‘Great Freedom’ Director Sebastian Meise on Inequality in Film: ‘We’re Still Far Too Fixated on Our Western Bubble’

Erika Jayne has been hit with a new $2.1 million lawsuit in which she's accused of financial elder abuse and "aiding and abetting" her estranged husband Tom Girardi. Attorney Manuel H. Miller and Kathleen L.

Cate Blanchett (Nightmare Alley, Don’t Look Up) has been named as the latest recipient of Film At Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award.

The Washington Post raved, "Fiona and Jane celebrates a woman’s ability to be late, to show up in their own lives when and where they want to, to change their minds, to be lonely and to be in love, and to be respected regardless.”There’s a whole lot of Holocaust discourse going on, ranging from misinformation and ignorance to the true evil of Holocaust denial. You can combat this by reading one of the many popular novels about the Holocaust, but these books tend to focus, oddly, on the “uplifting” parts of the Holocaust.

The Showtime Lakers will take center stage in HBO’s upcoming series Winning Time: The Rise of The Lakers Dynasty, but that’s the extent of their involvement. During the series’ CTAM session on Tuesday series co-creator Max Borenstein addressed reports about the lack of cooperation from the Lakers themselves and the Buss family.

NEW YORK -- The Associated Press said Tuesday that it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues, in the news organization's largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants.The announcement illustrates how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry's financial outlook has been otherwise bleak.The AP's new team, with journalists based in Africa, Brazil, India and the United States, will focus on climate change's impact on agriculture, migration, urban planning, the economy, culture and other areas. Data, text and visual journalists are included, along with the capacity to collaborate with other newsrooms, said Julie Pace, senior vice president and executive editor.“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” Pace said.The grant is for more than $8 million over three years, and about 20 of the climate journalists will be new hires.

Waiting it out. Denise Richards is still not on good terms with her eldest daughter, Sami, after she moved in with dad Charlie Sheen.

There’s bleak, there’s despairing, and then there is Ulrich Seidl, Austrian chronicler of the marginal, the miserable and plain mad. If there are Nazis still worshipping Hitler in some rural basement, Seidl will dig them out. Closet religious fanatics, marriages mired in cruelty, depraved things respectable people do on holiday that nobody at home will know about: Ulrich Seidl sets them out for all to see. Perhaps the Rimini director/co-writer is not so much bleak as relentlessly clear-eyed.

Alissa Simon Film CriticVeteran Swedish documentary maker Magnus Gertten’s “Nelly & Nadine,” a love story that begins in the hell of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, world-premieres in Berlin. Rise and Shine World Sales reps this Panorama title“Nelly & Nadine” is the third film you have made inspired by archival footage showing survivors from German concentration camps arriving in Malmö, Sweden. What motivated you to start this project?  It all started out of curiosity.

The Sopranos, citing exhaustion from inhabiting a character’s emotions for so long.The Better Call Saul star, who reprises his role as Saul Goodman for the Breaking Bad spinoff’s sixth and final series this year, made the remarks in a new interview.He told The New York Times that he’s ready to part ways his character, admitting that it’s “challenging” to let go of a role he’s portrayed over a decade.“I always used to scoff and roll my eyes at actors who say, ‘It’s so hard.’ Really? It can’t be,” Odenkirk told the publication of taking on a dramatic role.“[But] the truth is that you use your emotions, and you use your memories, you use your hurt feelings and losses, and you manipulate them, dig into them, dwell on them. A normal adult doesn’t walk around doing that, going, ‘What was the worst feeling of abandonment I’ve had in my life? Let me just gaze at that for the next week and a half, because that’s going to fuel me.'”Odenkirk added: “It gave me great sympathy for someone like James Gandolfini, who talked about how he couldn’t wait to be done with that character, and I think Bryan [Cranston] said similar things: ‘I can’t wait to leave this guy behind.’ I finally related to that attitude.”Despite his wishes to move on, Odenkirk said that Better Call Saul has “been the biggest thing” in his life.“It’s emotional to say goodbye to it, and to all these people I’ve been working with for so many years,” he said.

