“Dying isn’t simple, is it?” That question is asked at three separate points in “I Was a Simple Man,” and with each repetition, it sounds slightly less rhetorical, less worldly-wise, more loaded with anxious uncertainty. Christopher Makoto Yogi’s hushed, ruminative study of an elderly man’s last days in Oahu doesn’t quite settle on an answer
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Play video content Exclusive TMZ.com Wendy Williams is beaming about Lifetime’s movie and documentary covering her life and career, and not only because they’re helping her get revenge on her ex-husband. The talk show host joined “TMZ Live” Friday and in true Wendy fashion was not afraid to throw equal amounts of shade — for
Netflix has renewed “On My Block” for a fourth and final season. For fans of the teen series holding their breath since the third season finale jumped forward a bit into the future, seeing the fracturing of the friend group at the core of the series, answers will be coming soon — but not too
The HBO Max pilot “Verbatim” is rounding out its cast. Sara Gilbert, Rob Huebel, Leland Orser, Lyiq Bent, Tate Donovan, J.R. Cacia, and Kevin Dunn have all joined the project. The exact details of their roles are being kept under wraps, but the pilot follows the story of the 2019 college admissions scandal. All dialogue
The last time audiences witnessed Martin Gore, David Gahan and Andrew Fletcher – collectively, Euro-electronic pop avatars Depeche Mode – together was when the trio, virtually and humorously, accepted their award as part of the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Come March, Depeche will be up for another award, as its
Canadian television has suffered another blow in the wake of the Michelle Latimer scandal. Following the revelation that the “Trickster” director and producer is not of Aboriginal descent, as she previously claimed, public broadcaster CBC has decided not to move forward with a second season of the series. “We have had many conversations over the
Known to friends and family as Sparky, “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz died in 2000. Since that time, Schulz’s work has remained almost universally beloved — as was demonstrated in October when the internet erupted in outrage at Apple TV Plus’ announcement that it would become the exclusive home to three “Peanuts” holiday specials. (A
Joel Kinnaman has been cast in the upcoming “In Treatment” reboot at HBO, Variety has learned exclusively. The reimagined series brings a diverse trio of patients in session with the observant, empathetic Dr. Brooke Taylor (Uzo Aduba), who is wrestling with her own issues in this half-hour drama series. Kinnaman will star as Adam, Brooke’s long-time
Towards the end of the new limited series “The Investigation,” the show’s central police inquiry seems stalled. Nothing is moving in the right direction, and all players seem understandably frustrated. One cop (Laura Christensen) sets things right with an unlikely note of encouragement. “This isn’t a perfect crime,” she tells her boss (Søren Malling). “It’s
Is this the year a documentary finally gets a best picture Oscar nomination? When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in 2009 expanded the top category to 10, then-prez Sid Ganis expressed hope the noms would include animation, international films and docs. Since then, the first two groups have made the grade, but
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Pizza,” the third episode of “Servant” Season 2, streaming now on Apple TV Plus. Recently Lauren Ambrose showed her teenage son “The Sixth Sense,” M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 film about a young boy who sees dead people and the man who thinks he is
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the fourth episode of Season 1 of Disney Plus’ “WandaVision.” What started out as an excessively nostalgic homage to the genre of situational comedies starring two starcrossed Avengers — Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) — is getting more sinister and precarious with
When the Netflix series “Bridgerton” debuted on Dec. 25, 22-year-old singer-songwriter Abigail Barlow and 19-year-old pianist and composer Emily Bear binge-watched the entire show in a matter of days, as did as did millions of other households, making it Netflix’s most-watched original series. But, within the show — which is set in Regency Era London
Veteran rapper T.I. and his wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris have denied the most recent round of allegations from Sabrina Peterson, who previously accused the rapper of holding a gun to her head. The latest round of allegations are in a series of screenshots of DMs from several women accusing the rapper and his wife of disturbing incidents of
“Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir” producer Karen Pritzker and author and subject of the film Amy Tan discussed the chance circumstances that led to the film’s creation. At Sundance Film Festival’s Variety studio presented by AT&T TV, Pritzker and Tan, author of the beloved “The Joy Luck Club” and lead singer in the literary rock garage
