20,000 Species Of Bees, the debut film by Basque filmmaker Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, and Society Of The Snow, J. A. Bayona’s survival drama for Netflix, have dominated the nominations at this year’s Goya Film Awards.
19.11.2023 - 21:33 / variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Dashing Through the Snow,” Lil Rel Howery has the off-the-cuff funk energy of a hustler who’s so quick that you believe his spiel before you’ve had the chance to outthink it. The whole issue of believing is key to the movie, since Howery plays Santa Claus — or, perhaps, a petty criminal who’s pretending to be Santa Claus. The character calls himself Nick, and he’s dressed as a variation on the old-school Victorian Santa: half-frame glasses, a coat festooned with gold buttons and paramilitary shoulder flaps, a vest of gold finery, along with a few token bits of street cool (pearl earring, two-tone beard, fingerless leather gloves).
Howery’s line readings sound improvised, and that’s a good thing. He’s the ebullient, fast-talking spark plug of a formula comedy with a cheap engine, though one that putters along harmlessly enough. Not so long ago, there were maybe three or four Christmas movies per holiday season.
Now, in the streaming era, we have the Christmas-movie-industrial complex. They roll off the assembly line by the dozens, and most of them have a strikingly similar tone, derived from around the time that Hollywood was making comedies like “Jingle All the Way” (1996). It’s a tone at once silly, synthetic, and cynical, dunked in the excesses of the consumer culture, but it always builds up to a heartwarming way of saying that Christmas still has soul.
20,000 Species Of Bees, the debut film by Basque filmmaker Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, and Society Of The Snow, J. A. Bayona’s survival drama for Netflix, have dominated the nominations at this year’s Goya Film Awards.
Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, the beloved trio from The Grand Tour, have reportedly filmed their final special for the show.This comes just days after it was announced that Top Gear, their former BBC show, is also being put on hold.The streaming site Amazon Prime Video, which has been home to The Grand Tour since 2016, is expected to bring in new hosts if the show returns.The current presenters are said to be content with this decision. An insider shared: "It's a surprising decision and everyone realises it very much marks the end of an era for the three presenters." "The Grand Tour is one of Prime Video's most watched shows and Jeremy, James and Richard have a devoted following.
Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May have = decided to end Prime Video's The Grand Tour, according to reports. The much-loved trio launched the show in 2016 after they departed from BBC's Top Gear.
The New York Times and more wrote critical reviews of a new book on the royal family, including a chapter on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, which one review described as a "press release cooked up by ChatGPT." The book, by Omid Scobie, is titled "Endgame," and picks up on the royal family after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. A review, written by Eva Wolchover for the New York Times, said the book did Harry and Meghan "no favors." "Whether or not Scobie actively collaborated with Meghan and Harry for this book, he does them no favors.Their chapter reads like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT, and does little to shed light on them as humans," the Times review read.
The story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 is one of the most well-known flight disasters of all time. Many films, TV shows, books, and more were based on the story of the Uruguayan rugby team who chartered a flight over the Andes mountains and crashed with seemingly no hope of survival.
Dyson is notorious for not discounting its hair tech. Most of the year, even during big sale periods, the max you can get off a product like the Airwrap is £50 in a Boots Advantage Card deal – but that isn't the case this Black Friday.Though Dyson is yet to announce any discounts on hair electricals, I've just found out about a 'secret' deal that can give you up to 50% off an Airwrap.
On the first day of a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in the Fairfax District. A portion of the crowd marched through the streets and into The Grove as part of a nationwide effort demanding a lasting ceasefire in the war, as well as an end to U.S. aid for Israel.
Martin Scorsese has revealed that Robert De Niro wanted the whole of Killers of the Flower Moon to be filmed in the Osage language.Scorsese revealed the news during a Q&A session with fellow filmmaking legend Steven Spielberg after a screening of the film last week (November 14) at the DGA Theatre in Los Angeles.The recently released film – which is led by Leonardo DiCaprio, De Niro and Lily Gladstone – is based on a non-fiction book of the same name published in 2017. It tells the true story of a series of murders of Osage Native Americans over the rights for the oil under their land in Oklahoma.The film includes several scenes in which the Osage language is spoken, and De Niro in particular enjoyed learning it so much that he asked the director whether the whole film could be made in that dialect.Scorsese said: “By the way, a lot of the Osage language is lost, but they’re putting it back together, so to speak.