NEW YORK -- The band Spoon has taken a sonic fork in the road and, appropriately enough, the first single from their new album mentions another piece of silverware — a knife.“The Hardest Cut” — complete with the line "we live on a knife" — roars with a dark, grunge-meets-'70s guitar energy, a signal of what's to come from the Texas-based band on their 10-track, 10th album, “Lucifer on the Sofa.”“We wanted to make a rock ‘n’ roll record, a great rock ‘n’ roll record," says frontman Britt Daniel. "I just don’t feel like there’s enough great rock ‘n’ roll records being made these days.”“Lucifer on the Sofa” via Matador Records is a turn toward more muscular, minimalist classic rock, more aggressive and rehearsed than the band's predecessor “Hot Thoughts,” where synths were prominent and songs constructed on the fly.“We always tend to want to react a bit against the record we just did.

Selome Hailu CBS has given a pilot order to “East New York,” a drama series written by William Finkelstein and Mike Flynn.The series follows Regina Haywood, the newly promoted police captain of East New York, an impoverished, working class neighborhood at the eastern edge of Brooklyn. She leads a diverse group of officers and detectives, some of whom are reluctant to deploy her creative methods of serving and protecting during the midst of social upheaval and the early seeds of gentrification.Finkelstein is best known for his writing and producing work on a number of police and legal dramas.

EXCLUSIVE:  Sebastian de Souza, Eddie Marsan and Rich Sommer have boarded the Chloe Domont-directed finance world thriller opposite Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich.

EXCLUSIVE: New York’s Museum of the Moving Image announced the full lineup today for the 11th edition of First Look, its annual festival showcasing adventurous cinema from around the world.

K.J. Yossman “Breaking Point,” a feature about breakdancing from the directors of hit film “StreetDance 3D” will get its sales launch at EFM.Directed by Dania Pasquini and Max Guia, who helmed both “StreetDance 3D” and “StreetDance 2,” “Breaking Point” is described as “an adrenaline fuelled, high energy deep dive into the world of breakdancing.” HanWay Films are handling worldwide sales for the film, which goes into production in April.“StreetDance 2” alum Niek Traa will reunite with Pasquini and Guia for the new feature, choreographing the dance scenes.

Anitta isn’t just an international superstar because of her musical ability, she’s got some other unexpected tricks up her sleeve.The “Girl From Rio” singer stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday, January 31 to perform her hit song, “Boys Don‘t Cry.” While there, she talked about Super Bowl LVI, revealing that she knows exactly who is going to win the big game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals on February 13.Anitta broached the subject by referencing some puppies Fallon had on the show beforehand, who cutely tried to predict the winners for this year’s Super Bowl. The singer said she wanted to take home the puppy who voted for the Bengals, saying she also thinks they will come out victorious.

Leonine And Lionsgate Strike Germany/Austria Film Deal

Naman Ramachandran In a new series, Variety catches up with the directors of the films shortlisted for the International Feature Oscar to discuss their road to the awards, what they’ve learned so far, and what’s taken them off guard.Maria Schrader, an Emmy winner for directing the Netflix series “Unorthodox,” is also a Berlin Silver Bear winning actor for “Aimée & Jaguar” (1999). Her latest feature “I’m Your Man” follows a scientist (Maren Eggert, “Giraffe”) who agrees to live for three weeks with a humanoid robot (Dan Stevens, “Downton Abbey”) designed to make her happy.

Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead go way down the rabbit hole in their new film, “Something In The Dirt,” one of the big standout films from the Sundance Film Festival. A pandemic brainchild of necessity—what can we shoot during the pandemic which is relatively inexpensive but still doable, so we don’t lose our marbles and can stay artistic—“Something In The Dirt” is a trippy, DIY, sci-fi-ish film about a pair of loser (played by the two filmmakers themselves) dudes in dystopic Los Angeles who stumble upon the unexplainable.