News

Italian sales agent strikes key sale for Israeli feature at Cannes.

Menemsha Films has acquired North American rights to Noam Kaplan’s The Future, which was selectively screened to market participants at Cannes by Rome-based Intramovies ahead of its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in June.

The second feature from Israeli director Kaplan is produced by Yoav Roeh and Aurit Zamir for Gum Films and centres on a world-renowned profiler investigating a young Palestinian woman accused of having assassinated an Israeli minister.

The film stars Reymonde Amsellem, known for HaBayit Berechov Fin (2021), Lebanon: The Soldier’s Journey (2009) and Rendition...

The head-to-heads concluded on “Alter Ego” on Wednesday with the last four contestants singing their hearts out as digital avatars. Judges will.i.am, Alanis Morissette, Grimes and Nick Lachey decide which two move forward in the competition and which two are forced to reveal their true identities.

Rocsi Diaz hosts the groundbreaking singing competition. Night 1 of the head-to-heads concluded with Safara defeating Nevaeh King and Dipper Scott taking out Phoenix Embers. On Night 2 Seven reigned supreme over Siren while Queen Dynamite got the better of Aster. On Night 3, Wolfgang Champagne bested The Loverboy and Misty Rose triumphed over Fern.

Below, read our minute-by-minute “Alter Ego” recap of Season 1, Episode 8 to find out what happened on November 10 at 9:00 p.m. Et/Pt. Then be sure to sound off in the comments section about your favorite artists on Fox’s new reality TV show, whether or not you agree with...

Social Impact

Viacom International Studios has launched Vis Social Impact, a new studio division dedicated to developing social impact-driven content focused on topical issues such as climate, equality and health. The division is part of Vis’s larger Content for Change initiative, which was established to counteract racism, bias, stereotypes and hate throughout the company’s culture, creative supply chain and its finished productions.

Georgia Arnold, Vis senior VP of social responsibility will head the new division, reporting directly to Jc Acosta, president of Vis and networks Americas. Arnold brings with her a wealth of experience in large-scale behavior changing and was the co-founder and director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, which was established to protect young people worldwide against HIV and improve sexual and reproductive health.

The division’s first Social Impact Commission is “Protest & Progress” from photographer and social activist Misan Harriman. A three-part docuseries, the show...

Set in the foreboding sugar cane fields of KwaZulu-Natal, Fremantle-M-Net crime thriller “Reyka” – starring South African born Kim Engelbrecht, whose credits include “Isidingo,” “Dominion” and “The Flash,” and Iain Glen, Ser Jorah Mormont in “Games of Thrones” – looks set to mark another milestone in both Fremantle and premium South Africa TV production.

For Fremantle, a still expanding scripted drama force, “Reyka” is its first South African show, after it launched last year its first shows from Israel’s Maria Feldman and Chile’s Fabula.

For M-Net, following on “Trackers,” co-produced with HBO and Zdf, “Reyka” marks an early push into large-scale premium international co-production pairing local and international talent as M-Net parent Multichoice, led by Yolisa Phahle, sees some significant success in facing off with Netflix.

Chosen by Variety as one of the 10 buzziest shows hitting MipTV, typically for a Fremantle drama, “Reyka” tackles big ideas from a...

The “American Idol” finale on Sunday will open with the Top 7 reduced to the five finalists. We are predicting that Julia Gargano and Louis Knight will be eliminated. But which of the Top 5 — Arthur Gunn, Dillon James, Just Sam, Francisco Martin and Jonny West. — will win?

We’ve been surveying viewers all season long. In our exclusive “American Idol” winner predictions, Arthur Gunn remains out in front to take the title on May 17. But Just Sam is catching up in the final hours leading up to the live show. And Francisco Martin is making a late break for the finish line as well. But don’t count out the other Top 5 finalists in our “American Idol” season 18 rankings: Dillon James and Jonny West. Remember, Laine Hardy pulled off an upset over frontrunner Alejandro Aranda last year.

Who do you want to win season 18 of “American Idol”? Review their performances to...

Arthur Gunn‘s life was changed forever when his “American Idol” audition of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival went viral. The 22-year old musician from Wichita, Kansas was born half a world away in Nepal, Kathmandu, but now he is one of seven artists in the running to become the Season 18 winner.

