News

by Cláudio Alves

Juliette Binoche's jury made history when they gave Jafar Panahi the Palme d'Or.

One month ago, Jafar Panahi took the Palme d'Or at Cannes for It Was Just an Accident and thus became the fourth director to win top honors from the Croisette, the Berlinale, and the Venice Film Festival. The Iranian master joins the ranks of Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Altman. However. If you exclude ties and those cineastes who won two prizes for the same film, then Panahi and Antonioni are in an exclusive club of two. Inspired by Eric Blume's musings on the Triple Crown of Acting – Oscar, Tony, and Emmy – I started to ask myself what other filmmakers are close to achieving the same Palm, Golden Lion, and Bear combo. Who's next? The answers might surprise you…...

Henry Fonda for President envisions American history through the dual lives of Henry Fonda: the movie star and the real man behind him. While it’s the debut film from 61-year-old director Alexander Horwath, following his many years as a critic and programmer of the Austrian Film Museum, a lifetime of cinephilia and hard work lie behind it. Horwath’s engagement with Fonda’s films began with a trip to Paris in 1980. In Fonda, Horwath finds a defensible version of the U.S. (The film quotes James Baldwin to the effect that Fonda was the only white actor he admired.) Henry Fonda for President contrasts Fonda’s image with the rise of Ronald Reagan. Its montage brings together movie clips, footage shot in the U.S. by this film’s team, and audio excerpts from an exhaustive 1981 interview with Fonda.

The three-hour journey is an ambitious project that uses cinema...

Hisoka is probably one of the most disputed antagonists in Yoshihiro Togashi’s series, Hunter x Hunter. The character’s borderline perverseness is enough to tip off the fans. More often than not, the series leans toward disturbing and unsettling themes, including trauma and loss.

Its portrayal of human relationships and its complexities makes it a class apart from other series in the genre. However, it is this very aspect that threw a spanner in the works of its popularity.

Hisoka Morow in a still from the anime | Credit: Studio Madhouse

The series faced a major blow with its censorship in Australia. Following its ban, fans had an array of responses to the news. Not the gore or profanity but an iconic villain had to do with the series’ crackdown.

Interestingly, it also raises concerns regarding the representation of perverseness in the series. While the character is an iconic antagonist,...

Valorant‘s closed beta for consoles is all set to begin later this week but PlayStation players will have to play without one beloved feature: Gyro aiming. This feature allows players to aim in games by moving the controller, thanks to a special sensor called a gyroscope. PlayStation users have been using this feature in almost every shooting video game but will have to play Valorant without it.

Valorant (via Riot Games)

Riot Games took this decision to make the gaming experience fair for Xbox Series X/S players since this feature is not available on Xbox controllers. Gyro is the closest thing that console players can have to a mouse, allowing them to aim more precisely. Every other cross-platform video game that allows gyro aiming made the game unfair for Xbox players so Riot Games has finally eliminated that unfair advantage.

PlayStation 5 players will have to play Valorant without...

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival was officially closed yesterday, on May 25, 2024, as the prizes for the movies and the actors were awarded at the closing ceremony. It was a very exciting and content-filled event, and we have also reported on numerous movies that had their premiere at Cannes, some of which were received well, while others… not so much. But, naturally, everyone wants to know who won and who lost at Cannes, and that is what we are going to report about in this article.

The article will be divided into two main sections. The first one will list all the juries at Cannes, since they are the ones who chose the winners at the film festival, so we think that it is only fair that you know who picked the winners. After that, we are going to list all the winners in each of the categories.

As we have said,...

The hype out of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, for those far-flung and on the ground, tells one story: This was among the weaker lineups in recent memory.

Sure, huge stories broke out of the festival, from Francis Ford Coppola’s distribution push for his self-funded, decades-in-the-making passion project “Megalopolis” to Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof fleeing his home country after being sentenced to eight years in prison, finally making it to Cannes with his new film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” This journey inspired the jury to award him and his film a Special Prize (Prix Spécial).

