News

In the "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" episode "Wedding Bells Blues," Spock (Ethan Peck) awakens in bed next to Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) on the morning of their wedding. They are blissed out and happy to celebrate their nuptials, and they are eager to see all their friends dressed up at the ceremony. 

This is a curious place for Spock to wake up, however, as the pair had never gotten engaged. Indeed, they recently announced that they would certainly not be pursuing a relationship, allowing Chapel to begin a relationship with a man maned Korby (Cillian O'Sullivan). As Spock will eventually learn, reality has shifted under him at the hands of a playful godlike being played by Rhys Darby. This godlike being has sensed that Spock and Chapel are into each other, and decided to use his powers to stage a wedding, erasing everyone's memories and forcing them to play-act a grand romance.

Get ready for a brand-new cinematic treat titled Jack, spiced generously with action and comedy. Yes, Siddhu Jonnalagadda’s latest film, Jack, is now streaming on Netflix, nearly a month after its theatrical release. If you’re on the lookout for something fresh in Telugu cinema, this could be a decent pick to consider. But before you dive in, wondering where to find a review? You’re in the right place — we’ve got you covered with a full review of Jack. So, buckle up and let’s get started!

Plot of the Movie Jack

Talking about the narrative of the movie Jack, then it is a spy action comedy which revolves around the person named Pablo Neruda whose character is portrayed by Siddhu Jonnalagadda. Pablo Neruda is also affectionately known as Jack because he is a person who is jack-of-all-trades.

At initial go he was aimless, wandering about what...

Jack, directed by Bommarillu Baskar, asks for suspension of disbelief, but even after that, the narrative is too absurd for my liking and truth be told, I couldn’t bring myself to appreciate or enjoy what was shown. I understand the approach where the protagonist jokes around and does not take anything seriously, but the moment the plot calls for it, he turns into this superhuman who has the potential to do anything. But still, in Jack, I was just not able to stay invested, and it was a task for me to sit through the film. That said, the film is trending on Netflix, so definitely my opinions aren’t part of the majoritarian taste.

Spoiler Alert

How did Pablo’s mother die?

Pablo Neruda got the name Jack, or perhaps he started using that nickname himself because, as his father told him, he was a jack of all trades and master of none.

Maria.She is a First Lady, a princess, a primadonna. Invariably, she is draped in jewels. Little by little her eyelashes will unstick and dangle from the corner of a red-rimmed eye; the silk sleeve of her dress will fall 30 degrees toward her elbow, and her gait, once dignified, will begin to wobble. She is American, British, Greek. She lives in the White House, in a Norfolk castle, in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris.She is the subject of the director Pablo Larraín, who with Maria (2024) has completed a triptych of films about glamorous and tragic twentieth-century idols: Jacqueline Kennedy, Princess Diana, and Maria Callas. Larraín proceeds from the notion that these women are united by their suffering. The director’s earlier forays into history mostly focused on his native Chile, including a reimagining of the dictator Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire and a biopic of the poet and politician Pablo Neruda.

Over the course of eight years, director Pablo Larraín has released three movies centered on important women from the 20th century, and following the premiere of his 2024 film, Maria, now is as good a time as any to compare the films. Even before the start of this trilogy, Larraín was no stranger to historical films. As early as 2010, the director helmed films that focused on significant historical eras, particularly in his home country of Chile. Just before he began his 20th century women trilogy, Larraín directed a biopic about Pablo Neruda. Thus, the filmmaker has a specific niche.

In chronological order, Larraín directed Jackie in 2016, Spencer in 2021, and Maria in 2024. As previously mentioned, each of these films focuses on a beloved woman from the 20th century who made an impact on history. Notably, there are many places in which these movies intertwine and diverge. For example, Jackie Kennedy and Diana Spencer...

Chile’s most bankable stars, Paulina Garcia (“Gloria”), Alfredo Castro (“El Conde”) and Luis Gnecco (“No”), are leading the voice cast in the upcoming animated feature “Winnipeg, Seeds of Hope.” Producer Sebastián Freund (“Dad to the Rescue”), who launched Rizco Content Sales with partner Ángel Zambrano last October at Iberseries, has pounced on the international streaming rights to the toon and boarded as an executive producer.

“Securing the international streaming rights for this vital and emblematic project, which portrays a significant chapter in the shared history of Chile, Spain, and Argentina, marks a major milestone for our agency and the global market for diverse audiences,” said Freund, who is attending Ventana Sur where the project participates in the annual event’s Animation! Wip section.

Co-produced by Spain’s La Ballesta and Dibulitoon Studio, Chile’s El Otro Film, and Argentina’s Malabar Prods, “Winnipeg” unfolds through the reflections of 86-year-old Julia,...

