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The road to the 2013 straight-to-home-media Wester/horror film "Gallowwalkers" was weirdly circuitous. Way back in 2005, Ain't It Cool News announced that Chow Yun-fat was working on a horror Western wherein he would play a bounty hunting gunslinger that fought zombies. That film was to be called "The Wretched" and would be overseen by the production companies Sheer Films and Patriot Pictures, with Andrew Goth serving as co-writer and director. AICN's scoop was also confirmed in an issue of Fangoria Magazine.

Chow must have dropped out, though, because the next update on the project came in 2008, also in an issue of Fangoria. "The Wretched" had since become a project titled "Gallowwalker." The film was still being co-written and directed by Goth, but Wesley Snipes (who's one of our best actors) was now slated to star alongside David DeCoteau regular Andrew Smith and wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, with shooting to take place in Namibia.

Few directors made films that seemed almost engineered to play exclusively to midnight movie audiences quite like Alejandro Jodorowsky. The Chilean-born auteur became a cult sensation with his second feature film, El Topo, which kicked off a whole sub-genre known as the Acid Western. That's perhaps the best way to describe this metaphorical head trip, which was a favorite of Roger Ebert's. What Ebert understood that some other critics at the time didn't was that the destination of El Topo wasn't the point: it was the journey. Jodorowsky's surreal, indescribable saga came at just the right time for audiences searching for truth through drugs, activism, and cinema.

Luca Guadagnino was a lonely boy living in Palermo when he first read William S. Burroughs’ novella “Queer.” He would’ve been 14 when the book first came out in 1985, when gay liberation was already on its cultural downward slope because of AIDS, and the book was written in the early 1950s. But Burroughs’ story of American-expat-in-Mexico Lee and his obsessive romance with a lithe expat American soldier, Allerton, still emerged as an influential text for the queer literary canon but especially for Guadagnino’s imagination education.

Now, nearly four decades after first reading the book at 17, Guadagnino, one of the hottest filmmakers currently working — especially because of his other film this year “Challengers” — has finally realized the dream of bringing Burroughs’ world to the screen. Those men, Lee and Allerton, are played by Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in respectively career-reinventing and career-inventing performances. And the film, as Guadagnino said...

The 16th edition of the Lumière Film Festival kicked off in high style, with a glittering lineup of stars including Benicio del Toro, Tim Burton, Monica Bellucci and Vanessa Paradis plus high-profile directors Costa-Gavras and Giuseppe Tornatore gracing the red carpet in Lyon.

Bellucci, who’s in town to present a new documentary about the stage play in which she portrays Maria Callas, was among the last to take to the red carpet. After taking a few steps, she turned back with a playful gesture as if she had forgotten something, reached through the curtain, and drew out Tim Burton, to the delight of the 5,000-strong crowd: Burton’s unannounced appearance drew massive applause.

The pair famously met and fell in love in Lyon in 2022, when Burton was the recipient of the festival’s lifetime achievement Lumière Award, which was handed to him by Bellucci. The Italian actress has since...

Like any movie genre, the Western has its fair share of popular subgenres. Well-known Western subgenres include neo-Westerns, revisionist Westerns, and spaghetti Westerns. More obscure Western subgenres include acid Westerns, meat pie Westerns, and weird Westerns. Influential film critic Pauline Kael coined the term acid Western in 1971 in her review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo.

In the mid-1990s, Jonathan Rosenbaum expanded upon the definition of acid Westerns. He noted acid Westerns are a type of revisionist Western that reflected the counterculture ideologies of the 1960s and 1970s. Acid Westerns have a hallucinogenic quality that is often aided by surrealist imagery. Rosenbaum also stated that in traditional Westerns, a character's journey West resulted in freedom and prosperity. In Acid Westerns, Rosenbaum argued a character's journey is a march toward death. Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, and Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid...

Quick Links How Ridley Scott's Dune Could Have Advanced Alejandro Jodorowsky's Prep Work Scott Used H.R. Giger's Artwork for His Version of Dune Elements of Scott's Dune Development Presaged Denis Villeneuve's Later Adaptation A Tragic Loss Led to Scott's Self-Dismissal from Dune Ultimately, Scott May Have Made the Right Decision

Not long after the 1965 publishing of Frank Herbert's sprawling, best-selling science fiction novel, Dune, early attempts were made at adapting the book into a film. A movie option was originally purchased in 1971 by producer Arthur P. Jacobs which went into the early stages of development with Lawrence of Arabia director David Lean attached to direct.

