#cnn films

[tomorrowusa]

It looks like the start of another bad week for Vladimir Putin. 🥳 🎉 👏🏼

Russia’s leading anti-Putin dissident, Alexey Navalny, is the subject of a film which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature on Sunday.

Now everybody is going to see the film and be reminded of what a dickhead dictator Putin is.

“Navalny,” a film that explores the plot to kill Russian anti-corruption campaigner and former presidential candidate, Alexey Navalny, has won the Oscar for best documentary feature at Sunday’s Academy Awards.  

The riveting real-life thriller follows Navalny’s political rise, his survival of an assassination attempt against him by poisoning and his subsequent imprisonment. Directed by Daniel Roher and presented by CNN Films and HBO Max, “Navalny” documents a methodical investigation by CNN Chief International Correspondent, Clarissa Ward, and journalist group, Bellingcat, to unmask Navalny’s would-be killers. 

[ ... ]

He was poisoned with nerve agent Novichok in 2020, an attack several Western officials and Navalny himself openly blamed on the Kremlin. Russia has denied any involvement.  

After several months in Germany recovering from the poisoning, Navalny returned to Moscow, where he was immediately arrested for violating probation terms imposed from a 2014 embezzlement case that he said was politically motivated.  

He was initially sentenced to two-and-a-half years, and then later given nine years over separate allegations that he stole from his anti-corruption foundation. 

[rickchung]

Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia (dir. Salima Koroma).

CNN's documentary on the viral game show's spectacular downfall chronicles all the usual beats about the absurdity of startup life. Framed mostly through comedian and former HQ Trivia host Scott Rogowsky's rollercoaster experiences witnessing the meteoric success and subsequent turmoil, we learn more of the lurid details behind the mobile app's flawed management through its dysfunctional work culture and problematic co-ounders who also created Vine.

[centrevillesentinel]

The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia; Review of CNN Films HQ Trivia Documentary

In 2017, the mobile game HQ Trivia made its debut and became an instant sensation. The live trivia game, where players competed for real money, attracted millions of users from around the world. However, the breakout game was short-lived when it was eventually shut down. What happened to HQ Trivia, and why did it fail? The mobile game disappeared just as quickly as it appeared; without a real…

[justinsentertainmentcorner]

Jacqueline Mansky and Mike Barnes at THR:

James Earl Jones, a commanding presence onscreen who nonetheless gained greater fame off-camera as the sonorous voice of Star Wars villain Darth Vader and Mufasa, the benevolent leader in The Lion King, died Monday. He was 93. Jones, who burst into national prominence in 1970 with his powerful Oscar-nominated performance as America’s first Black heavyweight champion in The Great White Hope, died at his home in Dutchess County, New York, Independent Artist Group announced. The distinguished star made his big-screen debut in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and was noteworthy in many other films, including Claudine (1974) opposite Diahann Carroll; Field of Dreams (1989), as the reclusive author Terence Mann; and The Sandlot (1993), as the intimidating neighborhood guy Mr. Mertle.

For his work on the stage, Jones earned two best actor Tony Awards: for originating the role of Jack Jefferson — who was based on real-life boxer Jack Johnson — in 1968 in Howard Sackler’s Great White Hope and for playing the patriarch who struggles to provide for his family in a 1986 Pulitzer Prize-winning production of August Wilson’s Fences. Jones, the recipient of an honorary Oscar at the 2011 Governors Awards and a special Tony for lifetime achievement in 2017, was one of the handful of people to earn an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony and the first actor to win two Emmys in one year. “You cannot be an actor like I am and not have been in some of the worst movies like I have,” the self-deprecating star said when he was given his Academy Award. “But I stand before you deeply honored, mighty grateful and just plain gobsmacked.” Jones’ rise to become one of the most-admired American actors of all time was remarkable considering he suffered from a debilitating stutter as a child.

[...] Jones, of course, also was known as the “voice” of CNN. “I just emptied my mind, then filled it with the thought of all the hundreds of stories — tragic, violent, funny, touching — that could be following my introduction,” he said when asked about his motivation. “And then I said, ‘This is CNN.’”

James Earl Jones, who provided the voice for Darth Vader in Star Wars and provided CNN with the “this is CNN” line, dies at 93.

