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Three years after "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" was released in theaters, franchise co-creator George Lucas developed the ABC TV series, "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles." The '92 series went on for two seasons and four TV movies; it was considered a success and is still generally well-regarded by the hardcore "Indiana Jones" fans. The episodic format allowed young Indy to go through dozens of smaller adventures, constantly interacting with historical figures like Leo Tolstoy and John Ford.

One episode idea Lucas had for the show will sound familiar to modern fans: "One of the scripts we were working on was about a crystal skull. I became fascinated with it there," Lucas said in a 2007 interview. Although he was captivated by an Indiana Jones story where Jones looks for a crystal skull, the concept ultimately never made it into the series. On the bright side for Lucas, he was...

Steve Martin is obviously a man of many talents — from acting, to stand-up comedy, to balloon animal artistry.

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He’s also a published author, as evidenced by his new book Steve Martin Writes the Written Word, which collects several of his essays, novellas and short stories in one volume. In addition to his blow-job-heavy I Love Lucy fanfic, the book also contains the 2000 novella Shopgirl, which was eventually turned into an embarrassing movie.

To promote the new book, Martin recently guested on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he explained the difference between a novel and a novella. “You start writing a novel, and you just sort of run out of gas,” Martin joked. “You send it to the publisher and add an ‘la’ at the end of ‘novel,’ and you go, ‘Why, novella that’s very special!’”

Kimmel then asked Martin if he hid Shopgirl “within the pages of this...

The best-selling author of all time, as of this writing, remains William Shakespeare, a little-known British playwright from Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire, who lived from April 23, 1564 to April 23, 1616. He wrote some obscure plays that you've probably never heard of. Stuff like "Cardenio," "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and "Edward III." He's not nearly as well-known as his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Philip Henslowe, or John Fletcher. 

But I kid the Bard. There isn't a student in the English-speaking world who wasn't forced through at least four or five Shakespeare plays in high school. Raise your hand if you still remember a Shakespearean soliloquy you were required to memorize for your 10th-grade English class. 

After Shakespeare, some of the best-selling authors of all time include Agatha Christie, Danielle Steele, Harold Robbins, J.K. Rowling, Eiichiro Oda (the author of the "One Piece" manga), and Jackie Collins. No doubt you've explored some of these authors in your spare time at airports.

From Anne Boleyn to Lady W to Game of Thrones, she has played tough women who kick against society’s constraints. What will the actor bring to the great Russian character who leaves her husband and son?

It was back in 2019 that the role of Anna Karenina was first mentioned to Natalie Dormer. Six years, many screen roles, one pandemic and two children later, Dormer is finally set to take on the titular role of Leo Tolstoy’s epic as Phillip Breen’s adaptation comes to Chichester Festival theatre. The delay has ended up working out well, says Dormer, since Tolstoy’s characters are at the “cutting edge of technology”. The new railways were transforming Russia, and that wasn’t all. “Electric light!” exclaims Dormer. “We talk about it in the play, how that’s going to revolutionise their lifestyles. That trepidation about new technology is so adaptable to today:...

You wouldn’t expect Running Point, a comedy about a dynastic basketball family, to open with a reference to Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, but nothing about Mindy Kaling’s latest show is predictable. Running Point, written by longtime friends and collaborators Kaling, David Stassen, and Ike Barinholtz, puts a fresh spin on the quintessential sports underdog story, with a wayward but lovable family at its core.

Enter the Gordons — the clan who run the fictional Los Angeles Waves team in Running Point. As Isla Gordon (Kate Hudson) puts it, striding confidently across a squeaky court in a black power suit, “Our business is the greatest basketball franchise in the history of the game: the Los Angeles Waves. And this is the story of the fucked-up family that runs it.” Watch Isla and the rest of the Gordon family in action in the first four minutes of Season 1, above.

The...

Subhash K Jha takes us back to 2016 and Karan Johar-Shakun Batra’s critically acclaimed Kapoor & Sons that starred Rishi Kapoor, Sidharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan, Alia Bhatt, Ratna Pathak Shah, and Rajat Kapoor in this fantastic feature. Plus, as a special bonus, we hear from Shakun Batra about the making of Kapoor & Sons, “The movie’s been a blessing and has given me so much love… and I owe so much of where I am today to that film coming together and all the people who made it happen.” But more from Batra in a few lines — let’s revisit the Kapoor & Sons.

It was Leo Tolstoy who said it. “All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The family in Kapoor & Sons, played with magnificent eloquence by actors who know their job, is happy on the surface. But scratch the polished exterior,...

