William Goldman wrote the way Joe DiMaggio played ball: with such deft and consummate skill that the impossible seemed easy. (It wasn’t. And isn’t.) Reading a Goldman screenplay, you never see the armature, the scaffolding. You see people, real people, just a bit more vivid than they might be were they not in a Goldman
Movies
Stan Lee’s company POW! Entertainment posted an open letter on Monday in response to a blog post written by Bill Maher that chided the Marvel icon after he died on Nov. 12. Maher’s initial blog post criticized American adults for taking comic books seriously and questioned the validity of Lee’s legacy. In response, Lee’s company
The Brit List, the annual survey of British film executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays (similar to the Black List in the U.S.), was unveiled Monday in London with “Benny in the Dark,” a supernatural thriller by Phillip Morgan, heading the list. The film, which garnered nine recommendations, is a “character-driven 1950s-set allegory for the unspoken societal
AFI Conservatory Dean Richard Gladstein Steps Down – Variety You will be redirected back to your article in seconds November 19, 2018 11:53AM PT Richard Gladstein is stepping down as dean of the American Film Institute Conservatory after a little over year at the top of the film school. He will be replaced on an
November 19, 2018 11:39AM PT “Sons of Anarchy” star Theo Rossi has joined the cast of “Rattlesnake,” an upcoming Netflix movie from filmmaker Zak Hilditch. Character details are under wraps, but Rossi will star alongside Carmen Ejogo (“It Comes at Night,” “True Detective”) in the psychological thriller, which is currently in production. It follows a
November 19, 2018 10:51AM PT [embedded content] Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool kidnaps Fred Savage to appear in “Once Upon a Deadpool,” the PG-13 take on “Deadpool 2.” Savage’s inclusion in the film is described by 20th Century Fox as “an homage to Savage’s starring role in the 1987 bedtime-story classic ‘The Princess Bride.’” The first trailer,
November 19, 2018 10:42AM PT Universal Pictures has entered into a first-look production agreement with Janelle Monae’s Wondaland Pictures, the film division of Wondaland. Under the deal, Wondaland and Universal Pictures will aim at developing “multi-genre content with an emphasis on championing underrepresented voices and groundbreaking perspectives.” The studio announced the deal Monday and noted
Kent Jones’ “Diane,” Eva Trobisch’s “All Good” and Lila Aviles’ “The Chambermaid” are among the 14 features set to compete at the revamped Marrakech Film Festival, which will host its 17th edition Nov. 30 to Dec. 8. “Diane,” which world premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won three awards, stars Mary Kay Place (“The
Warner Bros.’ “Space Jam 2,” starring LeBron James and produced by Ryan Coogler, is set to film in California. The upcoming sequel is one of 15 film projects that have been selected for the state’s Film & TV Tax Credit Program 2.0. “Space Jam 2” received the largest conditional allocation with a $21.8 million tax
Things were a bit different at this year’s Governors Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences annual gala in which honorary Oscars are presented to icons of the film industry. Instead of being held two Saturdays before Thanksgiving, the ceremony took place the Sunday just before Turkey Day due to scheduling conflicts at
The Macondos, Colombia’s Academy Awards, were held over the weekend, and Laura Mora’s “Killing Jesus” was the big winner, scooping five awards, including best picture for a Colombian feature. The win caps off a whirlwind 14 months since the film’s 2017 Toronto world premiere and San Sebastian European premiere, where it won the Eroski Youth
“Free Solo” won the Grand Prize at the Kendal Mountain Festival on Saturday night. A contender in Kendal’s main International Film Competition, the documentary from E. Chai Vasarhelyi, who helmed Sundance hit “Meru,” and Jimmy Chin, a climber in that film, was the overall winner in a lineup of 90 mountain and adventure films. The
Judi Dench will receive the Richard Harris Award for outstanding contribution to British film at the upcoming British International Film Awards. Dench joins an illustrious list of former winners of the award, which is in its 17th year, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Helena Bonham Carter, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Julie Walters, John Hurt and Emma Thompson. Last year’s recipient
Directors Lasse and Frida Barkfors (“Pervert Park,””Death of a Child”) are pitching their new documentary project, “School Shooters,” at IDFA’s Forum. “Shooters” plumbs the phenomenon of school massacres, whose authors are often kids attending the same centers. But it takes a novel approach, focusing on the parents of the shooters. What happen to those parents
First-time feature director Carmen Torres follows up the domestic premiere of her autobiographical documentary “Dawn” at this year’s Cartagena Intl. Film Festival in Colombia (FICCI) with a European premiere at the 2018 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Addressing head on the question of nature versus nature, Torres tracks down her biological mother to ask
“Venom” enjoyed a spectacular $87 million second weekend at the Chinese box office. That was almost double the opening score by “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” in the Middle Kingdom. According to data that excludes online ticket fees, supplied by Asian theatrical industry consultant Artisan Gateway, “Venom” scored $87.2 million, a drop of just
November 18, 2018 9:53PM PT Opening on Wednesday (Nov. 14), Harry Potter spinoff-prequel “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” debuted on top of the South Korean box office. The Warner Bros. release earned $11.8 million from 1.52 million admissions over its opening five days. “Bohemian Rhapsody” remained in second spot for the third consecutive weekend.
