Soviet Union Showbiz Latest News and Updates

“It really is a show about friendship against the backdrop of espionage,” A Spy Among Friends creator Alexander Cary said at a panel for Deadline’s Contenders TV event. Cary was joined by star Damian Lewis to discuss the MGM+ series.

“Tetris.”Not the game of colorful blocks falling from the sky, but the new feature film about how the rights to “Tetris” were maneuvered out of the former Soviet Union by an American programmer and game developer named Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton). It’s a wild and deeply compelling story, the kind of Cold War caper that is even more incredible because it really happened. (Also, anyone who ever spent time with “Tetris” on the original Game Boy will be even more taken with the story.) Produced by “Kingsman” mastermind Matthew Vaughn, the movie has a decidedly poppy tone and visual aesthetic (embroidered with 8-bit flourishes) that makes it even more fun to watch.

The White House has issued a statement condemning Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich “in the strongest terms,” and is reiterating State Department warnings that U.S. citizens residing or traveling in Russia “should depart immediately.”

, which tells the real-life story of the high-stakes legal battle that took place to secure the rights to the iconic game.In the film, Taron Egerton stars as Henk Rogers, a Dutch video game designer who travels to the Soviet Union in 1989 to meet the game's creator, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov), and attempt to secure handheld rights to the game, so Tetris can be distributed alongside Nintendo's revolutionary new Game Boy system.«I always just feel if you seek to humanize somebody and make them relatable and three-dimensional, then you are doing them the right service,» Egerton says of taking on the role in ET's exclusive behind-the-scenes look at , which also includes interviews with the real-life Rogers and Pajitnov, who recall their first meetings in Russia in a secretive, dimly lit room that «definitely had some KGB guys in there.»«It was strange to watch somebody else be me,» Rogers admitted of watching Egerton, though he praised the actor for doing a «good job.»«Tetris crosses boundaries,» adds Rogers' daughter, Maya, who is now the CEO of Blue Planet Software and managing director of The Tetris Company. «It brings people of all cultures together… Not only is Tetris an amazing game, it was only possible because of this amazing friendship between Henk and Alexey.» premieres March 31 on Apple TV+.

Selome Hailu The world premiere of “Tetris” gave the crowd at South by Southwest a whole new look at Taron Egerton. From Egerton’s first appearance on screen, the Austin audience couldn’t keep quiet, cheering and applauding for his impassioned speeches, dad jokes and 1970s porn-stache. The film, which reveals a political thriller hidden within the history of its titular video game, stars Egerton as video game entrepreneur Henk Rogers. After a simple deal at a Las Vegas electronics convention goes wrong, Rogers finds himself embroiled in overlapping conflicts between every gaming company worth its salt, an English billionaire and the Soviet Union itself, with his life threatened multiple times along the way.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic At last, a video game movie that’s more than just a video game movie. In theory, “Tetris” — that primitive and highly addictive block-stacking strategy game — doesn’t lend itself to the big-screen treatment any more than Rubik’s Cube or Tic-Tac-Toe might. But Noah Pink has found an ingenious solution to a classic puzzle. The screenwriter realized that there’s more to Tetris than most people knew. Namely, there’s a terrific backstory about how this Soviet-hatched computer software made its way over the Iron Curtain, and telling it could play like a Cold War thriller as three teams of Western rivals race one another to Russia to secure the rights.

Axios confirmed to Vanity Fair that Montgomery is no longer with the company but did not elaborate. The news website is based in Arlington, Virginia. It was launched in 2017 by former Politico journalists Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz.Perhaps he should have considered being a journalist, not an activist or propagandist.The email sent from the Florida Department of Education Press Office billed the upcoming DeSantis-hosted event as “exposing the diversity equity and inclusion scam in higher education.” DeSantis has previously called his state “where woke goes to die.” A recent ban of more than 80 titles in Martin County schools that included works by Jodi Picoult, James Patterson and Toni Morrison went into effect earlier this month.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic The story of Kim Philby is perhaps too good to make up. The British spy, a double agent for Moscow, operated at the highest levels of the intelligence community; his ability to disseminate information to the Soviet Union, to which he eventually defected, is proof, perhaps, of the power of personal charm and erudition to cover over what’s lying in plain sight. That’s the powerfully told story of “A Spy Among Friends,” which streamed on ITVX in the United Kingdom last year and which now arrives on nascent streamer MGM+. Guy Pearce plays Philby, who has at the series’ outset been a valued Soviet source for many years; likely his closest friend in tradecraft, Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis), must get a confession from him. We see the pair’s relationship over time in layered flashbacks, adding context and understanding to Elliott’s failure to nail down Philby.

