The crowds outside the historic Sale Grande theater were chanting the name of an American superstar in Italy like it was the Oscars. On Friday night, Warner Bros. premiered “Dune” at the 78th annual Venice Film Festival, with a star-studded movie premiere that brought to mind how Hollywood used to throw a party in the
Month: September 2021
As a chef, Julia Child made no claims for herself as an innovator: Her mission was not to create new recipes, but to interpret and archive age-old French ones in ways the average American home cook could tackle without fear. Given her dual priorities of traditionalism and accessibility, then, she might well have appreciated “Julia,”
“You’re a Terminator,” Tokyo teen Ani (Miku Patricia Martineau) gapes to Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) after witnessing the bloodshed her kidnapper has brought down on two dozen yakuza now lying shot, stabbed, sizzled on a yakitori grill and very, very dead. Kate, the titular antihero of director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s vicious vengeance flick, is a grown-up
Alex Borstein, Yvette Nicole Brown, Justin Hartley, Padma Lakshmi, Mj Rodriguez and Brittany Snow have been named the 2021 honorees for the Creative Coalition’s 7th annual Television Humanitarian Awards. The event, to be held in-person on Saturday, Sept. 18 at the private residence of Academy Award-nominated producer Lawrence Bender, celebrates the charitable work of honorees
Award-winning Slovak documaker Peter Kerekes (“66 Seasons,” “Cooking History,” “Velvet Terrorists”) dips a toe in the fiction world with his rigorously researched Venice Horizons competitor “107 Mothers,” set inside a women’s prison in Ukraine. Made over five years and 86 shooting days, it reveals a cloistered world populated only by women: inmates, nurses and wardens,
The Rockaway Film Festival in Queens, N.Y. has announced its 2021 lineup for the Sept. 12-19 edition. Coinciding with the opening of a new outdoor theater, the first in Rockaway in over 20 years, the festival will play 12 feature films and 38 short films with a focus on highlighting filmmakers from the Rockaway Peninsula
It’s a bad day for everyone who only discovered “Dawson’s Creek” in recent years and had gotten married to the idea that Jann Arden’s “Run Like Mad” was the theme song for the 1998-2003 teen television series. For all of the show’s other fans, apart from that tiny, tiny sliver, it’s a good day, as
Amidst all the horrors of a war-torn decade that she would largely like to forget, one memory stands out for Kosovar filmmaker Kaltrina Krasniqi: the day her mother surprised the family with a VHS player. “We were so, so excited,” she tells Variety. “We really didn’t believe until she opened it that it was true.”
Denis Villeneuve’s science fiction masterclass “Dune” is looking like a prime candidate to follow movies like “Life of Pi,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Gravity” that amassed numerous nominations in the technical achievements categories. Though it’s early days for the awards season, the epic could be a contender in nearly every technical category: production design
Coming out the gate with his most personal and career topping achievement as a writer and director, Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” is a touching and moving portrait of childhood and family and the first movie I’ve seen this year that can be a best picture winner. Introducing the film with co-star Jamie Dornan, Branagh spoke about
The work of “Dune” costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan has caught the attention of fashion writers as well as film fans. It was an epic undertaking for the veteran costume designers. “Well, we’ve worked together many times and when this came up — when it was so large — she said, ‘would you collaborate on this with me?’ And I said, ‘of course.’ I adore
The first reviews for Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” are in, and the reactions are split. Ravenous sci-fi fanatics waited with bated breath as cast members Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem walked down the Venice Film Festival red carpet before the first-ever screening on Friday. After being delayed for more
Broadway took its next step toward reopening Thursday night, carefully and deliberately on the backs of two shows telling stories of fear and resilience. “Hadestown,” the 2019 Tony-winning best musical, and “Waitress,” returning again for a revival engagement starring Sara Bareilles, welcomed audiences into their theaters for the first time in nearly 18 months —
HBO Max has ordered a pilot for a potential “Dead Boy Detectives” series, Variety has learned exclusively from sources. Based on the DC Comics characters created by Neil Gaiman, the one-hour series would follow the Dead Boy Detectives — Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine — who decided not to enter the afterlife in order to
The past year and a half has been tumultuous for the television industry and world at large: The global COVID-19 pandemic caused production shutdowns that shifted series orders and release dates. Additionally, social unrest around the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others last summer, as well as the Jan. 6 riot at the