Angelina Jolie remembers the first time she was set to publicly embody the voice of prima donna assoluta Maria Callas in preparation for the Netflix film Maria. Her sons Maddox and Pax Jolie-Pitt stood watch protectively, like security. “I was so nervous,” Jolie recalls. “My boys guarded the doors.”

They were at a small theater in Greece, where, after months of singing lessons and vocal and breath coaching, Jolie would show filmmaker Pablo Larraín she was up to the task of portraying the famous arias associated with the legendary coloratura soprano. Callas died in 1977 and remains as popular now as when she was performing in great opera houses at the height of her fame in the 1950s and ’60s.

Like her boys, Larraín was protective of her too, ensuring a level of privacy a director usually reserves for shooting scenes of intense intimacy. Apart from him, only a handful of...

In an episode from the third season of Friends, Monica hooks up with a co-worker, Julio, who writes a poem inspired by their encounter titled “The Empty Vase.” Phoebe interprets the poem as a metaphor for what he really thinks of Monica: “My vessel so empty with nothing inside/Now that I’ve touched you, you seem emptier still.” Eventually, we learn that “The Empty Vase” isn’t about Monica specifically, but all American women.

The similarly titled “Empty Vase,” a drippy acoustic ballad from Gwen Stefani’s fifth solo album, Bouquet, makes Julio sound like Pablo Neruda: “I was an empty vase just sitting on the counter,” the singer laments. Even across just 10 short songs, the album’s botanical imagery grows heavy-handed and strained: gardens die, seeds are planted, vases are filled.

The second song Stefani ever wrote by herself, 2000’s “Simple Kind of Life,” was, notably, about...

Chile’s Fabula and Spain’s Alea Media have unveiled they are allying on development of “A Long Petal of the Sea,” based on a 2019 novel by Isabel Allende.

Alea Media founder Aitor Gabilondo will serve as showrunner on the series which is scheduled to go into production by the end of 2025.

The new title joins two of the biggest powerhouses of premium scripted drama in the Spanish-speaking world and powerful IP in a swing for broad audiences worldwide.

Founded by Pablo and Juan de Dios Larrain, Academy Award winners for “A Fantastic Woman,” Fabula’s production credits take in movies “Jackie,” “Spencer” and “Maria,” all directed by Pablo Larraín.

Headed by Aitor Gabilondo, Alea Media is behind HBO Spanish smash hit “Patria” and Mediaset España’s “Wrong Side of the Tracks,” whose latest third season topped Netflix global non-English TV series charts earlier this year.

“A Long Petal of...

“I’m a survivor,” says Magdalena Suarez Frimkess. “Since I was a kid, that’s been the definition of my life. Whatever I have to do, I do it. I’m still surviving at 95.” For decades, this feisty nonagenarian toiled away in relative obscurity at the Venice studio that she shared with her husband and longtime collaborator, the classically trained ceramicist Michael Frimkess, 89. Yet in the past decade, the Venezuela-born Suarez Frimkess also has been thriving.

In 2014, she and her husband were included in the Hammer Museum’s influential “Made in L.A.” biennial, and this month, Suarez Frimkess’ funky ceramic sculptures — 178 of them — will be showcased in The Finest Disregard, her long overdue retrospective at Lacma (Aug. 18 to Jan. 5), curated by Jose Luis Blondet. Her works depict figures from her family, art history, her upbringing and scenes involving some of her favorite pop icons: Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Wonder Woman,...

Chile’s Los Bunkers, one of the most admired of Latin America’s rock bands, has signed on to score “The Last Witness” (“El Ultimo Testigo”), a doc feature portrait of Luis Poirot, a Chilean photographer who has snapped many key events and figures in the country’s history from Salvador Allende to the estallido outburst of social protests in 2019, and beyond.

Some of Poirot’s earliest photos, all black and white, capture Allende on his successful 1959 presidential campaign trail, Poirot appointed its official photographer. He took illicit shots of Chile’s presidential Palacio de la Moneda days after Allende died there in a military coup d’etat, its windows gutted by Chilean Air Force strafing. He also snapped Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda at his Isla Negra beachside home.

Directed by Catalan documentarian-journalist Francesc Relea (“Serrat y Sabina: el símbolo y el cuate”), “The Last Witness” captures Poirot shooting...

Fast-emerging Mexican auteur, delivering knowing and cross.grained takes on life in Mixtec communities, actress-turned-director Angeles Cruz’s “Valentina or the Serenity” walked off Saturday night with the top best picture award and best actress (Myriam Bravo) in a high-caliber main competition at this year’s Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival.

Best actor went to “Money Heist’s” Rodolfo de la Serna, for his weighty turn in Paramount Television Intl. Studios’ “The Rescue.”