The cinematic medium has seen countless romance films, ranging from classics like Titanic to contemporary hits such as Moonlight. However, as beloved as the romance genre is, its darkest stories often go underappreciated. Whether they take place in a dark fantasy world with gothic creatures, possess elements of the thriller and horror genres, or explore the sinister side of love, these films are known to push the boundaries of romance.

Despite being very different, movies like Cruel Intentions and Jane Eyre share the premise of trust and mistrust in a relationship. They both have complex characters who give in to a forbidden love. Meanwhile, fantasy movies Only Lovers Left Alive and Let The Right OneIn dive into what love looks like for vampires with two distinct narratives. The best dark romance movies can showcase the beautiful and the terrifying, adding much-needed nuance to one of film's most popular genres.

Updated on March 6, 2025, by Andrea Sandoval.

HBO series House of the Dragon has a new cast member for the upcoming third season. Happy Valley star James Norton is set to play Ormund Hightower. As Variety reported, Ormund is cousin to Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) as well as nephew of their father, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans). As Alicent's cousin, Ormund is also second cousin to her Targaryen sons, the fleeing King Aegon II(Tom Glynn-Carney) and his eye-patched psychopath brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). Ormund's title is Lord of Oldtown.

So that sets up the so-called "Green" side of House Targaryen. Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) leads the "Black" side of House Targaryen. The end of House of the Dragon Season 2 saw armies on both sides mustering for war and a handful of new dragon riders entering the fray.

After taking over from his dead father, Lord Hobert Hightower, Ormund's role in the Targaryen...

Exclusive: Julian Fellowes is going from crimes of high society to real crimes. The Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age creator is set to write and executive produce a TV adaptation of Swiss-American author Donna Leon’s contemporary Detective Brunetti book series, which is in development at 20th Television.

The project was originated and set up at the studio by Fellowes’ longtime friend and mentor, producer Ileen Maisel who died in February at the age of 68. She had been in the 20th Television fold since 2018 when she signed a first-look deal with its former division Fox21.

Maisel will be credited as an executive producer on the Brunetti series alongside writer Fellowes, Gesine Lubben, Pk Fellowes and Lawrence Elman. Author Leon will co-executive produce. Playwright Felix Legge will serve as co-writer and producer.

While the setting is contemporary, the Brunetti series adaptation’s official description pays homage to a literary classic...

Given that Peanuts was a long-running comic strip, all the way from 1950 to 2000, it is no surprise that Peanuts included many pop culture references, including to classic literature. From capturing the Harry Potter fervor that was present in the late '90s to referring to some of the most famous and popular children's books, Peanuts gave readers of the past and present a window into what kids were reading at the time.

Well, for the most part, as Rerun at one point refers to quite the surprising novel, which is not the most child-friendly. Regardless, Peanuts usually focuses on the qualities of their characters and their interactions with others, as well as their reactions to situations. As a result, there were not always a lot of references to things like movies, music, and books in the comic strips. However, there still were enough comic strips referencing classic books to please any bibliophile,...

For well over over five decades, Christopher Plummer was one of our most esteemed and honored actors across all acting fields. He hwon two Tony awards (out of seven nominations) for his stage work — the musical “Cyrano” (1974) and the one-man show “Barrymore” (1997), which was later turned into a film. For his television work, he has also won two Emmy Awards (out of six nominations) for the TV movie “Arthur Hailey’s The Moneychangers” (1977) and for his voice-over performance in the animated “Madeline” (1994).

But similar awards for his work in film eluded him for many years. True, he did co-star in 1965’s “The Sound of Music,” a film he had disdained for the longest time but one that was a phenomenon at the box-office. The musical ran in theaters for over 4 1/2 years and, adjusted for inflation, “The Sound of Music” has grossed $2.366 billion, currently making it the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

Get the latest scoop on everything you need to know about today’s Jeopardy! episode airing on Tuesday, 3 December 2024 including the Final Jeopardy, contestants and today’s winner!

Today’s Final Jeopardy 12/3/2024 (19th Century European Literature) – Tuesday, 3 December 2024

An early version of this novel was first published as a serial under the title “The Year 1805”

Today’s Final Jeopardy Answer – Tuesday, 3 December 2024

The Final Jeopardy Answer is: War and Peace

Final Jeopardy Explanation – Tuesday, 3 December 2024

The novel referred to is “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. An early version of this epic novel was first published as a serial under the title “The Year 1805.” Tolstoy began writing the work in 1863, and it was serialized from 1865 to 1867 before being published in its entirety in 1869. The title “The Year 1805” reflects the initial focus of the novel, set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the events surrounding the year 1805 when the...