Naman Ramachandran South Africa‘s Quizzical Pictures has commissioned eight-part crime series “Murder By The Sea.” The series is set in Blaasgat, a fictional coastal town named after its giant blowhole. When Lennart Cato, a local man-made-good, is found dead inside a papier-mâché whale on the opening night of a new Whale Museum that he’s funding, the locals turn to town resident and retired old-school thespian Lawrence Mantooth for answers.
Emerald Fennell’s dark comedy Saltburn takes a massive jump from to over 1,500 screens today as Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest The Boy and the Heron, animated They Shot The Piano Player and other festival favorites launch awards season runs this Thanksgiving specialty weekend.
Maggie Betts, writer-director of The Burial, spoke about her film’s Oscar-winning stars Saturday at Deadline’s Contenders Film Los Angeles event. Jamie Foxx plays a lawyer representing a funeral home owner (Tommy Lee Jones) in a lawsuit against a big corporation. Betts learned she had to give Foxx space for his process.
The Peasants would already be a daunting project in the best of times. Like their previous film, Loving Vincent, directors Hugh and DK Welchman oversaw a team of animators painting each frame of the film based on live-action reference material. Hugh, who came to Los Angeles from Poland just for his 12-minute Contenders panel, said The Peasants also had to work around COVID and the Ukraine War.
An Oodie fan who decided to try out the brand following advice from Martin Lewis has revealed she totally loves one of the cosy pullovers available online.
Dashing Through The Snow, took to the red carpet for the first special screening of the movie.The film is directed by Tim Story and follows Eddie Garrick (Ludacris), a good-hearted man who has lost his belief in the wonder of Christmas. While spending time with his nine-year-old daughter Charlotte on Christmas Eve, he befriends a mysterious man in a red suit named Nick.Said man in red suit is the hugely talented Lil Rel Howery, while Madison Skye Validum plays the role of Charlotte in the film.All three were present on the carper and spoke about working on the film and their roles.
David Bowie once wore during his famous introduction to the 1982 adaptation of The Snowman is now available for purchase.The brand NotJust Clothing revealed their Christmas collection, featuring The World of The Snowman™ branded items. Some of the items include a festive jumper, scarf and blanket inspired by Raymond Briggs’ iconic and best-loved picture book, The Snowman, which was first published in 1978.The legendary scarf – which is priced at £19.99 – was inspired by the one seen on Bowie which he wore in his own attic during the filmed introduction to The Snowman when the animation was first broadcast in the US.For years fans of the beloved Christmas animation have searched for the garment, with Bowie’s own son, Duncan Jones, rediscovering the original scarf last year.Brian Harding, who produced Bowie’s introduction for the film, shared the story behind the scarf in an X/Twitter thread upon Jones’ discovery.“The Scarf was knitted by the lady in the accounts department of TVC, the production company who made the animation.
‘Quicksand‘s FLX Gets New CEO
Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Could A24 wrestle another Oscar contender into the mix while already having two strong candidates with “Past Lives” and “The Zone of Interest”? At the beginning of “The Iron Claw,” the narrator says the Von Erich family is cursed. Towards the latter half of the film, when the supposed curse has reared its ugly head, a man sitting directly in front of me with a woman begins to weep physically and audibly intensely. The woman grabbed his head to comfort him, but it was proving too much for the gentleman, who grabbed his crutches and walked out of the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In the most shockingly funny moment of Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Miles Raymond, the desperate English teacher and wine aficionado (that is, alcoholic with good taste) played by Paul Giamatti, has just learned that his book was turned down by the publisher he had his hopes pinned on. It’s more than a rejection; it’s the death of his dream. Miles is in the middle a chi-chi Napa Valley wine tasting, and suddenly he’s in dire need of a drink.
Alison Herman TV Critic To witness Emma Stone’s latest leading role in a TV series, a gripping portrait of self-delusion on par with any of her Oscar-honored star turns, viewers will have to pay a hefty toll: They’ll have to sit through a predictably agonizing odyssey from two auteurs who’ve already mastered the art of making audiences squirm. Here, the creators combine their talents to reach new depths of discomfort.
EXCLUSIVE: “We know that generations from now they’ll be talking about this seminal contract and reaping the benefits of it in the way that we have been for the last 65 years with a contract that was negotiated when Ronald Reagan was in my position,” says SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher of the new contract the actors guild made with the studios on Wednesday after 118 days on strike.