Innholdsfortegnelse for 01/11/2024 i Variety

“Barbie” may have won the box office, but “Oppenheimer” won the awards. The Golden Globes firmly cemented Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical drama as the Oscar front-runner, forcing other contenders to regroup and rethink their campaign strategies. As Hollywood recovers from an epic night of schmoozing and partying, it’s an excellent time to take stock of the state of the awards race. Here are five takeaways from the 81st Golden Globes. “OPPENHEIMER” FLEXED ITS OSCAR MUSCLE Universal Pictures’ after-party was the place to be on Sunday, with the studio’s executives and the Nolan crew giddy over their haul. And they had every reason to be. After all, “Oppenheimer” walked away with five statuettes, the most of any film. Most notable was its best picture in a drama triumph over its closest…

It’s become a staple of televised awards shows: A flummoxed winner climbs onstage and slowly recites a laundry list of thank-yous, leaving the audience squirming in their seats. By the time the hapless honoree is thanking their agent, manager, publicist and accountant, the play-off music begins. As it gets louder, they don’t always get the hint. Emmy Awards executive producers Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay have come up with a new solution to that age-old problem: Instead of play-off music, this year’s ceremony will feature a “play-off mama.” That’s Doris Bowman, the mother of host Anthony Anderson. “Mama Doris” is Anderson’s regular sidekick on his game shows, including ABC’s “To Tell the Truth” and Fox’s new “We Are Family.” On Emmy night, she has a new job: acceptance…

Eugene Hernandez has reached the top of the mountain. The journalist turned nonprofit executive has spent decades rising through the ranks of the American independent film scene. This January he assumes his seat at its apex: as the director of the Sundance Film Festival. Hernandez, the co-founder of IndieWire and longtime leader of Film at Lincoln Center, got the coveted job in late 2022. But his official duties begin with this year’s festival, the 40th edition of the annual celebration of film that kicks off Jan. 18. He still remembers his first time in the luxury ski town of Park City, Utah, watching Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi” in 1993. “It all feels full circle,” Hernandez tells Variety, adding that he shed tears when Sundance CEO Joana Vicente called to offer…

THESE AWARDS, IN SCREENWRITING, FILM AND EPISODIC DEVELOPMENT, AND FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCTION, recognize exceptionally talented work that explores science and technology themes and characters in an accurate and dramatically compelling fashion. The awards provide financial support and form part of a nationwide program to stimulate the next generation of filmmakers to tackle science and technology subjects, increase visibility for feature films that depict this subject matter, and develop new work that can be produced and released theatrically, on television, and via streaming. The program has supported over 800 film projects and developed over thirty feature films for theatrical release to date. Film School Winners 2023 AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE Tuition Award: Colin Rosemont Screenwriting Award: ONE ART, Meg Dudley, Writer Production Award: BEHIND THE CURTAIN, Kanani Koster, Writer/Director, Shuchi Dwivedi, Writer CARNEGIE MELLON…

David Alfano ’07 The Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show Starring Rihanna Outstanding Technical Direction and Camerawork for a Special Rosebud Baker ’06 Saturday Night Live Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series Randy Barbato ’82 RuPaul’s Drag Race Outstanding Reality Competition Program RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program Christopher Battaglia ’14 The Last of Us (“When You’re Lost in the Darkness”) Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) Eric Beetner ’92 The Amazing Race (“Body of Work”) Outstanding Picture Editing for a Structured Reality or Competition Program Larry Benjamin ’88 Better Call Saul (“Saul Gone”) Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) Matt Benson ’18 America’s Got Talent (“Episode 1717”) Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety Series Dancing…

When GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis takes the Emmys stage Jan. 15 to accept the Television Academy’s Governors Award on behalf of the advocacy organization, she will have a concise message: There is plenty of progress to celebrate and plenty more to be done. The award, which honors a person or organization that has made a profound and long-lasting contribution to television, puts GLAAD in good company with previous recipients, including the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Debbie Allen and Tyler Perry and his Perry Foundation. “For us at GLAAD, this is such a huge honor and a validation of our nearly 40 years of work.” Ellis tells Variety. In its annual “Where We Are On TV” report, which has tracked LGBTQ representation for 25 years,…

This year’s awards contenders feature no shortage of scenes with snappy dialogue, powerful speeches, spectacular action sequences and ear-popping musical numbers. But many of the most powerful moments were those that unfolded without a word. In “Past Lives,” writer-director Celine Song tells the story of South Korean childhood sweethearts reuniting after years apart. She often communicates their mutual longing using silence in the way a composer might utilize a specific instrument. “I really believe that a movie is a piece of music,” says Song. “So the whole film has to move like a piece of music. So much of it has to do with the rhythm of it.” Song indicates that her work as a playwright prepared her for these types of moments. “I am used to building in beats…