Jacobs, however, tragically passed away in 1973, reverting the rights temporarily until they were purchased by a French film group that tasked director Alejandro Jodorowsky with developing Dune in 1974. Jodorowsky won fame (and infamy) for his 'Acid Western' films like El Topo,...

Quick Links Zardoz Cast and Plot Zardoz Was a Commercial Failure Why Zardoz Is a So-Bad-It's-Good Gem

Beloved actor of the silver screen, made iconic for his performances as James Bond, Ramirez in Highlander, and John Patrick Mason in 1996's The Rock, Sean Connery created an impressive body of work before his passing on October 31, 2020. Still, some of his work did not withstand the test of time, and others were complete flops from the get-go. One can look at the 1974 flop Zardoz as an example of both, a movie that some say was ahead of its time, while others call it a self-indulgent passion project that should never have been released to theaters.

The '70s sci-fi drama/philosophical/dystopian movie certainly confused audiences at the box office with its weird visual direction and heavy themes, but decades later, the movie has stood as an underrated gem for cult film fans and the so-bad-its-good crowd.

Western movies often deal with themes of independence, assimilation, and rugged individualism. The films are sometimes interpreted as ringing endorsements of the myth of the American West. However, the darkest Westerns in the genre explore the issues with these stories and expose the deeper truths about the victims of these ideologies. Dark Westerns feature intense displays of violence and fast-paced action, but these serve to communicate the greater purpose of the plot and the filmmaker's message. As thrilling as they are unsettling, these films push boundaries and define what audiences under the Western genre are.

The filmmakers and actors who are hallmarks of the Western movie were inclined to push boundaries and subvert the genres as their careers progressed.

The filmmakers and actors who are hallmarks of the Western movie were inclined to push boundaries and subvert the genres as their careers progressed. This is unsurprising, considering how much the West defines American cinema.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's ambitious vision for Dune led to the most significant cinematic failure ever. Special effects supervisor Dan O'Bannon turned his failed Dune dreams into the screenplay for Alien. Documentaries like Jodorowsky's Dune and Memory chronicle the evolution of Alien arising from Dune's ashes. (104)

Thanks to the gigantic success of Denis Villeneuve's recent adaptations of Dune, everyone seems to know about David Lynch's first attempt to turn that epic story into a feature film that, unfortunately, turned into one of the biggest disappointments in cinematic history. The story of the first attempt to adapt Dune for the silver screen is lesser known and flamed out even more spectacularly than Lynch's, leading to the development of one of the most iconic horror films ever made.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, a filmmaker with a potent vision for Dune, was in charge of this first adaptation. His dream was to make an epic ten-hour film,...

Alejandro Jodorowsky blends Western clichs, surreal elements, and drug culture in El Topo, creating arguably the best acid Western. El Topo is full of symbolism and unexplained, illogical facets that defy traditional storytelling. The film found distribution through a midnight screening, attracting attention from the Beatles and serving as a mind-altering experience.

Clint Eastwoods A Fistful of Dollars. Lee Van Cleefs Death Rides a Horse. Franco Neros Django. These are just some of the more popular spaghetti Westerns of the mid-1960s. While cinematic historians still appreciate this now antiquated subgenre, Westerns as a whole were offered another kind of thematic spin-off a few years later that goes relatively unnoticed these days. Enter the Chilean and French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. First crafting a short 20-minute surreal production called The Severed Heads in the late 50s, he then co-founded an art collective called The Panic Movement (which was inspired by the...

Severin Films is proud to announce the release of Santa Sangre on Limited Dual Edition on 29 July 2024. We’re giving you the chance to win Limited Dual Edition.

Legendary filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky is lauded by critics and cult cinema enthusiasts alike for his avant-garde, violently surreal, brilliantly original features. Now, one of his finest films, Santa Sangre, is set for brand-new release that will deliver an experience like never before.

Severin Films is proud to announce the release of Santa Sangre Limited Dual Edition on 29 July 2024. Get ready for a breathtaking, epic odyssey through ecstasy and anguish, belief and blasphemy, beauty and madness – and learn about the surreal genius behind it all. This must-have set features the film on both 4K Uhd and Blu-ray, with the 4K scan from the original negative supervised by Jodorowsky himself.We meet Fenix, a young boy who has grown up in a circus in Mexico,...

The 1970s marked the end of traditional westerns and the rise of the anti-western, questioning the genre's whitewashing of U.S. history. Movies like The Cowboys, Jeremiah Johnson, and High Plains Drifter paved the way for revisionist westerns in the '70s. Films like El Topo, The Shootist, and Blazing Saddles brought fresh, innovative perspectives to the western genre in the 1970s.