Gunn soared when he reached the Top 20, singing “Lovin’ Machine” and earned a spot in the Top 11. In the “Homeward Bound” episode he took on a John Denver classic with “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and once again felt the love from viewers who voted him into the Top 7. For his “Disney/Mother’s Day” double, Gunn performed “Kiss the Girl” and “Hey, Ma” in hopes of being voted into the finale.

See Attention, West Coast ‘American Idol’ viewers: Here’s how You can vote for Sunday’s winner in real time

“Music...

Former Black Crowes drummer and current Trigger Hippy member Steve Gorman appears as the latest guest on Chris Shiflett’s Walking the Floor podcast, recorded, as all of the recent episodes have been, during quarantine. Gorman talks at length about his tenure with the Black Crowes, as well as the process for writing his honest depiction of that period in his book, Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes, along with his life after that gig.

“Anybody who has played in the band whose last name...

Arthur Gunn‘s life was changed forever when his “American Idol” audition of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival went viral. The 22-year old musician from Wichita, Kansas was born half a world away in Nepal, Kathmandu, but now he is one of 20 Season 18 finalists featured on the “American Idol” special, “This is Me” which aired on April 12 and April 19 on ABC.

Besides being about music, “American Idol” is about people, their stories and their dreams. Host Ryan Seacrest narrates this deep dive into the contestants where we hear more personal stories, see highlights from their audition process and learn what it took for them to convince judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan to select them as finalists.

“Music has always been my thing since I was young,” Gunn recalls. “I got my first guitar from my mom and then I started singing along...

My, Hollywood Week, how you’ve changed. Monday’s American Idol brought us to Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre, where 167 lucky contestants — a handful of whom I actually recognized — returned for another chance to impress the judges.

As Katy Perry explained atop the endless two-hour event, “Hollywood this year is… different.” More specifically, the contestants are now being asked to select a genre — pop, rock, R&b, soul, country and singer/songwriter — in which they would like to compete. Additionally, the judges are hearing all 167 contestants sing solo to get a better sense of who they are as individuals.

More from...

Chris and Rich Robinson — as the acoustic duo Brothers of a Feather — delivered a three-song set of Black Crowes classics during the brothers’ performance at this year’s Love Rocks NYC benefit.

Ahead of the band’s Shake Your Money Maker 30th anniversary reunion tour, the Robinson brothers performed the Black Crowes hits “Jealous Again,” “She Talks to Angels” and “Hard to Handle.”

The concert which took place Thursday hours after New York State instituted a ban on mass gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic; the Beacon Theatre audience subsisted...

Zamir, who is a producer and graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film School, replaces Renen Schorr.

Producer Aurit Zamir has been named as the new director of the Jerusalem-based Sam Spiegel International Film Lab (Jsfl), replacing Renen Schorr who created the lab in 2011 under the auspices of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School (Jsfs) which he also spearheaded.

Zamir is a graduate of the school and has been head of the entrepreneurial producing programme since 2018. She is also the co-founder of Tel Aviv-based Gum Films alongside Yoav Roeh, which she launched shortly after she graduated in 2008.

Its credits include Amichai Greenberg’s The Testament,...

“Expect the unexpected, because it’s going to get weird,” house-band bassist Austin Scaggs warned the crowd at start of the eighth annual Wammy party on Saturday night in Los Angeles. Scaggs was right in more ways than one; about an hour later, in a sort of Hollywood fever dream, Weird Al Yankovic took the stage and broke from his usual staple of parodies to sing surprisingly tight versions of Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and the Beatles’ “Savoy Truffle.”

Performances like these are the norm at The Wammys, the pre-Grammy party hosted by BMG,...

By John M. Whalen

“A Bullet for Joey” (1955) with Edward G. Robinson, George Raft and Audrey Totter is one of those “Red scare” movies from the mid-fifties that combines elements of a crime plot with espionage and the evils of communism. It was the Cold War era and people were digging bomb shelters and practicing “duck and cover” air raid drills, while at the same time, congressional committees hauled in suspected Communist Party members, including actors, writers and directors, to testify and name names. Hollywood did its part, in turn, by black listing suspected commies and turning out anti-communism films like John Wayne’s “Big Jim McClain” “The Woman on Pier 13 (“I Married a Communist”), and “I Was a Communist for the FBI.” “A Bullet for Joey”, despite having two of Hollywood’s toughest tough guy actors in the cast, is one of the weaker examples of this sub-genre.

