In the hour leading up to President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance on Thursday, I peeked inside the flashy studio where MSNBC’s biggest stars were previewing how Donald Trump could derail the proceedings, and I saw megawatt smiles. The hosts were in the middle of a
Viggo Mortensen is eyeing his next directorial project. “It’s only indigenous languages, it has no white characters and there will be no movie stars – just lots and lots of horses. But I am convinced it will have wide appeal, because it’s a universal coming-of-age story about
One of the biggest challenges for any artist is knowing when a creation — a song, a story, a painting — is finished and ready to be shared with the world. More than many, Neil Young has shown a willingness to wait, recording songs and full albums — and even performing them in
SZA, Usher and Victoria Monét were just a few of the musicians to take top honors at the 2024 ASCAP Top Rhythm & Soul Music Awards, which took place last night in Los Angeles. SZA, who released her record-breaking sophomore album “SOS” in late 2022, was honored with the ASCAP
Paramount’s prequel A Quiet Place: Day One made a loud entrance at the domestic box office with a franchise-best $6.8 million in Thursday previews. That’s an impressive start, considering this is the first entry not directed by franchise creator John Krasinski or starring Emily
Make some noise, because it’s time to return to “A Quiet Place.” The third entry in Paramount’s post-apocalyptic thriller series, “A Quiet Place: Day One,” has opened in theaters and made $6.8 million at the box office in Thursday previews. After the 2018 original movie and the
As this album’s cover artwork suggests — it appears to show a restaurant table with one man drinking tea and eating baked beans, and the other drinking syrup — a full-length collaboration album between British avant singer-songwriter James Blake and psychedelicized Atlanta
It’s the most wonderful time of the year for U.K. festival-goers: Glastonbury Festival returns this weekend. Most of the 200,000-strong crowd – including a large chunk of the U.K. music industry – are already on site at Worthy Farm but, for those unable to get a ticket, the
Renowned British filmmaker Mike Leigh believes that if the subjects of his 2018 historical drama “Peterloo” were alive to see the upcoming U.K. general elections they would be “not only horrified but mystified” about “people procrastinating about whether to vote and seeing
Lucy Kerr’s unnerving debut, “Family Portrait,” opens with a sequence where a character is intent on materializing the title in literal fashion. Katy (Deragh Campbell), a 20-something, tries to wrangle adults and children to take a group photo together on a calid afternoon
A collection of concert films featuring K-Pop icons BTS and Seventeen will start to become available worldwide on Asian-themed streaming platform Rakuten Viki from next week. An agreement between agency firm Hybe Corp. and Rakuten Viki provides a slate of nine concert films,
“Second Chance,” the directorial debut of Indian filmmaker Subhadra Mahajan, has been picked up for international sales by Thailand-based Diversion ahead of its world premiere at the 2024 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film is set to debut on July 2 in the
Emmy winners Sheryl Lee Ralph and Tony Hale have signed on to announce this year’s Emmy nominations, live on July 17, at 8:30 a.m. PT from Disney’s El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. The nominations reveal will stream live on the Emmys website, via Emmys.com/nominations. Also on
Dominique Boutonnat, the president of the National Film Board, France’s most powerful film institution, has received a three-year prison sentence, including two suspended, over sexual assault charges. Boutonnat has stepped down from the CNC in the wake of the verdict on June 28
British actor Ben Hardy, whose credits include “X-Men: Apocalypse,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Netflix’s “Love at First Sight,” is one of the leads in upcoming film “Unicorns.” Co-directed by BAFTA nominee Sally El Hosaini (“The Swimmers”) and her long-standing collaborator James
Khaby Lame brought his comedic chops to the U.S. — and the producers of his new unscripted series, “Khaby Is Coming to America,” are hoping his millions of TikTok fans will come along for the ride. The limited three-part series follows Lame as he explores the best (and
The world premiere of Mitzi Peirone’s horror film “Saint Clare” will open the Taormina Film Festival, this year celebrating its 70th anniversary edition. The adaptation of Don Roff’s novel stars Bella Thorne, Ryan Phillippe, Frank Whaley and Rebecca De Mornay. It’s the first of
Veteran festival director Marco Mueller was only hired to take over as the artistic director of the Taormina Film Festival in April this year. “I’m stressed out,” he told Variety, two weeks ahead of the festival opening, but he is philosophical. “The history of this island is
UPDATED, 10:01 a.m. ET: Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock rose slightly Friday after Donald Trump scored what political pundits nearly unanimously agreed was a victory over President Biden in the candidates’ first debate of the 2024 election season. Shares of TMTG, which
RENEWAL Hit Japanese anime series “Wind Breaker” has been confirmed for a second season, distributor Crunchyroll said on Thursday. The announcement came the same day as the finale of Season 1. “Welcome to Furin High School, an institution infamous for its population of brawny
Ian McKellen is teaming up with RuPaul’s Drag Race U.K. star Divina de Campo to share the titular role in the upcoming stop-motion animated film, Dragfox. McKellen, currently performing in a production of Henry IV, Parts One and Two on London’s West End, will voice Ginger Snap
Arnaud Lagardere, who had stepped down from his executive roles of chairman and CEO of the listed French media conglomerate Lagardere on April 29 after being indicted over embezzlement charges, is back at the helm of the company. Lagardere had been provisionally banned from
As the Indian film industry reaches the midpoint of 2024, Malayalam-language cinema from the southern state of Kerala has emerged as the breakout success story, while traditional powerhouse Bollywood recalibrates after an uneven start to the year. “This year has been the year
