“It’s hard to watch the family stuff. The drugs stuff I can handle because I did it, but the family stuff is touching,” he told Variety in an interview on the warts-and-all movie about his wild rock ‘n’ roll years.

The film won an extended standing ovation in Cannes, with critics hailing its honesty and the way it deals frankly with the British singer’s struggles with drugs, alcohol and his own sexuality.

“Part of the reason I became the addict that I was (was) because of my background,” said the 72-year-old megastar.

“I really value the fact that (my parents) stayed together for me when they were unhappy with each other…. I’ve come to understand the circumstances that they went through and I’m not angry or bitter about that whatsoever,” he said.

“But it did leave a scar and that scar took a long time to heal, and maybe it will never heal totally.”

John had a much-publicised eight-year feud with his formidable mother Shelia Farebrother, who he accused of trying to interfere in his life, but they buried the hatchet just before her death at the age of 92 in 2017.

An only child, John was raised by his grandparents until he was six before moving in with his parents. They divorced when he was 14.

The movie also explores the singer’s long and successful songwriting partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin, which produced seven consecutive US number one albums between 1972 and 1975.

“The wonderful thing is the relationship I have with Bernie, which is the glue of the movie,” the singer said.

“We’ve been together for over 50 years and to have this relationship being so strong… means a lot in this kind of business that we work in.”

Peopled by sometimes-awkward geeks making physics references, “The Big Bang Theory”, whose finale episode aired last night, seemed destined at first to appeal to a niche audience.

But as the show reaches its conclusion, it has become one of the most-watched series in the world.

Focused on whether characters Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah-Fowler will win the Nobel prize, the show is going out on top as it wrapped up its 12th and final season.

The show, which airs on US network CBS, has carved its place at the top of American television, with more than 12 million live viewers for much of the most-recent season (17 million when including delayed watchers) – similar levels to “Game of Thrones”.

According to research firm Parrot, “Big Bang” was one of the five most popular shows in the world last year, a streak CBS would have been happy to continue – were it not for Sheldon actor Jim Parsons having announced he would leave the show after the 12th season.

The cast from the television comedy series “The Big Bang Theory”, from left, Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch, place their hands into two blocks of cement at a Handprint Ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

For producer and writer Stephen Engel, who worked on it at the beginning of its run, “Big Bang” owes much of its success to the annoying-but-loveable character.

“It was a serendipitous blending of a character and an actor that was just magic,” he says.

Depicting a brilliant scientist who is socially clueless, Sheldon’s portrayal was “just a perfect marriage of point of view, jokes, voice and actor that made that character jump off the screen,” Engel adds.

But Sheldon’s charm alone can’t explain how a series that wasn’t critically acclaimed or even breaking into the top 50 most-popular at the end of its first season went on to run longer than American sitcom classics like “Friends”, “The Cosby Show” and “Seinfeld”.

According to conventional wisdom, it was series’ depiction of characters like Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj as proud geeks – obsessed with TV series, video games and obscure sub-genre interests – that allowed for its longevity.

Long associated with niche interests, geek, or nerd, culture has made its way into the mainstream, thanks to sagas like “The Lord of the Rings”, “Star Wars”, “Game of Thrones” and others, meaning there was a growing audience that could feel an affinity with the characters.

“There was a tendency in the wake of ‘Friends’ to just to put as many good looking people in a room as possible and just hope people would look at them and just want to watch the show. ‘Big Bang Theory’ just decided because they were nerds, we can get the funniest actors we can find,” Engel says. “They don’t have to be handsome.”

Though “The Big Bang Theory” differs from most shows in its popularity and subject matter, the series still relies on a variety of tried-and-true sitcom conventions: the episodes, shot on multiple cameras, are made up of a series of punchlines interspersed by a laugh track, some of it edited in later (the show is filmed in front of a studio audience).

The end of the series, which coincides with the end of ABC’s “Modern Family”, which will finish with its 11th season next year, marks the end of an era for the genre.

