Laila Robins

All You Need To Know About The Newest Additions To 'Homeland'

By Joe DeAndrea in Movies / TV / Theatre on 06 June 2014

Claire Danes Suraj Sharma Corey Stoll Laila Robins

Three actors have been added to next season's 'Homeland,' but who are they and what will they bring to the series?

The fourth season of 'Homeland' is ready to begin operations. The Showtime CIA thriller ended its third season back in December, and while details for the next one were kept under wraps, some plot info has been revealed. According to Entertainment Weekly, season number four will center on Carrie Mathison’s (Claire Danes) job located in the Middle East as chief of station. The summary is interesting enough considering nobody quite knew where Mathison & Co. could be headed following last season’s finale, but things are looking optimistic as a number of actors have been confirmed to return such as Mandy Patinkin, Rupert Friend, and Nazanin Boniadi.

Homeland will be back for series fourth

Sadly, the series will be missing one actor: James Rebhorn, who played the role of Carrie’s father, passed away from melanoma this past March. How the series will handle his character remains to be seen, but what is known this week is the addition of three new actors and roles that will appear in the upcoming season. Suraj Sharma will join as the “heavily recurring” Aayan Ibrahim, who is a Pakistani medical student that crosses paths with Carrie. Corey Stoll will guest star as Sandy Bachman for an undisclosed amount of episodes, who is “the CIA chief of station in Pakistan who is a rising star within the agency.” Finally, Laila Robins comes on board as series regular Martha Boyd, a U.S. ambassador to Pakistan who is described as “professional and put together, with a ship-to-ship voice and the personality to match.”

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Concussion Review

By Rich Cline

Very Good

A sharply observed odyssey of middle-aged self-discovery, this strikingly offbeat film may feel a little vague in its approach, but it carries a strong kick. And watching the central character work out what she really wants in life is thoroughly involving, finding universal truths in a situation that few in the audience can, or would be willing to, identify with.

It begins with a blow to the head in a playground accident, after which 42-year-old Abby (Robin Weigert) begins feeling unsettled in her life. She's tired of her high-maintenance kids and is more aware of the growing distance between her and her wife Kate (Julia Fain Lawrence). Then her home-decorating colleague Justin (Johnathan Tchaikovsky) makes a suggestion: if all she really needs is intimacy, Abby could make a reasonable living as a prostitute. So she gives it a go, stipulating that she meets her clients for coffee before anything else happens. But things take an unexpected turn when her friend Sam (Maggie Siff) hires her services.

Writer-director Stacie Passon gives the film a warmly comical tone, undercutting the serious premise with acerbic humour and small surprises. There's an unusual honesty to everything, as Passon and her cast refuse to play the usual Hollywood game: these women are in charge of their sex lives in ways rarely seen on-screen. They're also unusually complex characters who do things they know they probably shouldn't, but they carry on in an effort to make sense of their lives. This approach makes it impossible to just sit back and watch: we get intimately involved in every decision each person makes.

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Concussion - Green Band Trailer

When Abby suffers a mild concussion after getting hit by her son's baseball, she begins to yearn for a life of excitement outside the realm of her house, wife and kids. In a dramatic attempt at escape, she secretly buys a small pied-a-terre in New York where she becomes a high-class escort named Eleanor and indulges in days and nights of female pleasure which she sees as the ultimate release. However, things get complicated when her two lives cross over and she is set up on a 'date' with a woman she recognises from her hometown, Sam. Nonetheless, the women quickly get over their shock and waste no time in setting out on a full-blown passionate affair. When the women begin to regularly bump into each other in other circumstances, Sam begins to suspect that she is being followed and when Abby discovers she is in a happy relationship with a man, things get even more complicated. Abby herself is shocked by her inability to separate her feelings and starts to suffer the backlash of her no-strings exploits.

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Concussion Trailer

Abby is a lesbian whose life seems wonderful on the outside with her wife, kids and a beautiful house. However, after an incident whereby she got struck hard in the head by her son's baseball, she begins to suffer from a concussion that convinces her to seek other pleasures in life. In order to live a life that she believes offers more excitement, she buys a small apartment in Manhattan and becomes a high-class escort named Eleanor for other women seeking similar thrills. Letting her desires reign free gives her a sense of liberation, that is, until she is set up on a 'date' with Sam - a woman she knows from her town. The women are shocked, but the pair embark on an illicit no-strings affair anyway and, understandably, wind up bumping into each other in various parts of the city. However, when Abby discovers Sam is with a man, she finds that she now has to deal with some unwarranted emotions towards her new lover.

A story of self-discovery, 'Concussion' talks about finding true inner peace within one's own life and shows how real happiness and contentment can be disguised as mundane. It has been directed and written by Stacie Passon in her feature film debut and is due out in cinemas on October 4th 2013.ie

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Side Effects Trailer

Emily Hawkins once thought that her relationship with her husband couldn't be more perfect, however she is forced to come to terms with his absence when he is sent to prison and therefore struggles to cope with her mixed feelings and subsequent anxiety on his return. In a bid to progress to feelings of normality again, Emily consults a psychiatrist who prescribes her a drug to help her cope again. It seems to work well and gradually begins to help rebuild Emily and her husband's relationship. However, things take a tragic turn when a woman is mysteriously murdered and Emily and her psychiatrist seem to be the two people who are facing blame. Not only that, but when evidence arises suggesting the pair had a relationship other than a professional one, Emily stops knowing who she can trust anymore.

This complex psychological thriller is set to 'wow' cinematic audiences with its thrilling plot, all star cast and direction from the Oscar winning Steven Soderbergh ('Ocean's Eleven', 'Contagion', 'Magic Mike'). With a screenplay written by the BAFTA nominated Scott Z. Burns ('The Bourne Ultimatum', 'Contagion'), it's nothing short of expertly put together and definitely in line for several film award nominations on its release on March 15th 2013.

Director: Steven Soderbergh

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Laila Robins Thursday 7th June 2012 After party for the opening night of 'Kenneth Lonergan's Medieval Play' at the Signature Theatre

Slippery Slope Review

By Christopher Null

OK

Irony doesn't get any richer than in the movies.

Take Slippery Slope. Here we have Gillian (Kelly Hutchinson), who is such a radical feminist that she made a documentary about feminism. The doc is accepted into Cannes for screening... but she still owes the film lab $50,000, and they won't release the print until she pays up. She's broke, of course, so what will she have to do to earn the money? If you said the thing she hates the most -- porn -- you're well on your way to a bustling career in Hollywood.

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