After opening for Fletcher this fall, Maude Latour is ready for a tour run of her own. On Monday, the pop star, who released her album Sugar Water in August, announced that she’s embarking on a headlining tour next March.

“Guys, I am so excited to bring you the real-life experience of this trippy, emotional, existential rollercoaster of an album,” Latour wrote on Instagram, alongside sharing an album trailer. “I’m putting my whole heart into this tour… I cannot even Imagine getting to sing these songs [in real life] with you.

Breaking Bad has always been about a man suffering from the world’s worst midlife crisis and deciding to break bad after being handed too many lemons in life. For Vince Gilligan, his own pensive experiences shaped the show’s core idea around which he then developed a cult-classic sleeper hit.

Years after its release on AMC, the whacky series became a pop culture phenomenon almost overnight when Netflix dragged it off the shelves and onto the streaming platform, giving it a second life. The fanfare around the series escalated to an all-time high and Breaking Bad became one of the biggest hits Netflix never made.

Breaking Bad [Credit: AMC]

Vince Gilligan later admitted that his creation, although completely original in its conception, is not the first of its kind. And even though that statement might sound contradictory, Gilligan cited a 1952 Akira Kurosawa film as a reference that explains it all.

Breaking Bad...

‘Pachinko’ on Apple TV+ has just returned with episode 8 of its second season. Previously, it followed Noa’s journey toward Tokyo’s Waseda University. While he got the admission, Hansu’s father-in-law forbade him from attending his daughter’s wedding. So, Hansu murdered the old man as an act of revenge. Yoseb felt sorry for Kyunghee and decided not to be a barrier in her relationship with Chang-ho. However, Kyunghee refused to break her marriage. In 1991, Sunja became close friends with Kato-san. Mozasu got concerned and dug into Kato-san’s past. He found some shocking details that affected Sunja’s opinion of Kato-san. Now, Pachinko (Season 2 Finale) Episode 8 mainly follows Noa’s time at Waseda University with Nakazono Akiko. After learning a shocking truth about his past, he takes an irretrievable step.

Spoilers Ahead

Pachinko (Season 2 Finale) Episode 8 “Chapter Sixteen” Recap:

‘Pachinko’ (Season 2 Finale) Episode 8 follows Noa’s (Kang Tae-Ju...

Chicago – Filmmaker Haroula Rose will have a Chicagoland homecoming with her recently released film “All Happy Families” as she appears at a special screening at Chicago’s historic Music Box Theatre on October 7th, 2024 (6:30p). The 4.5/5 film (review below) was filmed all in Chicago, and was directed and co-written by Rose. For tickets and more information, click All Happy Fam.

Josh Radnor of “How I Met Your Mother” is Graham, a dejected writer/actor who manages the Landry family two flat in Chicago … his brother Will (Rob Huebel) owns it and has a successful TV show in Los Angeles. When the building needs a new tenant, Graham re-connects with interested party Dana (Chandra Russell) who he used to have a crush on in college. When Will shows up unexpectedly, and their parents (John Ashton and Becky Ann Baker) are also in for a visit, three situational bombshells are about to throw everyone into,...

In the early 1960s, when the Cold War was at its hottest, the Soviet Union sought to prove its might over America's most valuable commodity the movie industry by mounting the epic to end all epics: a sprawling, hugely expensive adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Spurned on by the popularity of a 1956 Hollywood version starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda, the Russian government spared no expense in bringing its most famous work of literature to the screen, spending a reported $100 million on the production (making it the most expensive movie ever made at the time). Museums were raided for set dressings, military planes and explosives were provided without question, and over 15,000 Russian soldiers were used as extras to recreate the historical battles depicted in the novel.

Maude Latour’s fans have described her music as being for people who “had glow-in-the-dark stars on their ceilings” as kids. These days, Latour sees her music as “main-character” pop anthems for dramatic people with intense emotions, like herself.

“It’s for any girly who needs to put their headphones on, and that’s where they go to understand everything,” the 24-year-old dream-pop singer says. “It’s for people who journal. For people who love to feel every feeling and have a strong spectrum of emotions, and aren’t afraid to feel anything extremely.

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “All Happy Families,” a drama/comedy about the common life element of family that all of us must deal with in our own way, co-written by Coburn Goss and Haroula Rose, and directed by Rose. In theaters on September 20th. See local listings,

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Josh Radnor of “How I Met Your Mother” is Graham, a dejected writer/actor who manages the Landry family two flat in Chicago … his brother Will (Rob Huebel) owns it and has a successful TV show in Los Angeles. When the building needs a new tenant, Graham re-connects with interested party Dana (Chandra Russell) who he used to have a crush on in college. When Will shows up unexpectedly, and their parents (John Ashton and Becky Ann Baker) are also in for a visit, three situational bombshells are about to throw everyone into, as author Leo Tolstoy once said,...