With delightfully dark classics like El Topo and McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the 1970s marked the end of the western genres heyday and the dawn of the anti-western. The western genre has been a staple of American cinema since the invention of filmmaking. One of the first narrative films ever made Edwin S. Porters 1903 silent movie The Great Train Robbery was a western. Seminal masterpieces like Stagecoach and Destry Rides Again established the cinematic language of the western genre in the 1930s, and westerns remained popular and prevalent throughout the 40s,...

Rediscover the Surreal Genius of Alejandro Jodorowsky with Santa Sangre‘s Limited Dual Edition Release out on July 29th and ready for you to win below.

Win 4-Disc Limited Edition Uhd + Blu-Ray of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s masterwork Santa Sangre

Critically acclaimed filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, known for his groundbreaking works like El Topo and The Holy Mountain, continues to captivate audiences with his avant-garde, violently surreal, and brilliantly original creations. Now, one of his masterpieces, Santa Sangre, is being re-released in a stunning new edition, offering an unparalleled viewing experience.

Severin Films proudly announces the release of the Santa Sangre Limited Dual Edition on July 29, 2024. Prepare yourself for an epic journey through ecstasy and anguish, belief and blasphemy, beauty and madness, while diving deep into the mind of a surrealist genius. This essential collection includes the film in both 4K Uhd and Blu-ray formats, with the 4K restoration supervised by Jodorowsky himself,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Paris Theater

Prints of Salò, Make Way for Tomorrow, The Turin Horse, There Will Be Blood, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Au Hasard Balthazar, and Rome, Open City all screen for “Bleak Week.”

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Minnelli, Bergman, Powell and Pressburger, Lubitsch, and more screen in an Annie Baker-curated series.

Anthology Film Archives

A five-film Aki Kaurismäki retrospective begins, while “Essential Cinema” brings von Stroheim’s Greed on Friday.

Film Forum

Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine begins playing in a new restoration, while films by Jim Jarmusch, George Miller, and more screen in “Out of the 80s“; Stormy Weather shows on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Last of the Mohicans and The Bridges of Madison County play on 35mm as part of “See It Big at the ’90s Multiplex”; an Agnieszka Holland retrospective continues...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film Forum

Films by David Lynch, Tony Scott, David Cronenberg, and Jim Jarmusch play in “Out of the 80s,“ which includes Do the Right Thing on 35mm this Sunday; The Neverending Story plays on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

Rumble in the Bronx and The Straight Story play on 35mm as part of “See It Big at the ’90s Multiplex” which also includes Boomerang and Trainspotting; an Agnieszka Holland retrospective begins; Mothra screens on Saturday.

Roxy Cinema

Altered States plays on 35mm this Friday; Saturday brings Knight of Cups; George Cukor’s It Should Happen to You plays on 16mm this Sunday.

Paris Theater

Seven, Old Joy, Come and See, and The Conformist all screen on a despair-inducing Sunday.

Metrograph

Films by Gus Van Sant and Alain Resnais play in an mk2 retrospective; retrospectives of Obayashi and Dieudo Hamadi...

In the early 1970s, a period marked by a surge in experimental cinema and the emergence of new cinematic voices, Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky embarked on an ambitious project that would challenge the conventions of traditional filmmaking. This was a time when filmmakers were pushing the boundaries of narrative and visual storytelling, experimenting with new techniques and themes. Jodorowsky, with his unique blend of surrealism and mysticism, was at the forefront of this movement. His goal was to adapt Frank Herbert’s iconic science fiction novel, Dune, into a film.

Jodorowsky is known for his avant-garde and surrealist style, which is evident in his body of work. In addition to his ambitions for Dune, he has directed several other films, each a testament to his unique artistic vision. These include El Topo (1970), a surreal western that is considered a classic of the acid western genre; The Holy Mountain (1973), a spiritual...

Surrealist cinema occupies a unique place in film culture that is outside of any traditional standards of storytelling. The style is as old as the classic silent films of Georges Mlis, and is responsible for some of the most striking imagery in the history of the medium. Despite their lasting influence, surrealist cinema has never had significant mainstream appeal. Nonetheless, the subgenre has spawned many prominent artists, including the brilliant Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Ever since his breakout acid Western El Topo earned a cult fanbase in the 1970s, Jodorowsky has made bold and disturbing films that combine rich mythology with thought-provoking philosophy.