The Rescue

Cruz’s win underscored the focus and value of Huelva. Despite funding challenges, Latin America’s big three – Mexico, Brazil and Argentina – alone produced 660 features in 2022. It is simply impossible for the media to pay sufficient attention to all but a highly select clutch of top titles.

“Ibero-American cinema is constantly evolving. Now, it is very easy to find great films, if not in budgetary terms, then in artistic ambitions,” Huelva director Manuel H. Martin told...

If you're Dominican and were alive during the 1980s and '90s, chances are Juan Luis Guerra's hits became the soundtrack of your life. They'd play at every family function, during long car rides, or at the beach, and he was likely your mami's favorite artist to blast during her Saturday morning cleaning rituals. Throughout his prolific and four-decade career, Guerra has not only reinvented the tropical rhythms of his native Dominican Republic alongside his band 4.40, but he's also reached audiences way beyond just the Dominican community. With 30 million-plus albums sold around the world and more than 20 Latin Grammy wins, Guerra has become a legend in the Latin music space and not just for his poetic lyrics - he's often referred to as the Pablo Neruda of merengue and bachata - but also for never being afraid to innovate or color outside of the lines of what "Dominican music" is supposed to sound like.

Underscoring its historical importance, a further production marking the 50th death anniversary of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende could well be in the works. The historical drama, provisionally titled “The Meeting,” details a historical encounter between the doomed president, whose downfall heralded the rise of the infamous military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in 1973.

Producers Patricio Ochoa of Chile’s La Merced Prods., Cristóbal Sotomayor of Twentyfour Seven, Spain and U.S.-based executive producer Hebe Tabachnik of Lokro Production are in talks with potential production partners in Vietnam and France and with possible international sales agents.

Gonzalo Maza, the screenwriter behind Chile’s Oscar-winning “A Fantastic Woman” is attached as a script doctor to the screenplay penned by filmmaker-writer Antonio Luco.

“The Meeting” relates the fateful 1969 meeting between Allende, who was then Chile’s Senate president, and Vietnam’s President Ho Chi Minh, a frail 79 and on his last days.

Taylor Swift's 10-minute version of "All Too Well" includes references to her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal and fans are dissecting the lyrics to uncover their meaning. Swift's short film based on the song explores the highs and lows of her relationship with Gyllenhaal, with fans convinced that it's about their romance. The extended version of "All Too Well" reveals more about the doomed romance and includes lyrics that allude to their breakup and Gyllenhaal's actions.

Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" 10-minute version is packed with references, including several allusions to her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, and fans have continued to dissect the track to figure out the "All Too Well" meaning. Nine years after the release of the singer/songwriter's Red album in 2012, she has released its re-recording. Red (Taylor's Version), runs for about 130 minutes. This is due to the change of ownership of the masters of Swift’s first six studio albums,...

Chilean director Pablo Larraín has a past of telling stories centered around historical figures, and turning them into euphoric experiences full of tension, suspense, and prestige. His work is simply unlike anything we have seen in the biopic genre before. His filmography includes the likes of the Oscar-nominated biographies Spencer and Jackie, starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana and Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, respectively, and he also made a beautiful biopic about the poet Pablo Neruda. His films, although critically acclaimed, can be fairly divisive. Many love these movies, and others just don't. So, will Larraín's latest outing, El Conde, a satirical horror comedy which debuted at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, unite the community, or will it receive Larraín's usual reception?

El Conde reimagines the diabolical Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) as a bloodthirsty vampire who, after his supposed death in 2006, still exists, feeding on the world. This is an undeniably intriguing concept,...

Pablo Larraín’s string of mostly 20th century biographical dramas hits a pinnacle of audacious brilliance with El Conde (The Count), a madly inspired reinvention of events embedded in the notion that longtime Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet became a vampire who ultimately tires of life and wants out after living some 250 years.

After playing it relatively straight and serious in their biopics of Princess Diana, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Pablo Neruda, the director and his shrewd and brilliant playwright collaborator Guillermo Calderón let their imaginations go wild (albeit rigorously so), and return with a sensational creation overflowing with a rush of startling notions that put this alternative look at a sinister ruling family on a top shelf all its own. Smart audiences worldwide will devour this bold, wildly irreverent take on its insidious subjects. After its festival debuts at Venice and Telluride, the film will make its Netflix home screen...

Happiness for Beginners' ending features a Pablo Neruda poem that reveals Jake's hidden attraction to Helen, finally bringing them together. Although Helen doesn't complete all her goals, she realizes that the arbitrary certificate is not as important as her deeper connection with nature and her personal growth. Jake's rare eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, adds uncertainty to his future. However, his relationship with Helen offers optimism for what's to come.

