#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)

🖤🕯️🖤

[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

[crowdvscritic]

round up // MARCH 24

This March Round Up is one of the most media-diverse I’ve ever published. Two books! Two miniseries! One museum! One telecast! And somehow, most of them eventually come back to the same topic: movies. 

Now that the Oscars have named their 2023 victors (“My eyes see Oppenheimer!!!”), it feels like the 2024 movie year has finally started, and one major Awards Season contender is already out. (Keep reading to see if it is Kong x Godzilla!) Three of my top 10 picks this month are new films, but this brief pause between Awards Season and summer blockbusters means I have time for indulgent activities like reading books and playing Turner Classic Movies roulette on the DVR. May lulls like these between your busy seasons be just as enjoyable with these pop culture faves…

March Crowd-Pleasers

1. The Fury by Alex Michaelides (2024)

You know it’s a good book when it’s already past your bedtime, you see that you have 100 pages left, and still say, “Yeah, there’s no way I’m not finishing this tonight.” I made this my January Book of the Month because it sounded like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (my favorite movie of 2022), but this doesn’t center on a Benoit Blanc-style detective. At the center is a charming, unreliable narrator (one I kept picturing as John Mulaney) recounting the murder of a starlet (whom I kept picturing as Carole Lombard) while on vacation with her friends and family. I read 75% of this murder mystery set on a private Greek in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down!

2. Road House (2024)

Thank goodness Jake Gyllenhaal seems to be losing interest in prestige projects because he’s best when he’s a lil’ crazy. That’s just one reason this Road House is even more fun than the original. Read my full review for ZekeFilm. Crowd: 10/10 // Critic: 7/10

3. Barbie: The World Tour by Margot Robbie and Andrew Mukamal (2024)

I have referenced Barbie in almost every Round Up since it came out, and I'm not slowing down now. This new book from Margot Robbie and her stylist Andrew Mukamal catalogs each of her Barbie press tour looks inspired the doll’s historical closet, giving side-by-side comparisons the head-to-toe looks on the doll and on Robbie. With designers’ sketches and insight into how Robbie and Mukamal made their sartorial choices, it makes for a gorgeous coffee table book.

4. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

Big things go smash! I stopped by KMOV to chat about the newest Godzilla/Kong team-up with Joshua Ray, which won’t send you away smarter but probably in a better mood. Watch the full review. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 4/10

5. SNL Round Up

I’m noticing my Saturday Night Live Round Ups are shorter this year, which is probably thanks to a greener cast. But I am always rooting for Studio 8H, and these three were worth re-watching and sharing in the text thread: 

“Detectives” (4913 with Sydney Sweeney)

“Loud Table” (4913)

“Moulin Rouge” (4914 with Josh Brolin)

More March Crowd-Pleasers: Morgan Freeman, Keanu Reeves, and Rachel Weisz get caught up in a murder plot surrounding a new energy source in Chain Reaction (1996) // Before Zodiac, Kurt Russell was a Miami Journal reporter investigating a serial killer in The Mean Season (1985)

March Critic Picks

1. Art in Bloom at the St. Louis Art Museum

Every spring SLAM invites floral artists to create arrangements inspired by pieces in the museum’s collection. As always, this event inspires me to look at works I’ve seen dozens of times in new ways, and I always discover flowers that make me wish my thumbs were more verdant.

2. Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune is weird, but I love that it hasn’t stopped it from sourcing an endless supply of memes. Even more, I love that a vision as grand as this one has taken root in pop culture, that a new crop of young actors are catapulting movie stardom into the next generation, and that this epic is as concerned with philosophy and the craft of filmmaking as much as blockbuster-style spectacle. Crowd: 8.5/10 // 9/10

3. The Sixties (2014)

And now I’ve finally finished CNN’s decade miniseries. Though these series aren’t revolutionary—The Sixties episodes include “The War in Vietnam,” “The British Invasion,” and “The Space Race”—they provide more depth and insight than a Wikipedia article with plenty of interviews and primary source footage. (And perhaps too much insight with an 85-minute episode about the JFK assassination, which is steeped in more conspiracy theories than are worth mentioning.) Each of CNN's decade series has impressed me with the connections drawn to today, and The Sixties is no exception.

4. The 96th Oscars

It’s a treat when the consensus is that the Oscars ceremony was…good? It’s been a few years since that was the popular opinion! Not only were the winners a pretty solid selection, but most of the bits worked, most of the musical performances were solid, and it finished…early? These were my favorite moments during the brisk evening:

Past Best Supporting Actress winners celebrate this year’s nominees and winner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph

Past Best Supporting Actor winners celebrate this year’s nominees and winner, Robert Downey Jr.

Past Best Actor winners celebrate this year’s nominees and winner, Cillian Murphy

Past Best Actress winners celebrate this year’s nominees and winner, Emma Stone (even though I was rooting for Lily Gladstone)

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito rib Michael Keaton and present Best Visual Effects to the charming Godzilla Minus One crew

John Cena demonstrates the value of our Best Costume nominees

Kate McKinnon and America Ferrera present Best Documentary (though they’re not always sure which films are fact and which are fiction)

Ryan Gosling (and many more Kens) perform “I’m Just Ken”

“My eyes see Oppenheimer!!”

5. The Power of Film (2024)

Onetime UCLA professor Howard Suber walks us through some of the most popular and memorable films in history in this new Turner Classic Movies miniseries. He explains why they’ve passed the test of time, analyzing storytelling motifs and themes like destiny, love, heroes vs. villains, and paradox. I’m still thinking about some of his insights (e.g. there are no good characters, only good character relationships), and I compiled the 275 films he uses as examples on in a Letterboxd list.

More March Critic Picks: A Letter to Three Wives (1949) is a light-on-its-feet melodrama about three women wondering which of their husbands is about to leave them // Naughty Marietta (1935) pulls off the princess-with-a-mistaken-identity rom-com trope with a dash of music // A Double Life (1947) is a killer thriller (pun intended) about the dangers of taking inspiration from Othello in real life // Before Mr. Deeds, Gary Cooper was a more earnest small town simpleton who stumbles into millions in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) // Susan Hayward more than earns her Oscar for her performance based on a semi-true story about a woman on death row in I Want to Live! (1958) // Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor didn’t make me cry like the remake does, but their relationship in Father of the Bride (1950) is still sweetly moving 70+ years later // Even if it didn’t star Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall, Written on the Wind (1956) would still look phenomenal because it’s directed by Douglas Sirk, but thank goodness they both get to cook in his Technicolor vision

Also in March…

I chipped in on a ZekeFilm piece on the Oscar-nominated live action shorts with a paragraph about Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

I also reviewed the perfectly pleasant Kung Fu Panda 4 for ZekeFilm…

…and for KMOV, where I also made some Oscar predictions before the big night.

Photo credits: The Fury, Barbie. Art in Bloom my own. All others IMDb.com.

[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