Experimental Westerns often struggle with controversial endings that can undermine the initial theme or narrative coherence. Films like "El Topo" and "Heaven's Gate" take risks with their endings, resulting in disconcerting twists or unsatisfying conclusions. "Cowboys and Aliens" and "Paint Your Wagon" suffer from confusing or unexpected endings that detract from the overall story and themes.

Western films are one of the most beloved genres in American cinema, so naturally, there have been many iterations of the movies' tropes and plenty of endings that don't live up to the giants of the field. Great Westerns are known for their action, landscapes, and nuanced portrayals of the rugged individualism that has come to define the American West. Though not always, Westerns frequently include cowboys, saloon brawls, and shootouts as central tenants of their stories.

Since there are so many hallmarks of the genre, many films try to subvert the tropes with original takes on classic stories,...

International filmmakers brought a fresh, critical perspective to the American western genre, showcasing morally gray antiheroes and blood-soaked violence. Films like Sukiyaki Western Django and El Topo took the western genre to new, dark, and twisted places, blending different cultural influences and unconventional storytelling. Directors like Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone pushed the boundaries of the western genre, creating subversive and truly iconic films like The Great Silence and Once Upon a Time in the West.

The western is a traditional American genre, but from The Salvation to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, some of the greatest westerns ever made were produced internationally. The earliest westerns directed by American pioneers like John Ford and Howard Hawks told clear-cut black-and-white stories about good triumphing over evil. When international filmmakers got their hands on the western genre, they had no emotional connection to the United States and therefore depicted the...

Acid westerns are a unique subgenre of Western that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. Pauline Kael first coined the term in a 1971 issue of the New Yorker during her review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's 'El Topo.' Acid Westerns combine classical revisionist Western motifs with the cinematic excesses of Spaghetti Westerns, incorporating LSD-inspired countercultural narratives to create a provocative, drugged-up version of the American Frontier.

Warning: Major spoilers for Snitch below!

In Snitch, John puts his family at risk to save his son from a harsh sentence under federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws. John and Daniel team up to change the DEA deal and turn the tables on the cartel, leading to a dangerous truck chase and crash. The movie ends with John's son being released from prison, but John and his family must go into witness protection due to their enemies. Daniel receives a reward for his help.

The ending of Snitch sees Dwayne Johnson's John putting himself and his family at risk to get his son out of prison. Snitch opens with John's son Jason (Rafi Gavron) being arrested by the DEA after reluctantly accepting a package he knows to be filled with drugs from a friend. Despite having no prior convictions Jason faces a minimum of ten years in prison under a hardline law,...

When the clear-cut ethics of western movies turned out to be an idealized myth, the genre took a violent turn with rougher, bloodier visions of life in the Old West. The western genre started out with an optimistic view of justice and a morally black-and-white perspective of good versus evil. However, as time went on and the world became a lot more complicated, filmmakers challenged these tropes and conventions with morally gray antiheroes, real hardship on the frontier, and lots and lots of blood. Directors like Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Corbucci upended the genre’s traditions to deliver darker, grittier, and bloodier western movies.

There are a lot of spaghetti westerns with no good guys and an abundance of bloodshed (such as Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars). There are movies that incorporate gory horror elements in the well-worn western traditions (like Bone Tomahawk). While there are also acid...

Every month brings a new slate of entertainment to streaming services everywhere, but each turn of the calendar also brings the tragic removal of a list of movies and television shows. While Netflix is debuting a bevy of releases in May 2023, the streaming service is losing some treasured titles. Good thing you have this guide to make sure you catch everything that may have been sitting in your Netflix queue before they mysteriously disappear.

Unfortunately, juggling distribution rights in the ongoing proliferation of streaming services makes it a headache to keep up with who owns what. HBO Max is the biggest offender of losing its own original content, as the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery and the induction of CEO David Zaslav has wiped a chunk of HBO Max exclusives from the platform. Netflix has a better grasp on its properties, but even the longest-running streaming service has lost some of its licensing,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Anthology Film Archives

On Sunday, Courtney Stephens gives a live performance of her archival doc Terra Femme.

Film at Lincoln Center

New 4K restorations of the Infernal Affairs trilogy start screening this weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Caan Film Festival returns with 35mm prints of The Godfather, El Dorado, and Games, while Safety Last! screens this Saturday.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of Morvern Callar and A Woman Under the Influence, while Godard’s King Lear screens.

Film Forum

A Miloš Forman retrospective celebrates the filmmaker’s 90th birthday; the restoration of Carnal Knowledge continues.