Happiness for Beginners’ ending features a Pablo Neruda poem, which has a deeper meaning in relation to Jake and Helen’s story. Netflix's Happiness for Beginners is a romantic comedy starring Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes as Helen and Jake. Adapted from Katherine Center’s 2015 novel of the same name, Happiness for Beginners opens with Helen trying to get over her divorce by hiking the Appalachian Trail. Things immediately go awry when she realizes her brother friend, Jake, is hiking...

Veteran auteur Mario Martone, whose Naples-set drama “Nostalgia” launched last year from Cannes, has quite a lot in common with Massimo Troisi, Italy’s beloved late comic actor-director who is best known internationally as the star of Oscar-winning film “Il Postino.”

Which is why Martone was well-suited to direct the multi-layered doc about Troisi’s legacy “Somebody Down There Likes Me” that is screening in the Berlinale Special sidebar.

For starters, they are both Neapolitan, and were born only a few years a part. Troisi – who in “Il Postino” played the simple postman who rides his bicycle on a sandy Italian island to deliver mail to his sole client, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda – died tragically of congenital heart failure at age 41 in June 1994, the day after “Il Postino” finished shooting at Rome’s Cinecittà studios.

Martone in Berlin spoke to Variety about capturing Troisi’s combination of humor,...

Exclusive: Italian director Mario Martone, who has been on the festival and awards circuit over the past year with Oscar submission and Cannes title Nostalgia, is at the Berlinale with his passion project Somebody Down There Likes Me.

The documentary pays tribute to late Italian actor and fellow Neapolitan Massimo Troisi who died tragically young at the age of 41 in 1994, just hours after filming wrapped on Michael Radford’s Il Postino (The Postman).

Selected for the Berlinale Specials sidebar, the documentary plays at a sold-out screening on Saturday, on the eve of what would have been the actor’s 70th birthday on February 19. Deadline can reveal a trailer.

Martone says he wants to shed light on the popular actor who he believes has never been properly celebrated.

“Massimo has always remained alive in the collective consciousness because he was a great actor and a great artist,” says the director.

Il Postino,...

Burning Patience (Ardiente Paciencia) is a 2022 Netflix drama movie directed by Rodrigo Sepúlveda starring Vivianne Dietz, Claudio Arredondo and Andrew Bargstead.

A movie that appeals to the land, the emotions and to poetry.

Premise

A young fisherman, Mario, dreams of becoming a poet. Destiny would have it that he lands a job as the postman to Pablo Neruda when the legendary writer moves there after being exiled from Chile.

Movie Review

A movie that uses beauty as an excuse to appeal to the autochthonous, and poetry to tell us a story (at times very political) of love in times of conflict, applying language borrowed from a man in exile with a great deal of political awareness.

Burning Patience

The result? A modest production, with decent photography, and relatively good performances, albeit a tad melodramatic. Making a blockbuster was not in the cards at the time of taking this project on.

Italian auteur Mario Martone, who was recently in Cannes with “Nostalgia,” is set to direct a high-profile doc about the late Massimo Troisi, one of Italy’s most beloved comic actors who starred in the Oscar-winning film “Il Postino.”

Troisi, who played the simple postman who rides his bicycle on the sandy terrain of an Italian island to deliver mail to his sole client, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, died tragically of congenital heart failure at age 41 in June 1994, the day after “Il Postino” finished shooting at Rome’s Cinecittà studios.

The film directed by Michael Radford, which also starred Maria Grazia Cucinotta and Philippe Noiret, became an arthouse sensation one year later when it opened in the U.S. distributed by Miramax.

“Il Postino” went on to win an Oscar in 1996 for best dramatic score, having earned five nominations, including for best film, as well as best director for Radford,...

Click here to read the full article.

Taylor Swift is already well-known as a singer-songwriter, but on Saturday she appeared at the Tribeca Festival as a director, a role she’s only taken on in recent years, first helming her music video for “The Man” and, just months ago, directing her short film, All Too Well, soundtracked by the 10-minute version of the song of the same name.

Joined by surprise guests Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien, who play the couple at the center of the film, Swift explained her approach to crafting All Too Well and how she moved into directing, in a conversation with director Mike Mills.

She explained that early in her career she started to get involved with the editing process of her videos and making changes.

“It started with meddling,” she said. About 10 years ago, she explained, she started writing elaborate treatments for her videos and “outsourcing the directing,...

For hundreds of Swifties in New York City, today was a fairy tale.

That’s because Taylor Swift made a rare public appearance, at Tribeca Festival, to screen her short film “All Too Well” and talk with filmmaker Mike Mills (“20th Century Women”) about bringing the 10-minute track to the big screen.

