Weinstein Company under investigation by New York attorney general

The New York attorney general has opened a civil rights investigation into the Weinstein Company following dozens of sexual misconduct allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

The state’s top prosecutor has issued a subpoena for records related to sexual harassment and discrimination complaints at the embattled film company, weeks after the movie mogul was fired from the company he co-founded, in the wake of a slew of sexual assault and harassment accusations.

News of the civil rights inquiry and wide-ranging subpoena comes as the list of Weinstein’s accusers has continued to grow, prompting police departments across the globe to begin criminal investigations.

The office of the attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, is investigating whether the Weinstein Company, headquartered in New York, violated local civil rights and human rights laws and has sought all documents tied to sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The prosecutor’s civil rights bureau issued the subpoena, which is also seeking records concerning how complaints were handled and resulting settlements. The inquiry is further targeting records related to management’s criteria to hire and promote applicants and employees, the source said.

“No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear,” Schneiderman said in a statement Monday. “If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know.”

The source said the subpoena also sought records that would indicate whether the company had launched formal investigations in response to complaints and the reasoning behind those decisions.

Weinstein’s spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Weinstein Company – the production firm behind critically acclaimed hits such as The King’s Speech, Carol and The Butler – also did not respond to an inquiry.

The corporation is currently at risk of collapsing, according to entertainment industry lawyers, who have said the company is vulnerable to investor and victim lawsuits. The board, which includes Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother, has claimed that it had no knowledge of misconduct. The actor Rose McGowan, who has accused Weinstein of rape, has called for the entire Weinstein Company board to resign.

The scandal first erupted with a New York Times investigation alleging that Weinstein had reached settlements with at least eight women over accusations of sexual misconduct. The producer would invite women to his hotel room for a supposed business meeting and then would greet them in the nude, demand a massage or ask that they watch him shower, according to the women.

A later New Yorker story included accounts from multiple women who said Weinstein raped them. A wide range of actors, models and other women have since shared their own allegations of the producer’s misconduct, including Lupita Nyong’o, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Cara Delevingne, Léa Seydoux and Romola Garai.

Some have said that that strict non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have prevented them from speaking out. Zelda Perkins, who says Weinstein sexually harassed her when she was his assistant, publicly broke her NDA in an interview published on Monday, saying: “I want to call into question the legitimacy of agreements where the inequality of power is so stark and relies on money rather than morality.”

Perkins said she was pressured into signing an agreement after she confronted Weinstein about an alleged sexual assault against her colleague at a film festival in Venice in 1998.

Weinstein has apologized for causing pain, but has said he denies many of the claims of harassment and “unequivocally” denies allegations of “non-consensual sex”.

The controversy has inspired women in Hollywood and other industries to publicly share stories of sexual assault in recent weeks. In an unprecedented move, Weinstein was recently expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Police investigations are under way in New York City, London and Los Angeles, and some legal experts say Weinstein could ultimately face serious sexual assault charges.

Brexit critic Colin Firth opts for Italian passport for ‘family reasons’

Many of the threats and promises exchanged during the row over Brexit have yet to be tested by time, but this weekend at least one has come to pass. The Oscar-winning film actor and producer Colin Firth, unmoved by Theresa May’s pronouncements in Florence, has accepted Italian citizenship, according to the Italian interior ministry in Rome.

It was reported in May that the actor had made a formal application for Italian citizenship in response to the vote to leave the European Union, while last year Firth’s apparent opposition to the referendum result was noted in an Austrian newspaper.

He was said to have described Brexit as “a disaster of unexpected proportions”. The actor’s agent said that the decision to apply for a new passport at the Italian embassy in London had been a family decision. He would not confirm that it had anything to do with Brexit.

“Colin applied for dual citizenship [British and Italian] in order to have the same passports as his wife and children,” the agent said.

The 56-year-old star came to fame as Jane Austen’s aloof Mr Darcy, the epitome of the reticent English aristocrat, in an acclaimed 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. But from now on Firth is officially as Italian as spaghetti carbonara.

“The very famous actor, who won an Oscar for the film The King’s Speech, is married to a citizen from our country and has often declared his love for our land,” the Italian interior ministry said.

