“Witness the wonder, the escape, the story,” McKinnon says. “The sandy beaches, the massive bamboo,” Adele adds, as the two banter back and forth on what’s most to love about a trip to Africa. “The lush, dangling foliage! The history!” The sketch, however, was met with some controversy on social media, with viewers pointing out the potentially offensive portrayal of Africa. Others have said that the sketch actually targets foreign ignorance about the continent....

NBA stars Dennis Rodman and Charles Barkley also showed up, as played by Chris Redd and Kenan Thompson respectively. Heidi Gardner plays Jordan’s security guard John Michael Wozniak. The sketch centers around a coin toss that goes awry. The lineup of hosts for this season of “Saturday Night Live” has been impressive so far, with other hosts including (and most controversially) Elon Musk, plus Academy Award nominees Carey Mulligan and Daniel Kaluuya, “Saturday Night Live” alumna Maya Rudolph, Nick Jonas, “Bridgerton” favorite Regé-Jean Page, “One Night in Miami” director Regina King, “Schitt’s Creek” Emmy winner Dan Levy, and actor and filmmaker John Krasinski....

“After the Warner Bros announcement, it’s been a bit of a boom for us because it’s made dating our movies next year somewhat easier,” Vinciquerra said this week during an interview with CNBC (via The Verge). “But the real benefit has been the number of incoming calls from talent, creators, actors, and directors to us saying, ‘We want to be doing business with you because we know you’re a theatrical distributor and producer....

“This is a Delroy Lindo appreciation post,” the Instagram message reads. “Delroy Lindo may not have received an Oscar nominations yesterday but that does not take away from the impact of his work that spans decades. From for his roles in ‘Da 5 Bloods’ to ‘Crooklyn,’ ‘Clockers’ & much more, we continue to recognize and celebrate his career.” The Oscars essentially ignored “Da 5 Bloods,” only nominating the film in the Best Original Score category....

Plot details about the series are remaining under wraps, but Deadline adds: “Wong and Yeun are executive producers. The creator/writer/showrunner of the limited series is Lee Sung Jin. They are keeping the logline under wraps for the moment, but this isn’t going to take long to land, and it will be 10 episodes, 30 minutes in length.” Related ‘Close’: Behind the Scenes of the Most Heartbreaking Coming-of-Age Story of the Year Ari Aster’s ‘Disappointment Blvd....

Other TV-friendly options are scattered throughout the festival’s 11 categories, including “Philly D.A.,” a docuseries on civil rights attorney Larry Krasner that’s set to debut on PBS, and “Weirdo Night,” a variety show pilot from L.A. cult artist Jibz Cameron’s alter ego, Dynasty Handbag (more on this one later). But, while one gets the sense that the festival’s intrepid programmers searched far and wide for appropriate, fully produced, and independent content, the surprising takeaway is how focused the Indie Series lineup remains....

“The White Lotus” and “Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney was on hand at Fenway Park to throw out the ceremonial first pitch when the Boston Red Sox hosted the Toronto Blue Jays. The actress donned a Red Sox jersey for the occasion, but her support did not do the home team much good. If anything, she might have been the bad luck charm. The Red Sox ended up losing in a blowout of historic proportions, as the Blue Jays beat them 28-5....

The Oscar winner revealed to Empire magazine that he was turned down to be an extra in the famous “Godfather” wedding scene, in the background among Marlon Brando, James Caan, Al Pacino, and Sylvester’s future “Rocky” love interest Talia Shire, who is director Coppola’s sister. “I went to Paramount, and said, ‘Can I be an extra in the wedding scene?,’” Stallone recalled. “They said, ‘Yeah, we don’t know if you’re the type of guy....

Here are the seven most exciting movies coming to the platform this month. 7. “The Prom” (2020) Future historians will note that 2020 ended the only way this cursed year possibly could: With Meryl Streep rapping on camera in a Netflix musical directed by Ryan Murphy. And yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, it seems “The Prom” might be just the party we’ve all been waiting for over these last nine months....

The experience of seeing a movie in a theater is singular, but moviegoing is not exactly an option for the time being for many people. In lieu of that theatrical experience, there’s a next-best alternative: Investing in your home theater. More specifically, ditching your old flatscreen TV for a brand new home projector. “Home theater” doesn’t necessarily mean an entire room with recliners and a popcorn machine, it’s simply the place where you plan to consume your entertainment....

