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Warning! This article contains spoilers for Percy Jackson and the Olympians episode 7 and the original Percy Jackson book series.

Percy Jackson episode 7 teases the Curse of Achilles, a major storyline in the books in which people who bathe in the River Styx become immortal. The River Styx is mentioned as Percy, Annabeth, and Grover travel through the Underworld which plays a vital role in granting the Curse of Achilles. Changes from the book in the Percy Jackson TV show suggest the Curse of Achilles may be altered in the TV show, adding dramatic weight to Percy's story.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians episode 7 includes one seemingly inconsequential line that teases a major storyline in the future. After Percy Jackson episode 6's detour to Las Vegas, the trio of Percy, Annabeth, and Grover finally make their way into the Underworld. In the realm of Percy Jackson's Greek god Hades, the children...

Director Ridley Scott reveals the original plan for Gladiator 2, which involved resurrecting Maximus and sending him through different periods of history. The script written by Nick Cave had Maximus fighting his way out of Elysium and returning to Rome, where he discovers a new corrupt Emperor. The original plan also included a time-traveling plot, with Maximus fighting in the Crusades, World War II, Vietnam War, and working at the Pentagon in the present day.

Director Ridley Scott details the original wild plan for Gladiator 2 which would have seen Russell Crowe return as Maximus. A sequel to the Best Picture-winning from 2000, Gladiator 2 follows the Oscar-nominated Paul Mescal as an older Lucius and is set for a release on November 22, 2024. However, years prior, there was a previous version of the script written by Nick Cave which would have seen Maximus resurrected and allowed Crowe to return as the character.

India’s Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest film market, has selected a range of projects from around the world for its annual co-production market.

The 20 selected projects are from 11 countries, most are already structured as co-productions, and they are all South Asian-themed. From Israel, the Hebrew-language “Raju” by Dror Sabo (“Dead End”), will be produced by Lee Yardeni for My TV Productions (“Nevelot”). Rafael Kapelinski, director of Berlinale winner “Butterfly Kisses,” is at the market with English, German and Hindi-language Germany-India-France-Poland-u.K. co-production “The Distant Near,” produced by Katharina Suckale for Bombay Berlin Film Production (“Loev”).

Hindi-language Germany-Luxembourg-France co-production “Kohinoor,” by Udita Bhargava (Berlinale selection “Dust”), will be produced by Martin Lehwald for Schiwago Film (Berlinale winner “Styx”). Fresh off Busan’s Asian Project Market, feature debutant Aakash Chhabra’s Hindi-language “I’ll Smile in September” will be produced by Sanjay Gulati for India’s Crawling Angel Films and...

Nearly 125 years after her assassination, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria — or Sisi to her enduring cultists — continues to inspire a veritable industry of portraiture in Europe: In the last year alone, a novel, two TV series (one of them a glossy Netflix affair) and two feature films have been dedicated to the tightly corseted royal icon. Viewers outside the Continental sphere of Sisi-mania may only have registered one of those films, Marie Kreutzer’s chic, subversive anti-biopic “Corsage,” which might make the second, German director Frauke Finsterwalder’s lush, irreverent “Sisi & I,” seem to them a too-soon spare — coincidentally repeating several tricks from Kreutzer’s anachronistic playbook with its modern feminist inflections, contemporary soundtrack cues and sensational fashions, albeit with plenty of its own panache.

That unfortunate timing, combined with the absence of a Vicky Krieps-style crossover arthouse star, may cost “Sisi & I” some distributor interest outside...

Tommy James and the Shondells have been eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for over 30 years. And now an overwhelming number of the band’s fans have voted in our recent poll that they should finally be inducted in 2023. Gold Derby recently hosted a poll about which ignored group should be chosen for induction. With over 12,000 people worldwide voting, Tommy James had 64.05 of the votes with Foreigner in second place at 12.73 and The B-52’s with 4.79.

Other bands recently inducted have included Depeche Mode (2020), The Doobie Brothers (2020), Duran Duran (2022), Eurythmics (2022), Foo Fighters (2021), The Go-Go’s (2021), Nine Inch Nails (2020), and T-Rex (2021).

