Movies

This past summer, I happened to watch “The Godfather Part III” again. At the time, it wasn’t known that Francis Ford Coppola was preparing a new version of the movie, one that would be retitled “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.” It’s probably a good thing that Coppola hasn’t decided to

David Fincher’s “Mank” premiered worldwide on Netflix Friday following a limited theatrical release in November. Capturing the events behind screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s development of the 1941 film “Citizen Kane,” “Mank” uses its greyscale imagery to reflect the time period in which it’s set. Fincher made the choice to mirror the films of the “Citizen

Taking place on site in five cities – Madrid, São Paulo, Mexico City, Bogotá and Santiago de Chile – and online for the rest of the world, Ventana Sur, Latin America’s biggest film market, climaxed Friday with a virtual awards ceremony for its major industry competitions hosted out of Buenos Aires. Awards went to some

In today’s Global Bulletin, the European Film Awards detail this year’s special five-day virtual ceremony, the Spain Film Commission extends an invitation to international productions, ITV Studios sells more than 300 hours of content in India and the National Lottery announces a special Pantoland performance for key workers. AWARDS The 2020 European Film Awards have

How do you create sound design for a film that hinges on silence? That was the challenge for composer-sound designer Nicolas Becker on writer-director Darius Marder’s drama “Sound of Metal,” in which Riz Ahmed plays Ruben, a heavy metal drummer who is slowly losing his hearing. The Amazon Prime release is available Dec. 4. Becker

“I guess the movie theaters will just be Halloween stores now.” That was the glib response from a veteran studio executive on Thursday, joining a chorus of powerbrokers, agents and other Hollywood insiders floored by the news that Warner Bros. Pictures will be releasing 17 movies — its entire 2021 slate —  simultaneously in movie

Regal Cinemas owner Cineworld Group is hoping for an agreement on release windows after Warner Bros.’ shock announcement on Thursday that their entire 2021 slate would release simultaneously in cinemas and on HBO Max day and date. In a statement released Friday, a Cineworld spokesperson said: “Cineworld was aware of WB’s plan to release ‘Wonder

Italy’s storied Titanus studio, producers of myriad golden era works from Cinema Italiano, has inked a global distribution deal with pubcaster RAI’s sales unit RAI Com for its entire library of roughly 400 titles. The landmark agreement, besides distribution, entails a collaboration to restore and preserve the Titanus library, which is a treasure trove comprising

The stakes are suddenly much higher for WarnerMedia and Roku in their months-long standoff over HBO Max. The clock is ticking for both companies, which — 191 days after HBO Max’s debut — still don’t have a deal for Roku to distribute the HBO Max service on its platform. WarnerMedia substantially upped the ante Thursday,

If the arrival of vaccines offers some hope of the year-consuming COVID-19 pandemic eventually cooling off, the attendant mini-genre of the coronavirus documentary is only getting warmed up. For years to come, we can doubtless anticipate dozen upon dozen of films probing all angles of what happened and how, what went wrong and how much.

Alibaba Pictures has launched a new in-house film studio modeled on A24 and called “Surprise Works.” The company announced a large line-up of upcoming local projects, which it says herald a strategic shift more firmly towards original content production. In the past, Alibaba Pictures cast itself in more of a complementary than primary role in

Strand Releasing has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Majid Majidi’s “Sun Children,” which competed at Venice and represents Iran in the international feature film race at the 2021 Academy Awards. Represented in international markets by Hengameh Panahi’s Celluloid Dreams, “Sun Children” has been critically acclaimed in the festival circuit, and its young leading actor Ruhollah

In deals forged during Ventana Sur, Chile’s Naira Films has secured the backing of Italy’s Keep Digging Prod. and Chile’s “Perro Bomba” producer Infractor Films to complete the financing of their Chilean independence war film “The Wealth of the World” (“La Riqueza del mundo”). The feature debut of artist-painter Simon Farriol is now being edited

British-Guyanese actor Letitia Wright, star of “Black Panther” and Steve McQueen’s “Mangrove,” has responded to extensive backlash after she posted a controversial anti-vax video to Twitter on Thursday night. On Friday afternoon U.K. time, Wright tweeted, “my intention was not to hurt anyone, my ONLY intention of posting the video was it raised my concerns

Show Me the Fund, a new resource aimed at helping Latin American producers navigate a myriad of little known funding opportunities, was the focus of Wednesday’s Ventana Sur session on international funding. The initiative – a partnership between film export bodies Brazilian Content and Cinema do Brasil and the AV support organization Projeto Paradiso –

