October 28, 2019 4:14AM PT Like a continually delayed movie release, Brexit has been postponed again, with the deadline for the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European Union pushed forward three months to Jan. 31, 2020. The other 27 member states of the trading bloc assented to another delay because the British Parliament remains unable to
Spotify kept packing on millions of listeners and subscribers for the third quarter of 2019, with the company claiming it’s growing twice as fast as chief rival Apple. The company also announced that CFO Barry McCarthy will retire from Spotify on Jan. 15, 2020, to be replaced by Paul Vogel, who is currently Spotify’s VP
Unfolding while Japan simultaneously hosts the Rugby World Cup, recovers from the recent Typhoon Hagibis, and prepares for the upcoming Olympic Games, the 32nd edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival got under way Monday, with a strong sense of Japanese tradition and heightened conservatism compared with previous years. That feeling was reinforced by last
October 28, 2019 1:51AM PT Sky Studios has inked deals with Free@Last TV, the producer of “Agatha Raisin,” and Sagafilm, the Iceland-based program-maker that counts “Stella Blomkvist” among its credits. The deals cover development and distribution. The producers get money to work up their slates, Sky gets a pipeline of programming, and Sky’s sister company,
Veteran programmer Yoshi Yatabe and his team have steadily steered the Tokyo International Film Festival competition away from the mediocrity of its early years, when even the winners couldn’t get distribution deals in Japan. The 14-film competition line-up for this year’s 32nd edition is a mix of seven world premieres and titles previously screened at
October 28, 2019 12:55AM PT An initiative of the Japan Foundation Asia Center, Crosscut Asia is a TIFF section dedicated to films from Asia, especially from emerging markets. Thematically, the sixth edition of Crosscut Asia takes a snapshot of Southeast Asian genre films. It presents eight horror, fantasy and dark future films from the region,
Lina Wertmüller wants to see a big change for the Oscars. The 91-year-old Italian director had Isabella Rossellini acting as her translator while accepting her honorary Oscar on Sunday night at the Academy’s Governors Awards in Hollywood. “She would like to change the Oscar to a feminine name,” Rossellini said. “She would like to call
October 27, 2019 11:45PM PT Korean drama “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” opened on Wednesday and landed on top of the South Korean box office. The film adaptation of a best-selling feminist novel of the same title earned $8.3 million from 1.12 million admissions over five days, including $6.31 million from 829,000 admissions earned over the
October 27, 2019 11:09PM PT After months in limbo, Lulu Wang’s breakout Asian-American family drama “The Farewell” is finally set to hit theaters in China on November 22, more than four months after its US release. Leading Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan bought the rights and is distributing, following a deal negotiated by Endeavor Content. A
Downtown Music Publishing has signed a global publishing agreement to represent the entire catalog of the legendary jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis. The long-term agreement, signed with the Davis estate, covers the artist’s entire songbook of more than 250 compositions, including songs from albums such as “Jack Johnson,” “Bitches Brew,” “In a Silent Way”
The REVOLT Summit touched down in Los Angeles this weekend (Oct. 25 – 27), following the success of the conference in Atlanta just six weeks prior. Presented by AT&T, the confab took place at The Magic Box in downtown L.A. and featured dozens of panels and performances, bringing to the stages such hip-hop greats as
October 27, 2019 5:08PM PT Attention, YG fans: At his shows, MAGA might as well stand for Make A Grand Adieu. It’s hardly a secret that YG is not a Donald Trump fan — “FDT,” which stands for just what you’d think it stands for, being one of his most famous songs. But he took
And so, here we are again. In October of 2017, Ronan Farrow made an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” at a shaky time in his relations with NBCUniversal. Farrow, who had worked as a mid-afternoon host at MSNBC and a contributor working off a contract at NBC’s “Today,” had just published a blockbuster
Exclusive Details Getty David Schwimmer‘s home became a landing pad for a guy who pivoted in the wrong direction — and, unfortunately, he got arrested for it … TMZ has learned. A spokesperson for the NYPD tells us that a 29-year-old man named Eric Rosa was arrested early Sunday morning around 12:30 AM ET for
Festival favorites like Neon’s “Parasite,” Roadside Attractions’ “Judy” and Fox Searchlight’s “Jojo Rabbit” have helped ignite a once-sleepy independent box office. It’s a welcome development for the specialty market, which has stalled in recent months outside of sparse hits like A24’s “The Farewell” ($19.5 million) and Roadside Attractions’ “The Peanut Butter Falcon” ($20.1 million). Industry
At Hozier’s sold-out show at L.A.’s Greek Friday night, one of the first things you couldn’t help noticing on stage —because it’s still an anomaly — was that his eight-piece lineup was half-male, half-female. Knowing his penchant for socially conscious songs, his decrial of “the anthems of rape culture” in his lyrics, and a general
Under Takeo Hisamatsu, the Tokyo International Film Festival has expanded its animation section, this year making it one of the event’s main pillars. But he says that the time is not right for a focus on Kyoto Animation, the beloved production house where 36 people died this summer, the victims of an unprecedented arson attack.