When Hof voters mark their final ballots, we hope they will also take into account our recent poll for female artists, which was won by Cher with strong support also for Cyndi Lauper and Mariah Carey. Our male artist poll was won by Phil Collins, with George Michael...

There’s one thing we’re still sure of: Robin Thicke’s odious “Blurred Lines” is high on the list of the worst songs ever made. And for that matter, Leah Kate’s nursery-rhyme-biting, Olivia Rodrigo-aping TikTok irritant “Twinkle Twinkle Little Bitch” is definitely this year’s contribution.

But in 2022, where all canons have been exploded and all taste strictures overturned, it’s hard for anyone to be as confident as, say, the defunct magazine Blender was when they created a much-discussed worst-songs list in 2004, topped by Starship’s “We Built This City.

There are lost-at-sea thrillers that make a virtue of the leanness of their narratives. J.C. Chandor’s “All Is Lost,” Wolfgang Fischer’s “Styx” and Chris Kentis’ legitimately traumatizing “Open Water” (not to mention Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” if we switch in space for ocean) all spun gripping tales of survival — or not — using minimal dialogue and very little character backstory. But the pitfalls of this less-is-more approach are laid bare in and stereotypes. In its familiarity, “Submersible” at least appropriately evokes such a sinking feeling.

We’re engulfed in the action immediately, when the film opens, as the rickety, makeshift sub codenamed “Guadalupe” is already mid-crisis. Its crew of three — secretive pseudo-captain Felix (Leynar Gómez), quiet, older engine maintenance guy Kleber (Carlos Valencia) and jittery, crazy-eyed wild card Aquiles (José Restrepo) — scrabble about the squalid, listing interior and decide in desperation to redistribute the weight on board by shifting their precious cargo around.

Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 11am — 12pm Pdt, 2pm — 3pm Edt, 8pm — 9pm Cet. Watch ‘Styx’ by Wolfgang Fischer and join us for a discussion!

Continue reading on SydneysBuzz The Blog »...

There are a lot of things that come together to make a series a hit with fans and critics. A compelling story, impressive visuals, and memorable characters are all essential to the mix. The latest animated series from Netflix, Blood of Zeus, is already a fan favorite because it balances all three. That doesn't mean it's perfect, however, and one factor is that there might be too many stories and not enough interesting characters to make the fans care.

Related: 10 Animated TV Shows That Were Canceled For Strange Reasons

There are some great heroes, villains, and everything in between in this series, but there are also some that aren't so great. This isn't about villains, either, the type of characters that the audience loves to hate. This is about characters that are boring, flat, annoying, and seem to be going nowhere. If Blood of Zeus gets a second season, and right now that looks likely,...

"An artist draws. And I... drink." Uncork'd Ent. has released an official Us trailer for an indie drama from The Netherlands titled Bloody Marie, which is one of the films that was considered for submission to the Oscars this year. This premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival earlier this year, and is already available on VOD now. Award-winning German actress Susanne Wolff (also seen in Styx) stars as Marie Wankelmut, a once successful comic artist, who lives among the prostitutes in Amsterdam's Red Light District. Nowadays drunken and bold, she gets into one big conflict after another. A gruesome sobering event at her neighbors forces her to take action. Co-starring Dragos Bucur, Alexia Lestiboudois, Teun Luijkx, Jan Bijvoet, and Therese Affolter. Looks like this gets extra wild in the second half, turning into a crazy crime thriller. Here's the Us trailer (+ Dutch poster) for Lennert Hillege & Guido van Driel's Bloody Marie,...

When bookwriter Chris D'Arienzo's 1980s hair-band tuner Rock of Ages moved from Off-Broadway's New World Stages to the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in April of 2009 - with a score made up of rock classics by Journey, Styx, Asia, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, Foreigner and a bunch of others - it was, to this reviewer's recollection, the first Broadway jukebox musical to acknowledge the silliness of jamming hit songs into an unrelated story.

‘Lara’ is simultaneously premiering at the Munich and Karlovy Vary film festivals.

