Vietnam Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Taking to his Instagram, eldest child Zak wrote: "Happy 72nd Dad! Was remembering how much I used to love that look you'd give."

Robin Williams’ kids are paying tribute to their late father, on what would have been his 72nd birthday.

It was a major win for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team as they made their debut at the 2023 Women’s World Cup and a record-breaking win for U.S. networks airing the championship.

Robin Williams' children honored the late actor on what would have been his 72nd birthday. On Friday, the "Mrs. Doubtfire" star's son Zak, 40, and daughter Zelda, 33, shared touching tributes to their father on social media.  "Happy 72nd Dad! Was remembering how much I used to love that look you'd give," Zak captioned a photo of Williams from his 1987 war comedy "Good Morning America." He continued, "That look with a mischievous, loving grin that your friends and loved ones knew so well.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor A dominant 3-0 win by the U.S. Women’s National Team helped the Women’s World Cup get off to a strong start for Fox Sports and Telemundo on Friday night. Viewership of the USA-Vietnam match, which aired at 9 p.m. ET, came in just shy of the record set in 2019 by a comparable Group Stage match. The Fox broadcast network brought in 5.26 million viewers for its live 9 p.m.-11 p.m. ET coverage of the game, held at Eden Park stadium in Auckland, New Zealand. Telemundo, which has Spanish-language rights in the U.S., averaged 1 million viewers for the game across linear and digital platforms, including Peacock. The 2023 Women’s World Cup, hosted by Australia and New Zealand, is drawing heightened attention in the U.S. as Team USA pursues a historic third consecutive victory. The tournament runs through Aug. 20.

2023 FIFA Women's World Cup is underway. The biggest international tournament in women's soccer is being co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand this year. For the first time, 32 teams — eight more than the previous edition held in France — will face off for the coveted FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 trophy.The USA women's team won their first match on Friday, July 21 against the Vietnam soccer team. The U.S.

Georgia Stanway’s penalty helped a disjointed England overcome Haiti and make a winning start to their World Cup campaign.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In America today, no one has a lock on conspiracy theory. It has become the air we breathe, the Kool-Aid we drink, the rabbit-hole ideology that defines too many of us. Yet conspiracy theories come in different shapes and sizes. Many are false, some are true. Many are bat-house crazy, some are more than plausible. All, in one way or another, work as metaphors: for the forces (within government, corporations, whatever) that collude in hiding things from us, for the sinister tantalizing truth that we aren’t allowed to see. “They Cloned Tyrone” is a slow-burn inner-city sci-fi nightmare thriller, one that plays off the spirit of conspiracy theory that has often thrived — with justification — within Black culture. The Tuskegee experiment was a conspiracy that happened; its horrific impact on the hearts and minds of African-Americans is beyond measure. And in the 1970s, the belief that the CIA, linked by the war in Vietnam to the Golden Triangle (the source of most of the world’s heroin), was dumping drugs into America’s inner cities was a notion that gained currency, culminating a decade later in the theory that the CIA was the hidden force behind the crack epidemic.

Whitney Friedlander The Improv turns 60 this year and, despite the spontaneity that the name might suggest, there’s a methodical plan to grow the comedy organization.  In 1963, founder Budd Friedman opened the first location in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, envisioning the defunct Vietnamese restaurant with a brick wall as a gathering place for Broadway talent. Comedians soon gravitated to the spot as a place to try out new material and talent scouts followed. While the original location shuttered in the 1990s, the brand itself is stronger than ever, boasting 25 clubs in 20 cities, including the Hollywood Improv on Melrose Avenue.  

The highly anticipated "Barbie" movie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is in theaters now, but there have been multiple controversies leading up to the film’s release. After years in development, with different writers and stars attached, including comedian Amy Schumer and Oscar-winner Diablo Cody, the film went into production with Robbie starring as the iconic doll. But as soon as the first full trailer for the movie arrived, controversies began to stir.

