Above Photo: In September, 99 percent of voting IATSE members authorized a strike over dangerous—or even deadly—working conditions. (Twitter user @runolgarun) The union representing 60,000 film and television crew workers reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood producers October 16. The deal averted a first-ever national strike by the Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE), which was set to begin the next night—at least for the time being. The contracts will be voted on in the next several weeks. Matthew Loeb, IATSE president since 2008, hailed the agreement as “historic.” But though Loeb calls the agreement a “Hollywood ending,” for the tens of […]
Film
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Ukrainian-made armored utility vehicles were spotted on the film set of the new Netflix movie. The two Varta armored personnel carriers were spotted with a film crew in Kyiv this Autumn at the film set of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s action-comedy “The Last Mercenary” from director David Charhon. In the French-language film, written by Charhon and Ismael Sy Savane (“Lascars”), action star Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a mysterious former secret service agent who must urgently return to France when his estranged son is falsely accused of arms and drug trafficking by the government, following a blunder by an overzealous bureaucrat and a mafia operation. – […]
Bellator MMA fighter and Instagram sensation Valerie Loureda has revealed that she has turned down the chance to feature in a reality TV show with her sister, Natalie, but admitted that she would “love” to become a screen star. Unbeaten flyweight prospect Loureda has built up a huge following on social media alongside her unbeaten start to her MMA career, winning her first three fights and reaching more than 523,000 supporters on Instagram. The 22-year-old earned her long-term Bellator deal after knocking out Tara Graff in August, and she reminded fans of her concussive skills as she fired a rapid flurry […]
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107902/59/1079025940_0:0:3151:1772_1200x675_80_0_0_abbf7b339d92603cc3c31a0af08593a7.jpg Sputnik International https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png Max Gorbachev. Sputnik International https://sputniknews.com/society/202010171080798463-adult-film-park-with-porn-stars-as-employees-opens-in-tokyos-red-light-district/ The attraction was designed by one of the largest Japanese adult film companies, Soft on Demand (SOD), which has previously opened bars where porn actresses serve guests. The idea turned out to be a hit and the company has decided to expand its business. A theme park for adults that has porn actresses as employees has recently opened up in Japan’s capital Tokyo. Each floor of the five-storied building, located in the Kabukicho red-light district, has its own theme. Floor 1F is used as a sort of reception, where the features of […]
Detroit News: Detroit Magistrate Joseph Boyer set bond Thursday for conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman at $100,000 in a voter intimidation case, even as the attorney general’s office argued for a $1 million bond and Burkman’s lawyer called the charges “a publicity stunt.” Wohl and Burkman on Thursday turned themselves in at the Detroit Detention Center. Assistant Attorney General Richard Cunningham said they “made a mockery of our system of government” and came with a camera crew and hundred dollar bills to pay the bond. The evidence will show there have been ongoing efforts by Burkman and Wohl to affect […]
Hollywood star Penelope Cruz has been unwittingly dragged into an online battle over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, after social media users falsely assumed she had posted an image of the Armenian flag. The Spanish-born actress shared a photo of the poster advertising her upcoming 2021 action thriller ‘The 355’, about a formidable team of international female secret agents. It shows Cruz in character as a Colombian, posing with the yellow, blue and red flag of Colombia in the background. But many apparently confused it with the flag of Armenia, which is red, blue and orange. “Karabakh is Azerbaijan!” many Azerbaijani commenters wrote. Users […]
Netflix is facing criminal prosecution over the controversial French film ‘Cuties,’ after a Texas grand jury indicted the entertainment streaming service for lewd depiction of children. The indictment was filed September 23 in Tyler County but was shared Tuesday on Twitter by Republican state Representative Matt Schaefer. It accuses Netflix of knowingly promoting visual material that depicts “lewd exhibition” of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was under 18 when the content was created. Further, the prosecution alleges that the material “appeals to the prurient interest in sex and has no serious literary, artistic, […]