German director Jan-Ole Gerster’s debut film Oh Boy (which was released as A Coffee In Berlin in the Us ) was a surprise critical and audience hit in 2012. The absurdist comedy following an aimless man wandering the streets of Berlin was his thesis film at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (Dffb). It certainly marked out Gerster as a director to watch, premiering at Karlovy Vary and winning him the best debut film prize at the European Film Awards.

Seven years later and Gerster is back with his much-anticipated second feature Lara.

In the latest installment of his ongoing interview series, host Stuart Wright talks with 606 Distribution co-founder Pat Kelman about his 5 Great British Horror Films, which include:

Eve Vault of Horror (1973) Frankenstein & the Monster From Hell (1974) The Omen (1976) The House that Bled to Death

606 Distribution acquired two new films at Cannes 2019. Silver Bear-winner System Crasher (Systemsprenger), and French music drama Le CHoc Du Futur (UK Title Tbc)

System Crasher joins 606’s roster of striking female-centred films, with a Triple-f rating of writer and director (Nora Fingscheidt), and an electrifying performance by 11 year old Helena Zengel. Le Choc Du Futur is directed by French music veteran Marc Collin of the band Nouvelle Vague, and describes itself as “an ode to the women in France in the 1980s who helped develop electronic music.” It stars Alma Jodorovsky and Clara Luciani.

Dubai-based Cercamon handles worldwide sales on Bronx-set tale.

Film Movement has acquired North American rights to Goldie, Sam de Jong’s coming-of-age story that premiered in Generation 14 Plus in Berlin and is being sold in Cannes by Dubai-based Cercamon.

‘Instagirl’ supermodel Slick Woods makes her acting debut as the titular character in the Bronx-set tale about a streetwise teen who discovers her true strength when her dream of becoming a dancer collides with harsh reality.

The drama, Dutch filmmaker de Jong’s follow-up to his 2015 feature debut Prince, screened at Tribeca Film Festival last month and hails from Twentieth Century Fox and Vice Films.

Andreas Dresen’s biopic wins six prizes from 10 nominations.

Andreas Dresen’s biopic Gundermann was the big winner at this year’s German Film Awards, taking home six Lolas at the weekend’s gala in Berlin after receiving a record 10 nominations.

The production by Pandora Film Produktion and Kineo Filmproduktion received the evening’s top award, the Lola in Gold for best feature film, as well as the Lolas for best director (Dresen), screenplay (Laila Stieler), lead actor (Alexander Scheer), production design (Susanne Hopf) and costume design (Sabine Greunig).

Accepting his Lola for best director - his third win in...

‘Avengers’ will be a boost to UK cinemas after a dreadful previous weekend.

After a dreadful weekend at the UK box office last time out, with no films topping £1m across Friday-Sunday, this week sees the welcome arrival of Disney’s latest superhero blockbuster Avengers: Endgame.

The film is the final entry in the current cycle of Marvel comic book adaptations and has been hotly anticipated since the previous film, Avengers: Infinity War, was released in April last year.

That movie started with a mammoth £23.1m opening Fri-Sun, and took £29.4m including previews on the Thursday. It went on to...

The recipients were the producers of films nominated for best film, best doc and best children’s film.

More than €2m ($3.2m) in nomination premiums has been awarded to the producers of the films nominated for best film, best documentary and best children’s film at the 2019 German Film Awards, aka the Lolas, in Berlin today (March 20).

The best film nominees are Andreas Dresen’s Gunderman, Markus Goller’s 25 km/h, Caroline Link’s The Boy Needs Fresh Air, Aron Lehmann’s The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx and Christian Petzold’s Transit. Each of...

A blunt, breathless, and astoundingly unsentimental morality play that’s told with the intensity of a ticking-clock thriller, Wolfgang Fischer’s “Styx” is every bit as ominous as its title suggests, and far less fanciful. A German emergency doctor named Rieke (Susanne Wolff) takes a well-deserved vacation from her long nights of saving lives, and flies to the sunny rocks of Gibraltar in order to fulfill one of her forever dreams. Completely by herself on an 11-meter yacht without any connection to the outside world except for the boat’s radio, she’s sailing to Ascension Island, a volcanic speck located halfway between West Africa and Brazil. Rieke longs to see the jungle that Charles Darwin once designed for the island: “Wild, untouched nature that was actually planned.” And she longs to do it alone. For a man, that might seem like a bit of bravado; for a woman, it...

