Zach “ZHC” Hsieh, a popular YouTube creator and artist, has been tapped as the host for Season 2 of YouTube’s “Instant Influencer” competition series, which promises one up-and-coming artist a $100,000 cash prize. Last month YouTube confirmed that James Charles, the beauty vlogger who hosted the first season of “Instant Influencer,” would not return to
“NCIS,” “Bull,” “SWAT,” “Blue Bloods” and “Magnum P.I.” have all been renewed at CBS. The network made the announcement on Thursday on Twitter. That will mean a Season 19 for “NCIS,” Season 6 for “Bull,” Season 5 for “SWAT,” Season 12 for “Blue Bloods” and Season 4 for “Magnum P.I.” All four shows are produced
“We have to cleans the balls,” a publicist warned “Big Shot” actor Cricket Wampler. “Don’t touch the balls.” The arrivals line at the 150-car drive-in premiere of the new Disney Plus series “Big Shot” on Wednesday night included racks of basketballs, but as Wampler grabbed one to show off her dribbling skills, she was told
Discovery Plus, the cable programmer’s fledgling nonfiction streaming service, is available on Amazon Prime Video Channels in the U.S. — although for now, Prime members are able to sign up only for the higher-priced version with no ads. Discovery Plus launched Jan. 4 in the U.S. on most devices and services, including Amazon Fire TV
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Let’s Meet,” the first season finale of “Made For Love,” streaming now on HBO Max. For seven-and-a-half episodes Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti) was on the run from her controlling tech-gazillionaire husband Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen), but in the final moments of the first season
It won’t have the bowls of shrimp or free drinks, but TV’s annual week of upfront presentations will look a little more like its pre-pandemic norm. NBCU intends to kick off the industry’s usual week of presentations May 17 with a virtual event that will feature looks at scripted and unscripted originals, sports, news, and
Lame humor and incoherent plotting are among the shortcomings of “The Rookies,” an initially engaging but increasingly tedious Chinese action-comedy-thriller that not even kick-ass movie queen Milla Jovovich can breathe much life into. Undemanding genre fans might go for this Budapest-set hodge-podge about rookie secret agents tackling a deranged billionaire, but there’s not much here
Editor Barry Alexander Brown had completed his film “The War at Home” and had returned to Atlanta to research a project when he was first introduced to Spike Lee through a mutual friend. At the time, Lee was at New York University working on a cable TV project. The year was 1981, and later, Brown
It’s finally (almost) here! After an unusually long season, voting for the 93rd Annual Academy Awards opens April 15, closing on April 20. The winners will then be announced at a unique ceremony held across the globe on April 25. All the speculation about how the length of the season and pandemic viewing may have
Sarah and Emily Kunstler have spent their lives immersed in the civil rights movement, first as the daughters of “The Trial of the Chicago 7” attorney William Kunstler, and then forging their own careers crafting documentaries on criminal justice. But when filmmaker and lawyer Sarah Kunstler heard a speech by ACLU attorney Jeffery Robinson at
Academy Award-nominated documentary “Hunger Ward” paints an intimate portrait of the children in Yemen suffering from starvation and malnourishment as a result of war-induced famine. The United Nations World Food Programme estimates about 400,000 could die this year without urgent intervention, which is what director Skye Fitzerald hopes to catalyze with the film. Overcoming a
Pete Davidson is gearing up to portray punk rock pioneer Joey Ramone in the upcoming biopic “I Slept With Joey Ramone” for Netflix and STXfilms. The announcement comes on the 20th anniversary of Ramone’s death. The biopic will chronicle the life and times of the legendary musician — born Jeffrey Ross Hyman in 1951 —
Gwen Stefani isn’t one to celebrate anniversaries. “I don’t really pay attention to that stuff,” Stefani tells Variety. “I know some people live by it, birthdays and all that, but it’s just not something I care about.” But as “Don’t Speak” — No Doubt’s biggest hit, from their third album, “Tragic Kingdom” — turns 25
Independent music venues have been crushed by the pandemic, and last week’s breakdown of the Small Business Administration’s website has only delayed the $16 billion in federal relief they’re scheduled to receive. But they have received some financial aid from friends in high places, including Spotify, YouTube Music, and now Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones
In a leadership shakeup, Tencent Music Entertainment Group has announced that Zhu (“Ross”) Liang has been appointed as the company’s new CEO, with Cussion Kar Shun Pang moving over to executive chairman of the company’s board of directors. According to the announcement, as CEO, Liang’s primary responsibility will be to oversee TME’s QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo
