Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/15/2023 i Variety

The César Awards are characterized as France’s answer to the Oscars. And just like their awards show cousin halfway across the world, the Césars are embroiled in controversy after failing to nominate any women directors. This year’s Academy Awards were slammed by advocacy groups after ignoring the likes of Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”) and Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”) in favor of an all-male contingent of auteurs. The Césars have followed suit with an all-male group of directing nominees, despite a banner year for French female filmmakers. It’s one that saw directors from Alice Diop (“Saint Omer”) to Claire Denis (“Stars at Noon”) dominating the festival circuit and scoring prizes, only to come up short when the Césars unveiled their contenders on Jan. 25. The omission has sparked a debate…

In the summer of 2019 I was training hard for a half Ironman in Lake Placid, N.Y. I felt like I was in great shape. The last week before a big race is a time when you’re supposed to start pacing yourself and give your body more rest. But I didn’t. I pushed myself. On a weekend day in mid-August, I was riding my bike down a road I had traveled many times before. The last thing I remember is that time seemed to slow down, and then everything went dark. Later, I was told a good Samaritan stopped and found me near where I went down. There are so many “as luck would have it” moments that day. As luck would have it, a kind motorist was willing to…

Stars have been a theme throughout Pentatonix’s career. The a cappella group covered Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” early on, performed “Stars” from the musical “Finding Neverland,” and named their holiday television special “Christmas Under the Stars.” So it’s only fitting that the group — comprised of Scott Hoying, Kirstin Maldonado, Mitch Grassi, Kevin Olusola and Matt Sallee — will be honored with their very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Feb. 15. More than a decade after forming, Pentatonix — a play on the pentatonic scale — became the first a cappella group to win a Grammy for arrangement with a sublime medley of Daft Punk songs in 2015. The group earned two more Grammys including 2016’s country duo/group performance for their duet with Dolly Parton on “Jolene,”…

The 29th annual SAG Awards, at which actors honor their peers, is set for 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET Feb. 26. While the ceremony will take place at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, the show will be livestreamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel for all to watch. Variety offers a primer on the kudos and what they portend for other awards. FILM CATEGORIES • How do the SAG Awards line up with Oscars? Unlike most other kudos bodies, the SAG Awards actually overlap with Academy voters. This is one reason the SAG Awards are often seen as a major precursor to which actors will take home Oscar gold. Last year, the acting categories matched up perfectly between the two shows with all four SAG Award winners taking home Academy…

Period Feature Film THE FABELMANS PRODUCTION DESIGNER RICK CARTER In Steven Spielberg’s film about his childhood and finding his identity as an artist, the challenge for Rick Carter and his crew was how to tell the story visually. He used the Fabelman family’s three homes as primary reference points, with their different architectural styles and decorative elements adding nuance as the family moves from one house to another — with each member progressing through his or her own story. Sammy Fabelman’s uncle Boris voices the boy’s inner struggle as he faces the conflicts between artistic aspirations and family life: “Art will give you crowns in heaven and laurels on earth. But it will tear your heart out.” —Chuck Parker Fantasy Feature Film BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER PRODUCTION DESIGNER: HANNA BEACHLER…

FILM REVIEW Director: Peyton Reed Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors “Ant-Man,” released eight years ago, was a comic book movie that almost inadvertently used its hyper-miniaturized cowboy-on-ant-back superhero as a metaphor for what a tiny place the film itself occupied in the MCU. “Ant-Man and the Wasp” (2018) was a bit less small. The director, Peyton Reed, who had a background in human comedy (“Down With Love,” “Bring It On”), expanded the sequel into a puckish fantasy of scale, with characters and objects popping back and forth in size, though the result was still more amusing than momentous. Paul Rudd’s nice-guy divorced dad turned badass metallic bug Scott Lang may have been an official Avenger, but that still didn’t give him more than a fly-weight significance. Now, though,…

AWARDS CIRCUIT It’s old school versus new school for best director at the DGA Awards. Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans” is the culmination of more than 50 years of moviemaking. Then there’s the visionary whimsy of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the duo behind the sci-fi comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The veteran and the newcomers are the front-runners to win the top prize at the DGA ceremony, which take place on Feb. 18. Which picture will prevail among the guild’s 19,000 members? One camp esteems a long and storied career; the other points to a cinematic future that will look different but be just as enjoyable. The Daniels and Spielberg are joined in competition by three other dynamic directors — Todd Field (“Tár”), Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”)…

The thought of playing a highly sexualized serial killer almost stopped him from committing to Netflix’s hit ‘You.’ But four seasons in, Penn Badgley is happy to be on a murdering spree. Penn Badgley doesn’t actually need to be on the internet to stoke his popularity. He’s already the internet’s boyfriend, and has been since the original “Gossip Girl” premiered in 2007. Badgley became famous at the exact moment when the celebrity-industrial complex, fed by the toxic brew of the gossip sites TMZ and Perez Hilton, was at its most pernicious — which was the same moment that teenagers everywhere got their hands on their first iPhones. “‘Gossip Girl,’ if you think about it, wouldn’t have happened at any other time,” Badgley says. “That was the spirit of the show:…

Edward Berger “ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT” Before director and co-screenwriter Edward Berger’s 2022 version, Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” had never been adapted in its native German. The director thrilled at the opportunity to bring it to life for new audiences with a depiction of World War I that captured the brutality and dehumanization of battle. Though he is hard-pressed to call it his favorite scene in the film, Berger says the sequence in which young soldier Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) stabs a French soldier while trying to climb out of a crater on the battlefield is the one he was most gratified to shoot — “because it was so hard to get done,” he says. “We shot it over a period of about…

