Month: September 2020

Back at the Venice Film Festival with Andrew Garfield starrer “Mainstream,” presented in the Horizons section, Gia Coppola took part in the “Life Through a Different Lens: Contactless Connections” talk on Friday – following in the (virtual) footsteps of Demi Moore and Nadine Labaki. During the chat, hosted by the festival and Mastercard, she looked

British moviegoers will be able to feel like royalty thanks to a drive-in film series hosted at Queen Elizabeth II’s Sandringham Estate. Starting on Sept. 25, the 20,000-acre private home of Queen Elizabeth and several previous monarchs will screen award-winning movies, like “1917,” “A Star Is Born,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and more. Sam Mendes’ Oscar-winning war

You know him from “The Farewell,” “Rush Hour,” “Arrival,” “Tigertail” and recently as”Mulan’s” father in the Disney live action adaptation. Actor and activist Tzi M’s goes deep into his journey into acting on Variety’s “#Represent: Legends” revealing that he used acting and martial arts training as a way to ward off racist bullies. Today, the

A shy, introverted farmer’s wife in Schoharie County, New York, Abigail has stopped going to church since the death of her young daughter Nellie. “I no longer derive comfort from the thought of a better world to come,” she says, in one of the many narrated diary entries that give Mona Fastvold’s period drama its

After months of delays, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic “Tenet” finally arrived in U.S. theaters and generated $20.2 million over Labor Day weekend. Ticket sales, though difficult to dissect given the uncharted waters of the coronavirus era, are roughly in line with expectations for a new release during a pandemic. The espionage thriller is already nearing

Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” has been hailed by the Western film industry as a savior of the in-person theatrical experience around the world, but this weekend in China it lost out repeatedly to the local savior of Chinese cinema, Huayi Brothers’ war film “The Eight Hundred.” The Chinese title bested “Tenet” each day of its three-day

Los Angeles-based Menemsha Films has acquired North American rights from Italy’s Intramovies to Venice Critics’ Week title “Thou Shalt Not Hate,” ahead of the racial hatred-themed drama’s premiere Sunday on the Lido.  The film has also been picked up for Australia and New Zealand by Moving Story Entertainment. Directed by Italian first-timer Mauro Mancini, “Thou

Watching Iranian director Majid Majidi’s “Sun Children,” I was reminded of “The Florida Project.” One of the best films about children of the 21st century, “The Florida Project” takes place within a stone’s throw of Walt Disney World, where it seems a dream too much for its neglected kid characters to visit, until, in the

Feltrinelli Editore, which is behind Roberto Saviano’s bestselling novel “ZeroZeroZero,” which was adapted into a TV series for Sky Atlantic, Canal Plus and Amazon Prime, is one of 18 prestigious publishers from across Europe attending Venice Film Festival’s Book Adaptation Rights Market (BARM). The first two episodes of the “ZeroZeroZero” series, which offers a gritty

New York and Oslo-based writer/director Mona Fastvold made her directorial debut with “The Sleepwalker,” which unlocked secrets between two sisters and made a splash in 2014 at Sundance. Her ambitious followup “The World to Come” stars Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby as two farmers’ wives in 1856 Upstate New York who fall in love but have no template,

Hungarian stage and screen director Kornel Mundruczo and partner/screenwriter Kata Weber collaborated closely on “Pieces of a Woman,” in which Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf play a Boston couple devastated by the loss of their newborn baby during a home birth. The film had its world premiere on Saturday in the main competition section of the

Filmmaker Nathan Grossman has followed Greta Thunberg’s remarkable journey from the earliest stages of her school strike for climate in 2018 to the United Nations Climate Action Summit last September, often operating as a one-man band shooting quietly in the background with fairly basic camera equipment. “As the movement grew and she grew, and the

Chaitanya Tamhane’s “The Disciple,” the first Indian film in Venice Film Festival’s competition since 2001, is set across three different time frames. It follows an aspiring classical music performer, Sharad Nerulkar, played by debutant Aditya Modak, on a journey that resembles that of a monk following a guru, experiencing sacrifice and solitude along the way.

The cast of Rob Reiner’s 1987 film “The Princess Bride” is reuniting for a virtual script reading and fundraiser benefitting the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Reiner, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Carol Kane, Chris Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn and Billy Crystal will read the script on Sept. 13 at 6 p.m. CT, followed by a Q&A

“Miss Marx” is a biopic bookended by death, colored by it throughout. It introduces us to socialist activist Eleanor Marx at the funeral of her father Karl, and follows her through to her untimely suicide, at the age of 43, some 15 years later. Ghosts of the past and future weigh heavily on her in

Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” will cross the $100 million mark internationally on Saturday. It passes that important milestone after the twisty thriller made just over $20 million in China so far this weekend. Those numbers are pretty standard for Nolan, who has a golden touch when it comes to blockbusters, having previously guided “Inception,” “Dunkirk,” and

For months, the entire entertainment industry has monomaniacally focused on how to return to work amid the coronavirus pandemic. Reams of health and safety protocols have dictated everything from proper PPE attire to testing schedules to how many people can be on a set, and by July and August, a small handful of major productions

The first look at David Fincher’s highly anticipated drama “Mank” was revealed Saturday to coincide with the 79th anniversary of “Citizen Kane’s” wide theatrical opening. The film is Fincher’s first feature directing effort since 2014’s “Gone Girl” and chronicles Herman Mankiewicz’s (Gary Oldman) race to finish the “Citizen Kane” screenplay for Orson Welles (Tom Burke).

Seven years after Gia Coppola turned a dreamily sympathetic eye on the pretty, youthful wasters of her high-school-set debut “Palo Alto,” she returns with “Mainstream,” packing a far smaller store of compassion and a lot less insight into the next micro-life-stage of telegenic wasted youth. A brittle, exasperated satire on social media celebrity, her sophomore

Are there signs of green shoots of recovery for the indie film industry following the profound business disruption wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic? “We’re living through a rapidly changing time,” says Brian Beckman, CFO of international sales company and producer Arclight Films, which is handling worldwide sales on “The Furnace,” an Australian adventure story, screening

One can imagine an American director such as Norman Jewison or Sidney Lumet directing a film about the legal battle at the heart of “Pieces of a Woman”: A terrible tragedy has occurred, and an expectant young Boston couple (played by Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf) have taken their midwife (Molly Parker) to court. The

Who is Greta Thunberg? On the one hand, practically everybody on the planet knows: She’s the Swedish teenage climate change activist with the Pippi Longstocking braids and the stern, strident oratorical style, who has resolved to be a thorn in the side of all major world powers until they make her environmental agenda their top

Speaking at a panel event on Friday held as part of the Venice Production Bridge, the Venice Film Festival’s industry section, a trio of industry heavyweights argued that in order to keep the continental film and TV business competitive in a period marked by change and unrest, the European Commission would have to free up