Sitcoms on traditional networks, such as “Big Bang” spinoff “Young Sheldon”, and “Mom,” also the work of “Big Bang” creator Chuck Lorre, just don’t bring in the same audience numbers.

And Netflix has tried its hand at the format, with “Fuller House” and “One Day at a Time”, though neither will be returning after the end of the year. By 2020, the classic sitcom will be absent from nearly every major streaming platform, including Amazon and Hulu.

“I’ve lived in many periods in this business where people have said: the sitcom is dying,” says Stan Zimmerman, who worked on “Roseanne” as a producer and writer. “And then it somehow comes roaring back.”

Coupled with the decline of the traditional sitcom, the fragmentation of audiences means there is concern that universal series, capable of capturing the attention of large swaths of the public, like “The Big Bang Theory” or even “Game of Thrones” was able to do, is gone.

“I think it’s wonderful that we are being so diverse in the programming and the voices that we are hearing and we just need to have more of that,” said Zimmerman, who is working on a show called “Silver Foxes”, a comedy centred on ageing gay men.

But he says he wouldn’t count out watercooler series just yet.

“There’s still room for a big, general-audience show that everybody could sit and watch and laugh and talk about the next day at work,” he says. “There’s room for everything now.”

The Cannes film festival opened Tuesday with one of the glitziest lineups in years as Hollywood stars and studios return in strength to the world’s biggest film jamboree.

Spanish star Javier Bardem and French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg declared the 12-day marathon open, before sitting down to watch the first movie – “The Dead Don’t Die” – with it’s small army of A-list stars led by Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton and pop idol Selena Gomez.

The cast of the zombie flick sendup of Donald Trump’s America by arthouse favourite Jim Jarmusch also takes in Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover and music legends Iggy Pop, Tom Waits and WuTang Clan guru RZA.

Having watched its Tinseltown thunder stolen in recent years by Venice, which US studios have used as their Oscars launchpad, this time Cannes is putting its much smaller rival back in its place.

Quentin Tarantino brings auteur heft and star power to the party with the premiere of his epic “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, a quarter of a century after he lifted the Palme d’Or – Cannes top prize – for “Pulp Fiction”.

US singer and actress Selena Gomez, left, and British actress and model Tilda Swinton talk with US film director Jim Jarmusch as they arrive for the screening of the film “The Dead Don’t Die.”

The panorama of Charles Mansonera Los Angeles stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a television Westerns star and Brad Pitt as his stunt double. Margot Robbie also appears as actress Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the cult leader’s followers.

Almost as big a coup was persuading Elton John to launch his wartsandall musical biopic “Rocketman” on the Croisette out of competition, with festival director Thierry Fremaux hinting that the singer will perform on his grand piano at the premiere.

The screening tonight is the first big blockbuster event at the festival, where Sylvester Stallone will also unveil a teaser for “Rambo V: Last Blood”.

Another headline-grabber, soccer legend Diego Maradona, is sure to create a stir when he turns up for a documentary on his rollercoaster career by the maker of the Oscar-winning “Amy”.

The festival has sparked controversy by giving a prize to veteran French star Alain Delon, with the Women and Hollywood group saying honouring a man who has admitted to hitting women “sucks”.

Tempers also flared after French taxi drivers protesting about online ridehailing rivals blocked traffic at nearby Nice airport, holding up movie movers and shakers trying to reach Cannes.

Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who heads the jury that will pick the Palme d’Or winner, also struck a political note Tuesday by condemning populist leaders like Trump, but without naming names.

“The world is melting and these guys are ruling with rage and anger and lies and making people believe that they are facts,” he told reporters.

“This is a dangerous thing we are returning to, to 1939,” he added, referring to World War II. “We know how this story ends if we keep with this rhetoric.”

Analysts, meanwhile, were upbeat about this year’s offerings.

“That Cannes has managed to get ‘Rocketman’ is a very big coup because Paramount was historically one of the studios who were the most reluctant to show films at the festival,” said Christian Jungen, author of the book “Hollywood in Cannes”.

