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There really hasn’t been a filmmaker quite like Blake Edwards. He could go from the silly-billy comedy of his “Pink Panther” comedies starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau to “Days of Wine and Roses,” a devastating drama dealing with alcoholism to the gender-bender musical comedy “Victor/Victoria” starring his wife Julie Andrews to the underrated Western “The Wild Rovers” with William Holden and Ryan O’Neal. Edwards even turned the diminutive British comedian Dudley Moore into a leading man thanks to his 1979 romantic comedy “10.” And let’s not forget the extraordinary collaboration he had with composer Henry Mancini who earned four Oscars including best song “Moon River” from 1961’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the title tune from 1962’s “Days of Wine and Roses.”

Still, there was no love lost between Edwards and Hollywood.

In my 2003 Los Angeles Times interview with Edwards, who had personality to spare, said “I have been a...

Sfo Entertainment has slated releases for feature documentaries “Feeding Tomorrow” and “Killing Me Softly With His Songs” with Gravitas Ventures. These releases mark the inception of documentaries, docuseries and scripted projects under the banner of Sfo Entertainment, aligned with its mission to create entertainment that inspires passion for social issues.

“We believe in shedding light on critical issues that impact our world, and we are committed to making a positive impact through the power of cinema,” Sfo Entertainment founder Jon Sheinberg said in a statement, adding that this partnership will “help spread the light far and wide.”

Focused on the global issue of food scarcity and sustainable agriculture, “Feeding Tomorrow” explores solutions to feed the growing population and create a more sustainable future. It won the best environmental film award at the 2022 Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival. The documentary is produced by Common Table Creative, the production company of co-directors Oliver English and Simon English.

Seasoned Hollywood executive Anjay Nagpal launched a new multi-media network, Entropy Media. Nagpal is best known for his work on critically-acclaimed films including Greyhound, Bombshell, The Good Liar, and more. He’s collaborating with a team of veterans in the industry including talent from Gimlet, Serial Productions, Vice, and Wondery to bring an all-in-one audio storytelling experience. In 2023, Entropy Media will launch five investigative, narrative nonfiction podcast series. From the most powerful mob family you’ve never heard of, to an everyday American man who took down a head of the Ira, to the FBI’s most expensive and intensive bust-up, Entropy Media will break into the market with intriguing stories listeners need to hear.

“We believe in a quality-over-quantity business strategy, bringing never-before-told stories with rich archival material and thoughtful, high-quality sound design to listeners,” said Anjay Nagpal. “At Entropy Media, we’re focused on good stories with captivating characters,...

Exclusive: Anjay Nagpal, who was formerly Chief Content Officer at Bron Studios, is moving in to the world of podcasts.

Nagpal, who worked on movies including Greyhound, Bombshell and The Good Liar, has launched Entropy Media with plans to launch five investigative, narrative non-fiction series this year.

First out of the gate is Brokers, Bagmen, and Moles. Premiering on April 26, the series starts on the Chicago trading floor of the 1980s — a workplace unlike any we know today — as the FBI mounts one of the most expensive, elaborate undercover investigations in its history. The goal: to catch brokers allegedly stealing millions of dollars from their customers. Was it a massive success that reformed our financial markets – or a huge flop costing taxpayers millions of dollars?

Chicago native and former derivatives trader, Nagpal hosts and produces this 12-part series, which was produced in association with Stretch Productions’ Tim Hendricks and Kevin “Stretch” Huff,...

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival announced plans Wednesday for 52 world premieres and 78 U.S. premieres spanning a total of 43 countries throughout the 11-day event.

“At a time where there’s a dwindling of movie theater attendance, the role of film festivals has never been more important,” said Sbiff executive director Roger Durling. “At Sbiff, with the 38th edition, our marching orders are clear, to celebrate movies and to nurture and exalt the film community, the artists as well as the cinephiles. It’s a great slate with 43 countries represented.”

The festival starts Feb. 8 with the world premiere of “Miranda’s Victim” from director-producer Michelle Danner. The period piece is set in the year 1963 and documents the true story of Patricia “Trish” Weir (Abigal Breslin), who attempts to put her abuser behind bars after being kidnapped and sexually assaulted at 18 years old.

Director Chandler Levack’s “I Like Movies” will...