“This is not a music video,” she informed the audience at the Beacon Theatre on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “We approached everything differently.”

In a wide-ranging conversation, the notoriously private pop star also revealed easter eggs in the short film, discussed her ambitions to direct a movie and treated fans to a surprise performance of “All Too Well.” Seated near the stage, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were among the many in the crowd who enthusiastically sung along, clapped and took videos of Swift throughout the lengthy track.

And now it’s actually a concert: Taylor Swift is performing #AllTooWell pic.

Exclusive: Blackstone Publishing has acquired worldwide publishing rights to Sean Scott Hicks’ autobiography, The Devil To Pay: A Mobster’s Road To Perdition. The company’s Director of Media, TV and Film, Brendan Deneen brokered the deal and will now edit the book, while shopping film and TV rights to studios and streamers.

The Devil To Pay tells the story of a man who was born into one of the most notorious crime families in history—The Winter Hill Gang. Hicks, the illegitimate offspring of a secret relationship, was raised around the criminal influences of such infamous mobsters as Whitey Bulger, Steve Flemmi and Howie Winter. By the age of 15, he became fully involved in Boston’s underworld of organized crime figures, primarily the Irish mob, which ultimately led to him serving over 24 years in prison. In his memoir, Hicks details his never-before-shared theories about how the unsolved 1990 Isabella Gardner...

Exclusive: First Wind Film Development has optioned TV rights to Rick Bleiweiss’ recently published debut mystery novel Pignon Scorbion and the Barbershop Detectives, with Brendan Deneen and Josh Stanton of Blackstone Publishing attached to produce the adaptation.

The book is set in 1910, in the small English municipality of Haxford, which has a new Chief Police Inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion, a Brit of Egyptian and Haitian descent, strikes something of an odd figure among the locals. But it isn’t long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective. Investigating a trio of crimes whose origins span half a century, Scorbion interviews a parade of people with potential motives, but with every apparent clue, new surprises come to light. And just as it seems nothing can derail Scorbion, in walks Thelma Smith—dazzling, whip-smart, and newly single. Has Scorbion finally met his match?...

With her fifth turn as Saturday Night Live musical guest, Taylor Swift went big, by performing the full, 10-minute version of “All Too Well” — the same song she released a “short film” music video for this week, and which instantly went viral. (In fact, Swift performed on SNL in front of a large screen playing said video.)

Swift hinted as much during a visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this week, when she teased of her SNL plans, “What if… it was not two songs as much as it was one song that is the length of three songs?...

Taylor Swift fans might be Ok, but not exactly fine at all, after watching the short film based on one of her most emotional songs.

After announcing that her next release in the rerecording of her catalog was her 2012 album, Red, Swift treated fans with the rerecorded original 10-minute version of her revered song “All Too Well” with an accompanying short film, starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink, which premiered Friday. The film was shot on 35mm film with Rina Yang as cinematographer.

Throughout the short film, which was introduced with a Pablo Neruda quote that read, “Love is ...

Taylor Swift fans might be Ok, but not exactly fine at all, after watching the short film based on one of her most emotional songs.

After announcing that her next release in the rerecording of her catalog was her 2012 album, Red, Swift treated fans with the rerecorded original 10-minute version of her revered song “All Too Well” with an accompanying short film, starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink, which premiered Friday. The film was shot on 35mm film with Rina Yang as cinematographer.

Throughout the short film, which was introduced with a Pablo Neruda quote that read, “Love is ...

Film

Netflix is teaming with the Larraín brothers’ indie production outfit Fabula to produce its second Chilean original, a feature-length adaptation of Antonio Skármeta’s “Burning Patience,” sometimes referred to as “The Postman,” adapted by one of Chile’s highest-profile screenwriters in Guillermo Calderón and helmed by “Sex With Love” director Boris Quercia. According to Fabula, a wide casting call will be announced soon, with shooting set for next year.

The book tells the fictional story of Mario, a young fisherman who dreams of becoming a poet. To that end, the young man gets a job as the postman to Pablo Neruda when the legendary writer, poet and diplomat moves there after being exiled from Chile. The Netflix adaptation has big shoes to fil. In 1996, Michael Radford’s adaptation of the story was nominated for five Academy Awards including best picture, best actor (Massimo Troisi), best director and best adapted screenplay,...

Often referred to as one of the 20th century’s greatest poets, if not the greatest, and adored by many, Chilean activist and diplomat Pablo Neruda is also, according to many, a self-confessed rapist. That’s the jumping-off point for The Dawning of the Day, Sri Lankan filmmaker Asoka Handagama’s fictionalized account of Neruda’s stint as ambassador to Sri Lanka in 1929.