Maura Tierney is known for a slew of great television dramas that run the gamut from medical (“ER”) to complicated marriages (“The Affair”). But her two most recent series took on the timely topic of justice, and more specifically how far one might go to save a loved one from having to pay for his
Kaan Müjdeci’s “Hamlet” reskins Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy in a modern retelling of family betrayal and horse carriages. When Kedir Kesmeci murders his brother in secret, his niece Hazar must find the courage to expose him. Indeed her sorrows “come not single spies,” and there on the island of Büyükada, off the coast of Istanbul, she
Erik Barmack’s Wild Sheep Content, the new L.A.-based company of the former Netflix VP, has boarded “Cromosoma 21,” an original crime mystery series created and directed by Chile’s Matías Venables Brito which adds major twists to a classic murder witness narrative. Executive produced by Nico Martínez Bergen, Barmack and Venables, and shooting in Chile from
The Showtime anthology “Super Pumped,” the first season of which will chart the rise of Uber, has cast Bridget Gao-Hollitt, Variety has learned exclusively. Gao-Hollitt joins previously announced cast members Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kyle Chandler, Kerry Bishé, Babak Tafti, Mousa Hussein Kraish, Jon Bass, and Hank Azaria. Planned as anthology, the first season of “Super Pumped” is
Venice Film Festival contender “Leave No Traces” will represent Poland at next year’s Academy Awards. A statement from New Europe Film Sales, handling the film’s sale, said, “We are happy to announce that Jan P. Matuszyński’s “Leave No Traces,” premiering in Venice Competition next week has just been selected as Poland’s Oscars entry for Best
The French box office, hampered by an increasingly rigorous series of COVID health protocols, took a plunge in recent months, resulting in week-to-week falls of up to 41%. But for all their caveats, industry analysts talk about the current landscape in tones of cautious optimism. In France, a growing number of commercial spaces are prohibited
In “Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s droolingly anticipated, eye-bogglingly vast adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 cult sci-fi novel, the characters fly around in airplanes that have three sets of wings, all of which flap very fast. The planes look like insects, and the film suggests that’s one way that a flying machine, in another planetary sphere, might
Thanks in part to his work with auteurs Benoit Jacquot, Claire Denis and Stéphane Brizé, Vincent Lindon had long become something of a festival-world habitué, a sturdy and reliable fixture on the international circuit. But even with well over two decades’ red carpet experience, nothing could quite prepare the French actor for what he cheekily
Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana? You better believe it. Judging by the rapturous response at the premiere of “Spencer” at the Venice Film Festival on Friday afternoon, the 31-year-old actor has pulled off one of the most dazzling onscreen transformations of the year. As the closing credits of the dramatic film, which bills itself as
Asked for the umpteenth time why she’s famous for a new Hulu docuseries about her life, 16 year-old Charli D’Amelio rolls her eyes. She’s thought about this question a lot, but still doesn’t have a great answer for her outsized TikTok notoriety. Maybe, she suggests, it was the shared boredom of COVID-19 quarantine, during which
System of a Down released “Toxicity,” its second studio album, back on September 4, 2001, unleashing onto the world a unique concoction of hard rock with Armenian folk influences and Middle Eastern melodies. A relentless assault of crushing drop tuned guitar and bass riffs, intricate and powerful drumming with dynamic vocals ranging from frantic guttural
ACQUISITION Abacus Media Rights (AMR) has picked up global distribution rights to BBC Two’s Joan Collins documentary, produced by Salon Pictures and commissioned by Mark Bell at BBC Arts. Promising to tell the life story of the Hollywood actor from her point of view, the 90-minute documentary will be narrated by Collins herself. Clare Beavan
Peter Dinklage’s musical interpretation of the “friend zone” took center stage at the Telluride Film Festival for the world premiere of “Cyrano,” and a leading Oscar contender for best actor appeared to emerge. The premiere started with an actor’s tribute to Dinklage, which highlighted notable performances such as his Emmy-winning role in HBO’s “Game of
BTS are set to appear on a special episode of YouTube Originals’ weekly music series “Released” on Thursday, September 9 at 11:45 PM ET, which will lead directly into the premiere of “BTS ‘Permission to Dance’ MV (Shorts Challenge ver.)” on September 10 at Midnight ET. The band will be joined by Coldplay frontman, Chris
Drake made good on his promise to drop his new album — belated though it was — and he smack-talked Kanye hard. “Certified Lover Boy” was unveiled as promised — at midnight — 9 months after Drake had planned to release it. Drizzy doesn’t mention Ye by name, but no need to … he’s clearly
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