But the two-story, ground-level duplex is actually a pretty cush Lower East Side unit, and for Karam, who wrote and directed the film from his own 2016 play, it’s not so bad. That’s because he more or less lived in this place during his starving-artist days in New York City. “The reason I was able to afford it as a playwright [with a] day job working as an assistant [was because] I lived in the basement....

During the New Jersey stop on his “After Hours Til Dawn” tour on Saturday night, The Weeknd debuted an exclusive first look at the upcoming limited series created by Tesfaye, Sam Levinson, and Reza Fahim. The teaser promises another visceral, debauchery-filled offering from, among the others, “Euphoria” creator Levinson. Check it out below. Based on the trailer, Lily-Rose Depp is indeed the star of this show about an LA self-help guru (Tesfaye) who lures a rising pop star (Depp) into his sway....

“The house, as per the book, has its roots in a sort of East Coast aesthetic,” Major told IndieWire. “So we chose this early Craftsman style that is actually quite artistic in many ways… the 40 years since it was built has really weathered it and pared back [the house], but it still has the bones of quite a fancy house. And in a way, it’s kind of synonymous with Phil [because] it’s almost like time stopped....

Higashida was part author and part codebreaker, which helps to explain why he and his book attracted the attention of “Cloud Atlas” writer David Mitchell. Not only do Mitchell’s novels reflect a near-pathological obsession with puzzle-solving and the space-time between people, but he and his wife KA have an autistic child of their own. Together, they translated “The Reason I Jump” into English — effectively bridging yet another crucial gap, albeit not without some controversy — and the book became an international bestseller that has since been published in over 30 different languages....

At the outset of Season 4, there’s no job for him to do. It’s not quite accurate to say that Harry is enjoying his quasi-retirement. He’s still shaken by the events of last season’s cabin showdown, not to mention being buried alive not too long before that. Sensing that he needs a literal change of scenery, his partner Sonya (Jessica Hecht) takes the lead on a retreat of sorts in an island town off the coast of New England....

Still, two decades is a long time in sponge years, and even basal metazoa who live in pineapples under the sea and earn their parent companies billions of dollars in licensing deals aren’t immune to the pressures of a superficial industry that only tends to care about what’s above the surface. In other words, SpongeBob has gotten some “work” done. And he’s not alone. In fact, literally every single creature (and building!...

You might sense it in the structure of Imbet, Magali Pouzol, and Jean-Charles Ostorero’s screenplay, which unfolds through a series of nested memories à la Isao Takahata’s “Only Yesterday” — or “Citizen Kane.” More specific is how this meditative, breathless, and occasionally transcendent film rustles with the same melancholic beauty that swirls through every frame of Hayao Miyazaki’s magnum opus “The Wind Rises.” Where that melodrama weighed the creative spirit against its most awful cost, this adventure story reaches even higher in its bid to understand why some men (and only men, so far as Imbert’s picture is concerned) are compelled to climb the world’s tallest mountain and/or die trying....

Michael Morris’ “To Leslie” is a redemptive drama about a poor Southern white lady played by Andrea Riseborough, who wins $190,000 in the state lottery and only learns the value of sharing after she’s drank all her cash away. But for a while there, the film is almost as slippery and elusive as the actress who plays its title role. Is it going to be — as the first stop along its episodic first half would suggest — a gruesome scream-fest between a bottom-of-the-bottle alcoholic and the semi-adult son (Owen Teague) who’s trying to give her a second chance?...

Toby Kebbell, who played Doctor Doom, recently spoke to Forbes about his role on the Apple TV+ show “Servant.” And even this many years later, the actor can’t stop thinking about what went wrong with “Fantastic Four.” He revealed that he raised questions about problems with the script during the filming process, but his concerns fell on deaf ears. “I don’t think we were a victim of timing, I think we were a victim of bad leadership and organization,” Kebbell said....

Cruise went on to note that he wasn’t interested in apologies: “You can tell it to the people who are losing their fucking homes because the industry is shut down. It’s not going to put food on their table or pay for their college education. That’s what I sleep with every night — the future of this fucking industry!” In hindsight, that furious speech was an uncanny echo of several things that Cruise had said “in character” the previous year — months before the first documented COVID-19 case — while shooting “Top Gun: Maverick....