Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/1/2023 i Variety

In the niche world of comedy touring, Mike Berkowitz has always been “the guy.” Over his 21-year career, the agent has been a go-to dealmaker in the live entertainment space, diversifying the income of star clients and launching digital crossovers. Berkowitz, who co-heads WME’s comedy group, first distinguished himself by tapping into the lucrative college market. He also blazed a trail for new acts to reach stadium-level stardom in a landscape where only the likes of Eddie Murphy and George Carlin once played. The sector has exploded in the past decade, and Berkowitz has been at the forefront. In 2022, he booked and shepherded production on Bill Burr’s $31 million-grossing tour, as well as Kevin Hart and Chris Rock’s co-headlining shows. He sent out John Mulaney ($50.2 million) and Amy…

It’s not every day that an action movie stars an 80-year-old. But leave it to octogenarian Harrison Ford (1) to return as Indiana Jones in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” the fifth installment of the iconic franchise. While moviegoers may be surprised to see Ford reappear four decades after making the first film, the actor has long felt he’d be back. “I always wanted to do it,” he told me at the premiere of his Apple TV+ comedy series “Shrinking.” “I wanted to do the rest of the story to see the end of his career.” But even Ford has his limits. He insists he’s hung up Indy’s fedora and bullwhip for good: “It’s the last time for me.” Speaking of franchises, are we getting closer to seeing…

When movie theaters closed in 2020 due to the pandemic, many pundits predicted the end of movie-going forever. Considering that grim assessment, Oscar’s 2022 best picture slate is a statement of victory. Academy voters came up with a great cross-section of films, from big epics to intimate dramas, showing movies are very much alive. While the list is healthy, the 10 films still show traces of lingering COVID, since they center on themes that reflect our concerns during lockdown: loneliness and fear, mental health, a need to connect despite nearly impossible odds, and an attempt to define our roles within the family (either genetic or the family we choose.) As announced Jan. 24, the 10 Oscar noms for best picture are “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Netflix), “Avatar: The…

For 11 days each February, the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival celebrates movies and the people who make them. One essential element of SBIFF is its focus on film education. With a carefully curated program, executive director Roger Durling says, “We’re educating your average filmgoer that comes to the festival.” Every event — from panels to tributes — is designed to teach, he says. This includes awards celebrating renowned stars including Angela Bassett, Brendan Fraser and Cate Blanchett. “The format is a 90-minute conversation,” he says. “It’s not an awards evening where the person shows up and gets the award. Cate Blanchett will be on stage talking about her craft and career.” Beyond staples such as films and panels, the program includes a variety of educational opportunities for cinephiles of…

When Sterlin Harjo sold “Reservation Dogs” to FX, he didn’t quite know what a showrunner was. “I remember calling a showrunner friend of mine and asking, ‘Am I supposed to be like holding meetings?’ There’s no template. It’s not laid out for you. Really, I was just going off instinct.” But Harjo soon realized that running his own show was a lot like what he’d been doing for years in independent film. Harjo was a regular fixture at the Sundance Film Festival, where his short “Goodnight Irene” premiered in 2005. That led to his first feature, “Four Sheets to the Wind,” which debuted at Sundance in 2007, followed by “Barking Water.” From there, Harjo directed the documentary “This May Be the Last Time,” which tells the story of the disappearance of…

The unsung heroes of the Grammy Awards may well be the microphone operators responsible for making sure winners and presenters sound pitch-perfect when they take the broadcast stage. An added challenge: adjusting the ever unpredictable height of the mic stand. Microphone gaffes are legendary in the entertainment biz, and music’s biggest night is no exception. In fact, this year’s Grammy nominees are an especially tall bunch: New artist contender Omar Apollo towers at 6’5” — the same height as Machine Gun Kelly, who found himself hunched over like a giraffe bending toward a zoo visitor as he picked up an American Music Award for favorite rock artist in November. And Jack Harlow is not far behind at a statuesque 6’3”. The women are no slouches either. Taylor Swift is 5’11”…

Three years into BAFTA’s radical overhaul of its voting system at the nomination stage, this year’s slate of nominees isn’t quite as rogue as it has been in the past two years, which saw many a heavily hyped front-runner booted in favor of homegrown underdogs and arthouse outsiders. But if things hew closer to the general shape of the awards race as shaped by American precursors, there’s still room for quirks and surprises — not least a foreign-language, field-leading juggernaut that few would have seen coming a couple of weeks ago. Here’s how the top categories have shaken out before the Feb. 19 ceremony. • BEST FILM BAFTA voters largely rejected Hollywood goliaths, including blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” and Steven Spielberg’s Golden Globe champ “The Fabelmans,” as Germany instead led…

