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Angelina Jolie has staked her claim to be part of the Best Actress Oscar conversation here at the Venice Film Festival following her well-received performance in Maria.

Pablo Larraín’s biopic follows the life story of the world’s greatest opera singer, Maria Callas, during her final days in 1970s Paris.

Jolie in a press conference today said she spent seven months preparing for the role: “Everybody here knows, I was terribly nervous,” she said of learning to sing opera. “I spent almost seven months training because when you work with Pablo you can’t do anything by half. He demands, in the most wonderful way, that you really do the work and you really learn and train.”

Critics have perhaps been more enthusiastic about Jolie’s performance than the film itself, which could prove challenging for the actress’s Academy prospects, but Netflix picked the film up this week...

David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and the reviews have begun to emerge. The film follows a businessman and grieving widower who invents a controversial technology known as Gravetech that allows families to see inside the graves of their loved ones as they decompose. Although known as the master of body horror, fans shouldn’t expect too much of that as Cronenberg’s latest is a much more personal film. The Shrouds is at least partly inspired by the death of his wife, Carolyn Cronenberg, in 2017.

THR‘s Leslie Felperin said, “This fetid stew of sex, death and tech may be an aphrodisiac for hardcore Cronenberg fans, but more casual viewers are likely to find it all rather slapdash and undercooked here. Cinematographer Douglas Koch’s lighting looks drabber than usual, and many of the scenes feel like the first or second take after a long day’s filming,...

The Match Factory has locked multi-territory deals on Berlinale titles Architecton by Victor Kossakovsky and Dying by Matthias Glasner, which picked up the festival’s Silver Bear for Best Screenplay.

Alongside the Silver Bear, Dying also picked up the Guild of German Arthouse Cinemas Prize and the Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Jury Award. The pic has sold to France (Bodega Film), Italy (Satine Film), Benelux (September Film Distribution), Norway (Selmer Media As), Poland (Aurora), Cis (Provzglyad), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF MegaCom Film), Hungary (Cirko Films), Greece (Cinobo), Romania (Freealize), Taiwan (Andrews Film), and South Korea (Pancinema). Match Factory has said negotiations for additional territories are underway, with a UK deal already confirmed. Deadline’s Stephanie Bunbury described the film as a “deep and darkly funny family drama.” The film stars Lars Eidinger, Lilith Stangenberg, and Corinna Harfouch.

Elsewhere, Kossakovsky’s Architecton has sold to me Spain (Caramel Films), Italy (Be Water), Benelux (Cherry Pickers Filmdistributie...

Pitch aired for one season on Fox during the 2016-2017 television season, and the decision to cancel the baseball drama greatly impacted one of its stars.

Starring Kylie Bunbury, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Ali Larter, Mark Consuelos, Dan Lauria, Mo McRae, Meagan Holder, and Tim Jo, the drama revolves around the first female player to join Major League baseball. In the story, Ginny Baker (Bunbury) joins the San Diego Padres, with Gosselaar playing her catcher.

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Exclusive: Joel McHale and Beck Bennett are starring in a new TV movie that is set to debut on Comedy Central.

The pair are fronting Office Race, which also stars Kelsey Grammer, Alyson Hannigan and J.B. Smoove.

Office Race centers around an unambitious office worker (Bennett) who goes to great lengths—specifically 26.2 miles—to one up his exercise-obsessed, micromanaging boss (McHale).

The film, which debuts on September 4 at 8pm, is directed by newcomer Jared Lapidus, who wrote it with Impractical Jokers writer James Kilmoon. It marks their feature film debut.

Kylie Bunbury (Big Sky), Erinn Hayes (A Christmas Story Christmas), Geoffrey Arend (500 Days of Summer), Katlyn Carlson (iCarly), Matt Richards (That Damn Michael Che) and Karolena Theresa (You Hurt My Feelings) also star.

SNL star Bennett will play Pat, a passionless pushover who coasts aimlessly through life until he’s goaded into running a marathon and soon discovers his love for the sport.

“I didn’t make a film against the pope or to condemn the Pope,” Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio said of his Cannes competition title Kidnapped at the official festival presser this morning.

