Afghanistan Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Mum Lyn Rigby has spoken of her “decade of heartbreak” as she faces the 10th anniversary of her son Lee’s murder.

Shalini Dore Features News Editor As the second season of Hulu’s “Taste the Nation” starts streaming May 5, executive producer and host Padma Lakshmi again takes viewers among the immigrant communities in the U.S. via their taste buds. Lakshmi spoke with Variety for AAPI Month ahead of the show’s season premiere. She says she and her team get lots of invitations from around the country asking them to visit and highlight the communities. This season they visit Puerto Rico, the Appalachians, the Afghan community in Washington, D.C., as well as Filipinos in the Bay Area. “We don’t just go into a community, visit them and we’re out and then rinse and repeat in the next town,” she says. “We’re looking at the larger issue of immigration in the country that is so integral to the foundation of our modern republic but also through the ever-evolving thing that is America. Immigration is so uniquely important to this country out of all the countries in the world and it’s what has made it its superpower.”

The latest Hunger Games, set decades before the original, is grittier and “more authentic” in some ways but doesn’t waver from existential questions, as relevant now as they were when the first films came out, said the director and producer of Ballads of Songbirds And Snakes.

LIVE – Updated at 04:45Prince Harry was “kept out of the loop” on alleged phone-hacking by tabloid newspapers, the High Court was told on the second day of a hearing for claims of illegal information gathering against the publisher of The Sun. The duke understands that the royal household dealt with fears that his voicemail messages had been intercepted while he was serving in Afghanistan, failing to update him with all the information and allegations, David Sherborne, representing Harry, told the court.

David Rohde, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is executive editor of The New Yorker’s digital site, is moving to NBC News as senior executive editor, national security, starting next month.

EXCLUSIVE: Activist Artists Management on Tuesday announced their signing of Human Rights Watch, the international organization working to promote and defend human rights around the world. Activist’s Bernie Cahill and Jon Kanak will rep the organization, as well as its 40+ years of human rights research and advocacy, helping to extend its reach through the creation of fresh scripted and unscripted storytelling opportunities across film and TV.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s “Black Flies” starring Sean Penn, and Catherine Corsini’s “Le retour” have been added to the competition lineup of the upcoming 76th Cannes Film Festival. As many as 13 movies have been peppered across several sections, including the competition, special screening, Un Certain Regard and out of competition. Robert Rodriguez’s “Hypnotic” and Kim Tae-gon’s “Project Silence” are joining the Midnight Screening roster, while Amat Escalante’s Mexican drama “Perdidos en la Noche” and Argentinian helmer Lisandro Alonso’s thriller “Eureka” starring Viggo Mortensen and José María Yazpik, will bow at Cannes Premiere, a non-competitive section launched in 2021. Alonso previously won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard with his 2014 movie “Jauja.” Also slated for Cannes Premiere is Valerie Donzelli’s drama “L’Amour et les forets.”

The Cannes Film Festival has a long tradition of showing films about world events and this year is no exception.

RT score to go with an A on CinemaScore, but audiences over the past two years have largely eschewed films based around real life issues and this film set during the U.S. War in Afghanistan is turning out to be not much different even with such positive word-of-mouth.

Carole Radziwill was an award-winning journalist when she joined Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City in Season 5. Now almost five years after leaving the reality series, Radziwill is looking back and talking about the one regret she had.

according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo.Since its opening on April 5, it has earned over $400 million nationwide, the second-fastest animated film to reach those numbers after “The Incredibles 2,” according to Deadline. The supernatural horror movie “Evil Dead Rise,” the fifth installment of the “Evil Dead” series, came in second, with a $10.3-million take on its opening day.The Post called the film “gory-as-hell” and said it is “as campy and fun as any chapter in producer Sam Raimi’s four-decade-old horror series.”“The Covenant,” the story of an army sergeant in Afghanistan, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and an Afghani interpreter, played by Danish actor Dar Salim, landed in third, with $2.25 million in sales.

Guy Ritchie is opening up about his new movie, The Covenant, and revealed that they didn’t use real firearms for any scenes.

T. Swift muse, Jake Gyllenhaal (he of the good hair, affable disposition, rampant sarcasm and dimples you can eat ice cream out of) is Sagittarius energy incarnate. Jamie Lee Curtis’s sourdough baking godson is known for such iconic roles such as the eponymous, troubled teenager “Donnie Darko” and closeted rodeo king/ranch hand Jack Twist in “Brokeback Mountain.”Gyllenhaal returns to the screen this spring as Sgt.

Guy Ritchie‘s new movie The Covenant is now in theaters and it’s getting some great reviews!

EXCLUSIVE: In Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, Jake Gyllenhaal throws on the military fatigues he hasn’t worn since 2005’s Jarhead, this time joined by an award-winning actor and real-life veteran in Dar Salim. In the new action movie from Miramax and MGM, Gyllenhaal plays U.S. Army Master Sgt. John Kinley, whose bond with his interpreter, Ahmed (Salim), only grows after their unit is ambushed by the Taliban. After Kinley is injured during the escape, Ahmed embarks on a Herculean effort to carry Kinley across the Afghanistan mountains to safety. When Ahmed is unable to get a visa to get him and his family to the U.S., Kinley risks his life to return to Afghanistan and save him.