If you’re a fan of historical dramas or romance movies, chances are you’ve watched 2005's Pride & Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright and based on the timeless novel by Jane Austen. You’ve possibly even seen Atonement, also by Wright, released in 2007. But even if you haven’t, you likely know that Keira Knightley is in both films. But one movie that may have slipped your notice is Anna Karenina, the 2012 adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel and the most recent collaboration between Wright and Knightley. This film only made a $68.9 million box office gross worldwide against a $40.6 million budget, and generally received mixed to lukewarm reviews, garnering a 62% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a weighted average of 63 on Metacritic. All of this makes it easy to dismiss Anna Karenina as a seemingly middle-of-the-road reworking of a book that’s already been adapted to death. In fact,...

The University of Southern California Libraries revealed the winners for the 35th annual USC Libraries Scripter Award on Saturday. The awards, which honor the year’s best film and television adaptations (along with the works on which they are based), returned live to USC’s elegant Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library for the annual black tie awards fete.

This group of academics, industry professionals, and critics is often predictive of the Adapted Screenplay Oscar race, presaging 14 eventual Oscar winners, including in the last decade “Argo” (2013), “12 Years a Slave” (2014), “The Imitation Game” (2015), “The Big Short” (2016), “Moonlight” (2017), and “Call Me By Your Name” (2018).

Screenwriter Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews won the film award for “Women Talking,” which is nominated for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay Oscars, while the television prize went to English stand-up comedian and screenwriter Will Smith for the episode “Failure’s Contagious,” from “Slow Horses,” based...

“Women Talking” has won the USC Libraries Scripter Award for adapted screenplay in a ceremony that took place on the USC campus in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

The Scripter Award goes to both the writer of an adapted screenplay and the author of the original material on which the screenplay was based, which meant that the award was given to writer-director Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews, whose 2018 novel formed the basis for Polley’s film.

In the 34-year history of the Scripters, the winner has matched the Oscar winner 14 times, most of those in an eight-year streak between 2010 and 2017.

Other finalists were screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro for “Living,” based on Leo Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”; screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for “She Said”; and Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” based on...

Gilmore Girls focused on the hectic relationship between mother and daughter, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, but it also showed Rory's relationship with literature and every book she reads. According to Book Riot, the characters read and refer to just shy of 410 books once the Netflix revival, A Year in the Life, came out in 2016. But there’s a big difference between books and authors that were referenced, and the books Rory was seen reading.

At the beginning of Gilmore Girls, Rory was just 16 years old and would rather spend her time reading. She said it best at her high school graduation in season 3, episode 22, “Those Are Strings, Pinocchio”: “I live in two worlds; one is a world of books.” Reading not only gave Rory a sense of peace but also took her out of dramatic realities. Unironically, some books Rory read paralleled her own life as a young woman...

One of the most fascinating elements of Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky" series is how each movie is a reflection of where the star was at that moment in his career. Over the course of eight films (including the two "Creed" movies in which he appeared), Stallone is critically examining his success, be it skyrocketing to ludicrous extremes (in "Rocky III") or direly on the wane (in "Rocky V"). Though his private life is another, far more complicated matter, it's rare to see a massive celebrity wrestle so honestly with his public persona. He's leveling with us because he knows how much we love The Italian Stallion. You're rooting for both Stallone and Rocky to come out on top every time. Well, almost every time.

This is a lesson Sly learned in the immediate wake of "Rocky." There's no more emphatic validation of one's artistic vision than delivering the year's top-grossing...

This past year, we've had a lot of discussions about whether Brendan Fraser should have been cast in Darren Aronofsky's "The Whale" due to him requiring a fat suit to play the role. On the one hand, we are all happy to see Fraser be given a lead role by a major director, which hasn't happened in many years. On the other, it is yet another entry on the long list of roles that should presumably have gone to fat actors but didn't. The likelihood that a central character is explicitly written to be large is already incredibly small, but if all those parts are getting taken by actors who need padding and prosthetics to make themselves appear large, when else are fat actors going to be given opportunities to lead films?

As someone who is indeed fat, I often find myself frustrated by this, but I also understand...

