Robert Downey Jr. Honored With Modern Master Award at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2024

The cast of Oppenheimer had a fantastic evening at the 2024 SAG Awards on Saturday (February 24).

Carey Mulligan and Adam Sandler are hitting the red carpet at the 2024 Berlinale International Film Festival.

As we get closer to the Oscars, other awards shows will help us predict who wins the top awards this year and we have the results from the 2024 BAFTAs.

After winning the best supporting actor BAFTA for his performance in “Oppenheimer,” Robert Downey Jr. took to the stage to reflect on his career and shout out “that dude” Christopher Nolan. “When I was 15, I wanted to be Peter O’Toole.

Saoirse Ronan is hitting the red carpet at the 2024 Berlinale International Film Festival.

Claudia Sanchez’s documentary Transmexico took the Audience Choice Award on Saturday at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which revealed winners in its juried categories as it wraps its 39th edition.

Diego Ramos Bechara editor “TransMexico,” “Edge of Everything” and Andragogy” are among the winners of the 39th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The SBIFF, whose mission is to discover and showcase the “best in independent and international cinema,” has become one of the leading film festivals in the United States – attracting roughly 100,000 attendees for a packed week slatted with screenings of over 200+ films. A panel of jury members selected the winners, which included Lesley Chilcott, Alex Keledjian, Chris Landon, Lael Loewenstein, Jacqueline Lyanga, David Magdael, Gail Mancuso, Greg Nava, Pituka Ortega Heilbron, Carla Renata, Gil Robertson, Ondi Timoner, Clay Tweel and Ali Wolfe.

Hunter Schafer is stepping out in Berlin!

Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon are stepping out for the premiere of their new movie!

Variety’s creative director HaleyKluge has been honored by the American Society of Magazine Editors‘ 59th annual National Magazine Awards. She received an ASME NEXT Award for Journalists Under 30, which recognize outstanding achievements by early-career print and digital journalists. Nominated by Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh, Kluge will be honored alongside Vulture’s Rebecca Alter, The Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Gyarkye, New York Magazine’s Isabela Quintero and MIT Technology Review’s Zeyi Yang.

Filmmaking duo Veronika Franz And Severin Fiala, best known Goodnight Mommy, which was Austria’s 2014 entry for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and the Riley Keough-led The Lodge, have signed on to direct the horror feature A Head Full of Ghosts. Production is set to begin later this year.

The Berlin Film Festival kicks off its 74th edition Thursday with the opening-night world premiere screening of Small Things Like These, the Irish drama starring Oscar-nominated Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy. It kicks of 10 days of movie debuts including for ones starring Rooney Mara, Isabelle Huppert, Gael García Bernal, Kristen Stewart and more.

HBO has several highly anticipated titles premiering on its network and Max in 2024, with “True Detective: Night Country” and “Tokyo Vice” Season 2 already bowing. Kate Winslet in “The Regime” is the next big title to drop next month, but after that comes “The Sympathizer,” Park Chan-wook‘s latest foray into TV.

Naman Ramachandran “A Head Full of Ghosts,” an adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s Bram Stoker Award-winning novel, will be directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. The horror feature will be adapted and directed by Franz and Fiala, the filmmaking duo best known for horror-thriller hit, “Goodnight Mommy,” which was selected as Austria’s 2014 Oscar entry, and the Riley Keough-led “The Lodge,” which premiered at Sundance and was acquired by Neon in 2019. Their next film, “The Devil’s Bath,” is competing for the Golden Bear at the ongoing Berlin Film Festival.

Christopher Nolan has responded to Robert Downey Jr.’s recent viral comments, revealing that he was slightly “afraid” of the actor when they first met.The actor – who has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Nolan’s latest movie, Oppenheimer – revealed that he had met with the director in the early ’00s in hopes to play the villain Scarecrow in Batman Begins.Downey shared that Nolan didn’t seem interested in casting the future Iron Man star, saying: “He was polite and all that. But you can tell when someone is kind of like, “It’s not going to go anywhere.’”Now, in an interview with the actor for The New York Times, Nolan has confirmed the story.“I 100 per cent knew you weren’t the guy,” said Nolan, who ultimately went on to cast Cillian Murphy in the role of Scarecrow.“In my head that was already cast.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. made headlines earlier this month when he revealed that he first met his “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan back in the early 2000s in order to nab the role of Scarecrow in the director’s 2005 superhero tentpole “Batman Begins.” Downey said Nolan wasn’t too interested in casting him, which Nolan fully admitted in a recent interview with the actor for The New York Times. “I 100% knew you weren’t the guy [for Scarecrow],” said Nolan, who eventually cast his “Oppenheimer” leading man Cillian Murphy as the Batman villain.

Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, and Billie Eilish seemingly weren’t tuned in for the Super Bowl this year as they had another big event happening!

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Mark Ruffalo has struck again! During a Q&A about his career at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Sunday, the recent Oscar nominee seemed to confirm that he will be reprising his role as the Hulk in Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” Asked by moderator Anne Thompson if he would next appear in the 2025 feature, Ruffalo nodded his head and said, “Yeah.” “Are you allowed to talk about that?” Thompson asked.

Killers Of The Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone has appeared to call out the Kansas City Chiefs for “misrepresentation” of Native American people.The team won last night’s (February 11) Super Bowl LVIII against the San Francisco 49ers, and ahead of the game, Gladstone – who is of Siksikaitsitapi and Nimíipuu heritage – referenced the controversy around the team and the Native American community.Speaking while being honoured at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Virtuosos Awards, the actress reflected on the “long overdue” milestone of becoming the first Native American performer to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award.The star noted that “some of the first filmmakers [and] the first film footage was shot by native people documenting our way of life”.She added: “But that’s a lot of history and a lot of years of exclusion or misrepresentation, and I mean Super Bowl’s tomorrow.

A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.