Studios have often been reluctant to risk their big-budget productions, fearful of a savaging from critics. Cannes got “Rocketman” thanks to Fremaux’s friendship with Paramount boss Jim Gianopulos, Jungen said, who was head of Fox when it took “Moulin Rouge” to the Croisette in 2001.

It’s precious breathing space for the festival, which is stuck in a standoff with Netflix over the streaming giant’s refusal to release its films in French cinemas.

Yet Netflix has far from turned its back on Cannes.

Jerome Paillard, the head of the festival’s vast market, where deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars are done, said it has sent a team of around 25 buyers and executives.

“More than ever the whole world comes to Cannes, particularly the Americans. They are still the biggest group overall, and their numbers remain stable,” Paillard said.

Even so, the last big Cannes Oscar success was the comedy “The Artist” in 2012, which won five gongs after being premiered on the Croisette.

Fremaux – who had only two US films in the main competition last year – claimed that Cannes is above “this general obsession about the Oscars”.

The festival, which calls itself the “Olympics of film”, is “about world cinema”, he said, and giving a platform to new voices and auteurs.

 Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya will preside over the event, which is dubbed “Thailand – Where Films Come Alive” and which this year celebrates the achievements of “Creative Thai” talent.

Thai Night is presented as part of the programme to support and promote Thailand’s film industry in international markets.

“Creative Thai” vision can be found in many different areas of the film industry, including production, post-production, facilities, production services, and visual effects, the department says.

“Creative Thai” skills and talent are seen both in front of and behind the camera. Since 2001 when “Fah Talai Jone” (‘Tears of the Black Tiger’) became the first Thai film to be screened at Cannes, Thailand has had a strong presence at the Cannes Film Festival.

Thai Night offers a chance to meet Thai filmmakers and representatives of the Thai film industry, including distributors, production service companies, and production facilities. In addition to the Thai Night, the Department will also host a dedicated Thailand Pavilion at the Marche du Film on Palais Level -1 Booth 22.01.

Twelve leading production, distribution, and service companies will be represented. Promotional events at Cannes and other international markets are just part of a policy of governmental support and promotion for the digital content industry.

The Department says it is committed to supporting the filmed entertainment, animation, character licensing, software and games industry, in order to develop and fulfil its potential in the international market. The digital content industry has become an increasingly important industry in Thailand, and is expected to generate revenue of more than US$900 million (Bt28.48 billion) in 2019.

Mae La has been home to more than 40,000 refugees for more than 30 years. Lives supposedly “inbetween” have become permanent while the camp has acquired features of a city: dynamic, vibrant, with more facilities and more mobility for refugees than one would expect.

This project is a semi-longitudinal work over a four-year timespan, produced in an artistic and ethnographic context. It started with personal curiosity and later developed into a tribute to the fascinating individuals of Mae La who shared their stories with the makers.

The short film presents a personal reflection on the lives of refugees in long-term camps, for whom the camp has become their home and raises questions about issues of citizenship, statelessness, nationality and permanent residency.

Produced by designer and filmmaker Belle Phromchanya and anthropologist Jiraporn Laocharoenwong, the documentary has recently been screened at the Pakhuis de Zwijger cultural centre in Amsterdam. After the screening in Thailand, there will be an informal Q&A discussion with both makers and Matcha Phornin, a human and gender rights activist who works on issues of statelessness with refugees and other marginalised communities.

This event is part of the series “Displaced and Uprooted in Southeast Asia” in collaboration with TIFA Foundation. The series aims to give visibility to the fate of displaced persons, asylum seekers and refugees in the region and stimulate public discussion on inclusive policy and intervention responses to forced movements of people.

The event is free, but donations are welcome to enable SEA Junction to continue its activities and keep events accessible to the public.

For more information and reservations, please call (097) 002 4140 or email southeastasiajunction@gmail.com.

