Month: July 2021

Zaila Avant-garde won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, becoming the first Black American winner in the competition’s 96-year history. The 14-year-old from Harvey, La., correctly spelled “murraya” — defined as “a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees having pinnate leaves and flowers with imbricated petals” — to clinch victory. “Does this
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Adele Lim, the writer of “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Raya and the Last Dragon,” will make her directorial debut helming an untitled comedy for Lionsgate and Point Grey Pictures. The R-rated comedy will star Tony and Grammy-nominated actress Ashley Park (“Emily in Paris,” “Girls 5Eva”) and follows four Asian American women as they travel through
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Totoral Media Lab, producers of Chilean docu “Bastard – the Legacy of a Criminal” (“Bastardo – la Herencia de un Genocida”), one of the four non-fiction features participating in Cannes’ Docs in Progress Showcase Chile, has inked a co-production pact at the Marché du Film with Stefilm, Stefano Tealdi’s Italian production house, and Sweden’s Laika
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When John Carpenter’s action classic “Escape from New York” premiered 40 years ago on July 10, 1981, moviegoers were treated to a dystopian nightmare unlike anything they’d seen before. Set in a grim future where the island of Manhattan has been converted into a giant maximum security prison, the film featured Kurt Russell in a
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Wes Anderson won’t be taking any questions in Cannes because “The French Dispatch” isn’t getting a press conference. Variety has confirmed with festival sources that the movie’s creative team won’t be made available to the press. The film has been missing from the press screening and conference schedule since Cannes kicked off earlier this week,
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India’s Payal Kapadia is back at Cannes with her debut feature, “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” a Directors’ Fortnight selection. A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India, Kapadia’s 2017 short “Afternoon Clouds” premiered at Cannes as a Cinéfondation selection. For “A Night of Knowing Nothing” Kapadia and the film’s cinematographer and editor
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The first single from the upcoming film “Gunpowder Milkshake” has been released. Composed by Frank Ilfman (“Big Bad Wolves”), “Goonfight at Gutterball Corral” fuses indie-rock with a spaghetti Western style, further mixed with a large orchestra and soprano vocal. Directed and co-written by Navot Papushado (also known for”Big Bad Wolves”), the film debuts on Netflix
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Olivia Rodrigo and her main collaborator, songwriter-producer Daniel Nigro, have given Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff and St. Vincent a songwriting credit on “Deja Vu” — the second song from Rodrigo’s blockbuster debut album “Sour” to receive such a non-collaborative credit, after “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back.” The addition to the album’s credits was first
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President Biden is signing an executive order Friday urging federal agencies to more aggressively police conduct by Big Tech — including to more closely review acquisitions that thwart competition. The action comes amid a growing backlash by lawmakers and regulators against massive Silicon Valley firms. Biden’s order doesn’t name the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon
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Andrea Arnold has refused to speak about her experience on season 2 of “Big Little Lies” — her last major credit before her Cannes-premiering documentary “Cow” — despite subtly hinting that all was not kosher in post production. Asked how long she was editing on “Cow,” Arnold said there was “a lot of stopping and
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BBC Studios Productions and Directors U.K. have launched a mentorship scheme to encourage and support under-represented voices in the British entertainment industry. Mentees on the scheme will have the opportunity to work across BBC Studios productions including “EastEnders,” “Holby City,” “Casualty” and “Doctors.” Applicants to the scheme, which launches later this year, will be expected
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“Postman” by Russian filmmaker Klim Tukaev has won the first prize at the sixth Nespresso Talents global short film competition. “Bagman,” by Jan Kellner, took the second prize, while “Speaking in Flowers,” by Nicolina Sterbet, took third. Both are from the Czech Republic. The winners were selected by the competition’s international jury, which includes actors
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On the 30th anniversary of Creative Europe’s Media Programme, the European Commission in association with the advocacy group 50/50 is launching a big diversity and inclusion campaign aimed at ramping up the representation of women in the film and news media sector. Dubbed CharactHer, the campaign was designed to foster inclusion, empower women and highlight
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Black Swan Tales, a Blumhouse-inspired genre film label launched by French producer Noor Sadar and Belgian banner Entre Chien et Loup, is rolling out its first roster of four French- and English-language horror films. A Mediawan company, Black Swan Tales was also created in partnership with the sales company WTFilms. Black Swan has just wrapped
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Fabrice Aragno is sitting at a desk in his studio in Lausanne, Switzerland, pouring over images of a lake in which the water and the sky meet in dramatic fashion. The filmmaker and frequent Jean-Luc Godard collaborator is simultaneously preparing to pitch his feature directorial debut, aptly titled “Le Lac,” at Cinéfondation’s Atelier this week,
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Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun returns to the sun-scrubbed Sahel region of West Africa for his latest feature, “Lingui, the Sacred Bonds,” which competes for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Set on the outskirts of the capital city of N’Djamena, “Lingui” is the story of a single mother, Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane), whose
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