“Holy Spider” breakout Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Guy Nattiv are set to make history with “Tatami,” the first feature co-directed by an Iranian and an Israeli filmmaker. Premiering in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section, “Tatami” shows Iranian female judo fighter Leila (played by “The L Word: Generation Q” star Arienne Mandi) heading to the world
Month: September 2023
Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, whose laid-back, good-humored, often tropically-themed brand of country-laced pop spawned a lucrative one-man business empire, died Friday. He was 76. A cause of death was not immediately released. Buffett’s death was confirmed through a statement on his official website: “Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his
On the surface, it looks like any other teenage love story: Abel, an absent-minded high-school student in Budapest, hopelessly pines for his best friend, Erika, dreamily staring out the classroom window when the teacher calls his name. On the day of his final exam, he draws a blank: Rather than bury his head in his
The question of whether Hollywood stars will light up the Lido this week has roiled the film industry in the run-up to the Venice Film Festival. “Poor Things” lead actress Emma Stone was among the marquee names that were holding out for a SAG-AFTRA exemption allowing her to promote the Frankenstein-inspired period film from Oscar
“City of Wind” depicts a version of Mongolian everyday life that is both traditional and modern. Ulaanbaatar is shown as messy and sprawlingly urban in a fashion that will be familiar to millions of city dwellers in Asia — even if there are yurts in the front garden. Presented in Venice’s Horizons section, and then
Aya Films has snatched all U.K. and Ireland rights to the Dominican Republic’s “Ramona” from Paris-based film company Alief SAS ahead of its BFI London Film Fest premiere. The docu-fiction hybrid, which had its world premiere at the 2023 Berlinale’s Generation 14Plus sidebar, will have its U.S. West Coast premiere at the AFI Latin America
In the debut feature of Mexican filmmaker-siblings Mariana and Santiago Arriaga, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. Competing at the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar, the coming-of-age road movie “A Cielo Abierto” turns on two teen brothers who are bent on avenging the death of their father in a road accident. They are
Hong Kong-based, Mainland China-born auteur Yonfan has scandalized and enthralled Chinese-speaking parts of Asia in a career that has spanned fine-art photography, filmmaking and journalism. Further afield, he has become a regular on the Lido. His 1995 feature “Bugis Street,” which has been restored and is screening in the Venice Classics section, achieved notoriety at
In 2021, Hamaguchi Ryusuke won truckloads of awards and nearly universal critical acclaim for his three-hour drama “Drive My Car,” including three prizes at Cannes and a best picture Academy Award nomination, the first ever for a Japanese film. (That Oscar went elsewhere, but “Drive My Car” was named best international feature film.) Instead of
“Yellowstone” star Kevin Costner is threatening to sue the show’s producers over money he believes he’s still owed from the series. The actor spoke publicly on Friday for the first time about his falling out with the hit Paramount Network series, while on the stand in a Santa Barbara courtroom. Costner discussed the “Yellowstone” acrimony
Flannery O’Connor saw folks in a way few writers did. She saw through them, past their petty prejudices and hollow pieties, to the less civilized selves they so desperately tried to keep under wraps. But it wasn’t just O’Connor’s X-ray vision that made the Georgia-born author such an uncanny reporter on the human condition. She
In “Nyad,” the titular character is entitled, mean, self-centered and treats people around her terribly… and she’s our hero? Supporting actors Jodie Foster and Rhys Ifans manage to keep the film moving along, but the main subject, played passionately by Annette Bening, is one who is difficult to connect with and root for in this
It’s almost cosmic, the way kids start out as nothing more than a twinkle in their mother’s eye. Then they’re born into heavenly little bodies, orbiting the adults who made them like tiny moons, until such time that they overcome their parents’ gravitational pull. So it is with “Janet Planet,” one of those intensely personal
There’s an unintentionally surreal moment in “Food Inc. 2.” Eric Schlosser, the journalist who wrote “Fast Food Nation,” is talking about how the rise of our corporatized, centralized, industrialized food system stifles the very kind of competition that could pose a challenge to it. He reaches back, with a level-headed liberal boomer nostalgia comparable to
Netflix’s live-action take on Eiichiro Oda’s “One Piece” debuted Aug. 31, bringing fans of Oda’s manga into the world of Luffy’s (Iñaki Godoy) exotic pirate adventures in an unprecedented way. As Luffy and his fellow Straw Hat nomads set sail in search of the One Piece treasure, the real-life cast brings Oda’s tales to life