The satirical video also serves as a promo for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan – with its bizarre reference to Vice-President Mike Pence in the title. Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen Has taken an in-character dig at US President Donald Trump in a viral promo video for the Borat sequel. A Twitter account for “Republic of Kazakhstan” – the homeland of Baron Cohen’s comedy character Borat Sagdiyev – posted a tongue-in-cheek video tribute to Trump on Wednesday following Tuesday night’s presidential debate with Democratic rival […]
Gale Sayers, who held or shared 12 NFL records when he retired, has died at age 77. He famously dedicated an award to his friend and teammate, Brian Piccolo. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive hide caption toggle caption Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Gale Sayers, who held or shared 12 NFL records when he retired, has died at age 77. He famously dedicated an award to his friend and teammate, Brian Piccolo. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Gale Sayers, a graceful and quick Chicago Bears running back whose elusiveness bedeviled defenses and delighted fans, has died at age 77, the team and the NFL announced Wednesday. Sayers was a fearsome […]
CNN let Netflix CEO Reed Hastings off the hook for the second time in four days, neglecting to ask him even once about ‘Cuties,’ the film that ignited a campaign to cancel the streaming service for showing alleged “child porn.” The latest Netflix-friendly interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program, where host Brian Stelter kept the discussion focused primarily on promoting Hastings’ new book. CNN host Poppy Harlow took a similar approach on Thursday, steering clear of hard-hitting questions and talking mostly about the book in the 10 minutes she had with Hastings. Harlow interviewed the CEO the day after […]
VENICE—It took two full hours to stop thinking about Kyle Rankin’s 109-minute masterful mindfuck called Run Hide Fight, named after the mantra kids are taught to remember in order to survive school shootings in America. But the film is surprisingly not really about school shootings. It doesn’t even have an anti-gun slant, and instead opens with a scene of a teenage girl, in mourning over the loss of her mother, shooting a deer under her father’s delicate guidance. The setup is risky. The exploitation of the epidemic of school shootings in the U.S. still feels far too raw to use as […]
I attended my very first Sundance Film Festival in January of 1997. I loved the energy and the community that came together around a shared passion for independent film and the discovery of new filmmakers. But when the lights came on, I saw very few people in the audience who looked like me. It was mostly white men. Were there Black filmmakers who didn’t know about or weren’t invited to Sundance? I began to wonder if there might be an opportunity to create an alternative platform for them—for us—primarily focused on content by African Americans for Black audiences. And if such […]
Criterion President Peter Becker knows that his company’s film collection has long ignored Black artists. And now, he says, he’s ready to do something about it. In a fascinating feature well worth reading in full, The New York Times spoke with Becker about the scarcity of Black and African American directors within Criterion’s ranks. “There’s nothing I can say about it that will make it OK,” Becker told the Times. “The fact that things are missing, and specifically that Black voices are missing, is harmful, and that’s clear. We have to fix that.” Criterion’s DVD collection can be coveted among cinephiles […]
A Netflix film set to debut next month has drawn major public backlash and a petition to see it cancelled, with critics insisting the mature-rated movie – centered on an 11-year-old wannabe dancer – sexualizes children. Scheduled for release on the platform in September, the French film ‘Cuties’ bills itself as a coming-of-age drama that hits on modern social issues, following protagonist Amy, a pre-teen girl from a conservative family who joins a school dancing troupe. But a growing number of detractors argue that the film is obscene and “promotes child pornography,” pointing to sexually provocative dance routines and revealing outfits […]
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/08/1080105730_0:0:3071:1729_1200x675_80_0_0_f7e9f4bf60f8d5b2dc3890778141e09d.jpg Sputnik International https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png Sputnik https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png https://sputniknews.com/europe/202008091080105759-europacorp-film-company-ceo-luc-besson-replaced-by-axel-duroux/ The 61-year-old filmmaker, who founded EuropaCorp in 1999, is famous for directing The Fifth Element, Lucy, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. On 8 August, French motion picture company EuropaCorp managing director Luc Besson was replaced by Axel Duroux, a press release by the company reads. According to the release, Luc Besson will retain the non-executive chairmanship of the board of directors “in order to focus from now on, as announced on 28 February 2020, on the artistic activities of the group as an artistic director”. The new chief executive will take up the position on […]
