Month: March 2021

Praised for its immersive approach to mapping out a drummer’s confrontation with hearing loss, writer-director Darius Marder’s “Sound of Metal,” now contending for six Academy Awards, features a singularly story-driven use of sound. Part of that sonic alchemy proudly bears a “Made in Mexico” stamp. The film is nominated for best sound, and three of
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“Snowfall,” the acclaimed drama set during the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles in the 1980s, has been renewed for a fifth season by FX, the network announced on Tuesday. Currently airing its fourth season, the show has seen a 41% increase in total viewers over its past season, with an average of 5.1 million
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In trying to explain why 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long would walk into three Atlanta-area massage spas on March 16 and shoot eight people, including six women of Asian descent, law enforcement officials cited the shooter’s self-reported motivation as “sexual addiction,” not one of racial hatred. But amid a yearlong backdrop of anti-Asian sentiment fueled by
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A holiday-themed romantic comedy centered on gay men is coming to Netflix from Michael Mayer, the Tony Award-winning director of the Broadway sensation “Spring Awakening.” In a genre that has seen increased calls for inclusion, the ensemble project “Single All the Way” boasts beloved actors of pop culture sensations past and a pedigreed filmmaking team.
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The global music industry remained remarkably resilient despite a year under lockdown, according to the IFPI’s new Global Music Report. The headline figure showed that global recorded music revenues rose 7.4% in 2020 to $21.6 billion, only slightly below 2019’s 8.2% increase. But there was also an awful lot going on underneath the surface. Variety
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Isobel Waller-Bridge, whose film and TV work includes the scores for “Fleabag,” “Emma” and Netflix’s upcoming “Munich,” has signed a deal with Decca Publishing, the four-year-old publishing company that specializes in handling the catalogs of outside-the-box composers like Max Richter and Clint Mansell. Waller-Bridge also recently signed with the Mercury KX label with the intention
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Hulu has ordered the animated comedy “Koala Man” to series. The series hails creator and executive producer Michael Cusack, with Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez onboard as executive producers and showrunners. “Rick and Morty” and “Solar Opposites” co-creator Justin Roiland will also executive produce along with Princess Pictures and Bento Box. 20th Television Animation will
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Vice President Kamala Harris is saluting her Alpha Kappa Alpha sisters in a new documentary film titled “Twenty Pearls: The Story of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.” The documentary — which debuts March 26 on Comcast’s Black Experience on Xfinity channel and will be available nationwide on demand starting March 30 — is narrated by Phylicia
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Demi Lovato screened her new YouTube Originals documentary series “Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil” with a three-song set at the Beverly Hilton hotel on March 22. The singer performed “I See You,” “Anyone” and “Dancing With the Devil,” the title track from her upcoming album “Dancing With the Devil…The Art of Starting Over,” before
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Ben Hardy has been cast in the upcoming BBC One, HBO Max series “The Girl Before,” Variety has learned exclusively. Hardy joins previously announced cast members David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Jessica Plummer. The four-episode series is based on the book of the same name by J.P. Delaney. The series tells the story of Jane (Mbatha-Raw),
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Variety executive editor and New York Times bestselling author Ramin Setoodeh is writing a reported nonfiction book about “The Apprentice,” the TV show that single handedly changed the course of American history. HarperCollins has signed a deal to publish the book about the reality TV series starring Donald Trump, which will feature exclusive interviews with
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Hot Docs, one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, has unveiled its full lineup. The event, which runs online from April 29-May 9, will present 219 films from 66 countries across 12 programs, with 50% of the directors in the program being women. The opening film will be “A.rtificial I.mmortality,” in which director Ann Shin
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Hernán Caffiero, director and producer of 2018’s International Emmy-winning “The Suspended Mourning,” is teaming with up-and-coming director Bárbara Francisca Barrera Morales on “La vida de nosotras” – formerly “Voces anónimas” or “Anonymous Voices” in English – and the two will pitch their new short-format series at this year’s inaugural Sanfic Series Lab, joined by BTF
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“(Im)Patient” (“El Pa(de)ciente”), the Sanfic Work in Progress entry by Chile’s Constanza Fernandez, deals with a universal hot button issue, health care. The drama follows an elderly but fit doctor who is suddenly hospitalized with the little-understood Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare disorder whereby a body’s immune system attacks the nerves. He begins to record his experience
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Director Giovani Borba’s “Empty House,” produced by Tatiana Sager at Brazil’s Panda Filmes, stands out among this year’s packed Sanfic Industria Work in Progress sidebar, not so much for its unique proposition – there are at least two other films which share many of its neo-Western sensibilities – but for its execution and exceptional visuals.
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Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks Int’l has nabbed worldwide rights to Daniel Werner’s feature debut, erotic thriller “Bandit Love” (“Amor Bandido”), after it screened at Argentine indie film festival Bafici, where it garnered both audience and critical acclaim. “This slow burn thriller, disguised as an illicit romance, surprised everyone at its Bafici premiere and critics went mad.
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French multi-hyphenate Amanda Sthers (“Holy Lands”) has recruited the U.K.’s Kelly Reilly, Italy’s Pierfrancesco Favino and France’s Jean Reno for English-language romantic drama “Promises,” set in Italy and London, which started shooting in Rome on Monday. Based on Sthers’ novel by the same title, “Promises” turns on an unfulfilled love affair between Alexander, played by
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One of Southern Europe’s fastest growing industry events, Spain’s Malaga Festival is pushing back its industry centerpiece Spanish Screenings from June in order to be able to celebrate an on-site event. “Last year and this, we’ve learnt not to make [longterm] plans. We don’t have a definitive date but it could be this fall, though everybody’s
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In “Darkness by Day,” Argentine Martin Desalvo‘s 2013 breakthrough, a reported rabies outbreak gradually creeps nearer to two women cousins, stuck in their isolated family home. Violence will let reign, but for most of its going, Desalvo seems more interested on building tension and the relationship between the two women. Eight years later, Desalvo returns
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