Typically, movies involving one person in the ocean are never happy stories. You either get stranded at sea (“All Is Lost”), attacked by sharks (“The Shallows”), or trapped on a raft Sam Claflin (“Adrift”). Admittedly, all three of the aforementioned scenarios might all be blessings depending on who you are. Feel-good films featuring a prominent role for the ocean simply do not exist, and “Styx” does very little to alter this cinematic pattern.

Continue reading ‘Styx’: Susanne Wolff and Existential Terror Keep This High Seas Drama Afloat [Review] at The Playlist.

Distributor plans a 2019 theatrical, digital, home entertainment and Svod release.

Film Movement Classics has acquired Us and English-speaking Canadian rights to Fritz Lang Indian Epic, the two-part cliffhanger comprising The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb.

The distributor plans a 2019 release as a theatrical double feature followed by digital and home entertainment release, and a launch on FilmMovement’s Svod platform, Film Movement Plus.

After more than two decades of exile in Hollywood, Lang triumphantly returned to his native Germany to direct the two-part cliffhanger in 1959 from a story he co-authored nearly 40 years earlier.

Film Movement president Michael Rosenberg,...

Film Movement has debuted an official Us trailer for a dramatic thriller titled Styx, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last year to quite a bit of worthy acclaim. This mostly-silent film is about a woman who decides to embark on a solo sailing journey from Europe to to Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Not only does she encounter a violent storm that nearly kills her, she encounters something else that changes her forever. Susanne Wolff stars in this, giving an incredible performance that carries the entire film. I saw this in Berlin last year and I loved it, writing a glowing review saying: "the film shows just how powerful silent storytelling can be, all we need is to watch what's happening and look closely at the details, and it will all make sense." This film is a hard sell, so the trailer not only shows the big...

Benedikt Erlingsson’s film is Iceland’s foreign-language Oscar entry.

Benedikt Erlingsson’s eco-terrorist comedy-drama Woman At War has won the Lux prize, awarded by the European Parliament in Strasbourg today (Wednesday November 14).

Launched in 2007, the prize intends to shine ‘a spotlight on films that go to the heart of European public debate’, according to the European Parliament.

Woman At War was chosen ahead of Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx, which came second, with Mila Turajlic’s The Other Side Of Everything in third.

Director and co-writer Erlingsson was present in Strasbourg to collect the award, and commented, “I feel like a politician,...

The Peterloo Massacre of 1819, in which British magistrates sent cavalry with drawn swords into a political gathering of Manchester civilians, is an event not likely to be recollected in tranquility; and Mike Leigh’s Peterloo (2018) goes full agit-prop, with apoplectic hanging judges, heartless aristocrats, mercenaries advocating “violence, hatred, destruction,” and local governors declaring “We must be brutal!” On top of the mustache-twirling, Leigh coarsens his storytelling to remove ambiguity: character is conveyed via TV-style shorthand; sympathetic characters foreshadow the coming catastrophe; the historical context is signposted in the dialogue. And yet the film is still deeply impressive, with more evidence of Leigh’s greatness than any of his films since Vera Drake (2004). Despite his reputation for kitchen-sink naturalism, Leigh has always favored exaggerated acting that isolates and intensifies character traits, and this stylization, coupled with his intelligence about social behavior, blows away the obstacles of historical adaptation as if they didn’t exist.

A strong showcase of German cinema was on offer at the Toronto Film Festival with a slew of films tackling such timely issues as sexual violence, the plight of refugees, the end of the Soviet Union and Germany’s recent turbulent history.

This year’s selections included works from such prominent names as Werner Herzog, Margarethe von Trotta, Christian Petzold, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Sven Taddicken.

In Herzog and André Singer’s doc “Meeting Gorbachev,” the prolific filmmakers offer a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and his lasting impact on world politics.

