed the action comedy when he had just turned 19.

Didn't working with the iconic Anderson for a breakout lead turn in "Licorice Pizza" give Hoffman the confidence to bring to "Old Guy"? Not quite. "It was super intimidating to step onto that set and to act across [from] Christoph Waltz, who's been doing it forever and knows exactly what he's doing — and I didn't," he said.

QuoteDenzel Washington and Spike Lee are reuniting for their fifth film together – the first since 2006's "Inside Man." Apple Original Films and A24 are partnering on [the film] which will be released theatrically by A24 before a global launch on AppleTV+.

The thriller, which starts production in March, is the English-language reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa's crime thriller of the same name. The 1963 film starring Toshiro Mifune was based on the Ed McBain novel "King's Ransom," which chronicles the ruin of a businessman following a ransom payment to kidnappers.

Developed and produced by A24, Escape Artists and Mandalay Pictures, [the film] features a script written by Alan Fox and Spike Lee.