The Oscar nominees are in and among the prestigious selection within the Best Actor category is none other than first-time contender Bill Nighy for his lead role in Living. The film is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's drama, Ikiru, and derived from Leo Tolstoy's novel entitled The Death of Ivan Ilyich. In it, Nighy plays a civil servant that is forced to reevaluate his life choices after receiving a terminal prognosis in 1950s Britain. Similarly to the postwar reconstruction that took place during the period depicted in this film, the protagonist undergoes a moment of personal growth as he strives to do something great with nearly no time left on the biological clock. Its deeply moving storyline and acting have allowed Living to continue winning audiences over for practically a year. This extended-release circuit has allowed the film to remain a sought-after watch for moviegoers that are also interested in the awards season.

Prokofiev’s opera War & Peace is presented on 28 January 2023 by the internationally renowned Catalan opera director Calixto Bieito in a joint production between the Hungarian State Opera and the Grand Théâtre de Genève. The cast featuring 28 soloists is led by Andrea Brassói-Jőrös, Szabolcs Brickner and Csaba Szegedi, the Opera Orchestra and Chorus are conducted by Alan Buribayev.

The will to live of the physically and mentally broken Andrei Bolkonsky, wishing to die, is restored by his budding love for the young and cheerful Natasha Rostova in vain as the warm-hearted girl and her family are cruelly and harshly rejected by Andrei’s father, the elderly Prince Bolkonsky. As a result of Andrei’s obedience, Natasha falls into the net of the married Anatole Kuragin, but his elopement with the girl is eventually prevented by Natasha’s cousin, Sonya. The humiliated Natasha attempts suicide in her despair, unsuccessfully. As a result of the events,...

“Volver a Caer,” a contemporary Spanish-language retelling of the Leo Tolstoy classic Anna Karenina, debuts exclusively on ViX+ on Jan. 20. It stars Kate del Castillo (“Queen of the South”) whose Cholawood Prods. co-produced the series under its development pact with Endemol Shine Boomdog.

“This is our first mainstream TV series for an international audience,” Del Castillo announced at a special screening of its pilot episode in Los Angeles.

She was joined at the post-screening Q & A by ViX+ chief content officer Rodrigo Mazón and the series’ director Hari Sama, best known for his acclaimed feature “This is Not Berlin,” which premiered at Sundance in 2019. Sama, who is also an executive producer, noted that this was the first TV series where he directed all the episodes.

“Hari had the right sensibility for this show, we insisted on him,” said Del Castillo. Indeed, his cinematic background comes through, elevating the six-episode series with more depth and nuance.

Star Trek is much more than just the USS Enterprise with the Starfleet's current ship count being estimated at somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 ships. Some of these ships are named in honor of mythological figures such as the USS Chimera, the USS Agamemnon, and the USS Apollo. As is common knowledge, Apollo is also the designated name of NASA's many Moon programs. Similarly, other NASA initiatives such as Challenger, Colombia, and Endeavor also get commemorated as Starfleet spaceships in the Star Trek franchise. Another common naming method for these planet-traveling vehicles is incorporating actual characters from the canon and even real-life personalities.

So, with every USS Chekov and USS Sulu, dedicated Trekkers can also find cool Star Trek spaceships named after visionaries like Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Neil Armstrong, and many more. So far only six ships have been identified in the canon to have been named after Star Trek characters.

The USC Scripter Award, now in its 35th year, honors feature films adapted from novels, short stories, nonfiction books, print media, and other movies, with both the screenplay and its source material feted in each case. This year’s nominees include three of Gold Derby’s five leading contenders for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars — “Women Talking,” “She Said,” and “Living” — as well as “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” which rank seventh and eighth on our predictions list.

The biggest omissions were “Glass Onion” by Rian Johnson, which is in second place in our Oscar race, and “The Whale” by Samuel D. Hunter, which ranks third.

The Scripter has forecast 14 of the eventual Oscar winners for Best Adapted Screenplay, six of which were in the past decade: “Call Me By Your Name” (2018) “Moonlight” (2017), “The Big Short” (2016), “The Imitation Game” (2015), “12 Years a Slave” (2014), and “Argo” (2013).

The...

“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” has become the first animated film to be saluted at the USC Libraries Scripter Awards, an annual honor that goes to the screenwriters of a film adaptation as well as the authors of the original work on which the film is based.

“Pinocchio” was named as a finalist alongside the screenplays for “Living,” “She Said,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Women Talking.” Because the original authors are also recognized, 2023 scripter nominees include 19th century Italian writer Carlo Collodi, who wrote the original version of “Pinocchio” in 1880; Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, whose 1886 novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” was adapted by Akira Kurosawa for the 1952 film “Ikiru” and by Kazuo Ishiguro for 2022’s “Living”; New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who wrote the book “She Said” about breaking the story of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct and were played in the film version by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan,...