[hayabs]

BBC is accused of mistranslating released Palestinian prisoner

Interview->

[dweemeister]

November 15, 2023

By Jonathan Mahler, James B. Stewart, and Benjamin Mullin

(The New York Times Magazine) — It was April 2022, and David Zaslav had just closed the deal of a lifetime. From the helm of his relatively small and unglamorous cable company, Discovery, he had taken control of a sprawling entertainment conglomerate that included perhaps the most storied movie studio on the planet, Warner Brothers. The longtime New Yorker had always loved movies, and against the advice of several media peers, he had moved to Hollywood and taken over Jack Warner’s historic office, hauling the old mogul’s desk out of storage and topping it off with an old-time handset telephone. So far things were going great. He had met all the stars and players, was widely feted as the next in line to save the eternally struggling industry and was well into the process of renovating a landmark house in Beverly Hills. “You’re the dog that caught the bus,” the billionaire octogenarian cable pioneer John Malone, one of Discovery’s largest shareholders, told him. All he needed to do now was pay back the $56 billion in debt that he piled onto the new company to make the deal happen.

Money is never just lying around Hollywood, and the town was still reeling from the pandemic. But that was OK. Zaslav had set a “synergy target” — cost cuts, essentially — of $3 billion in the next two years, and now, with the clock ticking, he got to work. To help, he had brought along his chief financial officer from Discovery, an amateur pilot and former McKinsey consultant named Gunnar Wiedenfels. As spring turned to summer, they laid off hundreds of workers, shuttered or reorganized divisions and suspended or canceled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of programming. Anything we don’t think is awesome, Zaslav told executives, stop production right now. Turn the cameras off.

Cuts are the norm after a merger, but Zaslav and Wiedenfels were pushing things hard, and in sometimes unorthodox directions. By shelving several nearly completed projects — including the animated, direct-to-streaming movie “Scoob!: Holiday Haunt,” and the fourth season of the postapocalyptic TV series “Snowpiercer” — they saved millions in postproduction and marketing costs, as well as residuals down the line, and they locked in hefty tax breaks up front. Like so much of what happened in Hollywood, all this was reminiscent of a Hollywood production — in this case, the beloved 1967 Mel Brooks comedy “The Producers.” There, the producers, Max Bialystock and Leopold Bloom, realized that under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than a hit. For Zaslav and Wiedenfels, the money would come from making sure that no one would get to see the shows in the first place.

Then they came for “Batgirl.” The big-ticket streaming project had just finished filming in Scotland when Zaslav took over, and he and Wiedenfels had immediately identified it as a target — a “free ball,” as Zaslav described it to several colleagues. The audience test scores for a very early cut were not encouraging. Still, a number of executives warned him not to shelve it. “Batgirl” was a $90 million entry in a multibillion-dollar universe of movies and television shows based on DC Comics. Michael Keaton was reprising his role as Batman, and sequels were already in the works. Plenty of movies had tested poorly but still earned millions. Killing an all-but-completed movie would alienate the people Zaslav — or at least Hollywood — needed most: the people who made the movies. It was to no avail. On Aug. 2, the word came down: “Batgirl” was dead.

As predicted, the backlash was immediate and emotional. Stunned, the film’s up-and-coming directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, tried to look at their footage, but their access to the production server was denied. The head of the DC unit, Walter Hamada, who was not consulted on the decision, asked to be released from his contract and would leave before the end of the year. Courtenay Valenti, one of the most respected development executives at Warner Brothers, was equally devastated and would be gone in a matter of weeks, ending a 33-year run at the studio. The news dominated the Hollywood trades for days. Under fire, Zaslav defended the decision in an earnings call with analysts, saying he shelved “Batgirl” to protect the DC brand. More quietly, Zaslav also sought cover in the authority of Bryan Lourd, the powerful co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency and a leading arbiter of Hollywood mores. As Zaslav told it to several associates, Lourd had supported the decision, observing that it wasn’t in the interest of C.A.A. clients, like the film’s star, Leslie Grace, to be associated with a bad movie. But a C.A.A. spokeswoman denied that. “Bryan Lourd was not consulted in advance of the studio’s move to cancel ‘Batgirl,’” she said.

At Discovery, producers referred to having their budgets slashed as “getting Gunnared,” and Wiedenfels maintains a hard-boiled, McKinsey-esque attitude toward the bottom line. “It’s hard work,” he says. “You don’t make friends.” Zaslav, a born salesman who would prefer to make friends, is more reflective. “You do sometimes get bloodied,” he said in a wide-ranging interview at Warner Brothers Discovery’s corporate headquarters in New York. But business is business. “We have made unpopular decisions because they were necessary.”

