The middle tier is the “Huh, this is pretty cute” level — shows with a little sass and verve that you don’t regret displaying to your child’s still-developing sense of self: the “Octonauts” and the “Storybots” and “The Muppets.” The top tier, inarguably, is “Sesame Street.” Sweet, kind, watchable even for adults, full of smarts and in-jokes and characters that make mistakes but learn from them in a way that isn’t cloying....

Except the actual “Wheel of Time” logo isn’t a dragon eating its own tail. It’s a dragon weaving forward, toward the screen, with its mouth open but the tail far in the distance. If you squint, you can actually see the dragon’s rear end in the middle of the circle, way behind its head. So… what does this symbol mean? Is it still designed to evoke ouroboros, even though the beast’s definitive beginning and ending contradict the symbol’s intent?...

Chaos reigns. And at this point, while the Primetime Emmy Awards don’t appear to be immune from the new status quo, executive producers Reggie Hudlin and Ian Stewart aren’t particularly fussed about it. In a Q&A with entertainment journalists Wednesday morning, the two men spoke at length about the vast and varied information streams they’ll be juggling throughout the process, each with the ability to go sideways at any moment....

This list includes films that have currently set a firm release date or are definitely expected in 2021, though many of IndieWire’s most-anticipated 2021 films have yet to announce release plans, including titles like “Memoria,” “The Worst Person in the World,” and a variety of other films set to bow on the fall festival circuit. At 45 titles now, this list offers a wide variety of choices for audiences, but we’re expecting to add still more as the months roll on....

“What constitutes animation as it relates to the Oscar qualification is an important discussion,” director Dean Fleischer Camp told IndieWire. “We got to show the process. What some people don’t understand is how animated it is. They think it’s a stop-motion character and some objects composited into a live-action world. But so much of that live-action world was animated to impersonate real physics, like Marcel jumping on a spoon. In a way, ‘Marcel’ is a victim of its own success because it worked so well....

This year is no exception: The second edition of Nightstream begins tonight and runs through October 13, with an exciting online program of films and events accessible to anyone in the U.S. Badgeholders will be able to tune into conversations with David Lowery, “Malignant” writer Akela Cooper, and “Creepshow” showrunner Greg Nicotero, as well as recurring events like The Future of Film Is Female and the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies....

We still have a couple months before the highly anticipated Disney+ series, “Loki,” makes its debut and to help pass the time, we rounded up a list of essential comics and graphic novels about the God of Mischief. The titles listed give you more insight into Loki’s story arc ahead of the new show starring Tom Hiddleston, which marks the third Marvel spinoff series after “WandaVision” and “Falcon and the Winter Soldier....

But before those tributes, Smith and “King Richard” had much to celebrate March 2 at the 13th annual African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA), where Smith won the Leading Male in a Motion Picture and Aunjanue Ellis picked up Best Supporting Actress, in addition to two more wins for the film: Breakout Actor (Saniyya Sidney) and Emerging Director (Reinaldo Marcus Green). Netflix’s “The Harder They Fall” (Netflix) took home Best Picture, Best Ensemble, Best Music (Jeymes Samuel, Kid Cudi, Jay-Z), and Best Director (Jeymes Samuel)....

“I didn’t know the rules of Comic-Con,” Driver said. “I got in at the hotel at two in the morning…and I’m like, ‘Maybe tomorrow I’ll go get a coffee.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh no, you can’t get a coffee.’ I’m like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll get a coffee in the hotel.’ They’re like, ‘No, you can’t get a coffee in the hotel.’” If Driver wanted to leave his room to get a coffee (or do any other mundane activity), he’d be required to wear a full head mask (Iron Man and Darth Vader were options, for instance) so that his identity remained anonymous from the thousands of “Star Wars” fans attending the convention....

To find models for his unusual narrative, Iñárritu looked to an unlikely source of inspiration. “In the ’70s, I loved these albums that were concept albums,” he said. “There were no singles, there was no division. The Pink Floyd albums, or Yes, or Genesis’ ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.’ Albums like that or David Bowie’s were telling a story and the songs were blending and it was just an atmosphere — a dream state, and the story’s kind of subjective....