In a year in which the frontrunners for Best Adapted Screenplay are still unclear, the USC Libraries naming the finalists for the 35th annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards offer more insight into what scripts most stand out. The award, which honors the writers of the year’s most accomplished film and episodic series adaptations, as well as the writers of the works on which they are based, is a major bellwether for the Oscars race, as its winners overlapped with the Best Adapted Screenplay winners from 2011 to 2019. Its voter base is a mix of academics, industry professionals, and critics.

As expected, Sarah Polley’s screenplay for “Women Talking,” an adaptation of Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, of which the filmmaker has already won several critics awards for, is among this year’s Scripter Award finalists. Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Living” script (a Tolstoy novella adaptation) and Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s “She Said...

“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” “Living,” “She Said,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Women Talking are among the film nominees for this year’s USC Libraries Scripter Awards. In addition, television episodes of “The Crown,” “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” “Slow Horses,” “Tokyo Vice” and “Under the Banner of Heaven” were also recognized.

A strong bellwether for the Oscars’ best adapted screenplay category, previous Scripter winners that have matched the Academy in the last decade include “Argo” (2012), “12 Years a Slave” (2013), “The Imitation Game” (2014), “The Big Short” (2015), “Moonlight” (2016), “Call Me by Your Name” (2017) and “Nomadland” (2020). Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” (2019) is the only Scripter-eligible film to win the Academy Award without being nominated by the organization.

The inclusion of “Pinocchio” is particularly noteworthy since it’s been picking up awards steam over the last few weeks. It’s a dark horse for one of the five coveted adapted screenplay spots, which could point...

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Living, She Said, Top Gun: Maverick and Women Talking are the film nominees, and episodes of The Crown, Fleishman Is in Trouble, Slow Horses, Tokyo Vice and Under the Banner of Heaven are the TV finalists, for the 35th USC Scripter Awards, the USC Libraries announced on Wednesday.

The most notable nominations are those of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and Top Gun: Maverick, given that the screenplays of those films had not yet received widespread recognition, and that acclaimed adaptations of the novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover and White Noise, the nonfiction work The Good Nurse and the play The Whale were also eligible. (A widely lauded adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was not eligible, as it is not in the English language.)

This year’s Scripters — the nominations of which were determined, as the winners will be, by a selection committee...

The USC Libraries on Wednesday unveiled nominees for its 35th annual USC Libraries Scripter Award, which honors the screenwriters of the year’s best film and episodic series adaptations, along with the writers of the works on which they are based.

Related Story 2022-23 Awards Season Calendar – Dates For The Oscars, Grammys, Guilds & More Related Story Charles White Dies: USC Running Back And Heisman Trophy Winner Was 64 Related Story Hollywood Studies Show Few Gains For Women, People Of Color Directing Films In 2022

This year’s film nominees are the screenwriters and original authors from Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Living, She Said, Top Gun: Maverick and Women Talking. In TV, screenwriters were nominated for penning episodes of The Crown, Fleishman Is in Trouble, Slow Horses, Tokyo Vice and Under the Banner of Heaven.

Winners will be announced March 4 at a ceremony at USC’s Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library,...

First things first: as I mentioned in my review of Season One, I’m not a gamer, have never played The Last of Us, and haven’t even watched a walkthrough video of it. So I’ll be discussing this episode, and all the ones to come, solely on the basis of how it works as a television show.

Judged on that basis, the super-sized “When You’re Lost in the Darkness” comes off pretty well. All of the season’s episodes are covering familiar ground in some way or other,...

James Norton has reflected on working with the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein on one of the producer’s last projects.

The actor, 37, was discussing the hit 2016 miniseries War & Peace in a new interview with The Independent, when he looked back on his encounters with Weinstein.

War & Peace, a retelling of Leo Tolstoy’s classic Russian novel, starred Norton as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky.

Weinstein served as an executive producer on the show, with Paul Dano and Lily James also starring. It was written by Andrew Davies and directed by Tom Harper.

The drama aired the year before Weinstein found himself accused of sexual harassment, assault and rape in an investigation by The New York Times that led to the #MeToo movement.

Speaking in a new interview with The Independent, Norton said of Weinstein: “He visited the set once when I was there, flew in for an hour, it was a handshake situation.

“I’d say ‘Living’ is harder,” admits Bill Nighy when asked whether it’s more challenging to portray an emotionally repressed man, like his character in “Living,” as opposed to portraying someone who is carefree and uninhibited. For our recent webchat he adds, “the way that I do it, it’s quite physical because you have to hold yourself still and tight and you have to squeeze out the voice and you are forever uptight. That’s quite exhausting!” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

See Exclusive Video Interview: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch (‘Living’ composer)

“Living” is directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by acclaimed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (“The Remains of the Day”). It was adapted from the 1952 Akira Kurosawa-directed “Ikiru,” which in turn was inspired by the 1886 Russian novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by novelist Leo Tolstoy. Set in 1950s London, Nighy stars as Mr. Williams,...