.“These are big shoes for us to fill with our film. I don’t mean to compare our film to what some of our predecessors went through, but it is very moving to be even remotely connected to this history that “All Quiet” has,” Grunert told TheWrap. “We’ve managed to capture something that is obviously horrific, and we tried to come to what we can only imagine is an emotional truth of our main character, and how it could possibly feel to him,” Grunert said.

Paul Mescal has clocked his first Olivier Award nomination for his leading performance in Rebecca Frecknall’s buzzy stage adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Scroll down for the full list of nominees.

Christopher Vourlias Latvian director Viesturs Kairiss, who won the international narrative competition at the Tribeca Film Festival last year with his coming-of-age drama “January,” is prepping his next feature film. “Ulya” is based on the real-life story of Ulyana Semjonova, a girl raised in the Latvian countryside who reaches a height of seven feet and would go on to become a famous professional basketball player. Set in the 1970s in Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, the film follows its titular heroine from the time she leaves the countryside at the age of 14 and travels to Riga to play basketball. Kairiss described that as a “crucial stage” in Semjonova’s life, as her body was undergoing dramatic — and traumatic — changes for a teenage girl, while she also began to learn how to overcome adversity and, through basketball, find her place in life.

Christopher Vourlias When a young Viesturs Kairiss started to dream about becoming a filmmaker thirty-some-odd years ago, he knew his path wouldn’t be straightforward or easy. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, aspiring Latvian directors would have to travel to Moscow or St. Petersburg to enroll in venerable Soviet film schools. After independence, Kairiss was among the first class of graduates from the newly launched film studies program at the Latvian Academy of Culture, one of many ways in which the small Baltic republic attempted to assert its own identity after half a century of Soviet rule. “We didn’t have any technique,” Kairiss admits of he and his film school peers, laughing. For his first feature film, “Leaving by the Way” (2001), he enlisted friends for below-the-line work and recruited actors from the local theater school. When the film bowed in the Crystal Globe competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, it was the culmination of what he describes as “a totally crazy, passionate journey” for a group of filmmakers laboring in an industry that didn’t truly exist.

The first trailer for Apple’s “Tetris” film has been released. The film depicts the incredible true tale of the battle for the rights to Alexey Pajitnov’s iconic game between Western publishers, Nintendo and the Soviet Union.

Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights from Participant to “A Compassionate Spy,” the new documentary from Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “Life Itself”). The film, which world premiered at the Venice Film Festival ahead of its North American launch at Telluride, is a real-life spy story about Manhattan Project physicist Ted Hall, who provided nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, told through the perspective of his wife Joan, who protected his secret for decades. Magnolia will release the film in theaters later this year. “A Compassionate Spy” is presented by Participant and is a Mitten Media and Kartemquin Films production produced by Mark Mitten p.g.a., Dave Lindorff, and Steve James. Executive producers are Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Tim Horsburgh and Gordon Quinn.

EXCLUSIVE: Writer-director Aysulu Onaran (Balaban) has wrapped principal photography on her latest feature film, Rebirth Island. The film is a historical spy thriller based on true events from the Cold War.

First-Look Image From Kiah Roache-Turner’s ‘Sting,’ Cornerstone Inks DealsProduction has wrapped in Sydney, Australia, on Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting. Cornerstone is handling worldwide sales and distribution on the pic. Studiocanal has inked a deal to release in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Benelux. Additional deals include Lucky Red (Italy), Diamond Films (Latin America, Spain, Portugal), Nordisk (Scandinavia), Kinoswiat (Poland), Pasatiempo Pictures (Baltics, CIS), Karantanija (Ex-Yogoslavia), Italia (Middle East), Filmfinity (South Africa) and Terry Steiner International (airlines). The film synopsis reads: One cold, stormy night in New York City, a mysterious object falls from the sky and smashes through the window of a rundown apartment building. It is an egg, and from this egg emerges a strange little spider… Check out the first image from the pic above.