The 38th edition of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which will run Feb. 8-18, will open with Miranda’s Victim, one of 52 world premieres in this year’s lineup, and will close with the U.S. premiere of I Like Movies, one of 78 U.S. premieres, the fest announced Wednesday.

These are, of course, in addition to a slew of the career-retrospective tributes for which the fest is famous, which this year will celebrate the likes of Cate Blanchett, Brendan Fraser, Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, as well as panels with breakthrough artists, artisans, directors, writers, producers, female creatives and international filmmakers.

The fest will also offer a variety of free educational programs, including Mike’s Field Trip to the Movies (for 4,000-plus fourth through sixth grade students from low-income schools throughout Santa Barbara County), which this year will feature a screening of Guillermo del Toro...

The Santa Barbara Film Festival has today unveiled the lineup for its 38th edition, taking place in-person from February 8-18.

The festival will open with the world premiere of the courtroom drama Miranda’s Victim, from director Michelle Danner. Pic tells the true story of Trish Weir (Abigail Breslin), who in 1963 was kidnapped and brutally raped by Ernesto Miranda. Committed to putting her assailant in prison, Trish’s life is destroyed by America’s legal system as she triggers a law that transforms the nation. Ryan Phillippe, Luke Wilson, Donald Sutherland, Mireille Enos, Andy Garcia and more also star.

Closing out Sbiff 2023 is the Chandler Levack-directed I Like Movies, which makes its U.S. premiere. The film starring Isaiah Lehtinen, Romina D’Ugo, Krista Bridges and Percy Hynes White follows the socially inept, 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence (Lehtinen) as he gets a job at a video store, there forming a complicated...

From the team behind HBO Documentary Films’ “If You’re Not In The Obit, Eat Breakfast” and “The Bronx, USA” HBO’s The Super Bob Einstein Movie, debuting Tuesday, December 28 (9:00-10:18 p.m. Et/Pt), celebrates the life and legacy of the late actor, writer and producer Bob Einstein. Written, produced, and directed by Danny Gold and produced […]

The post HBO Releases Trailer For New Documentary ‘The Super Bob Einstein Movie’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

"I was obsessed with him instantly." HBO has unveiled the trailer for a documentary biopic film titled The Super Bob Einstein Movie, made by journalist / filmmaker Danny Gold. It'll be streaming on HBO Max this December. The doc follows the life of the late actor, writer and producer Bob Einstein, featuring some of his greatest comedic contributions. Punctuated with a treasure trove of archival clips + interviews, Bob's unique sensibility is remembered by his family, his friends, and fellow comedians including Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Susie Essman, David Letterman, Sarah Silverman, Norman Lear, Cheryl Hines, Jimmy Kimmel, Steve Martin, Patton Oswalt, Rob Reiner, Jb Smoove, brothers Albert Brooks and Cliff Einstein, wife Berta and daughter Erin. A pillar of the comedy community for nearly 50 years, Einstein's singular sense of humor had a lasting impact on generations of legendary comedians. In keeping with his propensity for wry joke-telling and daring physical comedy,...

Some famous friends and family are celebrating the life, career, and impact of comedy icon Bob Einstein in HBO‘s new documentary The Super Bob Einstein Movie. Set to premiere, Tuesday, December 28, the HBO Documentary Films production shines a light on the legacy of the actor and writer through the eyes of people who knew him best. Ahead of the premiere, HBO has unveiled its star-studded teaser for the documentary which is full of laughs. (Credit: HBO) Written and directed by Danny Gold who produces with George Shapiro and Aimee Hyatt, The Super Bob Einstein Movie pays homage to Einstein’s past including his comedic contributions with an alter-ego like Super Dave Osborne. The memorable role was part of Einstein’s work on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The special also acknowledges one of Einstein’s final roles in HBO’s long-running comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm in which he portrayed Marty Funkhouser.

Mamoudou Athie, star of breakout feature film Patti Cake$, is to star in and produce a feature film set in the Sahara Desert.

Athie, who is also set to star in Jurassic Park: Dominion, has teamed up with Vespucci Group to develop Chighali, a project based in Mauritania, the North African country where he is from. It is based on an audio story, produced by Vespucci, and written by journalist Sahar Zand.

The story follows Sidi, whose first memories including camels, sand storms, scorpions, and sand dunes towering like buildings. Raised in a nomadic tribe on the far edge of the Sahara desert, Sidi doesn’t have a father like the other kids. He dreams of meeting him, even after his mom explains he’s gone away to heaven, a journey from which he won’t return. When Sidi discovers that many years ago a foreign documentary crew had visited the tribe,...

