Amy Poehler on Her Sundance Documentary ‘Lucy and Desi’ and Being ‘Open’ to Hosting Oscars

AMC Entertainment has reached lease deals for two major-market, former ArcLight locations. In the San Diego market, AMC will reopen AMC UTC 14 at Westfield UTC, located in La Jolla, on Thurs., February 10. In the Washington, D.C. market, the giant chain will reopen AMC Montgomery 16 at Westfield Montgomery, with an expected opening date in March.

Eddie Vedder is not a fan of Mötley Crüe — and apparently the feeling is mutual.

The deals keep coming at the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival. MUBI closed the docu Free Chol Soo Lee, including North America, and Warner Bros is negotiating a near $7 million WW rights deal for the Tig Notaro/Stephanie Allynne film Am I Ok? to place the film on HBO Max. The Lauren Pomerantz-scripted film stars Dakota Johnson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jermaine Fowler, Molly Gordon, June Diane Raphael, and Sean Hayes.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIt’s always a kick to encounter a documentary about a subject after you’ve seen the deluxe scripted and acted Hollywood version. “Lucy and Desi,” Amy Poehler’s film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz — their love, their showbiz partnership, their revolutionary influence on the creative landscape of television, their meshing and clashing spirits — is a nimble and fascinating documentary.

$25 million Apple paid for “CODA,” the $15 million Netflix paid for “Passing” or documentary-record $15 million Searchlight/Hulu paid for “Summer of Soul.”  There’s still plenty of time for dealmaking, but not much time for new films to grab the spotlight: All of the festival’s movies were programmed to launch in the first five days, with Monday’s lineup – which included “Emily the Criminal,” “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” “Dos Estaciones,” “The Janes” and “Am I OK?” – scheduled as the last of this year’s premieres.

Addie Morfoot ContributorThis year at the Sundance Film Festival, three feature documentaries — Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” and Isabel Castro’s “Mija” — share in common a $10,000 grant provided by the Points North Institute and CNN Films’ American Stories Documentary Fund.Launched in 2020, the fund underwritten by CNN has dispensed a total of $100,000 in grants to emerging U.S. filmmakers working on 10 documentary projects that highlight pivotal moments in America. Eiselt and Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” and Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” are two of nine films in the Sundance U.S.

NEW YORK -- Can a music scene still develop the way grunge did in 1990's Seattle or hip-hop did in the Bronx in the 1970s? Or has the digital makeover of music made such geographical-based explosions obsolete?It's a question that hovers over the Sundance Film Festival documentary “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” a vivid and shambolic time capsule of early 2000s New York when bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, the Strokes, Interpol and LCD Soundsystem made the city — and Brooklyn in particular — one the last easily identifiable hotbeds of rock music.The film, which debuted Sunday at Sundance, is directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, and adapted from Lizzy Goodman’s book, “Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011." Focusing mainly on the first handful of those years, the documentary is an ode to an already far-gone era when a wave of bands revitalized New York's music scene, capturing the gritty romance of the city. Brief interludes of news footage hint at a broader digital narrative forming largely outside the scene's bubble: Y2K fears, the onset of Napster, the introduction of the iPod.“One of the things we kept asking is: Is it even possible for a scene to emerge in one place with such intensity?” Southern, who with Lovelace made the 2012 LCD Soundsystem documentary “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” said in a recent interview.

Skyfall co-star Javier Bardem while his head was bleeding – which he failed to notice until the end of the chat.The pair took part in the latest edition of Variety‘s Actors On Actors segment, which sees two film or TV stars interview each other.At the end of the conversation, Bardem noticed that Craig was bleeding. “Let me ask you this last question my friend: what happened to you here?” Bardem said, pointing to the James Bond star’s head.“Where? Have I just got sandwich on my head?” Craig replied, before going to look in the mirror. He then laughed and explained the reason for the wound: “They’ve sent me this wonderful ring flash that I’ve set up with an iPad in the middle of it..

The Sundance Institute today set Fox Maxy as the recipient of the 2022 Merata Mita Fellowship, bolstering Indigenous women-identified artists in their efforts to mount a feature film.

Apparently it is the season to celebrate the iconic marriage and professional relationship of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed a penetrating, funny, revealing, and ultimately moving film, Being The Ricardos which covers a lot of ground in the Lucy/Desi world using dramatic license to place several real events in their lives all in the course of one week of production on I Love Lucy. Although starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as the iconic pair, it felt quite real and actually was as you discover watching Amy Poehler’s marvelous love letter to their lives and times in Lucy And Desi, which like Ricardos will be available on Amazon Prime, the perfect companion piece to Sorkin’s film, and a compelling documentary portrait all on its own.

There is, at the moment, no shortage of information in the culture about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. In just the past few months, the performers behind “I Love Lucy” have been the subjects of both a (very good) season of TCM’s “The Plot Thickens” podcast and a (very bad) Aaron Sorkin movie, “Being the Ricardos.” Now you can add to that mix “Lucy and Desi,” a new feature-length bio-documentary from actor/director Amy Poehler, which is hitting Amazon Prime in March, presumably as something of a companion piece to “Ricardos” (which the streamer/studio also financed).

NEW YORK -- Dale Dickey tends to get “those crusty roles,” as she heard someone once call them. A familiar, craggy face from films like “Winter’s Bone” and “Hell or High Water,” Dickey has long been a riveting supporting player in rural dramas.But in the Sundance entry “A Love Song,” Dickey, long a standout character actor, finally takes the lead. Even for her, it felt a little strange.“I don’t do leads in films.

Police in San Diego believe they have discovered the reason why a woman and her 2-year-old son who fell to their deaths at a Major League Baseball game at Petco Park last season.

to Variety, the team behind this year’s show has reached out to several A-listers to host the show together. Discussions for the 94th ceremony are still in the early stages, reported Variety, and the decision will be made by the Academy, ABC and producer Will Packer.A celebrity host last graced the Oscars stage in 2018 when talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, 54, took over duties.

Yellow wildflowers in the dusty brown dirt, multi-colored rolling hills, and a green-blue lake set the stage for writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s debut feature film “A Love Song.” A rumination on love found and lost, it’s also a hymn to the beauty and wonder of Walker-Silverman’s native Colorado. Cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo shoots the film with the hazy, yet hyper-defined colors of an old picture postcard.

“Curiosity is stronger than fear,” utters Katia Krafft, via an actress giving voice to her writing, underscoring images of unimaginably scorching lava exploding around her. With her endearingly reckless husband Maurice Krafft, they form the one-of-kind couple that blazes through the arresting documentary “Fire of Love” from director Sara Dosa.

Gregg Goldstein What brings documentaries to life? For an increasing number of them, it’s colorful characters — literally. Animation is making docs more accessible to a wider audience, allowing filmmakers to dramatize scenes that can’t be shown with footage and bringing them into once-unimagined awards categories.No film has demonstrated this more clearly than Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s refugee saga “Flee.” The Neon/Participant release made Oscar shortlists for both documentary feature and international feature film, won a Gotham Award for documentary and Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary.