‘Sophie Jones’ Trailer: A Teen Girl Deals With The Loss Of Her Mom In This Coming-Of-Age Indie Standout

Joe Otterson TV ReporterNatalie Portman and Sophie Mas’ MountainA production company has set a first-look TV deal at Apple.News of the deal comes a week after it was reported that Portman had signed on to star in the Apple series “Lady in the Lake” with Lupita Nyong’o. Portman is also an executive producer on the series, as is Mas via MountainA.

For her feature film debut, Mei Makino wanted to create a story that captured the flaws and imperfections of teenage life—particularly the confusion of having a multiracial identity. She initially sought to model her protagonist after the Black Latina students she taught in her Austin, Tex., youth film program, but when local actress Emma Galbraith auditioned, she rewrote the character as hapa—of half-Asian descent, like Makino and Galbraith both are.

Movies always have a way of giving fans false hope. This is just a by-product of presenting “movie moments” that make us long for the days we can experience our own sort of “meet-cute” or random encounter that leads to an incredible journey.

Guy Lodge Film CriticThe question of how to convey characters speaking a language other than English in a fully English-language production is one that many a director of an exotically-set Hollywood production or lumpy Europudding has faced over the years. For those who simply cannot resort to subtitles, the artifice of heavily accented English dialogue is a stilted standby.

Natasha Richardson’s untimely death at 45 remains one of the most shocking Hollywood tragedies of all time.

The final days of high school are fodder for dozens of films over the years. Typically, things don’t work out well for those teens that are shedding their high school lives in favor of becoming adults.

 Kelly Ripa  is one who loves to post throwback photos to Instagram of her and  Mark Consuelos , her kids, and now her most recent throwback picture is of Ripa and her mother, Esther.A post shared by Kelly Ripa (@kellyripa)The ‘Live with Kelly and Ryan’ host shared a side-by-side comparison picture of her in her 30s and her mother in her 30s on Tuesday. Let’s just say we had to do a double take because the resemblance between Ripa and her mother will make your jaw drop.

EXCLUSIVE: MarVista Entertainment has acquired worldwide rights for the indie coming of age pic The Miseducation of Bindu directed by Prarthana Mohan and executive produced by Jay and Mark Duplass.

Many people have wanted and tried to be the next Steven Spielberg, but now someone may actually be Steven Spielberg… as a teen boy, that is. According to multiple sources, Spielberg is working on his post-West Side Story movie project, a story rooted in his childhood that he wrote Tony Kushner, a frequent collaborator with whom he worked on films such as Munich and Lincoln, and will direct.

EXCLUSIVE: Escalating a relationship at Jason Blum’s Blumhouse, Carla Hacken has signed her Paper Pictures banner to a two-year first look producing deal. Among the films that Hacken will produce at Blumhouse is Coming Around Again, a romantic drama that Sophia Takal will direct from a script by Lawrence Michael Levine.

Highland Film Group has secured multiple distribution deals for action-thriller Wash Me In The River, starring Robert De Niro, John Malkovich, Jack Huston, Quavo and Willa Fitzgerald.

I am a cultural appropriator. I think I’m a white person from Colorado.

Courtney Howard authorNavigating the precarious aspects of growing up while simultaneously buried deep in the throes of grief is one young woman’s struggle in director Jessie Barr’s “Sophie Jones.” This meaningful drama, co-written and starring Barr’s sister Jessica, taps into the immediacy of being a teenager and the intimacy of sorrow, yielding astute insights. The pair set their story during the fertile period in a maturing teen’s life when hormones and complex emotions run roughshod.

Chloé Zhao has made history as the second woman ever to win the best director award at the Golden Globes, and the first Asian woman to do so. Zhao won for her work on Nomadland, which follows Fern (Frances McDormand) as she embarks on a new life as a van-dwelling nomad, traveling the American West.

On the heels of her debut single "Punching Bag," newcomer Wallice has shared her newest track, "23." The rousing track has the Los Angeles singer-songwriter shaking off expectations and embracing all of the messy malaise of being in your early twenties. "It’s hard not to compare your own professional success to that of your similarly aged peers," Wallice writes in a press release.

Disney‘s dedication to showing a diverse, inclusive world is a real thing; just look at Marvel and the rest of their casting. And slowly, but surely, others under the main umbrella are getting with that program.