IFC Center

“World of Wong Kar-wai” returns; the 4K Daisies restoration continues, as does the new restoration of Heat; Beaches of Agnes, Bottle Rocket, Aliens, Blue Velvet, The Holy Mountain, El Topo, Taxi Driver, The Shining, and The Silence of the Lambs...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of von Sternberg’s Dishonored and Alan Rudolph’s rarely screened Remember My Name.

Bam

In advance of her debut feature The African Desperate, Martine Syms has curated a series of influences—among them Spike Lee’s Girl 6, Paprika, and Happy Together.

Film Forum

A Miloš Forman retrospective celebrates the filmmaker’s 90th birthday; “Loving Highsmith” has its second weekend with Purple Noon, Strangers on a Train, and The American Friend; restorations of Alain Resnais’ The War Is Over and Carnal Knowledge continue.

Film at Lincoln Center

Three Colors: Blue, Three Colors: White, and Three Colors: Red all play in new 4K restorations.

Museum of the Moving Image

One of Johnnie To’s best films, Vengeance, screens on Friday as part of a retrospective on The Story of Film, while...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

“Working Class Musicals” examines the most lavish expressions from a ground level, featuring Cherbourg, Chantal Akerman, West Side Story x2, and more.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of Johnny Guitar, Jennifer’s Body, and Woman in the Dunes.

Film Forum

“Loving Highsmith” begins with Purple Noon, Strangers on a Train, and The American Friend; Alain Resnias’ The War Is Over continues and Carnal Knowledge, restored, begins a run.

Japan Society

Kihachi Okamoto’s Kill! plays on 35mm this Friday.

Film at Lincoln Center

As the Three Colors: Red restoration continues, The Wiz has a free outdoor screening this Friday on Governor’s Island.

Paris Theater

Kurosawa’s Ran plays exclusively through the weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

Streets of Fire, Licorice Pizza, Tron and Sleeping Beauty play on 70mm this weekend, while a series of zombie films screen.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

The Three Colors: Red restoration debuts as Three Colors: Blue and Three Colors: White continue.

Paris Theater

Prints of High and Low, The Haunting, and The World According to Garp play in a “Directors Selects” series, which also offers Coppola’s Dracula.

Film Forum

To mark the great Alain Resnias’ centennial, a massive retrospective continues with Marienbad, Hiroshima, Je t’aime, je t’aime, and some of his lesser-seen (but no less great) features—The War Is Over and Stavisky—while Dr. Strangelove plays.

Bam

Obayashi’s Anti-War Trilogy—Hanagatami, Seven Weeks, and Casting Blossoms to the Sky—has screenings this weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

Tron and Sleeping Beauty play on 70mm this weekend, while a series of zombie films screen.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of Bitter Moon,...

Just one month after debuting a fan favorite genre hit in the form of Stranger Things season 4, Netflix is once again coming out with the big guns for its list of new releases for June 2022.

The Umbrella Academy season 3 is set to be released June 22 and it will be a busy one for the Hargreeves family of crime fighters. After averting a 1963 nuclear apocalypse in season 2, the gang returns to the present only to find there’s a new team called the Sparrows living in their house. Based on the trailer for season 3, hilarity and many superpowers punches thrown will ensue.

Read more TV The Umbrella Academy Officially Introduces The Sparrow Academy By Alec Bojalad TV The Umbrella Academy Season 3: What To Expect By Michael Ahr

Other Netflix TV original series of note this month include the vampire love story First Kill (June 10) the Melissa McCarthy comedy God’s Favorite Idiot...

Exclusive: Formats biz veteran Siobhan Crawford, who has struck deals to revive reality show The Mole in several major territories, is leaving European distributor Primitives.

The former Banijay, Zodiak and Drg exec has been with the Belgium-based company for six years, most recently as Head of Sales and Acquisitions, but is now planning to take a period out before taking on a new challenge. Her last day is Tuesday April 19, she told colleagues and clients this week. 

Her key focus has been selling saboteur format The Mole, which is best known for its five-season run on ABC between 2001 and 2008. The show sees a group of contestants work together to accrue cash, with one of them attempting to undermine their efforts. Deadline understands several major deals are in the works.

UK-based Crawford also struck 17 deals, including in the UK and U.S., for competition format 99 To Beat, in which 100 contestants compete...

The TV documentary explores the Football Leaks website that exposes systematic illegaties in the football industry.

Dr Sales has closed a deal with Bomanbridge Media for a distribution partnership on the Football Leaks documentary A Game Of Secrets, with the Singapore-based Bomanbridge taking rest-of-world territories that Dr had not already pre-sold.

