Searchlight Pictures Returns, With Kudos From Disney CFO; Plus ‘Moonage Daydream’, ‘God’s Country’, ‘The Silent Twins’ – Specialty Preview

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) today announced the establishment of its first LED virtual production stage, located at Sony Innovation Studios in Culver City. With LED virtual production transforming the way film and television are made, the new stage is the world’s largest using Sony’s high brightness and wide color gamut Crystal LED display panels. The panels were created in collaboration with top engineers at SPE for use in virtual production. The establishment of this LED stage allows Sony Innovation Studios (SIS) to expand its virtual production workflow across various entertainment platforms and seamlessly merge the real and virtual worlds with its Atom View technology and proprietary stage-integration software.

Jack Grealish has spoken about the prospect of making his World Cup debut later this year.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Twenty years before “Moonage Daydream” was a sprawling documentary film about David Bowie‘s life and art, it was a massive photo book focusing on his Ziggy Stardust years, with photos by Mick Rock — his exclusive photographer at the time — and an introduction and commentary written by both of them. The limited-edition book was snapped up quickly and for years has fetched horrifying prices on the secondary market. But original publisher Genesis Books — which specializes in such state-of-the-art photography books — is releasing a 20th anniversary edition of the book today (Oct. 4, 2022). Where the film focuses on Bowie’s entire life, the book is entirely about the rise and fall of the Ziggy Stardust character in 1972 and 1973 — “Eighteen months, that’s all it was,” Bowie writes in the book. Alongside over 600 photographs taken by Rock, Bowie’s provides commentary on the creation and proliferation of the character that, in no understatement, changed rock music.

summer holidays everyone knew my father had died and was terribly nice to me, but I felt being singled out like that was somehow incredibly embarrassing. So it was very nice to go to another school and start again. St Mary’s Convent Ascot, as it was called at that time – it’s now St Mary’s School, Ascot – is where my mother had gone and her sister, too.

EXCLUSIVE:  The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos and Searchlight Pictures are looking to stay in business with each other as the studio is greenlighting his next film AND. Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley are set to star. With a script developed by Element Pictures and Film4 and penned by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, the film is produced by Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element, along with Kasia Malipan and Lanthimos.

EXCLUSIVE: Legally Blonde and The House Bunny screenwriters Karen McCullah and Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith are set to write the romantic comedy I Do… Not for Amazon Studios and Di Bonaventura Pictures.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Rachel Zoe, Julie Plec and Jennifer Salke will be honored at this year’s Barbara Berlanti Heroes Gala. Zoe will be presented with the Vanguard Award and Plec will receive the Barbara Berlanti Hero Award. The Humanitarian Award will go to Salke. The event, taking place Oct. 1 at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica and chaired by Greg Berlanti and Robbie Rogers, will include musical performances by Tori Kelly, En Vogue and The Scarlet Opera. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit Fuck Cancer. The guest list includes Aisha Tyler, Azie Tesfai, Daniel Ezra, David Ramsey, Hailey Bieber, Jesse L. Martin, Kheng Hua Tan, Lily Cowles, Maz Jobrani, Michael Trevino, Misha Collins, Olivia Liang, Peter Facinelli, Sara Foster, Taylor Zakhar Perez, TR Knight, Tzi Mai, Yasha Jackson and Yvonne Chapman.

Tom McCarthy, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s executive vice president of postproduction services, is retiring from his role after a career spanning three decades with the studio. Kimberly Jimenez will now be promoted to fill his shoes in a new role as senior vice president of postproduction services at the studio. The news was shared in a note with staff on Thursday from Jon Hookstratten, EVP of Administration & Operations.

Giving other outlets a shoutout isn't really the done thing when it comes to entertainment journalism, but when it comes to TikTok star Grace Keeling (or GK Barry as she's otherwise known)'s Saving Grace podcast we can't rave about it or her enough; namely because the Love Island tea this queen manages to extract from Islanders lulled into a false sense of security is always PIPING and MESSY.Her latest guest was Love Island 2022 queen of queens Indiyah Polack, who came in fourth place with boyfriend Dami Hope – and who is on par with Grace when it comes to being a consistent content ICON – so naturally, after an hour in Grace's chair, there was GOSS.After a long chat about life after Love Island with Dami, Love Island producers and the girls flashing their boobs to keep tea-spilling off air (love it) – and a couple of silver tequila shots – the topic of controversial Love Island finalist Luca Bish arose.Towards the end of the latest episode of Saving Grace, Grace asked Indiyah an array of fan questions including, "Was Luca as bad as he seemed [on Love Island]?"Indiyah admitted that she hasn't watched any of the show back, but she's naturally aware of how Luca was perceived by many during the summer series.She admitted, “Luca isn’t awful."He’s just a f-cking wind up and he knows it and he loves it.”In other words, he's a real-life panto villain who gets off on booing, so keep booing, boos.Naturally, Grace brought up his dramatic apology to Tasha Ghouri – after countless fans, including Gemma Owen's mum, accused him of bullying her on the show – and asked Indiyah whether the apology was producer-led.