The most rewarding moment of last year’s BAFTA ceremony came with the presentation of the lead actress award: As Joanna Scanlan was named the winner for her moving turn as a widow uncovering her husband’s double life in the British indie “After Love,” her visibly emotional reaction was matched by the palpable warmth of the applause. But a large part of the reason it was so memorable was because, in the long run of precursor awards and televised ceremonies that make up Oscar season, this moment belonged to BAFTA alone. Versions of Scanlan’s speech hadn’t been heard a dozen times before; she wasn’t even eligible for prizes Stateside. This was a case of the British Academy voters honoring one of their own with little regard for their place in the…

Dialogue may be king when it comes to a story’s clarity, but it’s the music and audio effects that create a resonating connection with the audience. That’s why we can be frightened in a shower (thanks a lot Bernard Hermann and your strident violins in “Psycho”), or imagine a flesh-eating shark simply by hearing the relentless duuuunnnn duun beat in “Jaws,” or get goose bumps when we hear a T-rex roar in the “Jurassic Park” franchise. This year’s crop of Cinema Audio Society (CAS) nominees carry on the rich tradition of shaping the aural palette that immerses viewers in the emotional touchstones of the narrative. “Big tentpole movies are back, demanding their proper place in movie theaters,” says re-recording mixer and CAS president Karol Urban. “Sound is making full use…

TV REVIEW Drama: ABC (10 episodes; 2 reviewed); Feb. 19 Starring: Milo Ventimiglia, Catherine Haena Kim, William Fichtner After six seasons, Milo Ventimiglia — a star who began his career as Stars Hollow’s resident hellion on “Gilmore Girls” — is freed up from playing the benevolent patriarch on “This Is Us.” And, at least in theory, his new series brings together the two halves of his TV career. On ABC’s “The Company You Keep,” based on the Korean series “My Fellow Citizens,” Ventimiglia plays a con artist, but one who’s utterly committed to his parents (William Fichtner and Polly Draper) and adult sister (Sarah Wayne Callies). The conflict between obligations to loved ones and the desire to get out of the game creates tension and interest in the show’s first…

On Nov. 20, Disney shocked Hollywood when it announced that Bob Iger would return as CEO after less than a year away. Two days later, Disney’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” landed a coveted China release. Then, the sci-fi film received a rare release extension in China that allowed it to run through Feb. 14, enabling it to gross more than $240 million in the country. Though Disney insiders say China’s embrace of “Avatar” was unrelated to Iger’s return, its success and a string of good fortune for the company has raised eyebrows at rival studios. That’s because after seeing its Marvel releases denied entry to China for nearly four years, Disney recently announced that “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” were being waved into the…

So you’ve been nominated for a BAFTA Award or simply received an invitation to attend the posh Feb. 19 gala — well then, hats off to you. While in London, you’ll want to celebrate your good fortune with a proper spot of Da Hong Pao, a flute of festive bubbles and a fancy cress sandwich. Or maybe you didn’t snag a nomination or even an invite. But you’re in London! Well then, you’ll want to drown your sorrows in a proper spot of Da Hong Pao, a flute of festive bubbles and a fancy cress sandwich. See? Either way, you win. Put on your best Stella or Vivienne Westwood — for guys, make it Tom Ford — grab a Chanel bag from your closet and take a seat at one…

With Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” earning nine Oscar nominations, director and co-writer Edward Berger is fast becoming an in-demand filmmaker. Given all the praise for “All Quiet’s” battle sequences, could an action movie be next for Berger? “I’m a big fan of action films. I love Jason Bourne. I love James Bond,” Berger tells me. “One of the reasons I made ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is it’s quiet in the end. There’s no music. I wanted you to sort of take home that pressure sitting on your shoulders and think about it for days. Next movie I want to make, I just want to turn on the house lights and people stand up and I put on a pop song and people go, ‘That was…

From the sharp sting of platonic rejection in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” to suicide and self-destruction in “Tár,” to death on a sinking cruise ship in “Triangle of Sadness,” grief and loss are a collective current running throughout this season’s Oscar contenders in the screenplay category. Inconsolable loss plays out with disastrous, violent consequence in “Banshees,” Martin McDonagh’s crushing excavation of friendship torn asunder on a remote island off the coast of Ireland in the early 1920s. As the Irish Civil War rages on the mainland, lead protagonist Pádraic, played to eloquent perfection by Oscar nominee Colin Farrell, is consumed with the heartbreak resulting from another catastrophic event: his comrade Colm (Brendan Gleeson, also an Oscar nominee) has suddenly, and without warning, broken off their friendship. Pádraic is so distraught, he…

The Directors Guild of America celebrates its 75th year, the org will rename an award for one of its own. The first-time feature award is getting a new name. “I am very excited because we are doing something that we haven’t done before, a special presentation and renaming one of our awards in honor of former DGA president Michael Apted,” says DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter. At the February ceremony, the DGA will formally change the name. The director of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “Gorillas in the Mist” had a long history with the guild. In 1998, he led the formation of the Independent Directors Committee to foster the careers and rights of indie filmmakers. He served as DGA president from 2003-09, and created the first-time feature award that will…

The Visual Effects Society is celebrating awards season with an evening that features an unprecedented number of nominations for one film, a significant new awards category and a changing of the guard at the top of the organization. “Avatar: The Way of Water” received a whopping 14 nominations, breaking the record of 13 noms for “The Mandalorian” in 2021. The film was nommed for a diverse array of work, including animated character in a photoreal feature and outstanding created environment in a photoreal feature. The first “Avatar” earned 11 nominations in 2010. “The thing about ‘Avatar 2’ that strikes a chord is that Jim [Cameron, the director] knows how to tell a story; the technology he uses to tell that story is beside the point,” says Jeffrey A. Okun, VES…