Elsewhere in the official selection, Un Certain Regard already handed out its prizes on Friday from a jury led by Xavier Dolan and including Maïmouna Doucouré, Asmae El Moudir, Vicky Krieps, and Todd McCarthy. Among the top winners were Roberto Minervini (“The Damned”) and Rungano Nyoni (“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”) tying for Best Director,...

"Palm Royale," a new comedy series created by Kristen Wiig, is set to release in 2024 and could be a great replacement for "The White Lotus." Like "The White Lotus," "Palm Royale" features a star-studded cast and takes place in a glamorous setting full of wealthy characters. While "Palm Royale" is set in a different time period, it will also explore themes of wealth and class dynamics, making it an ideal show to watch while waiting for "The White Lotus" season 3.

Though audiences have a long wait ahead of them for The White Lotus season 3, there is a new television show created by Kristen Wiig coming in 2024 that could be the ideal replacement. In March 2024, Apple TV will be releasing a brand-new comedy series called Palm Royale, starring and created by comedian Kristen Wiig. The show is based on the novel "Mr. & Mrs. American Pie," and follows a woman living in...

Plot: An alcoholic and drug addict, Richard is taken into the wilderness to detox – but once they’re out in the woods, he and his group of friends are attacked by a madman.

Review: Hutch Dano is the grandson of legendary character actor Royal Dano and the son of actor Rick Dano, so it’s no surprise that he got into acting himself. He has racked up over twenty screen credits in the last thirteen years, including playing Zeke on 77 episodes of the Disney series Zeke and Luther – and now that he has made his feature directing debut, he has brought several of his former co-stars onto the project with him. Dano stars in his film As Certain as Death, which he also scripted, alongside his Zombeavers co-star Cortney Palm, who was also in Disappearance with him and Guy Wilson, his Den Brother co-star David Lambert, and his Zeke and Luther co-star Daniel Curtis Lee,...

Nine years ago, Cortney Palm and Hutch Dano starred in Zombeavers, a horror comedy that got a good amount of attention because – as the title gives away – it happened to be about zombie beavers. Now Palm and Dano have reunited for the horror film As Certain as Death, which will be receiving a VOD release in the United States on July 11th. The trailer for the film can be seen in the embed above.

The feature directorial debut of Dano, who also wrote the script, As Certain as Death has the following synopsis: Desperate to help her addict boyfriend Richard, Kayla enlists the help of her sister and friends to stage an intervention, but the first step is finding Richard. Kayla documents their search for Richard among the allies and homeless encampments of Los Angeles, finally succeeding in finding him high in an alley. With the additional help of two friends,...

Most shonen series feature some type of power system, but very few systems are as detailed and varied as Nen. Not everyone in Hunter x Hunter is capable of using Nen, and those that can are able to manipulate their own life energy. Nen users are capable of using parapsychological abilities, but Nen itself is considered dangerous, which is why the public doesn't know of its existence.

Related: Hunter x Hunter: 5 Characters Who Can Defeat Hisoka (& 5 Who Can't)

Whether they are a Manipulator, Enhancer, Transmuter, Conjurer, Emitter, or Specialist, each Nen user can develop a useful ability. Some of these abilities can be very helpful in battle, especially if the user has enhanced physical capabilities. It is true that many of the strongest Nen users are men, but there are plenty of powerful women who can use it as well.

Melody

Melody may not be the strongest HxH character,...

Click here to read the full article.

Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s Close, which explores the fragile world of childhood bonds in his second feature, has been chosen by Belgium as its contender for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

The drama, starring Eden Dambrine and Gustave De Waele, won the Grand Prix trophy at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was one of the highest profile films in competition. Close sees main characters Léo and Rémi as 13-year-old best friends with a seemingly unbreakable bond that suddenly and tragically breaks apart.

Close is the follow-up for Dhont to Girl, which won the Camera d’Or for best debut feature in Cannes in 2018. That film portrayed a young trans woman who wants to dance on pointe with the other girls. Girl won another three Cannes trophies that year — the Fipresci film critics honor, the Un Certain Regard best performance trophy for lead Victor Polster,...