Jordan Moreau Nothing can keep the dead down. “Evil Dead Rise,” the latest movie in the horror franchise created by Sam Raimi, has made $2.5 million in Thursday previews at the domestic box office. It’s a strong start for a horror movie in April, but it won’t be enough to stop the mushroom-powered, meteoric rise of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which is projected to earn another massive haul with $45 million to $50 million in its third weekend. Universal and Illumination’s hit Nintendo adaptation already has $724 million globally and will soon pass “Minions: The Rise of Gru” as the highest-grossing animated movie in the post-pandemic era. “Evil Dead Rise” is expected to scare up between $15 million and $20 million in its opening weekend, with some predictions as high as $25 million. It’s the fifth movie in Warner Bros. and New Line’s “Evil Dead” franchise, which began way back in 1981 with Raimi’s original, low-budget horror hit starring Bruce Campbell as zombie killer Ash Williams. The previous entry, simply titled “Evil Dead,” made $97.5 million from a $17 million budget in 2013.

Netflix has dropped a brand-new political drama that fans are comparing to hit shows like The West Wing and House of Cards. The Diplomat dropped on the platform on Thursday (April 20) and is described by Netflix as a “high-stakes, contemporary political drama about the transcendence and torture of long-term relationships, between countries and people”.

Ricky Gervais and Richard Osman have reacted to losing their “blue tick” on Twitter. At the behest of Twitter CEO Elon Musk, the social media platform finally removed the “legacy verified” marks on celebrity profiles, with users now needing to pay a monthly fee in order to be “verified”.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Guy Ritchie announced in a new interview with Newsweek that he is no longer using real guns on his film sets following the October 2021 “Rust” shooting, in which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed by a prop gun filled with real bullets. Ritchie is a veteran of the action movie genre, with the majority of his films prominently featuring firearms and bombastic shootouts. His latest directorial effort, “The Covenant,” was filmed with Airsoft pellet weapons in place of real guns. “The Covenant” stars Jake Gyllenhaal as U.S. Army sergeant John Kinley, who returns to Afghanistan in an effort to rescue an interpreter named Ahmed (Dar Salim) from the Taliban. The two men became close years earlier when Ahmed served as John’s interpreter during the height of the War in Agahnistan. Ahmed saved John’s live during the war, so John sets out on a mission to do the same. Suffice to say, guns and shootouts are a plenty in the film.

Matthew McConaughey smoking a joint in Guy Ritchie’s new movie “The Covenant.” The prolific British director has, for the moment, left behind quirky crime and comedy for his Afghanistan War film — and it’s not hard to understand why. The story the movie is based on is a harrowing and special one. A US Army sergeant and an Afghan interpreter are on the run from the Taliban, when the American is knocked unconscious and his companion must go to extraordinary lengths to save him.Running time: 125 minutes.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.TheWrap: You’ve delved into the world of politics and foreign policy before in “The Americans,” was there anything that was completely new to you?Russell: The details of this entire army of people and what they do for our government was new to me. We know so little about what [State Department officials and diplomats] do, and yet they are so monumental in keeping democracy alive, and our government working correctly.

The Diplomat.Created by Debora Cahn (The West Wing, Homeland), the series follows Kate Wyler (Russell) as she adjusts to her new role, between tackling international crises and dealing with her turbulent marriage to a high-profile political figure.A synopsis reads: “Kate Wyler is the new US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. She was supposed to go to Afghanistan.

The Diplomat.Created by Debora Cahn (The West Wing, Homeland), the series follows Kate Wyler (Russell) as she adjusts to her new role, between tackling international crises and dealing with her turbulent marriage to a high-profile political figure.A synopsis reads: “Kate Wyler is the new US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. She was supposed to go to Afghanistan.

Emily Tannenbaum Fans of FX’s popular Cold War drama “The Americans” will undoubtedly check out “The Diplomat” in the hopes that Keri Russell’s next political thriller can fill the heart-pumping void the hit series left behind in 2018. They shouldn’t — at least, not for that reason. Though “The Americans” and “The Diplomat” share a star, as well as a similar focus on marital power struggles, the new series from “Homeland” executive producer Debora Cahn is less gritty spy thriller and more soapy workplace drama. Throughout the show’s eight, hour-long episodes, I found myself thinking of “The Diplomat” as a Shondaland-inspired take on “The West Wing,” which makes sense considering Cahn cut her teeth as a writer on both “Grey’s Anatomy” and Aaron Sorkin’s NBC series.

