Month: February 2019

Claude Barras’ “Savages!,” Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli’s “Tales of the Hedgehog” and Peter Dodd’s “King of the Swamp” are among the sixty-six projects –a 10% increase from last year– to be pitched at the 21st Cartoon Movie, Europe’s leading animated movie co-production event, which will take place in the French port city of Bordeaux,
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Strangely, for a directors’ race that has been dominated by “Roma” helmer Alfonso Cuarón all season long, Saturday night’s Directors Guild Awards didn’t feel all that sewn up. There has been a sense that career respect for Spike Lee, not to mention legitimate love for “BlacKkKlansman,” could break him through as a spoiler. Meanwhile, “Green
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As close to a breakout as there seems to be among the disappointing crop of horror films in Sundance’s Midnight section this year, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s “The Lodge” extends the creepy-domestic-crisis tension of their 2014 Austrian debut “Goodnight Mommy” a bit further toward conventional chiller terrain. Once again, children and a maternal figure
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“The Favourite,” “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians” walked away with top film honors at the 23rd annual Art Directors Guild Awards Saturday night. “This journey started six years ago with ‘Fruitvale Station’ and a very awkward Skype interview,” Hannach Beachler, production designer of “Black Panther,” said in thanking director Ryan Coogler. “This journey has
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February 2, 2019 10:10PM PT Three psychopaths kill a grieving couple (again and again and again) in Johannes Nyholm’s sinister fable. When “Koko-di Koko-da” characters Elin (Ylva Gallon) and Tobias (Leif Edlund) discover their daughter Maja dead on her eighth birthday, they think life couldn’t get worse. Shockingly, it can. The film jumps ahead three
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“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” topped Saturday’s Annie Awards, taking home seven zoetropes — one for each of its webslinger incarnations — including best animated feature. The Sony Pictures Animation film, which won in every category in which it was nominated, swung past Aardman Animations’ “Early Man,” Pixar’s “Incredibles 2,” Fox Searchlight Pictures’ “Isle of Dogs”
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Alfonso Cuaron has won the Directors Guild Award for top feature film for “Roma,” keeping up his awards-season momentum. Cuaron topped Bradley Cooper for “A Star Is Born,” Spike Lee for “BlacKkKlansman,” Adam McKay for “Vice,” and Peter Farrelly for “Green Book.” “Thank you, cabron — you are my film career,” a deeply moved Cuaron
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The 71st Directors Guild of America Awards are underway. The ceremony, being held on Saturday at the Hollywood & Highland Center’s Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, honors achievement in film and television. The DGA nominated Alfonso Cuaron for “Roma,” Bradley Cooper for “A Star Is Born,” Spike Lee for “BlacKkKlansman,” Adam McKay for “Vice,” and Peter
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The Sundance Film Festival concluded with five female directors — and one man — sharing the grand jury prizes in the four main competition categories. In U.S. dramatic competition, African-American writer-director Chinonye Chukwu won for “Clemency,” in which Alfre Woodard plays a prison warden who connects with a death-row inmate. Meanwhile, in the world dramatic
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Fears related to immigration, terrorism, and nationalism are a running theme in many Sundance entries this year, although probably none of the films addresses the commingled issues in such a potent yet roundabout way as Jacek Borcuch’s “Dolce Fine Giornata.” This satisfyingly complex drama stars Polish cinema veteran Krystyna Janda (going back to Wadja’s 1977
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What would it take to make you happy: A different house? A different wife? Or maybe an altogether different life? Before you go coveting your neighbor’s fill-in-the-blank, you owe it to yourself to watch “Greener Grass,” an odd and wonderfully upbeat absurdist take on the American dream from improv comedians turned independent filmmakers Jocelyn DeBoer
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MADRID  — Javier Fesser’s “Champions” won best picture at the 33rd Spanish Academy Goya Awards, having seemed to have been locked out of major awards. Spain’s Oscar entry, a blockbuster hit on home turf for UPI Spain, earning €18.5 million ($21.1 million) and sold near worldwide, the comedy turns on an off-the-rails Spanish coach sentenced
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GOTEBORG — Danish helmer May el-Toukhy’s second feature, the provocative melodrama “Queen Of Hearts,” about a successful attorney starting an affair with her teenage step-son, came away the biggest winner at Sweden’s 42nd Göteborg Film Festival, scoring the generously endowed (approx. $110,340) Best Nordic Film kudo. The film also received the Audience Award for Best Nordic
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In advance of his controversial halftime performance with Maroon 5 at the Super Bowl on Sunday, Travis Scott headlined a Pepsi-sponsored, invite-only concert Friday night in downtown Atlanta. The concert, held at a transformed Georgia Freight Depot, also featured special guests Metro Boomin, Lil Baby and Chase B, with a surprise drop-in from Young Thug, who came out
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February 2, 2019 12:15PM PT Rapper Bow Wow was arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning in Atlanta, Ga. after being accused of assaulting a woman, identified as Leslie Holden. According to the Associated Press, police were called to 205 12th Street around 4:15 a.m., where Holden told them Bow Wow — whose given
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February 2, 2019 11:56AM PT IFC Films has acquired “Official Secrets,” a politically charged thriller with Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes that debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Gavin Hood, the film is a ripped-from-the-headlines tale, this one about a Katharine Gun, a British whistleblower who leaked documents to the press. Her
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