Month: September 2023

Stories about nonverbal autistic teens rarely galvanize the public imagination. But when one such youth has made the transition in a few short years from having a limited ability to communicate to having co-written a symphony, people are going to take notice, and be touched. That’s the case with Jacob Rock, a 19-year-old from Eagle
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A predictably spectacular sunset spreads streaks of pink and orange across a northern Spanish late September sky, heralding the end of another packed edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, where at the closing gala, “The Rye Horn” the second feature from Spanish director Jaione Camborda has just been handed the Golden Shell, the festival’s
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Francis Ford Coppola is joining the Roman Empire TikTok trend by asking himself the viral question: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?” “How often do I think of Ancient Rome? Quite a lot, as the Roman Republic served as the example for my country America and its institutions, and was the inspiration
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Spoiler Alert: This interview contains spoilers for “Crown Vic,” Episode 5, Season 2 of “Power Book IV: Force,” now streaming on Starz. With the shocking deaths of four characters in the latest episode of “Power Book IV: Force,” the tides have turned for the Flynn family and the CBI organization. Under the new leadership of
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Spectacle is underrated. This is pretty much the antithesis of any accepted, traditional rock ‘n’ roll orthodoxy. It is also the natural human reaction to just about any or all of “U2:UV Live at Sphere Las Vegas,” the greatest-show-on-earth that opened Friday night in an enormous dome just off the Strip. The just-over-two-hour show marks
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A film based on Beyonce‘s smash hit Renaissance World Tour is in advanced talks to distribute directly to AMC Theatres, sources with knowledge of the project told Variety. Mega-agency CAA held preliminary talks with major studios and streamers two weeks ago, another source added, urging the players to be ready to bid on a project
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Guitarist Al Di Meola has announced his plan to resume touring in 2024 after suffering a heart attack during a performance in Romania on Wednesday. The musician posted a statement on Thursday addressing the incident: “I wanted to take a moment to express my deepest gratitude for the incredible outpouring of love and support that
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“This was not planned. I think the way you know is I walked in here covered with my child’s seaweed snack all over my sweatshirt.” Greta Lee is infectious and is so damn grateful this breakout moment is happening to her when she’s 40. When she comes in for her sit-down interview with Variety, she’s laidback
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There was one key question gripping the box office heading into this weekend: would audiences be PAWing, or would they be Sawing? In a crowded September capper with four new wide releases, Paramount’s “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” looks to come out on top. The animated feature is edging out Lionsgate’s horror entry “Saw X”
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Turkey’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, the country’s top international film event, has been canceled due political pressure following a storm of controversy prompted by the presence of an explosive documentary in the lineup. The doc, titled “Decree” and directed by Nejla Demirci, is about the plight of a doctor and a teacher who were
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Zurich Avenue, headed by producers and former Zurich Film Festival execs Karl Spoerri and Viviana Vezzani, has quickly amassed an impressive slate of projects since launching last year, including Annette Bening starrer “Nyad.” Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s film, which chronicles the attempt by 64-year-old swimmer Diana Nyad to swim from Cuba to Florida,
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It might officially be fall, but Netflix had a “Strong Black Summer.” At least, that was the name of the streamer’s warm-weather months campaign promoting a string of TV, film and documentary projects fronted by Black talent. Among the hot titles were Gabrielle Union’s rom-com “The Perfect Find,” the John Boyega-starring conspiratorial caper “They Cloned
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Bill Maher returned to the airwaves with HBO’s “Real Time” for the first time since the strike with only mild praise for the Writers Guild of America for settling the five-month strike. Season 21 of “Real Tiime with Bill Maher” became the first of TV’s prominent late-night talk shows to return to the airwaves after
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The show must go on! New York Film Festival opened its 61st edition with “May December” as planned, despite a massive rainstorm that’s left streets and subways flooded across the five boroughs. “Thank you all for braving the weather and making it here tonight,” director Todd Haynes told the mostly full theater. “We didn’t know
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The comedy community is just grateful to be nominated. Top professional funny people have weighed in on this week’s news that the annual Golden Globe awards have introduced two new categories, one of which will honor best performance in stand-up comedy on television. Comedy is a notoriously tough sell when it comes to awards season,
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ABC‘s “The Golden Bachelor” seems to have reenergized “The Bachelor” audience as the show opened to solid ratings on Thursday night, delivering the strongest debut performance from a “Bachelor” franchise series since 2021. Produced by Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in conjunction with ABC, the more mature take on the dating show debuted to an audience
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Along with the core cast of the “Star Wars” Disney+ series “Ahsoka” — Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and the loyal droid Huyang (David Tennant) — the show’s creator and sole writer, Dave Filoni, has welcomed a regular procession of legacy “Star Wars” characters from the movies
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The Golden Globes have plenty of movies to sift through and consider for its upcoming 81st annual awards ceremony. With “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Maestro” on the drama side, and “The Color Purple” and “Poor Things” in comedy, alongside the buzzy summer double-feature “Barbenheimer,” a star-studded event is surely awaiting viewers. The Globes
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ABC has canceled the comedy series “Home Economics” after three seasons, Variety has learned. In addition, the new series “High Potential” starring Kaitlin Olson is now slated to debut in fall 2024. “Home Economics” aired its third season finale in January of this year, which will now serve as its series finale. The series was
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As costs spiral upward for production infrastructure, visual effects and good old fashioned star wattage, blockbuster budgets tend to be one of the closely guarded secrets in Hollywood. Yet in the weeks and months leading to the release of “The Creator,” due Sept. 29, cowriter and director Gareth Edwards has not stopped talking — if
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New State Pictures has joined forces with Curiosity Rights to secure the life rights of scientist Susan Solomon, who led pioneering research into the destruction of the ozone layer in the 1980s. The partners plan to produce a film that will place a spotlight on how the work undertaken by Solomon and her team led
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