At Sundance, pandemic dramas unfold on screen and off

A broad entertainment industry coalition Friday begged Senate leadership to push ahead with Federal aid for pandemic insurance since it’s near impossible to get back to work without it, especially for independent film.

NEW YORK -- Carnegie Hall will miss an entire season for the first time for the first time in its 130-year history.Carnegie said Thursday it was canceling performances from April 6 through July at its three venues, extending a closure that started last March 13 due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.Carnegie hopes to reopen in October for its 2021-22 season and intends a delayed season announcement in late spring.The pandemic also caused the Metropolitan Opera to miss a season for the first time,

LOS ANGELES – A study released this week by The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law using data collected by an Axios-Ipsos poll in Fall 2020, shows that LGBTQ+ people are more adversely impacted in all areas of life by the coronavirus pandemic than their white LGBTQ+ and white non-LGBTQ+ people.

A few green shoots of pandemic hope emerged today in New York, as state Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that large sports stadiums and entertainment arenas in New York will be able to open this month with limited capacity.

R Kelly's New York trial has been delayed again due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Chicago Tribune, US District Judge Ann Donnelly said during a status hearing on Tuesday that the planned April 2021 date was "not realistic at all".

Multidisciplinary artist Amalia Ulman makes an appealingly idiosyncratic first foray into features with El Planeta, a captivating throwback to the shaggy aesthetic of micro-budget '90s New York indies that plays like Grey Gardens with a hint of early Almodóvar. Ulman and her real-life mother Ale play a reduced family unit in the Spanish seaside town of Gijón, living beyond their dwindling means in willful denial as the foundations crumble beneath them.

When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs square off at Raymond James Stadium on Feb. 7, there'll be no shortage of stars on the field thanks to A-list QBs Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes and an entertainment lineup that includes halftime performer The Weeknd, national anthem duet team Jazmine Sullivan and Eric Church, poet Amanda Gorman and Miley Cyrus, who's headlining the NFL TikTok Tailgate event.

You may be looking at your television screen later on during the 2021 Super Bowl and wondering…how many people are allowed in Raymond James Stadium right now?

It is tradition for the Super Bowl MVP to be asked what his next move is. They always reply, “I’m going to Disney World.”

NEW YORK -- Donald Trump has resigned from the Screen Actors Guild after the union threatened to expel him for his role in the Capitol riot in January.In a letter dated Thursday and addressed to SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, Trump said he was resigning from the union that he had been a member of since 1989.“I no longer wish to be associated with your union,” wrote Trump in a letter shared by the actors guild.

Netflix has acquired the worldwide rights to splashy Sundance title Passing, the directorial debut ofRebecca Hall that stars Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. Sources peg the deal as being north of $15 million.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is nearing a deal to acquire worldwide rights to Passing, the Rebecca Hall-directed and scripted drama that stars Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, Andre Holland, and Alexander Skarsgard. Sources said the deal will land just north of $15 million.

Bring Your Own Brigade isn't the first cinematic report on the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California, in 2018, or even the first one to screen at Sundance (Ron Howard's Rebuilding Paradise played at the festival in 2020). It almost certainly won't be the last film about the devastation wrought by uncontrolled wildfires, particularly in California, by a long shot.

Also Read: Sundance 2021: What Has Sold So Far, From 'CODA' to 'Flee' (Photos)Other Sundance films that have nothing to do with viruses have somehow caught the mood of the moment. Lucy Walker’s “Bring Your Own Brigade,” for example, is a documentary about the wildfires that have grown increasingly deadly in California over the past few years.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterMovies about the end of the world share a similar DNA: chaos, fire, looting, revelations.

For some, Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein’s “How It Ends” may trigger a bit of PTSD back to the early months of the coronavirus pandemic when stay-at-home orders were in effect. The film was shot in June of 2020.

Rounding out his trilogy of Oakland based verité documentaries, which includes 2012’s “The Waiting Room” and 2017’s “The Force,” Peter Nicks’ newest, “Homeroom,” is a poignant look at the 2019-20 school year in Oakland, CA, in which the compounding issues around defunding the police and COVID-19 force the school district to reevaluate their priorities.

Peter Nicks had for months been documenting the students of Oakland High School, in California, when the pandemic hit.