Firth, who grew up and went to school in Hampshire, has been married to the Italian environmental campaigner, fashion entrepreneur and film producer Livia Giuggioli since 1997. The couple live in Chiswick, London, with their two sons Luca, 16, and Matteo, 13.

Since Italy is one of the few European countries that allows dual nationality, Firth is expected to keep his British passport as well as a home in this country.

Firth and Giuggioli, 47, also have a house near the town of Città della Pieve in Umbria and the actor speaks good Italian. His 2008 film Genova, directed by Michael Winterbottom, told of a widower who falls in love first with Italy and then with an Italian woman. The actor, who has also appeared in the hit films The English Patient, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love, Actually and Shakespeare in Love, is currently promoting his new film Kingsman: The Golden Circle, a sequel to the ironic, action-packed 2015 hit.

Since the Brexit decision, a growing number of Britons have applied for citizenship in EU countries, with Irish applications exceeding all others. Any Briton born in the Irish Republic or Northern Ireland, or with an Irish parent or grandparent, is entitled to an Irish passport and it is thought six million could be eligible.

May went out of her way in Florence to pledge that hundreds of thousands of Italians living in the UK would retain their full rights.

Yesterday, Colin Firth said in a statement: “A connection with Italy has existed in my family for more than two decades now. I was married there and had two children born in Rome. My wife and I are both extremely proud of our own countries. We feel that we’ve made a gift of that to each other.”

“Our children have been dual citizens since the beginning. We never really thought much about our different passports. But now, with some of the uncertainty around, we thought it sensible that we should all get the same. Livia is applying for a British passport.”

“I will always be extremely British (you only have to look at or listen to me). Britain is our home and we love it here. Despite the enticements of my profession to relocate to more remunerative climes I’ve always chosen to base my career out of the UK and pay my taxes here. That hasn’t changed.”

“I married into Italy (and anyone will tell you when you marry an Italian you don’t just marry one person; you marry a family and perhaps an entire country…). Like almost everybody I have a passionate love of Italy and joining my kids in being dual citizens will be a huge privilege.”

George and Amal Clooney donate $1m to combat US rightwing extremism

George and Amal Clooney have announced a partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center to combat “bigotry and hate” in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Clooney Foundation for Justice says that it will bestow a grant of $1m to the SPLC in order to assist the civil rights organization in its attempts to combat violent extremism in the US, following the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer at a white supremacist rally in the campus city earlier this month.

“Amal and I wanted to add our voice (and financial assistance) to the ongoing fight for equality,” George Clooney said. “There are no two sides to bigotry and hate.”

“We are proud to support the Southern Poverty Law Center in its efforts to prevent violent extremism in the United States,” the pair added in a statement. “What happened in Charlottesville, and what is happening in communities across our country, demands our collective engagement to stand up to hate.”

SPLC president Richard Cohen welcomed the Clooney Foundation’s contribution at a time when the radical right in America is “energized”.

“Like George and Amal Clooney, we were shocked by the size, ugliness, and ferocity of the white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville,” he said in a statement. “It was a reflection of just how much Trump’s incendiary campaign and presidency have energized the radical right. We are deeply grateful to the Clooney Foundation for standing with us at this critical moment in our country’s fight against hate.”

The donation comes at a time when federal funding to organizations combating rightwing extremism in the US has been frozen by Donald Trump’s administration. Trump himself was roundly criticized for his response to the events in Charlottesville, with the president declaring that activists from “both sides” had been responsible for the violence.

The Clooney Foundation for Justice was established in 2016 to “advance justice in courtrooms, communities and classrooms around the world.” Earlier this month it announced plans to provide $3.25m to help 3,000 Syrian refugee children receive an education in Lebanon. “We don’t want to lose an entire generation because they had the bad luck of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time,” George Clooney said in a statement.

Logan Lucky review – Soderbergh roars back with a riotous heist caper

It seems, at first, like an impossible caper. Can Steven Soderbergh bring something new to the heist genre after his outstanding Oceans trilogy? The answer, as always, is to have faith in the director-producer-writer-cinematographer-editor-brandy salesman whose ingenuity has kept him one step ahead of audiences for almost 30 years.

Channing Tatum, working with Soderbergh for the fourth time, is at his sympathetic and charismatic best in Logan Lucky. His Jimmy Logan is a divorced father, injured Iraq war vet, John Denver enthusiast and loving sibling living in Boone County, West Virginia. His wounded leg gets him fired from a construction gig at the Charlotte Motor Speedway because it’s “a pre-existing condition”.

It is another example of the Logan curse, says his brother Clyde (Adam Driver), a stoic bartender with a prosthetic hand (again, Iraq). After a humiliating experience with a Nascar-affiliated energy drink creator (Seth MacFarlane, channelling all his obnoxious energy into a boorish British accent), Jimmy pitches Clyde an elaborate plan to rob the speedway.

Logan Lucky and Ocean’s Eleven would work as a wonderful diptych, similar at times, exact opposites at others. George Clooney and his band of career criminals wore fabulous suits and hung around slick airports in the world’s greatest sunglasses. Tatum works off a checklist of vague instructions and limps around unglamorous settings in an ill-fitting Charlie Daniels Band T-shirt. A shot of Tatum eating a plastic-wrapped Drake’s Yodel is the type of grace note that elevates a minor comedy-adventure into something that somehow feels important in its specificity.

This is an exercise in shining Hollywood lights on the under-represented red states, and with it comes an unexpected degree of warmth. The Logans, who also include sister Mellie (Riley Keough), a hairdresser with a less-is-more fashion sense, don’t for a minute bring up politics or gripe about the government, but wear the weight of financial disparity with each day’s new struggles.

Screenwriter Rebecca Blunt, in her first credited work, has crafted something brimming with humour and life. The heist scenes are as satisfying to watch as an elaborate domino sculpture, but there is also ample space to make Logan Lucky one of the great hangin’-out pictures.

The Logan gang can’t pull off the caper without explosives whiz Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, with an extraordinary southern accent and a penchant for chomping on boiled eggs), but Joe won’t join in unless his two idiot brothers Sam and Fish (Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid) are there to watch his back, and, perhaps more problematically, he’s in jail. So before they can get the loot, they’ve got to mount a prison break.

It’s all wonderfully preposterous, but also endearing and gratifying. I’d never dream of spoiling the ending, but I will say that Logan Lucky concludes with one of my favourite movie tricks, as all the characters get a curtain call. There’s almost a 30s screwball satisfaction to this rural crime story, without any of the self-referential showboating that, say, the Coen brothers would have brought to it.

Produced by Soderbergh’s new distribution company and eventually heading to Amazon’s streaming service, Logan Lucky is the perfect vehicle with which to reinstate himself as a feature director after a ballyhooed five-year sabbatical. (At first he said he’d spend that time painting, but he ended up also working as a cinematographer and producer when he wasn’t shooting two seasons of The Knick and re-editing cinema classics on his blog.)

If anyone can figure out how to pull off the biggest heist of all – getting around traditional Hollywood business models – it’s him.

Michelle Rodriguez threatens to leave Fast and Furious over limited female roles

Actor Michelle Rodriguez has threatened to leave the Fast and Furious film series if the franchise doesn’t improve the roles it creates for female actors.

The actor, who stars as the street racer Leticia “Letty” Ortiz in the films, made the comments on Instagram. “F8 is out digitally today, I hope they decide to show some love to the women of the franchise on the next one,” she wrote, “or I just might have to say goodbye to a loved franchise.”

She added: “It’s been a good ride & I’m grateful for the opportunity the fans & studio have provided over the years … One Love.”

Rodriguez has appeared in five Fast and Furious films, most recently The Fate of the Furious (titled Fast and Furious 8 outside the US). While that movie introduced two new female characters, played by Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren, Rodriguez had limited screen time, and the film had a greater focus on male actors such as Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson.

Rodriguez has previously expressed concern about the overly masculine nature of the franchise. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly last month she said that the tone of the franchise was male-focused because of the violent criminal world it represents. She had hoped that as the series progressed it would evolve out of that “90s macho vibe”, but the film series’ growing popularity in developing markets like China, where “the grand majority of the population are boys”, had made that impossible.

“At the end of the day, what message are we sending out there for women?” Rodriguez said. “It does weigh heavy on [me], especially in the male-dominated environment that I work in,” she said.

The Fate of the Furious was released in April and has grossed over $1bn at the worldwide box office, with a combined gross of the eight-film series to over $5bn globally.