nicolas cage

The world of showbiz is mourning the loss of Australian star Julian McMahon and one of his most popular roles is available to watch completely free

Julian McMahon’s iconic role in one of the most popular fantasy dramas ever is available to stream totally free of charge.

The Australian-American actor, known for portraying Doctor Doom in the original Fantastic Four films and Dr. Christian Troy in the medical drama Nip/Tuck, sadly passed away from cancer on Wednesday, 2nd July this year.

Following his death in Clearwater, Florida, his wife Kelly Paniagua said in a statement via Deadline: “Julian loved life. He loved his family. He loved his friends.

“He loved his work, and he loved his fans. His deepest wish was to bring joy into as many lives as possible.”

The actor most recently appeared opposite Nicolas Cage in the surreal thriller film The Surfer, but countless fans will remember him from a totally different role.

From the third season of the hit fantasy drama Charmed he portrayed the half-demon lawyer Cole Turner aka Belthazor, sent to menace the coven before falling in love with Phoebe Halliwell (played by Alyssa Milano).

He appeared as a major recurring character across three seasons, finally making a guest spot in the penultimate seventh instalment.

Following McMahon’s devastating passing, there’s no better time to relive one of his most iconic roles as all eight seasons of Charmed are available to stream on ITVX in the UK.

If you’ve never seen the series before, there are millions of fans out there who would all give it a stirring recommendation.

One rave Google review called it a “power-packed show with its perfect blend of fantasy, drama, and a strong portrayal of sisterhood.

“My heart melted for Charmed, gifting me with an avalanche of beautiful memories.

“It was the hard-hitting storyline coupled with mesmerizing performances and character growth that made the show a treasure that warms my heart today.”

And plenty of fans agree McMahon’s appearances were some of the show’s strongest episodes.

A Redditor claimed “Cole carried the show”, adding: “I’ve been rewatching the show and I’ve noticed what a great character Cole was.

“I feel like he had the most nuanced acting. He has a schoolboy charm about him that’s very cheeky.”

To which someone else replied: “IMO, the best episodes/seasons were when Cole was one of the main characters.

“I feel like his character brought a certain depth to the show that it didn’t have prior to his arrival.”

Are you planning on getting dazzled by Charmed at some point this week?

Charmed is available to stream on ITVX.

Finn Little, who played Carter in the hit Western drama, has a lead role in the new thriller The Surfer alongside Nicolas Cage

Yellowstone enthusiasts, take note!

There’s a fresh thriller on the big screen featuring one of the series’ most talked-about stars.

The young and talented Finn Little, 18, has made waves as the plucky ranch hand Carter in the hit Western series, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser, and Kevin Costner.

With 24 episodes under his belt, Carter has been picking up the ropes from Reilly’s formidable Beth Dutton and her other half Rip Wheeler (played by Hauser), while also learning some crucial life lessons along the way.

Now stepping into his late teens, Little has matured for his new gig in The Surfer, sharing the screen with none other than Nicolas Cage, reports the Mirror US.

Fans might do a double-take seeing how much Little has grown since his Yellowstone beginnings, and they’ll get to hear his true Brisbane twang in this Aussie-based flick – a stark contrast to his American persona on the ranch.

In this edge-of-your-seat film by Lorcan Finnegan, Little takes on the role of ‘The Kid’, son to Cage’s protagonist, who finds himself at odds with a menacing gang of surfers.

Despite the daunting task of acting alongside the esteemed star, it turns out Little wasn’t fully clued in on Cage’s A-list status.

“He was gloriously not aware of Nic Cage being a big actor,” revealed Finnegan in a chat with Express Online.

“We had a casting director from Australia, Jane Norris, and she suggested him. All the cast are Australian, apart from Nic. We had a lot of actors to get for the film, locally, and she was great at putting people forward.

“Finn auditioned, he did a self-tape and then we did a Zoom.

“It’s tricky because when you’re trying to find someone who could possibly look like Nic’s son, as well, and be Australian, we were still toying with the idea of whether he would have an Australian accent or an American accent.

“We decided to keep his Australian accent, but he does a good American accent, obviously.”

Director Finnegan shared how Little seemed unbothered about joining forces with Cage, a huge name in the industry. Recalling their initial chat on Little’s forthcoming scenes with Cage, he found the young actor’s attitude laid-back.

“I remember, he arrived in Australia quite early, before Nic got there,” he said.

“We were walking along, down to the beach to show him the location. I asked him how he felt about making a movie with Nic Cage and he was like, ‘Yeah… yeah, I’ve heard of him. Yeah, pretty cool’. Just not fazed.”

Away from his work on Yellowstone, Little doesn’t have any confirmed projects for now, albeit rumours abound that he might reappear in the wildly successful Western series due to Beth and Rip leading a new spin-off.

The Surfer is in cinemas now. Yellowstone is available to stream on Paramount+.

A sunny beach noir sounds like a contradiction until you’re sweating in the sand aware of the sting in your eyes and the uncomfortable sense that there’s something wrong with you, your life and how you’re living it. Why aren’t you having more fun?