In “Searching for Ingmar Bergman,” which also unspools in the Tiff Docs sidebar, von Trotta explores the Swedish director’s cinematic legacy.

Von Donnersmarck, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for 2006’s “The Lives of Others,” revisits East Germany in “Never Look Away,” which follows the life of an artist struggling...

Alan Alda will be awarded the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Dick Cavett Artistic Champion Award.

The festival established the award in 2017, honoring Cavett himself. The Hiff, now in its 26th year, opens Oct. 4 with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Kindergarten Teacher” and closes Oct. 8.

“Alan Alda is one of those now rare actors who in his career continues to distinguish himself on Broadway, in films and on television,” said Hiff co-chairman Alec Baldwin. “Of course, most people remember Alda for his starring role in the seminal TV series ‘M*A*S*H,’ but Alda is also great in the movies and on stage.”

Alda has won seven Emmys and wrote many of the episodes on “M*A*S*H.” He appeared in continuing roles on “ER,” “The West Wing,” “30 Rock,” “The Blacklist,” “The Big C,” “Horace and Pete,” and “The Good Fight.” He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role...

Thriller won awards after world premiere in Berlin.

Film Movement has acquired all North American rights from Beta Cinema to Wolfgang Fischer’s thriller Styx ahead of its Contemporary World Cinema slot in Toronto next month.

Styx premiered at the Berlinale and will receive its North American premiere in Canada before opening at New York’s Film Forum in February 2019.

Susanne Wolf stars as a German emergency room physician who embarks on a solo voyage across the Atlantic and must take matters into her own hands when she encounters a damaged boat containing dozens of refugees.

The film won the Heiner Carow Prize,...

Ariana Grande and James Corden just took on a Titanic-sized task, performing a new 13-song soundtrack for the movie “Titanic” in one take.

The duo had to navigate nine sets to pull it off — it was all quite impressive. The whole thing ended with Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” the breakout original song from the 1997 movie.

Along the way, Grande and “The Late Late Show” host also performed songs from Hall & Oates, Foo Fighters, Lady Gaga, One Direction, Vanilla Ice, and Rick Astley, among other (mostly) modern pop hits.

Also Read: Tom Cruise Forces James Corden to Go Skydiving (Video)

Here is the full track list from Monday’s performance:

1. Come Sail Away – Styx

2. Rich Girl – Hall & Oates

3. The Way I Are – Timbaland

4. Learn To Fly – Foo Fighters

5. Just Dance – Lady Gaga

6. Steal My Girl – One Direction

7. Shape of You – Ed Sheeran

8. Ride Wit Me – Nelly

9. Ice...

Ariana Grande worked overtime Monday during her appearance on CBS’ “The Late Late Show,” performing an elaborate “Titanic”-themed musical number with host James Corden.

The duo ran through a medley of 13 pop songs across nine different sets in a segment billed as a reenactment of the Jack and Rose love story from the Oscar-winning 1997 blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

The medley started with Styx’s “Come Sail Away” and ended, of course, with Celine Dion’s power ballad from the movie, “My Heart Will Go On.” CBS noted that the segment was shot in one take.

Grande will be back on “Late Late Show” on Wednesday to appear for the second time in the show’s popular “Carpool Karaoke” segment. Grande injured her hand while taping the “Karaoke” segment last week. Her latest album, “Sweetener,” is set for release on Friday.

Grande previously limned a “Karaoke” segment...

We’ve got questions, and you’ve (maybe) got answers! With another week of TV gone by, we’re lobbing queries left and right about shows including Claws, The Bachelorette, Younger and Quantico!

1 | Which Quantico scene made you chuckle harder: the special-effects-enhanced skydiving or Mike McQuigg’s amused look as the team wheeled him around in the hospital?

2 | Did it sting (a lot) that Killjoys dubbed the Hullen grunts “dolls”… just minutes after Wynonna Earp had tragically killed off Dolls?

3 | How did UnREAL‘s Chet wind up becoming the most reasonable, likable character on the show?!

4 | Did Michelle Wolf really...

