Month: November 2021

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched the seventh episode of “Succession” Season 3, titled “Too Much Birthday.” An easy, comically tall target for jokes at his expense, Greg doesn’t get to celebrate many victories in “Succession,” but at Kendall’s 40th birthday party, he finally notches a win and asks out Comfry,
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Marcel van Brakel and Mark Meeuwenoord, winners of IDFA’s Special Jury Award for Creative Technology for their project “Symbiosis,” are already working on an augmented reality (AR) spin-off app, “Future Botanica,” which will allow the audience to co-create new lifeforms and talk about ecosystems. “Virtual reality can be so exclusive, especially with a project like
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The first edition of ONSeries Lisboa (Nov. 25-26) brought streaming platforms, international broadcasters and co-producers to Lisbon for a two-day event that showcased Portugal’s new TV series aimed at the international market. Nuno Artur Silva, Portugal’s secretary of state for cinema, audiovisual and the media emphasized the economic potential of the country’s audiovisual sector and
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Over the course of a celebrated 40-year career, veteran Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen has worked on critically acclaimed films including Pirjo Honkasalo’s “The 3 Rooms of Melancholia” and Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence.” One of the key takeaways from those collaborations, which he explores in his new
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Virgil Abloh, founder of the fashion company Off-White and menswear artistic director at Louis Vuitton, died on Sunday following a two-year private battle with cardiac angiosarcoma, a “rare, aggressive form of cancer.” He was 41. Abloh’s death was first confirmed by his labels over social media. “We are all shocked after this terrible news. Virgil
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The Gotham Awards will be the first awards body on the independent circuit to choose its winners for the year on Monday. On the film side, two Netflix features lead the tally, both from debut women filmmakers — Rebecca Hall’s “Passing” and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter.” There isn’t always an obvious blueprint to predicting
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Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” has secured the best pandemic-era debut at the independent box office. With speciality offerings like “Licorice Pizza,” the key metric is per-theater-average rather than overall box office tally since its playing in very few locations. From only four theaters in the country — two in New York and two in
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Amsterdam’s documentary festival IDFA’s 34th edition wrapped on Sunday as an in-person event, having weathered the partial lockdown in the Netherlands. Variety speaks to artistic director Orwa Nyrabia about this year’s edition. He says of documentary filmmakers: “I prefer to spend my life with this bunch. These people are beautiful, they are kind, accessible and
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Disney has reclaimed its rightful place at the top of Thanksgiving box office charts. “Encanto,” the studio’s new animated musical fable, collected $40 million since Wednesday, a robust tally at a time when family audiences haven’t been eager to return to cinemas. It’s become holiday tradition for Disney to release a family friendly movie around
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Italian producer Domenico Procacci, after shepherding more than 100 movies and several TV series, including Netflix’s upcoming Elena Ferrante adaptation “The Lying Life of Adults,” via his Fandango shingle, is debuting as a director with six-part documentary series “The Team.” Variety speaks to Procacci exclusively about what prompted him to go behind the camera for
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A close-quarters study of the daily trials of living with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease — co-directed by the patient’s son with equal parts adoration and despairing frustration — “Eat Your Catfish” is a documentary every bit as tough-minded as its title is unexpectedly playful. That, as it turns out, is not a disconnect when
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A svelte, slinky figure in spotted silvery blond, the snow leopard is one of the great haughty glamazons of the animal kingdom — a status suitably acknowledged in the English-language title of “The Velvet Queen,” French docmaker Marie Amiguet’s lovely, unexpected screen ode to the little-seen feline. (The original French title is the rather more
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When “Nash Bridges” came to an end in 2001, series star Don Johnson felt like they “didn’t get a chance to finish the story.” The detective drama had been on the air for six seasons, but “political circumstances” between producer Paramount Network Television and network CBS kept it from getting renewed, the actor recalls. (Paramount
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One of three Arabic-language films in the Cairo Film Festival international competition, the feminist dramedy “Daughters of Abdul-Rahman” shows how many Jordanian women put the traditional expectations of their patriarchal society ahead of their own desires and the resulting collateral damage. After world premiering in Egypt, the debut feature of director-writer-producer Zaid Abu Hamdan will
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