‘Sideways’ Writer-Director Alexander Payne on What Makes a Good Film and What’s Missing in American Cinema

A unique house is up for grabs on a remote Scottish island - complete with its own private cinema.

Humza Yousaf has been urged to hand WhatsApp messages to the UK Covid Inquiry in a row over evidence.

Valerie Wu Intern The 2023 annual Newport Beach Film Festival (NBFF), hosted from Oct. 12 to Oct. 19, has announced its slate of awards winners.

Regarding movie runtimes, Alexander Payne apparently likes short and lean and “sharklike” in their efficiency. IndieWire reports that the director of “The Holdovers” had some choice words about inflated runtimes of recent film releases at the Middleburg Film Festival last weekend.

It’s official: Hou Hsiao-hsien has retired from filmmaking. Deadline reports that the Taiwanese filmmaker’s family released a statement earlier this week that confirms he’s retiring after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

EXCLUSIVE: Plan B Entertainment has set a joint venture with Oscar-winning documentarian and filmmaker Kevin Macdonald, known for movies including Touching The Void, One Day In September, Whitney, The Last King Of Scotland and State Of Play. 

A coroner today concluded that Yousef Makki was unlawfully killed.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Kingsman” director Matthew Vaughn knows a thing or two about bringing comic books to life on the big screen as the filmmaker behind acclaimed outings such as “Kick-Ass” and “X-Men: First Class.” In a recent interview with ScreenRant, the director shared his thoughts on the current era of comic book movies. He said poor visual effects are negatively impacting superhero movies, while also sharing his belief that Marvel needs to take a “less is more” approach. “I genuinely don’t know what’s happening with the superhero [genre] in the sense that, I do think, maybe we all need a little bit of time off from it,” Vaughn said.

Thierry Frémaux is best known internationally as the long-time head of France’s Cannes Film Festival, which is organized out of its offices in Paris’s trendy Marais neighborhood.

Tony Goldwyn Director Tony Goldwyn writes about the experience of working with his longtime friend, writer Tony Spiridakis, on the movie “Ezra,” which screened at TIFF and won the Audience Award at the Woodstock Film Festival. Bobby Cannavale stars as the father of an 11-year-old autistic son who sets off on a road trip with his son, without the permission of his son’s mother or his father, played by Robert De Niro, whose car he has “borrowed.” The friendship began before I could shut the door of my blue ’77 Chevy Nova. I had made the two and a half hour drive from college in Boston through the heart of the Berkshire mountains to Williamstown, Mass.

England held their nerve to beat Fiji in an enthralling quarter-final clash in Marseille, setting up a date with defending champions South Africa in Paris this Saturday.

Screenwriter and director Richard Curtis has a few regrets when it comes to the jokes in several of his films — especially the fat-shaming ones made in the 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief VVS Films, a leading Canada-based film distributor, will expand its operations to Australia and New Zealand. A24’s Nicolas Cage-starring comedy “Dream Scenario” is set as its first title for the new markets and will release on Jan. 1, 2024.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the third outing for Tom Holland’s web-slinger in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Directed by Jon Watts, the follow-up to 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home sees Spidey take on, thanks to multiverse shenanigans, villains from the superhero’s past – including Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) and Electro (Jamie Foxx).The sequel also features notable crossovers with past Peter Parkers, namely Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire, as they join forces to restore balance across multiple realities.After dealing with the villains, one of Green Goblin’s bombs takes out the confinement box holding Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) botched spell. This leads to everyone across the multiverse knowing the identity of Spider-Man.To counter the spell, Peter Parker (Holland) decides that if everyone forgets who he is, then no one will know who Spider-Man is.

Filmmaker Alexander Payne (“Sideways,” “The Descendants,”) recently held a Q&A session during the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France (via Variety), with Los Angeles-based French film journalist Didier Allouch overseeing that conversation. Payne gave the French audience a big tease about what he’s currently working on, which could allow him to tackle a dream film genre.

Ellise Shafer Daniel Kaluuya world premiered his feature directorial debut, “The Kitchen,” at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday night, calling it “one of the best days of my life.” Kaluuya was on hand alongside his co-director Kibwe Tavares, producer Daniel Emmerson and several of the film’s actors, including “Top Boy” star Kane Robinson and newcomer Jedaiah Bannerman. Set in a dystopian London where all social housing has been banned, the film follows the residents of a community called the Kitchen who must fight to save their home. Speaking before the premiere, Kaluuya and Tavares explained that it’s taken nearly a decade to bring the Netflix film to the screen.

Movie Week is done and dusted and what a spectacle it was, but this weekend on Strictly Come Dancing, the 13 remaining couples will once again be vying to impress the judges with their routines and you - the voting public.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Nowhere in the rap star manual does it say that a guaranteed formula for success is to “make psychedelic rock album with almost no rapping.” Yet that is exactly what Lil Yachty did with “Let’s Start Here,” his fifth full album but first rock project, after years as a top rapper with hits like “One Night,” “Minnesota,” “Oprah’s Bank Account” and guest spots on Kyle’s smash “iSpy,” Dram’s “Broccoli,” Calvin Harris’ “Faking It” and others. While Yachty’s new era was teased late last year with the trippy, 83-second-long single “Poland” (which isn’t on the album), at a listening session for “Let’s Start Here” in New York last December, a number of hip-hop journalists seemed perplexed by the new sound, which most directly evokes Pink Floyd, Funkadelic and other sounds from the early ‘70s.

EXCLUSIVE: UK-based sales and distribution company Blue Finch Film Releasing has acquired worldwide sales rights, excluding Australia and New Zealand, to Jordon Prince-Wright’s WW1 war feature Before Dawn. First-look materials will be available to view at the American Film Market, where Blue Finch will begin sales.

J. Kim Murphy Stop reading if you’ve seen this movie before — a wooden mannequin with the face of Greta Thunberg greets a horde of kindergarteners emerging from a steampunk Trojan horse under a dome of gigantic smartphones bathing them in hot blue light. Alright, keep scrolling.