Month: January 2020

Days ahead of Sunday’s BAFTA awards, “The Morning Show” star Gugu Mbatha-Raw has spoken out about a “stark lack of inclusivity” at high-level awards shows. Taking the stage at the annual Newport Beach UK Honors event in London, in association with Variety, on Wednesday night, where she was named a Breakthrough Artist, Mbatha-Raw said the
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MADRID — Netflix announced Thursday in Madrid seven new Spanish Originals: Two series, three features, one documentary and an unscripted title. The titles confirm a rapid ramp-up in production volume for Netflix in Spain, whose output to date takes in two of the U.S. giant’s standout breakouts in international, not only in Spain but overseas
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Since “Sons of Denmark’s” world bow at Rotterdam in 2019, Danish writer/director Ulaa Salim and producer Daniel Mühlendorph have enjoyed invites to 50 world festivals, and won nine awards – including best director at Seattle – and distribution in eight territories, negotiated by New Europe Film Sales. Those take in China (Huanxi Films), the U.K./Ireland
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Swedish helmer Jens Jonsson, who is currently editing Netflix’s “Young Wallander,” is set to direct the political thriller “Eight Months” (“Åtta månader”), based on acclaimed Swedish author Magnus Montelius’ suspense eponymous novel. Swedish scribe Erik Ahrnbom (“The Bridge,” “Stockholm Stories,” “Arne Dahl”) will be adapting for television. Published last year by Albert Bonniers Förlag, the
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Canal Plus Group is joining forces with Netflix for the first time on an original series with “On The Verge,” a daring L.A.-set comedy created by Julie Delpy, Variety has learned. The series is being co-developed by the Creation Original label of the French pay TV channel Canal Plus and Paris-based company The FilmTV. Netflix
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January 30, 2020 12:37AM PT A marital separation pains the husband protagonist of Robert Machoian’s stark, stripped-down but empathetic indie drama. Opening on what appears to be the verge of its titular act, Robert Machoian’s “The Killing of Two Lovers” then steadily pulls back from what sounds like a noirish potboiler of marital infidelity and
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January 29, 2020 8:15PM PT ABC News has suspended chief national correspondent Matt Gutman over a false statement he made on-air Sunday following the death of Kobe Bryant.  Gutman had erroneously reported that all four of Bryant’s daughters were on board the helicopter that crashed into the hills of Calabasas. Bryant and his 13 year-old
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One of these days, somebody should (and probably will) make a documentary about Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. An essential chapter of it would, of course, be about how when he came to power in 2011, after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il (who had ruled the country since 1994), just
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It took four movies before Lee Isaac Chung was ready to tell the kind of story first-timers so often rush to share straight out of the gate. Not a coming-of-age movie so much as a deeply personal and lovingly poetic rendering of his Korean American childhood — specifically, how it felt for his immigrant family
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“The Last Shift,” a fast-food tragedy written and directed by Andrew Cohn, is a gut punch with a side of anguish. In this wonderfully sad small-town drama, the ever-empathetic Richard Jenkins plays Stan, a former high school athlete who took the graveyard shift at local chain Oscar’s Chicken and Fish in 1971 and never left.
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There is a Robert Frost poem called “Escapist – Never” which provides a frequent refrain in Greg Barker’s deeply admiring but drawn-out biopic of Brazilian diplomat and U.N. leading light Sergio Vieira de Mello. “It is the future that creates his present,” runs the penultimate line, and the handsome, heroic, charismatic de Mello (played with
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After two days of quiet on the Recording Academy vs. Deborah Dugan front, the organization’s ousted CEO has asked to be released from the arbitration agreement she signed when she joined the Academy. The contract she signed upon joining the Academy last year requires her to arbitrate any disputes confidentially. “The Academy intentionally brought this
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January 29, 2020 3:19PM PT The iconic Japanese manga “One Piece” is being adapted by Netflix into a live-action series. Netflix has issued a 10-episode order for the project, teaming with Tomorrow Studios, which is also producing the streamer’s other forthcoming manga-based series “Cowboy Bebop,” and the original series’ publisher Shueisha. The series was first
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For any awards pundits reading the BAFTA nominations as tea leaves for the impending Oscar race, 2020’s nomination slate held relatively few surprises. Unlike in certain years when BAFTA has piled nominations upon wildcard contenders (“Drive” in 2012, for example), this year’s top selections in the major categories more or less align with their perceived
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#BAFTAsSoWhite was not the hashtag that BAFTA brass was hoping would trend on Twitter within minutes of nominations being announced. Yet there it was: an incensed public response to a slate that, for the fourth time in a decade, yielded all-white nominees in the four top acting categories, including two apiece for actresses Margot Robbie
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