The 90-minute documentary had already been pre-sold to Denmark (Dr), Sweden (Svt) Norway (Nrk), Iceland (Ruv), Finland (Yle) Switzerland (Rts), Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Holland (HBO Max) and the UK (Dogwoof).

A Game Of Secrets delves into the obscure website Football Leaks that started revealing shady deals and...

Oslo has five non-fiction features in production and development.

Award-winning documentary filmmakers Bjarte Morner Tveit and Tonje Hessen Schei have joined Norway’s Oslo Pictures as the company ramps up its investment in non-fiction.

Producer Morner Tveit joins from Stavanger-based Piraya Film, where his credits included Cold Case Hammarskjold, Inside Fur, The Secret Life of Pigs and The Mole. The latter went undercover in North Korea and won best documentary at the Danish Film Academy’s Robert Awards in 2021.

Director Hessen Schei joins from UpNorth Film, which she co-founded in 2017, and is known for documentaries such as iHuman, Drone and Play Again.

Mads Brügger’s feature directorial debut, The Red Chapel, took a Tom Green-via-Sacha Baron-Cohen approach to infiltrating North Korea, with the director finagling himself and two comics — both adopted from North Korea, one with spastic paralysis — into the country. Given that it’s not hard to make an actual absurd environment appear absurd on screen, he emerged with fairly pointless cringe comedy: plenty of awkwardness all round but no real surprises. So it’s interesting to hear Brügger admit at the start of The Mole that The Red Chapel, while an […]

The post Doc NYC 2021: The Mole, Life of Crime 1984-2020 and Mr. Bachmann and His Class first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Doc NYC Artistic Director Thom Powers on Mel Brooks in the Special Event screening of Lisa Hurwitz’s The Automat: “This is a real New Yorker’s film.”

In the final instalment with Doc NYC Artistic Director Thom Powers, we discuss a number of the films that are screening in the 12th edition of Doc NYC. I start with Marc Shaffer’s Exposing Muybridge which has comments from Eadweard Muybridge admirer Gary Oldman; Tom Donahue’s Dean Martin: King Of Cool; Alessandro Rossellini’s The Rossellinis; Andrea Arnold’s Cow; Vincent Liota’s Objects; Eva Orner’s Burning; Abby Epstein’s The Business Of Birth Control; Mads Brügger’s The Mole; Robert B Weide and Don Argott’s Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time; Peter Middleton and James Spinney’s The Real Charlie Chaplin; Lisa Hurwitz’s The Automat As A Special Event, and end with the Closing Night selection,...

Looks like his time hosting The Mole paid off! Turns out, there's another side of Anderson Cooper's career the world didn't know about. During an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers on Tuesday, Oct. 26, the famed journalist revealed that he moonlighted as his mother Gloria Vanderbilt's social media assistant, prior to her death in 2019. When the Anderson Cooper 360 host realized that the then 91-year-old—who had been a model, an author and, most famously, a jeans designer— was becoming a bit depressed, he suggested starting an Instagram account to encourage her to get back to working on and selling her art. Gloria agreed, saying the platform was like...

Exclusive: Sony Pictures has set Jon Croker (High In The Clouds) to adapt anticipated fantasy novel series Skandar And The Unicorn Thief, which was acquired by Simon and Schuster and Sony in seven-figure deals last year.

The first book in author A.F Steadman’s series, which is set to launch in spring 2022, follows a thirteen-year-old boy whose dreams of becoming a unicorn rider are disrupted when an emerging enemy steals the land’s most powerful unicorn.

The publishing deal, made by Simon & Schuster Children’s UK and Simon & Schuster U.S., was the biggest known deal for a children’s debut. Sony preemptively acquired the feature rights with their own aggressive offer.

Drew Reed and Jake Bauman were key in landing that deal and Peter Kang has been overseeing the project for Sony Pictures.

Croker is best known for scripting The Woman In Black 2: Angel Of Death...

“The Mole” is on Netflix now. Maybe it’ll finally get the credit it deserves.

The reality show, whose first two seasons recently arrived on the streamer, was part of the early-2000s boom in unscripted TV. Its greatest impact may have been introducing its audience to its host, a not-yet-famous Anderson Cooper. It didn’t match the explosive success (or the staying power) of peer shows like “Survivor” and “American Idol” in its moment — but that might just mean it will feel fresh on a second look.

