Month: February 2023

Sarah Michelle Gellar confirmed during a recent visit on “Watch What Happens Live” that 2002’s live-action “Scooby Doo” movie shot and cut a “steamy” gay kiss between her character, Daphne, and Linda Cardellini’s Velma. The film also starred Matthew Lillard as Shaggy and Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred. Gellar said all four actors signed onto
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Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison, his wife Tahereh Saeidi has announced in an Instagram post. Panani was released on Friday two days after announcing he was going on a hunger strike to protest still being incarcerated after Iran’s supreme court had overturned a six-year sentence issued against the
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Austin Butler will not sound like Elvis in “Dune: Part Two,” and he will soon not sound like Elvis in real life. The 31-year-old Oscar nominee announced on an episode of BBC One’s “Graham Norton Show” (Entertainment Weekly) that he is getting rid of the accent that has mystified, confused and enthralled social media for
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Cineflix Productions has promoted executive producer Jeff Vanderwal to VP, scripted, reporting into J.C. Mills, president and head of content. Based in Toronto, Vanderwal sources, develops and oversees the production of scripted series and movies for the division. Since moving to the scripted team in 2018, Vanderwal has developed and produced a range of projects
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Nino Rota’s soundtrack for Federico Fellini’s 1976 film “Il Casanova,” which is getting a re-release via Italian record label CAM Sugar, has been a favorite of Alexandre Desplat’s ever since the Oscar-winning French composer first listened to it at 15 years old. The magnificently staged film stars Donald Sutherland as the legendary 18th-century Venetian adventurer
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Taylor Lautner said on a recent episode of “The Toast” podcast that his relationship with Robert Pattinson was “definitely” impacted by the rivalry between their “Twilight” characters, the vampire Edward Cullen (Pattinson) and the werewolf Jacob Black (Lautner). The “Twilight” fandom created a massive frenzy over the rivalry, with “Team Jacob” and “Team Edward” merchandise
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Director M. Night Shyamalan’s newest twisty thriller “Knock at the Cabin” is barging into its opening weekend with $1.45 million in previews at the domestic box office. The previews came from from 3,000 domestic theaters, and the film will expand to 3,643 locations on Friday. Shyamalan’s most recent movie, 2021’s “Old,” opened slightly higher with $1.5 million
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Hear ye, hear ye! The queen has returned—Queen Bey, that is. Beyoncé unveiled her Renaissance World Tour yesterday with dates already confirmed for the United States and parts of Europe. The show will include hits from her latest release, Renaissance, which includes chart-topping hits like “Cuff It” and “Break My Soul.” The announcement was made
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The theatrical market across the Nordics recovered in 2022 without reaching pre-pandemic levels, driven predominantly by U.S. fare, such as “Top Gun: Maverick,” the biggest hit in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, “Minions: The Rise of Gru” No 1 in Iceland, and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” No 1 in Norway.  As always Danish movies secured the
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“1923” has lassoed a second season at Paramount+. Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” prequel stars Harrison Ford as Dutton patriarch Jacob and Helen Mirren as his Irish-born wife Cara. The series follows their generation of the Dutton family as they face pandemics, drought and the end of the Prohibition era in 1920s Montana. “1923” proved to be
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Shortly before Christmas, the eminent British critic and broadcaster Matthew Sweet embarked on a sponsored, round-the-clock watch of a new DVD set of “Crossroads,” the dogged ITV soap that first ran between 1964 and 1988. The prevailing idea was that negotiating the boxset’s 700 episodes might be as arduous — perhaps even as deadly —
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India’s Reliance Entertainment, a producer on Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” has pacted with T-Series and Anubhav Sinha’s Benaras Mediaworks to distribute Sudhir Mishra’s “Afwaah,” Sinha’s “Bheed” and Hansal Mehta’s “Faraaz” internationally. First up is Mehta’s hostage drama “Faraaz,” starring Zahan Kapoor, Aditya Rawal, Juhi Babbar Soni, which releases Feb. 3. The film, which had its
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After exploring the tumults of French politics in “Baron Noir,” Oscar-nominated French-Lebanese filmmaker Ziad Doueiri (“The Insult,” “The Attack”) immerses audiences into the rough world of French Special Forces in Iraq in “Dark Hearts.” Ordered by Amazon Prime Video in France, “Dark Hearts” is set on the eve of the battle for Mosul in October
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Prominent U.S. producer Christina Wayne, who shepherded “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” has been appointed managing director of MBC Studios, the expanding production arm of top Middle East broadcaster MBC Group. Wayne will replace Peter Smith, the former president of NBCUniversal, who over the past four years has overseen a surge in the Saudi-owned broadcaster’s
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The Joburg Film Festival defiantly went ahead with a screening of Ousmane Sembène’s “Black Girl” on Thursday, refusing to bow to political pressure after South Africa’s Film and Publications Board (FPB) denied it permission to hold a public screening of the Senegalese director’s groundbreaking debut. In a decision that shocked festival organizers and many of
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Do Grammy voters go with their heads or their hearts? Do they pick by personal preference or strategically? Do they even know who the nominees are? To get inside the voting body’s mind, Variety spoke with five industry figures, on the condition of anonymity, to find out how Recording Academy members really made their decisions about the
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“” stars Alison Brie and Danny Pudi, who recently reunited for rom-com “Somebody I Used to Know,” are ready to get started on the sitcom’s much-anticipated film extension. At the “Somebody I Used to Know” premiere on Wednesday, Brie told Variety she hopes the film shoots this year. “I’m clearing that schedule,” Brie said. Pudi
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“The fortune you’re looking for is in another cookie,” reads one of the many custom fortune cookie messages featured in “Fremont,” a lovely, low-budget mood piece with a hypnotically deadpan temperament, which flew largely below the radar at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. While Iranian filmmaker Babak Jalali’s easygoing fable-like movie serves up such oracular
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