Christopher Vourlias Alexander Rodnyansky, the Oscar-nominated producer behind “Leviathan” and “Loveless,” has boarded “The Dissident,” a Cold War drama that follows a former Ukrainian resistance fighter trying to rebuild his life after his release from a Soviet prison camp. The film marks the fiction feature debut of directors Andriy Alferov, a renowned Ukrainian film critic, and Stas Gurenko, a veteran commercial and music video director. Rodnyansky is producing alongside Oleksandr Omelyanov. Set in 1960s Ukraine, at a time when many in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc were re-evaluating the socialist system, pic follows Oleg, a former soldier in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought against both Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union for Ukrainian independence during World War II. After an amnesty deal is reached, Oleg is released from prison camp and returns to Ukraine, where he tries but fails to find his place in peacetime society.

EXCLUSIVE: The career of John Madden will be the subject of a limited series to be directed by Gavin O’Connor, and written by Alex Sohn (Vegas). In the huddle on the telling the life story of the Hall of Fame Raiders head coach, groundbreaking broadcaster and video game icon are Todd Lieberman’s Hidden Pictures, Lit Entertainment Group’s Adam Kolbrenner, Religion of Sports’ Gotham Chopra, Ryan Stowell, and Tom Brady’s 199 Productions.

EXCLUSIVE: Lance Bass, a member of pop group NSYNC and a trained Russian cosmonaut, is hosting a new podcast series about space.

Indiana Jones is returning to screens next year with the fifth instalment to the action adventure franchise.

EXCLUSIVE: Svetlana Efremova (The Americans) has been cast as a series regular in the upcoming fourth season of Apple TV+’s space drama series For All Mankind.

Vladimir Putin has approved a secret deal for Scotch whisky to be smuggled into Russia –avoiding an exports ban.

EXCLUSIVE: Salvador Chacón (Mayans M.C.) has joined the cast of Apple’s for Season 4 in a recurring role. He will portray Gerardo, one of Miles’ (Toby Kebbell) bunkmates on Mars.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Limonero Films, an independent boutique distributor of factual programming and documentaries, is launching a selection of documentaries and factual entertainment series at the Mipcom TV market. The titles are “Women Behind the Wheel,” produced by Dartmouth Films in the U.K., the wildlife titles “Wild Icons of Iberia” and “Heroines of the Savannah,” both by Azor Productions in Spain, “The Baby Makers,” from Mediacorp in Singapore, and “Shepherds of the Earth,” by Guerrilla Films in Finland. In “Women Behind the Wheel,” two 22 year-olds drive 3,500 miles along the Pamir highway to meet the women of Central Asia coping with the changes in their society since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

EXCLUSIVE: Maria Mashkova (McMafia) and Dimiter Marinov (Green Book) have joined the upcoming fourth season of Apple TV+’s space drama series For All Mankind in key recurring roles.

Netflix hit series ‘Inventing Anna’ said she got “exactly what I wanted” after being released from prison to house arrest in a Manhattan apartment. Anna Sorokin, 31, conned her way into New York’s high society by posing as a socialite with a £59 million fortune, culminating in a 2019 prison sentence for swindling US banks, hotels, and friends. Known as Anna Delvey, she collected investment for a planned members-only arts club, but funds were instead used to bankroll her luxury life of five-star hotels, private jet flights, and designer clothes - all inspiring the hit Netflix series starring Julia Garner and Anna Chlumsky.

Oscars.The Russian film academy announced the decision on Monday (September 26) in a statement (via the Guardian), which reads: “The presidium of the Film Academy of Russia has decided not to nominate a national film for the Oscars award of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2022.”According to Variety, several members of Russia’s Oscar nomination committee, including chairman Pavel Tchoukhrai, have resigned following the decision.In a letter published by state news agency Tass, the chairman blamed the Russian film academy for taking an “unilateral decision over the head of the committee” and described it as “unfair and illegal”.This is the first time the country has boycotted the Oscars since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It comes as tensions between Russia and the US rise over the country’s war on Ukraine, which started in February this year.As noted by Variety, some members of Russia’s Oscar committee resigned when the war started earlier this year.