That chance would be overdue: The second season of “The Mole” was pulled from ABC’s schedule in 2001, eventually running as a summer replacement series. It ignominiously returned in a “celebrity” format that sucked out the intellect that had been central to the show, then aired one more civilian season with a new host in 2008 before fading out.

“The Mole’s” clever...

Theatre

The U.K.’s National Theatre has revealed a robust return to normal programming services with a host of plays and films scheduled through 2022, as the country limps back to normalcy post-pandemic.

Highlights include National Theatre director Rufus Norris’ new musical “Hex,” based on “Sleeping Beauty” which opens this Christmas in the Olivier Theatre, and The Lyttelton Theatre’s reopening in October with Ayub Khan Din’s “East Is East.” Anupama Chandrasekhar’s “The Father and the Assassin,” about Gandhi and his assassin, opens at the property’s Olivier Theatre in early 2022.

There are returns to Broadway for the acclaimed “The Lehman Trilogy” and tours across the U.K. and Ireland for “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”

Clint Dyer directs and co-writes “Death of England: Face to Face” with Roy Williams, an original feature film from the Lyttelton Theatre,...

Heavily slimmed-down show takes place at Los Angeles venues in Union Station, Dolby Theatre.

British talent has made a strong showing in the early awards at the 93rd Academy Awards.

Emerald Fennell won best original screenplay for Promising Young Woman, while Daniel Kaluuya was named best supporting actor for Judas And The Black Messiah.

Carey Mulligan and Vanessa Kirby are in the running for lead actress, while Anthony Hopkins, Riz Ahmed and Gary Oldman are contesting the lead actor category.

Chloe Zhao became only the second woman in history to win the directing Oscar and collected her statuette for Nomadland...

Heavily slimmed-down show takes place at Los Angeles venues in Union Station, Dolby Theatre.

British talent has made a strong showing in the early awards at the 93rd Academy Awards.

Emerald Fennell won best original screenplay for Promising Young Woman, while Daniel Kaluuya was named best supporting actor for Judas And The Black Messiah.

Carey Mulligan and Vanessa Kirby are in the running for lead actress, while Anthony Hopkins, Riz Ahmed and Gary Oldman are contesting the lead actor category.

Chloe Zhao became only the second woman in history to win the directing Oscar and collected her statuettefor Nomadland on...

Heavily slimmed-down show will take place at Los Angeles venues in Union Station, Dolby Theatre.

The 93rd Academy Awards take place in Los Angeles on Sunday night (April 25) – the latest it has ever been held.

The heavily slimmed-down show will take place at the Los Angeles venues of Union Station (see artist’s rendering) and Dolby Theatre and will feature satellite links with international locations including BFI Southbank in London, and Paris.

David Fincher’s Mank leads the nominations with 10, followed by six other films which secured six nominations apiece including The Father, Judas And The Black Messiah, Minari, Nomadland,...

Heavily slimmed-down show will take place at Los Angeles venues in Union Station, Dolby Theatre.

The 93rd Academy Awards take place in Los Angeles on Sunday night (April 25) – the latest it has ever been held.

The heavily slimmed-down show will take place at the Los Angeles venues of Union Station (see artist’s rendering) and Dolby Theatre and will feature satellite links with international locations including BFI Southbank in London, and Paris.

David Fincher’s Mank leads the nominations with 10, followed by six other films which secured six nominations apiece including The Father, Judas And The Black Messiah, Minari, Nomadland,...

Some 70 women representing a record total of 76 overall nominations have been nominated for Oscars this year, a very encouraging statistic for the Academy and the industry.

In honor of this, Academy Museum trustee Diane von Furstenberg and the Academy Museum have released a video (click the link above to watch) celebrating the women nominees of the 93rd Oscars. In a year that posed exceptional challenges to filmmaking, it is especially important to uphold the tradition launched seven years ago to honor talented women filmmakers who continue to break glass ceilings in the entertainment industry.

This year’s women nominees were asked to submit short videos or statements about their film and/or creative process. Cohost von Furstenberg, designer; Jacqueline Stewart, chief artistic and programming officer, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Cynthia Erivo, actor, singer, and producer, and Dawn Hudson, CEO, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, present a video...

Factual content producer WildBear Entertainment has expanded outside of Australia for the first time, establishing the WildBear Aotearoa office in New Zealand.

Executive producer, director, and writer Craig Meade has been appointed general manager of the Dunedin-based branch and will report to WildBear Entertainment managing director Alan Erson.

Meade joins from Nhnz where, as head of production, he was responsible for its factual and documentary output, as well as relationships with the wider international television industry.