AT&T has struck a deal to sell its majority stake in Central European Media Enterprises for $1.1 billion as part of the telco giant’s larger campaign to shed non-core assets and pay down debt. AT&T said Sunday it would sell its majority interest in the media company that operates in Central and Eastern European markets
It’s not unusual to encounter an animated tale in which the hero is an incorrigible child (just look at “Boss Baby” or the Teen Titans). But the title character of “Ne Zha” is no mere mouthy delinquent. He’s a scamp from hell, a tauntingly invincible bad-seed superkid who has been infused, from birth, with the
Born in 1938 in Onomichi, a port town facing Japan’s Inland Sea, Nobuhiko Obayashi began making experimental films in the 1960s and showing them at galleries and other sites around Tokyo. With lines forming around the block for these films, which captured the free-spirited, anything-goes mood of the times, Obayashi branched out into TV commercials.
Born in 1931 in Osaka, Yoji Yamada entered the Shochiku studio in 1954 at the height of Japanese cinema’s postwar Golden Age. He debuted as a director in 1961 with the comedy “The Strangers Upstairs” and thereafter specialized in the genre, though he found hits hard to come by. In 1969 his fortunes began to
FX’s hit horror anthology series “American Horror Story” celebrated its 100th episode milestone in true “AHS” style, hosting a lavish bash among the tombstones at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery — a location that had particular significance for series creator Ryan Murphy. “One of my favorite memories of the show was here when we were shooting
Kanye West brought his Sunday Service to the big screen with “Jesus Is King,” a 30-minute short film that collected $1.03 million globally over the weekend. In partnership with Imax, “Jesus Is King” gives viewers a rare look inside the rapper’s gospel experience in Roden Crater and James Turrell’s never-before-seen art installation in Arizona. The
Paul Barrere, the singer-guitarist who was instrumental in keeping the group Little Feat going for decades after the death of founder Lowell George, has died at 71. Barrere died from the complications of liver cancer, which he’d been diagnosed with in 2015, following a battle with Hepatitis C that first came to light in 1994.
Though “Joker” bested “Maleficent” in North America, Angelina Jolie’s “Mistress of Evil” remained victorious at the international box office. Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” collected another $64.3 million from 56 foreign territories, boosting its overseas haul to $228 million. Globally, the dark fantasy sequel is nearing the $300 million mark with ticket sales currently at
President Donald Trump made a rare Sunday morning address to the nation shortly after 9 a.m. ET to announce the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a two-hour US-led raid in Northern Syria. “He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said. The major broadcast networks broke into regular
Put on a happy face: In its fourth weekend in theaters, Warner Bros.’ “Joker” returned to the top of domestic box office charts, narrowly defeating Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.” The two villains had been in a close race for first place, but Sunday estimates show “Joker” will walk away victorious with $18.9 million in
It wasn’t hard to be skeptical when Prince’s autobiography, “The Beautiful Ones,” was first announced earlier this year. In the rare interviews that he gave, the late artist was famously private, cryptic and confounding when it came to discussing his own life, often answering direct questions in confusing or oddly symbolic terms. The official description
VALLADOLID, Spain – The Valladolid Intl. Film Festival (Seminci), the truest event dedicated to international arthouse cinema on Spain’s festival calendar, capped off eight days of screenings, press conferences and roundtables by handing out awards on Saturday evening at the Spanish city’s historic Calderon Theater. The evening’s big winners: Wang Quan’an’s “Öndög” and Karim Aïnouz’s
At age 14, Ruka feels adrift in the world. At school, she doesn’t have any friends. At home, her parents are absent or distracted most of the time: Ruka’s dad works at the local aquarium, while her mother spends her days drinking beer indoors. This wide-eyed loner may be “just” an anime character, but she’s