I love a good survival film. I don't really know what it is about them, even though they're all quite similar, I still enjoy every last one - The Grey, All is Lost, Gravity, Styx, Buried, The Martian, Life of Pi, 127 Hours, The Revenant, Tracks, Cast Away, The Way Back, Kon-Tiki. The latest survival thriller offering which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival is a film titled Arctic, about a man trying to survive all by himself in the freezing, cold, snowy arctic. Produced in Iceland and filmed in Iceland, the film is the feature directorial debut of Brazilian filmmaker Joe Penna, and features some very real survival tactics. It also has all of the usual survival film tropes: just when you think everything is fine, something else goes wrong. There's always some animal that makes things worse. Rescuers never see them when nearby. Despite these familiar survival aspects,...

Lille, France — The Torino Film Lab and Series Mania have announced this year’s nine participating projects in the SeriesLab forum. SeriesLab is a joint venture intended to address one of the most significant challenges facing the European fiction TV industry: Developing screenwriting talent.

The event is held as a forum to mentor creative talent by gathering writers, creators and showrunners from nine series in early-stage development. The projects participate in a five-month course with three residential workshops and two online sessions, all culminating in a final presentation at the Series Mania Co-Production Forum on May 3.

SeriesLab project manager Angelica Cantisani credits the success of last year’s inaugural forum with producing an even stronger crop of projects this year. “We had the advantage of a really successful first edition that spread the word,” she says.

The nine participants that will be taking the stage in Lille are a testament to the forum’s diversity,...

Further deals inked on The Happy Prince and Styx.

German sales outfit Beta Cinema is reporting strong business across its 2018 European Film Market (Efm) slate.

The company has closed a series of deals on three of its titles that premiered in the Berlin Film Festival’s competition programme this year.

Thomas Stuber’s In The Aisles has gone to France (Kmbo), Spain (Surtsey), Benelux (Cherry Pickers), Japan (Aya Pro), China (Lemon Tree), Taiwan (Flash Forward), Baltics (A-One), Greece (Strada), Turkey (Filmarti), Poland (Aurora), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Film Europe) and the former Yugoslavia (Discovery Croatia). Read Screen’s review here.

With the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival wrapped, we’ve highlighted our favorite films from the festival. Make sure to stay tuned in the coming months as we learn about distribution news for the titles. Check out our favorites below.

An Elephant Sitting Still (Bo Hu)

The trick to getting the most out of the Berlin Film Festival is to dig deep into its stupendous program spanning 400 films across a multitude of sidebars. Premiering in the Forum section which traditionally favors more experimental/radical forms of filmmaking, Chinese writer/director Bo Hu’s feature debut An Elephant Sitting Still is the work of raw, intimidating talent driven by a creative fury that would likely daunt most competition titles. Unmissable for anyone craving the gritty realism and independent spirit of pre-00’s Chinese cinema. Fair warning: this is decidedly not the feel-good movie of the year. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)

Grass (Hong...

Sometimes you don't need to actually say anything to tell a powerful story. Styx is a remarkable film that uses minimal dialogue to tell a very powerful story. We've seen these kind of films before, but they're still effective, and if the filmmaking is up to par, they can leave a lasting impression. Styx is a drama directed by German filmmaker Wolfgang Fischer that's about a woman who embarks upon a solo sailing voyage from Gibraltar to an island in the middle of the South Atlantic. She's interrupted when she encounters a boat full of refugees. To be curt, Styx is essentially a mix of All is Lost (the Robert Redford silent sailing film) meets Fuocoammare (the Berlinale Golden Bear-winning documentary film about rescuing refugees from boats). Wolfgang Fischer's film Styx opens with a very clean, wide shot of a car crash, following the victim as he is taken to a hospital.

Tell the truth: did anybody think Green Day would still be around in 2004? Ten years ago, when they blew up into the hot summer band of 1994, they were snotty little Berkeley, California, punk kids who sounded ready to pogo off the face of the earth in three-chord tantrums such as “Basket Case.” Between Billie Joe Armstrong’s adenoidal snarl and Tre Cool’s maniac drums, Green Day seemed like a Saturday-morning-cartoon version of The Young Ones, three cheeky monkeys who came to raid the bar and disappear. But here they...