Variety’s ninth annual Artisans Awards celebrates and honors the craftspeople who are essential to the film making process. The tribute evening will take place on Feb. 13 at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara where Jazz Tangcay, Variety senior artisans editor, will moderate a conversation and panel with the honorees. As audiences returned to the movie-going experience to watch films such as “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Elvis,” and revel in the phenomenon that is “RRR,” a sense of community returned. And that’s what the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival is about, building community as it celebrates artists and artistry. The Variety Artisans Awards reflects on those whose work shines as they worked with filmmakers to deliver a vision and tell a story through their craft.…

TV REVIEW Drama: Apple TV+ (10 episodes; all reviewed); Feb. 3 Starring: Colin O’Brien, Connie Britton, Taylor Schilling, Anna Uzele “Dear Edward” is the sort of show that makes you understand why the great middle — the set of works that don’t feature aliens or superheroes, and that are intended for grown-up audiences — has fallen out of the theatrical moviegoing business. That’s because in any era other than this one, this smart but unshapely literary adaptation, full of good intentions and interesting characters but bloated beyond recognition at 10 hours, would have been a comparatively lithe movie. Taken in the form Apple TV+ has provided us via show creator Jason Katims, though, “Dear Edward” is a bit of a mess — a jumble of semi-intersecting characters that we meet…

Beyond the compilation videos of senators quoting Taylor Swift lyrics, what will be the legacy of January’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on anticompetitive practices in the live entertainment industry? Congress has held a few such hearings over the decades, with Pearl Jam famously making an appearance in 1994 and concert industry execs testifying against the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger in 2009. With the arrival of the latest installment, titled “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” which comes on the heels of the Taylor Swift ticketing debacle, some observers may feel that little has changed — in fact, promoter Jerry Mickelson was back before the committee on Jan. 24, echoing remarks he delivered nearly 14 years ago in opposition to the merger. So questions remain regarding what…

AWARDS CIRCUIT It’s not Andrea Riseborough’s fault that zero Black women were nominated for best actress this year. Still, with no such representation for the second consecutive year, the “To Leslie” star’s surprise inclusion is far more pronounced. Through a grassroots effort made up of predominantly white acting peers, Riseborough’s managing and publicity teams orchestrated a concentrated campaign that landed her a nom — and exposed an awards ecosystem that doesn’t naturally seek out Black women. Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) and Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”) were favored to be best actress nominees — this in a category that has seen only one Black woman, Halle Berry, win in 95 years. After scoring key mentions from industry groups, neither contender received a nod. Alas, their snubs recall what Morpheus says in…

WITH A MAJOR ROLE in launching the careers of Garbage, Coldplay, Muse, Zero 7, Ash and many others, the Mushroom/Infectious label scored multiple No. 1 records in the U.K. and sold millions of albums in its 10-year run, starting in 1995. But even as Coldplay is receiving its 39th Grammy nomination and Muse its fifth, Mushroom’s largest impact can be seen in the executives whose careers flourished at the freewheeling company, many of whom are now giants of the modern music industry. “If you look at what the acts have grossed over time, there’s been hundreds of millions of dollars in income from our people,” says Korda Marshall, the founder of Infectious Music, who went on to senior roles at Atlantic, Warner Bros. and BMG. “Whether it’s Stuart Camp managing…

One of the pleasures of a TV festival is bringing people who love television — and work in it — together in one place. After two years of holding a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Atlanta-based festival is back in person to connect students and fans with talent from both above and below the line. The 2023 festival will take place Feb. 9-11. “We are so excited to be back on the ground in Atlanta for this year’s SCAD TVfest, offering our students and patrons the opportunity to engage with some of the most creative and successful people in the television industry through screenings, master classes, panels and more. We are proud to premiere some amazing new TV shows and, of course, shows shot in Georgia,” says Chris…

• BEYOND UTOPIA Distributor: N/A When you watch Madeleine Gavin’s staggering documentary about what really goes on in North Korea, and about a handful of desperate souls who attempt to defect from it, you witness the glum dystopia of Kim Jong-un’s cult prison state — the full nightmare of it — as never before. The forbidden footage we see (torture, an execution) achieves a quotidian terror. But the film also follows the Roh family as they leave this bad dream of a nation, and their escape story has a suck-in-your-breath suspense that’s scary and inspiring. —Owen Gleiberman • EILEEN Distributor: N/A In William Oldroyd’s deliciously deranged second feature, Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) goes from being a withdrawn penitentiary secretary to an independent young woman. Perhaps “Eileen” is what happens when a…