Photographed pages from early copies of Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts, former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson’s forthcoming book about the changing industry of journalism, circulated the internet this week, revealing several errors and inaccuracies.

There were small, easy-to-correct errors, like saying that Charlottesville is in North Carolina, rather than Virginia. But greater concern was raised about an apparent bias against so-called “new media,” especially Vice News, with facts skewed to make young, digital journalists appear inept next to their...

At the age of 96, Carl Reiner remains impressively engaged with life.

He tweets daily to his 237K Twitter followers, often in criticism of President Trump. A tweet he posted on Friday garnered 12,000 likes: “I ask: Is there anything more upsetting than having our blow-hard, self serving President meet with foreign leaders and, suppossedly [sic], on our behalf, make deals that make him and his billionaire friends richer?”

And he keeps on top of the news, like the recent controversy over late night TV host Samantha Bee, who earned widespread censure after she called Ivanka Trump the “c” word.

“I know Samantha Bee, and I know she’s not a racist or anything,” Reiner tells Deadline. “She’s a very good soul, and she made a mistake and she apologized profusely, and it’s a little different than what Roseanne did. It’s quite a bit different because Samantha Bee’s heart is in the right place.

http://www.lajfilmfest.org

The 13th annual Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival will begin on Wednesday, April 25, 2018 and conclude on Wednesday, May 2nd with films from around the world celebrating the Jewish experience.

The opening night begins with a Bar Mitzvah or 13th year, style party and a tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. with the premiere of a new documentary Sammy Davis Jr. — I Gotta Be Me, an amazing Documentary made for American Masters which I was elated to see when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Sammy Davis Jr. was the ultimate performer. His worldview was unique and self made just as he was. It did not conform to the liberal “style” of the time, but it was not conservative either.

USA/2018/100 minutes

Directed by Sam Pollard).

Sammy Davis Jr. was recognized as a groundbreaking entertainer who frequently found himself bracketed by the bigotry of white America and...

HBO just released the trailer for If You're Not In the Obit, Eat Breakfast, a new documentary from producer George Shapiro and director Danny Gold which is about he vitality of those people who are going strong after age 90 and includes some of the biggest legends in the entertainment industry. It will debut June 5 on HBO. Some of those in the film are Shapiro, Stan Lee, Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, Kirk Douglas, Irving Fields, Stan Harper, Norman Lear, Dick Van Dyke and…...

Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, Kirk Douglas, Carl Reiner, Norman Lear, Stan Lee, Betty White and Dick Van Dyke — these are just some of the people interviewed for If You’re Not In the Obit, Eat Breakfast, a new documentary from producer George Shapiro and director Danny Gold that will bow June 5 on HBO. The film is a celebration of the vitality of those people who are going strong after age 90. Brooks is 90; Van Dyke 91; Lear, who will appear at Deadline’s Contenders Emmys…...

Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, Kirk Douglas, Carl Reiner, Norman Lear, Stan Lee, Betty White and Dick Van Dyke — these are just some of the people interviewed for If You’re Not In the Obit, Eat Breakfast, a new documentary from producer George Shapiro and director Danny Gold that will bow June 5 on HBO. The film is a celebration of the vitality of those people who are going strong after age 90. Brooks is 90; Van Dyke 91; Lear, who will appear at Deadline’s Contenders Emmys…...

HollywoodNews.com: “100 Voices: A Journey Home,” a feature documentary about a group of Jewish cantors returning to their ancestral roots in Poland, has had a remarkable journey through the United States. This film, which is contending for an Oscar®, was screened to a sold out audience at the recent Hollywood Film Festival and also played to enthusiastic audiences in over 500 theaters in a one night Fathom event. In an unprecedented move, Fathom last week played encore performances in 84 theaters in 35 cities.

The doc features the personal reflections and musical performances of some of the world?s finest cantors, including Cantor Nathan Lam of Steven Wise Temple in Los Angeles, who was one of the producers. Emmy® winning composer Charles Fox conducts an original piece with words by Pope John Paul II. Matt Asner (son of actor Ed Asner) and Danny Gold produced and directed. Michael Lam also produced.

Find out more at www.

