Hong Kong Auteur Scud Retires, Sets Two Final Films for North American Release (EXCLUSIVE)

LOONA have added four new shows to their sold-out North American tour, ‘LOONATHEWORLD’.Earlier today (June 16), K-pop PR company MyMusicTaste took to social media to announce that “due to overwhelming demand” the K-pop girl group would be bringing the North American leg of their upcoming world tour to four new cities.The girl group are now set to play in three more US cities – namely Atlanta, Dallas and Houston and Mexico City – as well as a sole stop in Mexico City, Mexico, which will wrap up the tour.

Amyl & The Sniffers have announced a new run of North American tour dates, marking their second tour of the continent this year.The new dates will see the Australian band return to the United States in September and October. The tour will begin with an appearance at the first-ever Los Angeles edition of the  Primavera Sound festival, before taking the band on a run of 14 headlining shows across the country.It follows on from the band’s previous tour in April and May of 2022.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorDark Star Pictures has acquired distribution rights in North America for Australian gay love story “Lonesome,” directed by Craig Boreham. Following its world premiere at the Seattle Intl.

Foals will head out on a tour of North America in support of their new album ‘Life Is Yours’ in October, the band have announced.The jaunt will mark the first time the Oxford band have played live in the US and Canada since taking their ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost’ tour there in 2019.The band will kick off the new tour at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 28, with the run continuing throughout November and December. It will conclude at the State Theatre in Portland, ME on December 18.“We can’t wait to play again for you,” Foals wrote on Twitter.

Post Malone has announced a slew of North American tour dates in support of his new album, ‘Twelve Carat Toothache’.Post’s tour will kick off in Omaha in September and run through to mid-October, with stops in Chicago, Toronto, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, Atlanta, Texas, Seattle, Vancouver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and more.On many of the dates, Post will be joined by Roddy Ricch, who features on ‘Twelve Carat Toothache’ single ‘Cooped Up’ and performed the track alongside Malone during a Saturday Night Live performance in May. See dates and venues below.

Dreamcatcher have announced an additional show in Los Angeles as part of their upcoming ‘Apocalypse: Save Us’ world tour.Today (June 14), the septet shared that a new Los Angeles show has been added to the North American leg of their ‘Apocalypse: Save Us’ world tour. Dreamcatcher will now be performing on July 16 at The Wiltern, in addition to their original July 17 show.Ticket sales for Dreamcatcher’s new concert will begin on June 15 at 8am PST here.

The Smile have announced their first-ever tour of North America for November and December 2022, in support of their debut album ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’.The band, which features Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood, will begin their debut tour across the continent in Providence, Rhode Island. The tour will then take them across the US and Canada, including two New York dates at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre and the city’s Hammerstein Ballroom.A pre-sale for the tour will begin this Thursday (June 16) from 10am local time, with the general sale following the next day at the same local time.

For a consummate multi-hyphenate, Japanese-Australian singer-songwriter-rapper-comedian-YouTuber George Kusunoki Miller (Joji) has been relatively quiet these past two years. From the release of his September 2020 sophomore LP Nectar till today, he hadn’t dropped a single song.

EXCLUSIVE: Canal+Docs has acquired French rights to Reinventing Mirazur, the feature documentary that explores the life of renowned Argentinian chef Mauro Colagreco and the dramatic transformation of his high-end restaurant Mirazur in Menton, France. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefFactwire, an independent news agency and publication in Hong Kong, said Friday that it will cease operations with immediate effect.It is the fourth closure in the last year of a significant news organization that is not aligned with the city establishment’s pro-Beijing camp.The injection by Beijing in July 2020 of a National Security Law, and a powerful security apparatus in the city, is seen by media organizations to have significantly reduced the freedoms of the press. The government disputes this analysis, but says that reporting must remain lawful.Factwire, which specialized in investigative reporting, was established in 2015 using HK$4.7 million of funds that were crowd-sourced from 3,300 supporters in three months. It did not pinpoint the reasons for its closure, nor analyze the timing of it.

Vivienne Chow Hong Kong director Alan Mak (“Infernal Affairs,” “Overheard 2 and 3”) has brought together award-winning actors Francis Ng (“Drifting”) and Aaron Kwok (“Port of Call,” “Cold War 1 and 2”) in new Hong Kong crime thriller “Insider,” 22-years after the two shared the big screen together.Produced by Tenky Tin for Emperor Motion Picture, the film also stars Simon Yam and Niki Chow. A start of production ceremony took place on Monday, attended by EMP supremo Albert Yeung. Kwok also uploaded images to his Instagram account.