The Italian Film Festival returns to town next week for its fifth edition and this year will be screening a total of 10 recent movies, by both established director and rookies.

Organised by Dante Alighieri Cultural Association and sponsored by Generali Thailand, the event is part of the annual “Italian Festival Thailand” and is set to run from May 16 to 26.

The festival opens at Scala Theatre next Thursday at 9pm with “Forever You” (“Un’Avventura”), a 2019 musical film by Marco Danieli. Set in the 1970s, it centres on Matteo. He has been secretly in love with Francesca since they were kids, but she left the small town in which they grew up to travel the world. Now she’s back and Matteo decides to finally make her fall in love with him, even if she’s no longer the simple girl he remembered. The film is in Italian with English and Thai subtitles. The second screening will be at Cinema Oasis on May 25 at 9.30pm.

Other films, all screening at Cinema Oasis on Sukhumvit Soi 43 (BTS Phrompong) and in Italian with English subtitles, are as follows:

Romolus & Remus – The First King (2019)

This tale with no narrative precedents brings the viewer to an unknown world where the forces of nature and primitive humanity intertwine with the beliefs and superstitions that ruled life at that time. In the Eighth century BC, the area spanning the banks of the Tiber and the hills of Lazio is occupied only by rudimentary villages. This is a wild world open to exploration and conquest and one day will witness the founding of Rome. Here everybody fights to survive, and the universe of beliefs, mysticism and religion is the only means for men to understand the world.

Friday May 17, 9pm

Saturday May 25, 7pm

Capri – Revolution

It is 1914, and Italy is about to go to war. A commune of young North Europeans has found on Capri the ideal place to live their lives and practise their art. But the island has its own powerful identity, in the person of a young woman, a goatherd named Lucia (Marianna Fontana). The film describes the encounter between Lucia, the commune, headed by Seybu (Reinout Scholten van Aschat), and the young village doctor (Antonio Folletto).

Sunday May 19, 9pm

Friday May 24, 9pm

Happy As Lazzaro

Lazzaro is such a purehearted young man that many would consider him to be an idiot. He might be a peasant but he’s worthy enough for the friendship of spoiled aristocrat Tancredi. They find joy in a forgotten pastoral world of deception and lies. The truth will separate them, but Lazzaro’s loyalty will withstand the test of time when he is catapulted alone into a bleak metropolis.

Saturday May 18, 9pm

Sunday May 26, 9pm

The Strange Sound of Happiness

After years of drifting, Diego returns to Sicily. His dream of becoming a musician has not worked out. He has no job and no plans for the future but the sound of an ancient musical instrument, the mouth harp, points the way. From the torrid coasts of Sicily, Diego journeys to the frozen flatlands of Yakutia in Siberia where he becomes part of a prophecy from a century ago.

Saturday May 18, 7pm

Wednesday May 22, 9pm

Sunday May 26, 5pm

Travelling with Adele

Adele, a 25-year-old girl with a mental disorder, has never met her father and has always lived under the protective wing of her mother Margherita.

Everything changes when her very existence is overturned by the latter’s sudden and unexpected death. Abandoned by all her relatives, Adele will meet Aldo, 65, an actor who was summoned to Apulia in order to pay his last respects to the deceased. Aldo discovers that he is the girl’s biological father and he must tell her the truth. And so begins a journey through an inhospitable Apulia in which two perfect strangers transform an improbable relationship into something unique and unforgettable, one that by degrees resembles what they never thought they could be together: a father and daughter.

Friday May 17, 7pm

Thursday May 23, 5pm

Sunday May 26, 7pm at Cinema Oasis

We’ll Be Young And Beautiful

(Comedy, student film)

Isabella still sings “Tic Tac”, the song that made her famous in the early nineties, when she was only seventeen. Her place is the Big Star, which has also become her second home. Her young son Bruno is her guitarist. The two are inseparable, they perform every night together and they share a ramshackle but happy life of unpaid bills and midnight strolls around the city. Bruno, however, dreams of a different musical career.

