MSNBC is still trying to perfect its weekend formula. The NBCUniversal-backed cable-news outlet is expected to announce Tuesday that Ayman Mohyeldin, an NBC News correspondent and anchor who hasn’t shied away from offering opinion and analysis in his past coverage of events in the Middle East, will get a new show, “Ayman,” on MSNBC’s weekend
Initiating one of Amazon’s most ambitious titles ever in Latin America, production has begun on “La cabeza de Joaquín Murrieta,” the region’s first Western Amazon Original series, Amazon Prime Video announced Tuesday. An “action-packed” series made in Mexico, it added, “La cabeza de Joaquín Murrieta” stars top Mexican actor Juan Manuel Bernal (“Monarca,” “Perfect Obedience”)
Variety’s 2021 Power of Women: Los Angeles honorees include Channing Dungey, Amanda Gorman, Lorde, Rita Moreno and Katy Perry. Power of Women: Los Angeles will return as a live event outdoors at the Wallis Annenberg Center on Sept. 30. In partnership with Lifetime, the event will gather the honorees along with other women working in
An animator long showered with awards and critical praise, beginning with his 2004 full-length directorial debut “Mind Game,” Yuasa Masaaki is no stranger to the festival circuit. But Venice, where his new animated feature “Inu-Oh” is screening in the Horizons section, is his first Big Three festival. And his film is the only one from
Rising indie quartet Big Thief have surprise-released a new song called “Certainty” that was written and recorded directly to 4-track during a three-day power outage. The recorder was plugged into a cigarette lighter, according to the announcement. Guitarist Buck Meek explained the complicated jerry-rigged recording process. “On the third day of the outage, I found
FESTIVAL The 17th Zurich Film Festival (Sept. 23-Oct. 3) will honor Paul Schrader for his life’s work, which includes the screenplays for Martin Scorsese‘s “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and the films he directed, including “American Gigolo,” “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” “The Comfort of Strangers” and “First Reformed.”
The ongoing Venice Film Festival has reached the midpoint with more than two-thirds of its pre-pandemic attendance numbers, and not a single attendee testing positive for COVID-19. During a lunch with international press on Tuesday Roberto Cicutto, who is the president of the Biennale that oversees the festival, also announced plans for a revamp of
Vox Media is acquiring Hot Pod, the independent news outlet focused on the podcasting industry, as part of a bid to expand offerings from its technology site, The Verge. Under part of a deal being announced Tuesday, Hot Pod will become the first paid-subscription product offered by The Verge, where executives are interested in seeing
Acclaimed French producer Catherine Dussart has a full production slate including new works from veterans Amos Gitai, Rithy Panh and Peter Greenaway. Dussart is currently at the Venice Film Festival where Indian filmmaker Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s “Once Upon a Time in Calcutta,” co-produced by her Catherine Dussart Productions, is playing in the Horizons strand. Dussart
Republic Records has promoted Alex Coslov to senior VP of marketing strategy, the label’s executive VP and general manager Jim Roppo announced on Monday. He is based at the Universal Music label’s New York headquarters. According to the announcement, Coslov will continue to devise, engage and enact marketing strategies and initiatives for a diverse roster, including Pearl
The 65 British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival has unveiled its full program and the headline galas include several films that have been gaining fame recently. Among the galas are Pablo Larrain’s “Spencer,” with Kristen Stewart; Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” with Benedict Cumberbatch; Reinaldo Marcus Green’s “King Richard,” with Will Smith;
Fran Unsworth, BBC director of news and current affairs, will leave the BBC in Jan. 2022. Unsworth was in the role from Jan. 2018 and oversaw all of the BBC’s news and current affairs programming. The process to appoint her successor will begin shortly, the BBC said. Unsworth began her journalistic career in 1980 in
“Woody Allen loves Venice. But Woody Allen’s Venice is not the real Venice. It’s the Las Vegas version of Venice, and it’s not only him,” says Italian director Yuri Ancarani, whose youth drama “Atlantide,” which makes its world premiere in Venice in the Horizons section, might be described as the ultimate Venice landscape film. Think
When producer Robert Lantos began developing the big-budget historical drama series “Rise of the Raven,” adapting Hungarian author Bán Mór’s series of bestselling novels presented obvious challenges. “It’s an 11-volume novel, each volume being 500-600 pages long,” says Lantos. It took several writers and the better part of a decade to find a way forward,
Ana Lily Amirpour doesn’t want you to call her movies “female-led.” It’s true that all of them to date have been centered around strong female protagonists, including her Venice competition title “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” but they’re much more than that, she says. The Iranian-American director recalls early reports describing her next project,