An anti-Ted Cruz political action committee has released an ad trolling the Texas Republican senator for obsessing over what he claims are hidden messages in the Barbie movie rather than more pressing political issues.The “Lose Cruz” PAC’s ad mocks the senator’s obsession with culture-war issues — both real and imagined — by unveiling a collection of “Cruz-inspired Barbie dolls” mocking Cruz’s past actions, statements, or political positions.The three Cruz-inspired dolls featured in the video show an “Insurrection Barbie”, with included a “Stop the Steal” button and podium to speak from as you attempt to “destroy democracy,” a “MAGA Podcaster Barbie” to help “promote the MAGA agenda” — a nod to Cruz’s own political podcast — and a “Cancun Barbie,” referring to the time when Cruz left Texas to vacation in Cancun while millions of Texans were left without power and water following a historic winter storm.Cruz recently branded the Barbie movie as Chinese propaganda for a scene in the movie depicting a cartoonish map of the world, displaying a dashed line through the water surrounding the map’s crudely-drawn Asian continent. Some have argued that the line is meant to represent the so-called “nine-dash line,” which Chinese propagandists have drawn on maps in order to lay claim to disputed territory in the South China Sea that other nations say does not belong to China. The controversy over the imaginary map led Vietnam, which has an ongoing conflict with China over where their maritime borders begin and end, to ban the film.

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team is safe after a mass shooting in Auckland, New Zealand, resulted in multiple casualties.

Lester Holt is taking NBC Nightly News to Alaska next week for a special broadcast that will focus on the U.S. defense against foreign aircraft and missile threats amid tensions with Russia and China.

Pink’s latest tribute has her floating on cloud nine.

Netflix has announced a second feature film with Indonesian action director Timo Tjahjanto, The Shadow Strays, starring a large ensemble cast of popular young actors. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean TV series and films are increasing still further their hold on streaming audiences across East Asia. They accounted for half of viewing time in the first half of the year, according to new third-party research. Korean-made premium VOD content captured 50% of SVOD viewership and 42% of freemium viewership between January and June 2023, with a record 58 million VOD users tuning in nine East Asian territories (Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam), according to Singapore-based research and consultancy firm Media Partners Asia. The analysis is based on the measured media consumption activity of 40,000 Asia Pacific consumers, conducted by AMPD, the analysis firm’s sister company.

FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 is finally here!After waiting four long years, the 2023 Women's World Cup kicks off with the first matches Thursday, July 20th. The biggest international tournament in women's soccer will be played across Australia and New Zealand. Who will win the World Cup trophy and a substantial cash prize? We can't wait to watch and find out!The USA women's team plays their first match on Friday, July 21 against the Vietnam soccer team.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. The 2023 Women’s World Cup in Sydney and Australia kicks off on Thursday, July 20, and this year’s tournament has the potential to be one of the most entertaining events in the game’s 32-year history. It’s the first time that 32 teams will compete for the world title, with more than half of the field as serious title contenders: most notably, the U.S who has the opportunity to three-peat, England off the back of a Euros 2022 win and Australia, whose striker Sam Kerr is one of the best players on the field and arguably the face of this year’s tournament. Eyes will also be on the U.S team since star player Megan Rapinoe announced she’s retiring later this year, making this the last major tournament she’s likely to ever play.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic It’s hard to know who “Superpowered” is for. The newly rebranded streamer Max presents a three-part documentary on the history and impact of DC Comics — not coincidentally, an intellectual-property concern with films like “Won-der Woman” and “Aquaman” that are made by Max corporate sibling Warner Bros. “Superpowered,” coming in the midst of a yearlong celebratory jag as Warner Bros. marks its 100th anniversary, is too superficial to satisfy core fans, but so automatically assumes viewer buy-in that it won’t create any new converts. Directed by Leslie Iwerks and Mark Catalena and narrated by Rosario Dawson, “Superpowered” follows an odd structure, where a linear march through the history of a company that began in the 1930s is studded with promotional interviews for recent endeavors. We jump from footage of the campy late-1960s “Batman” TV show to an interview with director Matt Reeves discussing his 2022 film “The Batman” back to the ’60s. Dawson intones over footage of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights-era protests that, given national turmoil, “the DC characters seemed tone-deaf.” And the spirit of tone-deafness is kept alive by such transitions.