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107982/56/1079825658_0:183:1201:858_1200x675_80_0_0_0ee889c3e705be84aaa93cb76e5c22a5.jpg Sputnik International https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png Sputnik https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png https://sputniknews.com/world/202008041080059894-ex-adult-film-star-mia-khalifa-fuels-conspiracy-about-beirut-port-blast/ A massive explosion occurred in the port of Beirut, leaving at least 50 people dead and injuring 2,750 others, according to the authorities’ preliminary data. Ex adult film actress of Lebanese descent Mia Khalifa has sparked controversy over the recent explosion at Beirut port, Lebanon. In a series of Instagram stories posted on late Tuesday, Mia shared videos taken by witnesses at the scene showing heavy blasts and orange smoke rising into the sky. Mia Khalifa’s stories on Instagram about Beirut port blast On one of the stories, she wrote “Fireworks” with double quotation […]
“Truth is the most important thing,” says Tomasz (Maciej Musiałowski) midway through The Hater, and of all the falsehoods this habitual liar spews, none is more shameless. Still, while deception is Tomasz’s stock-in-trade, there’s plenty of authenticity to be found in writer/director Jan Komasa’s Netflix feature (premiering July 29), whose release was temporarily delayed because its fictional story wound up echoing a real-life tragedy that shook Komasa’s native Poland. Three weeks after filming wrapped on The Hater, liberal Gdańsk mayor Paweł Adamowicz was assassinated on stage at a Christmas charity event by a right-wing hatemonger—a shocking crime that eerily echoes the […]
New Delhi (Sputnik): Sushant Singh Rajput ended his life on 14 June, and on 24 July, “Dil Bechara”, the last film to feature the Bollywood star, was released online, leaving fans and colleagues teary-eyed. The movie, based on the famous book “The Fault in our Stars”, directed by Mukesh Chhabra, broke every ratings record in India. Out of the 26,624 users who rated the movie on IMDb, 92.8 percent gave “Dil Bechara” 10 stars – making it the highest-rated movie of all time on IMDb. Since more and more users are tuning to the OTT platform Disney Plus Hotstar to watch […]
A bus seized by an armed gunman who took 13 hostages in the city center of Lutsk, some 250 miles west of Kyiv, Ukraine on Tuesday. Pavlo Palamarchuk/AP hide caption toggle caption Pavlo Palamarchuk/AP A bus seized by an armed gunman who took 13 hostages in the city center of Lutsk, some 250 miles west of Kyiv, Ukraine on Tuesday. Pavlo Palamarchuk/AP A hostage standoff on a bus in western Ukraine ended Tuesday after a bizarre demand from the captor was met with the country’s president publicly recommending a 15-year-old animal-rights documentary narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. Just before the end of […]
The 27-year-old woman, who was once one of the most popular porn stars, has recently revealed how she was tricked by a porn company to participate in a photoshoot with a photographer that reportedly worked for famous fashion magazine Vogue. Former pornstar Mia Khalifa opened up about her fight against the adult company she worked for in a video she posted on social media. The young woman said the smear campaign launched by BangBros company was terrifying and that she was “really scared” of slipping up and saying something wrong because the company was acting “dirty”. Her statement comes following a […]
Next, our film’s American cinema release was cancelled and a US TV network pulled the plug on screening it. This was after Trump International had issued a legal threat to anyone who showed the film or repeated Molly’s allegation about her water supply. The threats were enough to undermine our film’s release. Source link
The Painted Bird is a masterful epic about a young unnamed Jewish Boy (Petr Kotlár) navigating a bleak Eastern European landscape during World War II, and when it had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last September, it was equally praised and decried as brutal and harrowing thanks to its horrifying scenes of murder, pedophilia and bestiality. Ask Czech writer/director Václav Marhoul about that reaction, however, and he confesses that he views his third feature—a nearly three-hour, black-and-white adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 novel of the same name, boasting supporting turns from Stellan Skarsgård, Harvey Keitel, Udo Kier, Julian […]
Composer Ennio Morricone, posing with his Oscar for The Hateful Eight in 2016. He died Monday at age 91 in Rome. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images Composer Ennio Morricone, posing with his Oscar for The Hateful Eight in 2016. He died Monday at age 91 in Rome. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images The iconic score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: This is the sound of the American West, at least filtered through the ears of an Italian — specifically, composer Ennio Morricone. He was a giant in the world of film scores who wrote the […]