When Nathan Silver’s mother was in her mid-60s, she decided to have her bat mitzvah. As the indie filmmaker started telling people that his mother was embarking on a rite of passage usually reserved for teenagers, a friend urged him to turn her story into a movie. Now, “Between the Temples,” a screwball comedy inspired by Mom’s coming-of-age ceremony, will premiere at Sundance, with Carol Kane and Jason Schwartzman playing an elderly bat mitzvah student and a depressed cantor who forge an unlikely bond. “It’s one from the heart,” says Silver. “It’s a story that touches on many aspects of my life.” It also gives Kane and Schwartzman, who so often steal scenes in supporting roles, a chance to shine as leads. Signing on required a leap of faith for…

AWARDS CIRCUIT It’s decision time. After months of campaigning, festivalgoing, splashy premieres, magazine profiles and talk-show appearances, Academy voters will finally get their ballots this week. Hopefully, the organization’s nearly 10,000 members did their homework and watched as many of 2023’s offerings as possible. It’s hard to distill an entire year of cinema into five (or, in the case of best picture, 10) achievements. I love many of the films that the Academy will surely nominate for top prizes, such as Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” and Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” And who could resist the phenomenon of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” forever linked in pop culture as “Barbenheimer.” But for me, nothing tops the excitement over Cord Jefferson’s audacious debut, “American Fiction,” which boasted…

There’s an iconic scene in 1978’s “Superman” of Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve, spying Lois Lane dangling from a helicopter. He locates a revolving door, emerges as the Man of Steel, and soars upward and catches a falling Lane. “Easy, miss, I’ve got you,” says Superman. Lane is still panicking. “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” Superman smiles, offers a casual goodbye and flies off into the night, his forelock perfect. It’s the image the world held of Reeve until 1995. And that’s where Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui’s new documentary, “Super/Man,” picks up a very different version of the hero’s journey. Reeve is now paralyzed from the neck down after a fall from his horse. He cannot move, he cannot soar. His wife, Dana, tends to him and then…

After the stress of last year’s double Hollywood strikes and between overlapping awards shows, treat yourself to a getaway. With the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and delayed Emmys all in January, followed by the SAG Awards in February and Oscars in March — not to mention the return of hundreds of scripted television shows — there’s no better time to jet set. If you’re located in New York City or Los Angeles, you don’t have to go very far — or break the bank — to disconnect. FOR STAYING CLOSE TO THE WEST COAST If you’re looking for a weekend away — or even a night — a trip to Newport Beach could be the perfect destination. Just an hour drive south of Los Angeles, Lido House has both hotel…

It’s been a Barbenheimer year — so much so that my spellcheck has stopped trying to autocorrect and accepted that the phrase is here to stay. You can count on the portmanteau to make a comeback when the 96th Academy Award nominations are announced Jan. 23. That’s because both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” are expected to take in multiple nominations that morning. How do we know? Well, there’s no real science to it, but the Oscars have a long tradition of being predicted based on a few things, including: What other groups are highlighting, the recently released Academy shortlists and that indefinable thing known as industry buzz. (SAG Awards nominations — usually a strong indicator of how Oscar voting will go — will be revealed after this issue goes to press.)…

Jesse Armstrong Last year marked the end for HBO’s “Succession,” created, written and executive produced by Armstrong, which aired four seasons and earned a whopping 27 Emmy nominations in July, including drama, lead actress and a record three lead actor noms. Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Nkechi Okoro Carroll, Sera Gamble With nine shows last year, including “All American,” “All American: Homecoming,” “Superman & Lois,” “You” and “Found,” the production company led by Berlanti and Schechter continues to grow. The Berlanti family includes Okoro Carroll, who showruns both “All American” series and created “Found,” and Gamble, who developed, writes and produces “You.” Producers you most admire? Gamble: Two producers I’ve been behind closed doors with: Greg Berlanti, because I’ve watched him kindly solve issues that many a producer would be tempted…

TV REVIEW Starring: Jodie Foster, Kali Reis, John Hawkes, Finn Bennett Drama: HBO (6 episodes; all reviewed); Jan. 14 Looking back, 2014 was a different time: Obama was in office, skinny jeans reigned supreme and “True Detective” established itself with an unabashed emphasis on masculinity. Three years earlier, Ryan Murphy had revived the anthology series with “American Horror Story,” but it took the imprimatur of HBO, movie stars and a “serious” genre like crime to give the format prestige. In pairing Matthew McConaughey with Woody Harrelson on a journey through the bayou, creator Nic Pizzolatto elevated some of the genre’s clichés and left others intact — including a marginal presence for women, crowded into bit roles as wives and villains to make room for portentous monologues and four-minute tracking shots.…

