Month: August 2023

Celebrated Malaysian-Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang sat down with Variety on the eve of receiving the Locarno Film Festival Career Award. The award is only the latest in a series of prizes from major European festivals the art-house maverick has received – from the 1994 Golden Lion from Venice for “Vive L’Amour” to the Silver Bear
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LOCARNO — Spain’s Vertigo Films has boarded “All the World Drops Dead,” committing to co-produce the next scarefest from Austrian Kevin Kopacka, director of 2021’s noteworthy “Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes.” Set up at Germany’s Manderley Films, which oversaw VFX on “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “All the World Drops Dead” has been brought
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As the title may suggest, Nelson Yeo’s Locarno title “Dreaming & Dying” is driven by multiple transgressions and surprises. Identities, between humans, fish, and frogs, fluctuate and morph. Dreams and nightmares come together – to blend harmoniously or combust.  Singapore’s landscape proves a fertile ground for plumbing the depths of fantasies and repressed desires, which is just
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Disney+ Hotstar India’s Syria-set thriller series “The Freelancer” is in the works. Based on the bestselling 2017 book “A Ticket to Syria” by Shirish Thorat, the series is from showrunner Neeraj Pandey (Disney+ Hotstar’s Special Ops franchise), produced by Friday Storytellers and directed by Bhav Dhulia (Netflix’s “Khakee: The Bihar Chapter”). Pandey said: “’The Freelancer’
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While “Love in Taipei” promises transportive and transformative escapades with its adaptation of Abigail Hing Wen’s novel “Loveboat, Taipei,” the story’s core strengths are undervalued in the translation from book to screen. This Paramount Plus feature, centered on a young woman embarking on a life-changing overseas journey, only pays lip service to the struggle of
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Ryu Seung-wan’s female-led crime caper “Smugglers” topped the South Korean box office for a second weekend, ahead of new release title “Ransomed.” “Smugglers” enjoyed a strong hold in its second weekend of release and commanded 42% market share. It delivered $7.09 million, a drop of only 20% on its opening weekend, giving a 12-day cumulative
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The new collaborative album by Vince Gill and instrumentalist Paul Franklin is not a vocal duets record. But for anyone who believes that there’s something about the steel guitar that’s uncannily akin to the moan of the human voice, in spirit if not sound, maybe it’s close enough. Ten years ago, the country star and
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Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences
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“The Vanishing Soldier” is a coming of age story, as breathless as its protagonist: the kind of film that will make cinephiles of seventeen-year-olds. Which is one of the reasons that Dani Rosenberg, the film’s 43-year-old director, is delighted to be in Locarno, where the film, sold by Intramovies, is screening in main competition, and
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“Meg 2: The Trench,” the second Jason Statham-led shark thriller, is swimming to $112 million in its international box office debut, bringing its global total to $142 million. It’s a strong start for the $130 million-budgeted film, which was co-financed by Warner Bros. and China Media Capital. Like the original, 2018’s “The Meg,” which earned
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SPOILER ALERT: This contains spoilers from “Shortcomings,” now in theaters. Sherry Cola calls working with Randall Park in his directorial debut, “Shortcomings,” a full circle moment. Not only has she been watching the actor-director’s work for years, encountering him at parties, and having mutual acquaintances, but she had always wanted to be on MTV’s “Wild ‘N Out,’
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Basil Da Cunha’s third feature, “Manga d’Terra,” bowed in Locarno’s main Competition on Friday, a strand that highlights contemporary cinema and innovative global debuts from established and emerging cineasts. His debut, “After the Night,” played the Cannes Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight in 2013, while his follow-up, “The End of the World,” screened in Locarno’s main competition
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“Barbie” is saying “hiya” to the billion-dollar club. Greta Gerwig’s pink-coated fantasy comedy has surpassed $1 billion at the global box office, including $459 million in North America and $572 million internationally. This makes Gerwig the first-ever solo female filmmaker with a billion-dollar film. Three other billion-dollar blockbusters were co-directed by women, including “Frozen” ($1.3
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In the vast tapestry of Oscar history, specific years define instants of talents converging to produce a constellation of extraordinary performances. 1993 was one such epoch when the best supporting actor lineup at the 66th Academy Awards ceremony showcased an assembly of unparalleled depth. The roster included Leonardo DiCaprio for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” Ralph
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It was a good day for female filmmakers – and documentaries – at Locarno Pro, with “Mother Vera” by Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson winning the Creativity Media First Look Award on Sunday at Locarno’s pix-in-post competition, dedicated this year to the U.K. Dedicated to a young Orthodox nun, “Mother Vera” shows her turbulent past
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“Barbie” towered over the box office for the third consecutive weekend, taking down newcomers “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and “Meg 2: The Trench.” Grega Gerwig’s fantasy comedy added a remarkable $52 million in its third weekend of release, a decline of just 43% from its prior frame. “Barbie” has generated $459 million in
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LOCARNO — Costa Rica’s Juli Films has boarded Nicaraguan Gloria Carrión’s “Pantasma,” building production partner backing for one of the most ambitious titles at a talent packed Locarno’s Open Doors Projects Hub. A stop motion doc-feature, the film will narrate how the Sandinista-Contra War of 1982-1989 in Nicaragua forced Félix, a 17-year-old revolutionary, to become
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Lesli Linka Glatter has been elected to a second term as president of the Directors Guild of America. The veteran helmer known for her work on “Homeland,” “Mad Men” and numerous other TV series, was re-elected during the DGA’s biennial national convention held Saturday at the DGA Theatre in Los Angeles. The guild reported that
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Ben Kingsley, who likes to go to extremes, has played  his share of frowningly overcivilized repressed geeks and also his share of seething walking-id maniacs. But for all of Kingsley’s dexterous light-and-dark range, it’s still rare to see him take on a character as painfully mild as Milton, the small-town codger he plays in “Jules.”
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Here’s everything you need to know before seeing ‘Gran Turismo’. ► Buy Tickets for Gran Turismo: https://www.fandango.com/gran-turismo-based-on-a-true-story-2023-231714/movie-overview?cmp=Trailers_YouTube_Desc ► Learn more about Gran Turismo: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gran_turismo_the_movie?cmp=Trailers_YouTube_Desc Subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to be notified of all the hottest trailers: http://bit.ly/2CNniBy ► Shop Rotten Tomatoes: http://bit.ly/3KvCU1M Music: Courtesy of Extreme Music Watch More: ►
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A star, or several, are born, perhaps. Playing early as part of Locarno’s Open Doors Screenings, framing new features and shorts from Latin America and the Caribbean, “Rimana Wasi: Home of Stories” received a rapturous reception, establishing directors Ximena Málaga Sabogal, Piotr Turlej as talents to track. “Angelo,” and “La Distancia Del Tiempo” have good word
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“The Incredible Hulk” director Louis Leterrier has revealed there were plans for a potential sequel to the 2008 superhero movie. “Yeah there was, like, a whole sequel,” Leterrier said in an interview with Comicbook.com, adding that the scrapped film would have featured variations of the Hulk. “There was, like, Grey Hulk, Red Hulks — there
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