Sienna Miller: I Was 'Obsessed' with Costner's 'Dances with Wolves'

Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP
Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP
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Sienna Miller: I Was 'Obsessed' with Costner's 'Dances with Wolves'

Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP
Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP

Sienna Miller was such a huge fan of Kevin Costner's films when growing up that she named her pet rabbits after animals in "Dances With Wolves".
Now she is starring alongside Costner in his ambitious film series "Horizon: An American Saga" -- a four-part project that he mortgaged his home to fund, said AFP.
The first two installments -- each some three hours long -- hit cinemas this summer, with the first released on June 28.
Miller, 42, said she remained star-struck.
"I'm a child of the 90s. I can still barely look at Kevin, because he was such a huge part of my childhood," she told AFP.
Costner's Oscar-winning "Dances with Wolves" from 1990 was "the first time I really had my heart broken by a film -- I was obsessed with it," Miller said.
She had two pet rabbits named Two Socks and Cisco after the wolf and horse in the film.
"Horizon" follows multiple characters and storylines on the violent frontier of the 19th century as European settlers took over Native American land, with Miller playing a woman whose family is attacked and faces a brutal struggle to survive.
"I like to think I would be an OK frontier woman. I'm more outdoorsy than you might assume," she said.
"But I don't think it would have been fun. I know Kevin says he wished he lived back then. I think it was a very difficult time to have been alive."
Miller was pregnant for the filming of the second installment, which made the conditions even tougher.
"We were really out in nature. That was hard, because you're in corsets and it's boiling and there are scorpions and rattlesnakes.
"I found earth, that red earth, in my hair for like a month. Up my nose, ears, every orifice. Well, not every orifice," she added with a laugh.
Only Costner knew she was pregnant during the second shoot.
"I was feeling pretty sick. That corset was not my friend!"
'Horrific genocide'
Miller welcomed the chance to learn more about the history of the period.
"This country with an indigenous people who were exterminated violently, brutally, in a horrific genocide -- that isn't talked about nearly enough," she said.
"It's a bloody history and a gory history and a devastating history. But it happened. And I think to be able to look at it and not get too political, but just to show the truth of it, that's refreshing."
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Horizon" got its world premiere last month, Costner told AFP he began working on the script way back in 1988 but could never find a studio to back it.
"But I loved it and so I decided I would write four, which is very American of me -- insane," he said.
Reviews so far have been decidedly mixed, however, with IndieWire calling it "the dullest vanity project of the century" while The Telegraph gushed over its "sheer, magisterial sweep".
Costner says he has no concerns about bankrupting himself.
"What's the fear? If they take it away from me, I still have my movie. I still have my integrity. I still listened to my heart," he said.



Francis Ford Coppola Thinks 'Megalopolis' Outweighs Ordinary Film Ideas

 Francis Ford Coppola attends the premiere of "Megalopolis" on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, at AMC Lincoln Square in New York. (AP)
Francis Ford Coppola attends the premiere of "Megalopolis" on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, at AMC Lincoln Square in New York. (AP)
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Francis Ford Coppola Thinks 'Megalopolis' Outweighs Ordinary Film Ideas

 Francis Ford Coppola attends the premiere of "Megalopolis" on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, at AMC Lincoln Square in New York. (AP)
Francis Ford Coppola attends the premiere of "Megalopolis" on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, at AMC Lincoln Square in New York. (AP)

Renowned American director Francis Ford Coppola believes his harshly criticized science fiction film “Megalopolis” offers audiences a unique narrative vastly different from what they are accustomed to seeing.

"We're so used to seeing movies that are like other movies because they're financed that way,” Coppola told Reuters during a Zoom interview while he was at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film was also screened.

"It's [movies like other movies] always something that's already proven that it will make money. It's like a potato chip that you know is habit forming and 'Megalopolis' is new,” he added.

After debuting this year at the Cannes Film Festival, Coppola's $120 million self-funded project is going to be shared with broader audiences when it arrives to US movie theaters on Friday.

While the film will be distributed by Lionsgate, Coppola maintains ownership of the movie.

Adam Driver stars as Cesar Catilina, an architect-scientist who wants to better a fictional version of New York City called New Rome, pitting him against Mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito, who prizes authority and institutions over change.

Catilina falls in love with the mayor's daughter, Julia, played by "Game of Thrones"' Nathalie Emmanuel, as she helps him work towards his vision and re-ignites his power to stop time.

When asked if “Megalopolis” is an allegory for his film-making journey, the 85-year-old director said, “All of my films are.”

“When I was young and made 'The Godfather,'” I had to be like Michael [Michael Corleone] because I had no power and I had to be very Machiavellian. When I made 'Apocalypse Now,' I was in an absurd situation with helicopters and millions of dollars every week that I was paying for, so I had to become a megalomaniac like Kurtz [Colonel Kurtz]. You know, I have always become the characters in my movies just to survive,” he added.

While the press response to the movie has been poor with a low score of 51% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Driver believes “Megalopolis” is a film that needs more than one viewing to be truly absorbed.

"I think it does have legs and I think it is something that you want to return to and can return to and mine something else out of it," Driver said. "And it, you know, has a place in people's minds as being one of a kind, which I don't think a lot of films can say that, you know."