Month: May 2021

Montreal filmmaker Emanuel Licha’s new film—which won the juried award for best Canadian feature at Hot Docs—takes its title from the nickname Haitians have given the Toyota Land Cruiser, a popular mode of transportation among the humanitarian aid organizations ubiquitous in the country since the 2010 earthquake. In “Zo Reken,” which means “shark bones,” a
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The multibillion-dollar market for sports broadcasting rights is wreaking havoc in Europe, where soccer teams are suffering heavy losses due to pandemic-shuttered stadiums as new media players enter the field. Rapidly abandoned plans by 12 top European teams to form a lucrative breakaway soccer Super League in late April sparked pandemonium among millions of fans,
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Twenty years since the release of her first album, Miranda Lambert still happily confounds country’s hardcore traditionalists as to who she is, precisely, while maintaining Texas and Nashville’s interest and fandom. Precise just isn’t her thing. Ruckus-raising revenge fantasias; housewife tomes portraying the chinks in a relationship’s armor; meditations on being a woman loved, scorned,
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Irish public broadcaster RTE has acquired the rights to “Four Seasons in a Day,” director Annabel Verbeke’s documentary feature about the inhabitants straddling the post-Brexit divide between Northern Ireland and Ireland, Variety has learned exclusively. Cologne-based 3Boxmedia brokered the deal. “Four Seasons in a Day” offers a glimpse at the contentious Brexit debate through the
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Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop’s “Ostrov — Lost Island” and Emanuel Licha’s “Zo Reken” took the top Hot Docs jury awards at a special online ceremony webcast from Toronto Friday night. Eleven awards and $67,000 CAD ($55,200) in cash and prizes were presented to emerging and established Canadian and international filmmakers. Best International Feature Documentary
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Fox has ordered the country music drama series “Monarch” for the 2021-2022 broadcast season from executive producer and creator Melissa London Hilfers. The show, formerly known as “Untitled Country Music Dynasty,” will feature original songs and covers. Per the logline, the one-hour drama is a Texas-sized, multigenerational musical drama about America’s first family of country
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Colombia’s Germán Arango and Ana María Muñoz, the director-producer duo behind Hot Docs International Spectrum competition title “Songs That Flood the River,” are prepping a host of new documentary and fiction features focused on race, gender, violence and resistance in the South American nation, Variety has learned. Arango is developing “MC Silencio,” a Medellín-set musical
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Chance the Rapper has wrapped up a deal with AMC Theatres to have a new concert film, “Magnificent Coloring World,” premiere exclusively on the chain’s screens this summer. A teaser was issued Friday for the movie, which celebrates five years since the release of Chance’s landmark mixtape “Coloring Book” and the Magnificent Coloring World tour
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Roku paid $97.8 million in cash for This Old House Ventures, the home-improvement media company whose shows include “This Old House” and “Ask This Old House.” Roku disclosed the price tag in its 10-Q quarterly filing Friday. The company said it acquired the This Old House business because it “believes the content aligns with The
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When Verzuz announced on March 9 that it had left Apple Music for a new partnership with the social video platform Triller, the relationship seemed like an incongruous one. While there is tons of music on Triller, there wasn’t anything really like Verzuz, which pits classic hip-hop and R&B artists and producers against each other
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As Season 5 of Fox’s “The Masked Singer” heads toward its conclusion at the end of the month, Variety has the scoop on the guest panelists and show formats for the final three episodes. On Wednesday, the “Spicy 6” episode saw actor/singer Tyrese Gibson unmasked as the Robopine. When “The Masked Singer” returns next week
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A pair of Oscar nominations for “Collective,” a blistering exposé of corruption in his native Romania, was certainly a triumph for Alexander Nanau, one of Europe’s most acclaimed documentary filmmakers. But it was a success story shared by co-producer HBO Europe, which has spent the past decade beefing up its documentary arm en route to
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