Latest news with #CelineSong
ABC News
33 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
A real-life matchmaker's verdict on Materialists and his advice for singles wanting to meet that perfect match
Joseph Dixon says he has to hold himself back from "yelling and screaming" as he watches the romantic comedy Materialists. "This is my life, my life," Mr Dixon told ABC News about his reaction to the film. "Someone understands. Mr Dixon is the CEO and lead matchmaker at Bachelors Inc, a matchmaking agency for "highly eligible" bachelors of the United States. And while the director of Materialists, Celine Song, told the ABC's Screen Show she worked as a matchmaker for six months, Mr Dixon has more than 12 years of experience in the industry. In Materialists, Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) plays Lucy, a young, ambitious matchmaker working in New York City, who is caught up in a love triangle with her perfect match Harry (Pedro Pascal) and her imperfect ex John (Chris Evans). Mr Dixon, who used to work as a real estate broker, says while some movies grossly misinterpret people's careers, Materialists was true to life. "It was a great balance," he said. "I loved it because it talked about real life as far as a matchmaker is concerned. "I've been a married matchmaker, I've been a single matchmaker, so I totally understand everything that she was going through as a matchmaker as well. "It was a really, really good movie. I like the storyline. The acting was good. Mr Dixon says there are often two main reasons people choose the matchmaking route. "Most of my clients, bachelors and bachelorettes, they are all career-driven. "They have a lot going on, [they are] highly successful, so they don't have access to just go out and meet people like they used to, because they are busy. "I have doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, business owners, dentists, athletes, entertainers, they all have busy lives, so they do want to meet good people that are on their level. "And the convenience of matchmaking, [the movie] does touch on that as well where a person can come to say, 'this is exactly what I'm looking for' and possibly be introduced to those people." Mr Dixon says, as depicted in the film, matchmaking is about more than just making introductions. "It's also about helping our clients understand what they truly want [and] what they truly need in a partner as well. "We talk about values and alignment, rather than just surface-level attraction." Mr Dixon says the movie addresses unrealistic expectations, which is something he deals with on a daily basis. "If you tell me you're looking for what we call, she said it in the movie, a unicorn, and that unicorn has to live within a 5-mile [8 kilometre] radius of you, that may be an unrealistic expectation because it's all about the access and what the dating pool may look like," Mr Dixon said. "I think some people do come to matchmaking just thinking that we have a genie in the closet somewhere. "And we just go in the closet and rub it and out comes this perfect man or woman. "I tell people all the time, 'What you see in the dating pool is what you see in matchmaking as well.' "The good thing about matchmaking is that we are people connectors." He says he is sometimes blown away by what people come to him looking for. "Sometimes it boggles my mind, a laundry list of things that a person is looking for. "But by the time they work with me, because I'm a very, very forthcoming, blunt person and if you're able to take honesty, then I will give it to you." It is hard to go past the title of the film, and Mr Dixon says high-end matchmaking can be very materialistic. "Most of our clients are well-to-do, well-educated, [and have] great careers," Mr Dixon said. "They have material possessions themselves, so they don't want to dumb down their life for someone else, for the most part." He says this materialism can get in the way. "I love love," he said. "I've always been a hopeful romantic and I think with love anything is possible and I think a lot of people miss out on their soulmate and miss out on the right person for them because they have a checklist of things that this person has to have when it comes just material things. "We're not even talking about the intangibles, or the characteristics or the personality or the morality of the person, we're just talking about pure material." He says true love is what makes a relationship last the distance and should be the main foundation in any marriage. "I think when you find someone that you're in love with and they are in love with you as well, that's a bond that is hard to break," Mr Dixon said. Mr Dixon says, as the movie depicts, connections require self-awareness and vulnerability. "You have to be vulnerable to find love," he said. "The more vulnerable you get with a person, the more you really allow them to see you for who you are." His advice for those wanting love? "Don't come to a matchmaker with a Santa Claus list. "What are the top three things that you feel will make you really happy in a relationship, and then we'll start from there."
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Celine Song takes her talents to the world of E-Sports
Do E-Sports players have complicated feelings about love? That's for Celine Song to decide in her new HBO drama, Damage. While we know very little about the series as of this writing, it does have a logline, per IndieWire: 'A gaming prodigy joins the ranks of a professional E-Sports team, where she's taken under the wing of an older player with whom she shares a tragic past.' Song has remained tight-lipped regarding further details. 'I'd love to talk more about it when it's further along,' she told Variety. While Song is on board to write, direct, and executive produce, she isn't the only buzzy name associated with the project. The Last Of Us' Craig Mazin is also on board as EP, as well as Jacqueline Lesko and Cecil O'Connor (Word Games), and David Hinojosa. The project is backed by A24, which distributed Song's past two films, Past Lives and Materialists. This may seem like a departure for Song, but Materialists, which has its wide release this weekend, has already incited a heated debate about the boundaries of genre. 'When we see trailers for a movie like this, people just start calling it a chick flick—there's a very easy way that you can dismiss it,' Song said in a recent interview with The New York Times. 'I'm really interested in directly addressing the way that we completely dismiss matters of the heart. Not a single one of us actually can escape this problem, which is love.' It stands to reason, then, that we can't escape it even in our most escapist, virtual pursuits. More from A.V. Club What's on TV this week—We Were Liars, Outrageous, The Waterfront Duster gets to the fireworks factory Merciful Brad Garrett swears we'll be spared an Everybody Loves Raymond revival
Vogue
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
On the Podcast: Celine Song on ‘Materialists,' Matchmaking, and Her Favorite Rom-Coms
Everyone's talking about the new A24 film Materialists—and for good reason. It's not only an exploration of today's impossible dating scene, but also a standout addition to the modern rom-com canon, paying homage to classics like Broadcast News and You've Got Mail. On today's episode of The Run-Through, Chloe and Lisa Macabasco, Vogue's research manager and senior digital line editor, sit down with director Celine Song (Past Lives) to talk about the inspiration behind the film and Song's brief, real-life stint as a matchmaker—just like Lucy, the character played by Dakota Johnson. Earlier in the show, Chioma and Chloe dive into Francesco Risso's departure from Marni and Martine Rose's fabulous men's spring 2026 show, which created quite a buzz in London over the weekend.
