Oscars: Class Warfare and Culture Clashes Fuel International Feature Film Race

Hibs boss Jack Ross was delighted to see his in-form front pairing of Christian Doidge and Marc McNulty both on target against Ross County, but expects them to get even better as time goes on.

MADRID — Not resting on his laurels after a whirlwind year promoting and exhibiting his latest Oscar-nominated feature, “Pain and Glory,” Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has designs to get back behind the camera soon with two English-language projects, marking the first time in his decades-long career the director will film in the language.

By Nancy Tartaglione

Sunday’s Oscars ceremony had the biggest names in Hollywood take the stage to be recognized for their contribution in last year’s best films. Golden statuettes were handed out in 24 categories including Best Picture, Best Actress and, of course, Best Actor, for which Antonio Banderas received a nomination for his performance in Pedro Almodóvar film Pain and Glory.

Sixty years. That’s how long a Louisiana judge sentenced Rob Richardson to serve for armed bank robbery. Garrett Bradley covers more than a third of that term in “Time,” and the cumulative impact — boiled down into an open-minded and deeply empathetic 81 minutes — will almost certainly rewire how Americans think about the prison-industrial complex.

For female filmmakers in the industry, this year’s round of Oscar nominations – in which acclaimed female-helmed films such as “Hustlers” and “The Farewell” were shut out in place of male-directed Best Picture nominees predominantly centred on stories of white men – told a frustratingly familiar story. But in the Academy’s non-fiction branch, a different narrative was being written.

By Nancy Tartaglione

If there's one thing that Jimmy Fallon has taught us over the years, it's that he's game for anything, even if that's trying to keep up with fitness icon John Cena in about five different sports. The 45-year-old Tonight Show host does just that in the 2020 Super Bowl commercial for Michelob Ultra.

While U.S. attention in recent years has focused on the supposed hordes of “invading” illegal immigrants seeking to cross the southern border, “Identifying Features” is about a separate but related concern: The alarming if unknowable number of those immigrants who go missing, often robbed, kidnapped and/or killed, before they ever reach our soil.

By Antonia Blyth

Antonio Banderas will ensure his shoes are broken in properly before attending the 2020 Academy Awards next month.

Movie spies typically fall into one of two categories. There are the butterflies — flamboyant secret agents like James Bond or “Atomic Blonde” who behave as conspicuously as possible.

Enderby Entertainment is developing a feature film based on Melissa Fay Greene’s civil rights drama “Praying for Sheetrock,” Variety has learned exclusively.

Why stay in your lane when you can veer into other roadways with your own turbo-charged vehicles? With “A Fall from Grace,” mogul Tyler Perry swerves back and forth between his usual woman-centered melodrama and a quasi-thriller. Shot over just five days in late 2019, the writer-director-actor’s first made-for-Netflix feature hits trademark beats that might satisfy loyalists but are sure to make others wince or opt out.