Month: March 2022

Everybody knows the name of the first man to step foot on the moon, but how many have heard the story of the kid who walked there before him? Richard Linklater’s “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” reflects one of the director’s childhood fantasies, informed by growing up in South Texas, a stone’s throw

Oscar winner Halle Berry made a special appearance at Sunday’s Critics Choice Awards to accept the SeeHer award, a prize that recognizes a woman who pushes boundaries and defies stereotypes. Berry’s career — which spans more than 30 years as an actor, producer and now director — easily fits that bill. Berry was presented the

Celebrity comebacks don’t often go exactly as planned, but it helps when the planner is someone with as much of a knack for military precision and as broad a sense of the big cultural picture as a Rick Rubin or a Brandi Carlile. Rubin, of course, built Johnny Cash from a casino-playing relic back into

Mainland China’s theatrical box office slipped to its lowest weekend total of the year as the market suffered a combination of rising COVID cases and a lack of new releases. Nationwide box office between Friday and Sunday amounted to just $19.2 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. It was the fifth weekend of

This year, all five Oscar nominees in the sound category have also scored Motion Picture Sound Editors nominations at the 69th annual Golden Reel Awards. For the second year in a row, the Oscar category combines sound editing and sound mixing. The MPSE Golden Reel Awards, to be held as a virtual global ceremony March

William Hurt, who died Sunday at 71, had a look and an aura that appeared, at first, to fit all too snugly into Hollywood’s conception of what a movie star should be. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a silky shock of wheat-colored hair, his handsome features set off by a cleft chin and a faraway gaze,

Acclaimed Indian filmmaker Rajesh S. Jala, winner of awards at the Montreal and Sao Paolo film festivals for 2008 documentary “Children of the Pyre,” has tackled a universally resonant subject with his latest film “The Spark” (“Chingari”). In the film, a filmmaker on assignment follows a crematorium worker and an old woman in the ancient

Now completed, “The Silence of Smoke” has been added to the FilMart sales lineup of Hong Kong studio Media Asia. The family drama film is directed by Takita Yojiro, who won the best foreign-language film Oscar in 2008/9 with “Departures.” The film was first teased by Media Asia at an event at the market in

Organizers of Hong Kong FilMart, normally Asia’s biggest film and TV rights market, are putting on a brave face despite their prestige event being forced into an online-only format for the third time in a row. The city’s borders are closed to travelers from several key countries and its onerous quarantine-on-arrival conditions show no sign

“Inu-Oh,” the acclaimed Japanese animation that debuted in Venice and Toronto last year, has been sold widely by Fortissimo Films and Asmik Ace. Amsterdam and Beijing based Fortissimo is collaborating with Tokyo-based Asmik Ace on two titles, “Inu-oh” by Yuasa Masaaki and “Missing” by Katayama Shinzo, a former assistant director to “Parasite” director Bong Joon

As the 27th annual Critics Choice Awards celebrated the best in television and film, Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” and “Ted Lasso” led the night’s winners with four trophies apiece. “Succession” took home three awards. Hosted by Taye Diggs and Nicole Byer, the 2022 ceremony broadcast live on the CW and TBS, as

As the crow flies, only about 30 miles separate the port towns of Dover and Calais — a distance that, in many parts of the world, wouldn’t span any greater culture shift than a slight tweak in accent. When those miles are filled with the English Channel, however, opposite coastlines represent opposite worlds, where everything

“Dune” was the big winner at the 2022 BAFTAs with five wins in the craft categories. Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” won the coveted best film BAFTA and best director. However, Campion could not be present at the awards, and her lead Benedict Cumberbatch collected the award on her behalf. Another notable absentee

Rebel Wilson, one of the BAFTA Awards’ most memorable presenters in past years, did not disappoint as its host. The “Pitch Perfect” actor stole the show on Sunday during the first BAFTA Awards to take place in-person since the organizations’s groundbreaking 2020 diversity review. Wilson presented the best director award at the ceremony in 2020

William Hurt, an acclaimed actor best known for his Oscar-winning performance in 1985’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and his work in “The Big Chill” and “Body Heat,” died Sunday of natural causes. He was 71 years old. Hurt’s death was confirmed to Variety by his friend, Gerry Byrne. Hurt was nominated for four Oscars over

Rachel Zegler‘s rise from high school student to “West Side Story” star is well known. But the film’s casting director Cindy Tolan revealed the search that went into finding Ariana DeBose and David Alvarez as Anita and Bernardo, with DeBose initially declining a chance to audition and Alvarez, who had retired from acting, uncontactable. Speaking

Brittany Snow announced that Scott Mescudi, better known by his stage name Kid Cudi, has been cast in her feature directorial debut “September 17th.” In an interview with Variety about A24’s “X,” the horror film that Cudi and Snow star in together, the two shared their excitement about continuing to work together. “I can’t really

“The Batman” is nearing a significant box office milestone. The newest superhero adventure, starring Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader, has generated $463 million globally, putting the Warner Bros. film within striking distance of $500 million, an important benchmark given its $200 million price tag. In non-COVID times, half-a-billion dollars would be an expected and

BAFTA award winners Tom Cross and Elliot Graham have decried the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ decision to cut eight different Oscar categories, including film editing, from the live telecast. Although “No Time to Die” is not nominated for best film editing at the Oscars, the duo said they were unhappy with the

The Human Rights Campaign sure knows how to pick a month to throw a party, it was generally agreed by everyone attending the org’s annual L.A. dinner Saturday night, where the evening’s most invoked topics were veritably ripped out of the most topical mainstream media headlines. Honoree Brandi Carlile, featured speaker Brian Michael Smith and

Scoring tickets to one of the first BTS concerts in three years may be next-to-impossible, but plenty of fans of the global K-pop group were able to catch the group’s Seoul-set show at their local cinema. In a rare, one-night-only event, HYBE and Trafalgar Releasing brought the concert to movie theaters across the country to

Everybody has to start somewhere. Cate Blanchett — long before her two Oscars and starring roles in film, TV and on stage — had an oddball beginning in showbiz. On March 28, 1994, Variety mentioned “Police Rescue,” a big-screen version of the hit Aussie TV series, in which she appeared. It’s sometimes listed as her

Robert Pattinson’s moody superhero adventure “The Batman” prevailed at the box office again. The film earned $66 million in its second weekend of release, propelling its domestic tally to a robust $238.5 million. After only 10 days on the big screen, “The Batman” ranks as the highest-grossing movie of 2022, as well as the second-highest

Sony’s hit action adventure “Uncharted” has been banned in Vietnam over the film’s inclusion of a map that depicts China’s contested territorial claims in Southeast Asia. The film, which stars Tom Holland, Mark Walhberg and Antonio Banderas was to have arrived in Vietnamese cinemas from March 18. Prior to this weekend, the film had grossed

Documentaries about the conflict in Ukraine, the Cuban migrant situation and the Palestinian refugee crisis were among top winners at MiradasDoc, Spain’s foremost documentary film festival which wrapped its 15th edition on March 12.  Based in Tenerife, Canary Islands, the festival was an in-person event running March 4-12, while its market (March 8-11) remained virtual