Month: May 2019

Cheerleading is a sport that commands attention. It whips the crowd into a controlled fervor, getting people off their feet and cheering with excitement. Unfortunately, director Zara Hayes’ “Poms” barely manages to do the same with its story about a group of retired women who reclaim their vitality and challenge societal norms by forming a cheerleading
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Audible and Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s media company focused on telling women’s stories, have revealed three audio memoirs they’re co-producing exclusively for the Audible platform. Audible’s initial Hello Sunshine originals are first-person narratives from three women: music-industry veteran Sophia Chang, judge Rosemarie Aquilina, and comedian-activist Maysoon Zayid. The multi-hour audio memoirs will be available on
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Chris Hughes, who co-founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg and others 15 years ago when they were students at Harvard, believes the federal government should dismantle the extraordinarily powerful social-media giant. In a 5,700-word New York Times op-ed piece published Thursday, Hughes argued that Zuckerberg holds “unchecked power” that is “unprecedented and un-American.” “Mark is a
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As SF Studios bulks up its pipeline with ambitious in-house productions, the company’s international sales division is now aiming to widen its scope through third-party pickups, with an eye on non-Scandinavian projects. Spearheaded by Anita Simovic, SF Studios’ international sales team will be bringing to Cannes a couple pickups: Santiago Requejo’s heartfelt comedy drama “Grandpas,”
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Rupert Murdoch opened Fox Corp.’s Investor Day presentation on Thursday with a promise that the slimmed-down company will be a Wall Street growth story. Murdoch, Fox Corp. chairman, told the crowd in New York that he decided to sell most of his Hollywood assets to Disney in order to make the most out of all
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SF Studios — the Swedish major that’s turning 100 this year — is banking on the production of high-concept, talent driven English-language and local films, as well as TV series, to become a key European player and thrive in today’s ultra-competitive landscape increasingly dominated by deep-pocketed OTT services. Once the home of Ingmar Bergman, SF
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France’s Wild Bunch will be in charge of international sales and ARP will do French distribution for Chinese writer-director Gu Xiaogang’s debut feature, “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains,” the closing film at this year’s Critics’ Week at Cannes, the production team told Variety. The film does not yet have a distributor for China. “Dwelling” is
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This summer will see the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It may also provide opportunity to meditate upon the fact that an awed populace back then could hardly have imagined an American near-future in which anti-science sentiments would become so widespread, particularly at the highest levels of a government that once rated
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We’ve all heard the warning, “If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned.” Well, that’s nothing compared to the consequences if you steal gasoline straight from the source — an extremely high-risk practice now on the rise in Mexico, where the combustibility of extracting raw fuel from open fields is amplified by the dangers
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Kimmy Schmidt, meet Bandersnatch. Netflix is bringing back “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” for an untitled, one-off interactive special, set to debut in 2020. It’s the first interactive comedy for the streamer. As with Netflix’s “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” movie and other interactive shows, viewers will be able to make choices on behalf of the “Kimmy Schmidt” characters
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May 8, 2019 7:04PM PT SAG-AFTRA members have ratified a three-year successor deal to its commercials contracts with nearly 97% approval among those voting. The union announced the ratification Wednesday night shortly after voting concluded. It touted the deals as landmark agreements due to “flexible” alternative compensation models to promote growth of union-covered commercial work
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Motown Records President Ethiopia Habtemariam and Caroline President Jacqueline Saturn came together for an insightful conversation at the Music Biz conference in Nashville today (May 8). The two spoke of their illustrious careers and the successful partnership between the Capitol Music Group labels they each head. Spending more than a decade working in music publishing
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