The “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” host opened his October 12 show saying he is “spiritually refreshed” following the news of Jones being ordered to pay $965 million in damages to parents of Sandy Hook victims after the 2012 elementary school shooting. Jones was found liable of violating Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act by perpetuating lies that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged to sell products on his website. “Tonight I come to you with a spring in my step, with a song in my heart, emotionally and spiritually refreshed because you know how, as humans, we have to accept that sometimes bad things happen to good people?...

Here’s the film’s synopsis, according to Deadline, which first reported the news: “Giamatti plays a universally disliked teacher at the prep school Deerfield Academy. His non-fans include his students, fellow faculty and headmaster who all find his pomposity and rigidity exasperating. With no family and nowhere to go over Christmas holiday in 1970, Paul remains at school to supervise students unable to journey home. After a few days, only one student holdover remains — a trouble-making 15-year-old named Angus, a good student undermined by bad behavior that always threatens to get him expelled....

Still, despite the funeral setting, there isn’t much mourning going on here. Yes, Haddish sheds a few tears when admitting that COVID isolation has forced her to seek out sex via [shudder] a monogamous relationship, and Ziwe’s excellent evisceration of corporate racism via the death of beige band-aids is as genuine as it is passive aggressive. But most of the five-minute stand-up routines are celebratory. Silverman waxes poetic on the death of MAGA....

For the last month, much of Hollywood has been up in arms about the provocative decision to eliminate eight Oscar categories from the live ABC broadcast, with executive producer Will Packer opting instead to pre-tape the below-the-line categories and edit the acceptance speeches into the show to save time. One of those categories is Best Film Editing, and Hollywood’s top editors are none too happy about the move. American Cinema Editors, the organization devoted to honoring film editing that hosts the prestigious ACE Awards, has released a letter imploring the Academy to change the decision (via The Hollywood Reporter)....

“Because consumers were promised a movie with Ana de Armas by the trailer for ‘Yesterday,’ but did not receive a movie with any appearance of Ana de Armas at all, such consumers were not provided with any value for their rental or purchase,” the lawsuit states. The plaintiff’s lawyers went on to praise the “Knives Out” star, saying “Unable to rely on fame of the actors playing Jack Malik or Ellie to maximize ticket and movie sales and rentals, Defendant consequently used Ms....

ViacomCBS announced on Wednesday that that DiMartino and Konietzko will serve as co-chief creative officers at the newly launched Avatar Studios, which will create various animated series and films based in the “Last Airbender” world. The studio’s output will appear on the Paramount+ streaming service, Nickelodeon’s linear and digital platforms, as well as third-party platforms and in theaters. Production will begin on the studio’s first animated feature film later this year....

The statement follows the rep’s previous statement that Heche was in “stable condition,” which was issued on Saturday following the incident. It took place on Friday when Heche was heading east on Preston Way in her vehicle at high speed, ran off the road, and collided with a residence. The vehicle and the home became engulfed in flames before Heche was rushed to a local hospital. The blaze was fought by at least 59 fire ighters, who took 59 minutes to put out the fire that overtook both Heche’s car and the house it crashed into....

In reality, they were hidden behind headsets with Ridley located outside London and Hudson in Chicago. In the VR crowd milling about before the conversation began, an attendee snarked, “You’ve got to wonder how many of these people are wearing pants right now.” The event was a celebration of “Baba Yaga,” the latest family-friendly project from Baobab Studios, a five-year-old Silicon Valley company that has produced seven VR experiences to date (including the upcoming “Namoo,” which will premiere in Sundance’s 2021 New Frontier section)....

In it, you see Robbie in a red dress and wild hair hysterically unraveling amid tableaux of Jazz Age bacchanalia. There’s also a drunken Brad Pitt tap-dancing in his underwear. The sizzle is a propulsive series of images that come at you hard and fast, but one standout is breakout actor Diego Calva, who plays a character called Manny Torres, appears to be the lead. In a conversation with TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, director Damien Chazelle said that the super-sized Hollywood epic, set circa 1920s Los Angeles as silent films transitioned to talkies, isn’t finished....

Burdened with the knowledge that this $80 million studio project could be the last of its kind, “Babylon” refracts Hollywood’s first major identity crisis through the prism of its latest one. It reminds us the movies have been dying for more than 100 years, and then — through its heart-bursting, endearingly galaxy-brained prayer of a finale — interprets that as uplifting proof they’ll actually live forever. It just doesn’t have any idea how the movies will do it, or where the hell they might go from here....