@Acyn) pic.twitter.com/2iSWU9UwMzSo for those who might have slept through history class, Lyndon B. Johnson, popularly known as LBJ, was president from 1963-1969 (he became president after John F.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Specialty distributor, Trinity CineAsia is releasing China’s summer blockbuster “Lost in the Stars” in the U.K and Ireland on some 30 screens from Friday. “I was fortunate to watch the film when it opened in China and once I saw it I just knew we had to have it,” said Cedric Behrel “‘Lost In The Stars’ is a very clever, uncanny thrill of a ride that harks back to classic Hitchcock and any noteworthy thriller since – the master himself had in fact once optioned the rights to the same story. We organized the fastest turnaround premiere known to man and we’ve been delighted by the reactions to the early previews. It epitomizes the best of what new Chinese cinema can bring to audiences.”

Lana Condor’s beauty evolution was a voyage of self-discovery as she grew up with a mom who “looks completely different than I do.” 

Barbie film to be shown in the country’s cinemas, but have asked Hollywood distributors to blur the lines on a child-like drawing of a world map, which allegedly shows China’s disputed maritime claims.The film about the Mattel doll – directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling – is set to open in the south-east Asian nation on July 19.The censors began examining Barbie last week after Vietnam reportedly banned the film over scenes featuring a map showing the so-called nine-dash line, which China uses to justify its claim to the South China Sea.Beijing claims territorial ownership over almost the entire South China Sea, despite rival claims from other south-east Asian countries, including the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.However, after “meticulous” scrutiny of the film, Philippine censors were satisfied that the “cartoonish map” did not depict the nine-dash line.“Instead, the map portrayed the route of the make-believe journey of Barbie from Barbie Land to the ’real world’, as an integral part of the story,” the censorship board said (via The Guardian).“Rest assured that the board has exhausted all possible resources in arriving at this decision as we have not hesitated in the past to sanction filmmakers/ producers/distributors for exhibiting the fictitious ’nine-dash line’ in their materials.”Despite being satisfied, the censors have still asked Hollywood studio Warner Bros. to “blur” the controversial lines on the map.

Barbie won’t be banned in the Philippines after all, following a week-long review by local censors and government officials, although a scene with a controversial map of the South China Sea might be blurred for release.

The upcoming “Barbie” movie has been approved a commercial release in the Philippines after the country conducted “two review sessions and consultations with relevant government agencies,” as per a statement from the country’s Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) via Variety. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” has been allowed a commercial release in the Philippines, following a review by the country’s film censors. However, the scene that shows a controversial map may have to be blurred. The film was last week banned in Vietnam over its inclusion of a scene with a map alleged to show the ‘nine dash line’ by which China lays claim to nearly all of the South China Sea as its own territory. Vietnam says that China’s claims violate its sovereignty and that films and TV shows must not show the illegal map. On Monday, Vietnam banned Chinese series “Flight to You” for showing the map in multiple episodes.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Melbourne International Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, with “Shayda,” by Australian-Iranian director Noora Niasari, set as the opening title. The festival will run as a live event August 3-20, at venues around the city and its suburbs, and online Aug 18 – 27. The hybrid format was developed during the COVID pandemic and MIFF found it useful as a tool to reach further away audiences and wider demographics than a strictly in-theater edition. The ‘Bright Horizons’ competition section open to films by first- or second-time feature directors contains an 11-title mix of new and recently-debuted works.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Global streaming platform Netflix has removed the Chinese-produced drama series “Flight to You” from its service in Vietnam. The Vietnamese government banned the series on similar grounds to its objection to the upcoming Warner Bros. film “Barbie.” “As a result of the Vietnamese regulator banning elements of the series, we have removed ‘Flight to You’ from Netflix in Vietnam. It remains available on our service in other markets,” a Netflix spokesperson told Variety in an emailed statement. Both “Barbie” and “Flight to You” are understood to have included scenes that show a map of the South China Sea that depicts the “nine dash line” that represents China’s territorial claim to almost all of the area. Vietnam says that use of the map violates its sovereignty and that it will not tolerate the “nine dash line” in film and TV.

