‘Boys State’ is a Sundance documentary you’ll never forget

The Backstreet Boys responded to the rumor that Ryan Gosling was almost a member of the band when they stopped by Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Tuesday."It got so blown out of proportion," AJ McLean said of the rumor.McLean explained that the bandmembers lived in the same apartment complex as Gosling when he was on The Mickey Mouse Club.

Sixty years. That’s how long a Louisiana judge sentenced Rob Richardson to serve for armed bank robbery. Garrett Bradley covers more than a third of that term in “Time,” and the cumulative impact — boiled down into an open-minded and deeply empathetic 81 minutes — will almost certainly rewire how Americans think about the prison-industrial complex.

Every summer, more than 1,000 teens swarm the Texas capitol building to attend Boys State, the annual American Legion-sponsored leadership conference where these incipient politicians divide into rival parties, the Nationalists and the Federalists, and attempt to build a mock government from the ground up.

PARK CITY, Utah — What do “Reservoir Dogs,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Clerks” and “Wet Hot American Summer” all have in common? The Sundance Film Festival.

Beyoncé may be the undisputed queen of the "I dream it, I work hard, I grind 'till I own it" mentality, but one thing she can always count on getting for free is Popeyes Chicken.Back in 2003, the superstar revealed on the The Oprah Winfrey Show that she, in fact, has a lifetime supply card from the popular fast food chain. "I really love Popeyes.

By Brandon Choe

It took four movies before Lee Isaac Chung was ready to tell the kind of story first-timers so often rush to share straight out of the gate. Not a coming-of-age movie so much as a deeply personal and lovingly poetic rendering of his Korean American childhood — specifically, how it felt for his immigrant family to adjust to life in small-town Arkansas — “Minari” benefits from the maturity and perspective Chung brings to the project.

“Hillary,” a four-hour docuseries about the life and career of Hillary Clinton, has sold to Sky for U.K. distribution rights, Variety has learned.

Paris Jackson will “never forget” making her runway debut at Jean Paul Gaultier’s final couture show.

In the midst of a whirlwind press tour for her Sundance biopic “The Glorias,” activist icon Gloria Steinem reflected on the state of women’s reproductive rights in Hollywood and beyond.

By Brandon Choe

PARK CITY, Utah — Twenty years after he blazed onto the film scene, Alan Ball is back with another American beauty.

Sony Pictures Classics has teamed with Sony’s Stage 6 Films to oversee the global release of Heidi Ewing’s feature narrative debut “I Carry You With Me (Te Llevo Conmigo),” a gay love story about two men who immigrate to the United States. The deal follows the movie’s enthusiastic reception at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The romantic drama debuted to multiple standing ovations in Park City, where it was shown in the NEXT section. It will be released later this year.

It's 'Hotspot' v 'Big Conspiracy'

Amid the snow-covered mountains of Park City, Utah – South African filmmakers, producers, and directors have made a strong representation this year at Sundance – the largest independent film festival in the US.

By Anthony D'Alessandro

Amazon Studios has bought “Uncle Frank,” an acclaimed drama about a closeted gay man forced to come out to his Southern family in the 1970s. The film debuted this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival.

Pete (Will Ferrell) and Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) are a prosperous American couple who’ve taken their two sons on a ski vacation to the Alps. Are they having fun yet? That’s a question that hovers over the movie, as the family members hit the slopes and make pilgrimages to the alpine-lodge restaurant, or retire to their room, where they always feel guilty about playing games or watching TV, since they could do that anywhere.

Addiction, you could say (and I would), has become the central demon that plagues Americans. We’re addicted to everything: alcohol, illegal drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, psychotropic drugs, sugar-bomb soft drinks, processed food, video screens…you name it.

One of the people who’s made long-form television drama arguably more interesting as a whole than its mainstream big-screen equivalent in recent years, Alan Ball has underlined his superior comfort with that format in the few theatrical features he’s made to date. His screenplay for “American Beauty,” which Sam Mendes directed, was brilliant but glib; as writer-director of 2007’s “Towelhead,” he couldn’t quite make the complicated agenda of Alicia Erian’s novel gel in two-hour form.