Two FriendsThough known primarily as an actor, Louis Garrel has been conducting appreciable efforts behind the camera as well. After directing three short films, including a César-nominated Petit tailleur, and most recently La règle de trois, Louis Garrel expands upon his fascination of threes with his first feature length film, Two Friends (Les deux amis), in which he also stars. Based loosely on the French play The Moods of Marianne, Garrel's film finds professional movie extra Vincent (Vincent Macaigne) in frenzied love with Mona (Goldshifteh Farahani), who cannot and will not give in to his romantic advances due in part to her restrictive situation, which she keeps secret. She works behind a pastry counter by day, but every evening must return to prison for curfew, not unlike an incarcerated Cinderella. Vincent enlists his best friend, the caddish Abel (Louis Garrel), to help win her over or at least understand her cooling passion.

Marlene Dietrich on TCM Pt.2: A Foreign Affair, The Blue Angel Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Monte Carlo Story (1957) Two compulsive gamblers fall in love on the French Riviera. Dir: Samuel A. Taylor. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Vittorio De Sica, Arthur O'Connell. C-101 mins, Letterbox Format. 7:45 Am Knight Without Armour (1937) A British spy tries to get a countess out of the new Soviet Union. Dir: Jacques Feyder. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Robert Donat, Irene Van Brugh. Bw-107 mins. 9:45 Am The Lady Is Willing (1942) A Broadway star has to find a husband so she can adopt an abandoned child. Dir: Mitchell Leisen. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Fred MacMurray, Aline MacMahon. Bw-91 mins. 11:30 Am Kismet (1944) In the classic Arabian Nights tale king of the beggars enters high society to help his daughter marry a handsome prince. Dir: William Dieterle. Cast: Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, James Craig.

Marlene Dietrich on TCM: Shanghai Express, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil Is A Woman Raoul Walsh's unpretentious Manpower (1941) is a surprisingly entertaining drama about a love triangle featuring good-time gal Marlene Dietrich and unlikely partners Edward G. Robinson and George Raft. As an ex-Nazi chanteuse/black marketer (photo), Dietrich nearly steals the show in Billy Wilder's post-war Berlin-set A Foreign Affair (1948); I say nearly because Jean Arthur is Dietrich's equal as the goody-goody American congresswoman who learns that goody-goodiness may take you far at work (at least in the movies) but not in life. In the hands of someone like Ernst Lubitsch, A Foreign Affair would have been a humorously romantic masterpiece, cleverly and subtly interweaving the personal, the social, and the political. As it is, the comedy works great whenever Arthur and Dietrich are on-screen; else, A Foreign Affair suffers from Wilder's heavy hand; lapses in judgment in Wilder,...

Chicago – Along with sixteen restored 35mm prints of overlooked cinematic gems, the Music Box Theatre’s third installment of “Noir City: Chicago” brings two renowned film historians to the Windy City: Alan K. Rode and Foster Hirsch. Both men serve on the board of directors of the Film Noir Foundation, a non-profit corporation aiming to restore rare noir classics for future generations.

In addition to serving as the co-programmer and co-host of the annual Noir City Hollywood film festival, Rode is also the charter director and treasurer of the Film Noir Foundation as well as the producer, programmer and host of the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs, California. He garnered acclaim for his book, “Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy,” which followed the titular prolific actor through the rise and fall of the studio system. His latest book, “Michael Curtiz: A Man for All Movies,...

From Raoul Walsh's Manpower (1941); cinematography by Ernie Haller; editing by Ralph Dawson.

No need for words, but I want to give you some nonetheless: our new series on the underrated art of the reverse shot begins here, where perpetually-unbilled bit player Chester Clute rubs turpentine on Marlene Dietrich's skirt as she asks George Raft, "What's the view from your angle?" Cut to Raft, slyly sipping root beer, who responds: "I've seen better."...