Hong Kong has selected the crime thriller Where the Wind Blows as its official submission to this year’s International Feature Oscar race.

An exceptional and, one might venture, unprecedented group of politicians, diplomats, policy wonks, elected officials and veteran Washington insiders expound on the effectiveness of international military intervention—and the lack thereof—in The Corridors of Power. Israeli director Dror Moreh made one of the great political documentaries of recent times in The Gatekeepers (2012), as well as the excellent The Human Factor (2019), and this time he has assembled an all-star cast of more than 30 political heavyweights including Henry Kissinger, Hilary Clinton, George Shultz, Madeleine Albright and Condoleeza Rice, who in deep, original interviews, help to build a picture of how and why the best intentions can come unglued. The film deserves to be seen in any and all venues by audiences interested in the state of the world and clarity about how we got here.

Trinidad Barleycorn Founded more than 25 years ago by Manuel Catteau, independent French producer and distributor ZED has become over the years a major player in the documentary field. At TV market Unifrance Rendez-vous in Biarritz, ZED revealed to Variety the acquisition of three ambitious history documentary projects, which are available for presales. “Ukraine 1933: Seeds of Hunger,” a documentary by Guillaume Ribot, produced by Les Films Du Poisson for France Télévisions, recalls the tragedy experienced by Ukrainians between 1931 and 1933: the Holodomor, the great famine organized by Stalin to punish those who refused the collectivization of the countryside and communist ideology, resulted in the deaths of more than 4 million of them.

Anne Garrels, longtime foreign correspondent for NPR, died of lung caner on Wednesday, the network announced.

In a 2003 interview, though, Garrels promised she was not a “war junkie.” “I didn’t set out to be a war correspondent,” she said. “The wars kept happening.”Garrels reported from locations including the Soviet Union, Tiananmen Square, Bosnia, Chechnya, the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Christopher Vourlias The pursuit of justice in the wake of unspeakable war crimes is at the heart of Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s timely new feature, “The Kiev Trial.” Produced by Atoms & Void for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, the film had its world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. The trailer can be viewed below. Held in January 1946 in the former Soviet Union, the film’s titular trial was among the first court cases to hold Nazis and their collaborators accountable for atrocities committed during World War II — acts that would come to be known as “crimes against humanity” during the historic tribunals held in Nuremberg, Germany.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Just before director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming “Oppenheimer” plants a fixed image of Ted Hall in the popular imagination, along comes Steve James’s sensitive, studious documentary “A Compassionate Spy” to preemptively set any records straight. Unpacking the life and work of the prodigious teenage Manhattan Project physicist who passed key information about the endeavor to the Soviet Union — cuing an adulthood dogged by suspicion and secrecy — the film demonstrates its director’s characteristic nose for strong material and knack for gripping, straightforward storytelling. If the filmmaking is more televisual than in James’s best work, with its flourishes limited to some unnecessary dramatized passages, that should be no impediment to “A Compassionate Spy” commanding a sizable audience on multiple platforms. 

Manori Ravindran International Editor High-profile espionage cases in the post-war period often invoke the grisly fate of the Rosenbergs, the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed by electric chair for sharing atomic secrets with the Soviet Union in peace time. But in the new documentary “A Compassionate Spy,” filmmaker Steve James tells the incredible story of Manhattan Project scientist Ted Hall, who shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia — and got away with it. The Participant and Kartemquin Films-produced documentary, which has its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 2, is one of a number of films at this year’s festival that tackle the topic of nuclear disaster: Projects from Noah Baumbach’s feature adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” through to Oliver Stone’s on-the-nose documentary “Nuclear” all contemplate some aspect of our nuclear past and future.

Mikhail Gorbachev in 1984, when he led a Russian parliamentary delegation to Britain. She hosted him at Chequers, and the tense atmosphere led Gorbachev to tell Thatcher he had no intentions of trying to recruit her to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. She broke into a fit of laughter, in Gorbachev's retelling, and the pair soon found that they could engage in "real political dialogue" despite their opposing views.