Poh Si Teng, producer of Oscar-nominated documentary short “St. Louis Superman,” has joined the International Documentary Association (IDA) as the new director of the IDA Funds and Enterprise program. Poh will oversee and build IDA’s grants portfolio and serve as a key liaison with the documentary field in the U.S. and globally, working with IDA’s
Top Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan is set to star in the Indian adaptation of John Le Carré’s spy drama “The Night Manager,” Variety can reveal. Roshan will play an Indian version of the Jonathan Pine character, who was played by Tom Hiddleston (“Avengers: Endgame”) in the 2016 adaptation, which aired on the BBC and AMC,
The dilemma that “Pieces of a Woman” posed for composer Howard Shore was how emotional to make the music in a story about the most wrenching and devastating experience in a couple’s life. “We had many discussions about this exact topic,” Shore says, referring to himself and Kornél Mundruczó, who directed the movie, now streaming
Arlo Parks is the kind of artist who almost could have been created in a test tube for a certain type of music fan. A 20-year-old singer-songwriter raised in London to Nigerian/Chadian-French parents (her real name is Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho). Songs with personal yet universal lyrics culled from journals, steeped in R&B and alt-rock
Vanessa Kirby, who played Princess Margaret on the first two seasons of Netflix’s “The Crown,” has returned to the streaming service in the acquisition “Pieces of a Woman.” In the Kornél Mundruczó film, Kirby plays Martha, whose home birth ends in tragedy, upending her life. The birth scene, early in the movie, is a harrowing
Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) and Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”) sat down for a virtual chat for Variety‘s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. For more, click here. Vanessa Kirby, who played Princess Margaret on the first two seasons of Netflix’s “The Crown,” has returned to the streaming service in the acquisition “Pieces of
During a conversation between Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) and Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”) for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, presented by Amazon Studios, Kirby confessed her fandom. “I’ve loved you so much since ‘Mean Girls’ — it’s so iconic,” she said to Seyfried. “Mean Girls,” Seyfried told Kirby, was her first movie. Before then, she’d done soap
Peter Bogdanovich’s first impression of Cloris Leachman was nothing like the lonely housewife she played in “Last Picture Show.” The director recalled his first meeting with Leachman, who died Wednesday at 94, when he was casting “The Last Picture Show.” “One of the producers was Bob Rafaelson. I said, ‘I don’t know any 30 or
Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” reinvents the revenge thriller, giving the cinematic treatment for woman reclaiming their power. On page 20, Cassandra (played exquisitely by Carey Mulligan) is approached by a former college classmate Ryan (played by the charismatically brilliant Bo Burnham). After Ryan delivers a man’s all-too-familiar rude and passive-aggressive questions regarding expectations about
Four albums released by the Jacksons in the late 1970s and early ’80s are being reissued in expanded digital or vinyl format in February and March, as part of a campaign by the family’s original label, Epic, and Sony Music’s catalog imprint, Legacy, to re-expose the music the group made between the Jackson 5’s enormous
Over the course of 25+ years and 13 studio albums, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has reliably chronicled life’s ups and downs by navigating the fine line between ironic detachment and ultra-earnest confessionals. On the heels of two different self-titled releases in 2019, he and his bandmates were eyeing two more new albums for release in
HBO Max’s day-and-date premiere of “Wonder Woman 1984” the week of Christmas 2020 lassoed significantly more viewing time than any other streaming title for the period, according to Nielsen revised estimates. Previously, Nielsen had said Pixar’s “Soul” on Disney Plus, which bowed Christmas Day alongside Warner Bros.’ superhero sequel “Wonder Woman 1984,” was the most-viewed
French-Venezuelan biologist and filmmaker Alexis Gambis, whose sophomore drama, “Son of Monarchs,” screens in t Sundance’s NEXT section, has always been fixated on the confluence of art and science. It led him to found the Imagine Science Film Festival, which enters its 14th edition in October, and the five-year old VOD platform Labocine, both of which showcase science
MOLLY SJ LOWE; GIO STAIANO; MYRTHE GIESBERS Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world. The designer Iris van Herpen recently became fascinated by what scientists call the “wood wide web,” the communication network used by fungi to send messages between plants—think of it as nature’s answer to the
ITV has pre-emptively pulled the plug on this year’s season of “Britain’s Got Talent” due to production complications arising from the pandemic. The entertainment show is one of the country’s biggest primetime programs, and normally airs from April to June. The 2020 season was disrupted due to COVID-19 and aired in two parts, with the