Netflix dominated the 47th Annie Awards on Saturday, Jan. 25, picking up 19 trophies, including the top prizes of best feature (“Klaus”), best feature-independent (“I Lost My Body”), best TV/media production for preschool children (“Ask the Storybots”) and best general audience TV/media production (“BoJack Horseman”). Disney TV Animation’s “Disney Mickey Mouse” won best TV/media production
Addiction, you could say (and I would), has become the central demon that plagues Americans. We’re addicted to everything: alcohol, illegal drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, psychotropic drugs, sugar-bomb soft drinks, processed food, video screens…you name it. In theory, addiction was made for drama, because it rips into the fabric of people’s lives, and that’s intensely dramatic.
Greta Gerwig’s script for “Little Women” has won the USC Libraries Scripter Award for best movie adaptation and “Fleabag” has taken the television award. The winners were announced Saturday night at USC’s Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library. “Little Women” topped “Dark Waters,” “The Irishman,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “Little Women” and “The Two Popes.” All but
With the 92nd Annual Academy Awards just around the corner, “Saturday Night Live” devoted a segment in its Jan. 26 “Weekend Update” to cast member Melissa Villaseñor’s thoughts about a number of the nominees — and one notable snub. Clad in an Oscar gold dress, Villaseñor sat next to Colin Jost at the anchor desk,
Death isn’t wasted on the dead, exactly, but much that follows in its black-veiled wake is: A heartfelt eulogy, after all, is often composed of warm words we should have shared with the deceased before they turned cold. Eighties soft-rock band Mike and the Mechanics had a #1 hit with this very observation, of course:
With “Myth: A Frozen Tale,” Disney Animation has crafted a visually stunning virtual-reality short film — a project that flexes its VR muscles but deftly uses the technology in service of storytelling. Sometimes VR experiences feel like proof-of-concepts straining to justify their 3D settings. “Myth,” by contrast, employs virtual reality so effectively it feels like
When Adam Driver hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2016 he went viral for a “Star Wars”/”Undercover Boss” mashup sketch that saw his Kylo Ren put on a disguise in order to observe his employees ala the CBS reality show. Four years later, he has done it again. While hosting the Jan. 26 episode of “SNL,”
“On the Record,” a devastating look at many of the women who came forward to accuse music mogul Russell Simmons of rape and harassment, premiered to not one, but two thunderous standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday. The warm reception came as the film has become engulfed in a media firestorm, one
The 45th season of “Saturday Night Live” has been on hiatus for a month, and what a month it has been. The last episode aired just days after Donald Trump was impeached, and this week alone saw House impeachment managers presenting their case on why it would threaten the country’s security for him to stay
One of the people who’s made long-form television drama arguably more interesting as a whole than its mainstream big-screen equivalent in recent years, Alan Ball has underlined his superior comfort with that format in the few theatrical features he’s made to date. His screenplay for “American Beauty,” which Sam Mendes directed, was brilliant but glib;
The ceremony for the 72nd annual Directors Guild of America Awards is currently underway at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The DGAs are one of the most reliable bellwethers for the Academy Awards — all but seven directors who won the feature film award at the DGAs went on to win the corresponding
After two days of buzzy cameos out and about in Park City, Hillary Clinton finally took the main stage at the Sundance Film Festival. A four-part viewing of her new Hulu docu-series “Hillary” premiered Saturday at the Ray Theater, where the dedicated audience had but one intermission during the marathon screening, but was later rewarded
“On the Record,” a documentary that presents the former music executive Drew Dixon’s accusations of sexual harassment and rape against the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons (it includes several other Simmons accusers as well), is the fourth major documentary of the #MeToo era to offer an incendiary indictment of men who have used their power within
Sean Reinert, the pioneering drummer behind several death metal groups, including Cynic and Death, has died. He was 48. According to officials, Reinert was found unresponsive at his San Bernardino home on Friday, Jan. 24. No cause of death is known. Reinert formed Cynic in 1987 with frequent collaborator and guitarist/vocalist Paul Masvidal. They released
Carey Mulligan has made a conscious decision in recent years to collaborate with female directors, from Sarah Gavron (“Suffragette”) to Dee Rees (“Mudbound”). On Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival, she’ll unveil “Promising Young Woman,” a thriller written and directed by Emerald Fennell, about a heroine out for revenge after experiencing a traumatic abuse.