Early on in “Vanquish,” Ruby Rose as Morgan Freeman’s improbable housekeeper is very awkwardly chopping some vegetable — the awkwardness providing a rare plausible moment, as Rose seems an even less likely maker-of-dinner than she does slayer-of-many-criminal-goons. If she’d kept slicing that carrot or whatever for the remaining 90 minutes here, the results would have
Franco-Egyptian filmmaker Namir Abdel Messeeh (“The Virgin, the Copts and Me”) has teamed with Paris-based production outfit Les Films d’Ici for his next feature, the autobiographical hybrid-doc “Life After Siham.” Building on themes he developed in his award-winning 2011 doc “The Virgin, the Copts and Me,” a self-reflexive exploration of family and identity that played
The 48th annual Annie Awards, celebrating the best in animation, are taking place on Friday, April 16 at 7 p.m. PST. The ceremony — often a predictor for which film will win the best animated feature category at the Oscars — honors winners in 36 different animation-related categories, including independent feature, production design, effects animation,
Check out The Dry Official Trailer starring Eric Bana! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Visit: http://www.fandango.com?cmp=MCYT_YouTube_Desc Want to be notified of all the latest movie trailers? Subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to stay up to date. US Release Date: May 21, 2021 Starring: Eric Bana,
When celebrity events were halted because of the coronavirus pandemic last March, Hollywood’s clothing stylists, hairstylists and makeup artists were put out of work. The return of awards shows and virtual events has fostered a fashion resurgence. In March 2020, stylist Ilaria Urbinati — whose client roster of Hollywood men includes Rami Malek, Dwayne (“the
Looking to boost revenue from its digital news readership, Reuters is following major rivals in adopting a paywall strategy for its website, reuters.com. The company will charge $34.99 per month for access to the site’s content, allowing non-subscribers to view up to five articles per month for free. Reuters’ move, announced Thursday, brings it in
The late rocker and TV/theater composer Adam Schlesinger, who died from complications of COVID-19 in April 2020, will be feted by dozens of musicians and actors in May in an online tribute being produced by Jody Porter, his longtime bandmate in Fountains of Wayne. Titled “Adam Schlesinger, A Music Celebration, Virtual Show,” the stream will
For “Love and Monsters,” the film’s VFX team, led by Matt Sloan, had to devise 13 different monsters, each with a unique look. “Each had its own design rules and personality. From gross little leech-like slug worms to the misunderstood monstrous crab in the finale,” Sloan says. Familiarity was the key to the art department’s
Warner Music Group and Spotify have entered into a new partnership that will see the two companies develop a series of original podcasts built around WMG’s extensive and diverse artists’ and songwriters’ catalogs. “The most impactful podcasts share with music the key component of storytelling and personal experience. In partnership with Warner Music Group, we
This year, there were 366 films in Oscar contention, with 50-plus nominated — including three centering on disabled people. While that isn’t much, it’s three more than most years and, sadly, it qualifies disability awareness as an innovation. The teams behind Amazon’s “Sound of Metal,” Netflix’s documentary “Crip Camp” and live-action short “Feeling Through” all
Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt is no stranger when it comes to being at the forefront of digital moviemaking technology. David Fincher’s “Mank,” a biographical drama about “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) is without exception. Visually, viewers are transported to Old Hollywood, where an alluring black-and-white visual palette blankets the screen, a look that
Effects supervisor Bill Watral enthuses about his team’s groundbreaking work on Disney/Pixar’s Oscar-nominated “Soul,” but is quick to clarify, “Every single department here had challenges of taking existing technology and applying it to new artistic uses. A lot of things that we did are different from what Pixar does usually.” In the film’s Astral Plane,
As diligently as actors and crew work on set, it’s commonplace to re-record some lines down the road. For the teams behind “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” the process of painstakingly matching audio and visual was further complicated by working remotely during COVID. Eliza Pollack
Rising R&B singer Maeta has signed with the Roc Nation label, the company announced, and is kicking off the relationship with a new EP, “Habits,” which comes out April 30 and features her single and video “Toxic.” The track, which is executive produced by Skrillex, features a verse from Beam and details the dialogue of
Innovation can take many forms and sometimes it comes not from technology but technique. Nowhere was that more evident than during production and screenings of the Oscar-nominated short “Feeling Through.” Writer-director Doug Roland fictionalized his real-life encounter with a member of the deafblind community for the project. Newcomer and deafblind actor Robert Tarango played Artie.