Making its world premiere in competition at Tokyo, The Dawning of the Day begins by letting Neruda’s words speak for themselves, flashing prose from his 1974 memoir on the screen: “She kept her eyes wide open all the while, completely unresponsive. She ...

Often referred to as one of the 20th century’s greatest poets, if not the greatest, and adored by many, Chilean activist and diplomat Pablo Neruda is also, according to many, a self-confessed rapist. That’s the jumping-off point for The Dawning of the Day, Sri Lankan filmmaker Asoka Handagama’s fictionalized account of Neruda’s stint as ambassador to Sri Lanka in 1929.

Making its world premiere in competition at Tokyo, The Dawning of the Day begins by letting Neruda’s words speak for themselves, flashing prose from his 1974 memoir on the screen: “She kept her eyes wide open all the while, completely unresponsive. She ...

Exclusive: Oregon-based Blackstone Publishing has brought on former Miramax and Macmillan executive Brendan Deneen as the company’s Director of Media, TV & Film.

Deneen will spearhead this new multimedia division, mining Blackstone’s backlist and creating new IP for both publishing and adaptation opportunities.

Blackstone’s catalog counts over 13,000 audiobook titles from such authors as Ayn Rand, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Cs Lewis, Karin Slaughter, Don Winslow and Neil deGrasse Tyson. They also publish for such companies and properties as Disney, Marvel, and the James Bond franchise. Blackstone’s thriving print and eBook imprint releases count over 80 titles a year by both new and established writers, including James Clavell, Rex Pickett, PC Cast, Catherine Coulter, Leon Uris, Norman Reedus, and Meg Gardiner, among others.

Deneen recently exited Assemble Media, where he was the company’s President of Literary and IP Development. During his three years at Assemble, he developed...

In 2002, “Ogu and Mampato in Rapa Nui” became Chile’s first animated feature since the silent “Vida y milagros de Don Fausto” in 1924. Less than two decades later, five animated Chilean features in various stages of production are pitching at the Cannes Marché du Film.

That kind of growth would be surprising if it weren’t mirroring a larger shift seen in the country’s screen industries as a whole. There are few territories where domestic production and international co-production are more vibrant and exciting than Chile, whether in live action or animation, film or TV. In fact, two years before Sebastián Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman” won the international feature Oscar, Punkrobot’s “Bear Story” became the first-ever Chilean film to win an Academy Award as 2016’s best animated short.

Last year, “Nahuel and the Magic Book” was the third consecutive Chilean film to play in competition at the Annecy Animation Festival,...

Before Monday morning, the late actor Chadwick Boseman had somehow never been nominated for an Academy Award, despite his astonishing performances as Jackie Robinson in 2013’s “42” and as James Brown in 2014’s “Get on Up” — not to mention his iconic role as the superhero T’Challa in 2018’s “Black Panther.”

That was finally rectified with Boseman’s nomination for best actor as an ambitious jazz trumpeter in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” It also puts Boseman, who died from colon cancer in August at 43, in one of the rarest and most bittersweet Oscar categories: the posthumous acting nominee.

Deceased nominees are not all that uncommon at the Oscars; there have been 79 in total before this year. But prior to Boseman, only seven actors had ever earned Academy Award nominations after their deaths.

The first posthumous acting nominee, Jeanne Eagels, didn’t technically receive an official nomination — the second Academy Awards...

“Shadows,” “Winnipeg,” and “Sheba” feature among 10 nominated in the running for a Eurimages Award at this year’s Cartoon Movie, one of Europe’s principal animated movies forums.

The Eurimages Co-production Development Award will be the only prize granted at 2021’s Cartoon Movie online edition, which will not feature traditional tributes nor a territory spotlight.

Nadia Micault’s first-feature, “Shadows” is based on the same-titled French fantasy graphic novel by Vincent Zabus & Vincent Tavier. One of many projects at Cartoon Movie this year addressing migration, in “Shadows” two children flee a region devastated by blood-thirsty horsemen in order to seek a better life in the Other World. France’s Autour de Minuit and Schmuby produce in co-production with Belgium’s Panique.

Co-produced by Spain’s La Ballesta, Chile’s El Otro Film and France’s Marmitafilms, “Winnipeg, Seeds of Hope” tells the story of the ship that poet and former...

No matter how many streaming platforms seem to pop up and demand your attention and subscription dollars, there are incredibly still movies that are just…missing. Not for streaming, not for rental, not for digital purchase, nothing. These movies are simply unavailable digitally. Maybe you can catch a cable broadcast or can find a DVD lying around, because chances are you’re not seeing a repertory screening of these either right now.

For years there were Disney movies, Studio Ghibli films, art house classics and James Cameron blockbusters that had no home, though that’s changed even within the last few months as HBO Max, Disney+. Criterion Channel and Peacock have all emerged, but there are still plenty that are not available at the push of a button. It can do with how Hollywood treats its film history, legal puzzles in terms of who owns what or the financial reality...

