For Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, however, the decision to ingest the collection of roughly 55,000 DVDs and VHS tapes once housed at the iconic East Village mainstay Kim’s Video & Music is an experiment with no real downside. “Free movie rentals is not a great business model, but we have the space,” League said in an interview last week, a few hours before Kim’s reopened in the lobby of the new location....
Morales, who this year also directed “Plan B,” stars in the film opposite her co-writer Mark Duplass. Here’s the official synopsis: “When Adam’s (Mark Duplass) husband surprises him with weekly Spanish lessons, he’s unsure about where or how this new element will fit into his already structured life. But when tragedy strikes, his Spanish teacher, Cariño (Natalie Morales), becomes a lifeline he didn’t know he needed. Adam develops an unexpected and complicated emotional bond with Cariño — but do you really know someone just because you’ve experienced a traumatic moment with them?...
The feature filmmaking debut of Alexandria native Mayye Zayed, “Lift Like a Girl” is an intimate observational portrait of a young girl’s empowerment through the traditionally male sport of weightlifting. The film is bolstered by an improbable hero, the passionate and cantankerous Captain Ramadan, who rules his outdoor training facility with an iron fist and a can-do attitude. The Captain, as his young charges call him, hobbles around his patch of dusty earth watering trees held flimsily by rock piles, and shouting haphazard commands to his eager trainees....
In recent years, debates have festered around the best term to describe people from Spanish-speaking countries and territories — including Miranda, the child of Puerto Rican parents and a Mexican grandparent. But even this wordsmith hasn’t settled on a specific term to describe his background. “What you run up against are the limits of defining 32 different fucking countries with one world,” Miranda said in a recent interview with IndieWire....
At the time Jackson and Weinstein were developing “The Lord of the Rings,” McWeeny worked as a writer for Ain’t It Cool News. In his Polygon essay, McWeeny discusses getting the script for the two-film “Lord of the Rings” adaptation leaked to him by people at WingNut and WETA studios. The hope was that positive buzz created for the project on Ain’t It Cool News would be noticed and potentially save the project from the limitations Weinstein was enforcing....
Where to Watch “Losing Alice”: Apple TV+ (the series originally aired on the Israeli TV network Hot 3) For a show filled with different forms of temptation, it only makes sense that “Losing Alice” is told in a way that makes it appealing to try to solve it. From the opening scene, a brutal introduction to this world intended to be as disorienting as it is bloody, the viewer is a little at the mercy of the tangled web that writer/director Sigal Avin lays out over eight episodes....
The network announced plans for a documentary about C.K. after he stepped away from projects in 2017 following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. The “Louie” creator recently won his third Grammy for a 2020 self-released comedy special “Sincerely, Louis C.K.” and debuted the film “Fourth of July” earlier this summer. “Louis C.K. is a slightly different situation [compared to Harvey Weinstein],” Showtime CEo, Paramount+ chief content officer, and Paramount TV head of scripted originals David Nevins said during the Edinburgh TV Festival in Scotland, as reported by Variety....
Filmmakers can submit short films up to 90 seconds long about voting via the contest’s website or by uploading directly to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #VoteByNight. Shyamalan, alongside Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaign, will review the submissions, and the top three filmmakers will be invited to a virtual meet-up with Shyamalan to discuss art, film, and the power of storytelling. Submissions may also be featured in Biden-Harris campaign programming....
The pandemic’s pall hovered over Comic-Con. Entering the convention center required COVID verification wristbands and masks, but those precautions came late and caused confusion. Some panels were always virtual, like the one I hosted for “Abbott Elementary,” but one for fellow ABC shows “The Rookie” and “The Rookie: Feds” went virtual at the last minute. A disappointed heckler yelled, “We’ve been virtual for three years, c’mon!” However, that wasn’t the biggest disappointment: Too many of the in-person panels lacked substance....
The question is, when will audiences be ready to experience “The First Wave”? The movie finally premieres this week at the Hamptons International Film Festival, after a series of festival rejections that the lauded filmmaker was not expecting. He initially fought to get the film finished in time for Sundance 2021, and while he got praise from the festival, director Tabitha Jackson wasn’t ready to show it. Nor was Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, or the New York Film Festival....