How much longer will the Oscars wait? That is, wait to embrace the quality and sheer brilliance of documentary filmmaking in a significant way, meaning nominating one in the best picture category? Matthew Heineman’s deeply moving “American Symphony,” which follows Oscar and Grammy-winning composer Jon Batiste as he prepares for his performance at Carnegie Hall,
With one strike already underway, SAG-AFTRA announced Friday that it will seek authorization for a second strike against the major video game companies. The union said that talks on a new video game contract have reached a “stalemate,” and that the strike authorization vote is needed as leverage to win wage increases and protection from
Fans waiting for the kick-off to Electric Zoo — the three-day New York City-based EDM festival — were left disappointed on Friday when organizers announced its first-day festivities had to be called off. On Friday morning, hours before the festival gates were set to open, Electric Zoo updated its official website with a statement that
“How I Met Your Father” has been canceled after two seasons at Hulu, Variety has confirmed. The Hilary Duff-led “How I Met Your Mother” spinoff concluded its second (and now final) season July 11 without revealing who Duff’s character, Sophie, ended up having a child with. The show debuted in January 2022 and aired 30
The timeline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has changed again. Marvel Studios has rescheduled several of its Disney+ shows as the company continues to feel the impact of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. The affected shows, in chronological order of release, are: Season 2 of “What If…?,” the MCU’s first animated series, will now
Meg Ryan joined Interview Magazine for a discussion with comedy legend Carol Burnett, and she admitted that her kids are often embarrassed by one of her most iconic movie scenes: the fake orgasm at Katz’s Deli in “When Harry Met Sally.” In the 1989 romantic comedy, Ryan’s Sally proves to Billy Crystal’s Harry that women
Loretta Swit remembers well the night she won her first Emmy Award. On Sept. 7, 1980, the “MASH” star sat in her agent’s living room in Beverly Hills, watching the ceremony on TV when she heard her name called out and saw her picture flash on the screen. Swit was not in the audience at
SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of “One Piece,” now streaming on Netflix. “One Piece” lodged two cannonballs at its viewers in its first season, one coming halfway through the pirate manga TV adaptation, and the other at the very end. First up was both a big reveal and a deviation
It’s the end of the podcast road for Jemele Hill and Spotify, as they have agreed to end their partnership. Hill, an award-winning journalist, author and cultural commentator, launched her podcast “Jemele Hill Is Unbothered” on Spotify in April 2019. Subsequently, she expanded her deal with Spotify for the Unbothered Network with podcasts created and
HBO has acquired the broadcast rights to “Chico Virtual,” a short film starring Jaden Michael (“Colin in Black & White,” “Harlan Coben’s Shelter”). Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Olivia De Camps, “Chico Virtual” will premiere on HBO and stream on Max Sept. 18. The film follows Javier (Michael), a young Dominican American boy who
The fall movie season officially begins with the Labor Day holiday weekend, but it’s one of summer’s biggest blockbusters that’s set to dominate streaming this September. That would be Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” starring Halle Bailey as Ariel. The film earned a mighty $297 million at the domestic box office over the summer, while
Celine Dion’s sister, Claudette Dion, says her sister is still battling the exhaustive pain caused by Stiff-Person Syndrome — the neurological disorder that has halted all of Celine’s live performances for the past year. “It’s an illness we know so little about,” Claudette said in a recent interview with Hello! Canada, telling the publication that her
Two-time Oscar winner Alexander Payne returns to the big screen with his entertaining and crowd-pleasing film “The Holdovers” which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival on Thursday night, where he was in-person to introduce. With a 1970s aesthetic, a sharp script by David Hemingson, and a trio of exquisite performers, the film feels like the
“Poor Things,” the oddest movie to premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, landed the biggest standing ovation so far. On Friday night, Yorgos Lanthimos’ drama, starring Emma Stone as a woman who finds her identity through a series of tragic (and scientific) events, received an eight-minute standing ovation at its world premiere. “Genius! We
Mousy and diminutive, to the point that she practically disappears beneath a frizzy bramble of brown hair, Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci) adores movies. In “Finally Dawn,” she stumbles into one, drafted into being a featured extra on a swords-and-sandals epic shooting at Cinecittà. Doing so makes Mimosa a potential target in a meandering true-crime-adjacent period piece