The pic, directed and co-written by Bellocchio, follows the story of 6-year-old Edgardo Mortara, who was stolen from his Jewish family to be raised in a Catholic seminary on the spurious grounds that a maid had secretly baptized him in the cradle.

Edgardo’s parents, distraught, will do anything to get their son back. Supported by public opinion and the international Jewish community, the Mortaras’ struggle quickly take a political dimension. But the Church and the Pope will not agree to return the child, to consolidate an increasingly wavering power.

“In this story, the pope is the bad guy, but that isn’t what I wanted to show. I wanted to save him,” Bellocchio said.

Later during the presser,...

The initial reactions to “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” out of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival have made landfall, and critics are calling the movie a fitting end to the beloved franchise – or at least Harrison Ford’s part in it.

“Indy 5’s” official synopsis reads:

Daredevil archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary dial that can change the course of history. Accompanied by his goddaughter, he soon finds himself squaring off against Jürgen Voller, a former Nazi who works for NASA.

On his fifth outing as “one of cinema’s greatest heroes” – and the first not directed by Steven Spielberg – Ford is joined by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”), Mads Mikkelsen (“Another Round”), Boyd Holbrook (“Narcos”), Shaunette Renée Wilson (“Billions”), Toby Jones (“In Cold Blood”), Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”) and newcomer Ethann Isidore. Mottram calls Mikkelsen’s Wernher von Braun-inspired Nazi rocket scientist the best...

In the past, Big Sky hasn't been a stellar performer in the traditional ratings for ABC, but episodes often more than double their viewership once the live+7 day viewers are factored in. Will this season become a hit in the live ratings? Will Big Sky be cancelled or renewed for season four? Stay tuned. *Status Update Below.

A crime thriller series, the Big Sky TV series stars Katheryn Winnick, Kylie Bunbury, Dedee Pfeiffer, Jensen Ackles, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Reba McEntire, and J. Anthony Pena. Angelique Cabral, Rex Linn, Rosanna Arquette, Michael Malarkey, Luke Mitchell, Seth Gabel, Henry Ian Cusick, Anirudh Pisharody, and Madalyn Horcher appear in recurring roles. In the third season, private detective Cassie Dewell (Bunbury), undersheriff Jenny Hoyt (Winnick), and newly appointed sheriff Beau Arlen (Ackles) maintain order in Helena, Montana, with their investigative skills. But when a local backcountry trip led by charismatic outfitter Sunny...

It's case closed on Big Sky. ABC has officially cancelled the series, eliminating chances for a fourth season.

A crime thriller series, the Big Sky TV series stars Katheryn Winnick, Kylie Bunbury, Dedee Pfeiffer, Jensen Ackles, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Reba McEntire, and J. Anthony Pena. Angelique Cabral, Rex Linn, Rosanna Arquette, Michael Malarkey, Luke Mitchell, Seth Gabel, Henry Ian Cusick, Anirudh Pisharody, and Madalyn Horcher appear in recurring roles. In the third season, private detective Cassie Dewell (Bunbury), undersheriff Jenny Hoyt (Winnick), and newly appointed sheriff Beau Arlen (Ackles) maintain order in Helena, Montana, with their investigative skills. The trio faces a formidable mystery when a local backcountry trip led by charismatic outfitter Sunny Barnes (McEntire) goes awry. No camper can be trusted and danger lurks around every jagged rock and gnarled tree. Read More…...

There will be no fourth season for Big Sky at ABC as the network has opted not to renew David E. Kelley’s drama series. It is unclear yet whether co-studio A+E Studios would seek a new home for the show starring Katheryn Winnick and Kylie Bunbury.

Big Sky, which had a straight-to-series order, was a breakout when it premiered in November 2020. It was one of the strongest broadcast series to launch during the pandemic-hit 2020-21 season and set a mini trend for a big-name actor (in this case Ryan Philippe) to be announced as a star of a series and be used heavily in the marketing campaign only to have their character shockingly die in the first episode.

Ratings for the heavily serialized Big Sky have significantly slipped since the high flying first season, with the drama among the lowest rated scripted series on ABC this season when the show aired 13 episodes vs.