Ian McKellen, Annie Lennox, Martin Freeman, John Rhys-Davies and Derek Jacobi are among the stars joining author Julia Golding (the “Companions” series) to launch a $6 million crowdfunding campaign to try and save 20 Northmoor Road, the Oxford house in which J. R. R. Tolkien wrote “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” ahead

“Highlands Shadow,” “Cursed Fathers” and “Greta’s Journal” are among five animation projects selected for a new women animation directors’ training initiative launched this year at Ventana Sur’s Animation!, in alliance with France’s Annecy Festival and Argentina’s Institut Français. A 2D eight-episode series “Highlands Shadow” weighs in as a fantasy grounded in traditional folklore mixing action,

In “Sound of Metal,” Riz Ahmed plays Ruben, a heavy metal musician who gradually loses his hearing. The film, bowing Friday on Amazon Prime, follows Ruben as he copes with his hearing loss. Director Darius Marder relies on sound design to immerse the audience into the film, allowing them to understand what Ruben is going

About 60% of the movie theaters in the country — though not the major chains — would be in line for several billion dollars in grants if Congress can agree on a coronavirus stimulus package. Negotiations on a bill were jumpstarted on Tuesday, when a bipartisan group of senators offered a $908 billion plan. Senate

Amid the avalanche of disheartening developments this year, few were as dispiriting in Hollywood as the Aug. 12 announcement by the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan that it was eliminating coverage for 11,750 of 32,000 participants, including 8,200 senior performers. The plan and its trustees blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for creating $140 million in losses this year and

Argentinian author César Aira doesn’t work the way other writers do: Most mornings, according to routine, Aira takes a seat at a Buenos Aires café and picks up where he left off, responding to what he sees around him. His is a spontaneous style, shaped by chance or whatever may have happened the day before,

Warner Bros. sent the movie business spinning on its axis when it announced Thursday that it was releasing its entire 2021 slate on HBO Max at the same time as the movies debut in cinemas. It’s a group of potential blockbusters that includes “Matrix 4” and “Dune,” as well as awards hopefuls such as “Judas

Citing soaring COVID-19 case rates and the lack of hospital beds, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has widened the state’s stay-at-home order. Newsom also revealed early details of the state’s vaccine distribution plan with the first recipients planned to include acute care workers, employees in skilled nursing homes, paramedics and employees at dialysis centers. The first

It’s a bad day to be a movie theater. Warner Bros.’ announcement on Thursday that it will release its entire 2021 movie slate on HBO Max at the same time the films open in cinemas sent exhibition industry stocks tumbling. Cinemark fell more than 21%, Imax slid more than 7.3% and the Marcus Corporation fell

Presenting to the industry for the first time at Ventana Sur’s Proyecta event, “Puán,” a comedy, is a joint creative venture between Argentine directors María Alché, a 2018 San Sebastián Horizontes winner for “A Family Submerged,” and Benjamín Naishtat, who took three top main competition prizes at the same year’s San Sebastian for his third

Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, has acquired U.S. rights to “Riders of Justice,” a new action-thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen. The film follows Markus, a recently deployed military man, who returns home determined to exact revenge after his wife is killed in a train accident. Markus slowly begins to suspect that foul play

The semi-automatic pistol used by Sean Connery in the James Bond film “Dr. No” goes up for auction on Thursday. The Walther PP gun is expected to fetch between $150,000 and $200,000 at Julien’s Auctions. Film producer and prop collector on Disney Plus’ “Prop Culture,” Dan Lanigan is the current owner of the gun. He

WarnerMedia has terminated its seven-day free trial offer for HBO Max — a move coming three weeks before the streaming service is set to premiere “Wonder Woman 1984” day-and-date with theatrical release. In addition to the Dec. 25 debut of “Wonder Woman 1984,” starring Gal Gadot in the title role, on HBO Max and in

When Warner Bros. announced that “Wonder Woman 1984” would land on the streaming service HBO Max on Christmas, the same time it debuts in theaters, many expected it to be an isolated case in response to an unprecedented pandemic. Instead, the studio will deploy a similar release strategy for the next 12 months. In a

When director Chloé Zhao called on cinematographer Joshua James Richards to shoot “Nomadland,” the two already had a visual language established, having collaborated on “The Rider” and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me.” For “Nomadland,” available Dec. 4 on virtual cinema, their approach was to plan that look and feel from the inside out. That meant