What is “love?” The word signals many binaries. It’s unconditional but expectant. It’s something that goes often unrewarded but is not self-sustaining. It’s the balance of the hard, stern choices of a parent and the wide-eyed wonder of a child. It’s a legacy we pass from person to person, generation to generation. Everyone you meet has something to say about love or, at the very least, something they imply about their experience with it. Joni Mitchell says, “Love is touching souls”; Pablo Neruda loves “without knowing how, or when, or from where.” Love is …...

Based on Krystal Sutherland's novel Our Chemical Hearts, Amazon Prime's romantic drama Chemical Hearts tells the heart-rending story of high school student Grace (Lili Reinhart), who suffers a traumatic loss, and 17-year-old hopeless romantic Henry (Austin Abrams), who helps her heal from it. When Grace and Henry first meet, he catches her highlighting lines in a book, which happens to be Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets. The lines she highlights read:

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

In the poem, Neruda describes the intense love he feels and how it surpasses any previous definition of what he thought it was, something Grace knows all too well. Throughout the film, Grace often references this poem, and she even ends up lending Henry a copy of her book. While the sonnet was originally written in Spanish, it has since been translated to English,...

The MPAA has long placed teen movies in a tricky bind: When they reflect the lives of their young target audience a little too relatably, they’re slapped with a rating that excludes the very demographic they’re about. It’s an irony that corners too many films in the genre into a safely sanitized PG-13 space, clean and cute and not entirely real. That “Chemical Hearts” has bitten the bullet and accepted an R initially bodes well: Unafraid of depicting casual teenage swearing, drug-taking and modest sexual activity, Richard Tanne’s melancholic, tastefully presented romance promises a more mature, impressionistic take on standard adolescent rites of passage. It’s going out on Amazon Prime, after all: Who’s going to keep the kids away?

Yet for all its serious-faced surface grit, “Chemical Hearts” never quite rings true. There’s a lot of solemn pondering here on the disorienting nature of so-called “teenage limbo,...

“Winnipeg, the Seed of Hope,” the Quirino Awards winner of a special call for projects made by La Liga – a joint venture of Argentina’s Animation!, Mexico’s Pixelatl and Spain’s Quirinos – will form part of a La Liga Annecy showcase featuring a bevy of the most anticipated animation titles from Spain, Portugal and Latin America.

One of Annecy’s Mifa market territory focuses, the La Liga spread bows Wednesday, June 17, online for delegates at Annecy, the world’s biggest animation event.

Adapting a graphic novel by Spain’s Laura Martel, “Winnipeg, Neruda’s Ship,” the project was initially created by Toni Marín, an executive producer on Ignacio Ferreras’ Annecy special distinction winner “Wrinkles,” based out of Barcelona’s La Ballesta.

Chile’s El Otro Film, France’s Marmitafilms and Spain’s 3 Doubles Producciones have boarded the project.

“Winnipeg, the Seed of Hope” tells a largely unknown true story — the odyssey of 2,200 Spanish refugees,...

By Abdul Rahman Shah

“Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it, but those who need it.”

– Mario Ruoppolo in Il Postino.

It’s not easy to read a film. One can over-read, under-read, or even misread it; but all readings are important towards building discourse, which is the first step towards appreciating any form of art. Although lately in film discourse, we’re bogged down by a new type of reading. Born from the womb of social media and raised by pedants – film reviews and/or criticism tend to over-focus on perceived cinematographic mistakes, plot-holes, or even misunderstanding intertextual tropes based on how “real” the scene or moment is to the point of rejecting the symbolic. “Realness” is being constructed as the line between a good and a bad film. We are living in an age where metaphors are dying, being killed by literal reading.

Ceci n’est...

A never ending mission to save the world featuring Ron Perlman, Peter Ramsey, James Adomian, Will Menaker, and Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Karado: The Kung Fu Flash a.k.a. Karado: The Kung Fu Cat a.k.a. The Super Kung Fu Kid (1974)

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Nobody’s Fool (1994)

The Hustler (1961)

Elmer Gantry (1960)

Mean Dog Blues (1978)

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

Mona Lisa (1986)

The Crying Game (1992)

The Hairdresser’s Husband (1990)

Ridicule (1996)

Man on the Train (2002)

The Girl on the Bridge (1999)

Pale Flower (1964)

Out of the Past (1947)

The Lunchbox (2013)

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Raw Deal (1986)

Commando (1985)

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

The Last Man On Earth (1964)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers...