“It is a beautiful journey, in a sense of meeting this point of bittersweetness and acceptance,” declares composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch about what her score for the British drama “Living” means to her on a personal level. For our recent webchat she adds, “doing this film helped me see things from his point of view because not only has he accepted the fact that he’s going to die, but he’s also found the value of his own life,” she explains. “I’m glad I got to kind of think about that, because it helped me write a better score.” We talked with Levienaise-Farrouch as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with 2022/2023 awards contenders. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

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“Living” is directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by acclaimed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro...

Veteran filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, now age 92, has worked for decades making critically loved, epic-length documentaries that often reach well beyond the two-, three- and four-hour mark. His subject matter is often institutional, the places of civic and political life: large government agencies (“City Hall”) and small towns, psychiatric hospitals (“Titicut Follies”) and burlesque clubs (“Crazy Horse”), libraries “(“Ex Libris”) and Neiman-Marcus (“The Store”).

So it might come as a surprise to learn that his latest, the intense, sorrowful “A Couple” is neither a documentary nor much longer than an hour.

“A Couple” stars French actress Nathalie Boutefeu as Sophia Tolstoy, a writer and the wife of legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, one half of literary history’s most infamously unhappy marriage. Tolstoy was her husband’s secretary and manuscript copyist, a diarist and the mother to their 13 children. Here Boutefeu (who co-wrote the screenplay with Wiseman) delivers a stunning solo...

Frederick Wisman has been making movies since 1967. Now, 55 years later, he’s directed his first narrative fiction film ever shot on location. A Couple stars Nathalie Boutefeu as Sophia Tolstaya, the only actor in the 64-minute film from its 92-year-old director. It’s a methodical piece by Wiseman, shot on the small island of Belle-Île, close to the filmmaker’s home in Paris. He follows Tolstaya around a lush garden and on a deserted beach, focused on the words she’s speaking to Leo Tolstoy and the thoughts coming into her head. It’s ruminative, slight, and washes over its audience—much like Wiseman’s other, non-fiction films.

The director has been prolific in the last five decades, releasing a new film nearly every year, beloved by critics. Wiseman trades preparation for perception, placing his camera in front of his subjects without judgment or interference. This hour-long film is far...

The forever-rotating catalog of streaming movies and television has ebbs and flows of availability with what we gain and lose every month. November 2022 happens to be a month when we'll lose quite a number of great titles to the digital ether from HBO Max. Everything from some recent genre material, Hollywood classics, and films by major auteurs all leave the service by the end of the month. There are enough great films that I could spotlight a dozen or so movies you need to see before they leave HBO Max and are sent to possibly another streaming service or – and I know it's unthinkable – for digital rental, where you actually have to put down a couple of bucks to watch the movie.

To avoid spending some extra cash before the holiday season burns a hole in your wallet that you will soon regret, here are five films leaving HBO Max...

What does it mean to live? Living aims to not answer that question so much as explore how much the zest for life is lost the older people get. Adapted from the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru, which was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Living is directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro. Boasting a lovely, vulnerable performance by Bill Nighy, Living is a rousing drama that gets to the heart of being human and what gets in the way of living life to its fullest.

Bill Nighy’s Mr. Williams is a man who is stuck in his ways; he likes to keep things in a specific order, and has fallen into the trap of bureaucracy, which sees him becoming a shell of himself. His stoic, grumpy demeanor is wildly different from that of Peter Wakeling’s (Alex Sharp), who is new to Mr.

"Your power crushed my life and my personality as well." Film Forum in NYC has revealed a trailer for the first narrative film from acclaimed doc filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. It's called A Couple, also known as just Un Couple in French, and it's not really a film - a 63 minute chamber piece. A Couple follows a long term relationship between a man and a woman. The man is Leo Tolstoy. The woman is his wife, Sophia. It's nothing more than an hour of a woman reading letters and dairies written by Sophia, his young wife, who he didn't seem to love. French actress Nathalie Boutefeu portrays Sophia as a "determined, loving, angry woman who recognizes the limitations of long-term marriage to a man of world-renown." Which is to say that she didn't really understand that she was married to someone who didn't really care about her. It premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival,...