That joke about selling to Saudi Arabia in the end. Just... no.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

xxx

James Earl Jones 

(17 January 1931 – 9 September 2024)

🖤🕯️🖤

[katurdayss]

How the last week went in American politics via gif

[sincericida]

Andrew Garfield says there's "a lot of intimacy" in new film with Florence Pugh

Actors star in "We Live In Time," coming to brazilian cinemas on October 31.

British actor Andrew Garfield , 41, revealed in an interview with “Vanity Fair” that his new film with Florence Pugh , titled “We Time In Time” , required a lot of intimacy between the two protagonists, because it is something explored in the production. The drama hits theaters on October 31.

“We worked really hard, you know, on getting to know each other, gaining trust in each other, because there’s a lot of intimacy in this movie. It’s intimacy, emotional, mental, physical,” he explained.

“It takes a lot of courage to step in, especially for, I think, a woman on a film set. And she [ Florence Pugh ] is totally committed to what she does. And I’m so happy that she felt safe enough to go to the places that she went. And I felt safe enough to go to the places that I went,” he continued.

The two-time Oscar-nominated actor also praised his colleague, who has also been nominated for Hollywood's top prize.

“I’ve been a fan of Florence ever since I saw her in ‘Lady Macbeth.’ It was like seeing a kind of life force, a primal energy on screen. It’s rare when you see that. That level of charisma, that level of depth that comes with just being there. And then you add on top of that all this talent,” he said.

“We Time In Time” follows Almut, an up-and-coming chef, and Tobias, a recent divorcee, across several decades as the two fall in love after a surprise encounter. As they embark on a path challenged by the limits of time, they learn to cherish every moment of the unconventional route their love story has taken.

The director is John Crowley, responsible for the Oscar-nominated film “Brooklyn”. The title had its first screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday (6).

[zionistsinfilm]

When you buy or stream Anderson Cooper 360°, New Year's Eve Live, 60 Minutes, The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper, CNN Heroes, Visible: Out on Television, and anything on CNN, you're giving money to zionists. Anderson Cooper is a friend of the lOF.

[msclaritea]

I was very serious earlier. Women are going to have to start practicing their own bit of boycotting, against male-led, superhero films, since all of Hollywood acts like they want to literally murder a woman in broad daylight for having the nerve to enjoy, star in and especially direct a superhero film. This entire episode has me feeling completely turned off of male superhero films. If I have to start encouraging more women to boycott those films, I will. If I only cost them a dollar, then my work is done. But I'll just bet I could cost them more.

[thecurvycritic]

Lucy Lawless Captures Bravery of Margaret Moth in Never Look Away

Margaret Moth was a badass camera journalist for CNN who left no stone unturned inspiring her colleagues, strangers and camera journalists globally. #neverlookaway #sundance #sundancefilmfestival

Margaret Moth wasn’t your typical journalist.  Giving a gorgeously stunning newsroom version of Joan Jett and Grace Slick with spiky jet black hair setting off her blue green eyes, Moth was sexy, cool and the epitome of of rock and roll.  She was also the first camerawoman in New Zealand who spent more than two decades covering war zones from Sarajevo to the Persian Gulf to Tbilisi, Georgia in…

[ivovynckier]

CCN's town hall meeting with Donald Trump was equivalent to Mel Brooks' musical "Springtime for Hitler and Germany" in his movie "The Producers" (1967).

[oh-great-authoress]

I SWEAR this man will be the END of me.

This is too damn sweet—

He keeps MULTIPLE PHOTOS of his children ON HIS PERSON at ALL TIMES???

The little gasp he does before he talks about his kids????

The PRIDE in his eyes and face??????

And the fact that he whipped those photos out SO QUICKLY as SOON as the reporter said they wanted to see??????

Dead—I am DEAD

Val Kilmer showing off his children at the premiere of The Ghost and the Darkness, 1996

[hayabs]

It is your voice that is likely to reach people who have not considered what Palestinian occupation really means. And realistically, it is your solidarity that can help shift public opinion in the west.

Follow @sbeih.jpg on instagram!

Book recommendation: The Palestine Laboratory