Month: January 2020

In 2001, at 22, Josh Hartnett was supposed to become the next Leonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon. His back-to-back roles in Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” and Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down” catapulted him onto the A-list. He graced magazine covers, the paparazzi stalked his personal life and directors pursued him for blockbusters and comic-book vehicles.
0 Comments
After a historic year for women directors, the Academy Awards have followed the regressive path established this awards season by the Golden Globes, SAG Awards and the BAFTAs by not nominating any women for best director.  Despite having been shut out in the run-up to the Oscars, “Little Women” director Greta Gerwig was still considered a frontrunner
0 Comments
Seth MacFarlane is on the move with a big new overall deal at NBCUniversal Content Studios, the new unit of NBCUniversal under Bonnie Hammer. The deal came in through Universal Content Productions president Dawn Olmstead. According to sources, the deal is for five years and valued at nearly $200 million. NBCUniversal declined to comment on
0 Comments
Exclusive TMZ Ex-“Love and Hip Hop” star Mally Mall is facing a new lawsuit for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman, who claims she went to his home to talk business and ended up in an orgy-like nightmare. 26-year-old fitness and clothing model Quashay Davis says she flew from Dallas to L.A. in January 2019 to
0 Comments
Neil Peart, the legendary drummer of Rush, has died, according to an announcement from the band. He was 67. The cause of death, according to a spokesperson, was brain cancer. Peart passed on Tuesday, January 7th, in Santa Monica. Widely considered one of the most innovative drummers in rock history, Peart was famous for his state-of-the-art
0 Comments
Mark Pedowitz has been named chairman and CEO of the CW Network. The veteran television exec’s new deal will keep him ensconsed at the ViacomCBS-WarnerMedia  joint venture, where he has served as president for nearly a decade. Pedowitz last renewed his deal with the CW two years ago this month. The extension and elevation solidify
0 Comments
Fresh off his Golden Globe win and ahead of Oscar nominations being announced, Joaquin Phoenix was arrested, along with other climate change protestors, on Friday, Variety has confirmed. Jane Fonda’s last Fire Drill Friday protest in Washington, D.C., saw the actor march with hundreds, including stars Martin Sheen, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Susan Sarandon, and give
0 Comments
Golden Age of Streaming who? Despite an influx of entertainment options on Netflix, Hulu and now Disney Plus, global box office receipts will surpass $42.5 billion in 2019, according to Comscore, cementing a new industry high. Though U.S. ticket sales slumped 4.4% to $11.4 billion, international audiences fueled the record turnout. Overseas revenues also set
0 Comments
Melanie Laurent, the successful French actor (“Inglourious Basterds”) and filmmaker (“Gaveston”), is set to write and direct “The Mad Women’s Ball,” a period thriller based on the award-wining novel by Victoria Mas. Alain Goldman’s Legende Films, the well-established French production outfit behind Marion Cotillard starrer “La Môme,” “The Round Up” and “An Officer and a
0 Comments
As the grisly, counterfactual but oddly rosy ending of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” continues to be a point of debate among critics and audiences, along comes “The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson” to remind even the most insistent detractors of Tarantino’s what-if rewrite of the Manson murders how much worse things could be.
0 Comments
January 10, 2020 11:00AM PT “The Outsider” is a new HBO drama with top-shelf talent in front of and behind the camera. It’s a crime story that uses a single horrifying case to extrapolate outwards a story about a society haunted by soul-sickness and, perhaps, a boundless and supernatural evil. And it pairs unlikely collaborators
0 Comments
In the 1950s, paranoid schizophrenics and others with mental afflictions were treated much more harshly by today’s standards, often being locked away in institutions and subjected to electroshock and other debilitating treatments. In the film “Three Christs,” Richard Gere plays Dr. Alan Stone, a character based on real life social psychologist Milton Rokeach who during
0 Comments
The arrival of a show like “Little America” is no accident. Each chapter of Apple TV Plus’ new anthology series centers on the journeys of immigrants and first-generation Americans who end up in the United States either by choice, necessity or some combination thereof. (All are fictionalized versions of real-life stories, as recently collected by
0 Comments
In film history, there’s never been a project like the nine “Up” British documentaries, which have presented unique challenges for director Michael Apted and editor Kim Horton as they follow the lives of British individuals in seven-year intervals. Horton, who has edited the films since the 1984 “28 Up,” says, “It’s probably the greatest thing
0 Comments
Has it been 35 years since film director Ivan Passer, who died Jan. 9, explained to me why horror movies will never stop getting financed and distributed? “They don’t give their producers any sleepless nights,” the sage Czech maestro quietly, sagely noted, summing up a multitude of film business realities in a simple haiku. And
0 Comments
Sixty years ago, a psychologist named Milton Rokeach hatched an unconventional experiment, in which he gathered together at Ypsilanti State Hospital three mental patients who’d been diagnosed with grandiose delusions — each was thoroughly convinced that he and only he was Jesus Christ — to test whether confronting them with “the ultimate contradiction” of their claims might
0 Comments
NBC News is winding down Peacock Productions, an in-house unscripted production unit that has had a hand over the years in everything from true-crime serials to one of daredevil Nik Wallenda’s high-wire walks. “NBC News is shuttering Peacock Productions, effective March 2. NBC News is shifting its documentary strategy to an entirely new model, consistent
0 Comments
January 10, 2020 7:26AM PT British presenter and journalist Samira Ahmed has won a high-profile equal pay case against the BBC. Ahmed took the pubcaster to an employment tribunal claiming she was underpaid compared to a male colleague, Jeremy Vine, for presenting a similar program. Both presenters fronted viewer feedback shows. The BBC unsuccessfully argued
0 Comments