Memorial Day isn’t just the kickoff to summer, it’s the perfect time to shop for some of those tech essentials that you’ve been meaning to buy. Movie lovers will find lots of amazing deals this holiday weekend, from TVs to mini-movie projectors and Blu-ray players, now’s the time to save big on must-have items. Below, find a list of discounted gadgets and gizmos to buy. For additional tech recommendations, check out our picks for best smart watches, portable TVs for camping and more, and best gifts for tech savvy grads....
Castro introduces her main subject, Doris, as she shops for party supplies, and soon interjects the present festivities with footage from home videos—endearing portraits to a distant past when her family was together. Six years prior, her older brother was deported. Though her professional earnings enabled her to start the process for her undocumented parents to attain legal status, they remain unable to leave the country and see their son....
“We seem to have entered an economic downturn that will have a broad impact on the digital advertising business,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s Q2 earnings call Wednesday. Disney and Netflix are betting big on introducing ads to their flagship services. They’ve got an edge with broad reach and premium content, but in a soft market they need to give advertisers something better than what they have now — namely, returns on investment and the ability to precisely target users....
The show is the first project to come from Mara Brock Akil’s 2020 overall deal with Netflix to develop new content for the streamer. Akil, best known as the creator of the popular 2000 UPN comedy series “Girlfriends,” will showrun and executive produce the series. “Judy Blume’s ability to capture the real emotions we experience during the various rites of passage of our youth influenced my life choices and writing voice,” Akil said in a statement on Thursday....
A source confirms additional cities will open on the two subsequent Fridays, as well as some international dates, with more theaters added when the film begins its online availability October 16. Of course, these initial dates will not include Netflix’s own Paris Theatre in New York, which remains closed as do the major markets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Three weeks in theaters prior to online availability has been standard for Netflix since the release of “Roma” two years ago....
Below find Netflix’s summer movie preview sizzle, featuring some of the highlights from the nearly three-dozen films the streamer is set to release between April and the end of August. Included in the video are clips from Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead,” “Fatherhood,” the Jason Momoa-starring “Sweet Girl,” the Amy Adams agoraphobia thriller “The Woman in the Window,” and more. Netflix set a release date, announced the full cast, and revealed a first-look photo from “America: the Motion Picture,” a project that has been quiet since 2017, when word broke that Channing Tatum would voice George Washington in the animated feature directed by “Archer” EP Matt Thompson and written by “Wonder Woman 1984” scribe Dave Callaham....
“Oliver Sacks: His Own Life” uses conversations with Sacks himself as a kind of rudder, a personal guide through the many of the chapters of his own story. Beginning with an overview of Sacks’ early years spent adrift and following through to an unexpected second act as a bestselling writer, Ric Burns’ documentary offers a calm and measured look at Sacks’ legacy. One of the other built-in benefits of profiling Sacks is the wealth of written accounts he left during his life, not just in the published works that have become standard entry points into accessible understandings of the neurological field....
Nominations voting is from January 12-17, 2023, with official Oscar nominations announced January 24, 2023. Final voting is March 2-7, 2023. And finally, the 95th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 12 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET/ 5:00 p.m. PT. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2023 Oscar picks. In this year’s Supporting Actor field, several veteran Oscar-winners vie against a crop of newbies....
But “Ma Rainey’s” 89-year-old, Oscar-winning costume designer, Ann Roth (“The English Patient”) is the clear favorite. And it certainly helps that the momentum is with Viola Davis in the Best Actress race. This was her fourth Oscar nomination — the most for any Black actress. She plays the trailblazing ’20s blues singer, who flaunted her flashy wardrobe to convey a sexy, subversive image. Ross put Davis in a rubber suit modeled after Aretha Franklin, and assembled an array of bold and durable outfits (including flowing berry-red and blue velvet dresses)....
“For us, it was about learning the story, learning who these women are, their characters and diving into that world,” McGhee said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “We [focused on] bodies and what works well on them [for movement] and on how it’s really an empowering story of strength and resilience and love and non-judgment.” The one-hour drama created by the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall, follows the lives and careers of a group of strip club dancers in Mississippi’s Dirty Delta....