Spanish Screenings Goes to Cannes,  a selection of five pix in post which underscores the ever broadening compass – in genre, setting, protagonists, production bases and models – of film production in Spain. “Sima’s Song,” for example, is set in 1979 Kabul, “Jumping the Fence” on the Morocco-Spain border in Africa.  Many titles, though still in post production, come laden with prizes as projects, prestige deals or rich talent. “Sima’s Song,” from Afghan director Roya Sadat, whose “A Letter to the President” was shortlisted for an Oscar, won the Taicca Award at Busan’s Asian Project Market and the IFI-Pas Award at Mumbai’s Film Bazaar. Its producer, Alba Sotorra, was nominated for an International Emmy as a director for “The Return: Life After ISIS.”

I’m not sure why director Guy Ritchie has his name in the title of his latest film, but because this is I think the best Ritchie movie I have seen, I will pass up the chance to snark at the only misstep in Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. It about as exciting, gripping and moving as war films get — especially one set in the murky Afghanistan conflict in which the U.S. found itself immersed for more than two decades.

Jake Gyllenhaal knows all about those «Jacked Gyllenhaal» memes. The actor — who is currently in intense UFC training for the upcoming remake — recently sat down with ET's Cassie DiLaura to discuss his new film,, and weigh in on the internet's unquenchable thirst for his movie muscles.«That's a wonderful nickname,» he joked. «It's been an incredible experience and it is [amazing] working with actual real fighters, working with the UFC, reimagining a classic. There's been a lot of the physical [work].»That's not to say that filming was a walk in the park.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Last month, to my great surprise, I raved about a Guy Ritchie movie, “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre,” as an exhilarating exception to the rule of Ritchie’s style-over-substance, more-frosting-than-cake school of crime-thriller grandiloquence. The film bombed, and more critics than not disagreed with me. But I stand by my assessment of “Operation Fortune” as a diabolically entertaining screwball action-espionage caper. If you want to talk about exceptions to the rule, though, that movie has nothing on the new Guy Ritchie film, which is called (wait for it) “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.” Ritchie’s name was reportedly added to the title because there is already a film in existence called “The Covenant.” But that sounds like an awfully thin reason to suddenly convert Ritchie into a marquee legend, and, in fact, there’s a better reason. Against all odds, he has become one of the best directors working. “The Covenant” isn’t another Ritchie underworld caper. It’s an Afghanistan war drama, and if you’re wondering whether he has made a combat film in some version of the Ritchie style (jazzy violence, fast-break comic-strip dialogue, needle drops), the answer is no. He has put his confectionary flamboyance on hold. “The Covenant” unveils something new: Ritchie the contempo classicist. We’re seeing a born-again filmmaker.

Jamie Lee Curtis has labelled herself as “proud AF” of her godson Jake Gyllenhaal ahead of the release of his new film.The pair hit the red carpet together on Monday night, 17 April, and Academy Award winner Jamie, 64, couldn’t help but show her love for the 42 year old frontman. In one photo, Jake and Jamie stood hand in hand at the premiere of his new movie The Covenant – which is due to hit cinemas this Friday. Another snap showed Jamie lovingly planting a kiss on the Southpaw actor’s cheek as he appeared to blush at his godmother’s affection.

Prince Harry's security will be assessed on a “case-by-case basis” amid a “huge policing operation" for King Charles’ Coronation. Policing minister Chris Philp said he hopes the high profile crowning of the King and the Queen Consort Camilla in just over three weeks’ time will be similar in success to the “fantastic” handling of the late Queen’s funeral.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Jake Gyllenhaal is determined to star in another Broadway musical. “There are so many musicals I love so deeply,” Gyllenhaal, who starred in a revival of “Sunday in the Park With George” with Annaleigh Ashford in 2017, told Variety at the Los Angeles premiere of his new action drama “The Covenant” on Monday evening. “At some point, I’ve always loved ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ I’d love to do that.” Gyllenhaal’s godmother, Jamie Lee Curtis, was at “The Covenant” premiere and recalled how the actor was supposed to star as Tevye in a school production of “Fiddler” when he was a high school senior. He left the show when he was offered the lead in the 1999 drama “October Sky.”

EXCLUSIVE: Range Media Partners on Monday announced its signing of award-winning actor, producer, writer and director Ben Foster for management.

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The Vagrant Trilogy, a piece that would later move to New York’s Public Theater and earn the highly coveted New York Times Critic’s Pick. She’s now back at Mosaic for the third professional production of Unseen, a play she describes as “a bit of a thriller.”“It starts with a question, which is ‘How did this American photographer, Mia, end up at the site of a massacre?'” she says. “With her Turkish ex-girlfriend, Derya, the pair piece it together.

King Charles III may be the new monarch, but not even his new power is enough to get his little brother to listen to him!

Queen Elizabeth II wanted both Prince William and Prince Harry to go to war during their service in the military, but it was deemed too dangerous for the Prince of Wales, a former British army head has said.  "It was decided that William as heir to the heir, the risk is too great," retired British army Gen. Sir Mike Jackson said in an upcoming ITV documentary "The Real Crown: Inside the House of Windsor," according to Sky News.