On January day in 1989, Steven Soderbergh, a novice filmmaker whose previous gigs included holding cue cards on variety shows and directing a concert film for the rock group Yes, made his way to the front of a makeshift theater in Park City, Utah. He was at Sundance — or the U.S. Film Festival, as it was then known — to introduce “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” a piercing look at relationships that he shot for just over $1 million. “It wasn’t a normal theater — it was like a cafeteria or something, and they’d brought out folding chairs,” remembers Peter Gallagher, one of the film’s stars. “And Steven is describing the film, and he ends his spiel by saying, ‘If anyone wants to talk to me about distribution, I’ll be…

For four decades, Sundance has maintained a reputation as one of the most important film festivals in America for independent filmmakers from around the globe. To commemorate its 40th anniversary in 2024 and the enormity (and reciprocity) of that cultural footprint, festival leadership set a series of restoration screenings to highlight many of the most memorable films programmed throughout its history. “When you look at the way the independent film movement has evolved and changed over the years, from the maturation of an industry and the opportunities that artists have found, to the way that an audience has been built around the work, you see a festival that has evolved alongside it,” says John Nein, senior programmer and director of strategic initiatives. This year’s festival takes place Jan. 18-28, in…

The life and accomplishments of Brian Eno are prodigious enough to fill several films, but until hearing the pitch for “Eno,” the composer, producer, self-professed “non-musician” and visual artist associated with groups including Roxy Music and U2 was resistant to be the focus of even one about them. “I usually can’t stand docu-bios of artists because they are so hagiographic,” Eno says. Rather than charting a chronological path through Eno’s career, documentarian Gary Hustwit proposed using generative artificial intelligence to create a film that would literally be different for every audience that screened it. “The use of randomness to pattern the layout of the film seemed likely to override any hagiographic impulses,” Eno says. Hustwit and Eno had collaborated before; Eno scored the filmmaker’s 2018 documentary “Rams,” about German industrial…

Lead Actress in a Drama Series MELANIE LYNSKEY Yellowjackets (Showtime) Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie KATHRYN HAHN Tiny Beautiful Things (Hulu) Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS Abbott Elementary (ABC) Supporting Actor in a Drama Series MICHAEL IMPERIOLI The White Lotus (HBO) Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie RICHARD JENKINS Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (Netflix) RAY LIOTTA Black Bird (Apple TV+) Supporting Actress in a Drama Series SABRINA IMPACCIATORE The White Lotus (HBO) J. SMITH-CAMERON Succession (HBO) Guest Actor in a Comedy Series LUKE KIRBY The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon) Guest Actress in a Comedy Series JUDITH LIGHT Poker Face (Peacock) Guest Actress in a Drama Series MELANIE LYNSKEY The Last of Us (HBO) Outstanding Narrator ANGELA…

True gender parity remains an unfulfilled goal in Hollywood as in the rest of the world. But over the past several years, the power and potential of women’s stories has finally begun to take deeper root in the entertainment industry. Following a year whose releases included “She Said,” “Women Talking” and “The Woman King,” 2023 features “Past Lives,” “A Thousand and One,” “You Hurt My Feelings,” “Priscilla,” “Bottoms,” “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” and of course, “Barbie,” this year’s box office queen. Oscar voters have certainly noticed, awarding women seven of 12 winners for best picture, director and writer in just the last three years. Though written and directed by two men, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” dominated last year’s Academy Award ceremony with 11 nominations and seven…

Utah is one of Hollywood’s realworld backlots. The scenic state’s close relationship with moviemakers began 100 years ago during the silent film era when cowboy star Tom Mix shot “The Deadwood Coach” in Southern Utah, and continues today through projects from the likes of multi-hyphenate Kevin Costner. Dramatic red rock geologic formations, sandstone buttes and wide-open spaces have provided ample backdrops and artistic inspiration for legendary filmmakers throughout the decades. John Ford, Robert Redford and Ridley Scott memorialized Utah settings from Monument Valley (“Stagecoach”) to Mt. Timpanogos (the wilderness of “Jeremiah Johnson,” now within the Sundance Resort) to Southeastern Utah’s Fossil Point in “Thelma & Louise.” Since 1924, more than 1,000 film and TV programs have lensed in state. Film incentives sweetened the attraction, garnering a total in-state spend of…