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Screentime: Materialists, DocEdge film fest, The Gilded Age
Photo: IMDb Film and television reviewer James Croot joins Kathryn to talk about director Celine Song's latest film, Materialists , which is a US romance set among the backdrop of New York's luxury-driven dating culture and features the classic love triangle. James will also look at the third season of The Gilded Age and what's on offer at this year's Doc Edge Film Fest. James Croot is film and television reviewer for Stuff
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How ‘Materialists' Finds True Love in New York City
Location work is not usually considered one of the 'creative' departments on a film. Of course, they work with the director and the production designer to find spaces that will work for specific scenes that can't or shouldn't be shot on a set, but theirs is the unsexy work of negotiating contracts with owners, securing all the needed permits, and handling the crew's impact on locations. Yet director Celine Song credits a great deal of the push-pull yearning of her second feature, 'Materialists,' to that location work. New York City is not the easiest place to shoot, but it was important to Song for the film to reflect the realities of what it's like to live in New York. The apartments and streets in which the characters fight and make up and make out are characters in and of themselves. 'Location management in this film is a creative position. We were talking pretty creatively — my DP, my line producer, my production designer, and my location manager — we're all trying to solve problems together,' Song told IndieWire on an episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. More from IndieWire 'Saw' Franchise Rights Acquired by Blumhouse, Reuniting James Wan with Horror Series A New Blu-ray Collection Opens the Warner Bros. Animation Vault - and Finds 50 Treasures Inside Location manager Joe Mullaney and his team even helped Song realize something about the characters that was embedded in the script, but no one had quite articulated. 'Joe was the first to notice — because he has to permit every time a character smokes — that Lucy [Dakota Johnson] never smokes with Harry [Pedro Pascal]. She only smokes with John [Chris Evans]. And of course eventually the actors figured that out, too, but Joe was the first,' Song said. 'It's a very specific perspective.' The perspective was an extremely important one for 'Materialists,' which is so specific to New York and yet contains a much wider historical scope. It begins with and then later checks in on a very early, prehistoric marriage, after all, and Song and Mullaney were delighted to find a corner of Central Park where a bridge could echo the sense of a cave, and visually merge the two storylines at the end. ' It requires Joe's lifetime, his whole career, of building trust in New York City. He needs to have a good reputation for being somebody who can be trusted to give you their space. So I'm relying so much on his work even before my movies, you know?' Song said. But something that pervades both of Song's movies, 'Materialists' and 'Past Lives' is how living in New York forces the characters to move through the echoes of millions of other people's lives. Visually, that sense was something no amount of B-Roll or establishing drone footage could create. The characters had to be in and of the city. It's part of the romance Song wanted to create. 'Public spaces in New York are the most romantic places, because you know that you're not the first couple to have an argument there. Like, [on] every corner of New York City, someone has peed there, someone has slept there, someone has had a huge argument there, and someone has kissed there,' Song said. 'We're shooting in New York City, which is expensive and difficult — just like living in New York City. But [it's] romantic and rewarding — just like New York City. We were sort of acknowledging, well, if you're doing it, you might as well do it.' That meant going all out on streets and stoops, especially in relation to John. His apartment isn't exactly conducive to heartfelt conversations, but Lucy's isn't that much better, either. And the fact that they can't be fully comfortable or private in the spaces they live changes how the characters move through the world and desire each other. ''Materialists' is about the way that the cynic and the romantic are in conversation, and in a bit of a tussle,' Song said. 'New York City is exactly that. To live in New York City, you have to be a romantic because the quality of living is not high enough for it to be possible for anybody who is not romantic in some way… but on the other hand, part of surviving in New York City is that you have to have a healthy dose of cynicism, too. [The city] just encapsulates that amazing balance. [So] it was always fundamentally a thing that we wanted to shoot in New York City.' 'Materialists' is now playing in theaters. To hear Celine Song's full interview, subscribe to the on , , or your favorite podcast platform. Best of IndieWire The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' All 12 Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked, from 'Bottle Rocket' to 'The Phoenician Scheme' Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
