‘Cinema Laika,’ a Documentary About Aki Kaurismaki Building a Movie Theater, Boarded by The Match Factory

Oppenheimer” and 89% and 8.2/10 for “Barbie“), Hollywood is looking at a skewed rerun of another box office showdown from July 2008.Fifteen years ago, Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” broke the opening weekend record with $158 million, but Meryl Streep’s “Mamma Mia!” also nabbed what was at the time the largest Friday-Sunday debut ever ($28 million) against a $100 million-plus opener. History may be repeating itself, with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” looking to clear triple digits right as Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” hopes to open on par with the over/under $50 million launches of “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk.” The record set in 2008 against a Nolan epic may be set again this weekend *by* a Nolan epic.

Variety Staff Follow Us on Twitter If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. A book of movie reviews from an alternate dimension is set to beam down to Earth during this year’s Fantasia Festival. Filmmaker and artist Pat Tremblay is launching the new collaborative book “Terror in the Ailien Realms: Transdimensional Horror Movie Posters & Their Film Reviews” on July 28 at the Fantasia Festival. The debut event will include a live reading from some of Tremblay’s 50 collaborators. The book is now available for pre-order on his website. Tremblay explains the book’s concept in a press release announcing the project: “Drawn by the deep nostalgia of roaming video rental stores to find cool movies to watch by judging what its VHS box’s artwork would entice or beguile, filmmaker & artist Pat Tremblay has created a series of horror movie posters with the assistance of AI. He then proposed to talented individuals within the horror movie scene to write imaginary reviews for them. The result is a captivating mixture of styles, ranging from the enigmatic and alluring to the outrageously hilarious. The dimensional doors to the AIlien Realms have opened, and you can now read what horrific and crazy films this AI world has created, for better or for worse!”

A new four-part TV drama series, The Sixth Commandment, starts on BBC One tonight (Monday, July 17). The programme is based on a true story which the broadcaster describes as "one of the most complex and confounding criminal cases in recent memory".

The Barbie movie is fast approaching — but titular star Margot Robbie didn’t know if it would ever come to fruition.  

BLACKPINK member Jennie opened up about her career in the music industry while on the Dua Lipa: At Your Service podcast.

Adam Levine couldn’t help but notice that his wife, Behati Prinsloo, and their dog have a similar ‘do.

Sam Smith is rounding out the Barbie soundtrack!

We’re weeks away from Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie hitting theaters, but fans of the iconic doll almost got a very different take on the story from Diablo Cody.

K.J. Yossman In 2012, a Dutch company called Mars One announced grand plans to colonize the red planet. Over 200,000 people applied to participate in the effort and become the first humans in the universe to establish a permanent colony on Mars. Seven years later, Mars One collapsed into bankruptcy among accusations of mismanagement and the dream to send humans to live on Mars died. Now Ridley Scott Associates (RSA Films), the “Alien” director’s commercial production company, is set to make a documentary series about the enterprise after signing an exclusive access agreement with Mars One founder Bas Lansdorp, Variety can confirm.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown,” is supposed to kick off filming in August, but don’t call it a Bob Dylan biopic. During a recent appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast (via IndieWire), the film’s director, James Mangold, said “A Complete Unknown” is “not really a Bob Dylan biopic” but a movie about “a very specific moment” in the 1960s folk scene of New York City. The film’s specificity is one reason the real Bob Dylan “has been so supportive of us making it,” the filmmaker reasoned. “The best true-life movies are never cradle to grave but they’re about a very specific moment,” Mangold said. “In this case, it might be presumptuous to call it Altman-esque, but it’s a kind of ensemble piece about this moment in time, the early ’60s in New York, and this 17-year-old kid with $16 in his pockets hitchhikes his way to New York to meet Woody Guthrie who is in the hospital and is dying of a nerve disease. He sings Woody a song that he wrote for him and befriends Pete Seeger, who is like a son to Woody, and Pete sets him up with gigs at local clubs and there you meet Joan Baez and all these other people who are part of this world.”

Boy meets girl is a tale as old as time and one that Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki has visited several times in a career that has spanned forty years, including in his latest romantic tragicomedy “Fallen Leaves.” His 20th feature film is a continuation of what’s been dubbed his Proletariat Trilogy, following “Shadows in Paradise,” “Ariel, “and “The Match Factory Girl.” While each film follows similar plotting, Kaurismäki places a direct emphasis on his unique working-class characters and a humanistic worldview, despite the external harshness of the world around them.  Continue reading ‘Fallen Leaves’ Review: Aki Kaurismäki’s Romantic Tragicomedy Finds Love In A Hopeless Place [Karlovy Vary] at The Playlist.

Joe Swash is stepping into the world of documentary making with a new film that focuses on the UK care system. Swash, known for his roles on EastEnders and his victories on I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here and Dancing On Ice, says he's been inspired by his own family's experiences to look into the subject.

Rihanna has broken another record on Spotify!

Rochelle Humes has broken her silence on her future at This Morning during an Instagram Q&A as ITV continues to search for a new co-star to join Holly Willoughby. Rochelle Humes, 34, was asked by fans if she would be co-hosting the show again, before confirming to her followers that she will be making a return to the hit ITV show as a relief presenter.The former Saturdays singer, who has spent some time away from the show, confirmed that she will be making a return, as she said: “Yes, I’m back in the summer”.

Angelique Jackson Sylvester Stallone’s life and career is getting the retrospective treatment courtesy of the Netflix documentary “Sly,” which chronicles the highs and lows of his near 50-year Hollywood career. “Do I have regrets?” Stallone asks in a teaser that dropped on Friday. “Hell yeah, I have regrets.” “Sly” is directed by Thom Zimny (“Springsteen on Broadway”) and produced by Sean Stuart, with the documentary to begin streaming in November. The official logline explains what’s to come: “For nearly 50 years, Sylvester Stallone has entertained millions with iconic characters and blockbuster franchises, from ‘Rocky’ to ‘Rambo’ to ‘The Expendables.’ This retrospective documentary offers an intimate look at the Oscar-nominated actor-writer-director-producer, paralleling his inspirational underdog-story with the indelible characters he has brought to life.”

The Match Factory has acquired international sales rights to Cinema Laika, a documentary feature about Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki and his process of building a personal movie theater in Karkkila, Finland.

The theatrical requirements for movies vying for the Oscars top prize are getting a little tougher.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic A movie, good, bad or indifferent, is always “about” something. But some movies are about more things than others, and as you watch “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy,” Nancy Buirski’s rapt, incisive, and beautifully exploratory making-of-a-movie documentary, what comes into focus is that “Midnight Cowboy” was about so many things that audiences could sink into the film as if it were a piece of their own lives. The movie was about loneliness. It was about dreams, sunny yet broken. It was about gay male sexuality and the shock of really seeing it, for the first time, in a major motion picture. It was about the crush and alienation of New York City: the godless concrete carnival wasteland, which had never been captured onscreen with the telephoto authenticity it had here. The movie was also about the larger sexual revolution — what the scuzziness of “free love” really looked like, and the overlap between the homoerotic and hetero gaze. It was about money and poverty and class and how they could tear your soul apart. It was about how the war in Vietnam was tearing the soul of America apart. It was about a new kind of acting, built on the realism of Brando, that also went beyond it.

The Match Factory has posted fresh deals of for veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s Cannes 2023 Palme d’Or contender Kidnapped about the true story of the kidnapping of a young Jewish boy.

Khloé Kardashian is aware that her life has had some major drama — which she isn’t afraid to bring up with potential suitors.