Lady Gaga was among the many entertainment figures who had to evacuate during the catastrophic Woolsey fire a week ago, and she still hasn’t been able to return to her house. Though evacuation orders have been lifted in much of Malibu, Gaga told Variety at Sunday night’s Academy Governor’s Awards that she probably won’t be back
“There’s nowhere to go but up.” Those are the words Angela Lansbury and the cast of “Mary Poppins Returns” send you home with at the end of Rob Marshall’s sequel to the beloved 54-year-old Disney classic, and they do a good job of illustrating why the film is, perhaps unexpectedly, a bona fide best picture
AMSTERDAM — Helena Třeštíková’s speciality is what she likes to call “time-lapse” documentary, and it’s a phrase she doesn’t bandy about lightly. Having made her non-fiction debut in 1974 with short film “The Miracle”, she has worked consistently ever since, balancing so many years-in-the-making projects that sometimes she has up to 15 on the go
Pablo Ferro, who designed the title sequences for classic films like Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” “Bullitt,” “Men In Black,” and “A Clockwork Orange,” has died from complications from pneumonia in Sedona, Ariz. He was 83. Ferro’s family confirmed the news to industry publication the Art of the Title. Cuban-born Ferro’s first title sequence was for
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” led the foreign box office with a massive $191 million. The “Harry Potter” prequel series launched in North America with $62 million for a global weekend haul of $253 million. The Wizarding World installment needs to do well overseas to justify its costly $200 million budget and make up
AMSTERDAM — It’s hard to predict where Austria’s Nikolaus Geyrhalter will go next. “Pripyat” (1999) saw him investigate the radioactive legacy of Chernobyl; 2005’s food-processing doc “Our Daily Bread” took him all over Europe, while “7915km” (2008) involved a mini-tour of Africa on the trail of The Dakar Rally. His latest film, though, is a
The golden age of the rock documentary faded out a long time ago. It’s now rare to see a concert film or a backstage pop portrait that attains the status of an event, like “Woodstock” or “Stop Making Sense” or “Truth or Dare.” But the form has never gone away. In a sense, it’s now
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” enchanted moviegoers with a debut of $62 million. While that’s slightly lower than the domestic start of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the first installment in Warner Bros.’ “Harry Potter” spinoff series, it was easily enough to dominate the weekend box office. Warner Bros., the studio behind
Paris-based sales company Wide House has sealed a flurry of deals for two titles playing this week at Amsterdam’s IDFA documentary festival: Ruth Beckermann’s “The Waldheim Waltz,” Austria’s candidate for the 2019 Oscars, and Marcus Lindeen’s “The Raft.” World premiering at February’s Berlinale, where it won the Glashutte Award for best documentary, “The Waldheim Waltz”
AMSTERDAM — “Hamada” is an Arabic word meaning “desert,” and for the Sahrawi people who live there, in the middle of the Sahara, it has another meaning: “Emptiness.” One might think, then, that a film with such a title, dealing with stateless migrants, wouldn’t exactly be a laughing matter, but Eloy Domínguez Serén’s feature-length documentary
November 18, 2018 1:20AM PT Ash Mayfair’s Vietnamese film “The Third Wife” won best film at the 24th Kolkata international film festival’s international competition on Saturday. Mayfair’s debut feature previously won awards at Toronto, San Sebastian and Chicago. Mayfair was present to collect her award, presented by actress Tabu (“Life of Pi”) and filmmaker Shoojit Sircar.
In late 1965, Gay Talese set out to profile Frank Sinatra for Esquire magazine. Sinatra refused to be interviewed but allowed the writer to hang around, observing, which he did for three months, racking up almost $5,000 in expenses. In the end, Talese penned what became one of the most memorable celebrity profiles ever written,
The atmosphere on stage at the Golden Horse film awards ceremony in Taiwan on Saturday was politically-tinged. But the destination of the top prizes, at the event usually considered as the most prestigious for Chinese-language cinema, was largely predictable. Powerful period drama, “Shadow” was the numerical winner, taking home four prizes, including best director for