Acting icon Sigourney Weaver will be honored with the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. Inarguably one of the most acclaimed and versatile actors of her generation, Weaver, a triple-Oscar nominee, has moved easily across
France’s film and TV sales agencies are expanding their efforts to do business with companies in China and Southeast Asia. That requires travelling to the region and, for some, a tweak to established mindsets. This month has seen a delegation of sales firms set up stall in
Oscar-winning actor Sigourney Weaver will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. Weaver said, “To be gifted this award is a privilege I share with all the filmmakers and collaborators I have worked with throughout the
In her 2022 Toronto curtain raiser “The Swimmers,” telling the true story of two Syrian sisters and their emotional and gruelling journey to Europe to escape the civil war, director Sally El-Hossaini went to great lengths to ensure authenticity, using real-life refugees both
Expanding its Japanese content, Netflix has set up “Soul Mate,” a live-action series that charts the ten-year romance between a Korean man and a Japanese man. Traversing Berlin, Germany, Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan, “Soul Mate” starts when a man who left everything
The international documentary market Sunny Side of the Doc concluded its 35th edition in La Rochelle, France on June 27, drawing 2,100 participants from 68 countries. The four-day event, themed “Mapping the Future,” showcased 90 exhibitors and hosted 250 international
"After watching tonight’s debate, both of these men should be using performance enhancing drugs," Jon Stewart confirmed on The Daily Show
After she and Nicki Minaj had a low-simmering beef earlier this year, Megan Thee Stallion has seemingly addressed her one-time ally on “Rattle,” a track included on her freshly released album “Megan.” Megan, who’s currently on her first headlining “Hot Girl Summer” tour,
I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but Donald Trump didn’t just give a better performance than Joe Biden during the first 2024 presidential debate. In terms of authority and confidence, quickness and poise, articulation and verve, Trump left Biden in the dust. Relative to
Jon Stewart got behind “The Daily Show” desk Thursday evening for a special, live-broadcast edition, going on air minutes after the first 2024 debate between President Biden and former president Donald Trump concluded on CNN. The host didn’t mince words, attacking both
The media tried to keep the current President and the former one on a short leash Thursday evening, but failed in many ways to keep them in check. In a unorthodox presidential debate that focused more on optics than substance, a visibly shaky President Joe Biden clashed with a
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed says testimony at a recent hearing in Alec Baldwin's criminal case revealed prosecutors failed to share a possibly "exculpatory" report about the firearm before her trial
Should things go the way they seem to be going, the events of Thursday night may go down as the greatest unforced error in presidential electoral politics since Richard Nixon, fatigued and unshaven, went on-camera against John F. Kennedy in 1960. Joe Biden ran up against two
President Biden and former President Trump debated on Thursday in Atlanta, with each attacking the other’s four years in office as a disaster for the country. The two candidates attacked each other in personal terms. Biden referenced Trump’s criminal conviction and other legal
DJ and producer Diplo has been sued for distributing revenge porn, marking the second accusation lobbed against him for the same offense in less than a year. In the suit, filed in California on Thursday, an unidentified woman referred to as Jane Doe said she had an intimate
Vampires are eternal, and so are movies about them. The genre shows no signs of going bloodless anytime soon, even if the oldest texts continue to inspire some of its most compelling entries. Consider writer-director Adrien Beau’s “The Vourdalak,” an adaptation of Aleksey
IATSE has reached a tentative deal on the Area Standards Agreement, the contract that covers 20,000 film and TV workers around the country, including those in Louisiana, New Mexico and Georgia. The deal follows the Basic Agreement, which applies to 13 locals based in Los
Alamo Drafthouse is taking over the six franchisee locations that closed in June due to bankruptcy. The venues, including five Texas locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as well as a Minnesota venue in Woodbury, are set to reopen this summer. “We were heartbroken to hear
Jeremy Renner graces the July/August cover of Men’s Health magazine, where he opened up about the overwhelming support he received from his Marvel Cinematic Universe co-stars following his near-death snow plow accident at the start of 2023. For instance, Falcon actor Anthony
Among the perennial reasons we go to the movies is the onscreen heat between impossibly charismatic stars. The summer of 2024 has delivered the goods in that department so far: Consider the sweltering Anne Hathaway-Nicholas Galitzine romance “The Idea Of You,” the disarming,
The (silent) Scream Queen has emerged. Following Lupita Nyong’o’s role as a tethered clone with a shaky voice in Jordan Peele’s 2018 film “Us,” the Academy Award-winning actor now gets completely silent for “A Quiet Place: Day One,” set in a world where if you make noise,
Alec Baldwin and Stephen Dorff get caught up in the dangerous world of cutting timber in the Pacific Northwest in the trailer for Clear Cut. Lionsgate releases director Brian Skiba’s thriller feature theatrically and via digital and on-demand on July 19. Clive Standen, Lucy
Lupita Nyong’o is opening up about having a personal connection to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” song and her efforts to include it in her film Little Monsters. While appearing on the latest Hot Ones episode, the A Quiet Place: Day One star discussed Swift’s hit single being
Indie sports media brand Jomboy Media has partnered with regional sports network Bally Sports to air its “Warehouse Games” franchise, which includes ball in play, floorball, blitzball and slapball. Deal reps the first time the games have hit a mainstream linear platform. Jomboy
