Month: February 2019

Polygram Entertainment has unveiled a quartet of music documentaries in development on the Bee Gees, the Go-Go’s, hip-hop jewelry and the origins of mixtapes, Variety has learned exclusively. Polygram, which was revived in 2017 by Universal Music Group, rolled out details of the projects Saturday afternoon during a pre-Grammys showcase in downtown Los Angeles. Members
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February 9, 2019 2:30PM PT Under its new script-to-series model, AMC has opened a writers’ room for the drama series “61st Street.” The series hails from showrunner and executive producer Peter Moffat as well as executive producer Michael B. Jordan via his Outlier Society production banner, it was announced Saturday at the Television Critics Association
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Frictionless international film and series production is at the top of agendas in Central and Eastern Europe these days, with increasingly competitive territories adopting policy tweaks and launching new film promotion bodies. The freshly minted Slovak Film Commission is looking to catch up quick to its longstanding Czech counterpart, the Czech Film Commission, with a
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A recurring controversy flared up again at last month’s Sundance festival, this time with the Zac Efron-starring Ted Bundy biopic “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” as its lit match: Where is the line drawn between representation and celebration in films about appalling figures, particularly with a swoon-worthy sex symbol in the lead? That’s an
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Rock isn’t dead. It’s not on life support, either, and hasn’t been for a single solitary second since Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the forefathers of the genre brought it into the mainstream more than six decades ago. “Rock is alive and well, it’s just been underground,” says Allison Hagendorf, Global Head of
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Seven Portuguese titles will screen during the Berlinale, and a bevy of Portuguese producers are attending the European Film Market seeking co-producers and international sales agents for their projects. Two Portuguese features will screen in the non-competitive Berlinale Forum dedicated to more avant-garde cinema. “The Portuguese Woman,” a historical drama by Rita Azevedo Gomes, is
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Despite producing only around 15 feature films per year, Portuguese cinema has consistently won significant festival prizes. In 2018, awards for Portuguese films included Cannes’ Critics’ Week winner, “Diamantino” by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, and “The Dead and the Others” by João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora, which took a Special Jury Prize at
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In 2017, Portugal introduced a tax incentive scheme, revamped in mid-2018 as a 25%-30% cash-rebate scheme, with a €0.5 million ($0.57 million) minimum spend for shoots. The scheme, run by Portugal’s National Film and Audiovisual Institute (ICA) and Turismo de Portugal, has earmarked $14.4 million per year for 2019-21. The new, more competitive terms —
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At several points in “Out Stealing Horses,” a seemingly bland observation turns out to carry far more cutting emotional weight. “Fathers are great,” says one old man to another, shortly before an enfolded series of revelations that suggests both men can hardly believe such a thing. “That’s life, things happen,” says a father to a
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February 9, 2019 9:38AM PT Rising British rapper Cadet has died after a car crash in Betley in the early hours of Saturday morning. He was 28. According to the Associated Press, Cadet was on his way to a late-night gig at Keele University when his taxi collided with another vehicle. Staffordshire Police said a two-car
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“Best of British” streaming service BritBox is making further moves into original production, announcing a new multi-series collaboration with Oscar-nominated writer-producer Jeff Pope during its Television Critics Association panel on Saturday. BritBox will co-produce Pope’s new dramas “The Barking Murders” and “The Hatton Garden Heist” with the BBC. “The Barking Murders” stars Stephen Merchant, Sheridan
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It looks like the Grammy Awards will be embroiled in drama, yet again. Some viewers may tune into music’s biggest night, which airs live on CBS on Sunday, to see who’s missing rather than who’s there. Twitter has been abuzz with news of the public disagreement between Ariana Grande and Grammy producers. Despite being heavily
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As the Berlinale expands its efforts to achieve gender equality, Women and Hollywood founder Melissa Silverstein co-hosted and moderated a discussion about women striving for industry change Saturday at Berlin’s Regent Hotel. The sharp and focused panel of six experienced industry women – creatives, organizers, journalists, festival organizers and activists – welcomed a full house
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Lola (Valerie Pachner) wakes with a start. She has what we’ll soon learn is an uncharacteristic smudge of mascara beneath her too-bright, too-awake eyes. But then this is the Lola of later, not the woman to whom Marie Kreutzer’s nervy, nuanced drama “The Ground Beneath My Feet” first introduces us — not the ambitious, high-performance
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February 9, 2019 7:41AM PT Revolutionary playwright Bertolt Brecht gets the standard-issue TV biopic treatment in this two-parter saved only by ‘Reds’-style interviews. Buried within Heinrich Breloer’s superficial and plodding two-part TV movie about Bertolt Brecht are old and new interviews with the playwright’s collaborators that hold a fascination light years away from the fictionalized
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Anyone trying to do justice to the jaw-dropping scenery of Western Norway could do worse than Preikestolen, the iconic rock face that soars high above the Lysefjord gorge. Known as Pulpit Rock, the dramatic formation is one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. It’s also known to movie buffs as the setting for the pulse-pounding
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Berlin Film Festival director Dieter Kosslick on Saturday signed the gender-parity pledge aimed at achieving an even gender ratio in the organization’s top management, something Berlin has already well surpassed. Opening the Gender, Genre and Big Budgets event hosted by Women in Film and Television Germany and the Dortmund Cologne Intl. Women’s Film Festival, Kosslick
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