Peter Weir's The Way Back will kick off Los Angeles' Museum of Tolerance International Film Festival (Motiff) on November 13, which runs six days and screens twenty-two films seeking to highlight human rights issues past and present. Clint Eastwood will be honored with the festival's first "Tolerance Award" at the festival Gala on November 14. Clinton's Gran Torino (2008) will have a special presentation during the festival. Among the other films are Nigel Cole's Made in Dagenham (2010), Matthew Asner and Danny Gold's documentary 100 Voices: A Journey Home (2010), Reconciliation: Mandela's Miracle (2010) from Michael Henry Wilson, When We Leave (2010, Germany) from Feo Aladag, plus special presentations of Kimberly Peirce's Boy's Don't Cry (1999), To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) and more.

I’ve remarked a couple of times on the site in the past that there’s little to no reference sources online for the first two New York Underground Film Festivals, held in 1994 and 1995. The official Nyuff website has had its archives offline for, I think, over a year now. If you go to their site, they simply direct you to what’s available on the site Archive.org. (And, from my own experience, it’s a safe bet not to assume your stuff will be on Archive.org forever — it can really vanish at any minute.)

At Archive.org, the Nyuff archives only go back to 1996. I don’t know if the fest had a web presence those first two years or not, but whether they were ever there, the optimum point is that they’re not there now and probably never will be. And my own personal assumption...

Opens

Friday March 12

Agent Cody Banks, the teen secret agent who last year helped MGM bide a bit of boxoffice time while awaiting the arrival of the next real James Bond installment, crosses over the pond to again save the world in Agent Cody Banks: Destination London.

In terms of inspiration or even the slightest shred of ingenuity, Banks ranks more like an 000 than an 007.

Even more than the so-called original, the sequel's content to trot out the flimsiest of heavily worn spy-movie cliches without bothering to give star Frankie Muniz an opportunity to pull off anything truly heroic or at the very least quick-witted.

That probably won't bother its not-so-demanding junior demo, but even that segment seemed a little restless at a preview screening, which could portend OK but at less-than-stellar numbers.

While the first Cody Banks was able to have some fun with its young protagonist trying to maintain a "normal" teenage life while undergoing all that extensive spy training, the second quickly dispenses with a similar summer camp scenario before sending Muniz's Banks off to England, where a rogue CIA agent is planning to implement a stolen, top-secret mind-control device for his own diabolical purposes.

With Hilary Duff, his previous partner in crime-fighting, now busy with her own film career, Banks is paired up with Derek (the ubiquitous Anthony Anderson), a CIA reject who's recruited to protect Cody Cover's as a clarinet prodigy at an elite music boarding school.

When he's not faking practicing, Cody runs around London on the trail of the bad guys with a little help from a fellow student (Hannah Spearritt) who just happens to be Cody's British secret service counterpart.

As directed by Kevin Allen and written by Don Rhymer, there's a whole lot of running around going on without pausing to get maximum mileage out of such potential goodies as dental retainer listening devices, exploding Mentos and piano-playing pooches.

Rather than give much in the way of day-saving to do, Muniz and company have to settle for taking in the local scenery (actually provided by London, not Vancouver), which has been colorfully captured by cinematographer Denis Crossan.

Agent Cody Banks: Destination London

MGM MGM Pictures presentsa Bob Yari/Maverick Films/Dylan Sellers production

Credits:

Director: Kevin Allen

Screenwriter: Don Rhymer

Story: Harald Zwart, Dylan Sellers, Don Rhymer

Based on the characters created by: Jeffrey Jurgensen

Producers: Dylan Sellers, Guy Oseary, David C. Glasser, Bob Yari, David Nicksay

Executive producers: Madonna, Jason Alexander, Jennifer Birchfield-Eick, Kerry David, Danny Gold, Michael Jackman, Andreas Klein, Mark Morgan

Director of photography: Denis Crossan

Production designer: Richard Holland

Editor: Andrew MacRitchie

Costume designer: Steven Noble

Music: Mark Thomas

Cast:

Agent Cody Banks: Frankie Muniz

Derek: Anthony Anderson

Mrs. Banks: Cynthia Stevenson

Mr. Banks: Daniel Roebuck

Emily: Hannah Spearritt

CIA director: Keith David

Jo Kenworth: Anna Chancellor

Diaz: Keith Allen

Kenworth: James Faulkner

Running time -- 99 minutes

MPAA rating: PG...