Marta Balaga Photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková – no stranger to Prague’s nightlife in the 1970s and 80s, as depicted in upcoming documentary “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be” – has already earned comparisons to a certain American icon. “Libuše had this big exhibition in France in 2019 and on the radio they said: ‘She is like Nan Goldin of Czechoslovakia,’” says producer Lukáš Kokeš. Klára Tasovská directs. Recently, Goldin has been the subject of Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” “The very first time we pitched this project, our tutor, ‘Navalny’s’ editor Maya Daisy Hawke, said: ‘That’s funny. My husband [Joe Bini] is actually editing a film about Goldin next door,’” laughs Kokeš.

Warner Bros. Film Group said in the statement.

Far-right conservative preacher Kent Christmas asked God to “loose a Holy judgment” on the upcoming Barbie movie because it is “full of transsexual and transgender and homosexuality.”Posted on June 25, a now-viral video shows the Tennessee-based Christmas saying, “I curse in the name of the Lord this new Barbie movie that has been released full of transsexual and transgender and homosexuality in the name of the Lord. May God loose a judge, may God loose a Holy judgment.

Warner Bros. is speaking out and defending their upcoming movie, Barbie, following it getting banned in Vietnam.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Kino Lorber has picked up North American rights to Pham Thien An’s debut feature “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.” The Vietnamese drama appeared in Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight section and was winner of the Camera d’Or. The company plans a theatrical release as well as a digital and home video releases on all major platforms after the film makes multiple stops on the international film festival circuit. “The sudden death of his sister-in-law brings unexpected responsibilities to Thien (Le Phong Vu), who is reluctantly tasked with bringing his five-year-old nephew Dao to their countryside hometown. On the road, Thien is drawn into a search for his long missing older brother, haunted and spurred forward by a series of sublime dreams that reignite suppressed memories, forbidden desires, and specters of his own youth. What began as a journey home becomes a pilgrimage marked by visual splendor and mystical overtones, a quest for understanding and certainty in a Vietnam that seems unable to provide any clear answers. As Thien battles with his own existential question of what is worth living for, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell interrogates the persistence and complexity of faith, not only in the spiritual but in the delicate beauty of earthly existence,” said Kino Lorber by way of a long synopsis.

"Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" star Karen Allen was hoping her final bow in the franchise with Harrison Ford would be a little bigger than what audiences saw. But the actress is grateful she appeared in the final movie.  In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Allen explained changes with the story after Steven Spielberg stepped down from directing.

Billie Eilish has announced the release date and title of her new song for the forthcoming Barbie soundtrack.The ‘Happier Than Ever’ singer took to social media to reveal that she is one of the featured artists contributing to the highly anticipated film’s soundtrack. Eilish shared that the upcoming song ‘What Was I Made For?’ will make listeners “sob”.To announce the song, the 21-year-old singer shared a photo on Instagram of the Barbie logo with the track’s title written above it.

Indiana Jones franchise, “Dial of Destiny,” finally swung its way into theaters late last month.While series stars such as Harrison Ford and John Rhys-Davies came back for large portion of the action-adventure flick, one returning alum only had a sliver of time on the silver screen.Karen Allen — who portrays Indy’s longtime love Marion Ravenwood — made a quick, blink-and-you-missed-it cameo appearance at the end of the 154-minutes-long movie.The 71-year-old got candid with the Hollywood Reporter recently and expressed her disappointment with her lack of camera time.She previously had larger parts in 2008’s “Crystal Skull” and 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”Allen admitted that when she read the script for “Dial of Destiny,” she had expected that she would play a major role.However, she noted that it “was just not the direction” that the producers decided to go with.In the franchise, Marion and Indy have a son together, named Mutt Williams. Mutt was played by Shia LaBeouf in “Crystal Skull” and did not return for the latest film in the series.LaBeouf’s character actually died before the movie’s events (which occurred in the late 1960s).Allen explained how the filmmakers had issues with the story because LaBeouf, 37, was not making a comeback, and they had the character killed off-screen in the Vietnam War.