Frederick Wiseman is in his sixth decade as a giant of the documentary film world. But for his first film after emerging from the pandemic, the 92-year-old filmmaker was ready to try something new. While he is best known for his lengthy documentaries such as “Public Housing” and “Belfast, Maine” that meticulously capture portraits of institutions and communities, the director’s latest endeavor is a fictional film with a running time that barely exceeds 60 minutes.

“A Couple,” which premiered in competition at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, is a dramatization of the marriage between “War and Peace” author Leo Tolstoy and his wife, Sophia Tolstoy. Sophia takes center stage in Wiseman’s film, which unfolds in a series of monologues based on her letters and diary entries. Nathalie Boutefeu plays Sophia in the film, which seeks to recontextualize the Tolstoys’ marriage and explore the sacrifices that she made to support her husband’s writing career.

“Living,” directed by Oliver Hermanus and starring Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood, comes from a screenplay that Kazuo Ishiguro wrote, adapting it into English from Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese film “Ikuru.” (“Ikuru” itself was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 Russian novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”) Nighy plays a British bureaucrat in post-World War II London whose cancer diagnosis inspires him to reevaluate his life of solitude and try to make a difference in his community before he dies. Hermanus, Nighy and Wood visited TheWrap and Shutterstock’s Interview and Portrait Studio at the Toronto International Film Festival for a discussion about the filmmaking process.

Nighy plays the bureaucrat, Williams, and he and Hermanus weren’t too worried by the legacy of Kurosawa’s original film looming over their adaptation. Having Kazuo Ishiguro’s screenplay writing helped immensely.

“We had to ask for permission, and the story is that...

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Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) will open on Oct. 24 with Takahisa Zeze’s postwar drama Fragments of the Last Will, while Oliver Bill Hermanus’s Living, a reinterpretation of an Akira Kurosawa classic, will bring proceedings to a close on Nov. 2.

Takahisa’s film, based on real events, tells the story of a Japanese prisoner of war played by who battles to keep hope alive for himself and his fellow inmates in a Siberian gulag after his nation’s defeat in 1945. Fragments of the Last Will stars Kazunari Ninomiya, former member of boyband Arashi.

Living is set in Britain in 1952, the same year Kurosawa’s Ikiru, on which it is based, was released. Bill Nighy plays a staid bureaucrat who is inspired to change his life after receiving shocking news.

“Living is the story of an ordinary man, reduced by years of oppressive...

Playing the anti-hero Teresa Mendoza in Telemundo’s hit drama “La Reina del Sur” (Queen of the South) has become second nature to its star, Kate del Castillo. In a way, her hectic career as a producer, actor and entrepreneur, mirrors her character’s upstream struggle against patriarchy — sans the guns and contraband.

Speaking via Zoom from the U.K. where she’s working on the indie film “A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea & Tomorrow” with director Katherine Fairfax Wright, del Castillo reflected on the parallels between managing the challenges of her multi-faceted career with those faced by Mendoza in the show’s long-awaited third season, which premieres Oct. 18 on Telemundo. “La Reina” is a co-production of Telemundo and Netflix, which has international rights to the series.

The new season sees the titular La Reina taking on the brutal male-dominated cartels of South America once again, picking up four years after U.

Paris-based documentary distributor Lucky You is finding plenty of international buyers for its wide-ranging titles that span history, travel, wildlife and science.

Part of French production group Bonne Pioche, Lucky You has seen a slew of recent sales for hit titles like “Science of Emotions,” which examines the impact emotions have not only on people’s well-being but also their entire life. Commissioned by French broadcaster Planète Plus, the doc sold across Europe and North America, including to Zdf in Germany, Rai in Italy and Curiosity Stream in the U.S.

Likewise commissioned by Planète Plus, “Science & Sports” looks at the science, engineering and technology that are helping athletes maximize their performance. A Bonne Pioche title co-produced with Japan’s Nhk, it likewise sold throughout Europe and beyond, including sales to the BBC in the U.K., Belgium’s Rtbf and Canadian channel Ici Explora in addition to deals in China,...

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Actor Nathalie Boutefeu perambulates around an exquisite garden in full bloom, reciting a monologue in French she cowrote with her director, the words drawn from writings by Sophia Tolstoy, the wife of novelist Leo Tolstoy (whose own letters are also quoted here). The result is an expressive and moving portrait of a tempestuous marriage, one told with elan that feels rich in feeling even if its entire budget probably wouldn’t have covered the cost of croissants on an average film shoot in France.

That bald description might suggest it’s a quirky programming choice for the main competition at the Venice Film Festival unless you knew that the film’s co-writer and director is 92-year-old Frederick Wiseman, the American-born auteur who lives mainly in France now and has directed nearly 50 films in a storied career. There’s something typically puckish and surprising that at this late,...