Month: September 2021

Ana Lily Amirpour doesn’t want you to call her movies “female-led.” It’s true that all of them to date have been centered around strong female protagonists, including her Venice competition title “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” but they’re much more than that, she says. The Iranian-American director recalls early reports describing her next project,
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Nicholas Tse, star of the recent hit film “Raging Fire,” says he has applied to renounce his Canadian citizenship and will embrace the People’s Republic of China instead. The move comes as Chinese authorities mount crackdowns on the entertainment industry and on dual citizenship. The singer-actor-celebrity chef made the announcement during an interview on Sunday
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Prior to the debut of Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek called its old-school theatrical release an “interesting experiment.” The “experiment” in question: Would enough people show up to their local multiplex to see the latest Marvel movie to justify keeping the $200 million-budgeted film in theaters without
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Beyond the delta variant’s uptick and last week’s visitation of Hurricane Ida, Jay-Z’s annual Made in America music festival in Philadelphia — canceled in 2020, as were most music festivals, due to COVID-19 — could have been a wash. Bonnaroo in Tennessee certainly felt the water-logged wrath of Ida, and ceased plans for its 2021
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Palatin Media, European Star Cinema and Rocket Rights have teamed up on a new innovative drama series, “The Capelli Code,” which uses state-of-the-art VFX technology to better create localized versions. The technology means the series contains “built-in elements” enabling localized versions to use local stars at an affordable price. Swiss-based European Star Cinema, a production
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From dragon scales to the five elements of Chinese philosophy, production designer Sue Chan worked to incorporate numerous element into the set details of Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” From ancient worlds to San Francisco and a magical village protected by dragons, Chan and her team were faced with the mammoth
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Audiences on the Lido may be forgiven for thinking they’ve seen the Ukrainian entry in the competition, “Reflection,” before in Venice. Director Valentyn Vasyanovych’s somber study of the toll in the war against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine is shot in his trademark series of static, single-frame shots, like “Atlantis” – which won the Venice
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Amid the dramas and controversies spawned by the long-awaited release of Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” album, the biggest may have been the surprising presence of a songwriting credit on the song “TSU” for fallen R&B superstar R. Kelly, who is currently on trial for sex trafficking and racketeering charges amid allegations of sexual abuse against
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“The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains” has just opened at the Vogue Multicultural Museum, making its first U.S. stop on an international tour in the heart of Hollywood. Down on the corner, and in surrounding blocks, you can find tourist shops selling “Dark Side of the Moon” T-shirts (mostly unlicensed, probably) — but it’s
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British wunderkind Phoebe Waller-Bridge has exited Amazon’s “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” series. Multiple sources confirmed to Variety that Waller-Bridge, best known for her indie TV hit “Fleabag,” has left the project due to creative differences with fellow star and executive producer Donald Glover. According to those close to the project, Waller-Bridge’s departure is amicable and
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The previously postponed Beijing International Film Festival is to make a 2021 comeback and will be held later this month in the Chinese capital. The festival is normally held in late April, but organizers took the precautionary move of shifting it to August this year. They were only days out from the opening night when
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Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, who is at the Venice Film Festival gap financing market with the documentary “Kabul Melody,” says the lives of more than 150 students of Kabul’s National Institute of Music (ANIM) are at risk after armed Taliban guards shuttered the school and smashed all the musical instruments inside. A few days after
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This year’s seventh edition of the Ibero-American Platino Awards (Premios Platinos) will honor Mexican actor, director, producer and festival organizer Diego Luna with the Platino Award of Honor. An itinerant award show by design, this year’s Platinos will be held on Oct. 3 in Madrid. At just 41 years old, Luna will be the youngest
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New features by some of the most prominent filmmakers from the Asia-Pacific region including The Philippines’ Brillante Mendoza, Bangladesh’s Mostofa Sarwar Farooki and Japan’s Ogigami Naoko are among the seven titles competing for the Kim Jiseok Award at the upcoming 26th Busan International Film Festival (Oct. 6-16, 2021). Works by Royston Tan from Singapore, China’s
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When it comes to exploring relationships, Ingmar Begman’s iconic television series-turned-movie “Scenes from a Marriage” is still as relevant today as it was when it first aired almost fifty years ago. Which is why, when showrunner Hagai Levi (“In Treatment,” “The Affair”) was first approached about re-making the series, which plays out of competition at
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