Guillermo del Toro has been unusually quiet on social media during his quarantine, but that all has changed with the publication of a giant Twitter thread revealing the many books he’s been reading and films he’s been watching while on break from filming his new movie, “Nightmare Alley.” The “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Shape of Water” Oscar winner encouraged his fellow filmmakers to weigh in with their own watch lists, and the result is an incredible thread featuring the likes of Darren Aronofsky, Ari Aster, Ava DuVernay, Sarah Polley, Edgar Wright, Rian Johnson, Brad Bird, Scott Derickson, James Mangold, and a lot more. Click here to begin the Twitter thread.

It should not be too surprising to hear del Toro has been streaming a lot of titles on The Criterion Channel, including Gustaf Molander’s “A Woman’s Face,” Ermanno Olmi’s “Il Posto,” and Celine Sciamma’s “Girlhood” and “Tomboy.

“Winnipeg, Seeds of Hope,” “Bffs! Best Friends Forever Stranded!” and “Sex Symbols” are among five new finalists selected to participate in La Liga, the animation umbrella created to promote the Ibero-American animation sector worldwide between Spain’s Quirino Awards, Argentina’s Animation! and Mexico’s Pixelatl Festival.

The eventual winning project will be chosen at the upcoming edition of the Quirino Awards in April and given the opportunity to pitch at La Liga in Focus at Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival’s Mifa market.

“Winnipeg, Seeds of Hope” is co-produced by Toni Marín at La Ballesta (Spain) and Marianne Mayer-Beckh at El Otro Film (Chile). Based on Laura Martel’s script from her graphic novel, “Winnipeg, Neruda’s Ship,” it tells the story of the ship that Chilean poet Pablo Neruda chartered to save more than 2,000 Spanish refugees in France after the Spanish Civil War. It’s directed by Elio Quiroga (“The Cold Hour”).

“Bffs!

Jodie Turner-Smith and Joshua Jackson felt the magic of Valentine’s Day.

On Friday, the pregnant Queen & Slim actress, 33, posted a holiday shout-out to her “baby daddy” husband, 41, writing that she looks forward to celebrating many more with him in years to come. Turner-Smith is expecting the couple’s first child.

“our 2nd valentine’s day and it’s even more magical than the first! here’s to a lifetime of them,” she captioned the Instagram post. “happy valentine’s day to the man who sees my soul and holds my heart...

The first five directors talked with festival director Bero Beyer and programmer Muge Demir.

”They can cut the flowers, but spring will always come,” was the defiant response to increasing nationalism and reduced state funding, from a press conference with five directors participating in the Tiger Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr).

The directors were discussing a speech by then Brazilian culture minister Roberto Alvim last week, that borrowed heavily from one made in 1933 by Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels, in which Alvim said Brazilian art must be “heroic and national… it will be deeply committed to the urgent aspirations of our people,...

Maintaining Chile’s protracted awards honeymoon with international festivals, Jorge Riqeulme’s “Some Beasts,” starring Alfredo Castro and Paulina Garcia, swept Toulouse’s 35th Films in Progress, a pix-in-post competition which also serves as a traditional launch-pad for selection at the Cannes Festival.

“Some Beasts” won three of the four prizes on offer: Toulouse Films in Progress Prize; the Cine Plus Films in Progress Prize and the Distributors and Exhibitors Prize.

Mactari awarded its Sound Prize to “Ceniza negra,” from Argentine-Costa Rican Sofía Quirós.

“Some Beasts” stars maybe the two most best-known of Chilean actors: Castro, a Pablo Larraín regular seen last year in Alfonso Ruizpalacios’ Berlin winner “Museo”; and García, a Berlin best actress winner for “Gloria,” from Academy Award winning director Sebastián Lelio (“A Fantastic Woman”), which inspired his 2018 remake, “Gloria Bell,” with Julianne Moore. García also appeared in Ira Sachs’ “Little Men,” and, like Castro, “Narcos.”

A...

About seven years ago, stories about “Bob Dylan’s Rapping Grandson” flooded the internet. Pablo Dylan — the child of Bob’s oldest son, Jesse — was just 15 at the time and he was trying to promote his new mixtape. “My grandfather, I consider him the Jay-z of his time,” he said, in comments that ricocheted all over the web. “I love him to death.” It was a rare breach of the unofficial Dylan family code of silence, and the first time a member of the clan tried to make a go...

‘At Massimo’s funeral, his film double walked behind the coffin in homage – and all the Neapolitans thought it was his ghost’

Massimo Troisi was a huge star in Italy. He loved a film I’d made called Another Time, Another Place, about Italian PoWs in Scotland. We looked at various projects to do together, and he’d bought the rights to this Chilean novel called Burning Patience, about the death of Pablo Neruda and his friendship with a 17-year-old fisherman.