Ana de Armas
After her star turn in whodunnit hit Knives Out Cuban-Spanish actor Ana de Armas was set to have a big 2020. But, well, Events got in the way. Finally, No Time to Die is out, with De Armas as Paloma, an agent who helps James Bond (played by her Knives Out co-star Daniel Craig).
Blonde
The pandemic delayed two more De Armas films: Deep Water, a thriller from veteran director of erotic-tinged shlock Adrian Lyne, which was also ground zero for her brief showmance with co-star Ben Affleck; and Blonde where she plays Marilyn Monroe in a movie adapted from a novel by Joyce Carol Oates.
You Must Remember This
In 1987, Oates published You Must Remember This, a family saga set against the conservative backdrop of 1950s America. The title borrows a line from the 1931 song As Time Goes By, written by Herman Hupfeld, but best remembered from its use 11 years later in Casablanca, where it is performed by Dooley Wilson as Sam. Despite claims to the contrary, he is never told on screen to “play it again”.
Karina Longworth
The film historian hosts thepodcast You Must Remember This, about Hollywood’s sordid past – listen out for the series about Charlie Manson and Polly Platt. The latest venture from Longworth (whose husband is Knives Out director Rian Johnson) is the podcast Love Is a Crime, delving into a dark showbiz tale involving the actor Joan Bennett: “a film noir played out in real life”. One of its voice actors is Griffin Dunne.
Joan Didion
Dunne, who also features in Wes Anderson’s latest, The French Dispatch, is the nephew of Joan Didion, the arch chronicler of Californian and American life. Dunne made Joan Didion: the Center Will Not Hold, a documentary about his celebrated author aunt, in 2017. Didion was said to have lost her job as Vogue’s movie critic after trashing The Sound of Music, the breakout role for Christopher Plummer – De Armas’s benefactor in … Knives Out.
Read Democracy, Didion’s unusual 1984 novel centred on a doomed political marriage.
Drink Victor Laszlo’s cocktail from Casablanca: champagne + bitters, sugar and cognac. Drink it again.