New Delhi (Sputnik): Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas has been admired as the embodiment of female empowerment and someone who defied nepotism and left a mark in the industry. The actress started her B-town journey with the spy thriller “The Hero” in 2000. Bollywood’s Priyanka Chopra Jonas has shared with fans her 20-year career in the entertainment industry via a dedicated video produced by ozzy productions. The video defines the actress as fearless, a hustler, and a self-made superstar. “Thank you @ozzyproduction and all of you for such a beautiful reminder of these 20 years since I started in this business. […]
By Tuesday, over a quarter of a million people had signed a petition calling for the suspension of the release of a forthcoming film, ‘Habit’, starring Paris Jackson reportedly depicting Jesus as “a lesbian woman”. Australian pop star Sia Furler sent a message of support on Wednesday to American model, actress and musician Paris Jackson, daughter of the late pop icon Michael Jackson, amid heavy criticism she is reportedly facing for starring in the upcoming movie ‘Habit’, in which the actress portrays Jesus as “a lesbian woman”. “Dear @ParisJackson I love you, keep going. I believe you are a good person,” Sia […]
MOSCOW—When Russia’s leading contemporary theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov and his three colleagues went on trial, virtually all of Russia’s cultural elite, nearly 4,000 actors, poets, writers, and directors demanded authorities stop the shameful proceedings. Even the most careful celebrities stopped being careful and made public comments condemning the prosecution. “We tried to sit quietly but they continued to open our wounds with this case.” — Chulpan Khamatova, actress What they realized as they watched this case taking shape was that in Russia today any famous personality can be charged with some sort of cooked-up crime, arrested, and convicted. Dozens […]
Former US president Bill Clinton has expressed sadness over the alleged suicide of film financier and philanthropist Steve Bing. The millionaire was a generous donor to the Clinton Foundation. The 55-year-old is believed to have jumped to his death from his 27th floor apartment in Los Angeles on Monday. Following standard protocol, the LAPD released a description of the victim but declined to confirm that the individual in question was Bing. Any lingering doubts about his passing were removed, however, after Bing’s old friend Bill Clinton posted a tribute on Twitter. “I loved Steve Bing very much. He had a big […]
Earlier this year, a Facebook post spread like wildfire through the Texas film community. It was the account of a young actress, alleging that Adam Donaghey, a rising producer in the region, had raped her when she was 16. Donaghey, who has denied the allegation, was subsequently arrested in late April on suspicion of sexual assault of a minor, and is currently free on bail. The Dallas Police Department would not provide any further information. Donaghey, 39, was a ubiquitous presence in the emerging Dallas movie scene. A rich childhood friend of the director David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon), he had gained […]
MOSCOW, MAY 29 — RT won four prizes at the annual Telly Awards, a major international TV and film production award. The judges recognized a number of RT Arabic programs, a documentary covering the outbreak of HIV in the USSR, and a VR film produced as part of #VictoryPages — a large-scale social media project launched by RT to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. RT Arabic show Fight, developed with two Russian athletes — a UFC mixed martial arts and a weightlifter — won silver in the General — Online category. The Kalashnikova series, whose episodes tell about the Rostov-on-Don submarine, the Nakhimov Naval School and the […]
The UK government has confirmed that the film and television industry can restart as long as it abides by the social distancing guidelines – including the two-meter rule – leading many to wonder how on earth it can be achieved. With an increased number of people stuck indoors, relying on in-home entertainment such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and various UK channel players, some feared there may be a lengthy gap in new content releases later in the year, due to the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns bringing production to a halt. Also on rt.com What’s in the UK government’s Covid-19 […]
photo by Carol Duff Quarantine Cat Film Fest Will Raise Funds for Independent Theaters Closed by COVID-19 by Katherine J.Wu/Smithsonianmag.com Like other businesses shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic, independent movie theaters have taken a huge hit in recent months. But these boutique cultural mainstays appear to have found an unexpected ally: the world’s domesticated felines—or, at least, those stuck at home with their tech-savvy humans. This week, the team behind Row House Cinema in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, announced a fundraising bid that doubles as some much-needed feline fun during these troubling times. The first-ever Quarantine Cat Film Fest invites felines and their Homo sapien friends to submit shelter-in-place […]