Justin Bieber has postponed the start of his North American ‘Justice’ tour, just hours before it was meant to begin last night (June 7) at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena.The singer took to his Instagram stories to tell fans that his undisclosed illness would prevent him from taking to the stage. “Can’t believe I’m saying this,” he wrote.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Chef Mauro Colagreco of the three-Michelin star restaurant Mirazur will be attending the June 13 North American premiere of the documentary “Reinventing Mirazur” at the Tribeca Film Festival.  In a clip released ahead of its premiere in Variety, Colagreco explains the new philosophy behind the restaurant’s menus, borne out of the pandemic.As described, the doc takes “a deep dive into the life of Chef Mauro, who finds himself changing everything about his flagship restaurant after the COVID-19 pandemic halted his worldwide rise to prominence.”Forced to go into hiatus not long after his Menton, France-based restaurant was awarded the coveted three Michelin stars and the No.1 spot in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2019, Colagreco spent more time in his estate’s vast vegetable and flower garden and came up with the idea to introduce menus pegged to the cycles of the moon. Since he sourced all the restaurant’s fresh produce from his garden, where planting and harvesting were timed according to the moon’s cycles, the menus would undergo a radical change.

EXCLUSIVE: IFC Films has acquired North American rights to sci-fi thriller Vesper (formerly known as Vesper Seeds) directed by Lithuania’s Kristina Buozyte and France’s Bruno Samper.

Vivienne Chow Restored versions of Chinese language cinema classics Wong Kar-wai’s “Days of Being Wild” (1990) and Jia Zhangke’s first full-length feature “Pickpocket” (“Xiao Wu”) 1998) will lead the inaugural program of Hong Kong’s M+ Cinema, which will be opened to the public on June 8.The opening program also features the Hong Kong premiere of one of the films from Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’s epic project series “DAU,” making the M+ Museum notable for not canceling Russian culture following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.The cinema, comprising three theaters with seating capacity of 180, 60, and 40 seats, is a core facility of the Moving Image Centre at M+, the visual culture museum that opened in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District in November last year. Moving images, including artist-made audio-visual works, artist films, and traditional feature films, are considered among one of the three key disciplines of the mega institution housed in a building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

“Tori and Lokita,” the refugee drama from two-time Palme D’Or winning directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.The film stars Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu as a young boy and adolescent girl who have traveled alone from Africa to Belgium and face a serious test of their friendship as they grapple with the difficult conditions of their exile. The film received a special award at Cannes in honor of the festival’s 75th anniversary.

ITZY have announced dates and locations for their 2022 tour of the United States, in support of their upcoming mini-album ‘Checkmate’.Today (June 2), the K-pop girl group revealed on social media that they would be returning with new music in July, which will then be followed-up by their first-ever world tour. The post featured a “promotion scheduler” that details the upcoming mini-album, as well as some of the dates of the tour.The quintet are set to release a brand-new mini-album, titled ‘Checkmate’, on July 15 at 1pm KST.

Brittney Parks (Sudan Archives) has announced the Homecoming Tour, a run of 16 North American shows early this fall. The tour is scheduled to start September 24 at Solana Beach, CA’s Belly Up Tavern and work its way up the coast to Vancouver, through the midwest, and down the east coast before making its final stop at Lodge Room in the Cincinnati-born singer-songwriter-violinist’s adopted hometown of Los Angeles.

Everytown on his upcoming North American tour to promote an end to gun violence.“Along with all of you, I have been absolutely devastated by the recent string of mass shootings in America, culminating at the latest in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas,” the singer wrote in a statement on Twitter.End gun violence. pic.twitter.com/YNFHhmkhBG“On our North American tour, we will be partnering with Everytown who work to end gun violence, donating to support their efforst, and sharing their suggested action items,” he continued.The statement was accompanied by Everytown’s website, text campaign and other information, including the statistic that “Firearms are the #1 leading cause of death for American children and teens.”Styles’ third album “Harry’s House” launched on May 20, and tickets very recently went on sale for the North American branch of his 2022 Love on Tour.