Month: December 2019

Concord today announced that Glen Barros will leave his post as the company’s Chief Operating Officer on December 31, 2019 in order to form a new business venture entitled Exceleration Music. According to the announcement, through this new venture, Barros plans to invest in music rights while providing strategic services to third-party entities, primarily within
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December 20, 2019 1:25PM PT “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” will launch to a muscular $195 million domestically this weekend, according to midday Friday estimates. Disney, the studio behind the sci-fi franchise, hasn’t released numbers, but if rival studios’ figures hold true that will be a spectacular bow for the adventure film, albeit one
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Last night’s Democratic debate, which inevitably dealt with the recent impeachment of President Donald Trump, drew just over 6 million total viewers for PBS and Politico, according to Nielsen figures. Topics such as the economy, climate change, racism, Afghanistan, and taxing the wealthy were also on the agenda. That total, which counts the PBS broadcast
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The last time fans saw a short film from Grammy-nominated songwriter Lana Del Rey was in 2013 with “Tropico,” a nearly half-hour-long saga featuring songs from her 2012 album “Paradise.” Today, we got another one, a 15-minute ode to her critically-acclaimed “Norman F—ing Rockwell.” In “Tropico,” the singer played biblical Eve alongside model Shaun Ross
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Move over “The Last Jedi,” there’s a new “Star Wars” installment to debate ad infinitum. At 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, “The Rise of Skywalker” has the second-worst score of all the live-action “Star Wars” films, right behind “The Phantom Menace” at 53%. That’s right: critics hate the J.J. Abrams-directed flick almost as much as they
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Frank Ocean has signed with Warner Chappell Music publishing, a source close to the situation confirms to Variety. The deal was done during the fall, the source added, noting that it was intentionally kept quiet. The deal is among several big ones made by the company’s new co-chairs Guy Moot and Carianne Marshall, along with
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Are we ready to shake it off — the 2010s? Just about, but before the decade slaps us on the behinds on our way out the door, here are some of the albums that Variety music critics Jem Aswad, Andrew Barker and Chris Willman couldn’t have made it through the terrible teens without. (Click here to
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December 20, 2019 11:22AM PT Netflix’s international film VP David Kosse has unveiled a slate of non-English-language movies that will head into production in 2020. The former STXinternational topper’s projects span French, German and Italian-language projects, and include feature adaptations of Robert Harris’ novel “Munich” and Hanna Jameson’s “The Last.” Out of France, “Bigbug” follows
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Taylor Swift attended “cat school” to learn what Jellicles can and Jellicles do. To prepare for “Cats,” the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1981 musical, Swift and her co-stars enrolled in classes to master the movements of their four-legged characters. In the film, Swift plays Bombalurina, a rabble-rousing outsider who sprinkles catnip over the
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The decade didn’t lack for powerful and memorable performances across all forms and genres of television. Indeed, the challenge of pulling together a list of turns worth remembering was featuring only one cast member per show — otherwise, this could simply have been a list of “Orange Is the New Black” performers — and eventually
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Noah Baumbach knew right away that Adam Driver singing Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive” was going to work in “Marriage Story.” “A lot of times, when you’re shooting things, you’re not getting, necessarily, the chill that you might get when it’s in the movie,” Baumbach says on the latest episode of “The Big Ticket,” Variety and
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Before this decade, the idea of a network dropping an entire season on one day was not a serious one. Episodes aired week to week, occasionally back to back, and so it went — until streaming services made clear that they were willing to tread a different path. Suddenly, it seemed, TV’s release calendar featured
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Spanish actor Antonio Banderas has starred in such box office champs as “The Mask of Zorro,” “Evita” and “Spy Kids,” and worked with great directors, including Jonathan Demme, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh and Julie Taymor. But he’s best known for his eight films with writer-director Pedro Almodóvar. Sony Pictures Classics’ “Pain and Glory,” for which
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When writer Nina Weinman heard Hallmark wanted to include Hanukkah in their annual “Countdown to Christmas” original movie slate for the 2019 holiday season, she was thrilled. Weinman was raised Jewish but now celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas with her own family after marrying a man who is Christian. Weinman’s producing partner, Joel Rice, is
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It seems like every year there’s talk about the acting races being the most competitive and unpredictable ever — the kind of hype typical of a “the most dramatic season ever” of ABC’s “The Bachelor.” But for the 2020 Oscars, there’s quite a bit of truth to the cliché. Whereas the lead actress prize was
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“I am a very angry, optimistic woman,” says Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel toward the end of “Advocate,” a sober, engrossing documentary dedicated to her life and work. Her description isn’t a contradiction in terms, exactly, but it does highlight two traits that are rarely twinned, particularly to positive effect. It’s an apt pairing,
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A&E-backed video aggregator Littlstar has teamed up with Whistle, New Form, Silver.tv and others to launch premium content channels for its paying subscribers. The new partnerships will bring esports and other types of short-form content to the PlayStation and VR devices supported by Littlstar. The new partnerships will get Littlstar subscribers access to the entire
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SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “The Interview,” the first season finale of “The Morning Show.” Apple TV Plus’ “The Morning Show” began with beloved fictional morning news anchor Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) getting fired amid sexual misconduct allegations. The veteran media industry professional felt himself to be a casualty in
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December 20, 2019 9:00AM PT “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” will expand its podcast menu with the launch of “The Daily Show Podcast Universe” in January. “Podcast Universe” will serve up a five-episode miniseries featuring parodies of popular genres of podcasting, from true crime potboilers to social justice crusades to self-appointed self-help experts. The
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