His 15 years with the company included work on a diverse range of programming, including Gem Hunt for Travel Channel, I Survived 9/11 for A&e, Megastructures for National Geographic, and A Year in the Wild: Scotland for Channel 5.

Prior to this, he helped spearhead the production of reality TV in Australia as a freelance director, writer, and producer, developing House from Hell (which inspired Big Brother) before working as a director and showrunner on several major location formats,...

It was longer than usually, but at long last, the Oscar nominations are here. The field was led this year by Mank, scoring ten citations, with a number of films next in line. More to come, but for now, why not just get right to the good stuff, no? The movies deserve the stage. So, here you go… Here are the Academy Award nominees for this year: Best Picture The Father Judas And The Black Messiah Mank Minari Nomadland Promising Young Woman Sound Of Metal The Trial Of The Chicago 7 Actor in a Leading Role Riz Ahmed Chadwick Boseman Antony Hopkins Gary Oldman Steven Yeun Actress in a Leading Role Viola Davis Andra Day Vanessa Kirby Frances McDormand Carey Mulligan Actor in a Supporting Role Sacha Baron Cohen Daniel Kaluuya Leslie Odom Jr Paul Raci Lakeith Stanfeld Actress in a Supporting Role Maria Bakalova Glenn Close Olivia Colman Amanda Seyfried...

Other frontrunners include The Father, Minari and Nomadland.

David Fincher’s Mank comfortably leads the nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards, which were announced today (March 15).

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Set in 1930s Hollywood, the story of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane collected 10 nominations including best feature, best director and best actor for Gary Oldman.

The Netflix drama also secured nods for supporting actress Amanda Seyfried, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, costume designer Trish Summerville, makeup and hairstyling, production design, sound, and original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Other winners from Danish academy include Riders of Justice, Cry Wolf, The Mole.

Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round continues its streak by winning best film, best director, best original screenplay, best actor and best editing at Denmark’s Robert Awards, presented by the Danish Film Academy on Saturday night (Feb 6).

Anders Thomas Jensen’s Riders of Justice, the opening film at Rotterdam last week, also fared well at the Roberts, winning best actress (newcomer Andrea Heick Gadeberg) and best supporting actor for Lars Brygmann, as well as best visual effects.

Another newcomer, Özlem Saglanmak, was named best supporting actress for...

The longlists cover all major categories following the first round of voting by the organisation’s voting members.

The Bafta Film Awards has unveiled the longlists for films in all of the major categories following the first round of voting by the organisation’s 6,700 eligible voting members.

Scroll down to see the longlists

Bafta has brought in many changes to the voting procedures this year following an in-depth investigation into membership and voting this summer prompted by last year’s nominations which were widely considered to be lacking in gender, ethnic and national diversity.

The key changes introduced on the...

What a busy morning! Not only did the National Board of Review announce its winners, the Film Independent Spirit Awards revealed their nominees. It was quite the precursor day, to say the least! Nbr gave their top prize to Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, while the Spirit Awards were led by Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always. The former snubbed Promising Young Woman as a film, while citing Carey Mulligan in Best Actress, while the latter gave it three nominations, though also snubbing it in Best Feature. Among completely shut out titles, for one reason or another, we have The Father and News of the World. How much does this mean? Well, it remains to be seen, but it’s certainly good news for those titles cited, while at least a slight concern for those left out in the cold. Read on for all of the nominees and winners…...

Guatemalan Oscar submission title La Llorona named best foreign language film.

British stars Riz Ahmed and Carey Mulligan won top acting awards for Sound Of Metal Promising Young Woman as the National Board of Review announced its 2020 winners.

Spike Lee was named best director and Da 5 Bloods best film in Tuesday’s (January 26) announcement.

Minari, which earlier in the day picked up six Spirit Award nominations, earned Youn Yuh-jung the best supporting actress gong, and Lee Isaac Chung best screenplay. Jayro Bustamente’s Guatemalan Oscar submission title La Llorona was named best foreign language film.

Chadwick Boseman is posthumously...

Estonian comedy scooped the audience award at Black Nights Film Festival in November.

London-based sales outfit One Eyed Films has secured international sales rights to Estonian comedy Goodbye Soviet Union, which scooped the audience award at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival last month.

One Eyed Films negotiated the deal with Estonian production company Exitfilm, which excludes Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Cis.

The Estonia-Finland co-production marks the feature directorial debut of Lauri Randla, who also wrote the coming-of-age story set during the final days of the Soviet Union.

The comedy centres on a boy named Johannes, who is...