“The Surfer,” directed by Lorcan Finnegan (“Vivarium”) and written by Thomas Martin, captures that scenic unease and cranks up the heat until even its own bright yellow retro title font looks sarcastic. It’s a film in which the mythic crashes into the ridiculous, the intersection where its star Nicolas Cage has also staked his career. Playing an unnamed surfer stuck high and dry atop a parched parking lot, Cage stares down at the waves below with the thirst of a battered cartoon coyote. You half-expect to see his pupils pop out of his binocular lenses.

The action all takes place on a small spot of coastland in fictitious Luna Bay, Australia, where Cage’s character claims he grew up before moving to California at age 15. His accent doesn’t have a trace of it, but at least his skin is tanned the same shade of orange as his hair. Now a linen-suit-clad businessman, he’s returned with his own teenage son (Finn Little) shortly before Christmas with some paternal ocean wisdom. “You either surf it or you get wiped out,” Cage tells his boy, philosophically.

The kid is unimpressed by him; the local surf bullies even less so. Cage doesn’t get a toe in the tide before he’s given the heave-ho by a pretentious group of quasi-spiritual surfers called the Bay Boys. The beach is public, Cage insists. The Bay Boys’ guru Scalley (Julian McMahon, fantastic) is unmoved. “Yeah, but nah,” Scalley says and shrugs, his chill turning ice cold. An intimidatingly fit and happy life coach, Scalley promotes the power of male primal energy, although the film is savvy enough to point out that he was also born rich and curates an Instagram. Kudos to costumer Lien See Leong for outfitting McMahon in a hooded terry cloth poncho that makes him look like Jesus walked across the water to hang ten.

“The Surfer” has a plot you could recount in 30 seconds. First, Cage won’t leave and then he can’t leave — and then he can’t do anything without the Bay Boys making him suffer. (“Suffer” and “surfer,” Martin’s script points out, are only one letter apart.) The film is inspired by a real-life surf gang from the Palos Verdes Peninsula, but everything from the pace to the performances has been amplified into absurdity. A minute never goes by without Cage’s circumstances getting worse. His insistence on staying put makes him sacrifice one status object after another — his phone, his shoes, his car — and it isn’t long until he’s limping and ranting and crouching next to condom wrappers while men chase him with tiki torches. Luna Bay drives people lunatic. It’s all building toward the same tsunami of rage.

Cage has been on a streak of making catchy low-budget B-movies by rising filmmakers such as “Pig,” “Dream Scenario” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” It’s a brilliant approach: His fame gets interesting projects off the ground and, in turn, he gets to be the biggest thing in them. Not every film works, but enough of them do, particularly the ones that promise violence — which this delivers, but not in the way you might think. Most of “The Surfer’s” damage is mental; we’re steeped in Cage’s descent. It would make a great double-feature with Burt Lancaster’s 1968 “The Swimmer,” another hallucinatory psychodrama about a braggart skidding downhill.

The tribalistic Bay Boys deserve sea urchin spikes jammed into their toes. You come to hate their enviable ease, the pink zinc cream slashed across their noses, their wagging tongues and middle fingers. (They even sabotage the water fountain, just like Rome’s Gen. Aquillius is said to have poisoned his enemy’s wells.) Their giant, phony smiles reminded me of dolphins circling their prey and their mean laughter is blended into the sound of cackling birds. I think the film knows that the gang name Bay Boys — the same one as the actual Californians — is a lame idea of cool. It’s hard for the characters to say it with menace. More unnerving is the way everyone just accepts these guys are in charge. Shrugs one ritzy woman, “It stops them beating the Botox out of their wives.”

At stake is our outrage that the beauty in this world has been commandeered by people who act like they own the planet. We wouldn’t be as invested if the stakes were privately owned — say, a golf club or a gated community — although Cage’s character with his luxury car and costly latte habit probably cares about those, too. He’s no honorable underdog, brushing off a bum (Nicholas Cassim) who begs him for help. Cage doesn’t want to equal the playing field. He either wants to belong or burn it all down.

For him, this beach is personal. As a boy, he played on this exact spot. As a man (and there’s more testosterone in this movie than water in the Pacific Ocean) he’s desperate to buy back his grandfather’s house on the cliff. These blue-green waves are his birthright. In phantasmagoric flashbacks, we learn that his family spilled blood in their foam. Now, that promise is receding by the hour as guys with happier families and healthier muscles take his place. The grief in this film is relatable to anyone who’s realized how hard it is to go home again, whether that means a newly gentrified neighborhood or simply the security of what a middle-class wage used to afford.

Sun and sea are in every frame. Golden light dapples on Cage’s face. Aerial shots of water are used as scene wipes and their crashing noise underscores his psychic distress. Radek Ladczuk’s psychedelic camerawork loves dramatic zooms and lenses that make bodies blend and distort, underscoring how easily someone can slide from comfortable to wretched, and the grandly mystical soundtrack by François Tétaz is wonderful, even if it uses enough wind chimes to summon Poseidon.

“It’s all building to this breaking point,” Cage says of the waves. Audiences hoping for a gonzo bloodbath will be disappointed that Finnegan keeps his morality murky. But it’s the right choice. It bugs you just like “The Surfer” intends to, making the film follow you home like sand in your shoes.