Month: April 2021

Warner Music Group and Spotify have entered into a new partnership that will see the two companies develop a series of original podcasts built around WMG’s extensive and diverse artists’ and songwriters’ catalogs. “The most impactful podcasts share with music the key component of storytelling and personal experience. In partnership with Warner Music Group, we
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This year, there were 366 films in Oscar contention, with 50-plus nominated — including three centering on disabled people. While that isn’t much, it’s three more than most years and, sadly, it qualifies disability awareness as an innovation. The teams behind Amazon’s “Sound of Metal,” Netflix’s documentary “Crip Camp” and live-action short “Feeling Through” all
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Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt is no stranger when it comes to being at the forefront of digital moviemaking technology. David Fincher’s “Mank,” a biographical drama about “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) is without exception. Visually, viewers are transported to Old Hollywood, where an alluring black-and-white visual palette blankets the screen, a look that
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As diligently as actors and crew work on set, it’s commonplace to re-record some lines down the road. For the teams behind “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” the process of painstakingly matching audio and visual was further complicated by working remotely during COVID. Eliza Pollack
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Innovation can take many forms and sometimes it comes not from technology but technique. Nowhere was that more evident than during production and screenings of the Oscar-nominated short “Feeling Through.” Writer-director Doug Roland fictionalized his real-life encounter with a member of the deafblind community for the project. Newcomer and deafblind actor Robert Tarango played Artie.
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“Sound of Metal” director Darius Marder says he and his Oscar-nominated sound team — Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc, Carlos Cortes Navarrete — wanted heightened naturalism to depict varying stages of hearing and deafness of lead character Ruben (Riz Ahmed). “This sound mix is as complicated as in an action film,” Marder says. “This
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After a tough year, NBCUniversal’s news operations aim to honor people who provide inspiration. NBCU News Group will launch a new content franchise designed to call attention to influential individuals. “Inspiring America” includes an annual primetime TV event. “Inspiring America: The 2021 Inspiration List,” thatwill air on Saturday, May 1, at 8 p.m. on both
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Hulu has acquired U.S streaming rights to Sabrina Van Tassel’s timely documentary “The State of Texas vs. Melissa” which was selected for Tribeca in 2020 and it has won a flurry of accolades, including Raindance’s best documentary award. Hulu acquired the documentary from FilmRise, which represents theatrical and digital rights to the film for North
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Amazon Prime, the ecommerce giant’s membership program that includes access to Prime Video, now counts more than 200 million subscribers globally, founder Jeff Bezos wrote in his final annual letter to shareholders as CEO. Bezos most recently had announced that Amazon Prime had topped 150 million members in January 2020. The company rarely releases such
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In July 2020, Netflix canceled production on Turkish series “If Only” after Turkish authorities refused to grant it a shoot permit on the eve of it going into production. The bone of contention, the original series’ creator and screenwriter Ece Yörenç told the Financial Times, was the presence in the screenplay of a character who
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The Venice Film Festival will honor Oscar-winning Italian actor/director Roberto Benigni with its 2021 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Benigni, whose “Life Is Beautiful” – which he co-wrote, directed and starred in – won three Oscars in 1999, including best actor, recently returned to the big screen playing Geppetto in Matteo Garrone’s live-action adaptation of
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At one of its increasingly regular presentations on Thursday, Netflix Spain unveiled seven new projects including “If Only,” a Spanish adaptation of the Turkish original canceled before shooting by Turkish authorities. Where once Netflix would host its presentations early in the year and announce its ambitions for the next twelve months, the platform’s original Spanish
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Moritz Polter, executive producer of Sky series “Das Boot” and “Freud” for Netflix/ORF, is joining ITV Studios and establishing a high-end German scripted label. The label will be launched later in 2021. Moritz will be based in Germany with an international scope and will report into Lisa Perrin, managing director of international production at ITV
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A Latina Millennial obsessed with racking up as many ‘likes’ as she can on social media is the focus of the latest collaboration between music superstar Marc Anthony’s production shingle Magnus Studios and ViacomCBS International Studios (VIS). Explaining the concept for the comedy “Liked” during a pre-recorded MIP TV keynote on Wednesday evening with VIS
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BAFTA-winning writer Sally Wainwright (“Happy Valley,” “Gentleman Jack”), “Killing Eve” producer Sally Woodward Gentle and producers Faith Penhale (“Les Miserables”) and Stephen Garrett (“The Night Manager”) are among the creatives behind Disney Plus’ first scripted slate out of the U.K. The service has unveiled two Star originals — including one from debut screenwriter Emma Moran
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Morgan Wallen’s exclusion from the Academy of Country Music Awards this weekend is not going unnoted in Nashville, as fans have banded together to rent out billboards in highly visible locations declaring the MIA singer “his fan’s (sic) choice” for the top prize of entertainer of the year. “Support that boy from east Tennessee!” read
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Charlotte Gainsbourg, Julianne Moore, Chloë Sevigny and “Pose” actor Indya Moore star in Jim Jarmusch’s “French Water,” a new fashion film for Saint Laurent. The nine-minute movie presents a look at the French fashion house’s Women’s Summer ’21 collection. Julianne Moore and Sevigny are seen looking for Gainsbourg at the end of a party before
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STXfilms has nabbed rights to “Universe’s Most Wanted,” a sci-fi fantasy adventure starring Dave Bautista. It will release the film in the United States, the United Kingdom and India. STX acquired “Universe’s Most Wanted” from AGC Studios and CAA Media Finance. “Universe’s Most Wanted” is currently in pre-production and is scheduled to begin shooting in
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