Nicholas Tse, star of the recent hit film “Raging Fire,” says he has applied to renounce his Canadian citizenship and will embrace the People’s Republic of China instead. The move comes as Chinese authorities mount crackdowns on the entertainment industry and on dual citizenship. The singer-actor-celebrity chef made the announcement during an interview on Sunday
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched the Sept. 6 episode of “Bachelor in Paradise.” The new arrivals once again disrupted paradise. Two of the most teased newcomers arrived on Monday night’s episode of “Bachelor in Paradise”: Kendall Long, formerly of Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season of “The Bachelor,” and Pieper James from
Michael K. Williams commanded attention in the purest sense of the term. He didn’t ask for it, nor did he demand it. He simply had it, with a quiet determination and undeniable magnetism that inevitably made him an irresistible center of gravity. When he spoke, whether as himself or one of his indelible characters, people
If Jean-Paul Belmondo had gotten his way, he would have been a stage actor. He applied to the Conservatoire de Paris three times before the illustrious drama school accepted him and spent the 1950s trying to launch a theater career. Lucky for world cinema, Belmondo had greater success on screen, thanks to his role in
Vice TV had been in active production on Season 2 of Michael K. Williams’ unscripted series “Black Market” when the star was found dead on Monday, and according to insiders, much of it had already completed. The network declined comment on when the season might be ready for air, but is expected to regroup with
Irma Kalish, a prolific comedy writer who blazed trails for women in television with a career that stretched from radio to 1980s sitcoms, died Monday in Woodland Hills due to complications from pneumonia. She was 96. Kalish worked on a wide range of series, from “My Favorite Martian” and “Gilligan’s Island” to “All in the
It’s not often that films shoot in the Occupied Golan Heights, Israel’s contested border territory with Syria and Lebanon. Characterized by sloping mountains and the ruins of more than 100 Syrian villages, destroyed (by Israel) after the Six Day War in 1967, it makes for an atmospheric filming location. This can be seen in “The
Prior to the debut of Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek called its old-school theatrical release an “interesting experiment.” The “experiment” in question: Would enough people show up to their local multiplex to see the latest Marvel movie to justify keeping the $200 million-budgeted film in theaters without
As the news broke on Monday that Michael K. Williams had died at age 54 after being found in his Brooklyn residence, stars took to social media to remember the actor who starred in shows like “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire.” Director Spike Lee paid tribute to Williams in an Instagram post, featuring a photo
Michael K. Williams, who memorably portrayed Omar Little in “The Wire” and Chalky White in “Boardwalk Empire,” has died at age 54. The New York Police Department confirmed to Variety that the actor was found dead on Monday at 2 p.m. inside of his Brooklyn residence. Williams was a regular on many acclaimed HBO series,
Janet Jackson has revealed the first teaser for her two-night documentary, “Janet,” which premieres in January 2022 in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the star’s first album. Fellow friends and celebrities such as Paula Abdul and Mariah Carey are shown in the teaser, talking about the connection they have to the star while speaking
Beyond the delta variant’s uptick and last week’s visitation of Hurricane Ida, Jay-Z’s annual Made in America music festival in Philadelphia — canceled in 2020, as were most music festivals, due to COVID-19 — could have been a wash. Bonnaroo in Tennessee certainly felt the water-logged wrath of Ida, and ceased plans for its 2021
The white-hot moment of the Romanian new-wave film renaissance is long in the past. “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” came out in 2005, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in 2007. Other landmarks of Romanian cinema also now go back quite a ways, like “Police, Adjective” (2009), “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle”
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read until you have watched “Rick and Morty” Season 5, Episodes 9 and 10, “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” and “Rickmurai Jack.” There was perhaps no way to know in advance that a couple of crows — appropriately known as “two crows” — would play such a pivotal role in Rick and Morty
Palatin Media, European Star Cinema and Rocket Rights have teamed up on a new innovative drama series, “The Capelli Code,” which uses state-of-the-art VFX technology to better create localized versions. The technology means the series contains “built-in elements” enabling localized versions to use local stars at an affordable price. Swiss-based European Star Cinema, a production