Sunday May 19, 7pm

Thursday May 23, 9pm

Saturday May 25, 5pm

Wherever You Are

When Alessandro wears his shiny lucky shirt, he doesn’t feel his age. But after a life wasted on a slot machine, already drunk early in the morning, hoping for the luck of a scratch card, he would never have imagined that love could find him. In a hospital. It’s here, that he meets Francesca. Big green eyes, melancholy and bright, spontaneous as a child and with two ship tickets in her pocket. Alessandro and Francesca are finally out of the hospital, on their way to a last chance.

Wednesday May 22, 5pm

Friday May 24, 7pm

Sunday, May 26, 3pm

The Start-Up

Almost every adolescent dreams of inventing an app. Teenager Matteo creates a social platform where people negotiate job offers. At the beginning, no one believes in his project, but Matteo never loses his faith, and, in the end, he succeeds. At the age of 19, he suddenly receives national praise and becomes rich and popular. His ‘Start Up,’ which includes dozens of thousands of subscribers, becomes appealing to the most important companies. Success will soon take its toll.

Saturday May 18, 5pm

Wednesday May 22, 7pm

Friday May 24, 5pm

There is a Light

A touching road movie about parenthood, responsibility and finding your limits. Mia, a pregnant, vagrant singer, meets Paolo, a sensible and heartbroken gay man, in a club and the pair hit it off immediately. Borrowing a company van, they embark on an epic roadtrip from the north to the south of Italy. Can the pair find happiness on the run?

Sunday May 19, 5pm

Thursday May 23, 7pm

Saturday, May 25 3pm

For more than two decades Dr Larry Nassar was the osteopathic physician for the US women’s Olympic gymnastics team, as well as a physician at Michigan State University (MSU). During that time, he sexually abused hundreds of female athletes.

Offering insights that go beyond the sensational headlines, the documentary reveals a dangerous system that prioritised winning over everything else, including protecting young female athletes.

Through interviews with dozens of survivors, as well as coaches, lawyers, journalists and Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, the film exposes an environment in which young women spent their youth competing for victory on a world stage, juxtaposed against a culture where abuse was hidden, and lives were forever damaged.

For more than 20 years, Dr Larry Nassar worked with athletes, especially gymnasts, as a respected trainer and team physician. He taught Sunday school, volunteered in the community and was seemingly well liked. While Nassar tended to aches and pains, becoming a friend and confidant to many girls along the way, some of the methods he presented as treatment were sexual abuse.

For years, accusations and evidence grew against the doctor, as several young women came forward to their coaches, universities and parents. At Michigan State, mounting evidence suggested that reports of Nassar’s improper treatments, which sometimes occurred when parents were present, were dismissed by officials who chose to defend the popular doctor.

In 2016, after Rachael Denhollander went public with her story in the Indianapolis Star, the tide finally began to turn against Nassar, as more and more women filed lawsuits against him and the institutions that had shielded him for so long.

Nassar was subsequently fired from MSU. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography after 37,000 images were found on his computer. He eventually also pleaded guilty to abuse charges in Michigan, with the understanding that another 125 cases would not be tried. After one of the most highprofile trials in recent history, Nassar was found guilty and is currently in federal prison.

In January 2018, Ingham County sentencing, 88 survivors had been scheduled to make statements. By the end of that week, 156 women, all with a shared history of abuse, had bravely come forward. Chelsea Zerfas spoke of the impact of the trauma and her journey to heal, stating, “I get scared that I will be taken advantage of once again by another doctor, just like you did. I’ve tried my best to gain back the strength I once had. I am a survivor. Here I am today facing my abuser. I’m finally being heard. I’m no longer hiding my story.”

Trinea Gonczar, another survivor and a longtime family friend of Nassar, said to her abuser, “You hurt me, as I’ve had to realise I was abused for many years of my life…I will do everything for the rest of my life to make sure that the ‘you’s’ of this world don’t get to hurt another one of us.”