“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” director André Øvredal’s next adventure will see a U.S. rollout from Saban Films. “Mortal,” starring “Death Note” breakout Nat Wolff, has sold domestic rights to the distributor In a deal brokered by Endeavor Content. TrustNordisk handled international rights. Saban president Bill Bromiley, currently on the ground at the
Play video content Exclusive TMZ.com Meek Mill took a walk down memory lane that almost ended in blows — running into his ex, Nicki Minaj, and her husband, Kenneth Petty … and they weren’t happy to see each other. The shouting match went down Friday at the high-end clothing store Maxfield in West Hollywood, where
Shirley Jackson was a real person, a writer best known for her twisted short story “The Lottery,” although the version presented in Josephine Decker’s “Shirley” feels more like a character from one of her own novels. Featuring “The Handsmaid’s Tale” actor Elisabeth Moss in the title role, this queer, hard-to-quantify psychological study isn’t a biopic
Andy Samberg has been a reliable favorite hosting awards ceremonies, in recent years emceeing the Independent Spirit Awards, the Emmys and the 2019 Golden Globes with Sandra Oh. So it’s only natural to wonder if Samberg would consider taking the reins on the Oscars, which will return again this year without a host. “They have
The nonstop drama of the Trump White House has succeeded, among other things, in largely pushing gun control from the forefront of the news cycle — no doubt to the relief of the NRA and its allies, despite the continued frequency of U.S. mass shootings. As a result, and perhaps unfairly, Kim A. Snyder’s “Us
When it came to depicting the gonzo nature of influencer culture, “Spree” stars Joe Keery and Sasheer Zamata and director Eugene Kotlyarenko did a deep dive into the haves and have-nots of the internet. “Spree,” which premiered Friday at Sundance Film Festival, follows a rideshare driver named Kurt Kunkle (Keery) who will stop at nothing
Alexia Norton Jones, one of the alleged victims of Russell Simmons who appears in “On the Record,” a new documentary about sexual misconduct from the music mogul, couldn’t believe what she was seeing. A few days ago, Jones watched a video of Oprah Winfrey doing an interview with her friend Gayle King on “CBS This
In the terrific documentary “The Go-Go’s,” there’s a tasty clip of the band playing an early club gig in 1979, when they were part of the L.A. punk scene. They wear bushy black hair and pale white makeup (with rouge!), as if they were trying to be mannequin versions of Darby Crash, and they have
Nine Inch Nails, a banjo and Lil Nas X made unlikely bed partners in the genre-bending mega-smash “Old Town Road,” which included a track from NIN’s largely instrumental 2008 album “Ghosts I–IV.” But while Trent Reznor and frequent collaborator Atticus Ross receive co-producer/co-writer credits for having created the hit’s hook, don’t expect their names to
It wasn’t the reunion he’d hope (and sued) for, but Aerosmith reunited with estranged drummer Joey Kramer onstage at the 2020 MusiCares Person of the Year ceremony award on Friday night at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Kramer did not perform with the group for its four-song set, but joined his longtime bandmates at the
January 25, 2020 9:49AM PT [embedded content] Variety has been given exclusive access to the international trailer of the Danish film “A Perfectly Normal Family,” due to compete both at Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition, and at Göteborg’s Nordic Film Competition.Malou Reyman’s debut feature has been a hot property for sales agent New Europe Film Sales,
On Thursday, Jan. 22, amidst the mayhem of Grammy week in Los Angeles, the Vanity Group CEO Karleen Roy threw her inaugural “Grit Before the Gram” event. Billed as “the soundtrack of our solidarity,” the evening was produced to provide an environment of unity, awareness and impact. Agents, producers, managers, directors and label executives were
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Bebe Rexha hosted female artists, songwriters and producers at Los Angeles music industry hotspot Craig’s for her third annual Women in Harmony pre-Grammy brunch on Friday. The star-studded guest list included Cyndi Lauper, Kelsea Ballerini, Tinashe, Jordin Sparks, Dinah Jane, Natasha Bedingfeld, Sabrina Carpenter, Zhavia, Lindsey Stirling, JoJo, Daya, Becky G, Bea Miller, Ashlee Simpson,
January 25, 2020 8:20AM PT A knockout lead performance by Kyle Gallner sparks this ingratiatingly rude comedy set in Midwest suburbia. There are bits of “Repo Man,” “Napoleon Dynamite” and other literally or just philosophically “punk rock” cult comedies in the DNA of Adam Carter Rehmeier’s rude yet ingratiating “Dinner in America” — and mercifully