Roy Trakin Brett Morgen’s “Moonage Daydream,” a freewheeling documentary about David Bowie, doesn’t offer a chronology of the life of the late pop icon. Rather it provides a fever dream of sound and vision, with songs torn apart, reimagined and reassembled in ways that reflect its subject’s chameleonic music and art. The doc, out now in IMAX theaters, was a labor of love for Morgen that took four years to assemble and edit. It was another 18 months constructing the ambitious soundtrack, which required the talents of the Oscar-winning “Bohemian Rhapsody” team of Ventura, Calif.-based rerecording mixer Paul Massey (with David Giammarco); London-based supervising sound and music editor John Warhurst and supervising sound editor Nina Hartstone; and Dolby Atmos Music Studios.

At this point, we’ve all seen enough documentaries about 20th-century musical geniuses that the average viewer could direct one in their sleep: archival footage of the greatest-hits performances, behind-the-scenes clips showing the snatches of solitary humanity underneath the currents of history, and some interviews with loved ones and collaborators that go beyond the image to a subject’s vulnerable core. Tried-and-true as the template might be, Brett Morgen also finds it fatally boring, and endeavors to chart a less clear-cut path with his films.

Brett Morgen’s kaleidoscopic ode to David Bowie landed at no 10 in North America this weekend, singing up $1.225 million on 170 screens – exclusively Imax (159 U.S. locations, 11 in Canada).

Moonage Daydream, a film about David Bowie, opens with “Hallo Spaceboy,” a deep cut from his 1995 album Outside. It’s clear from the use of this song that Brett Morgen isn’t making a traditional documentary about the Thin White Duke.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor The first thing to know before seeing “Moonage Daydream,” Brett Morgen’s dazzling, exhaustive and exhausting memoir of David Bowie’s life and career, is that it assumes the viewer already knows a lot about the subject — his relevance, his influence, the brilliance of so much of his music, and the basics of his personal history. Like another recent historical film about an oft-trodden subject — Todd Haynes’ “The Velvet Underground” — it eschews the standard, chronological, done-to-death “Behind the Music”-style template that has become a predictable default for music documentaries and finds a dramatically different way to tell the story. In the case of “Moonage Daydream” — the significance of the second word of the title in this impressionistic film cannot be overemphasized — that different way is to let the man himself do all of the talking: Literally the only voiceovers heard in this 135-minute-long film are from Bowie (presenting real or conveniently fictionalized accounts of his life and work) and various interviewers. While that makes for an unusually free-form approach to structuring a documentary (and was enormously challenging for Morgen, who worked on the film for over four years and suffered a heart attack while doing it), in many ways it’s freeing: Instead of a rigid timeline or forced, overarching theme dictating the narrative, Bowie’s words do.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor  September 15, 2022 1:30 pm Bylines:By Pat Saperstein Brett Morgen went through a lot to make “Moonage Daydream.” It takes certain amount of obsession to capture on film the essence of the life of David Bowie, the shapeshifting music visionary, artist and actor. For Morgen, known for his work exploring another singular artist with “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,” as well as “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and “Jane,” crafting the first authorized Bowie documentary was a nearly seven-year process. Until it was time to create the encompassing sound mix with help from Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, he worked mostly alone, weathering both the pandemic and a serious heart attack.

Naman Ramachandran “Vikram Vedha,” starring Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan and Radhika Apte, is releasing worldwide in over 100 countries, making it one of the widest openings for a Bollywood film. Besides India, the film is releasing in territories where Bollywood films normally release day-and-date, including North America, U.K., the Middle East and Australia and New Zealand, on Sept. 30. What is remarkable is that the film is also releasing day-and-date in countries where Bollywood fare releases after it has had its initial run in the traditional territories. “Vikram Vedha” is opening across 22 countries in Europe and 27 countries in Africa and Latin America, including Japan, Russia, Panama and Peru, all non-traditional territories for Bollywood.

The legendary German food and drink festival Oktoberfest - a vibrant celebration of all things beer, bratwurst and Bavarian - returns to Manchester this October.

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent SPOILER ALERT: Do not read ahead, if you have not watched “The Bachelorette” Season 19 finale, part one, which aired on Sept. 13 on ABC… In an episode so dramatic, ABC had to unexpectedly extend the two-hour runtime, “The Bachelorette” began its journey to its grand finale, airing the first part of its live finale on Tuesday night. Leading ladies, Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey, have both dwindled down their suitors to one man each. But will next week’s big finale see an engagement for either woman? Both women faced similar situations with men who say they love them, but aren’t quite ready to propose at the end of the reality show. The contestants say they want to spend the rest of their lives with Recchia and Windey, respectively, but hope to experience a more realistic relationship timeline than tying the knot on TV, after just a handful of weeks.