After a week of powerful testimonies, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina meted out a 175year sentence, effectively imprisoning Nassar for life. Because so many survivors went public, some of the institutions and athletic organisations that protected Nassar, began to implement changes.

In March 2018, MSU agreed to a $500 million settlement for athletes abused by Nassar. In October 2018, Steve Penny, former president of USA Gymnastics, was arrested for tampering with evidence in the Nassar case. His case is still pending.

Congress went on to pass legislation enforcing mandatory reporting of sexual abuse in amateur sports. One week after Nassar’s sentencing, the entire board of USA Gymnastics resigned. One month later, Scott Blackmun stepped down as the chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee, an organisation that also moved to decertify USA Gymnastics as the sport’s governing body.

“Bruce Lee’s vision is alive and well,” Amato said of the series that combines high-energy martial arts with wit and brains. We’re thrilled to renew such a great show for a second season.”

Based on the writings of martial arts legend Lee, “Warrior” was created by and is executive produced by Jonathan Tropper, executive produced by Justin Lin for Perfect Storm Entertainment and executive produced by Shannon Lee for Bruce Lee Entertainment.

“Warrior” is a gritty, action-packed crime drama set during the brutal Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the second half of the 19th century. The series follows Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), a martial arts prodigy who emigrates from China to San Francisco under mysterious circumstances. After proving his worth as a fighter, Ah Sahm becomes a hatchet man for the Hope Wei, one of Chinatown’s most powerful Tongs (Chinese organised crime family).

Among the critical raves for the current season, which shows at the same time as the US every Saturday at 9am on Cinemax, Rolling Stone called the show a “lush action drama” where “the legend becomes fact in an unexpected, wonderful way with all of the bells and whistles of modern TV,” while IGN praised the series for its “efficient, energetic, and enjoyable [ability to bring] American history to vivid life with verve, intelligence, and memorable fists of fury” and “thoughtful political edge”,

In Thailand, the series is available on HBO GO via AIS Play and AIS Playbox.

Midea teams up with talented director Nattawut of “Bad Genius” and J. Walter Thompson Bangkok to create an emotional story about Paola Antonini, a Brazilian model who lost her left leg in a car accident but never ceased to pursue her dream, according to its press release.

Produced by Houseton Film, “Good Night Paola” follows Antonini’s journey through her treacherous path towards becoming a model, starring Antonini as herself.

Through her story, Midea hopes to inspire consumers to overcome obstacles and reclaim power to pursue their dreams, according to the press release.

“We developed the short film based on the double definitions of ‘dream’. One is the literal ‘dream state’ that occurs at the final stage of sleep and can only be achieved via calm and comfort; the other is a metaphor for realizing ‘dreams’ in life,” said Pete – Thasorn Boonyanate, Creative Director of J. Walter Thompson Bangkok.

“We interlinked these two definitions with Midea residential AC’s commitment to providing consumers not only cooling comfort for a restful night, but also refreshing energy to power through real-life challenges.”

“The film ‘Good Night Paula’ is also part of Midea’s global campaign #NoHeatCanBeatYourDreams to encourage consumers to brave through any ‘heat’ in their lives in pursuit of their own ‘dream states’.”

Globally, people encounter different obstacles in pursuing their dreams, including social pressure, financial difficulties, and physical limitations. In Thailand, approximately three percent of population are people with disabilities1, who have been fighting for equal rights and opportunities to fulfill their dreams.

“The #NoHeatCanBeatYourDreams campaign aims to encourage our audiences to overcome obstacles for their cherished dreams.” says Tony Liu, General Manager of Midea Air Conditioner Business Unit. “Midea residential AC is always there to protect your ‘dream state’ through any source of ‘heat’ in life.”

Launched in Thailand, one of Midea’s key markets in ASEAN, this campaign will later be hosted in Latin America. The film can be viewed online at https://youtu.be/OtD0Z8o2P8Y. For more information about Midea Thailand, please visit https://th.midea.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=417891829002769